Caught Forever Between

by Adrian Phoenix

  She slid her hand over Alex’s chest, rested it over his heart. She felt every faint beat. She’d never tried looking into Alex, had never tried to see the inner man, feeling no need; whenever she looked at him, he dazzled her sight. He burned white-hot and pure, like the sun. She almost believed that sunlight filled his veins instead of blood; he was strong and golden and warm. He smelled of summer, like dew-flecked grass at dawn and cool blue lakes and August heat.

  But now when she looked, Cass saw only darkness; sunlight hadn’t sprayed from his veins, after all. Now she only smelled stale air laced with disease and death.

  She caressed his hand, squeezed it. “Don’t leave me, Alexander Paris,” she whispered. “Don’t let go.”

  “Hey, Cass,” drawled a soft, familiar voice.

  Cass glanced up as Raleigh strode into the room, his sketch pad tucked under his arm. The sight of him was like a knife to the heart — tall and lean, long blond hair framing his face and sweeping past his shoulders, his lips curved into a smile. Except for the wry twist to his lips and the shadows lurking in his cobalt-blue gaze, Raleigh was the spitting image of his older brother.

  But where Alex blazed, burning with life and laughter and talent, Raleigh was more like a reflection in an old, dim mirror. His eyes held dark secrets, and a look of mirth lit his face at odd moments — like he’d heard a good joke, a really good one, but a joke only he was smart enough to understand.

  Cass often felt sorry for Raleigh. Twenty-one to Alex’s twenty-four, he was light-years behind in talent and personality. Yet he tried so hard to be like his brother.

  “How is he?” Raleigh asked, his voice shaking Cass from her thoughts. He tossed his sketch pad onto the nightstand next to the vase of lilacs.

  Cass noticed dark spots spattered or dripped across the sketch pad’s cover. Looked like blood. Maybe from That Night . . . “The same,” she said. “But I believe he’ll get better soon.”

  How had blood gotten onto Raleigh’s sketch pad?

  “Do you, now?” A strange tone edged Raleigh’s voice.

  Cass looked at him. His gaze was on his brother’s face, his own still and tight with some emotion — grief, she thought, but in the split second before Raleigh’s attention shifted back to her, she realized, with a cold shock, that what she saw on his face was hatred.

  “Well, if he doesn’t,” Raleigh said, voice hushed, “I’ll take you for my apprentice, Cass. That’s a promise.”

  “You don’t have a practice,” Cass said.

  “I will,” Raleigh said.

  She stared into Raleigh’s eyes, looked for light in his midnight-blue gaze, searched for the sun, but all she saw was her own reflection. His gaze shifted back to Alex.

  Cold iced Cass’s veins. She felt faint movement beneath her hand. Alex’s fingers twitched within her grasp. Pulse racing, heart triple-timing, she kept from reacting to the movement, to the fire melting the ice within her, to the sudden hope blazing in her heart. A sunburst filled her vision, golden and white-hot, then it was gone. Cass squeezed Alex’s hand.

  Then, glancing up, she looked into Raleigh.

  An endless abyss stretched before her, utterly lightless; a yawning maw surrounded by row upon row of razor-sharp fangs as yellowed as old bones. Like a black hole it sucked in everything around it. Compressed. Absorbed. Annihilated. Nothing escaped. Nothing remained to escape.

  Had Raleigh attempted to feed the void with Alex’s light? Tried to shift from reflection to the one reflected? Yearned to live Alex’s life?

  Had Alex finally looked into his brother? And seen the truth of him?

  Shuddering, Cass turned her face away from Raleigh and her vision. Instead, she looked at Alex’s pale face. She released his hand and wiped her sweaty palm against her skirt. Her heartbeat thudded loudly in her ears. She felt sick.

  “What were you doing?” Raleigh asked, his voice flat. He leaned over her and tipped up her chin with an ink-stained finger. “Were you looking?” he whispered.

  Beneath Raleigh’s sharp sage cologne, Cass smelled something hot and bitter, like vomit in an alley, like the lingering stench at the shop.

  The blood on Raleigh’s sketch pad was Alex’s. It’d been spattered there when Raleigh had shot him. Had he still been there when she’d come in? Gone out the back? And what — came back in to see his handiwork? her reaction? to savor the moment? all of the above?

  And Devlin — the loup garou — was on his way to deliver cold and brutal justice to the wrong person.

