He wanted to tell them they shouldn’t go out there, but the questions that would invite were more than he was willing to say.
Trouble, trouble, all around . . .
“We need to talk.”
“Not now, Vice.” Rogue refused to look at the wolf, but knew Vice wasn’t letting this go. At least Vice was able to restrain himself from not doing this when Jinx was there or in front of anyone else, but no way was this discussion going to remain between the two of them.
Rifter was lurking—he believed Rogue knew what was going on with Jinx. And Rogue was torn between his brotherly loyalties and loyalty to his king.
Maybe outing what was happening with Jinx was the only way to get him help.
And maybe it would make him angrier, and the situation more impossible.
Because if Jinx got angry, the monsters who suddenly saw him as the once and future king would go after the Dires and anyone else who got in Jinx’s way. It was a delicate balancing act and Jinx had taken only a few steps on the tightrope, not nearly enough to know if it would hold his weight for any considerable length of time.
“Now.” Vice’s big hand on Rogue’s shoulder turned him around and Rogue bared his teeth as a growl escaped his throat, louder than intended. The tattoos on his skull and face throbbed as though activated by his anger and that scared him in its unexpectedness. The nightmares he could deal with. Unintentional fallout from being marked by hell was in the oh shit box.
“What do you want from me, Vice?”
“What the fuck is wrong with your brother? What the fuck is wrong with you?” Vice demanded, not giving a shit if hell itself was on his heels. Rogue should’ve expected this—Vice had no filter, no worries about consequences when he was in the moment. It was the wolf’s nature and Rogue should’ve considered getting the hell out of Dodge the second he looked out the window and saw a hellhound looking back at him.
It cocked its head and looked confused. Sniffed the air and Rogue suddenly understood. They were protecting Jinx since he freed them from purgatory. And by extension, Rogue, since he was part of Jinx.
“Be nice to me or they’ll eat you,” he told Vice.
“You’re serious?” Vice asked, his hands in his pockets, his tone non-threatening.
“They’re Jinx’s protection,” he said.
“Jinx needs protection from us?” Vice looked astonished.
“No. It’s a long story, Vice. And none of you should follow Jinx out there.”
“Obviously, I’m going to need the story,” Vice said and then pointed to Rifter, who was listening by the door. Rogue had been so focused on the hellhounds that he hadn’t heard the other wolf come up behind him.
“I can’t, Rifter.”
“It’s not disloyalty to Jinx—it’s necessity, to help him,” Rifter told him.
“Don’t do this to me. Don’t make me choose.”
“There is no choice in this. There is only goddamned obey.” Rifter’s voice rose to shake-the-house levels. Vice trembled as his wolf struggled to stay contained. Rogue’s glyphs pulsed with pain and he heard Gwen and Kate talking, didn’t want either of them to feel Rifter’s wrath because of him.
But Rifter was circling him and Rogue felt cornered. Something in him was ready to snap, to go over the edge uncontrollably and what if he couldn’t pull himself back?
Jinx had always been able to do that for him. Would if called on again. But bringing his twin here in the first place was a mistake, even if it wasn’t his.
The growling was louder and more inhuman than any wolf he’d ever heard. It sent shivers down the base of his spine, called to him in a way it shouldn’t have.
His wolf wanted to join them and that was wrong on so many levels.
“What the fuck, Rogue?” Vice asked. He was circling the room staring out the window and seeing nothing, but sensing the evil surrounding them.
Vice stopped asking nicely and shook Rogue by the shoulders, which enraged the hellhounds. It was as if they were ready to jump through the windows, and Vice, who wasn’t scared of anything or anybody, didn’t stop pressing Rogue.
Just as suddenly, they were gone. Rogue heard them running, the beats of their paws inside his head, their massive jaws gnashing. He could only imagine what would have drawn them away from their threats outside the Dire house.
