The More Things Change Read online

  Table of Contents

  The More Things Change

  Book Details

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  About the Author

  The More

  Things

  Change

  EMILY HOLLOWAY

  When Jackie's parents are murdered by a werewolf, it's the final straw in an escalating conflict between the supernatural and the mundane. But it wasn't werewolves who did the killing, and only two people know it: Jackie, and the killer.

  Now her hometown is cut off while the militia hunts down what's left of the supernatural community. Determined to bring the real murderer to justice, Jackie seeks friends among the werewolves, where she meets Maya: a newly made alpha desperate to keep her pack alive.

  Meanwhile, Jackie struggles to deal with her adoptive family—a kind but naïve younger sister, an aloof mother, and a father torn between his duty as a soldier and his knowledge of what's right.

  Then there's Jackie's new grandfather: general of the militia, hero of the town—the man who murdered Jackie's parents and used their deaths to start a war.

  The More Things Change

  By Emily Holloway

  Published by Less Than Three Press LLC

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission of the publisher, except for the purpose of reviews.

  Edited by V. Duncan

  Cover designed by Aisha Akeju

  This book is a work of fiction and all names, characters, places, and incidents are fictional or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual people, places, or events is coincidental.

  First Edition May 2019

  Copyright © 2019 by Emily Holloway

  Printed in the United States of America

  Digital ISBN 9781684314881

  Print ISBN 9781684315130

  To my zucchini

  Prologue

  Nick Donovan startles awake when Jackie starts screaming. It's not an uncommon thing to happen, but it's been a few days since the last time. He had started to hope that the worst of the nightmares were over.

  He fumbles for the bedside lamp and climbs out of bed wearing nothing but boxer shorts, his lean, muscular frame dimly illuminated from the glow of the streetlight outside. Helen, his wife, opens one eye and gives him a look that borders on being a glare. He ignores her, heading into Jackie's bedroom. The nine-year-old has burrowed down into the blankets and gotten tangled into them. She's thrashing and wailing as Nick tries to pull them away from her.

  "Hey, hey, I've got you," he says as her eyes open and the screams turn to sobs. "It's me, you're safe, I've got you."

  He scoops her up, cradling her shaking body against his shoulder. She wraps her arms around his neck and cries harder.

  Out in the rest of the house, Nick can hear that Valerie has started crying now, woken by her sister. Helen emerges from the master bedroom in a terrycloth robe, and this time the look she gives Nick is positively icy. She passes him in the hallway as he rocks Jackie without saying a word. A few moments later, he can hear her soothing Valerie back to sleep.

  "Sorry," he says as she heads back into the bedroom. The only answer is the door closing again.

  Jackie's sobs have trailed off into sniffles, but Nick knows from experience that if he tries to put her back to bed before she's fallen asleep, she'll rev right back up. So he keeps walking around the house, one arm tucked securely underneath the girl's rear, the other hand rubbing her back. He hates that Helen gets so angry about Jackie's nightmares, but he doesn't know how to address it with her. It's not Jackie's fault. She found her murdered parents in a pool of blood. Of course that's going to give a child nightmares.

  It was six months ago, now, and the official adoption had just gone through. "There has to be someone else who could take her," Nick's brother had said. But truthfully, there wasn't. Jackie's only living relative was her grandmother, who was in a nursing home with kidney failure. There were probably other qualified parents looking for children to adopt, but Nick was adamant that she shouldn't be moved if it wasn't necessary. Jackie was attached to him. He was the only one who could calm her nightmares. Moving her would only cause more trauma.

  Six months. First the nightmares had been every night, multiple times per night, to the point where Nick slept next to her all the time. Then it was just once a night, then once every few nights. She was getting better, and he felt vindicated.

  He counts his circuits as he paces the house. It usually takes about twenty before Jackie's asleep again. If it takes more than that, it's because the nightmare was a particularly bad one, and there's a good chance she'll wake up again. When Nick gets to his thirtieth circuit, he sits down on the sofa. He'll stay up with her for a while. She'll sleep better that way. He lays her down with her head in his lap. She closes her eyes and sticks her thumb in her mouth. Nick smoothes down her hair.

  After a while, her breathing is deep and even. Nick doesn't want to go back to bed, and he figures the television won't wake her as long as he keeps the volume low. He fishes around for the remote and turns it on. It's tuned to CNN, probably the last thing Helen was watching. He's not really in the mood for more depressing news, but doesn't change the channel because he sees a familiar face. CNN is playing clips of Sam Callaghan's testimony before Congress about the murder of Jackie's parents.

  It was hard to believe that one incident could have such a widespread effect on the country, but it had. Tension between the supernatural and the ordinary world had been growing for a while. Unfair laws had been passed, restricting the movement of werewolves and demanding harsher sentences for any supernatural creature caught committing a crime. The non-humans were furious. They could have continued to live in the shadows, they said, but they had allowed humanity to know of their presence because they felt like they had things they could learn from each other. And this was how they're rewarded?

