by JL Merrow
“What is it, Tiffany?” he asked, probably a little more brusquely than he ought. But Tiffany wouldn’t have come all the way out here if she didn’t have something important to say.
She hesitated before speaking. Nick had a sudden urge to grab her by the shoulders and shake it out of her. “It’s about Julian. About where he might be, I mean.” She stopped again, damn her. “Look, maybe you’re doing this wrong. I mean, you’re trying to find him as a, well, as a wolf. Maybe you need to think more like a human?”
Nick resisted the impulse to ask sarcastically whether he should try to think like a bloody psychopath. “I think you need to be a bit more specific there,” he said tightly. His nerves were screaming at him to pace around like a caged tiger.
Tiffany nodded with maddening slowness. “Well, this Boris—he’s not going to stay as a wolf all the time, is he? So he must have somewhere to live. But he’s probably not very, well, comfortable around humans.”
“Is this going somewhere?” Nick snapped. “Sorry.” He took a deep breath. “Please go on.”
“I think he’s probably found somewhere abandoned to live. In town, I mean. I was going to tell you how I… but it doesn’t matter. Look,” she went on more briskly, “here’s a list of properties you might want to check out, okay?” She thrust a folded piece of paper at him. “They’re houses that were empty at around the time Boris might have got here and still haven’t got anyone living in them officially. He could be squatting in one of them.”
Nick swallowed. It might not be anything useful, but it was still a damn sight more than he had. And at least it would give him something to do. “Thank you.”
She nodded.
“Wait—have you told the police?”
“I didn’t think that would be a good idea,” she replied, looking uncertain, her arms wrapped around herself. She was still wearing Julian’s jacket. Nick wanted to ask for it back, but stopped himself. She’d earned it. “Be careful, won’t you?” she said softly and headed to the kitchen.
Chapter Eighteen
THE MOMENT Tiffany had gone, Nick started tapping addresses into his phone—three of the streets were already known to him, but the others weren’t. He tried to work out which might be the most likely from location alone, but the most he could come up with was that some were significantly closer to Coe Fen than the others, which might not mean anything at all. Still, he had to have some kind of starting point.
The skies were as dark as they’d get in the middle of town with all the streetlights reflected off the clouds, but it’d still be madness to try to check out the properties in wolf form. Far too many people around, and the distance between them was enough that he’d do much better by car in any case. At this time of night, traffic shouldn’t be a problem, always assuming he could manage to avoid drunken cyclists. He grabbed his keys, then hesitated. Should he tell Herrscher? Nick fought down his instinctive thought of “to hell with Herrscher.” This was about saving Julian, not scoring points over his father. Still, he was relieved when Herrscher’s phone clicked straight over to voicemail. He rattled off the list of addresses as fast as he could, then jammed the phone back in his pocket.
As he slammed Nadia’s front door behind him, it occurred to Nick that he ought perhaps to have said goodbye. Too late to worry about it now. A brisk breeze ruffled his hair and made him hunch into his collar, but the stars were still obscured by thick clouds that glowed Halloween orange in the reflected light of the streetlamps. Nick shivered for a moment before climbing into the Mini Cooper and driving off.
THE FIRST property Nick pulled up outside—or rather, a cautious five or six doors down from—was clearly occupied. Music blared from the windows, light shone through the blankets hung up to serve as curtains, and there were even signs of some attempt to tidy up the garden. Nice to know some squatters had standards. It was all clearly far too bloody normal for Schräger to be here. Nick got back into the car in resignation, sent a quick text to inform Herrscher of his failure, and set off once more.
The second house was also occupied, and midterrace besides, making it hardly suitable for concealing a prisoner. The third had been demolished and the debris hidden behind builder’s hoardings. The fourth was empty and cold. Nick risked breaking a window to investigate further, but the only signs of life were the cobwebs on the ceiling and the mouse droppings upon the floor. His texts to Herrscher becoming brusquer with every disappointment, Nick had begun to lose hope by the time he pulled up by the fifth property.
