by SM Reine
“I figure the real culprit in the middle of this is a witch,” Abel said. “I’m sniffing around for witches.”
“Any luck?”
The Alpha gave a meaningless grunt. “Do you know any witches?”
Lincoln knew plenty. Ashley had shown she was still capable of bringing warlock hexes to her fingertips, and she was far from the only one in his family who knew her way around a ritual circle. He wouldn’t turn any of them over to the pack. “I don’t know any murdering witches.”
Abel smelled the half-lie. “You oughta tell me if you do. I’ve got more and better resources than the sheriff, including a few witches of my own.”
“None of the witches I know are practicing.”
“I’d like to check,” he said.
“I bet you would. But I trust you about as much as I trust Noah.”
The Alpha’s eyes crimped at the corners. He wasn’t insulted by Lincoln’s mistrust. If anything, he seemed pleased that the mistrust was spread among everyone. “It’s not too late for us to work together. I still got better shit to do than witch hunting, and you don’t, so…”
A thought struck Lincoln. “Now that you mention it, Miss Keyes here is trying to patch together an old spell with missing parts. She’s gonna need supplies too. Reckon your witches could hook her up?”
He fully expected a refusal, since Lincoln hadn’t exactly been forthcoming with help. But Abel wasn’t all contrasts with his more generous mate. His eyes got a fraction gentler when he looked at Sophie. “What you need?”
“I’ve been trying to translate a ritual in ancient Sumerian, and the phrasing on this passage is especially obscure. Further, I’m missing supplies that will allow me to execute the ritual,” Sophie said.
“How likely is this ritual to kill lots of people?” Abel asked.
She looked shocked. “Oh none, none at all! Why would I do something like that?”
“Are you for real?”
“Quite so,” Sophie said. She lifted one hand high and placed the other on her heart. “I guarantee upon my honor that my ritual is only for obtaining information and is quite benign in nature. It will be no more damaging than peering at bacterium through a microscope.”
“Good enough for me.” Abel shrugged. “All right, you can come back to the sanctuary. Pretty sure we’ve got a Sumerian expert around. And you can use whatever we’ve got in stock, including witches if they’re game. I was heading back to the sanctuary. You wanna come with?”
“Oh, yes,” Sophie said. “Yes please!” She slung her backpack over her shoulder.
“The striped blue car is mine if you wanna stick that in the trunk,” Abel said. His distinctive muscle car was parked up the block.
“Thank you so much, Alpha!” Her feet barely touched the ground on her way to the car, and Lincoln’s gut gave an unhappy twist watching her go.
“You wanna come too?” Abel asked Lincoln.
“Can’t,” he said. Reluctantly, he added, “I’m not just stonewalling you. I’m trying to solve the case before Noah. I should stay in town and follow some leads.”
Abel’s smirk was smugger than it had any right to be. “Figured you couldn’t resist.”
“You know that means I’ll catch you if you’re guilty, right?” Lincoln asked.
“But we’re not,” he said. “So you’re just gonna clear our names, like you did last time with Elise.”
Lincoln hoped that Abel was right. “Do you know if any of your shifters might have gone off-sanctuary and killed farm animals?”
“No fucking chance,” Abel said.
“Cassidy Farms has had their goats eaten. I didn’t figure it was you, but I had to ask.”
“Cassidy, like one of the victims? They suspects?”
“I don’t think that family’s behind it,” Lincoln said. He heaved a reluctant sigh. “You can check them off your list. I’ll let you know who else I knock off so we’re not duplicating each other’s work.”
“What do you want for the cooperation? I already told you that you can’t have Elise’s number.”
“Just tell me if you learn anything too. We’ll pass information between us. Cooperate all proper-like.” Lincoln couldn’t look away from Sophie crouching in front of the car to closely examine its headlights, like they were the newest wonder of the world. She was giggling to herself over something that probably wasn’t giggle-worthy at all. “If anything happens to her while you’re together—”
“It won’t,” Abel said.
