Fate of the Alpha: The Complete Bundle (29 page)

I
n Ainsley’s eyes
, the thing under the field house suddenly transformed from a theoretical danger into something horribly real.

Grace, her darling, Grace, who was both stalwart and silly, was now in its clutches.

“Let’s go,” she told Julian. “Now.”

“Go on ahead,” Julian said, his face expressionless. “I’ll catch up with you. I have to get something first.”

She wanted to argue, but there was no time. He knew the creature better than any of them. If he needed to stop for something, it must have been important.

Ainsley found herself sailing over the porch railing for the second time in an hour. As she sprinted up Princeton and swung the left onto Elm, she focused on a mental call to her lieutenant.

Cressida. I need you.

Spooky decorations festooned the town, all part of the yearly parade and celebration. Halloween had always been big in Tarker’s Hollow. The irony of seeing the town draped in ghosts and skeletons pained Ainsley, and she ran faster, hoping not to bump into anyone she knew.

Cressida met her on the other side of Yale. She fairly flew out of the woods in spite of her less than sensible attire. Ainsley had almost forgotten how fast she was.

As they drew closer, she realized Cressida wore black leather boots with a three inch heel. Fishnet thigh highs ended before her skirt began. A thin pirate blouse above it was cinched to her narrow torso with a leather corset, which pressed her tiny breasts together into the semblance of cleavage. A sequined eye patch hung on a length of elastic around her neck.

“Wow, you’re really getting into the Halloween sprit, huh?” Ainsley remarked as they ran to the field house.

“Is that today?” Cressida asked.

Ainsley tried not to overthink the outfit and focused on the task at hand.

“Cressida, we’re in real trouble. Charley has Grace and he’s going to feed her to the moroi unless we let it loose,” she explained as calmly as she could.

“What’s a moroi?” Cressida asked, looking less than enthused.

Oh god. She didn’t know. There hadn’t been time.

“moroi are like vampires, except they feed on human souls, not just blood. According to Ophelia and Julian, the purpose of the wolf packs is to guard their tombs,” she explained, hoping she wouldn’t scare the girl into abandoning their rescue attempt.

“So, like vampires,” Cressida said thoughtfully. “Are they hot like the ones in Buffy? Or corny like the Twilight one?”

“I... I have no idea,” Ainsley stammered.

“Just fucking with you,” Cressida winked. “I heard the whole thing already from MacGregor. Just tell me what I’m supposed to do.”

Ainsley wasn’t sure whether to slap Cressida or kiss her. She wished the moon weren’t still full enough to make her eyes linger on the place where the tops of Cressida’s fishnets met her slender thighs.

“Just follow my lead,” she said. “I’m not really sure how this is going to go down. But they can’t have Grace and they can’t unleash their monster on my pack either.”

Cressida set her jaw and nodded in a way that told Ainsley she was ready to throw down. Ainsley’s wolf growled approval in her chest.

The barn doors at the back of the field house were already open. Once inside, Ainsley slid it shut behind them. It wouldn’t do for anyone to wander into this fight.

The normal scents of lawn equipment and fresh cut grass filled Ainsley’s nose. But her sensitive wolf ears heard the sickening pulse of something large and wet that didn’t belong.

She hurried to the rear corner, praying that the trap door wasn’t sealed. She didn’t think she could repeat that business Julian had done before. And she certainly wasn’t going to wait for him.

Thankfully, the door stood wide open. It looked like someone had been through in a hurry.

“
Lux ex tenebris,”
Ainsley whispered, and smiled at the fluttering sensation from her fingertips at the arrival of her magical fireflies. Merrily, they sparked ahead of her, lighting the way down the rungs of the ladder in a cheerful way that seemed at odds with the gravity of the situation.

As soon as her feet hit the wet stones that made up the floor of the corridor, Ainsley took off at a run. Every fiber of her being longed to shift, but she knew she would need her human brain to negotiate what lay ahead.

The cold, wet air seeped into her lungs as she ran, the clicking of Cressida’s heels ringing on the stones behind her. Cressida was faster, but she held back, letting Ainsley take the lead.

