“What about those guys?” I point to the Blood Moon.
Gina flaps her hands in a half-hearted “I don’t know” gesture. “They attacked, so we met them. They weren’t trying to subdue us or even really hurt us. They just seemed to want to draw blood.”
Rayne nods.
I wait.
“Whatever power they had was passed by blood, didn’t you see? Just like Flint, they all have some sort of old scar. Probably where the virus was passed on.”
“You’ve lost me now, what virus?”
Patient as ever, Rayne continues to support me, though now she walks us over to Flint’s body as we move. “Have you ever heard of a werewolf that can drop a person back into their memories? No, this…power…whatever it is, comes from the creature inhabiting Flint’s body. He was likely ground zero for the spread of it all, but it had to do so by infecting blood. It cut me, remember, around my throat? And you…” She lifts my injured wrist. “It had to infect your blood to affect you, so likely they were all doing the same.”
Her voice is low and soft, gaze focused everywhere but on me. I long to ask her what she saw in those moments, when the thing forced her to relive the most awful moments of her life. But given what I saw under the same, I’m too afraid to ask.
Instead I take a moment to realize that she’s holding my bloodied wrist and shows no signs at all of being interested in the blood there. I gape at her. “Rayne…”
In front of the church doors, the large grey wolf with the dark streak begins to stir. An instant later, she’s on her feet and searching.
Gina gives a little cry of relief. “Opal.”
A second later, the wolf ripples effortlessly back into Opal and runs headlong at Gina who grabs her into a huge hug.
The pair embrace fiercely, whispering to each other, stroking each other’s hair, checking each other for injuries. The other Loup Garou manage to stay back for a full thirty seconds before they can no longer help themselves, dashing in to touch and check on their leader. A mix of wolves, hybrid, and human forms gather around the relieved couple as the large cluster reassures themselves of the others’ safety.
Beyond Opal the doors open and in march a selection of wolves I don’t recognize. After assessing the scene before them, they shift back into human forms revealing a handful of faces. Alphas of all the other packs—Fire Fang, Long Tooth, Grey Tail. Even Aleksandar is there, though his growls on spotting me are tempered by the raised guns and weapons of my team who have walked in behind them.
“Guys.”
Solo, Duo, Hawk, Willow, and Erkyan, all of them form a barrier between Aleksandar and me that moves as he does.
They smile when they see me, though expressions of shock and worry quickly take over when they see the state I’m in.
Funny, I’d normally feel nervous and exposed to be so partially dressed among all these people, but being naked is nothing to a werewolf. The other alphas, back in human forms, are also nude and one could almost argue that everybody else is overdressed.
For the first time since the night began, I find myself relaxing. Just a tiny bit.
Hawk speaks first. “When you didn’t check in, we came to look for you.”
Duo nods. “Good thing too, you crazy bitch. What were you thinking?”
I raise my hands as far as the stiffness in my back will allow. “I didn’t do anything.”
A grunt from Solo. “When the Loup Garou emissaries arrived about the moot we figured we should all meet you here. Seems we missed something rather dramatic.”
Willow waves her hands through a series of complicated signs. “Your aura is clouded and you look weak. Are you well, friend?”
I can’t manage anything more complicated than a simple thumbs up, so that will have to do. “I’m glad you’re here.”
Hawk shrugs. “It’s not just us. There’s a bunch more agents en route.”
I stiffen. Glance at Rayne. She shrugs. I sigh.
“Well, what did you want us to do? We had no idea what was happening, you weren’t on comms, and your van was just out there on the grass. We had to get backup. They’ll be here soon.”
A familiar beeping catches my ears.
My watch. Looking at it is even more painful than usual. My blood dots the face which is cracked from repeated impacts, but I can still just about see the time through it. Sunrise is on the way.
Rayne catches me looking. “I’ll be fine,” she murmurs. “Get yourself checked out by Omega.”
