Edge of Seventeen (4 page)

Back in human form, Cyrus looked to the
wolves who stood at his attention and rejected their submission to
him. Before any of them could offer a plea for him to stay, Cyrus
ran as far as he could get from them and as fast as he could get
there. He would live without a pack, then. He’d done it for the
first couple of decades as a werewolf and he resolved to do it
again. That was, of course, until Stephen invited him to the Alaska
pack.

They had met twenty five years earlier at a
bar in Anchorage. Cyrus had lived for decades as a lone wolf,
seeking not the comfort of a pack or the consolation of peers. It
didn’t take long for Stephen to win him over and convince him to
join his group of misfits. His was a special brand of men and women
who had ended up there, just like Cyrus, because they were too
intense and too aggressive, or just plain didn’t fit in anywhere
else.

“Should I call the witch?” Cyrus asked.

“We should wait until the girl is in the
room,” Stephen answered, chuckling through a head-shake. “She’s a
wild one. She’s just waking up though, and not from drugs. We
didn’t even have to resort to knocking her out. It would have been
a shame to, if you can believe it. It’s been pretty hilarious
having her around. I’m telling you, she’s got Angel riled up. That
kid’s got spunk.”

“Why didn’t you take her out again?” Cyrus
asked.

“No need, my friend.” Stephen was beaming
with good humor. The smile still slapped on his face with a mix of
enjoyment and incredulity. His eyebrows jutted into his forehead as
he spoke.

“She was sayin’, ‘I know where you’re taking
me and I don’t give a shit, just pull over so I can pee. I’m
dying!’ Angel was threatening to rough her up and shoot her up
again and she just kept howling about needing to go to the
bathroom. ‘Do you speak English?! I need to fucking pee or I’m
gonna urinate on your back seat.’ It was a riot. We kept her awake
so she could go, but when we got her back in the truck, she passed
out on her own and happy as a clam. Got up just before we crossed
into the city limits. Angel’s probably having a time. She didn’t
want to get out of the car. She’s not fighting to run away, she
just wants something to eat now and says she won’t get out unless
we take her to a drive-thru. I’m letting him deal with it.”

“Can’t she just magic-up food?”

For as much fun as Stephen seemed to be
having with the petulance of a fourteen year-old Incarnate, Cyrus
was antsy to make the call to Bernadette’s people and get the
entire situation behind him. As a rule, Cyrus didn’t appreciate
being at the whims of witches. Witches, either the naturally
magical or the ones who worked tirelessly just at attaining
mediocrity, were always scheming. Witches and witchcraft wormed
their way into practically every affair of the preternatural
community. They used their self-imposed interjection in all matters
mystical and monstrous to gain some vantage from which to wield a
semblance of authority over the innately magical like werewolves,
vampires, and other such creatures.

Cyrus stayed away from them as much as
possible. Their pack had a pack-witch who helped with protective
spells and readings to guide their business and, at times, acted as
a personal counselor to the wolves. That was the most Cyrus would
deal with her kind. Stephen approached Cyrus tentatively, too
tentatively for an Alpha to approach one of his pack, and put a
heavy hand on Cyrus’s shoulder.

“Relax,” he said. “She’s not going anywhere.
I’m gonna kick off my boots and hang in here for a while. Maybe
we’ll order in some delivery. Anything good on the tube?”

Cyrus shook his head sharply, and stalked
away from his Alpha and out the motel room door. The sooner he
could get the girl out of the truck, the sooner it meant that he
could get rid of her and put her in the hands of the witches that
wanted her so badly. He found Angel standing with his arms cast
over the opened back seat door of the truck. Angel’s muscles were
alive with tension. They twitched with the threat of breaking the
door off its hinges. Angel wasn’t saying a word. From the glare he
was lashing into the back seat, it was clear that he wanted the
Incarnate out of it. If the girl didn’t budge soon, Angel was going
to become violently unhinged, and the truck’s door was coming with
him. If this girl had known better, she might reconsider testing a
werewolf as volatile as Angel.

