She stared at her father for one more brief moment before making her decision. He was a tough man, the toughest she knew. He’d survived a wolf bite and near death. He could survive a mild concussion.
Ro moved to disarm him, but heard a sound from above – footsteps, more than one pair – before she could grab his gun.
Damnit!
This had to end. She needed to move quickly, get Dean out of the mansion before her dad and the remainder of his group found him and finished the job.
She followed his trail to the access hallway and saw a large pile of rubble and debris where the basement entrance had been. A small opening, just wide enough for a person, led to the dark stairwell beyond. Ro couldn’t help but notice that the bottom of the passage was wet, as if covered in blood.
Her heart constricted, afraid that she was too late. She reached out with her senses and felt the distinct presence of a wolf close by. He was still alive. Relief filled her, and she pushed through the opening as quickly as she could. Ro carefully descended the stairs then entered the lab. She heard tortured breathing somewhere ahead, but couldn’t see anything in the all-encompassing darkness. Without thinking, she reached to the wall and flicked on the switch, bathing the room in blinding white light.
As soon as her eyes adjusted to the sudden brightness, she spotted Dean in the corner, bloodied and whimpering.
It ... he ... growled upon hearing her approach and lifted his head from the ground. She held out her hands in an attempt to soothe him. “Shh, it’s okay.” There was no way of knowing if he’d understood her, but she had to try. “It’s okay, I’m here. I’m not going to hurt you.”
Dean continued to growl deep in his throat but still she approached, arms outstretched. When she was within a couple yards, the growling stopped and she almost smiled when he wagged his tail.
Suppressing the ridiculous urge to giggle, she knelt down next to him. “You’re hurt bad, aren’t you?” Blood matted the fur at his side and leg. She couldn’t tell for sure, but the leg wound didn’t look too bad. The other looked more serious, so that’s where she turned her attention.
She knew she didn’t have much time as she reached out tentatively to probe the injury. “Shh,” she repeated. To her utter surprise, he allowed her to touch him, whimpering mildly.
Examining him more closely, she let out a gasp. Where the wound on his thigh was relatively clean, the bullet appearing to have passed clean through the muscle, the one in his side was ragged, ugly ... almost as if he’d tried to dig out the bullet himself.
As if sensing what she was thinking, Dean lay a bloody paw upon the ground and opened it. The remains of a silver slug clinked out onto the floor.
“Oh my God. You poor thing.”
He seemed to understand, his red eyes fixed on hers. He lay his head down again on the floor, as if content to feel her fingers in his fur. She raised her hand to his face, smoothed down the fur on his head, and he closed his eyes.
Dean’s ears twitched, and a moment later his eyes flew back open and he lifted his head. Ro didn’t need wolf ears to hear it, too – footsteps coming down the stairs.
Shit. She’d gotten too caught up in finding Dean, had let her guard down. They were cornered. There was only one exit out of the basement, and it led right to the hunters. They would need to fight their way out but, with Dean wounded, the prospect wasn’t looking very good. The only plus on their side was that the stairwell opening was a potential chokepoint.
She looked into the wolf’s ... Dean’s eyes and said, “Listen to me. They’re coming down the stairs. You need to get up. We have to make a stand.” He stared unblinkingly until she added, “If we’re going to live, you’re going to have to fight with me. I can’t do this without you. Now get up.”
Dean scrambled to an upright position, seeming to understand. He made no sound as he moved except for sharp inhalations of breath. He had to be hurting, but she couldn’t afford to treat his wounds now. She could see him favoring his bad leg, but he stood strong, his teeth bared as the footsteps continued to descend.
She trained her gun on the landing and forced herself to keep steady when her father appeared. His eyes widened in surprise upon the sight of her, but then immediately focused on the gun in her hand. His was drawn as well, but he faltered visibly on seeing her.
“Rowan? You were supposed to be at the pier.”
“Yeah, well, when you guys didn’t show up, I realized you might have been having your own party here. Turns out I was right. I hope you don’t mind that I crashed it.”
“You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me,” a familiar voice growled from further up the stairs.
“You need to get away from that thing, girl,” her father said, his voice unsteady.
“Really, Dad? After everything you’ve done, you really expect that to work?”
“Don’t be sassing me. I said to move.”
“You killed Coop. Murdered him in cold blood and then left him for me to find. There’s an entire pack out there killing people tonight and you chose your own goddamned ego over that, over me!”
While her father seemed to be warring with his emotions, Kane appeared little more than annoyed at her presence. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing, Ro?”
“Protecting Dean from you.”
“I see. Never took you for a whelp lover.”
Ro ignored the dig, knowing that to become emotional would only weaken her resolve. She could feel rather than see Dean behind her, deep growls rumbling in his throat. He was wounded and pissed, that much was evident. She needed to think fast if this was going to turn into anything other than a bloodbath.
As much as she wanted to protect Dean, she wasn’t sure if she could fight her father. She’d fought beside him countless times, but the notion that he was now the enemy, that she might have to injure him when she’d fought so hard to save his life, she could barely conceive it.
