Wrong Side of Dead

by Kelly Meding

  That Thackery had one in his employ until I killed the kid during the destruction of Boot Camp … Well, it had the Assembly on the alert for signs of others popping up. So far, none had. But that didn’t mean Wolf Boy was the only one Thackery knew about. Thackery never showed all his cards at once.

  Wolf Boy, the hounds, the hybrids, his never-ending experiments—all served to remind me that Thackery was little more than a sociopath. And that he terrified me on the most basic of levels.

  I squared my shoulders, more for me than Wyatt, because he couldn’t really see it anyway. “I’m not disregarding the theory. Hiding from something until it goes away isn’t my style, Wyatt.”

  “I know that. Just making sure you didn’t forget.”

  The temptation to knuckle him in the arm was almost too strong to resist. Childish, maybe, but dammit, he still knew how to bring that out in me. He knew my buttons better than anyone. “So Thackery knows how to make Halfies less crazy, and he’s now recruiting an army of them to do what?”

  “The last six years of his life have been dedicated to curing vampirism in humans. He thought your blood would help.”

  “Yeah, I was there, thanks,” I deadpanned.

  He slowed for a left turn. “But it didn’t, is my point. What if Thackery got to a place where he decided if you can’t beat them, join them?”

  “Fight fire with fire?”

  “Whichever metaphor you want, yes. He could theoretically use those Halfies to attack the vampires. Look at how those Halfies fought for Tovin at Olsmill. They almost match full-Blood vampires in strength and speed. Their biggest flaw was being mostly bat shit insane.”

  “Which Thackery has taken care of.”

  “Exactly.”

  I dropped my face into the palms of my hands, mind racing. This was bad on so many levels. Granted, it was all fucking theory, but it was a damned good theory. All of the pieces fit, and it did make an awful kind of sense.

  Wyatt’s hand slid up my arm to squeeze my shoulder. “We’re almost there.”

  I sat up. Familiar row homes and middle-class apartment buildings lined the rolling streets of this small slice of city halfway between the bustle of downtown and the desperate poverty of Mercy’s Lot. Wyatt parked near a familiar telephone booth, within view of my destination.

  “Hang here while I go look,” I said.

  He nodded, surprising me with his lack of protest at my wanting to go alone. “I’ll call Astrid and let her in on our new theory.”

  “Okay.”

  I grabbed a spare pair of sweatpants from the backseat and climbed out. I walked up the inclined sidewalk toward an empty lot half a block long and nearly as deep. The last time I was here, the blackened rubble of a major apartment building fire still lay scattered in heaps and piles. In the intervening months, someone had cleared the lot of debris, leaving behind a cement foundation and an asphalt parking lot. All other evidence of the Sunset Terrace Apartments was gone, bulldozed away. Forgotten.

  But not by everyone.

  A familiar figure was sitting cross-legged a few dozen yards away, back to me, easy to spot even in the gloom of faraway streetlights. I approached slowly, taking noisy steps, allowing the gentle breeze to carry my scent to him. Phin turned his head when I closed in to less than ten feet, then looked away. It wasn’t an invitation. It also wasn’t a “get the hell away from me,” so I took it as permission to come closer.

  I sat next to him on the warm concrete, noting the knife-shaped object in his lap.

  “Rufus called you,” Phineas said.

  “Yes.”

  “He’s concerned.”

  “We all are, Phin. You left without telling anyone where you were going, and right now, we can’t afford to let you out of our sight.”

  “Lest we lose the last of the Coni?”

  “We haven’t lost the others yet. They’re just misplaced.”

  The corner of his mouth quirked. He looked at me full-on, and the simmering hatred in his blue eyes startled me. “Three stories up from this spot is where Jolene and I lived. After she died, I left Sunset Terrace and moved east, closer to the river. Remaining with the Clan only reminded me of the pain. I survived the massacre because I had turned my back on my people.”

  “If you’d been here, you’d have died, too, Phineas. And who would have protected Aurora and Joseph when they needed you?”

  His nostrils flared. He looked away, over the landscape of cement.

