by K. N. Banet
“The way you talk about him sometimes is so…different from the relationship you seem to have with him,” Heath pointed out. “You have fond memories and get a relaxed look on your face when you think of him as if he really is your doting father. But you don’t treat him like that now.”
“Her fiancé was alive when Hasan found the accident. Hasan only Changed Jacky,” Jabari said loudly ahead of us. “She hasn’t told you?”
My stomach dropped, and the snarl that ripped out of me, uncontrolled and vicious, made Heath take a step away, his eyes flying between Jabari and me, waiting for another bomb to go off.
“Why?” he asked softly after a moment. “Why would Hasan do that to you?”
“I don’t know,” I snapped. “And it’s been the…problem. He lied to me for four years, saying my fiancé was dead upon his arrival. Then his story changed to my fiancé was too far gone to survive the Change, and even that was a lie. In the end, he let Shane die and kept me in this world. Do you know the answer, Jabari?”
“I always have,” her brother said. “But you aren’t ready for it.”
I growled at him before turning back to Heath.
“See? So, four years after trying to be part of the family with siblings who resented me for things I had no control over, I found out that the man I had come to love as a father in my new life was…a liar. It took me a while to catch it because I was still learning what different scents meant, but when I did, he didn’t…tell me the truth.”
“I’m so sorry.” Heath reached out to touch my arm, but I pulled away before he could. “Jacky, that’s…” He looked back at Jabari. “And none of you thought about how painful that would be to learn?”
“What do you know about it?” Jabari snapped.
“I watched my human wife die of old age,” Heath said softly. “And if there’s one moment in my life where I didn’t want to continue, that was it. The pack around me forced me to eat for a year. They didn’t let me run off and waste away. So, I would think I know a lot about losing a loved one and finding the future ahead of me very painful, one I can’t fucking imagine.”
Jabari’s eyes went wide as he looked back at us. Then he started walking again, away from us, following the blood trail. Heath growled, about to rush after him, but I grabbed the wolf.
“It was a long time ago,” I said softly. “Just leave it. That’s why Hasan and I are complicated. That’s why I spent seven years pretending none of them were my family.”
“If my pack hurt me like that, I would have disappeared too,” he said. “That’s hard. I’m sorry, Jacky. Let’s get through this and get home, away from this jackass. The fact that you’re even here helping him and that family of yours is…amazing.” He shook his head in disgust.
“Yeah, well…I thought I had started a war,” I reminded him. Now that wasn’t the case. It was clear the vampires were a seemingly random occurrence, but I wanted to see it through. “I wanted to clean up my mess and prove I could. Turned out, it wasn’t my mess.”
“Or mine or anyone else’s,” he said, nodding slowly. “But really, let’s get this over with and get back to Texas. I hate this rain, and I hate your family.”
We kept trudging through the evergreen forest, the rain falling on us. Heath didn’t seem any worse for wear from the night before, and other than my aching pieces, I was feeling fine. Jabari looked like he wasn’t injured at all. Every so often, Jabari called me up and pointed out something and made me find the next piece of the trail to follow.
A few hours in, I checked my phone and sighed. It was dead, so I couldn’t check the actual time. Looking up, I had to guess it wasn’t noon yet, maybe ten or eleven in the morning still.
“I think we’ve found them,” Jabari announced.
Heath and I stepped around him to see what he saw. There was a cave, but not one in the side of a mountain. It went kind of down into the ground, ‘under’ the mountain. What lay inside, no one could see. We walked closer together, Jabari setting the pace, which was cautious.
“If this is their hiding place, no wonder they were able to come after us both nights. We’ve been in the same…ten- to fifteen-mile area since we left the cabin,” Heath pointed out. “Meaning they aren’t completely out in the middle of nowhere.”
“It’s good hunting,” Jabari commented. “They are close enough to the campgrounds and hiking trails to attack humans.”
“And if someone goes missing out here…” I looked around. “Well, they would just be one of many who have gotten lost out here.”
