by Megan Morgan
“Dr. Winston is coming,” Lorena said. “He knows more than I do. It’s a long shot, but if we can cure the virus, maybe they’ll leave us alone for good.”
Deacon frowned. “If you can find a cure, I’m not sure you ought to give it to them.”
She looked up at him. “You don’t want the virus to spread, do you?”
“Might take care of the problem for us.” He sighed. “It ain’t easy for me to see them as human when all I can think about is how that big bastard leader of theirs was gonna rip my throat out, right in front of my family. Did you forget that?”
“I couldn’t forget it if I tried.” She yanked her hand out of his. “But I also know if this war continues, this town will never be safe. Just because most of them are gone doesn’t mean they won’t come back. If they organized once, they can do it again, and they might succeed this time. You don’t want to add the virus on top of that and make them even more dangerous to deal with, do you?”
“You’re gonna take Dr. Winston out in the woods?” Deacon’s Daddy asked. “We can’t convince you otherwise? You’re gonna put yourself in danger again?”
Lorena got to her feet. “I don’t have a choice.” She looked at Stacy. “Can you help me brew a potion?”
Stacy titled her head. “What sort of potion?”
Lorena motioned for Stacy to follow her to the kitchen. They left the room.
Deacon looked at the chair in the corner. Jack sat with his elbows on his knees, head down, his hands clasped. He’d been sitting like that the whole time and hadn’t said a word.
Deacon’s Daddy got up. “You can’t let her do this, Deacon. They’re gonna kill her when she can’t cure that Wolvite.”
Deacon rubbed his forehead. “I don’t know I can stop her.”
Zeke slapped his hands on his thighs. “They can’t do nothing to us. They come at us, we’ll be ready. They ain’t never snuck up on us before, how the hell they gonna do it now?” He got up too. “We’re gonna hunt them down and we’re gonna finish this.” He walked to the hallway. “Stacy! C’mon, we’re going home.”
Deacon’s Daddy shook his head. “We can’t let it happen, Deacon.” He walked to the front door and went out, rifle in hand.
Stacy hollered back for Zeke to calm the hell down and wait for her in the truck. He stomped out, carrying a rifle too. Better for them not to step outside without a weapon right now.
Silence fell, apart from the girls murmuring in the kitchen.
“Well.” Deacon took a deep breath. “She’s alive. I guess that mystery is solved.”
Jack lifted his head. His face was somber, his gaze distant.
“Part of me wonders,” Deacon spoke lowly, “if Lorena ain’t doing this because Mel is—was, my sister, and she thinks she’s doing right by our family somehow.”
“I hoped I’d never have to see her again.” Jack’s voice was grim. “But if Lorena goes out there, we need to go with her and protect her.”
“I damn well plan on it, though I reckon they’ll tell her we can’t come along. If we can’t come along, she ain’t going. Ain’t gonna be no cure for no Wolvite.”
“I don’t see there being no cure, but if they’re reaching out to us…”
“Mel’s afraid that mangy bastard she calls a mate is gonna die.” Deacon curled his upper lip. “Ought to let him die, ought to let her die, too.” He paused. “If Daddy knew what we know, he’d see this a different way, I reckon. But I’m afraid he’d be like Lorena too, thinking we got to help her cause it’s her—cause it’s his daughter.”
Jack abruptly stood. Deacon frowned up at him.
“I changed my mind.” Jack hitched up his jeans. “I do want to see her again. I want to look her in the eye and ask her how much they had to brainwash her to get her to do what she did. How in any lifetime she thought it was right, betraying her family like she did.”
There was no good answer to that. They’d started brainwashing her the day they kidnapped her and there wasn’t no turning back. Even if her family hogtied her and tried to deprogram her for the rest of her life, it probably wouldn’t work.
“Maybe you shouldn’t go,” Deacon said. “It’s only gonna tear you apart, seeing her. You just come back here, you’re still trying to get your bearings.”
