Wounded: Book 8 (A Rylee Adamson Novel)

by Shannon Mayer

  This was fucking ridiculous. We were in the middle of a major battle, of fighting for the world’s safety, and I decided I needed a detour into the past. What the hell was wrong with me? My rational mind told me to turn around, what was done was done and there would be no changing it. I knew that. But the little girl from my past, the girl I’d been so many years ago, who huddled inside me, the one who was afraid and weak, the one who cried for her parents when no one was looking, she wouldn’t be denied. Not this time.

  I had to see the ones who’d raised me, the ones I’d loved more than any others in the world, even after they’d turned me out. Even after they believed the worst of me.

  I pushed all that away and ran as fast as I could. If I was going to do this, I was doing it fast. And with that decision, the anxiety fled, and I knew I’d made the right decision. I had to reconcile this part of my life before I fully committed myself to being the one to stop Orion.

  The buildings around me took me back to my childhood, the expensive homes, the money that was as abundant as the air we breathed. Brownstones for the most part and the occasional fancy custom built house were everywhere, but I didn’t hesitate in my footsteps. Didn’t pause in my run. My feet knew where they were going and they took me home unerringly, with a spooky déjà vu that washed through me.

  I stumbled to a stop in front of the building I’d grown up in. Made of brick, there were units on each floor. Third floor was where we’d lived. The fence was wrought iron and the gate was keyed, there was no way I should have been able to get in. Except for the fact I could short circuit electrical devices just by touching them. I lifted my hand to the keypad, wondering if the pass number would be the same. My fingers hesitated as I stared at the top floor. Behind me a car pulled up, slowed, stopped and then a door slammed. My hearing slowly came back online and it was only then I realized I was nearly hyperventilating.

  “Oh, my dear, isn’t that your daughter?”

  I didn’t recognize the voice, but I turned and the world slowed to a halt. A limo had pulled over and four people were stepping out, two couples. One set I vaguely recognized, friends of my parents, they’d been over for dinner a number of times during my childhood. The woman of the couple, she stared at me with her mouth hanging open and her hazel eyes wide with shock. Her trim body and meticulous makeup made her look far younger than she was. Leanne was her name, if I remembered right. She’d been friends with my mother since I was a child.

  The other two people, they were far more familiar.

  Amelia and Robert Adamson.

  My parents.

  Fuck, Amelia looked like Berget, even more so now that Berget was older. Nearly white blonde hair, bright blue eyes, and features that would make angels weep for her beauty, even now. Dressed in a pale blue dress, it peeked out from beneath her long white woolen coat. Robert was slim, had his light brown hair slicked back; he was every inch the professional businessman in his Gucci suit. Her eyes widened and then narrowed like a set of shutters.

  “No, our only child was killed, you know that, Leslie,” Amelia said, brushing past me so close I caught a whiff of her perfume, a sweet musk, a scent that made my knees buckle with longing to be a child again. To be held and kept safe from the monsters waiting for me in the dark.

  To have my mother love and protect me.

  Pain, sharp and intense, flared through my chest seeming to rocket through my soul. Robert, my dad, met my eyes and there was sadness there, and I thought for a minute maybe he would say something.

  But no, not against Amelia. I held my hand out to him unable to stop myself from trying. His lower lips trembled and a glimmer of tears shaded his blue eyes.

  “I can’t. I’m sorry, Rylee.”

  Amelia whipped around, her face no longer one angels would weep for. More like run from, with the way her lips contorted and her eyes burned with anger.

  “Don’t you speak to her! She is not our child, she is a murderer!”

  Robert took his eyes from me. “Amelia, you’re wrong, she didn’t kill Berget. Not Rylee.”

  The tears that had been hovering in my eyes flowed down my cheeks. He believed me; my father believed I hadn’t killed Berget. That made this worth it, to know one of them believed.

  “Rylee, will you come in?” He held his hand out to me and Amelia choked back a sound that seemed caught between rage and horror as she slapped his hand down. Not that it mattered.

