Rack or Ruin (The Desecrated Pack Book 3)

by Jude Marquez

  The other four scrambled after us.

  The moon was above us and I looked up at it and sighed. “It should be full.”

  “I don’t think you have the time,” Zeke said.

  He stood across from me in the shadows of the trees. I had a fierce longing suddenly for my brothers or my parents.

  “It should be someone from your own pack here but any alpha will do in a pinch,” he said.

  “I know. I read,” I said stiffly.

  Zeke cleared his throat and ducked his head. He squinted his eyes at the paper in the dark and tried to tilt it towards the small amount of light from the moon.

  “Aren’t you made of fire?” I pointed out.

  He glanced up at me and if I wasn’t wrong, there was a blush spreading across his face. He cupped his hand and a small flame flickered to life.

  “Repeat after me,” he said.

  I saw Gerri, Savannah, Jake, and Emily shuffle in closer like they were worried they would miss something important.

  “As I take this mantle of Alpha, I swear that I will remember mercy above all things,” Zeke said.

  “As I take this mantle of Alpha, I swear that I will remember mercy above all things,” I repeated, and it was like all the noise in the world fell away and it was just Zeke, his flame, and me standing in a vast space.

  “I will show mercy where there is none and carry out justice to the aggrieved,” Zeke said.

  “I will show mercy where there is none and carry out justice to the aggrieved,” I said and it was like his voice was inside my skull.

  “I will defend the innocent and lead my army to victory,” Zeke said.

  “I will defend the innocent and lead my army to victory,” I repeated and blinked as his features came into focus suddenly.

  “No matter what the cost to myself or my soul,” he finished and looked up at me.

  “No matter what the cost to myself or my soul,” I said.

  There were twin flames in his eyes and he stared at me for a long moment before he stepped forward. I expected the knife he carried out from his room but I wasn’t surprised when he lifted my arm, the one I was going to slice open a few moments ago, to his mouth and bit down.

  Distantly I heard cries of outrage and horror but I ignored them. I felt like there were flames rippling through me and Zeke pulled the cuffs from my hand and laid one and then the other over the dripping wound.

  Then he clasped them over my wrists and stepped back.

  The flames in his eyes went out.

  “It’s finished,” Zeke said and bowed his head. “General.”

  I stared down at the cuffs and then when I looked over at the others, they were watching me with wide eyes.

  Then a wicked grin spread on Savannah’s face. “Your book is waiting for you.”

  WE WERE LESS THAN HALF an hour into the drive to Phoenix when a phone rang.

  I looked over at Lou.

  “It’s not me,” he said. He dug around and found it in the console, blinking at us.

  “Do I answer it?” He asked.

  I hesitated and by that point, whoever was calling hung up.

  A moment later, a chime let us know that there was a voicemail.

  Once again, Lou hesitated and looked to me. “What if the phone isn’t for us? Isn’t that snooping?”

  “Deidre isn’t that lazy. She left it here on purpose. Go ahead, see who it is,” I said but kept my eyes on the road.

  So far, there were no seven foot tall roaches trying to descend on us.

  Lou dialed and when the voice picked up, it came in through the speakers.

  “Eli, this is Harrison from the Gold Crest Pack. I’ll call you back. Pick up this time,” a gruff voice came over the speakers and he hung up.

  “Nice fellow,” Lou said and hit the End button on the phone. “Excellent manners.”

  I laughed.

  The phone rang a moment later, and I nodded at Lou to answer this time.

  “Harrison,” I said.

  “Eli,” he replied.

  “I’m here too!” Another voice chirped from the other end.

  “Who are you?” I asked.

  “Candace Weaver, Harper Pack,” she said cheerfully.

  She sounded twelve years old.

  “Nice to meet you, Candace. What can I help you two with?” I said.

  “We were hoping to save you the trip all the way out here. We are in your boyfriend’s world. You know the place?” Anderson asked.

