"I thought you were friends with them,” I whispered.
The wolf shifted as it stepped forward, a furry wild one instant and a man the next. The alpha. I could tell by his size and how the other wolves stood back to revere him. A black coat whipped around his ankles, and his stunning red hair gleamed with snowflakes.
"There's trouble at Margin’s church," he said.
Baba. Not him. Not him too. I shook my head to better hear over the roar of panic in my head.
"What trouble?" Thomas demanded.
"Faust. He’s there. He’s taking Gabriel back, he says.” His hard gaze slid to me. “And he’s waiting for you.”
Chapter Four
"Stay behind me," Thomas ordered, hauling me behind him up the steps to Margin’s church.
"Like hell I will." I raised my voice loudly over the crushing wind and snow so he’d be sure to hear me.
It had seemed like hours to get back to Margin while escorted by wolves, and because the two of us had walked hand in hand the entire way here and not in our usual unique way, my weary bones could hardly keep me upright. The cold had seized my entire body, but the idea of a confrontation with Faust licked fire at my heels and kept me moving.
Thomas stopped and turned so suddenly that my nose struck his lower stomach. He jerked me back by the elbow and ducked low so his breath steamed my cheeks. "Don't cross him, Aika. He hates me, but he hates women even more, especially the ones who stand next to me."
Sasha stared up at him with one eye through the buttons of my coat. He was only a blur of hair and wind and scars.
"He thinks you're dead," I reminded him. "He won't even notice me when he sees you're not."
Speaking of not noticing something, Sasha wriggled her paw free from the front of my coat and swatted at his ear to get his attention. He didn’t even blink.
"You still have the"—he waved his hand through the air—“you know.”
I nodded as I slipped my hand into my pocket and squeezed the small glass jar filled with four-step poison. "I guess I don't need my bow and arrow to kill him after all."
"You won’t need poison either." He drew a gun from inside his coat, turned, and slammed the church door inward.
As long as Faust died a terrible death, I didn’t care how it happened. Vengeance stirred deep within me, boiling over like it did for Lager.
I rushed in behind Thomas, and while poking down Sasha's head into my coat, I shut the door behind us. It smelled the same as the last time we'd been in here, like musty paper and ink, exactly like Margin’s library. A comforting scent usually, but not after what had happened here last time. The chairs had been arranged in neat rows and faced a short set of steps with a blazing fire at the top. When we'd run for our lives from here, the chairs had been scattered, Sasha had been hurt, and I'd been covered in her blood.
She touched her paw to my chest underneath my coat, as if the stirred-up memories and smells of this place had made her seek comfort in the steady rhythm of my heart. I held her close, but I froze the very next second.
"Imagine my surprise," a boisterous voice called down from…somewhere. Everything echoed in here, but I recognized that voice. It was him. It was Faust.
Thomas dragged me behind him and leveled his gun toward the rear of the church near the nursery then toward the stairwell which was hidden by a wall. Other than Faust’s bold voice, though, the church appeared empty.
"You’re alive,” Faust said. “I saw what you did to Gabriel. A pity about his face and his ears and his…well, everything.”
"Show yourself, Faust," Thomas ordered. He kept me behind him as he began to weave toward the center of the church.
"Dead wolves don't give orders,” Faust called with a lot of bite. “I do believe you two tried to trick me in the woods when we last played our little game."
Something creaked behind my back, but when I turned, Sasha didn’t see anything other than the closed door a few feet away. On the opposite wall, soft footsteps padded down the stairs, punctuated by two sharp clicks. Whoever that was, they stayed out of sight. Regardless, we were about to have company.
"How well did you two think trying to trick me was going to work out?" Faust called.
Thomas fired toward the stairs, the bullet puncturing the wall. I wheeled back, the noise striking the inside of my skull. Seconds later, a man I’d never seen before rolled down the steps with two guns clutched in his hands and a bullet hole through the side of his head.
"I'd say pretty well," Thomas rumbled.
Faust chuckled, the sound bouncing around the church. "Think again."
