by Rider, C. P.
"Cornelia MacLeod. We finally meet. I am Winter." She extended her hand.
I extended mine, but in a palm up, go no farther sort of way.
"Finally meet? I have no idea who you are, transparent Lady Godiva. Stay over there."
"Of course." She flipped one side of her silvery hair over her shoulder, revealing the small, pale slope of one breast. "You don't yet trust me. You have no reason to. After all, I only hold the life of your father in my transparent hands."
"Great. You're one of those." I crossed my arms over my chest. Taking a page out of Lucas's book, my intention was to "outcool" the shifter, even though my every nerve ending was on alert and my heart hammered against my ribs.
"'One of those?'"
"An alpha who hides her threats in saccharine talk and disingenuous acts of kindness."
One silver brow shot up. "You would prefer harsh talk and sincere acts of cruelty?"
"What I'd prefer is that you bring my father out to me and go away forever. But I'll settle for sincerity in lieu of your absence from my life. At least that way we're dealing in truth." I looked past her and raised my voice to just shy of yelling. "Barney Drath, I know you're in there. Might as well come out and join the fiesta, you lying sack of shit."
"Why are you concerned with that ridiculous mystic?" Winter tried to look blasé, but there was something in her eyes that told me Barney was more important than she was letting on. "His place with us is very low."
"So is his place in my heart, but he screwed my friends and me over and, you know, I tend to hold a grudge against people who do that." I stared at the door, keeping the strange woman in my peripheral. "Barney, you betrayed some good people. Time to pay for your assholery."
"Will you spike him dead if he comes outside?" Winter didn't appear to be worried about the possibility, which told me she felt he could take care of himself. Or that she simply didn't care if he died.
"Would you like me to spike him?" I was genuinely curious.
She lifted one slim shoulder. "He's useful. Will you promise not to spike him if I ask you nicely?"
"No. Promises are binding things, and I prefer to keep my options open when it comes to two-faced jackasses like Barney."
We stared at each other, neither giving an inch.
Finally, she sighed inelegantly and called out in a voice like a piano that was slightly out of tune. "Come, mystic. The spiker wishes to speak with you."
The door creaked open and Barney strolled out, a little too confidently for my taste. His cane and glasses were gone, and he looked years younger. He could easily pass for a robust seventy-five. "Hello, Neely."
"Hello, dickhead."
Winter's face went blank and she tilted her head from side to side as if she were a satellite dish trying to pick up a distant channel. Was she telepathic?
Are you telepathic? I sent the words into her brain, but saw no response on her face, felt nothing in my head.
So, not telepathic. Then, if she wasn't trying to read me, what the heck was she doing?
"Your anger is understandable." Barney spoke the words through a jovial smile, a demonic Santa Claus without the red suit. "I do apologize for dragging the Martinez family into this. They have been very kind to me, and I have no wish to harm them."
"Except Guillermo, right?"
Because someone had set Juan's brother up, and that someone was in tight with the pack. Not family, because I'd read the wolves I'd come into contact with, and they were all a hundred percent loyal. They were la familia, connected by blood and by love, and that ran deeper than even pack bonds.
"Unfortunately, Gil was a casualty of the war we're fighting," Barney said. "It was necessary. Magicals are under attack, and if we don't take up arms now, we'll soon find ourselves wiped out."
"Well, that makes no sense at all."
"Doesn't it?" Barney's frown deepened.
"It makes perfect sense." Winter's ethereal visage seemed to gain more solidity with her anger. It had me wondering if her appearance was an illusion. If so, it was nearly flawless.
I ghosted over her mind, but found nothing that told me what she was. In fact, her brain reminded me of Lewiston's, humming away beneath a crisp layer of beige nothingness.
"You say you're under attack, but it seems to me that you're the ones doing the attacking."
"We are fighting a war," Winter's voice shook on the word war, and that slip in her composure gave me a momentary insight into her thoughts, revealing her true identity.
