Graveyard Shift

by Jenn Burke

  But not before Ren grabbed the fur near Iskander’s hindquarters and brought his body down hard over his knee.

  The horrible sound of Iskander’s back breaking was not something I would ever forget. Nor the yelp he made, or the breathless, shocked sound that escaped Evan. As though his psyche held back a scream because...it couldn’t be real. What had happened couldn’t be true.

  I stumbled forward.

  Vaguely I knew fighting was happening around me. Vampire dust filled the air. But all I could see was Iskander lying in a broken, furry heap.

  Jet reached Ren and grabbed a handful of his fire-red hair.

  “Do it,” he gasped. “Please.”

  With a shriek of effort, she shoved the wood into his chest, piercing his heart. He disintegrated.

  Gunfire rang out from overhead. One of the newbie vamps caught a shot in the chest and was dust before they hit the ground. Then another, and another. Whatever Kurt’s soldiers had been doing during the onslaught, they seemed to be back in control of the upper level.

  Numbness seeped into my body. On some level, I knew it was shock—I’d experienced it before. But that realization seemed distant. Unimportant, when I looked out over a battlefield I never expected to witness.

  Priya’s gaze, not Jet’s, found me through the debris. Her eyes widened. “Wes!”

  Before I could gather myself enough to turn, a foot crashed into my temple, and the world disappeared.

  * * *

  “Hey.”

  I blinked my eyes open to see Iskander hovering over me. His pompadour was perfect and his brown eyes looked down at me with that curious mixture of amusement and concern I always seemed to bring out of him.

  “Oh, thank fuck.” My breath left me in a quick rush as I sat up and reached out to grip his forearm. “I thought you... I thought you were...”

  My voice trailed off as I realized we were alone in Alleys’ familiar surroundings. Which made no sense. Where had everyone gone? Even in the otherplane, there should be shadowy forms all around us—but Isk wouldn’t be in the other—

  “Isk?”

  His voice was gentle. “You already know.”

  “No.” My face crumpled and I clutched his arm harder, as if I could hold him here with me.

  He flipped his hand around to grab mine. “Yeah. There’s no...no shouting me back this time.” The small smile that tried to curve his lips faltered and faded.

  “Isk, please.”

  He shook his head. “There’s nothing for me to go back to.”

  “There has to be some magic we can do. I’ll call Lexi—she can be here fast—”

  “Wes—”

  “Or Dr. Kozlow. She’ll know—”

  “Wes!”

  Or maybe I could do something. I reached for my magic—which promptly fizzled and sputtered into nothing. I didn’t know if the injuries I’d suffered had made it inaccessible, or if Iskander was right and there was nothing left for it to hold on to.

  He grabbed my shoulders. “Wes, it’s done.”

  “Shut up!” I shouted in his face and brought my hands up to shove his away. “It can’t be done! You can’t be—” It felt like my heart was crawling up my throat, trying to block every utterance. “You can’t be gone.”

  His lips, set into a thin line, quivered. “Please, just let—let me say goodbye.”

  “Fuck, Isk.” I bowed my head, powerless to stop the tears from flowing forth.

  “I know,” he rasped. “This isn’t what I wanted, what any of us wanted. But none of us had a choice. I’ve—” His voice cracked. “I’ve had almost two years I shouldn’t have had. Like you pointed out earlier, I survived a vampire attack. Who does that? And then who survives a fucking werewolf bite? I had time I wouldn’t have had, because of you. I had second chances, because of you.” He placed a palm against my cheek and guided my face up to look at him. “Thank you, my friend.”

  “Please...” I couldn’t accept it. How could he expect me to?

  “Take care of Evan, okay? Make sure he knows this isn’t his fault. Tell him...” He pressed his quivering lips into a firm line for a moment. “Tell him I wish we could have known what we’d be to each other.”

  “I’ll tell him,” I whispered. “I will. I’ll tell him. Isk—” My breath hitched. “Oh, god, Isk. May your beyond be what you need it to be.”

  “Thank you.”

