Chapter 27
Emery
The west side of town absolutely reeked of wolves.
Picking out a distinct scent was nearly impossible as I whipped around the space at a distance, skirting through an abandoned neighborhood near the coast. Houses had been bulldozed, others’ roofs had caved in, awaiting the day when the town decided to finally flatten the area.
And beyond the overgrown park at the edge of that neighborhood stood a decrepit four-story building I hadn’t gone anywhere near in almost a decade.
Marlowe Sanitarium, the creepiest, most haunted building I’d ever seen.
Malik had said the wolves were gathering there, but I’d assumed they’d be haunting the old grocery store that had closed when I was still a kid, or had found a house that hadn’t completely collapsed yet. I didn’t think they’d actually be inside the building right out of a horror movie.
I sniffed the air again, making sure I was right.
That had to be where they were. I smelled Gage for certain.
I might’ve picked up Malik briefly, and I was damn sure I’d caught Hudson’s scent at one point, only to lose it again almost instantly.
The moment each familiar smell met my nose, it was pulled away, buried beneath the pungent aroma of at least half a dozen forest-dwelling wolves.
How Ty and I were going to take on that many werewolves… I had no idea.
Glancing up at the moon, I pulled out my phone, checking the time. A little over an hour until the eclipse—and something told me that wasn’t a coincidence.
Once I was certain I wasn’t fooling myself and that the sanitarium was our battlefield, I darted away, making my way back to the Garland house as fast as I could. I kept to the shadows as I got into the busier parts of town. The last thing we needed was the attention of humans.
When I finally got back to the house, I jogged up the back steps. Sir Hissalot was wailing again, pacing the parlor as I stepped inside. The moment he saw me, the cat came running, rubbing up against my leg and trilling.
“Ty?” I called out, lifting the cat in my arms as I paced toward the kitchen. “I know, Hissy. I know. We’re gonna fix it.”
My heart shot into my throat as I turned the corner to the altar room, finding the far shelf overturned and a gaping hole in the wall. “TY!”
“Ow—FUCK!” Tyler roared from below.
Hissy leapt from my arms at the sound, scurrying away. I bolted down the narrow steps, barely registering the cryptic space as I grabbed Tyler around the middle, hauling him back from a horrific statue with a growl in my chest. “What happened?! What the fuck is this place?!”
“It bit me!” he snarled, shaking out his hand and fuming at the stone beast.
My eyes raked over the monstrous figure, instantly recognizing it for the creature that appeared in the vision of Hudson’s ancestors—the Habet Maledictuus. “It’s—It’s a statue, Tyler.”
“Yeah! A statue with razor-sharp teeth that magically hypnotizes its victims into letting it bite them!” He held up his hand, popping his eyes at me before glancing back at his fingers. “Wait… what the hell?” He brought his hand closer to his face, examining his fingertips. “It… I swear it cut me.”
I took his hand in mine, pulling it to my lips to kiss his finger—and immediately regretted it. “Oh, what the fuck?” Something hideously saccharine, like charred sugar, hit my nose. “Were you groping that thing? Your hand stinks, Ty.”
“I was examining it, trying to figure out what the magic hole-in-the-wall was showing me.” He waved a hand around the space.
“It opened while I was holding this thing.” With a defeated look, he pulled Hudson’s pendant out of his shirt collar.
“I was hoping something in here would help us get Hudson back, but…”
Heaving a sigh, I paced around the room.
I lifted the cover of a musty tome on the desk, finding faded and worn writing, dated nearly a hundred and fifty years ago.
“This looks like… a diary.” I snapped the book shut, shaking my head.
“Even if there were spells in here, I think this is Lenore’s or Theodore’s.
Only Hudson could use them.” I ran a hand down my face with a shaky exhale.
“They’re keeping him in the old sanitarium across town. ”
“Seriously?” Tyler took a step toward me with wide eyes. “Wh-Why? Why would anyone hang out in that place?”
“I don’t know, maybe to ensure no one else will show up?” I gave a hopeless shrug. “There’s at least an entire pack of wolves there, Ty. And we’ve got—” I whipped out my phone. “Less than an hour until the eclipse starts.”
“The eclipse?” Tyler stared at me with parted lips. His brow furrowed as his eyes dropped, searching the floor. “You think this has something to do with the blood moon?”
“It has to.” I moved past him, trudging up the stone stairs to the altar room. “I thought it was strange no one else had made a move on Hudson this whole time. Vera was just bent on getting back at me, and Harrison got pulled into her scheme, but this…”
Tyler clambered up the steps behind me, then snagged a leather bag off the altar, rifling through its contents. “What can they do with a blood moon? What would they need Hudson for?”
