Tarnished Page 11

  Susan wanted to vomit. She wanted to scream at the others to do something. But wasn’t she herself standing idly by? But they didn’t have a baby to consider, they all healed quickly. Maybe they were keeping themselves safe, but what about Silver? What about Pierce?

  “No!”

  The tone of the word so matched Susan’s own feelings it took her half a second to figure out who’d actually said it. Silver’s voice vibrated with rage and she threw herself at Sacramento as the man moved on to Pierce’s pinkie. He casually backhanded Silver into the wall. She landed bad shoulder first with a dull thud that suggested concrete behind the paneling.

  Susan drew in a sobbing breath. Edmond hiccupped from his recent tears and started to squirm. Sacramento had stopped when he noticed the baby in the way. Was that a Were thing? Would even a guy like Sacramento refuse to hurt a child? If that was true, Susan was safer than most people here while holding him.

  The thought gave her enough courage to speak up again. “Silver never challenged you. Why are you hurting her?” When Sacramento transferred his attention to her she held Edmond high to make sure he noticed the baby.

  “Sorry, sweetheart. She’s not part of the Seattle pack.” Sacramento grinned. “Fair game.”

  Susan overfilled her lungs and held it, trying to use the tight feeling to still her shaking. “What about me? I was the alpha’s mate. What status does that give me? High enough? I can’t fight, not with the baby to take care of, but can’t I name a champion or something?” Susan had no idea if any of that was true for Were, but the longer Sacramento was listening to her babble, the longer he wasn’t hurting anyone. Dare would be here eventually.

  “I’d fight for you!” Tom stood and ducked his head to her, almost a bow. He needed a haircut, and the motion made his bangs fall into his eyes. Susan tried to read him. Did he understand what he was getting into, or had he accepted her pretensions to authority and was following orders instinctively? Scary thought. He’d be more ready for it than Pierce had been, but he’d be letting himself in for a world of hurt. Could she really in good conscience ask him to do that?

  “It’s not a true challenge, but if the young man asserts that you’ve been his alpha all along since your mate was incapacitated, never Sacramento, you may ask him to deal with the Were threatening your pack,” Silver said. She pushed herself standing, bracing with her good hand all the way. Her face was white, but she met Susan’s gaze, then flicked her eyes to Tom. Susan wondered if she had the same thought. They needed this, needed someone who could heal the damage to stall Sacramento, but did any teen really understand when they decided to fight for some greater cause?

  Sacramento raised his eyes to the ceiling and spread his hands in a clear “Oh, please” gesture. Tom cracked his knuckles and rolled his neck. His grin reminded Susan of every male, age fifteen to thirty, who had ever invited their friends to watch them do something stupid on a reality TV show.

  Tom threw the first punch and Sacramento blocked it easily. Susan checked that John still looked stable, then worked her way around the outside of the room to Silver. The way she held her shoulder didn’t look good. Susan’s brother had looked like that when he’d broken his collarbone playing football with older neighborhood boys.

  Sacramento blocked another of Tom’s blows, and another, then grinned. Clearly, he was playing with the young man, as he hadn’t bothered to with Pierce. Susan tried not to imagine what he would do to Tom when he was in earnest. Maybe Dare would get here before Sacramento tired of the game. She doubted it, but it was a nice thought.

  Then Sacramento went on the offensive. Each time Tom made it to his feet, cocky grin still hanging on, Sacramento hammered him right back to his knees again. Blow after blow landed, and the bruises began to linger. Tom’s split lip seeped blood. Susan pressed fingertips to her lips to hold in any sounds. Tom didn’t need her squealing each time a blow landed.

  Tom finally curled into a ball and didn’t get up. Susan swallowed convulsively and bounced Edmond as he began to sob. Sacramento growled under his breath as he stood over Tom. He kicked Tom a last time in the kidneys. Tom yelped. “Enough! Enough throwing infants at me.” Sacramento left Tom curled up and moaning and strode for the stairs. His stomach growled, suggesting his reason. The blond and Hispanic thugs positioned themselves again at the bottom of the stairs after their alpha passed between them.

