Wrong Side of Dead

Chapter Nine

5:35 A.M.

I tried swallowing, only my mouth had gone dry. “Just one?”

“So far,” Phin replied. “He’s upwind and making no effort to disguise his presence. Larger than your average wolf.” His nostrils flared. “I know that scent.”

“Wolf Boy?”

“Yes.”

“Shit.” I still couldn’t make it out, and really, really hoped that Wyatt stayed put inside the Jeep. Werewolves moved damned fast; it could cross the distance between us in seconds. I had a pair of knives strapped one to each ankle and a switchblade in my rear pocket. I’d also been up close and personal with a werewolf, and I remembered its thick, sturdy muscles. Killing one with a single knife hadn’t been easy.

“I’m going to stand up. Stay put.”

“Okay.”

He handed me his knife, then drew up slowly. I kept my eyes far away from his naked ass as he did so, then held up the sweats when he asked for them. He got them on without incident or warning, which I took as a good sign. Maybe the new wolf was just there to spy on us.

“Slowly now,” Phin whispered, extending his hand. I took it.

We both heard the low growl—from the opposite direction.

“It’s at your seven o’clock,” he said.

The Jeep. I looked. I couldn’t fucking help it. The Jeep was barely visible, a good thirty yards away, and in between the circles of light. Smack in the middle of the light nearest the Jeep was the second werewolf, its gray coat glistening, hackles raised, attention fixed—on a Jeep with zero protection in the form of a roof or windows. Wyatt sat perfectly still behind the wheel, though I had no doubt he was preparing to summon some sort of weapon.

“Can you teleport over there?” Phin asked.

“Yes.” Easily.

“Weapons?”

“Got ’em.”

I was standing now. A third growl, distinctly different from the first two, echoed behind us. Three of them, and they had us surrounded. Fan-fucking-tastic.

“Can you teleport to safety?”

“Not the way they’re spread out,” I said. No matter which way I went, I’d be too close to one of the wolves.

“I can fly you out.”

“Then they’ll just attack Wyatt.”

The first wolf stepped into a pool of light. Its black-and-white pelt gleamed and its eyes seemed to wink. It came a few steps forward, head low, no longer showing teeth. I calculated how quickly I could pull out the switchblade. As the wolf drew closer, Phin’s wings appeared. He kept them tucked close to his back, prepared without showing outward aggression.

The other two wolves hadn’t moved; Wyatt remained still.

At less than ten feet away, the black-and-white wolf shifted. The familiar, faint tingle of Break power crawled over my skin. I passed the fancy Coni blade back to Phin, who held it loosely by his thigh. Any direct threat from us would get someone killed quickly.

A teenage boy continued walking toward us, a mirror image of Wolf Boy—same narrow build, blond hair, and flashing silver eyes, right down to the straight point of his nose. Hatred hung around him like a bad smell, almost a physical presence. He stopped an arm’s length from Phin. He had no weapons in his hands and was completely naked—but I had no doubt he was the most dangerous person in our threesome.

The two males sized each other up, observing and assessing in such a blatantly alpha, testosterone-coated manner that I wanted to crack their heads together. I couldn’t check on the other two wolves without taking my attention away from the boy in front of us, and I desperately wanted to make sure that Wyatt was okay.

“Coni.” The boy’s maturing voice cracked despite his attempt to appear menacing, and he spoke as if those four letters tasted foul in his mouth.

“Lupa,” Phin replied, his voice just as frigid.

“Surprised to see us alive?”

“I was surprised last month when the first Lupa showed his ugly face, but like most vermin, where there’s one—”

The teen growled deep in his chest—a God-awful sound from someone who looked so young. So human. “Your ancestors failed to destroy us centuries ago, and their failure will be your undoing.”

I laughed out loud; I couldn’t help it. The spy-movie villain dialogue was just too much. The slip earned me a nasty snarl from Teen Wolf, as well as a flash of elongated canine teeth.

“You,” he said. “You killed our brother. You will bleed for that.”

“I’ve bled enough for both my lifetimes, thanks.” Okay, so sassing him was probably not the best use of my time, but the entire thing felt ridiculous. Until a few weeks ago, werewolves didn’t exist, and here I was having a big, bad showdown with one who looked like the Before side of an acne cream commercial.

