Avery
“It’s too many prophecies and curses,” I complained, pinching the bridge of my nose. “I can’t keep track, Wyatt. I need a chart … maybe a Venn diagram.”
Among the first things I’d learned upon joining the underground world of supernatural beings was that werewolves clung to their lore and way of life with four paws. They took occultism seriously, and they were superstitious as hell. So much so that any gobbledygook out of the mouths of supposed seers, oracles, prophets, clairvoyants, necromancers, and the like was upheld as gospel. What’s more, drastic actions were often taken based on outdated prophecies and rampant paranoia over alleged future events.
“Oh, come on, it’s not as bad as that,” Wyatt said as he typed something into the notes on his iPad. “You’re just tired. When was the last time you slept?”
“When I was human.”
He gave me a sympathetic smile and glanced at his watch. “How far do you need to drive still tonight—erm, this morning—to reach Sloane?”
“Far enough. Let’s keep going.”
“Speaking of, you’ll find a set of keys in your backpack to an old black Audi A4 parked on level three of the structure on Blake Street. You know the one?”
“Sure do. RiNo’s my old hood—sorta.” I rubbed my temple. “You were saying something weird and obscure about the decade of no light,” I prompted helpfully.
He set his iPad down and removed his reading glasses. “Listen, Avery. Lately, I’ve been thinking, maybe I should know Sloane’s whereabouts? You know … in case anything ever happens to Azda while you’re away … and you need me to relocate Sloane to another safe house—”
“No. Uh-uh.”
“But she’s old and half-blind—”
“Wyatt, no. Azda’s fine. It’s too risky.”
He looked a little offended by how quickly I’d shut him down. But it couldn’t be helped. “Avery, I would never—”
“It’s not about that. I just think it’s safer for everyone this way. I know you’d never betray us.” Not intentionally. Or without excessive torture at least. My hunch was that silver-spoon-fed white guys didn’t hold up well under torture. “Let’s get back to that prophecy about the decade without light.”
He sighed. “Right. Almost ten years ago, and nearly overnight as the story goes, every important seer, clairvoyant, and necromancer across the globe mysteriously fell dead, thrusting the supernatural world into a state of figurative darkness.”
“Who killed them all?”
Wyatt shrugged. “No one knows. They just … croaked.” He gave me a half-grimace, half-grin, trying his best not to give in to the humor we invariably injected into these sessions. Because really, we had to laugh so we wouldn’t freak out.
“That’s preposterous. They all just dropped dead on the spot? At the same time?”
“Yep.” He bit his lip and rubbed at the back of his neck. “Allegedly so.”
“O-kay.” I reached for my cold coffee mug. “Let’s just suppose for argument’s sake that actually happened. I still don’t get why it would spawn so much excessive rogue hunting. What’s this great panic over killing every possible rogue left on the planet before the decade of no light’s end?”
Wyatt shook his head.
“You think maybe, absent the ‘perceived’ second sight they’d come to rely so heavily upon as a society, they just … I dunno … flipped their collective supernatural wig, so to speak? And they’ve been runnin’ around killing rogues to work off steam while awaiting further instruction from the silent ether ever since?”
“Mmmm … perhaps …” Wyatt’s lips curled and his eyes crinkled with humor. “It’s a good enough theory, anyhow, given the voodoo-loving set we’re dealing with.”
We knew the supernatural world had been hunting for a powerful Rogue-with-a-capital-R who was prophesied to usher forth the birth of a new breed of werewolf species that would be unbeholden to the pack mentality and way of life to which all werewolves presently adhered. But that was a centuries-old prophecy. It didn’t explain the more recent rogue-killing frenzy.
Slipping his glasses back on, Wyatt raised his iPad and resumed reading through his notes, his finger scrolling over the screen. “An oracle foretold something about a war sparked by the death of a guilty innocent caught between two rival packs.”
“The ongoing fighting between the Brazilian and the Portuguese super-werewolf packs Perry told us about, right?” I took a sip of cold coffee and pulled a face. “The stolen eye prophecy?”
He nodded, then read from the screen: “The stolen eye no number of wrong eyes would make right. The unforgivable sacrifice destined to unearth a wrath so black as to obliterate night. Ushering forth the war of the century, the rise of a blind warrior, and the dawn of a decade without light.”
“You think the original seer or oracle who came up with that one really made it a rhyme?”
“Doubtful.” Wyatt grinned. “That one’s from the seventeen hundreds, I believe. Most likely someone turned it into a dumb nursery rhyme after the fact and it’s lost something in translation as a result.”
