by Mark Henwick
Angel Stakes
An Amber Farrell Novel
Book 5 of the Bite Back series
by
Mark Henwick
Published by Marque
Series schedule, reviews & news on
www.athanate.com
Bite Back 5 : Angel Stakes
ISBN: 978-0-9928240-3-7
Published in April 2016 by Marque
Mark Henwick asserts the right to be identified as the author of this work.
© 2016 Mark Henwick
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
No part of this book may be reproduced or used in any form or by any means—graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, Web distribution or information storage retrieval systems—without the written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. The names, characters and events portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, legal entities, incidents or localities is entirely coincidental. The laws of physics, chemistry, biology and psychology may not work as depicted.
Author’s Notes
Asian names:
Throughout this series, I use the Western sequence (First, Middle, Last Name) to depict names, so as to match with the majority of characters in the books. Most Asian societies would use Last, First, Middle Name.
Shakespeare:
“We are such stuff as dreams are made on”
Yes, I know I’m misquoting and it’s grammatically incorrect by today’s standards.
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Map of the Los Angeles packs
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
POST SCRIPT
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Chapter 1
Night Flight
Floating…
Floating down the river of night toward the city of dreams…
Our Lady, Queen of Angels. Where the long dragon spine of San Gabriel sprawls over the trembling San Andreas Fault and four million people cluster in its shadow. Bad Feng Shui, the Chinese mutter, and spit to clear their luck.
Los Angeles. Where glittering streets of plenty cut like knives through the desperate barrios. Where gangs and cults, earthquakes and hill fires, riots and despair and madness, all simmer just beneath the surface, waiting, like the abiding desert, to erupt out through the drains and engulf the city.
LA. The laconic arrogance in the initials of the city that lives, full of myth, pulsing with tales. The city that feeds on dreams, leaving nothing but dust and nightmares.
And we are such stuff as dreams are made. Or nightmares.
I knew I was on a plane, flying to Los Angeles, because Skylur had called us, and my oath bound me to him, as tightly as Diana or Bian were bound to him, or my House was bound to me.
And I knew that I was teetering on the brink of insanity. That I’d been over the edge. That I’d gone rogue—become an unthinking, instinctive killer, consumed by rage and blood lust. And that I’d been brought back by my kin.
Brought back as Were by Alex’s dominance. Brought back as Athanate by Jen’s Blood.
And whatever part of me was Adept had been torn and stunned by grounding all the energy that the whole Taos community of Adepts had poured into a lock to hold Diana prisoner on that cold hillside up in Carson National Park. The energy that Kaothos, Tullah’s dragon spirit guide, had reversed somehow.
They’d told me the Athanate would drive my Were rogue, or the Were would drive the Athanate. That the Adept would drive them both rogue.
It hadn’t happened like that.
You are none of the things they will think you are.
My great-grandmother, Speaks-to-Wolves, had said that to me in a vision, and she’d been right. My paranormal sides balanced each other. I’d escaped that nightmare, only to emerge into the same one—with a different face.
The tide of darkness in my mind wasn’t caused by my competing paranormal instincts, but by the meddling of Colonel Petersen’s psychologists, as I’d lain defenseless in Obs after being bitten by rogue Athanate in the jungles of South America.
I saw it as a storm in my head, sweeping in across the cold, high plains, threatening to obliterate me under towering clouds and cracking lightning. My body twitched and jerked with every electric strike.
My kin had saved me, but they hadn’t cured me. The darkness was returning.
And yet, it was as if there were two halves of me. A half that lay shaking and muttering feverishly on the floor between my worried kin, and a half that floated through the cool cabin, granted a clarity of vision that was painful.
I’d bound my eukori tightly into my head so that the stain of my madness could not spread, but I was listening to Diana and Bian.
There was a crisis ahead. An opportunity and a danger twisted around each other like mating snakes.
We were going to LA, a place where you could toss away your old life like a bad hand and get a new deal. But also the place where the hollow-bellied god of fame lured dreamers to the great light, only to let it flicker and fade, leaving them blind and starless in the stone jungles, unable to tell truth from artifice. And still believing, still believing, as they offered the last things they had left. Their passion. Their health, heart, soul and youth. Finally, even their children.
And the place where Basilikos and Panethus might end their shadowy battle, consuming each other utterly, that a new hope might rise from the ashes.
So close.
