Destiny and Deception

  “You’re the perfect tool,” Amy snapped.

  I widened my eyes at her.

  “Oh. For. Spying,” she concluded sharply.

  “Niiice,” Sarah countered. “Look, let’s be straight here. I’m not doing this to become anyone’s friend. Well, Cat, you and I could hang,” she clarified, looking at Cat’s recent boot acquisition. “You at least have a sharp sense of style. But some of you don’t have any sense at all. And some of you are far from sharp.” She turned back to face me. “But Jessie basically saved me when anybody else would’ve thrown me away. She got honest when it mattered most. And she gave me back my memories. Plus some creepy crap I still don’t know what to do about. But she tried. For my sake. So I’ll try for hers.”

  I shrugged. “I’m all for it. We need someone.”

  “And if you’re all we’ve got…,” Amy added grudgingly.

  “Thanks. So glad to finally make the list.”

  “Ohhh, you’re on my list, no worries,” Amy said, wrinkling her nose.

  “Stop!” I shook my hands. “We all need to work together to make this work out okay. Sarah, what we mainly need to know is if Perlson starts acting weird—like if it seems he’s ready to charge off in any particular direction. And if he says or does anything else weird.”

  “Vice Principal weird or—”

  “Scary paranormal / supernatural weird,” Sophie whispered.

  “Awesome,” Sarah said dryly. “That’s what I was hoping you’d say. And when he does—because, let’s face it Scooby gang, this is Junction, and weird seems to ooze up from the sidewalks around here now—what do you want me to do?”

  “Text us all. Immediately. First Soph and me, then Cat and Amy.”

  “Heyyy, look who’s on the bottom of the list,” Sarah remarked, pulling out her cell phone and passing it to me. “Enter the digits.”

  We all complied.

  The door swung open and Max strode in.

  Sophie shrieked, Sarah and Cat snorted, and Amy just grinned.

  “Lose somethin’, Tiger?” she teased. “Can’t imagine any reason a guy like you’d be in a place like this unless you’d suddenly misplaced something tremendously valuable to your gender identification.”

  “I did,” he said gruffly. “But she’s right here,” he added, taking her hand, “and about to be late for class unless we hurry.”

  “Fine, fine,” she said, letting him lead her to the door. “Adjourned?”

  “Adjourned,” I agreed.

  Max paused and looked around a moment. “Why does your bathroom smell so much better than ours?”

  “Maybe because we don’t spend our time using our equipment to try and take aim and hit—and probably miss—some little blue thing that’s disgustingly called a cake?”

  He nodded sagely. “But some of us are good enough with our equipment we can write our name in the snow. In cursive. And in Cyrillic.”

  “I so don’t want to ever see that,” she specified as they left the bathroom hand in hand.

  Alexi

  I examined the ticket in my hand. Flight 732 to Samoa. Seat 23A. Across the country and an ocean later I could be in the arms of my love, Nadezhda. I could tell her everything that was in my heart—all my hopes and fears and distant plans for our future together. And she would cover my face in kisses and take my hand in hers and lead me back to some quiet place away from the hustle and noise of humanity.…

  Or I would find her with her partner and my reality would be cruelly adjusted.

  If I returned the ticket and cashed in my dream I could still recoup some small something and better ensure that my family had the money they needed to last a little longer in Junction.

  Or to deal with the treachery that seemed to dog us. I could use the money Wanda gave me to somehow bring her down—get the justice my mother and father deserved.

  The irony would be sweet, using her own money against her.

  Nadezhda and I might be doing fine at a distance. Surely we could keep what we felt for each other alive a bit longer, even just using phones and e-mail and Skype.… Could we not?

  Da. Of course we could.

  Even though she had a partner who probably played the role of her husband in her current undercover operation … who stayed in her flat, in her room.…

  To keep up appearances …

  It was just a job.

  I had an important choice to make: love or vengeance.

