Rivals and Retribution

by Shannon Delany

  Alexi

  “Red again!” I shouted, hurling the beaker against the lab’s wall. It shattered, the formula splashing and leaving a bright stain on the otherwise unremarkable paint job.

  I was at an impasse. The cure was stubbornly turning red each time I dripped the catalyst into it. Red was not what we wanted. Red proved that some ingredient in the cure’s formula was in the wrong amount. Or some ingredient was simply the wrong ingredient altogether.…

  I reached for another beaker, but Hazel’s hand came down on my own, stopping me.

  She shook her head and removed my hand from the lab table’s surface. “How does this help us? Now someone needs to take time away from their research and experimentation to clean up your mess.”

  “Ironic, is it not?”

  “What is ironic?” she asked, the wrinkles around her eyes rearranging.

  “That you are complaining about cleaning up one of my messes when, in fact, we are both struggling to clean up your father’s mess. If he had never encouraged this line of research—if he had decided his laboratory would research something else for the good of Mother Russia…”

  “Then Wondermann would have developed the oboroten on his own and we would have no chance of undoing the damage he still would have seen done.”

  I snorted. “You make it sound as if it is destiny, the two of us working to fix werewolves in America.”

  “And what if it is? What if life and history combines in one frightening juggernaut barreling toward its own conclusion, with very few ways we might adjust or avoid its path?” she asked. “What if most things are fixed and perhaps foretold and we only have rare moments to shift the way destiny weaves together? What if this is such a moment?”

  I shook my head, a thousand ways to disagree with her musings sliding around in my brain. “I deny the existence of destiny,” I said, “but that does not mean I do not understand the stupidity of wasting our time. What determines our future is not some destiny written in the stars but rather our own sense of perseverance. Back to work.”

  Jessie

  Dad had joined the construction effort and brought Annabelle Lee, who insisted on reading aloud to us. Suggesting Anna save her voice and let his old boom box work some magic, Dad just grumbled when she responded that the only magic it might ever work was finding a clear radio station, and certainly not a good one, she added with a sniff. She had begun reading the third chapter of Little Women when I dropped the nail I’d been holding.

  It never hit the floor, coming back up to my eye level and resting in Gareth’s palm.

  “Thanks.”

  He shrugged and held it for me as I pulled the hammer back. “I want to help. The pups do, too.”

  Out of the corner of my eye I saw them standing by obediently, dressed in work clothes—most of what the pups had gotten so recently as a result of Dmitri’s association was starting to look more like work clothes, anyhow.

  Everything and everyone seemed to have lost their shine over the past few weeks.

  “The pups need to focus on their homework,” I pointed out as I hammered in the nail.

  I was greeted by a chorus of “Done,” “Done,” and “So very done.”

  “And is it all right?” I prodded, striking the nail one last time so it was flush with the wood.

  Gareth leaned in so I could see his face plainly. “I’ve checked all of it. I think they’re set.” Then, more softly, he said, “Let us help you, Jessie. We all want this to be taken care of.”

  I spun to face them, Annabelle Lee’s reading dropping away to silence. “We’ll gladly accept all the help we can get, but I don’t want anyone screwing up their grades because they’re spread too thin.”

  Dad coughed. “Pot calling the kettle black,” he announced.

  “I don’t have a choice,” I said.

  He shrugged and went back to work.

  Annabelle Lee continued her reading.

  “Can you tell them what to do?” I asked Gareth. “And then go and…”

  He nodded. “Keep an eye on trouble?”

  “Yeah,” I agreed, hating the fact we couldn’t trust Pietr and Marlaena in the same house. With Alexi back in the city working desperately long hours, Cat was stuck watching them now, but I knew Gareth was much-needed backup.

  That night, as Cat watched Marlaena and Pietr, I returned to the basement. Time was nearly up.

  Amy and Max soon found me, and not saying a word, picked up tools and began to help. Then Gareth and the pups tumbled out of their beds and joined in.

