Bone Coven

by D. N. Hoxa

  I almost picked up the phone to call my aunt many times, but I stopped myself. I’d given my word to Peterson that I wouldn’t talk about what he told me with anyone. I’d also signed the non-disclosure agreement. Still, this case was too similar to what had happened with the Bone coven ten years ago. Eventually, I was going to have to dig into that some more.

  The software Finn provided for his agents, which mimicked the human police system—paranormals were never that good with technology—could find people in seconds. The one I used, created by a human hacker, didn’t have the exact same fields as Finn’s program—like Kind and Coven or Pack—but using the names of the kidnapped witches, I was able to find pictures of all three of them. God, they were so young. All looked younger than me, except Austin Jr., and he wasn’t a day over thirty, either. My skin crawled at the thought that their dead bodies could be found anywhere at any time. I shook that thought away fast. I didn’t need that kind of negativity right now.

  The people who’d seen werewolves leaving Austin Jr.’s house had no further description other than they were all in their animal form. The werewolves I knew only shifted into their animals in a fight, just like Ralph Martinez had done with me, though he’d done it in broad daylight and in a human populated area, which was very much against the law. For the life of me, I couldn’t figure out why these kidnappers would shift to kidnap someone. The human body was much better equipped for that than a giant half-human, half-wolf.

  I debated speaking to the two main wolf packs in the States but decided against it. If both Finn’s agents and the ECU were on this case, they already spoken to every pack around and came up empty-handed. I just didn’t get it. If the ECU’s werewolves were in on this and werewolves were to blame, how were they not found by now?

  Something smelled very fishy about the whole thing.

  There was only one werewolf I could speak to who could have something of use to tell me. I had no doubt that Finn’s agents and the ECU had spoken to him, too, but my gut was telling me I needed to see him.

  Xander Ramos was the leader of a group of packless wolves. They didn’t operate like normal packs did, where the Alpha called all the shots, and every member of the pack followed his rules. Xander’s group was full of independent wolves who did what they pleased most of the time, as long as they didn’t get in trouble with the ECU and the other packs, and as long as they reported back to Xander. No idea who came up with the stupid system, or what wolf was stupid enough to agree to it, but it had worked for them for the past four years now, so they must have been doing something right.

  Xander was a rumor junkie. There wasn’t a thing he didn’t know about his wolves and the other packs. His currency was information. I’d been lucky to work for him my first year with Finn. Xander’s rules were pretty simple: you fuck up, you die. Two of his werewolves had fucked up by picking fights with wolves of other packs repeatedly. I was sent in to take care of business by taking both the werewolves back to the ECU where they’d be imprisoned. I did so, proudly. I wasn’t even angry that Xander hit on me the whole time. I spoke to him about it.

  Now, it looked like the time had come to pay him another visit. And I knew just the information to give him to make him tell me everything he knew.

  ***

  Xander Ramos lived comfortably in a fancy apartment building in the Upper East. Most of the wolves from his group were scattered outside of Manhattan, but he didn’t give a shit. Another reason why he was no Alpha, and his group was no pack. A real pack stuck together, the Alpha and his wolves.

  When I got there, it was almost noon. I’d never been to his place before, so when I saw the werewolf playing doorman by the door of the building, I was very much surprised. The man was big, shoulders wide and fists huge. His dark brown eyes scanned every person that walked by the building. I already knew that this wasn’t going to be a pleasant experience, and when I stopped in front of him, the low growl that came from his throat confirmed it.

  “Are you lost, fairy?” He said the last word as if it were a curse word rather than a name.

  With a roll of my eyes, I let it go. No point in arguing with every dumb wolf who thought he knew what the hell he was doing.

  “Nope. I’m here to see Xander. Fetch him for me, will ya?” I grinned just to spite him.

  His brown eyes grew wide and his jaw clenched tightly—signs that he didn’t believe me. “If you don’t disappear right now, I will break your face,” he hissed.

  Good for him. “You can certainly try,” I said with a dry laugh. “But seriously, though. I need to speak to Xander immediately.”

