Jennifer Lynn Barnes Anthology by Jennifer Lynn Barnes
“Explosives,” I said out loud, my voice hoarse. “Very close to where I’m betting Caroline set up her little sniper’s nest. If you can take her out of commission without hurting her, do it, because otherwise, we will.”
For the first time, I had the experience of watching another human flash out. The look that came over the old man’s face was completely animal: more than fury, more than need, more than the basest instinct I’d ever seen in a Were.
Whether he’d get to Caroline before the explosives detonated, I didn’t know. With the smell of blood in the air and the feel of someone else’s pain shooting through my body, I didn’t care.
I had to get to them—to Chase, to the others. They were my pack. They were mine, and they were hurting.
Bleeding.
Dying.
“You really shouldn’t wrinkle your forehead like that, Bryn. It’s horribly unattractive.”
I turned at the unsolicited advice, and there Valerie was, five feet away from me, completely unperturbed that I was the one holding a gun.
“Your little friends are certainly keeping us busy, aren’t they?” Valerie said, casting her glance down at the battlefield below. A nagging sense of fear turned my stomach to stone, and I felt a sliver of ice sliding down the nape of my neck. I knew not to take my eyes off the woman in front of me, but I couldn’t keep dread from forcing my gaze to the right, where what was left of my pack was facing off against the rest of the coven.
Wolf teeth met silver-plated knives held midair by a woman who blended in to the background like her entire body was painted in camouflage. Maddy, Lucas, and Sage were caught mid-Shift, bones frozen in the process of breaking, muzzles protruding from otherwise human faces. Lake was bleeding from her eyes and nose, Mitch was on his knees, and between them, the girls I’d seen at the breakfast table were moving their lips, saying something I couldn’t hear, causing the others to writhe in pain.
“I promised not to kill the girls,” Valerie said thoughtfully, “but I think my partner in crime will understand if we lose just one.”
Maddy lunged, snapping her half-human muzzle at the old woman with the knack for influencing animals. She didn’t see the snakes rushing down from the forest, didn’t see the one close enough to strike.
I saw it, though—saw it and felt everything Valerie wanted me to feel as fangs struck at Maddy’s body, only to be intercepted at the last minute in a blur of darkness and fur.
Chase. Bleeding. Hurting. He stumbled, turned, cut the snake down the middle with his jaws even as its head clung to his hind leg.
I stopped breathing.
Hurts. Hurts, Bryn. Maddy? Okay?
Chase’s thoughts were a mess, as uncensored and jumbled as Lily’s. I wanted to go to him, but I couldn’t move, and all I could see was Chase beside me, Chase standing guard, Chase shielding Maddy’s body with his own.
Maddy? Okay? Bryn?
Chase’s voice was weaker in my mind now, and that was enough to tell me just how badly he was hurt. I could feel the burn of silver, the venom in his bloodstream.
Bryn … Protect … Mine …
I let down my walls, let him in. He filled me up, the way he and Devon and Lake had before, but this time, it was just the two of us. Chase and Bryn. Bryn and Chase.
Bryn. Protect Maddy.
For you.
I hadn’t realized how far into my head Valerie had managed to get until Chase was there, too. His presence pushed against hers, and my body finally recognized the invasion for what it was.
She was attacking me from the inside out. She was violating me. She was hurting the people I loved.
Red, red, red …
Everywhere, there was red.
On some level, I knew that my own body was injured, knew that once I flashed out, there would be nothing to keep me from pushing too hard, too far.
It didn’t matter. I could feel Chase lying on his side, bleeding, as his voice got softer and softer in my mind.
Red, red, everywhere, there was red.
Chase had saved Maddy. For me. He was going to survive this. He had to. We had to. With everything I had, I shoved Valerie out of my head. She blinked like I’d thrown something at her and stumbled backward.
