Wildblood

Chapter 59

59

Kai

Killing had always come easy. It was like casting off a weight, the discarded obstacle doubling the satisfaction of taking life to conquer death. It’d rarely been a burden—a decision Kai had to measure against an uncertain outcome. He didn’t think about his victims, what they’d lose, or who would lose them, but he also didn’t make victims out of anyone. The math was supposed to be easy, but people didn’t fit into simple equations.

Hristina Kruni? had been right. Kai wasn’t as heartless as he wanted to be.

His arms drew tighter around Caelan as she dragged him forward, the few feet between the fetch and her double a scant shield as the shadow drained Alina’s vitality. Kai sensed the phantom could only do so much; it still needed Caelan to close the gap and seize her twin’s life.

He couldn’t stop her. As strong as he was, the thing inside Caelan was stronger, and Zverev was occupied with Pyotr. Miya clung to Alina, and as Gavran’s voice invaded them, Kai knew the barrier between the physical world and the dreamscape was crumbling to rubble. Miya met Kai’s gaze, her expression forlorn, hopelessness hewing her face into something that tore him in two. They both knew that a blade to Caelan’s heart was the only guarantee of freedom. It didn’t save Alina from her father, but that was a problem with a different solution.

Kai had no intention of leaving Miya alone with this burden. He didn’t want to harm a girl who’d been given only hurt, yet doing nothing was harmful too. Cutting the tether was a risk, but was it worse than death? The latter was final, but it was also a remedy to any affliction. If severing Caelan from a rotten limb changed her into something worse, there would still be blood to spill. And Kai had always been good at getting his hands dirty. Why not once more? If it spared someone pain, if it honored their wishes, why not be the monster they needed?

“Kill me,” Caelan sobbed, her knees giving out even as her shoes slid forward, the friction scraping rubber off her soles. “I don’t want to be broken.”

She’d heard Gavran too.

“I’d rather die than be broken.” She seized Kai’s forearm, clawing into his skin. Her nails were sharper, her hair the color of blood. She leaked the very life she stole, but the tether was craven, insatiable.

Kai summoned every scrap of might he could muster and spun around the teen. He stepped on her shadow and pressed a palm to her collarbone, pushing her back. In his other hand, he gripped the hunting knife until his knuckles turned white. “Listen to me.” His voice came out graveled, his teeth clenched as he tensed every muscle to keep himself rooted. “It’s better to be broken than dead.”

She shook her head, and as the shadow reached back with its free arm, Caelan’s hand clapped down on his bicep, squeezing hard enough to bruise. “You don’t know that.” Her voice came out layered, discordant. “You don’t know what it’s like. All I have is myself, and I’m not going to lose what makes me who I am.”

An essential part of her will die with her bond.

Kai winced, her fingers on his arm like hot coals. “I don’t know what it’s like to be you, but I know what it means to be broken.” He adjusted his grip on the knife, desperate to keep the girl inside the monster alive. “There’s no essence to lose. You’re not some chipped vase missing a bit of porcelain. You’re a person, and as long as you’re alive, you are yourself—no matter how much you change, no matter how different you feel.” His voice lowered, the words spoken for himself as much as they were for Caelan. “We all change. It doesn’t mean we’re gone.”

“There’ll be nothing left to salvage,” she said, her throat bobbing. “I’ll be a husk.”

It was ironic, hearing such bleak words from a body so vibrant with color. But Kai knew the feeling better than his own reflection—better than the scars on his blackened soul. He’d spent years trying to give the shell substance, filling it with rage and resentment, violence and sex. He’d poured and poured and poured until he teemed with nihilism and apathy—a lit fuse that left him imploding until there was nothing left of him to destroy. Yet here he was, alive and unyielding, carving out his heart to make space to care.

“There’s nothing to salvage but your future,” he told her, pleading and convicted all at once. “Even when you’re broken, even when you’re shaped by the emptiness inside you, it’s worth it. You find other things to fill that fucking void.” His breath caught, the words stuck until he forced them loose. “I’m not Mikhail Zverev. I’m Kai Donovan. I lost who I was, but not who I am.”

“What if I hate who I am?” A frightened murmur, an admission that left them both tattered. Her confession was met with a screeching roar from all around them, the tarry scourge in the walls and floor gibbering as though mocking Caelan—feeding on her self-loathing like a vulture feeding on carrion.

“Then hate yourself,” Kai urged, and he meant it. “If that’s how you really feel, hate yourself until you’re ready to become someone you can stand.”

Self-delusion was easy. How quaint—to gorge on vapid affirmation until the lie was buried too deep to notice. But Kai knew firsthand that it didn’t matter how much he was loved, how badly he was wanted. He’d continue to maim himself in the name of some facile independence, and nothing Miya did would be enough to stop him because he believed his own bullshit. Lies were a palatable poison, but the truth was a scythe to the soul.

