Night Broken

Warren drawled his “Yes, boss” without hesitation.

The wolves stirred and began to howl. Emerging from human throats, it was not as pure or carrying as it would have been out of the wolves, but the emotion was the same. There was respect and a celebration of his bravery in accepting and in the honor of being chosen to fight beside his Alpha.

It took Warren entirely by surprise. He grabbed Kyle’s hand and held on as his eyes brightened with tears that threatened to spill over.

Warren had spent most of his very long life alone, when wolves are meant to live in packs. I’d first met him while he worked at a gas station near here. I’d introduced him to Adam–who I resented at the time but couldn’t help but respect. As Gary had said, Adam was what an Alpha should be, and I’d known it. Adam had welcomed Warren into the pack, but the pack had taken him in with mixed feelings.

Their support told him that there were no mixed feelings left. Not at this moment.

When the howl faded, Adam said, “Honey?”

There was another stir in the pack; this time it was more shock than approval. Women didn’t fight, not in traditional packs. Honey was now unmated, which should have left her rank at the lowest of the pack, even below Zack, our new submissive. But Honey wasn’t a submissive wolf, not even close.

Honey didn’t need theirapproval. She raised her chin, looked at me–because Adam’s call had as much to do with me as it did with the pack. She’d resented it when I had refused to leave the traditional relegation of women alone. She’d liked that being married to Peter meant she was low‑ranking.

She gave first me, then Warren, for whom she’d always had a soft spot, a savage smile. “Yes, boss,” she said.

Me.I thought hard at Adam–and I knew he heard me. Pick me. If everyone who goes is going to die anyway, why not pick me?

I need you to survive,he answered me without speaking, without looking at me. I need to know you survive.

I need you to survive, too,I thought, but I tried not to send it to him. There was a faint chance he’d listen–and what if one werewolf instead of a coyote made a difference? What if I was the reason he died? So I kept silent.

“I’m sorry,” said Christy suddenly, before Adam could name anyone else.

Adam gave her a tender look that she didn’t deserve. God help us and keep us from receiving what we deserve–it was a favorite saying of my foster father, Bryan.

“It’s not your fault, Christy,” Adam said. “It is just a case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

She got up from the couch where she was sitting next to Auriele. “No. Not that, Adam. I’m sorry that I wasn’t strong enough to live your life. I left you–you would never have left me.” She looked at me and looked away. The tears on her face weren’t crocodile tears, they were the real, unattractive thing complete with ru

If she hadn’t done that last part, I would have kissed her–figuratively speaking–and cried friends. There are some things that honest, honorable people don’t do to the people they love. They don’t propose marriage on TV. They don’t bring home small cuddly animals without checking with their spouses first. And they don’t tell their ex‑husband they love him in front of a crowd that includes their daughter and his current wife right before he goes off to almost certain death. It didn’t help that most of us could tell that she wasn’t lying.

Adam said, “Thank you.” As if she’d given him a great gift. But he didn’t tell her what, exactly, he was thanking her for.

She caught the ambiguity. She gave him a rueful smile and sat down. Auriele hugged her fiercely.

I pulled my legs up and wrapped my arms around them.

Maybe they won’t die,I thought. Maybe something Gary does keeps them from dying.

All this time, since the first time he kissed me, I’d been worried about growing old, about leaving Adam alone. And it turned out that it was going to be the other way around.

“Paul,” Adam said. Paul’s name wasn’t a surprise, not like Honey’s.

Paul nodded, looked at Warren, shook his head, and said, “Yes, boss,” with graveyard humor. Paul had tried to kill Warren once because Warren was the wolf just above him in rank and because Warren was gay. Now he was going out to a battle that Adam didn’t think they would come back from, and he, like Honey, was telling Warren that he had his back. People can change.

“George.”

“Yes, boss,” said the quiet policeman.

Maybe I should have kept the walking stick. It had worked against a vampire, against the river devil–surely the river devil had been as powerful–more powerful with its ability to remake the world–and it had been the walking stick that had brought it down.

“Mary Jo?” he asked.

“Fighting fires is what I do,” she told him. “Yes, boss.”

Mary Jo loved my mate, too. She’d protect him if she could. I was glad that she was going. My grief was so huge that I had no room for jealousy.

The walking stick … was made of wood and silver, and no matter how magical it was, wood was wood. I had no doubt that someone could throw it into a campfire and it would emerge unscathed, but a campfire was not a volcano. If the walking stick could do some great magic that would kill a fire elemental like Guayota, Coyote would have told me. I was pretty sure Coyote would have told me.

“Alec?” I didn’t know Alec as well as I did some of the other wolves. He was a friend of Paul’s, and Paul didn’t like me much.

MaybeCoyote would have told me if the walking stick could kill Guayota. He’d told me that mortal means could not harm the tibicenas when in their tibicena form. Did he mean that the walking stick might?

“Yes, boss.”

I was pretty sure that the walking stick had served Coyote’s purpose by showing me what lay within the tibicenas. If it would have been effective against them, he’d have told me–or couched it in some kind of riddle that I’d still be puzzling out when one of the tibicenas killed me.

“That’s enough,” said Adam. “If Ariana has more magic when she has dealt with us, then I will call for more volunteers.”

Because of her fear of the wolves, Ariana worked with them one at a time, in the kitchen. I thought Samuel was going to go with her, but he came and sat next to me instead.

“We don’t have any idea on how to kill this thing,” Samuel said. “Ariana tells me that as far as she knows, the only way to kill a primitive elemental like Guayota would be to destroy his volcano, and even then, he would not die for centuries.”

“El Teide is the third highest volcano in the world,” I told him, pressing my cheekbone into my knees. The burn reminded me that turning to my other cheek would have been smarter. “I think it’s a little beyond our capabilities. Killing the tibicenas, his two giant dogs, might do it. But you can only kill their mortal forms, when they look like mostly normal dogs instead of polar‑bear‑sized monsters. I suspect they are not going to be fighting werewolves in their mortal forms.”

“Ariana would come with us,” he told me, “but she doesn’t have the power she once had, not even a tenth of it. And fire‑dogs are too close to her nightmares; there is no guarantee that she wouldn’t do as much damage to us as she would to Guayota and his beasts.”

“I’d come with you,” I said, “but Adam doesn’t want me to die, and for some reason, he seems to think that’s his decision to make.”

Samuel hugged me. “Don’t mourn us until we’re dead,” he said.

“I’ll spit on your graves,” I told him, and he laughed, the bastard.

“Nice,” said Adam, crouching in front of me. “I had to watch you go up against the river devil.”