“Good thing you didn’t trust them.” A muscle in Newt’s jaw moved, before he forced a grin. “That is, I assume you didn’t trust them and not that you didn’t want to come see me, me with mortal injuries, asking for you?”
My eyes filled, even though I knew he tried to lighten the moment, to defuse the pain of Eliza’s betrayal. I lifted my arms and he knelt down for the hug, careful not to squish Carson, but holding me close for a long minute. He felt so warm—funny, that in the early fall heat with the threat of fire all around his body warmth would somehow be so soothing. Like curling up in front of a hearth. I rested my cheek against his shoulder, so grateful he was okay.
Carson moved a hand and I jolted back to awareness. Newt let go of me slowly. Tony stared at us, but I couldn’t read the look on his face. Carson’s eyes fluttered open, his gaze fixed on my face, and he opened his mouth and gave one of his most ear-piercing shrieks.
“Shh! Carson, sweetie, you’re okay. I’m here.” I babbled, trying to soothe him. My hands started to prickle where they touched him, and I adopted a sterner tone. “Carson Roger Hall, do not change. Don’t you dare. You’re okay. We’re all okay. Mama’s right here. Shhh…”
Carson subsided into quieter whining noises and I sighed in relief.
“Julie.”
I turned around, adrenaline kicked into high gear by the warning in Tony’s voice.
James Robinson approached us, flanked by Eliza and two of the Weres we met at the hotel yesterday. Three other people—presumably friendly Salamanders or other Weres, my human senses couldn’t tell the difference—accompanied the group.
I tried to mask the effort I spent to stand up, though from the look on Tony’s face, I wasn’t sure I succeeded. Holding Carson tightly to me, I braced myself on the tree. My shoulder brushed Newt, who had immediately jumped to his feet, and I felt tension thrum through him. I couldn’t even look at Eliza—just seeing her made me so furious I had a hard time focusing on anything else.
“What’s the status of the fight?” asked Tony. He moved to stand on my other side, so he and Newt flanked me.
James raised his brows. “You’re welcome,” he said. “I believe we arrived just in time to save your lives.”
He looked pointedly at one of the other Weres and her name popped into my head as she spoke: Yuko.
She reported in a crisp voice. “The woman calling herself Ma’at is dead and so are eight other Eclipsers. Two captured, four escaped into the woods, but our people are in pursuit. One Were dead. Three Weres severely injured but healing, albeit slower than I’d like. Luckily, the moon is nearly full and we outnumbered them nearly two to one. Oh.” She glanced at Newt, then at a young woman slightly to her rear. “Four Salamanders killed, several more injured, right?”
As if non-Weres were an afterthought. I reeled at the tally, clamped my hands more tightly around Carson to stop them from shaking.
“All because you wouldn’t listen to us yesterday,” said James.
I asked, “What about the hotel? Did anyone die?”
A look of surprise crossed James’s otherwise impassive face and then vanished.
He said, “We left when Eliza got your call. Carson’s our priority, not tourists.”
“What?”
Tony stiffened next to me.
“Was the hotel on fire?”
“Yes, Julie, the hotel was on fire, but we were needed here. Did you want us to wait?”
Eliza stepped in hurriedly. “The hotel is right downtown. Human firefighters would arrive there any minute.”
“Don’t talk to me, you—you—” I looked her straight in the eyes for the first time and the emotion burst out of me. “How could you? Did you think it wasn’t a big deal? Lying to me? Using Newt as a lure? How could you?” My voice shook with anger.
Eliza looked shocked at the level of my ferocity. “Julie, I had no choice.”
“You always have a choice.”
“Orders are orders, Julie. Your friend recognizes that,” said James, his eyebrows quirked slightly as if amused by my upset.
“Dammit, Eliza! I thought you were my friend.”
“Julie.” She took a step closer to me and I shook my head in warning. Her voice shadowed with a note of uncertainty for the first time. “I am your friend. That’s why I want what’s best for you and Carson.”
“You don’t get to decide what’s best for us. None of you do. Not you, not the Greybull pack, not the council.”
