Scratch the Surface (Wolf Within)

by Amy Lee Burgess

“Why?” Her pretty mouth twisted and made her look like a harpy, not a woman. “Why? Why do you think, Vaughn? Nora and Jonathan couldn’t be Alpha forever, could they? And who would be next in line after them? Here’s a clue—not us. Not unless...” She grinned and Vaughn moaned.

  “You did it so you could have another shot at having a baby?” Aghast, he gaped at her. “You helped murder Elena and Grey so you could have a fucking baby? Callie, you can’t have a baby. All you have are miscarriages! You fucking killed them so you could have six more miscarriages before you turned forty-five? Are you fucking serious? Are you fucking standing there telling me you murdered Elena and Grey for that and that old man helped you?”

  “Maybe the next one wouldn’t have miscarried,” Callie argued and Vaughn moaned again. “But now because Stanzie had to come waltzing back into our lives and stir everything up, I won’t have the chance, will I?”

  She transferred her dark blue gaze to me. “You were supposed to die too in that car crash. He said you all would. And then you had to go and walk away without a scratch and I had to work Jonathan up into a frenzy about you being drunk and that damned old man wouldn’t help me at all. I had to do it all myself. You were supposed to die with them, Stanzie. You weren’t supposed to suffer the way you did. I never wanted that. You’re my friend and I didn’t want you to suffer.”

  “Are you fucking kidding me?” Vaughn gasped. “Oh my God.”

  From the hallway, we all heard the basement door rattle. It was locked. More rattling then pounding. Callie ignored it, but waited for Vaughn and me to look at her again.

  “I don’t like people to suffer. I’m sorry, Vaughn, about this. I knew you’d get over Elena once we were Alpha again and you needed to focus on me. I was right too. I wish you’d stayed downstairs with the others. I didn’t want you to see this.” Callie smiled at him wistfully.

  “If you don’t like people to suffer, why didn’t you think about me or Peter before you did this? This is going to destroy him, you know that? He worships you, Callie.” Vaughn had tears in his eyes now, but he wasn’t crying yet.

  A soft smile made Callie’s face radiant.

  I already knew, but it took Vaughn a moment to catch up, and even then he wouldn’t let himself believe it.

  “Where’s Peter? Where’s Peter, Callie?”

  “In the bedroom,” she said, still smiling.

  The pounding got louder. It sounded as though someone was throwing himself at the door with all his strength.

  Voices were calling now too. Callie’s name. Mine. Two male voices, one female. The more they shouted, the more Callie smiled.

  “That door’s solid oak. The bolt’s new too,” she remarked with a self-satisfied sigh.

  “What did you do to Peter, Callie? Oh God, what did you do?” Vaughn was crying now, huge tears slipping down his cheeks that he ignored as he pleaded with his bond mate.

  “He had a headache,” Callie said with a dreamy expression, although there was also grief. “So I gave him something to make the pain stop.”

  Vaughn shook his head then shook it again harder. It was easy to identify the smell now—now that we knew what it was.

  Callie gave me a beatific, conspiratorial smile, as if we were accomplices together.

  “Just like Stanzie gave Grandfather Tobias something to stop the pain. The pain of living. Right, Stanzie?”

  She looked back at Vaughn. “You didn’t buy that whole we’ll exile him to Florida act, did you? Wasn’t it convenient how he died before he got there? Stanzie knows just how convenient, doesn’t she?” Callie turned to me again and I stood there.

  “You didn’t have to kill Peter,” I said and Vaughn let out a hoarse cry because I’d said it out loud and he wasn’t ready to hear it yet.

  “Yes, I did. He worshipped me and he would never have understood why I did what I did. I didn’t want him to ever know and now he never will.”

  “We need to go back downstairs, Callie,” I said. “I’ll get you something to drink and we can work this out, okay?”

  Callie laughed at me. “Work what out, Stanzie? I’m not going to be tried by the Council. I’m not going to wait around to be executed like Grandfather Tobias. I played and lost and I’m going to end this whole thing my way. It doesn’t matter, because Peter is dead and I don’t have a baby. I have nothing. So don’t worry, Stanzie, I’ll get what’s coming to me, but I’ll do it my way, not yours.”

