by Chloe Neill
He stood up again, and before I could move out of the way, pressed his wet and freezing fingers to my face.
I couldn’t help the squeal forced out by the icy bit of lake now dripping into my shirt. “Oh, you will pay for that.”
“Come at me, vamp.”
“Not now,” I said, shaking out the water. “That’s too obvious. I’ll take my revenge when you don’t expect it. And it will be devastating.”
He just snorted.
“Is the memorial arranged?” I asked quietly, loath to bring up the clan again, but knowing we had plenty to talk about.
“Tomorrow night,” Connor said. “No one is happy, which I guess is a sign of a good compromise. I won’t be able to take you,” he added, uncomfortable or unhappy about the admission.
“I assumed. It’s fine. It’s for the clan. Did you learn anything else?”
“This isn’t the first time the sheriff has deferred to the clan to handle criminal matters. However much they’re paying him, it’s effective.”
“Effective if they want to be left alone, and get no real criticism of what goes on internally.”
He smiled. “Once again, I don’t have to bother explaining things to you.”
“Well, not supernatural manipulation. I was born to that. What’s the deal with Traeger?” I asked after a moment. “Does he have the cabin to himself?”
“His parents are dead—both killed in a drunk-driving incident four years ago. Both of them way over the legal limit. Father and mother both on the bike, and father turned into the path of a semi. Killed them both instantly. Georgia took him in until he was old enough to live on his own. Still checks in on him. He eats dinner with them most nights.”
“He’s got plenty of anger,” I said. “I think he knows something more about what happened to Loren.”
“He said that?”
“Not in so many words. But he was hiding something—his tone, his body language. He doesn’t bluff very well.”
“And he didn’t know they’d argued?”
“I don’t think so, which raises a different question: If he wasn’t angry with Loren for that, what was he angry about?”
“A good question. I’m a little surprised he talked to you at all.”
“Well, Paisley’s brother, Dante, talked to me. Traeger mostly talked at me. He’s a punk. And not the good kind.”
“The good kind being yours truly?”
“Of course. Hot and redeemable. Not necessarily in that order.”
He chuckled, put a hand at my back. “And what else is wrong?”
I didn’t want to tell him. Wanted to handle my own battles. But she was a member of his Pack, and if we were going to have a chance at this, at overcoming everyone else’s attitudes, we were going to have to be honest. Something that was in short supply in Grand Bay.
“I can tell you’re disturbed,” Connor said soothingly.
“Miranda, Maeve, and Jae stopped me on the way to Traeger’s. Miranda had some thoughts she wanted to pass along. About me and you.”
“Did she?” His tone went flat.
“Yeah. In particular, she’s got a lot of thoughts about who you should be spending time with.”
He muttered a curse.
“I can handle myself,” I said. “And I can handle her. But you should watch your back. In case you needed any more proof, she does not want to hand the Pack over to you.”
“She has nothing to hand over,” he said calmly. “The Pack does not belong to her. And if I have my way, it never will.” He sighed heavily, pulled me closer again. “Damn, Lis. It’s been a really long night.”
“It’s barely midnight.”
“Don’t ruin the moment, brat.”
I smiled against his chest. “Just keeping it real.”
* * *
* * *
We decided food was the way to go. We’d take a break, recharge, and figure out a plan of attack. Someone in the clan knew who’d killed Loren; the body, the trail, the prints all smelled like clan, not like something foreign. We just needed to figure out which clan members were involved.
I’d forgotten about the leftover chicken for breakfast, but it went down well with beer and, in my case, a bottle of blood. Even if it made us both a little uncomfortable to partake of Georgia’s generosity after we’d parted on bad terms.
“Let’s go to the firepit,” Connor said. “Sit outside. Enjoy the evening. It’s beautiful out there, and the fire will be relaxing. And maybe we could even talk to some shifters.”
I smiled thinly. “You’re inviting me to interrogate your Packmates?”
“No,” he said firmly. “I’m inviting both of us into someone else’s conversation—which isn’t quite the same thing.” But he didn’t look entirely convinced of his own argument.
“Okay,” I said, and finished the bottle of blood. “Let’s go to the firepit. But I reserve the right to ask inappropriately probing questions.”
He just rolled his eyes.
* * *
* * *
The weather was cool and just crisp. I grabbed a jacket, and we walked across soft grass to the firepit nearest our cabin, found a crackling fire and four shifters sitting in Adirondack chairs around it. Two chairs were empty.
“Can we join you?” he asked.
“Sit,” said a shifter on the opposite side, his face silhouetted between bright fire and dark lake. “Take a load off.”
Connor took one empty chair, and I took the chair to his right, sipped the bottle of beer as I considered the company. Some of the shifters watched us, considered. Others watched the fire or the lake.
“I’m Rose,” said the woman beside me. Her skin was tan; her hair was short, dark, and slicked back. She wore a tank top over leggings; a wide, tasseled scarf was bundled around her neck. She pointed to the older woman beside her. “This is Patsy,” she said, then moved counterclockwise around the circle. “That’s Gibson, and my sister Ruth.”
