Rack or Ruin (The Desecrated Pack Book 3)

by Jude Marquez

He squeaked, but they tackled him to the ground, held him close, and I couldn’t understand what they were saying but I knew all the same.

  Artie was home.

  We all were.

  Now, we just had to take it back.

  Chapter 14

  “If we leave this unguarded, they can come from here and flank us,” Eli pointed out.

  “What is this? Where did you get it?” Artie asked and picked up the pendant on Eli’s bare chest.

  Still on the baseball field, the fight raged.

  “It’s armor. Deidre gave it to me,” Eli said.

  “Cool,” Artie breathed and picked it up to examine it closer.

  Eli took it from him. “Focus.”

  Artie blinked. “Right.”

  “But we can’t let them near the spring either. We have to protect it,” I said.

  “We have to split up,” Dante said and winced. He glanced at Marcus and Stephen.

  “I think in this case, it’s the best idea,” Stephen said. He was still standing close to Billie.

  “But you said that it was protected by a magic even your god friend can’t get through,” Nichols said.

  “I don’t want to take chances,” I said firmly.

  “Artie, stay here,” Lou said slowly and looked up at everyone else.

  “Why? You will need me,” he said.

  “Yeah, but so will they if they want to get into that spring. Without you, there isn’t a chance, right?” Lou said.

  I nodded.

  “But Miss Maricel isn’t here. They don’t have a chance,” Artie said, standing upright.

  “Lou is here. That might be good enough. Same bloodline,” Eli pointed out.

  “Okay, let’s do this. Artie, you and Billie stay here with the other packs. Nichols, you too. Savannah, you too. If Gerri comes back, keep her here too. Keep them back, whatever you need to do, got it?” Celia said and looked at Artie.

  He returned the look. “Whatever I need to do?”

  I nodded. We still didn’t know the true extent of his powers and he had never let them off the leash, not after he killed the Ascendancy guards that came for him so long ago.

  He swallowed and nodded. “Okay. We’ll stay.”

  “The rest of you, let’s go-” I started and then stopped when I heard something peculiar in the distance. I cocked my head and then the others picked up on it too.

  Unsure, Stephen and Jake raised their guns.

  A moment later, I realized what I was hearing.

  “Don’t shoot,” I muttered and stepped towards the road.

  The twin black motorcycles stopped right before the wreckage of the Humvee.

  Zeke pulled his helmet off first and then Emily.

  “Hey,” he said.

  “Hey,” I replied, nervous suddenly.

  “I know you told us not to come, but-” he looked around and Emily bit her lip. If I didn’t know better, I would have thought she was trying not to laugh.

  “We thought you were just being modest,” Emily said, and swung her leg off the motorcycle and left it in the middle of the road.

  “Oh wow. I’ve never met one of you before,” Artie whispered and rushed towards Emily. She wrinkled her nose at him and swept one finger down his nose.

  “And I have been looking forward to meeting you,” Emily said.

  “Can I see it?” Artie asked, hopping from one foot to the other.

  I always forgot how young he was despite his immense power.

  Emily laughed and held her hand out.

  A tall, black scythe appeared, its blade silver and wickedly sharp.

  “What the-” Nichols whispered.

  “What is she?” Stephen whispered.

  “A reaper,” I said and glanced over my shoulder at him.

  “Oh. Yeah. Okay,” Stephen said and nodded.

  “Are you a reaper?” Billie asked Zeke.

  “No,” Zeke said politely and fiddled with his glasses. I noticed he taped them in the middle. He gave me a small smile when he saw me looking at him.

  “Okay, let’s do this. Nerd boy, can you fight?” Stephen asked.

  Zeke looked at him and frowned. “Yes.”

  “Okay, you’re with us. Excuse me, Miss Reaper, ma’am?” Eli asked Emily, much more respectfully than he talked to Zeke.

  “Emily. Yes?” She replied and handed her scythe to Artie. He squeaked again.

