Chapter Forty-Three
As he pulled back his hand to hit me again, someone caught his wrist to stop him.
‘Do you want to make it so easy?’ Astrid hissed. ‘She doesn’t deserve a quick death.’
‘You’re dead,’ I managed to say through a throbbing jaw. ‘I killed you.’
‘You wish,’ Cole said with a snarl.
‘If I hadn’t been there to pull him out the water, you might’ve come close,’ Astrid added. ‘Sloppy work. Very sloppy work, Emily.’
She ran her hand down his forearm, stopping at his bicep to squeeze it lovingly.
It was too intimate a gesture, almost tender, and clashed with the violence in their posture.
They were together, that much was obvious, but when he glanced over at her, I didn’t know if I could call the connection between them love.
Whatever she returned in her unnatural violet eyes wasn’t quite the same.
‘It was good of the pack to organize this for us,’ she said, lightly flicking her wrist to gesture around the park. ‘I like the silver cages, they’re a nice touch.’
‘And this way we get you and the pack in one fell swoop,’ Cole added. ‘Two birds, one stone.’
Astrid chuckled and crooked her finger under his chin. ‘He loves efficiency, this one. Such a practical man.’
Her English was heavily accented but flawless. Her hair hung stick straight down her back and I wondered if the blood staining her hands belonged to Ileen Stovell, Wyn, or someone else altogether.
‘Emily?’
A few feet away, Lydia roused, pressing at a spot on her left temple where a trickle of blood ran down her cheek.
‘We don’t have much time to chat,’ Astrid said regretfully. ‘My spells aren’t strong enough, not yet, and I don’t know how long I can keep these whelps asleep. If they wake up, I’ll have to kill them all and that would be messy.’
‘But we are going to kill them, right?’ Cole sounded concerned. ‘You said I could.’
‘You want all your vengeance at once?’ his girlfriend admonished. ‘Efficient but greedy. Yes, Cole, we are going to kill them, but not tonight. Five, six bodies, I can deal with. A hundred wolves at once? Be sensible. Pack leader now, the rest of them later.’
The pack leader. His own mother. Who were their other intended victims?
When Cole dropped me back down to the ground, I reached into the pocket stuffed with spearmint and rue.
Clarity and self-belief. I needed both, desperately.
Scattered around the park were the bodies of six unconscious Weres, two of them already phased into wolves, four still in human form, one of them Pamela Evans.
Behind Astrid, who was crouched over an open suitcase, were two large cages.
The bars sparkled brighter than any iron or steel.
Solid silver. In the cage closest to me, Jackson crouched in a corner, duct tape over his mouth, yelling wordlessly when our eyes met.
Behind him was an enormous, unconscious wolf, its laboured breathing confirming it was alive.
In the next, was Wyn, slumped and barely alive, his entire body painted with his own blood.
Behind him was another gagged and bound body.
Alex Powell.
‘What is she doing here?’ I asked, half-crawling and half-dragging myself over to the terrified woman, huddled in a tight ball in the back of the cage.
She didn’t look up when she heard my voice, and when I got close enough, I saw her skin had been smeared with a mix of herbs and plants, cayenne pepper blended with stinging nettles and fresh aloe.
A spell to ward off magic and stop me or Lydia sensing her presence.
The mixture had to sting like hell but she seemed too out of it to feel much of anything.
‘Don’t ask me.’ Cole booted the cage until a groan rattled out of his brother. ‘She was in there when we found them. Had to make room for little brother though. Makes me sick. Didn’t even put up a fight.’
I was so focused on Jackson, Alex and Wyn, I didn’t see the dead body behind the cage until Cole kicked the corpse. A young man, maybe twenty, sprawled out on the grass, his neck crooked and open eyes unseeing. Another death on my conscience. Another face I would never forget.
‘How did you get into Bell House?’ I demanded, filling the question with indignation, refusing to show I was afraid. Grief and blame would have to wait.
‘Your precious house is not very pet friendly,’ Astrid replied, still busy with the suitcase.
‘We only came for him, not you. It took a little finessing, but once the house was certain we meant no harm to any witch and blood or legal relative of the Bell family, we were able to force our way inside. Too trusting. Like you.’
