by J. N. Baker
“What’s up, Fido?” he asked, slurring his words. He used the door handle to pull himself to his feet. His legs wobbled under him and I wondered how much he and Holly had to drink. The answer was obviously a lot.
I yanked one of the torches from the wall before grabbing Cody by his long blond hair and shoving him back into the storage room, slamming the wooden door behind us. I didn’t need anyone walking by and seeing me scold my shift “sidekick” like he was some sort of disobedient child. He was sure as shit acting like one.
“What the fuck are you doing?” I asked again, the anger still very present in my voice. Anger came easily to the Chosen. It was about the only emotion that did. I took a deep breath, trying to calm myself so I didn’t throttle him to death.
“I’m just having a little fun, Fido,” he responded, hiccupping and chuckling to himself. “You should try it some time. I bet you’d be a lot of fun.”
“Have fun in your damn room,” I said, hanging the torch on the wall beside me. “Anyway, it’s the middle of the night. You shouldn’t be doing anything but sleeping.” I was sure I sounded like a hypocrite. It hadn’t been more than an hour since Alec had been on my case about the same damn thing.
“It’s always night,” Cody groaned. The drunken man had a point. That didn’t change matters. He shouldn’t have been sneaking around during sleeping hours. That sort of activity was cause for suspicion. Baldric had already proven that he could get his people into our castle when he got Tiffany, Josh’s late girlfriend, to join our ranks. I could still see her head rolling across the watchtower floor when I closed my eyes. Bloodsucking bitch, she got what she deserved.
“You know what I mean,” I replied, not in the mood to argue with drunken logic. “Besides, the shifts look to you now that Markus is gone. You need to start acting like a leader.”
“They have pretty boy Rhett to boss them around,” Cody slurred.
I almost snorted. I didn’t think many would call Rhett “pretty.” He was a burly, tough-as-nails asshole of a shift with a military background and a serious case of I’m the boss. Basically, he was a younger Markus. And like Markus, he’d once worked for Baldric, who’d given him the nasty scar he wore around his neck and the hoarse voice he used to bark orders.
Now, his “baby” brother James was a different story. The once scrawny teenager who followed Jade around had recently turned eighteen and gone through his “change.” Within weeks, he’d sprouted an impressive display of lean muscle and body hair that got attention from the likes of Holly and the other single female shifts. It was like they could all sense fresh meat and went into heat. I was sure they were glad he’d survived his little shish kabob incident during the battle.
“But they still look to you for guidance and you damn well know it, Cody,” I snapped, running a hand over my face in frustration.
Cody waved away my comment. He stepped closer to me and smirked, his chocolate eyes flashing with mischief. “Wanna have some fun?” he asked, the smell of whiskey on his breath. He wrapped an arm around my shoulders and smiled at me in a knowing way, waggling his brows up and down. It was almost comical. Almost.
I gave him a stern look, stifling a smile. “Come on, Cody. I think you need to lie down for a while. Sleep this off. You need to be at the top of your game. End of the world and all, remember?”
“You should come lie down with me.” His grin could have been seen from space. “What do ya say, Fido?”
“I say you’re drunk.” He was acting like a fool. Not that Cody didn’t play the fool the majority of his life; it was his favorite role. It was actually refreshing to see instead of the new serious Cody that had shown up since the Great Battle. Cody had two faces since then: serious, somber Cody and drunk-off-his-ass Cody.
He pulled me into his arms, dancing with me as if we were at some sort of junior high formal. “You’re pretty,” he said, slipping his hands down my back to cup my ass.
Before I could get a word in, Cody’s lips brushed against mine. It was an innocent kiss, one that tasted of whiskey and sadness. I shoved him away, probably a little harder than I should have; sometimes I forgot my own strength, especially after what happened at Stonehenge.
Cody tripped over his feet and fell into a pile of boxes. He laughed, purring at me. He’d always done that rather well, both as my friend and as my cat.
“You’re drunk,” I repeated. “You need to sleep it off.”
“You’re so pretty, Fido,” he said again. I just laughed, wondering if the alcohol had clouded his mind as it had his judgment. “I understand why they picked you.”
