Howler's Night (28 page)

But he was screaming for me, and what I knew was inevitable finally happened. Luc smacked headlong into the shifter’s chest, forced back into his human form. Before he had a moment to recognize the danger, the blond-haired shifter was on him, shoving his claws through Luc’s middle.

But Luc had been stronger than all of us, and in no time he’d managed to flip positions, gaining the upper hand, and with a deft flick of his wrists, he snapped the shifter’s neck. The body crumpled in a heap at his feet.

He stood, blood staining his nude chest, and I saw what he had done. Saw that the short scuffle had been just long enough for them to vanish with me, just long enough for him to lose sight of me.

Shifting back into mist, he scoured the grounds, his movements jerky and manic. For hours he’d searched; evening rolled into night and then into the murky twilight of dawn before finally he’d turned back to human form and, with a mighty roar, dropped to his knees and pounded his fists on the ground.

Soon after, the scene shifted again, and this time it was him in his trailer, lying on his bed with his arms thrown over his face and countless women all around him. They were doing things with each other, tossing him flirty glances, trying to get him involved, but Luc was just staring off into space, unimpressed, uninspired, and dead to the world.

The scene went from light to dark, then moved in rapid transition from dark to light, light to dark, and I knew I was fast forwarding through days, weeks, months.

Always the same thing too. Him just lying lifeless, while all around him life moved on. But then it shifted again, and this time he wasn’t in our carnival. He was at Adam’s, and they were talking in Adam’s office. I couldn’t hear what he was saying, but I saw the entreaty in Luc’s eyes and the understanding in Adam’s, and then, with a jerky flick of his wrist, Adam barked something.

Keltse walked in. She didn’t look much different from how she did now. Her hair was still snarled and her clothes two sizes too large. Her skin was as pale as moonstone, making the blue veins behind it stand out in bold relief.

She looked from one to the other with curiosity and even a hint of weariness in her luminescent amber eyes. Luc smiled his first smile in months then, and after a shake of hands with Adam, Luc stood, walked to her, and, taking her by the elbow, brought her back here.

And no longer was I seeing him lying on his bed with countless, nameless women all around him. Now it was just him and Keltse.

She’d lie down beside him, and just like I used to do with Kem, he’d wrap his arms around her, lay his head on her waist, and sleep.

As the cycle of days went by, I saw him repeat the process countless times, and the only indication of the passage of time was how sloppy his appearance became. First it was the scruff, then it was the hair, and then finally the clothes.

Things that’d once seemed to matter to Luc no longer did. He didn’t leave his self-imposed prison. Outside his window I’d see the glow of neon lights and know that someone had been running the show while he’d kept himself locked away.

There’d be knocks on the door, shouts of his name, verbal threats from Bubba and Vyxyn that if he didn’t come out soon they’d leave him behind. But he never budged, and soon their cries stopped too.

And off they’d move, from one town to the next, but Luc would never leave his trailer, never step foot outside. Only Keltse was allowed inside his inner sanctum.

Knowing what I knew now, how Sloths could speak in dreams, I wondered if they had, wondered if he’d turned her into his newest confidant the way he had me eons ago.

But those memories, at least, were sealed to me.

The buzzing in my head started back up again. I sighed. I didn’t want to be gripped by Sloth for another minute. His pacings were growing stronger, and soon they’d break my concentration altogether.

Ready to turn back, I stopped when I saw Luc break ritual.

Instead of snuggling into Keltse, now he was walking toward a floor-length mirror that hadn’t been in his room before.

Confused, because now that same mirror was materializing to the right of me, I watched as he pointed to it, looking at it with imploring blue eyes.

“Come here, Pandora,” he said in a voice as clear as if he’d been standing beside me.

Whirling around, because I was sure the real Luc was beside me, I saw him shake his head in the mirror.

“I’m not out there, I’m in here. I’m sure you have lots of questions—”

“Yes, like, for starters, why you brought me here to see this, Luc? I’m sorry you suffered, I really am, but—”

“But you should know this is merely an imprint. A recorded message Keltse helped me program into this scene when the day came for you to come to me.”

