Rack or Ruin (The Desecrated Pack Book 3)

by Jude Marquez

  “Any word on the others? Dante? Marcus? Stephen?” I asked.

  “Artie did a tracing spell. They are fine, but they are still in Glenwood Lock. I will try to contact them as soon as I get off the phone with you.”

  “And Azolata?” Eli asked and his voice shook a little.

  I reached for his hand and he gripped mine, hard. It was easy to forget how long Azolata had been in the Ortega’s lives. He was practically family and Eli hadn’t seen Azolata when he was taken. He only heard about it later on, which did nothing to help him imagine what had happened to Azolata.

  “No, Artie said that wherever Azolata is, it’s so shielded that he can’t see. Which I don’t like, because Gerri was telling me that her mother would gladly help boost Artie’s powers, helping him to see better and farther.”

  Eli bowed his head, and I didn’t want to ask the next question, but I knew that Eli wouldn’t. And I knew that we needed an answer.

  “Can he die? Can Azolata– can he die?” I asked as my throat closed.

  I hadn’t known him long, but I knew that the world would suffer from a loss like that.

  Celia was quiet for so long that I had to look down at the phone and make sure we were still connected. “If you asked me that two weeks ago, I would’ve laughed. Azolata can’t die. He’s been around for four thousand years. What could kill him?”

  That was the question, wasn’t it? What could kill him?

  Well, for one, his brother. Apparently his sister was the queen and had imprisoned him. It was a jumbled up mess and I just couldn’t figure out what to say.

  “I don’t think he’s dead,” I whispered.

  I thought about Azolata and who he was. All that magic bottled up in that body for thousands of years. I could only imagine what kind of reaction nature would have if someone like him died. I had to believe that the first law of thermodynamics applied even in magic: energy cannot be created or destroyed.

  If Azolata died, there would have been something, there would have been a huge reaction. We would’ve known.

  “Well, that’s how we’re operating right now. He’s alive, until we know otherwise,” Celia said.

  “Okay, so we get the books. Where are they?” Eli asked, desperate for a change of subject.

  “One is near glacier Mountain Park, in Montana. We are about fifteen or seventeen hours away. There is another book in Durango with the Harper pack. You and Artie were in contact with their Sentinel. I will call him and tell him to expect you.”

  “Is that a good idea?” I asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, after the Bowman pack, how are we so sure that any of these other packs won’t sell us out like they did?” Eli asked, following my train of thought easily.

  “That’s a good point,” Celia allowed. “But we have to do what we can. The other book is in White Sands, New Mexico. That is the Gold Crest pack. If anyone hates the Ascendancy more than us, it’s them. The Gold Crest pack I trust.”

  “And the Harper pack?” Eli and I asked at the same time.

  “They are more formal. They follow the letter of the law and make sure that others do the same. But they have the book. And they have a natural allegiance to our kind,” Celia mused out loud.

  The three of us fell silent.

  “Go for the books. Watch your back with the Harper pack but I trust the Gold Crest pack. I will contact them right now. I’ll tell them to expect to you within the next forty-eight hours,” Celia said.

  “Forty-eight hours?” Eli said.

  “Yes. I will assume you’re in Vegas,” Celia said.

  “Yes,” Eli said.

  “You are safe there, for now. You need to eat and you need food. Get at least eight hours of rest and get decent food in you and then go. How far away is it?” Celia asked.

  “To the Gold Crest pack? Probably ten or eleven hours,” Eli guessed.

  “Sounds right. Get a new vehicle, I’m sure that the Bowman pack did something to yours. I wouldn’t trust it. Leave it where it is, in that garage. I’m serious. Real food and at least eight hours of sleep,” Celia ordered.

  “Will do,” Eli said.

  “Good. I love you both. Stay safe,” Celia said.

  “I love you,” Eli said.

  “Love you,” I whispered, and the line went dead.

  Eli shut the phone and we stared at it.

  “Let’s go get food,” Eli said.

