One side of her upper lip peeled away abruptly to reveal long, supernatural canines. “Did Tristan never tell you what he is?”
Horror-struck by her fearsome teeth, I stumbled backward. “My God!”
She cut off my retreat with superhuman speed, the green of her eyes almost fluorescent beneath the darkening sky. “What we are?”
I was catapulted straightaway to Dean’s library, my fingers skimming over yellowed pages; over one unbelievable word. Werewolf. My mind screamed what I wouldn’t dare say out loud. Werewolf. All of Tristan’s allusions and hints sprang to the fore, taunting me with what had always been right in front of me: the way he’d scared that bear off; his uncanny hearing; the rumors; him naked in the woods; that animalistic undercurrent that had always thrilled and intimidated me. Werewolf. “Impossible!”
She finally sealed her lips again. “Werewolves, Evan. That’s what we are; that’s what your boyfriend is. And the thing about werewolf venom is that if it doesn’t kill you, it claims you; it changes you.”
I’d been bitten by a werewolf?! My hand flew to my shoulder. I wanted to call her a liar, but deep down I knew she was dead serious. Even on some unfathomable primal level, my gut recognized the truth in her eyes. The awful truth flashed before me the way her fangs had just done. Undeniable and dreadful. “Does that mean…?” I couldn’t even finish the question I was that terrified.
“Yes,” she answered anyway, understanding my horror perfectly. “That’s exactly what it means.” To emphasize the point, her lip curled back again to reveal her pretercanine teeth. “You’re a werewolf too. But less than that—you’re a mongrel.”
28
Conclave
“Do you know what we do to mongrels?” Aidan’s eyes were a dark hunter green in the lengthening shadows.
I said nothing.
“We kill them.” There was no satisfaction in her expression. In fact, there was nothing there at all, just a clinical stare that chilled my blood. “We don’t suffer them to live.”
“I don’t believe in werewolves!” My own conviction, however, tasted false even to me. “You’re lying.”
She gave me an obliging shrug and shifted her gaze past my shoulder. “If it’s proof you’re after, I can certainly indulge you this once.” She was staring purposefully into the darkness behind me, daring me to turn around and see for myself what had transfixed her gaze.
I could feel the tension prickle and coil around me, feel the sudden blast of a cold gaze at my back—probing insidiously along my spine.
Aidan, however, seemed impervious to the strange hush in the forest. Something, or someone, had materialized behind me. I didn’t need her to say it out loud, I could feel it. A sharp imminence crackled along the air. With a choking scream lodged in my throat, I turned around to face the devil I knew was waiting behind me.
A stunning and debilitating fear held me rooted as I confronted the thing from my nightmare. It was impossibly large; larger than I remembered—tall and almost sapient but for the fur and canine physiognomy. Its coat was thick and black, its muzzle slightly ajar to reveal a hint of gleaming fangs. Wolflike but not. Simian but not. A Canis Lupus-Bigfootimus hybrid!
It made no move towards me, only watched with dual-colored eyes: an eerie glowing heterochromia. One orb radiated with silver and the other glowed a deep amber brown.
I processed it all through some mental rigor mortis. A primal immobility held me still. I was lucid enough to know it would only give chase if I ran.
“Look at his eyes.” Aidan’s voice cut through my terror.
The blood rushed instantly from my head as I recognized those strange eyes, so unlike the pale ghostly blue of the one that had attacked me. Its ears were longer and devoid of white grizzled tips. This was not the creature that had bitten me. “Augustus,” I whispered, fearful and still not quite convinced. But it was him.
The bipedal wolf gave an imperceptible nod of its head and raised its strange, humanoid eyes to its mistress. A question in its canny gaze.
“Do you want to see him shift back? Will that convince you?” Aidan asked behind me.
I gave a fervid shake of my head, stepping as far back as I dared without looking ready to bolt. I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to regain my lost equilibrium. This was too much all at once.
The rustle of leaves beneath heavy, retreating footfalls evoked a flinch; I was almost certain it might bite me yet. But nothing happened. When I opened my eyes the creature was gone, a swaying branch the only sign that it had ever been there at all. “Is that…?” I licked my lips. “Will I look like that?”
