I rolled off her, and she snuggled up to me with her back to my front. We dozed there in front of the fire, our heads pillowed on her clothes and my robe over us.
“I’m not letting you go,” I murmured in her ear.
“Please don’t,” she replied, her eyes closed. “At least not ’til the morning.”
“Not even then. Sit, stay.”
I wish I had some sort of explanation, maybe the remainder of Reine’s magic folding over us or some other influence, but all I can say is that I fell into a deep slumber. When I woke to the tingling sensation of the first sunbeams of dawn, my head rested on a throw pillow, my arms were empty, and a ghost watched me.
Chapter Twenty-Five
“I used to find you like this in our bedroom closet, asleep on a robe,” he said as I scrambled to cover myself. I felt like a teenager who got busted making out with his girlfriend—or worse—by his parents.
“Haven’t you heard of knocking?” I asked. “Waiting for an invitation? Good gods, were you watching?”
“I gave you your privacy, but you know I didn’t teach you like this, son. Do you and the young lady have some sort of understanding? Are you at least engaged?”
I turned to him, open-mouthed with shock and feeling all of fifteen. “What do you mean you didn’t teach me like this? You died before I was even looking at girls.”
“But I always taught you to respect women.”
“Oh, I do respect her even though she drives me crazy. Now, do you have something important to say? I need to go after her before she sacrifices herself to some crazy vargamore who wants to use her as bait!”
“Find him. Find Wolfsheim. Expose the influence of the Silver Arrow and what they did to destroy me. Then I can find peace.”
With those words, he was gone. I ran my hands through my hair and tried to get my brain to calm down enough to make a plan. The doorbell and the phone rang simultaneously.
I grabbed the phone and padded to the door. The peephole showed me Rhys, the scarred Fey, standing on the other side. Great. Even worse, when I answered the phone, it was Morena. Even better.
“Emergency Council meeting in one hour,” she said. “No excuses.”
“How can we have a Council meeting? Cora Campbell is in the Hebrides with Bartholomew.”
“They’re both back. Be there, Gabriel. More rides on this than I can say.” And she hung up.
I flung the phone into the study and opened the door. Now that I was finally faced with the witness to the murder, I didn’t have time to talk to him.
“What do you want?” I asked.
“I warned you to stay away from us,” Rhys said. He stood with his hands in the pockets of a black leather jacket, and I shivered when the chill breeze hit my bare legs.
“I’ll ask again, Rhys. What do you want? Unless it’s to give me a description of the man who killed David Lachlan or tell me where Selene Rial is, I’m not interested in talking to you.”
“T’waren’t no man,” he said, and his mouth twisted into a smug grin. “T’was a woman. Thin with short black hair. Kinda green, if you know what I mean.”
“Jade?” I gasped, the pieces of the puzzle shifting and my world along with it. “That’s impossible! She’s not strong enough to have done that.” But my mind catalogued the clues that pointed in her direction, specifically her interest in the cure, how she posed as a broker between me and the Young Bloods, the killer’s smell in the basement of the Campbells’ company headquarters, and the likely person to have gotten a sample of Campbell’s blood to LeConte…
“Physically she int. But the girl’s got some magic to ’er.”
“And Selene?” I asked, both pleased that all roads seemed to lead to Bartholomew Campbell and annoyed that they might go past him.
“The boss said to give this to you.” He pulled a braid of copper-colored hair out of his pocket. It was woven into a love-knot, and it tingled with power. “Be at the ruins at sundown. He said you’d know what it meant since you been snooping around there in your wolf form. There you’ll be able to make a deal to save your ladylove.” He nodded toward the coil of hair in my hand. “Or I’ll be bringing you her scalp next.”
I barely had time to take a shower before I had to leave for the Council meeting, but there wasn’t any reason to let the rest of them know what I’d been up to. Another problem with lycanthropy I now thought about in a different way. Did the Young Bloods know when their friends had been hooking up more than they wanted to? In this social media-driven society, it would be one way to stay ahead of the flow of information and know things before their friends did, but perhaps they balked at the unintentional invasion of privacy.
In spite of the chill, I drove with the top down to allow the storm-cleansed air to clear my head. The same questions chased each other in a maddening circle: why wouldn’t Selene let me help her? Why did she leave? What were they going to do to her? What could I do to stop them? Why was I going to the Council meeting instead of chasing down Rhys and Wolfsheim and getting her back?
Because there was something that needed to happen first. It wasn’t just the timing of the summons from Wolfsheim, but something else. If I was going to take him on, I needed to be at full strength, and my instincts told me that would happen after the Council meeting. No, I didn’t know why—something in my blood older than my weight of years just told me to, and I obeyed it.
Sit, stay, prepare…
I first noticed the difference when I walked into Lycan Castle. Formerly the tapestries had seemed faded and old, but today they blazed with color and gore as they told the story of our lycanthropic heritage. While I’d spent a lot of time studying them as a young werewolf, I had no idea what I looked at, only battles with men and other creatures. Now one drew me in particular: a battlefield spread over five of the hangings. In the forefront, a grisly scene worthy of Bosch, where humans and hairy demons fought against other humans and wolves. There was a sense the hairy demons were going to win. In the background, a gaunt figure raised a sword toward an army of wolves, and I’d always thought it rallied them, but perhaps it held them back. Could it be Wolfsheim had become immortalized in tapestry, and I’d been studying him all along?
