I lay in the dark stroking her back. I outlined the letter J with my finger. Yeah, I was just that pathetic but I’d own it. How had this happened?
She sighed in her sleep, and I pulled her closer. I’d keep her safe in the darkness from the monsters. It took a monster to stop the monsters. Chad had ordered me to stay. It chafed me to just obey, but I could have a literal pissing contest and still end up hanging around because it was the right thing to do, or I could hold onto Margot in her sleep and just get on with it.
I closed my eyes, pressing my forehead to her back. I’d stay like this and never move again.
Only the scent hit my nose again. I raised my head. The Vampires were back. They were coming again. We needed a better alarm than my senses. What if I’d been fully asleep? I kissed Margot’s shoulder. “We’re going to have problems again.”
She opened her eyes. “Damn it.”
“We have nothing they want here right now. No Vamps on ice somewhere, right?”
She chewed her bottom lip. “You just publicly executed one, made a fool out of them. They’re super smart. Not communicating with us but clearly communicating with each other. They may very well be coming for nothing more than revenge.”
I sniffed. They were closer. My Wolf never wanted revenge. It had wanted family. Now it just wanted Margot.
She touched my arm. “They need to fight them back. And we need to go. We need to follow them back. Do you think it’s possible?”
“I can. Assuming they’re not here specifically to kill me. I can chase them and see where they go.”
My mate shook her head. “Not alone, Jason. You need me for this. Great, you can follow them, but you won’t know what you’re looking for when you get there. I have to do this. We have to.”
I sighed. “Margot, that makes it more complicated.”
“Maybe not.” She walked toward me, picking up her shirt while she did. “I’ll ride on your back.”
Once, a long time ago, I’d had a device Rachel used to strap herself to me. It had kept her upright. “That might work. We have to worry. And we have to go see Rachel.” If she still had the stuff then we could make this happen. If not, she was going to have to hold on like hell.
Worry wafted over her. Margot never flinched. If I didn’t have superior scenting skills, I’d never know. She never faltered when it came to danger, but the idea of going to see Rachel scared her. I ran a hand through my hair. “I’ll go alone. Get the med bay ready for you to leave.”
She tilted her head slightly. “Just because it frightens me to see the two of you together, and yes I know you can smell it, doesn’t mean that I don’t have to do it. If we’re all going to live here and that’s an if, I can’t be intimidated by the thought of her with you. She’s here. We’re here. Let’s go. How much time do we have?”
The alarm sounded. Someone had alerted the watch. That might be one of my Wolves. I sniffed the air. “Ten minutes.”
“Let’s run.”
On two legs she could keep up with me. Shifting would make me quicker, but I’d exerted so much energy lately fighting these things that I didn’t want to waste any shifting while I should stay in my Wolf form.
I followed my nose. I’d never been to Rachel and Chad’s place but I found it with no trouble. There were certain perks to my shifter status. One of them was I could follow my nose. I could have just asked Margot, too, I supposed. I wasn’t used to having anyone with me. Margot knocked on the door.
It took a second, and then Rachel threw it open. Her face was a mask. I couldn’t read her, and I didn’t care to try. She might have something I needed. Before I could speak, she paled. “Is it Chad? Is he dead?”
“What?”
Margot shook her head fast, grabbing Rachel’s hands. “No. Sorry to frighten you.”
Rachel let out a long breath. “Okay. We’re under attack. But that’s standard somehow. What’s going on?”
“I need the harness if you still have it.”
Rachel met my gaze. For the first time, I saw the girl I used to know. I didn’t love her, she didn’t love me. That was all fine. But we’d known each other through many circumstances. “Come in. I’ll see if I still have it.”
“Thanks.”
Eight
“You might be surprised what I have and don’t have.” She dug out a box. “We lost everything several times. Then we’d dig out the rubble and go again. But that harness, I found it. So yes I have it. I don’t know why I kept it. Maybe I thought you’d be cloned and I could give it back to you.” She lifted her gaze. “And I could say thank you.”
I took it from her. “Thank you?”
I met Margot’s gaze. If she understood what she meant, she didn’t indicate.
Rachel continued, “For saving my life, Jason. You died saving me. I never got to say thank you. I’m getting the chance. Thank you.”
“Oh.” The truth was I hardly remembered it. Most of my memories from the other Jason’s life were very clear but that one was sort of hazy. Maybe that was how death worked for all cloned individuals. “Well, you’re welcome.”
What was I supposed to say? I remembered that I felt the need to save her very strongly. Or my previous body had. I was the worst clone ever. Weren’t we supposed to not feel separate from ourselves?
“All right then.” She lifted the harness. “Chad says you’re quite different now. Maybe there will be a day in the future that we can all be friends. I mean that might be weird. But everything is weird.”
The alarm dinged twice as loud and Margot sighed. “That means imminent threat.”
They were close. “Thank you, Rachel. Look, I don’t know if we’ll ever be friends. There’s a lot of water under the bridge for us. But we share memories. We both remember a time that is no more and people long forgotten. Let’s not make things harder on each other.”
She nodded. “Fair enough, Jace.”
