Authors: Alianne Donnelly
I can’t stop staring. All this time I worried we’d be
kidnapping some frail fifteen-year-old girl out of the safety of her home.
Nothing could be further from the truth. Helena might be young, but she’s old enough
to have grown into a woman. There’s no frailty or innocence in her. She’s
strong, a fighter by the looks of her—and a damn good one by the looks of
everyone else.
She’s also Wolfen. I can tell by the way she howls, the
wild, feral gleam in her eyes. She’s not like the females back in Haven at all.
This one’s full of life and a boundless energy that makes my heart pump faster.
I bump my hand against Bryce’s, wordlessly asking for some sort of explanation,
a plan.
“Who’s next?” Helena shouts in challenge, eagerly
scanning the crowd for an opponent.
Everyone around her looks down, hand over their eyes.
We can’t leave Aiden with Klaus—that I know.
But we can’t trade this girl for him, either.
“Look down!” Dave whispers next to me.
I can’t stop staring.
She feels it. With her back to me, she stops, turns
around, and meets my gaze, head on. Her smile turns savage. She raises a long
dagger and points the tip straight at me. “Challenge met,” she says, and what
happens next makes me reconsider the whole hostage trading conundrum.
~
Two guards grabbed Sinna’s arms and shoved her toward the
ring.
“Wait, what?”
The crowd cheered, hungry for another fight, and within
seconds, Sinna was enclosed in a crush of bodies all taking bets on who would win.
Sinna looked for Bryce, but there was no sign of him. Too many people around.
They lunged inward, egging her on as Helena circled her, sizing her up.
The blonde was taller by a good few inches, powerfully
built, light on her feet, with a bloodthirsty look in her eyes as if she
couldn’t wait to get her hands on Sinna.
But wait she did. Because Sinna was unarmed.
“Your name,” Helena demanded.
“Sinna,” she replied.
Helena tilted her head. “Your real name.”
Sinna frowned. “Sinna,” she repeated. “Look, I don’t want to
fight you.”
Helena shrugged. “Sinna it is.” She tossed a dagger to the
ground at Sinna’s feet, then backed up to the very edge of the human circle,
giving Sinna a chance to take it. Men closest to Helena patted and shoved at
her in rough support, offering advice she paid no attention to. Her entire
focus was heavily on Sinna.
Sinna waited, strained her ears for Bryce, somewhere out
there. He’d get her out of this, of course.
When she finally caught sight of him, he was standing next
to Matron on a raised platform—the better to see the action. His jaw twitched,
and his hands were clenched into fists down by his sides, but he didn’t say a
word. When he met eyes with Sinna and gave a curt nod, she knew she was on her
own.
Betrayal stabbed through her, but she quickly shoved it
aside. Bryce wouldn’t let her do this if he didn’t think she could. He had to
have a reason.
“Come on, girl!” Helena snapped. “Your stalling is making me
snippy.”
Sinna drew in a deep breath. She could do this. Bryce had
taught her. With an eye on strategy, she surveyed the crowd. All Helena’s
supporters. Whether or not the warrior woman chose to fight fair, Sinna
couldn’t trust the rest of them.
Stay away from the humans.
Check. She licked her
lips, and reached for the dagger.
Helena charged, kicking out to catch her off guard, but
Sinna had expected some sort of trick, and she fell back, rolling into a
crouch. The circle shifted, giving her room to get up, but Sinna didn’t.
Instead, she waited for the dust to settle while she scanned the ground for the
dagger. It lay across from her, behind Helena.
“Good reflexes,” Helena said. She beckoned Sinna up and
turned her back.
It was an invitation to disaster. Sinna didn’t charge, but
slowly pushed to her feet and glanced around the circle again. At least half of
the people stomping their feet, chanting “
Hell! Hell!
” were armed,
including those to Sinna’s left. She reached around and grabbed hold of one’s
sword hilt.
Bad idea. The sword was too long, too heavy for her to
wield, and she almost dropped it trying to turn around. When Helena charged,
metal struck metal, and Sinna lost her grip under the force of it. She dropped
the sword and ducked right, rolling across the circle back to the dagger. It
had a curved blade along the handle like a deadly knuckle guard. It screamed
reverse grip, so she used that.
When Helena came at her again, Sinna blocked easily. She
stepped into her opponent, slammed her shoulder into Helena’s chest, but it was
like colliding with a wall. The woman didn’t even stumble. Instead, she caught
Sinna by the waist and hoisted her up, squeezing so hard, Sinna couldn’t
breathe. Flailing did no good, so Sinna tucked her chin in, then snapped her
head back. No aim, very little force, but she got lucky, and Helena dropped
her. While she was on the ground, Sinna swept a hard kick at the back of
Helena’s knees, sending her down.
