Pocket Apocalypse: InCryptid, Book Four (39 page)

Blithe stopped, the menace leaking out of her face like it was a punctured balloon. “Ah,” she said, reaching up to touch the knife’s hilt with one shaking hand. Vitreous humor was beginning to leak down her cheek like thick, terrible tears.

“Silver-tipped throwing knives,” I said, pulling my other hand from behind my back and beginning to cut the ropes holding me to the chair. “Always carry them when going into werewolf territory. Unless you’re trying to commit a very painful form of suicide.”

“Ah,” said Blithe again. She started trying to close her fingers around the knife, and found that she couldn’t: the silver on the blade was already interfering with her motor functions.

“Cooper was right: people are generally happier when they feel like they’ve been treated with respect. But the way to do that would have been to not do this in the first place. Nothing about this situation is respectful.” Pins and needles flooded my feet when I cut the ropes away. My circulation was going to take a while to return to normal. Bastards. I forced myself to stand anyway, testing my balance. “I truly am sorry this happened to you. I’m sure you were a lovely person before you got bitten.”

“Ah,” she said, dropping her hand. She looked at me beseechingly, or as beseechingly as it was possible for someone to look when they had a knife protruding from one eye.

“I understand,” I said.

The third knife caught her in the hollow of the throat, severing her airway and coating the wound with silver at the same time. Whatever regenerative properties she possessed—it was unclear exactly how much healing werewolves were capable of, but all the legends agreed it was there, and it was always best to trust the folklore when fighting something you couldn’t risk studying in depth—they wouldn’t be able to work around the silver.

The sound she made when she hit the floor was small and somehow sad, like she had been intended for a grander ending. I walked across the room to where she lay sprawled, and knelt, rolling her onto her back. Her single remaining eye stared sightlessly at the ceiling. I checked her pulse, and found it absent. I still used one of my remaining knives to slit her throat, and waited for a count of one hundred before I reclaimed the others. It was always better to be safe than sorry, especially under circumstances like this one.

I wiped my knives clean on a patch of carpet that no one had yet had the chance to bleed on. Then I straightened, checking the rest of my weapons. They were all present, save for the pistol that had been at my belt. I guess Cooper’s ideas about “respect” didn’t extend to leaving me with silver bullets. That was all right. I’m a Price. I was raised knowing how to improvise.

With three throwing knives ready in my left hand, I walked to the door, and pulled it open.

“Empathy is a beautiful thing. It’s also a luxury. When your back is against the wall, remember that survival comes before sympathy, and if you can only save one person, you have to save yourself.”

—Alexander Healy

Stepping into the hall in an unknown location that is probably still in Queensland, Australia, but might as well be on the moon

C
OOPER WAS EITHER
ARROGANT
or stupid, or put too much faith in Blithe—or possibly and most likely, some combination of the three. The hall was empty, stretching out in either direction like an invitation to freedom. I stopped in the doorway, tucking my chin against my chest and closing my eyes as I listened to the house, trying to decide which way was going to lead me to the outside world. Voices drifted from the left, distant and distorted, but audible enough to make me think they belonged to living people, rather than to an unattended television set. I raised my head, opened my eyes, and started walking.

The nice thing about being in a house with an unknown number of people is that while it’s still best to be reasonably stealthy, there’s no need to muffle every step like some sort of ninja in a video game. Most small sounds will be dismissed as either a sign of the foundation settling, or the result of someone else moving around. There’s a downside, of course—I could come around a corner and find myself nose to snout with one of my werewolf captors—but the positives outweighed the negatives, at least in my situation.

The impression that this was a Thirty-Six Society safe house intensified as I walked along the hall. The walls were bare, save for a few small, geometric paintings in cheap black frames, and the carpet, while a cheerful shade of lemony yellow, was clearly designed to be easily cleaned, more practical than plush. I would have laid odds on it having been Scotchgarded against bloodstains. Whoever did their interior decorating wasn’t creative, but they were practical enough to make up for any lapses.

Following the voices led me to the top of a flight of stairs. I stopped and pressed my back against the wall, listening.

They were arguing about something. I couldn’t make out what it was, but the female voice sounded angry, and the male voice sounded more placating. Cooper wasn’t there, or if he was, he was sitting by silently, observing his people while they fought.