“No bother,” Valerie said, her hair falling into her face as she recovered. “You’re a curious little thing, but I don’t need to be in your head to win this fight—or any other. I’ve already got so many little soldiers. Can you feel how much they hate you? How much they want to see your people bleed? It’s a delicate mixture—fear and loathing, the kind of curiosity they’re ashamed of, sorrow and fury—rising, rising, until they can’t stand it anymore.”
“Hello, Mother.” I didn’t know whether to take Caroline’s appearance at our side as a good sign or a bad one. At least if she was here, she couldn’t be targeting the rest of the pack.
At least if she was here, everyone else was safe—from her.
“Hello, Caroline.” Valerie sounded mildly pleased at her daughter’s arrival—no more, no less.
I looked at Caroline’s cherubic face, took in her doll-like features and the color of her eyes.
Watched them go from blue to black.
“Shoot her.” Valerie spoke the words, and I dove to the ground, just as the world exploded around me. I knew a shot had been fired, but couldn’t tell who had been shot. I was already in pain—so much pain—and I could feel all of the others’, feel it everywhere.
Someone was shot.
Was it me?
No.
I clung to consciousness, clung to Chase as he began to fade away, and the last thing I saw before everything went black was Caroline’s eyes changing back to blue—and Ali standing over Valerie’s lifeless body, holding a smoking gun.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
I WAS LYING ON MY BACK, MY HEAD TURNED TO THE side, my eyes closed. I knew before I opened them that Chase would be there, lying on his back, his head turned toward mine. The night sky stretched out above us, stars burning so bright it hurt to look at them.
His hand wove its way through mine.
Neither one of us spoke, but I felt his heartbeat as if it were my own, and for reasons I couldn’t pinpoint, tears began trickling down my face, slowly at first, but then faster.
This isn’t real. I tried not to think the words, but couldn’t hold them back.
I wanted it to be real. I wanted him to be okay, and barring that, I wanted the two of us to stay this way, my hand wrapped in his, his face close enough to mine that I could taste him.
Cedar and cinnamon. Chase.
He wasn’t bleeding.
I wasn’t burned.
And the ground beneath us was … not ground, I realized. It was concrete, and though the sky stretched out in all directions above us, here on earth, we were surrounded by walls.
Bars. Titanium and reinforced steel.
It took me a moment to realize where we were: Callum’s basement, the place where we’d first met, when Chase was newly turned and half wild with moonlust, and I was stupid and impulsive and unable to stay away.
This time, I was in the cage with him, and he was human.
“Caroline shot you,” I said softly, wishing I could say something else. “You got bitten by a snake.”
Chase blinked, his eyes brimming with acceptance—and something else. “Yeah.”
I reached for his cheek. He nuzzled my hand.
“That snake was going for Maddy,” I said, wondering if this was the last time I would ever touch him, feel the warmth of his skin. “You took its bite for her.”
Chase reached out, touched my cheek, and I leaned into his hand. “I told you that if it came down to the pack or you, it would always be you. But if it comes down to me and them …”
I closed my eyes, rubbed my cheek against his hand.
“I’d pick them,” he said softly. “For you.”
Callum had said that being alpha was lonely—but all I could think, lying there next to Chase, sharing this
“You’re going to be okay,” I told him, my lips a fraction of an inch away from his. “You’re going to be fine.”
“Bryn,” he said, his breath warm on my face, his voice wild and irrepressible and sure. “Love you.”
We’d shared dreams before, back when we were hunting the Rabid—enough for me to know that anything Chase said here was as real as words he said when we were awake.
There was no coming back from this moment, not now, not ever.
Somewhere his body was bleeding, poisoned with venom and silver.
Somewhere my body was burned.
But here, in this dream, as we lay side by side in a cage with all of heaven spread out above us, we were okay.
And I wasn’t alone.
“Love you, Bryn,” Chase said again, his voice hoarse. “Always you.”
