Sacrificed in Shadow

by SM Reine

  “I’ve had an interesting afternoon. Grab your bag and get in the truck. I’ll fill you in.”

  “Where are we going?” Lincoln asked, tossing a small duffle bag into the center of the pickup’s bench seat.

  “We’re going into hiding,” Elise said.

  She threw chicken at Ace, and he swallowed the piece whole.

  The drive into the mountains was quiet. Elise mulled over Lincoln as she took the twisting road toward the sanctuary, watching him out of the corner of her eye. He hadn’t attempted to ask her what their relationship was now that they’d had sex, which was a pleasant surprise. Elise didn’t want to talk about so-called “feelings.” But there was one heart-to-heart that they couldn’t avoid.

  She slowed around a corner. “What’s going on with you and James?” she asked, eyes on the road.

  “Who?”

  “He told me that your family used to be with his coven. He said that you’re indebted to him.”

  That got a reaction out of Lincoln. His head whipped around, and he stared at her hard. “You mean Orpheus. The angel.”

  “He told you that his name is Orpheus?” What a pretentious asshole.

  “Tall guy, white hair, always wears gloves…?”

  “Yeah, that’s James,” Elise said. “James Faulkner, not Orpheus.” She dug her fingernails into the steering wheel. “I can’t believe him.”

  “I guessed it was a pseudonym.” Lincoln smiled ruefully. “Guess you’d be Eurydice, then.”

  “I’m surprised you know mythology.” Eurydice had been one of the muses, and Orpheus’s wife, who he attempted to rescue from the Underworld.

  “I do have a theology degree.”

  What a waste of a college education. “Yes, I guess I would be Eurydice.” Although it infuriated her to think of James identifying himself as her attempted savior when the truth was far less flattering. “How did you know?”

  “I figured it out when he threatened me for getting near you. Told me to keep my hands off.”

  So he wouldn’t act jealous where she could see, but he would happily take it out on his vassals. Classy. “You’re shit at obeying orders,” Elise said.

  “Lucky for both of us, or you’d be missing all this fun.” Lincoln leaned his head on his hand, elbow on the door of the truck, as if suddenly exhausted. “I figured you’d be angry when you figured out that someone had me keeping an eye out for you.”

  She was definitely angry, but not at Lincoln. James had earned enough of Elise’s ire to last a lifetime.

  “It’s fine,” Elise said. “I don’t trust you anyway.”

  Lincoln’s smile slipped. “Then why’d you sleep with me?” She didn’t answer. It was too close to a “feelings” discussion for her taste, and she doubted that he’d want to hear that she was just horny. At Elise’s silence, Lincoln went on. “So his name is James. Where did you run into him?”

  “Outside your place. What did you do to owe him?”

  “Personally? Nothing. It’s my cousin. She was in a coven, she wanted out.” Lincoln said it with no small amount of distaste. Elise couldn’t imagine that a good Christian boy would be much impressed by heathen witches. “But the White Ash Coven’s not like that. You don’t just leave. When she disappeared, they came looking for her—and I agreed to do whatever Orpheus wanted if he’d let her go.”

  Which meant that James was still in the coven that had ruined Elise’s life. More than that, he was running it the way that his predecessors had. Elise hadn’t let herself imagine what James was doing during their time apart, but if she had, she would have imagined him in repentant seclusion, somehow atoning for his sins.

  But he had gone back to Colorado, back to business as usual.

  What an asshole.

  She could see Lincoln watching her out of the corner of his eye, so she kept her expression blank. “How’s your cousin?”

  “Good. She found God, and she’s living with my grandma in South Jersey.” Lincoln sighed, scrubbed a hand through his hair. “Now I’m the White Ash Coven’s errand boy.”

  “And what does the White Ash Coven want with Northgate?”

  “The main thing’s been looking out for you. Research the Hunting Club, keep an eye on what you guys were doing. He also had me throw my weight with some friends at the building department. Get some permits run through without inspections. Nothing very interesting, considering that he’s an angel.”

  Building permits? Was James building something in Northgate?