  The pack surrounded Tom to help him up. They supported him, of course. Susan’s frustration boiled over. Tom had listened to her like a dominant Were, so maybe she could use that. “I think Silver’s enough part of the pack that she doesn’t have to have her f—” Susan flicked her eyes down to her son. “—freaking fingers broken. And clearly Tom agrees. What about the rest of you?” She tried to channel a tone of her boss’s that told you there was only one correct answer, and he was waiting to hear it.

  A few nods and mumbled words of assent formed enough of an aggregate positive answer for Susan’s purposes. She drew in a deep breath. She hadn’t been sure that tone would work. Maybe they could work together to keep anyone else from being hurt until Dare got here.

  13

  The Lady’s light that marked the center of any healthy pack’s territory was dim around Silver. So many pack members gathered all together should have coaxed it ablaze. Though perhaps it was the tears of pain she viewed it through. This was a duller ache than the snakes biting at her arm had been, but it still made it hard to think. “It’s a shame you break so easily now,” Death commented.

  He nudged his nose under her bad arm so she could settle it so it would not move. She gritted her teeth as hard as she could and the pain receded. The sour scent of the beta’s smothered pain seeped in as her mind cleared. Silver started toward him, need to soothe instinctive. Maybe the pack hadn’t trusted her before, maybe they would dismiss her again once this was over, but for the moment she was the only alpha dominant they had.

  Susan had proven herself very close to one, however. Silver turned the how of it over in her mind. Susan had spoken like she already had the authority, rather than trying to coax the others into giving it to her. Perhaps it had only partially worked, but it was more than Silver had accomplished, waiting, trying to coax this pack into accepting her as someone who could think for herself.

  But in this situation, Susan could only do so much. Now it was Silver’s turn. “Dare will be here soon,” she told the others, putting confidence into her voice. “But we can’t allow Sacramento to hurt anyone else while we wait. I won’t ask you to fight him, but you know his challenge was not valid.” She gestured to where her cousin slept, wounded by Sacramento’s weapon. Most of the pack’s heads turned, following her words. The underlings just snorted. Good. Let them underestimate what she was doing. “Don’t fight, but protect.” She poured intensity into the word, and released a breath of relief when Death whuffed in approval.

  Now, then. The beta needed his fingers fixed. Silver went to her knees in a controlled fall beside the beta. “Help me with the name?” Silver asked Death, pressing fingertips to her eyes for a moment.

  “Pierce,” the beta himself said. “Silver. Is Dare going to be able to beat him, when he comes?” He sounded so lost, shadows congealing around his damaged hand. Silver knew there shouldn’t actually be shadows there, knew they shouldn’t writhe maliciously, but her own pain had scoured away some of her mind’s ability to control her eyes.

  Silver pulled her mind back to the task at hand. She imagined every beta sounded so, when they first picked up an alpha’s burden and found it too much. It was part of growing up. When he shouldered that burden again, after truly knowing it, then he would be a real alpha.

  “I don’t know.” Silver looked at Death for the answer, but he just returned the look and smirked. “But he’ll have my help.” Silver let her head dip, thinking she didn’t want to see if he still dismissed her for not being able to see his world. But then she couldn’t stand it, so she looked anyway.

  She didn’t find it. Pierc
e’s gaze was level. Trusting. Foolish boy. Silver leaned forward to kiss his forehead and braced his wrist as he snapped the first finger back. Death laughed, and Pierce whined deep in his throat. Silver squeezed his wrist until he did the others. She sat back on her heels. Pierce leaned forward to follow. He left his injured hand cradled in his lap, but he brought the other up to her cheek, the Lady’s light seeping back into him. He rested his forehead against hers. “I don’t know what I should be doing…” It was the barest whisper, trying to keep it from the others.

  “I know.” Silver exhaled slowly. Shadow tendrils pierced her shoulder too, and they twined and slithered as once the snakes had. They had no teeth, at least, no poison. That did not make them comfortable. “I know.” Her own plan did not go much further—keep everyone from being hurt until Dare arrived, that was as far as she’d gotten. She could only pray to the Lady new possibilities would show themselves as the situation changed.

