Chapter 28
MIND GAMES
The ominous clouds I spotted hanging low over the mountains roll in as we make our way to the circular wooden stage of the amphitheater. Light drops of rain begin pattering our shoulders by the time we arrive.
We stand on the stage, and I look out at the curving lines of seats where I sat before the Mating Run.
Marcel stood right where I’m standing now, delivering his prayer.
The importance of this moment hits me square in the chest. The danger we’re facing is real, the loss of more lives inevitable. But it’s possible we can stem the tide.
Right here, right now.
In the center of the boards is a firepit, the black remnants of previous years’ bonfires lying dormant. Omar is already at work setting up crystals and bones in a circle around it. Jasper places a cushion at the edge of the pit for me.
“You ready?” he asks, taking my hand and leading me to the middle of the stage.
“Yes,” I say, remembering Marcel and his father, remembering Kairos, remembering how I felt just under a year ago when I didn’t know if Jasper would live. “Let’s do this.”
I sit and Jasper moves so he’s sitting in front of me, he’ll channel as much energy into me as possible to help bolster my blood-wolf powers.
Omar is positioned behind his crescent of bronze bowls, ready to coax me into the Lunar Plane as he’s done before.
“Take a breath,” he says. “Close your eyes.”
I sniff back any last breath of apprehension, shake my head a little to fling off the lingering nerves, and shut my eyes.
The hum of Omar’s singing-bowl vibrates through me.
Easily, I let my consciousness expand and find myself floating in a familiar black void. The Lunar Plane.
The electric-red veins of other werewolves appear, blinking to life all around me. And I begin my search.
Like a fighter jet I fly through the void, honing my focus, looking for the thread belonging to Walter.
Finally, I spot something up ahead, a jagged vertical vein rising like a crooked tree or a zigzagging lightning bolt.
I let the aura of it wash over me, feeling a distinctly slimy and discomforting sensation. Walter.
As I move closer the vein grows larger, until I can see it in intense detail.
What the actual . . . ?
His vein isn’t pure, vibrating red like the others, this one is twisted like a candy cane with threads of glinting black, seeping white puss. It appears corroded, infected, rotten.
Yep, that’s Walter.
I reach out with my consciousness, crackling red lines emerging from my fingertips, my eyes, and my heart, and connect with Walter’s soul.
The instant my consciousness connects with his, my body tenses, my mouth flies open in a pained howl.
I feel like the corruption decaying his soul is infecting me, swimming in my blood, compressing my brain like a steel claw.
But I can’t stop. I have to keep strong, power on. I can’t let him resist.
With a grunt and a cry, I push harder, sending more threads of myself into the ether, connecting in more places, letting the acid-pain burn every inch of my skin.
All I see is blinding white-hot agony, and I scream and scream and push harder and strain until .
. . something pops, and relief washes over me like a cooling ocean wave.
I open my eyes, not in the real world, but inside Walter’s mind and find myself in a grand and old-looking library.
It’s classic old-world New York, with dark wood stacks filled with leather-bound books, one of those awesome ladders with wheels that allow it to slide along a rail running the length of the wall.
Wingback armchairs sit facing a roaring fire in a large ornate stone fireplace.
A balcony, with well-trimmed hedges and demonic gargoyles, sits beyond three sets of double doors, and beyond that stretches the Manhattan skyline at night.
Walter can’t be in New York, but maybe this library isn’t a literal place, maybe it’s a memory.
A mental recreation of his idea of sanctuary.
I’ve never seen the Bridgerses’ penthouse in New York, but I imagine it has a stately library like this.
It stinks of old money and old-world taste.
A haunting tribal mask sits on a shelf staring at me, I turn from it and find myself facing a floor-length gilded-framed mirror.
I gasp and reel back in horror, because instead of my own reflection I see Walter.
The graying hair rising like devil horns on either side of his head.
The smug entitled grin he passed on to his maniacal son.
His narrow form and curled shoulders that make him resemble Mr. Burns from The Simpsons.
A proper cartoon villain, wrought in wolfy flesh.
Having recovered from my initial shock, I take a cautious step toward the mirror, lifting a hand to my face. Only, my reflection doesn’t match my movement, it stares blankly at itself.
