by T. F. Walsh
Izzy sprinted to the bedroom.
“Curtis? Curtis!”
He wasn’t there. No body, no blood, no nothing. The comforter crumpled in a heap on the floor by his side of the bed. She checked the bathroom, threw back the shower curtain. No one.
“Nook?” Her voice bounced off the walls and tiled floor.
Quiet whines came from the bedroom. Izzy’s shins bumped the space heater when she rushed into the adjoining chamber. Burning coils seared her skin. She yelped and ripped the cord from the wall, cursing when she kicked the thing and stubbed her toe.
“Nook?”
The husky whimpered beneath the bed. She got on her knees and peeked under the box spring. Nook huddled against the back wall.
“C’mere, boy.” Izzy patted the floor. The dog didn’t move. “Nook. Nook!” She tried infusing Curtis’s commanding tone into her own. The sobs strangling her words ruined the effect. “Nook, please.” Tears streamed down her cheeks and she put her hurting forehead to the floor. She couldn’t wait for the dog. She had to go.
“God, please stay under the bed, Nook,” Izzy said as she snatched her prosthetic and hurried to the living room.
Picking through the debris from the smashed sofa and overturned TV, Izzy extracted her duffel. She stowed her harness inside and pulled her boots on over her pajama bottoms. The keys still dangled from the door, chiming while they swung. Ripping them from the lock, she held the ring in her teeth, the tarnished metal bitter on her tongue.
Izzy’s coat lay like a shadow by the splintered card table. There was no time to put it on. She threaded it through her bag’s straps and headed to the door. Maybe Curtis had escaped to the main house? She could check, but would he have left her behind? She snatched the pointed fire poker she spotted from the ash strewn grate just in case. Couldn’t be too careful.
Clomping down the front steps, Izzy scanned the lawn and the trees blackening the edges of the property. She didn’t see or hear anything. Cold numbed her face and arms. Her breath plumed white and her tear tracks froze on her face. Her boots squeaked when they sank ankle deep in the snow. Fresh tracks from the rampaging beasts cut blue shaded troughs in the sparkling and pristine white. Wading in the opposite direction from the wolf tracks, she made her way to the carport.
A large shadow swallowed Izzy’s as she trekked to the Jeep. Spinning, she swung the fire poker at whatever came up behind her. Thomas caught the weapon in one hand and yanked it from her feeble grip, bruising her cold-burned fingers. He caught her under the arm with his other hand and scowled.
“You’re not going anywhere.” He ripped the keys from her teeth and hauled her back to the cabin. Izzy squalled and thrashed the entire way.
Chapter Fifteen
Inside, Thomas stood up one of the collapsed folding chairs and sat Izzy in it, pushing her down hard by her shoulders. Then he set up one of the lamps, switched it on and shut the front door. Without a word, he leaned against the windowsill by the fireplace, opened the shabby drapes with the pointed end of the fire poker, and waited. Did he know what was going on? Izzy couldn’t keep quiet. Not with Curtis in danger.
“Something’s happened to — ”
“Shut your mouth and keep still.”
Izzy’s voice cut out and her jaw snapped shut. Blood burned in her cheeks and she surely took a layer of enamel off her back teeth when she ground them, but she didn’t speak. She couldn’t. Her mouth wouldn’t open. When she tried shouting, air came up in her throat and stuck there like a burp she couldn’t expel.
The wooden window frame creaked when Thomas clenched it and his jaw muscles ticked as he stared out the glass. Time passed in silence until heaving grunts and heavy plodding from the porch broke it. Claws raked the front door. The small, stifled voice within Izzy screamed, and her raw throat tightened and clicked when she swallowed. She didn’t want any of those creatures getting back in.
Thomas cracked his knuckles, neck, and opened the door, ignoring Izzy’s frantically shaking head. The silver beast stalked inside followed by a smaller, dark gray wolf on all fours. Instinct dictated she make herself as small as she could on the chair, but her body wouldn’t react. She couldn’t take her eyes off them. Trapped there, she couldn’t help but drink in the sight of them.
