Power of Three

by Tymber Dalton

  “Are you home?”

  “Eh, I’m in my rooms, yes.”

  “Are you doing anything?”

  “We’re supposed to eat lunch in a little while. Why?”

  “Is it just you and Colleen there?”

  “Yes, wh—”

  Elain appeared in his living room, silencing him in mid-question. He ended the call and slipped the phone into his pocket. “Hello.”

  “Hiya. Look, I’m sorry, but I need your help. Can you get Lucy to look after Colleen for you for a little while?”

  His gaze narrowed. “We’re going somewhere, I take it?”

  “Yeah. Sorta-kinda.”

  “Let me get Colleen ready and take her downstairs. I’m sure it’ll be fine. I’ll simply tell the truth, that the Seer needs my assistance.”

  “Thanks.”

  He stopped and turned back to her. “Interesting. No snark. Lots of nervousness on your part. No calling me ‘Damocles.’ That all leads me to one conclusion.” His voice turned somber. “How dangerous is this mission?”

  She patted her purse. “While you’re down there, please tell Ortega I asked for him to set you up with a gun. Send him up to talk to me, if he needs to. I’d rather avoid Fiona knowing I’m here.”

  He finally nodded. “Very well,” he quietly said.

  She sat on the couch while she heard Marston talking to Colleen, his now-forced jovial, fatherly tone with her as he got her ready.

  Her innocent, happy toddler-speak in reply.

  Including calling him Daddy.

  Elain closed her eyes. No, she didn’t want to kill Marston. No matter what, not when he had a daughter to take care of. If he was actively still a shit-weasel, yes, she might feel differently.

  But he was a different man now.

  And she couldn’t even claim that she didn’t know that.

  The sucky truth was, she did know that.

  He emerged with her a few minutes later, the toddler brightening when she saw Elain. Elain left her purse on the couch and stood, walking over to give the little girl a kiss on the cheek.

  “Auntie Wain!” Colleen happily exclaimed.

  She smiled. “You are beautiful, Miss Puppykins. Me and your daddy have to run a quick errand. You’ll see him again real soon.”

  Elain’s gaze briefly locked with Marston’s before he headed for the door with the girl.

  While he was gone, Elain pulled out her gun and the extra magazines, as well as her driver’s license, her concealed carry permit, and tucked those into her passport, which she slipped into her back pocket. She left her purse sitting on the couch.

  When Marston returned, he lifted his shirt and handed her a nine millimeter handgun he had tucked inside his waistband. “Let me go change. Jeans?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Right.”

  He returned a few minutes later. Jeans, black pullover shirt, sneakers.

  He’d kept the weight off and was coloring his hair. He didn’t look much like the man in the pictures or video Mercedes had sent Blackie, before she’d mated with Marston. The surveillance she’d done while Marston was still working for Abernathy.

  Elain would feel better if he had a full beard and mustache or something to better hide his features from Lina, but she’d take what she could get.

  Elain returned his gun to him and he tucked it into the back of his waistband before pulling his shirt down over it. “Right. I’m ready, I suppose.”

  “No questions?”

  He shrugged. “It’d only slow us down. I’m sure you’ll tell me what I need to know.”

  “Asolo and Boyd Pardie. And Nardel O’Donnell.”

  Marston’s already somber expression grew even more so. “What happened now?”

  “Long story short, there’s still an impending vision of a nuclear bomb going off. I had a vision about Rodolfo paying them off. I don’t know if those three have any knowledge relating to the nuclear bomb vision or not, but I want to find out. If they know anything about cockatrice in the area.”

  “Let me guess. No one knows you’re here?”

  She gently poked him in the chest. “Only you.” She grinned, but it contained no humor. “Here’s your chance to off me,” she joked.

  He slowly shook his head. “I swore an oath to you, Elain. Other than my oath to Mercedes to raise our child, and actually raising Colleen, there is nothing else for me in my life. I tried to enforce a damned stupid blood oath for centuries, one I didn’t even agree with, and not simply because Rodolfo had leverage over me. Do you honestly think I’d treat this with any less seriousness?

