Night Falls on the Wicked

THIRTEEN

C’mon, baby.” Darby forced a cheerful ring into her voice as her boots sank down into the snow. “We’re going to have to walk the rest of the way into town, but once we get there, I’m going to make you the biggest ice cream sundae you’ve ever seen.”

“What about that chocolate cake?”

“Ahh, that sounds even better, doesn’t it? Excellent suggestion. We’ll have warm chocolate cake with ice cream on the side. How does that sound?”

With a sniff and swipe at her nose, Aimee nodded, her small hand snug within Darby’s. “Maybe Momma will get away and meet us there? She likes cake, too.”

Darby’s heart clenched. She couldn’t bring herself to answer the girl—to tell her that her momma was never going to get away. Not yet. Not until they were out of this.

The cold cut into them like knives as they moved. Darby wrapped an arm tightly around Aimee’s shoulders and walked quickly, pulling her close. She bent her head and tucked her chin into her parka as they advanced down the road.

After a moment, she glanced behind her, satisfied to see that the car was out of sight. They were making good ground at least. She opened her mouth to offer an assurance that they would be there soon, when another howl ripped the night. So close it felt like the animal was on top of them.

She froze, looking wildly all around her, expecting to see a lycan bounding out of the trees at them. She saw nothing, but in the distance, she heard a thrashing sound, like something tearing through the brush.

“Run,” she gasped, pulling Aimee along. Just as in her vision, she ran, her feet pumping hard through the snow, the moisture soaking her jeans up to the knees.

Aimee tripped and Darby swung her up into her arms. Heedless of the extra weight, she ran, her legs burning from the strain. Her lungs ached, ready to explode from her chest.

The thrashing sounds intensified, were all around them now. She saw it then, a flash of eyes through the trees along the road. Icy silver and surrounded by the blackest of fur. They trailed her, toying with her.

The howls congested the air now. The forest was alive with the sounds of them—predators. The beating of their feet. The harsh crash of their breaths. Just as in her vision.

She swallowed thickly and stopped, dropping against a tree along the roadside. The snow-covered bark chafed her back. Aimee’s warm breath fanned her throat, a bittersweet reminder of why she had to live. Her survival was for both of them. Aimee didn’t lift her head, didn’t look, didn’t speak. Her thin arms clung so tightly Darby could scarcely draw breath.

She held herself still—quiet—her gaze darting around, plotting her next move, wondering if they should just find a spot and hide until daybreak.

Too late—the lycans emerged from the trees, all five of them. Apparently the two in the house had woken. They were varying shades of brown, gray and black. All bloodstained and grisly. Enormous, with slavering teeth that dripped gore from their recent kill. She wanted to look away but dared not.

They crossed the road in a slow, stalking pace, fanning out in a wide semicircle before her. Their great hulking shapes were covered in matted fur. But even the fur did not hide the sinew rippling beneath.

“Hey, remember me?” Darby fumbled for her necklace, holding it out by the chain, letting the charms dangle. “You wanted to keep me around, remember? I’m useful.”

At the sound of her voice, Aimee started to lift her head to investigate. Darby pushed it back down ungently.

She scanned the five creatures, trying to gauge which one was the alpha, Cyprian—the one she knew to direct her plea to. For some reason, her attention centered on the black-furred one. Not the largest, but the others seemed to walk in his shadow. He led the pack and stopped a few feet in front of Darby.

She dangled the necklace, her voice a terrible quiver and reed thin on the air. “Remember me? You want to keep me around.”

The lycan’s great jaws peeled back to reveal his yellow-stained teeth. Faint rivulets of pink, diluted blood traced his teeth and lined his gums. He released a low growl.

Running would be useless. For one fleeting moment, she considered doing that ultimate thing—the one thing she vowed never to do. Summoning a demon to aid her.

The question she asked herself was what she valued more—her soul or her life? Which was she willing to sacrifice? She knew that answer. She’d always known that answer.

With conviction burning in her heart, she pressed her lips tightly together, silencing herself should she feel tempted to utter the words, to shout out for a demon’s aid in a moment of pain or distress.

The alpha stretched his neck so that his face was close … close enough that she smelled the sourness of his breath, felt the heat of it fanning her face. She squeezed her eyes shut and turned her face, waiting, hoping it wouldn’t hurt, hoping he ended it quickly, that there would be no suffering—especially for Aimee.