Then the rest of what he’d said caught up to me. Your ancestors failed to destroy us. The Coni had been an elite guard. A warrior race. The Coni destroyed the Lupa Clan.

“How did you survive?” Phin asked.

Teen Wolf grinned, showing off those nasty teeth. “By the mercy of the Great People. We have been protected these centuries, prepared for a time when the Great People will retake this world and the Lupa can claim their place in it.”

“The Great People?”

“Yes.”

My heart slammed against my ribs as one more awful puzzle piece clicked into place. A puzzle we’d started to put together mere hours after the massacre at Boot Camp last month. “He means the Fey,” I said.

Phin gave no reaction to my statement. “How many of you are there?”

The boy laughed. “You are truly arrogant to believe I’d reveal such a thing. It would ruin the grand surprise.”

“Is Walter Thackery working directly for the Fey Council?” I asked.

“Not to his knowledge.”

It was an evasive answer, which led me to believe that Thackery didn’t know where his assistance was coming from. But whether or not he knew or cared mattered little to me. Thackery’s Halfie army had to be stopped, just as the potential legion of werewolves had to be found and contained before a real war broke out. A big, bloody war that would encompass the entire city.

“Why are you here?” I asked. “To gloat before you kill us?”

“Unfortunately, our orders are not to kill you,” Teen Wolf replied with real regret in his voice.

“Let me guess, then. We have one chance to accept an offer to join you or else suffer the consequences?”

“Hardly. We neither need nor want your partnership.”

Huh. “What, then?”

“I wanted to look you both in the eye before we met on the battlefield. I want you both to know the face of the man who will kill you.”

“Oh yeah?” I made a show of looking around. “Is he here?”

Teen Wolf snapped his teeth at me.

Phin touched my elbow. “And when shall we meet on this battlefield?” he asked.

“Soon enough,” Teen Wolf replied. “The world stands balanced on the edge of a razor blade. All it requires is one final push to change everything.”

I flexed my right hand and shifted my stance—just enough to get his attention. “Why wait? Let’s throw down, kid.”

He tensed, eyes glimmering with bloodlust. He was considering it, and if it wasn’t for some confounding loyalty to his master, he probably would have. Instead, he quirked a cocky eyebrow at me. “Soon. Enjoy your final days.”

“Uh-huh.”

Teen Wolf backed up several steps. He shifted quickly, brown and silver hair coating once-pink skin, back bending, arms and legs changing shape. Only his silver eyes seemed to stay the same—angry, intelligent, hungry. He snarled, and the wolf behind us made an answering sound. I hazarded a look; it was moving away.

Instinct yelled at me to not let them escape. They were enemies, and enemies had to be dealt with before they became a problem later. And these three wolves (plus any others that they had hidden away) were sure to be a huge problem in the near future. Walter Thackery did not make idle threats, and if something was about to happen, I had to believe it would. Something huge.

And werewolves existed. Holy shit.

“When they’re out of sight—” I started, whispering.

“I’ll follow them,” Phin finished.

Teen Wolf was nearly to the far edge of the vacant lot. He paused and dipped his head low to the ground. Only then did I think to check on the third wolf—just in time to hear the shout.

The third wolf leapt onto the hood of the Jeep and springboarded right over the windshield. I was already running when Wyatt yelled. A cold splash of panic overrode my ability to properly access my tether to the Break and teleport. All I saw was the furry back hunched in the front seat of the Jeep. Wyatt hadn’t made another sound and, more than anything else, that terrified me. I opened the switchblade as I ran.

The wolf squealed and leapt out of the Jeep. It stumbled on the pavement, turned, and raced down the street in the same direction the other wolves had gone. I paused long enough to shift my hold on the switchblade, hoping to throw it, but the damned wolf was too fucking fast.

“Wyatt!”

At first, all I saw was the blood. It drenched the front seat, as well as Wyatt’s face and clothes. He was folded into the floor, moderately protected by the steering wheel, a red-coated knife still clutched in his hand. My nose told me that the majority of the blood in the Jeep wasn’t human—it was darker, had a heavy, earthy odor—but the rest of me took a bit longer to catch up.

