by SM Reine
The werewolf pack, not a werewolf pack, because Abel’s pack was the only one with any power in the United States. In fact, they had all the power. His mate, Rylie Gresham, was the only Alpha with the ability to remotely control transformations of pack members. Even Spencer and Javi, despite having never left Reno since Genesis, looked up to Rylie as their Alpha.
Rylie and Abel were a political force rivaling even the Office of Preternatural Affairs. They had taken more refugees than any faction short of the sidhe. Laying claim to so many American citizens gave them a shocking population, and population gave them credibility.
In every way imaginable, Lincoln was weaker than Abel Wilder.
Abel looked to have prepared this small prison cell—or whatever it was—specifically for Lincoln. It was cramped, but not dark. Every shadow was burned out of the room by a half-dozen spotlights aimed directly at Lincoln. A car battery waited beside Abel’s chair, with jumper cables that weren’t intended to be hooked up to a car.
Lights and electricity for self-defense meant Abel thought Lincoln was still possessed by a demon. Or that he’d become a demon after Genesis.
Lincoln made no sudden movements. “I’m human.”
“Exactly the bullshit a demon would say.” Spotlights glistened on the swells of Abel’s deltoids, his arched traps, his vein-corded forearms. One side of his body was a mess of pink peaks and valleys, including his bared chest. Being half-dressed meant that Abel was ready to shapeshift at a moment’s notice—ready to kill Lincoln. “Prove you’re not a demon and I’ll let you out. Maybe.”
“How am I supposed to prove a negative?” Lincoln asked.
Abel’s chuckle was the threatening roll of thunder over the mountains. “You don’t gotta. I know what you are. I know what you’ve done. All I need to hear before I kill you is this: why’ve you been killing people in Mortise?”
“I haven’t been killing anybody.”
“Then what the fuck are you doing back in my territory?” The last word came out as a lupine snarl.
“I lived here decades before your pack moved in,” Lincoln said. “I have a family here. I belong here.”
“Then you left,” Abel said bluntly. “So if you’re back, I’m thinking you’re into some kind of trouble. I’m thinking maybe you’re the cause of all the trouble I’ve been having lately.”
“I’ve got no reason to mess with the pack.” Lincoln swallowed his anger down before he did something that would inspire a werewolf to pop his head off like a cork. “I don’t know what trouble you’re talking about, or why I’d be in it.”
“I met with the sheriff, Noah Adair. I recognized your smell on him.”
“Noah is the sheriff? Noah?”
“You’re admitting you know him,” Abel said.
“He’s my brother-in-law. But I haven’t seen Noah for years.” And Lincoln would have desperately hoped to never see him again, unless it was in handcuffs. “My cousin called me here. My dad’s dying. I swear on Elise’s swords that’s all I’ve got going on.”
Abel nodded, like he understood. Then he tilted his head, slid his nose behind Lincoln’s ear. Abel inhaled the scent at the back of Lincoln’s neck.
He knew that the Alpha was a big guy, but he didn’t know exactly how big until the man was folded over him, blotting out all those spotlights. Even if he hadn’t been hog-tied, Lincoln would have been outmatched.
Abel took his time sniffing around Lincoln, circling him slowly. The werewolf moved fluidly, and his flesh rippled as though he had more muscles than the average human. Lincoln didn’t remember the man ever looking this shredded. When their paths had first intersected, Abel had been in his early twenties, his musculature incompletely developed.
It had been a brutal few years. The famine after the Breaking had burned away the last hints of anything soft and young and vulnerable from the Alpha.
Now he was muscles wrapped around rage that could transform into a clawed monster.
Abruptly, Abel stepped away. “You smell weird, but you don’t smell like a demon. And you don’t smell enough like Sheriff Adair to be conspiring with him.”
“So am I gonna have to kill you to escape or not?” Lincoln asked.
“Any day you want a fight, I’m ready.” He rolled his hands into fists, arms corded with rage. “Are you?”
“I would not choose to fight such a warrior,” Inanna said. She had appeared to ghost in circles around Abel, appraising him from every angle. She nodded. “He is willing to kill, where you are weak. You will lose.”
