Carolina Moon

The Shadow of Kingsport: Tess

Ten minutes. That’s all the time I had to pack before heading back into the wolf’s den. I didn’t worry about the sundresses hanging in my closet. I grabbed the laptop hidden in my desk, and tucked it into a suitcase. At least this time, I was choosing to go. This time, I would be prepared.

K.C. struggled to stay on his feet. He looked like a ghost of the man who had walked into my shop this morning. His fever was so high, I could feel the heat coming off of him, even five feet away. Kingsport wasn’t just a mission, it was a life support machine. Leon was being generous when he said he’d last the week. K.C. wasn’t going to survive the night if we stayed. He needed the pack bond.

We walked out onto the porch, and I saw two armored black SUVs waiting for us. Their headlights cut through the Cypress Hollow mist like shark eyes. Leon was waiting beside one of them. He looked older, more tired. I didn’t bother with a greeting. I just pointed to K.C., “If he crashes in that car, you’re the first one I take out.”

Being inside the SUV was too much like being back inside the Whitmore Building. The smell of the leather and the recycled air felt sterile in comparison to riding in K.C.’s truck with the windows down.

K.C. slumped against me, his head on my shoulder. His skin was clammy, and he drifted in and out of consciousness. I took his hand, tracing the faint scars where his claws had torn through his skin just moments before.

I had to force Leon to give me a briefing. “Right now, K.C. is in no shape to lead any kind of anything,” I pointed out. “And it’s not like I haven’t proven my ability to go toe to toe with a werewolf.”

I saw his jaw tighten almost imperceptibly in the front seat before he finally relented. He turned around and showed me his tablet. There was a hint of the Beta respect he’d shown me when Darian had planned on making me his Luna. “The Grid-Keepers haven’t just taken Darian,” he explained. “They’ve occupied the industrial district. They’re using a crude version of the S-Grate to pulse the city. It’s messy, violent, and causing a sort of… static in the wolves’ minds. The static is why the Pack is tearing itself apart.”

I looked at the blinking red lights. I couldn’t just be an auditor on this. I would have to be the lead architect of a rescue mission for a man I hated in order to save the man I loved.

It was a three and a half hour drive from South Carolina back to Florida. We crossed the bridge into Kingsport, driving down I-95 through downtown. As we crossed the St. John’s River, I felt the energy in the car shift.

K.C. gasped suddenly, his back arching as his eyes snapped open. They were glowing a steady, dark amber. He wasn’t “healthy” by any means, but the close proximity to the Pack was acting like a transfusion. The sickness was being suppressed by the sheer weight of the collective consciousness.

We didn’t go to a penthouse or some massive skyscraper. Instead, we pulled into an old, fortified shipyard. The Steelclaw safe house. It was a labyrinth of shipping containers and reinforced concrete.

The doors opened to reveal dozens of wolves waiting. They were disheveled, wounded, and desperate. I got out of the SUV first, followed by K.C. He was leaning on me, but standing tall. A dead silence fell over the shipyard.

There were no cheers. One by one, the wolves dropped to one knee, a wave of submission rippling through the crowd.

I looked up at the skyline. In the distance, the Whitmore Building was dark, but the industrial district was glowing with an unnatural, flickering blue light.

Leon’s tablet chimed with a notification. It was an encrypted email with a video file. He opened it to see Darian strapped to a chair in a room full of silver-nitrate vats, looking at the camera with bloodied teeth. A voice on the recording said, “Welcome back, Oracle. We’ve saved a seat for you at the motherboard.”

I felt the weight of their words like a physical blow. They weren’t just looking for a technician; they were looking for the person that could turn a city into a weapon.

Beside me, K.C. let out a low, vibrating growl. He wasn’t leaning on me as heavily now. The “transfusion” from the surrounding pack was working slowly, knitting his strength back together, but it was a volatile kind of energy. He looked less like the boy I’d went to school with, and more like the warlord who had once held this shipyard by force.

“Leon,” I said, my voice cutting through the silence of the kneeling wolves. “Get me a secure uplink and every scrap of data you have on those blue pulses. Now.”

“Tess,” K.C. rasped, his hand tightening on my arm. “You’re not going near that motherboard.”

I looked up at him. His eyes were still burning, that predatory amber clashing with the exhaustion still etched in his face. “I’m already in it, K.C. They have Darian, and they have the hardware. If they stabilize that signal, they’ll be lobotomizing every wolf in the territory to make them their own personal army.”

I turned to the crowd of wolves. They were looking at me, not with hunger or suspicion, but with a terrifying kind of hope. They knew I was the one who had broken the grid the first time, and they expected me to fix the world that came after it.

“Stand up,” I commanded, my voice steady even though I was shaking. I was Theresa Beaumont, and I was back in the books. “We have a lot of work to do.”