Sloan could feel the sting of fresh tears force themselves to the front of her eyes. She was too strong to blubber, but she couldn’t help the hot drops of salty sadness slide down her cheeks.
“There has to be a way.” Sloan looked back into the room where Edison and Kimberly stood. “Edison, do to him what you did to me. Give him some of the vampire elixir and the Phoenix Serum. We can still save him.”
Edison walked into the room, his expression already telling Sloan he didn’t have good news. “We don’t have any, and neither do we have the ingredients. Even if we did, it would take hours to create.”
“No, no there has to be a way!” Sloan grabbed Edison around the collar of his shirt so hard, the action pulled the scientist in close to her. “Find a way. We’ve lost too much already. Marcus is dead, the Ahab girls are growing up without a father, Aareth is a monster, and I’m … I don’t know what I am, but we can’t lose Oliver, too.”
Edison didn’t try to free himself from her grip. Tears also pooled in his own eyes. He shook his head.
Kimberly placed a massive grey hand on Sloan’s clutch around Edison’s collar. The gargoyle’s grasp was firm but not forceful.
“Easy. We’ve all done everything we can. Though I don’t know the human well, and neither do I necessarily like him, the one you call Edison has tried his best. All we can do now is to be with your friend while he passes to the world beyond. Let his last moments be around friends and laughter, not strife.” Kimberly released her hold on Sloan’s hands. “If not for your own sake, then do it for the one who waits on death’s door.”
A lump the size of Elwood had worked its way to Sloan’s throat. She released her shaky grip on Edison’s clothing.
“I’ve instructed my men to release the one you call Ashley and bring her here,” Kimberly said as she left the room. “This time should be among the friends he knows.”
Somewhere in the back of Sloan’s mind, she knew she should thank the gargoyle, but all she felt at that moment was a numbness that came with shock and loss.
“You never would go out with me.” The doctor coughed. “Why would you never go out with me?”
Sloan sat on the edge of the doctor’s bed. A smile, not from joy but of pure surprise, crossed her lips. She took his hand in her own.
“I thought you were shady.” Sloan wiped a tear from her cheek. “And I don’t mix business with my personal life. Not that I have much of one of those anyway.”
“Yeah, well, I guess I was kind of shady.” The doctor inhaled a short, painful breath. “I was leading a secret organization known as The Order against the queen you served.”
Sloan sensed someone behind her. She turned to see Ashley and Elwood had joined Edison in the doorway.
Ashley’s shoulder-length brown hair bobbed in the wake of her movement. No tears pushed forth from her eyes, but the deepest look of sadness Sloan had ever seen had rested on her face.
The undead woman, raised from one of the very first experiments Leah Noble had ever started, walked around the bed and sat opposite Sloan, next to the dying doctor’s side. He took her hand in his own.
“You keep on fighting for what you know is right,” the doctor said through labored breathing. “All of you fight for a world free from the rule of dictators.”
Edison picked up Elwood, and the two took a spot at the foot of the bed. Fat tears were running freely down Edison’s cheeks; Elwood was sniffling and nodding along with the doctor’s words.
“If I had known who you really were…” Sloan gently squeezed Oliver’s cold hand. “If I had known the man you were, I would have said yes.”
There were no more words from the doctor. His chest stopped moving, but a smile touched his lips as he entered the world beyond.
A howl ripped through the air, this time not one filled with fury, but with sadness.
Chapter Sixteen
Sloan
“My men are guarding the house now.” Kimberly sat in a massive chair behind an even larger desk in her office. “I’ve called all of them back. The sheriff’s office is empty now. They’re cleaning the backyard. We have to decide what we’re going to be doing now.”
“We?” Sloan caught the word the gargoyle had so discreetly inserted into her conversation. “You’re not pissed I beat the living crap out of you?”
Kimberly raised an eyebrow. She stretched with a wince as the bruises and cuts across her body reminded her of the hell she had just endured.
“A few hours in my stone form and I’ll be healed like nothing ever happened. I’m not as fortunate as you to have an instant healing factor, but I manage.” Kimberly drummed her taloned fingers on the desk in front of her. By the many marks in the wood’s surface, this was a common occurrence. “And I did say ‘we,’ any enemy of the crown is a friend of mine. By the looks of it, friends are going to be in short supply.”
“Thank you.” Sloan lowered her guard enough for her to take a seat in one of the two overstuffed chairs in the gargoyle’s office. “Before we go on to make plans, I need to know if you’ve heard of a young man. He’ll be traveling with two girls, one his own age and one a little younger. They would have reached Term around the same time you caught the others.”
“Can’t say that I have, but I can put the word out.”
“Thank you.”
“Do these lost souls mean something to you?”
“They’re friends, and like you said, friends are in short supply these days.”
“Agreed. In the meantime, I’m sure you’ll want to bury your dead. You’re welcome to use my manor until we decide what’s to be done about the next attack.”
Sloan didn’t have to ask what the gargoyle meant. She knew too well how the queen’s military operated. If there was ever a move against the crown, it was met with a swift answer. Within days there would be a much larger force sent against Term to stem the swell of insurrection. Sloan shuddered at the idea of an army of vampire soldiers descending on the town. But that was silly, wasn’t it? There would be no way the queen or her sister would be able to turn that many soldiers so quickly.
