The Wolf's Curse (Brunswick Academy for Gifted Girls Book 5)

by Chloe Vincent

  “Yeah, I got it.” He nodded and jogged away. “I know where everyone is. Be right back!”

  “Hey,” Lilith said as they stood around waiting for Leif to collect the few missing guardians. “Um… Not to be super paranoid, but how do we know Kamthis isn’t one of the missing guardians?”

  “Oh shit.” Jordan blinked, and felt a little stupid that the thought had not occurred to him.

  It was easy to consider Kamthis an outside threat. Something somewhere out there that they needed to find. But if he had known to pretend to be Lilith, he was somewhere close by. He was paying attention.

  He could be anyone.

  “Well,” Jordan said. “You know that spell, right? We’ll just have to cast it on each of us.” He nodded at Laya. “Hey, can we talk to you?”

  Lilith, mercifully, knew the spell by heart. Her casting abilities were average, according to her. Though Jordan had trouble believing she was anything less than brilliant at absolutely everything.

  It took them about an hour, just to cast the spell on every single one of the guards. First, they explained about the demons and Kamthis and what they had found out. Then Laya agreed to let Lilith teach them all the spells and cast it on her and Jordan. Every single time the spell was cast, there was a palpable tension in the room.

  What if one of them really was Kamthis?

  Jordan saw Lilith breathe a sigh of relief when his spell came up clean, and then she looked slightly guilty for it. But he smiled at her in response. She was just being logical. Then she cast it on Leif while teaching him how to do it. When Leif came up clean, Jordan breathed a sigh of relief.

  Finally, they all came up as clean non-Kamthis guardians and then they all practiced casting. Laya agreed that they should use it on anyone who seemed suspicious.

  “So,” Laya said when all the training had been done, “we think this Kamthis is loose on Earth and trying to bring demons up from his dimensions. Effectively, bringing his buddies over to play?”

  “If by play, you mean take over Earth and turn it into a hell dimension,” Lilith said wryly. “Yeah.”

  “Heh. That’s rich coming from a demon girl.” It was a newer guard speaking. Jordan couldn’t even remember his name and it didn’t matter who he was. Jordan was already seeing red. He shoved past Leif and got in the speaker’s face. It was a wolf shifter like him and somehow that pissed him off even more.

  “What exactly do you mean by that?” Jordan hissed. “You saying there’s something wrong with humanoid demons?”

  “Jordan,” Lilith said behind him. “It’s okay-”

  “See, it’s okay.” The wolf shifter was younger than Jordan. He couldn’t have been more than twenty and he was wearing a cocky smirk as he met Jordan’s gaze. “She knows what she is.”

  Jordan growled.

  “Demon whore,” the guy whispered. He barely got the words out before Jordan had him on the floor with one good punch. Everyone hooted and Laya whistled shrilly, pushing Jordan away.

  “Alright, alright! Jordan...good job.” She glared down at the nameless wolf shifter. “Evan, don’t be an asshole. Alright, everyone. Patrol as usual but cast if you see anything suspicious, even when you’re not on patrol. We’ll meet again tomorrow night. You’re dismissed.”

  The rest of the day was spent patrolling the Underground and then the park and the stretch of Fifth Avenue where the wreckage was still being cleaned up. Jordan had a weird feeling, as if Kamthis could be anyone at any time and he could tell Lilith felt the same. They both had the compulsion to never leave each other’s sights. Then they could guarantee they were not actually talking to Kamthis.

  That night, they patrolled the park after a dinner of pad thai but Lilith seemed out of sorts.

  “I feel like we’re just waiting for the next attack,” she said. “The book said that Kamthis raised his demons via three atrocities. So the goblin attack was the first atrocity. Which means two more are coming. And more people will die if we don’t stop it.”

  “We’ll stop it,” Jordan said. He stopped and turned to her, resting his hands on her cheeks and kissing her sweetly. “We can do this. You and me.”

