by Hettie Ivers
Alex was clearly at a loss as to how to handle the situation. He’d never before had to fight his only sister—whom he was always so protective of. And he couldn’t seem to bring himself to fight back now.
Poor Remy was left to manage Alcaeus on his own, and it was almost comical seeing Remy try to employ his “touchy-feely” skills that Alcaeus had so often teased him about, in an attempt to sway Alcaeus—who had gone from mama-grizzly-bear protective mode to charging wild boar in his efforts to get to Lupe. Because although Remy had quickly resorted to physical violence against Al out of necessity in order to try and hold him back, Remy still persisted in trying to soothe him and tell him to calm his emotions.
Remy was woefully outmatched, and looked on the verge of being crushed by an increasingly aggravated Alcaeus, when Raul—a most unexpected ally—came to his aid, jumping into the fight to help hold Alcaeus back. Somehow my brother must have sensed what Alcaeus’s anger was doing to me as well.
But I wasn’t sure anymore if keeping Alcaeus physically away from Lupe wasn’t compounding the problem more so than helping—making the pull in my chest worse—as his next outburst took me to my knees in my effort to hold onto the vortex of fury trying to push its way out of me.
It was as if my weakening heart was battling the heart of the curse, and my heart felt like it was going to implode if the battle went on for much longer.
I might’ve blacked out momentarily, because I was jarred from my internal hyper-focus when a sudden gust of wind whipped through my hair and a cool hand cupped my damp cheek. As I opened my eyes, I couldn’t recall when I had closed them, and I knew that wasn’t a good sign.
Lupe was directly in my line of sight. We were both kneeling, face-to-face, her hand on my cheek. At first, I thought that maybe we’d both already died. Her hair was whipping wildly about her face. Mine was too. Because we were also inside of some kind of crazy wind tunnel.
Through the loud pounding of blood in my ears, I heard someone shouting. As I looked around, I realized that many someones were shouting. Alex, Raul, Alcaeus, Remy, and Lessa were all talking and yelling at once. And the “wind tunnel” was some kind of enchanted force field, blocking them all out.
“When I said I preferred a dramatic, telenovela-like ending”—Lupe shook her head as her wet eyes took in the screaming, fighting family of werelocks she’d come to know so well in the last fifty years who were now frantically circling, all anxiously trying to no avail to gain entrance to the strange hurricane force field encapsulating us—“I didn’t think it’d be quite like this.”
By the time her eyes drifted back to mine after pausing on Alcaeus’s face for what I suspected would be the last time, she was crying. “I didn’t know you’d suffer. I’m sorry.”
I tried to nod, to let her know it was okay. But I couldn’t. Her hand might’ve been the only thing holding my head up at this point.
“I only knew that you were going to save me, Miles. I waited all these years for this day. For you … the prophesied vessel.” Her lips trembled as she smiled. “My savior.”
I tried to shake my head as her hand drifted from my cheek to the wound over my heart where her machete was imbedded. Her other hand fell upon the weapon’s handle. She was going to pull it out of me.
I begged her with my eyes not to do it, as Alcaeus screamed and begged aloud from the other side of our cyclone cocoon for her not to do it. Because it would hurt. And he and I and everyone else in the room with any sort of IQ knew that I was far too weak and close to death to hold back the blast of blood curse revenge that would kill Lupe in retribution when she hurt me this time.
“This is what I want.” Her jade eyes were apologetic, but determined. She was not turning back. She didn’t want to. “With the witch’s help, this dark magic within you, it’s strong enough to free me—to permanently sever the bond that never should have been between me and Nahuel.”
Her beautiful, tormented eyes held hope. “She said you’d be fine afterward, that your blood curse would be fixed—that you’d be better than before for it.” She was convincing herself that it was true. We both knew it.
“It’s my only chance, Miles. I have to take it.” I felt her grip tighten on the machete’s handle as her words fell softly. “He took my parents. Took my life. I won’t give him my forever.”
