Tiffani grabbed and pulled me into her arms. “When you showed up, I knew he’d be fine. My only thoughts were for Levi and you. I don’t care about me anymore. Do you understand? You matter to us. With or without a mother.”
I pulled back. “I’m taking your machete.”
She nodded, running a hand through her hair. “I want to talk about this later.”
I didn’t. Turning my back on her, I walked quickly to her tent. Entering it, I was struck by the sheer mess of the place, most of which was probably my fault. I hadn’t exactly been neat when I’d leapt onto the back of the vampire. Shaking my head, I wondered what had ever possessed me to do such a thing. I’d never piggybacked an undead monster before. Why did I even think that would work? Why had it?
I rubbed at my eyes as I moved toward Keith’s weaponry cabinet. So much of fighting the monsters came down to instinct. My genes compensated better to stressful paranormal situations than that of a regular human. Somewhere in the past, one of my ancestors had survived beating up a beast and passed down the skills to me.
Even knowing that, I grimaced as I thought of just how dumb a move it had been to leap onto the backside of a vampire. No one had ever taught that to me in class.
I opened the cabinet and pulled out Tiffani’s machete. It felt slightly heavier than my own, which meant it hadn’t been standard issue. Keith liked to make custom weaponry when he had the time. Stakes for vampires. Machetes to kill werewolves.
I had a hard time killing werewolves. Or, at least I used to. Every wolf I struck down reminded me of Jason. Every bit of blood splattered felt as if I’d destroyed my beloved. Tonight, I felt no resistance.
I stopped to practice with Tiffani’s machete, swinging it over my head, letting the cold steel whish through the air a few times until I could control it. My own machete had been sadly neglected lately. I’d have to take it out and polish it when this was over.
Jason’s father had left us here to die. He’d moved his pack because he’d sensed danger. He’d moved his pack to allow for this attack to happen.
I was a Warrior.
These were my people and my attack on the vamps might have caused tonight’s attack. An assault of this magnitude could only mean retribution.
I had to keep my promises to Genesis and destroy any beast that got in my way.
As I ran toward the woods, I could hear screams marring the night. The sirens smothered most other noises. I felt the snow fall on my cheeks and nose first. The horror of snow had begun. We could be sidelined by the white monster while the vamps and wolves had no trouble managing it.
I saw my first wolf seconds later. Big and gray, he looked at me in the way only werewolves could: as if I was prey. Even the vampires didn’t have the same hunger in their gaze. They wanted our blood. Wolves wanted our flesh. Both were bad predicaments, but maybe because I had survived a vampire attack, the idea of being eaten alive by a wolf bothered me more.
Or maybe it was just, again, about Jason. I lunged forward, swiping as I went. In two seconds, I’d removed the head of the creature. I stepped back to look at my work. A severed head of a werewolf lay a distance from its body. That had been easy.
A cry to my left made me move before I could spend any more time examining my kill. Micah Lyons fought two wolves by himself but they were flanking him and clearly had the advantage. As I got closer, the brown one on the left snarled at me, baring his fangs. Drool spread down from its mouth.
“Rachel,” Micah called out, but I only had eyes for the wolf in front of me.
I swung my machete and with a sickening vibration that I could feel from my fingertips to the tips of my toes, I sliced off another head.
“I’m machete-free, Rachel.”
Micah’s voice pulled my focus. I’d missed that when I first came onto the scene. It had looked like Micah had been fighting the wolves but, in reality, he’d been shoving the wolves back using only a large branch. I would not lose another Lyons. Not tonight, not ever.
I took two running steps before I leapt in the air. Like I had with the vampire, I landed on top of the wolf. It shuddered beneath me as it tried to adjust to the sudden onslaught of my weight. I had no time to play. There wouldn’t be any time to pull my machete out. This wolf would be faster than me. I was going to have to resort to old-fashioned means, the kind of maneuver they taught us in school but I hoped never to have to apply to real life.
