by SM Reine
The earthquakes had grown in frequency and length during her bumpy trip. Like the contractions of a woman in labor, they were approaching some kind of climax. Pictures had fallen off of the walls. Various pieces of equipment had fallen off of their carts. The nurse was trying to pick up a TV that had tumbled to the floor in the lobby.
None of the town’s lights were working since the earthquakes had begun, so she had only a torch to light her path to John Marshall’s room. The beam took on a sickly hue in the haze, and it sucked all color from her surroundings, leaving everything a uniform shade of yellow. But Sophie needed little light to see there were no nurses at their station. She didn’t see a single medical professional as she carved a path up the cluttered hallway to John Marshall’s room.
Candles on the windowsill provided half-light. In the cottony-soft darkness, Lincoln’s unconscious father looked sad, even in his sleep. His equipment was disabled, the generator was dead, and the medicine that kept him peaceful would soon wear off.
The torch’s beam fell upon Ashley and Susannah, who were sitting by the bed. They looked unpleasantly surprised to see Sophie. “What does Lincoln want now?” Ashley asked.
Sophie swallowed hard, resisting the urge to stare at John Marshall. “I need you to call the pack. Warn them that their Alpha broke out of custody at the jail in Northgate. Police are heading toward them.”
Ashley was on her feet in an instant. “He broke out?”
“He was arrested?” Susannah asked, with even more horror.
“Lincoln and I have an idea for resolving this, but there isn’t time to explain,” Sophie said. “I must ask you to trust us. Will you call the pack and tell them to meet Lincoln at the caldera atop Mount Bain?”
She was genuinely shocked when Ashley said, without hesitation, “If that’s what Lincoln needs me to do.”
“It is. You must convince them to move quickly, too. Lie to them if necessary. Nothing matters more than getting the pack to the caldera in time.”
“I’ll have to use the phone at home,” Ashley said. “Our landline works even when the power is out.”
The earth shook beneath their feet again, and Sophie grabbed a cabinet to keep from falling. Glass jars rattled on the shelves. “Hurry.”
Ashley swung her bag over her shoulder, kissed Susannah on top of the head, and left.
“Are you going too?” asked Susannah.
Sophie shook her head. “I’m staying here to help protect John Marshall.”
“Why isn’t Lincoln protecting him?”
“He is leading Noah and the shifters to the gargoyles’ nest,” Sophie said. “The werewolves are capable of defeating them without help, but the police need to see it happen. They must know that the werewolves are on their side.”
“If anyone can bring the two sides together, I’m sure it’s my boy,” Susannah said.
“Yes, but let’s not rely on him too much. These earthquakes are magical in origin. The killer somehow knows that we are closing in on him. Thus, while Lincoln addresses the golems, we must address the witch. Tracking the magic should be easy. Did you bring ritual supplies to help protect your estranged husband?”
“I’ve got some spell stuff,” Susannah said.
“Excellent,” Sophie said. “Begin casting a circle of power.” She let her bags slide off her shoulders, setting John’s file on the table beside him.
The witch rose from her chair, wringing her hands. “Shouldn’t we evacuate? They say the earthquakes mean an eruption’s coming, and Northgate’s a lot safer than Mortise. We’re right under the volcano.”
“It won’t erupt if we stop the witch, will it?” She flipped open John’s file, on impulse, and skimmed the arrest report on top. It was as uninformative as the crime report. It only listed the time and date that Deputy McBride had arrested John, and then when Sheriff Dickerson ordered his release hours later.
Of course she had released him. She’d borne John’s baby—the so-called Wilson Dickerson that had been put up for adoption in order to hide their relationship.
The pages underneath the arrest report were a letter of complaint from Deputy McBride defending the arrest. Asking a judge to uphold the charges.
According to Deputy McBride, John Marshall had been using his position with the church to sexually abuse teenage girls.
It also alleged that Sheriff Dickerson and Father Davidek were complicit, which, the deputy said, meant the case needed to be addressed outside their jurisdiction.
