Authors: Alianne Donnelly
My eyes are broken. They don’t work right. I try to open
them, but they won’t, and when they do, nothing makes sense. Light flashes so
bright, I can’t stand to look at it. Everything tilts and swirls—things I know
should stand still are floating in the air, warped around each other like chips
of a fun house mirror.
I’m flying.
I fall. But I never hit the bottom.
The kaleidoscope of entropy flings me around by the tail,
and I can’t make myself stand still.
My flesh burns. Liquid fire sears my veins from the
inside. But my skin is freezing. I feel my teeth chatter, and clench them so
hard it hurts. The broken sobs are mine. I know that. But they seem so far
away, as if I’m not me anymore, as if I’m outside of myself, listening to my
body writhe in agony. Claws rip into my leg, deep enough to scrape bone. The
convert leader is gnawing at me, licking into my wound, and his drool is pure
acid.
I thrash, desperate to throw him off. I can’t move, can’t
breathe. I’m dying, but not without a fight. I scream to hear my own voice, to
convince myself it’s not over yet, that I still have breath left in my body.
That the thing attached to my leg is not a demon, and the heat cooking me alive
is not hellfire. I scream as loud as I can, a feat worthy of shattered
chandeliers.
The hoarse groan that makes it past my dry, bleeding lips
is beyond pathetic.
“Please,” I gasp, “please…”
The convert’s fangs sink deeper.
The agony steals my breath away. I flail my arms, try to
drag myself away. Can’t focus. Don’t know where I am. There’s desert, a long
stretch of pristine roadway snaking into eternity, and in the next instant, I’m
in a lab with electric lights and polished metal instruments. I twist to my
side, and the edge of a gurney is right there. Beyond it, an impossible drop.
Two feet—no, two hundred. It’ll kill me either way.
Better a fall, than a monster.
Restraints snap like whips onto my wrists, dragging me
back down. “Dez, stop!”
I can’t. I don’t know how. I arch so far up, my weight
rests on the crown of my head, and I can feel the breaking point. Just a little
farther, and it’ll be all over. I reach for it, but I’m denied. A massive
weight across my chest flattens me down. I’m held immobile until I’m too tired
to fight anymore. I lie still and keep time by the beat of my heart. It pumps
so fast at first, and then slows… slows… I breathe, because I remember I
should, not because I need air. My vision goes dark, and I let myself sink into
the soft embrace of a half-sleep.
I don’t feel pain anymore. I float euphoric in a black
sea of numbness for so long, it feels eternal, and I think,
I can almost
take this.
After a lifetime of torment, if this endless, limitless nothing
is my Beyond, I’ll be all right. I’m relieved. Grateful.
Nothing
can’t
hurt me.
The tickle, when it starts, is easy to ignore. But then
it grows, multiplies, and soon my leg is crawling as if hundreds of maggots are
eating me alive. No…
No! I can’t take this.
Not this! “Kill me!” I
scream, but the darkness devours my words, steals them from my lips. I can’t
fight what I can’t see, but I try anyway, kicking out, thrashing against the
convert holding me captive, and all the while those maggots writhe in my wound,
burrowing into me, taking me apart, little by little.
“Stop…stop… Penny get in here!”
Voices jumble together; they make no sense. I feel a
prick in my neck, and almost immediately, my arms fall useless at my sides,
weak and rubbery, and so very heavy. I pry my eyelids open one more time, force
myself to focus long enough to loll my head to the side so I can see.
The convert pinning me in place lets go, but thick bands
of metal remain where his claws used to be. I watch him back away, slip into
shadows, and as he does, his face transforms into one I know all too well. Not
a convert anymore. Still, just another monster. One with blond hair and
piercing eyes that glow out of the darkness, ready to pounce.
It’s easy to be brave during the good times. To dare the
devil when he’s nowhere to be seen. The truest test of strength comes when
you’ve been beaten down so deep, you can’t see the surface anymore. When your
heart struggles to keep up its beat, and your soul feels so light it could
float away on a breeze. When you reach out for help, and all you see is a
reflection of yourself. It’s not how you fall that writes the stories people
will tell about you. It’s how you choose to get back up—whether you choose to
get back up.
