“Yes, Alpha.” She straightened her spine and nodded to Theo. “It’s nice meeting more of Cam’s people, even if you are her asshole cousin and not above groping the ass of a woman you’ve never met.”
“You jumped into my arms and put your gorgeous ass in my hands,” he protested. “What was I supposed to do?”
“Not take advantage. You knew that welcome wasn’t meant for you, and I’m certain you could guess who it was meant for. Yet you didn’t put me down or correct my misconception.” She spun on her heel and, tapping her temple, started walking. “Call if you need me.”
A sigh lodged in my throat as I led Theo into his mother’s trailer, hating I was about to be alone with him and my suffocating guilt.
The door had been left unlocked so Abram could use the facilities he needed. The clutter of his belongings resting on the kitchen counter and the general chaos in Aunt Dot’s bedroom told me he was in the process of moving into his temporary quarters and preparing to transition Graeson in too.
Picking my way through the living room, I stumbled face-first into the wall when a boot hit my spine. My cheek smashed into the curved metal, and stars exploded in my vision. Theo gripped my shirt and yanked me around, slamming my shoulders against a family photo mounted near a window and bracing his forearm across my windpipe. “What the hell have you and your inferiority complex gotten us into this time?”
“Not…” I sucked in oxygen through my bared teeth, “…my fault.”
The waver in my tone was all the invitation he needed to pounce on my insecurities.
“You chose to enlist in the marshal’s program, Cammie. No one twisted your arm. In fact, I remember Mom begging you not to sign on the dotted line. You accepted a promotion to the Earthen Conclave knowing it meant you—and your family—would be put under a microscope. You’re the one who chose to invite the magistrates’ agendas into our lives.” Disgust soured his scent. “As if that wasn’t bad enough, you dragged my mother and brother into hostile warg territory. Your decisions are what brought us here. You’re the one living out your Tarzan and Jane fantasies while Mom and Izzy are gods know where.” He pressed down until I gagged. “This is all your fault.”
Wild magic sang in my blood, and pelt brushed beneath my skin. “Let go of me.”
Anger I understood. I deserved it. Resentment, well, that was our relationship in a nutshell. Every charge he’d laid at my feet was true, except the Tarzan and Jane bit, but my insides were chewed up just as much, and my she-wolf would gladly rend a pound of flesh from his hide to assuage my guilt right about now.
“Still can’t control your shifts for shit.” A humorless huff passed his lips. “Shut it down, or I’ll shut it down for you.”
Tawny pelt dappled with black rosettes sprouted from his left elbow to his fingertips. Hand thickening to form a massive feline paw, he flexed pale, sickle-shaped claws.
“Cam?” Dell’s mental voice sounded cautious.
“I’m fine.” Dell wasn’t the only one turning over a new leaf. Theo wasn’t bullying me into submission ever again. “Just a family squabble.”
A rush of prickling energy electrified my skin as the change swept over me. Silvery fur with black tips sprouted. Muscles thickened. Bones in my jaw snapped loud in the confined space. Heightened senses made my head swim. The delicious scent of fear pervaded my nose, and I salivated.
“I am alpha here,” I rumbled through my elongated muzzle, the guttural words rising from the well of recalled magic my she-wolf drank deep from these days. “Submit or die.”
Reminding me yet again why he was my least-favorite cousin, Theo swung his meaty paw at my head. Had his claws landed, he would have ripped off half my face. Back teeth aching with the need to sink into his flesh, I launched myself at him, wrapping my arms around his waist and tackling him to the linoleum. Shocked air burst from his lungs on impact, and his rock-hard skull bounced off the floor with a satisfying thud. Saliva pooling in my mouth, I unhinged my jaws and took the oh-so-fragile skin of his throat between the sharp points of my teeth. Salt from his skin left a tang on my tongue, and the coppery taste of his blood from the pinpricks of pressure I’d applied set my stomach rumbling.
Theo’s hands shot up beside his head, knuckles brushing the floor in a capitulating gesture. His claws retracted, and the paw receded until I counted ten fingers in my periphery.