I yanked open the passenger door and climbed inside, hands shaking, adrenaline a bitter taste in my mouth. “Wyatt? Where are you hurt?”

“Fucker got my neck and arm,” he replied. His gaze swept over me, checking for nonexistent injuries. “You okay?”

“I’m fine. They didn’t attack us.”

“Phineas?”

I scanned the lot and nearby streets, but all was quiet. No sign of Phin or the wolves, no sounds of nearby brawls. “He followed the wolves,” I said, both pissed that he’d disappeared and grateful that he hadn’t let them get away without a tail (no pun intended).

“What did they want?”

I explained the conversation we’d had with Teen Wolf while I helped him unwedge himself from the floor. Three long gashes went from just below his right ear all the way to his collarbone, each nearly as wide as my pinkie, each oozing blood. The lack of gushing was a good sign that the wolf had missed his carotid artery. His left arm looked just as painful—a deep bite circled his forearm, and even below the mixed blood, the skin looked swollen and tender.

“You need to get those looked at,” I said as I climbed back out of the Jeep and patted the passenger seat. “Scoot.”

“This side’s soaked with blood,” he said.

“I don’t care. You can’t drive like that.”

“You don’t have a license.”

“Are we really having this conversation while you’re sitting there bleeding?”

He blinked, already a little glassy-eyed. He was pale and breathing through his mouth. Those wounds had to hurt like hell. “Good point.”

He slid over. I circled the Jeep and climbed into the driver’s side, trying to ignore the wet seat and the stink all around me. The summer heat and humidity were not helping matters, and my stomach curled in on itself. I rustled someone’s dirty T-shirt out of the backseat and helped Wyatt wrap that around his arm.

“Guess you got the wolf pretty good,” I said once we were on the road and pointed south.

“Right in the stomach, I think. Why?”

“Uh, because his blood’s all over the place?”

Wyatt shook his head, then winced. “No, I mean why did they attack me and not you two?”

Good question. “Teen Wolf didn’t seem too keen on starting anything today, so I don’t know why he’d let one of them bite and run.”

“To prove a point?”

“Which is what? We’ve got bigger teeth than you?”

“Well, that point’s definitely taken.”

I snorted. More and more cars were joining us as the city’s nightlife went to sleep and the rest of the world woke up. Heading out for their morning coffee and donut, oblivious to the trouble heading their way. A whole lot of shit was about to hit the metaphorical fan, and this time I didn’t know if we could stop it.

Halfway back to the Watchtower, Wyatt’s cell rang. He shifted his hip, and I reached over and retrieved the phone from his back pocket, noting the way his mouth pinched in the corners. He was in pain and trying hard to not show it.

The I.D. read “Marcus.” “Stone,” I said.

“Did you find Phineas?” he asked without preamble.

“Yeah, right where I thought he’d be.”

“Is he with you?”

“No, he’s probably flying over the city, tracking down a trio of werewolves.”

“He’s what?”

I gave Marcus the condensed version, and ended with, “Have Dr. Vansis standing by in the infirmary. Wyatt’s injured.”

“What happened?”

“One of the wolves tried to take a bite out of him. He’s conscious and aware, but he’s bleeding a lot.”

Wyatt made a face that might have been humorous if I wasn’t so worried about him.

“I’ll send someone to wake him,” Marcus replied.

“We’ll be there in less than ten minutes. Let me know if you hear anything from Phin.”

“I will.”

I tucked the phone into my own pocket and nearly missed my turn onto Lincoln Street. We passed a woman with six dogs of various sizes on leashes practically yanking her down the street while she listened to someone on her earbud. Oblivious.

“Evy?”

The shakiness in Wyatt’s voice caught my attention immediately. He was beyond pale, the smudges of blood on his cheeks like berry stains on a white napkin. Perspiration trickled down his temples and cheeks. He stared straight ahead, but he wasn’t watching the street.

I touched his shoulder, my wheel hand shaking lightly.

“I’m going to be sick.”

Common sense would have had me stop so he could hurl onto the sidewalk. But terror slammed my foot down on the gas and, ignoring the chances of being pulled over by an observant city cop, I sped over the bridge. Wyatt grabbed the dash with both hands, breathing hard through his mouth, eyes shut.

