Chapter 19
Chapter
Nineteen
Consciousness returned in stages.
The first was sound, which arrived even before the pain.
A good thing, because it gave me the seconds I needed to orient myself.
Car. Wolves. Crash. My head began to throb, and the metallic tang of blood assaulted my nose.
I kept my aching body limp, my eyes shut, my breathing as even as I could make it.
“Get her out of there, Stephen.”
The godsdamned Yarnells. They must’ve shifted from wolf form to hybrid, because I was pretty sure they weren’t alpha enough to speak in animal form. Very few shifters were.
“I’m trying, Helen. I’m stabilizing her neck. According to my emergency medical technician course, we’re supposed to stabilize the spine of a car-accident victim before moving them.”
Helen let out an exasperated sigh. “It was an online class, Stephen.”
“I have a certificate.”
“That you printed out yourself.”
“You took archery lessons online,” he said. “That doesn’t even make sense. How do you learn to shoot arrows on the Internet?”
“I hit her, didn’t I?”
Guess that was one mystery solved.
“I guess.” Stephen paused then said, “Anyway, she could have a spinal injury.”
“Who cares if the witch is paralyzed? She wakes up and we’re dead, you fool. My dad was right about you. You’re about as sharp as a marble.”
Stephen didn’t respond to the insult. With firm, gentle fingers, he turned my head until my neck was in line with my spine. Something snapped in my back, and I instantly felt better. My spine wasn’t broken, but I’d definitely cracked some ribs.
I continued to keep my eyes closed so they wouldn’t realize I’d regained consciousness.
“Where’s the weird cat and that creepy little fae man?” Helen asked. “Doesn’t she always bring them with her?”
Fennel. Cecil. My boys! I couldn’t hear them, couldn’t feel them—
No.
That line of thinking had to stop. My partners were magical, and they’d been fully aware of the danger we were facing. We’d had a few seconds of warning. No way had they not taken precautions.
Unless they were as unprepared as you were.
The negative voice in my head was making way too much sense, so I stopped listening to it. Tried, anyway. It kept returning with fingernail scrapes and scritches and scores on my brain.
Are they dead? Did you kill your partners, Betty Lennox?
“He’s a gnome, not a man.” Stephen sniffed and snorted. “Don’t know where they are, but they’re not here. They were earlier, though. Scents are fresh.”
“Let’s hope they aren’t nearby. The gnome scares the shit out of me.”
“Want me to search the field?”
“The alfalfa field? Are you serious? It would take a strong alpha with a trained nose to track anything around here, and you aren’t a strong alpha.”
Stephen’s fingers pressed and pulled, manipulating the position of my head. I didn’t know if he was helping me, but he didn’t seem to be hurting me, either. “If I shifted, I could probably—”
“No, you couldn’t. You’re not a tracker, Stephen, you’re a brainless henchman and, apparently, a frustrated nurse. By the moon, stop worrying about stabilizing her.”
Helen sounded annoyed and sullen—jealous? Was this woman actually jealous because her husband was touching my head? Gods, these people were freaks.
“Greer wants her alive. I’m making sure she’s alive.”
“Alive, not walking,” Helen muttered. “Honestly, considering what she’s about to face, it might be better for her if she can’t feel anything below the neck.”
I supposed I shouldn’t have been shocked by her callousness, but I was.
These wolves didn’t just dislike me or think I was a bad alpha, they wanted me to suffer and die.
If one of them was lying on the side of the road hurt, I’d have helped them, made sure they were safe, even knowing they didn’t like me. I couldn’t imagine doing otherwise.
These were not moral people.
I let them load me into their trunk, doing my best not to wince. Again, Stephen had laid out clean bedding.
“You’re being too nice to her,” Helen snapped.
“I’m being smart, is all.” Stephen spoke from right above my face.
His breath smelled like spearmint gum and gingivitis.
“If she dies on the sheet, it’ll be easier to dispose of her body.
We just roll her up like a burrito and chuck the whole thing into the landfill.
Going to miss these sheets, though. Picked them up on sale at DiscMart.
They don’t carry this brand anymore. Not like it matters.
She’s already ruined them with her blood anyway. ” He slammed the trunk shut.
Fuck this guy.
Fuck all of them.
“They can’t be allowed to get away unscathed. If you don’t punish them, they’ll try again, and it’ll be worse next time,” Ronan had said.
“Wolves understand pain best,” the pack wolves had agreed. “We should pound ’em into the ground, Alpha.”
I stared up at the Chrysler’s trunk lid and contemplated my next move. My body rocked and rolled as the Yarnells drove over the old farm road. Had the situation been different, I might’ve been lulled to sleep.
