Jennifer Lynn Barnes Anthology (106 page)

My
Devon’s.

Hurting Lake hurts Griffin
. I didn’t want to take that line of reasoning one step further.

To kill a shadow …

No.

I couldn’t go there. I couldn’t let the thought form in my head. I couldn’t let it be true.

There had to be another way.

Numb, except for the constant throb of my shoulder, I looked back down at my phone. Slowly, painfully, I dialed Callum’s number.

He answered on the first ring.

“Bryn?”

I could tell by the way he’d said my name that until I’d
called, he hadn’t been sure that I’d made it. If Shadows really did interfere with his knack, he might not have seen the outcome of the last attack, or the way Jed had stitched me back together. For all I knew, maybe my future was so intertwined with this monster’s that Callum couldn’t see anything at all.

“I’m fine,” I said. Chase made a snuffing sound under his breath, and I amended my statement. “Mostly fine.”

“What happened?”

I don’t know what possessed me to reply the way I did, but the only words I could seem to manage were: “I got bit.”

A manageable bite, like this one, wasn’t enough to Change a person. Even if it had been, there was no way of knowing if a Shadow could do that kind of thing at all—and still, the only response I could muster was the same phrase Chase had said to me when I’d learned it was possible for someone to be born human and Changed into a Were.

“You got bit,” Callum repeated, using a tone that I recognized well as the calm before the storm.

“I’m fine,” I said, cutting his temper off at the pass. He rarely lost it, but right now none of us had the time to deal with the fallout if he did. “Jed stitched me back together. Pain sucks, but it’s manageable.” I let out a half laugh, short and harsh. “Just call it practice.”

The change in the room around me was immediate, and I realized I’d said that last bit out loud.

Practice?
Lake said.
Practice for what?

Chase didn’t ask, and I realized that he knew the answer—maybe he had always known the answer.

“Why didn’t you tell me that Samuel Wilson had a twin?” I turned my focus back to Callum, hoping that it would provide sufficient distraction for Lake. “That it was Sora?”

I wanted him to tell me that I was mistaken, that Sora wasn’t this monster’s twin, that I had it all wrong. I
willed
him to say that. I prayed.

“When?” Callum asked. “When would you have had me tell you? When we rescued you? When you latched on to Devon and he on to you? When Samuel resurfaced, and we realized he’d never stopped killing? When the kids in your pack killed him?”

Would I have wanted to know? I couldn’t help asking myself the question. If it hadn’t been for whatever happened that full moon, with Maddy and the baby, if the Shadows hadn’t come back—would I have wanted to know that the Big Bad Wolf was Devon’s uncle? That my second family in Callum’s pack had been his family, too?

“Once you realized we were dealing with a Shadow,” I said, neatly cutting those questions out of the equation. “Two hours ago, when we were on the phone, and you knew that a Shadow was stalking Maddy, why didn’t you tell me
then
?”

“Had we not gotten cut off, I would have.”

I believed him—not because he wouldn’t hide key information from me, but because we were dealing with an enemy
whose actions he couldn’t foresee. If he’d had a line on the future, Callum would have had no qualms about withholding information, but I didn’t think he’d play fast and loose with my life, not when he had no way of knowing how that might turn out.

This particular Rabid had died obsessed with the idea of Changing me.

“He and Griffin can’t be at the same place at the same time.” I leaned back against the wall, wincing as my shoulder protested the movement. “If Griffin hadn’t broken back through when he did, I’d be dead. And if Wilson isn’t tied to Maddy, if he’s playing with her because he can and not because he has to, there’s no limit on where or who he might have killed.”

I could see the victims in my mind, their corpses lined up like paper dolls. The boy in the cabin. The girl in Winchester. The unidentifiable mass of skin and blood and bones in Missouri.

How many victims had we’d missed? How many more would there be if we didn’t find a way to stop this thing? In life, Samuel Wilson had been the worst kind of monster. He hadn’t just attacked teenagers. He’d killed
children
.

And now he was bullet proof.

“This is just the beginning.” I tried to stay calm. I tried to be rational. “Sooner or later, he’ll find a way to push Griffin out. He’ll come to finish the job, and then—”

The corpses in my mind multiplied, stacks upon stacks of
bodies. Little bodies. The Shadow would kill me, and then he’d move on—to Caroline and Jed, Chase and Lake. To humans who never stood a chance. To children.

There was nothing we could do to fight back.
Nothing
.

To kill a Shadow …

I couldn’t afford to follow that thought to completion. In my mind, I saw Devon’s face. I saw his smile, the way he could look utterly ridiculous one minute and like a lethal fighter the next. I saw Sora, who had his eyes, but none of his humor.

No
.

It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair that Sora was this monster’s twin. It wasn’t fair that stopping him should fall to us. But most of all, it wasn’t fair that being alpha had turned me into the kind of person who
could
think the unthinkable.

I didn’t want to be that person.

“We don’t know how to kill him, Callum.” I swallowed, hard. “All we have is a theory.”

What we had wasn’t a
theory
. It was unspeakable. And there I was, saying the words.

“Now that he’s tasted my blood, he’ll be hungry for more. He’ll kill me, but it won’t stop there.” I paused, wishing that my life was the only one on the line, that this was my sacrifice to make. “It won’t ever stop.”

“No.” Callum wasn’t telling me I was wrong about this monster. He was saying what the voice in my head kept saying, over and over again.

No. No. No
.

“Tell me there’s another way,” I pleaded. “Tell me there’s something I can do, somewhere I can go to look for answers. Tell me I’m wrong.”

Callum didn’t say a word.

“Tell me.”

Nothing.

