by Neill, Chloe
I ignored the statement and asked a question. “Did everyone in the clan know about the initiation?”
“Yes. Everyone knew,” Cash said. “Why?”
“Because if they all knew it was happening here tonight,” Connor said, “leaving the body here wasn’t an accident.”
Cash worked his jaw, as if chewing over words. “Fine. Take the vampire if you want. She’s your responsibility. We’ve wasted enough time,” he said, irritated magic nipping at the air with needle-sharp teeth. “We find out who or what killed Loren, and then we deal with it. Get moving.”
The shifters were content to ignore me, light and magic flashing as they transformed, dropping clothing and exchanging bare skin for paws and fur. Moments later, a dozen wolves, a couple of coyotes, and the sleek, dark form of a panther dispersed to look for a murderer.
Connor glanced at Alexei. “You mind going back to the resort, staying with Georgia and the others? I’d feel better if you were there. And they’ll be working on dinner.”
“Incentive,” Alexei said, then gave a salute and headed wordlessly back to the trail.
“You mind?” Connor asked, pulling off his jacket.
“It’s your party,” I said, then winced. “Sorry.”
“It’s all right. I know what you meant.”
“You want me to put the clothes on the bike?”
For the first time in hours, he smiled. “They’ll be fine where they fall. Take a step back, would you?”
I did, pulling my dagger in case anyone got brave while Connor was midshift.
“Good call,” he said, and clothing dropped to the ground.
I watched him, let my gaze linger on that dip at the bottom of his spine, just before the ripe curve of his gorgeously toned butt.
“I can feel you staring at me,” he said without turning around.
“Then you’re very perceptive. Can you understand me when you’re in wolf form? I mean, is your understanding the same as when you’re a human?”
“We pretty much just divide everyone into ‘food’ and ‘not food’ and go from there.”
I was sure he was joking. Well, mostly sure.
“I hear you, and I understand you,” he said. “But the understanding of human words is . . . different. Less like hearing the individual words than understanding the concept. The same applies when I’m human. I understand animal concepts—smells, sounds, instincts—differently than when I’m wolf.”
“What about scritches?”
He grinned. “Scritches are appreciated in any form. And here we go.”
Magic sparked, ignited, circled his body in shimmering waves. Light filled the air, bright as a camera flash, and put the trees and boulders in sharp relief. I shielded my eyes.
When the magic dissipated, I glanced back. A wolf stood where Connor had been. Large and strong, with silver fur and the blue eyes that were undeniably his, even in this form.
He padded toward me, moved by my side, just close enough for his haunch to graze my leg. I looked down, decided this wasn’t the time or place for scritches. A grimmer business was at hand. “You want to lead?”
He bolted.
“I guess that’s a yes,” I said with a grin, and ducking my head, pushed off to race after him.
* * *
* * *
That we were moving quickly made me feel better about being in hostile territory—and not just because we were going too fast to notice any slithery things on the ground. The trees and undergrowth were so tangled that I couldn’t see more than a few feet in front of me, or more than a dark sliver of sky above the canopy. All that flora smelled rich and green and a little funky—the commingled scents of decay and rebirth and traces of the animals that lived here.
The slope increased gradually until we reached the crest of a granite-pocked hill that overlooked the lake, the road ribboning a hundred feet beneath us, the lake a dark blanket at its edge.
We stopped to look over the pale break of waves, the single golden dot of a boat on the horizon moving south. Nose lifted, Connor scented the air, seeking the clue that would tell us who—or what—had hurt Loren. I glanced around, but saw nothing on the trail nearby, or strewn across the hard rock, that would mark a murderer.
Below us a lone wolf howled, its cry rising through the air to circle around the cliff. A second wolf answered it, then another, until the air was an orchestra of sound, a chorus of harmonized voices.
I doubted many vampires had borne witness to this, had been able to stand in the midst of the Pack and listen to its sonata. I closed my eyes, let the monster have its chance to hear as the howls rose and fell, wound around one another. Some carried the melody—the main portion of the song—while others sang or yipped around the edges, adding their own stories to the larger book. It was astoundingly beautiful and yet hauntingly sad, even though I knew it had a practical purpose.
“They’re checking everyone’s location, right? Making sure they’re all safe?” I looked down at Connor, and he lifted his gaze to me, but his eyes were unreadable.
“At the risk of insulting you, and I’ll apologize in advance for that, could we have some kind of signaling system when you’re in wolf form?”
He continued to stare at me. But it seemed chillier.
“One paw scratch for yes, two for no? And not like one of those counting horses,” I said, reading his expression perfectly. “I don’t want you to perform for me. I just want to be able to communicate with you.”
I made myself continue to meet his steely gaze, unreadable though it was, because it seemed important that I not look away.
“One for yes, two for no, and three for ‘you’re being a brat’?”
He scratched once.
Then he scratched three times.
I probably had that coming.
