“Let me go.” The words carried the familiar snap of Isabel’s temper, making her memory so tangible Andrew could nearly smell her.
“I have let you go,” Andrew snapped right back, the bright burst of frustration damping down some of his pain. “There have been other women.”
“But you clutch your so-called failure so close.” Death’s ears flattened. “Let go of my death. Let go of the deaths you caused. The surest way to continue to repeat that failure for the rest of your life is to never protect anyone again.”
“Spare me your preaching. You’re not real.” But Andrew could imagine Isabel saying just those words, imagine her frown as she advanced on him. Summoning her face rather than pushing it down should have made him flinch, but maybe he had no pain left to spare for it.
“Again, you confuse real for true.” The man’s voice returned, full of withering scorn. “I wouldn’t have thought the mighty enforcer, the man who rained bloody vengeance down upon the Barcelona pack, would prove such a coward in the end.”
Andrew twisted and the muscles in his back responded as if they were whole again. He still couldn’t feel his legs, though. Paralysis never healed in humans, so how long would it take a werewolf? “I’m biding my time. To heal,” he said through gritted teeth.
“Shall I go and tell Silver that? She should just wait for you? I don’t think your mutual friend will care to allow her to.”
A denial came to Andrew’s lips, but he was too busy listening with all his attention to voice it. He couldn’t smell a thing over the stink of silver and his own blood. Was Silver here?
“Have you purified him yet?” Silver’s voice was unmistakable, though it didn’t sound like her usual tone. She spoke like her throat had been scraped raw with sobbing and had never quite healed.
“Why do you care about him? You came back to me.” Stefan’s pleasure swam over the words, oily.
Andrew couldn’t leave Silver alone. Maybe he’d fail this time too, but the need to protect poured back in on him in a rush, blunting anger and pain and fear. He’d fail doing, not fail waiting. That was the best you could ask of anyone in this life.
Breaking through the chains should be like pulling a knife from a wound. The faster you did it, the sooner the pain was done. You had to gather yourself, and—
Do it.
Andrew panted from the agony, but the chains snapped within half a second. With all that momentum, he ended up sprawling forward. He caught himself on his hands, but his legs tangled with the chair in a useless splay beneath him. He froze, gray sparkles obscuring his vision, trying not to pant so hard that he would be heard. Had Stefan heard him?
“But I don’t wish him harm,” he heard Silver say in the next room, voice raised slightly, to distract from the sound of Andrew’s movements. “He helped me get back here to you, didn’t he?” Stefan murmured in approval, and didn’t come into the kitchen.
Imagining Silver with the man made Andrew’s throat clench, but he pushed himself into movement. He couldn’t let her bravery go to waste. As he sat up, he realized one chain had snapped under the chair arm, leaving it wrapped around his wrist, dug into the blistered burn. He couldn’t bring himself to touch it to pull it out so he left it. He had no strength to shift away, so it didn’t matter that touching silver would prevent him.
Silver’s voice continued and Andrew sent her silent thanks for her stalling. Then with nothing else to reach for to affect the outcome, he prayed to the Lady. Please, let Stefan be so distracted with his rhetoric that he wouldn’t hear Andrew. Please.
“So you call to Her when you have nothing else left. Fitting, I suppose.” The black wolf paced beside Andrew, as if mocking him with his four sound limbs. Andrew pushed himself up on his arms, and settled his weight on his hip.
Experimenting, he discovered he could drag himself forward that way. He stopped before going more than a couple inches. All very well to get there, but he had to plan if he was going to save Silver. Some part of him flinched from the effort of planning, but Silver’s voice silenced it.
Stefan had dropped his crowbar beside the chair at some point. Andrew pulled his cuff down over his hand to pick the bar up and then dropped it on his legs. Even through the fabric, he could imagine it scorching, but he didn’t have much choice of weapons.
Now, he could go. His wrists screamed every time he put weight on his arms, but it was a quiet pain compared to what his back had been at the beginning. Each scuff of fabric against the floor seemed as loud as a shout to him. How could Stefan not hear?