The wolves were frightening yet utterly beautiful. The gray wolf simply appeared an overlarge version of the actual animal. The silver one was something out of a dark fairy tale. His — she saw now the silvery wolf was a he and wondered how she’d missed his, ah, masculinity before — coat shimmered like the snow carpeting the lawn. Beneath his luxurious pelt was a powerful and enormous body. Izzy’s eyes bugged out in disbelief.
Humanoid in his upright stature, the silver wolf’s legs were in a permanent semi-crouch, knees bent to support his upper body. His bipedal stride had appeared awkward when he’d entered the cabin. Izzy doubted he covered long distances on two legs. The white tips of his retracted claws poked from his hand and foot-paws and the points of his fangs jutted from under his black upper lip. Shoulders and chest went up and down as he inhaled and exhaled and the floor dipped a little where he towered before Thomas, the old wood straining under his prodigious weight.
“Well?” Thomas held out his hands. The property manager seemed not at all intimidated by the beasts. In fact, his manner suggested he ought to be obeyed. And the wolf beasts did obey.
The smaller gray plopped on his hindquarters and gazed up at his monstrous partner who let loose a coughing series of wuffs, growls, and grunts. His gestures as he communicated were very human and, if Izzy hadn’t feared for her life, she would have found the scene comical.
“Change,” Thomas said. “I can’t get the details with you like that.” He waved his hand at the looming silver. The humongous wolf dropped his head.
The seated gray immediately convulsed and Izzy winced at the painful sounding process. Hesitant, the silver wolf paced back, looked in her direction and back at Thomas. Why the hell did they obey him?
“A little late for cold feet, Curtis. Change.”
Curtis?
Izzy’s heart gave a sickening lurch. Snorting, the silver wolf tensed. His skin rippled, fur standing up with the passing tremor, and its shape changed, dwindled, while its companion’s stretched and grew. Fur and claws retracted, muzzles shortened, and where two wolves once hulked stood a very human, very naked Gerome and Curtis.
• • •
Changing always left Curtis hurting for a good five minutes afterwards, like he’d scrubbed himself with fine grit sandpaper. His skin was raw and hypersensitive, and the currents of air coursing over his body were near unbearable for the first few seconds. Disorientation accompanied his discomfort. Sound, texture, and color screamed at his senses and his Alpha’s voice, though quiet and threatening, reverberated in his ears.
“Did you kill Night’s-Rapid-Water?” Thomas asked. He leaned on the fire poker he held like a cane.
Curtis heard his Alpha but he barely comprehended. Izzy distracted him. He opened his mouth to respond, but no words came. When he’d entered the cabin with Gerome, her face had held the same burned-out quality it’d had when they’d come off the trail to Rock Spout Falls. The faraway look in her eyes had quickly twisted to shock, then anger when he’d shifted to human form. She regarded them all with unconcealed fury, dark eyes flashing. Charm and explanations probably wouldn’t get him out of this one.
“Curtis.” Thomas snapped his fingers in front of his Beta’s face and Izzy swam out of focus.
“We couldn’t catch him,” Curtis said, folding his arms.
Gerome suppressed a laugh that came out like a snort.
Curtis went on, “He was always the fastest of us and he’ll always know the terrain better. The woods are his first home not his second.”
“That’s why we brought her up here.” Thomas jerked hi
s head at Izzy and heat bloomed in Curtis’s chest and crept up his neck. “I didn’t think Rapid could smell her and leave her alone even if it meant crossing our territory.”
My territory. Mine. Rocking on the balls of his feet, Curtis rolled his head around and shoved his hands in his armpits before he balled them into fists.
“He might be a pure wolf, closer to animal than man, but he knows us,” Thomas continued, either unaware or uncaring of his Beta’s mounting agitation. “Our lure won’t be effective a second time without some additional … encouragement.” He ambled over to Izzy’s chair and braced the fire poker he held against her seat. Behind her, he clasped the metal chair back and leaned over her.
The dominant and possessive display stoked Clear-Skies from a candle flame flicker to a torch of blazing incandescence. Spirit fire shot from Curtis’s chest to his core, the freezing burn chewing through his belly and sparking out his pores. The wolf wanted out and Curtis’s vision tunneled. He shrank inside himself and the internal discordant howl of his enraged inner beast rang in his ears.