Reluctant to surrender my prey, I held him pinned until my inner predator accepted his surrender and faded to a wary tingle in the back of my mind. Bone snapped as my face realigned, and fur tickled as it shed my arms. Sitting back on my heels, I became myself once more.
“What was that thing?” Theo slowly massaged the bloody column of his throat as though seeking reassurance I hadn’t ripped out anything vital. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“That’s my wolf.” Claiming her out loud for the first time felt right. “And she doesn’t like you.”
“Your…wolf?” The acrid scent of fear mixed with an undefinable emotion permeated the space. “You’re really alpha here?”
“Co-alpha.” Much as Aisha had done, I took my title from my mate. “Go for anyone else’s throat like you did mine, and they’ll rip it out for you with my blessing.”
Rolling off Theo, I stood and extended my hand down to him. Cautiously, he accepted the offer. As comfortable with the brush of Aunt Dot’s and Isaac’s magic as my own, Theo’s grip still brushed a familiar signature up my arm. I hauled him onto his feet, twisted him sideways then shoved him into an oversized recliner that dominated Aunt Dot’s living room. The plush material bogged him down, and his shell-shocked expression struck me as almost comical. He eyeballed me as if he didn’t know who I was anymore.
That made two of us.
“Mom said you were getting serious about a warg.” He toyed with the paper bracelet on his wrist. “I didn’t believe her. I figured she’d binged on that supernatural soap opera of hers again and was projecting.”
“Graeson and I are serious,” I assured him. “We’re mated.”
“Mated.” The band tore, and he stared at it in surprise. “Your eyes shine gold when you mention him.”
“My warg aspect is evolving.” I touched my cheek. “Isaac thinks because I’ve gone so long without Lori’s blood that taking in the warg magic, using a few as donors, has kick-started a second becoming.”
“Does that mean you can’t…?” His gaze dipped to his lap, mouth set in a tight line as he started tearing the strip into pieces. “Is Lori gone?”
“I’m not sure.” A pang arrowed through my heart that I might have lost her. Again. “I don’t reset often, and I haven’t had reason to since Isaac mentioned his theory.”
Bracing his elbows on his knees, Theo stared at me through eyes so like Isaac’s it made my chest tighten, and linked his fingers in front of his lips. “Tell me everything.”
Pinpointing the exact moment things went south was as simple as remembering my first trip to Villanow, Georgia. Before Marie Graeson’s death, Charybdis had been an amalgamation of clues held together with supposition. After Marie, he became a tangible horror brought to life by the starkness of her brother’s grief.
I told Theo what I could, lips throbbing with pain as I skirted truths I had sworn to keep secret, and then I sat back while he digested all I’d said.
“Leopards don’t change their spots.” He nudged tattered scraps of paper across his thigh with an absent fingertip. “The killer fixated on you after the kelpie died, right? Why? You’re not his type, unless you count your ability to imitate Lori. Even his methodology doesn’t match his previous MO.”
“We don’t know how much of his MO is his own preference versus that of his avatar. He’s like a chameleon in that regard. He seems to amplify the natural inclinations of his host.” Or maybe not. The kelpie fit the profile. Ayer and Harlow did too. They had acted against their will, but the flavor of their transgressions mirrored the current host personality. All except for Bianca. Murderin
g her mate and threatening her unborn child? I didn’t need a friendship bracelet to know those actions were totally out of character for her. “Our working theory at the time was the kelpie’s murder spree was an attempt to create a circle around the state of Tennessee.”
“A circle of that size…” Confetti sprinkled the floor when he jerked upright. “There’s not a fae on Earth who could wield enough magic to activate it. Not alone.”
That might have been true. Once. Stinging lips warned me against explaining how Charybdis had escaped Faerie through a portal created by the Morrigan. “He wouldn’t have to be all-powerful.” Just very, very clever and willing to spill enough blood to grease the wheels of his scheme. “Not as long as the spell was self-sustaining.”
“True.” Perhaps surprised to agree with me, his eyebrows arched. “I can’t decide if it was worse when I thought he was a powerhouse of brute energy or when you convinced me of his ruthless intelligence.”
