21. Paul
Paul
The Scheme Unravels
“CHERRY!”
Even from where I was, I could tell her lights went out instantly when Luther decked her right in the face, her body going limp as he grabbed the front of her shirt and threw her off him.
I had already been fighting his influence, but that was enough to fully break me out of it, and I dashed after her. But she was going too far, too fast, and she hit the floor hard once before bouncing into the waterway that divided the two halves of the room, sinking as its current carried her off.
“Cherry! No! I’m coming! Hold on!”
My shifter voice was screaming of its own accord, even though I knew she was incapable of hearing it. I didn’t care. I launched forward to dive into the water after her.
Only for someone to grab my leg and swing me around before slamming me to the floor.
I snapped and clawed, my vision taking a moment to clear from the stars filling it to see Luther kneeling over me, his eyes blood red but still no emotion on his face.
“ Sleep, ” he ordered, and I couldn’t help but wonder how he could issue a command in shifter-speak while he was in human form. He was so many contradictions and impossibilities all on top of each other. Dead, but alive. My brother, but not. A wolf, but now a magic user.
“No!” I screamed, twisting my head and sinking my teeth into his thigh. I jerked at it, and while most people would scream in agony or try to get me to stop, my brother just stared at me.
But I didn’t give that much thought. My mind was replaying the instance of Cherry disappearing under the water. Was she dead? She couldn’t be dead! If only she had run!
Then again, if she had, we’d all have been within seconds. For being a very squishy mostly human, the oracle had proven once again that she was invaluable to the longevity of my family.
But even with her help, we’d reached the end of the line. Because Luther just squeezed me tighter and repeated his command.
“ Sleep. ”
“ Sleep. ”
“ SLEEP! ”
I could sense my siblings dropping out of consciousness, but I fought. With all I had, I fought !
Cherry had risked so much for me and my family, multiple times. I had to save her; there was no space for failure. So no, I wouldn’t let this pretender of an alpha command me to slip under when I could still save her.
I heard words being spoken, and for a moment, a hazy joy filled my mind, thinking it was somehow Cherry. But then I realized it was the assassin telling Luther to hurry because it was “ almost time.”
Almost time for what? I didn’t know. And I didn’t bother asking.
No, instead I dug my teeth deeper into my brother’s leg, tearing through tendons.
Luther pulled back his fist and punched me in the head once, twice, three times.
But it wasn’t until he moved in for a fourth blow that my wolf decided enough was enough.
It receded, my body shrinking into its human form.
The fourth hit landed, and my part of the fight was most certainly over.
The last thought I had as I plummeted into oblivion again was that we had failed. After everything we’d done, after all that Cherry and I had tried to investigate, we had failed.
Everything hurt. While I’d had my share of injuries and sore muscles throughout my life, I was unaccustomed to waking in pain. I assumed most shifters were. But this time, as consciousness began to ripple slowly through my mind, agony was one of the first sensations that hit me.
As for the rest of it, it returned in waves, urgently trying to coax me back to the surface.
I couldn’t say how long it took me, only that lucidity arrived in lazy peaks and valleys, until I could groggily open my eyes.
At first, everything was a blur, the low light of wherever I was not exactly doing me any favors.
But then my vision cleared enough to see that me and my three non-hijacked siblings were all tied up to five tall, thick stakes, the kind that wouldn’t look out of place in a historical depiction of a witch burning.
Huh.
I blinked a few times, feeling like there were shards of glass under my eyelids, but I could still make out that we were in some sort of…
belfry? Or maybe just a tower. Judging by the nausea roiling through me, the burning in my wrists, the numbness in my arms, we were bound with wolfsbane-infused ropes.
Utterly fantastic. There was a spell circle at our feet, which indicated that we weren’t in for a pleasant time.
But that was when my brain kicked in and my mind glitched at an error.
Five pillars?
Craning my neck to the side as far as I could, I realized that there was indeed someone tied to the final pillar, but it wasn’t Luther—not that it made sense that it would be. No, instead it was a… random woman?
I blinked several more times, desperately wishing I could rub my eyes, but the woman remained there. Not a figment of my imagination. That was good.
I didn’t recognize her at all, but she certainly looked worse for wear. She had new, deep purple bruises over fading, yellow bruises, a split lip and eyebrow, which told me she likely wasn’t a shifter at all.
