It was like the whole group was just sucking in a breath as they waited for the moaning, whining woman to respond. Diana gently touched Gwen’s hand. She didn’t want to make this worse than it was. She hadn’t had any intention of hurting Gwen when she had sprayed the mace. She had been trying to get the wolf to leave. It had worked. Apparently she should have taken photographs of the incident or something to prove her story.
“Diana did this!” Gwen sobbed. “It’s her fault. It’s all Diana’s fault!”
As if the EMTs had realized Gwen had done her due diligence, they wheeled her away toward the ambulance. It took some maneuvering to get the stretcher behind the stupid ambulance since the vehicle was basically wedged beneath the little tubular sign advertising the height of the ceiling inside the garage.
“So.” Officer Paulsen was glaring at Gwen as though he were about to pronounce judgment. “Would you care to revise your story?”
“No, I would not,” Gwen said through gritted teeth. There was no way in hell she was going to tell them that she had attacked Gwen Pallister. It would be bad enough for them if they found out that the two of them had been having friction in the office lately. “I’m telling you. There was a red wolf down here. I was trying to shoo it away from my car when Gwen came out of the elevator and started screaming. The noise agitated the animal. It went for her shoes and her dress and I was afraid it was going to actually gnaw her leg off or something so I used the mace I carry in my bag.” Diana knew this all sounded ridiculous. “Unfortunately, the mace got in Gwen’s face. That wasn’t my intention. I have no gripe with her personally. We are coworkers, but that’s just a coincidence that she was the one to walk out at that moment.”
The animal control officer was already rolling her eyes. “Lady, there are no wolves missing from private owners or the Dallas Zoo. There aren’t wild wolves roaming around this far into the city. You do realize that you’re talking about a suburban sighting of a wild wolf. Right? That’s just preposterous. We’ll keep an eye out, but I think you should consider it a Halloween prank or something.”
“Right.” Diana could not fault the woman even as the totally unhelpful animal control officer got back into her city vehicle and left the scene without another peep. Diana looked at the officers. They were not appearing very helpful. “So I suppose you’re now going to decide to investigate this as an assault and not even bother to investigate my claim?”
“That’s right, ma’am.” The police officer nodded. “I’ll consider Officer Dakine’s—she’s from animal control—but I’ll consider her thoughts about a Halloween prank because it is Halloween, but I would thank you not to leave the city in the next week or so as we continue our investigation.”
“You must be joking.” Diana was absolutely dumbfounded. How could this happen? It was absolutely insane and the stupidest part was that it had been some kind of werewolf who had started the whole thing! Like they would believe her if she told them that nonsense! “You want me to stick around town so you can investigate me. Are you charging me with a crime?”
“Not formally.”
“Then you can just leave me alone and stay out of my way. I am not stupid, Officer Paulsen. I know my rights. And if you don’t have a crime you can charge me with it means you have no evidence. And until you get some, then I will be going about my business as normal.”
“Fine.” Officer Paulsen narrowed his gaze. He sounded like a guy who played a television cop from Dallas instead of a real cop. It was very disheartening. “But when Ms. Pallister is able to speak I think we’ll have as much as we need.”
“For what? A her-word-against-mine case? That won’t do you any good.” Diana thrust out her chin aggressively. “If you don’t find some physical evidence then you might as well kiss your stupid case goodbye.”
“We have mace!” He held up a plastic bag and plucked the canister from her fingers. “We’ll get fingerprints and establish that this was the mace used and that it belongs to you.”
“I’m telling you it’s mine!” Diana argued. “I am also telling you I used it on a wolf and that spraying Gwen was an accident. You’ll have to do better than that if you want to sell someone on the idea that I came down here, laid in wait, and ambushed poor Gwen when she walked out of the elevator!”
“I’ll find the truth!” Paulsen told her with a fervency that was almost laughable given the circumstances.
“Good,” Diana told him. “I hope that you do.” And really there had never been a truer statement.
Chapter Twenty
Edward hated Halloween. He figured it was probably safe to say that he hated having to spend Halloween at his mother’s house even more. But at the moment everything was focused on figuring out why Orion had attacked Diana at the cemetery and there was really only one place to find Orion these days when he wasn’t in the office and that was at the King family home in University Park.
“This is stupid,” Jason muttered as the four of them traipsed to the second floor in hopes of finding Orion slightly less than drunk in his bedroom. “I could totally be at home with Skye right now watching old wolfman movies and laughing our asses off.”
“Yes,” Zane muttered. “Because we’re all so worried about baby brother losing out on one night with his sweetheart.”
Edward didn’t say a word. He felt like anything he did say would be along the lines of sending Jason off to go do what he wanted just because Edward was tired of hearing his younger brother whine about lost time with Skye. Which, of course, could actually be more related to the notion that Edward was jealous of what Jason had with Skye. Right now anything that might have or had once existed between Edward and Diana was basically in a shambles of lies and subterfuge and good old-fashioned anger.
Feminine laughter drifted up the stairs behind them and Edward nearly broke his neck craning it around to look. He glared at Devon, who was directly beside him on the stairs. “What in the hell is going on down there? A cackling hen party or something?”