NINE
We walked for nearly an hour, following this wing of the trail over and around hills marked by god-strewn boulders. The trail appeared to dead-end at another creek that channeled through the high granite walls.
“End of the trail?” I asked him.
I sensed the lightning spark of power before I saw it, and this time managed to close my eyes. The light of his transformation still flashed red behind my lids. When darkness fell again, I opened them to find him naked beside me, hands on his hips.
“Yeah, unless you want to go rock climbing.” He lifted his gaze to the thirty-foot ledge on the other side of the cold, dark water.
“Not at the top of my list. But if we might find anything over there, we should probably follow it through.”
“We won’t,” he said, moving closer to the water, crouching in front of it. “I don’t smell Pack—or anything else—past here. The water’s deep, and if anyone tried to cross it, they’d have had to take a good swim.”
“Eliminating their scent trail,” I guessed, and Connor nodded.
“At least for a bit.” He rose again. “Long enough to mask their direction. I’d rather search with a scent, a footprint, something. Not randomly stumbling around.”
“We need more information,” I said.
“Yeah.” Frowning, he rubbed his neck.
“Are you okay?” I asked. “You seem . . . uncomfortable. Is it the paw scratching?”
There was laughter in his eyes. “No. It was a good idea, but your delivery sucks. Something is . . . strange out here. Something . . . off.”
“Magic?”
He looked back at me. “I don’t know.”
“Hold on,” I said. His was the only magic I could feel, but I’d let myself be ensconced by it. So I closed my eyes and tried to filter it out, along with all the other scents and sounds that wove through the woods.
Connor and I had left trails of magic along the path, shimmering ribbons of power that wove through the trees. But there was another trail, and this one wa
s . . . different. Still shimmering, but not a ribbon. Not fluid or continuous, but sharp and broken. Angular, like a fork of lightning.
I opened my eyes, looked at him. “There’s magic, but I’m not entirely sure how to describe it. I think it’s broken.”
“Broken,” he said, staring deeper into the woods as he considered. “Yeah. I see that. But why?”
“I have no idea. I don’t know what would make someone—or their magic—leave a trail like that. Illness? Or the effect of some foreign magic?”
He looked back at me. “Like magical sabotage?”
“Or magic by choice. Because someone in the Pack tried magic, and it did something very, very bad. I didn’t detect anything like this with Beth.”
He rubbed his temple. “I was just thinking that. But it was windy last night, could have dissipated faster. The air is still tonight. Let’s check this area,” he said. “If the magic is strong enough to detect it here, maybe that’s not all they left behind.”
We nodded and split up. He moved back to the bank of the creek, and I moved to the edges of what passed for the trail, looking for broken branches or other signs someone had passed through.
It took only a moment.
I was moving away from the water when something flagged my attention. I wasn’t sure what I’d seen—something different enough to have my brain clicking to alert—so I stepped back, looked around. Then crouched in front of a boulder on the edge of the path.
There was grass around the base, and it was trampled flat as if someone had moved near the rock—stood or sat on it—and flattened the grass in the process. They also left a set of footprints that definitely weren’t human.
The marks had the general look of paw prints—toe impressions atop a central pad. But the impressions were elongated, as if the pads were longer and more narrow than a standard wolf’s. And they were massive.
“Connor,” I called out, and heard footsteps behind me a moment later. “Tracks,” I said, pointing toward them. “And I don’t think they’re yours.”
He studied them.
“They look canine, right? But they aren’t shifter.”
“No,” he agreed. “They aren’t. Too wide, too long.”
I held back the obvious joke and was inordinately proud of myself.
“Whatever made them was very large and very heavy,” he said. “That’s what she said.”
I couldn’t help but grin. “I’m glad you said it. I was trying to be serious. So what could make them? A really big dog? A wolverine?”
Connor stood. “There’s been no canine in North America big enough to do this in tens of thousands of years. I don’t know any living creature that makes prints like that—Supernatural or otherwise.”
“What about a cryptid?”
He gave me a dry look.
“What? The Beast of Owatonna is the best lead we’ve got.”
“That’s not a lead. It’s ignorance disguised as science.”
“Okay, then let’s add some science into it. Maybe we don’t need to figure out if this is the Beast. Maybe we just need to figure out what the Beast actually is.”
He blinked. “That’s not bad.”
“I’m feeling very intellectually spry today.”
“Then riddle me this,” he said, turning back to me. “What looks like a cryptid, but smells like Pack?”
“Like Pack,” I said, leaning around him to look at the track. “That’s all you smell?”
“That’s it.”
“Then I have no idea, unless you’ve got a Pack member with a really unusual podiatric condition.”
“I’m not aware of any. Take photos, will you? I don’t have my screen.”
“Because you’re naked,” I said and, reminded of that, had to work very hard to focus on his face.
His smile was wide, cocky. “I am, yes.”
I pulled out my screen, took pictures of the footprints. “How about I send these to Petra?”
“The conspiracy theorist?”
