Chapter 35
BLOODBATH
The world shines crimson as my howl rips across the land. The once-black cosmos is now as red as a blood moon. A surge of power rises in me. The power of the blood wolf. My true power. And it’s immense. My body vibrates with the intensity of it.
Anger and pain roil in my soul, fueling it. The surge of energy builds in the pit of my gut, growing until I can’t contain it any longer, and with one great exhale I release it.
A great blast of energy explodes in all directions.
How could they take him from me?
How can they justify the hurt they’ve caused?
How can they go on living, knowing what they’ve done?
The threads of every wolf on the battlefield flicker like frozen lightning bolts, trapped in a vortex and unable to expend their electricity. As my power explodes like a giant ripple, a circular tidal wave, I latch on to the soul of every Axis Pack wolf.
I take control of them all.
First, I seize their bodies, so they can no longer fight. I imagine what this must look like to the wolves fighting on the battlefield. Their opponents suddenly motionless, muscles taught. The panicked grimaces on their faces when they realize they can no longer move.
Then I take all the pain I’m feeling, the agonizing grief, the complete and utter devastation, and I send it out.
I flood their bodies with my own anguish.
A scream builds in my throat, escaping through clenched teeth, as I show them just what they’ve done.
I want them to hurt like I do.
I want them to suffer.
I want to show them what it feels like to have everything ripped away.
From some distant place their screams reach me, the pained howls of an entire army brought to their knees.
They’re hurting. And I’m glad.
I want them to hurt more.
So I send out another burst.
Take this, you fuckers!
I keep going. Keep pushing. Wanting to tear them apart.
Wanting to show them the true power of the blood wolf.
Gradually, each of their lightning bolts turns red, the deep rusty shade starting at both ends, trickling down and up until it meets in the middle.
Their screams grow louder. And I know they’re suffering. I can feel their pain coming back to me. Feel the terror in their minds. And I revel in it.
I can feel their bodies beginning to tear in half.
Because that’s what I feel like having lost Jasper. Like I’m torn in two.
I want to show them how that feels. I want to split them down the middle, so their insides tumble out in messy, red clumps.
I want to destroy them.
To show them the damage they’ve done.
I want to kill them all . . .
And I’m about to when, from somewhere in the back of my mind, I hear his voice.
“Max.”
I look down to find I’ve shifted back to my human form. I’m fully dressed, in a hoodie, jeans, and sneakers. My feet are standing on dusty, rocky red ground. In my right hand, I can feel his, holding on to me.
Is he . . . Is Jasper alive?
Somehow, back in the physical world, is Jasper awake and trying to reach me?
“Max,” he says, sounding weak. “Don’t.”
“Jasp?” I say his name, calling out to him, spinning around. But I can’t see him. All I can see is a desolate desert landscape, the sky full of crimson clouds, the lightning bolts of Axis wolves striking the ground and throwing up sand. A blood-red moon shines on the horizon.
I blink my eyes, trying to wake up, trying to leave the Lunar Plane, but for some reason I can’t.
“What is this place?” I ask.
“This is your last step, Blood Wolf,” a calm, almost friendly-sounding voice says from behind me. I turn and stumble backward.
In front of me stands an older man with long gray hair, in a brown suede jacket with shoulder pads, and tight blue jeans. He looks ridiculously normal, considering where we are, only his fashion sense is a little dated. This guy looks like he stepped right out of the eighties.
“Who are you?”
“My name is Elias,” he says. “I am like you.”
“Like me how?”
Just as I ask for clarification, I notice a line of shadows moving through the red dust cloud in front of me.
“I am your predecessor,” Elias repeats. “We all are.”
The shadows emerge from the dust. A line of werewolves as long as the horizon.
Each wearing clothes from a different era, like I’m riding Spaceship Earth at EPCOT, or seeing every exhibit at the Natural History Museum all at once.
There’s a woman in full hippie regalia, bell-bottoms and a frayed leather vest. A guy in a letterman jacket with greasy hair.
A woman with a bustle the size of a house protruding from the back of her dress, which is buttoned up to her throat.
Further down the line are people in traditional Native headdresses, or the furry skins of the Inuit people.
There are tunics and regency dresses. Outfits I can’t even describe except to say they look like they’ve stepped out of some fantasy novel.
The line of historical figures approaches until they’re standing right behind Elias.
“Who are you all?” I ask. “What is this place?”
“These are our soul lands,” he says. “A part of the Lunar Plane that’s just for us and our kin.”
“And I’m your kin?”
Maybe this guy is an uncle I’ve never met.
“Yes,” he says. “Because you bear the mark of the blood moon.”
I stare down the line of wolves, noticing a crimson glint in each of their eyes.
“Blood wolves,” I say, a sense of recognition, familiarity, blooming in my chest. “You were all blood wolves.”
A woman steps forward. She wears a floral dress with a leather jacket over the top and combat boots, her hair is frizzy and reminds me of someone.
“We are,” she says. “We are the blood wolves of the past and present.”
She sounds just like her too . . . Agatha. Didn’t she say her sister was a blood wolf?
