by Tanith Frost
At least the rogues were quick about it. This waiting is hell.
He shrugs. “Just passing along the message.”
“The elders want us to clear out, don’t they?”
He sighs. “Not everything is a conspiracy, Aviva. Maybe—and this is just a crazy thought—maybe they want your opinion on things. Maybe they think you’re doing okay up here.” He leans closer. “Maybe they don’t think your investigation is quite as pointless as I do.”
I chew the side of my thumbnail as I think. I want out, of course. I want to go to town, return to the Inferno for a proper meal. Get together with Daniel, see what he thinks about all of this, find a distraction in his arms. Though blood is my primary concern, I can’t say I’m not feeling deprived in another way as well. Both cravings run deep these days, and in spite of the lack of options around here, I’m feeling desperate.
But I can’t shake the feeling that leaving would be a bad move. The Department of Unnatural Resources is in charge of this place. It may be only one of a hundred other supernatural concerns in Maelstrom’s territory, but they know the wolves well enough to never leave them unattended. That has to go double with one of them on a killing spree.
Something else is going on here.
I’m no closer than I was before to solving the attacks. I’ve cross-referenced the murders with who was registered as present on those nights, but it’s hopeless. Too many of them sneak in and out without bothering to complete any paperwork, and too many are here permanently, representing every pack.
“I’ll think about it,” I tell Paul, and leave him to his files.
I pull my phone out and head through the common room toward my private space, dialling as I go.
“Pick up,” I mutter on the sixth ring. On the eighth, I yell it.
“Aviva?”
“Daniel,” I say, not hiding the surprise in my voice. I haven’t been trying to call him, wanting to respect his wish for space. Still, his lack of response after my first call made me wonder how far he’d go to avoid me.
I fill him in quickly on what’s happening. No preamble, no talk of loneliness or missing him. None of that is his problem. He knew about the killings, but not about our stock being threatened.
I don’t tell him about my tentative steps toward friendship with the female pack. It seems wrong. And though they’ve been open with me when I approached them, they’ve made no effort to reach out to contact me. That’s not friendship, and therefore nothing that goes against vampire values. Nothing that threatens my self-interested solitude or my loyalty. He doesn’t need to know.
Still, keeping secrets from him makes my stomach knot. I want to be able to trust him with this.
“Depending on how the meetings go, you shouldn’t have to worry about the food supply,” Daniel says, interrupting my thoughts.
God, he sounds far away.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean there’s a chance you’ll be out of a job soon, and you can come back to town.” He waits for me to answer. When I don’t, he continues. “They’re showing their true colours now. They’re killers.”
“So are we.”
“We control ourselves. More importantly, we police ourselves. When one of us goes rogue, we take care of it.” There’s not a lot of conviction in his voice. He’s probably remembering how he covered my ass after my incident, remembering that it’s not all as black and white as we’d like to think it is. “None of them are talking, are they?”
“No,” I admit. “I asked them to send Irene down to speak to me, but she hasn’t. Radio silence this week from Joseph and Silas. If they know who’s doing this, they’re not squealing.”
I can almost hear Daniel nodding at the other end of the cellular connection. I’ll have to hang up soon. Using this thing always gives me a headache. “This is why we keep an eye on them and keep them contained,” Daniel says. “And it’s worked for a long time. Sort of. But if this is what’s going to happen now… Aviva, we’re not going to invest money in more personnel to monitor them, in building fences to keep them in.”
“They’d just get through them,” I mutter.
Daniel is silent for a few seconds. “You should leave. Don’t stay there alone.”
“What will happen if I don’t figure out which wolf is doing this?”
“We’ll likely do what they did elsewhere, what we probably should have done from the beginning.”
His words hit me like a long-distance punch to the chest. “We’d exterminate them?” My voice comes out as a squeaky whisper that nonetheless echoes in the empty hallway. “Daniel, these are people with lives outside of the sanctuary. Jobs. Families. Kids who could grow up to be like them. You can’t just murder them.”
“Not me,” he says quietly. “This is department business, and I don’t stick my nose in it. I’ve just had my ears open for your sake. I don’t say it would be an easy job, or a quick one. But if you ignore the ones who stay at the sanctuary full time or who don’t have any close family and community ties, it can’t be more than forty of them to really worry about. They don’t tend to be the most social creatures when they’re away from their packs. Even those with families aren’t necessarily that involved. We probably know more about their kids than they do.”
“You’re saying they won’t be missed?”
“Yes. And that we are very good at making people disappear.”
My mouth goes dry. “I remember.” The rogue vampires were bad about covering their tracks, but we always managed to do it for them, removing evidence and bodies like they never existed at all, softening the impact of missing persons who should have been national news. I can’t imagine the levels of connection and organization it required, and don’t particularly want to know how they made all those people vanish.
“We tried,” he adds. “We gave them a chance.”
“I don’t think it’s multiple wolves doing the killing,” I say, finally remembering that I wanted privacy. I unlock my door, scan the room for intruders, and close the door behind me. I lean against it and sink to the floor. My legs feel shaky. “It’s their version of a rogue. We wouldn’t exterminate our entire species over a rogue vampire.”
