Page 11 of Trick Me (Immortal Vices and Virtues: All Hallows’ Eve)

Chapter

Four

ASH

T he afterglow of what just happened with Erynn lasts approximately three minutes before everything goes to shit. Because of course my past comes knocking.

“The great Ash Valderson, alone in the woods with his whore,” says the asshole, Cain, who steps out of the shadows ahead of me with his brother.

I should have picked up his scent before he reached us unannounced. I know that damn stench that accompanies the Bruck pack—rotted meat and old blood.

I push Erynn behind me in one smooth motion, scanning the night for any more of his men. But it’s only the two of them, stepping forward with the casual arrogance of fuckers who think they’ve already won .

Cain is built like a brick shithouse, scarred face that even his mother couldn’t love, and eyes that hold all the warmth of a frozen grave. His younger brother, Tobias, flanks him, smaller but faster. Both are dressed in black with heavy boots.

Erynn is huddled close against my back. I sense her there, not moving, exactly where I want her right now.

“Gentlemen,” I bark, hands forming into fists at my sides. “Didn’t realize the invitation said plus-two for assholes.”

“Oh, this is perfect,” Mikael says, materializing beside me with his usual terrible timing.

“The Bruck brothers. Remember when Cain tried to court Jessica? She said she’d rather fuck a cactus.

Good times.” I huff a laugh, realizing no one else knows why.

But fuck, I missed Mikael. Even dead and snarky, there’s something grounding about having him at my side again.

“Heard you were here,” Cain continues, stepping slowly to my left while Tobias mirrors him on the right. “Thought we’d settle some old debts. You cost us several warriors in that raid last spring.”

“You mean where you attacked a training school for pups?” My hands flex. “Where you tried to take children as leverage? That raid? Where you also killed my second-in-command, Mikael?” I growl.

Tobias spits on the ground. “You slaughtered our people too. ”

“Should’ve slaughtered more,” Mikael comments. “Starting with these two.”

“Your people chose to attack children,” I growl, ignoring my helpful ghost commentator. “They got what they deserved.”

Cain’s nostrils flare, and his head tilts. “The fuck is wrong with your scent? You smell…” He inhales deeper, confusion flickering across his scarred features. “Wrong. Broken.”

Then his attention shifts to Erynn, behind me, and his entire demeanor changes.

“But she smells interesting. Wolf, but not. Yours, but not quite.” A cruel smile spreads across his face.

“You got yourself a mate, Valderson? Perfect. She’ll scream so pretty when we’re done with her.

Let you watch before we take your head. Then your pack is ours. ”

“Over my dead fucking body,” I snarl.

“I can help,” Erynn whispers behind me, and I feel her shift forward.

“No.” I don’t take my eyes off the brothers, but whisper over my shoulder, “You can barely control him. Stay back.”

“Listen to your Alpha, little bitch,” Tobias taunts, already starting to shift, bones cracking and reshaping. “Won’t matter anyway. We’ll have our fun with you both.”

My skin crawls, rage igniting like wildfire in my blood. I should have ended these two when I had the chance. I wanted to. But now the universe is handing me the knife and daring me not to twist it.

“Oh, I have ideas for these two,” Mikael mutters, floating between the brothers with vindictive glee. “You could shove Cain’s head so far up his own ass he’d be wearing himself as a hat. Or—oh, this is good—remember that move with the spine and the?—”

Cain lunges mid-shift, three hundred pounds of fur and fury aimed straight at my throat.

I shove Erynn to the side, my heels digging into the ground, weight dropping, shoulder forward—bracing for impact. There’s no time to think, only react.

A snarl tears from Cain’s throat a split second before his bulk collides with mine.

The force is brutal. I’m thrown back, air knocked from my lungs, body skidding across the dirt.

Cain is on me before I can suck in a breath, all teeth and claws and hatred.

But I’m already reaching, my fingers closing around the hilt of my blade still sheathed at my side.

Come on, come on.

Cain’s jaws snap down, aiming for my throat.

I twist hard, just enough to make him miss, his fangs grazing air instead of flesh.

The dodge gives me one precious heartbeat.

Steel clears the sheath with a hiss.

I drive the blade up toward his ribs, aiming to gut him .

But Cain jerks sideways at the last second. The edge catches him across the flank instead, slicing shallow through skin and fur.

Blood spatters. He yelps, then growls, circling back.

My wolf is silent. But my fury isn’t.

“Come on, then,” I snarl, voice low and venomous. “Let’s see if either of you bastards can fight without a spine.”

