Mortal Kiss

by Alice Moss

  He looked around. They were all staring at him—Faye, Liz, Jimmy and Lucas. They were all so young, so clueless. How could they possibly understand? There was a battle to fight, the battle. And now …

  Finn had to get away. He had to be anywhere, anywhere but here. Turning, he strode toward his bike. He heard his father shout after him, but he didn’t listen. Throwing his leg across the seat, he kicked the engine into gear and skidded out of camp.

  The last thing he heard was Faye’s voice, calling for him to stop. And then the wind in his ears blasted everything away.

  #

  Faye ran forward as Finn went to his bike. “Finn! Wait!”

  He didn’t stop, the bike disappearing into the trees long before the sound of his engine faded from the air. She felt a strong hand on her arm.

  “Let him go,” said Joe. His face was weary. “He’ll need time.” He raised the scroll. “You did well, finding this. It could be exactly what we need.” He let go of her arm and sat down, intent on the ancient paper.

  Faye turned back to the others, who were standing still, in shock. Jimmy’s face had lost the color it had previously regained. “Jimmy?” Faye asked. “Are you all right?”

  “Yeah,” he said faintly, trying to smile. “I just … maybe I should sit down for a while.”

  Faye watched as Liz slipped her arm through Jimmy’s. “Come on,” said her friend. “It’s too cold out here, anyway. You should be inside.”

  “I’m OK,” Jimmy protested. “I’m just a bit tired, that’s all.”

  “I’ll come with you,” Liz told him. “I’m cold out here, Jimmy.”

  A look of concern crossed Jimmy’s face, and he wrapped his arm around Liz’s shoulders. “I’ve got a spare blanket.”

  Faye watched as her two friends walked slowly to Jimmy’s tent and disappeared inside. She couldn’t help but smile. At least something good was coming out of all this chaos. Jimmy was good for Liz, although Faye thought her best friend was probably pretty good for Jimmy, too. They were a cute couple—and Faye knew Jimmy couldn’t believe his luck. He’d liked Liz for so long, from afar, and now they were together. He was different, Faye realized—stronger, somehow, as if this experience had forced him to stand on his own two feet and he was enjoying what that felt like.

  Faye looked around for Lucas, but he’d disappeared. One minute he was there, standing silently while everything happened before him, and the next he had vanished. Faye saw footprints leading out of the clearing where he had been standing and into the unbroken snow beneath the forest canopy.

  She followed them and found him standing beneath a huge cedar tree on the crest of a ridge. Beneath his feet, the land dropped away under a sharp precipice. Lucas had wrapped his arms around himself against the cold and was staring out at the sea of snowbound trees. Faye felt her heart go out to him. He’d learned some pretty difficult things about his family over the past couple of days, and that had to be tough.

  “Lucas?” Faye stopped a few yards away, suddenly aware that he probably wanted to be on his own. He didn’t move or say anything. She stepped to his side and looked out at the bleak landscape. The sky was heavy with more snow.

  “It’s funny,” Lucas said after a few minutes of silence. “I always wondered what it would be like to have a brother. Trust me to end up with a moron like Finn.”

  Despite herself, Faye smiled. “He’s a good guy, really, Lucas. He’s just … passionate, I guess.”

  Lucas turned to look at her. “You’re always defending him, you know that?”

  Faye shrugged. “He saved my life.”

  Lucas laughed dryly. “Right. That’s my brother, the hero. What does that make me? The family zero?”

  Faye reached out, turning Lucas around to face her. “I know this is difficult—”

  Lucas shook his head, cutting her off. “This isn’t difficult. Divorce—that’s difficult. This is … this is … impossible! A week ago, I was just a normal teenager who happened to be a bit richer than most. Now … now it’s like I don’t even know who I am anymore. And I was never too sure to begin with.” He laughed again, a dry, short sound with no joy in it. “You know what? When Joe said that … when Joe said to Finn that I was his brother, I thought he meant he was my father. Just for a second, I thought …” He shook his head, looking down at his feet. “And I would have been OK with that. I would have been … happy with that, even. But no. I get the short straw. Mercy the Great Evil One is still my mother, and my dad’s still some jerk without a name.”

