Sensing him stirring around, Isaac loosened his grip just the slightest and leaned back to look into Moody’s eyes. Their noses touched.
Moody had a flash of an image, of two wolves nuzzling, there and then gone.
“I didn’t mean to scare you,” Isaac murmured. He kept rocking slightly, swaying back and forth. “You had just been in here a long time and I was done with the other rooms. I got worried.”
“It’s… okay,” Moody managed. His face felt wet and he scrubbed his cheek on Isaac’s shirt, wiping away the tears. He trembled, his fingers jumpy. His heart scampered at twice the speed it should have been going, still trying to outrun the monster.
“How long have you been having these panic attacks?”
“Long enough,” Moody sighed. He clutched at Isaac’s back, then pushed himself to more of an upright position. “I was just so wound up, and when you startled me, it all came out.”
“I’m so sorry. I really didn’t mean to. You know that, don’t you?” Isaac’s heart was pounding so hard in his chest that Moody could feel the reverberations.
“Of course you didn’t mean to,” Moody said. He could feel himself starting to calm down even more, and he slid one hand up to ruffle his hands through Isaac’s hair. Soft, silky blond strands slid between his fingers. “It’s okay. I promise. I’m good now.”
“Are you sure? I could call an ambulance. Or do mouth-to-mouth on you.”
“You forgot the resuscitation part.” Moody kept his fingers in Isaac’s hair, finding pockets of warmth within the thick locks.
Isaac murmured, “No, I didn’t,” and leaned down to rub his lips on Moody’s. The kiss deepened briefly and then they pulled apart again.
Moody remembered the book he’d been reading and looked around the room. His heart gave a worried thump inside his chest, and then he located the notebook on the ground where he must have dropped it. “You won’t believe what I’ve found in here, Isaac.”
“I’m sure I would, since I didn’t find anything. I even dug through his trash and nope, nothing there. Made me feel pretty damn stupid, going through all these Chinese food containers. Moody, this guy has a serious problem. His sodium levels have to be through the fucking roof.”
The joke wasn’t particularly funny, especially not since it seemed to have more than a bit of truth to it. Moody laughed anyway, and was surprised and grateful when the sound emerged from his lips in a more or less normal manner. Usually, the panic attacks took away so much of his strength away. He would be jittery, or dizzy, or jumpy for at least an hour afterwards. Food helped, if he could stomach it, but most of the time there was nothing to do for it except to just keep on keeping on and wait for it to fade out.
It’s Isaac. It has to be him. He’s helping.
“What did you find, baby?”
The word slipped out so naturally that Isaac hardly seemed to notice that he’d said it. To Moody this was the equivalent of winning the lottery. His heart swelled with joy and his hopes soared ever upwards, far beyond the realm of the physical world. Anything could happen now. Everything had potential to come true, because he was Isaac’s baby. He belonged to Isaac.
No.
He belonged with Isaac, and that was so much better.
The feeling was gone nearly as quickly as it came, tenuous and formative. He was in no situation to dwell on the meaning right now, but he knew it was important. There was an opportunity for growth here, potential for their future. It all suddenly seemed very real, and all it took was a single word for that to happen.
Pushing away from Isaac, Moody headed back over to the closet. He picked up the fallen notebook and put it back in the box, added the little Firestarter kit on stop, and brought the whole mess over to Isaac.
Isaac grunted as the heavy weight of the box thudded down on his lap. “Holy shit,” he said. “What the hell is all this? Was he writing a goddamn epic?”
“He was, actually.” Moody shivered a little, his throat feeling tense and tight. These things he had read were bad enough and he didn’t even know Arlo that well. If Isaac read them, the unfortunate series of events which led up to his eventual exile from the pack he had known for all his life, it would be so much harder for him.
He was an alpha. He could take it. There was justice in these written words. And if he needed help getting back on his feet, or someone to lie down with him until he was ready to get up again, Moody knew he was going to be that person. He wanted to be that person.
