by Jess Haines
I knew. I’d experienced what it was like being a puppet to Max and to Royce. It was one of the most frightening things that had ever happened to me. Even knowing Royce had no intention of hurting me and wouldn’t do anything to abuse the power he held over me, those few days of having no conscious choice in when or how I answered to him had been a special kind of hell to live through.
It had been more terrifying than answering to Max—at least I had known what the crazy-ass douche-canoe wanted from me. To use and discard me, just a pawn in his games to take whatever Royce cared about from him.
Royce was still in many ways a mystery to me. A puzzle I wouldn’t be able to solve until I returned to New York.
As for Sara, I couldn’t imagine how much scarier it must have been to have something so incorporeal as your energy sucked away instead of something physical, like blood. Being bitten by vampires was already enough to give me the heebie-jeebies. Having my soul sucked out with no more than a touch was a thought too horrid to bear.
As much as I wanted to throttle her for keeping it a secret from me, I pitied her for it in the same breath. The shame she must have felt being used that way was incomparable to anything. I should know.
And if the necromancer could draw from her, too, that meant there must be other things she was vulnerable to that we hadn’t counted on. I wondered if Arnold knew that. I wondered if that was why she hadn’t thought it would do much good to talk to her boyfriend. He had to know—and, oh, did it burn me that Arnold had known about the runes before I did—but that also meant that he must not have any way of fixing the damage.
Which also made me wonder if he had ever used her for energy the way the necromancer and sorcerer had.
If that Borowsky kid hadn’t already been dead, I would have hunted him down and murdered him all over again with my bare hands.
I wanted to chase after Gideon, to beg and plead for him to do something for my friend to make this awful thing that had happened to her go away. If Gideon knew how to remove the runes, then that meant it was in our best interests to make sure that Clyde was deposed as the master of Los Angeles.
This was a drastic change in plans for me. My earlier ruminations about the morality of informing Clyde about Fabian’s plans be damned. Clyde had nothing to offer me anymore, whereas the necromancer’s survival and success was of vital importance.
Royce wouldn’t like to hear it, but then, he wasn’t here to deal with this mess. The complications were tremendous, and I hated that I had so little say in any of it, but Sara’s health and well-being mattered to me far more than the life of a stranger who had forced us into dealing with his mess at the first opportunity.
Damn Clyde, and damn Fabian, and damn Royce, too, for sending us out here.
For the moment, all I could do was hold Sara’s hand and wait. Tiny was too weak to walk, and there was no way Devon and I could drag him and Sara. I would have to be cool, calculating, and as devious as the vampires if we were going to make this work.
And it had to work. I had to fix this for Sara. It was my fault she had been hurt that way, my fault she was a living battery for magi to suck the life out of at any given moment. Without Arnold here to protect her, God only knew how safe she was. Considering how easy it had been for Gideon to use her, probably not at all. As far as I was concerned, her survival mattered more than any vampire’s, no matter the cost. If we couldn’t make it back to Arnold for a while, then I needed to do the best I could to take away as many of the dangerous threats to her health as possible.
I turned to Devon. “We’ve got to make sure Fabian and Gideon win. If they don’t, Gideon can’t fix what’s wrong with her. Damn it, Devon, I hate this. I hate that there’s no right answer, that every choice I’ve had to make since I got here has just made things worse for somebody—maybe even long before I got here. But there’s got to be some way we can round up the White Hats who are left and get them to help in this fight. I need that necromancer to fix . . . whatever those are.”
Devon and Tiny were both looking at me like I was crazy. Maybe I was.
“Girl, you are nuttier than a squirrel turd under an oak tree. You want to let that thing have control of LA? What do you think he’s going to do once he’s won?”
I shook my head, frowning severely at Tiny. “I don’t know. I don’t really care. What I do care about is fixing that,” I said, stabbing a finger in the direction of the runes on the inside of Sara’s arm.