With a twist of my arms, I broke the wolf’s neck. He fell to the ground. This wouldn’t kill him. He’d regenerate if I didn’t take off his head completely. But at least he was down and still enough for me to end him with the machete.
When I’d done the deed, I blew out a long breath. “You okay, Lyons?”
“Nice of you to show up. Hell of a time for you to decide to take a night off.”
“What’s happened?”
“They came in such large numbers, Clancy.” He shook his head. “They just overwhelmed us. Keith sent several of us off to break up the crowd. I lost Deacon and Glen a while back. Not sure what happened.”
My heart rate kicked back up. “They okay?”
“They were the last time I saw them but who knows by now.” Micah shook his head, his black hair falling over his eyes like Chad’s used to. The movement made my throat clench in its unexpectedness. “You know what this is.”
“Revenge for what we did. But we hardly wounded them at all. It wasn’t even a major operation base. They’re just pissed we got past their defenses to begin with.”
Micah and I had gotten good at being a team, and we picked up in our raid manner, moving as a unit. His eyes scanned the trees for potential threats. The vampires loved to hide in the branches and leap down on us. I looked in the woods for movement. “There.” Micah pointed upward, and I flinched. There was a vamp in the tree, and I’d missed it? I followed the direction of his finger and gasped. It wasn’t a vamp but, instead, a wolf staring down at us.
“A wolf.” I swallowed, my mouth going dry. “In a tree?”
I’d no sooner uttered the words when several wolves descended on us from up above. Leaping like they shouldn’t have been able to, they came down in large balls of destruction aimed right for our heads. Micah dodged being hit by one and lost his balance. He landed with a hard thud as I swiveled to avoid the same fate.
He was on his feet in seconds. “I still don’t have a machete.”
“I’m aware.” I could hear the fear in both our voices.
I did a quick headcount of the wolves. Three growled at us, lined up in a semi-circle to cut off all retreat. If we ran, they would chase. We didn’t have the smallest chance of outrunning them. Our only recourse with the wolves was to fight back.
And now Micah couldn’t.
I swallowed. “You have to get help.”
“I’m not leaving you here with three wolves.” He spoke as if he couldn’t be argued with. I’d never been very good at following his orders.
“We will either both die here where we stand, or you can go get help. I can hold them back until you return with the others.”
“Rachel, I’m not even sure where to find help.”
The wolves in front of us started to growl even louder, moving forward in small steps. They were in attack formation. There wasn’t much time.
“Go. Now.” Moving in front of him, I shoved him backward. He had two choices—run or fall on his face.
Chapter Eight
As I’d predicted, the second Micah ran, one of the wolves decided to give chase. I moved fast, leaping over a large branch to get in its way. With a swish of Tiffani’s machete, I took off its head.
The other two wolves snarled at me and lunged. I whacked one of them with my machete while I attempted to dodge the other one.
My maneuver didn’t go as I’d planned. My machete hit the wolf’s neck but got stuck. Jarred, I tried to pull it back out but my weapon remained where it was, halfway lodged into the werewolf’s jugular. I tried to swallow but my throat sudden
ly clogged with terror.
The wolf snarled, showing me his neck and the giant steel collar he wore around it. If monsters could sneer, I would swear he did, letting me know that he’d beat my little trick. These were smart werewolves, hanging in the trees, wearing protective gear. I’d not encountered their ilk before.
In front of my eyes, one of them shifted, an impressive feat considering it was a full moon and only the Alpha of a pack could control his own shift during that part of the moon cycle.
In his human form, the man stood at least a foot taller than me. He walked forward and shoved my stunned form down onto the ground. I crab-walked backwards until I hit a large object—probably a tree— behind me. The wolves, one in human form, stalked toward me slowly, like they didn’t have a care in the world.
“Well, Rachel Clancy.” My stomach lurched. Why did they always know my name? Had they passed around a picture of me? Had Icahn commissioned a likeness? “It will be my great pleasure to tell the master that I defeated you, once and for all.”