Tobias comes from the right while I’m extended, jaws snapping for my dagger. I pivot, bringing my knee up into his throat, feeling cartilage crunch. He gags, stumbling back, but Cain has already recovered, returning with murder in his yellow eyes.

“Watch out,” Erynn calls out.

“Behind you!” Mikael shouts, and I drop just as Tobias launches himself at me, but now he’s aiming for Erynn.

“No!” I roar, spinning to intercept, but Cain’s massive paw catches me across the chest, claws raking through fabric and flesh.

White-hot agony tears through me, and then I’m airborne, back slamming into a tree hard enough to steal my breath.

Stars burst behind my eyes. I drop to one knee, lungs screaming, chest on fire.

Fuck.

No fast healing. No wolf to knit the torn muscle or dull the pain. Every inch of the damage is like fire. Flesh torn. Blood dripping.

I brace a hand against the dirt, force myself up.

They’re still coming. And I don’t have the luxury of staying down.

Erynn doesn’t run. The stubborn, beautiful fool stands her ground as Tobias stalks toward her, transforming back into his human form, lips pulled back in a grotesque approximation of a smile.

“Come here, pretty thing,” Tobias growls, and I fucking see that smug bastard’s hard-on.

Fury punches me in the gut.

“Let me show you what real wolves do to?—”

She moves fast. My wolf’s power threads through her limbs, but not quickly enough.

Tobias backhands her. The crack of flesh on flesh is sickening.

She crumples, crying out.

That sound?—

It rips straight through my chest.

No. I shove myself to stand steady despite the injuries, and lunge.

Except Cain barrels toward me from the side in the same moment. I don’t have time to think, only move. I pivot, blade flashing, too late to dodge. His weight slams into me, claws digging in, but I twist with the impact, drive my blade up hard against his ribs.

Warm blood sprays my hand. He lets out a sharp, strangled yelp and stumbles back, pawing at the wound.

I don’t wait.

I whip around, Tobias looming over Erynn.

My insides snap, when suddenly, I stumble on my steps. Wait, is that me?

The ground trembles once more…

And this time, it’s not rage.

“Uh, Ash?” Mikael’s voice cuts through the chaos, stripped of all humor. “What was that? Even I felt it.”

I don’t answer. I’m already moving, pushing through the quaking earth, through the pounding in my skull. Nothing matters but her.

Tobias yanks Erynn up by the hair.

“After I’m done with you, maybe I’ll keep you. Make you watch while we hunt down?—”

I slam into him, shoulder to his side. He stumbles, snarling, releasing Erynn. I don’t let him recover. I drive my knee into his back. Bone pops. He crumples with a howl.

I swing my fist down, cracking it against the back of his skull. He groans, collapsing flat. Not dead. Not yet. But he’ll stay down.

I reach for her. She’s on the ground, arms wrapped around herself, trembling. “Ash” is the only word that comes out.

“I’ve got you. Don’t worry,” I reassure her.

The world shifts beneath us once more. A low groan rises again from the earth itself, louder this time, ancient and unnatural.

She stares up at me, eyes wide, pupils blown, whispering, “Ash… I think something bad is about to happen.”

I don’t have a response.

Then Cain is on me again, a blur of rage and blood, and I spin just in time to meet him, my blade raised. We clash and fall to the ground, him still in wolf form.

Suddenly, I catch movement from the corner of my eye.

Three figures claw their way from the earth like nightmares given form.

The first is mostly skeletal, patches of mummified flesh clinging to yellowed bones, wearing the rotted remains of what might have been a suit from decades past. Its jaw hangs loose, connected by strips of dried sinew, and when it moves, bones click and scrape like broken wind chimes.

The second has more flesh but maybe wishes it didn’t as skin slides off in gray-green sheets, revealing muscle that’s turned to jelly, eyes that have liquefied and run down its cheeks like tears of rot.

It wears a dress that might have once been white, now stained with every fluid a body can produce as it decomposes.

Even Cain has paused, attention locked on the terror before us.

The third is the worst because it’s the freshest corpse, maybe dead only weeks, skin purplish black and split at the seams, revealing writhing masses of… things inside.

Cain whimpers, scrambling back on all fours in his human form now.

“It’s you, Ash!” Erynn shouts. “Ash, you called them! Your anger, your need for help… You need to control the power.”

“Zombies?” Mikael asks. “You raised fucking zombies. That’s new. Also terrifying. I’m dead, and even I’m creeped out.”

