by Lori Drake
“Um, no. My phone’s busted. Adam’s working on it. But we did have an interesting conversation with Roger.” Chris followed the direction of her eyes as they shifted toward Eric.
Eric stared back at them and arched a brow.
“Roger says he’s innocent,” Lucy blurted. Arms folded, she studied Eric with a frank gaze, making uncharacteristically bold eye contact.
Eric scoffed. “Of course he does. He knows we’ve got his nuts in a vise, if Joey’s plan works out.”
“What reason would he have to lie about it? Did you know?”
There was no immediate answer, but Eric stared Lucy down until she lowered her eyes. Then he cast a wider glance around the room. “So, the dead hunter says he’s innocent, and suddenly you all think I’m the bad guy? Is that it? That’s gratitude for you.”
“No one’s saying that,” Adam said, putting an arm around his twin.
“Everyone take a deep breath, okay?” Chris suggested. The irony of the suggestion didn’t escape him, given that he was literally incapable of doing that himself at the moment.
Eric rounded on him, eyes hard. “Stay out of this, Martin.”
Chris briefly considered doing just that, but with more than one pair of pleading eyes on him, he stood. Pain flared and he bit back a grunt. He felt unsteady on his feet, but endeavored not to show it. Joey stepped up beside him, and Ben joined on his other side. A united front.
“No,” Chris said. “Like it or not, we’re here and we’re involved.”
Based on his stormy expression, Eric did not like it. He did not like it one bit. A muscle in his cheek twitched as he looked from one alpha to the next. Lastly, his eyes shifted to Jessica. “What about you—are you buying into this insanity?”
Jessica grimaced, clearly torn, but said, “I think you need to answer Lucy’s question.”
“Of course I didn’t know,” Eric snapped.
Jessica closed her eyes and breathed out a sigh. Around the room, shoulders relaxed, but Chris’s eyes lingered on Jessica as she stood and walked over to Eric. The tension hadn’t quite left her frame.
“I’m sorry,” Jessica said.
The heat faded from Eric’s face and his lips quirked in a benevolent smile. “I forgive you for doubting me. I forgive all of you. Now let’s—“
Jessica’s palm connected with Eric’s cheek. The force of the blow snapped his head to one side.
“I’m sorry,” Jessica said, this time biting off the words, “for being so stupid.”
Eric’s retribution was swift. Before anyone could do more than gasp, he grabbed Jessica by the neck with both hands. She didn’t try to stop him, didn’t fight back, just gazed unblinkingly into his eyes as he squeezed.
Chris spared a quick glance around. The Granite Falls wolves looked on in shocked horror—all but Itsuo, who, oddly, smirked. None of them made a move to intervene.
“Eric, stop!” Joey rushed forward and grabbed Eric’s arm. Chris grabbed the other one, and together they tried to pull him back, but his hands held fast and he dragged Jessica along with him.
Jessica’s face started to turn red.
“Let her go!” Chris ignored the burning, shooting pain in his side and jammed his fingers against the wound on Eric’s back. It’d worked before, and it worked again. Eric howled in pain and released Jessica, but whirled on Chris and charged him.
Chris hit the floor hard with Eric on top of him. The fall knocked the breath from his lungs. He gasped in pain. His chest was so tight, it was like steel bands had clamped around it. He could swear he felt his ribs grating together as Eric rose over him and began throwing punches. Chris flung up his arms, but his efforts to deflect the blows weren’t effective. Eric’s fist connected with his face several times before he grunted in pain and twisted to make a grab for the fireplace poker in Joey’s hands. She must’ve hit him with it. They grappled over it while Chris struggled to breathe. Eric still straddled his torso, his knee jabbing Chris’s injured side as he twisted to contend with Joey. Chris didn’t even have the breath to cry out.
Ben joined the fray, wading in to punch Eric across the jaw. Eric’s head snapped back and he lost his grip on the poker. Physics being what they were, Joey went sprawling, landing on her ass in a most uncharacteristically graceless motion.
“Chris, stop him!” Joey shouted.
Chris wasn’t sure how he was supposed to do that, but he didn’t have enough breath—or time—to ask questions. He punched at Eric’s side with his good arm, but Eric ignored him.
