He responded by gripping me tighter and yanking me out of the room.
“Where are we going? The others, my friends, I’m not leaving them—”
“We have no interest in those others, at the moment,” he said tonelessly. “Only the three of you.”
“Then just let the others go!”
“Stop yelling in my ear, you stupid girl.”
“Oh, I haven’t even started to yell yet, you—”
He threw me against the wall, and that same knife from before was digging up underneath my chin an instant later. “The only reason you aren’t dead yet is because my father has insisted on interrogating any of you monsters that we find, rather than simply killing you on sight. But keep annoying me, and we might have an accident.”
My claws had sprung out, mostly as a reflex. But I swallowed the retort building in my throat. If they were truly going to interrogate me, then maybe I’d have a chance to explain myself?
And hopefully his dad would be a better listener.
I did my best to relax my body and just let him jerk me around, since that seemed like it was satiating that desire he apparently had to kill me. For now, anyway. He directed me, and the ones marching Joseph and Eamon, quietly along, and eventually led us into a room with a long wooden table in the center of it.
There was a man sitting at the head of that table, surrounded by three others who he was deep in conversation with. His hair was dark and greasy, his fingers gnarled and covered in rough skin that had turned a bloodless white because of how tightly he was gripping the table’s edge. There was a bandage wrapped around his head, and it was covering his left eye and part of the scars around it. Scars that looked sort of like mine. And it was silly, maybe, to connect with him because of that one similar thing, but I couldn’t help but feel that same flutter of hope from before—only stronger now.
Maybe I really could get this guy to listen to me.
Cruel Eyes left. The man watched him go, and his single, uncovered eye didn’t flash toward me until I was only a few feet away. And even then, it didn’t stay there. It moved to Joseph and locked on him instead. The corners of his mouth twisted into an ill impression of smile, but he didn’t speak.
“Hello, Iain,” Joseph said after a tense pause. “I wondered if we might be seeing you soon. Your son looks remarkably similar to you.”
Cruel Eyes, I realized, connecting the two. They did look somewhat similar, once you looked past the scars Iain had.
Iain glanced wordlessly at the three he’d been talking to, his eye darting and his face full of the sort of unspoken emotion that I’d learned usually meant a person was communicating something through thoughtspeech. And sure enough, one by one, the three nodded and stepped out of the room.
“I knew you’d be back before the end,” Iain said, eyes sliding back to Joseph. “Killers always return to the scene of their crimes—isn’t that what they say?”
“It didn’t seem like a crime back then,” Joseph replied calmly. “And as I recall, you didn’t think so either. I believe you were on my side at the beginning of all this.”
“Well we were all young and foolish at some point, weren’t we?” His fingers gripped the edge of the table again, tightening along with that odd smile he wore. “But I’ve wised up since then.”
“Yes. You left my side a long time ago. I haven’t forgotten. But then your wisdom took you to her grandfather’s side instead, didn’t it?” He nodded toward me, and I wasn’t sure what the hell they were talking about, really, so I just stood up straighter and tried to look a lot more confident than I felt.
Iain’s gaze was chillingly detached as it slipped over to me. “This really is her, then.”
“You fought alongside Cyrus, once upon a time,” Joseph said. “And now you can help the shifter world once more. By fighting with her.”
“Help?” Iain arched a bushy eyebrow. “But I am already doing it. You see, you three are not the first of your kind that we’ve caught.”
“Our kind?” I repeated.
“Magic users,” he said, lips curling back in disgust, “and the monsters they’ve created—the werewolves, the feral, all of them. All the same. And they seem to be everywhere these past weeks. Like an infestation.”
“Some of them, yes—”
“All of you. One giant infestation. Like roaches.”
Joseph looked taken-aback, just for a moment, as though this was a much colder reception than he’d expected to get from his plea. “What is wrong with you? Your voice is changed…it used to sound much more reasonable.”
“There’s little room for reason in a world full of monsters.”
Joseph shook his head. Eamon’s eyes were on the door we’d come in through, and I was pretty sure the only thing he was thinking about was running away.
I cleared my throat and fixed Iain with a hard look. “We’re not monsters,” I said, as firmly—and calmly—as I could. “The feral are the bad guys here, and you won’t rid yourself of them without my help, so you might as well sign up for Team Alex while I’m giving you the chance to, alright?”
He smirked.
I took a deep breath and mentally repeated the word calm to myself.
Repeated it like a hundred times, I think.
“No thank you,” Iain said. “Afraid I’m solely in the business of magic killing, now. The feral’s magic or otherwise, as the company you’re keeping—” he nodded at Joseph “—is proof that it all goes bad in the end, right? And your grandfather wasn’t much better. Enough with the pacts and the spells gone wrong. Our kind aren’t meant to have magic; it’s unnatural and it only invites trouble.” A growl slid in at the end of his words, and as it did, one of the doors along the side of the room opened. The three he’d been speaking with earlier were back, and they’d brought several friends with them.
Several friends with guns.
I could hear the soft hum of the silver bullets in their chambers.
So much for this guy being a better listener.
