Recap:
Danny and Connor were staring each other down, their eyes locked. Danny smirked at Connor, arrogant and sure. Connor steamed with anger and pain, his muscles clenching and his hands trembling.
“Oh little brother...What would our dear mother say about our little predicament here? Rest her poor soul,” Danny shook his head and looked up to the sky.
“Don’t you bring her into this. Don’t you speak of her!” Connor almost lunged at Danny, but Andrew held him back.
“I still remember her face when she realized who I was. When she realized just who was ending her life,” He traced his thumb across his lips. “Her blood did taste oh so sweet…”
“You bastard!” Connor broke free of Andrews grasp and shifted. In a flash, he was on top of Danny, teeth and claws slashing.
In a roar of trampling paws and growls, our pack flooded out of the trees. The two packs met in a clash of teeth and blood. The wolves moved in a blur, like a picture of moving cars. I stretched my wings and shot into the air to avoid a charging wolf. I looked out over the battlefield. Wolves and humans fought alike, ripping each other limb from limb. I couldn’t discern my pack from theirs, it was all one mass of fur and blood. I took a breath in the thinner air, shut my wings, and dove back into the fray.
CHAPTER 32
All was chaos. There seemed to not be a single place without a pair of wolves slashing at each other’s throats, not one moment with the blood-curdling cries of a dying wolf, not one blade of grass not stained red. I pushed and stumbled my way through the clusters of murderous rage. I ran as fast as I could, throwing my shield at anyone who tried to get near me. I had to find Bailey. The adrenaline seared through me, and I couldn’t stop my hands from shaking. I tripped as something fell at my feet. I felt a hand grab onto my leg as I tried to get up. I looked back to see a boy, no older than twenty. He had claw marks from his forehead to his stomach. Chunks of flesh were missing from his am and shoulder.
“Help…me…” he stuttered, blood spraying from his lips. “Help…me…”
The battle was nothing like what I heard in stories or history books, nor at all what I expected. We have always revered the victorious, glorified their bloody actions. ‘We were right,’ we said, ‘we were the good guys.’ But in truth, I couldn’t see the difference. Our pack slashed and bit just as ruthlessly as Danny’s. I saw no glory, no honor.
I shook off his weak grip and ran. I didn’t look back.
* * *
I found Bailey fighting off two wolves in a far corner of the field. Without slowing my sprint, I lifted one unsuspecting wolf from the ground and flung him into the other. “Bailey!”
She turned and saw me. “Maggie, this is out of hand! We’re getting massacred! There are too many!”
“I know,” I said. “We have to find James. Stay close to me.” She nodded and followed me as we ran through the bustling, bloody masses. In our smaller human forms, we could maneuver easier than the wolves. I sniffed the air, searching.
I could smell his wretched musk from across the field. James.
We moved quicker through the field, our fate closer at hand. When we found him, he was surrounded by three wolves. As they began to close in, he smiled at them. One wolf yelped, and began to twitch and move around sporadically. Then he turned to his comrade. He jumped on top of him, his comrade yelling in confusion. James watched, laughing, as the fellow pack mates ripped each other apart.
The third wolf jumped on top of James, bringing him to the ground. The two wolves stopped fighting and fell to the ground, heaving in pain. James kicked the wolf so powerfully that he collided with a tree and snapped it in half. The force of the impact shocked the wolf into turning back into its human form.
Kyle fell to the ground at the base of the tree, unconscious. I tried to run to him, but James was there before I even started. I tried to run faster, but the faster I ran, the more I seemed to stay still. James pulled a knife from his belt and raised it above his head. My legs were moving at record pace, but I felt like I was stuck in slow motion.
“No!” I screamed. “Kyle!” James looked up, the knife still above his head. When he saw me, he smiled. I was so close, yet too far away to do anything. James winked.
Kyle’s eyes fluttered open and he saw me. “Maggie?”
The weak utterance made James turn back to Kyle. I could see the sick grin on his face as he plunged the knife deep into Kyle’s chest. “No!” Just then, I was able to run again. I came to his side and knelt on the ground. He had his hand at his chest where blood was seeping out of the knife wound. Before I could stop him, he gripped the handle and yanked it out of his chest. Blood poured to the ground, bubbling out of the wound like lava. I pressed my hands to the wound trying desperately to stop the bleeding. The blood poured out from between my fingers as if they weren’t even there.
“Kyle…Kyle! Stay with me Kyle, come on, stay with me, please…” I could feel a single tear fall from my eye.
“Maggie…” He coughed, his blood spurted onto my face.
“I’m here Kyle, I’m here, just hold on…please hold on” My stomach twisted in knots, the tears flowed freely. I was begging, pleading, but nothing helped. The blood just wouldn’t stop.
“Maggie…take care of…Andrew…” He coughed as he tried to laugh, gagging and sputtering on his own blood as it lined his lips with red. He smiled up at me, despite the pain he managed to give me one of his big whole-hearted smiles, a rare thing with his serious leadership. “The kid…needs you…”
“No Kyle, come on!” His face got paler and paler as the life flowed out of him, staining my hands and the ground below me.
