by Jenn Burke
“Okay, but he—”
“No. It’s not about what he did or didn’t do.” His eyes darkened. “It’s about me and what I didn’t do. What I should have done. I should have tried harder. I should have been a brother in more than name.”
I cupped his cheek and he leaned into my palm. “It’s not too late.”
A puff of breath escaped him. “Yeah, it is.”
“How do you figure? You’re alive. He’s alive.”
“But Priya’s not. I don’t think he’s going to forgive me for not being around for that.”
“You’ll never know unless you try to reach out and fix it.”
“Then there’s the whole vampire thing.”
“So tell him.”
“Right. Like that would help.”
“Hud...” I sighed. “If it’s important to you, we’ll find a way to make it happen. Don’t let yourself be defeated before you even try.”
“I... I dunno.”
“Think about it. When you’re supposed to be awake,” I said in a mock serious tone. “Think you can sleep now?”
“Hope so. But you—”
I kissed his chest. “Watching you come apart was enough for me.”
He traced my cheek with a finger. “I love you, you know.”
I turned my head to press my lips to the tip of his finger. “I know.”
* * *
We returned to Alleys the next night after I got a call from the owner/bartender, Don, letting me know that Logan, Isabel’s boyfriend, had shown up with a group of friends. My gaze was drawn to them immediately after stepping through the door—five young men at the bar, two perched on barstools while the other three hovered over them. They were loud, raucous, and if the empty bottles on the bar said anything, pounding back beer at a rate that outstripped Don’s ability to clean up after them. They all wore T-shirts despite the chill in the evening air, and only one of them had full-sleeve tattoos.
On the drive over, Hudson and I had discussed how we’d handle the meeting—him asking the questions would put the shifters on edge, so I was on point while Hudson hung back far enough his presence wouldn’t spark any more confrontation than necessary.
I approached the group at the bar, wearing a congenial smile, and it took only a few seconds for them to focus on me. “Logan Marchand?” I asked.
The guy with the tattoos swiveled on his stool and stared me down. Other than the tattoos, he was pretty average—messy brown hair, brown eyes, enough stubble that it could probably be called a beard. His nose had a bump in it, as though it had been broken and never set properly. “Who wants to know?”
“My name is Wes Cooper. I’m helping Juanita and Victor Garcia.”
“Who?”
I narrowed my eyes. “Isabel’s parents.”
“Oh.” Some of the belligerence in his gaze dimmed, but he looked away from me. “I don’t want to talk about her.”
I stepped closer, only to be blocked by one of his buddies. He was a preppy-looking guy, like he’d stepped out of an Eddie Bauer catalog. “Look, man—”
“Her parents deserve answers,” I said around the dude’s bulk.
Logan scoffed and swallowed another mouthful of beer.
“Don’t you care that she’s dead?”
“Okay, that’s enough.” Buddy grabbed my shoulder.
Instantly, Hudson was there, his eyes shining gold and his fangs partially descended. “Hands off,” he growled.
Four shifters were suddenly between us and Logan, their own teeth bared. Behind the bar, Don marched over, his dark eyes promising pain if we didn’t knock this shit off. “We’ve got humans on lane six,” he snarled. “So can it.”
“All I want is some information, that’s it.”
“For fuck’s sake, Low, talk to him,” Don said exasperatedly.
“Fine,” Logan said with a sigh. He waved away his friends, but they didn’t go far. “What do you want to know?”
“Were you with her when she died?”
Logan closed his eyes. “Yes,” he whispered.
“But you weren’t mentioned in the police report when they found her,” Hudson said.
“Because I—I left.”
Christ. She died, he ran, and, I presumed, tried to pretend it never happened. “How much did she take?”
“She didn’t OD,” Logan said quickly. “We knew how much was safe to take of—of whatever.”
“Which was?”
“Crack. We didn’t do it often, because it was expensive for us to get a high, you know? We had to take extra, but we’d done it enough we knew what we were doing. I swear.”
“So what happened?” Hudson prompted.
“The last time we scored, we got a dose of something new to try. Our guy assured us that this one rock would have us high as a kite. It was special, new, made for shifters.”
I shared a glance with Hudson. Made for shifters, huh?
“Isa decided to try it,” Logan continued. “I wasn’t sure about it, but she said that our guy’s a shifter so he should know what would work for us. She inhaled a few times and fucking flew. I was about to try it out when her eyes rolled back and she started shaking and...” He shook his head and squeezed his eyes shut. “She was gone so quick.”
“Where’d you get the drugs?” Hudson demanded. “What’s the guy’s name?”
Logan’s eyes snapped open. “No way, man. I’m no snitch.”
“You want other friends of yours to die?”
“No, but...no. I’m sure it was an accident. A bad batch. He’s a good guy, he’d never hurt anyone.”
“Maybe he doesn’t know,” I said. “Someone should tell him.”
“Fuck.” Logan inhaled deeply, then said, “Gee.”
“Got a real name?” Hudson asked.
“No.”
“Okay. What’s he look like?”
“Average height—taller than him,” Logan said with a nod at me. “He’s a white guy with brown hair, and a shifter, but I dunno what clan. Here... I’ve got his number.”
