It took nearly half an hour before she found it, a tiny gold thing that was small enough to fit beneath a badly stained bowl without making it sit sideways, and by then I was so relieved that all I said was, “Good, let’s go!” without complaining about the wait.
“I’m coming, I’m coming,” promised Erica. “I’m really sorry, Pet! But I couldn’t leave it, especially not tonight!”
We hurried toward the side of the store and the door out, the store empty and ghost-like around us. I was feeling antsy now, prickles up and down my back where I might have had hackles if I was…you know, a wolf. I would have jogged all the way across the fridge and freezer section if it hadn’t been for Erica trailing behind me.
Oh yeah, I was very antsy.
It was such a relief to see the door that led out into the alley that I didn’t see the person standing by the end of the freezers until he moved, black hoodie separating from the display of black labelled frozen yoghurt behind him.
Metal studs caught the yellow light above.
“Ah heck,” I said.
“Found you,” said Daniel, through his teeth.
Chapter Twelve
Erica whimpered, and I tried very hard not to sigh in irritation. If she hadn’t waffled around for the last twenty minutes, we would already have been safe at her house.
“Go home, Daniel,” I said. “You shouldn’t be around Erica.”
He laughed, but it sounded almost like a sob, and there was a feral yellow gleam to his eye when he said, “That’s funny. I just came to talk.”
“Yeah?” I edged sideways a bit. Here in the store it was hard to see Between, but I could see the yellow in his eyes, and that was enough. I didn’t know whether it was because I was getting so close to being wolf, or because of being able to see things like Between, but I knew he was close to turning wolf.
“Why are you here?” he demanded. “I told you to go home!”
“Left my hoodie here,” I told him. Good thing I had, or Erica would have met Daniel alone—and that would have been a mess I didn’t know how to clean up. “You know there’s a whole lotta cameras in here, don’t you?”
“I don’t care about cameras!”
“Yeah, I figured,” I muttered. “C’mmon, Erica. Let’s go home.”
“I—” Erica looked around wildly and grabbed at my arm. “I—I can’t!”
“Exactly; she can’t,” said Daniel. He looked broader and taller today; less like a boy and more like a man. “We’re going to talk.”
“You can talk with her when the others get here,” I said. Flaming heck, I wish I’d been able to call Zero.
“I’m going to talk with her now! Mind your own business and go home!”
“Yeah, I don’t think so.”
Daniel let out a sound of frustration that was almost a growl, and Erica began to cry.
“I killed a man for her, you know?” he said.
“Yeah, I know,” I said, huffing a sigh.
“I didn’t…didn’t ask you to do that!” sobbed Erica, clinging to my sleeve.
I twitched my sleeve away from her. “Look, can you stop crying on me?”
She hiccoughed on a sob. “What?”
“It works on the blokes, but Wolf Boy already knows you were playing him.”
“What?” she said again—bewildered, lost, helpless.
“And I’m not a bloke.”
The frightened helplessness dropped from Erica’s face like a snakeskin.
“What a pain in the neck,” she said, carefully dabbing away the tears. “I’ll have to work myself up to tears again later.”
“Not on my account,” I said.
“Not on yours,” she agreed. “You were so helpful and caring before—really useful! What gave me away?”
“I didn’t realise it earlier because I wasn’t used to feeling a pack pull from anyone, but it must have been working away in the back of my mind, because as soon as you used your pack leader pull on me to not call Zero, I knew. You’ve been trying to steal me from the start, haven’t you? What am I, a replacement idiot for him, or just someone to make you stronger?”
Erica snorted. “Steal you? You’re rootless; open to anyone who wants to bring you in.”
Daniel, still through his teeth, said, “I warned you, Pet! Why couldn’t you mind your own business and stay away!”
“What warning?” I demanded. “All you did was glare at me and snarl at me!”
“I was warning you to stay away from her!”
