Wolfen

by Alianne Donnelly

The tickle, when it starts, is easy to ignore. But then it grows, multiplies, and soon my leg is crawling as if hundreds of maggots are eating me alive. No… No! I can’t take this. Not this! “Kill me!” I scream, but the darkness devours my words, steals them from my lips. I can’t fight what I can’t see, but I try anyway, kicking out, thrashing against the convert holding me captive, and all the while those maggots writhe in my wound, burrowing into me, taking me apart, little by little.

  “Stop…stop… Penny get in here!”

  Voices jumble together; they make no sense. I feel a prick in my neck, and almost immediately, my arms fall useless at my sides, weak and rubbery, and so very heavy. I pry my eyelids open one more time, force myself to focus long enough to loll my head to the side so I can see.

  The convert pinning me in place lets go, but thick bands of metal remain where his claws used to be. I watch him back away, slip into shadows, and as he does, his face transforms into one I know all too well. Not a convert anymore. Still, just another monster. One with blond hair and piercing eyes that glow out of the darkness, ready to pounce.

  It’s easy to be brave during the good times. To dare the devil when he’s nowhere to be seen. The truest test of strength comes when you’ve been beaten down so deep, you can’t see the surface anymore. When your heart struggles to keep up its beat, and your soul feels so light it could float away on a breeze. When you reach out for help, and all you see is a reflection of yourself. It’s not how you fall that writes the stories people will tell about you. It’s how you choose to get back up—whether you choose to get back up.

  “Kill me,” I plead. “Kill me. Kill me…”

  When my eyes go blind and my ears turn deaf, I know he already did.

  53: Aiden

  The evil of war is not that it destroys lives, but that it paints the world black and white. Friend or enemy, good or bad, life or death. The iron curtain of fear shutters our minds, removing degrees of variance that would otherwise allow us to see shades of gray. We cast stones, not caring whether the target is holding a rifle or a crutch. We cast them, not realizing our blow might be the one to finally shatter them.

  ~

  Aiden sank down onto a spindly chair, feeling a thousand years old. Penny was just finishing up applying a loose gauze dressing over the three dozen maggots she’d packed into Desiree’s open wound. She was quiet and efficient, focused on her task, but her gaze kept shifting over to Aiden.

  She wasn’t the only one.

  When he’d heard Desiree’s screams from clear across the compound to the dining hall, he hadn’t thought, he’d simply reacted, leaving Graham and a half-dozen others gaping after him. Now his second-in-command stood in the doorway on the safe side of the threshold, eyeing Aiden the way he always eyed Bryce when his brother was close to wolfing out.

  Aiden braced his elbows on his knees, and rubbed his face tiredly. “Bottom-line it for me.”

  Penny tossed her instruments onto a tray, then washed her hands in the sink. “I cleaned it as best I could,” she said, her back to him. “My wormy friends should take care of the rest, and the meds I pushed should help break the fever. If it works, we’ll see signs of recovery fairly quick. Maybe even tomorrow.”

  “And if it doesn’t?”

  Penny shut off the water, grabbed a towel, and leaned back against the sink. “She’s not like us.”

  “Meaning what?”

  The healer exchanged a look with Graham.

  “Don’t look at him, answer me.”

  “You already know the answer,” she said, more gently than he’d ever heard her speak. “You know how far gone she is; we can all smell it. If the fever doesn’t break soon, she could go into a coma or suffer permanent brain damage. If it screws with her heart or lungs…there’s nothing more I can do.”

  Aiden rejected the possibility outright. “She’ll pull through. She’s too strong to give up.”

  “Didn’t sound like it when she was begging you to kill her,” Graham said.

  Aiden tensed, and Graham raised his hands in surrender. “Just saying.”

  “Don’t. Ever.”

  “We’ve got bigger issues to deal with right now, Alpha. Stuff you’re going to want to know. Like now.”

  “Then why are you stalling?”

  Another look passed between Graham and Penny. “You want to do this here? Fine. Don’t move.”

  Not planning on it.

