Zeus's Pack 9: Rave

by Lynn Hagen

  It was as if an unseen force was helping him, guiding his hand and applying so much pressure that he could feel his temples throb with exertion.

  His arm rose slowly, and the muzzle of the gun pressed hard into Tony’s temple, reminding him of the power behind the steel. He fought to breathe, fought to get the damn thing away from his head.

  He was sweating profusely as he glanced around the room, praying his finger didn’t pull the trigger.

  A hand curled around Tony’s neck and Tony realized in horror that it was his own damn hand.

  But he could feel that someone was standing behind him and there wasn’t a damn thing he could do. He was so fucking helpless and powerless to stop the person. His fingers dug into his windpipe, making it almost impossible for Tony to breathe as the pressure mounted. He stood there strangling himself with a gun to his head.

  This was not one of his better nights.

  “I could kill you right now or make you shoot your brains out, and no one would truly know what happened in here,” the man said from a darkened corner. Tony could hear the note of amusement as his finger slid next to the trigger, taunting him, making Tony believe that he was going to shoot himself. He became light-headed, white dots bursting all around him from the lack of oxygen as his fingers maintained their tight grip on his neck.

  “Go back to where you came from, or the next time I won’t stop you.” A few seconds later the door flew open, the night air spilling in.

  Tony caught a glimpse of the man’s face as the cheap, yellow lighting from outside splashed into his room and framed the man in a soft halo.

  Aba.

  The deep angles of his face were half masked from the shadows as his eyes glanced back at Tony. They were soulless eyes, eyes that said Aba would do exactly as he promised if Tony didn’t back off.

  Something Tony didn’t plan on doing.

  His fingers eased from his gun, and Tony’s arm fell limp at his side from his neck. He fell to the floor, gasping for air. Wheezing for air was more like it. The skin on his neck burned from where his fingernails had dug into flesh, and his throat felt raw, his breathing ragged. Tony was on all fours, forcing air into his lungs as the door snicked closed. Tears streamed down his face from the pure pressure that had been exerted, his head feeling as though it were going to explode.

  What the hell was he dealing with? The file had said that Aba had committed multiple murders, but they all looked like suicides. Tony hadn’t really put too much stock into those reports, but he was quickly changing his mind.

  His hand came up, rubbing at his neck as Tony pushed back onto his knees, gun still in hand. He glanced at the door, but it was closed and the feeling of someone watching him in the darkness was gone.

  Tony sat on his ass, his back against the bed as he wondered how he was going to capture someone who could make him want to just walk away and forget about this case.

  Good thing he was a stubborn ass bastard who never gave up.

  Tony stared down at his Glock. It used to be a solid, comforting weight in his hand, but now he only saw it as a tool for Aba to use against him. He finally pushed to his feet, swaying a little.

  He sat down on the side of his bed, staring down at the gun he had fired very few times over the years, and wondered if the next bullet fired would be into his own head.

  The thought was sobering, but Tony was not going to run away and allow Aba to go unpunished. If Tony scared that easily, he wouldn’t have advanced as far as he did in his career.

  No, for better or dead, Tony was in this until the job was done.

  Awake now, Tony grabbed the file he had on the styre mente and began to pore over the notes again. He grabbed the small notepad and pen from the side table with the motel monogram and began to make notes of his own. It was after six when he finished memorizing everything in the file. He yawned, his stomach rumbling at the same time, letting Tony know it was time for some breakfast. He tucked the motel notepad inside his jacket and stood, grabbing the file to store in the trunk of the car.

  Dorm knocked on his door after seven. Tony was showered and ready to go.

  Dorm’s eyes widened as he stepped into Tony’s room. “What happened to your neck?”

  Tony had seen the bruising in the mirror after his shower. The fingerprints were clear and an ugly deep purple. There was no denying he had been strangled. “I choked myself.” He told the bizarre truth, hoping Dorm would let it go.

  Dorm’s brows furrowed as he stood in Tony’s motel room, staring from his neck to his eyes. “Why would you do that?”

