Connected: Chapter 14 (Patreon)

Chapter 14

Abby

I woke to murmuring before I could even open my eyes. The sedative they’d injected me with left me groggy and disoriented; my limbs were too heavy to move and my eyelids felt like they were glued shut.

Voices were distant, but I could hear Julian saying, “My contact officially put out a kidnapping alert. If they get any leads, we’ll be the first to know.”

“David?” Eli prompted.

“Called in two favors already,” David answered. “We’ll have seven more wolves here in a few hours to help search the woods.”

“And if the lab’s in the city?” Kyla asked, her voice barely a whisper.

“Then hopefully someone calls in the black van,” Eli said.

I finally had enough strength back to move, so I shifted as I opened my eyes, finding myself still in the living room in the Pack house. I’d been laid out on the couch, Kyla sitting at the end of it while the rest of the wolves stood around the room. Kyla was bent over with her elbows on her knees and her head in her hands, but she straightened when I moved, scooting over to help me up.

“You alright?” she asked.

I nodded, working my tongue around my mouth to try and restore some moisture. Wes grabbed a glass of water from the end table beside the couch and held it out to me. “Thanks,” I croaked, taking a few sips before asking, “how long was I out?”

“Couple hours,” Kyla said.

I glanced around at the wolves, picking up their thoughts of worry and realizing for the first time that someone else was missing. They’d taken Luna too. I let out a sigh and dropped my head back against the couch.

“How sure are you that End Mountain is behind this?” Eli asked me.

I shrugged. “Not sure enough for you to make a move.”

“I’ll move on solid suspicion,” he said.

“And risk a war?” I asked in shock.

David stepped forward, narrowing his eyes at me. “Your world’s politics mean nothing when any of us are in danger.”

“They won’t tell you anything,” I argued, “and a confrontation like that would put all of you in danger. Trust me, you don’t want End Mountain as an enemy.”

A soft growl rumbled in Eli’s chest, an instant reminder that I was an outsider here. My opinion meant nothing, no matter how well-placed my intentions were, no matter how badly I wanted Camille and Luna back too. I ducked my head to avoid a challenge, but picked it up a moment later with an idea.

“I can try the locator spell again,” I said. “Camille had bloody gauze when she got here, and her blood was all we were missing last time we tried it.”

Eli considered it for a moment, weighing his uncertainty against the sureness of confronting End Mountain. “Go,” he said.

I shot off the couch, swaying drowsily on my feet for a second before finding my balance, and then Kyla and I were hurrying to the kitchen to grab a bowl, and then racing to her room.

“Grab some gauze,” I instructed, dumping the entire contents of the backpack we’d used onto Kyla’s bed while she rushed to the corner of the room. She grabbed the bundle of Camille’s clothes and bandages on the floor, and picked out a piece of gauze. I selected the herbs I needed and put them into the bowl we’d set on the dresser, dropping the blood-stained bandage into it last. I pulled out my cellphone to find the picture I’d taken of the incantation. “Here goes nothing.”

I read the words in a steady tone, more confident than I had been last time because this needed to work. When I reached the last verse, I struck a match and dropped it into the bowl. The entire bowl ignited, bursting into a powerful flame that let off a stream of incensed smoke. It burned bright for three whole seconds, and just when I believed it would work, it sizzled out. Kyla and I stood there, staring at the charred contents, breathing heavily with our fading excitement.

“It didn’t work,” Kyla whispered. She turned and trudged to the bed to look over the ingredients. “Why didn’t it work?”

“I don’t know.” My shoulders slumped, and I couldn’t take my eyes off the failed embers of my best attempt. “We did it exactly like the book said.”

There was a long span of hopeless silence, and then Kyla said, “Not exactly.” I turned to find her holding up the calamus root. The ingredient my father had switched with the assurance it’d be more effective.

“Kyla,” I protested, shaking my head. “No way.”

“You know how much he hates us,” she said. “You said it yourself, there used to be an entire section of the Council who thought the world would be better off without us.”