  Penny said nothing when Graham left, and the silence, punctuated by Desiree’s ragged breaths, clawed at Aiden’s sanity. Grasping for something—anything—to distract him, he scrutinized Penny up and down. “So. Speaking of who’s smelling who on who—”

  “Whom.”

  Aiden ignored that. Penny couldn’t help herself. “You and Bear, huh?”

  She ducked her head, smiling a little. Happiness radiated from her like sunshine, and for the smallest instant, Aiden felt his own lips twitch. Bear was about the least likely candidate he’d have expected Penny to choose as her mate.

  “When did that happen?” he asked.

  “A few days after you left.”

  Aiden whistled. “Didn’t even wait for the sheets to cool.”

  She flushed. “It’s not like that.”

  Of course it wasn’t. At almost eight feet tall and built like a Sherman tank, Bear took some getting used to. But he had a huge heart and a tendency to wear it on his sleeve. If someone was sad, he kept them company; if they were hurt, he tried to make it better; if they needed help, he volunteered first for the job. You just couldn’t help loving the guy. Guess it’d taken Penny a while to pull her nose out of her books long enough to notice.

  If he’d known about this a week ago, he’d have teased the ever-living hell out of her. She’d had the Alpha giving her the goods every day for a month before he and Bryce left on their supply run. Aiden didn’t like to brag, but females good as lined up for his attentions for a reason—and was it bragging if it was true?

  But that was the great thing about Penny. She didn’t put up with bullshit. What they’d had was fun, and that’s all it had been. Aiden had never promised her anything, and she’d never asked. She knew better. “I’m glad,” he said, and he meant it. “Someone needs to keep Bear out of trouble.”

  Penny rolled her eyes. “You have no idea.”

  Aiden was still chuckling over that when Graham returned, carrying rolled up maps. “Yuck it up, buddy. You won’t be laughing for long.” He yanked the curtain partition aside, and spread out the maps on another gurney.

  “I’ll leave you two to talk,” Penny said, making her quiet exit.

  Aiden picked himself up, absently squeezing Desiree’s calf as he passed. Her fever raged through the layers of her pants and blanket, and his gut twisted tighter.

  “What have you got?”

  “You first,” Graham countered. “What happened to Bryce?”

  Aiden caught him up on the past few weeks—the run into San Francisco; Sinna and her latent transition; all the way to Haven, where they’d all split up. As he spoke, Graham traced their route on the map, marking sites with the code they all used. A circle for safe areas, an X for convert territory. The map he’d laid out was clean, probably the last original they had, and Aiden wondered why Graham would feel so cavalier about wasting it, but he let it go for the time being. “Bryce should have headed back here when he left with Sinna.”

  “Yeah, well, looks like he didn’t.”

  Aiden nodded. “Which means he went south, back to Gilroy.” No other place he would’ve gone. Bryce didn’t wander. “Stupid son of a bitch.” He’d gone to get the girl Klaus wanted to trade for Aiden.

  “No,” Graham said distractedly.

  “No?”

  Graham swore, flipped a wall switch to turn on the X-ray backlight, aligned their current map with the one underneath it, and held both up to the panel.

  “What the fuck?” Aiden flattened out the curling edges to see better, but couldn’t make any sense of it. The bott
om map was covered with Xs and Os; a sixteen-year compilation of travel he and Bryce, and the human mercenaries before them, had done. Between them, they had a damned good idea of where the loot was worth risking a hive and places they were better off driving around—far around. He thought he knew that map by heart. But now there were arrows all over it, looking too much like migration patterns for Aiden’s peace of mind.

  “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you.”

  “Is this what I think it is?”

  Graham nodded. “A few of us have been going out to recon the area—”

  “Without my permission?”

  Graham growled. “We can’t all just sit here while you and Bryce go out exploring. Most of us are getting pretty sick and tired of hiding. We. Want. Out. So, yeah. You were gone, I made a decision. And it’s a damn good thing I did.”

  It was the first time Graham had ever overruled Aiden’s mandate, and he’d done it without remorse. The way he stared Aiden down, the male was two seconds away from challenging him outright.

