“Dad. Please, stop, please, please, please.”
I tuck my arms and slither out of the jacket, landing hard on my arse. A quick scramble puts me on my hands and knees, crawling for the meagre remains of the table. Shelter. Protection. A blockade.
Two hands close over my ankle, pulling me back. I flail. Kick. Scream. Keep scrambling.
Table. I’m under it as far as I can go, tucking my legs in and hugging myself with both arms. Blood pumps from the agitated wound on my shoulder, and even I can smell it.
Dad’s eyes are wild, his expression feral. He pounds on the table with his fists, apparently too far gone to realize that all he need do is lift it.
I brace myself beneath each shuddering impact of the table remains, trying to think, struggling to formulate a plan. What do I do? What the hell can I do?
I’m mentally racing through every book I’ve ever read, recalling every single lecture, practical and theoretical, on these strange entities known as vampires. But the only thing my mind settles on is the thirst for blood, the strength, the insanity. Because they are crazy, we know that. And when hungry, nothing can break through to them.
Zachariah’s face swims across my mind’s eye, his grim expression and deadpan order to not hesitate. Did he know it would come to this?
The small piece of table forming my shield cracks down the centre from repeated blows. It won’t stand up to much more punishment. Already my legs are sticking out from beneath, naked and vulnerable.
I feel across the ground for some sort of weapon. I can’t even see my gun, but there has to be something here I can—wait, wood. There’s heaps of it, all over the floor. I grab the nearest shard, a thick, chunky piece with a jagged end that was probably once one of the legs.
With the hefty piece held like a club, I swing up, batting the table remains away and catching Dad’s face on the follow-through. The heavy wood connects with a thud that jars my arm from wrist to shoulder, but it stops him for just a second.
“Dad, snap out of it. You have to. Don’t you know me? Don’t you recognize my voice?”
More snarling, more snapping and raging. He dives at me again, hands outstretched, and I…I can’t. I freeze, hands still wrapped about the table leg, my eyes scrunched closed.
Thud.
The impact drives me back into the wall, knocking two framed photos off their hooks. They slam to the ground and shatter, strident snaps in the sudden still.
No more snarling. No growling. No moving.
I crack my eyes open.
He’s staring at me. Yes, him, it’s actually him. The silver is gone from his eyes leaving his own soft brown, shiny with tears. He opens his mouth and blood pours out, staining his long fangs red.
“Bean?”
“Dad? Dad, are you okay? Are you back?”
He looks down. “I…”
The hope dies in my heart as I follow his gaze to the table leg sticking out of his chest.
“Dad, no.”
He nods sadly. “Yes, Bean. It’s okay. You’re going to be okay, I promise.”
“I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean—but you were—and then I—we just—maybe I can—”
“Don’t…” He coughs hard enough to splatter hot blood droplets against my cheeks and forehead. “Don’t…”
“It’s okay. I can fix this, let me fix this. I’ll pull it out and we can go downstairs and—” Even as I speak, even as I pull on the table leg, the brown melts away one last time, replaced by wild, feral silver.
“Bean…don’t—.”
Dad clutches for me, fingers hooked like claws, and I scream, slamming my palms, one after the other into the butt of the wooden chair leg. Something cracks. He stops dead…and black ooze begins to seep out around the jagged edge.
He falls back from me, landing hard on his side while that foul-smelling black stuff begins to trickle from his ears and nose.
I slide down the wall with my hands pressed to my mouth, fighting and abruptly failing to hold back my horrified screams.
Chapter Thirty-two
Fuck. Oh, shit, fucking fuck, fuck, balls.
I claw free from the nightmare of my own memory, screaming and thrashing, calling out for my father in a voice so plaintive and pitiful I barely recognize it as my own.
Flint is still crouched beside me, grinning from ear to ear, only now he has his hand on the back of my neck.
“That’s it, little SPEAR.” His voice rattles against my senses. “Yes, yes, that’s what we want. That’s the fear we need. The pain. The horror of it all. Did you enjoy your trip to the past? Hmm? Was it every bit as awful and heart-rending as you remember?”
