Bold Mercy by Laken Cane
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Lennon. Shit.
Avis had her arm wrapped around Lennon’s neck, and the witchwolf’s own wand pressed to her throat. “Kait. Finally. We were beginning to think you weren’t coming.” Avis laughed and when she did, two of her teeth fell from her mouth, long tails of blood trailing from their ends. “Fuck,” she said. “Oops.”
She was dying. Her dead master’s magic had kept her alive long enough for her to fuck up the city, but it was failing fast. I padded toward her, but not too close, because I didn’t want to get a surprise hit with that wand.
What I couldn’t understand was how she’d gotten her hands on Lennon, who I hadn’t seen much of lately. Lennon’s magic was strong, yet somehow, Avis had gotten her and her weapon—the wand I had coveted for myself.
“Kait,” Avis said, “Your wolf would be fun to torture, but right now, I want to discuss things with the woman. Shift.”
I only growled, my head low between my shoulders, imagining how much pleasure it would give me to tear out her throat and carry her head back to the humans, proof that she was dead. Then Lennon shrieked as Avis drove the end of the wand into the soft flesh beneath her jaw and Avis waited for her to go quiet before she once again ordered that I shift. “Time is running out, Wolf. Don’t make me tell you again. Shift, or I will hurt this bitch.”
I could have walked away. I could have let Avis do whatever she was going to do to Lennon, and I could have waited patiently for another chance. But why would I do that? The vampire was right there in front of me, and she already had Lennon. Even if I traded myself for her, there were no guarantees that Avis would let her go. So I tensed my body to pounce, gathering my legs beneath me as I drew back my lips in a snarl of rage, and I started to attack.
“I have Lucy,” Avis said, freezing me in place. “Well, I don’t physically have her, but she’s under my control. It was stupidly easy to get her. Stupidly easy. I’ll tell you about it after you shift.”
I did nothing. She was lying. I couldn’t say that, because my wolf couldn’t speak, of course, but she knew what I was thinking.
“Listen,” she said. “Do you hear that? That’s the sound of your city crumbling, Kait. The vampires, wolves, humans…all of them are all tied up together, and all of them are dying. You killed my love, and you killed me. So I’m going to kill the world.”
I pawed the hard floor, trying to shut out the sounds of the battle. The room we were in was a circular room with a stone floor, short stone walls, and no roof. If I shifted, I could try to sling her over those walls so she’d smash herself on the ground far below. I would fight her, but as my woman, I wouldn’t be quite as strong as a vampire—especially one who, though it was failing, was bolstered by a mad magic. And I didn’t have my blade.
She sighed. “You don’t believe me.” She caressed Lennon’s throat with the tip of the wand. “That hurts my feelings.”
“Kait, please,” Lennon moaned. “Make her stop.”
But still, I hesitated. I did need to shift. I could think more clearly than my wolf. She simply wanted to kill. She wasn’t as concerned as I was with saving people. She wasn’t as attached to Lucy or worried about a witchwolf.
I slipped another couple of steps closer to Avis.
“Larry,” she yelled, suddenly.
A vampire moved from the wall, a vampire neither I nor my wolf had seen, sensed, or smelled. He moved and suddenly he was there. Fucking vampires.
“Show her,” she said. “Kait, don’t eat my friend Larry. You’re going to want to see what he has to show you. Oh don’t worry, it’s just a picture.”
The changes in Avis were astounding, really. No longer was she the mad, wild creature who seeped magic and showed little of the human she’d once been. Now she seemed more human. Maybe as the magic faded, so did the feral creature Axton had created.
Larry didn’t hesitate. He pulled a cell phone from his pocket, tapped on the screen, then placed the device on the floor. Then he melted back against the wall. When I watched him, I could see him, but when I glanced down at the phone and then back up, he’d disappeared once again.
“Look at the image,” Avis said, then spat out another tooth.
I didn’t want to. I knew it’d change my mind. I knew from experience that looking at a vampire’s phone or screen or whatever else they wanted to show me was a bad idea. I’d seen the detective that way, and Bastien and the girl Farrow, and now, I was about to see another horrifying picture.
I looked.
Avis hadn’t lied. She had Lucy. There was an image on the screen of her pale face, lips tight and a disbelieving look in her eyes as she stared up at her captor. She didn’t look as scared as she might have. She looked angry, and she looked shocked. But a hand was around her throat, and though I couldn’t see his face, I recognized the suit. I even recognized the hand pressing against her windpipe.
“One more chance,” Avis said. “Shift, or I will order him to hurt her. He will hurt her, and it will be your fault, just as all this is your fault.” Then she looked down at the diminutive Lennon. “You were right that she wouldn’t die for you. But she will die for the human. What a strange wolf she is.”
So I shifted, because it didn’t matter anymore. Wolf form or human form, I would fight to the death so that I could save Lucy. I would not die, and neither would she.
“How the fuck,” I said, my long, unbound hair my only clothing, “did you turn my detective into a monster?”
Because the man in the image with his fingers around Lucy’s throat was Rick Moreno, and I was devastated.