Shaking my head with the realization that I’d get no answers from him now for sure, I sidled closer to the mirror, taking my time to study his features.

He looked much more grizzled in the imprint than he had even today. Stress lines circled his eyes and mouth. His hair hung well past his shoulders and looked like it hadn’t been washed for days.

My heart squeezed seeing him this way.

Lifting a hand, I traced the image inside it, seeing now with my own two eyes just how much my disappearance had made him suffer.

Luc wasn’t talking, just looking at me. Or at least it felt like he was, as though he’d known I’d need time to take it all in.

Taking a deep breath, he shook his head. “I’m sure if you’ve returned then I’ve tried to convince you of what I now feel, but if you’re seeing this then it also means that didn’t go as I’d planned. I couldn’t begin to explain how it felt knowing you were alive again.”

He shuddered, and again I tried to trace the ripple of his image, but it was nothing but cool glass beneath my touch.

“My brain keeps trying to convince my heart that you are dead, because if you weren’t, I’d have found you.
We’d
have found you.”

The buzzing in my head came back sharply. I batted it away, not wanting to be distracted by Sloth now. Just a few more minutes and then I’d leave. It made my lips twitch realizing that he’d basically orchestrated this one-sided conversation between us, the bastard.

Luc would never change, and I guess in the end, that was part of his appeal too.

He lifted a hand, placing his palm flat on the glass. “If you are here though, then it means I was wrong, and I can never forgive myself for that. Pandora, you have to understand that all my life I’ve lived by rules meant to keep me alive, meant to keep
us
alive. But that doesn’t mean I don’t feel, don’t feel l…”

The way his words trailed off, I was sure that was it. It was over. Reading between the lines, he’d told me once again everything he’d told me up on the mountain. He loved me. He was sorry.

And somehow it was easier to accept it through the screen between us.

Blowing out a deep breath, he shook his head. “Fact is, you made me stronger. A better me. Without you here, I’ve lost my way. I’m not good, and neither is anyone else around me, but, Dora, you, you were our compass. The needle that pointed due north. It was through your humanity that we could cling to the shreds of ours. I’m afraid that without you here to be my conscience, I’ll become what I once was. So I lock myself away from others, becoming more and more dead inside.”

His blue eyes were so penetrating through the glass that I clutched my heart, feeling as though it might fracture, might break in two.

“All I ask, Dora, is that you let me touch your hand one last time.”

Lifting his hand, he placed it against the mirror and almost seemed to be waiting for me to do the same.

It was weird, really weird. He was an image—he wouldn’t know if I had or hadn’t done it. I could turn around and walk out of there and he’d never know. But maybe this was more for me than him.

Maybe this was an olive branch, his way of making sure that when I left here peace could once more exist between us. I wanted that. Desperately.

My fingers twitched by my side, and I slowly lifted my hand to his, ready to give him the absolution he and I both needed.

Closing my eyes, I touched my hand to his, and the glass that’d been so cool just moments before was now growing warm beneath my palm.

Frowning, I tried to jerk my hand back, but I was stuck. My hand couldn’t move.

“I’m sorry, Dora, but I just have to know.”

My gaze jerked up to the image in the mirror. It wasn’t the mirror refusing to let me go, it was Luc himself.

“Luc!” I snapped, shaking my head and trying to yank out of his grip. But in the dreaming I wasn’t as strong as I was outside. I could feel his strength, could feel his concentration, and the buzzing inside my head grew and grew and grew.

And like in some Japanese horror movie, first his hands, then his legs, and finally his head stepped through the sheet of glass. And it wasn’t an image, but Luc himself standing before me.

“It wasn’t Sloth buzzing in my head.” I chuckled, but it lacked humor. My lips were trembling at the depth of his betrayal, at what I knew he was about to do to me. “It was you. Keltse lied to me. Oh my God.” It was all I could think to say.

He was going to crack me open, make me relive the agonies of what I’d seen and done. What’d happened to me.

I screamed as he yanked me into his unyielding chest. “Dora, stop. It’s just me. Just your Luc.”

“No. You can’t do this. You’re not Sloth, you can’t.”