A door opens behind the reflection of Walter, with a crack and a squeak. I turn in panic only to find the same door on my side still shut.
Back in the mirror, reflection-Walter turns to speak with the person who has entered.
“Carmine?” I say out loud, shocked to spot the alpha who I met just a few weeks ago at the packhouse.
To my surprise, Walter in the mirror says Carmine’s name at the same time as me, only while my tone was surprised, Walter’s is casual, expectant.
I keep quiet and listen as their conversation continues.
“I trust you weren’t followed,” Walter says, slimeballing to the max.
“Please,” Carmine says, his cool demeanor disconcerting. “You know me better than that.”
Walter turns impossibly in the mirror, while I remain staring through the glass.
“I do,” he says. “And I know you’ll come through for me when I need it.”
Carmine steps forward. “You can always rely on me and my pack.”
“Good, because I’m afraid the time has come for me to leave New York.”
“Things are finally in motion then?” Carmine asks, confirming that this isn’t something happening right now, but is a recollection of the past.
Walter picks up a crystal-looking chalice with a deep maroon liquid swishing in it and lifts it toward Carmine as if toasting to something. “Indeed. The situation with my son has accelerated our plans. The time has come to take out the alpha. But first I’ve planned a surprise for Jericho Junior.”
“The alpha’s son?” Carmine asks.
“Yes,” Walter responds, then sips his drink before continuing. “Jasper won’t be long for this world, which means I’ll need somewhere to make my base while I complete the formation of my Axis Pack.”
This must be a memory from right before Jasper was shot, while Walter was still situated within the Elite Pack, before we knew of his betrayal.
“My home is your home,” Carmine says.
“Good, because I may need to ask another favor of you.”
“Anything,” Carmine says, lowering his head.
“At the start of next summer, before the next blue moon, there will be a party. I need you to help my wolves gain access.”
“Easy.” Carmine’s grin makes my stomach churn. “I have Jasper and Jericho eating out of my palm. But why wait?”
“The lunar energy from the next blue moon will bolster the strength of my allied wolves. With the power of the moon behind us the Elite Pack will be no match.”
Carmine tilts his head in respect. “You’ve thought of everything.”
“That’s my job,” Walter says, turning back to the mirror, and for a second, I could swear he looks at me, not just at his own reflection but at me me, like somehow he knows I’m here listening in. “There isn’t one part of this plan I’ve not thought through.”
Before I know what’s happening, he’s pulled a knife from some unseen place—was it sheathed in his belt this whole time?—and stabbed the glass.
The mirror shatters, shards flying at me.
I’m flung back, arms and legs flailing wildly.
Does Walter know I’m here in his mind? Does he want me to know? And if so, Is he showing me things on purpose? But why, why that memory?
I need to get my shit together, I can’t be led through anymore of Walter’s memories, I need to do what I came here for.
“Max?” Jasper’s voice reverberates around me. “Max, is everything all right?”
He must be mind-linking.
“Jasp, is that really you?”
I float through blackness, shards of shattered mirror drifting like stars all around me.
“Something happened to you here, you went all tense. It looked like you were in pain. Are you okay?”
“Yeah,” I say. “But I think Walter knows I’m here. He showed me a memory . . . Carmine, he’s been working with Walter since the start.”
“Must be why he betrayed us. Should we pull you out?” he asks, sounding worried.
“No, I can’t leave yet. Just . . . if you can boost my power a little more.”
“I’m on it,” Jasper says. “Omar too.”
“Okay.”
“Be careful, Max.”
His voice ripples and fades and I gather myself, tensing my limbs.
I spot a shard of mirror floating by with an image shining in it, but this image isn’t a reflection, it’s someplace new, a dark place.
It looks like a basement, or some dusty office in a rundown building.
There’s a desk and exposed cinder-block walls, power cables run to caged lights that hang from the ceiling.
Curious, I move myself toward the image.
I pluck the shard from where it’s suspended in space and hold it closer to my face.
Walter is sitting on the other side of what I assume is a mirror, the remnants of what looks like makeup cases in piles around him, balled-up dirty towels and used tissues cover the surface of the table. Dead flowers lie still wrapped in their paper in front of him.
