Sunder (19 page)

I didn’t move. I waited. I didn’t want to be near him. He came back after a while. There was a girl over his shoulder. She hung limp like he had killed her. When he got to the edge of the field, he lowered her and bit into her throat. I closed my eyes. I could hear him making sounds, but I dared not look.

The grass crunched close to me. When I opened my eyes, I jumped back. He was standing right in front of me. His eyes narrowed, like maybe he saw me. But he started walking through me, back towards the forest, leaving the dead girl in the field. I walked to where she lay. She wasn’t dead. She gargled and gagged on her own blood from her torn throat but didn’t die.

A man came running from the town, shouting a girl’s name. He seemed panicked. I could see blood running down his head like
he had been hit by something or someone
.

The girl moaned.

The man’s head snapped around, looking in the direction of her gargled cries. He ran to where the noise came from, screaming and dropping to his knees.

The girl gargled once more, saying one thing, “Gunnar!” Her eyes rolled into the back of her head. He sobbed, gripping to her lifeless body.

I was pulled back into the fog again.

My eyes closed and opened. I was in a cell. Gunnar, the real Gunnar, was chained to a wall. His wrists were burned brutally from the chains holding him. He was weak, lying there. His body was covered in sores and wounds that didn’t seem to heal. He was thin and a strange color—greyish.

A man walked into the room, holding a cell phone. He turned the phone, like he was Facetiming someone.

The person on the phone spoke, “We will need another dose,
the
wolves are breeding. They promised not to breed, and I have seen that they have broken their promise. Get the venom and report when you have enough. You’ll need a little of the wolf too. There are vampires there again.” I could swear I knew the muffled voice I heard.

The man laughed and hung up the phone, slipping it into his pocket. He grabbed a jar and a small makeup brush. He dipped it into the jar and dragged the milky substance across Gunnar’s bare chest. It jerked him alive as a searing sound sizzled through the air. Gunnar screamed, thrashing and rattling the chains.

The man grabbed a needle and stuck it into Gunnar’s opened mouth. He pulled a chalky red liquid from his mouth.

He pulled out a second needle and did the same.

He left the room, walking into another cell. A woman hung there limp. Her dark hair was matted against her face. My throat instantly tightened.

She wasn’t just any woman
,
she was my mother
.
My long-dead mother.

Only she wasn’t dead. My brain screamed that it was impossible. She had been in a coma. She was dead. But my eyes and heart saw the truth.

My heart broke. My breaths came in jerky moans. I rushed to her side, but my hand swiped through her. It was a dream. It wasn’t real.

The man lifted a jar from the small filthy table and pulled a tiny makeup brush from it. I screamed. “NOOOOOO! PLEASE DON’T HURT HER!”

He ignored me. I was a ghost in the dream. She woke instantly as the brush was dragged between her breasts. Her face changed drastically the moment she was awake. The scream ripping from her thrashing face was a roar.

He collected from her the same way he had Gunnar, sticking needles into her screaming mouth.

My mother screeched like I had never heard. The sound of it triggered something inside of me.

I screamed too. My voice became a roar with hers. We matched. For a moment, and then it faded again.

She hung there, limp and defeated.

There was no way it was a dream. She was real. No dream could make a sound so harsh.

I was pulled back into the fog, and when I opened my eyes, I was at the table. My body was vibrating. I backed up the chair, knocking it over. I turned and ran for the door. I knew what to do. I didn’t even know how I knew, I just did.

I sprinted along the grass and the streets. A pain tore at my skin but I ran harder. I got to the field, the one where the girl had died and dropped to my knees. Vomit heaved from my lips. Arms wrapped around my waist, lifting me. I knew it was
him
. I hoped Briton was getting me as far from the town as he could. I knew what the dream had triggered, and I could tell by the urgency in his movements he did too.

When he got to the forest’s edge, he pulled a cell phone from his pocket. I shook my head. “My mother . . .” the words were in a voice I didn’t know. “My mother . . . she was my mother! Did you see her too?”

“Yes.” He lowered his hand. “And my brother. They are alive.”

