by Reine, SM
Her fingers trailed from Abel’s gun to Seth’s old fang earring, which he hadn’t worn in years. Which one was more real? Which path was she meant to follow? And why did it have to be so damn hard?
She felt something hard among Seth’s belongings, and on impulse, she pulled it out.
Rylie recognized the brown cover instantly. It was marked with a gash, like a claw mark, and the pages curled at the edges.
She thought that the diary she had used at Camp Silver Brook had gone missing long ago. But here it was, among all of the things that Seth considered to be most important. He must have had it all along. It still smelled like Rylie had when she was a human, and like the oils on Seth’s hands. He must have held it frequently.
Sinking to the edge of the bed, she opened it to a page at the end.
Tonight’s the night. It’s my only chance to save myself. I have to be strong, like Seth said, but I don’t know how. I’m scared.
He might be right. If I do change, I’m probably better off dead. I won’t be able to go home. I won’t even have a home anymore. Going back to the city of school is out of the question, especially since even my friends think I’m a freak by now.
I’m not the same person anymore. I don’t want to die, diary, but I feel like I’ve reached the end of days anyway.
I wish Seth was here.
Rylie stared at the page, feeling numb. She didn’t often think about when she had first become a werewolf. It had been an awful time. Life was so much better now, in every way. And it was entirely because of Seth and Abel.
But she was going to have to break someone’s heart.
Closing the diary with trembling hands, Rylie stuck it back into the duffel bag, and zipped it shut.
Rylie stepped into the living room on the morning before the next moon to find yellow balloons covering the floor, banners hanging from the ceiling, and a lot of people in party hats.
“Surprise!” they shouted.
She froze in the doorway, staring at them like a deer that had just spotted a werewolf.
Almost all of the furniture and wall hangings were gone now, leaving plenty of room for pictures of cartoon babies. They were on the balloons and banners, the plates and napkins, and even on the confetti that had been scattered across the floor. All the women were there, including James’s apprentice, Brianna. Even Brody lurked in the corner, apart from the festivities.
“Uh,” Rylie said. She was still wearing her pajamas.
Bekah took her hand and led her to the lone chair. “It seemed like it was time to lighten the mood, so we thought we would throw you a baby shower. Are you surprised?”
“That’s a word for it,” she said faintly.
It hadn’t occurred to her that people might want to throw a baby shower. She had been so caught up with moving that she hadn’t thought about the babies much at all. And now there were babies everywhere.
“We got presents for you,” Pyper said.
“But not much,” Stephanie interjected. “You’ll have to travel light when you reach the Haven, but all of the essentials should be covered.”
Brody helped Bekah carry all of the presents to Rylie’s chair. The bags and wrapping paper were just as cutesy as everything else. She stared at a stork carrying a baby with a single curly hair on the side of one present.
“You okay?” Gwyn asked when Rylie didn’t move to open anything.
She shook her head to clear it. “Yeah, sorry. I’m still waking up.”
Rylie pulled the stuffing out of the bags, and then lifted a piece of cloth out of it. It was a tiny unitard that would have barely fit a doll.
“I got that for you,” Brianna said. “It’s called a onesie. They have buttons at the bottom so that it’s easy to change diapers. See?” She popped it open and showed Rylie the flaps. “There are a few in there with ladybug print, and a few with baseballs. You can mix it up between the twins.”
Stephanie pushed a large box forward. “And speaking of diapers…”
Inside were cloth diapers in a dozen different gender-neutral colors. “Cloth diapers?” Rylie asked, trying to imagine how cleaning those worked. The idea was horrifying.
“We don’t know what access to disposable diapers will be like over there,” Gwyn said. She picked up one of the diapers to examine it. There were buttons on the front, and no diaper pins in sight. “These things have gotten a lot better since I babysat in high school. Used to be that you had to put kids in rubber pants, and the rashes…”
Diapers. Onesies. Rashes.
All this time, being pregnant hadn’t seemed real. Her growing stomach was some nightmarish medical problem that she just needed to ignore until it went away in August, when she was due.
But it was already the very end of May. Rylie was going to have babies soon.
Tiny werewolves that relied on her for survival.
Her vision blurred, and tears began rolling down her cheeks. She wasn’t sure if it was from fear, worry, or something else entirely.
Gwyn put a papery hand on Rylie’s shoulder. “It’s going to be okay, babe.”
Rylie rested her head on her aunt’s shoulder, closed her eyes, and let herself cry.
SEVENTEEN
Resurrection
By the time James put the finishing touches on his spell, there was no standing room left in the cellar. Almost every inch of the floor was covered in James’s magic circle, and he had lined the stairs with his books, leaving only a narrow path to walk down.
“Where did all of these come from?” Rylie asked, grabbing the wall so that she could step over a particularly tall stack without unbalancing.
Brianna shrugged. She was squeezed in one corner, using a stack of text books as a makeshift chair. “Beats me. We didn’t bring them with us.”
“Of course not. That would be impractical. I conjured them from an office in Colorado.” James gestured at the circle of power. There were a couple of cushions in the middle. “Kneel in the center, Rylie.” Rylie settled down and tried to get comfortable, but her hips ached at the motion.