“G-get away from me.” I swing out with my fist, but he’s nowhere near. He doesn’t even try to dodge. In fact he leans closer and speaks directly into the shell of my ear.
“I think you’ll be a much better vessel going forward. This wolf is good, but imagine the chaos I could cause from within SPEAR. I couldn’t hope for a better chance to make my mark.”
I continue to flail at him, but I can barely see where he is, let alone aim. Though I’m mostly free of the memory, my vision is blurred with mingled images of the past and present. My father’s broken, bleeding body. Flint’s wild yellow eyes. My own trembling hands. Rayne still lying on the floor. Francine Quinn rushing into the office with her gun aimed. The white teeth of Flint’s mocking smile.
“Don’t touch me.
Flint merely smiles and grabs at the back of my clothing. Three quick slashes of his claws opens up my jacket and the shirt beneath, laying my back utterly bare but for my bra straps. He doesn’t unfasten them, simply pulls until they snap and then starts carving.
The passage of his claws leaves lines of acidic fire across my skin. I know he’s tracing some form of pattern or sigil, but the fiery burn of his werewolf claws on my human skin soon spreads enough to encompass everything. The whole of my back is aflame with agony and I can’t move. One hand on the back of my neck, his legs straddling my backside, makes sure of that.
I lie flat beneath him, pain-wracked and impotent, still sobbing at the forced reliving of my father’s last moments.
I’m clawing at the floor, at the air, at anything I can reach, but nothing stops him from etching his marks into the flesh of my back.
The acrid scent of burning flesh fills the air, hot in my nostrils.
No, no, no, what the fuck is he doing? Why is he doing this to me? Why can’t I do anything? Why will no one help me?
A dark blur streaks across the ground in front of me and the weight on my butt is suddenly gone. I hear bodily thuds and grunts of exertion and find Rayne grappling hand to hand with Flint.
The vacant look in her eyes is gone; in fact the look of anything is vanished from her eyes, replaced by that cold, feral silver glow. Her entire face is contorted with rage, her fangs long and sharp, just like back in Misona. Just like when carving up all the Dire Wolves.
Fuck, no. As if we need her in mania to make this night any worse.
She spins him round, pounding her fist into his face again and again. He struggles to be free, but her grip on the front of his shirt won’t let him escape. When he tries to simply tear the fabric, she switches her grip to his throat and continues to pound on his face.
“Rayne.”
She pauses, mid punch and whips her head round to stare at me.
Fuck, those eyes. The silver is bright enough to glow, haunting and ghostly in her dainty face.
“What is it, Danika?”
I gape at her. That isn’t the “what” of a violent, mindless beast. That’s Rayne’s own voice, her inflection, her tone. If anything she sounds worried.
“I—”
“Are you okay?” She still has her fist raised, still has a black-eyed and bleeding Flint dangling from her grip. “Can you see me? Can you hear?”
“I…I’m fine, but you—”
Flint gives an angry little growl.
“Just a moment.” Rayne returns her a
ttention to the werewolf and finally lands that punch. It sends him to the ground and she follows him down, diving onto his body and wrapping her arms around in him an impressive and effective choke-hold. “Are you all right?”
“Y-yes, but you…” My words break up as my back flares with pain and I have to grit my teeth against it for several seconds.
Rayne uses the time to press harder on Flint. She pulls handcuffs off the holder on the back of her belt and flicks them open. But her eyes are still silver, her fangs overlong. Her entire body has that prickling, battle-ready aura about it, the one I’ve come to learn is inexorably linked to mania.
How is she doing this?
Flint struggles back against the cuffs, fighting to escape the hold to the point that he begins to choke himself on her forearm. If anything, he is far more frantic and mindless than she is right now.
He opens his mouth and lets loose a scream, something high, shrill, and cutting to the senses. “You can’t hold me,” he rages. “I have what I need now, you’ll see. I don’t need this body anymore. I have a new one to inhabit.”
