Chapter 16
SIXTEEN
Asha
The monster goes limp, its mass deflating like a popped tire. The black ooze thins and runs away from the body it holds, leaking into a sticky puddle that surrounds us. I dig my arms into the substance to fish out the body of my dead brother, my heart aching more than I thought it would. The ooze sleeves my arms in awful slime, but I don’t care. All I want is to hold Simon one last time.
“Simon,” I whimper.
The boy who bought me a stuffed bear when I was five. The boy who used to save his chocolate pudding for me, because it was my favorite. The boy who could grow anything in the garden.
My knuckles brush something solid. I double my efforts, trying to scoop away the putrid muck. Gradually, I manage to surface the limp frame of a body suspended within the carcass of the gelatinous monster.
Simon, my sweet brother .
Only, when his face breaches, I don’t recognize it as my sibling. It’s older, the features lined with wrinkles. His nose is larger, his cheeks wider. “Who the hell are you?” The question escapes my lips, the shock of bewilderment giving rise to aggression.
I go back to shoveling, as if there might be a second body hidden inside. The manic exercise achieves nothing but a greater mess. I’ve spread the guts of the slime beast across the floor and ruined my pretty ballgown. I doubt that washes out . It’s a peculiar thought for such an emotional moment, I know, but Simon’s absence unmoors me. The bittersweet catharsis I expected delays once again and in its place I don’t know what to think. What to feel.
I sense the presence of my mates surrounding me. They read my exasperation. “What’s going on?” asks Braxton.
I look up at them, each bearing a look of sympathy waiting behind confusion. “This isn’t Simon. This isn’t my brother.”
How is this possible? It’s like my brain is working, but it’s coming up empty. This is Simon. I saw him time and time again. It’s who we’ve been chasing. And yet, this isn’t him. It simply doesn’t make sense.
And yet, it does, in the strangest way. My Simon was gentle and kind. He loved me, and his family, more than anything in this world. He was a person who would sacrifice themselves in a heartbeat for the person they loved. It took me so long to accept that Simon had become this monster. Now, I can’t believe I ever thought that was possible.
Simon is good. Simon is good deep in his soul. Of course he could never do this. He couldn’t hurt a fly. This evil being just took the face of someone filled with goodness and beauty. Why? I don’t know.
But this mystery gets put on hold as my freed Blood Packmates crowd around us. “Asha?”
I peer into an older woman’s face, searching memories for a match. In a classroom, I see her, though she looks different from in the past. Straightened shoulders, smooth face, fewer grays. The time between then and what she’s been through has aged her. Nevertheless, I know for certain she was once my teacher. “Victoria!” I cry, rising to throw my arms around her.
Despite the slime dripping off me, she embraces me without a second thought. “I can’t believe you’re still alive.”
I scan their faces, each tickling a memory of a happier time in all our lives. They look worse for wear, but there they are, all standing on their own two feet. Fucking alive . “How are you?” I ask, as if the answer could be anything other than awful.
Yet, with a soft smile, Victoria replies, “We’re okay. The Blood Mages, they…did terrible things to us. You were there for some of it. You understand.” Her gaze is gentle. “But we passed through the darkness and emerged on the other side.”
I see it hanging around them, the dark specter of their suffering. It leers at me, roars in my thoughts, This was all your fault, Asha! Their pain is on your head! I’m overcome with guilt. Its weight settles over me and my legs buckle. I collapse to the floor, gripped by a fit of hysteria. Sobbing convulsions tear through me. Every muscle clenches, my chest tightens, my thoughts spiral into gloom.
“I’m sorry!” I cry, the words torn from my chest. “I sent you all to hell. Your misery is all because of me! I’m so fucking sorry. I can’t ever fix it! I can’t undo your pain!”
As the world slips out of reach, the touch of a dozen hands pulls me back. I feel their connection as they settle over my shoulders. “Asha.”
The soft voice of my former teacher.
I sniffle and turn my head from the floor. Through a veil of tears, I see Victoria’s face.
“Asha, it’s okay.”
How can it possibly be?
She extends her hand.
I don’t deserve this. Every ounce of pain these people have experienced was because of my foolishness. Because of what I did.
“Come, girl. The hard part is already over,” she says.