  I looked over at Lou and then back at the road, searching my mind. It took me a minute before I understood what he was saying.

  “Oh, yeah. Okay, yeah we will be there in about an hour and a half,” I said.

  “Good man. Just the two of you?” Anderson asked.

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “Bye!” Candace said.

  “See you,” Anderson said and hung up.

  “My world?” Lou asked, confused.

  “Iglesia La Luz Del Mundo,” I explained.

  “A church?” Lou said.

  “The Light of the World,” I replied.

  “Clever,” Lou said.

  He found some snacks, and we shared them before we fell silent again. Lou leaned his head back against the headrest and he was so quiet, I figured that he fell asleep.

  “Are we sure this isn’t a trap?” He asked.

  “I don’t think so,” I replied.

  “Why?”

  “Who could have gotten this number? Deidre would have to give it to them. And it’s hard to fool her,” I said.

  Lou hummed.

  The music played quietly as I pushed the speed limit and headed for the church.

  When we got there, the parking lot was empty, and I was surprised at the heat on my skin.

  Harrison Taylor was a big guy, with big shoulders, a broad chest, and thighs and forearms that looked like tree stumps. He had rich brown skin and perpetually glaring brown eyes. His mouth was almost always pressed into a disapproving line.

  We had met a few times before through pack meetings and his demeanor had changed little over the years.

  I did not know who Candace Weaver was, but I had to choke back laughter when I saw the two of them. Candace could have been related to Gerri with her white blonde hair and store-bought tan. She was already smiling brightly at us when we pulled up.

  “I-” Lou started but then stopped. He looked over at me.

  “What?” I asked.

  He grabbed a napkin from the floor and a pen from the console.

  I don’t like this. Feels off.

  I looked down at the napkin and then up at Lou.

  “I guess I’m just nervous about meeting your friends,” he said, a cover for why we were taking so long. He also knew that Harrison could probably hear him.

  I took the pen from him.

  We have to at least see if they have the books. If they don’t, we are out of here.

  Lou nodded, but he didn’t seem happy.

  “Don’t worry about it. They are great people. Especially Harrison. I’ve known him since we were kids,” I said.

  If Lou hadn’t said anything, I would have missed the wince that crossed Harrison’s face.

  Lou put a hand on my arm. I put one hand over his and gave him a reassuring squeeze.

  “Come on. It’s okay,” I urged.

  We got out of the car and I waved to the other two. They waved back.

  I reassured myself that I still had the wolf’s head pendant around my neck.

  Harrison pulled me into a big hug which was surprising, since the last time we saw each other a handshake was all I got. And that was years ago. In one hand, he was carrying a package that was wrapped in black cloth. I wondered what it was and why I felt the urge to snatch it out of his hands.

  “We heard what happened at Glenwood Lock,” Candace said.

  She was a tiny thing, a wisp of a young woman.

  “Yeah,” Lou said and cleared his throat. He put his hands in his back pocket
s.

  “Sorry, you are?” She said and squinted at him.

  “Lou Correa,” he said and nodded. He didn’t make any motion to shake her hand but then again, neither did she.

  “Are you the new Sentinel of the Ortega Pack?” She asked.

  “No,” Lou muttered. He fidgeted and looked around. The church glinted behind Harrison and Candace.

  Technically not a lie but not the entire truth either.

  “Then who are you?” She asked, her eyes flicking up and down. “We rarely do business in front of strangers.”

  “He’s not a stranger, he’s with Eli,” Harrison snapped.

  Candace did not look happy with that answer but she didn’t say anything else either.

  “Sentinel Harper sent this for Sentinel Ortega. The Sentinel Ortega. Is he here?” She asked and glanced around us towards the car. She had a package wrapped in brown paper in her hands.

  “No. My brother had-” I sighed and took a deep breath. “He has other commitments.”