I gagged more, twisting into the sound of the snapping bones. “My father . . .I think I knew that man’s voice on the cell phone. And the man in the room who hurt my mom, I think my father knows him . . . he’s familiar!” I roared again, screaming as another set of bones broke.

He dropped to his knees but I felt it. I screamed, “GET AWAYYYYYY!”

He jumped up, scrambling to a tree and climbing it. I lost focus once he was gone. I lost everything. The sounds of the forest were lost in my screaming.

In a still moment when the bones stopped snapping and my body took a break, I caught a glimpse of him.

For the past ten days he had been in every thought and feeling. In fact, I could sense that it had gone back much further than ten days.

But as I changed there on the forest floor, he was gone. He was gone from my heart.

Even though I could see him, I was alone and broken.

He was gone and that was the least of my worries.

I didn’t know how long it lasted or how long I was unconscious. But when I opened my eyes, I saw the whole world through different eyes. I caught his scent instantly, jerking my face that way. He watched me from the tree, his red eyes glowing.

But then I caught something else.

A smell I loved. I didn’t know why or what it was, but I ran.
I realized part way through the forest
,
I was on all fours
. I was running as a wolf. The feel of it was just as Judith had said.

I felt amazing. I ran faster, feeling a smile spread across my lips.

Briton

“What is worse than this?” he asked her ragged body. She sat naked and limp in his arms. He had followed her for miles and hours all through the forest. She had downed a rabbit and eaten it. There was a small amount of dried blood still lingering on her cheek. He wiped it away, whispering to her, “What is more painful than loss? I know it will be watching you live without me.” He stroked her hair from her face. “But I won’t ever be far. I promise I will always stay and watch over you.”

It all made perfect sense.
His instant love for her.
His brother’s uncharacteristic violence that had resulted in a war.
Her mother dying of a disease when she was an immortal.
The pull they both felt to be with each other.

It all made sense.

He kissed her cheek, smelling the wolf on her for the first time. He didn’t even mind the smell. He loved her, regardless of the fate they faced. When her body had changed and she had completed the transformation, his love hadn’t died away. It had not faded, even slightly.

Her eyes opened before she stirred. She looked at him for a moment before smiling. “You are here. I thought so, but I was worried it was a dream like everything else.”

He winced. “Liv, that wasn’t a dream. You are naked in the woods, you turned into a wolf for the first time, and our family members are being held by hunters.”

She closed her eyes again and spoke in a dreamy voice, “My father . . .?” She jerked to life, springing from his arms. “MY FATHER!”

He put a hand up. “Stay calm. You can force the change if you get too emotional.”

“My mother is alive, Briton. I don’t think I can stay calm.” She started to tremble.

He did the stupidest thing he could think of and wrapped his arms around her.

She pulled back. “I could bite you.”

He nodded. “I can think of no greater death. I don’t want to fight this, what we are. I want to let it end me. I want to die exactly like this, so if you have to do it now, I’m okay with it. Just remember to free my brother when you go for your mother.”

She froze. He prayed his words affected her.

“We need to free them, Briton. We need to warn Judith about my father.” Tears started to stream her face. “I have this terrible feeling that my father let them take my mother.”

Briton kissed her damp cheek. “We will make them all pay. Now we must go back to town and see Ellie and Liz. They must know what to do about this.”

She still looked shocked or maybe it was just that she was overwhelmed. He pulled his sweater off and dragged it over her head gently. He scooped her up into his arms and carried her through the dark forest. She closed her eyes and leaned into him. “What are we going to do about us?” she asked the dreaded question.

“Is there still an us?”

“I’m not familiar with the vampire/werewolf rules, but I don’t know how to stop loving you. I don’t know how to escape the ruin of you, and me.” She nodded. “I love you. I know I do. I know I won’t ever love another person. I never have. That dream of us lying on the ground dead and Liz cursing the men—that happened—I think. I think the dream was a past life. When I was a wolf, I saw you in my head. There were other past lives . . . you were a vampire and I was a girl. I didn’t know what you were, but I knew I loved you. But you didn’t see me. You walked by me, like I was nothing. You didn’t ever see me, until now.”

He felt the truth of it tug at his chest. “I must not have known it was you.”

