Heads were hung and feet shuffled until Hudson finally spoke. "You know when you stopped for a drink?"
"Yeah."
"So did we."
Chapter 13
Like most active people, I suck at being ill or injured. Lying around in bed for days on end, waiting to get better, is just not for me, I need to be doing stuff all the time.
I tried turning the case over and over in my mind, seeing if I could make some progress, but it just made my head hurt as much as the rest of me. As matters stood, I had nothing definite; I needed to be out there, collecting evidence, not laid up here staring at the ceiling.
Having the guys taking care of me was cool, and they made surprisingly good nurses, but my body was too beat up for me to take any more recreational advantage of staying with them. By day four, I was feeling a lot better but, irritatingly, they all had some official ceremony at the Pack Lodge.
Being a Kenai heir wasn't all fun and games.
Fed up with lying in bed, I got up to have a proper nose about the room in which I had spent much of that week. It was clearly a spare room, not one inhabited by any of the brothers, and yet it looked as if someone had recently been using it as a make-shift office.
There was a desk in the corner with a few pens scattered across it, and one of its drawers partly open with various papers sticking out. Without touching anything - because as long as you don't touch, it's not snooping - I peered as far as I could into the drawer to take a closer look at the papers. They were covered in a scattering of erratic handwriting I could barely read, a few circled names and places. Most of the writing seemed to be stream of consciousness; making sense to the writer but to no one else, but one name leaped out at me; Yuko.
The name of Gray's mate, who had been killed in the Hokkai border raid.
I stared at the bundle of notes, flaunting its secrets provocatively. Hudson had said something about Gray investigating the killing of his mate; 'reams of notes' he had said. Was that what I was looking at? If it was, then it was none of my business, it had nothing to do with the King case, and I wanted to look at it more than anything else in the world. But I couldn't justify that intrusion into Gray's privacy. I turned away.
Or could I?
I turned back. Was it so cut and dry that this had nothing to do with the attempted assassination? It was another attack on the Kenai family - albeit a somewhat oblique one. Presumably, Gray spent time with Yuko at her home, might the raiders have hoped to catch him there and kill him, too? More, to my current way of thinking, was it possible that whoever was trying to frame the brothers for the assassination had created a powerful motive for Gray by killing Yuko?
When I thought about it like that, then it would have been irresponsible of me not to violate Gray's privacy. I grabbed the notes from the desk and carried them back to the bed. I then hurried across to the door and locked it - however much I had convinced myself that this was essential to the case, I might struggle to convince anyone else of it.
The rest of the day I spent in bed, a pen clutched in my mouth to make my own notes, where necessary, as I tried to understand Gray's desperate efforts. For a werewolf, he had been surprisingly thorough, which spoke volumes of his desire for vengeance, I doubted that there was a fact about the circumstances surrounding the raid that he had not found out. The problem was that all those facts were in no sort of order. The whole document was an ill thought-out, haphazard mess of facts, rumors, ideas and suppositions, all written down as they occurred to Gray. Nothing was linked up. On page two he mentioned an eye witness account of a werewolf with a grey stripe on his head and that description was repeated on page twenty-seven, making it a key piece of evidence. But Gray had failed to link the two thoughts. Werewolves just don't have organized minds, they think in straight lines - A-B. For twisted thinking, then you need a human – or, at least, a three-quarter blend like me.
Over the course of the afternoon, I read Gray's notes, marking those passages that went together. I then went back through again, this time putting the facts into a clear chronology of events, figuring out which witnesses were to be trusted, matching descriptions to addresses. Basically, this was my day job, only someone else had done the legwork for me, and by the time the brothers returned in the evening, I had a pretty good idea who was on the raiding party, which of the party had killed Yuko, and where that person lived.
Which left me with the question of what to do with that information. Telling Gray would surely result in him rushing back into Hokkai territory with murder in mind. Keeping it to myself seemed a betrayal of someone who had saved my life.
