Darkness Wanes

by Susan Illene

  “I don’t know how you handle so much, Mel.” Aniya sighed.

  Lisette grabbed both our hands, a mischievous sparkle in her eyes. “I recommend ice cream. We used to get through all kinds of tough spots that way.”

  “Says the woman who had the most relationship problems.” I grinned at her. “It’s a miracle we didn’t become the size of Goodyear Blimps from all the men who pissed you off.”

  Lucas cleared his throat, guiding a reluctant Patrick into the living room. The male sensor had an expression of dread on his face that told me he’d rather be anywhere else.

  “I apologize for interrupting,” Lucas said, giving me a rueful look. “But it appears there are more attacks on supernaturals planned in the near future. Patrick has uncovered information you’ll all want to hear.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  Melena

  Aniya, Lisette, and I exchanged worried glances. As much as I wanted to visit with my friends for a while, impending attacks had to take precedence.

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  Patrick shifted on his feet. “I’ve been following their online message boards—the open ones, anyway. They don’t discuss specifics there, but there was a call to arms raised a couple of days ago. I suspect assaults on the supernatural population are about to get a lot worse.”

  “How is it you know about these boards?” I asked, narrowing my eyes at him. It still annoyed me that no one had bothered to inform me about this until tonight.

  He cleared his throat, clearly uncomfortable with being the center of attention in a room full of supernaturals. “The message board was originally set up so sensors could keep in touch with each other. It also served as a way to warn our kind of any dangerous places to avoid. In the last month or so, it’s evolved into something different.”

  I’d never heard of such a website, but before coming to Alaska I’d only known one other sensor—Wanda. Considering she’d planned to sell me to the highest supernatural bidder as soon as I finished high school, she wouldn’t have told me about it. I took a few steps closer to him. “Who is the leader?”

  “His name is Grant Douglas. A couple of years ago, he broke away from a group ran by his father. I have no idea why, but all those guys disappeared a few months back. Grant has since formed his own cult to take their place. There aren’t many sensors willing to follow him, but after the peace spell started coming down, he recruited a lot of humans. He’s teaching them how to find and kill supernaturals.”

  My body turned cold. Lucas lifted a brow, the question obvious in his eyes. The only man Grant could be was my brother, especially since he shared the same last name as my father.

  “Dammit.” I spun around, searching for something to hit. Lucas and Micah had repaired the living room since the attack and replaced the furniture. No way did I want to mess up all their hard work. Unable to find a target, I returned my attention to Lucas. “It has to be him.”

  He dipped his chin. “That is what I believe as well.”

  “I feel like I’m missing something here,” Patrick said, confusion in his voice.

  I paced the room, no longer caring what Emily’s father heard or discovered. “Grant has to be my brother. The one we couldn’t find and capture.”

  Patrick’s eyes rounded. “You guys took down that group? They were huge, and I heard they had a lot of heavy firepower.”

  “We had the Department of Homeland Security helping. Jerome and his people fought, but it wasn’t too hard to capture them,” I said, stopping to look at him. “Tell me you’ve never had any participation with those people and don’t dare try to lie.”

  Whether he lived or not depended on his next words and he knew it. Patrick met my gaze. “Never. Other than commenting a few times on the message boards—before all the trouble began—I’ve avoided them. I only knew about Grant because I went to college with him.”

  “That was also where he met Emily’s mother,” Lucas added.

  “Did they try to recruit you?” I asked.

  “Yes.” He nodded. “But I refused. That’s when I stopped interacting with anyone on the forum.”

  Everything he said so far this evening had been the truth. A part of me wished he’d lied so I had an excuse to get rid of him. He couldn’t have shown up at a worse time. We were all on edge, and Emily was vulnerable to a long-lost father coming into the picture.

  “You’re only watching the forum now? Not talking to the members?”

  “Right,” he confirmed, his expression hardening. “Even if I hadn’t found out about my daughter, I wouldn’t want any part of them.”

  I could sense his resolve and the truth he spoke. Whether I liked it or not, I couldn’t find anything bad about him other than his not entering Emily’s life sooner.

  Speaking of which, she entered the room and grabbed her father’s hand. “Mel, I’ve asked him all kinds of stuff, too. I really think he’s here just for me.”

  She gave me a pleading expression, silently begging me to stop questioning Patrick’s motives and accept him. I supposed there was a certain point where I had to give the man the benefit of the doubt. He’d cooperated with us so far.

  “Alright, we’ll trust him for now.” I pointed a finger at Patrick. “But you will show me these forums. I need to know everything about this cult.”

  “Whatever you need,” Patrick said, glancing down at his daughter. Emily gave him a bright smile. One thing was for certain, she was the one motivating him to work with us.

  Lisette spoke up, “I want to see the website, too. People need to be warned about this.”

  She had a large family back in California to worry about. Pixies tended to have many children, and they formed a sort of clan that lived within a set territory. If a sensor located Lisette’s relatives in the Monterey area and they had humans to fight with them, they could wipe out hundreds of pixies in a short amount of time.

  “Absolutely,” I agreed.