  Things were scary and tense, but he didn’t feel as gloomy as he would have usually...because he had Lilith. He felt like he could do anything if he had Lilith, who kept mentioning how he’d punched that bigoted guard in the face and looking at him like he’d hung the moon.

  Yet that night, when they fell asleep together, he had a terrible nightmare. They confronted Kamthis and stopped his final atrocity. They captured the totem! They succeeded. But then Lilith turned to him and her bright eyes with their pretty little glimmers of red went cold and dark. She didn’t even say goodbye. She only walked away into the shadows, leaving him with his loneliness.

  It was all a big joke. The curse that had always been so cruel was tricking him.

  He would never have Lilith and getting closer and closer would only make the comedown more painful.

  He woke up feeling terrible.

  13

  Lilith

  Lilith woke up absurdly early in the morning, already thinking about what they had to do next.

  It was as if her brain had not shut off even while sleeping and she woke up mid-thought. She rolled around in bed, stretching, and frowned when she realized Jordan was not in bed with her. She rubbed her eyes and sat up. She had a theory that Kamthis wanted to target humans more than magic folk since his intention was to turn the Earth into a netherworld. That seemed like more of a target-the-humans kind of plan to her. Which meant they should be keeping their eyes on gatherings of humans.

  Jordan wasn’t anywhere in Lilith’s quarters and she was a little grumpy about it, thinking that he could have told her he was going. Then she was a little worried. But she went about her morning and showered and dressed and went to Jordan’s quarters where she assumed she would find him so they could go get coffee.

  But Jordan wasn’t there. Leif was there and answered the door, looking groggy.

  Jordan had come home early and according to Leif he’d looked grim.

  “He was all broody,” Leif said, rolling his eyes. “Just like the old days before you showed up. He didn’t say anything. Just got dressed and said he was going out for coffee. He probably didn’t want to wake you up. It was like four in the morning.”

  “Thanks, Leif,” she said, smiling tightly.

  She couldn’t imagine what had happened to put Jordan in a bad mood overnight. Things were scary, sure. But he’d seemed so optimistic. He was more upbeat than her the night before.

  Now Lilith was the one brooding.

  What if something had happened to Jordan? Or what if he’d gotten up in the middle of the night and Kamthis had gotten to him and now the Jordan who had spoken to Leif was actually Kamthis pretending to be Jordan and meanwhile Jordan was unconscious or even dead somewhere… The very idea made Lilith short of breath but she had nearly reached the Starbucks across from the park where she and Jordan had already made it a habit to go to breakfast.

  It wasn’t as if she couldn’t cast the spell on this version of Jordan to discover if it was him or Kamthis.

  Sure enough, Lilith found Jordan at Starbucks, sitting at a table by the window, sipping coffee. She ordered her own and sat down across from him, frowning. He was staring down at his cup and he hadn’t even said hello, much less stood to kiss her.

  “Good morning to you too?” Lilith said. “Jordan?”

  “Hey,” he said, looking just as grim as Leif had described.

  “What’s the matter?” Lilith took a long drink of her coffee. Whatever this was, it definitely required a lot of caffeine. “Are you okay?”

  “I’ve just been thinking.” His voice was so low, she could hardly make him out. “About… I think we should break up.”

  Lilith’s jaw just about hit the floor. “You think we should what now, excuse me?”

  “I’m not saying you’re wrong about what you said.” Jordan spoke slowly a
s if he wanted to be very careful of his words. Which was wise of him, Lilith supposed. Because her heart was pounding and she had a strong urge to throw a fit. “But it’s-”

  “What happened?” Her voice trembled and Jordan looked up sharply. She had a lump in her throat and her eyes were welling with tears. Just those few words had produced a visceral reaction. She hadn’t felt anything quite like it before. “Jordan, what happened? Last night everything was fine!”

  “I told you, I’ve just...been thinking.” He wouldn’t even look directly at her. He glanced off to the side, over her shoulder, as if he couldn’t bear to meet her eyes.

  “I need to cast,” Lilith said breathlessly.