“Use your words next time, you flamin’ galah!” I told him. To Erica, I said, “I’m not rootless, you know. I’m already part of a pack, so your pull doesn’t work on me.” I thought about that, and added, “Well, it doesn’t work properly, anyway. When I didn’t know what it was I went along with it by instinct, but now that I’ve recognised it, turns out I can refuse it.”
“A pack? With a vampire and two Behindkind fae?” Her voice was only amused, but her face was contemptuous. “It gave me a shock, I’ll admit; seeing them all in the same room together. I knew what you were up to, but I didn’t realise Behindkind were investigating as well. They certainly won’t come to the aid of a human, if that’s what you’re thinking. They have their own reasons for investigating, I’m certain.”
“It’s a temporary pack,” I said, frowning. “And it’s not like your pack is looking like a flamin’ healthy place these days. At least we’re not killing each other.”
Well, not yet, anyway; JinYeong certainly didn’t mind the idea of killing me, and I was pretty sure Athelas was ambivalent about my death.
“Anyway,” I said, “that’s how I knew you were lying about being scared of shifters and stuff. You couldn’t be scared of ’em if you were one of ’em, and since you were able to sway me into doing small stuff, I reckoned you had to be the boss. Is that how you made Wolf Boy kill that bloke for you as well?”
Daniel squeezed his eyes shut and opened them again. “Stop calling me Wolf Boy,” he said to me. To Erica he said, “You told me Chris was trying to take over the pack! He wasn’t even a shifter!”
Erica laughed. “He certainly would have been by the time you were finished with him, sweetheart! I thought he would agree to starting the change when there was no other option, but he fought it right until the end.”
“Are you trying to die?” I asked her. Daniel’s face was very red, and he was so angry he was almost crying. Almost crying, and almost, but not quite, wolf.
“He can’t kill me,” she said. “Not unless he’s trying to challenge my leadership, and then we’ll just see how strong his will is. Bianca couldn’t do it, and she was fighting for her mate—Daniel couldn’t even kill the human. I had to finish the job myself.”
“You killed Chris because he didn’t want to be a shifter?”
“It’s a non-negotiable part of being with me,” said Erica simply. “I thought he was just being coy, but it turns out he really wanted to be human. I told him he’d die if he didn’t turn wolf, and he still refused it.”
“What about the other ones?”
“How many of those do you know about?” Erica stared at me for a moment, then laughed again. “Sweetheart, if your friends know what’s good for them, they won’t meddle with Upper Management. Upper Management has a way of tidying away problems, and they’re already following your detective friend very closely.”
“Good friends of yours, are they?” I asked, unsurprised. “You scratch their back, they scratch yours, that sort of thing?”
“I explained to them that the incidents were matters of pack succession, and they stepped back.”
“I don’t think it was pack succession,” I said. If I could string this out a bit longer, there was a chance—just a slight chance—that Zero would realise something was wrong and come for us in time. If I got out of this alive, Zero was gunna kill me for not calling him—again. And I couldn’t blame it on the pack leader pull, because once I’d recognised it, there had been a minute or two where I could
have resisted. I only hadn’t because I hadn’t wanted to give myself away while it wasn’t safe. “Bianca Terry, yeah, maybe, if you want to call it that. But there were three human victims and only two shifters. What were the humans doing wrong—apart from not wanting to turn into wolves?”
Erica sighed. “They got in the way. I don’t have to answer for the deaths of a few unimportant humans.”
I thought back to the photo of the single female human victim, April Post, her face bright and young, and then to Bianca Terry—the shifter fighting for her mate. “They were too attractive, weren’t they? They were taking away the attention and trust of the other shifters—even the unimportant human one. What about the other human male—the tramp? What did he do wrong?”
“She said April wanted to join us,” Daniel said, his face suddenly white. “She said it didn’t go well and that James went wild with grief and attacked. He had to be put down.”
He would have believed that, too. I’d thought it was just a normal crush on an older woman, but he must have been influenced by Erica as the pack leader as well.
