Kept (18 page)

Not able to suppress my curiosity, I took a step forward. I tried not to think about how it could have been Lisbetta in there. If I’d never checked the back of the truck and found her, I would have been allowing a child to be treated like this. My family would have justifiably been ashamed of me.

“What are you going to do with her?” I whispered. I repeated it again when Karl didn’t acknowledge me.

He snorted. “What do you care? In a few minutes, you can go back to Roscoe with a clean nose and be your family’s savior.”

I folded my arms. The chill hadn’t penetrated my coat, but I felt cold nonetheless. “What honor is there in treating a child like that?”

Karl surged forward, grabbing me by the lapel of my coat. “Don’t question me!”

I sensed Nick moving not far from me. I prayed he didn’t strike. This wasn’t the time.

“Get your hands off her,” Nick warned.

I winced. No one gives orders to an alpha in front of his pack. No one. A
very
bad move on Nick’s part.

With a tilt of Karl’s head, five men stalked toward Nick.

Oh, shit.

“Hey!” The older werewolf leaned his head out from the back. “What kind of bullshit is this?” Something was shoved out of the truck a second later. It wasn’t a wolf, or a little girl, but a bloodstained man with a large grin on his face. The man—actually, in reality, the fairy—laughed with a streak of black blood streaming from his mouth.

All hell had officially broken loose.

“What?” The fairy spat blood on the ground. “You don’t like surprises?” Then he proceeded to say something in German. From the silence all around me, and the look of unabridged fury on Karl’s face, he didn’t
appreciate
what the fairy had to say.

I expected the alpha to grab the fairy, but instead he turned to me, his yellow eyes wide from his oncoming change.

“Betrüger!”
His fist rose to swing at me, but the hit barely connected with my chin. By the time his fist encountered my flesh, something large and scaly had appeared to clamp down on his arm.

Karl, the imp, and I went crashing to the ground. Karl’s heavy weight stole the breath from my lungs, and even worse, my ears rang from the jolt to my chin.

The pack leader snarled and swatted at the relentless imp on his back. He rolled off me to grab the creature. While he wrestled with it, many more imps jumped on
him. His pack wasn’t far away and rushed to his aid. Once I’d been hit, total chaos had erupted in the clearing. Imps scampered from over the ridge like a black tide. But the fifty or so werewolves weren’t deterred. While some fended off imps, others initiated the change, to give themselves a fighting chance. Once the wolves had transformed, blood began to flow freely. Wolves snatched up imps, grabbing them like cottontail rabbits dashing through the snow.

At first, Tamara, the spell-casting wolf, hovered close by, but far enough away from the melee to avoid involvement. Maybe she was holding back long enough to regain her energy in order to cast her spell. Like Grandma, she knew the old magic of transformation. Suddenly, Tamara’s form crackled and contorted to become what I didn’t want to see, the ghastly form of a monster I remembered all too well. It towered over everyone, its mouth, full of jagged teeth, gaping wide.

I backed away, shaking my head.

A wolf tackled me, driving me into the present. He bit into my shoulder, shaking me violently. I clawed him and managed to kick him off. From behind me, Heidi surged forward with a trident, burying it in the wolf’s side.

“Stop standing there!” she yelled at me. “Move your ass!”

She expertly glided forward, shoving back the advancing wolves while I trailed behind her, nursing my shoulder. All around me, the fight continued. I wanted to join in, but I was practically frozen with fear. Here I was in the middle of a damn clearing with blood spraying all over the place. With howls of pain coming from all sides. Not far away, even the Muse had somehow managed to join in, gutting a werewolf. What the hell?

The fairies provided support to the imps. The dark elves came first, wielding swords. Not far behind them
came the fairies themselves. Their beautiful faces were marred by vicious snarls. Who would have thought someone who looked like Tinkerbell could leap on a wolf like that? It was almost like a nightmarish kids’ movie where the good guys lost.

But where was the fairy child Lisbetta? Was she all right?

I would have expected the fairies to cast spells to fend off the wolves, but just as Nick had said, the fairies were right now at their weakest, and with every fairy the wolves viciously brought down, that weakness showed.

