Wicked Hour

by Neill, Chloe

  “Because she loves you guys. Generally,” I added. “Not you specifically. You drive her crazy.”

  “Mutual.”

  I smiled. “The Pack hired her for the mural, let her show it off at their party. She’s never had an easy time fitting with humans or Sups. The Pack gave her space to be herself, probably more than she even knows. I think that’s been good for her.”

  “I think it’s been good for the Pack,” he said. “She’s a pain in the ass, but manageable.”

  I chuckled, sipped.

  He took another drink of his beer, then set the bottle aside. He turned toward me, gaze heavy as if he was preparing to unburden himself about something very serious.

  And then a sharp howl split the air.

  Connor tilted his head toward the sound, one of the most wolfish things I’d seen him do, frowning as he listened, interpreted.

  Until the howl became a scream.

  The beers were left behind, and we took off running.

  FIVE

  We ran across the resort toward the sound of voices, the wild blossoming of magic. The wind had picked up, that magic swirling farther, faster, in response.

  Along the way, we passed what looked like the resort’s former main lodge, a dozen cabins, and a few piles of rubble that I guessed had once been buildings, but time or neglect had stripped them of the title.

  Connor was right. The resort hadn’t been kept up. Paint left to peel. Lawns gone to dirt and scrubby weeds. Overturned and rusting picnic tables. You could see the bones of the resort behind the mess, but it would take time and care to carve the decay away again.

  We saw no shifters until we reached what I guessed was the far edge of the property, given the thick treeline. A half dozen men and women stood near a woodpile that was surprisingly straight and tidy given the rest of the resort’s condition.

  There was chatter—agitated, excited, confused—not unlike the magic in the air. And the voices went quiet when they realized someone had joined them—and realized who that someone was.

  I wondered if that reaction bothered Connor. Not the pause, but the implicit acknowledgment that he was different. Pack, but different.

  The monster shifted, wanting to touch the magic, wanting access to that power. I ignored it.

  “Everything okay?” Connor asked.

  A man stepped up to him, beefy and strong and nearly a foot taller than Connor. His skin was ruddy and freckled, his hair short, red, and spiky. His eyes were small, blue, and suspicious, his nose Roman in profile and knobby from being broken. “Who the fuck are you?”

  Connor looked completely implacable. “I’ve gotten taller since I last saw you, Clive, but you should still recognize me.”

  Clive’s eyes went wide, and he moved back a step as if to get a better view. “Keene? Holy shit, man.” He reached out, gripped Connor’s arm in one of his enormous hands. Connor returned the gesture. “My bad. It’s been too long.”

  “A few years,” Connor agreed. “This is Elisa.”

  The shifter nodded. If he recognized my face or my name—or realized that I was a vampire—it didn’t show on his face.

  “What happened out here?” Connor asked. “We heard screaming.”

  “One of our shifters, Beth, was attacked.”

  He moved aside, gestured to a female shifter who sat on a small bench along the mulch path. She wore a T-shirt and shorts, and her skin was pale, her hair nearly as light. A set of crimson scratches stood out starkly across her cheeks. Bruises blossomed around puncture marks on her arms, and her lip was cut and bleeding.

  Shifter blood was a powerful thing—full of magic—and the monster became more insistent. It stirred, curious. I was afraid to force it down too harshly, for fear that might make it fight back. And this wasn’t the time or place to let it go, especially when I wasn’t sure I’d be able to push it down again. Instead, I focused on staying calm, on breathing through the magic.

  Two more shifters, both female, sat on either side of Beth. One was pulling gauze from a plastic first aid kit. She folded a mound, pressed it to Beth’s arm.

  All three women wore strips of black fabric, like emblems of mourning, around their arms. For Paisley? I wondered.

  There were footsteps behind us. We looked back, found Alexei had reached us. He gave me and Connor a silent nod.

  “This is Alexei,” Connor said, and gave him the basics. “Who attacked her?”