  * * *

  Andrew had plenty of time on the drive back to blame himself. He should have gone inside with Silver and Susan, should have known Sacramento would try a trick like this. Had John been overpowered or threatened into making the call? He wasn’t answering his phone, so Andrew doubted he was sitting around in Fife at the start of a trail.

  Pictures kept flashing through his mind of what could be happening at the house. Silver bleeding out her life with human inexorability, or screaming her throat raw. He tried to wrestle his imagination down but he wasn’t even strong enough for that. What about Susan? Would Sacramento ignore her as incidental once more? And what would he do to Silver…?

  Action finally enabled Andrew to shove the thoughts aside as he screeched into the pack house driveway and turned off the car. He slammed the car door, leaving the key, and ran for the front door. Imagining did no good. He’d see what Sacramento had done, and then make him pay for it.

  The scent of fear came and went in patches, like the source was behind some barrier. Shut up somewhere. Must be the basement, since it was easy to keep the whole pack from escaping down there. When he yanked open the door a blast hit him, the stink of terrified Were marinated with a generous splash of pain and blood. Andrew switched desperately to breathing through his mouth.

  He turned a corner and saw that the door at the top of the basement stairs stood open. His feet took him toward it without conscious thought but he jerked himself to a stop. Sacramento would have heard him arrive, but Andrew had a beat or two to plan. Essential to take advantage of it. This was part of Sacramento’s trap. He knew that. Sacramento had called him here, baited it with the suffering down below. But what else could he do? The only help he could call was down there in that room.

  He didn’t know how Sacramento had subdued the pack, but if Andrew could undo that, that would swing the odds in his favor. He’d been their alpha before, however briefly. That and the fact that he wouldn’t hurt them, maybe that would count for something. Andrew ran again, into the basement and down the stairs.

  Sacramento stood behind Silver in the center of the basement, couch moved up against the wall to create more space. His hand rested on her shoulder, deceptively gentle. She held herself straight and confident, and like something was broken. Andrew couldn’t breathe for a moment, but at least she was standing. It wasn’t her blood he smelled.

  Sacramento’s gelled hair was as impeccable as it had been the last time Andrew saw him, though his shirt was crumpled and sweat-stained. The just-groomed-after-a-fight look was somehow even more of a slap in the face because of the pain all around him.

  Sacramento smirked, enjoying his moment, so Andrew forced himself to look away from Silver to see who else was hurt. Who else could help him. Susan stood off to the side with the baby in his sling, unhurt probably because of the child. John was laid out on the floor, surrounded by most of his pack. His shirt had a small bloodstained hole. A bullet hole. Andrew drew in a deep breath, trying to find the gun by scent, but the basement stank too much for that. He found it by eye instead, up out of the way on a shelf for now. With that marked, Andrew moved on.

  Tom was curled into a ball among the huddled pack, looking like he’d been beaten nearly unconscious. He was the other source of the blood, though at least none still flowed. Pierce was chained up, huddled around his hand like it was another injury healing slowly after too much other abuse.

  “Congratulations. You’ve given me the justification I needed to take you down without political repercussions.” Andrew pushed the words out around a snarl. Fights weren’t supposed to end in death, and he shouldn’t kill Sacramento—couldn’t, without shooting his plans for challenging for Roanoke in the head, even with what Sacramento had done. No one in the pack was dead. In the Convocation’s eyes, they’d all heal.

  But that didn’t matter anymore. Someone needed to take Sacramento down. Andrew sought Sacramento’s eyes to force a dominance struggle in the eye contact as he untucked his shirt, ready to shift.

  To his shock, Sacramento turned his head, breaking the contact. He laughed. “No, Dare. Not yet.” He tightened his hold on Silver’s shoulder and twisted it.

  Bones creaked and Silver’s expression grew glazed with agony. She whimpered, a gasped, panting sound that hardly left her time to breathe. Andrew could barely see with the pounding beat of rage in his head. Sacramento just smiled and twisted harder when Andrew jerked another step forward. “Just getting started, Dare. Nice and slow so there’s no shock and this doesn’t end too soon, hm? Death takes her when I say.”

