Night Falls on the Wicked (14 page)

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.

T
hey drove directly to Darby’s apartment. She followed Niklas up the stairs and inside as he carried Aimee and placed her on the bed. She got to work cleaning Aimee’s wound and bandaging it up. She changed her into the smallest T-shirt she owned, guessing they wouldn’t be able to claim her luggage from the bus station.

“We’re going to have to get her some new clothes.”

He nodded. “I’m going to get the rest of my things from my room. I need to gather some other supplies, too, so I’ll see what I can find for her. I’ll be back in a few hours. We don’t want Cyprian to get too much of a head start.”

She walked him to the door, rubbing her hands up and down her arms and telling herself that she just hadn’t warmed up yet. Even though—for once—her apartment was cozy and warm. The cold clung. A bone-deep cold that she doubted she’d ever be free from—especially after tonight.
Tonight she’d shed her last scrap of hope that she could ever be safe. Ever be free of all the ugly things that walked this earth alongside the good and innocent.

She was done hiding. It was time to fight.

“How do you know where to go … where Cyprian will go next?”

At the door, he paused and turned to face her. “It’s time we’re up front about a few things that we’ve been skirting around.”

She nodded, but her throat felt suddenly tight, her skin itchy beneath his regard. “You know what I am.” They’d covered that already.

“Yeah.”

She crossed her arms over her chest. “How do you know about witches?” They hadn’t covered that and it was still nagging her how he knew about her kind.

“My mother.”

She angled her head. “She told you?”

“No.” He looked away from her then, stared somewhere over her shoulder as if he saw something there, something being played out just for his eyes alone. “She was one. Like you—a witch.”

Her heart leapt, unaccountably excited to discover they had this connection. “Your mother was a white witch?”

“At first. A white witch. And then she sold her soul.”

Darby pulled back as if physically struck. It was her worst nightmare. Her mother had killed herself rather than enslave herself to a demon. As much as she struggled with her mother’s suicide, it would have been so much worse to lose her to a demon. “Your mother contracted with a demon?”

He looked back at her then, faced her with his indigo eyes flat and void of emotion—as if this information affected him not at all. “She gave up her soul and turned herself over to a demon.”

“Why would she do such a thing?”

“She did it for me. In exchange for my soul.”

Darby looked him up and down, as if he wore his soul on the outside and she could see it before her. “What do you mean? How was your soul in danger?”

“I was infected by a lycan. When I was sixteen Cyprian and his pack attacked me and some friends. I escaped, but it was too late. I was infected just like that girl in there and on my way to becoming a …
monster
—I think that’s what you called it.”

She nodded, remembering that she’d said that. And he’d flinched. Why? He stood before her, obviously not one of them. His mother’s sacrifice had worked and saved him. So then, why—

“My mother did the only thing she could think of. She exchanged her soul for mine.”

“So a demon lifted your curse and took her instead.” Darby inhaled, unable to imagine how that must have made him feel. How it still made him feel, knowing that his mother sacrificed herself for him. “That must have been awful for you.”