by SM Reine
Elise fought to keep her expression straight, her jaw clenched.
Rylie had tasted Elise’s blood and seen the garden.
It was a private, painful memory. Elise hadn’t given Anthony or McIntyre, who she considered her only friends, details about what had happened to her there. Yet this girl, this child, barely out of adolescence, had walked through the black gardens in Elise’s mind.
“Did you see anything from me?” Rylie asked. Her tone had dropped to a whisper.
Elise shut her eyes, remembering the swollen moon, and jumping from the top of a mountain.
She had felt something strange in that memory. It was the same thing that she had felt in the garden, the same sense of immense power and destiny. Rylie had been touched by gods, too. Maybe not the same ones that Elise had, and in a very different way, but she was touched.
They had something in common. Something very important.
Elise said, “I didn’t see anything. You must have been hallucinating.”
Rylie didn’t look convinced. “Your blood tastes weird. It’s like apple cider.”
Elise reached into her pocket. Rylie tensed, gold eyes flashing, but Elise only extracted Lincoln’s cell phone. “Give me your phone number.”
“What? Why?”
“I told you that I’m doing some investigating today. If you’re innocent, I’ll contact you.” Elise lifted one shoulder in a shrug. “Maybe together…maybe we can figure out who’s trying to blame these murders on your wolves.”
Relief flooded Rylie’s features. “We can do that. That would be great.”
“Don’t thank me yet. You don’t know what I’m going to find.”
“You’re going to find that the bites don’t match my jaw, because my pack and I are innocent,” Rylie said. “We’re not monsters. I’ve got everyone under control, and all we want to do is live in our sanctuary in peace.”
“Is that what those cottages are? A sanctuary?”
“Yeah. And I hope that someday, they might be home, too,” Rylie said.
The earnestness of it plucked at some deep, tender part of Elise. Probably not Elise, actually—Eve was a sucker for that kind of talk. Elise wanted to roll her eyes. But she nodded, as if Rylie needed her consent to have a werewolf sanctuary, and the conversation was over.
Rylie dictated a phone number. Elise saved it to Lincoln’s contacts, then returned the phone to her pocket. The girl started to back away, heading for a steel blue Chevy Chevelle that was parked on the curb.
Elise blew out a sigh. “Either way, however this turns out…tell Nashriel I’m sorry. For everything. And he really is forgiven.”
A smile flitted across Rylie’s face, brightening her features like the sun breaking through the clouds. “I’ll tell him that.”
TWELVE
LINCOLN WAS DREAMING of Hell again, but this time, Hell wasn’t a fiery pit. It was his bedroom. Blood poured from his walls, tracking amber stains on his family photos, spilling off of the crucifix mounted above his TV. His carpet was on fire. The only place that didn’t burn or bleed was his bed, and he couldn’t go there. She was waiting for him there.
Save me, the Devil said, reaching for him with black-nailed hands. You’re my salvation, Lincoln.
She lounged on his bed, utterly naked. Brown nipples tipped perfect, round breasts. Her hairless pubis led to the gash between her legs, where the flower of her vulva unfolded to reveal a flaming pit, screaming souls, endless wasteland.
But her face was innocent, doll-like. The blackness of her eyes was balanced by the need in her stare. Full red lips twisted in a fearful grimace. She was afraid of what she had become, afraid for Lincoln’s sake and her own.
He wanted to take that fear from her face. He wanted to join with her lonely body in that darkness and help her become whole.
She was evil embodied, as much a gateway to Hell as she was part of its fabric, and it would be death to plunge his arousal inside of her.
But Lincoln couldn’t stop himself. He was drawn to her suffering. She needed him.
He climbed on top of the bed, which was no longer made of wood and cotton. It was cradled in huge, leathery hands, with claw-tipped fingers and callused palms. Eyes stared at him where the headboard should have been. Bat wings churned the air, rocking the bed gently from side to side.
The Devil’s legs and arms wrapped around his body, pulling him tight to her breasts. Her nipples brushed against his chest hair. Her thighs clutched his hips.
