Chapter Twenty-One

Cal

Now I've made some pretty dumb decisions in my time. The usual ones like sticking a knife in the toaster and microwaving tinfoil. That one really sucked, because I broke it and we had to go without for almost a year before Niko and scrounge up enough money to get a new one. And there were some pretty huge mistakes too. Allowing Cherish to get so close and almost get all of us killed. Sleeping with Delilah, while amazing fun that was a huge mistake. Thinking I could ever be human…

But then there was this.

I left my son unattended with a pack of pissed off werewolves circling like sharks in a chum pond. I knew how underhanded and vicious these dicks could be and I still thought they would avoid him in fear. The Kin avoided nothing, not even me. They thought they were the top of the food chain and they would have lunged at a full bred Auphe if it were challenging their territory. They wouldn't survive that, but the Kin defended their inflated pride to the bitter end. And I'd be damned if I wasn't their bitter end in this scenario, especially when one of them broke the circle of bodies that was piling up around us and dove right for Dante.

I slammed my foot into its ribs as it came at us, but not before the white wolf clamped its jaw around the back of my son's neck. "Fuck!" I leveled the Desert Eagle, but couldn't get a clear shot without clipping Dante. First thought was that Delilah just signed her death warrant, but it wasn't my former sex-friend/current pain-in-the-ass psycho-ex. For one, this white furball was male and I didn't recognize him, but he was dragging Dante back on his kicking feet, yellow eyes trained on me as if he knew he was using my son as a shield, which meant this prick was dead. And my boy…man, burst a pair of wings through his back and he screamed bloody murder, but a werewolf sinking fangs into his non-existent scruff and he was just plan pissed. He flailed and clawed like a cat being drug to bath time, drawing blood and renting the asphalt like it was melted butter. Of course that made it impossible for me to sharp shoot the wolf in the head. I went for the tail end instead. I even got off a couple rounds into the snowy hide right in his flank. One of them blasted off the majority of a tail already gargled and scared from previous battles. If Cassie's playful nicknames for these Evati douchebags held any truth, I was thinking this one was Tail-rot…of course, now it would be Tail-gone. I was tackled by another white one, before I could take out Tail-rot's knees. Apparently they came in pairs.

There was a distinctive sharp bark in my ear that sounded almost like the wolf on my back was trying to speak to me. I swung around and slammed the butt of the Eagle against the second wolf's temple. It didn't make the usual thump of metal to skull sound, more like metal to ground meat. The new White Fang above me seemed to grin. The side of her head that I slammed was bleeding sluggishly from a head wound that had obviously been healing from a previous shot to the head. It was angry and pink, the meat that was usually hidden under flesh and fur was bubbled and uneven; scar tissue. I knew without any other hint that this was Delilah. "Get the hell off of me."

She snorted and shifted to her human guise right on top of me. Her body becoming the sleek lines and curves of the very the attractive woman I once thought she was in the blink of an eye. Now all I saw was another homicidal bitch out for blood. I didn't have time for this. Thankfully, Cassie had the same thought in mind. My lover tackled Delilah and they went down in a blur of amber and pale cream limbs, blood quickly joined in with the fangs and feathers, but I didn't wait for the conclusion. As much as I wanted to see Cassie rip Delilah to shreds I had more important things to do.

"Dante!" I shouted, more to Cassie to tell her where our sights should be set than to call to him. I launched onto my feet and bolted for the open doorway. I chucked the Eagle aside and ripped the Ka-bar out of the hidden pocket in my jacket. I was out of bullets, but I hadn't wanted to fire into a potential gasoline firebomb anyway. Tail-rot was still dragging my son along back into the warehouse, which was smoking now. Shit. A fire started. I didn't know how, but I damned well didn't care. "Dante!"

I got there just as the first barrel exploded. I was airborne, knocked inside the building and into a pile of crates. Splintered wood dug into every inch of my skin, but I barely felt it; adrenaline full throttle through my veins. I shoved it all out of the way, patting down my lit shoulder and kicking smoldering planks out of my path. The warehouse was filled with smoke. I could barely see a thing except for the fire racing across the floor to catch every piece of wood and skating across the trails of gasoline like a rocket on speed. I tore a piece of my shirt off and held it over my mouth as I crouched and groped through the murky clouds. I was still part human; no matter how Auphe I felt sometimes, the smoke suffocated my lungs just like any other human. I hoped Nik had already gotten his ass out of here.

A fuzzy gray object collided with me as I made it out into the main aisle. I managed to stay on my feet, my center of gravity lowered as I tried to stay below the billowing smoke that attempted to escape through the small windows broken above. I slashed the black matte knife in the direction of the obvious werewolf's trajectory path and caught my target. There was a yelp mixed with a snarl and I smelled more that saw the blood blossom on the pelt. I slammed my foot into the undefined form, catching it solid enough to send it into a pile of burning something as I had planned. There was another cry of pain and the sounds of a dog scrabbling to get away from something that frightened it, namely their tail being on fire.

