by Stella Night
“Why the hell did we run in the first place if we wanted the wolf to find us?” Scar asked sulkily.
“Have you not been paying attention?” Pony Tail asked. He didn’t look up when he spoke. His focus was on the new rifle. Deft fingers moved over the dark steel, checking things that Amanda would never understand. He looked like a member of the orchestra tuning his instrument before a performance.
“My radio is busted,” Scar whined. “I’m out of the loop.”
“Well then you can stay out of the fucking loop. I’m not here to hold your goddamn hand. Now stay frosty. He’s gotta be close.”
Pony Tail surveyed the surrounding woods. Scar tried to copy him, but he seemed to do it half-assed. He held his rifle lazily, the muzzle pointed to the ground. And he stood with a kind of slouching disdain, like he wanted everyone to know how much he didn’t give a shit.
Amanda wondered if she could get that rifle away from him. It wasn’t strapped over his chest. It hung loosely in his hands, just begging to be stolen.
If only the soldiers beside her weren’t holding her so tightly. Unlike Scar, these two guys took their job seriously. They hadn’t budged an inch since they’d stopped. One of them looked old and grizzled, a vet of some foreign war. The other wore a helmet like the soldier who’d brought the rifle. So his face was covered and unreadable.
A keening howl sounded in the trees off to their right. All eyes turned in that direction, including Amanda’s.
“Our guest is here,” Pony Tail said. “No fuck ups.”
Another howl sounded from the opposite direction of the first. The soldiers spun towards it, rifles raised.
“There’s two of them,” Scar moaned.
“Shut the fuck up,” Pony Tail said.
A third howl tore at the air from another direction. “Oh, man, it’s that fucking wolf pack again.”
“It’s not the goddamn wolf pack,” Pony Tail said. “It’s the white wolf fucking with us.”
Pony Tail seemed confident he was right, but the other soldiers around them didn’t seem so sure. Their eyes flicked nervously in every direction, like they were surrounded by invisible enemies. They jumped at every noise.
Even the guys holding Amanda’s armed seemed jumpier than before. The vet loosened his grip just a fraction, distracted by this new threat. The helmeted one had let go of her altogether, preferring to have both hands on his rifle.
As nervous as Scar seemed, he hadn’t tightened his grip on his weapon. Amanda eyed it greedily. If she grabbed it, she’d probably be killed on the spot. But at least she might be able to take some of these bastards with her.
At least she might be able to save Santiago from whatever trap they’d prepared.
Fuck it.
She shook the vet’s hand loose and lunged at Scar. He never saw her coming.
Amanda threw her shoulder into his chest while grabbing at the rifle. Scar tumbled away from her, leaving the assault rifle in Amanda’s hands. She raised the muzzle of the gun, not really aiming. Just hoping that the shots found targets on their own.
Pray and spray, she thought it was called.
Before she could squeeze the trigger, New Guy was beside her. Amanda hadn’t even seen him move. He ripped the assault rifle from her hands and threw it into the woods without even looking.
New Guy gripped Amanda’s wrists in a brutal, crushing grip, forcing her down on her knees.
That’s when the white wolf burst through the trees, aimed right at New Guy.
***
If you want to make God laugh, make a plan. That was the thought ringing through Santiago’s head as he charged into the circle of armed men.
His plan had been decent, in theory at least. Classic divide and conquer. When facing overwhelming odds, it was best to split them into smaller groups and take them out one at a time. So he’d run around the soldiers, howling in different directions to cause panic and create the illusion that there was more than one of him.
The plan might have worked until he saw Amanda in trouble. That’s when the plan flew out the window and he charged in recklessly.
He lunged at the soldier grappling with Amanda. Something about the soldier seemed familiar, but in the heat of the moment, he couldn’t be bothered with figuring it out.
The soldier moved fast, almost too fast to see. He let go of Amanda, turned to Santiago, and grabbed the wolf in midair. The soldier redirected Santiago’s momentum, flinging him past where he slammed into a tree.
