I snarled. She didn’t notice. She was already on her way.
Brandon and I crashed through the neatly-trimmed hedges around the nearest building—a house once, a dentist’s office now. I suppose it’s a mercy that these were businesses, and vacant at this hour. We cut through its yard, approaching the edge of Pickering Creek. There’d been enough rain that the creek ran fast and swollen, rising up the banks. Some enterprising soul had already set out sandbags.
Marcus was on the opposite side, going for Raoul. There was a terrible grace to the way Raoul fought, but Marcus had madness on his side. He was blunt, brash, making mistakes—and was completely unpredictable. We all leaped toward them, but just as we approached, he lunged in and ripped a slash down Raoul’s side.
I howled and hurled myself after them both, which was not my most well-thought-out move ever.
The water and my wounded leg both fought me. I was too slow to have the element of surprise, but at least it diverted Marcus’ attention. He rounded on me, instead of Raoul—and I thought I’d have a chance to retaliate, but he had the advantage of weight, experience and sheer, brutal speed. Before I knew what was happening, he’d knocked me under the surface of the water and held me there.
This is what it’s like, he said, all too clearly, while I thrashed and fought for air. The torrent holding you under, washing you away. This is what awaits you.
Awaits me? It was bad enough already. I choked, starting to fade. Fortunately, Brandon caught Marcus by the scruff of his neck, hauling him back, and I split the surface of the creek, gasping.
Ilsa bounded over me, attacking Marcus from behind. Marcus howled, the sound degrading into a laugh.
You won’t last, Ilsa. She’ll get you. She will.
Ilsa bit him so hard it hurt just to watch. Marcus didn’t even stop. He kept struggling toward me, even while Ilsa tried to drag him away. Raoul blocked off his escape from the rear. I wondered what Brandon would do. He was hesitating, as if reality was finally sinking in.
Ilsa wasn’t going for a capture. She never had been.
We can hold him, Brandon protested, but Ilsa’s eyes flared.
No.
Marcus met his son’s eyes. Whatever passed between them wasn’t for me to hear. Brandon didn’t take it well, though. He jerked back, shocked, and when Ilsa saw that, she sprang forward. Don’t listen. Marcus lies—
He’d also gotten an opening. Marcus, freed, spun straight to me. I couldn’t look away. My childhood nightmare was right there…
But he didn’t attack me. He only wanted me to understand.
Blood never lies, he said.
It was the last thing he ever did say. Ilsa got his neck between her pristine, pale jaws and snapped. It sent him into a wracking spasm, one that sent conflicting signals through him in all directions. His thoughts crackled, then went dull. The light in his eyes dimmed. In one last twist, his body contorted out of shape. He died as he’d begun, falling into the river as a broken, battered human.
I could only watch as the water took him. All around him, his spilled blood curled into the water, its tendrils coiling and frothing around my feet. Blood never lies, he’d said, and there it was, everywhere—in the water, the air, sinking into the riverbed, matting my fur. I didn’t even need to taste it. I shut my eyes, overcome.
No, Ilsa snarled.
Too late.
His memories came at me sideways, showing me flashes of Marcus and Ilsa together, planning something, seeking someone outside the pack for help. I felt, rather than saw, what came of that. There were experiments. Dangerous ones. Medicines so potent they weren’t fully burned away by the transformations. The first few had their upsides, but things started going wrong—and I felt him warp past sanity until he snapped.
I saw Marcus in that state, going after me.
It was too much to take in. All those years of Grey playing mad scientist on me…I finally understood how careful he’d been, how much he’d struggled to protect me from his most dangerous theories. It could have gone so wrong.
And I sure as hell had to watch it go wrong.
It was terrible, knowing the kind of feverish hunger he’d felt, the completely inhuman satisfaction of fulfilling it—the cycles of withdrawal, the constant need. The pain and guilt were horrifying. And I saw him run. The pack chased him, time and again, but he’d always managed to slip away.