I coughed and hacked and crashed my way further into the warehouse, slipping on blood as well as the evaporating foam left behind by someone's attempt to stop this inferno before it got out of hand; my brother and a fire extinguisher probably. "Dante!"

"DaaaaAhhhdaaa!" The scream, balefully drawn out, hitched into something more Auphe in the middle. It let me pinpoint his location in the smoky fog and it caused his captor to let off a little whine of pain as well. I made a sharp turn toward the sound and almost into a piece of rebar sticking out of the curved half of a mangled support beam. Someone had tossed something into it mighty hard; for that one my best were on my pissed off girlfriend and a werewolf shot-put. I saw something shift in the smoke to my right and my son, ever the smart little cookie, started screaming again. Either he saw me and was calling for me, or he realized the sound loosened the hold on his nape.

The wail reverberated against walls; even among the creaking and crashing of the consuming fire, it could be heard clear as a jagged glass Q-tip being shoved in your ear. I shot off after them, expecting the werewolf to drop his treasure to get away from the agonizing maelstrom of sound my son was making. Instead I heard a sound that I knew would haunt my nightmares for the rest of my life. An almost inaudible snap and my son's voice cut silent. I'd caught up to them, I could see in the hazy glow of a nearby fire the white male shaking my son's limp body back and forth like the other had my .38. I went numb, frozen for just a moment, but that was enough to emboss that image into my brain with white-hot fury and shame.

Tail-rot dropped my son to the concrete. His tiny limbs flopped down like a broken doll's and his head dropped facing me so I could see the blood streaked over his round face, running up against gravity. Ash stuck to his dark lashes, covered his little wings. His gray eyes stared blankly at me, mouth slack. He wasn't moving. He wasn't fucking moving.

I had no idea what the white ball of fluff standing over him saw when my eyes panned up to him, but the last little tuff of fur on his bloody half stump of a tail tickled his balls it was curled so far between his legs. His yellow eyes peered at me as if pleading; like a little puppy that just chewed on daddy's signed baseball. He didn't mean to do it. Of course not, Dante was bait. Always bait. The bastard's jaw just convulsed in the throes of Dante's scream and snapped…

But this wasn't a fucking baseball or a favorite pair of shoes. This was my son. This bastard just killed my son. I built the gate without any conscious thought of what it would do to me. Second gate, third gate, it didn't matter. This murderer was taking a vacation. I opened the gate to Tumulus without thinking either. My son was dead. The thing they wanted most was gone. If they wanted to come out and terrorize a few more of the hydrant-pissers I was all for it.

Tail-rot tried to duck away; the look in his eyes changed from pitiful supplication to vicious terror. He bared his teeth and launched at me –now that his pity-party clearly wasn't working. It was all big bad wolf and the huntsman with him flying at me paws first and claws spread wide for maximum carnage. I dodged with more calm than I'd had in weeks. It was like everything had been set into place inside my head or everything had just dropped out of my head, either was plausible. I dodged the piss-scared wolf and shoved the serrated ka-bar into his sternum on his way down. His full two-twenty dead weight of muscle, bone, and hairballs hit my shoulder and brought me to my knees, but I just wrenched the blade up, cracking a rib and feeling the flow of warm blood cascade over my hands.

I didn't feel anything else. Not the shift of displaced joints where he dislocated my shoulder, not the cut of splinters and glass digging into my knees, not the heat of the fire surrounding or even the pull of the gate growing. I hoisted Tail-rot onto my mangled shoulder and tossed him bodily into the vortex. He didn't make it all the way; his backside waving about and his hind-claws sliding and scraping around outside the edge of the shifting gray. Something was pulling him in or maybe I opened the gate off a cliff, who knew. Who cared?

"Cal!" At that shout my hearing came back in a wave. It was no longer the wish-wash rush of blood to my ears. Now I could hear the whine and clank of the building deteriorating above. The beams and supports were sagging; metal and wood crashed down around our ears to feed and fan the fires. I could see a small figure through the smoke and for a moment thought I might be hallucinated from smoke inhalation. But her voice carried over the cacophony of noise again, a damned sweet sound that sent ice down my spine. "Cal, Nik's out. Where's Dante?"

She wanted me to tell her he was safe, that he was with Rafferty and curled up in a puppy-pile with Hunter and Chase. But that would be a bald faced lie; that would be what a good father had done. A good father would have never brought their son to a werewolf cage match. A good father would have gated…no, a good father couldn't gate. A good father wasn't a fucking monster.