“Not a damn chance.” I wave off her look of surprise. “I’m not leaving your side until you wake up again this evening. We…have a lot to talk about. Besides, if I do leave you, those military lunatics may just drag you outside to get you back to HQ.”
“They aren’t stupid.”
“Don’t care. No risks.” I take her chin in my hand. “No. Risks. Okay?”
She stares into my eyes. God, there are so many questions, there, all of them brimming in her beautiful eyes. “Very well. That means you too, deal?”
“On my locs and hope to trim.” My words stutter a little over my usual little vow. For the first time in a long while, I’m forced to remember why I refuse to cut my hair, having always wanted it to be as long as my father’s.
I keep the little internal voice to myself and wait with Rayne, occasionally wincing as my back gives another twinge. Each of my team comes to embrace me in turn, with their own opinion about the marks. Solo describes them as a sigil, Duo as a sunburst. Hawk assesses the marks while hovering upside down and tells me they resemble tribal tattoos he’s seen humans wearing in summer. Erkyan and Willow confer together and decide as one that though they’ve never seen such marks before, they resemble a brand or burn.
Frankly, none of it is comforting, but at least there isn’t any black smoke or yellow pus flowing from the wounds. Rayne performs her own little study as we retreat to the relative safety and privacy of the chancel, but says nothing other than she has some references to check in the evening.
Then my watch beeps again and she passes out in my arms, limp and lifeless against me like a doll.
I pull her to me and wait for Omega to arrive while the wolves all talk about what should follow. I’m sure they’ll still have their moot, but the Loup Garou and Blood Moon seem to have particular issue with Aleksandar. I can’t hear all of it, but I hear my name come up more than once, along with the phrase “pack-friend.”
I don’t care. All of that can wait.
What I want now, more than anything, is to settle down in a soft warm bed—preferably on my front—and sleep for a week.
Of course, as I suspected, Omega agents try to coax me with them out of the old church and back to SPEAR facilities. I refuse, making clear that in the middle of the day, it’s my responsibility to protect my colleague and that I won’t be leaving her side.
Many of the Omega agents already know about the relationship between Rayne and me, but the military certainly doesn’t. It takes several heated conversations and threats of setting my wolf friends on them to get my way. Foolish, perhaps, but I’m not leaving her. No freaking way.
Only after all this do I realize, in all the commotion, that Flint hasn’t moved from where he fell.
With my team on guard around attempts to move Rayne outside and into the sunlight, I limp over to check him out.
Dead. Without doubt.
His eyes, nose, and ears are singed black as though burned from the inside out. The skin around his mouth is stained the same sooty black and stretched wide enough to break skin. His entire body seems flatter than it should, as though emptied of vital organs. And when I take the chance to touch his curled, twisted hand, his skin is icy cold and stiff.
I wish I could ask him what happened. He’s likely the only one with reliable intel on what the hell that black creature really is, but now he’s gone.
Though with this being the second time Rayne and I have seen the thing, we can no longer brush it off as an unknown entity. We need to figure o
ut what the hell it is before it causes any more damage.
Yep, because things are always that easy.
I leave Flint’s body on the ground and return to my team, joining the conversation on how to get Rayne safely back to HQ.
Chapter Thirty-three
It’s kinda nice not to be the one waking up in one of those medi-bay rooms. Weird, but nice. I sit on the stiff plastic chair beside Rayne’s bed, watching her lifeless body beneath the sheets. In a situation like this I would usually have clues like soft breathing or eyelash flutters, but there’s none of that from Rayne.
If a stranger were to walk in on me right now, they might assume I was mourning a dead body.
Perhaps I am. But at least this body is going to wake up in a few minutes.
Outside the room, the rest of my team forms an unofficial guard. I know there are a couple of soldiers out there too, but Hawk is large and broad enough keep any of them from entering. I’d laugh if it wasn’t verging on ridiculous.