And just like that, my sense of humor disappeared. “What on earth are you talking about?” I asked, not really sure I wanted to know.
“Baldric. Alec.” Cody took a deep breath, locking those dark brown eyes with mine. Uh-oh, serious Cody had returned. “Josh.”
Cody struggled to get to his feet before falling back and crushing the boxes beneath him. He heaved a heavy sigh, looking down at his hands. I thought I saw tears streaking his cheeks in the flickering torchlight.
“I was so jealous of him, Zo,” he whispered. “I was so jealous of the way you always looked at him, of what you two had together all those years. I should have known better. You two were always so perfect for each other. You both were just too stupid to see it.”
“Cody, that’s enough,” I ordered. He was headed down a road I wasn’t emotionally ready to take, not so soon after one of my dreams. Hell, not ever.
“I could have loved you too,” he mumbled into his hands. “If things weren’t, you know, like this. I could’ve loved you like he did.”
“Stop,” I said, my voice wavering. “Just stop.”
“I still could.”
“Enough!” I damn near shouted. “You and I both know you don’t have those feelings for me, or me for you. You’re just drunk and lonely. Maybe you should find Holly again. Fuck this out of your system.”
“Or I can just fuck you,” he replied and I gritted my teeth, reminding myself not to kill him. I’d probably regret it. “You’re right,” he continued. “Maybe we don’t love each other like that, but we could keep each other company, you know? We could be friends with benefits—help satisfy all our needs.”
“Knock it off, Cody. I’m serious.”
“So am I,” he retorted, his words still slurring together. “I mean…I know Josh had the bigger dick and all, but I have a shit ton more experience. I bet I’d be the better lay. Why don’t we find out?”
“There’s nothing to compare,” I bit out.
“Ha! Exactly,” he said triumphantly, “because you know I’d be far superior.”
“No, it’s just…” I paused, trying to find the right words. “Josh and I, we never…We didn’t…”
Cody’s eyes watched me for a moment before he smirked. “But you wanted to.”
I shook my head. “Look, we weren’t together, okay? Besides, I’m with Alec.”
“Dammit, Zoe, don’t try to pull that shit with me!” Cody growled. “Tell me you didn’t love Josh. Tell me!”
“I-I…” I closed my eyes and inhaled, biting the corner of my lip to stop it from trembling.
My shift friend chuckled. “That’s what I thought.”
“None of that matters anymore,” I whispered. “Josh is dead.”
Cody stared at me with empty eyes. If he wasn’t crying before, he was now. Oh, how I missed being able to cry. I hadn’t cried since Josh died. I doubted I ever would again.
I reached out to Cody and offered him a hand, which he took. I heaved him onto his feet, the momentum throwing us back against one of the stone walls. Before I knew what was happening, Cody’s tongue was down my throat. His lips ran wild over mine, sloppy and full of misplaced hunger. I gasped, pushing him away. He came right back, clearly not taking the hint. He was so lucky he was drunk or else I’d be removing his dick with a rusty knife.
His hands were everywhere at once, on my hips, around my neck, tang
led in my hair. As wrong as it was, it felt so “human.” The taste of alcohol flooded my senses. I felt dizzy, uncomfortable…wrong.
I pushed him away once more, with more force this time. His body smashed into the opposite wall. “Cody, no.”
“What the hell do you think you’re doing, shift?” a deep male voice raged. I knew in a heartbeat who that voice belonged to. Shit was about to hit the fan.
Alec stormed into the room and grabbed Cody by his shirt, slamming him into the wall, stone cracking under the pressure.
To my shock and utter dismay, Cody actually laughed. The dumbass. He had horrible self-preservation skills. “God, that was good,” he purred. “I’ve wanted to do that for years.” He flashed me a wicked grin over Alec’s shoulder, fueling the fire.
Alec growled, picking him up and throwing him out of the storage room. Cody groaned as he landed hard on the courtyard floor.
“Stop it!” I shouted, chasing after Alec.
