Jennifer Lynn Barnes Anthology

by Jennifer Lynn Barnes

  “No,” I said, aware that Chase was close—very close—to Shifting. “They’re just like you. Did you know they used to be human—Chase and Maddy and the rest? They were human, just like you. They were attacked, just like you. They survived. For that matter, so did I.” I thought about what Jed had said about the man who’d led the coven before Valerie. “My parents didn’t.”

  My words seemed to snap Caroline out of it. She stopped moving forward. Genuine emotion overrode whatever psychic push Valerie had left in her daughter’s head, and I saw an instant of doubt, vulnerable and raw, in Caroline’s blue eyes, a single moment during which she wanted desperately to believe that she wasn’t alone.

  That she wasn’t a monster.

  That someone, anyone else could understand.

  “Do you really think this is about Lucas?” I asked her. “You really think that your mother is willing to go up against an entire pack of werewolves just so she can squeeze out a few extra days of torturing one? Valerie wants to fight. She wants you to want to fight, and I think we both know that your mother has a way of getting what she wants.”

  Uncertainty danced around the edges of Caroline’s features, but the mere mention of her mother was enough to make her pupils pulse. I thought of Ali’s description of her own childhood, growing up under the constant influence of an empath.

  If she was sad, I was sad. If she was angry, I was angry. I loved her so much, because she wanted me to.

  Caroline wasn’t angry. She wasn’t sad. I wasn’t even sure she loved her mother, but whatever she was feeling, she felt it irrevocably and intensely, and the emotion had a mind of its own.

  She glanced down at the gun in her hand and then back up at me. I had a single second to process the realization that if Valerie wanted me dead, she didn’t need a whole coven to do it.

  “She didn’t send me here,” Caroline said, turning the gun over in her hand. “I came on my own, but it doesn’t matter. None of it matters.” She closed her eyes, then opened them again, lifting the gun. “What I want doesn’t matter. What you want doesn’t matter. This is what I was made for. It’s what I’m good at. It’s what I do.”

  I felt a flare of energy the second before Chase Shifted. Caroline switched her gaze from me to him, and my heart jumped into my throat when I realized that a girl who’d been programmed to hate werewolves was standing there, watching him Shift, her hand on a gun.

  Caroline’s knuckles went white. Her blue eyes bled black again. She turned her attention from Chase to me, and she raised the gun.

  Bryn. Mine. Protect.

  Chase’s thoughts. Before I could process them—or what the wolf was about to do—he leapt, straight for the gun pointed at me.

  Straight for Caroline’s throat.

  Devon jumped forward, Shifting in midair faster and more fluidly than any Were I’d ever seen. His body slammed against Chase’s, and the muted sound of flesh hitting flesh was drowned out by the snapping of teeth and a low, vibrating growl.

  Almost instantly, Dev was back on four feet, and he whirled around, bringing the full force of his massive size to bear on Caroline, matching Chase’s growl with one of his own. The message was clear, even to an outsider: Devon had saved her, but if Caroline gave him reason to, he’d kill her himself.

  Caroline’s eyes went suddenly blue, her pupils shrinking to pinpoints as she stared at Devon in wolf form. For whatever reason, seeing him had knocked out the effects of Valerie’s interference, and for a split second, I relaxed.

  Then Caroline’s finger tightened around the trigger. With no warning whatsoever, she took aim and fired—but not at me.

  In her right mind and of her own volition, she put a silver bullet straight through Devon’s heart.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  YOU CAN KNOW, OBJECTIVELY, THAT YOUR BEST friend isn’t allergic to silver. You can be fully aware that, setting the silver issue aside, most werewolves can take a bullet to the heart and come out of it okay. You can know it, and it doesn’t matter.

  The second I saw the bullet pierce Devon’s chest, I was on the floor beside him, saying his name out loud, calling to him through the pack-bond, willing him to be okay. My hands warm and sticky with his blood, I felt the Change ripple through his body as he Shifted back to human form.

  “Dev. You’re going to be okay, Devon. You’re going to be fine.”

