Cry Wolf (36 page)

The words hurt Kelly where it mattered, but she also saw Renee pull the trigger before she actually did. The bullet came at her in slow motion, spinning, the thunder of the gun and the thunder from the incoming storm full, rich and deeper than the voice of the earth.

Kelly plucked the bullet from the air. It burned her hand, but it stilled at her touch, and she dropped it to the ground.

Instead of going cold, a great heat expanded inside her. Her body wasn’t the only thing floating. It seemed to her that her head was a million miles away. What she was doing was controlled by something else, and yet it was still her—Abraham hadn’t tried to pull her strings yet.

Everything was planned—there was nothing she could do to change the inevitable conclusion of the conflict. This was the realm of fate. Kelly was on good terms with fate. Whatever decisions she made now had been set into motion and woven into the tapestry of the world, and with that came a certain serenity, even if it ended in her death.

“You want power?” Kelly shouted, so that even the humans could hear her, but her question was directed to Abraham.

His amusement was bitter to her on taste buds that preferred more substantial flavour and fare.

“I’ll show you power,” she murmured.

She released her magic with one specific command, and only one. It burst out of her like a twister, spreading over the clearing and through the trees. The forest sounded like the earth itself had cracked open, but it was from all the branches snapping, followed by falling pine needles like thousands of sharp raindrops on the ground. The same wind blow of magic that made the trees lean away also made every person, every dog and every wolf within a few hundred feet fly back. Renee’s rifle went off, but the shot was wild and accidental from when she fell, her finger reflexively squeezing the trigger.

The shifters fell to the ground as people. The werewolves lost their skins. They all fell together, knees hitting heads, elbows digging into backs, feet striking stomachs. Some of Abraham’s people were close enough to the trees that they flew into the trunks. A few collapsed, unconscious. Kelly didn’t know if any of their bones had broken in the process. She also really didn’t care at that moment.

Euphoria infused every breath as she turned back around. Abraham stared at her with unmasked shock.

As far as the magic had exploded, she had broken every spell but her own.

The rain began to fall, large droplets that were near freezing against her overheated skin.

Abraham’s lips thinned and his eyes widened, the pupils swirling with fire as rain stained his suit dark. The tangle of bodies behind her slowly pulled apart and ran back for the forest, transforming to dog and wolf when their shaky muscles could resume their forcefully discarded skins. Renee stayed behind with Max and a transformed Britt.

“Son of a bitch,” Renee said.

Kelly heard the sharp mechanism of the gun as Renee cocked it.

“Don’t worry, Renee. He can’t harm you anymore,” Kelly said. Her voice came from far away, yet echoed all around her. She lowered herself back down until wet grass caught between her toes.

“Why would I harm her?” Abraham said, trying to regain his composure. “She’s human. I’d rather recruit her.”

“You aren’t going to do that either,” Kelly said.

Abraham raised his chin and peered beyond Kelly. “Oh, I see. You’re that girl who owns the dog sanctuary a few miles from here. I’ve heard about you. But you don’t just take in dogs, do you? Seems we are two of a kind, you and I, helping the mongrels in our own way.”

“Stop trying to find common ground,” Kelly said. “You’re only embarrassing yourself.”

Abraham’s head snapped to the side when she struck him with her invisible whip.

“I don’t have to try,” Abraham retorted, whipping back and catching Kelly off guard. The skin at her left hip split where the welt’s pressure was too much.

“That’s why you’re pathetic,” Kelly said. “You truly believe all the bullshit that spews from your mouth.”

“I was right about you, wasn’t I?” Abraham said. He rose from the ground to gather his magic.

Kelly constructed a spell shield in front of herself, Renee, Max and Britt, imagining twenty-foot concrete walls between her and Abraham.

“I was right about your magic, and you know it. We are meant for each other, two of a kind. And you, young lady,” he addressed Renee, “we may disagree on what helps our friends, but I appreciate that you try. So what I’m about to do, I assure you, isn’t personal. I will try to spare you.”

Renee aimed and fired past Kelly and straight for Abraham’s chest, but he almost lazily waved it away. Unlike Kelly, who had let it fall harmlessly to the ground, Abraham sent it ricocheting back to its source. Kelly’s shield couldn’t stop it—a bullet wasn’t a spell. Renee cried out when it struck her left forearm.

