Kelly Meding - Another Kind of Dead

“This is insane,” Kismet said.

No one argued with her.

“How much time before Thackery calls?” Baylor asked.

Wyatt replied before I could look for a clock. “Less than ten minutes.”

Fucking hell. My stomach twisted into tiny, frozen knots. I put the half-finished coffee on the table and pulled Wyatt back down the hall to the bedroom. I didn’t care what they thought. I wanted a few more minutes.

Once inside, Wyatt swept me into his arms, his mouth finding mine in a bruising kiss. I held him around the waist, molding my body to his, kissing him so hard our teeth scraped. Imprinting his taste on my tongue, his smell in my nose, his touch all over my skin. We held each other a while, until my arms trembled and some internal chronometer told me our time was almost up.

I pulled back, cold everywhere we no longer touched, and fished my necklace out of my pocket. It had become a part of me since I’d first found it. The silver cross glittered in the light. I opened Wyatt’s palm, coiled it there, then curled his fingers back to hold it, and kissed his fist.

“I gave this to you once before for safekeeping,” I said, my voice tight. “Hold it for me again?”

His eyes glittered. “Only if that means you’re coming back for it.”

“You know I’ll do everything in my power, Wyatt. Me and Defeat aren’t exactly pals.”

“Yeah. It’s one of the things I love about you, Evy.”

I smiled. “I love you, too.”

And that was when my ass rang.

“Fuck,” he muttered.

“Yeah.” I fished out the phone as we walked back to the living room, hand in hand, and had it on speaker by the time we got there. Instead of opening with my usual terse “Stone,” I said, “The money’s ready.”

“Cutting to the chase, Ms. Stone? I like that.” The calm lilt of Thackery’s voice made my toes curl—and not in a good way. “Tell whoever else is listening to send it to this account.”

He rattled off a number that Kismet typed into the laptop. I let her do her thing, having no earthly idea how money transfers worked. Two hundred grand was more cash than I’d see in a lifetime, and it was all going to this bastard via Blackmail Express. A full minute passed in silence. Even the other Hunters had gone completely still.

“Excellent,” Thackery finally said. “I don’t suppose, after our first meeting, I need remind you that you’re to be alone and unarmed?”

“You don’t.”

“Keep this phone with you and go back to Grove Park. You have fifteen minutes.”

“That’s cutting it close from my current location.”

“Then I suggest you get started.” And he hung up.

Baylor closed the laptop. Everyone began moving without a single order being barked. Those cold knots continued twisting my stomach, unaffected by the scorching coffee I’d gulped.

I climbed into one Jeep with Wyatt, Kismet, and Milo. Baylor’s crew piled into the second Jeep. Kismet drove. Wyatt and I sat in the back, clutching hands, just existing for a few more minutes. I couldn’t think of anything else to say. He didn’t try to offer platitudes or reiterate his unerring promise to find me and get me back alive. It was implied. Expected.

Six blocks from Grove Park, Kismet pulled to the curb. My heart hammered so hard I thought it might beat out of my chest. I started to stand. Wyatt pulled me down for one more kiss. A gentle promise in the brush of his lips. On any other day, I might have been embarrassed by the PDA. But today, I didn’t give a shit.

His expression was carefully schooled into intense calm, but he couldn’t keep the fear out of his eyes. Eyes that begged me to stay even as he silently watched me go.

“See you later,” I said, and he nodded. Replied, “See you.”

I didn’t look back as I walked. If I had, the tightness in my chest and throat would have turned into wrenching sobs. Crying where they could see me would only make this harder. And walking away now was hard enough.

It was just past sunrise, the north-south streets still cast in shadows. Halfway to the park, in the gloom between two streetlamps, I pulled the little tin box out of my back pocket. Flipped the lid and looked at the two white capsules nestled in a bit of cotton. Enough poison lurked in one of those to kill a three-hundred-pound man in under ten seconds. I took the pills and tossed the tin into a garbage can. Held the milky capsules in my palm a moment, contemplating how benign they looked.

I had told Wyatt I would rather die again than be anyone’s guinea pig. I had meant it then, and still did now. But staying alive meant a continued chance of rescue or escape. Killing myself precluded those possibilities. Precluded him.

I dropped the pills and crushed them beneath my heel, grinding the poisonous contents into the sidewalk. Even as I’d suffered at Kelsa’s hands, I’d stayed sane with thoughts of rescue. Thoughts of Wyatt looking for me, doing everything in his power to find me. No matter what Thackery had in mind, I wasn’t going down without a fight.

The park was empty, silent as a grave. The neighborhood around it would be waking up soon; for now, not even birds occupied the stubbly trees. The ground was soaked and muddy in places from last night’s rainstorm, and the odor of wet earth was cloying. Almost suffocating.

I tested my tap to the Break and found its familiar, buzzing power quickly. Just in case. The utter silence unnerved me. Then the phone rang, and I had it open and to my ear before it could chime a second time. “Where’s Phineas?”

“The trade isn’t happening at the park. It’s too public.”

“Where, then?”

“I’m sending a courier to get you, Ms. Stone. And, please, try to keep an open mind about your transportation.”

“I don’t—”

He hung up and I grunted, sick of him doing that. I pocketed the phone. I didn’t have to wait long, though, to see just what he meant by transportation. I sensed movement behind me and pivoted, dropping my weight back to my right foot, ready for a fight.

I wasn’t ready for the sight of a two-hundred-pound gray wolf standing on the sidewalk, less than twenty feet from me. Streetlight glistened off its long canines, glinted across the sleek gray pelt that covered its heavily muscled body, and sparkled in its intelligent silver eyes. It drew back black lips and snarled.

My stomach hit the dirt. What the fuck was a wolf doing in the middle of the city? I had no weapons, and no way to defend myself short of teleporting onto the roof of the next building. I stared, waiting for its muscles to tense, for any sign of impending attack. It didn’t. It actually turned and hunched sideways, offering its back, then swiveled its head around to stare at me again. I gaped.

Try to keep an open mind about your transportation .

“You have got to be shitting me!”

It was actually kind of brilliant, as long as the wolf didn’t get hungry and decide to make a snack of me on the way to our destination. Wolves were fast—much faster than any human being—and had the agility and grace of natural predators. It could carry me on a zigzagging course through Mercy’s Lot that would leave my trackers in the dust, rendering the dye useless as a means to follow me.

Fucking genius.

I took two tentative steps forward. “Nice doggie,” I said softly.

The wolf remained still. More steps, a few at a time, until I was nearly at its back. I longed for one of my knives. Something to plunge into the animal’s hide and rip through muscle and flesh. The odor of it roiled my stomach—sweat and meat and something musky, almost sinister—both familiar and completely foreign. I touched its shoulder. Coarse fur and hot skin rippled under my touch. A low, almost inaudible growl rumbled in its chest. Orders warring with its killer instinct to rend rather than carry.