I sucked on my bottom lip and thought about that. The pack was like a family then. More than that, though. I was so content just to be around them—more content than I had been even with my parents at any point in my adult life, and certainly more content than I had ever felt around Jenny and Steph. I closed my eyes and filled my lungs with the soot-covered scent of the three packmates sharing the Jeep with me.
Jonathan’s warm hand fell onto my knee and I could smell that we were closer to my side of town—the motor oil smell that seemed to accompany older cars, the old trash scent that accompanies shared dumpsters, and the unmistakable skunk of marijuana that always seemed to hang around the apartment complexes in my area. I hadn’t even taken the time to really take it in since...well, since I was attacked.
But then there was that sickening scent again and my eyes snapped open. The tension in the Jeep ratcheted up as Jonathan pulled into a space near the stairs.
“That’s fresh,” Ian said. “I didn’t smell them when I was fixing the door jamb last night.”
Them? I inhaled. There was a distinction amongst the sickening dead smells. Them. There had been three of them. I practically flew from the Jeep and up the stairs to my apartment. Three vampires had come to my front door last night between 4 a.m. and dawn. The handle to my apartment turned easily. My stomach turned. The smell of my home was tainted with death. One of them had been inside my apartment. Red seeped into the edges of my vision, and my skin started to feel tight and restrictive.
My chest rumbled with the growl coming from my throat. My lips curled back from my teeth. Arms snaked around from behind me, holding me in place with a strength that was startling, but I struggled anyway, my skin pulling even tighter as my joints started to ache.
“Whoa,” Jonathan’s voice came softly in my ear. “Easy, Lynn. Take a breath. Not out here.” Soothing calm dripped from every word.
I stopped fighting against him and glared at my door through narrowed eyes, my mouth still set in a silent snarl.
“There’s no vamp in there,” he murmured. “The last one left probably just before dawn. Once you get up close and smell one that’s in your face, you’ll get a better feel for how I know.”
“How we know,” Jamie corrected.
“For now, just trust me,” Jonathan said. “Even if there was a vamp in there, you’d have him dead to rights, easy.” His arms around me loosened.
“One of him,” Jamie said. “Four of us.”
“Unless the vamp is old as dirt,” Ian said quietly.
Jonathan’s head snapped to Ian. From the corner of my eye, I saw Ian’s apologetic look.
“If you rip that door off its hinges,” Jonathan said. “You’re going to cause a lot of noise and someone’s gonna look into it. Just breathe.”
I filled my lungs with that sickening dead smell, scenting through it to find Jonathan’s woodsy warmth tinged with electricity, Jamie’s motor oil scent, and the sharp citrus-lined cocoa scent of Ian. Closing my eyes, I could feel the tension in all of them and could almost see it along the strands that Sheppard had shown me before. They were as ready to fight as I was, but they were calm, steady. I took another deep breath, bringing my face closer to Jonathan’s arm around me, hoping his scent could erase some of the death pricking at my nose. The red faded from my vision, but my heartbeat hammered in my ears and my skin still felt tight.
“This is why we stick together,” Jonathan said, his voice barely perceptible. “Vampires set off all of the alarm bells in everything we are. Our instincts make us want to destroy them because we know and understand that their only purpose is to kill. But the world isn’t ready to see us as we are yet. If their first view of us is violence and destruction, they will never accept that we are only trying to protect them.” He relaxed his hold on me entirely, moving his hand over mine on the door handle.
Well I definitely wanted to kill the thing that had violated the sanctity of my home, that’s for sure.
I looked over my shoulder at Ian and Jamie, meeting their eyes in turn. Each nodded once to me and I pushed my door open as gently as I could manage through the anger, keeping my hand on the handle as Jonathan’s hand shifted to rest lightly on the door itself. The door didn’t bounce into the wall, so I must have controlled myself pretty well.
The normally welcome scent of my home had been tainted by death, however. It brought me no relief as I stepped in. Jonathan stepped in to my right and Ian to my left. Jamie stayed in the doorway.