This house was large, detached from its neighbors, and derelict-looking. Boards hung loosely from broken windows, and tiles from the roof littered the scrubby front garden, long ago abandoned to thistles and stinging nettles. Nick couldn’t imagine any self-respecting student wanting to squat here. God alone knew why the site hadn’t been redeveloped. Perhaps the owner was just waiting for the property market in Cambridge to rocket from sky-high to astronomical.
Nick sniffed at the air, once again regretting the limitations of his human form. As he moved closer to the front door, the sickly smell of rotting wood overlaid with the foul odor of other refuse grew stronger. Excitement tingled in his belly—could it be his subconscious reacting to Julian’s scent? Consciously, he could detect no sign of it, but perhaps he didn’t need to? His breathing coming quicker, Nick paused at the front door. It might well be rotten enough to kick down, but did he really want to announce his arrival so clearly? He listened, but could hear no sound from within.
Taking care to tread as noiselessly as possible, Nick moved round the back of the house. Long grass and weeds clutched at his trouser legs, and the hairs on his neck rose under a curious sensation that he was being watched by someone long gone.
The wolf. The wolf must have passed this way. Heart pounding in his throat, Nick lifted a corner of a loose board on one of the ground-floor windows. He was in luck. The glass beyond had been completely shattered and had been swept to one side. He had found the squatter’s way in, and he was now certain he knew who the squatter was. Nick climbed gingerly through the window and crept farther into the house, thankful for his soft-soled shoes that allowed him to tread silently upon the bare wooden floorboards.
The kitchen showed definite signs of occupancy. Carrier bags littered the floor, some empty, some full of foul-smelling rubbish. Cans of food stood upon worktops next to large bottles of supermarket mineral water. Now and again, as he turned his head, Nick was sure he caught Julian’s scent. It was faint, very faint. But it was here. Julian was here.
Or had been. Nick’s heart lurched at the thought that he might be…. No. He was here, and Nick was going to find him, was going to take him back from that bastard Schräger. Nick swallowed at the thought of what that might mean. Should he have brought some kind of weapon? Unfortunately this wasn’t the kind of kitchen that came equipped with a handy knife block. Not that Nick would have had the first idea how to fight with a knife in any case.
He moved on, straining his ears for any slight sound that might alert him to where Julian was—or whether his intrusion had been detected. The faintness of the scents suggested no one was on the ground floor, but Nick’s throat was still tight as he crept round half-open doors to the deserted rooms beyond. It was almost pitch-black in the house, barely a trace of the streetlamps outside seeming to penetrate the boarded windows. Nick used his phone torch cautiously, weighing the chance of being seen against the likelihood of him blundering in the dark.
But all was empty.
Nick began to fear he’d got here too late, that Schräger had somehow got wind of his discovery—how, he couldn’t imagine—and had decamped elsewhere. He stood by the staircase for a moment, undecided as to whether he should go up. The dust and grime on the stairs appeared undisturbed, and he was almost certain the scent was actually weaker here.
As he hesitated, he realized there was one door he had yet to check. It looked like a cupboard—could Julian be bundled up in there? Christ, it must be like being in a coffin.
His mouth dry, Nick tried the door handle slowly, alert for any sign that it was about to screech and betray him. The door opened soundlessly, thank God, and a queasy mix of scents greeted Nick’s nostrils. One of them made his breath catch in his throat and his heart leap in his chest. Julian. He was here, Nick was certain of it. The other—Nick could barely restrain the snarl that rose in his throat. It was the wolf from Coe Fen.
Nick found himself at the top of a flight of concrete stairs. He’d forgotten old houses like this sometimes had a cellar. Faint yellowish light reached up around a third of the way from a room below, but the angle was all wrong and it showed nothing but a bare stone wall.
He didn’t need to see. He could smell that his mate was here.
Every instinct screaming at him to leap to the attack, Nick made himself tread slowly, quietly down the stairs. He could hear a voice speaking softly, and although he couldn’t make out the words, he could tell that they were in German and they sounded like words of comfort.
Relief flooded through him. Herrscher must have got here before him, and overpowered the wolf. Julian was safe now. “Julian!” he called, abandoning stealth and hurtling toward the sound of the voice.