But she still knew the difference between right and wrong. Dean, though a wolf, was still human inside. She couldn’t allow him to be murdered. Her conscience told her it was wrong but, more importantly, so too did her heart.
♦ ♦ ♦
John had never seen a hunt turn to shit quite like this one had. How the hell did she get up here so quickly?
It was a stupid question, though. The fact was his daughter was here. She was born and raised a hunter. Resourcefulness was in her blood.
He cursed himself. He’d hoped his little gift at the pier would have bought them more time. Either the whelp’s friend had been further gone than John had intended, or she’d just abandoned him to come up here.
The latter was something he’d have done. No point wasting time over a lost cause, but he somehow didn’t think so. No. She wouldn’t have left the man to race up here and save this whelp. The latter bespoke of caring and the former would have required blood colder than ran through her veins. That meant Maddox was dead.
Damnit! He knew he should have stopped sooner but just couldn’t do it. Once he’d gotten started, he’d wanted that goddamned wolf lover to hurt.
Should’ve knocked her out and tied her up at the apartment instead.
All of that ran through his mind in the space of a heartbeat. The truth was, none of it mattered. Rowan was standing there, large as life, with her gun trained on him.
Her mother had been weak, a coward, but this, this went far beyond anything Moira had ever done. In the space of a few seconds, Rowan had gone rogue like few hunters before her. There was no way the Guild would forgive her for this.
There was no way he could forgive her.
In one fell swoop, she’d thrown everything away, her entire life, and for what? This thing?
He steadied his aim. The wolf was far bigger than his daughter. Try as it might, it couldn’t hide behind her. Though a kill shot would be cleaner, he was well aware that enough silver would be fatal on its own.
“Don’t do it, Dad,” Ro said, n
o doubt reading the intent on his face.
“It doesn’t have to be this way, girl.”
“I think it does. What you’re doing is wrong.”
He could feel Kane looming a step or two above him, and he moved to block the younger man from reaching the bottom. This was his business and his alone. “What I’m doing is wrong?” he snapped. “This is what we do.” He waved his free hand at the wolf. “That thing behind you is a werewolf, a goddamned monster, and our job is to exterminate them.”
“If he’s the monster, then why is he the only one I trust to turn my back on?”
He didn’t have a quick answer to that. Truth be told, he’d never seen a whelp act this way before. It was almost like it knew what it was doing. The look in its eyes seemed to convey this. They were still a wolf’s eyes, but they were different, more aware ... more human.
No! That was impossible. He knew it in his gut. It had to be some trick. Maybe she’d drugged it before they’d gotten down here.
Either way, it didn’t matter. She was wrong. Her days as a hunter were over. There was no doubt about that. She’d never be trusted again. But maybe he could still make her understand the error of her ways once this thing was dead.
♦ ♦ ♦
Kane was growing more pissed by the second. Not only had this bitch betrayed them, but her father was obviously hesitating in doing what needed to be done.
Am I the only hunter worth a damn in this house tonight?
Not only that, but he was a cop, too. Usually the two careers didn’t overlap much, but on occasion it was useful ... like, for instance, in a standoff.
“Rowan,” he called out, “I want you to lay down your gun and come out here.”
“Not going to happen, Kane. Not unless you back off first.”
“You know I can’t do that.”
The old man was blocking him from the bottom of the stairs and a clean shot. He was tempted to club him in the back of the head and shove him out of the way, but that would have been a mistake. It was painfully obvious Ro wasn’t going to shoot her father. However, Kane wasn’t an idiot. To assume she’d afford him the same grace struck him as a stupid risk. He didn’t think she’d be gung ho to gun down another hunter, but it seemed smart to err on the side of caution.
“Ro, I’m going to ask again...”
“Oh, cut the shit,” she snapped from within the room below. “This is bigger than both of us.”
“How so?”
John looked up at him and narrowed his eyes, but Kane held up a placating hand. He knew what he was doing. It was one of the tenets of hostage negotiation – keep them talking. Sure, the hostage in this case was a monster they were going to put down with extreme prejudice, but same general principle.
“He’s working on a cure,” Ro replied after a moment.
What?!
“Have you gone soft in the head, girl?” John snapped. “You know as well as I do that there isn’t a cure. That thing’s a monster.”
“Your father’s right, Ro,” Kane said, hoping for a way to tell the old man to shut the fuck up without her hearing.
“Right now, there’s no cure that we know of,” Ro replied, desperation creeping into her voice. “But think about it, Kane. I’m sure you’ve read his case file. You know his family and what they do. If there’s anyone who can find a cure, it’s him.”
She had a point. The Masons owned a biotech company and the kid supposedly had more smarts than he knew what to do with. If things had turned out differently, he would have taken over the family business one day, assuming he got his fucked-up life back on track. Of course, that had all come to a screeching halt when the kids’ parents had ended up butchered. “He’s playing you. You’ve gotta know that.” There came a pause. Perhaps he was finally getting through that thick skull of hers.
But then she said, “He’s using my blood. He knows about our resistance to the curse. He’s trying to find a way to...”
