Haunted (24 page)

He looked thoughtful for a moment, his eyes wandering up and to the right.

“You know, I think you're right, Ruby,” he replied, bending down toward me yet again. I would have flinched at the gesture, but I lacked the strength and coordination, my condition ever-worsening.

He reached out and grabbed my right hand, the one with the rapidly swelling finger, and squeezed it hard in his grip. I winced and immediately hated myself for it; he took immense pleasure in it.

“Hello, Ruby,” he purred. He shook my hand as if truly meeting me for the first time. “I'm Gregory.”

A smile crept wider across his face as he tightened his grip.

“But you can call me Alpha.”

30

“Now that we've been properly introduced, you're probably wondering why I've brought you here today,” he said, as if addressing a room full of people. “Well, of course you are, so why don't I just cut to the chase. I wanted revenge.” He looked at me curiously as if examining my expression for a response. “No, no, silly. Not for that. I'm not upset that you wiped out my family and were ultimately the driving force behind my death. That seems to be inconsequential at the moment,” he said, pausing momentarily for effect. “You ruined my plan. I hate it when a perfectly good plan is foiled.”

I knew that he'd not been the most balanced individual in life, and death seemed to have done little to help with that matter. Instead of the mass eradication of his family making him loathe me, it was that I had shit on his grand scheme. It must have been one hell of a plan.

“So,” he continued, “You left me in a bit of quagmire for a while, being dead and all, until I realized that I could use Cooper to ultimately get what I want. But your deed could not go unpunished. I'm sure you understand.”

“Cooper?” I wheezed before coughing uncontrollably. It did nothing to ease the pain in my gut as I struggled to contain its contents.

“Yes, your little knight-errant. Killing me put him into the Alpha role,” he said with great disdain. “I hardly knew he had that level of power. One of my breeding is nearly impossible to take down.”

I remembered a conversation I had with Cooper in the dungeon when we were escaping. He had said he'd always gone unnoticed, that his unimportance served him well. Had the Alpha really no idea he was so powerful? Did Cooper even know? What did it all mean? Questions flashed across my face in a slideshow of what I was thinking.

“It means, my dear, that I underestimated him, a mistake I shall not repeat in the future,” he said sternly. “But I digress. What's important here is what I realized after he eliminated me – that he could hold the Watchers. It was through his power that we remained, and ironically will also be his undoing.”

“Watchers?” I whispered, confused as to how they factored into the whole debacle. Cooper had little to no understanding of them, other than that they served to protect the pack – “ghosts of the woods”, he'd called them.

“Ah, that's right. Cooper never ranked high enough to be privy to that information,” he told me, sounding nostalgic for the days of old. “They're my servants, bound to me in death. With enough power you can strap the souls of your conquests to you and puppet them however you like. It's been so many centuries since it was used that it became lore. Few live today who are ancient enough to even remember it. I, however, thought it was time to revive the practice, frowned upon though it may have been.”

“You're...my...ghost,” I struggled out, breathing heavily in between words.

“Now, now, let's not be greedy for all the attention, Ruby. I was Cooper's ghost. We all were,” he explained. “This is where the genius of my new plan was born. After we realized that we were not passing on, that we were still earthbound, I knew that by some fluke in the universe Cooper was powerful enough to wield the Watchers. Since they were already tied to me, he acquired them quite by default. It took a while to locate him, as we were still in Utah where we'd been so rudely murdered. That really was no way to treat such gracious hosts.”

“Fuck you.”

“Yes, yes, we tried that, remember? But we just didn't seem to have the right chemistry,” he replied, looking as evil as he was. “Now we need to focus on my plan, Ruby. It doesn't look like you have much more time left.” His observation felt all too correct. My pulse was thready and weak, my mouth dry and my vision blurring again.

“So where was I? Ah yes, once we found Cooper we started coming to him as he slept. He thought we were dreams; he had no idea what was going on. Once I knew we were getting to him, I hatched my plan.”

“To make him a drugged-out nutcase?” I whispered, barely coherent.

“Not exactly. We wanted to make him crazy enough that he became a liability of sorts. I wanted him rogue.”

“But why?” I asked as my eyelids fluttered closed.

“To finish what I'd tried to start by acquiring you. I want us exposed. I'm tired of placating the human population. We stifle our greatness to blend into their world. It's beneath us all, even if I was the only one with enough vision to see it. I wanted to return to the good old days of hunting humans, hearing them beg for their lives – the thrill of the chase. I wanted to relive that feeling you get when you first slice into the flesh of struggling prey; humans really are so much sweeter than animals. You could nearly feed on their horror alone,” he said, throwing his head back as though about to climax. He breathed deeply as he snapped his head back down, his eyes glowing from deep within, full of rage. “Instead, I'm supposed to eat wild game and domesticated farm animals. It's insulting, but I found ways around it.”

The words “midnight snack” flashed through my memory. I had no doubt he'd found a way around the rules. Sean had said the Utah pack had been on the PC's radar for a while and it was becoming abundantly clear as to why.

“It would...never have...worked,” I told him, thinking that Sean and the PC would have taken Cooper down long before he did anything crazy.

“Why not? Because your precious Sean and his boys would have stopped him? His focus is so diverted by your pretty little face that I could have easily accomplished what I wanted to.”

“Wanted?” I asked, pointing out the tense he'd used.

“Oh, well now I have a much better plan. It's far more direct, and I do despise a middle man. I'll still accomplish everything I want – you'll be dead, serving as yet another distraction for Sean, Cooper will still die, and I'll have the pleasure of taking center stage in my masterpiece. It's really quite a thing of beauty,” he said as he leaned forward, gently capturing my jaw in his hand. “And you have the honor of being the opening act in all of this.”