“No. We’d find them and end them,” he says, terse and hard-voiced. “Tell me you’re not getting involved.”
“I’m not. I’m here by myself, or as good as. Paul’s no kind of company or help, and neither are the wolves. But I can’t ignore how wrong this is. Yeah, the wolves are miserable. I don’t blame them. I’ve been in captivity here for less than a month, and it’s painful.”
“They’re free to leave when they’re in human form,” he says. “You could leave with Paul. Pack up right now. It would be the best thing for you. This doesn’t have to be your business.”
I lean my head back and close my eyes. I could leave. Someday I might understand what Daniel feels about werewolves, and maybe I’ll be grateful to him for offering advice that could help me long after they’re no more. But when I think about leaving, something pulls hard in my chest, where I should rightfully feel nothing.
Staying would be a mistake, another black mark in my file, one that’s surely dripping with dark ink already. I swore I was done making mistakes to save anyone else. I decided in the hospital that I was going to use my skills and powers to benefit myself, to ensure my safety and position. The elders want me to leave, and this is a chance to prove my obedience. I’ve done what they sent me here to do and more. I haven’t yet stepped so far out of line that I can’t come back.
I close my eyes and listen. Not to Daniel, who’s completely silent on the other end of our connection, but to myself. I still don’t know what that means. I suspect myself lies at the convergence of vampire, void power, and the decisions I can live with. I can’t help thinking about this in terms of right and wrong, no matter how well I know I shouldn’t.
I consider leaving, and the knot in my chest tightens.
I can’t. I can’t leave, not when I could sti
ll figure this out and deliver the killer to face justice, saving the others in the process.
They’re not my friends. I can’t trust a single one of them, thanks to what I am and what they are, and I’m going to be completely on my own now. But that doesn’t mean they deserve to die. Violet, who took a chance on letting me in and giving me a chance to open my eyes, doesn’t deserve that. Irene, who defends her pack so fiercely. Even Silas, who just wants a taste of freedom and fresh meat once in a while. His pack might be assholes, but that doesn’t warrant a death sentence for someone else’s crimes.
“I’m staying,” I tell Daniel, fighting back the wave of nausea that comes as I consider how I’ll be disappointing the elders and possibly damning myself to a difficult existence if I fuck this up. “I know you won’t understand this, but I have to.” I touch the necklace that still hangs above my breasts. It feels warm in spite of the chill of my skin, as though it contains a fragment of the great power Susannah feels in this place. The void, life itself, the werewolves’ unique energy, whatever else might be out there. “I’m learning things about the world we live in, about the power that holds it up. The wolves are a part of that as much as we are.”
I feel as though I’m standing on a cliff, leaning forward.
And I take the final step, knowing it’s a mistake, certain I can’t do anything else and still live with myself. I can’t create a new place for myself as Irene did within the confines of her world, but I can still fight. “I think they’re worth saving if I can, for the good of vampires as much as anything else.”
Daniel draws a long breath. “We’ll talk about this later.” He has his hard-ass trainer voice on. This is not the guy I’ve shared my bed with. He’s an authority figure, and one who sounds disappointed. Though I still trust he’ll try to spin this in a way that’s not fatal to me, I sense that I’ve severed something that might have remained between us.
I can’t be what he wants me to be. Not as his former student, not as an ally, not as anything else.
I don’t apologize before I hang up.
The phone lands on my bed with a soft thump, and I leave it there as I go to tell Paul he’ll have to call to ask for a ride to town.
I don’t want to have the phone on me if Daniel tries to call back.
I’m alone. I’m actually, totally, completely alone.
The Jeep bumps over ruts in the road, handling them far better than Daniel’s car did when we came in the same way almost a month ago. I’m on my way back to the compound after driving Paul out to the highway, where a sleek black Escalade with tinted windows waited to take him to town.
I don’t know who was driving. I didn’t get out to look, or to help Paul with his stuff. Just dropped him off, wished him well, handed him some notes he probably won’t think are worth sharing with the department representatives, and hauled ass back here.
It’s not that I was eager to return to the compound. It’s still a bland, boxy, concrete prison, and I could rhyme off a hundred places I’d rather be on this chilly summer night. But in the days since my talk with Daniel, my certainty has only grown.
This isn’t where I want to be, but it’s where I’m needed. I am a vampire, with all the dark gifts, bloodlust, and hidden weaknesses that come as part of that package. I have no choice in these things, but I still get to choose what I’ll do with them. And for now, I’m on the hunt for a killer.
Finding the murderer is my first responsibility. Arresting him or her. Notifying the authorities.
And confronting their pack leader. I think I’m as scared of that as I am of the killer. Someone is hiding something. Maybe everyone is, and they obviously don’t want me to learn their secrets. I wonder whether that would change if they knew their lives were on the line. Their species, even.
