Samhain (Matilda Kavanagh Book 2) (27 page)

I rolled my eyes at her. I knew her better than anyone, and I could tell that all she wanted to do was go running in search of him and see for herself. “They’re keeping everyone separated from the werewolves until they can sort who is who. Otherwise I’d take you to him.”

Ronnie’s freckles disappeared behind a flush. “Of course, sure.”

“Can we find some place to sit?” Joey asked. “Smert is tired.” She was holding her tiny, fuzzy, cream-colored dragon, tickling one of his green tufts with her pointy finger.

“Sure, and you can tell me what’s going on out here.” I led the way to the edge of the sidewalk so we could sit on the curb.

There was no telling how long they would keep us all there. I just hoped they’d let the ambulances through and start shuttling people to hospitals before anyone else died. Pairs of people—fairies, witches, and brownies mostly—moved around, passing out emergency blankets and cups of steaming something. When one couple reached us, I was happy to see the steaming cups held hot chocolate. The three of us each took a cup gratefully. Ronnie and I declined blankets, but Joey took one, draping it over her lap and making a little nest for Smert.

“So what’s going on?” I asked.

Ronnie held her cup between both hands, trying to warm her fingers. “A lot of death.”

I took a sip of the steaming chocolate and savored the sweet, soothing feeling running down my throat. It was the first time all night that I’d felt even a modicum of relaxation. “I saw.”

We weren’t looking at each other. We stared ahead, our eyes fixed on some point in the street. It was one tiny spot where there weren’t any bodies or blood. If I let my eyes relax, I could almost believe that everything else had just gone away. But the occasional wail of pain brought me right back to that nightmare spread out around us.

“Over half of the protesters were killed,” Ronnie said. “So many of the monsters were running around, but it was like they were drawn to the humans—at least the ones who were part of P.E.A.C.E.”

“But not the others? Not the humans who just came to join the festival?”

“I mean, not any more than any other moving body, you know?” Ronnie sipped her chocolate.

Joey picked up the thread of the story. “It was like they were programmed to go after the protestors specifically.”

“Why do you say that?” I asked.

“Because so many of them looked like they were looking for something. Only a small number of them broke off and ran into the festival. The rest of them saw the line of protesters and ran right for them.” Joey shook her head, making her soft pink spikes drift back and forth. She hunched over Smert, gathered the blanket around him, and hugged him close.

“Yeah,” Ronnie agreed. “They were sniffing the air, swinging their heads back and forth, and then some idiot screamed. All of them, like twenty of them, turned as if they were all connected by the same string. They saw the humans, and they howled and brayed and ran right at them.”

“How did you see all of this? Where were you? I left you for, like, a minute, and when I turned back, you were just gone.” The panic of losing sight of them resurfaced inside me, and I was torn between wanting to punch them both in the shoulder and pull them close to me.

“So stupid,” Joey said, shaking her head. “I had to pee.”

“What?”

“I knew you’d come back to that spot, and Ronnie knew where we were, so I thought it was okay to run to pee. While I was fighting through the crowd, everything went crazy.”

“I saw her take off, so I followed her, figuring we’d meet you back in the food court in a minute,” Ronnie said. “But then the screaming started, and people were running away from the food court. We couldn’t get back there.”

“We went with the flow of the crowd, figuring when it dispersed, we could run back in and find you,” Joey said.

“But then we were almost at the gates,” Ronnie said, pointing up the hill behind us. “And we saw the, um, we saw…” Her voice was sticking in her throat.

I touched her shoulder lightly. “Them. You saw them.”

She nodded. Squeezing her eyes shut, Ronnie fought the tears and tried to compose herself. “So we were out here when we saw
them
and saw what they were planning on doing with people when they caught them.”

I nodded, looking back at that blank spot on the road again. “I saw that too.” I tried not to remember the sounds of breaking bones and the slurping and chewing and all the other noises that would haunt my nightmares.

“So what happened? How did it stop?” Joey asked. Smert had fallen asleep in her lap and was snoring. It was a soft sound that almost sounded like a cat purring.

Thoughts of Artemis filled my mind, and the only thing in the entire world that I wanted was to go home and scoop him up and rub my face against his smushed one. Guilt slammed through me. He was probably hungry and worried about me. Being my familiar meant that he was metaphysically tied to me. If I spent too much time away from him, we both suffered.

