I shifted.
Chapter 13
Keep Your Enemies Closer
After a stunned pause, Colin’s eyes widened, and he let out a sharp crack of laughter. “Shamans are so fucking weird, dude. Really? A fucking bobcat?”
Now, I’d never found Colin particularly attractive; he wasn’t quite tall enough, and his muscles were overdeveloped, and he had light hair and brown eyes, and he didn’t hold a candle to — other people. Even so. He was looking at me as I stood in front of him naked, and laughing. And calling me weird.
“Do you want me to burn you alive or flay your skin from your bones, or would you rather try again?” I glared him down, my nose in the air. How dare he? And then I crouched down to dig my clothes out of my backpack, because he didn’t deserve to see me naked.
He made a choking sound that was probably another stifled burst of laughter. “I apologize,” he said completely insincerely, holding up his hands in a ‘come on now, calm down’ gesture that only infuriated me more. “Just — I didn’t expect it. What the hell are you doing here, Jonah? You’re supposed to be Matthew’s prisoner right about now.”
The sound of Matthew’s name sent an unpleasant jolt through me. Why couldn’t he have just referred to the Armitage pack? “I escaped,” I said tersely, letting the obviously, you idiot hang in the air unspoken. I tugged the track pants up my legs and unrolled the t-shirt. “And I’m here to help you. Just maybe not the way you expect.”
Colin tilted his head and examined me through narrowed eyes. “That sounds like the kind of shit a mage says when they’re about to turn you into a diseased frog and then explain how it’s actually for your own good.”
I choked down a laugh of my own. Now there was an idea. I could get behind Parker living out the rest of his life as a diseased frog. It wouldn’t be a long one, since I’d stomp him into diseased green slime. But still. Not a bad idea.
“No frogs. Probably,” I amended. “Not you, anyway. Look. I overheard your phone call.” He startled, his face going red, and started to protest. “No, I don’t know who you were talking to, and I also don’t care,” I said before he could really get going. “But I know you think your pack’s making a wrong move. And I agree with you.”
He pursed his lips. “Yeah. That’s super fucking convincing, dude. You don’t have any attachment to my pack. How do I know you didn’t make a deal with Matthew Armitage? You could be playing everyone against the middle. That sounds like the Jonah I know.”
I paused in the act of straightening my shirt. The thing was, that was the Jonah he knew. It was also the Jonah I knew, and the whatever-pseudonym-of-the-week I and everyone else had always known.
But it apparently wasn’t Arik, which probably came as even more of a surprise to me than it would to anyone else.
And it was disheartening as fuck, because if I couldn’t convince Colin, who didn’t have any particular reason to hate me, how in the hell was I supposed to convince Matthew?
I could spin a story. I could lie to, manipulate, and even enchant Colin if I needed to.
But what if this Arik, the one who was starting to feel something uncomfortably close to partisanship, or even, perish the thought, loyalty, for the first time in thirteen years, wanted to try something different?
Well. Sort of different. It wasn’t like I was going to start baring my soul or anything.
I sighed. “Look, Colin. You’ve been spending a little time with Parker Taft, yeah?” He nodded, looking grim. “So you know a little bit about our history?”
“I know he thinks you’re his mate even though you obviously aren’t and don’t want to be. And I know he wants to ‘violate both your holes until you can’t scream anymore.’ And there was a lot more where that came from, but I tried to tune it out. So yeah. I may not know the details, but I know enough.” Colin sounded as grim as he looked. “And in case you were wondering, if you want to — what were you going to do to me? Light him on fire or flay his skin or some shit like that? I won’t be stopping you.”
Had Colin had some personal experience with an alpha like Parker? Not likely, not when he was an alpha too and a member of a fairly prosperous pack. But someone he knew? Either way, his tone was uncompromising and sincere in a way I couldn’t doubt.
My tension eased, just a tiny bit. Gods, but it said a lot about how fucked-up the world was, or how fucked-up the part of it I’d known had been, that an alpha shifter actually condemning another alpha for rape seemed like a stroke of luck, rather than the standard it ought to have been.