He nodded slowly, still gripping my hands so tight that I couldn’t budge, couldn’t move. “She trained me for months. If you came back, I had to know. I had to know, Dora. I have to know.”

Then he slammed his lips to mine, and the kiss was brutal and rough. Tears spilled from my eyes as the buzzing that was him ripped through the fractured barrier of my steel wall and the memories flooded in.

I trembled as he sucked them in, as he saw me strapped to the bed, saw them take cattle prods to my heart, saw them dip me in ice, burn me in flame, as they cut me open over and over and over. I felt blood leaking from my mouth.

I’d bitten my tongue, struggling to get away from him.

But his hold was unyielding, his grip brutal, and his fingers dug into my skull as he explored every second of the missing year.

The doctor was staring down at me, whispering garbled words.

“You will return.” He’d laughed. “You don’t know it yet, Pandora, but what plans we have for you.” His touch was gentle on my bruised cheek. “You think you’re in charge, think you can break this, but you never can, even when you think we’re not there. We’ll always be there.”

The echo of his words pounded through my heart as my memories spun out of control. Me locked in the cage, Asher kneeling before me.

The angry animal that had been me on the floor, snarling and spitting at him as I’d tried to eviscerate him with my claws. Shrieking at the top of my lungs that I hated him, that I would kill him, always kill him. That he would never stand a chance because I was unstoppable and he just didn’t know it yet.

One memory after another ripped from me, colors bleeding and blending.

Me in Asher’s arms, his gentle kiss on my brow, his whispered words that he’d never give up on me.

His dark wings covering me, holding me as I cried. The screams in the middle of the night.

The shadows in my priest’s eyes as he’d looked at me, the hopelessness that sometimes settled in his gaze.

Then a smile. And another. Being pieced back together. Not whole, but no longer broken either.

Love.

Love.

Love.

Then Luc’s hold on me snapped, and he stumbled back, nearly falling into the mirror again, staring at me with horror and shaking his head. “No, Pandora, no.”

Blood poured from his mouth.

My memories had been raped from me, exposed to him. The tears couldn’t stop coming from both our eyes.

I turned on my heel and ran back out of the room, out the door.

“Pandora, wait!” Keltse’s voice called to me. “He made me, Dora. I’m so sorry, I’m so, so sorry.”

I couldn’t stop. I had to get away, had to forget this’d ever happened. Had to forget the face of the man in the coat and the words that still echoed in my soul.

“Oh God.” I was going to throw up.

Running and running and running. Door after door after door, the hallway shifting and turning and becoming longer and longer and…

“Get me out of here!” I screamed, then dropped down, huddling into myself and wrapping my arms around my body.

A hand touched my back, and I shrieked. The darkness I worked so hard to keep locked away surged through my veins, stirred my blood, and blanketed my mind in rage. I didn’t think, didn’t stop to wonder, whether this was right or wrong. Sitting up, I shoved my claws through Keltse’s stomach.

It was just a dream, but I wanted to end her, I wanted to kill her. My breathing was raw and animalistic, my skin crawling between pale and gray. I felt my eyes glow and knew I’d lose it soon. Sloth was alive inside of me, powerful from feeding off Luc, and if I said kill, he would.

A fiery tingling ran through my fingertips still inside her as my nails scraped against the power of her soul. All I would have to do was give it a gentle tug and I could take her down. Could make her mine. Ours.

Sloth laughed, the reverberations of his desire moving like a sonic wave all through me.

Take her. Give her to me…

Yes…give her to you…

I laughed, and the sound that came out of me was awful. I was losing Pandora, she was slipping away from me, screaming as she fell. I could feel Ya-el—she’d never really gone away, she was still there—just waiting for Pandora to slip up.

Keltse looked down at herself wide-eyed, and it was the whimper that spilled from her lips that snapped me out of the haze just long enough to yank my claws back out, shaking my head.

What was I doing? Oh God. This had to stop. I didn’t want to kill her. Not like this. I didn’t want to lose myself. Not this way. I shoved Sloth away, slamming him down into the box with a will so fragile that had he fought me harder, had I not surprised him, I would have been his slave. His puppet.