It wasn’t Herrscher.
It was a man he’d never seen before, but Nick didn’t have a lot of attention to spare for him, as his eyes were transfixed by the sight of Julian, laid out facedown on a low camp bed.
Naked. And with fresh marks on his back—Christ, what had that bastard done to him? Blood was seeping slowly down Julian’s side, a trickle of it falling to pool on the rough blanket on which he lay. Bruises, looking horribly like finger marks, mottled his hips, and he was filthy. He looked up at the sound of Nick’s voice, his eyes dull and empty, made hollower by the shadows cast by the camping lamp that was the only source of illumination in the cellar.
A snarl forced Nick’s attention to the stocky, dark-haired man crouching at Julian’s side. He reeked of the wolf from Coe Fen. Schräger, his mind supplied clinically. That was Schräger, and Nick was going to kill him.
He launched himself at the man, succeeding in getting his hands around an unshaven throat that deformed and grew under his fingers, loosening his grip. Schräger’s whole body was writhing, changing—and suddenly Nick found himself face-to-face with a full-grown wolf, its teeth like ivory daggers and its breath like an abattoir. Instinctively Nick retightened his grip upon Schräger’s throat, pushing the wolf away as it snarled and tried to tear at his face.
“Nick!” Julian’s voice was high, panicked. “You have to change!”
Easy for him to say. It was taking all Nick’s strength to keep the wolf’s jaws away from his face, his throat. If he relaxed his grip for one instant….
He didn’t have a choice. Sooner or later his grip would weaken and that would be the end of it. He’d be dead, and Julian would belong to that bastard forever. Nick’s arms shook as those vicious jaws snapped ever closer. He had to use it—use the pain, the fear, the fierce desperation to reclaim his mate. He fixed his gaze on his enemy’s maddened eyes. There was nothing human there at all. Only wolf. Nick felt his own teeth bare, mirroring the usurper’s snarl. He let the rage flood through him, let it change him.
This time the pain felt right.
The few heartbeats the transformation took meant that by the time he was fully wolf, Schräger’s jaws were on his throat. Adrenaline powering his muscles, Nick jerked away, shaking off his attacker. Schräger rolled, circled for a moment—then lunged at him once more, his muzzle flecked with Nick’s blood. Nick leaped to one side, hampered by the clothes that were hanging off his wolf form. Not fast enough. Schräger’s claws raked his right flank, the pain like a red-hot knife slicing through his flesh. Julian watched, wide-eyed, a momentary distraction. Focus. The other wolf was bigger, more experienced. But not invulnerable. Nick had to turn the tide of this fight, and quickly. He leaped.
Schräger had been waiting for it. He rolled to the side, taking Nick with him. The jaws closed on Nick’s throat again, more tightly this time, the pain blinding him. Nick’s frantic struggles were useless. Those fierce teeth only bit harder as he wrestled vainly to dislodge them. He was going to lose this fight, to die, and his mate would be the spoils. His vision fading, Nick roused himself to make one final effort to be free. But he wasn’t strong enough, and the iron grasp of those powerful jaws on his throat did not lessen. Blood pounding in his temples, Nick’s rage turned to desperation.
Suddenly the agony lessened, and his vision cleared. A smaller wolf—his mate—had its teeth into one of Schräger’s hind legs. Schräger yelped in pain, and his grasp on Nick’s throat loosened. Exultation firing him, a new burst of adrenaline spurring him on, Nick wrenched himself from Schräger’s grip and sank his teeth into that hairy throat. Blood gushed into his mouth, hot and rich and intoxicating. Nick bit down hard with savage satisfaction—and then twisted, pulling away.
Half of Schräger’s throat came with him. Drenched in a cascade of thick red blood, Nick watched, jubilant, as the dark eyes dulled, and the beast slumped to the floor. He backed away a pace, panting, alert for any further threat to his dominance. There was another wolf here. Nick snarled at it, challenging, and it cowered, belly low, whimpering slightly. Appeasing him. Nick’s hackles lowered and, as the wolf’s scent reached him over the heady stench of his defeated foe, his tail fell. It was his mate. Julian, he remembered dimly, even as he howled his triumph to the world.