  I opened my eyes to the real world, and I knew before I heard Evan’s pleading shout, that my dream was more than a dream.

  Iskander was dead.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  I sat propped up against the bar, waiting for my head—and my entire fucking world—to stop spinning. We’d lost. We’d lost so thoroughly, and so much, I couldn’t comprehend it.

  Vampire dust covered the furniture and the floor. People’s clothes. I wasn’t sure if the last vamps had been killed or if they’d escaped.

  Then there was the blood. Everywhere I turned I saw it. Smelled its coppery aroma. Kurt’s soldiers had been decimated by the surprise attack, and they lay where they fell in various and awkward rag doll poses that made my stomach turn. I didn’t know if Kurt himself had survived.

  And Evan—

  Fuck, Evan.

  He was sitting motionless next to Iskander’s body, staring at nothing. I wanted to go to him—I needed to—but the thought of moving, even with help, was enough to turn my stomach. Don was over there, keeping an eye on him, but the shifter looked as helpless as I felt.

  “U-uncle Wes?”

  Two Priyas crouched beside me, though the longer I looked at her, the more it seemed it was only one Priya. Two hands reached out, then conjoined as they made contact with my arm.

  “I couldn’t save him.” Hudson, Ren, Iskander—take your pick. Failure was a heavy, bitter taste on my tongue.

  “We didn’t know—you couldn’t have expected that,” she insisted.

  I closed my eyes. It didn’t matter if I couldn’t have expected it. We still should have beat the odds. We always had before. If only I hadn’t underestimated Pike. If only I hadn’t gotten taken out in the first fucking wave.

  Gingerly, I touched the back of my head and hissed at the tenderness.

  “Y’aright?”

  “Sore.” I glanced at Evan. “Can you...check on him?”

  “Of course.”

  “Shit—I need to call Lexi.”

  Her grip on my arm tightened. “Take it easy. Give yourself a few more minutes.”

  “We need to go after Hudson.”

  “I don’t disagree, but you can’t even stand yet, yeah?”

  She wasn’t wrong. “Goddamn it.”

  “I’ll go poke at him, and then we’ll—”

  “Stop right where you are.”

  I blinked a few times to bring Kurt’s imposing—and slightly ragged—form into focus as he approached. His helmet and face mask were gone, and he sported two significant gashes across his cheek. For the first time, I was able to see that his hair was just as red as my new ’do, though matted down by sweat and blood. Part of his tactical vest had been shredded, but he still had his weapon, and he wore a thunderous scowl.

  I guess that meant he’d survived.

  Priya stood to face him. Suddenly he had her arm twisted up behind her with one hand while his other grabbed her throat.

  Fuck. I tried to get to my feet, but I lost my balance and fell back down. Don stood up, wearing sweatpants and nothing else, but I held up a hand to ward him off. He needed to keep Evan safe right now, since I couldn’t.

  “We had a deal!” Priya yelled.

  “That was before I lost ten of my fucking men,” Kurt growled. “Was that the plan? Bring us here and kill us off?”

  I started to shake my head, but the movement made me groan. “No,” I managed. “I swear. This
took us all by surprise.”

  “You should have known more about Pike than any of us,” Priya said. “Haven’t you been hunting him through Europe?”

  Kurt ignored that. “Our deal is null and void,” he announced. “Priya Rojas, you’re under arrest.”

  Priya’s eyes bled black and Jet struggled against Kurt’s grasp. I didn’t know what Kurt was—human, paranormal, something else—but he held on. Barely. Until he let go long enough to grab his sidearm and point it at me. Jet froze.

  I glared at him, the best I could with my head pounding. “I survived a head shot before, remember?”

  “But can you survive more than one? What’ll happen if I empty my whole fucking magazine into your head?”

  I held his gaze, as difficult as it was to focus. It was a bluff. Had to be. He was supposed to be one of the good guys—that was what the Order was all about, wasn’t it? He knew as well as I did that in this moment, I was helpless. Unarmed, essentially. I’d thought that Kurt had some sense of honor.

  He put his finger on the trigger.

  Maybe I was wrong.