“She’s with me because someone’s after her,” Lincoln said. “A witch that’s trying to assassinate her.”
The Alpha didn’t even blink. “There’s nowhere safer for her than with the pack.”
It was hard to argue with that, but watching Sophie bounce on the springy leather bench seat made Lincoln need to say more. “You have to keep her safe, Alpha. Or you’ll answer to the worst of me.” The part of him that wanted to stick a knife in his mom’s back, who thought that he should always go for the kill, who would have hunted dragons as readily as werewolves. “And I will blame you, personally.”
Abel was watching Sophie too, and he was half-smiling at her. “I’d blame myself too, if something happened. She looks like my daughter, so she’s safe.”
Some knot in Lincoln’s chest unraveled. “All right.”
They shook hands. Abel squeezed so hard that Lincoln’s hand went numb.
Then he left, and he took Sophie with him, and Lincoln was alone.
Chapter 24
Abel drove a car that was long and wide and low. The engine growled like a living animal. “This is an impressive vehicle,” Sophie said. “What is it?”
“My baby, that’s what it is. My first girlfriend.” Abel ran one of his hands over the dashboard. “A 1967 Chevy Chevelle. Best muscle car ever made.”
“What is a muscle car?” Sophie asked.
“Strong cars for strong men. This thing has survived more than one apocalypse. It’s gonna outlive me.”
“I find that hard to believe,” she said. “Historical observations note that werewolf Alphas are strong enough to survive the enormous stress of changing between shapes twice a month, and age-related decline appears to be delayed as a result. Alphas are far from immortal, of course: hunters or other shifters are a significant danger. However, in stable conditions, an Alpha like yourself may have another century ahead of him. Two hundred years wasn’t even unheard of back in the day!”
His eyebrows climbed. “Where the hell did Lincoln Marshall find someone like you?”
Sophie erred on the side of cautious truth. “We met in the Middle Worlds. I reappeared there after Genesis, though we do not know why, as I am not sidhe. I’ve since found myself in some trouble. He’s helping me.”
Abel grunted. That noise that meant anything, from “I don’t actually care” to “you’re lying but it’s not worth figuring out why.”
“I should warn you that at least one person is aggressively seeking my death,” Sophie said. “I’m sorry to spring it upon you like this. Subtlety is not my strong suit, and it’s important that you know before you bring me among your pack.”
“Lincoln mentioned it,” he said.
“He did?”
“Yeah, at the same time he was threatening to kill me if anyone hurt you.”
That sounded even more like Sophie’s guardians than before. Nostalgic warmth spread over her. “He can be very kind when he wants.”
“He never wants,” Abel said.
“Not very often,” she agreed. “But occasionally.”
The road toward the sanctuary was tight and winding. They weaved between jagged rock faces cloaked by blue-hued shadow and tangled ivy. The sheer volume of trees was astounding. They had grown a lot of produce on Sophie’s farm, but all such growth had been hard-won. So many of her waking hours had been dedicated to coaxing soil to proper acidity for trivial plants like tomatoes. Nothing would have grown if not for her care.
The road widene
d into a valley, and Sophie caught her first glimpse of the werewolf sanctuary.
On the western side of the valley, a waterfall spilled into a glassy lake with broad beaches. The core of the sanctuary was picturesque: little golden cottages with white trim, tiny to-die-for gardens, and so much forest for shapeshifters to enjoy.
As Abel drove his Chevelle deeper into the valley, Sophie began to make out less-idyllic details. Like the fact that the trees were hiding a tent city. Abel crept through the town’s main road at five miles per hour and people emerged from their tents to watch their passage. The air that came through the air vents smelled like human waste, unwashed bodies, and rotten food.
“This is your pack?” Sophie asked.
Abel grunted again.
There must have been hundreds of people—even thousands. They were building facilities to accommodate the burgeoning population near the north side of the valley, but those looked to be weeks away from completion, and in the meantime, the pack suffered.
Abel stopped the car beside a large shed painted gold to match the cottages. The door flew open, and a bright-eyed woman pounded out.