Despite his name and probably in spite of it,
Angel was the shortest fuse among the pack. He was wired to explode
with the slightest bit of agitation, but he was a good fighter and
a solid all-around man. He was of Mexican descent, skin tanned by
heredity as much as by overexposure to the sun through over fifty
years of working under it. His slicked-back coal black hair and
tattooed forearms and knuckles made him look every bit the
intimidating ‘bad guy’ he truly was. Seeing Angel like this put
Cyrus on red-alert. Belligerent as Angel appeared, he might not
think before acting.

So as not to catch the werewolf off-guard,
Cyrus spoke before getting too close behind him.

“What’s going on here?”

Startled, Angel turned, his eyes nowhere
close to the tint of his wolf’s bright flame, thankfully. Instead
of the gravel rasp of an aggravated wolf, Angel’s voice broke in a
pleading whine that, once escaping him, made him embarrassed to
have said anything at all. His cheeks flushed with pink and he
tucked his chin, darting his eyes away from Cyrus.

“The girl… She doesn’t want to get out of the
car.”

Angel stepped aside and took strides toward
the back of the truck. He lit a cigarette and sucked in the first
drag like he’d been waiting years to do it. He threw his hands up
and exhaled harshly, raising a cloud of grey smoke.

Cyrus eyeballed Angel. Angel was pissed, but
not quite
I’m gonna rip your throat out
kind of pissed; he
was more like
I’ve had the worst day in my life and it’s all
that damn kid’s fault
kind of pissed. If Cyrus hadn’t been so
keen on lifting his pack of this burden, he’d find it comical. He’d
laugh. He’d make fun. Angel’s fuse got lit by a lot of things, but,
until now, a teenage girl wasn’t one of them.

As it was, Cyrus wanted to get this contract
over with. He gritted his teeth and gave a curt nod to Angel
signaling that he’d take the baton in the relay to get the
ever-feared god-woman-child out of the car. They could laugh about
this later, Cyrus resolved,
much later,
after they’d gotten
rid of the little problem.

“Let me handle it,” he chewed out,
confidently puffing his chest as he pulled his shoulders back. Like
this, he was massive. Even bigger than usual. If the girl wasn’t
intimidated by the dark, agitated werewolf, then perhaps the huge,
burly one could shock some sense into her.

Cyrus stepped toward the open back door of
the truck slowly, hoping to build the Incarnate’s anticipation of a
threat with his pace. She might have been the ever-feared god-woman
of the preternatural world at-large, but she was also just a kid.
If Stephen could kick back and relax while Angel felt keen enough
to argue with her, then Cyrus could work on manipulating her in
order to get his way.

He pulled his long, dark, blond hair out of
his ponytail and shook the hair free around his face. Between that
and the thick beard he wore—not to mention the full sleeves of
tattoos that all but screamed out
KEEP AWAY,
he was sure
that the girl would be shaking in her shoes to do whatever the
werewolves asked of her.

When his eyes landed on her, Cyrus
experienced what he could only comprehend as a cataclysmic
unhinging of his being. It shocked him into stupor and that was,
for Cyrus, a unique occurrence. He hadn’t felt it when he’d awoken
to his curse after the animal attack that should have ended his
life. He hadn’t felt it when he’d mercilessly devoured his first
kill and recognized a guilt so cruelly unrelenting that it he
carried it even sixty years later.
Never
had Cyrus become so
upended.

His pulse raced, his lungs seized as he
fought for breath, his stomach cramped. Even transformation had
never been so wholly devastating, so completely visceral. It took
him a handful of seconds to compose himself and put a cork on the
unprecedented eruption within. He didn’t have to look in a mirror
to know that his eyes were blazing gold with his wolf’s sudden
break for the surface. Even his wolf needed to come up for air.
They were both suffocating.

Cyrus’ white-knuckled fists smashed into his
hips and he shut his eyes tightly until a white light sparked
against the inkiest black of his mind. When he reopened his eyes,
he forced himself to look at her,
really look
at her, with a
raw, heavy-handed dissection. Cyrus approached her until he stopped
just a few feet from the girl, but she didn’t even flinch.