  “Would you mind staying here?” Eli asked.

  “I can do that,” Emily nodded.

  Eli looked to me and I nodded.

  “Let’s go,” I said.

  IT WAS THE TOWN SQUARE.

  Of course it was. It was always the town square.

  I should have known by this point.

  “There is a door in Azolata’s shop that leads down to it,” Celia explained as we approached the square.

  But once we saw the square, we knew that we wouldn’t have to go that way.

  At one point, I’m sure there had been a neat organization of construction equipment surrounding the square and the fountain that stood in the center. But now, thanks to Dante and Marcus, it was all blown away.

  They were too late though. The Ascendancy had blasted through fountain and dug down. They found the tunnel that led to the lock that guarded the spring.

  Just like Artie predicted, there were still people gathered around, some with jackhammers and sledgehammers, others with laptops.

  “Can’t we just sit here and laugh at them trying to get in with that stuff?” I whispered to Celia.

  “As appealing as that sounds, you know that’s not how it works,” she whispered back.

  I knew that. But I still wanted to point and laugh.

  “So what’s the plan?” I asked.

  Celia looked around at us. She had brought the strongest fighters from her pack, trusting the alphas from the other packs to keep the others safe.

  “Let’s try to talk to them,” Dante suggested.

  Everyone turned to look at him and he kept his face serious for half a second before he cracked and grinned. “Just kidding. Can you imagine?” He said.

  I shook my head.

  But the gods knew how good it felt to be home, to have Dante at my side, with Celia leading us. I could see how much better Eli felt too.

  “Let’s entrap them. Lou?” She said.

  I nodded. “No one out.”

  I knelt and dug my fingers into the rich soil and whispered the words I trusted. They were the words that my forest whispered to me, the ones that kept me and mine safe.

  “Your friend is glowing,” Zeke whispered to Eli.

  “Boyfriend. And yeah. He does that,” Eli replied.

  The tattoos on my skin connected with the magic in the forest, in my blood, and lit up. I requested that it help me keep them in so we could get the Ascendancy out.

  I opened my eyes and when I did, everything was layered over with magic only I could see.

  “Do his eyes do that too?” Zeke asked.

  “No, that’s new,” Celia said and stepped closer to me.

  “Yeah, that started in Vegas,” Eli said.

  Celia frowned. “We need to tell Artie.”

  “What about Azolata?” Stephen asked quietly.

  There was a shift in the group. They hadn’t forgotten him but there wasn’t leverage to get them to let him go either. The Ascendancy had shown that they were okay with sacrificing their own.

  “Can we see who’s down there?” Celia asked.

  “Whoa, what are those?” I asked when I looked down at the cuffs on her arms.

  “I’ll explain later,” she said.

  “That’s a lot of wolf magic,” I said.

  She didn’t reply.

  “Can we see who’s down there? Anyone important?” Celia asked.

  I turned my gaze back towards the square. I skimmed over them until I stopped over an older man, with silver hair and dark eyes. He had a pin over his heart that looked like it was also a source of magic, but one that
was poisoned and rotted nearly all the way through.

  “I think your grandpa is down there, Savannah. Old guy, lots of silver hair, weird magic pin?” I said.

  “That’s him,” she whispered and shuddered.

  “That will do. We’ll do an exchange. A life for a life. I don’t want to kill him-” she said and looked over at Savannah.

  “Yes, you do. Maybe you should,” Savannah said.

  Celia went quiet and still.

  We waited.

  “Disable their equipment,” she said. “As soon as we get there, disable it.”

  I looked around. “You get one thing or the other, Cee. You get the entrapment or you disable the equipment.”

  “I can do it,” Zeke whispered and fixed his glasses on his nose. They were taped together over the bridge of his nose and the guy was muscled almost as much as Dante, but I saw nothing that he had that we didn’t. I bristled at the fact that an outsider could so easily earn Celia’s trust and a place with us. When I looked around, I saw that I wasn’t the only one who felt that way.