It’s not. Simon… or this other person might be dead, but the weight of what I’ve done is still here. Every person here is a reminder of that.
Still, I take hold of her hand, and she hoists me out of the goop. “Victoria, I’m so?—”
She shakes her head and says, “Shush now. Nobody blames you, dear. We’re simply glad you’re okay.” There are nods of agreement from the rest of our pack behind her.
“There’s no way–”
“Asha, believe us.”
I draw my shoulders back, wiping tears from my cheeks. They just don’t know all my crimes. “I thought I was applying to a college, but the documents were actually their way of learning where our town was. And then when they attacked, I ran. I left all of you behind.” But I’m not done. “And when I was tortured, any time I was given a chance to make it end and make someone else take my place, I did it. I let all of you get hurt in my place.”
Victoria exchanges a look with the others, then her gaze finds mine once more. “Do you really think none of us ever gave information about where we lived? We were careful, but not perfect. And do you think we were all fighting the day the Blood Mages came? Most of us were running for our lives, because that’s a normal reaction when hell rains down on you. And as for the torture, I’m sure you ended up on that metal bed at times because we ended our own torture by putting you there. It was just another way the Blood Mages fucked with our minds.”
“That still doesn’t mean you should just forgive me,” I say, my thoughts spinning.
“That’s exactly what it means,” she tells me. “No one should be questioned about what they had to do during a war to survive. Do you understand?”
“I don’t.”
She smiles gently. “One day you will. Until then, just trust us and find a way to forgive yourself.”
I accept their unearned grace. “Okay,” I whisper.
If they actually forgive me, I don’t know what I’ll do. I have so much guilt to inspect and unpack that I can’t possibly do it right now. This is something I’ll have to deal with when I can be alone with my thoughts.
My gaze moves to my men. They’re smiling. They’re okay. And they seem to be approving of what’s going on right now. Again, I need to think about that, but not now. Now, I’m just happy that so many of the people I care about are okay.
A young woman comes up and grabs my hand firmly. “Asha, thank you . We’d still be in the dungeon if you hadn’t come to our rescue.”
“Or worse,” pipes up another younger packmate. I recognize him as Triton, a shy kid my brother used to run around with. “They weren’t going to keep us down there forever.”
“What do you mean?” asks Max, sounding every bit the Enforcer.
“The Blood Mages had suggested this party was going to involve us somehow,” Victoria explains. “The insinuation was that we wouldn’t see the next dawn.” When she speaks of her tormentors, a barely contained rage makes itself known. I think she’d tear their bodies to shreds if Simon — or whoever the monster was—didn’t already take care of that. When her eyes survey the gore surrounding us, they light up with a grim satisfaction.
But she’s not lost. I can tell none of them have lost their sanity the way…not-Simon had. “Who is this guy, anyway?” I ask, directing my gaze to the goop-covered carcass at my feet. I don’t understand.
There’s silence, and then, “Holy shit, that’s Greg Riles,” someone says.
The name instantly sends a chill down my spine. Creepy Greg? He was a shifter in his early thirties who had started dating my brother’s eventual girlfriend when she turned seventeen. The whole town had had a problem with it, and my brother had been one of the people who helped her to realize that he’d groomed her. That a relationship with that kind of age gap, between a teenager and an adult, was completely inappropriate.
She’d broken up with him and started therapy. A couple years later, my brother and she had started dating. Every step of the way, Creepy Greg had remained obsessed with her. When my brother started dating her, Greg had dyed his hair to look like my brother, changed his clothes to look like him, even altered his behaviors.
There was talk of kicking Greg out of the pack. So many half-breeds were crazed, but we thought we’d started a town full of the normal ones. With his behaviors, we were starting to think that maybe he wasn’t as sane as he appeared to be.
But the Blood Mages had attacked before that happened.
“I don’t understand. So was it him the whole time?” I feel lost. Confused. Everything I thought I knew was falling away, and I wasn’t sure what to grab onto.
Victoria looks down at him. “His true face came out in death.”
So the man I’d tried to save, the man I’d hunted, all along was simply pretending to be my brother? Maybe the dark magic made him insane, or his sanity was gone long before that, I don’t know, but it sickens me that he’d worn my brother’s face to do so many terrible things.