John glanced up again, his eyes wide, but Kane ignored him. What the ever-living fuck? Not only was she a goddamned wolf lover, but she was letting him experiment with her blood. That was the one advantage they had over the monsters, the one thing that gave them an edge. And this bitch was letting him know all their secrets. How stupid could she be?
This fucking wolf wasn’t trying to develop a cure. Any moron could see that. He was going to use this to take down the Guild. In a flash, it all became clear to him. It was bad enough that she’d rejected him, but it went beyond that. She had rejected everything they held dear. Not only that, but she was actively working to destroy it all, too.
“Oh, you’ve fucked up, Ro,” he snarled, suddenly consumed by anger, by her betrayal. Not only had she spurned him for a wolf, but she was a traitor to their very kind. “I was hoping maybe we could convince the Guild to just drum you out, but there’s no way they’re letting you walk away now. Not after this.”
“Oh really?” she called back. “And what are they going to say when they find out you blew off possibly the biggest score in decades for a personal vendetta? You think I’m going down alone? You could have been a hero to the Guild, Kane, but you put yourself first, and now God only knows how many wolves are still going to be walking around tomorrow because of it.”
That was the last straw for him – to do this, the ultimate betrayal to their kind, and then to threaten his good standing as well.
He’d been willing to see that Guild justice was done, give her a chance to plead her case to them no matter how little good it would do her. But now she’d sealed her fate. No fucking way were either of them, this wolf or his traitorous cunt, walking out of there alive.
39
Ro could sense the internal war going on behind her father’s eyes. She knew he still meant to kill Dean but saw he was hesitant about training his gun on her. As much as he hated wolves, she was still his daughter. Hopefully that was enough to stay his hand for at least a few more moments.
The same couldn’t be said about Kane. She couldn’t see his face from her vantage point, but she could hear the rage in his voice following their discussion of a cure. She wasn’t sure why he was so angry. She would’ve thought they would all want this, an end to all the senseless killing and bloodshed.
Then a thought began to form. Maybe he didn’t want it to end. She’d seen him after a hunt, how he’d reveled in a kill, bragged about it to everyone who’d listen. She knew the pull of the moon, the need to hunt, the satisfaction that came after a job well done. Perhaps, for him, that was all he had. He had no family, no real friends that she knew of. The hunt was his life. To find a cure, to end the need for hunters, would be devastating to someone like Kane.
But she still had to hope that her father wasn’t so far gone. He was cold, entrenched in the old ways, but she had to believe he wouldn’t kill his own daughter just to preserve that way of life. If not, then she was truly alone.
“Rowan, you must understand,” her father said, “we’re doing this for you. I don’t know what bullshit that whelp has been filling your head with, but there’s no hope for him. The moment he was bit, he changed into a monster, pure and simple. You need to put him down and accept that. If what you’re saying about that gang of wolves is true, then we’re going to need you for that fight.”
“If you’d listened to me in the first place, then they would’ve been dead already, Dad. Dean is not the monster here.”
“Yes, he is! He’s a whelp! He’s an animal, a predator. Haven’t I taught you anything, fool girl? Now put a bullet in him and finish the job!”
Dean’s growls became louder behind her. Despite his injuries, she could sense him tensing to attack. That was perhaps what made wolves most dangerous to hunters – their uncanny ability to recuperate from serious injuries in remarkable time. Hence why hunters used silver, the one element which seemed to retard that ability – an ability that, Ro realized, might be their saving grace in this fight ... and there would be a fight
. She saw that now. There was no chance of the others letting them walk away without one.
Sorrow welled up in her, but she forced it down. That would have to wait for later. What came next would require the same coldness she’d used to take down wolves in the past.
“Give it up, John,” Kane growled. “Can’t you see she’s a lost cause?”
“Shut the fuck up!” her father spat, turning ever so slightly toward him.
In the space of a second, Ro realized what she had to do. She used the distraction to aim and take her shot. It was, with some irony she realized, something her father had taught her to do, even as she added her own nonlethal spin to it.
Her dad cried out in pain as the bullet slammed into the side of his foot, causing him to crumble to the ground.
“What the fuck?” Kane yelled. “Are you fucking crazy, you stupid bitch?” But Ro was through listening. She rushed to the side, toward cover.
♦ ♦ ♦
Dean felt like his brain was swimming in mud. For what felt like hours, but was probably just minutes, it was like he was surfacing from deep underwater. At first there were just flashes, like watching a grainy movie from the back row of a theater: Ro’s old bedroom, spilled blood, explosive sound followed by pain, returning to his lab.
But then she was there ... Ro. Little by little, he began to find the strength he’d lacked ever since he’d been bitten – the strength to fight against the wolf, to stand up to the beast that had so easily dominated him.
The wolf didn’t go easy, though. Fighting it was like wrestling down an angry Rottweiler with his bare hands, but Ro’s presence seemed to strengthen him while simultaneously taming the beast.
When the wolf wanted to snap at her as she tended to his wounds, he convinced it to stay its hand. When it demanded they attack the intruders, he forced it to wait.
Lycan Moon: An Urban Fairy Tale (Lycan Evolution Book 1) Page 28
