13. Eli

13

ELI

" I promise," Max said, pushing me out the door.

It had been almost twenty minutes, but she still didn't have full mobility. She could speak, and had control over most of the muscles in her face and arms, but it would probably be another hour or two before she had complete control of her body back. Even so, she refused to leave the medical building. The girl, Ellie, was attached to her like velcro, and Max was devoting most of her energy towards trying to comfort her. It was a good distraction for her, because while I knew she wouldn't let herself truly sink into the grief she was feeling, I knew that Greta's loss was hitting her hard.

I hesitated, not wanting to leave her, even though she was surrounded by people and had Wade and Declan doting on her.

She grunted, in frustration. "Go. Bring him home. And be careful. He's not in his right mind."

I hesitated for another second, then pressed a chaste kiss to her lips and nodded.

It was decided that while the others fortified The Lodge, and made sure that there weren't any other shades in our midst, Bishop, Atlas, Darius, and I would take lead on tracking down my dad.

Which, judging by the sight of things outside, wasn't going to be as difficult as I'd initially imagined tracking down a delirious werewolf would be.

The sun was up, lighting our way. Wherever Seamus had gone, he'd been in too much of a state to cover up his path. The snow was streaked with blood—though the scene looked far less gory with the sun shining on it, compared to the horrors of that basement.

I shivered at the memory of that sight. It would be burned into my brain for the rest of my life.

My stomach had dropped at the sight of all that blood—the condition of the corpses, so much death and decay. Even though I knew Max would be okay, it still felt like I'd swallowed knots of metal seeing her like that.

I turned to Darius, desperate for something to erase that sight away. "Max mentioned you teleported. Into the room?"

The vampire arched a brow, glancing briefly at Bishop, then shrugged. If we were going to get a hold on Max's powers, it was only a matter of time before the council knew we could share them. "I did."

"How?" Atlas asked, his voice even, steady. He hadn't said much, but he seemed to be doing slightly better today than he had been, more himself.

Which was odd, considering the ordeal we'd woken up to.

"Not entirely sure." He ran a hand through his hair, the silvery-blond streaked through with a few bits of dried blood. "I knew she was in trouble, that something was very, very wrong with that nurse, and I needed to get to her." He squinted slightly as he stared into the sun. "I think knowing that it was possible," he nodded to me, "you know, after the pyro here turned into a torch," I shot him a glare that he fully ignored, "knowing it was possible, that I could reach for and use her powers, made it easier to access them? It's easier to reach for something you know exists, if that makes sense? That knowledge, and the adrenaline, made it happen." He grunted. "Still felt queasy as fuck though, even though it was a short jump. Miracle I held onto my stomach, between that and the puddle of fleshy soup waiting for me on the other side of the door."

And we were back on the visuals of that room. So much for a subject change then.

I swallowed back the urge to vomit. Thank the gods I hadn't had time for breakfast this morning. Would've been a waste of resources.

"That makes sense, I guess," Atlas said, seemingly unbothered by the visuals Darius's description conjured. "We'll have to work on that more today when we get back. Faster we get a handle on using her powers, the better we'll be able to protect her."

I almost tripped at the familiar tone in his voice. He almost sounded like…himself—bossy team leader and all.

"Explain this shade shit again." Bishop shot Darius a dark glare, as if he'd been the mastermind behind the basement of gore.

He was on edge. His home had been infiltrated by a powerful demon few had even heard of, in the middle of the night, while we all slept through it. And several members of this community were now dead because of it. There was no denying the rage and guilt boiling below his skin, and the fanghole was an easy target to aim all of that vitriol at—something I understood better than most. Still, I had to fight back the urge to swat the guy across the back of his head.

More would have been dead if Darius hadn't killed Greta—er, the demon reanimating her body, anyway.

I'd been around Bishop a lot when I was growing up, and, like his cousin, he was never really a sunshine and daisies kind of guy. Still, I didn't remember him being this easy to anger .

There must've been something in the Andrews family bloodline that turned sour after age twenty-five.

If Darius was annoyed by Bishop's displaced aggression though, he didn't say anything. "Don't know much about them, I've met exactly two shades before, and neither time offered much of an opportunity for a Q and A session. All I know is that they seem to have the ability to possess a dead body, but the duration of the stay in their fleshy hotel is largely determined by the power of the person they're reanimating. Meaning they rarely stay in one—er—place very long. I'm guessing that after Seamus demolished the crew down there, whatever corpse they'd hitched a ride in grew stale, and the nurse was the only immediately available option."

My lip curled at the thought of my dad doing that to the patients down there. It still didn't make sense to me. He wasn't himself, sure, but he was locked up. And, even if he'd gotten free, why tear up those people, bring them back to the basement where he'd been held captive, and then leave? "How did they get down there, though? And where'd the shade initiate? In one of the patients? Was it here all along?"

And how did we know that the shade wasn't the one who'd killed the people in the basement? Why did we assume it was my dad?

