by Kelly Meding
“What?”
“Something Jenner said that day in his office still bothers me—that line about fairy tales. What does that even mean?”
A smile tugged the corner of his mouth. “He was giving you a hint as to the identities of the bi-shifting Clans.”
“Really? Because as clues go, that one sucks.”
“We’ve been here a long time, Evy, long enough to have inspired quite a few myths and legends among humans.”
I flashed back to Tattoo the Halfie’s reaction to Phin on the gym roof. “Like angels?” I asked.
“Precisely.”
It made an odd kind of sense. Part man, part animal. Greek myth had a story about something half man and half horse. Huh. Maybe after this was over, I’d hit the library and try to guess which of the other Clans were bi-shifters. Or I’d make Wyatt do it; he was way better at the research thing. “Thank you, Phin.”
He nodded.
“Anyway, there’s nothing left to be done on that front.” I took a step closer, as he’d retreated deeper into the room. “Did you meet Call?”
“Yes.” Phin’s nostrils flared. His gaze flickered to Wyatt, still sitting comfortably in his chair, then back to me. What was …? Oh. Heightened sense of smell—a little bit of Wyatt must have rubbed off. I quirked an eyebrow at Phin.
He continued. “Average human male, about your age, lanky build, maybe three inches taller. Brown hair, dark eyes, no discernible scars or birthmarks. Pretty forgettable fellow, except that he’s cut like an Olympic swimmer.”
“No one you’ve ever seen before?” I asked.
“No, I don’t think so.”
“Don’t think so, or you know so?” Wyatt asked.
Phin narrowed his eyes. “I know I’ve never seen him before. From the way they talked, Call and Snow have a history. They sounded like old friends, comfortable with each other.”
“So looking into Snow’s past might be useful in conjuring up Call,” I said, giving Wyatt a meaningful glare.
Ignoring me, he said to Phin, “I don’t suppose you brought a snapshot?”
Phin shook his head. “I couldn’t manage one without being obvious. I do have other news. He wants to meet you.”
For a moment, I thought Phin just forgot to look at me. But he was gazing right at Wyatt, whose eyebrows shot up into his hairline. “Me?” he asked at the same time I said, “Why?”
“He didn’t tell me why,” Phin said. “I never admitted I knew who or where you were; he just assumed. He said to bring you with me tonight.”
“Just Wyatt?” I asked.
“Believe it or not, Evy, not everyone knows that you’re alive—for the first time, and certainly not the second.”
“Maybe it means Call knows me,” Wyatt said.
He was actually considering it. I planted both hands on my hips. “Or Snow knows you and Call’s playing along, and one of them wants to put a bullet between your eyes. You can’t—”
“No?” He stood up, hands balled into fists. “He’s the big bad, Evy, and he wants to meet me face-to-face. How the hell often does that happen?”
“Like I said, usually before the bad guy kills the unsuspecting hero. Way to walk right into his plan, Wyatt.”
Something dangerous flittered across his face. “If Call had asked for you, you’d be the first one out the door, and my objections be damned.”
“I …”
What? He had me pegged, and we both knew it. Any protests I tossed at him would be deflected, because I had no good reasons for them. Just selfish ones. I didn’t like being the one on the outside looking in.
“If it helps at all,” Phin said, “I didn’t get the impression Call wishes to kill him. He seemed more interested in a conversation.”
“Did he hint at the topic of conversation?” Wyatt asked.
“He didn’t say much of anything at all. Snow did most of the talking. A lot of his same spiel about the races policing themselves and holding accountable those responsible for crimes against them.” His words held no direct accusation; Wyatt still flinched.
“Wyatt,” I said, “why would the Kitsune Elder tell me to ask you about Snow’s beef with the Triads? Why you, specifically? What did you do to the Kitsune Clan?”
My questions hung in the air like blocks of ice, chilling and impenetrable. Wyatt went perfectly still, his face utterly blank. I’d seen so many emotions there in such a short span of time that the emptiness startled me. He didn’t want to reveal something, and everything seemed to point toward that very secret.