  “What-”

  Lilith spread her hands and whispered the spell she’d memorized and taught to all the guardians. It was a fae spell and the words were a little tricky to get the hang of at first. But she’d gotten her mouth to form the strange pronunciations and she hadn’t let any of the guardians go until they could all do it flawlessly over and over. She concentrated her power and felt the spell travel through her fingers which glowed slightly as it left her and hit Jordan, who only rolled his eyes.

  “I’m not Kamthis,” he said under his breath.

  He wasn’t. If he had been, he would have been consumed with red light and his true form would have revealed itself.

  “Then why are you being an asshole!” Lilith said, shrieking so loudly, it turned some heads in the coffee shop. “I mean where the hell is this coming from?” Just as quickly, she completely shifted gears, reaching over to grab his hand. “Jordan, please. What the hell is going on?”

  He pulled away, practically recoiling, as if he couldn’t stand the sight of her. “I just...had this dream. It was a real wake-up call. I just think I’ve been seeing what I want to see. Believing in something that could never happen. And I know how much pain is around the corner if I let myself believe this can happen between us any longer. I just...can’t do it anymore. You should probably work with Leif or-”

  “You had a dream?” Lilith said, disbelieving. “This is happening because you had a stupid dream? It was just a nightmare. It wasn’t real. This…” She grabbed his hand again, unwilling to let him go. “This is real. You and me. You know that.”

  “No.” He shook his head, letting go of her hand, and got to his feet. “The dream was a warning. It was the part of me that knows this curse inside out and knows just how cruel the fates can be. I can’t let myself fall for this. Not again.”

  With that, he turned and left, tossing his empty cup away before heading out the door.

  Lilith ran after him but out on the sidewalk, he had somehow already vanished. Being a wolf shifter, he was particularly good at that. He had a talent for stealth that made her a little jealous. And right now, it really pissed her off too.

  But all at once her anger disintegrated and grief for what should be hit her like an abrupt punch to the head.

  The sun was just barely rising as Lilith burst into tears.

  She could fix this. She was sure of it. But not if he refused to even speak to her. Everything seemed so utterly hopeless on top of worrying about whether or not she would even be able to find Kamthis and the totem and complete the mission…

  Lilith was used to being pretty positive, if not a bit sardonic. But now she just cried and cried and couldn’t seem to stop.

  She almost missed the screams.

  14

  Lilith

  It took Lilith about three seconds to make the switch from heartbroken to alert and in battle mode. She heard multiple people screaming a few blocks down and she ran down the street that already had businessmen and joggers and service people starting their day on the sidewalk. Some of them were frowning, hearing the screams, slowly walking in that direction. She shoved past them and headed down the tree-lined street just in time to see a man grabbing another man by the lapels of his jacket and then taking a giant bite...out of his cheek.

  “Ugh!” Lilith grimaced. After the goblin attack, she had thought it a good idea to at least always be armed with a couple small weapons and she ducked down in the middle of the street and grabbed the dagger she’d strapped to her ankle, wielding it as she headed for the attacker.

  Just a few feet away, she realized that the attacking man, wearing a raggedy old suit was...extremely dead. His face was half-decayed, his eyes staring at nothing and his mouth a desiccated blood-covered maw. His skin was gray and he was walking slowly, stumbling toward his victim as if drunk as he took another bite out of the man’s neck while blood spurted everywhere.

  “Goddamn zombies,” Lilith muttered. “Goddammit.”

  She didn’t take any chances. She was sure that at some point there had been training in how to kill undead at Brunswick. But somehow, whatever she had learned there did not override the years of zombie media she had been exposed to. Lilith yelled and stabbed the zombie right through its temple and its eyes rolled back before it slumped to the ground.

  Unfortunately, its victim was already dead, crumpling to the ground besides his attacker. Lilith caught her breath just as she heard the rasping growl of a bunch of other undead creatures staggering down the street. She couldn’t help but notice that there was a church on the corner of the block the zombies came from...with a graveyard next to it.

