Chapter Two

 

 

Now

 

The trees and bushes had all bloomed in the last month. I pushed one of the branches from a now-flourishing tree out of my way as I tiptoed through the forest. The duality of my existence never struck me more than when I looked at my surroundings. The whole area where I currently sought my objective—the Kenwoods—had once been sighted to make a mini-mall. The project had, obviously, been scrapped when the world had ended.

But my brain couldn’t think of it simply as the place where they wanted to put the frozen yogurt store next to the designer discount-clothing store. No. I could also categorize it as Section Three, Slot Four, on the map I’d studied a million times at Genesis, an area we didn’t patrol because it fell outside the zone considered necessary for our survival. If Section Three, Slot Four became a haven for the monsters, it wouldn’t affect our lives in Genesis too much. We didn’t care if Vamps or Weres hung out there, usually.

The two Rachels. The Warrior and the semi-rebellious teenager. Which one was I?

I rubbed at my nose. Well, whichever Rachel I happened to be, both of them had seasonal spring allergies and both of them would have loved an antihistamine.

“I still can’t believe you knocked me out.”

“Shh.” I hushed Darren. Hunting Werewolves proved challenging in the best of circumstances. Darren rambling on made it virtually impossible. He could nurse his hurt feelings all on his own. I really didn’t care.

He grumbled and I moved farther ahead of him to ignore his complaints. If he wanted to vent his spleen, I supposed he was entitled. He also had the right to get eaten by a Werewolf. I didn’t have to witness, partake, or deal with either scenario if I didn’t want to.

The Warrior Rachel could really kick butt. My physical strength as a Vampire fighter outdid the suburban Rachel tenfold. I had hated running the mile to pass the President’s physical fitness test before the world had ended. But the easy-life Rachel had been much better educated than the Warrior Rachel. I grinned at the thought. So much for the importance of my 4.0 GPA. I’d never gotten to experience the Ivy League education I’d been working toward. Instead, I’d gotten lessons in how to put a stake through a Vampire’s heart.

Other dualities were difficult to deal with, less funny. I’d loved and sometimes hated my mother when I’d grown up in my small New Jersey home. She’d wanted the best for me, and her wishes directly interfered with what I’d wanted for myself, namely Jason, the Werewolf I now needed to kill. Even amidst our crazy mother-daughter angst, I could remember what she smelled like, how the expensive moisturizer she used made her skin soft.

The Rachel Icahn had “reworked” had never known her mother, had no memories of her. No, all my Warrior self had was a fear where I’d never live up to the woman my mother had been and, somehow, I’d been gypped of a relationship I had needed in my life. Which version of me got to win? The one who knew and loved my mother or the one who railed against the unfairness of not having been given an opportunity to have a relationship with her?

I took one more step and stopped, shoving my shaking hands in my pockets. If I moved an inch closer, I’d be officially too near to Genesis. I always had the same reaction to being this close to my former home. I could destroy the Undead without a second of worry, or at least I could recently—amazing how getting of a sense of the futility of my entire existence made me a really kick-ass fighter—but I couldn’t walk too close to Genesis without turning into a bundle of nerves.

On the other side I would find Andon and his pack. I put my hand in my pocket and felt the cover of the syringe. If I could find him, I could get this horrendous task behind me.

“You know they’re over there.”

I nodded. I would not show weakness in front of Darren, but I couldn’t keep coming up with excuses for not moving forward. Even someone as dumb as him had to know my reasons for staying away from my former haunts. I looked up at the sky. The sun would be down soon. The folks in Genesis whose job happened to be the destruction of the Undead would travel Upwards when the golden orb officially left the evening sky.

“Movement.” Darren whispered in my ear.

I could smell the garlic he’d eaten at lunch. The other habitats starved and yet somehow the residents of Redemption ate like kings. I tried to keep my diet light. The daily lunch-hour feasts would make me heavy and slow.

I stared in the direction Darren indicated. Yep, the man might eat his body weight every day and drive me crazy regularly but his eyesight proved flawless. Something the right size to be a crouched Werewolf moved through the getting-thicker-every-day foliage.