Who was she and why was she tied up with me and my siblings?
Maybe it was the weight alone of my gaze that roused her, but she went from unconscious to peering at me. At first her face was completely blank, but then it was as if she recognized me.
“I’m sorry,” she rasped, and Gods, it sounded like she’d been screaming for hours. I hated to think what could have caused that kind of trauma. “It’s all my fault.”
“What is?” Not my most eloquent repartee, but it wasn’t like I was exactly firing on all cylinders.
But her swollen, red-rimmed eyes fluttered closed again, and her body went completely lax. No doubt she would have toppled forward if it weren’t for the ropes holding her in place.
I stared at her in puzzlement, but I was coming back to myself more and more as the seconds passed. I inhaled, then realized I recognized the scent surrounding me. It was one I was incredibly familiar with, as it belonged to a family I’d known since birth.
The Parracidas.
The realization hit me, and some faint part of my memory recalled that Cherry had cried something about knowing who the masterminds were right before all hell broke loose. Had she come to the same conclusion?
I supposed I would never find out, considering that she was…
That she was…
I couldn’t bring myself to even think it, let alone say it. Internally, my wolf whispered, and I was sure he would be howling if he wasn’t buried below the effects of wolfsbane.
Then, as if summoned by my epiphany, a door somewhere below us opened. I heard confident footsteps coming up the stairs. Sure enough, it was the head of the Parracida family, his wife, an older man—Mr. Parracida’s father, I think—and their children, Alexandria and Sergio.
I couldn’t believe it. After hundreds of years of being taken care of, of atoning for the truly horrific ways of their ancestors, now they were throwing it all away?
“Look who woke up. Hello, Chris, we’ve—” Mr. Parracida started to say, and although it was ill-advised, I had to cut him off.
“Paul,” I said hotly. “I’m Paul. ”
The man had the gall to look confused. “Paul? Wait, since when?—”
“You worked on and off as a staff director in my house until I was thirteen!”
“I… Oh, Paul! Of course, the one with the glasses.”
I stared at him, completely taken aback. Yes, I was quite aware that I was potentially living the last moments of my life, but I couldn’t believe that said life was reduced to me being the VanMarche sibling that wore glasses! Was that really the impression I was leaving on the world?
“Anyway,” Mr. Parracida cleared his throat. “Sergio, wake them up.”
My gaze went to the strapping young man, who had just done a pretty good job fighting me and my siblings without being able to shift. None of the Parracidas had been able to shift in at least three generations, although they still had the enhanced senses and healing abilities.
“Yes, Father,” he said before raising his hand, which I hadn’t realized was holding a hose. He gave a couple yanks, which I assumed signaled to someone downstairs, and suddenly cold water sprayed onto Chris, who was tied directly next to me.
It was a decidedly unpleasant way to be roused, I was sure, but I was helpless to stop it as one by one my siblings were forced back to consciousness, coughing and sputtering.
I wanted to transform, to rip each of them apart limb by limb until they couldn’t hurt anyone ever again. To wipe that stupid, gloating look off all their faces.
Well, off most of their faces. Sergio’s face had a strange expression that I just couldn’t decipher, but it wasn’t at all what I saw on his parents’ or grandsire’s faces. As for Alexandria, she was standing to the side, face blank, as if she were trying to dissociate from what was happening.
God, I wished Cherry was right in the room with us. She’d tell me exactly what they were feeling, unnerve them with uncannily accurate deconstructions of their inner selves, then probably sneak in a couple of animal facts while she was at it. But Cherry would never be there because she was dead.
And they had killed her.
“What the hell is this?!” Chris yelled almost as soon as he came to, spitting mad in a way I hadn’t seen since a business partner tried to embezzle over a million dollars from the scholarship fund my brother set up for orphan shifters.
“Vincenzo, Arlene, what the hell do you think you’re doing? Get us out of here before?—”
Mrs. Parracida lifted her hand, and a stone rose from the ground.
It crashed into my brother’s mouth. His head jerked to the side, and I was sure I heard a tooth crack.
“Your time for giving orders is done now. So please, be quiet and have some dignity as our family frees itself from your oppression!”
“But you’re a shifter, aren’t you? You married into the family,” Penelope said, sounding a little rough around the edges. “How do you have magic?”