“Fuck it all.” I pushed my coffee mug aside. We were losing time and getting nowhere with deciphering the prophecy nonsense. As usual. “How ’bout I just keep torturing rogues for intel?”
Despite being a believer of positive genetic mutation, I’d tortured and killed a fair share of rogue werewolves over the years in my quest for information on my new species. I rationalized that every single one of them had been mad and headed for demise anyway—deranged and warped as they all inevitably became from lack of sufficient contact and communion with other wolves.
“Works for me,” Wyatt readily agreed.
“Great. Let’s move on to the South American super-werewolves.”
“This is Alex Reinoso.”
“Daaamn.” I rummaged blindly through my new backpack and tried to control my drool reflex as Wyatt flipped through photos of a gorgeous Brazilian god. “I feel a heat cycle coming on. Where are those pills?”
“Him?” Wyatt squinted at the photos. “Ugh, don’t tell me you go for that type?”
“You mean the perfectly hot type? The tall, dark, handsome Alpha type? Definitely. Please tell me that beautiful man’s not coming to kill me.”
“He’s coming to kill you.”
“So unfair. I hate killing the hot ones. Too dangerous to fuck first?”
“Yes. Too dangerous to attempt to kill as well. But he’s only part of the problem.” Wyatt flipped through more photos on the iPad before stopping on a series of shots of a waiflike young brunette with long, wavy hair, bright blue eyes, and delicate, angelic features. In the photos, she was getting out of a Bentley SUV, surrounded by big, beefy hotties on all sides—more super-werewolves, no doubt. “This is Alex Reinoso’s better half, Milena Caro-Reinoso.” Wyatt’s manicured forefinger tapped the screen. “She is enemy number one.”
“She’s the Alpha bitch?” I grabbed the electronic notepad from his hand. “This little girl here? The one who looks like she’s just come off of a peace and love bender at Burning Man?”
“She’d just come off of a rogue killing spree in Eastern Europe when this was taken, actually.” Wyatt gave me a pointed look devoid of humor. “Word is she calls the shots and runs the show these days within the Reinoso stronghold. And that the pack both respects and adores her as their fearless leader.” He scratched his chin. “She’s also referred to as the vessel. But I haven’t figured out yet what that means or which prophecies it relates to.”
“She’s the Alpha of the Reinoso pack? The pack that includes this breed of super-werewolves? Alpha of one of the oldest, largest, most powerful werewolf packs on the planet?”
“Not one of,” Wyatt corrected, “the largest, most powerful known werewolf pack. And the ones with the extraordinary magical capabilities are known as werelocks, not super-werewolves or superbeasts. The werelock subspecies originated from the union between a powerful warlock and a werewolf back in the first quarter of the sixteenth century.”
“You’re pulling my leg with this. She doesn’t even look Brazilian.”
“She’s not. She’s American. From the surfer town of Santa Cruz, California, as a matter of fact.”
“NoCal flower child turned rogue werewolf killer?” I shook my head. “We’re being set up. This can’t be right.”
“Avery, you of all people should know a person may be far more than what they appear on the surface.”
“Spare me the afterschool special message. I’m serious.” I proceeded to flip through photos, pausing on one where the flower child had gone from walking from the vehicle to being sprawled out on the pavement with multiple beefy hotties hunkered over her. “What happened here? Gunfire? Were they attacked?”
“No.” Wyatt coughed into his fist. “She ah … tripped and fell, I believe.”
“Oh, good Lord.” I offered the pad back to him. “Shall we move on to that French pack of superbeasts in Alsace? Got any pics of ’em eating croissants you wanna try and terrify me with?”
“Very funny.” He snatched the iPad from me and began searching through photo folders. “So she’s a little clumsy for an Alpha werelock. That doesn’t make her any less dangerous.”
“True.” I signaled our server for a coffee refill. “Suppose I’m unable to trip her?”
“Haha,” he deadpanned. “Avery, you need to take these werelocks seriously. Especially this Alpha Milena.”
“Believe me, I do. Come on, a cute, privileged white girl everyone adores? That’s a rival the likes of which I’ve never seen before.”
“You’re impossible.”
“You’re laughing on the inside.”
“That’s beside the point.”
“Just show me photos of the easy pack target with the weird name that you told me about so I can go and practice my tripping skills.”
He opened another folder of photos and flipped the iPad around for me to see just as our waitress approached with my refill.
“Sweet Jesus!” our server’s high-pitched voice rasped, taking the words straight out of my mouth as she and I both shamelessly eye-fucked the dark, hunky stranger in the photo filling up Wyatt’s screen.