“What are you going to do?”

“Are you testing me?” I turned to stare at Darren. “Awful convenient for one of them to be right there, right over my self-imposed border. Are you guys pushing my buttons? Trying to see how close I would get?”

“Why on earth would we care whether or not you went back to Genesis? You’re wiped clean there. No one from your old life even knows you ever lived. Go to Genesis; don’t go to Genesis. The boss wants you alive so you stay alive. Take the Werewolves out here or some other place. Your choice.”

Hate for Darren resonated through me like a gong going off inside of my head. It started out loudly the second he began talking, and by the time he finished, hatred practically vibrated through my veins into my skin.

“Please. Shut. Up.”

I supposed his words were probably true. Why would anyone want to throw me back into Genesis when it had taken so much effort to extract me from it?

And what I needed traipsed around ten feet in front of me. It could be a trap; it could be luck. In either case, I had no choice. How could I let an opportunity like this one get away?

“Whichever Wolf it is, and I know all of them in their human form, but I can only tell a few of them when they walk on four legs, it won’t be alone. For the most part, they stay in twos if they’re not with the whole pack.”

“I don’t need Werewolf 101, Clancy. I’ve done this longer than you have.”

I unhooked my machete from my back. If this turned out to be my moment, I needed to be ready. “You don’t know this pack. I lived with them, briefly, and they spent a lot of time at Genesis. I understand them better than you do.”

“A pack is a pack is a pack.” Darren got to his knees. “Wolf behavior is Wolf behavior. Let me guess. You were about to tell me you wanted us to split up. I go after the clumsy one and you go after whichever Wolf happened to tag along.”

“Until they lead us to the pack.” I nodded. In one version of my memory, Darren and I had been trained by the same team—Keith Endover and Patrick Lyons—making it not surprising he and I would approach a problem like this the same way.

I stared at him for a second. “Think you can leave me alone long enough to actually split up or will the Icahns spank you for giving me some space?”

“In this case, I’m pretty sure they’ll appreciate the separation.”

“Great.” I stood up. “I’ll get this injection into Andon, and then I’m going to end Jason before he can do any more damage.”

“You don’t take being dumped very well, do you?”

“Jason never dumped me. I broke up with him, or I intended to, before things went to hell. In this life, he never did me the courtesy of breaking up with me. He tried to kill me instead.”

“You understand he can’t help it. As long as Andon is susceptible to the virus—”

I waved my hand in front of his face to stop him from talking. “Don’t act like you get the science of this any more than I do. You don’t. Everyone is lying. All I know is the bad guys have to be stopped. I’m going to see they are.”

“Fine.” His jaw clenched. “Then I guess I’ll see you whenever the pack meets up again. I’ll be the one trying to keep you alive.”

He thought he could keep me alive? I didn’t have time to contemplate his nonsense, not when members of Andon’s pack were so close by. Of course, I assumed they were Andon’s pack. The Icahns could have made the whole thing. I might be getting ready to do battle with some other scumbag Werewolves. Either way, I couldn’t back out now.

I stormed forward. Darren and I had done so much talking; the likelihood we hadn’t been heard fell between slim to none. They’d even know who stalked them as I’d spent a ton of time with them when they’d not been psychotic and I hadn’t wanted to kill them.

As I’d suspected, a second Wolf I hadn’t seen plowed out of the bushes, where it had been hidden. I strode forward, holding my machete in front of me.

“Do you want to play?” I hoped my bluff paid off. I didn’t want to kill the beast, not yet. I wanted to follow it.

The Wolf growled, showing me its fangs. I raised an eyebrow as I stared at the creature. As far as Werewolves went, I’d seen bigger and I’d seen smaller. Gray fur around its face shifted gradually into a brownish hue toward its lower body. I didn’t know who it would turn into when it shifted into its human form. Jason looked different in his beast attire—darker, more intimidating.

Plus, both Andon and Jason stood at least twenty inches taller than the one I currently faced.

“Oh yes, you’re a big, strong Wolf, aren’t you?” I held up the machete again. “A giant beast whose head will be on the ground in two seconds if you don’t run.”