“Don’t dawdle, McCord.”
I turned with a snarl to see Morena standing behind me, her crossed arms enhancing her fireplug appearance.
“This could be important,” I said. “Who is that, and what is he holding?”
She squinted at the place on the tapestry where I pointed. “That is the foul vargamore Wolfsheim.” She shook her head. “Of all the tapestries for you to notice… The others tell of our victories, but this one is a reminder of our greatest defeat.”
“No one told me about it.”
“We don’t like to talk about how our kind failed Bonnie Prince Charlie at Culloden. He counted on us, and we didn’t show up.” She pointed to Wolfsheim. “The tales vary on how he managed to influence us, whether it was a poison that made the soldiers sleep through the short battle or some more sort of direct magic, but whatever happened, we let our guard down and failed. This tapestry is cautionary.”
“What can one do against a vargamore?” I asked. “Neither wizards nor we have been able to control a creature who has all our talents.”
“They don’t have full wizard or werewolf abilities, only a subset. All you can do is hope to outsmart him before he influences you. The element of surprise is best.”
I looked again at the battle. “What about bringing a second one?”
She smirked. “You’re thinking about Lonna Marconi-Fortuna, aren’t you? She is young and untrained.”
“But powerful, or at least that’s what I’m told. Plus Max is in danger of being captured and tortured by the other wizards.”
“Those are all little moving pieces in this great big chaotic mess, Gabriel.” She moved toward the hallway t
o the Council Chamber, and I followed. “The worst of which is David Lachlan’s death.”
I bowed my head to keep the lump in my throat from expanding into tears. “He was a great wolf.”
“Who got too close to something that wanted to stay hidden,” she said. She stopped just before we entered the hallway and put a hand on my arm. In a low voice, she warned me, “David’s charge was to investigate the Order of the Silver Arrow and try to keep track of their activities. Someone tipped them off that he was doing it, and that’s what caused his death.” Her gaze bored into mine. “Tell me it wasn’t you, that you’re not the leak.”
“Morena, I swear by both my parents’ graves that I didn’t speak of it to anyone, on or outside the Council. I didn’t even know until two nights ago that he had information of that sort. He told me he knew they had something to do with my father’s death.”
She nodded once, curtly. “I knew it wasn’t you. That leaves five others. That’s why we’re here. News of David’s death hasn’t gone out publicly yet. You’re to help me flush out our snitch, and potentially our murderer.”
“Look to the Campbells,” I said. “Too much points in their direction to be a coincidence.”
“I hope it’s that easy, but sometimes the most obvious answer isn’t the right one.”
Just before we walked in, my phone buzzed with a text from Lonna: Looked through LC’s analyses further. Found another surprise. Call me.
“You might be right,” I said to Morena. “My vargamore has an interesting piece of news for me. I’ll join you in a moment.”
“I’ll wait.” She crossed her arms and planted her feet. But then Dimitri Corvair rounded the corner. His narrow features lit when he saw her, and his heavy black brows rose.
“Ah, Lady Morena,” he said and took her arm. “Just the person I hoped to see. Do you have time for a word before the meeting?”
She allowed him to steer her away from the Council Chamber but looked over her shoulder at me. “Don’t forget,” she mouthed. “I need to know.”
I waved her off and called Lonna. I followed them away from the chamber but took a different turn to bring me to a parlor we used as a waiting room for visiting dignitaries. It smelled of little-circulated air, and I sneezed just as Lonna answered her phone.
“Gabriel? Is that you?” she asked.
“Yes,” I said and sniffled. “Sorry, dusty parlor. What’s up?”
“Well, it took me, Max, and Iain looking through Otis’s charts and figuring out his code—the key is on the laptop Garou has—but we came up with another interesting connection between the Rial family and the Council.”
My toes grew cold in spite of the stuffy room. “What?”
“Selene and Curtis—both of them—are related to Dimitri Corvair through their mother. Closely. I don’t know what it means, but—”
“But Morena is in danger. Sorry to interrupt you, Lonna, but I have to run.” Indeed, I already ran down the hallway and followed Morena’s and Dimitri’s scents to her offices. As the leader, she was the only one who rated a nice suite on the ground floor. Their voices came to me in the hall.
“This is irrelevant!” Dimitri yelled. I’d never heard him raise his voice before, and here he was almost snarling.
“Why did you give your blood to be tested?” asked Morena. “You could’ve abstained.”
“How was I to know my great nephew was a test subject and my great niece would be an Institute employee? I had to manage appearances.”
I flung the door open, but they stood with no weapons other than their words. “I think this would be a better discussion to have with the Council,” I told them. “They need to have the entire story.”
