Cipher

by Moira Rogers

  Mackenzie rocked to her toes, then unzipped her jacket. “So we fight. Jackson, baby? How big a racket do you think crossing the perimeter will make?”

  “With these kinds of precautions? I’d say mighty loud.” He flexed his hands and stretched his shoulders. “I can handle the spells, and whoever they’ve got in there casting them. What we need to watch out for is a Hail Mary pass once they know we’ve got them.”

  Andrew yanked his shirt over his head. “That’s me. If anyone tries it, I’ll stop them. No question.” And there wasn’t. A strange calm descended over him as he unbuckled his belt. If anyone needed to step in front of a bullet, it would be him. He’d take that risk, be the protector.

  One way or another, Kat would live.

  Anna nodded slowly. “I’ll be on your heels.”

  “Patrick?” Mackenzie’s voice was muffled as she jerked her shirt over her head. Her bra was blue lace and ruffles, but her words were brutally efficient. “Go with them. I’m fast enough to be flexible, so I’ll keep an open path for retreat.”

  And watch Jackson’s back. Andrew understood the feeling. He normally avoided fighting as a wolf, but tonight he relished the notion. He’d stand before them, and they’d know how low he would bring them.

  And then he would end them.

  His jeans landed in the dirt, and he followed them down. Magic, so much magic he wondered if they’d feel it in the ramshackle garage, and then the wolf was free. He stalked through the grass, once overgrown and now brittle and brown. They left tracks, he and Anna and Patrick, but that was okay too.

  The time for stealth was almost at an end.

  Jackson began to chant, low, rolling words that tumbled over each other until they ran together in a rhythmic stream. Soft light began to gather around him, a subtle glow that seemed like a trick of the eyes until it intensified, almost throbbed—

  From somewhere inside the building, Julio howled, a sound that fell somewhere between human and animal, one hundred percent rage.

  The magic around Jackson exploded, might have even swept Andrew off his paws if he hadn’t already been running, counting on Patrick to blow open the door and let him in to wreak his vengeance.

  A roar came from above as a massive black shape hurtled off the roof. Patrick spun out of the way too fast for a human, but his silent shot went wide. The panther landed gracefully, using the momentum from his leap to charge straight at Andrew.

  Anna cut him off. She was smaller than the cat, but she caught him broadside with a running leap, and they both went tumbling down, spitting and snarling, in a flurry of claws and teeth.

  More shouts from inside, voices raised in warning and fear. Andrew hit the door with his shoulder and it yielded, shattering under the force of his advance.

  Inside was chaos. Men and women scrambled for weapons in front of a door that shuddered as Julio screamed his rage. An older man sat in the corner, both hands pressed to his temples and his face screwed up in an expression of agony. Next to him, a woman clutched at his shoulder, screaming something that cut off abruptly as she stared at the door.

  At Andrew.

  Before he could move, she threw up her hand. Fire shot up in a semicircle that cut her and the man off from the rest of the room, and a second woman spun and leveled her gun at Andrew, her finger trembling on the trigger. “You self-protecting bitch, why don’t you set the fucking wolf on fire?”

  She fired a split second before Andrew moved, and pain ignited in his shoulder. It didn’t stop him from lunging. She screamed and squeezed off one more wild shot, and he snapped his jaws shut on her forearm.

  Julio’s enraged roar drowned out her pained shriek. The inner door trembled under the force of another strike, and the man standing before it lifted both hands as if warding off an invisible force. “Kill him, Saunders. I can barely hold the door.”

  The remaining figure—a hulking man who smelled of wolf—swung a meaty fist at Andrew. The blow connected, driving Andrew to the floor, and the woman screamed as his teeth tore through her flesh.

  He released her and rolled away to his feet, dancing clear of the next punch. His shoulder burned, but he could stand on his leg. Just a graze, maybe, and no real damage.

  Zola’s voice echoed in his head, warning him not to let his anger guide him. Rushing in blindly was a recipe for disaster, so he braced himself and growled, baring his teeth and lifting his tail. A show of dominance. A warning.

  For one second, one telling, fatal second, his attacker hesitated.