“No,” she said. “You’ll look a lot less majestic when you first change. A mongrel even less so than a pure-born.”
That thing was majestic?! I nearly burst into maniacal laughter. Nearly. Instead I felt the hot sting of tears threaten my splintered composure. “You said mongrels…aren’t suffered to live.” Trembling, I turned to face her again. “Are you going to kill me now?” Why hadn’t she just killed me already? Why the show of proof? Why waste her time on explanations? Why had any of this been done to me at all? I was good person. I recycled and everything. I never hurt anything except mosquitoes.
Heedless of my churning thoughts, her facade cracked only slightly as she heaved a weary sigh. “You somehow survived the venom.” She seemed frustrated by this. “I don’t know how—” But she stopped herself and narrowed her eyes at me as something monumental seemed to occur to her. “Tristan,” she snorted. “Of course. You’re mated, aren’t you?” This appeared to make sense only to her.
Was that werewolf for, Did you have sexual relations? “That’s none of your—”
“Werewolf venom needs to be injected straight into the bloodstream to take effect; near the heart.” She seemed to be talking to herself now, her eyes momentarily unfocused. “Your jugular vein was pierced, and the venom injected straight to your heart. Had you been bitten anywhere else you’d have died. If your neck had been snapped, you’d have died.”
“Tristan was never violent! He never—”
“This is just a theory,” she went on, disregarding my interruption again, “but by mating, right before he bit you, you’d have had trace venom in your blood. The wolf gift. A sort of temporary inoculation.” This appeared to satisfy her. “That’s why you survived.” I was subjected to another of her derisive looks, up and down, as though she couldn’t believe that I had survived at all.
Wolf gift? I liked the sound of that better than the term mating. He’d used a condom, though. But not in the shower. “So, indirectly, Tristan saved my life.”
Her lips compressed distastefully. “You wouldn’t have needed saving if he hadn’t tried to kill you in the first place.”
“No! Tristan would never hurt me,” I said with a steadfast lift of my chin.
“He lied about what he is. Maybe you don’t know him nearly as well as you think you do.”
“He didn’t bite me.” I gritted my teeth as a dawning and instantaneous clarity lifted the fog from my eyes. “But Nicole did.” I knew that now, the links in this fucked up series of events were starting to connect themselves. My brain had been reeling under the colossal weight of all that had happened and all the implications I was yet to understand. I was drinking from a firehose, but suddenly it was all clear. “Your sister bit me.”
“Tristan—”
“Tristan doesn’t have cold blue eyes! I recognized Augustus”—pointing to where her crazy-eyed henchman had disappeared moments ago—“and I now recognize your sister for what she is: a crazy, murderous bitch that nearly killed me!”
“We bite to kill. We disembowel our prey, little girl. If you were bitten, then you clearly weren’t intended for death. He slept with you first and then, before the venom could leave your blood, bit you exactly where he knew you’d have the best chance of survival.”
“You weren’t in the cabin. That monster tried to maul my head off!” I could still see those familiar crazy eyes whenever
I shut my own.
“Then why did Nicole bring you here? Why not finish you off and bury you in the woods for the maggots? She saved you by bringing you here to—”
“I don’t fucking know what goes on in that deranged head of hers. I don’t speak crazy.”
“Enough,” Aidan seethed. “Your clothes reek of Tristan even now. Moreover, in this pack, my sister’s word will always stand unalloyed against a mongrel’s.”
So much for justice. “Then ask Tristan. Ask Dean. They’re not Mongrels.” Or so Nicole had implied that day in the cabin. She’d made it sound like Tristan was an aristocrat or something—some or other werewolf royalty.
“This matter is now an Athabaskan one. Dean won’t interfere unless I invite him here.”
I snapped my jaws shut, cowed by her furious glare. Then, in a calmer tone, I said, “Believe whatever you want, but you don’t need to kill me if there’s reasonable doubt.”
“There’s every reason to kill you,” she countered. “You don’t even know yet what it means to be a mongrel. You’re an unknown danger. You’ll be unpredictable.” Her eyes flickered back to the woods behind me. When she spoke again, it wasn’t to me. “You took long enough.”