* * *
Selene couldn’t see Andrew, but she heard someone fall. She closed her fingers around Stefan’s wrist and pulled him farther into the house, into the first bedroom. The walls would dampen the sound of Andrew’s escape. Probably not enough, but a little. Stefan laughed, too distracted to hear the dragging sounds that followed the fall. The rotting, twisted scent of his attraction increased. She pressed her lips closed and her throat spasmed as she suppressed a gag.
“Why did you run, Selene?” Stefan asked. “You knew we were meant for each other.”
He cupped her cheek with his good hand and she couldn’t take it any longer. Selene jerked back, but he was too fast and caught her at the side of her neck. He held her that way for a breath, and then kissed her.
She did gag this time. She slammed her arm into his and bit his tongue, but he only tightened his grip and smashed his lips down harder. Part of her mind heard another dragging noise and clung to it, but the rest was nearly too panicked to think. She had to get him off her. Off! He avoided her knee to the crotch, but not the kick to the knee the feint covered.
“Still running,” he hissed. He stumbled back a step, favoring the injured side. “Why, Selene?”
If the rhythm continued, another drag would come in a second. She was so stupid. He’d hear it now. Why couldn’t she just swallow her disgust and play along? “The human God frightens me. I’m not—” She put an artistic waver into her voice. Keep his attention. She had to keep his attention. Religion was safer than walking the line of teasing without allowing him too close. “I’m not worthy the way you are, Stefan.”
“If you repent your sins and beg His forgiveness, He’ll welcome you. You proved yourself worthy when you survived.” His voice took on a singsong quality of memorized words. Selene steeled herself and clasped his forearm. He clasped hers back and didn’t try to close the distance between them further. Thank the Lady.
* * *
It was easier to keep going once Andrew was moving, but stopping would even be easier than that. But he wasn’t going to. Isabel was right—Death was right—or some part of his own mind was right. This time, he would protect her. Concentrating hard enough on that thought almost kept the pain at bay. Almost in a way that wasn’t even close.
Plant his hands. Drag. Plant his hands. Drag again, wincing at the noise. Stefan should have heard, but Andrew could hear his voice’s terrifying cadence, up and down. Smooth and reasonable as he explained something. Distracted. Silver was good at this. He couldn’t even imagine what it was costing her. Why didn’t she run? She could save herself if she ran back to John and the pack.
The voices came from out of sight in the bedroom, and Andrew aimed for them without allowing himself to stop and consider a plan. He couldn’t stop. Besides, what good would a plan do him? What could he do when he got there, half crippled? Distract Stefan from Silver in turn, that was about all. He had a weapon, so after that he could at least go down swinging, by the Lady.
The transition from laminate to carpet caught at Andrew’s pants, disturbing the crowbar. He saw it start to fall, knew it would clatter. He knew he had to catch it, he did catch it, but it burned. Andrew’s eyes watered as his sight flared white with the agony. Even on top of everything else, he could feel the new burn.
Resettle. Plant his hands. The carpet abraded the newly burned skin, and it felt like he left the top layer behind whenever he moved his hand. He couldn’t do this. His
strength was draining steadily in the face of all the wounds, and every drag was worse than the last.
He caught sight of them then. They stood beside the bed, Silver edging back and Stefan edging forward. The residual flare in his vision continued as his emotions stoked it. Stefan was touching her. His hand caressed her cheek. Silver looked beyond him to Andrew. Fear had twisted her expression into something older and not herself. She changed her focus so her eyes looked through him and then back to Stefan, but she knew he was there. In that moment of distraction Stefan pressed forward until he pinned her legs to the side of the bed with his.
“Stefan, no. No. Stefan!” Silver struggled to get out from under him, but he just ground his hips against hers. She shrieked, and her eyes caught Andrew’s. He could read her message as clearly as if she had spoken. She’d distracted all she could. From here, she would fight, and Andrew would be on his own.
