Jennifer Lynn Barnes Anthology

by Barnes, Jennifer Lynn

  “The Senate doesn’t know about the baby, Maddy, but if they find out, you won’t be safe here.” I paused, and my eyes traveled to her stomach, round against her rail-thin frame. “Neither one of you will be.”

  This wasn’t how I’d imagined our reunion with Maddy going, but I didn’t know how to say anything else. Hesitantly, I crouched where I was, my knees pulled tight to my chest. I forced my own guard down, so she would know that I wasn’t trying to scare her or threaten her or imply that she’d made a mistake. Instead, I let my face show my feelings, let my own tears come.

  “I was scared, Maddy, so scared that something had happened to you, and that we wouldn’t get here in time.”

  She looked at Griffin and nodded, and he shot me a warning look and then backed up to stand next to Lake, leaving nothing but a few feet of space separating Maddy and me.

  “I left to get better,” the girl who’d been one of us said simply. “And everything got worse.”

  I ached for the bond missing between us, for the ability to take on her thoughts as my own, to feel them with and for her and protect her from those who would see her harmed.

  But every instinct I had was screaming at me that I wasn’t Maddy’s alpha anymore.

  I wasn’t even sure we were friends.

  “I knew,” she said, her hand rubbing small circles over her bulging stomach and leaving no question what she was referring to. “When I left, I knew, Bryn, and I didn’t tell you. I didn’t tell anyone. I thought I could do it—just go away and get better and stop missing Lucas, who I thought he was, what I thought we had.”

  She eased toward me. Or maybe I eased toward her. I couldn’t be sure.

  “I didn’t know how much it would hurt.”

  I wasn’t sure if she was talking about the pregnancy, or leaving the rest of us behind.

  “I didn’t know that having someone inside of you could make you a hundred times more lonely on the surface. But I was doing it. I was.” She nodded, as if to convince herself of that fact, even as the tears she’d been holding back spilled over and carved tracks into the grime on her face. “We were doing fine, but then there was a full moon. It wasn’t the first one, but the baby …”

  “He Shifted, too,” I said.

  Maddy met my eyes. “She,” the pregnant girl corrected softly. “She Shifted, too.”

  It wasn’t uncommon for werewolf pups to Shift in the womb—that was part of the reason so few human women survived giving birth to werewolf kids. Combined with Maddy’s own body morphing and breaking, the effect must have been excruciating, so much so that I could almost overlook the other thing she’d just said.

  Behind me, Lake could not. “She?”

  “It’s a girl,” Maddy said. “Don’t ask me how I know, but I do, and that full moon, when she was Shifting, and I was Shifting, I thought—”

  She’d thought she was having a miscarriage. Because female pups only made it to full term if there were twins.

  “But nothing bad happened, Bryn. I was fine, and she was fine, but my body—it was like being split in two, cut up from the inside out. It was like dying, and then, suddenly, I wasn’t alone.”

  Her eyes landed on Griffin’s, and he smiled, a tragic smile that looked out of place with the freckles on his face.

  “You brought Griffin back?” Lake’s voice was very small. Through the bond, I could feel the slight tightening of her throat, the aching knowledge that, for years, she hadn’t been able to do what Maddy had that night. “There was a full moon, and you Shifted, and you just brought him back? That doesn’t even make any sense.”

  Maddy looked down at her hands—away from Lake and her question. Griffin picked up where Maddy left off, speaking the words she couldn’t bring herself to say.

  “It wasn’t like that, Lake. One second, I was there, watching, invisible, and the next, I could feel Maddy’s Shift, feel the baby Shifting, feel the moon pulling me closer, turning me inside out. Maddy was screaming, Lake, and it hurt me. I started to Shift, too, and then it was like a nuclear reactor went off inside my body.”

  His eyes shone just describing it, even now.

  “Being dead is like being under anesthetic.” Griffin struggled to put the feeling into words. “Your emotions are there—the important ones, but everything else is numb. Nothing is the way it used to be. Nothing is right, but that night—” His eyes went back to Maddy. “I could feel. I was there.”

