Long time no see! This is a long one.
Chapter 7: emily and i
An unknown number is calling Emily's burner. Very few people know the number, and only one person contacts her on it these days. Emily sits up on the bed in her cushy hotel room in anticipation, licking her lips.
"Sammy?" she asks in a hopeful tone. It's been so long since he called her, and even longer since they warmed each others' beds after she was hired for a hit in Silicon Valley.
"Wrong brother, ya hateful bitch."
Emily scowls, releasing a sharp sigh.
"Paul… What are you calling me for?"
Between the two brothers Paul had certainly inherited the worst personality traits, although he was definitely a force to be contended with in the sheets– she'll at least give him that.
"You'll never guess who I just caught," he sings.
Emily freezes. There was no way.
No fucking way.
"Is she dead?" she barks.
"Not yet," Paul answers in that stupid sing-song voice.
Emily knocks over her chair as she gets to her feet.
"She's my kill. Not yours! Mine!" she shouts. "I was the one who was supposed to kill her. Sam sent me first!"
"Sam called you off the first time, and for whatever dumb reason you listened to him," Paul reminds her. She can hear the smirk in his tone and wants to rip it off his face with her claws. "It's a fair game, now. Finders keepers and all that. But don't worry, Em. I'll make sure she suffers."
Fair game? He was stealing a moment that belonged to her.
"Paul-"
"If you wanna visit her grave, come by in the morning. I'll give you all the gory details in person."
"PAUL-"
The asshole hangs up before she can get another word in.
Emily screams in frustration, throwing her phone across the room.
Paul was intruding on her kill! She's meant to be the one that's supposed to finish Leah off– it's been her fantasy since the stupid girl joined their ranks. She never belonged among them.
"I should've killed her the first chance I got," she growls under her breath.
Emily walked through the lobby of the hospital with a smile plastered on her face. She nodded politely to the nurses at the front desk and turned the corner.
Her heels clacked against the floor as she continued her steps down the hall. She stopped in front of the bathroom door and locked it behind her when she stepped inside.
Dropping her bag from her shoulder, she made quick work of removing her clothes. She pulled out a costume nurse's dress and admired the stark white fabric in the bathroom light.
Emily slipped into the tightly fitted dress and pulled on nude stockings that rolled all the way up to her thigh. She adjusted the nurse hat on top of her head and slipped her white heels back on. And for the final touch, a kitschy white eyepatch to cover her damaged right eye.
After spending a few minutes admiring herself in the mirror, flicking her hair to and fro, she pulled out a tiny jar of poison and needle.
Emily filled the needle with the poison and placed the loaded needle on a silver tray. She exited the bathroom and walked down the hallway to the second to last room on the right.
Through the window, she could see Leah laying on the bed looking peaceful and defenseless.
Emily smirked. The girl had no idea what was coming for her.
She entered the room and set the tray on Leah's lap, leaning in to get a closer look at her face.
Whatever drudges of wolf magic Leah could manipulate had managed to heal her ugly mug. Too bad it wasn't enough to fix her brain.
A sneer lifted Emily's lip as she glanced around the room.
"I never liked you, you know. You were always in my way, always one step ahead of me somehow," Emily said to the sleeping woman. She tilted her head. "Everyone was so infatuated with you, the little ordinary human who could do a few magic tricks. I never understood that. You were never all that."
Emily pulled the needle from the tray and reached for the IV tube. "Too bad for you, you don't get a warrior's death. You get to die in your sleep, like the boring bitch you always were-"
The shrill ringing of her cell phone interrupted her thoughts. She dropped the needle and dug through her bag. After checking the screen, she answered with a dreamy sigh.
"Hi, Sammy."
"How is she?" he asked without preamble.
"Comatose," Emily replied cheerfully. She tapped Leah's nose. "She and I were just having a nice girl's chat together."
"Atta girl," Sam purred. The sound made her shiver in delight. "Em, I'm aborting this mission."
No. No. What?!
Emily looked at the phone with disbelief. "Are you kidding me? Why?"
"She's owed better than this, Em," Sam said.
"I don't owe her anything! And neither do you!" Emily shouted. She ignored Sam's shushing noises and paced to the window. "She's in a fucking coma! It's not like I'm disturbing her sleep!"