Strength we could overcome with enough force. Wits applied with vicious precision, now that was dangerous.
Mulling over that unsettling revelation, Theo cocked his head. “What happened to the spell? The circle, I mean? Can it still be activated, or has it been defused?”
“The kelpie was the only link between the deaths. Without it as a binder, a focus for the negative energy, the spell dissipated. The circle was never completed.” All that preparation, all those lives lost, and for nothing. “Charybdis holds me accountable for that.”
“You made it personal.” A grimace twisted his expression. “At least as far as he’s concerned.”
Admitting the case had felt personal all along—first because of Lori and then because of Marie—got stuck in my throat.
“He’s returning the favor tenfold.” I released a humorless laugh. “Let me show you something.”
Grateful I had changed earlier, I dug my phone from the hip pocket of my jeans and pulled up a set of images before passing it across the table. The folder contained pictures of each item I had found on the steps of my trailer while in Villanow in addition to the items Graeson had rescued from the water sprite’s cavern. “Do these mean anything to you?”
“Hmm.” He angled the screen to flash the geode. “You and Lori had an entire bag of those one summer and wouldn’t share. Lori sat on Mom’s porch and cracked them open with a freaking hammer right under the window to Isaac’s and my bedroom.”
I smiled at the memory. I wasn’t the only one Lori had lovingly tormented.
“How would Charybdis know about this?” His forehead wrinkled. “These memories are vintage. Did you talk to Cord or Dell about your childhood? Is there any way Charybdis could have, I don’t know, overheard?”
“I hit the high points.” Or were those low points? Yes. Definitely that. “Small details like this? No. I haven’t thought about this stuff in years, let alone talked to anyone about it.” I shifted in my seat. “Besides, he’s not into eavesdropping. That’s not how he gathers his intel. He likes taking it direct from the source.”
“That means he must have had access to someone who knew that information, right? That means Mom, Isaac, you and me. Or…” he frowned, “…your folks.”
“Exactly.” I rubbed the sore spot over my breastbone. “All of us were accounted for prior to this. Aunt Dot, Isaac and I stuck together, and he kept tabs on you. The only ones off the grid are my parents.” By their own choice. “I haven’t heard from them in years, and I haven’t tried contacting them either. They’re the most vulnerable, which is why I’m calling in favors to locate them.”
“I have contacts I can tap too. I’ll send out the first batch of queries before bed.” He swiped his thumb over the screen. “All of these are memories from our Tennessee summers. We have a lot of good ones from there.” His brow puckered, and he glanced up at me. “I figured that’s why you asked for the transfer.”
That Theo had gotten his wires crossed wasn’t surprising. He visited every few months, but his life was separate from ours. Decisions we made had no bearing on him one way or the other except as a new destination when he bought plane tickets.
“The spot came available, and Vause mentioned it.” Despite all the good memories, Aunt Dot broke tradition the summer after my family dissolved. The next June the four of us ditched the mountains and began exploring the rock formations in and around Goblin Valley State Park in Utah. “Aunt Dot perked up at the idea. She’d been missing the mountains, I think. After I saw how much it meant to her, yeah, Vause pushed the papers through for me.”
“What’s her take on this?” He bent to pick up his mess. “Have you contacted her for help locating Mom and Izzy?”
“No.” I ducked my head, ashamed that I had ever put my job before my family’s safety. “She’s missing.”
“Missing?” Theo sat up slowly. “Magistrates don’t go missing.”
“I spoke with her Unseelie counterpart, Magistrate Martindale. Vause disappeared from behind her locked office door. Security at outposts with assigned magistrates is tight.” No one got near them without a background check, an appointment and a vigorous pat-down. “Whoever took her killed one of her guards in the process, and those guys are hardcore.”
Theo loosed a low whistle. “Is this related to Charybdis?”