  “I just—” I shook my head and slid a hand over my hip my finger brushing against my back pocket. “I can’t right now. I just wanted to see you,” I said, feeling awkward and unsure, like I was a teenager again.

  Robert gave me a small smile, reached out and took my hand. “When you can, come and see us. There are a lot of years to catch up on. A lot of things that need to be worked out. Apologies to be given.”

  Amelia spun and stormed toward the house, her back rigid, head held high. None of that mattered as my father pulled me gently into his arms, somehow holding me around all my weapons.

  “I should have stood up for you then, Rylee. It is my only regret in life, that I let you go when we lost Berget,” he whispered into my ear and I all but collapsed against him. His arms supported me and I clung to him as the tears flowed and the pain that had been with me for so long eased. He patted my back and kissed my cheek. “I am sorry, Rylee. Truly and deeply sorry. We can make this better, though, if you are willing.”

  The words were those I’d wanted to hear for the last ten years. That things could be better, that I could have my family back.

  I lifted my head and stepped back, swallowing hard, and fighting to speak normally. “I’ll come back when I can.”

  His eyes flicked over me, seeming to finally see my weapons, the leather jacket, the hard lines of a body that had been trained to work beyond natural limits.

  “Be safe, my girl, whatever you’re doing, be safe.” He kissed the back of my hands like he’d done when I was a little girl, when I’d done something smart or right.

  I backed away sliding my hands from his, knowing if I didn’t I would never leave, that I would break down on the doorstep of my home and let the world go to hell in a poorly woven basket.

  Lifting one hand to him in a weak wave, I said nothing more. Couldn’t talk past the lump in my throat. With quick steps I spun and headed away from them.

  When I hit the corner and was out of sight I broke into a jog and it wasn’t very long before I was back on the street corner with a very nervous looking Pamela, Frank, Alex, Berget, and Erik.

  “What the hell was that, Rylee?” Erik asked, his eyes narrowed as if that would somehow make me spill the beans.

  “Sorry.” I shook off the emotions tangling up my heart and mind, or at least tried to. Already, the guilt of taking the detour was eating at me. A demon had been brought through and was possessing one of the kids, and I fucked off for a family reunion. Not really good form, no matter how you looked at it.

  Pamela peppered me with questions, but I evaded them, finally going silent. I knew I was probably freaking them out, but I couldn’t talk about it.

  They followed me as we worked our way through town. Berget never said anything, never even asked if I’d seen our parents. She knew me well enough not to push, which was funny because we had been apart for years.

  That didn’t slow the others, or more pointedly, Pamela.

  “Look,” I finally barked, coming to a standstill on the south side of the Charlestown Bridge. “It was personal. It has nothing to do with any of you or this fucking salvage or whatever the hell this is.”

  I started across the bridge, my eyes taking in the heavy utilitarian girders, focused on everything but my team ranging in behind me. Near the middle of the span I stopped and let them catch up.

  “I went to see my adoptive parents.”

  Pamela’s breath caught and I knew that she, of all those who stood with me, would understand. Her own parents had handed her over to a handful of overzealous priests to have her �
�exorcised’ of the ‘demons’ in her.

  “What did they say?” She slid a hand over one of mine as the first flakes of snow dropped from the sky.

  “My father wants me to come back to see them,” I whispered the words, still unsure how I felt about that. Happy, freaked out, uncertain. Erik said nothing, but there was understanding in his eyes. Family was important to him too. Berget was unreadable, and for that I was grateful. I wasn’t sure what she thought about our parents. I wondered how much she even remembered of them.

  Frank was the last one I thought would have anything helpful to say. But he shocked me. “Parents love you, even when they are afraid of you. They can’t help it; they will always want to believe the best of their kids. Even my mom was like that, with me raising the dead when I couldn’t help it; I scared her so badly she passed out on a regular basis. But she still loved me. Even when she asked me to move in with my uncle.”

