By the Embers Dies the Fire

by Tymber Dalton

  It did that a lot. Sometimes while he was trying to sleep. But he couldn’t afford to destroy the fecking evil thing yet.

  Not until he took care of this and restored order and balance to his family line.

  Rid them of the evil from within.

  He would do that, no matter what.

  Chapter Three

  Carl Shupe sat in his office and sipped his morning coffee while browsing his e-mail. He had his fingers in countless pies, including expanding his activities in Florida.

  Something was happening down there in Arcadia, and he needed a base of operations close by to figure out what the hell was going on. He had people working on that for him now.

  Then a message’s subject line caught his attention. That’s when he paused, studying a message he’d received overnight from an informant he’d used countless times over the years.

  Reliable, trustworthy, as far as cockatrice went.

  I think this might interest you.

  That’s all the e-mail’s body text had said. Enclosed, however, was a .pdf, a printout of a police report taken regarding one Alexa Borlen.

  Couldn’t be a coincidence that Aliah Borden hadn’t been seen in approximately the same amount of time since Alexa’s disappearance.

  Or that she had an infant son who’d also disappeared with her.

  Supposedly, she’d told the elderly couple she was a live-in caretaker for that she was going to go visit some family and be back in a few days. She’d never returned. Not only had she not answered her cell phone, but her voice mail was now full. The problem was the contact information she’d left her employers wasn’t valid, the address, people, and phone numbers not existing at all.

  So the police weren’t treating it so much as a missing persons case as they were a person who chose to leave of their own volition.

  Carl had made Aliah’s truck vanish. No one would find that. It was now a square block of crushed metal bound for a recycling facility.

  He hadn’t yet located the car the three idiots had used that day when they went with Aliah, but he supposed the wolves had done that job for him. If the morons Aliah had hired were smart, they stole a car that couldn’t be traced back to them.

  Fortunately, this contact didn’t fuck around. He’d provided the full police report, not some bullshit with a lot of it blanked out, waiting for a payout before he coughed up the rest. They’d worked together long and frequently enough to know that, for something easy like this, they could trust each other.

  Carl logged into one of his offshore bank accounts and made a quick wire transfer of five grand to the guy’s account he usually used.

  It was more than the guy would expect to receive for this little nugget of info, but the goodwill Carl knew he’d just purchased by paying out more meant he’d likely get a phone call and an offer to do some groundwork to follow up on it more in-depth.

  That’s where the guy would then begin to earn that extra cash payout. Because now Carl had a starting point to look for the damned book.

  If Aliah had been a live-in caretaker to this elderly couple, she’d likely hidden the book there somewhere. He could work up a story pretending to be Aliah’s family—excuse me, Alexa—or a detective hired by them. Claim she had visited, but then left. Hint around that she’d hooked up with her baby daddy and was traveling with him, and had indicated she was coming back to Maine. That he wanted to look for evidence to where she might be or who she might have been in touch with. He had contacts all around the country. He could set that up to make it look believable, if forced to.

  No matter what, Carl couldn’t afford to trip the radar of Kitty Blackestone. His entire organization, so far, had remained unnoticed by any of the Maine wolves, and he planned to damn well keep it that way, regardless of how fucking stupid Aliah had acted.

  Cameron had to be dead, no doubt about it. He wouldn’t have let Aliah parse out the book that way had he still been alive. Cameron would have sent a couple of pages, one-time deal, and then held an auction for it between himself and probably some European nests.

  The whole thing smacked of Aliah’s short-sightedness. Of desperation. At least Cameron, for his faults, had half a brain in his skull.

  A pregnant cockatrice woman, alone, her mate dead, and cut off from and disowned by her home nest?

  Yeah, that’s what this felt like. The fact that Cameron’s jackass cousin, Gerry, had also gone missing about the time Aliah first contacted Carl only added to Carl’s suppositions. If Cameron and Gerry had tried to pull something and ended up dead, it made sense Aliah would reach out and try to figure out how to make a way for herself.

  Just to be sure, Carl made a mental note to send someone to check out Aliah’s family, as well as the property in Georgia where she and Cameron had been living. Maybe she had boogied out of the area.

  He doubted it, but it never hurt to be thorough.

  Closing that e-mail, he switched to another one from his realtor. He was in the process of closing on a property in Arcadia, Florida. Which might not appear to be much more than a hick Cracker cow town to anyone not in the know.

  It was shifter central south, in terms of population and density of shifters, especially wolves. Those damned Lyalls.

  The perfect location, however, for a base of operations in the area. He’d pay people to live there, pretend to work it, provide cover and gain information. Shifter outcasts of other races willing to overlook the source of their income. Like that one wolf he’d worked with on occasion, who’d been in Rodolfo Abernathy’s organization and frequently provided accurate, if minor, information.

