Bargains and Betrayals

  She rambled, doing what she always did when panic set in.

  “Jessie.” I stopped her. “Max has the car. Da. Taxi. You get her to the hospital to be checked out.”

  I hung up and called the cab service. It was the slowest ride I’d ever taken, knowing what I did.

  Amy had been attacked and Max was out for blood.

  Alexi

  If doing cardio was good preparation for a fight, then I would be in amazing shape, I thought as I sprinted away from the taxi, hurling bills at the driver and racing for the main entrance of Junction High. I’d used my time in the crawling cab wisely (after cajoling and then verbally berating the man in Russian when he refused to go a single notch past the speed limit).

  I’d called Jessie back and gotten a basic overview of the school’s layout.

  Hindsight being what it was, I realized I should have attended the parent-teacher conference about Max’s flirtatious behavior when it was first requested. At least then I would have known the school’s layout personally.

  The place was nearly empty—the strange illness that kept being mentioned in the local papers making the high school more and more desolate. I slid to a halt outside Pietr’s classroom and waved my arms wildly at him. He needed no more instruction, but vaulted out of his desk.

  Behind him a man shouted about his current math grade not being mathematically impossible to lower. Yet.

  Pietr winced.

  “Max,” I wheezed, struggling for breath. I should have given up cigarettes months ago. Hell, I should have never started smoking the blasted things.

  Pietr’s nostrils flared and he grabbed my arm, dragging me with him down the hall as my shoes—a decent grade of Italian leather—slipped on the linoleum tiles. This was why Mafia men were so often shown in tracksuits on television and in the movies, I thought as we rounded a corner and I scrabbled for purchase: There was running involved. Sensible shoes were necessary all the time.

  Pietr, not even winded, pulled me to a stop at a door marked BASEMENT. “Down there,” he said, yanking the door open. He paused, seeing the line of steps, and then, judging the distance, took them all in one stunning leap. Show-off. I ran down them as quickly as my feet could carry me, my goal simply to not trip to my own death in my haste.

  Pietr stood in the corner, assessing things, and I leaped between my brother and his girlfriend’s attacker.

  “I will kill him—” Max’s fist raised and I covered my head with my arms—the noise of glass breaking punctuated his words as he shattered a lightbulb swinging above us—like a boxer taking a warm-up swipe at a convenient punching bag.

  Marvin dropped to the floor and rolled into a fetal position as glass rained down and I straddled him.

  “Max—MAX!” I shouted, trying to break his focus and stem the rage boiling in his bones.

  Glass stuck out from Max’s bloody knuckles, but he didn’t even twitch at the shards wedged there, his focus so tight on Marvin, whimpering before him.

  I spread my arms. “Max, think!” I urged. “Pietr—a little help!”

  Pietr jumped forward and grabbed Max’s arm.

  Max’s shoulders rolled forward, head low, his brows brutally shadowing his eyes. The beast inside my brother fought to claw its way out and he welcomed it.

  I closed my eyes and puffed out a breath. “Max,” I urged, trying to find him somewhere beneath the red swirling in his eyes. “Stop this madness.” This could quickly go from bad to tragic. And no matter what Max was planning, Amy would lose. Realizing we had one casualty already, I focused on limiting the collateral damage.

  “Max. Calm down,” Pietr said, pulling back on his brother’s arm and bracing himself for a fight.

  He spit. “Calm down? Whose side are you on?” His glare cut at us as deeply as the claws and fangs of the wolf could bite.

  “Amy’s,” I answered, working to rebuild a cool façade that kept crumbling beneath the rolling heat of his hate. “We’re on Amy’s side.”

  “Then let me have him,” he purred—a deceptive noise that folded seamlessly into a growl.

  “Nyet,” I insisted, my ears disbelieving, my own neck still remembering the brutal power of his enraged hands from the one day we’d had it out for top dog of the family.

  He knocked me aside easily, barely flicking his wrist, but I still stumbled under the impact and plowed with a curse into the wall.

