Chapter 42 #2
He grabbed my hand, and I twitched, startled, but my body was stuck.
I had been staring off into space, my thoughts blending together, rivers afoul with confusion.
My mind was running on fumes, unable to pick the details apart.
The brother I had been convinced was gone had come back from the dead, and the man I was willing to admit I was falling for was a wolf—and my soul mate.
Overwhelmed, I studied the hand that held mine, then looked at him, and tears burned lines into my face.
Andy tugged at my fingers, not letting me waste the seconds of falling down a rabbit hole of minutiae.
“One thing at a time.” His voice was hard, militant, the urgency in it leading me out of the quicksand to walk.
“Konstantine,” I said, breathing heavily through the pain in my leg. “We have to find him.”
My brother whipped his head toward me sharply. “The alpha?”
So he knew.
At my questioning glance, he looked away.
Drawing out a knife and a Glock, Andy took a policeman’s stance, and we inched toward the foyer. I cringed at the creaks our feet made on the floor, too afraid they’d give up our position. I tried to focus on quieting my exhales. Trailing him with my palm on his back, I felt Andy stop.
The sounds of light steps had filled the first floor, approaching steadily, and my chest pinched in terror. I clutched my brother’s shoulder, using him for balance.
“Stairs. Now,” he whispered, turning us both around.
The pain in my ankle had graduated to numbness. I staggered, and my vision became blurry.
“Andy, I can’t,” I whimpered. “It hurts too much.”
My injury had gotten the best of me, and the footsteps were getting louder. My brother holstered the gun, and knife in hand, he picked me up around the thighs and broke into a run.
I held on tightly, thinking of a way to be useful. I didn’t have my phone, though even if I did, there was no one to call.
“The garage.” I suddenly remembered my night out with the girls. “They keep the keys down there with the cars.”
“What’s the quickest way to it?”
“Elevator,” I replied.
“Not good, it leaves us blind. Any other way?”
I shook my head, hating myself for never exploring the castle.
We had turned the corner on the landing, and through the banister, I saw a group of men pass by. I crouched low against my brother, watching them bypass the stairs and spread out across the first floor. Their voices became a low buzz as they discovered each of the bodies.
“Andy, are these people Konstantine’s enemies?
” I asked quietly. Cyrus had the assumption that they were.
Powerful men like Konstantine, with long family legacies to uphold, did not rise to the top without ruffling a few feathers in the process.
I’d seen enough mob movies to know. Not that that was what I believed Konstantine to be, but alpha or king or don, I imagined the narrative was the same.
My brother nodded against my arms. “Ancient enemies.”
Ancient. How ancient? I pondered, bitterly noting the convergence of the real world with the fantastical. Konstantine’s statement about simplicity smacked me in the face yet again. It mocked me and my problems, linear and straightforward in comparison.
Andy pressed the button on the elevator and set me next to him, resting one hand on the Glock.
I presumed in the years away, he’d added marksman to his long list of talents.
I gazed up at his profile, fighting with myself not to blurt out and ask why he’d left and why he was here, on this day of all days.
The question nagged me. If he was part of this coalition of ancient enemies, had his plans changed when he saw it was his sister who had been caught in the crossfire?
I didn’t get the opportunity to ask.
The elevator doors opened to three men inside. Andy grabbed my elbow and shoved me roughly behind him.
The man in front tilted his head and half stepped forward, confident and in charge.
“Andranik.” He nodded, his voice, though muffled in his mask, carried a taunt. “Reunited, I see.”
With each step the three took toward us, Andy made us take one back, not letting the distance change.
“Andranik,” the man said again but with a condescending laugh. “You’re being given a chance to right your wrongs, to fix your failu—”
Andy didn’t let him finish. The knife shot out from his hand but was deftly knocked away by an easy swing of the man’s forearm.
The quickness of his reflexes and his size, bigger than the two next to him, led me to think that while at least some of soldiers he commanded were human, he himself was not.
“Treason it is,” he sneered.
“Fuck you,” Andy sniped, and taking my waist, he swung us both around.
He took out the Glock and unleashed a barrage of bullets in their direction.
The men scattered, and my brother used their distraction to turn and put three—no, four—bullet holes in the window.
