His clothes shredded as he shifted to wolf. He ran down the pavement after Glenna and the SUV, howling as they drove out of sight.
Chapter Thirty-eight
Serena had never felt more out of her depth. She missed Gabe like she would miss her heart, and even though she didn’t have the tight bonds with the Windy Gap shamans’ circle that she’d had back home in Maine, she missed having their support too. She was on her own without her personal pack, facing Cila Walkerson and Anna Truewater alone. The Windy Gap council reps had left the fire and driven over to Ram’s Haven. And they were here to find out why she had failed.
“I don’t understand why this isn’t finished. Why you haven’t figured out who attacked that poor woman.” Cila’s anger shrank the small room until Serena could feel it pushing on the ragged edges of her patience.
“I—”
“You obviously don’t understand the importance of finding this out,” Cila continued, before Serena could even get another word out. “Packs across the country are up in arms that we’ve had a problem here of this magnitude. We’re losing our anonymity. The public is scared there is a fatal disease out there. And we know it’s being spread by a madman. You’re responsible.”
Serena counted to ten under her breath. Inhaled. And started again. “I have visited Glenna in her dreamscape.”
“But you didn’t find out who her attacker is.”
“No, I didn’t, but...” Serena shrank under Cila’s aggression, looking for help to the more reasonable Anna, but the other councilwoman just stood there.
“Serena, do I need to remind you that you answer to the council?”
There was a knock on the door. It opened and Adam stepped into the room. “Hi, I’m Adam Adalwulf, head of the Ram’s Haven shamans’ circle.” His bearded face was calm and polite. Just seeing him helped Serena feel more centered. “I don’t mean to be rude, but since Serena is without the support of her own circle, I would like to represent them instead.”
Serena’s heart swelled with gratitude. Gabe wasn’t here, but she wasn’t alone. Adam would help her face the council. He would help them understand what it would mean to rip down Glenna’s walls in the middle of the change.
“Serena is not part of Ram’s Haven—she’s a member of Windy Gap. You don’t have authority.” Cila bristled.
“Nevertheless, I am head of the Ram’s Haven circle and Serena is a guest here. We have discussed this case. I will stand by her as her advocate.”
“This isn’t a tribunal. She doesn’t need an advocate.” Anna soothed.
“She’s allowed to have support from a fellow shaman any time she is called to face the council.”
“We’re not a full council. There are just two of us.” Cila glared, her lip curled up over her slightly crooked teeth. Serena quivered inside but Adam stood firm.
No one spoke while the dominance game played out.
“Very well.” Anna stepped forward, taking control of the situation with one look. “This is neither a formal council meeting nor a tribunal. Serena doesn’t need an advocate, but we will let you stay anyway.”
“I would not only stay, but I would speak.” Adam looked at Serena and she moved to the side, giving him the center of the small room. “I’m disappointed in your council. You’re asking Serena to violate her oaths as a dreamwalker and as a shaman, and to do so without any consultation with the more experienced members of her circle.”
“We wouldn’t do this if it weren’t of the utmost importance.”
“I understand you think you have the right. But you don’t.” Serena began to think she’d underestimated Adam. He’d been good with the children and the rest of the evacuees, but his calm easy demeanor had hidden this passionate side. His eyes gleamed and he leaned forward, just enough, engaging both Anna and Cila’s attention in a way that she’d found impossible. “Glenna isn’t a real person to you, but she is to Serena. Serena has been in her dreams, in her subconscious. She knows Glenna now and she believes that Glenna may not even know who her attackers are.”
“Is this true?”
Serena lifted her chin and spoke with confidence. “Yes.” Adam believed in her. She just needed to convince the others. “When I first explored Glenna’s dreams the attackers were there, I could see them, but they were represented as monstrous distortions of wolves. And she had more than one.”
“We should have been informed of this in the first place. How dare you hold back on us?” Cila half-rose out of her chair. “I don’t think you are fit to do this job. “Silence!” Anna pounded her fist on the table until Cila settled back into her chair, her face creased with disapproval. Anna cocked her head at Serena. “How many?”
“A whole pack, at least seven or eight. I don’t think she knows who attacked her. The police report said the witness scared off a man, not seven or eight. I think she’s created a scene from her fears and memories of the attack. Even if I force her to dismantle her wall now, she may not be able to see the truth. It’s too soon.”
“Tell them the rest,” Adam said.
“Tell us what?” Anna’s voice was soft.
Serena took courage form Adam’s calm gaze and tried to catch the eyes of the elders of her adopted council. Cila looked belligerent. But Anna...Anna had an expression of such compassion and pity that Serena knew this had been a tough decision for her. She could see by Anna’s face that she knew they’d betrayed her as a dreamwalker, just as they were asking her to betray Glenna.
“She’s very close to the change. There’s a real risk she won’t be able to make it through and keep her sanity if we push her now. She wasn’t raised with a pack. She doesn’t really understand what’s going on. More than any of our adolescents, she could be lost to the change, to the wild, or to insanity.” Serena took a deep breath. “The last time I went in, she had no focus. If I have to make her face her worst fears at the same time she’s welcoming a wolf into her body, or into the dreamscape, and the change is pushing her to mate... I don’t know what will happen. She might run off into her subconscious and never come back.”