Floating down the river of night toward the city of dreams…
Floating…
As they touched the cool, gray asphalt of Van Nuys airfield, the plane’s tires began screaming, and I went into convulsions.
Chapter 2
Therapy Session
“No, man, he’s got
to go out big. This is it. This is the grand exit.”
The guy they’re talking about is John Elway. This January, he’d led the Broncos to their second successive Super Bowl, rifling the ball through the Falcons’ defenses and running for a touchdown himself. He’s a football god, but he’s a thirty-eight-year-old football god, and the fevered rumor mill at South High in the spring of 1999 says he’s going.
Back-to-back Super Bowls, oldest MVP ever, more wins than any other starting quarterback.
Way to go.
But the boys aren’t asking my opinion.
Eerie, how a remembered sentence opens a door. The smells and sounds come rushing back, dragging faces and colors and tastes and more words behind them.
The rows of lockers at South High. That institutional smell that no janitor can get rid of. And the sickly-sweet aroma of my emergency stash of sugar-rush candy. The corridor is shouty and echoey, full of just-before-class energy being burned off. And zombies on autopilot waiting for the caffeine to kick in.
I’m holding my locker open. That gives me half a place to hide. A moment to gather myself and shift mental gears for the school day. I need to think about class. Need to concentrate on schoolwork.
For all the talk, it’s not as if Elway and the Super Bowl are the biggest things going on in the world.
There’s a war in Kosovo. NATO has bombed the Serbians. Clinton said firm action but no troops on the ground. But they’d lied to us before. And, well, Clinton.
And bigger than that in my world, looming like a wall in front of me, there’s the Final Ruling just days away. My life might start over.
Will start over.
Think positive.
My locker door slams shut.
“Prom,” Cassie Quinn says, leaning against the closed door. Her mouth is set in a hard line. I’ve ducked this one too many times.
I shrug. “It’s a month away.” Cassie is the only reason I have any social life left, but that doesn’t mean she’s not irritating as a bug.
“It’s two weeks.”
“I’m sorry, Cassie. I can’t think about it right now. I promise, after—”
“By then it’ll be too late. Look, Amber, the insurance will come good. Dad says you’ve got a cast-iron case.”
The Final Ruling. The end of the legal battle over my dad’s huge medical bills that’s taken three years and pushed us further and further into debt.
“And his qualifications to make that assessment?” I ask.
Cassie’s parents have been a great support for Mom, but her dad’s got a tendency to say what makes Mom feel good at the time.
No way does that justify my pettiness.
But Cassie takes it all in her stride and keeps coming back. She just smiles crookedly, so I’ve got nothing to fight against, even if I want to lash out.
“I hate you forever,” I mutter, because she understands. She knows what I mean and doesn’t pay too much attention to what I say.
“Likewise.” Then her eyes look over my shoulder and go all wide and soft. “Oh, my God,” she says.
I don’t fall for that. I’m immune to her tricks, which is why, four years later, she’s still trying to get me back for the frogs I put in her bed.
But it turns out there is someone behind me.
He’s tall and slim. His thick, silky hair is that sort of blond that looks brown in some light. It’s raked back, but it’s always falling forward under its own weight. There’s a curl that brushes his forehead. His chinos don’t crease; his pale shirts manage to look soft and crisp at the same time. And it all looks effortless.
“Hi, Amber,” he says.
Tanner Forsythe is talking to me, and he even remembers my name.
I cough to hide my astonishment.
“Sorry,” I say. “Err…hi, Tanner.”
So cool. I mean, what a clever thing to say. Hi.
“I’m not interrupting?”
“No.” Cassie finds her voice, and she’s very firm. “Not at all.”
“My folks are away until next weekend, and I’m having a party on Thursday,” he says. He looks down at his loafers and slips his hands into his pockets. “I’m kinda restricted on numbers, but I wondered if you’d like to come?”
It’s not April 1st. Check.
I am awake. Check.
“Of course we will,” Cassie says. She’s glaring at me, eyes glinting like knives.
“Ahhh…” Tanner looks embarrassed.
Cassie is so quick. “I meant, of course she will,” she says without missing a beat.
Before I have a chance to stop this, it’s done.
He tears a page from his notebook and writes his cell number and address down. I don’t know what I expect, loopy calligraphy maybe, but his writing is neat and blocky, like he used a stencil.
I give him my number in a daze.
