by Lori Drake
Groaning, Chris finished anyway. “—trap.”
28
Joey wasn’t even able to fully process Chris’s warning before the chandeliers overhead exploded. Crystal shards flew everywhere. She threw up her arms instinctively, but the rain of sharp crystal fragments punctured her exposed skin wherever it landed.
It stung, but the sting would fade as her lycanthrope healing kicked in, pushing the foreign bodies out as it knit the flesh from the inside out. In the meantime, though, the slices and punctures wept rivulets of scarlet as she lowered her arms. Her eyes went to Chris first. He was no better off than she was, but at least not any worse.
“We have to get out, now!” Chris shouted, lunging forward to grab Adam, who was trying to crawl over to where Dawn still crouched over Melinda’s lifeless form.
Joey adjusted her feet farther apart to gain steadier footing on the shaking ground. Having grown up in SoCal, she was no stranger to earthquakes. But this was no natural phenomenon. Her eyes jumped to Dean, who had one hand pressed to his neck while the other clutched the cage he stood beside. Blood seeped through his fingers, and Joey’s heart rate kicked up a notch.
She ran over to him, gritting her teeth against the pain as she inevitably stepped on sharp crystal fragments along the way. “How bad is it? Let me see.”
He locked eyes with her but removed his hand. Relief surged through her when blood didn’t jet from the wound.
“It’s shallow, missed the vein,” she assured him, grabbing his hand and putting it back over the wound. “But keep pressure on it, okay? We have to go.”
“No shit,” Dean said, eyes darting around the quaking room. “What about them?” He jerked his head toward the cages, where Melinda’s remaining three victims—two human and one wolf—yet remained.
“Go. Get the witches moving. I’ll check them.”
“Are you sure?”
“Go!” Joey shoved him. “And don’t look back. If we don’t make it, dig us out. But get your ass to safety. Do you hear me, Torres?”
He nodded and then hurried toward the exit, crystal crunching under his motorcycle boots. Joey glanced over her shoulder to make sure the others were following suit. Chris had Adam in a fireman’s carry by then, but Adam was fighting his Alpha, pounding Chris’s back with his fists and screaming at Dawn, who yet lingered over the corpse as if chaos weren’t erupting around her.
“Dawn! Time to go!” Joey called as she threw open the occupied cages. One of the women darted out and ran for the exit. The other remained huddled inside, shivering and weeping. Joey leaned over to get a better look at her. It was Rachel, the missing Seattle witch, alive and… well… alive. “Hi Rachel, we’re here to help. But we have to go, now.” She held out a hand.
Rachel reached out with only slight hesitation, and Joey hauled her out of the cage less gently than she would have if she’d had time to spare.
“Who— Who are you?” Rachel asked, once she stood on her own shaky feet.
“No time. Go! Follow them.” Joey pointed at Chris and Dean. “Hurry!”
The witch nodded and hurried off while Joey turned her attention to the final occupied cage. Crouching, she peered into the cage. The gray wolf inside lay as if sleeping, but Joey couldn’t tell if she was breathing on account of the whole room shaking like a wooden roller coaster. Reaching a hand through the bars, she touched the wolf’s downy fur and gave her shoulder a shake. No response. She put a hand before the wolf’s muzzle, but felt no breath. Whether it was Daffodil or some other specimen, she was gone.
Joey turned away from the cages and frowned at the sight of Dawn still looming over her felled prey. She hurried over to her friend, stepping around the shards of crystal as best she could, but picking up a few more foot punctures on the way regardless. By the time she got there, she almost couldn’t bear to stand.
“Dawn, can you hear me?” she asked, picking up her feet one by one to brush chandelier bits from them. The cuts stung, and her fingers came away sticky with blood.
Dawn lifted her golden eyes and locked gazes with Joey. “Go,” she rasped in that husky, growly voice. “Get to safety while you still can.”
“You need to come with us.”
Dawn laughed, though the sound was barely recognizable. “Look at me, Joey. I don’t belong out there anymore.”
“You’ll change back.”
Dawn shook her head. “You don’t know that.”
