by Cane, Laken
Larry didn’t hesitate. He pulled a cell phone from his pocket, tapped on the screen, then placed the device on the floor. Then he melted back against the wall. When I watched him, I could see him, but when I glanced down at the phone and then back up, he’d disappeared once again.
“Look at the image,” Avis said, then spat out another tooth.
I didn’t want to. I knew it’d change my mind. I knew from experience that looking at a vampire’s phone or screen or whatever else they wanted to show me was a bad idea. I’d seen the detective that way, and Bastien and the girl Farrow, and now, I was about to see another horrifying picture.
I looked.
Avis hadn’t lied. She had Lucy. There was an image on the screen of her pale face, lips tight and a disbelieving look in her eyes as she stared up at her captor. She didn’t look as scared as she might have. She looked angry, and she looked shocked. But a hand was around her throat, and though I couldn’t see his face, I recognized the suit. I even recognized the hand pressing against her windpipe.
“One more chance,” Avis said. “Shift, or I will order him to hurt her. He will hurt her, and it will be your fault, just as all this is your fault.” Then she looked down at the diminutive Lennon. “You were right that she wouldn’t die for you. But she will die for the human. What a strange wolf she is.”
So I shifted, because it didn’t matter anymore. Wolf form or human form, I would fight to the death so that I could save Lucy. I would not die, and neither would she.
“How the fuck,” I said, my long, unbound hair my only clothing, “did you turn my detective into a monster?”
Because the man in the image with his fingers around Lucy’s throat was Rick Moreno, and I was devastated.
Chapter Thirty
“Remember how I said he’d done some very bad things? He’s done worse than this, Kait Silver. Sorry.”
I hardened my emotional, aching heart. I’d think about Rick later. I was good at compartmentalizing, thankfully. “You have to know you’re not going to leave here tonight alive,” I told her. “Even if you somehow escaped me, the wolf alpha is here. And Bastien—”
“No one can find this room,” she interrupted. “This is Frederick’s creation. His and Kaloni’s. They will never find this room.”
“I found it,” I said.
“Because you were led here, and you were allowed in. They will only see you again when you are dangling over the wall.”
“What do you want, Avis?” Of course I knew what she wanted. I was stalling, hoping that maybe she’d go ahead and die and save me the trouble of killing her. More worried about Lennon now that I was not ruled by my feral wolf brain, I skimmed my stare over her tearstained face, her tattered clothes, and the bruises ringing her throat.
She didn’t look at me, though. I understood. She’d told me once that she wasn’t made for fighting. She didn’t like it, didn’t want to do it, wasn’t good at it. She wanted to stay in the safety of Shadowfield and do what seers did best—see things and report to their alpha.
Eli was going to lose his mind when he discovered that she’d been taken. Jared had left him in charge of the pack while he came to fight with me, and somehow, Avis had taken Lennon right out from under his nose.
“I want you to give yourself to me,” Avis said, “to save your friends. This one…” She kissed the top of Lennon’s head. “And the one your human friend is holding for me. I’ll give Lennon back her wand and return her to her pack, and I’ll free the little dreamer who means so much to you.” She hesitated and then cocked her head, her stare quizzical. “Do you believe me?”
“Not even a little bit,” I said.
“I wouldn’t believe me either,” she said ruefully. “But you really don’t have a choice. I came up here because this was Frederick’s favorite room. He’d often stand at the wall and gaze down into his world, dreaming, making plans, trying to be happy. It’s so hard for vampires to be happy. Did you know that?”
I only nodded. She wasn’t really talking to me anymore. She was preparing to die.
“Frederick was terrified of death,” she murmured. “Terrified. There is no God waiting for vampires. No rest or peace or heaven. Only nightmares.” Finally she blinked and focused on me once again. “You sent him there. I can only imagine his pain and terror right now. When I die, I’ll find him.” She shook Lennon, a little. “You promised, didn’t you, Witchwolf? You promised that your magic would lead me straight to him.” She was crying, her pink-tinged tears sliding down her face, proof of her despair. “I miss the life we had. The most depressing thing is knowing I can never get that back. There’s only death now, and the hope that maybe it isn’t as bad as Frederick believed it would be.”