  “What is this?” I asked. “I’ve never seen you play the self-pity card.”

  “I prefer to think of it as self-reflection.” He lifted the object in his lap—a knife. Fourteen inches from hilt to tip, it gleamed a reflective gold. The blade curved to both sides, divided like a trident missing its center prong. Intricate patterns and swirls decorated the base of the blade where both halves came together, and the handle appeared to be some sort of smooth bone carved with similar patterns.

  It looked deadly.

  “I told you once that the Coni were a warrior race,” he said. “Centuries ago, we left behind our savage ways and embraced peace. We chose a life among humans rather than as mythical beings apart from others. We were one of the first Clans to integrate. One of the first to propose what is now the Assembly.”

  “Do you think the Fey are punishing you for that?” I asked.

  “They punished us for being powerful, and because it played well with their other plans. Two hundred and twelve of us were Coni, Evy. We were a force to reckon with, even against the Fey’s magic. To anger all of the bi-shifting Clans at once? The Fey would stand no chance in a direct battle.” He snorted. “As if they would dirty themselves to fight their own battles.”

  He had a point. I’d never seen a sprite outside First Break without the use of a human avatar. A few faeries, yes, but they were less powerful than their fellow Fey. Demanding that the Triads destroy the Coni and Stri Clans could have ended with humans and Therians at each others’ metaphorical throats, on the edge of open war. It hadn’t (by some miracle), which threw a lovely monkey wrench into the sprites’ plans. Left them scrambling and improvising, which they don’t do well.

  “What’s the knife for, Phin?” I asked.

  “Until about five centuries ago, our elite guard carried them as symbols of their status. Only a few survived, and one has been passed through my line. The others were destroyed during the fire.”

  I studied the gold knife and its twin blades—one for each branch of the Clan. Coni and Stri, separate and together. Its age surprised me.

  “For me, this is no longer about the Watchtower or the city’s best interests,” Phin said, his voice cold. “It’s about my Clan. I will do whatever it takes to find them and bring them home.”

  “I know you will. So will I.”

  “Walter Thackery will die by this blade.”

  As much as I wanted to argue and lay claim to killing Thackery, I didn’t. Phin hadn’t said who would wield that blade, after all, which left all sorts of things open for interpretation. “We have to find him first,” I said.

  “Something tells me we won’t have to wait long.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  “Yes.” He turned his head slightly, giving me three-quarters of his profile. “Don’t react, but we are being watched.”

  I tensed. “Wyatt’s in the car.”

  “The opposite direction, about two o’clock.”

  Damn him and his Therian eyesight. All I made out in the shadows between two faraway streetlights was a dark blob. “What is it?”

  “A wolf.”

  Terrific.

  Chapter Nine

  5:35 A.M.

  I tried swallowing, only my mouth had gone dry. “Just one?”

  “So far,” Phin replied. “He’s upwind and making no effort to disguise his presence. Larger than your average wolf.” His nostrils flared. “I know that scent.”

  “Wolf Boy?”

  “Yes.”

  “Shit.” I still couldn’t make
it out, and really, really hoped that Wyatt stayed put inside the Jeep. Werewolves moved damned fast; it could cross the distance between us in seconds. I had a pair of knives strapped one to each ankle and a switchblade in my rear pocket. I’d also been up close and personal with a werewolf, and I remembered its thick, sturdy muscles. Killing one with a single knife hadn’t been easy.

  “I’m going to stand up. Stay put.”

  “Okay.”

  He handed me his knife, then drew up slowly. I kept my eyes far away from his naked ass as he did so, then held up the sweats when he asked for them. He got them on without incident or warning, which I took as a good sign. Maybe the new wolf was just there to spy on us.

  “Slowly now,” Phin whispered, extending his hand. I took it.

  We both heard the low growl—from the opposite direction.

  “It’s at your seven o’clock,” he said.

  The Jeep. I looked. I couldn’t fucking help it. The Jeep was barely visible, a good thirty yards away, and in between the circles of light. Smack in the middle of the light nearest the Jeep was the second werewolf, its gray coat glistening, hackles raised, attention fixed—on a Jeep with zero protection in the form of a roof or windows. Wyatt sat perfectly still behind the wheel, though I had no doubt he was preparing to summon some sort of weapon.