The last page in the folder was a denial from Judge Smith. The case had been thrown out.
Sophie felt light-headed.
Not that she was surprised by any of it, of course. John Marshall was at the heart of a series of targeted murders. He’d had an affair with a woman best known for running a cult in Northgate. Abusing children simply checked one more box on a to-do list of corruption.
Except that this was John Marshall, father of Lincoln Marshall. She’d seen the way Lincoln’s face got bright when he talked about his dad. John was Lincoln’s hero.
And now Sophie would have to tell him the truth.
She couldn’t feel guilty about it. It wasn’t her fault that John Marshall was a monster thousands of times worse than the gargoyles. But she would take no joy in being the bearer of bad news, particularly when it meant bringing sadness upon someone who had, to the best of his ability, attempted to be a friend.
That was a dilemma for later. Her current dilemma was the pressure in her bladder signaling an urgent need for the toilet—a need she could no longer ignore. She peeked into the hallway again. “Where is the nearest toilet?”
“That door, actually,” Susannah said, pointing to the one in the corner of the room. “I thought it was a closet too, at first. But it’s a bathroom.”
“Oh, excellent. Will you watch John for a moment?”
“I’ve watched him this long,” she said.
Sophie dropped her jacket. “Please shout if he stirs. I don’t think anyone should be alone with him.”
“Then you’ve learned about John’s arrest, haven’t you?” Susannah said.
Something in her tone made Sophie look at her again. “That is why you divorced him, isn’t it? You learned that he was sexually abusing teenaged girls through the church.”
It was as though some puppeteer had cut every last one of Susannah’s strings. She sagged against the window, forehead rested against the glass, eyes shut. “He told me that he was having an affair with that Dickerson woman. I didn’t want to believe him. But when he was arrested, he was released immediately. Everything got swept under the rug. Even when Brandi McBride died by suicide, nobody wanted to blame John. I thought that I could put up with that for Lincoln, for my girls, but once I heard about Junior…”
“Everybody has their limits, and that was yours.” Sophie opened the bathroom door.
“I wouldn’t say it was a limit,” Susannah said. “I would say that was my motive. I hope Lincoln understands.”
The sight of a ritual space inside the bathroom was so surprising that Sophie almost didn’t register what Susannah had said.
Motive.
Susannah had set up a fresh spell inside the bathroom, and Sophie knew enough to tell the intent was malignant. The goat horns and slaughtered rabbits might have been part of a protection spell, but whatever burned cruelly orange within the bowls around the perimeter was something else entirely. The air was thick with an acid tang that stung Sophie’s eyes.
There was a framed photo of John Marshall beside one of the bowls. A lock of his hair was tucked into the frame, and runes were etched onto the glass.
Sophie turned slowly, her urge to urinate forgotten. “The shifters didn’t smell a lie when you said you had nothing to do with the gargoyles.”
“For witches like me, masking a lie is the smallest thing I can do,” Susannah said. Flame foamed over her shoulders, the same color as the magic within the bathroom. It flowed down to her arms.
“You control
the gargoyles?” Sophie asked. “But why?”
“Because it’s John’s fault. Because he hurt those kids, and something about that made them come back as monsters,” Susannah said. “I owe them their lives, don’t I? I only killed people who deserved it in order to animate them, you know.”
The magic grew so thick that Sophie struggled to breathe through it. She put her hand into her pocket, grabbing the charm that Omar had given her. The witch hunter bracelet. “What’s this spell going to do to them?”
“Nothing. I’ve been caught. I have to finish John now, while I’ve still got time, and I’m going to make his final minutes the most painful of his life.” There was no evil within Lincoln’s mother, even now. She gazed at her unconscious ex-husband with anguish. Almost as much anguish as she showed when turning on Sophie. “I can’t let you interfere with me—for the sake of the children who deserve this vengeance.” Susannah said it like she was trying to convince herself. “I have to put you down for the kids.”
She lifted her hand to point at Sophie.
In another lifetime, Sophie would’ve known a counter spell to save herself.
