Downstairs, no one was around. It was creepy, and I felt super awkward going through the cabinets, so I just pulled out the coffee from where I’d seen Jean put it away and started a pot, hoping the aroma would wake someone else and I wouldn’t have to sit there alone.
Raff came down shortly after wearing an old pair of Drake’s sweatpants and an oversized t-shirt. His hair was sticking up in different directions.
“Morning,” he said, heading straight for the coffee.
He poured a cup and took a sip of it black, a wide smile spreading across his face.
“You are such an addict,” I teased.
Raff winked at me. “Guilty as charged.”
“You think we can get home today?” I asked.
I was eager to take a shower, which seemed pointless without fresh clothes, and I didn’t want to be stuck up here indefinitely without any of my stuff. Or a toothbrush.
Raff considered, staring toward the front of the house like he had x-ray vision and could see a clear road ahead. “I hope so. But first, I should take Zara and Miles out and sweep the area for hunters.”
I shivered and sipped at my coffee. “How many do you think are out there?”
“Enough to make life hard for us if we don’t put a stop to this.” Raff scratched at the stubble on his chin. “The question is, how? There are only five of us warriors left, and only three on the premises.”
“I’m here,” Rayna said from the stairs as she stomped down them in her heavy boots. “And I want them all dead.”
Her hair looked glossy and freshly washed, and she wore her leather jacket and dark jeans. She looked like a bad ass.
I shuddered. I didn’t love the idea of killing anyone. But these hunters were going to kill all of us if we didn’t get to them first. I knew that. Still…
Rayna pounced on my hesitation. “No one will force you to kill, wolfling. You’re young enough to be excused this time.”
I blinked at her, and then swung my gaze toward Raff, who was trying very hard not to laugh.
“Charlie isn’t a warrior.”
Rayna raised an eyebrow. “In our pack, all wolves are warriors when they need to be.”
“I shot one of the hunters,” I said, feeling defensive.
I did not mention that I’d only shot him in the leg. At the time, it had been enough.
“I’ll come with you guys.”
“Charlie, that’s not—“
“Power in numbers, right?” I said. “I’m sure Jean has a weapon of some sort that I can borrow.”
Rayna nodded approvingly. Raff frowned so deeply it etched lines across his face.
“I want to help end this,” I said.
I didn’t add that I still felt sort of responsible for the hunters finding the orchard in the first place, although we were unsure whether they’d known about it before or if they had followed me to my first pack meeting. We knew they’d been looking for werewolves ever since Marianne was attacked and turned and probably would have found this place eventually.
“All right,” Raff said. “But you’ll have to follow orders, and if anything happens, your first job is to run for help. Got it?”
“Loud and clear.”
Jean had a small collection of hunting rifles she was willing to lend out. I had zero experience with that kind of gun, so she took me out back and gave me a quick lesson on how to hold it and fire it, and how to use the safety. I shot a few rounds into a fallen log on the side of the property until I was reasonably confident I wouldn’t accidentally drop it or shoot myself.
I still wasn’t super comfortable carrying a giant gun, but at least it looked intimidating. If we found the hunters, that was important. I wasn’t usually someone who struck fear into the hearts of murderous jerks.
Part of me sincerely hoped the hunters were gone and we’d find nothing, while the rest of me just wanted this whole thing over with. These were the same people who’d set my house on fire, who’d planned to do horrific experiments on Holly, who’d killed Owen and other wolves from our pack. None of us were safe as long as they were out there, planning new ways to make us dead.
Werewolf warriors mostly used their bodies as weapons, but Zara and Miles did have their own pistols, and Raff happily took one of Jean’s rifles. Apparently, firearm training was part of being a warrior. Rayna didn’t have a gun, but she carried an assortment of knives, including a large hunting knife she seemed happy to wave menacingly as she spoke.
Miles talked her into borrowing Owen's pistol, and though she was hesitant, she eventually agreed, “just in case.”