“No!” Thomas shouted, whirling toward me.
Something hard clobbered the back of my head. I slumped down, knocking into several chairs, as pain cleaved my skull in half. Sasha tumbled free of my coat with a pained yelp. I landed hard on my side, my cold bones in agony. I reached for her, or tried to. My arms wouldn’t cooperate. Blood filled my mouth, and its strong, coppery taste focused my thoughts on it rather than the shadows edging into my awareness.
"That's what you fucking get," a feminine voice seethed.
"Now, now, Louisa," Faust said.
His red-headed wife. One of his wives, I’d heard.
Thomas roared, “You fucking touch her again, Louisa—”
“The pup will have a bullet for an eye if you finish that sentence, dear brother,” Faust yelled.
Thomas went quiet and still, though the air around him pulsed with wrath.
I flopped to my back and managed to pull Sasha’s trembling body toward me through a puddle of my own blood. It poured down into my eyes, and I couldn’t see, not even through Sasha.
"You cut my face, you whore," Louisa spat.
I grinned up at her, a bloody, horrific one from the feel of it. "It looks like you need a matching one on the other cheek."
"It looks like, huh?” She scoffed. “You can't see shit."
"Come on out, Faust,” Thomas bellowed. “You really sent your wife here for backup?"
“She wanted to come to get Gabriel,” Faust answered. “I'm beginning to think she likes him more than me."
"I do," she hissed.
"You can't deny that I fuck better though." At her silence, he laughed, cold and dry. "Gabriel's already gone, Thomas. My pack took him. When he's healed up, there's nothing to keep him from coming back for round two with you. In fact, I'm sure he'd enjoy it."
"Gabriel no longer has feet,” Thomas growled. “The bear trap I found him in took care of that. He won't be coming back for anything."
"The bear trap you set for him, you mean,” Faust said.
“What you did to him…” Louisa sucked in a shaky breath. “You’re a fucking monster, Thomas.”
Thomas growled so low, I almost didn’t hear him, “And you have no spine, you weak-willed cunt.”
“Lucky Gabriel doesn't need feet to torture you, though,” Faust called, seeming to not have heard their exchange. “All he needs are his tools. Didn't you save those from the tavern fire in Old Man’s Den, Louisa?"
She laughed humorlessly. "I did."
"You call what he did to me torture,” Thomas barked. “He had twenty-three months to torture me. He did nothing but buzz around like a fly."
"If you say so, brother." Faust chuckled, a dark sound that rolled a shiver up my neck. "And yet I could hear you scream."
"That was him when he realized he’d wasted all that time in trying to force me into telling him where the ruby caves are."
"Hm. What about your girl there?” Faust asked. “Awful lousy shot when you want to be, aren't you? But that obviously wasn't poison you broke all over the snow, which means you still owe me a kill."
"Sure," I croaked and spit out blood onto the floor. "Just as soon as you tell me where Archer is, I’ll kill you."
Faust clicked his tongue. "I'm afraid you're mistaken. You don't get to make the rules here."
Fury ground up my voice into ice. "I thought it was my choice who got killed. Is
n’t that part of your game?"
"Louisa, check her pockets for poison," Faust ordered.
"Like hell you will," Thomas snapped.
"For the sake of your girl and your pup, you'll let her or they are dead,” Faust said, his voice edged in malice. “You hearing me?"
Thomas growled as he backed off, his boots thudding. The air roiled with tension around him.
Louisa stalked toward me and dropped to her knees, placing her gun beside her. She roughly poked her hands into my coat pockets then hiked my coat up to my knees and searched my pants pockets. Even though it made my head pound twice as hard, I grinned at her, slid my tongue over my bloody lips as if I liked her touching me.
A distraction. The whole time, I crept my hand closer, closer to her gun.
"Nothing," she ground out. "Let me kill them, Faust."
"With this?" I snatched up the gun and tossed it in Thomas’s direction. The quick movements clobbered my head with pain and stars, but he caught it easily.
Louisa released a scream of rage and backhanded my cheek.
