by Cristy Rey
Just as the door was about to close behind her, Sunday turned. Her face was soft with a lack of expression, but her eyes told an altogether different story. In them swirled faint wisps of grey that dissipated like smoke even as Clark watched. He frowned, and his eyebrows gathered tightly. He shook his head sharply, and leaned slightly forward as though he could get a better look and see it was just an effect of the light. Sunday’s lips pressed tightly together until they all but disappeared into her mouth. Her chin dropped, and she looked at her feet.
With an ever-amassing boulder resting on her shoulders, she turned her back and walked away. It wasn’t the best last impression to make on a cherished neighbor, but it was the one she was going to make. Nothing was going to change that.
CHAPTER THREE
Everything was as Bernadette had said it would be. The convent’s location, the girl’s daily routine… all of the information they’d received from the witch had been accurate. Like clockwork, Cyrus got a call to let him know that Stephen and Angel were en route to Albuquerque. They had secured the package, and the Incarnate was traveling with them to their one stop along the way to Bernadette.
The next morning, the knock came as he watched cable television on the motel bed, his back to the headboard and his legs extended. . From the other side, Angel announced that they’d arrived and asked Cyrus to open the door because they needed to bring in the Incarnate. She’d been sedated for the abduction and was likely still reeling from the effects of the drugs when they’d pulled up to the motel, or so Cyrus thought. What he didn’t imagine was that Sunday wasn’t the typical abductee.
“She’s walking, just not wanting to,” Angel barked as Stephen passed him by and entered the room. His head held high, he nodded to Cyrus as he entered.
“Look to the girl,” Stephen called over his shoulder.
Angel hesitated for a moment, gritting his teeth and blowing a hard breath from his nose. Evidently, Angel wasn’t the Incarnate’s biggest fan. He didn’t need to be told twice, however; and he turned on his heel and stormed off toward the car.
Alone in the motel room with the eyes of the pack far from them, Cyrus looked directly to Stephen, eye-to-eye. Cyrus towered over Stephen with his six-foot four-inch frame and his tightly muscled physique. Even so, he appreciated Stephen’s dominance. They were friends, not rivals. The Alpha had an ability to control his wolves like none other whom Cyrus had met.
The werewolves of the Alaska pack were soldiers. The pack was a unit of fifteen werewolves; brothers and sisters in arms and circumstance. Though the pack was comparably small considering the much larger packs that helmed from more densely populated and more centralized locations, they were regarded as the elite force of the preternatural community. Mostly former military and hard-living men and women, the Alaska contingent was an impressive community.
Historically, most of Cyrus’ experiences with other werewolves ended badly. He had been in a pack for some time early in his post-transformation life, playing the role of submissive for as long as he could milk it. Still, as the pack warmed to him, a majority of his more submissive packmates gravitated to him and sought his counsel, approval, and affection at all costs. His Alpha then, not one for the threat of mutiny or murder, challenged him. The Alpha’s mutilated corpse was the answer to his challenge.
Back in human form, Cyrus looked to the wolves who stood at his attention and rejected their submission to him. Before any of them could offer a plea for him to stay, Cyrus ran as far as he could get from them and as fast as he could get there. He would live without a pack, then. He’d done it for the first couple of decades as a werewolf and he resolved to do it again. That was, of course, until Stephen invited him to the Alaska pack.
They had met twenty five years earlier at a bar in Anchorage. Cyrus had lived for decades as a lone wolf, seeking not the comfort of a pack or the consolation of peers. It didn’t take long for Stephen to win him over and convince him to join his group of misfits. His was a special brand of men and women who had ended up there, just like Cyrus, because they were too intense and too aggressive, or just plain didn’t fit in anywhere else.
“Should I call the witch?” Cyrus asked.
“We should wait until the girl is in the room,” Stephen answered, chuckling through a head-shake. “She’s a wild one. She’s just waking up though, and not from drugs. We didn’t even have to resort to knocking her out. It would have been a shame to, if you can believe it. It’s been pretty hilarious having her around. I’m telling you, she’s got Angel riled up. That kid’s got spunk.”
