by E. A. Copen
I stood and pushed past Abe, motioning for him to follow. We went down the hall to Hunter’s room. The sour smell of teenage boy and old socks wafted out when I opened the door. Abe wrinkled his nose.
“You want to talk, this is the only place we’ll get any privacy,” I said.
Abe sighed and stepped in.
I followed and shut the door behind me. Once inside, I turned to the shelf behind the door and switched on Hunter’s stereo system, turning it up.
Abe’s hands went to his ears. “What is that?”
“I believe it’s what kids call music these days. Now, lower your voice. Read my lips if you have to. It’s the only way to make sure they don’t hear.”
He lowered his hands and shifted his coat. “First, I am to extend an offer to you on behalf of Marcus. He has offered the use of an experimental treatment to accelerate the healing in your arm. The effects are temporary, however, but it can buy you a few hours of time at your full potential.”
I glanced down at my arm. It sounded too good to be true, especially the part about it being an experimental treatment. It’d probably come out of Han’s and LeDuc’s research, the same research that had created Warren. But it might be my only chance at winning a fight against him.
“What’s the catch?” I narrowed my eyes at Abe, scrutinizing his every move.
“The offer is only good until dawn.”
“Dammit!” At the volume I shouted, there was no way they hadn’t heard me. “What happened to Dick’s promise that we could bury the dead, rest, and recover?”
“Would you have them join you in your hunt?” Abe shrugged. “An injured alpha werewolf and his inexperienced pack, the packless wolf and the bear shifter who are nursing injuries of their own? Or were you counting on your son as backup?”
“What about Ed? He deserves to be in on this.”
Abe shook his head. “You must leave all the werewolves out. Claws and teeth on the body will only draw attention to the pack, exactly where you do not want it to go. For the cover story in place to work, it must be you who kills him, Judah. Ed will not understand this. The wolf in him wants vengeance. If you take him, if you let him kill Warren, we cannot protect him.”
“I’m not sure I can take him on my own, Abe. Look at what happened last time. He made a mess of me.” I placed the palm of my hand on my aching head.
Abe gripped both of my shoulders firmly. “You will not go alone. You will have me and the elf. The others cannot know.” He took a folded slip of paper from the inside pocket of his coat and held it out to me between his second and third fingers. “Come here at the time listed. A car will pick you up.” He walked past me.
“Abe?” I turned to find him standing with his hand on the doorknob, one eyebrow arched. “Thanks for trying to save me, even if you did break my arm.”
His lips turned up in a smile that showed his fangs. “It is good to know how much you can get back up from. However, I think next time I will have to break both your arms and maybe a leg if I want to stop you.”
I turned off the stereo as soon as Abe was gone and unfolded the paper. The address he’d listed wasn’t far, just far enough that Sal wouldn’t hear the car door. So long as I managed to get out of the house without being detected, it’d be easy.
The paper was suddenly warm in my hand, and then outright hot. I dropped it, flinching when the paper burst into flame. It hung in the air a moment before the bright, intense fire turned it to ash that fell to the floor.
Sal and Hunter were waiting for me when I came out, arms crossed, chins raised. Hunter might have been a smaller, paler carbon copy of Sal. It was almost cute.
“Well?” Hunter demanded. “What did he have to say?”
I knew better than to try to lie to two werewolves, so I skirted the truth. “He had a message from Dick, a work-related message. Sorry, but I can’t tell you. Don’t worry so much, guys. The worst thing that could possibly happen has already happened.”
I mumbled the last line as I walked over to where Mia sat with her coloring books. Crayons were strewn all around her in a rainbow of repetitive patterns. She gripped a purple crayon with her whole fist and scribbled away at the page, tongue out, pigtails waving. “Hey, kid. Long time, no see.”
She didn’t look up.
“Mind if I color with you?”
She put down the purple crayon in front of me and took up a blue one. I fumbled to grab the purple crayon and put it to the page.
That’s as far as I got before the next barrage of images hit me. For a long moment, I was back in the dark cell, shaking and bleeding. Alone. All alone.
A new pressure introduced itself on the back of my hand, and I snapped back to the present with a gasp. Mia was staring at me, her brilliant brown eyes shining with a hint of gold. Her face was full of concern that was beyond her years for a moment, reminding me too much of her father’s worry-laden features. Then, she tilted her head to the side and smiled. “C is for crayon.”
I couldn’t help but smile back and pat her on the head. “You’re right, Mia. It most certainly is.”
Chapter Thirty
All through the rest of the day, I alternated between periods of intense business and restless napping. Once I gave Hunter and Sal a list of all the places they needed to call to begin funeral arrangements for Reed and Mara, I shut the bedroom door and went digging through the closet. I searched through shoeboxes and suitcases, wincing whenever something struck my broken arm. It still hurt through the cast. That was one thing I’d be glad for, anyway. Having a broken arm sucks.
I’d reached the back of the closet without finding what I was looking for and was about to give up when the bedroom door opened and Sal walked in, closing it behind him. “Looking for these?” He held up three white envelopes with names written on them. They were the letters I’d written to him, Hunter, and Mia the last time I thought I wasn’t coming back from a battle.