Jack looked out the window. “I know she’s out there now. I ain’t gonna be able to stop thinking about it.” He walked to the door, grabbed up his rifle next to it, and left.
Deacon got up and walked to the kitchen. Stacy was squatted down, petting Clem.
“I gotta go bury my dogs, now that things have calmed down.” She stood and looked at Lorena. “Come over after supper. We’ll work on it.” She walked past Deacon. She had a pistol on her hip.
Once she left, Lorena slumped against the sink counter.
Deacon walked over and leaned on the counter too, facing the window. “They all think this is a bad idea.”
“I don’t think it’s a good idea, but I’m not going to risk losing you. Maybe they’re bluffing, but maybe they’re not.”
He chewed over some words in his head, words he wanted to let out but didn’t quite know how.
“They’re watching me,” she said. “Watching all of us. I’m going to try to extend an olive branch. Keep them at bay.”
“What do you think they’re gonna do when you can’t help them, when you and Dr. Winston can’t cure him? They’re gonna tear into you, and they’re gonna come after us. It won’t matter that you tried. They ain’t gonna make no promises we can trust.”
“I’m going to try to get them to meet us in a place where we’ll be safe, where they don’t have an advantage. I don’t know if they can transport Dafydd, but if they can, Dr. Winston can look at him somewhere that’s not their camp. Somewhere neutral.”
At least she was using her head.
“Maybe Dr. Winston can even take him to his lab,” she went on. “He’s never been able to study the virus in a living Wolvite. Maybe he’ll find some answers.”
Deacon snorted. “You really think they’ll let you cart him off?”
“If they’re desperate enough, maybe.”
Deacon struggled with those words again; finally, he let them out.
“How’d she look?”
Lorena raised her eyebrows. “She was…dirty. Thin. They’re not doing so well out there.”
Deacon shifted his jaw, grinding his back teeth together.
“They’re starving. I don’t know how their society works as far as hunting and gathering, or if the witches thrive differently than Wolvites. She didn’t look like she’d had an easy year, though.” She hesitated. “You know, if we can achieve peace between us, maybe—maybe she could come back.”
“Come back to what? After what she’s done, my parents couldn’t accept her. Jack sure as hell couldn’t accept her.”
“I know.” She touched his arm. “But she’s your sister, and I know how this hurts you.”
Yeah, it hurt, but it had always hurt, and this wasn’t the kind of hurt he could put on his parents. Their heartbreak would be ten times his if they knew, if she tried to “come back.”
“She ain’t my sister.” His throat was tight. “Chelsea is dead.”
Lorena wrapped her arms around him. She rested her head on his chest. He could still smell the sex on her, the love he’d given her. The way he’d marked her.
He wrapped his arms around her in return. The thought of her going back out in those woods, helping those monsters, helping Mel, turned his blood to ice.
“I’m not gonna let anything happen to you.” He kissed the top of her head. “I’m gonna protect you, if I have to use my last breath to do it.”
“Please don’t,” she whispered. “I’d rather you keep breathing.”
* * * *
Lorena stood in Stacy’s kitchen, at the tall table where they practiced making potions many times. Lorena still got some of her herbs and plants confused. Sometimes she added too much of one thing or not enou
gh of another. If she’d ever been any good at cooking and baking, she might be better at making potions.
“I’m sorry about your dogs.” Lorena chopped thin strips of tree bark. “I wish Clem hadn’t been so reluctant to make friends with them.”
Stacy ground up herbs in a bowl with a pestle. “And these are the creatures you want to help.”
Lorena looked up at her. “I don’t want to help them, I need to. Or everyone could end up like the dogs.”
Stacy kept grinding. “She scared you. Of course she did, she’s desperate. But Zeke’s right. If they could hurt us, why haven’t they done it by now?”
“Deacon said the same thing.”
“So why do you think they can do it now?”
