“It was called consumption in my day. Now you call it”-Suyolak tipped his head to one side as if listening, picking the term from a mind-“tuberculosis. It is an ugly word for such an elegant process that eats your lungs small bite by bite. A tiny predator ranging wild within. Marvel at the beauty of it.”
Marvel. Jesus.
Straightening, Rafferty said, “We cured that a long time ago, asshole. And you talk too much.” His voice was clear, not thick and choking, and the rest of us weren’t dead on the ground. That meant he was holding his own. “Here’s something new for you.”
This time Suyolak was the one to stumble. It was only a few inches back and he stayed on his feet, but the blood that poured from his nose and mouth cheered me up some. He coughed, holding up a hand toward us, palm out. Whatever was behind that hand stopped Rafferty after a single step, one he’d been quick to take. He was a healer, but he was a Wolf too. He could kill with his mind and he could kill with his hands. With Suyolak he’d use whichever one would do the job.
“Ah, this… one.” Suyolak lifted his head to grin with teeth now coated black in the moonlight. “This one is a thing of magnificence.” The blood stopped. “What do you call this then? Ebola? Hemorrhagic fever? A fitting name for a glory I’d not even dreamed of.” The grin widened. “I approve.” This time Rafferty didn’t just stagger; he almost fell, and I didn’t want to even guess what kind of god-awful disease he was fighting. Leprosy. Smallpox. Suyolak’s blue plate special, the plague.
“Goddamn it,” I muttered. “Why doesn’t he just go for the heart like he did to me?”
“I imagine that’s quite thoroughly protected as Rafferty is protecting his and ours. They most likely have only the tiniest cracks that are weak enough to attack.”
Niko’s comment didn’t satisfy Delilah. “No manner to fight.” She paced the area behind us. “Throwing germs.” There was a righteous disgust in her voice. “It is wrong. To stand aside. Wrong. Want to fight. Want to bite. Want to kill.” Catcher was picking up on her blood-lust, his growls growing wilder.
I grabbed Delilah’s arm as she passed to yank her to a stop. “Quit it. If you send Catcher off the deep end, you might distract Rafferty, and then we’ll all be spreading the news about how festive Ebola is. If we survive this, you’ll have plenty of other things to kill.” One of them might be me, but there was a time and a place to worry about that. It wasn’t now.
She threw my arm off. “It is not just the kill. It is the battle. The fight. I am Wolf, not sheep. I do not stand. I do not wait. I fight.”
“Then look over your shoulder,” Robin said, hanging on to Catcher for all he was worth. “You’re about to get ten years of birthday wishes all in one. And thanks so very much by the way. It’s just what we needed on top of the oh-so-entertaining parade of diseases throughout history.”
Too agitated to pick up their scent or unable to detect it over Suyolak’s own, Delilah hadn’t smelled them coming-neither she nor Catcher. The Ördögs were back. Or since we’d killed all of the others that had come out of the truck the day before… hell, not the day before… this morning. It had been this morning. Talk about one long damn day. Time was so raveled in knots, I honestly couldn’t tell one day from the next, but it had been this morning. It had been today-the day that I’d argued with Delilah, eaten a Big Mac, then a deer, lost a piece of what humanity I had left, and now it was time to fight for my life… again. The army thought they did more before nine a.m. than most do all day. Well, they could get in line.
No, these Ördögs weren’t from the truck or the creek where we’d killed the others. There were more this time and they looked… full… their sunken bellies now bulging with food. From their appearance, they’d had at least the entire day to hunt for prey and that would only make them quicker and stronger than the last. Suyolak hadn’t chosen this place at random. Whether he’d gotten the location from the dead professor’s mind or just felt the huge area teeming with life, he had picked the park; he had the Ördögs waiting. I thought he’d underestimated the seals, as Abelia had overestimated herself, and had the truck pass it by until he could get out of the coffin.
Or, out of the kindness of his heart, he’d waited to wreak death and destruction until the noncamping areas of the park were empty. That, I sincerely doubted. We used to have a neighbor when I was ten, for a few months before we moved again as we always did. She was pear shaped, her hair always in rollers, and she had a mouth so small and pursed, she could’ve doubled as a nickel slot machine. She’d once told me, as she crushed a cigarette under one large rubber flip- flop, that I was no better than I had to be. I hadn’t gotten that as a kid, and Niko for once hadn’t felt the need to explain it to me. No better than I had to be; seriously, what did that mean? I’d long since learned what it meant, and I knew Suyolak was no better than he had to be either, certainly no kinder than he had to be.
And that wasn’t kind at all. We were lucky we weren’t hip deep in tourist corpses-instead of being hip deep in all-too-alive Ördögs. But better than all that, just too fucking good to be true, were the Wolves behind them. Ten of them: nine in lupine form and one still wearing his human suit in the midst of them all.
“Cabal,” Delilah announced with a mixture of disdain and what sounded like reluctant pride. “Pack leader. Mine.”
I understood the emotions then. Disdain because traditionally Alphas were male and that was not a tradition Delilah embraced. She wanted to be Alpha and, despite not being male or a high breed, and being a believer in the All Wolf on top of it all, I’d have put my money on her. That was before I’d come into the picture, and, it being a particular talent of mine, I was the straw that broke the camel’s back. A female, maybe; an All Wolf, chances were slim. Screwed an Auphe-if that wasn’t the sole reason the dictionary had the word anathema in it, you’d have to show me proof otherwise.
As for the pride part of her emotion, she might want to kill him and take his place, prove herself worthy, but if you were a Wolf, your pride also rested in your Alpha. He represented your pack. He was your pack. Every day was the day you hoped to end his reign and begin yours, but until then he was as the world saw you-the Wolf world. He was you.
“You called them here,” Niko said to Delilah, not as an accusation but as a fact.
“Yeah, she did.” I wasn’t any more surprised than he was. I wasn’t disappointed either. I wasn’t hypocrite enough to let myself be. I’d known all along what she was, and I’d known this was more than likely coming. But I thought it would be Delilah herself. Death was personal to her and a thrill she wouldn’t care to share with anyone but her victim.
But I was wrong; right and wrong, but wrong in a way that didn’t necessarily help me out.
“Yes. I call.” She cupped my cheek. “I told them you too much for me.” Her smile was bright and mocking. “They believed. They believe anyone too much for me, then they deserve to die. I call twice a day as Cabal orders. I call and they follow. I do this because I know, you are too much for them. My duty to my pack complete and you still live. It is a good plan.”
It was a good one. If we fought off her pack and, more ideally, her Alpha, Delilah was free and clear. I felt a relief I didn’t want to admit to, but admit it I did. I had too few people in my life. I didn’t want to lose one. Delilah had done as her Alpha had asked: She had delivered me up, and if he and the pack couldn’t manage to chew me up and swallow me down, then maybe they should start hunting little furry bunnies or the ferocious squirrel. She’d be happy to tell the survivors so-if she spared any. Werewolves, like ordinary wolves, were pack creatures. They were drawn to one another, the majority of them, but there were always exceptions-lone wolves. Delilah was a loner through and through. She was only pack as a career choice. She was Kin before she was Wolf; she was Kin before she was anything.