  “Can you teleport over there?” Phin asked.

  “Yes.” Easily.

  “Weapons?”

  “Got ’em.”

  I was standing now. A third growl, distinctly different from the first two, echoed behind us. Three of them, and they had us surrounded. Fan-fucking-tastic.

  “Can you teleport to safety?”

  “Not the way they’re spread out,” I said. No matter which way I went, I’d be too close to one of the wolves.

  “I can fly you out.”

  “Then they’ll just attack Wyatt.”

  The first wolf stepped into a pool of light. Its black-and-white pelt gleamed and its eyes seemed to wink. It came a few steps forward, head low, no longer showing teeth. I calculated how quickly I could pull out the switchblade. As the wolf drew closer, Phin’s wings appeared. He kept them tucked close to his back, prepared without showing outward aggression.

  The other two wolves hadn’t moved; Wyatt remained still.

  At less than ten feet away, the black-and-white wolf shifted. The familiar, faint tingle of Break power crawled over my skin. I passed the fancy Coni blade back to Phin, who held it loosely by his thigh. Any direct threat from us would get someone killed quickly.

  A teenage boy continued walking toward us, a mirror image of Wolf Boy—same narrow build, blond hair, and flashing silver eyes, right down to the straight point of his nose. Hatred hung around him like a bad smell, almost a physical presence. He stopped an arm’s length from Phin. He had no weapons in his hands and was completely naked—but I had no doubt he was the most dangerous person in our threesome.

  The two males sized each other up, observing and assessing in such a blatantly alpha, testosterone-coated manner that I wanted to crack their heads together. I couldn’t check on the other two wolves without taking my attention away from the boy in front of us, and I desperately wanted to make sure that Wyatt was okay.

  “Coni.” The boy’s maturing voice cracked despite his attempt to appear menacing, and he spoke as if those four letters tasted foul in his mouth.

  “Lupa,” Phin replied, his voice just as frigid.

  “Surprised to see us alive?”

  “I was surprised last month when the first Lupa showed his ugly face, but like most vermin, where there’s one—”

  The teen growled deep in his chest—a God-awful sound from someone who looked so young. So human. “Your ancestors failed to destroy us centuries ago, and their failure will be your undoing.”

  I laughed out loud; I couldn’t help it. The spy-movie villain dialogue was just too much. The slip earned me a nasty snarl from Teen Wolf, as well as a flash of elongated canine teeth.

  “You,” he said. “You killed our brother. You will bleed for that.”

  “I’ve bled enough for both my lifetimes, thanks.” Okay, so sassing him was probably not the best use of my time, but the entire thing felt ridiculous. Until a few weeks ago, werewolves didn’t exist, and here I was having a big, bad showdown with one who looked like the Before side of an acne cream commercial.

  Then the rest of what he’d said caught up to me. Your ancestors failed to destroy us. The Coni had been an elite guard. A warrior race. The Coni destroyed the Lupa Clan.

  “How did you survive?” Phin asked.

  Teen Wolf grinned, showing off those nasty teeth. “By the mercy of the Great People. We have been protected these centuries, prepared for a time when the Great People will retake this world and the Lupa can claim their place in it.”

  “The Great People?”

  “Yes.”

  My heart slammed against my ribs as one more awful puzzle piece clicked into place. A puzzle we’d started to put together mere hours after the massacre at Boot Camp last month. “He means the Fey,” I said.

  Phin gave no reaction to my statement. “How many of you are there?”

  The boy laughed. “You are truly arrogant to believe I’d reveal such a thing. It would ruin the grand surprise.”

  “Is Walter Thackery working directly for the Fey Council?” I asked.

  “Not to his knowledge.”

  It was an evasive answer, which led me to believe that Thackery didn’t know where his assistance was coming from. But whether or not he knew or cared mattered little to me. Thackery’s Halfie army had to be stopped, just as the potential legion of werewolves had to be found and contained before a real war broke out. A big, bloody war that would encompass the entire city.

