Sonja snorted a wry chuckle. “We always knew the pack would come under fire. No surprise there.”
He chuckled, too. “There’s that.” After a moment, he added, “So. Truce for tonight?”
Light from the oncoming cars highlighted the angles from her face. They looked harder, severe, but also full of strength. He’d never noticed what handsome features she had before now. “Truce for tonight. Tomorrow, I reserve the right to think you’re an insufferable prick again.”
“Only if I can think you’re a mercenary asshole.”
“It’s a deal,” she said, and gave him a brief smirk before returning her eyes to the road. “How do you want to handle it when we get there?”
I want to walk in, see nothing happened, and have Noah laugh at me for jumping to conclusions. Apologize to Kayla for thinking she’d give in to whatever set Derek off. Though that wish came with problems of its own. He decided he’d rather deal with those than the alternative. “If Kayla’s lost control, plan to subdue. You have more of those darts?”
“And another set of runed cuffs. They prevent a shift so they can’t be slipped out of or broken from rapid size change.” She winced. “I think they’re under Derek, though.”
He snorted. “You didn’t plan that out too well, did you?”
“I was in kind of a hurry,” she said apologetically. “I was thinking, ‘Put the unconscious werewolf into the car before someone sees,’ and not, ‘Make sure you can get to the compartment with the handcuffs and taser.’“
“Worst. Date. Ever.”
“I snore, too.”
“Tell me you don’t drink cheap beer.”
“I said I’m a bad date, not a heathen.”
Bantering with her was easier than thinking about what they drove towards. By unspoken agreement, she hadn’t asked what they would do if they could not subdue Kayla. That answer would cost too much to give, too much to even think about. He would consider no other reality than one where both his friends came out alive.
They both fell silent when Sonja pulled up in front of Noah’s home. Cameron had grown used to their habit of keeping the house unlit, but tonight it felt different. Darkness shrouded the residence, with not even Noah’s small reading lamp to brighten it. The alpha might have gone to bed, with or without his mate, and turned off all the lights behind him. A thousand benign reasons begged for acceptance in Cameron’s mind.
Charlie growled. Cameron’s delusions of a normal evening vanished. Because he could sense it, too. The oily residue of darkness, the fetid reek of foul magics powerful enough to coat his tongue with the taste of malign power.
In the back of the car, Derek stirred and writhed in his uneasy rest. Sonja jammed a dart into his leg to make him still again. Grim knowledge turned her expression somber. “Can you feel it?” she asked.
“Wish I couldn’t,” he said. “This what you felt when Derek showed up?”
“Yep.” She picked up the dart gun and verified she had one in the chamber. “That what you felt in your dream?”
“Think so,” he said, and eased the car door open. Charlie slipped out after him, but before Cameron could caution the dog to stay, he sat down next to the front wheel to wait. “Good boy, Charlie. Power isn’t quite as strong here as in my dream, but it definitely feels the same.”
“You’re full of good news, aren’t you?” Sonja nudged her car door closed with her hip to prevent a loud slam. “You take point. I’ll stay on your six and cover you. When we find her, keep her distracted and try to get me a clean shot. Instead of standing in my line of fire. It would be inconvenient if I put you down for the count.”
“Inconvenient for who?”
“Me, of course. You wouldn’t know the difference.” She checked a gun in the shoulder holster hidden beneath her jacket, as well as the contents of several inner pockets. “Ready to roll.”
“What about the cuffs?”
She gave him a steady look. “Let’s see if we need them before we chance moving Derek.”
Cameron’s lips flattened. There she went again, speaking the most unfortunate logic. “Yeah. Let’s go.”
They stayed low as they prowled up the walk with the dog at their heels. Sonja kept the dart gun snugged up to her shoulder, ready to snap up at the first sign of a threat. Adrenaline set him on edge. His senses felt raw, abraded by the dark magic and hypervigilant for any unusual sounds or smells. From inside, he thought he could hear the cadence of speech, low and rhythmic and calming. Any comfort he felt at the sound paled in comparison to the worry.
