Bite Back 05 - Angel Stakes Read online

  I was in therapy—an Athanate therapy, run by Diana.

  Rogue! I’d gone rogue.

  My heart surged and immediately calmed.

  That feeling. Eukori. The same way I’d used it to help others, it was being used to help me.

  Diana.

  That was one of the faces—the closest. But something was wrong with her.

  I wasn’t floating. I was lying on cushions. My head was resting in her lap and her fingers were touching my forehead.

  Everyone else was sitting on the floor around me.

  Jen and Alex! My kin.

  Bian, Yelena, Julie and Keith.

  Keith? Why was he here?

  There was a physical pain in my head, like it had split open.

  “Shhh. Don’t try and reach with your eukori.”

  That was Diana. Not the Diana I remembered. An old Diana, white-haired and aged. An impossible Diana, because Athanate don’t age.

  Athanate.

  More pain; a blinding pain in my head.

  I wanted to go back. I wanted to dive back down into my life at school where problems seemed overwhelming, but they were human-sized problems that could be fixed. And at the same time, I didn’t, because there were other things from that time, things that had to be left buried.

  I felt Jen kiss my hand and press it against her cheek.

  Alex patted the other hand clumsily.

  “You’re all right,” Jen said. “We’re here. Let us help Diana fix you.”

  I blinked, trying to remember how I’d gotten here.

  The lock. The Taos Adept community had put a lock on Diana that had drained her Athanate powers away. That was why she looked aged—eroded by the power of the lock.

  We’d broken it, Kaothos and I. But the huge explosion of power had broken more than that. It had ripped my mind wide open, and everything was jumbled together randomly in my head. Killing Amaral. Feeding from Jen and Alex. The ritual. The flight on the plane to LA. The seeping rogue darkness that seemed to spread until every part of me…

  “Hush,” Diana said, and I realized I’d been babbling disconnected sentences.

  “We’ve got to go back,” she whispered. “You’ve got to take us back through all those painful things you locked away and refused to think about. You need to relive them, stare them down until they lose their power. Everything you locked away.”

  “No,” I said, my voice thin and uncertain. I was seventeen again. “I can’t look at those things. I can’t let you see them. I can’t.”

  You’ll despise me.

  But they weren’t listening.

  “Love you.”

  “Trust us.”

  All their voices whispering.

  “We can’t make those memories painless,” Diana said, “but we have to make them less poisonous. We have to share them so we can build you back up. And you have to lead us. You have to want this.”

  “Please, honey.” Jen pressed my hand against her lips.

  “No,” I said again.

  I shook my head from side to side. I ached all over. I felt weak.

  “Whether you lock them away or not, every event stays part of you,” Diana said. “Today’s Amber is always built on yesterday’s. Now you have to unlock those memories. Only you can do it.”

  I felt like I was falling.

  I remembered Martha, talking about the little cemetery nestled in the arms of the yew tree hedge, behind the ranch at Coykuti. Parts of the yew die and rot and feed the rest of it. It lives off itself. It makes itself new from all it has ever been. The pack’s like that. It’s all the things it’s ever done, all its loves and hates, all its desires and fears, all its triumphs and failures.

  I was all the things I’d ever done. All the things that had ever been done to me. I couldn’t escape that. I couldn’t escape.

  But there are parts of me I can’t let them see.

  Diana’s fingers were pressed into my forehead. Cold as ice. Deep. Remorseless.

  My body fought to escape against hands holding me down.

  No! So many things I can’t let them see.

  “Calm, Amber.” Diana’s voice, seeming to echo down a corridor. “None of these memories are easy, but we’ll start earlier…here.”

  I’m falling through the depthless night. Ahead, somewhere in the dark, there’s a massive rock emerging from the jungle. Rendezvous point. Hacha Del Diablo, the Devil’s Axe. The mission where my team died. I can feel the blood pulsing from the wound on my neck as I collapse against the rock which blocks out the stars in the sky above me. The despair. My team. All of them. Dead. The blood lust, the elation, as my knife skrees off his cervical vertebrae, telling me I’ve cut through every blood vessel in his neck and he’ll die before me, this thing that killed my team. Killed me.