I remembered how Matt had methodically checked my apartment a few days ago. There weren’t a lot of places to hide in my apartment, but Ian checked my kitchen while I checked the bathroom and Jonathan checked my walk-in closet. Once we had moved away from the front door, Jamie gently pushed it closed with a small click and stood with his back to it.
With a start, I recognized the cologne mixing with the dead scent.
“Frederick,” I spat.
Jamie looked at me. “Who?”
“Frederick,” I repeated through clenched teeth. “A friend of mine. Or he was. Sheppard tried to tell me before that he was a vampire. I didn’t want to believe him, but then I called him, and he all but confirmed it. And that’s his cologne.” I waved my hand, gesturing to the air.
“That’s who bit you.” Jonathan’s comment was less a question, more a statement of fact.
I nodded, pressing a hand to the pinprick scars were. “That’s who bit me.”
Jonathan reached an arm around my shoulder, pulling me closer to him. I inhaled his woodsy electric warmth and listened to the steady rhythm of his heart, trying to force myself not to think about Frederick.
“You called him?” Jamie’s voice was incredulous. “As in, you called him after Sheppard had already told you what he was?”
I squeezed my eyes closed and nodded. Calling Frederick was definitely not one of the smartest things I’d ever done.
Jonathan released me slowly and I opened my eyes. “Why would you call him?”
“Because I thought he was my friend.” It sounded lame even to my own ears. “Because he was one of the few friends I actually had in this town. Because I thought maybe Sheppard could be wrong.” My voice cracked, and I closed my eyes to keep tears from spilling. “That he hadn’t only been using me as a source of food.”
Jonathan pulled me against him again.
I took steadying breath and pushed back the tears. Frederick was clearly not worth tears. I should have listened to my instincts about him better. Something had always seemed a little off about him. But I guess that’s why hindsight is always 20/20.
“Well,” Ian said. “Then he probably knows you’re a werewolf now, so what was he doing here?”
“He probably wanted to confirm it in person.” Jonathan’s voice resonated through his chest.
“Couldn’t he have known that anyway?” Jamie asked. “If he started the fire last night?”
“If he set the fire last night,” I said. “Then sure. But maybe that’s why he came here after. To see if the fire would draw me here.” I pulled away from Jonathan and paced across my apartment as I thought. “The sheep at the store with Kaylah wanted to take me with them. Maybe he came here to ambush me.”
“What good would taking a newly-turned werewolf hostage do for him?” Ian asked.
“Bait,” Jonathan said with a growl, looking to me. “He would have used you as bait to try to get the rest of the pack to act. With all of us on edge after the fire, maybe we’d slip up and his brood would get the chance to overwhelm us and take us out.”
I balled my hands into white-knuckled fists. Frederick used to be my friend. But, it turns out, all he ever wanted was to drain my blood. And now that he knows I’m a werewolf, he wants to use me as bait to kill the pack. Great.
I rubbed at my face with a small growl of my own. “So what do we do?”
Ian moved toward the door. “Well first, I’m going to grab my stuff from the Jeep and change these locks.” He stepped out of my apartment.
“Frederick can’t hide from us,” Jonathan said. “He can bolster his brood all he wants, but we’ll still get him and make sure he stops hurting people.”
I took a breath. “Okay,” I said, walking over to my closet. I looked around my apartment as I opened the closet door. “You guys stay off my furniture, alright? You’re all covered in soot and ash, and I don’t have any clothes that would fit you.”
“We’re heading over to my place next anyway,” Jonathan said with a shrug as he stepped toward my little kitchen. “I have a shower and some extra clothes for the rest of us there.”
My fridge door opened as I pulled clothes from the closet to put on after my shower. I grabbed a towel from the tiny linen closet next to the bathroom and then shut and locked the bathroom door.
