Bold Mercy by Laken Cane
Chapter Thirty-One
I ripped the wand from Lennon’s hand, and though she fought me, she really wasn’t a fighter. I punched her in the face, holding back so I wouldn’t kill her, and when her grip loosened, I took control of her wand. I managed to get to my feet, and I stumbled and staggered to Avis, and I did not hesitate. I lifted the wand and plunged it into her heart. To me, that wand was simply a wooden stake. But the wand had other ideas.
It exploded with magic. Power shot up my arm and into my shoulder, so intense and shocking that I gave a hoarse scream, but I didn’t let go of the wand. Avis’s heart exploded with the magic, pieces of it hitting my face, the wall, the floor.
The vampire never moved away from the wall, but Lennon ran to me, and while I was stuck in the magic of her wand, she hit me in the head with what felt like a large rock she’d either pried up from the floor or wall or maybe had simply found it lying there. She was as caught in Avis’s awful magic as I was in the power of the wand, but then Avis died, and Lennon continued to hit me.
I was flung away, finally, as though I’d held a live wire that finally let me go, and I held a hand up as Lennon started toward me, her face twisted and wet with tears. “Stop, Lennon. She’s dead. The spell will wear off now and you’ll be okay. Just wait.”
“Give me my wand,” she cried, attempting to grab it.
But I knew if she got the wand before the magic was gone, she’d kill me with it. “When you’re calm,” I told her, holding her off as I finally managed to stand. Then it was just a matter of holding the wand out of her reach. She was short, and I was tall. She wasn’t getting the wand.
Seconds later, she fell to her knees, head hanging, and began to sob. “What have I done,” she cried. “Oh, God, Kait. Why did I try to hurt you?”
Barely able to stand, I crouched beside her. “It wasn’t your fault, honey. She did the same thing to Detective Moreno.” I slid the wand to her, but reluctantly. I really did want that wand. “But Avis can’t hurt anyone anymore. Let’s get out of here.”
She accepted the wand almost gingerly. “Let me help you heal,” she whispered. “I can purge you of the magic that’s keeping you from shifting. And I can at least wipe away some of the pain.” She looked at me, finally, her eyes brimming. “I’m so sorry, Kait. I’m just so fucking sorry.”
I patted her hand. “Not your fault,” I told her. “Do what you can to heal me. My wolf and Dr. Hayes will do the rest. We need to hurry. I have no idea what’s going on below.”
“The rogues will be easily controlled with Avis gone,” she said, her voice stronger. She straightened her shoulders. “The world is different, and we will adjust. Hold out your hands so I can push pain relief in through your palms.”
I held my hands out obediently, and she circled them with the wand, whispering words I didn’t understand. The light that wrapped around my wrists was warm, blue, and numbing, and I began to feel immediate relief as it spiraled up my arms. But then the light became restrictive, like rope, and I frowned.
“Just another minute,” she said, then fell back into whispering nonsense.
I didn’t know how long it took me to realize she wasn’t trying to heal me. She was trying to restrain me—and she was succeeding, because I’d patiently sat there and meekly held my arms out so that she could wrap them with her magic.
“Lennon,” I said carefully, trying to tug my arms away, “what are you doing?”
But she wouldn’t stop chanting, and then, I was well and truly caught. I was cocooned in invisible ropes of magic, and I could not fight my way free. Not from that.
Then she pushed herself away from me and sat with her back against the wall and her knees drawn up, her wand securely in her grip. “A long time ago,” she said, “I “saw” you. I was shown that you were a danger to me, my pack, my alpha. I knew I would be forced to have you killed, eventually, because as long as you’re alive, no one is safe. You destroy things, Kait. The councils have made you judge, jury, and executioner and though you have yet to completely immerse yourself in that role, it’s coming.” She grimaced and put her fingers to her throat, then continued. “Avis promised to help me. She’d see to it that Lucy disappeared and she would kill you, and I would go home and pretend none of this happened. I didn’t want to see you die.”
I shook my head. “You’re not the bad guy, Lennon. You can’t be.”
She hiccupped, then darted her tongue out to lick the tears sliding over her lips. “Of course I’m not the bad guy, Kait! You are the bad guy. I just want to protect my people. It’s simple as that. My pack and my alpha are everything to me. I’ll do anything I have to do to protect the nonhumans. To protect our world. But you have no loyalty. You’ve lost your way. You don’t even know who you are.”
“I would never hurt Jared or the pack,” I told her. Honestly, I was stunned. Was she right? Was I the bad guy? Is that how the nonhumans saw me? But I shook it off. I couldn’t feel sorry for myself. I couldn’t feel guilty. I needed my rage.
I forced myself to relax, then concentrated on using my own magic to try to break the bonds she’d restrained me with.
She looked at me with pity and frustration in her eyes. “You’re the reason all of this happened. You could have made different choices. You accepted the council’s request. You killed Axton. You destroyed his seer—and I saw that you would also destroy me. Just as your old pack alpha knew you would destroy him, which is why he forced you out of his pack. He didn’t want to kill you, so he sent you away. And guess what? You will kill him. Because of you, the nonhumans are in awful danger and the humans are dying. You are not a champion of nonhumans, and you cannot live in our world.”
“You’re the reason the pack hated me so much, aren’t you?” I asked her, filtering out her accusations. I would look at them another time, if I kept my life. “You planted fear and doubt. It wasn’t just that they thought my father was a traitor, though they hated me enough for his sins.” I needed to keep her talking. Her reluctance to do the dirty work and kill me could possibly help me survive this night.
