by Reine, SM
Eleanor cut Abel’s ankles free as well. He got to his feet, and she didn’t stand. He wasn’t sure that she could.
He gazed longingly at the empty fields bathed in moonlight. The white swells were so tantalizing—freedom, just a few steps away. All he had to do was start running.
He took a step, and then stopped. Looked back at his mother’s corpse.
Abel’s heart ached. “I can take you with me,” he said. “I can find someone to fix you. It’s got to be possible.”
She sneered. “Run!”
The arrangements were complete, and Cain was just hours from victory.
He reclined on the floor of the mobile home’s empty living room, hands folded over his stomach and eyes closed. The walls were covered in maps, reports of Rylie’s movements, pictures of the Gresham Ranch. He even had a few photos of the wedding decorations that had been set up earlier in the day.
Eleanor had taught him her Process for tracking prey, and his eyes were everywhere. Even now, his men were watching the Greshams.
But Cain was resting, and enjoying the anticipation.
Trying to organize a movement wasn’t easy, yet he had claimed dozens of men as his own—men who bore the mark of the Apple, but would listen to everything he told them. Now, after so many months of stalking, he was going to have his retribution.
Abel would die tonight. Seth would die tomorrow. And he would claim Rylie—and her unborn infant—as his own.
He wanted to savor the victory.
Cain smelled Eleanor’s approach before she opened entered again. It was hard not to smell her coming now. Without Scott’s spells to maintain her, she was decaying.
He didn’t open his eyes. “Mother,” he said, allowing himself a smile. “Was it as good as you imagined to kill Abel, so many years after he betrayed us?”
She didn’t reply.
He finally looked at her. Fluffy snow was stuck to her hair and the layers of her black dress. Her destroyed eye pointed toward the wall, while the other focused on him.
And she looked pissed.
Cain sat up. “You killed him, didn’t you?”
Eleanor raised the knife. The blade was unbloodied. “Tell me why you let that blond whore live.”
“Tell me you killed Abel,” he said, getting to his feet. His moments of languorous peace were shattered. “Mother. I need to hear these words from you.”
“She’s pregnant,” Eleanor said, advancing on him at a limp. One of her legs dragged underneath her.
“That doesn’t change anything—”
“You want her baby to live!”
So Abel had told her. Cain cursed himself inwardly. He hadn’t thought that Abel would tell Eleanor, much less that she would actually listen to him—Eleanor’s mind seemed to be rotting along with the rest of her body.
“I knew I should have taken care of this myself,” he said, reaching for the knife.
Eleanor lunged. Silver flashed through the air, and he felt the bite of the metal burying into his bicep.
Cain roared and ripped the knife out of his arm. Silver didn’t sting a natural-born werewolf the way it did the impure, but that didn’t mean that the injury didn’t hurt like hell.
He flung the knife aside.
“What’s wrong with you?” he demanded, grabbing Eleanor’s remaining arm as blood cascaded down his elbow. “I’m your son.”
“You’re a waste of breath.” She spat ichor into his face. It splashed like acid on his cheek. “You’re just as bad as Abel and Seth.”
Hurt and betrayal crashed over him. Cain closed his eyes, took deep breaths, and tried to calm his anger.
He had spent his childhood raised in foster homes, knowing that his mother was out there somewhere. He had spent so many days dreaming of her. What she would be like. Longing for her love.
When he learned that she had been killed, he had abandoned everything to find a necromancer to resurrect her, and then dedicated months more to tracking down her killers—Eleanor’s other sons, the useless bastards.
He had thought he was finally happy.
And now she spit on him.
“I think that you’re having a bad night,” Cain said slowly, carefully. “We need—”
“You deserve to die,” she said in a dry voice. Each syllable was slower than the last.
She swiped at him with bony fingertips, and it was too easy to step back and dodge her.
“I’ll find Scott,” he said. “He needs to heal you.”
“You don’t deserve my blood,” Eleanor hissed, taking the knife from the floor and rounding on him again.
“Mother—”
“I’m going to bleed it from you.”
