by D. N. Hoxa
“No, no, let him. Just don’t expect me to not return the favor.”
“You are both right,” Mathias said, shutting us both up. “You need the help, but you also can’t be sure about Oscar’s motives.”
“His motives don’t concern me,” Luca said. “His daughter was taken. That’s more than enough reason for him to want to do something for which his Alpha will no doubt kick him out, if he doesn’t kill him first.”
“He needs us as much as we need him. His people will be with us. Don’t you think he knows that whatever happens to us, happens to them?” Ax asked, still looking at me, like we were the only ones having that conversation.
Exhausted, I turned my head the other way. I was trying my hardest, but dammit, I wasn’t used to having to talk to someone about making a decision. I usually fought myself over pros and cons, not other people. And I found I didn’t have the nerves for it—at least, not now.
“We don’t have to decide today,” Fallon said. “Let’s sleep on it first.”
“Nothing’s going to be different tomorrow, Fall,” Ax said. “We’ll still need the help.”
“And we’ll still have the time,” she said, and holding Sienna by the arm, she stood up and made for the stairs.
“Can I talk to you for a second? Outside?” Ax said, nodding at the backdoor.
“Me?” Couldn’t he see that I was about to follow the girls to the room?
He did, in fact, but he didn’t care. And he didn’t wait for a reply, either. He just walked outside and waited. Saying I didn’t need this would be an understatement, but nobody was going to save me, so I dragged my feet as slowly as I could, until I was standing in front of him.
“You’ve been fighting on your own for a long time,” Ax said, looking up at the sky, at the moon burning blue among the stars. “When I say we need their help, I say it for the demons, too. Or whatever they are. If they catch up with us while we’re there, they’ll help us.”
“I thought about it, too, but we’re in Pennsylvania, and as far as we can tell, they don’t leave Manhattan.” Or else the others would have been attacked just as many times as I had.
“As far as we can tell,” Ax repeated, and I flinched. “We’re going to Inwood, which is in Manhattan. We’re going to try and learn how to block our magic like you do, but there’s no guarantee.”
He was right. It took me a long time to learn how to do that. Even so, at the sight of those demons, I and everybody else in the group fell unconscious, and having werewolves with us could definitely come in handy…
“It’s too risky, Ax. Trusting a stranger just because you can’t trust someone familiar isn’t smart.” But it wasn’t smart to base decisions like this on fear, either. “I’ll think about it. We all should.” The night was long. Hopefully, I’d come up with more questions to ask by morning.
“You look good in my shirt,” Ax said, catching me completely off guard. I turned to look at him, hoping he wouldn’t see the blush spreading on my cheeks. Weren’t we just talking about werewolves and demons and stuff? “You should keep it.” He was smiling brightly, his teeth shining under the moonlight in a weird but cute way. Just like that, I imagined him naked, with nothing but the towel around his hips.
“Maybe I should,” I whispered, and lowering my head, I walked back inside the house. I’d liked guys before, plenty of them, but Ax was something different. He was someone I wanted to both kick in the teeth and kiss within the same minute, and that scared the shit out of me. Going from calling him a pussy to wanting to touch him so fast made me dizzy, so I ran away. It was better that way. Less complicated.
But when I went back to the room and laid down in my bed, I couldn’t shake the image of him from my mind, even while I thought of werewolves and demons, and got annoyed by Fallon’s snoring.
Twelve
I woke up before six in the morning. By seven, my stomach was growling like mad, demanding to be fed. By eight, I gave up on waiting for the girls to wake up and got out of the bed. Hoping to find my clothes washed and dried in the bathroom didn’t make them magically appear there, but I did check. And when I went downstairs, I was surprised to see that Luca was already up. I hadn’t heard anyone, or I’d have left that room long ago.
“Good morning,” said Luca, and Mathias, who was resting against the counter, reading a newspaper, mumbled something similar.
“Morning. Slept well?” I asked, and eyed the black coffee in front of Luca. Where could I get some of that?