“Used to be,” I emphasized. “The Council doesn’t work like that anymore.”

“Are you willing to bet Camille’s life on it?” she asked. “Look me in the eyes and tell me that you believe with all your heart he had nothing to do with this.” She tossed the calamus root back onto the bed and strode to the pile of scrubs on the floor, picking up an article to hold it out. “Tell me End Mountain could pull this off without the Council having some inkling. Tell me-” She stopped short, adjusting the pants in her hand to feel around. Something crinkled in her grip, and she reached into the pocket to pull out a scrap of paper. “Tracker in arm,” she read, eyes scanning the rest of it to see an address that she recognized. The address of the Council’s holding cells.

“Let me see it,” I breathed, my heart sinking into my stomach. She handed it over, and I read the address for myself, along with the contact number listed above it. My father’s personal cellphone number. Both were written in a much calmer script than ‘tracker in arm,’ and all the air left my lungs as tears filled my eyes, the reality of it hitting me so hard that I fell back against the dresser and dropped to the floor.

“Sometimes hate is enough,” Kyla murmured. She turned for the door, intent on taking her discovery to Eli.

“Wait,” I scrambled up, throwing myself between her and the exit. “Wait, please, wait.”

Her eyes met mine, her brow furrowing with betrayal. “Tell me you didn’t know, Abs. Please tell me you didn’t know.”

“No,” I said instantly, my heart shattering that she’d even think I could keep this from her. “I had no idea, Kyla, you-” I swallowed around the agonized lump in my throat, unable to keep the tears from falling down my cheeks. “You and Camille are the world to me, you have to know that. I had no idea.”

“Then you have to let me by.”

“You’ll start a war,” I said, sniffling and trying everything I could to keep from breaking down.

“Good,” she said. “Seems like that’s what your dad wants.”

“Then don’t give it to him,” I begged. “Don’t give him a reason to make his hatred more public. Don’t tell Eli, not yet.”

“They have Camille and Luna,” Kyla argued. “What else do you want me to do?”

I stared down at my feet in thought, struggling to form ideas when all I wanted to do was give in to my grief. But Camille and Luna needed me, and I had to hold my broken heart together until we got them back. “Let me talk to him,” I said.

“You already talked to him,” Kyla sighed, her voice full of sympathy. “He lied to you. Why would he tell you anything now?”

“Because I have leverage,” I said. Kyla’s head tilted curiously, so I explained, “He doesn’t care if the Pack attacks the Council because that would unify it. Council members on the side of discriminated species would abandon that support if the Council was threatened. But right now, not everyone at the Council will support what my dad is doing.”

“So, what,” Kyla asked, “you’re gonna tell everyone?”

“I’ll threaten to tell everyone,” I said. “If he doesn’t tell me where the lab is, I’ll expose him. We can worry about what to do with the Council later, but we need to get Camille and Luna back alive. The office opens at eight. Give me a couple hours, that’s all I need.”

Kyla stared at me for a few seconds while she thought about it, and then asked, “How sure are you that he’ll tell you?”

“His position in the Council is elected,” I answered. “There’s no way he’ll risk losing so much support.”

She considered it for a little while longer before glancing toward the door. “They’re all ready to attack End Mountain.”

“Stall them,” I said. “I know you’re on thin ice with Eli, but whatever you have to do, buy me time.” Her eyes fell, weighing my request against the already limited time we had. We didn’t know how long Camille and Luna would last this time, and she was worried a couple of hours was too long to wait. “Kyla, I… I love you. You know that, right?”

She met my gaze, the conflict and the worry apparent by the moisture in her eyes. “I love you too.”

“Then trust me,” I pleaded. “If something happens to Camille, I’ll never forgive myself. You two are… you’re everything to me, and I swear to you that I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t think this was the best way.”

“Okay,” she agreed, nodding. “Okay, I’ll try.” She watched while I stepped aside, and then reached up to run the back of her hand down my cheek, wiping away the moisture. “Wait here.”