But then my gaze swings to my men as a new and unexpected thought comes over me. “If this isn’t my brother, could he still be out there somewhere?”
Doubt instantly shines in Max’s gaze. Braxton’s is thoughtful. But Orson’s? Orson’s is hopeful.
Turning to my pack members with my heart in my throat, I ask, “So, where is my brother? Does anyone know? Has anyone seen him?”
They pass grave looks between them. I feel like I’ve buried Simon a half-dozen times already and I want to tell them not to sugarcoat, not to try and spare me the nasty particulars, but to just rip the fucking band-aid off already. Instead, I keep my mouth shut. There’s no use snapping at them. We could all use a little grace right now.
“We don’t know if Simon is still alive,” says Victoria, but her tone suggests it’s more than that she doesn’t know.
Something inside of me that thought it couldn’t hurt again aches once more. Hope, tiny and delicate, crushes between her fingers.
“I understand,” I tell her, but some part of me still wants to know more. No matter how bad his final moments were. “Where did you see him last?”
“They moved us around a lot,” says Triton, and I can see that remembering those days is painful to him. “You never knew when they took someone away if you were ever going to see ‘em again.”
I remember those days too, but they’re talking about after. After we were done being experimented on. They were imprisoned elsewhere. I was running, trying to escape my demons and find my people.
“We were made to serve the mages as entertainment,” Victoria says. “They would take us from one mage’s house to another. They’d pull us out of our cells, hurt us, laugh at us, and throw us back in, just a little more broken than before.”
Tamping down my impatience, I ask, “Is that where Simon is now? Is he in someone’s house?”
“We can’t be certain,” Victoria answers gently, “but we have a pretty good guess as to the last place he got sent.”
A good guess is better than nothing. It’s more than nothing. It’s a path that might lead to figuring out what happened to my brother, once and for all.
“Yes?” I hold my breath.
“A few of us had been to this one Blood Mage’s house,” says Triton. “Mean son of a bitch. Simon was sent there the last time we saw him.”
Victoria cuts a chastening glance at Triton, one that says I don’t need to hear about how bad my brother’s situation likely is. “The house is north of town. Impossible to miss. It’s a large gothic construction rising above the trees off a little road called Pine Avenue.”
“Blood Mages have a particular aesthetic,” says Orson humorlessly.
“Think they’re fuckin’ Dracula,” says another one of my packmates. None of them are short on venom for their captors. Nor am I. And now, having witnessed a taste of their malice, I think it’s safe to say my mates feel the same way.
“How do you know all of this?” Max asks quietly, and I can see the caution in her gaze.
Victoria looks uncomfortable. “Some of the ways they transported us allowed us glimpses of the outside world. Even if some of those ways were uncomfortable and inhumane.”
“Horse trailers and other fucking shit!” a man shouts.
There’s a roar of anger amongst them, and my heart aches for all they’ve been through. I picture them being transported from one Blood Mage’s house to another, treated like cargo or livestock. They’re people! And I’m going to do my best to remind them of that fact now that they’re free.
After a quiet moment, Victoria says, “But, you should know, the mage who had your brother was particularly… cruel. Any of us that were sent there to be his entertainment weren’t expected to survive. I just need you to know that.”
“I understand,” I tell all of them, my gut clenching. “I can handle him.”
Even if this means things aren’t over yet, at least it means there’s still some hope Simon is out there. No matter how small the chances are that he’s survived all of this.
She looks surprised. “You’re really going to look for him? Knowing he likely didn’t survive, and knowing the danger you’d face there?”
If the Blood Mage caught me again, would I be tied down again? Would he push different liquids into my veins just to see what it would do? Would I scream and scream until my voice was raw, even though it wouldn’t make a difference? I shiver. It doesn’t matter what could happen to me. What matters is that my brother could be experiencing those very things right now, and I have the power to stop him. For once, when we scream in pain, someone will be there to help.
Me.
“I have to.”
Glancing at my pack mates, I can tell they think I’m crazy, but they also look exhausted, like nothing in this world could drag them into battle again. I don’t blame them. They deserve some peace and happiness in their lives after all they’ve been through.