“Decent,” Luca said and stood up. “Sit. I’ll get you one.”
Who knew he was such a gentleman? It’d been a while since somebody had brought me coffee—my last boyfriend of all of three weeks—and I couldn’t say it wasn’t nice. Mathias didn’t move at all as Luca walked around him to get the mug and the coffee from the machine on the counter. He seemed to be completely enthralled in whatever article he was reading.
“Have you thought about it?” Luca said when he brought me a yellow mug full of fresh coffee. My mouth watered.
“Thanks,” I said, and raised the mug to him before taking a sip. Heavenly. “I have. You?” I’d thought about it since I woke up. About the werewolves and about the ECU. About the demons.
“I still think we should do it,” Luca said. This morning, he sounded much more determined, or maybe it was just because he’d rested.
“I still think we shouldn’t.” Raining on their parade wasn’t my intention, but the feeling hadn’t gone away, and the whole thing stank of mystery. Where I came from, keeping secrets never meant anything good, and that werewolf Oscar had refused to tell us how he knew what we were, and how he found us. It was too risky. We were being hunted by the ECU and by the demons. Now was not the time to be reckless.
“Look, you’re the only one here who knows what you’re doing in a fight,” said Luca, shaking his head. “I do trust your judgment, and believe me, I would have liked nothing more than to do this ourselves, but we can’t. We need help. We need information…we don’t even know how many others like us are in there.”
“Which is what bothers me. They claim to know everything, but they’re counting on us to decide to break in?” I took another sip of the coffee. “He’s a fighter, Luca. He’s a werewolf. His nose alone would have told him that we’re in no condition to help, not against the ECU. In fact, with people like him, we’d only drag them down—not to be offensive or anything. We’re nowhere near stronger than werewolves.” It was the ugly truth, one we needed to accept before anything else. The demons rendered us unconscious almost on sight. The ECU had beat us bloody and if it wasn’t for the demons, they’d have had us, too. And the assassins that had taken Elisa had had no trouble handing us our asses in mere minutes. There’d been three of us, and two of them, not counting the werewolf Elisa fought against. I was just being a realist, and the nature of a werewolf would have been able to smell this from a mile away, especially one as well connected as this Oscar guy seems to be.
“The girl is right,” Mathias said. I jumped and almost spilled my coffee. Shit, I’d forgotten he was even there.
“The name is Scarlet.” Pretty sure he’d heard the others call me by my name the night before.
“If you’re going to give me a name, don’t give me half of it,” Mathias said, rather angrily, and folded his newspaper.
“Jones,” I said, amused by the way he watched me, like an annoyed parent. “Scarlet Jones.”
He didn’t expect a reply, so the surprise that registered in his eyes was clearly visible. Then, he turned to Luca. “Scarlet is right. I’ve known Oscar for more than ten years, and I can assure you that he is no fool.” Now, it was my turn to be surprised.
“Which puts the real reason of why he wants us to help him in the darkness.” When things didn’t add up, it was a sign from the universe to take a step back, in my opinion.
“His daughter has been taken.” The voice came from the stairs to our right, and it made me almost spill my coffee all over again. Man
, I was really jumpy that morning. I wondered why…
Ax’s eyes were swollen, imprints of sheets tattooed on his left cheek. He looked angrier like that, and bigger somehow. Not to say the look didn’t suit him, because it did, and it made my stomach growl again, only this time, it wasn’t demanding to be fed.
“You seem to forget that detail,” he said, getting rid of some stupid thoughts in my head effectively with that deep, hoarse voice of his. “His daughter was taken, and as a father, he’s ready to do anything to get her back.”
“To me, that only makes this more suspicious,” I said, determined to stick to my guns. “He’s looking to get his daughter out, so it would be natural to assume that he’d make sure nothing at all would go wrong. Inviting strangers you’ve never met before to tag along doesn’t exactly scream safe.”
“He needs numbers,” Luca said. “Nine people aren’t going to be enough. Fifteen is better.”