Hudson jotted down the info on the notepad he always carried in his jacket pocket. “Thanks.”
“Any other problems in the shifter community?” I asked.
Logan looked up at the guy who had barred my approach earlier, then back at me. “N-no, why?”
I arched a brow. “That was convincing.”
Buddy sighed. “There are rumors going around that there’s a clan of shifters in the city selling drugs and acting like a gang.”
Logan groaned. “Colin!”
“What? It’s not like it’s a big secret.”
“It’s not,” I said. “I’ve heard the same.”
“People think it’s our group, but it’s not,” Colin continued. “We hang out, drink, run sometimes, and have fun. That’s it.”
“And occasionally do drugs.”
Colin lifted his hands. “Not me. That’s not my scene, and most of us aren’t interested.” He shot Logan a look that managed to be sympathetic and accusing at the same time. “Pretty sure Logan’s done with that scene now too.”
“Yeah. Yeah, I am. Fuck. I’m never going to forget—and then how her eyes were open and she wasn’t—Fuck. I need another beer.”
I could sympathize with Logan, but that didn’t mean I liked the guy. I didn’t. He’d abandoned Isabel’s body, he hadn’t told her parents he’d known what happened to her, and he’d let her languish as a Jane Doe in the morgue while her parents were frantic. It all started with a mistake, but he’d done nothing to mitigate that or show he regretted his actions.
“I don’t know who started the rumors,” Colin continued, “but I don’t think they’re true. They’re too vague, you know?”
“So why would someone pass around a story about a shifter gang?” Hudson asked.
“Maybe they want to give shifters a bad name?” Colin shrugged. “No clue.”
Hudson handed over a Caballero Investigations card. “If you think of anything else, give us a call.”
I didn’t protest when Hudson’s arm around my shoulders guided me toward the exit. All I wanted was to go home and have a shower, scrubbing away the residue left behind by Logan’s scumminess. At least Colin seemed like a decent sort.
“You dealt with people like that all the time?” I murmured as we stepped out of the bar.
“All the time. Especially in my undercover days.” Hudson chuckled, but there was no humor in the sound. “Hell, sometimes I was those people.”
“Not for real. Not where it counted.”
He grunted, his “you don’t know what you’re talking about, but thanks” grunt.
I was about to open the passenger-side door of Hudson’s monster muscle car when dark figures swarmed out of the black night and shoved me up against the vehicle. A cut-off shout from the other side of the car told me Hudson had received the same treatment. For a second I thought it was Logan and his crew, looking for revenge—but then I spotted the assault rifles.
What the fuck?
All the people—and as far as I could tell, they were all men—were dressed in head-to-toe black, with balaclava-like masks that covered everything but their eyes. They looked like a SWAT team, with tactical vests, cargo pants and combat boots, but none of them bore a badge that said POLICE.
One stepped into my personal space, way too close to my face, and demanded, “Where is Priya Rojas?”
“P-Priya?” That wasn’t what I’d been expecting. At all. My brain scrambled to catch up to the change in track. “Why are you looking for Priya?”
“Answer the question.”
Wait...that voice was familiar. “You’re one of the guys who came to the house. I knew you were fishy.”
He grabbed my shoulder and shoved me against the car, hard enough to make it rock. “Where is Priya Rojas?”
“She’s dead,” Hudson called out. “She died months ago in a car accident.” A grunt from his side let me know he’d probably been shoved too. It would be simple enough for him to power his way through our assailants, or for me to go ghost and avoid them, but exposing ourselves to humans would invite more attention than we wanted.
“Who are you?” I demanded. “Cops? Interpol? Let me see your badge.”
“One last time,” the guy growled, “where is Priya Rojas?”
“One last time,” I mocked, “I. Don’t. Know.”
The guy glanced over his shoulder, and one of his compatriots approached. He lifted a hand, and I thought he was going to hit me—but then I felt the energy crackling around his fingers.
Oh, hell no.
“Witch!” I shouted for Hudson’s benefit, then I slipped into the otherplane.
Shouts of confusion peppered the night air—which turned to cries of surprise as Hudson started working his way through the men. His shadow form was dark and spiky, a sure sign he was fully vamped out. I helped him where I could, rematerializing in time to throw someone off balance, or trip them, or whatever. I didn’t access my god powers—my plain old not-ghost abilities were enough to sow uncertainty and confusion.
It didn’t take long before the majority of the men were on the ground, groaning, and the guy who’d been in my face had his hands up in a placating gesture. “Clearly we’ve gotten off on the wrong foot,” he said.
I rematerialized. “You think?”
“Fascinating,” he murmured, watching me.
Hudson growled. “Eyes up here, asshole.”
“Right. I have a card in my front pocket. May I...?”
“Slowly.”
As ordered, his hand moved at a glacial pace to his chest pocket. He retrieved a small black card and held it out. I grabbed it. It had a charcoal-colored shield embossed on one side and over it, the text “Order of the Onyx Shield.” Underneath was a phone number.
“So, not Interpol, then.” I handed the card to Hudson.
