Beast of All

by J. C. McKenzie

  My limbs shook. Tears welled up, but I blinked them away.

  Wick climbed on the bed and gathered me in his strong arms. His heartbeat echoed in my chest. “Shhhh. We had no way of knowing.”

  Sid grunted somewhere near us. “You can’t live your life dwelling on the ‘what ifs,’ little one.”

  Sid, the poetic Demon, again.

  “Congratulations on your mating,” he continued. “When you’re both decent, meet us in the living room. We have news on your missing pack member. Former pack member, that is.”

  I lifted my head away from my mark on Wick’s fragrant neck and met the Demon’s twinkling gaze.

  Former pack member? Who the hell—

  My muscles quivered, and my pulse sped as heat flushed through my body.

  Christine.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  The loose ends

  “They say the best revenge is living well. I say it’s acid in the face…”

  ~Mindy Kaling

  Wind laden with pine and ocean curled around me as I sank my talons into the tree limb and pulled my head down into warm, black feathers. Waiting in raven form, I watched the Grouse Mountain Resort as Allan’s Vampires waited close at hand for a call to action. Wick and his pack roamed the forest from a safe distance nearby. His presence still thrummed like a warm pulsating blanket in my chest. The reassuring love bolstered my confidence and put the beast at ease.

  Of all the methods to discover Christine’s location, online purchases of designer clothing had not been considered high priority. Heck, it hadn’t been on my list. She demonstrated unexpected intelligence and used someone else’s name and credit card. She had the clothes delivered to the resort instead of her actual address, but she hadn’t anticipated Kayne Security Solution’s ability to hack into the online retailer, nor the ingenuity and diligence of cross checking. They’d gone into all her favorite sites and ruled out the other non-residential deliveries.

  When Wick and I both neglected to answer our cells phones—hello? Busy mating—Olly contacted Lucus with the information, which led to the awkward morning-after house call from the sex Demon and Veronika.

  After cursory surveillance of Grouse Mountain revealed lurking Vampires from the Pharaoh’s now disbanded horde, confirmation of Christine’s whereabouts seemed certain.

  That left the simple task of waiting for her to show up to collect a pair of bedazzled jeans and a burgundy scoop neck sweater.

  It wasn’t Christine.

  With the smooth and fast movement of his tall, lanky body, clad in black camo, he screamed Vampire. It made no difference. We knew they lurked around the area like parasitic ants scurrying around an ant hill. We didn’t know the location of their base, or the entrance to their lair. They had to be in an abandoned mine, or cave somewhere. That was the only thing that didn’t fit in this whole equation.

  Christine in a mine shaft.

  I couldn’t picture it.

  Unease trickled along my small bird spine as I launched from the branch with a hearty croak and followed the Vampire from above, swerving and maneuvering around the trees and their branches.

  Vampires moved fast, but this one didn’t move at top speed, and I didn’t need to stay directly on top of him, just close enough to see where he went.

  There!

  He ducked around a large boulder a few kilometers east of the Grouse Grind and disappeared. I flapped my wings and perched on a nearby branch. With a few hops and branch jumping, I positioned myself in front of a dark entrance. It looked like an old cave converted into a structured tunnel with wooden supports. A Vampire stood sentry to the right of the entrance. A branch snapped below, and I watched another Vampire move in. Definitely concentrated in this area.

  Gotcha.

  ****

  From a bird’s eye view, the attack was breathtaking, in a seamless tactical assault way. Allan’s Vampires and Wick’s pack moved with swift efficiency. The speeding shadows of Vampires flowed through the forest, flanked by wolves, taking out the Pharaoh’s team with little difficulty. Their pace never faltered, and the second line took over as others dropped back to finish the job. Decades of working together, though not by choice, resulted in this beautiful display of teamwork.

  I pumped my wings and moved forward to sit and watch the entrance. It would take little to get past the measly guard. I leaned forward.

  Don’t you dare go in without me, Wick growled in my head.

  Dang that mate bond. He’d read my intent.

  I rocked back on my perch and settled. You only lectured me fifty million times before we left.