  Now she felt a little…guilty. “Sorry.”

  “It’s quite all right. I understand I’m not your friend and never shall be, your uncle or not.”

  “Let’s go do this,” she said. “Can you think about where they each live?”

  “If they still live where they were, yes.”

  She reached her hand out to him, waiting.

  He stared at it. “Am I returning from this errand?” he quietly asked.

  “I hope to hell so, dude. I have two babies. I don’t need a third right now, no matter how adorable she is.”

  He finally smiled at that and took her hand.

  “Close your eyes and think to me where Asolo lived. Picture it, not just the address. Think about the yard and stuff. Cover, outbuildings, how it smelled, all of that.”

  He did. “He lives in Montana.”

  She closed her eyes and, ignoring the other mental detritus in Marston’s brain, she homed in on what he was thinking.

  That’s when she saw it. There was a thick stand of trees behind the house, toward the back of the property. That’s where she aimed for, and when she felt the air change and her ears popped, she heard Marston’s breath escape him in a whoosh and for a moment she wasn’t sure if he’d faint.

  She opened her eyes. “You all right?” she whispered.

  His eyes were wide. “Yeah,” he whispered back.

  A little reason to be amused, at least. “Faster than flying.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  She squeezed his hand, hoping it reassured him, before letting go. She didn’t want to torture him. He was a father, and she’d gotten her pound of flesh from him by beating the crap out of him that time.

  Frankly, she needed him on his game.

  “Let’s go.” She led the way, heading around the house and relieved there were no dogs running loose in the yard. Asolo Pardie lived on a rural road in a small valley tucked into a set of foothills in Montana.

  No neighbors in sight, and his long driveway curved down and away through more trees, shielding the front of the house from view from the road.

  When she reached the front door, she motioned for Marston to wait just off to the side, facing away from the door.

  Then she ignored the illuminated button for the doorbell and knocked.

  Hard.

  With her fist.

  Elain was about to pound on the door again when it opened. The man she stared at looked to be in his mid-fifties…except she knew he was much, much older than that. He also bore a very creepy resemblance to her father.

  Which only made sense, since he was Liam’s eldest brother.

  “Asolo Pardie?”

  He nodded. “Yes?”

  “Elain. Liam’s daughter. We need to talk.”

  He then saw who was with her and lunged. She’d anticipated this and easily caught his arm, used his momentum against him, and it ended with Asolo on his back on the front walk, Elain’s knee in his chest, and her gun in his face.

  “Look. I know this sounds like a bad TV show cliché, but we can do this the easy way, or the hard way. Now, I can tie you up and call my dad and tell him his older brother is one of the reasons his mate—my mother—died. Because of being a cowardly fuck who took bribes from that rancid taint-wart, Rodolfo Abernathy. Or the three of us can go inside and have a polite chat that doesn’t involve bloodshed or exit wounds.”

  He glared
up at Marston. “You bastard!”

  “Been called worse by better, mate.”

  Elain shoved her gun under Asolo’s chin. “Dude, listen. Believe it or not, in this game of good cop/bad cop, I’m the bad cop.”

  “He murdered her!”

  Marston let out a disgusted snort. “If you mean the woman Rodolfo seduced into talking you into assisting with his schemes, sure. I have pictures of her with Rodolfo, with his cock in her mouth while another man had his up her ass, among others. She was a whore. She wasn’t your One. When Rodolfo threatened her to tell you about what she did, about the money he’d been giving her throughout the years, she helped him talk you into helping him and betraying your own brother.”

  That was almost shocking enough to make Elain turn and look at Marston, but she pretended like she already knew all of that. Somehow, she’d missed all of that while looking through Marston’s mind for info during their initial encounter in fricking Bolivia.

  Then again, the thought that her uncles had actually helped Rodolfo out had sickened her and she hadn’t delved very deeply into the deets.

  Asolo blanched, jaw gaping.

