by WB McKay
"What?" asked Nathaniel.
"How did you do that?" asked Graham. He was already back at his car, and I was still at the edge of the woods. It was impossible to tell if werewolves were listening to you or not when they ignored all rules of conversation. Standing near someone? Looking at them? Beginning a conversation with a greeting? What were manners anyway? Just the basis of a civilized society, but who cared about that?
"I removed its heart," I answered, not bothering to tell Graham, beta of the Lassen Pack, that he was a rude man. The words would be lost on anyone listening, I was sure of it.
"How did you see where it went?"
"I didn't." It was a bad idea to lie to werewolves, you had to say something that felt completely true to yourself. "I'm a good, experienced, tracker." Telling them more would risk too much, and anyway, they didn't want to know what I could do. It was better for everyone that they didn't.
"You track vampires," Graham said.
"That is correct."
He'd stopped fiddling with the door of his car to look at me, though he wasn't really seeing anything. He was in his head, and it was then I realized I'd just made myself valuable to the Lassen Pack. He was busy calculating my uses, like any good pack politician would. Damn. Damn. Damn. So much for convincing them to leave me alone.
Nathaniel, still at my side, sniffed my shoulder. I caught myself before looking his way and pretended not to notice his attempts to catch my eye. I'd shifted back to wolf, and then again to human, as slow as nature intended. The magic of my shifts should have covered everything else. And even without that, most wolves wouldn't think anything of the stench of witch magic. It wasn't something they cared about. But Nathaniel… Nathaniel paid me too much attention.
I focused in on Rachel, a natural place for me to go that wouldn't raise questions for Nathaniel, and walked toward her.
"You owe me information," I told her.
"Yeah, okay, lady." She jerked her head toward her vehicle. "I'll fill you in on the way home."
Without a word to anyone else, I climbed in and waited for Rachel to finish up. She was standing next to a van where the rest of the pack had congregated. They were happy. Pleased with themselves. This was a big win for them. They'd protected their territory! Killed those murderous blood drinkers! Their alpha would be proud.
When Rachel finally broke away from the group, it was with promises to meet up with the rest of them later at the farm. They had bonfire plans.
I almost felt bad about grilling her when she was riding such a high. I hesitated to start, which let Rachel ask her own question first: "You can track vampires?"
"I can track anything," I said.
"But how?"
"I practiced," I said. "You're the one supposed to be tellin' me things."
"Right, fine." She sighed, letting go of some of her joy from the night. "What do you want to know?"
"You said these vampires killed a family?"
"Okay, so." She puffed up her cheeks and blew out a long breath. Rachel always started talking like she was preparing herself for a difficult mission. "We first found out about the vampires in the area when they killed that family in Redding. Did you hear about that?"
"I heard a family was murdered," I admitted. "But vampires?"
"Yeah, vampires. We've been following sightings of them ever since, but we always showed up too late."
"How do you know it was vampires that killed the family?"
"Lots of things," she said. "Rumors started it, then one of us went over the scene. While it looked like a fae crime, they couldn't scent any magic. You know what that means. Plus, you know, the fact that they were here."
She had a good point. Redding wasn't exactly a popular fae destination. But she couldn't be talking about my crime scene. It didn't make sense. "The family. What was their name?"
"Miller," she said with certainty. "Did you know them or something?"
"No," I said, but it felt like a lie and the way she looked over at me told me she'd caught it. I was too emotionally involved on this one. I felt like I knew the victims, though I knew reasonably little about them. I didn't bother to explain all of that to Rachel. I was too busy trying to make myself believe what was in front of me.
Vampires killed the Miller family. That blond woman with the anklet had been with vampires. It couldn't have been the blond woman I was looking for, then. Except.. it made no sense. I never would have considered vampires for this murder. Vampires were kidnappers. On the rare occasion they killed on the scene, they still drained their victims. The family in Redding had been killed brutally, leaving behind a big, bloody mess. The bodies had been there. They'd been mauled, not drained. The facts were in front of me, and still, it was hard to imagine blood drinkers did it. "Why would they do that?"
"I don't ask vampires questions." Rachel smirked.
"Child, motive can tell you more than most anything else."
"They're blood drinkers," Rachel said. "I think the motive is pretty obvious."
"When they drink the blood, it is," I said. "But the scene was left bloody. If vampires did it, I don't understand why."
"Maybe they were interrupted," she suggested. "Maybe they had to leave the bodies behind."
She seemed comfortable with that answer. She wanted to believe whatever put the matter to rest. I never understood that complete lack of curiosity, or how anyone could sustain the will to live through all life throws at a person without it. If I wasn't still curious about the world, I'd wither to dust.
There was just no way a group of vampires mauled a family, spilling blood everywhere, and left the bodies behind. Not without a reason for the waste. There was a story to this. I just couldn't see it yet.
"So there's a bigger group?" I asked, knowing I'd never put the story together without more pieces. "How many vampires are left?"
"Uhh, I don't know," she said. "But I don't think it matters. Yeah, we only killed the three we found, but that should be enough to scare away the rest of the group." I must have looked skeptical, because she went on to say, "Vampires aren't pack. They aren't going to feel the need to avenge their people. They'll see a threat they have no reason to fight, and they'll leave."
