Chapter Twenty-five – Jack
Chapter Twenty-five
Jack
I should’ve—I thought, hauling the junky truck around corners like it could bend. I should’ve kept him safer, somehow. I should’ve never been with him. I should’ve never fallen for him.
And I should’ve grabbed that girl and dragged her with me to interrogate along the way. She’d fallen back, and I’d ran past her out the door without thinking. But she’d been mortal, clearly—there’d been panic in her eyes when she’d backed up.
Goddammit all to hell—I dragged the wolves’ unfamiliar truck over curbs and ran reds, until I threw it into park and heard the transmission crunch in Vermillion’s parking lot. I ran inside without thinking and found a full house.
“Anyone who doesn’t want to die tonight LEAVE NOW!
” I bellowed over the music. Everyone inside paused—and then people started rushing out in a panicked wave, men, women, dancers.
The hostess left her station, the bartender jumped over the bar, men raced past with their flys down and their dicks still out, girls tottering out topless into the night—until I was looking at a much smaller number of people.
It was a strip club on a weekday. Of course some of the people in here wanted to die.
“Everyone who’s human—OUT!”
That rattled the rest of them free as I stalked toward the back. I knew where I would find her—and him.
“Jack. Finally!” Rosalie announced. Paco was tied to a chair and the chair to the pole on center stage—the same place I’d found Thea dancing, all those years ago.
“Let him go,” I growled.
She ignored me. “Do you think I don’t know what you did?” Paco was bruised, he’d been beaten—but at seeing me, he started shaking his head, warning me to stay away.
If he thought I could, he was a fool.
“I didn’t do anything, Mistress. Your man broke your deal and sold my charge out to werewolves.
All I did was fight back. Some helpful human had gone and left bombs.
” I made my voice calm and walked up to the podium, trying to hide my shaking.
“The place exploded—but the boy survived. Your deal is intact.”
“My deal,” she snarled, derisively.
“Isn’t that all there is in life? Survival? Money?”
“You and I both know that that is not the case.” She traced a hand down Paco’s face, as if testing the quality of his shave. “Don’t make me make you tell me.”
If I told her I’d killed Tamo, there was nothing to stop her from taking Paco’s life. I steeled myself to not give anything away.
“I keep telling you what I’m afraid of, Jack,” she went on.
“Cameras. Technology. That doesn’t mean that I can’t use them, though.
I saw you. I watched you plunge a finger into his eye and stir his brains.
” One of her hands crept, so that she could tap a fingertip on Paco’s eye that was swollen shut. Her finger pressed in and he winced.
“You’re right—I killed Tamo!” I shouted, and ran three steps closer. “So kill me! Not him!”
“Silly man. Why wouldn’t I just kill the both of you?
” Rosalie laughed. “The only decision I have to make now is how will it hurt you more? To watch him die, knowing you couldn’t save him—or for you to die, knowing that your lover’s doomed?
” She lounged over Paco. “If I could get you both to die at the exact same time, I would. Maya!” She shouted Maya’s name, and Maya emerged from the back.
She was wearing her dancing clothes and heels, and looked as unprepared as I was.
“Maya, kill your brother here, would you?” Rosalie said, tilting her head in my direction.
“But….” she began.
“Kill Jack,” Rosalie growled, and Maya propelled herself forward. Her body and her expression were at odds—she knew how to kill, she’d clearly done it before—but her face said she didn’t want too.
“What’s happening?” she asked, of Rosalie, and of herself, as Rosalie’s command overwhelmed her.
“Don’t listen to her, Maya,” I said, falling into a crouch. “I don’t want to hurt you.”
“Too bad,” Rosalie tsked. “Because I’m going to start strangling your man now. And you’ve got to get through Maya, to get to me.” Rosalie wrapping a hand around Paco’s throat.
“NO!” I screamed and bolted for the stage—and Maya caught me, with an arm across my gut, sending me swinging to the side and down.
“Aww, fuck, Jack!” Maya yelled, as if it were my fault she was about to stomp on my face with her heels.
“I don’t want to hurt you, Maya!” I shouted, grabbing her leg and twisting her down. She fell on to her hands, and I still had her by the ankle.
“Then don’t!” she shouted back at me.
I kicked her in her stomach, sending her skidding across the floor, knocking down chairs like bowling pins.
I could’ve broken her leg, or ripped it off of her—but actually killing her would’ve taken time and I didn’t want to—I just needed to get to Paco’s side.
I could see him going limp, and watch his blood start to stutter as lack of oxygen panicked his heart.
I raced for the stage and stepped onto it.
“Not one step further,” Rosalie said—and my body obeyed. “How’s it feel, Jack?” I could hear Maya behind me, standing back up, running toward me in heels. “To know that I’ve taken everything you ever loved in this world from you?”
Before I could respond, Maya’s arm looped around my neck and dragged me back. I went with her and we fell in a wrestling tumble.
“I hate her,” Maya whispered in my ear.
“Then fucking fight,” I whispered as she choked me. Paco was dying and there was nothing I could do.
“I am! That’s why you’re still alive!” she said, through gritted teeth.
“Then fucking fight her,” I growled at Maya.
“Don’t you fucking start with me too!” she shouted back. But her arms loosened, and I slipped through.