  No. That’s in the wrong order. Jumbled. Chaos. That Athanate died—the crazy descendent of the Carpathian House Chrysos—he bit me and I killed him. But I didn’t die. I became Athanate and lived.

  Start again.

  Step through it.

  Start at the beginning…

  I’m falling. It’s night. Ops 4-10’s Cyclops system readouts tell me where to head for. How far. When to pull the cord. My batsuit and brake will get me there in one piece. My team is behind me.

  The wind is screaming past my face…

  Chapter 4

  It was light. The blurry passage between dreams and memory and reality had a feel of familiarity now.

  This was real. This was now. Lying down with my head in a lap.

  Diana’s lap. This was her leaning over me, not Speaks-to-Wolves or Martha or any of the phantoms from my head, and we were alone.

  A Diana whose face was slightly younger every time I woke.

  She’s recovering. We’ve spoken about that. The lock the Adepts used had drained her energy, made her age. Now she was recovering. When had we spoken?

  “How long?” I said. My voice felt rusty, my throat sore.

  “Nine days since we left New Mexico.” She spoke carefully, watching me intently.

  Watching for what?

  Watching me because sometimes I’m crazy.

  Wait. What did she say?

  “Nine days? Where am I? What’s happening?”

  A little tick of panic beat at my ribs, and there was an answering pulse of soothing pacifics from Diana.

  “We’re in Los Angeles. You’re in therapy, and you’re doing well.”

  Doing well. Something they say that doesn’t mean what it says.

  “What about…” I trailed off. Where would I start?

  My House was with me. Some of them at least. My kin. That was real.

  Mom? Tullah?

  Another tick of panic.

  Ingram? I said I would meet him. That was ten days ago now. What was he—

  And Felix? How had the—

  Olivia? Had it really worked?

  My mind raced in circles. It was like trying to climb out of a pit of ice. I couldn’t seem to get any traction.

  Diana said soothingly, “Everything’s being taken care of.”

  I realized I’d been blurting the names out.

  “Alex and Jen have been speaking to your mother regularly. Tullah and her parents are in hiding from the Adepts with Chatima, somewhere down in New Mexico or Arizona. Agent Ingram has been sent a message explaining you are in recovery and will get back to him. Alex talks to Felix every day. Olivia is well and enjoying being a full werewolf at every opportunity, from what I hear.”

  A breath escaped me.

  Everything is fine. Relax.

  “You have to concentrate on yourself for a while,” Diana said. “Let us worry about the rest.”

  Concentrate on myself.

  “I went rogue,” I said. That was real, too. I could remember that.

  I had a flashback to Bian’s chilling summation about how Athanate dealt with rogues: We provide a quick and humane death.

  Why am I still alive?

  “We got to you in ti
me,” Diana said, seeing the questions forming in my head.

  “Like with David?”

  David had started to go rogue. Diana had brought him back, almost effortlessly. But that had all happened in the space of one evening.

  Nine days?

  “Not like with David,” Diana said. “You went much further, and you’re much more complicated.” She smiled to soften the words.

  I closed my eyes for a moment, lulled by the pacific pheromones she was dosing me with.

  No, not like with David.

  Only Diana could have brought me back. I’d saved her in New Mexico and in doing that, I’d saved myself. Without Diana treating me, the Athanate would have killed me by now. Or the Were would have—they took the same line with rogues. Even though what had finally sent me over the edge wasn’t my Athanate, or my Were. It was what humans had done to me.

  And that wasn’t fixed. Despite Diana’s soothing, I could feel it like a darkness moving in the deep beneath me.

  “No, we’re not finished yet,” Diana whispered. “But hear my oath, Amber Farrell, House Farrell, beloved: I will hold you, as long as it takes, as long as I am able. I will not let you fall. On my Blood, I so swear.”

  I felt her eukori supplementing the pacifics. Calm. Calm.

  She would cure me. I didn’t need to worry about anything outside of my treatment.

