Shadow's Messenger: An Aileen Travers Novel

by T. A. White

  “There was no one there when I came in. I didn’t sense anyone until I smelled the blood.”

  The alpha’s eyes sharpened. “Then what?”

  I didn’t think he wanted to hear about how I momentarily lost control and was on my way to drink down the owner of that tasty smelling blood.

  “I went to see what was wrong and saw a man standing over the body. Then your guy over there startled me and when I turned back the man was gone.”

  “Declan?”

  The small giant’s face was thoughtful as he said, “I saw her standing outside the office door and recognized her from earlier. Then I smelled the blood and ran into the room. I didn’t see any man.”

  “There was definitely a man,” I said.

  “She could be lying,” a woman said from her perch on the bar. Her hair was curly and wild around her head. It matched the feral beauty of her face.

  “Look, I assume with all the sniffing you guys have been doing that you can smell if I had Wade’s blood on me. Given the way Declan happened upon me, I wouldn’t have had time to hide the blood from your senses.”

  “Could be magic,” someone else said.

  “Or she could have a partner.”

  “What reason would I have to kill your pack mate?” I asked.

  “That is a good question,” the alpha said. “What did the man you said you saw look like?”

  That was easy.

  I struggled to remember.

  “Uh. He had blue eyes.”

  His face was blurry in my memory.

  “Brown hair?” I couldn’t help the question in my voice.

  Why couldn’t I remember? Maybe the blow to the head had rattled my brain more than I thought.

  “She’s making this up,” the woman said. “She can’t even come up with a convincing description.”

  “Oh. Fangs.”

  I think. No. I was eighty percent sure.

  The alpha’s mouth tightened.

  “A vampire would explain why she can’t remember very clearly,” Declan said. “He would have been able to cloud her mind.”

  I didn’t know they could do that. You would think Jerry or even the Captain would have clued me in. I could have been practicing all along. It would make paying my rent so much easier.

  “A vampire didn’t kill Franklin,” the alpha said.

  That cleared me. If I was willing to reveal what I was. I’d like to avoid that if at all possible. Especially with a vampire now in the mix.

  Fifty years in service to a sorcerer or a hundred years shut up in a vampire clan. I’d pick neither.

  “Look, you can check with Hermes. They can verify my story.”

  “Oh we will,” the alpha said. “That still won’t clear you, and in the meantime you’ll be our guest of honor.”

  He stood and walked away.

  Wait. He didn’t understand. I climbed to my knees but was grabbed roughly by my arms before I could make it any further.

  “Wait, you don’t understand. I need someone to sign for that package. I’ll be in a lot of trouble if I don’t deliver it.”

  The two men who had hold of me began dragging me out of the room, ignoring my struggles.

  No, it couldn’t end like this. No way was I going to let myself end up as a sorcerer’s stooge.

  “Please. I just need my phone and a thumbprint.”

  The alpha ignored me as his men pulled me away. My eyes landed on the clock. 12:03.

  I went limp. It was too late. They picked me up, holding me suspended between them by my arms.

  I let them carry me out of the room, down the hall and into the basement. They threw me into a cell. I flinched as the door clanged shut. I didn’t say anything as they walked out, talking about the Buckeye’s chances of winning the next game.

  Fifty years. I couldn’t believe it. After all my hard work staying off any of the major player’s radar, I’d signed away half a century of my life for a measly fifteen thousand dollars.

  Could I even be held accountable if the person I was making the delivery to died before the deadline? No, of course not. That would be ridiculous. Not to mention impossible. I was a vampire not a necromancer.

  The sorcerer would just have to understand that I put in a good faith effort but was prevented from doing my job by forces I couldn’t control.

  I looked around, hope giving me renewed purpose. This was an old building. The basement was small, damp, and surprisingly well fortified. It held at least four cells that I could see. It looked like they pounded the bars into the ground and then poured the cement in after them. There were even bars on the ceiling and against the cement blocks of the foundation.

  I grabbed one and yelped. The skin on the palm of my hand was angry red and blistered. Silver. They’d coated the damn things in silver.

  Who did that? For that matter, what kind of people had cages in their basement? Not normal ones, that’s for sure.

  Looked like I wasn’t going anywhere for the moment. At least there wasn’t a window in here. I wouldn’t want to fry in the morning sun.

  I settled down onto a cot in the middle of the cell. There were no blankets or pillows but at least they’d provided a place to rest. Such nice captors.

  The hours crawled by at an agonizing pace. There was nothing to do but worry. I passed some of the time by singing all the Army cadence’s I knew. That didn’t last long as I’d forgotten a lot of them in the short time I’d been out. Trying to sing any song I remembered didn’t last long. My memory had always been kind of bad when it came to remembering lyrics. After the fifth repetition of ‘The Itsy Bitsy Spider’, I gave up on singing.

  I laid back on the cot and stared at the bars above me.

  I’d met a vampire and hadn’t even realized it until the werewolves pointed it out to me. How sad was that?

  My knowledge of this world was exceedingly small even after two years. Some of that was because I had no reliable mentor. Everything had to be picked up on the fly. It didn’t make for a well-rounded education.