“You,” Phin said. Eyes wide, something like shock in his tone as he stared at Wyatt. “You were the one who killed Rain.”
Wyatt paled and seemed to teeter on the edge of vomiting. I reached for him; he pulled away to the other side of the room. When he reached it, he froze. Then he pivoted, face blazing, hands shaking, every ounce of that fury targeted at Phin. “Yes, I killed her. I took the Neutralize order and carried it out myself, so no one else would have to know. Especially my Hunters.”
“Who’s Rain?” I asked.
“Were-fox, Kitsune, whatever you want to call her,” Wyatt replied, his voice as venomous as his expression. “It was four fucking years ago. Why does Snow care so much now?”
“I don’t know,” Phin said. “Snow mentioned the name once during his pitch. He used her death as an example of how the Triads were out of control.”
I looked back and forth between the two seething men. Getting answers out of them was like prying teeth with tweezers. “Why was she killed?” I asked.
Phin’s eyes narrowed, and his head twitched to the side. He looked like a bird of prey about to attack—more of an animal than I’d ever seen. He was deferring the question to Wyatt, who continued glaring at Phin. I wanted to knock their heads together until the answers spilled out and the testosterone was washed away.
“Officially?” Wyatt asked. “She was considered a threat to the preservation of the human race.”
I blanched. “You want to translate that unofficially?”
He fell silent. Phin picked up the slack and said, “She fell in love with a human, Evy. That was her crime. She wanted to love and marry outside of her species.”
The room felt ten degrees colder, the air thicker. Harder to breathe. Shock tore at my stomach, threatening to upset its meager contents. The brass had ordered the death of a woman because of who she chose to love. And Wyatt had requested the kill so he could hide it from the other Hunters. Hide the fact that such an order had ever come down.
If the woman had been a Blood, maybe I could understand. The risk of infection was too great to chance such a pairing, even if I believed vampires capable of loving humans, which I didn’t. Any other species was barely human—goblins, trolls, gargoyles—many of them little more than monsters. Therians had always seemed both more and less threatening—more because they could appear completely human; less because they chose to live among us without upsetting the status quo. How much could one woman’s love of a human truly hurt? What if Aurora had loved a human? Or Danika? Or Phineas? Would they have been ordered murdered for that assumed crime?
A lump clogged my throat, backed by tears I refused to let spill. I turned the full power of my bewilderment on Wyatt, who actually took a step backward. “Why?” was the only word I could manage, and it came out as much a growl as a question.
He worked his mouth open and shut several times before attempting a halfhearted reply. “Fraternization between the race—”
“Don’t give me the fucking textbook answer, Truman. I had it mashed into my brain in Boot Camp, and I saw what happened to Bradford.” The single lesson our instructors drilled over and over was the utter inhumanity of the Dregs. We are human, they are not. Period.
Only not period, not anymore. These last few days with Phin had seriously screwed up my judgment, messing with four years of blind acceptance of everything Boot Camp had taught me. And without blind acceptance, Hunters began questioning orders, which made us
harder to control. As long as we saw in perfect black and white, we couldn’t question the shades of gray in between.
“It shouldn’t surprise me, should it,” I asked, “after everything the brass did to me, that they’d go to such lengths to keep their control? They can’t let a were-fox love a human and turn a blind eye, because it goes against everything they teach Hunters about how to view Dregs.”
“There was more to it than that.”
“I just bet.” My hands began to ache, and I realized I’d clenched them so tight I’d cut my palms with my nails. I squeezed them harder, glad for the external pain. “So what kind of fucking hypocrite does that make you? Killing her for loving someone she shouldn’t, then you turn around and fall in love with me when you should have goddamn well known better?”
Every furious accusation seemed to strike like a fist, and he wilted a little with each blow. I hated seeing him like that—weak and defeated and utterly miserable—but part of me was also glad. Glad to see the guilty eaten alive by their conscience. Glad to know he still felt pain over what he’d done.
