Fade to Black

Follows right after Bad Moon Rising.

*Dom…..

I’m worried about Stevie and I really can’t help it. I have been completely driven to the point of insanity because of this girl. She’s laying on the backseat of the car I’m driving and she’s just staring at her hands, at the dirt and blood on her nail, naked except for a blanket tossed over her. Her hair splashed across her face like a sort of white blonde messy curtain hiding her partly from the world.

Even looking through the rearview mirror it doesn’t keep me from seeing the tears that just haven’t stopped since the battle at the Templar compound. The radio can’t mask the whine that comes out of her heart.

That fucking girl.

I’m at a loss with her so much. I’m Domitian Fenris, I’m a prince of the Fenris Kingdom, and we’re Werewolves from Budapest. I’m the youngest of seven brothers but the youngest of the Werewolves that pretty much control most of the packs in Europe. I was promised in marriage when Katya’s mother had negotiated for Katya and I to be married so that new blood, old lineage blood would be brought in to her pack and that I’d end up as Alpha.

I’m the youngest son so no; I’ve no clue to the price that was set on my marrying Katya. Hell…She was barely a year old when the bargain was struck. I ended up going to boarding school in New York and summering up in Moon Bat trying to get to know my future bride and queen.

Katya didn’t want anything to do with me and for awhile I had stopped going. Instead I went home where I was exposed to the night life of home and the manipulations of every bitch that wanted something from me like a child that’d tie her lines to mine, the new York night life was now better but they just thought I was a rich old money whatever from Europe.

By the time I had enough and went back to Moon Bay, I found Katya cumming around with this…well I couldn’t get it.

Steven Parker was five six five seven and about two hundred and thirty pounds with dirty blonde colored hair and grey eyes. He was this shlubb, no car chubby plus and glasses and drove around town on an old five speed bike.

In what world does a guy like him get more interest than a guy like me? I get it now knowing Stevie. It’s what’s inside. But at the time it drove me a bit nuts.

But then she turned him and that made problems and I really wanted to kill him for just being there. Katya had turned him without permission and then she was going to marry and mate with him over me.

Then the attack came and we both lost Katya and in her last bits of life Katya used the blood magic of giving power to her mate which should have been her offering to me on our wedding night.

I would have been the Alpha of this pack. But instead she gave her life force’s last spark and her energies changed Steven into Stevie because he/she was not of the Alpha blood lines and where I would have just absorbed the power the magic made Stevie’s form change to suit the powers of an Alpha female.

No one knew that her blood carried the human’s gift for mage-blood. To gift a mage with the power of the Were is forbidden. I’m not mage savvy but it’s because only the royal lines in my people can put their power into a changing bite or The Silvermark and change a Non-Were to a Were it’s a sacred thing, it defines the royal blood. A mage that was made one of us can use his or her own power to do what was/is only possible for the royal lines.

Those mages are usually executed; it’s far too dangerous to have them running around making their own packs.

And no, a non-royal Were cannot make another Were with a bite. The only way for them to breed is by having children. Even if a child is born to the Were or couple if they do not have enough natural magic in them the genes won’t waken in them. I’ve no idea why some children will have it and some won’t that’s where magic crosses genetics and I’m at a loss. Royals though are very, very likely to breed true with a human, and almost always with another Were.

Stevie is only safe because she had inherited Katya’s Alpha-ship and therefore the rule will not apply to her. But she’s gone and broken the custom of silence of the wolf in the blood of those families of her pack.

Silence about ourselves has saved our lived from being hunted down by mankind. People talk, but it’s all up in the air now because she was right. Even without the public knowing about us The Templar’s are waging a war and using science or science and magic but their intent was clear and we have the proof.

We lost people back there and some of them were non-wolves but family of. Stevie’s pack and they died so us as a species may live.

I don’t know how that’s going to play out with the heads of the great packs.

I reach up and pinch the bridge of my nose and try and breathe through the stress headache. It really doesn’t help as every instinct I have is to curl up to Stevie and try to nurse her spirit back together.

It’s so messed up me and her.

Most women just…just well fall for me. It’s either been the whole pheromone thing or it’s been my status or just my looks. And does Stevie even come close to getting caught up in those things? Oh no, she actually looked at me and accused me of being Euro-trash…charm her? Influence her hell I still think one of the only reasons is she’s still young that her wolf side is still responding to the mate effect.

It has no effect on the human side of her. I’ve never met a more willful tough, stubborn bitch in my life. And she had no real like of me, she had no real use for me when we first got together and still she promised to be real with me, she took a chance on me…

I look back in the mirror. “Soon Love we’ll be at the farm soon.” I give it some more gas and still it’s a long thirty minutes before we get there and pull into the farmstead.

There’s a lot of the people who stayed back here looking at us as I take Stevie and the case we retrieved into the motor home. The others are pulling in behind us but I’m inside with her. I set the case in a cooler and was taping it up when I could hear the commotion starting up outside.

I heard another sound and Stevie’s up and already headed for the door or the motor home. I lunge to my feet to get there. “Stevie, no…they knew the danger…” She shut me up by putting her fingers to my lips and gave me the saddest sweetest hurt smile that I’ve ever seen.

