Rivals and Retribution (31 page)

“And when I am finished, you will take me for a celebration drink?”

“I am leaving the city now,” I said.

“Oh. That is unfortunate. Well, I have a raid to organize.”

And then she was gone.

It was the longest train ride to Junction ever. And it was strangely longer back to the city after I deposited Feldman, our luggage, and specific instructions for administering the cure (perhaps too cruelly specific, I mused in retrospect) to Max.

I arrived at Wondermann Corp. minutes before they led Mr. Wondermann out in handcuffs, Nadezhda holding him firmly by the arm. Never had a woman looked so absolutely alluring in jackboots and a flak jacket.

Seeing me, she shoved him into someone else’s arms. “Load him into the car,” she said as she headed in my direction.

“You nearly missed me,” she said.

“I thought I had a little longer.”

“I thought you were leaving the city.”

“I did, but the train tracks run both directions.”

“Amazing, is it not?” She holstered her gun and reached into her pocket. “I guess I arranged this for nothing, then.…” She held out a slip of paper with a series of numbers and letters scrawled across it.

“A confirmation number?”

“Yes. I have arranged for a much-needed vacation and I am supposed to pick up my ticket in an hour.”

My heart dropped. Nadezhda would be winging away from me too soon again. “To where?”

“Some small town in the back end of the American nowhere. They call the place Junction.”

“
Pravda?
It so happens I am also returning to Junction this evening. And, if you are quick gathering your things, we might still have time to catch that drink you requested.”

Jessie

Feldman carried the briefcase and opened it once every bit of luggage and everyone was inside the Queen Anne.

“Alexi was very specific about where the needle needs to go in,” Max explained, handing syringes to Cat and Gareth. “The cure will fix the life-span issue and break the imprinting code, but it will still allow transformation.”

“Best of both worlds,” Gareth whispered. “And where must we administer the shot?”

“If you guard the door, I will demonstrate,” Max said, opening the basement door.

Downstairs, the cells fairly shook with the angry beasts contained inside. Gareth set down his needle and followed Max down the steps.

“Ready?” Max asked.

Gareth nodded, lifted the bar on Pietr’s cell, and yanked open the door.

Alexi

“So I told him precisely where he should stick it.”

“Wait, wait,” Nadezhda said, laughing over a pretty drink with an umbrella in it. Our train was due to arrive in fifteen minutes, but right then and there, with her, time meant little. “You told Max the cure had to be stuck in a certain part of their anatomy in order to work?” She blinked back tears. “Oh, Sasha…”

“What?” I shrugged. “For years they have been a pain in my ass. Why not briefly be a pain in theirs?”

Jessie

Max fell on Pietr like the shot he held was a harpoon, not a syringe, and he hit the plunger the moment the needle met the flesh of his backside. Pietr howled and thrashed, his teeth long and wicked, his only thought to rend and rip and destroy, and then he collapsed.

He twitched and coughed, and Max rolled off him, satisfied with his success and crouching a little distance away, his eyes intent.

“It has to be a shot to the ass,” Max said.

“Looks like it feels like a kick to it, too…,” Gareth added.

The wild red bled out of Pietr’s eyes, and his teeth returned to their normal length and pointiness, and between fierce shudders, he seemed to catch his breath. He rolled into a seated position and rubbed his head, jamming the heels of his hands into his eye sockets like he was trying to clear them of memories as much as clear his vision. “What did I do?” he whispered.

He raised his head, his eyes meeting mine. “Oh, god, Jess … what did I do to us? To you?”

He was my Pietr again—beautiful, headstrong, guilt-ridden, and melodramatic. And I still loved him.

I cleared my throat and stepped into the small, dark room. “You were a complete and utter ass to me,” I said boldly. “You redefined
dick
.”

“I know,” he whispered, getting to his feet.

“Pants,” I said, reaching out to provide a new pair.

“And you’re going to make up every bit of it to me,” I added as he slipped into his jeans. “For as long as it takes.”

He straightened and nodded at me, his face strained and solemn. And he said the only two words I needed to hear from him, the two words that set Pietr Rusakova apart from any other teenage guy in Junction, werewolf or not. “I promise.”

