“We also have other skills.”
Miles and I kept watch as he worked on the locks.
“You know what power I’d love?” Miles asked, as we watched the empty street. “Super speed. I mean, wolves can run fast, right? I’d love that in human form.”
“Just run more,” Raff said, as he worked his picks. “If you start running ten minutes a day and gradually increase your time, you’ll gain stamina and speed.”
Miles rolled his eyes and smiled at me. I smiled back.
“Good idea, man,” Miles said, heavy on the sarcasm.
If Raff noticed, he was too busy to comment.
Finally, the lock clicked, and Raff opened the door. I rushed up the two steps to the entryway. Inside the church sat boxes, a few collapsible card tables, and half a dozen folding chairs, some in front of tables but most folded up against the wall. The back of the church had a small altar and pulpit, but that was it. It was one single room, no side rooms, closets, or even a bathroom. It smelled like mildew, moss, and rot with a weird tinge of bleach and something acrid and toxic.
“Guess it’s probably not used for worship anymore,” I said, as I stepped inside.
The wooden floor was soft under my shoe, and the board bent as I stepped on it. For a second, it felt like my shoe was going to break through the wood, but it held. I bounced a bit before taking further steps. Raff and Miles walked cautiously.
One of the boxes on the table was sealed and labeled with a date in November, but no year and no indication it had been this past November except that the box seemed to be in decent shape. The handwriting looked strangely familiar, but I couldn’t place it.
Across the room, Raff bent over an open box and swore.
“What?” I asked, heart pounding.
I didn’t smell silver or gun powder, but I was prepared for anything we might find: body parts, weapons, a case of Crystal Pepsi. Who knew what kind of things might be left in old buildings like this?
“Look,” Raff said.
I looked into the box and sucked in a breath. It was filled with little green jars. Exactly the kind we’d found with the dead werewolves. The tops were labeled “WB” like the other jars we’d seen, in the exact same hand as the date on the other box, which was why it was familiar.
Miles whistled. “Well, I guess now we know for sure they’re behind the potion.”
The letter to Marianne flashed in my head.
“Oh my goodness,” I said, feeling a little faint. Raff stood on edge, looking ready to catch me if I did. “Marianne’s letter. It was telling her to come to the church, remember?”
Raff nodded.
“It wasn’t just a general ‘come back.’ It was a coded message telling her to come to the church and drink this stuff. Probably after she handed it out to everyone in the pack.” Cold filled my bones. My whole body felt unsteady and shaky. “Marianne couldn’t get here because Jean never lets her out of her sight, but the hunters didn’t know that. They were hoping she’d lead the pack here and get as many werewolves as possible to drink the potion. Maybe when she didn’t, they managed to slip some to Rob and Linda and hoped they’d spread the word.”
Raff blinked and then looked from the horrible green jars and then back to me. “But how would she have even known what it was?”
“Maybe it was one of their long term plans or something. They could have discussed it before attacking us and just hoped she’d remember. Bryce’s video was up before then.”
Miles had gone pale. “I’m gonna go on the record as being glad those guys are at least a little bit incompetent.”
“That’s about all they have going for them,” I mumbled.
I lifted one of the jars, and the viscous liquid sloshed around inside. I desperately wanted it to show it to Bryce or Avery and have them tell me if there was anything resembling a real anti-shift potion in there, mixed with the poison. That was ridiculous, of course. Why would the hunters bother with a real potion? But for good measure, I decided to bring Avery a sample to see if she could give me a breakdown of what it was. Knowing the brand of poison might help us locate the hunters or learn more about their methods. I surreptitiously stuck the small jar in my purse when Raff wasn’t looking.
“It’s like liquid evil,” Miles said, holding one of the jars up for inspection.
Raff continued to search through the remaining few boxes, so I helped, though I had no idea what we were looking for and the smell of the room was starting to make me nauseous. That was the downside to having heightened senses: You couldn’t ignore them. Most of the boxes contained empty jars or nothing at all. There were no invoices, receipts, or maps leading to their new headquarters, assuming they weren’t using the same cabin we’d found them in the first time. Maybe we should have burned it to the ground.