  I nodded, feeling numb. Eli grabbed his wallet. I followed him out the door.

  “HOW FAR IS IT TO AZOLATA’S apartment?” I asked.

  “About a mile, if we cut through the forest,” Dante said.

  “Is it safe?” Marcus asked.

  Dante turned on him, like the question insulted him.

  “It’s fine,” I said, trying to sidestep another fight.

  “Well, there’s only one problem,” Marcus said and eyed his brother. I knew that if it came to physical blows, Dante could easily put his brother in the hospital. If we had a hospital.

  “Only one?” I asked.

  “The area around Azolata’s apartment and shop are pretty heavily guarded. I would say that it’s more heavily guarded than most of the town,” Marcus said.

  Dante shrugged. “That’s fine. Stephen can sniper while I go in.”

  Marcus stared at him. His brazen idea took aback me.

  “Let’s think this through a little more,” I suggested.

  “Do you have a better idea?” Dante asked. I felt like I was walking on thin ice with him even though I had done nothing to him.

  As far as I knew, anyway.

  “Not right now, but I would prefer not to lose the element of surprise in our first excursion out there,” I said and crossed my arms over his chest.

  Dante mirrored my gesture. “Like I said. Do you have a better idea?”

  I stared him down.

  “Why don’t we take one of their teams? And one of their vehicles?” Marcus suggested.

  I pointed at Marcus and, if possible, Dante’s facial expression went stonier.

  “If we take one of their Humvees, then we have the room for the weapons and a vehicle that is inconspicuous and can go over rough terrain,” I said.

  “Where are we going to put it? It will be obvious if there is one Humvee parked in the lot,” Dante said.

  “The shop. It has bay doors. We can just drive it in,” Marcus said.

  Dante opened his mouth again, but he was cut off by a phone ringing in the corner of the room.

  We turned to it.

  “Don’t answer it,” Dante muttered.

  “Obviously,” Marcus said and glared at Dante.

  Dante rounded on him. They began to argue, but I stopped listening to them. There was nothing I could do to keep them from fighting, and I was already sick of trying.

  After six rings, the phone stopped ringing.

  I stared at it, waiting for it to continue but when it remained silent, I went to the cabinets and got out more paper. We needed to make a map.

  Another phone, this time in the corner opposite of the first one, began to ring. I stared at it but Marcus and Dante barely paused in their argument to notice it ringing. I looked around the room, but there were no windows to see in. We had been careful when we chose this place to hide in. I knew we weren’t followed. Since Marcus arrived, Dante seemed on high alert, but had said nothing about the building being approached. With his hearing, he should have been able to hear anyone approaching.

  That phone stopped ringing after six more rings.

  I couldn’t help the apprehension I felt crawling between my shoulder blades like a spider. I strode over to the phone, but when I picked it up all I heard was a dial tone.

  The teacher’s lounge was connected to the nurse’s office and the administrative area. I thought I heard another phone ringing and as I approached the door that connected the lounge to the nurse’s office, I heard the phone ring again.

  I looked over my shoulder at Dante and Ma
rcus. They were in each other’s face now, fingers raised, neither one of them backing down.

  I tried the door to the nurse’s, but it was locked. I took two steps back and kicked the door open.

  It flew back on its hinges and I caught it as it bounced off the wall. The other two stopped arguing when they saw what I was doing and I headed straight for the phone, situated against the wall.

  I snatched it off the hook. “Yeah?”

  There was a pause on the other end of the line. “Stephen?”

  “Who is this?” I demanded. I was caught between hanging up and demanding more information.

  “You and Billie, you have your parent’s wedding rings on chains around your necks. It’s me. It’s Savannah,” she said.

  The relief I felt drove me to my knees. I leaned forward and pressed my forehead against the wall and tried to calm the wild beat of my heart. It had been too much to hope for.

  “Hey. How are you? You good? Been to any good restaurants?” I asked and my voice cracked.

