“What in the Lady’s name is going on?” Those at the back parted for him at his tight question. Silver struggled against Rory’s grip on her good wrist, pulling for the door. Rory had dried lines of blood from bites all over his arm. The underlying wounds had healed, but the initial blood remained. Andrew scrubbed fingers over his lips to avoid a smile. No wonder Rory now held her at such a remove.
“She tried to run again,” Rory growled. He gathered himself, yanked Silver right off her feet, and pinned her arms when he caught her. He growled more deeply when she scored several good kicks, but those trailed off when she realized they weren’t making him let her go.
“Because you don’t know how to watch,” Silver snapped. She hung in Rory’s hold, panting. “All your questions! Stupid, useless questions! I don’t have answers, and if I did, why should I give them to you?”
“Should have just let her go, if she wants to so badly. Let her run right into Western territory to no longer nip our flanks.” Rory turned and thrust Silver at his wife, who enfolded the woman in a protective hug.
“She’ll be gone the moment I find someplace to take her. You know she’s in no state to be on her own.” Andrew came forward to stand between Rory and the two women. “Since you can’t get her to tell you anything about her pack, you need to let me track them down. No Western pack is going to take her in because you tell them to, unless we find the one with some connection to her.” He hesitated a beat. Rory might want to just dump the mystery of her attacker on someone else, with Silver herself, but Andrew knew better than that. He hated to work against Rory’s wishes in front of the pack, but this was important. “And then once I take her back to a pack that knows her, I can start tracking down her attacker.”
Rory opened his mouth to object and stopped. Andrew sensed an undercurrent of support for him from the other Were in the room. They probably didn’t want to have to worry about meeting Silver’s monster either. “Don’t take too long about it,” Rory finally said.
Sarah lifted her nose, sniffing. “Her breakfast smells ready.”
Rory snorted and turned away. The Were parted to let him out and he disappeared into his office, closing the door behind him more firmly than necessary. Everyone else filed out and Andrew left Sarah to coaxing Silver to the kitchen. Time to start playing phone tag again. Hopefully none were late risers, given the time difference.
He let himself out the front door to crunch around the gravel drive as he dialed. Someone could probably still eavesdrop if they really tried, but at least this way they’d have to make the effort. None of the remaining packs answered this time either, but he left voice mails. He kept it simple, describing Silver and what had been done to her, and then asking if they knew of anyone missing or quiet lately.
Occam’s razor would suggest those packs hadn’t answered because they’d checked their caller ID. Especially Sacramento, who would have every reason to bear a grudge for what Andrew had done to his son. But Andrew’s mind kept circling back to the possibility the silence was because one pack no longer existed, except for Silver. Wouldn’t the others have noticed? The Western packs didn’t cooperate with each other, but they always knew what their neighbors were up to, if only to make sure it wasn’t mischief. He hated to rely on badgering information out of Silver, but there didn’t seem to be any other choice.
He returned first to the kitchen, where he walked into yet more yelling. Sarah stood by the kitchen table, frozen with her hands on the back of a chair she had been pulling out. Silver had her good fist balled up as she shouted, “No! Leave me alone!” She jerked the chair from Sarah’s hands and tossed it aside. The back caught the plate sitting on the table in front of it and sent that crashing to the floor too. Silver backed up, muscles rigid. Andrew blocked her way into the rest of the house, so she darted into the living room and crouched in front of the couch. The room had no other exits, so Andrew let her be.
Sarah bent to pick up plate shards mixed with scrambled eggs. “I’m sorry,” she said, voice breathy with upset. “I don’t know what set her off. I wasn’t asking any questions, like Rory was. She seemed interested in the food.”
Andrew motioned for Sarah to get up. “Why don’t you take her some food in there. Leave the plate on the floor or something. I’ll get this.” He scooped up the bigger shards and accepted a dustpan and brush from Sarah for the rest. He waited in the kitchen when he was done, letting Sarah approach Silver without the pressure of another Were. It seemed to work. Silver didn’t shout, and he could hear her eating when Sarah returned.