“I’m not sure if you should read all of it now. But this one,” Moody held up the journal he’d read last, “is the most important. There’s everything in there that you need to know.”
Isaac looked down at the journal, which looked so small and insignificant in his hands. “The truth, in the most unlikely of forms.”
Moody said nothing. He just sat down beside Isaac and wrapped an arm around the alpha’s waist, leaning against his solid form.
Isaac flipped rapidly through the journal, pausing to read a sentence here and there that caught his eye. He stopped at about the halfway point, letting the book fall from his hands and land on top of all the rest. “He’s the arsonist. We were right. And that was just from the recent past. How much has he done throughout the rest of his miserable fucking life?”
“A lot,” Moody said. He bit his lip, wondering if he should give voice to what he was thinking.
Isaac looked at him, eyes narrowing. “What are you thinking about?”
Instead of being drained by what he’d just read, as Moody had feared, Isaac seemed furious, more than willing to go on and make things right. That was good, but maybe not so good if he let his anger get out of control. They needed Arlo alive, unharmed, or he would potentially be able to put blame on both of them when it should have been him receiving all the attention.
Speaking of Arlo…
“Where is he?” Moody asked.
“He, who?”
“Arlo! You know exactly who I’m talking about, Isaac. Don’t be short with me now, please. We’re so close.”
“He’s taken care of,” Isaac growled. Moody felt a sensation like a rush of warm air as Isaac reached out with his thoughts, trying to urge him on to a different subject. “Tell me what you were thinking.”
And now he was worried quite a bit about what Isaac might have done to Arlo. He supposed he would have heard something if there was a struggle, so he had to take Isaac at his word that things were taken care of. And he trusted Isaac, even through his worry. The alpha had gone through police investigations before. He knew not to do anything that would cast him in a suspicious light.
“I read a lot more than you. Look.” Moody dug in the pile of books, which had been so organized and were now in a clump due to his disturbing them. He held up one of the college-ruled notebooks, waving it back and forth. “He started with these when he was really young. These aren’t just records of what he’s done wrong. It’s his entire life. And he writes about how he discovers all this, and how he tried to stop, or keep it on the down-low. He’s not a monster. I think it all just spiraled out of his control to a point where he literally couldn’t do anything anymore except try to cover for the mistakes he’d made.”
Moody stopped, aware that he was winding himself up and starting to breathe a little rapidly again. Swallowing hard, he finished, “And then he had to cover up his cover, and it just kept going.”
“He killed Lance.” Isaac tensed up just saying the words, the hairs on his neck standing on end. The display wasn’t as effective as having his wolf hackles up, though the hard ridges of his muscles made up for that. “Look, he wrote all about it in this fucking thing. And he made up all this stuff about Lance’s last words and everything. And, god, he killed Percy, and Orlando.”
“Who are they?” Moody asked. There was so much he wanted to address, so many various things which needed explaining, that he wanted Isaac to understand. However, he hadn’t read as far in that last journal as Isaac had. He hadn’t known about th
ese deaths and he needed to.
“Percy and Orlando were great guys,” Isaac said, his voice raw with hurt and anger. His hands clamped tightly into fists. “Lance’s buddies. His council, you might say. If Lance couldn’t be somewhere, one of them went instead.”
“So, Arlo got rid of them because Lance probably told them about what he suspected. Or maybe they were the ones who suggested the idea to him.” Moody’s thoughts raced and he stumbled over his words a little, trying to follow them. “And then, when they were gone, there’s really no one left who knows about him. And the pack needed someone to guide it, and since Arlo could say whatever he wanted about Lance’s last words, maybe he pretended that Lance passed ownership to him. Why did no one challenge him, though?”
“No one wanted it,” a new voice said.
Moody turned, without much surprise, to see Arlo standing in the doorway, watching them. His eyes looked sunken and hollow, and his back was bent so severely he seemed half his usual height. His wrists were still bound together.