“Be sick if you have to, but I am not stopping,” I said, as much to clarify my own racing thoughts as to reassure him. “You need to get to the doctor right now.”

“Feels so weird.”

“What does?”

“Me. Hot. Uh—” He jerked sideways and leaned over the Jeep door, head out. The sounds of retching were lost to the wind roaring around us. I gripped the wheel with both hands as I navigated through the East Side, south along the Black River to the mall.

A thought hit me with horrifying clarity: Wyatt was infected with something. Or poisoned, probably by the werewolf’s bite. I’d had a minor reaction to my own werewolf bites a month ago, but they had healed quickly. Because I healed quickly. Wyatt didn’t.

I’d never heard of a human being having such a violent reaction to a Therian bite, but the Lupa had been extinct for centuries. And they’d come back to us courtesy of Walter Thackery, King of Genetic Meddling.

God only knew what those wolves were carrying.

“We’re almost there,” I said. “Stay with me, Wyatt.”

His only answer was a loud groan.

I zipped across the Capital City Mall parking lot, making tracks for the entrance to the Watchtower at a dangerous speed. I hit the brakes at the last minute as I went through the barrier and nearly clipped a parked car. All thoughts of procedure flew out of my head, and I just kept going. I drove right down the short hall that spilled into the broader mall corridor. It was wide enough for two cars to drive side by side and still have room for a third to pass them.

A handful of familiar faces sprang out of my path. It wasn’t very far to the infirmary, and I hit the brakes again and swore I smelled them burning. I didn’t even turn off the engine, just shifted into park and tumbled out the driver’s-side door.

“Dr. Vansis!” I shouted as I circled to Wyatt’s side of the Jeep. “I need help!”

Wyatt was slumped over the passenger door, head lolling. He hadn’t passed out, but he wasn’t completely conscious, either. His pale skin burned with a fever I could feel without touching him, and sweat had soaked through his shirt.

“What happened?” Dr. Vansis asked. He shouldered me sideways, and if he had been anyone else, I’d have reacted way more violently. The doc was of average height and build, with curly multihued brown hair and a prickly personality, but he wasn’t my enemy.

“Werewolf attack,” I said. “Maybe fifteen, twenty minutes ago.”

Dr. Vansis gaped at me. “You’re serious?” My glare stopped any more questions. “All right. Hold his head while I open the door.”

A small crowd of gawkers watched us get Wyatt over Vansis’s shoulder in a fireman’s carry and take him into the infirmary. His actions seemed effortless, but all Therians had a way of surprising me with their hidden strength. He deposited Wyatt on the exam table and turned on a bright overhead light.

“He has gashes on his neck and a big bite on his left arm,” I said. The wounds were fairly obvious, but all the extra blood could be confusing. “He got the wolf pretty good before it ran off.”

“The Lupa blood could be what’s irritating his wounds,” Dr. Vansis said.

“Does that happen a lot?”

“To my knowledge, Lupa have been extinct for centuries.”

“Then why—?”

“It’s a theory, child,” he snapped as he examined the wounds on Wyatt’s arm. “I once saw a vampire react rather violently when she accidentally drank from a Cania, so there is grounds for it. But humans rarely react to Therian blood, and certainly not this badly.”

The infirmary door burst open, depositing Kismet and Marcus into the room. And if Kismet looked half as freaked as I did, I had to be a sight.

“There’s something wrong with him,” I said.

“Is he going to live?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” Dr. Vansis replied before I could. “Everyone out. I need to examine him and run some tests.”

I took a step toward him. “But—”

“Out!”

Marcus steered me into the corridor, where I promptly fell back against the storefront wall and collapsed onto my ass. My heart hammered against my ribs, and I felt sick. Kismet crouched in front of me and rested her hands on my knees.

“Are you hurt?” she asked.

“No, they didn’t come after me. Just Wyatt.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. What about Phin?”

“Nothing yet,” Marcus said. He was tense, coiled, as though his jaguar form was waiting just below the surface, ready to spring free and pounce.

“Anything else from Felix?”