* Stevie…..

There’s nothing that anyone can tell you that’ll prepare you for this. Battle real battle is more than a fight, or a skirmish. It took all night to go through what we did there at the fortress it felt like forever, it felt like everything happened so fucking fast.

Dom had carried me to the car and he had thought to bring himself a change of clothes he’s such a euro-priss… but he opened the back door of the Impala he some how had gotten a hold of. He undressed me and used his own shirt off his back to wash off the worst of the dirt and the blood and grime…he’d kiss me occasionally and make me stare into those green eyes of his. He dressed me as best he could in his spares and tucked me into the back seat.

Honestly if he hadn’t hung onto my soul like that I would have found a way to kill myself.

Do the real soldiers feel that way?

Get out of battle and see nothing good in the world left after what you’ve done. Just wanting to eat a bullet…get off the ride.

Dom’s eyes, that link between us straining like a fraying cut rope and he’d not stop. I couldn’t even respond to it, just…I bare had the soul left to breathe. But it didn’t make him lose heart, he didn’t give up on me.

He had the heater cranked to full as he drove and I…I fell into that dark hole as I could feel it, the shock and horror and the creep up of the PTSD of the other’s just weighing down on everyone. Some of my vet’s were just hanging on, some were just slipping over that edge and falling.

What could I do but open up?

They’re mine.

Katya made me promise. I love them like I love her, yes still love her. Seeing her in there, seeing her spirit there guiding me, still loving me.

As they fall or find themselves in that dark space inside I’m there waiting. I’m there with them as the pain and the blood closes in.

Vietnam several times I’m in that jungle land with one of them or another. A rain soaked washed out killing field…ours and theirs. Or a burned out tiny village, or napalm roasted jungle the bodies of people that never should have gotten involved, kids.

Desert storm, the never ending sand, the gasses, the fear of the smoke being something else, oh fuck did I get my mask on in time. The shelling and long distance fighting, the patrols seeing dead civilians in these hovels that a dog shouldn’t live in…all because the enemy used their places. How they can see fire works anymore without seeing the flare zip of tracer rounds sending death out to people they might never see.

Iraq, the maze like streets, the fear and loathing they stare at you with and how being a stranger in that strange land preys on your mind. What are they doing, saying where’s the knife coming from, is that a sniper. The blast boom of a IED…blood and friends dying, the maze becoming a death trap…the way that fear eats at all of you some when you hit the insurgents you hit a little too hard.

The police officers, ATF, DEA guys all in their own firefights. This is home, America and you see the guns and poison on the streets killing out kids, sucking the heart out of places because when you’re poor…what do you have to lose? But it never stops, the tide never backs down and them fighting a losing battle and getting shot, seeing friends get shot, seeing them come after cops and stuff in their own homes.

It’s a flood, and we’re all drowning for awhile together. I get soaked in all the blood on my hands, and theirs and then we’re stopped and the whole thing kind of breaks up like a tornado that didn’t quite get to form, it’s still dark and stormy and that almost olive oil colored air is the mood, the sadness in all of us.

I blink a few times as Dom carried me into the motor home. I hear them, the questions the panic and that horrible feeling building in some of them, too. There’s flashes from them too…seeing someone in a formal dress uniform of one kind or another coming up the walk or to the door, the surgeon coming out of the doors to the O.R.

I have to.

They’re my family, my pack.

Everything hurts, everything hurts soul deep as I get up and Dom lunges to get in my way. He’s holding me saying “Stevie, no…they knew the danger…” I cut him off and that hurting himself, scared for me, scared for all of us look is there in his forest green eyes. And as much as I want to give in and just fucking bawl right now I draw strength from him, him loving me like that and Dom just being my Dom.

….Yeah, MY Dom. I Love Katya but I think I love him just as much? The more I know him, the more there is to love.

“We all thought we knew the danger Dom, I have to do this, I have to talk to them, I’m Queen. I owe them this.”

So as regally as I guess I can muster I step out of the RV into the rain with his bagging socks on my feet into the squishy grass and Dom’s black cotton long sleeve shirt and my panties.

There’s a lot of chaos going on and I take a shotgun from someone and climb up onto a picnic table and fire a shot into the air.

That get’s their attention.

I lower the gun and look them over.

“We were right.”

“Unfortunately we were right.”

“These Templar’s, these fanatics had made a virus, a plague and they used a sample of it to try to stop us from stopping them. A suicide bomber with a vial of the virus detonated it in the compound making it airborne and if it wasn’t for the rain none of us would be here right now.”

“We lost too many people. I know that one life is one too many but this was something that’s cost up too deeply, cost us too dearly and I can’t sugar coat it or spin it. I did this, I did this and brought us to this point. You followed me and your loved ones died.”

I’m crying, and wiping away tears and it’s giving me that crying voice that I’ve got to just push through making me sound hoarse because I’m having to talk over the crowd and the rain.

“I can’t be as sorry as I should be.”