  He said something—softly. I couldn’t make it out, couldn’t get my human ears to decipher whatever he was trying to say.

  You’re going to be okay, Dev. You’re going to be fine.

  If I could have made it an order, I would have. I would have ordered him to be okay, but I didn’t get the chance, because he spoke again—silently this time—and I heard what he said just fine.

  Caroline.

  I felt a pulse of rage go through my body, and all around me, the rest of the pack felt it, too.

  The smell of Devon’s blood brought the rest of the pack straight to us, and as a unit, they turned their attention on Caroline. She moved quickly, quietly. Mitch caught her roughly by one arm, but an instant later, he was wearing a dagger through his bicep, and she was gone.

  She dove out a window, straight through the glass.

  The pack wanted to follow. They wanted to tear her open, hunt her down, make her bleed the way Devon was bleeding now.

  Prey. Prey. Prey.

  With their animal instincts beating a constant rhythm in my mind, I could feel the desire rising in my own body: tears in my eyes, a tightening in my throat, and the thrum of my heart and theirs all around me.

  “Could be … trap,” Devon wheezed.

  The second I heard his voice, I let out a breath I hadn’t realized I was holding. Appreciating his meaning took me a second longer. Caroline had just taken out one of our strongest fighters and whetted the pack’s desire for blood. Every instinct they had, every instinct I had said to chase her.

  But what if that was what she wanted?

  I couldn’t rule out the possibility that Valerie had sent her daughter here to lure us out, even though the memory of Caroline’s eyes—blue and completely her own—and the expression on her ashen face as she’d leveled the gun at Dev made me think that none of this had been planned, that she hadn’t come here to kill anyone, that shooting Dev after he’d saved her life had been … personal.

  Time was passing. Precious seconds, and once Caroline was out of eyesight, she was impossible to track. The pack wanted to go after her. I wanted to go after her. But I couldn’t take the chance that it was a trap.

  I couldn’t take any chances, because if there was one thing the blood on my hands had hit home, it was the reality that from here out, we were playing for keeps.

  “She’s not prey,” I said out loud. “Not yet. We’re going to let them bring the fight to us.”

  Beside me, Devon groaned. With no small amount of ceremony, he lifted his right hand, dug his fingernails into his chest, and ripped out the bullet.

  “Well, there goes that manicure,” he muttered.

  “Somebody bring me a med kit,” I said, my voice the only sound in the room. “Mitch, I’ll need you to weigh in on a couple of things. Lake, bring me up to speed on the explosives. And will somebody please get Devon some clothes?”

  My hands soaked in my best friend’s blood, I prepared my pack for war. Now that the course was set, now that we’d passed the point of no return, I felt an odd sense of calm rolling over my body, a whisper in the back of my mind.

  I could practically taste the red haze of Resilience, hovering just out of reach.

  We waited for the attack at the edge of the forest, where we had the benefit of cover and our attackers would not. Lake, Maddy, Phoebe, and Sage took the front line; Devon and the kids were hidden safely away. Our perimeter was lined with explosives, and I was ready and willing to use them.

  If Caroline tried to set up some kind of sniper’s nest and pick us off one by one, she was going to be very unpleasantly surprised.

 
I felt detached from what we were about to do, but my heart was pounding, feeding my brain adrenaline, fueling the pack’s appetite for blood. This was a hunt. We were hunters, and the air was heavy with the things a werewolf pack, backed into a corner, could do.

  Would do.

  I could see the expression on Caroline’s face as she took in Devon’s wolf form, pulled the trigger. She’d shut down emotionally, but as I played the moment over and over again in my mind, I caught wisps of fury, vulnerability, fear.

  Pack. Pack. Pack.

  I didn’t want to kill her, didn’t want to kill any of them, but if it came down to our lives or theirs, if Caroline started shooting, I’d put her down like a rabid dog—the same way I was going to go after Valerie and end this once and for all.

  Alpha. Alpha. Alpha.

  My chest tightened and a ball of energy exploded inside me, pushing me forward, willing me to force my way to the front of the pack—in front of Lake, in front of Maddy. Every instinct I had said to face this threat head-on.

