by Kelly Meding
His only answer was a loud groan.
I zipped across the Capital City Mall parking lot, making tracks for the entrance to the Watchtower at a dangerous speed. I hit the brakes at the last minute as I went through the barrier and nearly clipped a parked car. All thoughts of procedure flew out of my head, and I just kept going. I drove right down the short hall that spilled into the broader mall corridor. It was wide enough for two cars to drive side by side and still have room for a third to pass them.
A handful of familiar faces sprang out of my path. It wasn’t very far to the infirmary, and I hit the brakes again and swore I smelled them burning. I didn’t even turn off the engine, just shifted into park and tumbled out the driver’s-side door.
“Dr. Vansis!” I shouted as I circled to Wyatt’s side of the Jeep. “I need help!”
Wyatt was slumped over the passenger door, head lolling. He hadn’t passed out, but he wasn’t completely conscious, either. His pale skin burned with a fever I could feel without touching him, and sweat had soaked through his shirt.
“What happened?” Dr. Vansis asked. He shouldered me sideways, and if he had been anyone else, I’d have reacted way more violently. The doc was of average height and build, with curly multihued brown hair and a prickly personality, but he wasn’t my enemy.
“Werewolf attack,” I said. “Maybe fifteen, twenty minutes ago.”
Dr. Vansis gaped at me. “You’re serious?” My glare stopped any more questions. “All right. Hold his head while I open the door.”
A small crowd of gawkers watched us get Wyatt over Vansis’s shoulder in a fireman’s carry and take him into the infirmary. His actions seemed effortless, but all Therians had a way of surprising me with their hidden strength. He deposited Wyatt on the exam table and turned on a bright overhead light.
“He has gashes on his neck and a big bite on his left arm,” I said. The wounds were fairly obvious, but all the extra blood could be confusing. “He got the wolf pretty good before it ran off.”
“The Lupa blood could be what’s irritating his wounds,” Dr. Vansis said.
“Does that happen a lot?”
“To my knowledge, Lupa have been extinct for centuries.”
“Then why—?”
“It’s a theory, child,” he snapped as he examined the wounds on Wyatt’s arm. “I once saw a vampire react rather violently when she accidentally drank from a Cania, so there is grounds for it. But humans rarely react to Therian blood, and certainly not this badly.”
The infirmary door burst open, depositing Kismet and Marcus into the room. And if Kismet looked half as freaked as I did, I had to be a sight.
“There’s something wrong with him,” I said.
“Is he going to live?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” Dr. Vansis replied before I could. “Everyone out. I need to examine him and run some tests.”
I took a step toward him. “But—”
“Out!”
Marcus steered me into the corridor, where I promptly fell back against the storefront wall and collapsed onto my ass. My heart hammered against my ribs, and I felt sick. Kismet crouched in front of me and rested her hands on my knees.
“Are you hurt?” she asked.
“No, they didn’t come after me. Just Wyatt.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. What about Phin?”
“Nothing yet,” Marcus said. He was tense, coiled, as though his jaguar form was waiting just below the surface, ready to spring free and pounce.
“Anything else from Felix?”
Kismet shook her head. “No, and I don’t think we’ll get anything else out of him now.”
“Why?”
“I’ve tried, Tybalt’s tried. We even floated your Serenity Serum theory past him with no response. The only person he wants to see is Milo, and Milo refuses to go in that room.”
I wanted to pretend I was surprised, or even upset at Milo’s unwillingness to face his former Triad partner, but I wasn’t. I’d once witnessed a friend in a similar position, and I couldn’t imagine the horror of seeing someone you loved going through that.
“You know why he won’t do it,” she said.
“Yeah, I know.”
“Well, I don’t,” Marcus said.
Milo told me about it the day Felix was infected. In some ways, I’d expected the confession. I wasn’t completely oblivious to the people around me. But it wasn’t something for me to share with Marcus.