“Well, that’s all I got,” Renee said faintly just as Max knelt down to catch her.

Britt leapt in front of Renee and bared her impressive set of teeth at Abraham, who paid her as much mind as he would pay a cabbage.

Kelly whirled to face Abraham. Fire wreathed him like a saint in a Renaissance painting then expanded outward in all directions. Kelly strengthened the invisible shield and pushed back against the attack that threatened to neutralize her protection. She desperately hoped that she knew what she was doing.

Fire darted over the brown grass towards the trees like spokes on a wheel. Kelly called the rain and attempted to minimise the wind. The fire managed to avoid where Renee and Max were huddled, but now their clothes were plastered to their bodies. Renee’s black sleeve had a reddish cast to it. A high-pitched whimper of a wolf from within the trees might as well have stabbed her in the gut.

Lightning streaked over the sky like a grid when Kelly launched herself into the air to meet Abraham.

He struck out at her. She barrel-rolled, but neither of them would be fazed by little things like magical blows and air-whips over their flesh, like the one that hit Abraham across his middle, shredding his sodden suit. The rain came down in sheets now. It was hard for either of them to see past each other. They were blind but for their own fight. All of his attention was on her, which would leave his followers open to attack without his protection.

“They can take care of themselves,” Abraham said. He didn’t bother trying to shout over the storm. He could have been speaking directly in her ear.

“So can mine,” Kelly replied.

“I like it better this way,” Abraham said, adjusting his clothes to dignify his soaking wet and torn ensemble. “Just you and me. You’re the only one worthy.”

“I can’t decide if you’re arrogant or delusional,” Kelly said.

They floated in circles, closer with each pass.

“I prefer ‘confident’,” Abraham replied. “Why shouldn’t I be? Any humility I could possibly show would be a lie.”

“Or a conveniently hidden truth,” Kelly said.

His coat jacket sleeve split where she struck him. He retaliated across her cheek. Her tongue stretched out to taste the smear of blood.

“Oh, I forgot you
like
that,” Abraham practically purred. “I shall have to devise a more appropriate, inventive punishment for you.”

He gave her no time to regroup. All at once, her skin began to tear itself apart. Not with the manageable ache and sting of corset rings—although she felt those tugging her skin out and attaching her to the air, as though he’d created something out of nothing on which to hook her. No, it was her arms and upper back that seemed to be opening and crawling over her.

When she looked down, she saw the roses rising from her tattoos like lilies in a lake. Thorned branches wrapped around her arms, digging spikes into her skin. On her leg, the snake didn’t just slide over her skin as ink like it had on Abraham—it surfaced and sank its teeth into her thigh. The snake wasn’t venomous, but that just meant that it had excellent grip and an extremely painful bite.

Kelly shouted, the sound becoming a growl as her body tried to protect itself by turning. It could only manage halfway—Abraham’s grip on the tattoos kept her in her human skin. She lost control of the wind, and her hair whipped around her face once more. Her rose branches waved and pulled her to and fro, tugging at flesh and the hair that had tangled within it.

“Two can play at that game,” she snarled from her half-transformed mouth, wide and sharp.

When she called, the fairy answered, fluttering its wings over her thigh like a moth before flying out into the rain and unleashing its mischief. Its size was prohibitive, especially in the storm, but it avoided Abraham’s flailing arms as it tugged at his ripped clothing then crawled in. Kelly had no idea what her fairy was doing to him, but Abraham suddenly released her from her invisible suspension and started batting at himself like a man with a bee stinging his chest and a mouse crawling up his pant leg. It would have been funny if Kelly hadn’t felt like a garden trellis.

Gritting her teeth, she thrust her arms out and sent the roses he had used against her to vine and wrap around his arms. They clashed together, rolling over and over in the air. Kelly didn’t know which way was up. Lightning flashed around them on all sides. A tree trunk split in two with a horrifying crack, and Kelly tried to guide the lightning back into the clouds away from her people.

Attempting to control her own weather preoccupied her. Abraham took the opportunity to make the fairy disappear back into her skin. He clutched her elbows, even though it dug some of the thorns deeper into his palms. The mist of his influence seeped through the foliage, but he couldn’t sneak that past her anymore. She recognised the signature far too easily now.

