The Society Series Box Set 2

by Mason Sabre

“Sometimes those we know do things we wouldn’t imagine, and because we know them, we never suspect, because we’d never picture it. Maybe you think too highly of Shayla to comprehend that she could do drugs. Maybe you’re just blind to it.” She had been blind to it. Too fucking blind and she had paid the price of that.

  He shook his head, making his hair flick across his eyes. “You have to trust me. I promise. Whatever that is in there, it isn’t hers.”

  She trusted him. For all her better judgement, she had touched his wolf … touched him, and she knew if she just went home, closed her door and ignored this, it would bug her for all her years … he would bug her. “Okay,” she mumbled. “But don’t touch me again.”

  Chapter 4

  The remainder of the apartment was much like the kitchen and the bathroom—clean, normal, no signs of anything untoward happening in them. Crystal had at least hoped to find a speck of blood, a broken glass … something, anything that would make it seem like Shayla had put up a fight. But nothing had happened, and if it had? Well, someone had cleaned it up real well. So well in fact, that they had cleared out the closest in the bedroom. There were two, one was filled with Shayla’s belongings, the other, Jason told her, had been David’s.

  “There is bleach in the air,” Jason said as he shut the door to Shayla’s bedroom. “I smell it all around us. It’s like whoever was here wiped themselves away.”

  “Bleach?”

  He sniffed at the air, putting that fine head of his back and making the angle of his jaw even more kissingly appealing. Crystal blinked and turned and snapped her gaze from him before she lost herself and her mind.

  “It’s not bleach. I …” He gave her a frown, his brows knitting together above his nose creating perfect, sexy creases … “It’s like they took all the scents away. The air is empty. Someone has stopped my wolf from detecting any scents, yet,” he stepped closer, leant in and as he breathed on her, his mouth so damn close that his breath tickled her skin. She had to force herself to stand still. “I can smell you.”

  Taking a step back from him, she put herself at a distance, or her brain was about to start listening to areas of her body that had one thing in mind and one thing alone. Screw finding Shayla. “Is that possible?” she said, clearing her throat at the end.

  He gave a non-committal shrug. “If you’d have asked me five minutes ago, I’d have said no, but …”

  “Hhhmmm.”

  In the lounge, on the table they had found three more bottles. All of them green. Crystal’s reaction had been almost like the first time. Her mind told her to get the hell out of there and out of this. They weren’t just drugs, not the street kind at least. Maybe it wouldn’t have been so bad if she’d found a bag of meth or some shit like that, but this was worse … those bottles were secretly labelled with big trouble that made her want to run first and ask questions later. The drugs were Human made … a synthesis of Others.

  The whisperings around them were that the Humans had discovered how to take bloods from Others. They could take it, synthesise it and turn it into a weapon … or rather, turn whoever they wanted into a weapon. Crystal didn’t know how much of that was true. It was almost like her magic, but not quite. It could give Humans something and make them more than what they were, but it came with the price of their lives. The last thing she had heard about it was that they had figured out how to give Humans the acute senses of the shifters, making them see better, or hear better. But apparently the subjects died.

  “I don't think there is much else here,” Crystal said. It was almost after five now and they had combed every part of the apartment within an inch of its life. She was tired, too … cranky and tired.

  Jason had sniffed at every corner of the place and Crystal reached out, only lightly, with her magic, but even she found it like Jason had said, empty. It didn’t make any sense. Places were never empty, not even new build houses. Land held power, life … and everything was built on some kind of land. Yet when she reached out, she couldn't detect any vibrations in the place. Not one.

  “I’m going to go and stand outside,” she said to Jason, feeling like a liar with her words, though, feeling like she was betraying him by leaving him in there. This was all so crazy. She didn’t know this wolf, didn’t owe him a damn thing.

  “I’ll come with you. We’re done here.”

  Relief washed over her … a strange relief that had no place in her psyche, but it was there nevertheless. When this was over, she’d be sure to take herself off to somewhere far away, meditate and find out what the hell was going on inside her body … inside her magic.

