by ST Branton
“Gladly.” Lupres launched himself off the edge of the plinth, arms and claws outstretched. He caught the flat of the blade, and even though I could see and smell it burning hair and skin, he did not let go. The sword was wrenched to the side, twisting my wrist. I only held onto it harder.
Under pressure from this god, neither blade nor hilt would bend, but I felt myself almost being lifted off my feet by the sheer force of the god’s strength. The Weres who were still fit for battle regrouped behind me.
It was a mistake. Amber, still holed away in whatever nook she’d found at the top of the cave, reloaded and began firing into the pack. All clumped up like that, they might as well have been fish in a barrel for her.
“Find the sniper!” Lupres demanded harshly. “I will take care of this pest.” His dramatic bravado was undermined somewhat by that one tiny hand, which I couldn’t keep from smirking about whenever it came into my view.
“How long is that gonna take to grow back?” I asked him. “Because, like, maybe you should have thought about that before you cut it off.”
“Silence!” He lunged at me and actually hit me so hard we both fell to the ground.
The rough rock dug into my back through my coat and thin undershirt, but I didn’t let the discomfort show on my face. I was too busy trying to work myself into a position that would let me shove Lupres off me in the most commanding way possible. Meanwhile, his nails dug for my throat.
“I want to see you suffer,” he spat. “Humanity’s agony will be nothing compared to yours.”
“Would you fucking can it already with the melodrama? It’s like a really bad movie.” I managed to unpin my knee from beneath him. “And, the only agony to see here is yours.” And without further ado, I drove my kneecap up between his legs, right into the were-family jewels.
His rancid breath rushed from his lungs as he folded up on himself. Good to know even the gods had their weak spot. But being a god, his strength didn’t falter like I was hoping. In fact, I swore his holds clamped down harder. A sharp point drew a spot of blood at my throat.
“You will pay the dearest price,” he hissed, looming over me.
Each fang in his mouth was as least three inches long. He pinned my twisted wrist down, trapping the arm with the Gladius Solis under my body. This arrangement was outrageously painful. My vision blurred around the edges, and I wondered if I would pass out.
Then he made the biggest mistake I could hope for. He shifted his weight. The tiny change was enough for me to force my sword arm free, and as he pushed down on my wrist to inflict pain and assume the most dominant position, I took the sword and rammed it up through his stomach.
He snarled but refused to die. I twisted the sword and pushed it up higher.
“This is for Mormouth,” I said, then pulled the blade free up through his collar bone.
Lupres went rigid above me, his face completely slack. Not wanting to be caught beneath his bulk when he inevitably collapsed, I rolled awkwardly to the side. He gurgled. A foamy stream ran from the corner of his open mouth, pooling to join the rest of the mess on the floor. The tiny, creepy fingers of his baby hand trembled. So did his intact arm.
A smile crossed my lips as I thought of the perfect final words. I couldn’t help myself. Really. “Play dead bitch.”
***
You could have heard a pin drop when Lupres finally hit the ground. I wiped the trickle of scarlet off my throat, wincing at the sting. The god took one last rattling breath before his body went still. After that, it was like a giant switch had been flipped. Every Were in the vicinity turned his or her head to see their mighty sovereign felled in a widening pool of his own blood.
A racket of barking, yelping, howling, and who knows what else shattered the silence. These sounds quickly devolved into yelling as Were after Were fell to the ground writhing. Slowly, fur fell away to skin, and the monsters reverted back to their human form. They were all stark naked, but I had seen so much crazy shit that it hardly even registered to me. Plus, I was fresh off of killing a god.
Congratulations, Victoria! That would be your first true kill. Victoria Stratton, godkiller.
I ran my fingers through my hair. “We’ll worry about the praise later, dude. I’m just glad we pulled it off.”
Yes. Lupres’s plan would have been disastrous if allowed to come to fruition.
“Don’t worry. There are still plenty of problems.” I pinched the bridge of my nose. “I’m looking at a bunch of them right now. What are we going to do with all these people? No chance they all turn back to normal, huh?”
