Grave Rites: An Urban Fantasy Adventure (Grant Wolves Book 6)

by Lori Drake

  “Everyone, this is Quinn. Quinn, meet the pack. Or part of it, anyway. This little spitfire is Jenny,” she teased, motioning at the young wolf at her side. “Then over there we have my brother Ben, and my pack brothers Itsuo, Vince, and Adam. And the little lady there is Dawn. She’s Cathy’s apprentice, and an old friend.”

  Quinn nodded to them and strolled over to the table, helping himself to a slice of salami.

  “Help yourself,” Vince murmured with a chuckle.

  “Where’s Chris?” Ben asked, flicking a glance behind her like he expected the man in question to walk in at any moment.

  “He’s staying with Cathy tonight. Which is a long fucking story, and I honestly can’t remember the last time I ate.” Joey walked around the table to hug Adam and Dawn, then reached between them to grab a few olives to tide her over until she could get something more substantial on a plate.

  Itsuo scooted down to make room, so she climbed over the bench running the length of the long table and settled between him and Adam while Jenny grabbed a clean plate from the cupboard for her. Quinn made himself at home, grabbing a handful of pretzels and leaning against the wall nearby.

  Joey updated everyone while she made herself a sandwich out of two slices of French bread and some of the meat and cheese set out, starting with the missing witches and the investigation into Naomi’s murder before moving on to the matter of the missing wolves and how the wolves and witches might be connected. She left out Chris’s attack and its alarming aftereffects, but only because she didn’t know Quinn well enough to discuss Chris’s ability in front of him. Even so, by the time she finished, everyone had stopped eating and stared at her with a variety of expressions on their faces ranging from curious puzzlement to outright horror.

  “Can’t leave you alone for a minute, can I?” Dawn frowned, but her eyes were thoughtful behind her dark-framed glasses.

  Joey snorted. “I guess not.”

  “You really think there’s a witch out there trying to create lycanthropes?” Jenny asked.

  “That’s our current theory,” Joey said. “I know it sounds far-fetched.”

  “Maybe not as much as you think,” Dawn said. All eyes turned on her, and she fidgeted with her glasses, taking them off and rubbing them with her shirt like she wished she hadn’t said anything. “Well, it’s a magical gift, but you aren’t able to tap into magic in other ways. You’re not witches.”

  “Not all of us, anyway,” Joey said.

  Dawn’s head came up sharply and she leaned over to peer at Joey around Adam. “Elaborate?”

  “Well, some lycanthropes are also witches,” Joey said. “Or, so I’ve recently heard.”

  “I have heard of this as well,” Itsuo said. As quiet as he’d been, Joey’d all but forgotten he was there.

  “That’s… that’s… wow.” Dawn held her glasses up to peer at the lenses, then put them back on. “Well, then I guess it just makes even more sense that it could be possible.”

  “Cathy thinks fleshcraft spells might be behind Naomi’s deformities,” Joey said.

  Dawn wrinkled her nose. “I doubt that. I mean, she’s way more knowledgeable about magic than I am, but if I wanted to make a lycanthrope, that’s not how I’d go about it.”

  Everyone stared at her for several long seconds.

  “Okay,” Ben said. “I’ll bite. If you were going to make a lycanthrope, how would you go about it?”

  “Well, how would you go about it?” Dawn asked.

  Ben snorted. “Surrogacy.”

  Joey rolled her eyes. “I get what you mean. It’s genetic. Passed from parent to child. It doesn’t even require two wolf parents, though it’s exceptionally rare for someone with only one wolf parent to inherit it.”

  “Right,” Dawn said. “The witch gene is the same way. Part of my research has been trying to determine if there’s a link between the lycanthrope gene and the witch gene. Knowing they can co-exist… that’s amazing. But what I’m getting at is that if you want to manufacture a lycanthrope—and you’re not doing it in petri dish—you have to alter someone on a genetic level. Sculpting their flesh and bone into something else doesn’t give them the ability to change back.”

  “That’s why they need the wolves,” Quinn rumbled from the corner. “Genetic material.”