“Are you . . . Jenny?” I ask.
She nods.
“And are you all”—I look down the line—“dead?”
Jenny smiles. “No. While the majority of us have passed to the eternal Lunar Plane, some of us are still alive. Elias here is sitting on his porch somewhere near Wyoming right now.”
“How are you all here? How am I?”
“Max,” Elias says. “We’re here because you’ve tapped into the true power of the blood moon. You’ve seen the destruction the power of the blood wolf can bring.”
My gaze darts to my feet as shame brings tears to the corners of my eyes.
“I wanted to kill them all,” I say. “I wanted to destroy them.”
“Our powers have the potential to cause great harm,” Jenny says. “And learning that is an important step on the journey of a young wolf, like yourself. But we, more than any other wolves, have the capacity for great empathy. Harnessing that is the true path of a blood wolf.”
“And we’re here now because it’s important that you know you don’t need to walk that path alone.” Elias gestures down the line of blood wolves, all looking on, all watching me. “You are just one in a long line of blood wolves. You carry our history in your soul. And so you carry us with you.”
“You also bear a great responsibility,” Jenny says, jumping in.
“Anger may help you access your powers, but it is not the path you were meant for.” My fists clench involuntarily.
Is she suggesting my anger was unwarranted?
That I should have empathized with my enemy, the one who may have still taken Jasper from me?
“Anger took me from my family,” she continues.
“From my life, and I do not wish that for you.”
I relax my hands and remember what Agatha said, that Jenny was put into a hospital, that it was like the life had left her. Is this where she ended up? Am I going to be trapped here if I can’t find empathy for the wolves who want to see me hurt?
“But how am I supposed to empathize when there are wolves who want to burn everything I care about to the ground?”
They look at me with this cloying sort of pity. It’s patronizing and suddenly I want out of this vision.
“You already know the truth, Max,” Elias says. “You have the power to stop the war that’s sprung up in your backyard. But violence will only beget more violence. You have to find another way.”
Jenny steps forward and places a hand on my shoulder. I want to shirk her off. I want to retreat or back away. But I don’t.
“Just like you, I was lost,” she says. “This place became my sanctuary. But it is not meant for us to stay. You need to find the way home, the way back.”
“How?”
“Remember who you are and what you know to be true.”
“I don’t know anything,” I say, hating the tears trickling down my face. “Without him, I don’t—”
Elias takes a step forward as well. “The truth you need is as obvious as the moon,” he says, looking over to where she sits, hovering between the horizon and the clouds. “We’re always with you, Max. Remember that as you make this next choice.”
“Wait,” I say. “You’re leaving already? I . . . I don’t know what to do.”
“I believe in you, Max,” Jenny says, stepping back. “We all do and we’re all here for you.”
“Then tell me what to do!”
Elias steps back as well, the two of them joining the line of blood wolves that seems to reach from one horizon to the other. “You are the next in our line, Max. You’ll do the right thing.”
The eyes of the blood wolves glow a brilliant shade of red, so bright I have to turn away.
With my eyes scrunched I hear another voice, only it isn’t one voice, it’s the voice of every blood wolf from the beginning of time, speaking as one, right into my mind.
“We’re always with you, Max.”
When I open my eyes and look back, they’re gone. All of them vanished.
“Wait!” I cry out, turning in circles. “What am I supposed to do?”
Was there some hidden meaning to what they said? They showed up out of the blue just to tell me I belong to this long line of blood wolves then bolted. How is that helpful?
“What do you want me to do?!”
My voice echoes across the vast landscape.
I collapse to my knees in the dust, facing the moon, which seems to have grown to twice its size.
Loneliness compresses my ribcage. I wish Jasper was here, or Katie, or Aisha, or Mason, or Omar, my parents, I wish anyone was here, I wish . . .
The moon stares back at me silently. But I don’t need it to talk, I can feel the energy coming off it. The lunar energy that gives us our wolf selves, that matches us with our mates, the thing that links every werewolf on the planet. Every lonely soul.
“One pack under the moon.”
Light begins to glow at my chest, a brilliant white orb.
Because maybe sometimes every wolf feels as alone as I feel right now and maybe that’s just one thing that unites us. Because we’re never actually alone, we’re all linked by the moon. Just as I’m linked to every blood wolf that came before me. We’re a pack. We’re all one pack.
The light at my chest grows and expands, until it surrounds me like a massive bubble.
I lift from the ground, my feet hanging beneath me as I rise.
My body is weightless. My mind is clear.
Above the landscape I hover, me and my light, like a mini-moon.
Stretching my arms out on either side and finally, closing my eyes, I whisper, “One pack under the moon.”
I repeat it like a mantra.
“One pack under the moon. One pack under the moon. One pack under the moon.”
I let the light surrounding me expand and expand and expand until I can’t hold it back any longer.
Energy and light erupt from the core of my being. So bright and so brilliant.
My soul begins to lose its form, dispersing particles that float away and vanish into the expanding light.
It absorbs me until my body no longer exists, until all I am is light.
Light that stretches on for eternity.
Light that encompasses everything.
Light that connects us all.