The pain never came.

A shot exploded on the air. And then another.

Darby’s eyes flung wide open. The black-furred lycan no longer stood before her. He was gone. A blurry ink spot on the white landscape.

She whipped her gaze around and spotted a man holding a weapon. He was armed to the teeth, ammo strapped to his chest, and a gun in each hand. A knife glinted from a sheath at his waist and he wore multiple holsters. He was armed for battle. For lycans.

Her gaze took all this in with a sweep—before actually seeing him. The real him. The face of the man she knew. Niklas. Her heart leapt with instant hope. And something else strange and indefinable. He stood tall and capable-looking, his indigo eyes glowing with that otherworldly light, and something besides her heart leapt. Her stomach flipped.

Two lycans lay dead. Blood so thick that it looked black seeped into the snow around their bodies.

She watched Niklas approach and riddle several more bullets into each of the bodies. Steam wafted over the wounds. Silver. It had to be. She knew it was the only thing that could stop a lycan.

A blur flashed across the air. In a blink, Niklas turned to greet the new threat. They came together simultaneously in a crash of bone on bone.

Niklas had been lucky with the shots. She was sure his luck wouldn’t last. Not against creatures with supernatural powers. Even if he beat this one, there were still two other lycans unaccounted for. Her skin shivered at the memory of them. She wasn’t sticking around for them to direct their attention back on her and Aimee.

She lowered Aimee to the ground and grabbed hold of her hand. “C’mon, sweetie. Keep up.” Holding tightly, she took off, pulling the child after her.

Even as they tromped through the snow, guilt pained her for leaving Niklas. She wanted to stay—wanted to help him. But she knew she could do nothing except get them both killed if she did that. And there was Aimee she had to consider.

“Were those monsters?” Aimee gasped beside her, and Darby grimaced, realizing she’d let the girl see them, after all. Guess she could only shield her from so much when this was the frightening reality that surrounded them.

Ignoring the question, she tugged harder on her slight hand. “C’mon, keep up. We’re putting them behind us.”

Then suddenly she wasn’t holding anything anymore. Her fingers groped air. She spun around—assuming the child had fallen—ready to haul the girl back to her feet again.

But she was gone. Darby jerked her gaze off the empty space in front of her, where she expected Aimee to be, and scanned the area all around her.

From the corner of her eye she glimpsed a streak of brown. She narrowed her gaze on the spot and a lycan running away through the trees with Aimee struggling in his arms.

“Aimee!” she screamed, running several steps before tripping on a tree root hidden beneath the snow and falling to her knees. She was up again, still screaming even when she could no longer see them. They were gone.

She followed in the lycan’s tracks, only dimly wondering about Cyprian and Niklas as she focused on finding Aimee. She struggled ahead, even after it became clear she wouldn’t catch up with them. The only sound she could hear anymore was the crashing of her labored breath on the vanishing night. And then a scream—shrill enough to shatter glass.

She froze for a fraction of a moment, goose bumps breaking out over her flesh. “Aimee!”

Spurred to life, she pushed harder then, freezing tears trailing her cheeks as she ran.

She stopped suddenly, seeing something, the bright splash of pink that was Aimee’s coat through the trees in the road ahead. She rushed forward, numb to her actions, uncaring that she in no way could stop this from happening. She had to try. Her aunts had been there for her after her mother died. Someone needed to be there for Aimee, too.

She grabbed the discarded coat with both hands and hugged it close, glancing around, despair rising up to choke her as she felt the slick sensation of blood on the fabric. “Aimee!” she screamed. “Aimee!”

A shot rang out in the woods, reverberating off the towering trees.

She picked up the tracks in the snow again and charged through the trees, stopping when she came upon a person bent in the snow.

Catching her balance, she eyed the broad back of the familiar figure. “Niklas?” she whispered. Apparently he was okay.

He unfolded his great length from where he crouched, turning to face her. And that’s when she saw his arms weren’t empty. He cradled an unconscious Aimee, and behind them lay the corpse of the lycan, gradually returning to his human form.

“Aimee,” she breathed, reaching for the girl, eager to take her back into her arms. “You saved her.”

