Kelly Meding - Wrong Side of Dead

I didn’t like leaving Wyatt alone with Brutus, but the idea that Ava and Aurora were so close, almost safe, propelled me forward. I’d just crashed through the wooden beads when Phin shouted my name. I peered through the gloom of the back room, past stacked boxes and a tiny desk that served as an office. A single open door was tucked away behind a row of storage containers, and it led to a rickety staircase.

Up I went, into the odors of bacon grease and patchouli. Halfway there I sneezed. The stairs led into an apartment—kitchen and living room, two other doors. One door was open and obviously a bathroom. The other door would have been my destination, even if I hadn’t heard the unmistakable sounds of a kestrel keening.

“Phin?” I said, charging at the door.

He and Marcus were inside a cramped bedroom. Two metal cages stood atop an old wooden dresser, and inside of them, the two most beautiful things I’d ever seen—Ava and Aurora in their true forms. One was an adult, the second a miniature version of her mother. Phin stood in front of the cages, hands out and palms up, both crisscrossed with weeping red welts.

“The cages are silver,” Marcus said. “They can’t shift and we can’t break them.”

“We need a key,” Phin added.

“Something tells me the Lupa have the key,” I said. “Maybe Wyatt can summon off the locks?”

“Where—?”

“Downstairs with Brutus.”

Marcus left without being asked. I moved closer to the cages holding my friends, so relieved to see them that I wanted to weep. Ava was crying constantly, her kestrel scream indignant and frightened, even with her mother close by.

“We’ll get you out,” I said to them.

Aurora screeched at me.

I lifted one of the cages—heavy, but not impossible to move. Phin grabbed a pillow off the bed and shook it out of its case. He ripped the case into strips and began wrapping them around his hands. I caught on and helped until we’d created a pair of makeshift mittens.

As I pulled the last knot, Phin’s head jerked toward the bedroom door. “Something’s happening downstairs,” he said.

“Come on.”

I grabbed Aurora’s cage. Phin took Ava’s and followed me into the living room.

The floor in front of the stairs exploded upward, and a big black shape was flung toward the ceiling. It bounced off and landed in a heap next to the kitchen’s miniature fridge—Marcus in jaguar form.

Shit .

4:30 P.M.

Marcus lifted his head and blinked at me, dazed, before putting his head back down. Anything that had sent a two-hundred-pound cat through the floor wasn’t something Wyatt needed to be fighting alone.

I put the cage down, leapt over the hole in the floor, and landed on the first step with enough grace to twist my left ankle. I stumbled down the steps two at a time anyway, pulling my gun again, all to the sounds of Wyatt’s deep-chest growling. Something else crashed and thumped in the shop below. Then it went quiet.

The beads were down. Wyatt was crumpled on the floor in the doorway, conscious but stunned. I hopped over him, into the shop, stupidly blind as to what awaited me.

Brutus stood in the middle of his shop, clutching a leather cord. Dangling from it was a blue crystal, about four inches long, tapered at one end like a nail. Power crackled around the room, caressing my skin and urging me to tap into my Gift. I didn’t know much about mages, but I’d seen crystal magic at work, mostly as some sort of blocking spell. Blocking a person from sight, for instance, or blocking their ability to tap into the Break. It was organic magic, requiring proximity to the crystal for it to work.

Brutus glared at me, his eyes swirling with a faint hint of light and power. “I won’t be bullied by you people. I took a blessed job, nothing more!”

Rationally, I understood that. He was a businessman. He sold exotic tea, and he enchanted crystals if you could pay him enough money. He’d helped us out a few times in the not so distant past.

Emotionally, I didn’t give a shit. He’d hurt Wyatt. He’d held people I cared about in tiny cages made of a material that injured them if they touched it. He’d taken money from my greatest enemy.

“Please, try to take me down, little girl,” Brutus said.

As much as I loved the idea of breaking his nose with my fist, I knew I’d get bounced into a concussion by that crystal in his hand. I couldn’t get through. But I bet a bullet could.

“If you insist,” I said. I raised my right hand, steadied it quickly across my left wrist, aimed my gun at his fist, and fired.

He screamed loud and long as his hand exploded, and the crystal fell. It shattered against the concrete floor, releasing a blast of power not unlike a faint electric shock. He fell to his knees, clutching his wounded hand against his chest. I walked over and kicked him in the face. He toppled over, unconscious.

“Little girl, my ass,” I said.

“Evy?”

I turned at the sound of Phin’s voice. He stood just behind Wyatt, one cage in each hand. I holstered my gun and squatted in front of Wyatt. His eyes remained wholly silver and his canines long, but he didn’t snap or snarl. He let me help him sit up.

“How’s Marcus?” he asked.

“Stunned,” Phin said. “You?”

“Same. That crystal had a pretty good punch.”

“Can you walk?” I asked.

“Yeah, I think so.”

“Awesome.”

I found Marcus’s discarded clothes and took them upstairs. He’d pulled himself into a sitting position, but hadn’t changed back yet. His copper eyes watched me, a little too wide, and he didn’t move when I knelt down and touched his head. The fur at the base of his skull was damp with blood. My fingertips brushed a knot there and he hissed.

“Sorry,” I said. “Brutus is down. We have the girls; we need to go.”

He lurched to his feet, then promptly flopped back down. Whined.

“I know, pal, you’ve got a good-sized goose egg on your head. Can you shift back into a man, at least?”

He whined again. Downstairs, the doorbell dinged.

“Come on, Marcus.” I felt strange talking to a giant black cat. But manhandling a human down the stairs would be easier, so I needed him to shift.

Feet pounded the steps. Unsure who was coming, I said, “Watch the hole.”

“The what—? Oh.” Milo leapt gracefully over the hole in the floor and crouched on the opposite side of Marcus. “Is he okay?”

“Concussion. Brutus tossed him through the floor.”

“Ouch. No wonder he’s lying there like a stuffed animal. Big, bad mage beat him up.”

Marcus lifted his head, and I swear he glared at Milo. Yawned. Then he closed his eyes. Magic sparked around him in the faint way it always did when a Therian shifted near me. Black fur melted away, paws lengthened into fingers, pads into palms, and his face blurred as the cat gave way to the man. The sound was similar to sticky tape peeling away from skin.

His long black hair was loose around his shoulders, making the goose egg hard to see, but I still noticed some blood on his neck. Milo and I each took an arm and helped him stand. He wobbled a little, so Milo acted as a human crutch while I assisted Marcus in stepping into his jeans.

Me dressing a naked man—I could just imagine the possessive, overprotective reaction this would get out of Wyatt’s wolf.

By the time we got his shirt over his head and settled properly, Marcus seemed more alert. Just enough floor remained along the edge of the hole for us to slide around, backs to the wall, and over to the stairs. Milo and Marcus went down first, the former still supporting the latter, and I couldn’t help smiling at the friendly rapport that had developed between them.