  I turned to look at him, and in his young eyes I saw a wisdom that shouldn’t have surprised me. “Thanks. You’re right, I guess.” I blew out breath, catching a few flakes of snow and spinning them away from my face. “That being said, we still have a job to do. We have to take out the covens and get those kids away.” I refrained from mentioning that one of those kids was already lost to us. “To be safe, we’ll stake them out for a bit.”

  “We aren’t going in right away?” Pamela asked as we headed over the last half of the bridge.

  “No, we need to see if we can figure out the best way in and out, where Frank will place his friends, and see if we can find out where the witches are exactly.”

  The threads of the coven were growing stronger, getting closer with each step we took. There was very little time before we’d have to go in and face the black witches, rescue the two kids who hadn’t been possessed, and kill the one who had been taken over by a demon.

  Yup, good times ahead.

  Tracking the witches was easy. Simple. And we found them at the Navy Shipyard.

  Contrary to the name, there was no navy waiting for us. A shipyard for repairs and construction on big boats. Yeah, I know, not very technical but I was no boat buff. The docks were not active; the night had cleared out most of the humans. Good and bad, it was harder for us to blend in when it was just us walking the docks as compared to say the bustle of mid-day.

  “How close are we?” Erik asked, breaking the silence.

  I stopped and looked to the far end of the docks, an old navy ship in the farthest berth bobbed lightly in the water. I squinted, using my measly second sight, and could see the lay of spells on the hull. They shimmered and danced in the blowing snow. If I didn’t know that it was black magic and witches, I would have thought the boat almost pretty. “That one, at the end. Why?”

  Erik didn’t answer me. Instead he asked Frank a question. “How many dead can you sense?”

  The kid cocked his head to one side, as if listening for voices only he could hear. “There’s a lot of dead people around here.”

  But I had a suspicion I knew what he was talking about.

  “In the water?”

  He nodded and pointed to a rope ladder that spun down to touch the dark water. “Yeah, there are a lot in the water, but to get them up to the dock might take a bit of work. Zombies aren’t known for being coordinated.”

  “I can lift them if there is a part of them dry from the salt water,” Pamela said. “But like I said, the other witches will be able to sense me working my magic, so I don’t know if it’s a good idea.”

  Berget tipped her head. “If there was something solid for me to stand on, I could throw the zombies onto the boat.”

  Neither option looked good.

  Crap, without a secure way to bring the zombies out of the water, I wasn’t sure it was going to be worth it.

  “Frank, are there any dead bodies closer? Some from dry ground, perhaps?”

  He rubbed his forehead. “No, sorry there aren’t.”

  I wanted to groan and beat my head against the dock. “Well, we’ll just have to run with it and hope the gods are looking out for us.”

  Frank and Pamela nodded and Erik lifted an eyebrow at me. I lifted an eyebrow right back at him.

  “Let’s get closer, find a spot to hunker down and get a good look at these fuckers.” I led the way, finding a small alcove about a couple hundred feet from the boat. A part of my brain was ticking away at a small problem, one that no one had pointed out.

  “Why the hell would they be on a boat?” I muttered.

  Alex lay at my feet, his eyes glowing in the darkness. He tipped his head up, and mimicked Frank, cocking it to one side. “So they can go swimming easy.”

  Erik laughed softly, but the laugh on my lips died. “Fucking hell, he’s right.”

  “What?”

  “Salt water nulls spells. If you were raising demons and running spells that could end your life if you weren’t careful, wouldn’t you want a big ass amount of salt water around?” I crouched, elbows on my knees and hands under my chin. “This is their fail safe, the harbor could save their asses and they know it.”

  Pamela’s mouth dropped open. “How did Alex know?”

  Alex grunted and rolled to his back, tongue flipping out between his teeth as he grinned up at us. “I is smarty smart now.”

  Whether or not he knew didn’t really matter, I was sure it was the reason behind them being here. I stared at the big boat, eyed the only gangplank onto it. It looked about three feet wide and wasn’t secured on either side; just a piece of wood going across a slim portion of water between the dock and the boat.