My musings on this were interrupted by a knock at the door.
"Just a second."
I shoved the papers back into their drawer and then unlocked the door.
"You locked the door?" asked Hudson, perplexed.
"Force of habit. I don't live in the best area of town."
"We wondered if you wanted to eat in your room or come down and join us?"
"I'll join you."
"Great. How was your day?"
I shrugged. "You know: boring."
Dinner was as much fun as I had come to expect from the guys. The more time we spent together, the more we seemed to enjoy each other's company. Even Gray was trying, though I still felt that sense of him keeping me at arm's length, not wanting to get too close, as if to do so was a betrayal of his lost love. He was, of course, the only one of the brothers I had not slept with and I found myself idly wondering if I still might. I wanted to. However much I tried not to think it; I really wanted to. There was something compelling in his intensity, and even in his melancholy. Gray loved hard, and that was not such a bad trait.
The fact that, in the drawer in my room, I might well have an answer to his troubles - or at least a way of laying that old ghost to rest - did needle at me through dinner, but I tried not to think about it, I still had the decision to make about what was best to do next.
"You look tired," Tanner observed as dinner ended.
"Thanks."
"I'm just saying. Could you not get any sleep today?"
I shrugged, trying to look innocent. "I never had much luck at sleeping during the day."
"You should get some rest," said Hudson. It might have been my imagination, but I thought there might be a trace of disappointment in his voice, and that of Tanner, too. Had they both hoped I might spend the night with them? That might have been awkward. Unless they had hoped I might spend the night with both of them. Just the thought made an image of burning intensity flash through my mind's eye. But in the version, I imagined it was not me with two brothers, but with all three of them.
It was early morning when I awoke, the sun still not risen above the city. I turned over gingerly to go back to sleep - my wounds were healing quickly, one of the advantages of being a part-wolf, but my back was still sore. As I moved, I noticed that my door was ajar. That was odd; I was sure that I had closed it the night before. I got up to close it and my eyes were drawn to something that made my blood run cold. The desk drawer was open, the notes scattered to the floor.
I ran over to rifle through the papers to see if my worst fears would be confirmed. They were. My own notes, the sheet with the name and address of Yuko's killer, were gone.
I was dressed in seconds and running for the door. The chain of events seemed obvious; during the night, Gray had wanted his notes and crept into my room to get them. There he had seen my conclusions and had dropped the notes in shock before stumbling out, too dazed or in too much of a hurry to even close the door. His next action seemed equally obvious – though, I hoped I was wrong - he would head into Hokkai territory to challenge Yuko's killer. Unless I could catch up and stop him.
Perhaps I should have asked Tanner and Hudson for help, but given where I was going, that was just asking for more trouble. In cases of vengeance - a male revenging the death of his mate - wolf lore could be flexible, but brothers coming across the boundary to help out was tantamount to a
n act of war. I had to do this alone.
Fortunately, I remembered the address of Yuko's killer and my car was still outside Heir’s House from when I had last gone looking for Gray in Hokkai territory. Through the greying light of early morning, I drove like a demon, tires screeching on the asphalt as I barreled around corners, heading across town. Even at the stupid speeds I was going, the drive never felt longer, and as I approached the block where Yuko's killer lived, my heart sank. I could see a circle of bodies forming - a makeshift ring that was traditional for one of the oldest of werewolf customs; the duel.
I slammed on the brakes and was leaping out of the car before it had fully come to a stop. Careless of safety, I elbowed my way through the crowd of amped up werewolves, hungry to see some blood spilled. Reaching the front row, I found myself staring out into the center of the circle, at the middle of which a fire burned, its flickering flames illuminating the leering faces of the spectators, as well as the two men who were stripping off their shirts, ready to fight.
