The Black Wolf

by Linda Thomas-Sundstrom

  Footfalls, light but meaningful, became louder as they got closer to where Cara stood. A woman appeared, heading toward her on the driveway. No. Not a woman, really.

  “I suppose you’ll need a ride,” Dana Delmonico Landau said, as if she had either been privy to everything that had happened so far—or possessed a set of talents that she usually kept hidden.

  * * *

  Rafe looked for the black SUV in the garage, feeling guilty about leaving the dirty work regarding the body and finding the killer to the others. But the car was gone. This was curious, since the SUV was seldom used by anyone except the Weres who were out with his father in the park at the moment.

  He chose another car and slipped onto the warm leather seat. He had to find Cara. He would bring her back and chain her to the house if necessary until he could get some things done without thinking about her.

  It was likely that others had heard what had transpired between them on Were channels. He didn’t care. Most of his pack had their own mates and would understand his dilemma with Cara. If she was right about the uprising of monsters in Miami, only she could help to locate and cull their numbers, and yet it was dangerous for her to do so. Having Cara here would benefit everyone, except maybe Cara.

  She had closed down communication. He could no longer see her in his mind at present, which would make locating her a problem. Had she gone home? If so, was there a chance he might intercept her before she got there? How would she get away from Miami? Heaven only knew what Colton and Rosalind would think if she returned on her own. Or if he showed up unannounced looking for her.

  Rafe waved at the guards at the gate as he drove up and stopped to ask, “Did you see Cara?”

  A quick no in reply was all it took for the glimmer of an idea to form in his mind. Cara had not come this way on foot, and she wouldn’t have gotten past the guards if she had. She was wily, however, and could have easily skirted the front gate.

  Rafe stepped on the gas. Using the GPS, he plotted the secret location of the Kirk-Killions’ home that his family had been allowed access to in order to bring Cara to Miami. That place was a couple of hours away. He’d have to find Cara somewhere between here and there.

  Barely three miles from the estate, Rafe slowed the car to process another thought that had dropped into his mind. Was it a message? He’d heard a whisper. In that whisper was a name he recognized.

  Hell, Cara hadn’t gone home. The name he had heard was a place wrapped up in the legends that formed his pack’s history.

  Fairview.

  He made a U-turn and drove at breakneck speed for a few more miles with an eye out for the old sign that had been left standing after the psychiatric hospital had supposedly closed down—supposedly being the operative word.

  Every Were in Miami knew of this place and that it was where humans freshly inducted into the moon’s cult were taken, if they were lucky, to go through their first bone-shattering transition from human to werewolf. Although Fairview’s windows now appeared to be dark and the gates were padlocked, there was plenty of activity behind those old brick walls that went undetected by all except for the wounded humans Fairview’s conscientious staff served.

  It wasn’t far to that place. A slight detour only, and one Rafe had to take in case Cara had been the one to guide him there.

  * * *

  Cara sat back on the seat, staring out the half-open window. “This isn’t the way home,” she said.

  “You weren’t really thinking of going home tonight, were you?” Dana replied.

  Cara gave her a brief glance. “No.”

  “I thought you might like to see the spot that’s been on your mind,” Dana said. “I can always turn around if I was wrong about that.”

  Cara gave her hostess another sideways glance.

  “Do you have any idea where that might be?” Dana asked.

  There was only one more place tied to the memories of her parents’ past left to see in Miami. Dana had mentioned it earlier. After everything that had happened since then, this trip was to be a fitting finale to her quest for the truth. And Rafe’s mother had picked up on that.

  “Fairview,” Cara said.

  “It’s only a few miles from us,” Dana explained.

  Cara studied the landscape intently. Because Dana seemed to understand what was going on, Cara asked what was on her mind. “Was there a reason a fight with the vampires took place there instead of in the park?”

  “No one knows that for sure, other than your parents. I tend to think that Rosalind led the vampires here because it was far enough from the city to allow her to do what she wanted to do.”

  “Which was what?” Cara asked.

  “Fight them, once and for all. Prove her dominance over them.”

  A shiver of apprehension iced Cara’s neck when she heard that word. Dominance. Out of the corner of her eye, she caught sight of a sign that had long since fallen into disrepair and now hung from its hinges. It would have directed people to the Fairview Hospital Psychiatric Clinic when the hospital was up and running.

  She felt an even deeper chill when they turned down a long, dark driveway. Tingling sensations accompanied a new premonition. Something was about to happen here that went beyond her objective of taking a quick look around.

  She leaned forward on the seat. Everything outside the car’s window had once again become dreamlike, as if she was seeing the landscape through the tight weave of a net. Her sight was limited, but smells came through.

  “Wolf,” she said.

  Dana nodded. “Wolves have always been a part of the history of this place, and still are. One of our packmates runs Fairview now, the same as long ago when part of it was open to the public.”

  “Wolves and humans mixed there?”

  “They were kept segregated, of course. No one on the outside ever knew what went on in some of those corridors.”