While I’m busy trying to figure out what on earth that means, black smoke begins to pour from Flint’s mouth. Slow and heavy, it billows out across the ground in one thin tendril that seems to thicken as it goes. In fact it does thicken, it even takes on a shape, coalescing into a spindly arm with long, clawed fingers at the end of the skinny hand. More smoke follows, and as it comes, the stuff continues to form more and more limbs. Bicep, shoulder, neck, head.
Rayne gives a little screech and rolls across the ground, but the thing crawling out of Flint’s mouth continues to come with more and more of the black smoke.
Her eyes blaze as she shifts her grip, now trying to force Flint’s mouth shut. But even as she succeeds there, smoke pours instead from his ears and nose, forming inky clouds that join to the rest. Soon, another shoulder joins the arm and head protruding from his mouth. The rest of the arm. A second clawed hand.
Like a genie spilling from the spout of a lamp, the weird black thing continues to force its way out from Flint’s body…and crawl toward me.
Rayne’s voice shudders with panic. “What is this? I’ve never seen anything like it before. What do I do? Danika?”
But I don’t have any answers, only little whimpers of pain. Whatever marks Flint drew on my back, they’re pulsing now, throbbing rhythmically like a heartbeat that has nothing to do with me.
The partial body crawling out of Flint turns toward me. “Little bird,” it says.
That voice, those eyes. Just like it had back at Vixen’s little hideaway, the creature blinks slowly at me with harsh, yellow eyes. The two strange slits beneath the eyes flare wide, the way nostrils might, and the long gash beneath those seems to act as a mouth.
“Wait there for me, I’m coming, little bird.”
A terrifying snarl ripples from Rayne’s mouth. “Touch her and you die.”
But more of the thing is crawling free, the smoke moving faster now in bigger clouds. Despite Rayne’s hold, a chest and trunk follows the rest, then one long leg. And another. It moves like a spider, unfurling itself from the smoke like a creature of old nightmares.
When it finally pulls free of Flint’s body, it stands tall and attenuated, with elongated arms and legs and a head far too large for such a slender body.
It seems weaker than last time, or at least less tangible as if still formed of smoke. Through the long limbs I can still see Rayne as she drops Flint’s now lifeless body and leaps to her feet.
“Danika.” Her words tremble with fear. “Don’t let it touch you.”
Oh, she doesn’t need to tell me that. The last thing on earth I want right now is for that thing to come anywhere near me, but I still can’t move more than a pitiful shuffle in any direction.
I roll over and immediately regret it when my bare back scrapes against the hard, cold floor. I cage a scream behind my teeth and pat down my sides searching for something, anything at all that can help. More magazines for my gun, little phials of holy water, chains in silver, lead, and steal, darts tipped with the greasy residue of old sprite blood, throwing knives, but nothing to help against this thing. Whatever the fuck it is.
I fight to my knees. And it is a fight, with every muscle of my body screaming for mercy. “Don’t come near me—”
It’s right in front of me. Did I lose time? Did it move that fast? I’ve no idea, but the thing is standing in front of me, peering down again with that creepy yellow gaze.
“Hold still,” it whispers. “It will all be over soon.” More smoke. This time from its mouth, reaching out to me like thin, ethereal claws.
“No.” Rayne dives at me, actually through the strange creature, scattering its increasingly wispy form as she passes into and then out of it.
It hisses, loud and sibilant like a thousand angry snakes, and begins to break apart.
“You’ll not escape me again, little bird. I know you now. I can find you wherever you go. When you sleep, I’ll be there. When you wake, I’ll be there. Every day of your miserable life henceforth I’ll be there at your side, in your mind, in your memory.”
The two silver points of Rayne’s eyes are a beacon in that cloud of that close, choking blackness. She reaches through it and pulls me close, wrapping her body around mine like a shield.
“Whatever you are, you can’t have her, hear me? While I live, while I drink blood and walk this earth, I’ll make sure you never touch her again.”
The marks on my back flare with fresh pain, almost in concert with the furious shrieks of dismay from the tall creature. And then, it breaks apart, one limb at a time, falling away into soft black motes of a soot-like substance that carry the scent of rot and sulphur.
