“Jake?” Elise asked after I’d been changing for a while and hadn’t said anything. “Are you okay?”
Thankfully, my vocal cords hadn’t changed yet. “Just a minute,” I gasped as the thick and silky black fur began to sprout across my body.
Just a little longer.
“Jake? What’s wrong?”
Nothing. I shifted the bulk of my wolf-body around in the bathroom, the claws of my hind and forepaws clicking on the cheap tile as I licked my chops.
This was it. I couldn’t believe I was fucking doing this, betting it all on black this way. But what other choice did I have? She said she cared about me, and I believed her. And she knew I cared about her. I’d never felt this way before, not in my whole life. The dry mouth, the itchy paws, the whine at the back of my throat that just wanted to come pouring out of my muzzle.
“Jake?” she asked.
I snuffled a deep breath, let out a baritone sigh. Now or never, Jake. Now or never.
I reached up a paw and scraped just to the left of the doorknob.
“You alright?” Elise asked worriedly. “Jake, can’t you hear me? Can you answer me? Are you okay?”
I seriously contemplated barking right then, but I figured that’d be too confusing. Instead I scratched again.
“God, I hope I don’t have to call a fucking ambulance,” she said as she came over and put her hand on the knob.
I sat back on my haunches as she began to turn the knob.
She began to pull open the door. “Jake, you’d better be okay.”
I stayed perfectly still as the door swung open. I locked my wolf-eyes with her wide human ones. She stepped back, her mouth a soundless circle, a black hole where no scream could escape.
Elise started backing away slowly her face still frozen in fear. Her eyes moved rapidly behind me, trying to find me. She was scared. I gave a little whine and wagged my tail to show that I wasn’t going to harm her, but that made her back away even faster.
“Oh, my God,” she squeaked. She was on the verge of tears. “Please don’t hurt me! Where’s Jake? Did you eat him? What are you?”
I fought the urge to laugh, knowing my large, sharp teeth would traumatize her even more. Instead, I placed a paw awkwardly on my chest, hoping she’d understand.
“Okay, everything’s okay. He said not to be scared,” she whispered to herself frantically as she stared at me, her eyes so wide I was scared they would pop out. “He knew this would happen. He knew it. He said not to be scared….” Her eyes then sharpened as realization hit her. “Jake?” she asked as her beer slipped from her grip, hit the floor, and spilled in a fountain of hoppy foam. “Jake? Oh my fucking God, you’ve got to be fucking kidding me. How?”
I nodded my head in a very un-wolflike gesture.
“No way…” she whispered, her eyes rolling back into her head before she could finish her sentence.
I darted forward, faster than any human, and managed to cushion her fall with my furry body as she collapsed to the motel room floor.
Well, that could have gone better.
Chapter Thirty-three – Peter
Peter finished his beer and seriously considered raiding the liquor cabinet for something stronger. Mary’s story inspired that kind of fear, that kind of nervousness.
“The size of a grizzly bear?”
Eyes wide, she nodded as she tucked two long dark curls back behind her ears. “The guy I saw, he had to have been eight, almost nine feet tall. Covered in scratches and bite marks and scars. There was a bunch of other people with him, normal humans I think, but like military or something. They had on some of the stuff I’ve seen you and the other guys wear.”
“But he didn’t catch you? The big one?”
She shook her head. “No, when I saw the fire, I called 911 and told the guy I was with to just go.”
“Why?” Peter asked. “Just curious.”
“Well, I knew if I was going to get my parents and everyone out of the house, I was going to have to be a wolf. No way I could do it in my human form. And I couldn’t show that to the guy I was with, could I? So I called the fire department, put my phone away, and stripped down to shift as soon as he left. I took off across the field, jumped the barbed wire fence, and headed up to the house. But when I got there, I smelled it. The smell of the fire and some…some kind of herb.”
