Taking Back Sunday (28 page)

“There has to be a way that they can stop her,” Marcus said from the passenger seat of the truck. “Why else would they agree to meet her there?”

His back was turned to Sunday, but he spoke over his shoulder so that she could hear it. Neal was still on the phone, which meant that all of the wolves were having a conversation in spite of only two men being on the phone. Sunday felt grossly inferior to them. She was only privy to what the boys in her car were saying, and they’d taken to leaving out what was being said on the other end of the line. From the other end of the call, the other two wolves were answering Marcus and coming up with their own ideas. Sunday wanted to be a part of the conversation, but instead, she was merely going along for the ride, letting the werewolves take over. She wrung her hands on her lap and glowered out the window.

Cyrus caught the view of Sunday in the backseat. It had been such a long time since he’d chauffeured her anywhere that, in that moment, the memories of driving her from Albuquerque to Seattle hit him like a truck. All of it: the teenager who hadn’t put up a fight knowing that she was being abducted, her singing in the backseat, and carrying her bruised and battered body while she rested nearly unconscious in his arms before dumping her onto her small bed in the witch’s compound rushed back to him. His heart sank. If Sunday had been right to believe that everything happens for a reason and as it’s meant to, then there must have been a reason that he had been in that position all those years ago. Then, he’d made the wrong choice. He couldn’t let that happen again.

Sensing his eyes on her, Sunday looked up to meet his gaze in the rearview mirror. She knew, she’d seen it in his mind, that this moment was so much more than just the hour or so that it took them to get from the dead vampires’ house to the scene of Constance’s ceremony. It was the realization of Fate’s design that led him to meet her, him to be driven by hate to pursue her, and him to find her and be consumed by his devotion to her.

“There’s the other witch, though,” Cyrus cut in. “There’s no way we can leave her there with Constance and the vampires. Even if the vampires manage to stop Constance, we don’t know that they won’t turn her, and we don’t know what they’ll do to the other witch.”

“No matter what, we have to save Eunice and end Constance,” Sunday concurred from the backseat, her eyes still leveled with Cyrus’. He silently nodded.

Without warning, Marcus shot around to look at Sunday. With his eyes squinted, he inspected her from head to toe. He found her expression quizzical. She was put-off by his abrupt speculation of her. She felt like a specimen under a microscope, and she didn’t know what point he was trying to make with his accusatory evaluation.

“Problem?” she snapped. Her tone made Cyrus turn sharply to look at Marcus, and then dart back to the rearview.

“What’s your deal in all this?” Marcus asked. He was stern in his line of questioning and it was obvious that he doubted her motives. They were so close to the reservoir that it was pressing on him to get a handle on her before he allowed his brothers to fall into the line of fire on the whim of the dreaded Incarnate.

“What do you mean what’s my ‘deal’? That’s my friend
out there,
and those are my friends
back there
. What the hell are you asking me?” she barked. This late in the game Sunday didn’t need some wrench flying into her plan. There was only the one objective: stop the warlock. It didn’t make sense to Sunday that any one of the werewolves couldn’t see that for himself.

“You could have destroyed her with a wink, yet here you are letting the hunters who’ve been sent to catch you drive you into battle with vampires and demons.”

Cyrus stayed quiet, as did his packmates at the other end of the call. Marcus was saying what they’d all thought, even Cyrus, and they all wanted to know what Sunday’s answer would be. There was no reason that they could decipher for why she’d let Constance go on with her plans if she’d really suspected a threat to her friends. What was occurring at that moment was a direct result of her decision to
not
interfere. They had followed her for weeks, watching as the pieces had fallen into place. Even with the looming threat of the wolves going back on their word and abducting her without interfering with the warlock, she hadn’t attempted an escape.

“I wasn’t sure,” she answered defensively “Lest I remind you all,
you
were the ones who found the warehouse
and
the ones who found the vampires. All I found was a dead witch that we still can’t explain. You all jumped on
my
case, not the other way around. I’d be here with
or
without you.”

