She smiled and the manager swallowed hard. Realizing her smile had been rather predatory, Ruri softened it into something more genuine.
“It’s perfect,” she said. “Here’s the first month’s rent and security deposit. I can have it immediately, right? That’s what the ad said on Craigslist.”
“Umm, yes.” He reached out and plucked the envelope from her hand, taking great pains not to actually touch her. His hands shook and he covered for it by crossing his arms.
It had taken her a few days to search out the various stashes of valuables and cash that had remained in her old den. Most wolven didn’t bother with banks. The hotel had been full of hiding places for money. So many wolves had been killed during MacTavish’s takeover that she’d recovered enough cash to rent the small apartment. It was a shithole, but it had a window to the outside. Her old pack would never think to look for her among humans. They would expect her to hole up in an abandoned building as she’d first done.
Finally mating had allowed her to think clearly for the first time in days. Ruri had decided the best way to avoid her old pack was to go legit or as much as she could stand. She’d need a steady job. What skills did a 150-year-old farm girl from Minnesota possess that could transfer to today’s employment market? Anybody who could give her a reference was long dead. She’d picked up a plethora of skills and knowledge over the years, but without a Social Security number, she couldn’t even get through the first half of a job application. If worse came to worse, she could always look for a bodyguard gig or something requiring physical labor. With enough money, she could even invest in tools and maybe get a gig or two for some contract work. She had muscles to spare. Whatever she ended up doing, it would be under the table. She’d been born before Social Security even existed. Official documents would cost money she didn’t have yet.
“Great.” Ruri smiled at the manager. He mumbled something unintelligible and left, shutting the door behind him with a little too much force. “Oh well,” she said to the empty apartment.
There was no furniture, of course. She would need to do something about that. There was one place where she could get all sorts of furniture for free, but the hotel was still a risky proposition. The rest of the North Side pack was very well aware that she’d stuck around. That mysterious woman had dispatched two of the wolven who’d attacked her, but the third had escaped. If she had any luck left at all, MacTavish would focus on the woman and leave her out of it. As much as it galled her to admit it to herself, she was no threat to his pack. At this point, she was pretty much beneath his notice.
Ruri shivered, the enormity of what almost happened settling on her. She leaned against the wall and slid down it until she sat on the cheap carpet. With her eyes closed, she tipped her head back until it thumped gently into the wall.
The feeling of helplessness gripped her again; her palms were uncomfortably damp and she scrubbed them on her jeans. Her wolf might have welcomed the chance to mate, but she hadn’t. Being at the mercy of three who should have had her back made her clamp her teeth down on an anguished howl. Thoughts of betrayal inevitably led to memories of blond hair. Ruri pulled her traitorous mind away from her. She’d promised herself that she wouldn’t dwell upon Brittney any longer. Time to move forward; Britt was her past. The blond wolven represented every stupid mistake she’d made that had cost her the Alpha and her pack.
Easier to contemplate than the betrayal was the appearance of her mysterious rescuer. Who had that woman been? Why had she intervened? The sword flashed again beneath the streetlights of her memory. The way she’d taken out two wolven without breaking a sweat disturbed Ruri more than she would have admitted to anybody. And she’d just let Ruri go. She’d felt the woman’s eyes following her as she hauled ass away from the scene of her attack. Goose bumps rose on her skin at the memory and her wolf rippled in the back of her mind. Claws raked the underside of her skin. The wolf wanted out. She would rip apart whatever it was that bothered Ruri.
Ruri snarled, baring her teeth. Now was not the time to let the wolf out. Fortunately the full moon wasn’t yet upon them. She would need to find somewhere to run on that night. There would be no denying the wolf then.
But her wolf had a point. She was vulnerable. As long as she was without a pack, she was exposed. Her injury and her heat had put her at a disadvantage. She needed to get back in fighting shape. Ruri pushed herself up from the wall. There was nothing for it. One last trip to the hotel would have to do. All she needed was a pickup truck, like the one she’d seen on her way to the pack’s new den.
The old hotel building was quiet. Mary Alice watched it from a perch across the street. It wasn’t surprising that no one from the neighborhood was squatting. Even though an abandoned building such as this one was usually a prime gathering spot for the city’s homeless, it would be a long time before humans were brave enough to venture inside. The furries’ prolonged presence had contaminated the place, and it wouldn’t be fit for human habitation until their scent dissipated.
That didn’t mean there mightn’t be squatters of a more supranormal variety. In fact, it surprised Mary Alice that none of Chicago’s supras had decided to make the place their home. Vampires, especially newly minted ones, would have loved a new place. It had been two weeks since the hostile takeover of the old pack, though it felt longer. Whatever had happened was bad enough that everyone was giving it a wide berth.
She shouldn’t even be here. Uncle Ralph had told her to get more intel on the pack, and she would. But she wasn’t going to report back to him, at least not any more than it took to keep him off her back. She knew the furries were behind Cassidy’s attack. The new Alpha had told her in no uncertain terms to back off. How he’d known to go after Cassidy, Mary Alice had no idea. Family made easy targets, and if they knew about Cassidy, they might know about Sophia as well. At least she was out of town and out of the pack’s reach. There was no way Sophia could find out what had happened. If her mother knew someone had injured her baby girl, she would want to take them out herself. Mary Alice would have to keep her from rushing straight into their hands.