“Shut him down!” Joey cried, with escalating urgency. “Like Emma, remember?”
It clicked. Chris knew what she wanted him to do, but wasn’t sure if he could. He’d never tried leaving his body on purpose before, and right now, he wasn’t sure if it was a good idea. But he closed his eyes anyway and focused on what it was like to slip out of a borrowed body. How different could it be? He willed himself upward and opened his eyes when the searing pain in his side vanished. The world had gone gray. He’d done it. On purpose.
Chris looked around with newfound clarity, despite the washed-out colors and slightly blurry landscape. It was then that he realized something else had happened while he was preoccupied with Eric. Pandemonium had broken out. Itsuo’s glowing eyes told Chris that he was under Roger’s influence. He had Adam by the hair, and, before Chris’s horrified eyes, slammed his head against the coffee table once, twice, three times. Lucy clung to Itsuo’s back like a spider monkey, hindering him but not having much luck when it came to stopping him entirely. Her hands beat at his head and shoulders ineffectually, while Brandon looked on from behind them, eyes wide in shock.
Forgetting his concern for his own well-being, Chris shot over to stand on the other side of the coffee table.
“Roger! Hey, man, knock it off!” He waved his arms for added effect.
The spirit-possessed man did pause and looked over at him, though he still held on to Adam’s hair. The younger man looked dazed and was bleeding from cuts and abrasions on his face, as well as from the nose. One of the cuts had a tiny circuit board stuck in it.
“You again? Stay out of this, or you’ll die too,” Roger said, in an eerily distorted version of Itsuo’s voice.
“Please, Roger! Adam’s as innocent as you are. He thought you killed his friend. It was a mistake!” Chris wasn’t sure if pleading would do him any good, but for the moment, Roger had stopped trying to put Adam’s face through the coffee table, so Chris counted that a win.
“Innocent?” the spirit sneered. “Hardly. Killing stains his soul, and he’s not even sorry about it.”
“He’s sorry! Believe me, he’s sorry. They all are.” All except Eric, anyway. But Chris wasn’t about to offer the vengeful spirit a trade. “Just let him go.”
The spirit snorted and slammed Adam’s head against the coffee table again. “Make me.”
Chris frowned, quickly evaluating his options. Possess Adam, try to fight back? That hadn’t gone so well with Kate. Then he remembered what’d happened when he tried to battle Roger over Colt’s body. He’d bounced right off. It gave him an idea.
The next time Itsuo brought Adam’s head down, Chris dove over Adam’s head and threw himself at Itsuo. He staggered backward and lost his grip on Adam’s hair, further overbalanced by the blue-haired hellion clinging to his back. Adam fell forward across the coffee table and didn’t get up.
Itsuo managed to catch his balance without toppling to the floor, but a moment later, someone else barreled into him. It was Brandon, finally stirred to action. This time, Itsuo went down. All three of them did, taking an end table down with them. The cheap wood gave way under their combined weight with a noisy crack and collapsed, sending chips of particle board flying.
Lucy scrambled out of the pile and went for Adam. It was a bad idea, because it left Brandon alone to contend with Itsuo. While Itsuo was considerably less formidable with Roger in the driver’s seat, Roger did have a single-minded desire to kill everyone that
made him dangerous. He also had nothing to lose. If Itsuo killed someone, great. If they killed Itsuo, he’d be just as content. Roger bashed Itsuo’s head against Brandon’s, briefly stunning him, then grabbed one of the ruined end table’s legs and began clubbing Brandon with it. The two men grappled over the weapon, rolling around on the floor.
Chris cast his eyes about for something, anything that he could do to help. Ben and Joey had managed to drag Eric off his unconscious body, but that fight was still far from over. The only person not engaged in frantic fisticuffs, unconscious, or tending to the wounded was Colt. Even Jessica had recovered enough to try to help wrangle Eric. Colt just sat there, staring into the flames while the chaos swirled around him. On one hand, Chris couldn’t blame him. He’d probably be pretty damn despondent if Joey had been the hog-tied corpse upstairs. On the other, he wished Colt would do something, anything, to help.