“Why the blue hell is there a Jeep in the corridor?” Astrid’s question boomed down the hall. She stalked toward us with long, angry strides; Isleen followed, taking shorter, more precise steps to keep up with the almost-sprinting were-cat.
Kismet stood and shifted closer to Marcus.
“My fault,” I said, still sitting. Now that my adrenaline was wearing off, I hadn’t yet mustered the energy to get up.
“When Phineas called, he said someone might be injured,” Astrid said.
“You spoke to Phin?” Hope bloomed in my chest, and I sat up a little straighter.
“Just a moment ago, yes.”
“Did he track the werewolves?”
She gave me a critical eyeballing. “He lost two of them in Mercy’s Lot but managed to backtrack and find the injured third. He’s holding it in a secure location until Baylor’s squad can get there.”
An osprey was holding a wounded werewolf captive. Sometimes my life was too strange, even for me.
“What location?” Marcus asked.
“He mentioned the trunk of a parked car.”
“They can’t interrogate the wolf in a car,” I said.
Astrid gave me the look that impatient teachers give their dumbest students. “Once the Lupa is secure, he’ll be brought back here for interrogation.”
“No way.” I mimicked her expression. “Those wolves are working with Walter Thackery. Teen Wolf admitted it to my face, and if Thackery loves anything, it’s to keep track of his toys. He tracks his hounds and his hybrids, and he probably tracks the wolves, too.” Just because Astrid’s people hadn’t found a tracking device on the wolf I killed at Boot Camp, didn’t mean these guys were clean.
“Evangeline is correct,” Isleen said, inclining her head in my direction. “It would be decidedly unwise to bring the Lupa back to the Watchtower.”
Something niggled at the back of my mind like a fire alarm in a faraway building.
“Okay, you’re right,” Astrid said. “I’ll have Baylor find someplace in the city to interrogate the wolf. And to be on guard for possible tails to their location. Now, do you want to tell us what happened on your end, Stone?”
“Fuck me.” It hit all at once, a wall of ice water that turned my guts inside out. No, no, no, no.…
“Stone?”
I don’t know who said it, because I was on my feet and running. Trying to outrace the panic of having done something so fucking stupid—unable to believe we were all capable of such obvious idiocy. Someone was following me, and I probably looked like a crazy person racing down the corridor in bloody clothes. No one, thankfully, was stupid enough to try to stop me.
Nevada was sitting on top of his desk chatting with Morgan, who was seated in the desk’s actual chair. They both gave surprised squawks when I slammed through the jail door.
“I need in there right-fucking-now,” I said, pointing at the interrogation room.
Nevada took in my state, then leapt off the desk. “What’s going on?”
“Please, just open the door.”
Maybe it was me using “please,” which rarely happens. Or someone with actual power to order him around came into the jail behind me and silently gave him permission. I don’t know, and I didn’t care. Nevada punched in the door code, and the lock snicked back.
I gave little consideration to just how terrible Felix looked after his long exposure to the wooden chair and whatever creative interrogation methods Marcus and Wyatt had used. He was about to be very, very dead anyway. He watched me with bleary ey
es and a sad half smile, as if he knew exactly why I was there.
I plucked a slim wooden spike off the table behind him, circled around to his front, and drove it as hard as I could into his right thigh. He shrieked. Saliva sputtered from his lips. I pressed the spike down harder until he started to cry.
“You son of a bitch,” I growled, getting in his face. “Is he tracking you?”
A flash of clarity stole through his agony, and Felix nodded.
“Thackery is tracking you?”
Another nod.
I swallowed back bile. “What’s the plan, Felix? We go after you, bring you back here, and Thackery sends his werewolf army to tear us down in our own headquarters?”
He lifted his head, clearly astonished by some part of my accusation. His leaky nostrils flared. “You smell like them.”
“That’s because one of them tried to kill Wyatt tonight, so he returned the favor by slicing its guts open. Now what’s the plan?”
“I don’t know.”
“Really?” I yanked out the spike, then slammed it down into his left thigh.