“Kill me,” I plead. “Kill me. Kill me…”
When my eyes go blind and my ears turn deaf, I know he
already did.
The evil of war is not that it destroys lives, but that
it paints the world black and white. Friend or enemy, good or bad, life or
death. The iron curtain of fear shutters our minds, removing degrees of
variance that would otherwise allow us to see shades of gray. We cast stones,
not caring whether the target is holding a rifle or a crutch. We cast them, not
realizing our blow might be the one to finally shatter them.
~
Aiden sank down onto a spindly chair, feeling a thousand
years old. Penny was just finishing up applying a loose gauze dressing over the
three dozen maggots she’d packed into Desiree’s open wound. She was quiet and
efficient, focused on her task, but her gaze kept shifting over to Aiden.
She wasn’t the only one.
When he’d heard Desiree’s screams from clear across the
compound to the dining hall, he hadn’t thought, he’d simply reacted, leaving
Graham and a half-dozen others gaping after him. Now his second-in-command
stood in the doorway on the safe side of the threshold, eyeing Aiden the way he
always eyed Bryce when his brother was close to wolfing out.
Aiden braced his elbows on his knees, and rubbed his face
tiredly. “Bottom-line it for me.”
Penny tossed her instruments onto a tray, then washed her
hands in the sink. “I cleaned it as best I could,” she said, her back to him.
“My wormy friends should take care of the rest, and the meds I pushed should
help break the fever. If it works, we’ll see signs of recovery fairly quick.
Maybe even tomorrow.”
“And if it doesn’t?”
Penny shut off the water, grabbed a towel, and leaned back
against the sink. “She’s not like us.”
“Meaning what?”
The healer exchanged a look with Graham.
“Don’t look at him, answer me.”
“You already know the answer,” she said, more gently than
he’d ever heard her speak. “You know how far gone she is; we can all smell it.
If the fever doesn’t break soon, she could go into a coma or suffer permanent
brain damage. If it screws with her heart or lungs…there’s nothing more I can
do.”
Aiden rejected the possibility outright. “She’ll pull
through. She’s too strong to give up.”
“Didn’t sound like it when she was begging you to kill her,”
Graham said.
Aiden tensed, and Graham raised his hands in surrender.
“Just saying.”
“Don’t. Ever.”
“We’ve got bigger issues to deal with right now,
Alpha
.
Stuff you’re going to want to know. Like now.”
“Then why are you stalling?”
Another look passed between Graham and Penny. “You want to
do this here? Fine. Don’t move.”
Not planning on it.
Penny said nothing when Graham left, and the silence,
punctuated by Desiree’s ragged breaths, clawed at Aiden’s sanity. Grasping for
something—anything—to distract him, he scrutinized Penny up and down. “So.
Speaking of who’s smelling who on who—”
“
Whom.
”
Aiden ignored that. Penny couldn’t help herself. “You and
Bear, huh?”
She ducked her head, smiling a little. Happiness radiated from
her like sunshine, and for the smallest instant, Aiden felt his own lips
twitch. Bear was about the least likely candidate he’d have expected Penny to
choose as her mate.
“When did that happen?” he asked.
“A few days after you left.”
Aiden whistled. “Didn’t even wait for the sheets to cool.”
She flushed. “It’s not like that.”
Of course it wasn’t. At almost eight feet tall and built
like a Sherman tank, Bear took some getting used to. But he had a huge heart
and a tendency to wear it on his sleeve. If someone was sad, he kept them
company; if they were hurt, he tried to make it better; if they needed help, he
volunteered first for the job. You just couldn’t help loving the guy. Guess
it’d taken Penny a while to pull her nose out of her books long enough to
notice.
If he’d known about this a week ago, he’d have teased the
ever-living hell out of her. She’d had
the Alpha
giving her the goods
every day for a month before he and Bryce left on their supply run. Aiden
didn’t like to brag, but females good as lined up for his attentions for a
reason—and was it bragging if it was true?
But that was the great thing about Penny. She didn’t put up
with bullshit. What they’d had was fun, and that’s all it had been. Aiden had
never promised her anything, and she’d never asked. She knew better. “I’m
glad,” he said, and he meant it. “Someone needs to keep Bear out of trouble.”