Kismet shook her head. “No, and I don’t think we’ll get anything else out of him now.”

“Why?”

“I’ve tried, Tybalt’s tried. We even floated your Serenity Serum theory past him with no response. The only person he wants to see is Milo, and Milo refuses to go in that room.”

I wanted to pretend I was surprised, or even upset at Milo’s unwillingness to face his former Triad partner, but I wasn’t. I’d once witnessed a friend in a similar position, and I couldn’t imagine the horror of seeing someone you loved going through that.

“You know why he won’t do it,” she said.

“Yeah, I know.”

“Well, I don’t,” Marcus said.

Milo told me about it the day Felix was infected. In some ways, I’d expected the confession. I wasn’t completely oblivious to the people around me. But it wasn’t something for me to share with Marcus.

“Why the blue hell is there a Jeep in the corridor?” Astrid’s question boomed down the hall. She stalked toward us with long, angry strides; Isleen followed, taking shorter, more precise steps to keep up with the almost-sprinting were-cat.

Kismet stood and shifted closer to Marcus.

“My fault,” I said, still sitting. Now that my adrenaline was wearing off, I hadn’t yet mustered the energy to get up.

“When Phineas called, he said someone might be injured,” Astrid said.

“You spoke to Phin?” Hope bloomed in my chest, and I sat up a little straighter.

“Just a moment ago, yes.”

“Did he track the werewolves?”

She gave me a critical eyeballing. “He lost two of them in Mercy’s Lot but managed to backtrack and find the injured third. He’s holding it in a secure location until Baylor’s squad can get there.”

An osprey was holding a wounded werewolf captive. Sometimes my life was too strange, even for me.

“What location?” Marcus asked.

“He mentioned the trunk of a parked car.”

“They can’t interrogate the wolf in a car,” I said.

Astrid gave me the look that impatient teachers give their dumbest students. “Once the Lupa is secure, he’ll be brought back here for interrogation.”

“No way.” I mimicked her expression. “Those wolves are working with Walter Thackery. Teen Wolf admitted it to my face, and if Thackery loves anything, it’s to keep track of his toys. He tracks his hounds and his hybrids, and he probably tracks the wolves, too.” Just because Astrid’s people hadn’t found a tracking device on the wolf I killed at Boot Camp, didn’t mean these guys were clean.

“Evangeline is correct,” Isleen said, inclining her head in my direction. “It would be decidedly unwise to bring the Lupa back to the Watchtower.”

Something niggled at the back of my mind like a fire alarm in a faraway building.

“Okay, you’re right,” Astrid said. “I’ll have Baylor find someplace in the city to interrogate the wolf. And to be on guard for possible tails to their location. Now, do you want to tell us what happened on your end, Stone?”

“Fuck me.” It hit all at once, a wall of ice water that turned my guts inside out. No, no, no, no.…

“Stone?”

I don’t know who said it, because I was on my feet and running. Trying to outrace the panic of having done something so fucking stupid—unable to believe we were all capable of such obvious idiocy. Someone was following me, and I probably looked like a crazy person racing down the corridor in bloody clothes. No one, thankfully, was stupid enough to try to stop me.

Nevada was sitting on top of his desk chatting with Morgan, who was seated in the desk’s actual chair. They both gave surprised squawks when I slammed through the jail door.

“I need in there right-fucking-now,” I said, pointing at the interrogation room.

Nevada took in my state, then leapt off the desk. “What’s going on?”

“Please, just open the door.”

Maybe it was me using “please,” which rarely happens. Or someone with actual power to order him around came into the jail behind me and silently gave him permission. I don’t know, and I didn’t care. Nevada punched in the door code, and the lock snicked back.

I gave little consideration to just how terrible Felix looked after his long exposure to the wooden chair and whatever creative interrogation methods Marcus and Wyatt had used. He was about to be very, very dead anyway. He watched me with bleary eyes and a sad half smile, as if he knew exactly why I was there.

I plucked a slim wooden spike off the table behind him, circled around to his front, and drove it as hard as I could into his right thigh. He shrieked. Saliva sputtered from his lips. I pressed the spike down harder until he started to cry.

“You son of a bitch,” I growled, getting in his face. “Is he tracking you?”