  “There isn’t much out here. But if you have any recommendations, we are all ears,” she said.

  It was too much to hope for. When Dante and I were making our worst case scenario plans, I didn’t want to admit that he was probably right. If everyone else wasn’t dead, they would be soon. The Ascendancy didn’t keep prisoners, but they took trophies. I wanted to give Dante that hope because I knew that if he thought his entire family was dead, he would be a loose cannon.

  “How did you find us?” I asked.

  “Artie. He told us where you are hiding,” Celia said. I was on speaker.

  “Oh god,” I muttered. “Is he there? Give him a kiss for me. Is Billie there? Can I talk to her?”

  “They aren’t here, thank the gods. They are with Gerri’s mom in the fae court. They are alive and healthy and being spoiled by her. She gave them her protection and I don’t think even Azolata’s siblings would try anything while they are under her watch,” Celia said.

  While that was a comfort, I couldn’t help but feel disappointed and angry all over again.

  “Wait, if they are over there, how did you-” I was cut off by shouts from the teacher’s lounge. “Hold on a second.”

  I stretched the cord as far as it would go and stood in the doorway that led to the teacher’s lounge. “Would you two shut the fuck up?!” I screamed.

  Marcus and Dante fell silent and turned to me. I glared at them and then turned back to the nurse’s office. I pulled up a chair and put the phone back to my ear. “Sorry,” I muttered.

  “So Dante and Marcus are alive, huh?” Celia said, her dry humor was a much-needed relief.

  “I will take them into the Ascendancy myself if I have to deal with this much longer,” I hissed. I looked up as they entered the office.

  “I won’t fault you,” Celia said.

  I sucked in a deep breath and closed my eyes. “So what’s the plan? You coming back?”

  She hesitated long enough for me to know that the short answer was no. “Not yet.”

  “Okay,” I said agreeably, if weakly.

  “Artie and I have decided that we need to find those books. Savannah, Gerri, and I are on our way to Glacier Mountain National Park-”

  “Montana?!” I choked out.

  “Yeah,” she said.

  “That’s like- that’s fifteen hours away!”

  “Eighteen,” she corrected.

  I fell silent. “And Eli? Lou? Are they okay? Are they headed back?”

  I could cobble together a plan with those two, especially with Lou’s magic and Eli’s calm, strategic mind. Maybe they could get the other two to stop fighting for more than three minutes.

  “No. They are headed to White Sands-”

  “New Mexico,” I said miserably.

  “And then Durango-”

  “Colorado,” I finished.

  “Was geography your best subject?”

  “We’ve been around a lot of places,” I muttered.

  No one was coming back. I looked up at Marcus and Dante and realized that I was stuck with the pack’s equivalent of Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum.

  “Fine. Okay. That’s another fifteen hours for them. There and back. If they don’t run into any problems, they could be back in two days. We can manage for two days,” I said, trying to remain optimistic.

  “I wouldn’t count on it. I would give them double that,” she said.

  I groaned. “At least tell me where Azolata is.”

  “I can’t. Artie can’t see him. He thinks he is still in town but wherever he is, it’s too shielded for Artie to get past, even with the Queen’s help. It’s serious magic. Be careful, Stephen. I wouldn’t go looking for him until at least one group is back,” she pleaded.

  I looked down at my hands. “I don’t think he would wait if our situation is reversed.”

  “Yeah but- I mean-” she sputtered.

  “I don’t have a lot of help. I am well aware. But I once fought a horde of vampires with my eleven-year-old sister. I’m not convinced that these two are as helpful as her, but I can try, right?”

  Celia sighed. “I guess that’s all we can do. Take down this number.”

  I grabbed a pencil and a piece of paper off the desk and wrote her number down.

  “Keep in contact,” I said.

  “We will. Stay safe.”

  She hung up after that and I looked up at Marcus and Dante.

  “Everyone is alive, so that’s good,” I said.