“Hey kid!” Abel called, sliding his massive form out of the car.
The woman jumped on Abel and embraced him tightly around the neck. He patted her back as if he wasn’t sure how to hug.
Sophie emerged more cautiously. “Is this your mate?”
“This is my daughter,” Abel said.
They looked to be the same age. “Alphas really do age slowly,” Sophie said, surprised.
“Something like that,” he said. “Summer, this is Sophie. Sophie, Summer.”
“Oh! Hello! Welcome to the sanctuary!” Summer’s hair fell in spirals around her tanned shoulders. She smelled like coconut oil and musky woods. “Are you a shifter?” Summer huffed Sophie’s hair with little sniffling noises, nose tracing the path between two braids. It tickled. “No, you’re definitely not a shifter.”
“I’m mundane.” Sophie was so delighted to have a shifter smelling her like that. She might never stop being delighted ever again.
“Sophie was brought into town by Lincoln Marshall,” Abel said. “She needs witchy supplies and help translating Sumerian. Got time to babysit?”
“Not really, but I’m so far behind on everything that I’ll help anyway,” Summer said cheerfully. She linked her arms with Sophie. “Lincoln Marshall… You don’t mean the former deputy?”
“Yes, him,” Abel said. “Apparently, she’s important to Lincoln, so keep a close eye on her. Oh, and there’s an assassin after Sophie too.”
Summer’s head bobbed. “No problem.”
“Great. See you around.” Abel stalked into the shed that Summer had left, yanking the door shut behind him. No words of goodbye. No more discussion about the assassin, either.
After being treated like every minor detail about Sophie was not only rare, but offensive, it was refreshing to be among people who were utterly unimpressed by those same qualities. She was not dangerous because of her dark skin. She wasn’t even unwelcome because she was being hunted.
“I have so many questions for you,” Summer said, drawing Sophie down the hill toward the cottages.
“However many you have, I’m sure that I have double.” Sophie needed to know much more about the culture of a pack that didn’t bat an eyelash over assassins. “But please, you go first. Ask me anything you like!”
“Start with Lincoln Marshall. I was traveling when he was at the sanctuary in the past. Is he as scary as they say?”
“He’s scary in the ways people say and the ways they don’t,” she said.
Summer propped open the door to another shed, standing aside so that Sophie could go inside first. “I can’t wait to meet him.”
“You can wait,” Sophie said. “Don’t be in any rush.”
“That bad?”
“Many of his attitudes are indefensible yet he’s stubbornly defensive of them regardless. Mr. Marshall isn’t an easy man to recommend.” Even if he got dimples when he used his allotted annual grin.
“Noted,” Summer said. She followed Sophie into the room. “This is our dedicated computer facility. We’ve got some desktops pack mates can borrow, and then I keep all of my servers and mainframe in here too.”
The floor sounded hollow underneath Sophie’s feet—most likely to make room for the cables that draped behind the servers. It was an impressive display including dozens of racks with dozens of machines each. “These are yours?”
“Yep! I almost have a computer degree,” she said with a wink. “Lucky for you, I’d already been working on a program that will translate ancient infernal. It’s an agglutinative language like Sumerian, so it should be easy to tweak as long as we have sample vocabulary.” Summer’s hands were a blur on the keyboard. Her tongue stuck out the corner of her mouth as she worked.
Sophie peered over her shoulder. Everything was gibberish to her. She was more familiar with ancient languages—Akkadian, Sumerian, and even Etruscan—than she was with anything related to computers. “Your computer wizardry looks like genuine magic.”
“It has a lot in common with magic. In fact, when you’re designing new spells, they are structured a lot like computer programs. You have to define the library of techniques and elements in the earliest ritual stages, and then you refer back to them elsewhere in the so-called code. If you don’t use a library and a pre-existing language, you have to design everything from scratch, much like coding machine code in binary.”