  “Maybe,” Dawn said. “I dunno, it’d make more sense to me to start with a lycanthrope. Then you’d have exactly what you needed, genetically. Otherwise, you’re splicing human DNA with wolf DNA and I’m not sure what would come of that.”

  “But there’s more to it than pure science,” Joey said. “There’s a mystical element to it as well.”

  Dawn nodded. “That’s where the witches come in, I guess. They’ve got the mojo, so from there it’s about adding the wolf component and bridging the two with some sort of transformation spell.”

  “Okay, my head hurts.” Joey rubbed her temples.

  Seconds ticked by in silence, and then Dawn made a sudden move to rise. “I should probably go see if I can help Cathy.”

  Joey reached around Adam to catch her arm and pulled her back down. “There’s nothing you can do tonight. I’ve got the address to the safe house. I’ll take you over first thing in the morning, okay? How did your trip go, anyway?” Her eyes slid toward Quinn again. This was another topic that might be too sensitive to be discussed in the company of an outsider. The big alpha met her eyes from across the room and held them, as if challenging her to look away first. Uninterested in a metaphysical dick-waving contest, she did.

  Dawn shrugged. “They didn’t slam the door in my face, but I don’t think they were sad to see me go. We can talk about it later.”

  Adam put a hand on Dawn’s arm, and she glanced at him and smiled faintly. Joey’d been surprised when Adam had announced that he was going to Eastgate with Dawn. What had surprised her was that Dawn had gone along with him tagging along. Adam hadn’t hidden his infatuation with the witch very well, and Joey worried it’d end in heartbreak, one way or another. But the trip had clearly cemented a friendship there, if nothing else. Joey found herself pondering that something else as she observed the two of them for a moment.

  Ben interrupted her train of thought. “I’m surprised you’re here and not with Chris.”

  Joey grimaced. “It wasn’t my first choice, but the High Priest has a stick up his ass about wolves. We figured Chris going along was enough of an ask for one night. I’ll be a little surprised if he doesn’t turn up here at some point because Ethan threw him out.” She rolled her eyes, blowing a lock of hair out of her line of sight.

  “Eric put that stick there,” Jenny said.

  The table went quiet, all eyes turning to the young wolf. She fidgeted under their scrutiny. Jenny was one of a handful of current members of the Granite Falls pack that’d been around under the previous administration.

  When Jenny didn’t elaborate, Joey said, “You gonna keep us in suspense or…?”

  “I overheard a few things I probably shouldn’t have. But it wasn’t hard to put the pieces together. Eric had this whole protection racket thing going with the witches. Ethan paid him a lot of money so the Anklebiter’s Club would leave them alone.”

  “Huh. Why didn’t I think of that?” Joey murmured, though not seriously.

  “Because you’re not a psychopath,” Ben said with a smirk.

  “Thanks, bro. What’s this about an Anklebiter’s Club?”

  Jenny shrugged. “That’s what he called it. That’s the group that went out and caused problems for the witches if they didn’t pay up. He thought it was clever I guess.”

  “Who was in this group?” Joey wondered if any of them were sitting around the table. Jenny, Itsuo, and Adam had all survived Eric’s rule.

  Jenny lifted her eyes to meet Joey’s, though it was barely a second before her eyes slid away. The young wolf didn’t have a dominant bone in her body, but the fact that she didn’t immediately answer the question gave Joey hope that she was becoming less of
a pushover under Chris and Joey’s influence.

  “Most of them are gone now,” Jenny said. “One way or another. And the rest... it was a different time. You know how he was.”

  Joey did indeed know how Eric was, a bullish brute who wouldn’t hesitate to use alpha dominance to get his way and had no one’s interests but his own at heart. He’d driven off—or killed—most of the alphas in the area to ensure he could keep his betas under his tyrannical thumb. And while Joey had little doubt that Jessica, at least, had been part of this Anklebiter’s Club, Jenny was right. It was a different time.

  “Well, thanks for telling me about it,” Joey said. “The way Ethan’s been acting toward us makes a lot more sense, and now that I understand the history between the coven and the pack, maybe I can mend some fences.”