  You’re exaggerating, and obviously the lectures didn’t work. You’re still thinking about it. Let our team go in first. We’ll leave Christine for you.

  I’m freaking part goddess. I’m not weak.

  You’re my mate! He growled. Let me do this for you.

  He had a point. As Christine’s Alpha, the kill technically belonged as much to him as it did to me. Not only had she tried to kill me more than once, and when I was under Wick’s roof, but she’d evaded Wick’s orders and needlessly jeopardized the pack by siding with the Pharaoh.

  Wick would snap her neck in a second, but even with her tally sheet of wrongdoings, Wick hated violence against women, and he knew my need for vengeance trumped his need to assert Alpha discipline.

  Just…just wait, he huffed, breath light as he raced through the woods. With the mate bond, his concern and worry coated my tongue, and sent physical pain running along my bones, as he drew closer and closer. We’re almost there.

  Fine.

  The Vampires and Werewolves burst through the forest. The guard’s cry cut off as Allan snapped his neck. The team continued to move with fluid grace into the cave’s entrance. A large, menacing black wolf, with a white tipped snout, mitts and boots, splattered with Vampire blood, paused at the base of trees and peered up at me. Wick.

  Mate, he growled.

  Warmth flooded my body, and I floated down from the branch, shifting to wolf before I reached the ground. The familiar form rippled through my bones, light and dark gray fur replaced black feathers. As one of my first feras, the wolf form felt like home, and now, with the mate bond, it was more than that, something potent and indescribable, yet undeniably awesome.

  Run with me. Wick stepped forward and butted his head against mine. His wolf dwarfed mine, in strength and size, but his presence beside me, with our energies flowing, brushing and moving past each other as they entangled and meshed along the mate bond, sent overwhelming love racing through me.

  I nipped his jaw and took off down the tunnel, with Wick and his—our—pack running close behind. Wet dirt, mould and moss cloaked the air in the entranceway as my paws sank into the open ground.

  The deeper we moved into the tunnels, the darker, colder and drier they became. We slowed and came to a stop when we reached the tunnel’s main room. Dust, churned up from our run, settled around us. The large chamber had been converted into an underground, or in-a-mountain, lair with surveillance camera feeds, and more hallways running off the main room, and farther into the mountain.

  Christine stood stiff among the Pharaoh’s truly-dead and dying Vampires. In aiding us tonight, Allan ensured the eradication of the Pharaoh’s horde and any imminent threats to his seat of power.

  The Vampires and Wick’s wolves surrounded Christine but didn’t make a move. They didn’t dare. Blood splattered her grim face, perfectly coifed hair and flashy designer clothes. Her hands balled into fists at her side.

  As we entered, her chin lifted and she pushed her shoulders back. She sucked in a breath and her gaze glittered when it met Wick’s.

  Christine, he spoke to her using his Alpha power. You’ve been sentenced to death.

  She jerked her head away.

  I won’t carry out the sentence.

  She looked up, eyes wide, with something like hope playing at her expression. Clean, lavender-tainted air flowed from her. She looked around until her
gaze snagged on mine. Her brows dropped.

  The hope washed away, replaced by something else. Something bitter and dark. She squeezed her eyes shut, as if to process my presence and what it meant. Sweet sweat lifted off her fragrantly-moisturized skin, and her muscles tensed. Finally, she opened her eyes, cold gaze meeting mine.

  “Figured,” she spat.

  I shifted to human and stood to approach her, not caring who saw me naked, or how cold the air was against my skin. For added effect, I continued the shift and embraced the true form of my beast. Now over eight feet tall, wings folded tightly against my back to allow more room, and rage racing through my veins, I closed the distance to Tristan’s murderer.

  The air spiraling out from the hallway to the right smelled wrong. A few moans and cries, more animal than human, trickled up to the main room. I hesitated.

  “What’s that?”