Kai wasn’t guarding his independence; he was simply wounded and afraid. The Big Bad Wolf was also a whimpering bitch, and that was okay.

“What if I can’t?” Caelan finally replied. “What if this hunger gets worse—hollows me out until I’m a black hole, and all I want is to consume, to take, to kill? What if I become something that shouldn’t exist?”

Kai clamped his jaw. He couldn’t ignore the possibility. Not all life was sacred. The world was an endless parade of birth, suffering, and death, and neither man nor nature cared for every pulse strumming its tune. He lifted his hunting knife, angling the blade. “This won’t get dull overnight.” His other hand shifted to her shoulder, and he squeezed, his words a promise. “I’ve got you.”

Her scalding touch on his arm eased, and her eyes locked with his as if testing his sincerity. Then, she nodded—an almost imperceptible jerk of her chin.

Kai squeezed his eyes shut and exhaled, then half turned to Miya. “Do it.”

Her spine straightened, surprise lacing her features before she homed in on the knot of shadows on the floor. With her arms still around Alina, she garnered her resolve, and Kai watched, rapt, as the Dreamwalker ignited the room.

A lustrous cloak of violet and black plumage erupted around her, gathering her up in a protective embrace. Ivory cradled her skull, rich purple and azure swirling over the bone like oil in water as the raven-beak mask drew over her face, then sharpened to a vee that curled past her lips. Iridescent feathers wove through her hair, billowing in an otherworldly wind. Around Miya’s neck, the dream stone thrummed, bathing Alina’s shoulder in a lavender glow. Miya yanked the pendant from her neck, the fang-shaped labradorite lengthening into a dagger. It shimmered like volcanic glass—amethyst, emerald, and gold broken only by inky veins that pulsed across the blade.

He’d only ever seen her like this in the dreamscape—in the haze of fantasies and nightmares. Now, in the clarity of the waking world where his senses came alive and desire curled ravenously around his heart, he saw her as if for the first time.

She was stunning.

Miya dropped into a crouch and drove her blade through the shadowy tether, her mantle sweeping up behind her like a midnight wave. Kai expected to hear the clang of metal on concrete, but a wet, fleshy smack sickened his ears as the dagger struck something he couldn’t see—something beyond.

Caelan’s heart-rending scream ripped Kai from his revulsion. Her legs gave out in front of her, and she sagged in his arms, convulsing as the shadow on the floor began to warp and shudder. Zverev and Pyotr rotated toward them, their faces stricken with horror as they watched the girl writhe.

Miya’s head shot up, her blade still piercing the shadow, and she looked to Kai for guidance.

He didn’t know what to do. He sank to the floor with Caelan, her weight dragging him down. Holding her as best he could, he tried to soothe her, smoothing sweat-slicked hair from her face. She whipped her head to the side and shrieked, and Kai’s hand came away stained with crimson that shed from her like a mist.

“Stop!” Saliva dribbled from her mouth, and she lurched, folding as though each of her ribs were being broken one by one. “Kai, please?—”

The blade of his knife stayed flush against his forearm. As Caelan flung her head in violent rebuke, he clutched the back of her neck to keep her from injuring herself.

Miya viciously sawed through the phantom cord—an aberrant thing with the density of cartilage. It bubbled up around her hand, fusing as quickly as she took it apart. From the thrashing shadow, a dissonant squeal deafened Kai to Caelan’s cries, but when the ringing in his ears subsided, the sound she made nearly wrenched his heart from his chest.

“End it.” Caelan’s fingers raked over his arms, her joints locked from sheer agony. The words left her as stuttering rasps. “Please, please, just make it stop.”

Kai shook his head, his grip on the knife like steel to curb the trembling. “Don’t make me do this,” he whispered, though he readied himself even as he begged. He pressed the flat of the blade to the side of her neck, though everything inside him revolted. Her eyes rolled to where she felt the cool metal on her skin, and she twisted toward it, but he’d turned the edge away. He’d promised her he’d do it himself.

“I told you I’m not going anywhere,” he said. “I’m not moving until this is over?—”

Her spine bent back as another scream tore through her, all the hues she’d sucked from Alina bleeding onto the floor in a ghostly pool. The glacial blue of her eyes faded to the stormy gray Kai was familiar with. Across the room, he heard Gavran caw, beating his wings from his perch on Alina’s shoulder.

Kai hooked his stare into the Dreamwalker, and she met him with her own, the symbiosis between them a salve against the onslaught. Tendrils like black tar whipped up from the floor in a desperate assault, but Miya’s cloak was an ethereal armor, her feathers piercing through the globs until they splattered into muck. With a final tug and a war-like shout, she sliced the blade through the sinewy shadow, and the tether snapped. The cord retracted, a festering death rattle shaking the room. The bulbs in the ceiling sparked, then shattered, the army of spectral teeth receding to their source. Alina’s shadow shrank back, and so too did Caelan’s, the thing on the floor withering away until it sank into the vinyl like an old stain, then vanished.