Kelly slapped him across the face.

In retaliation, the snake at her thigh dug in deeper as though holding on for dear life. A whine escaped her, and he wrenched her roses from his arms with a snap, making her cry out because he was actually breaking her skin.

“Why do you fight me?” Abraham said, taking her face in his hands.

“Because you’re a sick human being,” Kelly said.

“I’m not sick,” he replied. “You’re the one who is sick. Your soul festers each hour you let that wolf remain. Your magic is tainted like tar coating the lungs. All this power you harness, it might as well be flowers and snakes with the way the wolf destroys it piece by piece. You aren’t like the others, the ones that I free from themselves. You can hold onto this world when I purge you. I can help you. I can
save
you, Kelly. You never have to be alone.
We
never have to be alone again.”

Her tattoos sank back into her skin. With the perfume of wet roses surrounding them, Abraham pulled her closer. His will-breaking magic wrapped around her to remind her of the magic they shared, but he didn’t let it seep in yet.

She couldn’t help it. The same way that her wolf desired pack, so did the witch desire a coven, even a coven of two. When he pressed his lips against hers, she welcomed his rain-slick skin, the texture of his suit against her blood-speckled and sensitised flesh. She accepted him, curled her tongue in his mouth as if to beckon him closer. He cradled her cheek as he moved down to kiss her neck, biting lightly before moving up to her ear.

“Please,” he whispered.

The rain, thunder and the cries around them by their friends and followers were louder than ever, yet Kelly and Abraham could have been in a quiet room alone.

“Come with me. Let me save you, Kelly. Please,” he urged.

It came to her in a flash, like the afterimage of lightning.

Tim had a short, silver sword, his shoulder bloody from a werewolf bite. There was madness in his eyes, to have become the very thing that he despised. But he didn’t have to stay that way. With nothing to lose, he ran at the werewolf that had bitten him and shoved his knife into the wolf’s stomach from below, a white and grey mix that she recognised as Landon. As soon as the silver had poisoned Landon’s blood, Tim pulled the blade out and slashed his wrists, then his neck.

Kelly jerked as though it had been she whom Tim had stabbed. Her head fell back and she closed her eyes to keep the rain from mingling with tears.

Then it wasn’t even a choice.

She pushed Abraham flying in the other direction. Abraham threw up his hands as though that would protect him. The makeshift shield he constructed in a state of panic might as well have been made of eggshell, and he knew it.

This is what I am
, Kelly thought.
This is what you’ve made of me.

The place in her chest that ached blasted outward. Part of her wished it could have really broken through her ribcage, because then she wouldn’t have to live with the consequences of what she was doing. Abraham would only be her third kill, but that was still three people too many.

The lighting came down in a deafening, blinding charge to the now jerking form of Father Abraham Kinkaid. The smell of ozone and burnt fabric and burnt meat filled the clearing. Kelly screamed as pulse after pulse of magic passed through her—a vessel, a conduit, merely the passage of something much greater and grander than her and not laden with all the moral complications she carried. She screamed because she knew that no one could hear her. No one had to know that she was tearing another scar onto her soul.

When the lightning strikes ended, the charcoaled remains fell to the ground. Kelly dropped herself as well, landing on her feet. The rain thinned immediately.

She wasn’t done, though, not if she wanted to save more blood from being spilled, the shot of silver through veins, fur stripped away.

“Hey!”

It wasn’t very commanding or dignified, but when she amplified it to reach several hundred feet in every direction, she at least got everyone’s attention.

“Your fearless leader is dead. Many of you are wounded. Your leader couldn’t defeat me, so your power might as well be magician’s tricks in comparison to what I am capable of. You’d do well to listen to me.

“You have two choices. Leave now and never come back. We will not pursue you. If you’ve been bitten or if you feel like your philosophy might actually be shit, you can stay and we’ll discuss your future options. There is no third choice. If you stay to fight, I’ll do nothing to stop my pack from feasting on your flesh. I don’t
want
my pack to eat you. It’s a personal principle that I hold. But I won’t stop them if you insist on putting their
lives in danger. You have ten minutes.”