  So much for hoping.

  Tony slid his jacket on, shrugging it over his shoulders, knowing there was no way he could hide the bruising. “I had a visitor last night. Aba warned me away from the case, strangled the crap out of me with my own hands to show his power.”

  “Are you kidding?” Dorm gaped at Tony with a glint of anger in his eyes. His lip snarled back as he looked at Tony and then glanced back at the motel door, as if Aba were still standing there. “And you didn’t shoot him?”

  There was no way Tony was telling Dorm that he almost shot himself in the head with his own damn gun. That was something a man never shared. Talk about kicking someone’s pride in the gonads.

  “I was too busy trying to breathe. It’s kind of hard to shoot when you’re about to pass out from blood loss to your brain.” And it was.

  “You have a point.” Dorm didn’t look too happy, as if the thought of someone choking him left a bad taste in his mouth. Tony knew how he felt.

  “Let’s get some breakfast, and we can start questioning people.”

  Tony tucked the file under his arm, closing the door behind him.

  They drove through Pride Pack Valley, heading toward Theo’s. Tony knew from the last time he was here that Theo’s served breakfast.

  He slammed the brakes just a block from Theo’s when he caught a glimpse of a body in an alley, and the perp standing right next to it.

  Tony jumped from the car, pulling his gun as he raised it and ran for the mouth of the alleyway. “Freeze.”

  The man looked at him, his eyes narrowed and his canines exposed. Was he a shifter? He didn’t look like any shifter Tony had ever seen. He wanted to look down at the body on the ground, but he didn’t dare take his eyes off of the man standing there staring at him as if Tony was meddling.

  Dorm was out of the car, gun raised and coming up behind Tony when Tony gaped at the suspect flying away. Flying? He was really flying? He glanced around to see if Aba was anywhere near. Maybe this was another mind trick. It had to be.

  Men just didn’t fucking fly away from a crime scene.

  “Get the sheriff on the phone,” Tony said to Dorm as he carefully walked down the alleyway, his eyes scanning for any other flying men. When he saw that the alley was clear, Tony checked on the victim.

  He gasped when he saw black ooze coming out of the man’s neck wound. Just what in the fuck was going on around here? Tony had a feeling he had stepped into some shit in this town. There was more than just a mind controller running around, and he was going to get to the bottom of things.

  He jumped back when the downed man’s eyes popped open, and then he scurried to his feet, running from the alley with a damn knife still embedded in the side of his neck. Ah hell. He was going to lose his mind by the time he wrapped his case up. He could just feel it.

  “The sheriff is on his way.” Dorm walked down the alley, his gun out and at his side as he glanced around. Tony was still kneeling on one knee, feeling slightly disoriented.

  “What’s going on?” Dorm asked as he glanced around. “Why did you jump from the car and tell me to call the sheriff?”

  Dorm hadn’t seen the men in the alleyway. He had been behind Tony. Shit. Now he was going to have to tell the sheriff what he really saw, or tell them it was a false alarm. Maybe he needed to go talk to the alpha of the grey wolf pack that lived here. Things were just getting too damn strange for words.

&n
bsp; Sirens blared as the sheriff approached, the front of the car coming into view as the sound of heavy footfall came toward them.

  Tony stood, dusting his hand onto his jeans as he holstered his gun.

  Dorm put his away as well.

  Sheriff Jesse DeKalb came into view, his gun out and his eyes searching. “What’s going on, Agent Monroe?”

  He wished he knew.

  “False alarm.” It gutted him to say those words when they weren’t true. And he knew Jesse was a shifter, which meant he could probably smell the lie. Grey wolves had a very keen sense of smell.

  “False?” Jesse glanced at him with questioning eyes and then looked over to where Dorm was standing. Understanding dawned in his eyes as he nodded. Jesse knew Dorm was human. He would be able to scent it, which meant no talking about strange paranormal shit in front of the human who had no knowledge that shifters existed.

  “What do you think you saw?”