Anna and Cila exchanged worried looks.
Adam stepped forward. “Do you remember what it was like? The change?” he asked. “The confusion and drive, the fear of the unknown. Not knowing if you would become skinwalker or dreamwalker, or even a spelltalker? Knowing that something was going to happen that would change your life forever?”
The council’s faces were rapt. They remembered.
“Now imagine you’re this woman—traumatized, unable to return to your family, to your pack. Thrown into a new world, where you don’t know anyone or any of the customs. You don’t understand what is going on. You’ve never been prepared for any of these marvelous things. In fact, you’ve been told that to go through the fever is to become insane and die.”
“But the change is a gift, our gift from heaven.” Cila’s eyebrows rose and her chin lifted high stretching out the loose skin on her neck.
“You see it that way,” Serena said. “But the mundanes have made us the boogey man. Werewolves are mythical horrible creatures that have misshapen bodies and tortured spirits. And now they have spread the idea that lycanthroism is a malignant disease where you hallucinate you’re a wolf before you die.”
“I feel for this woman, I do.” Anna stepped forward. “But the fact remains. She was brutally attacked, and she’s not the first.”
“What?” Adam stared in shock at the council. Serena hadn’t told him about the other suspected attacks. She’d kept the details at a minimum, sure the council wouldn’t want this known.
“We’ve kept it from the general population, but there were three other women attacked before her. None survived.”
“What are you implying?”
“She is our only link to this man,” Anna said. “Because of these attacks we are being exposed. Not only that, our exposure will be as diseased, violent criminals attacking young women. If that happens, we will be persecuted out of existence. We’ve
faced it before and our species barely survived. Our entire modern existence may depend on stopping whomever is doing this.” Anna looked at Cila, and the other councilwoman gave an emphatic nod. “I’m sorry, Serena. But we just found out, Glenna’s been taken. She’s no longer under our protection. She’s likely undergoing testing right now, in some government facility, giving them all the information they want. Or they might be driving her insane, past the point where we may be able to retrieve any information about these attacks.”
“She’s gone?” She couldn’t believe it. “She’s still fragile, still vulnerable.”
“She’s gone.” Anna took Serena’s hand and squeezed, but it did nothing to help the fear rising in Serena’s heart. “And we have no idea where. You have to go into the dreamscape and find out what she knows, before it’s too late.”
Panic rose, choking her so that her next words came out rough and raw. “You didn’t see her. You can’t ask me to hurt her like this.” She shook off the councilwoman’s hand and turned to Adam for support, but the other shaman had taken a few steps away from her, the information about the other attacks seeming to be too much.
“We aren’t asking. We’re telling you. You’re our best chance. Even if we move to another dreamwalker now that person won’t have the rapport with her that you have. They will do more damage.” Anna stared into Serena’s eyes, her expression fierce. “Give her a chance, Serena. You be the one to go in and find out if we can stop this monster, or any damage she incurs will be your fault.”
Chapter Thirty-nine
Alastair shut his office door on the noisy hallway and dug out his hidden cell phone, punching the buttons viciously. It rang several times before being answered. “Where is she?” he demanded.
“We don’t know. Sam still has her.”
“She’ll be changing soon. She’s vulnerable now. She’ll take any mate that’s offered to her, and she’s supposed to be mine. You promised me!”
“I know I promised her to you, but until he brings her to the cabin there’s nothing we can do.”
“You need to get him to bring her here so I can seduce her and start the fever. Unless I give her the Bite she won’t be mine. She’ll change, and then she’ll calm down and start thinking again.” Bitterness coated his words. “And then she’ll choose a wolf shifter. That’s what they all do, fucking women. And we’ll have to look for another candidate.”
“I’ll get her there. You just get the spot ready, like I instructed you, so we have somewhere to hold her.”
“If this doesn’t work, if she passes through the change and I don’t get the opportunity to Bite her, she’ll be fair game for others. I’ll have to compete.”
“If this doesn’t work, there’s always her sister. She’s bound to have a gene or two. We’ll see whether Glenna gets a physical wolf or not. If she’s a wolf, she has both genes, one from each parent. Then we’ll know her sister will have at least one. And that means she’ll be vulnerable to the fever too. Even if Glenna becomes something else, odds are her sister will have inherited at least one gene. Maybe even the spelltalker gene. We can do this again. You’ll have another opportunity.”
Chapter Forty
Glenna woke up with her face stuck to a leather seat cushion and dry-mouth from hell. Her head ached, the rhythm of the vehicle’s movement vibrating in her head. She blinked once or twice, then worked on getting her gummy eyes to focus on the empty cup holder just in front of her face.
Somewhere close a man was talking.
“No, she’s in the backseat.” A pause. “No, I gave her a full dose. She should be out for hours.” They took a curve. She forced her body to relax so she slid with the tilt of the seat. She shut her eyes and faked sleep. “I’m on my way. No, I don’t know what happened back there. I grabbed her and got the hell out. I left my partner.” The man’s voice cracked. “I just fucking left everyone and got the hell out, like you said to do if anything went south.”