Winter wolf. The white wolf.
I wasn't even surprised. Really, I had the worst luck with people named for that season.
I ignored her and focused on Barney. "So, instead of reaching out for help from the people who love you, you hand over the grandson of the man who hired you years ago? The grand-nephew of the woman you claim to have feelings for? The brother of the wolf alpha who trusts you with his family and his land?"
Barney's smile fell away and his mouth pulled downward.
"You allowed these monsters to torture Guillermo until his prehistoric side was forced to break free to protect him. Do you have any idea what you risked? The story Juan told me was that he should have emerged from that treatment insane, murdering everything he touched. Why would you do such a hideous thing?"
I rolled my head from side to side, pretending to work the kinks out of my neck. I'd learned that looking too eager for information gave the other person leverage, and I didn't want to surrender any advantage to these two.
"Hogwash," Barney said. "That's an old lie, a cautionary tale told by privileged "chosen" alphas so that no one else would attempt to bring forth their prehistoric side. Those alphas didn't want the competition. It's a conspiracy born of selfishness and deception, and has no place in a world of science and magic."
Barney was a hundred percent wrong in what he had done to Guillermo. Thing was, even if I explained why he was wrong, he'd find some reason to defend the idea that what he had done was just. He was a true believer, brainwashed by his own hateful agenda, and nothing I said would convince him otherwise, so why waste my breath?
"Who are you people?" This I directed to Winter.
"We are the ones who will save our people." She stopped tilting her head and regarded me. "All our people, including you."
Okay, that doesn't sound so bad. Enemy of my enemy and all that. "How exactly do you propose to do this?"
Her white-blue eyes rounded and her oddly still face became animated. "By dismantling the organizations working to exterminate us."
"You mean the sanctuaries." Still didn't sound bad. There had to be a catch.
"Yes."
There was a catch, and I didn't have to wait long for it to surface.
"And once we've done this, we will dismantle both the human and shapeshifter worlds. We will make them fear us and never have to live in terror again. Why should magically talented paranormals be satisfied with simply existing? Why shouldn't we use every power at our disposal and run the world? It can't get any worse than it is now."
There. The light was finally showing through the cracks in the facade. "So, you want to do to the humans and shifters what you believe they're doing to us?"
Her smile was too wide, too toothy. Too much.
"Then why hurt my dad? Because that's literally what the man is trying to do. Well, not the batshit bonkers world domination thing, but he's working hard to take down every sanctuary that pops up. Plus, he has a huge security force at his disposal. Why not work with him?"
The smile faded, thank goodness. I didn't like looking at it.
"Your father consorts with shifters and humans." Her upper lip curled.
"In his efforts to take down the sanctuaries, yes. I would imagine there has to be some level of diplomacy involved in a job like that."
Her brows drew low over her eyes, wrinkling her smooth forehead, and her head tilted again. I really wished I knew what she was doing, but my telepathy would not work properly on her. If I wanted in
to her head, I was going to have to spike my way in.
"We use them the way they use us."
"According to Gil, you've abused countless paranormals to push your agenda. How are you different from the sanctuaries?"
"What we do is important to the continued existence of magical paranormals. We recruit—"
"Recruit?" My mouth fell open. "What the actual…? Guillermo was held against his will, you delusional ass."
"Sometimes compulsory recruitment is necessary." Her icy gaze met mine. "You'll see once you join us. And you will join us."
"You sound exactly like the humans who held me captive in the sanctuary," I said.
She stiffened. "We will abolish sanctuaries and murder the people who run them."
Got to admit, I didn't hate that idea. But it wouldn't go well with her in charge.
"That's it, then? The big plan is to use the same tactics the humans use on us—the humans you hate? You're bringing nothing new to the table at all." I rolled my eyes. "You know, I don't think Legion invented the word loser, but I do think you all are doing everything you can to perfect it."
Winter pressed her lips together and narrowed her eyes. "You'll see. Or you won't. Either way, you're our weapon now."
