Madly and Wolfhardt

by M. Leighton

  Kellina was my source of water. I could plainly see that Wolfhardt was losing his hold on her, but it was costing Kellina her life.

  Jerking my hand back as if I’d been burned, I fell back on my hands, away from Kellina. I could hear Aidan’s pleas and accusations.

  “Madly, stop! You’re killing her! Madly, please!”

  His words sounded far away, paling in comparison to the conviction in my soul as doubts assailed me.

  What if I couldn’t capture Wolfhardt without killing Kellina? How could I make a choice like that? How could I commit such an atrocity? It was murder!

  “Let me go!” Aidan growled at his captors. “Madly please!” he yelled.

  I looked to Jackson, who was watching me carefully. In his eyes, I saw pain. It wasn’t his pain that burned there, though. It was mine. It was a reflection of my agony, my turmoil. It was as if his insides were being ripped out because of my suffering, his pain a sacrifice to the gods of bitter victories and unacceptable choices.

  Slowly, he rolled to his feet, pulling me up to stand at his side. His pale eyes, eyes that seemed brighter than the moon that hung above us, saw into me, seared through me. They reached inside me and placed a gift inside my heart, a gift that spoke to me in words that my head couldn’t understand.

  “Do you trust me?”

  I nodded.

  “Do you trust me?” he asked again.

  “Yes,” I whispered.

  With a blinding speed, Jackson bent and tossed Kellina over his shoulder and took off through the forest at a dead run. I stood, dumbfounded, as I watched him go.

  Follow me, Madly. Trust me.

  So I did. Without one more second’s hesitation, I ran after him, feeling the earth’s rain splattering my face with liquid vigor, my legs moving beneath me with speed I didn’t summon because I didn’t know I could.

  As if he was still in my head, I knew where Jackson was going. When I saw the stream come into view, my eyes simply confirmed it.

  Leaping from the bank, Jackson landed in the water and trudged quickly through it to its deepest point. He let Kellina fall from him until she was all but lying on his hands, face up, adrift in the gently moving waters.

  When Jackson glanced at me over his shoulder, I understood and I jumped from the bank into the water and made my way to them.

  Reaching beneath Kellina, I laced my fingers with Jackson’s and, immediately, I felt the explosion of the water. It churned around us, great swells washing over our bodies, threatening to carry Kellina downstream.

  Quickly, I closed my eyes to harness it. I felt it tingle in my toes and radiate from my fingertips, joining with Jackson’s strength to pull Wolfhardt from Kellina. The roar of the water drowned out all life, but for the three of us where we rested in an eye of calm amidst the tiny hurricane in the forest.

  Images began to flit through my mind, pictures of a boy in the woods growing into a man with an obsession. I saw him succumb to a wolf and then turn to kill it. Then, I was inside the man.

  I felt a pelt on my back, as well as the desire for the flesh of a girl wash through me, clear and potent. Saliva flooded my mouth with thoughts of her. My body tingled with awareness. Daisy petals drifted by behind my lids like dust in the wind.

  Then there was blood and anger—overwhelming, mind-boggling rage—and there was pain. The excruciating shifting of muscle and bone tore at my nerves and a feral greed arose and drove me to hunt. And to feed.

  I felt the soothing, invigorating taste of something coppery sliding down my throat as if it were actually happening. My mind wanted to be free of the visions, but they held me. Relentlessly, they held me.

  A burst of conflicting emotion coursed through me as I held the limp body of the Straus Maiden. In a tiny scratch, I placed a drop of my own blood, the seed of my curse for her to carry throughout eternity, hidden until I could awaken her unto me.

  I knew but one thing stood in my way, one person. It was with great zeal that I tasted her flesh, opening the door for death as her life fell at my feet, one crimson drop at a time.

  With her blood on my tongue and answered revenge in my heart, a blackness invaded me. It stared back at my man’s face from the mirror. It promised me that I would live inside every maid in the Straus line, crouching like a patient disease. It promised me that there would be a day when I would possess the last of the Straus line and, with her innocent hands, kill all that remained of her family. And then I would kill her.