  For one second, maybe two, Maddy smiled. Then she looked down at her hands, and I knew that whatever she said next wouldn’t be good. “The corpses started showing up a week later.”

  There was a full moon. Griffin came back. And a week later, things started to die. Maddy had to realize how that sounded—but it was clear from the way she looked at him that she did not.

  “Corpses?” Jed prompted, his voice so gentle, it surprised me.

  “They were animals,” Maddy said. “At first.”

  I thought back to the blood in the cabin in Alpine Creek. “Something killed them?” I asked, forcing my gaze to stay on Maddy and not dart over to Griffin.

  Maddy continued on as if I hadn’t said a word. “I woke up that morning, and Griffin was gone. He just disappeared, and the moment he left, I felt it.” Maddy shivered. I was close enough to her now that I could have reached out and wrapped my arm around her—but I didn’t.

  “I didn’t see anything, not at first, but I heard the door open. Then I heard bones snapping and skin stretching, and even though I couldn’t smell anything, I knew someone was Shifting. At first, I thought it was Griffin, so I walked out into the hallway.” Maddy stopped blinking, her eyes far away and glassy, as if she could see it happening, all over again. “The front door was open, and there was a dog standing on the porch. You could tell it was someone’s pet, because it was wearing a little red collar.”

  I could see where this was going—well enough that she didn’t need to relive it by putting the experience into words, but when I opened my mouth to tell her that, her voice grew louder, more decisive.

  “I didn’t know what the dog was doing there, and I thought that maybe I’d imagined the sound of Shifting. But then I saw the tag on the dog’s collar moving, and I realized he was shaking.” Maddy swallowed, but forced herself to continue. “The dog was a mutt, maybe a year old, and he was shaking so hard that I knew whatever I’d heard, whatever I was feeling, he could feel it, too.”

  Now I could see it: Maddy and the mutt and a villain neither one of them could see.

  “The puppy saw me. It came right up to me. It nuzzled my hand. And then something cut it in two.”

  Blood on the floor and walls of the cabin. I couldn’t see through Maddy’s eyes, but I didn’t need to. I’d smelled the cabin, I’d seen the blood.

  “It just kept going and going, claws digging into it, teeth ripping out chunks, and I just stood there.”

  “You couldn’t have stopped it,” Griffin murmured. “You couldn’t even see it.”

  Maddy continued on, as if she hadn’t heard him. “And then it stopped, and I thought whatever had killed the dog might come for me, but it didn’t. Griffin came back.” Maddy blinked, and I could see her coming back into the present. “We buried the dog—what was left of it—out back.”

  It was an odd thing for a werewolf to do, to bury an animal that should have smelled like prey, but the horror of what had been done to the little dog in the red collar had left a mark on Maddy that was visible on her face even now.

  This wasn’t just hunting.

  This was torture.

  And she’d been helpless to stop it. There was nothing a person like us hated more.

  The rest of the story made its way out of her mouth in halting, staccato bits. She’d showered, scrubbing her hands raw, using an entire bottle of shampoo, but never feeling clean. Griffin had come back, and whenever he was near, things weren’t so bad, but the second he disappeared …

  It happened again. And again. And again. Sometimes it was strays.
Sometimes it was someone’s pet, but always, it was brutal. She and Griffin left Alpine Creek, but wherever they went, whatever Maddy did, the monster followed. It always knew where to find her, and Griffin was the only thing that kept it away.

  “What happened during that full moon, Maddy?” Jed spoke before I had a chance to, and I wondered if he knew something on the subject of ghosts that the rest of us didn’t. “The night you saw Griffin for the first time—I need you to tell me exactly what you did to bring him back.”

  I saw the logic in the question—if we could figure out how Maddy had brought Griffin back, we might be able to figure out the likelihood that she’d brought something else back, too.

  Let it be something else, I thought. Not someone she cares about. Not someone Lake cares about, too. Just this once, let it be something else. Let it be easy.

  For a long time, Maddy didn’t answer Jed’s question. When she did speak, the words came out in a whisper. “We don’t think it’s anything I did,” she said, each word hard-won. “We don’t think it’s me at all.”

