by Sierra Dean
Though we hadn’t climbed far, the view was so astonishing my breath caught in my throat.
“My God.”
The streets were packed with the dead, fumbling and tripping over one another like macabre bumper cars. From our new vantage point I could see clearly what I’d missed from higher up in the penthouse. They were everywhere. If this street was any indication, there must be hundreds of thousands throughout the city.
I let out a whimpering breath.
“Wow,” Holden said, following my gaze.
I shuddered and stepped closer to him, looping my arms around his, needing to feel something living and tangible. There was so much death out there, and I didn’t know what to think. My plan seemed so small in comparison to what the necros had done. They’d turned New York into a dead city, and how could I defeat that?
They’re only human.
“We’re getting closer,” Holden told me.
Beyond the ambling corpses, the image of a smoldering Chrysler Building caught my eye. I couldn’t look away. It was my favorite building in the city, and it was lit up like a Roman candle, smoking and beyond saving.
“Why would they do something like this?”
“You’re asking for logic out of evil. Evil doesn’t yield to reason, Secret. It simply exists to consume and destroy. Did you ever think maybe they just wanted to see if they could do it?”
“No.”
“Well…”
“I can’t think anyone would do this just for the sake of doing it. There must be a reason. Even if it’s a stupid reason, I need to believe there was something that motivated them to take things this far. No one burns a city to rubble because they think it’s a fun way to spend their Thursday.”
“There’s a first time for everything.”
I shook off his assessment, trying to push it out of my mind. I couldn’t leave it at that. Whatever the Hands of Death had come here for, it wasn’t just kicks and mayhem. I’d settle for an overkill way to assassinate someone, or perhaps wanting to establish their territory. Hell, I’d rather think they were trying to steal paintings from one of the art museums, or drugs from the hospitals. Any of those excuses, as flimsy and frustrating as they would be, was better than having no reason at all.
Anarchy might exist, but they were too organized for that to be their endgame. They’d planned this meticulously and divided their power. They’d been able to take the city to its knees in two hours flat. That took precision and careful work. Anarchists just threw dynamite into the cell and waited for the prisoners to start screaming.
Holden was already striding across the rooftop, and I jogged to catch up with him. He jumped from one building to the next effortlessly in spite of the wide gap between the two, and when I followed suit, I stumbled on my landing, proving no matter how graceful vampires and werewolves might be on their own, their joint offspring didn’t necessarily get the best of both worlds.
Dusting gravel off my palms as I got to my feet, I nearly walked into Holden’s back because he’d come to a sudden stop.
“Here,” he announced.
“You’re sure?”
One stiff nod was all the confirmation I needed.
“Now let’s get back so we can—” He stopped talking because I’d started to walk away and was no longer listening to him.
The decision to regroup after finding the necros was an integral part of the plan. A plan I had come up with myself. I’d been the one to drill into everyone’s head how important it was not to be a vigilante. Come back and don’t be a hero, I’d said.
So of course I was ignoring my own wisdom entirely.
“What are you doing?” He was beside me again, and I sidestepped before he was able to grab hold of me. Just because I didn’t flinch at every touch anymore didn’t mean I wanted everybody getting handsy with me.
“I’m going in.”
“That’s not the plan. You were very explicit about the plan.”
“I’m changing it.”
“You can’t change it.”
“Sure I can, I made it up. I can change it.”
I was almost at the next fire escape when he said, “And what if one of the others decided to change it? What if Desmond decided he was going to ignore you and go in guns blazing because he thought it would be easy to take out one necromancer all by himself?”
I froze. He wasn’t playing fair. Of course I wouldn’t want anyone else to do what I was about to do. But I had a double standard for myself. I knew I was never going to abide by the rules, so I generally assumed they didn’t apply to me. I’d figured by now everyone else should know this about me as well. Rules were more like suggestions, and right now I was choosing to ignore the suggestion.
“We aren’t the others. I’m not the others. I’ve already killed one of these bastards.” I was still facing the fire escape so I didn’t have to look at him. I was worried if his expression was too earnest or fearful, I might change my mind and back down.
After what I’d seen on the streets, I couldn’t back down.
These fuckers had to pay.
“You faced one, but at what cost?”
“Holden, don’t.”
“No, listen to me. At what cost? Would Keats want you to risk your life like this?”
That got my attention. I spun around and cleared the distance between us in less than a second, jamming my finger hard into his sternum. “Don’t you dare say his name to me. How can you pull it out like it’s a fucking magic trick, and play the what would Keaty say card. That’s a horseshit, low move, and you shouldn’t have said it.”
“I’m not taking it back.”
“Fuck you.”
“Fuck you,” he spat back. “You think you’re the only one suffering? You think your pain is the only real emotion here? Goddamn, Secret. You’re so blind to everything around you because you’re too lost in your own fucking bullshit to see what’s going on with anyone else.”