  On the other hand, I’d made no real attempt to further my understanding, preferring to bury my head in the sand. What I didn’t know couldn’t hurt me. Or so I told myself.

  That truth wouldn’t hold for much longer. Not knowing about myself or the spooks around me was going to get me hurt or killed. I needed to find someone I could trust to teach me what I didn’t know.

  For better or worse, I’d picked this way of life when I decided against declaring myself to the clans. I needed to own that decision. I didn’t survive a year in Afghanistan being shot at with mortars and dodging IEDs, and then live through my transformation to vampirism to let my ignorance get me killed now.

  If I got out of this in one piece, things would have to change. I’d have to make more of an effort to learn about this world. It was the only way to keep myself safe.

  The heavy thud of footsteps distracted me from my thoughts.

  Heat bathed my skin and lightning snapped at my fingertips as the alpha’s power preceded him down the steps.

  I remained reclining with my arms folded behind my head. The picture of relaxation.

  He came to a stop in front of my cell.

  The silence grew between us.

  So, Mr. King of All He Surveys, what did you discover?

  The scent of blood clinging to him told me exactly what he’d been up to in the past few hours.

  “What are you?”

  Huh. Of all the things he could ask, I hadn’t expected that one.

  “Didn’t your mother ever tell you it’s rude to ask that?”

  Common etiquette among the spooks discouraged that kind of question. Some species were rare and hunted by the others. Also, it was a sign of status and power to be able to determine what brand of freak you were.

  Maybe he wasn’t as powerful as I’d assumed.

  “Didn’t yours tell you it was rude to break into someone else’s home?” he asked.

  “I didn’t know bars counted as homes
now.” I sat up on my elbows, giving him a pitying look. “Was the recession a little tough on you? Forced you to bed down in a bar?”

  “Smart mouth from the one in a silver cage.”

  I looked around me. “True. Wonder how long it will be until Jerry finds out you have physically assaulted and detained one of his couriers while on a delivery. Wouldn’t want to be you when he does. I’ll take my cage and smart mouth over his wrath any day.”

  “I have no proof you’re a courier. Only your word. Someone found you standing over a body killed in much the same way as several others found this summer.”

  I rolled my eyes. “I wasn’t found standing over the body. I was in the doorway leading to a room with the body. Big difference.”

  “Who asked you to deliver the message?”

  “Ah, ah. That’s privileged information.”

  “Your intended recipient is dead. That excuse no longer holds weight.”

  I sat the rest of the way up, folding my legs under me. “My client still lives. And while he does, that information remains secret unless he instructs me otherwise.”

  He folded his arms across his chest and pinned me with a glare. I’m sure it was the same kind he gave to many a rebellious pack member. They probably quelled and showed their belly to signal their submission to his superior will. Me, it bounced off barely registering as a glare.

  “Tell me about what was in the package.”

  “Privileged.”

  He snarled. I couldn’t help the smile that spread across my face. He’d kept me in here for hours. It felt good to get some of my own back.

  I figured the only reason he was down here asking me questions was because he couldn’t get my bag open to get at the message. It wouldn’t open for anyone but me. It’s how Jerry ensured the contents of a delivery remained confidential even in the event of a mugging. He also probably couldn’t break through the security both technical and magical on my phone.

  “You were willing to have me sign for the package. How is this any different?”

  Wondered when he would get around to that.

  “But you didn’t sign for the package. Because you didn’t, you can’t see what’s in it.”

  I got a little thrill from being able to throw that back into his face.

  “I’ll sign now.”

  “Nope. It’s too late now. The delivery deadline has come and gone.”

  There was no point in telling him the deadline had passed even before I’d asked him to sign for it in the first place.

  “We could torture you,” he said.

  “You could, but it wouldn’t do you much good. That bag won’t even open for me at this point.”

  His face looked like it was chiseled in stone. Didn’t like that, did he?

  Good. Perhaps he should have signed for the damn package when he had the chance.

  My last statement was complete bullshit of course. I could open the bag anytime I wanted. I just wasn’t in the mood to cooperate after sitting in here all night.

  “Tell me again how you broke into my bar.”

  “I’ve already told you this. Again, I didn’t break into anything. I turned the knob and walked in.”

  “You saw nothing?”

  “No. I saw nothing. There was no one guarding the entrance. I didn’t even realize anything was wrong until I smelled the blood.”

  “Did you sense anything? Smell anything?”

  I pushed down my frustration, knowing it was pointless to give into it. Besides the fact I was convinced the alpha would look at me with that blank expression that said I was a child if I threw a tantrum, it would serve no purpose and get me out of here no faster.

  “Again, no, I didn’t sense anything.”

  But I did smell something.

  “You’ve thought of something.”

  He stepped closer to the bars.

  I thought it was the dumpster, but maybe it had been something else. It had smelled of dead and decaying things. I thought a raccoon or something had died in it or behind it.

  “How bad does your dumpster normally reek?” I asked.

  “That’s it? Our dumpster smelled?” He didn’t seem convinced.