My ears were ringing, but I heard the man shout, and Andy, his body serving as my shield, zig-zagged the last few feet and dove backward through the glass.
In our momentum, we hit the balcony rail and toppled over.
The castle, built out of the uneven levels of the mountain, made the two-story drop frighteningly higher.
My scream was truncated by the impact of my brother breaking my fall.
I curled into a fetal position as a jagged hail of points pierced my skin.
Andy covered me, his protective clothing taking most of the hits, but we were both standing before it was over.
His shoulder jutted out at his side, dislocated, but he pushed me ahead of him.
“I know it hurts, kuyrik, but you have to run!”
A motion from above my head pumped adrenaline through my body, awakening my bones and tamping the pain. The leader swung his form over the railing and dismounted, then stuck the landing easily, and my legs moved.
I heard Andy grunt loudly, and as I looked back, he finished popping his shoulder back in its place. Past him, the leader and his men were in full pursuit, closing in.
We were in the courtyard of the castle, about to reach the main road. Far in the distance, beyond the village and the hills, a storm of sand and fog was approaching, clouding the rich blue sky in a tide of dust. My heart lurched, brimming with new hope.
“Konstantine,” I said to my brother, pointing a shaky finger at the earthy clouds. “That has to be him.”
Andy had caught up to me, and a curious look passed through his expression at the second—or was it third?—mention of Konstantine’s name. It held me, and his gaze flickered to my neck.
I gleaned from it what he was thinking. “We’re not there yet, him and I,” I explained breathlessly, knowing he’d understand.
A shadow darkened his features, and his attention wandered to the swirls of dust and remained with them. We may have been separated for over five long years, but neither the distance nor the time had altered the face my brother made when hatching a plan.
We had made it onto the main road when a stray bullet hit the ground near me, and I yelped, almost tripping on the socks stretched thin on my feet.
“Hold your fire!” a voice shouted angrily.
I didn’t need to look back to know it was the man in command.
He gave out an order in their language, and in front of us, the path disappeared, teeming with soldiers.
They appeared from within the trees—even rising out of the ground it seemed—multiplying faster than I could count.
Armed to the teeth, they circled us with their guns cocked and ready, and a cry left my lips.
The hope that had blossomed in my chest just minutes before was destroyed, and the last of it extinguished when Andy took me in his arms and we faced them. Two against the impossible.
Round and round we went, a moving target—like prey trapped on an ant hill—swarmed by sentries.
The scenery faded into something from my nightmares…
of funeral pyres and burning bodies. Of fires lapping at my feet, surrounded by figures unknown.
The circle of doom that had blighted my sleep came to fruition, one faceless figure at a time.
Was this what was meant when they’d talked of dreams coming true?
“They’ll never stop. They’ll never stop,” Andy muttered to himself in my ear, spinning our bodies together.
The pain in his voice amplified the pain in my heart.
The tears wetting my cheeks weren’t out of fear; I was done being afraid.
They were of grief; of that gutting woe I’d felt the second I realized I might lose my brother once again.
The leader raised an arm in the air. Bent at the elbow, it signaled his soldiers to slow their advance. He slowly encroached on our space and looked over his shoulder, anticipating the approaching hurricane that was Konstantine and his men.
“I’m through with these games, Andranik. It’s time to go.”
His strident tone was meant to be sure and firm, said from a place of knowing they’d won. However, he glanced over his shoulder again at the impending storm, then at his men, and I saw the fissures of doubt testing his resolve.
Andy saw this too and immediately produced another gun from his waistband. “Motherfucker,” he said to the man, his spittle flying into my ear. “You knew.”
The man calmly gave a signal, and his men inched forward, stepping with unity and precision. Andy breathed harsh and low but me? I didn’t care, fighting inevitability had taken its toll. I wanted this to end.
“Mom’s dead,” I stated, resigned to my fate. I needed him to know, if he didn’t already.
His response was gentle. His arm came around my waist squeezed me once.
I looked to the west, at the storm that had reached its apex in the sky. Specks of dust had taken on the likeness of both beast and human, and I sent a silent farewell of my own.
“Andranik, no!”