Dark Curse (Dark Wolf Series Book 2)

by Dena Christy

  Cadric stared at her phone, as if by concentrating on it, everything he wanted to know would be revealed. After a few moments he handed the phone back to her, and Hadria tucked it back in her pocket.

  “I think we can establish that you believe you were ordered to go there. I want you to tell me exactly what happened.”

  “Cadric we’ve been over this.”

  “Go over it again,” he insisted through clenched teeth. A dull flush covered his cheeks, and although he was no longer shouting at her, she could tell his anger still simmered under the surface.

  Hadria repeated her story for him again, for what seemed like the hundredth time. As she spoke, his face grew grimmer and grimmer. When she finished speaking she sat silently, waiting for him to sort through everything in his head.

  “My phone went missing this morning. I thought I’d misplaced it, but I can see now that wasn’t the case. I don’t think it was chance that caused you and Eric to stumble upon that woman in the woods today. The hiker was so savagely attacked that there is no possible way her assailant could not have known that she would die. Plus we cannot ignore that there were three other wolves waiting there for you when you got there. If you hadn’t had Eric with you, you would have been severely outnumbered.”

  Hadria blew out her breath, as Cadric’s words sunk in. She’d walked into a trap that afternoon, and it had not even occurred to her until just now.

  “Why me though?” That’s what she couldn’t figure out in all this. Why would the bastards responsible for the formula want her? It didn’t make any sense.

  “I have no idea, but I intend to find out. The wolf you captured is in a locked room in the infirmary under heavy guard. We’re running tests to see if he is infected with the formula. Once that is determined, he’ll be questioned.”

  “Do you want me to do the questioning?” Hadria hoped so. She wanted a few minutes alone with him, to find out why he’d done what he’d done to that poor woman.

  “I want you as far away from him as possible. Is that clear? I’ll be questioning him.”

  Hadria felt sorry for the other men. Based on the steely look in Cadric’s eyes, the wolf was going to wish he was dead once Cadric got through with him.

  There was a knock on Cadric’s door, and he bade that person to enter. Hadria turned around just as Nick poked his head through the door.

  “The tests you ordered on the wolf have been run. I had the lab put a rush on the results and it looks like our guy is not under the influence of the Dark Wolf formula. We couldn’t find any trace of rabies in his system.”

  “Okay, where is he now?”

  “He was moved into one of the cells.”

  Cadric nodded thoughtfully and stood. “Both of you are done for today. You may as well go home.”

  Hadria stood and walked over to Nick’s side. She clasped his hand. She was still shaken up by what she’d just learned from Cadric, and holding onto Nick made her feel safe.

  “Nick,” Cadric said just as they turned to leave. “Look out for her.”

  “Okay.” A puzzled frown descended onto Nick’s face and he squeezed Hadria’s hand a little tighter as they walked down the corridor. “What the hell was that about?”

  “I’ll tell you when we get to the car.” Hadria stared straight ahead as they left the building. She didn’t want to feel paranoid, but knowing that there was someone within the Order who was working for their enemy made her leery about discussing anything within the walls of Headquarters.

  They got into the car and Nick turned to face her. “Okay, so what’s going on? Why would Cadric have to tell me to look out for you?”

  “When I went to investigate the clearing I thought I was under orders from Cadric to do so. I had received a text message telling me to go there and that someone would meet me there. Apparently Cadric’s phone was stolen and he wasn’t the one who sent me the text.”

  “What?” Nick’s voice came out in a fierce whisper as his hands shot out to grasp her arms.

  “When Eric and I got there Nick, there wasn’t anyone from the Order to meet me, and there should have been. Cadric seems to think that poor woman was used as bait to distract me. There were four wolves in that clearing, and even with me changing into wolf form I wouldn’t have stood a chance against them if Eric hadn’t been with me.”

  By the time she finished speaking Nick’s face was bone white. His hands flexed into the flesh of her arms before he yanked her to him and crushed her against his chest.