  Or, at least, for the wrong reason. What had she seen within Helena’s heart?

  “What did you see, Cassie?” Raleigh demanded, leaning in close enough for a kiss, his breath hot against her cheek, his sage and bitter-bile scent stealing her breath. One hand closed on her shoulder.

  Forcing a smile onto her lips, Cass met his black-hole gaze. “The sun,” she said. “Only the sun.”

  Raleigh blinked.

  “I’m tired. Would you mind taking me home?” Cass said. “I hate making the trip alone, especially on the bus.”

  “Yeah,” he said, releasing her shoulder. “Sure.”

  “Great. Just let me call Helena and tell her she doesn’t have to meet me.” At Raleigh’s nod, Cass fished her cell out of her purse and speed-dialed her sister. The phone rang twice, then Helena’s voice mail kicked on. Dread snaked through Cass.

  It’s too soon! she thought, glancing at the clock. She left a message for Helena to phone her before coming over, then ended the call.

  Cass glanced at Raleigh. His sardonic expression and tilted smile were back in place. Something cold and dark twisted within her, latched on to her heart. He wouldn’t be wearing that expression much longer.

  “Let’s go,” she said.

  Lights burned inside the shop. Cass’s dread intensified. She climbed out of Raleigh’s pickup and shut the door. The night air felt thick and still, oddly soundless, given that it wasn’t yet midnight. On the sidewalk, people hurried by, shoulders hunched, hands in pockets, like a storm loomed over them or a mugger followed, surefooted and silent.

  He’s here, Cass thought. The loup garou had arrived and, somehow — primal instinct, sixth sense — people felt the danger in their prickling skins, their senses electrified and wary.

  Just like Cass’s.

  “Looks like Helena didn’t get your message,” Raleigh drawled, narrowed gaze on the light seeping around the boarded-up windows. “You still want me to come in?”

  “Just to make sure it’s safe, okay?”

  Raleigh grunted in assent.

  Cass pushed open the unlocked door. The bell above tinkled, the sound loud in the silent shop. She looked around the room; not much to see or hide behind since she’d cleaned it and trashed all the ruined furniture and equipment. Counter. Walls bare of patterns. Fan. Nothing out of place.

  She glanced at the door leading to the back room and the living quarters upstairs. It was open. Her heart leapt into her throat, and she felt cold and fevered at the same time.

  “Helena?” she called.

  Silence.

  Taking in a deep breath, Cass hurried across the stone floor — cleaned of the blood-smeared swirls and designs etched forever onto her heart — and through the door. A thought arrowed through her mind: Maybe she didn’t return my call because she’s already dead.

  “Cass?” Raleigh said. “Something wrong?”

  She didn’t answer him, couldn’t. Her words dried up in her throat when she saw her sister backed up against the kitchen counter, her face white, her gaze locked on something or someone out of Cass’s sight — but she didn’t need to see Devlin to know he was there. A blood-red moon, full and swollen, filled her vision. She stumbled to a halt, her hand groping for the wall.

  Cass blinked until the image cleared from her mind and from her sight. Helena didn’t glance at her, didn’t even blink. Maybe she believed her steady gaze kept the beast in his place.

  “What’s going on?” Raleigh stopped beside
Cass. He fell silent, his narrowed gaze dropping from Helena’s face to her white-knuckled hands gripping the counter behind her. He took a step back.

  Cass gripped his arm. “I made a mistake,” she said, her voice low and level. She knew the loup garou’s pointed ears would hear her even if she whispered. “I gave the wrong name.”

  Raleigh stared at her, his muscles tensing beneath her tight-fingered grip. “Who are you — ”

  In a blur of snarling movement, Devlin sprang around the corner and onto Raleigh, hitting him so hard that Cass was knocked away. Her head thudded into the wall. Bursts of color starred her vision. Nausea knotted her belly. She slid to the floor.

  As her vision cleared, she saw Raleigh on the floor, his right arm up and over his throat, his blond hair spilled across the floor like honey, his eyes wide as he struggled to escape the creature on top of him.

  Devlin, still mostly in two-legged form, eyes silvered and gleaming, black claws extending from human fingers, crouched on Raleigh, knee to chest.

  Cass glanced up as a hand latched around her arm and hauled her to her feet. Helena clutched a steak knife. Cass sucked in her breath.

