Rivals and Retribution (6 page)

“Mommy’s sorry,” she said, wiping clumsily with the back of her shaking hand at the water that raced out of her eyes. “But you have to focus. You have to master this lesson before she arrives, otherwise…” Her eyes closed and more tears seeped out. “Auntie will be here in less than an hour, Derek,” she insisted. “And you have to show her…”

My lips—his lips—were moving, and I heard us say, “I don’t want to do this anymore. I don’t like this.”

“I’m sorry, baby,” she murmured, wiping at my cheek, her fingers coming away wet with Derek’s tears. “This is why you were born. When you’ve learned all these lessons, no one will ever rival your power. Don’t you want that? To be powerful? To never be afraid?”

“I want to go play.…”

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, her eyes flashing. “Most of us don’t get what we really want.” Her head hung a moment, and when she looked at us next, her jaw was set and firm even in that soft-looking face of hers. “You can take some time away after Auntie comes and sees that you’ve learned your lessons. That you’re fit.”

We nodded.

“Now focus on
her
.”

I gasped, seeing a woman in a jogging suit slumped in a nearby chair. A woman with blond hair hanging loose around her shoulders, and strong features that I’d come to recognize too well now. I knew her even without her signature ponytail.

Wanda
.

About ten years ago.

“Be gentle, but be firm. We don’t want to reduce every visitor to a drooling idiot like we accidentally did that Bible thumper. All you need to do is slip into her brain and find what she most wants to do in life.…”

Our gaze focused on Wanda, and the skin of her forehead seemed to peel back and her skull unfolded and we were absorbed into her gray matter. In a moment we stood in the foyer of a dimly lit house.

“Hurry, baby,” a voice oozed out of the woodwork of the hallway and spurred us forward.

“Hurry, hurry—find the door.…”

“It’s not here,” we hissed, spinning to again view all the doors lining an impossibly long hallway. A hallway that, the more we tried to look to see its end, to see where we had entered, the longer it stretched and the more doors popped into existence to fill the walls.

“It is there. It has to be,” Mommy urged us. “You don’t have much time. She must have some defenses.”

“Does she know it’s me?” we asked. “That I’m the one setting the trap?”

“No—not at all. She just knows someone is. But it doesn’t matter what she knows or how she can adapt. You are better. Stronger. More able. Find the door. Open every one of them, if you must.”

And we did. We raced down the hall, throwing doors open wide—doors to Wanda’s memories: her first kiss, her prom, her entrance exam for the academy …

“Stop, stop!” Mommy shouted. “Too much too fast … She’s struggling. Look at the doors. Focus on your goal. You’ll see a sign. There’s always a sign.”

We stood stock-still, spread our feet shoulder-width apart, and balled our hands into fists. Down the hall about halfway to forever the wall had distorted into a door that wobbled and glowed.

“Got it!” we shouted as we rushed toward it and flung it open.

We paused inside a tidy office space. Only as wide as we were with our arms stretched straight out at our sides, it was still a happy place with potted plants on the desk and a huge assortment of colorful books and pictures filling a few tall bookshelves.

“Do you see her life’s desire?”

We examined the area, running our fingers across the spines of books and watching their titles rearrange themselves, letters rippling and falling into unreadable jumbles at our touch and then straightening again, shaking themselves and climbing back into their proper order and place.

“Is it temporary? What I’m doing?” Derek asked.

“Only if you let it be,” Mommy answered. “But you can change a life forever if you just try.”

“Forever,” we whispered, making our way beyond the bookshelf.

On a wall hung a whiteboard.

Words were carefully written in a dozen different colors of marker, each in friendly, bubbly handwriting. Kindness, Sharing, Love, Gentleness, Reading, Writing, Arithmetic, Friendship, Self-Esteem, Good Manners, Self-Worth, Science, Art, Social Studies, and Phys Ed were each in a circle with a line extending from it back to the largest bubble of them all, with two words written in neat, large script in the board’s center.

TEACH KINDERGARTEN

Our heart raced. “We’ve found it. There’s a whiteboard with her goal,” Derek said. “She wants to be a teacher.”