My mouth went cotton dry, and for a moment, I was scared—terrified—that I wouldn’t be able to say it back. But somehow, I found the words, convinced my mouth to string them into a sentence—one that felt true.
“Love you, too.”
The moment I said the words, his body gave in to the poison, and he began seizing. His limbs twitched, but he didn’t Shift. He didn’t blink. He didn’t take his eyes off mine. He just faded away, bit by bit by bit, until I was lying there alone, the ghost of his touch lingering on my fingertips, my lips warm and swollen with the kiss we hadn’t shared.
Bryn. Bryn. Bryn.
I sat up in the cage and willed myself to wake up so that I could go to him, save him, but instead, the world around me morphed, until the sky was nothing but stars, nothing but brightness, and I wasn’t alone.
“You.” The word ripped its way out of my throat, but I couldn’t coax my body into moving, couldn’t rip the intruder’s jugular out, the way I should have the first time we’d met.
“Me,” Archer said. The word sounded like some kind of confession. “It’s just me this time, Bryn.”
No nicknames, no gloating. This was a side to my psychic stalker that I hadn’t seen before. I glanced at his eyes and noted the ring of lighter color around the pupil, and then I realized what he was trying to tell me.
“Just you,” I repeated. That meant that Valerie was …
“Dead,” Archer said, answering the question I hadn’t asked. He flicked his wrist with halfhearted showmanship, and images flashed into my mind, courtesy of his psychic interference. This time, there were no flames—just a series of still shots of the coven’s members, bleeding from the nose. “When Valerie died, her influence went with her. It was sudden. It hurt. But it was enough for the rest of us to realize that the monsters we were fighting weren’t.”
“Weren’t fighting?”
“Weren’t monsters.” Archer looked at me with an expression somewhere between pity and pain. “You’re just kids.”
He couldn’t have been more than five or six years my senior, but for a split second, I could almost see myself the way he did: sixteen, battered, old eyes, thin.
“I’d like to say that we didn’t know what we were doing,” Archer said, trying to sound like the words didn’t matter to him nearly as much as they did. “But we weren’t completely brainwashed. We knew. Valerie just made us feel like it didn’t matter, made us hate you enough that we didn’t want to question what that hatred was making us do. We let it happen. I let it happen.”
I shut Archer down before he could say the word sorry, because I didn’t want to hear it. “I need to wake up,” I told him. “Now.”
I didn’t have time for apologies. I didn’t need to be along for the ride as he worked his way through the question of whether he and the rest of the coven were villains or victims.
I needed to get out of here. I needed to wake up. I needed to protect what was left of my pack.
“Let me go.”
“I’m not the one keeping you here,” Archer said. “The fight’s over. It’s been over. You and some of the others—on both sides—were pretty beat up. You’ve been out for three days.”
That wasn’t possible. He had to be messing with me, playing with my mind, keeping me here when there was still something I could do to protect what was mine. I couldn’t afford to take his words at face value, couldn’t trust anything I’d seen through his mind—no matter how true it felt.
I had to make sure that the other psychics had stopped fighting when Valerie took a bullet to the head. For all I knew, while I was stuck in a dream with Archer, Caroline was out there in the real world retaliating for her mother’s death. She could be taking aim at—
Ali.
The memory of my last conscious moment came rushing back. I’d been facing off against Valerie, against Caroline, pushing my body past every limit and clinging to consciousness by a thread. Caroline had pointed her gun at me. Valerie had given the order—and Ali, my Ali, had shot the coven leader dead.
If Archer was lying, if Caroline was still out there …
I moved to grab Archer by the lapels, but my hands sank through his body, like one of us was a ghost. “Wake. Me. Up.”
Archer opened his mouth, then closed it. He took a step backward, his body solidifying once more. He held up one hand in invitation.
I didn’t have the luxury of debating whether or not to take it. This was Ali we were talking about here.
The moment my hand touched Archer’s, images flooded my brain in rapid fire: things he seemed to feel he owed it to me to share.