  Nick closes his eyes wearily. Everyone paints the situation like it's black and white, but he knows from experience that it's so many shades of gray. Harsh sentences aren't fair, but at the same time, supernatural creatures had instincts that were difficult to control. It was true that they had revealed themselves, but it was really only because enough of them had been discovered that it was basically inevitable. Both sides wanted to protect their families. Both sides had important points to make. And of course, each side had their share of raving loonies who wanted the other side exterminated 'for everyone's protection,' and each side pointed to the loonies on the other side as the reason why rational discourse was impossible.

  Sam Callaghan is the alpha werewolf in their region, the most powerful of the supernatural creatures. He's being called in front of Congress to explain how a werewolf could have killed an innocent couple on his territory without him being able to stop it, without even being aware of it. Sam is adamant that no werewolf did any such thing, but it doesn't matter. Nobody believes him.

  Nick doesn't know what to think. He knows that werewolves can be brutal, that they can lose control of their instinct to hunt, to kill. But it's rare, and the supernatural world has always done a good job of policing its own. If a werewolf r
eally had killed Jackie's parents, Sam Callaghan would know, and the werewolf's body would have been delivered to the police station the next morning. He knows Sam well because he dated the alpha's son Ryan off and on for years. Ryan was everything the activists wouldn't expect out of a werewolf: charming, confident, well-educated and well-spoken. The exact opposite of the brutish thugs they tried to portray.

  The screen changes to a different man speaking, and Nick grunts a little in surprise. It's his father, Mitchell Donovan. Highly decorated soldier, current state representative. Nick hasn't seen him in person for over a year. He's talking to the panel about his experience with werewolves, how even the best-intentioned will eventually lose control and hurt somebody, citing studies that Nick knows for a fact are biased. Sam interrupts to point out this fact, and someone tells him to be quiet.

  Jackie makes a small noise, and Nick looks down, surprised to see her eyes open. "Hey, sweetie. Want some cocoa?"

  "Nuh uh." Jackie hugs the blanket to herself, eyes fixed on the screen.

  "You shouldn't be watching this, kiddo." Nick turns the television off. "How about you get some more sleep, okay?" He sees that she's crying. "What's wrong?"

  Jackie looks up at him with her big brown eyes—is that why Helen hates her, because she's black? "Were they talking about who killed my mom and dad?"

  Nick sighs. There's only so much they can shelter her from. She knows her parents were killed. Numerous psychologists had interviewed her and determined that she hadn't seen it happen, couldn't give any clues as to who had done it. But she was the one who had found their bodies, clawed and mauled and soaked with blood. "Yes, sweetheart, they were."

  "Because the werewolves did it?" Jackie asks.

  "Uh huh. And now they have to decide if they should punish all the werewolves because of what happened."

  "Will they?"

  Nick is quiet for a minute, debating not what the answer will inevitably be, but what he should tell his daughter. "Yes, sweetheart. I think they will."

  Jackie says nothing.

  "How does that make you feel?" Nick asks her.

  "Sad," Jackie says.

  The answer surprises Nick. "Why?"

  "Because it's not what my daddy would want." Jackie closes her eyes and nestles back into Nick's lap. "He would say it wasn't right."

  Nick thinks this over. "Do you want to tell people what he would want? The important people who make the decisions? I could take you to see them if you wanted." He waits, but Jackie just shakes her head. "Why not? Are you scared? I'd stay with you the whole time, I promise."

  "People like that don't listen to people like me," Jackie says.

  Nick closes his eyes, feeling the pain in her voice all the way down to his bones. "Well, just so you know, I'll always listen to you, okay? No matter what you need to tell me. I'll always listen."

  Chapter One

  'The more things change, the more they stay the same,' Sam had once said, laughing as he listened to the description of a fight that Ryan had had with his boyfriend. Ryan had laughed too, but not for the reason Sam thought. Everyone thought the great Sam Callaghan was so wise and understanding, but a lot of the time, his father was an idiot.

  The more things changed, the more they changed, until suddenly you're standing in the ashes of a dystopian hellscape that used to be your life, wondering how in the world you wound up there. The father who had spoken those words to him has been cold in the ground for five years, and he hasn't spoken to that boyfriend in almost as long.

  Instead of a family that he begrudgingly respected and a boyfriend he was constantly, playfully at war with, now he's left with a ragtag pack of children. His step-sister Maya is their alpha, if she can really be called that, and the pack has fragmented and rejoined what feels like dozens of times because she can't keep them together. They're too frightened and too stubborn. Nobody trusts anybody. Too many people have died for trust to still be a thing in Cold Creek.

  That's part of why Ryan makes sure he stays just slightly apart from Maya's pack. He's the only adult in their little group of survivors. So they come to him for advice, or what he supposes passes for wisdom. He's up front with them. His advice basically always boils down to 'look out for number one.' And if they can't see the inherent flaw in taking advice from someone who lives by those words, well, they'll probably get themselves killed without needing any help from him.