Pain exploded in Santiago’s entire body when he collided with the gnarled tree trunk. He crumpled to the dirt, yipping with pain. He was pretty sure none of his bones had broken, but the wind had been knocked from his lungs and it felt like his brain had rattled around in his skull.
He didn’t have time to nurse his wounds. A soldier with a pony tail aimed some kind of rifle at him. Santiago didn’t recognize the weapon, which meant that it must have been custom made. Whatever the hell it was, he didn’t like the wide barrel pointed in his direction.
Whatever projectiles the gun shot, they must be massive. He didn’t want to find out the hard way just what he was up against.
He rolled to the side and headed for the safety of the trees. But the soldier who’d been grappling with Amanda was in front of him again, blocking his path. Santiago growled in challenge and sprang again, looking to tear the soldier’s throat out and be done with him.
But the son of a bitch was fast. Faster than a human. Faster than Santiago even. He sidestepped Santiago’s mad rush and jumped on his back. The soldier’s arms clamped around the wolf’s neck, cutting off his air supply.
Santiago shook his entire body like he was trying to dry his coat. The soldier’s grip loosened but it didn’t break. Still, it had freed Santiago up enough to shift back to human form.
The change caught the soldier off guard. Santiago twisted in his grip like an eel, bringing himself face to face with his attacker. Well, face to helmet anyway.
Santiago pried his fingers beneath the visor, looking to strip the helmet off and use it to bash in the soldier’s skull. No matter how fast or strong this guy was, a few cracks to the noggin would rattle his cage.
He managed to snag the helmet off. A cascade of blond hair fell down from beneath. Son of a bitch, it was a woman. She smiled at him cruelly. Suddenly, he understood why she had seemed familiar. But there was no way. It wasn’t possible.
“Eliza?” he asked, his voice cracking.
Her smile widened. A sharp pain flared in Santiago’s side. He looked down to see the biggest tranquilizer dart he’d ever seen sticking into his flesh. Then his world faded to black.
Chapter 11
Freezing water splashed over Santiago, jarring him awake. Someone slapped him hard across the face, drawing a trickle of blood from his lip.
“I’m up,” he groaned. “Enough.”
His eyes blinked open, taking a moment to adjust. The sun was setting in the sky. It would have been pretty if Santiago wasn’t bound to a chair. He appeared to be sitting in the ruins of some ancient, crumbling tower. But that didn’t make sense.
America didn’t have ruins like this. Where the hell was he? How long had he been out?
He sniffed the air. It smelled like the same forest he’d been in when they knocked him out. And he could smell Amanda’s scent, vibrant and alive, from somewhere close by. She was alive. That was enough for now.
Cold hands slid around his head from behind and covered his eyes.
“Guess who?” a female voice asked.
He recognized Eliza’s voice at once. The memory of his encounter with her came slamming back to him, so hard it made him dizzy. “So I’m not crazy. You’re alive.”
The woman barked a laugh and strolled to stand in front of him. “In a manner of speaking.” Her anonymous soldier’s uniform was gone, replaced with a black tank top and black pants that hugged her body. “No thanks to you, I might add.”
“But how? I mean, I saw you die.”
/> She nodded. “Yes, you did.”
He shook his groggy head, trying to gather his jumbled thoughts into some semblance of order.
“Close your mouth,” she said. “Flies will get in. Look, I get it. You’re surprised to see me. But no more surprised than I am to see you. Of all the forests in all the world, you had to walk into mine.” She tapped a finger to her lips. “Now why do you think that is?”
“I have no idea what’s going on right now.”
She crossed her arms over her breasts. “Well, I’ll tell you. I think it means that you and I have unfinished business. It’s fate. Or karma, I suppose. Considering what happened.”
“Can we please back up a bit? You know, to the part where you’re not actually dead?”
“Who says I’m not dead?”
“Well, unless I’m hallucinating. You seem very much alive to me.”
She closed the space between them and pulled his head flush against her breasts. “Listen,” she said.
