by Tricia Owens
That growl did funny things to my insides that Vale probably wouldn't have appreciated hearing about.
"Well, now that you've met me I'm telling you I'm no threat to your pack. I'm a friend. Lev can vouch for me."
Lev's black wolf whined a bit and danced around. I was beginning to get the feeling that continually bringing him into the conversation wasn't doing anything to improve his standing within the pack. I wish I knew something about wolf pack politics, but honestly, who really did besides groupies and furries?
"You attacked the shifters," Raker said in his rumbly voice. "You assassinated the gargoyle called Xaran. There were witnesses, so don't bother denying it."
"Did any of these witnesses actually witness me doing the deed? Or did they only see me grab Xaran and fly off?"
Raker narrowed his icy eyes, which pulled at some of the nearest scars and slightly contorted his face. Who all had he fought to get those scars? And what had happened to his opponents? Were they absorbed into the pack or did he necessarily have to eliminate them to remove future threats to his command?
"If you didn't kill him, where is he?" he challenged me. "Give me proof that you let him go."
"That's not possible, unfortunately. As soon as I let him go, he took off like a shot. I think he went back to Paris. Try checking there." I smiled. "Any excuse for a vacation, right?"
"You treat this like a joke and I will treat you as a joke," Raker snarled. He took a step forward and suddenly Vale stood between him and me.
"Back off, Alpha," he said quietly.
Raker sniffed the air and looked Vale over with that same, mangled gaze. "Gargoyle. You should step aside. This isn't your fight."
"If you're defending my brother's death then it is my fight." A warm breeze stirred Vale's hair. "Except your defense of him is unnecessary. Xaran lives. I saw him with my own eyes. I spoke to him."
I quickly looked around Celestina's yard and then to the nearby yards. If eavesdropping pixies were in the vicinity they'd be difficult to spot, but I had to try. This wasn't a conversation for the Oddsmakers' ears. They still believed Xaran was dead.
"How can this be possible?" Raker demanded. "The dragon had him in its jaws."
"He tasted terrible, alright? I let him go."
Raker glared at me but Vale spoke up, drawing his attention back to him.
"The rumors about Xaran's death exist to keep Anne safe for reasons that I don't want to get into. I encourage you to continue spreading the rumors. Act as though you believe them. But I'm telling you the truth, Alpha. My brother is alive."
The big wolf shifter heaved a deep breath. "I must accept your word, then."
"Why don't we call it a friendly misunderstanding and let it go?" I said, coming up to stand shoulder to shoulder with Vale. I wasn't about to hide behind him like the little lady. "We're all on the same side. That's the good news."
As I spoke, another wolf, this one black with a white mantle, began sniffing Lev. Lev snapped back at the other wolf, which prompted a loud tussle until Raker turned his head and snarled, "Enough!"
The black and white wolf transformed, becoming a stocky young man with a wicked mustache and goatee. "Alpha, he carries the scent of the Eastsiders! They all do! Why are we standing here discussing this? They're traitors!"
Oh, man. If there was a word guaranteed to set me off these days it was that one.
"Listen, Fu Man Chu," I said, pointing a finger at the stocky shifter, "there aren't any 'traitors' here so I suggest you learn what the word actually means."
"A true Black Die member would never carry the stink of an Eastsiders," the shifter snarled at me. "Or of a dragon."
"You're not exactly smelling like roses either, buddy. You ever hear of dog breath? Try a Mentos."
"You're a traitor! You're the assassin of the Oddsmakers!"
Some of the other wolves began growling and lips curled off fangs.
I pointed at the shifter. "And you're not the alpha, so I'm not talking to you."
He leaped for me but Raker turned and slammed a powerful arm across his chest, knocking the other shifter back a handful of paces, where he glowered. "Enough! She's right. You're not the alpha of this pack. Back off. Now!"
The stocky shifter stepped backward, but he had plenty of glares to split between Raker, me, and Lev. That guy was going to be trouble in the future. Raker had better watch his back.
"Why did you all show up here?" I asked the alpha.
