Wrong Side of Dead

by Kelly Meding

  Hot damn, I’d never heard her cuss before. The cold delivery of her mini-rant didn’t cow me, but it did make one thing perfectly clear—she wasn’t happy about the ordering of her priorities. Good. It meant she cared about more than just her Clans.

  “Understood,” I said.

  She blinked hard, as though surprised by my sudden acquiescence. “Good.”

  “I need permission to leave the Watchtower.”

  “Stone, we still don’t know—”

  “I know what we don’t know, Astrid.” I was toeing the line with her, but had the faintest outline of a plan forming in my head. I just couldn’t do anything about it stuck here. “We don’t know a hell of a lot, including what this disease will eventually do to the vampires here, or if Wyatt’s going to die from that werewolf bite. But Thackery does know, and I can at least get us a few more werewolves.”

  She gave me a dubious frown. “How?”

  “I need to know Phin’s current location, and I need two tranq guns with the strongest local anesthetic we have.”

  “For?”

  “I used to be a Hunter, right?” I smiled. “I’m going hunting.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  6:50 A.M.

  Ten minutes later, I met Baylor’s van in the parking lot of a discount grocery store in upper downtown. I climbed in, armed with my requested guns and a cell phone set to speed-dial Astrid. Baylor wore the same concerned, pinched expression I’d seen on everyone in the last few hours.

  “Squad’s in position,” he said in lieu of a greeting.

  “Good,” I said. “Phin?”

  “Construction site across the street, just like you said.”

  “What’s our lead time?”

  “Ten minutes, max.”

  Cool. I hated waiting. My plan was simple—bait and shoot. The wounded werewolf had died a few minutes ago from blood loss—which may or may not have been helped along, but I wasn’t going to question a good thing—so the body had been dumped at the construction site. Phin was watching downwind in osprey form, and the rest of Baylor’s team had taken surveillance positions nearby. As soon as the other werewolves tracked their dead buddy, I’d get a signal and teleport in with my tranq guns ready to blast the bastards. We’d have twenty, maybe thirty minutes to interrogate them before anyone tracking realized they hadn’t moved locations in a while.

  A very simple plan.

  With so many chances to go terribly wrong.

  Less than three minutes of tense silence passed before Baylor’s phone beeped. He checked the message. “They’re coming up the street, about a hundred yards to the north, human form.”

  Even better, if they were tracking as teenagers. “Okay, good, see you in a few.” I reached for the door handle.

  “Watch your back, Stone.”

  I winked, then bounded out of the van. The guns were tucked in the waist of my jeans, hidden by a loose T-shirt I’d changed into after a quick shower; no sense in coming to an ambush smelling like Halfie blood. The wound on my back had been rebandaged, and the itch-ache of it healing kept me company as I jogged across the street south of the construction site. It was still early, the city not fully awake. Cars zipped past, but the foot traffic was minimal—good for our purposes.

  A tall construction wall created a fairly solid barrier between the sidewalk and the stalled project inside. I’d hunted Halfies here a few times and knew the lay of the land pretty well. Financing on a hotel had fallen through nearly two years ago, and all work on the site stopped. It had yet to restart.

  I was near the empty and rusting trailer housing the site office. The frame of the hotel was in place, creating an iron maze with only the barest sense of structure. Tarps had been draped over large sections to protect equipment from the weather. Phin should have put the dead werewolf in the center of one of these tarps. The logic: open placement screamed bait, but covering him theoretically limited our ability to ambush the other werewolves from a distance. That’s where my teleporting ability would come into play.

  I could appear out of nowhere, far enough to prevent them from smelling me first, and shoot them before they could react to my presence. Theoretically. Everything hinged on my ability to not teleport into one of them or, worse, into an unexpected support beam.

  The fence had half a dozen different weak spots, and with the werewolves approaching from the north, they’d stumble across at least three of those before they got close to my position. So I waited. Waited for a very simple signal: Phin landing on the roof of Baylor’s van.