Werewolves heal fast, but Gray's body still bore the signs of his recent brush with death - he was not in peak condition for a fight, and one look at the other side of the ring told me that he needed to be. The name of the man who had killed Yuko was Reed Leon, and though I recognized him from pictures I had found in amongst Gray's haphazard investigation, those pictures had not done justice to the man. He was a foot taller than Gray, and his body, which was thickly haired, even in human form, was broad with muscle. He bore scars from past fights on his body and his face, and his nose had been broken at least once.
While Gray looked taciturn and solemn, Leon was grinning smugly, as if this was just another Saturday night for him - a few drinks, a bit of dancing, and a fight to the death. My gaze shifted back to Gray. Leon clearly had the more brute strength, built like a steamroller, but Gray's strength seemed more animal, more visceral, more agile. His lean, corded muscles knotted about his wiry limbs, and the fire threw the ripped muscles of his abs into sharp relief.
None of which meant he had a chance. A wolf may be a lean predator, but if you hit it with a bulldozer, then that's relatively meaningless. I tried to push forward, to go and tell Gray that this was foolhardy and that he would be better off giving his findings - my findings - to the police. The crowd stopped me, holding me back so I could not spoil their fun. I opened my mouth to shout to him.
But no words came out.
As Gray turned, I had caught the look in his eye. Perhaps I did not know the brothers that well, and Gray least of all, but I knew them well enough. That look in Gray's eye, a look of infinite sadness, whetted to a fine edge by an unquenchable anger, told me how much he needed this. It did not matter to him if he lived or died - he had to have this fight.
I settled back into the crowd, keen to see but also keen that Gray should not see me. I wondered if that desire for justice and vengeance might be the deciding factor.
There did not seem to be any formal way of starting the fight. There was no one officiating beyond the judgment of the crowd, who would see that all was fair, and no one sounded a siren, blew a whistle or dropped a flag. The two werewolves simply went from not fighting to fighting in a spontaneous instant, Gray coming to his toes, Leon starting to swing his brick-like fists.
I winced as, having dodged the first two of Leon's swings, Gray was caught by the third, a blow hard enough to take him off his feet and send him tumbling to the ground, drawing a roar of approval from the strongly partisan audience. So nimble was Gray's recovery that his body seemed barely to touch the ground at all, as he rolled on his shoulder straight back into a standing position. Leon grinned, flexed his massive muscles, and shifted into wolf form. He had been a big human, he was a huge wolf, lumbering on his sturdy back legs, his thick arms hanging heavy by his sides, almost long enough for the claws to brush the ground. He howled, then charged at Gray, who spun sideways with the agility of a dancer, shifting shape as he moved and slashing his claws across Leon's broad, hairy back.
"Yes!" I cried, unable to help myself, and suffered the angry stares of every pair of eyes around me in the crowd. Some of them were probably noticing my part-wolf smell. I met their stares. "Fuck you. I'm here to see a fight."
Leon threw back his head in a snarl of pain and rounded on Gray, hurling his bulk at the smaller wolf, but Gray moved fast, catching the massive arms and absorbing their bulky strength with his own. I saw the tendons standing out through his hair, his eyes almost red with effort. And then he was gone, suddenly pulling back and allowing Leon's force and weight to throw himself forward. Gray was the wilier fighter, able to use Leon's strength against him, able to back off when the situation called for it.
But Leon was not a man to underestimate, and was one who did not like to be made a fool of.
Fueled by his anger, he lashed out with his leg, catching Gray off-guard and sending the Kenai heir back, tripping over the fire, a bloody gash across his chest. My heart was in my mouth as he struggled to get back up again, burned and bloodied, but as I watched, new resolve seemed to flow into him, as if the face of Yuko had floated before his eyes.
Now, it was Gray's turn to act in anger, and Gray's anger was a formidable thing to see, it burned from him, it writhed in him like a living thing, and when he set it loose, it drove him on like a wild thing. Snarling and hurling himself directly at Leon, Gray's claws rose and fell with vicious intent. Leon fought back, but suddenly it seemed that Gray was the stronger wolf, fueled by hate and long anticipation of this moment. He also seemed invincible, as if he did not even feel Leon's claws. I didn't think Gray was feeling much at that moment. The difference between the two was that Leon was now fighting to stay alive - Gray did not care, he was fighting only to kill, only to have his vengeance.
