by Kelly Meding
"Okay." Pissed was an emotion I could deal with—and it was a very human pissed because his eyes retained only the thinnest ring of silver around the black.
"And as angry as I am, I do understand, and I'm so grateful that I didn't lose you for good. But I need a little time to get through the anger."
"I get it, believe me." I turned my hand palm up, and he pressed his hand into mine. The warmth of his touch traveled straight to my heart, and a hot tear slipped down my cheek. "I thought I'd totally fucked this up and you were done with me."
"Never." He yanked me into his lap, and I fell against his chest, grateful for the contact. To hear the solid thump of his heartbeat. To smell his skin and know he was still mine. "You're stuck with me, Evy Stone."
"Good, because you're stuck with me too."
We sat together for a while, existing without talking. I realized that the boys had made themselves scarce now that Wyatt's temper was down below critical levels. It had been interesting how his emotions had so intensely influenced theirs—probably a Lupa thing, since I'd never seen the same rage-share among the other Clans.
"So did you actually stab Elder Dane?" Wyatt asked.
The left field question made me snort laughter. "Yes. Not deeply though, and he took it like a trooper. Dane's a tough old bird."
"Cat."
"Whatever."
"And this Demetrius, he actually cut you open?" A dangerous growl inflected that question.
I tightened my hold on his waist. "Yes, exactly where and how I told him to. Hurt like fuck, but it's healing, and I'm fine. You don't get to hurt him back, hero."
He made a noise that might have been a raspberry. "Spoil sport."
My cell phone rang, which scared the crap out of me since I didn't know the ring tone right away. "It's Gina," I said to Wyatt before answering. "Dead girl walking."
Kismet groaned. "Really?"
"You can forgive a bad pun because I have good news. I'm with Wyatt."
"Thank Christ. How is he?"
"Moody but intact." That got me a poke in the ribs. "What's happening on your end?"
"Therians are pissed, humans are confused, and the only thing we can agree on is that Vale is an asshole who needs to be found immediately so the Assembly can deliver some much deserved justice."
"Sounds about right. How are the Frosts?"
"They're really confused and demanding to see you. I keep telling Astrid to put off telling them you're dead, but I don't know how much longer she can."
"Maybe it's better if they think I'm dead." My heart hurt to even suggest it, and I hadn't realized until that moment that I kind of wanted a chance to get to know them. To talk to Chalice's parents at length and see what they were like. Maybe it was selfish though. Their daughter was dead, and they needed to grieve for her.
Right?
"It's more complicated than that, Evy. They saw Vale shift."
Crap. "How was that explained?"
"It wasn't. Dr. Vansis is calling it a post-traumatic stress-induced hallucination, but I don't think Mr. Frost is buying it. We're going to have to tell them something, and soon."
"Yeah. I know." I needed another complication like I needed another death in my repertoire. "Listen, how's Milo?"
"Healing but still on a lot of drugs. We haven't told him about your latest death. Marcus doesn't think we should until he's stronger."
"If we're lucky, he doesn't have to know until I'm alive again."
"How's that?"
I explained Elder Dane's wishes for the Assembly vote and my need to stay under the radar.
"Well, if you want a shot at Vale, he's contacted us," Kismet said.
"What? When?"
"A few minutes ago. It's why I called. He wants to ransom back the scroll and the cure. I doubt he knows what the cure is, just that you wanted it. He asked for half a million dollars, cash."
"Are you serious?"
"Perfectly."
"Where does he think we're going to come up with that kind of money?"
"He doesn't care. He gave us twenty-four hours."
"The vampire Families might pay it."
"For a gnome cure that we can't guarantee will work?"
"Yes. Gina, go to Alucard Communications and ask to speak to a man named Eulan. He's engaged to Isleen and he wants to save her. He'll hear you out."
"All right, I'll do it. And I'll tell the others that I spoke to Wyatt."
"Make sure Demetrius knows he can stop looking over his shoulder."
Wyatt grunted.