The Wolf backed up two feet, still growling at me.

“Come on,” I taunted it, “what do your instincts tell you? Fight or flight? Which one?”

The Wolf turned and darted out into the forest. I ran behind, knowing if I slowed down even a little, I’d lose it. I also counted on the idea of the Wolf pack would not be too far away. My enhanced fighting skills, given to me by Isaac Icahn while I lay in cryogenic freeze, allowed me to be ultrafast when I pursued a Werewolf. In the same situation, chasing a regular human, I wouldn’t have any special speed, some sort of fail-safe Icahn had genetically programmed into his Warriors to keep us from hurting the non-Warriors. Right now, gratitude for the speed that let me follow the Wolf filled my veins even as my muscles burned from being pushed to their limits. I’d really have to up my training at Redemption.

Air traveled in and out of my lungs in short gasps, and my vision became focused solely on the monster in front of me. The world tunneled; I had no sense of anything to my left or right. Like the monsters I fought, I existed now purely on instinct.

Abruptly, the Wolf came to a halt, turning around to snarl at me. I skidded to a stop, arriving in a clearing where in front of me lay a scene I would have once thought could only exist in horror movies. Surrounding me on all sides were at least a dozen Werewolves, some shifted into their animal form, some standing as humans, and all of them focused on me.

I wiped at my brow and tried to smile like I had complete control over the circumstances. Planning and executing were two different creatures. I loved coming up with a plan, hated having to make sure it came through.

“Why, hello everyone.” I put my hands on my hips, grasping the hypodermic. Maybe I’d be lucky and no one would notice. “What are you all doing on this lovely spring day?”

The dark Wolf I knew to be Andon shifted back into his human form. If anything, I’d always found him more intimidating as a man than a beast. His blond hair, graying on the sides of his head, set off a long face with a cleft in his chin. Whatever let them become animals also took care to see them clothed when they shifted. I didn’t ask too many questions about the process. All Jason had ever said was the clothing was part of the magic. I didn’t believe in the mumbo jumbo so I’d dropped the subject. Maybe someday I’d know why he appeared in jeans and a white T-shirt. Maybe someday I’d care.

His eyes, blue like Jason’s, bore into me like I was his favorite afternoon snack.

“Rachel Clancy. I’m shocked to see you. Genesis went below ground again. What are you doing up here?”

I strode forward, ignoring the growls of the pack around me. Having lived with them, I knew they didn’t want me so close to their Alpha. I couldn’t care less. Wolf issues, Wolf politics—they bored me to death.

“Hadn’t you heard, Dr. Kenwood? I don’t live there anymore.” I motioned to the forest around us. “But you sure seem attached to this area. With everywhere you could go in the world, why here?”

A growl so loud it could have been heard miles away caught my attention. I didn’t need to turn around to know who’d made the sound. In fact, I preferred not to look at him. I’d been around Jason’s temper enough to be able to discern his various noises from those of the other Werewolves. I’d clearly pissed him off, if the volume of his aggression indicated anything.

I had too many memories of him—good ones, bad ones, present-day occurrences, and I wasn’t certain if they were real. Even though I knew for sure I could handle Jason, as I needed to, I could anticipate the first time I set eyes on him would be akin to getting smashed by a runaway train.

Before I could allow the inevitable pain to happen, I had to handle Andon.

“Where I take my pack is of no concern to you. You’re foolish to come here, little girl. We have a death contest on you. Whoever eats you first gets hunting privileges for a month.”

I swallowed, my throat turning dry. “The problem with this whole thing,” I took a step in his direction, “with all of this, is I have a hard time remembering you’re sick.”

Andon’s eyes turned red, a surefire indication of the fact he no longer controlled his own body or mind. Before he’d succumbed to the Vampire virus—it had taken over his entire pack, making them feral—he’d had eyes of the clearest blue. The reason I’d had a hard time ridding him from my existence was he seemed too much like his son.

“Sick? We are not ill.” His hands elongated.

I’d made him so mad he was half shifting his shape? This indicated a new development. Andon in control of himself would never be so easily flustered.

“We’re gods.”

