by Krista Wolf
Her scent was strong as she hovered over me, all perfume and jasmine and… something else. Something more powerful. Something coppery and primal, I couldn’t put my finger on.
“There’s little time,” my angel spoke softly. “In just minutes you’ll be dead.”
I punched the button on my morphine drip. In the back of my drug-addled mind, I knew I’d already maxed it out.
“I’m offering you life. Hope. A new beginning.”
I clamped down with my jaw. Squeezed so hard it felt like my teeth would shatter.
“This is your last chance, Broderick.”
She leaned forward, brushing her lips against me.
“Your very last moments in this world.”
She kissed me, more with pity than with passion. I sighed as her mouth moved lower, over my chin, my neck, my chest.
I could feel the infection in my veins now. It ran through every inch of me, just beneath my skin.
“Broderick…”
It was white hot. Sizzling agony.
“Save yourself.”
I was dying of thirst. Her lips were cool, clear water…
I gulped hard. Finally I nodded.
“Is that a yes?”
I nodded again, this time more vigorously. In my weakened state, I noticed my chin barely moved.
“You have to say it, Broderick. I need the words.”
My throat was bone dry. My tongue glued to the roof of my mouth.
I opened my cracked lips and spoke anyway.
“Do it,” I murmured. “Help me.”
Her mouth moved to my lips again. Her eyes bore into mine.
“Tell me to—”
“Make me,” I gasped.
Her eyes flared, two green jewels sparkling in the hospital’s dim light. It was what she wanted. Precisely what she’d been waiting for.
“Make me.”
The angel’s smile of pity turned to one of enthusiasm, even rapture. She bent her head, lowered her lips…
As her teeth broke through I barely felt anything at all.
I blinked away the memory, shoving it back to that dark place I seldom visited in my mind. I needed to focus. Focus on masking myself from Karessa. Focus on staying close enough to Serena, while still putting out feelers for Damien, who I could sense even now was moving in my direction.
There wasn’t a lot of time. Damien was bringing two pursuers with him. I could smell them now, their scent riding the air. Christophe. Lionel. Running full tilt, in my direction.
I inhaled deeply, filling my great human lungs with air.
Make me.
Karessa had taken my life, and yet she’d given it too. Damien’s choice had been no less made for him, and he’d adjusted famously. I’d always hated him for that — hated him for the ease at which he was able to accept, adapt, even thrive.
I’d hated him and I never understood why. But now I did.
Make me…
It had taken me all these years to come to terms with who I was. All those long years of turmoil, just so I could—
I could hear them now, rushing this way. The sound got my blood pumping. I tilted my chin upward, allowing it to be a catalyst for the metamorphosis. I felt the familiar, rising heat of the shift.
My eyes rolled into my head. My lips curled backward, stretching over my teeth…
Make me.
I was who I was.
36
DAMIEN
I reached the long chamber just as Christophe leapt. There was no avoiding it. No escaping him, four legs to only two…
Tucking myself into a ball, I covered my head. The huge grey wolf glanced off me from behind, raking my arms, tearing them open from elbow to wrist. Pain ripped through me as blood splattered the floor, big warm droplets in a fan-like pattern.
No sooner had Christophe landed than he was jumped by something else. By someone else.
Broderick.
My wolf-brother hit him in the side, so hard I could hear the dull, sickening crunch of several ribs snapping in two. Christophe yelped — something I always thought funny — and his now-diagonal momentum sent him skidding hard into the opposite wall.
I backed up. Kept moving. I could hear voices now from the other end of the hall — feminine voices, speaking in sinister tones. Voices that belonged to Serena… and Karessa, too.
Broderick’s ears went up, and I sensed peripheral movement off to one side. Rather than turn to look, I transfered hands and swung Boone’s club in a great arc over my left shoulder. It connected solidly and satisfyingly with Lionel’s mouth…
CRACK!
The strike was so hard it jarred the baseball bat out of my hand. For Lionel though, it was worse. An ugly red line split his snout all the way to the nose. Several of his teeth were suddenly missing, including his canines, and he was spitting up frothy pink blood through his big black nostrils.
“Broderick!” I shouted. “Serena!”
I pointed to the far end of the corridor, crimson droplets raining from the ends of my fingertips. I was bleeding badly, from both of my forearms. Still, he nodded in recognition and bolted off in the right direction.
Christophe was recovering. He was limping terribly though, and favoring one side.
“Come on!” I cried loudly, trying to startle him. “You wanted to fight me?”
I kept my eye on the two of them, while slowly stepping in the direction of my club. I hoped they wouldn’t notice.
“Look at yourselves!” I shouted. “Think she even cares about you? And yet you’re still doing this, all for her?”
The wolf that was Christophe hung his head low. He stopped growling long enough to swing a glance at Lionel, who kept sneezing blood, uncontrollably. It was like he couldn’t stop.
In that instant, I grabbed the bat.
“She’d leave you here to die,” I said, “either one of you, if it meant getting Broderick back.” I jerked my head. “And now he’s going to her. And you’re both stuck here, all alone, licking your wounds.”