Save me, Lincoln, said the Devil, her lips against his throat.
“Tell me what to do,” he said.
Let me bleed you. The hard edge of her teeth brushed the artery in his throat. Take me, and I’ll take you.
The angel was watching from somewhere above, disapproving and deadly.
But the Devil didn’t care.
Save me, Lincoln.
He buried himself inside of her, and she buried her teeth inside him. He filled her with his body. She drank his blood. The bed trembled with the roar of the demon holding it.
Lincoln was gone.
He woke up with a guttural cry tearing from his throat and orgasm seizing his body. He gripped the pillow to his chest, bit the sheets, thrust his hips hard into the mattress. He emptied himself onto the bed. When he was done, he collapsed, soaked with sweat.
His mind was blank. Numb.
The reality of his bedroom—sunny, warm, and quiet—was a far cry from the bloody chaos of the dream. It had been so vivid. So very real. Being inside of Elise had been…sin. The kind of sin worth going to Hell for.
Lincoln smothered his face with the pillow.
Lord, forgive me, he thought.
It took him a few minutes to gather the strength to shower. He still had a few of hours until he needed to be at work, but he feared the dream too much to try to sleep again.
He scrubbed himself in the shower, trying not to think about Elise naked in his tub the night before, and then stripped the semen-stained sheets off of his bed.
He dressed in uniform, leaving the collar unbuttoned. His house was still too hot. He turned on the ceiling fan, cracked the window, and stepped into the living room.
Lincoln wasn’t alone.
Elise sat on his recliner, much as she had been waiting for him on the first morning. She had closed his curtains and sat in darkness again. The cutoff shorts and baggy t-shirt looked innocuous enough—less like the Devil, and more like a college student visiting during break. She might actually blend in around Northgate.
Lincoln struggled to banish the mental image of her naked in his bed, surrounded by flames. This Elise was passably human. Not the Devil.
Or maybe the Devil in a more subtle disguise, whispered a voice in the back of his mind.
“What are you doing here?” he asked.
“You’re taking me on a date to a crime scene today,” Elise said, rising to her feet. When had he agreed to do that? Around the same time that they had been kissing on his desk?
Lincoln put on his hat, jammed his badge onto his belt.
“This isn’t a date,” he said.
“That’s disappointing. I find murder scenes incredibly sexy.”
He shot her a look, but Elise’s face was expressionless. He couldn’t tell if she was joking or not.
Do you want me to bleed you? she had asked, in total seriousness, while stroking him to the brink of climax. During the day, with the sun peeking through the clouds outside and Mrs. Kitteridge puttering around the front walk with her umbrella, the answer was a horrified, “No.” But the night before, he had been about to say, “Yes, please.”
“Let’s go,” he said, offering his arm to Elise. She took it. They walked through the drizzle, got into the cruiser, and went on their first date.
Bob Hagy had died a violent death. The sheriff’s department had cleared the scene overnight, but there were unmistakable marks of the struggle that had resulted in his murder: Claw marks on the asphalt. A puddle of blood in the middle of t
he road. A tree ripped out by its roots, flung across the lawn. Shattered windows. Broken fence.
The farm was two miles outside of Northgate: close enough to be a brisk walk from the local church, but distant enough to be a part of unincorporated Grove County. Elise imagined that this had once been a beautiful home—not Bob Hagy’s home, but someone else’s pride and joy. Now it looked like nobody had lived in the farmhouse for years. The paint was peeling. The fields were overgrown with weeds. There had probably been nobody nearby to hear Bob Hagy’s death cries.
The overcast day sucked all of the color out of the barn, the swaying grass, the puddle of blood. The forest was thick on either side of the property. Dense enough to make it feel utterly isolated.
She looped a finger through James’s warding ring as she paced the perimeter of the property, scanning the evidence that the sheriffs hadn’t been able to remove. It would take a long time and a lot of rain to wash that blood away. The road would have to be repaved to cover the claw marks, too.
“Werewolves,” Lincoln spat, like it was a curse.
