Werewolves & Wisteria (12 page)

“No,” he said. He flicked his tail, and the mess disappeared. “She’s not getting it, so it’s irrelevant.”

“You didn’t tell me about your history with werewolves because you thought that was irrelevant,” I pointed out. “Is it suddenly going to become relevant when it screws us all over?”

“It will never be relevant enough for me to tell you.” And he walked away.

I shook my head and went back to my library to read and study.

Vince had cleared out that morning, but Charlie left his safe room furnished and in place. Adeline had found another werewolf, some guy named Blake, who was willing to let Vince room with him. Vince had gone to meet him, give it a few days, and see if it would work out.

The memory of the previous night still made me smile. We had been too shy to do much more than kiss, but to me, it still felt like we had moved too quickly.

He kissed me again before leaving that morning. The sudden change in our relationship fascinated me to no end, and I loved it. We were going to meet for lunch on Tuesday.

Lyssa took the time to work a spell to block my thoughts from demons so that Stark wouldn’t know what we were up to, but she warned me that he probably wouldn’t like it when he found himself unable to read my mind.

He found me on Monday, and she had been right. He taunted me with more stories of Charlie, and things that he had done. They made me wince, but I held my tongue and refused to be provoked.

Vince came by the apartment for lunch on Tuesday because I didn’t want Stark to interrupt us, and Lyssa and Martha cleared out to run some errands and see to the greenhouse. He said that things were going well with Blake, but he glossed over the details, so I took it that he didn’t want to focus on his malady or its effects on his life. We talked about that week’s astronomy assignment instead.

On Wednesday, Stark followed me around to my classes, invisible to everyone else, and told me a long history of how he and Charlie had been the most feared pair in Europe a few hundred years back. He was getting bolder, and I spent that night worrying that Saturday wouldn’t be soon enough, because he had said something about medieval torture and how he would have the book from me by Monday.

I stayed in the apartment on Thursday and Friday, telling Vince to stay away and emailing my professors that I was sick. It was still early in the semester, so it wasn’t a big deal, but all of their well wishes only made it worse. I didn’t know if I would be better by Monday or not. I might be dead.

Martha had managed to get in touch with Walter, and they bumped the plan up to Friday night.

When the knock came at my door, I was more than ready for everything to be over.

Chapter 12

When I opened the door, I was shocked by how much weight Walter had lost since I had last seen him. He looked ill as he stood there, taking me in and nodding in defeat.

“Vince’s girlfriend,” he said quietly. I think he meant it as a joke; we hadn’t actually been dating when I met Walter. “I didn’t know who you were when all this started. You’ve got friends in high places.”

I moved to the side so that he could come in, and his eyes fell on Charlie. He froze.

“Low ones, too,” I said.

Charlie had arranged things with Gates that morning, and she told her mom she’d be staying with me that weekend. As long as she answered any phone calls, no one would be the wiser that she was actually hiding in Vince’s former basement apartment as a cat. She had refused to be on site at first, saying that her mother wouldn’t be able to cope if she lost her now. Charlie assured her that the room would do just as well keeping werewolves out as it did keeping werewolves in.

The look in Walter’s eyes made me think he was going to change his mind and bolt, but he didn’t. Martha came up behind him and wrapped her arms around his neck before kissing him on the cheek.

“It’s all going to be fine!” she said, her voice quiet. “Charlie’s a friend. You don’t have to be afraid of him. Are you ready?”

Walter looked at her as she walked around in front of him. She was wearing short shorts and a tank top that showed off several tattoos I hadn’t known about. Even with circles under his eyes, Walter still tried to stand a little straighter in her presence.

“I’m ready,” he said.

Martha smiled, taking one of his hands again. “Good.”

“Good,” Charlie echoed. “I would rather Lyssa does this part.”

Martha’s smile turned to a frown. “What?”

“I’m not giving you any demon, let alone Stark,” he said. “If we’re going to do this, Lyssa will be the bridge. I don’t see any reason the plan can’t proceed the same outside of those details.”

“I’m a necromancer,” Martha said. “He doesn’t know me. He’s more likely to accept me as a bridge, because he won’t suspect anything.”

Charlie crossed his arms and grinned. “We’ve got the cooperation of the current bridge, so I don’t see the problem with forcing his hand. I think Walter has known for a while that he’s a dowry. Stark is going to butcher and sell him to the first warlock he finds who knows the value of a werewolf. It’ll be a hard hit to Stark, losing a bridge to death, but that’s never fatal if he already has a new bridge in place. If he doesn’t, well…”

My eyebrows shot up. “Excuse me?”