Joey emitted a frustrated growl. “Come on! Time’s running out.” She grabbed her friend’s thick, furry arm.
“No!” Dawn ripped her arm from Joey’s grasp. “I’m a monster, Joey. Look what I did.” She motioned to Melinda’s cooling form, at the mess that used to be her throat, then twisted to look at Joey. Her eyes widened in horror. “Look what I did to you.”
Joey had been doing her best to forget the stinging throb of the gashes raked up her face. The fact that the room felt like it was about to collapse helped. “I’m willing to call that an extenuating circumstance…”
“I’m not!” Dawn roared, feral energy rolling off her in waves.
Joey stood to face her, lifting her chin and staring her down. Their eyes locked, and Joey let her wolf rise to the surface. She had no idea if her innate dominance would have any effect on whatever witch-wolf hybrid Melinda had turned Dawn into, but she had to try. “Change back.”
“I don’t know how!”
Joey flung a hand out, pressing it to Dawn’s sternum with a burst of supernatural speed. “Change.”
Power spread from her fingertips as she issued the command, and Dawn’s body went rigid. Her back bowed and she went up on the balls of her feet, mouth open in a silent scream as her body reversed the process it’d gone through before. Joey winced in sympathy, shifting her weight between her stinging feet. It took only seconds, but it felt like an eternity as pieces of the ceiling began to fall around them.
When it was all done, Joey leaned down to grab Dawn’s shaking shoulders and hauled her to her feet. Dawn’s skin was unmarked, so she was either a faster healer than Joey or had been protected from the falling shards by her thick pelt. Joey took her friend’s face in her hands and looked into her eyes—now back to their normal green. “Welcome to the pack. Now move your ass.”
Tears streaming down her face, Dawn obeyed and Joey followed her out, using chunks of ceiling as stepping stones through the sea of sharp objects whenever she could. They both left bloody footprints behind, all the way to the door.
As soon as they stepped into the hall, Chris released a struggling Adam he’d been hauling bodily down the hall. Adam rushed toward Dawn, but his legs gave out along the way, and he tumbled to the floor. Dawn let out an alarmed squeak and hurried over to help him up. He let her, then grabbed her face and kissed her.
“Hate to break up the party, but we need to go,” Joey said, giving them a gentle push to get them moving again.
Chris stepped aside, letting them move past before offering a hand. “I don’t know about you, but I’m ready to call this the worst double date ever.”
Joey snorted and took his hand to hurry after the others. They got about halfway down the long hall before an explosion ripped through the ballroom. The shockwave surged down the hallway, nearly knocking them off their feet. Joey careened into the wall, but Chris tugged on her hand and pulled her along with him. Cracks appeared in the walls to either side of them, racing them down the hallway. Joey poured on the speed until she was edging ahead of Chris in her haste to flee. But she wouldn’t leave him behind. No way, no how.
Ahead of them, someone paused and turned to look back. Itsuo.
“Keep going!” Joey called. “Hurry! Get them out!”
Itsuo’s eyes weren’t locked on them, but on the ceiling.
Joey looked up. The cracks that had been chasing them along the walls were along the ceiling too… but they extended farther than the walls. Itsuo rushed toward them.
“No! What are you doing? Get out of here!” Joey yelled.<
br />
He ignored her, stopping at a juncture about ten feet from them where two trembling wooden supports stood at either side of the hallway. He spread his arms, bracing his hands on the supports just as they started to lean inward. Joey couldn’t bring herself to look back as the sound of more debris from the collapsing ceiling and walls hitting the floor rose behind her. They ran faster.
Joey released Chris’s hand so they could both duck under Itsuo’s arms and squeeze through the gap between his body and the supports at the same time. On the other side, they spun as one, motioning for Itsuo to join them.
The old alpha merely shook his head. “Go. I will hold it as long as I can.” A small chunk of ceiling broke away and bounced off his shoulder on the way down.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Joey said. “Come with us!”
“I regret I cannot,” he replied, muscles quaking under the stress of holding the supports in place. “But I can buy you the time you need. Get the others out.”