  Clive cleared his throat. “She said she was attacked by an animal out near the big woodpile.”

  “An animal?” Connor asked.

  “Something with fur,” Clive said. “Fangs, claws. That’s all we know so far. We just got here—me and my girl, Jae.” He pointed to the shifter with the gauze, who had pale skin, a fall of straight dark hair, and dark eyes.

  “The other girl is Maeve. She got here first. We haven’t questioned Beth yet, just made sure the immediate area was clear, then got her treated. We asked her to wait to shift until we talked to her, looked around.”

  “Have you told Cash?”

  Clive rubbed a hand over spiky hair. “That was the plan. He’s apparently at the cataracts preparing the site for the initiation.”

  “I’d like to talk to her,” Connor said.

  Clive looked at Connor, back at the girl, debating whether Connor was an acceptable substitute. “That works for me. Let me just give them a heads-up.” He walked toward the women, talked to them as he gestured back at us.

  “Cash?” I whispered.

  “One of the clan elders,” Connor said quietly.

  Clive gestured us over. Connor moved to the women, while Alexei and I stayed a few steps behind. “Beth, I’m Connor. We’re in town for Will’s initiation—me and Elisa and Alexei.”

  She nodded.

  “Tell me what happened.”

  “I was getting some firewood,” she said, and gestured to the woodpile.

  “Do you do that often?”

  “Often?” she asked.

  “Is it part of your routine?”

  “Oh,” she said. “No. We wanted a firepit, and the box near the pit hadn’t been refilled, so I volunteered. I grabbed two pieces, heard something in the woods. Got a little excited, because I thought it might be a rabbit or a deer, and I could use a good run.”

  She looked up at Connor for confirmation, and he nodded. “Go on.”

  “I put down the wood again, very quiet in case I needed to bolt, then walked really quiet toward the edge of the woods. I saw something—a flash of fur, I think—and then something hit me from the other side.” She touched fingers gingerly to the left side of her head, where the skin had started to purple.

  “Hit you with something?” Connor asked.

  “No, I think it was an arm or paw. It wasn’t rough or hard on the outside, like a log or pipe or something. But it had force behind it. Anyway, that hit me, and then it moved again. It was fast, and it was big. Huge claws,” she said, and pointed to her cheek.

  “An animal?” Connor asked.

  “Some kind of animal. I don’t know what specifically. It was really close—and really big. The only thing I saw was fur. I hit it back, made contact. There was strength beneath the fur, but not much muscle, if you know what I mean? Kind of . . . stringy strength.”

  “I understand,” Connor said.

  “There was a howl,” Alexei asked. “My cabin’s on this side of the resort. Was that you?”

  She shook her head.

  “It was me,” said Maeve, the third shifter. Early twenties, with tan skin and brown hair that fell straight to her shoulders, bangs long enough to partially hide her dark brown eyes.

  “I was heading out for a trail run,” she said, gesturing to her shorts and tank. “I smelled blood and called out. I found her on the ground. I yelled for help.”

  That explained th
e scream.

  “Something was crashing in the trees,” she continued. “Moving away from us. I thought it might have been a bear or something. They’re active right now, trying to eat up before hibernation season. And there was a bear attack a few weeks ago near Boyd.”

  Connor shifted his gaze to Beth. “Did it look like a bear?”

  “Not really,” she said, and looked guilty at the admission, as if she was letting Maeve down.

  Connor nodded. “That’s fine. It’s better not to jump to any conclusions. Did you smell anything?”

  She frowned, shifted her gaze down as she considered. “Nothing but Pack,” she said, and looked up again. “No animals. But we were upwind, and the wind was really strong.”

  “What about unfamiliar magic?” I asked.

  “Like sorcerers?” Beth’s gaze darted to mine, then away again. “Vamps?”

  “Or shifters,” Connor said. “Any kind of magic that didn’t seem common or usual. Or maybe no magic at all?”