“I sure as fuck didn’t mean to!” I climb to my feet as the corpses shuffle forward, their movements too fast for things that dead, joints bending in ways that shouldn’t be possible.

“Tell them where to go!” Cain yells, backing away from Tobias, who’s trying to get up despite bleeding from my attack.

“They need a mission, or they’ll go on a rampage!” Erynn instructs, sounding as panicked as I feel. “They’ll come after everyone, including us!”

“Ash, do it!” Mikael blurts out the obvious.

“How do I?—”

The skeletal one lunges at Cain lightning fast. He yelps and dodges, but the corpse’s bony fingers catch his hair, yanking him back. He goes ballistic, fighting it… screaming. “Get it off me! Get it fucking off me!”

“Command them!” Erynn shouts. “Like an Alpha command but for the dead! Focus your will, give them purpose, or they’ll just destroy everything!”

I try to focus, to find that place inside where Alpha commands come from, but it’s different without my wolf. “Stop! I command you to stop!”

Nothing. If anything, they get more aggressive. The purple-skinned one has grabbed Tobias by the leg, and the sound he makes as its rotting fingers dig in will haunt me forever.

“Ew,” Erynn states, moving to my side.

“Not ‘stop’!” she corrects, her hand on my arm grounding me. “They came to help, so give them something to help with! And you have to mean it, feel it, push your will into them!”

“What the hell have you become?” Cain snarls, breaking free from the zombie, face pale, retreating quickly. But the skeletal corpse advances on him, jaw unhinging wider.

“Good question,” Mikael chirps. “I’m going with necromancer. Or maybe death wizard? Ooh, corpse commander has a nice ring to it.”

“Not helping, Mikael,” I murmur. I close my eyes, dig deep, and find something that’s not my wolf but sits in the same space.

It’s cold where the wolf was warm, patient where the wolf was aggressive.

I push everything into my voice: “TAKE THEM. The two male wolves. Take them, and do not harm the woman or me. TAKE THEM NOW. ”

The change is instant. The corpses’ heads snap toward the Bruck brothers in perfect synchronization, and then they travel forward, not shuffling but rushing, bones and rot moving with terrifying purpose.

Tobias scrambles and tries to run. The purple corpse catches him in three strides, bearing down on him. His screams cut off as putrid fingers find his throat.

Cain makes it farther, almost to the tree line, before the skeletal one and the flesh-sloughing one bring him down together. The sound of him being overwhelmed by the dead is wet and final.

“Oh, fuck!” Erynn breathes, clutching my side, both of us unable to look away from the carnage.

“That’s disgusting,” Mikael observes with fascination. “Is it eating his face? I think it’s eating his face. Oh, wait, no, that’s his—yep, definitely eating his face now.”

“They’ll return to their graves once the mission is complete,” Erynn explains. “Usually. Probably.”

“Have you ever raised the dead before?” I ask her.

“Technically, I raised a dead hamster once when I was seven,” she states, and I turn to stare at her.

“It was an accident. I was crying over Mr. Whiskers, and suddenly he wasn’t dead anymore.

Except he also bit through his cage and terrorized our village for three days before I figured out how to send him back. ”

“A zombie hamster.”

“It ate the neighbor’s dog.” She shudders. “We had to relocate the following week. No one would come near our house after that.”

The corpses are finishing their grisly work, and as we watch, they begin to sink back into the earth, taking what’s left of the brothers with them. Within moments, the only signs of violence are the blood-soaked ground and the echo of screams in the air.

“So,” Mikael says cheerfully. “You can raise the dead. That’s fun. Totally not terrifying at all. Hey, think you could raise me? I mean, more than I already am? Maybe give me a body so I can drink again? I miss vodka.”

I slump against the nearest tree, adrenaline crashing. “I raised fucking zombies.”

“You saved us,” Erynn corrects, wrapping her arms around me.

“This is so much worse than seeing ghosts,” I admit.

“Or better, depending on your perspective,” she says. “Do you know how useful combat zombies could be?”

“Please don’t give me ideas.”

Silence. We just stand there. Me. The woman I’m falling for, who has my wolf in her. My best friend, the ghost. And memories of the fucking undead coming back.

“This is the weirdest night of my life,” I say .

“I have no words,” Erynn adds.

“And it’s not even midnight yet,” Mikael contributes.

I wrap an arm around Erynn, who hasn’t let go of me yet. For this moment, we’re alive, we’re together.

Could be worse.

Probably.