“We have no way of fighting back,” I whispered. “Once he gets done with us, who’s next? Ali? The twins? Human children who don’t understand that monsters are real, any more than I did, cowering underneath that sink?”

Even if there were another option, another way of fighting back, there was no guarantee that we would find it in time—and while we looked, more people would die.

No matter what I did, people always died.

“You do not know what you are asking, Bronwyn.”

For the first time, Callum’s use of my full first name didn’t affect me at all. I knew exactly what I was saying, and he was the one who’d raised me to be the kind of person who could say it.

“Sora’s his twin, Callum. He’s a Shadow because he’s shadowing her. She’s his link to this world.”

Get rid of the link, get rid of the Shadow. I wanted him to tell me there was a flaw in my logic. I wanted to be wrong.

“You’ll hold the knife, then?” Callum asked. “You’ll look into Sora’s eyes and cut out her heart?”

Devon had his mother’s eyes.

The temperature in the room around me seemed to drop ten degrees. My face felt clammy and flushed. The brutality of what I was suggesting hit me full force.

To kill the Shadow, we might have to kill Sora. Sora, who’d bandaged my cuts and fed me cookies when I was a kid. Sora, who’d taught me to use a slingshot. Sora, who for better or worse, was one of Callum’s most trusted soldiers.

Devon’s mom.

“I’ll have no part of this,” Callum said. “If you’re certain it’s the only way, you’ll do it yourself.”

I hadn’t expected this from him, hadn’t imagined he would put this decision in my hands. Sora was his wolf. At one point in time, our killer had been, too. Everything Callum had done in the past few years had been aimed at protecting me, shaping me. But this?

This wasn’t a choice the Callum I knew would ever have put in my hands. I still dreamed about Lucas, still thought about him, still felt the weight of snuffing out his life, and that had been self-defense. He’d been a danger to the pack, a loose cannon, and he was the one who’d challenged me.

But Sora wasn’t a danger. She wasn’t evil. This wasn’t self-defense. This was me, sitting on a ratty bed in a motel room, thinking about sacrificing her life for the greater good.

This was me, talking about murder like it was an option.

“I don’t know what else to do,” I said.

There was a long silence on the other end of the phone, and I waited for him to say something to make this—any of it—better.

“What would you do if it were Lake?” Callum asked finally. Something in his tone made me feel like, this time, he was looking for something from me—absolution, understanding? I wasn’t sure which.

“If it were Griffin that was the killer, and the only way to kill him was to kill Lake, what would you do?”

I’d thought that Griffin might be the killer, but I’d never let myself follow that thought to completion, because the idea of hurting Lake, sacrificing Lake—I couldn’t have done it.

Could I?

That was the position I’d put Callum in. He was so old, so powerful that it was easy to forget that he had emotions, that his pack mattered to him, that there were people—other than me—who he loved.

“Three hundred years,” Callum said softly. “She’s fought by my side for three hundred years, Bryn. I wouldn’t see her dead on a theory, and neither would you.”

Three hundred years? Sora had been a part of Callum’s life longer than the United States had been a country, longer than any human would ever live.

And still, if it wasn’t just a theory, if he were
sure
that this would work and there was no other way—he would have done it. That was what it meant to be alpha.

That was what I was becoming, even now.

“You wouldn’t have to.” Lake came to stand next to the bed, and I realized she was talking to Callum as much as to me. “If it were Griff doing the killing, if we thought me dying might make a whit of difference, Bryn, you wouldn’t have to kill me.”

I read between the lines to what Lake wasn’t saying.

If it had been her, if her death was the way to stop the monster, she would have killed herself.

“This isn’t your choice,” Lake told me. “It’s not his,” she continued, jerking her head toward the phone. “You two don’t just get to sit there and talk it out and decide that she lives, no matter how many other people have to die. You don’t get to keep this from her.”

I realized suddenly how Callum and I must have sounded, talking about Sora like she had no stake in this. I wondered if this was what being alpha would ultimately turn me into—a person who was so used to making hard decisions that she assumed every one that came along was hers to make.

“Bryn.” The voice on the other side of the line wasn’t Callum’s, not anymore.

“Sora.” For the first time, saying her name didn’t take me back to the night when she’d beaten me. I didn’t see her driving her fist into my rib cage. I saw her the million times before that, taking care of me like I was her own.

I saw Devon—the way she looked at him, the way that, once upon a time, he’d looked at her.

“You’re sure the killer is my brother?” Sora sounded younger than I’d ever heard her—like Lake when she’d realized that Griffin was here, that he was real.

I thought of the bodies, the blood, the breath on my neck. “I’m sure,” I told her.

Sora didn’t hesitate. She didn’t stutter, she didn’t even breathe. “If the only way to stop him is to kill me, then you kill me.” She paused, and I could picture her sharp features settling into a mask, every bit as unreadable as Callum’s. “I’d prefer not to have to kill myself.”

But she would—that was what she was telling me. If one of us didn’t kill her, Sora would kill herself. She’d die to stop her brother.

“I’ll meet you at the border,” she said. “Three hours.”

That didn’t give her much time to say good-bye—to Callum, to her husband, to Dev.

“Sora—” I wasn’t sure what to say, but it didn’t matter. The line was dead.

She’d already hung up.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

T
HE WEREWOLVES IN THE ROOM WERE SILENT
—they’d heard every word Sora, Callum, and I had said. They knew what was coming. Jed and Caroline were another story.

Chase told them, so I didn’t have to. He was brief, to the point, and calm, but inside, I could hear him howling—not for Sora or Devon or all the things that might never be.

For me.

I could feel him thinking about what this would do to me. On the other side of the pack-bond, he was thinking about the future: about years and years of being alpha chipping away at everything else I was. About everything I would have to give up and everything I’d already given up.