  “He’s not really an angel,” Elise said. “He’s Gray.” Lincoln looked confused, so she explained. “When humans breed with angels or demons, their mixed-breed descendants are called Gray. One of James’s ancestors up the line was an angel. But he’s mostly human. A witch, actually.”

  Until the end of their relationship, Elise had believed that such a thing was impossible—a witch with angel blood. There had been a treaty for many millennia that prevented angels and demons from possessing magic. But the treaty had been shattered in secret before Elise was even born, and James was the result. Handsome, powerful, frustrating James.

  “He told me that the White Ash Coven does the work of God,” Lincoln said.

  She grimaced. That was basically true—they had actually worked for the Voice of God for many centuries. But that was a story she didn’t have the strength of will to share with him. “Is the deal you made with him worth it?”

  “My cousin’s soul has been saved. What do you think?”

  She took that as a “yes.”

  They were getting close to the sanctuary now, and the road had all but vanished, forcing Elise to crawl through the trees to keep from shaking the truck apart. As she crept along, she studied Lincoln’s profile out of the corner of her eye. He was almost too clean-cut for her, like a superhero from an old comic book. And she definitely could have done without his naive fixation with God. Yet he practiced what he preached, and knowing that he was only indebted to James to save his cousin made something hard and angry relax inside of her.

  “You’re either brave or stupid for disobeying James. He’s not going to leave you alone now that he knows about…” She gestured between their bodies.

  “My cousin’s not the only one that needs saving, Miss Kavanagh,” Lincoln said.

  “Elise,” she corrected. She wanted to argue with him, tell him that she didn’t need to be rescued. But the optimism was kind of a nice change of pace. “Thanks.”

  “So where are we hiding, exactly?” he asked, peering through the windshield. “There’s nothing out here.”

  “You’ll see.”

  Now that she was looking for it, she felt the moment that they crossed the wards concealing the sanctuary. Her ears popped. Her eyesight momentarily fuzzed. And when it cleared, the sanctuary appeared out of the darkness. All of the cabin lights were on that night, and they appeared in the valley below the road like a sheet of stars hovering in the dark forest.

  “I didn’t know there’s a town down here,” Lincoln said.

  Elise smiled faintly. “There isn’t.”

  What was a good Christian boy like Lincoln Marshall going to think of a pack of werewolves hiding out in the mountains behind his home town? She hoped, for his sake, that he got used to the idea quickly—the wolves were the only ones that were going to be able to keep him safe from the cult, from Sheriff Dickerson, and from James.

  Rylie greeted them at the carport by the waterfall. She was in a white sundress and cowboy boots again, her blond hair in a milkmaid braid. She was exactly the kind of girl that Lincoln would like: someone who looked harmless and innocent. Someone that Mrs. Kitteridge would approve of. Someone he could take to church.

  Elise wasn’t jealous, not exactly—it wasn’t like she was in love with Lincoln, aside from the hunger for the carved muscles hidden under his flannel shirt—but there was no way that she could ever look that innocent. She could lose the leather, put on a skirt, and tie her hair back, but she was still a demon. Violence ran
in her veins. She just didn’t act normally, and she would never meet Lincoln’s standards.

  Of course, Rylie wasn’t exactly the sweetness that she looked like, either. Appearances were deceiving. And, as Elise was reminded by Abel’s approach, she was very much taken.

  “Deputy,” Rylie said shyly when he stepped out of the pickup.

  Lincoln was stunned. “Have we met?”

  “I’ve seen you around town,” she said, by which she probably meant, I’ve smelled you around town. She held out a hand that was delicately-boned, yet coarse with calluses. “I’m Rylie Gresham.”

  “And I’m Abel,” said her fellow Alpha, looming behind Rylie like a very large, very mean shadow.

  Lincoln did a double-take at the sight of him.

  “It’s the werewolf,” he blurted, reaching for his sidearm. He had lost his county-issued sidearm, but he was still carrying the pistol from home. Elise put a hand on his arm to keep him from drawing it and starting a fight Lincoln couldn’t win.

