“You just tell me what to do,” Eddie said.
Great. Eddie might be the de facto leader, but Zach was the team torturer. My stomach twisted.
“What about this one?” Shelley asked. She had moved to Stearn’s partner and was sitting on his lap. He was trussed to the chair but leaning as far away from her as he could get.
“Let’s search him,” Austin said.
“Not yet,” Zach said shortly. “Time for that later.”
Eddie pulled a Bowie knife out of a sheath on his belt. He handed it handle-first to Austin. “Here ya go. Don’t let him shift on you.”
“Don’t start on him yet,” Zach told Austin. “Just keep him from moving.”
Austin nodded and stood behind the other shapeshifter, knife at the ready.
“We could use some cold water,” Zach said to me. “As much as you can carry.”
I grabbed the ice bucket and slipped outside, glad to leave for a moment. When I returned to the room, I used the bathroom to turn the ice into ice-water. Then carried it back into the room.
Austin was pulling the curtains all the way closed and Eddie and Shelley were finishing gagging our captives with more shredded bedsheets. One of the wolves continued to glare, but his partner just looked scared.
“How are they going to tell us anything if they’re gagged?” I asked.
Zach glanced at me. “They’ll tell us what we need to know. I just don’t want anyone hearing them screaming.”
A little chill went down my spine. I had killed before. But I wasn’t sure I was up to torturing anyone.
As if he’d read my mind, Zach turned and gave me a long, level look. “We need to know what they know, Blaize. And they’re not going to just tell us.”
I took a shaky breath and nodded.
“Okay,” Zach said and turned back to the first captive—Jason Stearn.
He started by drawing the knife down along the side of the werewolf’s face. A thin red line of blood trickled down past his ear. The wolf clenched his jaw but didn’t respond otherwise.
It got worse from there. I had to keep reminding myself that these were werewolves. They could almost certainly survive what Zach was doing to him.
Even if it involved removing body parts.
Every so often Stearn’s form would start to stretch, to change. At those moments, Zach tossed ice-cold water into his face. At one point, he poured tequila over the spot where Stearn’s ear used to be. It took two full pitchers of water to stop the change that time.
I took every chance I could to leave the room to get more ice water.
I had to turn away several times, my stomach churning.
Eddie and Austin looked on passively.
Shelley, however, settled down onto the other shifter’s lap and began narrating what was happening in a crooning voice. It gave me chills to hear her say things like, “See what you’ve got waiting for you, honey? You sure you don’t want me to take over when it’s your turn?” She ran a fingernail lightly down the side of the shifter’s neck and he shuddered.
“That’s one cold bitch,” Austin said to me as he watched Shelley play with her victim.
“I’m beginning to realize that,” I said.
My shudder matched her victim’s.
Chapter 7
Cold bitch or no, it was Shelley’s technique that finally got us the information we were after.
When the first werewolf’s second ear came off and landed with a sickening plop at his partner’s feet, the partner began to whimper. I looked over and saw Shelley’s head bent to his, her lips brushing against his ear as she whispered.
The other were nodded at something she’d said, and Shelley looked up at Zach. When Zach nodded, she pulled the gag out of the second were’s mouth.
The first werewolf growled through his gag, trying to stare the other man down.
The second man wouldn’t meet Stearn’s gaze.
“Okay,” said Zach, moving from Stearn to the other man. “Let’s start easy. What’s your name?”
“Gordon,” the man said. “Gordon Granger.” His voice was a raw whisper.
Zach motioned to me and I handed him a glass of cold water. Zach gently held it up to Gordon Granger’s mouth. The man took a careful sip but coughed anyway. His partner snarled from across the room. Zach held the glass out behind him. “Toss this on the wolf, would you?” he asked. He let go without looking to see who had taken the glass from him. Eddie turned and threw the water in the wolf’s face.
“So, Gordon,” said Zach, all his attention on Granger. “Who sent you?”
“My alpha,” Granger said.
“Good,” said Zach. His voice was soft and soothing. “Just keep telling the truth and you’ll be fine.” Then he bared his teeth at Granger in a smile that was anything but soft or soothing.
Granger whimpered again.
Zach’s smile grew even wider. “So. The Council sent a subordinate out with a dominant wolf? Are they crazy? Or do you have a death-wish, Granger? Which is it?”
“Neither one,” Granger squeaked.
“Then what?”
“He’s my brother,” Granger said.
“Different last names,” Zach pointed out.
“Half-brothers,” Granger qualified. “He wouldn’t hurt me.”
Across the room, Stearn growled.
“Doesn’t sound all that much like brotherly love to me,” Zach said.
“He wouldn’t hurt me,” Granger insisted. “He protects me.”
Zach leaned away from Granger again. “Huh. Interesting,” he said.
“Zach, honey,” Shelley said from her new position on the nearest bed, “Not to be pushy, but do we really have time to work out all the intricacies of his family connections?”
“You’re right,” Zach said. He visibly drew his attention back to the shifter. “So. What did the Council tell you to do?”
“Follow her,” Granger said, jerking his chin toward me.
