Perigee - Chapter 22: Chapter 22

It felt like hours. Crouched beside Jaylin in the musky sheets, Tisper watched all she could see through the tiny window on the laundry room doors. Shapes moving beyond the faint vinyl words adhered to the glass.
There were so many wolves, knelt in clusters. So many men pointing guns to their heads.
But of all the men, it was the leader who seemed most keen on whipping his clunky weapon around. There was something too familiar about him and Tisper wondered if she'd seen him before. Around town, or on TV. But there was a way his words gouged at the ends that made her think he wasn't from this place. Something heavy in his Ls, but an accented tainted with so many other accents, Tisper couldn't tell just what it was she was hearing. He pointed his gun here and there, shouting orders—grinding his timbre into the silence between bullets and the soft simpering of a younger wolf who had just been latched around the wrists with silver barbed cuffs.
Felix hadn't run off. He hadn't even tried. Once they were safely tucked away in the room, he'd disappeared somewhere into the shadows to get as far from the laundry room as he could—then reappeared before the hunters slowly, with his hands folded over his head. He put up no fight—which didn't seem very Felix of him—and dropped to his knees when it was demanded. But Felix was still Felix and when those heavy assault rifles pointed straight to his face, he'd had the nerve to crack a joke about compensation. It earned him a rifle to the jaw. Twenty minutes had passed and he was still knelt there, spitting blood to the ballroom floor.
More wolves were brought in. More young girls and boys forced to the ground, sobbing for the pain in the cuffs that bound their wrists and pierced their skin. Tisper gripped her bow a bit tighter. God, she wanted to put an arrow through that man's face. Through one ear and out the other, like some kind of walking novelty gag.
Then she caught sight of Sadie and something in her chest snapped. Those guns pointed at her, the men shoving her towards the ground, and then Alex. Tisper nearly launched from the bin, had Jaylin not caught her by the shirt and eased her back.
After some time, the last of the wolves had been brought out, forced to the ground with the others. Some were bloodied—beaten in the face from putting up a fight. Even a young girl—sixteen at most, bleeding from a gash on her forehead. But what crushed Tisper more than anything, were the wolves. The real wolves. They were brought in over men's shoulders. Three of them, limp and lifeless, ragdolled into a small pile to the side.
"They're dead," Jaylin whispered beside her. "They killed them. Tis, I—"
"Shh." She slid an arm around his neck and held her hand over his mouth, crouching deeper into the bin. They had only killed the ones who turned wolf. She couldn't let the sadness of it set in just yet—she had to know why they'd beaten the others. Why they'd only killed the wolves and not the men. Not Felix.
"Son of a bitch!" A shout made her startle nearly out of her skin. "Where is it?" The leader swung about, making his words heard to every face in the room. His voice was the gnarl of a wild animal when he pointed his light to the crowd. "Start talking," he said. "I have more than enough pepper to put a hole in every one of you. Start talking."
But they didn't. To Tisper's surprise, no one said a word. She was sure that most of them hadn't even met Jaylin—but they stayed silent, with their heads bowed, cowering away from the flashlight on his gun.
Then he stalked forward, reached down and ripped one wolf up by her hair. Tisper should have known by that strawberry sheen that it was Izzy—but she didn't recognize her. Not until she was lifting her head with pure hatred in her stunning eyes, hair fallen over her freckled face. The hunter held the barrel of the gun to her forehead.
"Tell me!" he shouted out again.
Imani was rising to her feet, shoving off the hands that tried to press her back down. "What you want is not here," she roared. "Why are you breaking treaty?"
"I have no treaty with you," the man said. "Micheal may have had a treaty, but that's just some tough shit, isn't it? Because Micheal's dead."
Some kind of shock hit Imani when he said it. Tisper had never seen her like that. Struck so hard, she sunk back down to her knees. "Micheal's dead?"
