by Chant, Zoe
What would it be like if he really were to pin her up against one of the trees? She’d have rough bark at her back, but Colby’s smooth, hard chest in front of her. His work-roughened hands would stroke her, freeing her from her bra—
She didn’t know that she’d ever been so turned on in her life. She hadn’t even known it was possible to get this aroused without so much as a kiss.
“You feel like velvet,” Colby said.
“You feel like... you feel amazing,” Aria said breathlessly.
She was more of a pictures girl than a words girl.
He traced the shape of her mouth with his thumb, looking as hypnotized as if he thought her lips were perfectly soft and smooth and colored even without a trace of lipstick on. His dark blue eyes showed something beyond desire and beyond fascination.
Aria had always liked the idea that a picture captured a thousand words. Most photographers did. When you were faced with something like the Grand Canyon—or your own newborn child—what words could possibly do the sight justice?
She had that same feeling now. She knew she was committing every detail of Colby’s face to memory.
“Let’s save the first kiss for when we’re on the other side of all this,” Colby said.
That made sense. They shouldn’t be getting distracted.
But God, she wanted to kiss him. She really did.
At least he had said first kiss, like he was hoping there would be many more after it. With something like that to wait for, she could put up with a little delayed gratification.
“You’re giving me a lot of motivation to help you find this fugitive,” Aria said.
Colby laughed softly. “Imagine how motivated I am.”
He brushed back a few loose strands of her hair and then finally—disappointingly—let his hand fall to his side.
“Okay. Back to business with a smile on my face. Where did you go from here?”
Aria pointed, and the two of them went on picking their way through the woods.
She had a smile on her face too, but thoughts of Eli Hebbert couldn’t help but creep back in as she retraced her steps from that morning.
She was reassured by the sound of birdsong—usually animals had a kind of sixth sense for trouble and quieted down or scattered if anything bad was happening. Maybe it was silly, but she felt like they would have known enough to get the jitters around Hebbert. She definitely couldn’t remember them being this peppy earlier.
Now, though, the birds and squirrels were having the time of their lives. They were probably over the moon about the park rangers having gotten all those noisy, clumsy, interfering humans out of their preserve.
All but two, anyway, Aria thought. But they know we don’t mean any harm.
Her hand dropped down to check the gun Colby had loaned her. Its weight was reassuring.
If they weren’t alone in the woods, then at least they were prepared.
One more turn around a little dip full of wildflowers brought them right to the spot where Aria had come face-to-face with Eli the Homicidal Werewolf.
“This is it.” She looked around and saw nothing but grass and trees. “I feel like I should apologize for it not being more exciting.”
“Don’t,” Colby said.
He sounded distracted, and Aria noticed that he was scanning the horizon.
Not that there was much horizon to scan in a place where the trees grew so thickly. But she couldn’t shake the weird feeling that Colby was seeing further than she was.
When he took a few steps forward, she noticed that he even walked more quietly than she did, too. There was no sound of squelching mud or snapping twigs or rustling grass.
It would have been eerie in anyone else, but with him, she found it reassuring. She was actually relieved by this half-baked sense that he was some kind of Superman masquerading as a Clark Kent.
He silently motioned for her to follow him, so she did, even though her own footsteps sounded incredibly noisy in comparison.
It took her a while to see what he’d picked up on almost a quarter mile back. There was a curtain of leaves ahead of them, one that was just a little too thick and opaque to be completely natural. It looked like someone had woven a dense screen out of leaves, branches, pine needles, and maybe even blackout fabric.
From far away—to anyone but Colby—it would look like just another cluster of trees.
Up close, it was like the camouflaged entrance to a clubhouse.
Colby put out one hand in a “halt” gesture, and then pointed at his chest and then at the screen of leaves. He wanted to go ahead of her.
Aria shook her head fervently. No way.
He raised his eyebrows at her. Yes way.
She shook her head again and tapped the butt of her gun: I can watch your back.
He took out his badge, which felt like cheating: I’m a US Marshal. Stay put.
Aria made a face. She had no real way to argue with that.
Colby smiled at the sight of her wrinkling her nose, and then he leaned forward a little and took her hand. He raised it to his lips and pressed a soft, sweet kiss against her fingers.
Oh. So this is why people swoon.
Eli Hebbert could be right behind that curtain, shifted into his wolf form and salivating at the thought of tearing them to pieces—but even Aria’s fear couldn’t drown out the intensity of Colby’s mouth on her bare skin.
But that didn’t mean her brain didn’t snap into gear the second he passed through the curtain of leaves.
She drew her gun automatically, keeping it at her side. She was straining so hard to hear anything that might be happening on the other side of the curtain that she thought, for a second, she was imagining things.
Then she definitely heard something. And, thankfully, it wasn’t a wolf snarl.
It wasn’t Colby’s voice either, and it wasn’t Eli’s.
It also wasn’t polite.
She was relieved to hear it followed up by Colby saying, loud and clear, “It’s okay. You can come through.”
Aria crashed through the barrier immediately, wincing as the slimy leaves brushed her face. She had to wipe some of their drippiness out of her eyes before she could clearly see Colby again.