“So you get it,” I said, my voice a little too hoarse. My throat felt thick, and I swallowed hard to clear it. “That’s why I’m here. I don’t want you and the Armitages to kill each other, and I think it’s fucking stupid, but I’m not really on their side any more than I’m on yours.” Lie. My heart skipped a beat. “But I want Parker dead. And if you can help me make that happen, I’ll help you end this fight however you think it needs to be ended.” I drew a deep breath. “And I think the first step in that is to call Matthew Armitage and warn him what’s about to happen.”
Colin snorted and shook his head. “Right. Yeah. You and me, I bet we’re really high up on his list of people to trust when they call with shit like that. And if you are working with him, then me calling him is part of your plan.” He stopped and frowned. “Although I’m having trouble seeing how calling him is a trick.”
“Because it’s not,” I said, pressing the advantage while I had it.
The moon was sinking behind the treetops, and the night wasn’t getting any younger. I couldn’t smell the rain yet, but I could feel the clouds rushing in from the east, teasing the edges of my magic with their pregnant shadows. It was going to be an ugly, bloody, muddy morning if we didn’t do something soon.
“Colin. Sam brought what happened to him on himself,” I said, praying he’d listen, agree, and gloss over the passive-voice construction that left out my having done it to Sam directly. “The Armitages didn’t attack him. Matthew was trying to make peace, you know that. Why was he so fucking dead-set on taking over the Armitage territory in the first place, anyway? There’s nothing there. And the pack’s hardly worth absorbing. There’s no point in this pack war. Your father has to see that.”
“He doesn’t see anything right now,” Colin said bluntly, shoving his now unclawed hands into his pockets. That was a good sign. If he didn’t see me as an immediate threat, maybe we were getting somewhere. “Sam had this fucked-up plan. He was stupid enough to listen to that maniac Hawthorne.” I nodded emphatically. We were on the same page there. “And Hawthorne convinced him and my dad that the way to get a leg up in the new supernatural organization that was coming was to take over any other local packs. Become one of the big players in California.”
New supernatural organization that was coming? The hair on the back of my neck lifted until it felt like it ought to be waving above my head.
What. The. Fuck. I hadn’t heard anything about that while I was with the Kimball pack — and that had obviously been on purpose, because I’d been around for a lot of their planning. And now Hawthorne was dead, and whatever he’d known, whatever he’d been plotting, had died with him.
What had he been doing for those missing two years? The answer hadn’t concerned me much before, but it had suddenly become a much, much more urgent question.
New supernatural organization. Oh, my fucking gods. That’d been tried a few times over the decades, and always ended in rivers of blood and no organization at all. Not something a lone shaman like me wanted to be in the middle of. I cleared my throat, trying for something less insane than screaming demands for details. Fly casual, Chewie. “Has Bill heard from them? The, uh, organization? Since Sam died?”
“I don’t think so. I’m not sure my dad was so eager to tell whoever Hawthorne was working with that he died, for real this time. And I’m also not sure even Sam knew exactly who Hawthorne was working with, actually. That asshole really played his cards close to
his vest, you know?”
Yeah. I knew. And it suddenly hit me that whatever plans Hawthorne had for Nate, they were probably bigger, and a lot worse, than whatever petty power-draining I’d thought it was going to be.
Not that petty power-draining was all that petty when it was you getting drained. An unexpected pulse of hurt went through me. How could Nate do that to me, when he’d had it done to him? My jab about like father, like son had been just that — poking him where I thought it’d hurt. But really thinking about it…how could he? I wasn’t that awful. That hateful. Was I?
“Fuck it,” I said. Much as I wanted to pin Colin down and dissect his brain until more information came out, I didn’t have the time and he probably didn’t know much more in any case. “That’s for later. Right now, we have other problems. If you can’t talk Bill out of pursuing this fucking stupid-ass crusade of his, we have to find another way. You can’t possibly want more of your pack to die for nothing.”
“Of course I don’t. I’m just not sure what we can do.” He sighed heavily. “You really think Matthew’d listen?”
No. “Yes. He has to.”