“Why didn’t you take her out again?” Cyrus asked.
“No need, my friend.” Stephen was beaming with good humor. The smile still slapped on his face with a mix of enjoyment and incredulity. His eyebrows jutted into his forehead as he spoke.
“She was sayin’, ‘I know where you’re taking me and I don’t give a shit, just pull over so I can pee. I’m dying!’ Angel was threatening to rough her up and shoot her up again and she just kept howling about needing to go to the bathroom. ‘Do you speak English?! I need to fucking pee or I’m gonna urinate on your back seat.’ It was a riot. We kept her awake so she could go, but when we got her back in the truck, she passed out on her own and happy as a clam. Got up just before we crossed into the city limits. Angel’s probably having a time. She didn’t want to get out of the car. She’s not fighting to run away, she just wants something to eat now and says she won’t get out unless we take her to a drive-thru. I’m letting him deal with it.”
“Can’t she just magic-up food?”
For as much fun as Stephen seemed to be having with the petulance of a fourteen year-old Incarnate, Cyrus was antsy to make the call to Bernadette’s people and get the entire situation behind him. As a rule, Cyrus didn’t appreciate being at the whims of witches. Witches, either the naturally magical or the ones who worked tirelessly just at attaining mediocrity, were always scheming. Witches and witchcraft wormed their way into practically every affair of the preternatural community. They used their self-imposed interjection in all matters mystical and monstrous to gain some vantage from which to wield a semblance of authority over the innately magical like werewolves, vampires, and other such creatures.
Cyrus stayed away from them as much as possible. Their pack had a pack-witch who helped with protective spells and readings to guide their business and, at times, acted as a personal counselor to the wolves. That was the most Cyrus would deal with her kind. Stephen approached Cyrus tentatively, too tentatively for an Alpha to approach one of his pack, and put a heavy hand on Cyrus’s shoulder.
“Relax,” he said. “She’s not going anywhere. I’m gonna kick off my boots and hang in here for a while. Maybe we’ll order in some delivery. Anything good on the tube?”
Cyrus shook his head sharply, and stalked away from his Alpha and out the motel room door. The sooner he could get the girl out of the truck, the sooner it meant that he could get rid of her and put her in the hands of the witches that wanted her so badly. He found Angel standing with his arms cast over the opened back seat door of the truck. Angel’s muscles were alive with tension. They twitched with the threat of breaking the door off its hinges. Angel wasn’t saying a word. From the glare he was lashing into the back seat, it was clear that he wanted the Incarnate out of it. If the girl didn’t budge soon, Angel was going to become violently unhinged, and the truck’s door was coming with him. If this girl had known better, she might reconsider testing a werewolf as volatile as Angel.
Despite his name and probably in spite of it, Angel was the shortest fuse among the pack. He was wired to explode with the slightest bit of agitation, but he was a good fighter and a solid all-around man. He was of Mexican descent, skin tanned by heredity as much as by overexposure to the sun through over fifty years of working under it. His slicked-back coal black hair and tattooed forearms and knuckles made him look every bit the intimidating ‘bad guy’ he truly was. Seeing Angel like this put Cyrus on red-alert. B
elligerent as Angel appeared, he might not think before acting.
So as not to catch the werewolf off-guard, Cyrus spoke before getting too close behind him.
“What’s going on here?”
Startled, Angel turned, his eyes nowhere close to the tint of his wolf’s bright flame, thankfully. Instead of the gravel rasp of an aggravated wolf, Angel’s voice broke in a pleading whine that, once escaping him, made him embarrassed to have said anything at all. His cheeks flushed with pink and he tucked his chin, darting his eyes away from Cyrus.
“The girl… She doesn’t want to get out of the car.”
Angel stepped aside and took strides toward the back of the truck. He lit a cigarette and sucked in the first drag like he’d been waiting years to do it. He threw his hands up and exhaled harshly, raising a cloud of grey smoke.