  Beth lifted a shoulder. “I don’t know. Nothing unusual, I guess.”

  “There are rumors about a beast,” Maeve said.

  “What kind of beast?” Connor asked, voice quiet and careful, as the chatter dipped to silence around us.

  “Something big,” Maeve said quietly, and goose bumps lifted on my arms at the warning in her voice. “Something stronger than us. Something that’s out there hunting.”

  Despite the warning in her tone, her eyes glittered, and I wasn’t sure if it was fear or excitement about the possibility of a hunt—or a battle.

  “Details?” Connor asked.

  “Only what we’ve told you so far,” she said. “No one’s gotten a good look at it. No one has really seen.”

  “Because it’s nonsense,” Jae said, closing the first aid kit with a click. “Maybe there’s an asshole in the woods. Maybe there’s an asshole in the clan. But there’s no mythical beast.”

  Maeve didn’t seem to like that pronouncement, made an expression that said she’d eaten something sour—or held back salty words.

  “Did anyone see or hear anything else?” Connor asked.

  “Not that I can think of,” Beth said. Maeve just shook her head, and then shifted her gaze to the lawn, where a man approached.

  He was tall and lean, with a short crop of white hair that was perfectly styled. I guessed he was in his late fifties, and he eschewed the shifter denim-and-leather uniform for pressed khakis and a polo shirt of blue-and-green stripes. He looked less “shifter” and more “insurance agent.”

  Gaze scanning the scene, he saw us, nodded, headed in our direction. “Loren,” he offered with a smile. “And you’re Connor Keene. It’s been a few years.”

  This was the elder Marian had mentioned, the one who’d discovered Paisley. He nodded at Clive, got a nod in response. He was handsome in the way of sharp and precise men, and wore his power comfortably.

  “It has,” Connor agreed, shaking his hand. “This is Elisa Sullivan and Alexei Breckenridge.”

  “Of the Chicago Sullivans and Breckenridges,” Loren said, blue eyes shining. “Welcome to our home.” Loren glanced back at the women. “Everything all right here? I was just in the lodge and felt the magic. Thought I’d check it out.”

  “Beth was attacked,” Connor told Loren, and gave him the details.

  I looked back at the women, and noticed Beth and Jae didn’t seem especially thrilled to see Loren. Because he was an elder, I wondered, or because they just didn’t like him?

  Maeve wasn’t watching Loren; she was watching me, and didn’t bother to hide her animosity. Because I was vampire, because I was here with Connor, or possibly both, I guessed.

  “Animal attack” was Loren’s conclusion.

  “Maybe,” Connor said noncommittally.

  “We should let her shift,” Loren said, nodding to Beth as if offering her permission.

  That was part of the magic of shifters: Transforming into animal form healed any wounds incurred in human form. A neat trick, but unfortunately one that didn’t work the other way around.

  Beth nodded. “I would. I’d like to get back to my cabin.”

  “Take care of yourself,” Loren said supportively, then turned back to us.

  “You might consider putting a guard on her tonight in case this was personal,” Connor said.

  Loren smiled, but there was a tightness to it he didn’t quite manage to hide. “This isn’t Chicago, and we take care of each other here. Issues are resolved quickly; we don’t let them fester.”

  “What about the Beast of Owatonna?” I asked.

  Loren’s laughter was booming and broad. “Thank you for that,” he said when he’d calmed again. “A fairy tale created by humans who don’t realize they have no need for cryptozoology. The Supernatural realm is more than sufficient to fill their nightmares.”

  “You think the Beast is a shifter?” Alexei asked.

  “Of course,” Loren asked. “Humans don’t know that we live here, so when they see a shifter in wolf form—larger than the average wolf—they draw their own conclusions. It’s the nature of humans to exaggerate.”

  Loren struck me as the type happy to exaggerate if it enhanced his own position.

  “There are, of course, always believers, regardless of the silliness of the idea. You must be tired,” Loren said. “I’ll handle this, let you get some rest.”