Lupres dead, which means he no longer has a hold on their minds. But they still ingested his blood. That change is a permanent one.
I nodded as I looked upon the newly freed people. Some I recognized from Silver Banks, but others were new to me. They must have been from Mormouth or other nearby towns. There was no telling how far Lupres had reached in the last few days.
As the survivors came to, the scene was rapidly devolving into a state of chaos not much better than the fight, what with all the crying and screaming and confused bleeding. I hadn’t prepared any sort of emancipation speech, but I was rapidly coming to see that I should have.
Wade pushed his way through the front of the group. “Do you have any idea what you just did to us, Diner Girl?”
“Uh, yeah.” I folded my arms. “I saved you from the mind control of a crazy god. Literally, a god.”
“Yeah, a god who gave us more power than we could have ever imagined.” He stared hard at me. “He controlled us, but he made us better for it. What did you do?” He pointed. “You beat the shit out of townspeople.”
I followed the line of his index finger to see Smitty seated cross-legged on the floor, his old, wrinkled face as pale as it had been when he was pulled from the river. His left arm ended just above the elbow in a tourniquet currently being applied by Maya. Amber knelt beside him, looking like she was trying not to cry.
“Oh shit.” The color drained from my face, too. “Oh shit!”
“Yeah. How about that? You cut off Smitty’s fucking arm.” A hideous note of triumph stood out in Wade’s voice. It was as though he were almost glad for the damage I had done. “Thanks for saving us.”
His volume steadily increased until the words carried throughout the whole cave. Eyes turned to us, including Smitty’s. The old man scowled at Wade.
“You know why she cut my arm off, Wade?” Smitty asked. “It’s because I was trying to kill her with it. Nobody needs that kind of incendiary talk here, boy.” The words dripped from Smitty’s mouth with a disdain I didn’t think he was capable of. “Let us figure out what the hell we are before you start pushing some harebrained agenda. I know your type.”
“I’ll tell you what the hell we are.” A faintly maniacal light sparked in Wade’s eye. “We’re the gods now! And we’re always going to be stepped on by people like her, who do more harm than good in the name of some bullshit self-righteousness. Lupres gave us a gift. I’m sure as hell not gonna waste it.”
“What do you mean by that?” Maya asked flatly.
Wade’s grin was cruel. “I mean I’m taking back Silver Banks, whether you like it or not. This place was founded on the backs of the Stevens’ family. We slaved over the land, as far as the eye could see. And once we finally tamed this god-forsaken corner of the country, you know what happened?”
“I have a feeling you’re going to tell us,” I quipped.
He ignored my charm. “A bunch of soft as hell assholes waltzed in and settled in to the town that we created for us. Damn, Silver Banks belongs to me, and I’m taking her back. I’m stronger than any one of you. I’ll take who I want and kill who I don’t. If that doesn’t seem fair to you, well you can take it up with the big guy upstairs.”
“That’s madness!” Despite his pallor, bright spots of anger stood out on Smitty’s cheeks. “You hear yourself, Stevens? You want to cull the population like a herd of livestock?” Several other voic
es piped up in outraged agreement. Someone referred to Wade as a “psycho butcher.” I was inclined to agree.
So was Wade. “That’s exactly what I want, Smitty. And you and your friends are gonna be the first on the chopping block. Once we get rid of the dross, we can take the town back. Make it what it was meant to be.” He turned to the anxious crowd staring at him wide-eyed. “Who’s with me? Once we get rid of these few naysayers, we’ll have total freedom to do whatever we damn well please. Silver Banks will be ours! The world could be ours.”
To my great chagrin, a cheer rose from the masses. I moved around to stand between Wade and my friends, the Gladius Solis held out in front of me. “Over my dead body,” I told him simply. I’d gotten used to wagering with my life in the recent past.
“That can be arranged.” He didn’t give me time to do anything but block his rush. As he ran, his frame grew back into the shape of a Were, and by the time he hit my sword, all traces of humanity were gone from him.