He jerked his head to indicate they should go around the side of the house. Sonja nodded and followed. The ground-floor guest room had a weak window lock, one Cameron knew he could pop without much noise. If Kayla heard them, she would check the front and back door first. An unexpected direction would give them the advantage.
Except the voice grew louder the closer they got to the window. “Hold on, Kayla. All right? Just hold on. We’ll figure out what’s happening. I know you don’t want to hurt me. You don’t want to get more blood on the floor. But we wanted to replace that carpet anyway, right? I bled in a good place. Gave us an excuse to remodel. Maybe tile this time.”
A low growl answered him.
“Hey, easy. You wouldn’t want to get rid of a husband who will bleed in convenient places. They’re not easy to find. Just hold on. Let me get to my phone, so I can call–” The snarl interrupted him. “Okay, I’m just going to stand right here and keep talking.”
As Noah kept up his running monologue, Cameron clenched his jaw. Now, they had confirmation that Kayla had felt the same command as Derek. They also knew Noah was hurt, and Kayla wouldn’t let him near a phone. Cameron went over the layout of the house in his head. “Back door,” he mouthed. “I have the key. But she’ll hear me open it.”
Sonja held up a finger. She motioned to her dog, then crept back to the corner of the house. Cameron could see her give the dog a sign that made him run back toward the car. When she nodded to Cameron, he advanced to the door with his key in his hand. Sonja gave one more sign. Charlie started to bark like he’d seen the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.
Cameron couldn’t help but smile as he turned the key in the lock. Good boy, Charlie. And Sonja, he supposed, had done pretty well, too.
Bent pots and dented pans littered the floor in the kitchen. Someone had embedded a skillet in one of the walls, with the handle sticking out in a futile plea. His heart sank as he caught sight of an ominous, chunky red splotch on the wall, until the scent of basil and tomato revealed it as spaghetti. He threaded his way through the gauntlet of dishes. If he so much as brushed up against one, the noise would alert Kayla. Better to avoid a fight entirely if he could.
Nothing goes quite as planned.
He didn’t see the puddle of olive oil in the low light. His foot slipped one inch before he found his balance again, but that was enough. A saucepan teetered with a metallic clink as his leg caught the handle. A loud growl was all the warning they got before a white-furred form tore into the kitchen. Cameron hadn’t caught his balance before Kayla lunged at him. Instinct raised his hands in time to catch her shoulders so he could keep her snapping jaws away from his throat. They both went down with a clatter of cookware.
Kayla rolled them the moment Cameron heard the dart gun cough. A dart thudded into the wall next to his head. He fumbled for it and wrapped his fingers around it as Kayla rolled again. He drove it into her back. She howled her indignation before lunging for his neck again. The shadowy power she had gained in Kiplinger’s horrid ritual made her strong, almost too strong for Cameron to fight back against without harming her.
The view into her muzzle, full of sharp white teeth and snarls, inspired him to consider religion with more serious intent. Sonja’s dart gun fired again. A second dart stuck out of Kayla’s shoulder.
The shadow wolf sprung off him to go after her shooter. Sonja got one more shot off before she had to dodge behind the kitchen island. K
ayla’s claws scrabbled on the granite countertop as she fought for purchase on the slick surface between her and her prey. Cameron shifted into his half form, for its speed and strength. Long-fingered talons wrapped around Kayla’s ankle to yank her away with a fierce pull.
Noah, half-shifted and oozing blood onto the floor, bounded out of the hall to take hold of Kayla’s other ankle. He and Cameron wrestled Kayla to the ground, each with a hand on a wrist and a leg. “Today, Carter,” Cameron snarled, words mangled by the lupine shape of his mouth.
Sonja understood. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw her jump onto the kitchen island and put her dart gun to her shoulder. A dart shot out to bury into Kayla’s chest. With expert movements, Sonja chambered another dart, fired, and repeated the process until Kayla’s eyes drooped closed.
Cameron gusted a heavy breath of relief. As he let his shapeshift fade, it occurred to him, Sonja hadn’t once sprouted fur. Not even when Kayla had gone over the counter. That woman’s got stainless steel nerves. “Noah, are you all right? You’re oozing.”