“Take my…body…to my parents…they…already know…about…all this…” he reached to his neck and gripped a small rosary on a thin silver chain. “And tell Anna…I’m sorry…and… that I love her…” With his last bit of strength, he yanked the chain from his neck. “Give this…to her…don’t let her…forget me.”
“Anna? Who’s Anna?” He looked up at me and smiled. Slowly his smile faded and his eyes unfocused. “Kyle?” He didn’t answer. “Kyle! Wake up Kyle!” I shook his shoulder, but he lay limp, his eyes unfocused and lifeless. The hand clasping his necklace opened slightly, the chain dangling off his fingers.
He was gone.
I heard laughing behind me. I turned to see James grasping at his gut, doubled over in laughter. “Oh you mortals…always so emotional…”
“You bastard! I’ll kill you!” I lunged at him taking him to the ground with me. I shifted in an instant and slashed and clawed at any opening I could find. My vision had gone red and all I could hear was his laughing. I could hear Bailey calling my name, but I didn’t care. All I could focus on was his jugular, and the idea of my teeth ripping his throat out. He threw me off of him, sending me flying into the dirt. Bailey got in front of me before he could. He shoved Bailey to the ground and put his hand up, palm to her. A smile crept across his face. Bailey staggeringly got up, turned and began to walk to me.
“Maggie? What’s going on? I’m not doing this!” She continued to walk toward me.
“Fight like a man James! Don’t use her as a puppet because you’re afraid to fight me yourself!”
“Now why would I do that?” He said, smirking. “This is far too much fun!”
Bailey ran to me and threw a punch that I barely dodged. I tried to grab her, but I could not get a hold of her flailing arms. James laughed in the background. I ducked another blow and crouched to the ground. I kicked her legs out from under her and before she could get up, I got on top of her and pinned her to the ground. Her arms flailed as she tried to attack me, but I kept her arms restrained. I let my shield cover my body, then flow onto her. Once it had covered her, she stopped struggling.
I looked over to James, who had a confused look on his face. “I see you have picked up a few new talents since we last saw each other” He spread his wings wide. “Let’s see if you’ve still got what I taught you,” with that, he shot into the air. I spread my wings.
“Bailey, see what you can do down here. I don’t know how much the shield will protect you when it’s on both of us at once, so be careful,” she nodded and I followed James into the air.
“Good of you to join me!” He shouted.
I looked down at the ground below us. People were dying. My friends. I could still see Kyle’s body as it lay lifeless. I looked back to James. He beat his pitch wings as he smiled at me, the image of the angel of death.
When our eyes met, the world seemed to disappear from around us. The fighting was seemingly gone, all sound became silent, and the only people left in this world were he and I. He was the undefeated terror that had kept this secret war going for so long. He was the man that had killed so many of Connors packs in cold blood. The man that had just brutally murdered my friend, my brother in all but blood. The man that could control people with a single thought.
“You could be powerful, Maggie. We could rule the new world! Danny is just a pawn. When he’s done, we’ll get rid of him and take over! We are superior in every way!” He laughed again, flapping his wings in the wind. “Join me!”
I raised my arms, letting my shield take over. It stretched, leaping through the air. I thrust my hand through the air, plowing the shield into him.
“That’s my answer you sick son of a bitch!” I screamed, lunging through the air. We tumbled through the air, the wind cutting across us and the world passing us in a blur. I felt his nails tear through my skin and his knees jam into my stomach. Nails raked and teeth ripped, blood dripped from our tangled bodies to the ground below. As we tumbled through the open air, we hit the top of a pine tree at the edge of the field.
We crashed through the branches as we plummeted to the ground. I retracted my wings in the fray as the branches started to hit them. Splinters dug into my skin as I slammed against the rough bark. We plowed into the ground, me on top of him. He kicked me off, sending me flying into another wolf. Quickly, I shifted and sprinted to James once again. He was up and waiting for me. I stopped in front of him, growling and snarling. He smiled at me again, and shifted into a black bear, twice the size of a normal one.
A fear set in the pit of my stomach, wild and primal. His deep black eyes bore into me as he stared silently. He let out a cry of battle and rose up on his haunches, slashing his claws in the air. The hair on my neck stood straight and my ears laid flat against my head. I let out a growl, but it was lost in the drone of the battle. As he road and slashed the air, a tiger plowed into him and brought him to the ground. The tangled mass of black and red fur tumbled across the field. They broke apart and stood facing each other, neck hair raised and teeth bared. Bailey’s tiger form was not that much bigger than a normal tiger, but instead of a light orange color, she was a bright, fiery red. Her black stripes flared across her back like the rays of the burning sun.
I ran to her side and we faced James together. I stretched my shield over both of us, the haze just slightly distorting the scene around us. James shifted back to his human form and stared at us, smiling like the Cheshire cat.
“Look at you two little girls! How sweet!” he laughed. “Well this should be fun…”
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Happy Holidays everyone and Happy new year! (Not exactly a happy chapter to end the year with, but oh well)