With a vicious snarl, Helena got up, eyes feral, glowing
with reflected firelight.
Sinna scrambled up, retreating as fast as she could, but the
living circle of human flesh shoved her forward again, right into Helena. Sinna
swiped with her blade. Helena deflected. She punched out. Helena slapped her
hand away like a meddlesome fly, and then caught her throat, lifting her up off
her feet. Sinna slashed at Helena’s arm, a shallow nick, but it infuriated
Helena beyond reason. She howled and let go, then threw her entire weight
behind a backhand strike, so hard, something popped in Sinna’s neck. Pain
exploded at the base of her skull. She didn’t feel her impact with the ground.
With no sensation in or control over her limbs, she stayed down, paralyzed by
more than fear. The base of her skull was a firestorm of agony, but below
that…nothing.
Sinna moaned softly, tears stinging her eyes. She couldn’t
move. On her front, face half in the sand, she couldn’t even turn over.
Help,
someone…
The crowd cheered. Fight over. Helena won, and no one
questioned how, or why Sinna wasn’t getting back up again. No one saw her eyes
were still open, watering and pleading for aid.
Helena ignored the accolades. She wasn’t finished yet.
Snarling, she paced back and forth in front of Sinna until she dropped to one
knee before her, curled her fingers into Sinna’s hair, and mercilessly lifted
her head up. “I was going to let you walk away,” she said, “but you just had to
draw blood.”
Sinna recognized the glowing sheen in her dark, blue-green
eyes. It was the same one Bryce got when he was close to losing control. With
the others exchanging payments and celebrating Helena’s victory, no one noticed
the firelight reflecting off of Helena’s raised blade.
Sinna’s body began to tingle, sensation returning to her
limbs by slow degrees. Wolfen regenerative abilities had kicked in, working to
make her whole again. But not fast enough. As Helena’s blade began to descend,
Sinna closed her eyes and thought of sunshine.
Then the ground beneath her shuddered with the force of a
deafening roar. People screamed and ran as something huge landed not far from
her, and in an instant, Helena was gone. Sinna’s head fell back to the sand.
She coughed dust out of her lungs, twitched her fingers, wriggled her toes,
trying hard to ignore the sounds of fighting all around her. Heart in her
throat, she pulled her hands in and pushed herself up. She raised her head in
slow degrees, terrified of what she’d see.
And then she saw it, and came to understand why Aiden had
warned her about Bryce.
The creature standing between her and an unconscious Helena
was no longer human. His back was massive, bigger than it ought to have been,
thick arms rippling with muscle, legs even more so. He balanced on the balls of
his feet as if they were paws, hunched like a nightmarish werewolf of legend.
His fingers were tipped with long black claws, furled and tense as if he was
barely restraining himself. Each breath he took was a rumbling growl and,
although he wasn’t looking at her, Sinna sensed he was acutely aware of
everything around him. He knew when she sat back on her heels; his head raised
a little, ribcage expanding in a massive inhale. He stiffened when crossbowmen
surrounded him, but instead of lashing out, he backed toward Sinna to stand
guard over her, relinquishing Helena without a fight.
“Bryce,” she whispered, barely a sound, and not one she’d
intended to make.
He wheeled on her with a vicious snarl, and she gasped,
scrambling away a few inches before she stopped herself. The familiar, scarred
face of her companion was gone. In its place was a true monster with a
flattened nose and a slightly protruding muzzle. His canines were three times
their normal size and his eyes were all gold, no green. There was no
comprehension or recognition in them. He didn’t see her, Sinna, only a moving,
breathing target too close to him.
“Please.” She kept her voice low as she slowly climbed to
her unsteady feet.
He snapped, and she flinched.
“It’s me!” But her courage didn’t extend beyond that plea,
and she backed away from him. “It’s Sinna, remember?”
Bryce stalked her retreat.
“You don’t want to hurt me. I’m pack.”
His nose wrinkled as he snarled again. If she moved too
fast, spoke too loudly, he’d tear her apart. His entire body shook with tension
and he never blinked, even when he snapped at the soldiers they were
approaching.
Men and women armed with lethal weapons retreated to a safer
distance.
Sinna’s back hit the wall. “Bryce, it’s me,” she said.
He crowded her until she couldn’t move, hooked claws digging
into logs to either side of her. When he raked them down, thick curls of wood
peeled away beneath them.
“Please,” she whispered. “Please, remember.”