I really couldn’t talk. My own wounds were in need of a dire licking. I was feeling woozy now, even lightheaded. But I couldn’t let them see that.
“This pack is finished,” I said, keeping up the command in my voice. “We all know it. We’ve known it since—”
Lionel finally stopped sneezing. He shook himself off, backed toward the chamber’s entrance… and then slunk away.
Christophe’s entire expression changed as we both turned to watch him go.
“Good choice,” I called after him. “Now… about you…”
I whipped my head back around to face Christophe, but there was just one problem.
He was already gone.
37
SERENA
My push struck Karessa mid-flank, sending her spinning wildly across the chamber. Her arms and legs flailed out. Her sleek wolf body looked almost like the detached rotor of a helicopter as it sailed into the opposite wall.
Rather than crumple, she actually hit the ground running. One of her legs looked wrong, and her gait was off, but she was still sprinting forward with incredible speed.
Move!
I jumped to one side, just in time to avoid her next leap. I felt the rush of air as she whizzed by, landing on her bad leg and letting her body flop to the ground to stop her forward momentum.
“Enough!” I yelled, trying to regain my composure. “Karessa, this is stupid!”
I was talking to a wolf. An actual wolf. In the back of my head, a little voice laughed at the absurdity of the statement.
“We came for Broderick’s totem,” I said. “That’s all. Give it to him, and everything will be—”
Something hit me, hard from behind. It knocked the air from lungs. Slammed me face-first into the hard rock floor.
“UNNNFFF!”
Agony flared. It traveled up through my forearms, emanating from my wrists. If I hadn’t gotten my hands out in front of me at the last moment, half the teeth in my mouth would already b
e scattered across the floor.
Another wolf landed over my head; a big grey one, all muscle and sinew. I recognized it immediately as Christophe, the guy Damien had pounded back in the alley.
“That’s the second time you’ve blindsided me,” I grunted from the floor. “The second time you’ve hit from behind.”
I could see the wolf was hurt too, and pretty badly. It was leaning to one side. And not just from our collision.
I rose, first to my knees, then to my feet. I knew I’d have to dig deep to push again. But I was angry. And my telekinesis was always easier when I was angry…
The wolf that was Christophe snarled, and I shoved it as hard as I could. It flew backwards, end over end, its eyes registering pure unbridled shock as it was lifted into the air and sent hurtling into the hard rock wall. It crumpled behind the last row of bookcases, out of sight, out of mind.
“SERENA!”
Damien’s voice roared through the vault. In the end, it was his yell that saved my life.
I turned, saw, and ducked… just in time to avoid the twin rows of Karessa’s razor-sharp teeth. She sailed past me, grazing my chin. I felt another stab of pain there, and dropped to one knee to keep from falling over.
But Karessa had overcompensated. She hadn’t counted on not hitting me, and so she sailed into one of the three crumbling columns that fed archways to the ceiling. Dust sifted down from overhead, and new cracks formed. I watched as she shuddered to a halt against the ancient pillar, half covered with gravel and stone.
I was beyond dizzy now — I was drained. My vision was already blurry and I could taste blood high up in the back of nose. Even so, I sighed in relief. Because standing on either side of me, I could just make out the reassuring forms of Broderick and Damien.
Thank God.
Contentment flowed through me. I felt safe. I felt—
“Stay down Karessa,” Broderick called loudly. “It’s over.”
My sexy Scandinavian was human again. He stood to my right, magnificently naked, all chest and arms and powerful core. His expression was almost sad. Reluctant, even. But he was still fully and completely in command.
From the rubble on the other side of the chamber, Karessa rose despite the order. She too was naked. I felt taken back a little bit by her natural beauty, from her stunning green eyes to the long curls of thick red hair that flowed down over her breasts. But her mouth ruined it quickly, as she curled it into an ugly frown.
“You’ve destroyed everything,” she said sourly. “And for what? For her?”
She sneered in my direction. I wanted to snap back at her, but instead I just brushed myself off.
“She’s not one of us, you know,” said Karessa. “And she’ll never be. You won’t ever make her, Broderick, even if she asks. You don’t have the courage. You don’t have the balls.”
Broderick took a step forward, totally undaunted. He stood facing his ex lover, both of them defiant, both of them wholly without clothes.
“I’m human first,” said Broderick. “Always have been. Always will be.”
“Not for long,” smirked Karessa. “Not without your—”
Her sentence died as he held up a strange metal object. It was shiny in places. Dull in others. Twisted in all kinds of unnatural ways.
He was holding his totem… and deep in my heart, I knew what it was:
The piece of shrapnel that had almost killed him.
“Goodbye Karessa,” said Broderick. “And don’t—”
There was a rumble. A shift. The ceiling, already bowed out and holding an enormous, crushing weight, seemed to ripple and move.
“Karessa!” I shouted. “Get over here!” I waved her on. “Over on this side of the chamber!”
She curled her lip at me. Laughed.
“Don’t pretend this isn’t over,” she said cruelly. “Not by—”
The ceiling shifted again. Dust rained from above, heavy and thick.
“Karessa, now!” Damien jumped in. “She’s right! Listen to her!”
