The Judah Black Novels Box Set

by E. A. Copen

  I flinched as it went in and almost turned my head away from watching Reed squirm. He opened his mouth in a cry of pain but choked on blood. Hector scowled and twisted the blade, prolonging Reed’s suffering.

  It was the last thing he’d ever do. With a battle cry, Reed used the last of his effort to swing his sword. It slid through Hector’s neck as if his whole body was made of butter. Hector’s head shifted down and then detached completely. His body went limp and fell to the side, blood flowing everywhere.

  Everything else happened in slow motion.

  I screamed.

  Creven waved away the barrier and moved to pull the knife from Abe’s chest, unstaking him.

  Sal put me down and raced to Reed’s side.

  I sat for a long moment, shaking, still trying to process everything, then I rose on trembling legs and dragged myself to Sal’s side. Reed was an immortal, too, I told myself. I’d seen him recover from far worse. He’d pull through this. But when I reached his side, he didn’t look like he was recovering. Sal had pressure around the wound but had left the sword in.

  “Why isn’t he getting better?” My voice was small and distant, still not my own.

  “Shit, shit, shit!” Sal was in panic mode, working to wipe away something gray on Reed’s forehead.

  Reed smiled, showing bloody teeth. “Don’t. It won’t matter.”

  “You’re not healing because of that damn ash!”

  Reed’s arm rose weakly to grip Sal’s. “I’m still under Warren’s spell. If you remove it, I won’t be myself.”

  “But you’ll live.”

  “I will kill you. I can’t fight it, not without the ash.” Reed shook his head and then pressed his chin to his chest to look at the sword. “I would rather die like this than harm another innocent.”

  I put my hand to my mouth and sank to my knees next to him, not caring that I knelt in a pool of blood. “Reed…”

  “It’s all right. I’m not afraid. I know where I’m going.” He tried to shift his sword, but he was so weak, he could barely move his arm.

  Sal put his bloodstained hand over Reed’s and helped him move the hilt of the sword to Reed’s chest.

  “Thank you,” Reed said, his voice strained. “Judah, the sword.”

  I swallowed the growing tightness in my throat and blinked away tears. “I won’t let Seamus have it. You have my word.”

  Reed closed his eyes and moved his hand until it was over mine. “Father, watch over her. Protect her where I could not, for our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil. In…Your name…Amen.”

  The air left his lungs in a deep, rattling wheeze. His head rolled to the side, and Gideon Reed stayed still.

  I slumped, but Sal caught me.

  Abe removed his hat. “We still have to find Espinoza.”

  “We can’t leave him here,” I insisted, shaking my head.

  “We must worry about the living before seeing to the dead. Get her up. Let us go before the suicide squad gets here.”

  Sal picked me up against my will. I was too weak to fight.

  We left Reed’s body where he had fallen, but I made Creven take the sword. There was no way I was breaking my word to a dead man, especially not after everything he’d done for me.

  The light in the hallway was blinding and felt heavy on my skin. I tucked my head into the coat against Sal’s arm to block it out. The first time I’d been out there with Warren, I hadn’t had time to look around. I wasn’t sure I wanted to do it this time either, but when I heard Abe mention splitting up, I had to open my eyes. I didn’t want him to leave my sight. I didn’t want any of them to go. They might not come back. Losing Abe might be worse than losing anyone else because it would be my fault. I had his coat, his protection. I tried to say something about it, but the words wouldn’t come.

  Abe gave me a heavy look. “Stay out here with her, wolf. If we find Espinoza, we will bring him back.”

  Sal’s hand tightened its grip on my shoulder. “And if you run into Warren? Then what?”

  “I’m fuming enough that we should’ve no problems dealing with that fecking gobshite,” Creven said and tapped his staff on the floor. “If t’wern’t for him, none of us’d be in this mess.”

  Creven’s speech was what finally convinced me beyond the shadow of a doubt that I wasn’t in one of Warren’s illusions. Warren might be good, but Creven’s odd manner of speaking wasn’t something anyone could duplicate, especially when he got mad enough to mash three and four words together at such a quick pace.