“Look at Greer pacing around on the back porch.” Helen’s muffled voice echoed into the trunk. “Not where I’d choose to be, not with that spooky-looking cemetery so close.”
“Seems nervous,” Stephen said.
“He should be. Last time he was here was on Alpha Pallas’s orders. Don’t you remember?”
“No. I was busy firebombing that rat’s house—the one who works for the third alpha?”
Karen.
“Yeah, Alpha sent me after the rats, too,” Helen said. “Killed a couple myself.”
I was disgusted by how proud they sounded. Ronan’s words went round and round in my brain: “If you don’t punish them, they’ll try again, and it’ll be worse next time. If you don’t punish them…worse next time. …punish them…”
“He killed the alpha’s goddaughter.” Helen clicked her tongue. “If the East Pluto Wake catches him on their territory…”
Stephen sniffed. “Brock’s a strong alpha. He can handle it.”
“I’m not so sure. Our weak alpha dog-walked him last time he confronted her. Never mind what that bitch Esperanza Pacheco did to him.”
“Pacheco got the drop on all of us that day.”
“Did you not hear me?” Helen huffed. “I said, never mind what she did, Stephen.”
The sound of the window rolling down was followed by Helen’s voice. “We got her.”
How to react? If they thought I was knocked out, they might lower their guard. On the other hand, they might shoot me through the trunk. Seemed like the smartest move on their part.
I scooted back, pressing myself against a cotton grocery bag filled with other grocery bags. Somehow, the sight of such a mundane, decidedly human thing, made this all so much worse.
The Yarnells were people who shopped at DiscMart just like me, picked up groceries and a movie, maybe even a cheap T-shirt and a pack of toilet paper. I bet they occasionally bought a candy bar to eat on the way home, too.
Normal people. Regular, normal, everyday people who intended to murder me and didn’t give a damn if I rotted in a landfill wrapped in shoddy, low-quality sheets.
I decided on a course of action, wrapped my magic around me, and waited for Greer to open the trunk, which he did, three seconds later.
“Alpha Bitch.” His cruel smile gleamed, every tooth reflecting the late morning sunlight.
“Wolf,” I said, my throat dry and a little raw.
“That’s it? No jokes about my name?” He made a show of looking around. “No little alpha bitches hiding somewhere with a gun?”
“No,” I said.
“And no magic, either. You know what this is?” He pulled out a charm suspended from a leather cord from inside his shirt. The locals didn’t craft them like that. He must’ve gone out of town for it.
“My guess is it’s a dampening charm, Brillo Greer.”
“Lo and behold, the dumb witch almost got my name right.” He dropped the charm against his bare chest. “Brock Greer. I’ll give you a second to learn it before I call for the others,” he said with a big show of a laugh.
“The others?” I tried to ignore the pain wrapping around my body like the world’s worst hug.
“Your friends at The Esteemed Order of the Removal of the Blight on Humankind.” He flashed another cruel grin. “I memorized the name off the big, fat check they dropped into my bank account when they hired me to bring your demonic ass to them.”
My head hurt, and one side was crusted with drying, still-tacky blood.
My back ached, and my hips felt crooked, as if I were a doll with its legs attached wrongly.
When I took a deep breath, something sharp poked into my lung on the right side.
And now, at my weakest, I was being turned over to my worst enemies by my own wolves.
Everyone had been telling me I’d been too easy on Greer—on all the pack fence-sitters. Well, easy time was over. After I dealt with these fools, I was going to track down every single name on that list I’d given Mason and pluck them from the pack in the unkindest way possible.
I was done being the better person. Done looking the other way. Done giving wolves who wanted me dead a chance to change.
These weren’t good people. They valued dominance, cruelty, and violence above all, and there was no reasoning with them.
Helen and Stephen’s faces appeared next to Greer’s. The trio stared down at me, disgust, glee, and the slightest hint of excitement in their eyes. Stephen’s gaze was tinged with a dopey sort of confusion, but darkness lurked beneath the uncertainty.
Dead things, all of them.
The rustling of wings grabbed my attention.
All three wolf shifters looming over me froze in place. Hot fear spread over their features like wildfire, jumping from wolf to wolf.
“Buzzards.” Greer shuddered.
Behind the wolves, the sky was a cloudless, atmospheric blue, the sun an unblinking, glaring eye. Silhouetted against it was a dilapidated, two-story wood house with cracked second-floor windows and missing shingles.
Atop the rotting eaves roosted four birds of prey—a hawk, a falcon, and two buzzards. They were actually turkey vultures, but locals referred to them as buzzards, and as far as I knew, that was how they referred to themselves.