I waited, pacing the room for a handful of minutes that felt like an eternity, until Kyla slipped back through the door. “He gave us until reinforcements arrive,” she said.

“How long is that?”

“About three hours.”

“That’s enough,” I said, pacing forward to wrap my arms around her neck. “Thank you.” Her arms curled around my waist, and I buried my face in her neck as fresh tears welled in my eyes. “I’m sorry,” I said, sniffling. “I should’ve seen it. I keep wanting to trust him, and I don’t know when I’ll learn that that’s a mistake.”

"He's the one who keeps betraying your trust,” she said, hugging me a little tighter. “You deserve better than that.” I pulled back and let her go, reaching up to wipe at my cheeks. “Are you gonna be alright?”

“I don’t know,” I said honestly.

Beneath my forced composure, my heart was broken. I’d never felt more betrayed in my life. I’d been willing to live with the fact that my father hated the wolves, but he knew how much they meant to me, and he’d done this anyway. It felt more personal than if he’d sanctioned my own imprisonment. And how could I go back to the Council after this? The Council wasn’t just a job, it was my family, my life. It used to be something I believed in, and now I didn’t know what to believe.

“Can you feel Camille?” I asked. “Is she…”

“Alive,” Kyla answered. “That’s all I know for sure.”

I nodded, and we did our best to wait until it was time to leave. Both of us were too worried and tense to do anything but pace the room, sitting occasionally only to rise and pace again when we couldn’t sit still. It was the longest two hours of my life, but twenty minutes till eight, we left the Pack house. We drove to the Council office, parking at the rear of the lot so Kyla would stay unseen.

She was about to tell me that she’d come in with me if I wanted, but before she could, I said, “I need to do this alone.”

“I know,” she said. “But the offer stands anyway.”

I stared out the windshield at the office, feeling more nervous and sick to my stomach than I could ever remember, terrified of facing the truth. Kyla reached over and grabbed my hand, bringing it to her lips to press a kiss to the back.

“You can do this,” she said. “I’m here.”

I nodded and whispered to myself, “For Camille. Be brave for Camille.”

I blew a hard breath through pursed lips, and before I could lose the nerve, I got out of the car and paced toward the office. I went inside and headed to the very back where the arms room was, and peered around to make sure nobody was paying much attention while I punched in the code and slipped inside. I grabbed a pistol and loaded it with tranquilizers, and then snuck out with it tucked under my jacket in the rear waist of my jeans. I veered to the front and to my father’s office without saying anything to the receptionist, went in without knocking, and closed the door behind me.

“Abby,” he greeted from the seat at his desk, “are you finally here to work a case?”

“Tell me it’s not true,” I said.

He shrugged. “It’s not true.”

“This is not a joke,” I muttered.

“Maybe if you told me what you’re talking about,” he said calmly.

“The lab,” I said angrily. “You’ve been behind it this whole time.”

"Ah.” He stood up from his desk to come around to my side and sit on the edge of it. That was all he said, all he did, but it spoke volumes to his guilt.

“Oh my god,” I breathed, that same feeling of agonizing betrayal like a knife to the heart. “All this time you’ve watched me scrambling to find Camille. You’ve known about what they’re doing to her, to other supernaturals, and you didn’t say a goddamn thing. How much of it was you?”

“Enough of it.”

“That’s all you have to say for yourself?” I asked in disbelief. “No ‘I’m sorry, Abby, it was wrong and it will never happen again?’ No ‘it was really End Mountain and I’ve been working on trying to stop them?’ No remorse whatsoever?”

“I believe in what we’re doing,” he said.

“You kidnapped my best friend!”

“I sanctioned the apprehension of a Pack wolf,” he explained, as easily as if he was explaining an equation, “along with other supernaturals, in order to deepen our knowledge about how to protect humans and the more vulnerable species of supernaturals.”

