Retaliation

[Amorentia]

Peni POV

"Tori needs you." My Mother's voice said over and again in my head focusing me past the rage. But barely so. Tori's head was nestled between my hands as Reg carefully carried her motionless body to one of the rooms downstairs. Ewan's hands were already moving skillfully over her to perceive the damage.

"Marcus, you're with us," Seth's voice called from the door above the chaos of barks and howls as the Pack grieved, furiously between Jacob and Sam's directions. "Let's go." He said

The curls of Tori's dark hair, sticky with blood, clung to my fingers as my eyes caught my loves. They were leaving. The Pack was leaving to avenge. I was being left behind. Marcus's warm fingers cupped my face, kissing me lightly, "We'll find them."

"Baby, one of has to be here...one of has to raise our kids. You know I don't want to leave them, to leave us, but the other option, it being you...it would be worse," My mind recalled the conversation Marcus and I had after he first phased. "You are the only mother all eight of those children have.  Deni, Nevi, Jaki, Bliss, Marki, Elissa, Johni, and Breena.  And you have to be there for them".

It was the same thing the Ancestor's told me since Bliss was born. The role of Mother trumped the role of Pack. Just because it was true, didn't make it any easier to handle. Justin was dead. Tori was unconscious. The love of my life, my Pack family, were all going to fight against a danger unknown. Swallowing not standing beside them in battle, not being there to help make sure they were coming home made my stomach ache. Quietly, I told him, "Be careful."

"I will, I love you." Reaching over, his hand trailed over Tori's hair lightly. She looked like she was sleeping. Like Justin did right after his spirit left his body. Fresh tears spilled over my eyes, my heart seized up as he added, "Take care of Little Bit.  We need her"

Nodding, I fought back the argument inside of me to look in his clear blue eyes so full of love and demand to go. I wanted to take his hand in mine, tell him he had to come back or my life would collapse in upon itself. But my hands were covered in blood: Justin's and Tori's. The only words I could find were, "I love you." With those words he was gone.

"She's lucky," Ewan said as he delicately laid Tori's head on the pillow. "It was the Killing Curse to the back of her head. A very powerful one. If it was her temple or the top of her head, it would have been much worse."

The first time we knew the Killing Curse's effects on our kind was when Seth was hit before the battle of Great Hallow. After the stunned effect wore off, it broke one of his ribs clear in two. When Pansy hit Tori with one, it was a weak curse. Still it left a bruise on her abdomen that took several days to heal.

"There's a fissure in her skull." Ewan said. My hand went to my mouth smelling the fresh blood of our children - that's what they were - children. It didn't matter Tori was a year from twenty, like Justin, right now she was still a teen.

Reg moved up behind me. I felt his arm around my neck as we leaned on each other in shock. I was so glad he was there, glad he shared some care of Tori.

"It should heal," Ewan looked at me seriously. Should wasn't reassuring. He went on to explain, "Once the swelling goes down inside, the crack will heal. It may only take a couple of days." May wasn't reassuring either. "I'm pretty sure. Unless there are complications." Again, in no way shape or form reassuring.

"You have to give me more than that," I demanded.

Ewan gave the smallest of half smiles, "Head injuries are unpredictable. The brain is delicate and can't be finiky. She could wake up in hours or days. There is no way to know." Putting his hand to her head he weighed the injury again saying, "It is healing. That I know."

As the quill in Ewan's hand began scratching against his notepad making notes for Tori's care, my hands began shaking again. Our children. Quileute children. My cousin. Our Little Bit. Justin's screams. The holes in his head where his eyes have been. Tori's blood from the back of her head on my hands. Somewhere out there my husband, brother, cousins, Pack family were all tracking down the monsters that dared to mess with us.

"Stay with her," I asked Reg. As I stood to leave, he took a seat by her on the bed.

Knowing he was with her, I gave myself over to the anger. Making my way to the bathroom adjacent to the room, I was not able to hold the anger at bay. A promise was made. I wouldn't put myself in harms way. But I wouldn't be left behind either. I slipped down the wall setting my Spirit free to join the hunt with a hunger for vengeance. It was time to put my Spirit Warrior ancestry to the test.

"Uh, oh," Paul laughed once my Spirit caught up with the Pack as they ran across Scotland at full speed. "Peni's joined the party."

