“You should feel warmer now,” I said. “Can you get up? We have to get out of here.”
“No,” she said. “You don’t understand.”
“What don’t I understand?”
She shook her head, gulping back sobs.
“It’s already too late.”
CHAPTER TEN
“IT’S NEVER TOO LATE,” I said, not sure if she was just freaked out, or if she knew something I didn’t. “Not until that demon is through the Gate wreaking havoc. But that’s not going to happen.”
“It’s too late for me!” she sobbed. “It’s too late for the others, for my pack sisters. We’ll never be able to go back to normal now, will we?”
“Why did you hesitate? Why didn’t you attack me?”
“I knew who you are. I knew who I was. The others… I don’t think you know at first. When you change, it’s like there’s something else inside you but you’re still there. You struggle with it, or you give in. I guess if you give in, then you’re no longer in control of yourself. I was still struggling.”
“Listen, Sam, we have to get you someplace safe. And there’s something I need to pick up from home. Please trust me. We may save the others, too. But we have to act fast. If we can, there’ll be time for talking later.”
She sobbed again, sniffled and nodded her consent. I felt in my jacket pocket. The handgun Joe had given me was still there although to feel its cold metal under my palm was scant reassurance. I’d use it if I had to, but I prayed hard it wouldn’t come to that. I helped Sam to her feet.
“Now listen, they could be anywhere by now, but I’ll wager they’re way beyond Highgate. There’s not much hunting here. I mean, I don’t think Moratu had rats and rabbits in mind. Try to keep quiet, okay?”
“Who are you?”
“You know who I am,” I said, challenging her to pursue her question further. “I’m Lia Stone. We go to the same university. Now let’s go!”
I thought about wrapping my jacket around her, but realized I had nowhere else to keep the gun. Besides, the energy I transferred to her would keep her warm long enough. I grabbed her hand and pulled her along beside me as we ran from the mouth of the mausoleum, lost as I still was, trusting my instincts to guide me back to the west gate. As we ran, I flipped open my smart-phone and punched in numbers.
The ‘phone rang only once before Joe snatched the call at the other end.
“Lia?”
“Hey, listen. Can you get to the west gates of Highgate Cemetery with the car?”
“Yes.”
“Do it. Fast. But stay in the car and keep the windows and doors locked. Got it?”
“I’m on my way.”
My crystal was warm but not glowing red, so both Moratu and his pack were far enough away for their frequencies not to register. I knew we had time – I just hoped we wouldn’t meet any more werewolves or demon sympathizing occultists on the way. Call it a miracle, intuition, or just plain good luck if you will, but we emerged from a dark, tree-lined avenue, and I saw the gates: still dark, still locked.
I dragged Sam behind me. She was flagging physically, psychologically and emotionally. This was much more than the girl could take. We’d been running so hard and so fast we slammed into the rattling iron bars. The chain and padlock protested the impact. Sam would have slumped to the ground if I hadn’t thrust my arm around her and held her upright.
There was no sign of Joe. I glanced down at my ‘phone. It had taken us five minutes to get there. He'll be here any minute now, I thought. Any second. He’ll be here.
Sam’s body tensed in my arm and she let out a yelp of pain.
“What is it?”
“The scars,” she said, putting her hand to her thigh. “They… they’re burning.”
My moon-crystal burned with blood-red light. Joe! Come on!
“Let me go!” Sam said, grasping at me. I let her go.
“Hey, I’m trying to help.”
“Like hell,” she snarled. “What do you know? You want to break us up, that’s all!”
What the freak is going on now? Sam pulled away from me, backing off several paces.
“Sam, I know you’re freaked out, but listen…"
“No!” she screamed. “You listen! I wanted this. You confused me back there, but only because I was alone. I should have taken you as my sacrifice.” There was something weird going on with her eyes, like a green glow shimmering in the darkness of her pupils. “But now I feel my sisters and hear them again! Now I remember why I loved this!”
Her skin was rippling already.