  That in itself was enough to worry about.

  “I’m all the things I’ve ever been.” The words sighed from my lips, as if Martha’s spirit were speaking through me. My heart rate tried to spike. “All the things that have ever been done to me—”

  “And you’re all the things you ever could be, as well,” Diana said.

  Her eukori stirred again, reached into me, synced my heart with hers until they beat together as slow as waves on the shore.

  “Sometimes,” she said, “to fix things, we have to take them all apart and put them back together again. It’s like a strange puzzle. Everything connects to something else, but it all has a place. Even the bad things.

  “This is not like a physical injury, not like fixing a bone.” Her voice seemed to float down to me. “I can’t make you like you were before anything bad happened, without erasing everything you’ve become. That same everything that we all love, and is worth having.”

  We.

  My House and…

  “Keith,” I said. “I saw Keith, didn’t I?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why’s he here? Last time—”

  “You nearly bit him. Yes, you scared him,” Diana said, smiling. “But he still cares for you, and as you judge these things, I think he and Julie are part of your House.”

  As I judge these things.

  I could tell there was an issue there, but I was too blissed out to deal with it.

  Diana spoke quietly. An intercom or something. I was drifting.

  My eyes opened to see Julie and Keith sitting on either side of me. Julie was speaking, like you speak to patients who you’re not sure can hear you.

  “I’m in, if you’ll have me,” she was saying.

  I blinked, tried to rewind. She was talking about being in my House.

  “I mean to say, where else am I going to find such crappy humor and good snark?”

  I chuckled, but Diana said something sharp and Julie dropped her eyes.

  “Okay. Okay.” She took a deep breath. “You were there for me when the Nagas came after me. You kept Keith and me alive.”

  “You were being hunted by the Nagas because you helped me,” I said.

  “No. We took a stand against what was happening in Ops 4-10. You were just the key we used.”

  There was an exchange of looks between Julie and Keith. I felt their paths were different. Each was feeling their way.

  “You trusted me,” Julie said. “Enough to have me guard Jen. I didn’t realize how much that meant at the time. I do now.”

  She shifted uncomfortably. “There’s lots we have to discuss. I…I’m freaked about some of what goes on…”

  She stumbled to a stop, and Keith took over. “Me too,” he said. “But it’s not just about what’s happened in Denver.” Another glance, almost guilty, but he seemed to be drawing some strength from Julie. “It’s about before, too. When you and I…when we were together in 4-10.”

  We’d been an item until I’d gotten bitten. First, they isolated me from the rest of the battalion, then they sent me away to Denver. I guessed our relationship hadn’t had a chance. I didn’t begrudge him the love that he and Julie shared now.

  “Not your fault,” I said, my words slurring. “Neither of us knew what being Athanate would mean to me.”

  He shook his head. “It’s not that, Amber. I’m sorry I wasn’t better for you then, but I’m talking about before that.”

  I frowned.

  “I knew—” he started.

  “We knew,” interrupted Julie.

  He nodded. “Yeah. We knew there was something wrong, something that had happened before you joined up. We knew it and we did nothing. We let you down.”

  “We were a team, and we let you down,” Julie said. “We owe you.”

  I tried to sit up, but I had no strength.

  No. Not that. No obligations.

  More pacifics drifted down from Diana. I could barely move.

  The others were coming in, sitting down in a circle around me.

  Alex. Jen. Bian. Yelena.

  They were all tense, even Bian, and Jen had been crying, however much she tried to hide it.

  Diana started speaking again. “This is the heart of it, Amber. We need to go back, down into the depths of your strongbox, the very core of it, and find the things you kept there.”

  Her fingers were cold, reaching, reaching, pushing me down.

  Someone was screaming as I sank back into the darkness.

  Chapter 5

  Therapy Session

  Spring is here, but I’m still wearing a jacket this evening.

  I’ve wrapped it tightly around myself, my hands jammed deep into the pockets as if I was cold. It’s comforting.

  I don’t know why I’m here.

  Everyone has heard the news, of course. Bad news pulses through the air faster than radio waves.