  “It’s still open?” Cara asked.

  “Jenna James runs Fairview now, and she is very good at what she does.”

  Cara said thoughtfully, “Wolf scent could have been what helped to draw the vampires to the area.”

  “That certainly could have been a part of why they appeared back then,” Dana agreed.

  Cara turned to her. “But you don’t really believe that was the case?”

  “I tend to believe it was Rosalind who purposefully drew them here for a reason of her own, and that she was merely aided by the darker aspects of this place. I think she planned this in order to keep others away.”

  If that was true, and Dana was right about her mother’s motives for coming here, Rosalind had cared about the lives of others and had chosen this place for its remote location. She might have taken into consideration that wolves injured in a fight could have been treated at this hospital.

  She was beginning to fill in the blanks of her family’s past. She had seen what had happened to her father in the park. She had seen her parents making love in the attic room. Now she was going to find out the rest. The puzzle was about to be solved.

  The long driveway to Fairview was partially overgrown with grass and knee-high weeds. There were no lights. As the car wound through a dense stand of trees, the moon ducked behind a cloud.

  When the outline of a building came into view in the headlights, Cara put a hand on her chest to try to ease her racing heartbeats. As Dana pulled up to an old chain-link fence and stopped the car, Cara’s hand flew to the door handle.

  “Wait,” Dana cautioned. “Someone else is here.”

  Cara already knew that, though, and also that the past was about to come alive in a way that could affect them all.

  Chapter 29

  Rafe drove up to the chain-link fence surrounding the hospital and parked the car. Fairview had a forgotten, forlorn look that was deceiving, and appeared to have been abandoned for years.


  Grass had overtaken whole stretches of the circular driveway. The fence drooped in places, and moss crept up the brick near the base of the steps leading to the front door, presenting onlookers with a broody atmosphere that ghost hunters might have liked to explore. Yet Fairview wasn’t empty or abandoned, and anyone trespassing here would get a decent shock if they somehow managed to get inside.

  He saw no one. Heard nothing. The quiet was so convincing, he almost believed what that boarded-up exterior suggested, when he knew better. Nevertheless, he had to wonder why Cara would want to come here, if in fact she would.

  He got out of the car and took several deep breaths. Then he scanned the area for hints of life beyond the faint scent of wolves that only another wolf would have noticed.

  His visits to Fairview were rare and made him uneasy. He seldom set foot here unless called upon to investigate any incident caused by a wolf biting a human. There were several such cases each year, and all of them required the good guys of their species to go after the bad guys afterward to track down those toothy bastards.

  Things had been fairly quiet in that arena lately, and now the danger had escalated to include another kind of bite. All of a sudden, the current pack had vampires to worry about. There was no help for humans punctured by fangs, and no private hospitals like this one to take in the undead. Only the cold slabs of city morgues could host a new vampire’s temporary stay.

  With the back of his neck prickling, Rafe walked toward the padlocked gate. There was something here...but what?

  What was he supposed to find?

  There was no sign of Cara, but the hum of an engine on the driveway made him turn around. The needling sensations at the base of his neck tripled as he waited to find out if the whisper he heard had been legitimate and if Cara had sent it.

  When the SUV rounded a corner, Rafe breathed a sigh of relief. It was the missing vehicle from his family’s garage. If his father and others with access to the garage had been scouring the park, who was driving that SUV?

  Two headlights coming his way made the night temporarily brighter. Rafe waited by the gate on the opposite side of the building until the car pulled up and the passenger door opened. Cara got out. Following closely behind her was the surprise of the night.

  “What are you doing here?” his mother said.

  The only sound left after that was the unusual pounding of his heart.

  * * *

  Cara froze when she saw Rafe. She attempted to hide how grateful she was to see him, because there was a downside to meeting him like this, here. Emotions she had tried to leave behind rolled over her. Unable to think of anything to say, she turned to Dana, who stood on her left.

  “I suppose he has a right to be here and to share this,” Dana said.

  “Share what?” Rafe asked, sounding as confused as Cara was.

  “Her family’s past,” Dana said.

  Cara realized by observing the way Rafe looked at his mother that he was in the dark about why he was here and might have been following a hunch as to where she would turn up next.

  “The bond between you is obvious,” Dana went on. “Maybe it’s a good thing you’re here.”

  Cara finally spoke up and said to Dana, “You can’t possibly find that kind of bond acceptable.”

  Dana wasn’t intimidated by the intensity of Cara’s gaze or her frankness. “Why wouldn’t we accept it?” Dana said. “Why do you suppose you were sent here, if not to become one of us?”

  Rafe stepped closer...close enough for Cara to feel that familiar flush of warmth he gave her and to remember the exquisite seductiveness of his body stretched out on top of hers in that attic room. Her own memories were now of deep, drowning kisses, and how Rafe’s scent could chase away thoughts of the bad things in her life.

  “This is the place,” Cara said.

  The set of Rafe’s jaw told her he was trying to ignore the compulsion to look around him. For Rafe, what had happed here was part of his pack’s dark history.