“That’s why you broke up the room at the police station, isn’t it?” I said suddenly, to Daniel. “You were suspicious because of something—”
“Yes,” said Erica. “I thought he might be more useful to me angry, and it looks like I was right. I gave him a hint of what really happened before he got there that night, and he went after the footage just as if I’d told him to do it.”
“You figure he was going to get rid of the footage as well?” I asked, with one eye on Daniel’s face. It was redder than before, and I wasn’t sure whether he was about to burst into tears or into a rage.
Gotta keep her talking, I thought. Zero must be wondering why we weren’t safe at her house; he’d told me to text or call if things went wrong. I just had to keep her talking until he came looking for us.
“No, that was just a nice extra,” said Erica.
I ticked them off on my fingers. “So there was a human who was too attractive; dead. The shifter who was too keen on her; dead. A female shifter who was too attractive and maybe too ambitious, dead. One human bloke who didn’t want to be turned into a shifter, even if it meant being with you—also dead. Seems like a pattern to me.”
“Leadership carries certain perks with it,” said Erica. “If I give myself for the good of the pack, I should expect to receive the benefits of that sacrifice. And the more trust my pack has in me, the stronger we get—it’s a symbiotic relationship. The tramp, though; he actually thought he could blackmail me—he saw what I was capable of, and he still tried to blackmail me! If he’d been able to turn, I would have kept him.”
I tried very hard not to roll my eyes. “I’m pretty sure that the sole attention of every male in the pack isn’t one of the perks of being a leader.”
Erica shrugged. “I don’t expect to be the focus of every male in the pack; just the ones I pay attention to. And I don’t appreciate other shifter women trying to undermine my authority, either; the pack is mine, and will remain mine. Sometimes a heavy hand is needed. Fortunately, I think your friends see things my way.”
“Maybe,” I said. It would have been nice to give vent to the angry negative that had sprung to my lips, but I wasn’t sure it was true. “But killing other shifters is gunna make a difference if there weren’t any legitimate challenges to your leadership.”
“Perhaps,” said Erica, “but I don’t suppose they know about that. I think you only just figured this out for yourself. They still think I need protection, and I’m quite certain they don’t know I’m a shifter. I’ve been spraying enough perfume around the place to confuse the nosiest vampire.”
Ah heck. I’d been hoping she didn’t think of that. “Wouldn’t bet on it,” I told her.
“That’s a shame,” Erica said, smiling. “I think your three Behindkind will be willing to be persuaded when they find me crying over your dead body, having killed the shifter who attacked you. You’re both so delightfully predictable—he came here without even thinking about it. It makes my job much easier. It won’t be too hard to convince the Behindkind, I think.”
“Yeah? How are you gunna do that? Wolf Boy—”
“My name is Daniel!”
“—he’s pretty strong, from what I saw of that body before Upper Management tidied it away, and if you turn wolf, you’re going to have Zero and JinYeong on your tail so quickly—”
“Can you please spare me the creative threats?” she said, and pulled out a gun.
“Flamin’ heck!” I muttered.
What kind of a werewolf brings a gun with them? I mean, yeah, I know there’s no such thing as werewolves and that she’s a lycanthrope, but what kind of lycanthrope brings a gun along with them to a pack fight?
Erica smiled at me. “What? You don’t think I got to be pack leader by letting my animal side run things, do you?”
Great. We were definitely going to die. From here, I could see two bits of metal piping in the exposed section of freezer that might be persuaded to turn into knives if only I could get to them; but I was too far away.
I said, “So, what? You’re going to shoot Wolf Boy—”
Daniel stormed over to me, pushing me back a few steps, and snarled in my face. “My name is Daniel!”
“Do you really think that’s important right now?” I demanded. I managed to fall over one of the milk crates, which was pretty useful in two ways.
One, it made Erica sigh and look away for a second in a pained sort of way.
Two, it put me right in reach of the two bits of metal piping that only needed my hand on them to convince them that they were actually knives made of some kind of slick, dark metal.