  And by the time the sun had come up, we had holding tanks for two rabid werewolves.

  * * *

  Luring a werewolf into a place you want to trap it, with decidedly few escape routes for you, is a stupid, stupid thing to do, I realized as I called Marlaena every dirty word I’d ever heard (and a few I took significant liberties with).

  Luring two werewolves into a place you intend to trap them with decidedly few escape routes for you is simply and utterly insane. But then, I had spent time in the local asylum, Pecan Place.

  And actually it was easier than I expected to make both Marlaena and Pietr angry enough to chase me into the basement. But getting them locked in and getting myself back out alive?

  That required Max.

  “Set and spike!” he shouted as he barreled into Marlaena, shoving her into the first cage. Well, not so much a cage as a panic room. But smaller. A panic cell? Max locked the door, pulling a heavy bar across it to keep her inside.

  A standard deadlock wasn’t going to do it. We had to go medieval on their asses.

  Pietr shifted his attention from me to his brother and this was one moment I was glad not to be the center of his attention.

  “Come now, brotherrr,” Max growled, putting his hands up. “Be reasonable about this. You have lost your ever-loving mind and we are trying to save you. So…”

  Pietr lunged at him, but Max dodged and wiggled his fingers as an obnoxious invitation to Pietr to try again.

  Outraged, Pietr did.

  And like the most amazing of bullfighters, Max stepped aside and let Pietr rush straight into his cell. The door slammed shut, the bar came down, and I ran straight into Max’s arms, thanking him again and again.

  And then crying like I needed to be locked up, too.

  His arm around me, Max led me up the stairs and shut the basement door, lowering a newly installed bar there, too.

  “I think you should go home tonight. Take Amy with you,” he said.

  She was already waiting in the foyer, a bag in her hand.

  I nodded and let them take me home.

  Alexi

  “I wanted to call you first,” I said to Jessie as Feldman and I boarded the train, all our belongings in an awkward combination of suitcases and duffel bags and one very precious briefcase. “We are coming home, Hazel and I.”

  There was a lengthy silence as she processed what my words truly meant. “You mean … you have it?”

  “Da.”

  “You have the cure?”

  “Da. Enough for everyone.”

  She screamed so loudly I moved the phone away from my ear. It was a moment before I dared to move it back.

  “You are happy now, da?” I teased.

  “I’ll be over the moon if you’re on your way here now,” she confessed.

  “Then ready your rocketship, Jessie Gillmansen, because we will be arriving at the station at two.”

  She shrieked again, and I hung up.

  “She seems pleased,” I said, setting the phone on my lap. But try as I might to remain cool, I grinned like an idiot at the thought of, after so many years on the opposite side, truly being a hero.

  * * *

  My next two calls were brief. “Wanda,” I said. “Listen to me. No matter what happens next, you must not go near the Wondermann Corporation. You must not join Interpol on the raid.”

  “Don’t you tell me what I can do, Alexi Rusakova…”

  “I am no
t telling you what you can do, I am merely making a friendly suggestion. Wondermann wants you dead. His best men will be watching for you.”

  “I’m already headed to the city,” she griped.

  “Excellent. It is not much farther from the Big Apple to the best of small-town America. And there are people here who I know are desperate to see you.”

  She grumbled a bit. “If I go…”

  “You will most certainly be targeted the moment you are identified. Make the smart choice. Come home to Junction.”

  “Crap,” she muttered, and I knew I had convinced her, so I concluded the call.

  “One more,” I said. I punched in Nadezhda’s number. “Naddie, we are out. I have everything I require. Take your men in, but be careful,” I said, disgusted at how soft my voice went.

  “And when I am finished, you will take me for a celebration drink?”

  “I am leaving the city now,” I said.

  “Oh. That is unfortunate. Well, I have a raid to organize.”

  And then she was gone.

  It was the longest train ride to Junction ever. And it was strangely longer back to the city after I deposited Feldman, our luggage, and specific instructions for administering the cure (perhaps too cruelly specific, I mused in retrospect) to Max.