“Mother!”
She swung with the knife, and he wasn’t so shocked that he couldn’t dodge her blow. Cain instinctively knocked her arm aside with his. There was a dry crack when his elbow drove into her flesh. One of the bones in her forearm fractured and jutted from the skin.
“Bleed,” Eleanor said. Even her good eye was empty of consciousness now, too. The rage had taken her somewhere else. Somewhere inhuman.
Cain felt panic swell in his chest. “Don’t make me hurt you, Mother. Not now. Not when we’re so close.”
But she only kept advancing on him.
He threw open the front door and dropped down the steps. The stakes that had bound Abel to the ground were little lumps under the snow, but his body was gone.
She had freed him.
“What have you done?” he asked. He heard her taking slow, careful steps out of the trailer behind him.
And then he felt a blazing point of pain erupt between his shoulder blades.
Cain reacted on instinct. He swung as he turned, lashing out with both fists. They connected with Eleanor’s skull and sent her crashing to the ground.
He watched in horror as she fell.
The dry ligaments that barely held her together snapped free when she struck. A horrible shriek filled the air—one leg was twisted underneath her, her spine was twisted at an impossible angle, and her face was screwed up with pain. She shouldn’t have been able to hurt. Scott told him that zombies didn’t feel things the way live humans did.
“No!” Cain cried. “I didn’t mean to—”
“Failure,” Eleanor hissed through her gritted teeth. Her eye glistened at him in the moonlight. “Failure.”
His protests fell into silence as he stared at the broken fragments of his mother. Any living human in that state wouldn’t have been able to speak. Yet even now, she stared at him with hate.
Calm settled over him, and a grim certainty that robbed him of his panic.
“You’re just having a bad day,” he said gently, even as his heart was breaking. “I know that the Greshams have Scott. When we kill them all at the wedding tomorrow, he’ll fix you. But for now, you’re… you’re unwell, Mother.”
She hissed and wailed as he carefully picked up the pieces of her body, took her behind the mobile home, and placed her inside the trunk of his car. Her body fit in there neatly, folded in half.
“You animal bastard,” Eleanor said.
Cain shuddered. Wiped his cheeks dry.
“I’ll fix you, Mother,” he promised, voice a low whisper.
He slammed the trunk shut.
The rising sun broke over the horizon, glowing through a crack in the clouds.
Just a couple more hours to the wedding now.
ELEVEN
To Have and to Hold
The phone rang six times, and then clicked over to voicemail—the exact same way that it had the last twelve times Seth tried to call.
He swallowed against the lump in his throat as he heard the recording of his brother’s voice.
“This is Abel. Leave a message.”
Beep.
Seth had hung up every other time he called, but he was out of time. The wedding was due to start in an hour. He couldn’t keep hoping for Abel to answer.
“Hey, man,” he said, clearing hi
s throat as he paced in his bedroom at the Gresham Ranch. “This is—it’s me. We’ve got to talk. I keep trying to reach you, but…”
But what? Seth sighed.
“I’m marrying Rylie today. I was hoping you’d be here, but I understand why you’re not answering, and why you wouldn’t want to come.”
Could he leave it at that? It didn’t feel like enough. There were still a thousand more things that he wanted to say.
“I wasn’t bluffing,” Seth said. It came out before he could even think to stop himself. “When I called Scott at the California sanctuary, and asked him to let you know that I love you. It wasn’t a bluff. I do love you, bro. And I don’t think I’ve told you that enough. I hope you’ll come back soon.”
Feeling strange and awkward, Seth hung up. He set the phone on his table and stared at it.
It had been almost a week since he last heard from Abel. Every day hurt a little more than the one before. He thought that they were friends, as well as brothers—and good enough friends that they wouldn’t let something like a girl get between them.
“I guess I was wrong,” he muttered, facing the mirror.
Seth was already in his rented tuxedo. He wore a white suit with a red vest underneath. It matched the theme of the wedding—Gwyn had given him the vest with a wink and told him that he would match Rylie somehow.