Lorena set the knife down. “We didn’t see them coming last night, when they kidnapped me. Don’t you think that’s evidence they can hurt us? We didn’t even know they were still around, even me, who goes out looking for them on a daily basis. Come on Stacy, use your head. They’ve already demonstrated they can get to us if they want to.”
Stacy set the pestle down and leaned on the table with both hands. She sighed. “They got great timing, don’t they? This is just what Jack needs.”
“My heart aches for him.” Deacon’s own personal, secret pain weighed on her mind. “I ache for all of you, having to deal with this.”
“And I’m scared for you, having to go back out there to keep us all safe.”
“I guess it’s my job.”
Lorena hadn’t told her the entire plan. She didn’t even know if her plot would work. She hoped she was right about the Wolvites watching her. The strange tingle she felt said that she was. Eyes were on her.
They mixed the ingredients, the recipe taken from one of Stacy’s books. The potion part was simply a calming potion they would use as a delivery method for the bark. Unlike Hazel, Stacy didn’t write her own potion books. Hers had been handed down through her family from grandmother to mother to daughter.
Stacy drained the potion into a small glass bottle. The liquid was thick and dark green.
“It probably tastes terrible.” She shoved a cork stopper in it. “But then I don’t know what sort of palate a Wolvite has. Maybe they’ll love it.” She held the bottle out to Lorena.
Lorena took it. “I can’t thank you enough for this, especially because I understand how morally against this you must be. How hard it must be for you.”
“I think you’re crazy, but my husband is crazy too. I don’t want him getting killed. He wants to go storming into those woods. If you can figure out a way to keep that from happening, I would greatly appreciate it.”
Lorena smiled. “I’ll try.” She looked toward the kitchen doorway, into the living room.
Zeke and Deacon sat on the couch, playing a video game. Jack sat in a chair next to them, chin propped on his fist, staring at the TV.
“I need you to do me one more favor.” Lorena lowered her voice. “I need you to keep Deacon distracted for a little bit.”
“How come?”
Lorena glanced at the kitchen window. Evening had fallen, the sky a deep blue.
“I have to go give this to them.” She clutched the bottle. “Don’t let Deacon know I’ve gone outside.”
Stacy gaped at her. “I thought you were gonna give it to them when you went back in the woods?”
“This is a bargaining chip. I’m going to give it to them and try to negotiate that they bring Dafydd to a safe place where Dr. Winston can examine him without putting us in danger.”
Stacy widened her eyes. “You’re going out in the woods right now? It’s getting dark.”
“No.” Lorena went to the back door. “They’re watching me. They’ve been watching me since they brought me back. I’m going to walk out there and ask for an audience.”
Stacy looked out the window. “They’re watching us right now?”
“Do you understand now why I’m so worried they might actually make good on their promise?” Lorena drew up her courage. “Just make sure you head Deacon off if he comes looking for me. I’ll try to be back as fast as I can.”
“How the hell am I supposed to head him off?”
Lorena turned the knob. “Tell him I’m in the potty or something.”
A raucous commotion rose in the living room. The game was going well for someone.
“I think he’s distracted right now.” Lorena eased the door open. “I’ll hurry.”
Stacy switched the radio on the counter on. “I’m not talking to myself to pretend you’re still out here.”
Lorena’s heart pounded, her stomach in knots. “Thank you.” She slipped out the door.
Stacy peeked out. “Be careful, for Godsakes.”
Lorena patted the gun on her hip. “I will.”
Chapter 7
Shadows gathered thick beneath the trees. Stacy and Zeke, like everyone else in their family, lived outside of town and the woods lined the edge of their property. Without knowing exactly where to go, Lorena simply followed the tug in her gut.
Her palm was slick around the bottle and she feared she would drop it and lose it in the tall grass. Her other hand rested lightly on her gun. She stopped about ten feet from the trees and the back of her neck prickled. The power of nature welled in her and expanded like a slowly inflating balloon. Something else was there too, something cautious and observant.