She’d been right that he wasn’t alone. But it was hard to think that the skinny, sullen-looking teenager sitting on the fallen log was any threat to him. Aria could see why he’d known it was safe to tell her to join them.
She was sure he’d already seen Hebbert’s mug shot, but just in case, she said, “This isn’t him.”
The boy squinted at them. Aria, who wore contact lenses, knew that particular squint firsthand: the kid was nearsighted and doing his best to compensate for it.
He said, “You’re looking for Eli?”
“That’s right,” Colby said.
“He left me behind,” the kid said glumly. “I couldn’t keep up.”
He scratched at his left leg, and that was when Aria noticed that it was twisted somehow. He must have meant that he walked with a limp, and Eli had ditched him rather than have his flight from the law literally slowed down.
One of the wolves she’d seen that morning had had a lame leg.
Was this him? That wolf had had reddish-brown fur, and this kid’s tangle of hair was about the same color.
And he was slightly built and toothpick-skinny. She remembered that she’d been able to see the smaller wolf’s ribs.
Plus, she could smell that doggy odor again.
She looked around, taking in the full sight of the clearing that the green curtain had protected.
People had clearly been camping in this spot for a while. In addition to the wet-dog smell, there was the clinging scent of woodsmoke from a dozen old campfires. And there was a thick carpet of litter on the ground—candy bar wrappers, egg cartons, rotting banana peels, beer and soda cans.
They were lucky it hadn’t been windy lately, or a sudden flood of Almond Joy wrappers would have tipped someone off to their hiding
place.
Eli Hebbert was a murderer and a werewolf and eighteen different kinds of trouble, but apparently Aria could still spare some outrage for him littering a nature preserve.
Even aside from all the food wrappers, there was something about the campsite that struck her as subtly wrong. It took another slow look around for it to sink in.
There were signs of past campfires, but there weren’t any tents or sleeping bags. If Eli had cleared out of the place in such a hurry that he hadn’t even bothered to take his friend with him, would he really have bothered hauling out a ton of camping gear?
But he’d clearly been living here, judging by the mess he’d left behind.
And then Aria noticed three oval lumps of grass and leaves. They were gathered into roughly dog-bed-like shapes... assuming your dog was almost the size of a small horse.
If you knew what you were looking at—if you were Aria and knew about both the ordinary reality of camping and the shocking reality of werewolves—the clearing might as well have had a sign up: SUPERNATURAL CREATURES LIVE HERE.
They were standing in a werewolf home base. Talking to a werewolf.
And only she knew what was really going on. Which meant she’d have to be the one to pry the right information out of this kid, so she needed to start talking.
She stepped forward and put her hands on her hips, hoping that it made her look authoritative. It was a pose that worked with Mattie, but Mattie was eight. And human.
“Where was Eli going?” Aria said.
“I don’t know,” the kid said. “He wouldn’t tell me.”
“Are you two family?” Colby asked.
He sounded almost casual, but Aria could see that he was paying an incredible amount of attention to the answer.
“He’s my cousin.”
“And the two of you, you know, take after each other?”
“Uh, yeah. I guess.”
The kid looked confused. Aria couldn’t blame him. Since they already knew what Eli looked like, what was Colby trying to figure out here? He was messing up her attempt at a werewolf interrogation.
She broadened her stance even more, hoping she’d strike a vibe between tough Old West gunslinger and disappointed mom. If one half didn’t work on the boy, the other half might.
She just had to hope he would be smart enough to figure out what she was really asking him.
She chose her words carefully.
“I saw your cousin earlier. He probably mentioned that.”
The kid’s eyes widened until they were almost the size of saucers.
“You’re her? Then you—”
“—know exactly how dangerous your cousin is,” she finished for him.
A split second later, it occurred to her that she would have been better off seeing if the kid would blurt out the whole furry werewolf truth on his own. It would have given her a safe way to broach the subject with Colby without seeming nuts.
Protecting the half-assed code of their conversation had been sheer, dumb instinct. It was like they were playing a game of Taboo and she didn’t want to lose.
“And,” Aria said, “I know about Eli’s dog.”
“Dog?”
Colby cut in there, his voice as sharp as a razor: “She saw a big dog around your cousin, kid.”
The boy wrapped his arms around himself. The movement stretched his shirt at the shoulders, widening a hole near the collar.
“I’m eighteen, you know,” he said sullenly. “You don’t have to keep calling me kid.”
“I asked you your name when I came in here,” Colby said. “Sorry if I didn’t think ‘fuck you’ was the actual answer to the question. Is that what I’m supposed to be calling you instead?”
The kid actually cracked a smile at that, and it changed the whole look of his face. Without that fug of fear and glumness hanging over him, he was actually cute, in a puppyish kind of way. The smile showed off a chipped front tooth and put a lively light in his clear green eyes.
“Only my friends call me Fuck You,” the kid said. “You can call me Luke.”
“I’m going to have to keep my distance and make sure we don’t become buddies, then, Luke,” Colby said. “Because I like one of those names a lot more than the other. Now, my friend was asking you a question about a dog.”
