by S. M. Reine
The memorial appeared further along the trail, the same grassy lump that Deirdre had recovered beside after her race against Rylie. The flowers were starting to bloom. There were no guards outside, and nothing else to indicate that anyone was inside.
Deirdre prayed that the Alpha wasn’t there.
Apparently she didn’t pray hard enough.
She burst through the door to find Rylie sitting at the center of the room. She was resting on a bench carved out of a log that faced an altar.
The worry on Rylie’s face dissolved when she recognized Deirdre.
“Hey,” Rylie said, standing and smoothing her hands down her dress. She apparently hadn’t planned on making any kind of appearance at the forum. She was wearing a long sundress and no shoes—the Alpha’s idea of casual wear. “What’s going on? How’d you find me?”
Deirdre could barely breathe. She slammed the door shut and leaned against it.
“Stark’s down the hill, and he just compelled Gage to kill you,” Deirdre said. “They’ll both be here in…oh, about five seconds. Where are your bodyguards?”
Rylie paled. “Gage?”
“Where are your bodyguards?” Deirdre pressed.
“With my daughter,” Rylie said. “I left everybody to protect her. The enchantments on the memorial…” She hesitated, fingering the straps of her sundress. “Did Stark try to compel you, too?”
“Yeah, but you know, still immune, so—“
“So he can’t know that you’re not trying to kill me.” Rylie pointed at the altar. It was a heavy stone slab, big enough for someone to stretch out on its surface. “Get on the floor behind that. It should protect you from Gage while I divert him. Act unconscious.”
“But—”
A body slammed into the outside of the door.
The whole memorial shuddered. Dirt showered from the ceiling.
“Go on. Stark won’t be able to get into the memorial. Gage will,” Rylie said, shedding her dress.
For a woman in her thirties, her body was taut and youthful, skin unblemished by the many children she’d borne. The only sign that she’d ever been anything but a werewolf were the faint, silvery scars marking her chest—the remnants of the wound that had changed her.
She began to shapeshift.
Deirdre didn’t watch. She dropped behind the table, just like Rylie had told her to do.
Her heart was pounding an erratic beat, and the rush of blood to her head made her feel dizzy. The idea that she was just going to lie down while a berserker rampaged was insane. Terrifying. But she couldn’t shoot Gage with silver bullets, nor could she transform and fight him; her only hope was pretending to be a possum shifter.
Rylie shapeshifted as the memorial continued to shake under Gage’s barrage.
Deirdre had seen thousands of changes before, but none like that of the Alpha werewolf. She made it look graceful. There was no hint of pain in her eyes as she stepped out of her human body and into the skin of a wolf.
Her beast was beautiful, too. Rylie’s fur was long, sleek, and golden brown. She was significantly smaller than Gage in his bear form, but still larger than a natural wolf. Almost big enough that Deirdre could have ridden her like a pony—not that she considered riding an Alpha werewolf a good idea.
With a stature almost more feline than lupine, Rylie looked much too fragile to be an Alpha.
If Gage shifted, she wouldn’t stand a chance against him.
The door exploded inward, and Gage entered. He was still in his human form.
Deirdre couldn’t bring herself to close her eyes and play dead. It was like watching two trains approach each other in slow motion. She knew they were about to collide and that people were going to die. She didn’t want to see it—but she couldn’t turn away, either.
Gage drew his gun and fired it at Rylie.
She dodged so quickly that she was barely more than a blur. The bullets buried into the far wall of the memorial. One hit the floor near Deirdre. She jerked behind the leg of the table to protect herself.
He fired until the gun clicked empty and then tossed it aside.
Rylie darted forward. Her jaws closed on Gage’s leg…and she ripped.
He screamed as he fell. Rylie stayed on top of him, tearing at the other leg.
Deirdre muffled a scream behind her hand. It had happened so fast, so suddenly.
Sweet, polite Rylie had deliberately hamstrung a man she considered to be a son.