  Lario had folded me into one of his big hugs that smelled of his good cooking and told me to take a couple of days on full pay. I skipped school. Cassie’s been trying my cell, but what is there to say?

  I’ll talk to her tomorrow.

  I feel bad that I just walked out of the house this evening, but Mom didn’t seem to be hearing anything I said and Kath has been crying all day.

  I walked and walked, as if I could get away. Now it’s time to face it.

  The Final Ruling came in, and we’re bankrupt. There’ll be no trouble selling the house, thank God, but that won’t clear the debt.

  Mom has work. I tossed my college forms this morning and I’ll start applying for a full-time job. Tomorrow. Maybe I can keep working evenings for Lario as well. We’ll find a way, somehow.

  Kath has to stay in school and go to college—I promised Dad.

  So much to think about, so much to do, it seems to press me down into the sidewalk.

  And I don’t know why I ended up here, outside Tanner’s house.

  Inside, there’ll be a bunch of his friends who are all going to go to college in the fall. If they’re not talking about that, they’ll be talking about the prom, and I’m not going to that either. Or, given the kind of house and cars I can see here, maybe they’ll be talking about how their dads bought them their own little sports car after they got back from their last vacation in Europe.

  That’s not fair. My family’s bad luck isn’t their fault.

  But I’m not going to be in the mood to party tonight.

  I’m about to turn away and walk home when the door opens and the party spills out onto the drive in an explosion of loud talk and laughter.

  I see immediately that it’s not just people from s
chool. In fact, most of them look as if they’re in college. I’m sure some of them even come from ‘real life’—they work for a living.

  “Amber, great you could make it.” Tanner strides over, his arms flung out in welcome. Somehow, I’m swept into one of the MPVs and we’re off in a convoy to a dance club. To ‘warm up’, as Tanner puts it.

  It takes forty minutes to get to the club. No one seems to mind that I don’t say much, and they don’t talk about houses or cars. In fact, the people from South High talk about the sort of stuff that was going through my head last week—the feeling that our schooldays are slipping away and big, scary life is rushing up on us. No one wants to admit it, but it feels to me like we’re all desperate to hang on a little longer to the familiar safety of school, and that’s why the prom is such a big event.

  There’s one guy in the car who does, indeed, work for a living. Working Guy’s been through what we’re about to go through, and he can’t help but make us feel a bit inadequate.

  We finally get to the club. I’ve never been to a real dance club before, so when we get there, I’ve got nothing to compare it to.

  We pile out of a dozen different cars. Working Guy seems to know the bouncers, and I swear something changes hands before we get waved in without ID checks.

  I’m still not quite sure what I’m doing here, but maybe dancing is what I need.

  Lario’s money in my pocket would pay the cover charge with enough left over to bail and get a cab home if needed, but Tanner insists on paying.

  I’m not thinking of bailing when we get inside.

  The club is amazing. Past the bar, there’s a huge dance floor sunk into a kind of smoky pit. Looming over it are two walls of plasma display panels, rippling and pulsing with images. Strobing lasers flicker overhead and glitter balls spin above us. The DJ is on a raised platform, half-hidden behind his gear and lit from below. He looks like some kind of shadowy demon as he pumps his music into banks of speakers. The crowd is jumping.

  There’s no chance to talk. No awkward waiting to be asked to dance. All of us pour onto the dance floor and get with it.

  I’m between Tanner and some bare-chested hunk in a Stetson and jeans, his abs gleaming with sweat.

  The DJ knows his club. “Baby, One More Time” blurs without break into “Man, I Feel Like a Woman,” then favorites like “Believe,” “Heartbreak Hotel” and “No Scrubs.” The screens flash fragments of the promotional videos for the songs, spliced with views of the dance floor. It gets hotter and more crowded with every song. The moves get toned down, as we’re all bouncing off one another. I even bounce off Fay Daniels. For a second, I think it’ll be a problem, but she’s blissed out. She spins, ending up against Stetson Boy, and proceeds to do a slinky grind against him, which gets her a little space for appreciation.