My hands clenched so tightly that my nails—just my relatively dull, still-human nails—drew blood. I glanced at Iain and mimicked his dark smirk from earlier. “Do you have any idea how many people have tried to kill me at this point?”
The two closest to me raised their guns, training them on either side of my head.
“A lot,” I continued. “And they’ve all failed so far, obviously. So yeah, you’re going have to get a lot more creative than just a few basic guns.”
“We’ll see,” Iain said, lifting his hand in signal.
Joseph and I exchanged a quick glance.
(Do not kill any of them,) said his voice in my head. (This is one of the largest, most powerful packs in Ireland. We need them on our side.)
I said a quiet curse directed toward politics under my breath. But I understood. So I cleared the irritation from my mind as best I could. I gave my hands a shake— a deliberate movement that usually helped me shake off the fire magic rising up from my blood. That magic might have been the kind I was most comfortable with, but as long as I was trying not to kill anyone, it would definitely be too much in this contained space.
Iain’s hand jerked forward.
Gunshots rang out.
One. Two. Three—and the bullets hit the semi-solid barrier that I’d just barely managed to wrap around myself. They sank into it. They didn’t pierce the shimmering magic wall completely, but they did cause a fissure in the center of it. A fissure that spread quickly, dissolving the barrier as it went.
That was close.
Good god, that was terrifyingly close.
I tried to act like it hadn’t fazed me. I’m not sure I pulled it off.
“See?” I said, with a flourish of my hand that brought some of the barrier’s scattered magic floating back toward me. “Not creative enough.”
“I assure you our imaginations have no limit,” Iain said. “We can come up with more ways to kill you.” His smile hardened. “Just give me a second.”
It took less than a second, though.
It happened faster than I could react: two lycans barreled through the doorway toward me. The one in front lowered its head and slammed into my stomach, sending me flying back into the table. Pain flared through my shoulder as it took the brunt of the landing. I crumpled into a heap beneath the table, momentarily stunned.
My vision steadied just as the second lycan shot toward me.
I braced my hands against the ground, aimed, and kicked. My timing was perfect; my foot stabbed into the creature’s throat as it leapt over me. It gave a breathless yelp as I crushed my foot deeper into its windpipe, and then I attempted to heave it aside with the strength of my leg. I managed to shove it far enough away that I could scramble to my knees and crawl out from beneath the table. I ignored the way the muscles of my right leg protested, weary from lifting the weight of the massive, panting creature.
I had to ignore it, because that other massive creature was immediately on top of me.
I caught this one by the ruff of thick fur around its neck and swung wildly to the side, narrowly avoiding its fangs as they snapped for my face. I stumbled toward the table, vaulted myself over it, and landed lightly on my feet next to Joseph.
“Can I please set these bastards on fire?” I huffed.
“No, you may not.” I didn’t take my eyes off the lycans preparing to attack, but I could feel the exasperation in the glance Joseph was giving me.
“Fine.” I scowled. “Help, then? Please?”
“Of course.” He cleared his throat and cupped his hands together as they began to glow with magic. “Since you said please.”
“We’re going to die here, aren’t we?” Eamon lamented.
“I might offer you as a sacrifice if you don’t shut up,” I snapped, raising my hands in front of me and bracing myself.
The two lycans stood between each of the gun-toting men from before.
All four of them moved at once.
The barrier that slammed into their attacks was much stronger, much more solid than the last one I’d summoned. Because I was much angrier, for starters—and also because of the way Joseph’s magic swirled and weaved around mine, reinforcing it. Our barrier folded over and cocooned around our attackers, rendering their claws and flames and guns all useless as we pushed that magic back, pinning the four of them to the wall.
“Call off the rest of your wolves,” I said to Iain, “Or these four are getting crushed.”
I didn’t actually know if you could use barrier magic that way—I’d never tried—but the threat sounded real enough, anyway.
Iain only laughed it off, though. “And I will replace them with four more,” he said. “And four more after that, and after that—as many as it takes until you are crushed.”
The words caused a sick feeling in my stomach that quickly soured into deeper anger. Cannon fodder, is basically what these others were to him. Casualties who didn’t matter as long as he could keep waging war against his prejudices.
It was revolting.
And there was fire in my hands before I even fully turned to face him.
“Be careful, Alex—”
I was already directly in front of Iain. I didn’t even remember moving. And my next movements continued the same way—quickly, and without any real thought, and suddenly I found myself surrounded in flames that lashed toward him as I leaned in closer.
“Call them off,” I demanded again. “Or, on second thought, I’m going to kill you instead.”
“Do it, then,” he snarled.
He seemed terrifyingly indifferent to the way my magic was searing the frays of his jacket. Completely unaware of the beads of sweat collecting on his skin from the very real, very close heat of my flames. He staggered closer to me. There was almost no space between us anymore.
It was almost as if he wanted to catch fire.
Something is wrong with him.
The thought—as much a tangible feeling as anything— hit me so hard it took my breath away. I tried to back away from him. I didn’t want to hurt him anymore. I couldn’t understand why, but I needed to back away. Now.