His beastly head lowered, and hot air puffed against her
temple and ear. He sucked in air like a huge bellows, then blew it out on a
growl.
In.
Sinna whimpered, squeezing her eyes shut.
Out.
She clutched the steady support at her back.
In. Out.
Breaths, not growls.
Again, and the breaths softened.
On the fourth inhale, the small distance between them grew,
and he sighed her name.
“Bryce?”
His head briefly rested on her shoulder, before he fell to
his knees.
Sinna opened her eyes. “Bryce!”
His arms wrapped around her legs. He was shaking, unsteady.
Before her eyes his body changed, shrinking from monstrous proportions, back to
normal human size. With his face buried against her stomach, Sinna couldn’t see
his eyes change color. She didn’t see the fangs recede, or his nose take on its
normal shape, but she felt the cracks and snaps as his bones rearranged. His
breath hitched. He was in pain.
Sinna put her arms around him, not knowing what else to do.
“It’s okay. You didn’t hurt me,” she said, over and over, but aside from
clutching her tighter, he didn’t acknowledge the litany at all.
On some wordless command, the crossbowmen put their weapons
down. Silence fell, with too many humans holding their breath, waiting for the
monster to rear his head again.
And into that auspicious void, Helena made her presence
known. “Well, isn’t that just the syrup on top of my pancakes.”
The patient continues to be unresponsive to external stimuli.
As best I can tell, his breathing is unobstructed and his heartbeat is steady.
The wound has stopped bleeding, but his irises are still uneven.
Diagnosis: Coma.
Prognosis: Unless Dare wakes up or I can figure out how
to feed him through a tube, he’s not going to last the week.
~
Desiree stayed in the lab after Klaus made his exit. With
everything that needed doing around Dare, she didn’t have many opportunities to
sit down, much less stroll about. It was tiring work, but it kept her busy and
her mind from other things.
Like the hole in Haven’s defenses.
Or the supplies Arik was hopefully gathering for their great
escape.
Or the Wolfen she was scheduled to torture again once she
was done here.
Around noon, when Desiree started to feel the familiar pinch
of agonizing back pain, Cassandra flounced into her lab as if she owned it,
pretty blonde hair disheveled, sleeves rolled up and blouse still wet from
washing. She hurried straight to Dare’s side and leaned over him to caress his
face, ample bosoms pressing against his chest until he started wheezing.
“Please, come in. Make yourself at home,” Desiree said, in
no mood to be cordial. Cassandra shouldn’t be pressing on Dare’s chest so hard;
he had no conscious control of his diaphragm and couldn’t adjust his breathing
to compensate. But then, knowing Dare, Desiree doubted he would mind. If she
remembered correctly, Cassandra was a regular on his weekly ‘bang ‘em and mash
‘em,’ in-and-out tour.
The woman ignored her. “Dare, honey, wake up. It’s Cass. Can
you hear me?”
Desiree rolled her eyes, and busied herself cleaning up the
soiled linens and gauze. Such concern for his welfare. Where had she been hours
ago, when he’d been brought in?
“Come on, baby, open your eyes.”
“He’s in a coma,” Desiree said. “It’s not like he can follow
orders. What do you want?”
Cassandra straightened, anxious expression cooling when she
turned on Desiree. “I came to make sure you don’t try to do anything
humane
,
like put him out of his misery, the way you did with Eroll last winter.”
Yeah, because it was always fun to look a dying man in the
eye and tell him there was nothing more she could do for him. Eroll had caught
pneumonia. His lungs had filled with so much fluid, he’d been drowning on dry
land. He’d begged Desiree to help him. And then, later, he’d begged her to help
him die.
But Cassandra didn’t know that. Why would she? Neither she,
nor anyone else ever bothered to ask about Desiree’s patients. People saw them
go in, and they prayed to whatever god they worshiped that the person would
walk back out on their own. Often, they didn’t. And somehow, it always ended up
being Desiree’s fault.
She scoffed and shook her head, so damned tired of this
bullshit. Turning to toss the dirty linens into a wash bin, she muttered, “You
stupid, ignorant bitch.”
“What did you say to me?”
“I said he’s in a coma,” she replied over her shoulder. “Did
you not hear me? For all intents and purposes, your precious Dare is
brain-dead. He can’t answer you. He can’t open his eyes. He can’t even control his
bowels. You think he wants to live like that, to need someone to wipe his ass
for him?”
Cassandra sneered. “You’d just love to make that decision
for him, wouldn’t you?”
Desiree turned too fast, and her prosthesis twisted with a
loud creak. She bit back a wince. “You want to play guardian angel? Fine. Then
you
take him.
