It seemed, to Aaron, like a lifetime had passed since he proposed to her during that picnic outing. It was just before she left to go to Berlin. He thought he had lost her, spooked her, but she had said yes. Amber, the girl with a history of commitment and trust issues, agreed to marry the very same ex-jock who used to poke fun at her in school. Go figure.
Aaron watched his breath form clouds in front of his face. The moment spun out, seemed to stretch into a pocket of eternity, and then continued. He would have been lost in that moment—lost to the recesses of his own mind—if the woods had remained quiet.
Someone was coming.
Aaron perked up, stood, and scanned the porch, the front yard, and the tree-line. He saw his car, saw Frank’s car parked next to it, and tensed as the rumble of a big motorcycle crashed into his senses like a slow moving wave. From the porch Aaron watched the bike materialize from within the morning mist and recognized not only the bike but the rider, too.
The rider dismounted and pulled a full-face black helmet off their head allowing a blood red waterfall of hair to cascade over her shoulders and back. She was wearing a black racing jacket zipped up to the collar and part of her face was covered by a red bandana worn as a bandit mask. Her once tanned skin seemed, in these woods, to be as pale as the mist she had come from, but her cheeks were lit up like orbs; warm and flushed.
“Where are the rest of them?” Aaron asked.
“It’s good to see you too, Cooper,” Jackal said as she approached, crushing the ground beneath heavy boots.
Her scent came rushing at him all at once, and he was thankful that—at least now—the smell was familiar. He thought it reminded him of honey laced with subtle, bitter venom, and remembered the brawl they’d gotten into the first time they’d caught a whiff of each other in that parking-lot in Vegas. The memory caused his lip to curl into a smile and his nerves to buzz excitedly.
“I’m sorry,” he said, “I was just expecting the rest of you.”
“You’re lucky you have me,” she said, stepping up to the porch.
“I don’t understand.”
“They aren’t coming, Aaron.”
Aaron’s arms started to prickle and his gut went cold. “Why?”
“The old wolf doesn’t want to send his pack into the middle of Nowhere, California, I guess.”
“I don’t fucking believe it.”
“You’d better believe it. He asked you to stay in Nevada with us and you chose to come back here. Frankly I get it—you have a girl here—but he’s old blood; pack is everything to him.”
“That’s bullshit!”
“No it isn’t, and you know it.”
Aaron stood watching her, staring into eyes of warm summer, and swallowed his rage. She was right. Pack was everything to him, too; Frank, Damien, Amber… Collette… they were his pack. They’re the reason why he didn’t stay in Nevada with his father and the others. But he did stay with them for a while, and he ran with them. Didn’t that count for anything?
“I passed the trial,” he said.
“Barely, and I had to help you through it.”
“Did you come here to mock me?”
“No, I came here to help, but I can leave if you want me to.”
“Help? I thought my father wasn’t sending the pack.”
“He didn’t send me,” Jackal said, taking Aaron’s chair and sitting down. “I came of my own volition.”
“Why? I mean, why risk my father’s wrath?”
“Wrath? I’m his beta. I’ll get chewed out a little when I get home but I’ve been chewed out before; no big. Besides, sounded on the phone like there might be a little fun to be had up here. Can’t blame a girl for not wanting to miss a good party.”
“What’s going on here isn’t a joke,” Aaron said in a tone that made Jackal’s humor die a quick death. “I appreciate that you’re here, but if you’re going to stay and Marcus isn’t going to send anyone else, you need to know what you’re dealing with.”
“Marcus won’t send anyone else,” she said.
“He would if he knew what was good for him and his pack.”
“Is that a threat? Because that’s my Alpha you’re talking about.”
“I’m not threatening you but the thing that’s coming is. I thought I made that clear, but maybe I needed to be there in person to get through to him.”