  I thought about the heat of Nadezhda’s kisses and the way her breath cooled the skin of my bare chest one hot summer day in Moscow.…

  But my mother and father taught me everything I knew about life and love …

  … and loyalty.

  I knew in that instant what I needed to do.

  I picked up the phone. “I’m so sorry,” I explained. “I need to cancel my ticket. I will not be taking this flight after all.”

  “I’m so sorry to hear that, sir. Has there been some emergency?”

  “Da—yes,” I agreed. “I’m afraid so. Two of the most important people in my life have died.”

  It was such a simple thing, in the end, the cancellation of an airplane ticket and the return of the funds. I would spend the money well.

  Marlaena

  I had returned to the Rusakova household and seen Pietr—alone. Making clear my desire to have them join our pack for a get-together, I finally convinced him it was in everyone’s best interest.

  From my seat by the second-story bedroom window I watched them enter the house. Gabe knocked on the door shortly after they’d been greeted and come inside. “They’re here.”

  “We know,” Gareth murmured, flopped across the broken bed, dreads falling across his eyes.

  “Shall I introduce you?”

  “Yeah, Gabriel. Get ’em all riled up or whatever.”

  The door closed behind him and Gareth rolled onto his back, even stronger somehow when he submitted.

  “What is the purpose of all this?” he asked, rolling his head so his dreads flopped.

  I dropped to my knees at the bed’s edge and swatted his hair. “I’ve never known. Care to explain?”

  “Not the purpose of this,” he said with a smile, shaking his hair again. “The purpose of whatever you’re doing tonight. With them. The Rusakovas and their not-so-werewolf entourage.”

  “We need them.”

  “Since when did you need anyone?”

  I fought down the words that sprang to mind and choked on ‘since I met you.’ Instead I shrugged. “They know this region.”

  “So we intend to stay?”

  I shrugged again. “They have connections.”

  “Which we can make in time.”

  “If we have them, we don’t need Dmitri. We can make things work on our own.”

  “They were the first ones to tell you they aren’t our own, weren’t they?”

  I kept my mouth shut.

  His voice grew softer, luring me closer. “Be honest.”

  “I am. I always am.”

  “It’s because of him, isn’t it? Because of Pietr Rusakova. There’s something about him that’s caught your curiosity.”

  “No. Don’t be ridiculous.”

  He rubbed his hand slowly across his stomach and was silent for a moment. “It’s okay, you know.”

  “What? What’s okay?” My heart raced. Why was I suddenly terrified I was closer to Gareth than ever and still he was slipping away?

  “It’s okay if you choose him.”

  “Choose him…? What the hell are you talking about?”

  “You know. You’re an alpha female. You need an alpha male.”

  “Who am I choosing between?” I asked, fighting the sudden panic edging into my voice.

  “You know very well who you’re choosing between.”

  “No—no I don’t,” I insisted, reaching across to grab his hand.

  He sighed. “Between Pietr, Gabe, and me.”

  He kissed my hand and dropped it, sitting up and then vaulti
ng to his feet in a motion so smooth any wolf would envy him.

  Then he walked out the door and left me.

  “Shit!” I hissed, squeezing my eyes shut. “When the hell did you let you become an option for me?”

  * * *

  “We were down and out, lost, frightened and alone—misunderstood, abandoned, punished, and brutalized, imprisoned and in fear for our lives. And for what? What was our singular crime? Being different! Being stronger”—they cheered—“faster”—they cheered—“and for being more savvy than the humans who make up the least bit of us. Do we have humanity? YES. Will we ever lose it? NO. But we are far greater than that bit of flesh we walk in—because we are different.”

  Gabe was on a roll. Phil would’ve liked him—would’ve seen preacher potential in him.

  “Hunted, wounded, weakened—we were each at our ropes’ ends when she found us and led us—like the lambs we were—to become something greater—something stronger and fiercer—to become her wolves. And who is she, this leader who raised us all from our darkest moments and led us into the full moon’s dazzling light? Who is this girl?” he demanded, his voice cracking.