For a moment she wondered if that was part of the Alpha’s plot. It was an awfully convoluted plan for a lycan, though. If she had been up against vamps, the tactics would make more sense. With a mental headshake, Mary Alice discarded the notion. The shifters were much too direct for a plan like that. Likely they would go after her mother in the same way they’d gone after Cassidy, whatever that had been.
Another hole in the plan gnawed at her. If her mother found out the truth about Cassidy’s injuries, she would stumble upon a government cover-up decades in the making. She’d become a prime target for Mary Alice’s superiors. They weren’t above killing to silence inconvenient witnesses. In saving her mother from the pack, she’d be sentencing her to death from their government. Maybe the three of them should go on the run together.
Mary Alice snorted in amusement at the idea. Even if they didn’t kill each other after too much time in close proximity, Uncle Ralph and his bosses would never let her go so easily. She was much too valuable to them, and Lord knew they had all sorts of leverage over her. When they were snapped up again, and they inevitably would be, Cassidy and Sophia would be locked away against her good behavior. And that was the best possible scenario.
That was a question for later. The priority staring her in the face was helping her sister. Once Cassidy was stabilized, she would make sure her mother was out of danger and take out the pack, in that order. After that, she would figure out where the leak was that had exposed Cassidy to the fucking furries.
Helping Cassidy meant finding someone to help her through the transition. For that, she needed a furry, preferably an unattached one. Mary Alice had found signs of solitary lycan activity after the takeover when she’d last scoped out the hotel.
In the four, maybe five days since she’d found Cassidy, this was the first time she’d left her sister alone for more than an hour or so. The days were blurr
ing together. Mary Alice couldn’t have even said for sure what day of the week it was.
Leaving her sister unsupervised had Mary Alice distracted and the night was passing even more slowly as a result. Cassidy wasn’t doing well. She couldn’t control the shift. Any time she was angry or scared, which seemed to be at least every hour or so, the wolf came out but never completely. She lashed out with claws and teeth when she was frightened. Unfortunately, she was afraid most of the time. Mary Alice had taken to sedating her, but the solution wasn’t a lasting one.
From her perch in the architectural detailing on top of the building, Mary Alice fretted. How much longer could she keep dosing her sister before Cassidy ended up with permanent damage? When would she have to hand Cassidy over to the government? No, Mary Alice would kill her first. At least her sister would die as a person and not as a thing to be experimented upon.
The moon rose over the hotel. It wasn’t full, thank god. She had no idea what would happen to Cassidy at her first full moon. Even furries in full control of their beasts shifted that night. Cassidy half-shifted uncontrollably already, and she was extremely strong, both when she displayed wolf features and in human form. Mary Alice felt the pressure of time bearing down upon her. This was a deadline she had to meet, for both their sakes.
So there she was, hoping against hope that a furry would be stupid enough to return to this cursed place. She’d tracked the female she’d saved to the place she’d been holing up but had been too late. There had been no sign of the lycan, and her hidey-hole had already felt abandoned. This hotel was her last option before taking the fight straight to the rogue Alpha. She probably wouldn’t survive that, but it was better than sitting around waiting for Cassidy to survive the change. Or not.
Mary Alice shook her head. No matter which plan she went with, there was too much that could go wrong, and too many of the outcomes left Cassidy dead or in the government’s clutches. Death was preferable, but only in the way a car accident was preferable to a plane crash. The only way they could beat the odds stacked against them was to make everything work.
The faint sound of something creaking pulled her attention away from her worries. She scanned the street below, trying to pinpoint it. The street should have been busy—it was just off a highly trafficked thoroughfare—but not many people ventured down it if they didn’t have to. She could hear sounds of traffic from her perch but had yet to see more than a couple cars driving through. Certainly, none of them had stopped.
Businesses lined both sides of the street, all of them shuttered for the night. It was well past their closing times. The sound hadn’t come from any of them. Malice listened, imagining she was stretching her ears to catch the elusive noise. She couldn’t rotate her ears like a wolf. Usually the idea of being anything less than human filled her with revulsion. Tonight, all she could think was that it would have been useful.
There still wasn’t anything to see, but more sounds made their way through the usual city noise. Someone was inside the hotel. Maybe this was her lucky night. Or Cassidy’s lucky night.
She slid down from her vantage point and sprinted over to the side of the roof where she’d climbed up. A rusted fire escape gave her quick and easy access to the ground. Though she wanted to race down it, she took her time, being careful to move silently. If she could hear whatever was in the hotel, then they would certainly hear her clattering down the iron stairs. Her heart pounded at her to move faster, but her practical side counseled patience. Years of training allowed the practical to triumph, but it was a very near thing.
The street was still empty, but Malice checked both ways before she darted across it. No parked cars lined the street, nothing she could use as cover if someone were to glance out the windows. It was a testament to humans’ unease with the place that they were willing to forego prime parking spots and in Chicago no less.