  She pressed the gun she’d been holding behind her back to her pale forehead.

  “I thought I could kill you and Liam yesterday but I didn’t have the guts,” she told me, her eyes locked to mine. “But I have the guts to do this.”

  She pulled the trigger.

  Blood, bone and brain matter exploded in all directions. Most of it hit the ceiling, but enough of it ended up on me and Vaughn to make us both cry out and throw our arms up to protect our eyes. Only it was too late.

  Callie’s body crumpled to the floor. Her dead fingers tightened convulsively around the trigger of the gun but it didn’t go off again.

  The solid oak basement door splintered and I could hear Murphy screaming my name. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t even lower my arms at first.

  There was a blur of color and motion in the kitchen and the beaded curtain broke, cascading beads every which way. Some of them rolled into the pool of blood gathering beneath Callie’s ruined head. I could see it, so I must have lowered my arms, only I didn’t remember doing it.

  Even as Murphy jerked me into his arms, I kept my face turned so I could watch the multi-colored beads roll into the blood.

  He was crying and he held me so tightly I couldn’t breathe. It hurt but I didn’t try to get free. I just wanted to watch the beads in the blood.

  Somehow I still had Elena’s cat in my hands. It rubbed against Murphy’s thigh. My arms were trapped against my sides because I couldn’t move, he held me so tightly.

  Jonathan took one appalled look and rushed off to the bathroom, hand over his mouth.

  When I heard him retching, I remembered how he’d thrown up in the bushes when he saw Grey’s dead body. He was such a wuss.

  Nora flattened herself against the wall, her eyes huge. She stuffed one fist to her mouth but she didn’t cry, scream or puke. I think she would have fallen if not for the wall.

  “Vaughn,” I said. Only I could barely recognize my own voice. It didn’t seem to be coming from my body for one thing.

  I forced myself to stop looking at the beads and blood, and turned my face in Vaughn’s direction. Only he wasn’t there. The hallway door was open. It had been closed before.

  “Vaughn,” I said again. I struggled to be free of Murphy’s embrace and he let me go, although clearly he didn’t want to.

  Carefully skirting Callie’s body and most of the blood, I followed Vaughn’s bloody footprints down the hall to the master bedroom.

  The smell was bad and it got worse the closer I got to the door.

  Inside the room was dark save for the light that came in through the hallway.

  Vaughn knelt by the bed, head down, crying.

  Peter lay on his back, one arm across his chest.

  His skin was waxy gray, but his eyes were closed. He even seemed to be smiling a little.

  His chest was bare and toned. His bond pendant gleamed from around his throat.

  He looked as if he were only sleeping. Because I was Pack, I could smell death way before decay set in.

  Peter had only been dead a few hours. Three at the most. Rigor mortis hadn’t even set in yet.

  I knelt beside Vaughn and put my arms around him, drawing him close.

  He buried his face in my neck and cried so hard I had to use the bed to brace us or we would have fallen over.

  I was numb, but a part of me relived the terrible moment just before I’d fully comprehended Grey and Elena were really dead. Vaughn was in that same moment now and he would crash into the horrible next phase of his life soon. A life filled with hopelessn
ess and betrayal. And worst of all, he’d be alone where no one could quite reach him.

  Even though I’d experienced the same hell, it wouldn’t be enough to bridge the gap, but I held him anyway. No one had held me, but I would hold him. Maybe, just maybe, he wouldn’t feel quite as alone as I had.

  Murphy’s shadow fell across us and I looked up to see him staring down at Peter.

  “Mother of God,” he said, his face grim. He took out his cellphone and called Allerton.

  Twenty minutes later the clean-up began. It didn’t take long to remove the bodies and scrub the floors, walls and ceiling clean, but I only had to close my eyes to make all the blood come back. There was no industrial-strength quick-cleanser to scrub out the memories.

