Song of Midnight Embers

by Dana Marie Bell

  Mollie could barely breathe as the rage exploded inside her. “Hello, Arlene.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Arlene? The woman in the jail cell who’d tried to hurt Mollie was standing in front of him now, fidgeting with the strap of her bag. “I was just on my way out. I need to go see my kid.”

  They should have looked deeper than she’s the mate of a wolf. Greer wanted to smack himself.

  More importantly, he wanted to smack Arlene. If she even looked cross-eyed at Mollie, she was getting a dagger in an uncomfortable place.

  “Of course. Now it all makes sense.” Mollie took a step forward, the heat wave rising from her causing Arlene to take a step back. “It’s you, isn’t it? You’re the tie, to the wolves, to the blood, to Bernadette. To everything.” Mollie looked Arlene up and down, a sneer of contempt on her lips. “You killed Allan and Lily Wulfenbach.”

  Arlene backed up yet another step. “What? I wouldn’t kill my beta’s mate.”

  “Wouldn’t you?” Mollie’s fire began to lick up and down her body. “Where in the pack does your mate stand, Arlene? Gamma?” She tilted her head. “Omega?”

  Arlene scowled. “My mate is a gamma, not a fucking omega.” She took a deep breath, visibly calming herself. “Look, my kid is sick and I need to get home. Let me by.”

  “Amazing. Her child calls her about feeling sick just as the receptionist called to tell Dr. T we were coming.” Greer tapped his blade against his leg, taking a stand next to Mollie. As her mate, the heat coming off her in dizzying waves didn’t affect him in the least.

  Arlene, on the other hand, was visibly sweating. “I don’t know what you’re after, but I’m not it. Let me go.”

  “Not until I talk to Dr. T.” Mollie stared at Arlene, her gaze burning brighter and brighter until the normally sunny blue of her irises was swallowed by flickering flames. The whites of her eyes glowed, as if someone put a flashlight right behind them, showing each and every tiny vein. Anyone else looking would think Mollie the one demon-possessed.

  His mate was one scary lady. Greer approved.

  Arlene frowned, and pain began to build in Greer’s head. “I said, let me go.”

  Dr. T stepped out into the hallway. Behind him, Greer saw several curious glances thrown their way before the double doors swung shut once more. “What’s going on? Arlene?”

  Arlene didn’t sag with relief, like someone who saw a potential ally. No, if anything, she stiffened more, her expression turning wild with fear. “They won’t let me by, and I need to get to my kid.”

  Dr. T scowled. “That’s not what you told me.”

  Greer didn’t need to hear anything else. The pain in his head didn’t matter. Dr. T didn’t matter.

  This woman had tried to hurt his mate, and she would pay dearly for her trespass.

  Greer’s sword flashed as he sang, the single blade becoming paired, silver runes flaring to fiery life. He rushed Arlene, backing her up until she hit the wall, his daggers at her throat. “Was it worth it?”

  She hissed as he pressed his blade against her throat. “I don’t know—” One of his blades nicked her, silencing her.

  “The truth, Arlene, before you die. Was it worth it? The deaths, the searching, the fear? Knowing what would happen if that fucking black blood got into a kid?”

  “Yes.” Her teeth were gritted, but now rage mingled with the fear. “We were so fucking close, and you ruined it.”

  “How?” It had to do with the wolf pack hierarchy. Noah was going to shit himself when they told him about this. Arlene had fooled them all.

  Arlene glared at him, refusing to respond even when he nicked her a second time. The fire of his blades cauterized the tiny wound.

  “I know people who can make you talk.” He slid one of his blades down her body, like a lover’s caress, ending with the tip of his blade just brushing where her thighs met. One flick of his wrist, and her femoral artery would be cut open. She’d bleed out in seconds.

  She knew that, too. Her body twitched as she felt the blade through her pants. “Don’t.”