Raff picked up the box of poison and carried it out.
“Why do you need that?” Miles asked, before I could.
“I don’t,” Raff said, putting it into his trunk. “But it doesn’t seem smart to leave it here.”
I walked the perimeter of the church for good measure, but there was nothing except overgrown grass, littered cans and alcohol bottles, and random pieces of trash. Raff replaced the lock on the door and then we piled back into his car.
“Well, that was a waste of time,” I said from the back seat where I was still forced to sit.
“No time is wasted when it’s used in pursuit of good,” Miles said and beamed at me from the front seat.
Raff muttered something under his breath as he pulled the car out onto the street.
“What was that?” I asked.
“Nothing,” he said, or started to say.
Then a truck rammed into us from behind. I flew forward until the seatbelt tightened, yanking me back hard against the seat. I struggled to catch my breath.
Raff recovered more quickly, hitting the gas and turning the corner before speeding over to 15th Avenue and turning right. The truck was a big, oversized black pickup with a huge cab, no doubt the same one that had chased us the night before. We sped down the busy street, the truck keeping close behind. Raff turned right when a stoplight would have hindered our progress, but that forced us back on smaller, narrower streets with cars parked on both sides that were difficult to navigate at normal speeds, let alone when trying to lose someone.
At a roundabout, Raff took a hard left, traveled down to busier, bustling Market Street, and was able to get back down to 15th. An SUV pulled out between us and the truck, oblivious to the ongoing chase. Back on the main road, Raff gunned it. He slipped beneath a yellow light as it turned red and the truck, stuck behind the SUV, had to stop.
Raff kept the gas pressed to the floor, and I stared out the back window as the distance between us and the truck increased. He turned down a side road and then turned again until we reached a freeway entrance downtown.
“They might know where we’re heading,” Miles said, his voice shaky.
“I know,” Raff said. “But so far, they’ve been unwilling to attack the orchard directly.”
“They’re cowards,” I said, my voice dripping with disdain as my heart continued to pound at my insides with its rapid-fire beating. “They want to attack us in small groups, because they’re afraid we’d kick their butts otherwise.”
“We would,” Raff said confidently, and those two words managed to calm some of the turmoil raging in my midsection.
He glanced quickly in the rear view and met my eyes, and I realized I felt safe with him. Scared, sure, because the hunters were determined (who rams a car in broad daylight?) and heavily armed (see: both men currently lying unconscious due to the silver poisoning), but I also knew Raff was strong and more determined than they were. For the moment, that was enough.
Chapter 19
“I’m never going to be able to explain this to my insurance company,” Raff said, rubbing his temples as he looked away from the damaged rear end of his sedan.
The bumper and back side had been cr
unched in. The trunk’s cover was still latched but bowed up, leaving a gap where it no longer met the sides of the trunk. Raff had tried to open it, but it was jammed, stuck because of the way it was bent.
“Tell them it was a hit and run,” I said. “That’s not even really a lie. We got hit and we ran.”
Raff groaned. That the car was the only thing damaged was nothing short of a miracle, and the fact that the idiots had tried to attack us in the middle of the day was pretty scary. We’d gotten away unscathed, and that mattered more than Raff’s car, but he was allowed to be bummed about it.
“Let’s just go inside. I don’t want to look at it anymore.” Raff reached for me and then stopped, his arm floating in mid-air as if he’d suddenly changed his mind.
I swallowed and forced a smile, shrugging it off. I headed inside.
The minute Zara opened the door, sobs filled the air. Zara's face was hard, and the mournful howls coming from deeper in the house rattled my bones. Instinctively, I knew what it meant, but I didn’t want to accept it.
“Who was it?” Raff asked.
“Owen,” Zara said.
Raff let out of a sigh of relief. I glared at him.