  “Jesus Christ. Thank God Samara insisted that Eric go with you.” Nick pulled back, his hands going to her face as he pressed a fierce kiss on her lips. “Someone in the Order wants to hurt you. Who the fuck could it be?”

  “I have no idea. It could be because I’m heavily involved in this case and have been from the beginning. There may be nothing personal to it at all.”

  “Well whatever the reason, you are not going to take any chances. You are going to stay at my house. I don’t want you to be alone. When I can’t be with you, I want someone else with you at all times. Preferably someone I trust. I’ll talk to Eric and see if he can look out for you if I can’t.”

  “Nick, you’re being ridiculous. I don’t need a bodyguard and Eric has his hands full looking out for the mother of his child.”

  “I don’t think it’s ridiculous to want my woman to be safe. We’ll swing by your place and get some clothes for you.” Nick turned away from her and stabbed the key in the ignition. He gunned the engine and peeled out of the parking lot.

  “Nick I’ll be at work when we aren’t together and I’ll be perfectly safe there.”

  “Like you were perfectly safe today?”

  Hadria glanced over at Nick and saw the scowl etched between his eyebrows. She didn’t know what she could say to him to convince him that today was a one off, that she wasn’t going to spend her life afraid.

  “We know about the threat against me and I’ll be more cautious from now on. Come on Nick, you can’t expect Eric to worry about me, considering that he has to worry about Samara too. I’ll stay with you at your house if that’s what you want, but I’m not going to have Eric babysitting me.”

  Nick sighed and quickly flicked his glance over to her. Hadria could see resignation on his face and knew that she’d convinced him to be reasonable.

  “Just promise me that you’ll be more careful from now on?”

  “I promise. Now take me home and show me how happy we both are to be alive,” Hadria said as she put her hand on Nick’s leg. Nick glanced over at her for a second. He put his hand on hers as he gunned the engine.

  ***

  Nick slowly eased away from Hadria, being careful not to disturb her as she slept in his bed. The events of the day kept whirling around in his head, keeping him from sleep. If Eric hadn’t been there, if she wasn’t the strong fighter he knew she was, she would have been lost to him. Taking one last look at her peaceful face, he turned and left the bedroom. He walked down the stairs and into the kitchen. He itched to go for a run, to clear some of the restless energy bouncing around inside him, but he didn’t dare. He’d meant what he’d told Hadria earlier today, he didn’t want her left alone, not even locked up safely in his home.

  He grabbed a bottle of beer out of the fridge and twisted off the cap, flinging it into the garbage can. He took a deep pull from the bottle as he thought about who could want to harm Hadria. As far as he knew, she was well liked within the Order, but that didn’t necessarily mean anything. Perhaps she was right and the attempted attack on her wasn’t personal.

  The ringing of his cell phone blasted out into the stillness of the kitchen. He reached over and looked at the number. The name was blocked and so was the number. He hesitated for a second as the phone rang again. He accepted the call and put the phone to his ear.

  “It’s the middle of the night, this better be good,” he growled down the line. No one he knew would call him in the middle of the night, and especially not from a blocked number
. They were lucky he was answering at all.

  “How’s your girlfriend?” A raspy, distorted voice came on over the other end of the phone. A chill trickled down Nick’s spine as he set the beer aside and stood up straight.

  “Who the hell is this?” he snarled as his hand tightened on the phone.

  “That doesn’t matter. I represent an organization that is very interested in you Nick. We’d like you to come play with us. You don’t have to decide right now. Just think about it. We could use someone with your medical background to help us.”

  “Are you the assholes responsible for injecting my younger brother full of your junk, and then feeding some poor human to him?” Nick asked through clenched teeth, using every ounce of will power to continue to listen and not hurl the phone across the room.