Cooper had taken Chloe and Trigby with him when he went to get Shelby. My stomach sank. Either there were more werewolves than I had suspected, or Cooper was already back with my girlfriend. Neither option was good. To be honest, I had hoped that Cooper’s people wouldn’t come back at all. Shelby wasn’t some defenseless little flower, and with her mother and sister right there, she stood a good chance of taking out any attacker. But Cooper knew her. He might know how to get around whatever security the Tanners had in place.

Bastard. I didn’t enjoy thinking of myself as a killer, but I couldn’t deny that I would enjoy seeing him dead.

Slowly, I peeled away from the wall and began creeping down the stairs, so tense that my shoulders felt like they had been replaced by iron bars. The knives in my hand were no real comfort. I still couldn’t use my left hand for knife-throwing, and this wasn’t the sort of situation I wanted to walk into one-handed and without a gun. I listened even harder as I descended, hoping for something to indicate how many werewolves were beneath me, and whether they were the two I had seen before.

The step beneath my foot creaked loudly.

I froze, pulling back a step, but it was too late: the alarm had been sounded. “Blithe?” a man’s voice, much closer than it had been only a few seconds before: he was approaching. Dandy. That was just what I needed. “Did you need something? You know you’re supposed to stay with the Price fellow until Cooper gets back.”

Maybe this
was
just what I needed. Now I knew that Cooper hadn’t returned with Shelby, even if this confirmed the existence of at least two more werewolves. Like Blithe, this man sounded faintly familiar; I had probably walked past him at some point, maybe even been introduced to him, and failed to register anything out of the ordinary. Assuming I got through this alive, I was going to recommend the family seriously improve our werewolf detection training.

A narrow male face appeared around the wall separating the stairwell from the front room. He had time to widen his eyes and open his mouth in preparation for shouting for help, and then a knife was in his throat, making it impossible for him to do more than choke. He staggered backward, out of my line of sight, before I could throw another knife.

“What the
fuck
—?!” shrieked the female voice.

So much for stealth. I ran the rest of the way down the stairs, whipping around the corner into the living room to find a skinny teenage girl holding up the man with the knife in his throat, a terrified expression on her face.

“We didn’t do it,” she said rapidly. “We didn’t kidnap you we didn’t touch you we didn’t do anything please. Please don’t do this. Please we haven’t hurt anyone please.” The man was still choking and clawing at the knife in his throat, and for a moment, I was afraid I had acted too quickly: that I had killed, or at least direly injured, an innocent bystander.

Then I noticed her hands. They were shortening, the fingers becoming stubby as the nails became more pronounced, stretching into claws that dug into the man’s skin without quite breaking it. These people were werewolves. Whether they had chosen this or not, they were, for the moment, the enemy.

She proved it a second later, when she shoved the man aside, revealing the reshaped angles of her legs, which had stretched and bent while his body had blocked them from view, giving her a wolf’s jumping power while leaving her with a human’s height and versatility. She snarled, showing a mouth full of teeth, and leaped for me, clawed hands extended.

I flung a knife at her, aiming for the dark triangle of her open mouth. She batted the blade aside while it was in the air. Shit.

With only two knives remaining and no chance of getting more, I did the only sensible thing: I turned and ran, trusting panic to grant me greater speed. There was a door only a few feet away. I wrenched it open, revealing a dark porch, the night spread out beyond it like a prayer—and Cooper, Shelby slung over his shoulder, standing there. The look on his face must have mirrored mine, all stunned confusion and disbelief. Then it hardened, and his eyes flashed amber.

Well, shit.

Cooper recovered first. “Don’t kill him!” he barked, directing his words to the girl behind me. I raised my knives, preparing to throw, and stopped as clawed hands seized my arms and yanked them painfully behind my back. “Disarm,” Cooper snarled.

The hands tightened, compressing until I could no longer keep my right hand closed against the pain. The knives clattered to the ground.

“He put one of those in Albert’s throat,” said the unnamed female werewolf, her words garbled by her mouthful of lupine teeth but still intelligible. “Albert’s not getting better.”

“Silver throwing knives?” asked Cooper, looking back to my face. I didn’t answer him. He smiled. “Clever. I’m assuming Blithe is dead?”

