“You’re one to talk,” Kain retorted.
Cynthia cut in before anyone could continue. “That’s enough.” She sat and indicated for Kain to do the same. “Do we know why we’re all here?”
Zach leaned one arm on the table. “We’re here because we’re all sick and tired of taking the human’s shit and living like savages in these fucking sewers.”
“Language,” Sasha drawled and gestured to the children who stood chuckling behind their hands.
“He said a bad word,” Lewis called.
“Do you really think we should talk about this in front of the children?” Sasha asked Cynthia.
“I don’t see why not. They have as much right to be here as anyone. They’re victims of this war. They’re all humans from the surface and Geralt’s victims, stolen from their families to be experimented on by him to see if the Were legacy could continue. Why should they not listen and be a part of this meeting?”
“Hold on,” Jimmy said in disbelief. “You’re telling me that Geralt experimented on children? I thought these were baby Weres and we simply never saw them until they were grown?”
“The audacity,” a Were with bright fiery hair cried out.
“Disgusting,” another said and put a hand to her mouth.
Kain nodded in agreement. He had almost forgotten that many of the Weres would have been completely ignorant of the extent of Geralt’s madness. They would have lived in their own bubbles in the sewers for the best part of several decades. Kain wondered what Cynthia had said to get them there.
“That’s right. The casualties extend to more than only Weres. There are kids at stake here. These children want nothing more than to see their families again. Even those who have been injected with the Were blood want to unite and live with the humans. Shouldn’t we, after however many years of fighting, find the courage and strength to return them? To find a way to live on the surface world and end this war?”
“Abso-fucking-lutely,” Zach growled.
“Then here is the man with the plan,” Cynthia said and handed over to Kain with a simple gesture.
He froze again as all eyes turned to him. Sure, he had wanted to plan a truce and find a way to make this all work out, but as much as he had dreamed of the moment of triumph, he had hardly thought of the words to say or the right things to do to persuade the Weres to follow. In all honesty, he had half-expected Cynthia to push the agenda forward and drag him across the finish line.
“Er…yeah. So…”
“I’ve never seen Kain struggle with his words so much,” the redhead whispered behind her hand.
Kain took a deep breath and thought of Caitlin and her strength and how she used it to convince the towns and villages to follow her. He recalled the passion behind her words and the truth in her eyes. Her strength came from nothing more than a pure will and desire to do good in the world.
Perhaps that’s all that it takes, Sudeikis. Maybe that’s all there is to it. You want to make the world a better place, don’t you? You want to unite the two halves and make a whole? Then here’s your fucking chance. Speak from the heart and see what happens.
He closed his eyes and exhaled slowly.
And, if it all goes tits-up, you can grab that bottle of malt you saw in Bryce’s chambers, flee into the forests again, and find another group of friends willing to protect you, watch your back, and make a real impact on the world.
Kain opened his eyes. “It’s no longer about them and us. I’ve been up there on the surface. I have friends up there now, fighting in our corner and working to bring the humans closer to a truce. Those humans up there are not all bad. Like us, they want to find a way to live in peace.”
Zach scoffed. “Make peace with the humans? How do we know that that’s what they’re after?”
“Do you really think they want to fight for the rest of their lives? Risk casualties and cause more damage than has already been done?”
Kain had their attention now. All eyes were fixed on him.
“The time has come,” he continued and rose to stroll around the room. “The time has come to put an end to the suffering—for both sides. We’ve lived in this bubble of hate for far too long, and all it has brought us is misery, suffering, and ironically, madness. Even the great Geralt fell off his rocker when he started to steal these children.”
Kain cleared his throat.
“What we need is for everyone in this room to unite. To stick together and act as the go-between between the humans and our own. We need to show the other side that we’re not all bad and that we can live in harmony. That a seed of hope can grow into a blossoming tree.”
“A blossoming tree?” Cynthia mocked. “Where did that come from?”
“I have no idea,” Kain said and looked aghast at his hands. “I think I’ll be sick.”
“So how do we make an impact?” Sasha asked. She reclined in her chair and laced her arms behind her head. “What good is a handful of Weres and a handful of children against the rest of the pack? Do you think they won’t mark us as traitors and hunt us down?”
Kain grinned. “Come on. If I can get back in, anyone can. Now, who’s with me?”
In a heartbeat, the kids had their hands in the air. Each child stood on tiptoes and strained to be seen. Serena was the only one who looked uncertain, but her hand finally joined those of the others.
The Weres were more reluctant. At first only Sasha and Jimmy raised theirs, and after a long silence, Zach and the others finally agreed.
“Great,” Kain said. “That went better than I hoped.”
“So what’s the plan, oh mighty leader? Infiltrate the town and gain the favor of the humans?” Zach said.
“Not quite,” he replied. “We don’t have a great deal of time to play with. If Frank has his way, the humans will be flushed out by fire this evening. That gives us less than a day to try to convince as many Weres as we can to join us before the whole thing goes bang and we’re caught in the middle of a bloodbath.”
“Jesus. You don’t fool around, do you, Sudeikis?” Sasha said and showed the first hint of real concern since she had arrived in the room.