  I saw Kellina’s grandmother. And then I saw Kellina.

  Darkness folded in on me, threatening to carry me down, down past despair and defeat. It was the feel of Jackson’s hands that anchored me to the world around me and I clung to them with all that was within me.

  I forced my eyes open, looking first into Jackson’s handsome face and then down at Kellina. Her face looked as healthy as the first day I’d seen her, as the first day he’d seen her—Wolfhardt. Relief flooded me, a relief so intense that I felt the sigh of it well in my chest like a large fist.

  But something brought me up short. Something stirred a darkness that I could still feel hovering within me. Looking up, I saw a sooty cloud marring the clear air between Jackson and me.

  It was as if an ink stain, black as a raven’s wing, had taken on a shape—that of a man. As I watched, the form shifted, writhing as it struggled to take on the likeness of an animal, a wolf. It squirmed frantically, stuck somewhere between man and beast, the figure stretching and yawning as if something else was deep inside the blackness, fighting to get out.

  I felt a burning hatred flood me, so quick and complete that I had to curl my fingers into tight fists around Jackson’s to keep myself from hurting Kellina. But something in me wanted to. Desperately, savagely, it wanted to.

  Instinctively, I knew that Wolfhardt blamed her for his failure to kill the grandmother. Kellina’s influence had been so strong that she’d kept him at bay most of the time. Her personality had split to accommodate him, unable to bear the existence of something so evil inside her.

  But the draw of the full moon had been too much, Wolfhardt’s presence too strong, especially after he’d tasted blood. But it wasn’t human blood that helped him overcome her; it was the blood of a Mer. It was Aidan’s blood. The power in it had sent Wolfhardt into a frenzy.

  Determined to keep Aidan safe, Kellina had fled the hospital when she could no longer fight Wolfhardt. The Lore had used her weakness to take over, used the opportunity to make an attempt on Kellina’s grandmother’s life. Only she wasn’t the one in the window. I was.

  A voice and a blazing heat brought me back into myself, away from Wolfhardt’s influence. It was Jackson’s voice and the sting of my bracelet. Wolfhardt was resisting capture, trying to find another vessel—me. But I had to get free of him so that the bracelet could do its work.

  In the writhing mass of onyx smoke, I saw the black eyes of a tortured soul and the wide mouth of a screaming man just before razor blade-like pains shot from my wrist up my arm and into my body. The force of them, the intensity of the pain, propelled me up out of the water and through the air until I fell back to the earth of the bank with a resounding thud.

  I rolled over onto my back and lay, staring up at the night sky as I gasped for air, waiting for my breath to return to me. I heard the sloshing of water. I knew it was Jackson carrying Kellina to shore.

  Seconds later, I saw Jackson’s face come into view when he knelt at my side. As he stared down at me, I heard the relieved voices of Aidan and Kellina fade into the background as I became lost in the sea of calm blue eyes. Never taking them from mine, Jackson reached out and dragged tender fingertips down my cheek.

  “You did it,” he said, his voice like the brush of silk against my skin.

  He smiled and I felt the warmth of it all the way to the center of my being.

  “He was going to use Kellina’s body to kill people, to kill her grandmother.”

  “He was. He won’t be doing any of that now,” Jackson
said as he reached down and took my wrist in his hand.

  “I’ll take him back to Atlas and put an end to this.”

  Although I had known that was the plan all along, I felt panicky at the thought of Jackson leaving me again, of him going off on a life-threatening mission. What if I never saw him again? How could I let him go?

  But, then again, how could I not, when so many lives depended on his success?

  There was only one choice for me—only one choice my heart could live with, only one choice that I could live with.

  “Jackson, why did you come back?”

  “I—”

  “And don’t tell me it was your job. I know you were fired.”

  “I wasn’t fired. I was reass—”

  “Whatever. Just tell me the truth. Why did you come back?”

