by Mark Henwick
Spring the magazine. Replace. Chamber. Back searching for targets. All one continuous movement.
The flashbombs went off. We were protected by being outside, but I was still seeing stars for a few moments.
A door opened. David fired the Sig. A body slid down onto the gravel and stayed there.
No return fire. And none going to come now.
Julie and Keith coordinated evacuating the front truck.
David, Rita and I worked on the back one. Less smoothly, but the two of them would have done well in Ops 4-10.
Nine attackers.
Four dead bodies.
Four wounded. One probably not going to make it.
And one cub, wet pants, temporarily blind and deaf, but otherwise miraculously unhurt.
Standing back from us, I could sense Kane was upset. And Scott was shocked—partly by the violence, partly by his wolf reaction to it.
I put them out of mind and focused on the task in hand.
By the time Bian’s Ops 4-10 team and the clean-up crew had arrived ten minutes later, we’d tended to the wounded and loaded the dead into one truck.
I got a salute and a well done from the Ops 4-10 team leader. I remembered her from my time.
“Did they make you Sergeant before it all went away, Annie?”
“They did, ma’am.”
I laughed. “Don’t ma’am me. I’m just another civilian now.”
“If you say so, ma’am.” Her lip twitched, but then her expression changed as she looked over at the prisoners. Went bleak as a storm clouds rolling off the Rockies.
“Not tonight, Annie,” I muttered and went to stand over them.
I nudged the cub with my foot. “On your feet.”
He scrambled up, heart racing and the stench of fear on his breath.
I sniffed.
“You’re not El Paso. What’s your pack?”
“Shut up, boy. We’re dead anyways.” One of the wounded.
I pointed the Mk 23 at the one who’d spoken. That close, the barrel looks like a freaking cannon. He got the message and shut up.
Without the support of his pack, the cub answered. “Black Hills, ma’am.”
Black Hills and Thunder Basin, to give them their full name. Not a Confederation pack, last I heard, out there on the Wyoming-South Dakota border. Just big enough, just far away enough from the Confederation to not be worth the trouble. But close enough to want to be friendly.
And the Confederation, frustrated in its attempt to drive down the Rockies through Colorado, might be looking east across the plains.
Black Hills trying to buy a guarantee of independence?
“You drive?” I asked.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Well, kid, I suggest you load the living into the back of this truck and then drive all night. You could make the Black Hills in time for a late breakfast with your alpha. And when you do, you tell him to call me, if he has the balls, so he can explain what the hell he thinks he’s doing.”
I gestured and he bent down to help the first one to his feet. The boy moved slowly, as if he was expecting me to shoot him in the back as soon as he turned away.
I gave him some room and turned my attention to the last two sitting propped against the truck.
They were El Paso, and they hadn’t missed me saying ‘the living’ got to leave.
“There is no El Paso pack anymore,” I said. “The pack that was El Paso now belongs to me and my co-alpha, by right of challenge. You two are outcast. Try your luck with Black Hills or the Confederation if you want, but if I ever see you back in Colorado, you’ll join the others as fertilizer. Now get out of here.”
They got.
Annie had organized the second truck with its load of dead werewolves to return to the fertilizer factory. The clean-up crew were spraying chemicals over the road to destroy the blood spilled during the ambush and aftermath.
We were done here, but I lingered for a second or two longer while Rita got in Kane’s face a little way off from where the headlights were shining through the steam of our breath.
“Yeah, five living,” he was saying, not realizing I could hear him. “What about the four dead to add to the total for the night?”
“You’re being an asshole, Kane. They’d have killed us to take her. Your magic any good at stopping bullets?”
“We could have done it another way.”
“Yeah, and you could be dead. This way worked fine. You know, by werewolf law she should have killed the survivors. She’s probably going to have to persuade Felix and Cameron not to go scorched earth on the Black Hills pack now, and if she succeeds it’ll be because none of us were hurt. Thanks to her way of doing it. You draw your own clear lines for yourself, but don’t try it on other people in the real world. Especially the werewolf world.”
Kane backed off, blinking. Knew a bit about magic, but not so much about werewolves.
I raised my voice. “Time to go home.”
Not only did I have a job to rebuild bridges with Kane about the type of magic that seemed natural to me, I was going to have educate him with some of the more brutal aspects of the paranormal communities. At least for the second, I’d expect the rest of the House to help.
Flint and Kane on their own could probably have lived their entire lives without overstepping the personal boundaries they laid down. The way they lived, if they ever felt they’d come to the close attention of too many humans, they could just move on and disappear. But history had shown the paranormal communities that their way didn’t work for bigger, complex groups.
We split up between the trucks. I went with Rita. Kane opted to go in the Hill Bitch. I shrugged. It wouldn’t have been ideal to talk to him in the car but it was his loss; much as I loved the Hill Bitch, Rita’s Dodge had heating.
Chapter 30
We got back to Manassah at around 4 a.m., both trucks together.
Amanda and Pia were waiting up for us, and I guess it was obvious to them Kane and I had a problem. I could see them stiffen up right away.