  The wolf took a menacing step toward me. My beads buzzed with excitement. They missed the action, too. “Get. Lost.”

  “We can do this all day long, wolf. I’ve got nothing but time. Or, you can give Xander a call and tell him Winter Wayne is here for him, and I’ll be out of your fur for good,” I said and raised a brow. “What’s it gonna be?”

  The fists by his sides opened and closed as he thought about what I said. He might have been a packless wolf, but even Xander didn’t want any drama in public. I wasn’t going to leave without a fight, and he knew better than to pick one with a fairy. When he finally nodded, though suspicion still sparkled in his eyes, I let out a sigh. Time was already wasting.

  “Stay here,” the wolf ordered, then took a second to just stare at me.

  Um…was that supposed to scare me? Because it didn’t.

  Still, I said nothing and let him get inside the apartment building. When he closed the glass door behind him, he turned to give me another one of those looks. I almost laughed. What was up with this guy? Did someone tell him he was intimidating or something? If they did, they were damn liars.

  With a phone to his ear, the wolf’s lips began to move as he spoke, his eyes still stuck on me. For his pleasure, I smiled like the world was on fire, and I had the match that lit it. I saw the second his eyes widened in surprise. Instinctively, my eyes moved to his lips.

  But she’s a fairy. I was willing to bet my life that that’s what he said. And then another wave of shock hit him when Xander probably told him to let me in. It felt like I’d conquered the damn world when the wolf opened the door for me and nodded to tell me to step inside.

  “See why you don’t want to be a rude asshole to people? You might bite your words sooner than you think.” I had to say it. I just had to.

  Clenching his teeth, the wolf growled again. “Filthy fairy,” he hissed, and the hatred in his voice almost made me dizzy. I still didn’t let it affect the smile on my face. I just stopped in front of him and crossed my arms to wait for further instructions. But the wolf didn’t say anything else. He just turned around and walked to the other side of the lobby, and I followed.

  The elevator doors opened the second he pressed the silver button. Then he stepped inside and pressed something on the panel before coming back out.

  “Thank you, wolfy,” I said with a grin and got inside the car. Penthouse. Xander lived in a penthouse. Much better than I expected.

  I held the wolf’s fiery eyes until the doors swung closed. When they finally did, I let out a loud sigh. Keeping my cool around people like that was getting harder by the day. It almost made me want to use every ounce of magic I had, just to look like the old me again. I dreamed about it more often than I liked to admit, too. But I was still determined.

  My stomach rolled the closer we got to the twenty-second floor—and Xander’s penthouse. The last time the werewolf had seen me, I’d looked like a witch. I had no doubt he’d heard about my transformation, and the fact that he agreed to see me did not mean that he didn’t care. No, he either wanted something from me, or he was curious to see me himself. I was betting on the latter.

  When the doors slid open with a cling, a narrow corridor was in front of me. With half my attention focused on my beads, I walked forward. I had no idea what could be waiting for me in there, but whatever it was, I was prepared for it. I had my gun, my knives, an
d my beads with me in case Xander tried something funny.

  What I didn’t expect was butt naked females sleeping on the white leather couch. Two of them. The grey satin sheets didn’t really cover anything. Their clothes were all over the floor, covered in a white carpet that was stained with everything you could imagine—and burned, too. Nothing was in its place, or so it seemed to me. It looked like a party had happened there the night before.

  “Winter Wayne,” someone said from my right. When I turned, I found Xander Ramos looking at me, a huge smile on his face. His light eyes were enough to keep a smart person on edge when in his presence. He looked like an evil little bully with a very rich daddy, and the blue suit strengthened that impression further.

  “Hello, Xander,” I said, feeling uncomfortable all of a sudden. At least he was dressed.

  “I can hardly believe my eyes,” he said as he pretended to fix the silver cuffs on his sleeves and walked slowly over to me.