  Aiden had half a mind to remind him who the alpha was. He checked himself only because Graham dropped his gaze in submission.

  Instead of apologizing, Graham turned back to the map. “All of these arrows indicate movement,” he explained. “And there’s been a lot of it lately. They’re shifting around like something’s calling them, and they’re all gathering right here.” He smoothed a hand over a thick band of territory bisecting the former United States into North and South.

  It ran right through Haven.

  Aiden’s skin crawled with the implications.

  “Right here is where you split up?”

  Aiden nodded. “Haven got wiped off the map in a hurry.”

  “How many converts?”

  “Hundreds at least.”

  “They must have been gathering for a while.”

  Planning. A tactical, logical decision. Made by supposedly unthinking beasts. But then, they weren’t really, were they? Not anymore.

  “Bryce didn’t go after the girl,” Graham said. “He went south, because he couldn’t go north.”

  “He still would have tried.” And might have succeeded… “But not with Sinna.” Bryce wouldn’t have risked her. Aiden let out a string of foul curses, stopping short of punching a hole through the X-ray’s backlit panel. “What are the odds the humans developed a kill serum?” he asked. That was why Klaus had wanted the girl, after all. Someone besides the Nazi fuck must have known about it. They could have continued Klaus’ work in Gilroy. It was a long shot, but better than nothing. If they had the means to wipe out converts, Bryce would take it in a heartbeat to keep Sinna safe.

  “Zero point fuck all,” Graham said.

  “They could have—”

  “No, they couldn’t. You know how I know? Because we did. Ask me why we’re not using it to wipe the fuckers off the face of the Earth.”

  “Tell me.”

  “Two words: shared DNA. For any toxin to have a chance in hell of killing converts, it has to be potent enough to kill all of their genetic parts. They’re too strong to go down for anything less than that. Which means, it’ll be toxic to us, to humans, and any animal that got used in the mom and pop smoothie.”

  “I’m guessing you used a gas.”

  “Had to. Anything else is too slow to infect, en masse. Maybe if we’d figured it out sooner, we might have stood a chance. But now, as many converts as there are, grouping together, we’d need tons of this shit to take them out. And once it hits the atmosphere…”

  “Game over for all life on Earth.” It’d get into air currents and storm clouds, rain down into rivers and lakes, and it would cross oceans in a matter of days. Any human settlements left on Earth would never know what hit them. Well, there goes that plan. “What’d you do with it?”

  “The techs isolated a small sample for storage, just in case. The rest was neutralized and disposed of.”

  “Good.” Last thing they needed was some curious pups playing where they shouldn’t, and getting themselves killed.

  “Looks like we’re back to square one, and it’s gotten awfully crowded in the meantime. So what do you want to do?”

  Aiden stared at the map, a subtle throbbing pressure taking hold at the base of his skull. Graham had done the legwork, but it was still Aiden’s call. The pack would expect him to make it. If converts were gathering, there had to be a reason.

  “Aiden?”

  Humans had underestimated the threat of converts once and it had destroyed them. Aiden wouldn’t repeat their mistake. This could be a blessing in disguise. If they were all in one place, it might be possible to take them out. They might outnumber Wolfen five to one, but Aiden would take those odds any day.

  “Aiden.”

  “Call the dogs,” he said, hating the bitter taste the order left on his tongue.

  Graham turned ashen. “What did you say?”

  Aiden faced him. If he couldn’t look Graham in the eye when he said it, he had no right to say it at all. “Call them,” he repeated.

  “The dogs? Aleissi’s battle dogs? The people who killed to entertain him? Those dogs?”

  “Yes.” The fighters. Those who hadn’t just killed, but had done it most efficiently. Trained soldiers and assassins who, to this day, didn’t trust themselves around others of the pack when their tempers flared. There was a holding unit set up in the basement to contain Wolfen who got wound up to a hair trigger, and they’d built it themselves, knowing a cage was sometimes the only thing that could keep the nightmares from lashing outward. “All of them.” He considered that, and amended, “And anyone else with a three or four in their designation.” If Desiree was right about the factors, those would be his best choices. He wouldn’t risk anyone higher than a five.