Mommy laughed, and deep inside Derek, who was deep inside me, I shivered at the sound. “Well, that will never do,” she said. “Pick up the eraser and let’s make up her mind for her.”

I fought him. I begged him.
Don’t do it,
my mind screamed.
Don’t erase her dream and replace it.…

But he grabbed the eraser and went to work, his arm sweeping the height and width of the board to wipe it clean. To wipe out any trace of her dreams and desires.

“It’s not coming off.…”

“Put your back into it,” Mommy commanded. “Push your will onto hers.”

I was going to be sick, but there was no way I could. I was without form.
He
was without form.…

I was watching the memories of a ghost.

The queasiness passed as he worked with a fierce passion and the words began to disappear.

Mommy wasn’t just erasing Wanda’s future, she was changing Derek’s by letting him tamper with another person’s soul.

Inside his head, I cried. For both of them.

“Now what?”

The floor beneath our feet shifted, the boards buckling.

“Mommy?”

“What is it?”

“The room is … tilting.…”

“Oh. Very good. She knows something’s wrong. She’s strong enough to rebel. Be quick, baby. You need to write the new goal and get out.”

Back the way we’d come the door swung open and closed like a chewing mouth as the entire office slanted.

“What do I write?”

“In the center, write: ‘Work for the CIA.’ Then surround it with these words: ‘Shoot, Train, Fight, Work, Battle, Justice, Blood, Compete, Rise.’”

We scrawled the words on the whiteboard, connecting them back to her goal with a trembling hand.

The walls shuddered, pictures dancing off hooks and nails to crash on the floor and throw splinters of glass at us. “Finished!” we screamed.

“Not yet,” Mommy said as we grabbed hold of the whiteboard’s tray to keep our footing. “Grab all the markers so she can’t rewrite her destiny.”

I heard the smile in her voice and I shivered again.

We grabbed the sliding markers and shoved them into every pocket as things fell off the bookshelves and rolled under the desk. “Done!”

“Good boy! Now get out of there!”

We let go of the whiteboard and slid toward the door, kicking it open and bursting out into the hallway.

The ceiling undulated, tiles popping loose and flying in our direction, and Derek screamed, “Ouuut!”

We were back in the room with Mommy, her face so close to ours we pulled back in surprise. She patted our hand.

“How did I do?” we asked, panting from our efforts.

“Beautifully. You didn’t give up, and you adapted to new circumstances. You’re a survivor,” she said proudly. “Now let’s get things ready for Auntie’s arrival.”

I plummeted back into my own head—or he seemed to be vomited out of mine—but his mother’s words stuck.

“You didn’t give up, and you adapted to new circumstances. You’re a survivor.”

It was like Derek was sharing a lesson with me. With a groan, I kicked my feet out in front of me and rolled up onto my butt. The blanket fell off my shoulders, but it didn’t matter. Energy from Derek’s memory still washed through me beside the roaring headache. If I was going to survive this, I had to adapt.

And I was determined to survive.

Marlaena

My brain spilled out of my ears as my lips parted for Gareth’s kiss. His mouth was all cloves and cinnamon drenched in honey, his lips somehow both soft and firm, his tongue delicately probing along the edge of my mouth, precise as a cautious finger.

I sucked him down, filled my head with his smell, his taste, and wrapped my arms around him, letting my hands glide over the powerful muscles of his back and come to rest on his hips, just above that magnificent ass of his. He pressed me so close against his chest that my boobs ached, squashed against him the way I was, but I didn’t care. Because this was me and Gareth. Together. The way I’d wanted things to be for so long.

And then he pulled back from me so slowly I followed him, bending toward that delicious mouth like a moth drawn to the buzzing bulbs outside each room at the motel. “What?” I whispered—no, I
gasped
. Parts of me were on fire, parts of me buzzed with an energy—a hunger—I never felt except when I was chasing my prey, fur and flesh and hot, sweet blood just a hairsbreadth away. “What is it?”

So close I couldn’t see his mouth, I still knew he smiled because of the way the corners of his eyes crinkled. His dreads rubbed against my forehead, a bead bouncing across the tip of my nose as he shook his head. “You are so beautiful. So strong.” Then he stepped back on the bed, and my world tilted as my feet tried to compensate for the shift of the mattress beneath my feet. “But we should…” His arms dropped away from me, and he took my hands off his hips and held them, watching them intently as they curled limply in his own.