"Don't you fucking touch her." Thomas lunged toward her, and he must’ve whipped her over the head with one.
She dropped and thudded next to me, releasing a shuddery, pained breath.
"Enough!" Faust shouted. "You owe me, Thomas. Let Louisa walk out of here just as I let you leave Old Man's Den."
"You didn’t let me,” Thomas said. "And I owe you nothing but pain."
“Louisa, walk out of here right now,” Faust ordered.
“Don’t you fucking dare, Louisa,” Thomas growled.
A gunshot rang out, and for a few lifelong seconds, I wasn't sure if I'd been hit. Or worse, Sasha, tucked against me.
“Leave now!” Faust yelled.
Pressing closer to Sasha, I made the V for Victory sign into her fur. We’d wormed underneath his skin yet again, made him lose what he thought was control. Faust was a cruel game maker who could easily be played. I rolled this over and over in the back of my mind, somehow both frozen with terror and giddy at the same time. That was how we could get him. That was how we would win.
Louisa fought to get her legs underneath her and then stumbled into the rows of chairs on her way out. Footsteps rushed down another set of stairs I hadn’t known existed, and then a back door slammed. A blast of cold through the open front door drowned everything else out. After it banged closed, silence followed, as suffocating and untrustworthy as when there’d been noise.
“They’re both gone?” I whispered, stuffing Sasha down my coat with trembling hands.
“Yes.”
“You could go after them.”
“Yeah.” He knelt next to me and gently touched my temple, making me hiss. “I could.”
“My baba,” I pleaded. “Is he hurt?”
“You first. How does your head feel.”
“Not great.”
"You learned from Archer to make things disappear, but where…"
"I told you I'm not an idiot," I said. "You have the poison. I slipped it into your pocket before we got here."
"Clever, clever woman." He picked me up off the ground as though I were a feather pillow and sighed, his breath a warm caress.
Sasha peered out of my coat and spied the blood on my chin and face, and before she ducked back, she flicked her gaze up at Thomas. A small smile curled the corner of his mouth as he stared down at me, and it danced across his brown eyes. Just a glimpse and then it was gone, the first I'd seen on this man who claimed not to feel anything. That smile had been anything but empty. It had given him life, if only for a split second.
He carried me past the dead man at the foot of the stairs. "We'll check in on your dad, and then I need to see to your head."
"Thank you."
On the second-floor landing, he stopped, fiddled with the doorknob to my baba's room, then used my feet to push it open.
“I heard gunsh—” Baba gasped from the direction of the bed. "She's shot? Who shot her?"
I mentally waved away the sharp edge of worry in his voice, now of all times and never before, likely because he had an audience he thought might kill him. "I'm fine, Baba," I said, sounding exhausted. "The threat's gone."
"Who—"
Thomas shut the door on him, and the rest of Baba's question faded out as Thomas walked me down the hallway to another door. Another room, hopefully not the one he’d kept Gabriel in and…did whatever he did to him. "Your dad was asking too many questions.”
"He didn't used to."
A pause as he turned the doorknob with a hard click, then, "Your dad's not a good man."
Whether it was intended as a question or not, I couldn't tell, and I didn't have an answer even if it was. "He tries. He kept me fed with a roof over my head. Jade and Lee too. But he's…"
Thomas gently laid me down on a soft, clean-smelling bed, free from any traces of what he’d done to Gabriel. At least, I hoped.
"What," Thomas prompted.
I shook my head, instantly regretting it as a bolt of fresh pain hammered my skull, and freed Sasha from my coat. She sniffed at me and whimpered, again and again.
"He's not really my baba,” I explained. “He just told me shortly before we left here. I didn't even tell Archer and Grady that truth because it felt too fresh and…painful. It's something I still need to process myself."
From the side of the bed, something trickled into what sounded like a bowl, and then a soft, cold cloth pressed to my head as Thomas sank down next to me. "So you told me instead."