“Order of the Onyx Shield?” He frowned. “Never heard of you.”
“I’m not surprised. We have a...specialized mission.”
“Looking for dead women.”
The guy tilted his head to the side. “Sometimes.”
“I don’t know who stayed with us, but it wasn’t Priya Rojas.”
“I see.” He paused. “If she appears again, please get in touch.”
“Why?” I asked. “Why should we trust you?”
“You don’t have to trust us,” he said. “Just know that you shouldn’t trust her.”
Chapter Ten
The next day, after lunch, I handed the card off to Lexi, because I sure as hell didn’t know what to make of it.
She stared at it, flipped it over to look at the back, then glared up at me. “Are you kidding me with this? The Order of the Onyx Shield?”
“Why do you always assume I know everything?” I countered.
“How much shit are we in?” Hudson asked.
I glared at him. “And why do you always assume we’re in shit?”
“Sweetheart, we were accosted by men in tactical gear because we spent time with someone who looked like my niece but wasn’t. How is that not the definition of being in shit? The only question is—”
“How deep.” Lexi pulled over her laptop from the end table beside the couch, typed and navigated the keypad. “Well, I can tell you they’re the paranormal cops of Europe.”
I froze with my coffee mug against my lips and slowly lowered it. “Come again? I thought there were no paranormal cops?”
“Not in North America, no. It was a tradition that never caught on over here, for whatever reason. But in Europe, they’ve been around since before the Spanish Inquisition.”
“Huh.” I started to take another sip and stopped again. “But wait...why would they be after Hudson’s niece?”
“Or whoever looked like my niece,” Hudson corrected.
“Right.”
Lexi hit a last keystroke and looked up. “I don’t know. Honestly, I always thought they were a legend. A bogeyman. You know, ‘be good or the Order will take you away’ kind of thing.”
“But they’re the good guys, right?”
“In theory.” She tapped a finger against her screen. “They have a very strict interpretation of good and evil. Black and white. They don’t acknowledge gray.”
“That’s not necessarily a bad thing.”
She leaned back. “You sure? I mean, technically Hudson is a mass murderer.”
Hud winced, and my heart thumped hard. “Don’t call him that.”
Hudson had killed, yes—to get away from his bastard sire and the sadistic band of vampires he’d been forced into. He’d planned the killing and carried it out, but he hadn’t had a choice.
“And Evan killed Julia Boucher.”
“She was possessed by a demon.”
“I know that, but he still killed her.” She waved a hand in my direction. “And you—they could probably argue illegal usage of a magical artifact.”
Because Julia and her on-board demon had forced me to use that artifact in a ritual to make Julia’s body immortal. The spell had backfired on me when Evan killed Julia, and since I was already immortal, it bestowed godhood on me.
Lexi scrolled down her screen. “There are a lot of stories on the TWW of European witches who have disappeared after coming in contact with the Order. They’re judge, jury and executioner, which is never a good idea. So my advice? If you see them again, turn around and run in the opposite direction.”
“And what if we see Priya—or Priya’s lookalike—again? You think I should call them?”
Lexi chewed on her lower lip for a second. “I don’t know. If the Order is hunting her down,
there’s a reason for it.”
“Good point.”
Her laptop dinged. She scrolled around a bit and her hazel eyes lit up. “We got a hit.”
“On what?”
“The picture of Sam’s mark I posted to the TWW.”
“Yeah? What’d they say?”
“It’s from a clan north of Toronto, up in Muskoka. Got an address.”
“No phone number? Name?”
“No.” Lexi grimaced and sat back. “I’m not sure I like this.”
Hudson stood. “It’s not like we’re going to send her up there by herself. We’ll all go for a road trip, and at the first sign of things being hinky, we’re gone.”
I wrinkled my nose. “What about following up on Logan’s drug dealer?”
“Tonight,” Hudson said. “Hunting’s best after dark, anyway.”
* * *
The drive north was uneventful. The urbanness of the GTA eventually fell away to reveal fields filled with golden cornstalks and bales of hay. Some trees still held their crown of autumn colors, but most had lost their leaves already. The sun shone, but there were steel-gray clouds on the horizon—maybe that snow Lexi had mentioned. Halloween was only a few days off. Hudson was driving Iskander’s SUV, since Isk was still not quite himself. He and Evan were cuddled in the farthest rear row, with Lexi and Sam in the second row, and I was sitting shotgun. Every once in a while, I would ask Sam if anything looked familiar, but so far, no luck.
A few hours outside of Toronto, Hudson followed the GPS down a pothole-ridden dirt laneway. Bare branches scratched at the windows and mirrors, like nails on a chalkboard. I wasn’t sure what to expect once we reached the end of the driveway, but a relatively normal-looking farm wasn’t it.
Hudson pulled the SUV to a stop and we waited for someone to appear. But there was no movement, no sign of life at all. The farmhouse was a modest two-story structure, covered in white boards that could have used a new coat of paint. Leaves were strewn across the entire yard, including the overgrown flower beds on either side of the steps that led up to the front door, and on the steps themselves. In behind the house, I could barely make out the edge of a barn and what looked like a row of greenhouses.