Val was right—Max was pissed.
After an ambulance came to retrieve the old man’s body, they spent most of the ride home in a tense silence. Val explained to him what happened, but he responded with one-word answers—when he responded at all—until she gave up trying to talk to him. He drummed his fingers on his knees as he clenched his jaw, obviously itching for a fight but holding it in. Not in front of the driver.
When they got home, he marched straight to their bedroom and slammed the door behind him. After confirming nothing eventful happened at home in their absence, Val dismissed Jamal, ushered the kids to bed, fed the dog, and ensured that her mother was settled in the guest bedroom for the night. Then she followed Max upstairs, sucking in a deep breath before facing the full wrath of whatever he’d been holding in during their car ride home.
His clothes were already scattered across the floor, shed in a frenzy. She heard running water in the bathroom and the whisks of a toothbrush. As she shimmied off her dress, he came stomping out. Pretending to ignore her, he threw back the comforter on their bed as if he intended to turn in early.
Val sighed. “Max, I’m sor—”
“What the hell were you thinking?” he spat. “We were at a funeral, Val. A goddamn funeral! Everyone saw you just get up and leave!”
“I stopped a fire that could’ve burned down the entire church.”
“Alarms would have gone off. The fire department would’ve shown up before it became serious.”
“Oh, I’m sorry. I should have let everyone possibly die in a horrible fire so I didn’t embarrass you.”
“You only discovered that fire because you were chasing after somebody in a fit of paranoia, which everybody got to witness firsthand.”
“Since when do you give a shit what other people think?”
“I give a shit that eight people died, and their friends and family were there to mourn them, and instead of a loving tribute to their memories, they got to watch you run off in the middle of the service.”
“Nobody cared what I was doing.”
“I cared!” He jabbed a thumb at his chest. “I needed you beside me and you were gone!”
She scoffed. “You needed the arm candy? What am I, Lacy Zephyr now? A prop to hang your doting husband costume on?”
His frown turned into a snarl, then he shook his head. “You know what? Forget it.” He jumped into bed, jamming his feet under the covers as he turned away from her. “Just fucking forget it. Do what you want.”
“I found a body, Max! I know she killed him. I know she tried to set the church on fire.”
He threw off the comforter and leapt to his feet again. “How? How do you know that?”
“I saw Eleanor walk over there right before he died, so obviously—”
“You saw her walk in that general direction, where about a dozen other people also happened to be. And how did she kill him? Scare him to death? Because the man clearly died of a heart attack while stealing food and smoking in the basement, dropping his cigarette in the process. And why would Eleanor try to burn the church down? What’s the point?”
Val threw up her hands. “I don’t know, Max! I don’t know how or why she did it! But I know it was her! She’s taunting us! She tried to kill you. She’ll try to kill my mother. Why can’t you believe me?”
“Because I…I—” His words hitched, and he looked away for a moment before meeting her eyes again, fear muting his anger. “I saw something in a vision. Not the numbers, or the red raven. It was a…a beast…a monster, like a hyena…a yellow hyena. And it—” He took a trembling breath. “It ate the raven.”
“You think Eleanor is the yellow hyena?”
Shaking his head, he said, “I don’t know what to think.”
“If she is the hyena, that’s all the more reason for me to kill her before she kills me, or you, or my mother, or anyone else.”
His anger flared back, eyes wide and fists balled. “Are you crazy? Stay away from her, Val! She’ll hurt you. She’ll hurt us.”
“I can’t sit here and do nothing. Last time I tried that, Lucien Christophe almost killed you.”
“We can leave. We can move away—”
“I am not running. I’ll kill her first. I might not be able to kill Delilah or Northwalk, but if it’s the last thing I ever do in this world, I will fucking kill her.”
Max clenched his eyes shut and grabbed his head as if it might explode. His voice quivered. “I can’t do this again—”
“Then help me. I need to know what she’s going to do. What she’s planning. Show me.” She threw off the rest of her clothes until she stood naked before him. “I can stop her from hurting us. I can fight for our future. I just need to see it.”
His eyes drifted open as his hands fell to his sides. “You want to use me to confront the woman who will kill you?”
“It’s our best option. You said it yourself—all we have to go off of is the letter, and that’s not enough. The police won’t believe us, and they can’t be trusted anyway. We need a plan.”
A shadow fell across his face, a specific kind of darkness she hadn’t seen in him before. Something akin to despair and disappointment. Whatever he felt, it was a small price to pay to keep their family safe. Why couldn’t he see that?