“Your father was a traitor. He wasn’t a good man. He abused you your entire childhood, and you think he was a god.” She shrugged. “Maybe that, combined with your hobbled wolf, made you the horror that you are. You’re a traitor, too, Kait, and I was not going to allow you to destroy my pack. Unfortunately, I didn’t stop you before you succeeded. I was soft. I can’t be soft any longer.” She gave a sob, truly upset that she would now have to kill me. She squeezed her wand and began a tiny flurry of movements that would likely end in my death.
“What about Lucy,” I said, desperate to slow her down. I could feel the magic weakening. I couldn’t break the bonds, not yet, but I was getting there. I was sure of it. “Why did you want to hurt her?”
“She sees too much. Her dreams are confusing to her at times, but she would have become very powerful eventually. She would have known what I’d planned for you. She saw herself with a serial killer, didn’t she?”
“Rick is the serial killer?” I whispered, horrified.
“God, no. He’s a man whose mind is trapped by a dark magic he might never escape. It wasn’t his fault he was taken by Axton. That was on you, too, wasn’t it? No, Lucy saw herself with the serial killer because she was with the serial killer. Quite often. She was falling for him. Falling for a killer.” Her expression hardened. “Just as my alpha is falling for one. And I must protect him. You understand that, deep down, don’t you?”
Like she needed my permission and understanding so she could be at peace with her decision to murder me. And I was not going to break the bonds of her magic in time to save myself.
Finally, as the effects of Avis’s paralyzing and painful magic drifted away, rage began to swirl in my stomach. My mind slid into darkness, and my heart began to thud faster and harder with hatred. Maybe I was the bad guy. Maybe I would kill everyone who pissed me off. Maybe I hated the world.
The council wouldn’t have chosen me if I were weak enough to let one fucking seer kill me. I smiled as an eager joy added itself to the dark rage.
Hello, Psycho.
“Go ahead and kill me then,” I murmured. “Let’s see how strong you are, pretty girl.”
She jerked so hard the back of her head hit the wall, and a blast of hard purple magic splashed from the wand. It landed on the floor with a splat, and the stones broke beneath it. Genuine terror lit her gaze, and for a brief second, I saw myself through her eyes.
Was I the bad guy?
Yeah. Right then, I was.
She scrambled to her feet, and there was no more delaying. Her fear and revulsion were larger than her reluctance to kill. She steadied her shaking hand and whirled her wand, leaving beautiful traces of color in the air, and then she sent all the power she could muster at me. “Please die,” she whispered. “Please just die.”
Poor thing, so upset at having to kill me. I guess she’d blame that on me, too.
I braced for the impact, but really, one couldn’t prepare for a killing magic. For a few seconds after it hit me, I thought I was never going to survive it. It wasn’t meant to be survived. Simply put, it hurt like a motherfucker.
God, I wanted that wand.
But whatever was inside me didn’t flinch from the pain. It welcomed it. It absorbed it and used it and in the end, it broke her magical bonds. She screamed as I ran toward her, and then fell as she tried to scramble away from me. But I couldn’t let her go, just as I couldn’t let Avis go.
I took the wand. Lennon didn’t deserve such a gift. “Don’t worry,” I told her. “I won’t destroy it. I’ll use it for what it was meant to be used. A weapon.” Then I frowned at her. “Why haven’t you shifted?”
“Because I don’t want you to hurt my wolf,” she murmured, and she was dead serious. “I didn’t want any of you to hurt my wolf.”
“I guess I’m not the only one who has trouble separating my wolf from myself,” I told her. “But you know I’m going to kill you.”
She didn’t scream or run or even try to hit me. She didn’t shift. She slid to the floor, her back against the wall, and stared up at me with a complete lack of hope in her eyes. “Please, Kate,” she said. “Show me mercy. Give me back to my pack, to my alpha. Don’t let me die here.” Then she said nothing more, and she didn’t take her stare from mine. She was almost calm as she waited to die.
And psycho or not, I couldn’t kill her.
“I’ll turn you over to Jared,” I told her. “But I’m keeping the fucking wand.”
Her eyes widened. “Kait. Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me,” I said. “Jared will not go easy on you. If he doesn’t kill you, he will do something worse.” But I could see by the look in her eyes that she didn’t believe me. For a moment, I wavered. He might blame me for everything. She could definitely twist Eli into believing whatever she told him.
If I killed her now, I could blame it on Avis. No one would ever know. And I wouldn’t have to tell any of them the things Lennon had said about me.
But I didn’t kill her. “How the hell,” I said, yanking her up from the floor, “do we get out of this place?”
“Only Larry can admit or expel a person,” she said. “That’s what Avis told me. But I don’t know how to get him to let us out.”
“Larry,” I called. “We’re ready to go. Open the door.”
And apparently it was just that simple. Apparently anyone could give Larry orders and he’d obey. He detached from the wall like a sinister shadow, walked toward a section of the wall, and reached for a doorknob that hadn’t been there a second earlier.
But I couldn’t go, not yet. There wasn’t a nonhuman or counsel on earth that wasn’t going to want to see proof of Avis Vine’s death. I had to take her with us. I wound her hair around my hand—and the wand—and I dragged her across the floor and out the door.
When we were in the hallway, Larry shut the door, and it was simply gone. There was no doorway, no room, and no living Avis Vine.
Not anymore.
But her legacy, that would live on forever.
