“Or maybe I just know what’s worth living for and dying for.”
His teeth grazed her throat, tearing at the flesh, but not quite ravaging her. “Why aren’t you pissed?” He peered closer at her, as if she was some kind of strange bug.
She was angry. Of course she was angry. She wanted to spend her life with Warner. She wanted to have pups with him. She wanted to have adventures with him. She wanted to help him bear the weight of the Dark Champion’s mantle on his broad, strong shoulders.
She wanted more late nights with the other Woolven Brides. More of the sugar fairy’s treats and trading secrets over wine at grown-up slumber parties. She wanted more family picnics where bone fairies sat with sugar fairies and vampires and dragons came to visit. She wanted to see her pups trailing after their Alpha, Noah.
She wanted to see her father again. She wanted to hug him so tight.
She wanted more days in Westwood’s lab.
Mari wanted more of everything. She didn’t want to give it all up.
Was it unfair? Massively.
But what could she do about it? Not a goddessdamned thing.
When she passed from this world, she’d be thinking about Warner. What he’d said. That he would still come for her, that he would find her.
That she was his one.
She’d take that with her and hold on it through the long dark.
Mari couldn’t change the fact she was going to die her. She couldn’t change that it would be Peter Breslin who took her life while inflicting as much pain and agony on her as he could. He’d drink it like a fine wine.
She was under no illusions that she was strong enough to keep him from that small, sick pleasure. No, Mari didn’t handle pain well at all.
The only thing she really had a choice about was the memories she’d hold on to when her abused body surrendered.
And the satisfaction of knowing that Peter Breslin would breathe the air of this world just long enough to know he missed it before the Wendigosent him straight back to the dark.
So she smiled at him.
“You won’t be smiling when I finish tearing your throat.”
Mari kept smiling.
“Fight me,” he demanded.
The smile didn’t waver.
As he tore out her throat, she hoped her death mask would remain a smile that would piss him off even when he rotted in hell.
17
Warner lay wrecked and miserable while his body knit itself back together.
“I’m going to kill him,” he growled.
“Didn’t you already try that?” Lenore said, as she shoved a headless body toward him. “Hurry up, eat this one before it can grow back. Plus, you need to keep up your strength.”
“This is not somewhere I ever thought I’d be,” he grumbled.
“Me either, boo. Me either. If I would’ve even suggested it during my hunter training, I’d still be looking for my teeth, but here we are.” Lenore paused. “Do you still believe she’s the one?”
“I was convinced,” he said between bites. “But when she started bleeding…” he trailed off, stricken.
“The prophecy said she had to die to be reborn, too.”
“I want to have hope, Lenore. I do.”
“I understand. Wanting and having are two very different things.”
“I have to get in touch with Blake. He needs to know this whole pack has been lost. If we don’t survive, he and the Council needs an account of what happened. Otherwise, there will be war. Again.”
“I’m mostly useless against these things. So I’ll see if I can hack their comms. I can do that.”
Lenore’s words reminded him of Mari.
The way she’d said she could be of use.
His fingers curled up into fists.
She was the best thing that had ever happened to him and he hadn’t gotten the chance to really tell her, to make her believe it.
The pain that throbbed and radiated throughout his body was nothing compared to the pain in his heart. The empty, gaping hole of nothing that was an ever-widening chasm.
The Dark Champion felt her loss acutely.
It was a strange and awful thing to love a woman with two hearts, and feel the loss of her in two souls.
He’d never felt this for Arianna. What he’d felt for her was a tiny, flickering tea light candle. It was warm, soft, and more like decoration.
This thing that burned for Mari, it was a cascade of fire, it was volcanic, it was the sun. It was utterly vital.
There was no way Mari wasn’t the Wendigo.
And he wouldn’t let her rise alone.
Warner struggled to his feet, and Lenore offered her arm to help him.
“That’s my Dark Champion right there. Hell yeah.”
“You’re not going to tell me I need to heal?”
“You’ll figure it out.” Lenore grinned. “And you’re gonna go get our girl, right?”
“Damn right.”
“In all this One Mate, True Love stuff, don’t forget you’ve got to wipe the rest of this infection off the face of the earth and stuff. Okay?”
“I mean, I guess.” Warner shrugged and gave her a half-grin. “Damn hunters. Always wanting something.”
“Fuckers. Every last one.” She shook her head. “Swear to Goddess, I’m hanging up my guns after this.”
Warner watched as the last bits of flesh on his gut stitched themselves back together, then said, “Wait, what?”
“I’m over it. Dark Champion has this hunting rogue things down.”
“What are you going to do if you’re not hunting? Take up knitting?”
“I might.” She made a stabbing motion with pretend knitting needles. “I can still stab things with the needles.” A soft look crossed her face. “I might take a vacation. With Luchtaine.”
“You should.”
Lenore looked around. “I can’t believe I said that out loud. I can’t believe I said it out loud and he didn’t materialize like a fucking ghost stalker.”
“Too bad he didn’t. That would’ve actually been helpful.”
“I can call him.”