“It’ll be hard to face the Blood Mage there. He’s very powerful,” she warns, speaking each word clearly and carefully. When I don’t react, she presses on, wincing as she speaks. “He’s thrown us around with his powers, smashing us into walls and trees, laughing at the sounds of our bones breaking. He’s shred our flesh, decorated the floor with our blood while laughing. He’s… insane, cruel, a monster. Are you sure you want to do that?”
None of that matte rs.
I smile, even though it hurts. “Just like I couldn’t stop looking for all of you, I can’t stop looking for him, if there’s a chance he’s out there.”
Her eyes gentle. “Of course. Do you need help?”
I look at the lot of them, ragged, in need of a decent night’s rest. No, a decent lifetime of food and rest and fun. They’d be more of a liability than a help, but it’s kind of her to offer. “No. We can handle it. All you guys need to do is… be free.”
Victoria hangs her head, relief and exhaustion seeming to course through her whole body. Almost under her breath she murmurs, “I’ve longed to be free for so long, now I find I don’t know what to do with myself.”
I take her shoulder gently and give it a squeeze. She lifts her weary head. “Go home. Back to our town. Many of the buildings still stand. What our town stood for is still there. Rest there, and then we’ll rebuild, together.”
Her gaze is filled with doubt. “Can we really just… walk out of here?”
I understand where she’s coming from. Nothing is ever that easy. “The Enforcers have the place surrounded, but are waiting for our signal to come in and clean up. So, for now, you can.” I glance at Max, hoping he can say more.
“We’ll give you all enough time to get free of this place,” Max says, radiating Enforcer energy. “Head north. You can slip through the gap in their surveillance if you take the woods.”
“We can leave!” she tells the others, a smile teasing the corners of her mouth. “We can go home!”
The energy shifts in the room, and my broken pack looks hopeful. Almost like they’re starting to really believe that they’ll be able to leave this place and have a life once more.
“But will the Blood Mages come after us?” a woman asks, the words small and frightened.
I realize that they don’t understand, and I’m grateful when Max speaks. “During this party, all the Blood Mages that had been hurting you were killed. Violently. There was only one remaining Blood Mage who didn’t seem to be attending this party, and we’re going to find him now.”
“ One left?” Victoria asks in shock.
“Just one,” I say, and my eyes burn with tears.
The people are murmuring amongst themselves in disbelief. I catch fragments of comments. How can this be possible? They were so powerful. They were everywhere. Can this be true?
Victoria looks at me “We’re not just free of this place. We’re free of all of them?”
“Yes.” I feel a tear roll down my cheek.
They gather together, holding each other. Some are crying. Some are laughing. How could I forget that the prison they were kept in wasn’t just made of metal but made of pain? The Blood Mages stand like looming monsters in all their minds, and the monsters being dead is just as significant as being free from the metal cage that bound them.
“They should go,” Max says gently. “Before the Enforcers start asking questions.”
Victoria hears him. She brushes tears from her cheeks. “Yes, we need to leave. We can’t waste any more time.”
But another thought occurs to me. “But,” the word stretches through the room, “don’t use the magic they gave us. That dark magic that calls to you in your greatest moments of weaknesses. Using it kills your soul. It makes you become like the Blood Mages. We can have a good life again, but we can never give into that call. Trust me. The cost is more than any of us want to bear.”
They’re worried now, but I need them to be.
Victoria nods. She takes my face in her hands. “Thank you, Asha. Thank you, all of you,” she says, looking at my men. “We’ll watch out for each other and stay safe from the dark magic. And we’ll see you soon.”
We hug, and then she gestures for them to follow her. The new leader of our pack. The perfect leader for our pack.
I watch them scramble over the bodies on their way out of the mansion. One by one, they shift and become a pack of wolves for the first time since the destruction of our home. They’re a lean bunch, a ragged bunch, but they’re my pack. My family.
I finally have them back.
Tears spring to my eyes, but these are happy ones. For once, I encountered a member of my pack and it didn’t end in death. Hope is truly a powerful thing, and they have hope now. Just like I do.
But a needling thought cuts short my elation. This isn’t over yet .
And it isn’t. Whether my brother is dead or alive, I won’t stop until I know for sure. He deserves that much. And it might be all I’ve been through, but something whispers inside of me that this is more a quest to find answers, to find his body, than to find him alive.
Yet hope is still there. Small and fragile, but powerful.