Devon spoke gently, like he was trying to keep me from storming off or doing something equally stupid. “You’re not thinking straight, Shia. Of course you’re scared right now. We all are. But we can’t let that monster win.”
“You don’t understand,” I snarled.
His tone grew sharper. “Yes, we do. You’re afraid of losing her. So are we. But we’re more afraid of losing our city to something that could destroy us all if we give him a chance. I know you want him to fix what’s happened to Sara, but you have no guarantee that he will, even if he wins.”
I didn’t want to consider that. Shaking my head again, I rose to my feet and started pacing, though I stayed close to Sara. It felt like the hairs on my arms and the back of my neck were crackling with static electricity, standing at attention. My vision was feeling a little funny, too. Something was wrong with me, more than just the overdose of adrenaline pumped into my system from the buildup of terror while facing down the zombies and the necromancer.
This was what Sara had been talking about when she said I never thought things through. The thing was, I didn’t want to think them through. Not one bit. I wanted to go rampaging through the streets until I found Clyde and destroyed him.
That was my clue that not all was kosher in my head. Had the necromancer messed with my mind somehow? Or was it something worse?
Feeling sick, I stopped my pacing, hanging my head and taking deep, steadying breaths. When my gaze fell on my hands, those deep breaths caught in my throat. The veins under my skin were clearly visible.
Black. Not blue.
Fuck me sideways. Was nothing going to go right for me?
I closed my eyes and fought off the looming panic attack, forcing myself to take deep, steady, slow breaths. No hyperventilating. No rushing off to attack things with my bare hands. No succumbing to the corruption in my blood.
Once the worst of the desire to rush off and attack Clyde with nothing more than my teeth and nails subsided, I focused again on Devon and Tiny. That odd haze to my vision had cleared up somewhat, though the two hunters were both watching me warily now. Were there other visible signs of the change? Was I starting to turn Were? That thought cooled my ire faster than anything else.
“No matter who wins, we all lose. My only hope at this point is to find something I can give to that necromancer to make him fix what’s wrong with Sara.”
“He can’t fix it,” Sara muttered, one hand lifting to her brow. My attention shot to her, and I quickly knelt by her side again.
“How do you know?”
Her eyes fluttered open. She tried to sit up, but couldn’t quite manage on her own, so I gave her a hand. Once she was sitting up, she addressed the three of us, her voice soft and features twisted in a grimace of discomfort.
“Arnold checked every source he has at his disposal. There’s no cure for this, Shia. I’m going to end up living with these things for the rest of my life.”
She might as well have told me her parents had died all over again. My heart ached for her in a way I couldn’t put words to. All I could do was wrap my arms around her and hold her close.
There was no way I could ever be sorry enough for what had been done to her. Knowing it was my fault was like having a dagger buried in my gut, twisting and turning and digging its way all the way up to my heart. David never would have taken her if she hadn’t been connected to me. Helping me fight his plans to make the Others of New York his slaves. Who would have thought some puny human women would have the power to stop a mage who had control over th
e will of New York’s most powerful Others? The sorcerer had obviously felt threatened by me at the time—threatened enough to drag Sara into my mess and hurt her when he couldn’t get to me directly.
And the joke was on him. I was alive. He was dead. All that mattered now was finishing cleaning up the mess he’d left behind.
A small part of me wanted to hope that Gideon hadn’t been lying—that he had some way of making this right again.
The rest of me knew it would be stupid to take anything he said at face value, and that if Arnold said there was no way, I should leave it alone.
Still, I wanted to give him a chance. Just once. Just to see. Maybe this would be the one epic fuck-up in my life that I could fix.
Sara pulled back from me, running a shaking hand through her hair. We all looked like hell, covered in gore, tired, shell-shocked. Tiny somehow managed to stagger to his feet first, his hands braced on his knees as he bent over to catch his breath. Devon soon followed, then me. I helped Sara get to her feet, though she did take my unspoken offer to lean on me for support once she was up.