Marlaena

Something inside of me had died, my heart no longer beat as fast or as strong, and I rolled onto my side, emptying my guts on the floor, a deep sorrow settling in my bones. I had lost something precious, I knew it. My memories of the last two days were a blur. I remembered the gunfight in the forest, the taste of Pietr’s lips …

I was going to be sick again.

I reached out to the only one who mattered to me. “Gareth,” I whispered.

Jessie

Gareth slowly helped Marlaena to her feet, wrapping an arm around her waist to steady her.

She wiped at her face, and he held out a washcloth for her. I wondered if she had any idea how often he had stood at the top of the basement steps, listening to the beasts rage below and waiting for a time he could soothe and care for her again.

“Come,” Gareth said so softly the word nearly escaped my simple human ears. “‘
Come live with me and be my love, / And we shall all the pleasures prove,
’” he cooed, holding the syringe out before him like it was not a needle but a single red rose he was presenting to her.

Everyone else had taken the cure. Every eligible Rusakova and every member of the pack.

Except Marlaena, who preached “the Wolf is the Way.”

Her gaze flitted from the syringe to his gentle eyes and back. Again and again. Her lower lip quivered. “I can’t…” She shook her head, red hair flying around her face.

“Come,” he pleaded. “Grow old with me.”

“Nooo.” The word came out like a whine. “I never … I never imagined…”

“Imagine it now,” he soothed, reaching out with his left hand to smooth a strand of her hair back and lovingly tuck it behind her ear.

She was trembling.

“You and me, sitting on some big, beautiful porch down south. Cracking jokes and sipping tea. Hand in hand,” he promised. “Imagine seeing our pups have pups. They’d be ferociously beautiful.…”

“Your smile,” she agreed, her finger reaching out to touch his lips so tentatively it made my heart hurt.

“Your eyes,” he conceded solemnly. “Our spirit.” He took a step closer, and she stepped into his arms. “You can see it, can’t you? You and me—together forever.”

“For as long as our forever is,” she said in a way that made me think she’d often said the phrase.

“Yes. For as long as our forever is. So you’ll still love me as an old man?” He chuckled.

But the air between them chilled, and she blinked at him as if coming out from under a magician’s spell.

“Will you still love me as an old man?” he asked again, this time his voice low, dark with doubt.

“We’ll never know,” she croaked, looking away.

“What? Marlaena…” He reached for her cheek, but she dodged back, holding the recovered syringe in her hand like some prize from battle.

“We’ll never know if I could love you as an old man,” she said levelly. “Because by the time you are that old man, I’ll be long in the ground.”

“Don’t say that,” he begged. “Just imagine it with
me
.…”

“No. I never could imagine growing old before, and now…” She tilted her head and looked at him so sadly. A tear flashed down her face and was gone—wiped away by her own angry hand. “Some things are too hard—too cruel to imagine, Gareth. You … with gray in your hair and wrinkles around your eyes, your skin ashy, your movements slow and clumsy…” She blanched and shook her head again. “I cannot. No,” she corrected herself. “I
will
not.”

“
Please
.”

“Our forever just won’t be as long,” she consoled him. “We can still have this … but this is how we’re meant to be. This is how we were designed.”

“By a man’s hand,” he clarified. “Not some god’s. He was a
man.
A treacherous, self-serving
man.
We can fix his error. Now. Use the syringe.”

“No. Treacherous. Yes. Self-serving. Yes. But he was our creator, and what better defines a god than that? I will not go against my creator’s design.”

“Damn it!” he roared. “I didn’t want to have to—” He lunged at her, grabbed her, and knocked her to the ground, retrieving the syringe.

She struggled beneath him and I stepped forward, but Pietr’s hand gripped my arm and he tugged me back.

“I want a long life with you,” Gareth growled. “As difficult and thickheaded as you can be, I want you to live.…”

She thrashed beneath him, more wildcat than wolf. “I won’t have it—I can’t!” she shrieked.

He readied the needle.