I caught my reflection in the mirror. My hair was a stringy mess, and there were blackened sections with bits of ash stuck in it from digging through the wreckage of Sheppard’s house. My forehead and face were streaked with ash and soot. There was a light scar on my left cheek leftover from the attack. I touched it as I remembered Jonathan’s hand brushing it back at Sheppard’s old house, and how I had startled like a spooked deer then.
That had been just three days ago.
Sighing, I reached over and turned on the shower and looked under my sink for any extra shampoo or conditioner I might have since I had taken mine to Sheppard’s place. I found a little travel pack in the back corner of the cabinet, with shampoo, conditioner, and a small bar of soap. I was pretty sure it had been under my cabinet for over a year, probably from that time I traveled for the big book convention in Chicago.
It felt like an eternity before the shower water ran clear, but once it did, I washed my hair and ran the bar of soap vigorously over my body. The ache in my joints receded, and I felt some of the tension leave my muscles under the hot water.
Bait. Frederick wanted me to get to the pack. Dammit. When would I stop being a danger to them? And why would they want to keep me around if I was?
I put my head under the shower and watched the water run down the drain for a few moments as I tried to just quiet my thoughts. I turned off the water and dried myself before pulling on underwear and a pair of loose jeans. My favorite pair had been lost in the fire. Dammit. With pursed lips, I tugged a faded black t-shirt over my head and opened the bathroom door to let the steam out. I grabbed the rosary from where I had left it on the bathroom counter and jammed it into my pocket. I also grabbed a comb from my bathroom counter, and though it wasn’t my favorite way to detangle my hair, I quickly ran the comb through a couple of times as Ian tightened the last screws on my door.
“Good as new,” he said, turning to me. “And just in time.”
I smiled at him. “Thanks, Ian. I appreciate it.”
“Sure,” he replied. “Just maybe try not to make a habit of breaking into your own place, okay?”
“We usually keep spare sets of keys for everyone in a lockbox,” Jonathan said. He had a glass of water in one hand and a half-eaten piece of bread in the other. I didn’t even know I had bread that hadn’t gone moldy. “We should probably put a copy of your key in there too, now.”
I stepped over to him and pulled a piece off the bread in his hand. He smiled as I popped it into my mouth.
“Maybe let’s just leave a copy with my leasing office for now,” I said, swallowing the bit of bread.
“There’s not really much of a point to having your own place anyway,” Jamie said.
Jonathan shot him a look, and Jamie put his hands up in a placating gesture.
“I just mean that Matt and Chastity, and Daniel and Kaylah don’t even bother with a place of their own,” he said.
“Yea,” Ian said. “But they’re also all 150 years old at the least.” He shrugged. “Privacy was never really a thing for them.”
“They’re not all that old,” Jonathan retorted. “Daniel and Chastity are both only a hundred or so.”
“So wait.” I sat in a chair from my dining table to pull on a pair of socks. “How old are the three of you, then, if they’re so old?” My tennis shoes followed the socks.
Ian screwed up his face in thought. “It’s only been like 12 years since I was turned, I’m 36.”
“Yeah,” Jonathan said, running a grimy hand through his sooty hair as he took a breath. “But Jamie and I were turned about 50 years back.” He bit his bottom lip and his gold-flecked green eyes met mine.
“I, uh,” I stammered. “You’re.”
My eyes unfocused and I was glad that I was already sitting down. Blinking, I ran a hand through my damp hair.
Fifty years, plus the twenty or so that he appeared to be. But even if he was barely more than a child when he was turned, I had slept with a man who was old enough to be my grandfather. I ran my fingers along my cheek and lips before curling them around my mouth and chin. And I knew that wasn’t true, not if he fought off the wolf that attacked him and his brother like he said before. Sure, Jonathan looked like some laid-back college student. But...
“Fifty years ago?” My voice sounded foreign to me. “So you’re like three times my age?”
Jonathan winced.
Jamie busied himself looking at the books on my bookshelf.
“Cradle-robber.” Ian elbowed Jonathan’s bicep. He stepped past us and into the kitchen. “Where do you keep your glasses, Lynn?” He opened and closed cabinets as I simply stared at Jonathan.