“Listen,” she said, standing, “I know you probably feel like you need to get in your car, drive down to Vegas, and knock a few heads. But that’s not going to help your case.” Jackal approached and her eyes softened. “I’m here for you.”
Aaron swallowed. Nodded. “I’m glad you’re here.”
Jackal’s hand slid off Aaron’s chest. “So, how about you tell me what the hell’s been going on up here?”
Chapter Four
“Pull it together,” Damien said to himself in the mirror. “She can’t smell it.”
He opened the tap and let ice cold water spill into his cupped hands before splashing it on his face. The cold seemed to snap the world into focus, but it didn’t cure the pain in his chest, so he produced a bottle of pills from his pocket and popped a couple. The Vicodin would stop the pain, at least for a while, but would it stop the smell?
Damien, at great cost, pulled his shirt up and examined his bare chest. Even three weeks later the flesh was still red, still raw in some places, and scabbed over in most others. The lines of ripped skin were jagged and imperfect, deep, and agonizing to look at, but he had to. He needed to confront it, to acknowledge it, and move past it. Somehow.
She didn’t mean to do it.
“That still looks rough.”
Aaron’s voice crashed through the silence like a tree toppling over. Damien had left the bathroom door open… he must have. He pulled his shirt back down and pocketed the pills, then ran a little more cold water into his face and hair.
“It’s fine,” he said. “It’ll heal.”
“Magick won’t fix it?”
“Magick’s the reason I’m still alive, but the wound is pretty resistant to it.”
“Werecougar got me good once. Thought I was gonna die. Took ages to heal the wound naturally.”
“Yeah, well, I’m not a werewolf, so…”
Damien dried his hands off, probably a little excessively, on the towel next to the sink and went to leave the bathroom but Aaron was standing in the doorway and it didn’t look like he was going to go anywhere. His heart started to race, and his quickened heart rate made the wound on his chest throb with dull pain.
“Look,” Aaron said, “We need to talk about this.”
“There’s nothing to talk about.”
“It’s been three weeks, man. Three weeks since it happened.”
It was like being scratched with three red hot fire pokers. “I don’t know what you want me to say.”
“I want you to let me apologise or something.”
“You didn’t do it, Aaron.”
“I know, but I was there and I wasn’t fast enough to get to you. I’m responsible for this too.”
“Not as much as you think, and she didn’t know what she was doing anyway so we’re all good.”
Damien tried to shove his body into Aaron’s to clear a path, but Aaron wasn’t going anywhere. It was like trying to push through a wall of flesh. Aaron was a lot stronger than Damien even when he wasn’t trying to be strong—that much was clear—and he wouldn’t get past without using magick.
Am I really thinking about using magick on Aaron?
“Damien,” Aaron said.
“Look, what is it you actually want from me? It happened, I’m fine, let’s move along.”
“I want you to forgive me. To forgive her. I want us to be friends again.”
Friends. “I don’t know what gave you the impression we weren’t friends, Aaron.”
“You haven’t spoken to me since the night it happened. You bolted so fucking fast after, I never got a chance to talk to you or anything.”
“Frank needed help finding the reliquary and you weren’t going to go anywhere.”
“Don’t give me excuses, man. I think I know you better than that.”
“Do you?”
“We have more in common than you think.”
“Amber?”
“No. You had a messed up childhood too. Your parents weren’t there for you when you needed them. Mine weren’t either.”
“Difference is I wasn’t a dick to everyone within reach growing up.”
Aaron’s lips pressed into a thin line; a line Damien knew he was crossing, but he had already committed to crossing it. He didn’t want to be aggressive, didn’t want to hold a grudge, but the night Amber—in a violent, blind rage—opened him up like a piñata, something changed inside of him. Snapped. Broke. And Aaron hadn’t been nearly as quick to rush to Damien’s side as he thought he had been.
Friends.
“That was low,” Aaron said.
“I told you to leave it alone.”
“We were kids.”
“I didn’t mean to say that. I’m sorry.”
