by D. N. Hoxa
“Protect her,” she whispered, and then she closed her eyes and began to chant.
My wolf howled, and her pain became mine.
The witch was gone. The house was gone. The smell was gone.
She was running in the woods like the devil was chasing her. Her entire body ached, her paws were bloody, and she hadn’t had a sip of water in such a long time, but she refused to stop. She wouldn’t stop.
Not until the baby was safe.
The woods were gone. The yellow light of the room fell on my face. My sister was on the floor on her stomach, and she wasn’t moving. Amara was still standing, and so was Haworth’s other guy. They were both bleeding but still fighting.
As for Haworth, he had stepped away from me and was looking down at me like I was a ghost.
My wolf’s memories had still not completely let go of me. I could still feel damp ground under my feet—or under her paws. I could still feel her thirst. But I could also recognize my fear and where I was and who the man standing in front of me was.
“It’s…it’s impossible,” Haworth whispered, looking down at his hand.
Only when I saw the blood coating his fingers did I realize that my left cheek stung. It stung from the deep cut he’d made with his knife.
“What did you do?” I whispered, no longer able to hold back my tears, though I didn’t want to cry in front of this man. But it was too much—all of it. My reality and my wolf’s memories.
“It just…it can’t be,” said Haworth with a shrug, looking down at the blood on his hand. My blood. “It’s impossible.”
Something squeezed my insides hard. It was my wolf.
“All this time, I thought…I thought…” Haworth had forgotten how to even speak.
“What did you do to me?” I asked him again, but he shook his head, not interested in answering my question.
“I thought he was a god,” he whispered, looking at me like he was both terrified and extremely happy. “I thought he was made. But you…how can you be his?”
Stepping closer to me, he seemed to forget that his hand was covered in my blood, and he grabbed my chin. I didn’t have it in me to move away because my wolf had begun her fight against me, too. She now wanted to be let out. Suddenly, she no longer feared Haworth—and I couldn’t put my finger on it still.
“His blood—his actual blood in my hand,” Haworth continued as he pushed my head from one side to the other to study me. “But you’re nothing like him!”
My wolf howled inside my head. “Who?” I asked through gritted teeth.
Haworth smiled. “Does he know that he’s your father?”
My father?
“It would be such a beautiful coincidence if master didn’t know, and I was the one to tell him,” Haworth whispered with a wondrous smile on his face.
I wanted to ask—I really did—but how could I when I couldn’t stop crying? I could hardly even breathe. My wolf was there, letting me know she wanted out by bruising all of my internal organs, but she should have been here by now. I wasn’t trying to stop her. Why wasn’t she coming out?
Haworth began to laugh, and he stood up, taking me with him by the arm. He wrapped his fingers around my throat and squeezed just lightly, but it was enough to make my legs go limp. He had no trouble holding his weight.
“Shift,” he demanded. “Shift for me, my dear.”
Something fell against the wall behind him. It was his man, the giant. He hit the wall with his head and slowly slid to the floor. Amara still stood.
She turned around and looked at Haworth’s back for one split second, and hope bloomed in my chest. Maybe she could stop this monster now that his spells hadn’t worked against her shield.
But before Amara could even speak a single word or take a step toward us, her eyes turned in their sockets, and she collapsed on the floor, taking all of my hope with her. I screamed with all I had, but she didn’t get up again. She was gone.
Now, it was just me and Haworth.
“Shift!” he shouted at my face and squeezed, pulling me farther up until my feet could no longer touch the floor.
I closed my eyes and ordered my wolf to come out. He wouldn’t be able to strangle her, and the time it took him to chant his possession spell would be enough for my wolf to rip his throat out.
But we both knew that was a lie. Haworth didn’t conjure spells like everybody else. He didn’t need to chant—at least not as long as everybody else. So my wolf resisted both her desire and mine.
