Cold Hard Secret (Secret McQueen) (29 page)

Ghosts can’t speak, so they made their silent commentary, and I was too out of it to wonder what they thought of this whole scene.

I looked past them and kept both eyes on Mercy. She seemed oblivious to the spirits closing in around her. I waited until the life was blotted out from her eyes and the last rattle of breath escaped her lungs.

She didn’t join them.

Once I was sure she was gone for good, I closed my eyes.

Chapter Thirty-Five

The best indicator I wasn’t dead was the insane amount of pain that woke me up.

“
Augh,
” I shrieked, swatting at the hands on me.

“I told you we should have waited until she was awake,” Holden’s cool voice cut in. “Idiots.”

“I understand, but if we’d waited that long, she’d be dead.” Desmond was standing closer to me, his words coming through clearer.

“You boys. Nothing but arguments. If you aren’t going to help, you must both leave.
Vous comprenez?
” This from the familiar accent of
Grandmere
. I could have cried, either because I now knew for sure she was alive, or because this meant I was actually dead.

“
Oui,
” Holden spat back in reply.

“Fine,” Desmond answered.

They were still bickering, so chances were good I hadn’t gone to heaven.

“Uuuuuugh.”

“Don’t move,
bebe
, this will hurt quite a lot indeed.”
Grandmere
pushed me back gently, and my head thumped against something hard and wooden.

I didn’t have much time to think of what it might be because a moment later she jammed her fingers into the soft tissue below my rib cage. I scrambled, reaching out to take hold of whatever was closest. Desmond grabbed my hand, and even though I squeezed hard enough to hear his knuckles pop, he didn’t pull away.

The sound I belatedly recognized as my own screaming faded away, leaving only my rasping breaths in its place.

“Good Lord,” Holden observed.

I lifted my head, easing my grip on Desmond’s hand.
Grandmere
held up the fragmented bits of a slug in her hand, angling them so I could see before she dumped them into a nearby glass of water where another cluster of metal had already been deposited.

Guess removing the first bullet was what brought me back from the dead.

My body responded immediately to the removal of the silver. It wasn’t like an instant fix, but the holes cut through me by the bullets started pulling themselves back together, letting the healing process begin. I wiggled my jaw, and the responding thrum of pain in my cheek told me the bone was still plenty broken.

Twenty-one hours.

Having someone put their fingers under my skin brought back a flood of memories, even though
Grandmere
had been saving me. I doubted I’d ever be able to have someone put their hands on me without having to chase back my demons first.

I tugged down the hem of my shirt, which was already ruined by bullet holes and blood, but I didn’t feel like exposing my skin any longer. Everyone in the room had seen me naked, but I hated feeling…bare.

“Thank you.” I hoped I was completely covered. I was sitting on the dining room table in
Grandmere
’s house. The shades on the window were drawn tight, but there wasn’t yet any sign of light peeking around them. Between that and Holden’s presence in the room, I had to assume it was still night. “Where is she?”

My whole body demanded I stay put, but I braced myself on Desmond’s shoulder and slid off the table. Standing on two feet, I felt woozy, but managed to keep myself upright.

Concussed and injured, I still noticed no one had answered my question.

“Where is she?”

Desmond guided me to a nearby chair and forced me to sit. I braced myself for some terrible announcement that, defying all reason, Mercy had survived being stabbed in the throat. I didn’t know
how
she could, but leave it to my mother to find a way to stay—

“Her body is in the shed. We couldn’t leave her in the woods. There was too much risk of exposure.” Desmond glanced at
Grandmere
, then back to me. “There’s more, but I’m not sure you’re ready.”

“Try me.”

“We got Ben and Fairfax locked up in the other garden shed. It should hold them for now, but there’s no sign of them shifting back. A few of Mercy’s men got away while we were trying to secure Callum’s wolves.”

“I don’t care.” I’d gotten who I came for. Let the parasites vanish back under whatever rock Mercy had kicked over to find them. Given Desmond’s expression, he wasn’t quite done with the news yet. “What else?”

“Callum called.”

“Callum called,” I repeated.

“The phone was ringing off the hook when we got you back here. We couldn’t ignore him. He insisted on speaking to Vivienne.”

“Charming temper on my children,”
Grandmere
huffed.

“He wanted to know she was alive,” Desmond explained. “And she told him about you, about Mercy, the whole situation with Ben and Fairfax. She couldn’t give him all the details about the shift, but apparently he already knew something about it from you?”

I nodded. “I called him when I couldn’t figure out how to fix you.”

Desmond squeezed my hand. “He wants us to come see him immediately. He’s asked us to return his wolves safely and…” He glanced to Holden, and it was the vampire who finished the sentence.

“He wants your mother’s head.”

“Her
head
?” Surely he must be using a metaphor. I shifted my attention to
Grandmere
, hoping she would clarify things. Instead she had sat down in a chair with her face cradled in her hands. I hadn’t once stopped to consider what Mercy’s death would mean to her. I kept the two women totally separate in my mind, usually forgetting entirely that Mercy was
Grandmere
’s daughter.

I’d killed her child.

“
What?
” I asked Holden, still unable to process the request.

Desmond answered for him. “Because of what Mercy did to you, Ben and Fairfax, she has been deemed a sworn enemy of the pack. Beyond her standing excommunication, she has been sentenced to death on sight. Since you’ve…well, since that’s not an issue anymore, Callum needs proof.”

But Callum had already given me his blessing to kill her. When we’d spoken from Paris, he hadn’t mentioned anything about needing her head. Did he assume I would fail and skipped saying anything because of that? Or was this some bonus punishment he’d cooked up at the last minute? “Can’t I just send him a picture?”

