by S. M. Reine
Her stomach clenched. She was going to be sick. Rylie clapped both hands over her mouth.
It took a few minutes to gain enough control to speak. “Abel told me that he talked to Stephanie. She promised to ask you to stop messing around with my wolves.”
Levi didn’t look back, focusing on the sliver of road they could see through the headlights. “She did talk to me. I ignored her. Stephanie might be in charge of the Apple, but she’s no werewolf. She has nothing to do with pack matters.”
“This isn’t just some pack matter, Levi,” Rylie said. She leaned to touch his shoulder in the front seat. “You know you’ve always been welcome in the sanctuary. We’re not enemies.”
He elbowed her away. “Don’t touch me.”
“Don’t hurt my wolves.”
Levi’s eyes were reflected in the rearview mirror, glaring at her. “Your wolves? The ones that you’ve mismanaged and gotten killed at the mouth of Hell?”
“My wolves,” Rylie whispered. They had always been her wolves, always would be. She was Alpha. Nothing Levi did would change that.
Right?
Levi parked the SUV right in front of the statue of Bain Marshall, inside the barricades that the Apple had erected. Storm clouds roiled overhead, concealing the gash to Shamain that hadn’t quite healed.
He jumped out. Pulled Rylie into the wind with him. They were right against the edge of the fissure.
“Why here?” she asked, pressing her whipping hair against her shoulders with both hands.
The question answered itself. There was a crowd gathering, even bigger than the one Rylie had seen around the fissure earlier. People had come out to see what Levi was going to do to the Alphas.
Levi hauled Abel out of the back of the SUV. He had shifted back to human within the chains so that the muzzle hung loosely around his neck. Bright red burns crisscrossed his skin, leaving blisters where they had dug into him. Levi dropped Abel on the lawn then shoved Rylie to the ground beside him.
She didn’t think twice before unhooking the chains. They sizzled against her fingers, but she bit back a cry as she released Abel and pulled him onto his knees. The sight of the wounds made her want to cry.
“I can’t change,” Abel groaned against the top of her head, gripping her shoulders tightly. “The silver. You have to do it.”
He wanted her to shapeshift and kill Levi.
She bit her bottom lip. She wanted to change and protect Abel, but…she couldn’t. And it had nothing to do with silver.
Rylie glared up at Levi through the blaze of firelight. Hell reflected on him, casting his features in stark shadows. “What’s the point of this? What do you possibly think you can accomplish?”
“Join my pack,” Levi said.
“What?”
“I’m Alpha now. Swear to join my pack now, while everyone is watching, and I’ll let you both stay.”
His pack?
Rylie’s eyes swept over the clearing. The number of witnesses was growing. She had initially assumed that the people watching them were members of the Apple that had never left Northgate, but then the wind shifted, carrying their scent to her. She smelled pine trees and cold stone. Open air dotted by starlight. Old cabins, rotting wood, wet soil.
This was the pack. Over twenty of them, at a quick count.
More than half of Rylie’s werewolves were standing with Levi.
This wasn’t just Levi taking over. This was an organized revolt.
There were so many familiar faces standing behind him. Some people who had been with her for years—people who had faced down the Union on Gray Mountain the night that she became Alpha in the first place. But they weren’t there to defend her. They were there to throw in their lots with Levi.
Levi, who was willing to bite more people and turn them into werewolves.
Levi, who was a member of the same cult that had made Rylie’s life a living hell.
Her eyes burned, and it wasn’t with the pain of transformation. She swallowed down tears. She had given everything for the pack, even the things she never thought she could give. Not just money and the time required to build the sanctuary, but her life. The lives of her children. The lives of friends, like Toshiko, and even Seth himself.
All for the pack.
“Have I been that bad?” she whispered.
Levi’s brow creased. “You’re not a leader, Gresham. You never have been. You’re just some dumb kid that survived getting bitten.” He thumped his chest with his fist. “I’ll be able to make the pack a force to be reckoned with.”