  Allan spoke, “My team is still moving through the labyrinth of tunnels in the mountain. Seems there’s a prison section housing the few super supes that survived the KK transformation.” The drug Bola and the Pharaoh had worked on elicited extreme supernatural abilities from roughly one percent of norms who dabbled with the drug. The rest either got high or died, but those weren’t the results the Pharaoh cared about.

  I turned to Christine. “Why are they caged?”

  “They refused to carry out the Pharaoh’s bidding.”

  I snorted. “All that effort to make an unbeatable army.”

  “And the transformed norms are spineless turds,” Christine finished, not quite using the words I would have.

  “And you’re their guard?”

  Christine sneered. “All that work I did for the Pharaoh, only to be reduced to some prison guard in a dirty, uncultured cave.”

  I paused and searched within. Nope. No feelings of sympathy surfaced for Christine.

  Sonny’s words echoed in my mind. You need to let it go.

  The anger I held toward Christine washed away. Not forgiving, certainly not forgetting, but letting her power over me go. She couldn’t hurt me now, nor could my anger. I had to make sure she couldn’t hurt anyone else.

  Wick pawed the dirt.

  Christine lifted her chin. “Aren’t you going to fight me fairly?”

  I laughed. She’d already used that line to pressure me into fighting her in my wolf form, a severely disadvantageous move for me, and I’d still beaten her in the dominance fight. Instead of answering, I snatched a sword from a nearby Vampire, stepped forward, beast-quick, and skewered her heart with the sharp point of the blade. I left the sword buried in her chest and took a step back.

  Her gaze widened as blood soaked through her shirt. She coughed, sputtering blood along her lips, before her gaze lost focus. Her body dropped to the floor and sprawled amongst her former allies in a bloody heap. Even Were healing couldn’t mend a pierced heart. I pulled the blade free and returned it to the nameless Vampire, his gaze fixed on the blood coating the shiny metal. He licked his lips.

  My shoulders drew up, now completely weightless. No longer burdened by unwanted bonds or unfulfilled promises. With the final piece of my revenge carried out, my steps fell lighter on the dirt packed ground. If I didn’t know any better, I’d worry I could float away.

  I brushed my hands and turned to Wick, his mouth open in a lazy Werewolf grin. I reached for the wolf. Another scent, faint, but present, trickled up from another hallway.

  I froze. Tasting the air with long successive breaths, followed by short ones. Blood and death. “No way.”

  “What is it?” Allan grumbled, no longer granted free access to my mind. Another awesome perk of the mate bond we’d discovered.

  “Can’t you smell it?” Blood and death, with the signature scent that used to remind me of Italian good looks and ridiculously flashy designer shoes. Unease prickled at my skin.

  He shook his head. The Vampires shuffled their feet, and the wolves tensed.

  “Lucien.”

  Chapter Forty

  The last piece

  “I intend to live forever, or die trying.”

  ~Groucho Marx

  The air burned as I raced down the hall, closely followed by Werewolves and the Vampires. Luckily, Allan had no desire to relinquish his control over the Lower Mainland Vampire horde now that he had it, and we hadn’t brought Clint. We all knew he was a big softy as far as his former master was concerned. All of Lucien’s inner circle had died with him, or appeared to. With his scent present in this place, albeit weak, nothing remained certain.

  Allan hadn’t joked when he said this place was a labyrinth. The halls and tunnels crisscrossed and continued deep into Grouse Mountain. I paused at some junctions to sniff out the right path.

  The trail of stench grew stronger. I put my head down and raced faster, past rows of cages with freakish-looking super supes cowering in corners.

  There!

  The tunnel veered sharply to the right. When I turned, I stopped at the sight greeting me. The tunnel opened into a small room. In the center, Lucien hung on a beam, crucifix-style. Or at least, what used to be Lucien.

  Severely emaciated, his body consisted of shriveling, ash-coloured skin clinging to bones, like someone took a vacuum-packing machine to him and sucked out all the flesh and blood. One of his arms had been amputated, and a long, rusty metal bar had been inserted in its place to string him up. Lab equipment lined the room.

  The air shuffled through the tunnels in sporadic gusts. The rustling fabric and slapping footsteps of others echoed.