Erica, this time numbly, said, “What?” and belatedly began to bring her gun back in line with us.
I threw one of the knives. Just chucked it at her like it would do some good, without planning anything except to wish it would cut off her hand or something. Somehow it hit the gun instead, and something went crack and then thunk so quickly that it was impossible to tell the sounds apart.
The gun landed behind Erica and she moved as if she would have dived for it, but Daniel was a wolf faster than my eyes could make sense of, huge and white, and already leaping.
“Ah heck!” I said, scrambling to my feet with my remaining knife. I didn’t know how to do anything except footwork, and I hadn’t been trained with knives, either. That might have been survivable, but my knees didn’t seem steady, and I wasn’t sure how much I could trust them.
Erica turned, growling, and fur rippled all over her, sprouting dark and thick.
White fur collided with dark in a snarling, toothy ball of furious energy, blood and fur flying.
“Ah heck!” I said again, and fumbled for my phone with my left hand, my right wrapped tightly around the hilt of my blade.
Gotta call Zero.
It wouldn’t unlock, but then it didn’t matter, because something hefty and full of teeth knocked me into a fridge door, shattering glass and shocking every bone in my body. For a moment I couldn’t breathe, unsure if it was me or the glass that had been shattered into a thousand pieces.
Then everything hurt.
Blood mingled with the glass around me. I tried to push myself up to face the thing that had hit me, but wolf Daniel was between me and it, snarling. I couldn’t find my knife but that didn’t seem to matter to my body.
My body said teeth instead of knife, and instead of climbing to my feet to fight, I pulled myself up on all fours. Claws and paws scrabbled against the glass, knocking me over again as Daniel threw himself at Erica a second time.
Teeth, teeth, TEETH! said my brain.
And below that, deep and primal and hot, something sizzled into my being. Pack leader, it said. Protect the pack leader.
Ah heck. My body was trying to turn me into a wolf, and I didn’t think I could stop it.
“Zero!” I screamed, trying to make sense of fingers and arms that wouldn’t stay st
ill. “Zero!”
Wolves yelped, sharp and sudden, and there was a breaking of glass somewhere nearby. I pushed myself onto all fours again, and saw a slim figure rise beside the prone body of a wolf. Dark fur; the wolf was Erica.
I was so focused on that that I didn’t see anything else until Zero’s boots stopped right in front of me. A blade touched the slick tiles beside his feet, clean and shiny, and a dim, still-slightly-human part of my brain said, gloves. Zero had on gloves, and full sleeves of something dark and shiny, and there was a similar shininess to the distant figure that must be Athelas. They were fully prepared for fighting wolves, and they had arrived in perfect time for the Act part of Intent, Initiation, and Act.
Flaming heck, said the human part of me, a bit more strongly. I wish they’d tell me when they’re using me for bait.
“What are you doing?” snapped Zero. “Stand on your feet!”
I staggered to my feet, and they were still feet because he’d told me to stand on them and I didn’t dare disobey. My head was still human when I turned it from side to side to see what was happening, too.
Erica was down in a furry mass behind Athelas, who cleaned a slim, short blade, eyes bright. Detective Tuatu stood between me and Zero, and the still-standing Daniel. Daniel snarled at him, eyes glowing yellow, but there was a film of disorientation over those eyes.
Detective Tuatu lifted his gun, hands shaking, and I threw myself at him.
Something strong and implacable wrapped itself around my arms and avoided my kicking as I struggled to get to Daniel, the wolf-thought still there in my brain that this was now Pack Leader, and Pack Leader must be defended. Human brain knew the human pack, but wolf brain was hot and hurt and confused.
“Put your gun away,” said a voice, distantly; and my thoughts cleared enough to realise I was being passed from Zero’s arms to the detective’s.
I would have bitten the detective to get to Daniel, but he jerked away just in time.
“Ow! Stop it!”
Between Shifts (The City Between Book 2) Page 19