Andrew gave her a little longer to get the food into her, then padded into the living room, curving around the couch. Silver had climbed up onto the cushions, and now ate scrambled egg chunks from her plate with her fingers. She dropped one or two to the carpet every so often. She made a hsst sound when she heard Andrew come in, shooing away whatever delusion crouched there.
Now that he had a chance to examine her properly, the difference after a bath this morning startled him. Her white hair reflected the light softly when clean. Someone had taken her sweatshirt away from her, and while the lack of dirt made her thinness clearer, a new navy-colored long-sleeved top clung to what would be curves when she was well fed.
“Silver.” He waited until she met his eyes. He knew his timing was bad, but when would the timing ever be good with Silver? “I’m waiting to talk to the alphas in Denver, Seattle, Portland, and Sacramento.” She showed no reaction. “Nothing?” She shook her head before going back to her food. He seated himself in a love seat facing her. “I need something. Anything you can give me.”
“No one is forcing you to concern yourself with me.” Silver brought up her plate to give it a broad-tongued lick, like a child needing more lessons on passing for human. She stood to leave, but he caught her upper arm.
“Anything, Silver. Anything you can give me. Tell me about your pack.” He kept his voice low and gentle even as frustration crowded in at the words’ edges. To have someone sitting right in front of him who knew the answers he needed but couldn’t tell him was almost worse than having nothing to go on at all.
Silver caught his eyes again, hers intensely blue. “The others are all dead. You cannot speak to them. Death uses their voices, but it is not truly them speaking.”
Lost for any other way to jolt her out of the rambling, Andrew shook her. She braced against the motion rather than go rag-doll. “A place, then. Tell me about your home, Silver.”
“The monster—”
Another shake. “Where, Silver?”
“Why don’t you ask Death, since he likes you so much?”
Andrew took a deep breath so he didn’t accidentally clench his fingers tighter. Patience. It wasn’t her fault the silver had left her mad and unable to help him. “Where, Silver?”
Silver whined. “Not on the water, but close enough for salt on the wind. Not quite close enough to hear it. Crash on the rocks, gulls in the air. Mocking gulls. The wind was off the water, when the monster did it. The Lady pulls the sea. I called to her into the wind, but it blew the wrong direction. She didn’t hear me.” She shivered so hard Andrew let her go, and she scooted along the couch away from him. “Don’t go there. He’ll find you too.”
Andrew sat back. That took him down to three packs that bordered the ocean somewhere in their territory. Some progress, he supposed. Seattle, Portland, or Sacramento. No closer to what might have happened or who might have done it, of course. Had Silver been in one of those packs, or a lone suffered to live on the edge of their territory?
As for who had done it, all he had were the usual stories that could be traced to rumors that could be traced to threats to keep the children quiet and in hiding. A vampire that had somehow escaped extinction at the hands of the Inquisition. Secret government programs, designed to study and then warp Were to their own ends. Bullshit, all of it. In this century, humans didn’t believe. The Catholic Church had believed longer than most, but even they had given up their persecution of s
upernatural creatures long ago.
His phone chimed. PORTLAND, the screen said. “Dare,” Andrew said as he slipped into the kitchen and out through the sliding door. He thumped over the back deck and into the scrubby woods beyond. Again, it was no guarantee of privacy, but better than nothing.
“I suppose you plan to keep leaving voice mails until I answer.” The woman’s voice was resigned and quiet in her authority. Even though Andrew knew Portland had a female alpha, it was still strange to hear her voice. Fewer women than men had the strength to hold a pack, and even those who did frequently preferred more subtle forms of power.
“That was the idea.” Andrew pushed through some sassafras and found a sapling strong enough to take his weight when he leaned his shoulder against it.
“And you’re not speaking for Roanoke?” She could mean the Roanoke pack as a whole, but more likely she meant Rory’s formal title.