James began lighting candles around the room. He held a piece of paper in one hand and snapped the fingers on his other hand repeatedly, until tiny flames appeared on the wick of a dozen candles.
“So you said this might hurt, right?” she asked.
James tucked the paper in his pocket. “Very likely.”
She set her jaw. “I’m ready for it.” What could hurt worse than getting mauled by a werewolf? Or even worse, turning into a monster twice every month? Rylie had already been through the worst pain that any human could endure.
Even so, she felt kind of faint as she watched James anoint a dagger with oils.
“This is only a ritual focus,” he said when he noticed her expression. “It’s called an athame. I won’t use it on you.”
She forced her fidgeting hands to stillness in her lap. “Okay. So what do I do?”
“For now? Relax. But please let me know when moonrise is coming.”
“We still have at least a half an hour,” she said.
“Excellent.”
James continued to prepare the ritual space. She didn’t like seeing all of those bowls getting laid out and knowing that it had something to do with impending pain. It was like watching the dentist prepare the tools for a root canal.
Still, James was pretty interesting to watch. His movements were smooth and graceful, almost like every gesture was choreographed. He occasionally told Brianna to hand him something—a poultice, another book, a satchel—but mostly, his apprentice stayed out of the way.
Once he seemed to be done with her, Brianna pulled a giant roll of yarn and a half-knitted blanket out of the bag at her feet. “What do you think of the colors?” the young witch asked, lifting the blanket to show Rylie. It was pale blue striped with gold. “I was going for a moon look.”
It was just some stupid blanket, and Rylie was about to have witchcraft cast on her. What was she supposed to think about it?
&
nbsp; “Looks nice,” she said. The sound of her voice made the babies kick her in the pelvis. She grimaced and rubbed the underside of her stomach.
James stood back with his arms folded to look over the room. He must have seen something that Rylie didn’t because he fidgeted with the positioning of a few candles before giving a satisfied nod. “How much time until moonrise now?”
Rylie reached out to her pack. They felt scattered and unfocused on their surface, probably worried without their Alpha to help them. “About ten minutes.”
He did a few stretches, like he expected to exercise rather than cast a spell. He stretched his arms over his head, twisted his torso, and cracked his knuckles. Then he sat on the cushion in front of Rylie. The way he moved just didn’t match the gray hair at all.
“How old are you, anyway?” she asked.
“Old. But I was born in nineteen seventy.”
Rylie did the mental math, ticking decades off on her fingers. “So…forty two?”
“No, I’m much older than that,” James said. He left her puzzling over how that was possible while he dragged a lap desk covered in small bowls to his side. “Brianna, please bring down our zombie friends.”
His apprentice set her knitting aside and went upstairs.
“How will this work?” Rylie asked.
“You should behave as you would on any normal moon, and exert your power over the pack from afar. I’ll take care of everything else.” He took one of her hands and dotted anointing oil over her knuckles. “I’m sure I know the answer to this, but whose survival is more important to you, Gwyneth’s or Scott’s?”
She blinked. “My aunt. Gwyn.”
“Very well.”
“Five minutes,” she said, and he nodded.
Brianna returned a moment later with Gwyn and Scott. The scent of crumbling skin, soil, and something like damp leaves filled the cellar. It made Rylie’s nose itch. She sneezed twice.
“We’ll start with Scott,” James said, pointing at the third cushion. Scott sat, and Gwyn joined Brianna in the corner.
Rylie opened her mouth to protest, until she realized why James had asked who she cared about more. He must not have been very confident in the spell after all. Better to test it on the traitor, right? It didn’t exactly inspire confidence.
Energy built, sweeping down Rylie’s flesh, and it wasn’t magic. It was moonrise.
“It’s starting,” she said, reaching out to her pack again. She found Abel without having to try very hard. He was just outside the doors to the cellar, probably trying to listen in on the ritual.
James closed the circle of power with a line of salt. “Give me your hand again.”
Rylie hesitated an instant before resting her fingers in his. He was wearing gloves even though it was comfortably warm in the cellar. Had she ever seen him without the gloves on?
With his free hand, James touched Scott’s shoulder, but his focus remained on Rylie. The moon poured through her, and Rylie reached for her shifting pack so that she could ease the transformation. It was a lot harder at a distance, and required a lot more focus, but felt good—familiar. It soothed her nerves to be embraced by that energy.
But only for an instant.
“Deep breaths,” James said.
The moon’s energy shifted inside of her.
Her heart stopped beating. Rylie sucked in a gasp.
It felt like a metal spike had been driven into her heart, and somehow, it forced all of the power of the moon and the wolves away from her pack. It directed the energy down her arm and into James’s body. His pale irises brightened, reflecting the glow of the moon.
Rylie gritted her teeth as the intensity increased, pouring through her crown and ripping out her breast. Her wolf rocked against the inside of her ribs. She tried to pull her hands free, but she wasn’t strong enough.
She was nothing but a conduit, and it hurt.
None of the wolves were changing. James had taken all of the power of the beast and shoved it into the nearest zombie.