Wordlessly, Colin pulled his phone out of his pocket, tapped at it for a second, and then handed it to me, Matthew’s contact information already on the screen.
All I had to do was press send. I felt like I’d been frozen in place, caught in some weird magic of Dor’s. Matthew Armitage, right there on the screen. Like he was just a person, someone you could call on the phone, and not — whatever he’d become to me. It felt like he ought to be unreachable. Distant. In another universe.
I touched the button and held the phone up to my ear.
One ring. Then two. I started to exhale. Maybe he wouldn’t answer. I could send a text.
“Yeah. Colin?” Guarded. Defensive. Matthew’s voice, gruff and deep. The rest of my breath rushed out of me in a whoosh.
“It’s not Colin. I’m — I’m calling from his phone.” No shit, Sherlock. I licked my bone-dry lips and started to sweat as Matthew said nothing. “Hello? It’s Arik.”
“Yeah. I got that.” His voice had gone down another octave. “I guess I don’t need to ask where the fuck you are. Should I ask what the fuck you’re doing, or just assume you’re going for round two of attacking my pack? Different Kimball, different day, same bullshit?”
That hurt, piercing me deep in a place I’d thought I’d walled off years ago.
“Different Kimball,” I managed to say. “Different day. And similar bullshit. But this time you have advance warning. And I’m not involved in creating it.”
Matthew laughed, an ugly, bitter sound that echoed in that same place inside me. “Right. I’m sure this call is totally altruistic. Fine. Tell me what you called to tell me.”
I drew a deep breath — a shaky deep breath, but close enough. I hadn’t really expected another reaction, had I? Like, say, relief that I was all right and Parker hadn’t caught up to me? Or even a hello. I’d have taken it.
“Parker and the Kimballs are planning an assault tonight, before dawn. Apparently Jonathan Hawthorne was involved in something. Some kind of supernatural group that’s trying to — I don’t know what, because Colin doesn’t know more than that Hawthorne had a larger agenda. But he got Sam Kimball on board with the idea that taking your territory would give him a place in that. And now Bill’s convinced he wants to carry on, plus now he wants revenge for Sam’s death.”
There was a short silence; I waited it out this time. Matthew was probably having the same WTF reaction I’d had a few minutes before.
“That piece of shit motherfucker,” were the first words out of Matthew’s mouth. He blew out a breath loudly enough to make a rushing sound on the phone. “He dies twice, and still manages to cause trouble afterwards.”
At least he believed me about that part. “I’m not involved, Matthew,” I said, trying to forget how he’d told me he liked the way I said his name. “I don’t want some new world order created by Jonathan Hawthorne’s fucked-up allies any more than anyone else who’s not batshit insane.” Matthew huffed a laugh, which I chose to take as him believing me. “And I want Parker dead. That’s why I came to the Kimball territory in the first place. Then I talked to Colin, and I found out about this.”
“And Colin Kimball’s just — ready to betray his own father. Just like that.” His skepticism was nearly tangible, floating out of the phone. “I didn’t know you and Colin were close.”
Matthew spat Colin’s name like it was something disgusting that he wanted out of his mouth. What the fuck was his problem? He’d been trying to make peace with the Kimballs from the get-go. He wasn’t the type to hold grudges if it was more practical, or more politic, to let them go. And Colin hadn’t been the driving force behind anything that had happened. Matthew had to know that.
“Colin’s ready to help his father avoid doing something really fucking stupid. Even if that means going against Bill’s plans.” I glanced up at Colin and raised my eyebrows; he nodded emphatically. Good. I wasn’t just putting words in his mouth. “He’s not your enemy, Matthew.”
“Right. And he lets you speak for him?” There was that tone again, like he was accusing me of something I didn’t understand.
I bit my lip, hard, and then released it, letting the sting ground me before I answered. Carefully. I had to choose my words carefully. “He thought you might not listen to anything a Kimball had to say right now.”
“Yeah. Listening to him is tied with how little I think I should listen to you. Fine,” he went on before I could argue, “let’s say I believe you that you’re not setting me up somehow, even though we both know how that went last time. I need to talk to Colin directly. Hand him the phone, please.”