Moody glanced at Isaac. You didn’t restrain him further when he woke up?
One of Isaac’s shoulders twitched, a miniscule motion that might have been a shrug. “Didn’t need to. We had an agreement. He doesn’t try anything funny, and I don’t smash his head against the wall. I’d say it’s an arrangement that works well enough for both of us. Don’t you agree, you fucking bastard?”
Arlo stood there, features blank despite the fury coming his direction. He shrugged a little. “Sure. I’m sunk. I can’t go on any longer. Backed myself into um, a corner. Like a mouse. What else can I do but wait for the results?”
Moody understood. At least, he thought he understood as much as anyone was ever going to be able to.
Rather than seek help, Arlo had let his obsession go on and on. He had lived his lies, covering for them, pretending innocence, getting rid of those who knew about him. And now, there was nothing else for him to do. End of the line. Time to get off the train.
Moody himself had lived a lie, creating a new name, a new identity for himself. He, too, had reached a point where he didn’t think he could continue doing so any longer. Of course, his reasons were good and Arlo’s were not, but that didn’t mean anything. The substance of their two tales were the same.
He didn’t think Arlo deserved empathy, or even sympathy. Understanding, however, was a different beast altogether. Only through understanding could true judgments be made.
“You didn’t know what else to do. If you came clean, you’d go to jail for a long time. If you didn’t, you’d just start more fires,” Moody said. “And if you started more fires, Lance would really wise up to you. So, you had to get him out of the picture.”
Arlo nodded, a guilty grimace crossing his face. “I kept thinking this is the last time. One more chance. This one will be enough. But it never was. I even thought maybe if I got rid of you for good, Isaac, I could trick myself into thinking I couldn’t light anymore fires. No scapegoat. No excuses. But I can already feel the desire inside me again. It, uh, burns. I’d be caught anyway. I guess it’s best to get it over with before I do anymore harm, isn’t it?”
“Yeah,” Moody said. “It is. I’m sorry, Arlo.”
And he was, though it wasn’t a sorrow that could be named, what he felt. He was just sad, worn down, ready for all of this to be over.
Arlo nodded at him, then turned to look at Isaac. “I’m sorry.”
Isaac turned his head away. “Yeah. You better be.”
“What are you, um, going to do? With me?”
“Do you have a phone?” Moody asked. He stepped slightly in front of Isaac, figuring the alpha wouldn’t try anything stupid and wanting to make sure of it anyway.
Arlo nodded his head down in the direction of his pockets. His jeans hung off his slim hips, drooping despite the belt he wore. “My cell.”
Moody came over to him and bent over, reaching to get Arlo’s phone out of his pocket. As his fingers poked into an empty fold of fabric, he suddenly remembered the phone he had seen on the TV stand.
And then hot fangs clamped down on the back of his neck, sinking deeper and deeper. Heat burst inside his neck, explosions chaining down his spine. He felt no pain, only heat and fire and the individual points of many teeth skewering his flesh. Rivulets of hot blood, flooding down to dampen his shirt.
Moody bucked up with every ounce of strength, shoving his arms out to push Arlo away. Encountering only empty air, he collapsed on the carpet on his hands and knees. For a moment, he was aware of nothing but blood, starting to trickle around to his throat, following the lines of his tendons, down to his clavicles. Scarlet welled there, then started to spill over again.
Looking up caused the first true pain to rocket through his nerves. Clenching his jaw on a cry, he looked in the direction of a bunch of snarling sounds that all rolled into one guttural threat.
Isaac had thrown himself at Arlo and knocked him down on the ground. Even though he was still in human form, he was growling, gnashing his teeth like they were fangs.
Arlo lay on the ground underneath him, also human, though Moody’s blood still wet his face and chest. His eyes were white-rimmed with terror, his chest heaving. “Don’t hurt me!” he pleaded.
“Like you didn’t hurt me?” Isaac snapped. His shoulders heaved. Rearing back, he brought his fist up and then brought it down. The sound of impact was like a hammer striking a watermelon, hollow and deep. Arlo went limp.