“Mother and Alaina Ariosa,” Devon murmured. Then he gave Edward what could have been called a significant look. “And yes. I consider it both ironic and irritating, but that’s neither here nor there, is it?”
“Would you two shut up?” Zane was already halfway down the hallway to Orion’s door.
Their eldest brother occupied the only suite equal in size to the master bed and bath. It was at the far end of the hall on the left. The master was on the right. Edward and Jason had once shared a suite so that their mother would always have guest quarters if necessary. It had been one of Edward’s strongest points when he had informed their parents that he was moving out. At twenty years old, he had been very tired of sharing space with his one-year-younger brother. Now Jason had moved out and the house was getting emptier. Though not nearly as empty as it should have been, considering the ages of the King brothers.
“What thirty year old still lives with his mother,” Edward muttered as Zane pushed open the bedroom door. “This feels like a scene from Scooby Doo with all of us creeping down the hallway together on Halloween night to find the big bad wolfman asleep on the second floor of the creepy old manor house.”
“Right.” Devon appeared amused and not annoyed. “And there are even witches downstairs plotting our demise.”
Zane snarled something Edward could not understand right before he pushed his way inside their brother’s suite of rooms. Zane did not waste a single second once he was inside. “Holy shit, it’s like walking into Dracula’s castle! What in the hell? Did Lupita stop coming up here to clean or something?”
“Damn! What’s that smell?” Jason demanded. “Tell me Orion isn’t dead in there.”
It was so dark inside the suite that not even Edward’s preternatural eyes could penetrate the gloom. Devon fumbled along the wall and flipped on a light. Once he had Edward almost begged him to turn it off. Orion’s room was an absolute travesty.
“Holy crap! Is that—?” Zane took a few mincing steps toward the ni
ghtstand and picked up a bottle. “It’s Absinthe!”
“No wonder he’s been drunk,” Devon sighed. He looked around at his brothers. “Have any of you tried that crap before? It will mess you up!”
Edward had never tried Absinthe. Nor had he ever thought of doing anything that would have resulted in his living in circumstances like these. The drapes were drawn and did not appear to have been opened in a good long while because there were mounds of dirty clothing piled in front of them. A broken wingback chair appeared to have been flattened by someone in a fit of pique with superhuman strength. Both arms of the chair had been ripped off and discarded onto the dirty clothes pile.
The sheets on the mattress were more off than on. The comforter was hanging off one post of the four poster bed. It almost looked as though it had been tied there or somehow anchored on purpose. There was almost no rhyme or reason to any of the placement of the bedclothes, the pillows, or even the man half hanging off the end of the bed with his face planted on the floor.
A chest of drawers had been knocked over. The contents were strewn about as though someone had been digging through them in a futile effort to find clean clothing. Both nightstands were upended and piled in front of the bathroom door like a barricade. Who was Orion trying to protect? Himself? The man smelled as though he needed a shower more than anything else on the planet.
“All right,” Zane said in his take-charge voice. “Jason, you move the nightstands. Edward, you come help me move Orion. And Devon, go start the shower on cold.”
“Great,” Edward muttered. “This should be a good chance to get bitten. At this point looking at the total disaster in his room I would actually believe that Orion has rabies to pass along.”
It most definitely took two of them to lift Orion off the bed where he had landed last night or whenever he had last come home to sleep. The man not only weighed a ton but it was like he was a dead, limp body with absolutely no muscle tone or ability to move himself. He flopped there between Edward and Zane as though he was paralyzed from the neck down.
Edward watched Orion’s head loll backwards as they half carried and half dragged him through the opening that Jason had made in the junk blocking the bathroom door only moments ago. Nope. Strike that. Orion could not even qualify as a man paralyzed from the neck down. His head didn’t seem to have any strength either. He was just flopping there like a dead fish.
“How much Absinthe is left in the bottle?” Edward called over his head to Jason.
Jason snorted and Edward heard the clink of one bottle against another. “Which one? There are four empties and one half full on the floor over here where his nightstands used to be.”
“Any water over there with it? Or a glass perhaps?” Devon stuck his head out of the bathroom. The water was running in the shower behind him. The sound was loud, but Edward could also feel the cold mist rising from the tile floor. Devon continued to regale them with his odd bits of knowledge. “You’re supposed to cut Absinthe with water, one parts to three and usually in 30ml sections.”
“How do you know that?” Edward grunted as he struggled with Zane’s help to maneuver their oldest brother into the bathroom without braining him on the doorframe.
It was a futile effort. Orion’s head thudded dully on the edge of the shower right before they threw him in. Zane exhaled a huge sigh and glanced at Edward. “I think I might have enjoyed that a little too much.”
Edward watched the water sluice over Orion’s face and body. He was naked at least so there were no clothes to worry about. But his dark hair was soaking wet and streaming across his face. The water droplets seemed to gather by his lips, in the cleft of his chin, and right beside his nose. His chest was rising and falling as he breathed in and out and it did not take long before Orion managed to inhale one of those droplets of water on his upper lip.
