A Place to Run (Trials of the Blood Book 1)

by Becca Lynn Mathis

  It felt so good to be running again, but it was almost eerie to be alone. Once I became aware of the lack of company, it pressed on me. For the past week, there had always been someone of the pack with me. There was always another presence, even if it was quiet. Now, the lack of that presence was almost a ringing in my ears, like after a loud rock concert. Like the deafening silence of my empty apartment, it was uncomfortable. I wanted pack. I had spent most of my adult life living on my own, and now, after only a week or so, I found I missed the pack so completely that my chest grew tight.

  Closing my eyes, I saw the strands of the pack, thrumming with energy that fed back to Sheppard, and tears filled my eyes. It was so odd to find comfort in just seeing the strands of my packmates. And to think, a little over a week ago, they were just strangers to me.

  I blinked in surprise as I rounded a corner. I was back in front of the glass house again. How had I missed running past the wreckage of Sheppard’s old house? How on Earth was I back here already? I checked my phone. I had been gone nearly an hour. I must have run multiple times around the sprawling neighborhood in that time.

  Shaking my head at the house, I sighed. “Sarcina eiusdem sanguinis, indeed.”

  Inside, the house smelled of waffles, maple syrup, sausage, and bacon. Kaylah and Chastity were in the kitchen, while Matt, Jamie, and Ian were eating at the dining room table. Jonathan was coming down the stairs, his hair still wet from his shower.

  He smiled at me. “Good run?”

  Maybe my text didn’t wake him this morning. Or he was just going along with the charade.

  “It felt good to get my feet moving under me again,” I replied, waiting for him to get past the landing before I stepped toward the stairs. “You didn’t take all the hot water, did you?”

  “Nah,” he said. “This place has one of those on-demand water heaters. You have to be trying to run out of hot water here.”

  “Well good.”

  “Lynn,” Kaylah called.

  I looked her way in time to see the water bottle sailing my direction. I caught it and smiled at her.

  “Hurry back down or breakfast’ll all be gone,” she said as I opened the bottle and took a swig of the cool water.

  I nodded and darted up the stairs, my stomach had been growling at me since I stepped into the house.

  “I’ll save some bacon for you,” Jonathan called behind me.

  At the top of the stairs, I turned and smiled at him. “Thanks!”

  I didn’t take a terribly long shower—I didn’t need it. I just needed to cool down and rinse off. Toweling off, I pulled on a pair of stonewash jeans and shoved the rosary in my pocket. I dug around my bag for a shirt, finally settling on the olive green one. Remembering what Matt had said before, I sniffed at my shoulder. It didn’t smell like Jonathan anymore. Pressing my lips into a line, I squeezed my eyes shut to clear the tears that threatened to spill from my eyes. I scrubbed at my face, pressing the heels of my palms against my eyes.

  God, I had only known him for a week! What did it matter if I didn’t smell like him anymore? I sighed, pushing tears away. I probably wasn’t going to be able to touch him again anyway, so I should just get used to this.

  “Your bacon tastes even better than mine!” Jonathan called from the dining room.

  I couldn’t help the smile that pulled at my mouth. For someone old enough to be my grandfather, Jonathan seemed to always have a sense of what to say to make things better. I shook my head with a sigh and wiped at my face again.

  “There better be some left when I get there,” I said, heading for the stairs. “Or you’ll have to go into the kitchen and make me more yourself!”

  “Oh no he ain’t!” Kaylah exclaimed. “The last time I let one a them boys cook, we were still scrubbin’ sauce offa the cab’nits three days later!”

  Jamie threw his head back in exasperation. “The sauce had to simmer, Kaylah!”

  She shook her wooden spoon at him. “You simmer things with a lid on ‘em, mister!” Her crystal blue eyes met mine. “And that wa’n’t even the worst’v it. I had t’ throw out th’ pot after th’ spaghetti burnt so bad it glued itself to th’ bottom!”

  I raised my eyebrows in surprise as I sat at the open seat between Daniel and Jonathan. As promised, my plate already had a handful of bacon slices on it.