The bowtie hung loose around his neck. He had already tried, and failed, to get it to tie about a hundred times.
“One hundred and one times is the charm,” he said, working on the knot again.
There was a brief knock at the door, and Yasir entered. He cleaned up pretty good. Black suit, no tie, dress shirt with the button open at the neck.
“Need help?” Yasir asked.
Seth dropped his hands. “Hell yes. Save me from this unholy thing.” The commander took over, standing behind Seth to quickly tie it in a neat bow. He made it look so easy. “Is that suit Union issue?”
Yasir laughed as he turned Seth around and brushed the hair off of his shoulders with brisk motions. “Believe it or not, yes. We do covert ops sometimes. There’s even a whole department for espionage.”
“Nice,” Seth said, reaching up to fiddle with the tie.
Yasir grinned. His gold canine glinted in the light. “Nervous?”
Seth braced his hands on the windowsill to stare out the hill at his wedding. Bekah, Trevin, and Stephanie were in hyper-party mode, and they whirled around getting everything right at the last minute—the chair drapes, the red ribbons, the roses, the table of gifts. There weren’t many presents. Half of their guests were plants from the Union, and the other half were werewolves; they didn’t have actual friends to invite.
There were snow flurries that morning, so they had put an awning over everything and draped fairy lights on it. It looked like a huge gazebo. Really pretty.
And in about an hour, he was going to meet Rylie under it and promise to love her until the day they died.
Hopefully, that wouldn’t be tonight, too.
“Nervous?” Seth echoed. He gave a small laugh. “No way.”
But he didn’t feel right going into battle without his brother at his back, either.
Yasir gave him a hard pat on the shoulder. “Let me show you what we’ve got out there.”
They headed out into the snow. The heavy clouds and absent wind made everything warm, even as the daylight faded, like a pleasant autumn day that was a little icier than usual. The winter berries and roses were beautiful splashes of red against the white of the snow.
It was easy to pick out the Union, because they were the only men in black nearby. The suits really were Union issue. They were all dressed the same.
They milled around the back of the gazebo together under the watchful eye of Levi, who was getting the sound system ready nearby. Seth noticed that their jackets bulged under the arms.
“Subtle,” Seth said.
Yasir shrugged. “It doesn’t have to be.” He pointed at the man on the far left. “That’s Grant. He’s an ordained priest. He can officiate the ceremony for you two.”
“Actually, I was hoping I could do the honors.”
Seth turned. Someone had let Scott Whyte out of the cellar, and he wore a neat suit and bowler hat low on his brow that concealed the bullet wound. Levi hovered a few feet behind him, looking worried.
“What do you want?” Yasir asked sharply.
“Wait,” Seth said, putting a hand on his best man’s arm to keep him from drawing his gun.
“I realize what a betrayal it was to cooperate with Cain’s demands and bring back Eleanor,” Scott said, holding his hands out to show them that he was unarmed. “But I hope you understand why I did it.”
“Cowardice?” Yasir suggested.
Scott gripped his heart, as if the word wounded him. “Love,” he said. He caught Seth’s eye. “I’m not the only one who has done stupid, misguided things to protect his family.”
Seth rubbed his chin thoughtfully.
“If you’re seriously considering listening to him, I have to protest,” Yasir said. “This is a bad idea. We need someone we can trust at the altar.”
“I already have you,” Seth said.
Levi stepped up to his father’s side and placed a hand on his shoulder. He was a lot taller than Scott, which made him fairly imposing. “He can’t do any damage if all of us are watching him. And he knows he’s made a mistake.”
Scott extended a hand. After a moment, Seth shook it.
“I look forward to the ceremony,” Seth said.
Yasir gave a snort of disgust and walked away. The other men from the Union followed him. They didn’t go far—just to the gazebo to sit down. Many of the werewolves were already seated. The time for the wedding was approaching quickly.
“Thank you,” Scott said.
Seth fixed him with a hard look. “You’re not forgiven. I’m sorry, Scott, but it’s going to take more than words to regain my trust.”