The sound of our boots crunching through snow created a strange soundtrack to the morning hike.

Darius was quiet for a while, considering, then stopped for a moment and nodded to Bishop. "The bodies—were they all patients?"

Bishop shot him a dark look. "Other than Greta, you mean?"

Darius snorted. "Obviously."

"Vincent," Bishop answered, voice clipped. "He was one of our best scouts. Came back with a fresh shipment of supplies for the med center today." He paused for a beat, then shook his head. "Between the two of them, we've taken a big loss. We have healers, but none as adept at the practice as Greta. She was special."

She was. There's always been something a little—more—about her. An omniscience that used to annoy the fuck out of me when I was a kid. She could always see through my shit better than most—and she was one of the only people capable of bossing Atlas around.

Darius shrugged before continuing on with his march. "There you have it, then."

"Meaning?" Bishop pressed.

"Meaning," Darius drew the word out, like he was growing impatient with Bishop's inability to keep up, "that your pal Vincent likely got himself killed on his scouting mission and gave the hitchhiker a nice fleshy vehicle to ride back in. Guessing he was human, because he didn't last long. And that's when the shade took over your nurse."

"And the patients?" I asked. "How'd they end up in the basement and how'd my dad get loose? And where did the poison come from? Isn't it usually from those wendigo-like creatures? The flesh eaters? Do shades usually work with them? Or do you think one of those creatures took my dad?"

"As brilliant as I may be, I don't have all the answers." Darius met my eyes, but looked away, like he was itchy or uncomfortable for some reason. "I'm working on a theory. I'll let you know when it's better developed."

Something about the way he said that, the flatness in his voice, convinced me that I wouldn't like whatever new theory he was shaping.

I picked up the pace, desperate to find my dad. We needed a win. Even a small one.

It took longer than I'd initially imagined to find him. It was a full hour of all-out running before we came into a small town .

The five of us stopped dead in our tracks when we got onto the main street.

"Fuck," Atlas whispered, stealing the only word I was capable of forming at the moment.

The trail we'd been following had thinned out over our hike. For the last twenty minutes it had been nothing more than a drop or two of blood every ten feet or so.

But this? This was a bloodbath. A twin to the basement scene we'd left behind for the others to clean up. Maybe even worse.

"What the hell happened?" Bishop asked. Any aggression and anger he felt towards Darius was gone, cannibalized by the horror of the sight before us.

There were at least six or seven bodies strewn about the street, all in varying levels of attachment. The only faces in sight were dead, eyes lifeless as they stared up at the sky. An abandoned arm hung awkwardly in a broken window, the meat caught on a particularly sharp shard.

Screams and cries echoed from a few of the closed-up shops, where the humans were likely bunkered down and hiding.

Gunshots rang out, coupled with grunts and clashes in a hardware store at the end of the block.

"No," I muttered, unwilling to accept that this was the handiwork of my father. This looked more like the set of a zombie movie. "This wasn't him."

I repeated the sentence to myself, over and over—half mantra, half prayer.

Please, for fuck's sake don't let this be at my dad's hands.

Darius glanced at me briefly, and the look of pity reflected in his face made me want to punch it.

Even if giving him a broken nose would only result in my own.

I shook my head and followed the sounds of commotion. This wasn't my dad. I refused to believe that he was capable of something like this, no matter what the hell was wrong with him.

Atlas was turned into a werewolf—and Sarah. They never once did anything like…this.

Unless—could he be possessed by a shade too?

My stomach dipped at that, because I knew what that meant if he was. He was already dead.

No. I refused to let myself believe that our luck was this trash, that my father would come all this way, go through all of that pain, just for his story to end like this. The world couldn't possibly be that cruel.

My blood turned cold when I walked into the hardware store, the shelving units were shoved and knocked over, the floor littered with tools and slabs of wood. The fluorescent light in the ceiling flickered obnoxiously, like the splashes of blood and decapitated humans strewn in the aisles didn't lend enough of an ominous backdrop to the setting.

And there, in the back, was Seamus.

His teeth sank into the arm of a man fighting for control of his gun, his scream low, guttural, full of pain.

So the world really was that cruel then.

"Dad?" I approached slowly, hands raised like I was cornering a wild animal. Honestly, it wasn't far from the truth.

Seamus's eyes were dark, streaked with yellow, and wild. There was no recognition when they met mine. He pulled back, ripping a bit of flesh from the man with the gun. And then he chewed, swallowed.

I fought the urge to vomit again, but I didn't win that battle this time.

I spilled the meager contents of my stomach on the black and white tiled floor.

The man with the gun dropped it, then fell to his knees, motionless. Not a single muscle twitched; his face was frozen in horror, the shape of a scream permanently molded around his lips.

Paralyzed. Like Max.

What the fuck? Did my dad have some of that flesh-eater poison on him? Did the shade work with him?

"Fuck." Darius's eyes darted between me and my father, like he wasn't sure who to give his attention to first. "Eli, stay back."