I glanced back at Tail-rot. His bloody stump of a tail was whipping around as he attempted to pull himself back in a safer reality. Well, I couldn't have that. I started to circle closer, but saw the Auphe had joined in on the game. Black talons had emerged from the depths of the gate, small ones, scouring over his hide like a dozen little paring knives. Not sure I wanted to know what they were doing on the other end, but I had a few ideas. They were playing with him; apparently I tossed him into a nest of baby Auphe.

How fitting. Let them have their fun.

I shoved my foot to his wriggling ass and chucked him in, before I shut the gate. A toy was no fun if it was broken in half.

A beam screeched and swung down to crash barely a foot away from me. It knocked me out of my psychotic homicidal moment more than even Cassie's voice did, mainly because that was much too close to my son. I ducked under the beam, feeling the heat of it against my scalp as I passed and dropped next to Dante's body. I could see Cassie picking through the debris, still calling my name. That was until she saw me knelt down beside our son. I touched a hand to his still chest, searching for any sign that he was still with us. There was nothing, no movement at all. I heard Cassie coughing, Dante's name coming out several times as her wings reappeared and she sailed over the last obstacles. She half landed, half collapsed into me and I caught her as best I could, patting out a flame that took out a few feathers.

Her weight to my good shoulder, the slightest hint of her glorious scent among the stenches of gasoline, wood smoke and charred dog, the sensation of her breath on my neck and the dampness of her sweat and tears on my cheek…it grounded me. She grounded me. Just like Nik always had. And I would be a damned lousy brother if I let everything he taught me go to waste. The situation was fight or flight and without a helicopter to fly over and douse this fire pit there was no use fighting. So flight it was.

I pulled Cassie from my shoulder and shook her once. She looked even more rough-and-tumble than I probably did and flinched at my light jolt to her body. "We have to get out of here," I shouted over the din of another beam coming down. It busted a window in the back as it see-sawed over one of its fallen brethren. The fire kicked halfway up to the second story rafters at the new wave of oxygen to feed from. I hadn't noticed that this building went all the way deep to the street behind it. I couldn't see how far back with all the smoke, but I could see it was filled with enough oil drums to send this place sky high.

I scrambled to my feet, dragging Castiella up with me. "Dante," she chirped. Her soot-and-blood covered hand skated over his tiny arm as I pulled her away. Well, of course, I wasn't leaving him here, if that was what she was asking. Once I got her to her feet, I scooped up my son's little body –much heavier now that he didn't have the consciousness to hold on to me; it gnawed at me, trying to make me think about it, but I couldn't. I had to get Cassie out of here; I had to get myself out of here. I couldn't think about how his head rocked against my shoulder when I cradled it there as if he was just tuckered out and asleep. I couldn't let the sensation of my fingers sticking to the shorn skin of his neck from the dying blood (his and mine) distract me. There was plenty of time for me to beat myself senseless over the murder of my son.

Castiella was at my side, standing wearily on legs so torn up I could see bone just below her right kneecap. She gave me a determined look though, her eyebrows darkened even more by ash and a furrowed to a straight line across with blood smear between them. Her eyes matched, still lava red from the battle and now the rage of losing Dante. She spoke to me in Auphe, which chilled me slightly: We're getting out of here and we're going to murder every last Evati we can find. I was glad to hear the 'we' in there, because my first thought was she was about to murder me for being the fault of Dante's…

Not that I wouldn't deserve it. Part of me wished she would. My son was dead. It was my fault, but I didn't kill him. A fucking wolf with mange killed my son.

God damn it they killed my son!

I'd been trying to fight it, but it hit me all the same. Like a brick wall slamming into my back, jolting my entire body with dread, guilt, and fervent rage. And then I realized that wasn't emotion sending my mind reeling so I didn't know what was up or down; it was a literal explosion and I was eating the solid metal surface of a bent and crumbling concrete support. Somehow my legs were still under me, holding me against the pillar like a really bad pole dancer. I groaned and spit out a tooth, then turned to search for Dante; all I had was his torn shirt clenched in my fist.

We had to get out of here. That explosion was just another small barrel inside the first room; they were spread out here, leaving enough room between them that it didn't go off like C4 on an oil rig. The back room would be another story. Once that fire ignited just one of those barrels back there and our little half Auphe family would be nothing but cinders. I doubt even Cassie could come back from that.

"Cas—" I started to pull away from the beam I was half clutching half plastered to. My shoulder scraped against the curved dent it made in the concrete, sending little sparks of pain down my arm, but it was the fire-bolt of agony blazing through my chest and into the pit of my stomach that jolted me to stop, my legs twitching uncontrollably as an aftershock. Something scratched at my ribs from the inside. A sticky warmth drenched my inner thigh down to the edge of my boot; I didn't think I pissed myself, which meant that was blood and a lot of it. I coughed, sending another strike of lightening through my body, and looked down at my new dilemma.