Not now, Curtis strained against the transformation. We can’t change now. We’ll hurt Izzy. He concentrated on his Alpha’s face, keeping his expression carefully neutral. If Thomas and his wolf, Mountain’s-Might, sensed the Beta’s defiance, nothing would stop them from tearing each other, and everyone else, apart.
Thomas smirked. “So, tell me, what exactly went wrong besides ‘we didn’t catch him?’”
Gerome gave Curtis the I’m-not-taking-the-fall-for-this face and Curtis’s upper lip pulled back. Debrief, though he resented playing twenty questions, helped him regain control. Articulating his thoughts kept Clear-Skies from tearing loose, the wolf’s reactionary instinct brought in line by reason.
“It’s my fault,” Curtis said. “I fell asleep. I didn’t smell Rapid until he was in the cabin and already changed. He’d masked his scent with his human form and with the ranger’s clothes.” No doubt a missing person alert would go out in the next few days. Unless the authorities found the unfortunate man’s body, that is. Curtis didn’t think they would. If Rapid didn’t consume his kills, he hid them well. “I didn’t signal the pack soon enough because I was distracted.”
“You don’t say?” Thomas drew Izzy’s hair over her shoulder, tangled it in his fingers, pulled her head back, and took a deep whiff of her neck. Though her face was tilted up, Curtis saw her eyes widen with terror. Her throat convulsed when she swallowed and his acute sight narrowed on the erratic flutter of a pulsing vein. That delicate spot he’d kissed lay exposed and vulnerable and he had to protect what was his. He felt his blank expression contort and he edged forward. Thomas baited him. He knew it. This was a test.
Is she more important than us?
Of course she was. And because she was, Curtis couldn’t rise to his Alpha’s taunt. He couldn’t give Thomas an excuse to get rid of her. Cheeks working around his gritted teeth, he stepped back in line with Gerome and the heat he knew colored his neck set his ears aflame when Thomas stroked Izzy’s head.
“Maybe if you weren’t so distracted.” Thomas fisted his hand in Izzy’s hair and yanked, making the skin on her forehead taut. “Maybe if you weren’t fucking the bait,” he jerked her head back hard and her eyes squinted, watered, “we wouldn’t have to do things my way.” Two drops leaked from her eyes and slid down her already tear-tracked face.
“Thomas.” Curtis strode toward them, gunning for Izzy. He’d had enough.
“Curtis, shut the fuck up and get back in line.”
A violent force worked on Curtis. The Alpha’s power hit him as if Thomas had thrown up an invisible wall. Circumnavigating the barrier was impossible. The wall pushed at him, then twisted on itself, creating a thrumming filament that speared his core and pulled him backward like a strung puppet. The string hummed with Thomas’s intent and ripped through his Beta’s body in a shock wave, making his eyes jitter and his muscles spasm. Clear-Skies leapt away from the tendril of power skewering his host, and when Curtis tried to resist the command, he felt his insides tear. Once he obeyed and returned to Gerome’s side, the pain ceased. The power spent itself and diffused. Curtis’s arms hung like dead weight. Fighting the order had hollowed him out and Clear-Skies had become a pinprick of white-blue light hidden deep within his chest, his dominance quashed by the Alpha’s will. Thomas rounded on him, dropping Izzy like an uninteresting bit of prey.
“You assured me. You said you’d take care of it. I trusted you to handle Rapid.” Thomas came a hair’s breath from Curtis’s face, so close a fleck of spittle struck his chin. “You fucked up and I don’t even know why you’re smiling, Gerome.” The Alpha glared at the subordinate wolf in Curtis’s periphery. “All that means is more bitch work for you.
“Curtis, your priorities are clear. You stay here and baby-sit. Gerome, wait for me outside. We’ll be tracking, so change quick.”
When the door swung shut behind Gerome, Thomas laid his hands on Curtis’s bare shoulders.