“Are you gonna tell me your names?”
“I’ll tell you mine. Deputy US Marshal Colby Acton. You can call my friend by whatever cool alias she wants to pick.”
She tried not to feel smug about him letting her choose her own alias. (But she was willing to bet actual witnesses under US Marshal protection never got that same privilege.)
One thing was for sure: she wasn’t going to go with her old high school nickname of “Granola Breath.” Instead, she’d go with the person her high school self would have killed to be.
“You can call me Ororo Munroe.”
Colby looked delighted. “Oh, Storm. Very cool.”
“Oriole?” Luke said. He looked genuinely confused. “Like the baseball team?”
“Ororo Munroe,” Aria said, emphasizing the syllables so he would catch it this time. “She’s Storm from the X-Men, the one who controls the weather.”
It felt appropriate for a day that had already featured a big thunderstorm.
“Oh, yeah, the one Halle Berry played in the older movies,” Luke said, perking up. “She was a total badass.”
“Older movies,” Colby muttered. “God, kid, you make me feel like I’m a hundred years old.”
“Try having kids,” Aria said. “You’ll feel like you’re a thousand.”
Luke did the universal teenage eyeroll at that, and it made Aria think about how funny it was that he had known the X-Men reference at all. As far as she could tell, he lived in the middle of the woods and spent at least as much time on four legs as he did on two.
But unlike Eli, he’d bothered to get dressed once he’d turned human again. And he’d visibly brightened at the chance to just talk about a superhero movie.
Maybe it was a chance for him to be just a normal kid.
Aria softened her approach. Now that she knew him a little better, she didn’t think intimidation would do anything but remind him of his cousin.
“You’re right, though,” she said. “Storm was a total badass. If I were really Ororo Munroe, I wouldn’t worry about running into your cousin again. If he made one wrong move: zap.”
She flicked her fingers like she was tossing out a bolt of lightning.
“But instead I’m just me, and I’m a little scared of your cousin, Luke.”
“Because of his ‘dog,’” Luke said, practically putting the word in air-quotes.
“Right. His big, scary attack dog.”
Luke started to say something, and then he turned to Colby. He was sniffling like he had a cold, and then his eyes widened.
“Hey, you’re—”
“Not what we’re talking about right now,” Colby said crisply. “Answer Ororo’s question.”
“Eli would tear me apart if he knew I talked to you,” Luke said.
Suddenly all the ridiculous, frustrating humor drained out of the situation. There was no doubt he believed what he was saying.
Luke added, “He hates me anyway, because of my leg.”
“Because of your leg?” Aria said.
“I was born with a clubfoot. They did some shit to it with casts and stuff, but it never straightened all the way out. I mean, I can walk, but not that fast. Eli says that if we were really in the wild, I’d have died from it before I was even a year old.”
He didn’t even sound angry. He said it like he was just reciting some basic lesson that had been drilled into him since birth: the gospel of Eli Says.
“Good thing we’re not in the wild, then,” Colby said. “Because there are a lot of people who have done the world a lot of good who would have been dead before they were a year old.”
He’d gotten cool and composed—Aria could detect the anger simmering beneath
the surface there. He was controlling it, she realized, because he wasn’t angry at her or at Luke. He was angry at Eli Hebbert, and that was fuel he might as well save for later.
“Plus, I need glasses,” Luke said.
“So wear glasses,” Colby said. “Girls dig glasses.”
“We do,” Aria added for good measure.
Luke shook his head. “Eli broke them. He says I’m just extra baggage.”
“He’s wrong.”
Luke gave them a sad, slanting smile. “Yeah, well, you can put that on my gravestone when he kills me for giving you two the time of day.”
“Eli’s not going to find out you talked to us,” Colby said calmly. “I won’t let him.”
“You couldn’t stop him. He always gets what he wants.”
“Couldn’t stop him? Which one of us is here and which one ran away with his tail between his legs? I’m chasing Eli. He’s the one running away.”
Luke shook his head. “He’s chasing too.”
“Who’s he chasing?” Aria said.
Luke looked down, his expression almost ashamed, and the answer hit her.
Me.
6
Colby saw Aria’s face freeze for just a second before she forced her expression back into neutral.
She’d already been worried that Eli Hebbert would be on the lookout for her. But there was a big difference between worrying and knowing.
All he wanted to do was wrap his arms around her and tell her everything was going to be okay. At least he could do the second half of that.
“It’ll be okay. He’d have to get through me first, and trust me, he can’t.”
“He’s pretty tough,” Luke said unhelpfully.
Aria said, “So is Colby.”
She met Luke’s gaze evenly, like she was daring him to even try saying Eli was tougher.
Luke might have been a backwoods werewolf with no human skills beyond what he’d scraped up from convenience store runs and superhero movies, but he apparently knew enough to back away from that look while he still could.
Colby could press the kid further on Eli’s plans, but he didn’t know how far he would get.
He didn’t think there was any love lost between Luke and his cousin, but he could tell Eli had been Luke’s alpha. That bond didn’t break easily, no matter how badly the alpha wolf had treated their pack.