  A low growl, building in intensity, froze them both. Cass looked at the loup garou. Devlin’s claws pierced Raleigh’s shoulders. The smell of blood and musk filled the room. The loup garou watched Cass through a wild tangle of hair, curving canines revealed as he growled.

  “I gave you the wrong name,” Cass said, heart pounding. She wondered if Devlin was still human enough to reason with. Wondered if he’d ever been. What had Gabrielle called him? Coeur sauvage. Wild heart.

  “Raleigh shot Alex,” Cass said. “I’ll still walk the road with you, loup garou, but let my sister walk away.”

  “No,” Devlin said, voice thick. “You had it right. She a kinslayer, for true.” His burning gaze fixed on Helena.

  Helena held his gaze for only a heartbeat or two before she lunged, jaw clenched, knife slashing like claws through the air, arcing down toward Devlin’s chest.

  “No! Don’t!” Cass cried, uncertain of who her words were meant for.

  The loup garou yanked one hand from Raleigh’s shoulder and slapped the knife from Helena’s hand. The blade tunk-tunked across the stone tiles. Helena’s wrist snapped beneath Devlin’s black-clawed grip, the sound sharp and sickening. Gasping, she dropped to her knees.

  “Kinslayer,” Devlin snarled.

  “It was an accident, but I’d do it again,” she whispered. Sweat beaded her forehead. “I’ve got no regrets.”

  Helena looked at Cass, and Cass felt herself drawn into her pained, defiant eyes like smoke into a fan. Thoughts and images whirled through her mind, leaving her dazed.

  Tiger. Sleeping cub. Black silhouette.

  She’d been right. And wrong.

  Cass knew in that moment, knew it with the clarity of a polished mirror, a mirror aimed behind her, that her treasured and puzzling memory of her mother bending over her was a memory of Helena; long red curls, dark eyes, smoky-sweet smell of tobacco and vanilla. The glitter sparkling on her face hadn’t been fairy sprinkles or magic dust or even tears — it’d been droplets of blood, their mother’s blood.

  Closing her eyes, Cass turned her face away.

  “She was doing meth again. Neglecting you,” Helena said. “Her life revolved around meth. I asked her to give you to me, since she had no time for you. I was eighteen, Cass, and I’d been on my own since you were born. Because she had no time for me, either. And I asked . . . we argued . . . she hit me . . . one thing led to another.”

  Helena laughed, a low, throaty sound full of irony. “When I found out you were an Intuitive, I was afraid you’d see what I’d done. And hate me for it. So I sent you to Alex.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “And I was right.”

  “Cass, I got nothing to do with this — ” Raleigh’s words ended with a snarl from the loup garou. Raleigh moaned and whether it was just simple fear or added pain, Cass couldn’t tell.

  “Cassandra Aphrodite Danzinger,” said a familiar voice. “Open your eyes, girl, and witness what you done brought about.”

  At the mambo’s cold words, Cass opened her eyes. Gabrielle LaRue stood in the doorway between the front and the back of the shop. She stepped forward, the door swinging shut behind her. She fixed Cass with a gaze as icy as her words, her eyes like night-hidden stones. A purple scarf covered her hair and silver flashed at her ears, throat, and wrists. Her purple dress was simple and summer-sheer, and her brown feet were sandals-clad.

  A queen stood before her, a queen full of dark power, one who weighed and measured her better than any set of scales. Cass straightened. Met the mambo’s gaze.

  “You set all this in motion, girl,” Gabrielle said, crossing the floor to stand beside her crouching godson and his downed prey. “You a decision to make.” Her gaze shifted to Helena. Helena met the mambo’s dark eyes and lifted her chin slightly. “Justice for your mama or — ” Gabrielle glanced at Raleigh. Her lip curled slightly as though she smelled something bad — maybe the bitterness he’d splashed all over the shop and himself when he’d pulled the trigger That Night. “ — justice for your Michelangelo.”

  Returning her attention to Cass, she looked at her for a long moment. “You must choose one. The other be released, y ’hear, girl? Released until the day a higher power calls ’em to task for what they done.”

  “I didn’t shoot Alex,” Raleigh said, his voice thin. “He’s my fucking brother!” Sweat gleamed on his forehead. His strained face looked ghostly even in the kitchen’s clear light, his eyes as dark as midnight.