“Yes, Jacky. That’s exactly the conclusion I was coming to. They’re using the forests and mountains in the area for a hunting zone where no one has to know they killed anyone.”
“Then they ran into two werecats when they got here,” Heath continued, crossing his arms. “Two werecats who took it personally when humans were in trouble and helped them. Guardians of the area. They were in the way of freedom to vampires, who had no way to defeat them.”
“Then a group of werewolves decided to take a camping trip,” I said, helping put the story together. “Easier prey, something to power them up to take out bigger problems.”
“And once all was said and done, they thought they would get away with it. Until we showed up with Jabari,” Heath sighed.
“Unless they cut our fuel line in broad daylight, they have help from a local human, though I’m still trying to figure that one out. I don’t see any of those three having a real motive.”
“They’ll talk once we deal with the more dangerous group.” Jabari nodded down at the cave.
We were close enough now, I could see it was part of some sort of cave system. How big it was, I didn’t know, but it was terrifying to think I was about to go in it after vampires.
“Then, let’s go kill these vampires,” I said, hoping the courage I portrayed covered up the waver in my voice.
25
Chapter Twenty-Five
We planned to Change together, shoving our clothing into Jabari’s bag. He tucked it away in a bush, covering it with foliage to stop curious hikers and animals.
“There’s no food in it, so it should be fine,” he said. “Remember the plan. We’re going down there together, and even if it takes all day, we’re going after them one at a time. Incapacitate them, drag them out here, then burn them. If one of them offers information, I will go into my human form and get it.” He eyed us both. I rubbed my hands together, nervous. “Then I can communicate with both of you, and Jacky, you can tell me what Heath has to say.”
I nodded quickly. “Can do.”
Heath nodded beside me, remaining silent. I knew he just wanted to get this over with. He looked like he was doing fine, but he was a little pale in the light. He would follow orders if it meant never seeing these vampires or Jabari ever again.
“Good. Let’s Change and get through this. We’ll be out of this forest by nightfall.”
I fucking hoped so because I was done with stomping around the woods in the rain.
We Changed, bones cracking, growls, and grunts accentuating the pain and transformation our bodies were going through. Jabari was done before me, and we waited the few minutes it took for Heath to finish. He was fast for a wolf, just like I was fast for a werecat my age. I wondered if there was some similarity between us that caused it, or maybe we were just both lucky.
Jabari walked into the caves first with Heath and me able to walk beside each other behind him.
“He’s a big motherfucker,” Heath pointed out. “Every time I see him, I wonder if he can crush my damn head with those paws.”
“Probably. He would wipe the floor with me, that’s for sure.” There were reasons I never got physical over the insults my siblings threw at me. Mischa and Zuri were more my size, maybe a little bigger, but they were older, more powerful, and more resilient, so size essentially didn’t matter. Davor was the smallest of the guys in the family, still bigger than me, while Jabari and Hasan were the biggest werecats on the plan
et. I didn’t think anyone would ever match them in size.
We entered the cave, going down. It smelled of dirt and water, along with some other choice things like decay. They had left bodies down in the mud, apparent to anyone with a nose. Even humans could have walked down here and known there were dead bodies of some sort—it reeked.
Heath growled softly. There was one problem with the reek of dead for our noses. We knew they were dead wolves.
“Do you think they’re asleep?” I asked Jabari and Heath, wondering what they thought about the welcome we weren’t getting. Jabari’s big head nodded, and Heath provided more information.
“Most vampires feel an undeniable urge to sleep once the sun comes up. From what I know, as they get older, they can resist it but not well. It’s just safer to hide and sleep.” Heath sniffed the air. “There’s a small draft, and I can smell…a wolf on it. I think the last one is still alive.”
“Then we’ll find him,” I promised. My nose, not being as sensitive, couldn’t discern that. All I could smell was earth, death, and wolf. Unless I was missing some key way death changed scents, I had no idea how he came to the conclusion the last wolf was still alive. Maybe it was just hope.