Tanner takes his slim Nokia out and types it in. It’s the latest cell, all copper sheen and sleekness, with a web browser, like that’s going to catch on. Anyway, my three-year-old basic cell with its ugly, stubby antenna and gray plastic case stays in my backpack.
“I’ll call,” he says and then he’s moving away, quickly gathered into a posse of laughing friends.
“I can’t,” I mutter, more to myself than Cassie.
It’s on a Thursday night. I guess that’s so he has Friday to clean the place up before his folks arrive back, but it’s a working evening for me, waitressing at Lario’s. One strike. Followed by a school day. Two strikes. And party clothes? My clothes are the clothes I go to school in. Three strikes.
It’s all kinds of flattering, but I don’t move in his circle. I probably won’t know anyone who’s going, and it’s not like he said he wants to date or anything.
My circle? My circle is school, eat, work, study, sleep and repeat. Run sometimes. Running helps.
“Yeah,” Cassie says, surprising me by agreeing. Then she adds: “Unless it turns out he wants to take you to the prom as well.”
As if.
We’re heading for class and there’s someone blocking the way: Fay Daniels. Another person who’s never spoken to me that I can recall. That makes two in the same morning.
There’s a kind of symmetry to it: if there’s a female equivalent of Tanner, it’s Fay. Long wavy black hair. Big blue eyes. Pouty red lips, like she’d gotten bee-stung. Stacked, of course. And when she wasn’t dressed like a model, she was being a cheerleader. Cue trail of drooling boys behind her that she ignores.
She smiles, but it doesn’t reach her eyes.
“Tanner just feels sorry for you,” she says. “Look, it’s sweet of him to invite you, but I wouldn’t advise taking him up on it.”
My jaw works, but no sound comes out.
“You won’t know anyone,” she goes on. “I wouldn’t want you to feel awkward or anything, so it’s probably for the best that you don’t come. You understand.”
Her lips stretch a little more before she turns back to her fan club.
My head finally catches up.
“Y’know, Cass,” I say loudly, “I need a night off. Next Thursday. Think I’ll go to a party.”
What kind of stupid decision was that?
What if she’s right? I mean, I’m all elbows and knees. I’m clumsy around boys. Tanner just feels sorry for me, so we’ll both be embarrassed when I show up.
Fay Daniels is looking back at me like I slapped her.
“Ow,” Cassie says, as if she’d stubbed her toe. Then she laughs that raucous, killing-the-donkey laugh she does and I have to join in.
Fay is not laughing.
We’re late for class.
∞ ∞ ∞ ∞ ∞
I’m sitting in the teepee and a hint of smoke curls up from the embers.
Across from me sits my great-grandmother, Speaks-to-Wolves. I know this is her, but she wears another’s face today. It’s the face of Martha, sister of Felix, who has been gathered up into the song of the pack, the song that is everything the pack has ever been.
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I chose a path. I chose a path that led me to that bleak hillside and I chose a path that led me here.
Chatima, the Caller, the Navajo shaman from New Mexico, had warned me that every path bore death and sorrow and pain and loss. And the path I chose bore death for Martha and for Silas, Felix’s huge lieutenant, and many more.
“There were no easy paths,” Martha says. “All of them held many deaths. And you must walk on. To stop is to lose everything that has been sacrificed to do what was done and to bring you this far.” She leans forward and the smoke curls around her like an old memory of ghosts. “Always remember, you are still none of the things they say you are. When they say rogue, they mean when the anger overcomes the heart and the head. But your anger is the great strength that carries you, and your heart knows the path. Trust yourself.”
But I am broken.
“You are only as broken as you allow yourself to be. Trust yourself. Use that strength.”
Outside, in the darkness, I hear the song. It sounds so comfortable. It would be easier to let myself float away. To be one with the song. To put an end to pain.
“Coward,” she says.
That hurts.
And the whole teepee begins to float upward and disperse like smoke.
Chapter 3
It felt like I was lying in a pool, looking up at the sky. But the sky was a white ceiling in a room I didn’t recognize, and there were faces looking down at me.
It hurt to see them. Every face seemed to pull my mind off into the direction of something painful, and it was easier just to float and not think about them.
I had to be dead. They were holding a séance.
Or dying. Dying people have their lives flash before them, don’t they?
Why did that brief time at my locker flash before my eyes, instead of…
Instead of things that could really hurt. The locker conversation was safe. However stressful it felt at the time, it was safe.
No. Wait. This wasn’t my life flashing before my eyes. This was deliberate. Controlled.