  “You fail to see the bigger picture here. I’m not going to discuss this with you right now. If you decide to join us and want to debate our methods, we can discuss it then. We’ll contact you again at a later time once you’ve been under Hadria’s influence a little more. We’re positive that you’ll soon see things our way. Take care Nick.”

  The call disconnected, and Nick pulled the phone away from his ear and set it deliberately on the counter as if it would explode. He would take it into work tomorrow, but he doubted any information about the caller would be found. Scrubbing a hand over his face, he finished off his beer. He doubted sleep would come, but after that phone call he needed to assure himself that Hadria was still okay. He set his empty beer bottle on the counter and turned toward the kitchen door. He came to an abrupt stop when he saw Hadria standing there, looking sleepy.

  “You okay baby?” She walked up to him and put her hand on his chest. He captured it, bringing it up to his lips.

  “I’m fine. Just couldn’t sleep. I hope I didn’t wake you.” He drew her against him and held her tight. He didn’t want to tell her about the phone call, knowing it would only worry her. He felt a little funny hiding it from her, but decided to wait until he’d talked to Cadric.

  “Who was on the phone? I thought I heard it ringing. That’s what woke me up.” She tilted her head back and looked at him.

  “Wrong number,” Nick said as he tucked her up against his side and walked with her up the stairs. They settled into bed, and he held her against him. After several minutes her breathing slowed and she relaxed against him. He stared at the ceiling for several long minutes, his guts twisting as the phone call replayed over in his head. His arms tightened around Hadria, as if he loosened his hold for a moment that she would slip away. She murmured in her sleep and he forced himself to relax. Her presence beside him anchored him and quieted his thoughts. He closed his eyes and forced his thoughts out of his head. He needed his sleep if he was going to be effective against whatever or whoever was threatening Hadria.

  Chapter Ten

  Nick knocked on Cadric’s door the following morning, the lack of sleep he’d suffered from the night before finally catching up with him as exhaustion dragged down his limbs. Hadria had come into work with him this morning, and she’d been unusually quiet. He hated letting her out of his sight, but there wasn’t much he could do about it unless they both quit their jobs and stayed in his house for the rest of their lives.

  He heard Cadric’s voice growl from the other side of the door. From the sound of it his boss wasn’t in any better a mood than he was. He walked into Cadric’s office.

  “Close the door.” Cadric didn’t look up from his computer as he pounded on the keyboard as if the keys needed to be slammed into the desk in order for them to work. With a sound of disgust, he finally shoved the keyboard away and turned toward Nick.

  “I hope you have better news for me this morning than anything I’ve received thus far today.”

  “I got a call last night. I think it’s the people responsible for Dark Wolf, and they want me to consider joining them. I brought my phone in but I don’t think we’ll get anything from it. They were smart and blocked their name and number.”

  Cedric was silent for a moment, before his face relaxed. “So they’ve contacted you. That’s good. I think we’ve finally made a break in this case and we’ll need to use it to our advantage.”

  “Do you want me to take the phone to the tech guys and see if they can trace the number?”

  “I wouldn’t bother with the phone. Obviously we have a Judas in our midst, and I don’t want them to know that you’ve told me you’ve been contacted. I don’t want you to share this with anyone, not even Hadria.”

  “Why wouldn’t I tell her?” Nick didn’t like not being able to talk to Hadria about this. He didn’t want to keep secrets from her.

  “Nick, it’s become obvious to everyone here that you and Hadria have become very close. I’d hoped that once it got around that you two were an item that this would happen.”

  “To what purpose? Surely you aren’t suggesting that I meet with these people?” Nick took one look at Cadric’s face and realized that was exactly what his boss was thinking. “You want me to meet with these people and you want me to hide it from Hadria?”

  The bottom fell out of Nick’s stomach when his boss nodded. He sat in stunned silence for a moment, not knowing what to say. He loved working for the Order, and he wanted the people who fucked up his brother’s life to pay, but he didn’t want to do it at the expense of his relationship with Hadria.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” Cadric said as he steepled his hands under his chin. “And I know it’s asking a lot. I think you are the one who needs to do this. There is no way I can get any other agent in there, and the only way we are going to be able to shut these people down is to have someone on the inside.”