He wasn’t sure what she was playing at. He couldn’t hear anything. Then it clicked. He didn’t hear anything. Eliza didn’t have a heartbeat.
He shook his head. “Okay, so I am going crazy.”
She released his head roughly and sat on a broken rock wall a few feet away. “The whole world is crazy. Always has been. I guess you just hadn’t noticed.”
“I guess not.”
He watched her warily, unsure who or what he was dealing with. She looked like the Eliza he’d known, but there was something off about her. Something more than just the absence of a heartbeat.
The word that come to mind was “broken,” although he couldn’t quite put his finger on why. “Eliza, are you okay?”
She narrowed his eyes at him. “How can you even ask me that?” It wasn’t really a question. It was an accusation. “If you’d seen what I’ve seen, if you knew what I’ve had to do, you’d understand that I am very much not okay.”
“What have you seen? The afterlife?”
She shook her head bitterly. “If there’s an afterlife, I never got a chance to see it. The world wasn’t quite done with me when I died. It ripped away the heart of me and spit me back out.”
Santiago tried to lean forward, but the ropes held him back. “Eliza, I want to understand what happened to you. Please.”
“You’ll never understand what happened to me,” she said, her voice choked with emotion.
“Then help me understand. Tell me what’s going on. Tell me what happened.”
Her expression changed from morose to mischievous, as if someone had flipped a switch inside her. She hopped up from her seat and paraded in front of him with her hands clasped behind her back. She reminded him of a game show host, preening around a stage. “I could tell you, but it’s more fun if you figure it out for yourself.”
He sighed. “It’s really not. I’ve had a hell of a day. I’ve been shot, beaten, tranquilized, and now my dead partner turns up, still dead by the way, and I’m tied to a goddamn chair. I’m really not in the mood for games.”
“You’re no fun,” she said, pouting.
“Yeah, well, I liked you better when you were alive. So I guess we’re both disappointments.”
“Okay, fine,” she said. “I’ll give you a hint. You remember the night I died.”
“How could I forget?”
She nodded. “And you remember our mission?”
“Yeah. Find some asshole terrorists hiding out in the woods. Get some intel.”
“Well, those assholes weren’t terrorists.”
“Obviously. Your garden variety terrorist wouldn’t have gotten the drop on us like that. So what were they?”
She spread her hands in front of her, palms up. “That’s what I want you to figure out.”
He exhaled heavily. “Fine.”
Santiago thought back to that night. The night that led him to this insane conversation with a dead woman.
They’d infiltrated some backwater province in Eastern Europe. The plan was to go in at night, slip in, and slip out. But Santiago and Eliza had been ambushed in the dark. Neither of them had sensed anything amiss until the attack came. So the bad guys knew how to cover their tracks.
Then Eliza and Santiago ran, but the assholes managed to catch up to them. At the time, Santiago assumed they’d gotten outflanked. But obviously there was more to it than that. Otherwise, Eliza wouldn’t be hinting that they were something more than regular terrorists.
So they were fast.
Fast. Quiet. Night time. No heart beat. The pieces clicked into place. Now that he’d figured it out, he felt foolish for not connecting the dots sooner.
“You’re a fucking vampire?” he asked.
“Correct!” Eliza exclaimed, clapping her hands. “If it’s any consolation, that was my reaction, too. I couldn’t believe they’d turned me into a fucking vampire.”
“So we were sent to gather intel on vampires? We’d never done anything like that before. Shifters leave them alone and they leave us alone. That’s always been the unspoken rule.”
Eliza shook her head. “Well, I guess the rules have changed. Besides, I think that mission was set up to fail from the start.”
“What do you mean?”
“It doesn’t matter now. If I’m right, whoever was responsible will pay for what they did to us. But that’s a whole different story.” She winked. “What matters now is that those vampires caught me, killed me, and turned me.”
“I can’t believe it,” Santiago said. “I’m sorry that happened to you.”