Elise kneeled beside the puddle of blood to take a closer look. She could feel Lincoln’s eyes on her as she spread her fingers across the claw marks, estimating the size of the paw. “Do these gashes seem messy to you?”
He pulled his hat off and lowered to her side. He tapped the brim against his knuckles. “Claw marks should be messy.”
“But they look chiseled.” She ran her finger along the inside of the gouge. She was wearing her fingerless biker gloves again, and her sensitive fingertips traced the ridges. “A werewolf’s claws are sharp. They cut through rock as easily as you eat Poppy’s cherry pie. This seems hand-tooled.”
Lincoln frowned, trying to understand the implications of Elise’s accusation even as she moved onto the next evidence.
The blood splatter didn’t look like the product of a murder. Elise had killed a lot of demons. She had severed arteries, bled them out, dismembered them. This looked more like buckets had been emptied on the ground beneath them.
The more she looked at Bob Hagy’s murder scene, the faker it seemed.
But she had known it wouldn’t be real before they even arrived.
“When did you say the body was found?” Elise asked. She already knew, but she wanted Lincoln to repeat it, forcing him to go through the same thought process.
“Yesterday.”
“When was the full moon?”
“Yesterday,” Lincoln said.
Elise shook her head. “No, deputy. It was last night.”
Lincoln’s phone rang, echoing over the fields outside the farmhouse. He frowned at the screen. “Who’s Anthony?”
She plucked it out of his hand and answered.
“The size is all wrong,” Anthony said without preamble. “The wolf that bit you? Its mouth was twice the diameter of the bites on the cadavers.”
“Hang on, I’m putting you on speakerphone,” Elise said. “Deputy Marshall will want to hear this.” Lincoln loomed over her shoulder as she punched the button.
Anthony started over. “The bites on the cadavers are too small to be a werewolf’s. McIntyre has a taxidermist friend in town—”
“A taxidermist friend?” Elise asked. “Really?”
“Yup.”
Guess it wasn’t all that surprising. Sometimes, it seemed like McIntyre knew everyone. “Okay. Go on.”
“Larry, the taxidermist, specializes in household pets. We went through some of his canine works. Guess what we found? The bite radius on the cadavers most closely matches that of an American Staffordshire Terrier—a pit bull. Pretty big for a dog.”
“But not for a werewolf,” Elise said.
Rylie was small for her species, but her mouth was still twice the size of a pit bull’s. Unless she was hiding puppies in the pack, there was no way that any of her people could have been responsible for the injuries on the cadavers.
“It gets better,” Anthony said. “The bites were inflicted postmortem.”
“How’d you determine that? What’s your background in forensics, exactly?” Lincoln asked, frowning deeply.
Anthony’s voice went deeper, gruffer. Testosterone butting up against testosterone. A dick-measuring competition over conference call. “McIntyre and I have seen plenty of bodies, most of them killed at our hands. What’s your background, deputy?”
“Our coroner could mistake a pit bull bite for a wild animal’s bite, but she would have noted the postmortem damage.”
“Unless she’s in on it,” Anthony said. He had reached the same conclusion that Elise had, and he hadn’t even seen the chiseled claw marks.
Someone was killing people and blaming it on a harmless pack of werewolves.
“Thanks, Anthony,” Elise said.
“Need me?”
“No. I think we’re almost done here. Shouldn’t be long now.” She hung up and tucked the phone back in Lincoln’s pocket.
“My department’s not fabricating evidence,” he said. The very implication looked like it offended him deeply, maybe even deeper than the implication that there was no God left to listen to his prayers. Elise was guessing that their date was over.
“They never assigned you to this case, did they, Lincoln?”
“No, ma’am.”
Back to ma’am. Not a favorable indicator, either. “They’re keeping you off of it for a reason,” Elise said. Probably because he was the only one in the department that didn’t know what was really happening. “Who’s your coroner? I want to visit her.”
Anger ruddied his face. “You’re leaping to irrational conclusions.”
“I’m exploring all avenues. Maybe there’s nothing down this road, but I’m going to check.” Elise reached up to touch his cheek, but he stepped out of reach. “I’ll do it with or without you, Lincoln.”