“Just follow her?”
I saw Granger swallow. “No,” he said. “We were supposed to take her out.”
“So why didn’t you?”
Granger dropped his eyes. “First we couldn’t find her.” He grew silent.
“But then you got to her hotel room,” Zach prompted.
“She wasn’t there,” Granger said. “So Jason decided to go inside. You know, wait for her. But when the door opened, it was someone...some thing...else. And it...she...had another guy she dragged in behind her.”
I felt my stomach twist. “Oh.” I felt faint and had to sit down. “Who was she dragging?”
Granger shook his head. “Don’t know. Someone else following you.”
“But human,” Zach said. It wasn’t a question.
“Yeah,” Granger agreed. “Not a shifter.” He paused. “When she tore into him, we ran.”
“So what were you and your brother supposed to do next?”
Granger glanced toward Stearn but quickly looked away. He didn’t answer.
“So you followed her here,” Zach said.
“Yeah.”
“Once you’d taken her out, what were you supposed to do?”
Stearn growled. Granger whimpered.
“Yo, Zach,” said Eddie. “You might want to take a look at this.” He pointed at Stearn, whose face was visibly elongating. “I’ve dumped two pitchers of ice water over him and he’s still changing.”
“Dammit,” Zach said.
“I’ll be right back.” Austin left the room, and when he returned, he had a huge syringe in his hand.
“Smart,” Eddie said.
“It’s for horses,” Austin explained. “A sedative. It should keep this guy from changing.”
“Good idea,” said Zach. “Give him whatever dose you’d give your horse.”
My eyes widened. “Really?”
“He’s got the metabolism for it.” Zach turned back to Granger. “So,” he said. “How about you? You going to shift on us?” Granger shook his head. “Good. Now tell
me what you were supposed to do after you’d killed Blaize.”
Granger swallowed and his eyes flicked toward me once. “We were supposed to call our alpha and tell him the job was done.”
“What’s his number?”
“It’s in my cell.”
“Perfect.” Zach fished around in the shifter’s pockets until he came up with the phone. He scrolled through the numbers, then turned the screen to Granger. “This one?” he asked.
Granger nodded. Zach hit the send button and nodded at Austin, who got ready to slide the syringe into Granger’s arm. Stearn was already slumped over in his chair.
We all waited in silence. We could hear the male voice on the other end of the line when he answered. “Go,” he said.
“It’s done,” said Zach shortly, then hung up. He turned to the rest of us. “Maybe that will throw them off for a while.”
Shelley crossed her fingers and held them up.
“What now?” I asked.
“Now,” Eddie said, “we take these two back to Gwen, while you and Wolf see if you can get the Beast’s scent.”
“If you want a ride back, you’ll have to wait for me,” I said. “You can’t have my van.”
Eddie’s smile was disconcerting. “Oh, I know. If we’re still here when you return, we can discuss it then.”
I didn’t trust that smile.
But I didn’t have much choice at the moment.
“Let’s go, Wolf.”
Chapter 8
Wolf circled the room a couple of times, and then led me outside to the parking lot, where he stopped at an empty lot and whined.
And suddenly, I knew what was going on.
I couldn’t have said how I figured it out, but I was absolutely certain.
I raced back into the hotel room. “I have to get back out to the pack lands, now.”
“But we’re not done here,” Shelley whined.
“I don’t have time to wait for any of you. That’s where we’ll be.”
They were werewolves, I reasoned as my tires spun out in the parking lot. They could get out to their pack lands on their own four legs, if necessary.
Wolf sat tensely in the van’s passenger seat as I sketched out my theory for him. “This was all a ruse,” I said. “The Sierra Vista pack doesn’t give a shit about me. Why would they? So I took a couple of wolves out. So what? Killing me would be a nice bonus, but what do they really want?”
I paused as if Wolf would answer, then continued. “Land. They want the pack lands. That’s what they’re after.”
My mind raced ahead of my words as I filled in the blank spots with my conscious mind—the ones my subconscious had already put together for me. “But those guys back there? They’re from the Sierra Vista pack, and they didn’t know a damn thing about the Beast.”
Wolf’s head whipped around to stare at me.
“Yeah,” I said. “That’s the deal. The Sierra Vista pack didn’t send the Beast to come after us.”
I stepped on the gas.
“Your old alpha, Gwen, is the one who did that.”
THE BITCH WAS WAITING for us outside the pack house. The Beast stood behind her, a looming presence made of shadows and horns and teeth.
I pulled up closer to the house than before, letting my headlights shine on Gwen and her pet monster.
“Well,” she said as we exited the van, “that didn’t take as long as I expected. I guess you’re a little smarter than I realized.”
I shrugged, keeping my Glock trained on her. “Or you’re not as smart as you think you are.”
She laughed, a bright, happy sound—especially when contrasted with the broken-glass sound that gritted out of the monster behind her.
“Shut up,” Gwen snapped at the Beast, her laugh cutting off abruptly. “I decide what’s funny.”
“So what were you hoping would happen?” I asked, my curiosity getting the best of me.