“What do you expect from me?”
“There was a way to bring Eleanor back from the dead,” Seth said, lowering his voice. Levi leaned in to listen to him. “After all of this is done, I want you to bring Gwyneth back instead.”
The witch looked startled. “But it requires sacrifice.”
“I know,” Seth said. “I know.”
Music started playing from the speakers by the gift table. It wasn’t the processional yet, but it was a warning that they only had fifteen minutes left. Seth stepped away.
“I’ll have Stephanie check on Rylie,” Levi said.
Seth led Scott to the altar and took his position beside a disgruntled-looking Yasir. He swallowed his nerves, checked his cell phone, and saw that Abel still hadn’t called back.
“Almost time,” he whispered.
The music started playing. Rylie could barely hear it from her tent outside the house, but it still made her heart leap into her throat.
“But I’m not ready!” Rylie gasped, pulling her garter belt over her stockings.
She pulled shoes on, but her fingers were shaking too much to get the straps around her ankles. Gwyn laughed and took care of it for her. “Relax. The wedding’s not going to start without you. Trust me.”
Rylie gnawed on a fingernail. “What if we get attacked during the ceremony? What if we don’t get attacked during the ceremony? Oh my God, what if I trip while I’m walking up the aisle?”
Her aunt grabbed her shoulders. “Breathe in. Breathe out.”
“I am breathing! I couldn’t panic if I stopped!”
“You’re not going to trip and fall. You’re a werewolf, babe. You’re the epitome of grace. Remember?”
“Oh,” Rylie said. “Yeah. But what about—”
“Cain and Eleanor? Don’t worry about it.” Gwyn jerked her thumb at the table that was occupied by a space heater and parts of Rylie’s wardrobe. “I’ve got a shotgun under my wrap. And I have an extra weapon, too.”
She pulled a glass ball out of a box
on the table.
“What’s that?” Rylie asked, curiosity winning out over her fear. She leaned in closer. It had a tiny animal skull inside.
“This is what Scott used to resurrect Eleanor,” Gwyn said. “If she shows up, I’m pretty sure I can use it to get rid of her.”
Rylie opened her mouth to argue, but Stephanie Whyte stuck her head through the flap, interrupting them. “Almost ready?” she asked. Little white flowers were pinned in her strawberry blond hair.
“Almost,” Rylie said with a weak smile.
Stephanie stepped in and fluffed out Rylie’s skirt. “Lovely,” she said fondly. And then her voice hardened. “My father’s officiating, but there are Union soldiers out there. I saw them myself. You’ll be safe.”
“Stephanie,” Gwyn snapped. “Is this the time?”
Rylie pressed her hands against her stomach. She wasn’t sure if that queasy feeling was morning sickness or nerves. “It’s good to know. It’s not like we aren’t preparing for trouble, too.” Rylie hesitated, and then asked, “Any sign of Abel?”
Stephanie frowned. “No. Were you expecting him?”
Expecting? No. Hoping? Maybe a little bit.
Rylie shook her head.
“I’m going to take position,” Stephanie said. “I’ll be watching you from the back.” She squeezed Rylie’s arm encouragingly. “You look great.”
And then she was gone, and Rylie still had to get her dress done up the back.
“Hurry,” she urged Gwyn, sucking in her stomach.
“The dress is just a little snug.” Her aunt grunted as she forced the sides of the fabric together. Her fingers were cold against Rylie’s skin.
Rylie pressed her hands against her lower belly. It seemed a tiny bit bigger than when she had first tried on dresses. “I can’t be growing that fast. Do I look pregnant?”
“You’ve changed sizes since prom. That’s all. There.” Gwyn finally secured the hook and sighed.
Rylie twisted and turned to study herself in the mirror. Bekah had already done her hair in loose curls down her back, with smoky eye shadow and pink lip gloss. All of that looked good. And the dress was gorgeous, too—it had demi-sleeves, a slash of red at the waist, and a heart-shaped cutout at the small of her back. But all Rylie could think about was the shape of her belly.