  “Why?” Graham growled, hackles lifting with aggression.

  “Because right now, they might be our only chance of striking a solid blow.”

  It took a while to get everyone in one place. Graham knew if he stood on a podium and started calling names, panic would ensue. Instead, he talked to each one privately and let them know what was going on. Still, it wasn’t Graham’s job to call anyone to arms—it was Aiden’s.

  After most of the others had turned in for the night, Aiden found the dogs in the dining hall, throwing back mugs of whiskey amid a low hum of subdued conversation. All of it stopped the moment he entered. Mugs were set down, heads turned to him. Wary, but trusting. Four dozen men and women, and he knew each and every one of them.

  “You know why we’re here and what I’m going to ask of you,” he said. “You know I’d never do it unless I had a damn good reason. Shit’s about to hit the fan down south. If we don’t do something about it, it’ll spill right to our gates. Maybe not tomorrow, maybe not next week, but when it comes, it’s gonna be the end of everything we’ve built here. Now, I won’t lie to you; it’s not gonna be a fun mission. I put our odds of survival at a hundred to one, so I won’t force anyone to go—”

  “Cut the shit, Aiden.” At the back of the hall, Morgan pushed to his feet. He was missing an eye and a few toes, but he was still one of the best riflemen they had. “I hate when you blab so much. I’m with you.”

  Aiden nodded, grateful for his support.

  Spencer rose next, draining his mug. “Can’t let this one out of my sight. If I’m not careful, he’ll have fun without me!”

  Spencer’s mate, Tessa, stood and kissed his cheek. She whispered to him, and he nodded, then Tessa walked between the crowded tables to stand before Aiden. Raising her chin, she looked him straight in the eye.

  Aiden didn’t know what to say. Tessa and Spencer had three pups to worry about, one of them barely old enough to walk, and if anything happened to her mate, she’d be on her own.

  Tessa smiled and touched Aiden’s arm with infinite affection. “I’ll see you at the gates. There are some hellions I need to say goodbye to.”

  Aiden shook his head. “Tessa, no. You can’t.”
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  “I need to,” she said. “For them.”

  “No, you’re staying.”

  Tessa chuckled and looked back at Spencer. “That man knows better than to leave me behind. And you should, too.” She stood on tiptoe to kiss his cheek. “Chin up, Alpha. We’ve been fighting all our lives. Now, we finally have something worth fighting for.”

  As she walked out, Aiden grasped for something to say that might change her mind. He had nothing. Tessa was a protector with a family to keep safe. She wouldn’t be left behind. In her place, Aiden wouldn’t, either. By the time he’d faced the dogs again, they were all on their feet, and Aiden couldn’t breathe past the lump in his throat. “Get your affairs in order,” he rasped out, then cleared his throat to get his voice back. “We’ll ride out first thing tomorrow.”

  It took every ounce of Aiden’s strength to stay standing as his pack members filed out past him, nodding or thumping his shoulder, letting him know they stood together, no matter what.

  Graham was the last to go. “I’ll make sure all of our arrangements are made.”

  “You’re staying,” Aiden said.

  “The hell I am—”

  “I’m not asking. When I’m gone, you’re in charge.”

  “You can’t just—”

  “That’s an order.” One life. He had to spare at least one. The pack trusted Graham. He had good instincts and a good heart, and he’d take care of them the way they should be taken care of. “If things go wrong, I’ll send a runner. You’ll need to take it from there. Batten down the hatches, cut and run, I don’t know. Just keep everyone safe.”

  Graham shook his head. “Why are you doing this?”

  “Bryce and his girl are on the other side of that mess. You didn’t really expect me to leave them there, did you?”

  Graham swore. “That’s suicide!”

  Yeah. Pretty much. But, “He’d do the same for me.” Graham wanted to argue more; Aiden could see it. “Go get the mules ready,” he told him, “and make sure everyone has what they need for the trip. Pack them light; we’ll need to be fast. Oh, and tell everyone not to bother with silver.”