Lincoln clenched his teeth. “I don’t want a fight. Today or ever.”
“That’s why you’re so weak,” Inanna said.
Abel turned off the spotlights. Lincoln’s eyes ached in the dimness, green shapes swimming through his vision. He could see Inanna even when his eyes were blurriest, though. There was no getting rid of that bitch easily.
“Hold still,” Abel said.
He broke the chains. Lincoln was free.
Chapter 11
Abel opened a steel door effortlessly, even though it was inches thick and must have weighed about thousand pounds. The sounds of the werewolf sanctuary spilled into the room: distant talking, some shouts, hammering, car engines.
“Walk with me,” Abel said. “Tell me more about what’s up with your people.”
Lincoln limped out after him. He was getting too old to be abducted and chained up in one position. “My dad’s dying. He got sick in Genesis somehow, and my cousin thinks he’s got days left. So I’m back to sort out the half-brother stuff. I’ll be gone once my dad dies.”
“John Marshall,” Abel said. “I heard.”
“You did?”
“Everyone’s been talking about John Marshall. They’re opening an elementary school named after him.”
Momentary warmth buzzed through him—pride for his family, and the idea that they’d be remembered for something good. His dad had always been involved in the community around Grove County. Lots of time teaching Sunday school, working with teenagers at camp, volunteering to supervise field trips. He’d have been beyond honored to get recognized for his contributions. But John was on so much morphine that Lincoln doubted he had a clue it was coming.
“Hell of an honor,” Lincoln said, voice hoarse. “Hell of a kindness from the town.”
Abel’s lip curled again, just like a dog’s when another unaltered male came into his back yard. “They asked for public opinions about the school. Took a vote. Rylie won. Should be Gresham Elementary. But they didn’t count the votes from the pack—said the refugees couldn’t vote on nothing. We’ve been here for years!”
“Some of you,” Lincoln said, shading his eyes as he looked out at the valley of the werewolves. “A few gotta be new to the area, though.”
The sanctuary had been much smaller years earlier. He’d never counted cabins, but there had only been room for a few dozen pack members. Fifty at most.
The sanctuary had mutated since then.
Everything that Lincoln remembered from his first visits remained: the original matching cabins, painted yellow with white trim. The aging kitchen with the huge fans for ventilation on top. The picnic tables in the town square. Now there were a hundred more cabins under construction surrounded by thousands of tents. Lincoln stood in the middle of a mountain slope filled with shipping containers propped on cinder blocks. Tired people stood in line outside a couple of the containers, where food service workers handed out raw meat.
Lincoln had been questioned in one of those shipping containers. Abel locked up behind them, and it looked like any of the other containers with its door closed. There was no way for a man without a preternatural nose to tell which ones held supplies and which held captives.
“Everyone who’s coming here is staying here,” Abel said. “We live here too, and we should have voting rights. This is our home.”
“Will it be in twenty years?” Lincoln asked.
Abel’s lip quivered with barely-repressed revulsion. “You�
�re as bad as them. I asked about this ‘John Marshall Elementary’ bullshit when I met with the sheriff, and that was when it all started getting worse. Sheriff Adair’s a dick.”
Lincoln’s hair stood on end. Noah was a dick, but it was different when Lincoln thought it, versus when an outsider said it. “Why were you meeting with the sheriff?”
“Sheriff and mayor,” Abel said. “We were trying to come up with, you know, kind of like a treaty. A way for us to live together. All of us.”
When they stepped up to the edge of the ridge, Lincoln got a better look at the valley. This wasn’t the only place where people were waiting to be fed like cattle. There were more supply lines beyond the cabins, a lot of trucks, and lots more shifters.
Lincoln had heard the numbers. He’d heard that “many thousands” of humans had come back from Genesis as shapeshifters—some estimates in the tens or hundreds of thousands nationwide.
This looked like a city’s worth of new shifters. Without any infrastructure.
“I heard that the OPA had asked you guys to take refugees, but I didn’t realize…” Lincoln trailed off, unsure what he’d planned to say.