“I—”
“No, you don’t get to talk. You’ve had your say, now it’s my turn. This isn’t your city. This is our city. I’ve lived here since before your mother’s mother was born. I have known things about this place and have loved more people in it than you will love in your whole damned life. And I’m just as scared as you are about what’s happening. I know you’re mad. So am I. We all are. Every person you left at that hotel cares just as much about this as you do. This isn’t your vendetta. Not every fight has to be yours alone, you know.”
He paused, and I stared at him wide-eyed, unsure if he was going to continue or not.
“Are you done?” I asked.
“No.”
But rather than saying anything, we stood there in silence with only the sounds of burning buildings and the restless dead to keep us company.
“Well?”
“I can’t let you go in there. Not just because it’s selfish and stupid, but because I can’t risk losing you.”
I chewed the inside of my cheek to keep from crying. “I won’t—”
“Oh shut up, would you?” He looped his hand around the back of my neck and pulled me to him for a bruising kiss.
My cheeks burned from the suddenness of it. This was no quick kiss, nothing like the sweetness of our goodbye kiss only a few days earlier. This was a deep, dirty, end-of-the-world kiss. The kind of thing that evoked images of getting fucked up against a wall with almost all your clothes still on.
His fingers gripped my neck, holding me in place, and I braced my hands against his chest. I thought my intention was to push him away, but the need and urgency from his mouth stayed my hand. I closed my eyes and melted into it, meeting him measure for measure, and when he pulled back, we were both gasping.
I took a step away and stumbled, my legs gone rubbery underneath me.
“Whoa.”
“Sorry,” he mumbled.
I couldn’t say I was sorry, because kisses like that were the thing people dreamed about when they watched Gone with the Wind. Maddening, dema
nding kisses built to consume a person from their toes up.
I just hated that it meant we weren’t anywhere near being friends.
We might never get there, either. Because friends sure as hell didn’t kiss each other like that.
A thump brought my attention back around to the fire escape, with my gun up and armed, ready to shoot whoever or whatever was scaling up the ladder. A duffel bag had come first, coated with dust and blood, but what came next practically knocked me on my ass.
“Still getting around, I see,” she said, brushing some rust from her black jeans before she stood upright, smiling with no small amount of venom.
Her hair was different, short now like Audrey Hepburn’s Roman Holiday pixie cut, though judging from its messy appearance I was betting it had been shaved at some point and was now starting to fill in again.
Her look might have changed, but the smug superiority hadn’t gone anywhere.
“Morgan?”
Chapter Twenty-Three
Morgan Scott.
Werewolf, and at one time Lucas’s third-in-command.
Of course, that was before she hired assassins to kill me and managed to shoot Desmond at my wedding ceremony. I thought I’d seen the last of her when she’d been exiled to Siberia, but apparently it was impossible to keep a bad bitch down.
Another fine example of why being merciful got me nowhere.
I kept my gun up, not trusting her for a second. “What are you doing here, Morgan?”
“Nice to see you too.” She picked up her duffel bag and slung it over her shoulder, then untucked an old Ruger handgun from her waistband.
What was she doing here? There was no way she’d come because she heard what was happening. Getting into the city had to be damn near impossible at this point, and flights anywhere in the vicinity of New York were likely being rerouted to other states. We’d only been able to land because we got in so soon after shit hit the fan.
No, Morgan must have already been here.
Or she came with them.
Given her all-black ensemble and the new shorter do, seeing her as a biker’s old lady wasn’t a hard stretch of the imagination. And I trusted her so little, my brain latched on to the idea of her being one of the bad guys and wouldn’t let go.
“Simmer down. I’m not here to finish the job.”
It took me a moment to realize she was talking about her assassination attempt. “It didn’t go great for you last time, did it?”
“Yeah, but I’d like to point out you’re not surrounded by a legion of werewolf bodyguards this time.”
“She wouldn’t need them,” Holden added, his voice cold with malice.
“Of course not. Not with a big scary vampire by her side.” She rolled her eyes, completely unmoved by his apparent threat.
“What are you doing here?” I repeated, my voice edging towards shrillness. I had prepared myself for a great number of contingencies to happen tonight, but bumping into a werewolf who ought to be in Siberia was not a worst-case scenario I’d thought of.
“I’m here to help.”
“Like fucking hell you are. Caught the first flight into JFK when you saw the news on CNN? No, tell me the truth, or I hedge my bets and assume you’re guilty of something. You usually are.”
“Okay, okay. Jesus, nice to see you’ve mellowed out since the last time I saw you. So, there’s a chance I didn’t come just to help.”
“Probably because you’re one of them.”
“Wow, dramatic conspiracy theory much?”
“The simplest explanation is almost always the right one,” Holden said. Nice to see he’d been thinking the same thing. “Seems a little suspicious you would happen to show up the exact same time as the necromancers.”
Her eyes went wide, and her mouth opened slightly. “Man. Suddenly all this stuff makes a lot more sense. I didn’t think necromancers were real.”
“What did you think all the moving corpses were then?” I asked.
“Zombies. What the hell else would I think when the streets are packed with walking dead people.” She gave me a look that suggested I was the stupid one here.