Where was Sam? Who was this man? Glenna forced her body to stay limp and quiet against the surge of adrenaline-pumped questions.
“Pay the fiancé the money.” The man’s voice had evened out. “He earned it. He was absolutely right about her coming back for the little sister.”
An angry growl burrowed up out of her throat.
“Shut up. I heard something.”
Glenna froze and practiced the slow, even breaths of someone still deeply unconscious.
“No, she’s fine.” The man exhaled. “Still out. I’ll have her at the lab in an hour and we’ll get her in a cage.”
Sam had been right. About everything. She should never have tried to see Sarah, for any reason. They’d been following her and they’d taken her right out of her new life. Now she might never see anyone again. Not Sarah. And not Sam. Roger had turned her over to the enemy.
She peered up out the windows through slitted eyes and tried to figure out where they were, and how fast they were going. He’d said they’d be there in an hour. Outside of the car, pine trees flashed by alternating with blue sky. She caught sight of a sign. I-70.
The only spots on I-70 with this many trees and steep curves were on the drive into the heart of the Rockies. Somehow she had to get away and find Sam.
Glenna slowly stretched her arms and legs. He must have underestimated the amount of drugs her rapidly changing metabolism would need because he hadn’t even tied her up. She needed to do something now, before the hour was up and they got wherever they were going. If he got her to the lab, he’d put her in a cage.
A surge of anxiety rushed through her. She held back the growls rising in her throat. She didn’t know what was going on, but she had to hang on to something sane or these feelings rushing through her would leave her incapable of any human action.
The trees went by a little slower. She knew this road, knew if you got caught behind slow-moving traffic there was nothing you could do but hurry up and wait. This was her opportunity.
She eased over to the door and tried the latch. Stupid human, he hadn’t even locked it. It gave and gaped wide over the moving highway.
“Hey!”
The driver hit the brakes and the SUV jerked to a stop, skidding on the road. Glenna slid hard off the seat and hit the back of the front seat before hitting the floor. Her open door slammed shut.
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”
Glenna got one quick look at the FBI agent’s bulging eyes and the grasping hand that reached over the seat and clawed at her. She wrenched the door open and rolled out of the car. And fell into the empty space off the side of the mountain.
The sickening drop took too long, then she hit. Rolling down the hill, crushing saplings and banging into rocks, the clear blue sky flashed by as she fell screaming down the side of the steep embankment.
Chapter Forty-one
Sam struggled to maintain his composure as Lana chewed him a new one over the phone.
“Lana, I know you’re upset. I know we screwed up.”
“No, you screwed up.”
He rolled his shoulders forward in an attempt to ease the tension. “Fine, I screwed up. But Ian, Marcus, and Caleb are here now. The feds are in cuffs and stashed in their own SUV. Marcus and Caleb will take care of the Suburban, and Ian and I will find her.”
“And just how are you supposed to do that?”
He didn’t know. But if he didn’t at least tell himself he stood a chance he wouldn’t be able to maintain his human shape. And then he stood no chance of finding her at all.
“We’re enforcers. Let us do our job.”
Ian gestured for the phone and Sam shoved it at his beta with more force than necessary. He stalked away from the Jeep over to a narrow strip of grass where he might be able to breathe in this sea of concrete and metal.
Marcus walked up. “Alastair is on his way. He’s going to meet us at the warehouse in Lakewood.”
“Great, just fucking great. Just what I need, fucking perfect Alastair to come clean up my
mess.”
“We need to find out where they’ve taken her, and then we need to wipe their memories. Alastair can do all of that.”
“I can fucking interrogate them. I don’t need Alastair.”
“Yeah, but he’ll do it faster with less mess. He has the talent. You don’t. I don’t.” The bitterness in Marcus’s voice pushed through Sam’s rage.
Sam took a deep breath. “Hey, man, you are way more important to the pack than fucking Alastair.” He didn’t know what he’d have done if he’d made it through the fever to find out he was never going to be a wolf, like Marcus.
“He serves his purpose. At least he has a talent.”
“It’s not your fault you missed out on a gene.”
Marcus shook his head and looked away. “I know.” His face was resigned, but his tone was bitter.
“Hell, if it weren’t for dormants like you, we wouldn’t have saved Glenna from these bastards in the first place. She’d be locked away getting tests done while she goes through the change, alone.” He swallowed.
She still might be alone, locked in a cage, shifting for the very first time with no pack to guide her through. But if he dwelled on that, they’d never find her.
“Hey, it’s okay. I made my peace with it years ago.”
Marcus might have made his peace with never changing into a wolf, or even being a spelltalker, like Alastair, but not having enough of the genes, or maybe any, that interacted with the fever made him less attractive as a mate. And Sam knew that burned. Competition for mates within the pack was stiff. Marcus could look outside the pack, but if he did that, he’d have to cut all ties and go mundane. They couldn’t bring humans into the pack. It was too dangerous.
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