At least, I figured, if I had to I could shift out here. There was room. But that would be crazy. A werewolf isn’t that much bigger than an average human, but a Dragon in full flame in Highgate Cemetery might just attract too much attention. But so would an infernal abyss opening to release Anubis on the world.
“Sam, listen. That feeling of sisterhood. It’s all part of it, but…”
“Yes. What do you know? Do you know what it’s like being me?” He bones were elongating, her back hunched, and muscle rippled under fur, but she could still speak. “Another plain stupid girl pushed onto the edge of everything? Never respected, never invited to parties? The brunt of everyone’s jokes?”
She lurched forward, her face only inches from mine. I could smell her breath, the stink of rot and bloodlust. “Do you know how lonely I’ve been? Do you know what loneliness does to you? How hard it is just to get up in the morning and face the world? God, how could you know?”
She turned away a moment and hunched over. When she looked back her face was more wolf than human and she could barely form the words she spoke. “Like this, I’m powerful. Like this I belong. It hurts, but each of us becomes more than just one. We are a pack, a family, a sisterhood. We are one! I’ve never felt such complete love.”
“Sam, stop this. I changed your form back, but you’ll always be a werewolf now. So will the others. But he…” The words fell into the cold air, and it was as if they froze there and fell to the ground shattered and unsaid.
Sam was shifting quickly now. Just another few seconds and she’d be fully transformed. But it wasn’t that made me stop speaking. It was the sudden emergence of first one, then three, then a dozen werewolves from the trees.
They were closing in. My eyes scanned for Moratu, but I couldn’t see him. Don’t make me shift, okay. Don’t make me shift.
“I know who got you into this, guys!” I called at the top of my voice. “It was Moratu, or whatever he told you he’s called. But he doesn’t give a crap about you! He’s only interested in one thing, and that’s his crazy plan.”
The werewolves snarled and slobbered and hunched forward, moving as one, forming an arc around me.
“It’s not too late. You can still keep your sisterhood, still be part of the pack. You can get registered. You can join a licensed clan.”
You’re wasting your breath, Lia. They’re so far gone now, they can’t even understand you. But I tried anyway.
“You know what Moratu will do? When he’s finished with you, he’ll kill you; along with the rest of the city. He’ll destroy the world!”
The monsters had formed a tight cluster around me now. Sam was indistinguishable from the rest of them. I felt their power, their strength. And I envied them. I did. In that desperate moment, I wanted to be like them.
Sam couldn’t have known, but I knew the loneliness she was talking about. I was more socially adept maybe, but it was all a lie. It was a mask, wasn’t it? I lived here, as generations of my kind had done, in human form. But I longed to release my Dragon nature. Moratu had once tempted me to join him, to abandon the human apes to their own greed and arrogance, let them bring themselves to destruction. To be a Dragon among Dragons…
No! I wanted that more than anything, but I wasn’t in this world to gratify my own desires. I have a mission. And it’s bigger than me.
Twin arcs of light from car headlamps illuminated the semicircle of monst
ers.
Joe.
The sudden brightness shocked them. I whipped out the revolver and flashed it around the circle.
“Silver bullets, guys,” I said. “Who wants to risk it?”
The pack snarled and growled, jaws hanging, lips drawn back to reveal rows of deadly fangs.
And as one, they pounced.
I dropped into a spring squat, snarling jaws snapping at my boots, just as I shot into the air, flipped, somersaulted and landed on the other side of the gate.
I turned and ran to the car. The passenger door was just a yard off when vicious claws snatched at my shoulders and legs, dragging me back. I ducked down, reaching up with both hands, grasping through thick fur to the muscle beneath, and pulled two of the monsters clean over my head.
As they smashed to the ground, I twisted my ankle free, flipped onto my back, and delivered a double kick. Blood sprayed into the arcs of light. I scrambled back onto my feet and leaped for the car.