They all acknowledged the introductions. Gibson was a young man with dark skin and cropped hair. Ruth looked a lot like her sister, if maybe a few years younger.
“Connor,” he said, and they laughed. “And this is Elisa. She doesn’t bite. Unless you ask nicely.”
The shifters chuckled good-naturedly, seemed to relax.
“You’ve stirred up Cash,” Rose said, drinking from a plastic tumbler. “He’s usually pretty low-key, but he doesn’t like being questioned.”
Connor stretched out his legs, folded his arms. “I’m not questioning him. I’m questioning what the hell is happening in this clan that two people died in a matter of weeks. Coincidence bugs me.”
“Loren had his place,” Gibson said. “He was—as all the elders are—concerned about keeping the clan together, keeping it stable. I can’t fault them for that.”
“I can,” Connor said, “if saving the clan hurts the individual shifters.”
Gibson lifted a shoulder. “Who’s to say it does? Things are different out here than they are in Chicago.”
Beside Rose, Patsy shook her head. “That’s an excuse, and you know it, Gibbs.” She looked back at Connor. “Describe this resort, physically.”
Connor frowned at the fire as he considered. “Comfortable. Kitschy. Dated.”
“Bingo,” Ruth said, pointing at him. “Frigging bingo.”
“Bingo,” Rose agreed. “It’s dated. The grounds are the same. The cabins are the same. We don’t want to spend communal money on fancy decor, fine. But the place is falling apart. The floors are stained. The edges are worn. The dock disintegrated five years ago, and it still hasn’t been replaced.”
“I thought there was a dock,” Connor said, lifting his gaze to the waterline. “I figured I just misremembered it.”
Rose nodded. “There was a dock. It wasn’t original, so it wasn’t replaced.
” There was disdain in her voice.
“Hell, shifters weren’t original,” Ruth said, “and that didn’t stop us from moving in.”
“Right?” Rose agreed. “I’m fine with not changing things, with retro. But when things start to fall apart, and we pretend it isn’t happening? No. Unacceptable.”
“You’re stagnating,” I suggested.
“Something like that,” Ruth said, nodding. “We’re so busy protecting the clan that existed twenty years ago that we aren’t paying attention to the clan that exists now.”
“Why the obsession with the past?” I asked. “What’s the appeal?”
“They were at the top of the pile back then,” Rose said as the fire popped, sent up a spark that blossomed in the air like a Roman candle. “The resort was basically new, the elders young and strong. Cash and Everett were married. There was money in the bank, and being a shifter was still secret. And because of that, sexy.”
“You’ve got a secret power,” I offered, “so you’re basically a superhero.”
“Exactly. Times were good—or seemed to be in hindsight. There was always the usual drama. Humans curious about the ‘cult’ that lived together in the abandoned resort, humans who came around to freeload or preach, someone’s wife runs off with someone else’s husband.”
“Or wife,” Ruth said with a grin.
“Or that,” Rose agreed. “Those were golden times.”
“So what happened?” Connor asked.
“An investment in some kind of restaurant lost us some money. Cash’s wife died, and Everett’s ran off, and they both got grouchier. Normal wear and tear on the resort evolves into shabbiness and dilapidation. That entire generation got older, had kids. And never stopped talking about when things were better. Kind of lived in the snow globe of those better days, if that makes sense.”
“It does,” Connor said. Brow furrowed, he looked like he was considering saying something else, but wasn’t quite sure whether to voice it. And lifted his gaze and looked around the shifters, considered. “And the newest generation. They want different things?”
“Different and better,” Gibson said. “They don’t much like the elders, don’t agree with how they’re running things. Unhappy with the resort’s condition, unhappy with how Paisley’s death was handled.”
“They have the strength to make a change?” Connor asked.
Gibson whistled low, and the discomfort the question had triggered was keen in the irritating prickle of magic. “Let me put it this way,” he said, “and I’m sure these ladies will disagree with me if I’m wrong.”
That elicited a chuckle of agreement.
“I don’t think Cash, Everett would survive a takeover,” he said quietly, voice barely audible above the crackle of the fire. He didn’t want his voice to carry beyond the circle. “They aren’t strong like they used to be, and they don’t train like they once did. Complacent, I guess. But I don’t know of anyone who’d challenge them. Who’d want the clan bad enough to take on that fight.”
“No other alphas?”
“Not at the right age,” Ruth said. “Teenagers who aren’t ready, young parents who aren’t interested.” She shrugged. “They thought they’d have better lives in town, so they went to Duluth, Minneapolis, Chicago.”
She sounded certain. But I wasn’t so sure. Not given what we’d seen . . .
“What about Georgia?” I asked.
“Female,” Rose said. “For better or worse, clan’s patriarchal, like most of the Pack.”
I could accept that that was the pattern, even if I disagreed with the necessity of it.
“So why do you stay?” I asked.
“Just look,” Ruth said, gesturing toward the lake. “And listen.” Quiet fell, revealing the songs of humming frogs, the sounds of water on the rocks, the crackle of the fire, the wind through the trees to our left. And somewhere beyond it, the sound of laughter.
I looked in the direction of the trees, half expecting to see lights or movement.