“I didn’t want to kill you, Wade.” I looked past him at the cluster of his supporters. They, too, were dressing back up in wolves’ clothing. “I didn’t want to kill any of you.”
“Shame,” his Were-voice growled mockingly. “Now you have to. I’d rather die fighting than go back to the way things used to be.”
“All right, then. I’ve put up with your shit long enough, now you’ve given me something I’m glad to oblige.”
Maya appeared at my shoulder, all Were. “Can I help?” she growled.
“Yeah.” I grimaced. “You bet your furry ass.”
“You got it,” Maya replied, and as she did, the Weres who had chosen the side of darkness attacked.
Battle heated up around me. As I fought Were after evil Were, I glimpsed Maya and Smitty locked in battle close by. While Maya was swift and crafty, Smitty was a powerhouse, attacking with brute strength and accuracy, the gifts that made him a master metal worker. Throughout the battle, Smitty directed the others who chose to stand with us with strategic mastery.
Were after nasty Were fell to their attacks.
After only a few minutes, the fighting stopped. I stood, flanked by my friends in the relative silence of the cavern. Wade and his closest cronies were the only ones left standing. We’d all anticipated this outcome, even Smitty, but there was still a lull as we sized each other up, maneuvering around the fallen. Wade stretched to his full height and beat his paws on his chest.
The universal, cross-species symbol for come at me, bro.
Leave it to him to pick some really shitty last words.
Maya and the remaining Weres on our side took on Wade’s friends. Wade and I squared up for one final standoff. I’d expected him to talk some, since he typically had such a hard time keeping the utter stupidity from flowing out of his mouth, but his hatch was battened down. He just wanted to get it over with.
First thing we had ever agreed on.
Somewhere off to the side, a bone snapped. Maya flung one of Wade’s friends across the cave. I shook my head. For a tiny, mild-mannered vet, that girl could go hard as hell. Then Wade was barreling down on me, and I had to rein in my attention. Tunnel-vision closed in on him. He was my target, and he was the only thing that existed aside from me and Kronin’s sword.
The first cut was a drive-by, inflicted as he blew past. A red trail of blood laced the air after him.
He spun and advanced again, trying to catch me with one heavy shoulder dropped toward my torso, maybe aiming to break my ribs or toss me Maya-style. Pulling up the sword in a defensive stance, I goaded him on.
“Come on, ya fleabag. Come and taste the blade of the gods.”
He skid to a stop and reoriented himself. The blade waited patiently in my hand, bloodless and brilliant.
Standing up straight, he let out a noise that was half laughter, half growl. “Blade of the gods? In the hand of a human, what good might it do?” He gestured to his friends fighting mine. “We are the new deities. All the greatness of humankind, infused with the power of the eternal.”
I waved the Gladius Solis in front of me. “I’ve got your infusion right here.”
Wade ran at me again. I cut him again. The blood loss slowed him down now, and I thought his third pass would fizzle out before it started.
But as he turned to face me, his hatred blazed in his eyes, and he found a third wind. The sound that left his throat was eerie, inhuman.
I stood directly in his path. When I knew he’d passed the point of no return, I held the sword straight out. He could have called off the attack if he wanted to. He could have chosen not to lunge at me with all of his strength.
But he didn’t.
Wade was dead before his body hit the ground. I withdrew the killing blade and stood quietly over him, watching the rest of the fights play out. At the end, Maya and I gathered the survivors and brought them up to the mouth of the caves, Smitty and Amber leading the way.
I spent the whole way back trying to figure out how the hell to tell Sheriff Rosewood that nearly twenty of his citizens were dead.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Rosewood sat for a long time with his head in his hands, exemplifying the way we all felt. Maya, Smitty, and I gave him the silence he needed to soak it all in.
I had come up with some fancy rationalizing speech, but the second I stepped into his back office and looked him in the face, I couldn’t get anything out but the bare truth. To his credit, he’d listened all the way through before burying his head, and his immediate reaction hadn’t been to excommunicate me from Silver Banks for good or slap me in handcuffs.
Really, I had already gotten the most I could hope for.
