Bad Seed: An Imp World Novel (Northern Wolves Book 4)

by Debra Dunbar

  Chapter 20

  It was dusk when we pulled into the compound. Jake had texted our ETA before we’d left the hotel, and was unsurprisingly spot-on. That plus the fact that the werewolves could hear the truck a mile away meant we had a few dozen pack mates clustered by the road in. They smiled, and I felt the pack relax as a collective, relieved to have their Alpha back among them. Jamie probably had done a great job managing things, but wolves always felt more secure in the presence of their Alpha.

  Jamie was the only one who followed us to the parking area, although the others milled around to ensure they had a good vantage point. Jake was at my door, his hands on my waist to help me out of the truck before I could even step foot on the running board. I wanted to protest this kid-glove treatment, but just as I opened my mouth, he kissed me, his one hand twisting my short hair into his fist.

  Holy shit, what a kiss. And right smack in front of everyone, too. Even those who were too far upwind to get a whiff of our scent would know. As we broke apart, I heard Jamie make a strange gurgling noise.

  “Go. Shower. Get some sleep. I’ll see you in the morning,” he told me.

  There was an odd emphasis on the word “shower” that made me grin.

  “You reek of sex,” he said, loud enough for everyone to hear. Then he spun me around and sent me off with a slap on my ass. He reeked of sex as well, and I noticed there was no haste on his part to go wash my scent from him. Instead he turned to Jamie and started talking to her about the business at hand, ignoring her wide eyes and the nostrils that flared as her gaze whipped back and forth between the Alpha and me.

  Oh well. Whatever lingering fears I’d had that Jake might be ashamed of what we’d done, that he might want to hide it and sneak me in and out of his bed, vanished.

  I did not shower, at least not right away. Instead I strolled into the dorm and up to my room, smirking at the astonished expressions on my roommates’ faces as I plopped my duffle bag at the end of the bed.

  “Got you a present, Mir,” I announced proudly.

  “You sure did,” she squealed. “Are you moving into the Alpha House? I’ll miss having you as a roommate, but I’m so glad that you and Jake are getting it on.”

  “Screwing doesn’t mean moving in.” Fox Face wrinkled her nose. “Take a shower, Mills. Sheesh, how many times did you guys do it? You smell like a walking bordello.”

  Yes. Yes, I did.

  “Glad somebody’s getting some,” Muscles groused. “I think I’m a virgin again it’s been so long since I got laid.”

  Muffin Top rolled her eyes. “Please. Thirty days doesn’t make you a virgin again. I have a boyfriend and I haven’t gotten any in a week.”

  “I get some every night,” Boobs announced.

  “Liar.” Muscles threw a pillow at the woman, and suddenly everyone’s pillows were sailing across the room with great precision.

  I pulled out the bathrobe and handed it to Mir with a bow.

  “Ooo, you stole me a bathrobe!” She lifted it to her nose. “And you didn’t wear it either.”

  “Yeah, Jake and I weren’t really bothering with bathrobes,” I told her.

  “You clearly weren’t bothering with personal hygiene either,” Fox Face retorted, holding her nose.

  “I brushed my teeth,” I told her. Then I dug in my trunk for my bag of toiletries and some underwear, because I’d made my point and I really was dying for a shower.

  By the time I was done, Mir, Fox Face, Boobs and Muscles were asleep. I assumed Muffin Top, not wanting to be outdone in the most-recently-had-sex category, had gone out to find her boyfriend. I was hungry, and not very tired even though I’d not gotten more than an hour of sleep the night before, so I headed to the dining room, remembering that Mir said there was always some food out and available for those who were in late from work or who were stricken with late-night munchies.

  I filled two bowls with Rice Krispies, dumped about a pound of sugar on top of each one, then floated the whole mess in whole milk before sitting at a table in the darkened room to eat. It was weird. I’d spent most of my life eating alone, and in just a few days I found it strange. I missed the buzz of conversation, the clank of the trays in the buffet, even the glares Mir’s mother always sent my way. What used to be relaxing, companionable silence felt…lonely.