  I gave them all a hard look, one at a time. “You all stay here. I’m going to get a closer look. Frank, if I give you a thumbs up, you start raising your buddies. Let them just float to the surface of the water. Pamela, I’ll give a closed fist for lifting them out of the water and onto the deck of the boat. Berget, you see if you can circle around, come in from a different angle.”

  Frank pushed his glasses up his nose and then rubbed his arms. Pamela gave me a grim smile. Some days I thought maybe she enjoyed the fighting a little too much. One more thing to discuss when we finally had our little heart to heart. Berget gave a short nod and with her spooky-ass speed, ran around to the other side of the docks, disappearing as she leapt onto the boat with a single bound.

  “I’m going with you, Niece.”

  I didn’t argue with Erik—no point—and I didn’t really mind. He was a good man to have at my back. Crouching, I scooted forward until I was behind a set of crates about ten feet away from the gangplank, Erik tight on my heels. From there, I peered around the corner without exposing my body.

  Fifteen minutes passed with no movement on the boat, and no feeling of much of anything from the witches or the kids. Everything was pretty quiet. It made me nervous.

  The waves splashed against the dock below and I looked back toward my group. On the dock, the snow had accumulated and, fuck it all, Alex crept forward, leaving large footprints in the snow. I glared at him, but he didn’t slow until he was at my side.

  “Boss says watch over you.” He sat, wagged his tail and looked up at me. “I keep you safe.”

  Nothing I could do now.

  The minutes passed and the snow fell, coating everything around us. That would make the plank slick, and even more deadly to cross. I signaled to Frank, giving him a thumbs up.

  I didn’t feel anything, didn’t sense a disturbance in the force, as it were. A loud splash from below drew my eyes down. There, to one side of the boat, bodies floated to the surface. And damn they were nasty.

  “Stinkers,” Alex grumbled. That they were. The zombies had not been well-preserved, and I wondered how so much flesh remained when they’d been in salt water for hell knew how long. Bones stuck through in a lot of places, flashes of white in the water, dark pits for eyes. I shuddered, remembering the old vampires we’d faced in the Australian desert. They’d started out with dark pits for eyes too.

  The zombies flo
ated along, like lazy vacationers, as the clouds above us opened up and icy cold rain poured around us. At least that would serve Pamela well in raising the zombies out of the water, rinsing portions of them clean of the salt.

  A scream erupted from the deck of the boat, a woman’s voice letting out the sound of sheer terror across the docks, and I froze. Slowly, moving so I could see around the crate, I peered up at the deck.

  “Fuck me,” I whispered.

  A flash of a blue dress and a dark suit caught my eyes.

  I didn’t know how the witches managed to grab them and beat us here, but the black coven had my parents.

  Chapter 11

  AT SOME POINT, the darkness began to fade and he knew he wasn’t going to die. He lay on the cold, bare ground, the sharp winter wind coursing through the night air, ruffling his fur. But he could feel the discomfort, and that meant he was alive. Hands wrapped around him, the scent of a woman filling his nose. He recognized her and the wolf in him identified the pack bond between them.

  Voices floated in his ears and around his head.

  “You can’t move him until I finish the healing. It was started, but there was too much hate in the one who did the healing. Too much anger.”

  His wolf took another deep breath, scenting the two women who were arguing. Neither was his mate, both were shamans. A growl slipped past his lips and the hands on him increased in pressure in response.

  “Be still, Liam. I can heal you, but this will take time.”

  That was Louisa, her name floated to the front of his brain. Louisa was in New Mexico … he forced one eyelid up. It was like trying to lift a truck with one finger, but he managed.

  The movement around him was a blur of bodies and faces. He caught sight and scent of a few he knew. But not Rylee.

  He tried to whisper her name, forgetting he was still in wolf form.

  “It’s okay, baby, I’m here.”

  He rolled his one eye to see a panel of long dark hair swing down and brush his face. Her hand reached out to take something from under him. The copper knife that had caused him so much pain, that had almost killed him.