  “Wow Jamie,” I said. “Even I don’t burn spaghetti, and I can’t cook to save my life.”

  Kaylah clucked her tongue as she brought a fresh plate of waffles to the table. She set them down near me and grabbed the syrup from in front of Ian and set it next to the waffles.

  “Milk?”

  “Ooh,” I replied. “Yes please.”

  Kaylah disappeared back into the kitchen and returned with a tall glass of milk. I didn’t try to take it from her; I just let her place it next to my plate.

  “Thanks, Kaylah,” I said.

  She smiled gently at me and sat on the other side of Daniel, piling sausage onto her plate.

  Picking up a couple of waffles with my fork, I stacked them on my plate and poured syrup over them. I took a bite and noticed that Chastity, on the other side of Kaylah, kept eyeballing something in the living room as she stuffed bite after bite of her food down. I looked over my shoulder. The laptop she had brought back from the cave was on one of the coffee tables. It was open, and something was running on the screen. I took another bite of waffle and studied the screen.

  “Decryption software,” Chastity said flatly. I guess she saw me staring. “Hopefully it can crack that flash drive.”

  I crunched on a piece of bacon and took another bite of my waffles. “How’d you get that?”

  “Ian knows a guy.” She looked at her food, scooped a bite of sausage into her mouth, and looked back at the laptop.

  “What do you think might be on that?” I asked her.

  Her hazel eyes finally focused on me, and she shrugged. “No way to be sure. But his notes indicate that he thought he was getting close to figuring out the connection between vampires and werewolves.” She waved her hand. “Beyond what we already know about how we both came to be.”

  I dipped the bacon in some of the maple syrup that had pooled on my plate and took a bite. “But what did that have to do with keeping crazed wolves in cages?”

  “He was running experiments on them,” she said. “I just don’t know what he was hoping to prove.”

  The laptop dinged.

  “AHA!” Chastity sprang to her feet, shoving a piece of bacon into her mouth. “Gotcha!” She darted over to the coffee table and sat cross-legged on the couch next to the laptop. It was kind of an odd sight, her sitting sideways to face the laptop over the arm of the couch.

  I finished my waffles and pulled the last few pieces of sausage onto my plate, rolling them around in the leftover syrup before cutting them in half with my fork and popping them into my mouth.

  “HOLY MOTHER OF GOD!”

  I swear, I could have heard Chastity’s exclamation from three counties over. I actually felt it jangle in my head—a gentler version of what happened when I bit Matt during our sparring match the other day.

  Matt stood from his chair. “What is it Chas?”

  She looked over at him, her eyes wide. She looked at all of us and then swallowed. Looking back at Matt, she said, “He used to be a werewolf.”

  Matt scrunched his face in confusion. “What?”

  “That bloodsucker Lynn dusted,” she said, gesturing to the laptop. “If his notes are to be believed, then he was a werewolf long before he was a vampire.”

  A chill snaked its way down my spine. “That can’t be true.”

  She looked back at the screen. “It says here that he’d lost his pack in a vampire raid. In retaliation, he tore the throats out of the sheep of that brood, feasting on their flesh. That was all it took for him to lose the ability to turn back to wolf, and he found that he hungered for blood the way he knew vamps did. That’s what started his experiments.”

  �
�Holy shit,” Ian whispered.

  Holy shit was right. A hush fell over the pack.

  “How is that even possible?” Jonathan asked.

  Chastity hadn’t looked up from the computer. “I don’t know. But he wasn’t the only vamp turned from a werewolf. He somehow captured a crazed werewolf, turned some of his sheep into werewolves, and then experimented to see exactly how many people they had to eat to turn vamp.”

  I pushed my plate away from me as anger surged in me. “What kind of sick, twisted—”

  “Vampire,” Matt said, cutting me off. “Those bloodsuckers are the only things on the planet capable of that kind of evil.”

  “People can be pretty bad to each other,” Daniel said. “Remember, there are some wolves that were actually around when the Holocaust happened.”