  “Sacramento—” The second of Sacramento’s men, the one Andrew hadn’t met before, started forward, disgust settling into his scent.

  Sacramento spared a snarl for him. “Go guard the front door.” When he didn’t move, Sacramento raised his voice. “Both of you! Now!” His tone threatened that whoever heard the order and ignored it would soon find himself without a pack. Neither of Sacramento’s goons disobeyed.

  Andrew stepped aside to allow the goons to reach the stairs. Sacramento watched and dug fingers into Silver’s shoulder when Andrew would have come closer.

  Andrew reached down into the calm of a fight, used it to force out words as he locked his muscles down. “Your business is with me, Nate.”

  Calm more or less achieved, it urged him to wade in anyway. It whispered that Silver couldn’t get hurt any worse than she already was before he took Sacramento down. Only Andrew knew she could, so he stayed where he was. His heart bled to not be able to stop her pain.

  “Oh, but you killed my son, Andrew. I think it’s only fair I kill your mate. After I make her suffer a little.”

  “He never suffered. He died for his crimes, but he never suffered. He enjoyed causing suffering. Looks like he got that from you.” Andrew’s mouth kept going, but it felt like it was almost divorced from the rest of him. Keep tossing out insults, while the rest of him screamed. Kill Silver? He’d have to kill Andrew first.

  * * *

  Shadows slipped into Silver’s veins and then slashed their way out again. Distantly, she recalled the pain of the snakes in her arm before they’d died, when they had called the Lady’s light to burn her up. That had been pain. This was just a distraction. And Death was with her. It was ironic, that she should find that comforting. But he kept her anchored, so mist did not cover her eyes and make her lose track of Dare.

  “You are the one who brought torture into this,” Silver said. Her words were weak and dissipated into the air with her panting, but she felt the shadows congeal around her captor once more. Death stood before them, poised to attack at a moment’s notice, but he did not interfere. This was Silver’s task, and she knew it. If she was to make this pack believe she wasn’t useless, she needed to be not useless. She couldn’t wait for Dare, or Seattle, or anyone else to save her.

  Sacramento shook her to make her words stop and Silver stayed limp so the shadows didn’t cut so badly. Even so, she still bled drips of liquid pain like acid from her shoulder. So hard to think when it hurt so much. Lady, what
was she supposed to do? She didn’t have the strength to fight Dare’s enemy any longer.

  Sacramento hadn’t used his own strength to defeat her cousin, though. He’d used a weapon. Silver searched out where he’d put it aside for later. She tried to see the weapon for what it really was, tried to see it properly. It glinted with shadow, something that wasn’t possible, and she could hear it hissing of her death even from the other side of the room. The snakes had hissed so. Someone needed to reach the weapon and kill it before Sacramento could use it.

  “An adequate leader knows how to do what must be done herself,” Death said. “A good leader knows how to get things done, whoever does them.” His tail flicked.

  “Susan!” Silver put all her remaining command into her voice and looked straight at the weapon for as long as she could. Then Dare’s enemy made the shadows cut her until tears flowed and her eyes wouldn’t focus. She could only hope Susan understood what Silver needed her to do.

  * * *

  Susan felt as frozen as Dare seemed to be as they listened to Silver whimper. Silver calling her name brought her back to herself. She saw Silver look at the gun, request clear enough. She should have thought of it herself. But she’d only ever fired a gun at the range with her brother, and she didn’t think Sacramento would believe any bluff she attempted.

  Silver sobbed and something in Susan snapped. No. No more. She had to do something. Not “someone.” Her. Right now. She shrugged out of the sling. If the thugs wouldn’t touch her when the baby was in the way, then Tom needed that protection more than she did at the moment. Tom was sitting up now and though his expression creased with confusion, he cradled Edmond instinctively when Susan handed him over. Susan pushed up and walked at the edge of the pack until the last minute, like she was just moving within it. She reached the shelf and carefully lifted the gun from the top. She had to stop Sacramento from hurting everyone. Stop him hurting everyone so that it stuck, this time.