He sharply pulled her out of Darby’s reach, like a toy he would hoard for himself. “No. I was too late,” he announced. “She’s dead.”

Darby’s gaze flew to the still girl, only then seeing the nasty wound at her shoulder—the shredded purple sweater soaked in blood, where the lycan’s teeth had torn through to get to her. A choked sob escaped her. No! No! I promised she would be okay.

Her small face was ashen, lips a pale purple tinge. She was still, hanging limply, lifelessly in Niklas’s arms. Dead. Darby’s shoulders slumped and a heaviness lodged deeply in her chest.

And then Aimee let out a little mewl of pain.

“Wait!” Darby cried, stretching her hands for her again. “You’re wrong! She’s alive!”

Relief surged in her heart, wild as the fluttering wings of a bird just released from its cage. With this relief mingled a hope so palpable she could taste it. Aimee was going to be okay. They were both going to be okay. She stretched her arms for the child again.

“No!” Niklas pulled Aimee out of the way, his features stark and relentless in the light of the moon. “She’s bitten.”

The reminder struck her like a physical blow. Her arms fell to her sides as she let this penetrate, sink in in all its horror …

Bitten by a lycan.

She shook her head as if she could erase his words. As if she could wipe free this terrible reality.

She stared hard into his unblinking gaze, searching as denial rose up inside her. “What are you saying?” she asked through numb lips, the relief disappearing inside her, changing to something painful and aching.

“I think you know.” He cocked his head. “You know how this all works. What they are.” He waved a hand, motioning to the dead lycan, now a human corpse in the snow. “You know what it means if you’re bitten.”

Darby nodded jerkily. “Yes. Yes, I do.”

Jonah had been part of her life for a long time. Even though he was a hybrid lycan—a dovenatu—she knew all about lycans. The reason they even existed was that one of her kind had bought into a demon’s empty promises and started the curse.

“I do know about these monsters,” she admitted. For half a breath, she thought he flinched at her words. “But I also know you just have to kill the alpha—”

“The alpha that got away,” he reminded her harshly.

A muscle along his cheek rippled with tension, and she guessed that this was a sore point for him. She caught his meaning. If he hadn’t had to save her and Aimee, he would have killed the alpha. Accusation shone in his indigo gaze.

She squared her shoulders. “Then we have to find him.”

“Yeah, that’s kind of what I’m trying to do … what I was doing until I stopped to save your ass.”

“Sorry to be such an inconvenience,” she snapped.

He shook his head angrily and nodded down at Aimee. “We can’t risk letting her—”

“No,” she cut in, not about to let him say it. Not about to let him utter that they should kill the child rather than let her live out the month.

“She’s dead,” he uttered flatly. “You’re not doing her any favors if you let her live through the month. Think of her.”

“We’re not killing her,” she repeated.

“I’ll do it. You don’t have to be here—”

“Some favor! You think that will make it better? Easier for me? It’s not about me and what I can or can’t handle. It’s about her. She deserves someone to fight for her.”

“Face facts, Darby. Ugly as they are, when the moon rises she’s going to turn into one of them. A tiny monstrosity with a hunger for flesh.”

She flinched but held her ground. Her whole life had been ugly facts. She was sick to death of existing under a dark cloud of ugly facts. Existing and not living. Enduring a reality that was not of her making and beyond her control. For once she wanted to take control, wanted to beat the odds. She wanted to win Aimee her life back. And maybe in doing that, she would win herself back, too. She’d no longer feel like a prisoner within her own life.

She stepped closer. Moistening her lips, she stared into Niklas’s eyes and rested a hand on his arm. Even through the thick layer of sleeve, his heat reached her. That arm tightened, the muscles clenching beneath her fingers.

“Please,” she whispered, beseeching him with her eyes. “We can try.”

Aimee rustled in his arms and they both glanced down at her. The child looked angelic asleep and Darby didn’t know how he could consider snuffing out her life … how he could not consider fighting for her.

She looked up at him and asked in a quiet voice, “Haven’t you ever fought for anything? For anyone?”

“When there’s no chance of winning? What would be the point?” His voice fell cold and empty, and she was convinced this was a man who had never loved.

Maybe who never could.

“Hope is the point.” And love. She already loved this girl, and she wasn’t ready to let her go.