"I know you didn't think I would miss the party." I told them. Because I wasn't in Wolf form, I communicated on a different frequency as the Pack. Though not all of the Pack had the sensitivity to see and communicate me with me naturally when I was using Astral Travel, as long as one of them could, through that person they all could hear see me and I could hear/see them.

"They left heading on foot north north west from the Hogshead at full speed. They must have known we'd come after. There was no time wasted. They have a significant head start," Sam told me.

"Not for long," I  moved past them to the north north west intent on slowing down the Vampire's responsible to hold them up for the Pack to destroy them.

"Pen," Jacob said. "No army of Chipmunk's here. You have to really bring it to hold them." That I knew. How I was going to use the Spirit Warrior skills I'd learned so far to do it, I wasn't sure. I was no closer to having it figured out when I saw the Hummer moving at full speed down a country road. It was full of five Leeches. They were twitchy - definitely Newborns. Stepping back I took in the surroundings. The road was wedged between the Coast and on the other side a woods at the bottom of a incline.

Drawing up all of my power, I tapped into the flowing power of Mother Earth, calling upon all powers that be to aid me. The power feeling me tingled heightening all of my senses. My vision expanded to give me a broader scope of all that surrounded me in a very inhuman way. The heavy rain clouds above the road spilled cool rain on the speeding vehicle. Reaching to the North, I drew in the frigid air from off the Northern Coast where snow swirled over the open ocean. Pulling it to me, I forced it low under the warmer air causing sheets of ice to coat the road ahead of the car. It fell too heavy and quickly for their quick reactions to stop the car from careening out of control at the high speed they were traveling. Pulling the warmer wind from the south east, I accelerated it's speed to a gust of wing that hit the sliding Hummer with a intensity that sent it sliding off the road, down the embankment beside it. Turning the wind with a stronger gust, I forced down two trees to fall over the SUV trapping them temporarily inside. I could hear them inside of the car. One of them saw my Spirit manipulating the forces of nature naming me a Witch, among other things.

"Keep it coming, Peni." Sam demanded. "We're not close enough yet. And we need the ice gone when we arrive."

My mind was blank not knowing what else to do. Parting the clouds, I let the warm air and sunshine shine through melting the ice as I searched for an idea. Then it came.

"I'm sorry, baby. I promise I won't stay." Before Marcus could object, I pulled my Spirit back to my body, immediately apparating myself to the road beside the Hummer. The Bloodsuckers were pulling themselves out of the Hummer one at a time our of the only opening they could rend open. The first one to emerge from the vehicle to see me standing in the flesh beside them was the one who identified my Spirit before. Curiously she stepped forward as a devilish smile spread across my face as she asked, "Who are you?"

"To you?" I answered with a smirk touching my necklace to Portkey the Pack to the location where I stood. "Death." 

In an instant our targets were surrounded by almost a dozen rabid, giant wolves. So as not to distract Marcus from the defensive role he was taking, I apparted back home relishing a smile as I heard the first tell tale sounds of Vampire's being shredded to bits by the Quileute Pack. Part of me wanted to slide back into Spirit form to see for myself the vial monsters being destroyed in the name of Justin and Tori. Part of me also wished they'd leave one alive, but barely so, so that it could go back to tell the other Bloodsucker's this is what happens when you mess with us. Then my Mother's voice came into my head,  "Tori needs you." 

The stench of the neighborhood burnt my nose as I washed the blood from my hands in the bathroom of my house in Min Way. As I prepared clothes, towels, and a wash cloth to changed and clean Tori, I wondered when it was that I forgot how rank Minx Way smelled with all the Leeches taking residence here. They tried to blend into society as if they weren't the worst of monsters. How I was fooled. How they fooled all of us. It was only a matter of time before their true colors showed through. Jacob was killed by his own Half Vampire wife. Justin was dead. Staring at my own reflection, I could see the Wolf staring back out of my brown eyes with a new bias forming clearly. There was one lesson I was taking away from all of this: The only good Bloodsucker is a dead one.  

Peni and Pack written by Amorentia. Regulus Black by shtteredprncess. Marcus Flint by shtteredprncess. Ewan Zabini by Amorentia.

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