“We’re not leaving you behind,” Joey growled. “No way, no how.”
But Chris was strangely silent beside her. The two men exchanged a weighty look.
Then, Itsuo said, “Tell Jenny I love her, and I will always watch over her.”
Chris hesitated a moment more, then nodded and took Joey’s hand, tugging gently. “We’d better hurry.”
“Are you crazy?” Joey said, taking a few halting steps after him. “He’s going to die!”
“It’s his decision.” His features were grim, deep lines etched in his forehead.
Joey let him tow her along by the hand, but she couldn’t take her eyes off of Itsuo. He’d always been a bit of an enigma, a lone wolf who’d cleaved to the pack solely to look after his granddaughter, but he’d also been a member of the Granite Falls pack decades earlier when Chris’s father had been Alpha. Losing him would truly be the end of an era.
Itsuo’s face turned red as he was forced to exert more and more effort to keep the supports in place. Every instinct Joey had screamed to go back for him, to never leave a packmate behind. But she kept moving, instinct also telling her that going back for him was suicide. She met Itsuo’s eyes across the distance, and what she saw there gave her hope. There was no resignation there, no defeat. Instead, his dark orbs sparked with determination. She should’ve known the old wolf wouldn’t go quietly. Emitting a fierce roar, he released the tension in his arms and surged forward, sprinting at full tilt away from the collapsing subterranean structure behind him.
Joey’s heart was in her throat as she watched the debris win the race, swallowing him up as it raced toward them. Tears in her eyes, she spun and put her all into running once more.
They spilled from the building and out onto the cobblestone street in the nick of time. Dust billowed out the door after them and the whole structure sagged, then collapsed in on itself. The building above it must’ve shifted as it did, but that was the least of Joey’s worries. Grief tightened in her chest like a fist around her heart, and she choked on a sob she desperately didn’t want to let out.
Chris drew her close and wrapped his arms around her, one hand cradling the back of her head. She let him hold her for a few moments, soaking up some of his strength. How could he be so composed? It took everything she had to keep her emotions in check, to stave off the tears that threatened to dissolve her control. Her pack needed her. She had to be strong, like Chris. Promising herself a good cry later, she lifted her head and found tear tracks on Chris’s dusty face. While she’d fought off her emotions, he’d embraced them. And when he opened his blue eyes and met hers, she knew he grieved just as much as she did.
Itsuo’s sacrifice would never be forgotten.
29
They laid Itsuo to rest five days later at Mount Carmel Cemetery on a sunny Wednesday afternoon. Chris had learned his lesson about burying bodies on his property, but more than that… the old wolf deserved more than an unmarked grave in the woods. Chris sure as hell couldn’t leave him buried in the rubble under Pioneer Square. It’d taken them the better part of three nights to dig their fallen packmate’s body out, and that with the help of Lisa—the Seattle coven’s strongest earth witch—doing some of the heavier lifting and making sure the whole thing didn’t collapse while they were working.
The days had been busy too, but just as they chipped away at the subterranean ruins one stone at a time, they dealt with the rest of the fallout from their confrontation with Melinda, bit by bit.
Sara had been devastated to learn of her cousin’s death, though they’d spared her the gory details. In the end, she’d felt it best that they leave Melinda’s body where it was rather than risk digging even deeper into the rubble in search for it. No one was any closer to comprehending just what had driven Melinda to such extremes. She’d made her motive clear, but there were still a lot of unanswered questions.
Quinn’s tremendous effort wasn’t enough to save Jordan. He succumbed to his injuries before they even left the tunnel. Chris didn’t know what Quinn had done with the body, but Quinn assured him that it was taken care of. If the big alpha was holding a grudge against Adam, he didn’t mention it. But he did say it was getting on toward time for him to relocate, and that he’d heard Montana was nice.
The surviving hybrids who had attacked them were turned over to the coven. Ethan had vowed to find some way to turn them back. What was done with magic, he said, could be undone. They just had to figure out how. Amber thought she might be able to help, given what she’d seen when one of them had touched her. Chris hoped so. If the process could be reversed, and assuming the poor souls’ minds hadn’t been broken by the trauma, they could be returned to their families.