“If you want.” He stretched, feeling his body move to accommodate his commands. The pain was gone. He was ready. “Let Blake know what’s going on first, though. Report your fuckwit hunters, too, if you’ve the time. I’d love to see your mother’s face.”
“No, you really wouldn’t.” Lenore snorted. “Meet back here for cake and ice cream after the party?”
It was Warner’s turn to snort, but his was much louder, and much wetter because his muzzle had erupted from his face and his warrior form was ready for the fight.
He can smell the pack. They smelled like a herd of cattle, but if they shat sulfur. The stink was rotten in his nose.
His senses honed in on them, those who walked, but should not be.
He could no longer see Lenore, or sense her. Part of his rational mind knew she was still there, but the Dark Champion had blocked her out.
Warner followed the trail of their stench, registering another scent, more delicate, and somehow more awful because he knew it was Mari’s blood.
He followed it for miles.
She’d run so far, and so hard, his little mate.
His teeth elongated in his mouth, stabbing into his gums as rage filled him. Warner raged that she’d had to fight so hard. Raged that she thought that her only purpose in this life had been to buy him time. Raged that it was possible Peter had taken her from him.
He refused to allow that thought into his head. He pushed it out like the poison it was. Because he was going to find Mari, he was going to hold her close while she healed, and together, they were going to take down these abominations.
That was his plan for the immediate future.
For the long-term, he just wanted the time to love her as she deserved to be loved.
He leaped down the embankment easily, his powerful legs pushing him forward, and absorbing the shock-force as he landed a
nd leaped again.
He smelled her death, it still hung in the air over the water.
Warner knew it had to happen if she was the Wendigo, but it still tore into him with sharper claws than Peter’s had been trying to get out.
He threw back his head and howled his pain and his grief into the sky.
At the sound of his howl, the most base and primal sound of sorrow, the clouds gathered and crashed together to blot out the sky. Lightning bloomed in giant flashes and thunder split the atmosphere.
It was as if all of nature felt his grief, too.
He noticed that while he could scent the loss of her, that it wasn’t stained with fear. Warner was so proud of her. Hope burned in his chest like a tiny sun.
He picked up Peter’s trail again and he knew from the other wolf’s gait, that he carried Mari with him. Warner followed him through a grassy field and into the woods. Warner realized the trail was leading back to the small village. They were probably crowning Peter king with Mari’s body on display like some kind of trophy.
As he approached the outlying edge of the tiny settlement, sentries howled the alert, but Warner wouldn’t be turned away.
He expected them to charge him, to try to take him down, but they didn’t. They only howled. Until he neared the entrance to the town, the single road going in and out.
Then, braver wolves ran up to him, snapping with their teeth and slashing with their claws.
He’d get them all in turn, but if he stopped now to devour each one who came at him, it would make him full to bursting and it would slow him down.
Also, he never wanted a past-full stomach again.
Warner kept pushing forward until he’d moved into the town square, surrounded by infected wolves.
He finally saw her—Mari.
She’d been posed in the square on a throne of hay bales, like a macabre May queen. Her throat torn out, the skin splayed like curtains at a peep show to reveal her now bloodless insides. The sight of her, unmoving, her wounds unhealing, snuffed the burning flame of hope in his chest.
It left nothing behind but darkness.
Part of Warner was prepared to lie down next to her and go wherever she was. That was where he wanted to be. Where he needed to be.
But that would make her sacrifice for nothing and he wouldn’t allow that. Not on any plane of existence.
“I’m curious,” a voice echoed from a small storefront behind Mari. “Do you hunger for all the dead, or just infected dead?” Peter nodded to Mari.
“I’m taking her with me,” he said.
“I’ll allow it. I just want to know what you’re going to do with her. Make a statue of her and worship her like you did Dead Saint Arianna?”
Warner knew that Peter was trying to make him angry, but he didn’t understand why, where was the benefit?
“What’s it to you, Breslin?”
Peter shrugged. “I don’t know. Seems pretty important for you to come in here all alone.”
“You can’t hurt me any longer. Mari saw to that.”
“She did, didn’t she?” Peter’s mouth turned down in a frown as he cast her a look. “Interesting. It’s almost like she thought it mattered.”
It did matter, but he wasn’t going to waste his time arguing about it.
“I’ve been waiting for this mythical Wendigoto come and all I’ve got is a corpse and… you.”
“I’ll tear you apart,” Warner promised.
“Mmm. There is that. You’ll eat me again, too, I suppose? Do you think it’ll work this time? Do you think I’ll stay dead? Because I don’t.” Peter stepped closer to him. “But by all means. I kinda like it when your teeth tear into my meat. It’s intimate. More intimate than I’ve ever been with a woman. Unless you count my teeth tearing into her.” He jerked his head in Mari’s direction. “It’s not the same, though, after they’re dead. Don’t you think?”
Warner put aside his fury and went to Mari. He gathered her up in his arms and studied her face. The expression she wore in death was at utter odds with the now bloodless wound at her throat. It was all calmness and serenity.
If Warner didn’t know better, he’d even call it a smile.
He pressed his lips to her forehead, oh-so-gently and he carried her back toward the way he came.