Kismet snickered. "What are you going to do?"
"I'm going to do what I do best." I glanced at Wyatt, who nodded, supporting me without question. "I'm going hunting."
Chapter Seventeen
7:45 p.m.
Hunting didn't happen as soon as I'd hoped. Mostly because I didn't have clue one where to start looking for Vale.
Scratch that. I had a pretty long list, including the decrepit police station where we were held and the old motel where the Marcus/Prentiss showdown happened, but Astrid knew about those places, too. She'd have Watchtower people scouring the locations, plus the homes and businesses of the rest of Vale's family and social circle. I needed to go somewhere my friends wouldn't notice me, and I couldn't think of anyplace.
The pups invited me to join them for dinner, and even though I was still a little queasy from the Juliet Potion, I sat down with three red-headed teenage boys and watched them devour box after box of Chinese food. Wyatt ate a healthy portion of food, too, while I picked at plain white rice with a pair of chopsticks. My lack of attention to the food gave me a chance to watch the men in the room.
Peter was definitely the alpha of the brothers. When we assembled in the small dining room off to the side of the kitchen, Mark had laid out the dozen or so white boxes, as well as a few wax-paper bags, packets of sauces, and pairs of chopsticks. The three of them waited until Wyatt and I had seated ourselves before taking chairs on the other side of the table.
Wyatt helped himself to pork lo mein and fried rice, and once he finished, Peter picked up a container, put a small amount of vegetables on his plate, then handed it to Mark. Mark sniffed and curled his lip. He gave it over to John without comment. They went like that with every container of food. Sometimes Peter took a lot, sometimes he didn't take anything, but he always served himself first. The whole thing was kind of strange, but it also fit with them letting me and Wyatt get our food before serving themselves.
No one really talked at first, beyond grunts and simple commands to pass the soy sauce.
"Mark?" Wyatt said. "In what year was the Treaty of Versailles signed?"
I nearly dropped my chopsticks. I definitely flung some rice across the table. Wyatt was watching Mark over a half-eaten spring roll, intently waiting on an answer to the most left-field question of the month.
Mark picked up a piece of pork with his chopsticks, as though the answer was written on it in brown sauce. "Um, 1918?"
"John?"
"June 1919," John replied promptly.
"Peter, when did the U.S. officially end our involvement in the first World War?"
Peter squirmed.
Wyatt sighed. "Anyone?"
"1921, after the Knox-Porter Resolution was signed," John said.
"I'm so confused right now," I said. "What's with the history quiz?"
"Being cut off from Thackery meant their education stopped," Wyatt said. "They might be orphaned Lupa, but they're teenagers and they still need to learn. We're picking up with an easy subject."
"History is easy?"
"Those who don't study history are doomed to repeat the past."
"Thank you, Aristotle."
"Actually, it was George Santayana," John said, "and what he said was—"
"Will you turn it off before I fong you?" Peter asked. "Geez, we know you're smart, okay?"
John flushed red and looked down at his plate.
"Fong?" I said. "Do I even want to know?"
"It's fro
m a movie," Peter replied. "It's slang for kicking or beating up. Wyatt doesn't have a TV, but we had one when we lived…um, with Dad." He looked away.
Dad meant Walter Thackery, may he rot in hell.
"So is John the only one who did the reading assignment?" Wyatt asked.
"I tried," Peter said. "I really did but I'm not good at that stuff. I never was, even when Dad—Thackery, taught us."
"You didn't like anything he taught you?"
"I liked learning how to fight."
"And I said we'd work on that together."
I almost flung more rice across the room with that little nugget of information. Wyatt was going to teach the kids to fight? He was taking this "under his wing" thing seriously. More seriously than I thought, and that might not be good for him, considering they were wanted by the Assembly. A month ago, I'd have loved to see all three of them dead, and now Wyatt had practically adopted them.
Thumping my head against the table wouldn't change anything, so I refrained.
"We'll find something you enjoy studying more than world history," Wyatt said. "As long as you promise to try."