  Faye didn’t know what to say. There wasn’t anything she could say. So instead, she pulled Lucas to her. She felt him hold her tightly, felt his cheek come to rest on her hair. They stood like that, quietly, for several minutes.

  “You’re with us now,” Faye said eventually into the silence. “We’re here for you.”

  She felt Lucas move, pulling back slightly to cup her face in his hands. There was pain in his blue eyes, but he was smiling slightly. “Are you, Flash? Are you here for me?”

  Faye felt her stomach flip over completely as she looked into his eyes. Her arms were still around his waist, his body pressed against hers. He looked at her as if he could see nothing else. An image of Finn flashed through her mind, and she knew she should push Lucas away, but she couldn’t. She was drawn toward him, helplessly, and it felt amazing. Lucas leaned in, slowly, his lips brushing hers.

  “Faye?” Joe’s voice broke the silence of the forest, loud and close. “Faye? Lucas? Are you here somewhere?”

  Lucas looked away, and Faye stepped out of his arms, trembling. “Yes, Joe, we’re here!” she called back.

  The biker appeared behind them. “The patrol reports that the town is snowed in. Mercy’s entered her endgame.” Joe held up the scroll. “I think we need to talk to your aunt.”

  Chapter 44: Secrets and Lies

  The wolf flared inside Finn as the cold wind cut through his leathers. He rode hard, through the forest at first, and then down onto the road. At first he had no idea of where he was going; he thought perhaps he should just ride out of town and never come back. But then he saw the signs proclaiming that Winter Mill was snowed in, and he knew he was trapped with every other living soul inside the town limits.

  Finn had never felt such fury, least of all directed at his father. All his life, he had looked up to his father, Joe Crowley, leader of the Black Dogs. He’d always known that his father was a good man, and Joe had brought up his son to follow in his footsteps. But now? Now it seemed that Finn’s whole life had been built upon a lie. Mercy Morrow, the woman he had dedicated his life to tracking and stopping, was his mother.

  For a while Finn rode blindly, racing through the wind and the freshly falling flakes of snow, before finding himself on the road that led to the Morrow mansion, in the depths of the woods just inside the town limits. He knew where he had to go.

  Finn had never seen Mercy close up. He’d seen pictures, of course, and he’d spied her from a distance, usually as the bikers failed to stop her latest bargain with Annwn. But he’d always been in the background, with no chance of coming face to face with their great adversary. Finn now understood how that had been carefully engineered by his father—of course Joe had never wanted him to meet Mercy. She would have blown his lie to pieces.

  Finn had no doubt that Mercy was evil. He had seen with his own eyes the things she had done, the cruelty she had visited on mankind for centuries. But she was his mother. And now that Finn knew it, he couldn’t just ignore it. Exactly the way he couldn’t ignore the fact that he’d just found out he had a brother. Finn thought of Lucas and shook his head. That was something he’d have to deal with later. He’d never even thought of the idea of having a brother before, and it would take some getting used to, for sure.

  He pulled back on the throttle, slowing the bike as it reached the mansion’s main gates. They were wide open, standing back on their hinges, but still Finn hesitated. He imagined what his father would say if he knew Finn was con
templating confronting Mercy alone. Finn knew it was stupid, he knew he should know better, but now that he knew she was his mother, he had to talk to her, face to face. Joe would lecture him about how her words could bind and her face could beguile. He’d tell Finn she was pure deceit and infinite destruction, and that to listen to her was to seal one’s own cruel fate.

  Finn had listened to her once before in his life, in fact, and it had led to the death of the person he’d loved most in the world.

  But the longer Finn stared at that great house, the more surely he knew he could not ignore this impulse. He wanted to see her, in the flesh. He wanted to look Mercy Morrow in the eye, and he wanted her to acknowledge that yes, she was his mother.

  Finn opted not to ride through the front gate. Instead, he hid his bike in the dense bushes at the entrance and then slipped over the wall, dropping into the soft snow on the other side. Walking up the pathway would only limit his options. He wanted to meet his mother, but he wasn’t stupid. He wasn’t going to give Mercy any advantage that she could use against him.

