Luke (Bear Shifter) (New World Shifters) (14 page)

Luke

I took the gun. It felt
right
in my hand, just as pointing it at Zoe felt natural. My actions were my own, though the thought behind them most certainly was not.

There was a strange quietness in my mind, and I realized that for once the voice of the Bear, the constant knowledge of its cravings and desires was gone. The silence was deafening. It was like being in a wild sea without the steady hand that had guided me. I was alone, finally alone.

And worse, I could see that Zoe was too.

I aimed down the sights at her head. Thoughts that weren’t mind filled my head, whispering through the storm with the seduction of a siren.

At least this would be quick. She didn't deserve life any more than any of the rest of them did. She left her kid behind, Carla was right about that. She'd abandoned her child. She been foolish or careless enough to have a boy so young, and she'd left him behind. Her grandparents hadn’t needed that burden, and yet they'd had it thrust upon them. Zoe was selfish and self-centered, thinking only of the impacts her choices had on her own life and unable to think of the repercussions.

She was a bitch. She was a whore, who would spread her legs at the tender age of sixteen or seventeen and not thought to use protection. She was a dirty, used up, worthless slut, and the sooner I could remove her from the earth the better off everyone would be.

I shook as I fought to keep my finger from the trigger, but that didn't stop it from wrapping around the metal that would soon send a bullet through her brain. I fought it, aware that these thoughts weren’t my own, no matter how right they felt. I raged against them, and even though my body shook as my brain did its best to rebel, I could feel my finger tighten on the trigger.

And beneath all of the lies, one thought that I knew to be true…

She wasn't my Mate. Yes, it had felt perfect when I'd been inside her, and I was sure that sex with another could never be sweet as what I've enjoyed with her, but she wasn't destined to be mine. She wasn't a daughter of Virginia Dare, and so she couldn't be the one for me.

I gritted my teeth. I felt sweat break out along my hairline as I fought against that last millimeter, the one that would make me fire the gun.
Don't do this
, I told myself, but the words were instantly drowned out by the chaos the Vampire had caused in my brain. Without the Bear to strengthen me, I was rudderless, tossed to and fro and easily led. I had no doubt that this was exactly what Everly had felt like, and Bruno too. Both of them were older than me, and probably stronger in their will because of it. And yet they hadn't been able to resist.

What hope do I have
?

I gave in. I couldn't fight anymore, and my finger tightened on the trigger.

She's yours!
the Bear roared at me, as if from a great distance.
You claimed her last night. Right or wrong, destined or not, you made her the one. Your heart knows it. Your head may be controlled by another, but this is your soulmate. Ask yourself if that isn't true!

I paused, unsure. The Vampire controlled my mind, but my heart was a wild thing, and I saw right then that I’d already given it to another. Zoe owned me, and I was glad of that.

I was going to fire the gun. I couldn’t stop myself. But my love for Zoe and her love for me freed me just enough that I could change the angle of my body. When I finally did shoot, I managed to swivel enough to send the silver bullet inside the chamber crashing through Carla's shocked, horrified face.

I dropped to the ground, powerless. Every drop of strength I possessed had gone into that fight, and even though I didn't know if it was over not, I had nothing else to give.

25

Zoe

Luke had moved so quickly that it took me a moment to realize that I hadn't been the one that was shot. I flinched at the meaty impact of the bullet when it struck Carla, and an instant later Luke fell to the ground like a ton of bricks. He didn't move. I couldn't even see if he was still breathing, and I rushed to him.

I put my hands on his body, desperate to feel his lungs take a breath, or the strength of his pulse. He was cold. I’d touched him so often over the course of the last day or so that I’d grown used to his heat. The sudden lack of it brought a finality with it that I didn't know how to accept. Here was this man, this muscled force of nature, suddenly brought low.

“He's the lucky one,” Carla said, and I jumped at the whip crack sound of her voice. I'd seen the shot; I had seen her head rocked back by the impact. If that hadn’t killed her, what could?

“Let Jake go,” I said. “Whatever plans you have for me, let my son free.”