It didn’t matter, though. Haworth didn’t waste time. His magic fell upon my shoulders like a blanket made of ice, reaching into my very core, calling out my wolf. She howled, feeling the pull, feeling the pain, trying to resist.
I’m sorry, I thought, hoping to ease her pain.
All my life I’d been trying to hide her. And when I couldn’t do that, I tried to control her. I tried to stop her, I tried to force her out—whichever way suited me. But I never once stopped to think about what it was like for her to spend every single day trapped inside my body. She had her own mind, her own desires, her own hates and fears—her own pain that doubled mine. And she only came out to protect me.
Just like she’d protected that baby.
My wolf wasn’t perfect by any means, but I understood her. I understood her drive for the first time because before I’d never felt the need to protect anyone like I do now. Izzy, Amara, Red. The woman who’d raised me. Even Finn.
So for the first time in my life, I surrendered to her completely. If I was going to die or if I was going to lose her, I would let her fight. I would let her choose. I would let her lead.
I thought I’d changed before, but I hadn’t. Not really.
Now, I did.
My wolf was there to hear my thoughts, to feel me open to her—heart and mind—to become hers just like she was mine. We were together. She bathed me with a warmth I’d never felt before. She spun around me, traveled within me through my veins, found herself in my every cell, and then she began.
The tips of my fingers tingled. All I could do was dangle my feet forward and back, because my arms were still tied behind my back.
Until they weren’t.
I felt the metal of the cuffs breaking against my skin. Against her skin, but in those moments, that made no difference. She was coming out, just like Haworth wanted. It could have been his spell, but then again, it didn’t hurt. She shifted my hands and they turned into paws, but the pain never came like it normally did. And when the cuffs fell on the floor, Haworth loosened his grip on me, distracted for a second, and my arms fell to my sides. I waited, and waited, and waited, but the shifting never completed.
Haworth let go of me, and I almost fell on my back, but somehow I kept my balance. My wolf guided me. He was as confused as I was. As amazed to see that…that my hands and forearms were no longer mine. My skin was covered in fur, my fingers had turned into paws with really big claws. They were the hands of my wolf.
I looked up at Haworth as we both struggled to understand what was happening. There was no pressure against my heart. My wolf wasn’t going to come out all the way. She’d only lent me her paws.
I couldn’t decide whether to freak out or to jump from joy, but that decision could wait. For now, I had a man to kill.
I jumped forward, taking advantage of Haworth’s distraction, and ran my claws over his chest. Four tears on his suit. Four streaks of blood getting thicker by the second. He looked down at himself, refusing to believe what his eyes told him to be true, but I didn’t give him a chance to recover. I jumped after him again, spinning around, using only my paws as my weapons, trying to catch him in the throat. Then, I could sink my claws in his heart, and it would be over for good.
But Haworth stepped away every time I swung my arms, until he finally realized what was happening, and began to chant. It was the first time I’d heard him use words for spells, but they were strong. They froze me, just like the first time I met him. I was suspended on air, the magic hea
vy against my skin, pushing me to the floor like an invisible brick wall. He smiled, mesmerized, and watched me try to stay on my feet.
Once more, I called on my wolf. No orders anymore—just a simple call. But she was frozen as well. Haworth’s magic touched her paws that were attached to my arms, and she couldn’t do anything against him, either.
Haworth smiled like he really was as invincible as we all thought. “You are the most—”
He was cut off abruptly.
His eyes wide, he looked down at his chest for the second time, and I did the same. The wounds I’d caused with my claws were already healing, but there was the tip of a blade coming out of his chest now that hadn’t been there before. And that blade had gone right through his heart.
Somebody chanted a heavy spell, one my ears weren’t used to, and the next second, the air grew heavier. My body unfroze.
Haworth fell to the floor to reveal Izzy standing behind him.
My wolf recognized her, too. Once more, she shifted my body, and my hands became mine again, but there was no pain—just a sweet ache I barely registered. I cried and laughed at the same time, unsure which to pick first, because I’d known. I’d known all along that Izzy hadn’t lost her mind. She had never really been working with Haworth—and now she’d proved it by saving my life.