A flash of clarity stole through his agony, and Felix nodded.

“Thackery is tracking you?”

Another nod.

I swallowed back bile. “What’s the plan, Felix? We go after you, bring you back here, and Thackery sends his werewolf army to tear us down in our own headquarters?”

He lifted his head, clearly astonished by some part of my accusation. His leaky nostrils flared. “You smell like them.”

“That’s because one of them tried to kill Wyatt tonight, so he returned the favor by slicing its guts open. Now what’s the plan?”

“I don’t know.”

“Really?” I yanked out the spike, then slammed it down into his left thigh.

He jerked forward, snapping at my throat even as he squealed; I leaned just out of reach. “I was there to recruit; I wasn’t supposed to get caught!”

“Bullshit. What’s the fucking plan, Felix?”

“I don’t know!”

“Tell me what you know.”

“I can’t!”

“There are a dozen more spikes on that table, Felix. You know you’re going to die today. How many holes do you want before we end this?”

He closed his eyes. Tears feathered his lashes and ran down his blotchy cheeks. Judging by the blood on the floor and the cuts on his exposed skin, he wasn’t as upset about the pain as the emotions warring inside him. The little bit of humanity still lingering in his brain as opposed to the instinctive rage of the vampire infection.

“I don’t know what he’s doing with the werewolves, Evy, I swear,” he said. “Just that they’re freely loyal to him.”

“How many does he have?”

“I don’t know. I’ve only interacted with one.”

“When?”

“The night I was infected. He was sent to follow you. He saw the bus crash, then followed me. He took me to Thackery.” His voice cracked and his iridescent eyes begged me for mercy—something I wasn’t about to give. Not now. Not when he’d walked into our home wearing the equivalent of a police wire.

I believed him, though. So far. “How do you control the bloodlust, Felix? What’s Thackery giving you?”

“What’s that sound?”

“The voices in your head? Sorry, pal, they’re all yours.”

“Something else.” He shrank into his chair, curling forward like someone with a severe stomach cramp. The oddest look crossed his face, as though he suddenly understood the punch line to a frightening joke. “Goddammit. You should have killed me.”

“Give me time. I promised, right?”

“It’s too late.”

“You’re not going anywhere.” The look on his face said he thought otherwise, and a cold knot of dread squeezed my heart. “Felix?”

“This is wrong.”

“Now that’s a fucking understatement,” said a familiar voice that got our collective attention. Milo stood just inside the interrogation room, stone-faced, arms pulled so tightly across his chest that they seemed ready to snap. Marcus hovered just behind him.

Felix jerked upright, unable to move far thanks to his bonds, but struggling nonetheless. “You came now?”

Milo took a step backward and hit Marcus’s chest. His expression shifted from cold to furious. “I didn’t want to come, but Marcus told me you’re being tracked. You bastard!”

“It wasn’t my idea.”

“Of course not. You’re the victim, right? Poor crazy Halfie?”

“I was trying to protect you.”

“By leading Thackery right to our doorstep?” Milo came forward, stopping next to me. “What the hell do you want from me, Felix?”

“Get out of here.”

Milo made a choking sound. “Oh, so now you want me to leave? Fuck you.”

“It’s not a tracker.” Felix’s face pinched, and he doubled over again as far as his restraints allowed. “Get the fuck out of here!”

The hair on the back of my neck prickled as Felix’s words rang in my head. If he hadn’t been given a tracker, then what? Something was very, very wrong. Milo moved toward him. I grabbed Milo’s arm and pulled him back. Gave him a hard shove toward the door.

“Marcus, get him out of here,” I said.

“Should have never brought me here,” Felix said. “So sorry.” He looked up, his youthful face twisted in pain.

“Run.”

“What is Thackery giving you?” I needed this answer, dammit.

“Get out!”

“What is it?”

“Blood.”

“What?”

“What’s that sound?” someone asked in a terrible mirror of Felix’s earlier words, just as a second person yelled, “Stone!”

I was grabbed around the waist and hauled through the interrogation room door. A sharp whine cut through the voices, followed by a high-pitched beep. Felix looked right at me, tears streaking his face, and then he exploded.