Alina crumpled in a daze, her eyes darting around as though she’d woken from a fitful sleep. Then, her gaze fell on Kai and the fetch. Caelan went rigid. A breathless keen slipped from her mouth before her limbs went slack, and she wilted in Kai’s arms.

For an excruciating moment, he was paralyzed, decades of survival and quick thinking crushed in panic’s vise grip. Caelan’s neck craned back, her eyes half-open, glazed over and dull. Even with his breath held, Kai couldn’t hear her heartbeat. He pressed two fingers to the girl’s pulse, each half-second an eternity until he felt the faint patter under her skin. Weak but persistent. His shoulders slumped with relief, and he glanced at Miya, whose feathered mantle dispersed into a cloud of smoke. She checked on Alina, then nodded to Kai. She was fine.

Caelan’s fate remained unclear. She was alive, yes, but in what state? Who would greet Kai when she awoke—the kid he knew, or one he had yet to meet?

On the other side of the room, Zverev released Pyotr, both men too stunned to intervene. They’d witnessed a collision of worlds, a severance of bonds made from shadow.

“I’ll kill you all,” came Pyotr’s impotent threat. He thrust an accusatory finger at Kai. “You, that witch of yours, and that fucking forgery!” Then, he whirled on Zverev. “You’ll join them…you’re dogmeat, and that worthless geriatric?—”

“Shut up!” Alina pulled herself to her feet with Miya’s help, her chest heaving. “You piece of shit—you’re no father. You never have been.” Tears welled in her eyes, her face ruddy as the color returned to her skin and hair. “I hate you. I wanted to die because of you, and I’d still rather die than go back to that prison you call home.”

Pyotr’s mouth hung open, his brow knitting as his daughter’s reproach sank in. “You don’t know what you’re saying. Everything I’ve done is for your safety. You don’t know how horrible the world is?—”

“It’s horrible because of people like you !” Rage scraped her voice raw. “You keep saying this is all for me, but you’re a liar.”

Shock morphed into anger as Pyotr’s hissed, “You’re na?ve, disobedient—a brat still.”

“Is that what you think parenting is?” Miya stepped in front of Alina, shielding her. “A way to force someone who’s powerless to obey you?”

“Don’t speak to me, you whore—” Pyotr’s venom was cut short when Zverev drove a fist into the mobster’s gut, and he doubled over, clutching his ribs.

Kai was as torn as he was surprised. He wanted to pummel the man himself, but he appreciated the spontaneous act of chivalry. Muscles sore and bones aching, he rose to his full height, Caelan cradled carefully in his arms. He turned to Zverev. “I know what you did. If it weren’t for the fact that you took a bullet, I’d carve out your jugular.”

Zverev snorted. “You still want to carve out my jugular.”

“I do, but I won’t today, because you’re taking Caelan, and you’re helping Miya get Alina out of here.”

Zverev sighed and tipped his head, his eye on Pyotr. “What about him?”

Kai’s glower darkened. “He and I have unfinished business.” Zverev opened his mouth to protest, but Kai cut him off with a snarl. “He’s mine. You owe me that much.”

Zverev shut his trap and nodded, then gently took the girl from Kai’s hold. He had no grounds to refuse; he wasn’t getting the payment Pyotr had promised him. All he could do was make amends for the harm he’d caused. His eyes flashed with guilt as he peered down at both teenagers. Caelan never should’ve been a means to an end, and he likely regretted taking so long to accept it. Ivan Zverev couldn’t have stomached the sacrifice; the chemotherapy would’ve cost more than blood money. Wordlessly, he carried Caelan to the door where he waited for Miya to join him.

Gnashing his teeth, Pyotr wedged himself in his cranny like a wet turd. His eyes were trained on his daughter, who didn’t spare him a second glance. Gavran roosted on Alina’s shoulder, his beak yawning open as he thrust his head forward to menace the mob boss.

Battered and exhausted, Kai locked eyes with Miya, but he didn’t dare take a step toward her. He wasn’t done yet. Pyotr was a loose end, and Kai was determined to tie it into a noose fit for the mobster’s neck. The bastard had no reason to pursue Caelan further, but he was proud, arrogant, obstinate. He’d force Alina back and hunt Caelan mercilessly. A fruitless, belligerent undertaking that would only end in flames.

“I’ll see you soon,” Miya called, the words laced with questioning.

The corner of Kai’s mouth quirked into a tired half smile. “You’ll see me soon, Lambchop.”

He heard her heart settle. Then, she took Alina’s hand and pulled her from the office, leaving the wolf alone with his prey.