Page 204 of White Wolf

“How about putting your hands up for real this time, huh?” Lanny said, motioning to him with the barrel of his gun. “Nice and high, behind your head.”

Chad complied this time, hastened by a little shove from Sasha.

Trina took out her cuffs. “Um. Are these gonna work on him?” she asked Sasha.

The wolf sighed and shook his head. “Probably not.” Then he glanced up, over the top of her head, grin tugging at one corner of his bloody mouth. “But don’t worry, we won’t need them.”

She heard a faint rustling behind her, and twisted around just in time to see Nikita land ballerina-light, like Sasha had, his hair still settling as he started toward them.

“You guys make a habit of jumping off buildings?” she asked.

“Only when we have to.”

“It’s fun,” Sasha said.

When she looked back at Chad, she saw that he’d spotted Nikita, and that he was trying to shrink down into his shirt collar like a turtle hiding in its shell.

“We’re taking him in,” Lanny told Nikita. “Douchebag already confessed to killing the Anderson kid.”

“Hmm,” Nikita said, drawing up in front of a now-shivering Chad, face impassive. “And do what with him? Handcuffs won’t hold him. Neither will a cell – not in the long run. Too many chances to overpower guards and other prisoners.”

“Yeah, well,” Lanny huffed. “That’s the system we got.”

“Ineffective,” Nikita said, dismissively, all his attention on Chad. “Did you turn that boy?” he asked.

“I…”

“Did you?”

“Yes,” Chad said. His teeth were chattering he was so scared. “But please, I didn’t…”

“Mean to?”

“No, well, I did, but–”

“You’ll do it again.”

Chad sighed, deflating a little further into Sasha’s grasp. “It isn’t a bad thing. That guy was sick, okay? I saw him use an inhaler. He was some geeky loner with no friends, and now he’s gonna be super strong. I made him better. This is – this is amazing! Who wouldn’t want to feel like this?” But his voice was not that of an enraptured holy man – it was that of a petulant child. Mean-spirited and entitled. “Idid him a favor,” he repeated. “And he’s not even dead – he’s gonna wake up – so it’s not murder.”

Nikita nodded. He shared a look with Sasha. Nodded again.

Trina sucked in a breath. “Wait, no–”

Nikita grabbed the boy’s head in both hands and snapped his neck with one clean jerk.

Chad slumped forward, knees and ankles going soft, and Sasha held him upright.

“What the fuck?” Lanny roared. “You can’t just – you just –what the fuck?”

When Nikita turned to them, he looked exhausted. “You wouldn’t have been able to contain him, and he wouldn’t have changed. I did what had to be done.”

“You broke his fucking neck,” Lanny seethed.

Nikita turned his gaze on Trina, quietly imploring.

She waited for the revulsion to hit her. The hate. The fear.

Instead, she felt…relief. Chad was no longer her problem, or anyone else’s.

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