“I don't have any plans for you,” she told me, rubbing at her temple. I saw the wound begin to close, and she smiled at me. “Silver bullets don't work on Vampires. I'm sure your boyfriend knew that, but he did what he could. I'm impressed, if I'm being honest. The Wolves were much harder to convince, but in the end I brought them around. He seemed ready to do my bidding, but I see now that he was stronger than any of the others.”

“Is he dead?”

She shrugged. “You both are.”

That wasn't really an answer, and I knew it. It was a threat, or maybe even a promise.

But it also meant that there was still a chance. If Luke was gone I could see no reason for her not to just come out and tell me, and the fact that she hadn't meant that there was still a way out of this. At least that's what I told myself, and I was determined to hang on to that belief with both hands, like the survivor of shipwreck clinging to the wreckage as the ocean pulled at her legs.

“My son doesn't have to be a part of this,” I told her again, trying one last time.

“No one
has
to be. But he
is
. You
are
. Your Bear boyfriend
is
. Everyone in this town is a part of it, whether they want to be or not.”

“What do you want from us?” I figured if I could keep her talking at least she wasn't going to be able to fully concentrate on hurting either Jake or myself, though I doubted that I could stall her for very long.

Carla shrugged. “I know the movies you seen. I've read the same books you have, and no matter what the newest shit says, we've never sparkled. Yes, we’re hurt by the sun, and no, we can't cross running water. Some of the other stuff is true as well, but the important thing is that there can never be more of us than there are.”

“Until you bite someone, you mean…”

Carla shook her head. “No, that part is bullshit too. We can't make more, and even if we could I doubt we would. It's hard enough staying in the shadows with the ones that are already in existence. Way back, before the beginning of time, we existed. And we go on existing, sharing that initial power between what is left of our ranks. Every time one of us is gone, the rest grow stronger.”

“What did you do to Bridget then?”

Carla sighed. “That… Well, that’s what happens when we bite someone. If we’re careful, if we sip instead of guzzle, we can leave enough room in a now empty soul to implant a thought. But she's no Vampire. The winter will strip her flesh away, and she’ll never eat again. She’s on borrowed time, and when she wears her fingers down to nubs against the barks of a million trees, she’ll go right on carving that same message with what's left of her hands until she's dead. Is that the fate you want? Would you like me to let you feel the prick of my teeth, so that your son and I can watch your last days of mindless, unknowing torment?”

I felt an inferno of rage boiling up in me. This woman, this monster… I wanted to tear her limb from limb. “Carla, I don't know why you're doing this, but I have to warn you. If you try and use my son against me once more, if you threaten his life or his memory of me, I will find a way to end you.”

Carla smiled, and I thought for a moment I could catch the new sharpness to some of her teeth in the glint of the light. “You'll have to forgive me for not fearing your threats.”

I grit my teeth. “You don't have to fear me. Just know that I'm telling you the truth.”

She shrugged. “Jake? Come over here. I want you to say goodbye to your mother.”

Obediently, with slow, exaggerated movements that made it look like he was walking underwater, Jake set his juice box on the bar and climbed down from the stool. I watched him approach, my mother's instinct on high alert for any scratches or bite marks. I didn't see any. She'd mesmerized him the same way she had Luke and Everly and Bruno, but she hadn't emptied him like Bridget.

Maybe that was something. Maybe what was done to him could be undone, but I knew that in order for that to happen I’d have to first destroy Carla.

Sure
, I told myself,
that seems easy
.
All you need to do is kill an ancient evil, and you’ve got no idea how to do it
.

“Carla?” I asked. “Is there no other way?”

“No,” she told me, as she reached out to lay her hand on Jake's tousled hair. He smiled up at her, and my heart broke. “At least if there is,” she conceded, “that's not the path you and I are going to be walking.”

The anger rushed up through me again, stronger this time. I was fueled by an impotent fury that threatened to short-circuit my brain. There wasn't anything I could do, and she knew it. Why else would she be rubbing my face in it? Luke still had that big handgun gripped in his fist, and Carla didn't care. Not one little bit.