  Tony knew Jesse couldn’t just walk away. He had to play the part in front of Agent Dorm. But Tony also knew he would be explaining himself later to the sheriff when Dorm wasn’t around.

  “I thought I saw a body, but I must have been seeing things.”

  Damn if he didn’t feel lame saying that. Tony never imagined things.

  He even knew that there had been somebody in Logan and Cal’s house when he and Dorm were there last night. He’d bet his bottom dollar on it.

  Jesse looked around, giving Tony a few subtle glances along the way. “Nothing here,” he called over to Deputy Hanes. “False alarm.”

  Tony wanted to get out of there. He hated feeling like an idiot, especially when he wasn’t. One way or the other, Tony was going to find out what in the hell was going on in Pride Pack Valley.

  Chapter Five

  Logan walked into Theo’s Bar and Grill. There was a horseshoe-shaped bar in the center of the room, booths off to the left, tables and chairs scattered around on the dark wooden floor. He spotted a pool table behind the row of booths and flat-screen televisions spaced out in various places. Most bars were dimly lit, a place of refuge for those seeking solace, but Theo’s was moderately lit, not brightly, but enough to see the people around him.

  Wine glasses hung over the bar, bottles of liquor lined the shelves, and bowls scattered from one end of the bar top to the other with nuts, pretzels, and napkins stacks on the side. But Logan could smell the salty scent of bacon on the air, home fries and pancakes as well.

  Damn if it didn’t make his stomach growl, but he’d never really been a breakfast person.

  Logan walked to the bar, taking a seat on one of the stools. Rave was with him, talking with a few people who had stopped him by the door. Logan glanced around, spotting a bartender busy on the right side of the bar. He glanced back to make sure Rave wasn’t watching him and then concentrated on the bartender, mentally pushing the thought of coming over to Logan and serving him into the guy’s head.

  He wasn’t out to hurt the man, but Logan was curious as hell to see if he could do it. It just didn’t seem real that he could actually control minds. Logan was floored by the idea, and who wouldn’t want to test their boundaries if they knew they could control minds?

  The bartender walked away from the customer he had been serving, the lady looking indignantly at the bartender as he made his way over to Logan. “What can I get for you?”

  Logan sat there stunned for a moment. He had done it yesterday in Zeus’s office, but to see that it worked on humans as well, wow.

  Okay, so he assumed the man was human, but it had worked. “I’ll have an orange juice.” After all, it was only eight in the morning.

  The man nodded and brought Logan a tall glass of cold OJ. He felt a hand grip the back of his neck, and then Rave’s face came into view, a disapproving look on his face. “I thought we talked about this?”

  “You talked about this,” he said casually enough as he sipped his juice. He noticed a light throb in his head, but nothing compared to yesterday. Maybe Logan was getting stronger, better at controlling minds so it didn’t make him weak and vulnerable afterward.

  “Do you think it’s right to make people do what you want, taking away their free will?” The question was spoken low enough for just Logan to hear, but he heard the censure in the guy’s voice. Now Logan felt like crap for mentally making the bartender get his drink.

  “I am who I am, Rave. You may try and stop me from being a styre mente, but I have this gift for a reason.” Why would he have this ability if he couldn’t use it? He wasn’t trying to do bad things with it.

  Hell, Logan wasn’t even sure what he was supposed to do with it. But not using it seemed like a waste to him.

  “Then we need to figure out a positive way for you to use it. Making someone do your bidding without a choice is wrong.”

  “Life isn’t fair. Get over it.” Logan wasn’t usually a douche, but he felt as though Rave was blowing down on him. He hadn’t hurt anyone. Logan didn’t plan to, either. But how was he going to know the extent of his powers if he didn’t try them out, like a test run?

  “If you insist on using people as slave labor, we can go back to the house.”

  “Or I can just go home.” Logan still wasn’t sure why he was hanging around. His mom’s place was just as safe as Rave’s house was. Aba didn’t know where his mother lived. And since Cal was his only friend, he didn’t have to worry about anyone ratting him out.

  “You’re being difficult on purpose,” Rave accused as he took a seat next to Logan. “I’m not your enemy.”