  “Listen Nerd Boy, we have the strength to tear all this down. We can handle it-” Stephen said.

  “I can handle it,” Zeke insisted quietly.

  Celia glanced over at him and nodded. “Fine. And if they don’t want to deal, burn it all.”

  “Happily,” Zeke said.

  “Burn?” Eli said.

  “Can you contain fire?” Zeke asked me.

  “Uh, yeah. Fire? Wait- what-” I started.

  But it was too late. Celia was standing and striding through that invisible wall that I had just put up to keep everyone inside. Zeke followed her.

  Everyone else followed.

  As soon as we were out and the surrounding voices began to raise in alarm, Zeke took a step forward. The old man stepped out from behind a backhoe and surveyed us. There was nothing but disgust in his eyes.

  Zeke looked over his shoulder. “Ready?” He asked.

  I nodded.

  He rubbed his hands together, and I wasn’t the only one that gasped when flames appeared on his fingertips and ran up his arms. Then he spread his arms wide and flames erupted from his hands and his chest, shot forward and outward.

  But it wasn’t mindless, chaotic destruction. It was directed, controlled, fire magic like I didn’t think was possible. The backhoe tires popped and something snapped in the engine. The cables around us that powered all their machines began to melt under the stink of rubber.

  Then Zeke was pulling it all back and when he turned to Celia, to see if that was a job well done, I saw the scales on the side of his face, arching up elegantly from his chest to his jaw and ending at his hairline.

  “Thank you,” she murmured.

  Zeke stepped back and stood beside Stephen.

  Stephen stared over at Zeke, his eyes wide.

  “So we must be close,” the old man announced and cackled.

  He could have been Santa Claus, if Santa had a tan and a penchant for genocide and all things evil.

  “You would have never gotten in,” Celia said.

  “But now that you are here, maybe we don’t need to blast our way in. Let us come to an agreement-”

  “There is no agreement that lets you into the spring. Not now, not ever,” Celia interrupted and I could see that enraged him more than all the melting equipment around him.

  “Really? Are you so sure?” The man said and pulled a gun. He aimed it for Celia’s forehead and with his distance, he couldn’t miss.

  She didn’t move.

  “This isn’t your run-of-the-mill stuff, young lady. You saw what it did to your friend back there. What can it do to you?” He asked.

  “Kill me, probably. But then you wouldn’t ever get in. You know what you need to get in and me dead won’t help you,” she said calmly.

  “Where is Azolata?” Savannah asked.

  The old man turned and looked at her. If it was possible, his face twisted in even more disgust. “What have they done to you?” He demanded.

  “They saved me. They became my family. They did more for me than you ever did,” she replied and grinned.

  The blood that soaked her earlier was flaking off now, and she looked like she crawled out of a nightmare.

  “We didn’t want to believe Bianca when she said you were too weak but we never thought you could betray us like this,” he said. He almost sounded sad.

  “What happened to my parents?” Savannah asked.

  The change of subject didn’t just the old man for a loop. Everyone else seemed confused.

  Everyone but Celia.

  “I told you, she killed them in a ritual-” he started.

  “Liar,” Eli hissed.

  “She hunted them,” the old man began.

  “Lies,” Zeke declared and stared the old man down.

  “Where is Azolata?” Stephen demanded.

  “Give us back Azolata, free of his shackles and I’ll let you out of here, unscathed,” Celia said.

  “You think you control them? They are nothing more than animals-” the old man started.

  I jerked. I felt something at the edge of the circle, something that felt familiar and alien all at once.

  “No,” I breathed and pushed my way forward. I grasped Celia around her waist and jerked her and Zeke back.

  They were in front of us and when I moved them, the entrapment fell.

  But right where they had been standing, a group of jackhammers dropped.

  It wouldn’t have killed them, but it would hurt them.