Pity swelled inside me, shocking me with its abrupt intensity. No matter that she’d done horrific things that could never be undone, she was agonized, and I felt sorry for her.
That pity would not stop me from killing her, but it would make me show her mercy. I wouldn’t make her suffer or give her to Zach for closure or hand her over to Bastien for centuries of torture.
I would simply kill her.
Then I would go deal with the aftermath of my choices.
I closed my eyes and sent up a prayer that Rick would not kill Lucy, that Lennon would survive my attack, that Avis wouldn’t suddenly be filled with energy and throw us both over that wall.
I would have given just about anything for my demon blade, but I would make do with everything I had naturally—and not so naturally. There was magic inside me that came in times of desperation, and I could only hope it’d rise to aid me when Avis and I began to fight. She was sick, and she was dying, but she was not weak and she was not slow. Not yet.
Without another hesitation, I partially shifted and leaped at the unspeakable mutation that Frederick Axton had created. As I crashed into her, Lennon flung herself away, screaming, but she took time to snatch her wand from Avis’s grip. Good. With both of us fighting her, she was not getting away. We would take her down and end her miserable life.
Everything seemed to happen at once. Avis called for the vampire who had faded himself against the stone wall to attack, and he flew suddenly toward me—but I was too busy with Avis to bother with him. “Lennon,” I yelled. “Stop him!”
She had a very powerful wand that I had witnessed an action. I knew what it could do. I knew it could stop the vampire, or at least distract him. So I trusted her to have my back, and I put all my attention on Avis.
As I had known, Avis was not weak. She was still a challenge, no matter that she was half dead. She had pure hatred driving her on. She would’ve liked to of dragged things out. To torment me further. But she knew she had run out of time.
The only thing left for her to do was kill me.
The vampire behind me began his brutal attack, even as I attacked Avis. The stone room was abruptly full of flying blood and sounds of pain and I had two adversaries to battle. No, that was wrong. There were three enemies in that room.
I was hurt quickly. But I was used to pain, and I shrugged it off, because there was nothing I could do about it and no time to care. My injuries would be dealt with later. If I survived.
And that was beginning to look a little more uncertain, because Lennon turned her wand on me. She crouched against the wall murmuring, and she sent her power right at me. She was good, as I’d known she was, and the blast of magic slammed into my body.
It was like being hit head-on by a train. That feeling wasn’t new. I had been in a lot of fights with a lot of powerful people, and I had had my brain scrambled by most of them. And then I realized the reason Avis had wanted me to shift to my human form.
She had cut me up badly with her claws and though I believe that her terrible magic had waned, I once again felt it surging through me. It wasn’t as painful as before. It wasn’t as potent. But it was plenty strong enough to keep me from shifting to my wolf. And without my demon blade, shifting to my wolf was the one thing I really needed to
do to defeat the three people I battled.
Obviously Avis was using Frederick Axton’s mind control magic to make the detective do her bidding and to make Lennon attack me. She’d turned my friends into lumps of mind-controlled evil. It was the only explanation. At least the only one I could accept. And if Avis could be believed, and I believed her, no one was coming to help me. I was going to have to handle shit myself, which would be fine if I could wake up my inner psycho. I needed that power. But Avis’s magic was coursing through my body, magic from Lennon’s wand was making me feel like my entire body was caving in, and the blasted vampire who apparently guarded the room was attempting to remove my head from my body. He had dug his claws into my flesh as though he could simply pinch my head right off. I was pain.
Then Avis made a stupid decision, and I knew that was what would save me. Her need to be the one who hurt me, who killed me, who made me pay for what I had done to her and her master. “Stop,” she screamed. “You said I have to be the one to kill her.”