  “Don’t what? Kill you?” Greer wished he didn’t have an audience for this one, but he needed answers. “Give me a reason not to.” He could hear Mollie murmuring in the background, either filling Tyrone in or calling for backup. Either way, it didn’t matter. He couldn’t take his attention away from Arlene. “How was this supposed to work? Did Bernadette get to be alpha and your mate would be beta?”

  It was the only thing that he could think of that would cause someone to go to these lengths. Bernadette must have lied about wanting to be beta and had probably made all sorts of promises to Arlene, and maybe even Arlene’s mate, about where he’d wind up. Going from gamma to beta would be a huge step up, even if it was for a normal wolf pack and not the leader of the North American wolves.

  Bernadette would never have been strong enough to take Noah’s place completely. Someone would have become the North American alpha, and that someone would no doubt have investigated Noah’s death, if only to shut Greer, Ash and Mina the hell up. No way would they allow Noah’s death to go, not when they knew what he was to Iva.

  Arlene looked shocked before her face contorted once more in rage. “Fuck you.”

  “That’s original. Oh, and no thanks. I have a mate.” He stiffened as a sudden thought struck him. Could it be? Was that part of the answer? “Do you?” Her eyes went wide just before his head exploded in a pain so intense he almost dropped to the floor. “Stop it, Arlene.”

  The pain increased, throbbing in his skull. Nausea built up in his stomach until he thought he would vomit. His vision went blurry, every breath an exercise in remaining upright. The light of the hallway threatened to kill him with its intense rays, and the floor beneath him swayed.

  It was even worse than that time when he nearly died, when he’d saved Dragos from certain death. His crushed ribs had made breathing impossible. He’d started to fade, heading almost happily into the darkness of the earth’s embrace one final time.

  This pain? This pain threatened to remain, to live with him for the rest of his days. Nothing he could do would stop it. He’d be forced to commune with his tree, sharing his pain, unable to leave for fear of what would happen if he tried. It was the most frightening experience of his life.

  Arlene screamed as Mollie’s fire whipped around him to strike at the psychic, breaking her concentration. The pain in his head snapped like a rubber band stretched too tight. One quick shot of an even worse agony, and it was gone, leaving him gasping for breath and shaking his head to clear his vision. The world slowly righted itself, the floor no longer swaying back and forth like a ship in a storm. Without thought, he flicked his wrist, slicing her throat before she could harm anyone else.

  The gurgling noises were familiar ones, the warm rush of blood over his hands a sensation he’d felt many times before in defense of his beloved town. Greer took a step back, allowing Arlene to fall to the ground, holding up one dagger when Tyrone tried to get to her, to intervene. Arlene was dead no matter what, because if Greer had not done so, then Dragos would have. Or Mina. Or Noah. Or even Lore. She’d betrayed the wolves, the town and everything they held dear. Everything she should have loved would suffer for her actions, including her children.

  “Remind me not to piss you off,” Tyrone muttered. “What the hell just happened here?”

  Greer kept his gaze on Arlene until her eyes glazed over, the light of life gone from them.

  Mollie took a deep breath, shaking the fire away from her hands. “She’s the traitor. The one we’ve been looking for all along.”

  “The fuck you say.” Dr. T shoved Greer away from Arlene. “She was one of my best techs.”

  “Someone whose work you didn’t question, even when blood samples started turning up missing or tampered with.” Greer d
idn’t flinch as Dr. T’s hands began to blaze. “Someone who had access to the entire lab. Someone who knew Bernadette through her connection to the pack.”

  The fire on Dr. T’s hands slowly died as Greer spoke. “But why? I never got even an inkling that she was unhappy in any way.”

  “To make her husband beta, maybe?” Greer shrugged. “Who knows.”

  Dr. T stared at Arlene’s body. “And now we never will.”

  “We need to get to her home, go through her things.” Greer put away his weapons. They were no longer necessary. He’d gotten what he’d come for. “And her things here.”

  “Emails, correspondence, everything that might show where she was sending the blood.” Mollie started for the lab. “Ash and Selena are on their way. So is Noah.”

  “Fuck.” Greer glanced down at Arlene and winced. “Is her husband still alive?”