  Her expression turned apologetic. “I might have to leave soon, too. If this is as bad as it sounds, I’ll need to get back to my family.”

  “If you require assistance with travel arrangements, let me know,” Lucas offered. “I can have my plane ready to depart with two hours notice.”

  “Thanks. I’ll probably take you up on that,” Lisette said, casting him a grateful look. Lucas didn’t do that for just anyone, but he knew she was important to me.

  Emily and I jerked our heads toward the front window where we sensed werewolves coming down the road. A few moments later, Patrick tensed. It took a little longer for him to catch on since male sensors only had a quarter-mile range compared to a female’s half-mile. Derrick and Nadine, his second-in-command, were headed our way. They’d also brought a teenage werewolf, Gabby, with them.

  “Did you know they were coming?” I asked Emily. It was her friend showing up with the alpha, after all.

  “No,” she said, sounding rather annoyed about it.

  Lucas and the others stared at me, confused.

  “Derrick and Nadine are almost here,” I explained.

  “And Gabby.” Emily’s eyes flashed. “I told her I didn’t want to talk to her anymore.”

  My jaw dropped. They’d been good friends for years now. “What? When did this happen?”

  “Ask Lucas,” she said, stomping toward the front door. “He’s the one who made her spy on me. Like I wouldn’t figure it out.”

  I rounded on my mate. “Why would you do that?”

  “It had seemed like a good idea at the time.” He didn’t appear the least apologetic.

  “Oh, for God’s sake.” I shot him an annoyed look before following Emily to the door. Couldn’t I leave these people alone for five minutes without everything falling apart?

  Derrick was just pulling his truck up to the house when we came outside. Kerbasi was already out there checking on the new arrivals, but as soon as he saw the vehicle, he muttered something about mangy dogs and headed back to his shack.

  Luc
as, Patrick, and the others followed me down the steps. It wasn’t like the alpha to show up this late without calling first and definitely not with a teenager in tow on a school night. As we approached them, their strong emotions hit my senses like a blast wave with a mixture of anger, frustration, and despair.

  “What happened?” I asked Derrick, hurrying toward him.

  “Another attack.” He put an arm around Gabby. “They hit her house.”

  I shifted my attention to the stricken girl. “Where’s your father?”

  Her lips trembled. “He’s…d-d-dead.”

  “Oh my God, Gabby, I’m so sorry.” Emily pulled her friend from Derrick and wrapped her arms around her.

  The alpha gestured for us to follow him away from the teenagers. Nadine stayed by his side, strutting with self-importance. She was taller than me by several inches, and she had tight compact muscles. Since I’d last seen her, she’d cut her blond hair so that it spiked up now. I didn’t like her all that much—she was the one who’d convinced Derrick to oust Nik from power—but now wasn’t the time to bring up old grudges. We walked far enough across the yard that the girls couldn’t easily overhear us.

  “A group of humans attacked Gabby’s home in Fairbanks a little over an hour ago,” Derrick said in a low tone. “They had rifles and shotguns. There wasn’t enough time for her and her father to escape. He sacrificed himself to give his daughter time to get away.”

  “You got there fast,” I said, glancing back at the girls who were still hugging and crying together. We lived almost forty-five minutes east of Fairbanks. Derrick must have driven straight to my house after picking up the teenager.

  “We were out patrolling the city when she called from a gas station. It didn’t take long to reach her, but she insisted on coming here rather than my place. Her mother is flying in from Seattle in the morning to get her,” he explained, voice gruff with emotion. An alpha was supposed to protect his pack. As the master of a city, he had to look after all supernaturals. It was only natural he’d feel frustration and remorse that one of his werewolves was killed and another traumatized. In his mind, he’d failed to do his duty.

  I gave him a sympathetic look. “The job isn’t as easy as you thought it would be, is it?”

  “No.” He shook his head. “I’m beginnin’ to see why Nikolas had so many problems maintaining the peace. I thought he was just bein’ incompetent.”

  I refrained from pointing out that no leader was perfect, but Nik had done his best.

  “We won’t let it happen again,” Nadine said, squeezing his shoulder.

  I scowled at her. “Don’t lie to him. It’s only going to make him feel that much worse when it does happen again.”

  “You don’t know that.” Her eyes flashed at me.

  “Enough,” Lucas said, his voice cutting through us. “This problem is not restricted to our area—it is occurring all over. With the angels’ peace spell dissolved, humans and supernaturals are attacking each other. No one person can handle the responsibility of resolving the situation.” He gave Derrick and I pointed looks.

  “Hey, I usually get other people to help me,” I defended.

  A black SUV suddenly came racing up the drive. Everyone turned to me.

  “I can’t sense whoever it is so they have to be human,” I answered the unspoken question. I sure wished I knew why my home seemed to be a hub of activity this late at night, but this person would be in for a rude awakening if they planned to cause trouble.

  Kerbasi appeared in the front yard again, ready to do battle. Lucas flashed over to the girls, prepared to defend them if necessary. The rest of us formed a line, waiting to see if the vehicle made it past our protection ward. That would tell us a lot about their true intentions.