Cyrus eyeballed Angel. Angel was pissed, but not quite I’m gonna rip your throat out kind of pissed; he was more like I’ve had the worst day in my life and it’s all that damn kid’s fault kind of pissed. If Cyrus hadn’t been so keen on lifting his pack of this burden, he’d find it comical. He’d laugh. He’d make fun. Angel’s fuse got lit by a lot of things, but, until now, a teenage girl wasn’t one of them.
As it was, Cyrus wanted to get this contract over with. He gritted his teeth and gave a curt nod to Angel signaling that he’d take the baton in the relay to get the ever-feared god-woman-child out of the car. They could laugh about this later, Cyrus resolved, much later, after they’d gotten rid of the little problem.
“Let me handle it,” he chewed out, confidently puffing his chest as he pulled his shoulders back. Like this, he was massive. Even bigger than usual. If the girl wasn’t intimidated by the dark, agitated werewolf, then perhaps the huge, burly one could shock some sense into her.
Cyrus stepped toward the open back door of the truck slowly, hoping to build the Incarnate’s anticipation of a threat with his pace. She might have been the ever-feared god-woman of the preternatural world at-large, but she was also just a kid. If Stephen could kick back and relax while Angel felt keen enough to argue with her, then Cyrus could work on manipulating her in order to get his way.
He pulled his long, dark, blond hair out of his ponytail and shook the hair free around his face. Between that and the thick beard he wore—not to mention the full sleeves of tattoos that all but screamed out KEEP AWAY, he was sure that the girl would be shaking in her shoes to do whatever the werewolves asked of her.
When his eyes landed on her, Cyrus experienced what he could only comprehend as a cataclysmic unhinging of his being. It shocked him into stupor and that was, for Cyrus, a unique occurrence. He hadn’t felt it when he’d awoken to his curse after the animal attack that should have ended his life. He hadn’t felt it when he’d mercilessly devoured his first kill and recognized a guilt so cruelly unrelenting that it he carried it even sixty years later. Never had Cyrus become so upended.
His pulse raced, his lungs seized as he fought for breath, his stomach cramped. Even transformation had never been so wholly devastating, so completely visceral. It took him a handful of seconds to compose himself and put a cork on the unprecedented eruption within. He didn’t have to look in a mirror to know that his eyes were blazing gold with his wolf’s sudden break for the surface. Even his wolf needed to come up for air. They were both suffocating.
Cyrus’ white-knuckled fists smashed into his hips and he shut his eyes tightly until a white light sparked against the inkiest black of his mind. When he reopened his eyes, he forced himself to look at her, really look at her, with a raw, heavy-handed dissection. Cyrus approached her until he stopped just a few feet from the girl, but she didn’t even flinch.
The Incarnate looked every bit the part of a pissed-off teenager, petulant and arrogant with the pride of every second of her fourteen years. The girl glared straight ahead through narrowed eyes. The seat belt buckled and strapped tightly across her chest. She sat erect in her seat with her hands folded neatly in her lap as though expecting good conduct marks from a teacher, her long chestnut hair tossed haplessly over her shoulders in careless tangles. She looked as though she’d stepped out of school, which was definitely a possibility given her age. She was wearing jeans, ripped at the knees, and a purple cardigan over a graphic print t-shirt.
For all her ubiquity, something about her lit a fire in his belly that just about sent his wolf barreling out of control. Unable to reconcile what he saw with what raged inside him, Cyrus leered at her with a mixture of spite and disbelief. Nothing like this had ever happened to him before and it was unwelcome.
Her aura simultaneously trapped him in her orbit and thrust him out of it. She was hardly a teenager and what he was feeling was hardly seduction, but there was some inexplicable attraction and Cyrus wanted nothing more than to fend it off. She wasn’t a sexy woman spreading her legs and inviting him to feast. She wasn’t a little girl with a skinned knee begging for a protector. Yet he was flummoxed by an overpowering juxtaposition of all of these emotions brewing within him. So abruptly, so unexpectedly.
Cyrus’ wolf had demanded something it never had before, even in the face of his Alpha: it forced him to lower his gaze. While his wolf lowered its head and deferred all authority over to the petulant fourteen year-old god-kin, Cyrus seethed. He was unable to understand what was happening to him and needing it desperately to stop… now and forever. If Angel had seen it for himself, he might still not have believed it. No one would have, least of all Cyrus.