  “Abel is innocent,” she said, which was mostly true. Richard Armstrong had deserved to die anyway. To Rylie, she explained, “They caught Abel checking out one of the victims on surveillance footage. He’s been the primary suspect.”

  “He interfered with evidence,” Lincoln said.

  Abel bristled. “I’ve been trying to figure out who’s killing people while your department’s jacking off and eating donuts.”

  The men didn’t exactly move to bump chests and growl at each other, but Rylie stepped between them before they could attempt it. Even a foot shorter than Abel, she formed a very convincing wall between them. Her fingers massaged his chest, relaxing the lines of tension, drawing his attention down to her and away from the deputy.

  “I invited Elise to stay with us, and I told her she could bring Lincoln,” Rylie said. “It’s safe here. And you know what Gwyn would think if we told her we weren’t letting in people who needed us.”

  “But it’s less safe when you invite more people,” Abel said. The words were accusatory, but his tone lacked that angry edge when he spoke to Rylie. He didn’t seem to have the ability to get mad at her. “Lots of opportunities for security breaches.”

  “He’s a deputy,” Rylie said.

  That didn’t seem to assuage Abel’s worry, but he shut his mouth. Judging by the way that he was looking at Elise, it wasn’t really the deputy that he was worrying about anyway.

  “Elise?” Lincoln asked.

  If he was looking for reassurance that he would be safe with Abel, he wasn’t going to get it from Elise. But she did say, “He’s not the murderer. You can trust them.”

  Rylie smiled apologetically. “We’re making dinner. Come on, let me introduce you to everyone.”

  “I’ll be right there,” Elise said. “I want to fill Ace’s water bowl and let him out to use the bathroom.”

  Rylie’s smile turned a little pinched. She hadn’t said that she thought Elise should put the dog down, but it was obvious in her eyes. “See you in a minute.”

  Lincoln waited until the werewolves had disappeared up the road to speak. “When you said that this isn’t a town, you meant…”

  “It’s a werewolf sanctuary,” Elise said, grabbing a plastic bag out of the front seat. She had bought a basket muzzle, collar, and sturdy chain while at Walmart, and now it was time to test them out. “The last surviving pack lives here.”

  “It’s not all that far from Northgate. I can’t believe I didn’t know.”

  She climbed into the bed of the truck with Ace. He was squeezed into the back corner, lips shivering with a growl. “There’s a lot of things you don’t know, Lincoln,” she said over her shoulder. “But there’s plenty of time for you to get familiar. You’re in my world now.”

  It took no small amount of effort to wrestle the pit bull into submission and get the muzzle over his nose.

  When Elise climbed out of the truck with Ace, Lincoln was gone.

  TWENTY-ONE

  IF THERE WAS one thing to be said about werewolves, it was that they knew how to throw dinner. One entire cottage near the center of the sanctuary turned out to be a restaurant-like kitchen, and people carted trays in and out of the hanging doors in an endless line. The nearby road had been set up like a block party, with picnic tables, paper lanterns, and a stereo blasting music. But as soon as one of those trays got set down, a half-dozen people ripped into it with a fervor that wasn’t quite typical of a normal party.

  All they served was meat: steaks, pork ribs, turkey, whole slabs of them, barely cooked so that they were juicy and almost raw. It was a nauseating reminder of finding Ace in Father Armstrong’s basement with a barrel of rotten flesh.

  “They have great immune systems,” Seth said, stopping beside Elise. She hadn’t even realized that she was staring. She jolted when he spoke, taking a step away from him reflexively. “I cook myself a steak medium-well every night when everyone else is done. I’ll make you one while I’m at it, if you want.”

  Elise was still full with Father Armstrong. The idea of eating again—eating dead meat, no less—was utterly unappealing. “Deputy Marshall might be interested. Have you seen him around?”

  Seth had obviously been talking to Abel, because he didn’t look surprised to hear that they had company of a more mundane persuasion. “That guy that looks like a football player, right? I saw him pacing out that way.” He jerked a thumb toward the trees. “Think he’s having a crisis of reality.”