“Nope. I never do,” he replied and winked at Cynthia.
Chapter Sixteen
Silver Creek Forest, Old Ontario
If it hadn’t been for her vampire eyesight, Mary-Anne wasn’t sure how she would have navigated the forest.
Brave fuckers to go out traveling in this darkness, she mused and focused to try to catch the scent of the Silver Creek-ians.
Creekers, she reminded herself with a grin.
The scent was almost nonexistent. When she had set out from Silver Creek, she had seen the tracks on the ground leading away from the town. Heavy boot prints in the loamy soil—dozens of them—had all headed into the woods. But the underbrush was thick and tangled, and it was down to her other senses to enable her to track.
This would be a fine time to travel with a wolf companion.
Damn. She never thought she’d say that.
The forest noises were plentiful. Wind swept through the leafy canopy and insects cricked and buzzed. Here and there, the shuffling sounds of the feet of larger mammals and reptiles joined with the sound of wings as birds took flight or hopped to other branches for a closer look at the stranger in their midst.
Once or twice, Mary-Anne heard the screeches of the Mad, sometimes far off and sometimes, too close for comfort.
As the night wore on and the scent grew stronger, the vampire felt a sense of familiarity as if she had been there before. It was almost impossible to tell given that most of the forest looked the same, but something in her gut told her it was so.
Cautiously, she stepped over a fallen log and cut her way through a tangle of vines. She immediately paused and smiled. A large clearing opened before her, and the skeletal shape of an old wooden airship jutted from the ground.
“Well, if there’s any place to rest up, it might as well be here.”
The vampire hes
itated at the edge of the clearing at the sound of a large snap. She looked down and realized her leg was caught in something thick and wiry.
“Ah, shit,” she said, and her stomach dropped as she was suddenly hauled into the air. Her head whacked against the bough of a tree as the trap swung her higher.
She hung there for a moment, moaned, and rubbed the bump on her forehead. The blood rushed to her head and she fought a surge of nausea as she spun lazily in the air to view the airship and the trees from upside-down.
A moment later, excited voices heralded a rush of silhouettes that spilled from the airship.
“We’ve got one!” a voice cried and an arrow whistled toward her.
Mary-Anne’s eyes grew wide in alarm as the missile found its mark in the bough of the tree.
“Hold your fire!” Dylan’s unmistakable voice cried. “Wait until we see what we have.”
The people moved closer. She could see them squinting at her shape in the darkness and cupped her hands to her mouth. “I swear by the Queen Bitch, if someone shoots another arrow in my direction, I’ll force them to sit directly on its tip for the rest of their lives.”
“Ma?” Dylan said with a small laugh of surprise. “Is that you?”
“In the flesh. Now get me down, please. I can taste blood in my mouth, and mine doesn’t taste as good as humans’.”
He and a few others sprinted toward her and worked on the rope, while several of the townsfolk stood and aimed bows and arrows into the forest.
“I see you’ve got the whole pack working for you now.”
Dylan nodded. “The Revolutionaries have trained them in the use of weapons like the tales of you and Caitlin back before the governor vanished. I feel like we’re recreating bits of history here.”
He untied the last knot and lowered Mary-Anne gently to the ground. She stood smoothly, brushed herself off, and hugged him. He beamed at her, and she realized then that she had never seen a proper smile from him. She’d somehow thought that he might be incapable, but he almost glowed with pleasure. It seemed that taking action and leading his people through the forest had brought out another side of the Harrison brother.
Mary-Anne leaned forward conspiratorially. “You realize some of your archers are shaking?”
Dylan grinned. “They’re getting used to weaponry. Some of them have never had to do any real strength training, and it’s surprising how hard it can be to hold an arrow ready for such a long time. I’ll be honest…” He cupped a hand to the side of his mouth. “I have doubts that some of them will be any good at all—”
A thwomp was rapidly followed by a gasp and cry of surprise as one of the archers lost their grip and fired an arrow into the brush. A second later, another slipped and an arrow streaked toward Mary-Anne. It thwacked into her thigh.
“Argh! You goddam sonofa—”
“I’m sorry! I’m so sorry!”
“Sorry doesn’t remove the arrow now poking out my leg, does it?” the vampire yelled. Her eyes glowed red as she gripped it with one hand and yanked it out.
Blood poured down her leg. The archer shook and looked at everyone else, unsure of what to do. Dylan moved beside her and pulled her arm over his shoulder.
“Here, let’s get you inside and out of the way.”
“I want her head on a spike!” Mary-Anne said and stared at the archer. Though she was only joking and would never actually consider the possibility of tearing her head off, the woman’s knees knocked together.
“Don’t you think she’s already scared enough, having just shot a vampire?” he whispered.
“The bitches need to learn,” she groaned, pulled Dylan to a stop, and sniffed the air and sighed.
“What is it?”
“My shouting might have attracted some friends to join us.”
“I assume you don’t mean friendly vampire friends who will protect us from the horrors of the forest.”
Mary-Anne shook her head. “Unfortunately not.”
