Kelly Meding - Wrong Side of Dead

“And you are?”

He flashes a predatory smile. “My name is Marcus Dane, and you must be the infamous Evangeline Stone. I’ve heard quite a lot about you.”

“I really can’t say the same.”

“And for good reason.”

I hold his stare, unsure if I like his candor or find it annoying. Probably a little of both. His information only enforces my suspicion that Thackery used Wolf Boy to do quite a bit of his dirty work. And wherever Thackery is now, he’ll be super-fucking-pissed to find out his teenage sidekick is a corpse. I break the stare-off first.

“I want to take him back with us,” Marcus says, jacking his thumb at said corpse. And he isn’t talking to me.

“Agreed,” Wyatt says. “Do you know what he is?”

“Perhaps, yes. The Assembly must be told about this.”

I glance at Tybalt, whose confusion mirrors my own. We’re both completely lost in the conversation.

“All right.” Wyatt shifts his attention to me. “Evy, I know you have a lot of questions—”

“Most of my questions can wait,” I reply. If I start asking them now, we’ll be in this Pit all damned day. “I need to see what’s happening topside, and there are still a lot of wounded to tend to.” Such as Greg, the Hunter I didn’t know at all until half an hour ago and am now curious about—his arm and leg were bleeding heavily the last time I saw him.

“Yourself included,” Marcus says, gesturing at my ankle and forearm.

My ankle is a mass of itchy-healing sensations. My arm isn’t bleeding as it was, but it does hurt like a bastard. The skin is swollen and hot, but I ignore it in favor of getting the hell out of the Pit. I’m just lucky Wolf Boy never got a better angle with his teeth. “I’ll heal.”

He tilts his head. “Indeed.”

I’m winded by the time we reach the top of the Pit and am doing my best to not pant or gasp. Though frustrating, my lack of energy doesn’t really surprise me. I haven’t eaten properly in weeks, and my stamina wouldn’t let me go two rounds with a toddler right now, even after sleeping most of yesterday and all night. One hour’s battle has completely exhausted me. I need to rest.

I also need answers, and the latter seriously trumps the former.

Wyatt stays close without actually touching—hovering yet still giving me space. I can’t read his face and that worries me. He’s always been so open with me, so blunt and honest, that this invisible wall around his emotions is jarring, almost painful.

Understandable, though. It’s not every day your girlfriend comes back to life for the second time.

Our group heads for the front of the Admin building, where I left Kismet and company earlier, with Marcus in the lead and Tybalt behind us. As we round the smoking remains of Boot Camp’s most important building, two things are immediately clear.

First, a triage area is already under way, with Adrian Baylor shouting orders to both the injured and able-bodied trainees. The teens are tense, most of them pale-faced but stoically doing as they’re told by someone whose sheer size and voice command their attention. They’re setting up in the parking lot next to Admin. Someone’s already raided the infirmary for supplies. The only thing I don’t see is any of the medical staff.

Second, the few non-wounded Hunters and a handful of brave trainees have gathered around one of the Jeeps in a tense cluster. Gina Kismet is standing on the hood next to a raven-haired woman in Black Ops gear identical to Wyatt’s. I locate Phineas in the crowd, as well as Milo and a handful of other familiar faces, both Hunters and Handlers.

Two more Black Ops strangers, male and female, break away from the group and head over to intercept us.

“What the hell is Astrid doing?” Marcus asks. The angle of his head suggests he means the woman with Kismet.

The new female has the palest green eyes I’ve ever seen, and short, spiky hair in numerous shades of brown. “Volunteering our help with cleanup, apparently,” she replies. “Preliminary death count is twenty-six, but that will probably go up.”

Twenty-six. Jesus Christ . Anywhere from twenty to thirty teens are at Boot Camp training at any given time, plus the trainers, medical staff, and people employed at R&D, which totals maybe fifteen more. That’s more than half of our numbers dead.

“Are they all trainees?” Tybalt asks.

The female shakes her head. “It appears the beasts rampaged through your Admin building before they made their presence known outside. Your staff is dead. Many of your trainees are wounded and several more may die.”

I shudder. “What about Hunters?”

“Several injuries, but I believe they are all alive.” She gives me a once-over with her creepy pale eyes. My instincts scream she’s Therian; I’m just not sure which Clan. “Evangeline Stone, I presume?”

Does everyone know who I am? “Yep. Who are you?”

“Leah de Loew. You’re prettier than I imagined you’d be.”

“Um, thanks?” I’m too exhausted to put more thought into a response or wonder just exactly what she’s heard about me, other than the obvious. Died and rose again; died again and rose one more time. Okay, so less “rose one more time” and more “didn’t actually die the second time.” Or if you count the factory fire from last month, it’s the third time … oh forget it. Trying to make sense of my second life is going to give me migraines.

“Leah, Kyle,” Marcus says. “I want to show you something.”

They wander back toward the Pit with Marcus. Knowing their names doesn’t make me trust them, even though Wyatt seems to, and I hate being left out of the conversation about Wolf Boy. Sooner or later, though, I expect Marcus will confirm my werewolf theory.

“You went and got some new friends,” I say to Wyatt.

“Well, I needed to keep busy after the brass fired me and forbade Gina, Adrian, and the rest of the Triads from helping me look for you.” He’s so matter-of-fact about something that shocks me. Not so much the part about the brass forbidding Kismet and Baylor from searching for me—it’s the fact that they wanted to look for me at all that trips me up.

“Some of them looked anyway, when they could,” Tybalt says. “Milo and I went out when he wasn’t on patrol or sitting with Felix.”

“I heard about Felix,” I say, oddly touched by Tybalt’s admission. It’s been so long since anyone except Jesse, Ash, and Wyatt cared if I lived or died that I don’t quite know how to accept the idea of new friendships. Or that others care. It’s equally odd to care so much that a Hunter who once tried to kill me is now permanently disabled and will probably never walk without serious pain again. “I’m sorry.”

“Us, too.”

“So how come you’re not dressed like you’re about to rob a high-security vault?”

“I wasn’t invited. Conflict of interest.”

A look is exchanged by Wyatt and Tybalt, and I don’t have the first clue how to interpret it. Amazing how much people and circumstances can change in three weeks. The thought makes me kind of dizzy. Everything feels ten degrees hotter. My arm seems twenty pounds heavier, the Wolf Boy bite on my arm throbbing and achy.

“Which means what, exactly?” I ask.

“Evangeline?” Phin’s voice is a welcome sound, and his attention flickers to my swollen arm as he approaches. “That’s newly acquired.”

“What can I say? I collect injuries everywhere I go.” I curl my left hand into a fist and hide it behind my hip, not in the mood for more shock over my missing pinkie. The heat and humidity of the June morning are adding to my exhaustion, as is my painful forearm. A bead of sweat trickles down my forehead and into my eye—when did I start sweating so badly? “Oh, and sorry. I lost your gun in the Pit somewhere.”