I huffed, wondering if I should keep my mouth shut or address this last statement. A god complex? No, this couldn’t continue much longer.

“Enough.” I leaped forward, brandishing the hypodermic in front of me. The drug would fix Andon’s pack, temporarily, and Jason would die by my hand. I kept these thoughts upfront in my mind as the wind blew my hair backward with a fast snap.

I heard the roar of the pack’s fury behind me. I had to get this right on my first attempt or I’d be dead. Strangely enough, I didn’t feel at all nervous about what I had to do. My body knew how to perform this maneuver. I’d been trained to be a physical work of art.

With my knee raised, I collided into Andon’s upper stomach. He grunted and reached out to scratch at my arms with his claws. I jabbed him in the arm and inserted the medicine in his muscle before we both hit the ground from the force of our collision.

He snarled, grabbing onto his arm. “What did you do to me?”

Did I see fear in his eyes? I stood, my legs unsteady beneath me. “I guess you’ll have to find out.”

The drug worked fast. Andon rolled over, grasping at his head. I hoped I had done it right. I wanted the man dead, but I didn’t exactly want to explain to the Icahns, at this point, how I had screwed up their mission. Pissing them off came later on in my plan.

The earth moved beneath my feet as a Wolf rushed toward me. I whirled around. A lot of the pack already staggered but Jason, like the raging animal he was, charged me, his mouth open with drool pooling from his lips.

I grabbed my machete; it had fallen to the ground during my collision with Andon Kenwood.

A whoosh sounded through the air and an arrow hit Jason’s shoulder. He howled before he tumbled to the ground.

It took me a second to figure out what I’d seen. “Nice shot, Darren.”

“Thanks, Rachel.”

I hated the way my name sounded when he said it. Maybe I should cut out his tongue. I trudged forward, staring down at Jason. “You didn’t kill him. It shouldn’t have knocked him out so fast. Werewolves are much stronger.”

“Not Werewolves who are already weakened because their Alpha has been compromised.”

Andon groaned on the ground.

“Compromised might be the right word.”

Darren walked out of the bushes, pushing a branch out of his way as he did. “Nice maneuver with the Wolf.”

“Your timing could have been better. I might have liked some help.”

He stretched his hands over his head. “You seemed like you had it covered. How do you want to play this?”

His mind jumped so quickly from one thing to another and sometimes none of it made any sense. “I don’t follow.”

“Do you want to kill Jason here or bring him back to Redemption and do it?”

I raised an eyebrow. Suspicion had recently become my best friend. “You’re going to let me end him? Even though the Icahns are against it?”

“Despite what you might think of me, I don’t live and die by what they say.”

“Yes, you do.” I bent over Jason. “Which begs the question: what is their real agenda? What would my destroying Jason bring them?”

“No, Rachel. Don’t do it.” Andon’s voice beckoned me from the ground.

I didn’t turn to look at him. I called over my shoulder. “Oh, just pass out already.”

Andon groaned. “He can’t help it.”

“Exactly why he needs to die. I’m tired of monsters who can’t control themselves.”

Darren sighed. “I’m going to haul Andon back over my shoulder. You can do whatever you like with the pup.”

“This isn’t you. You’ve never been this person.”

Darren whacked Andon over the head, stopping whatever the man would have said. I let his words move through me, waiting for the guilt they should have caused. When none came, I kicked the dirt next to Jason.

How did I want this to end?

A noise in the distance caught my attention. Voices. I jerked my head up and moved quietly to the side, goose bumps coating my skin as I did. The sun still lit the sky. They shouldn’t be out and about yet.

Darren paled, motioning with his hand his intention to take Andon farther out into the forest. I nodded my understanding.

Genesis could not catch me. Everything I worked for would crumble if they recognized me and if they didn’t…well, my heart might not survive such a thing.

Andon’s pack lay out cold on the ground. If they were stumbled upon, there would be questions about why so many Werewolves had passed out. If discovery happened, it might cause trouble I did not need in my life.

I didn’t want my old friends to see me, but I had to drag their attention from where it headed to somewhere safer. The only problem? I had no idea how to do it.