  “They aren’t coming back. They’re going after the books,” Dante concluded.

  I nodded.

  “Then we should leave,” Marcus said.

  “I won’t leave without Azolata,” I said.

  “I think he can take care of himself. He’s a god, right?” Marcus said.

  “I’m not leaving without him,” I insisted.

  “Me either,” Dante said and nodded at the door that would take Marcus outside. “But feel free.”

  Marcus glared at us and turned. I thought he would leave but when we went into the lounge, he was sitting, drawing on the paper I had laid out on the table. His strokes were short and angry. “As soon as I help you two idiots find him, I’m out. I’m done with this fucked up town.”

  Chapter 6

  “I can’t believe this,” I said blankly as the SUV rolled to a gentle stop in a gravel run off.

  “Why are we out of gas?” Savannah asked, dumbfounded.

  Twenty minutes earlier, we had a full tank.

  “Faulty gas gauge?” I guessed.

  Savannah and I stared at the dashboard like it would give us the answer.

  “I saw a station a few miles back,” I muttered and unbuckled myself.

  “I can go,” Savannah offered.

  “You sure?” I said. I wasn’t at full strength and even though I could make the trip there and back in less than twenty minutes, it would be easier for Savannah who hadn’t been shot recently.

  “Yeah,” she said and hopped out. The sky was beginning to lighten. Dawn wasn’t that far off.

  Savannah went to the trunk and opened it. She dug through a few duffle bags before she found one with cash. She grinned at me and waved at Gerri. “I’ll be right back.”

  I felt uneasy about letting her go. I watched until she disappeared from my sight.

  “It’s as though our trip is cursed,” Gerri noted when I got back into the SUV.

  “It seems that way,” I agreed.

  We fell silent, and I looked back to see her with a fidget spinner. She was staring down at it.

  “Savannah bought it at the last stop. She said that it helps her to concentrate. I don’t know about that, but it is distracting,” Gerri explained.

  “Yeah, the teachers back home banned them from school unless there was a proven reason for it,” I said, recalling the craze a few years ago.

  For a few moments, the only sounds in the car was the toy’s spinning in Gerri’s fingers.

  “The people of your rea
lm are so funny,” she said.

  I looked up from where I was texting Eli and glanced in the rearview mirror. “Why do you say that?”

  She looked up and I could only see the top of her blonde head as she kept her eyes on the spinner in her hand. “If it were me that was taken, no one would have come for me.”

  I was flabbergasted. “But your mother –”

  Gerri shook her head. “If I was gone, then I was gone. That’s what happened to my sister. I discovered that she was attempting to overthrow my mother’s rule. I threw her out myself and banned her from our courts. After that, her name was not spoken. She was only gone. There is not a single member of the royal courts or of our family that would have spoken against me to save her.”

  “Not to sound presumptuous, but could it be because of who she was?” I asked gently.

  Gerri laughed. “It’s a possibility. But now, with my disappearance, I know that if I don’t return, no one will come looking for me. My mother will choose a new heir and life will go on.”

  I looked up and watched as headlights headed straight for us. A Jeep passed us by and I wondered about the lives of the people inside. If they had people back at home that would miss them if they disappeared.

  “If I heard that you were missing, I would look for you,” I said.

  “That makes you so different from us. That’s why I think it’s strange. My insight into your people grows as I stay here. I appreciate the fact that you have ties to each other that are so strong, but I have to admit that it is strange. When I saw that Lou was so ready to come look for savanna in our realm, despite knowing the danger, it was only the beginning. And now witnessing firsthand the links you go to for your family, I have to ask myself something.”

  “What?”

  “If for all our wealth, are we missing something? Do we lack something vital in our lives?” She whispered.

  This time she looked up and met my eyes. I didn’t know if what I was seeing was comforting or not. She doubted the way her people lived and had lived for thousands of years.

  “I’m not sure anyone can say. You have your way of life, just like we have ours. That would be something you would have to ask yourself or your mother.”