"No, thanks. I'm all set."
"You will—"
"So all that talk about being the savior of paranormals is exactly that. Talk. Must be nice to be able to toss away your scruples." I kept my gaze on her as I shook my head. "Not that I'm one to talk, Winter. I've been known to toss away a scruple or two, for instance…"
Without pause or reflection, I locked onto her brain. I did not try to match the rhythm of her brainwaves to mine. I did not worry about hurting her. And I certainly did not hold back.
I spiked, and I spiked hard.
She screamed, clutched her head with both hands, and went to her knees, then her belly. Tears ran down her face, streaking her silver—no, beige—hair. Beige hair, like her … skin. Like her.
Winter had shifted into Ms. Beige from the garden inside Guillermo Martinez's head. How many forms did this woman have?
I was so shocked, I let up on the spike a little. "Guillermo killed you."
But I was in her head and I could see Guillermo hadn't finished the job. He'd gotten Knee-kicker and Bald-guy, but she had slid from his grasp seconds before bleeding out, pulled out of the illusion, and called for a healer in time. She had to be strong.
Strong or not, this time she was going down.
It was too hard to spike her with my eyes open, too confusing to exist in twin realities, so I let my eyes slide closed, then called for my backup before I dove too deep.
Now, Lucas.
Winter's head was a place of darkness and red, fiery rage. She wasn't anything like the cool white wolf persona she'd presented to me. Nor was she as plainly beige as her other persona suggested. She was a conflagration of chemicals and sickness, and the connections in her head were rotted in places and singed in others. I spiked straight to the core of her consciousness, the purple-black pulsing mass that served as her connection to the living world, pushing all my energy into it. It wasn't enough.
"Come. Come. Come," Winter/Ms. Beige croaked, the words emerging in spit-soaked velar sounds. I pushed harder, drawing from the mystic on the porch and the woman herself.
"Come forth."
Crashing footfalls sounded on the side of the house closest to me, and I heard the screech of … an elephant? Ground trembling, ear-piercing shrieks grew louder, and the cloying smell of unhealthy animal filled my nostrils.
Something big and nasty was heading this way, and I couldn't open my eyes to see what it was or I'd lose concentration and drop the spike.
Hurry, Lucas.
I knew when he was close because my energy, which had been flagging, shot into the stratosphere and my spike blasted through Winter's rotted core. She screamed, and I drank in her pain, sending energy shooting down the nerves of her spinal column and all through her body.
"Umph." The back of my skull hit the grille of Juan's truck as I was thrown out of her head with a force equal to the strength of my spike. She was dead.
My head stung, and hot blood sluiced down my neck and back. I opened my eyes. Winter had shifted before she died, assuming the form she'd taken in the back room of the Dusty Cactus, outside my panaderia, and, today, at my dad's house. Sadly, it was her only remaining pure form. The only one Elijah hadn't been able to taint.
The white wolf.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
A brown, shaggy beast with tusks like pirate swords and a foot-to-shoulder height of at least ten feet thundered into the front yard. Wet puffs of air issued from the corners of its mouth.
A woolly mammoth shifter?
I must have thought the question to Lucas, because he replied, Even worse. It's a fucking mastodon.
The mastodon let out a cry that made my ears pop.
Worse? Lucas, how in the world could anything be worse than a mammoth? Aren't they the largest ancestors to the elephant, the largest land animal?
Yes, documentary nerd. But mammoths are kind of dumb. At least, the two I know are.
The two you know? Put a pin in that, Alpha Blacke, because we're definitely going to discuss it later. I pulled myself off the truck's grille and held onto it, tried to regain my footing. My back was throbbing. Fine, even if it's a mastodon, both mammoths and mastodons were herbivores. What are they going to do? Graze us to death?
The mastodon let out another cry and I sidled away from him. I knew the creature was male because of the tusks—and a few other details—but that was the extent of my knowledge. I'd watched a few documentaries on prehistoric animals; I hadn't gotten a degree in zoology.