“That it’d be hard, messy work? That we’re a sovereign nation inside yours, strong enough to conquer all of you if we wanted?” Abel grinned. His teeth were crooked, and it made him look disarmingly boyish. “Surprised?”
The Alpha drew stares as they migrated deeper into the sanctuary. Compared to the new pack members hoping to be fed, Abel looked like a damn gladiator.
Abel veered down toward the main road, heading straight for the new constructions. “Managing this many people is a problem. I don’t got time for new problems. Luckily, I’ve got you now.”
“What do you mean, you’ve got me?” Lincoln asked. “I’m not a pack resource.”
“As long as you’re in my territory, hell yes you are.” A hundred packmates were toiling over steel-enforced wooden structures, cloning the pre-Genesis cabins. They were building as fast as shifters could move, but it looked like they’d never catch up with population growth.
Few buildings meant insufficient plumbing, too. Some of the refugees were waiting in line to visit latrines. If Lincoln could smell the waste, the much more sensitive shifters must have been dying under the toxic stench.
“What do you expect me to do about this?” Lincoln asked. “Talk to Sheriff Adair about getting more resources than the OPA gave you?”
“That’s not what I want from you. You remember my brother, Seth?”
Lincoln nodded. Seth was a shorter, soft-spoken version of Abel. He used careful words when his brother used guns and muscles. Lincoln hadn’t gotten to know Seth very well, but Elise had regarded him as a great hunter, and that meant a lot.
“Seth’s starting medical school in Las Vegas this semester—first of the new college class. First of our family to go to grad school too,” Abel said.
“Congrats,” Lincoln said.
“Oh, fuck you. I don’t give a shit. He’s out of town learning to be a doctor, is what I’m saying, but he still visits sometimes. On his last trip, he got into local medical records and told me that folks in Mortise are getting murdered.”
It seemed impossible that Lincoln wouldn’t have heard about it. Even his grieving cousin wouldn’t have been able to resist gossiping about serial murders in their hometown. “You keeping it under wraps?”
“No, but nobody believes us.”
“Seth must have left you with proof,” Lincoln said.
“The medical files, which make no sense to me. But Seth says people are getting murdered, and if Seth says it, he’s right.” Abel glowered. “Seth is always fucking right.”
They had reached the main road. There was a man waiting for them at the bottom—a shifter in his fifties with dark hair, a full beard, and sloped shoulders.
Someone that old shouldn’t have looked threatening just standing around. Lincoln still reached for his falhófnir dagger before remembering it was in his bag. “Alpha,” called the new man. “You said that we would talk.” He had a thick accent—Spanish, maybe, but not Spanish by way of Mexico.
“I’m busy. I’ll tell you when I’ve got a minute, Pedregon.” Abel kept walking without even the slightest pause.
“You made me wait long enough already,” said Pedregon. “War won’t wait for the whims of Northgate’s Alpha mate!” He grabbed Abel’s arm.
They both froze.
For a moment, they stared at each other without blinking.
Lincoln’s heart was pounding even though he stood several feet away. He’d have preferred to fight another hydra than get between the two of them.
A low growl rippled from Abel.
“Don’t. Touch. Me.”
The older man looked away first, deferentially lowering his gaze. But there was no submission in his face. He was furious. “I’ve been waiting to talk to you for days after traveling across the world for this meeting, and something has always kept you busy,” Pedregon said. His eyes remained fixed on the ground. “The longer I wait, the more shifters die.”
“You think I’m not dealing with life and death here?” Abel asked.
“You are on good terms with your government. At my home, they’re trying to exterminate shifters. It’s turning into civil war. If you don’t help us—”
“I told you, not right now.” But Abel’s anger had cooled a fraction. He surveyed the other Alpha anew, rubbing his jaw thoughtfully. “Follow me. I’ll talk after I’m done with this guy. Marshall?”
“I’m still here,” Lincoln said from a safe distance.
“Seth linked eight deaths at the Mortise hospice. He says all these people should’ve lived another month, sometimes even a few more months. But they died early.”