"Okay," I told her, because it seemed important to her that I believed, but I wasn't as confident as Rachel was that the larger group of vampires would be leaving. I'd have to know why they'd come to Redding in the first place before I had an idea about that.
"No matter what happens, we'll be keeping our ears open for news to see if more vampire sightings come up. We're prepared."
Tension rolled off Rachel. She was defensive, and it took me a minute to put together that she thought I didn't respect the capabilities of her pack. The fact that I didn't want to join her pack had possibly exacerbated that. After careful consideration, I decided to pretend it wasn't happening. If I was talking to any other informant, my next step would have been to repeat the details back to make sure I had them correct. So that's what I did. "A group of vampires came to Redding, murdered a human family, the pack patrolled and caught repeated sightings of them until tonight, where you finally killed three of them."
"That's right," she said. "We protect our territory."
"Do you know anything about the humans? Did they have any connections to the fae?" Maybe they knew something they shouldn't have, or maybe they were one of those rare humans who involved themselves with blood drinkers. It wasn't typical, but neither was leaving the bodies behind.
"I didn't hear anything about them knowing any fae," she said, "but I did hear one weird thing. It's probably just a rumor though. I mean, if there were witches in our territory, we would have known about it."
"Witches? The family was witches?"
"I shouldn't have even told you that. Forget it. It's just pack gossip."
"Right." There was no way I would forget that bit of gossip. Nothing in my research had said anything about witches, but, well, why would it have? Most of the research I'd done had been human record
s—and humans who weren't witches had no knowledge of witches—with some fae contacts—and fae had no interest in witches.
"Which one of your houses am I dropping you off at?"
"Home," I said. "The cabin."
The next ten minutes passed in silence. Or, well, I was silent. Rachel talked about something I guess. When the first cattle guard rattled me out of my head, I thought to ask Rachel, "Do you know anything about a blond woman with an anklet?"
"I didn't hear anything about that." She took all the right turns without asking directions. I didn't remember seeing her the day I shot Nathaniel. I supposed that meant the whole pack knew where to find me. "Why are you so interested in all this?"
"I like to know about the messes I've been dragged into," I told her. "Speaking of, why was I needed on this mission?"
"More numbers," she said with a shrug, making me think it was her own speculation and not something she was told. She'd gone to rouse me for battle without bothering to ask why.
"That doesn't make sense," I pointed out. "You had plenty."
Rachel shrugged again. "You'd have to ask Gretchen, or maybe Graham. I am not privy to that information." Her last sentence left no room for more questions. I'd worn out my welcome with Rachel.
"Thank you for the ride," I said.
She kept both hands on the wheel, making it clear she wasn't planning on getting out to help me open the gate and take me up the driveway. She was dropping me off there. She wasn't going to say "you're welcome" or anything else she didn't have to say to me. She was done.
I shut the door and waved goodbye. "Thank you again," I said, and then bit my own lip. If she wasn't ticked off, I wouldn't have thanked her at all. She'd shown up to take me to fight without giving me the option to say no—I'd been kidnapped. Thanking your kidnapper was a sign of weakness, or delusion. These people aren't your friends, I reminded myself.
With the gate locked behind me, I turned off the driveway and marched over to the creek. "Best to get it over with," I said. Water rushed through my shoes as the rocks wobbled under my feet. With one last breath for bravery, I bent down and laid back over the rocks, finally plunging my head under the shallow water. If I could have produced thoughts under the icy cold, I would have regretted not taking the time to haul water up to the cabin and boiling it to use in the shower I'd built on the side of my outhouse. As it was, I held my tense muscles as long as I could, and then raised my head up, gasping for breath. The water was melted snow from Mount Lassen. I expected it would have been warmer to sink into the snow itself.
Fast as I was able, I ran my hands over my body, massaged my scalp, and did my best to rub at my ears and all the places blood could hide on a person. When I finally got out of the creek, I vowed to be smarter about cleaning up late at night next time. Because, of course, there would be a next time I came home late at night covered in drying blood.
Human Julia wouldn't have had this problem.
CHAPTER EIGHT
I tried to sleep, honest I did, but it was impossible. I should have been exhausted from performing magic and healing and all of the shifting, but my brain didn't listen to such logic. I threw on my boots—still wet and squishy, but warm from the fireplace—and stalked out into the night.
The tree I'd used as a marker was still technically standing, but only barely. The roots had torn up long ago, and it leaned against its neighbor. I should do something about that soon.
I press the back of my heel against the tree, and toe to heel, walked twenty boot prints east of the tree. My shovel was rusted and chipped, but it dug into the soft ground with ease.
Pack gossip, I reminded myself. They likely aren't witches. And yet, my heart knew. As much as I told it not to hope, not to draw connections out of nothing, it hammered against my ribs with excitement. Blond woman. Anklet. Child witness. Witches. The puzzle pieces were falling out of the sky into my hands.
Shovel hit metal. I cleared the way for the box, pulled it out, but when I went to unlock it the sight of my shaking fingers stopped me. This wasn't good for my mind, this excitement, this hope. My heart sank at the word. Hope. Was there any word more dangerous?