I smiled. “She’s not just a conspiracy theorist.” She was an aeromancer and led the OMB’s technology squad. “She’s also into cryptids.”
Connor’s gaze went flat.
“She’s very good with research,” I added. “And Theo and Yuen are there, too. Maybe someone has an idea.”
Connor sighed. “Send away.”
I did, sending the photos to Petra and Theo and giving them both an update about Loren, Cash’s reaction, and the search, and I asked Petra to check out the pictures and let us know if she found anything interesting. Then I put the screen away again, looked up.
At his face, obviously.
He glanced at the sky. “Let’s get back to the cascades, see what everyone else found.” He grinned at me. “Assuming we can make it back by dawn.”
“If that’s a dig at my speed, you have four legs, and I only have two.”
“At least you acknowledge that’s a weakness, vamp.”
“You wanna test me?”
“At the moment, I can think of many more things I’d rather do to you, Elisa.”
My heart quickened at the knowing look in his eyes. The wolfishness. “I think at the moment we’d better concentrate on the search.” But I put a hand against his bare chest, felt his heart pulse beneath my fingers. Want and need rose up so quickly, they nearly swamped me.
Connor smiled, and there was nothing pleasant in it. Just the harsh acknowledgment of the need. “Maybe I better shift again.”
“I think I can control myself,” I said, but it took another five seconds before I put my hand down again.
“There you go,” he said with a smile, then took that hand and stepped back onto the path. “You know, when we get back to the cascades, you’ll need to help me out—I’m not entirely sure where my clothes are, and mine won’t be the only ones out there.”
“I can point you in their general direction.”
“Good enough,” he said.
We walked side by side, vampire and naked shifter, back to the waterfall.
* * *
* * *
We returned to find the waterfalls nearly empty, only a few piles of clothing scattered here and there. The shifters who’d finished their searches had apparently dressed again and left.
“I guess Cash wasn’t in a hurry to discuss the evidence,” I said when Connor had dressed again. “Maybe he went with Everett to the funeral home?”
Connor surveyed the area, his expression going grim. “He should at least be out here managing the investigation. Waiting for everyone to report in. If a member of my clan was murdered, I’d be out there searching right along with them.”
“Cash isn’t you,” I said. “Maybe he didn’t like Loren. That would explain the indifference.”
“Yeah,” Connor said. “It would. But we’ve got a dinner date at Georgia’s. If we don’t tell him what we found until tomorrow, that’s his loss.”
“Because we’re going to keep looking,” I guessed. “And we’re more reliable.”
His smile was warm. “I like that I never have to explain things to you twice.”
* * *
* * *
Rain, soft and misty, had begun to fall when Connor pulled the bike in front of the cabin. I was glad I’d taken a photo of the tracks; there’d probably be nothing left of them by tomorrow.
I walked around the building, scanning for any trace of that same broken magic. And found nothing.
“No broken magic,” I said when Connor joined me.
“Could be on the other side of the resort,” he said. “Or maybe it didn’t come back here, whatever it is.” We walked to the front door, and Connor pulled off his boots. “I want a shower.”
“Okay. Do I need to do anything for dinner? Prepare anything?”
He smiled in amusement as
he unlocked and opened the door. “Like whip up some steaks?”
“Or whatever.”
He opened his mouth, closed it again. “I’ve actually taken care of that,” he said. Then he walked to the duffel bag he’d left near the kitchen, pulled out a growler of thick, dark liquid. “I brought this.”
I stared at the bottle and the dark brew that sloshed inside it. “Do you hate your family?”
“It wasn’t that bad.”
“It wasn’t bad,” I agreed. “It was just . . . a lot. But maybe they’ll have more of a taste for it.”
Connor put the growler on the table, headed down the hallway, pulling his shirt over his head. “We’re beginning Scotch trials when we get back. And you might need a drink after hanging with the family.”
* * *
* * *
While he showered, I checked my screen for messages from Petra. There weren’t any, so I toed off my shoes and sat down on the floor. My monster had handled the initiation just fine, but past results didn’t guarantee future success, as my father enjoyed saying in his not infrequent pep talks about mental toughness.
But Georgia had looked at me and seen . . . something. My eyes hadn’t changed color, and I hadn’t gone berserker. Maybe she’d only detected the magic, had felt the otherness about me. Either way, that was the most awareness I was willing to grant her.
So I crossed my legs, put my hands on my knees, and closed my eyes. I focused on my breath—in, hold, out. In, hold, out, until I could feel the remaining tension slip away, and the monster no longer peeked over my shoulder, looking for a way out.
I opened my eyes when I heard the water turn off, and half-expected to see Alexei staring at me again, but the room was still empty. Just me and the monster.
Feeling chill, if not exactly more energized, I stood up and stretched out, pulled a colored lip balm from my backpack, reapplied, then flipped over my hair, finger-fluffed it, and flipped it back again. I checked myself in the mirror that hung over the couch—the frame made of birch logs—and decided I was presentable.