  A moment later the SUV got close enough for me to see the government plates. I let out a groan. “Relax. It’s just an agent from the Department of Homeland Security. Nothing to worry about.”

  “That man is annoying,” Nadine said, sneering. “I’m always having to send him away from our gate.”

  With Derrick’s house being the seat of power for supernaturals, I wasn’t surprised O’Connell had tried visiting. Too bad I’d missed the confrontations between the agent and Nadine. There was something perversely amusing about watching two people you didn’t like that much facing off against each other.

  Lisette put her hands on her hips. “What is he doing here?”

  I’d forgotten she hadn’t been around since DHS started their supernatural branch. “I’m supposed to be working for him. It’s a long story.”

  “But you just got back,” Aniya said, getting angry in my defense. She lived at Derrick’s headquarters and had heard all about my working with the agency. “He can’t expect you to return to work right away.”

  “O’Connell is rather dedicated and expects everyone else to be the same way,” I explained. Not that it excused his abominable behavior.

  The agent parked his SUV next to Derrick’s truck and strode toward us. His black hair was slicked back and he wore a navy suit. Even this late at night, he would insist on a professional appearance.

  Kerbasi stopped him before he made it ten feet from his vehicle. “What is your purpose here?”

  “None of your business.” O’Connell glared at the guardian. I was impressed that I didn’t sense a hint of fear coming from the agent, but he probably knew I wouldn’t let Kerbasi hurt him.

  “Your presence is undesirable. If you do not leave the premises, I will consider that permission to do whatever I wish to you. Currently, I’m considering removing that dreadfully pointy nose from your face.”

  O’Connell balled his fists. “I’ve come to speak to Melena.”

  “Do you have an appointment?”

  The agent’s face twisted in annoyance. “I don’t need a…”

  As amusing as this was to watch, I couldn’t let it continue. “Let him through, Kerbasi.”

  “Very well, but I will be keeping my eye on him.” The guardian flashed away, reappearing on the roof.

  The DHS agent twisted around, cursing loudly. He knew Kerbasi could flash away or make himself invisible. Not knowing which undoubtedly bothered him. He gave up trying to locate the guardian and headed toward me. “Melena. We need to talk.”

  I crossed my arms. “Okay, go ahead.”

  “Privately.”

  “Let’s get the girls in the house,” Lisette said, grabbing Aniya.

  They headed toward the teenagers. Once they’d reached them, Lucas flashed over to stand next to me. Derrick and Nadine stayed put. I enjoyed having so many people around to make O’Connell uncomfortable.

  “Looks private enough to me,” I answered.

  He worked his jaw. “You need to come back to work. Violent outbreaks are occurring on an almost daily basis now between humans and supernaturals. Tonight has been worse than usual.” O’Connell glanced at Derrick, who grunted his agreement. “I can’t handle it all without your help, and I’ve waited long enough.”

  “It hasn’t been easy for me lately, either. I assure you,” I replied, annoyed that he’d show up this late expecting me to hop to attention for him. Already, my body was wearing down and I’d only been awake a few hours.

  O’Connell studied me closely. “From what I heard, you were supposed to be in bad shape, but you seem fine to me.”

  “She is only beginning to regain her strength,” Lucas said, glaring down at the agent.

  I appreciated his support, but we both knew I couldn’t sit around much longer. He’d made that point earlier by bringing up the cult group, and the attack on Gabby’s house added to the dilemma. No matter how much I wanted to rest and recuperate, I didn’t have the luxury anymore.

  “Give me two days and I’ll be at the office.” I needed that much time to pull myself together and get all the details from Patrick about my brother’s new group.

  “I better see you then,” O’Connell warned. “You agreed to work with us, and I’m holding you t
o that promise.”

  Lucas stiffened next to me, and Derrick growled. The man was an idiot to push them.

  “I’ll be there, but you might want to get out of here or else I can’t guarantee your safety.”

  O’Connell backed away a couple of steps, finally noticing the danger. He gave me a curt nod. “Good night.”

  No one relaxed until his SUV disappeared down the road. Kerbasi flashed next to us, clucking his tongue. “The things I would do to that man if I was allowed.”

  “Like what?” Nadine cocked her head. She didn’t know better than to encourage him.

  Kerbasi tapped his chin. “Well, first I’d strap him down to a surgical table…”

  “Let’s go check on the girls,” I said to Lucas.

  “Excellent idea.”

  Chapter Twenty

  Lucas

  Lucas guided his SUV through the series of protection spells outside the nerou compound. Emily was right when she pointed out they were rather irritating—though necessary. He much preferred flashing inside when he did not have sensors with him.

  They’d come straight to the facility after dropping Lisette off at the airport. The pixie had not wanted to leave yet, but with her kind they defended themselves best when they worked together. Lisette was also one of her clan’s most skilled fighters. She couldn’t afford to stay away long under the circumstances. Lucas was secretly relieved she’d left since she would have created one more distraction for Melena. He was tired of sharing his mate with so many others.

  “How long did it take to get the protection spells up?” Melena asked as they passed through the compound gate.