Desmond shook his head. “That’s not how things work in the pack.”

“I didn’t have to bring Marcus’s head to Lucas.”

“That’s because Lucas saw Marcus’s body. You didn’t have to prove he was dead.” He took both my hands, squeezing them. “I’m sorry. I know you don’t want to do this, but there isn’t any other option.”

No other option? Seriously? I could think of loads of other options, and most of them could be accomplished without cutting off my mother’s head. Werewolf society was so goddamn backwards, some days I wondered how they managed to get anything done.

“
Grandmere?
” I stood, and the room spun. I walked the few steps across the room and knelt in front of her, mirroring the gesture Desmond had just used on me. I held her wrists, waiting for her to pull her hands away from her face. When she did, it was clear she’d been crying.

I wouldn’t do anything without her approval. Callum might want the head, but if
Grandmere
said no, it wasn’t going to happen.

To be totally honest, I didn’t mind the idea of lobbing the bitch’s head off and delivering it to my uncle on a damned silver platter. But I wasn’t going to disrespect my
grandmere
’s grief if she said she was against it.

“What do you want me to do?”

She moved her hands to my cheeks and tipped my head upwards, running her thumb lightly across the bruise under my eye. “She almost took you from me,” she whispered. “What would I do? What would I do without you,
bebe
?”

Here I thought her tears were because Mercy was dead—and maybe in part they were—but instead of hating me for killing her child, she was grateful I’d survived.

I offered a watery smile. “She almost took
you
from me.” Turning my face, I placed a kiss against the rough skin of her palm. “You don’t have to worry now.”

“I’ve spent twenty-four years knowing she would come one day. Twenty-four years of fear for you because I knew she could not let it go. Oh, Secret, you cannot know the terror.”

“It’s over.” Saying the words was like waking from a dream. It
was
over. This whole nightmare with Peyton and Mercy, it was done. The two greatest evils in my life were gone, and now…

Now what?

I wasn’t out of the woods as far as trouble went. I still needed to go back to New York and face the wrath of the council, and for better or worse—probably worse—I owed Aubrey Delacourte a favor. Yeah, I definitely wasn’t done with sticky situations. But all the same I felt
free
.

“It’s over,” I said again.

Both Holden and Desmond watched me, but neither moved closer. I didn’t think I could handle their support right then anyway. Between the stark realization that I’d successfully killed my mother, and the too-fresh memory of having fingers inside my skin, I didn’t feel like getting hugged right now.

I got up, grasping
Grandmere
’s hand to remind myself she wasn’t going anywhere, and I had in fact saved her. “Take me to the body.”

Thankfully I didn’t have to ask a second time, otherwise I wasn’t sure I’d be able to go through with it. Killing her was one thing, but I wasn’t used to having to look at dead bodies once I was done with them. Especially not bodies I was connected to in some way.

Desmond led me outside to where the bruise-colored hints of sunrise had begun to brighten the sky by degrees. I was already feeling sleepy thanks to the night’s activities and my copious wounds. The coming morning was drawing me in, and I was ready to yield to a long and hopefully dreamless sleep.

The shed door was open, and before we entered I glanced across the yard to the brown garden shed near the vegetable patch. I couldn’t hear any sounds coming from within, so perhaps Ben and Fairfax had given in to sleep as well.

Boy would their faces be red when they realized how badly they’d failed at being bodyguards.

I hefted a sigh, too tired to mentally laugh at my own jokes.

Mercy’s body rested against the back wall of the tool shed, her feet between the tires of
Grandmere
’s riding lawnmower.

She looked like a doll, limp and lifeless, her arms dangling, palms turned upward like she was begging for something. With her head lolled down, chin against her chest, she might have nodded off.

I cleared the room and poked her in the side with the toe of my shoe. Her head bobbed, but she didn’t respond. Desmond, clever fellow that he was, had remembered to bring my sword and handed me the weapon.

“Tell me this is real.” I glanced at him, quietly pleading for him to confirm I wasn’t dreaming.

“It’s about as real as it gets.”

I slipped the sword from its sheath—someone had thoughtfully put it back in its scabbard at some point—and slid the blade under Mercy’s chin, tilting her head up so I could see her face. Her slate-gray eyes, totally devoid of life, looked back but focused on nothing.

The unhealed slit in her neck was visible now, showing bloody meat and bone gristle through the skin. I’d done a number on her when I pinned her to the tree.

Now we had one last hurdle to cross.

“Can you get me a box, please? There should be one in the supply shed next door.”

“I don’t think your grandmother has enough sheds,” he observed sarcastically.

“There used to be six. She consolidated.” I wasn’t really paying attention to our conversation. I was too busy staring into my mother’s vacant eyes.

“I’ll be right back.”

Once he was gone, I crouched beside Mercy and lowered the sword, keeping her head up by gripping her hair.

“It didn’t have to end like this, you know.” I half-expected her to jolt back to life and rip my throat out. She just sat there though, all her dead weight tugging on my hand. “I wanted to leave you be. I never wanted to kill you, but you couldn’t let it go, could you?”

I released her head and sat back against the riding mower so I mirrored her pose. “You
bitch
,” I spat. “Why couldn’t you leave me alone? Why did you make me do this?” Kicking her in the leg, I wanted to take out all my frustration on her. I thought killing her would pull back the darkness and shed some light into my world. Instead I just had a bleak pit inside me that felt like guilt.

I didn’t want to regret killing her.

The guilt probably had more to do with the danger my loved ones had been put in because of my need to kill her, or the deep-seated belief I had that
Grandmere
was more torn up about this than she let on. But another part of me
did
feel bad for murdering Mercy.

How could I not feel bad?