No one had called me that in a million years. Well, maybe not that many. But it felt that way. She was like a long lost old friend. We might not have anything in common anymore. Still, we’d always share history.
Even if this body never lived it.
I grabbed Margot’s hand. We had the harness. I could keep her safe on my back. Somehow, we’d get through this and leave the past where it belonged—far, far away.
We lay in the dark night watching the battle. Genesis continued to survive thanks to my Wolves. For now, anyway. The originals were rough. They’d injured some people, and I could feel Margot’s hand shake on my fur from her wanting to go help people. Chad and the others understood why she had to be where she was at the moment. They’d survived years without her. For tonight, they’d have to make do.
I’d get her back as quickly as I possibly could. She needed to get more information and I was going to make that happen for her. I reared back a little bit. We didn’t know how good the sense of smell was on these guys. Most creatures didn’t have my level of scent detection but we really didn’t know. These guys had tracked me running at top speed with one of them in my mouth.
I wasn’t taking any chances with Margot.
We needed to reach the point in the battle where they took off running back to wherever they came from, which implied we had to win. I’d not shared this with Margot, but I was more than prepared to dump her somewhere safe and go join the fight if the tide turned in the wrong direction. So far, however, everything was on our side.
This was my biggest concern. These Vampires were supposed to be super badass. Why were we winning at all? I suspected, but couldn’t prove, that they were testing us. And I was now thinking of Genesis as us all of a sudden.
That was because of Margot.
She made me feel like a man worthy of being there, even when I was in my Wolf form.
My mate leaned forward, running her fingers through my fur. I wondered if she knew how on edge my thoughts were. I’d ask her, later. If I didn’t get distracted by something else awful that took my mind off of this.
Three Vamps ran back into the woods. I ducked down, hoping she’d know to stay quiet without even being told to. Margot was smart. She didn’t need me to force feed her basic survival. I didn’t think. This having a mate amidst terrifying circumstances really could amp up the anxiety.
I took off running after the Vamps, keeping my feet swift and as silent as I could. The wind behaved. It was as if it wouldn’t help them to know I was with them by blowing in the wrong direction. I didn’t know if there were forces that helped or hindered us beyond our understanding—I’d never known—but I’d take whatever assistance I could get even if it was random occurrences of entropy.
We ran for a long while, stopping only when they did. I listened to every beat of Margot’s heart. There were too many scents in the air for me to determine if she was okay from that alone. But her heartbeat I could hear through the silence of the night and while it was faster than I might have liked it was steady.
She was okay.
It begged the question, of course, as to whether or not the Vamps could hear her heartbeat, too, or my own. We really needed to know more about these things and fast.
Finally, after hours of running, we stopped. I sniffed the air. This was a new area to me. There were three buildings, all of them lit up like they had regular electricity and not the dim sometimes it worked sometimes it didn’t version that we lived with. Or that Genesis lived with. I’d only had that a few days, if that.
We’d been living like the stone ages in my pack.
They disappeared into the second building to my right, filing in like they’d been trained to do just that. Margot hopped off my back. I was going to shift, but she held up her hand, catching my attention. What did she see? I looked where she pointed. A woman who looked just like her passed. Her clone. That was right. Unlike Chad or myself, there were multiple versions of Margot wandering around. No that wasn’t right. None of them were Margot. Not at all. I took a long, and easy inhale through my nose.
The woman rushing from the first building to the next smelled nothing like her. The other being had a sour smell, not at all the welcoming roses of my love. I stared up at my mate. She crossed her arms over her chest and watched the other woman from a distance move by. She dropped her arms, putting them on her hips and without another word stormed forward.
What was she doing? I growled in the bottom of my throat, and she waved her hand in the air dismissing me.
“Hey,” she yelled to get the woman’s attention. Her clone turned around, her mouth falling open. This woman had longer hair than Margot and bangs. Otherwise they were identical.
She visibly swallowed. “Who are you?”
Margot shrugged. “I guess tonight, I’m you.”
She punched the woman hard, bringing her down to the ground. My mouth fell open. I hadn’t seen that coming. My girl had just knocked that woman right to the ground. She pulled a necklace right off of her that looked like it had a key card.
Over her shoulder, she spoke to me. “Drag her off. Will you? Put her somewhere a distance away. I’m going inside. I guess I’m going to be her. I don’t know who she is, but I’ll pull it off. Stay here, Jason. Don’t bust down any doors unless you have to. Being stealthy is helpful. Maybe better they don’t know we’re here.”
She wanted me to just wait here? I called my shift onto myself because we really had to discuss this but, by the time I got into my human form, she was gone through the door of the second building. Damn it. This was not the plan. I was supposed to be taking all the risks here.
I sighed. Okay, she’d told me to drag the woman off, and I couldn’t do that on two feet. I shifted back. I was going to crash later. I had to start monitoring how many changes I made in a day. When I’d been growing up it would have been unheard of for a Werewolf to do this as much as I did regularly. But circumstances weren’t easy, and I had to make do.