“Peyta?” I asked, not having heard her name listed off.

“She has the highest honor of all. Her sacrifice will allow for all of this to be possible. Her mere presence has spawned my genius – she's my muse. Thank you for bringing her into your home. None of this would have been achievable if we'd never been introduced.”

I swallowed hard on that reality. It was my fault that Peyta was involved.

“How?”

“Peyta is like a beacon of light for the dead. The second she entered your house I could feel her. At first we were all very careful when she was around, unsure about exactly how deep her powers went; I didn't want to be discovered before I started my planning. However, if it hadn't been for her seeing the boys in Cooper's room, I would never have imagined her gifts ran so deeply. She must be a direct descendant of Asclepius himself. The PC will be sorry to lose such a treasure, but her death will give me true form. I will be unstoppable then, and the true power of Romulus will reign again.”

I knew that name and I searched frantically through my mental rolodex to find it. I sucked in a breath as I landed on a story from Greek Mythology: Romulus and Remus, the twin boys fathered by Aries, the god of war himself, abandoned and raised by a she-wolf.

He saw the recognition on my face and smiled, pleased that I knew about his heritage, but something about all of it made no sense to me. The story I remembered told of Romulus killing his brother, which I had no doubt Gregory's kin would be capable of doing, before becoming the tyrannical leader of Rome. Yet nowhere in the story was there any mention of werewolves, and Greek mythology was hardly lacking in the improbable stories and characters department.

He waited patiently, watching me sort through things in my mind.

“So you know the story?” he asked, sounding impressed. “Or at least you think you do. History managed to...leave out a few details. Allow me to expand your understanding. Romulus despised his brother who was, for all intents and purposes, his polar opposite. He killed him to be rid of his ramblings about peace and democracy, but Mother Wolf was none too pleased with him for this, so she bit him. It altered his being, changed his DNA if you will, and led him to become the greatest and most powerful ruler the world had ever seen. He made Hitler look like a cheerleader.

“As Aries watched his son's rise to greatness he was both proud and horrified, loving and resenting him equally. Though he knew he needed to be stopped, the god of war could not bring himself to kill Romulus, and so the PC was born. They, too, are descendants of Aries, created for one purpose: to kill Romulus. They succeeded, of course, but not before he was able to spread his seed. The PC eventually became what they are today, the keepers of balance between the human and inhuman worlds. However, once my plan is carried out, I will make it a priority to kill each and every last one of them, starting with your precious Sean, of course.”

“When?” I asked, wanting to know when his reign of terror would be thrust upon the unsuspecting population, rocking it to its very core. Life for humankind was about to seriously change.

“Tonight,” he said simply. “Once Peyta's death makes me whole again I plan to pay a visit to the festivities downtown. Are there not fireworks planned for the celebration of your town's founding two-hundred and fifty years ago? What better place to publicly expose us. Or do you not think that the annihilation of an entire city is worthy of the media's attention?”

Holy shit...

“I do wish you'd be there to see it, Ruby. You'll miss seeing Peyta's final moments as well, but don't worry, I've picked the perfect place. She'll be somewhere she loves when she dies.”

He turned his attention behind him, and Peyta instantly began to struggle against her bindings. He rose slowly and sauntered over to take her away to her death. His penchant for being overly dramatic was beyond infuriating.

He scooped her up, throwing her over his shoulder, headed for the back door. I could barely see her face from that far away, my vision worsening exponentially, but I knew she lifted her head to say goodbye.

I'm so sorry Peyta...

I didn't have the strength to speak, lying paralyzed in the room while the door closed behind them. The irony of a ceiling being all that separated me from rescue was not lost on me – so close, yet so far away. I shut my eyes and surrendered to the darkness consuming me. I was going to die, alone.

Then I saw the light.

31

I couldn't tell if I was imagining it or if it was real. I opened my eyes to a beautiful, glowing white haze all around me, encompassing what I thought was my broken body. Upon inspection, I realized it wasn't broken at all. My shirt was intact with no blood in sight, and certainly no gaping-open cavity where one should have been. I was whole again. I stood without problem, the pain completely gone. My body felt light and airy as though I could have floated away at any moment.

The light called to me, and I wanted to see where it would take me, walking towards the nucleus of it. As I approached, two figures eclipsed the glowing orb, blocking part of it out, which created an aura of ethereal radiance around them. I didn't recognize them until they spoke.

“It's good to good to see you again, Ruby.”

“Mom?” I called. “Dad?”

“It's us, Ruby,” my dad confirmed. I'd only seen a few pictures of them in our home after they died. I never bothered to keep the family photo albums; they seemed irrelevant, detailing scenes of my childhood that I'd never seen. I remembered them in other ways, and hearing their voices again was a gift I couldn't pass up.

I started to run towards them, but no matter how long or far I ran, I never got any closer. Seeing the futility in it, I finally stopped trying.

“Why can't I reach you?” I asked, frustrated. I'd realized after their deaths that my parents were far from perfect, but they were mine, and I loved them still. I wanted to hug them and tell them all about my life and what I'd become.

“You have to surrender to it, Ruby,” my dad told me. “It's OK, we're here.”

I tried with everything I had to do as he'd said, to surrender and let the light take me. With every conscious attempt I got closer and closer to them.

“I've missed you so much,” I whispered, fighting back tears; Daddy never did approve of crying. He'd have been appalled by the amount of it I'd done since he died. “Where are we going?”

“Come to us, Ruby. We'll tell you everything on the way. You'll be safe.”

I heard those words and wanted to believe them, but somewhere down deep within me, I didn't. A feeling I couldn't ignore told me to run the other way and I fought my own urge to flee from the light, feeling pulled from behind by an invisible tether. I took an involuntary step backward.