You
watch over him and make sure he keeps breathing. And while
you’re doing that, you can also figure out how to feed him so he doesn’t choke,
since he can’t swallow food on his own!” She hobbled to the door and shoved it
open. “You four,” she barked at the guards posted to keep an eye on her. “Get
in here.”
They followed her into the lab, where Cassandra still
seethed. “What’s going on?” one asked.
“Cassandra just volunteered to take over Dare’s care. You’ll
be moving him to her house.”
“Cass?”
Panic flashed over Cassandra’s features; she was wholly
ill-equipped to handle the chore. But as stubborn as she was, she pulled back her
shoulders, puffed out her chest, and speared Desiree with a venomous look.
“It’s all right. Go ahead and take him there. I’ll make sure he pulls through.
And
when
he wakes up and tells everyone you were the one who attacked
him, I’ll make sure to act really surprised.”
By the time they’d moved him out, Desiree was back on her
crutch like an evil hag, and Frank himself was on guard duty at her door.
“Where’s Arik?” she demanded.
“He’s been removed from your detail until the investigation
is finished.”
Desiree frowned with apprehension. “Why?”
“I have my reasons.”
She sighed. “Haven’t we already gone over this? I told you
everything I knew.”
“We have.”
“So?”
“I wasn’t satisfied.”
“You still think I tried to kill Dare?”
“Did you?”
“If I did, rest assured he’d be dead now, and it sure as
hell wouldn’t be from a blow to the head.”
Frank glanced around the lab. “No, I don’t suppose that’d be
your style.”
Desiree huffed. “Look, either make yourself useful, or stand
outside. I don’t have time for this.”
“You don’t seem overly concerned for someone being accused
of attempted murder.”
“There aren’t that many possible outcomes to this scenario,”
she told him. “Either I’m innocent—in which case, I have nothing to be
concerned about—or I’m guilty, in which case you’ll need to prove it, present
it before Klaus, and let him decide whether Dare’s life is more valuable than
mine. I doubt he’ll rule against me.” Life was a bitch that way.
Frank smiled—not a friendly expression, at all. His
ridiculously white teeth were too bright, too predatory against his dark
chocolate complexion. This was when he was at his most dangerous. “All right.
Have it your way. But I wouldn’t be getting comfortable yet if I were you. If
there’s one thing I know about the boss, it’s that no one ever gets a free pass
with him.” And he left the lab to stand guard outside.
Desiree lowered herself into a seat and sighed. Frank was
right. Which was why she needed to talk to Arik.
But he didn’t show, and as the afternoon wore on, Frank
returned to tell her everyone had been invited to the common hall for
supper—meaning, be there, or else.
Shit.
As the cherry on top of that delightful sundae, Frank and
the rest of the guards were called away at sunset, leaving Desiree to hobble
across the market square on her own. By the time she got to the hall, everyone
was already seated around long tables laden with food and drink—a veritable
definition of garish excess. News about Dare and Cassandra had spread quickly,
and people cast Desiree dirty looks as she passed. Conversations stopped, and
then resumed in humming whispers once her back was turned. More than one person
shifted to take up extra space on the benches so she couldn’t sit there. As if
she’d want to, anyway.
Desiree inched toward the front-most table reserved for
Klaus and his own, under the watchful eye of Frank seated on Klaus’ left
tonight. She sat down on the very edge of the bench, far away from Klaus, and
waited for the worst of her back pain to recede before she reached for a
pitcher of mead.
Arik snatched it up first, and nudged her to move over as he
poured himself a cup. “Great party,” he said.
“Yeah,” Desiree agreed, watching all of Haven’s population
stare at her like a leper among them. “It’ll be talked about for years to
come.”
Arik hummed in sarcastic agreement.
“Where were you earlier?”
“Frank had me combing the baths for signs of a breach.”
“And did you find any?”
“Fucking hole big enough to drive a truck through,” he
answered into his cup.
“Shit,” she breathed. Not good. Very not good.
“Yeah, it gets better. Notice anything missing?”
“More like any
one
,” she replied, voice low and her
gaze away from Frank. Half the gunmen from his group weren’t in attendance, a
curiosity disguised by the steady traffic of circling wenches.
“Klaus sent out a recon unit,” Arik said.
Desiree turned to him in surprise. Haven had been on
lockdown since the last convert raid. They didn’t want to draw more attention
to the compound. No one—absolutely no one—was allowed out after dark. “They
went
now
?”
Arik nodded.
“To where?”
He shrugged. “Beats me. I wasn’t invited.”