  He headed for what would once have been the servants’ quarters, in the basement. The external door was small and locked tight, but the panels around it were old glass, easy to shatter. His leathered fist pushed through one, and the glass tinkled to the stone floor on the other side. Finn froze, listening for any sign that someone inside had heard him, but there was no movement. Reaching his hand through the broken windowpane, he found the key in the lock. He was inside the house within three minutes, stopping to listen again. There was no sound anywhere. It was as if the house were dead.

  The rubber soles of Finn’s boots were quiet on the stone floor as he crept out of the kitchen and up the short flight of stairs to the ground level. No lights were lit, and the house was cold and dark. The corridor he was in opened onto the main foyer, which was paved with pristine marble. A huge stone staircase curved up into the gloomy upper level. Finn stood for a moment, getting his bearings. He wished he could use his wolf senses, but he was keeping a tight rein on them. He didn’t want his first real meeting with his mother to bring out that side of him. Over many years, he had learned to control when he changed into the wolf. It didn’t always work—when he was very angry, for example, or under attack, he sometimes felt himself changing before he had a chance to clamp down on the creature within. But mostly, he tried to control that dark side of himself.

  Then Finn heard a car pull in through the main gate, pebbles rattling beneath the tires. Looking around, he saw a door opened to a darkened room and slipped through it. Seconds later, Mercy Morrow opened the front door and stepped inside. She paused for a moment on the threshold, listening just as Finn had done. Finn watched her from the shadows, fascinated. She was so tall, so slender—and yes, she was beautiful. He swallowed, trying to remember back through the centuries, trying to remember a time when she was really his mother. He realized, with surprise, that it was important to him to be able to see her that way. He’d never known what it was like to have a mother. And now here she was, not twenty feet away. Finn had been brought up to fear this woman—to hate her, even. But now, now that he was here … things didn’t seem quite as simple at all.

  Mercy flicked the light switch. She looked around, her large eyes bright in the sudden glare.

  “I know you’re here,” she announced, still not moving from her spot. “Do you think I can’t sense my own son when he’s so close?” She took one step onto the marble floor of the foyer, holding her head high, her neck stiff. “I know where you have been, Lucas. How dare you think you can simply return here, to me?”

  Finn felt his heart do a sick backflip. Mercy couldn’t tell that it was he, Finn, and not Lucas. She just knew that someone with her blood was near. He shut his eyes briefly. Well, there was confirmation enough.

  He stepped out of the darkened doorway into the light but didn’t speak. Mercy turned sharply at the noise, her displeased frown transforming into shock, which she quickly hid beneath a mask of disinterest.

  “Well,” she drawled, moving closer. “Look who it is. My lost son, my would-be heir. So Joe finally told you, did he? He finally revealed the truth, after all these years.”

  Finn said nothing, watching Mercy as she made her way slowly nearer. She smiled at his silence, a charming flash of warmth that his heart responded to. This was his mother. This was …

  “So. What do you think of the wonderful, righteous Joe Crowley now, my sweet?”

  Finn cleared his throat. “It doesn’t change anything.”

  Mercy smiled again. “Doesn’t it? Then why are you here?”

  She touched her fingers to his face, and they were ice cold. He felt a tremor pass through him. When he was younger, he’d longed to feel his mother’s arms around him, telling him he was loved, during those cold nights on the road.

  “I just wanted to see …”

  “You wanted to see what?” she whispered.

  Finn shook his head, unable to speak. Mercy suddenly slid her hand down his arm, catching his fingers in hers. Tugging at him, she pulled him across the floor, into a dimly lit room. It held a fireplace and comfortable chairs. They didn’t sit down. Instead, Mercy pulled him toward the fireplace, above which hung a large, ancient mirror.

  “I missed you, my perfect little boy,” she said softly. “You were so beautiful when you were born. So small, with so much dark, dark hair. I loved you so much. But he took you from me.”

  Finn found himself transfixed. “He said it was for my safety,” he managed to murmur.

  “Oh, Finn, how can that be true?” Mercy asked, still speaking softly. “How can it be right to separate a baby from his mother?”