"Someone called," Raker growled, aggressive all over again. "He did not identify himself and I didn't recognize his voice. He claimed that you brought an Eastsiders shifter into my territory and then killed him in the hopes of inciting a war between our packs."
I made a face. "That's ridiculous."
"If a dead Eastsiders shifter is found within the Black Die territory blood will be spilled."
Uh oh. "Isn't that jumping to conclusions? What if the guy died of a heart attack or had an allergic reaction to peanuts?"
"The first death will bring war!" Raker roared, stepping forward.
"But what if—"
Raker lowered his head and his shoulder muscles bunched violently. "Is there a dead Eastsiders shifter in my territory?"
I gulped. "Maybe?"
All hell broke loose.
Raker roared and jumped at Vale and me. He transformed in mid-leap in a move straight out of a horror movie. It was pure instinct to pull up my dragon, Lucky, who flared like the sun right there on the sidewalk, lighting up the entire street. Raker's wolf slammed head first into Lucky's chest and bounced off him to smack against the sidewalk. The other wolves in the pack went rabid when they saw what happened to their leader. They hurtled en masse at my dragon.
It was like watching squirrels going after a pit bull. The wolves swarmed over Lucky, uncaring that he was so gold and bright that I saw an image of him on the backs of my eyelids when I blinked. They tried to bite at his sides and back but he was covered with scales that repelled their teeth. A few caught a fin between their jaws but Lucky shook them off like fleas.
Vale grabbed me and tried to pull me back to the safety of Celestina's house. We were nearly at the front door when a wolf tackled him, hitting him between the shoulders and sending him sprawling across the barren yard.
That ticked me off, big time. Although I knew this was a terrible place to stage a fight—any of the neighbors could look out their windows or open their front doors—I wasn't about to let Vale and me be overrun by a bunch of obnoxious wolves who didn't belong here in the first place.
I fed Lucky a ton of my energy, growing him until he was sixty feet from snout to tail. First I had him grab the wolf that had attacked Vale and fling it down the street. Then I had him snap his long tail at the rest of the pack, smacking wolves this way and that, their furry bodies skidding across the asphalt of the road or into the scraggly yards of my neighbors. A couple of them hit the iron fence surrounding Moonlight Pawn and yelped as my wards gave them a little zap.
The wolves tried again and again to attack Lucky, circling him like they would a water buffalo, attacking him in groups and singly. But no matter how clever they were, they simply couldn't dodge his whipping tail. It also helped that Lucky wasn't a dumb beast. Not only could he think for himself, but he had me guiding his actions. The closest a wolf was going to get to him was close enough to receive a dragon smackdown.
That's when Raker turned his sights on Vale and me.
"Wait!" I yelled at him as he loped for us.
But he didn't wait and Vale had to shift into his gargoyle form to intercept the nearly three hundred pounds of furious wolf that barreled straight for me. Their bodies collided with an awful thud, with Raker's momentum driving Vale's gargoyle backward to gouge out a deep furrow in the hard-packed soil. It looked like the trail you'd expect to see after a meteor struck the Earth.
Vale's gargoyle didn't lay down for it, though. The gray-skinned creature flipped Raker's wolf off it using its powerful hind legs. Once the
wolf hit the ground, the gargoyle jumped on it and began pummeling the wolf while evading its gnashing, spit-flecked bites. The fight was brutal and painful-looking and I hated every second of it.
"You're all a bunch of idiots," I grated out. But how could I stop so many wolves at once?
For some reason The Matrix jumped to mind. It's worth a shot. I slowed down Lucky, making him appear tired. The wolves began salivating, sensing weakness. They circled him, the click click click of their nails on the asphalt reminding me of the sound of falling hail.
Then I turned my back, clenched my eyes shut, and had Lucky pulse as bright as an exploding star, or my idea of one, anyway. It was so bright I saw the light even with all my precautions. I heard a dozen or more yelps of pain. After I had dimmed Lucky to normal levels again, I turned to find the wolves stumbling blindly into each other or lying on the ground, trying to wipe at their eyes with their paws. All of them were incapacitated except for Raker, who was still fighting Vale's gargoyle.