“You’re not making any sense, Julie. We never wanted to hurt Carson. The council wanted to protect him. And it’s a good thing we were here to help; otherwise, you’d both be dead in the woods.”
“Right. So you left a bunch of humans to burn to death in the hotel and came here to rescue your pet super-Were.”
Eliza looked at me as if I spoke a foreign language.
“You just left. Left that hotel on fire.” I spat the words.
“To rescue you, yes,” Eliza said.
“What about those people? Do humans matter at all to you?”
“Julie? What are you talking about? You’re human and I care about you. That’s the whole reason I’m here.”
“You lied to me. Eliza, you lied to me. About Newt. How could you?”
Someone cleared a throat.
“Actually, about the hotel, a team of ’Manders stayed behind to help. Against the wishes of some.” The young blonde woman spoke, the one Yuko had glanced at, presumably the Salamander leader.
Newt said, quietly, “Jules, we took care of it. We wouldn’t leave the hotel to burn.”
I continued to stare at Eliza, wishing she would say something—anything—that could actually justify her betrayal. To make it all right again. As if anything could.
James gave a theatrical sigh and attracted my attention. He gestured through the trees toward the house where firefighters emerged from their trucks. “Most of the fires in the woods are out, but we may have humans scouting the area soon. Perhaps we can take this pointless discussion somewhere else?”
Anger coursed up my spine at his tone, but I recognized he was right; we needed to move before we were discovered.
Tony reached out an unobtrusive hand to my back, supporting me as we followed the group deeper into the woods. Newt walked right by my side. For once, I didn’t mind the help. Eliza hovered slightly behind me, her face still a mass of hurt and confusion. I didn’t care.
James Robinson surveyed the group and said, “The council organized a raid on Eclipser headquarters late yesterday, so the threat to your son should be over. Whatever ragtag remainder we might have missed won’t be enough to mount another attack. We’ll round up your belongings and head to Greybull tomorrow—or maybe the next day,” he adjusted, with a quick look at my injuries. “Carson will be much safer with the pack.”
Eliza gave me a tentative smile, her dark eyes earnest.
“The council’s very pleased they didn’t need to contain Carson’s powers after all. I suppose in some ways your recklessness paid off,” concluded James.
So the council had considered stripping his powers. Not that the details mattered at this point. The chasm between what I wanted and what the council stood for seemed to widen by the second. I knew I was supposed to feel relieved on some level. We’d been saved from the Eclipsers after looking death straight in the face. Instead, I felt more and more trapped, my resentment of the high-handed Were leaders rising by the second.
“Um. I should call Lily Rose, so she can arrange housing for you and Carson,” said Eliza.
“I’m not moving to Greybull.”
James swiveled to face me. “Yes, you are.”
“No. I’m not. Are you going to kidnap us? Abduct us and keep us prisoners in Wyoming? Because I’m not going voluntarily.” I showed my teeth in a smile. “Fuck you, James. Fuck you and fuck your Special Ops and fuck the council, too.”
“If you don’t come with us, your son will be a rogue wolf. Do you know what the council will do to him? A
Were as powerful as Carson, uncontrolled, untaught, unsupervised?”
Beside me, I felt Tony’s Were energy rise in response to James’s threat. Newt moved a fraction closer to me.
“Julie, be reasonable. Come to Greybull. We’ll sit down together and discuss everything with Lily Rose. You can even meet with the inner council and they will reassure you. They can explain,” Eliza said. She reached out to touch my shoulder, but dropped her hand before making contact as I roughly jerked away from her.
My mouth twisted. I couldn’t even look her in the face.
“Um. Julie? I picked this up for you. This is yours, right?” Eliza held out my gun, as if a token of truce. I took it automatically, repositioning Carson up on my left hip, well out of reach of the gun. I moved my shoulders in a shrug, not even sure what I meant by the gesture.
“Julie,” Eliza said, “I didn’t have a choice. Why don’t you understand?”