Scott fell back with a cry, gripping his chest. His back arched. His feet kicked helplessly against the circle. And still James didn’t let go of his hand, or Rylie’s. The power grew and grew, and Rylie felt like she was going to shake apart from the inside.
The pack waited outside, worried and confused and human. Rylie was barely aware of them anymore. All she knew was the pain.
Scott suddenly went limp.
“Damn,” Gwyn said.
But the moon’s energy wasn’t done flowing through the circle of power. James turned his gaze to the dead man.
As Rylie watched, color returned to Scott’s flesh, filling his cheeks with a pink glow. A line of blood trickled from the forehead wound, and the edges began knitting together to seal the hole in his skull. His eye sockets became fuller. His skin plumped.
With her sensitive hearing, Rylie heard a thump—the beating of a tired, dusty heart that hadn’t moved in a long time. It was followed by a second beat, and a third, before it found rhythm.
Within minutes, the forehead wound was gone, and his chest was rising and falling with breaths that his lungs hadn’t drawn in weeks.
Scott’s eyes opened, and he sat up.
James released Rylie’s hand, and the energy vanished instantly. It was all she could do to stay on her cushion when she wanted to fall over and sleep for a few days.
The older witch blinked and looked around the room in the confusion, as if he had been asleep for a long time. “What’s going on?” Scott asked. “Where’s Stephanie?”
James peered closely at his face. “She’s in town with Seth to watch Tate’s tour arrive and make sure they don’t get into trouble. How do you feel?”
“I feel…human.” He felt his smooth forehead, his cheeks, his chest. Everything looked to be intact. “I’m alive. And—and I can feel magic again!”
“Which you won’t be using anytime soon,” James said sharply.
Scott was too happy to care about the anger. He got to his feet and ran his hands over his arms, like he couldn’t stop touching his new, soft flesh. “It’s just like I was before…” He trailed off and shot a look at Gwyn.
The pain of having the moon’s energy forced the wrong way through Rylie was over, but the moon was still high in the sky, and the wolves should have been changing on the surface. Rylie clenched her hands into fists. “Can we finish this?” she asked tightly.
Gwyn stepped toward the circle.
But there was something wrong outside the cellar. Rylie could feel her pack running, even though they were still human. Abel was leading them away. The only one that remained was Brody, just outside her door.
Why?
She rose from the cushion unsteadily. “What are you doing?” James asked.
“Something’s wrong,” Rylie said, stepping over the edge of the circle and mounting the stairs.
Muffled gunshots rang out through the door.
“The Union,” Scott said.
The cellar door flung open. Brody stood on the other side wearing a pair of tattered jeans and a grim expression. “We’ve got black SUVs heading this way.”
“But we’re not done yet,” Rylie protested. He grabbed her arm.
“Sorry, ma’am.”
Brody hauled her out of the cellar. The night was cool and wet with the warm promise of impending summer, and Rylie could smell gunpowder on the wind. But she couldn’t see the pack anywhere—even as humans, they could run at ridiculous speeds.
Spotlights rolled over the hills, mounted on top of black SUVs. Two of them headed east, probably chasing the pack. They were the ones shooting.
But the three other vehicles were heading straight for Rylie.
The windows beside her exploded, and gunshots echoed belatedly through the night. The Union had opened fire. Glass showered over them as Brody shielded her with his body. “Run!” he shouted, pushing her ahead of him.
“But Gwyn—”
“Run!”
Brody
spun to face the SUV bearing down on them. He got into a half-crouch with his feet braced and hands extended.
The vehicle struck.
The back wheels of the SUV lifted at the impact, the hood crumpled, and Brody roared as the bumper bent under his hands. The force of it made him slide a few inches through the mud, but he kept his footing.
On top of the SUV, the spotlights swung wildly. For an instant, a face on the other side of the windshield was illuminated. He had a broad jaw, cocoa skin, dark eyes, and coarse yellow hair.
Cain. He had come for her.
He leaned out the driver’s side window and aimed a handgun at Brody, but she didn’t wait to see what happened. Her bodyguard had just grabbed a car like it was nothing. She doubted he was in serious danger of getting shot.
Rylie broke into a run, sprinting as quickly as she could with a thirty pound stomach. There were gunshots behind her.
An engine roared. One of the other SUVs was chasing.
She leaped over a pile of rocks and rushed toward the pond. Water fed into it from a narrow creek that was squeezed between hills, where the massive Union vehicles would never fit. She could escape through the valley.
But Rylie didn’t make it that far. Her foot caught on a branch, and she slid to her knees.
The SUV bore down on her. She flung a hand up to shield her eyes from the blinding headlights—
Which turned away at the last moment.
Something heavy impacted metal, and the vehicle rolled. One of her wolves had launched himself into the side of the SUV like a lion taking down a gazelle.
Not just any wolf. Abel.
He rode the door of the SUV until it flipped onto its side, and then he punched an arm through the glass and grabbed the driver by the throat. More gunfire, and holes appeared in the door as an acrid tang filled the air.
“Abel!” she cried, scrambling to her feet. She had to help him.
But a hand seized her arm.
She spun with her teeth bared, but it was only James, looking muddy and annoyed. “Keep going. Abel can take care of that on his own.”