  Mollie frowned. “I don’t know, but we can ask Noah when he gets here.”

  “You think she wasn’t fully mated?” Dr. T sounded shocked. He whistled low. “What would that have meant?”

  “I’m not sure.” Greer kneeled and began riffling through the dead woman’s purse. “If she was promised a mate higher up the food chain?”

  “So her husband might have been bound to her, but she wasn’t bound to him.”

  “I have no idea how psychics mate, but I know they do. Eddy and Trajan are a prime example.” Greer quickly went through her wallet, finding nothing but credit cards, insurance cards and a Starbucks gift certificate.

  “They imprint.” Mollie kneeled beside him and watched. “They do some mind-meld thing I don’t understand, but it links them to their mates in the same way my mark links me to you.”

  “So if she never imprinted, or managed to fake the imprint...” The implications were staggering.

  “I had no idea they could mate.” Dr. T shrugged when they both glanced at him. “They’re essentially human, right? Which means—”

  “That she could have lied about the imprint, and no one would be the wiser.”

  “We could be wrong, too.” Mollie put her hand on Greer’s shoulder. “If her mate is dead, we’ll know for sure one way or the other.”

  Dr. T joined Greer, waving at Mollie to head into the lab. “Do what you need to do, Mollie. I’ll be with Greer so I can help him deal with Noah once he arrives.”

  “Thanks.” Mollie didn’t wait for Greer to say anything. She headed straight into the lab. Greer itched to follow, but his mate was strong. She could take care of herself.

  “We’ll need to go through her locker as well, if she has one.” Greer pulled out Arlene’s cell phone and began going through her call list. “Lots and lots of texts and calls to Bernadette.”

  “Fuck.” Dr. T’s hands were burning again. “How did I miss this? The bitch was in my own lab, for fuck’s sake.”

  “We all missed it. Hell, even Lore believed her.” Greer shook his head. He should have looked into Arlene after the first incident, but they’d all dismissed it when Arlene had apologized so profusely. Even Noah hadn’t suspected her, and he was a suspicious bastard at heart. “He wanted to believe her.” And that was the problem. People were going to get killed because they’d believed in the sincerity of a practiced liar. “Take a look at this. It’s a text Bernadette sent Arlene just before she died.”

  Dr. T took the phone from Greer’s hand and read out loud. “‘Package sent, USPS overnight. HC demanding more info on bloodsuckers. Send what you’ve got.’ Motherfucker. Arlene told them about the vamp blood being a possible cure for black blood infection.”

  “Which means they know we know what it is, and what it does.” Greer continued to scroll through Arlene’s phone, checking for any further texts. Since the carrier was a national brand, and not the local one run by the town, he wouldn’t be able to subpoena the rest of the texts. Perhaps Lore could do that.

  “Wait.” Dr. T was grinning up a storm. “If Bernadette was using the United States Postal Service, then we have a goddamn address on the Van Helsings.”

  Greer sighed happily. “And once we have it, we get to storm the castle.”

  “Guys?” Mollie’s voice came from behind them, quiet and shaking. “You have to see this.”

  Greer stood immediately, Arlene’s phone still clutched in his hand. “Are you all right?”

  Mollie shook her head. “No. This goes deeper than we feared.” She held up a manila folder filled with papers. “It looks like Noah’s got some housekeeping to do.”

  * * *

  They sat in Tyrone’s office, still going through the paperwork while the quickly appointed coroner dealt with Arlene’s body in the hallway. Mollie hoped she never again saw that expression of pain on Greer’s face. It was all she could do not to flame the bitch like a charcoal briquette, but she’d held back. She’d thrown a flame at Arlene’s hand, knowing the pinch of pain would more than likely break her concentration.

  It had, and that break had cost Arlene her life. Greer didn’t fuck around. He’d slit Arlene’s throat without a second thought, the blade flashing so quickly Mollie had barely seen it move before Arlene had been gasping and clutching at her throat. Fighting in battle was one thing, but seeing him so coldly cut her throat was another. It brought home all the things he’d told her about being an assassin. Part of her was horrified at what he’d done, but the truth was Arlene would have killed him first. And Greer wasn’t the type to go after someone unless he knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that the person deserved whatever he doled out.