Only one thing. “Jinx is in trouble,” he told them, before he shifted and went out the already broken window, following Jinx’s trail of glass and blood.
Chapter 18
Letting the air dry them, Jinx and Gillian walked together through the dark woods, arms around each other. The bruising pattern on her back was looking more glyph-like and she said it was tender to the touch, so he made sure his arm didn’t press on it.
Halfway back to the house, his scenting diverted him. He smelled wereblood, tasted the violence like a bitter wine and he motioned to Gillian to follow him.
Quietly, they wove through a makeshift path that wasn’t here a week earlier. Trappers came here and did things like this all the time—typically, the twins found them and took care of it, re-camouflaging everything and restoring it to its original state. But they’d been caught up with Liam’s war lately.
At the end of the path, he stopped, scanned the area and saw the bodies, hurriedly buried beneath some old leaves. He raced over to them, Gillian on his heels.
Dead Weres. Two of them, younger than Cyd and Cain were when they came to Jinx. They’d been through their first shift, but they hadn’t been shifted during the attack. They hadn’t even been given the chance, probably drugged to make the shift impossible, and wrapped in silver chains to stop it from happening, judging by the burns around their necks and wrists.
He bent to look more closely at the other injuries, saw electrical burns and deep cuts made from a hunting knife. And the way they were tied made it easy for Jinx to assume they’d been raped. Tortured. Held for who knew how long. For what? For being what they were born to be. He knelt next to the bodies, touched their foreheads. They were no doubt coming to find Liam, as they had directions to the meeting place and a note from their packmaster who’d sent them along as a show of faith for the new king.
Brother’s impeccable hearing told him that whoever dumped these bodies was close enough to have heard Jinx and Gillian. They were lying in wait, and Jinx’s hackles—and the violence held tight within him—rose.
The near miss with Rifter, the feelings Gillian brought out in him, the troubles with Rogue and purgatory, all of it conspired to make Jinx goddamned angrier than he’d been in centuries. The feeling grew quickly until it rattled everything inside of him.
More than anything, Gillian brought out his most primal side, the warrior who would fight for what was his. And he was more sure that Gillian was meant to be his than anything he’d ever known.
“Jinx, what happened to them?” Gillian was looking for a pulse on their necks until he stopped her with a shake of his head. “Were they . . . ?”
“Wolves. Weres, not Dires. They were tortured.”
“Why?”
“Because they’re wolves.” He wanted to sugarcoat it for her, but he couldn’t. Wouldn’t be fair to her anyway. She had to know what kind of world she was coming out in. There was no changing it—she had to know things to keep her safe.
“What kind of people do this?”
“Weretrappers. They’re angry at all of wolfkind because we killed their leaders and threatened their entire organization.” The Dires had expected blowback, but seeing innocent Weres bear the brunt of it turned Jinx’s stomach.
She looked around like she felt the trappers were still near them. “They’re still close, aren’t they?”
“They heard us, yes.” Their voices were low, their heads close. “We’re going to need to try to get back to the mansion.”
“We should stop them. Fight
them.”
“You’re not ready for that. I’ll go after them after you’re safe,” he promised.
Shots rang over their heads. He shoved Gillian in front of him and he ran, because he would shield her with his body. And as much as he wanted to stop, rake his claws over the men who’d hurt the young Weres, they couldn’t stop—he couldn’t afford to have Gillian taken. But they were closing in on all sides and he pushed Gillian to climb the big oak, handed her a gun and told her to shoot anyone who came close who wasn’t a wolf.
She did so as he shifted. Turned, prepared to run into the trappers, confuse them by turning the chase onto them. He could handle bullets—the wounds would heal. At this point, Gillian’s might not.
He waited until he saw them in the clearing, maybe fifteen feet away, and he began to run. As he did, the earth beneath his feet shook. The air chilled and as the trappers descended, so did the dogs of hell. Shots rang out, and something caught him in the neck. It took Brother Wolf mere seconds to realize it was drugs, not bullets, and he cursed and tried to force himself to shift as the hellhounds passed him.