"That's right," he said tossing Izzy toward the center of the room. With her hands bound, she couldn't catch herself. She hit the ground hard on her shoulder. His gun lifted, lazily outstretched in his arm and pointed right at her puddle of poppy hair. "Micheal's dead," he announced with a twang of satisfaction. "I'm in charge of the corp. No treaty." He started to circle Izzy slowly. Heel-to-toe steps that made every muscle in Tisper's body tense. "No promises. No peace ties. Now tell me where the lich is."
"Or what?" Izzy snarled, picking her head up from the ballroom floor.
The man gave her a grin—strong creases folding his cheeks, deep wrinkles in his eyes. "Sweet thing, you say that like I don't have a gun in my hands."
Jaylin tried to move, but Tisper held him back. "Don't," she said as quietly as she could. "I know you want to help them. Don't." He pushed away and Tisper bared down on him with all her might, squeezing him back by the hand that cupped his mouth.
Their weight shifted. The bin they stood in creaked—slid just a bit on its rubber wheels. The hunter's eyes shot to the room they holed away in, the light on his gun flashing toward the little rectangular window.
"Anyone check this room?" he called out.
No one responded. The man moved closer.
They were not going to die here. By god, they were not. Tisper had too much to do.
She wanted that trip to Paris. She wanted to bask on a California beach one more time. She wanted to graduate from her university, she wanted to fall in love. She wanted to fall in love.
Tisper shoved Jaylin down into the bin, tossing dirty sheets over their heads. They smelled of strangers and the heat dug down into her like a heady oven, but they both went still beneath the pile. The world was dark and there were only footsteps—heavy, fierce, booted thuds that stopped not a foot from the door.
She was not going to die here.
Then she heard the the wicked creeeek of the hinges, and Tisper could feel his presence like a weight in the air. The heavy rain before a storm. She went as still as she could, hand cupping Jaylin's mouth, breath gusting through her nose. His not leaving him at all.
Then the man stepped closer. The floor whined beneath the weight of him.
"Don't think you'll find them in there, lad."
Felix. He sounded broken; that hit to the jaw must have been as bad as it looked. The footsteps stopped, then the rubber of his boots scuffed the ground with a squeak and the hunter about-faced, his brisk and angry footsteps carrying him out of the room. The door shut soundly behind him, and Tisper popped from the sheets for a breath of air.
Outside, he was pointing his gun to Felix. "What do you mean them? More than one lich?"
"I meant your balls," Felix said in all seriousness. "Assumed you were looking for them."
Tisper thought for a moment that he might shoot Felix. Instead, he held the rifle by the barrel and hit him with the butt of the weapon. Felix nearly fell into the wolf beside him, but he righted himself with his head hung, blood falling straight from his nose to the ballroom floor.
Felix spat, his body curled forward, wrists bound behind him. "I'm going to kill you," he said—not a threat, not a challenge. A fact.
"Let's bet on it," said the man. This time, he lifted the gun properly, pointed the barrel at Felix the same way he'd pointed it to Izzy.
Then, in all the dark edges of the ballroom, shadows started to move.
Something crossed the wall—a dash of black, then another.
There was an upset-a tense shift in the hunters crew. The men were pointing their guns, searching for the black masses in the heavy darkness. The leader lowered his rifle, turning in a circle to catch the shifting shadows with the beam of his flashlight. There was nothing where he pointed. An empty wall, glinting with tiny fragments of light from the chandelier above.
The laugh he gave next made Tisper's skin crawl. "Was wondering where you were, you son of a bitch."
A gun was fired—sparks of light blinking in the darkness as one of the hunters was brought down with a shout. And before the others could aim their lights toward him, there was another man ripped to the ground, gun hurled in the air. Then another, and the hunters must have seen the shadows move again, because all Tisper heard next were gunshots. The fast, terrifying blast of those rifles. Someone screamed, but she couldn't tell if it was man or wolf. Glass shattered, furniture toppled over, and when Tisper finally had the grit to gaze through that tiny window, bottles of moonlight were toppling from the table straight across, shattered into beautiful blue pools.