“I won’t leave you alone to fight the force that’s coming.” Sloan looked straight into the gargoyle’s grey eyes. “But neither is Term my home. If my other friends don’t show up, I’ll have to leave and search for them.”
“I understand.” Kimberly got to her feet with a wince of pain. “Term is not your responsibility, and I don’t expect any favors, but be sure a war is coming. The queen hasn’t been content to build wealth behind her walls; she wants more.”
“You won’t find any argument from me.” Sloan also rose with a similar wince. “I just can’t concentrate on a war now with the fate of my friends still in the balance.”
“You may have to.” Kimberly walked to the door. “I’m going to take a few hours to rest and heal. “I’ve already instructed my men to give you whatever you need. Mourn your loss and put your house in order. Tonight, we’ll discuss what needs to be done about the coming force from New Hope.”
Without another word, or even waiting to see what Sloan would say, Kimberly walked out of the room. She left the door open. Elwood’s sniffling could still be heard in the next room, along with Edison’s words to the small gnome.
“He was a great friend, Elwood, and we will always remember what he stood for,” Edison said, comforting his helper. “But chin up. We have work to do. He deserves a hero’s burial just as much as anyone who died in service to the crown.”
Sloan crossed a hall and walked into the room where she had first woken up from her head wound. Edison was crouched down next to Elwood, wiping away the small droplets of sadness from the gnome’s face. Sloan’s stomach twisted as she saw the red Kade around Edison’s neck where she had twisted his collar.
“Edison,” Sloan began, trying to find words that didn’t exist. There was no excuse for her treatment of the inventor. “I’m so sorry, I had no right to lay hands on you. You’re my friend and—”
“There’s no need to apologize.” Edison stood, raising his collar to hide the red Kades around his neck. “I felt like doing the same thing. If there was any way to save him, I would have.”
“I know.” Sloan licked at her dry lips. She was barely able to think, let alone plan what was supposed to happen next. “We need to bury him. Ashley—is she all right?”
“More than you know.” Edison beckoned Sloan over to a window that overlooked the rear of the property. He pointed to two figures: a woman and a wolf. Everywhere around them the yard teamed with activity as Kimberly’s men cleaned up the dead soldiers. All of them gave a wide berth to the woman and her wolf.
“I don’t know how much she’s capable of feeling since she doesn’t have a heart anymore.” Edison looked out through the glass as if he were speaking to himself. “I hope for both of their sakes there is something left in her that remembers her time with Aareth.”
Sloan held no regret in her heart for her hand in reuniting the pair. Her brief kiss with Aareth was nothing more than two lonely people looking for comfort, she knew that now.
“Let’s give them some time.” Sloan looked over to Edison. “I’ll prepare arrangements for the funeral. If you’re up to it, it would be great to get some answers as to what exactly is happening to me, and then what’s going on with Aareth.”
“Elwood and I are on the case.” Edison winked. “We’ll get to the bottom of why you’re able to stop a bullet with your skull, I promise.”
Chapter Seventeen
Aareth
Aareth sat on his rear haunches, looking at the impossible woman in front of him. Fear, wonder, apprehension, dread, and a multitude of other feelings cascaded through his soul as he watched the woman he’d spent a lifetime loving appear in front of him.
Brenda had shorter hair now, her body was toned like a warrior’s, and her eyes were a bit clouded, but there was no denying it was her. It was his Brenda. The same woman he had held in his arms when she died, the same woman he had dreamed about for what seemed every night since her death.
Brenda exited the manor, making her way toward him slowly, not like she was frightened by his appearance, but like she was trying to remember something before she arrived in front of him.
She was wearing boots with black pants and a black tank top. The tattoo on her wrist that matched the same one over Aareth’s heart showed clearly—ancient warrior helmets binding them to one another.
More than anything Aareth wanted to run to her. He wanted to hug and kiss her. It was all he could do to manage to stay put. To not run to the love of his life whom he had found and lost and found again was a torture all on its own.
“I know you.” Brenda took the last step toward Aareth, placing herself directly in front of the beast he had become. Her words were slow as if she were fighting a mental battle to pull them from her life long lost. “How do I know you?”
She looked deep into his eyes.
Something was happening to Aareth, something that would be beyond his understanding for a long time to come. The presence of the wolf inside of him, the one that was a part of him now as much as the human side of him had ever been, was receding. It was leaving now, not because it had been defeated, but because it understood it was not needed.
Brenda reached forward with the palm that was inked with the tattoo and placed a cold hand on the spot over Aareth’s heart that held his own tattoo. At once, the internal change took on a physical form. Dark fur fell away from Aareth’s skin. His muzzle receded, along with his paws and claws. Dark brown skin rippled across his naked body as he changed back into the form he had known since birth.
In the space of a few seconds, Aareth stood as a man in front of his wife, as naked as the day he was born.
Brenda slowly took back her hand, still not showing any sign of recollection, but instead the beginning of understanding.