  “Marlaena!” they shouted in answer, and my heart shook to hear it on so many tongues. “Marlaena! Marlaena!”

  I stepped into the room, my rabid supporters—the phrase always seeming so much more appropriate for wolves, especially my wolves—leaning forward to greet me, a fire in their eyes as excitement built and tested the limits of their control, the wolf edging into each of their eyes.

  “My wolves!” I shouted. “My war dogs!” I threw my head back and laughed. “Together we have already come so far—we who were once alone and so lonely are now united, one family, one kinship, one pack! And what is the main lesson the pack preaches?”

  “The wolf!” they answered me. “The wolf! The wolf!”

  “And this wolf—this wolf”—I pounded a fist to my chest—“this wolf is…?”

  “The way!” they screamed.

  “And what, my cubs, my whelps, my warriors, what are the laws of our way?”

  My eyes found our visitors sitting behind the pack’s writhing bodies. Each of their forms told a different tale. They were curious, at least one was fearful, and most were doubtful, but they were all listening. That was the important part. If I could get someone to listen to a message often enough, eventually they would believe it.

  “The law?” I repeated.

  “The law is survival!”

  “The law?”

  “The law is power!”

  “The law?”

  “The law is hunt or be hunted!”

  “The law?”

  “Eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth, claw for a claw!”

  “The law?”

  “Morality is a luxury!”

  “The law?”

  “Fortune favors the bold!”

  “The law?”

  “Survival of the fittest!”

  The one called Jessica balked at the last few of the laws, her head snapping back and her body stiffening. She took Pietr’s hand, and he patted hers like he’d comfort a child incapable of understanding what they witnessed.

  I couldn’t have cared less what she thought. Because, for whatever reason, I needed Pietr to buy in to what we were doing. To understand the Way of the Wolf and that the wolf was truly and completely the only way.

  “And who is the fittest?” I screamed.

  “We are, we are, we are WOLF!”

  “And the wolf?”

  “The Wolf is the Way!”

  And then the real excitement began.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Jessie

  Another wolf, Gareth, led us to a beaten-up barn and told us where to sit. Werewolves carrying makeshift drums and branches came first, the group of them circling Marlaena as she held up a lighter and a stick wrapped with a rag. As her cohorts piled sticks around her feet she touched the torch and lighter together. The torch jumped to life and she lit the pile of wood at her feet and leaped into the crowd as they howled.

  There was dancing and more howling and food and more howling and more dancing. And howling.

  I picked at the meat that was given to me and watched Pietr. As he watched them. He smiled, his features lighting with far more interest than I’d seen him have about me recently.

  I tried to fight down the nausea clawing at my stomach. These were his kind. In a way. It was natural he’d feel a kinship with them.

  I could only hope that sensation of kinship with Marlaena’s pack would be overridden by his logical, cool, and very human side.

  When things finally died down we headed to the car, Marlaena close behind. “Pietr,” she called. “Pietr!”

  He turned back to her, and I hung at his side.

  “You were just going to leave?”

  “We’re very tired,” he apologized. “But thank you for inviting us to an amazing event.”

  “Wait—will you not … Won’t you join us? The Wolf is the Way.…”

  “But it is not our way,” he said softly. “We chose to be human, to live longer lives and spend more time with the ones we love.”

  I reached out and took his hand. “Come on now,” I urged, and as we turned away from her, I thought I heard her say, “You made the wrong choice. And now you leave me without one.”

  Melodramatic werewolves.

  As we squeezed into the car to leave, I noticed I was one of the few not exhausted from dancing.

  Or howling.

  Even Amy complained happily about her sore feet.

  None of it was a good sign, in my opinion.

  Marlaena

  “Go,” I told Tembe. “Take the truck. We may not have lost them yet.”

  He nodded and took the keys from my outstretched hand.

  “You know what to do?”

  He nodded again.