Peter wrinkled his nose subconsciously, her mention of that smell triggering the memory in him. He’d smelled the same thing at her family’s farmhouse as he’d smelled at his own family’s when he’d returned from the service. They’d long been gone, but the smell of their burnt flesh and hair, and that oily herbal scent engulfed everything. Sometimes he’d wake up in the middle of the night with that smell in his nose and on his tongue.
“So I got closer,” she said, pausing to take a drink of her milk. She shook her head. “That’s when I saw him. He looked as big as a house. Like a WWE wrestler, but bigger.”
“What happened?” he asked after she didn’t continue for a moment. He didn’t want to push her too hard. Her clamming up wouldn’t get him anywhere. But this was the first time he’d been able to get an eyewitness account of the only suspects in his family’s murder. Or his mate’s.
She looked him right in the eye. “He smelled me, or heard me. Something. I don’t know how. I was crouched right there in the bushes, looking over the little gravel drive, straight at his back, at the other guys running around there with their rifles and stuff. And he just turned around and grinned, his eyes right on mine.”
“What did you do?”
“What do you think I did? I bolted! I took off, ran as fast as I could, and tried to hide.”
“And they didn’t come after you? Any of them?”
“They tried shooting at me, but I stayed low and zigged-zagged a little. That big guy, he tried to race after me, but realized I had too much of a head start, I guess, and just let me go.”
Peter cursed himself. Dammit, if he’d known they’d shot at her, he would have gone through the fields, searched for casings with a metal detector. Maybe find a bullet buried in the dirt that could tell him something, anything, about these people who were hunting shifters. Had they been using silver? Or normal bullets?
“Heard one of them say to just leave me be, that I wasn’t a threat. Might as well just be a coyote.” Mary made a face as she stared at her milk. “Said they had enough. Then the sirens started coming, and they bolted fast as they could. Just loaded up their trucks, I guess, and left.”
“Had enough?” he asked. “Any idea what they could have meant?”
She shrugged and sighed. “I don’t know, Peter. Enough wolves they killed, maybe? They killed my parents and brothers and sisters. Maybe that was enough bloodshed for them.”
Peter nodded. “Yeah. Maybe. And this guy, are you sure he was that big?”
“I swear,” she said, sitting up with one hand over her heart and the other in the air. “Like Hulk Hogan and Undertaker squashed together. Never seen anything like it, not ever.”
And, coming from a shifter, that was saying something. They both sat there in silence for a while longer, Peter taking another drink from his already drained beer and Mary taking a sip of her milk.
“You believe me, don’t you? Cause that’s the reason I haven’t told you, yet. I wasn’t sure if you’d believe me.”
Peter nodded. “Of course. Why would you lie? I mean, as crazy as this is, how could you make it up? I mean, this is nuts. This is like X-Files stuff.”
“Who do you think they were?” she asked.
He flipped through the possibilities like he was thumbing through a mental Rolodex. Who could they be? Government? A corporation? Something else? What kind of organization could hide from the world the way these people had? They’d have to be buried as deep as shifters, guarding every moment to conceal their existence.
He took a deep breath and shrugged. “I don’t know, Mary. I really don’t know. This is all so new.”
&
nbsp; “Do you think…” she began, but trailed off.
“Do I think?” he prompted.
“Do you think this’ll help you? I mean, will this help you maybe find these guys? Pay them back for what they did to my family?”
He reached across the table and grabbed hold of her hand, leaning down and leveling his eyes with hers like a protective older brother. “Listen, Mary. I promise you I’m going to find these bastards if it’s the last thing I do. And I’m going to make them pay. For your family, for mine, and for everyone else they’ve hurt.”
She nodded and sniffed a little. “Thanks, Peter.”
He nodded again and let go of her small, trembling hand. “Now go get some sleep. Or try to, at least. It’s still a school night.”
She rolled her eyes and got up from the table. “Fine.” She stopped at the hallway entrance and got Peter’s attention as he was grabbing another beer from the fridge. “Hey, Peter? Do you think this’ll help?”