  She looked down, but not at her hands this time—at her stomach.

  It hadn’t just been Maddy Shifting that night. According to what they’d told us, the baby had, too.

  The baby Maddy said was a girl.

  The baby who—based on everything we knew about werewolf biology—shouldn’t have lived past that night.

  “You think She did this somehow?” Lake said the word she like it was capitalized, like it was a name.

  Maddy didn’t answer.

  “You have a knack, Maddy,” I said, trying to get her to look at me. “You’re Resilient, but maybe the baby is something else. Maybe her knack isn’t just surviving.”

  “It’s not her fault.” Maddy’s eyes flashed. “If having her means this monster following us—I won’t let you touch her. I won’t let anyone touch her.”

  “Maddy.” I held my hand out, palm up, and then slowly placed it on her stomach. I didn’t say a word, but as Maddy put her hand over mine, I hoped that every assurance I couldn’t put into words would flow between us, with the exchange of body heat.

  Even when I’d thought she was the killer, I’d been determined to keep the other alphas away from Maddy. I wasn’t about to let anyone—or anything—hurt her baby now.

  Not even if the baby was somehow responsible for raising the dead.

  “What happened last week?” Chase turned the conversation back to the event that had brought us here in the first place. If anyone else had asked, Maddy might have winced, but this was Chase, and for whatever reason, she seemed to trust him.

  “We stayed away from people.” In Maddy’s mouth, the word we took on new meaning—whatever else she’d thought or done, she was a mother now, would never just be I again. “I swear, we stayed away from people, but we were outside for months, and then there was this house, and it was empty. The people who lived there had moved, but they hadn’t sold it yet, and we thought—I was hungry, and I was tired, and I just wanted to sleep for one night, just one night, Bryn.”

  “Hey.” I caught her chin in my hand. “It’s okay.”

  She looked at me, incredulous. “It’s not okay,” she said. “There was a boy. A runaway, and I guess he thought the house looked pretty good, too.”

  Blood in the foyer.

  Blood on the fireplace.

  Blood on the walls.

  “He came too close to me, and then Griffin disappeared. I tried to get out of the house. I tried to run, but it was too late.”

  “And today?” Caroline asked, her voice decidedly less gentle than it had been before.

  “Today, I was hungry.” Maddy met Caroline’s gaze head-on, and for a second, I saw a flicker of the inner steel she’d always hidden beneath that quiet surface. “The baby needs meat.”

  “So you went hunting,” Lake said, like it was the most natural thing in the world. For a werewolf, it was.

  “I went hunting,” Maddy replied.

  Not for humans. Not for pets. For a rabbit or deer, a clean kill that wouldn’t have felt any unnecessary pain or fear.

  “And you?” Caroline turned her piercing gaze to Griffin. “If you knew she had to go closer to town to hunt, why weren’t you with her? If this invisible killer only shows up when you’re not around, then why in God’s name would you leave her alone? Why disappear?”

  The emphasis Caroline put on those words was unmistakable. She didn’t trust Griffin, and to her, all Maddy’s story had confirmed was that he didn’t have an alibi for the murders.

  “I don’t have a choice,” Griffin shot back, his voice rising, his jaw clenched. “I’m new at this. I don’t know how it works. Most of the time, I’m here, and I can control it, but sometimes, I lose my grip, and it’s like there’s something else out there, just waiting to push me away. I fight it. I fight to stay, to keep Maddy safe, but if my attention wavers, even for a second—”

  He looked at Lake. No matter who asked the questions, he always ended up talking straight to her. “It might be easier to stick around now that you’re here, Lakie.” He tried to smile, but couldn’t coax his lips into doing anything more than baring his teeth. “The baby might have brought me back, but she’s not the reason I lingered in the first place. Having you here makes everything feel more solid. It makes me feel real.”

  None of this made sense to me. It wasn’t an alibi for the murders. It wasn’t an explanation. It was vague and wishy-washy and—

  I believe him, Bryn. Lake’s voice cut off all other thoughts in my mind. We’re connected. I don’t need to be able to smell him to know if he’s lying. He’s not. If he says there’s another ghost, there’s another ghost. If he says he’s been trying to fight it, he’s been trying to fight. And if he says that having me here will help, then I’m damn well going to do whatever he needs me to do.