Good. She should have fought all along, fought and run. Leave Andrew here with what he’d earned by being stupid enough to be caught. Rage burned his skin from the inside, eclipsing the silver burns on the outside, but it consumed his energy too. He’d kill Stefan. Torture him until he wept and then kill him, and tear out his throat, like the others. But he couldn’t move. He didn’t even have the breath to snarl.
“Silver knows you can, Dare,” the black wolf said, threading though the door, past Andrew. He came to stand beside Stefan’s legs. The thought of Silver’s faith freed Andrew from the locked paralysis of his need to annihilate Stefan.
Silver wrenched herself away, dragging half the blankets with her. She tossed them to tangle Stefan’s feet as she scrabbled back to a safe distance, screaming curses. “Lady set your voice to screaming for eternity until it shreds apart!” Stefan laughed, still even and pleasant, and stepped over the fabric without hurry.
It took three more drags to reach Stefan. At the second Stefan stilled, attention caught by something, who knew whether it was smell or sound. Andrew closed his hand around the crowbar, and pulled himself the last few feet one-handed as Stefan turned. He ignored the burn of silver against his skin and swung the weapon with all his remaining strength at Stefan’s knee.
Something cracked, and Andrew’s pleasure flared at Stefan’s grunt of pain. Yes. The bastard should suffer. Stefan tumbled backward. Andrew tried to roll aside, but when his legs didn’t respond the other man ended up sprawled half across him. Silver followed a moment later, driving her knuckles into Stefan’s throat.
That stunned him for a moment, but Andrew was still pulling himself out from under the other man when Stefan regained use of his arm. Stefan yanked at Silver, writhing to throw her off.
Silver pinned his one good arm with hers and sat on his chest. Andrew finally dragged himself out of reach, panting. “Satan’s whore!” Stefan screamed, his voice coming back raggedly after the throat strike. “You belong in Hell! All of you! You and every one of your spawn, until the world is cleansed of your beastly stink—”
It started just as an impulse to shut the man up, but Andrew leaned over to hook outstretched fingers into a pillow among the tumbled covers hanging from the bed. He tossed the pillow over Stefan’s face, following it with all the body weight he could bring to bear from his position.
Andrew met Silver’s eyes over Stefan, watching as each jerk of his body came closer to dislodging her. Maybe it was Andrew’s lack of strength, maybe it was uneven coverage from the pillow, but the man’s struggles did not abate with the lack of air. Andrew’s mind screamed at him to tear with teeth he didn’t have and couldn’t shift to get, or punch with strength that was long gone. And all he could do in the end was hold on, pressing down. Hold on for Silver.
The black wolf looked on impassively. Andrew locked gazes with Silver. “Can’t you tell Death to— Just ask him—”
Silver bit her lip, shaking her head. Her eyes drifted right over the wolf. “I can’t see him—” She gasped as Stefan bucked again.
“Right there—” Andrew indicated Death with his chin. Why couldn’t she see him now, of all times, when they needed him the most? He caught the wolf’s eyes himself. He just wanted this to end. “Please—”
“I thought you’d never ask.” Death pounced on Stefan. His jaws reached through Andrew’s hands and the pillow and plucked up something from within Stefan. Death tossed it into the air, caught it, and swallowed. Stefan went limp. Andrew drew in the first breath that actually felt like it gave him air since he’d first seen the man. It was over.
Death stepped back, regarding them both. “Remember me, Dare,” Stefan’s voice said, but robbed of the glinting sharpness of its earlier insanity. Andrew’s heart thrashed back to its greatest panicked speed at hearing that voice. It took him a moment to register the actual words. The next moment Death was gone, as completely as a hallucination would disappear.
Silver’s head dropped, a sob working its way free. Tears began to patter down a moment later. The weeping wracked her entire body.
“Silver. Silver, puppy. It’s over.” Andrew could only run his fingers along her cheek without overbalancing himself. The moisture trickled down to the burns, and the salt stung so badly he had to drop his hand again. Her pain stole his breath away again. It was all right. He wanted it to be all right for her.