“Fifteen? Come on, you’re not thinking of taking Sienna, are you? She’s still struggling to understand that we even exist. Putting that kind of pressure on her is going to break her for good.”
Flinching as if he’d just realized it, Luca nodded. “Fourteen, then. Fourteen is still better than nine.”
“Is he trustworthy, Mathias?” Ax asked as he prepared some coffee for himself.
Mathias thought about it for a while. “He is, from what I know. His family is very well known in the pack. He’s a respected man.”
“Do you think we should do it?” Ax asked next. He sure seemed to trust this guy’s opinion a lot.
“This is far more complicated than just one thought,” Mathias said. “I think Scarlet is right. And I think you two are right as well. Ultimately, your decision will depend on how much you want to save the other witches.” Turning his back to us, he cleared his throat. “And please remember what you stand to lose.”
“Our lives,” Luca whispered.
“Or, your freedom,” Mathias said, which, to me, was much more important. It was never even a question. I’d rather die than be taken and locked in a cage somewhere like a slave.
“I have no doubts,” Ax said. “I’m not going to comment about where Oscar is coming from, but I agree with everything he said. Alone, we’re weak. Easy to kill. Together, we stand a chance. Saving others like us should be our purpose, and if you don’t agree, put yourself in their shoes. If you were locked up, would you have wanted for us to wait until we had a better chance?”
Shoot. He got me there.
The sound of footsteps made us all look to the stairs. Grover and Fallon were coming down, fresh out of bed. Sienna was probably still sleeping. Better that way. She didn’t need to hear all of this.
“If I was locked up, and if you hadn’t gotten me out by now, I’d have killed you myself as soon as you did,” Grover said with a wide grin on his face when he saw the coffees.
Dragging her feet, Fallon lazily sat on Luca’s lap, and he kissed her forehead.
“It seems the ladies are the only ones who need convincing,” Mathias said with a sneaky smile that seemed to wake Fallon right up. She blinked her eyes fast a few times, until she was completely alert.
“Trusting strangers is a bad idea,” she said, then looked at Grover by the coffee machine. “Grover, please get me one, too.”
“But it’s a better idea than going in ourselves,” said Luca.
“Should we put it to a vote?” Grover asked.
“It’s three against two, Grover. You already know you’re going to win,” Fallon said, rolling her eyes and pushing her long dark hair behind her shoulder and right onto Luca’s face. The guy didn’t complain.
She was right, it was the girls against the guys in this, but I’d known from the second those assassins had taken Elisa that I was going in there. Maybe I was an asshole for not making others like us a priority, but so be it. Elisa was who I was after, because I believed that information was key to our survival, as well as numbers. And if the others wanted to include the werewolves, so be it. Hopefully, that would get the demons off our backs for a while.
“Let’s do it,” Fallon said, surprising us all. “I don’t care about votes, but Ax is right. Those people need us.”
“You’re not going to regret this,” Grover said and clinked his mug to hers.
They cheered next, and hi-fived each other while I smiled to myself. It was so good to see some happy faces. It felt like a long time since we’d had anything to celebrate, even if my whole heart wasn’t into it.
“Scarlet?” Ax asked, calling my eyes to his. They were no longer swollen but I couldn’t decide which was better.
“Yes, we’ll do it,” I said, feeling a bit relieved that I no longer had to think about a decision.
Ax gave me a billion dollar smile, one that breathed fire down my throat. “We’re going to kick some ECU ass.”
His positivity was contagious, even if for just a little while. “But first, I’m teaching you how to block.” The werewolves would probably help with the demons, but one could never be too sure.
“And a couple moves would be nice,” Fallon said, looking down at her mug.
“We’ll have the weapons,” said Luca, smiling brightly as if his birthday wish had just come true.
“I’m glad you’ve all come to an agreement,” Mathias said. “But I would suggest one thing.” He turned to look at me. “Keep one trick under your sleeve, and don’t tell anyone about it.”