Rylie would have given him the ability to be Alpha if she could have. If it meant that she and Abel could live without being bothered—fine. She had been willing to let Elise exorcise her to reach that end.
Having it taken from her felt so different from giving it up willingly. It hurt.
She looked at each member of her pack in turn. Cassie had been a resident of the California coven’s werewolf sanctuary. Sanjana had been at her wedding with Seth. Antwan had helped Rylie fix the fences at the Gresham ranch after the bad snowstorm in 2012.
Not just friends, but family, too. Rylie caught sight of Abram over Levi’s shoulder. He was on the outermost edge of the lawn, almost to the street. His expression was inscrutable in the night.
What would Levi do if Abram attacked? Her son couldn’t defend Rylie against an entire mutinous werewolf pack.
She caught Abram’s eye and stood up. “Run,” she whispered, hoping that he would read her lips. “Get out of here.”
“We’re not joining your pack,” Abel said, struggling to stand beside her.
Levi’s fingernails had been replaced by claws. The bones in his face shifted under the skin, popping faintly. “You don’t have any choice, Wilder. There’s nowhere else for you to go.”
“All you assholes want Levi in charge of the pack? Whatever. We’ll go to Hell,” Abel said loudly enough for everyone to hear him. “Moon’s in three days, asshole. You ready for it?”
Hell? Rylie gaped at him. “Abel, we can’t—”
“Okay,” Levi said. “If you’re happy to turn tail, then go to Hell. Get out of here.”
Abel pulled Rylie hard against his side as he walked up to the edge of the bridge. She gazed up at him in silent questioning. There was no trace of doubt in his face. Abel was, in his own way, an immovable force of nature—something that used to terrify her. The twisted left side of his scarred face didn’t bother her anymore. But the hardness she saw in his eyes…that frightened her.
It reminded her of the man who had once hunted her, threatened to kill her. He was back.
And for some reason, he was retreating.
“Abel?” she whispered.
“Trust me,” he said.
She did trust him. She trusted him with everything.
Rylie glanced back at Levi. He looked so damn smug. She swallowed down her pride and asked, “Will you feed Sir Lumpy until Summer comes back for him? Please?”
“Yeah,” Levi said. “I can do that.” Even he wasn’t so much of an asshole that he would let the cat starve.
Rylie stepped over the edge of the fissure with Abel, leaving the pack and the Earth behind.
Smoke consumed Rylie. She gagged on it hard enough that she slipped to her knees, her only anchor Abel’s strong arm trapped between her hands. She had been fighting the urge to vomit ever since she had seen Crystal and Trevin shifting on the mountain. Now she lost the battle. Everything she had eaten the day before spilled out of her.
Abel jerked her to her feet again. “Don’t stop moving.”
She cupped her hand under her mouth, trying not to get sick all over her clothes. Throwing up didn’t make her feel any better. The illness had taken root deep in her soul.
Sand blasted her skin, exposed by the long white nightgown she had been sleeping in. The healing fever swept over her again and again, struggling to heal her as Dis inflicted damage.
The judgmental faces of her pack haunted her. She co
uld see them in the shape of the smoke as Abel dragged her down the crystal bridge.
“They left us,” she choked out, hot tears streaming down her cheeks.
“Fuck them,” Abel said. His voice was quickly going hoarse as his throat dried out in Dis’s climate. “Fuck every last one of them.”
The wind blew harder, clearing the smoke long enough for Rylie to see the bridge stretching down to the tower and the city beyond. Dis was huge, sprawling, and just as frightening as Rylie remembered. The jagged black mountains looked sharper, meaner, like Levi’s teeth when he was in his wolf form.
There were people advancing toward them from the bottom of the bridge. The guards had spotted their approach and were moving to intercept.
Abel tensed under her hands. “Don’t hurt them,” Rylie said, digging her fingernails into his skin. “These are Elise’s people.”
“Elise’s people? That looks a hell of a lot like the bitch herself.”
She wiped the tears from her eyes and looked again. He was right—Elise was leading a group of men wearing black leather body armor up the bridge, and she was in full battle gear herself, with Seth’s gun at her hip and her hair cinched into a tight knot.