I whipped my head around to see Augustus loping towards us.
He winked at me as he zipped up his jeans. “Lippy here is a little naked-shy. Thought I’d better cover up first, didn’t wanna scare her.”
I snorted incredulously. What freaky twilight zone had I stumbled upon? So it was okay to scare me with a giant werewolf but spare my fragile sensibilities the sight of a penis? “I already saw you naked,” I reminded him, feeling my hackles rise.
“Well, it don’t count when all this length—” he grabbed his crotch suggestively “—is hidden behind all that fur.” He gave another wink. “Trust me, you’d have fainted for sure if you’d seen it.”
“Are you done?” Aidan checked her watch impatiently.
The smirk slid instantly from Augustus’ face, and my anger subsided behind the fear again. She had that kind of power over both of us. The irrefutable power of an alpha. She considered me narrowly. “You say Nicole bit you. Even if that’s true then you’re still my problem to deal with because the wolf that bit you belongs to my pack; and, therefore, I decide your fate. Not Dean. And certainly not Tristan.”
I took a shallow gulp of air. “What have you decided?”
“I’ll let the pack determine whether or not you live or die.” She then glanced back over my head at Augustus. “Let’s get this over with.”
“Wait!” I cried, edging away. There had to be a better way. Her tone and the way she’d glanced down at me had been extremely ominous. Dreadfully final. Maybe it wasn’t too late to run away. Without a second thought, I bolted.
One minute I was hell-bent for leather and the next thing I knew, Augustus, with his quicksilver reflexes, had grabbed a fistful of my shirt and yanked me back, restraining me, kicking and screaming, against his granite torso before I’d even worked up a good flight.
“The meeting will go one of two ways,” she went on to say to him, as though I hadn’t just tried to escape, speaking calmly over my vociferous struggles. “Whatever happens, you know what to do.” I noticed the silent, arcane message that passed between them.
I had just braced myself to bolt again, or bite, my fingers already stiffening into claws, but suddenly the fire was snuffed from my breast and my jaw slackened with fascination. I blinked in confusion, letting my captors’ words drift meaninglessly into one ear and out of the other. My gaze widened mesmerically. Even though dusk had fallen swiftly and the stars were already visible, my eyes were adapting strangely. Nightfall had obscured nature’s colors, like it always did, but for the first time ever, my eyes cut through the gloom with startling clarity. Everything was weirdly enhanced. The shadows were strangely iridescent. A whole other spectrum was unfurling around me. Air whooshed out from my lungs as I realized that I could see perfectly in the dark!
There was a muted sort of glow infusing every detail of the forest, a thermal pulse radiating even from the trees themselves, as though they were alive. Hundreds of varicolored life forces surrounded us from all the creatures I had now become aware of. Nightjars, toads, owls, foxes, and deer! Even the insects were emitting a visual scent.
The smells that greeted me were more piquant, richer, and the night sounds sharper. A rodent shuffled through the dead leaves on my right. A beetle gnawed through the damp wood of a moldering log nearby, and something with scales was burrowing beneath the soft earth beneath my feet. I could even hear the grinding of wheels along a distant dirt track, the low mechanical hum of pistons, the growl of a far-off motorcycle. But we were so deep in the woods that I instantly questioned what my ears were revealing. There was no one else out here but us three.
My own blood began to fill my ears as I gaped at my hands, noticing every pore and each fine crease around my knuckles, every follicle, as I held them up in front of me. Amazing! I’d been so caught up in my supernatural sensory wonderment that for a fateful instant I’d let these burgeoning gifts overshadow my dire predicament. And the two scary creatures beside me.
The gag that was suddenly shoved into my mouth quickly dispelled my awe. My hands were instantly yanked away from my mouth, where they’d flown to dislodge the obstruction, and then restrained behind my back. Then I was swiftly lifted up over Augustus’ shoulder, like a shrieking bag of garbage, and carried off towards the meeting hall for my supposed sentencing. Presumably towards my otherworldly jurors.