Jabari continued in the lead, deeper into the caverns. We walked silently, placing our paws carefully to keep from causing too much of a disturbance. If we hadn’t woken them up already, there was no reason to wake them up now. Sleeping vampires had to be easier to kill.
We cut into a small passageway, a thin, narrow walk into what seemed like a back chamber. Jabari crouched, which allowed Heath ahead of me to see over his head. And I could see over Heath’s head.
Inside the chamber, there were mattresses and furniture. Couches with throw blankets and pillows. A power generator, probably using gasoline to run electrical items like the TV I saw. The vampires had set up a nice home in their cavern.
The only reason it wouldn’t be a cool little clubhouse was the werewolf in human form on a small blanket in the corner. Even from where I was, I could see how gaunt he was. Heath pawed at the ground, anxious. I sniffed and realized he was right. This werewolf was alive. How I didn’t know, but he was still fucking alive.
Jabari began to walk again, low to the ground. Once he was out of the small passage, Heath moved out faster, though still very silent, and went toward the werewolf.
“Don’t. He could wake up and wake them up,” I said.
“He’s going to die if we don’t get him out of here now,” Heath snapped.
I shook my head. “Let Jabari and I get into position, then you can run him out. We can handle the vampires, but you have to wait for the right moment.”
Heath looked from me to the sleeping, half-dead werewolf, then nodded. I moved toward Jabari and saw what he was focused on. In the corner of the cavern I couldn’t see from the narrow passage, the vampires had set up an impressive bed and were sleeping together on it in a tangled amalgamation of bodies and limbs. They looked peaceful and clean, nearly harmless. They must have washed the blood and mud off themselves when they had run from the trap we had set. Now, injured and sleeping, they were easy prey.
Jabari and I stalked to the bed. We didn’t touch any of the pieces hanging off, not yet. The leader was in the center, the hole where her arm used to be closed up. The younger woman looked perfectly fine if a lot paler than she had been the night before. I couldn’t see most of her, which annoyed me. The man had vicious claw marks all over his chest, where Jabari had nearly cut him in half.
Jabari sat on the other side of the bed, and it looked like he smiled for a moment, his teeth bared and his eyes on me. He nodded his big head, letting me know he was ready for me to make the call.
“Heath, are you by the wolf?” I asked.
“Yes. I’ll wake him up the moment you get started on them. Hopefully, I can get him on my back and run him out to daylight before any of them divert their attention from you.”
I took a deep breath, flexing my claws into the dirt, feeling it between my paw pads.
“Now!” I ordered. Jabari and I jumped onto the bed, attacking the first bodies we could sink fangs and claws into. The werewolf screamed across the room, but I didn’t hear Heath’s response. Underneath me, the vampires screamed and struggled. One of them punched me in the head. One was able to scramble away and ran somewhere I couldn’t see. Jabari pulled one off the bed, dragging it by a leg.
I focused on the one beneath me, the leader. With her remaining arm, she clawed at my face as I shook her by the shoulder, not connected to an arm. My five-inch fangs were buried into her, through bone and muscle. Tired of her clawing at me, I jumped back, yanking her along with me off the bed. Once I was on solid ground, I pinned her to the ground with a paw and tore, taking a giant piece out of her. Her screaming wouldn’t stop, so I flexed my claws, letting them dig into her chest and tore down, tearing bones and muscle open.
Some part of me knew I should be sick from the carnage. Vampires had a human face, and it was disturbing when you could tear off pieces and cut them open, and they kept screaming, still ‘alive.’ Their animated corpses continued to fight as you pulled their intestines out.
“I’m dragging this one out,” I told Jabari as I grabbed her good arm and yanked, listening to her scream further. She tried to stand, so I swiped at her legs, listening to the bone crunch, probably one of her femurs. She fell to her knees, yet she still tried to pull her remaining arm from my mouth.