  Without a beating heart, true Vampire death was hard to ascertain, unless the head was completely cleaved from the body. Not in this case. Lucien, aside from the missing arm, looked completely intact, with rags of his designer pinstriped suit covering his lower half.

  The air, coiled with his dried blood and dead meat Vampire scent, now tasted twisted and bitter.

  When I stepped forward, his eyes pinged open to tiny slits. “Kitten.”

  His voice, barely a husky wheeze, sounded more like shredded vocal chords than his former self.

  “We thought you died.”

  He hacked. Trying to laugh, maybe? Instead, his hack lead to a coughing fit, spurting up a trickle of clotted blood that splattered his lips and dripped down his chin.

  “Took my arm and burned it. Killed the rest.” His raspy voice trailed off, and his head sagged down.

  Neurons fired in my brain. A moment from the dilapidated ferry spiraled back to me. The loose thread I couldn’t quite grasp and pull together. Clint and Allan had discovered Lucien’s remains within a day of feeling their link with him break. Lucien was ancient. Maybe not as old as the Pharaoh, but he measured his age in centuries, not decades. Ashes a day after his supposed death was too soon for someone of Lucien’s age. His remains should’ve lasted days.

  “What about the link between you and the others? They felt it snap.”

  Lucien coughed up another dollop of blood.

  Taking in his state of disrepair, he couldn’t have much left to cough up.

  “Bola…” he wheezed.

  The last piece to the puzzle of Lucien’s faked death fell into place. Of course, Bola. That sick bastard had an absurd wealth of scientific knowledge to tinker with drugs, and enough demonic power to snap bonds. He’d planned to do as much with Sid’s mark on me. The Pharaoh and Bola had used Lucien’s arm to create a pile of Lucien scented ash, and Bola severed Lucien’s ties with his servant and horde.

  A perfectly faked death. And instead of dead, Lucien had been here, the whole time, under our noses in a forced Hell.

  I paused, and searched within again. Nope. No sympathy surfacing for this former Master either.

  “Why’d you send Allan and Clint away?”

  Allan shuffled behind me as the Vampires and Werewolves entered the room. Lucien’s act of sending the two away had ensured their safety and survival.

  “Had…had an agreement…with Pharaoh. Supposed to meet. Didn’t fully trust…” H
is voice scraped against my eardrums.

  Well, Lucien’s spidey-senses had panned out. Though, it hadn’t worked out well for him.

  “Why not just kill you?” Allan asked.

  Lucien’s head lifted briefly before flopping back down. “Ah, Akihiko…”

  I shot Allan a dark look. He better not think of saving this guy, this tormentor from my past.

  Allan shook his head. He might not have read my mind, but my death stare probably made my thoughts clear.

  “Used me…used me for science.” He coughed again. His whole body constricted and tensed, but no blood sputtered from his lips. His brows pinched in. “My blood…is old… Used for KK and SomaX.”

  Ew! Did that mean a little of Lucien’s blood had pulsed through my veins? Maybe still did?

  My skin crawled as Lucien’s body convulsed again.

  How long does a red blood cell survive? Wick asked me as he rubbed his blood-soaked body against my leg. He would’ve sensed or smelled my fear. Heck, it flowed off my skin in waves.

  I ran my hands through his matted fur and shrugged. One hundred to one hundred and twenty days.

  Then his blood no longer courses through you.

  I sighed in relief, liking Wick’s logic and wanting to stick to it. Let’s hope none of those red blood cells developed the ability to divide and replicate.

  You’d smell of him. And you don’t.

  What do I smell like? I smiled, knowing the answer, my soul singing.

  Like heaven. Like a pristine forest begging for me to run through it.

  I waited.

  And me. You smell like me. You smell like mine.

  Lucien’s body finished convulsing, and sagged. Though his current state and power had been considerably depleted, and he wallowed in pain and discomfort, he could mend, with time and a lot of blood. He’d remain considerably vulnerable for a while, and he’d never regenerate an arm, but given protection and the means, he’d return to at least a portion of his former power.