My back aches beneath the light dressing Omega finally decided to put there. Not pain like before, but certainly uncomfortable. It itches too, as if the lightest contact of any fabric irritates the strange marks. After more bullying—no, negotiating—with my alpha colleagues, I’ve been able to study the quick photos they snapped of the wounds.
Hawk is right, the marks are almost tribal, but there’s something strangely even and symmetrical about the signs. They’re certainly not something I’ve ever seen before and no wracking my brain through the course of the day has brought to mind any memory of something similar.
It has brought up other things though. Recollections that leave me first angry, then scared, then desolate, one after the other.
It’s been so very long since I allowed myself to think of Dad. Even with Mum acting the way she is right now, it’s easier to leave such painful memories in the past. But now they’re as fresh and raw as the day after, and my insides ache with the pain of it.
I can almost feel that chair leg in my hands, the hot splash of coughed up blood against my face.
“Oh, Dad, I’m so sorry. I’m sorry. I never wanted to do that to you, I never, ever did.”
“He knows, Danika.”
My head snaps up.
Rayne is awake. She hasn’t moved, but her gaze is fixed on mine, her smile soft and kind. “You really stayed with me all day?”
“Damn right I did. I even told Maury that—”
She presses her index finger against my lips. “When the creature forced me back into my memories, I saw one of my foster siblings dying. He had leukaemia and spent the last three months of his life in hospital going through procedure after surgery after test. He was so miserable in the end, I think he was glad when it ended. He was only twelve.”
“Rayne…”
She grips my hand. “But beyond that my life has been pretty clean and happy. I’m very lucky. So instead my mind gave me the worst-case scenarios of every last one of my nightmares.” She frowns. “I saw you die, over and over, in every conceivable way. But always at my hand. I did it, every single time. Because…I lost control.”
I tighten my fingers on hers. I’ve no idea what to say, but part of me knows that I’m not really supposed to say anything.
“I killed you, Danika, over and over, with my hands, with my fangs, with weapons. I let my monster take control of my senses and lost you because I was weak. Then, when that thing finally let me out, I saw you on the ground. You were crying, screaming for your father, and I knew I would lose you for real if I couldn’t save you. If I couldn’t control that monster living inside me.”
“And that’s how you learned to control your mania?”
She nods. “I don’t know how. I don’t even know if I could do it again. But I do know, in that moment, nothing on earth could have stopped me helping you. Not even my own beast.”
“I—”
Again she touches my lips. “You don’t have to tell me anything. I just want you to know that it’s over now. That whatever happened you’re not the same person and that you’re stronger now than you’ve ever been. Your father would be proud of you.”
My tears are instant. There’s nothing I can do. They spill forth without warning and stain my cheeks, running off my chin, into my mouth. “I killed him, Rayne. I did it. I was the one.”
There’s a gasp from somewhere behind me, but I don’t care.
“The records all say ‘vampire attack,’ but by the time I reached him he’d already changed. I had to. He attacked me and I had to. I had to.”
Rayne shoves herself off the bed and pulls me to her. I don’t even care about the twinge of pain from my back, I just let her hold me, clinging to her soft, cool body while tears wrack my own from top to bottom.
She doesn’t say anything the entire time. I feel her there, her hands around me, her chin against the top of my head, but not one word.
And I cry. I cry like I had that day in the manager’s office. I cry the same way I had when Quinn found me, covered in black ooze and numb from shock. I cry the same way I did when telling Mum and Pippa what happened. Or a portion of what happened.
“I had to keep it secret.” I whisper the words against Rayne’s neck. “Mum would never have forgiven me, and Pip…I couldn’t lose Pip. She couldn’t know what Dad had become. And now there’s you and her, and I can’t help but think or wonder, what if? What if I’d been able to save him? What if there was some other way? If you and Pip can be so good and normal, then what about him?”
Rayne’s arms tighten around me. “What happened? Tell me. As much as you can.”
“But—”
“Indulge me.” She rubs her cheek against the top of my head. “You’re a good person, Danika. Headstrong, sure. Stubborn, totally, but you’re still a good person, and I refuse to believe that’s happened in the last eight years. You were always good, and I can guarantee you’ve been carrying this guilt for far too long. Let me help you.”