“Hudson’s ancestors wanted him to use it for his ascension, but it can also be used to relinquish his magic, like he planned,” I muttered, thinking out loud as Tyler withdrew potion after potion, showing me what he had found.
“But that magic doesn’t have to dissipate when it's released. It could be used to fuel any number of nasty spells, and…” Screwing my eyes shut, I shook my head. “None of them end well for Hudson, Ty.”
“So he’s a fucking sacrifice,” Tyler spat, clutching the bottle in his hand so tightly I worried he might break it. He shoved the potion back in the satchel, turning away and leaving the room. “Let’s go get him, then.”
“Ty, we need a plan!” I shouted, racing after him to block his path. “You and me against a whole pack of wolves? We’re dead.”
“So, what you’re saying is that we have the element of surprise on our side,” he droned, pushing past me into the kitchen.
“For like five seconds, Tyler!” I snatched his wrist, spinning him back to me. “Then they’ll rip us apart!”
“I don’t care, Emery!” His eyes narrowed, tears swimming over them as he bellowed at me. I thought he meant to pull away, but his hand curled around my wrist. “It’s Hudson. The boy you’ve been in love with since high school. Our Hudson.”
“I know, Ty, but…” My breath came out shaky and broken, and I squeezed his arm tighter, pulling him in. “We don’t stand a chance like this.”
Tyler swallowed hard, shaking his head. “Hudson has his blood magic, right?”
“Y-Yeah, but they’re probably keeping him sedated, possibly using iron to suppress his power. They know he can use magic, even if they don’t know what sort.”
“Then we get to him.” Ty reached into the bag around his shoulder, pulling out a focus draught. “We slip him one of these, and let him go nuclear.”
I set my jaw, heaving shallow breaths as I glanced between the bottle and the resolve on Tyler’s face. “If you get killed, I’m finding a necromancer to bring you back just so I can kick your ass.”
“Deal,” Ty said, pulling me closer and looking me right in the eye.
“Hudson leaving… taking off to live his life, having some shot at happiness even if it wasn’t with us…
I could’ve found a way to be okay with that.
But this?” He swallowed hard, then blew out a sharp breath.
“No, Em. He’s ours, and if he goes—it’ll be over our dead bodies. ”
I gave him a single nod, a grin taking shape on my lips. “A suicide mission, then.”
Ty tucked the bottle back in the bag, then grabbed my keys, heading for the front door. “Damn straight.”
“Not if I can help it.”
Something in Tyler had changed between leaving to scout and coming back to find him in that hidden room.
I hadn’t smelled blood on him when I’d sniffed his hand.
The mention of hypnosis frightened me a little, and with the way he was driving my car like a bat out of hell through downtown Felcove, I wasn’t ruling out mind control.
“Jesus, Ty, slow down!” I roared, grabbing the oh shit handle above the passenger seat.
“Fuck, no.” He floored the gas, racing through a red light and making a beeline straight for the sanitarium. “I’m not giving them a chance to—”
“To hurt Hudson, I know, but if we get Sheriff Dammond on our ass, we’ll have a whole other problem!”
“Not a bad idea.” He whipped off Main Street to avoid a construction zone, peeled around the hardware store, then barrelled right back on course. “Get a few cops on our ass, and force the wolves to expose themselves if they try anything.”
“You know how wolves like them avoid exposure?” I growled, staring straight ahead as the shadow of the sanitarium came into view. “They kill the witnesses, Ty. They don’t give a fuck about human lives, so we have to.”
He slammed the brakes, then shifted the car into park, gripping the steering wheel and seething as he glared forward. “We’re getting out of this, Em. We’re getting Hudson out of there, and we’re going home, and we’ll live whatever sort of life he wants.”
I glanced up at the moon, the sky already beginning to shift into strange hues. “There’s no point in stealth. They’ll smell us. Probably already heard the car.”
A faint grin curled the side of his lips as he squeezed the steering wheel with a rev of the engine. “Permission to run over more werewolves?”
Peering ahead, I scanned what I could of the enclosed parking lot, sealed off from the public with yellow warning tape around the steel gates.
I could make out several figures guarding the front doors, standing there like some wannabe militia men with more guns than common sense.
Wherever they were keeping Hudson, he wasn’t going to be out in the open.
They’d have him locked up inside somewhere.
All we had to do was get through those doors.
“Granted.”