I hadn't realized I'd been moving towards him. My body was stuck in some perverse trauma response. I was scared, fucking terrified. I wanted nothing more than to go to my dad—the pillar of wisdom and family who'd held me tall for my entire life. My body couldn't compute that that same man was now the one responsible for my fear.

"What the hell is wrong with him?" I watched in horror as my dad's hands, shaped mid-transformation into claws, peeled a thin layer of skin back from the human collapsed at his feet.

And then, dangling the flesh above his mouth, he consumed it.

I glanced at the others, hoping one of them would crack a smile, tell me this was some elaborate, ass-backwards joke. I'd punch them for it, but the relief I would feel would dispel my rage quickly.

I almost uttered the word please, begging this burgeoning fantasy to be reality.

Atlas looked gutted, his face morphed into the picture of grief—like my father was already dead before us, not this flesh-eating monster he'd become.

Bishop's skin was ashy gray, and I could see him fighting the urge to vomit.

Two shots rang out and my dad fell to his knees, the frozen human cushioning his fall slightly.

Bishop and Darius both had their dart guns poised.

Atlas's hung limp at his side.

Mine was abandoned at the entryway of the hardware store .

Seamus's eyes found mine, and for a moment, there was a flash of recognition.

"Eli."

My name sounded pained, full of torment as it pushed through his lips. Like it took all of his willpower to say.

"We know where the venom is coming from now," Darius muttered, swearing under his breath.

"Dad?" I moved towards him, hardly paying attention to the growing puddle of blood as I waded through it, slipping and sliding. I gripped his head between my hands, held his eyes with mine. "Dad? What's wrong? What happened?"

He looked confused, terrified—I saw my own horror mirrored back at me.

My stomach clenched and my fingers trembled as they held his face, my body betraying me as I fought for composure, for control.

We could fix this. I would fix this.

"Same thing that's been happening to people corrupted by shadow magic in hell," Darius said, the sentence tinny, like I was hearing it in a tunnel, "that girl that attacked you and Max in hell? That's what he is now. Or he's in the process of becoming like her anyway. Wendigo, flesh-eater, shadow-tainted—call him what you want, but hunger controls him now."

"No." I shook my head, my vision blurring as I fought back the sob lodged in my chest. "Or if he is, we'll fix it. We'll fix him."

"I'm sorry, Eli. This isn't a thing that can be cured."

"Fuck," Bishop said, and I heard a loud series of crashes, like he'd knocked another shelving unit down.

I couldn't bring myself to look, couldn't peel my eyes from my father's for even one second.

"Are you sure?" Atlas asked, his voice low and gruff. "Maybe there's something—somewhere. "

"I'm guessing the shade noticed right away," Darius said, and I could practically hear his mind whirring as he put the pieces together, like this was just some random mystery to be solved, Sherlock chasing a clue. "They—" he cleared his throat, "fed him some of the patients, harvested the venom, probably was hoping they'd join forces. Because their bodies are so transient, they must often need to outsource their work. Explains why the shade who showed up at Max's family cabin was so fine with leaving their friends once they were dead. They were business partners, a means to an end, nothing more." He paused for a moment, and I fought like hell to find holes in the story he was stringing. "I'm guessing they let Seamus free, expecting him to stick around and be grateful. The shade didn't account for the kind of ravenous hunger creatures like him experience, and he—" he cleared his throat, "I've never seen a flesh-eater quite like him. His wolf transformation was off, wrong somehow. Now we know why."

My dad started thrashing, the temporary calm thrown, as if the story was a punch in the gut, sending him back. He shook my hands loose from their hold, his teeth snarling and snapping at me as they sharpened and elongated. His claws dug into my sides, half gripping on to me, half pushing me away, like even he was at war with himself and wasn't sure which side he wanted to win the battle.

His expression morphed, flattened, until he looked like a stranger and not the man I'd spent a lifetime looking up to, trying to protect.

"Eli." Darius's tone wasn't unkind, but I knew what he was asking permission for all the same. He wanted to put him out of his misery. To put him down, like a dog.

I strained against our tug of war, slipping on the bloody spoils of my father's mid-morning snack. Bile rose in my stomach .

My dad didn't do this. He wouldn't kill those people, wouldn't do this to them. To me.

"No," I said, though I wasn't entirely sure what I was refusing. Darius's unasked question, or this new reality—maybe both.

For a moment, my father stilled, lips quivering as his gaze met mine again.

"Eli," my name burst forth like a prayer, one filled with pain, his focus waning, "please."

Whether he was asking for death or forgiveness, I couldn't tell.

I grit my teeth, swiped away a stray tear that spilled unbidden down my cheek.

"Knock him out," Bishop said, resolve clear, "don't kill him. Not yet. We'll bring him back with us." His voice was soft, filled with the quiet compassion I was used to from Bishop, back when Atlas, Dec, and I followed him around like lost puppies. "He's a good man, Eli. I can't promise we'll find a way to save him, but the least we can do is try."

Four more darts flew past me, landing dead in his chest.