  The sky had lost that complete darkness, and now, the colours of the new day were threatening to come in. They hid around the corner as the day slowly woke. She could see better outside, now, not perfectly, but enough that she didn’t need her light. She was glad of that. It was just a low wattage spell, but using no magic at all was the best option. Except … her well wasn't as empty, was it?

  As Jason came out onto the walkway and closed Shayla’s apartment door, something in Crystal’s magic danced inside her and sparked to life. Realisation hit her like hidden grenades going off in her face. He wasn’t like her familiar … he was her familiar. It made sense that it would be a shifter. After all, all familiars have the ability to change form in some way. But mostly witches had dogs, cats, rats … even birds. Her own mother had used a crow. It had sat on her shoulder like a parrot, watching the world, waiting …

  “I should have had a horde of flying monkey’s,” she murmured to herself.

  “Pardon me?”

  “Nothing.” She held her sigh silently to herself. She had never found her familiar, but then she had never really needed one. Her magic had always been good, strong. The idea of keeping a pet that she had to remember to feed and care for had often made her consider giving up the witch life … and besides … pet hairs? No thank you. The thought of that alone made her shudder.

  But Jason?

  This wasn’t the place to think about that, and it certainly wasn’t the time. She hadn’t even realised Jason had moved, until he said, “Coming?” and jolted her out of her internal debate.

  They walked down the alleyway, but not in the direction of where she had parked her car. They went in the opposite direction, the direction that led them deeper into the bowels of this place. Crystal stopped, suddenly enough that Jason almost stumbled over her and had to grab her shoulders or send her reeling to the ground. It was disgusting. She thanked him for the save. She wasn’t sure why she had stopped, or what it was that compelled her to stand just there, but something felt wrong … off. There was a stench in the air that didn’t really smell of anything. That was the problem. The absence was strong enough that even she could detect it. “It’s the same, right?”

  Jason sniffed up. “Yeah.” He frowned. She wished he’d stop doing that. “This is the yard under Shayla’s apartment.”

  It had a gate on it, the wall was a little more solid than the one where the steps were. There was trash dumped in the yard too, but nothing in the terms of the volume of the other one. Even fly tippers couldn’t be bothered to lift shit over the walls, she supposed. Jason pushed the gate open and stepped inside.

  “Wait,” he said, putting his hand across her before she followed him in. He crouched down, and a second later rose with a phone in his hand. “This is Shayla’s.”

  Crystal gaged the distance from the railing on Shayla’s part of the above walkway. “To land here, someone threw it.”

  “And broke it,” he said, handing it to her. There was a large crack across the centre. Someone had taken it in both of their hands and then bent it till it snapped. Someone with power … shifter power.

  Crystal’s mind went to the drugs. “Her boyfriend is shifter?”

  Jason was scouring the ground for anything else. He stopped only to answer her. “Yes.”

  “And you can’t trace him? His scent?”

  “No.” He shook his head, his mind d
istracted, then he stopped when it was clear there was nothing else around for him to pick up. “He wasn’t our pack … actually …” he raked his hand through his gorgeous hair, and crystal pressed her lips together in a firm line. “I don't know where his pack was, or who he hung with. She just ….” He crouched down again.

  “Maybe we can pick something up with the phone.”

  “Maybe we don't need to.” He held his hand out to her, in the palm was a piece of gum, too bright to be old. It held the pinks and the blues of whatever it had been. He lifted it to his nose, sniffed. “This is his for sure. It doesn’t have Shayla’s scent on it.”

  Crystal took it from him and without warning, she popped It into her mouth and bit down.

  Jason’s eyes widened. “Did you just …”

  “Yep.” She chewed on it, turning it soft again with the heat and the saliva in her mouth. She had to turn her back on Jason or the expression he was giving her was going to distract her too much. He was hot … that face … combined. Someone had to help her. Although, she’d probably blown her chances now of getting anywhere near that luscious mouth of his.