Five wolves moved to take down Heidi. I called out her name to warn her, but a man burst out of the woods not far away. He vaulted over scampering imps without effort. His white-blond hair was distinguishable from the snow only because it spiked out from the top. He wore nothing but a brown leather jacket and a pair of blue jeans. No shoes. He didn’t even react to the cold around us.

A wolf was headed toward me, but I failed to notice. Instead, I was transfixed by the blond-haired man. Maybe it was the way he plunged his spear into one of the wolves, got tackled by the rest—and then didn’t stay down for long. His attackers scrambled, and only he alone stood with his bloodied blade. Yet more wolves came at him. His movements were fluid. Graceful. Deadly.

He must have lost his natural mind to come here armed only with his pointy stick and a knife.

The wolf continued to come at me, his jaws now close and snapping. I watched in horror, begging my damn legs to move, until a hand clamped down on mine and dragged me backward.

“What are you doing?” It was Nick. He waved his staff in front of us. The spell only pushed them back temporarily, but he’d at least bought us some time.

We ran through the trees, not daring to look back. I sensed a few members of the pack at our heels, fighting to catch up with us. We’d made a mistake in running. That was exactly what wolves like me wanted. Blood for the hunt. Blood for the kill. We’d be dead soon if we didn’t make a stand.

My shoulder throbbed. I’d been bitten deeply.

At my side, Nick panted, trying to keep up with me through the mud and snow. Under normal circumstances, I would have been freaking out at the
plop, plop
sound of mud on my shoes, but today the fight for my life took over.

Turn around and face them
, the wolf in me begged.
Let me at them
.

I dared to turn around and noticed we had ten werewolves behind us, running in a tight formation. Three had separated from the pack to run ahead. They meant to slaughter us. I sensed their frenzied mood. My chest tightened, and I wheezed painfully. My legs, which had once yearned to run, now turned to rubber. This wasn’t the Long Island pack or the Burlington pack. They didn’t want to take me prisoner. They wanted to end me—and it wouldn’t be pretty.

I should have seen the tree coming as soon as I turned around again. But instead I plowed right into it while Nick managed to dodge it. With an
umph
, I landed painfully on the ground.

Ehh, they would’ve caught us anyway
, I tried to tell myself. I stood up slowly, dizzy from the impact. My fingers brushed against the underside of my nose and came away wet with blood.
Well, there’ll be more of that when they get done with me
.

When Nick urged me to run, I shook my head. The three wolves had circled around, and now they ran at us.

I whispered, “You got an atomic bomb in that coat?”

He faced me, fear in his eyes. “Not today, I don’t.”

Mountains of terror crushed me. Enough to make every breath horribly painful.

Yellow eyes glowing and bright closed in. With claws out, ready to slice us to ribbons.

Our backs touched—maybe for the last time. “It’s been good knowing you, Nick.” My voice came out hoarse.

“Oh, I’m not done yet.”

I managed a short laugh before the first one leaped at us. Nick swung his staff. I expected fireworks, light, something magical to back up his words. It spurted a few times and then went dark.

The wolf howled in pain and scampered away.

Still, I groaned. “Is that it? I’ve seen sparklers that are hotter.”

Nick bit out, “If you can do better, you’re more than welcome to try. I’m a
white
wizard using a warlock staff. A rather shitty loaner staff, actually, and if I’m alive afterward to complain, I’ll do so to the guy about it.”

“I told you what I was up against, and you showed up with a borrowed staff?”

Before I could get out another snide comment, the other wolves came at us, much sooner than I’d expected them to. There was power in numbers and with their count, we were done for. I saw the next sequence of events with each blink of my eyes.

The first wolf swept in, mouth wide open.

Nick grabbed my hand.

A second wolf came at my feet.

A third surged toward Nick, prepared to gut him.

My mouth opened to call Nick’s name.

Suddenly, the dark greens and browns of the forest around me lightened and then turned gray. The air disappeared and my ears popped. I faintly heard a grunt when another wolf struck my leg. Pain blossomed, but it was nothing compared to the emptiness I felt. That raw
feeling after someone punches you in the gut when you weren’t expecting it. Your eyes roll back and your body shifts forward to protect yourself. I wanted to look at Nick one last time. To see the slight tilt of his smile. To see the lips I’d never kiss. To see the look of finality in his eyes before he was taken away from me.