I changed into my Wolf form and trotted forward, gripping the woman by her shirt. This would be easier if she stayed knocked out, or I was going to have to bang her around again to put her back under. The idea was really unappealing. I’d never particularly cared for having to get physical with a woman, even in battle. I’d apparently taken on Rachel once but the fever had been riding me high. I didn’t know what I was doing. My father had wanted her dead, and I’d been in no position, mentally in the throes of delusions, to even know what the heck was going on.
I lived with that guilt. One of many things I somehow had to live with. Why did the universe give me Margot? I was really undeserving.
Her clone stayed asleep, and I dragged her a distance away. I left her on the ground under two large trees. Something might happen to her unconscious in the dark and maybe it made me an asshole—oh hell I’d always been an asshole—but this woman didn’t belong to me. The one I loved needed me, and the rest of the world could go fuck itself.
I ran back to the location where I’d left her and I waited. Time seemed to slow. Every second felt like an hour. I paced under a tree. This sucked. She should not be in there alone. It wasn’t that Margot wasn’t capable but part of my whole existence from the moment I’d met her was to help her. It just was.
I shifted into my human form. I was going in after her and it wasn’t going to be as a Wolf. Once upon a time I’d been sort of semi notorious in my neighborhood. I used to break into Rachel’s house all the time to see her. I wasn’t kept outside if I wanted to be in somewhere.
I didn’t have a key code, and I wasn’t going to wait until I could knock someone out to get a pass. No, I hightailed it to the wall of the building, hoisting myself up onto the ledge of the windowsill. The overhang of the roof came down low enough that I could use it to get on the roof. I looked behind me just to double check what my nose told me.
There was no one around.
The object of this trip to the roof was the chimney. It was old, and I doubted it would work if I wanted to make a fire. In fact, a building like this was probably using it for something other than sitting around and being warm on winter nights. They were probably burning things or people they needed to get rid of. I wasn’t going to think too much about that. I needed to get to Margot and so that was what I was doing.
The fireplace was wide, thick, and my way inside.
Maybe someday they could call me Santa Wolf.
I jumped down.
Covered in soot and other substances I wouldn’t dwell on until I could wash them off of me, I managed to get myself out of the basement of the building. I shook some of the dust off myself. I sniffed the air, searching for my mate through the haze of yuck filling the room and the rest of the building.
She was there, and she didn’t smell like she was in distress. That was all I needed to focus on for right then. Well, that and not getting caught so I could actually help her.
The basement where I found myself was relatively empty. There were boxes lined up on the walls. In a day with nothing to do I’d go through them, but I highly doubted there was anything of import being stored in the dank basement while people still worked upstairs. I found an old pair of stairs that was in clear need of repair and took them with a great deal of caution. The last thing I needed was for them to collapse under me.
I made it to the top to find the door locked. I sniffed the air. How long had it been since anyone came down here? I’d guess from the staleness, a very long time. I twisted the door anyway and it opened for me. I was stronger than a regular human.
As quietly as possible I opened the door. No one was in the hall, but I had no idea if I was under surveillance otherwise. I’d undertaken this insanity and I wasn’t going to get too hung up on worrying about things that were beyond my control at this point. If I had to fight our way out, I would.
I followed the scent of Margot, pausing on the side of a doorway when I got close to her. She glanced in my direction, shaking her head so slightly that I’d have missed the movement if I didn’t know she didn’t not just shake her head around randomly. She’d grabbe
d some clothes, including a sweatshirt that she pulled over her head. Margot was so damned smart. No one would notice the change in her hair if she kept it like that.
Two people spoke to her, both of them older versions of her clone. She nodded at something one of them said. Was this place crawling with Doubleday clones? All my nose told me was that there were a lot of people in the building. I’d never dwelled on the scent of clones before. Did Chad smell different than he used to? Did I? I was going to have to think about this when I got out of here. How much could the subtle changes alter our scents?
A crowd was coming around the hall, and I darted into a room to get out of the way. I wasn’t a Doubleday and if there were nothing but Doubleday clones here I had to be hidden. At least I wasn’t hearing any alarms going off.
Unless they were silent.
I groaned. I really hated this world.
Except for Margot. She was a bright light.
“Hi.” I jumped, before I whirled around. There was a woman in the room with me. She was an older version of Doubleday, like the crazy one who had run the madhouse where I’d woken up from my cloning.
She waved her hand. “You can’t smell me. Don’t freak yourself out over it. I was part of an experiment to see if we could be immune to Werewolves. The answer was yes.” She stumbled to her feet. “They found that result really interesting but not enough to keep doing it. So you can’t smell me. You didn’t miss the scent.”
My nose wasn’t broken. I supposed that was good news. “You know who I am?”
“You’re Jason Kenwood. Everyone watched the Jason-Rachel saga. We need things to keep us entertained here.”
I wasn’t going to enlighten her just how much that didn’t matter anymore. “Always glad to be of service.”
She rose unsteadily to her feet. This non-scented Doubleday wasn’t doing too well. Was she sick? How much could my nose not pick up on her? “What brings you here? Oh, I bet I do know. The originals aren’t contained anymore. They’re getting a lot of attention. Did they mess with your pack?”
Jason: A Dystopian Paranormal Urban Fantasy Romance (Warrior World Book 3) Page 9