  That’s right, you son of a bitch. Andrew let his growl melt into a menacing snarl as he surged forward. The man was strong, maybe strong enough to hurt him if he really got a good grip, so he’d have to drag him down. Instinct drove him just as much as anger, and he sank his teeth deep into the man’s thigh.

  The wolf hit the floor, but he didn’t go down easy. A steel-toed work boot slammed into Andrew’s back leg, and Saunders snatched at the scruff of Andrew’s neck and yanked out a fist full of fur.

  Inconsequential, really, that pain. For all he knew, this was the man who’d grabbed Kat off the street, covered her mouth to quell her screams and dragged her off to her fate.

  No more anger. Even his rage was transformed, more animal than human, and he wrenched his head back without opening his jaws. Blood gushed as muscle and skin ripped under the force of his bite.

  Saunders screamed—just once, short and agonized, and rolled away awkwardly, the desperate retreat of an animal who knew he was already dead but couldn’t quash the urge to flee.

  The man by the door threw out his hands, and an invisible wave tossed Andrew into the air and against the wall. He barely managed to stagger to his feet as the remaining door smashed open, knocking the telekinetic aside. The man stumbled over one of his fallen comrades and tripped into the fire that blazed in the corner.

  He flailed, screaming as the flames licked at his clothes and hair, but his suffering lasted only moments. Julio gripped the man’s head between both hands, twisted hard enough to crack his neck and dropped him into the blaze.

  Julio looked like hell, but he was alive. His shirt hung in sliced tatters over scabbed, bleeding flesh, and broken chains dangled from his wrists. Another inhuman noise escaped him, a match to the feral light in his eyes, and he dropped to the floor behind Saunders. One quick, vicious movement wrapped one of the chains around the man’s neck, and Julio drew it tight with a sharp snap.

  Nothing stood between Andrew and the door, and he rushed through it. The first thing that hit him was the scent of blood, of death, and he stumbled blindly.

  “Andrew?” Kat’s voice, hoarse and cracking.

  Kat. Andrew shook as he tried desperately to reach for that spark of humanity inside him, to regain his human form and tell her everything would be all right. But the stink of death remained, and he realized with growing horror that it was Ben in the chair beside Kat, unmoving and—

  He dragged his attention away, focused every bit of his attention on the curve of Kat’s cheek. She needed him to help her now, and it was the only thing that allowed him to shift.

  He struggled through the change and half-crawled to her chair. “I’m here.”

  Blood and bits of Ben had dried on her face and neck, cut through with furrows that showed the path of her tears. There was something off in her gaze, not quite shock, or even fear, but a detachment that was almost numb.

  It seemed to take forever for her to focus on him. When she did, her gaze fixed on his shoulder. Black swallowed her eyes, until her iris was nothing but a tiny blue ring around endless pupils.

  In the other room, a man shrieked in agonized terror.

  He’d forgotten all about the bullet wound, and he lifted her face with his hands, tearing her gaze from it now. “Stop, Kat. You have to come back now.”

  “They killed Ben.” She leaned forward, twisted, and metal clanged against metal. “Get me out of these handcuffs. Let me fight.”

  Struggling against the cuffs had cut
into her wrists already. Andrew snapped the chain and lifted her from the chair. “I’m getting you out of here.”

  “No!” She twisted in his arms like a wild creature. “I’m not running. Put me down and help me fight, Andrew. I need to fight. I need—” A hitched breath. “So much pain. They tortured Julio, and it’s in me now.”

  No time to argue. He pressed his lips to her temple, clutched her tighter and ran for the door.

  Just outside, the flames had grown higher. The pyrokinetic could still lower the flames and come after them, and Andrew trembled, torn between his need to get Kat someplace safe and his knowledge that everyone involved here had to die or she’d never be safe.

  Before he could make a decision, a spot of magic flared on the wall, a flash followed by a bullet that shouldn’t have passed cleanly through the side of the garage. One of Patrick’s weapons, and as it found its mark, the woman cowering on the other side of the flames crumpled to the floor.