Lyssa spoke from behind me. “We talked about it, Annie. I knew you wouldn’t like this, with Vince and all, but it’s the only way. Walter, you’re already dead if this doesn’t work. What we want to do is summon him, and then threaten him with your death if he doesn’t take me as a bridge. If he does, then I will bind him, and you’ll be free when I make him consent to severing the bond with you. That’s the only way we can be certain to keep you alive—force him to consent to breaking with you. That means a second bridge and a binding. If he refuses to have me…”

I turned to look at her. She didn’t want to say it.

“Then you’ll kill me,” Walter finished.

“Charlie will,” Lyssa said despondently. “I don’t think I could…”

“No,” Walter said suddenly. He looked back at Martha. “She’ll do it.”

The deep red smile on Martha’s lips and the focus in her eyes nearly sickened me. She was looking forward to it, and for the first time, I saw what Charlie saw when he looked at her. She was a killer.

And she had known, too, because she pulled a knife from under a pillow on the couch, and then leaned in to kiss Walter on the cheek again. She whispered something in his ear, and kissed him on the lips as Charlie rolled his eyes.

“I’ll make it quick,” she promised.

“Just summon the jackass already,” Charlie groaned.

Walter was still staring into Martha’s eyes, mesmerized, and I wasn’t sure if he was himself when he nodded. He said some words under his breath, calling out to Stark, and it took less than a second for the blond-haired man to appear before us.

He turned in a slow circle, the smile spreading across his lips as he faced his old friend.

“Charlie,” he said. “You were always good at fooling the girls. How much do they really know about you? Kendra doesn’t know. She wouldn’t be with you if she did.”

“If I could have killed you years ago,” Charlie replied sourly, “I would have.”

The next voice to break the silence nearly broke my heart, because I could hear the tears in Walter’s words.

“I’m breaking the bridge with you,” he said. “I’m not going to end up in someone’s wardrobe.”

He pulled something from his pocket, though I couldn’t see what it was. Stark froze, and Charlie’s eyes flashed.

“Walter—!” Charlie called out, but it was too late.

Stark turned on us, and his eyes looked from one of us to the next. He was glowing—
glowing—
with a pale blue light that burned my eyes and my skin, and I ducked down, shielding myself with my arms as Lyssa started to scream.

When I opened my eyes, I thought I had gone blind, because the bright light had left a halo of darkness on my retinas where my apartment should have been. Charlie was mumbling incoherently, and I looked over just in time to see him and Martha bowing down over Walter.

“The
idiot
!” Charlie hissed. “He was supposed to wait for Stark to take a new bridge so this wouldn’t happen!” He pulled something from Walter’s hand, and looked at it, then turned his accusing eyes on Martha. “How did he get this?”

Martha took her bracelet talisman back from him, and then frantically bent over Walter’s corpse, waving her hands over his chest like she was trying to fan a fire.

Sparks appeared.

I hoisted myself up onto my elbows to see better, and Charlie looked over like he had forgotten I was there.

“Thorn!” he yelled. “Lie still!”

He rushed over, but I still saw. Martha’s hands illuminated a tight knot of glowing thread in Walter’s chest, red and pink and white, and she bowed down over him, basking in them before she used her fingers to delicately pull a few of them loose into her palm before they all burned into blackness.

I had witnessed the moment of Walter’s death.

“Thorn, can you breathe?”

It took me a moment to register what he was asking, and when I looked down, I saw the blood. It soaked my shirt, and the carpet.

The scar that Stark had put on me before had ripped wide open. And it didn’t hurt at all.

“What did she do?” I asked, pointing lazily. “What did she do to him?”

“Thorn, lie back before you kill us both!”

I stared at him, and then looked back down, and I was sure that all of the blood had come from somewhere else.

“It’s not my blood,” I said, trying to get up. “It’s not my—”

I stopped as pain overtook me. Shrieking and falling back into Charlie’s arms, I saw Lyssa’s body jump on the ground next to me as she regained consciousness. She had a gash on her head and panic in her eyes as her face swam over me, and for some reason, Stark’s words came back to me.

Kendra doesn’t know. She wouldn’t be with you if she did.

My hands were shaking as I clung to Charlie. I was cold, but I felt like I was sweating.

“What doesn’t Kendra know?” I asked, feeling my tongue slide around my mouth as I fought to stay conscious. The last time I had given in to the darkness, I had become a demon, and that wasn’t going to happen again. “What doesn’t Kendra know about you?”

Lyssa shook her head, looking at Charlie. “What is she talking about?”

Charlie looked down, and our eyes met, and I watched as he disposed of the idea of telling the truth just as quickly as it came into his mind. Stark was right; he was a very good liar.