I intended to do exactly that.
***
Oscar and his men came back at nightfall. Mathias had called him right after we’d decided to go with it, and I thought they’d be there earlier. The waiting sucked my soul, until I discovered that Mathias’s bunnies in the backyard were awake and in the mood to play with me. I spent most of the day chasing them and petting all three furiously for as long as they let me—which was about forty seconds tops. And when the others called for me to start teaching them how to block their magic, I kissed the bunnies and promised to be back.
Fallon and Luca cooked lasagne for lunch. It was delicious, and so, so strange to eat with so many other people. Back home, I’d dreaded meal times. They consisted of long minutes of silence and silverware clinking on plates, and occasionally, the sound of my father clearing his throat to get my attention when my thoughts trailed off to some faraway place, which happened more than you’d think.
But this time was different. Everybody was talking over everybody, telling stories about what they’d gone through, about how Luca had found Fallon first, then Ax, and then Grover. You could see it in all their eyes that they loved each other very much. They were friends, the four of them. True friends.
Fallon took lunch up to the room for Sienna, who’d decided to spend the day in bed, to think. What she’d meant was, she needed some time to process all the information that had been dumped on her lap in such a short time, not even considering the attacks from the demons, and the ECU soldiers.
Mathias was on edge the whole day, so when Oscar came, he heard the car even before it had parked in front of his house. He had four men with him this time as well, and two of them carried big black bags on their shoulders. I hadn’t noticed anything about them before, other than they were big, but now I did notice how young they were. Their muscles were huge, but did that mean they knew how to fight? Could that be the reason why Oscar wanted our help?
“Mathias,” Oscar said with a curt nod when he entered the house. All of us waited in the living room for them, and he smiled when he saw us, as if we were already friends. “I’m very happy to hear that you’ve decided to help us. My family and I are very thankful.”
“We’re helping you because we need your help in return,” Ax said. “Your daughter isn’t the only one that needs to be freed.”
“That is what I promised,” Oscar said, and without waiting for an invitation, he sat down on the couch. We’d already dragged chairs close to the furniture so we could all sit down, but when everybody did, Oscar’s werewolv
es remained on their feet, and so did I. I was more comfortable that way. “Help given for help taken.”
“You said you had a plan,” Ax said as he sat on the couch next to Mathias, who refused to say a word.
“I do,” Oscar said eagerly. His brown eyes sparkled with excitement as he took as all in, like we were fucking trophies to put on a shelf and admire. “My plan is simple: we’re going to break in when there are the least number of soldiers in the building, and we’re going to be out within fifteen minutes.”
Ax leaned back on the couch. “We’d appreciate some more details.”
“My wife’s nephew works for the ECU.” No surprise there, since probably half the werewolves did. “He has gathered vital information to this mission for us. Isabelle, along with others like yourself, are being held in a research facility in Inwood, Manhattan.” That was exactly what Elisa had said. I hoped to God she was there, too. “We’ve gotten the security schedules for seven weeks in a row, and we’ve determined that Saturdays are days with the least amount of traffic. There’s still staff, researchers and assistants, but they won’t pose a threat. Between ten pm and ten twenty-five, there are only twenty-two guards in the building until the next shift starts.”
“Are you sure about this?” Twenty-two seemed an awfully small number for the ECU. It was hard to believe that they’d leave everything in their hands.
“We have the logs,” Oscar said with a nod. “If you want to see, I can email them to you.”
“I’d like that.” Maybe I was used to doing my own research, but it wouldn’t hurt to have another set of eyes on everything they had.
“My people have studied the building many times. It’s an old structure, two stories up and four stories down. I believe Isabelle is being held on the third, because that is where at least ten guards are at all times.”
“If what you’re saying is true, that leaves twelve soldiers to fight to get into the building,” said Ax. “And you have nine men, as well as the element of surprise.” It made me feel better to know that he wasn’t going to just accept everything Oscar said blindly, because the way he sounded, this sure as hell was easy.