  “Appreciate it,” Connor said, but his smile wasn’t reflected in his gaze, which kept its suspicious edge.

  “A tidy dismissal,” I whispered when Loren walked over to the girls and we turned back toward the cabin. “Did we find the monster Marian mentioned?”

  “We found something,” Connor said. “But I don’t smell anything other than Pack, and apparently neither did they. They also didn’t detect any unusual magic, and Beth’s injuries are consistent with a wolf attack.”

  “From a shifter,” Alexei said, “but not one they recognized?”

  “That’s an issue,” Connor admitted. “We don’t know Beth, don’t know how skilled she is in fighting. Maybe someone just got the best of her, was too fast for her to make a positive ID. Maybe someone didn’t like Beth, saw their opportunity.”

  “And ran off without doing her much harm?” I wondered. “Or telling her how she’d pissed them off?”

  “Also good questions,” Connor said. “She didn’t go to this woodpile regularly, so the attack couldn’t have been planned to match her schedule. And, again, they ran off when they were confronted. That’s not very dedicated if they were trying to make a hit.”

  “Put like that,” Alexei said, “it seems random.”

  “We could look around,” I said. “There could be fur, footprints. Maybe even a trace of magic or scent in case there was something they missed.”

  Connor smiled. “You just earned your room and board.”

  “I haven’t had any room or board,” I pointed out. “But I’m glad to hear they’re on the agenda.”

  “I’ll take a look,” Alexei said.

  “I’d appreciate it,” Connor said.

  “Did you see Beth and Jae didn’t seem thrilled to see Loren?”

  “I did,” Alexei said. “They looked wary. Suspicious.” His gaze fell onto a pile of lumber and debris that might once have been a cabin. “I think there’s some rot in the resort.”

  “Yeah,” Connor said. “I think you’re right.”

  “Are the black armbands because they’re mourning Paisley?” I asked.

  “That would be my guess,” he said.

  “Armbands?” Alexei asked, frowning back toward the woodpile. “I didn’t catch that.”

  “Only the young ones wore them.” Connor sighed. “We’ll have to dig into this more, but tomorrow, since the sun will be rising soon.” He looked at me. “How long do we have?”

>   I looked toward the eastern horizon. Dawn was creeping closer, her rosy fingers grasping at the edges of the horizon. “About thirty minutes,” I said.

  “Do you feel it in your bones?” Alexei asked.

  I looked back at him, smiled. “No, but I can see it with my eyeballs.”

  “Hilarious.” He looked at least faintly amused.

  “Let us know what you find,” Connor told Alexei. “And be careful.”

  “Always,” Alexei said, then pulled a peppermint from his pocket, unwrapped it, popped it into his mouth. And disappeared into the woods.

  * * *

  * * *

  Back at the cabin, I organized my gear in the bedroom. When I came back into the living room, I found Connor had arranged a blanket and pillow on the couch, but I was alone in the cabin. He came in through the front door a moment later.

  “I was just closing the shutters,” he said, and locked the door behind him.

  “You sure you’ll be okay on the couch?”

  “I’ll be fine. I’ve also slept in a tent in the mountains. Rockies, not Pyrenees, but I imagine sleeping on rock in a freezing wind is pretty much the same all over the world.”

  “Our tragedies bring us together,” I said.

  He snorted, took off his watch, placed it on the kitchen counter, along with the contents of his pockets, then toed off his boots.

  “You were good with Beth.”

  He looked up, brows lifted.

  “You handled her well, I mean. You were thoughtful and polite, and you worked to put her at ease. But you did it with authority.”

  “Not bad for a former punk.”

  I bit back a smile. “You still have some punk in you.”

  “Will I get in trouble if I call you a brat again?”

  “Yes. There were two of them—the things that attacked her. She didn’t realize it, but there would’ve had to be at least two. One to hit her, one still moving. Because the one that hit her was behind her.”