Like the last time, Ainsley had nearly given up on there being anything below the field house but an endless corridor, when she saw a sliver of light from the archway in the distance.

Ainsley slowed her pace and put a finger to her lips, signaling Cressida to be quiet.

Cressida tapped her own temple, reminding Ainsley that she need only think a command, and her bond as alpha would do the rest.

Of course. Ainsley wished, for the hundredth time, that she were better trained at the whole alpha thing. Maybe some time away with Ophelia was just what she needed.

Together, she and Cressida slipped down the last few feet without so much as a single boot heel click.

Ainsley pressed herself to the cold stone wall and angled her cheek to steal a glance into the room.

What she saw there filled her with rage.

Grace.

Bound and kneeling on the floor, her navy blue uniform, in which she took so much pride, rumpled and streaked with dirt.

Charley Coslaw stood over her, holding a gun to her head with a relaxed indifference.

How could this be the same man that donated all of the decorative flowerbeds in the town square, and had a standing order for 500 boxes of cookies from the local Girl Scout troop?

The acrid tang of Grace’s fear-filled scent told Ainsley that her friend had been roughed up, but not assaulted sexually. This knowledge filled her with relief and fury at once.

Again, she had to choke down the shift that was building in her blood. Her very bones seemed to twist against her will, and it took all her discipline not to let them betray her.

Grace, who was facing Ainsley, had given no sign of seeing her. That was wise, because if Grace looked at Ainsley, so would Charley, and Ainsley would lose any chance of surprising him.

“I’m afraid Clive Warren used my last silver bullet,” Charley said, his voice expressing his repugnance for the former sheriff. “But I don’t think that will matter for your friend.”

Fuck. So much for surprise.

“You’re not going to shoot her,” Ainsley said firmly as she stepped through the archway. “You need her alive to use her as a key.”

“It’s true,” he said. “She makes a good key. But there are other ways to release the master.”

“Not without a key,” Ainsley replied.

“Okay then, Ainsley,” he said with sly smile that looked out of place on his friendly face. “So you come for me. I shoot Grace. You kill me. Problem solved, right?”

His sarcastic tone told Ainsley all she needed to know.

Charley Coslaw had underestimated her. In spite of all the evidence to the contrary, he believed her to be the same goody-two-shoes she’d been all those years ago. A girl who could never see harm come to her friend.

Fortunately, Ainsley labored under no such delusions about Charley. She knew exactly what he was.

And she had already weighed her options and come out knowing she really only had one course of action. If she walked away, he would kill Grace anyway, and release the moroi to feast on the town.

Protecting the pack was Ainsley’s sworn duty.

She could feel the hum of each of them under her every move, even now in this cold place. The teeming warmth of their green submission bathed her in power and responsibility.

That didn’t make it easy, though.

She met Grace’s eye.

The policewoman’s face was a mask of calm. But Ainsley could see that her best friend’s eyes were terrified.

If she could stretch this moment across space and time, she would. Ainsley wished wildly that she could call a truce, or even have one moment to say good-bye.

Grace nodded once and lowered her eyes in assent.

Still, Ainsley stood frozen. To move toward Charley was to kill her best friend.

Not to move was to abandon her pack.

She closed her eyes and tried to picture Ophelia, and the calm way Ophelia would do what had to be done in this situation.

Sucking in a breath, she opened her eyes, and took a step toward Charley.

“Well, that’s unexpected,” Charley remarked, cocking the hammer of the gun. “I guess you’re more wolf than I gave you credit for. Say good-bye to your friend.”

“That won’t be necessary,” said a crisp voice from the doorway behind them.

Julian.

Ainsley snuck a glance back at him. He was holding the key. It seemed almost to glow in his hand, like it knew, after centuries, that it was finally close to its home.

“How about a trade?” Julian asked Charley, without so much as a glance at Ainsley.

“Julian, you can’t do this,” Ainsley said. “Your vows, your order... You’ve dedicated your life to keeping these things from getting free.”

“No. I dedicated my body and soul. Until I met Grace, I didn’t have a life,” he said simply. “I’m not willing to let her go. No matter the cost.”

