Chapter Thirty-Eight #2
Oh, I know what he’s doing. He must have seen Henrietta’s body. He must have understood what happened. But he wasn’t sure whether I knew what I’d done, so he took the blame.
Except this is not the time to be a damned knight, riding to my rescue.
I turn to my grandmother. “Ask whoever found her. She was lying on the stairs, on her back, with her head at the bottom. As if she’d been knocked off her feet and sailed down headfirst. If Bishop snapped her neck, she wouldn’t have been positioned like that.”
“Did he seduce you?” she asks. “Is that what this nonsense is about?” She wheels. “ Marjorie. You insisted Cordelia didn’t want to marry him. You told me he hadn’t turned her head.”
“He didn’t turn my head,” I snap, my fear hardening into anger. “If you think I could be seduced by a handsome man, then you know nothing about me. And you know nothing about your daughters, if you thought they’d raise me like that.”
I expect that to work. Oh, she won’t apologize, but she’ll see the fury in my eyes and know I’m telling the truth. Instead, she fixes me with a cold stare.
“I know my daughters,” she says. “I loved my daughters, whatever mistakes they made. Just as I love my granddaughters. All of them. That’s why I’m here.
That’s why the Pack will pay for what it did.
Murdering two of my daughters, murdering one of my granddaughters, kidnapping another and forcing her into marriage. ”
“But that was my father. Not Bishop. Henrietta’s death was an accident, at my hands, and I am deeply— deeply —sorry for it. But Bishop did nothing. While I understand you want revenge, Silas is dead.”
“This is the price,” she says as if I haven’t spoken. “A lesson for anyone who crosses us. I was going to give that lesson to your father. I was going to make him one final offer. Accept death willingly or I kill everyone in this house and burn it to the ground.”
“That—” I begin.
Bishop cuts me off. “Does it still stand? If I accept your lesson, will you let everyone else go? That must include Cordelia. I understand she’s your granddaughter, and you want her back, but that needs to be her choice. Otherwise it’s no different than what her father tried to do to her.”
I should thrill at those words. At the fact that he understands. But all I can hear is the first part. What he’s offering in return. To die. For his Pack. For me.
I leap forward to protest, but Beryl’s already speaking. “You’re comparing me to her father ?”
“No,” Bishop says mildly. “I’m asking you to let her make her own choice. Let my Pack go and let Cordelia go.”
“That’s not—” Julius says.
“—not open for negotiation,” Beryl finishes.
“You seem to think you have some power here, boy. You have nothing. My granddaughter has already proven she’s too young and naive to make her own choices.
She needs her family. What I’m offering her is power beyond her wildest imagining.
Her rightful place at the center of a cabal.
What I’m offering you is the chance to save part of your Pack. ”
Bishop hesitates. “Part?”
“My original lesson wasn’t just killing Silas and letting his entire Pack live.
This was a lesson for more than him. It was a lesson for the Pack.
For all werewolves. For all supernaturals.
You do not double-cross my cabal. You do not murder my children.
If you do, I will rain down hellfire, and if I leave behind anything except scorched earth, that will be my mercy.
” She looks at me. “My choice, as I believe Cordelia would say.”
I open my mouth.
She continues, “My original lesson would have been the death of not only Silas but his inner circle. His advisor. His controller. His enforcer. And you, Bishop. It always included you. I would have crippled the Albion Pack, left them whimpering and licking their wounds in this monstrosity of a house. They would have recovered… in a decade or two. But now, you’ve eliminated three of my targets.
So I need to adjust. I will even—in recognition that the wolf responsible is dead—decrease my demand from five lives to three. ”
She looks from Bishop to Julius and Claude. “ You three. The new Alpha and his new inner circle. If you want to save your Pack, you will kneel and willingly accept—”
“The hell we will,” Julius says.
“Not feeling like a martyr today, Dr. Daniels? How about you, Alpha? Do you accept my offer? Either way, you three will die. The only choice is whether I take the rest of the Pack or not.”
Claude clears his throat. “Is that really to your benefit, ma’am?”
Beryl turns a slow, hard look on him.
He continues, his voice carefully deferential.
“Imagine how useful our debt could be. You run a cabal. You employ other supernaturals. You recognize their unique talents. Our talents might be the most unique of all. You may have werewolves in your cabal, but they aren’t Pack wolves.
I won’t speak for Bishop, but I believe he’d agree that the Pack does owe you a debt.
A blood debt for the death of your children. Tell us how we could repay that.”
“You’re offering to accept a blood debt. For the murder of three members of the Levine family.”
“Yes,” Bishop says, stepping forward. “The Pack acknowledges our debt. Let’s discuss repayment.”
She points to Claude. “I’m talking to him. Your controller. Your financial genius.”
Bishop hesitates, but a look passes between him and Claude, and then the controller steps toward Beryl while Bishop moves back.
“You’re willing to find a way to pay this debt,” she says.
Claude nods. “Yes.”
“You concede that you owe this debt.”
“I concede that Silas owes it, and as the former Alpha of the Pack, his debts, unfortunately, fall to his successor and the Pack as a whole. So yes, I—”
Claude rises onto his toes, his eyes bulging as he gurgles in pain. Bishop and Julius both lunge toward him, only to be hit by knockbacks that send them across the room.
I race toward Claude, still dangling there, as if held up by invisible wires.
“You dare offer to negotiate with me?” Beryl says. “I told you what I want. You think you can trick me because I’m a woman?”
Smoke billows from Claude’s mouth. I grab him, but I can’t pull him down. He’s choking, coughing and sputtering smoke that smells… smells like burning flesh. Bishop and Julius are still trying to get to us, but knockbacks from the other witches send them flying again.
“It’s not a trick!” I shout. “They acknowledged the debt.”
Beryl wheels on me. “So I must negotiate? They disrespect me by thinking they can negotiate? I am a Levine. You are a Levine. We do not negotiate.”
She casts the spell again, and I recognize some of the words. It’s a fireball. But I don’t see any fireball.
Because it’s inside him. A spell even Lenora refused to learn. An internal fireball.
Claude screams in agony as the second spell hits. Whatever’s holding him up snaps and he collapses. I fall beside him, cradling him. His eyes roll in what can only be the most unimaginable pain, but he still meets my eyes, still coughs out “Felix.”
His body convulses, that burned smell seeming to emanate from every pore. He screams and thrashes, and I hold him, clutch him as tight as I can, babbling promises I don’t know if he even hears, promises that we will take care of his son, that the Pack will always look after Felix.
Claude looks up, meeting my eyes, and his lips move. Then he goes still.