by Sierra Dean
That’s one of the nicer things I could say about them.
Sutherland blinked at the four of us standing in his living room—Dominick had stayed outside to keep an eye on things—and smiled softly, like this was the most normal thing in the world.
“I wasn’t expecting company. I don’t have any snacks.”
Secret gently touched his shoulder, in a gesture that could seem meaningless to the untrained eye, but very clearly indicated that under her annoyance she had quite the soft spot for him. “Sutherland, we’re not here to visit.”
“I can make tea.” He shuffled towards the kitchen before she could stop him and we could hear him rattling through the cupboards and starting a kettle. I gave her a questioning look, like should we stop him, but she just shook her head. Apparently the tea-making would go on as planned.
“You guys might want to take a seat,” she said, gesturing to the loveseat and armchair. It wasn’t a lot of room for everyone, but Wilder stayed by the door and I sat next to Desmond on the loveseat while Secret lingered near the kitchen. Lucas hesitated, then sat in the armchair.
I knew why he hadn’t wanted to sit.
Wilder was still standing.
Yet Lucas couldn’t exactly get riled up about this with both Desmond and I sitting down. I was an Alpha now, and Desmond was king. If neither of us cared about Wilder standing, Lucas really couldn’t say much.
It bothered him, though.
It was kind of nice to see that death had done little to change Lucas, who I didn’t have the fondest memories of from his time alive. He had, after all, stood my sister up on the day of their public wedding, because he considered it a mere formality after the werewolf ceremony had been completed.
The elite of Manhattan would have been scandalized, except for the fact Morgan had shown up and tried to kill us all. That part ended up being a bit more memorable at the end of the day.
I hadn’t really thought about how the papers were going to react when he made the big reveal he was alive and well, or even if he intended to go public. There were a lot of finer details to coming back from the dead and not a lot of useful literature circulating on how to deal with it all.
So You’ve Come Back from the Grave: A Beginner’s Guide.
Sutherland returned a moment later with a teapot and a few mugs, though not enough for everyone, and set it all on the table with a satisfied nod of the head. “There. It’s hot. Be careful.”
We all stared at the teapot, and he didn’t seem to care one way or the other if we filled our mugs.
“Have you seen Mercy tonight?” Secret asked, cutting right to the point.
He stared at her, his eyes unblinking as he processed her question. “No.”
“Sutherland, think hard, have you seen Mercy?”
“No. Who are all your friends? They smell like dogs.”
Desmond gave a slight smirk, and I saw Wilder’s expression change to one of disgust and hostility but I held up my hand and gently shook my head. Secret scrubbed her hands over her face and looked as if she’d aged ten years since we arrived.
“Dad, we talked about this. You can’t say that stuff around werewolves.”
“Oh. Right.” He looked at us. “Sorry.”
Desmond, evidently already accustomed to this, just shrugged and did his best not to laugh. Typically calling a werewolf a dog was considered one of the most grave insults you could level at us, but it was pretty hard to be mad at a teenage vampire with brain damage.
“Why were you asking about Mercy?” he said to Secret. “She’s dead.”
“She was dead.”
“Oh. Okay.”
I glanced over at her trying to get a read on what she was feeling from her expression, but the only thing I could say for certain was that she was as exhausted by this roundabout conversation as the rest of us. Probably more so since she had to deal with it on the regular.
“We think she might come here for you.”
Sutherland nodded, then moved towards the table where he’d put the teapot and poured some into one of the mugs, holding it out for me. “Here you go.”
I took it from him. “Thanks.”
“I hope you like mint.”
“I do.”
“Good. Good. Mint is so nice. Why do you think Mercy would come here? It’s been a very long time.”
“We think she wants to hurt the people who matter to me, since she can’t get to me directly.”
“That’s not very nice.”
“Well, Mercy isn’t very nice,” I replied.
“She used to be.”
Those four words crushed me in a way I hadn’t realized I might still be able to feel. I’d spent so long thinking of this version of Mercy as the only one. The mean, spiteful, killer version. The woman who would come back from the dead to kill me just because she knew it would hurt Secret.
I had only known this dark version of her, and it had erased any notion I had of the woman she might have been before everything went dark. She’d been a girl once, who loved the man standing in front of me, and whose entire life had been ripped to shreds in an instant.
Maybe you just don’t come back from something like that the same.
Maybe she really had been a person worth knowing and loving, once upon a time.
I wish I’d had a chance to meet that woman, because by the time she’d had me and Ben, any remaining vestiges of Mercy being a good person were long, long gone, and they sure as hell weren’t coming back now.
Still, it broke my heart to imagine she might have once loved things unconditionally, and she could have had such a different life if things hadn’t taken the turn they did.
I looked at Secret, the very person Mercy blamed for all the things that had gone wrong in her life, and I knew even then I was still on my sister’s side.
I would follow her down into the pits of hell and not feel the slightest pang of pity when we put Mercy back in the grave a second time.
Mother or not, I knew she had to go.