Andrew grimaced. He’d been hoping to slide past the politics, but he couldn’t really claim Rory’s voice in this matter. For any other official business, he would have. Portland knew that. “Did I say that?”
The woman—Michelle, Andrew dragged from his memory—laughed. “That you never once mentioned his name in your message was more noticeable. So he’s loosened your leash enough now to allow you side projects? I can’t imagine the other Western alphas are pleased about that.” Never mind the other packs—her voice was plenty sharp.
Andrew pinched the bridge of his nose, deciding which of the implications there he wanted to answer. Maybe it would be better to have his reputation out in the open so he could address it. Pretending it didn’t exist certainly hadn’t gotten him very far with the other alphas. “And what exactly is everyone worried I’m going to do when out of Rory’s control?” That came out sounding too angry, but he couldn’t take it back.
“I seem to recall certain rumors about ‘the Butcher of Barcelona,’ Dare.” Michelle’s humor turned on edge to slash him. “Killing other Were is bad enough, but the stories say you didn’t exactly stop there in Spain.”
Andrew clenched his jaw until his teeth ached. He hadn’t encountered that nickname before. Anger’s familiar burn tightened his muscles. He had to keep his cool. If Portland said no to taking Silver, he didn’t have many other Western packs left to try. Better to put up with the barbs long enough to get a chance to convince her. “I can’t say anyone’s ever been stupid enough to repeat the stories to my face, but exaggeration is guaranteed.”
“Mm.” Michelle’s voice was flat. Andrew couldn’t read anything from it. “Sacramento’s still sore about his boy.”
Andrew let out a breath and forced his muscles to relax a little. He was on firmer ground here. “He was raping human women. Sacramento’s welcome to be sore, but he would have had to do something about it himself eventually.”
“So say the other rumors.” Something in Michelle’s voice made Andrew think either she or her source had personal experience with the boy. He’d been an oily little shit. “But it still means you’re not afraid to kill. Or use silver, like you did in Memphis. It’s all very European of you.”
“Memphis was—not my idea.” The growled words slipped out before Andrew could stop them. Revealing he had disagreed with Rory was borderline insubordinate, but if he didn’t do something to convince Portland, he would never be able to track down Silver’s attacker. “Trust me. You’ll notice that never happened again.”
Michelle snorted. “Your reputation aside, your mystery woman isn’t one of ours. I have no idea who she could be.”
“Wait.” Andrew spoke quickly into the pause that probably came from her getting ready to end the call. “Like I said in the message, she needs somewhere to go. She can’t stay here.”
Andrew took his phone away from his ear to check the call was still open as the silence stretched. Finally, Michelle sighed. “Say we take her. What do you want out of this? Information about missing Were isn’t going to do you much good on that coast. You want permission to cross territory out here to do your own search?”
Andrew winced. He’d planned to wait to ask for permission to cross territory when he was already there, having escorted Silver out. He’d hoped it would be harder to throw him out than it would be to deny him permission over the phone.
“I want to be able to track the one who did this, yes. But that’s secondary. The priority is finding Silver somewhere to go.”
“She goes by Silver, does she?” Michelle let out an incredulous breath, then lapsed into another long silence.
Andrew clenched and unclenched his hand to try to release tension from other muscles too. He wished she’d just say no and get it over with, as the others had. What alpha would want to let “the Butcher” onto their territory, knowing he’d want to stick around?
“I want to meet her. Maybe one of my pack will recognize her. And if I do let her stay, it wouldn’t be such a bad thing to be able to say I did Roanoke’s duty for him.” Her sarcasm was no less acidic for not being directed at Andrew. “And we’ll see about your permission to cross when you get here.”
Andrew released a breath, ragged with unexpected relief. “Thank you. We’re chartering. I’ll text you the flight details once I have them.”