His hand struck out and caught me by the throat.
Squeezed.
I couldn’t breathe, and the wolf inside me thundered, survival instincts roaring to life.
I tried to hold it back. But then Iain reached for his hip, and I caught a flash of the gun holstered there. Panic made my magic flare brighter, stronger. It swallowed him. It swallowed half the room in a pulsing white heat that was completely blinding for a moment— until his hands were no longer touching me. Then I managed to rein my power in and stumble back a few steps. My whole body was shaking.
He was curled into a ball on the ground, not moving.
I reached for the place on my throat where he’d grabbed me, and I reminded myself that I’d had no choice but to fight back. That I might have to burn a path through more of his pack if we were going to get out of here alive—which we had to do. And Iain deserved what he’d gotten, didn’t he? Because he’d chosen the wrong side. He’d refused the chance to join me.
And my side is the right one, isn’t it?
He coughed.
I breathed a sigh of relief because he was still alive, at least.
I couldn’t help the sigh. It was so uncomfortable to think about how many had died just because they happened to be on the “wrong side”.
My relief was short lived. The attackers Joseph and I had held back were breaking free, and through the near-opaque-at-this-point barrier they could see what I’d done to their leader. And they weren’t the only ones.
Iain’s son had reappeared in the doorway, and he was staring at the fallen alpha. And Iain coughed once more—weakly—but other than that, he didn’t move, and he looked for all the world like an ashen-colored corpse.
“I warned him,” I stammered to his son. “I tried to stop. I…”
His son glanced at me. A hard, searching look that made me draw back a bit. My breathing quickened. My body ached and my skin still felt like it was smoldering from the fire’s energy, and I really didn’t want to keep fighting, but I braced myself all the same.
His son didn’t charge at me, though.
He seemed to forget about me and my company for a moment, actually—all of his pack did. The ones Joseph was holding didn’t try to revive their attack, not even once they had broken completely free of the barrier. They just stared at the alpha’s son as he crouched beside his father.
He felt for the pulse along Iain’s neck. Then checked his heartbeat. Then he removed the singed bandage that had been crossed over his father’s face, and he used his thumb to nudge the closed, half-dead eyes open. He studied these for a moment. Then he sighed, his entire body shuddering with the movement, and he glanced back to me.
I held my breath.
“I wish you had killed him,” he said.
Eight
mine
“Wait…what?”
The alpha’s son ignored me, instead turning to the rest of his pack members and concentrating fiercely on them for a moment—instructing them to do… something with his father, apparently. It was thoughtspeech, and I tried to break in and eavesdrop on it, but I couldn’t.
The two lycans shifted back to their human forms. Together with the other humans, they picked up their alpha and cradled him with something like dignity, and then they all left the room, leaving us alone with the alpha’s son.
(This feels like a trap,) Eamon thought.
I glanced, as subtly as I could, at the room’s two doors. I wondered what sort of fresh horror was about to burst through them.
“No one else is coming. Not at the moment.”
I turned to see the alpha’s son stepping toward me as he spoke, and my whole body tensed all over again. “You’ll understand if I don’t exactly take your word for things, right?” I said, frowning. “I mean, given the circumstances.”
He massaged his temples for a moment before
dipping his head in a nod. “Sorry about before,” he said. “Let’s start over? My name is Rowan, son and successor to the alpha of the Ring of Kerry Pack.”
I just glared suspiciously back at him, and it made him sigh for a second time.
“I was ordered to bring you and your friends in. And when the alpha gives you orders, you do not ignore them,” he said. “Unless you want to further encourage mutiny within the pack.”
“Mutiny?”
“My father is not himself. Too many of our pack already suspect this, and if the rest knew the truth, there would be an uprising before dawn.”
“Not himself?” I thought of that feeling I’d had just before I attacked him. I pictured that bandage wrapped around his head…. And suddenly, I would have bet everything I owned that there was a white eye beneath it. I didn’t even have to ask Rowan about it, either; I think he could see the understanding dawning on my face.
“It’s become a bit of an epidemic these past few weeks,” he explained. “My father isn’t the only one they’ve overtaken. His anti-feral, anti-magic talk is all a ruse; the truth is, he’s only been killing the good magic users. That is, the ones who have refused the feral’s attempts to recruit them. But our pack—most packs, really—are afraid of magic users in general, of course, so telling them that we’re in the business of indiscriminate magic-killing helps keep them from questioning their leader’s feral-sanctioned crusade against the ones like you.”
“An epidemic?” Joseph repeated. “On what scale, precisely?”
“Hard to say. I’ve heard of at least five other alphas being taken, though I don’t fully trust any information I hear these days. I imagine there’s more than that.”
“But they haven’t taken over you,” I pointed out. “And you don’t have to do what they’re trying to make the overtaken do.”
“I am not an alpha,” he said.
“Doesn’t mean you can’t act like one, right? And stop following orders that you know are coming from a twisted source.”
His frown curled into a scowl. “You know all about wolf politics do you, little girl?”
Ascendant (The Shift Chronicles Book 4) Page 6