He tried to tell them to stand down but the tranquilizer was strong, had him wobbling, unable to shift. Hellhound didn’t understand wolf. All they understood was that they were supposed to keep Jinx safe. And that’s exactly what they did.
Through his position prone on the ground, he could see the way the hellhounds poised to rip the unsuspecting trappers to pieces. Three men who never stood a chance.
He was finally able to convince Brother that he should shift. It hurt like hell but he did it, managed, “No,” and the hellhounds whimpered but stopped. “Make . . . them . . . run.”
They did. The trappers had no idea that hounds of hell were at their heels but they knew something was after them and they ran for their lives.
Jinx lay on his back, staring up at the dark sky as his brother came up on him. “Gilly . . .”
“I’m here.” She moved closer, still holding the gun. “They’re gone.”
“I know.” He rolled over onto his side as Gillian told Rogue, “Help him, please.”
“Can’t take him back into the mansion,” he heard Rogue say and then someone—Jez—picked him up. He was vaguely aware of a rocking car ride, muttered something about deadheads being terrible drivers.
“Asshole wolf,” Jez told him, carried him up the stairs instead of taking the elevator without Jinx having to ask. So yeah, he owed the vamp.
“Gilly?”
“She’s with Rogue in the elevator—checking the apartment.”
“I think I can walk,” he mumbled but Jez didn’t listen, carrying him the entire way to his bedroom, where he laid Jinx on the bed and began to get supplies together.
“Gwen told me to run saline to get the drugs from your system,” he explained.
“You know how to do this?”
“I know how to find a vein,” Jez deadpanned and Jinx groaned and closed his eyes.
• • •
Cain, Cyd and Liam had been preparing for a night of patrols and meetings when they heard the ruckus. They’d run through the underground hallway that connected to the main mansion and burst into the living room in time to see the Dires headed out the window. Kate was following them and Cyd helped her out the window, picked her up and carried her to where everyone had gathered.
Cain passed him by when he smelled wereblood. Liam was right behind him. And now, minutes later, he was trying to process what he’d just seen.
Bigger than Dires. Blacker than night, foul smelling with glowing yellow eyes that looked more than other. Unworldly. And they were chasing the trappers through the woods.
It was obvious they could’ve caught them, ripped them to pieces. The question was, why didn’t they?
“What was that?” Gwen asked. She was shaken—they all were—but none of them could put a handle on exactly what they’d seen.
Vice was tracking whatever it was and nearly tripped over the bodies. “That’s why Jinx was running. He was trying to save Gillian.”
Cain came up behind him and knelt by the bodies. They were too far gone for anything, but he still passed a palm over both young wolves eyes to close them so they were no longer staring vacantly in death. “Things are getting more violent.”
They were. Nothing was as downright evil as when the weretrappers had both the Shimmin brothers in charge but since their deaths, the trappers had gone Wild West on all wolves. If we’re going down, we’re taking as many wolves as we can with us seemed to be their motto.
Liam would be upset by this.
Stray and Killian were out there, both of them looking unhappy, and Killian more than a little disoriented as he sniffed the air. Cain’s wolf was pissed and confused, maybe more so by the fact that he hadn’t been allowed to help Jinx recently, and since that’s what he’d cut his teeth doing, he was lost out here. But only for a moment, because he’d gotten through his moon craze and was going to be the omega for Liam. He had other responsibilities, and he’d help Jinx whether the Dire wanted him to or not.
He approached Kate, who was staring off into space, hand on her chin. “You all right?”
“Not really. Rogue left with Jinx.”
“Do you think that’s a good thing?”
“It’s the best thing for now. Do you know what was in the woods?”
“I know of only one thing that makes tracks like this, but I’ve only seen pictures of it in books. Depictions, actually.” He stared down at the massive footprints again and back up at Kate. “These were made by hellhounds.”