He shook his head once. “You’ve no idea what we’re risking. Keeping her alive until the next moon endangers innocent lives.”

So pragmatic. Where was his heart? “I’m not going to let you do this,” she bit out again, louder this time, reaching for Aimee, grasping the girl with both hands. “Give her to me.”

“You can’t win this.”

“Look. We’ll stay with you. We have a month to track this alpha. We’ll find him. We’ll kill him before the next full moon and she shifts. Then we can return her to her grandmother—where she was going with her mother in the first place.”

“It won’t be that simple.”

Darby shook her head. “She’s got a chance. We have to give her that chance.” She inhaled bitter cold air into her lungs and added, “If it doesn’t work out, I’ll do it myself. When the time comes.”

He stared at her for a long moment through narrowed eyes. Snow gathered in his lashes as he studied her. Then as if reaching a decision, he blinked and strode past her, still carrying Aimee. “Come on, it’s cold. Let’s get somewhere warm before we start tracking Cyprian again. I killed the others. There’s just him now. He’ll be desperate to increase his ranks. My guess is he’ll move into a larger population and try to lose himself in the masses—make it harder for me to sniff him out.”

She walked quickly after him, trying to keep up with his long strides, her heart surging inside her at his indirect agreement.

“You’ll do as I say. Exactly what I say. Without question,” he called over his shoulder. “Otherwise this ends now. Before it even begins.”

“Of course,” she agreed, panting to keep up, her boots crunching a steady rhythm over the snow. “How do you know so much about this Cyprian? Are you the one they mentioned? The one who’s been hunting them?”

His lips twisted as he walked, carrying Aimee in his arms as if she were nothing more than a feather. “That would be me. I’ve managed to decimate his pack. He, however, still eludes me. The bastard has nine lives.” They approached the Hummer parked alongside the road, not far from where she crashed the lycans’ car. He opened the back door and carefully laid Aimee on the backseat.

Jonah had mentioned lycan hunters before to her, a large, secret organization called NODEAL. “Are you part of NODEAL?”

He slid her a look. “You know a lot about lycans. No, I’m not. I do things solo.”

“Why are you after this particular pack? Did they do something to you?”

He motioned for her to get in the back beside Aimee. She slid in beside the girl but still looked up at him, waiting for an answer.

“They took my mother,” he responded flatly and then shut the door in her face.

She felt his announcement like a slap. She knew what it was like to lose a mother. Her mother had been unable to handle her life as a witch … the constantly appearing demons trying to steal away her soul. It tormented her only further when Darby’s gift ended up being something that had demons appearing all the time.

Getting struck with a vision at any odd time of the day became more than an inconvenience. It was dangerous when it tracked demons to her like a moth to flame—tracked them to her and her mother.

Her mother couldn’t cope. Not with any of it—but especially not with Darby. So she quit on all of it. She quit on herself and Darby. She quit on life.

Darby gawked at the back of Niklas’s head as he got in the front and started the car.

“How long ago was that?” she asked.

He lifted one broad shoulder, his gaze catching hers in the rearview mirror. “Ten years.”

“You’ve been hunting this pack for ten years?”

“Lycans haven’t been around this long because they’re stupid and easy to kill.” Defensiveness edged his voice. “So, yeah. I’ve hunted Cyprian and his pack for ten years.” His eyes hardened and she knew he was battling rage for having lost him. For having been so close only to come up empty-handed again. “I’ll hunt him forever, if I have to.”

She bit her lip and glanced down at the inert girl.

“And what about you?”

She tensed at his question, her thoughts still tangled up in the painful memory of her mother. “What about me?”

“How long you been hiding from demons in the Great White North?”

She jerked from the question. How did he know she was a witch?

As if reading her mind, he answered, “I saw your necklace … and the way you act … It wasn’t hard to put together. Not if you know witches are out there.”

Darby stammered as he put the car in drive and headed into town. She wondered how he even knew witches existed. Most people didn’t know. As far as she knew, even lycans and NODEAL hunters knew little of them. At least not about true witches: white witches and demon witches. Her kind kept a low profile, obviously preferring to stay off the radar. The world didn’t know about them.

But he did. He knew her secret. She bit her lip, wondering how many other surprises he had in store for her.