"I do promise," Peter said. "We all did."
Wyatt pop-quizzed them a little bit more while they cleaned their plates and divvied up what was left in the containers. John got everything right. Peter didn't know a thing. Mark was about fifty-fifty. The entire production was sort of adorable in an alternate universe kind of way. Wyatt sounded like any parent making sure his kids were ready for a big test.
"I don't want to die." Words spoken in earnest by a sobbing, terrified boy I'd watched being tortured for information at an abandoned construction site. A boy identical to the three eating dinner with me. A boy who'd died sobbing in a pool of his own blood, sweat, and piss because I'd thought Wyatt was dying, and now we were protecting that boy's surviving brothers.
"I don't want to die."
I pushed away from the table and found the bathroom tucked down the hall from the living room. Closed the door, turned on the faucet, and then sat down on the toilet as the emotion bent me in half. So much that it wasn't able to manifest as tears, because I wasn't sad. I'd done my job, like I always did my job, but the end result was that I'd participated in the capture and murder of a teenage boy. No, three teenage boys. Brothers to the boys I was trying to help now. Boys Wyatt saw as family—he didn't have to say it, because I saw it.
I wrapped my arms around my aching middle and rocked a while, letting the regret worm its way up and out. The shame of looking Peter, Mark, and John in the eye, knowing I'd done the same thing to their brother—I'd looked Daniel in the eye while his fingers were being cut off.
"Shit." I pressed the heels of my hands into my eyes, needing to rub those images away.
Someone else had done the cutting. Someone else had landed the killing blow. But I'd been complicit. I'd done the asking, and I hadn't stopped anything. I didn't have the stomach for that kind of torture anymore. I could kill goblins all day long to keep them from hurting innocent people and never bat an eyelash at the slaughter. Halfies, too. This was completely different.
Thackery had been given these children to raise as he saw fit. He made them into the villains I'd once hunted. Had they been given to a loving parent, someone who wanted them to grow up sane and happy, they might all still be alive. Their family wouldn't have been ripped in half. They wouldn't be hiding out in the apartment of the man they'd tried to kill and only succeeded in changing.
For the first time, I hated myself for the thing I'd become—the killer that Boot Camp had created and unleashed on the world.
"Evy?" Wyatt knocked. "May I come in?"
"Yeah."
He pushed the door open far enough to slip inside, then shut it. He didn't ask, simply knelt in front of me and gathered me into his arms, a solid presence I'd come to depend on more than I ever thought possible. The tears still wouldn't come, so I clung while he stroked my back.
"What happened?"
"Bad memories," I said.
"Of?"
"Killing their brothers."
"Oh, baby." Wyatt pulled back and cupped my cheeks in his palms. "That was a lifetime ago. You can't—"
"Blame myself? That ship has sailed around the world, so try again."
"You reacted to a situation. You had no choice."
"Didn't I? There's always a choice, Wyatt."
"Thackery had Ava and Aurora. You were protecting your family."
"They thought they were doing the same thing."
"Maybe, but you know more than anyone that you can't change the choices you've made. You have to live with them." The soft growl at the end of told me he was also addressing my most recent choice to "die" without telling him first.
Wyatt knew about living with choices better than almost anyone—except maybe Rufus, who was still withholding a whopper of a secret from Wyatt. "I know," I said. "Really. I guess it hit me all at once, sitting across from the disciples like that."
"The disciples?"
"Peter, Mark and John. Don't tell me it never occurred to you?"
He chuckled. "I guess it did. Evy, there's a lot of blame to go around, but the important thing is that those three are safe, and they want to stay that way."
"They definitely seem to like you."
"I'm an easy guy to like."
I rolled my eyes, which made him laugh again. "You're good with them, Wyatt. I mean that."
"Some of it is Lupa pack instinct. They're young and they want to be led by someone stronger and older."
"Or they need a father figure, and they like you for it." Something warm flashed in his eyes, an affection that wasn't directed at me. "Did you ever want kids?" The question bubbled up and out before I could think it through.