“If I hadn’t done it,” he said, “someone else would have. I had to keep it quiet, Evy. Why do you think no one uses Rain’s death as a Triad object lesson? No one else knew.”
“Of course not. Can’t have the other Hunters thinking we go around murdering people for the holy hell of it.”
Full-force sarcasm armor: check.
“That’s not fair.” He stood up straighter, shoulders back. His temper was returning, making him fight. “You have no idea why I did what I did. You hadn’t joined the team yet. You don’t know the part of me that I sacrificed that night!”
“So fucking tell me!”
His eyes blazed with fury, as hot as I’d ever seen. I half expected him to spontaneously combust under the heat of it. Instead, he said, “There were two names on the Neutralize order, Evy. Rain and the man she loved. Both of them were supposed to die.”
It all started to make a strange kind of sense. Four years ago, right before I joined. Wyatt took the job to keep it from the others, and from his own Hunters. He’d lost a part of himself. Oh God …
“Tell me you didn’t kill Cole,” I said. “Tell me he was not the one in love with Rain and that his name wasn’t on the order. You fucking tell me that.” His silence broke my heart. Tears stung my eyes. I stumbled back until I hit the bed, then sat down hard. Unable to tear my gaze off a dull spot on the floor.
“I did take the order because his name was on it,” Wyatt said, the words spat out as though they tasted foul. “I took it so he wouldn’t have to die.”
My head snapped up. Phin had moved in closer to me, remaining on the periphery of my attention. Everything in me was fixed on Wyatt. On the way he could look both furious and defeated, and on the fire that still burned in his cheeks, even though his eyes were cold. I didn’t have to ask this time. He was going to tell me.
“I knew Cole was seeing someone, I just didn’t know who until the brass sent the order. They said it was my Hunter who was the problem, so it was now my problem to solve. I just couldn’t make myself tell Jesse and Ash. I couldn’t tell anyone what I was planning.
“I went to Rain’s apartment first, and I used a sniper rifle to eliminate my first target. She was a clerk in the office of a criminal defense lawyer who was prepping for a high-profile trial, so her murder was easily explained by the city police.”
The detached way he spoke of eliminating his target sent chills wiggling down my spine. I knew the psychology—put up a wall between yourself and your actions, dehumanize the victim. Make her a job, not a person. Training I’d utilized dozens of times in my Hunter career, putting down Bloods, weres, and other Dregs solely on the say-so of others. Animals to be euthanized, not people with lives and loved ones and futures. I hated seeing him so cold.
He continued. “I picked up Cole and drove us to the mountains. He didn’t question me at first—not until I stopped the car in the middle of the woods. I told him about the order, and then I stabbed him in the shoulder.”
My face must have asked the question he hurried to answer. “The knife blade was coated with a spell I’d spent my life savings to buy. It knocked him out and wiped his memory clean—nothing left of his past or his life as a Hunter, or his knowledge of Dregs. I drove him a hundred miles away and left him in front of an emergency room. Alone.”
His life savings to give Cole another chance. So damned familiar. “How exactly was that better than just killing him?”
He blinked owlishly, obviously not prepared for my question. “I couldn’t kill him, Evy. He was one of mine. He didn’t do anything wrong.”
“And Rain did?” Hadn’t she, though? A month ago, I’d have been less quick to judge Wyatt’s decision. Taking Rain’s side never would have occurred to me. She’d have been guilty of seducing a human—a sickening crime I’d have been all too eager to punish her for, and probably enjoyed myself. Had Rain done anything wrong?
Yes. No.
Who the hell am I to judge her for loving someone?
Not just someone—a human Hunter, dammit.
“Faking both bodies would have raised suspicions,” Wyatt said. “The brass had to believe I’d killed him so I could save him.”
“Save him?” I snorted. “Dumping him in a strange city, with no idea who he is or where he’s from, and without telling him the truth about Rain? Maybe you didn’t pull the fucking trigger, but you killed everything that made Cole who he was. How is that not murder?”