There was no time for me to be confused about her comment. It was enough that the other two stood down immediately to let her end the fight. The glorious magic inside me was stifled by the poison she had sent into my body, but I was strong enough anyway. I was desperate enough.
I had nothing but my hands and my teeth and my determination, and I used them all to get me what I wanted, what I needed. She leaned over me, poised to pierce my throat with her hideous fangs, and I gathered up everything inside me, even the pain, and I yanked her to me. I hadn’t even realized I was on the floor until that second. She fell off balance and on top of me. I wrapped my arms and my legs around her, held her head still with a hand that had managed somehow to partially shift into a claw—I couldn’t have shifted if I tried, so I guessed my wolf was lending me as much help as she could—and I ripped out her throat.
It wasn’t enough to kill her, though. As she seized on the floor, blood and magic exploding from her torn throat, I let her slide off me and I crawled to Lennon to get her wand. I could end Avis with that wand.
Avis wouldn’t stay down for long. Even now, despite the way she looked, she was slowly healing herself. Maybe I could have summoned enough strength and energy to lift her over the wall, but I was no longer sure that was the right thing to do. I had no guarantees that she would die if I did, and she absolutely had to die.
Here. Tonight.
And I had to kill her.
Chapter Thirty-One
I ripped the wand from Lennon’s hand, and though she fought me, she really wasn’t a fighter. I punched her in the face, holding back so I wouldn’t kill her, and when her grip loosened, I took control of her wand. I managed to get to my feet, and I stumbled and staggered to Avis, and I did not hesitate. I lifted the wand and plunged it into her heart. To me, that wand was simply a wooden stake. But the wand had other ideas.
It exploded with magic. Power shot up my arm and into my shoulder, so intense and shocking that I gave a hoarse scream, but I didn’t let go of the wand. Avis’s heart exploded with the magic, pieces of it hitting my face, the wall, the floor.
The vampire never moved away from the wall, but Lennon ran to me, and while I was stuck in the magic of her wand, she hit me in the head with what felt like a large rock she’d either pried up from the floor or wall or maybe had simply found it lying there. She was as caught in Avis’s awful magic as I was in the power of the wand, but then Avis died, and Lennon continued to hit me.
I was flung away, finally, as though I’d held a live wire that finally let me go, and I held a hand up as Lennon started toward me, her face twisted and wet with tears. “Stop, Lennon. She’s dead. The spell will wear off now and you’ll be okay. Just wait.”
“Give me my wand,” she cried, attempting to grab it.
But I knew if she got the wand before the magic was gone, she’d kill me with it. “When you’re calm,” I told her, holding her off as I finally managed to stand. Then it was just a matter of holding the wand out of her reach. She was short, and I was tall. She wasn’t getting the wand.
Seconds later, she fell to her knees, head hanging, and began to sob. “What have I done,” she cried. “Oh, God, Kait. Why did I try to hurt you?”
Barely able to stand, I crouched beside her. “It wasn’t your fault, honey. She did the same thing to Detective Moreno.” I slid the wand to her, but reluctantly. I really did want that wand. “But Avis can’t hurt anyone anymore. Let’s get out of here.”
She accepted the wand almost gingerly. “Let me help you heal,” she whispered. “I can purge you of the magic that’s keeping you from shifting. And I can at least wipe away some of the pain.” She looked at me, finally, her eyes brimming. “I’m so sorry, Kait. I’m just so fucking sorry.”
I patted her hand. “Not your fault,” I told her. “Do what you can to heal me. My wolf and Dr. Hayes will do the rest. We need to hurry. I have no idea what’s going on below.”
“The rogues will be easily controlled with Avis gone,” she said, her voice stronger. She straightened her shoulders. “The world is different, and we will adjust. Hold out your hands so I can push pain relief in through your palms.”
I held my hands out obediently, and she circled them with the wand, whispering words I didn’t understand. The light that wrapped around my wrists was warm, blue, and numbing, and I began to feel immediate relief as it spiraled up my arms. But then the light became restrictive, like rope, and I frowned.
“Just another minute,” she said, then fell back into whispering nonsense.
