Chapter Twenty-One #2
Or rather, wanted to scream. Before the cry reached the backs of my teeth, my demon side was on it.
She strangled the sound back into me and flooded my body with numbness, leaving my brain awake.
As blood poured from my sides, the witch worked to stem the flow.
She pulled in the dust kicked up by the wolf and absorbed it, using the power to staunch the blood without a charm.
“Rrreowww!” Fennel flew out of the bush claws first, and went for Nameless’s mouth, ripping away the fleshy part of his cheek before prying open the wolf’s jaw with his front paws. He hacked and slashed while the wolf howled then landed at my feet, front paws soaked, and spat out the wolf’s tongue.
It had taken Fennel seconds to disable a fully shifted wolf.
We really should have taken him with us this morning, my demon side said.
Blood streamed down the wolf's muzzle. The sounds he made surpassed shrieks or howls—they were expressions of agony so visceral and intense I’d never heard anything like them.
Guess he didn’t have a demon side to hold back his pain.
I shoved the distracted, screeching wolf with everything I had—magic flowing through me, the demon holding me steady—and he slammed into the asphalt.
Cecil darted past Floyd and headed straight to Nameless clutching a flat hex bag like the one he’d put on my ankle earlier. He slapped it on the warbling wolf’s head and took off like a shot.
Somehow, I didn’t think he was worried about the wolf’s pain.
“Run,” I yelled.
Fennel and I bolted back to the room. Rory’s wolf—a smaller replica of her brother’s Mexican wolf—was two doors down, teeth ripping into Krane’s throat. At that distance, she was as safe as we’d be in the room.
We leapt over the threshold.
Boom!
The wet slap of blood and bone on asphalt had Fennel and me peering outside.
Nameless's head was gone, the hex bag spell confining the blood and gore to a small radius around his neck. Cecil had created an explosive hex with an ultra-contained blast zone. The gnome was a genius.
Rory’s wolf made a triumphant sound. Krane’s severed head was in her mouth.
“Don’t think your boys are going to heal from those injuries, Floyd,” I said, my voice threaded with witch and demon and whatever it was that made up the me that existed without them.
“Enough!” Floyd shifted to hybrid, his shoulders bursting the seams of his striped polo shirt. It had already been a size too small, which had made both his biceps and belly look twice their actual size.
I looked from Rory to him. She was strong, but there was no way she could win a battle against him. He was massive and cruel, and so afraid of losing that he’d terrorized his own children. She didn’t stand a chance.
His methods are brutal, yes, but the worst part is that he doesn’t actually need them to win. He likes the brutality.
“Drop it,” Floyd ordered Aurora, flooding his voice with his wolf.
Her mouth opened, and the head thunked onto the cement.
“Come.”
“You don’t have to obey him, Rory.”
Her wolf whimpered, lowered its belly to the ground, and shook. Her paws dug into the cement, claws breaking, as she inched in Floyd’s direction. She wasn’t trembling in fear—she was shaking with the effort of disobeying a direct command from her alpha leader.
Both of Floyd’s kids were powerhouses of determination. My someday sister-in-law’s heart was broken, but her will was not.
I wanted to step between them, to protect her, and if he moved to strike, I would.
But there could be no half measures. Floyd was strong, and he’d tear me apart with pleasure.
I couldn’t fight him—I was healing, but my injuries were severe, and even at full strength, I was no match for an alpha wolf.
I’d have one shot, and I couldn’t hesitate.
Hurry, Ronan.
He was coming. He had to be.
And yet, I couldn’t be sure. If he was in wolf form, he wouldn’t have his cell on him. He might be investigating some lead, far from anyone who could tell him how much I needed him.
Ida would’ve gotten my message, of course. The woman was like a teenager with her phone. Yet, she hadn’t yet shown up, either. And she’d known what I was up to, had even replied to both my texts with a “K.”
“Lie on your belly before your alpha, wolf,” Floyd commanded. “All the way down.”
Rory shook like a mobile home in an earthquake, but the command was too strong, and she went down.
“You die today,” I blurted, and instantly cursed myself. Taunting Floyd was a bad idea if I meant to wait for Ronan.
“One of us does,” he replied without breaking eye contact with Rory’s wolf.
“The difference is, if I die, the pack goes down with me.” His smile was cruel.
“It’s already started. The ones loyal to the traitor are dying.