My words fell onto deaf ears as he descended upon Cody once more, wrapping his hand around my intoxicated friend’s throat. He was going to rip his head off, literally. I lunged for Alec, grabbing him by the arm. Maybe it was instinct, maybe not—he elbowed me in the ribcage and I stumbled to the ground, trying to catch my breath. This went unnoticed by my “mate,” which only fueled my own rage.
Electricity coursed through my body, sizzling just under the surface of my skin; I could feel it burning me from the inside out. And yet, it wouldn’t break free. I snarled in frustration, calling instead on my newfound strength as I leapt to my feet and stormed over to Alec. I grabbed him by the back of his neck, ripping him away from Cody and throwing him across the courtyard. He landed gracefully with perfect catlike reflexes, his eyes locking onto mine.
“He touched you,” he roared, pointing at Cody who was still rolling around on the ground. “He should be killed!”
“Enough,” I hissed. “He’s drunk. He didn’t mean any harm. Let it go, Alec,” I warned.
“Zoe—”
“No,” I said, interrupting him. “Haven’t we had enough bloodshed?”
Cody mumbled something, crawling to his feet. He staggered toward me and Alec growled. I shot Alec a look and turned my attention to Cody, helping to steady him. He looked like he was about to puke. If he knew what Alec wanted to do to him, he probably would have.
“I meant what I said,” he insisted, blood trickling from the corner of his mouth as he smirked. “Do you know that you taste like heaven?”
An interesting choice of words since I was destined for fire and brimstone.
Alec moved fast, too fast for me to stop him. He caught Cody in the gut with his fist, knocking him to the ground once more, where he grunted and groaned in the fetal position. I was certain I heard ribs crack.
“He’ll be fine,” Alec sneered when he saw the look on my face. “I went easy on him.”
“Leave us,” I commanded.
“No,” he said sternly, crossing his arms over his broad chest. I could tell by the look on his face that he thought his words were final. He was sadly mistaken.
“I said, leave us.” I glared at Alec, my eyes burning a hole straight through him. “Don’t make me tell you again, Alec. I don’t want to see your face right now. Go. Get the hell out of here.”
He looked almost hurt but the anger quickly returned. He growled, kicking Cody in the ribcage as he stepped over him. I heard another crack and Alec smiled to himself, making his way out of the courtyard.
When I knew he was gone, I dropped to the ground beside Cody, brushing his long blond locks away from his face. He was sobbing like a baby but I didn’t think it was from the physical pain. As he breathed in and out, I held my breath, the smell of booze somehow getting stronger as time went on.
“What were you thinking?” I snapped. I had to admit, it wasn’t easy scolding a man when he was down, but someone had to do it. Better me than Alec. He’d put Cody farther down. Like, six feet farther.
“Getting drunk, fooling around with that shift down here—kissing me?” The first two really didn’t surprise me. He’d gotten drunk often in the past six months, and Cody had always been a ladies’ man. It was the last one that really caught me off guard.
“I can’t do it anymore, Zo,” Cody said, his head rolling back against the cold floor. I picked his head up and set it on my lap, feeling his tears soak into my pant leg. “I can’t keep doing this.”
He looked so pathetic, lying there like a helpless child. Cody hadn’t fared well emotionally after the Great Battle. Not many of us had, but he’d taken it especially hard. Alcohol and women soothed him for a time, but they couldn’t fix the deep wound in his soul. That didn’t stop him from trying.
“You’ll be fine, Cody,” I said, stroking his hair. It was still just as dry as I always remembered it to be. The salt water had wreaked havoc on it from years of sun worship and surfing, though it lacked that familiar salty scent now. “It’s just going to take some time,” I assured him.
“I told him that I’d protect you,” Cody continued.
“William?”
“No.” He shook his head. “Josh. He found me before the battle started and made me promise if anything happened to him that I would protect you. I couldn’t even do that back in high school, how am I supposed to do it now?”
“We were just kids back then,” I told him. “You couldn’t have done anything to protect me, no matter what Josh told you.”
“He never really forgave me after that,” he said, his head rolling back again, sinking farther into my lap. “No matter what I did, I couldn’t make it up to him. In the end, I couldn’t even save him. He died hating me.”