Yet again, I wished we could just transform into wolves and go on patrol that way. It would be a lot easier and involve fewer bullets. Unfortunately, as werewolves we couldn’t change at will, only during the full moon, which was still almost three weeks away.
The five of us gathered on the front porch. It was mid-afternoon, and the sun beat down on the orchard. Clouds periodically dimmed its light, but it was a relatively warm and dry day.
“You sure you want to come?” Raff asked as I triple-checked the safety and slung the rifle over my shoulder. “You could stay here. We really shouldn’t leave the house unprotected.”
I smiled weakly. “Nice try, but Jean still has plenty of guns. I think they’ll be fine.”
Raff ran his fingers through his hair. “Just promise me if anyone shouts an order, you’ll do what they say. Don’t question it, don’t argue.” Raff met my eyes with smoldering heat. “This isn’t a game, and you’re not trained.”
“I know that,” I said. “I’ve seen what they’re capable of, remember?”
“I know. I just worry about you. More than…” He swallowed, as if unsure how to finish his thought.
“More than what?” I asked, pulse racing.
“Hey, come on,” Rayna said. “It’s time.”
Raff and I stared at each other as something unspoken seemed to hang in the air between us. But then, Raff shook it off and headed toward Rayna’s voice. I followed.
“Here’s the plan. Two groups,” Miles said as we huddled together in a tight circle like a sports team planning their next play. “Rayna and Zara will head to the right and make small circles around the interior of the property. The three of us—” He gestured to himself, Raff, and me—“will sweep the exterior of the property lines. Then we’ll all meet up there, at the meeting house,” he pointed toward the barn where pack meetings were often held, “and we’ll go up the road. We can take a car for that. See if we can lure them out, if we don’t find them first. That work for everyone?”
Everyone agreed that it did. I found myself intensely relieved that I wasn’t being separated from Raff. Zara and Rayna both turned right and started by circling the house itself. From there, they’d sweep the fields and the orchards. We walked out to the edge of the fenced area at the front of the property and began tracking the property line.
We moved in silence, doing our best not to even make noise as we walked. I was the worst at it, but I used it as practice to up my stealth game. By the time we turned the first corner and began circling the orchard full of apple trees, I could feel the tension pressing down on my shoulders. Beyond the fence, there was an empty field. I kept expecting someone to pop out of the trees or start shooting, but nothing happened.
We got back to the house without incident. Zara and Rayna were waiting for us.
“Nothing on the property,” Rayna reported.
“We didn’t see anyone lurking near the fence,” Miles said. “Maybe they’re parked down on the main road.”
There was a long private road that led from the orchard’s driveway to the main road. Obviously, the hunters weren’t parking along that, or we’d have spotted them, but they could have been parked anywhere along the main road, watching for cars pulling out of the drive.
“We can take my car,” Rayna said, heading for the driveway. “It’ll carry all of us.”
Screams pierced the air. They were coming from inside
the house.
No one hesitated. Everyone spun on their heels and ran toward the house. Another scream punctuated the air from the back of the house as we ran down the hall.
I skidded to a halt at the entrance of the living room and kitchen, where Jean was slumped over the small oak table in the breakfast nook, a broken mug of tea spilling a brown liquid beneath her chair. Kai was behind her, taking a pulse. Sasha had been the one screaming, and now she stood with eyes glued to Kai, awaiting her assessment.
I held my breath.
Kai shook her head slowly, expression grave. Her meaning was clear and horrible and slammed into me like an oncoming train: Jean was dead. A strangled cry traveled up my throat and died.
Sasha let out a long, heavy sigh.
“What happened?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” Kai said, baffled. “I went upstairs to take a shower twenty minutes ago and she was fine.”
Marianne was at the kitchen island, sitting with a cup of tea. When I glanced in her direction, she started laughing. Everyone looked at her then, stunned by this heartless reaction.
“What’s so funny?” I demanded, fingers curling into fists.