I yanked her and was able to get us to the narrow passage. Instead of fighting to drag her alongside me, I walked backward down the little hall of stone. Once we were in the main area of the cave, her screaming picked back up, probably realizing how we intended to kill her. A howl came from behind me. Heath probably letting me know he was there, out and free with his saved werewolf.
The stupid bitch of a vampire pulled her arm hard, and I felt muscle and tendons tearing apart. I released for a second, let her gain an inch, then slammed my jaw closed again, snapping the bone in her upper arm in half and making the hand fall limp. With a snarl, I yanked her harder, making her fall to the ground. As I approached the mouth of the cave, Heath appeared before me, his ice blue wolf eyes watching me carefully. He ran in and grabbed one of the vampire’s legs and turned her to go into the sun, feet first. We were big enough, we lifted her off the ground and slowly marched outside. I halted before her head was exposed to the sun. The light felt good to me.
It did not feel good to her. In Heath’s mouth and broken on the ground, her legs went first. Beyond him, I could see the freed wolf, eyes wide with terror and awe, watching as the bitch that had tortured him melted, crusted, cracked, then crumbled as dust into the wind and rain. I didn’t feel sick this time, forcing a vampire to suffer this. She had helped torture the poor werewolf for a month. The poor thing who had to watch his friends die and was probably would’ve died soon if they hadn’t rescued him.
I dropped her arm once I knew there was no hope for her. The screams echoed around in my skull, though. She never stopped screaming until her lungs were dust. Heath nudged the arm and shoulder into the light, which quickly went to dust.
We were left with just her head, which I carefully pawed back deeper into the cave.
“There’s one more left. Jabari is bringing the man. I’m going back in for the other woman. Keep an eye on him.” I pointed with my nose at his saved werewolf, who shook weakly. The poor young man looked to only be skin and bones, but at least he was out in the sun and not down there being torn apart any longer.
“Be safe,” Heath said, bumping his head to mine. I nervously danced back from him and went into the cave once more. As I traveled back down to the narrow passage, Jabari passed me with the man, who was missing both his arms and one leg. I didn’t let it faze me; Jabari had done what he needed to.
“I’m off to find the last one. Heath will help you position that one to burn,” I told my brother as he went closer to the sun. Jabari, holding the man’s remaining leg, nodded.
I went through the narrow pass, hoping there would be another one inside the caverns that could show me where the little bitch fled. They had brought this on themselves. I understood now what it meant for Jabari and my siblings when it was said they were Hasan’s judges, juries, and executioners. There was no oversight. We knew the Law, and we fought to avenge those werecats whose lives were lost unnecessarily. While the execution was gruesome, seeing that poor werewolf made it worth it. We were all monsters, but that didn’t mean we had to be monstrous. We could live wonderful lives, have fucked-up families, and still be monsters.
There was no reason to do what they had done to that werewolf. They should be thankful. Their deaths were quicker than the one they had wanted to give him, wasting away as leftovers for them to snack on.
I snarled as I prowled around the little mansion they had set up for themselves. I sniffed the air, realizing the dead werewolves’ bodies weren’t being kept in this area, which meant there had to be another. They weren’t buried because the scent was too strong, too pervasive.
No, they had stashed the dead werewolves somewhere, and that was probably where the little bitch had gone to hide.
I found a small opening and growled into it. A whimper came out the other side. I listened harder, tilting my head to hear everything.
“I don’t want to die. I don’t want to die. I don’t want to die,” the younger vampire whispered to herself.
I pawed at the stones and realized she had half-buried herself in while we were handling her friends. I went on my hind legs and shoved my paws against the loose rubble, knocking some over on the other side and digging to clear out the side I was on. Her breathing grew heavier inside as I dug out stones, some nearly as big as my head.
Finally, I could see her and swiped a paw inside. She screamed, backing away and curling into a ball.
I roared, trying to dig her out and get my body inside. I was nearly in a frenzy with it, desperate to take my prey to meet its end. I snapped and snarled, wanting a piece of her.