She limped over to me, favouring the side where she’d been burned at Hilton Head, her hands slick with a foul-smelling green paste.
‘If you hadn’t complicated everything by attacking Cole in the cemetery that night, everything would be as it should be by now.
Your boy wouldn’t be a part of this, none of your friends would have to die. ’
‘I was defending myself.’ Every word I spoke scratched at my throat like a rusty nail. ‘I didn’t know Cole was a Were.’
The scent of the concoction on her hands made me gag, and I knew, whatever it was, that it would not be pleasant for me.
‘Wyn said the wolves don’t use magic.’ I tried to push myself backwards but there was nowhere to go. My head was still fuzzy and both Astrid and Cole seemed to tower over me, both giants as I sat up with my back to the cage.
‘Were by birth, witch by choice.’ She almost sang her answer, a disturbingly happy smile on her face.
‘Like all of my kind, I was raised to hate witches, but how could I not be curious? So I learned in my own way, practised in my own way. Not born to it in the way you were, no, but if you truly dedicate yourself to any craft until you are cast out by your family and your pack, exiled from your homeland, and you come to hate packs so much it consumes you, then there are a few tricks you can learn.’
She daubed the green paste onto my forehead and I screamed, the whole city shaking with my pain. It was worse than a burn, more like being branded. The triangular mark she made seared itself into my skin until my eyes watered and I retched onto the grass.
‘See?’ Astrid clapped her hands together in delight then pressed them into her injured left side. ‘Unless you are prepared to give everything, you deserve nothing – and I have given everything over and over and over. Now it is my turn to get what I deserve.’
‘Mom?’
Somewhere outside my own agony, I heard Lydia’s voice, so tiny and afraid as she shuffled towards her mother. Alex tried to answer but all that came out were more choked sobs.
‘Get away from there!’ Cole grabbed Lydia by the throat, tossing her away like she weighed nothing, far stronger than a regular Were.
His resemblance to Wyn was so pronounced, each time he looked my way, my heart lurched.
Older, but not by much, his hair was longer and darker, and his piercing eyes gleamed gold instead of mossy grey-green, but his face had the same sculptural quality, painstakingly crafted to perfection, full lips, high cheekbones.
They even shared the same easy gait. As Cole strolled back to me after inflicting more casual violence on my best friend, my blood churned.
‘There’s wolf’s bane woven into their clothes,’ he told Astrid with a laugh. ‘Cute.’
‘It doesn’t hurt?’ I asked, my breath still coming in gasps.
He turned his hands palms out to show me the red welts.
‘It hurts,’ he replied, gold eyes sparkling. ‘I just don’t care.’
‘Amazing what does and doesn’t concern you after you’ve died,’ Astrid said in an offhand manner.
‘He was dead when I pulled him out the water, but not entirely gone. A spark remained and a spark is enough to burn the world to the ground if you know how to nurture the first flame. The hardest part was staying with him and not ripping your throat out there and then.’
I swiped at the foul tar-like substance on my forehead, the pain never once lessening into something I could live with.
Instead of wiping it away, it spread, covering my hands, my forearms. Face down, I tried to whisper to the live oaks that lined the park, to the Spanish moss that swayed in their branches, but received no response.
‘You’re wasting your energy,’ Astrid said when she saw what I was doing.
‘They won’t help you tonight. Not when you’re marked.
Ash of a live oak, crushed up selenite, hematite, poppy seed for disorientation, the blood of someone who loves you and the blood of someone who would see you dead.
So curious to find both in the same family.
I think that’s what makes it burn so very badly. ’
‘If you don’t let me help him, your brother is going to die,’ I said, turning to Cole. There was no point trying to talk to Astrid, Wyn was right, she was out of her mind. ‘Do what you want with me but are you really going to let her kill your brother?’
‘A brother who betrayed his pack for the witch who killed me? A brother who kills me again and again, every time he chooses you. As far as I’m concerned, he’s already dead.’ Cole’s foot hovered over my fingers, threatening to crush them if only Astrid would loosen his leash and allow it.