I was about to take a sip of my tea when the living room light and TV both went out.
Through the darkness, Sutherland said, “I suspect that’s her, then.”
Chapter Thirty-three
It’s one thing to know a fight is coming your way, and quite another when it actually arrives at your doorstep.
We sat in Sutherland’s living room, all collectively holding our breath. Except for Sutherland, who didn’t need to breathe.
The whole place was dead silent, and though I had no problem seeing with the lights off, it was still a bit spooky to be sitting in the dark. I still had the hot teacup in my hands, and gently set it back down on the table. My pulse was pounding in my ears, and given how high the tension in the room was, the last thing I wanted to do was to forget I was holding the mug and spill boiling tea on my lap when things got crazy.
Except for several minutes nothing happened.
I knew she was messing with us, but to what end? Did she want us in here or out on the street? She had to know she couldn’t win against us inside the apartment where she was grossly outnumbered. The odds didn’t favor her no matter where she attacked us, but I imagine she was just hoping to kill someone before she was put down herself.
No one in this apartment was going to die tonight if I had anything to say about it.
The sound of Cyndi Lauper’s “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” started bopping through the space, and after the second it took for my heart to slow down, I realized it was my own phone ringing.
I rifled through my bag, unnecessarily embarrassed to have my ring tone blaring so loud, and answered the unfamiliar number calling me.
“Hello?”
“It’s important you to know I never wanted things to end this way,” Mercy’s voice came through the other end. “We could have been a proper family. You, me, your brother. Things could have been different if you hadn’t been taken in by her.”
“She’s not a hoodoo witch doctor or anything. She
didn’t put my under a spell. You’re just mad because I recognized my real family when I saw it.”
There was a long pause and for a moment I thought she might have hung up, but then she made a gravelly along growling sound. “What a waste. All of you. Three fucking disappointing children. A monster, a groveling coward, and you.”
“And what am I, Mercy?”
“You might be the biggest disappointment of them all. So much power and so much potential, and yet you squander it on that stupid boy, and Callum’s stupid pack, and your useless sister. If I had what you had, I would rule them all and crush the rest beneath my boot.” The venom in her voice was so vile it gave me a chill even through the phone.
“Then it’s a good thing you don’t have my power, isn’t it?”
“And neither will you for much longer.”
“That’s such a lame threat. Boring and overdone. Just tell me where you are and let’s finish this thing.”
Secret glanced over at me and gave me an approving nod. She might not be able to hear what Mercy was saying—probably for the better—but she could certainly appreciate a good threat when she heard it.
“Why don’t we finish what was started here so long ago, and you meet me where you were supposed to die?”
“If I meet you, will you leave the others alone?”
“That’s not how this goes, baby girl. It’s not you for them. You die so she suffers, and then she dies so I’m free. I don’t care if you come alone or not. This night ends in death.”
“It certainly does.”
“Maybe this time you won’t be such a goddamn letdown.”
“I guess that all depends on the outcome you were hoping for.” I hung up before she could say anything.
They all stared at me, and as I went to explain what she’d said, the lights flickered back on.
“She wants us to meet her where I almost died,” I explained. I glanced over to Lucas and he understood my words before the rest of them. “Where everything went down that night.”
“In a manner of speaking,” he said with a forced smile.
“She wants to finish what was started.”
“So, we don’t go,” Wilder said. “This is insanity. She’s told you point blank she wants to kill you, and you’re just going to go right into her waiting arms? That’s lunacy.”
“She’s said she wants to kill everyone in this room,” I snapped back. “We can’t sit here waiting to see which one of us she tries to pick off first. It’s time to finish what she started, and if that means I go where she tells me to go, so be it. At least I’ll know she’ll be there.”
“Oh, we’re going to finish this all right,” Secret said. “But you’re not going in there alone.”
“I wasn’t planning on it.”
She pulled a gun out of the holster on her shoulder, the shiny metal of the Sig P226 glinting under the restored light from the lamp, and she pulled back the chamber.
“I know you said bullets won’t killer her, Gene, but I’m going to be honest with you, I’ve found there are very few things that don’t die if you pump enough silver into their skulls.”
I smiled at her.
“You never change.”
Chapter Thirty-four
I spent the entire drive to the memorial park trying to remember how I’d killed Timothy Deerling.
Channeling my rage had worked, but it wasn’t just something you could turn on and off like a light switch. I wasn’t particularly angry right then, not even with the specter of Mercy’s threat lingering over us. Sure, she’d told me she wanted to kill everyone near and dear to me just to make my sister suffer, but it was such a ludicrous threat it didn’t make me mad.
Which posed something of a problem.
We parked in a pay lot across the street from the park and made our way in a grim pack towards the main gate. While the memorial museum had been long closed for the night, the park itself remained open twenty-four hours a day. Even though it was November and the promise of winter was in the air like a frosty kiss, the fountain in the middle of the park remained on, at least for a few days more, before the weather got too cold.