From there, the images degraded. There were too many, diluted by time and illness and rushing water. But I could feel him trying to break free of what he’d done to himself. He’d just never succeeded. It always ended in violence, against himself or someone else. Years of suffering, of trying again, of failing and fleeing, on and on without end.
Marcus truly wanted to erase the evidence of what he’d done. Stop the experiments, stop the people damaged by them, stop the people who’d helped conduct them, everything. He was just too far gone to end the cycle without hurting anyone.
The truth of it all was floating in the bloody murk of the river. If I’d stayed a second or two more, I might have pulled out the last few details I needed—names, clearer images of faces, absolute proof. However, I didn’t get the chance. Ilsa pulled me out by her teeth, tossing me to dry land. From the way my head was burning with it all, who knows…maybe she was doing me a favor.
Raoul came to my side as I curled up, shaking in uncontrollable little fits. His warmth was the only comfort I got as the rain poured down, and as Ilsa hissed into my mind alone: What did you see?
I was so exhausted I couldn’t reply. Ilsa waited over me for five seconds, ten, then wheeled away as if she’d cast her hands to the air. It was quiet for a while.
We can’t, I heard Brandon say at last. His voice sounded weirdly hollow. Can’t leave him.
We must.
Ilsa, this is…
We all stopped when a far-off call lifted. There were two short barks, then a long, plaintive summons that echoed down the hillsides. I weakly lifted my head.
The call home, Raoul murmured. They have something.
Through my weary fog, I remembered. Ayu and Pandora…and Kane. Brandon quivered with tension. Go, Ilsa said. There was no arguing with it. We left the river—and Marcus—behind.
*
It was a long climb back. We took a roundabout path to avoid being seen, and I couldn’t even feel my feet by the end. Raoul and I were silent, but stayed close. I’m not sure what either of us were expecting, but we knew it wouldn’t be good.
Ilsa didn’t speak to Brandon the whole way back. Maybe if she had talked him through it, things would have turned out differently. As it was, the next crisis was laid out for us without warning. Ayu and Pandora had caught up with Kane. There’d obviously been a bad fight, and they must have dragged him all the way back. They hadn’t gotten out unscathed, either. Ayu, whose left eye was grossly swollen, was gingerly licking one of Pandora’s wounds when we arrived. The cut had nearly severed her ear.
He tried to run, Pandora said. She sounded grayed over with exhaustion. And he tried to…
She broke off in a way that suggested all sorts of wrongness. Brandon darted forward, trying to see. Ayu nudged him back as best she could, but it didn’t last. What—he said.
She sounded even wearier. No choice.
Brandon pushed forward, then stopped. I looked around him, and saw what he’d seen. Kane was breathing, but that was the best I could say. Even werewolf healing can only do so much.
Brandon stared through a few seconds of horrified silence, then let out a howl of rage.
In the end, Raoul had to drag him away. The sound kept going, fading under cracks and crashes and increasing distance, and I’m sure I kept hearing it after it was physically possible to do so.
Ilsa didn’t say a word. She just sat before Kane at the dormant bonfire pit, and waited.
She kept waiting all the way until dawn.
I stayed out there, too. Didn’t know what else to do. Raoul returned eventually, looking haggard. He said Brandon was sleeping and wou
ldn’t be going anywhere. I knew Brandon wouldn’t be sleeping right now without, well, encouragement, but I didn’t ask. I did let Raoul sit beside me until we both transformed back. For my part at least, it didn’t go down easy.
Raoul was holding me by the time I came to my senses again, which was both a comfort and completely humiliating.
“Um,” I mumbled, feeling my cheeks flush. Eventually he got the idea, and turned away while I tried to force my trembling limbs to wrap around me.
“We should go,” Raoul suggested softly. By then, though, I’d seen Ilsa unfold herself and step forward to where Kane still lay.
He was flat on his back, almost motionless except for shallow breaths and the occasional twitch of his fingers. Some of his wounds were too deep to have healed properly, and the change had only ripped them wider, not re-patched them. I felt embarrassed to see him all splayed out like that, with nothing hidden whatsoever, but mostly I just felt horrified. Even I’d never come out of full moons looking that bad.