He nodded as he popped the top with his bottle opener. “Yeah, Mary. I think it will. I think it’s going to help a lot.”
She disappeared into her room, leaving him alone with his thoughts. How could these people be moving unprotected? Were they part of the government? How long had they been around? And who was this giant of a man? Or, better yet, what was he? Peter had never heard of such a thing, not in all his years in either the shifter lore, or in his time traveling the world with the SEALs.
But—and this one worried him the most and left him with an icy feeling in the pit of his stomach—how much longer would it be before they found the shifters of Frost Security? How much longer would it be before Enchanted Rock became a war zone?
Chapter Thirty-four – Elise
“What a dream!” I groaned as I came to, prompted by Jake shaking me awake on the bed.
His handsome, bearded face was hovering over me as the world came into focus. “Elise? Hey, you okay?”
“What happened? Did I just pass out or something?” I asked, glancing down his body, expecting him to be naked for some reason.
Jake, completely clothed, put a hand to my forehead. “Yeah, sort of. You don’t remember anything that happened?”
“No,” I said as I sat up, brushing his hand away from my shoulder, “all I remember is this crazy dream of you turning into a black wolf while you were in the bathroom. Something wild like that.” I shook my head, trying to dismiss the images that seemed so damn real. “But that’s crazy! That can’t happen. Like I said, crazy dream.”
He gave me an exaggerated frown. “Well…” he said, drawing out the word.
I shook my head. “Nope, that’s crazy. That’s absolutely, unbelievably crazy. Right?”
He winced and nodded. “Oh, believe me, it’s crazy. But–”
“See? I told you, it’s crazy.”
“–it’s true. I can, and I do. Me and the guys at Frost Security.”
It was like someone had taken a ceramic spark plug and shattered the window of my reality. All the shards just came tumbling down at that moment, spreading into my lap and the world outside. What was up? What was down? Wolves can become men? Men can become wolves? Was the sky still blue? Did the moon still control the tides?
What. The. Fuck?
I scrambled back across the bed, crab-crawling backwards and to the side as fast as my hands and feet would carry me away from Jake. I curled up against the headboard.
“Whoa, whoa!” he said, standing up with his hands out. “It’s okay, I’m not going to hurt you. I’m exactly the same guy I’ve always been. Nothing’s changed!”
I shook my head. “Nope, this can’t be real. Nope, nope, nope.”
He jerked a thumb back over his shoulder, towards the bathroom. “Want me to go show you again? Because it’s real, Elise. It’s realer than real.”
“But it can’t be! This kind of thing doesn’t exist, Jake! You don’t exist!”
He raised an eyebrow at me. “Well, that’s news to me. I’m about as real as they come.” He held out his forearm and pinched it with his other hand. “See? Want me to cut myself, too, so you can see how fast I heal? See that I do, in fact, bleed red blood?”
“No,” I squeaked, shaking my head, “that’s fine.”
“Look,” he said as he very carefully came around the bed to my side, “I told you this was going to change your world, Elise. I told you that, didn’t I?”
“So this is my fault that you’re real?”
He shook his head, still moving at an exaggeratedly slow pace, like he was dealing with a wounded bird that might just fly away. “No. Look, I just—I wasn’t ready to tell you yet, okay? You’re the first human I’ve ever told.”
I barked a burst of laughter, a weird maniacal sound to my ears. “First? Jesus Christ, Jake!”
He gestured to a spot on the bed. “Do you mind?”
I shook my head. “Fuck no. Not till I say so!”
“Okay,” he said, nodding, hands out in front of him still, “okay, that’s cool, I understand.” He went over, grabbed two beers and sat in one of the chairs. He popped the lids off both and offered me a new one.
What had happened to my other? Oh, right. I dropped it because the guy I have the hots for turned into a fucking wolf in the fucking bathroom. I took the beer from him, tipped it back, and chugged until the carbonation and hops were too much for me, the cold swirling down into my belly as it paradoxically warmed my insides at the same time.