Unwilling to take over anyone else, Chris finally dove for Eric. The world slammed back into focus, colors surging into brilliance as myriad aches and pains assaulted him. Eric had a killer headache and the wound in his back burned like fire. He’d been holding his own against the three trying to wrestle him to the ground, but when Chris took control, he let Eric’s body go limp. The others swiftly overpowered him, pinning him to the ground facedown with his arms twisted behind his back.
“Brandon needs help. Roger’s got Itsuo,” Chris said. No matter how many times he possessed someone, it was always weird to hear their voice when he spoke. Hearing Eric’s made his skin crawl. He didn’t like being inside this slimy worm.
Though she gave him a wary look, Joey glanced over her shoulder and frowned at what she saw. Chris twisted to try and see around her, but Ben must have taken it as another effort at escape. He planted a knee in the small of Eric’s back. Pain flared and Chris cried out in pain. The knee lightened, slightly.
When his vision cleared, Chris saw Joey go over and haul Itsuo off Brandon. The older wolf didn’t fight her, just scrambled back and hopped up into a fighting stance, expression wary as he watched Brandon like a dangerous animal. Brandon just lay there, panting, the table leg clutched in one hand.
It looked like Itsuo was himself again, so where was Roger? Chris got his answer when his own body stirred and sat up.
“No! No, no, no!” Chris struggled against the hands—and knee—that held him down. They tightened their grip, and Ben’s knee once again stole Chris’s ability to form a coherent thought. When the fog of pain subsided to a light mist once more, he watched in horror as Joey approached Roger-Chris and took a knee beside him.
“You okay?” she asked.
“That’s not m— That’s not Chris!” Chris exclaimed, nearly giving away his secret in his haste to warn Joey.
“Don’t listen to him, he’s trying to trick you!” Roger-Chris countered.
Joey glanced between them, then rose and withdrew a few feet.
“Joey?” Ben asked, clearly as uncertain as she was.
Joey sighed. “Tie them both up.”
Joey held the package of peas against her eye. They were cold. Freezing, actually, but that was kind of the point. Eric had gotten her good with his elbow during the scuffle, and she wouldn’t be good to anyone with one eye swollen shut. The cold felt good against her lacerated palm, at least. Things were numbing nicely. A small, somewhat dingy ray of sunshine.
Before her was a dilemma wrapped in a conundrum. Brandon had scrounged up enough nylon rope to secure both Eric and Chris to straight-backed dining chairs. Both insisted that the other was possessed by Roger. Had Chris succeeded in possessing Eric? She couldn’t ask directly, not without getting him alone.
So she sat there on the island in the kitchen, holding a bag of mostly frozen peas to her face and staring down the two men tied to chairs with her good eye. Itsuo leaned against the wall nearby, keeping an eye on everyone. He’d been mortified to learn he’d manhandled Adam while under Roger’s influence, and seemed eager to distance himself from the others in the aftermath, even if that meant leaving Jenny’s side.
Come on, Chris. Just give me a sign. Something, anything.
It didn’t help that it was after three in the morning, and forming coherent thoughts was becoming a challenge.
“Come on, this is ridiculous,” Chris said, after nearly a full minute of silent scrutiny passed. “Untie me so we can get this over with.”
Although it was Chris that spoke, Joey eyed Eric. He sat there quietly, which was point number one against him being himself. Eric was never quiet. He also hadn’t objected in the slightest to being tied up. Point number two. Based on nothing but these two facts, Joey had a strong suspicion that Eric wasn’t Eric. But was he Roger, or was he Chris?
“Why should I believe you?” Her question was directed at Chris, but she held Eric’s gaze with her good eye. He inclined his head in the slightest of nods. She wasn’t sure how to interpret it.
“Because you know me,” he said. “You’d know if I weren’t me.”
Joey couldn’t shake the feeling that he should have been right, but smirked. “You’re right. That should be making one of you nervous right about now.”
Eric remained silent. Chris asked, “What are you trying to accomplish by tying me up, anyway? It’s not like Roger couldn’t just jump into another body.”