  “I sure hope so,” Dawn said. “I’m surprised the pack got away with that sort of thing with a whole coven without some sort of magical retaliation.”

  “Maybe Ethan is a pacifist,” Ben suggested.

  Joey barked a laugh. “God, I hope not. I have a feeling we’re going to need some magic firepower before this is over.”

  “Hey, what am I, chopped liver?” Dawn folded her arms and harrumphed, but she was smiling.

  “We’re lucky to have you, and I’m glad you’re back.” Joey stood and climbed over the bench seat, coming up behind her friend.

  “Really?” Dawn twisted to look behind her, hope in her eyes. Their friendship had been strained at times, but Joey was finally ready to put all that aside, once and for all.

  Joey wrapped her in a hug. “Really. Welcome home.”

  Chris opened his eyes to darkness. The moonlight slanted through the mini blinds, but the contents of the room were reduced to hulking shapes in the darkness. The house was quiet, and a glance at the clock by the bed told him it was nearly two in the morning. Hopefully, the witches had finished their spellcasting and gone to bed.

  He stretched and did a brief self-assessment. Sleep had done him good. The fog of fatigue had lifted, and he almost felt like himself again.

  You there, buddy?

  His wolf stirred, but it was an odd sensation, like sensing its presence from far away. His eyes drifted to the window. He could still sense the moon, too, but like his wolf it felt… distant. Since it was waxing and less than two weeks from being full, that was definitely odd. Unsettling. Worry plagued him, like an incessant insect buzz in his ear. Sighing, he closed his eyes and thought about going back to sleep. More sleep would probably be better, right?

  He was on the edge of drifting off when his phone vibrated in his pocket. Two short buzzes. A text message. He fished it out, noticing the battery was low when the screen lit up. Hopefully someone here had a charging cable he could…

  The thought faded as the message on his screen finally sank in.

  Jon: Honey, it’s time.

  Let it not be said that his straight-laced brother didn’t have a sense of humor. Sara was in labor. Chris sat up so fast the room spun. He put a hand to his head, waiting for the lightheaded sensation to pass. When it did, he sat there trying to figure out what to do. Call Joey? No, Jon had sent the message to the whole family. It’d popped up in their group chat. Joey was the first to reply.

  Joey: On my way. Need anything?

  Jon: Scotch. Lots of scotch.

  Ben: On it.

  Chris sat there a moment more, considering his options, then sent a message off.

  Chris: Can someone pick me up?

  It was almost a full minute before he finally saw Joey’s name pop up with the little indication she was typing. It went on and off a few times before her message finally came through.

  Joey: You should probably stay with Cathy. We know you’ll be with us in spirit. But, you know, not really here as a spirit because that’s dangerous.

  Chris groaned and scrubbed a hand through his hair. He was wide awake now; there was no point trying to go back to sleep. Joey was right. He should stay with Cathy. But his first niece or nephew was about to be born—the first child born to their pack in over twenty years, and the first ever while he was Alpha—and he wanted to be there, dammit.

  On top of that, Jon’s house was on the other side of Lake Washington; there was no way he could or should walk all the way there in the dark. Even if he had been in tip-top shape, which he surely wasn’t right now. With sigh, Chris flopped back down on the bed and stared up at the ceiling, but within five minutes he was on his feet again, searching the darkness for his shoes and cramming his feet into them. His light-footedness served him well as he navigated through the quiet house.

  There was a light on in the dining room. He found Amber there, hunched over a big book with a styrofoam cup of coffee sitting on the table beside her.

  “Hey,” he said quietly, but his voice was still loud in the silence of the room.

  Amber jumped, nearly knocking her book into her coffee cup. She grabbed it anyway, moving it a few more inches away. “Jesus. You’re like a cat. Which is weird, for a wolf.”

  “Sorry, I didn’t mean to sneak up on you.” He moved a little farther into the room. “My sister-in-law is in labor.”

  Amber sat back in her chair, pulling the oversized book into her lap, gloved fingers curled over the top of it. “Congratulations?”

  “Thanks. The family is getting together at their house—it’s a home birth.”