  “Why are you here?” I asked. “To gloat before you kill us?”

  “Unfortunately, our orders are not to kill you,” Teen Wolf replied with real regret in his voice.

  “Let me guess, then. We have one chance to accept an offer to join you or else suffer the consequences?”

  “Hardly. We neither need nor want your partnership.”

  Huh. “What, then?”

  “I wanted to look you both in the eye before we met on the battlefield. I want you both to know the face of the man who will kill you.”

  “Oh yeah?” I made a show of looking around. “Is he here?”

  Teen Wolf snapped his teeth at me.

  Phin touched my elbow. “And when shall we meet on this battlefield?” he asked.

  “Soon enough,” Teen Wolf replied. “The world stands balanced on the edge of a razor blade. All it requires is one final push to change everything.”

  I flexed my right hand and shifted my stance—just enough to get his attention. “Why wait? Let’s throw down, kid.”

  He tensed, eyes glimmering with bloodlust. He was considering it, and if it wasn’t for some confounding loyalty to his master, he probably would have. Instead, he quirked a cocky eyebrow at me. “Soon. Enjoy your final days.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  Teen Wolf backed up several steps. He shifted quickly, brown and silver hair coating once-pink skin, back bending, arms and legs changing shape. Only his silver eyes seemed to stay the same—angry, intelligent, hungry. He snarled, and the wolf behind us made an answering sound. I hazarded a look; it was moving away.

  Instinct yelled at me to not let them escape. They were enemies, and enemies had to be dealt with before they became a problem later. And these three wolves (plus any others that they had hidden away) were sure to be a huge problem in the near future. Walter Thackery did not make idle threats, and if something was about to happen, I had to believe it would. Something huge.

  And werewolves existed. Holy shit.

  “When they’re out of sight—” I started, whispering.

  “I’ll follow them,” Phin finished.

  Teen Wolf was nearly to the far edge of the vacant lot. He paused and dipped his head low to the ground. Only the
n did I think to check on the third wolf—just in time to hear the shout.

  The third wolf leapt onto the hood of the Jeep and springboarded right over the windshield. I was already running when Wyatt yelled. A cold splash of panic overrode my ability to properly access my tether to the Break and teleport. All I saw was the furry back hunched in the front seat of the Jeep. Wyatt hadn’t made another sound and, more than anything else, that terrified me. I opened the switchblade as I ran.

  The wolf squealed and leapt out of the Jeep. It stumbled on the pavement, turned, and raced down the street in the same direction the other wolves had gone. I paused long enough to shift my hold on the switchblade, hoping to throw it, but the damned wolf was too fucking fast.

  “Wyatt!”

  At first, all I saw was the blood. It drenched the front seat, as well as Wyatt’s face and clothes. He was folded into the floor, moderately protected by the steering wheel, a red-coated knife still clutched in his hand. My nose told me that the majority of the blood in the Jeep wasn’t human—it was darker, had a heavy, earthy odor—but the rest of me took a bit longer to catch up.

  I yanked open the passenger door and climbed inside, hands shaking, adrenaline a bitter taste in my mouth. “Wyatt? Where are you hurt?”

  “Fucker got my neck and arm,” he replied. His gaze swept over me, checking for nonexistent injuries. “You okay?”

  “I’m fine. They didn’t attack us.”

  “Phineas?”

  I scanned the lot and nearby streets, but all was quiet. No sign of Phin or the wolves, no sounds of nearby brawls. “He followed the wolves,” I said, both pissed that he’d disappeared and grateful that he hadn’t let them get away without a tail (no pun intended).

  “What did they want?”

  I explained the conversation we’d had with Teen Wolf while I helped him unwedge himself from the floor. Three long gashes went from just below his right ear all the way to his collarbone, each nearly as wide as my pinkie, each oozing blood. The lack of gushing was a good sign that the wolf had missed his carotid artery. His left arm looked just as painful—a deep bite circled his forearm, and even below the mixed blood, the skin looked swollen and tender.