  “I came back for you,” he confessed quietly.

  “But why? If you can’t love me, why did you come back?”

  I saw Jackson’s dark brows draw together in confusion.

  “What do you mean, if I can’t love you?”

  “Jersey told me.”

  “Jersey told you what?”

  “About the girl, the one who stole your heart. The one that you’ve never gotten over.”

  “Jersey’s got a big mouth.”

  My heart sank. It was true. Jersey had been right. Despite her words, I’d held on to a tiny hope that she might be wrong, mistaken, that Jackson could somehow still be mine. But it wasn’t Jersey who had been wrong; it was me. Jackson’s words had confirmed it.

  “Then why? Why did you come back? Just tell me the truth, Jackson.”

  “Jersey was right. I gave my heart away a long time ago and you never gave it back.”

  You? I thought with some confusion. Was he talking about me?

  “Huh?”

  “It’s you, Madly. You’re the one I could never get over. I fell in love with you when you weren’t even sixteen years old. When your parents grounded you for having feelings for me, your father sent me away for my training. He told me that we could never be together and that I needed to move on. He ordered me to stay away from you.”

  I was torn. Although his words made me happier than I could ever remember feeling, I felt the sting of betrayal, too. My father, because of a ridiculous Mer tradition, had sent away the boy I’d tied to. He must’ve known that it was no girlhood crush. He’d known it was real and it scared him. He’d known it was real, but still, he sent Jackson away.

  “Why did you go? Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I tried to move on, Madly. I knew that we could never be together. And I wasn’t sure that your feelings for me were anything more than a crush. You were so young…”

  I sat up and rolled onto my knees, desperate to make Jackson understand how I’d felt all this time.

  “But they were Jackson. At the time I didn’t know what it was, but I’ve been tied to you since I was fifteen years old. There has never been anyone else for me. And there never will be.” Reaching out, I took Jackson’s face in my hands. “Don’t you understand? I don’t care about tradition. I don’t care what my father wants. All I want is you. You are the only thing that I can’t live without.”

  Sadness stole over Jackson’s perfect face.

  “No, there is one more thing that you can’t live without, one thing that none of us can live without,” he said, taking my hands and coming to his feet.

  “What?”

  “Atlas. I still have to save Atlas, Madly.”

  Fear lanced through me.

  “No, Jackson. We’ll find another way. You can’t go by yourself. It’s too dangerous.”

  Jackson looked to his left and nodded, and then to his right. It startled me when hands gripped my upper arms in firm grips. Sentinels had come to stand on either side of me, restraining me.

  When Jackson leaned down and pressed a sweet kiss to my cheek, he whispered in my ear, “I love you, Madly James and if I never see you again, know this: someday, whether it’s today or a hundred years from now, I’ll die with you on my mind.”

  That’s when I knew why the Sentinels were holding me. Reaching forward, Jackson took the tiny pearl from my bracelet and then turned to run—run toward the sea, run toward Atlas, run toward likely death. Run out of my life.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  As Jackson disappeared into the darkness, my world crumbled and fell at my feet in a heap of meaninglessness. The Sentinels held me until he was long gone, until my legs lost their will to support me. That’s when the Sentinels let me go, let me drop to the ground.

  I felt the wet tracks of tears as they spilled in heartbroken trickles down my cheeks. It was as if someone had ripped everything that mattered out of my chest and set it on fire. It burned, it hurt, it tore at me so angrily that I couldn’t catch my breath.

  I gasped, struggling for air, but not wanting to breathe if it meant living without Jackson. I heard the worried questions of the Sentinels, but I ignored them. I was clinging to the lingering warmth of Jackson’s words where they resonated inside me.

  I love you, Madly James… I’ll die with you on my mind.

  Hands grabbed at me, but I just wanted to be left alone. My arms were too leaden to swat them away, so I begged from the emptiness of my soul.

  “Leave. Just leave,” I croaked softly. “Leave me alone.”