  He had no answer to that. He watched as Mercy lifted one slim hand toward the mirror. He followed its movement, looking at where her fingers touched the glass, and then, without realizing it, he was looking at the glass itself.

  An alarm bell went off in his mind. This was wrong … something was wrong. He could feel something pulling him closer.

  “No,” he said sharply, tearing his gaze away. “No!”

  He backed away from the mirror. Mercy took a step toward him, but he moved out of her reach, heading for the door.

  “He was right about you,” Finn said hoarsely. “Everything he said was true.” Mercy grinned—a cruel, powerful grimace that twisted her face. “But you know that’s not true, Finn. And if he lied about that, what else has he lied about?”

  “Nothing,” Finn said, almost at the door.

  “Oh, really? What about that little girl you so loved? What was her name, now? Eve, wasn’t it?”

  Finn’s hand was on the door handle, but he froze and looked back. “What about her?”

  “Don’t you know how she died?”

  He swallowed painfully. “You killed her,” he said. “You ordered your hounds to … to …” He faltered, shutting his eyes. Even this many years later, he couldn’t think about it.

  Mercy shook her head. “I wasn’t there. I didn’t even know her name. Who did, Finn? Who knew about her?”

  The thought popped into his mind before he could stop it. Joe! Joe knew. Joe had warned him away—just as he had tried to do with Faye. Finn shook his head. “You’re lying.”

  Mercy sighed, a long-suffering susurration that seemed to fill the echoing hallway. “Oh, Finn. Think about it. When have I ever lied to you?”

  He opened the door and ran through it, slamming it behind him with a resounding bang.

  Chapter 45: Homecoming

  Jimmy was fidgeting. Liz watched him, pulling the blanket he’d given her tighter around her shoulders. They’d been talking quietly for the past ten minutes, but she could tell his mind was elsewhere.

  “Jimmy?” she asked finally. “What is it? What’s the matter? I mean, aside from all the weird werewolves and end-of-the-world stuff …”

  He smiled at her, and Liz couldn’t help but smile back. She was doing that a lot around him lately. She couldn’t believe how quickly her
feelings toward him had changed. It was as if this whole crazy thing had opened her eyes. And boy, was she glad it had.

  “Sorry. I didn’t mean to—it’s not that I’m not listening to you, Liz,” Jimmy said, sitting a little closer. “I was just thinking about my parents.”

  “They know where you are, right?”

  Jimmy shook his head. “No. Joe and the bikers didn’t know how the bite was going to affect me. They didn’t know whether I was going to survive it or …” He shrugged. “If I’d gone home, Mom and Dad would have insisted I go to a hospital, and that wouldn’t have helped at all. So Joe said I should wait. Until I was better.” Jimmy shrugged. “And I trust him. I trust all the bikers.”

  Liz nodded. “Your parents must be worried sick, though. I mean, where do they think you are?”

  “I know.” Jimmy looked down, scrubbing a fingernail against the cold ground. “Joe’s been teaching me how to ride a motorbike.”

  “Wow. Really?”

  “Yeah, it’s amazing. I mean, I can only do basic stuff right now, what with my leg and everything. But being on the bike—it’s really incredible, Liz. I just forget everything else.”

  Liz nodded, not sure what this had to do with Jimmy’s poor mom and dad.

  “Anyway,” Jimmy went on nervously, “I was thinking about taking one of the bikes and going to see them.”

  “Your parents?”

  Jimmy nodded. “Yeah. I’m getting better all the time. Joe says all it’s going to need is time and rest.”

  “It’s a good idea to see them, Jimmy,” Liz told him, touching her hand to his for reassurance. “They’ll be so much happier once they know for sure you’re all right.”

  He smiled, turning his hand over and curling his fingers through hers. “Yeah, that’s what I thought. So I wondered … I wondered …”

  Liz put her head on one side, watching as he struggled to ask her something.

  “What is it?”

  “I wondered if you’d come with me. To see them. On the bike,” Jimmy said in a rush. “It’s fine if you don’t want to. I’ll understand. I just don’t really want to go on my own, that’s all. But it’s OK. I’m sure you—”