Jenny’s parents flew in from Portland to attend the funeral, which had been a whole other kind of trauma. The apple didn’t fall far from the tree, and Lillian Kobayashi-Richmond was nearly as strong an alpha as her father had been. In her grief, she was ready to bundle her only child up and sweep her off home whether she wanted to go or not. Once Chris and Joey had determined Jenny didn’t want to leave Seattle, a delicate dance had been required to preserve the submissive young wolf’s autonomy without offending her overprotective mother.
As the funeral crowd had dispersed, Chris had quietly asked Justin to accompany Jenny and her parents to the airport and make sure Lillian didn’t pressure her daughter into coming along at the last minute. Joey had walked with them to the car to see them off, leaving Chris to pay his final respects by himself. His eyes lingered on the headstone, and he couldn’t suppress a heavy sigh. Reaching out, he lay a hand on the casket, warm from the afternoon sun, and tried not to think about the condition Itsuo’s body had been in when they pulled him from the rubble. Instead, he called an image to mind of the old wolf parked on the sofa at home, listening to Jenny go on about a research project she was working on or the latest campus gossip. Itsuo didn’t smile much, but when he did it was usually in response to something his granddaughter said or did. It was no surprise that his final thought—other than to protect his Alphas—had been of her.
“I’ll look out for her. I promise.” Chris closed his eyes and stood in silence, rubbing his thumb against the warm wood until he heard light footsteps approaching.
“He would’ve approved, don’t you think?” Joey said quietly, coming up beside him to thread her fingers with his.
“Itsuo, or my father?” Chris asked, opening his eyes to look from Itsuo’s freshly etched gravestone to the more weathered one bearing his birth parents’ names alongside it. It’d seemed only fitting to lay him to rest there.
“Both, I think. Itsuo thought the world of Henry Martin, and I think your father would’ve been grateful for what he did.”
Chris had no answer for that. He was beyond grateful for Itsuo’s sacrifice, but thinking about it gave rise to a sense of unworthiness he couldn’t quite shake. If only he’d been faster, if only he’d recognized the spell for what it was sooner… maybe things would’ve gone differently. Maybe he wouldn’
t be standing there alongside that gleaming mahogany casket festooned with white lilies, the scent of freshly turned earth filling his nostrils. Oh how he hated that smell.
Joey squeezed his hand. “Stop it.”
“Stop what?”
“Blaming yourself.”
She knew him too well. He sighed and brought her hand to his lips, brushing a kiss across her knuckles. “I’ll try.” Turning away from the casket, he faced her and let his eyes roam her face. No trace remained of the vicious claw marks Dawn had given her, thanks to Cathy’s healing magic. Though, Joey’s lycanthrope regeneration would have mostly—if not entirely—healed them by this time anyway. But thinking of Cathy reminded him of her apprentice. “I’d hoped Dawn would put in an appearance today.”
“She’ll come around. She just needs time. She’s worried about not being able to control her shifting.” Joey took his other hand, holding both as she stood before him.
“She needs practice.”
Joey arched a pale brow. “Can you fault her for not wanting to?”
Grimacing, Chris shook his head. “I guess not. But it’s the only way she’s going to get the hang of it. She shifted back once, so she knows how.”
Joey made an agreeable noise, but her eyes slid away from his. His wolf perked, taking interest in her evasive reaction, however mild.
“What aren’t you telling me?” he asked, eyeing her.
“This isn’t really the best time or place…”
“Just tell me.”
She sighed but lifted her eyes to meet his gaze once more. “She didn’t shift back on her own.”
“Huh? What do you mean?”
“I tried to talk her through it, but there just wasn’t time.” She looked away again, guilt written in the lines in her forehead. “I used an alpha command. I know, I should’ve told you sooner, but I didn’t want to get in another f—”
He silenced her with a kiss, hands slipping from hers so he could draw her body against his. She melted against him, arms around his neck, holding on tight.