“No.” The woman before him caught his eyes, and forged a connection so tight he knew even before she said it. “Not Silver.” She shivered, a helpless movement that looked like it might shake her apart, but she still reached out to gently remove the chain twisted around his wrist. He’d forgotten it was there.
She slid it into her pocket. “John and the others should be here soon. Andrew. I want to stay, but I can’t—”
Andrew managed one more drag over to catch her as she collapsed, shivers walking the line of a seizure, and then pulling back again. “The snakes … left their skins behind. Are they coming back? Where is the Lady? Death? Come back, please.”
Tears of his own stung in his eyes. “Oh, puppy.” He wanted to make it all right, but maybe there wasn’t an all right in this world for Silver. He held her as close as he could with his injuries, and listened as her madness returned.
25
Andrew wanted to pass out. It seemed only fair. He deserved that relief by now. Silver slipped unconscious quickly enough. Andrew pulled them half the length of the room away from the dead man before he gave up and just lay with his arm around Silver. He closed his eyes, but his mind kept running in quiet misery.
After a while, he tried to think what to do if the others didn’t come. His phone was destroyed and the landline in this house would have been disconnected. He tried to think beyond that, but the best he could do was repeat those facts over and over.
Footsteps. His sense of smell was so dulled by the stink of death and silver and blood he couldn’t tell who it was. Please, not humans. Please, Lady, please. Dark laughter bubbled up painfully from somewhere inside him. Praying to the Lady twice in an hour after a decade of atheism. He was seriously slipping.
“Dare? Silver? Thank the Lady.” John entered first, followed by Pierce, Laurence, and the woman whose name Andrew still couldn’t remember.
After that, it was easy to slip away and ignore the questions. He didn’t think he passed out, but time did jump a little. John carried Silver while the others took Andrew between them, probably so they wouldn’t have to touch the mess of his back. They were gentle, but he had so many burns, it wasn’t much more comfortable leaving the house than entering it had been.
The car lulled him as he lay half on the floor of the trunk, half on the folded-down backseat. He could keep his arm around Silver. He thought he remembered arriving at the Seattle pack house, but it might have been a false memory to link being in the car with being in bed and eating. He had the most wonderful steak he’d ever eaten in his life, just picking it up and gnawing. Then sleep.
His next sharp impression was of an empty spot beside him where Silver should have been. That brought him fully awake, heart po
unding, but the Seattle pack’s scent was everywhere around him, nothing of Stefan.
He was back in John’s room—his room. John’s scent was even more pervasive now Andrew was actually in the bed. Andrew rolled his shoulders in discomfort. At the moment, the scent of another alpha male just served to remind him of how weak he was. Maybe he could ask to change rooms.
He had more important concerns at the moment, though. Andrew took quick stock of his injuries. He couldn’t feel his legs. He felt along his back and his fingers met bandages over what felt like unbroken skin, but when he pulled up the fabric of borrowed pajama pants and pinched skin on his thigh, only his fingertips conveyed sensation. Like he was pinching someone else.
The transition from form to form often aided healing, so Andrew reached out for a shift. He’d rested, eaten, and it was still not far off full. It should have been easy. He should have felt it right there as he reached, the snap into a new configuration his for just a moment of concentration.
But nothing happened. He could feel it there, just beyond his reach, but no amount of concentration made it happen. Andrew held his breath for a moment, trying to keep his heart from racing out of control.
He’d never tried to shift this heavily wounded before. Maybe he just needed time to heal. He figured he’d be able to walk soon enough even without help. Wounds made by silver always took longer to heal, and a werewolf could heal in a couple minutes what would take a human weeks. Why shouldn’t it take days for him to heal something that a human never could? He just needed a little patience.
His other injuries seemed minor in comparison to his back. The burn on his palm screamed when he pressed it. The other burns on wrists and jaw were dull aches. It was strange to find the swath of burned skin without stubble amongst the growth along the rest of his jaw. He must have been out for a day or so.
Silver Page 22