Sophie nodded her agreement. Witchcraft was something she could understand, though her understanding of it had always far exceeded her ability. “You know a shocking amount about magic for being a shapeshifter.”
“I was raised by my Uncle Scott. He was a great witch. A necromancer, in fact, which meant that he did a lot of magical machine code, so to speak. There aren’t a lot of premade spells for necromancers out there.”
“Of course not. Necromancers are and have always been incredibly rare,” Sophie said. “In fact, in geneses past, death magic was considered the most powerful of all magical schools. I would be fascinated to hear more about your Uncle Scott.”
“And I would love to talk about him—another time.” Summer rose from the chair, stretching her arms above her head. “My altered code is compiling, and we’ll need to feed it samples before we can proceed. We should see about identifying some of the more obscure Sumerian vocabulary in your ritual.”
Sophie handed the notebook over readily. “There is no way to say this without being arrogant: very few people are smarter than me, so I would be stunned if you can do anything about this.”
“Arrogance is one of the cutest personality traits a person can have.” Summer winked. “But I know someone smarter and more arrogant than you.”
“I find that hard to believe.”
They re-emerged into sunlight to head down the hill. As soon as Sophie’s eyes adjusted, she spotted squalor. The paths were littered with trash. People sitting under a tree nearby glared mistrustfully at them.
Summer waved in response. “Hello! Beautiful afternoon, isn’t it?”
They didn’t reply.
“Your pack seems troubled,” Sophie said.
“They’re not too bad.” Her short dress swished from side to side as she took long strides along the road, forcing Sophie to speed-walk alongside her. “Everyone’s just in shock. It’ll be okay.”
“How can you say that when so many people are hurting?”
Summer squeezed Sophie’s hand. “In the darkest night, the moon still watches.” Summer’s eyes seemed to have trapped the moonlight in them, shining silver instead of gold. A result of being born to two Alpha werewolves.
Summer whistled, waving her other hand above her head. The men working on the roof of the cottages nearby looked up.
“What are you doing?” Sophie asked.
“I’m calling my expert in Sumerian.” Summer’s lopsided grin made her look just like Abel.
&
nbsp; Most of the men returned to work, but one stood, setting his tools aside. His fine straight hair was cut short. He was an exceedingly attractive man, with a fit physique displayed by his snug white t-shirt. And he looked at Summer as though there were nobody else in the world.
He stepped up to the edge of the roof and jumped.
“No!” Sophie cried.
But the man didn’t fall. Wings flared at his back for the briefest instant, each one longer than he was tall. The wings were gone the instant his toes contacted earth. Only a few feathers lingered, drifting to his toes like downy snow.
The man only looked at Sophie long enough to evaluate whether she was a threat. Sophie knew the look. She’d seen it on her guardians repeatedly.
“Nash, I’d like you to meet Sophie,” Summer said. “Sophie, this is my fiancé.”
“Husband,” Nash said.
“Oh, yeah.” She giggled and leaned into his chest, as cuddly as Nash was standoffish. “We just got married. It’s been busy, so I keep forgetting.” She tipped her face toward his. “Sophie is trying to translate ancient Sumerian, but she’s having trouble with some of the vocabulary. Think you can help?”
His lips grazed over hers. “Yes, I can read anything for you.” Nash barely glanced at the notebook before saying, “Give me a writing utensil.”
Sophie came up with a pen she’d stolen from the motel. “Will this suffice?”
“Indeed.” Nash began to write, and Sophie took advantage of his distraction to stare at his pristine features. Nash’s eyes were a vibrant shade of blue, like lightning arcing between thunderclouds. His skin was flecked with gold. He was naturally strong, but lean.
Summer Gresham was married to an angel.
Angels had come into existence in the prior genesis, birthed by the collaboration between Eve and Adam. Prior to that, there had been many ethereal creatures, but none so powerful as Eve’s children.
They were terrifyingly smart—the only creatures that Sophie would agree were smarter than her. Intelligence didn’t translate to compassion. They had hunted all other ethereal creatures to extinction and built cities with their bones.