  I leaned casually against a telephone pole, pretending to bite my nails, glancing around as if waiting for someone, all the while facing the van. Minutes ticked by. My anxiety grew exponentially, sending a gaggle of butterflies loose in my guts. This had to work. I didn’t have another plan, couldn’t think of another way to learn if there was an antidote for wolf bites.

  A shadow drifted across the sidewalk, and then a bird that had no business living in a city perched gracefully on top of our van. I swallowed hard, mouth dry, and pulled my guns. Checked for potential witnesses and saw none.

  Here goes nothing.

  I tapped into the Break—a little easier each time I did it, with loneliness, my emotional trigger, so close to the surface at all times, despite living with more than a hundred and fifty other people—and the Break snap-crackled around me. Buzzed on my skin like static. It filled me, and I fell into it, focusing on my intended destination in the middle of the construction site. The Break pulled me apart, and the faintest ache poked me between the eyes.

  The journey was quick, and I pulled out precisely where I intended to land, materializing directly behind a pair of slim, pale-skinned bodies wearing cargo shorts too large for their frames. They were crouched over the body of their dead brother, growling low. I ignored my sharp headache, raised my hands, and fired. Red feathered darts hit both of them right between the shoulder blades. They stood and spun in perfect unison, snarling loudly, teeth bared.

  I scurried backward, giving them room to falter a few steps as the anesthetic took hold and froze their basic motor functions. Legs dragged, arms flopped, and both of them—Teen Wolf, and his companion, whom I dubbed Freckles because he had a lot of them—collapsed face-first into dirt.

  “Hot damn, it worked,” I said.

  Baylor’s squad was an eclectic bunch who regularly worked daytime detail, so they didn’t have a vampire assigned. Carly Hall had been one of Baylor’s Triad Hunters, and she looked a bit like I did once upon a time—short, thin, blonde, and a firecracker of fight hiding beneath a demure exterior. Not that I’d ever looked, acted, or pretended to be demure …

  The other human was Paul Ryan. I disliked him for personal reasons, but respected his ability to kill things efficiently now that he’d grown up a little. Baylor’s other members were Autumn, a female Vulpi/Kitsune who shifted into a Bengal fox, and Sandburg, a gray-eyed Musti who was the only Therian I’d ever met who shifted into a ferret.

  I saw it once, and he promptly bit Carly for cooing at him.

  Phineas rounded out the group, but he flew in only long enough to make sure things were progressing according to plan. His simple presence put the Lupa into a rage, so he volunteered to keep watch and promptly flew back out of the construction site. Once the two Lupa were put into seated, upright positions and chained to individual iron pylons, Baylor handed me a wooden box with a few special implements.

  “Is this the reckoning you were talking about earlier?” I asked Teen Wolf.

  He snarled, head tilted slightly to the side. The anesthetic had the awesome effect of numbing his extremities while allowing him to remain conscious, but it also made holding his head up difficult. Paul was on standby with two more rounds of the stuff. Therians heal quickly, and we didn’t want the numbness to wear off before we were through. Sometimes the knowledge of grave injury is a more effective weapon than the actual pain.

  I opened the box and removed a pair of wire cutters. The blades we
re sharp, fashioned from silver, and able to cut through solid objects up to two inches thick. I handed them to Carly, who circled around behind Teen Wolf. He tried to track her movements and failed.

  “Now,” I said as I crouched at eye level with Teen Wolf, “I could lie and tell you that I’ll let you live if you cooperate, but we both know I have orders from the Assembly to kill you.”

  His expression remained the same—cold fury.

  “The only thing I can offer you is a much faster death than your friend over there. Bleeding to death from a belly wound over the course of an hour is a nasty way to go, don’t you think?”

  “He was my brother,” Teen Wolf snarled, the words slightly garbled through his half-numb lips.

  “Sucks for you. Are you going to talk?”

  Silence was a good answer, given the question.

  “Okay, then,” I said.

  Teen Wolf frowned, then blinked rapidly. He certainly felt something, he just didn’t know what, with most of his nerves numbed by the anesthetic. But he’d find out in a moment.