Then everything went silent. Dead, like the world had been dipped beneath water. And all she heard next was a drop, drop, drop of something wet, hitting the ballroom floor.
The flashlights whipped back toward Felix, and there Quentin stood between the hunter and his sheriff, sheening in a blood so dark, it painted his skin black. Bailey and Nicon were matching forms behind him, nearly unrecognizable—but glaring eyes, drenched in red.
A smile cut the hunter's face, like a new scar, ripped open at the stitches. God, she knew she'd seen him before. "There he is," he crooned.
Quentin didn't wait a breath. "Get out of my land."
"Your land?" The man laughed. "That's the thing about your kind. Think everything belongs to you."
"You don't have jurisdiction here," Quentin growled. It was soft but sinister. The sound of metal dragging on loose aslphalt. "Get out."
"I don't need jurisdiction, boy."
Quentin disregarded the answer, grazing the room with his eyes. Minding his wounded wolves, the young ones in shackles and the alphas like him—too smart to do anything but stay still. Then he settled on the pile of wolves.
"How many did you kill?"
The man shrugged. "They were dumb enough to turn, they were dumb enough to die."
"They were kids!" Quentin thundered.
Again, there was that happy, heinous curl to his words. "They were monsters."
Quentin looked as if he wanted to tear the man to shreds—somehow beyond the blood, Tisper saw it. But he couldn't. If these hunters were human, then he really couldn't.
Then, in the quiet, there were footsteps.
Qamar was led into the room, no hands on her arms, but a gun pointed to her back. Every set of eyes left the hunter in pursuit of her. There was a momentary examination as Qamar took in the sight. Then she raised her head, and with no emotion at all, she said, "It's alright. You can kill them."
All at once, the wolves began to burst—blood spattering the sofas, the tables, the curtains that hung from the ceiling. One after another and under Qamar's will, they shifted free from their shackles, surging on the hunters like a flood. Guns were ripped away, wolves bearing down on men until they were drown beneath a sea of beasts. The hounds were taken too—upsurged with the bodies of wolves, screeching when their teeth went in.
More hunters were closing in—rushing the front doors. Tisper could hear their shouts—hear the guns. But within the ballroom, only the leader remained, looking only slightly less satisfied than before.
"Go," Quentin said through his teeth. "Before I kill you."
"I can't do that," the man replied. "Because now I know there's a reason you want me to leave. There's a lich in this place—and it's going to make me millions." Then he raised his hand. Not the one that held the assault rifle, but the other. The hand she never expected would wield a second gun. A small black pistol, so dark she could only see the sheen of it in the filtered moonlight. "More than you've ever been worth," the man said. The world came alive when it fired.
It had happened so fast. Pop. Once in his stomach. Pop. Once in his shoulder. Pop. Once in his chest.
And she wouldn't have believed it had really happened, had she not seen the dark spots appear—darker yet than the red on Quentin's body. Deep, black holes that upsurged with blood. A second film of it, that wetted his chest and trickled to the ground, two shades lighter than the drops before. Quentin took one step back, a stunned look in his eyes. Then he was in Nicon's arms, slumping to the ballroom floor.
Jaylin launched forward, and Tisper crushed him back as hard as she could, hand still muzzling his mouth. He let a muffled sob out into her palm and she held him in close, her heartbeat so loud in her ears, she'd gone def to the sound of gunshots. She couldn't out-fight Jaylin. Not anymore. So she forced her stomach down and whispered in his ear, "You can't help him. If they take you, you can't help him."
And Jaylin went still. A hot tear fell over her knuckles.
The wolves had stopped—several of them leaving the wounded hunters to crowd around Quentin. She saw the blood-wet gleam of Imani's shape, woman again. She dropped by his side, and it was the look on her face that stung deep into Tisper. Something frightened and helpless, while she searched the holes in his body. Fear on Imani. Fear on the alpha of the South West.
The man who'd fired the gun was gone now. That was the last thing she'd gathered before she heard a tack. And then another. Tack. Tack.