“I came here to try and apologise, to talk to you like a human-fucking-being, and try to make things right. Nothing about the last month has been easy. For any of us. But if you’re more interested in holding a grudge, fine. Do what you want.”
Aaron stepped aside. Damien considered for a moment what to do next with the kind of careful deliberation of a bomb expert. Aaron was in need of absolution; that much was plain to see. He had never seen such regret on a man’s face before as he had then. But Damien was in need too, and his needs weren’t being met.
He walked, slipping into the corridor and making his way toward the front of the house.
“I’m marrying her, you know,” Aaron said. Damien stopped, but he didn’t turn around. “I proposed before she went to Berlin, and she said yes.”
It was as if vertigo had seized him in rough hands. His head started to spin and sway, his heart rate shot up, and his Adam’s apple began to furiously work, but still he didn’t turn. Didn’t speak. Instead he continued walking down the corridor, up the stairs adjoining the main room, and into the guest-bedroom which was home only to a tiny dresser and an old bed. He had seen Frank downstairs but he chose not to stop and speak to him.
They’re getting married when this is over, he thought. But it wasn’t the thought of Amber marrying Aaron that got to him—or, at least, it wasn’t the leader of the pack of blind weasels running around in his mind. It was the idea that, when Amber and Aaron get married, what happens to Damien?
Where does Damien fit?
***
Where does Frank fit?
“Where does Frank what?” Frank asked, his eyes lifting from the book he was reading. He only realized after he had spoken that the living room was empty. And dusty. And old. Sure that he had heard someone speak, his gaze went to the duffle bag on the coffee table in front of him and the ram’s head inside.
“You talking to me?” he asked the bag in his best Al Pacino voice.
The bag didn’t reply.
Frank set the book down on the table and tugged on the zipper like the bag was made of silk. The ram’s head skull seemed to pop out like a picture in a pop up storybook and looked at him accusingly. Most people couldn’t draw emotions out of the cold, dead eyes of a skull—but Frank could. Emotion was everything, everywhere, in everyone, and one could always draw it out if he knew how to look.
This ram’s skull had been to more black masses than most devil worshippers would ever attend in their lifetimes, and had soaked up more raw emotion than a thousand freshly dumped sixteen year olds. It was a perfect reliquary—protected from the ravages of time, appropriate in design to house a servant of the adversary, and emotionally charged enough that even the slightest contact with skin could transfer all kinds of feelings to the person touching it.
Frank touched it and felt nothing, but that was only because he was good at shielding his mind from such power. What Frank wanted to do was get to the source—to open his eyes into the Nether and see past the bullshit, past the lies, and find out just how strong the demonic mark on Amber was. Once he knew that, he would know how much power he would need in order to take it out of her. At least, that was the plan.
But then he heard the thing inside the reliquary whispering, chattering, and screaming; an endless cacophony of pure, unbridled chaos. It was almost musical. Frank could swear he could hear a pattern in there somewhere, a cycle maybe; a cycle of suffering.
When he opened his mind’s eye the world around him showed itself as a dim, distant representation of the material world. All of the living room furnishings were there—the fireplace, the chairs, the sofa—but it was like a picture with the contrast turned all the way up. Shadows were longer and darker, colors were richer, and the things that liked to hide in the invisible stood out whether they liked it or not.
Frank’s ethereal body walked around the room and got his bearings. When he looked at the skull he noticed it was covered in an aura of red and black tendrils pulsing and writhing around it, like hands each wanting to claim it for their own. He also noted the cold in the room, though this cold manifested itself visually; primarily as a mantle of glittering frost sitting atop every possible surface.
He followed his instincts toward the cellar door and stood there, watching it, examining the glowing runes and symbols superimposed on the wood; runes of his own casting. The wards were holding, but they were weak—weak enough for Frank to be able to feel his way in through the cracks and seams in the magick. And when he did, he heard the whispers coming from the cellar.
