Chapter Twenty-Four
I stared at her for a moment, unable to speak. Then I got up and slammed out of the back door and into the yard, which was just a big sandlot since I’d never gotten around to landscaping it. And probably wouldn’t now.
What does a monster need with grass?
There was something wrong with my lungs; I was breathing hard but couldn’t seem to get any oxygen. I hadn’t been able to in the kitchen, either, and had thought it would be better out here. It wasn’t. All I could smell was potion, all I could see was that stupid ampule...
And Caleb, one of the strongest war mages I knew, looking terrified as he stared up at the Relic version of me.
And my hideous reflection in the window of the grocery, like something out of a nightmare.
And Sophie, lying on the filthy floor screaming, a student I was sworn to protect, but who I’d just attacked.
And blood, blood everywhere as it dripped down my white laundry machines, from the body of the last student I’d killed—
I took off running, and since there was nothing behind my house but desert, there was nothing to stop me.
I transformed at some point into my wolf form because she desperately wanted to run, too, and we ate up the ground.
We usually had to slow down for the boys, especially the younger ones, when we ran as a pack, but this time there was no need, and it felt like flying.
I don’t know how long it was until I noticed a second shadow on the sand, rippling along just after mine, and recognized Cyrus’s silent form.
He’d been keeping pace with me the whole time, not telling me to slow down, not telling me anything, because wolves—even the human kind—didn’t talk as much as norms. They knew how to be still, to breathe, to run, and right now, that was all I wanted.
I don’t know how far we went, but it was fully dark when I finally stopped, panting hard but feeling more myself, more normal, more calm than I had since that horror story this morning.
I lay down, exhausted, and then Changed back, letting the moonlight bathe my human body and briefly mourning the demise of another outfit. Weres were hell on clothes.
Cyrus didn’t transform immediately, but curled up in front of me, an enormous black and tan wolf breathing only slightly fast, and nuzzling my face and neck. I grabbed hold of him like a child with a stuffed animal, a ridiculously huge, warm, safe presence against the night. And held on.
We stayed like that for a while, until my breathing slowed down and I was no longer shaking. Then he finally Changed and sat on the sandy ground beside me, and again, nothing was said. It didn’t have to be.
He understood what I was going through better than anybody, having experienced it himself.
Ripping out of his skin that night at the Council to face Whirlwind, but finding not the sleek, purpose-built predator he’d always been, but another form: uglier, crueller, horrible.
I shuddered in memory and had the sudden, strong urge to rip my skin off, only I wasn’t sure what I’d find below.
I shuddered again, and he drew me in, his arm hard around me, just holding on. The night was chilly, as the desert often was after sunset, but with him here, I didn’t feel it. Unlike the chill inside.
“Does it go away?” I finally asked, my voice so low that a human wouldn’t have heard it.
“What?”
I turned to look at him. “Does it go away? Or is Sophie right? Are we this... thing... forever?”
“I don’t know.”
“But you’re not, right?” I asked, suddenly desperate. “You Changed that night at the Council, a lot of people did after Danny slipped that brew into the wine, but you haven’t since! Not into that thing—”
“That thing was still me, Lia,” he said quietly. “Like it was still you today—”
“It was not me! It almost killed Caleb! It wanted to kill him—”
“But you didn’t—”
“But it wanted to!” I heard the hysteria in my voice as he kept referring to it by the wrong pronoun.
It wasn’t me! “Do you understand? He’s been my friend for years.
He’s pulled my ass out of the fire more times than I can count.
If not for him, I’d be dead many times over, yet that thing didn’t care!
“All it saw was prey.”
I wrapped my arms around myself, and Cyrus hugged me tighter. “But you didn’t do it,” he said again. “You were still in control, just as I was that night. I was overwhelmed at first, didn’t know where I was or who I was. Just saw all those tiny people down there, running, screaming, looking like—
“Food.” He swallowed. “I’d have gone for them, too; I was a split second away from doing so: breaking bones, hearing screams, tasting blood—the blood of my kind, but that didn’t matter. I was too confused and het up for the fight, and they were running away.”