Isaac stood up, shaking out his reddening hand. He looked up, then pulled in a deep breath. “Shouldn’t have done that, but god, it felt good. He shouldn’t have bit you.”
“I’m okay,” Moody said. Surprisingly, he meant it. He felt better than he had in a long time, calm and relieved that all of this was over.
With Isaac standing guard over Arlo, Moody grabbed the phone off the TV stand and turned it on. The screen was password protected, of course, but he didn’t want anything hidden within. He wanted the emergency call feature.
“911, what’s your emergency?”
“Hi,” Moody said. “I think we’re going to need the police over here. And maybe a paramedic, because I’m bleeding.”
12
Isaac had hoped to never repeat the whole damnable process of being part of a police investigation. Such things were grueling and drawn out and repetitive by nature, as only persistence would draw out the truth of a situation. People changed their story, for better or worse, remembered new details, forgot others. Inconsistencies might appear, calling for even further investigation.
He hated it. There was only so many ways that he could state the same damn things over again.
And he knew the cops hated it, too. He smelled their frustration, saw the littlest of details which revealed their boredom. While he might have been a suspect in their records, those leads had all amounted to nothing. He was innocent, and Arlo was guilty as sin.
But they had to make sure of it. Over and over.
The first few times, Isaac stayed angry as hell. He gestured wildly with his hands, thumped his fist on the table between him and the officer, tore a napkin to shreds, and those shreds to slivers. After that, the more he talked, the more drained he felt. Adrenaline abandoned his system. His wolf instincts went into slumber. He was just a tired man in a scary room, talking about how he and Moody managed to break out of the basement by the docks.
He was aware of Moody’s presence, elsewhere in the station, probably repeating the same damn things.
And if Moody’s injuries didn’t look like they were from a concealed knife, if he was already no longer bleeding from his strange, bite-shaped wounds when the ambulance arrived, leave that to the humans to figure out on their own. Everything else they told could remain more or less the same, if they replaced “pack” with “friend group” or “community.”
In the windowless interrogation room, there was no knowing the passage of time. However, when he was finally released, Isaac was not at all surprised to discover that
the gray of dawn was being burnt away by stronger morning sunbeams. As dead as Daphne had been several hours prior, now the streets and sidewalks bustled with a proper amount of city traffic.
Not that anyone chose to walk right in front of a police station, but there were a few. A small group of young women, hardly out of their teens, still enjoying their ability to wear tank tops and short shorts.
They turned to look at him as he emerged from the station, a burly man with torn and stinking clothes who looked like hell. Their eyes widened, like deer who knew a predator when they saw one, and they hurried onward, taking their long legs and skimpy clothing with them.
Isaac turned his head as he reached the sidewalk, looking for something in particular.
“Isaac!”
Looking in the direction of the jubilant call, he caught a glimpse of dark hair and pale skin before a gentle weight hit him. Long arms wrapped around his neck, followed by a very nice pair of legs that went around his waist.
Isaac smiled at Moody clinging to him like a tick, sliding his hands underneath the omega’s ass to support him. As fucking exhausted as Isaac was, he felt a rush of desire head straight for his groin. Moody’s soft ass felt good in his hands, making his very blood tingle.
“Hey, Moody!” he said, laughing. Hugging the other man closer to his body, Isaac gave him a kiss. Their lips pressed together, their souls brushing.
“Are you okay?” Moody asked, his body still wrapped around Isaac.
“I’m just glad it’s over.”
It wasn’t over, not quite yet. There would be a trial. Isaac would be called upon to testify. His presence at the court meant the prosecutor could call on his situation to appeal to the jury, giving them a story of a man who had suffered because of Arlo’s negligence.
Juries ate that shit up.
And so would the media.
Only when a verdict had been given, Arlo had been sentenced, and the media attention had died down, would this whole thing be considered over.
Fire Of Love Page 19