  Because those are the words he lives by. He looks out for his own skin first and foremost, which is why he doesn't want to be burdened by a group of helpless teenagers. Their soft-heartedness has gotten them into trouble more than once. Rescue missions end with three people dead where before it would have just been one. Trying to stay together has attracted attention, which has gotten people killed.

  They want to be a family, and in Ryan's opinion, there's nothing more dangerous than that.

  There had been a time, years ago, when he had stood over his father's grave and sworn to get revenge.

  But he's been beaten down again and again since then, and now all he cares about is survival. The sting of his family's loss hasn't exactly faded. It's more that everything has faded. It's hard to care about revenge, about loss, when you're shivering in an attic and you haven't eaten in days.

  All Ryan wants to do now is live.

  And these stupid teenagers, they don't get that. They don't get that survival should be their goal, each of them, individually. And so they've been dragged through the mud over and over again. They've lost people. A lot of people. And every time they disagree, things break into factions, and they split up angrily. Then things are quiet for a little while, until someone gets lonely, and they all wind up crashing in one place. Nobody bothers apologizing. It's just how they live now.

  Or at least, it was how they lived until about six months previous. That was when Jackie Donovan walked into their lives, and everything changed.

  It was insane to trust her. She was the daughter of Nick Donovan, one of the militia's captains, and granddaughter of Mitchell Donovan, the militia's general. She was a member of that very militia. She had been brought up to hate and fear everything supernatural; she had probably assisted in the murder or capture of dozens of their friends. When she showed up on their doorstep to warn them that their location had been betrayed and there was going to be a raid, they should have killed her right then and there.

  But they didn't, because Maya trusted Jackie for a very, very stupid reason. It was the same reason that Ryan wanted to trust Jackie, despite all the things that told him what a bad idea it was.

  It was because of a chocolate bar.

  Jackie had always been rebellious, and four years previous, she had gotten pissed off at her father and run away from home. It was a stupid enough idea for any kid to wander around Cold Creek, especially a kid who smelled like silver and gunpowder. She had run afoul of a couple of Gisela Cervantes' betas, who had figured out who she was within two minutes. They had kicked the shit out of her and decided to hold her for ransom.

  That was a pointless plan, which Ryan could have told them, because Mitchell Donovan probably didn't give a plugged nickel about his biological granddaughter's life, let alone the life of the orphan his son had adopted. It was coincidence that Maya had run across them, while a bruised and battered Jackie spat all kinds of obscenities at the two werewolves and promised revenge.

  "She's just a kid," Maya said, when she saw what Jackie looked like.

  "She's a Donovan," the beta retorted. "We're going to make her pay for our friends in blood."

  "Yeah, I'm sure she's been out here killing your friends personally," Maya said. "What are you, kid, eleven?"

  "I'm thirteen!" was the indignant response.

  Maya gave the betas stern looks and reminded them who her family was, and they reluctantly let Jackie go. The name Callaghan still means something, even now. Maya brought her back to the den, or more accurately, to the rundown tenement that they were calling a den on that given day. Carmen, Maya's mo
ther and their alpha at the time, had ripped her head off for bringing the girl back to their hideout, but Maya just shrugged and said, accurately, that it was almost time for them to move anyway. It was too late at night for Jackie to walk back home herself, and Maya wasn't going anywhere near militia territory to take her there.

  "I'm not going home," Jackie said, face creased in a scowl.

  "Most of the people here would kill to have your life," Maya responded, exasperated.

  "You don't know anything about my life!"

  "Well, I know you don't live in a God damned hole in the ground," Maya retorted. "I know that you know where your next meal is going to come from, and that you don't have to worry about people hunting you down. I know that you don't have to worry about your water source being poisoned, or what you're going to do the next time it rains. So maybe you should get over yourself!"

  Ryan didn't think that sort of rant was going to get them very far with a thirteen year old, but Jackie looked surprisingly pensive for a few minutes before she just said, "Okay," curled up, and went to sleep in the corner.

  The next morning, in the chilly, predawn air, Maya and Ryan had walked her back to the edge of the Donovan complex, or as close as they could come without getting shot. Jackie had climbed over the fence and disappeared without another word. Ryan watched her retreating back for a minute before saying, "Come on, let's go get ready to move."

  After some discussion, they decided to stay one more night in the tenement. They needed time to scope out a new place, make sure it wasn't already occupied and to make sure it was secure. They all agreed that the odds that Jackie was going to go tell her family about their location were slim. Not unthinkable, and moving was a good precaution, but even Ryan wasn't too worried.

  He wondered if he should have been worried when he heard a quiet thump outside their door the next morning. The others slept through it. He climbed down from the loft he had been sleeping in and eased the door open. There was nobody there, but there was a box. He examined it for several minutes, sniffing carefully, but didn't smell anything dangerous, so he brought it inside.