Sam waited for her angry breathing to quiet.
"You scratched the hell out of her, and she didn't die. Bella damn near drained her dry, and she didn't die from that either. I put two bullets in her, and she still Didn't. Die. We've done enough, Emily. Anything more would be shameful." He paused. "Don't you agree, Mrs. Uley?"
Emily preened at the sound of her new last name, and her eyes turned to the glittering ring on her finger. A reminder that she won him in the end, not Leah.
"Of course, Sammy," she gushed.
"Then come home, honey," Sam crooned in a low voice. "And keep that nurse outfit on until you get here."
Emily bit her lip. "You got something for me?"
"Come home and find out," he whispered with promise. An ache spread between her legs.
The call ended.
Emily stared at the phone with a smile. God, he was an outstanding lover.
"I love that man," she murmured.
Emily turned around and glared at Leah still laying on the bed, immobile. Untouched.
Alive.
Her blood boiled at the sight.
"Word of advice, bitch," she hissed, leaning over the bed railing. "Keep those eyes shut."
Disappointment wasn't a sufficient word to describe what Emily was feeling.
Of all of the members of the Deadly Lupine Assassination Squad, Leah met her demise at the hands of Paul. Maugrim, the sloppiest of the Uley brothers, who always stuck his nose where it didn't belong.
Emily snatches up her purse before she storms out of her hotel and impatiently flags down the valet to bring her car around to the front. Her Vanquish pulls up seconds later, and soon she's barreling down the highway for the rest of the night to reach Tacoma during daylight hours.
After hours of driving, Emily finally arrives at Paul's rinky dink trailer in the late afternoon. She pauses to reapply her nude lipstick in the rearview mirror after she cuts the engine, ignoring the sudden swarm of dirt covered children around her car. She snaps her compact closed and finally turns her attention to them.
"How many of you have that gremlin as a daddy?" Emily asks, pointing to Paul's trailer.
Over half of them raise their hands. The number of children he fathered exponentially grows each time she visits.
Emily doesn't entertain any of the children's follow up questions for her. Rather she steps out of her car and fishes for loose change in the cupholder, throwing them in the air like breadcrumbs. The children scream and flock to it like seagulls.
"Really, Emily?"
She turns at the sound of Paul's voice and watches him take a long stretch like a cat, arms braced against the doorway of the trailer. He looks like he just rolled out of bed.
Emily scoffs, hooking her purse in the crease of her elbow and pausing on the final rickety step so they're eye level.
"Is this really how you'll spend your life here, Paul? Sowing your fucking seeds in anything with a hole?"
Paul smirks as he assesses her cocktail dress with shameless eyes. "I can plant one if ya too, if you'd like."
Emily lifts her chin. "I don't think your brother would appreciate you propositioning his wife," she whispers.
"That's never stopped you before," Paul purrs, leaning close as his irises begin a slow color transition.
Faster than even she can register, Emily is tugged inside of the trailer as Paul's lips attack hers in a frenzy. It's unrefined and beastly, all tongue and clashing teeth.
The chorus of jeering children behind them is muffled as soon as Paul yanks the door shut. He pins her against the door and they share ragged breaths between them, staring into each other's bright blues.
It typically annoyed Emily when Paul played with toys that weren't his, but this was an allowance Emily always indulged him in. Like attracts like; she too had an inclination toward a lack of moderation.
Her purse drops to the floor, and her dress and heels follow. It takes no time at all to have Paul on his back, grasping her hips as she rides him into the lumpy mattress with everything she's got.
Any of Paul's attempts to switch positions is met with snapping teeth and a slash of claws. Emily has never allowed him to put her on her back, but that doesn't stop Paul from trying. He's a glutton for punishment. A masochist, really, when it comes to her.
It's exactly why Paul called her to break the news. He knew she would come. He knew he would be punished.
Emily responds in kind with deep scratches to Paul's chest, digging until she draws blood that crusts under her claws. The wounds seal closed almost as soon as she makes them, but still, she enjoys the faces he pulls and the growls that escape his throat. He makes for an excellent scratching post.