A flash of understanding illuminated everything for Ainsley. The strange behavior, the tension, all of it made sense. Grace and Julian weren’t having a fling. What they had was love, true love. And Julian was going to destroy the world in its name.

Desperately, Ainsley scrambled, putting herself physically between Julian and Charley.

“You’re not thinking clearly, Julian,” she told him. “I’m not going to let you do this.”

“I’ve never been more clear about anything,” he said as a huge ball of light leapt into existence in his free hand. “And you might want to get out of my way.”

A growl burst from Ainsley’s chest, and she had to press down her wolf once again, as she summoned her own blue ball of light.

“You know you’re no match for me, Ainsley,” he said, the ball of energy pulsing in time with his steady heartbeat.

“You’re not that quick, Copperfield,” Cressida said from behind Julian.

Ainsley was at a complete loss for a moment, wondering how Cressida had managed to position herself without anyone noticing. She really was wonderfully sneaky.

“If you attack Ainsley, you’ll be dead before you hit the ground,” Cressida hissed in his ear. “And if you make me shift and ruin these boots, I’ll make sure it’s painful.”

For a moment, Julian seemed to waver in indecision. Then the ball of light in his hand flickered out.

Ainsley held her magic strong.

Cressida smirked, and Ainsley was forced to admire what a great pirate she made.

Julian’s shoulders slumped and the look in his eyes was so painful she could barely meet his gaze. She knew that look. She’d seen it in the mirror every night since Erik had gone.

“Why don’t you give me that key?” she asked him gently.

Julian looked down at the key in his hand, as though he had forgotten all about it.

He looked to Grace, then, before anyone could react, he threw himself at the center of the symbol on the floor, and shoved the key into the stone hole.

Instantly, a pillar of crimson energy engulfed him.

Grace’s scream ripped Ainsley’s gaze from Julian.

Her best friend, still bound, dragged herself across the floor toward the column of fiery red light.

Ainsley threw herself at Grace and rolled her away from the grate.

“Noooooo,” Grace howled. “Let me go! You were willing to let me die a minute ago. Let me go!”

Behind them, Charley cackled in delight.

Ainsley pinned Grace beneath herself and turned to see Charley stepping toward the beam.

Julian was gone.

“Rise, Master,” Charley boomed in his friendliest Sunday open house voice. “My father’s father began our post in this village to prepare for your arrival. I am here to do your bidding.”

The outline of a human-like shape began to form inside the beam.

Ainsley watched, numb with horror, as Charley stepped closer still.

The thing inside the light reached out a hand to Charley’s head. Charley closed his eyes, basking in the glory of its presence.

The moment the hand made contact with his head, his eyes shot open and he screamed in agony.

The gun fell to the stone floor with a clatter.

Charley’s head seemed to melt and ooze into the fingers of the outstretched hand, followed by his neck and torso. He continued to be drawn in, bit by bit, until at last his legs swizzled up into the pulsating red beam of light, and he was gone.

The light throbbed brighter than before, then pulled inward, darkening for a moment.

Without warning, it exploded upward, piercing the stone ceiling, and disappeared, leaving them in complete blackness.

The sound of rushing water poured in from the hole left in its wake.

One moment, Ainsley was on the stone floor, holding Grace down. The next she was waist deep in frigid water, grasping Grace’s leather belt to pull her up for air. Within seconds the entire chamber was completely flooded.

Ainsley swam with all her strength, in what she hoped was the direction of the hole left by the creature. She had bumped the domed ceiling, and begun to feel for the opening, when Grace wriggled out of her grasp.

Determinedly, Ainsley kicked after her friend. Her arms closed on Grace again, but in the tumult, she lost her sense of up and down.

A beam of light showed her the way, and she swam, dragging Grace after her.

Despair set in when she saw it was only a broken shard of the key.

Ainsley snagged it in the hand that wasn’t hooked on Grace’s belt. Her lungs burned with the need for breath as she held the bit of glowing key near her face and let out a tiny bit of precious air.

In the soft illumination, she watched the bubbles move. They seemed to be going sideways, but she kicked off like mad in their direction.

They led her back to the smooth, curved stone of the ceiling. She felt around frantically, but couldn’t find the hole.