But all I saw was the wolves around us faltering. Tilting wildly. Then I realized the tilting was me as well. Falling with the wolves—Nick’s hand locked around my wrist. He kept me from slamming too hard into the ground.

When I finally hit, my eyes fluttered closed.

Chapter 14

I
woke
up to the worst hangover I’d ever had in my life. Mind you, I’ve only been drunk once. At most, like anyone who drank wine on occasion, I’d experienced a light buzz. But this was insane.

Every inch of my skull throbbed. Especially when my head moved forward.

“Don’t move,” a voice whispered.

I squirmed slightly and then winced when my shoulder protested. I was lying in the backseat of a car. A rental, if my nose was correct.

Rentals should always have that lovely clean car smell. Until I’d rented that SUV with Thorn in Atlantic City, I’d yet to meet a rental car I didn’t adore. But that wasn’t what I should be focusing on right now. How the hell had I gone from the middle of a life-and-death situation to feeling like utter bottom-of-the-pan-burnt-on-couldn’t-be-scraped-off crap?

“What time is it?” Even my voice sounded jacked-up. It had that kind-of-gravelly sound of a person who had a sore throat. My fingers brushed against my face. Even that action made the world flip upside down, and I wanted to purge my already empty stomach.

From the front seat, Nick said, “It’s about two. You’ve been sleeping for a while.”

I blinked a few times. I never slept in. That was unusual—unless I’d been hurt badly.

“What happened? Is everyone okay?”

I shifted my head to look at the opposite seat, but the movement made me nearly black out. The pain was that bad.

“I told you not to move.”

“I won’t if you tell me what happened,” I grated.

Slowly, I felt around to make sure I wasn’t missing any body parts. I counted all my limbs and fingers. Everything was accounted for. So why did I feel like I’d been tackled by every NFL team in existence?

“Heidi and Abby are okay. They got out of it just fine. The fairies and some big guy protected them from the wolves.”

I wanted to nod, but I’d learned my lesson the first time the pain came.

“Who was that guy?” He wasn’t someone a person could easily forget.

“I don’t know, but I sensed he came from the sea, like Heidi.”

I rested for a few minutes, and then spoke again. “What happened after that?”

Nick replied, “Well, you and I didn’t fare as well. The Jackson pack’s short several members today, but the ones who came for us hit us pretty hard.”

“How are you holding up?” I managed to ask.

“With spells. I’m also forcing my eyes open with imaginary toothpicks.”

“Why aren’t we in a hotel right now, imitating a rock formation?” With nice, very clean sheets for me to lose myself within.

“You were in pretty bad shape. And I didn’t want you in their territory in case they had other ideas.” He sighed. “I fended off our attackers, but you collapsed in
the process. Not long after, I regrouped with the fairies, along with Heidi and Abby.”

Memories bounced around my head. “I think I saw the child fairy again. But all I remember is her voice.”

“She came to us, and her people guided us through the forest. They got us back to civilization so we could find a way out of town.”

I tried to string together what happened when those wolves attacked us, but my mind couldn’t wrap around it.

“Did you cast some kind of spell? On the wolves? ‘Cause it got me, too.”

He didn’t speak for a bit. “Yeah, I did something. Something I regret.”

What did he have to regret? What was bad about
saving
us? I did my best slight shrug. “I’m alive. I guess I should be happy about that.”

“Should I take you home? Let the pissed-off fairies take care of Roscoe?”

The name made the pain come back with renewed force. “Absolutely not! Are we on the Parkway yet?”

“We’ll be there in about an hour.”

“Then keep going south to Atlantic City. You’re not taking me home.”

A groan from the front seat. Even though I couldn’t see his face, I naturally guessed he was angry. His next comment confirmed it.

“I can’t do it, Nat. You’re not well.”

“If you’re my friend, you’ll take me where I need to go.”

“What good will it do you if you can barely walk?”

I fumed from my seat. He had a point. He also hadn’t mentioned healing me, which meant I was in
really
bad shape.