“You should devour her, Warner. Maybe your body will be her passage back from the land of the dead, too. Won’t you try it? Even if it doesn’t work, you’ll get to keep her with you forever if you do.”
He’d keep her with him forever anyway. She’d always live in his heart.
“Why are you so obsessed with this idea, Breslin? You’re a sick fuck, you know that?”
“Says you, the eater of wolves.”
“Jealous?” Warner tossed back.
“Obviously.”
The other wolves began swiping at him again, taking tiny bites out of his flesh. He didn’t care. They’d heal. As he carried Mari, he couldn’t resist pressing his lips to hers one last time.
After he pulled back, he saw that the tiny split in her lip had healed.
So he pressed his mouth to a secondary wound on her throat and it too quickly healed.
Elation bloomed through him and he knew he had to get her out of there. They’d never let him resurrect her. They’d tear her apart first and she needed a body to come back to.
That was why Peter wanted him to devour her.
He suspected Mari was the Wendigoand if Warner devoured her, she’d no longer be a threat.
“Aw, the great Dark Champion doesn’t want to play? Why not?” Peter called out and began walking after him. “Too bad, because I’m not done.”
“Yes, you are.”
Warner felt him approaching from behind and he closed his mouth over her wound, his teeth elongating into the cool flesh.
He hoped against hope this was what they needed. This would heal her and bring her back to him.
Mari awoke to a strange landscape.
It looked like the wilds of Nevada, if they’d been on Mars.
She was alone.
She sensed no animals, no small creatures, no insects. Nothing that lived was present. She’d never felt so incredibly alone.
The desolate landscape seemed to amplify that feeling. It was beautiful, but harsh and strange and filled with reds and oranges and browns. She’d give anything to see something green.
Being dead was every bit as awful as she imagined.
More so, because she thought when creatures passed from the daywalking world, they forgot their troubles. She did not leave hers behind. They came with her and Mari wished desperately she could see Warner, just to know he was okay.
That he won.
She wished again for something green and suddenly, a meadow burst to vibrant life before her and in the very center of that green meadow dotted with periwinkle and daisies, she saw a woman.
A woman she knew somehow, her presence so very familiar.
The woman sat with her legs crossed wearing strange looking leathers, and a bow slung across her back. Her hair was like a waterfall of midnight down her back and her chestnut skin was smooth and unmarred, except for the scar at her throat.
It bore the shape of claws.
The woman motioned for Mari to join her and she didn’t hesitate to cross the soft, fresh grasses that felt so real beneath her bare feet.
“Maribella,” the woman said, her voice low and husky. “Come sit with me and let me see your face.”
She realized if she’d survived, her scar would’ve looked much like the one that this woman bore.
Maribella sat down next to her and allowed the woman to pull her head into her lap and she stroked Mari’s hair in a familiar rhythm.
“My sweet little Maribella. What a powerful woman you’ve become. I’m so sorry I didn’t get to see you bloom, but that was the tradeoff, I suppose. I get to be here now.”
“I know you, but I don’t,” she said honestly.
“I’m your grandmother, child. My p
eople called me Tala. I am here on behalf of the Great Mother. You know her as the Goddess.”
The name struck a chord of recognition inside of her and it echoed like a golden bell.
“I did it, then? I saved Warner in time? Is everyone safe?”
Tala continued to stroke her hair. “Oh no, my child. Your work is not yet done. You must go back.”
“Back?” she murmured. “I have nothing to go back to.”
“You have your destiny.”
“Me?” Mari swallowed the hope that rose up inside of her. “Am I…” she was almost too afraid to give it a voice. It was her greatest hope.
She wanted to be the Wendigo. She wanted not only to shoulder the responsibility with Warner, to make the world safer, but she wanted to live. She had so much she wanted to see, do, experience.
“Your fear isn’t of the Wendigo.” Tala sighed. “I wonder if it’s because you haven’t been told enough of the old stories to be afraid.”
“I’m not afraid of Warner, and he’s the Dark Champion. So why should I be afraid of the Wendigo?”
“The Wendigohas walked the earth much longer than any Dark Champion. Warner is the Dark Champion. It’s as much a part of him as his wolf. The Wendigo is much different. She is a holy thing, and we are but the chosen to be her vessel.”
She sat up and looked at her grandmother. “You were Wendigo?”
“Yes, and so are you. It’s why you couldn’t access your wolf. When I had your mother, I had already become the vessel and while she wasn’t granted powers, you were. A gift for my service from the Great Mother, but your father, he didn’t understand. He was afraid for you as all fathers are.” Tala nodded as she spoke. “Doesn’t make it okay, but he did for you what he thought would keep you safe.”
“I know he did.” She looked around. “Safe? I guess it doesn’t get much safer than dead, does it?”
Tala gave her a gentle smile. “Do you hear him calling your name?”
She heard nothing. “No.”
“Listen, child. Listen for the voice in the dark.”
Then she could hear it, so faint, barely audible, but there. Warner, begging her to come back to him. Begging her to stand by his side.
Stealing the Heiress Page 13