  The door opened, spilling moonlight across the floor in a column of silvery white. I felt him before he’d even stepped across the threshold, before I even smelled his distinctive scent.

  “Got news,” he said in that deep voice that sent everything below my waistband to quivering. He’d showered, but it had done nothing to wash me from his skin. Now he just smelled crisp and clean with a sandalwood-pine fragrance accenting the I’ve-been-screwing-with-Tupper scent.

  “Yeah?” I pointed my spoon at a chair and kept shoveling in the Rice Krispies as he sat.

  “Sabrina called.” Brent put her in charge of tracking down the bullet sales and monitoring the websites that these hunter guys have been using. “They’ve disbanded all the sites. They’ve shut down their operations.”

  “That’s a good thing,” I said with my mouth full. “We killed one of their partners, killed their elf, stole their shit. They gave up.”

  “Yeah, but before they threw in the towel, they sold over fifty thousand rounds of bullets by Sabrina’s reckoning. The bulk of them went to an organization out of Montana, but the rest are individual sales spread all over the world. We’ll never be able to feel completely safe again.”

  I knew this upset Jake, but it didn’t particularly bother me. Werewolves had been pretty darned close to invulnerable since that first Nephilim had children. Now we faced the same fears of mortality that humans did every day. Actually we faced far less, because it took one heck of a car crash, or boating disaster, or fall off a ten-thousand-foot cliff to kill us. We still didn’t get diseases. We still didn’t lose our lives from a stab wound, or gunshot with a normal bullet.

  But I didn’t want to seem unsympathetic so I paused from chewing my cereal and made what I hoped were supportive platitudes.

  “She’s tracking down the place in Montana.” Jake sighed and rubbed a hand through his short dark hair. “There’s no way we can get tens of thousands of individual bullets off the streets, but if we can manage to find the spot where this particular group is warehousing them and seize those, it will help.”

  I swallowed the cereal. “So when do we leave?”

  He shrugged. “Sabrina’s gotta find the place first. I might see if Gwylla can help again, although the last divination took quite a toll on her. She’s resting in her sanctuary, and I’ve given Dustin an open-ended leave to attend to her.”

  Attend to her. Fancy word for sex, I’d bet.

  “Let me know when you need me,” I told him. “Until then I’ll be taking care of the garbage and recycling, stirring up trouble with my pack mates. Oh, and taking Mir to get that piercing I promised her.”

  He ignored the last statement and reached out a hand to touch my cheek. “We’ll resume sparring tomorrow night. Will you join me for dinner first?”

  I leaned my face into his hand. “I’d love to. Should I meet you at the Alpha House? What time do you want me there?”

  “No, have dinner here with me. I want to share a private meal with you here, in the dining room.”

  Suddenly I realized the purpose of those little private tables along the edges. It wasn’t just someone’s clueless idea of what a romantic date should be, it was for couples to declare their partnerships in front of the entire pack. I was starting to realize that there was something sacred about sharing a meal together. No doubt that’s why so many of this pack came to the dining hall to eat instead of using their dorm or house kitchens. It wasn’t just that the food was included, it was a time of bonding, even if some of these werewolves didn’t say a word to each other. Eating together, living together mattered for these wolves. And demonstrating a united partnership, a mate-relationship, in front of all your
community was one step toward a mating ceremony.

  I felt tears sting my eyes, and I didn’t even have a plate of onions to blame it on. Damn him for making me feel all these things. Damn him for turning my still-lethal beast into a loyal, fiercely loving side of my personality.

  “Yes. I’d be happy to join you here for dinner,” I told him. Then I watched as he rose with a smile and headed out of the dining room. I had a mate. I had a pack, and I had a mate.

  Chapter 21

  I was on my way to the four-wheeler, the sky a pre-dawn light gray when I felt a prickle of warning down my spine. I stopped, turning towards the woods over by the lake and lifting my face to scent the air. Pine. Aspens. The crisp smell of water, and the murky odor of frogs and fish. Hundreds of varieties of grasses, brush, flowers, and berries. My fellow werewolves, the scent of breakfast bacon. Deer, bear, the muskrats down by the river. Nothing that should be making the hair rise at the back of my neck and my lip curl upward in a snarl.