“Mattie?” Ronnie’s voice cut through my worried thoughts. Her hand was on my shoulder, shaking me to bring me back to the present. “Do you know what happened to stop everything?”

“Oh, right, yeah, I do.” I told them about seeing Tollis and his talk about taking the world from humans, the supernaturals rising up like some superior race. I told them about Fletcher trying to come to my rescue and binding Tollis. I told them about lighting the Bonfire and finding out exactly why Jameson truly was the city Alpha.

“Whoa,” Joey said after I finished explaining Jameson’s transformation and feeling his power rush out of him, forcing so many wolves to
shift
smoothly and painlessly.

“Exactly.”

“So Tollis is collared?” Ronnie asked.

“Yes,” I said, draining the rest of my lukewarm chocolate. “They’re back there now, trying to figure out who is part of Jameson’s pack and who is part of Tollis’s and who was just a victim of the Madness.”

“Do you think the people who were Stricken were the humans Tollis kidnapped? The ones he was feeding that potion that Whelan told you about?”

“Yes, I do.” I nodded.

“So he figured out some sort of potion that would transform a human into one of those things when the Samhain full moon rose.”

“I don’t get it,” Joey said. “I mean, it’s the full moon. Why not just have his wolves do this? Why use humans to attack other humans?”

Ronnie and I shared a look when Joey’s words sank in.

“He was always talking about humans oppressing us because they think we’re animals and abominations,” I said, choosing my words carefully. “Maybe he was trying to prove that humans could do this kind of thing to each other.”

Ronnie nodded. “And if it’s humans killing humans, then he’s protecting his pack. They won’t be charged with these crimes.”

“Sonnovahobgoblin,” I swore, getting to my feet so fast my head spun. I needed to get home and get some sleep soon.

“Where are you going?” Ronnie asked, gripping my pant leg to keep me from leaving.

“I have to tell the cops what Tollis was doing, or they’ll release his pack and arrest all those innocent people.”

“No, they won’t,” Ronnie said, tugging on my leg to get me to sit back down. I tried to shake her off, but Ronnie was as stubborn as I was sometimes. “Mattie, Jameson knows what Tollis was doing with those people. He’ll tell them.”

I looked up the hill at the entrance to the ruined festival. There were wooden sawhorses and uniformed police in riot gear standing behind them. They didn’t look friendly or interested in hearing the ravings of one exhausted witch. Reluctantly, I sat back down. I pulled my knees to my chest and wrapped my arms around them.

“It’ll be okay,” Ronnie said. “If we’re wrong and they do arrest everyone, we’ll go home, get Whelan, and take him to the police station. He’ll tell them what happened to him, and you can tell them about the kids you dropped at the hospital, and they’ll have so many witnesses they won’t be able to ignore it, okay?”

“Okay,” I said, nodding slowly. I wasn’t really sure it was, in fact, okay, but I didn’t believe I could get back to the captain and Jameson right then anyway.

The sun was fully in the sky by the time they let people leave. Ronnie, Joey, and I were all fighting to stay awake when officers moved through the crowd, making sure they had everyone’s contact information before giving them permission to go.

Walking home was one of the hardest things I’d ever done in my life. My legs were heavy with exhaustion, and I couldn’t walk in a straight line. I was glad all the city cops were tied up at the park because I would’ve gotten arrested for being drunk in public. I think I passed out on the elevator ride up to my floor, because Ronnie had to shake my shoulder and push me out of the deathtrap, telling me she’d call in the evening.

I struggled with my key, but I got the door open. I picked up Artie, who was waiting for me at the door. I’d expected him to be mad and give me the silent treatment, but he purred when I gathered him to my chest. His warm, healing magic flowed over me, giving me the strength to get to the bedroom. I saw the spectrum of colors behind my eyelids as his magic enveloped us, moving from pale blue to purple to white and back again. I nuzzled his neck, and he meowed, curling into me, his claws flexing in and out of his tiny paws. I smiled for the first time all night, or day, or whatever.