  The ring of fire on the concrete floor subsided, but the flames had already climbed the wall. When they reached the rafters, they began to spread quickly.

  Too quickly.

  Patrick lunged through the door, a sleek rifle in his hands. “Where’s Ben? We need to get back to the cars. The fight’s converged there.”

  Shit. “He’s…” Andrew couldn’t say it, couldn’t, not like this.

  “Patrick.” Kat’s voice broke on his name, and that must have been enough. Without a word, Patrick circled around them and disappeared into the back room.

  Kat shuddered, pain spilling over her features. “I can stand. You need to get him.”

  Anna came in, barefoot and still tugging her shirt into place. “Everyone outside is down. Jackson says—” She froze, her gaze on the open doorway into the back room. She crossed to it, heedless of the fire overhead and its mounting intensity.

  Andrew took Kat outside and set her down, but he stayed by her side. “Anna will get Patrick out of there. I’m not leaving you.”

  She tried to step away, but her knees buckled, and she ended up clutching at his shoulders. “I’ll be fine when my feet wake up. Just go.”

  “I can’t.”

  She actually snarled, but her eyes held pain and fear, not rage. “Why not?”

  “You’re all that matters.” He smoothed his hands over her cheeks and tried to make her understand. “I’ll save every damn person in the world if I can, Kat, but if I ever have to choose between them and you… It’s not even a choice. It’ll always be you.”

  And there it was. The answer to the question she hadn’t dared to ask all those endless days ago. The reason he’d learned first aid and weapons and fighting. Everything. Andrew didn’t want to be a hero.

  He wanted to be her hero.

  Her body trembled. Tears filled her eyes, but she blinked them away, and when she met his gaze this time, clear blue stared up at him. “Do I get to save you sometime?”

  “Every day. More than once, if you want.”

  “Oh, good.” She shivered again, and her eyes fluttered shut. “When Patrick and Anna get out, you have to get me to Julio. I have to try to undo what I did before it hurts him.”

  “It’s okay.” Andrew pulled her closer, tucked her face against his neck. “Everything’s going to be okay.”

  “I killed the man who was shielding me,” she whispered. “I blew his mind to pieces, and then I went back and crushed the pieces into dust. And I don’t feel bad. Not at all.”

  “Because they did this,” he whispered. “No choice, remember?”

  Kat nodded. “Do you think—”

  She stiffened as Patrick’s voice rose in a single incoherent roar of grief and anger, audible over the crackle of the fire. A moment later he screamed again, this time in pain.

  Kat’s fingernails pierced Andrew’s skin. “We have to do something.”

  The others had already come running, but by the time they reached the garage, Anna had made it to the door. She dragged Patrick bodily behind her, nearly lifting him off his feet even though he was easily twice her size. “One of the rafters went,” she ground out.

  A wide strip of the shirt covering his upper back had been burned away, revealing red, blistered skin beneath. “We need to get him to the clinic,” Andrew told her.

  “And you,” Jackson cut in. “There’s a hole in your shoulder.”

  Andrew had forgotten again. “I can barely feel it.” Then again, that might not be a good thing. “We can handle arrangements for—for all this on the way.”

  Arrangements. A nice, bland way of talking about covering their tracks, but reality was reality, and sometimes it was necessary. They could never walk away from a fight clean and free, with no worry about exposure or what came next.

  Kat’s hand slid into his, and he closed his fingers around hers. “Let’s go.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  It took Sera, Mackenzie and half a bar of soap to get Kat clean.

  She ended up in the shower at the clinic, stripped to her bra and panties as the two women helped her scrub dried blood from her skin. Jackson had sprung the locks on the handcuffs before they made it back to New Orleans, but the damage was already done.

  Kat winced her way through a haphazard bandaging before Sera dragged her under the spray. Then she stretched her aching hands out in front of her and watched through a dream as the pinkish water circled the drain until it finally ran clear.

  Sera braided her damp hair while Mackenzie found her a pair of scrubs to wear. By the time she had her wrists clean and redressed, Andrew appeared, his own bandage just peeking out of the neckline of his T-shirt.