As soon as Paul's left eye twitches Emily bores into his chest with more harshness than before, making him whine like an innocent pup. But she knows better– she has all of his tells and tricks memorized by now.
"Not inside," Emily hisses. She immediately halts her movements and raises on her feet to pull him free.
She wouldn't dare to carry his pups, but Paul on the other hand likes to play with fire and tempt fate whenever possible. It would certainly sign both of their death warrants by courtesy of Sam, who had a deadly intolerance for disloyalty.
Paul groans as he spills across his chest. "Fuck," he grunts, and his eyes revert back to brown.
Emily pushes him back down when he tries to sit up. "Where are you going?"
Paul scoffs. "To get a fucking beer. What does it look like?"
"I didn't finish," she sniffs.
Emily shuffles forward until she's crouched above his head, smirking as he licks his lips in anticipation. Her thighs tighten around his head, practically suffocating him whenever he tries to push her off and test his limits again.
She doesn't allow him any reprieve to come up for air, not that he really needs it, until she says otherwise. Just as she likes. And Emily always gets what she likes.
Only after she's finally sated with Paul's tongue does she give him a break and release him from her grip, crawling into the space beside him.
Paul relaxes with a gasp, closing his eyes. He eventually catches his breath and clasps his hands behind his head, looking like a cat who ate a canary with that smug look on his face.
Emily flips her hair over her shoulder and picks at the dried blood under her nails.
"What'd you do to her, Paul?" she finally asks, watching him out of the corner of her good eye.
Paul sighs, as if answering is a great burden. "Chained her up and buried her six feet under at the cemetery a couple miles west from here. The headstone is Riley Biers," he says.
"Silver lined?"
Paul nods once. "You know it."
Emily whistles, impressed. "That's a pretty fucked up way to die."
"She came after me with one of Becca's modified daggers. It was self-defense."
"Rebecca Black gifted her a blade?" Emily asks incredulously. "To kill a wolf?"
Paul snorts, shaking his head. "Fat load of good it did for her. Idiot didn't even get a chance to use it."
"Where is it?"
"Outside somewhere. One of those kids is probably playing with it." Paul shrugs. "Doesn't matter anyway. Becca shouldn't make shit like that in the first place. It's fucking blasphemy,"
Emily raises a brow, surprised he knew such a big word.
"So how's it feel?"
Emily stops picking her nails, only offering confused silence as a response.
"I got rid of Frostfur, so now you two can't settle your stupid little rivalry anymore. You're the winner by default, I'd say." Paul squints at her. "So tell me, what are ya feeling? Relief, or regret?"
Emily purses her lips at the bitter reminder, clucking her tongue. "A little bit of both."
"Horseshit," Paul chuckled. "I know damn well that you feel one more than you feel the other. And my question was, which one is it?"
"Regret," Emily admits after a pause.
Paul nods thoughtfully. "Thought so. Sam thought she was so damn smart. And I tried to tell him… a girl can't have big tits like that and have a brain." Paul blinks at her chest with faux innocent eyes. "No offense."
Emily rolls her eyes. The little prick. "I could use a drink..." she trails off suggestively.
"You know where the liquor is. Help yourself."
Emily scowls at his lack of hospitality… but what was she expecting, really? This is Paul she's dealing with after all.
She crawls from the bed and makes her way across the tiny space into the kitchenette.
The scotch is in its usual spot: the furthest cabinet above the sink. She pulls out two somewhat clean mason jars, tipping a generous pour for each of them. Upon returning to the foot of the bed, she finds Paul already palming his crotch for round two.
"Wrap your lips around that," she murmurs, holding out the jar to him.
"Wrap your lips around this," he retorts, splaying his legs open.
Emily answers with a lick of her lips and they toast each other, clinking glasses. Paul downs his whiskey in one gulp while Emily watches with a contemplative look over the rim of her glass.
Paul suddenly gags harshly, dropping the glass to grasp at his neck. He scrambles with uncoordinated limbs and crashes onto the floor at Emily's feet. His bulging, bloodshot eyes are pinned on Emily as he chokes through grit teeth and spittle.
She tuts at him and takes a step back when he tries to make a weak grab for her ankle. His hand falls limp on the floor, fingers clawing uselessly against the stained carpet.