  They’re here. I feel them. Many of them.

  I trusted my beast’s intuition, but I couldn’t detect the smell of gunpowder, or the peculiar metallic smell I’d come over the decades to associate with firearms. I wanted to sound the alarm, but how? The compound wasn’t gated. We didn’t have guards—werewolf hearing and other senses were such that we weren’t easy to sneak up on. Who would believe me when I told them that my beast was excited, wary, and ready to attack? As far as my pack was concerned, my beast was always excited, wary, and ready to attack.

  Jake. Jake would believe me.

  I forced myself to turn my back on what I was positive was a threat and tried to look casual as I walked to the Alpha House. It was never locked, so I pushed open the heavy door and walked in. Jake met me just outside his office.

  “What?” His voice was tense, and I knew he was feeling the same sense of pending danger as I was.

  “Do you feel it? Lots of them, in the woods by the lake.” We had pack mates who were still asleep, pack mates who were showering and getting ready for their workday, pack mates who were right now in the dining hall preparing breakfast or grabbing a quick bowl of cereal before heading out.

  “They’ll disable the plane.” Jake grimaced. “Dustin is going to explode if they damage it. He’s lost one plane already this year. If he loses another he’s going to go on a rampage.”

  I wasn’t particularly concerned about the pilot going on a rampage, but I knew if he was upset, his sidhe mate would also go on a rampage. And I really wanted to make sure I was out of the blast radius when that happened.

  “So is there some early warning system? A group text to all the pack that you can send out in a kind of alert?” It would take these werewolves twenty minutes to shift into animal form—the form that would best serve them in a fight. If these hunters were loaded with the magicked bullets, we’d still suffer losses, but already in wolf form, the pack wouldn’t be reeling from a forced shift as they tried to defend themselves.

  Jake was dialing his phone. “That’s a good idea and I’m going to implement it as soon as this is over. We have an emergency flare, but it will also alert the attackers that we’re onto them.”

  And with twenty minutes to shift, they’d attack when we were at our most vulnerable. “They’re probably waiting until dawn to get as many of us in one place as possible. It will be easier for them to attack if most of us are in the dining hall or out in the open, as opposed to having to go house-to-house.”

  “Go make your garbage rounds like nothing is wrong,” Jake told me. “Go to the dorms then the houses on the outskirts first and tell everyone to shift as quickly as possible. Children are to be secured in the basements and lower rooms with weapons if they’re old enough to handle them. I’m alerting the inner houses as well as the businesses and the dining hall. Tell everyone to shift and wait for my signal. Stay close to the houses with the kids. You’re responsible for making sure none of the hunters gets in and hurts the children. Got it?”

  I nodded and spun on my heel, ready to go. Protect the pups. That I could do without any worry about losing control and killing my pack mates.

  “Tupper? If everything goes south and we look like we’re losing, I want you to let your beast loose. I want you to shift into whatever she wants and kill every one of those hunters.”

  I swallowed hard. “I can’t guarantee she won’t kill my pack mates,” I confessed. “And if I let her loose, I can’t always stop her. She could end up slaughtering the hunters as well as everyone else in the compound. I can’t control her Jake. Here…since I’ve come here she has seemed calmer, more content, but if I tell her to kill, I’m worried that I won’t be able to rein her in.”

  His ice-blue eyes met mine. “If she’s out of your control, I’ll step in. She’ll listen to me.”

  No she wouldn’t.

  “Jake, I’ll admit she’s pretty attached to you, but that doesn’t mean she’ll stop killing because you ask nicely, or even command her to do so. Killing and violence are more fun to her than sex. They’re more important than my pack, my Alpha, even my own continued existence.”

  His fingers paused on the phone and he looked up at me in surprise. “Your beast is you. And she’s more than attached to me. Trust me, and go. We don’t have much time.”