Kate’s mouth opened and then closed. Finally, she said, “Do the others know?”
“I want to make sure before I open this up to them.”
“Rifter overheard Rogue saying they came to protect Jinx.”
“Why does he need protection from the Dires?” Cain asked, completely confused. He could feel the empathy coming off Kate in waves. She knew more than she was saying, probably because of her connection to Rogue when he’d been in the coma. There was a bond between them and he was grateful that at least someone knew what the hell was going on.
Finally, he said, “Jinx isn’t bad.”
“No, he’s not,” she said quickly. Sincerely. “But he’s in some real trouble.”
Cain would lay down his life for Cyd and for Jinx. For any of the Dires and their mates. Kate put a hand on his shoulder, told him, “Rogue will help him, Cain. He won’t let anything happen to them. Let’s concentrate on what we can help with now.”
“I can track the trappers,” he said as Vice joined them. He knew the Dire wouldn’t say no. Those men needed to be brought to justice. And wolf justice meant an eye for an eye. “When you’re done, bring the dead to Liam.” He pointed to the young Weres. “He’s their packmaster, even though they’d never met him. But they served him. And they fought.”
Cain nodded. Called to Cyd with a long howl and waited until his twin bounded through the woods, already shifted.
“We’re tracking,” Cain told him and Cyd took off, Cain at his heels without waiting for further instructions.
Cain noted the hellhound prints as his paws passed through them—it looked like there had been at least six of them, maybe more. He smelled the sulfur in the air and something else that reeked of rotten eggs and dead things. It was easy for them to follow that scent, as it overpowered that of the trappers, but the underlay was there.
He ran side by side with his twin for miles. The trappers wouldn’t have been able to keep the running up for miles and miles, and they’d find it impossible to evade the hellhounds. They were trapped in this ring of woods and Cain’s wolf bared his teeth as he thought of the young Weres who’d been sacrificed.
Even through all their injuries, Cain could smell the fight—and the fear—they’d carried. They hadn’t gone down easy.
Fi
nally, the trail was getting colder for the hellhounds, stronger for the trappers. It was as if they’d gotten bored of simply cornering the men or they’d gotten distracted and Cain was glad. Hadn’t wanted to come face-to-face with those creatures.
As the scent of human trapper became overpowering, the wolves passed quietly. Cyd paused, Cain at his side, and for a long moment, they waited in silence. The hellhound scent was gone suddenly and a rustle in the trees told them the trappers were near. They didn’t know how many tranquilizers they had, so it would have to be an ambush. There wasn’t time to call for help. Neither wolf had any desire to, either.
Instead, Cyd circled to the back of the large tree where the trappers were hiding and in a graceful leap, jumped up to the branch, scaring the three men who’d been perched precariously. Cain lunged for all three as they fell as if they were bowling pins, taking them down by slamming their legs out from under them. Cyd leaped onto them and without thinking, they acted like the wolves they were, avenging the Weres’ deaths. Acting in Liam’s stead. Doing what warriors would. There was no pleasure in the task—it was purely necessary justice and the trappers’ throats were torn out in rapid succession, with no excess torture. Far more care than the trappers had given the Weres, but that was the Weres’ tradition and the twins honored it.
And when the trappers lay dead, excoriated so there was no doubt they’d been killed by wolves, it was only then Cain and Cyd stepped back. They howled together, the sound echoing in the quiet night, bouncing through the woods and possibly the town beyond, and tonight, neither wolf cared.
No mercy can be shown, Cain thought and his twin answered him with a growl of approval. The time for mercy was over. The time for revenge was here.
• • •
Liam made calls all night, with Vice at his side.
“Keep going.”
The list was long and so far, the response had been good. News of Liam’s kills of Tals and Walker had continued to spread and the respect in other alphas’ voices had been evident.
Good thing they couldn’t tell how freaked he was.
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