  “Bryn.”

  My eyes were so focused on the horizon that I didn’t see Ali until she’d made her way back to the point in the forest where I stood. Briefly, I wondered what she was doing here, but then I saw the gun in her hand and the look on her face—one I recognized all too well.

  I’d invented that look.

  “Ali, you can’t—”

  “I can’t fight because I’m human?” Ali said, cutting me off. “Or because you don’t trust me not to get myself killed?”

  There was no answering that question. I didn’t even try.

  “I may not be strong, I may not be fast, and God knows that I don’t have even the tiniest sliver of psychic ability, but I am a part of this pack. I am a part of you, Bryn, and when I say that you are not going up against this coven without me, I mean it.”

  The message was clear in her stance and the set of her chin: alpha or not, I was her daughter. My fights were her fights, case closed.

  “Can you shoot?” It was probably a stupid question, but I’d never actually seen Ali armed.

  “Better than you can,” Ali replied. “I’ve always been a decent shot.”

  She fell in beside me, and Chase took a step toward the two of us. I looked at him. He looked at me. We waited. And no matter how much I wanted to, I couldn’t tell him that his willingness to trade the pack’s safety for mine didn’t matter to me. I couldn’t tell him that everything would be okay, that we would be okay, and he knew it.

  “Be careful,” he said softly.

  I pictured myself raising my right hand, waiting for him to do the same. I saw myself melting into him, but I didn’t move a muscle.

  “I will be,” I said.

  He nodded.

  “Chase?” His name caught in my throat as he turned back to face me once more. “You be careful, too.”

  He nodded, and then I felt it—a prickling at the back of my neck, a shifting in the air around me as the Weres began to scent our prey. The psychics were close, getting closer.

  This was it.

  Pack. Pack. Pack.

  The pull of the pack at the edges of my mind was unbearable, overwhelming. I hadn’t asked for this battle. The human part of me didn’t want it, but in those last moments before the enemy came into view, I could feel my humanity falling away, like sand through my fingertips, like the memory of a dream I’d never be able to reclaim.

  Alpha. Alpha. Alpha.

  Prey. Prey. Prey.

  We were Pack. The coven had come here to hunt us. One way or another, this was bound to end in blood.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  TO MY LEFT, ALI READIED HER GUN. ON MY RIGHT, Chase Shifted, flooding my mind with heightened perceptions from his wolf form: the sound of footsteps, the smell of gunpowder and lead.

  “Lake.” I was surprised that my voice could sound so human when the rest of me felt so not. “Now.”

  On short notice, we hadn’t been able to round up more than three or four pairs of earplugs, but given the number of teens and tweens in our pack, we had iPods to spare. On my order, the girls turned up their music, drowning out all other sounds. If the coven wanted to get past our first line of defense, they’d have to do it the old-fashioned way—without the help of Bridget’s knack.

  As if on cue, a single note wafted its way through the forest on the wind, announcing the psychics’ presence long before they appeared on the horizon, walking toward us like they hadn’t a care in the world.

  I knew what to expect, but the sound—sweet and simple and so full of longing that I ached to hear more—nailed my feet to the ground and brought my hands to my sides. I’d chosen to go without earplugs, because the one advantage I’d have in this fight was my own knack—and it only came out to play when I felt threatened, in mortal danger, trapped.

  That was where Bridget came in. The sound—oh, God, the sound—rushed me, enveloping my body, my mind, drowning out everything and everyone else, until there was nothing.

  Until I was trapped.

  If it had been just me, it would have taken longer for my Resilience to flare up, but even as I lost all ability to care about the outside world, the rest of the pack gnawed at the gates of my mind, and their panic at my sudden stillness spurred a single spark of my own.

  Trapped—Escape—Trapped.

  For an instant, I saw the music as a physical thing, multi-limbed and snakelike. It held me in place. When I struggled, it tightened, but the overwhelming need for freedom burst out of me, and I saw the world in shades of red. Black dots played around the edges of my vision, but this time, instead of giving in to the haze, I rode it like a wave.