That damned, fucking, cock-barrel, son-of-a-coil rebar I'd avoided earlier was now implanted firmly through my abdomen, angled down. I closed my eyes – they were already stinging from all the smoke so I just pretended that was why tears were streaming down my face. The rebar had sliced into me pretty good on entry. The downward angle couldn't save me when blown directly into it. Maybe if it had been alloy or maybe even just a thinner diameter in this heat it might have bent and maybe it did, but not enough. I didn't have an exit wound, but I could feel it under my skin at my back…if it already punctured my kidney I was a goner. I was human inside, not Auphe. I could live with a gun shot or stab wound as long as it didn't get something vital and when a puncture wound was at least six inches long and probably just as deep…

"Cal!" It was a cry of panic and I saw Cassie skid to a halt beside me after she hurdled a blazing crated and the beam that crushed it. It was a sloppy jump. She kicked the crated, sending embers sparking all around. She stumbled from the new burns on her legs; she was loosing strength and probably had already lost just as much blood as I was right now during the battle. I attempted to tell her to get the hell out of here, but it came out as a gurgled cough before blood slipped passed my lips and prevented the words from forming. Internal bleeding. Fuck, I was toast.

I glanced down at the inch of rebar visible between the concrete support and my sternum so she didn't do something stupid like try to drag me away, or hug me, or…break out her Auphe claws to slice through the rebar and catch me before I toppled to the ground. Oh, wait, that actually worked. She laid me down and brushed my shirt aside to inspect the wound. Her expression said it all. Her claws slipped back into the flesh of her fingers and tears made clear tracks down her soot-blackened face. "Cali…"

I was dead. I knew this and now she knew this. A week ago I had thought I'd lost her. Less than a week ago I wasn't a father. Less than a week ago I was alone. And now I was losing everything all over again. Good lord, what was Niko going to do without me? Get a life maybe. Settle down with Promise and have a gaggle of vamp-babies? I hoped so.

I touched a trembling hand to Cassie's cheek, brushing away a tear only to add a streak of blood to her face. I wanted to tell her to get out. I wanted to tell her I loved her and that she had to make sure my big brother didn't do something stupid. I hoped it was in my eyes. I hoped she read it there like she did every other unspoken request. Her jaw clenched under my palm. Her features hardened and her eyes, swirling gold and fire red flickered up to something unseen beyond. No…shit, no.

I knew that look. That was the same look I saw on Niko's face when he went on his homicidal rampage after Cherish mind-melded him into thinking I was in pieces on our living room rug. It wasn't Niko I had to worry would do something stupid, or rather Cassie was about to get a head start. I tried to grip her neck, tried to squeeze it to tell her no, but suddenly my nerves weren't sending messages to my brain anymore. My hand fell to my side like I'd already passed out and I glared at it for giving up. Cassie rose from my side. Her wings lifted from her back like an enraged Valkyrie; ready to take every last werewolf in the world to Hell. And I could do nothing to stop her.

There was a voice calling out in the distance. Male and familiar, but I couldn't place it. Unconsciousness was trying to take me out and I was fighting it like it was a tangible enemy, clawing and scraping to keep afloat and out of the void. My eyes closed of their own accord. I felt Cassie's fingers drift over the little bit of stubble along my jaw. Her lips dusted over my own. "I'm sorry, Cali."

I didn't know what she was apologizing about. This was my fault. I got our son kill and then died. She laid down her life for our son and in the end neither of them had died. I was the one that fucked all of this up. Everything she sacrificed I just let it slip through my fingers. I wanted to tell her that, but the fire was creeping farther into the back room and it felt like the blood was clotting in my throat. I coughed to clear it. I tried to grab for her when I felt her stand. The moment I shifted, though, something sparked up my spine, blanking my head out. Blanking everything out.

When I managed to peel my eyes open again, she was gone and my eyes no longer burned like they were on fire. I couldn't feel anything actually, but my vision was jostled as if I was being moved. I forced my head to crane back and saw my brother. Always there. Always by my side. He was screaming something over his shoulder and a moment later Robin emerged from the heavy smoke. Aw, look at that he was ruining another set of clothes for me.

They hoisted me up off the ground, Robin at my ankles and Niko hauling me up under my arms. It didn't matter how hard I fought against the darkness at that point. The moment they lifted me up, the rebar punctured through my back. I would have screamed, but there was still blood in my throat and now breathing was becoming an issue. I lurched to the side, almost flipping out of Niko's grip to vomit/hack-up whatever was blocking the path. The motion drove me over the edge and the black engulfed me. The last thing any of my senses picked up was the explosion.

I had to admit, that was a pretty good trap.