That being said, it was something of a shock for him to lift his eyes to mine, fold his hands atop his desk, sigh, and say, “I don’t know what we would have done without you.”
They would have all surely died.
I cleared my throat. “It’s OK, Sheriff. I was just doing my duty, same as you.”
A warrior and a diplomat. My choice in hero was excellent.
I wanted to say something about how his first choice for hero pissed himself when they first met, but the Sheriff was already responding.
“So what do we do now? Do you work for the government or something? Will they have people to help deal with this? I don’t know if I’m the man for this job.”
It pained me to deny him that little bit of solace, but I shook my head. “That’s not true. You’re exactly the person to help Silver Banks move on. And unfortunately, you can’t really bring in anyone from the outside at this point. The evidence we had is gone; all we’ve got is a bunch of human looking corpses in a cave. That’s pretty high on anyone’s list of things that don’t look good.”
“You don’t think there’s anything the military or the FBI could do?” Rosewood looked like he wanted to crawl in bed and sleep for a million years. He’d aged a decade in the twenty minutes we’d been sitting around his desk.
“Other than commit everyone involved to the nearest asylum? No. Not to mention that things on a larger scale aren’t even close to over. There will come a day when I’ll need Weres on my side, I’m sure. And I’d like to know I have a place to find them.”
The sheriff nodded wearily. “All right. I’m choosing to trust you, as I know that without you here, this could have gotten much, much worse.” His smile was sad but genuine. “For that, the town of Silver Banks will always be grateful.”
“But what about the other towns in the area?” Maya chimed in. “There are little hamlets like this all over. I find it hard to believe Lupres only focused on one.” She paused for emphasis. “And remember, I found Smitty just outside of Greenlake, bleeding all over creation.”
“Son of a gun probably told me to spread the disease,” Smitty grumbled. “And I had no choice but to say yes.”
“It’s not your fault,” Maya said soothingly, glancing down at what was left of the blacksmith’s arm, hanging in a sling. “That body we found in the river, that w
as how Lupres took control of Silver Banks. And it stands to reason that other places may also be infected. Which means there may be an indeterminate number of Weres out there. Who knows how they’re going to act now that the big bad leader is dead?”
I pursed my lips. “Maybe they’re all like Wade.”
Smitty scowled. “I’m still up nights thinking about how many sided with him.”
I would’ve been lying if I said I wasn’t too. There was one other thing that made my skin crawl. “Plus, think about how the infections have happened so far. Mormouth was gone in, what? A day? That was probably where Lupres began his assault—where he took his hand. Here, it took a little longer. We don’t know what’s happening in Greenlake, but I’m willing to bet that because Smitty was recovered before he could finish the job, things are progressing even slower there. We could be seeing new Weres for weeks or months.”
“Can you stay?” Rosewood asked me. “I think your services to the town are more than enough compensation for room and board.”
I chewed my lip. “I don’t know, Sheriff. I don’t think so. This is the third major incident I’ve witnessed, in the third separate location. I can’t expect things to stay static for very long out there in the world. And when the shit hits the fan again, I bet it’ll be somewhere else. Not to mention, I’ve got unfinished business with a bunch of vampires in New York.”
He stared at me to see if I was joking, then nodded grimly when he saw the serious look on my face. “Well, I’m sad to see you go. I’m sure we all are. But I can’t rightly ask you to forfeit your commitment to the greater cause for our sake.”
“I’m not leaving you empty handed,” I said, stealing my own glance at Smitty.
“Don’t worry, Leland,” Smitty said. “I got it covered. The shop’s like a damn armory these days. And you know my granddaughter’s got one hell of a shooting eye.”
I chuckled. “You’re telling me.”
“Plus, missing arm notwithstanding, I haven’t felt this good in years. We’ll cook up a militia,” Smitty continued. “A Were Army. There are still some of us here who are good, and anyone who wants to help can come and be armed. Then we search out the new ones, track ‘em down, keep ‘em in line. If they won’t stay in line, we get rid of ‘em before they have the chance to spread.”