“You’re next,” I said. “Shelby—”

“Not bitten yet. Thought I’d show you I mean business and give you one more chance to come along willingly. That way you can bite her yourself, once you understand what we’re offering you.” Cooper’s smile was full of teeth, but they still looked mostly human. He was keeping himself under control, for now. “And before you start thinking that we’re easily fooled, remember, I left Blithe with you for a reason.”

I stared at him. It had seemed awfully convenient, me left alone with a single werewolf, especially one who was so cocky that she’d let herself get into range. “You set her up.”

“She thought she was in charge. I thought you might have something up your sleeve.” Cooper shrugged. “Guess I was right and she was wrong. Thanks for cleaning up that little mess for me. Now we have a better understanding of how far you’ll go, and I don’t have to kill her myself.”

“Albert,” whined the werewolf who was holding me.

“He should’ve known better than to go investigate a strange noise—I’m assuming that’s what happened, yeah?” Cooper didn’t wait for an answer. He pushed past us, carrying Shelby inside. The door remained open, but there was no way I was making a break for it: not now, not with Shelby in his control. He might be willing to refrain from biting me until I consented. I knew he wasn’t going to offer her the same courtesy.

Besides, Chloe and Trigby appeared on the porch almost as soon as he’d vacated it, prowling out of the darkness as naked as the day they’d been born. Chloe smirked at me when she saw me. “Like what you see?” she purred. “Tanner girls don’t know how to have fun. Maybe once you’re properly one of us, you and I can play a little chase-the-rabbit around the meadow, hmm?”

“Business first, pleasure later,” snapped Cooper. “Deb, keep hold of him. Chloe, come help me tie her down.”

“You’re no fun at all,” complained Chloe. She stepped past me. “Ew, what happened to Albert? Is he dead?”

“He will be soon,” said Cooper, sounding unconcerned. “Deb, come on. Kitchen, now.”

Deb growled, apparently too upset to continue using words. Her claws were breaking the skin on my arms. I winced, but did my best not to struggle. She was on the verge of losing control, and I didn’t want to give her any reason to disobey Cooper.

“Better move, Deb,” said Trigby, not unkindly. “You know the boss doesn’t like being kept waiting.”

“Hate him,” spat Deb, her voice now so distorted that it was virtually incomprehensible. She turned, yanking me along with her. I caught a glimpse of Albert, lying in a pool of blood in the middle of the floor—and apparently quite dead—and then I was being shoved across the room and down a short hallway that I hadn’t had the opportunity to see before. It ended in a small, homey kitchen with a tile floor and floral wallpaper. A dining set took up a large portion of the available floor space. Shelby, still unconscious, had been dumped into one of the chairs, and Cooper was in the process of tying her hands behind her.

“Put him down,” he said, jerking his chin toward an open chair.

Deb shoved me into the seat, harder than she had to, ripping my arms even more in the process. This time, I didn’t bother to conceal my wince. Cooper was watching. The more hurt he thought I was, the better my situation was going to be.

“You’ve killed two of my people,” he said. “I hope you understand that you’re going to replace them. I am a fair man. I know you may have had other plans for your life. At the same time, I can’t allow you to weaken us like this.”

I stared at him. “You put me in a situation where it was her or me.”

“Yes, and you could have chosen to let her kill you and thus spare yourself a lifetime on all fours. You elected to live. That’s good for me—I wanted you to make that choice—but it’s not necessarily best for you.” Cooper smiled. “At least you’ll still be together.”

“It didn’t have to be like this,” I said. “It still doesn’t.”

“I think you’ll find that we’re well past the point of no return,” said Cooper. He moved to stand behind Shelby, licking his lips once, and then bent forward, like he was going to kiss her neck.

I couldn’t help it. I jerked against Deb’s hands, cutting myself worse in the process, to no avail. Her grip was too tight. I wasn’t breaking free.

Someone rang the doorbell.

The entire room went still. Cooper snarled, straightening again, and looked first to Chloe and Trigby—who were naked—and then to Deb, who was half-transformed and had shredded much of her clothing. Seeing no useful flunkies, he lowered his voice and said, “Be quiet. I don’t know who followed us here, but they don’t know for sure that anyone’s inside.”

The doorbell rang again. Shelby groaned, beginning to stir. Cooper checked the knots on her hands, looking flustered for the first time. Too much was happening at once; his plans might be elaborate, but they didn’t cover anything like this.

“We can kill whoever it is,” said Chloe, in a mild, almost disinterested tone.