  “Oh,” she said and looked over to Harrison. He shrugged, like he couldn’t care less what she said. “Well, Sentinel Harper told me I was only supposed to give this to Artie-”

  Candace began to turn away to an unmarked sedan behind her.

  “That’s not what he said. He said to give it to an Ortega,” Harrison said.

  “But he has-” she gestured at Lou.

  “Oh my god,” Lou muttered and threw his hands up in the air.

  “Give it to Eli and let’s get out of here,” Harrison said and they stared at each other for a few long moments, glaring.

  “I will not get demoted because of you,” Candace snapped.

  “I’ll leave you here,” Harrison threatened.

  Lou and I looked at each other, both of us unsure what would happen.

  “Okay, how about this,” Lou said and stepped forward.

  And took the book from Candace.

  She hissed at him like she was a cat and I saw the brief shift on her features but Lou was unimpressed. He was faster than her and stepped away when she swiped at him with her claws.

  “Hey!” I snapped and there was no missing that growl in my throat. “Keep your hands to yourself.”

  “Make me,” she replied, her words slurring as her fangs descended.

  “I don’t have to,” I said and glanced at Lou over my shoulder. “Got it?”

  “Yeah. I can read it, this one is mine,” he said breathlessly as he studied the book he just unwrapped and held his hand up casually.

  When I turned, Candace was stumbling away from me, like someone had pushed her.

  I looked over at Harrison, who had disgust written all over his face as he stared back at her. When he looked back at me, there was the strangest expression of regret on his face before he looked down. “I didn’t have a choice.”

  The words were so strange that they didn’t make sense for a minute. “What?” I said.

  “My alpha compelled me. I told him we shouldn’t work with them, that working against our own is ensuring our own extinction but he didn’t listen. I think they have something of his,” Harrison said in a rush and shoved the package in his hands into my own.

  “Let’s go,” Lou said, and I fumbled with the package for a minute before I firmly grasped it.

  “Freeze!” A voice boomed out from the corner of the parking lot.

  I did, for a second, then Lou and I were tearing back to our own vehicle.

  Too late, we saw the Ascendancy guards rising from the bushes that surrounded the parking lot. We slowed to a halt and I raised my hands. They surrounded us on three sides and Harrison and Candace stood at our backs.

  “They can mask themselves. Their scents. I should have been able to smell them the minute we drove in,” I said in a remarkably calm tone. I looked over at Lou, only to see him staring at his book like we weren’t surrounded by people with weapons that could torture and maim us.

  “Focus, babe,” Lou said and turned a page in his book.

  “You’re reading!” I hissed.

  “It’s helpful to our current situation,” Lou said and looked up at the sky, which was clear and bright. Then he looked around at us and frowned. “Not ideal but what else do we have?”

  “What-” I asked as the Ascendancy began to cross the line of bushes separating us and them.

  “Listen to me,” Lou commanded.

  It seemed like everyone did and even the Ascendancy guards paused. Even I turned my complete attention over to him.

  “Shoot him! Shoot the witch!” A voice screamed over the walkies of the guards.

  When Lou began to speak next, it wasn’t English, and I wasn’t even sure it was a language spoken by humans. It scared me, to be honest, and I could only stare at him as his eyes began to go silver again.

  Then the shots began.

  I ducked and turned back to the guards but they were being pulled to the ground, the branches of the bushes snaking out and dragging them back, wrapping around their throats and pulling tight, wrapping tighter and tighter around their midsections.

  Any shooting was purely accidental as the guards began fighting off the vines that were wrapping around them. I watched a few of them try to slice their way out, only to stab themselves.

  “We should go,” Lou said to me and we ducked again when another shot rang out.

  There was a sharp cry behind us and we turned to see Harrison and Candace on the ground.

  “Damn it,” Lou said and rushed to where they were laying on the broken cement.

  He worked with Harrison first, pulled the bullet from his arm first and then left him there on the pavement. I stood behind Lou to make sure no one else snuck up on him.

  “They made me-” Harrison said to me.