My legs no longer held me, and I fell to my knees in front of Haworth’s lifeless body. He was dead. The knife was still in him, and his blood had already made a pool on the floor. He wasn’t chanting. He wasn’t healing. The wound wasn’t closing. He was dead.
“Izzy,” I whispered, unsure what to say next. How to apologize. “Thank you.”
“You’re very welcome, sis. Looks like I woke up with perfect timing,” she said with a grin, then turned to Haworth’s man, the one Amara had rendered unconscious. My sister took out a gun from her waistband and shot him right between his eyes. Shocked out of words, I watched her turn to Amara.
“You want me to kill her, too?”
Oh, God. “No! No, please don’t.”
With a shrug, she put her gun away and approached me. I thought she would help me up to my feet and hug me. I so desperately wanted to hug her, to tell her how happy I was that this was finally over. That we could go home together and see Mother.
But Izzy hadn’t come for me. Instead, she stopped in front of Haworth and turned his body over, never minding how his lifeless eyes were stuck to her face as if he could still see her. She reached into the pocket of his pants and took something out—the Reaper String.
“There it is,” she said, and throwing it in the air once, she caught it and put it in her own pocket.
I still couldn’t process any of this. “What…what are you doing?” I asked her with half a voice. She wasn’t making any sense to me.
Raising her arms to the sides, she said: “What does it look like I’m doing?”
“Izzy, the Reaper String is mine,” I reminded her. She’d been there when Haworth took it from me. She knew the whole damn story.
“Not anymore it isn’t,” she mumbled, and with her hands on her hips, she took one look around the room. There was something about the look in her eyes that I hadn’t noticed before. She even smelled different.
“Can you tell me what’s happening?” My whisper broke because I didn’t want an answer. Not really.
But I needed one.
“Are you really that clueless?” my sister asked me. “I’m taking over, Vick.”
“You’re taking over? Taking over what?”
She grinned. “Everything.” She patted the pocket where she’d put the Reaper String. “I was going to ask you for it, but then I found out that it needed to be unlocked from your powers, so I had to give this dumb fool a way to get you here. It was pretty neat, don’t you think? You caught me on camera, and you came here, and he was going to release the Reaper for good, but—like I said, he was a dumb fool so he couldn’t get around to do it. Also, it was damn hard to catch him off guard, so whatever you did to distract him there, it was perfect.” She sighed. “Plus, I know a way around the Reaper now.”
“Izzy, you’re…you’re…” I couldn’t find words to speak.
“Relax, Vick. I killed him. That’s what you wanted, didn’t you? To save me?” She laughed a little. “Well, you did. I’ve been trying to get him to go after the enchanted items ever since I found his possession spell. Now that I have them all and he’s dead, I can move on. We all can, don’t you agree?”
It felt like hell had just come to earth. “What the hell are you talking about? Possession spell? You want to do his possession spell?” Had she lost her mind, or had I lost my hearing?
“I don’t see why not. If he thought he could do it, I can do it, too.”
By some miracle I managed to get to my feet and face her. “Why? What the…why?”
Surprised, she leaned her head back. “Because, Vicky! Power, that’s why. I’m sick of being the fool everybody can just drag around to wherever they want. I’m too smart for this shit. Haworth’s place belonged to me since the beginning, but nobody would give it to me, so I took it.” She raised her chin, pride radiating from her skin.
I shook my head. “This is wrong. You know this is wrong. Please stop this. You can’t just become…this!”
“I didn’t become this,” she said, pointing at her chest. “I was born for this.”
“Izzy, no,” I breathed, once more running out of words to say. Maybe she was joking. Could she be? She’d start laughing in my face soon and tell me I was a fool for buying it. She wasn’t going to take over and try to do the whole possession thing instead of Haworth. She was just kidding!