I ignored it and pointed Scott at the master bedroom. “You’re sleeping in there until you’re stable,” I said. “Go take a shower. Towels in the bathroom. Spare bathrobe, comforter and pillows in the closet. You get the couch.”
His lip thinned, but he’d gotten enough control not to snarl at his alpha for being bossed like that.
I ran a hand through my hair tiredly. The scent of Scott sleeping in the bedroom was going to drive Alex crazy when he got back. As if I didn’t have enough trouble in that area with Zane; someone was bound to tell Alex what had happened just before the fight.
I still didn’t know what to make of that. It gave me an odd, uncomfortable feeling, like looking back on something I’d done when I was drunk. It was embarrassing. Unfamiliar.
That’s not me.
Kane walking away without speaking brought me swiftly back to my more immediate problems.
I held up a hand to indicate I needed to speak to Amanda, and then briefly introduced the others.
“This is Rita. Lynch. Pia. Amanda.” I pointed at them. I wasn’t up to lengthy explanations tonight. “Rita and Lynch are staying with us for a while.”
Pia and David exchanged a silent message in a look, and it was David who took Rita and Lynch off next door to find spare bedrooms. Being the gentleman he was, he even offered to carry her backpack. The sound of Rita’s laughter as they left only made the silence in the hallway deeper.
“Amanda, I’ve apologised to Kane...”
“What happened?”
“I’ll explain it all later, but I pulled magic through him. Dark magic. I really don’t want to lose you, but I’m not sure I can tell him what he wants to hear from me. I can’t tell him I won’t ever do it again. Please, go talk to him, then come talk to me.”
She hurried after Kane, looking worried.
“Want to talk about it to us, boss?” Pia lead me into the living room and fixed me a rum.
Julie
and Keith settled silently into the smaller sofa and waited.
I didn’t know where to start.
“Tove came back,” Pia said when I didn’t immediately speak. “She was jumpy, but I think you’ve gotten through to her. She seems to be getting to that point where she realizes what a mess she’s in, and that we’re probably the best chance she has. She’s asleep now.”
“She gave back the money, too,” Keith said. “It’s in the safe.”
There was another one of those waiting gaps in the conversation.
“David told us what happened at the werewolf meeting,” Julie said, turning her head to look at the side of the house where Kane had gone to Amanda’s suite. “But there was obviously more going on under the surface. Why don’t you start from when you left us outside the club?”
Fair request.
I didn’t want to, but this was my House. I owed them the truth, and so I started speaking about why Zane had come and collected us for the meeting out at the fertilizer factory.
I hadn’t gotten far, no more than the background behind the challenge from El Paso, when Amanda came back in, with Flint and Kane.
My heart was in my throat at the sight of Amanda’s face, pale with anger.
Was using Kane to channel Blood magic enough to break the Athanate oath she’d given for her House? Had I lost them already?
She sat stiffly beside me. Flint and Kane sat cross-legged on the floor.
“I have sworn my oath,” she said, not meeting my eye. “I need to hear what happened, from your perspective.”
Shit.
One more interruption: Rita and David.
Rita took a chair, David went and stood behind me to massage my neck. Until his thumbs pressed into the muscles, I hadn’t realized how tense I had become.
Flint was quiet, but his face wasn’t as closed as Kane’s.
I started again. Went back over the situation with the Southern League—the need to allow some of the old traditions to remain while such a fundamental change was made to the independence of packs. How the challenge from El Paso fell into this gray area. The way Felix and Cameron had felt they needed to protect me. The bending of the rules to exclude me from the fight. My explanation that I’d thought it would have done more damage.
I went on to the explosion of emotion I’d felt when I heard Cameron’s work-around, my instinctive refusal to allow it, then followed by the cold reality; Alex in single combat against Caleb had probably been better odds than both of us against both of them, because Victoria outclassed me fighting as a wolf and would leave him to face both of them.
“And you couldn’t fight in human form?” Amanda asked. “Wouldn’t you have been better that way?”
Rita answered for me. “Not when it’s a formal challenge, with lives and packs at stake. Then you have to fight as a wolf.” She held up a hand to stop me continuing. “Maybe it’s just detail, but you were acting strangely before the fight.”
My stomach sank. I had to explain that as well? To my House?
But she was right. I had to explain because they were my House. Even Rita.
“This is not for discussion outside the House,” I said, and held Rita’s level gaze until she nodded.
“While Cameron and Felix were still arguing in the back of the factory, Zane got the Belles to cover for him and he came to warn me what was going on. To warn me not to get involved in the challenge.”
“That went well. What a surprise.” Keith said, with a lopsided smile. Trying to lighten it up. Julie jabbed him in the ribs.
“Yeah. Anyway, I guess Cameron sent him, but he wasn’t supposed to be telling me anything and he was worried the El Paso pack or their friends might be watching. So he had to pretend to be coming on to me...”
I felt the color creeping up my face.
“I’m not... I don’t know what happened. When Rita says acting strangely, I guess she means I was about to get mounted on the wall.”
“He was—” Pia started.
“No. He wasn’t forcing me,” I said. My face was hot now. “I came on to him.”