  “Make it count. If they live, they’re wolves. And free of nearly all human taint. They’ll join us then.”

  “And if they don’t live?” he asked.

  “Then I look into another option.”

  Tembe scurried away, and the truck started with a cough and a wheeze of its engine. It wouldn’t matter how good the engine was after tonight.

  I caught Gabriel’s scent on the wind and turned back to the house—too late.

  “Come on, beautiful…,” he coaxed, placing one hand on the tree at my back so his bicep grazed my shoulder. “Didn’t I do you proud tonight? Got all the pups cheering you on.… Haven’t I earned a little…” His gaze wandered the length of my body, and I knew by the glimmer in his eyes that he liked what he saw.

  That didn’t matter. I looked flat into his face. “Just because you do me proud,” I stated, “it doesn’t mean you get to do me.”

  He didn’t even blink but tilted his head and gave me a slow nod. “What’ll it take then?”

  “To get me?” I laughed.

  Gabriel was no longer beating around the bush. “Yeah,” he said, his eyes narrowing as he appraised his potential prize. “What’ll it take to get you?”

  “A different man.” I shoved him back, pushing past him.

  I could’ve sworn he muttered something like, “There has to be something I can do…,” but I was already walking.

  For a moment I thought I still felt him behind me, shadowing me, but then, like a ghost, he was gone, disappearing into the trees that stood like skeletal sentries along the old property’s edge.

  Jessie

  “I don’t trust them,” I muttered from the backseat, sandwiched between Amy and Alexi.

  “I doubt any of us trust them, Jessie,” Alexi said with a yawn.

  Max shrugged and turned left at the light. “They’re not so bad. Rowdy. Cultlike. But they sure know how to throw a party, don’t they?” He glanced into the rearview mirror at us, grinning.

  And that was when the truck t-boned us.

  We whipped like rag dolls against one another, seat belts holding us so tight everything else i
n our bodies was loose by comparison. My spine was loose as a snake’s and my head slammed into Amy’s shoulder and Alexi’s back crushed against me.

  And we were far better off than Pietr.

  * * *

  The ambulance and fire department were fast to arrive and faster still to pull us out, check us over, and suggest we all ride to the E.R. to be checked out more completely by way of another ambulance. Pietr was the priority.

  The unconscious, bleeding priority.

  I vomited right there. Someone said that was a sure sign of concussion, but I knew it was more than that. “Help me up,” I asked, looking at Alexi. “We need to ride along.”

  “Sorry. There’s only room for one…,” the same helpful medic reported.

  “Take her,” Alexi said, pushing me into the back of the ambulance. “I’m his guardian—do whatever it takes to keep him alive—”

  But the doors were already closing and we rushed to the hospital, siren screaming.

  It seemed that no matter what they did, they couldn’t stop Pietr’s bleeding.

  Even more terrifying was the moment he stopped breathing and they couldn’t start him up again.

  I reached out clumsily for his hand. “Damn it, Pietr, not now … not like this.…” To lose him now because he could finally live a normal life and a normal life span, or to still have more than twenty years with him as a nearly invincible werewolf …

  What if the wolf was the way and my blood, the cure, had taken it from him? What if I was finally the thing that killed him?

  I squeezed his hand so hard I felt bones pop. “Fight, damn it.…”

  He gasped and the medics shouted in surprise.

  The ambulance came to a sudden stop and Pietr was unloaded first. I stumbled out behind, caught up by one very helpful man. “Here,” he whispered, seating me in a wheelchair. “He’s going to our best doctors. Let’s go get you checked out, okay?”

  I nodded, tears sliding down my cheeks. “I’ve been told frequently I should get my head examined,” I muttered.

  “Well, there you go. Maintaining a sense of humor’s an important thing at a moment like this.”

  Alexi

  We were all hurt from the accident, Amy, Cat, and I far worse than Max. I looked at him carefully. He and I would need to talk. Da, I had lied to him for years about being an oborot, but this lie of his …