“She’s delirious,” he said. “If you have nettles, she’s going to need them.” He looked back down at me. “I’m sorry, Thorn, this is going to hurt.”

And even with all of my determination, the lights went out again.

~~~~~~~~~

I wasn’t out for long that time. Only around ten minutes by Lyssa’s estimation, and when I came to, the pain had subsided to a manageable level. Charlie had sewn me back up, and while the scar that ran down my side wasn’t any worse, it looked different now, and for some reason that bothered me.

I had come to accept it, but with all the new edges and contours, it was a stranger on my body again. It ached liked I had a deep, heavy bruise.

Charlie took the time to explain to me in private that it was likely to tear any time we saw action with Stark. It had been imprinted down to my very soul when he had ripped me to the Other Side, and it had stayed when I briefly dipped a toe into becoming a demon, and that was why it would never heal. The scar had formed when I had no body, and now it would show on my physical form forever.

He told Lyssa it was just normal damage from dealing with demons. I saw the way Martha looked at me, with pity in her eyes, when he explained. She didn’t say anything, but she knew a lot more about demons than Lyssa did. She knew the truth.

She told us that Walter had approached her for help of a different sort than she had led us to believe. By the time a person arrived on a necromancer’s stoop, they had already accepted their demise. He had angered his pack, first by summoning Stark, and then by using him to attack the niece of Kendra Hawthorn. They had abandoned him to his fate, and he didn’t want to be sold by the pound after his death, so he had come to Martha seeking a more humane release.

Using the talisman that Martha had loaned him, he had forced a break with Stark. It had ended his life, but Charlie was fairly certain Stark still lived on somewhere in the Other Side. Death of a bridge to suicide wasn’t as severe to a demon as other tragedies, because the soul had already prepared itself for a release.

I was upset that Martha hadn’t tried harder to convince him to live. Charlie accused her of encouraging him, because she wanted his death for her own life-hungry magic. Lyssa didn’t say a lot; I think she didn’t want to think ill of her friend. What was done was done.

While Charlie and Lyssa debated how bad it was that Martha had lied about the encounter, I checked on Gates and then went to shower and change out of my bloody clothes. Lyssa stopped me just as I got out of the shower.

Martha had promised Walter that she would take his body to Adeline for a proper burial.

I told Gates, and then the four of us loaded into my Trooper because it had the most room for a body in the trunk. Charlie drove, and the whole time I kept shooting him glances. Stark had said there was something about him we didn’t know.

Kendra seemed like a forgiving person. She went around befriending werewolves, demons, and necromancers. Whatever it was, it had to be pretty bad if Stark thought it would end their relationship outright.

We woke Adeline up to deliver the body, and she in turn woke the rest of the camp. If I had known it was their custom to send the dead off immediately, I might have insisted on waiting until morning.

They built a funeral pyre and burned him. Adeline said it was to protect his remains from scavenging warlocks.

As the flames grew higher, more and more of the werewolves at the settlement came out, and I was surprised to find Vince there. He was standing next to a young woman, but his eyes lit up and he came over to see me.

“Is that…?”

“Yeah,” I said, trying to be respectful. “Walter. Stark got away, but Charlie thinks it hurt him pretty bad. Walter did something stupid.”

Vince sighed. “He seemed like that kind of guy. He was a good guy, don’t get me wrong, but… yeah.”

We both fell silent. He reached over to hold my hand as we stood side by side, watching the smoke and flames rise into the sky. I looked at him, and then back at the girl he had been standing with a moment earlier.

“Is that your new werewolf girlfriend?” I joked.

Vince didn’t look at me. He squeezed my hand.

“Vince?”

He closed his eyes, shaking his head. “Annie, I was trying to find a good way to introduce you, because I wasn’t sure how you would take this. That’s Blake. She’s Adeline’s daughter. I’m staying in her spare room.”

I looked over at the girl again. She looked too thin and delicate to have a strong name like Blake, especially after I had built an image in my mind of a swarthy and masculine werewolf.

“That’s Blake?” I asked incredulously. “Did you know before, or…?”

“I didn’t know,” he apologized. “Someone told me Adeline had a son and a daughter, Ashley and Blake, and when I got Blake’s number, I assumed Blake was her son.”

I didn’t want to admit it, but my heart sank. “You moved out of my place to move in with another girl.”

“It’s not like that. She’s with someone.”

“Because you asked her if she was?”

“Annie…”

“It’s cool,” I said. It wasn’t cool. It should have been, but it bothered me to look at Blake. After Adeline’s warnings, I felt like the world had conspired behind my back to try to break us up, and Vince was really the only good thing I had going in my life right then. It wasn’t fair. “If it’ll help you with everything, then it’s cool.”