Chapter 60
A prayer
They hung their bodies from the old light and electricity poles. There must be fifty corpses lining this particular street.
“Did they die from the fire?” I ask hopefully.
“No. It looks like they were all alive and hanged after the fire went through here,” Mordecai murmurs. His brow wrinkles as he peers up at a corpse in front of us.
I recognise some of them from my travels. They are old and young and in between. Male and female. No mercy was shown.
With shaking hands, I walk down the street, almost tripping over tufts of weeds. It goes on forever.
“Quick! Hide!” Cadel spits out.
I rush into the closest building and climb up to the second level, plastering myself up against the wall. Jarek lands beside me, while Mordecai and Cadel take the other side of the window.
“It’s so pretty,” the Beta’s Voice says.
I glance out and see her walking down the street with her jerky movements. She’s wearing gold body paint and nothing else. I’ve heard that she burns the bodies up quickly, overheating them.
I wonder if the girls are willing and happy to sacrifice themselves to her or whether they, like us, are just prisoners waiting to die.
I remember the cages in that warehouse. I can’t imagine they are all voluntary, besides, there are lots of ways to force someone to do something against their will.
Her two pets walk beside her, the newly appointed Fang and Claw. She stops almost directly outside the place I’m hidden.
“If you show yourself, I will give you leniency. I will let you die first or last, however you’d like?”
She bends over, cackling. Her skin stretches and splits, weeping. I duck back and press my hand to my mouth. Jarek closes his eyes, but he’s pale and looks very close to throwing up.
“Do you like my present? It’s to welcome you all back home. You are my masterpiece, my artwork.” She’s talking to the corpses, I realise with a morbid horror. “Isn’t it beautiful?”
Her people murmur approval and words that affirm that her depravity is some kind of god-level art instead of the murder that it clearly is.
“But she is my star.”
I glance out and see that she’s staring up at an old skeleton, one that I hadn’t noticed because it’s literally just a skull.
The beta sways in the street, almost as if she’s dancing.
“Kaida Keres,” she sings out.
I stiffen. Why is she calling my name?
“Kaida Keres, I know you’re here. I can smell the stench of you. That wild and foul scent. I want it gone.” She turns in a circle, and I duck back. “Did you come and say hello to my pretties?”
I cover my mouth with my hand to muffle my breathing.
“Ah, you’re not a talkative one, huh? Well, it’s a good thing that I am. It turns out that after having your pain in the ass, interfering mother run riot around my city, we caught her. And now she’s just…hanging around.” The goddess explodes into rancorous laughter.
My whole body freezes, listening intently.
“We caught her just outside the city walls; it was almost like she wrapped herself in a pretty bow and delivered herself here.”
Jarek takes my free hand, squeezing my fingers tight. I look at him, and he mouths two words at me. Don’t react.
“So, into the Culling Ground she did go. Her head held high, a withering glare in her eyes. She refused to be cowed, not even when we hit her.”
She laughs suddenly.
“She was impressive. She evaded capture for four months, and it wasn’t until my Claw pushed her from the building that we finally could start the party.”
She swans back and forth, jerking like her limbs aren’t even under her control anymore. Blood weeps down her back from the split, and another opens up under her eye.
“She didn’t die.”
I’m so distracted by the horror of what she is doing to the body that I almost miss what she says.
I turn to Jarek, staring at him with wide eyes. He presses a hand against my lips, pleading with me not to make a sound.
“She couldn’t move her legs, but she was alive. I kept her that way for three more months. I had them take her apart, piece by piece. That was your punishment for escaping, you know.”
She pauses, but I’m lost in the screams of my own mind.
“I underestimated you, Keres. You see, I thought when you made that deal that you were delusional and arrogant and that you’d die within a week.
I was impressed that you were still alive after two.
And at four, I started to take an interest. I stopped paying attention to you for a while, but when I was reminded you were still alive, I thought you were a most excellent bargain.
Though I didn’t keep my side very well, but I am a goddess, I am exempt from keeping deals. ”
I grab onto Jarek’s leg, tears rolling down my cheeks, holding onto him because I’m terrified if I don’t, I will fling myself out there and attack her.
“Six months was incredible. But you know, a claim to fame being that you lived isn’t that impressive.”
She paces; I can see her out of the corner of my eye.
“What was impressive was escaping my prison!” her voice thunders throughout the street, and a wind slams into the city like it’s her anger made real.
“How dare you leave before I was done with you? Still, I thought it would be easy to recapture you, but no, out into the wilds, avoiding everyone. Impossible to find. You taught me a lesson that I’d forgotten. You reminded me of the value of patience.”
Jarek is suddenly in front of me, his intense green eyes locked on my face. He’s almost in my lap, one hand pressed against my lips and the other on my back, holding me against him.
“And you, like a repeat of your mother, gave up your life for a child. It is so ridiculous and poetic.”
I am still before I explode with movement, ripping free of Jarek.
I get close to the window, but Mordecai pulls me back and into his arms, holding me on the floor. I struggle and fight, but he sets his teeth in my neck, and I go still, the omega in me submitting to the alphas I’ve chosen.
I lay there panting hard, while his hand slides down my back and up again.
“Those poor, darling little children.”
I struggle again, but Mordecai holds me in a lock that I can’t get out of.
“I brought them to Foreen for you.”
I open my mouth, no sound escaping me as I silently scream. Cadel comes closer, laying down, and presses his cheek against mine. Jarek holds onto my ankle, but I can’t stop.
“Get them up so Keres can see that no good deed goes unpunished.”
Every painful, terrible sound echoes in my mind. I can hear her laughter, the glee of her Claw and Fang.
