Bewere the Night (14 page)

“What are you doing?” I demanded.

“Breaking up your little love nest,” Jules said, arms crossed. “You left me for
this
?”

My nostrils flared. “I left you because you used me,” I said.

Jules jabbed a finger at my unconscious lover. “Like
she
isn’t? You’re just an infected to her.” She stepped forward and pain registered on her face, if only briefly. “I’m sorry. I never should have let Peter talk you into this. But once this is over, we’ll talk.”

“Once
what
is over?” A chill crept up my spine as I watched the wolf carry Ginny out the door. I started to struggle but the other wolves manhandled me to a less mobile position. “What are you doing to her?”

“As much as I’d like to, I’m not doing anything. We take the Seeonee territory tonight.” She sniffed at me. “You’ve already changed.”

“If you hurt her, I’ll—”

“You’ll what?” Jules spread her arms, inviting me to explain. “You’ll what, Claire?” She stepped towards me and touched my chin with her fingertips. I didn’t have the freedom to recoil. “Don’t you see how they were planning to use you?”

I did. Ginny had come clean with me about that. But that was Seeonee scheming. There was no way Jules could know. “You’re lying,” I said.

“Why would I lie to you?” Her hand moved from my chin and stroked my cheek.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” I stiffened as I tried to turn my head away, and she dropped her hand.

“Then you’re a bigger fool than Peter took you for.” She took a step back. “The Seeonee were going to use you for murder and let the humans kill you for it.”

I blanched. How did she know?

I didn’t have time to think about it. Jules pulled a hypodermic out of her pocket and removed its plastic sleeve. The red wolves tightened their grip on my arms and one grabbed a fistful of my hair. Another held out my wrist.

The wolf inside my head snarled. “What is that?”

“A new batch of cocktail,” she said.

She came at me with the needle but I struggled. The claws in my hair tightened and pain lanced up my spine. Jules grabbed my face and brandished the needle in my field of vision.

“You can hold still and let me administer this,” she said with an undercurrent of a lupine growl, “or you can keep up the shenanigans and I’ll jam it straight into your tear duct. Which will it be?”

Terrified, I held still. She grabbed my wrist, tapped the veins there with the back of her fingernail, and stuck me. The fluid spread up my arm like ice water.

Tingling followed the numbness and the wolf howled inside my head, trying to claw its way out. Every muscle cramped. I started to faint, but shook my head violently to clear my vision. The change was coming again, the pain still familiar from last night. “Why are you doing this!”

Jules waggled the empty syringe at me. “Test subject.”

My skin crawled from beneath, as though she had injected me with a hive of angry bees. My legs faltered and the red wolves dragged me along as they followed Jules out of the apartment. I wanted to vomit. My head spun. Tingling spread to the rest of my limbs, my mouth watered and my vision tunneled. I forgot where I was.

Next I knew, I was dropped on my knees in the gravel of the driveway. I did retch, and felt a little better afterwards, except the drug was making my heart race and spots clouded my vision. I heard Jules’s voice, painfully loud in my ears. “Did you make the call?”

The plastic click of a shutting cell phone was as harsh as a gunshot.

“Yeah,” Peter said. “They barked my ear off. Pretty convincing, to their credit.”

Footsteps on the gravel crunched like a coffee grinder. I wanted to cover my head but my arms wouldn’t move. My shoulders, still aching from last night’s disjointing, popped again and I blacked out as they readjusted.

“They’ll come right to us,” Peter said. I strained through the blurry vision and saw him crouch down beside Ginny. He stuck a needle in her arm. There were more wolves in the parking lot, at least a dozen that I could see.

Jules walked over to me, straddled me, and draped a loop of chain around my neck. I growled a deep, horrible sound at her and it shocked me that I’d made such a noise. I looked down at my hands, but black paws had replaced them. The pain and rage faded.

I was
conscious
. The change had come, and I was still conscious. This wasn’t the same drug as before.

Jules tightened the chain and pulled my head up, but I felt her finger pressed against my nape, under the chain, to prevent it from choking me. She bent to my ear.

“I know you can hear me,” she whispered. I couldn’t see her and I tried to struggle, but she put a knee between my shoulderblades and yanked my head higher. “I know you can, Claire, so listen to me.”