  Moving into the middle of the alley, she positioned herself, so she could see the expanse of the apartments where they lived. “Give me your hand,” she said.

  “Are you sure? I mean …”

  Giving him no choice, Crystal lunged and grabbed his hand and held it firmly in hers. It slammed a switch on in her head and she let out a gasp and Jason grabbed her, other hand on her shoulder.

  “What the …”

  She held on tighter, used him for sight, for sound and for a bloody good rock to hold her into place as she watched the walkway. There were people there, no voices, no sounds other than the static of her own magic, and that alone was a thing to be reckoned with. Whatever the contact with Jason was doing to her, it was sure as hell affecting her magic tenfold.

  A figure of a man came out of Shayla’s apartment. It was so vivid Crystal almost shouted to him as if he was real. The lights were on and he pulled a woman out of the building and thrust her against the railing. She fell, landing on her knees. She was slim, young and she scrambled away, but the man was on her. He pushed her back, raised his hand and brought it down across her face with a silent crack. He snatched her phone from her hand, said something to her and then bent it in his hand and tossed it over the railing to the yard.

  Moving Jason with her, Crystal traced the echoed steps Shayla was taking. She couldn't hear her, but she could see clearly that the girl was crying. She hit at him, pounding with her tiny fist against his strong defined shoulder blade, but then he turned and hit her. The man pulled Shayla across with him, dragging her on her knees at first, not giving her a second to stand, but when they got to the top of the steps, he grabbed her under the arm to thrust her down them. Female wolves were strong, but they were no match really for their male counterparts, unless in season or nursing … then god help any male that even dared to think of taking a bite.

  He walked so quickly, Crystal went to step back, but she smacked into the very solid wall of Jason’s chest. She let out a part whimper as the man and Shayla slammed into both her and Jason, and came out the other side. He was a shadow … an echo of himself. He got to the gate, and then spat and was gone.

  Crystal blinked. “Shit.” She spat the gum out herself. There was nothing left to see, but she was breathing hard, panting. If it hadn't been for Jason still holding her in place, she might have fallen back. “Shayla was—”

  “I saw,” he said, and she felt him tense at his own admission. “I saw them.”

  “You saw?” She turned, breaking the contact with him. “How? You shouldn't be able to see. I don't understand.” She put a distance between them. “It’s impossible.” Yet, it wasn't. Everything about her should have been impossible, the magic, the strength of the sight just then. It wasn't that he poured magic into her pot, it was like it flowed back and forth between them and with each passing, it grew and gained momentum. It was like some reactor in their centre, burning … heating up and creating things that she could never imagine.

  Jason took a deep breath, making his chest expand. “I can scent them now too. Not strong, but it’s there.” He pointed to the end of the alleyway at the opposite side where her car was. “They went this way. He took her this way.” He took off in that direction.

  It was only a few metres along, but Crystal stopped again.” Jason, wait.”

  “What?”

  There was a wall, this one led to another building. She was standing in front of it. “He stopped here to take a piss,” she said.

  Jason inhaled, his nose twitching at the side. “Are you going to take a taste of that too?”

  She cocked her head at him, raised one brow. “That would be disgusting.”

  “I know, right? And there’s a trail of scent of him down there. Come on.”

  She did. They walked all the way to the end where it came out to another road, a back street that had probably been booming with sales. On the corner there was a closed shop. One that had clearly shut its doors a long time ago. Its windows were whitewashed. Its door was covered in a steel board.

  “Trail stops here,” he said.

  Crystal nodded. “Probably got into a car around here? There’s no way to know which direction they went.”

  “No.” He stuffed his hands in his pockets, rocked on his heels as he stared all around them, the predator in him finally coming awake. “The drugs, though. You knew them, right? They have to be his.”

  “Oh, I know those. Dangerous fucking shit. You ever hear of the Human Project?”

  “The wannabe Nazi group? Human only world?”