“Your mother would be so proud of you, Keres. You are a chip off the old block.”
The beta grumbles and then shrieks in rage.
I can’t get up, not that I want to.
“Get me another body, quickly,” the Beta Goddess snaps. “Hurry!”
My body turns to stone hearing her words, but it doesn’t quite connect.
“Get me another body, quickly,” I mouth.
I do it again.
“What’s she doing?” Jarek asks.
“I have no idea, but it’s freaking me out,” Mordecai answers.
“Get me another body…quickly?” I purse my lips, frustrated that it’s not making sense.
“Goodnight, prophet. I look forward to never seeing you again.”
I move so suddenly that Mordecai almost doesn’t get hold of me. It’s only at the last minute and because of Cadel that they manage to hold me.
Prophet?
I sit up, still held in his arms, and look straight into the dead, screaming face of the girl I’d tried to rescue.
Mordecai turns me.
“Don’t look.”
I shudder in his arms.
“Don’t you dare look. This isn’t your fault. It’s not your fault.”
I stare at the wall; the image burned on my retinas and into my mind. Her eyes are gone. Why are her eyes gone?
“They’ve left,” Jarek says.
Mordecai loosens his hold, and I double over, sobbing so hard I can’t hold myself up. I collapse on the floor, but he picks me up and pulls me into his arms.
The purr starts from one of the alphas, I’m not sure who, but the other two join in, soothing away the pain, smoothing the edges of my guilt.
“Did you try to rescue those kids? Is that how you got caught?” Cadel asks.
I nod and realise our fingers are laced together.
“That was an amazing thing to do, Kaida. You gave them a chance, but whatever bad luck happened was not because of you.”
“Are her alphas with her?” I ask in a huff of breath.
“Yes,” Jarek says. “They all died together.”
“Someone needs to come back and give everyone a proper burial,” I say brokenly.
“They will; it’s one of the first priorities the Resistance has. They will also raze Foreen to the ground and leave the city as a memorial for the lives lost here.”
I free myself from the alphas and look out the window. I’ve prepared myself, but it still hurts to see them all lined up beside each other.
I try to ignore them and look instead for the skull. I find it on the pole to the right, a long, yellow-brown skull that has been sitting in the elements, left alone and lonely.
“Someone make sure my mother’s skull is recovered when it’s over.”
“Of course, we will. We’ll all come back and do it together,” Jarek says.
I don’t answer him because I’m not sure anymore, and my mind is drifting back to those words.
“Cadel, if you die in this body, are you dead everywhere, or would your soul return?”
“I would go back.”
“What if you possessed a body?”
His head whips to me. “Say that again?”
“What if you possessed a body, would you die in the body or would you go back?”
His eyes are wide, and he staggers to the wall, bracing himself on it.
“You’d die everywhere. Especially if an omega and alpha did it together.”
“If we get rid of her spares and kill her in the body she’s in, we can get rid of her,” I say in a hollow voice.
“It won’t diffuse the rest of their damn cult.”
“No,” I say to Mordecai, “it won’t, but it will destabilise it enough that we could fight.”
“We don’t have fighters,” Jarek reminds us.
“Actually,” Mordecai says. “They are on the way.”
We all turn to look at him. “Did you think Bear would abandon us? He had planned for it to be Legion who brought the backup; we changed the plan on him, but the bulk of the Resistance is marching towards Foreen as we speak.”
I get a shiver of excitement. This might work. If we can get close enough, we can take her out.
“This might work,” I breathe.
“It has to work,” Mordecai says. “We have no time or ideas left. This is it.”
“Let’s go find Legion and Mia and let them know about our idea,” I say.
I turn back to the window, looking up at my mother’s skull. “I don’t want anymore people to suffer. Those kids didn’t deserve that. My mother didn’t deserve that. I’m not giving up until it is over and the Beta’s Path is destroyed.”
I close my eyes.
Omega Goddess, if you are there, listening, I’m asking, praying for your help. Give me the strength to save these people.
Lightning lances down seven times, hitting the city over and over, turning the world purple and white. Until one finally hits the street just in front of the building. I can hear screams. One scream. My head aches, my eyes can only see those strikes and a crescent moon; I’m almost blind.
Omega.
Omega.
“Omega, look at me.” I turn my head and smile at Jarek, but deep inside I freeze. His hair is short, and he’s got eyeliner on.
This isn’t my Jarek.
“Who are you?”
He frowns. “Kaida? What’s wrong? Don’t you remember? We’re supposed to meet Mordecai.”
I feel myself start to panic, but then he leans forward and kisses me, and I know that kiss. He might look different, but it’s still him.
“Do you remember me?” he teases.
Remember me?
Do I remember me?
My head aches, and I grip it and let out a low moan.
“Kaida.”
“Omega.”
I grip Jarek by the throat and throw us back into the present. “Who are you?”
He blinks at me, stunned by my vicious attack.
I throw him away from me, ignoring the fact he just slammed into the wall, stand up, and go to the window, looking out at the bodies dispassionately.
“Where am I?”
I hear a sharp exhale and turn, finding a face, a familiar face. The world, this new, scary, unfamiliar world, stills, and all I can see is snow and millions of stars.
“Do you remember me?” he says slowly.
“Alpha?” My voice comes out a whisper of pure yearning.
He rushes towards me, pulling me into his arms.
“I’ve been looking for you for thousands of years.”
Our kiss is a homecoming; it's magic. Power leaks out of us and into the air, causing snowflakes to spin around us in a whirl.
“My Winter Wolf.”
“Luna Omega,” he says so gently I feel it in every part of me.
And then I remember.
I remember everything.