  Max straightened, stretched, swaying. In one long, smooth movement, bones cracking as he raised his arms, he leaned back his head and summoned the change, relishing the beast as it pushed to the surface. His face stretched, eyes glowing the red of hot coals, hair sprouting along his skin as his fingers curled under and his hands became heavy paws.

  Cloth ripped as his haunches and barrel chest burst free of the constraints of human clothing. For a moment he teetered on his hind legs, balancing awkwardly as he peered at his paws and flexed them—claws like stiletto points unsheathing with a deadly whisper.

  He looked down at Marvin—impossibly small in the shadow of the wolf—and fell forward …

  … to come face-to-face with me.

  I amazed us both, successfully sandwiching myself between the leering wolf with its slavering jaws and its whining human victim.

  I was officially an idiot.

  Marvin reeled back beneath me as far as he could go, his face pressed into the floor, trembling so hard at what he saw above me his body shook mine.

  “No!” I shouted, keeping as much of my back pressed against Marvin’s quivering form as I could. “I won’t let him destroy your future, too!”

  Glass ground into us both as I adjusted my position to better cover him.

  Max grabbed my arm to pull me out of his path.

  I stiffened. Marvin balled up more tightly beneath me and my disgust for him grew. He was only brave enough to fight if his opponent was smaller than himself.

  And I protected him.

  “Urrgh!” I snaked my neck to catch Max’s glimmering eyes with my own. Nose-to-nose he could hardly ignore me. If I stared him down—grabbed hold of the humanity in him, the part that wanted blood as much as it warred against the idea—maybe I could stop him.

  “Max, don’t…”

  His eyes glowed, the red fire swirling up to consume the light that regularly sparkled in them. The cords on his neck stood out—metal rods holding his head in place—and I wrapped my hands around them and raised my legs so my knees were jammed beneath his heavy chest.

  I built a wall of bone, flesh, and blood between him and his prey—a wall he could raze in an instant. His lips slid back from his teeth as his anguished snarl turned into a jagged-toothed grimace.

  “He rrraped herrr,” the beast within him shrieked from deep in his gut, shaking everything but my resolve.

  Pietr stepped back, putting his hands up. “Tear him apart,” he agreed.

  “Shit, Pietr!” I snapped. “It’s murder!”

  “Justifiable homicide,” Pietr returned.

  “When did my questionable moral code start to qualify as the guiding light in this family?!” I wedged myself more firmly between the two of them. “He will pay, Max,” I swore. “He’ll pay.…” My hands on his shoulders I pushed, trying to pry him off. No good. “But if you kill him—”

  Marvin shuddered beneath me, pinned and listening.

  “—you will go to jail. There will be no way to stop that.”

  “I could run,” Max muttered, his eyes still glowing, and fixed, on Marvin. “I could kill you and run,” he clarified, looking past my shoulder at Marvin. Max’s mouth twisted into a smile.

  At my back, Marvin’s heart pounded.

  In the corner, Pietr rubbed his forehead and cursed. He stepped forward again, leaning over Max and wrapping a hand around his shoulder. “Then who will protect Amy?” he whispered to our brother.

  Max froze.

  Pietr closed his eyes and added, “What will happen to Amy without you?”

  “Da,” I agreed, grabbing at
Pietr’s logic. “She will need you now more than ever.”

  The temperature dropped as the fire faded from Max’s eyes and the light of reason returned.

  Max slid back onto his heels, crouching, his eyes on my face. Reluctantly he stuck a hand out. I took it and popped up to my feet and off of Marvin.

  “He has to pay,” he said, eyes locked on mine.

  “He will,” I assured him. “God.” I sniffed. “What’s that smell?”

  “Him.” Max pointed a finger at the heap of humanity still curled in a puddle.

  “Disgusting.”

  Marvin only moved far enough to get his eyes back on Max and then he froze again, still as a statue.

  I looked at my two brothers. “Get Max some clothes and then head back to class,” I said to Pietr. “You,” I said to Max, “stay.” I pulled out my cell phone and called the cops.