“I’m sorry to hear that,” Raff said, ignoring my look. “He was a good guy.”
Zara nodded. None of us had really known Owen, but he’d been fiercely loyal to his pack, and he hadn’t deserved to die. Especially by something as painful and sinister as silver poisoning.
“You shouldn’t look so relieved,” I mumbled as Raff and I headed to the kitchen.
The howling upstairs continued, and I assumed it was Rayna. I also assumed she probably didn’t want to be bothered at the moment; I certainly wouldn’t have wanted to be.
“I’m not relieved,” Raff said quietly. “But it’s good that it was Owen instead of Levi. Losing an Alpha…” He trailed off and shook his head.
Jean was in the kitchen, leaning against the counter and watching the timer count down on the microwave. The smell of something yeasty baking in the oven filled the air. The howling continued, more muffled from this side of the house, but before we could exchange pleasantries—or ask what was cooking—banging sounded from above, followed by muffled yells.
Jean sighed. “That must be Marianne.”
The howling stopped for a moment, long enough for me to make out Marianne screaming something, and then it started again.
Jean looked from the stove to the stairs, obviously torn between her baking and Marianne.
“I’ll go speak to her,” I said. “I want to ask her some questions anyhow.”
Jean raised an eyebrow, uncertain, but the timer only had two minutes left and she obviously didn’t want to leave.
“Okay. But be nice.”
She pulled a key from her sweater pocket and handed it to me. Raff started to follow, but she stopped him.
“Just Charlie. I don’t want Marianne to feel ganged up on.”
“But—” Raff started.
“It’s fine,” I said. “I’ll just be upstairs.”
Raff ran his fingers through his hair. “Be careful.”
I ignored the note of genuine worry in his voice. Marianne was a danger to herself, but I wasn’t convinced she was a real threat to me.
I passed the room where Levi slept and Owen's body lay. The door was cracked, and I could see Rayna kneeling between the beds, her head up as she howled at some imaginary moon, a song of pain and loss. I moved quickly to Marianne’s room, where she was beating on the door and screaming for the “wretched noise to stop.”
“Marianne?” I called. The screaming and pounding halted. “I’m coming in.”
I unlocked the door and stepped inside. Marianne’s room was exactly like we’d left it. There was no sign that she’d touched the pile of mail on her dresser, and she probably didn’t know Raff had snagged some of it. I set my purse on the dresser, realizing I’d carried it all the way upstairs. Normally, I’d have left it on the counter, but I’d been clinging to it for the entire tense drive up and hadn’t even thought about letting go of it.
“Can you make that horrible noise stop?” Marianne asked, sitting back on the bed. “I already feel as if I’m confined to a zoo. I don’t need the soundtrack.”
“Owen died,” I said.
Marianne’s face contorted, her lips twitching. My stomach twisted. She was trying not to smile. Because Owen was dead, and that made her happy. The urge to slap her rose and I had to tamp it down.
“He was poisoned by silver,” I said angrily. “And Levi is fighting for his life.”
“Mongrels must be put down,” she said, so matter-of-factly that I almost couldn’t believe the callousness of it. Almost.
“You’re really something, you know that? Owen is… was… a person. He didn’t deserve to die.”
Marianne shrugged and picked up a hair brush off her nightstand, though her hair was up in a knot on top of her head and she made no move to brush it out.
“I just came up here to ask you to stop screaming. So, you know, stop. Let Rayna grieve.”
“I suppose she should be allowed that. Though soon she’ll have much more to grieve for.”
Marianne did smile then, and it was so vicious that I physically took a step backward. She looked so much like her brother that it made chills run down my spine.
“Well, at least until she’s put down like the rest of us.”
I stared at her. The first time I’d seen her, it was like looking through a cracked mirror into an alternate world, one where I’d allowed my loathing of what I was to take over my whole being. The situation last month had forced me to face some of the ways I spoke about being a werewolf, and even how I thought about it. Being a werewolf came with problems: a painful transformation that was out of your control, a rampant appetite, and a weirdly strong sense of smell. I still couldn’t see it as the magical gift that Raff thought it was, but I no longer believed it was a total curse.