"Raker, your pack is at my mercy!" I shouted at their struggling forms. "Where's their alpha when they need him?"
That caught the wolf's attention. It leaped backward off the gargoyle and shot a look at the street. When it saw the helpless state of its pack, it transformed back into Raker's human form.
"What did you do to them?" he demanded, flinging his wild-maned head toward me.
"I call it a dragon EMP. Or maybe a dragon flashbang. Which do you think is catchier?"
"I'll tear your throat out—"
Vale's gargoyle leaped between Raker and me. The wolf shifter drew up short, his lips peeling back off his teeth.
"I don't know why you flipped out just now," I said to him, trying to keep my tone of voice calm and reasonable, "but you have no reason to attack us."
"No reason?" Raker's icy eyes bulged and the muscles in his pecs jumped as he curled his hands into fists. "You disrespect my kind and incite war and tell me I have no reason to seek revenge?"
"Look, it was a mistake, okay? We found the dead shifter at First Friday and we only brought his body here because we were trying to identify him. He was already dead! Can't you take him to the Eastsiders alpha and explain what happened? There doesn't need to be a war."
"What violence has been done to his body?"
I smiled with relief. "None! Once they get a good look at him they'll see—"
"Uh, Anne?"
Melanie's apologetic call from the front door of Celestina's shop made me cringe. Don't give me bad news. Not now.
"Um, Anne, can I speak to you a moment?"
I held up a finger to Raker. "Hold that thought."
I dashed back to the front door while Vale's gargoyle kept Raker in place. Melanie was hanging on the door with a sheepish expression on her face.
"So, um, maybe the dead shifter is sort of changing?"
Groaning, I pushed the door open and peered inside. The body was changing alright. It was turning into something that resembled a giant mushroom, but a glowing one, like one you might see if you'd gone and eaten mushrooms. The shifter's limbs were barely recognizable as limbs, more like stumps, but the bulk of its body had molded into this oblong mushroom thing which, strangely enough, appeared to be melting as fast as it was forming. Worst of all, though, was that the whole mound was covered with golf-ball sized half-spheres that appeared to be covered with skin. I had a sinking feeling I knew exactly what those orbs were.
"Great," I muttered to myself and ducked back out into the yard.
"Hey, guess what?" I said brightly, mentally preparing to pull Lucky up again as needed. "It seems like your friend is definitely changing. I wouldn't exactly call it 'dematerializing'." I added finger quotes just to drive home my point. "But it's certainly not pretty and it seems to be puddling on the floor of my friend's shop. Any suggestions?"
"You lie!" Raker roared.
"Holy cow, calm down! I'm not lying. Something's happening to it. You should—you should take a look for yourself."
I didn't like the idea of allowing him inside with my friends, but he seemed like he wouldn't back down until he could see the body. Considering it was moldering and glowing like something born out of nuclear waste, I was eager for him to get a good look, too. Hopefully he'd have an explanation.
"Vale, it's okay," I told the gargoyle. "Let him pass. We need to let him take care of this, otherwise they'll keep fighting."
The rest of the Black Die Pack was currently stumbling around, blindly colliding with parked cars and fire hydrants, but I didn't mention that. Raker needed to believe he was the badass boss of a badass crew right now.
"I'll let you in," I told him once Vale's gargoyle reluctantly stepped to the side, "but if you go anywhere near my friends I'll have my dragon turn you into a rug."
Raker's smile was as wolfish as it got. "I'd like to see you try it."
"Just do what you need to do and don't cause trouble," I said, frustrated.
He finally nodded his big head. "Show me the corpse."
It wasn't my favorite word but I nodded, too, and led the way back to the shop. I pushed in the door and quickly called in, "Everyone move to the kitchen. Big, bad wolf coming through. I'm not kidding."
I was grateful that they didn't argue or question the command because Raker soon shouldered me aside and barged into the room. He took one look at the puddle-y mess on the floor and cursed in a language that sounded Slavic.
"What is this?" he gasped and took a step closer.