  Jessie

  I’d wrapped Amy in a long winter coat and dragged a brush through her hair before my father’s truck pulled up. We’d been through the reasons she couldn’t shower and shouldn’t change and I was sick knowing that maintaining evidence of Marvin’s crime meant maintaining physical proof of his contact with her.

  The door was dragged aside and my father, eyes dark with worry as they scanned the damage to the door frame, asked, “Max?”

  I nodded and, shielding Amy in my arms, walked to the truck with her. We rode in nearly perfect silence to the hospital; the only sounds were the wind with its growing chill as it clawed at the truck’s windshield and the grinding of Dad’s teeth as he worked his jaw in anger.

  We were ushered into a small room, just Amy and I, and we waited behind the drawn blue curtain for a nurse and a police officer. I stayed the whole time, Amy’s hand tight around mine, while the nurse collected evidence and the female police officer asked questions that swirled around my head and fed my blood with rage. Nothing but being there for Amy mattered in those long minutes between formal introductions and the suggestion she see a counselor.

  There was, in fact, only one moment when I felt the need to speak.

  The officer, scribbling detailed notes on a small pad of paper, looked at Amy and asked, “So this Marvin Broderick, you say he smacked you around numerous times before and you never reported it.”

  Amy nodded slowly.

  “He beat you a lot.”

  Amy paled at the word and looked away.

  “No,” I corrected the officer when Amy could no longer find the words. “He hit her, he punched her, he kicked and pinched her. I saw bruises on Halloween night before she left him for the last time,” I admitted. “And today he raped her. But he hasn’t beaten her.” I squeezed her hand and looked at her, hoping she read the determination in my eyes. “And I’ll be damned if he ever does.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Jessie

  Dad took it upon himself to talk to Amy’s father. The trailer, now officially the last place Amy wanted to be, was quickly emptied of the few items she’d taken back to it by Pietr.

  When we got to the Rusakovas’ home, Amy hesitated on the stairs. “I don’t…” She touched her throat. “I don’t want him to see me like this again. I don’t want him thinking of…” Her eyes squeezed shut at the thought.

  “Shhh.” I took her hand and listened. Upstairs something broke against a wall. Cat shouted. Max was working out his anger on the furnishings. “Come on,” I insisted. “We’ll go straight to the basement.”

  We did, gliding like ghosts through the foyer and down the long line of steps.

  Amy froze at the sight of her bed, the blanket rumpled and Annabelle Lee’s stuffed rabbit—that Amy still teased her about—peeking out from the sheets.

  “Oh. She isn’t going to…” The words didn’t come at first. “I don’t want anyone to…” She slumped onto the bed, wrapping the rabbit in her arms. “I don’t want anyone else to know…”

  “It’s okay.” Sitting beside her I stroked her hair and let her lean into my shoulder. “It’s all going to be all right.” As much as I wanted it to be the truth … how could things ever be all right again?

  Cat brought us plates steaming with food that night instead of expecting us to eat dinner at the table, and she gave Amy a gentle hug that made tears ooze out of them both.

  Above us I heard the Queen Anne’s front door and back door open again and again. The noise of footsteps was frequent and I knew the werewolves—both the Rusakovas and the Mafia men who called themselves werewolves—were finally assembling.

  Tonight would be the night. It was better I wasn’t seeing the final preparation, in case Derek was borrowing my eyes for the evening.

  Readying for bed downstairs, unwilling to risk walking past Max in the hallway before she was ready to see him again, Amy looked at the huge pile of belated birthday gifts stacked in the corner. “What are they really, Jessie?”

  My mouth flapped open, but no words fell out.

  “The truth,” she insisted. “I think I’m ready for the truth. I’ve seen the way you’re changing—growing a little tougher, a little faster. Friends notice. Something big’s about to happen, isn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Something involving the whole family here, right?”

  “Yes. Tonight.”

  “Tonight,” she repeated, eyes widening.

  “Shhh. Don’t worry,” I soothed her. “Lie down now.” I picked up our plates, mine clean, hers still full. “I’m going upstairs. But I’ll be back. Soon.”