The wolf next to him growled. “Yes, you are right, Anders, that we defeated the girl.” He stared at me as if I was the most delicious piece of meat he’d ever seen. “Let me ask you this. Where are your wolf-protectors now?”
I had a hard time finding my voice. “Look at you, big men. Picking on a little, unarmed girl. I bet you’ll go back home and be big heroes. Great work.”
“You have been a thorn in the master’s side for too long.”
“Tell me.” I pushed backward until the tree behind me helped me to stand up. I didn’t want to die on the ground, cowering with fear. They could smell my terror. I didn’t have to give them the visual aid to go with it.
“What were you before you were this?” I enunciated the last word. “A doctor? A lawyer? A teacher? What did you do before you were nothing? Do you even remember? You must have been an Alpha. That’s why you can shift tonight. Do you even remember what that meant?”
“Enough.” His brown eyes flared red. “End her.”
The wolf with half his neck chopped off rushed forward. I darted left but he was faster. Weaponless, my genes weren’t helping me very much. His mouth crunched down on the side of my arm. I screamed before the pain ever really hit me, just knowing the pain that would be coming.
But my roar did nothing to stave off the actual experience. Light flashed before my eyes. The pain didn’t contain itself to my arm but exploded from it. His teeth continued to tear a hole into my body as he dragged me forward. To my left, I saw the Alpha shift back into his wolf form.
I’d almost died from a monster before. My memory of that time had dimmed. I only knew I wasn’t going to survive this time. He treated my body like his personal rag doll. I closed my eyes. I didn’t want to watch Alpha wolf take his turn. Maybe if I closed my eyes I could make the whole thing move faster. Or I could force myself to pass out.
Micah had gotten away. I wouldn’t die with another Lyons death on my conscience.
The Alpha wolf bit down on me, and I couldn’t even scream this time. Tears streamed down my face and rather than speed up, time seemed to be slowing down. My mind traveled away from my body. It felt odd and calming.
I started to remember. The years I’d spent living in father’s house down below in Genesis came first. Tia handing me a sandwich every day, and the times I’d silently spend watching Micah come and go, his presence trumping all others in the world. Training first with Tiffani and then with Keith. The way they’d both watched me like I’d mattered, and how I’d looked forward to those times during the day. The dread that had taken root in my stomach every afternoon because I knew I had to go home, at least for a while, and clean up my father.
But there were good memories of him, too, which surprised me. Sometimes, when he stayed sober, I would watch him carve small wooden dolls. He could do any kind of an animal. When he’d finish, he’d hand them to me, and I felt like those small presents were the best gift anyone could ever give me. Until I’d had enough of cleaning up after him, and I’d tossed them all out with the trash when he’d finished a particularly bad binge.
After that, I could see the time I’d first spent with Jason. How light and airy everything had suddenly felt, as if life outside of Genesis could exist. I’d been a fairy-tale princess who finally got her happy-ever-after just as I’d stopped believing such a thing could happen.
The first time I’d seen the night sky. The first time snow had fallen on my eyelashes before I’d learned to hate the weather. Beautiful moments. I’d practically forgotten they’d ever happened.
The boy in the cage—Deacon—who had looked at me as though I mattered, and he couldn’t believe I’d let him down. He’d turned out to be such a perpetual pain in my behind and yet I knew I would miss him if he suddenly vanished. Laughing with him when nothing should have been funny. The hard, haunted look in his brown eyes when I’d chosen Chad over him.
Chad…his image came and went from me like a fleeting brush of wind I wanted to hold on to but like the boy himself, I couldn’t. That seemed so unfair. Shouldn’t I be able to have Chad, who had been my friend before he’d been anything else, in death if nowhere else?
Remotely, I felt my head slam onto the ground hard. Were they lifting me up and throwing me back down? I didn’t know.
The images in my mind moved further away, and I moved to follow them.