I felt Guillermo somewhere behind me. Alpha Juan and Gert were nearby, though not as close as Lucas.
He could stomp you to death. The earth shook beneath my feet as he drew closer. Also, animal mastodons might have been herbivores, but we prehistoric shapeshifters are amazingly good at adapting our diet to our current ecosystems.
Adapting? As in, to an omnivore diet? The mastodon stomped around Winter's body. I kept watch on the enormous beast without looking it in the eye and risking enraging it. So, he's a meat eater?
Yes, and he doesn't seem very happy with the way you took out his friend. Watch your head.
Lucas leapt over the cab of Juan's truck and landed on all fours in the dead grass in front of me, letting out a roar that threatened to shake the fillings from my teeth. His Smilodon form was four feet from paws to shoulders, eight feet from nose to tail—a beautiful and ferocious beast, eight hundred pounds of thickly banded muscle, claws like sickles, and dense sandy fur.
Triangular peaked ears flattened against a skull three times the size of a normal tiger's as Lucas lasered in on the other prehistoric. He wasn't fully shifted, but the only way I could tell was because his voice was still in my head. He certainly looked the part.
How close are you? I asked. The last time he'd fully shifted, he'd slipped into berserker mode and I'd had to spike him back to his senses.
Holding steady. Come here.
I stumbled to his side, and he tucked me against him with his front paw. His fur was coarse but inviting, and he smelled like a cross between animal and mineral. It was a comforting sensation.
The tingling in the back of my head told me he was healing me.
My hero.
You know it, sugar cookie. Now get out of the way, because this is about to get real ugly.
I darted to the right and out of the way as the snorting, huffing, spitting mastodon charged at Lucas, who held his ground. Until he didn't. Lucas moved out of the beast's path at the last minute and the mastodon rammed the front end of Juan's truck, crumpling the grille and folding the hood. Blood spurted from a gash above the mastodon's right eye, spraying the cracked windshield.
With the mastodon occupied, I made a dash for the door behind which I suspected my dad was being held. Barney Drath had positioned
himself in front of it, arms crossed, jaw set. As I approached, he slipped a silver charm out of his shirt and shook it at me. "You can't spike me without hurting yourself. This charm—"
"Yeah, an anti-spiker charm. I've seen them before." I sounded less than impressed, which seemed to annoy the mystic.
"Not like this one, but it doesn't matter. I won't allow you to leave, spiker."
"Is it that charm that makes you think you can stop me? Think that through, because I've pushed past that sort of pain before when I was pissed off enough, and I am really angry with you, Barney."
I played with the edges of his mind. Telepathy, not spiking, which apparently didn't activate the charm. The mystic was confident about his ability to hold me here, which made me wary. This was more than bravado. This was deep confidence from an aged mystic who could affect the weather. If he decided to conjure up a blizzard, he could freeze me to death in minutes—maybe seconds.
"Anger? What do you understand about anger? You've been a paranormal for thirty years. Try living this existence for a hundred, always having to hide who and what you are. Fearing exposure at every turn."
"Exaggerate much? Gert said you were eighty-seven, not a hundred."
Behind me, Lucas crunched down on the mastodon's throat. From the corner of my eye, I saw a bloodied, swordlike tusk on the broken sidewalk a few feet away. Not Lucas's, thank God. Where was Juan?
Barney ignored me. "Legion's mission is important to the continued existence of our kind. There's no room for ego with Legion. There's no place for self. There is only the—"
"Cause. Yeah. I get it." Here I'd thought Barney might bring on an ice storm, but I guess the mystic's big plan was to monologue me to death. Unfortunately for him, I'd faced down Malcolm Xavier, the king of monologuing. "You know there's a fine line between activism and fanaticism. We see it in the human world all the time. Not that I'm accusing you of anything…" I gave him an exaggerated look of innocence.