In another life. When Sophie had still been a witch.
Now, she could do nothing except lift the green charm between them. Sophie held it so that the eye made of twisted metal cables seemed to stare directly at Susannah.
Magic crashed into it, bounced off, and ricocheted into the wall. Red splattered and left behind an ugly sear.
Sophie dived behind the bathroom door. She moved too slowly to save herself. The spreading flames caught her in the face. Magic burned over her like wildfire.
For a few moments of screaming pain, Sophie felt nothing but fire, the boiling blood and fats within her skin.
Then the pain was too much. Her mind shut down, and she was unconscious.
Chapter 38
Abel expected that running from the police would be easy, and he was right.
Werewolves could outrun just about anyone. In rugged terrain, they’d even beat cars. He was unstoppable once he took on four legs and carried Verna, clinging to his back, through the trees beside Pedregon.
What he didn’t expect was to smell anger on the wind before he even caught sight of the sanctuary. He recognized the smell of his mate and the tang of her sweat. He could smell their baby all over her too. Benjamin’s perfume was a mix of Summer and Abel’s. Musky and puppy-ish and yet somehow completely human.
Abel began shifting back into his human form as soon as he smelled the baby, and he didn’t lose a single step on his approach down the hill. Not even when his knees switched directions. His hair fell out in clumps. He only had to pause when he was no longer big enough to carry Verna, sliding her to the ground beside him.
He arrived at the edge of the sanctuary steaming in the crisp night. Rylie stood at the edge of the field. She was in one of her sundresses, hair flying free behind her, anger lighting her eyes like twin suns. Benjamin was nestled in the crook of her arm.
“Are you okay?” Rylie asked.
Abel took them into his arms. “How’d you know I was coming?”
“You triggered alarms on the nearest police department. They must have a partnership with the OPA—I found out because I got a call from Fritz. Can you even imagine it? Learning that your husband is a fugitive from the head of the OPA?” Rylie was shaking. “What were you thinking?”
“I needed to be here for you,” he said.
“You’re nuts.” She kissed him desperately, the baby fussing between them. Even Benjamin’s colic couldn’t keep Rylie from climbing halfway up his chest. “I’ve been so scared, and I did want to see you, but—I mean, this is just the police. They wouldn’t have kept you forever. You should have cooperated.”
“I did it for you, baby,” Abel murmured. His hand was big enough that his palm curved around baby Benjamin’s head. The little boy’s skin was so soft, so fragile. “They’d have dragged me off no matter what I did. There’s no making them happy.”
“I have to fix this,” Rylie said. She was near hyperventilating. She tore at her hair with the hand that wasn’t holding the baby. She must have been doing it a lot; the hair on that side was frizzy as hell. “We can’t just run again. We have a small city’s worth of shifters! And I’m tired, Abel, I’m so tired. I haven’t slept since Benjamin was born. How am I going to stay ahead of the law when I’m so sleep deprived?”
“Whoa, calm down. You don’t gotta freak out. I’m here. I’ll take care of everything.”
“How?” she asked, suddenly angry. She’d gone from panic to fury even faster than Abel had broken out of jail. “How in the world do you plan to take care of this disaster that you made? You didn’t even tell me that tensions with the police had gotten so bad! We could have prevented this!”
“Look, it’s not my fault the cops are racist shit-stains,” Abel said.
“They’re just doing their jobs,” Rylie said.
“Their job is fucking racist!”
“It’s not racism when you’re breaking the law, Abel!”
“So this probably isn’t a good time to tell you that I broke another prisoner out, huh?” Abel asked, beckoning Verna forward.
Leaves rustled. An enormous stag slid gracefully between the trees, approaching them from Verna’s rear. The size of the deer was weird. Big wolves felt normal—they were predators. Nothing about Pedregon looked like the prey he should have been. Not the fierce tips of his velvety, blood-red antlers, or the silver hooves punching divots with every graceful step.
