Bold Mercy by Laken Cane
Chapter Thirty
“Remember how I said he’d done some very bad things? He’s done worse than this, Kait Silver. Sorry.”
I hardened my emotional, aching heart. I’d think about Rick later. I was good at compartmentalizing, thankfully. “You have to know you’re not going to leave here tonight alive,” I told her. “Even if you somehow escaped me, the wolf alpha is here. And Bastien—”
“No one can find this room,” she interrupted. “This is Frederick’s creation. His and Kaloni’s. They will never find this room.”
“Ifound it,” I said.
“Because you were led here, and you were allowed in. They will only see you again when you are dangling over the wall.”
“What do you want, Avis?” Of course I knew what she wanted. I was stalling, hoping that maybe she’d go ahead and die and save me the trouble of killing her. More worried about Lennon now that I was not ruled by my feral wolf brain, I skimmed my stare over her tearstained face, her tattered clothes, and the bruises ringing her throat.
She didn’t look at me, though. I understood. She’d told me once that she wasn’t made for fighting. She didn’t like it, didn’t want to do it, wasn’t good at it. She wanted to stay in the safety of Shadowfield and do what seers did best—see things and report to their alpha.
Eli was going to lose his mind when he discovered that she’d been taken. Jared had left him in charge of the pack while he came to fight with me, and somehow, Avis had taken Lennon right out from under his nose.
“I want you to give yourself to me,” Avis said, “to save your friends. This one…” She kissed the top of Lennon’s head. “And the one your human friend is holding for me. I’ll give Lennon back her wand and return her to her pack, and I’ll free the little dreamer who means so much to you.” She hesitated and then cocked her head, her stare quizzical. “Do you believe me?”
“Not even a little bit,” I said.
“I wouldn’t believe me either,” she said ruefully. “But you really don’t have a choice. I came up here because this was Frederick’s favorite room. He’d often stand at the wall and gaze down into his world, dreaming, making plans, trying to be happy. It’s so hard for vampires to be happy. Did you know that?”
I only nodded. She wasn’t really talking to me anymore. She was preparing to die.
“Frederick was terrified of death,” she murmured. “Terrified. There is no God waiting for vampires. No rest or peace or heaven. Only nightmares.” Finally she blinked and focused on me once again. “You sent him there. I can only imagine his pain and terror right now. When I die, I’ll find him.” She shook Lennon, a little. “You promised, didn’t you, Witchwolf? You promised that your magic would lead me straight to him.” She was crying, her pink-tinged tears sliding down her face, proof of her despair. “I miss the life we had. The most depressing thing is knowing I can never get that back. There’s only death now, and the hope that maybe it isn’t as bad as Frederick believed it would be.”
Pity swelled inside me, shocking me with its abrupt intensity. No matter that she’d done horrific things that could never be undone, she was agonized, and I felt sorry for her.
That pity would not stop me from killing her, but it would make me show her mercy. I wouldn’t make her suffer or give her to Zach for closure or hand her over to Bastien for centuries of torture.
I would simply kill her.
Then I would go deal with the aftermath of my choices.
I closed my eyes and sent up a prayer that Rick would not kill Lucy, that Lennon would survive my attack, that Avis wouldn’t suddenly be filled with energy and throw us both over that wall.
I would have given just about anything for my demon blade, but I would make do with everything I had naturally—and not so naturally. There was magic inside me that came in times of desperation, and I could only hope it’d rise to aid me when Avis and I began to fight. She was sick, and she was dying, but she was not weak and she was not slow. Not yet.
Without another hesitation, I partially shifted and leaped at the unspeakable mutation that Frederick Axton had created. As I crashed into her, Lennon flung herself away, screaming, but she took time to snatch her wand from Avis’s grip. Good. With both of us fighting her, she was not getting away. We would take her down and end her miserable life.
Everything seemed to happen at once. Avis called for the vampire who had faded himself against the stone wall to attack, and he flew suddenly toward me—but I was too busy with Avis to bother with him. “Lennon,” I yelled. “Stop him!”
She had a very powerful wand that I had witnessed an action. I knew what it could do. I knew it could stop the vampire, or at least distract him. So I trusted her to have my back, and I put all my attention on Avis.
As I had known, Avis was not weak. She was still a challenge, no matter that she was half dead. She had pure hatred driving her on. She would’ve liked to of dragged things out. To torment me further. But she knew she had run out of time.
The only thing left for her to do was kill me.
The vampire behind me began his brutal attack, even as I attacked Avis. The stone room was abruptly full of flying blood and sounds of pain and I had two adversaries to battle. No, that was wrong. There were three enemies in that room.
I was hurt quickly. But I was used to pain, and I shrugged it off, because there was nothing I could do about it and no time to care. My injuries would be dealt with later. If I survived.
And that was beginning to look a little more uncertain, because Lennon turned her wand on me. She crouched against the wall murmuring, and she sent her power right at me. She was good, as I’d known she was, and the blast of magic slammed into my body.
It was like being hit head-on by a train. That feeling wasn’t new. I had been in a lot of fights with a lot of powerful people, and I had had my brain scrambled by most of them. And then I realized the reason Avis had wanted me to shift to my human form.
She had cut me up badly with her claws and though I believe that her terrible magic had waned, I once again felt it surging through me. It wasn’t as painful as before. It wasn’t as potent. But it was plenty strong enough to keep me from shifting to my wolf. And without my demon blade, shifting to my wolf was the one thing I really needed to do to defeat the three people I battled.
Obviously Avis was using Frederick Axton’s mind control magic to make the detective do her bidding and to make Lennon attack me. She’d turned my friends into lumps of mind-controlled evil. It was the only explanation. At least the only one I could accept. And if Avis could be believed, and I believed her, no one was coming to help me. I was going to have to handle shit myself, which would be fine if I could wake up my inner psycho. I needed that power. But Avis’s magic was coursing through my body, magic from Lennon’s wand was making me feel like my entire body was caving in, and the blasted vampire who apparently guarded the room was attempting to remove my head from my body. He had dug his claws into my flesh as though he could simply pinch my head right off. I was pain.
Then Avis made a stupid decision, and I knew that was what would save me. Her need to be the one who hurt me, who killed me, who made me pay for what I had done to her and her master. “Stop,” she screamed. “You said I have to be the one to kill her.”
There was no time for me to be confused about her comment. It was enough that the other two stood down immediately to let her end the fight. The glorious magic inside me was stifled by the poison she had sent into my body, but I was strong enough anyway. I was desperate enough.
I had nothing but my hands and my teeth and my determination, and I used them all to get me what I wanted, what I needed. She leaned over me, poised to pierce my throat with her hideous fangs, and I gathered up everything inside me, even the pain, and I yanked her to me. I hadn’t even realized I was on the floor until that second. She fell off balance and on top of me. I wrapped my arms and my legs around her, held her head still with a hand that had managed somehow to partially shift into a claw—I couldn’t have shifted if I tried, so I guessed my wolf was lending me as much help as she could—and I ripped out her throat.
It wasn’t enough to kill her, though. As she seized on the floor, blood and magic exploding from her torn throat, I let her slide off me and I crawled to Lennon to get her wand. I could end Avis with that wand.
Avis wouldn’t stay down for long. Even now, despite the way she looked, she was slowly healing herself. Maybe I could have summoned enough strength and energy to lift her over the wall, but I was no longer sure that was the right thing to do. I had no guarantees that she would die if I did, and she absolutely had to die.
Here. Tonight.
And I had to kill her.