My shoulders slumped. “How did you know?”
“Because I know you,” he said, lowering the envelopes. “And I know how people like Dick Richardson work. He wants to frame someone for this, someone who isn’t a werewolf. That means you have to go in without us.”
I pushed a box back into the closet. “Are you going to try to stop me?”
“You know better than that.” He sat down on the floor across from me and reached out to hold my hand. I turned and tried to catch his eyes, but they were fixed on the floor. “Everyone I’ve tried to protect just gets hurt.”
I squeezed his hand. “Maybe you’re trying just a little too hard to protect us, Sal. We all need room to breathe.”
“Chanter was the only lead I’ve ever followed. When I took over, I thought I would fix things, do all the things he was too tired, sick, or busy to do. Now, I’m tired and busy too, and people I love are hurt because of it. Because I’m not strong enough.”
I touched his cheek and tugged his head up so that I could look him in the eyes. There was a time when doing that would have been dangerous, when he might have seen it as a challenge, and I would have been too afraid. Now it was different.
There’s something special about looking into the eyes of someone you love and someone who, in return, loves you back. There’s both a deep, searing pain in your chest and an icy chill. Your heart skips a beat and floats into your throat. When it comes back down, it’s with the pace of a runner’s pulse.
But it’s more than something physical. The ancient Roman orator Cicero once wrote that the eyes were a window into the soul, and people have been quoting it ever since because it’s true. When you look someone in the eyes, everything else melts away, leaving behind the person they truly are underneath. Underneath everything, Sal was just a man fighting to leave his mark on the world and protect those he loved.
I smiled. “None of us are strong enough alone. That’s why there’s family.”
“You just make sure you come back to yours.”
“Of course I will, Sal.”
“Then you won’t be needing these.” He lifted the envelopes and ripped them in half before stacking the halves and ripping them into fourths. When he was done, he scattered the ripped paper in the air like confetti before gripping me by the chin and pulling my lips to his, holding me until I couldn’t breathe.
Had my arm not been broken, my head aching, and the floor littered with bags and boxes, it might have been more than a kiss, but there are times when a kiss is all you need.
For a long time after that, I sat in his arms in silence, listening to him breathe and his heart beat. I thought a lot about what I should say, if anything, before I left. My mind was still broken from Warren’s assault, my heart still aching over Mara and Reed’s loss. I could cry, but that felt like wasted energy. I had already shed too many tears.
Maybe I owed him an apology. I’d made bad decisions, and I had to own that. He’d warned me about getting Ed involved, and I’d ignored those warnings. Because of that, he was hurt more than he might have been. If I hadn’t been so hard on Mara all those months ago, she might still be alive, too.
All those could haves and might haves pounded away at the inside of my head for hours before I remembered something Chanter had once said to me.
“You can’t help everyone,” his voice rang in my head.
If I closed my eyes, I could almost see him standing in his kitchen, scolding me when I came to him with some mundane problem. He wore a brown apron, a white tank top, and blue jeans. While he spoke, his hands worked to chop the celery and carrots on his glass cutting board. The room smelled like roasting meat and old smoke.
Chanter lifted the knife and pointed it at me to emphasize his words. “There are people in this world who don’t want to be saved, girl. Some of us are doomed from the day when we first draw breath to end in tragedy. You are not one of those people.”
I crossed my arms and leaned forward on the bar. “What makes you so sure, old man?”
“I could say it’s because I’m an Indian and we know these things.” Chanter smirked. “But you wouldn’t believe me.” He turned back to chopping his vegetables, a somber look now on his face. “But one day, something bad is going to happen to you. Bad things happen to all of us. We can’t always choose to avoid tragedy. What we can do is decide how to respond. Do we play the victim and wallow in our own self-pity, asking again and again, ‘what if I had done things differently?’” Chanter lifted the cutting board and dumped the vegetables into the stockpot, taking his time to continue, as he always did.
“Or?” I pressed, impatient as always.
He waited until he had put the cutting board back down and cleaned his hands on his apron to turn and lean on the counter himself. “Or you pick yourself up, you acknowledge what happened, and you learn from it. That is the difference between someone who cannot be saved and someone who saves themselves.” He leaned back and sighed. “You should wake up, or you’re going to be late.”
I blinked. “What?”
“Wake up!”
I woke from the dream with a start. The room was dark, with long shadows. My right foot was asleep and my arm itched like crazy. It had been late evening when he came in. What time was it now?
Sal drew in a deep breath and cleared his throat. “What time are you supposed to be wherever it is you’re going?”
“Four-thirty.” I grunted and hauled myself up, which was more of a task than normal, given the pins and needles in my foot. The alarm clock on the other side of the bed announced it was four fifteen. “Shit, I need to go.”
“Need a ride?”
I shook my head. “It’s not far. Listen, Sal, you weren’t supposed to know. If you let on that you did—”
He interrupted me with a dismissive snort. “I used to work for the government too, Judah. You don’t have to tell me what happens when people don’t play by their rules. Go. I’ll be waiting for you when you get back. Just do me one favor.”
I stopped limping around, trying to get the blood going to my foot again. “What?”