Joey lowered the bag of peas from her face. Why hadn’t Roger jumped bodies? Why had he let himself be tied up to play this game with them? Her eyes shifted between Chris and Eric once more. This could work to her advantage, because it meant for the moment Roger probably wouldn’t hop bodies. He was a prisoner of his own making.
“Scary, right?” Chris said, misinterpreting her reaction. “And, frankly, I don’t want to be tied up when he does. Come on, give me a chance!”
The more he spoke, the less like Chris he sounded.
Time to roll the dice.
Joey hopped down from the counter. Leaving the peas behind, she walked over to the bound men and stopped in front of them with her hands on her hips. “So, here’s the thing. I don’t actually have time to sort this out right now. You two can cool your heels in here for now.”
“What? No, don’t leave me alone with him!” Chris said.
“You’re both tied up—what harm could he possibly do?” She headed for the door, motioning with her head for Itsuo to join her.
“No, no! Come back!” Chris’s pleas followed her out of the room.
“Is it wise to leave them alone?” Itsuo asked quietly, once they were out of earshot.
“Wait for it…” Joey whispered, and held her index finger aloft.
“Come back here, you heartless bitch!”
Joey’s lips twitched into a smile. She turned around and sauntered back into the kitchen to find Eric glaring rather fiercely at Chris. Chris’s expression was chagrined; he knew he’d made a mistake. Leaning over, Joey put her hands on his shoulders.
“We need to talk,” she said, then gave him a firm enough push to make the chair tip back onto its back legs. It wobbled, then fell backward to hit the floor with a noisy thump.
Chris made a pained noise, somewhere between a grunt and a whimper.
“Careful,” Eric whispered.
Joey winced inwardly, belatedly recalling Chris’s injured ribs, but walked forward until she could look down into his eyes. It was difficult seeing him as anyone but Chris, even though she knew the spirit was inside him. “Get out of him.”
“Why should I?” Roger asked, giving up the pretense now that the jig was up.
“Because if you don’t, or if you harm him in any way, I will end you. Once and for all.”
Roger laughed, or at least tried. The sound tapered off with a wheeze and he coughed lightly, visibly struggling to breathe. “You’ll do that anyway,” he said, once he’d caught his breath. “That’s what you’ve all been planning. That’s why that scrawny nerd was trying to fix your phone. But you’re missing a piece of the puzzle, little wolf. You can’t stop me. I won’t sto
p until they’re all dead. All of them!”
He had a point. Also, the sounds Chris’s lungs were making troubled her. “Fair point. But maybe there’s a way for us to both get what we want.”
Roger narrowed his eyes. “How so?”
“Well, you want justice for your murder, right?”
“Yes!”
“He did it.” Joey pointed at Eric. “Not the others. He tricked them and used you as his patsy. I’ll make sure that he pays for that crime.”
“You’ll kill him?”
“No. But the state of Washington might. Eventually. I’m talking about justice, not revenge. Eric gets turned over to the police. The others go free. Knowing they killed an innocent man will haunt them for the rest of their lives. Isn’t that more satisfying than a quick end?”
“No!” Roger howled, writhing against his bonds.
“Stop it!” Joey snapped, shooting the spirit a glare that could curdle milk. “You’ll hurt him!”
A heavy sigh came from Eric’s direction. “Knock him out.”
“What?” Joey’s head swiveled, and she peered at the other bound man.
“He won’t be able to inhabit the body if it’s unconscious,” Eric said, meeting her eyes. Somehow, Joey knew it was Chris behind them now.
“What about Kate? He didn’t have any trouble animating her.”
“It’s different. Trust me.”
Joey trusted him, but still hesitated. Why did she keep ending up in these sorts of situations, where she had to do him harm at his behest?
“Are you certain, Christopher-san?” Itsuo’s quiet question jolted her from her reverie. She’d all but forgotten he was there. His eyes were on Eric, as if he—like Joey—knew that Chris was calling the shots and wasn’t alarmed in the slightest.
Chris-Eric’s brows went up, but he nodded.
Itsuo grabbed one of the beer bottles that’d been left scattered around the kitchen and smacked Roger-Chris upside the head with it. The glass shattered, but more importantly, Chris’s eyes rolled back in his head and he went limp.
Joey winced. “Thanks,” she said.