  Carly stepped back around to his front and dropped something into the dirt by his feet. Teen Wolf stared at the blood-covered pink object until it dawned on him what it was. His eyes widened; his nostrils flared.

  “That was your index finger,” I said, careful to keep my tone even and commanding. “The next thing she cuts off is your thumb.” This sort of bargaining was something I hadn’t done in a long time, and the sight of a severed finger made my skin crawl. I just couldn’t show my distaste to the Lupa. Would not.

  Baylor stepped up behind me, muscled arms folded over his chest. “Why did your brother attack one of our humans tonight?” he asked.

  “Fuck off,” Teen Wolf said.

  I clucked my tongue. Carly slipped behind the pylon. Sweat broke out across Teen Wolf’s forehead. I heard the distinct snick-crunch of the shears doing their job, and my insides went a little wobbly. God, when had I lost the stomach for this? I used to revel in it.

  Moments later his thumb joined his index finger in the dirt.

  Freckles whined. Teen Wolf snarled at him.

  “Why did you attack us last night?” I asked, toeing his thumb with my shoe. Ugh.

  “To send a message,” Freckles said. It earned him a second, louder snarl from his buddy.

  I stood and turned, giving Freckles my full attention. He was the same age as Teen Wolf, similar coloring, with a sea of freckles on his face, chest, and arms. He looked as dangerous as the science nerd who trips over his own too-large sneakers. “Looks like we’re cutting pieces off the wrong wolf here,” I said. “You have something to say?”

  Freckles swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing. He was sweating, drooling, and might have even peed on himself. Not the bravest wolf in the pack, that was for sure.

  “I’ll kill you,” Teen Wolf said.

  “We’re dead no matter what,” Freckles snapped back. “They win this round, brother.”

  “Why did your brother attack?” I asked.

  “To send a message of fear. To remind humans what we can do to them.”

  “The infection, you mean?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why didn’t you bite me or Phineas?” Freckles frowned, puzzled. “The Coni.”

  “We were ordered to harm neither of you. The other human had no such protection.”

  “Ordered by who?”

  Teen Wolf snarled again, a warning if I ever heard one. It made me more desperate to hear the answer. Only Freckles hesitated.

  “Carly?” I said. “You wanna jog his memory?”

  She came around the support beam, bloody shears clutched in one hand. Unlike me, she seemed to be truly enjoying herself. I wanted to look at the others, see the faces of Paul, Autumn, and Sandburg, and judge their reaction to the gory scene playing out in front of them. Looking away, though, might display weakness to the Lupa, and I couldn’t risk it. I barely dominated the conversation as it was.

  “Our master,” Freckles replied meekly.

  I heaved a put-upon sigh. “Look, we can take you apart a little bit at a time, or you can just be fucking straight with me.”

  “Master Thackery.”

  I fully expected his answer, but it still stung a little. “Who else?”

  Freckles made a bizarre face—like he’d tried to shake his head and forgot he couldn’t move it. “I don’t understand.”

  “You started working for Thackery only recently—”

  “No, my entire life has been in his service.”

  Yikes. His young age put him at maybe three and a half years—for a Therian. Which meant it was likely the Lupa were given to Thackery as babies to be raised as his own personal rabid pack dogs.

  “Who put you into Thackery’s service?” Baylor asked.

  “I don’t know,” Freckles replied. Carly stepped behind his support beam. Freckles turned a terrible shade of red and yelped. “I don’t know, I swear! We weren’t told!”

  “How many more of you are in service to Thackery?”

  “Don’t tell them,” Teen Wolf said. “Don’t tell them anything else, you coward.”

  “I don’t want to die!” Fat tears rolled down Freckles’s cheeks, and I was torn between believing his fear and suspecting it was all an act.

  I squatted in front of him, elbows on knees, hands dangling loose in front of me. I tilted my head until he met my gaze, his silver eyes glimmering. “We all die at some point, kid. There’s no stopping it, not for any of us. The only thing you can do right now, in this moment, is change how you face death. You can opt for fast and painless, or”—I jacked my thumb at Teen Wolf—“piece by bloody, painful piece.”