“That sounds like a fancy way of saying you’re figuring out how to commit genocide,” I spat.

"Abby,” he sighed, “when was the last time you met a vampire with a conscience? Or a werewolf that had never drawn blood? Or a vengeance demon that didn’t automatically resort to death as the end-all of punishment?”

“So your solution is to kill them all?” I asked. “To turn werewolves into your slave soldiers?”

His jaw clenched with the beginning evidence of frustration, but he did his best to keep it out of his voice. “The wolves are well-equipped for the tasks we require of them.” He folded his arms across his chest. “We operate in a secret world with a delicate balance, and the Council has done its best to maintain that balance while these species threaten it. The incident with the vampires and their soul-eating phantoms proved to me that they can’t be allowed to continue, or it’s only a matter of time until they expose the rest of us.”

“The phantoms,” I murmured, thinking back to when the vampires had possessed three Pack wolves with phantoms, a situation that surely would’ve led to mass exposure. It wasn’t long after that that my dad had found a way to keep me from reading his thoughts. “You’ve been planning this since the phantoms,” I realized, and he gave the slightest tilt of his head in confirmation. “The wolves had nothing to do with that.”

“Is that your only concern?” he asked, his tone filled with poisonous resentment. “That I’ve threatened your precious wolves?”

“Nothing about this is right.”

He hummed like he didn't believe me.

“You know the wolves will want war when they find out,” I said.

“Perhaps,” he answered, “although a war with the Council and its allies would be ill-advised.”

“And when they recruit supernaturals you’ve experimented on? Like vampires.”

“Vampires fight for nothing but themselves,” he said. “I can think of very few species beyond weres that would participate in the wolves’ self-righteous war.”

My throat filled with disgusted bile, and I was too angry then to feel hurt. “I have just three questions before we’re done here, and you owe me answers. No more lies.” He gestured for me to ask. “How involved is End Mountain?”

“They’ve provided significant funding for the facility and staff,” he answered. “As well as brainstorming, and helping with wards and other magics.”

“Any other covens?” I asked. He shook his head, but who knows if he was telling the truth? “Marion Presley,” I said. “Was she ever transferred to End Mountain? Or did you send her straight to the lab?”

“The insight of a healer was necessary for our work.”

My head cocked with thought as my heart skipped a beat. As I considered exactly what that meant. “She was necessary?” I repeated. “Did she…” Tears sprang to my eyes. “Was she even a criminal?”

He glanced down with the faintest hint of regret. “No.”

A wounded breath escaped my chest, and I couldn’t keep a tear from falling. “My first field mission… You-” I had to swallow to hold back a sob. “You sent me to kidnap an innocent woman.”

“I never meant for you to-”

“I shot her husband!” I shouted, choking on a whimper. “I killed an innocent person!” I held out my right arm, pushing up the sleeve of my jacket to show him the rune scar on the inside of my arm. The scar I’d received when a demon almost killed me for having taken an innocent life. “I almost died because you turned me into a murderer!”

“I take full responsibility for-”

“Fuck you,” I spat, inhaling several jagged breaths as tears fell freely. “You don’t have to live with what I did. You don’t have to lose sleep over it, or wake up crying. You don’t have to feel sick to your stomach when something random triggers the memory.”

“Abby,” he said softly, “I’m sorr-”

“Don’t you dare say you’re sorry,” I cried. “Just tell me where the lab is.”

“I’m afraid I can’t do that.”

“You misunderstood.” I took in a deep breath, pushing down all the grief and wiping the moisture off my face so I could say as confidently as possible, “Tell me where the lab is or I’ll walk out this door and expose you to the whole office.”

He lifted his chin to look down his nose at me, clenching his teeth angrily while he considered the threat. “You don’t know how many people here were behind the lab.”

“I know it wasn’t all of them,” I said. “I know enough of them will be so disgusted that you’ll be out of this office faster than you can say ‘Council prison.’”