I couldn’t take back the final question, and that was what crushed him. He crumpled into the closest chair, his strings cut by my barb. Repugnance and sympathy warred inside me. I wanted to hold him and make the agony of his actions seem okay, but they weren’t. I wanted to rage against what he’d done and hate him for allowing Cole and Rain to be torn apart. I wanted to rip out the part of me that understood why he’d done it and that applauded him for choosing the human over the Dreg—a part being slowly beaten back and struggling against being completely silenced.
The idea that Wyatt could save Cole’s life by taking away everything he knew and making him forget had been born of some noble sense of protection. He was a Handler protecting his Hunter. What were we really, except our memories? My body was different, but my mind was intact. I knew who I was, even with those bits of Chalice peeking out once in a while. Cole had been taken away and replaced by a shell.
“I’m sorry,” Wyatt whispered, barely audible. No strength left in his voice.
“You don’t owe me an apology.”
“No, I do, because you’re right. I am a hypocrite. I destroyed two lives for doing the same thing I did. You can’t choose the people you fall in love with. I know that now, and it’s too late to fix it.” He inhaled a shuddering breath, then released it in short, wheezing pants. “Something tells me apologizing to Snow when I meet him isn’t going to help.”
I flinched at the thought. Snow seemed to know what Wyatt had done—a turn of events I could only guess at, because Wyatt was careful. He wouldn’t have left incriminating evidence behind, and it was very likely this was the first time in four years he’d spoken to anyone of those events.
Being Kitsune, Snow was as likely to kill Wyatt on the spot as entertain any notion of apologies. Call wanting to meet him was very likely just an excuse to get him at Snow’s mercy. I didn’t quite know how to forgive Wyatt, but I couldn’t let him walk into that sort of blind trap.
Phin made a soft, strangled noise that earned our collective attention. He was staring at the ceiling as though it held some prophetic answer, his mouth open. I glanced up, wondering if I’d missed something.
“What is it?” I asked.
“What was Cole’s surname?”
“Um, Randall. Cole Randall.” From the corner of my eye, Wyatt nodded. Then the sudden change in his expression, from misery to shock, got my full attention. “What? What am I missing here?”
“Cole Randall,” Wyatt said. “
Leonard Call. Son of a bitch, I didn’t even see it.”
“Or you didn’t want to see it,” Phin said.
“Goddammit!” I jumped to my feet, alarmed and annoyed.
“The name is an anagram,” Wyatt said. “We know Call is someone with a grudge against the Triads, don’t we? What if something went wrong with Cole’s memory spell? Phin’s description is vague, and brown hair and brown eyes describes three hundred thousand people in this city, but it also describes Cole.”
I should have been elated at our breakthrough, but something in Wyatt’s calm acceptance enraged me. I was across the room, had hauled him out of his chair, and shoved him against the wall before my brain caught up to my actions. He didn’t protest when I grabbed the front of his shirt, or leaned in until we were almost nose to nose. Our eyes met, and I saw something there I’d never seen brought on by my own hand—fear.
“You’ve had this information in your head the whole damned time,” I seethed. “The whole goddamn time, Wyatt!”
He didn’t try to defend himself. Just let me hold him there. “I never had a reason to doubt the memory spell, or think it would break down. Cole never occurred to me as a possibility until this moment.”
“Not even when we were talking about Neutralize orders or people with grudges? Not once?”
“No!” With the frustrated denial came a hint of annoyance. “How many times should I say it, Evy? Cole was gone, dead and buried along with dozens of other Hunters.”
“Not all of us stay dead.”
My statement was meant to wound. Instead, it seemed to anger him. “I’m done apologizing for that, Evy.”
“No one’s asking.”
“Then what do you want from me?”
I wanted time to be angry at him. Time to absorb all the things he’d told me in the last hour, from his parents to his brother to this. Time to sit and talk about things like normal adults. Most of all, I wanted time to figure us out. Only we had no time. We never did. Our lives were about the next step, planning for the next fight. Until the city was free of Dreg threat and I no longer had to stand watch as one of the city’s invisible sentinels, there would never be time for us.