  “Right,” Marston said. “That’s what I thought.”

  They got Asolo up and inside and sitting on his couch before Elain started questioning him. “You were feeding Rodolfo information.”

  Asolo looked like a broken man. “I thought Liam was into something shady. Why else disappear the way he had?”

  “Didn’t cross your mind he was trying to escape an unconscionable oath he never should have had to agree to, huh? To save his baby?”

  Marston stood silently nearby, arms crossed over his chest, but his gun in his right hand.

  “It was a blood oath,” Asolo said. “And he was an Alpha. He knew if he took a mate and had a daughter that he’d have to hand her over.”

  “Yeah, must have been nice knowing you wouldn’t have to hand any of your kids over to an asshole like Rodolfo, huh?”

  “You’re a child! What do you understand about oaths and the old ways?”

  “I understand about family and not turning on them.” She immediately felt like a hypocrite for her words, considering who her current partner in crime was. “He was your brother.”

  “So you’re here to gloat over Marston taking my mate from me, because your mother died? Well, go on, then. Gloat away.”

  It was probably the sneer on his face that did it. She transferred her gun to her left hand and punched the guy in the face with her right.

  His hands flew to his face. “Ow! Fucking bitch!”

  Her Alpha wanted to play, wanted to goad him into running so she could hunt him down.

  And eviscerate him.

  She reined it in. “Warned you I was the bad cop. I want to know what else you know about Rodolfo’s operations and contacts. What kind of information did he share with you? Any cockatrice he’s dealing with?”

  “Go ask him yourself.”

  “Guess you’re out of the information loop, huh? I would ask him myself, but he’s dead. Thanks to Ortega Montalvo and the jaguars. I’m sure they’d love to talk to someone who was a sympathizer to that asshole. You know Rodolfo raped his own niece and then killed her by cutting her baby out of her, right? Raised the baby as his own?”

  Asolo’s skin couldn’t have turned any whiter if Elain had slit his throat and bled him out right there on his carpet.

  Which she was sorely tempted to do.

  “What?”

  “Oh, you didn’t hear that either, huh? Yeah, Rodolfo was a class act, all right. By the way, I know exactly how Rodolfo died. Slowly, and in a lot of pain. Because the woman Rodolfo killed was Ortega’s daughter-in-law. I’m sure if I ask Ortega for a repeat performance, and tell him exactly what you did, that he’d be happy to help me out. Me being their Clan Seer and all. And he’s the godfather of my oldest child.”

  Asolo swallowed hard. “All right, fine. I heard Rodolfo talking once on the phone when I went to see him to receive a payment in exchange for some rumors I’d dug up. When he finished, he was talking to one of his guys about a Carl Shupe in Maine. About contacting him. Apparently they had an information exchange going on. Carl Shupe didn’t know who Rodolfo was, though. Rodolfo said Shupe thought he was dealing with a cockatrice who was infiltrating Rodolfo’s operation. That’s what Rodolfo told me, but I don’t know how true that is.”

  She looked at Marston.

  “Rodolfo was wily,” Marston told her. “I’m surprised he could keep everything straight. He did, in the past, pretend to be someone he wasn’t, feed real information that could be verified, information he didn’t care if it got out or not, to add to the veracity. I wasn’t privy to all of Rodolfo’s schemes, but that certainly rings true to me.”

  Elain knew she could easily confirm the truth simply by grabbing the guy’s wrist and looking through his brain, but she was trying to avoid that.

  Frankly, she didn’t want to touch him like that if she didn’t have to.

  “Tell me what you know about New Madrid, Missouri.”

  “What? Where the hell is that?”

  “You’ve never heard of it?”

  “No.”

  “Anything about Missouri at all?”

  “No.”

  “Who else are you involved with?”

  He vigorously shook his head. “That was all. Just Rodolfo. Considering the blood oath, I thought it best I work with him. Keep the peace.”

  “You mean be a coward.”

  “To be fair,” Marston said, “Rodolfo could be pretty persuasive in various ways both pleasant and not, even without using threats of force or coercion.”