“Eliza—”
She took a step toward me, her hands open, body slim and graceful, her eyes fixed on me as if she could somehow will me into agreeing with her.
I closed my eyes for a moment. When I spoke, I knew my voice sounded flat with utter weariness.
“Eliza. You always have a choice. Always. You may not like the choices you have, but you can always choose. That’s—” I paused and shook my head, my mouth twisting around the words. “That’s what makes us human.”
She stood mute.
The moment broke when Carson gave an impatient grunt and reached for the gun held loosely in my other hand. I moved him farther up on my hip. He thrashed, bending at the waist and trying to get at the shiny new thing. When I held him tighter to prevent him from grabbing at the gun, his frustration from the crazy events of the last few days finally peaked. He screamed in anger and flailed at me with his hands, kicked me in the side, right where my ribs shot pain into my every breath. Then he lunged. Fresh pain shot through my shoulder and I nearly flung him away, but at the last minute caught myself and merely set him roughly on the ground so he couldn’t hurt me with his tantrum.
“No! No biting,” I yelled, then immediately felt bad for raising my voice. But dammit, that hurt and biting wasn’t…biting…
Sucking in a breath, I yanked down the collar of my shirt and saw two red tooth marks on the meat of my shoulder. One deep indentation slowly welled with blood.
Blood.
The world tilted around me and my heart thumped frantically. I opened my mouth, but no sound came out. Eliza’s head jerked up and she stared at me, then was suddenly by my side. James Robinson appeared next to her, scooped up Carson, and held him possessively. Tony yelled something. Newt’s warm arms were around me.
I couldn’t breathe.
The world went white.
I was going to pass out.
Or change?
Or die.
****
Lights. Voices. Something pulled me into a roaring vortex of noise, a whirlwind of pressure and pain and swirling colors that lasted forever. I screamed and fought for the surface, over and over again. The world drowned in gray, stinging agony until nothing else existed. I couldn’t think. My body was a mass of stabbing pain. My throat felt torn and bloody from screaming. My head would explode. I begged for it to stop. I begged and begged and begged.
Finally, quiet.
I sank down.
Epilogue
Sunlight. Warm and bright. I felt sunlight on my face and dimly realized the sun reminded me of someone. I opened my eyes and blinked into the light, slowly brought the world into focus.
“Julie?”
She moved into my field of vision, smelling of worry and stress. When she bent closer, the sharp scent of lavender spilled from her fawn-colored ponytail. I stared up at Eliza for a minute before I placed her.
There were other scents. Carson had been in this room recently—his healthy baby smell soothed me on a deep level, gave me the strength to draw another breath.
Tony. I knew exactly where he stood, though I hadn’t looked yet. I didn’t need to. I sensed him, the particular mix of musk and sweat of Tony. Even now, he pulled on me and I suddenly wondered if his scent, rather than the sunlight, had called me up from wherever I’d been.
Other people had been in the room, but not now. If I focused hard enough, I’d know just who.
Something was missing and I frowned.
Oh, right. Ash. Blood. That’s what I expected. Pain. Where was the pain?
Eliza’s eyes looked dark as the shadows.
“What happened?” I asked. Though I knew. God, I knew.
“You made it.” Eliza’s face beamed and I sensed her pure joy, radiating out in a dizzying wave of scent that flooded me. “Oh, Julie, it’s all going to be okay. You’re one of us. You’re a Were. You’re one of us, now.”
She was wrong.
She was a stranger.
I turned my head. My gaze unerringly found Tony’s and read shared truth in the amber depths of his eyes.
I’d never be one of them.
A word about the author…
Sarah’s love of reading, writing, and all things fantasy started with her explorations of Narnia, Middle Earth, and Pern. She is a huge enthusiast of all fantasy, paranormal, and science fiction. Flying her geek flag early, she started D&D with the good old boxed sets (and still plays today). Her stories focus on strong women, strong friendships, magic, and love.
She lives with her husband Gary, their three kids, and three cats. She’s also an artist and a boardgame geek.
http://sarahestevens.com
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