  Matt speared him with a look, despite only having one good eye to do so. “If you think vampires weren’t part of that, then you haven’t been paying attention.”

  Whoa. That was an angle I certainly hadn’t expected. Vampires were involved in the Holocaust? I shook my head. Okay, sure. I mean, why not? But what we had here, what Chastity had found, was terrifying.

  “Apparently,” Chastity continued, largely ignoring the conversation as she skimmed the files, “most of the werewolves fed human flesh went crazy, but from those that didn’t, he found that three was the magic number.”

  I took a breath, trying to calm the renewed roiling in my stomach. “So what did he need all the medical equipment for then?”

  Chastity looked at me for a moment, but I could see her thoughts swirling.

  “Hmm.” She turned back to the laptop and opened more files. “He was,” she scrolled through the top document, “looking to make a connection between the vampires and the werewolves.” She opened the next file in the folder and stopped scrolling. She looked at me, something altogether new on her face.

  I squinted at the screen, but couldn’t make it out from the angle I was at. “What?”

  “He knew you were consanguinea,” she said. “He intentionally released the wolf that turned you. He figured consanguinea would be a better chance at bridging that gap.”

  “He clearly didn’t know most consanguinea don’t survive turning vamp,” Matt said.

  I wasn’t listening anymore. My vision had lost focus. Frederick had known I was consanguinea. He had never been my friend. He had only ever been trying to figure out my patterns, so he could use me in his experiments.

  Numbly, I stood from the table. Things in my life had gone from simple to incredibly complicated.

  Run.

  My gut jumped. I wanted to. But where? There was nowhere to go. My apartment had been infiltrated by Frederick already. He may be dead and gone now, but that didn’t make my apartment feel any safer. Safe was here with pack. And pack wasn’t running.

  “Oh my God,” Chastity said, snapping me from my thoughts as she unplugged the laptop and stood. “Sheppard’s gonna need to see this.” She headed toward the basement door.

  I followed her.

  In the basement, Sheppard was still in the same chair as he was last night, his shirt damp with sweat. He turned to Chastity as she came down the stairs, wiping sweat from his brow. The cuts on his chest looked better this morning than they had last night. The caged wolf hadn’t moved in its slumber.

  Chastity handed the laptop to Sheppard. “Her entire family tree is in there,” she said, pointing at the screen. “All of the consanguinea’s are.”

  My blood turned to ice in my veins. Then the vampires knew how to figure out who was consanguinea and who wasn’t. I didn’t know what exactly that meant, but I could feel in my bones that it couldn’t be good.

  Sheppard looked at me, the concern plain on his face. “We have to hope that the vampires’ innate distrust for one another means this information is not widely known.” He looked back to Chastity, returning the laptop to her. “I heard the rest of what you found.”

  He fished his cell phone out of his pocket and scrolled through his contacts, touching the dial icon when he found the one he was looking for.

  “Buckheim,” came a gruff voice from the other end of the line.

  “I have something you’ll want to see in person,” Sheppard said, and ended the call.

  THIRTY-FIVE

  “WHO’S BUCKHEIM?” I asked.

  Sheppard had said before that pack doesn’t keep secrets.

  His gentle eyes met my own. “He’s an old friend—and First Sergeant Langley’s commanding officer. I’m honestly surprised he hasn’t shown up on our doorstep already, since the military seems keen on recruiting you.” He nodded his head toward me. “General Buckheim runs the werewolf operations within the military. He’s going to want to see the proof that shows the vampires know how to track consanguinea.” He pressed his lips into a line.

  Chastity swore. It made me raise my eyebrows at her.

  I looked back to Sheppard and pushed a hand into my hair. “What happens if they find them all?”

  “They’ll kill them,” Matt said, appearing at the top of the basement stairs.