Not knowing what to do or what to say or even if he’d wanted to do or say anything at all, Cyrus hesitated. He postured at the open car door and the girl who hadn’t even bothered to tilt her head his way. As he geared up to bark a command at her or stalk back to her and yank her free of the back seat, his words caught in his throat. He was all but frozen into inaction. Cyrus shot a frazzled look to Angel who still huffed and puffed as he paced. Angel caught Cyrus’ unreadable expression with a furrowed brow that told Cyrus as much about Angel’s frustration than reflected by his own internal battery.
I can’t do this, Cyrus thought.
His mind blanked of anything else. There was nothing else to think of, not when caught in her orbit, and not when he couldn’t take a breath without feeling his eyes sting with fiery tears.
When the girl finally moved, it was to fill and then vacate her lungs with a long-drawn sigh. Her entire body slumped in the back seat as she’d sighed. She was exhausted, that much was clear. Cyrus could see the bags under her eyes now. Heavy lids drooped over her light brown eyes so clear that they were almost translucent.
All the inactivity about her was making her tired. More than any desire to eat that she had complained about earlier, Sunday wanted some rest; real rest, not fake, drug-induced rest. And whatever, she told herself. Whatever to the hunger and whatever to her abduction and whatever to these creepazoid werewolves that hovered around her building ire and doing nothing to release it. What Sunday was going to do was sleep. They were at a motel, after all. She was sure they’d at least let her have a bed.
CHAPTER FOUR
Quietly, Sunday unbuckled her seat belt and stepped onto the dusty New Mexico soil. The sky was blues and purples so vibrant they seemed unreal. She closed her eyes and tilted her head back to face the afternoon sun. Though the dry desert air was crisp and biting, the sun flooded her with warmth. The instant she opened her eyes again, she felt the weight of her day-long journey and was wracked by the urgency to sleep.
The biggest werewolf she had ever seen was standing before her, gold-flecked brown eyes lashing over her. If she wasn’t so tired, she would say something that smarted to get him to chill the fuck out. Instead, the corner of her lip pinched into one cheek in a twitch, and she shuffled forward without giving herself a second to look at him.
For as long as she could remember, Sunday could feel everything around her. She could sense things before they were going to happen; mostly, because people made those things happen and, usually, people
brewed with intention to do it before they did. Even thoughts and feelings that occurred so quickly that people considered them “passions” or whatever, Sunday felt for a long while before people even realized what they were going through.
The blond werewolf’s crazy sudden tsunami of emotions wasn’t technically a dime-a-dozen kind of inner turmoil, but her curiosity wasn’t getting the best of her. If it was hard enough to diagnose mundane adults, it was probably impossible to read and comprehend a werewolf. What she knew was this: This was a man who needed a reason to hate her because, whatever it was that he was feeling, he didn’t want even a bit of it. The thing was, he also needed a reason to stop from tearing her to pieces. She was a job, and he couldn’t turn up with an Incarnate carcass in his hands and shrug it off like he’d only squashed a fly. It might have made her woozy with the way everything he felt rolled off his skin, but she needed to walk away from it.
Quite frankly, it wasn’t her responsibility. She figured that, whatever he needed, Fate would find a way to give it to him. She fully intended on ignoring him. Sunday didn’t know what would happen exactly. She didn’t know why she was so important, precisely. But she knew that things happened and that, in some way, she was supposedly some big deal in the preternatural community. Her life was mapped out, at least for the time being. To Sunday, this happened. Furthermore, to Sunday, so much more would happen. She figured that she’d just as well let whatever was going to happen happen.
This afternoon, Sunday wasn’t going to say anything to the werewolf drawing hard breaths and standing in her way. There’d be no consolation and there’d be no prize. Rather than incite any more fury from another person who could rip her to shreds, she rubbed her eyes, turned back to the open car door, and reached in to collect her purse. With the straps fisted and her arm lax, her bag dragged by her feet as she walked past the new wolf and Angel, still stomping and glowering at her from where he stood at the back of the truck.