And then she said it, soft as a breath. “Please. Please,” she said. “I don’t want this. Shouldn’t it be my choice?”

He trembled above her, the needle poised to deliver the cure. The tremble was part rage and part love and part sorrow. He nodded then, just one fast jerk of his chin, and his eyes stormy, he rocked back onto his heels and stood.

He looked down at her as she lay between his feet, all at once utterly vulnerable and fierce in her resolve. And then he turned the needle away and extended his hand, helping her to her feet once more. “You are right,” he whispered. “It must be your choice.”

He handed her the needle.

“Yes. It must.” And she crushed the syringe in her bare hand and let the cure dribble out between her fingers with the bits of glass.

Marlaena packed her bag and left that night as the news hit the television that Mr. Wondermann, and all of his computers and documents, had been seized and locked up on tax evasion charges.

It seemed like good news on top of good news.

But losing Marlaena was strangely like shooting Gabriel. She’d been an outcast from society before and now she’d make herself an outcast a second time by choosing to live (and die) as the untamed wolf. She couldn’t be forced to change and she certainly didn’t care to try to change. As much as I didn’t like her I still felt bad for her. She’d only found her place and a group who would love and support her a little while before rejecting them.

I wondered if it had been a preemptive strike. Reject us so she didn’t have to risk being rejected herself. But I’d have years to ponder it, if I really wanted to. Now I had a few more things to clean up before I could feel good about collapsing into a heap.

Alexi

As stunned as I was by the news of Marlaena’s choice, I still recognized it as her own and I had to respect it as such.
Da,
she had crushed the last syringe of the cure, but Hazel and I knew how to create more as easily as if it were now in our nature. We had persevered and we had won the day.

And, later that night, back at home, I wrapped my arm around Nadezhda as we sat cuddled together on the aptly named love seat, resting well in the knowledge that if more
oboroten
came looking for a cure, they could make their own choice about taking it.

Jessie

I found Wanda at the horse farm late that night after I’d tucked Pietr into bed and called Dad to bring me home. Amy insisted on coming along, and I welcomed the company. And Dad needed dear daughter number three, from the worn look on his face.

Wanda was in the kitchen, poking at a cooling pizza that looked as loaded as the ones we’d ordered for the pups. Dad and Amy made themselves scarce, and I sat down across the table from her.

I opened with small talk, but she wasn’t buying it, so, knowing I’d regret it, I began to eat a piece of the pizza to give me a legitimate reason to be there. Between bites, I talked about Dad and Annabelle Lee and the farm. Nice, normal things.

She shoved her chair back from the table and gave me such a look, I swallowed prematurely and choked a moment.

“Look, I understand what you’re trying to do, Jessie, and I respect it,” Wanda said. “But it won’t work between your dad and me. Some things just aren’t meant to be,” she explained, reaching out to pat my shoulder. “Your dad needs someone nice and loving—”

“Do you love him?”

Her mouth hung open a moment, empty of words. “Yes. Very much. More than anything. But he deserves someone nice and loving. I’m a fighter,” she said, rising and reaching for her coat. “It’s all I ever wanted and all I ever dreamed of.”

“No. No, it’s not. Not all,” I said firmly, taking the coat that now hung in her hand. “Don’t you remember ever wanting something else? Something like you just described? Nice and loving?”

She blew out an exasperated breath. “Sure. Everyone wants to be a firefighter, an artist, or a writer at some point—pipe dreams. That doesn’t matter when you start to grow up and get real.”

“What if I told you I know you wanted to be something else when you grew up and someone took that away from you?”

“Aw, crap, Jessie. In any place and talking to any other kid, I’d say you’re full of it. But we’re still in Junction, aren’t we?”

“Very much so.”

She shook her head, her ponytail snapping. “You know what? It really doesn’t matter. The past is the past. I don’t even remember any other plan or dream.”

“When was the last time you meditated?”

She snorted at me.

“Prayed?”

“Have you forgotten who you’re talking to?”

“Fine. When was the last time you did a visualization exercise?”

“Yesterday, before heading to the range for practice.”

“Awesome. Go sit on the couch. You’re not the only one doing some practice here or there.”