Noah glanced down at his leg. “When Kayla flipped her biscuits, I tried to help her. She gashed my leg for my trouble. What did you shoot her with?”
“Industrial-strength tranquilizer,” Sonja said. She hopped down off the counter onto a clear spot in the floor. “Enough to put down two elephants. Or one shadow wolf. Derek Anderson is asleep in my car, out with the same stuff.”
Noah looked up sharply. “What the fuck happened tonight?”
Sonja shook her head. “We’re not sure. But... There’s some pretty convincing evidence that Kiplinger might have come back.”
“He did this?” Noah’s gaze returned to his wife. “How?”
“Derek came to me before he lost all control. He said he could hear a voice telling him to find the rest of the pack and kill them. Then he begged me to shoot him so he wouldn’t hurt anyone. I don’t think it was just him. I think it was all the shadow wolves.”
Cameron chimed in. “I’ve already sent Dani and the others to check on the pack. Let’s have a look at that leg wound.”
“Thanks, Cam. It doesn’t feel as bad as it looks.” Noah paused, then glanced between Sonja and Cameron.
Sonja took the hint. “Let me go dig the shackles out of the back of the truck. Where we going to stow Derek and Kayla?”
Noah chewed on the inside of his lower lip. “Bring him in here. We can put them in the basement.”
Sonja nodded. “Unlock the front door for me, if you would. Do you have a wheelbarrow I can borrow?”
Noah cocked an eyebrow. “It’s in the shed. Help yourself. You going to do some landscaping?”
“Wouldn’t make tonight any weirder,” Sonja said with a shrug, and ducked outside to the kitchen door.
Noah waited until the latch clicked shut before speaking again. “Kayla’s going to be all right, isn’t she?” He asked, as he knelt down to brush hand over his mate’s white-furred face.
“Hope so,” Cameron said, heart squeezing. Noah and Kayla had already endured so much. He’d held out for a year, refusing to believe she might have died in Kiplinger’s ritual. They deserve to be happy. Wish to hell the world thought so, too. “She’ll probably wake up with a headache and a burning desire for pancakes. I wasn’t kidding about the leg, you know. You look like shit.”
Now that the adrenaline had started to wear off, the alpha really did look terrible. A small puddle of blood oozed around his right foot. Noah tried to rise again, but his leg wobbled under the strain and gave out. He sat down abruptly. “I’m pretty sure I feel like shit. It seems stupid to say this wound should hurt more, but...”
But you got that wound from a shadow wolf, and I have a really bad feeling about this. “Come on. Let’s get you into a comfortable chair. Then we’re going to go on a trip to Awkward Land when I take off your pants.”
“With Kayla passed out in the kitchen? I thought you had class, Cameron.” Noah grunted in pain as Cameron picked him up.
“Never claimed to have class, Noah, because that would be a dirty lie.” Cameron snorted. “Besides, it’s like the lady said. Can’t make tonight any weirder.”
“And that might be the most important question of all. How the hell did you end up with Sonja Carter?”
“Gonna be a long night,” Cameron muttered. “Gonna be a long fucking night.”
Chapter Three
“It’s going to be a long fucking night,” Sonja muttered, as she pulled on the tattered remains of Derek’s belt to slide him toward the back of the Humvee. The immediate crisis had ended, she hoped, but she suspected the worst had yet to come.
And that was even before she dumped her ex-boyfriend into a wheelbarrow to lug him across the yard.
He’d just hit the bed of the wheelbarrow when her phone went off. “Answer call,” she told the headset. “Nnf! This is Sonja Carter.”
“Miss Carter. Perhaps you can tell me what has happened this evening.”
The owner of the smooth voice on the other end of the line might have stepped off a plane from Sicily five minutes before, based on the thickness of her accent. That Sonja knew of, the vampire hadn’t visited her home country for decades, perhaps centuries. Not since she’d followed vampire lord Vincenzo Pirelli to America. Luciana Gaeta had remained the head of security to the lord of the city’s vampires for as long as any of Sonja’s contacts had heard.