  I sighed. “Look, I may have smelled something, but I can’t be sure. That area was pretty ripe, but I don’t know if that’s normal.”

  “I smelled nothing unusual when I checked earlier.”

  “Perhaps whatever was there left right before I passed through,” I said, thinking aloud. “Did you ever find out what happened to the guards who were supposed to be on duty?”

  “They both said they were relieved by someone but can’t remember who.”

  That didn’t help much. What I needed was to get back to that dumpster to see if it smelled the same.

  Metal scraped against metal. I looked up to see the alpha holding a key in one gloved hand.

  “What’s this? You’re letting me go after all that?”

  Not that I planned to complain if he did.

  He gave me a sharp toothed grin. “We’re going to test your theory and see if the smell was in your imagination or not.”

  Oh. That made a lot more sense.

  “I warn you. If you try to escape, my wolves will rip you apart.”

  “Ah. How nice of them. All of your guests must feel so at home with your hospitality.”

  He took me by the arm, his grip firm but not painful. “We’re werewolves. We don’t have guests; we have dinner.”

  How comforting.

  The alley looked much the same as it had when I passed through earlier. The only difference being the four werewolves eyeing me like I was a juicy rabbit they’d like to pounce on.

  I took a deep breath.

  That was the other difference. The foul odor I smelled on my way in was gone. I couldn’t believe I thought it was the dumpster. I’d been so focused on finishing my delivery on time I’d missed a vital hint that something was not as it should be.

  It occurred to me that it was a good thing I hadn’t been any earlier. I must have missed whatever did this by scant minutes for the smell to be that pronounced.

  “Anything?” the feral woman from the bar top asked.

  “Yeah. The thing I smelled when I came in is gone.”

  “How can we be sure she’s not making this up?” a strange wolf asked.

  “We can’t,” Declan said, examining the surrounding area. He took a careful sniff of the air. “Even if whatever caused the smell is gone, I should still be able to catch something.”

  For that matter, the smell should have continued into the bar. It hadn’t. At least I didn’t think it had. It’s possible I hadn’t noticed the difference.

  I examined the alley. There had to be something they’d missed.

  “Could they have had a dampener?” I looked up to find four sets of eyes once again on me.

  Brax was the one to ask, “What do you mean a dampener?”

  I straightened and looked around. The woman and stranger looked disgruntled and suspicious, while Brax and Declan regarded me with a steady gaze.

  “Like what you have in the bar but instead of hiding sound it hides smell.”

  “Then how would you have been able to pick up the scent,” the woman challenged.

  “Proximity? Bad timing? A sound dampener can hide sound, but if you get too close it doesn’t work. I assume something that hides smells would work the same way. I could have just come through the alley right after the murderer left the bar.”

  Declan looked over at his alpha, “It could explain why I didn’t smell blood until she opened the office door. We should have smelled something the moment he was wounded.”

  I shrugged at the skepticism the others aimed my way. “It’s what I would use if I wanted to murder someone in a bar of super sniffers.”

  Brax bent his head and rubbed his jaw. “Shit. That would mean a witch is involved in this somehow.”

  No one looked happy with that assessment.

  He tilted his jaw at me. “
Return her to the cage then report back. We need to compare this to the other scene now that there’s possible new information.”

  The woman nodded and glared at me, tilting her head toward the bar when I didn’t move fast enough.

  Guess they were done speaking with the captive. The other three had already walked away, leaving just the woman and me.

  The sky was beginning to show the faintest signs of sunrise. It was a barely discernable lightening of black. Given my present limitations, I’d had a lot of experience guessing when that pesky ball of fire in the sky was going to start playing havoc with my life. Didn’t want to get caught out without cover. By the looks of things, I had an hour, maybe an hour and a half, before dawn.

  I might not get a better chance. I needed to make my move now. If I waited any longer, they’d know what I was when the sun rose. There wasn’t a window in the basement to light me up, but the coma like slumber would be a dead giveaway to anyone with half a brain.

  I couldn’t let her put me back in the cage. I was never going to be able to get out of that. Not unless I learned how to pick a lock in the next hundred steps.

  Bolting wouldn’t work either. As a werewolf she’d probably beat me in speed. At least I assumed that was the case since Brax trusted she was strong enough to escort me back to the cage.

  Or did he? Perhaps he was counting on me seizing this chance so he could trick me into lowering my guard. He could be waiting for me to lead him back to my client. It would be the sort of thing an experienced hunter would do. Track its prey back to its den.

  No. I couldn’t think like that. I’d psych myself out of taking any action. Remaining wasn’t an option if I wanted my secrets to stay secret.

  My moment came on the stairs leading to the basement. I waited until she nudged me to continue down into the dark before twisting to the side and sticking my foot between her legs. I timed it perfectly. Waiting until right before she completed a step.

  It threw her off balance and allowed me to help her tumble down the stairs, leaving me standing at the top. I don’t care how fast or strong you are. I just need the right leverage to take you down. Of course, if I’d mistimed my move by even a little, it’d be me taking the tumble.