As Gray's blows rained down on his torso, Leon let his guard down for an instant and Kenai Gray seized his chance. Diving forward, Gray fastened his jaws to Leon's neck, and in one gory wrench of his head, he shredded the larger wolf's jugular with his teeth. Blood spurted forth, silencing the crowd.
Gray backed off, limping, his breath coming in fitful wheezes, only now feeling the injuries that had been inflicted upon him. Leon remained on his feet but seemed to be doing so more by force of habit than physical strength as the blood gushed from his body. His movements were marionette-like, stilted and uncertain, his body slowly coming to terms with the fact that it was already dead. His collapse seemed to me to be in slow motion, toppling forwards and folding up in a crumpled heap, his fur matted with red blood that spread out from him in a pool. As I watched, Leon's body changed from wolf back to human. Werewolves never die in their wolf form, the last desperate act of their dying bodies is always to revert to humanity. It confirmed Gray as the victor.
I looked at the crowd around me and wondered how they might take this.
Gray shifted back into human form, his body bloodied but his head unbowed, his wounds apparently not as serious as the amount of blood suggested.
"He killed my mate."
There was a murmur around the assembled viewers.
"Can anyone confirm this?" asked a voice.
A number of other Hokkai wolves spoke up to confirm it - they had been part of the same border raid and, yes, Leon had killed a female.
"Righteous vengeance," judged the first voice. "You may pass back to your own territory unharmed, and this matter will be considered dead."
Without another word, and with the entertainment apparently over, the crowd began to disperse. The fight had not gone how they might have wanted, but it was better than no fight at all, and no one seemed to have much liked Leon anyway. I stayed put, watching Gray. He stood, still as a statue, apart from the rising and falling of his shoulders, his eyes on the bloody heap that had, until recently, been Reed Leon.
He still did not look up as I walked over to him. "I can't believe it's over."
"You must be pleased, though."
"I..." A frown passed across his handsome features. "I think I expected
to die. To take him with me, but to die. I don't really know what I'm supposed to do now."
"Live?" I suggested.
He looked up, seeming to see me for the first time. "What are you doing here?"
"I came to stop the fight," I admitted. "I decided not to try."
"Good call."
He smiled. It may have been the first time I had seen him smile, and was certainly the first that I had seen him smile with such genuine happiness, almost serenity.
"Nothing's changed, and yet it all seems different."
We drove back together. Most of the blood on him seemed to be Leon's and he insisted that he had no need of a doctor. Gray sat in silence the entire journey, not angry or upset - a calm seemed to have settled across him. He almost looked puzzled. Every now and then, I caught him shooting glances at me when he thought I wasn't looking.
We arrived back at Heir’s House just as the sun was rising and it was only then that Gray spoke. "There's something I'd like to show you."
He led me up through the house, up staircases I had never known existed, until we came out on the roof.
"There."
The sunrise was framed by the buildings, creating a piercing shaft of orange light, like a gateway to heaven. Gray and I sat down, side by side, to watch.
"We used to come here to watch the sun rise." Gray's voice was low but betrayed no sadness. "I wanted to come here to say goodbye, one last time."
I looked at his face. He wasn't crying. He didn't really look sad, he had reached a point of clarity where Yuko was concerned, that was what this had given him; the ability to let go, and with the rising of the sun, the harsh pain of loss that had crippled him since Yuko's death would begin to heal.
"She was really something," he said.
"I wish I'd known her."
"I'm glad you didn't."
"Why?" I frowned.
He said nothing in reply. "She's still gone. Why do I feel... happy, when she's still gone?"
Her Werewolf Harem Page 10