A car pulled up with a blaze of headlights. The doors opened and Mae got out, along with two of the Seeonee, who dragged out a fourth person in chains. He was a scruffy man, bruised and beaten, but he wore designer jeans and a nice jacket. His eyes widened when he saw us.

I tried in vain to sniff for Ginny, but Jules’s quiet, urgent voice distracted me. “I told you I wasn’t lying. I knew what Mae was planning to do with you because Peter told me. Just watch.”

Peter sauntered to the car and, to my astonishment, kissed Mae. He put his hand on her swollen stomach. “How’s our son?”

Mae’s hand covered his. “Doing fine, sweetheart.”

“Peter?”

The voice belonged to the shackled man.

“Peter, what’s going on?”

“I’m sorry to do this to you, David,” Peter said, putting an arm around Mae’s shoulders. “But you’re only human, after all.”

I could hear David’s panicked heartbeat.

Jules rested her other hand, the one that gripped the chain, atop my head. I thrashed but she was strong enough to hold me still. “That’s the man you’re supposed to kill,” she whispered.

Mae appraised me with a glance, then nodded and asked, “How is Geneva?”

“Ready to wake up with a bad temper,” Peter said. He glanced at his wristwatch. “When’s the rest of your pack due?”

“Any minute.”

“Good. Get your perfume ready,” said Peter. He stripped out of his suit. The two Seeonee that had come with Mae did the same. One of them handed her the car keys.

“Remember,” Mae told them, “These are our new packmembers. We can’t have an all-out war. Attack only the dissenters.”

“Including the Donnelly girl,” Peter added. A shadow crossed Mae’s face when he said that. “Do whatever’s necessary to kill her when she comes after your alpha.” He put his hands on Mae’s stomach again. “We’ve got a new heir, combining the bloodlines.”

I bristled. So, that was their plan all along. Unite the packs with deception, kill anyone who didn’t accept it. We’d
all
been duped. I snarled, and when Mae caught sight of me she flinched. She said to Jules, “Is she feralized?”

“Yes,” Jules lied. “She’ll kill David like you want, as long as he’s in her path when I unleash her.” At that, the smell of David’s sweat soured.

“Good,” Mae nodded and turned back to Peter. “Good.”

Howling sounded in the woods. I felt the immediate urge to answer, but Jules tightened the chain to prevent me. Peter stepped back from Ginny; she stirred and started spasming.

Mae stood back as Peter and the others changed. While they shifted, Jules bent and whispered quickly in my ear. “This has been in the works for a while, and I won’t follow an alpha who lies to the pack. When I let you go, do whatever you think is right. But know this—the fight is coming.” She hesitated. “I’m sorry I exposed you to this. I’m trying to make it right.”

She stroked a hand down the side of my furry neck. Then she slipped the chain off and I heard her begin her own change, clothes ripping.

I did the one useful thing that occurred to me. I filled my lungs, reeled my head back, and howled.

Other howls responded, closer now. I strained to listen and heard them brushing against undergrowth in the woods. I howled again. A dozen gray wolves charged from the hedgerow into the gravel lot and bodies of red and gray clashed in growling whirlwinds beneath the brightness of the full moon. I couldn’t tell which were loyal to the alphas and which were loyal to the packs.

Peter, now a huge red wolf with a dark muzzle, watched me. His fur twitched once, and half a heartbeat later he bolted for David, who’d been handcuffed to a parked car and was trying desperately to get away.

A small red wolf darted past me and hopped on Peter’s back, biting at his face and snarling like a demon.

I ran to Ginny, who had changed and gnashed her teeth like she had gone mad, spittle flying from her mouth. She was bigger than me, the gray wolf. Her injured foreleg was still bandaged. I nosed towards her but she snapped at me and I backpedaled and then she saw Mae, the only human standing.

I smelled something foul and swiveled my ear towards Mae, hearing a hiss of aerosol. Mae sprayed something from a small perfume bottle. I bared my teeth at the rotting stench of vampire odor, but I was able to control my predatory urge to rush her.

Ginny wasn’t.

She charged Mae. I blocked her path. I didn’t want to hurt her but she snapped at my throat and got a mouthful of fur as I flinched away. I didn’t want her to hurt
me
. I caught her on the injured foreleg and bit through the bandages; she yelped in pain and kicked me loose.

She rushed at Mae again.