Suddenly his senses sounded the alert. Another challenger. Nick’s muzzle snapped toward the door. Another wolf stood there, and this one did not cower. Growling, his hackles raised, Nick took a step forward, placing himself between the interloper and the wolf that was his.
The challenger surveyed the scene, its scent tantalizingly familiar. His wolf—Julian, the part of Nick that was human supplied—whimpered again. And all at once, the challenger turned and walked away. No longer threatened, Nick started to come back to himself. The challenger—that must have been Julian’s father. Herrscher.
Julian. Nick morphed back into his human form. The wreckage of his clothing still clinging to him, he hurried over to the young wolf and tentatively caressed him. The wolf shuddered, and abruptly Nick’s arms were full of a naked, filthy, blood-smeared Julian who grabbed hold of him convulsively.
“Shh,” he whispered. “It’s all right. He’s gone now.” Nick forced himself to look at the wolf’s bloody corpse. You did that, he told himself, only half believing it now he was human once more. You killed him. Aloud, he couldn’t help saying wonderingly, “I thought he’d turn back.”
There was a stifled sob in the region of his chest. Concerned, Nick cupped Julian’s face in his hands. Traces of Schräger’s blood stained his mouth. What the hell Nick himself looked like, he couldn’t imagine. “Julian?”
“He’s dead, Nick. How can he transform when he’s dead?” The voice was shaky, near to hysteria.
“We have to get you out of here,” Nick said, trying for firmness and very nearly succeeding.
Julian shook his head. “No. We….” He swallowed. “We have to deal with that.”
It was obvious what he was referring to, but Nick wondered what the hell dealing with it involved. “Why did your father leave?”
Julian looked very vulnerable. “I don’t know. Perhaps… I don’t know.”
Nick’s arms tightened around him, until he remembered the welts on Julian’s back. “God, I’m hurting you.”
“No,” Julian whispered. “Don’t let go.”
“We need to get you to a doctor.”
“No.” It was firmer than before. “It’s not safe.”
“The boy is right.” Nick spun at the sound of Herrscher’s harsh voice. “There will be no doctor, no police.” Herrscher was in human form, now, entirely and unabashedly nude and flanked by his two equally naked minions.
“The police are already involved,” Nick told him angrily. “It’s a bloody murder investigation, or hadn’t you heard?”<
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“That is regrettable. But it can be dealt with. The boy will tell them he ran away from Schräger, and that no one else was involved.”
“The boy has a name, damn you.” Nick realized he was snarling again.
“Don’t,” Julian said weakly into his chest. “Don’t fight him, Nick, please.”
“What about the young man who was killed?” Nick demanded. “What if they try to pin it on Julian?”
Herrscher shrugged. “He will tell them Schräger is to blame. It will be assumed that he fled the country. They will search for a time, and then they will give up.”
Nick struggled to think logically. “But Julian will have to tell them where he’s been, and they’ll come here… there must be all kinds of evidence they can find about what’s happened.”
“This is an old house, I think?” Herrscher said calmly.
Nick stared at him. “So?”
“So it will burn well. Come, you must find clothes.”
The only clothes in the place they could find for him, of course, were Schräger’s. Nick fought the urge to throw up as he pulled on a pair of sweatpants and a T-shirt that reeked of Julian’s rapist. As soon as they got back to Nick’s rooms, he was lighting a bloody fire. And spending a week in the shower. Schräger hadn’t apparently thought it necessary to have the water reconnected, so they couldn’t even clean themselves off properly. Nick remembered the bottled water and did his best to wipe the blood off his hands and face.
Throughout, Julian was unnervingly silent. He took the clothes Nick handed him and put them on without even seeming to see them.
Did the smell of them revolt him too? Or was it—God, familiar? Comforting, like the soft words Schräger had spoken as Nick was on the stairs? How much harm had that bastard done in the time he’d had Julian? How many lies had he told—and how much had Julian believed?