The damage was enough to keep him on the ground, but not enough that he’d lose the limb. Rylie hadn’t surrendered to her beast’s control. She’d just sized up the situation and taken the action she thought was likeliest to save both of their lives—which meant temporarily mutilating someone she loved.
Even though he was bleeding on the ground, Gage wasn’t giving up on his attempt to kill Rylie. He dragged himself toward her using his arms. His eyes were glassy, unfocused, filled with mindless anger.
“We finally meet, Gresham.”
Stark stood just outside the doorway, hands on his hips. He sneered at the bear shifter writhing in pain at his feet.
It took all of Deirdre’s willpower to shut her eyes and go limp, even though total fear gripped her now.
Rylie was an Alpha, but was she Alpha enough to resist Stark’s compulsion?
She snarled.
Deirdre couldn’t keep her eyes shut. She peeked through her eyelids to see Stark grab Gage’s ankle and yank him through the door, pulling him outside the magical protections that enchanted the memorial.
Rylie surged, leaping onto Stark. She knocked him away from Gage. And both of them rolled outside of the memorial’s protective magic.
The sounds of fighting became muffled, growing distant. Rylie didn’t seem to be giving Stark a chance to test his compulsion on her. Wolf and man tangled together, and it was impossible to tell who was winning.
Gage gave a low groan. The unmistakable sound of bones breaking echoed through the memorial.
“Oh no,” Deirdre whispered.
He was still compelled to kill Rylie. And now that he’d lost the ability to stand as a human, he was going berserk just a few yards away from Deirdre.
Either she could stay in the memorial with an insane, vicious bear, or she could go outside where the two powerful shifters were fighting.
Gage made the decision for her. As he changed, he grew bigger, filling the space in the memorial. He was going to be half as big as the room.
If Deirdre didn’t get out immediately, she wouldn’t be able to get out at all.
She leaped over Gage’s rippling body and launched through the door.
Something large hurtled toward Deirdre’s head. She flung herself at the ground, ducking it.
It was Rylie’s body. The Alpha smashed into a tree beyond Deirdre so hard that it shook half of its leaves off.
Rylie dropped to the ground, motionless. Her flank was raw and bloody.
Stark turned to look at Deirdre, lifting a bushy eyebrow.
That was when she remembered that she was still supposed to be a mindless automaton attempting to assassinate Rylie.
As soon as Deirdre realized that she had his attention, she lifted the gun, aiming it at Rylie. She would have to shoot and miss—even if it meant wasting silver bullets.
“Stop,” Stark said. “Don’t kill her.” Deirdre was almost relieved, but then he said, “I want to do it.”
With that, Stark’s human skin peeled away, revealing a furred body underneath.
It was like the animal had been curled up inside his ribcage where organs should have been, and all it needed to do was erupt out of him. That was impossible, of course. There was no way anything as big as his beast could have been inside a man, even one as large as Everton Stark. But what remained on the ground when he was finished looked like nothing more than a human skin suit.
And Deirdre had no idea what he had become. It wasn’t an animal she’d ever seen before.
The musculature of his
body was very much like a bear—just as big as Gage, with a broad head and a long muzzle. But there was something wolfish about the way he moved. His tail was long and his rear legs obviously weren’t meant to support his weight the way a bear’s could. His vicious fangs and claws were silver, like a werewolf’s.
He reminded Deirdre of a saber-toothed tiger, in a way. The beast looked primitive. A few rungs behind on the evolutionary ladder.
Whatever Everton Stark had become, his species should have been extinct.
The sight of him gave Rylie pause, too. She was on her feet and healing quickly, but she didn’t attack in the instant when Stark might have been vulnerable.
That instant of hesitation cost her.
Stark moved. Rylie was immediately drenched in blood, her side opened in long, vicious gashes that exposed the glistening white bone of her ribcage.
Deirdre hadn’t even seen Stark running. He’d crossed the top of the cliff in the time it took her to blink.
Rylie whirled, snapping at Stark, but he was already gone again. He’d leaped to her other side with a slash of claws and a fresh spray of blood.