Over the gate was a sign that read “Lucas Rain Memorial Park” and on the walls at the back of the garden were the names of all those who had died in the assault on the city. Lucas’s name, of course, was among them, but no larger than any of the others.
“The walls were made from what was left of the hotel,” Secret said quietly. “I came here when they cut the ribbon on this place. It felt like we were standing on your grave.”
Lucas nodded and said nothing. I wasn’t sure what he could say right then. I had a million questions I wanted to ask him about that night, about what had happened after he’d gone through the floor, but I suspected those answers would never be shared, and I had to be okay with that.
“The memorial building is the old lobby,” Secret told us. “When they cleared away the rubble they found that the floors had all stayed intact somehow, so they built it up around them. Kind of morbid if you ask me.”
“They were really expensive floors,” Lucas countered.
The building Secret was referring to was a three-story museum. I’d read about it after it had opened, and watched some of the coverage on the news, but I’d never seen it in person before. It felt weird to be standing here, and honestly the last thing I wanted to do was to go inside.
A light on the top floor came on, as if inviting us to enter.
We all knew who was waiting.
“You don’t have to do this,” Wilder told me.
“I do.”
“She’s dangerous.”
“So are we,” I reminded him.
He grabbed me by the shoulders and turned me to face him directly, and before I could ask what he was doing, he bent low and planted a kiss on my lips. It wasn’t a delicate or gentle kiss, it was the kind that flared down into your toes and seeped like molten hot need through your veins. My whole body felt undone and remade in an instant under the pressure of his mouth, and I forgot myself just long enough to sag into his embrace.
When he released me, I sighed against his lips.
“You are coming out of this thing alive, you hear me?”
“I never planned on dying, you idiot.” I kissed him back, holding his face in my palms. His stubble was rough against my skin and I swore that no matter what happened tonight, when he and I got home we would let ourselves hide away from the world, at least for one weekend.
We deserved that much, didn’t we?
“We doing this, or do you guys want to be fucking adorable a little bit longer?” Secret asked.
“The adorable just happens naturally, I’m sorry, I can’t help it,” I retorted.
“There’s only so much cutesy bullshit I can handle before murdering someone a second time.”
“She says that,” Desmond said. “But I’m here to tell you she loves cutesy bullshit twenty-four-seven.”
Secret rolled her eyes and let out an exasperated sigh. “Am I the only one who toggled my switch to badass-butt-kicking mode? You guys are still in quippy-one-liners-and-being-sappy mode.”
“You’re a weird lady,” Wilder told her.
“You have no idea,” Lucas said.
“I hope she kills all of you.”
“You love us,” I said.
The pall of fear that had followed us into the garden had lifted slightly, and lightness had come into its place. None of us were trying to pretend this wasn’t serious and potentially very deadly, but it wouldn’t help any of us to go through those doors already dreading the outcome.
If we could crack jokes, it meant we thought this might end well.
It had to end well.
“Let’s fucking do this,” Secret announced as she kicked open the door.
Immediately it became clear we weren’t only going to be dealing with Mercy. I wasn’t sure how it was possible for her to have amassed goons so quickly, or if these men were still loyal to her fr
om the last time she made a bid to usurp the throne, but the second we got through the door a dozen werewolves were on us.
They were all in human form, same as us, but it didn’t mean they weren’t deeply dangerous, especially since they seemed to be fighting like they didn’t care whether they lived or died.
The museum door shut behind me and before my eyes had a chance to adjust to the darkness, someone struck me hard right across the face. The punch landed right on my cheekbone, and pain exploded through the side of my head as if I’d been hit with a hammer rather than a fist.
I staggered backward, hitting the door, and cradling my face in my palm while stars swam in front of my eyes.
Being hit by a human would have done more damage to them than it did me.
Being hit by a grown male werewolf who wasn’t holding anything back? Well, that hurt a hell of a lot, I’m here to tell you.
Once my brain started to function again I was able to better assess our situation. Unfortunately for me, that was the precise moment one of the wolves took notice of me and lunged in for a second attack.
My instincts took over and I tucked and rolled just as he was about to collide with me, but my little evasive maneuver only managed to roll me directly under Desmond’s legs, bringing both him and the werewolf he’d been fighting right down on top of me.
Four hundred plus pounds of writhing, snarling men fighting on top of you isn’t sexy or enjoyable no matter how you look at it. The air was knocked from my lungs and I struggled to breathe as I wrestled my way out from under them.
I was already a sticky, sweaty, bruised disaster by the time I got to my feet, and we weren’t even out of the main entrance hall yet. Admittedly, I’d come into this assuming Wilder, Secret, Desmond, Lucas, Dominick, and I would be able to handily dispatch one once-dead werewolf. We’d left Sutherland back at his apartment, assuming he’d be more of a liability than an asset.
I was starting to wish we had the vampire on our side.
Secret swore, and the sound of crunching bone echoed through the chamber, but there was no way for me to tell if the crunching sound had been from her or caused by her. Either way, someone was going to be in a shitload of pain.