Rylie blinked, and Elise was suddenly standing in front of her. She had crossed the last several thousand yards faster than a heartbeat.
“What happened?” Elise asked, brow furrowing. “What are you doing here?”
“Levi Riese,” Abel growled.
Her upper lip curled. She almost looked like a wolf herself. But when she spoke, her voice was surprisingly gentle. “Good to see you survived.”
“He took the pack,” Rylie said, blinking away her tears, trying to calm herself. “No, he didn’t take the pack—they just went with him. They didn’t want us in charge of them anymore.”
“And you let them kick you out?” Elise asked. “You’re an Alpha werewolf. You’re telling me you couldn’t just change and kill them?”
“Never thought I would agree with you,” Abel muttered.
“I could have changed, yes,” Rylie said, staring at her feet.
“So why didn’t you? Because you didn’t want to hurt anyone? Are you that idealistic?”
Her throat worked as she swallowed. “You wouldn’t understand.”
“Fuck,” Elise said with heat. She glared up at the fissure, still just a few hundred feet above them, as if trying to decide what to do. “I can’t deal with this bullshit right now. I’m going to have the guards escort you into the Palace to wait for me.”
“Where are you going?” Abel asked sharply.
Elise shot him a look, but addressed her guards. “You heard me. Get the Alphas into the Palace. Somewhere secure. And if anyone tries to approach them, assume that it’s an assassin and kill on sight.”
Rylie’s jaw dropped. “An assassin?”
“The Palace isn’t secure anymore,” Elise said. “Don’t eat anything.”
And with that, she dissolved into smoke and darted through the fissure.
Neuma paced alongside Elise’s bed, chewing on her lacquered fingernail. She knew she was going to ruin a perfectly good manicure, but she couldn’t bring herself to stop. Not while Isaiah and Aniruddha were casting magic to try to save Lincoln’s life.
She could watch him fading, even now. He’d looked so strong and healthy when she’d spotted him throwing tantrums in the library earlier. Complaints aside, Lincoln had smelled amazing. Definitely her kind of lunch. And exactly the kind of pain in the ass that Elise needed to keep her in check.
Now he was weak. Frail.
Dying.
Neuma had watched more than a few men spiral toward death as she fucked the life out of them. She knew what a man looked like when he was past the point of no return. Lincoln wasn’t there yet, but he was approaching fast.
Aniruddha and Isaiah were arguing in quiet voices. The kind of hushed tone people took on in a funeral parlor.
“Healing magic is hard enough on Earth,” Isaiah was saying. “I managed to heal a headache once down here, but there’s a difference between an herbal analgesic and trying to keep someone’s heart from failing.”
“I don’t think it’s his heart,” Aniruddha said. He was calmer, more confident, but no less grim.
“But if we can keep his heart beating, we can keep blood flowing to his brain…last long enough for Elise to come back…”
Neuma tuned them out and increased her pacing range to the bedroom door and back. Her heels rapped loudly against the tile. Too loudly, considering a man was dying. Didn’t seem polite to be stomping around like that when he was on the brink of shuffling off his mortal coil. She kicked her shoes off and nudged them under the bed.
Shouts rose from beyond the bedroom wall.
The door slammed open, bouncing off of the wall. Azis and Gerard strode inside, dragging another man between them. He was wearing a linen apron and his face had been beaten into a bloody pulp.
Neuma stopped pacing. “The chef who made the pie?”
Gerard tossed him to her feet. “The one and only. We found him trying to get down into the dungeons.”
He hadn’t escaped out the gates because he had been trying to hide in the dungeons. Not real bright. Even if he’d gotten down there, he would have found himself caught in Jerica’s thrall. “I don’t recognize this guy.”
“He’s not a former slave,” Gerard said. “I don’t recognize him, either.” He shoved the man’s shoulder, hard. “Where’d you come from?”