  Crystal scoffed. “They're worse than the Nazis, believe me.” And they were. She might have refused to poison those people years ago. She might have walked away from that, and her home, but when she had gone back later … The sights woke her up now. Images, pictures … shit she wished they were just images so that she could delete them. The Humans had killed so many, slaughtered them, left them there to rot. The last she heard, they’d boarded the place up and left it, so the bodies would just rot, and the earth would reclaim them. She had first seen that same logo then, on the corner of a sheet of paper. She’d been naive, of course. Didn’t quite know what they stood for. She thought she was helping, and then she realised she had been a fool. “I don't think we can do this alone,” she said admitting defeat. “You spoke to Cade, right? Cade MacDonald?”

  “Yeah, but this isn't a Society problem.”

  That comment made her want to laugh. “It is if they want to stop this shit. Get off their high and mighty thrones and look what is happening in the real world. We need to speak to him.”

  “He won’t help us,” Jason said. “I tried. He’s alpha. He can’t.”

  “Just because he has risen in the ranks, doesn't mean he isn't the same man inside, and if what I hear about him is true, then he is good, decent. We can ask, at least.”

  “It’s just wasting time.”

  Crystal shrugged at him. “Maybe. But all we’ve got is gum and piss, and all they can tell us is what went on here. We know someone took her. We know it involves those little bottles of glory, but unless you want to go chasing cars and sniffing their tyres, we’re shit out of luck here. We need to go to him. See what he knows. If this is The Human Project, I bet he’ll want to know. He might be alpha, but he is also DSA.”

  Jason sucked in a breath and then let it go again. “Fine,” he said as he stared out to the vacant street. “Let’s go.”

  Chapter 5

  Cade MacDonald was the new alpha to the Northern pack of wolves within Society, and he was also one of the higher-ups within the DSA. DSA, that was the organisation that dealt with anything that was Other. He was the Human equivalent of what they would call the police. He lived across the river and pretty much far away from everyone. Where his house was located, it was a collection of used up old farm houses and land that the Humans didn’t want a
nymore. Houses that had long since been abandoned. Their loss. The properties were either crumbling to nothing, or too close to the river that was slowly knocking on the door and waiting to swallow up the buildings, but not all of them.

  Cade’s house had been one of the left to rot variety. It was inland, and like a beautiful stone that had been cast out, standing alone in the darkness, there was really nothing wrong with it. Nothing that a little hard work wouldn’t fix, of course. There was a lane that ran up to where his house was. It wasn’t unusual for shifters to live in these kinds of houses. Most of the time, they came with land around them and shifters needed that to run and hunt. Cade was clearly no exception.

  “Maybe I should wait in the car,” Jason said, when Crystal pulled them to a stop just at the end of the lane. He’d been silent the entire drive there. She was thankful of that. The raw heat of him next to her had been enough. She didn’t need to add that silky voice to it, the one that sang to her inside, but this … no. Wait in the car?

  Like hell he would.

  He fidgeted in his seat … he’d been doing that the entire drive over too, and it had taken almost all of Crystal’s last nerve not to slam her hand down on his leg and make him stop. His thoughts had been a constant chatter pressing against her mind and her magic … god, her magic. Whatever it was with Jason, it made her pot bubble and simmer, and if he didn’t stop it, she’d end up with some kind of Meg Ryan episode in the car when it all got too much.

  Magic was like an orgasm, tingling, touching, stroking parts inside her. One more … just one more. She could hardly contain herself with it. Changing gear was almost a challenge. She moved her hand across the stick and her knuckles brushed his hard thigh … that was enough. Enough to make her magic reach for him—powered waves that grabbed for him, tried to drink him in and send her head spinning into heated bliss.

  Maybe this was worse than running out of magic.

  Putting the handbrake on, Crystal pushed back into her seat and centred herself on the feel of that against her back as she tried to force her logical side to be the one in control. If she didn’t get a grip soon, Shayla would be dead, and it would be her fault. “He’s not about to bite your head off,” Crystal said, pulling her thoughts back on track. “He’s DSA. He’ll help.”