“But you’re here
with
us, Incarnate,” Marcus retorted. “You know this isn’t going to end well for you, no matter
what
happens to the witch and your friend. At the end of this, you’re stuck with the guys who’ve been hired to find you, and we’re taking you with us. Why are you letting us get involved? Why not run away when you knew we were on to you? You made Angel, then Cyrus and me, yet you stayed. You slept in our bed, and you rode in our car. There’s something else up that you’re not telling us.”

Sunday looked away into the darkness of the wooded curtain beyond Broad River Road. Sunday wasn’t going anywhere with them when this was over, not to wherever the wolves intended her to go and not anywhere with Cyrus. They shared a long silence before she answered their dissention at all. Without taking her eyes from the trees blurring past them as they took to the final road to the reservoir, she responded.

“Like it or not, you’ve got a job to do. That’s not my problem right now. I had a life, and this warlock messed with it. We’re going to fix this problem and then worry about the next. You keep worrying about
me
, you won’t be able to stop her, and let me make this clear to you, if you get in my way out there, you’re nothing more than a part of the problem.” She drew a dark and cutting leer into Marcus’ eyes when she turned back to face him. “You can all hear it once and hear it clearly. Make no mistake, you get in my way
now
, you won’t live to deal with the next thing.”

This was her problem, and she was going to fix it. The way she saw it, the wolves had done her a service with the extra man-hours and the benefit of their information, but she would be taking care of this one herself. If they had a second thought about joining her side of the fight, they’d be better off walking away now. All of them. Even and especially the one she didn’t want to lose.

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

Sunday puffed on a cigarette anxiously as she waited in the truck for the werewolves to sniff out the area. Cyrus remained in human form, but Marcus had taken a few minutes to shift into his wolf. She hadn’t seen him yet, but they’d let her know what he was doing. As a wolf, he had both the increased hunter’s senses of his animal, and the element of tracking more quickly and more furtively through the wooded area. According to the other werewolves, the vampires were headed near to where the three had parked their truck into the forest by the reservoir’s edge. They were on the right side of it, at least based on where the vampires had been leading Neal and Angel. It was only a matter of time before Cyrus or Marcus would return to give her a direction in which to move.

The night was cold, and by the reservoir, the air was more humid than it had been in the city. Sunday wiggled her toes in her sneakers and felt for the warmth of her thick socks. Visiting all the places that she had in her lifetime, she had experienced all sorts of climates and all sorts of conditions, yet she could never acclimate herself to one. Where it was even brisk, she found herself freezing. Where it was mild, she found herself sweating bullets. She rewrapped the striped scarf that she always wore in the cold around her neck and re-buttoned her dark pea coat over its ends.

As she exhaled a stream of smoke, she shivered. The wolves had been gone for at least fifteen minutes, and she was eager to get started and nervous that the other wolves or the vampires would land at her feet before they returned. Even worse, she considered the possibility that they were so far off from where Constance had set up shop that they wouldn’t reach her in time.

“You’re taking too long,” she mumbled into the trees as she crushed her cigarette between her fingers and shoved the butt into her coat pocket.

Seizing any opportunity to do something rather than sit abandoned in the middle of nowhere as the werewolves did recon, Sunday got out of the truck and walked a few yards until the trees cleared, and she was standing at the gravely base of the reservoir. Without dropping a single guard, Sunday could feel the pulsing energy of the water. It was being held there, trapped, when it yearned to rush through the river.

She knew why Constance would pick a place like this to set her ritual. So much of the reservoir had poured into the lake for want of further motion and mobility. Instead, it was forced into stagnation. The natural state of this water was movement. No matter how important it was to the surrounding community to set up a dam and cut off the river, it was more important for the water in the river to breathe and feel alive again. Some of it would be used for powering turbines, and sure, that was a reprieve from the agony it suffered when it was stuck in a glorified pond, but this water had so much more energy to give than any power station could use it for. It had a long life. Moreover, it wanted its life back. If a witch like Constance came by with an offer to utilize it, then it would rush at the chance to help her.