Not lies.
Like a slide show, the images flashed through my mind, bits and pieces of things that Archer had seen in other people’s dreams, in reality.
I saw Devon Shifting from human form and Caroline’s knuckles going white around the handle of a gun.
Flash.
I saw a little blonde girl, covered in blood. I saw her scramble backward as a large wolf—Devon? No, not Devon, not quite—approached.
Flash.
I saw Ali lifting a gun and taking aim at a woman exactly her height. I saw her pull the trigger, saw Valerie go down.
I heard Caroline say four simple words: “You shot my mother.”
Flash.
I saw Ali releasing the clip on her gun. She lowered her hands to her sides. She met Caroline’s eyes and waited for the girl to shoot.
“For what it’s worth,” Ali said, her voice catching in her throat as she looked back at Valerie’s body, “she was my mother, too.”
I woke up stiff, with morning breath and a body that felt like it had been put through a blender. It was dark outside my window, night just beginning to give way to the last moment before the dawn. Before I even opened my eyes, my pack-sense went haywire, flooding my body with thoughts and emotions, locations, tastes and smells.
Instantly, I knew where each member of my pack was. I knew who was awake and who was sleeping, who was injured, who was dead.
“You’re awake.” The voice was quiet, female, flat. I reached for the knife I kept on my nightstand, but it wasn’t there.
“Devon didn’t kill my father.” Caroline said those words the way someone else might have said hello. “I didn’t kill that Were.”
That Were.
I knew who she was talking about. I could see his very human corpse in my mind—lanky and in desperate need of a haircut.
“His name was Eric,” I said.
He’d been a freshman in college. The oldest of the Changed Weres. Excited to go to dorm parties. The first to speak up when things went awry.
“He was ours.”
Words like peripheral meant nothing in death. Eric’s absence was noticeable—a phantom limb, a gaping hole in my psyche. In human terms, we hadn’t known each other very long or very well, but right now, I didn’t feel human. I felt like I’d let Eric down. Like I should have protected him. Like I’d failed.
I didn’t shed a tear, didn’t even think about it. I wanted to go out to the woods, where the others had buried Eric, and howl.
“I could have killed
That was the first time Caroline had mentioned her mother, but I couldn’t read any emotion in her words, other than something empty, something fierce.
“I shot that Were—Eric—but I wasn’t the one who killed him. I didn’t kill anyone.”
I struggled to sit up, make myself taller, taking stock of my injuries as I did. In the time I’d been unconscious, I’d already started healing, but my left forearm was as good as useless, burned and wrapped in gauze. I thought of Jed and the layers and layers of scars decorating his aging flesh.
Werewolves healed quickly. Short of silver poisoning or being literally torn to pieces, they bounced back with minimal scars, but I wasn’t a werewolf, and unless I turned, someday, I’d be as old and scarred and battle-worn as Jed, strong enough to survive, with the things I’d lived through etched into the surface of my skin.
“After I took that last shot, there was an explosion. Jed pulled me out, dragged me away. He tried to take my gun.”
This time, I did see a flicker of emotion. Little Miss Huntress didn’t like being disarmed.
“We fought. I let him think he’d won, and the second he came out of fight mode, I knocked him out and dragged him far enough away from the explosions that I knew he’d be okay. Then I went after you.” Caroline shrugged, like nothing she’d said so far was important, like none of it mattered, to her or to me. “You know the rest.”
She stayed in the shadows, her back against the wall, the distance between us the only thing that kept me from reaching out with my one good arm and grabbing her by the throat.
As much as I didn’t want to, I believed her when she said that she hadn’t killed Eric—but either way, she’d shot him, left him as easy prey for the coven and their bag of tricks. She’d put a bullet in Lake’s dad and one in Chase, and the last time I’d seen her, she’d had a gun trained on the one person in this world who’d always been there, always been on my side, from day one.