  Besides, she couldn’t exactly claim her hands were clean either. She’d burned Bernadette to death, a far slower, more horrific death than the one Greer had given Arlene. Put side by side, which one of them could be labeled a monster?

  “Why? That’s what I don’t fucking understand.” Noah stood, papers in hand, and began to pace. His eyes had turned golden brown, and a fierce snarl was on his face. “Why sell the town out just so Bernadette could become alpha of the pack?”

  “Who knows,” Greer replied absently. He was still reading one of the many documents he’d surrounded himself with. “Perhaps they thought the Van Helsings would actually help them or some shit like that.”

  “Or find a way around the vaccine we’re working up.” Dr. T shook his head. “We started rushing it when we saw the blob monster. Now that we know for certain that vampire blood is truly the cure, we’ve started extracting the suspected pathogen in the black blood cells. The odd part is, the vampire blood must be alive to work on the black blood, so the vaccine will always be live.”

  “Does the black blood need to be live as well?” Mollie didn’t know much about creating a vaccine, but the black blood had been eaten by the vampiric. She wasn’t sure how that was supposed to work. “Would it be like a transfusion instead of a vaccine?”

  Dr. T shrugged. “So far the only thing we’re certain of is that vampires are in danger if the Van Helsings know about this. Their pet demon won’t be able to use its blood to control us if the cure is easily obtained.”

  “And vampires are so willing to share blood.” Mollie shook her head. “That’s unfair of me. In Maggie’s Grove, I know they’re more than willing to help. But outside the town?” She sighed. “We’ll have to have Dragos and the other vampires start making some phone calls, I guess.”

  “And the rest of us will have to contact who we need to in order to make this work. If we can get the cure out to all the other supernaturals, then we stop this attack, at least.” Dr. T chuckled, but it lacked humor. “We seriously need a monthly newsletter or something.”

  Noah’s phone rang, and Mollie turned back to the papers in her hand. A lot of them were routine reports, so she set those aside. Some of them looked odd, different from the others, so they were put in a separate pile for Tyrone to look at. And a third set appeared highly suspicious
. They were notes that were handwritten rather than typed up, sticky notes and ripped bits of paper with things like “BB is reacting strongly,” “Inform BA we’re GTG” and “Pkg twenty-three out of door.” Those she put in a pile close to Greer. None of them were dated, but they’d been found in the same folder as the more suspicious paperwork Mollie was setting aside for Tyrone.

  “That was Paisley.” Noah put his cell phone away with a grimace. “It seems Arlene’s mate is still alive.”

  “Then we were right? She didn’t imprint him?” Arlene had children with the man. Was it possible he’d bitten her, but she’d never claimed him?

  “We’re not sure, but he’s devastated. I don’t think he knew what his wife was up to.” Noah ran his hands through his hair with a low, dark growl. “I’m going to question him anyway. From what I’ve seen, there are a few wolves who need their asses kicked.”

  Mollie winced. That folder, the one with the list of conspirators, had been handed right over to Noah. It contained people they knew, loved ones, people who they’d shared popcorn with on Monster Movie Night. And none of it mattered. If they’d been in on the conspiracy, they would suffer the same fate as Arlene unless they could prove their innocence. Noah couldn’t afford to let any of them off the hook if there was still the slightest hint that they might have been involved. “You still think that you were their target?”

  He nodded. “Get me, and you get every wolf—hell, every shifter—in North America. Bernadette might have been their first plan of attack. Make her alpha, infect her and give her the power to beat any and all challengers. Once she’s the North American alpha, infect every fucking shifter who comes to speak with her.”

  “And once the shifters are owned, they begin attacking all the other supernaturals around the world.” Mollie shook her head. “Fuck, that’s brilliant.” No one would suspect a thing until the big, bad wolf was huffing and puffing and blowing their lives to shit.