  Fight. Fight. Fight.

  Survive.

  The psychics spread out—eight of them, Caroline and Archer nowhere in sight.

  Fight. Fight. Fight.

  I slipped sideways through the forest, far enough away from the rest of the group that—assuming the coven really was gunning for me—a portion of our attackers would have to follow. The first shot rang out, and the only reason I knew it wasn’t Caroline was because the shooter missed.

  The world was coming at me faster now. My heart raced, the amount of adrenaline coursing through my bloodstream an inhuman thing. I felt Chase throwing off Bridget’s hold, and like dominoes, the others followed.

  Now, I told them, and like horses bucking their riders, the girls gave up cover and rushed our assailants, crossing the space between them in a fraction of the time it took me to draw prey of my own.

  Teeth snapped. Metal flew. A high-pitched whine cut me to the core, fueling my need to fight, to protect.

  To survive.

  “Hello, mutt-lover.”

  Archer’s voice assaulted my mind, taking me back to my dreams. I saw the forest, the wolf, the fire—saw it as if it were real and the rest of the world had just faded away. Archer’s hold on my mind wasn’t a sharp, stabbing pain this time; it was burning, liquid flame: invincible, hungry.

  Fire exploded around my body, and knowing it wasn’t real didn’t stop me from feeling the heat.

  Trapped. Escape. Survive.

  Power surged, crackling through my body and rendering Archer’s interference useless. One second I was in my head, burning, and the next I was back in the real world, stalking toward Archer. He took a step backward and threw something at me—some kind of firecracker, maybe, or a mild explosive—and this time, I caught fire for real.

  Fight. Kill. Survive.

  My hair was burning, but I couldn’t smell it. My eyes watered, and like a rubber band, the hold I had on my Resilience snapped.

  At some point, I must have stopped, dropped, and rolled, must have extinguished the flame and disarmed Archer, but the only motion I was aware of was my fist plunging into his face, my body pinning his to the ground.

  Fight.

  I pressed my left forearm to his throat, cutting off his air supply. My skin was already beginning to blister from his assault, and the only thing that kept me from snapp
ing his neck was a single sentence, issued from somewhere behind me.

  “Let the boy go, Bryn.” I heard Jed’s voice, and it pulled me back, away from that lovely red haze in which I could fight, fight, fight without thinking, without hurting, without feeling anything at all.

  Ignoring Jed, I dug my arm farther into Archer’s throat, feeling his trachea give, and the older Resilient responded by wedging a shotgun against the back of my head. “I said to let the boy go.”

  Jed didn’t shoot me.

  Mistake.

  In a single motion I caught the barrel of the gun with my leg and knocked it back into the older man’s chin. He stumbled, and I whipped the gun around, caught it in my right hand, and rammed the butt into Archer’s face, hard enough to knock him unconscious.

  Jed shook his head, smiled through the blood. The sense of panic—and the fight-or-flight mode that went with it—left me the moment I let my eyes meet his. There was no threat there.

  None.

  “That boy isn’t your enemy,” Jed said. “Not really. Easy thing to lose sight of when you flash out.”

  “That boy,” I said tersely, “set me on fire.”

  “You flashed out too early,” Jed grunted, ignoring my complaint entirely. “Fight isn’t over yet. You’re going to have to go again, and sooner or later, the back-and-forth will start to wear on you.”

  I didn’t have time for Resilience 101—not with my pack out there fighting for their lives. The smell of blood was thick in the air. The sound of teeth, of claws, of screams and howls was deafening.

  “Caroline has to be in position by now,” I said. Before Jed could reply, my words proved prophetic, and I felt—rather than saw—Chase take a bullet in the side.

  My Chase.

  White-hot pain. Silver in the blood. Hurts.

  “She doesn’t know what she’s doing,” Jed told me. Another shot sounded, another howl of pain. I felt it as if it were my own, wished it was.

  Don’t be dead, I thought, desperately trying to make the words an order. Don’t be dead. Don’t be dead.