I scented her exhaustion a second before she wrapped her arms around my waist. “Come with me.” She tugged, letting go of me, and I stepped away from the person I’d just finished with to follow Margot.
She didn’t speak again, just bringing me wherever it was she wanted to go. I’d follow her anywhere. We ended up going into a room at the end of the hallway that seemed to have nothing in it but a long table and some broken chairs.
Margot threw her arms around my neck. “I thought you were dead. When you didn’t come back, I thought you were dead. Deacon said he didn’t think you were. That last he saw you, you were alive and in the woods. But I was just convinced.”
I kissed the top of her hair. “I’m sorry. I went all Wolf, and I went under too long. I passed out. I don’t have clear memories of anything that happened.”
“You didn’t come back.” She shook me slightly, and I let her. There was no way she could hurt me. “Jace,” I loved when she called me that. “I think we’ve lost a quarter of the population. A quarter. It could be more. They’re all just bleeding to death.”
Margot let out a sob, pressing her head into my chest. “I can’t stop the bleeding.”
I’d noticed that, too. It was impossibly harder than it should have been to close the wounds of those who’d been bitten in the neck. “This isn’t your fault. They’re made to be lethal.” I sort of remembered that it was hard to tear them apart. My jaw ached at the pseudo-memory. “It’s our fault we let them past us.”
She shook her head against my chest. “I saw them coming, and I thought we were all dead, but the Warriors pushed them back again. Still, they got a quarter of us. I think a quarter of us. And there’s nothing I can do.”
My heart clenched both at her pain and at the sheer loss of life from a community that wasn’t very big to begin with. But this moment wasn’t about me, it was about being there for her. So I tightened my arms around her and I held on while the flood of grief struck my woman. She worried that she was made from Doubleday, that somehow she was like that person. Margot couldn’t have been more wrong.
She shook, her sobs becoming silent and something inside of me died that I couldn’t just fix this for her. Eventually with time she stopped. Maybe she just didn’t have any more tears. Maybe they would come later. I wanted her to go to bed, I wanted to take her there and hold her until morning came. Hell, until ten more mornings came. We both knew that wasn’t possible, not yet.
“I have to go see to more patients. The helpers are great but no one has my background.” She stepped back and wiped her eyes. I leaned over to kiss both her cheeks, letting the tears touch my lips. They were salty. I breathed her in. The stale smell of grief had taken hold of her scent. My Wolf reared inside of me, hating it. But we both knew that it wasn’t going to go away just because we wanted it to.
I pressed my nose against her hair. Touch was so important to shifters. I knew it was just as pivotal to her. “Soon.”
I hoped she understood my promise. Soon there would be rest, soon there would be retribution for this. Soon there would be some semblance of peace. I could promise her that.
“They have all the supplies, all the ability to just keep doing this to us. I… Why am I even going down this train of thought? Life has never been fair.” She kissed my cheek, lingering there. “Out of all of it, if you had died, I might become the monster Doubleday is. You’re here. I can breathe.”
I shook my head. “You’d never be Doubleday.”
“You’re so sure.”
I could give her a million reasons for that but there would only be one she’d accept as truth. “I can smell it, Margot. I’m all about the nose.”
“Do you think you would have liked me if you’d met me in that time you come from? The one almost everyone here can remember but I never saw outside of pictures and movies.”
I picked her up in my arms and set her down on the table so that I could hold her for another second in my arms. She pressed her head against my chest again. Sometimes you just had to make time. She wasn’t going to be a good doctor this way to anyone if she didn’t get a second.
“Would I have liked you? Are you kidding? You’re mine, Margot. I must warn you I was a little bit crazy back then. Couldn’t control the shifts. But I’d have done anything for you. You probably would have thought I was creepy. Following you around, demanding time.”
She laughed. “I’d have loved that.” She tugged on my shirt before she lifted her mouth for a kiss. I gave her one, pouring all the love I had for her into it. Eventually she sighed. “This just… sucks.”