“I can’t express the pain enough to make it fair.”

“But I wouldn’t change it either.”

“We have the virus or at least a sample of it. We have a chance to stop a plague that would have killed who knows how many? It struck furred and non-furred down both, if this had gotten out into the mainstream world we would have been facing extinction…”

“Even for now, even if we only delayed their plans everyone who went, fought, died here are heroes, heroes a hundred, a thousand times over…It’s all I can say…we either stopped it our bought time that we shouldn’t have had.”

I stop as I see Athena/Andrea and Miranda pulling in with a freightliner with the children. I take a deep breath.

“Alright!, we’ve got close to two hundred children that need us. Please be gentle, these children have quite literally been through hell…these kids are part of what our loves died for.”

I step off the table and it’s my dad that’s there first with this look on his face I’ve never seen before in my life. He’s hurting bad and I think for the first time in my life he’s actually proud of me. He pulls me into this huge hug and holds me and he’s crying because he’s shaking and I’m trying hard not to bawl. I actually bang him on the chest a few times before he lets me go.

I look at my Daddy, something I haven’t called him since I was a little kid. “I can’t…I can’t right now there’s too much to do…There’s just too much dad…Can I take a rain check on losing my mind for a bit.”

He gives me this fond look. “Oh yeah stubborn as all get out, you’re definitely my daughter….I’m sticking close, you’re pushing it too much but yeah…” He looks out over the gathering. “There’s stuff you’ve got to do or at least get started.”

He does stick close as I wade into the thick of things stopping only to get into the rubber boots mom came over with and a hot blanket…I can’t…I take it and wrap it around the first couple of kids getting helped off the semi.

I never seen them until now. I’ve never see kids, mostly ethnic kids and girls look like those poor abused animals in the SPCA adds, there’s something broke there in some of them, gone…Andrea’s powers are shaking like she’s boiling inside and she’s crying as she takes each one of the little ones off the truck with her own hands… There’s this aching look of yearning in her that just makes sense.

Goddess, Immortal…but unable to ever had children of her own…And of course it’s Andrea and she loves kids.

I’m there helping then too as much as we can and after a bit Shadira arrive too who frowns at the Elf… “Car trouble.” It’s not a real frown more of a pout thing but that changes as she’s taking some of those kids in her hands and there’s this look in her eyes of been there…done that. And with shaking hands…she reaches out and touches bruises, cuts, sore and even broken bones…I heard her right forearm break itself as she took the hurt into herself… her eyes get so bright inside…It’s fucking really hard to swallow that lump in my throat. She has tears as bright as moonlight spilling out from her eyes as she looks at me and Andrea… “I can’t heal what’s broken on the inside but by heaven I’ll do this.” Every hurt fades and but nothing takes the physical pain from her, the pain of all that healing time compressed into moments.

Andrea offers her hand to Shadira…and I do too “What strength I’ve got it’s yours” I say.

She takes the pain, the wounds we supply the energy. Athena far more than me…pulling and burning off more essence than is possible…but…just at what point do you say no to burning off that much power when you heal the rape damage…of some little ten year old girl.

The three of us are there doing everything we can, getting lost in it and soon others are getting them off to the farm house and the RV’s to get them cleaner up. Giving them clothes and being as gentle as possible. There’s this sad grace through out the camp right now.

Shadira sags hurt, beyond hurt and her elf comes and pulls her off her feet and into his arms like she’s this delicate china doll. I don’t understand a word of what he’s speaking but it sounded very Lord of the Rings.

Andrea smiles watching and says. “You’re the reason that I breathe, You’re the light in my dark, you’re everything I’ve ever yearned for and never dared to dream.” I think she translated what he was saying, but of course she’s a goddess she’d know the language. She sighs and looks at me and we hug side by side for awhile. “You’re a piece of work Parker, You know that?”

“Yeah, but you’ll get used to me.”

We hug a bit more and her girl’s coming over and Dom and Mom and Dad too. “You think you can make some calls Andrea we need to take care of the kids that are snatched from homes and we really need to talk this out somewhere safe, somewhere neutral we need to figure out what we’ve got to do next…”

She nods. “I’ll call Tyr first and we might be better served to get a hold of the Great Lakes Packs and the Native tribes, The Shaman’s will be neutral as much as they can.”

She shoves off the truck and into Miranda’s arms and I do the same as Dom gets close and I swear, it’s never felt so good to be held by him. I’m swept up into strong arms and his warm chest and I’m feeling the heat sinking into me as he carries me off to the RV. As soon as he’s unbuttoning the shirt I’m in Dad swings Mom around and takes her off and I hear her go “Oh.” in the distance.

Dom strips me naked and soon we’re into the shower as hot as we dare getting the water and we make love in the need to feel something, something just good…be…be…us instead of ourselves hurting alone.

It hurts, it heals and It’s never been me and him like this before…

He carries me after to the bed. And we curl into each other and I swear I can feel his midnight black wolf curling defensively around my heart and soul keeping the nightmares at bay…Loving me so much, so intensely and letting me slip into sleep, letting it…

Fade to Black…