The Alpha wasn’t fast enough to keep up with him.
A monster roared behind Deirdre.
Gage’s massive bear form pounded across the grass, his claws shredding the earth underneath him. He struck both Rylie and Stark—too blind with the berserker rage to differentiate between the two.
Blood splattered. Animals growled as they fought.
The lashing mass of fur and fangs was too wild to tell what they were doing or who was winning. All Deirdre knew was that they were screaming, biting, clawing, bleeding. She had to do something—anything.
She aimed the Ruger at the mass of battling shifters. They rolled together, jaws locked on one another, claws opening each other’s flesh and then healing just as quickly.
When the three of them struck the trees, they knocked them down. Their bodies crushed rocks. Their claws ripped up the earth and left huge gouges behind.
It was like watching gods battle.
Deirdre had no idea where to shoot.
Motion down the road caught her eye. One of the gray vans had somehow gotten onto the access road, and members of Stark’s rebellion were coming to retrieve their master.
When the van turned around the corner, the sun shifted enough that Deirdre could see through the windshield. Niamh was driving it. She’d been privy to Stark’s plans and hadn’t told Deirdre anything about them.
A piercing yelp broke through the crash of the waterfall. Gage flung Rylie and she soared almost to the edge of the cliff before hitting—and she hit hard.
Gage stopped dead, staring at the place that Rylie lay limp.
His stillness could only mean one thing: The compulsion had lifted from him.
Stark had told them not to stop until Rylie was dead.
“No,” Deirdre whispered.
Gage rounded on Stark, his fur bristling. His golden eyes were wild.
Compelled or not, there wasn’t any hint of man in him.
He’d really gone berserk.
Gage attacked so quickly that even Stark didn’t get a chance to react. The bear struck him down, jaws clamped shut on his throat.
The van screeched to a halt beside Deirdre, and Niamh jumped out with Jacek and Bowen.
They didn’t hesitate to shoot.
Bullets pelted Gage. The bear ripped away from Stark and took a huge chunk of flesh with him. Blood and saliva drooped from his furry chin.
“What are you doing? Stop!” Deirdre tried to wrest the gun away from Jacek, but he slammed the butt of the machine gun into her stomach, knocking the breath out of her.
“They’re normal bullets, you idiot,” he said. “Once I’m Beta, I’m going to kill you for being so damn stupid.”
He shot again, showering Gage in gunfire.
The bear fell.
On all fours, Deirdre stared around the top of the cliff at the limp animal bodies and all the blood. Her heart didn’t seem to be beating anymore. She couldn’t breathe.
Gage couldn’t be dead. There was no way.
And Rylie…
A helicopter buzzed overhead. It was circling, descending rapidly upon the airstrip. Once it landed, whoever was inside would be only minutes from raining hell on them. And considering that Rylie Gresham was friends with the Office of Preternatural Affairs, they would surely be armed with silver.
“Get them in the van,” Niamh said.
It took all three of them to move Stark’s body into the van. Deirdre’s heart sank when she saw him stirring, flesh rippling as he began to change back into human form. She hadn’t really thought that Gage’s swift attack would be able to take him down, no matter how brutal, but she’d hoped.
Once Stark was loaded, Niamh tried to drag Deirdre to the van.
“Wait!” Deirdre said. “Help me get Gage!”
“He tried to kill Stark,” Niamh said.
“It’s not his fault—he went berserk.”
The approaching helicopter vanished behind the trees. Its engine cut out.
If Rylie was dead, then the OPA wasn’t going to be gentle with Gage. They wouldn’t listen to his side of the story. They probably wouldn’t put him on trial, either.
They’d see a berserker and they’d shoot.
Deirdre clung to her friend’s arm. “Please, Niamh.”
Niamh hesitated. She actually hesitated.
“Andrew!” she shouted. “Help us with the bear!”
“We don’t have time,” Jacek said.
But Andrew was already out of the van, and with his help, Deirdre and Niamh managed to drag Gage to relative safety.