Pandora sat nearby, her eyes strangely blank. She’d been scrubbing at her mouth with one hand until half her face was red. “After what I saw,” she said, “he deserved it.”
“Oh, God,” I murmured. His memories. She must have seen a few during the fight. And knowing him, he’d probably focused on the worst of them on purpose. Kane let out a low, watery laugh at her expense, then focused on Ilsa, who looked so cold I’m amazed she didn’t turn the earth to ice.
“Why did you lie to me?” she said.
“You…asked too much. My father—”
“You hated him.”
He laughed again, coughing on the last note in a strangled sort of way. “You broke him.”
“That’s not true.”
“You break everyone.” Kane slowly shook his head. “You’ve already decided about me. Get it over with.”
Ilsa crouched down, watching him as if he were some experiment that had turned out strangely, fascinatingly wrong. “I trusted you,” she whispered. “What did you do? Let Marcus endanger us all. Why?”
Kane took in a few rasping breaths. Something changed in his expression. “I have so much more power than you, and I’m still your fucking lapdog. You and your games have us all tied…I wanted to hurt you back for once.”
Ilsa’s face twisted before she flung her arms out wide. “Then do it,” she spat, baring her throat. “Take your revenge. See what comes of it. See what comes of us all.”
“No.” His smile stretched grotesquely. “This is so much more fun.”
And he spat blood in her face.
Ilsa shut her eyes and turned her head. I could see the pattern on her pristine, pale skin, the mark on her lips where she could so easily taste. Slowly, she reached up and wiped it away, staring at her fingertip for what felt like years.
“Go ahead,” Kane said. I could hear the compulsion in his voice. He was manipulating her with everything he had left. “Take it. Take your evidence against me. Do it.”
Ilsa stared him full in the face. For a minute I thought she would. Then she stood. The disdain in her voice was the scariest thing I’d ever heard.
“No,” she said, and walked away.
We were left behind there. I finally began struggling to stand. I don’t even know what I meant to do, because the last thing I should have been doing was helping Kane, but I couldn’t let him just lie there. He’d sagged back, though, exhausted. I think he used the last of his energy trying to coerce Ilsa. His eyes were still open, but there wasn’t much there.
“You’ll find out,” he whispered to the sky. “You’ll find—”
Then he simply stopped.
I covered my eyes. I think Raoul picked me up after a while; I remember getting carried across the grounds and being put down somewhere. It was uncomfortable, but quiet, and I couldn’t smell death in the air from wherever I was.
Someone put a blanket over me, blocking out the cold. I was more than willing to hide underneath it and pretend nothing else was out there, either. Eventually, so exhausted I couldn’t do anything else, I fell asleep.
And morning crept on without me.
Chapter Twenty
Waking up in the wrong room after the full moon was disconcerting at first—and terrifying shortly thereafter.
I didn’t recognize it right away. It was a small room with two beds. I was in one, and the other stood empty. There was a basic sink, something you could generously call a kitchenette, a few cupboards, and a rudimentary light bulb above. From what I could see out the window, the electrical rigging looked odd. It was just a cable strung down the hill on unorthodox poles. I guessed the setup wasn’t the most legal thing on earth.
Once I blearily put all that together, I knew this had to be one of the cabins, out in the woods with the rest of the pack. And that realization made the whole night crash in on me at once. I practically fell onto the floor with my desperate flail of, Oh, God, I have to get home.
Ayu, though, was there to catch me.
“B. Hey. Calm down,” she said.
I clutched the blanket around me and stared. My first thought was that she looked…remarkably collected, and that was terrifying. What do you do with someone who could wound a man that deeply and consign him to die, then walk away like nothing had happened? I shrank back, then saw the deep bruises beneath her eyes, and sensed the weary murk of her thoughts. The pain there, I realized, was real.
She twisted her lips. “Yeah. Some night.”
That was one way to put it. I shook my head. My throat still felt like I’d been screaming the whole night through, so I really only managed two words: “Are you…”
Okay? Insane? What was the next word? I didn’t know, so I stopped.