Cold trailed down Lincoln’s spine. The hospice. “That can’t be right. What serial killer would bother murdering people just a little early?”
“Dunno, but he’s good at it because it looks natural.” Abel kept walking. Lincoln followed—but so did the rival Alpha. Pedregon tailed them from an uncomfortably close distance. “Seth was guessing that this is the work of a witch, maybe someone using the deaths to power a ritual.”
“That’s a big problem if he’s right.”
First of all, because Grove County shouldn’t have had problems with witches sacrificing humans anymore.
And second of all, because Seth Wilder couldn’t have had the time to look at all the county’s post-Genesis medical files. Had he found every victim?
Was it possible that John Marshall wasn’t really dying, but under attack?
“That’s why I want your help,” Abel said. “Preternatural killings are the pack’s problem, but not a priority. I’d like to catch this killer before it becomes a priority.”
“I’ll do what I can to fix this,” Lincoln said. “But you’re gonna have to do something for me in exchange. I need Elise Kavanagh’s phone number.”
Abel looked as wary as though Lincoln had just slapped him across the face with a leather glove, offering to duel. “Why?”
“You’ve gotta have it. Rylie got real close to Elise, and they were still working together when I left. Rylie must have a way to contact her. Phone number, mailing address, email…”
“She doesn’t got anything,” he said.
Lincoln didn’t need a werewolf’s nose to know he was lying. “I’m not going to work on the investigation unless you come clean with me, sir. I’ve got reasons I need to talk to Elise.”
“Your dad’s gonna die if you don’t find the killer before he works his way down the patient list to him.”
Lincoln didn’t blink. “My dad is going to die anyway.” He stood firm under the weight of an Alpha werewolf’s stare.
Abel said, “So we’re not gonna have a deal.”
“I guess not,” Lincoln said.
“Then you’re not welcome in my sanctuary,” he said. “Get out. And don’t let me see you back around here unless you’re dropping off the killer’s s
kull.”
Lincoln hadn’t wanted to be there in the first place. It was easy to walk away from the sanctuary, even knowing there was an Alpha werewolf at his back who could rip out his spine.
Chapter 12
“Men like that are weak.”
Adán Pedregon’s voice was an unwelcome intrusion into Abel’s consciousness. His accent rolled thick like sludge through the weight of fatigue, and Abel was already boiling with new anger when he turned to face the visitor.
The man’s scent brought to mind vultures wheeling over rocky terrain, black caverns with dripping stalactites, newts bellying through shallow waters. Abel smelled heavy snow and coniferous trees.
Most of all, he smelled prey.
Pedregon was a stag shifter. Abel had barely spoken three words to him since his arrival, but his species and history was written all over his aroma. He was velvet and keratin. He was herd, not pack.
“A man who wants to be compensated for shows of strength doesn’t deserve his strength,” Pedregon went on.
“A man who can’t shut his mouth doesn’t need a tongue,” Abel said. “I’ll tell you when I wanna hear from you. Hey! You!” He snapped his fingers at a passing shifter. It was Krantz, a fellow wolf. “Catch up with the mundane and give him a ride back to Mortise. That big ugly house behind the hospital.”
“Yes sir,” Krantz said. He jogged off to catch Lincoln.
Only then did Abel turn to survey the other Alpha, this time with eyes instead of nose. Eyes were good enough to pick up the important human details. Pedregon wore a burgundy cardigan, fitted khakis. He looked like old money dressing down to blend in. There were no bulges to indicate hidden weapons, but Pedregon wouldn’t need them. Even a stag shifter was still a shifter.
“What do you want?” Abel asked.
“A few minutes of your time, to begin with,” Pedregon said.
“You’ve got until I get home.” He started walking.
The stag didn’t waste a moment. “Our government began exterminating us after the first full moon. El Centro de Inteligencia Cambiaformas was announced the next day. They are capturing and killing every shapeshifter they can reach, and we’re organizing to fight back. Our numbers are few—they acted too quickly for many of us to escape—but if we had the support of your pack—”