  * * * *

  We stood in a circle in the same clearing we had four days earlier. The same people, only now, two of them were reduced to ash inside ceramic urns.

  Callie’s was black, Peter’s cobalt blue.

  Vaughn had carried them both as we’d walked single file through the woods. Some of the snow had melted between Grandfather Tobias’s funeral and this one, but not much. I’d walked behind Vaughn because he wouldn’t let anyone else near him.

  He hadn’t talked much since he’d watched Callie blow her head half off. Any talking he’d done had been to me and that had been mostly monosyllabic. He ate only what I put in front of him, drank only what I poured for him, slept in the same bed with me, holding onto me as if I could save him from the nightmares he suffered. When he woke screaming, I was there. I tried to make him feel safe but I don’t know if I did.

  Kathy Manning made him cookies, pies and all his favorite food but he didn’t seem to taste any of it. She watched him eat, her elfish brows knitted as she schemed her next tempting meal or baked good. She was determined to get through to him with food.

  Allerton let him alone, but he watched. That man always watched and he missed nothing.

  Murphy was a saint, not the least bit jealous or impatient. He sat with Vaughn and me all day long. He talked, told Vaughn about Sorcha. Things he hadn’t even told me yet, he told Vaughn, and I heard them for the first time too.

  Vaughn didn’t say anything, but I think he listened. When Murphy left the room, Vaughn would follow him with his gaze and when he returned, Vaughn seemed to relax maybe just a little.

  I wasn’t sure he’d carry the urns but he took them from Colin Hunter’s hands in the parking lot in front of the Devil’s Hopyard.

  Colin and Devon were Alphas of Riverglow now. Vaughn couldn’t be Alpha without a bond mate. He couldn’t even stay a member of Riverglow unless he bonded within the next three months. I somehow doubted he gave a shit, but he would, eventually. At least I hoped he would.

  Now we waited in a circle around Vaughn, who stood in the center with both the urns.

  Vaughn’s gaze met mine and I nodded encouragement. I wanted him to say what he wanted to say. It didn’t matter if it was angry or mournful, hateful or wistful. I just wanted him to speak from his heart.

  Very carefully he put Peter’s urn down on the forest floor at his feet. He held Callie’s urn in both hands and, for a moment, I thought he might smash it down to the ground and stomp on it and that would have been all right too, but he didn’t.

  He took the top off the urn and reached in for some of the grayish-white cremains.

  Saying nothing, he sprinkled in a circle around himself, careful not to get any on Peter’s urn.

  They’d been bond mates for almost two decades. They’d always been a triad. Peter and Vaughn had grown up together in the same birth pack. They’d been inseparable since they could walk. Peter had been older by only a year.

  They’d met Callie at a Regional in Maine when Vaughn had been sixteen and Peter and Callie had been seventeen. They’d bonded four years later at another Regional, this one in Connecticut, and they’d formed Riverglow with Jonathan and Nora.

  They’d been Alphas of the pack for seven years before Jonathan and Nora took over.

  When Grey and I had joined, they’d been Alphas. The transition to Jonathan and Nora had happened the same year Grey and I had bonded with Elena.

  Vaughn had spent more than half his life with Callie and he had nothing to say at her funeral.

  Reverently, he picked up Peter’s urn and removed the top. He had to stand very still for a moment before he brought himself to take a handful of the cremains.

  “My brother,” he whispered, a cheated smile flashing across his face. “I try to tell myself that this is the way you’d have wanted it. That you wouldn’t have wanted to know the truth. Died loving her as much as you always and ever have. I’ve been telling myself that for days now but I don’t think I believe it. Maybe that’s why I’ve been left behind because I don’t believe in anything.” He closed his eyes and a flock of starlings burst from the tree tops and swirled together high above his head. I could hear their flapping wings, the muted flutter of their rapid heartbeats before they were gone, as if they’d never been.

  “Goodbye,” said Vaughn and he sprinkled Peter’s ashes in a circle around himself.

  He came to stand beside me and I took his hand. He leaned against me for comfort but kept his eyes fixed to the center of the circle.