  He was right—about my beast being more than attached to him as well as us not having the time to get into this. Jake was powerful, brilliant, and I loved how instead of being afraid or repulsed by my beast, he seemed to like and respect her. She liked and respected him back.

  Who was I kidding? My beast loved this guy just as much as I did.

  And I did trust him, so I headed out, that feeling of anxiety and excitement ratcheting up as I made my way to the dorms and houses. I had to wake a few of the werewolves up, and many were reluctant to believe me when their noses and ears weren’t telling them that anything was amiss. But I’d been chosen to go out with Jake and Karl on that special assignment, and he’d made it quite clear in full view of the pack that we had something important going on between us, so in spite of their misgivings, every one of the werewolves I spoke to began to shift.

  I noted which houses had young, and planned to keep close to them and protect the pups when the attack occurred. I didn’t trust these hunters to spare children, and as unhinged as my beast was, she was a softie when it came to pups.

  I’d managed to go to all the dorms and most of the houses when the first shot rang out right at sunrise. Instinctively, I hit the ground, looking around to see who’d been hit. The noise echoed, making it difficult for me to figure out exactly where the shooter was, but my gut told me over by the lake.

  The woods moved, and armed men swarmed out of the tree line, laying down a cover of bullets as they advanced. Instead of hitting us like hunters taking down prey, these guys moved like they were on a paramilitary exercise, dividing up as they reached the compound and using the buildings for cover. A flare shot up from the Alpha House, lighting up the sky like a second sun. Wolves ran from the buildings, darting across the open spaces and ducking under vehicles. The air was filled with their barks and yips, and above it all I heard a howl that shook the ground.

  Jake. He stood at the top of the steps of the Alpha House, a huge silvery gray wolf with ice-blue eyes in a dark mask. He scanned the compound, and I realized that he was communicating silently with the pack, directing them in groups to take up positions around the edge. He planned to pull the attackers in, surround them, then move in for the kill. It would have been a great plan had these guys just been shooting regular bullets, but with the magic ammunition and the rapid-fire action of their assault rifles, we wouldn’t come out of this unscathed. We might win the day, but we’d win it having lost most of our pack to those bullets.

  Seconds after Jake’s call to action, gunfire filled the air. He stood exposed on top of the steps, taking their fire as bullets ripped into him and blood splattered across the front of the building. I bit back a cry, certain that even Jake could
n’t take that many hits, and my beast slammed against my skin, desperate to break free and protect our Alpha.

  He was drawing their fire, keeping their attention away from the wolves that were now moving in on the humans. Jake fell to his knees, bits of flesh and fur flying from him in chunks. I wanted to run to him, but I needed to guard the homes with the children, and I knew in my heart that he’d be fine, that an almost-angel could take whatever these hunters were dishing out and repay them with death—just as soon as the pack was in position and ready.

  Screams of humans suddenly rang out—now as loud as the gunshots. I saw the hunters dashing across the compound, using buildings and vehicles as cover. A brownish-gray wolf plowed full-tilt into one, closing his jaws on the man’s arm as another wolf bit down on his leg. The man swung his weapon in the other hand, trying to push the one wolf away while shooting at the one on his leg. The wolf nearly exploded in a spray of red, bringing a fierce growl from the other. I heard bone crunch, saw the man trying to bash the wolf in the head with his weapon as another of my pack mates swooped in for the kill. We were winning, working together as a wolf pack should, but at what cost? Would we lose half of our pack to these guys? Would we mourn, only to have another group come back in a week or so to attack us again? How long could we hold out until they eventually killed us all?

  I saw a shadow over by one of the houses, a man quickly looked around, then kicked the door in, vanishing inside.

  Oh no you fucking don’t. I snarled, scooting out from under the car and running full-tilt to the house. Bullets churned up the dirt and asphalt around me but through some miracle, I reached the doorway without being hit.

  There was a muffled scream. I heard the thump of heavy steps on the stairs and grabbed the closest thing at hand, which happened to be a brass statue of a whale. The man appeared on the landing and I ran, but before I could get to him, he shoved the child aside and brought up his gun.