Dark Lies: Chapter 32

Jaxson

Savannah and I headed back to where Harlow and the rest of the agents were waiting and brought them with us as quickly as we could.

With the sentry out and the werewolves chanting loudly, we could afford to abandon a little stealth.

Why did we have to bring noisy humans? my wolf snarled, though he was well aware of the situation.

By the time we neared the perimeter of the light, the chanting had ascended to a fever pitch. The words cascaded off the werewolves’ tongues in obscene ways that made my ears ache and thoughts twist. Whatever they were speaking, it was a foul language. I didn’t know its meaning, but I understood its intent: to bring a being of pure evil into our world.

Savannah shivered, and I didn’t blame her.

Those words were the only thing standing between us and calamity. When the chant ended, Dragan would kill his sacrifices, and a doorway would open—one we might never be able to close again.

Harlow turned to her agents and whispered, “Okay, this is it. We’ll fan out into the woods as planned. The trees should conceal our positions and provide some cover from firearms. Masks on, everybody.”

I turned to the cluster of werewolves on our flank. “Fan out on the other side of the road. Be prepared to pursue and incapacitate stragglers.”

They faded noiselessly into the darkness. I secured my gasmask, which made it impossible to breath or see correctly, then helped Savannah put hers on. “This had better fucking work.”

“I hate this thing,” she whispered as she shimmied it in place on her face.

I followed her, Harlow, and the masked Order agents cautiously into the woods. As planned, Sam and two wolves stuck with us to provide pursuit and fangs if we needed it. Unfortunately, with the potion bombs, they wouldn’t be able to directly enter the fight.

I flexed my claws, regretting working with the Order for so many reasons. Gods, every step the agents took was like a tree falling in the forest. Could they be less discreet? At least Savannah had learned to walk quietly, like a reasonable creature.

Savy and I took up the first position with Harlow and another agent I didn’t know. Sam continued on with Max and the others, while Harlow crouched down and waited, her megaphone on her knee.

I didn’t like this plan one bit. It would have been better to have killed all the bikers and let the hells sort them out. But gods alive, if my father could work with that fiend Laurel LaSalle, then I could work with the Order.

My wolf’s voice rose in my mind: If it all goes to hell, we do it the werewolf way—with tooth and claw.

I took a deep, satisfied breath. Here’s hoping.

Sensing Savannah’s anticipation, I turned to my mate. “Ready?”

She nodded solemnly and whispered, “I’m going to fuck Dragan up.”

I grinned. She was so beautiful. The faint light of the fire traced the perfect lines of her cheekbones and glinted off her red hair.

So much fight. A strong mate, still needing to be tamed.

Two brief pulses of static came over Harlow’s radio. Sam and Max were in place. A triplet of blips followed a moment later, indicating that the third team was set.

Looking through the brush, I could just make out Dragan in Grayling’s body among his circle of cultists. I’d had dealings with Grayling many times over the years, but tonight, he looked deranged. His hands were raised, and he was swaying in front of the bonfire, which had taken on an eerie purple-black light. The glow had crept out of the flames and begun forming symbols and radial patterns on the ground.

Not good.

Savy shifted her bulletproof vest, and I caught a brief flash of pain cross her face. Was her wound bothering her again?

She half rose and looked into the darkness behind us, then turned to me with wide eyes and hissed, “Jaxson, it’s time! The spell is almost done!”

I hadn’t heard the chant change, and teams four and five hadn’t checked in. “How do you know?”

Cold and pale, she looked like she’d seen a ghost.

Savy grabbed Harlow’s arm. “We need to do this now. One hundred percent now. Go, go, go.”

Hell, she didn’t even bother whispering.

For one second, Harlow froze, and then she pulsed her radio six times, took a deep breath, and raised the megaphone to her lips. “Victor Dragan, Lucius Grayling, this is the Order. You are surrounded. Everyone raise your hands, kneel on the ground, and cease your sorcery, or you will be incapacitated. This is your one and only warning.”

Grayling paused and turned toward the sound of her voice. His eyes flickered with the purple light of the fire. With a malicious grin, he opened his palms wide. “My brethren, the Dark God has delivered new sacrifices into our midst, just as promised. Make sure their cries of agony are loud enough that he can hear!”

The bikers turned slowly toward us, almost like zombies, and a chill passed through my bones. For the first time, I could see their eyes. They weren’t yellow like wolves’ eyes, or red like those of drug-crazed madmen, but pure white, with no irises.

“Something’s not right. Fuck your protocols, and take these bastards down before shit gets wild,” I snarled.

The bikers’ mouths opened in silent howls, and their hands erupted into claws.

Harlow raised her radio. “These guys want to play. Disperse the potions.”

The agent beside us hurled a cannister in a high arc. It dropped at the edge of the circle and began spewing out a jet of pinkish gas. Four more potions flew from the darkness, and plumes of gas billowed up where they landed.

Harlow raised her radio. “Do not engage unless necessary. We incapacitate the bikers and apprehend Dragan-Grayling.”

With streams of smoke filling the air, two bikers stumbled to their knees. But it wasn’t enough. The rest shot forward, roaring like rabid dogs.

“Knock ’em down,” she shouted into the radio.

Riot suppression guns cracked next to us. Beanbags flew from the darkness and slammed into the chests of the advancing werewolves, each puffing on impact with little bursts of magic. Three wolves flew back and landed hard, and the agent beside us tossed a sleeping gas potion beside them.

