Prologue #2
He didn’t raise his voice, he simply spoke in his true one: an alpha voice so packed with power that it felt like a shout.
“We don’t want to kill you,” the assassin said. His voice conveyed an authority it didn’t have the depth to pull off.
“We don’t want to kill you, either,” Ronan said. “Leave.”
“We don’t want to kill you,” the Org assassin repeated, “but we will.”
But we will? That was a pretty bold statement. Who did The Org think they were? Why were they so confident?
“This is a matter of good and evil, life and death, saint and devil. You will disperse and allow us to apprehend the creature.”
Ronan growled, and the warning sound made every hair on my body stand at attention. He was barely human now, even if he was still on two legs.
The main problem with The Org approaching from the street was that the back row of wolves facing Ronan had suddenly become the front row facing the guns. These weren’t the strong alpha fighters in the group. They were the elderly betas and young wolves. The vulnerable.
“Who the hell do you think you are to tell our pack what to do?” a strained, long-time smoker voice growled. I saw her black, shellacked, beehive wrapped in a black paisley bandana before I saw the rest of her.
“We have ultimate authority,” The Org gunman nearest her said.
Gladys pushed a smaller wolf behind her and broke free of the group. “Because you’ve got guns?” She barked a laugh. “We’re wolves. Who cares about a gun?”
The assassin closest to her gestured to his weapon. “Silver-sheathed bullets.”
Rage beat against my ribs like a second heart. Gladys had been brutally attacked with silver by a couple of Floyd’s henchmen in retribution for her support of Ronan and me. She’d barely survived.
There was no way I was going to stand back and let it happen again. And if the rolling growl in front of me was any indication, neither would Ronan.
I stepped out from behind my human shields, putting one trembling foot in front of the other, ensuring the sole of my foot made total contact with the warm asphalt before lifting the other.
Margaux’s spell had given me an unnatural burst of energy, but it hadn’t healed me, so the wounds on my hips bled down my thighs and soaked my jeans with every step.
“You will not hurt these people,” I said, as I slipped away from the safety of my friends. I stood beside Ronan in front of the threatened pack. I wasn’t a mother, but in that instant, I knew what it felt like to be one. “They are under my protection.”
“Betty, honey, it’s okay,” Ronan whispered. “I’ve got this.”
“No,” I said, “it’s not okay. These killers are here for me. I won’t allow them to hurt any of you.”
“You don’t have a choice, demon,” the middle Org shitbag said. “We call the shots here.” He held up his stupid gun. “Literally.”
“Get the hell out of here,” I snarled at the seven.
They held their ground.
It occurred to me then that there was no earthly way seven lone humans would think they could take down a group of wolves this large, even armed with silver-coated bullets.
Which meant they hadn’t planned for it to go down like this.
They’d expected to face me, not a growling throng of irate wolves.
Fucking Floyd.
He must’ve told them I’d be at this location, helpless and alone. Was that how the coward had intended to take me out? Hand me over to The Org?
Not that it mattered. The Org had underestimated me, just like Floyd had. Just like some of the wolves growling angrily behind me likely were.
Wolves howled, shifted at my back, gnashed teeth, dragged claws over asphalt.
The air was like acrylic wool, dense and hot and impossible to breathe through.
They were going to attack no matter how daunting the threat, because they were scared, and scattered, and driven by instinct to attack when they felt that way.
Gladys threw herself to the ground, her wolf bursting through her clothes. Fur bristled out of skin turned inside out, claws replaced crimson nails, shearing teeth pushed out grinding ones. Her front half lowered, back half raised, as she readied for attack.
The Org assassin nearest Gladys began to lift his gun.
“No!” Ronan was directly behind me, moving with preternatural speed, but he wouldn’t be fast enough. Even the strongest alpha wolf couldn’t outrun a bullet.
The world locked into slow-motion.
I looked down at my hands and saw dusty gray skin, viciously pointed black fingernails. The agony seeped through my demon apathy, the charms and patches, Margaux’s spell, and my soil magic, but it was less now, like the shrill bleat of a smoke alarm in the house next door.
Protect our people. Kill the wolves responsible. Rip out their eyeballs and boil their brains. We’ve done it before. It’ll be easier the second time.
Well, Demon Betty was back, and she sounded a lot like she had before we’d had our kintsugi moment in the garden room, before I’d accepted that there was really no separate Demon Betty, there was only Betty—earth witch, demon, me.
Numbness bled into me, but it didn’t consume me the way it had before, because something else accompanied the feeling. A violent—what one might call maternal—protective rage.
“Don’t touch my wolves,” I shouted.
No, not shouted. Like Ronan, I hadn’t raised the volume of my voice, I’d drenched it in power. The difference was, he was an alpha wolf who possessed that power.
I was neither alpha nor wolf. Or was I?
The center assassin, the one I considered the group spokesperson, pulled off his ski mask.
Blond, he looked to be in his mid-twenties.
He regarded me with blatant disgust but addressed the wolves.
“Don’t you see the demon? Don’t you see the evil in your midst?
” He gestured to the rest of his people to stand down.
Obediently, they lowered their guns. Slightly.
“What I see is my alpha standing between silver bullets and her wolves,” Rory yelled. “Broken and hurt and still willing to die to protect us.”
Whines, yips, and growls rumbled through the pack at her use of my alpha.
The wolves ceased reacting with fear and started using their brains.
Goddess bless her, my someday sister-in-law was making them think.
Floyd was dead, Ronan hadn’t automatically ascended to alpha, ergo, someone else was alpha.
I felt them staring holes into my bleeding back.
“You’re making a grave mistake,” the man said. “Siding with evil is wrong.”
“She isn’t the one threatening to fill them with silver,” Ronan said. He was behind me, so close I felt his breath on the back of my neck.
“If they back off, they won’t get hurt.”
“Heard that one before.” Bronwyn appeared to the left of me, a step behind and to the side. “Don’t believe it, folks. They’re going to take Betty and kill as many of you as they can. It’s how they do things.”
“Scorched-earth warfare,” Mason said from beside her. “It’s standard operating procedure.”
“Hartman.” The first sign of fear went through the spokesperson of the group. It was followed by thinly veiled disgust.
“This isn’t going to happen.” I took a step forward, holding the gaze of the man in front. “I won’t allow you to hurt a single strand of fur on their heads, do you understand?” The power in my voice escalated in accordance with my rage. “Not one godsdamn hair.”
Another rumble went through the pack, this one less angry but still confused. The wolves might not like the idea of being led by a demon-witch, but they weren’t going to hash it out here, when the enemy had silver in the guns pointed at their heads.
“A wolf pack led by a demon?” The Org man scoffed. “I don’t believe it.”
“Believe this: I’m not just a demon.” Ice water poured into my veins as I faced them down. “I’m their demon.”
He brought the gun up again, aimed it at the wolves.
My wolves.
Rip out their eyeballs and boil their brains.
Demon Betty had been right.
It really was easier the second time.