He paced, fumed, slapped his hat into his hand harder and harder. “They wouldn’t. It was a mistake hiring you anyway. Never shoulda brought you here.”
She waited for him to finish ranting, arms folded. Let him work through it. Let his temper burn itself out.
Lincoln got in his cruiser. Still, Elise waited.
He started the engine.
Turned it off, got out again.
“I don’t remember the new coroner’s name,” he said, spitting it out like he was swearing at her. Lincoln had some kind of accent, and it only grew stronger when he was angry. “She’s new. Only been here two months, never had a reason to work with her on a case. Haven’t even met her yet.”
“Two months,” Elise said. The murders had been going on for two months.
She saw the moment that the acceptance flashed over Lincoln’s face. His shoulders sagged, and he jammed his hat on his head again. “Fine. Explore all avenues.”
“I’d like to see the files on the case,” she said. “I want to know what else our coroner’s been fabricating.”
“You can’t.” His neck was tense. “We’ve got increased security at the station since the original copies of the case’s files were stolen.”
That was right. The files had been stolen by Seth and Abel. Which meant that Elise didn’t need to enter the station to study them—she needed to apologize to Rylie and ask nicely.
“Call in sick to work,” Elise said. “I’ll talk to you when I know what’s going on.”
A frown crossed his features. “What…?”
Elise brushed a kiss over his lips. He stiffened, but she dropped back before he could stop her. “I’ll call you,” she said, and she walked into the forest.
THIRTEEN
WHEN ELISE ARRIVED, the werewolf sanctuary looked like a ghost town. The street was empty and the windows were shuttered. She lingered in the shadow of the trees, waiting for the wind to blow a denser cluster of clouds over the sun. Her shorts and t-shirt were no protection from the sun’s unfriendly light, such as it was—between the density of the surrounding forest and the cliffs framing the valley, the sanctuary was cast in twilight. The sun would
probably only touch the buildings for a few hours a day, even when it was cloudless.
From her protected vantage point, she studied the empty buildings. Construction materials had been abandoned in the front yard of the nearest cottage. A truck was parked at the end of the street, idling but driverless. The spotlights were turned off for the day.
There were more cottages than she had initially noticed—a good dozen already built, and a dozen more in progress. They stood on the bank of a small lake, which was fed into by a towering waterfall that dissolved into an icy mist before reaching its surface. Everything in the valley was green, moist, and mossy.
It was a hidden, gloomy utopia in one of the Appalachian’s most remote regions, safe enough to protect an entire pack of werewolves.
Werewolves that were obviously giving Elise a wide berth.
She felt them in the trees, on the cliffs, behind the waterfall. They were everywhere, yet nowhere in sight. But she could taste their flowing blood on the back of her tongue, sense their earthy energies. They weren’t afraid yet. Only cautious.
The sky darkened. With a whispered hush, the rain picked up, driving cold and hard on the sanctuary.
Elise stepped out of her cover.
“You were right, Rylie,” she called. It was so quiet, aside from the rumbling of the waterfall, that she barely had to raise her voice. “You’re being set up.”
The wolves seemed to materialize from nowhere. They appeared among the trees, one by one: sleek, pale ghosts that stared at her with golden eyes. They flitted through the mist. They glided down the hill, stepping onto the road.
Werewolves were only supposed to be able to change twice a month: on the full moon and the new moon, beginning around midnight and ending at sunrise. Yet here they were, in daylight between moons, all four-legged and furred. Either Elise’s information was hopelessly wrong, or this pack was special. Dangerous.
They were led by one wolf that was bigger than the rest, with glossy black fur and canines the length of Elise’s fingers. She was at eye-level with his shoulder. His hide rippled as he walked, as if he had fewer bones and more muscle than he should have. He looked more like he belonged with prehistoric megafauna than a pack of graceful wolves—a monstrous remnant of eras long since passed. This, Elise knew, was Abel: the scarred man, and Rylie’s fellow Alpha.