  “Whatever you’re going to say, I’ve heard it all before, Xander. I’m here for business, so spare me.” Maybe the doorman wolf guy had gotten to me more than I realized because suddenly I was feeling a lot more pissed off.

  “That’s no way to speak to your host,” he said, flashing me his white teeth. “I thought we were friends, aren’t we?”

  I rolled my eyes. “No, we aren’t. I don’t befriend assholes, remember?” That was exactly what I’d said to him the last and only time I’d seen him.

  Xander laughed as if I were the funniest person on the planet. “Good to see this…horror is only superficial. You haven’t lost your sense of humor.”

  “I wasn’t kidding,” I said with a smile, but he continued to laugh like I hadn’t say anything at all.

  “I’d invite you to sit down, but I don’t really want to.” Xander wrinkled his nose.

  “That’s okay. Sitting on top of naked women isn’t really my thing, anyway.” The smaller couch was free save for some clothes, but I didn’t mention that.

  “I assure you it’s much more fun than you think,” he whispered, that mischievous grin lighting up his whole face.

  “Like I said, I’m here on business.”

  Pressing his lips together, he sat on the small couch without bothering to put the clothes away. “I don’t know if you heard, but I don’t work with fairies, Winter Wayne. I’m deeply sorry.” Sorry, my ass.

  “Of course you do. You wouldn’t have let me up if you didn’t.”

  “You can’t blame a wolf for wanting to see you.” He shrugged. “It’s not every day that a witch turns to fairy.”

  “You’re full of shit, Xander,” I said, laughing.

  “I’m just a professional.”

  I rolled my eyes and made sure he saw. “You’re an asshole who would sell his own mother for the right price.” I knew it. He knew it. There was nothing he could say to that, so I continued. “And I’ve got an offer you won’t be able to refuse.”

  His left brow shot up. Curiosity filled his eyes. “You do?”

  “It’s so good, you should be drooling right now.”

  Clapping his hands, Xander dragged his ass closer to the edge of the couch. “You don’t want a werewolf drooling for too long, my lovely fairy,” he said.

  See how quickly I went from filthy to lovely? Record fucking time.

  “Except in this case.” He was not going to get anything from me without telling me what he knew first. “I need something from you first.”

  Xander arched a brow. “You want to know about the Green coven kidnappings.”

  Not surprising. Like I said, the wolf was a rumor junkie. Nodding, I began to walk around the glass table full of stuff, and if I wasn’t mistaken, full of cocaine, too.

  “Who’s doing it?”

  The werewolf bit his bottom lip and took a second to think about it. His answer was disappointing, though. “I don’t know.”

  “Oh, Xander, you naughty little wolf. You’re going to have to do much better than that.” He’d taken too long to think about an answer. That alone told me that he knew something.

  “The Brighams are on it and so are the Kaynes,” he said with a sigh, but I already knew that. The Brigham and Kayne packs were the biggest in the country. They were also very tight with the ECU. They provided the soldiers I spent so much time running from and fighting (killing) two months ago, only because there were no better fighters out there than a lot of werewolves—together. “Your former employer, too. It makes me wonder where you’re coming from,” Xander said, but his real question was: who sent you?

  Peterson’s face and his green eyes came to my mind. “Right from my office,” I said with a grin. “Go ahead and talk. I’m all ears.”

  But Xander laughed instead, and he didn’t sound so entertained anymore. “Why should I trust a fairy?” He spit the words like he was disgusted. I was right back to square one.

  “I’m also a witch, if you need the reminder. And you shouldn’t trust me, but do trust your greed to know the secret I’m keeping. It won’t lead you astray.”

  “At least tell me what it’s about,” he insisted, just like I knew he would. No harm in sharing a little bit of my secret, I guessed.

  “It’s about something that has no business existing here on Earth, but does.” Wiggling my brows, I watched as the curiosity turned his light eyes darker.

  Finally, he smiled, and his smile brought the face of a snake to my mind. “None of mine have heard anything about the alleged kidnapper werewolves,” he whispered reluctantly as if he was already regretting telling me this. “All I can tell you is what I told the others who came here asking questions like they fucking own me: whoever they are, those werewolves aren’t from here. And I’m not even talking about their size.”