“It doesn’t matter,” Rosalie said, as I stood back up. “It’s done.”
I stood there, swaying. She was right. Paco’s heart had stopped. His blood was drifting down through him on its final course, like the last raindrops of a summer storm, evaporating on a hot night before they landed.
The man that’d saved me from myself, who taught me how to make some peace with what I was, who had given me some semblance of hope that I had clung to each morning when I died, was gone.
And that Jack—the one that Paco had loved—died with him.
I felt all my humanity disappear, leaving only a vast darkness behind. “Get away from him!” I snarled at her, expecting to be obeyed.
I didn't recognize my own voice, and it didn't matter. I felt the eternity of all my future days without Paco in them weighing on me now, compressing my hatred for Rosalie like the hammer of a gun.
She was going to die tonight or I was.
“You don't order me!” she snapped.
“GET AWAY FROM HIM!” the dark thing that I'd become roared.
Rosalie staggered back under the weight of my command, as I leaped up to Paco’s side, wracked with grief, things breaking in me that time would never repair. “What’ve you done?” I said, half to her, half to myself. “What have you done?!”
“Nothing that time wasn’t doing already!
” Rosalie shouted back in self-defense. Her eyes were wild and I could taste her fear pricking in the room.
Emotions, foolish human emotions, came rushing back to me, and I sank to my knees, sagging against Paco.
I placed my head in his lap and wrapped my arms around his legs.
He was still warm, for now, warmer than I was.
“I’ll punish you later,” I heard Rosalie tell Maya. “And I’ll punish you, now,” she promised me, coming back. “What did you ever see in him, Jack, that was worth losing your life over?” she asked, stroking Paco’s hair off his face.
I found her answer, and mine, clipped on the inside of Paco’s left boot. I shifted, and quietly pulled out what I knew would be a silver knife as I answered her.
“I loved him because he loved me, even though he knew the score,” I said, lunging up, blade out, plunging it into her side.
The silver ripped through Rosalie’s dress and the skin behind it parted like it’d been sewn on the same seam, her organs spilling out like pinata candy.
Rosalie was aghast for a moment, and then she screamed—a sound not meant to be heard by human ears—and started sifting through the slick wet tubes that’d fallen, trying to shove them all back in.
Maya ran up beside me, one heel in her hand.
“I hate you! I fucking hate you!” she said, stabbing the heel of it into Rosalie’s back.
“I made you, Jack!” Rosalie hissed, her fangs halfway out, unable to comprehend my betrayal.
“I didn’t ask to be made!” I shouted back—as the pieces of her around my ankles started to shift to sandy dust, then all of her collapsed, leaving a torn dress and a foul smell.
“Oh my God. Did we do it?” Maya said, still holding her heel in one hand.
She kicked off her other heel, and then looked at me.
I was still holding silver—were we still fighting?
I didn’t care anymore. I dropped the knife, and turned back toward Paco, unable to come to grips with the enormity of what I’d lost. He’d been the only one who’d always understood me.
My lover, my friend, my mate.
Maya reached out and put a hand on my arm. “If you want him, try.”
It took me a second to realize what she was suggesting. “He’s dead.”
“So are you.”
Would he want to live…like this? Like me? Could I condemn him to that? Could I live my life without him?
Not if there were a way to change that.
I bit my wrist, hard, tearing a chunk out so that it wouldn’t heal right away, and then put it to his lips, opening his jaw.
“Come on. Come on,” I said, kneeling over him, squeezing my forearm to make it bleed faster.
I knew my blood was rolling down his throat into his stomach, but was there any of his life left for it to quench and replace with the un-life that I knew?
I pressed my head to his and whispered in his ear, “Don’t die on me. I can’t make it without you.”
I stayed pressed against him as the room spun, waiting for a sign, as Maya rose up, ripped his shirt open, and touched him.
“You’re not going to feel a heartbeat,” I said like she was stupid.
I didn’t want her touching him—I only wanted people who loved him to touch him from here on out.
I pulled my wrist from his mouth. The wound was healed, but I would never be.
I took his head between my hands, set my forehead to his, and felt sorrow wrack me.
He was gone because of me, just like I’d always feared would happen.
My lighthouse was gone, and I was shattered on the shore.
“Jack,” Maya said, shoving at his chest.
“DON’T TOUCH HIM,” I snarled at her, and she yanked her hand back like it was on fire.
I grabbed the knife and cut through the ties that held him to the chair to pull him toward me, his slack body sagging into my arms, as I helplessly wept.
I moved to pick him up, cradling him to me.
I didn’t know where I would take him, I only knew he deserved better than this.
And he deserved to have been loved by someone better than me.
“Jack,” Maya said, with emphasis but without a whammy, and set her hand against my cheek. It was cold, like it’d just been in a freezer. “Jack, he’s dead—but in a good way.”
I inhaled, finally hearing her, and feeling him. Everywhere we touched I could feel the chill of the grave permeating from his body.
Maya was right—Paco was dead…just like I was.
“You saved him,” Maya said, growing bold, an unfamiliar smile on her face. “Because of my good advice. So—you owe me. The clubs are mine. Both of them.”
“Yeah, sure, whatever.” I dropped the knife and held him closer.
I just wanted to get us home.