“So am I. I’ll spare you the gory details, but they didn’t turn me into one of them so I could join them for afternoon tea. They had other uses for me.” She shuddered at some unspoken memory. “The first chance I got, I escaped.”
“I’m glad you made it out.”
She whirled on him, anger flashing in her eyes. “That’s just it. I didn’t make it out. Not completely. After they turned me, after I died, the tiger inside me was gone. My tiger. I can’t hear her any more. And I can’t shift. They stole that from me. And I’d do anything to get her back.”
“Including murder?”
“Yes,” she said. “Oh, don’t give me that look. I know what you’ve done in your life. You’ve got just as much blood on your hands as I do.”
“That was different. We were following orders.”
She shrugged. “Now, I’m giving the orders. Besides, I don’t know what you’re accusing me of, but I haven’t murdered anyone out here. Sure, we’ve killed a few wolves, but those mean little fuckers attacked us first. They don’t like us poking around out here.”
“And where is here? Where am I?”
She whirled in a circle, her arms spread out on either side like a realtor showing off a house. “This, my old friend, is an ancient shifter temple. Powerful, primal stuff. I suppose it had a name once, but it’s been lost over the years.”
“I didn’t know shifters had temples.”
“They don’t any more. And almost no one remembers the time when our kind worshiped primeval gods. Unless they’ve been alive for a very long time. Like, for example, my vampire captors. You should have seen the books they had. Tomes from every age. You could spend several lifetimes reading them all, which some of them do, I guess.”
“So what’s in this temple? What’s so special about this place?”
She chuckled and shook her head at him. “Don’t pretend you haven’t felt it. Even I can feel the power here, despite being severed from my animal spirit. It’s faint, but there. For you it must feel like standing next to the sun. At least, when you shift. But I bet you can feel it even now. Now that you’re so close.”
Eliza was right. He hadn’t noticed it before, focused as he was on Eliza’s reappearance. But now that he opened himself to it, he could feel the energy vibrating up through the ground.
It was a distant echo of the sensation he’d felt in wolf form. It wasn’t as strong now, and he didn’t feel that inexorable pull to
find the source of that power.
“What is it? What am I feeling?”
Eliza bobbed her head back and forth. “That’s unclear. The bits and pieces I found about this place were cryptic. But as far as I can tell, this is the home of an ancient shifter deity.”
“A god? That’s ridiculous.”
“Is it? Some kind of power is out there. Maybe it’s a god, maybe it’s just a well of mystical energy. Exactly what it is doesn’t matter. What matters is what it can do for me.”
“And what’s that?” he asked, feeling a creeping sense of dread.
She leaned her face close to his. Her eyes shone brightly with excitement. “It can reconnect me to my tiger. It can make me a shifter again.”
Santiago blinked at her. “Is that it? I thought you were hellbent on world domination or something.”
She shook her head. “All I want is what they took from me.”
“Well, that’s great. I wish you the best of luck. But what the hell do you need me for?”
She laid a firm hand on his shoulder. “I need a shifter to activate the altar. It won’t work for me, as I’ve found out. Then you fell right into my lap. Seems like fate to me.”
“You make it sound so dire. I’m in. No problem. Untie me and I’ll do it right now. Easy peasey, one, two, threesey.” He laughed, relief washing over him. “You didn’t have to go through all these theatrics. You could have called me on the phone and I’d have shown up to help.”
She arched an eyebrow at him. “Well, you say that, but it’s not as simple as flipping a switch. The gods don’t dole out favors to anyone who asks. Every gift requires a sacrifice.”
Santiago’s heart sank in his chest. The joy he’d been feeling withered and died. “What kind of sacrifice?”
“The human kind, of course.”
He struggled against his bindings. “You can’t do this. You can’t trade someone else’s life for yours.”
“I’d trade a hundred lives for mine. It’s what soldiers do all the time. Take one life to save another. This isn’t any different.”
“So I have to die? Is that it? You blame me for what happened to you and now you want to punish me?”