“You make sure that bastard can’t hurt anyone else again the way he hurt you.”
“I will,” I promised and opened the door.
Hunter was standing on the other side with a very sleepy Mia holding his hand.
I sighed. “Not you, too?”
Hunter grinned. “If you think I’m going to let you run off without giving me the password to your Netflix account, you’ve got another thing coming.”
He didn’t hug me, but he did let me hug him.
“God, Mom,” he said, and it sounded like he rolled his eyes. “No need to make a scene. This isn’t the first time you’ve gone off to certain death, and it won’t be the last.”
I kissed him on the cheek and he cringed.
Sudden pressure on my leg alerted me that Mia was clinging to me. I bent over and kissed her, too. She giggled. “Be good for your daddy, okay?”
“Love you, bye,” she said as if I were just leaving for any old day at the office. I wondered how much of all this she understood. Would she even notice if I didn’t come back? One look at her smile and all thoughts that she wouldn’t vanished. Mia might not have been related to me by blood, but she was as much my child as she was Sal’s.
I paused in the doorway to look back at Hunter, Mia, and Sal one last time. No, to look back at my family. I might have been a mess, but I wasn’t going to go through life being a victim, not when I had people I needed to protect. I knew what Warren could do now, and I knew how to fight him. When I got my hands around his neck, he was going to wish he’d finished me in that Way.
I’d recognize Marcus’ Range Rover a mile away. He had other cars, most of them flashier, but that was for his public persona. The vampire underneath, the one hardly anybody got to know, was ruthlessly efficient and had an ego the size of the whole Lonestar State.
Also, a few months ago, I’d slapped a bumper sticker on the back end that said, “I’d rather be in Transylvania.” The sticker was faded and peeling from where he’d tried to scrape and wash it off, but I’d special ordered one of those high-grade permanent stickers. A girl’s got to get her revenge somehow.
The Rover pulled up at the meeting spot, and the back door opened. I hesitated when I saw it was Doc who had opened it. His afro bobbed in the light wind as he leaned out and gestured for me to get in. “Come on, Judah. I’ll explain on the way.”
What choice did I have?
I slid in next to Doc. Creven waved from the seat across from me. The back seats in Marcus’ Rover aren’t the standard ones. They faced each other, which made the back of the SUV kind of surreal to sit in.
Marcus adjusted his mirror. “Good to see you.”
“Did you fire Han?” I asked.
Marcus turned his attention forward and gripped the steering wheel tighter. “No. He didn’t report for work today. I expect BSI has whisked him to safety already. It would be pointless to eliminate his position now, especially when I can just as easily fill it.”
I turned to Doc and raised an eyebrow.
He waved his hands frantically. “Don’t look at me. I don’t work in R and D. I don’t even have a license to practice outside the reservation. The state took that away after they found out I kept zombies.”
“Rightfully so.” Abe twisted in the front seat to frown back at us. “They’re dangerous creatures.”
“They’re misunderstood!” Doc shot back as the car slid out onto the road.
I cleared my throat. “So, why are you here, Doc?”
“To administer the…uh…treatment.” He pushed his glasses up his nose with a finger. “I haven’t had a lot of time to study it, but the research he gave me seems to suggest it’ll do what he claims. Not only will it heal you, but it will accelerate your healing for a short while. But you know, full disclosure—this hasn’t been tested on humans yet.”
“Although it performed admirably in the chimpanzee trials,” Marcus said, turning his head. “Nine out of ten were able to recover from significa
nt injuries.”
“And the tenth one?” I asked.
“Died in a lot of pain,” Marcus answered and waved a hand, dismissing my concerns. “But that won’t happen to you. You should see what the Viagra trials were like, and the FDA approved that. You’ll be fine.”
“So, what is this treatment?” I turned to study Doc.
He fidgeted until Creven tapped him on the knee with his staff and nodded below the seat. “Oh, right.”
Doc threw himself forward and hauled out a metal briefcase that he placed on his lap and opened. The inside was lined with foam except for a cutaway area where a series of no less than five hypodermic needles and syringes sat. A few alcohol wipes and a pair of rubber gloves had been shoved into the lid.
He pulled one of the needles out. “Ideally, we would be in a laboratory setting, and I would use monitors to keep an eye on your oxygen saturation, heart rate, maybe an EKG every few hours—”
“There is no time for that,” Abe growled from the front seat. “We know where Warren is now, and he is unlikely to remain there once the sun rises.”
“Well, you’ll at least have to pull over.” Doc sounded firm, but his chin quivered. He was, after all, just a doctor in a car with a bunch of supernatural creatures. “I’m not injecting anything into a patient’s spine in a moving vehicle!”
I cringed. “That goes where now?”
Marcus pulled the car over to the side of the road just short of the exit from the reservation.
Doc turned to me, one of the needles in hand. “Five injections into the dura. You’ve been through childbirth. They did an epidural, right? Same idea, except this isn’t going to make you numb. It stimulates the autonomic nervous system directly. It’s quite astounding. Breakthrough research.” He gestured for me to turn around.
I started to lift my shirt.
“Oh, there’s no need. These go in the cervical lumbar.”