The door sprang open, and I jumped in. The engine roared, and the tires squealed as the car shot backwards. Even before I’d shut the door werewolves hit the windscreen and thumped onto the roof. Joe swerved around, reversed again, yanking the steering wheel left and right to shake them off. As the last one slipped from the back of the car, its talons screeching down the glass, Joe slammed the accelerator to the metal, and we roared away.
“Shit,” I said.
“You hurt?” Joe said.
“No, but I’ve got tooth marks on my new boots.”
“You know,” Joe said. “Folks shouldn’t let their dogs off the leash in public places.”
Despite everything, I laughed. Then I said, “How’s Dan?”
“Alive. Sleeping pills should keep him in the land of nod until this is over. Where to?”
“Home.”
“Home?” he said, incredulous. “With that lot on the loose?”
“I need Excalibur.”
“Ah,” he nodded, and pushed the car faster. “The lady means business.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
I’D NO IDEA IF JOE HAD FOLLOWED me out or not after he’d pulled the car up outside Grandma’s Victorian mansion.
My mind was ablaze. I didn’t know what to do, except one thing: I had to stop the demon. And if I couldn’t stop it getting through the Gate, then I had to destroy it as soon as it got through. All my anxiety for the girls, and anyone else, even myself, was banished from my frenzied mind.
I slammed through the front door, stormed along the hall, and burst into Grandma’s study, heading to the cabinet and the sword: the ancient blade of the Pendragon, the Demon-Slayer, Excalibur.
Stretching out my hands and directing my powers, I unlocked the psychic seal. The lid sprung open, and I reached inside, my fingers closing around the hilt of the sword.
I’d barely lifted it out when a voice broke through my frenzy. At first it seemed so distant I wondered if it wasn’t a psychic communication. But I recognized it. The speaker was in the room with me. I realized she’d had been there all the time, but I’d been so hell-bent on my crazed mission, I hadn’t noticed before.
Still holding the blade, I turned around, my heart thudding, sweat trickling down my back and between my breasts.
“Amelia,” the voice said again.
“Grandma.”
“Amelia, we are in a hurry. But we must not throw all caution to the wind. What do you intend to do?”
“Go back to Highgate and get there when Anubis manifests or hunt it down and slay it once it has. That’s my job, right? I’m a demon hunter.”
“What about the girls?”
“There’s nothing I can do about them,” I said, my voice trembling. Joe sloped into the room and leaned against the bookcase. “They want to be like that. It’s too late for them. I can’t save everyone. I have to stop the demon and take the consequences as they come.”
“There is still time.”
“What are you saying?” I was already heading for the door, ignoring Joe’s steady gaze, furious with Grandma for not understanding. “Those werewolves are out there now taking human lives and dragging the bodies back to Moratu for his little blood fest. I’ve wasted enough time already.” I flashed a glance at Joe then. “I should have listened to you,” I said. “I should have recognized how serious this was and stopped the girls at the outset. I should have listened to you again when you said…”
“Then listened to Joe now,” Grandma said. Her voice remained quiet but had a tone of great authority. My heart still thundering, and my body almost shaking with urgency, I forced myself to calm down and turned back to face Joe.
“I think we can save the girls, too,” he said. “Once I settled Dan and saw to his safety, I got in touch with the leader of one of the most powerful Wolf clans in the city.”
“The moon’s full. Shouldn’t he be on lock-down?”
“And how does this help?”
“He can control the girls, hunt them down, and bring them together. They’ll respond to him. He’s a powerful Alpha.”
“And we have another plan, Amelia,” Grandma added. “If you will be there, the moment Anubis is evoked, then it’s important we get you as close as possible. But Moratu will sense you approaching a mile off. You must fight through a pack of werewolves, and killed them, to get anywhere near him, and by then it might already be too late.”
“I’ve got this Alpha on hold,” Joe said. “He’ll get on it as soon as I give him the call.”