  I rolled off of them and when I turned around, I wished I hadn’t. I wished I had seen anything but what was right in front of all of us.

  Chapter 15

  I stared at the still bodies of Clint, Priscilla, Casey, and Tommy.

  I stared at them because it was easier to look at them than it was to look at what was right in front of me.

  Bianca had Billie’s hair twisted around her fist and Billie’s face was tipped backwards, up to the night sky.

  The wickedly sharp blade kept her still, but I saw that she had been nicked a few times already.

  Artie was next to her and an old woman, Savannah’s grandmother, had a gun to his lower back. He was pale and I could feel his anger pouring off of him in waves.

  But if he made a move, they would slit Billie’s throat.

  The other wolves and Marcus, they were not with them.

  “You can’t kill him and expect to get into the spring,” I said calmly and stood up.

  “He has clarified that he will kill himself if we force you to compel him, we know,” the old woman said.

  “So we will settle for a compromise. We will take him. All we require is a source of magic, and he is among the strongest here. Right, Jessica?” The old woman said and turned to the blonde that was casually standing to their side and staring at Lou, hunger and lust written all over her face.

  “With control, yes,” Jessica agreed.

  “I know you don’t understand and you won’t for a very long time, but you can’t let them have him. I don’t know what you will have to sacrifice, but one day you will have to make a choice. And it will be the worst thing you will have to do. But you have to promise me, both of you, swear to me you will never let the Ascendancy have him,” my mother whispered to me and Eli.

  Her voice was right there, in my head, and I didn’t know why, but I was a good wolf, and I always listened when my alpha gave a command.

  “No,” I said.

  Everyone twitched.

  The old man and woman stared at me and Bianca snorted.

  “There isn’t a choice. This isn’t something that you can bargain your way out of. We are taking him and the blonde for insurance,” the old woman said.

  “Please,” Stephen whispered, and I saw him drop to the ground, to his knees. “No, please take me.”

  “You’re human and worthless,” Bianca said.

  “I shot you,” Stephen said, and I wasn’t sure if he knew of
what he was doing. “Please, no. I’m not-”

  I turned and snarled at him.

  He stopped speaking and looked up at me.

  It was then, right then, when I was distracted, that everything changed.

  It was a second, less than a second, and it all fell apart.

  Marcus tore out of the forest from the side and headed straight for Bianca. He slammed into her and the three of them, Bianca, Marcus, and Billie fell into a heap.

  A shot rang out and Billie screamed and Marcus bellowed something and I flinched when I thought I heard something tear.

  Then Artie was jerking out of the old woman’s grip, because he didn’t have to worry about Billie anymore, she was away or dead, but either way it didn’t matter because Artie could get free and his magic was controlled, sure, when he was in control but they had threatened him, his home, his best friend, everything he loved and I could smell the ozone-lightning-rain that was Artie’s magic-

  Then another shot rang out.

  My little brother, the one I had come home to for so many years, the little brother that was prophesied to be the most powerful of us all, was curling up into himself, and that ozone-lightning-rain smell was gone like it never was there in the first place and he was falling backwards onto the piles of cement and asphalt, dying as he fell, dying at the cursed fountain just like our parents died.

  Eli screamed, but they weren’t done yet.

  The old man stepped forward and put a gun to his head, even as he gasped for breath and his face drained of all color. Even then, as he clutched his midsection, he sneered at the old man.

  “You are nothing. You have no real power. You were not chosen and even if you kill me, that won’t make you special. It just makes you a killer,” Artie hissed.

  “I can save him,” Lou whispered from my feet.

  He was on all fours, like he had dropped to his knees when Artie was shot and could barely hold himself back from running to his side.

  “Celia, I can save him, give him to me, let me save him, I can save him,” Lou begged, but he didn’t look up at me.

  “Save him and then we’ll take him,” the old man said.

  “No,” I said once again.

  “Then let him die, I don’t care,” he said.

  “Give him back to us and I’ll go with you,” I said.