Penny rolled her eyes. “You have no idea.”
Aiden was still chuckling over that when Graham returned,
carrying rolled up maps. “Yuck it up, buddy. You won’t be laughing for long.”
He yanked the curtain partition aside, and spread out the maps on another
gurney.
“I’ll leave you two to talk,” Penny said, making her quiet
exit.
Aiden picked himself up, absently squeezing Desiree’s calf
as he passed. Her fever raged through the layers of her pants and blanket, and
his gut twisted tighter.
“What have you got?”
“You first,” Graham countered. “What happened to Bryce?”
Aiden caught him up on the past few weeks—the run into San
Francisco; Sinna and her latent transition; all the way to Haven, where they’d
all split up. As he spoke, Graham traced their route on the map, marking sites
with the code they all used. A circle for safe areas, an X for convert
territory. The map he’d laid out was clean, probably the last original they
had, and Aiden wondered why Graham would feel so cavalier about wasting it, but
he let it go for the time being. “Bryce should have headed back here when he
left with Sinna.”
“Yeah, well, looks like he didn’t.”
Aiden nodded. “Which means he went south, back to Gilroy.”
No other place he would’ve gone. Bryce didn’t wander. “Stupid son of a bitch.”
He’d gone to get the girl Klaus wanted to trade for Aiden.
“No,” Graham said distractedly.
“
No?
”
Graham swore, flipped a wall switch to turn on the X-ray
backlight, aligned their current map with the one underneath it, and held both
up to the panel.
“What the fuck?” Aiden flattened out the curling edges to
see better, but couldn’t make any sense of it. The bottom map was covered with
Xs and Os; a sixteen-year compilation of travel he and Bryce, and the human
mercenaries before them, had done. Between them, they had a damned good idea of
where the loot was worth risking a hive and places they were better off driving
around—far around. He thought he knew that map by heart. But now there were
arrows all over it, looking too much like migration patterns for Aiden’s peace
of mind.
“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you.”
“Is this what I think it is?”
Graham nodded. “A few of us have been going out to recon the
area—”
“Without my permission?”
Graham growled. “We can’t all just sit here while you and
Bryce go out exploring. Most of us are getting pretty sick and tired of hiding.
We. Want. Out. So, yeah. You were gone, I made a decision. And it’s a damn good
thing I did.”
It was the first time Graham had ever overruled Aiden’s
mandate, and he’d done it without remorse. The way he stared Aiden down, the
male was two seconds away from challenging him outright.
Aiden had half a mind to remind him who the alpha was. He
checked himself only because Graham dropped his gaze in submission.
Instead of apologizing, Graham turned back to the map. “All
of these arrows indicate movement,” he explained. “And there’s been a lot of it
lately. They’re shifting around like something’s calling them, and they’re all
gathering right here.” He smoothed a hand over a thick band of territory
bisecting the former United States into North and South.
It ran right through Haven.
Aiden’s skin crawled with the implications.
“Right here is where you split up?”
Aiden nodded. “Haven got wiped off the map in a hurry.”
“How many converts?”
“Hundreds at least.”
“They must have been gathering for a while.”
Planning. A tactical, logical decision. Made by supposedly
unthinking beasts. But then, they weren’t really, were they? Not anymore.
“Bryce didn’t go after the girl,” Graham said. “He went
south, because he
couldn’t
go north.”
“He still would have tried.” And might have succeeded… “But
not with Sinna.” Bryce wouldn’t have risked her. Aiden let out a string of foul
curses, stopping short of punching a hole through the X-ray’s backlit panel.
“What are the odds the humans developed a kill serum?” he asked. That was why
Klaus had wanted the girl, after all. Someone besides the Nazi fuck must have
known about it. They could have continued Klaus’ work in Gilroy. It was a long
shot, but better than nothing. If they had the means to wipe out converts,
Bryce would take it in a heartbeat to keep Sinna safe.
“Zero point fuck all,” Graham said.
“They could have—”
“No, they couldn’t. You know how I know? Because
we
did. Ask me why we’re not using it to wipe the fuckers off the face of the
Earth.”
“Tell me.”