  “I’ll go,” Priya said softly. “Just don’t hurt him.”

  “Wait,” I gasped.

  “Excellent decision.” Kurt holstered his gun and waved over one of his surviving soldiers. Magic crackled between the man’s fingers.

  “Go after Hudson,” Priya said. “I’ll be fine. It’s—”

  The soldier held up a hand on either side of Priya’s head, and her eyes rolled back into her head. He caught her as she fell and hoisted her over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry. I supposed it was a positive thing that they hadn’t shot her right in front of us. Maybe they needed authorization for the executioner part of their role.

  “This isn’t over,” I promised him.

  Kurt looked around Alleys, his gaze pointed. “I think you’ve got bigger worries, Mr. Westerson.” He gave me a mocking salute, then followed his men out the door. Each of the surviving soldiers carried a body of their fallen comrades, and the sight made me close my eyes.

  So much death. Loss. It wasn’t right.

  “Holy goddess,” Don gasped. “Wes? What do we do?”

  With an effort, I dug my phone out of my pocket and focused long enough to push a button. When the call connected, all I could say was, “Lex, I need you.”

  * * *

  I didn’t believe in God, but I did believe in Lexi Aster.

  The first thing she did when she arrived was call Kat Li. If I’d been able to think clearly, I could have done that, but my brain was slow to come back online all the way. Then she directed Don to find something to cover Evan and help keep him from going into shock—a blanket, a jacket, something—and a cup of tea to warm him up. He was sitting beside me now, still quiet, still mostly motionless, but at least now I could reach out and grab his hand.

  It was ice cold.

  “Look here.” Lexi flicked a penlight across my eyes. “Your pupils are different sizes.”

  “Is that bad?”

  “Well, if you were human, I’d be admitting you right now, so...”

  “I don’t have time for this.”

  “Tell that to your poor brain.” She cupped my cheek. “We’ll make a plan. We’ll figure shit out. But right now, you need to rest and heal up.”

  “I hate that very good advice,” I grumbled. “Just so you know.”

  Kat stormed in the door, looking as casual as I’d ever seen her in jeans, hikers and a bomber jacket over a sweatshirt. I mean, fair enough, it was past three in the morning, but I found it odd. Incongruous. I blamed my fixation on that stupid detail on my head injury.

  She stopped inside the door and surveyed the bar, the bowling lanes, and everything in between. “Fuck,” she said succinctly. Then she spotted Iskander’s body, partially covered by a cloth Don had found somewhere. He’d reverted from his wolf form to human. His pompadour was visible and Kat had seen it enough to recognize it. Her voice softened. “Oh, fuck.”

  “We need your help,” Lexi said, rising.

  Kat blew out a breath and let her head droop for a second. “Clearly. God. That’s Iskander Hassan, right?”

  Lexi glanced over her shoulder. “Yeah.”

  “Fuck,” Kat breathed. Repetitive and not particularly eloquent, but then, no one needed to be in these circumstances.

  Lexi related what she knew of the events that had gone down, and Don filled in the blanks as needed.

  “Christ. And Hud’s gone?”

  “His sire has him,” I said.

  “Pike?”

  “Yeah.”

  “How the hell did he kidnap Hud?”

  “No, he’s his sire.”

  Kat looked at me expectantly, but my brain wouldn’t send more words out of my mouth.

  “Your sire can influence you,” Evan said quietly. “Control you, even.”

  “Like...” She waggled her fingers. “Woo-woo kind of control?”

  “Force him to follow his will, yeah.”

  “That’s bullshit.”

  Evan grunted and lifted his tea to his still mostly blue lips.

  “We’ll figure out how to get him back,” Lexi said, determination ringing in her words. “But, Kat, we need your help with...with Isk.”

  Kat’s expression hardened. In Hudson, I called it his Asshole Cop look. Kat looked extra fierce. “Yeah, you do. How did he—”

  “Broken back,” Evan said.

  Kat closed her eyes, her forehead a mess of lines. “That’s going to make things difficult.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  She opened her eyes. “It’s kind of what I signed up for when I chose to believe in you, isn’t it?”