They turned to the trees and looked past the nervous archers toward the possible source of the screeches that rang clear in the night. A moment later, several pairs of red eyes appeared as if floating in the darkness.
The Broken City, Old Ontario
“How is this even possible?”
Caitlin and the Weres sat in a circle. Sheets and material had been draped over the gaps in the paint on the glass windows to block out the world and a small fire crackled in the center of the room.
“It’s simple, really,” the woman Caitlin had come to know as Nell said. “We were all Weres of the sewers once. Many months ago, now. Each of us was stuck in the mindset that we’d never be free, that humans were the worst breed of creature in the world and one day, we would rise up and take over the city. We lived in shit conditions, treated like nothing more than dogsbodies for Geralt’s regime, until one day, we found ourselves the last ones left in the mess hall.”
“We hardly had to say a word to know what each other was thinking,” Brett, a Were with hardly any body fat and a stringy beard, said. “We looked at each other and agreed. We moved closer to one another, put our heads together, picked a night, and fled.”
“Just like that?” Caitlin asked.
“Just like that,” Nell added and inspected the rat now crisping on the end of her skewer. “It’s obvious Geralt never gave a shit about us because no one gave chase. He was so trapped in his own lunacy and limited vision that he didn’t even notice us little people disappear from his hive.”
A Were sat across from Caitlin and chuckled darkly. He had been introduced as Drake, but she was sure that couldn’t be his real name. “I wonder what it’s like down there now. I bet Geralt’s so far down the rabbit hole that they all wish they could leave. Did you know that I saw him in the tunnels with children? He took them to some locked room I’d never noticed before. That can hardly bode well for a happy ending, can it?”
Nell rolled her eyes. “All you care about is happy endings.”
“You know it.” Drake winked.
Caitlin looked at them in bewilderment. “You mean, you don’t actually know?”
“Know what?” the man asked and his smile faded.
“Geralt is dead.”
A moment of silence swept the Weres. They looked at each other, unsure what to say. A moment later, they were on the feet.
They punched the air, they whooped, they hollered, and they hugged and clapped until Nell had the sense to call them back to order. She hushed them with a finger on her lips as she pointed to the windows.
With smiles glued to their faces, they returned to their seats, and some now sat with arms around one another’s shoulders.
“Now, finally, that is some good news,” Brett said. “How did he die?”
Caitlin looked coyly at the floor and raised her hand. “I killed him.”
They stared in shocked disbelief before Drake punched the air again and was immediately hushed. In seconds, they had gathered around Caitlin to hug, squeeze, shake her hand, and tousle her hair until she felt suffocated. Despite this, her smile was wider than it had been in weeks.
“You absolute beauty,” one Were said and kissed her head.
“You’ve done the city a favor, kid,” another said, his voice emotional.
“Okay, enough, enough.” Caitlin laughed, waved their affections away, and straightened.
“Tell us everything. Tell us how it happened.”
As quickly as she could, she related the story from her arrival at the city to her encounter with the two bears, the wolves, and panther. She included her meeting with Cynthia and the disagreement with Triston. The Weres were a great audience and listened in complete awe. They gasped at the right moments and clapped gently at others.
“I cannot believe Kain has returned,” Nell said. “After the shit he pulled on Geralt, to have the audacity to return—”
“I couldn’t do it,” Drake said.
“Me neither.”
“Nor me.”
“And now you’re bargaining over the city’s security? Over its future? With Triston’s own mother?”
“You know Triston?” Caitlin asked.
“In a manner of speaking,” Brett said. “We might be tunnelheads, but we still try to keep abreast of city politics. Why do you think we stay here and watch the humans in the library? It’s surprising the gossip you can pick up as they pass the building.” He tapped his ears. “Super Were hearing and all that.”
“I wanted to ask about that. Why are you hiding here in plain view of where everyone lives? Aren’t you afraid people will catch you?”
“It’s easy, really,” Nell said. “It’s logic taken from a book I once read that seemed to make so little sense that it made sense—the closer we are to danger, the farther we are from harm.”
“And we’re not afraid of the humans, to be honest. What’s the worst they can do? We survived Geralt for years, so a few humans won’t do much more harm, will they?”
“And now Geralt is dead,” Drake said. His face suddenly creased as a thought struck him. “Wait a minute. Who have they made Alpha?”
“I bet it’s Bryce.”
“Oh, of course, it’ll be Bryce.”
“I don’t know,” Drake said. “If Caitlin, here, was tough enough to take down Geralt, who’s to say that the big old bear wasn’t weakened from their fight and some Were with a lot to prove and everything to gain took advantage of the situation.”
“It is Bryce. Though he’s not exactly happy with me, given that he watched me cut down his Alpha.”
The Weres nodded solemnly.
“Oh, I bet they’re all going crazy down there,” Nell said, and sudden sadness washed over her.
“Are you okay?” Caitlin asked.
“Sure. It’s just…if there’s ever one time where it’s amazing to be a Were, it’s after the pack chooses a new Alpha. All the good liquor comes out—you know, the stuff people have spent years denying that they have—and the whole system turns into one big party.”
The Caitlin Chronicles Boxed Set Page 82