The man trembled, staring around Elise’s quarters as though he had never seen the likes of them before. Her room was intimidating, just like anywhere else in the Palace—high buttresses, iron decorations, windows overlooking the city. Anyone who had spent any significant time in the Palace shouldn’t have been surprised by it.
“Well, getting this one to talk will be real easy,” Neuma said, jerking a spike out of her hair so that it tumbled around her shoulders. She held the point near his frightened, bulging eye. Sweat poured down his face. “At least I can torture you humans the normal way—by plucking your eyeball out, just like scoopin’ melon balls for a Halloween party.”
“I’ll tell you anything,” he said. “God, please just don’t hurt me.”
Neuma huffed. “You’re not even trying.” Kind of disappointing. She had a lot of frustration she would be happy to work out on him. “Who are you?”
“My name…” He swallowed hard. “My name’s Jacobi Nowacki.”
That meant nothing to her. She rolled the hairpin in her hand as she paced around him, skimming the energies that arced over his mind. Fear and desire were pretty similar, physically speaking. He wasn’t putting on a show to make himself look harmless. He was exactly as terrified as he looked—on the verge of losing bladder control, in fact.
Not much of an assassin.
“What did you put in that pie, lover boy?” Neuma asked, trailing her fingers through his hair. He didn’t have much. The top of his head was shiny and bald. She scraped his scalp with her fingernails.
He cringed. “I don’t know. It was given to me. I didn’t even think it was dangerous. There’s more in my pocket…”
Neuma took a quick step back. Anything that could kill Lincoln would kill her just as quickly.
Gerard patted Jacobi down and came up with a vial the size of his thumb. Fine black powder was collected at the bottom. “Gunpowder?” He moved to uncork it.
“Don’t do that!” Aniruddha crossed the room in three strides and snatched it out of his hand. “It reeks of magic and it almost killed Elise Kavanagh. You don’t want to let that out.”
Magic, huh? That might mean a warlock. “Who gave this to you?” Neuma demanded. “Was it Belphegor?”
Jacobi’s panicked eyes flicked between her and Gerard. “What? Who’s Belphegor?”
“Who gave the vial to you?” Neuma asked again.
He hesitated.
She jabbed the silver spike into the muscle of his shoulder. Jacobi jerked
back with a cry. “Levi!” he said. “Levi Riese gave it to me!”
She had been prepared to hear virtually any name from his lips in that moment—maybe even a friend of hers, someone living within the Palace that she and Elise trusted. How else would Sallosa have gotten a bespelled Taser? Who would have let in Jacobi in the first place?
But Levi’s name meant nothing to her.
Apparently she was the only one who didn’t recognize it. Isaiah gasped audibly. The other men exchanged dark looks.
“Levi Riese? Are you sure?” Isaiah asked. He yanked down the neck of Jacobi’s shirt. There was a tattoo of a bleeding apple over his heart.
“He only passed it on to me. He said it was a present for the Father, coming from someone else. I don’t know whom. That’s all the information I have!”
“Who’s Levi?” Neuma asked.
Jacobi cringed away from her as she trailed the point of the pin over his chest.
“He’s a werewolf in Northgate,” Isaiah said. “He’s with the Apple. He’s the reason I left St. Philomene’s.”
That was all she needed to know. Neuma turned to Gerard. “Send some guys to Earth,” she said. “I’m thinking the werewolf Alphas need protection.”
“That won’t be necessary,” Gerard said. “They’re already here.”
Eleven
ELISE DESCENDED UPON Reno, Nevada two hours before sunrise, unafraid of being caught by sunlight. It had been a long time since the sun had risen on Reno. Fledgling nightmares swarmed in the darkness, blotting out even the faintest rays of moonlight.
Once, Elise had treasured the small-town feel of Reno. It had been known as the Biggest Little City, and the slogan had been apt.
Nothing that she had enjoyed about the city remained—none of the trucks that served authentic slow-cooked cabeza burritos, the Art Town activities that once filled the nights with music, the food festivals and farmer’s markets and classic car shows. Even the Truckee, once her favorite jogging location, had been dammed near the source and now ran dry.