  The usual reaction to that news was curiosity or disdain. He got neither from Amber, just a nod of acceptance. “Want a ride?”

  Chris couldn’t keep the surprise from his face. “Yeah, actually. But didn’t we leave your car at Cathy’s?”

  “We can take Cathy’s car.” Flipping the book closed, Amber returned it to the table and stood, stretching.

  Chris hesitated, then nodded. “Sounds good. I’ll grab my coat.”

  It took about twenty-five minutes to get from the safe house in Kirkland to Jon and Sara’s big house in Madison Park. They were close enough to the lake that Chris could smell the musty, earthy odor of it even with his senses not quite as sharp as usual. Amber whistled low when they pulled up in front of the house, which was impressive even in the dead of night. The property was ringed by an honest to goodness white picket fence, with an elaborate archway topping three concrete steps leading up from sidewalk level to the property.

  “Damn, what did you say your brother did for a living again?” she asked as they climbed out of the car.

  “I didn’t, but he’s a lawyer.” Chris didn’t feel a need to explain that Jon’s career had little to do with his lifestyle, so he let it go at that and headed up the steps and across the manicured yard to the front door.

  Jon himself answered it in sweats and a T-shirt, laughing when he saw Chris and his escort on the front stoop. “Joey’s gonna be pissed.”

  Chris shrugged and pushed past him into the house, grumbling. “She’s not the boss of me.”

  “It’s cute that you think that.” Snickering, Jon waved Amber in and led them both down to the finished basement, which housed several bedrooms and a rec room complete with a pool table, mini bar, and half-kitchen where their father stood at the coffee maker.

  “Son! Jon said you weren’t coming.” Reginald broke off from watching the coffee brew and came over to give Chris a hug.

  Chris leaned into the embrace. A wave of comfort washed over him. Even his wolf perked his ears, and seemed to rumble in contentment. It was the most he’d gotten from his lupine half all day. “Well, I did. Why are we down here instead of upstairs?”

  Jon flopped onto a plush sofa and dropped his head back to rest against the pillows. “Because I almost can’t hear her pain from down here.” He rubbed his eyes, then pinched the bridge of his nose.

  “Um, aren’t you the one that got her into this to start with?” Amber asked.

  Jon cracked his eyes open to peer at her. “Who are you, again?”

  Chris finally broke away from the hug, but his father left a hand on his shoulder, which h
e was grateful for. “This is Amber. She gave me a lift from the coven’s safe house. Amber, this is my brother Jon and my dad, Reginald.”

  “Charmed,” Amber said, tucking her gloved hands under her arms. “Sorry, I guess it isn’t any of my business.”

  “You’re right, it’s not,” Jon grumbled. “But the contractions are fifteen minutes apart and Mel says it’ll be a while.” He eyed Chris. “Which was why I asked for scotch.”

  Chris held up his hands for a cease fire. “Ben said he was bringing some, so I figured I was off the hook. Besides, it’s the middle of the damn night. Your offspring has shitty timing.” In more ways than one, that was for sure.

  Reginald chuckled softly. “Get used to it. Babies run on no one’s time but their own.” As the coffee machine gave its end-of-brew gurgle, he withdrew to pour a few cups.

  “I should probably head back,” Amber said.

  Frowning, Chris shook his head. “You shouldn’t go alone. There are a couple of bedrooms down here if you want to sack out for a while. I’m sure we can get you back in the morning.”

  Amber made an uncertain face. “We didn’t exactly tell anyone we were going.”

  Chris blinked. “You didn’t leave Cathy a note?”

  “I thought I’d be coming back.”

  Sighing, Chris took out his phone to send Cathy a message. “I’ll take care of it.”

  Reginald handed Chris a cup of coffee, forcing him to switch to one-handed texting, then walked over to Amber. “I’ll show you where you can lie down, dear.”

  The two of them walked down the hall, and Chris headed over to join Jon on the couch. He offered the father-to-be the mug of coffee. He looked like he needed it more than Chris did.

  Jon took it with a nod of thanks and sipped from it. “You okay? You look like shit.”

  “I’ve been getting that a lot lately. But I’m okay.”