  A sudden pang pierced Cass. He looked like Alex had when she’d discovered him on the blood-pooled floor, pale and fading, eyes shut. She remembered Raleigh walking into the shop, the color draining from his face as he looked at his brother held in her blood-smeared arms; remembered his words: He’s dead, isn’t he? Remembered the shocked expression on his face when she’d breathed, No. Call 911.

  Remembered the shattered-heart feel of the world ending as Alex’s blood pulsed past her fingers

  Tearing her gaze away from Raleigh, Cass looked at her sister kneeling before her, broken wrist held tight against her chest. Helena met her gaze. Held it. She said nothing. Her earlier words looped through Cass’s mind: I’d do it again. I’ve got no regrets. And felt again Helena’s arms wrapping around her, comforting and warm, strong enough to hold her forever. Recalled Helena’s voice shushing her, soothing her — right after she’d murdered their mother.

  Cass shifted her attention back to Devlin. He watched her through the dark fall of his hair. “I choose Raleigh Paris,” she said. “D’you hear me, loup garou?”

  “Oui,” Devlin growled. “I hear you, for true.”

  “No!” Helena exclaimed. “Cass, this is all wrong — ”

  Her words ended when Devlin threw back his head and howled. The sound reverberated through the small room, lonely and full of yearning, dark and primal. The hair rose on Cass’s arms and neck.

  Helena stared at Devlin, lips parted, eyes wide. Raleigh struggled frantically to push himself free of the loup garou’s weight.

  In seconds, Devlin stripped off his clothes. His muscles rippled.

  Gabrielle strode past her morphing godson and, hand to elbow, eased Helena to her feet. “You be free, girl,” she said, her gaze stern. “You weren’t named. Time to go.”

  “No, I — ” Helena began, but the mambo held her hand up to her mouth and blew the glittering dust cupped in her palm into Helena’s face.

  Coughing, Helena wiped at her face. The dust sparkled like tears in moonlight, like blood in the dark, like gold in a sunlit stream. Her hands fell to her sides. Her eyelids drooped.

  Behind Gabrielle, the loup garou shifted, flowing like water from one form to another. Devlin howled, his voice full of anger, hurt, and hunger.

  “Let’s leave this place,” Gabrielle murmured. Grasping Helena’s good hand, the mambo led her from the kitchen.


  Cass pressed herself against the wall, breath caught in her throat, as she watched Devlin shape himself into a creature as much a part of the night as the moon. Gleaming fangs. Silver eyes. Black fur. Claws.

  She realized she was seeing his true form — the crouching hunter silhouetted by a swollen blood-red moon. Saw flames where his heart should be.

  Raleigh no longer scrabbled to get away from the loup garou. He stared, frozen, mouth open, as Devlin looked down on him, silver eyes moon-bright, lips wrinkling up on his muzzle as he snarled, saliva dripping from his fangs.

  The sharp smell of piss filled the room as Raleigh’s bladder let go. A dark stain spread across his jeans and down one leg.

  The loup garou’s muzzle dipped and, at the same moment, Raleigh threw his right arm across his own throat. The wolf bit into Raleigh’s forearm, tearing into the flesh. Bone cracked beneath fangs. A high, ragged scream pierced the air. And for one heart-stopping second, Cass wasn’t sure who’d screamed — herself, lost in a nightmare replay of finding Alex on the stone-tiled floor, or his brother, caught in the werewolf’s jaws.

  Nosing past the damaged arm, the wolf’s muzzle closed on Raleigh’s throat. Blood sprayed onto the loup garou’s face, into the air, and spattered hot against Cass’s throat and chest.

  Heart pounding, muscles coiled, Cass struggled to keep watching. Raleigh’s feet drummed against the floor as the loup garou’s muzzle burrowed into and shredded his throat. Her stomach clenched, and she swallowed hard. Raleigh gurgled. Thrashed. She remembered Alex’s blood pooled and smeared on the floor. Remembered his closed eyes, the froth on his lips, his convulsing body. Tried to remember the warm feel of Alex’s hand; tried to remember the sun.

  But instead, the moon sucked her in, and the night swallowed her whole as she looked through the loup garou’s eyes, the tang of blood in her/his mouth as she/he, no, they, abandoned Raleigh’s ruined throat. Their claws and bloodied muzzle tore into the man’s chest, snapping through bone. Their fangs sliced into the man’s quivering heart. Tasted it. Gulped it down. Blood spread dark across the stone tiles.