He jerked forward, snapping at my throat even as he squealed; I leaned just out of reach. “I was there to recruit; I wasn’t supposed to get caught!”
“Bullshit. What’s the fucking plan, Felix?”
“I don’t know!”
“Tell me what you know.”
“I can’t!”
“There are a dozen more spikes on that table, Felix. You know you’re going to die today. How many holes do you want before we end this?”
He closed his eyes. Tears feathered his lashes and ran down his blotchy cheeks. Judging by the blood on the floor and the cuts on his exposed skin, he wasn’t as upset about the pain as the emotions warring inside him. The little bit of humanity still lingering in his brain as opposed to the instinctive rage of the vampire infection.
“I don’t know what he’s doing with the werewolves, Evy, I swear,” he said. “Just that they’re freely loyal to him.”
“How many does he have?”
“I don’t know. I’ve only interacted with one.”
“When?”
“The night I was infected. He was sent to follow you. He saw the bus crash, then followed me. He took me to Thackery.” His voice cracked and his iridescent eyes begged me for mercy—something I wasn’t about to give. Not now. Not when he’d walked into our home wearing the equivalent of a police wire.
I believed him, though. So far. “How do you control the bloodlust, Felix? What’s Thackery giving you?”
“What’s that sound?”
“The voices in your head? Sorry, pal, they’re all yours.”
“Something else.” He shrank into his chair, curling forward like someone with a severe stomach cramp. The oddest look crossed his face, as though he suddenly understood the punch line to a frightening joke. “Goddammit. You should have killed me.”
“Give me time. I promised, right?”
“It’s too late.”
“You’re not going anywhere.” The look on his face said he thought otherwise, and a cold knot of dread squeezed my heart. “Felix?”
“This is wrong.”
“Now that’s a fucking understatement,” said a familiar voice that got our collective attention. Milo stood just inside the interrogation room, stone-faced, arms pulled so tightly across his chest that they seemed ready to snap. Marcus hovered just behind him.
Felix jerked upright, unable to move far thanks to his bonds, but struggling nonetheless. “You came now?”
Milo took a step backward and hit Marcus’s chest. His expression shifted from cold to furious. “I didn’t want to come, but Marcus told me you’re being tracked. You bastard!”
“It wasn’t my idea.”
“Of course not. You’re the victim, right? Poor crazy Halfie?”
“I was trying to protect you.”
“By leading Thackery right to our doorstep?” Milo came forward, stopping next to me. “What the hell do you want from me, Felix?”
“Get out of here.”
Milo made a choking sound. “Oh, so now you want me to leave? Fuck you.”
“It’s not a tracker.” Felix’s face pinched, and he doubled over again as far as his restraints allowed. “Get the fuck out of here!”
The hair on the back of my neck prickled as Felix’s words rang in my head. If he hadn’t been given a tracker, then what? Something was very, very wrong. Milo moved toward him. I grabbed Milo’s arm and pulled him back. Gave him a hard shove toward the door.
“Marcus, get him out of here,” I said.
“Should have never brought me here,” Felix said. “So sorry.” He looked up, his youthful face twisted in pain.
“Run.”
“What is Thackery giving you?” I needed this answer, dammit.
“Get out!”
“What is it?”
“Blood.”
“What?”
“What’s that sound?” someone asked in a terrible mirror of Felix’s earlier words, just as a second person yelled, “Stone!”
I was grabbed around the waist and hauled through the interrogation room door. A sharp whine cut through the voices, followed by a high-pitched beep. Felix looked right at me, tears streaking his face, and then he exploded.
Chapter Ten
BEFORE
Wednesday, July 2
The East Side
The handshake agreement establishing a three-way police force among humans, vampires, and Therians became an official arrangement the day after Boot Camp’s destruction and subsequent evacuation. Every Handler, Hunter, and trainee was given a choice to join or leave. In the end, we all said yes to joining, and we began assimilating on Wednesday.