  “Their size?” Peterson didn’t mention anything about size.

  “Yes, size. Those wolves are a lot smaller than average.” Xander seemed to be sweating as he folded his hands on his lap.

  “That’s it?”

  “That’s it,” he confirmed with a nod.

  I grinned. “How do you know?”

  Narrowing his brows, he shrugged. “How do I know what?”

  “The size, Xander. How do you know that they’re smaller than average?”

  The werewolf just stared at me for a long second, never even blinking. It made me very uncomfortable.

  “The ECU told—”

  “Bullshit.” If the ECU knew about this before they interrogated Xander, Peterson would have known, too. “Don’t lie to me.”

  Leaning back on the couch, Xander’s eyes moved down to his lap. “They were seen leaving.”

  That’s more like it. “Where and by who?”

  “Delaware. Two of my wolves spotted four wolves running. All they could tell me was that they looked smaller than normal and, I’m quoting here, ‘not exactly right’.”

  Left speechless for a second, I just looked at the guy. What the hell kind of question was I supposed to ask now?

  “Not right how? How would they even know?”

  Xander smiled. “Because they’re werewolves. Could you tell the difference between yourself and an unusual fairy?”

  Flinching, I looked away. “What wasn’t right about them?”

  “The size.” Xander rolled his eyes. “Do those pointy ears still work?”

  “You’re not giving me anything to go on here.”

  That information was not something I could use. It wasn’t going to lead me anywhere. For all I knew, Xander’s wolves could have been too far to see properly, or they were drunk as fuck when they saw the werewolves running.

  “It’s more than everybody else knows, for now,” Xander said with a sigh.

  “You disappoint me.” I thought he’d know more. Now, I was going to have to give Finn a call, and I definitely wasn’t looking forward to that.

  “Look, this doesn’t mean that I won’t find out more. I’ll share every update I get with you,” Xander said.

  That was exactly what I want
ed to hear.

  “I’ve got a new number.” I was going to pull out my phone, but he waved for me to stop.

  “I’ve got your new number,” he mumbled. “Now give me mine?”

  “If you don’t call me first about even the smallest detail, I’ll destroy you with the very secret I’m going to give you.”

  Xander smiled like the lunatic he was. “Please do.”

  This was it. I was using the only thing I had that this werewolf wanted and I could very well lose my head over it, but it was worth it. Anything at all to solve my first case and make my place in the world.

  “The ECU has dragon blood powder from actual dragons from the Fairy realm.”

  The werewolf opened his mouth, but no sound came out for a second. “You’re kidding.”

  “I’m not kidding. And if they know you know, you’re a dead wolf.” Maybe that was stretching it. I knew and they hadn’t killed me yet, but only because they believed me to be harmless. Nothing wrong with scaring Xander Ramos a bit, though. “So, if you don’t call me first…”

  “Yeah, yeah, you’ll tell on me, but if you know and you’re still alive…” Xander shrugged. The bastard.

  “Are you a fairy, too?” I raised my brows though I wasn’t sure if he was going to buy my act. In the end, though, it didn’t matter. He moved on, and so did I. If I’d have trouble about this in the future, I’d cross that bridge when I got there.

  “What does it do? Why is it a secret?” he asked.

  My grin told him everything he needed to know. “You’re going to have to find that out yourself.”

  Xander loved a challenge. His eyes sparkled.

  “Also, if you tell on me, we’ll both be dead. We don’t want that, do we?”

  He shook his head, smiling. “No, we don’t.”

  Word on the street was that Xander Ramos organized some of the biggest heists in the country. There was never any evidence tying anything to him, but those rumors had to be based on something. I wouldn’t be surprised if he tried to steal the dragon blood from the ECU. In fact, I’d be glad. That blood had been Julian’s, and though I’d had to return it to keep the whole world off my back, it didn’t mean I liked to know the ECU board members had it.