Is he in some kind of dressing room? What is this place?
I let myself move closer, let the shard expand until I feel as if I’m on the other side of a rectangular mirror about the size of a farmhouse window.
I notice a tingle starting at the tips of my fingers and feel the familiar presence of Jasper’s and Omar’s energies flowing through me, just as it did when we combined strength in the elevator while breaking Omar out of the pack prison.
They must be sending it to me. The energy fizzes up my arms and through my chest. I feel bigger, stronger, more alive, and in this state, I find myself able to expand the mirror further, until the boundary between me and the room Walter sits in is gone.
The void transforms seamlessly into Walter’s location.
Dusty racks of old clothes hang along one wall, there’s a water-stained sink in a corner. This does look like a dressing room. Like the kind we had at our school’s theater, or the ones I’ve sat in with Aisha as she did her makeup before a performance.
Walter sits before me at what would be a mirror, his head bowed, his hands clasped under his chin. He looks like he’s concentrating, waiting.
I’m close enough to touch him. Close enough that I can hear his breathing. Smell the stale musk of the room, and the pheromones oozing out of him.
Then, like a scary clown, he lifts his head and our eyes meet.
Before he can make any more sudden moves, I bring to mind the memories of Alpha Jericho being transferred from his sickbed to the gurney, picture him being wheeled into the back of his transport, his feet and the healers moving around his room at the pack retreat.
I show Walter images of the empty summer camp, the abandoned cabins, the unused canoes.
I feed him all this along with whispers of our fake plan, our troops stationed across Manhattan and the surrounding boroughs.
I let him read me like a book of lies. Hoping he buys what I’m selling.
When I’m done, I release the connection between us with a gasp, drifting back slightly, but not leaving this vision.
Walter is still staring straight at me, and slowly, painfully, his lips stretch into a sickening grin.
“Thank you, Max,” he says, like he’s right here with me, as if he somehow, impossibly is talking from the real world and into the Lunar Plane. “Stay for the show, won’t you?”
Walter presses into the dusty counter and stands, moving to the door. Like a ghost I drift behind him, terrified but curious. He can’t hurt me here, a mantra I repeat to myself.
I follow Walter as he passes into the dark backstage area of a dilapidated theater. Sandbags hang from strained ropes, electric wires are exposed, a rat scurries along the edge of the wall. We move between two threadbare curtains and suddenly I’m blinded by a bright light.
Blinking as my eyes adjust, I realize I’m standing on a stage, a hot spotlight right in my face.
Above me sits a crumbling proscenium, red velvet curtains hanging in tattered strips on either side.
Walter is to my right, bathing in the spotlight with both arms held out wide, and in the auditorium in front of us, though it’s hard to see through the intense light, are hundreds of wolves, their eyes yellow pinpricks in the dark.
“Axis Pack!” Walter cries. “Our time has come!”
An enormous cheer rises from the audience.
I do a quick scan, trying to scent out who these wolves are, and I’m overwhelmed by an intense and powerful stench.
These wolves are alphas, betas, powerful warriors, and rogues.
A whole mismatched crowd of scents and vibes. But with a few things in common.
These wolves are strong, powerful, and angry.
Thirsty for blood.
“Just as I predicted, our enemy has given themselves away.” Walter glances in my direction, and even though I know the other wolves can’t see me, I swear he can, because he smirks and winks.
I feel like throwing up. “I know where their alpha is stationed, and I know where we will stage our attack. Wolves of the Axis Pack, you have placed your trust in me, and soon you will be rewarded tenfold. This is a dawning. And you are the wolves who will forge this new world from the blood of our enemies. The blue moon is upon us. Tomorrow, we move out, and when the war is done, we will build a new world in our image, a world where the righteous are given their due. Axis Pack, are you with me?!”
Like thunder the crowd erupts, sending me back a step or two.
“ARE YOU WITH ME?!” Walter bellows once more.
And as the cheers and bellows of his followers rise to the rafters, filling the space, so loud I worry the roof of this derelict theater might cave in, Walter turns to me and says, quietly enough that no one except me can hear,
“See you soon, Blood Wolf.”