Incoherent, pained, and speaking in reverse; he couldn’t understand the voice, but he knew its meaning well enough. Amber wasn’t all the way possessed, not by a long shot, but there was still part of a demon inside of her, and it was the culprit for the sundering of her psyche. Her mind wouldn’t have cracked were it not for demonic intervention, but that’s what the demonic did. It sat, dormant and patient, and hid until the right time to strike came along.
Add to that the emotional and psychological hits Amber took and you’ve got a recipe for disaster.
Frank moved away from the cellar and was about to return to his seat where his tall, skinny body sat waiting, when he heard something else. Something upstairs. More whispers? Surely not. He had attuned his mind to the demonic and expected to hear only two sets of whispers. Two. Not three. Three wasn’t good. He turned his eyes upwards and floated through the stone ceiling and followed the sound directly to its origin.
When he emerged in Damien’s presence his heart could have stopped.
It was a snake, a snake made of smoke and light, wrapped around Damien’s shoulders. Where’s its tail? He watched, bewildered and terrified, with his heart wedged in his throat pumping hot blood throughout his entire body. His hand went to his mouth, but the snake caught the movement and tilted its head up to give Frank a cocky look.
A grin?
He shook himself out of the Nether and went to stand but yelped at the sight of a woman looming over him.
“You okay?” she asked.
Frank, with his hand on his pounding heart, swallowed hard. “Almost gave me a heart attack,” he said. He wasn’t kidding, either.
“Sorry. You looked like you were sleeping… or something.”
“Who the fuck are you?”
“Jackal. Aaron’s friend. You must be Frank.”
“You know me but I don’t know you… and you’re friends with Aaron,” he said, standing. He was taller than her. “You must be a werewolf.”
“I must be,” she said.
“Fantastic.”
“Why’s that?”
“Nothing,” he said, sliding past Jackal on his way to the stairs. “I think I just need a drink. It’s been a long day.”
“Scared of werewolves?”
Frank heard a thump, and it was the sound that made him turn toward her—not her weak attempt at getting a rise out o
f him. He knew werewolves well enough. Every time they meet someone they want to assert their dominance and find their place in the pecking order. Frank wouldn’t let Aaron sit on top of him; if this bitch thought she could intimidate him into submission she had better get stepping.
“Did you touch that?” he asked, crossing toward the coffee table.
Jackal turned around. She had followed him so she was too far away to have knocked it over, but Frank asked anyway hoping—begging—for a yes. “No. Why?” she said.
Frank picked the ram’s head skull from off the ground. There, running diagonally from one side of the dead beast’s face to the other, was a fresh and notable split. As Frank’s fingers gently traced the line of cracked bone a heavy dread began to swell from the pit of his stomach, and in the back of his mind he heard the rising crescendo of a thousand pained screams rising to greet him.
Chapter Five
Aaron stood in the back yard and watched the mid-afternoon scenery which was now awash with sunshine. The clouds above had managed to keep the sun at bay for a while, but as he stood there, drinking in the cold rural air, the heavens themselves parted and let the star’s brilliance shine through.
Amber would have said this was a good sign; an omen. Something hopeful. Aaron had a hard time believing in omens like black cats, Friday the thirteenth, and throwing salt over your shoulder, but he would take all the good omens he could get if he thought they would do Amber any good. The thought of her sitting in that dank, dark cellar, day and night, with only herself and the stone walls for company… it was enough to stir the blood until only the tearing of an animal apart with one’s teeth could bring calmness back.
But what could he do? The thought of going down there terrified him as much as it did her. Amber herself had forbidden him from going down there until she was ready, but would ready ever come? And even if it did, would she be in the right frame of mind to identify the moment or would it slip through her fingers like blood.
“Lost in thought?”
Jackal had crept up on him and her voice made him jump. “Jesus,” he said, turning to look at her, “Don’t sneak up on me like that.”
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