  Freckles sobbed in earnest now, unable to wipe away tears or snot. His misery was palpable. He was just a boy, raised by a madman to do his bidding, facing an impossible choice—a boy with a vicious monster lurking deep inside of him.

  His monster manifests itself as a wolf. What’s your excuse, Evy?

  I mentally batted away the question. I could second-guess and self-analyze my own internal demons at a later date.

  “I don’t want to die,” Freckles whispered between choking sobs.

  “Tough shit,” Baylor said, taking over the role of the heavy. “How many fingers do you want attached when you do?”

  “Three.”

  “You—what?”

  “Three others,” Freckles said.

  “Bastard!” Teen Wolf lunged against his chains. Paul popped him with another tranq dart to keep him docile.

  Freckles whined at the sight of it.

  “Okay, now we’re getting somewhere,” I said. “Three others serve Thackery. How many Lupa are in or around the city?”

  “I don’t know,” Freckles said.

  I sighed. “Didn’t we go through this once?”

  “I don’t, I swear. We serve; we don’t ask questions.”

  “Two weeks ago, one of you was following me around the city. You found a human male recently infected by a half-Blood and took him to your Master.”

  “Yes.”

  “Who found him?”

  “Not us. Our brother Mark.”

  “Mark is one of the three still free?” I asked.

  “Yes,” Freckles said.

  “Why?”

  “Ask Mark.”

  Oh, I intended to, as soon as I found him. “Do you know anything else?”

  He looked at me with weepy eyes, a sad smile tugging the corners of his mouth. “I know I’m about to die.”

  “Did you know that your saliva can cause a serious infection in human beings?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you know if there’s a cure?”

  “No.”

  “No what?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Well dammit it all anyway. Not that I was surprised. It wasn’t information that Thackery was likely to share with teenage werewolves who lived to do his dirty work. “Okay, then, kiddo, here’s the million dollar question. Where is
Thackery?”

  His eyes went wide. “You’ll kill my other brothers.”

  I could have bullshitted him just to get the answer, but something kept me from doing that. “If we catch them, yes, we’ll kill them. You’re our enemies.”

  “No!”

  “No, you won’t tell us where Thackery is?”

  He clenched his jaw in a show of mock bravery. I didn’t even have to signal Carly. She disappeared behind the beam. Freckles’s eyes bulged and his left shoulder jerked. The easy movement was Paul’s signal to send a second tranq into the Lupa’s chest. Moments later, a finger landed in the dirt.

  Freckles choked. I barely managed to stay still while my insides shook.

  “Where’s Thackery?” Baylor asked.

  After the fourth finger, it became obvious that Freckles wasn’t going to budge on this one. I stepped away, curiously close to losing my … well, whatever I’d eaten last. Might have been lunch. We were running out of time. I gazed up at the morning sky, and a shadow swooped toward us.

  Phineas shifted midair, choosing to remain in his bi-shift form. He surveyed the captured wolves with cold disinterest, then held his hand out to Baylor. Baylor gave him the ancient, decorative knife I’d last seen in the empty lot. Phin clasped it in his hand, approached Freckles, and gazed down at him.

  “Lupa,” Phineas said, “you have been judged by the Therian people, and their sentence is death. What say you?”

  Freckles tried to look up. The heavy doses of anesthetic prevented it, and he managed a sideways tilt. Tears, drool, and sweat coated his cheeks and chin—the very picture of misery. I swallowed hard against the tide rising in my stomach and tried to not feel sorry for him.

  “Our master will avenge us,” he gasped.

  “Unlikely,” Phin said. “You and your brothers are his pawns, nothing more, and you are easily replaceable.”

  Freckles muttered something that might have been “fuck you.” In a swift movement that I almost missed, Phin drove the twin blades of his knife into Freckles’s chest and twisted. Blood gushed over the gleaming gold. Freckles slumped against his bonds. It was a fast death, and yet I still wanted to cry.