She pulled Jaylin by his wrist, out of the dirty hamper and over a set of blue-black curtains. The window beneath was stained from years of weather and neglect, cracked straight down the center and filmed with something foggy on either side. Somehow she could make out the shape of a small rock, bouncing off with another tink.
"It's me!" a voice was whispering and shouting somehow both at once. "Open it!"
Matt. She gave the window a shove, and sure enough, his freckled face gaped up from ten feet below.
"Hurry, while there's no one around!"
"How did you know we were here?"
"I don't know," Matt said. "I just knew. Now hurry."
The window was small—just large enough to fit them one at a time if they'd tried hard enough. She pushed Jaylin towards it and he reeled around.
"No."
"Yes, Jaylin, go!"
"No," he said again. Tears seared his cheeks and he shook his head wildly. "No, no—I can't leave him."
We can't help him. That was what she wanted to say. But Tisper knew the anguish on Jaylin's face, and hope was the only thing that was going to get him through that window.
"Imani has him, he'll be okay. And he'll be better off if we go get help now. Okay? You can't go out there, Jaylin. You can't step through that door or everything they're fighting for will be worth nothing. Do you understand? If they take you, it'll all be for nothing."
He let out a frustrated sob and she wiped the tears away with the sleeve of her pajamas, all at once shoving him toward the window.
"Hurry."
He moved through, head first. He'd gained so much depth, he'd barely fit at the chest, but Jaylin pulled his way through, hung onto the frame with his fingertips and let himself drop down into Matt's arms. Tisper tossed her bow and quiver down first, then she followed through, bare toes clinging to the bricks in the walls, fingers digging into the frame of the window until she felt it cut into the skin. Then she dropped, hit the ground with a shock to the ankles.
"Sadie," Matt said, catching her as she stumbled back. "Where is she?"
"I don't know." Tisper felt like folding to her knees. "I don't know. I don't know, I—"
"She's fine." Jaylin's eyes were strained and damp, and he wiped them with the collar of his shirt. "I can hear her."
"Through all that noise?" Matt asked. "You can hear her voice?"
Jaylin shook his head. "I hear her."
Tisper listened, but she heard nothing. Just gunshots, growing sparser. Glass breaking. Voices in the building and crickets in the distance. Then a shout in the courtyard, just around the corner. She didn't know if it was of a wolf or a hunter, but she took Jaylin's hand and ran.
Matt led them through the trees and every step felt like knives in Tisper's feet. They were so numb compared to the fear in her. Adrenaline was keeping her high, but it wasn't pumping through her the way it pumped through Jaylin, and after ten minutes, he stopped beside a small sycamore and crouched, vomiting into the dirt.
The sun was beginning to seep into the sky in shades of pink and yellow. It was nearly morning. They just needed to find a safe place to wait it out until they heard word from Sadie. He needed to get up. They needed to keep going. But the closer Tisper drew, the more clearly she saw Jaylin's body shake.
He was going to turn at this rate. He was going to burst into that giant black lichund and it was neither the time nor place for that. So she knelt beside him, too afraid to touch. Watching him wipe the mess from his mouth and the tears from his eyes.
"Guys—" Matt had stopped to urge them on to safety, but Tisper held up a hand. He went quiet. Confused, as Matt usually was, but quiet.
Jaylin curled forward and purged a second time—and though Tisper felt sick to see it, she ran her fingers through Jaylin's hair, waited until his vomiting was done and pulled his head in close to hers.
"He's okay. He'll be okay."
But the truth was that Tisper had no idea where the mortality line was drawn for wolves. Whether three bullets could kill a creature like Quentin. Whether they could heal from it, the way they heal from everything.
"You got shot remember?" she told him. "You were fine. He'll be fine."
But Jaylin was fine because he was a lichund. Because his skin was tough as steel. Because those bullets had hit in all the right places for him to be fine.
This wasn't the same thing. Somehow, Tisper knew that Quentin wasn't fine. But she needed Jaylin to believe her. Just for now.
She took his hand and rose to her feet, and they followed Matthew through the trees.