His eyebrows winged up. "I don't give it a lot of thought, since Gifted can't have children."
One of those weird side effects of being able to tap into the Break and its magical energy source was sterility—boys and girls. Biologically, it made the question moot, especially as a "couples topic." But it didn't do a damn thing to stop adoption. Literal or figurative.
"The Lupa are your family now, Wyatt, whether we like it or not. And even if you don't see yourself as a dad, at the very least you're the handsome, fun uncle who feeds them sodium-laden fast food on a regular basis."
"A high-speed metabolism helps with the sodium and MSG."
"And seriously depletes your bank account."
"No kidding."
"How long are you going to hide them?"
He released a long, uneasy breath. "I don't know. If I can prove they aren't a danger to humans or other Therians, then maybe the Assembly will rescind their kill order."
"What if they don't?"
A flash of silver in his eyes hinted at danger if that happened. "One crisis at a time. They're safe here for now. Our first priority is Vale."
I could live with that. "Okay, so if you were a were-cat wanted by your own people, where would you hide?"
"If I was Vale, I'd leave the city altogether."
"But not before you get your ransom money. So where do you hide while that's happening?"
"Fleabag motel?"
"Plenty of those around here. Vale isn't the smartest big bad ever, but I don't think he's stupid enough to use his real name. It'll take forever to flash his picture at every front desk, and who knows if we'll be lied to."
"You're forgetting one advantage we've got."
"What?"
He tapped the side of his nose. "I know what the bastard smells like."
Sometimes having a half-Lupa boyfriend was kind of awesome.
With no computer on the premises and my pre-paid phone only a few years past the Stone Age, we figured out our motel search grid the old-fashioned way: a piece of paper and a phone book. It took a while, but between the five of us we knew every single street and location, and their relationship to the others. The pups seemed eager to help and disappointed when we told them they couldn't go with
us.
"Too many people affiliated with the Watchtower will be out tonight," Wyatt said. "You're still wanted by the Assembly, so I want you to stay here. Promise me."
"We promise," Peter said, and that seemed good enough for Wyatt.
Not me. "You so much as go outside for a pizza and I'll bust your ass, kid," I said.
Peter blinked and nodded vigorously. "We'll stay here."
"Good."
Our next problem was the issue of transportation. Wyatt had fled the Watchtower on foot, and I'd left my car at the Dane compound. Stealing a car was on the list of possibilities, but we both preferred saving that one as a last resort. Stolen cars meant police attention when the owner noticed it was missing.
As I was considering calling Kimset to see if she could help us on that front, Tybalt called me. "Hey," I said.
"I knew you weren't dead. I told you she wasn't dead."
Oh crap. "Milo?"
"Yeah."
"Why aren't you resting?"
"Been resting all day, and then everyone started acting weird. Avoiding questions. Marcus finally told me what was going on, but I didn't believe him. I made him steal Tybalt's phone, since I can't walk."
The mental image of Marcus pickpocketing Tybalt made me snort hard through my nose. "How did you know Tybalt knew anything?"
"Because he came to see me a while ago, and he's not that great of an actor. If he thought you were dead and did what you're accused of, he wouldn't have been so calm."
True. Milo's deductive reasoning skills scared me sometimes. "Is Marcus with you still?"
"Um, yeah. He actually looks kind of steamed, and—"
"Put him on the phone."
My end of the conversation had earned Wyatt's undivided attention, and his expression asked if I thought this was a good idea. I thought it was a fantastically bad idea, but I couldn't let Marcus keep thinking I'd murdered his grandfather and gotten away with my own life. Hell, I hated lying to everyone about my latest death, but especially Marcus. I respected the hell out of him, even though I'd never say so out loud.
The only reason I knew Marcus was on the line was because he breathed really loudly, almost a growl.
"Marcellus is alive, too," I said.
I swear I heard his eyebrows hit his hairline. "What?"