“Look,” I said to the White Hats, as we all limped toward the exit together, “you told me yourselves that you want to see Clyde dead. There will be no better opportunity to see that happen than to help Fabian and Gideon get rid of him. But”—I added hastily, cutting them off as they opened their mouths to protest—“if we let them win, then they’ll be weak and vulnerable, and that will put us in a better position to get rid of them, too. Maybe we can get Gideon to tell us what he had in mind for Sara first. He might know something that our mage friends in New York don’t about how to get rid of those scars.”
No one seemed very happy with the idea.
That was okay. I wasn’t either.
“I guess that might work,” Devon grudgingly agreed.
Hallelujah. It was the least I could ask for, and the best possible outcome.
Now, if only things turned out the way I hoped they would, then everything would be golden, and I would have an honest shot at atonement.
Chapter 25
“Tiny, why don’t you take Sara somewhere safe—” I started to say, but Sara cut me off.
“No. I’m coming with you guys.” That didn’t sound like a good idea. She looked like a stiff wind would knock her on her ass. She lifted her fist, giving me a fierce glare in return for my dubious look. “You can’t keep me out of this fight. If the necromancer has been following us through me, then it doesn’t matter where I go. He’ll find me again, and I’ll end up leading him right into one of the White Hats’ hideouts.”
Devon rubbed his temples. “This is too complicated. So we need to help the necromancer kill Clyde, but then we have to wait just long enough for one of you two to ask him for help removing those runes—and then we have to try to kill him? How are we supposed to know the right time to get involved? It’s not like he’s going to be an easy kill, even after he’s worn down from the fight with Clyde. Not if the mess up there is anything to go by.” He gestured at the freeway, encompassing the sounds of gunfire and screams, punctuated by the occasional roar from the shifted werewolf, only a few hundred feet away.
That gave me an idea. I could have kissed him if it wouldn’t have sent the wrong message about my intentions.
“Follow me!”
Devon helped support Sara. Tiny wasn’t too quick on his feet, but he was able to follow without much trouble.
I led them around the fence and up the freeway off-ramp, thrusting the gun into Devon’s outstretched hand. Better not to face the Were while armed. Didn’t want an unspoken threat to piss off our one shot at turning the tables on the necromancer and both vampires right off the bat. Werewolves were so touchy about those visual cues.
The Goliath was still rampaging across the freeway, gallumphing its way from one clump of zombies to the next. Most of the people who had stayed in their cars were watching with their hands and faces pressed to their windows, only withdrawing when a zombie came too close.
Earlier, I hadn’t noticed, but the Goliath was making a sincere effort not to damage any of the vehicles around it. It moved its great body gracefully considering all of the many places its skin was torn and bleeding, chunks taken out in human-sized bites. Every now and again it bumped into one of the stopped cars, but it never knocked any over or even scratched the paint. It had developed a system for killing the zombies still coming after it, getting up on its hind legs to grab a torso with one paw, and using a foreclaw from the other to pop the head off.
What was left of each zombie flopped bonelessly to the ground once the Goliath let it go. It was a pretty efficient, if disgusting, system.
There weren’t too many left. I scrambled on top of one of the nearby cars, some expensive luxury sedan with a long, low-slung front end, ignoring the owner’s indignant shouts as I got up on the roof. Sara, Tiny, and Devon crouched behind it, all three of them hissing variants of “Get down! Are you crazy?”
Why, yes, I was feeling a bit on edge at the moment.
A quick glance farther along the freeway gave me a glimpse of flashing red and blue police lights, and a better view of the helicopters hovering overhead. One had “LAPD” on it and seemed to be more focused on the jam ahead, but it looked like the rest were from news stations. A handful of them were closer to this end of the jam, probably videoing the Goliath melting zombie faces.
“Hey! Hey, you . . . werewolf!” I waved my arms over my head, shouting at the Were. It growled as one of the walking dead grabbed at its hind leg, shaking the cadaver off and then pinning it with that foot, before looking at me. “I need to talk to you!”