“Your guess is as good as mine.” The truth was I hadn’t put much thought into what it meant that she had been taken. She had professional ties to me but not personal ones. On the surface it didn’t seem related. “Vause was taken within hours of when Aunt Dot and Isaac disappeared.” Yet Charybdis hadn’t bragged on his coup. Why was that? Unless he was innocent for once. But if he wasn’t to blame, then who was? Who else would dare take on a magistrate? “I don’t see how Charybdis would have had time to make the trip to Maine and then back to Georgia in that timeframe.”
“I don’t believe in coincidence.” Theo shoved the trash in his pocket and crossed his legs. “Sounds to me like you’ve got him running scared. Why else would he risk so much? Attacking a magistrate? That’s asking for a marshal to put a few rounds in you.” His restless foot started wiggling. “She must have known something. Maybe she got a tip? He could be scrambling to cover his tracks.”
“None of his actions make sense unless I confront him.” The very nature of his gift birthed an obvious hunger for connection, though he broke everyone he touched. Perhaps because of that, he craved the temporary fixes even more. “He’s getting something out of the hunt. We think he chose ritual sacrifice as a means of powering his circle because he’s familiar with collecting that type of energy. Right now he’s happy prolonging the chase. Otherwise why taunt me by lashing out at the people closest to me?”
“That would explain why he started with your friend—Harlow?—and escalated from there.” Theo uncrossed his legs and sat forward. “A magic user would fashion a circle out of familiar magic to make it easier to manipulate. There I agree with you.”
“He was patient with the girls,” I recalled softly. “His timeline was so precise. It made him predictable.” Glancing around the familiar trailer gutted me. The whole place felt empty without Aunt Dot’s warmth making it a home. “This time he made a wild grab. Several really. He’s lashing out faster, acting erratic.”
“Did you ever figure out his endgame from before? Why he wanted the circle? Could his previous timeline be tied to a critical event?” Theo held my gaze, absent of scorn. “Is it possible he’s getting sloppy because he’s desperate to meet the original deadline?”
The soundness of his observations impressed me, and I repaid him the compliment of sizing him up in much the same way I had noticed him appraising me earlier.
How much of our mutual animosity was habit? How much of our reciprocal dislike was the product of childhood pettiness and teenage angst? How much was grief and time to blame for the rift so deep between us that he had started a new life away from his mom and brother in order to be absent from mine?
No definitive answers popped into mind, and that
bothered me.
I didn’t have so much family that I could afford to give up on what little I had left.
“Ellis.”
I bolted to my feet and skidded through the living room on my way out the door.
“I’m coming.”
“Cammie?” Theo trailed after me. “What happened? What’s wrong?”
The hum of the pack bond, the joyous rallying of each individual voice as it recognized Graeson’s presence, drowned out my cousin. I ran straight to the makeshift tent and shoved aside the heavy plastic tarp. Groggy hazel eyes locked with mine and hauled me to my mate’s side as though our hearts were magnetized.
Hot tears rolled down my cheeks and splashed on his forehead. “I thought I lost you.”
“I told you, sweetheart,” he rasped through a tight voice, “you won’t get rid of me that easy.”
“Alpha?” Abram intruded on the moment I chose to rain kisses on Graeson’s face and neck. “This guy says he’s with you?”
Theo. That fast I had forgotten about him. “He’s my cousin. My other cousin. Theo.”
“Don’t crowd her,” Abram warned him. “Our alpha has claws when it comes to her mate.”
Rocking forward as though he had been shoved, Theo caught his balance several yards from Graeson’s pallet. A stern-faced Zed stood guard near the entrance flap, his frame as slight as the saplings used as tent posts, and his fingers tapped out a quick cadence on his thigh as he sized up my cousin.
Blood draining from his face, Theo absorbed the scene before him. The hodgepodge shelter, the bloody cloths, the dagger with brown crust flaking off the handle. Antiseptic gave the air an astringent quality, and I sneezed, but not before I noticed a shadow flicker across the material near the rear flap. My money was on Dell pulling sentry duty.
“This is Cord Graeson?” The hot glide of Theo’s voice through the quiet startled my attention back to him. “Good gods. What happened here tonight? Why didn’t you tell me?”
Dog Eat Dog World: Limited Edition Bundle (Black Dog) Page 137