“Coming on wasn’t one-sided, from what I could see,” Rita said quietly. “Not that I’d expect anything else from him.”
“It’s not what I’d expect from me.” I looked at the ceiling rather than catch anyone’s eye. “I thought for a moment someone must have slipped me something in my beer at the club, but...” I shrugged, “I’d have burned that out of my system by that time.”
“Not necessarily,” Amanda said. “But I don’t think we need to go any further into this. You were acting out of character. Does that mean it also affected your decision to fight, and what happened in the fight?”
“No.” I struggled with putting it into words. “If Zane had come on to me, say, a year ago? Hey, he’s too sexy for his own damn good, but I am attracted to him. Deciding to fight had nothing to do with feeling strange. Feeling strange was all about making out with him only days after...”
I held up my left hand with the twin rings that Jen had got for us. No, we weren’t married, but we were committed to each other.
Whatever that means.
Jen saying she understood about Bian.
That she’d talked to Alex about it. That he would be okay.
But Zane? Oh, no. Whole different ball game for Alex.
Aloud I said. “It was almost like it was happening to someone else. Like I didn’t care. Like I had no inhibitions about anything. Nothing to do with the fight.”
I closed my eyes.
The fight.
Sitting there in the luxurious comfort of the living room at Manassah, it should have been difficult to think back and capture that exact horror and fascination of the formless power lurking in the darkness beneath me. The terror of it. Knowing it had been waiting there for me to reach in this urgent way. Knowing it was a sort of a trap. Something that I couldn’t undo. Knowing my desperation was all part of the trap.
It wasn’t difficult to capture it at all. It was burned into my mind, and while I stumbled putting it into words, Pia’s eukori slipped effortlessly in. Then David. Amanda. Sweeping in Julie and Keith and Rita. Flint. Finally, Kane.
They all became witness to the bone-deep shock of it all, seen up close through my eyes.
Alex unbalanced by our combined weight on his back and the fangs in his neck.
Caleb poised to kill him.
Knowing Alex would die.
Accepting the trap because I couldn’t let him die.
Sucking that power through Kane, without knowing how or why.
Terror and fascination.
The horror knowing what I was doing to both Kane and Victoria.
Kane’s feelings, shocked and sharp and deep as knife wounds.
The memories of the pain exploding through my body as the magic worked. Anger. Fear. Dark sensations and emotions. Feeding on them, growing stronger. The obscenity of it—using Victoria’s own terror as part of what made me able to kill her.
Her despair.
The violent need as I killed her.
Then afterwards, the sickness at it all. The nausea at what I’d done.
Tears gathered in my eyes.
Amanda knelt and gathered Kane into her arms. Flint hugged them both clumsily.
David kept massaging my neck. Pia moved to press her body against mine.
As if the physical contact could drain some of the pain bubbling up in both of us.
It did help.
My House.
“What’s done is done,” Pia said.
David shook his head. “Frankly, rather this than the alternative.”
Amanda turned to me, her eyes troubled, but steady.
“You still have my oath,” she said.
She turned to look at Flint.
He nodded without hesitation.
Kane: his acceptance was slow, but it wasn’t grudging. He’d seen what happened through my eyes. He wasn’t happy about it, but I could feel his aura through my eukori.
“We’ll talk to Kaothos and Alice tomorrow.” Pia kissed my cheek and rested her head against my shoulder. “They’ll know what this is and how we all deal with it.”
Their pressure on my eukori started to feel uncomfortable. I eased them out, and they accepted my need for privacy.
It wasn’t quite that.
The thought of Kaothos and Alice poking around in my eukori unsettled me. As if... as if whatever it was, this brooding darkness, it was mine. For me to handle. Alone.
Chapter 31
I asked Julie to describe her impressions of the visit to Weaver and the attempted ambush afterwards, saying I’d add anything I felt she missed.
As I’d known she would, Julie made a good, neutral summary. None of us liked Weaver, but none of us had enough reason to not work with him, if it meant getting Tullah back.
“He’s our best bet,” I said.
That discussion slowed. The others thought we shouldn’t make a final decision without a better grasp of what the Hecate might offer as well, and it seemed clear we couldn’t work with both. Julie was adamant that just because Weaver said she wasn’t to be trusted, wasn’t enough reason to refuse to speak with her.
“Apart from kidnapping Amber...”
I had to laugh at that. Yeah, apart from kidnapping me. And spying on Alice.
“Apart from that,” Julie continued, unfazed, “she’s been reasonably polite, and all she says she wants to do is meet the dragon. I say we go at least that far with her.”
That was on the list for ‘tomorrow’, which was now today. Late as it was, no one showed any sign of moving. I had the feeling they were waiting for me go to bed, but I was slumped back on the sofa and it seemed a long way up.
“She’s also part of the Northern Adept League, which has a large community in New York, so we need to progress carefully and keep Skylur in the loop. I’ll relay that through Bian,” Pia said, closing off that topic and moving to what we were going to do with Tove.
The girl had made a good decision, and a brave one; she’d come back to us for help. But Amanda was quick to say Tove might not yet have reached the point where we could really help her.