I pulled the phone away from my ear and stared at it in disbelief for a second. That was it? No Thanks for warning me, no Are you sure you’re all right, no Thanks for taking that fucking spell off me before you left instead of killing me, which you totally could’ve done and no one would’ve been able to stop you? Fucking seriously? A curt dismissal. Hand the phone to the alpha present, please, so I can talk to an equal.
My cheeks burned with humiliation, and I swallowed down a lump in my throat. I always felt like this when I was angry, dammit. It had nothing to do with longing for something I wasn’t going to get.
I held the phone out to Colin. “He wants to talk to you.”
Colin took the phone, and I crouched down by my bag of magic tools, listening with half an ear. I sorted through, making sure I’d have everything I needed for…well, honestly, I was stalling and making myself look busy.
But it was good to be prepared.
“I don’t want any more deaths,” Colin was saying, his tone uncharacteristically serious. “Except Taft. That fucker can burn as far as I’m concerned.” A pause. “Yeah, that too. But you should’ve heard the way he was talking about Jonah.” He sounded royally pissed, and in spite of everything, it made me smile. The smile fell away when he said, “Fine, fuck, I won’t kill him. I just don’t want anyone else to die.”
Matthew was telling Colin not to kill Parker? Fuck him. Fuck him sideways. My eyes burned, and I shoved a coil of string back in my bag with more force than necessary, breaking a piece of chalk in the process.
Fuck. I tidied up the pieces, my hands trembling too much to fish the smaller bits out of the bottom of the backpack.
I’d missed a bit of the conversation, and it sounded like it was winding down. “Yeah,” Colin said. “Okay.” He nodded and paced in a small circle. “That works for me. I’ll tell Jonah. Maybe he should get there sooner to help with the magic shit. No one but me knows he’s here, so he can leave without being noticed. Uh-huh. I need to go, dude. They’re going to wonder where the fuck I am. Yeah. Text me.”
He hung up and then stood there, holding the phone and looking at me oddly.
“What the fuck are you staring at?” I snapped. “And where did you just volunteer me to go?”
“Back to
the Armitage territory,” he said. “To help them prep. Matthew thinks Hawthorne Junior can set up some kind of magical trap. Catch our pack as we step over the Armitage wards and pin us all down while we, and I quote, ‘deescalate the confrontation.’ Where the fuck did he learn to talk, anyway? Like, he went to the same high school I did.” Colin shook his head. “You’d better get going. Do you have a car?”
I stood, resignedly stripping off my shirt again and rolling it up to go in the backpack. Not for the first time, I wished there was a way to shift and keep my clothes somehow.
“It’s parked in the old campground.”
“We’re supposed to leave here at three AM.” He lit up his phone’s screen and glanced at it. “It’s one-thirty now. So you have that much of a head start.”
That wasn’t much, especially if I was going to have to try to set up some kind of magical booby-trap, with no planning, and with Nate as my partner in crime, gods help me.
But I had to know. Matthew did like to solve problems peacefully, if possible. Of course he wouldn’t want another potential pack war on his hands, this time with Parker’s pack and possibly half of the rest of Nevada.
Which was obviously more important than what Parker had done to me. Of course it was. To Matthew, there wouldn’t even be a comparison. Objectively, even, given the lives at stake, it wasn’t a comparison. Not that I was all that objective.
That lump in my throat had only grown bigger, but I forced out, “Why didn’t Matthew want you to kill Parker? Does he want to ‘deescalate’ with him, too?”
Colin laughed, shaking his head. “No, dude. He told me he’d kill me if I got to Taft before he could. Something about, like, beating him to death with his own spinal column? I guess the way Taft cheated in the fight the other day must’ve really fucking pissed him off, or something.” My mouth dropped open, and the pants I’d just pulled off my hips fluttered out of my fingers to the ground. Colin didn’t seem to notice. “I’m heading back to the house. I’ll see you in a couple of hours. Good luck.”
Captive Mate (Mismatched Mates Book 2) Page 13