And why should she? She’d already taken one bullet from it, and it had clearly done her no lasting damage. By leaving it so close to me, it was just one more way of saying that I was powerless to stop her.

“Jake?” I asked, hoping that between us we could break the spell, if only a little. Luke had been able to, at the very end, but my son didn't have the experience or the magic that my lover did. His eyes remained dazed and glossed over, shining and yet empty at the same time.

“There's nothing else to say,” I told Carla. “You clearly want to be his mother now. “

“I'll be good to him,” she promised me. “He won't want for anything, so long as he wants for the right things.”

I remembered the way Carla had always counted things. The money, the scratches on the table, the glassware. She'd explained it away as OCD, but it was
way
more than just obsessive. It was practically
psychotic
. I remembered back to the spilled popcorn she'd spent fifteen minutes of her life picking up, one kernel at a time. There was something there. What's more, it lined up with some of the fiction that I knew about Vampires.

But what if it wasn't fiction? Luke had known that she couldn't cross moving water, and Carla had admitted that there were some rules. There were places she couldn't go, so maybe there were things that she couldn't resist.

“He needs another juice box,” I said softly, keeping my voice low so that she’d think I was only talking to myself. If luck would have it, if fate was on my side, she'd overhear me and take it for the sad, final words of a mother doting on her son as she said goodbye.

She took the bait. “See,” Carla said, that arrogance showing once more as she brazenly turned her back on me to go to the bar. “He needs something and I’ll provide it. That's what mothers do. You might not know that, since you abandoned him for so long. I suppose he'll remember you,” she said, behind the bar now and reaching beneath it for another drink for my son, “but I'll make sure that those memories get twisted. They'll be no fondness when he pictures your face, and before too long the image will fade away to nothing. How does that sound, Zoe?”

I needed to be fast. I knew I couldn't outrun her, and I knew that she was stronger than me as well. If she saw what I was doing she’d try to stop me. If I gave myself away, the game would be up before it had even begun.

“Are you ready to be a mother?” I asked angrily.

“Of course,” Carla said. “I’ve been waiting a long time for the right child.”

“Then you better get used to cleaning up after them,” I yelled. Each of the tables had a little bowl of nuts in the center. They were disgusting things, and both Carla and I had watched in horror over the last few months as the patrons had picked through them for the ones they wanted, their blunt, dirty fingers poking around in bowls we never washed.

Hell, we never even emptied them out, since it was only our job to keep them full. Before we opened I’d go around with a big bag and top them up. That was the sum total of the maintenance they required, at least according to me. Carla never wanted anything to do with them, and I thought I knew why.

I'd watched her once, when she'd accidentally spilled some of them while wiping down a table. I watched her lips move as she counted them back into the bowl one by one, a little nervous tic running through her as she individually removed each nut from the table and placed them in the bowl.

It was my only chance. If I was wrong, I was dead. I scooped up the bowl nearest me and threw it in an arc over the bar to land behind it. Carla watched in horror, unable to stop its fall. Nuts went everywhere, and I heard them skitter behind dozens of hiding places. I knew the floor back there would be covered with the damn things, and Carla looked down at her feet as if she were seeing her own demise.

She was
aghast
. That was the word. In her face there was an equal measure of disgust and agony, laced with a healthy dose of revulsion. She couldn't take it. She couldn't stop herself from counting them back into the bowl, and as she bent to almost mindlessly pick them up one at a time, I dropped to my knees and pulled the gun out of Luke's hand.

I didn't know if this would work. If it did, there was no telling if Jake or Luke or I would be safe.

But there also wasn't time to get out of the way. The best I could do was move in front of my boy as I aimed through the bar, imagining a straight line the past from the muzzle of the handgun through the thin wood to the six cheaply made bottles of natural gas that powered the shitty campfire stove Bruno had made us heat entrées on.

Carla was still down there. For all I knew she was in the way of the bullet, or had been able to break free of her obsessive compulsion and was even now racing around the bar.

I didn't know. It didn't matter now. I closed my eyes, not wanting to see if she really was rushing at me, and pulled the trigger over and over and over.