  He took her hand and lifted it, studying her wrist. “Okay?”

  “I’ll be fine.” Everything felt distant—surreal—except for the brush of his fingers. Shivering, she leaned into him. “I think I have a new understanding of pain now.”

  “Julio’s going to be fine,” he whispered. “Most of the wounds are already healing.”

  The wounds were the least of it, and they both knew it. Julio’s berserk frenzy had exhausted his body, but it had taken Sera’s touch to lead him back to sanity. The magic of a true submissive shapeshifter, the power to balance rage with gentle acceptance. Sera might be trapped into obedience, but the true dominants—the good ones—were just as bound by their need to protect her.

  Not so different from the balance between herself and Andrew, Kat supposed, though so much cleaner. She and Andrew would always be tangled up in an edge of danger and the knowledge that they could hurt each other. It had taken her this long to realize it didn’t matter. They were creatures of instinct, both of them, and their first impulse would be to keep each other safe.

  Turning her head, Kat pressed a soft kiss over his heart. “What about Patrick?”

  Andrew hesitated. “The burns on his back are probably going to scar. Right now, understandably, he’s more upset about Ben. Anna took him to the apartment over Mahalia’s to get him set up there.”

  Sera had been the one to break the news about Lia, conveyed in a soft whisper as she worked bloody snarls out of Kat’s hair. Maybe it was a blessing, that Ben had never found out. That he’d died so fast, so suddenly, and with no idea that the woman he loved was already gone.

  Andrew stroked the tears from her cheeks. “The cleaner settled everything. He managed to stop the fire too, so Patrick can bury Ben after the ME releases him.”

  “Okay.” The numbness was fracturing. No, melting—like ice around her heart laid bare to the sun. Andrew’s warmth surrounded her, and the lingering echoes of pain drifted up. She’d made it her own, and she’d used it, and now she had to let it go, let tears wash away everything but the knowledge that she’d never have to cry alone again.

  He rocked her and murmured gently as she cried, soft assurances that no matter what happened, horrifying and joyous and everything in between, he would be there. Holding her.

  It was enough. Not a cure, not even more than the start of one, but it was co
mfort enough as she sobbed through the pain, through Julio’s pain, the agony he’d borne that had gone beyond the flesh. He hadn’t cried, not really, so she cried for both of them, until her head ached and she felt empty and hollow.

  Swallowing hurt, but she managed, then rested her cheek against his chest. “I get it now. The instincts. Being alpha. It’s not just because you love me, is it?”

  “No,” he whispered. “That’s not all of it. I love you, and that’s the only reason I can rein it in sometimes. Because I know the crazy alpha shit makes you miserable.”

  It would always be his challenge. Hers would be to love him enough to forgive him when the instincts spilled over. “I don’t know what hurt Julio more. Being tortured, or knowing they were using him to hurt me and not being able to stop it.”

  “That.” He seemed certain. “Being helpless to stop someone else’s pain.”

  He’d been helpless to stop hers for too long. All of them had been, and maybe that was the real truth behind Alec’s anger, the truth even Anna hadn’t picked at. He’d watched Kat cry, and it would have been so much easier if he could have dragged Andrew to her by the scruff of the neck and forced them to make up. But Andrew had been a danger to her, so Alec couldn’t stop her pain.

  She didn’t have to be in pain anymore. So she let it go and struggled for a smile. “Thank you for coming to get me. I mean, we were in the middle of rescuing ourselves, but I’m just as glad I didn’t have to wrestle with Julio after I gave him the empathic version of a shot of adrenaline.”

  He didn’t laugh. “Of course I came for you. Don’t ever think I won’t. Ever.”

  “I didn’t,” she promised, lifting a hand to his face. He looked grave, as exhausted as she felt. “I’ll always protect you. You’ll always protect me. That’s how it works.”

  “That’s how it works,” he echoed hoarsely, his eyes intense. “Kat, I’m sorry. About everything.”

  “Shh.” She smoothed her thumb over his lower lip. “I don’t hate you anymore. Not even a little.”

  “Even if you should? For Ben, if nothing else?”