I nodded. “It does.”
I watched her leave me, keeping myself settled long enough that I was sure she’d gone back to work. Margot was right. Enough was enough with this free fucking pass they had for us. I wasn’t putting up with this anymore. They had to be hit where it hurt and that was cloning. They had to know that they, too, could die. End of story.
I followed my nose a distance away until I reached the hall where I was pretty sure the council met to have meetings. I tried the door. It wasn’t locked, but if it had been, I’d have broken the lock. There was part of me that was always going to be nefarious. I’d domesticate for Margot but only to a point.
I knew before I entered that Chad, Micah, Deacon, Glen and Tiffani were there. I’d followed Chad’s scent so the first part, at least, wasn’t surprising. I guessed it made sense they were altogether after such a terrible battle. The council would need to regroup. But Glen’s presence made me think they were on the same page as I was.
Micah nodded at me when I came in. “I told you Jason would come.”
“It has to stop.” I didn’t pretend that they wouldn’t know what I was talking about. A quarter of our meager population was gone. Dead at the hands of original Vampires. At the very least we had to stop their creators from being able to do this endlessly.
Chad ran a hand over his face. Everyone here was utterly exhausted. Tiffani had blood on her arm. She must not have needed medical attention or she’d be elsewhere. Glen leaned on a chair in front of him like he might fall over otherwise.
It was Chad who spoke. “One of us has to hit the button to turn the cloning machines off. Icahn hid it here because he knew we’d never have the balls to use it. I’m going to do it. I just have to gear up for what it means. I can see the greater good. I promise I can. But I hit that button and there is every possibility that you, me, Margot, hundreds of us, we all drop dead instantly. I know it’s selfish, but I really wanted to see my kid.”
He was right. It was selfish, but I totally understood him because I had my own dreams I wanted to see fulfilled, and the last thing I wanted to do was harm Margot in any way. But we couldn’t just let them decimate us piece by piece, and I didn’t have it in me to shift and battle until I lost consciousness day after day. I wished I did. Maybe I was a wimp. Maybe another Wolf could do it and ask it of his pack. But in my case, understanding my limitations was something I did very well. If they came at us again tonight with that level of force, I was dead.
End of story.
“And there’s no way to prevent the potential death to the current clones. I mean, there’s no way to know for certain one way or another whether disabling the cloning machines altogether ends our life or doesn’t?”
Glen shook his head. “The amount that I understand this tech is very little. I was really good at this stuff in the world we all used to live in. Well, almost all of us. Sorry, Deacon.” The other man shrugged. He had to be used to this by now. “But they cryogenically froze us and now I’m playing catch up every day. This? I can turn it off. That’s how far I can go. I can tell you guys how to turn it off. Otherwise, yeah. I’m just dense about it.”
The door slammed open behind me and I was hit with the scent of my mate immediately. I whirled around. Apparently, the humans in here weren’t the only ones suffering from exhaustion. I’d gone nose blind. “You okay?”
She shook her head before she stormed p
ast me and pointed at the machine in front of me. “Is that it? The cloning device that controls all others that we can’t seem to get rid of?”
Deacon sighed. “We don’t keep secrets very well around here, do we?”
Margot put her hands on her hips. “Not with Tia around. I love your wife, Glen, but she likes to talk.” She pointed at it. “I knew about it anyway. From the trip I took with Jason to the lair of the Doubledays.”
Was that what she was calling it in her head? I snorted, and she gave me a look that screamed not amused. I immediately stopped laughing. I guessed Margot hadn’t intended to be funny. I steeled my face. Maybe I was deranged. Nothing should be amusing at the moment.
Tiffani nodded at her. “This is the device. One of us will turn it off. But the idea that we’re about to potentially kill everyone is hard to swallow.”
Margot hit a key and the whole thing shut down. It made a swish noise before the green light on it turned red. I gaped at the device. She’d just flat out shut off that fucking thing without giving it another thought.