Emily watches with disinterest as she pulls out a glass vial of clear fluid from between her breasts.
"I'm sad to report that you just swallowed a nasty dose of vampire venom." She empties the vial onto the carpet and watches the fibers as they begin to smoke and disintegrate. "I planned on using this on Leah once upon a time, you know."
"Em…ily…"
The skin of his neck turns green and black, and more spittle accumulates at the corners of his mouth. His face is already drained of color, only blotches of red spread across his cheeks.
Paul tries to phase– she can tell from the way his form shifts under his skin and how his eyes flicker between blue and brown, but he can't hold the shape for long. Not when he's being charred from the inside out.
"Fascinating substance, that vampire venom." Emily takes a sip of her whiskey and grimaces at the burn. God, he always picked the worst brands. "You remember those old stories the elders used to tell us when we were kids? There was a saying:
"'Out of all the things in the world, a silver bullet can kill you, a silver blade can kill you, and a vampire can kill you. But only with a vampire there's a chance they'll skull fuck you before you meet certain death,'" she recites. "Remember that?"
Paul gurgles something unintelligible, his face now puffy and blood streaming from the corners of his mouth.
"Of course you wouldn't. You have the memory of a goldfish. I guess I'll just have to give you a crash course..." Emily sighs theatrically, rolling her eyes to the ceiling.
"Vampire venom is a neurotoxin, meaning it fucks with your brain like an infection. And that's why, since the dawn of time, we refer to vampires as parasites."
Emily drains the rest of her whiskey and runs a hand across her mouth. "They have two kinds of venom. One turns humans, and one just causes paralysis."
She tosses the empty jar over her shoulder, excitement making her eyes wide as she counts off her fingers. "The paralytic is harmless to us. It's like a temporary sedative to the nervous system. But the other kind? Well that's the most effective poison for our kind– it breaks down tissue faster than we can regenerate it. It can even cause hallucinations."
Emily leans forward with her hands on her knees and quips, "Did you guess which one you got yet, dumbass?"
Paul, unable to answer, wheezes and twitches uncontrollably. Bloody foam froths from his mouth. The skin at his neck has already deteriorated enough to reveal the graying, atrophied muscle underneath. He stares unseeing at something above him.
"A single bite from a vampire administers a ten milliliter dose. That'd kill one of us in an hour." Emily grimaces with over-exaggerated sympathy. "It's too bad you just swallowed thirty. I think that math puts you at a pathetic ten minutes." She taps her chin in contemplation. "But then again, I am really bad at math. Must be the big tits, huh?"
Emily laughs at her own joke.
"I suppose in these pitiful little moments you have left, I'll answer your question from earlier more thoroughly," she decides. "Right at this moment, what I feel the most is regret."
Her lips curl into a snarl.
"Regret that my prey met her end at the hands of a piece of shit like you!" she shouts, suddenly furious all over again. "I deserved that kill! I deserved to brag about it! But you took it from me!"
She straightens, taking a deep breath. "You disrespected me, Paul. And I can't let that go, no matter how much I like your pretty dick."
Paul takes his last breath.
Emily spins on her heel, stretching her arms until she hears the joints crack. She slips back into her abandoned dress.
Returning to the bedroom and stepping over Paul's body, she rips open his mattress with her claws. A hefty amount of cash is stuffed in the center, just like he always claimed.
She unceremoniously dumps the cash into her purse. No point in letting it go to waste, right?
Again her cell phone rings, and she pulls it out from a side pocket and cradles it between her ear and shoulder.
"Sammy…" Emily breathes sadly. "I have some tragic news. Your brother's dead. I am so sorry, baby."
"What?" Sam snarls.
Emily cringes away from his tone. "She managed to poison him with venom, but I took care of her," she lies.
"Is she…?"
Emily rolls her eyes. She never understood his soft spot for that girl.
"Let me put it this way: if you ever start feeling sentimental, come out to Tacoma Cemetery," she says with false cheer. "When you get here, pick up a bouquet and look for the headstone marked 'Riley Biers'. Because you will be standing on the final resting place of Leah fucking Clearwater."
Sam seems to be at a loss for words.