The Were lifted its lip, turning its attention back to the remaining zombies. I stomped my foot, making the roof of the car make a hollow sound that didn’t do anything to get the Were’s attention, other than making it flick its ears back. The guy inside yelled again, but I ignored him.
“C’mon, you asshole! I haven’t got all day!”
This time it looked at me over its shoulder, hackles raised and pearlescent fangs gleaming as it turned narrowed, golden eyes on me. Finally. A hand was grabbing at my ankle—Devon or Tiny, I was sure—tugging at my pants leg for attention. I couldn’t listen to them right then. I had hundreds of pounds of pissed off werewolf leaning meaningfully in my direction.
“Listen to me, and listen good,” I said, adopting as dangerous a tone as I could muster. It must have worked, because the Were was paying attention, even if it was still bristling at me, meeting my challenging stare. There was something to be said for the lessons Chaz had imparted about what kind of dominant behavior a Were deferred to. My asshole ex hadn’t been good for much, but the lessons I’d learned, I’d taken to heart. “You want to stop what’s controlling all of these things? Find your alpha and tell him to bring the rest of his pack to Clyde Seabreeze’s place. Help me, and I’ll help you. Santa Monica. Midnight. Tonight. Got it?”
It flicked its ears in my direction, then went back to tearing apart the few remaining walking dead. I hoped that meant yes. If not, I had no idea how we were going to stop the necromancer. That was assuming Gideon could destroy Clyde’s retinue and heal Sara before then.
Maybe it made me a cold, heartless bitch—too much like the vampires I hated, calculating and cruel like Max, Fabian, and Clyde—but I wasn’t going to leave any loose ends. If Gideon could remove Sara’s curse, I’d find some way to distract the Goliath werewolves once they showed up until he was done. Possibly by setting them after Fabian. If Gideon couldn’t deactivate the runes, heaven help him, because I would do everything in my power and use every resource at my disposal to see that he was hunted to the ends of the earth for hurting her like he had.
In many ways, it might have made me as monstrous as the thing I had feared turning into, but there wasn’t even the slightest twinge of my conscience when I saw the way Sara’s skin was stretched tight over the bones of her hands and face as she looked up from her crouched position behind the car. The dark c
ircles under her eyes had worsened, and if I hadn’t known better, I might have thought she’d been bitten by a vampire given how weak and parchment pale she’d become.
Hopping down from on top of the car, I shrugged off Tiny and Devon’s hands, flexing and then clenching my fingers until my knuckles gave a satisfying crack.
“Let’s get back to the car.”
It would take a little while for the gridlock to clear up, but we still had a couple of hours before sundown. If we couldn’t use the freeway, hopefully there would be another way to get across town in time to reach Clyde’s place before Fabian and Gideon attacked. Perhaps Gideon would be too distracted by the fight and the number of zombies he had to control to notice we were coming.
“Shia, this is crazy. What the heck are you trying to do?”
I paused so Sara could catch up, hooking an arm through hers and slowing my pace to help her the rest of the way back to the car. “Trust me. I’ve got a plan.”
Devon’s hand was heavy on my shoulder as he fell into step on my other side. “We deserve to know. Especially if you expect the rest of the White Hats to help.”
“Fine. First, we’re going to help Fabian and Gideon take down Clyde.”
All three of the others shot me horrified looks.
“Then we’re going to let Gideon fix those marks on Sara. If he can’t fix it before the Goliaths arrive, we’ll set them after Fabian. If he does fix it, once he’s done, we’ll let the werewolves mop up what’s left of the vampires and get rid of Gideon.”
“Shia.” Sara’s voice was hushed, strained. “Shia, no. You can’t—”
“Can’t what? Can’t fix this?”
“Can’t treat them like pawns. This isn’t your fight, and it’s not like you can fix what’s been done to me.”