I hadn’t the strength left to emote, so I closed my eyes, wordlessly letting her know it was okay. I understood. Wishing that I could somehow convey how much I loved her, and how much I would miss her. And fervently hoping beyond hope that what Maribel had promised my dear friend Lupe would prove true.
As the machete left my heart, I felt the surge of power rising up in me one last time: the reverberation of the blood curse—the dark, wrathful energy ball; the long-dormant violence overdue its day—as the deep and ancient pain that had never truly been mine sought its next host.
* * *
“Things turned a bit maudlin at the end there, don’t you think? You suppose the hurricane effect was over the top? It’s so difficult at times”—she sighed audibly—“removed as I’ve been all these years—not knowing what sorcery displays are en vogue in werelock culture nowadays.”
I was floating in darkness. Amid nothingness. I couldn’t feel my body anymore. I couldn’t see. But I could hear. Her. That bitch was talking to me. At me. Fussing over her petty concerns about how her displays of magic had come across to her former peers.
“You’ll have a decade of no light. Remember that. A decade without supernatural insight into future events,” she proceeded to lecture me as if I was her willing pupil.
As if I should be taking notes on her nonsense right now when all I could think about was what had just happened to Lupe—and worry over what might be happening at this very moment in the banquet hall to everyone else I cared about.
“Lupe?” I somehow pushed the question out in my non-corporeal form. It occurred to me that this felt like teleporting—except that it was more like being trapped in limbo mid-teleportation.
“A success. Cord severed,” she answered succinctly, before continuing her litany of reminders. “It’ll be a decade before the next generation of seers emerges on the scene, so you’ll have to hunt the Rogue on instinct and tracking skills alone. But you must find and destroy the Rogue before the decade’s end, Milena. It’ll be vastly harder to destroy once second sight is restored to our world. Of course, this is all … if the Rogue should come to pass.”
The way she was fretting about it made it sound less and less like an “if” situation and more like a foregone conclusion.
“You’re welcome for fixing your fucked blood inheritance,” her disembodied voice drawled. “Now you truly do have the best of both worlds … like your T-shirt boasts.” She snorted. “Pollyanna gets to walk away with all of her Salvatella blood powers amassed to date, without the sour aftertaste of revenge curse to haunt her the rest of her days.”
If she expected me to thank her, she’d be waiting an eternity.
“Still too young … too full of idealism to understand the tremendous gift I’ve given you in all of this,” she lamented with a humorless chuckle. “You only see the wrongs I’ve had to do. But one day you may realize for yourself the true merits of the consequentialist point of view, Milena. For as much as you don’t like to believe it, sometimes in life the end does justify the means.”
I wasn’t interested in having a philosophical debate on ethics with Maribel. Nor did I have time. This was how the evil psycho had died—trapped in limbo mid-teleport! I needed to get back.
Just as I began to try and feel my way back to Alex, I felt the energy of his emotions reaching out for me, attempting to pull me home to him. And as I felt his love embracing me, reconnecting and anchoring me to the land of the living, it was the profoundest sense of joy and relief I’d ever known.
“Ah! There’s your happily ever after now, right on schedule,” she announced with a false air of gaiety. “As I was saying, you’ll get to live
out your fairy tale Pollyanna existence without the constant fear of accidentally killing innocent people through an unstable ricochet effect now.
“Your pure heart will no longer have to endure the burden of harboring more than a century’s worth accretion of bloodthirsty, revenge-greedy Salvatella emotions. You’ll keep your coveted Joaquin blood inheritance, without the faulty protection spell fueling it—essentially, the black heart of the curse.”
She was rambling. It struck me that perfectly imperfect Maribel was nervous. Scared. I suspected she was trying to buy time that she didn’t have left more so than she was actually looking for some sort of recognition from me for her twisted brilliance. She had to have known she’d never get any.