When we cleared the tree line I was immediately confronted with the source of the sounds I’d heard earlier—almost every available space around the meeting hall was occupied with trucks, motorcycles, and cars, and from within the building itself, I could hear the excited and variegated murmuring of voices.
I struggled like a panicked worm, my hair flying into my wet eyes. Finally, with an irritable grunt, he swung me down and for a brief moment, it seemed as though I’d won my freedom from him. But I was wrong. He took my shoulders in his large fists and gave me a shake until my teeth rattled. Aidan passed us by without a word, clearly unconcerned for my fury or safety. When she’d disappeared through the swinging doors, the voices becoming sharper for a moment until the doors closed again, I met his stormy bi-colored eyes with a terrified glare of my own.
“There’s no conceivable way you’d ever outrun me, girl. I’ll snatch you bald-headed, so don’t piss me off trying. Now, do you wanna be carried in there over my shoulder, hogtied, or do you wanna walk in with what little dignity you got left? Either way, you’re going in.” He waited till I’d given him a curt nod.
I’d bloody well walk in under my own steam.
“Good, our world ain’t for chickens. We eat chickens. So harden up and pay attention otherwise you ain’t gonna survive past your first change.” He was speaking so low that I strained my ears to listen, blinking mutinously.
As far as pep talks went, that was one of the worst I’d ever heard, but by now the fight had gone swiftly out of me, my limbs trembling. My shoulders slumped under the weight of my impending doom. “I’m not a chicken,” I tried to say, but my words came out muffled as I chewed on my gag.
He understood me though. “Maybe not, but you got yourself some henhouse ways.”
With a look and a gesture, I pleaded for him to untie me.
“Here’s something for nothing, Lippy—” he pulled at the knot he’d tied at my wrists “—we don’t respect the weak and you look like you wouldn’t bite a biscuit. So fix your face.” Then he straightened. “No more theatrics, got that? No one’s gonna have any patience with your screaming, bitching, or crying.”
I gave a stiff nod as I pulled the gag out with numb fingers.
“You ain’t got no say here. You’re just a mutt, as far as they’re concerned, and if you open your trap again, or get your tail up even once, you’ll be gagged quicker than a sneeze through a screen door, understand?”
&nbs
p; I nodded again, looking up at the imposing doors. My energies would be better served paying attention and figuring out how to escape.
“Glad we understand each other.” He gestured for me to precede him. “In you go, they’re waitin’ on you.”
I’d already guessed that much from the very conspicuous hush that had settled around us. Steeling myself, I went in.
29
Lupum Caedes
Execrating eyes stabbed at my flesh when I entered. I could feel the hostile pressure of them as I fixed a wide-eyed gaze at the scuffed wooden flooring, relying solely on what I noticed from my periphery. Even the silence was glaring and hollow as I followed the alpha and her lieutenant past the many nameless faces towards what appeared to be a dais of sorts. There stood Nicole, front and center, with preterlupine stillness, eyes cutting palpably across my downturned face. She moved aside for her sister and Augustus, but my shoulder was none too gently bumped by hers as I passed.
What pernicious whispers there had been abruptly ended as Aidan climbed the single step and turned to face them all, addressing her pack of stony-faced monsters with lethal coolness and formidable self-possession.
I shifted uncomfortably on my feet as she explained why she’d summoned them here; and the problem I now posed them. Despite what I’d seen so far, I was still of two minds about this impossible fantasy I’d become a part of, still half-convinced I’d soon wake up back home in Jupiter (the town, not the planet, although waking up on another planet seemed infinitely more plausible than the existence of werewolves in the universe) and realize, with exquisite relief, that my biggest problem was nothing more sinister than that I’d just spilled tea over Andy’s crotch again. But no, here I was in Red Devil surrounded by supernaturals and enclosed by smells and sounds that overwhelmed and suffocated me.
The musky and unfamiliar redolence of each stranger elicited an overwhelming urge to run. Each individual scent was unmistakably and subtly different from another. And there were many of them. They bombarded me. It was too much. Too intense all of a sudden, their cunning whispers like a thousand blades of grass raking my eardrums. It was by pure force of will that I stood frozen in place.
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