Page 21 of Her Reborn Mate

“How am I going to clean this mess and the dead body outside all by myself? Any moment, someone’s going to come out of the backdoor of the bar and see Lawrence’s corpse. Before you go, can’t you help me sort this mess?”

I nodded. “Of course.”

There were no more words. Silently, I followed her down the stairs to where Lawrence’s body lay. I hoisted it on my shoulder, thankful that the blood in his body had congealed and wasn’t dripping on my clothes. Where was I going to get new clothes at this time of the night? Dumping Lawrence’s body was not a problem. As it happened, he had given us the very means to dispose of his body without anyone finding out where he was.

I took his car keys and flung them to Alexis. She nodded, then disappeared around the alley’s bend, reappearing minutes later behind the driver’s seat. She reversed the car into the alley and opened the trunk. I threw Lawrence’s body in there, then shut the trunk. A second later, I opened the trunk again, not being able to believe what I had just skipped seeing.

There was a false compartment in the back. When I opened it, I saw an array of firearms of all kinds hanging in there, ranging from concealable pistols to semi-automatic rifles. This changed my mind about what I was going to do with Lawrence’s car. Initially, I had just intended on dumping it with Lawrence’s body still in it. But this made me reconsider. I could use this car. The weapons would come in handy. For what, I didn’t know. But a man with firearms was better equipped to deal with the dangers of the world than an unarmed man. Especially now, now that I couldn’t shift into my true form.

I closed the trunk again and saw that Alexis had disappeared. I traced my way back to her apartment and found her sifting through the pile of clothes that had fallen from the cabinet. She threw me a pair of jeans and a black t-shirt from them.

“Have you taken a shower?”

I shook my head.

“There’s hot water in the bathroom. Go clean yourself, and I’ll clean the room while you’re in there. Let me know if you’re hungry. There’s a stocked kitchen below. I can get you something to eat.”

“That would be lovely,” I said, not wanting to overstay my welcome. We had defaulted to being polite strangers, so full of etiquette, and formality. It was nothing short of bizarre and hurtful, but I was careful enough not to even think it lest she read my mind again and broached that subject.

I took a towel with me and headed into the shower. The floor was slippery with grime, and the walls had fungus growing on them, but at least the water was boiling. It felt welcoming against the cold outside. Refreshing against my dirty body. I cleaned grave dirt and dried blood clots from my body and lathered my hair in shampoo, finally ridding myself of that horrendous concoction of stench I was wafting everywhere.

I did not know how long I was in the shower, just that it was probably one of the most comforting ones that I had taken, right up there with the first shower I had taken when I had emerged from Edward’s prison. How long ago that seemed and how distant, almost as if that hadn’t happened to me.

All of a sudden, the hot water stopped pouring out of the shower, leaving murky cold water in its wake. I hurried out of the steaming bathroom, barely dry, half-clothed, and saw that within the time I was in the bathroom, Alexis had done an admirable job on the room. It was spotless except for the broken wood and the broken window.

“I have been thinking,” she said. “They’re sending assassins and vampires after me. It’s never going to stop, is it? This only stops if I die or if they die. There’s no third option.”

“You can run. Run as far away as you can. These three people might have a large circle of influence and power, but even their circle has limits. They can’t find you someplace like the West Coast. Or even Europe,” I said.

“Is that what you want me to do? Flee to another country like a fugitive?” Alexis glared at me. “Where is the Will who used to tell me to stand my ground in the face of horrors?”

“I left some parts of me buried in the dirt. It seems I came out of the ground a mortal man, no longer a werewolf. Perhaps that Will who used to bolster you lies still in the grave,” I said solemnly.

It was a tense silence that followed, where neither of us hazarded a look at each other, not knowing what to say further, not knowing where to go from here.

“And where are you going to go?” she asked.

“I just think that with no future in Fiddler’s Green and no prospects with my mate, I need to go on a journey—a long voyage across the continents. Maybe I can go back to Germany and see what became of my old village if any descendants survived. Most importantly, though, I need to find purpose. Revenge is a purpose, I agree. But as you can see, I have no fight left in me, not at this moment. How can I be expected to fight the powers that be if I can’t even take down one assassin without getting beaten up to a pulp?”

Alexis walked across the room, staring intently at my face. There was an intensity of emotions rising in her eyes, and I felt like maybe she would cry. But she did not cry. She put her hand on my shoulder and said, “This is not you speaking. I never knew the Alpha wolf to be a coward. The words you are saying are riddled with fear. Do you not want revenge? First, you’re telling me to flee, and then you’re talking about fleeing yourself? What utter nonsense is this, Will?”

“It’s not nonsense but the ramblings of a man who has grown weary of fighting. At some point, one must stop fighting everything. He must let his love go, let his enemies live, and loosen his grip on what he had previously thought was his purpose. It is not just you who desperately require a new lease on life through a new purpose. I need it too. You’ve made it clear that this reunion of ours hasn’t changed a thing between us. It’s time I stop fighting that, too,” I said, gently taking her hand and pulling it off my body.

“Goodbye,” I said.

“…goodbye, Will,” she said.

While I was preparing to leave, a phone rang out of nowhere. I cast a look confusedly at the clothes that I’d thrown off. Rushing to that pile of dirt coat, pants, and shirt, I fished out a rather bricky old phone. On the minute screen, it said, “Vincent.”

“I didn’t know you got a phone,” Alexis said.

“Neither did I. It’s Vince. He must have slipped it into my coat when I went to meet him. That’s quite sneaky of him,” I said. “How does one answer a call?”

Alexis took the phone from me, hurriedly pressed a couple of buttons, then handed it to me.

“Vincent?” I asked. When Vince responded, his voice came out quite loud from the phone.

“Will. Thank God you picked up the phone. I thought you wouldn’t notice. I put it in your coat pocket when you came by my home. I hoped I wouldn’t have to use it, but the thing is, it’s extremely urgent,” Vince panted. There was panic in his voice, and all of his syllables were jumbled up as if he was trying to speak too fast in too little time.

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