The Jeep bumps hard, and my skull hits the ceiling. I rub at the sore spot and consider putting the seatbelt on, then slow down instead. I’m still enough of a vampire to turn my nose up at human safety standards.
Violet said Joseph seemed obsessed with the idea of continuing the species, of mixing bloodlines and strengthening them, of having werewolves dropping youngsters everywhere. As distasteful as all of that is and as troublesome as it is to our desire for secrecy, I wonder whether it might not make him willing to help me if I explained the threat to their future.
Oh, I’d be in deep shit if I warned them. But it might be a tool worth using if it gets me answers.
I stop the Jeep to perform the manoeuvres necessary to open, pass through, close, and lock the gate. It seems silly when it’s such a pointless security measure. I’ll feel better once I’m inside the compound. Maybe I’ll take the rest of the night off, put on those silly glasses, and see what kind of satellite reception we actually get on that old TV.
The thought dies almost before it’s fully formed, as the compound building comes into view.
The entrance to the garage is blocked by wolves. At least a dozen of them, hackles raised.
Snarling.
Chapter Fifteen
I’m not going to run. That’s what they want, for me to back the Jeep up and follow Paul to St. John’s. They have no idea what I’m guarding them against by continuing my investigation. Part of me wants to do it, to just go. I bet they’d let me. I bet they wouldn’t chase me back to the fence and attack me when I got out to unlock it.
If they think it’s going to be that easy to get Maelstrom to leave them be, they don’t understand vampires as well as they think they do.
I pull closer to the garage. The wolves strike me as males, though they’re all too damned fluffy for me to see any defining features in that area. They’re big and heavy-skulled. I don’t see Irene’s pale, delicate face among them, or Violet’s huge ears.
Silas’ or Joseph’s pack, then. No sign of the scarred face I would recognize, but he could be here. Maybe the alphas hang back like generals or kings.
A big fellow with a coat that looks touched with rust stalks forward as the headlights catch him. Others follow, none of them putting themselves directly in front of the Jeep where I could so easily run them over or pin them to the wall of the compound.
Pain gathers in my temples as I grit my teeth hard and press the button to open the garage door. The wolves keep pace, leaving no chance for me to simply close the door behind me and shut them out, but they’re keeping their distance for now. I pull in quickly, not caring whether any of them get in the way, and drive the Jeep in until its nose touches the back wall, placing the rear bumper clear of the door that will let me into the safety of the compound. I’ve barricaded myself between the walls and the vehicle as well as I can, leaving them only one obvious angle of approach that I’ll be facing as I head for the door.
I didn’t bring the gun, but I know exactly where it is.
The wolves howl, and the sound echoes through the garage, deafening even before I open my door. I lean on the horn in response. They have sensitive ears. I hope it hurts them.
They’re frightening, I’ll give them that. A dozen massive bundles of heavy muscle and sharp teeth powered by hate and supernatural power. But I can handle them. There’s not room for more than one or two of them to approach beside the Jeep, so that’s all I should have to fight. All I have to do is get out of the Jeep, get to the door, unlock it, and get in without letting them squeeze in there with me.
No problem.
I force myself to relax, drawing on my own power. Dark. Heavy. Cold. So unlike theirs, but just as powerful. Maybe more so. I’m alone, but I’m not helpless.
My leather jacket is resting on the seat beside me. I slip into it like I’m putting on battle armour, then reach into my pocket. I pull my key ring free and grasp the heavy compound door key, rubbing my thumb over its jagged metallic edge.
I don’t close the garage door. I want them to be able to retreat.
I throw the door open, and a smaller wolf lunges at my legs. I’m ready, already turned so that I can kick out. My boot catches him square in the nose, and
he yelps as he stumbles back, briefly blocking the narrow space between the Jeep and the wall, giving me time to get out of the vehicle. Another wolf clambers over him. I step toward the compound door and attempt to slide the key into the lock without looking away from the wolf, but keep missing my mark. He’s bigger than the first, approaching with his head low and ears back, snarling and exposing huge yellow teeth up to the gums.
I’m still cursing Maelstrom for not springing for a more efficient security system when the larger wolf leaps at me. I brace myself and bring my knee up, blocking him, catching myself against the wall as his weight threatens to send me stumbling back.
I adjust my grip on the key and drive it up under his ribs.
It’s a tiny wound, surely no more than a flea bite to this beast, but he lets out a snarl like he felt it. He snaps at my face and I push against his throat, holding him back.
The tight space means that only one wolf at a time can attack, but it’s limiting my options. I need to be able to use his size and momentum against him, and I can’t.
He keeps snapping and growling, and the whites of his eyes show. He looks insane.
I push my shoulder hard against the wall and shove him away, gaining a bit of ground on my path to the door. He’s barely off me before he lunges again, but I have enough space to crouch and throw myself at him, catching his big chest with my shoulder, sending him flying back.
The others are going nuts behind the vehicle. I almost don’t hear the scraping noise from the other side of the Jeep over their howls.
But there’s no mistaking the loud bang just behind me as the Jeep’s hood takes on the weight of the wolf that’s leapt up onto it.