  More words from them, more hands that wouldn’t let me die in peace. And then there was anger—my anger—anger at them for keeping me from Jackson, anger at my father for keeping me from Jackson, anger at life for denying me that one thing that I wanted above all else. Jackson.

  “Leave me alone!” I said again, screaming words that were saturated with an agony that I couldn’t escape.

  Then, out of nowhere came a strength and a desperation that I couldn’t describe. Catching the Sentinels off guard, I leapt to my feet and I ran. I ran as hard and as fast as I could run.

  I flew weightlessly across the forest floor and I sailed soundlessly through the quietly sleeping town of Slumber. I was driven, but I was also drawn, drawn to the sea, to all things I held dear and the one thing I couldn’t survive without.

  When I saw the moonlit white sands come into view, I scanned them for what I sought more than I sought the water—Jackson.

  A dark form moved against the pale landscape and I swerved in that direction, hitting the fine, sugary sand at breakneck speed. The closer I got, the more certain I became that it was Jackson standing at the water’s edge.

  “Jackson!” I called breathlessly.

  I saw his head turn in my direction and I pushed my legs even harder, determined to get to him before anything could stop me.

  “Jackson wait!”

  I was close enough now to see that he had stripped down to black boxer briefs that fit him like a second skin. His long arms hung by his side and his wide chest heaved with his breath. He turned fully toward me, his bronze skin bathed in an ethereal glow.

  My heart leapt up into my throat and I worried that I couldn’t contain the love that swelled inside me. I felt the silky strings of it pulling me closer and closer to Jackson, the bond growing tighter and tighter.

  Relief flooded me when I launched myself into his waiting arms. I hadn’t missed him. He hadn’t left me yet. He’d heard my voice and he’d waited for me.

  Arms like steel bands wrapped themselves around me as lips that fit mine to perfection came crashing down on me. My mouth opened, frantic to take into myself everything he was willing to give me.

  The taste of Jackson’s tongue on mine was like warm, wet heaven. I drove my fingers into his damp hair and fisted them, holding his head to mine as he devoured my mouth.

  I felt the world dip for a moment as he lowered me to the sand. The cool granules shifted at my back to accommodate my form, cradling me in a soft bed as Jackson’s body settled over mine. His hips rested heavily between my thighs and his chest brushed mine as he moved against me.

  Desire swept through me and the thre
ads of an all-consuming love wound around us in a blistering cocoon of emotion.

  Jackson’s hands slid up my arms, his fingers tangling with mine as he pulled my arms over my head, pressing them into the sand as he kissed a fiery trail to my ear. He teased the lobe with his tongue.

  Rolling onto his back, Jackson dragged me with him until I was stretched out on top of him, our lips colliding again in white-hot passion. Every hard contour of his body was imprinted on the softer ones of my own, the heat of his skin branding everything it touched.

  Jackson sat up, forcing me to my knees where I straddled his hips. The contact sent fireworks rocketing through my core and I had to break free from his lips to catch my breath

  With chests heaving, our eyes met, and in Jackson’s pale ones, I saw all the love I’d dreamt of, all the passion I’d longed for, all the devotion of a tie that I’d blissfully succumbed to. It washed over me, flooding my soul. It flowed through me, melting my bones. It poured from me, enveloping our bodies. It was like liquid steel, strong and hot.

  “I’m going with you,” I told him. “We’re stronger together and I can’t be without you.”

  I knew how important the mission was. We needed to break into Atlas to free my family, to find out who was behind the prison break, to find out who they were working with on land, to find out who had killed Lady Sheelah.

  Yes, I knew how important the mission was. I knew how dangerous it would be, too. But I also knew that we were better—greater, tougher, brighter, stronger—together than apart.

  When his eyes searched mine, I knew that he saw the truth of my words. There was no denying it, no arguing about it. He was mine and I was his, and our future, whatever it held, was meant for both of us. And we’d face it together. Always.

  With a smile that lit my heart up like the fourth of July, Jackson rolled me onto my back again and gave me one rough peck on the lips.