  I arrived at Wondermann Corp. minutes before they led Mr. Wondermann out in handcuffs, Nadezhda holding him firmly by the arm. Never had a woman looked so absolutely alluring in jackboots and a flak jacket.

  Seeing me, she shoved him into someone else’s arms. “Load him into the car,” she said as she headed in my direction.

  “You nearly missed me,” she said.

  “I thought I had a little longer.”

  “I thought you were leaving the city.”

  “I did, but the train tracks run both directions.”

  “Amazing, is it not?” She holstered her gun and reached into her pocket. “I guess I arranged this for nothing, then.…” She held out a slip of paper with a series of numbers and letters scrawled across it.

  “A confirmation number?”

  “Yes. I have arranged for a much-needed vacation and I am supposed to pick up my ticket in an hour.”

  My heart dropped. Nadezhda would be winging away from me too soon again. “To where?”

  “Some small town in the back end of the American nowhere. They call the place Junction.”

  “Pravda? It so happens I am also returning to Junction this evening. And, if you are quick gathering your things, we might still have time to catch that drink you requested.”

  Jessie

  Feldman carried the briefcase and opened it once every bit of luggage and everyone was inside the Queen Anne.

  “Alexi was very specific about where the needle needs to go in,” Max explained, handing syringes to Cat and Gareth. “The cure will fix the life-span issue and break the imprinting code, but it will still allow transformation.”

  “Best of both worlds,” Gareth whispered. “And where must we administer the shot?”

  “If you guard the door, I will demonstrate,” Max said, opening the basement door.

  Downstairs, the cells fairly shook with the angry beasts contained inside. Gareth set down his needle and followed Max down the steps.

  “Ready?” Max asked.

  Gareth nodded, lifted the bar on Pietr’s cell, and yanked open the door.

  Alexi

  “So I told him precisely where he should stick it.”

  “Wait, wait,” Nadezhda said, laughing over a pretty drink with an umbrella in it. Our train was due to arrive in fifteen minutes, but right then and there, with her, time meant little. “You told Max the cure had to be stuck in a certain part of their anatomy in order to work?” She blinked back tears. “Oh, Sasha…”

  “What?” I shrugged. “For years they have been a pain in my ass. Why not briefly be a pain in theirs?”

  Jessie

  Max fell on Pietr like the shot he held was a harpoon, not a syringe, and he hit the plunger the moment the needle met the flesh of his backside. Pietr howled and thrashed, his teeth long and wicked, his only thought to rend and rip and destroy, and then he collapsed.

  He twitched and coughed, and Max rolled off him, satisfied with his success and crouching a little distance away, his eyes intent.

  “It has to be a shot to the ass,” Max said.

  “Looks like it feels like a kick to it, too…,” Gareth added.

  The wild red bled out of Pietr’s eyes, and his teeth returned to their normal length and pointiness, and between fierce shudders, he seemed to catch his breath. He rolled into a seated position and rubbed his head, jamming the heels of his hands into his eye sockets like he was trying to clear them of memories as much as clear his vision. “What did I do?” he whispered.

  He raised his head, his eyes meeting mine. “Oh, god, Jess … what did I do to us? To you?”

  He was my Pietr again—beautiful, headstrong, guilt-ridden, and melodramatic. And I still loved him.

  I cleared my throat and stepped into the small, dark room. “You were a complete and utter ass to me,” I said boldly. “You redefined dick.”

  “I know,” he whispered, getting to his feet.

  “Pants,” I said, reaching out to provide a new pair.

  “And you’re going to make up every bit of it to me,” I added as he slipped into his jeans. “For as long as it takes.”

  He straightened and nodded at me, his face strained and solemn. And he said the only two words I needed to hear from him, the two words that set Pietr Rusakova apart from any other teenage guy in Junction, werewolf or not. “I promise.”