I only had the strength to step out of my shoes before I tumbled into bed. I didn’t even care that I smelled like campfire smoke and the smell would get into my sheets and all the laundry that would mean. Curled around Artemis, my eyes closed and my mind was blessedly quiet. I didn’t even have it in me to get under the covers. I simply fell into a deep abyss.

Chapter 19

I was woken by an insistent pounding on my front door. I’d never been so happy to have fallen asleep in my clothes, because I was so damn groggy that I stumbled through my apartment and answered the door without thinking. If I’d been in my birthday suit, I don’t think I would’ve been alert enough to cover up.

I gripped the door for support, squinting at the mass of bodies pressed into the narrow hallway. There were humans, witches, wizards, fairies, elves, a troll, and some others I couldn’t pinpoint other than knowing they were
other
. It was a motley crew if I’d ever seen one, and the only thing that brought them together as a group was the overwhelming scent of blood. Everyone in my hallway was injured in some way.

“Matilda Kavanagh?” the man up front said.

I squinted at him. He towered over me and was probably the thinnest man I’d ever seen. His hair cascaded down his back in a black wave, and his pale, pointy ears cut through the curtain. His eyes were as black as his hair and so dark I couldn’t make out his pupils. I knew if the elf let his magic flow, the first thing to change would be his eyes. I wondered what color they would be. He cleared his throat, pulling me from my thoughts.

“Yes,” I managed. I pressed my thumb and forefinger into my eyes and rubbed, trying to clear my vision and shake off the fingers of sleep.

“We’ve come for your help.” He lifted his chin and flicked his hair over his shoulder, exposing his long, lean neck. Three ragged gashes curved around it, blood oozing out of them and staining his blue silk shirt.

“All of you?” I looked past the elected spokesman.

Many heads nodded, but the group in the back avoided eye contact with me. They were all dressed in gray, black, and white, and they were very obviously human. Of the group, they were the most battered. Blood splattered their clothing, which was ripped and nearly shredded. Their faces were bruised and swollen, and many of them were leaning on someone else for support. As a group, they’d put space between them and the supernaturals.

After everything they’d put me through, I couldn’t believe that P.E.A.C.E. members had the audacity to show up at my door and ask me for help.

The elf man followed my gaze, twisting at the waist to see what I was staring at. When his eyes landed on the humans, he nodded once and sniffed loudly. “We did not bring them with us.”

“Then why are they here? With you?”

“The hospitals are overrun,” the elf man explained. “There was no telling how much longer we would have to wait, and some of us don’t have that much time.”

Now that my sleep weary eyes were clear. I realized that I did recognize quite a few faces among the supernaturals. None of them were regular customers, but many had come to see me from time to time. I looked back at the human group and felt a twist of anger in my belly. I did not want to let those people into my home. They deserved their injuries as far as I was concerned, and they could bleed out for all I cared. The self-righteous bastards couldn’t even look me in the face, but they wanted my help? Toad scum.

“Come in,” I said with a heavy sigh, waving the crowd in as I stepped back, holding the door open.

“Many thanks,” the elf man said as he stepped inside.

When all of the supernaturals had crossed my threshold, none of my wards blocking them since they didn’t mean me harm, I stepped in the doorway and blocked the humans. I crossed my arms and tilted my head, daring them to look at me. They stopped abruptly, their eyes darting to mine and away again just as quickly. The twist of anger in my belly tightened. I felt heat rushing up my neck to color my face. They still couldn’t look at me? Seriously?

“What do you want?” I demanded. I had decided, without realizing it, that I was going to make them ask for help. They were going to say “please” and “thank you” and look me in the damn eye before I let them in.

They exchanged looks, mouths opening and closing without words coming out, but they still didn’t look at me. I looked at each of them, taking in the details and making note of unique characteristics in case I needed to make a police report later. I was also making sure little Miss Jane wasn’t hiding among them. In the back of the pack, one little boy was staring right at me.

He looked entirely too young to have been out in the middle of the night protesting. If I’d had to guess, I would say he wasn’t a day older than thirteen. He had a wide, open face with large brown eyes. His chin had broken out, and he had a habit of picking at his pimples, making them redder than they already were. His mousy brown hair was mussed, and his shirt was ripped open, exposing the claw marks that ran down his torso. As I held his gaze, his eyes filled with tears, making them shimmer in the hallway lights.