  While Abe and Creven hurried down the hall in search of Espinoza, Sal lowered me to the floor. I knew I couldn’t stand, and I couldn’t bear to be put down just yet, either. It was silly, but I was still deathly afraid something would happen and freedom would slip away. I closed my fingers around his arm with a death grip.

  “Just for a minute,” he said. “It’s just for a minute, Judah.”

  He lowered me to the floor. I reached out and kept a hand on his shoe just in case.

  Sal stripped off his shirt and put the collar over my head. It took longer than normal for me to remember how to get my arms through the armholes. My head still felt fuzzy, and every time I focused too hard on anything, it hurt. I tugged his shirt over my knees and stared at a big, red smear on it. Breath caught in my throat as the barrage of images struck me again.

  Blood. Death. Famine. War. Pain. Suffering. I was buried under the weight of it all, suffocating as each image piled, one atop the others, and threatened to crush my heart.

  And then the weight lessened. As if each painful, horrible thing were an item of clothing on a laundry line, someone wheeled them backward, tugging some of the weight away.

  I gasped as the image faded and flailed, looking for someone, anyone to hold onto. Sal’s hands were already in mine and his eyes were wet. “Jesus, the damage is… What did they do to you?” His jaw shook and then set, his eyes darkening. “When I find that fucker, I’m going to peel the skin off his bones and make him watch.”

  “Oi, Sal,” Creven called, standing in another doorway further down. “You’d better come quick. It’s Espinoza.”

  Sal stood, took a half-step away, then paused. He was going to pick me up and carry me again. As much as I wanted that, I didn’t want to restrict him in any way. He’d need the use of his hands and arms to help anyone, and I needed to find my own feet. I grabbed for the fabric of his jeans to pull myself up, but he caught my hand and pulled me to my feet. Once I was upright, he put an arm around my shoulders and we limped down the hall together.

  Espinoza’s cell was identical to mine. Linoleum floor. Rocky, unfinished wall. Drain in the middle. Espinoza was splayed, naked, over Abe’s lap. He looked like someone had dipped him into a vat of red up to his shoulders. There was so much blood everywhere and he was so pale, I was sure he was dead.

  “Life signs are faint,” Abe reported in a small voice. “I am told you can help?”

  Sal left me standing alone in the doorway and went to kneel on the other side of Espinoza. He took his pulse, checked his pupils, looked over wounds, and nodded. “I can try.”

  Sal was a healer, the most powerful healer I’d ever met. Still, there was a limit to his power. He could only heal as much damage as he could take. Thanks to the accelerated healing of werewolves, he could take more damage than most, but there was still a hard limit to what he could do, especially since he was still healing from Reed’s first attack. If he took too much, he could die. I had never seen him heal someone as far gone as Espinoza, but Sal had also served as a medic in the Army in Iraq. If anyone could save Espinoza, it was him.

  Sal pressed one hand to a wound in Espinoza’s side and placed the other on his forehead. A beat of silence passed before Abe licked his lips and asked, “Is it working? Nothing seems to be happening.”

  “It’s this place.” Sal sighed, removing his han
ds. “I’m cut off from magick here. You need to take him out of this Way right now and call EMS to the scene if you want to save him, Abe.”

  “But if we move him—”

  “You don’t have a choice,” Sal barked and stood. “Get him out of here.”

  Normally, Abe would have glared at Sal, and they would have gotten into an argument about who could tell who what to do, but Abe was too worried to fight about it. He scooped Espinoza up in his arms, much the same way Sal had done with me and sprinted toward the door at a supernaturally fast speed.

  He stopped suddenly in the doorway and took a step back, revealing a dozen tiny red dots dancing on his head and chest. Through interlocked fangs, he announced, “Blood, we were too slow.”

  A squad of men in unmarked black body armor filtered into the room, visored helmets obscuring their faces. They swept their weapons right and left, gauging the threat as they progressed, before eventually deciding to split their attention evenly between Sal, Abe, and Creven and surrounding us. The last two stopped next to the door and knelt.