But the werewolves moved like the wind. Six made it through the barrage and crashed into the brush around us, roaring and shifting into wolves.

One leapt above us, shifting in midair. I lunged up, tore him from the sky, and rammed him into a tree. Behind me, another burst from the bushes and trampled an agent, before charging Harlow, fangs bared.

I hurled the wolf in my claws back into the woods and spun, but Savannah was already there. Her claws extended, she caught the wolf by its neck, and then, with a thunderclap of dark magic, sent it spiraling head over heels.

I shivered as the freezing shockwave rolled over me. That was new.

She caught my eye. “We need to get to Dragan.”

I nodded. Sam and the others could protect the agents. We had to bring him down.

We raced out of the brush into the graveyard, the haze of sleeping gas now thick in the air.

“Dragan!” I roared through my mask. “This is the end!”

With a snarl, a shadow stumbled out of the plumes of smoke and into a patch of clear air. A deep sense of fury and horror filled me.

His claws and head were that of a wolf, but his body was that of a man. His form twisted and shifted as he lurched forward.

He had become an aberration. A true monster.

Riot guns cracked from the trees, and a beanbag slammed into his side. Dragan stumbled but held his ground, and with a howl, his head turned back to that of a man.

“We will tear you to pieces!” Dragan roared as he charged—and even as he did so, he lurched and craned his neck as his head became lupine once more. With each step he took, his body continued to twist and change.

He couldn’t seem to hold his form. What the fuck was wrong with him?

I braced for impact, but Savannah snapped her hands up, and Dragan was suddenly swallowed in a ball of darkness. “Shift position, Jax!”

I darted right as she darted left.

Dragan stumbled out of the black cloud of Savy’s magic, his back to me. Just like bullfighting.

I pounced and drove him to the ground with an elbow blow to his back.

He snapped at me with his wolf jaws. Pain shot through my arm as his fangs tore through my flesh and into my bone, but then his jaws released as his head became human again.

“Fuck you, Laurent!” he snarled as my blood poured from his mouth. Dragan thrust his claws toward me, but before they hit, a blast of green flame raced over my skin. It was an inferno of pain and heat, but I held on to him even as the shockwave pushed me back. Agony lanced through my chest as he ripped his claws along my ribs. But I fought through the pain and squeezed his neck like a vise. He kicked and gurgled as his eyes bulged. He tore at my hand, but I didn’t stop.

All I had to do was let my claws out, and they would rip through his jugular. Instead, I froze.

This wasn’t only Dragan. This was Lucius Grayling, alpha of the Central Michigan pack. He was a bastard, but a bastard I knew well. Plus, if I killed him, chances were that Dragan would just possess another.

With a roar of rage, I heaved him skyward into the ring of smoking potions.

Grayling’s body landed with a bone-rending crunch. The impact cleared the fog for just a second, revealing his form lying atop an ancient gravestone, and then it swirled in, obscuring him from view.

The crunch hadn’t sounded good, but he was a werewolf—as long as the landing hadn’t snapped his spine or neck, he’d live.

Savannah was at my side in a second. “Shit, Jax. You’re burned and bleeding everywhere!”

“We need to make sure Grayling is down.” I moved toward the cloud of gas.

As soon as we entered the pink-gray smoke, our vision dropped to feet, then inches. The haze was building instead of dissipating, and we had to step cautiously over unconscious bodies on the ground. Some were bikers, while others were bound prisoners. All were just shadows in the dark grass, almost impossible to discern until you were standing on top of them.

Savannah grabbed my arm. “What was that?”

I took a fighting stance and scanned our surroundings, but I couldn’t make out anything—not through the smoke and the thick, charred lenses of the clunky gasmask. “Keep your eyes peeled.”

We started moving forward again into the depths of the cloud. Nothing. No movement, no motion.

My foot hit something hard. I grabbed Savannah’s wrist and bent down to examine it.

The gravestone.

I stood. “Grayling’s gone.”

Savannah scanned the pink-gray cloud. “Well, fu—”

Her voice cut out as her wrist slipped from my grip, and she vanished into the smoke.

I didn’t hesitate or let the horror of the moment take my mind. I didn’t need to see—I could feel her being pulled away. I barreled forward in the direction my heart was tugging.

I was on them in seconds. She struggled as Grayling—Dragan—pulled her through the clouds of potion. She elbowed him in the face, causing his grip to loosen, and she spun out of his grasp.

With a roar of rage, I lashed out and hurled him to the ground. Pinning him in place, I rammed my fist into his face over and over. He was holding his breath to keep from succumbing to the potion, but he’d have to breathe sooner or later.

He clawed at my gas mask, but Savannah ripped away his hands. Together, we restrained his arms.

Dragan thrashed and cursed. His hands and face shifted back and forth from human to wolf to human again, but we maintained our iron grip. Eventually, he roared and took a breath.

I slammed my fist down on his chest, and he gasped again.

His head flopped back into the grass as he finally submitted. His eyes grew glassy, and he looked at something we couldn’t see.

Then he spoke, his speech slurred with drowsiness. “You think you’ve defeated me, Alistair? This is just the begin…”

His head rolled to the right as his body relaxed into slumber.

My heart was racing, and Savy’s beat matched my own. Tentatively, she released her grip.

“Jax, I think—”

A swirl of spectral light surged up from Grayling’s unconscious body. It emitted an unearthly howl that echoed through my mind.

For a second, the apparition of Dragan hung before us, and then, like a wolf seizing its prey, the ghost leapt straight into Savannah.