  Marlaena

  Something inside of me had died, my heart no longer beat as fast or as strong, and I rolled onto my side, emptying my guts on the floor, a deep sorrow settling in my bones. I had lost something precious, I knew it. My memories of the last two days were a blur. I remembered the gunfight in the forest, the taste of Pietr’s lips …

  I was going to be sick again.

  I reached out to the only one who mattered to me. “Gareth,” I whispered.

  Jessie

  Gareth slowly helped Marlaena to her feet, wrapping an arm around her waist to steady her.

  She wiped at her face, and he held out a washcloth for her. I wondered if she had any idea how often he had stood at the top of the basement steps, listening to the beasts rage below and waiting for a time he could soothe and care for her again.

  “Come,” Gareth said so softly the word nearly escaped my simple human ears. “‘Come live with me and be my love, / And we shall all the pleasures prove,’” he cooed, holding the syringe out before him like it was not a needle but a single red rose he was presenting to her.

  Everyone else had taken the cure. Every eligible Rusakova and every member of the pack.

  Except Marlaena, who preached “the Wolf is the Way.”

  Her gaze flitted from the syringe to his gentle eyes and back. Again and again. Her lower lip quivered. “I can’t…” She shook her head, red hair flying around her face.

  “Come,” he pleaded. “Grow old with me.”

  “Nooo.” The word came out like a whine. “I never … I never imagined…”

  “Imagine it now,” he soothed, reaching out with his left hand to smooth a strand of her hair back and lovingly tuck it behind her ear.

  She was trembling.

  “You and me, sitting on some big, beautiful porch down south. Cracking jokes and sipping tea. Hand in hand,” he promised. “Imagine seeing our pups have pups. They’d be ferociously beautiful.…”

  “Your smile,” she agreed, her finger reaching out to touch his lips so tentatively it made my heart hurt.

  “Your eyes,” he conceded solemnly. “Our spirit.” He took a step closer, and she stepped into his arms. “You can see it, can’t you? You and me—together forever.”

  “For as long as our forever is,” she said in a way that made me think she’d often said the phrase.

&nbs
p; “Yes. For as long as our forever is. So you’ll still love me as an old man?” He chuckled.

  But the air between them chilled, and she blinked at him as if coming out from under a magician’s spell.

  “Will you still love me as an old man?” he asked again, this time his voice low, dark with doubt.

  “We’ll never know,” she croaked, looking away.

  “What? Marlaena…” He reached for her cheek, but she dodged back, holding the recovered syringe in her hand like some prize from battle.

  “We’ll never know if I could love you as an old man,” she said levelly. “Because by the time you are that old man, I’ll be long in the ground.”

  “Don’t say that,” he begged. “Just imagine it with me.…”

  “No. I never could imagine growing old before, and now…” She tilted her head and looked at him so sadly. A tear flashed down her face and was gone—wiped away by her own angry hand. “Some things are too hard—too cruel to imagine, Gareth. You … with gray in your hair and wrinkles around your eyes, your skin ashy, your movements slow and clumsy…” She blanched and shook her head again. “I cannot. No,” she corrected herself. “I will not.”

  “Please.”

  “Our forever just won’t be as long,” she consoled him. “We can still have this … but this is how we’re meant to be. This is how we were designed.”

  “By a man’s hand,” he clarified. “Not some god’s. He was a man. A treacherous, self-serving man. We can fix his error. Now. Use the syringe.”

  “No. Treacherous. Yes. Self-serving. Yes. But he was our creator, and what better defines a god than that? I will not go against my creator’s design.”

  “Damn it!” he roared. “I didn’t want to have to—” He lunged at her, grabbed her, and knocked her to the ground, retrieving the syringe.

  She struggled beneath him and I stepped forward, but Pietr’s hand gripped my arm and he tugged me back.

  “I want a long life with you,” Gareth growled. “As difficult and thickheaded as you can be, I want you to live.…”

  She thrashed beneath him, more wildcat than wolf. “I won’t have it—I can’t!” she shrieked.