Kelly Meding: Wrong Side of Dead

I’d seen him fight before, several times. The very first time, though, he’d been in bi-shift form—still human, but with man-sized osprey wings protruding from his back that made him look like a dark-haired angel. He told me once that his people had been fierce warriors, and he proved it each time he went into battle.

His wings weren’t out this time, but he was no less intense. He caught me watching, and gave me a wink and a grin. Uh-oh.

Phin grabbed a Halfie by the neck and sent him at me like a bowling ball down a lane. I stopped the male Halfie’s progress with the sharp heel of my boot, crouched, and cleanly snapped his neck. He thudded to the roof. Kismet and Phin dispatched the other Halfies with only a bit more effort. The front of Kismet’s dress was ripped, nearly exposing her breasts, and her skin was spattered with Halfie blood. Phin, meanwhile, barely looked disheveled.

He gave me another wicked grin, battle lust shining in his eyes. Eyes that flickered past me, then blinked. In surprise, not in warning. I turned, curious, and nearly burst out laughing.

Marcus had shifted into jaguar form—a big black thing of beauty and power—but that wasn’t what was so funny. He was sitting on top of Felix, front paws pinning down the thrashing man’s shoulders like a giant paperweight. The fact that Felix was struggling to remove the two-hundred-pound immovable object threatened to give me a bad case of the giggles. It was just so ridiculous.

I stared. Marcus yawned. Behind me, Phin laughed.

Kismet appeared by my shoulder. She hadn’t seen Felix since the day he was infected. Her jaw was set, her expression hard. She had mourned him, just as Milo and Tybalt had, but that didn’t mean much when the “dead” person was still alive and being held down by a were-cat.

She looked up at me, and I held her gaze without blinking. I’d been where she was—about to end the suffering of a loved one because of vampire infection. I didn’t know exactly what she felt, but I could damned well guess. She blinked, then inhaled a deep breath. Let it out. Palmed a blade.

Felix had stopped struggling. As Kismet walked toward him, he twisted his head around to look at her. He offered a sad smile. “Hey, Kis. We had a good couple years, huh?”

She froze. Even with her back to me, I saw muscles tense and could just imagine her expression—ice and anger flashing in wide green eyes. “No,” she said in a voice full of cold fury, “we didn’t. You have his memories and body, but you aren’t Felix. Felix died the moment he was infected.”

“Maybe. Probably. Shit.”

He seemed so sane, so completely in his right mind that my curiosity bubbled over. I closed the distance between me and Kismet. “How did you not go insane from the infection?” I asked before I could censor myself.

His iridescent eyes flickered from her to me. “This wasn’t supposed to happen.” He went on before I could ask for clarification. “I can smell your blood, Evy. It smells so sweet. I want to taste it. That’s really disgusting, right?”

Marcus growled.

“It’s partially impulse control,” Felix said as if he hadn’t even mentioned wanting to taste my blood. “The desire is there, but it doesn’t have to be. I want to hunt and feed, but I don’t do it.”

“You just don’t?” I asked. “Bullshit.”

He shrugged—or at least he tried to shrug. “It’s an addiction, a craving. I was a Hunter, so I know it’s wrong. I know I’m a monster, and I don’t want to be.” He sounded so … resigned. Almost sad. With the shimmering eyes and the fangs, it was pretty damned eerie.

Half-Bloods were abominations. They weren’t controllable, hence the entire reason for our open execution policy. Even if Felix hadn’t run the night he was infected, we couldn’t have risked keeping him alive. You can feed and tame a wild animal, but you live with the constant risk of being turned on and attacked. The kindest thing you can do is set them free—and for Halfies, that means death.

Marcus made a noise not unlike a bored grunt. His bright copper eyes shifted from me to Phin, then down to his trapped prey. He bared long, deadly teeth, silently asking if it was time to end this. Therians were not prone to infection, so he could crush Felix’s throat with those powerful jaws and not risk turning, but I knew that Kismet wouldn’t allow that.

She squatted next to his head.

“Tell Milo and Tybalt I’m sorry,” Felix said.

She nodded, turning the blade in her hand.

“Wait a moment,” Phineas said. He passed me to stand on the other side of Felix, then looked straight down. “Who’s organizing this?”

Felix frowned. “Organizing what?”

“Who sent you here tonight recruiting? Who’s turning young people into half-Bloods?”

His eyes widened like a child caught in a lie, then hardened just as quickly. “You’re going to kill me anyway.”

“Yes.”

“Then I think I’d rather not tell you.”

“Why not?”

He looked away, focusing on one of the big black paws holding him down. I turned it over in my mind for a moment. He seemed stuck, as though he wanted to tell us something but couldn’t. And I could only guess at the reasons. Glimpses of the old Felix kept peeking through, winking at us, while the monster remained in charge. Felix deserved release from that monster, but he did have information we needed. Hell .

“Marcus, can you keep sitting on him for a minute?” I asked. “Phin, Kis, a word?”

They followed me to a safe distance, far enough that with the pulse of the rave beneath us, Felix shouldn’t be able to hear.

“What?” Kismet asked.

“I think we should truss him up and take him back to the Watchtower with us,” I said. Before either could reply, I held up a silencing hand and kept talking. “He’s half-sane, and he knows a lot more than he’s saying about who’s organizing this. That’s valuable information we might be able to get out of him.”

“You trust him?”

“Absolutely not, but I think it’s worth the risk. He’s been out there for two weeks. He knows exactly where the Watchtower is, but we’ve yet to see an open attack, or even spies sniffing around. It’s possible there’s enough of the old Felix inside him to keep him from completely betraying us.”

“You want him interrogated?” Phin said.

“Yes.”

“We cannot offer him freedom in exchange for information.”

“I know that, and I wouldn’t even consider it. But maybe he’ll take something else.”

“Such as?”

I glanced at Kismet. “A chance to say good-bye to his friends.” She glared, but I didn’t relent. “Felix told me once about how much it hurt to lose Lucas, because they didn’t get to say good-bye. Maybe we can use that to reason with him.”

Kismet flinched. Almost eighteen months ago, Milo had been Lucas Moore’s replacement in Kismet’s Triad. Lucas and Felix had been best friends, and Lucas’s sudden death from a brain aneurysm had devastated Felix. Hunters lived every day with the risk of dying on any patrol, but no one expects to lose a loved one while he’s watching a baseball game at home in your apartment.

It was kind of a low blow, though, since Kismet and Lucas had been secretly, madly in love for most of his tenure in her Triad.

“That might actually work,” she said. But she looked anything but happy about it.

Goodie. “Phin?”

“I think it’s worth trying.”

“Awesome. Prisoner it is.”

Halfway back, the roof door swung open and Quince stepped out with Kyle Jane, another Therian team member, close behind. They both stopped and surveyed the scene.

“It seems we missed the party,” Quince said.

Marcus couldn’t reasonably sit on Felix in the car, so he stayed put until Phin returned with enough restraints to bind a raging rhinoceros. The end package wasn’t pretty, but everyone seemed satisfied that Felix could neither get loose nor bite anyone on the drive back. He was dumped into the SUV’s rear compartment with jaguar-Marcus and Quince as guards. Kyle drove, with Kismet riding shotgun.