“You want to use me?” he said, a dangerous edge to his voice. He yanked off his underwear and walked around the bed that separated them until he stood toe to toe with her, looming over her as he radiated an angry, frightening heat.
She forced herself not to back away. This was what she’d wanted, after all.
“Fine,” he said,“Use me.”
He grabbed her arm and shoved her onto the bed. She gasped when he gripped her legs and flipped her onto her stomach, then pinned her down with his own naked body. A shiver ran up her spine despite the warmth of her husband’s flesh pressed to hers.
He’d never hurt her. He couldn’t. He wouldn’t.
“What do you want to see, huh?” he said, his words dark and caustic, sandpaper to her ears. He rubbed his body against hers in a rough cadence, and she felt him hardening at the small of her back, willing himself into arousal. “Do you wanna see me dying? The children dying? The world on fire?”
Tears stung her eyes. She didn’t want it to be like this, but she didn’t have a choice. “I need to see what Eleanor’s going to do next. I need to stop her. I need to protect you and the children. I need to save my mother.”
“Sure you do. Of course you do.”
She yelped when he jerked her hips up, forcing her to her hands and knees. He slammed into her from behind and thrust like a jackhammer, like a piece of equipment. Or a robot.
“Look into the future, Val,” he rasped. “Watch this woman kill you, if that’s what you want to see.”
It was what she wanted to see. Only by seeing it could she stop it. That’s how their curse worked. He knew that.
She reached behind her and clutched his hard thigh as it slapped against her skin. “Harder, Max. Please.” Sweat exploded over her skin. She needed what only he could give. The climax, the vision. Answers. Vengeance. “Please.”
He gave her what she wanted, hard, fast, and unrelenting, without his usual soft caresses, without kisses, without whispers of love in her ear. It didn’t matter. What she needed now was the purely physical reaction. Flesh on flesh. If she concentrated, she could make it. She could make it. She could make it—
A middle-aged man with a sprawling bald spot atop his head screams as the floor collapses beneath him. He’s weightless for a terrifying second until his body slams into the ground below. A chunk of cement falls on top of him, then another, and another.
Blur.
A woman sails through the air, reaching for anything to stop her fall, but everything’s falling. There’s nothing to grab. She makes contact with the floor below, so hard she bounces once before landing in a heap.
Blur.
Blood leaks out an Asian man’s mouth as he lies amid ruins made of rock and Christmas lights, his eyes searching for something before they glaze over and stare at nothing.
Blur.
From between the cracks in a pile of debris, Rudolph’s nose blinks. Somehow the tiny light, attached to a buried person’s sweater, hasn’t broken. It might be the only thing that hasn’t.
Blur.
Simon looks at me with tear-filled eyes. “Help me, Mommy! Please help me!”
“I’m coming, Simon! Hang on. I’m coming!”
Blur.
Max lies in a hospital bed, tubes protruding from his body. A machine beeps in the background. His face is waxen where it’s not covered in black bruises, his body limp, his eyes closed. A gasbag pushes air into his lungs.
“There was a lot of cranial hemorrhaging,” one doctor tells another at the foot of Max’s bed. “I’m not sure if he’ll wake up—”
Blur.
“Don’t be sad, Mommy,” Lydia says. “I’ll always love you. Daddy, too. If you love us, we’re never really gone. We’ll live forever.”
Blur.
Dani’s steel blue eyes widen as she stares down the barrel of a gun in disbelief. Her red hair, streaked with gray, frames a delicate face lined around the eyes and mouth with age. “Don’t do this, please.” Her lips tremble. “I have something to live for now. You don’t understand—”
BOOM BOOM BOOM. Three shots to the chest. She collapses to the ground and spits up blood for a moment before going still.
Blur.
“No!” I scream. “No! No! No!”
“You wanted to see.”
A woman in a white A-line skirt with a matching satin blouse stands next to a wall of glass, silky black hair cascading over her shoulders. We stand in what looks like an office in an enormous house, except there are no books or furniture other than a simple glass desk and a couple sleek steel chairs. Through a window on the opposite wall, I see an evergreen forest.
Who is she?…I remember now—Cassandra. This woman is Cassandra, Northwalk’s Alpha.
“No!” I say. “I want to see them live! I want to know how to save them.”
“There are infinite ways,” Cassandra says with a breathy English accent. “The choice is what you are willing to sacrifice.”
“Everything.”
“Your love or your anger?”
I should sacrifice my anger, if that’s what she means. That would be the right thing to do. “But…I need my anger. It gives me strength. I need to protect my family. If love means doing nothing…I can’t.”