“All good things, yes?” she prompted at my nonreply. “And I will bear the burden of keeping the darkness of the curse locked within what’s left of my own damaged soul. For all eternity.” She forced a laugh, and even her laughter sounded nervous to me now, whereas I’d only heard the condescension inherent in it moments before. “After all, it goes so well with my overall look, don’t you think?”
The inky black nothingness surrounding me gave way to a murky grey fog, and gradually, enough light filtered through the fog to reveal the true inhuman form of a perfectly grotesque Maribel—like some creature straight out of a horror movie.
She was hideous, nothing but a foul, decaying, skinless corpse—a black soul that had rotted through. Misshapen. Deformed. Unrecognizable from the display of great beauty she’d presented herself to be in my dream. Her formerly brilliant violet eyes were a lifeless shade of pewter. If she’d looked lost before in the gardens, she appeared utterly bereft now—a confused, morally bankrupt shell of a demented being.
But it wasn’t only her physical appearance that had altered. Her entire demeanor was changed. She suddenly seemed … destroyed. For some reason that made me angrier still, knowing that even in this, she had robbed me of my due.
“All this time. All this planning,” she confided softly. “I was so singularly focused on finding the means to save my White King that I never thought to imagine what it would be like once I had succeeded … how awful it would feel not to be connected to him anymore. How completely alone I would be. Forever.”
The girl I’d been when I’d first arrived in Brazil would have pitied the tormented creature that Maribel was. I couldn’t find that Milena within me now.
“Still think I might be a good person?” she asked. “That I’m wired to do the right thing?”
Though her query was framed in sarcasm, I could’ve sworn I’d glimpsed a shadow of expectancy light her dead eyes—as if my assessment of her now, in the final moments of her fucked-up, undead existence, actually did mean something.
I felt Alex’s energy moving through me, wrapping more tightly around me, tugging harder. I didn’t have time to waste.
“No. I don’t.”
She nodded. “I think … I’m going to need your help … leaving,” she admitted at last. It must’ve gutted her to her core to say those words to me. “I don’t know … if I can manage it … myself.” I think she attempted a smile, but it didn’t quite manifest on her distorted, inhuman features. “I thought it might be easier for you to deliver me to hell like this … in my Dorian Gray form.”
“Wasn’t necessary,” I told her flatly. “You were hideous enough to condemn to hell during our last encounter.”
Another nod. “Milena I … it was … all of this …” Her eyes flitted about, aimlessly searching—for what, I couldn’t say. Nor could I bring myself to care. Because I was so done. Beyond ready to be finished with her. When her desolate gaze returned to me, those gunmetal eyes of hers were still lost, albeit resigned. “It was never personal, Milena.”
“Congratulations. It is now.”
For the first time, the surge of vengeance that vibrated and swirled up within me wasn’t born of some ancient, mythical curse. It was purely my own. And I knew the violence I hurled at the bitch who had played puppet master with my life and the lives of everyone I loved would alter who I was forever as I sent her screaming and careening well into the beyond.
Where the horror of Jacinda’s figurative blood staining my hands would always haunt me, Maribel’s would define me from this moment on. Because this wasn’t an end. It felt exactly like a dreaded beginning, in fact.
She would be back.
Though I’d only lived with the dark energy attached to Joaquin’s blood curse a short while, it was long enough to know that the energy behind the curse would find a way to live on. And it now had a powerful vehicle through which to re-emerge into the world. A vehicle who would be born untethered by the laws and constraints that bound all others of our kind.
Prophecy had foretold that the next vessel would be the key to the Rogue of all rogues. And for centuries werewolves and werelocks had pondered whether the vessel would be the key to finding or to destroying this fabled Rogue. As cryptic as prophecies too often are, this one had proved shockingly straightforward.
I was, quite literally, the key to the Rogue. And I’d just sprung the lock that would unleash the mother of all aberrations of the werewolf species upon mankind—a rogue werelock who would be consumed by the darkest of forces, wielding unbeatable power, and destined to usher forth an unstoppable reign of terror on the world.