“He didn’t hate you, Cody,” I whispered. “That man would have done anything for you, no matter what happened. He loved you like a brother. You’re just drunk, that’s all.”
“No, he hated me,” Cody said, sounding so sure of himself. “And who could blame him? I failed my best friend. I failed him and now he’s dead. I didn’t even get to tell him goodbye.”
That was one thing that I did get. I got to see Josh moments before his death. I still remembered the feel of his lips brushing against mine. It was the moment I’d chosen him. I never thought it’d be a goodbye kiss. I shook the memory from my mind before it settled in too deeply.
“Don’t fall apart on me now,” I begged him, tightening my hold on his shoulders. “I can’t lose you too, Cody. You’re all I have left.”
His silence worried me. I’d already lost Cindy and Josh. They were never coming back. The thought of losing Cody as well made me feel so alone, so empty. Who would be left of my old life—the old me?
“I mean it,” I said when he didn’t respond. “I can’t lose you. I need you to stay strong for me. We need to stay strong for each other. We’re all each other have left, remember?”
He nodded against my leg.
“Promise me, Cody,” I whispered. “Promise me you won’t do anything stupid. Josh wouldn’t want either of us giving up. He’d want us looking after one another as we always have. As he always did. You said yourself, you made him a promise to take care of me. Don’t break that promise now.”
“Zoe, I…”
Voices rose from the castle gates as two male forest nymphs carried an unconscious woman in on a man-made stretcher, Ryuu in tow.
“Get the nurse,” he yelled.
The sound of hurried footsteps filled both sets of stairs as those who’d heard Ryuu came rushing to see what was happening.
Cody groaned as I pulled him to his feet, holding him steady as people filtered into the courtyard. In the growing crowd, I spotted Holly and motioned her over.
“Get him to bed,” I told her, draping his arm around her shoulders so she could support his weight. Without another word, Holly steered Cody around and led him up the stairs. Only after they disappeared from sight did I push my way to the front of the crowd.
Stepping beside Ryuu, I looked down at the woman as the t
wo forest nymphs set the stretcher on the ground. It was MaryAnn. The shift had blood leaking from her parted lips, her side ripped wide open. Her skin was pale and coated with sweat. With my heightened senses, I could hear her heart beating erratically within her chest. She was fading fast.
Even though they were strong creatures, shifts were still technically mortal and healed a hell of a lot slower than the Chosen or vampires did. There wasn’t going to be anything the nurse could do; MaryAnn was going to die. The grim expression on our resident nurse’s face said as much. Being a shift herself, this couldn’t have been easy for her. She undoubtedly knew MaryAnn.
I cursed under my breath, hands fisting at my sides. “Do what you can for her,” I told the nurse, knowing full well it was likely futile. But we really couldn’t afford to lose any more of our people, especially one of the shifts. Our numbers were already too low.
The nurse, Sloane, nodded, kneeling beside the stretcher to inspect the wound.
“She must have been attacked by another animal while she was in her shifted form,” Dante said. I noticed his fangs had extended, the sharp points peeking out from under his upper lip. Likely an involuntary reaction to the scent of blood hanging heavy in the air. The vamps weren’t getting nearly the blood supply that many of them were accustomed to.
Alec materialized out of thin air directly in front of me and I resisted the urge to jump out of my skin.
“Fucking teleport,” I mumbled.
“Dante is right,” he said, his eyes glued to mine, his face serious. Was he still pissed about Cody? Did I care? “It was likely an animal.”
My eyes fell back to MaryAnn, trailing over her wounds. They were as deep as they were wide, and all too familiar. There was no way in hell those violent gashes were made by any animal. A phantom pang shot through my middle as I remembered my own attack.
The Sythen.
Baldric’s personal pets, the Sythen were the only living relatives of the dragons of old. I knew them well. The vile creatures had long—almost serpent-like—bodies, massive leather wings, and jaws full of jagged teeth designed to rip flesh from bone. If their blood got into your system, they could mess with your mind. I should know, since it happened to me. But my sanity wasn’t the only thing the Sythen had taken from me. It also took Josh and Cindy.