Desiree frowned. Arik was one of Klaus’ best trackers. He
should have been heading that unit, and giving orders. “What’s going on?”
Arik raised his cup to his mouth again, but didn’t drink.
“If I had to guess, I wouldn’t.”
Desiree licked her lips in a nervous twitch and reached for
the pitcher to pour herself as much mead as her cup could hold.
Bailey, one of Frank’s younger runners, jogged to a hard
stop right inside the hall. He looked around, then ducked his head and made his
way around the hall to say something to Frank.
“Did you get your end of things squared away?” Arik said,
drawing her attention back to him.
Desiree gave a cautious nod.
Her supplies were ready to be grabbed in a hurry, tucked away
in her lab. But every time she’d glanced at it today, one question kept popping
into her head. “Why did you tell Klaus I was separating the fluids?”
Arik winced. “I crossed paths with him, and he wanted to
know why I wasn’t guarding the lab. I panicked. Didn’t know what else to say,
so I told him you needed room to work on it, and that Dare was keeping watch.”
Bailey brushed past her on his way back out, and Desiree
frowned at his hasty exit. “Seems like a great way to throw someone to the
wolves. What if he’d wanted to check for himself?” she asked, keeping up the
thread of conversation.
“He did,” Arik said. “I distracted him with something else.”
The hairs on the back of her neck prickled, making her
shiver, and she turned to look at Frank again.
He was watching her in return. When their gazes met, he
toasted her with his cup, smiling just a little.
Desiree swallowed hard. “I don’t believe you. That’s not
something Klaus would just forget about.”
“He might have, if what I told him was more important.”
Frank was talking to three of his men, giving quiet orders
of some sort. None of them looked Desiree’s way again, but something about that
little huddle put her on edge. “What was more important than the Wolfen?” she
asked Arik.
Her potential accomplice faced forward again without
answering. “Just do what you always do, and be ready. When the time comes,
you’ll know.”
At the other end of their bench, Klaus pushed his throne
back and stood, raising his hands for silence. Not everyone saw him, but
everyone heard his guards drumming their blades on the tables. The hall
quieted, and Desiree counted: one… two… three… Klaus started every one of his
speeches this way. Just like his role model, Adolf Hitler, Klaus was a stellar
orator and always began with complete silence, making sure he had the attention
of every last man, woman, and child, before he wasted precious breath speaking
to them.
“We have a traitor in our midst.”
Gasps and a shocked buzz of conversation met the
announcement, and Desiree felt the world shift beneath her feet.
Klaus stopped speaking until everyone had shut up. “Our
perimeter has been breached, und one of our own has been attacked in cold
blood!” For all of his passionate delivery, his accent was tightly controlled, belying
his outrage. He didn’t give a shit about Dare; couldn’t care less about a
perimeter breach, when he had a small army to make sure his ass stayed safe.
No, this was a carefully orchestrated farce, one whose ending Desiree feared
she knew.
“You son of a bitch,” she whispered to Arik, but couldn’t
tear her gaze away from Klaus.
“There is one among us who has shown no regard for our
rules. One who thinks exceptions will be made. One whose small rebellions have
escalated to proportions we will no longer ignore!”
Desiree turned to Arik, expecting him to gloat, but he, too,
stared at Klaus, frowning. “What the shit?”
Frank motioned to Bailey by the door, and the runner entered
with the pimply-faced Nick and a stuffed pack. They brought it forward and
emptied its contents onto Klaus’ table. One by one, guns fell out, along with
ammunition, knives, plastic packages of chemicals, meats, cheeses, bread… A
proper bug-out bag that would have kept someone alive for one hell of a long
time.
Klaus looked it over, and shook his head in sorrow. “And if
all that was not enough, this person planned the ultimate betrayal: to steal
from us und leave Haven for good.”
“Tell me that’s not yours,” Arik said in a harsh whisper.
“Where the hell would I have gotten any of that?” she
snapped. “Is it yours?”
Arik’s eye twitched, and he swore, subtly shaking his head.
Havenites leapt to their feet, shouting for justice,
demanding to know who the traitor was, while Klaus’ guards vaulted the table to
take a stand around him. The rest of the gunmen stood away from the table,
slowly preparing to strike. Frank pushed to his feet, winking at Desiree.
“It pains me that these crimes could be perpetrated by
someone so close to me,” Klaus said. “By my own flesh und blood.”
“Whuh…?”
There was a guard at her back; she hadn’t even seen him move
into position. He grabbed her arm, yanked her out, and Desiree screamed in pain
as her prosthesis caught on the bench and tore across her thigh. “Are you
kidding me?” she cried. “What is wrong with you?”