Stop being such a ninny, I scolded, and popped open the old metal box.
My fingers hovered over the contents. My mother's sterling plate teaspoons, engraved with the letter G. A bird my father whittled. A scrap of fabric from my sister's best dress. My hands ached to touch it, but I worried the fabric, brittle with age, would shatter to pieces.
It shouldn't have kicked me in the gut like it did—the cabin was full of their belongings—but these were the best things. After they died I'd stuck around for a while, but eventually had to go. I worried the place would burn down while I was gone, or be ransacked. I'd carefully selected memories—items I couldn't fathom losing—and tucked them into that box.
A notebook sat in the corner. It was too faded now to read, not that it mattered—the words lived on in my mind. My parents' lives had been dedicated to the work described on those pages. As with any endeavor worth its salt, their journey was filled with failures. They'd spent a lot of their effort attempting to make charms. Even now, I'd never seen evidence that anyone but fae could make charms, but they'd tried. A few of the items they'd failed to enchant rattled around in my box now, nothing more than paperweights. Their biggest effort, however, was the cruelest joke I could imagine. Years and years of work—they'd traveled to build contacts and knowledge, they'd worked magic that tore through their human bodies causing aches and pains that never healed—all part of an effort to ease the pain of werewolf shifts.
It had been hard to live in a world where werewolves were responsible for their death.
And the hardest part of all: the why of it. Why did they come to our cabin and kill my family? Had they been killing indiscriminately? Was it mistaken identity? I couldn't imagine anyone knowing my parents and wanting them dead.
In the early years, murdered witches had been part of my criteria in the search for their murderers, in particular, I had investigated all violence involving both wolves and witches—but that had proven to be a red herring one time too many. Witches and wolves were natural enemies. The best I could figure it, the wolves resented witches because they were human while most wolves had their humanity violently stripped from them. On the other side, most witches would have given anything to be fae of any variety. Witches were humans willing to go to dangerous lengths to be able to perform magic. Fae were magic. Witches resented wolves because they were given the gift of fae magic and had no appreciation for any of it. Witch magic was labored. It took study and practice and skill. Fae magic was intuitive, easy. It took no study at all. And, worst of all, witches tore their bodies apart performing magic that didn't come naturally to them. Most fae faced little to no repercussions for their magic—though, many wolves would argue they paid higher costs, like the end of their mortal lives, the pain of shifting, the isolation of being apart from the human and fae worlds. Both sides had their points, I guessed, but none of it meant much of anything to me. None of it was helped by hating the other group. As it was, violence broke out between the two groups on a regular basis. Following every report of violence involving witches and werewolves took me nowhere near my goals. The leads had all been garbage. So I'd decided it was unlikely my parents had been killed for being witches, and I'd removed the item from my criteria.
Perhaps that had been a mistake.
Had they killed my family for being witches?
But how could their killers have known they were witches, without knowing they were witches trying to help werewolves?
I knew all the reasons to believe the connections I was seeing were mere coincidence. There were vampires, for one thing. The vampires raised a hundred questions. The blond woman was probably another vampire. But the kid had pointed her out as if she were separate from the rest. That was probably nothing. It was probably a child being a child, or possibly I interpreted the girl's words the way I wanted to hear them. And y
et, the thought itched. The blond woman was something apart from the vampires.
And most of all: hope was dangerous.
But I didn't care how dangerous hope was. This was it. I knew it. Somehow, this was going to piece together. This was the lead. I was about to have my chance for revenge. Finally. I was either going to succeed or fail and either option was… terrifying.
It had been a long time since I'd last had a good lead. A long, long time. No matter what happened—no matter what it cost me—I wouldn't let it get past me this time. This had to be it. It just had to.
I MADE MY OWN breakfast as soon as the sun was up. I wasn't sure who to contact for more information on the vampire's victims—I'd already talked to everyone I could before interviewing the child—but it was still my best bet. Someone had to have known the Millers were witches. Rachel had believed there weren't witches in Redding, which meant there likely wasn't a coven, but I wasn't taking that for granted. Somewhere out there were the answers I was looking for, it was a matter of finding the right thread to pull so the whole thing would unravel.
My workshop was meant for woodworking, but today it was Revenge Headquarters. I opened up my laptop with gusto, convinced I'd find someone to confirm the Millers were witches and what they used magic for before noon.
Three hours deep, forty tabs open, I was pointing my finger at Facebook, accusing userpics of hiding the secrets I needed told.
I might have hit a dead end.
It was time for a new tactic. I shook myself off, opened up Skype, and called The Inventor. When I'd first met her in person, she'd offered me a fake name. I'd smelled the lie. Rather than pretend, I'd taken to calling her simply The Inventor. She found it amusing.
"It's you!" she greeted me.
"And it's you," I returned. "What are you working on today?"
She stepped closer to the camera, blocking out some of the spinning dials behind her. The Inventor's lab was always hectic. I didn't know what kind of fae she was, but I often wondered if she didn't require sleep. "You know how I am," she told me. "I've got several irons in the fire."