  Sheppard nodded. “Most likely, yes. Or they’ll try turning all of them, most of whom will die. But some won’t, and we’ll have a handful or so of high-powered consanguinea vampires running around.” He sighed. “But mostly it spells nothing but bad news for humanity. If the vampires figure out that the blood stays strong with consanguinea, then they’ll just start wiping out entire swaths of people. Then they’ll find out pretty quick whether a cure is even possible for them.”

  That was horrifying.

  “Wait,” I furrowed my brow. “What do you mean ‘the blood stays strong’?”

  Jonathan appeared at the basement door. He stepped down to sit at the top of the stairs as Ian came to lean on the doorframe. Jamie squeezed past Matt and Ian to sit next to his brother on the stairs. The two were a pretty striking pair with their swarthy skin and dark hair. The boyishness that was almost exaggerated in Jamie was simply hinted at in Jonathan, but the two were unmistakably siblings: they had the same nose and the same strong chin.

  Sheppard eyed the sleeping wolf in the cage and then turned his chair to face the stairs. “Kaylah, Daniel,” he called, power lightly washing through the words. “You two are going to want to hear this as well.”

  Jonathan and Jamie stepped down a couple of steps and sat back down, allowing Matt and Ian to sit on the top steps. Daniel appeared in the hallway. The water turned off in the kitchen, and a moment later, Kaylah came to lean on the doorframe, drying her hands on a kitchen towel. Chastity slumped onto one of the middle steps, and I sat at the bottom of the stairs. Having all of the pack so near, their scents intermingling with each other, made my heart so full it ached in my chest.

  “The vampires likely know how to track consanguinea now,” Sheppard said with a sigh, presumably repeating himself for those that weren’t here.

  “So I heard,” Kaylah said.

  Sheppard nodded then, thinking. He looked up to where Matt was sitting. “You’ve heard that phrase, the blood stays strong, haven’t you?”

  Matt nodded. “Yea, it means the number of consanguinea in a generation stays the same, more or less.”

  Sheppard nodded again. “Exactly. So if a consanguinea dies without having any children, the blessing passes to the eldest sibling of the parents, or the eldest sibling. Sometimes this makes it jump families, and the church loses track of it for a little bit.”

  “Then consanguinea ain’t got nuthin’ to do with actual genetics,” Kaylah said.

  “If the church loses track of it sometimes,” Daniel said, thinking out loud, “then the vamps probably would too if it jumped families.”

  “And they would likely wipe out entire cities trying to find it again,” Matt added.

  Sheppard’s somber look told me those were more than just good guesses—they were right. “It would be a while before the vampires realized they were killing off their food supply too quickly.” He ran a h
and through his hair. “But their numbers would wipe us out long before that.”

  Ice snaked down my spine again. “Shouldn’t we tell the church then?”

  Sheppard thought a long moment before answering. “Not just yet.” He shook his head. “There’s no telling where they got that information from in the first place. Ian, did you manage to save the hard drive from my computer?”

  Ian nodded. “I’m pretty sure it’ll work. I just need to get an enclosure for it and then we can hook it up to the laptop to see.”

  “Let’s get that done today,” Sheppard said. “I want to compare Frederick’s file of the consanguinea line to ours. With any luck, it’s out of date.”

  Jamie cleared his throat. “What good will it being out of date do?”

  “Well,” Sheppard said, “if it’s old enough that the blessing jumped families, then they’ll be on a wild goose chase for a bit.”

  “That just means more sheep, more vamps, or more dead wherever the former family last was,” Matt said sourly.

  “Then we’d better bank on their distrust for one another and hope this information hasn’t gone terribly far,” Sheppard said. He wiped at his face and I realized he still hadn’t slept yet. The bags under his eyes were pronounced.

  “Is there anything at all that any of us can do to help you?” I asked quietly, looking meaningfully at the caged wolf and then meeting Sheppard’s eyes.

  His tired smile broke my heart all over again. He waved the phone at me. “Just wait till Kristos calls back. That old bear will know something, I’m sure of it.”

  “We haven’t seen that asshole in over two hundred years, Shep,” Matt said, crossing his arms. “What makes you so sure he’ll call back?”