Except, she wasn’t.
“I’m going to leave now, and you might never see me again—and trust me, that’s a good thing. Since you’re my sister, I’m going to also suggest you leave the States. It’s about to get real ugly here.” All the while, she smiled.
“Izzy, please. Please tell me this is a joke.” Or that she’d lost her mind. Or that she was on drugs. Anything at all would do but this.
“Nope, not a joke. See you around, Vick. Oh, and thanks a lot for this. You made my life so much easier,” she said, pointing at her pocket, and before I could blink, she took off running out of the room.
For what must have been the hundredth time, I fell to the floor. I should have run after her. I know I should have run after her. So why didn’t I?
Because I’d have had to stop her. I’d have had to fight her. I’d have lost, but what if I’d won?
No, neither option sat well with me.
So, like a coward, I sat down on the floor and waited in silence. For…what?
The tears came back to me, full force. I felt like something was squeezing my chest, blocking the air completely. Every wall I’d built in my twenty-one years of life to protect myself from the world came crashing down. Very little made sense to me, and I couldn’t bring myself to face my reality. It was too messed up—maybe as messed up as my past.
“Rowan,” I whispered, trying to stop the tears but failing. “Am I…am I the baby, Rowan? Is Elizabeth my mother?”
My wolf howled that painful sound that cut right through me. A cry escaped my lips.
I’d always wanted to know who I was and where I came from ever since I heard the conversation of my adoptive parents when I was seventeen years old.
Now, if I could, I’d take back every wish I’d ever made.
Because Rowan didn’t lie to me. She wouldn’t. That’s why she showed me those memories, now after all this time. She’d never been afraid of Haworth possessing her.
She’d been afraid of what he’d tell me. She’d been afraid of the truth.
So she’d told it to me instead—by showing me her memories. I was the baby in the basket, and that witch, whoever she was, had spelled us. She’d spelled me and Rowan and locked us together forever because a man had been coming to kill me.
I knew who my mother was. I’d seen her with my own eyes. I’d h
eard her laugh, and I’d seen her cry. I’d seen her kiss me, and even though I had just been born then, I could swear I felt her kisses all over my face. She’d loved me, and now that I’d seen her, I loved her, too.
But was Haworth right? Was his…his master my father?
The Antichrist, Red had called him.
It was all bullshit. Izzy was right—Haworth was a dumb fool. I’d seen that man with Elizabeth—the werewolf. He was my father, not Haworth’s master. I refused to believe it.
I refused to tell anyone about it, and now that Haworth was dead, he couldn’t tell anybody else that stupid theory. It was okay. I was fine. Just as long as I kept my focus, nobody ever had to know.
Rowan and I would be okay.
18
The race to find Red in that underground garage took more out of me than the fight with Haworth had. When we did find him, we both thought he was dead. He was lying on the ground next to the car, his left arm and shoulder completely torched. His skin was gone, and his clothes had melted away. All we saw was raw meat and his bones.
It was the second scariest moment of that day until he blinked. He tried to talk, but we didn’t let him. We put him in the backseat to rest. He didn’t need to tell me what had happened—I already knew. He’d tried to come after me after Haworth’s men took me, and the sun had burned him. That was something I was never going to forgive myself for.
Amara didn’t ask me any questions—not yet. When she’d woken up in that room, she’d found me crying, dangerously close to Haworth’s dead body. She was hurt badly, cut and bruised in more places than I could count, but for now, she kept quiet, sat in the passenger seat and let me do the driving. As shaken as I was, I wouldn’t be surprised if I drove the car into a tree. Or off a bridge. But my wolf was with me, and she’d be careful. She was always careful.
We arrived in Manhattan a little before midnight, and we had no place to go. Amara insisted we couldn’t use her apartment, and we were definitely not going back to the Lair, so my apartment it was. After all, Haworth was no longer going to come after me. I no longer needed to hide from him.