“Just about,” Jonathan said quietly, ignoring Ian. “Yeah. Seventy-two.”
“Nevermind,” Ian said from the kitchen. “Found ‘em.”
The kitchen faucet turned on and, a moment later, back off.
More than three times my age then.
I sucked on my bottom lip and let my eyes lose focus again while I thought.
I had slept with a man who was old enough to be my grandfather.
I rubbed my face in my hands. Ugh. We were here for a reason. Locks and a shower. They needed showers too. We had to move. Fine. I had a backpack in my closet, I could put some clothes in there to take along with me. I sighed and stood, stalking over to my closet.
“Lynn—” Jonathan reached a hand toward me.
I stopped and faced him, my expression stopping his hand before it touched me. “Look, my whole life is different now.” There was no hiding the frustration from my voice. “Nothing about any of this is familiar, and all I have is whatever fantasies those authors made up.” I gestured to my two bookshelves. “Along with whatever you guys tell me to guide me through any of this.”
“Lynn—” Jonathan started again.
I balled my fists at my sides. “You’re entire generations older than me, Jonathan!”
He closed his eyes and looked away.
I squinted my eyes closed and put a hand to my forehead, “And I slept with you!”
Jamie’s eyes went wide. “Whoa,” he said, his hands up again in that placating gesture. “And ew.” He looked around my apartment. “Um, look, not all of that is made up.” He inclined his head to the books. “Some of those authors are werewolves and vampires themselves, they just can’t say anything about it.”
Ian set his glass down in my kitchen sink. “Sheppard will guide you through everything. And he’ll answer any of your questions, any time you ask.”
“And I’ll answer any I can in the meantime,” Jonathan said, his voice calm and level in stark contrast to the turmoil I felt. He didn’t look at me, but his heart pounded. He followed Ian into the kitchen and put his glass in my sink too. A moment later, he came back out and stood in front of me as I came out of the closet with my backpack of clothes.
I focused on a point in space over and behind his left shoulder, the direction where my door was.
“I’m sorry Lynn,” he said. “It doesn’t occur to me to talk about how o
ld I actually am. I don’t think it occurs to any of us, really, since it’s just this side of irrelevant to us. Pack is what matters.”
“Sarcina eiusdem sanguinis,” Jamie murmured.
“The blood and the pack—” Ian said.
“Are one.” I nodded, pursing my lips as I looked at Jamie. “Right. Which is why I’m still here.”
I met Jonathan’s eyes, arched my eyebrows, and looked pointedly at my door as I slung my backpack onto my shoulder. “So, let’s just go already.”
EIGHTEEN
THE GUYS WAITED IN the Jeep while I dropped off the new key at the leasing office. As I climbed into the passenger seat, Jamie reached forward from the backseat and squeezed my shoulder before buckling his seatbelt.
I stewed with my arms crossed as Jonathan pulled away from my apartment.
Sheppard said the oldest werewolf he’d ever known was over a thousand years old, so Jonathan, at 72, was really just a pup by that standard. But that’s still a long time to be alive.
I watched him from my peripheral vision. His hair brushed his shoulder as he checked his sideview mirror and changed lanes. A man who was old enough to be my grandfather had no business looking as young—and as hot—as Jonathan did. I rubbed my face with my hands again.
At least Sheppard, at well over five hundred, looked like he was in his forties, though it was a wonder he didn’t look so much older than that even. But Jonathan, at less than a fifth that, still looked like he was in his mid-twenties. Jamie and Ian too, really. God, even Chastity and Kaylah didn’t look any older than Jonathan and they were twice his age!
There was a snickering laugh behind me. I uncrossed my arms and looked over my shoulder. Jamie was laughing, and Ian was pointing out the driver side window at a gas station.
Kum & Go.
“Really?” I rolled my eyes. “You guys are how old and you’re making this joke?”
A Place to Run (Trials of the Blood Book 1) Page 15