He was silent for a moment, remembering. “When the others transformed, the other Relics, I saw them as pack. I didn’t mind when they crowded around, did obeisance, and submitted themselves. It felt right; made me see them as allies, not food. They were acceptable, but the rest...”
He shook his head.
“Then you understand—”
“I understand that something incredibly primeval had just swamped my psyche, completely overwhelming me. I understand that I was so swept away, so confused, so out of my league that I lost control for a moment. And it might have been a moment too long.
“But you saved me, jumping down from above, transforming for the first time, something I thought I’d never see, that we would never have—
“It shocked me. So much that it knocked me right on my heels, the sight of you, the scent, how utterly fearless you were. You turned your back on me—on me—and knew you were safe to do so. You didn’t run.
You didn’t crawl on your belly like the others, head down, eyes averted, waiting for my acknowledgement.
You made me acknowledge you, for you were Lupa.
You were Mate. And you were pissed as all hell because I hadn't immediately welcomed you, and so before I knew it, I was the one crawling, and whining, and apologizing.
“And then we were up and running, because that was what my mate wanted to do, so it was what I wanted, too. And the rest just followed our lead.
“You saved the entire Clan Council that night, and they know it, even though most of those over-proud bastards will never admit it. But you did, like you saved me. And over the course of time, I began to come back to myself, to remember who I was, to regain some measure of control.
“Just as you would have done today.”
“I didn’t have time today,” I whispered.
“But you had something else, and you used it. Caleb told me what happened. He said he was fighting for his life and might easily have killed you after you forced a Change on yourself without warning, suddenly reverting to a defenseless woman without weapons, shields, or even clothes. But you risked it, because you’d rather hurt yourself than a friend. ..
“Or a student.”
Yeah, Cyrus knew what was really wrong with me, I thought, staring over the desert.
The trauma of losing a student never really faded, but it was a thousand times worse when you’d killed them yourself.
It had been in self-defense; Adam had been enthralled and was being used against me, I hadn’t meant it to be a killing blow, and it had all happened so fast.. .
None of which made it any better.
Just like it wouldn’t have today.
“I don’t know if I can do this,” I whispered.
“Do what?”
“Teach anymore. I’m a danger to these kids, to everyone, until we figure this out. Until we get rid of this thing.”
And once again, I had the almost overpowering desire to rip chunks out of my arm, to get under the skin and drag out the thing that lurked inside my flesh, to make it fight me and kill it, kill it, kill it! Before it killed anyone else. But I didn’t know how.
“If anyone can protect themselves,” Cyrus said dryly. “It’s those kids—”
“They couldn’t today!”
“—and didn’t Jenkins tell you that his formula was supposed to be one you can think through?”
“Jenkins said a lot of things!”
Right up until I silenced him forever.
I felt my fists curl, remembering the terror of that night, and how smug he’d been, so self-satisfied, so proud of his creation! So sure that he’d saved the world—by creating an army of monsters to rip it apart! An army he’d expected to lead, after stealing the Ulfheenar strain from my blood.
God, he was dead, and I still hated him!
“Did I ever tell you about the first time I changed?” Cyrus asked.
“What?”
“Most people have some tale about a wobbly cub stalking—and usually failing—to catch a rabbit, before falling on its little behind and howling at the injustice of it all. It makes for cute dinner-table conversation, an amusing story to embarrass the kid with later, or to bring up in a wedding speech. I didn’t get that. ”
I looked at him, not understanding the change in topic.
“Sebastian and I both turned early,” he added.
“Wolf-born, like you, only with no Neuri Syndrome to hold us back. Instead, I Changed for the first time so early that nobody had been expecting it. I was barely four and had been fishing down by a creek with my uncle. We were on a family trip in the Appalachians—cookouts, white water rafting for the older kids, fishing for the younger ones, and hunting for the dads who didn’t need rifles when there was nothing but forested hills for as far as anyone could see. You know the drill.”
I nodded. Weres loved to be in nature. Plenty of them lived far off the beaten path, if they could financially swing it. One of the advantages of my house was that it was at the end of the little subdivision, allowing me to look out my kitchen window and see only scrub and mountains.
It healed the soul.