Emily sighs impatiently. "Look, I can catch a flight and get there in a couple hours. Do you want me to come over?"
"You didn't complete the other job, Em," Sam begins to say.
"No, no, no," Emily rushes to reassure him, jamming her feet back into her heels. "You need me, I'm there in a heartbeat."
"...Come over, then."
"Okay, I'm leaving now," Emily chirps. "Make sure those pink handcuffs are ready for me when I get there, okay baby? I'll be there soon!"
She hangs up, already planning her route to Sea-Tac. Her foot kicks the door open as she contemplates whether or not she should snatch up that fancy dagger before she leaves.
Standing on the other side is Leah, looking like a wraith caked in dirt and grime. Leah, who's supposed to be dead.
Emily drops her purse and phone in shock.
Leah lunges, white fur exploding from her face.
Emily manages to hold her back by her shoulders, dodging the sharp teeth of the wolf head that snaps in her face. She isn't sure what she's more shocked by: the fact that Leah can truly phase now, or that she has such control she can isolate the phase to specific limbs already.
"You just don't know how to die, do you?" Emily grunts. But still, she grins widely, excitement raising goosebumps on her skin.
Emily kicks Leah back to put some distance between them and cracks her knuckles. She watches Leah skid backwards, slamming into the Vanquish.
The children that still lingered in the area shriek and scatter.
"Now I'm gonna fucking kill you for real," Emily hisses.
Leah's face snaps back into human form as she straightens, dusting herself off. "Raksha," she murmurs.
Emily frowns. "Frostfur."
"There's something I've always been curious about," Leah says, taking slow steps toward the trailer where Emily stands in the doorway. "Just between us girls…" Her eyes shine with mirth. "What did you say to Taha Aki to make him scratch out your eye?"
Emily's frown deepens as she reaches up to touch her unseeing eye. "I called him a miserable old fool."
Taha Aki slashed her across the face for that comment during a grueling training session. The wound took days to heal, but her eye was eventually restored. Her vision, on the other hand, was not. Years and years have passed, and still– not even a flicker.
Leah gives her a mock grimace. "Bad idea."
It makes Emily see red.
She phases on the fly, destroying the trailer's doorway as charcoal fur bursts from her human skin.
Leah follows suit, charging forward in snow white fur through a plume of tattered scraps that was once her clothes. The white wolf meets her head on, baring sharp teeth.
The force and momentum behind their impact destroys Paul's trailer in one fell swoop. The trailer capsizes, raising sparks in the air as metal rakes across gravel. Screaming rises from the neighboring trailers, and bystanders peek through blinds or rush outside. They have front row seats when both wolves continue to fight among the destruction.
Leah and Emily clash against each other with matching snarls, ramming and twisting around each other while exchanging brutal bites that gouge their hides.
They're both evenly matched until Emily delivers a particularly vicious bite into Leah's shoulder. She sinks her teeth in deep and whips Leah about. Just like she did before she finished off Laurent.
The memory flashes through their mind-link, fresh as the day it happened. Laurent, coated in blood and viscera and bruises. The taste of his blood as fangs disembowel him. His screams quickly fading to rattling breaths, barely heard over Emily's endless laughter–
The sound Leah makes couldn't be described as a scream.
But it hurts Emily's eardrums nonetheless, shocks her enough that it almost throws her off balance. Leah becomes uncoordinated in her anger, lashing out at Emily without thought or finesse.
"I always wanted to make you sing," Emily sneers.
She bats Leah away like an annoying gnat, watching her roll away. On the last tumble, Leah knocks into the Vanquish again, phasing back to her human skin and curling into fetal position. How sad.
Not.
Emily takes her time trotting over, high from the knowledge that she knows she's about to win. That she's about to settle this and rightfully claim her kill once and for all.
She presses a paw against Leah's back, peeling her lips back to deliver the finishing blow so she can play with the corpse like a hacky sack.
Leah glances over her shoulder, one bright blue, tear-filled eye trained Emily. Her gaze looks demented as she works her jaw.
"Fuck. You," she says in a halting whisper.
Emily rears back.
But not quick enough.
Emily catches a glint of something as Leah abruptly lashes out at her.