“We’re not sure yet, but I have a few leads. Do you want the long but light on information version, or should I cut to pointed speculation?” Sonja asked.
“Speculate for me.”
“There’s evidence Kiplinger might have returned. Someone set the shadow wolves off. He has the most direct link to their magic, as well as to potential control.” She tried to keep the strain out of her voice as she shoved the wheelbarrow up Noah’s walk.
She failed. “You sound taxed.”
“I’m transporting an unconscious shadow wolf to safer accommodations. In a wheelbarrow.”
“It has been that sort of evening, then.”
“To put it mildly. There’s been some trouble.”
“Trouble?”
“I’m not at liberty to say what sort.” For all she trusted Luciana Gaeta and the vampires, she knew the pack didn’t share her generous feelings. They would not appreciate her telling them the alpha female had gone feral and attacked the pack’s leader. “But it’s been a night. I assume it’s been the same for you.”
“Si. Moira had an episode.”
An episode. Years of working peripherally with Gaeta gave Sonja insights into what that word could mean. Not an incident, which would imply harm, or a situation, which would have involved them taking perhaps drastic steps to solve it. An episode would then imply the magics had touched Moira, through the link created when a shadow wolf had attacked her, but not one they had required permanent measures to mitigate. “She felt whatever it was that sent the shadow wolves off, then.”
“It distressed her. We hoped you might be able to shed light on the cause.”
“I’d be glad to share what I know. Does Lord Pirelli want me to call him?” The wheel nudged against Noah’s front stoop where the door stood open. She lifted the back end to dump Derek with care but sans dignity onto the small entry rug at the front hallway. Sorry, amigo.
“I believe Lord Pirelli hoped you would give your thoughts in person.”
Of course he did. Why did I have to be a werewolf instead of an army of clones? Then I could be everywhere I need to be. “Miss Gaeta, on any other night, I would be honored to. Tonight...” She walked around the wheelbarrow and into the house. “Tonight, I have to clean up after whatever happened, then, I have to figure out what happened. Would it be all right if I said that I will come by before dawn if I can, but if not, I promise to visit him as soon as I am able?”
“That will be fine. You understand this is of great concern to him.”
“I do.” With another quiet grunt, she leaned down to clasp Derek’s furry ankl
e. “Believe me, I do.”
“What could have caused the shadow wolves to so lose control? You believe Kiplinger could have done this?”
“Off the top of my head...” she conjectured as she dragged Derek down the hall. “Kiplinger originated the magic that created the shadow wolves. He may have re-established the tie to it so he could use the control inherent in it.”
“He was never so powerful before.”
“No, but he was utilizing unknown artifacts. We still have no idea of the origin, or the purpose, of those jars Kayla talked about.” She took a shot at the moon. “If Lord Pirelli would give me access to the library, I might be able to find something about them, or the ritual.”
“You have taken a blow to the head tonight, then.”
So vampire leader’s household was worried enough to call on her, but not enough to let her run wild among their private stacks. Vampires often guarded their knowledge with zealous ferocity. Werewolves didn’t get library cards for vampire book collections. Half the time, other vampires didn’t, either.
“Just a suggestion.” As she got deeper into the house, she could hear both Noah’s and Cameron’s voices, though as far as she could tell, they were holding separate conversations. Noah reassured someone in his talk, while Cameron sounded concerned and angry. “Miss Gaeta, I’ve got to go. Let me know if anything else develops, please? I’ll be in touch as soon as I can.”
“Take care of yourself, Miss Carter. Darkness is walking tonight.”
“You don’t have to tell me twice.” She told her phone to cut the connection. An acrid scent of tension turned the air sharp as she closed in on the living room. Darkness is walking tonight, and I bet it’s left more muddy footprints in here.
One look in the room confirmed her suspicion. Noah sat on the couch, leg bound with makeshift bandages to stanch the bleeding where it lay propped up on an ottoman. He’d paled a shade in the few minutes since Sonja had gone outside, but the ooze from the gashes had stopped. It struck her how tired he looked as he leaned against the arm of the sofa with the phone pressed to his ear, as tired as he’d looked just after Kayla had disappeared. And Cameron...
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