The rest will get in line. They need a strong alpha leader, not some touchy-feely, weak fool. ”
Screw it. In for an inch, in for a mile.
“You mean an alpha strong enough to murder his daughter’s mother? That kind of strong alpha? Or the kind of strong alpha leader that ran with his tail tucked between his legs when another alpha threatened his territory? You sold your own kid so you wouldn’t have to fight. Because you’re weak.”
My phone buzzed in my back pocket, but I didn’t dare take my eyes off Floyd. I hoped it was Ronan telling me he was on his way.
“I’m a man who does what has to be done.”
“Were you a man when you dropped out of the mayoral race after I threatened you with blackmail?” I asked, hiding a grunt. My magic was holding back the majority of my pain, but I was badly hurt and a little seeped through.
“I was a good interim mayor for this town, and I would’ve been a good permanent one, too. And that was only the first step. I’d have run for governor eventually. You fucked up my plans.”
“If you hadn’t been an evil piece of shit, I wouldn’t have had the ammunition to get you to back out.
” I bit back another grunt. “I can’t wait for the other shifter groups to sift through all the stuff I have on you and your wolves.
You used silver on your own wolves and other shifters, allowed human poachers into your territory, and profited off the misery of your own kind.
If you think you were fucked before, lube up, boy, because it’s about to get a lot worse. ”
For a second, only one, his gaze flicked to me. “You got nothing on me. Not anymore.”
“If you believed that, you wouldn’t have come here with only two wolves. You saw what I did to the ones you sicced on me this morning. Coming here was an act of bravery, stupidity, or self-preservation, and we both know you aren’t stupid—or brave.”
He shook like a dog fresh out of a pool. “Nah, I don’t believe you. Why wouldn’t you use that kind of information if you had it?”
“Until recently, I didn’t have proof I dared to show you because I didn’t want to endanger my sources. But I don’t care anymore. Every alpha in the county is going to know you betrayed your own kind, you bastard.”
Sweat streaked down the sides of his face like tears. He shook again. “Do what you want. I’m the most powerful wolf in this county, and my alphas obey me. In the end, the betas will die, so will my traitor son, and so will you.”
Rory growled. Blood ran down her canines and puddled under her chin. Her muscles were taut, and she hadn’t stopped shivering. She was fighting with every drop of strength, and though she hadn’t gained much, if any, ground, she wasn’t losing it, either.
“Is this a challenge, daughter?” The way he said it, soft and almost caring, made it so much worse. “I’ll crush you. You’ll live beneath my heel until I can marry you off to another pack. The Riverside deal fell through, but there are others. I’ll find a use for you, yet.”
She grunted, continued to fight the compulsion in her father’s command.
A vein throbbed in his sweat-slicked temple.
It wasn’t as easy to control Rory as he was trying to make it look.
“Show throat.” He closed the distance between them in clomping thuds of his booted feet. Fists the size of grapefruits hung at his sides. “You won’t take me down and neither will your half-brother bastard. Neither of you have what it takes to run a pack. You aren’t ruthless enough.”
He was talking like he’d already won. Did he know something I didn’t? Fear broke through my numbness. Pain stabbed into my slowly healing sides.
“Ronan and Aurora don’t have to be ruthless. They have true power running through their veins.”
His head swiveled in my direction. “Where do you think they got it from?”
“Isn’t it obvious?” I shot him a gambler’s smile, willing him to believe I held a straight flush rather than deuces.
Fake it ‘till you make it, as Ida was fond of saying. “Which parent was willing to die to protect them? Huh? Which one abandoned them to their fates the second things got hard? Come on, Floyd, you know the answer. I mean, this isn’t the Sunday crossword here.”
He spun around, chest heaving, and stomped over to me. Ironically, I was less afraid now than I’d been when he was standing over Rory.
Boy, was that a mistake.
Floyd’s fat hand shot out. He’d telegraphed his move, but he was fast as hell, which meant I took the hit on my ear instead of my jaw, and it cleaned my clock.
Demonic apathy spread through me, numbing the pain of what I was certain was a cracked skull. Gods, was I grateful for my demon side tonight.
Never thought I’d be saying that, but here we were.
“I’m going to enjoy killing you.” Spittle flew from his lips, dotting the front of my shirt. “When I’m done, I’ll chop you up and leave parts of you all over this town for your lover. Every time he finds a finger or a toe, he’ll remember what happens to people who fuck with Alpha Pallás.”