The decade of no light had dawned. Maribel would be back—not as Maribel—and she and I would face off again before the decade’s end.
As I let the energy force of Alex’s emotions pull me safely back through to the other side, I knew somehow it was going to be up to me to stop Maribel—as the Rogue—the next time around. I had less than a decade to prepare, to train and hone my newfound skills. Prophecy or no, I was now bound and determined to be the vessel who not only unlocked but destroyed the Rogue as well.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
“You’ll never deserve her.” My brother spoke in a hushed tone of voice as I resurfaced to the blissful sensation of Alex’s fingers dragging against my scalp.
My healing heart rejoiced in the confirmation that Raul was okay—that they both were.
I could feel the presence of my wolf again. I was lying on a bed. At least it felt like a bed. Alex’s scent was overpowering, so I was sure that it was his bed that I was in. There was still a faint scent of blood in the air.
“Agreed. Suppose that’s one thing you and I will always have in common,” Alex rejoined, before saying in a softer voice that sounded closer to my ear, “That’s it, baby. Come back to me. You’re going to be fine.” His other hand held and squeezed mine. I tried to squeeze back but only managed to twitch my finger. Alex squeezed my hand again in response.
“I’ve spent my whole life protecting her,” Raul hissed.
“And you’ve been so terrible at it that you led the Salvatellas straight to her, succeeding in getting her lured to Brazil, kidnapped, and delivered to my doorstep as a sacrificial trade for Celio. I will take over protecting her from here on out, thank you.”
Awesome. They were fighting. Things were officially back to normal.
“Gabe never had her kidnapped.”
“Oh, yes, right, I’m the one who staged that whole circus with Felix to interrupt my own dinner party. Great lie to sell to your sister, by the way. I really appreciated her asking me about that one.”
“Every word out of your mouth is a fucking lie, Alex. It’s better that she get used to not believing anything you say.”
“Yet another thing you and I have in common, since I never believe a fucking word that you say.” Alex’s warm breath fanned my earlobe as he whispered, “Just a bit more and I’ll take the needle out, all right?”
Needle? I registered the sensation of a needle in my arm, and knew that they must be giving me blood. I’d certainly lost a tremendous amount of it, based on my recollection of events in the banquet hall. Alex was worried about a needle bothering me after I’d had a machete lodged in my heart? The notion was laughable. I tried to open
my eyes but couldn’t.
“I see your eyes moving, princess. Won’t be long now before you have the strength to open them.” Alex pressed kisses to my closed eyelids. “Relax. It’ll happen.”
“Ugh, you’re smothering her,” Raul remarked in a voice laden with disgust.
“I’m loving her,” Alex snapped. “Perhaps you missed the part where your sister took a machete through her heart today, protective big brother?”
“Fucking self-righteous prick, try loving her without smothering her to death. She needs some breathing room.”
“Like the six thousand miles of breathing room that you and your father gave her for the better part of her life?”
“We were protecting her.”
“You abandoned her.”
“I did what was best for her!”
“You did what was best for yourself!”
I heard a door fly open and bang against a wall with a heavy thud. “You two,” Bethany’s voice reprimanded, “need to use your indoor voices or I’m kicking you out.”
Thank God, Bethany was all right, too!
“It’s my house,” Alex balked.
“It’s my vein she’s tapping,” Raul chimed in.
“Then get along for ten minutes or shut up and pretend to. I’m sick of your constant bickering, and I’m sure Milano is, too.”
I could’ve kissed Bethany for being Bethany as I heard the door slam shut behind her with a force that seemed to shake the room. My mom had often complained that Bethany and I were Olympian door slammers.
Raul swore under his breath and Alex chuckled. They fell silent as Alex’s fingers continued to stroke through my hair.
“I wouldn’t hit that if I were you,” Alex eventually cautioned.
Huh?
“What?” my brother asked.
“Bethany,” Alex said. “Don’t go there, man.”