“Let me get this straight,” I said after draining about half the bottle, “you’re a werewolf.”
“We prefer shifters. But, I guess so, yeah.”
I took a deep breath and shook my head. I tipped the bottle back and finished the rest. The alcohol was beginning to make my head swim. In many circumstances, that might have been a bad thing, but I figured tonight I would need it to calm my nerves and relax my mind.
“Think you might wanna–”
“–drink another beer?” I interjected, finishing his sentence for him.
He gave me a blank look and got up to grab another, leaving only one remaining in the six-pack. Guess he hadn’t bet on us going through the whole thing so quickly! He twisted off the cap and passed it to me. “Feeling any better?”
“Are vampires real, too? Is magic?”
His eyes went wide and he just kind of shook his head. “What? No. Well, I don’t know. I’ve only met a few of us. I mean, my first pack in LA, then the guys at Frost.”
I frowned. I’d really been hoping magic would be real. That there was something bigger and weirder out there than just what science gave us. I mean, I guess there was, and I had proof sitting right in front of me. And more down in Enchanted Rock, from what Jake said.
“All of you are werewolves?” I asked. “The girl I met, too?”
“Lacy?” He shook his head. “Nah, Lacy’s just a human. So is her grandmother, who works at our office. Far as I know, they don’t have any shifter blood in their family. Not that they’ve mentioned, at least.”
“But your boss, the guy that showed up at that guy Kevin’s house when we found the body?”
He nodded. “Yeah. He’s the one who asked me to join. He’s the alpha of our pack, the leader.”
I wiped a hand down my face, shook my head. “You know this is just fucking crazy, right?”
“Why do you think I didn’t want to tell you? Or show you?”
“Okay,” I said. “Going back to that whole thing. You’re a werewolf.”
“Shifter.”
“Whatever. Shifter. I’ll try to remember you’re a shifter. You told me your big secret, right? So what happened on the mountain last summer?”
He sighed and ran a hand back through his hair. “Okay, you know those bikers back at Crossroads in Yellow Rose?”
I nodded.
“Those guys belong to a biker gang called the Skull and Bones. One of them was harassing one of our guys, Richard, had him holed up their with a client—Jessica, actually, the one you met at the Curious T
urtle. Her friend and Lacy were there, too. We showed up and helped Richard get rid of them. As wolves.”
I’d put the bottle up to my mouth to take another drink, but now the bottle hung in my hand, the mouth of the bottle inches from my lips. I set it aside, saying, “You fought the biker gang? As wolves?”
He nodded. “Not proud of it. They didn’t really stand much of a chance once we showed up, but they were going to hurt Richard and maybe kill the girls. So we stopped it.”
“Okay. Well, that makes sense.”
He slapped a palm to his forehead. “And now that I’m telling you about that story, this makes perfect sense. Who else but Spike would have sent that text message? Here I was, worried that someone else knew about us.”
“Spike knows what you are?”
“He was there.”
We talked back and forth about Spike, about the fight that had happened. About how Spike refused to tell anyone because he was worried they’d all think he was crazy.
I laughed at the last part. “Of course he feels that way! I know, too, and I still fucking think I’m crazy!”
Jake smiled a little and took another drink of beer.
I set my beer aside and licked my lips a little. “Jake, I’m going to ask you a question, but I don’t want you to think that I consider you to be some kind of freak show. I grew up as a weirdo outsider, and I’d hate to have anyone else feel that way because of me, but…”
“But?”
“Can I see you change into it? Into the wolf?”
He cringed a little and shook his head. “It’s not pretty, Elise. It’s actually pretty grotesque. You really don’t want me to, not in front of you. I don’t ever change in front of anyone unless they’re in the pack, honestly.”
I frowned. “Well, how about in the bathroom again? Just so, like, I can see it? Promise I won’t pass out this time.”
Frost Security: The Complete 5 Books Series Page 67