  “I don’t need your help!” Asolo screamed at him.

  Elain punched him again.

  Marston snorted and pointed at Elain. “Then by all means, continue to piss off a woman who is not only an Alpha wolf who literally ripped Paul Abernathy’s nuts off, but she’s also the Clan Seer, and is part of the new Triad, and who—again, literally—helped make a house disappear.”

  Shock filled Asolo’s face, even around where he was holding his hands over his bleeding nose.

  Elain gave him a toothy, wolfish grin and waggled her fingers at him. “Hiya, Uncle Asolo. Oh, I should add that I sorta-kinda have a grudge against anyone who contributed to my mother’s death.”

  She handed her gun off to Marston, mostly because at this point she wasn’t so sure she might not use it on Asolo. Then she returned to the man.

  As he cowered back against the sofa, she grabbed his left wrist and held on tighter than she needed to.

  Tight enough to make him think twice about trying something.

  At first, she fought a wave of nausea as she stumbled through his thoughts. His grief, his guilt, his shame over realizing who she was and what he’d contributed to.

  She didn’t dig deep, only wanting confirmation of his involvement with Rodolfo and that he wasn’t working with cockatrice.

  He was not an honorable or innocent wolf, and he was a shitstain. He’d actually suspected his mate had been fucking around on him…and had used taking the money from Rodolfo as a way to keep punishing her, knowing Rodolfo would debase her further.

  At least Marston had a certain code he lived by. He might have been a shit-weasel, but at least you knew where you stood with him.

  This guy…Elain was ashamed to be related to him by blood.

  And on the point about further knowledge, at least, he was telling the truth.

  Now she also understood why, despite her father asking him and Boyd both about getting together since his return, they’d found any and every excuse to avoid it.

  They couldn’t look him in the eyes.

  Or her.

  She released him and stepped back, wiping her hand against the leg of her jeans before holding her hand out for the gun. When Marston returned it to her, Asolo started begging.

  “Please don’t kill me!”

  “I’m not going to kill you, asshole. Don�
��t be stupid. I’d rather let you live. You’re already a miserable fuck. That’s punishment enough right there.”

  She turned and headed for the front door, Marston silently following in her wake.

  It surprised her to realize not only had she handed her gun to Marston, leaving her essentially defenseless, but here she was for a second time walking ahead of him, turning her back on him despite knowing he was armed.

  Trusting him.

  She turned at the front door and pointed at Asolo. “If my dad ever invites you to Florida, or to Maine, or to a Gathering, or to a fucking Labor Day sale at the Dollar General, find any and every excuse not to come. I catch you within a mile of Joss or my kids, or any of our family, I’ll rip your goddamned throat out.”

  She stormed through the door, Marston leaving it standing open behind them.

  She grabbed his hand and, knowing Asolo could see them from where he still cowered on his couch, poofed them back to Marston’s rooms.

  In fricking Bolivia.

  He let out a relieved breath. “Round two?”

  “In a minute. I need a minute.” She walked over to his counter and laid her gun down. Then she leaned against the counter with both hands, taking in deep gulps of air to clear out the stench of Asolo’s shame and fear from her lungs. His whole house had smelled of it.

  “Now I know why he never filed any kind of motion for assistance with Jocko or Blackie after you killed his mate,” she said, her voice shaky.

  “I’m sorry,” Marston said.

  “Why?” She finally felt strong enough to straighten and turn. “You didn’t do this.”

  “Actually, I did.”

  “I meant you didn’t betray my father. Well, not like he did. Would have done.”

  “Finding out the truth about someone always hurts.”

  That was far more ironic than he probably realized. “You mean like realizing you can’t kill someone you wanted to make slowly explode from the inside out because they are, at their core, a decent person who made some bad past choices?”

  When she laughed, he laughed with her. “Not the example I was going for, but touché.”

  She picked up her gun. “I guess I’m ready to go to Boyd’s.” She hesitated before taking hold of Marston’s hand. “Any warnings?”