  A moment passed before someone else strode into the room. He was of average height, middle-aged, with salt and pepper hair. The beginnings of wrinkles marked the corners of his eyes and mouth. Whoever he was, he hadn’t even bothered with a bulletproof vest. He just wore a long coat over an impeccable suit. Gray eyes peered out from underneath a wrinkled brow. Polished two-tone shoes shone in the dim light as he stopped in the doorway to adjust his gray suit jacket.

  “Good morning, gentlemen, and to the lady in the room.” He bobbed his head in my direction.

  “Who the hell are you?” Sal snarled.

  Abe lifted his chin and shifted Espinoza in his arms. “Deputy Director Rich Richardson.”

  Richardson smiled and lifted a cigarette to his mouth. “Call me ‘Dick.’”

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Ed

  For wanting to chat, Mystery Guy wasn’t too vocal. Shortly after we were all blinded by the spotlights, the armed guards grabbed me, twisted my arm behind my back, and forced me forward. I didn’t dig my heels in, worried they’d shoot me if I resisted.

  Angel fought. It got her the butt of a rifle to the back of the head.

  Bran’s roar was so loud it threatened to explode my eardrums. Still in bear form, he charged off the porch and swatted at one of the officers, batting him aside. A series of quick shots rang out, the bark of a machine gun pointed at the bear. Bran rose on his rear legs and let out another loud roar that chilled my blood. When he came down, it was to swat the rifle away. The soldier’s arm went with it, twisting too far. The crack of bone was unmistakable.

  Angel’s head shot up. “No, Bran!” she shouted firmly. “Stop! I’m okay! I’m okay.”

  Bran paused with one arm raised, teeth bared. It was all the time the soldiers needed to fire nets at him. The nets came down, and like the trained professionals they probably were, the soldiers closed. The dancing lights on Bran changed from red to blue and different shots rang out, these were more air-filled and softer. Tranquilizers.

  Hands shifted my arm further and forced me forward. My head slammed against the side of the armored transport. I fought to swing my head around and searched wildly for my sister. She was half-changed. When they shot her with the tranquilizers, I felt it in my bones. A new, protective rage stirred up and I tried to twist free, only to have my head slammed against the side of the vehicle again, this time harder. “Resist and you’ll get some too, werewolf.” The soldier’s voice filtered through his helmet, sounding almost computerized.

  They lined us up like that, facing the side of the trucks, slipping silver handcuffs on each of us. My heart was in my throat the whole time. This is it. This is how I die, handcuffed and shot in the back of the head. Dammit. Mara, I’m sorry.

  Angel shifted next to me, coming closer. Somehow, even though we were both handcuffed, she managed to link one of her fingers in mine. “It’s gonna be okay, little buddy. No matter what they do to you, don’t let the bastards break your spirit, okay?”

  “Quiet!”

  There was a wet crack and Angel made a loud grunting sound, then slid away.

  “And keep your hands to yourself.”

  Angel growled. “If you’re going to kill me, just fucking do it already, you dickless coward.”

  The guard drew his rifle back to strike her again but stopped cold when the remains of the front door opened. The whole yard fell silent as, one by one, heads turned. I lifted my head from the side of the car and careened my neck to see what they were all gawking at.

  The man in the long coat had come back out of the house, leading a procession of armed guards and injured people. My people.

  The first one I saw was Officer Espinoza in Abe’s arms. He looked dead. God, what had they done to them? It hadn’t been more than a few hours.

  Then I saw Sal. He carried Judah out with Abe’s coat draped over her. I breathed a sigh of relief when I saw her moving. She was alive, then. We’d come in time.

  My heart sank when the next two came out, each hauling a body. Well, the first guy had part of a body—Hector’s, to be exact. I assumed the head was in the plastic bag the soldier had slung over his arm. The rest of him had been wrapped in plastic and tossed over the soldier’s shoulder as if he were just a sack of wood.

  Behind Hector came Reed’s body. There was no doubt in my mind that the priest had died, not with the way his arms hung limp and his head bobbed like dead weight. There was too much blood all over him. God, I hoped he went down fighting. He must have. He’d taken Hector with him. At least there was that.