Ayu shrugged in reply. “What do you think? No, I’m not going to miss Kane. I have my reasons.” She grimaced. “He had a way of getting what he wanted by telling you you did, too. He never did to me what he did to Pandora, but…he’s worse than you know.”
I didn’t want to think about how true that probably was. “Why did Pandora ever put up with being around him, then?”
“It’s not like she had anywhere else to go.”
The simplicity of that was piercing. “Is that why you joined, then?” I said softly. “For her?”
“Joining the pack was my choice,” she said shortly. “And anything beyond that is none of your fucking business.”
I went silent. Ayu picked up the pillow I’d knocked loose, shoved it behind me without much grace or ceremony, then said, “She’s still off healing, if you cared. Kane fucked with her pretty badly. Ilsa’s keeping an eye on her. At least she’s trying to help.”
I pictured Ilsa last night, standing over Kane in much less helpful fashion, and shuddered.
Ayu guessed where my thoughts were going. “Ilsa made the call. She’s pack leader—it’s her right. We did what she asked, and I’m not going to let myself be sorry.” Ayu’s voice cracked enough that I wasn’t sure I believed her. “Besides…your night wasn’t any better than mine.”
I thought of the bloody river and shut my eyes.
“Help me up?” I asked, suddenly desperate to stop having this conversation. She did, but my knees wobbled and I was too busy holding the blanket in place to balance properly, so I plunked right back down again. I swore.
“You’re not getting anywhere like this,” Ayu said, which was stating the obvious. Still, I shook my head.
“I have to get home.”
“You’re kidding.”
“You told me. You told me you’d leave my brother out of this. That he’d be fine. I disappear in the middle of a full moon and I don’t come home? He’s not going to be fine.” She looked ready to argue, but I wasn’t in the mood. “Please.”
She sighed heavily. “Fine. I can drive you. But eat something before you pass out. And…” Her expression went wry. “Clothes would be an idea.”
“You think?” I muttered.
She went off. In her absence I made a second, solo attemp
t to look around. Eventually, I limped to the chest of drawers on the far side of the room. Kane’s possessions were in there. I’m not sure what I was expecting to find—something to prove he deserved what he got? Who knows—but all I found was his clothes. I stood there for a minute, overcome with the smell of him.
I wondered what they’d done with him. I wondered if they’d burned him—which is what my nose was suggesting, given the scent of ash clinging to everything. I wondered about Marcus’ fate, too. I couldn’t decide what to feel about that one. The biggest horror of my life was gone, and all I could feel was numb.
I shut the drawer, standing there until Ayu returned. The clothes she brought weren’t an unqualified success. The blouse strained over my chest, its black lace trim itched, and the boots were too big, making me clump around even more inelegantly than usual. I made my way into the next room, though, for the breakfast of champions Ayu had dredged up—a.k.a. steak and eggs. Without the eggs. She said I’d feel better.
For better or worse, she was right. After a few bites, I felt less woozy. The muscles in my legs relaxed, and my back stopped hurting. Soon I wasn’t even fumbling with the silverware anymore. I had a long and storied history of dropping things, or cutting my own fingers instead of the food. Here, I wouldn’t have earned any points for deportment, but I didn’t slip once.
Eventually I stopped mid-chew and stared at my hands, bewildered.
“What?” Ayu said. She was hovering impatiently. “If you’re done, let’s get this over with.”
I swallowed heavily, pushed my chair back, and rose in one smooth motion that was over before I even realized I’d begun. I stopped cold again. Behold: the first person on earth to be creeped out by the simple act of standing up.
What was in that stuff?
I licked my lips, wondering over the taste, but kept my head down as I followed Ayu to the car. I was too aware of how easy my steps were, how I’d buckled my seat belt without pinching my fingers. Then I remembered what I was about to do and what I’d have to explain to my brother. I nearly threw up. What was Grey going to say…?
“Hey,” Ayu said as she turned the key. “I am not cleaning up after you. Breathe.”
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