Dimitri gave me a smile that chilled me to my core. “Oh, I agree, Investigator. Lead the way.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
Once we’d all assembled in the Council Chamber, Morena started with a call to order. I looked around as she read the minutes of the last meeting—which I’d not been invited to, but which didn’t mention me or my situation. I still felt that power coiled at my solar plexus, my third chakra, some would say, but it lay quiet like it waited for something. I, too, waited and dreaded the words that would make the previous evening’s horror real. Finally they came.
“As you know,” Morena said, “David Lachlan was investigating the Order of the Silver Arrow for the Council.”
“Where is he, anyway?” asked Cora Campbell. “I cut a trip short to be here. He should be more considerate.”
“I’m sure he would have been here,” Morena told her, “had he not died in his home last night.”
Cora’s mouth fell open in genuine shock. I hung my head in sorrow but watched the reactions of the others. Dimitri’s face drained of color, making his black hair, stubble, and eyebrows even starker against his skin. Everyone looked truly horrified and saddened by David’s passing, but it made my job harder. And then things got worse.
“Why doesn’t Gabriel look more shocked?” asked Cora. “You two were friends.”
“I was the one who found him, so I already knew.”
“And I assume you’ve talked to Garou?” Dimitri said. “Morena, will the detective be here today to give us a report?”
“He will,” she said, but she shot a helpless look at me.
“I have not yet spoken with Garou about it,” I said. “I was injured and had to seek medical attention, and then Morena woke me this morning.”
Dimitri sniffed. “I’m not sure what kind of attention he was seeking, but I can tell you it wasn’t medical, at least not all the way.”
Dammit! “My personal life is none of your business,” I told him.
“But the Council and what happens to its members is,” Dimitri pushed. “Let me guess, you were with that pretty little redheaded scientist, weren’t you?”
“Again, that’s none of your concern.”
“And who did you seek help from? We know that Maximilian Fortuna, the wizard wanted by his own Tribunal for use of questionable magic, and that silver Fey visited you last night. Was that your ‘medical attention’?” He stood and pointed a finger at me. “Lady Morena, I submit for consideration that our own Council Investigator has been consorting and possibly conspiring with enemies of our kind.”
The other members jumped in on the uproar, and it was impossible to tell who as for and who was against me in the din.
“And what about you, Dimitri?” I asked when I could break into the shouting. “What secrets have you been keeping from us? Or trying to?” I stopped. I couldn’t say anything about Selene and Curtis’s involvement with the Order of the Silver Arrow without endangering all of us.
“You’ve been withholding information just as you are now,” he sneered.
My temple gave a little throb. I should’ve guessed the tension would blossom into a migraine, or would try to. “I can’t share all the information without jeopardizing the investigation,” I told him. A couple of people nodded, but the rest sat in stone-faced silence, their expressions neither accusatory nor supportive, but more curious. It was then I understood the dynamics at play.
How could I be so stupid? David was dead. He’d been the senior male member of the pack, and although Morena was our leader, the remaining males would then be vying for alpha position. Not Keith, a firm beta who had never shown any desire for leadership and whose graying temples and rounded features watched with curiosity. That left Dimitri, whose behavior suddenly made more sense beyond his hiding his connections to the Institute. I wondered if finding out his niece and nephew were so close made him change his vote. He would be reprimanded for not acknowledging them since it was important for us to keep track of our own kind so we could protect the human population.
“I would like to propose a replacement for Council Member Lachlan,” Cora said. Her mask of clueless observation melted away to reveal a sh
rewd expression. “I would like to propose Bartholomew Campbell as our new male council member.”
I raised my eyebrows. “He has no genetic link to the Council.”
“Ridiculous!” Dimitri said. “He has not demonstrated the moral fiber necessary to sit at this table. Need I remind you of his infidelity?”
Instead of recoiling from the harsh fact, Cora leaned in. “You call it infidelity, but is an alpha male not permitted to take whatever female he wants from his pack? His actions have all been with my consent.”
“Even his actions abroad?” I asked. “With those outside of our knowledge and kind?”
Her features drew in like I’d just forced a very sour pickle into her mouth. “I don’t know what you mean.”
Damn, I would have to reveal one of Selene’s secrets, but I didn’t know how to get around it. “He has an illegitimate son by an American woman, a boy who manifested the full spectrum of CLS symptoms.”
“Preposterous! Prove it.”
“Otis LeConte was going to prove it. He was working on making genetic connections between known werewolves and found something indicating one of our first test subjects was related to Bartholomew.”
“How? Bartholomew refused to give a sample.”
“He got one somehow.”
She smacked the table. “There must be some sort of mistake. Let’s get back to the matter at hand, not airy-fairy accusations.” She pointed at Morena. “These are dire times, and we need a full Council to take a vote on the abomination that is the Institute before it further endangers us and our kind.”
“The Institute is only a building, Council Member,” Morena said. “It cannot threaten you any more than this table can.”
“Then the people who make it up.” And, with a poisonous glance at me, “And those who advocate for it. Even beyond its stated mission, which in itself is an abomination to ‘cure’ people of this gift. First it brought danger into our midst, then it risked exposure of our secrets to the humans, and now it is the vehicle for unfounded accusations toward our businesspeople.”
Blood's Shadow: The Lycanthropy Files, Book 3 Page 22