“Seriously? This is your headquarters?”
I blurt it out as Wyatt drives into the parking lot of the defunct Capital City Mall, through what has to be a magical barrier of some sort because it tickles the back of my mind in the place I’ve come to associate with my tether to the Break. Kismet and Milo are in the backseat of the nondescript sedan that’s so unlike what I’m used to seeing Wyatt drive. I don’t know what I expected when he said the Watchtower was on the East Side near the Black River, but this isn’t it.
It isn’t so much the fact that, the last time I was here, I was attacked by well-organized Halfies and saw two Hunters murdered. It isn’t even the fact that this mall, abandoned fifteen years ago when a new one opened across town, protects a Sanctuary. I can even kind of look past the knowledge that Chalice Frost, the woman whose body I now inhabit, was born here on this very hot spot.
No, the thing that makes my palms sweat is what happened in the Sanctuary when Isleen brought me here the first time. She used a vampire meditation technique to help me remember the days leading up to my death—tortured mercilessly at the hands of the goblin Queen, taken apart bit by bit. It all came back at once in a crushing rush of emotion and pain. Alex had been there to hold me, let me cry it out. My last moments with him before he was infected by the vampire parasite are entwined with this place, as are the last moments of my old life.
Living and working here feels like a cruel joke.
Wyatt drives through the weedy parking lot, aiming for the interior of the U-shaped mall’s curve. Any remains of the helicopter that exploded here months ago is gone, cleaned up as though it never happened. Just as Isleen had, Wyatt drives straight through the illusion of a wall.
Inside is a host of other vehicles—cars, sport utilities, pickup trucks, and vans—all parked in the lot once occupied by several hollowed-out restaurants (if memory serves). Walls are knocked down, carpet is ripped up, and lines are painted on the bare cement floors. I must be gaping at the impressive utilization of space because Wyatt grins at me as he parks.
“So far I’m impressed,” Kismet says with a hint of awe in her voice. “How do you keep folks from seeing you drive through a wall?”
“The entire perimeter is protected by a barrier spell,” Wyatt
replies. “Makes it impossible for someone outside it to look straight at the mall, and it kind of urges them to stay away. Think of it like a magical repellent.”
“Human bug spray,” I say.
He nods.
“And if they somehow cross the barrier?” Kismet asks.
“Then security deals with them,” he replies.
I can imagine what that means. Overall the location is perfect. It’s in the middle of an older part of town that is mostly abandoned, so traffic is light enough to not cause us many problems. We’re also in the middle of a sea of pavement and construction, and I have no doubt the foundation has been reinforced with tar—precautions against bridge trolls, who are part of the earth and known to form in unfinished cement. They also answer to the Fey, and I hate the idea that Smedge, a troll I once considered a friend, is now my enemy.
We tumble out of the car and follow Wyatt on a tour of our new home.
The original tiled corridor is still intact, leading us to an intersection and an old fountain lit by a skylight. The fountain holds a variety of plants and herbs, all new and alive. The entire mall is freshly scrubbed and carries the scents of food, new paint, and cut wood, as well as the distant sounds of construction and voices. The long corridor is clear of kiosks and benches. To the right and all the way down is the old food court. To the left, halfway down and tucked into a service corridor, is the Sanctuary.
“The food court’s been modified,” Wyatt says, jacking his thumb over his shoulder even as he leads us in the opposite direction. “We combined some of the kitchens, walled off the others, and now have a working cafeteria. The windows are all blacked out, but Kyle’s a good artist and he’s been painting some murals in his spare time.”
A were-dog who paints. What are the odds?
It’s probably good that I keep the thought to myself because the muralist in question pops out of a storefront and waves.
“Astrid was just asking if you were here yet,” he says, his voice echoing down the corridor.
“Just got here,” Wyatt replies. “Does she need something?”
“I don’t think so, but I’ll let her know you’ve arrived.” He disappears as quickly as he came, back into the storefront.