  “I could do a spell to turn his body to dust,” Lexi offered. “But it would mean no body for his family to bury, and I don’t want to do that.”

  “Islam forbids cremation,” Evan said. “So no, we can’t.”

  “It’s not cremation, it’s—”

  “No!”

  I rubbed Evan’s arm. “Okay. We’re not doing that, buddy.”

  “He wasn’t very religious, but...” Evan’s jaw worked. “He wouldn’t want that.”

  As far as I was concerned, it was a moot point anyway, because I couldn’t imagine keeping his mother, Yasmin, and the rest of his family in the dark about his death. It wouldn’t be right.

  Don cleared his throat. “If you need to stage something, I can help.”

  “You don’t need to get more involved in this,” I said. “I’m sorry we brought all of this down on your head.”

  “I volunteered. Not gonna lie, I was hoping for—expecting—a different outcome, but it is what it is, eh? I’ll deal with it.” He looked at Kat. “I’ve got some experience with covering up deaths.”

  She narrowed her eyes. “Do you want to admit that to a cop?”

  He shrugged. “Look, shifters die all the time in difficult-to-explain scenarios. You get to a certain age, and you’ve probably helped sanitize a death at some point.”

  “Shit. Sanitizing death.” Kat propped her hands on her hips and looked around at the scene again, nodding. “Yeah. Yeah, I’ll take that help.” She held out her hand. “Katrina Li.”

  He shook it. “Don Kusugak.”

  “I’m going to get these two home,” Lexi said.

  “Do that,” Kat said. “We’ll take care of this.”

  Lexi helped me to my feet. Evan rose too, his eyes fixed on Iskander’s covered form. His reluctance to leave was evident in the tautness of his body.

  “C’mon, Ev.” I held out my hand.

  We need to go.

  There’s nothing else we can do.

  I’m so sorry.

  All of those sentences were something I could have said, but I didn’t. They wouldn’t help. Staying
here wouldn’t bring Isk back.

  Evan took my hand, and we left Iskander behind.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Lexi sent me to my room for a nap. I wanted to argue that I wasn’t three, but she had a point. The more I rested, the more I would heal, and the quicker I’d be ready to go after Hudson. And Priya, because we weren’t going to leave her in the clutches of the Order.

  When I woke up, the world felt real again. Solid and not in duplicate or triplicate. Hudson’s smoky cedar scent surrounded me and I resisted the urge to roll over and shove my face into his pillow. I couldn’t dwell on the fact that he was gone—I had to plan how to get him back.

  So I got up.

  Lexi and Sam were downstairs in the breakfast nook, Lexi nursing a coffee and Sam poking listlessly at a tablet screen. Sam’s nose and eyes looked red, so I assumed Lexi had explained what had happened. She looked up as I entered the room, but quickly turned back to the game—or whatever—on the screen.

  “Evan?” I asked in lieu of greeting.

  “In his room,” Lexi said. “We’re going to have to watch him.”

  Yeah. Depression was Evan’s ever-present nemesis, and after last night? It was bound to swamp him. We were going to have to tread a fine line of letting him mourn, without him getting overwhelmed by his asshole brain. But letting him hole up in his bedroom when we needed him was not part of the plan.

  “Sam, could you run up and get him?”

  She didn’t make any objections, which was a good indication that she wasn’t herself, either.

  “I’ve been sitting here all morning, trying to wrap my head around...everything,” Lexi said. “How did we miss that Pike was the source of the new vampires?”

  I pulled out a chair and sat down. “Because we don’t think like him. Because until a couple of days ago, we didn’t even know he was alive. Because all the newbies we came across seemed uncontrolled and abandoned. Because how the hell would we think a few new vampires would equal an entire fucking army?” I sighed. “Take your pick.”

  I don’t know what Sam said to Evan to encourage him to come downstairs, but he did a few minutes later, Sam on his tail. They took the other two spaces at the small table, and it struck me that our family had been forever changed. For a second, my throat closed up, and I couldn’t speak.