Marianne held up the jar and my heart exploded into a million pieces. It a green jar of poison. The fake shifter potion, like the ones we’d found in the church. Like the ones Rob, Tracy, and Linda had drunk. And it was half empty.
“What did you do?” Sasha hissed at her.
“Where did you get that?” Raff demanded.
I could see the horror pass over his face like a storm cloud as he remembered that he had a whole trunk full of the stuff and he’d driven it right here.
But I remembered something worse.
I’d had one jar in the purse that I’d left unattended in Marianne’s room. It had been all of five minutes, and it hadn’t looked like she’d even left the bed, but I knew without a doubt where she’d gotten it. My stomach melted into a puddle of hot, molten shame.
“She got it from me,” I said quietly.
Marianne giggled.
“Charlie promised to help me,” she said. “And she finally did.”
Everyone turned to me, waiting for me to explain why I’d given Marianne a jar of freaking poison, like it was something I’d do on purpose.
So I was the only one looking as Marianne raised the jar to her lips and drank. I screamed. The room erupted into chaos. Rayna darted forward and grabbed Marianne, while Raff wrestled the jar away from her. But it was too late. The jar was empty, and it clattered to the kitchen floor, devoid of its poison.
And soon, Marianne followed, slipping out of Rayna’s arms and falling dead on the floor.
Chapter 21
“It seems Marianne put the poison into Jean’s tea,” Kai said, breaking the silence as we all sat marinating in our misery and grief.
She had cleaned up the mess and figured out it was the tea in the broken cup, not the eggs and potatoes Jean had been eating for breakfast, which had ultimately killed her.
“Probably while Jean had her back turned at the stove making herself and the girl some eggs.” There was a bitterness in her voice.
Jean had let Marianne out to cook her breakfast, and Marianne had paid her back with poison in her tea. It was so awful that it made my heart hurt and my chest ache.
Sasha nodded numbly, her eyes still distant. Kai patted her shoulder before heading upstairs to check on Levi, who was still unconscious.
I sat crossed legged on the sofa, trying to fold in on myself. If I could only make myself small enough, maybe I could disappear. Sadly, that wasn’t happening.
“I had advised her to take care with Marianne,” Sasha said solemnly. “I suppose I should have made it an order.”
“She wasn’t a prisoner,” Miles said softly, meeting Sasha’s eyes from where he stood by the window, keeping watch. “None of us thought she was dangerous. Except maybe to herself.”
“I did,” Raff said.
He had stopped glaring at me, which would have been a plus, except that now he was no longer looking in my direction at all. I couldn’t decide which was worse. Frankly, both sucked a lot.
“I don’t understand, Charlie. Why would you give her poison?”
Sasha met my eyes, and hers were full of sorrow. I’d never seen her look so defeated before.
“I didn’t give her anything. I had it in my purse. She must have stolen it.”
I didn’t dare admit that I’d left my purse in her room totally unattended. I’d completely spaced the poison was even in there and anyway, I hadn’t expected her to go through my stuff. It honestly hadn’t even occurred to me. Which, in retrospect, was obviously pretty stupid.
Raff, still not looking at me, said, “Why did you have it in your purse at all?”
His voice was hard enough to cut steel.
“I thought maybe I could bring it to Avery, the witch, and see if she could…” I trailed off and shrugged.
I didn’t know what I had thought. It all sounded so stupid now.
“What, make you a real potion? They never had anything but poison in them.” Raff practically hissed the words.
There was so much venom in his voice that I recoiled, leaning even harder against the back of the sofa. Every part of me felt awash in sickness.
“No. I know. I shouldn’t have taken it, okay? I’m sorry.”
“Sorry won’t bring her back.” Zara's voice came from behind me, but it felt like a slap to the face.
“Let’s not attack each other,” Sasha said. “It was clearly a mistake.”