Seriously, did no one know zombies weren’t real? Was I the only one who paid attention to what other supernatural critters populated our world? People could have saved themselves a lot of headaches and trouble if they took the time to know what was real and what wasn’t. Zombies? Horror-story fodder. Necromancers? Totally a legit thing.
But either she was a phenomenal actress, or she didn’t know about the necros.
I knew she was a liar, but I didn’t think her acting chops were good enough to fool me.
“If you’re not with them, you’re in the city for something else.”
“Truth is…” She looked away and fidgeted. “I’ve been back for about three weeks.”
“Excuse me?”
“I split from the Siberian pack, found transport back to the US and hitchhiked from Alaska, of all fucking places. Not the most fun trip I’ve ever had, but here I am.”
“Why would you come back here? When Lucas finds out—”
“I’ll make my appeal to the king when the time comes. But last I heard you two weren’t exactly joined at the lip anymore, know what I mean?”
“And you think he’ll ask you to jump right back in his bed?” I rolled my eyes at her. “I don’t care how cute you think you are, he still values trust over a hot piece of ass.”
“Trust was what landed him on the cover of Us Weekly with that skanky actress?”
I’d almost forgotten about Lucas’s relationship with Willow Chalmers, starlet of the year. The incredibly tense dinner Holden and I had shared with them wasn’t a memory I wanted to revisit too often.
“You seriously came to win him back? That’s pathetic.”
“I came to be a part of my pack again. It has nothing to do with my relationship with Lucas. I have other reas—”
“Oh my God, enough.” I holstered my gun and held my hands up in defeat. “I will do whatever it takes for you to shut the hell up. If that means trusting you, so be it.”
“Shooting her is also an option,” Holden suggested.
It was, but I didn’t have a surplus of bullets I could go around wasting.
“We’ll take her back to the hotel and see what His Majesty has to say. If he wants me to shoot her, I’ll gladly oblige. But I’m not going to lie, another able body with a gun isn’t a bad thing right now. You know how to use that thing?” I asked her.
“I shot you once, didn’t I?”
“Not quite.” I gritted my teeth and thought of Rio’s fluffy kitty belly and Christmas lights at Rockefeller Plaza. I focused on anything other than the tangible memory of Desmond’s weight falling on me after he took the bullet Morgan had meant for me.
On the plus side, I was getting better at controlling my panic attacks.
There might be hope for me yet.
“You’ve got to be pretty happy about this,” I told Holden.
“Why in God’s name would I be happy about this?”
“Because there’s no way in hell I’m running into a necromancer den, guns blazing, with this psycho bitch tagging along.”
He gave me a thin smile, then looked at Morgan. “In that case, welcome to the team.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
Three other teams were waiting in the lobby when we returned.
Nolan and Rebecca had found a single necromancer with only a handful of guards holed up at Grand Central Terminal. Bradley and Merlin had come up empty-handed, but Chuck and a sentry named Yara had found two necros together in the New York Public Library by Bryant Park.
Seemed the theory we’d been running on held some merit. They were favoring older stone-and-brick buildings near subway lines. It was smart. They could avoid street travel and not have to interact too much with the bodies they were controlling. With the power out they’d be able to move freely through the subway tunnels and gain access to most major points around the city.<
br />
I felt a sense of dread, imagining what might have happened to the civilians trapped below. If they posed any kind of risk for the necros, what was to keep the bikers from killing off full carfuls of innocent people?
Best-case scenario, people had managed to force their way out of the cars early, before the gang had set up shop. If they’d gotten above ground and escaped, my worry was for nothing.
I could imagine few things in the world worse than being trapped in a subway car. And that was saying something considering the depth and breadth of my imagination.
I realized Holden and I hadn’t even done any recon on our target. We’d confirm there was a necromancer in the building we scouted, but we’d gotten so distracted we forgot to see how protected he was.
I wanted to blame all that on Morgan, but I also had to take our impromptu make-out session into consideration.
At least we’d found one of them, though.
Morgan hopped up onto one of the check-in desks and set her duffel bag beside her. She kicked her feet out cheekily like a bored schoolgirl. The only things missing were some pigtails and snapping pink bubble gum and the effect would be complete.
“Lucas isn’t going to be happy about this,” Bradley commented, speaking about Morgan like she wasn’t there.
That was how banishments worked in werewolf society. Once a member of the pack was exiled, the wolf was effectively dead to the pack. I suspected if Morgan spoke directly to Bradley, he would do his best to pretend he couldn’t hear her. It was going to make things both comical and depressing when the rest of the pack returned.
What was she thinking, coming back? If she tried to ask for solace from any of the other three kings, she’d have a better chance being welcomed. Though most would have turned her away out of respect to Lucas, she might at least have been treated like she was alive. Coming here was the absolute worst choice she could have made.
Not only would the pack not receive her with open arms, she’d also defied Lucas’s banishment order. At the time he’d considered it a kindness to send her away rather than kill her. Perhaps this time around he wouldn’t be so nice.