He sat there on the edge of the desk, staring at me while he breathed heavily with the weight of his decision and his jaw working back and forth. “If I tell you where it is,” he said finally, “promise me you won’t go.”

“Why?”

He exhaled a hard breath. “The staff were instructed to initiate self-destruct if it was ever discovered.”

“Are you-” I stopped short to give a humorless laugh. “Do you even hear yourself when you talk?”

“I know you don’t always agree with my decisions,” he said, “but I’m your father and I love you.”

“You have a fucked-up way of showing it,” I muttered.

“Promise me,” he said again.

“Where is it?”

He stood and turned around to grab pen and paper, wrote down where the lab was, and then handed me the coordinates.

“Do you have access?” I asked. “How do we get in?” It was with some reluctance that he reached behind the desk to open a drawer, but he pulled out a keycard and gave that to me too. I glanced over the items and said, “If you’re lying-”

“I’m not,” he said. “The lab is there. I’m going to have to destroy it now anyway.”

I shoved the paper and card into my pocket. He stopped looking at me for a few moments while he reclaimed his seat on the edge of his desk, and I used that opportunity to pull the gun out and aim it at his chest. “Don’t open your mouth,” I told him, watching his eyes go wide when he looked at me again, “and keep your hands down, or I’ll shoot faster than you can get off a counter.” His eyebrows furrowed with plea and hurt and confusion, but the range of emotions that played across his face testified to one overlying feeling. Betrayal. He thought the gun was lethal, but the betrayal he felt, betrayal like he’d made me feel, it wasn’t satisfying. I’d say it hurt me that he thought I could kill him, but I was beyond hurt. Beyond feeling anything but determination to put a stop to this. “I can’t let you warn the lab we’re coming.”

“Ab-”

I pulled the trigger, firing a dart into his chest that was loaded with a supernatural-strength tranquilizer. He collapsed back over the desk, instantly unconscious, as he would be for far longer than it’d take us to get Camille and Luna back. I put the gun back into my waistband and slipped out of the office, aiming for the exit, but I stopped short just outside the door when my eyes met my mother’s.

She was standing at the front desk talking to the receptionist, but she took one look at my face and her expression fell. “Oh, Abby, no,” she murmured, rushing over.

I braced myself for the hug. For comfort. But she didn’t stop when she reached me. She dodged around me and pushed into the office, and if I’d thought my father’s betrayal hurt, I wasn’t prepared for the agony of this. The only thing that kept me from breaking down on the spot was Camille. She needed me, and heartbreak was something I couldn’t afford yet. I turned around and hurried into the office behind my mom, shutting the door and then pulling the gun out again.

She’d been checking my dad’s pulse, but she wheeled around when I pulled the gun. She didn’t look betrayed like my father had, or scared, or confused. Her eyes filled with tears, her brow knitting with such severe apology that I choked on a sob.

“I’m so sorry,” she whispered.

“You knew,” I said, trying to steady the aim of my trembling hand.

“I didn’t agree with it,” she said. “I didn’t support it.” She held her hands out and took a step forward, a caring look in her eyes like she was finally ready to comfort me.

“Don’t,” I whimpered, gripping the gun a little tighter. “You knew and you didn’t say anything. How much did you know?”

Her chin fell. “Everything.”

“Marion Presley?” I asked, and she couldn’t bring herself to look at me, but she gave the barest nod. My chest tightened with the excruciating pain of it, and I swallowed down the sobs building within me. “How many of the board members know? How many approve?”

“Half,” she answered, glancing up at me in earnest. “I didn’t have the power to stop this. Abby, I swear, there was nothing I could do.”

“You could’ve told me,” I said sadly. “You could’ve tried to help me.”

“Let me help you now,” she begged, wiping a stray tear off her cheek. “I’ll cover for you here. You can trust me.”