Zara mumbled something, but I couldn’t make it out. What hurt more was that Raff didn’t jump to my defense. But then, why should he? It was my fault. Jean was dead because of me. And so was Marianne.
I wanted to leave the room. I wanted to go home. Not to the house I shared with Raff, but my old home, where I lived with Michael before the hunters burned it down. Where I had avoided other werewolves and lived a mostly normal life, working at the yogurt shop and chaining up myself during the full moon to avoid doing any damage. I wanted to go back to that. Back to when I wasn’t responsible for anyone’s death.
My vision narrowed and my head swam.
“Charlie, you okay?” Sasha asked.
I nodded weakly. I wasn’t okay, but I didn’t know how to explain that, not when two people were dead due to my carelessness.
Silence filled the room, heavy and thick like fog. I wanted to flee but couldn’t decide where to go, so I sat and stewed in it.
Kai yelled from upstairs. I couldn’t make out her words, but Rayna flew from the kitchen to the staircase in seconds, racing up like there was a fire, so it was easy to guess what she’d said.
“Did she say Levi’s awake?” Sasha asked, awed.
After Owen had died of his wounds, no one had really expected Levi to pull through.
“I think so,” Miles said, sounding equally surprised by the news.
Sasha stood.
“I suppose I should go check on the patient,” she said.
Raff and Miles both nodded. Neither moved to get up. I decided to take the opportunity to get out of that stuffy, oppressive room.
“I want to see him, too,” I said and jumped up, heading for the stairs quickly without waiting for anyone’s response.
Two hours later, I sat on a bench on the back porch, watching the wind blow dead leaves and debris around the orchard as the sun set. Harvest season was long over, and the branches of the apple trees were bare. The air was frigid, and the sun had lost its battle with the clouds that now blanketed the sky in a stark, empty gray. I had the rifle next to me, just in case, but our little foray outside this afternoon—which felt like it had happened eons ago—had convinced me there were no hunters hiding in the trees or behind the sheds. Still, Miles had refused to let me outside without it, “just in case.”
I’d come out here after spending about three minutes in Levi’s sick room, enough time to say hello and verify that he was, in fac
t, awake. When Kai had decided it was time to change his bandage, I decided there were better places to be.
Raff had disappeared, but his car was still out front (I’d checked), so at least he hadn’t totally ditched me. I told myself that everyone grieved in their own way, and that maybe he didn’t hate me, he just needed time alone. I almost believed it. Almost.
The way he’d looked at me earlier, when he’d found out I’d unwittingly given Marianne a murder weapon, made me feel completely sick inside. It was like he suddenly saw me as the worst kind of monster.
I tried not to think about it or about Jean, who’d only this morning taught me how to shoot a rifle. She’d been so welcoming to the whole pack, letting us take over her house for pack business, even after her beloved husband Drake was killed last month. And now Jean was dead, too, in part because she’d had the heart to take in one of the hunters’ discarded members, a young woman who’d been bitten by a werewolf and whose only other option was to sit in a room and starve to death. She’d treated Marianne with kindness and tried her best to rehabilitate her, to get her to see herself and her condition as something worth protecting, even though the girl’s brother had been responsible for the death of her husband.
I sucked in a shuddering breath and let the sadness settle on me, cold and heavy.
The back door opened and I turned, half-hoping to see Raff and half-dreading it. But it wasn’t Raff. It was Levi. He wore a clean t-shirt that covered his bandages and his hair was damp. He smelled of soap and minty mouthwash. I’d forgotten how nicely he cleaned up.
He sat on the bench next to me, careful of his wound.
“Nice day,” he said.
I snorted. It was cold enough that my cheeks were starting to burn, and I was contemplating going back inside.
“I guess.”
“I woke up from being shot with a silver bullet and it looks like I’m going to recover, so it’s nice to me,” Levi said.
“Yeah, that is pretty great,” I agreed.
Wicked Moon (The Reluctant Werewolf Chronicles Book 2) Page 14