Jean had been trying to shift Marianne’s perspective in a similar way, but clearly, it was a lost cause. And looking at her now made me sad.
“I thought maybe you could learn not to hate what we are,” I said, “like I’m learning. But now I think maybe you can’t be saved.”
Marianne laughed. “I don’t want to be saved.”
Rayna’s howling stopped. There was a moment of silence, and I found myself holding my breath. And then there was a scream. Doors banged open. Footsteps moved down the hall. I ran outside to see what was happening, careful to lock Marianne’s door so she couldn’t slip out during the chaos.
In the sick room—for lack of a better word—Rayna was slapping Levi. He wasn’t responding. Or breathing. His chest was still. Kai, who had run down the hall, pushed her aside. She pulled something out of her bag and poured it into his open mouth, massaging his throat. He gasped and his eyes popped open. He looked at Rayna, who grabbed his shoulder and held him for dear life. Then his eyes fluttered closed, but his chest continued moving.
“I need to reapply the salve,” Kai said. “But I think perhaps that was the worst of it.”
“His heart stopped!” Rayna screeched.
“Yes, but now that it’s beating again, he might be on the road to recovery.” She pulled more of the salve out of her bag.
Raff appeared beside me in the doorway. I hadn’t even heard him approach, I’d been so distracted.
“Everything okay?” he asked.
I nodded, though he was asking Kai.
“For now,” Kai said as she unwound bandages from Levi’s limp body.
The foul smell of the salve and the sweet scent of infection filled the room, and I wrinkled my nose.
“Though I think it’s time to remove Owen's body. This is an infirmary, not a morgue.”
Rayna looked stricken, like Kai had slapped her, and glared at Raff as if daring him to come any closer.
“We can put him somewhere more peaceful until you can transport him home,” Kai said more gently.
&nbs
p; Rayna scowled but flopped down into the sole chair that had been brought into the room and shoved in the corner. Raff went to get help since moving Owen wasn’t a one-man job. I went back to Marianne’s room to retrieve my purse.
Marianne was sitting quietly on the bed, brushing out the hair she’d pulled down from its knot.
“Is the other one dead yet?” she asked.
I didn’t dignify that with an answer. I grabbed my purse and left, shutting and locking the door behind me. For the first time, I didn’t feel even a little bit bad for locking Marianne up.
Chapter 20
Raff and I crashed in spare rooms at the orchard, too exhausted to face the drive back home, especially since the hunters were probably camped somewhere nearby, waiting for the chance to pick more of us off. Since the house wasn’t as full as it had been the last time we’d stayed over, Raff and I got our own rooms, though they were next to each other. I deeply regretted not bringing a change of clothes, but leggings made decent pajama pants in a pinch, and Jean lent me one of Drake’s old t-shirts that was large enough to work as a pajama shirt.
I brushed my teeth with a finger and took a swig of mouthwash before settling on the bouncy mattress. I called and left a message at Yogurt Time saying that I had food poisoning and wouldn’t be in for my shift the next day. I hated lying, but I didn’t know when we’d get back. Anyway, I had an actual life or death situation to deal with and couldn’t handle serving yogurt right now.
I didn’t have my computer—another oversight; I would have packed it if I’d known we’d be spending the night—so I checked social media on my phone. Michael had posted a new makeup video about highlights and toners, and I fell asleep watching as he soothingly explained how to use his favorite highlighters over foundation.
When I awoke the next morning, sun streamed through the blinds, and the house was eerily still and quiet. I crept into the bathroom down the hall and washed my face before putting yesterday’s clothes back on and doing my best to clean my mouth without a toothbrush. I didn’t even have eyeliner, so I was forced to forgo makeup.
Wicked Moon (The Reluctant Werewolf Chronicles Book 2) Page 13