Once the water went up his nose it was all over. Suddenly Zane and Edward were leaping backwards to get out of the way as Orion roared to life. He half rose from the shower floor swinging his arms as though he were fending off an attack. Then his bare foot slipped on the tile and he went crashing to the floor.
“Look out!” Edward grabbed Zane and yanked his brother out of the way just as Orion’s foot connected with a tall glass shower door.
The door popped off the track and fell sideways. It plummeted toward the shower floor but was stopped at the last second when a corner of the metal frame caught against the tile. It wasn’t quite soon enough though because the tempered and frosted glass slammed right into the top of Orion’s head.
“Dammit!” Orion roared.
Orion shoved angrily at the glass in order to push it off his head, but he wasn’t coherent enough to realize that the positioning of the broken door was now such that it had nowhere to go. That meant it whapped Orion a second time and this blow landed on the forehead. Big brother’s roar of indignant outrage only served to make the younger Kings snort and laugh at him.
Finally Edward took pity on Orion and reached in to shut off the water, which had been pooling on top of the shower door and was now making a total mess all over the bathroom floor. “Be careful or you will slip and fall and break your face. Not that you don’t deserve it at this point. Absinthe? Really?”
Zane and Jason levered the shower door up and pulled it out far enough to set the thing aside. It wasn’t like that was the only repair that needed to be made in this suite. At the moment the thing looked like it needed to be gutted and rebuilt entirely. It was Devon to reach down and offer their brother a hand up. Not that Orion took it. He was too busy scrambling to his feet and sucking in deep breaths as though he were about to go all big bad wolf on them with the huffing and puffing.
He never reached the blowing the house down part because as soon as Orion stepped out of the shower his feet slipped on the wet floor and he nearly went straight back down. Edward caught his arms and barely managed to keep his brother from slamming face first into the toilet.
“Now,” Edward said irritably. “Let’s try and be nice. Shall we? And let’s start with nice shifters do not attack human women in graveyards.”
“Yeah, dude,” Jason added in a voice filled with humor. There was even a snarky expression on his face. “You can’t do that on the night before Halloween. You’re making us into some silly urban legend.”
Edward was about to say something else, but his phone started ringing in his pocket. He glanced down in total shock.
“Just ignore the call,” Zane snapped.
Edward pulled his phone from his pocket and showed his brother the display. “Do you want to be the one to ignore Mother’s call when she’s right downstairs and has probably been yelling up the stairs for the last five minutes?”
“Oh shit. No.” Zane made a face. “Answer it.”
Edward left his other four brothers, three of them lecturing the oldest with gleeful abandon, and took the call from his mother out in the main bedroom. “What? I’m right upstairs. We’re dealing with Orion. What do you want?”
“Dealing with Orion? That is ridiculous!” Mother sounded as though she had already brushed off that concern entirely. “I want you down here right now to open the door for Eleni when she gets here.”
Edward sighed. This was just getting better and better. “And why is Eleni coming over? What could possibly be here that would draw her attention on Halloween night?”
“You,” Tisha said with a disgusting amount of cheer. “Her mother called her and said you were here and that the two of you could have a little impromptu date since apparently you are both too busy during the regular week.”
Shit. This was their little cover story coming back to bite him in the ass. “Fine. I’ll be down in a minute.”
“You had better be,” Mother said viciously. “And I don’t know what you’re doing up there but you had better tell your brothers to stop breaking things before I call the police and have you all arrested.”
“Uh huh. I’ll let them know.” Edward hung up his phon
e.
Glancing behind him at the bathroom, Edward decided it probably wasn’t worth explaining to everyone. He stuck his head in the doorway and noticed that they were all taking turns splashing some blue-tinted fluid at Orion as though they were bent on punishing him for being such a douche in the last few weeks.
“Hey, I’m going downstairs to run interference with Mother.” It was all that Edward had to say. He got a round of nods and then he was off toward the door of the suite.
As Edward was descending the stairs two at a time he heard the doorbell. No wonder his mother wanted him down here. She was tired of getting up to hand out candy. There was a big bowl on the hall table, but there was no doubt in Edward’s mind that Mother wasn’t getting up to give the kiddies any kind of treats. If Lupita the housekeeper wasn’t there to do it then it didn’t get done and Lupita went home at six o’clock on the dot.
Grabbing the bowl of candy in his arm, Edward flung the door open. But there were no calls of trick or treat to answer. Instead there were three kids huddled on the porch staring off into the darkness on the right side of the path that led back to the street.
“Hey, kid? Aren’t you supposed to say something?” Edward prompted with a frown.
The tallest kid in the middle looked up at Edward. “Mister, you need to put a leash on your dog. He’s scary!”
“I don’t have a dog,” Edward said automatically.
The kid’s voice was actually trembling with fear. “Then you better call the dog catcher or something, mister, because that dog is crazy and he’s camped out in your yard!”
That was when Edward saw the glowing yellow eyes. Gradually he made out a furry body and dull reddish-brown fur. Then it registered that he was looking at a red wolf. A red wolf. There were no red wolf shifters in Dallas. So where in the hell did this one come from and why was it in the King’s yard?
Chapter Twenty-One
Billion Dollar Wolves: Boxset Bks 1-5 Page 39