“Then this is your choice: amidst a sea of blood will stand the ebony fox and the crimson wolf. Kill the wolf.”
“What does that mean? What—”
The scene evaporated. Cassandra again. Val had only talked to the mysterious woman once before, when she and Max first made love in the boathouse six years ago. All she wanted to know was how to keep her family safe, but all she’d seen was their suffering. Though she had a chance if she killed the wolf…whatever that meant. It was better than nothing. If Max had seen Eleanor as a yellow hyena, who was the wolf? The last cryptic advice Cassandra gave Val ended up saving her life.
Kill the wolf.
Lying facedown on the mattress, Val pushed herself up onto her forearms and blinked as her eyes adjusted to the room’s light.
“Max?”
Every time she could remember, he’d been with her when she awoke from her trance, to comfort her if she needed it or to talk about what she’d seen. She did the same for him.
Now he was gone.
* * *
Max flipped on the shower faucet and let the water course down his skin, so hot it nearly scalded him. With both hands, he braced himself against the stall’s wall and tried unsuccessfully to catch his breath.
Had he just assaulted his own wife? It almost felt like he did, the brutality of it. But she’d asked for it, she’d wanted him to…
Jesus, what have I done?
He didn’t know what came over him. When she said she wanted to use him, memories of his father had boiled up from the places he’d buried them and tried to ignore, and he’d…he’d lost it. Lost control of the darkness inside him. He gave her what she wanted in the worst possible way.
All they had to do was leave. She was the one who could change the future. If they left, just avoided the yellow hyena—whether it was Eleanor or something else—and let the police handle the bomber, they’d be safe. They could stay together as one happy family, the way they were before. But she was too wrapped up in solving the world’s problems to consider the simplest, best solution. She said she wanted to protect him, her mother, and the children, but he knew better. Val wanted payback for Robby’s murder, for her rape five years ago, for the hell the people who pulled the strings had put them through. She wanted someone, anyone, to pay. She wanted blood. He couldn’t help her this time.
He shut the water off and toweled down, calmer and more collected than when he’d rushed in, though the core of him still shook. The memory of what he’d just done felt like an oil stain on his soul. Taking a deep breath, he walked back into the bedroom, prepared to apologize.
Val sat at the foot of the bed, frantically writing in the notebook she used to record her visions. She didn’t look upset at all. She’d wanted a glimpse of the future, and she didn’t care how she got it. Vengeance was all she wanted.
Max slipped on a T-shirt and a pair of pajama bottoms while Val scratched away at her book. When he grabbed his pillow, she looked up.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m sleeping in the study tonight,” he muttered.
“But…but Max, I saw Cassandra this time, and she said—”
He turned and walked away. He didn’t care what the crazy lady in white said. What he cared about was her. If she couldn’t be bothered to care about her own well-being or the effect it had on her family, then there was no use talking.
As he trudged down the hallway, he heard, “Daddy?”
Max spotted Simon in the doorway of his room, his tiny body silhouetted by the starry nightlight illuminating the ceiling.
“What is it?” Max knelt next to his son. He put a tender hand on Simon’s shoulder.
“Are you and Mommy fighting?”
“Um…we had a disagreement, but it’s okay. Everything’s fine. Go back to bed.”
“Don’t fight. If you do, the wolf wins.”
Max frowned. Another one of the kid’s cryptic premonitions. He could tell Val about it, but it would just fuel her wrath, and he didn’t want to talk anymore. A child shouldn’t be burdened with a curse even worse than what Max and Val had, but what could they do? Only Lucien had a cure, and he took it to his grave.
“We’ll be fine, Simon. Go back to sleep, okay?” Max ushered his son to bed, shushed him so he didn’t wake his sister, then tucked him in and gave him a kiss.
“Daddy, I don’t want you to fight. I’m scared.”
Max whispered, “How many sides does an icosagon have?”
Simon smiled. “Twenty.”
“Good job. When you’re scared, recite the names of all the shapes you know, from the least sides to the most sides. It’ll take your mind off whatever’s scaring you.”
“Okay. I love you.”
“I love you, too. Don’t wake your sister.”
Max left the bedroom, easing the door shut so the sound didn’t disturb Lydia. He continued his march down the stairs and to the study, threw the pillow down, and lay on the couch. Toby trotted up and launched himself into Max’s lap, wagging his stubbed tail with happiness at the rare chance to sleep with his master. Max sighed and pushed the dog down to his legs, where Toby settled between his knees.
At least Max still had his children—and the damn dog. But the one person in the world who made him whole was slipping away, and he didn’t know how to stop it.