“He lied to you. Icahn lied.” She looked at all of us. “The science makes no sense. Two plus two doesn’t add up to two thousand. It just doesn’t. If you give something life you make it self-sustaining. Jason’s heart beats. He breathes. He isn’t doing so because of some connection to a machine. They told you that so you wouldn’t turn off their toy. But you didn’t. I did.”
Tiffani let out a long, audible breath. “Wow. I mean, you just did that. One. Two. Three.”
“Well, I’m Doubleday, right. Despite what my love says. I’m a little bit fucked up.”
The growl that came out of me couldn’t have been controlled even if I’d wanted to. “Don’t talk about yourself that way.”
Tiffani met my gaze. “Maybe a little fucked up is what we need around here. You can be fucked up. As long as you’re our fucked up.”
She pointed at the door. “We have to bury a quarter of our population. Let’s stop dillydallying and get to it.”
Margot turned on her heel and then stopped, looking back at me. There was vulnerability in her eyes the others wouldn’t see. She visibly swallowed. “I debated the whole way over here about whether or not I’d do it. If I had the chance. I didn’t just decide to do it willy-nilly.”
“We’re still standing here so you were right.” I took her hand in mine.
“Yeah. But what if I had been wrong?” She shook her head. “Burying bodies. Now.”
Margot let go of my hand to storm out again. I let her go. Sometimes I had to know when to let people just be. My nose was off but my sense of self-preservation was just fine. She wanted space. She was going to get it.
Yes, we were going to bury the dead. Tiffani stepped up next to me. “I’m giving Margot my space on the council.”
I blinked. “What?”
“I need off of here. It’s time. I’m beyond exhausted from it. I was only ever on because of Keith. It’s time to let this go. We need doers. Chad overthinks. Micah wants to be on his tower that we’ll now have to rebuild. Deacon’s a teacher. I’m so out of the loop that I can’t even figure out what the heck is going on in this once-again new version of our already new world. Margot is the woman for this new world. I want someone to hit buttons and stop Doubleday. I want your wife.”
She wasn’t my wife. Not yet. She would be. I would see to it. When the dead were buried, when Doubleday understood we meant business, and when the wall was rebuilt around the outskirts of Genesis.
“I think that’s a good idea.” Not that she had asked my opinion. More like informed me of what she planned on doing. I was an Alpha Wolf but in Genesis I was glad to be one of many listening to really smart people around me who knew better than I did what they were doing.
I could take down original Vampires, rip out their throats, climb through windows, and shift into fur, but I didn’t have a clue how to keep these non-furry people alive. Yes, Margot should sit on the council. And maybe someday I’d convince her she wasn’t a monster and never would be.
Eleven
I kept Margot close to me, her head pressed to my heart as she cried herself to sleep. Her body shook until it stopped and sleep claimed her, the only thing that would pause the grief for the moment. And it would just be a pause. Even if she managed not to cry anymore she was going to hurt for a long time. We all were. But Margot most of all. She’d held most of them while they bled to death on her tables. She’d been the one to tell their families.
She had to carry that.
Eventually, when she was still and even, my practically useless nose told me that she rested without pain, I closed my eyes. I followed her into sleep.
I walked through my high school. I recognized the lockers and the smell coming out of the lunchroom. It must be tater tot day. I’d hated those fucking things. The oil had a particular odor that said it was cheap and that the food would give you indigestion. My Wolf in particular had hated that shit. But he was never happy back then unless we were eating meat.
Why was I dreaming of high school?
I smelled Margot, her dreamy, soothing aroma hit me, and I picked up my pace, dodging the football players who always seemed to be taking up three quarters of the hallway. I found her standing in an empty classroom. She was younger than she was now. But then I looked sixteen, too. In that weird way of dreams I just knew that.
I walked toward her. “Hi.”
“Hi.” She didn’t look at me which I hated, keeping her gaze on the board, which I could now see was covered in math problems. I wanted her eyes on me. “Margot.”