  The sight of the last one out made my breath catch in my chest. The body in his arms was limp, just like Reed. He carried her like a child, one arm under her knees and the other holding up her upper body. Her head hung upside down, lips blue and skin the wrong shade of pale. A numbness spread from the top of my head all the way down as my heart pounded through the realization. The voice that came out of me was small and broken like when I was thirteen. “Mara?”

  It didn’t matter that there were dozens of guns pointed at me or that I was being held in place by someone stronger than me. Not even the cuffs on my wrists would hold me. In a fit of rage, I pulled and twisted. The metal groaned loudly and then snapped, freeing my hands. I pushed away from the vehicle and shoved my captors aside, dashing across the yard, jumping over bodies and screaming her name. “Mara!”

  Guns raised, pointed at me. I didn’t care.

  The man in the long coat raised his hand. No one shot me. They should have. If she was...if they had…

  “Get away from her!” I screamed as I came up to the man holding her. “Get away!”

  He lowered her limp body to the ground in the middle of a drying bloodstain. I hit the ground on my knees next to her with enough force that it sent a shockwave of pain through me. My hand shot out, preventing her head from striking the ground.

  I choked on something. It felt like my throat was swelling shut and that my chest was about to explode. My limbs were numb, and my head pounding. Tears spilled over. I didn’t even try to hold them back.

  There was blood everywhere, all over her, and her dress was ripped. I touched her face, finding it cold. The skin didn’t feel real. Nothing did.

  “No, no, no.” I just kept saying over and over. What else was there to say? “It’s my fault. I didn’t come back soon enough. It’s my fault!”

  “Ed?”

  I couldn’t see through the tears, but I could feel Sal’s presence across from me, kneeling on the other side of Mara. “Help her. Please. Do something!”

  Sal sighed. “She’s gone, Ed. I can’t. I’m sorry.”

  My hands balled into fists. “It’s not fair.” I struck the ground. “It’s not fucking fair! It’s my fault. This is my fault…”

  Sal reached out to grip my shoulder and pulled me into a tight hug. He didn’t say anything because there was nothing anyone could say or do. Mara was dead. Words are for the livi
ng.

  Inside, it felt like I was dying too, like the very idea of her not being there was ripping my insides apart. There was a black hole in the center of my chest, and it was swallowing the rest of me whole. If I didn’t let it out somehow, I was going to wither away and die with her. For a long moment, I thought I would. I couldn’t go on alone. Mara was the whole reason I’d learned to be stronger, to stand up for myself. I owed her everything. What was the point in going on all alone?

  A feeling cut through the pain, trickling down through the pack bonds and growing stronger. Something hard to explain. It felt like hands, a half dozen pairs, linked together around me, forming a protective barrier. At the same time, they somehow reached for me, resting unseen on my back as I wept, just letting me know they were there. I drew strength from the pack, strength enough to lift my head and let out a low, mournful howl.

  After a long moment, Sal pulled me up, his hands still tight on my shuddering shoulders. “Ed, we have to go. Espinoza needs medical attention, and so does Judah. I promise you, we’re going to take care of Mara’s body. I’m going to make sure you get the chance to mourn her properly, but right now, we have to see to the living.”

  I nodded slowly.

  “I need you to do everything these men tell you to do, okay?”

  My head bobbed, even if my heart wasn’t in it. My heart was still with her, as still as hers.

  Sal patted my shoulder. “Good man. Now, go with them.”

  “Come with us, sir.” Their robotic voices prompted me to dry my eyes. The soldiers stood on either side of me. One waved with his rifle.

  I took in a deep breath and turned my back on Mara to march to the waiting trucks. I might have turned away, but I left part of my heart with her.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Lacerations. Contusions. Dehydration, fractures, and blood loss. Whatever doctors Dick had look at me had a list of my ailments a mile long, and that didn’t even scratch the surface of what was really wrong with me. No amount of fluids, rest, or x-rays was going to make me feel better.