“Brenda.” Aareth spoke the word as if learning to speak English for the first time. “Brenda, it’s me, it’s Aareth. Do you remember me?”
“My name is Ashley. Ashley Brookhaven,” Brenda said, shaking her head, trying to discern fact from fiction. “I don’t understand what’s happening to me or to you.”
For the first time, Aareth felt panic. What if she couldn’t remember him? What if whatever it was that had been done to her had completely wiped away the person she had been, along with all of their memories together?
“No.” Aareth grabbed her hands into his own. “Your name is Brenda Emerson. You’re my wife. You were—you were killed and now somehow, someone brought you back.”
“I’m sorry.” Brenda ripped her hands from Aareth’s own. “I don’t remember you.”
Grief only comparable to the sorrow he felt when Brenda had first died washed over Aareth’s naked body. What if she could never remember who she had been before?
“We’ll figure this out.” Aareth looked at the black fur piled all around him, the only physical representation that remained to prove his time as a monster had been fact and not fiction. “We’ll figure out what’s happened to you and what’s happening to me. We have time now.”
Brenda’s eyes were vacant. She nodded, but there was no real commitment in her face.
Chapter Eighteen
Jack
Jack and Abigail ran past the guards standing sentry at the back of the queen’s private garden.
“Stop! You there, halt!”
“In the name of the queen, stop!”
The shouts only made Jack and Abigail run harder into the twisting streets of New Hope.
The city of New Hope sprawled out in front of them with gigantic brick buildings and winding cobble streets. People filled the pavement, while horses and carriages lined the actual roads. The noise brought on by so many people in such a small area drowned out Jack’s own beating heart.
The two only allowed themselves a moment of respite when they were sure they had lost any sign of the soldiers chasing them.
Jack’s lungs burned. His mouth was dry, while the first trickles of sweat slipped down the back of his neck. Abigail stopped beside him, her hands on her knees, bent over. She was breathing hard.
“We have to come up with a plan to go back.” Abigail straightened, letting out a long, cleansing breath from her overexerted lungs. “We can’t leave Elizabeth in there.”
“We will.” Jack did his best to straighten his shaggy, brown hair and wipe the sweat from his face. A few New Hope citizens were already taking too much interest in the pair for Jack’s liking. “But we need a plan first. We need help. Our best chance of getting Elizabeth back isn’t going to be through brute force. Leah’s too strong.”
“Okay.” Abigail placed her hands on her hips. “Well, we have no money, no idea what happened to our friends, and no one else in the city we can turn to for help… so what do we do now?”
“They all can’t be bad, can they?” Jack shook his head, racking his brain for anyone he could think of who would be willing to help. “What about Private Pia, Sergeant Harrison, even Lieutenant Baker? Do you think they’ve all just fallen in line with the queen?”
“The queen,” Abigail repeated Jack’s words. “How could she have done this? How could we have been fooled for so long?”
“I don’t know.” Jack shaded his eyes from the morning sun. “But when I was traveling the Outland with my father, the best places to gather information were always the bars and taverns. I can’t imagine things are much different in New Hope.”
“It’s a plan.” Abigail nodded her agreement. “Not that we have money to buy anything while we’re there, and Leah will be looking for us.”
“Right.” Jack mentally kicked himself again for his lack of knowledge in the magical art when it came to anything outside of the simple fighting and hunting techniques his father had taught him. “Disguises and money first, then hopefully we can get that information we need.”
“You have no idea how to do either of those things, do you, Jack?” Abigail looked at him with a r
aised eyebrow.
“Yeah, well.” Jack cleared his throat, looking anywhere but into Abigail eyes. “I guess I’m kind of limited.”
“You’re in luck.” With a wave of her hand, Abigail motioned for Jack to follow her. She started walking down the main street again, this time intermingling with the crowd. “When my mother left us, I went through a bit of a rebellious spell in Burrow Den. I wasn’t the best daughter. I found the rush that stealing brought, and well, I became addicted.”
Jack furrowed his brow, trying to imagine the Abigail he knew stealing from the town folk in Burrow Den. The image wasn’t only comical, it was downright hilarious.
“What would you steal?” Jack laughed out loud. “Farmer Maggot’s watermelons?”
“Oh, nothing crazy.” Abigail brushed by a woman she passed on the street. Her hand moved in and out of the large pocket in the woman’s coat so quickly and smoothly, Jack wouldn’t have seen the motion unless he was looking for it. “A book here or a piece of jewelry there. It was a dark time in my life.”
“Did you just steal something from that woman?” Jack looked at Abigail’s hand that clutched a compact wallet. “I don’t know if we should be doing this, no matter how hard up for money we are.”
Abigail ignored Jack’s words. Instead, she ducked into a side street with less foot traffic. She did a double check to make sure they weren’t being followed. It didn’t seem like anyone was even looking in their direction.
“We don’t have the luxury of morals right now.” Abigail opened the small clutch. Inside was a wad of bills and a few gold coins. “She didn’t look like she was hurting for money, either.”
Jack felt an internal battle waging inside him at the moment. He understood what they were doing was very wrong, but at the same time he found himself justifying their actions.
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