7
Silver didn’t like it when they flew. They went so high up into the sky she felt like she should be able to touch the Lady, but Her presence was still veiled from Silver. It made her ache inside. Not as badly as the ache left by the absence of her wild self, but bad enough. Why had the Lady left her? Why couldn’t Silver feel Her light on her skin?
The wind stung her face after too long, and Silver curled into a little ball, letting the warrior carry her against his chest. “At least the monster can’t track our scent,” she told Death, trying to sound optimistic.
“Why would he need to, when you’re going toward him?” Death said. Death didn’t mind flying, and not a hair ruffled out of place as he ran along the air beside them. “It would be better to give in now.”
Silver avoided Death’s gaze by looking at the ground below. That was almost worse. The rivers and paths looked like snakes. “I can’t run forever. I have to trust someone. Maybe I can only find my wild self if I go back to where she first ran, and follow her trail properly. I’ve been looking inside all this time. Maybe I need to look outside.”
Silver heard how little it sounded like she believed that. Death’s contempt for her self-delusion was clear. “He’s not helping you search. He’s hunting the monster.”
Silver’s stomach clenched. No, the monster was too strong. You had to run, run as far and as fast as you could, to stay safe. She’d known in abstract that the monster might catch the warrior, following her. Might catch him in fire and burn him down to ash. But hunting would take the warrior to the monster even faster.
“And when the monster defeats him, you will be handy.” Death dropped his jaw in a grin, adding a flash of teeth to the humor. “Think of the trouble the warrior will have saved him.”
Silver didn’t deign to answer, but Death’s words twisted in her mind. This was why she should have kept running alone. Of course a warrior would think first and only of his prey. She would search for her wild self, alone, and after that she would run again, alone.
* * *
The only people around to see Silver were the pilot and a few people at the small airports where they stopped to refuel. The pilot, either the guy Laurence knew, or a guy that guy knew, made no comment. Andrew tried to encourage him in his disinterest by playing the reluctant caretaker to a mentally disabled relative. Silver bristled at the patronization at first, but once they got airborne, she seemed too far gone to register anything he was saying.
She didn’t seem to notice him buckling her in each time, just allowed it before curling into a tiny ball with her knees against her chest. On the first leg, she talked monsters and running, but the ramblings got progressively more indistinct as time went on, until on the last leg she was silent.
Her
arm also seemed to pain her more. Frustration at sitting beside her doing nothing made his jaw ache. He wanted to help, but he had no idea what he could do. Would aspirin work for her? He couldn’t remember hearing about a Were bothering to try it. Even if it would work, he hadn’t thought to bring any. How the hell had he ended up with this job? Better they had sent Sarah or someone to take care of Silver on the trip, and he had gone separately to track her monster. Tracking and dishing out punishment was what he was good at.
He took her good hand, for lack of anything better. That seemed like it might be the right thing to do, as her fingers closed around his with a werewolf’s strength. He let her keep the hand for the rest of the flight.
It was dark when they reached the Hillsboro airport, chosen since the charter company didn’t fly into Portland International. Andrew was unclear as to how Hillsboro related to Portland, but Michelle hadn’t had any questions when he sent her the information, so he’d let the locals worry about that.
For the walk across the tarmac to the terminal building, Andrew shouldered his overnight bag and the bag Sarah had packed with clothes and toiletries scavenged from the female pack members. With luck he could hand both it and Silver off to Portland to care for. Andrew hoped that once they met Silver, they’d want to protect her.
Keeping Silver close when he had a bag on either side proved a challenge, but he kept a hand on her back. She started to resist as they entered the tiny terminal building. The signage suggested that other businesses leased the second floor, and companies had carved up much of the rest for their specific traffic.
Silver bit her lip. “Why do I have to go to this pack?”
“Because they might know who you are. Or know who would know. And you should stay put with them until I figure it out.”
“So you can hunt the monster. What makes you think they’ll agree to let me stay even if I wanted to?” The look she gave him was so dry it took him aback for a moment. He might have liked this woman when she wasn’t crazy.
Silver Page 5