  That was a good way to put it. “Throw something on the grill for him,” Elise said. And then, with no small amount of effort, she added, “Thanks.”

  Seth gave her a broad, lopsided grin. It was boyishly charming—the kind of cuteness that Elise’s best friend, Betty, would have jumped on in a hot second. She had the wild urge to ruffle his hair.

  But she couldn’t bring herself to smile back, not when she remembered what James had said to her about Seth and Abel.

  “You know I’m trying to protect the pack, right?” Elise asked impulsively.

  “Guess so. Rylie trusts you, anyway. And you helped keep Abel out of trouble today. I’m not gonna forget that.” Seth raked a hand through his hair, which had been straightened so that the bangs fell over his eyes. “Rylie actually asked me if she thought I should let you hide out with us.”

  “What did you tell her?”

  “I said yes.”

  He said it casually, but Elise understood the weight of it. The Alpha was asking Seth, someone who wasn’t even under her command, for his opinion on how to best protect her pack. And she had listened to him. If Seth decided that Elise wasn’t going to be safe to keep around, then that would matter to Rylie, too.

  It was an impressive power. He was probably the only human that had ever had such sway over werewolves before.

  Would that be enough to make James want to protect Seth—that unusual relationship with werewolves? Except that Elise had no reason to attack them over that. She couldn’t have cared less how the pack was structured. Seth remained an enigma.

  “Thanks,” Elise said again, more sincerely.

  Seth gave her a weighty look, the kind that said, Don’t blow this. “I’ll see if I can wrangle the deputy.”

  Lincoln could barely feel his own two feet below him as he drifted through the werewolf sanctuary.

  A werewolf sanctuary. Right there, just a few miles behind the town that he had grown up in. He had barely had a couple of days to become adjusted to the idea that werewolves weren’t behind the mass killings, only to find himself in the bosom of their hospitality. And there were a lot of them. One or two wouldn’t have been a surprise. Three dozen? Four?

  He wanted to lie down for a while, but he couldn’t rest there. Not with the memory of the cadavers in the county morgue haunting him, and knowing that if the pack turned on him, the damage they inflicted would be even worse.

  The faces of the pack swirled past him as he staggered down the road. They were staring at him, and he couldn’t help wond
er what they thought. Did they see him as potential prey? Did they think he would go down easy? Lincoln gripped the gold crucifix at his throat for comfort, but the glowing love of God didn’t fill him as it usually did. In the shadowed valley where werewolves lurked, he was alone.

  He double-checked that his sidearm was still in his belt, at the small of his back. There were twelve silver promises loaded in the magazine—bullets that ensured his safety if the worst happened. Twelve. Not enough to take the whole pack, but enough to take down eleven and himself.

  “Deputy?”

  Lincoln swung around, fists clenched, ready for attack. The man who had spoken to him held two hands up in a calming gesture, the fingers of his left hand tangled around the necks of two beer bottles. It was the young black man. Not the one that they had videotaped inspecting a murder scene, but his brother, Seth Wilder.

  According to Elise, Seth wasn’t a werewolf. With effort, Lincoln relaxed his fists. “What can I do you for?” Lincoln asked.

  “I thought you’d like a drink,” Seth said.

  He handed one bottle, drenched in cold perspiration, to Lincoln. It felt like it had just been pulled out of an ice chest. Lincoln turned the label in his hands to inspect it.

  “This is good beer,” Lincoln said.

  Seth grinned. “When you’re sequestering forty-some adults away from civilization and expect them to get along with no fatalities, you better have the good alcohol. You should see our liquor cabinet.” He pulled a knife out of his pocket, and Lincoln tensed again, but he only used it to pop the cap off of the bottle. Seth offered it to Lincoln hilt-first.

  “Thanks.” He kept Seth in the corner of his eye as he opened the beer. The guy looked young, maybe college age. “Are you twenty-one?”

  “Does it matter?” Seth asked.

  Wrong answer. “Let me see your ID.”

  Seth barked a laugh, but he managed to produce an Iowa driver’s license from a battered leather wallet. His twenty-second birthday was approaching in a couple of weeks. Legal, but barely.