Rylie couldn’t even summon her welcome speech for Verna. She was beside herself, jiggling Benjamin with extra vigor to calm his grunts. “And who the heck is this guy now? I don’t have any Alpha stags in my pack! You’re bringing around shifters without even telling me?”
“Pedregon’s here to help us,” Abel said. “Verna, head down this road. There’s a shed at the bottom. Look for a girl named Summer—really tall, really pretty. She’ll help you.”
“Thank you,” Verna mumbled, or something like that. She was running from the arguing Alphas too quickly to enunciate.
Rylie barely watched her go. She had gone full Alpha at the sight of Pedregon’s approach, her nostrils flaring and eyes blazing. “I should be approving visitors.”
“Come on, baby—” Abel began.
“Stop with the ‘come on baby’! We have an actual baby,” Rylie said. “And you’re doing weird stuff without talking to me, when we should really be figuring out how to cooperate with the Grove County officials who obviously don’t trust us!”
Abel pulled Rylie tighter against his chest and said, “There can’t be any cooperation between pack and the Grove County cops. We’re going to war.”
The stag bellowed into the night. He made the forest shake with his cry of battle.
“Stop!” Rylie roared. “Both of you, just stop!”
She flung her hands out, and the power of the moon throbbed over the entire valley.
Abel was her mate and he was still incapable of resisting her summons. She’d seized his body. His heart couldn’t take a single beat without her permission.
And Adán Pedregon shifted back.
He came back into his human form weeping. Pain hormones rolled off of him, so Abel could smell that Pedregon had felt every last moment of his transformation. It wasn’t the carefully numb experience that Rylie’s shifters survived each full and new moon. It was the original, visceral, bone-grinding, blood-boiling, teeth-shattering experience, and Pedregon was left to shiver, naked in a puddle of his own fluids.
Rylie stood over him. Even with her slight figure and the baby grumping in her arm, she shivered with energy that left no room for Pedregon to stand.
“What’s your plan?” she asked.
It took Abel a moment to realize she was talking to him.
“I was gonna go to Barcelona with Pedregon,” Abel said. “There is a real revolution there. Shifters are fighting and dying, and the government is trying to ex
terminate them.”
“Then your solution is to…leave?”
“I don’t got much of a choice now, do I?” Abel asked. “Cops don’t want us here. The shifters over there need help. It’s the right thing to do.”
Her chin was trembling. “The right thing? For who, exactly?”
“Alpha,” groaned Pedregon, rolling over on the ground so that he could see Abel. The mud caked to his sweat-soaked shoulders. He looked every year of his age now, and then some. He looked weak. “You have made the right choice.”
“Abel! Rylie!”
Summer was running up the road now.
“Is something wrong with Verna?” Abel asked, alarmed.
“No, she’s fine. I sent her on to the welcome tent. She’ll be okay soon, but—no, you have to hear the message from Lincoln,” Summer said, breathless. “He says that he can prove we’re not involved with the murders and get the cops to drop their case against us. But we have to get to Mount Bain’s caldera before nine, or else the gargoyles will kill him and the police.”
“What time is it now?” Rylie asked.
Summer’s body began to shift. Her face was reforming into a wolf’s when she said, “Eight fifty-seven.”
Wind blasted through Lincoln’s hair, whipping it back as they tore through the trees. He was too tense to sit. He hung onto the roll bars, feet gripping the bed, watching the forest fall away as they climbed to higher elevations.
Noah knew the exact trail that would take them to the caldera. They’d climbed it together a few times as kids. The Jeep was a lot faster than Lincoln on foot, though, even while careening up to crazy elevations. They rolled over the edge of the caldera and kicked up ash as they slid down into its belly.
Lincoln jumped out of the Jeep and landed on sand. The air was hotter here than it had been down in town. Everything reeked faintly of rotten eggs. But there was no sign of the gargoyles among the craters—thankfully, since there was also no sign of the werewolves yet, either.
“Where are they?” Noah shouted out his window. The other cars were pulling up behind him and fanning out. “I told you, Lincoln, if you were just distracting—”