I didn’t know how long it took me to realize she wasn’t trying to heal me. She was trying to restrain me—and she was succeeding, because I’d patiently sat there and meekly held my arms out so that she could wrap them with her magic.
“Lennon,” I said carefully, trying to tug my arms away, “what are you doing?”
But she wouldn’t stop chanting, and then, I was well and truly caught. I was cocooned in invisible ropes of magic, and I could not fight my way free. Not from that.
Then she pushed herself away from me and sat with her back against the wall and her knees drawn up, her wand securely in her grip. “A long time ago,” she said, “I “saw” you. I was shown that you were a danger to me, my pack, my alpha. I knew I would be forced to have you killed, eventually, because as long as you’re alive, no one is safe. You destroy things, Kait. The councils have made you judge, jury, and executioner and though you have yet to completely immerse yourself in that role, it’s coming.” She grimaced and put her fingers to her throat, then continued. “Avis promised to help me. She’d see to it that Lucy disappeared and she would kill you, and I would go home and pretend none of this happened. I didn’t want to see you die.”
I shook my head. “You’re not the bad guy, Lennon. You can’t be.”
She hiccupped, then darted her tongue out to lick the tears sliding over her lips. “Of course I’m not the bad guy, Kait! You are the bad guy. I just want to protect my people. It’s simple as that. My pack and my alpha are everything to me. I’ll do anything I have to do to protect the nonhumans. To protect our world. But you have no loyalty. You’ve lost your way. You don’t even know who you are.”
“I would never hurt Jared or the pack,” I told her. Honestly, I was stunned. Was she right? Was I the bad guy? Is that how the nonhumans saw me? But I shook it off. I couldn’t feel sorry for myself. I couldn’t feel guilty. I needed my rage.
I forced myself to relax, then concentrated on using my own magic to try to break the bonds she’d restrained me with.
She looked at me with pity and frustration in her eyes. “You’re the reason all of this happened. You could have made different choices. You accepted the council’s request. You killed Axton. You destroyed his seer—and I saw that you would also destroy me. Just as your old pack alpha knew you would destroy him, which is why he forced you out of his pack. He didn’t want to kill you, so he sent you away. And guess what? You will kill him. Because of you, the nonhuma
ns are in awful danger and the humans are dying. You are not a champion of nonhumans, and you cannot live in our world.”
“You’re the reason the pack hated me so much, aren’t you?” I asked her, filtering out her accusations. I would look at them another time, if I kept my life. “You planted fear and doubt. It wasn’t just that they thought my father was a traitor, though they hated me enough for his sins.” I needed to keep her talking. Her reluctance to do the dirty work and kill me could possibly help me survive this night.
“Your father was a traitor. He wasn’t a good man. He abused you your entire childhood, and you think he was a god.” She shrugged. “Maybe that, combined with your hobbled wolf, made you the horror that you are. You’re a traitor, too, Kait, and I was not going to allow you to destroy my pack. Unfortunately, I didn’t stop you before you succeeded. I was soft. I can’t be soft any longer.” She gave a sob, truly upset that she would now have to kill me. She squeezed her wand and began a tiny flurry of movements that would likely end in my death.
“What about Lucy,” I said, desperate to slow her down. I could feel the magic weakening. I couldn’t break the bonds, not yet, but I was getting there. I was sure of it. “Why did you want to hurt her?”
“She sees too much. Her dreams are confusing to her at times, but she would have become very powerful eventually. She would have known what I’d planned for you. She saw herself with a serial killer, didn’t she?”
“Rick is the serial killer?” I whispered, horrified.
“God, no. He’s a man whose mind is trapped by a dark magic he might never escape. It wasn’t his fault he was taken by Axton. That was on you, too, wasn’t it? No, Lucy saw herself with the serial killer because she was with the serial killer. Quite often. She was falling for him. Falling for a killer.” Her expression hardened. “Just as my alpha is falling for one. And I must protect him. You understand that, deep down, don’t you?”