“I know, but I think I always knew it was you. I remember every life I’ve had, like my wolf remembers them all. And each one has been spent wandering and searching but never finding you again.
Until this time.
I remember our death on the field with the men in the furs. I remember loving you more than any person ever loved.” She paused, shaking her head. “I sound crazy, bat-shit crazy.”

He smiled weakly. “I think we have both far surpassed crazy.”

Her eyes glazed over and she continued, “I remember us in that life where we died on the field with Liz. She was your sister, but we had different names. She wasn’t Liz. She was a witch but we called her a healer.
We loved her
,
she was our family
. The day we died in that field, we were gathering herbs when the men came. You tried to save me but we died. That’s what we saw in the dream. That’s when Liz called the curse down.”

“My father must have been in the field fighting that day.” His heart was bursting, regardless of not having a heartbeat or the memory of the disaster of their past. He cared about one thing. “So you remember that you love me? The wolf hasn’t convinced you we are enemies?”

She shook her head. “My wolf loves you. It’s the curse and my brain that are against us, but my wolf knows the truth of it all.”

He kissed her face, taking in a deep inhale of her. “You were pretty cute as a wolf. Very white and soft.”

She laughed
,
it was weak and pathetic
.

He hugged her tighter. “I’m so sorry about your mother.” His fangs nearly sprang at the thought of killing her father. He didn’t want to overstep his boundaries and take her right to kill, but he knew if he saw him, he wouldn’t be able to rein it in. Briton would murder her father slowly, enjoying every drop of his blood. He would kill anyone who meant to harm her.

He would free his brother and make everything right again. If they took away the vampires and wolves from the clutches of the hunters, they would lose their one weapon.

He sighed when he got to the forest edge and Ellie and Liz were standing there waiting for him. They had Josh with them. That didn’t make him feel better, but at least Liv knew she loved him. She had fallen back to sleep in his arms.

“She ran—she is a full wolf now.”

Ellie nodded. “I know. I called Judith, and she knows Liv is a wolf. I asked her not to tell Frank. I didn’t tell her he was a traitor.”

Liz walked to him, running a finger along Liv’s arm. “Was she okay?”

“Yes. She did wonderfully. No issues. Just changed and ran around like an animal.”

“Did she kill?”

He grinned. “A rabbit. She won’t be happy about that.”

Liz grimaced. “She ate it? A bunny?”

Josh laughed. “We all eat bunnies, Liz. We can’t help it. Wolves love bunnies.”

Ellie looked back towards the town. “We have a major issue here. We don’t know which wolves are in on the vampire massacre.”

Josh sighed. “I can’t see any doing it, but I’ll let you have my bloodline to read.”

Ellie poked his finger and said something softly. She pressed into his palm, the way she had done to Briton.

Josh sighed and slipped away. He stood perfectly still, frozen with Ellie.

Liz swallowed hard “It’s so weird.”

“The woman in the dream walk last night, that’s Liv’s mom.”

Liz paused before whispering, like she was stuck in disbelief, “Her dead mom?”

He nodded. Liv started to move and stretch, waking up again. She opened an eye and looked at Liz. “Hey.”

Liz had no poker face at all. She instantly burst into tears. “Liv, I’m so sorry about your mom.”

Liv started to cry too. Briton put her down, letting her walk to Liz. They held each other, crying like teenaged girls. He forgot sometimes that’s what they were.

Ellie and Josh snapped out of it. Josh’s face was drawn. He stumbled a little and then gave Briton a look. “I am so sorry. I didn’t know.”

“I didn’t either.”

Josh shuddered. “My uncle is responsible for it. His family has been dabbling in this for some time. Buying our freedom with venom to be used as a weapon against our own kind. He just wanted the vampires gone, without the wolves dying too.”

Briton took a long breath, contemplating it all. “At least it makes sense why there are so few of us left in the world. I knew the hunters had some way of killing us; I never realized it was to this degree though. And I thought only the born and bitten could die, not the cursed—I didn’t know venom was their weapon. But live venom would kill any one of us.”

Ellie gave him a frightened look. “We need to find this place where they keep them.”

Josh’s face tightened. “You need to stop the people here first.”

Briton spoke through his clenched jaw, “Oh, I intend to. But first, I need to call my brothers home.”