I winced and screwed my eyes shut, my throbbing temple rejecting his touch. "It's…it’s this feeling, a connection. With you. I felt it as soon as I saw your scars.” I wasn’t used to being quite this honest about what exactly I was feeling, but with Thomas, it seemed easier. Comfortable, like I could tell him anything. Maybe a part of me believed he really was empty of all feeling, and therefore judgement of any kind, though I suspected he felt everything, like me, and had grown damn tired of it. “It’s like we're similar even though of course we're not."
He rinsed the cloth in the bowl and squeezed, the rhythm of the trickling water soothing. "I bet we have more in common than we don't."
I opened my eyes and wished I could see his face, but Sasha was more concerned with me. "What makes you say that?"
"Your scars.”
"My blindness, you mean."
"Yes.” A long, weighted pause. “My scars were given to me by Faust, small at first, in places no one could see."
I gasped, more from shock than from pain as he resumed dabbing at my temple. "Why would he do that to you?"
"He was the outcast in my family, and I got attention without ever asking for it. That, and he always wanted what I had, no matter what it was."
"So he took it?"
"It's a lot harder to take the alpha position in a pack. The previous alpha chose me before he retired, but that didn’t stop Faust. At first, he tried to turn our packmates against me, got Louisa and Gabriel, quite a few other others to listen to him." What sounded like his jaw cracked as he pulled away for another rinse.
"You said he couldn’t kill you. But he can still hurt you?"
"That's part of who he is, from the time we were young. It's about power with him and showing me I don't have any while he's carving out my skin."
"He's deranged," I whispered.
“That, and he can’t kill members of the Crimson Forest pack.”
“But he’s not in the pack, I thought.”
“He’s not. The Crimson Forest rejected him and the others when they left the pack, and when it did, it changed him. Changed us. We can’t die at his hands, or any of his packmates’ hands.”
“That explains why he has others do his killing, like Catch, Kill, Release and dumping poison into the forest’s water supply to slow your pack down. Right?”
He sighed deeply. “I doubt he dumped the poison himself, but yeah, that’s right.”
I reached out gingerly to stroke his beautiful
scarred face, a simple touch that charged my fingertips. "How young were you when he did this to you?"
"Five."
"Me too." I sucked in an uneven breath. "I was five, too, when my ama poisoned me and took away my sight."
"Ama."
"My mom."
He pulled away from my touch and stood to rinse the cloth in the bowl again, even though he could reach it just fine. His movements were stiffer than usual, strained. "Your own mother."
"Your own brother… And the rest of the scars?" As soon as it left my mouth, I knew. "Gabriel."
After a long time of rinsing, he came back and sat heavily on the bed. "What I told Grady and Archer was the truth last time we were here. After Faust played his game with the rest of my pack the first time around, I'd been shot seventeen times with an arrow by Faust. Even though he can’t kill me, he can hurt me. My body needed rest. We slept in a cave that night, and the next morning, I really did hear Faust coming, along with Gabriel. So I did what any alpha would do. I led him away from the cave and my pack and gave myself to him."
"And Gabriel tortured you," I said, my voice cracking. "For how long?"
"About two years. I escaped when the chains securing me to the wall and floor wore away. Gabriel had no reservations about hurting me, but he wanted to do it slowly. He didn't believe me when I said I didn't know where the ruby caves were. That's what he said anyway."
"Two years of torture?” I shook my head and swallowed. “How could you possibly stand it?"
"I felt nothing,” he said simply. “My pack was dead, and my soul, such as it was, was dead."
I wanted to reach out to him again, to prove he was wrong, but I didn’t want him to close off on me either. "But…you're alive. Surely you feel something. Relief, maybe? Because you still have Archer and Grady. And Sasha. Please don’t forget about her."
"All I feel," he said, his voice growing darker, "is the slightest fraction of victory.”
My eyes widened. “How so?”
“He’s terrified of us, of you, of me, of what we might do.”
“You noticed that too.”
“I did. We’ve made a point, but the sharper it is…”
“The bloodier.” My smile split my head in half, but I didn’t care.
Winter's Rage (The Crimson Winter Reverse Harem Series Book 3) Page 3