“It’s the Stone farm,” Connor said, gaze lifting to the thin tower of smoke that rose over the canopy. “Probably having a party over there.”
“Carlie’s family?” I asked.
He nodded. “She and her grandmother. The clan’s territory extends right up to their property line at the edge of the woods.”
“Technically,” Gibson said, “clan territory runs just past the woods, but the Stones are good people, and we don’t worry too much about that.”
“Now that you’ve grilled us,” Rose said after another quiet minute, and another sip of beer, “I feel like we should interview you.”
“All right,” Connor said. “That’s fair.”
“You’re taken, right?” Ruth asked. “I mean, I play for a different team,” she added with a grin, “but we have a younger sister.”
Connor slid me a glance, smile slow and sly. “I’m not currently accepting applications.”
Since we hadn’t discussed exclusivity, I figured that answer was more than fair.
“Damn it,” Ruth said with good humor. “Ah, well.” Then she cleared her throat, the sound a little nervous. “But that wasn’t the real question. We want to know about your intentions with the Pack.”
Connor watched her for a moment. He didn’t ask what she meant or that she clarify. Just considered the question like it was one of the most important he’d ever been asked.
And maybe it was.
“Apex,” he said.
“You want to be Apex?” Ruth asked carefully.
A tricky question, I thought. Did an alpha predator and presumptive Apex “want” to be Apex? Or was it just an unquestionable state of being?
“I am alpha,” he said, looking at each of them. “And my father is Apex. It’s up to him and the Pack when his tenure is done. Up to the Pack to determine whether I’m next. But I don’t intend to step away.”
There were considering nods. Ruth had opened her mouth to ask another question when screams cut through the darkness, echoing around us in a cloud of sound with no apparent starting place.
Silence fell again. We stood one by one, quietly and slowly, and we waited, bodies tense and still, for another sound to penetrate the quiet.
There was another scream. And this time, the direction was clear.
It was coming from the Stone farm.
“Carlie,” Connor said.
Clothes were discarded and light flashed as humans became wolves, shifters running full out toward the possibility their human friend was in danger. Or worse.
Connor looked back at me. “Go,” I said.
“You’re sure?” He searched my face.
“I’m sure.” I flipped the dagger from my boot. “And I’m armed.”
He slipped a hand through my hair and pulled me against him, kissed me hard. “Follow the trail. It’s a good half mile to the farm. There’s a V just before you get there. Go left.”
“I’m right behind you,” I assured him. “Be careful.”
He nodded, ditched his clothes, and ran.
Dagger tucked away again, I took off after him.
FOURTEEN
I was fast, but they were faster—proving that four supernaturally enhanced legs were in fact better than two.
As I pushed through the darkness, it worried me that I couldn’t even hear their footsteps ahead—until I realized it was smarter to track them by magic rather than by sound. I reached out for that, caught the sizzling trail off to my right, and pushed harder. It took only a moment to hear the battle, then to smell it.
And then to emerge from the woods . . . and step directly into hell itself.
The woods edged into the cleared land of the Stone farm, furrowed rows of dirt either left fallow for the season or already cleared of whatever green they’d held. Now, in the warmth of late summer, there were
only scraps of what had once been growing.
The farmhouse was on the other side of the field, white clapboard and guarded by a windbreak of trees on the opposite side, all of it on a gentle rise that offered a view of the lake.
And ten yards from the tree line, a bonfire that might have sprung from one of Dante’s hellish circles. Wood and brush had been piled six feet high, and the flames licked the sky several feet above that. There’d been chairs, but they were tossed, scattered across the field along with empty beer bottles and an upturned cooler.
Some of the humans were running, screaming. Others were down, blood staining the earth and scenting the air. Five wolves—the shifters from the firepit, including Connor—stood between the humans still on their feet and the monsters who’d attacked them.
They were wolves, but not wolves.
They were beasts. And they were enormous—twice as wide as a human, and nearly as tall as the fire itself. Their bodies were generally wolflike, if wolves stood on two legs, had claws as long and sharp as icepicks, and narrow, gaping muzzles with fangs nearly as long as their claws.
The wicked hour had come, I thought ruefully. But these were no cryptids, no myths. They were as real as I was.
There were four of them. Going by fur: silver, brown, red, and black. But their fur was matted and bare in spots, showing what appeared to be human skin beneath. For all their bulk, they were skinny enough that bone and tendon were visible beneath that thin skin.
Stringy strength, Beth had said, and I understood now what she meant.
And since blood and human and smoke and clan were the only scents in the air, they were undeniably clan, even if their magic was fractured. How had this happened?
They stood together, swatting at the wolves as if they were nothing more than irritating pests, but they didn’t seem entirely certain what to do next. At least until the brown beast stepped forward, raised his muzzle to the sky, and let out a howl that lifted every hair on the back of my neck . . . and had the monster paying attention.
He threw out his hand and sent a black wolf flying through the air, until it landed with a horrible whimper on the dirt twenty feet away. It rolled to its belly, whimpered again. Then rose on shaky legs, shook off the fall, and prepared to lunge again.