Cautiously, she made her way to the back of the building. It would be best to enter through the busted-out window. Coming in through the front would alert anyone in there to her entrance. Trash and other detritus had begun to accumulate along the alley next to the building. Chicago’s winds blew it along and deposited it where it pleased. The pack must have been diligent about cleaning up the junk; Malice hadn’t seen much the last time she’d been here. In less than two weeks, there was already a significant accumulation.
The shattered window gaped black in the moonlight, shards of glass looking like the uneven teeth of a crouching beast. Malice hunkered down next to some bushes by the edge of the property. She had her choice of cover from which to watch the back, what with the untamed land that connected the hotel to the river. She could see why the furries had chosen it. From the hotel, they had plenty of access to places to run and hunt. Their new den area didn’t have nearly the same luxury, and she wondered how the new Alpha was letting them blow off steam.
Noises still issued from inside. They weren’t very loud and Malice doubted anyone passing by on the street could hear them. She wondered if they had anything to do with the incredibly beaten-up little pickup she’d passed in the alleyway. It could be that she’d stumbled upon some unusually brave human who had finally worked up the courage to loot the place. It would have been a goldmine for copper and other metals. From what she’d seen of the inside, the pack had put a lot of time and work into renovating the place. They’d had a sense of pride about it too; most of the updates were to bring the hotel back to its former glory. Someone in the pack had cared very much for their den.
Malice pulled a pistol from the holster under her arm. It wasn’t an especially large gun, and it was strangely shaped. Most people wouldn’t have recognized it. The weapon had little use outside her very small circle of colleagues. She chambered a dart and moved forward. This wasn’t going to be a kill, not if she could avoid it. If it was indeed a furry, Malice needed it alive. If the noises were being made by a human, she would handle the scavenger using more conventional methods. For some reason, the idea of someone chopping up the hotel for profit offended her greatly.
On silent feet, she moved forward, taking care to avoid the shattered glass that still littered the concrete below the window. The window had been quite large, so it took her a while to navigate her way through it. Her thigh muscles tensed against the urge to move quickly, imprudently. Finally, she stepped over the sill and into the silent exercise room.
All was not as she remembered it. Another weight bench had been dragged up to the window and dumbbells were piled atop it. That seemed a strange item to loot, at least in its entirety. She cocked her head, trying to get a fix on the noises she’d heard, but there was nothing for the moment. Whoever was in here would be back, though. They’d moved the bench for a reason.
Malice moved to the corner of the room where she would be undetectable through the door. She crouched and deliberated. Should she set up here and wait for the person to come back? If it was a furry, she could lose it if it made a break for it. The window was too excellent an escape route. With the amount of noise that was being made, whoever was in here wasn’t too worried about being caught. Either it was a supra or a very stupid human.
The risk of losing her prey was too great here, she decided. There was nothing for it but to press on. It was dark enough in the building that she had to work to make out shapes. Her night vision was beyond excellent by human standards, but if that was a furry who’d been making the racket, she’d be at a disadvantage if it detected her. Malice didn’t have a choice. She needed to take care of Cassidy, and this was the only way, short of putting a bullet in the back of her sister’s head, that she could think of to do it.
Chapter Eleven
The mattress was awkward to handle on her own. It wasn’t heavy, but someone else to help guide it around the sharp corners of the stairwell wouldn’t have gone amiss. Ruri had abandoned stealth for speed. If she was to get a few pieces of furniture before someone noticed, it was the best way.
Moving large pieces alone wasn’t exactly conducive to
stealth, anyway. Ruri had gone all the way to the third floor before she found a room with a usable mattress. It turned out hers was not the only room to be trashed and defaced, merely the worst of them. Maybe there were other members of her old pack out there. From the destruction and the bodies in the ballroom when she’d come back, she had assumed everyone else was either with MacTavish or dead. Now, she thought perhaps a handful had survived. The possibility filled her with more cheer than she’d felt since Dean had been murdered. Maybe she could rebuild her pack. Chicago was a huge city and they could be anywhere, and that was if they’d stayed in the area. Her wolf twined around her, filling her with warmth and approval. No matter how hard it would be, she had to try. She craved connection to her people and now that the possibility existed that she could rekindle it in a real way, she wouldn’t give it up.
The door to the first floor was propped open and Ruri blessed her forethought as she pulled the mattress toward the opening. It got hung up on the carpet and she ducked to get a grip on the corner to jam it through. Something whistled over her head and pinged off the wall behind her.
Without thought, Ruri vaulted over the mattress and leaped, grabbing the top of the banister on the stairs. Her hands slipped on the slick wood and she scrabbled at it, trying to catch her grip. As hard as she struggled, she couldn’t keep her hold and she slid down the wall. The mattress was yanked through the doorway and onto the bottom landing. A figure filled the doorway, stepping into the scant light from the frosted windows. It leveled a gun at her. Ruri threw herself to one side, the projectile passing so close it tugged at the fabric of her sweatshirt.
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