“Your head’s in the wrong place. It always has been with her. You’re my second. My Beta.” Thomas squinted at him. “Did you really think I’d let you life-mate a cripple? I didn’t order you to get her up here for you to fuck her. Don’t look away. Look at me.”
Curtis did and he understood it was not merely a pup’s disobedience that clamored inside him. He hated this man. Had tolerated him so long out of deference to his father’s respect for his business partner and friend. But Robert Keene was long gone and Thomas had somehow — no, Curtis knew he’d allowed the man to do it — sidled into his father’s place, wore his father’s role like a misshapen mask. The mask’s distorted mouth gaped as it lectured him.
“The only reason that woman hasn’t run screaming from you is my influence. She’s weak and she’s not your mate. Quit acting like she is. After tomorrow, that girl is a face on a milk carton. She’s the next shitstorm on CNN. Get used to it.” Thomas pushed off Curtis and slammed the front door when he exited.
• • •
A weight Izzy hadn’t realized settled on her lifted with Thomas’s departure and the rest of her truncated warning came tumbling out, “ — to Curtis.”
At the mention of his name Curtis moved to Izzy, arms outstretched. Another man’s hands on her was the last thing she wanted right now. Her skin and hair still smelled of the property manager, his overpowering cologne. The fragrance made her think of men who wore fat, gold rings and met in smoky back rooms. Where he’d stroked her hair and neck she imagined glistening trails like a snail’s silvery tracks.
Body and voice free, she leapt out of the chair, snatched up the fire poker, and brandished it at Curtis. Unhindered by the weight that had kept her paralyzed and silent, her body felt very light, like she’d trained herself to run with ten-pound weights attached to her arms and ankles and had just loosened the excess ballast. The right sleeve of her flannel shirt flopped over her incomplete arm.
“What the hell are you and what the fuck is going on?”
Curtis stopped where he was and held up his hands as a man would at gunpoint. The dull tip of the iron poker dimpled his chest. “Calm down, Izzy.”
“Fuck you. I’m bait? Weak?” Shock from the attack and at seeing two wolves morph into men had overwhelmed her indignation at Thomas’s scathing remarks. It had taken a moment for the full effect of his words to hit her. And this man — if he was a man — had stood by and accepted it. It made her gut twist. Inside, she hurt all over, her organs suddenly too large and crowding each other in the flimsy casing of her body. “Do you have any idea what it takes to be a principle dancer in a major company?” She prodded him in the gut with the poker.
Curtis oofed and shook his head, rubbed his tummy.
“I used to be the fucking best,” her voice caught and she blinked back stinging tears. “Now I’m a face on a milk carton?”
“I didn
’t say any of that.”
“But he did, and it seems like everyone agrees with whatever he says and does whatever he wants.”
Curtis looked bewildered. “Thomas is our Alpha. A direct order is almost impossible to disobey.”
A direct order?
Shut your mouth and keep still.
So, that’s why she hadn’t been able to move or speak, and when Curtis had stepped out of line he’d had to retreat when Thomas told him to. Curtis had to obey no matter what he felt, which —
Oh, God.
“He ordered you to bring me up here?” Izzy asked.
Curtis’s Adam’s apple bobbed up and down. “Yes.”
The fire poker wilted in Izzy’s hand. “That’s why you came to the studio. It didn’t have anything to do with my glove.” The center of her forehead tickled like a hair-line fissure opened there in her skull.
“It wasn’t just orders. I wanted to see you anyway.” Curtis tripped over his words and took a half step to her before Izzy righted her weapon and drove him back.
“I hear you fine where you are. Why does your ‘Alpha’ want me here and what was that, that thing that broke in?”
“That thing was a Werewolf. I,” he touched his chest, “am a Werewolf. We’re not things. We’re people … mostly. The wolf that attacked you tonight used to be part of our pack before he went sick. Thomas wants you here because we haven’t been able to track him. When you came to the lodge last week, we scented him for the first time in years.”
“But why would he come for me?”
Curtis played with his fingers. “Izzy, you’re the only prey that’s ever escaped Rapid.” He couldn’t look at her. “He’s the one that took your arm. He’s the one that killed your brother.”