At first, Emily doesn't react. She doesn't notice anything. And then she feels blood trickle down her fur, and a sudden stinging pain that follows. She realizes, to her horror, that she can't see. She can't fucking see, and her eye won't heal.
Everything is bathed in black.
Her howls of rage transition into screams of bloody murder as she phases back. She clutches her eye, the one good eye she had left now rendered useless, and screams again, falling back. Not in pain– the blow itself barely hurt– but in shock and acute disbelief. The horrible knowledge that her eyes will never burn blue again, that she's fucking… blind? It's too much.
Emily screams again.
All the sounds around her reverberate in her ear all at once, making Emily unable to locate where any specific noise is coming from. She hears metal hit the ground, the sound of thirty-odd rapid heartbeats, people screaming and panicking, and then there was sobbing.
Leah is somewhere, fucking sobbing like the sniveling little bitch she is.
"You bitch!" Emily shrieks, blindly swiping at the air with her claws. Trying to cut something, anything– fucking Leah to exact her revenge. "Come here, you fucking bitch! I'm gonna fucking kill y-"
An arm weaves around Emily's neck like a serpent, constricting tighter until her windpipe struggles to deliver air to her lungs. She bucks and claws against the arm around her neck, undoubtedly drawing blood, but the arm remains steadfast.
She still completely when she feels the whisper of something sharp tap against the skin over her heart. Her skin sizzles from the fleeting contact, and she stiffens even more.
Rebecca's dagger.
Leah's lips are right next to her ear as she whispers, "Where's Sam?"
"You-"
A stab to her stomach makes Emily shout and double over. It's quick, nothing more than a sharp flash and it's over, but the lingering sting knocks the breath out of her. The oozing wound does not close.
"Where's Sam?" Leah repeats, her voice rising.
Before Emily can respond or react, Leah stabs her again. Emily howls.
"Where the fuck is he, Raksha?"
"You think I'll tell you?" Emily rasps.
The next stab makes her wail and writhe as Leah cruelly twists and jerks the blade. When Leah finally yanks it out, Emily can't stop the faint tremble in her limbs. Her energy leeches away along with the blood pouring from her wounds like air escaping from a deflating balloon
Leah sighs, frustration coloring her tone. "This would go so much quicker if you'd just tell me," she growls. "But I do know one more person I can ask."
"She won't tell you either," Emily slurs. "Bella is loyal to Sam."
Leah scoffs. "We'll just have to see about that, won't we?"
Emily weakly snarls, trying to summon enough strength to phase again and tear into Leah one last time. Her bones and muscles shimmer under her skin, but nothing further. Just like Paul.
"I'll never let you have Sam," she threatens anyway.
Fingers dig into her scalp and painfully yank her head back. "I don't want Sam. You can have him all to yourself in hell. In fact, go wait for him there. I'll send him to you real soon," Leah whispers.
Emily feels the abrupt, blazing hot pain in her throat as the blade rakes against her neck. Leah abruptly releases her hair, and Emily falls over without the support, clutching at her neck. She makes an unrecognizable sound, unable to speak.
"The only man I want is dead," Leah says somewhere in the abyss. "Because of you."
A blow against her head– from a foot, Emily thinks– dislodges several teeth and sends her brain on a nauseating spin.
Emily coughs, or tries to, as blood continues to weep down her throat and arms, coating her like a layer of honey. Every nerve ending in her neck throbs painfully, and a pressure builds in her head as the air in her lungs is overtaken by a deluge of blood, until her throat feels as dry as the Sahara desert. Each breath is a fight, like breathing through thick smoke, and then–
Nothing.
Emily's assassin codename is, once again, a name of fictional wolf from a real book.
Raksha description from wiki: Her name means "protection/nature... because of her ferocity as a fighter, and she will fight to the death for any of her cubs [who in this case would be her pack members]." This is how Sam perceives Emily's personality is when she's around him, (and similar-ish to how she's written as a den mother in the books). But here Emily is the complete opposite of her namesake.
Emily's car is also the Aston Martin Vanquish, a nod to the car Edward used when he drove Bella to prom in Twilight.
Will I ever write a not-evil Emily? Maybe one day. But for now, Leah has to face Bella next... Stay tuned!