The Incarnate looked every bit the part of a
pissed-off teenager, petulant and arrogant with the pride of every
second of her fourteen years. The girl glared straight ahead
through narrowed eyes. The seat belt buckled and strapped tightly
across her chest. She sat erect in her seat with her hands folded
neatly in her lap as though expecting good conduct marks from a
teacher, her long chestnut hair tossed haplessly over her shoulders
in careless tangles. She looked as though she’d stepped out of
school, which was definitely a possibility given her age. She was
wearing jeans, ripped at the knees, and a purple cardigan over a
graphic print t-shirt.

For all her ubiquity, something about her lit
a fire in his belly that just about sent his wolf barreling out of
control. Unable to reconcile what he saw with what raged inside
him, Cyrus leered at her with a mixture of spite and disbelief.
Nothing like this had ever happened to him before and it was
unwelcome
.

Her aura simultaneously trapped him in her
orbit and thrust him out of it. She was hardly a teenager and what
he was feeling was hardly seduction, but there was some
inexplicable attraction and Cyrus wanted nothing more than to fend
it off. She wasn’t a sexy woman spreading her legs and inviting him
to feast. She wasn’t a little girl with a skinned knee begging for
a protector. Yet he was flummoxed by an overpowering juxtaposition
of all of these emotions brewing within him. So abruptly, so
unexpectedly.

Cyrus’ wolf had demanded something it never
had before, even in the face of his Alpha: it forced him to lower
his gaze. While his wolf lowered its head and deferred all
authority over to the petulant fourteen year-old god-kin, Cyrus
seethed. He was unable to understand what was happening to him and
needing it desperately to stop…
now
and forever. If Angel
had seen it for himself, he might still not have believed it. No
one would have, least of all Cyrus.

Not knowing what to do or what to say or even
if he’d wanted to do or say anything at all, Cyrus hesitated. He
postured at the open car door and the girl who hadn’t even bothered
to tilt her head his way. As he geared up to bark a command at her
or stalk back to her and yank her free of the back seat, his words
caught in his throat. He was all but frozen into inaction. Cyrus
shot a frazzled look to Angel who still huffed and puffed as he
paced. Angel caught Cyrus’ unreadable expression with a furrowed
brow that told Cyrus as much about Angel’s frustration than
reflected by his own internal battery.

I can’t do this
, Cyrus thought.

His mind blanked of anything else. There was
nothing else to think of, not when caught in her orbit, and not
when he couldn’t take a breath without feeling his eyes sting with
fiery tears.

When the girl finally moved, it was to fill
and then vacate her lungs with a long-drawn sigh. Her entire body
slumped in the back seat as she’d sighed. She was exhausted, that
much was clear. Cyrus could see the bags under her eyes now. Heavy
lids drooped over her light brown eyes so clear that they were
almost translucent.

All the inactivity about her was making her
tired. More than any desire to eat that she had complained about
earlier, Sunday wanted some rest; real rest, not fake, drug-induced
rest. And
whatever
, she told herself.
Whatever
to the
hunger and
whatever
to her abduction and
whatever
to
these creepazoid werewolves that hovered around her building ire
and doing nothing to release it. What Sunday was going to do was
sleep. They were at a motel, after all. She was sure they’d at
least let her have a bed.

Quietly,
Sunday unbuckled her seat belt and stepped onto the dusty New
Mexico soil. The sky was blues and purples so vibrant they seemed
unreal. She closed her eyes and tilted her head back to face the
afternoon sun. Though the dry desert air was crisp and biting, the
sun flooded her with warmth. The instant she opened her eyes again,
she felt the weight of her day-long journey and was wracked by the
urgency to sleep.

The biggest werewolf she had ever seen was
standing before her, gold-flecked brown eyes lashing over her. If
she wasn’t so tired, she would say something that smarted to get
him to chill the fuck out. Instead, the corner of her lip pinched
into one cheek in a twitch, and she shuffled forward without giving
herself a second to look at him.

For as long as she could remember, Sunday
could feel everything around her. She could sense things before
they were going to happen; mostly, because people made those things
happen and, usually, people brewed with intention to do it before
they did. Even thoughts and feelings that occurred so quickly that
people considered them “passions” or whatever, Sunday felt for a
long while before people even realized what they were going
through.