  Lilith screamed Jordan’s name on the off-chance he could hear her from wherever he was, and then ran at the small hoard of zombies, wielding her dagger.

  It was touch and go.

  Her training took over. Lilith managed to dodge teeth and unforgivably grasping fingers that kept trying to dig into her flesh and take her apart in chunks. The trick was to keep moving and move fast. But it wasn’t something she thought consciously. She relied on her muscle memory and it felt like a dance as she spun away from one only to stab another in the head and yank her dagger out before ducking under an arch of grasping arms and coming up the other side to lop off a head that was already half off. She flipped over the back of a zombie that was hunched over but determined and took it down then kicked out and swept two more zombies’ legs out from under them, leaping on top of them and taking the two of them out neatly. She danced away again to get some distance. There were still a few of this cluster left...but she heard more screams down the street.

  “Oh, seriously?” she said, panting. “Goddammit.”

  She almost killed Leif when he came running up and he reared back. “Whoa whoa!” He had a sword strapped to his jeans and another in his hand that he handed to Lilith hilt-first. “Here.”

  “Glad to see you,” she said. She held up the sword. “Gladder to see this. Where is Jordan?”

  “You never found him?” Leif looked alarmed at that. “I thought he was here with you. Laya told me there were reports of undead. That’s a new one. So I came running.”

  “He was here but he...left,” she sighed, and they started running toward the zombies that were all stumbling and staggering down the street in the direction of yet more screams. “We had a...fight.”

  “Okay,” Leif said darkly. “Well, I hope he shows up. We need him.”

  The next couple of hours were a blur. Lilith just kept moving. She imagined if she stopped, she’d have too much time to think, and worse, she might get tired. Instead she took down zombies one by one and did her best to keep them away from humans. Except that the humans were New Yorkers and apparently not too shy about attempting to fight back instead of run even if they had no obvious weapons. Although Lilith was more than a little impressed by the mail carrier who swung his mailbag in a zombie's face before effectively stabbing in the eyes with his keys.

  The only real thought in her head was like a chant that pulsed and pulsed to no end. Her head already ached and it ached worse every time she thought it: Where is Jordan?

  She was back on Fifth Avenue, her eyes wild as she looked for something else to kill. Her clothes were covered with goop and her hand hurt from gripping the sword so tightly. She had just seen Leif and sev
eral other guards running down another street as if chasing a cluster and she ran in that direction.

  But Jordan…

  It occurred to her that she might die. The thought was dark, but all too real.

  What if she died and she never saw Jordan again?

  For once, her training fell by the wayside. There was too much space to think. She needed to talk to Jordan one last time, just in case. If she died, it might mean his curse would never break. He might want those last few words from her.

  Lilith ducked into a bodega where the cashier was perched at the window, watching slack-jawed as a trio of zombies stumbled down the street where Lilith had just been standing.

  Lilith ignored all of it and grabbed her phone, marching to the back of the store where it was quiet, right as the cashier hopped down from his stool and shut and locked the front door, dragging a crate of oranges to block it from the zombies wandering the streets.

  She dialed Jordan with shaking fingers and sniffed as she put the phone on speaker, leaning up against a wall and shutting her eyes. When his phone went to voicemail, she just started rambling.

  “Jordan! Hey. Listen, I don’t know where you are and I don’t even know if you’re okay, but if you’re okay you need to get down here to… Oh, I don’t know where I am, like, um, 74th and Columbus or something like that... Where the bodega is? There are zombies and I’ve been fighting and Leif’s been fighting…” She could hardly talk for crying and she clapped a hand to her mouth, wishing it would just stop already when, across the bodega, the glass door shattered. “Oh! Jordan, I don’t know where you are but please get here and I love you. I love you and I need you to believe that. If this is the last time I talk to you, I at least need you to believe-”

  The phone was knocked out of her hand by a flailing female zombie who looked strikingly like her first-grade teacher except that she had no lower jaw. Lilith allowed herself one scream just to take the edge off and then she spun around and sent the zombie flying into a shelf of ramen with one good kick.