  “What do you want to find here?” he asked her. “More of your mother’s memories? Further trauma that might make you feel worse than you already do?”

  Rafe was probably wondering if her feelings for him might be nothing more than a chapter in her family’s lingering past. If she might have gone to bed with him only because she thought she was dreaming, or reliving something that had happened long ago between her parents.

  You’re wrong, Cara wanted to tell him, though she wasn’t completely sure about that, either.

  “My family’s memories could be coloring everything,” she said in answer to the questions Rafe hadn’t voiced. “I have to find out what is here for me, and if I can let the past go once I understand it.”

  Rafe’s blue eyes searched her face in a caressing way that was the equivalent of having his hands feather over her body. He wasn’t going to stop her from finding what was here. Maybe he wouldn’t offer another protest.

  “Trust me,” he said. “What we did in that room had nothing to do with Colton and Rosalind. You can forget about that. You were there. I was there. We did what we did because we wanted to, and because we had to. Your discoveries about them and their affection for each other can’t cause you to love me any more or less than you do. Neither can someone else’s memories or words sway my feelings for you.”

  She wanted to believe him. She honestly did. The strange thing was how quickly the imprinting state had taken them over. This was only her second day in Miami, though it felt like she’d been here much longer. Did anyone really know how the mating game could happen so fast, or tie two Weres together so strongly?

  Rafe faced his mother. “Did Cara ask you to bring her here?”

  “No,” Cara said. “Dana merely offered me a ride.”

  “I thought you ran back toward your home,” Rafe said. “I thought you had gone.”

  Cara shook her head. “It’s not over. This is where things in Miami ended for my parents and their life of seclusion began. What happened here was the final battle with the vampires. Something secretive must have been disclosed here that I’m meant to see.”

  As she had in the park, Cara sensed in the hospital’s grounds the remnants of that battle tugging at her. Anger and death lingered in places where lives were lost. She had mentioned that to Rafe earlier, and he could choose to believe it or not.

  She didn’t look past the fence, already feeling Fairview’s chill. The air surrounding the old building was thick and difficult to breathe. No one with an ounce of sensitivity would have been comfortable here.

  “Seeing what happened near this place might make me better understand my fears,” she said, thinking out loud and avoiding Rafe’s gaze.

  “What fears?” Rafe asked.

  She couldn’t hide things from him now, but she didn’t want to tell Rafe everything. He hadn’t shared the horrors she had seen growing up. Rafe belonged to a pack that supported his species and offered backup in a crisis.

  How can you love a monster killer who is also a monster herself?

  “No,” Rafe objected, having either tuned in to or guessed what she was thinking. “You have to realize by now that you aren’t a monster, and neither were Colton or Rosalind. How could you even think such a thing when theirs was the ultimate sacrifice? They gave up our kind of freedom for another one that they believed would suit them better. They offered the same kind of freedom to you before extending the choice of something else.”

  Cara glanced up, drawn to the tender adamancy of his remarks.

  His eyes bored into hers to help drill home a point as he said, “Your parents could have stayed here. No one turned them away. If what they left was so bad, why would they send you here? If they weren’t wanted in Miami, why would they expect things to be different for you?”

  Rafe’s earnestness was as beautiful as his face. What his eyes told her was that he
had fallen in love with her. After everything that had happened during their brief acquaintance, their souls had mingled in the way only Were souls could, and he loved her.

  The pleasure of that made her sway on her feet. He steadied her with a firm hand that forced her to again meet his eyes.

  Could he see that she was desperate to believe him? Was he able to read that in her face?

  “This is the final piece of the puzzle,” she repeated. “I have to see it in order to understand why my parents made the choices they made.”

  Rafe nodded reluctantly. His anxiousness surrounded him. But the net of her mother’s memory had already dropped in front of her vision, and the process of dipping into the past had begun.

  There was no way to stop what was coming, and Cara didn’t want to. By finding what she needed here, there was a good chance she could let the past go and love Rafe back. When this was over, she might be able to throw herself into his arms.

  At last, she might shed the tears she had held back for so long, and the anger she had harbored for the kind of life she and her family could have lived if things had gone differently and events in Miami had turned out well.

  Fears.

  There were just too damn many to count. And Rafe had added to them by concentrating, right now, on the word she feared most of all.

  Love.

  He loved her. It was true.

  And she loved him back.

  She was Lycan above all, he had said. And as the strongest and fiercest of the breed, Lycans were supposed to be the masters of their own destinies, not pawns to anyone else’s.

  “Then let’s see what there is to see,” Rafe said as he took her hand in his.

  Blue light shone from his eyes, and that light grounded her. Cara sent the tentacles of her mind into the surrounding landscape and said, “Rosalind. Show me what happened here so that this can be over, once and for all. And so that I can make a choice for the direction my life is to go.”

  * * *

  The musty green smell of uncut grass and old trees reached her before it changed to make way for the acrid odor of stale blood.