Chad had died. I’d stabbed him through his precious heart because we’d promised each other what every Warrior promises another Warrior: I will not let you be a vampire. So why did I feel like I’d killed him? Why did even remembering it now cause me so much guilt that I begged my mind to let me pretend it had never happened?
I could see more things. Jason coming back, the security blanket he had been for me during the most tumultuous time in my life. Tia’s baby and Tiffani’s. Wondering if I ever even wanted children.
And then the Icahn clan. After I died, no one would stop them. Not that I’d been doing such a bang-up job, but at least while I lived no one could forget what they’d done. If one person lived who knew what had happened, who didn’t forget, or pretend that somehow existence could continue in a normal fashion while the Icahns still breathed air, then that held significance. Someone whose thoughts, if nothing else, held them accountable for mass destruction.
My mother…I could almost remember her. How her hair smelled….
I suddenly felt lighter. I wasn’t being thrown around. Was this the end?
“Rachel, don’t you dare die on me.”
I knew that voice but I couldn’t place it. Not while I drifted so beautifully where there was no pain, just my own thoughts and visions.
I’d liked where I was going. My mom….
“Your mother is not here, and you are not seeing her today. I don’t even know if that even happens. Rachel, come on.”
Desperation laced Deacon’s voice like I’d never heard before. Why was he bothering me so much when I’d finally found happiness?
“Rachel.”
It felt like he squeezed my cheeks in his fingers. I opened my lids, desperate to ask him to stop, to leave me alone. The world felt very bright to my abused eyes even though daylight had not yet arrived, and I blinked rapidly trying to clear it. Why did the moon have to be so darn bright tonight?
Tears slid down Deacon’s pale cheeks. Funny, I’d never thought of Deacon as a crier. Jason, yes. He could get a good weep going when he wanted to, but not Deacon, the boy who had lived underground only to come upward and find out he had to fight monsters still. Deacon never shed a tear.
“Why are you crying?” I tried to raise my hand to touch his face but I couldn’t. The burn in my arms had become an extraordinary thing…I closed my eyes. I needed not to feel.
“No.” He pinched my cheeks again. “Don’t close your eyes.”
I glared at him. If I wanted to drift, I didn’t need his permission.
“I’m crying because you are scaring me, okay? Other people get to die, Rachel.
Not you. Never you.”
I raised an eyebrow, even though it pained me. “Never?”
“Not until I’m dead.”
He stunned me. I guess it had never occurred to me that Deacon really felt things that deeply. Oh, I knew he claimed to have romantic feelings for me. With Deacon, however, it always felt like a really surface thing. In our hearts, I’d thought, we were basically friends.
Now, as I lay in front of him broken and bloody, he got romantic?
“I think I’m dying, Deacon. It’s too late for me. You should leave me here and go before the wolves come back.”
He shook his head. “You’re not dying. You can’t because then life will cease to matter.” He shouted the last part of his sentence as if he wanted someone other than me to hear it. “And those particular wolves are not coming back. They’re dead.”
“Why are you shouting?”
Deacon slipped one hand under my neck and the other under my lower back. “I want the universe to hear me.”
“The universe?”
He laughed. “It couldn’t hurt. I’m going to pick you up now.”
“I’m torn to bits.”
“No, you’re not.” He shook his head emphatically. “Just your arms and your shoulders. They were playing with you, hadn’t really gotten started on killing you yet.”
“It feels like I’m dying.” It really did, and that urge to drift started again. I could add this moment to my list of images. Deacon showing his soft, romantic side over my dying, mutilated body. That thought stopped me short.
“You could still be bleeding to death. I think you’re going into shock.”
He scooped me up in his arms like I weighed nothing. In the year he’d lived above ground, he’d all but doubled in size. Fresh air, better food, and exercise had made him broad and powerful. I’d just not noticed until this moment because I’d been totally focused on Jason.
Deacon swore as he moved forward. “I never thought I would say this…ever…but I wish Jason hadn’t left because it would mean his father the doctor could save you.”