In the distance, Sunday heard a car engine near slowly and then settle. Somewhere beyond where she could perceive, the vampires had arrived with the pair of wolves behind them, hopefully, having gone unnoticed through the lonely nighttime country roads. More time passed during which Sunday felt the slow, certain rise of the reservoir’s potential. It was being teased, and Sunday knew it would soon get release.

Rather than waste another second waiting for the werewolves to lead her to Constance, Sunday took the matter into her own hands. She stood at the foot of the reservoir and placed a hand on the dirty, stale water. Closing her eyes, she focused on the aura of the lake. She dropped her shields, and as she did, she asked the reservoir to tell her its story, the story of where it had come from, the story of the trees trapped beneath the water, the story of the men who had carved it out of the ground, the story of where it dreamed it could be.

When she touched the water, she did so kindly, generously, knowing the body of water suffered to be something more than it was. It ached to drive itself through the powerful turbines. It pressed itself into the wall of the dam. It called out to Broad River beyond.

I can give you release,
she told it.
You feel my strength and you want to be a part of me. You know I can give you what you need.

Behind the voice of the reservoir, a wolf howled. It was probably the first this region had heard of its kind in ages. It was Marcus, no doubt, calling to his brothers, letting them know where he was. Werewolves could talk among their pack, she had learned. As wolf or man, packmates shared a certain bond of communication and camaraderie.

Again, however, she was out of the loop. Wherever Marcus was and whatever he had found, he wasn’t going to share with her. The only choice she had was to communicate with the one constant in the area, the one thing that would let her in, get inside of her, and share, without discrimination, the information that she needed to know because she could offer it something that no one else could. Use.

Take me to the witch named Constance,
she implored the reservoir.

She created the image of Constance in her mind that she most clearly recalled. The small frame, the tight waist, the short bobbed hair that shone in the light, the large brown eyes that fit her pale, clear face like a doll, her eternally puckered rosy lips, her childlike voice… As she did it, the soul of the locked river answered her with the gift of guidance.

Sunday walked what seemed for miles in what seemed like total darkness, following the knowledge that the reservoir had given her. She had made it a promise that she intended to keep. She would harness its power and use it tonight. She would find Constance and she would rain her terrible glory on the witch’s parade.

As she neared the site of the ritual, Sunday could feel the magic seeping through the trees. It wasn’t just Constance that she was feeling. She was feeling the spirits of another strong witch, Eunice, no doubt. Surrounding the site and behind her among the trees were others and those were not human at all. There were animals among them and walking death. The werewolves and the vampires had joined the party. The only source of light outside of the moon that shone overhead and reflected on the water through the line of trees beside her was the orange glow of a fire pit ahead where Constance was weaving her spell.

Taking a step toward the glow and the muffled sounds of Constance’s incantation beyond the trees, Sunday heard the snapping of a twig behind her. Quickly, she jumped back and found herself pressed against a tree. Coming upon her were two massive wolves. The bigger of the two was dark as midnight, his fur blending in with the shadows of the woods. The other wolf was brown and white and not much smaller than the other who, any closer, would have reached her chest. Sunday was not a small woman by any means and the size of these wolves made her feel insignificant.

Both pair of animal eyes bore into her, their muzzles revealing the deadly grins of wolves having found their next meal. Simultaneously, and without warning, both wolves hid their teeth and turned to look behind them. From the shadows emerged the silhouette that she had recognized emerging from the shadows of the warehouse just a night earlier. It was Cyrus, and he had ordered them to back off. The goal was Constance. Sunday had warned them and they had known her to be true. They could have scared her to death with their fangs and their growling, but they would do better than think they could attack the Incarnate with the warlock just yards from their grasp.