  She meant it, more than she’d ever meant anything in her life, and she was sure. I could feel that certainty bleeding over into my own mind, so overpowering I thought my head might explode.

  She was in his mind, and I was in hers. She was asking me—begging me—to let that be enough.

  “Okay,” I said, but even as the word left my mouth, I thought about Lucas, about the way Maddy had loved him and believed in him and asked me to let him in. What if I was making the same mistake again? What if being alpha meant that I could never really trust anyone, not even the people I loved the most?

  He could kill you, my instincts whispered, from somewhere deep inside my mind. He could kill you all.

  “We need a plan in case this thing shows up again,” I said, pushing down my doubts, keeping them from Lake, who would never understand. “Right now we’re defenseless. Caroline tried to shoot Griffin, and the bullet went straight through. We have to assume that weapons wouldn’t have an effect on the other ghost, either.”

  If there was another ghost.

  Caroline didn’t seem to appreciate being reminded that she’d tried to shoot Griffin and failed, but after a few seconds, she transferred her glare from me to him. “Powers and weaknesses. Yours. What are they?”

  Griff answered the question without hesitation. He swiped his left arm at the wall of the cave, and it passed straight through. “Walls aren’t a problem. Neither are doors.”

  A look of concentration fell over his face, and he placed a hand on my shoulder. I jumped.

  “Solidifying is hard,” he said. His touch was ice-cold on my shoulder. The place where his skin met mine felt numb. “But staying solid is easier if I’m not trying to stay visible at the same time.”

  He disappeared halfway through that sentence, and the weight of his touch intensified. Beside me, I could feel Lake pushing down a stab of unwanted panic.

  A second later, when her brother reappeared, Lake bit her lip.

  “Don’t do that,” she said, her voice small. “Don’t ever do that, Griff.”

  “Hey.” He caught her eyes. “Lakie, I’m here. I always was.”

  “As tou
ching as this reunion is,” Caroline bit in, “can we concentrate on the part where weapons go straight through ghosts? I hate to be the one to point this out, but it’s not exactly a handicap for a killer to be more capable of violence when he’s also invisible.”

  Lake gave Caroline a disgruntled look, but the latter was clearly immune.

  Jed cleared his throat—about as close to diplomatic as the old man could come. “There’s not a thing alive that can’t be killed, Caro. Dead things included.”

  If Jed saw the contradiction inherent in those words, he gave no indication of it. “You just have to know where to hit it.”

  Caroline’s hunter eyes appraised Griffin. Lake’s lip curled upward, her incisors gleaming in the scant light of the cave.

  “No, Lake,” Griffin interceded. “She’s right. This thing isn’t going to stop until someone stops it.”

  It was getting easier to believe that he was on our side, that we really could trust him. But what if that was the point?

  “There’s only one thing that hurts me.” This time, Griffin directed his words at me, like he knew what I was thinking.

  “What is it?” Lake didn’t give her brother a chance to reply, before fixing him with a look. “I recommend you open that mouth of yours and start talking, Griffin.”

  Caroline might have wanted to know a ghost’s weaknesses so she could hunt one, but I was fairly certain Lake wanted to know what could hurt Griffin so that she could make 100 percent certain that nothing did.

  “There’s only one thing that hurts me,” Griffin repeated.

  Lake didn’t seem to appreciate his stalling. “What?”

  He gave her a weak smile. “When something hurts you.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  HOURS LATER, WITH THE STORM RAGING OUT ON THE mountain, the seven of us were still crowded into the tiny cave. We’d settled into a loaded silence, the heat of our bodies fighting back the wind and brutal rain, neither of which showed any signs of stopping.

  Our cell phones—not shockingly—had no reception, which meant that I hadn’t been able to get in touch with Callum. I was hoping that once I did, he’d be able to call off the Senate and keep Shay and the others from coming after Maddy. That was the one good thing to come from this.