Just like I'd feared, the skin covering those weird ball-shaped growths on the mushroom split apart to reveal that they were covering dozens of giant eyeballs. As one, they swiveled to look up at Raker. He jerked to a stop and cursed again. He didn't back up, though, and that was his mistake. An orifice opened on the mushroom and something spat out of it. The arcing glob of slime splashed Raker right across the bridge of his nose.
He stiffened violently, like he'd just stuck his finger into an electrical socket. Blackness swept out from where the goop had struck him, spreading across his face like a Zorro mask. The sclera of his eyeballs went midnight black, making him look like some sort of demon. He opened his mouth but no sound escaped from his lips as the blackness crawled through the skin of his face, covering it in an inky mesh that quickly moved down his throat. Once it hit his chest, it exploded downwards, streaking to all four limbs.
It took only seconds for his entire body to turn completely black.
"Raker?" I was afraid to touch him with my bare hands, but I couldn't just leave him like this. "Raker, can you hear me?"
His chest didn't rise and fall, which worried me.
The front door of the shop banged open as Lev rushed in.
"Be careful!" I cried, but it was too late.
The simple blast of wind created by Lev's entrance was too much for Raker's form to take. It crumbled at the hips and then the whole thing collapsed like a Pompeii victim. I leaped back, horrified.
"Was that my alpha?" Lev choked out, staring uncomprehendingly at the black pile on the carpet.
I pointed at the first wolf shifter's body accusingly, but it had completed its degeneration—or mission?—and had melted into an unrecognizable puddle of goo. I wasn't sure a steam cleaner was going to make much of a dent on that.
"That wolf shifter," I said, struggling to understand what I'd just witnessed. "It shot something at Raker that turned him to ash. It killed him, Lev. How could a dead body do that? Is that normal for wolf shifters?"
"No! No, not normal!" Lev was beginning to freak out and I didn't blame him. Besides the fact that his leader had just been killed, there might be those in the pack who would think Lev had deliberately led him to his end.
The door banged open again and I spun to face the stocky shifter with the wild mustache and goatee. He looked at the scene in shock, but only for a moment.
"I claim alpha!"
"Dude, the body's still warm," I shot at him, disgusted.
He bared his teeth at me, all bristle
and attitude. "I claim alpha." He glared at Lev. "Do you challenge me?"
Muscles rippled across Lev's body, but then gradually he calmed down. "No. I do not challenge."
I was relieved to hear it. After seeing all the scars on Raker, being alpha seemed like a hell of a dangerous job. Celestina would see her boyfriend even less frequently than she already did.
With a wolfish grin of triumph, the shifter rushed back outside to challenge the rest of the pack. I wouldn't put it past the guy to fight them while they were blinded.
"I'm so sorry, Lev," I told him as we turned our attention back to the two messes on the floor. "Do you have any idea what happened?"
Rage had tightened his features. I'd never seen him anything less than happy-go-lucky. I felt terrible for it now as I watched his eyes fill with anger and suspicion.
"This is big trick," he growled out. "His smell not right and now we see why. Someone want to attack my alpha and they succeeded." Grief loosened the skin around his mouth. "He was good alpha. Good man. I am sorry this is how he go. He should have died in battle."
"The body turned into something strange, sort of like a mushroom." I motioned at the goopy puddle. "Now it's all melted. Have you ever seen this before?"
"No. Never."
My gut told me it wasn't an accident that my friends and I had stumbled across the shifter body and brought it back here for it to kill Raker. That was what the note was for, right? To stir my curiosity and hook me. And then someone had called Raker here. I was being set up, or at the least I was being used, and I wasn't happy about it. Was that stocky shifter involved? All of this had benefited him without any of the suspicion landing on his doorstep. It had landed on mine. If he truly believed I had killed Raker, he would have gone after me. But he hadn't. He'd run off to claim his place. No doubt later, once the pack had regained their senses, he'd blame everything on me.
"Hey, guys," I called to my friends in the kitchen. Celestina, Christian, and Melanie tentatively came out only to jerk back with alarm at the mess on the floor.
"What is that?" Celestina screeched, horrified. "It's leaking into the padding!"
"That is what remains of our dead shifter." I pointed at the black charcoal. "And that's what remains of Raker after the dead shifter spit something at him."