“Hello?” she called out, as loud as she dared. “Is anybody there?”
Going into the trees would not be wise. Not only would it be dangerous, but the more time she spent outside, the bigger the risk of getting caught.
“I have something for you.” She held up the bottle. “It’s for Dafydd, it may help him.”
Something stirred in the trees to her left and she whirled toward it.
The prickling on her skin intensified. The shape advanced toward her, a dense shadow moving slowly through the gloom.
She expected Neala. Instead, a tall figure appeared. He didn’t emerge from the trees but remained beneath the branches, just inside the tree line. His skin glinted gold in the fading light. He was massive, even bigger than Deacon, his dark hair thick on his shoulders.
She crept toward him. “Kendrick, right? You were the one who spoke to me in the woods last night.”
His hands were clenched at his sides in meaty fists. He was dressed as before, in animal hide pants and shirtless. A long beaded necklace hung around his wide column of a throat and rested on his enormous chest.
“This is for Dafydd.” She held the bottle out again. “I don’t know if it will actually help him, but it might ease his symptoms. It won’t cure him.”
He gazed at her, as still as the trees.
She took a deep breath. “I’m giving you this as a gesture of goodwill. I fully intend to help you. Dr. Winston will be here in the morning, he knows much more than I do, but…”
Kendrick took a slow step forward.
She grew cautious. “But…” Her fingers danced over the butt of her gun. “I need to ask something of you, of Neala, actually. I wonder if she would agree to a compromise?”
“A compromise?” His voice rumbled like distant thunder.
“I don’t think you can deny that coming into the woods is a dangerous proposition for me and Dr. Winston. There’s no guarantee you won’t kill us.”
His gaze remained fixed on her, all-consuming.
“I want to help Dafydd,” she said. “Have you seen this virus before? Have you seen what it does? There’s no cure, not one we know of, anyway.”
“Of course I have seen it. I have seen my family die from it, brothers and sisters equally. I have seen them go mad with it.”
Lorena’s curiosity once again overwhelmed her trepidation. “There’s female Wolvites?”
“They are rare.” He flicked his gaze to the bottle in her hand. “Once, there were more.”
“Can only female Wolvites have Wolvite children? Or can witches have your children as well?”
H
e growled. “You want our secrets? Is that part of the compromise?”
“No.” She shook her head. “I’m not…I’m just curious. I have so many questions, so many things I wish we understood. It could lead to peace, if we understood each other.”
Hostility emanated from him, but there was also interest. Had he ever dreamt of peace? Had any of them?
“You are a bold witch,” he said. “Fearless, like our witches.”
“Maybe I just don’t have the good sense to be afraid.” A tiny smile broke her lips. “I’m a scientist, we’re always curious.”
“My witch was killed in your attack.” His anger swelled and rolled over her like a black wave. “She was shot as we tried to flee. I carried her body away so it would not be desecrated.”
“I’m sorry,” Lorena said softly. “I never wanted that to happen. I tried to stop it.”
“Your kind are killers. Heartless murderers.”
He made her nervous, but anger also flared in her, and resentment. “Wolvites killed my mother. They attacked her while she slept. She wasn’t trying to hurt them. They didn’t even finish her off, she had to suffer and die from your venom.”
The heavy lines of his face softened, just a bit. The malevolent glow in his eyes simmered down.
“Not all of my kind are killers.” Lorena spoke tightly. “And not all of your kind are, either. But there are killers among both of us, and every time someone kills, the cycle repeats itself. It has to stop. It must stop.”
He swept her with his gaze, and seemed to consider her.
“I advocate for peace, that’s why I’m going to help you.” She walked toward him, the bottle held out in front of her. “I don’t want the cycle to repeat again.”
He didn’t move.
She stopped, close enough he could take it. “You said you’ve seen your kind die from the virus, then you understand there is no cure. If there was a potion, your witches surely would have discovered it by now. I don’t know if we can heal him. Neala needs to understand that.”