  “I don’t know you well enough to agree with that.” Logan could see the frustration in Rave’s brown eyes, but like Logan had stated, he didn’t know Rave. For all he knew, the man could be using him.

  Logan didn’t know who to trust. His life had gone from ordinary and monotonous to a fun-filled trip to Disney World where the characters tried to eat people. Maybe not that bad, but it was damn close.

  Someone had tried to blow him up—which he was really starting to suspect it to be Aba—then he was told he had funky blood, and then Aba tried to whisk him away to the unknown, against his damn will. Now he sat here with a wolf shifter he didn’t even know who was stating that Logan could trust him.

  Not likely.

  Rave shook his head, as if confused by Logan’s mistrust. “I know you don’t know me too well, but on my honor I would never hurt you.”

  “Again, don’t know ya, pal.” Logan drank down the last of the orange juice and sat the empty glass down that had pulp stuck to the inside as he glanced around.

  Logan held back the gasp when his vision blurred for a moment, and then images started forming in his head. He glanced at a couple sitting in a booth, looking pleasant enough as they ate. But Logan could see images swimming in front of him of the woman being pregnant and the man cheating on her countless times. The man was paranoid, too, doubting that the child was even his. Logan blinked a few times and then wiped his eyes with the palms of his hands. How in the hell did he know that?

  He glanced at the woman’s belly, but didn’t see even the smallest bump to prove she was pregnant, but somehow he knew she was.

  His gaze swung to the next occupied booth. A man sat there alone, sipping what looked like apple juice, or maybe beer, as he watched something on one of the televisions. The guy wore a deep-blue suit, a matching hat, and had brown patent leather shoes on. The soft-soled kind. Logan’s vision swam again, and he could see the man in the blue suit stealing money from the church offering plate.

  It was if he could see everyone’s dark little secrets as he stared around the room. Logan was frightened to look at Rave, afraid of what he would see. As much grief as he was giving the man, Logan really did like the guy. He didn’t have anyone he could really trust aside from Cal, and although he didn’t know Rave, or know his motives, who else did he have to rely on right now? Cal was a good guy, but he was useless in this mess. And to be honest, Logan didn’t know Cal all that well either. Six months
was not long enough to know someone like the back of his hand. Although Cal was quiet, and gone half the time, Logan knew he could trust the man.

  He wasn’t so sure about Rave.

  “Is there something wrong?” Rave asked.

  Logan closed his eyes as he bent his head, praying that he didn’t see anything dark or wicked when he looked at Rave. He took a deep and cleansing breath and then glanced to his right, opening his eyes to stare at Rave.

  Nothing.

  No images, no deep, dark secrets. If the images he had seen with the strangers were correct, then he could see, or not see as it were, any malice coming from Rave.

  Big point for Rave.

  It made him relax a little. Logan wasn’t too sure he liked this little trick of the eyes. He didn’t want to know everyone’s evil little secrets.

  It sucked all the optimistic joy from his world and turned it into a cruel and cold place, where everyone was a thief or a liar, a bad man, an evil villain. It made him want to push into those people’s minds and make them do the right thing.

  Logan shook his head. “Everything is fine.” He knew that pushing into their minds was unfair, even if it was the right thing to do. He couldn’t take their choices away like that. Good or bad, they had to make the choices, not him.

  In that moment, Logan could see how someone like him could abuse the powers he possessed. It was very tempting to make people do the right thing, and that scared the shit out of him.

  * * * *

  Rave was becoming a little worried about Logan. He looked a little pale, and he was sweating. His eyes kept jumping around the bar, staring at everyone. His wolf wanted to ease the discomfort on Logan’s face, but Rave knew Logan wasn’t being too receptive right now.

  He cursed under his breath when he spotted Agent Monroe walk into the door, a large, lumbering man following behind him. This was not a good time. He knew that Monroe and Logan needed to meet, to get to know each other, but with what Logan was going through, and the mistrust he was swimming in, that was going to be a tall order.