She turned around before she leaned against the blackboard, rubbing some of whatever those calculations were away with her back. Margot lifted her eyebrows slowly. “I’m trying to figure it out, Jace.”
“What’s that?” I stepped toward her, placing my hand on her cheek to feel her skin.
“Why you are letting them regroup?”
I sat up in the bed. My mate hadn’t moved, but when I jolted she rolled onto her side, not rousing. I placed a hand on her back while I made myself calm down. She’d been right in the dream. Why were we letting them regroup? Just because we needed a minute didn’t mean we should give one to them.
I got out of the bed as quietly as possible and left her sleeping. I’d be back, hopefully, before she woke, since I thought she’d be out cold for a while, and in the meantime we could make a real dent in things. We could turn this tide in our favor.
I hurried outside and nearly collided with Chad. The breeze blew the wrong way but still I shouldn’t be this out of touch with my senses. I really had overdone it in the last battle. But as dream Margot had asked me, why was I giving them time to regroup. I wasn’t.
Chad grabbed my shoulders. “We have to…”
“Bring it to them,” I finished his sentence. This man and I had once hated each other. Or at least other versions of ourselves had. Now we were in sync and battling together. The world was strange. “You came to me.”
Chad nodded. “I sort of think of you as our new general. Maybe that’s wrong but…”
“No, that works. Come on. Let’s get the pack. Keep it small. We aren’t going to battle the originals. They’ve gone to regroup. We don’t need a lot. Precision strike. Hey, question. When I got back here you were never worried about me. Not once. I couldn’t smell an inkling of anxiety. Why was that?”
He held up two fingers. “One, I love and trust Rachel. She holds my soul. Nothing would ever separate us, not while either of us lives. I didn’t intend to let you kill me. She’s pregnant with my baby. I think Wolves get that. Family. You’re big on Pack. If you still wanted her, you’d back off because of that, but really, I wasn’t worried because of the second reason.”
I lifted my brows. “Which was what?”
“Margot came back from meeting you, humming. That’s very un-Margot. She smiled at me. I… I can’t help it. I’m a romantic at heart. I knew right there that you were going to be with her. And that a
ll would be well in that regard.”
I blinked. Well, I wouldn’t have given Chad so much credit for foresight. As it was we were on the same page and that was a bonus. “One thing my father taught me was how to hit hard and never look back. Let’s do this thing.”
Hours later we stood in front of the compound with the Doubledays and the Vampires. They didn’t know we were there. They had to think we were licking our wounds because that is what we had always done.
My pack was with me. Well, most of us. I’d left some of the elderly and injured behind. We had two thirds of us with us. We actually made up the majority of the fighting force and that was because of my choice to do so. Humans were wrecked. Some of the Warriors could still fight but they’d probably do so until they died. That left us with Chad, Micah, Brynna—who was not being left this time, Deacon, Glen, Brian, Tony, and Taylor.
I looked at Matt, my pack mate. “I don’t want to engage. As much as possible, we burn them out.”
They’d come to our home and prepared to destroy us. We would now do the same. I looked at Micah. “I know you guys aren’t big on killing humans. I can do this.”
“Things have changed. I’m not big on killing those who don’t deserve to be killed. Humans who do? Yeah, I’m not so much discriminating on that anymore. We’ll do it together.” He looked over his shoulder. “Deacon, you’re with us. Chad, Glen stay here.”
Chad rolled his eyes. “This was my fucking idea. I don’t have to be protected from it.”
“Stay here.” Micah nudged him. “You don’t kill people. You’re Chad. You stay far away from what Jason and I are going to do. Rachel? She could kill people. That’s why you’re the yin to her yang.”
Deacon looked between us. “What is that?”
“Never mind,” Micah and I answered together.
Deacon sighed. “Should I be insulted you think I kill people?”
“We know you do.” Micah walked past him. “Brynna, could you scout around? Make sure we’re not about to be ambushed.”
Jason: A Dystopian Paranormal Urban Fantasy Romance (Warrior World Book 3) Page 12