I jumped on her back, letting instinct lead me, and clamped down on the back of her neck with my jaws.
Please
, I begged silently,
please stop
.

I held her with my teeth as the battle raged around us. Wolves stalked towards us but never reached us, either blocked by another dogfight or engaged in one by Jules’s supporters.

Ginny raged beneath me like a gray hurricane, but I clamped down harder and prayed that she’d snap out of it. She was stronger than me but her leg was lame and I’d pinned her.

I had no idea how long the drug-induced rage lasted. I tried to think back to the video recording of last night. It hadn’t lasted long, had it? Seemed like hours now.

My jaw ached, threatening to lock up. Ginny settled down and I must have dropped my guard because she wrenched free and spun on me, black lips peeled back from deadly fangs. I wasn’t quick enough. She bit down on my throat and rolled me onto my back. Her growl vibrated against my neck.

She had me. I closed my eyes and waited for the inevitable crush of my windpipe. Or was it the jugular first? I clung to the memory of last night’s tenderness. I wanted that to be my final thought in life. Joy, not pain, not betrayal.

The sounds of fighting faded around me, as did Ginny’s growling. I squeezed my eyes shut.

Instead of oblivion, the jaws lifted and a wet nose pressed against my face a moment later. I wasn’t dead. I squinted one eye open.

The gray wolf licked it.

When I regained consciousness, I had my jaws around a red wolf’s throat. Was I fighting or asserting dominance? Not knowing frightened me.

The red wolf smelled like pine boughs and pumpkin seeds.
Claire. Oh, God.
I pulled away immediately and searched for signs she was all right. She seemed to be.

I scanned the area. Were we in danger? I smelled Seeonee, but other wolves too, and blood, and anger. A large black-muzzled male lay bleeding out beneath the shadow of a parked car. A human lay slumped and bleeding against the same car.

In the distance I saw another car’s taillights receding and heard the boom of an accelerating engine. The stink of vampires faded in a whiff of car exhaust.

Claire nudged me to my feet, though my foreleg threatened to give way beneath me. She sniffed at my face and I smelled a mixture of worry and relief on her. She was a wolf but . . . she seemed aware. She wasn’t impeded by her infection at all.

One by one, wolves—all except the dead—shifted back to human form, the moon’s demand sated for another month. When I shifted back, I wobbled and sat in the dirt, my head swimming. Claire wrapped her arms around me and squeezed me so hard it almost hurt.

Almost.

I sat in the waiting room of the clinic while Ginny got dressed in the medical wing. The doctors had checked her thoroughly; she’d been so pumped full of drugs.

Jules came back from speaking with the toxicologist and sat on the plastic chair beside mine with a sigh. “Peter’s dead and hell if I know where Mae ran off to. If we catch her, she’s dead. But that’s really Geneva’s call.”

I didn’t know what to say. My first reaction was to protest talk of execution, but the world and its rules were different for me now.

“David is still alive,” Jules added. “Infected. But if he wants our drugs, he’s welcome to them. I doubt we’ll see the human backlash Mae and Peter dreamed up.”

“I’ve had enough of your drugs to last a lifetime,” I said.

She nodded, not meeting my gaze. “But that’s what I can offer you.” She reached into the pocket of her torn jeans and pulled out a prescription bottle. “If you want them.”

“More sedatives?” The wolf inside me bristled.

“No,” she said, balancing the bottle on the armrest of my chair. “What I gave you tonight. Clarity of the natural-born. I can’t take back what I did to you, but I can . . . I can make it easier.”

“Thanks,” I said quietly, not sure what else to say. I watched the others—Seeonee or Rothschild, in human form I couldn’t tell them apart—filter out from the exam rooms. They looked tired, and sad. They stayed close together, like they were waiting for something.

“I am so sorry for everything,” Jules said. She scrubbed her face with her hands, looking exhausted. “Jesus, what a day.”

“Jules?”

“Hm?”

“Thanks,” I said, and meant it. I squeezed her shoulder in gratitude and stood, going into the back of the clinic. I wasn’t content to wait anymore.

Ginny came out into the sterile hallway. She smiled at me, that dimpled smile, and I couldn’t wait the length of the corridor. I ran to her and threw my arms around her, claiming her mouth with a kiss. She wrapped her good arm around my neck and tangled her fingers in my hair.