  “Save it,” I snapped.

  I heard a faint ripping sound, and I didn’t want to turn around to see what Lou was doing, but Candace’s half scream/half howl told me enough.

  “Let’s go,” Lou said and pulled me to the car.

  I followed him and as we pulled out of the parking lot, we saw more cars speeding in.

  “There’s more coming,” I told Lou.

  He turned to see what I was talking about. I watched in horror as he rolled down his window and leaned out.

  Again there was that inhuman language and when I looked in the rearview mirror, I saw the tires of the Ascendancy flatten.

  When Lou was back in the car, buckling up, he looked over at me. “I told you I didn’t like it.”

  “We got the books, didn’t we?”

  “Yeah. Let’s go home.”

  Home. It felt like a thousand years since we had considered it.

  “THAT DOESN’T MAKE SENSE,” Marcus said.

  “Excuse me for not taking the advice of someone who doesn’t know jack shit about magic or reincarnation or whatever the hell else is going on here,” I said.

  I was tired. It felt like I hadn’t slept in a lifetime.

  I had to stop myself from giggling.

  “Where is Dante?” I asked.

  “Went grocery shopping,” Marcus said.

  “Did you two fight again?” I asked.

  “No,” Marcus said and stared out the window of the teacher’s lounge.

  “That’s a first,” I muttered.

  Marcus didn’t reply.

  “What does he mean when he says that I don’t see him? I see him. I see him plain as day right in front of me,” I said, repeating myself once again.

  In the last hour, we had been over and over this and we still weren’t sure what Azolata was talking about.

  “And if I can make it through the door, I should be able to make it through the flames, right?” I said.

  “Uh, no. Azolata got hurt by those flames and he’s mostly god. You aren’t even a little bit of a god so I’m sure it would incinerate you,” Marcus said.

  “Fuck you.” I glared at the soda in my hands.

  “Hey, you want to die, go ahead, but make sure you make a w
ill for who gets custody of Billie before you do,” Marcus said and stood from his perch. “He’s back.”

  Dante shoved himself through the door a minute later, his backpack in his arms, staring at us with wide eyes. He was panting.

  “What?” Marcus said.

  “We need to get Celia on the phone,” he said.

  “Where were you? What happened?” I asked.

  “I went grocery shopping. We will starve on vending machine food,” he said and looked down at the backpack he was clutching. “I don’t know how much I got.”

  I took the bag from him. There were a couple loaves of smashed bread and some lunch meat and a few bottles of water.

  “Well, let’s call her,” I said and gestured to a phone on the counter top.

  Dante rushed over and Marcus and I followed at a somewhat slower pace.

  The phone rang once before Celia answered. “Hey, I was about to call you. We are on our way back. I just talked to Eli and Lou and they are on their way home-”

  “Wait, Celia wait. Maybe you shouldn’t come back,” Dante said breathlessly.

  She paused. “Why not?”

  “I just got back from the store. I had to sneak in and I got lucky because it seemed empty. Then I heard some voices towards the front of the store and I stopped to listen. It was Bianca and her grandma,” Dante said.

  “Okay,” Celia encouraged.

  “They were talking about a bunch of stuff about feeding someone, about someone coming home, about someone finally eating. It didn’t make sense, and I was about to leave when Bianca asked her grandma when it would happen. Her grandma told her she needed to have patience. Bianca said her patience was wearing thin because of all the things she had been through. She said that she still had stitches from what she had been through,” Dante said.

  “Ha!” I said and stuffed a piece of bread into my mouth. “That was me. I did that.”

  Dante and Marcus gave me a curious look.

  “Stephen? You okay?” Celia asked.

  I stuffed more bread into my mouth.

  “He’s going through... some things,” Marcus said.

  “Anyway, Bianca asked her grandma who would light the fuse and her grandma said that they had to find the spring first before they could blow it. And that was only if they found the source of the spring and they couldn’t move it or get close to it,” Dante said.