“And what does he do?” I sneered. The plan seemed like a time-waster. “Chase off around the city tearing them off their victims?” I shook my head. “It’s no good, Joe. It’s too slow and it’s too messy. You think I want these girls to die? No. But I have to weigh up the consequences of not getting the demon. That’s worse. Don’t you see? It’s a freaking bummer of a choice, but I’m the Guardian now, and it’s a decision I have to make.”
“But if he can stop at least some of the girls bringing back their sacrifices, then maybe we can stop the ritual.”
“I don’t think so. They’ve already been out hunting. They’ve probably brought their victims back. Joe, you saw how many there were at the cemetery gate. The goddamn demon could be through already!”
I shook my head, resting the blade on my shoulder. Joe frowned. I guess he was out of his depth.
“Very well, Amelia,” Grandma sighed. “There’s a thing called division of labor. Joe will go with you, and I’ll engage the help of this Alpha fellow. Even if it’s too late for him to stop the killing spree, he may yet help the girls.”
Grandma didn’t wait to hear my response. She’d turned to her telephone and was already punching in the numbers as I left the room with Joe on my tail.
Back at the car I said, “Joe, can you lend me your VIBE? Do you have it?”
“Can’t you tell?”
He was right. I had no psychic sense of his presence. If he hadn’t been standing right in front of my eyes I wouldn’t have known he was there. That was the power of the Vibrational Interference Biokinetic Equalizer.
“Okay, lend it to me. That way I can get close to Moratu without him knowing I’m there; if I can keep out of sight long enough.”
“Sure,” he said, nervous. “But I have to say, it’s my comfort blanket I’m giving up here.” He unclasped the device from his inside pocket and tossed it over. I caught it with my free hand. He was right, the VIBE would make me psychically invisible, but it would expose Joe not to have it.
“I know,” I said, clipping the small black box inside my leather jacket. I lifted Excalibur as I pulled open the car door. “But I’ll look after you, I promise. And you can have it back just as soon as I’m through with it, okay? Now let’s go.”
Joe drove like a demon himself, and I wondered that we arrived back at the cemetery gates without being stopped by the traffic police.
“Holy shee…” Joe said as the mangled gates came into view in the car headlights, nothing but twisted iron and torn hinges snagge
d with fur and splashed with blood.
My crystal was burning hot, even here at what was left of the gates. I jumped down from the car and stepped over the debris with Joe following. He should have been scared – terrified even – but he seemed as calm as ever.
What makes Joe tick? I wondered again what it was he’d done that had led to his being posted in the P.I.D.
The amber emergency lights blinked on the car as he triggered the lock. In front of the first avenue, I stopped. My moon-crystal was the color of congealing blood. I’d expected that. But Excalibur emitted a gentle glow of its own.
“I may have the VIBE,” I said, drawing Joe’s attention to the glimmering blade. “But there’s a good chance Excalibur will give me away just the same.”
“So what do we do about that?” Joe said. “I guess even you won’t wrestle the demon to the ground with your bare hands.”
“I’ll try it if I have to. But no,” I said, “I’d rather not.”
For a moment I stood frozen with indecision.
“You’ll have to carry the sword, Joe,” I said at last.
Joe’s eyebrows raised, and I saw the concern and anxiety in his eyes despite his calm demeanor.
“Oh… Okay,” he said. “So you go invisible and I follow up with the psychic equivalent of alarm bells and a loudhailer on full blast screaming, I’m here! Come get me!”
“Look, it’s not so bad, and it won’t be for long. I’ll carry the blade until we get to the Egyptian portico. Then you take it. I’ll go ahead. I reckon the ritual, if it isn’t over already, will be in full swing by then. Take the sword now.” I handed him the blade. He clasped his hands around the hilt and cursed as the weight of it almost dragged him off balance. Gripping the sword in both hands he stood in front of me. “It’s stopped glowing,” he said.
“Yes, because it only transmits when it’s connected.”
“Meaning connected to you?”
“Exactly.”
“So I’m safe.”
Wolf Moon: Lia Stone: Demon Hunter - Episode Two (Dragon-born Guardians Series Book 2) Page 6