“Two words: shared DNA. For any toxin to have a chance in
hell of killing converts, it has to be potent enough to kill all of their
genetic parts. They’re too strong to go down for anything less than that. Which
means, it’ll be toxic to us, to humans, and any animal that got used in the mom
and pop smoothie.”
“I’m guessing you used a gas.”
“Had to. Anything else is too slow to infect, en masse.
Maybe if we’d figured it out sooner, we might have stood a chance. But now, as
many converts as there are, grouping together, we’d need tons of this shit to
take them out. And once it hits the atmosphere…”
“Game over for all life on Earth.” It’d get into air
currents and storm clouds, rain down into rivers and lakes, and it would cross
oceans in a matter of days. Any human settlements left on Earth would never
know what hit them.
Well, there goes that plan.
“What’d you do with it?”
“The techs isolated a small sample for storage, just in
case. The rest was neutralized and disposed of.”
“Good.” Last thing they needed was some curious pups playing
where they shouldn’t, and getting themselves killed.
“Looks like we’re back to square one, and it’s gotten
awfully crowded in the meantime. So what do you want to do?”
Aiden stared at the map, a subtle throbbing pressure taking
hold at the base of his skull. Graham had done the legwork, but it was still
Aiden’s call. The pack would expect him to make it. If converts were gathering,
there had to be a reason.
“Aiden?”
Humans had underestimated the threat of converts once and it
had destroyed them. Aiden wouldn’t repeat their mistake. This could be a
blessing in disguise. If they were all in one place, it might be possible to
take them out. They might outnumber Wolfen five to one, but Aiden would take
those odds any day.
“Aiden.”
“Call the dogs,” he said, hating the bitter taste the order
left on his tongue.
Graham turned ashen. “What did you say?”
Aiden faced him. If he couldn’t look Graham in the eye when
he said it, he had no right to say it at all. “Call them,” he repeated.
“The dogs? Aleissi’s battle dogs? The people who killed to
entertain him?
Those
dogs?”
“Yes.” The fighters. Those who hadn’t just killed, but had
done it most efficiently. Trained soldiers and assassins who, to this day,
didn’t trust themselves around others of the pack when their tempers flared.
There was a holding unit set up in the basement to contain Wolfen who got wound
up to a hair trigger, and they’d built it themselves, knowing a cage was
sometimes the only thing that could keep the nightmares from lashing outward.
“All of them.” He considered that, and amended, “And anyone else with a three
or four in their designation.” If Desiree was right about the factors, those
would be his best choices. He wouldn’t risk anyone higher than a five.
“Why?” Graham growled, hackles lifting with aggression.
“Because right now, they might be our only chance of
striking a solid blow.”
It took a while to get everyone in one place. Graham knew if
he stood on a podium and started calling names, panic would ensue. Instead, he
talked to each one privately and let them know what was going on. Still, it
wasn’t Graham’s job to call anyone to arms—it was Aiden’s.
After most of the others had turned in for the night, Aiden
found the dogs in the dining hall, throwing back mugs of whiskey amid a low hum
of subdued conversation. All of it stopped the moment he entered. Mugs were set
down, heads turned to him. Wary, but trusting. Four dozen men and women, and he
knew each and every one of them.
“You know why we’re here and what I’m going to ask of you,”
he said. “You know I’d never do it unless I had a damn good reason. Shit’s
about to hit the fan down south. If we don’t do something about it, it’ll spill
right to our gates. Maybe not tomorrow, maybe not next week, but when it comes,
it’s gonna be the end of everything we’ve built here. Now, I won’t lie to you;
it’s not gonna be a fun mission. I put our odds of survival at a hundred to
one, so I won’t force anyone to go—”
“Cut the shit, Aiden.” At the back of the hall, Morgan
pushed to his feet. He was missing an eye and a few toes, but he was still one
of the best riflemen they had. “I hate when you blab so much. I’m with you.”
Aiden nodded, grateful for his support.
Spencer rose next, draining his mug. “Can’t let this one out
of my sight. If I’m not careful, he’ll have fun without me!”
Spencer’s mate, Tessa, stood and kissed his cheek. She
whispered to him, and he nodded, then Tessa walked between the crowded tables
to stand before Aiden. Raising her chin, she looked him straight in the eye.