  “But why do I have to hide it from Hadria? You know her history, and you know what it would do to her if she thought I betrayed the Order. It would kill her.”

  “I think we are getting ahead of ourselves. A meeting with them may come to nothing. I don’t know who our mole is, so I don’t know who to trust. I know it’s not you, and I know it’s not Hadria. But whoever it is, they are watching everything very closely. The only way for them to believe that you’ve gone over to their side is if everyone believes it, including Hadria. If it comes about that you do end up joining them, I will take Hadria aside and assure her that I’m fully aware of what’s going on. Trust me, I wouldn’t ask this of you if I could think of any other way around it.”

  Nick sat in silence, his mind scrambling for another way to do this. Cadric was right in that the Dark Wolf group had approached him, and they wouldn’t suspect him if they truly thought that his going to their side was a result of that ridiculous curse that Hadria put so much faith in. But he wanted to spare her even a moment of pain, and thinking for a moment that he’d betrayed them would hurt her. He thought about the wolf they’d brought in yesterday, and hoped that he would yield some information that would be of some use.

  “Did you get any information out of the wolf we brought? Surely we can get something out of him that would help us.”

  A thunderous look crossed Cadric’s face. “No and we aren’t going to at this point.”

  “Why not?” Nick’s eyebrows drew together. Surely there was a way for Cadric to get him to talk.

  “Somebody let him out. He’s gone. He was in the cells last night and now he’s not.”

  No wonder Cadric was in such a shitty mood. That wolf was their best lead on what was going on, and now that lead was gone.

  “Have you found any information from the surveillance footage?”

  “Someone disabled the cameras before they let him loose. Did the group say when they were going to contact you again?”

  Nick sighed. Obviously Cadric wasn’t going to let this go, and now with the wolf they’d captured gone, it was looking more and more like Nick may not have a choice about meeting them.

  “No. They said they wanted me to think about their offer and they’d be in touch. What do you want me to do now?”

  “Just try to g
o on as normally as possible. That’s all we can do at this point, at least until we know who we’re dealing with.”

  Nick nodded and stood. He left Cadric’s office, and walked swiftly to his own. He settled in to do some paperwork. He couldn’t concentrate on it and was grateful when his phone rang. Glad for the interruption, he picked it up, hoping at least that it was some good news.

  “Nick, it’s Dennis.” Dennis Turner was a demon who worked in the Order’s lab. The guy never seemed to sleep and Nick could hear him fidgeting on the other end of the phone. A ghost of a smile crossed his lips.

  “What’s up?” Nick sat back in his chair and propped his feet up on his desk.

  “I was about to ask you that. I thought you wanted me to run tests on Samara’s blood but I never got it.”

  “What are you talking about?” Nick sat up and slammed his feet down on the floor. “I put it in the fridge in the lab myself. It has to be there.”

  “I went to run some tests with it this morning and I’m telling you man it isn’t here.”

  “I’ll be right up.”

  Nick slammed the receiver of his phone down, and strode from his office. He raced up the stairs to the third floor, taking them two at a time. Dennis was waiting there for him, and buzzed him into the secured door of the lab.

  Nick walked over to the small bar fridge where the blood was kept for testing and he looked through it. The two vials of Samara’s blood that he’d put in there were gone.

  “Christ. What the hell is going on around here?’

  “I don’t know. I know you put the samples in there, I was here when you did it. I went to get them this morning, but they were gone.”

  “Did you look at the log to see who accessed the lab?” Entrance to the lab required the use of a pass card and when it was used to unlock the doors, the computer recorded the date, time and whose card was used.

  “I did. That’s why I thought maybe you’d taken the blood out for some reason.”