Gwen’s mouth tightened. “I expected you to kill the Sierra Vista pack alpha for me. Then his lands would be mine.”
“And the Beast?”
“She’s a Morrigan,” Gwen corrected me. “A death-eater. She’s been under my control ever since I found her in the hospital, eating dying children. I’ve just been waiting for the right time—and person—to feed her.” She threw a loving glance back at the thing. “She’ll clean up anyone who gets left behind.”
I’d been using the last few minutes to try to figure out what kind of magical hold she had on the creature, breathing in the dust the van had kicked up and using my earth magic to breathe it back out as power that would cling to their bond.
There it was.
Gwen held the cord like a leash, the monster’s invisible collar and chain allowing the pack alpha to hold her tight.
And I knew exactly how to disrupt it.
“Hang on,” I said quietly to Wolf. He braced himself against the dirt, and I reached deep into the earth to gather what magic I had access to.
Then I converted it to pure power.
It swirled through me, over me, under, inside and out, until I could see it surrounding me in a blue-white light that pulsed with my heartbeat.
And as it pulsed, it got brighter and brighter, even as I saw the light encompass Wolf, too.
This should protect us.
Wolf nodded at me as if he had heard my thought.
As the light spun, it grew almost blinding, until I closed my eyes against it. It built even more, becoming almost a sound that reached a higher and higher pitch. With a mental shove, I sliced across the leash Gwen held.
Gwen’s scream echoed across the desert.
All at once, the magic light that was also a sound shattered around us and we collapsed to the ground. It fell like shards of glass, slicing into Wolf as the Beast laughed that cruel laugh of hers.
But I can tap into something bigger, stronger.
I knew it with absolute certainty.
Pulling hard on the magic surrounding us, I opened my eyes and stared directly into the Beast’s eyes, matching her gaze with my own. With an effort, I managed to stand.
Gwen lay crumpled on the ground in front of the monster she’d tried to control.
The Beast shoved at me, her power spinning around me, trying to find a way in.
But that didn’t happen. Instead, I reached inside her with my own magic, shoving it down into her, clasping something deep inside, and pulling it back out.
The Beast screamed. More power flooded through me, whipping through my veins, hot and fast and mine.
Mine.
Mine!
“You cannot stay,” I announced to the Beast. My voice echoed with her stolen power. “Your feeding here is over. If you return, I will end you.”
In response, she attempted to steal her power back from me, circling and shoving and picking at my defenses, trying to get in and take back what had been hers.
I did the only thing I could think to do.
With another shove inside her, I pulled the last of her power into me.
Everything around us exploded, three times bigger than ever before, as the monster dried up, turning to dust—to the earth I could control—and then blew away in a dust devil, picking up small rocks as it went.
I pushed myself forward, draping myself over Wolf, hoping to keep him from damage as I squeezed my eyes shut. To my surprise, a human form wrapped his arms around me, his fingers playing with my hair.
I opened my eyes to discover a bright blue light encompassing us both.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
Wolf nodded, as silent as he was in his Wolf form.
“Do you see that?” I asked in a tone of wonder.
“I think maybe you saved us,” he said, then bent over to kiss me for the third time ever.
Chapter 9
As we pulled away from one another, I stared up into his beautiful, silver eyes, reminded of how amazingly gorgeous he was in his human shape.
And how naked.
“O
h,” I said, casting about for a blanket.
As if reading my mind, Wolf laughed aloud. “I’ll find it.”
He turned away from me long enough to let go of me. I had just enough time to gasp, “Wait,” before he stepped out of the protective shield I’d created for us.
From her spot on the ground, Gwen struggled up to her elbows, stretching out one arm in front of her.
“No,” she rasped out. “Your punishment isn’t over.”
She made a complicated gesture with the outstretched hand, and a flash of orange light licked across Wolf’s naked form like fire.
He screamed aloud, dropping down to his hands and knees as the magical power forced him back into his Wolf shape.
“You won’t win that easily.” Gwen’s voice crackled with pain, but she kept talking, even as she collapsed again. “I might not be able to do it now, but if either of you returns, I’ll make sure you die here.”
She gasped for air, and I took a step toward her, not sure if I meant to help her or finish her off.
But at that moment, howls echoed across the desert, wolves calling back and forth to each other.
Gwen chuckled. “They’re waiting for me to answer. When I don’t, they’ll hit the pack lands looking for blood.”
I glanced at Wolf, who was struggling to his feet.
His four feet.
“Is that true?” I asked quietly.
He nodded, and I cursed.
“We’d better get out of here, then.”
Wolf growled and took a step toward Gwen. The wolves howled again, closer this time.
“Come on,” I said. “We don’t have time for that right now.”
With a final snarl, he followed me to the van and hopped in.
I paused for just a second. Then I drew my Glock and took aim. “I know this probably won’t kill you,” I said. “But with any luck, it’ll hurt like hell.”
And then I pulled the trigger.
The howls followed us all the way out of Tombstone.
We didn’t stop until we were halfway through New Mexico.
Epilogue
There was death to be had in this form.
Not much.
Scarlet and Silver Page 3