My hands looked as pale and weak as skim milk against the richer and warmer tone of even the palms of his hands.

“We should take things slow,” he said softly.

I yanked my hands away, the sting of rejection sharp. “Fine.”

He grabbed my hands again and took advantage of his better balance, pulling me close once more. “I’m sorry?” he asked, searching my eyes for some clue.

I pushed back from him and caught myself as I tumbled off the edge of the bed, making my stumble look more like a dismount. Barely. “It’s completely logical,” I admitted, fighting to keep the acid from my voice. “You don’t want the responsibilities that come with being bound to an alpha and … well…” I brushed the hair back from my eyes and straightened, throwing my shoulders back and my boobs out. Yeah. I had great boobs. And I made damned certain he knew it. And that he knew he wouldn’t be touching them for a very long time. “And I’m an alpha. I can’t just go screwing around with someone who can’t shoulder responsibility.”

He opened his mouth to object, but before he could say what I’d guessed all along—that he wasn’t shirking responsibility—I added, “I have to think of the pack.”

His mouth closed and he nodded. “You’re right,” he said as a conciliatory measure. “I’m not good enough for you.”

I blinked. I thought of Jessica Gillamansen, duct-taped and gagged nearby. My stomach quivered.
Gareth
wasn’t good enough for
me
. It was the furthest thing from the truth.

“I like you, Gareth,” I admitted, my heart quivering at my willingness to put words to my feelings. “But you’re right. Slow is best. Maybe pause or stop is even better.”

Before he could say anything else, I left, letting the door slam behind me.

Alexi

I fought to keep the interior of the truck’s windshield from fogging up between the heat of Max’s breath and the cold of the blustering wind.

“And exactly what will we do when we get to the motel?” Pietr asked.

“Max will scent for their rooms—” I leaned forward and rubbed my sleeve against the windshield to give myself a swatch of vision.

“Or Jessie,” Max stated, his nose to the open window.

“And we will confront Marlaena and demand she return her.”

It seemed simple enough.

“And if they put up a fight?”

“We will give them the fight of their lives.”

“And if Dmitri is there?”

“We’ll argue over who gets to kill him,” Max muttered.

I shook my head.

“There will be no killing unless we’re left with no other choice. They are
oboroten
. They are like us—like you,” he corrected, looking at Max.

“They may be
oboroten,
but they are nothing like us. They are thieves—”

“And very likely murderers,” I reminded. “There is one shopkeeper less in this small American town, and I am willing to bet it is their fault.”

Max stretched in his seat. “And we know what that means,” he stated, folding his arms behind his head. “You don’t make bets you aren’t sure of winning.”

“I would bet you are correct,” I confirmed, easing more weight onto the truck’s gas pedal. “But the fact remains they are
oboroten
and should be given a chance at being something other than our rivals.”

Marlaena

I crept down the motel’s stairs and around the back of the building to watch them, sipping substandard coffee. It was still coffee, at least. A totally legal upper with a dark and grim flavor perfect to reflect my mood.

It wasn’t like I was going to sleep tonight, anyway.

Dmitri and Noah scuffled a minute in the clearing between the motel’s back wall and the single line of trees marking the property’s boundary.

Dmitri barked out a laugh and threw Noah back to land on his ass. I nearly threw my cup and shouted, but the pup’s blond hair just ruffled with the impact, his cheeks pink from the cold, his mouth open with something between laughter and a gasp of surprise. Laughter won, and he nodded at Dmitri and popped back onto his feet, brushing the snow off his jeans.

I stayed still and quiet, sucking up the scent of my coffee and watching them.

Crouched nearby, Terra huddled under a hoodie, grinning and clearly impressed by Noah. They had joined the pack at nearly the same time. I’d nearly rejected her—she didn’t fit in anywhere, except with Noah. He had convinced me that she needed to be part of the family.

But she was still “a square peg trying to fit into a round hole,” as Margie would have said.

Of course, our entire pack was made up of square pegs, if you thought about the rest of society.