“Maybe.” I’d been hurt so many times today that I didn’t know who I could trust, and I wasn’t willing to risk Camille’s life on anyone’s word but Kyla’s. “But I don’t.” I shot her with a second dart, rushing forward to catch her before she hit the floor. I set her down gently on the ground beside the desk, tucked the gun back into my jeans, and left. “They’re arguing,” I told the receptionist as I closed the door behind me. “I wouldn’t bother them for a while.”

“Sure thing,” he said.

I hurried out to the parking lot and to my car, doing everything I could not to cry. Kyla was standing outside, leaning back against the passenger side door. I must’ve looked more upset than I thought, because she pushed off the door when I reached her, stretching her arms wide to wrap them around me. But I set my hand against her stomach to keep her at bay. Even though all I wanted to do was hug her and break down in the safety of her presence, I couldn’t let myself feel safe until Camille was safe.

“I can’t,” I murmured as she backed off. “Not yet.”

She nodded in understanding. “Did he tell you where the lab is?”

“Yeah,” I said, pulling the coordinates and keycard out of my pocket and handing them to her. “But we can’t just storm the castle. We need to be smart about this.”

“Why?”

“He said the place is rigged to blow if it’s ever found.”

Kyla blew a long, hard puff of air through pursed lips, and thought about it for a minute. “It shouldn’t be long before Eli’s extra wolves get here. You and I should sneak out to the lab, scout it before they get here so we know what we’re up against.”

“Seven extra wolves is a lot,” I agreed. “Hopefully it’s enough.”

Kyla gave me the coordinates so I could punch them into the GPS on my phone, and pulled out her own phone to call Eli and tell him the plan. But before she could unlock it and dial his number, something happened in the connection. It hit her like a tidal wave, crashing through her so violently that she wavered on her feet, suddenly woozy enough that she lost balance and fell sideways against the car.

“Kyla?” I shoved my phone back into my pocket and caught her before she could collapse to the ground. I’d never seen a werewolf faint in my life, but Kyla was so lightheaded she could barely hold herself up when I leaned her back against the door.

Something was wrong with Camille. Something so wrong that it broke through whatever wards or magic they had working against the connection. So wrong that Kyla could feel the sickness and the pain as clearly as if they were standing right next to each other. And then all at once the dizziness faded and the sickness stopped, but so did the connection. The pain didn’t. Because Kyla felt so suddenly empty and alone in the connection that it was agonizing. Her eyes met mine as all the blood drained from her face, as the instant terror turned her heart to ice and flipped her stomach so disturbingly she wanted to vomit.

“No,” I whispered, feeling a similar wave of grief-filled sickness crash through me. “God, please, no.”

Kyla’s eyes filled with tears as she opened her mouth to say something, but her chest was heaving with rapid, shallow breaths, and she couldn’t get the air to speak. She refused to acknowledge what her body was telling her, but she didn’t have to say it. Camille was…

It didn’t matter if the lab was dangerous anymore. It didn’t matter if Kyla and I were alone when we got there. I didn’t care. We were going, and anyone caught in our way would regret it.

“Get in,” I ordered, sprinting across the car and diving into the driver’s seat. Kyla was so weak that she fumbled with the door handle for a few moments before managing to open it and fall into the passenger seat. “I need you to call Eli,” I told her, barely waiting for her to close her door before I peeled out of the parking lot. I pulled out my own phone to finish inputting the coordinates, but Kyla still hadn’t moved when I glanced over at her. One of her hands was on her thigh, the other clutched around her phone, both trembling so badly that she couldn’t even get her thumb on the button to unlock the screen. I stuck my phone into the mount on my dashboard and reached over with my free hand, setting it over hers. “Let me,” I said gently, easing her cellphone out of her grip.

She let me take it, and I found Eli’s number to call and tell him where to meet us and that they had to go now, even if reinforcements weren’t there yet. I didn’t tell him yet that my father had anything to do with it, but one thing was certain: if Camille really was dead, I wouldn’t stop Kyla from doing whatever she wanted. I wouldn’t keep any of them from doing a goddamn thing. If Camille really was dead, there’d be hell to pay, and hell would have my blessing.