They were gone before the OPA arrived, leaving Rylie’s body cooling by the waterfall.
—XIX—
It was raining in New York City.
Deirdre hated the rain.
She held her jacket over her head as she paced the alley from one end to the other, back and forth, over and over again. She only peeked out every few minutes to look for helicopters again.
It turned out that there were a lot of helicopters over New York—ones that belonged to news channels, the local police, and gods only knew who else. On such a gloomy day, she couldn’t tell if any of them belonged to the Office of Preternatural Affairs.
It was safer to assume that they all did.
Deirdre was still shocked that they’d made it back to the city without getting killed in the first place. Niamh and Jacek seemed pretty confident that they’d lost the OPA tailing them, but not confident enough that they’d returned to the asylum yet. They didn’t want to risk leading anyone back to their hideout.
In the meantime, they were waiting with one of Stark’s friends, who owned a cigar bar several blocks away. The van was parked in the alley behind the bar.
They had been there for eight hours. Deirdre had been on the lookout for two of those hours.
In the rain.
Everyone else was inside, aside from Jacek, who was sitting behind the wheel of the van. They weren’t having fun in there, though. Stark and Gage had both needed serious attention from a healer.
It turned out that shapeshifters didn’t heal damage inflicted by an Alpha werewolf as quickly as normal injuries. Both of them had gotten torn up by Rylie pretty thoroughly. Without a healer, Gage might not be able to walk for months.
Even with a healer, he might have been permanently damaged.
Deirdre wanted to go back inside and check on Gage’s progress, but she’d been given explicit instructions to stay outside and keep watch. So she was keeping watch. Who knew what was happening in the meantime? Gage might have been healed, or Stark might have slaughtered Gage for what he’d done at the sanctuary.
“Gods, I hate the rain,” she muttered.
“Deirdre!” The whisper drew her attention to the street. Deirdre saw a flash of gold on the sidewalk.
Her heart leaped.
She stopped walking and watched. Then she s
aw a blond ponytail swing into view again as a woman poked her head around the corner to hiss a second time. “Over here!”
Deirdre glanced at Jacek to make sure he wasn’t watching, then slipped around the corner.
A woman was waiting for Deirdre on the other side of the wall. Her hair was tied back in a ponytail, a hat jammed low on her head, big sunglasses shielding her eyes. With the voluminous coat hiding her slender body, Deirdre almost didn’t recognize Rylie Gresham, werewolf Alpha.
Living werewolf Alpha.
Deirdre’s adrenaline spiked as she looked back at the van again. Jacek was reading a magazine. He hadn’t noticed anything.
“What are you doing here? Are you insane?” Deirdre pulled around the wall where neither of them would be visible. “I thought you were dead! Everyone thinks you’re dead! Don’t you want Stark to think you’re dead?”
“I wanted Gage to think I was dead so he could break out of his compulsion. But they’re about to release a report on the news saying I’m alive, so it won’t be secret for long,” Rylie said. “I needed to check on Gage. I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t.”
“And you’re going to die if anyone sees you. He’s fine! Get out of here.” Deirdre hoped that was the truth. It had been hours since she’d seen him.
Rylie bit her lip and nodded, but she didn’t go anywhere. She was obviously struggling with words.
The street was busy, but nobody looked at the two women talking by an alley. Deirdre still felt insanely exposed, standing outside a cigar bar where Stark was currently hiding, talking to an important political figure who was meant to be dead.
Deirdre was certain that the helicopter that kept passing overhead belonged to the OPA now.
When Rylie finally managed to speak, the words erupted out of her all at once. “You guys should leave with me. It was wrong of me to send you two after Stark. I saw the news, and what you had to do, and—you can stay in the sanctuary with me now. Come home.”
Frustration clawed at Deirdre. “After everything we’ve done to get in his good graces? Just give up?”
“He’ll make you do more horrible things,” Rylie said.
She had no idea exactly how horrible it was at the asylum. It was all so much worse than the Alpha ever could have conceived.