So I tell her.
I open myself up and reveal the truth in a way I’ve never done before. I tell her about the vampire in the alley and the very first bite against my shoulder. I explain how afraid I was, how clueless and lost. I share the fear as it gripped my heart, watching my dad turn and open his eyes to reveal bright, cold silver. I recall the frenzied fight in that lonely, cramped space, and the way he begged me so desperately not to kill him.
Rayne’s hand stops stroking down my hair. “Don’t hesitate,” she murmurs.
I stiffen against her.
“Danika, you’ve got this wrong. The man you’ve told me about, the one you loved, he would never have begged for his life like that.”
I clutch at her, shaking my head. “But he did, you didn’t hear me, he said—”
“He said ‘don’t,’ right?”
I freeze. “Y-yes.”
“And the other older agent you mentioned, did he not say to you ‘don’t hesitate’?”
“Yes, but—”
“Shh.” She pulls away long enough to see my face and gently wipe the tears off my cheeks with the pad of her thumb. “It’s the first and single most important rule us SPEARs follow. You know that. Trust your gut. Don’t hesitate. What if your father was trying to tell you the same thing?”
“What?”
Rayne pulls me up onto the bed and cradles my head and shoulders against her. Despite her smaller size, I feel safe and protected with her arms around me like this. Like she’s the bigger one and I’m the dainty doll wrapped close in her grasp.
“He must have known what was happening to him. And you’ve seen what mania is like. Perhaps not back then, but you have now. You’ve seen me. When caught in mania like that, we don’t have control or conscious thought. We can’t make decisions like rational creatures. But you described him pulling back again and again, doing everything in his power not to hurt you. He fought it, Danika, right to the end until he couldn’t fight any more. And when he understood he had no choice, he begged you, his daught
er, someone he loved, to do what he knew only you could, ‘Don’t hesitate.’”
I’m numb. I can’t think, can’t see, can’t even feel.
Rayne is still talking, something about the people I might have saved, the agents I may have spared by acting so decisively, but all I can think about is Pippa and Mum. Could it be that I saved them by murdering Dad? Did I save him too? From himself?
I can’t process it, can’t fathom it. My mind is looping the thoughts until nothing makes sense and all words become a blur.
Don’t hesitate.
Could that really be what he meant to say? Was I wrong after so many years of self-hatred, blame, and fixation on widespread vengeance?
Though it hurts, though my back twinges with the pain of it all, I voluntarily take myself back to the night so many years ago. I put myself back in that room, against that wall with my heart thudding in my ears and my sweaty, bloodied hands wrapped around the shaft of that broken table leg.
“Don’t,” Dad says. And for the first time, I recognize the resolve in his eyes. I see the peace and acceptance in his expression before the wicked flash of silver takes over once more and swallows the man I knew and loved.
“Oh, fuck.”
Rayne stops speaking and peers down at me, still cradled in her arms. “What? What is it?”
I bite my bottom lip. “I did the right thing?” It’s not a question, but I voice it as one, for the first time in eight years, allowing myself the hope of redemption and forgiveness. “I didn’t murder him?”
“You ended his life at his request and with his blessing, Danika. It can’t possibly be any other way.” She hugs me. “And I’m sorry. I’m sorry it’s taken eight years for someone to tell you this, but it wasn’t your fault. There was nothing you could do except exactly what you’d trained for as a SPEAR. Protect and serve. Learn and understand.” Once more she wipes hot tears off my face. “Hunt and exterminate. Your father would have been proud of everything you’ve accomplished. You’re everything he could have wished for, and more.”
Something seems to flood out of me. I can’t name it or even describe it beyond a sense that some long-held tension or weight has been lifted. It washes out of me like a river and vanishes into the air, leaving behind a peace I can’t remember ever feeling.
Moon Fever Page 32