She stood stubbornly defiant, both hands resting casually on her shapely hips. But her indifference was laced with worry, too. I could see it in her eyes.
“The ceiling’s coming down over there,” I said quickly. “There’s too much damage! There’s too much—”
“DON’T EVER SPEAK TO ME YOU—”
KA-BOOOOOM!
With a horrendous rush of wind and noise, the entire center section of the vault’s ceiling came crashing down! I couldn’t tell if it happened on Karessa or just in front of her… whether it crushed her beneath hundreds of tons of rock, or whether it only separated us by a newly formed, impenetrable wall of instant concrete.
“Karessa!” shouted Broderick at the top of his lungs. “KARESSA!”
He and Damien rushed forward, choking on the rolling wave of dust. A minute went by. Two minutes. By the time the air cleared, there was nothing else to see but stone and gravel.
“She’s gone,” said Damien sadly.
“Maybe.”
They both looked at me, and I shrugged.
“You know how many tunnels criss-cross in and out of this place?” I said. “Especially here, at the vault. The Order would never have built this chamber without more than one exit. Trust me.”
They sighed in unison. Each of them looked only semi-hopeful.
“Besides,” I pointed, coughing. “That bitch is resourceful.”
38
SERENA
Xiomara was an all-too-close blur taking up my phone’s entire screen. I could see skin pores, the hairs on her chin. The arch of an ancient eyebrow.
“You’re doing this on purpose, aren’t you?”
She pulled back a bit, and made a face. A face that was very familiar to me, because she made it almost every time we spoke.
“It still boggles my mind, Ms. Weston,” she snarled. “You had all of Paris. You could’ve fucked anyone in the whole damned city — anyone at all — and you had to go and sleep with your contact?”
“Contacts,” I corrected her. “And yes. I slept with them.” I crossed my arms defiantly. “Both of them.”
At the same time, I wanted to add, but didn’t.
Xiomara grunted and shook her head slowly. “That sounds like a goddamn mess.”
“You wouldn’t believe it if I told you.”
The old woman sighed heavily into the phone’s camera. But looking past her designed expression, I thought I could see a glimmer of mischief in her eye.
“Well that mess is on you then, Ms. Weston. When it all goes south — and it invariably will — remember one thing: you are the architect of your own suffering.”
I wanted to tell her to fuck off. That I’d screw whoever I wanted, whenever I wanted. That I didn’t ask for or require her permission to make those types of decisions.
Instead I just sat there, letting her mock anger drain away to nothing. In truth, I thought maybe she was even a little bit proud of me.
“Are you done?”
“For now.”
“Good,” I said. “Because you need to send more people. Arato and Poole are up to their teeth in work right now, photographing, moving, and cataloging everything they can get their hands on down there. You want a mess, Xiomara? Come see it. That place is a fucking mess.”
She scoffed at me. “Only because you brought the ceiling down. They said you buried half the Order’s work beneath a pile of—”
“I saved that work,” I countered, “from being destroyed. And you’re welcome by the way.”
I reached over and grabbed a small stack of books, fanning them out in my hands for her to see. The West African woman’s entire face lit up with child-like excitement.
“Just wait until you see some of the stuff that’s down there,” I said proudly. “Might wanna put on a second diaper. You’re going to shit yourself.”
She caught herself practically drooling, and her expression hardened again.
“If there’s that much work,” she s
napped, “maybe you should get your ass down there and help? Arato and Poole could use your—”
“Because I’m taking some time off,” I said proudly. “Call it a much needed vacation.”
She barked out a short, vicious laugh. “I don’t remember ever—”
“You didn’t,” I said, stretching out across the enormous bed. “But I’m taking one anyway.”
I angled the phone intentionally so that she could see. We were still in the Executive Suite, three days later. Broderick was picking through a big platter of food room service had just brought up. Damien was at the foot the bed, my legs in his lap, expertly rubbing my calves.
“Hi mom!” he smiled and waved merrily from the background. Both of his forearms were still bandaged, wrist to elbow.
“Jesus Christ, Weston,” Xiomara exclaimed. “How long do you think you’ll—”
“Until I’m ready to come back,” I said. “And not a second before.”
There was a certain admiration in her eyes now, and not just because I had two beautiful men attending to me. Xiomara could be pushy as hell, but she’d always been somewhat of a champion for taking a stand.
“So you’re staying in Paris?”
“For a while,” I said. “Maybe I’ll even see some more of Europe. Norway sounds good right about now.”
On the other side of the room, Broderick flashed me a smile.
“Norway,” Xiomara muttered. “Unfuckingbelievable.”
“What was that?”
“Nothing, Weston,” she said. A certain part of her had given up. “I’ll see you back here… well… apparently whenever.”
I smiled back at her sweetly. “Whenever sounds absolutely wonderful.”
Before she could say anything else, I pushed the END button.
My eyes blinked open and I was staring at Damien. The light of the candles had grown a little dimmer, but not much.
“So…” said Damien. “Were you serious? You’re really gonna stick around for a while?”
I was lying between them, their warm naked bodies pressed up against mine. Apparently we’d dozed off, and for a little while too. Not long ago I’d taken care of them once already. Each in turn, and also together.