Seconds later, it’s gone, the last few shreds of darkness drifting up toward the ceiling and drifting away on an invisible breeze.
* * *
I stare at the high ceiling, barely daring to hope the thing is gone. Still latched to my body, limpet-like, Rayne buries her head against my neck.
I put my arms around her, slowly, tentatively, no longer sure of who or what I’m holding.
When she looks up at me, the silver in her eyes is still there, the wild, animal glow of her manic self. And yet…she’s smiling. She’s smiling and crying.
“Are you okay?” she murmurs.
I open my mouth to answer, but sudden shouts from behind cut me off.
I turn in time to see every Blood Moon wolf drop to the ground. Each of them convulses and twists as though pumped full of volts, then from the mouth of each curls a small, but familiar wisp of black smoke.
The Loup Garou women leap back from their fighting, some of them ducking out of range, others of them swiping at the black motes with large, clawed hands. But the smoky stuff simply dissipates without a trace, leaving behind a pile of semi-conscious Blood Moon wolves.
I can’t take much more of this.
My knees give out, but my landing is soft as Rayne guides me gently to the floor. Then, instead of letting me lie, she pulls my body across her lap and cups my face in one tender hand.
“How are you doing this?” I can’t help myself. There are so many other questions to ask right now, but I can’t compute this. “This is mania, isn’t it? This is TRISP?”
She cocks an eyebrow. “What’s a trisp?”
“Never mind. Just tell me. Are you in mania right now?”
Rayne looks first at me, then her hands. She turns them back and forth, then scan-assesses the rest of her body. At last, she presses her hands to her face. “It seems I am.”
“Then how? How are you holding me, right now? I…I’m covered in blood, I’m hurt, I’m weak. Why aren’t you trying to rip my head off?”
A smile. “Because I’d never do anything to hurt you, Danika. Not now, not ever.”
I can’t speak. What am I going to say? What can I say? This flies in the face of everything I’ve ever known. This is a bizarre and unheard of phenomenon that
—fuck it.
I reach for the back of her neck and yank her down for a kiss, fangs and all. There’s blood there, and sharpness, but I don’t care. I want to pour myself into her and feel her receive me, I want to tell her how sorry I am, how much I love her, but none of the words are there.
So I kiss her instead.
And Rayne responds. Her control of the kiss spikes as she wraps her arms around me and as the embrace deepens, her fangs recede and the silver finally fades from her eyes.
Puffy lipped and breathless, I pull back. “Ah, there you are.”
Brown. Brown in the varied shades of autumn visible in her gentle, tender gaze. Such a beautiful colour. A beautiful expression. A beautiful woman.
I kiss her again and again, I can’t help it. I feel like an eon has passed since the last time I did and my fingers tangle in her hair, gripping it, pulling her closer and closer.
Someone behind us clears their throat.
I wave my hand, a vague “go away” gesture, but they do it again. Then again.
Grunting now, I pull back from Rayne’s lips and turn. “What?”
It’s Gina. Her shifts through various forms have shredded her clothing, so she stands before me naked now. Her eyes are downcast, not embarrassment—I think—but confusion and fear.
Oh, yeah. There’s a lot happening right now.
“Are you okay?”
I’ve no idea how to answer that. Without the distraction of hot, passionate kisses, my back once more throbs with pain. Less, but still very much there and the accompanying stiffness makes movement difficult.
I settle for a gruff, “I’ll live,” and pull myself from Rayne’s grip into a sitting position. Fuck, that really hurts. “What about you?”
She looks over her shoulder at her pack mates and the fallen Blood Moon. “I think we’re okay. What the hell was that thing? Did it actually come out of Flint?”
“It would appear so.” Rayne scoots to her feet then bends to help me do the same. She supports my weight with an arm low around my waist, the other gently holding my opposite hand. “I’ve no idea what it is, but its powers are dangerous and…” She clears her throat. “Frightening.”
Moon Fever Page 31