  One by one people stepped into the center of the circle. Everyone had something good to say about Peter. Jonathan cried. Nora didn’t. Today she did not smell of alcohol, only perfume.

  Murphy said things in Irish for Callie but he spoke English for Peter. He said, “Of everyone in Riverglow, you tried to make it right and, at least with me, you did. I would have been proud to call you friend if time had allowed. You’ll be missed, Peter Gardiner, of that I have no doubt.”

  Then it was my turn and I had to let go of Vaughn’s hand to step into the circle.

  I picked up Peter’s urn first and, although I told myself I wouldn’t cry, I did.

  “There’s a lot of things to remember about you, Peter,” I said when I could. “But I’ll always remember you’re the one who showed me how to put ketchup on my eggs.”

  Nora started to laugh a little then even she began to cry.

  “You made the best breakfasts in the world, but they were always just a little bit better with lots of ketchup.”

  Even Vaughn smiled then and I sprinkled some of Peter’s ashes around in a circle, remembering him standing behind the stove in the kitchen Callie had never liked, spatula in one hand, beer in the other because, just as much as ketchup, Peter had loved beer with breakfast. Of course by the time all of us had rolled out of bed the morning after shifting and gotten our bleary asses to the table, it had been past noon so it wasn’t so much breakfast as brunch.

  I remembered the handful of times Peter and I had gone to bed together—how he would pick me up in a bear hug and nail me against the wall, my legs locked around his waist as he told me how goddamn hot I was and I’d be reduced to shivering jelly, secretly wishing Grey would do me against the wall like that but he never had.

  My eyes shut, I let myself think about Peter for a moment. I hoped like hell he wasn’t walking like Grandfather Tobias, that he wasn’t still lingering like Grey and Elena had for me. “I’ll watch over Vaughn,” I whispered inside my head to him, not knowing if he could hear, but compelled to say it anyway. “You go ahead and I’ll take care of him, Peter, I swear.”

  Callie’s urn wasn’t heavy but it seemed to weigh a ton in my hands. It was mostly empty by now because I was the last inside the circle.

  At first I didn’t know what to say, if I could say anything, if I’d be like most of them who’d gone before me, who hadn’t said anything, but had simply sifted her ashes through their gloved fingers and walked away.

  But the words suddenly came to me and I spoke them aloud in a voice that was steady and determined. “I’ll remember you too, Callie. I’ll remember you and hope for myself that I never want something so much that I forget what I already have.”

  Vaughn bowed his head. Devon Talbot st
ood beside her bond mate, tears coursing down her cheeks. Colin Hunter nodded and looked across the circle at Murphy, who stared at me.

  I stared back, while above our heads the starlings swirled out of the tree tops and darted in and out of the branches before flying away to find a quieter roost.

  Amy Lee Burgess

  Why do I write? Since I was a child I’ve sent myself to sleep by planning stories. It took me until I was ten to figure out I needed to write them down as well as imagine them. After that, I tortured my friends reading them all aloud and if they were nice to me, they got a character named for them. Yeah, okay, I usually killed them off, but every story needs some dramatic tension, right?

  Nowadays I only kill off purely fictional characters who may or may not be based on hot Hollywood actors. Unlike my friends, they never complain.

  I grew up in Connecticut and the towns and parks mentioned in this novel are all real, although I’ve taken certain liberties with some of them. I live and work in Houston these days, but New England remains a limitless source of inspiration.

  I’m fascinated with the concept of shapeshifting and what a person might discover about herself if she could find and release the wolf within. Stanzie’s continuing story is my exploration as much as it is hers.

  Amy’s Website:

  http://amyleeburgess.blogspot.com/

  Reader eMail:

  Amyleeburgess99@gmail.com

  Also by Amy Lee Burgess

  The Wolf Within

  Beneath the Skin

  Hidden in Plain Sight

  Inside Out

  About Face

  Across the Line

  Lyrical Press books are published by

  Kensington Publishing Corp. 119 West 40th Street New York, NY 10018

  Copyright © 2012, Amy Lee Burgess

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.

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