  She nodded and crawled into the bed, pulling the sheets and blankets high up on her body like a shield.

  Alexi

  Wanda and Leon had come to our party late, but I was glad when they finally arrived. They’d made it clear they’d help incapacitate threats in the bunker, but were against outright killing, except in self-defense. Looking around the table at the mafiosos I knew we had eager killers aplenty.

  Dmitri had tried to take over the entire operation and we were already arguing about getting past the doors. The first one, we had a way around, but the door at the bottom of the stairs was a different matter.

  Jessie walked past the group of us on the way to load her plate and Amy’s into the dishwasher. For a moment everyone fell quiet.

  “If he uses her eyes, why is she here?” one man grumbled.

  The question continued to circle, growing in power until Pietr smashed his fist down on the table. “She is much more of an asset than a liability.”

  “More like a piece of as—” the same man muttered a heartbeat before Pietr knocked him to the floor.

  Leaning over the other man, Pietr growled, “Her skill with a gun may just save your ass.”

  Dishes clattered in the kitchen as Jessie arranged them in the dishwasher.

  I whistled for attention. “Look. Look. We don’t need C-4 for the door at the bottom of the stairs,” I argued. “We need stealth. We need surprise.” I shoved my hands through my hair.

  Jessie was suddenly beside me. She looked from me to Wanda. “Remember those files?” she asked.

  Wanda nodded.

  I nodded—the files Wanda had slipped out of the bunker in a ruse that they were to return to the warehouse.

  “You want stealth and surprise? What you really need also starts with an S.”

  Wanda nodded sharply and reached around behind her to pull up the filebox she now carried almost everywhere.

  “I,” Jessie announced to the group, all the while focusing on Pietr, “am going upstairs for a nice, long, peaceful shower.” She wiggled her fingers near her ears like rain poured down around her head. “Lots of water.”

  Pietr was transfixed, his imagination running as fast as his heart probably hammered at the thought of his girlfriend in the shower, but I knew what she was getting at and understood the message she was sending.

  We’d work out the rest of our plan while she showered, blind and deaf to our plotting, with the nearly guaranteed benefit that Derek’s eyes would probably be on her the whole t
ime, following the soap’s lathery trail.

  To have a power like that …

  I shook myself and looked at Wanda as Jessie climbed the stairs. “S, Wanda,” I prodded. “Pietr.” I snapped my fingers, pulling him back from his brief fantasy.

  He blinked and refocused.

  Wanda pulled out a file and slapped it down on the table for everyone to see. “S, it seems, stands for Sophie.”

  Things only got weirder and weirder in Junction.

  “Cat. This one’s yours,” I suggested, sliding the file to her. “It won’t be a trip like your usual ones together to the mall and movies, but you can guarantee her it’s bound to be unforgettable.”

  I considered what else needed to be done in Jessie’s absence. “We need to move the presents.”

  Cat spoke up. “I’ll go. I think…” She glanced at Max. “I think Pietr and I should handle this.”

  Max barely reacted but understood as well as he could that Amy didn’t want him around. Not yet.

  Cat and Pietr descended and climbed the stairs multiple times, carrying package after package of colorfully wrapped presents filled with guns and bricks of ammo while Max, Dmitri, Wanda, and I argued strategy in front of the mafiosos Pietr had paid for with a promise he was eager to break.

  Jessie

  I had become a prune in the interest of keeping Derek’s attention away from the group plotting Mother’s rescue. For my own satisfaction I focused on scrubbing my ankles, knees, and armpits and sliding a washcloth carefully between all of my toes. Even after such a long shower, I felt filthy knowing Derek’s eyes had probably seen the same bits of my body as mine.

  I slipped into my pajamas and walked to the basement, ignoring the debate still raging in the dining room. Downstairs Amy had been joined by Annabelle Lee. I’d persuaded my father, honest and bright as anyone, to tell Annabelle Lee she’d be tremendously helpful if she kept Amy out from under foot. Amy, Dad had pointed out to her, didn’t know about my amazing werewolf boyfriend.