  Unfortunately, that contact, as well as Abernathy, both seemed to have disappeared. Rumor had it that the jaguars had finally succeeded in getting their claws into Rodolfo Abernathy.

  If that was the case, easy money was placed on Rodolfo being dead, or wishing he was. It was no secret that Ortega Montalvo had a hard-on of the bad kind for Rodolfo after a couple of incidents years earlier.

  Even Carl wasn’t stupid enough to try to infiltrate the jaguars. At least the wolves had a “live and let live” ethos, for the most part. Stay out of their way, don’t hurt people—that they knew of, at least—and don’t be assholes to them or theirs, and you could usually keep your hide.

  Not the jaguars.

  Whether it was a cat thing, or a machismo thing, the jaguars would absolutely go out of their way to fuck up someone’s shit in a painful and/or permanent way.

  Especially cockatrice.

  Something Carl absolutely couldn’t afford to happen. Definitely not now.

  Not when he wanted his hands on that. Fucking. Book.

  He let out a sigh and forced himself not to open his tablet and peruse the scans yet again. He was working on a few Eastern European nest contacts, distant relatives who would speak to him as a matter of courtesy, given their bloodlines, but it would take time to earn their trust.

  The last thing he wanted to do was hand over a few pages of copies and then find himself inundated by assholes wanting to steal those from him.

  This required finesse. Patience.

  And probably a shit-ton of money.

  * * * *

  Lina made it over to the house first, alone, at ten thirty-five. She offered Elain a playful smile.

  “What?” Elain grumbled.

  “Someone took a little jaunt yesterday.” She pointed to where Jasper was watching them from where he lay next to Joss and Connor on the floor. Ellie was asleep in her carrier next to them.

  “Lacey asked me to watch him for her.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Seer Says.”

  Lina rolled her eyes. “So how is Ortega?”

  Elain gasped, shocked and now filled with fear for Marston’s safety. “How’d you know that?”

  “I guessed. Calm the frak down, girlfriend.” She headed into the kitchen with Elain on her heels. “You ‘Seer Says’ me over the big hairball. Which, I get it. They’ve got their own stuff going on.” She opened
the fridge and pulled out a nearly empty pitcher of iced tea. “Feel free to tell him he can call on me, too, you know. I don’t mind.”

  Then Lina frowned as she turned to Elain. “Unless he…does he like me?”

  Oh, sweet blessed relief. “Honey, he helped protect Dad for twenty-five years. It’s nothing against you. He likes you, honest. He’s just sort of adopted me, is all.”

  And Elain didn’t feel the slightest bit guilty over that statement because it wasn’t even a fib. Not a single loophole needed.

  It also seemed to relieve Lina’s fears. “Ah. Gotcha. Sorry. I hadn’t even thought about it like that.” She finished off the pitcher of tea and started to make a fresh one. Having spent so much time living there in the Lyalls’ home, she knew the kitchen’s layout as well as Elain did. “So…uh, where’s Brighton this morning?”

  “Don’t know, don’t care.”

  “Mm-hmm.”

  “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  It was time like these Elain wished she could throw fireballs. “Spill it.”

  It looked like Lina was about to speak when they heard the back sliders open and Carla speaking to one of Elain’s men.

  Ain.

  “Later,” Lina whispered.

  * * * *

  Mai arrived a few minutes later with BettLynn, who was delighted to spot Jasper. Before Mai put her down on the floor, she said, “If you want to play with the puppy, no shifting. Got it?”

  “Puppy!” BettLynn reached for the dog.

  Mai set her on the floor, and the toddler scrambled as fast as she could on her hands and knees toward the dog, who wagged his tail at her as she grabbed him around the neck.

  Elain felt gooseflesh ripple up and down her arms as Jasper met her gaze and gave her a nod of his head, as if silently saying, I’ll protect her.

  “God he’s adorable,” Lina said. “It’s like he’s talking to us and telling us he’ll take care of the babies.”

  Elain hoped her meep of fear wasn’t audible. But then Ain, who’d had to look up some info in their home office, stopped by the kitchen to give Elain a quick kiss before leaving again. Once he was gone, Elain turned to Lina.

  “Back to the Brighton subject,” Elain said, her voice lowered. “How do I handle that?”

  “Oh, good,” Mai said from where she’d settled at the kitchen table. “I didn’t miss the Brighton bashing.”

  Lina had been making herself a snack. “Oooh, no. This is your house, lady. I’m not going there.”

  “Seriously,” Elain said. “You’re family, and I trust you.”

  Lina sighed before finally answering. “He’s your brother-in-law. I haven’t had any visions about him yet, but…” She shrugged. “Let’s just say I think the whole mood around here would be lighter if he wasn’t here, know what I’m saying? He’s kind of an energy vampire, among other things. Um, not a literal vampire.”

  Elain looked at Mai, who shrugged. “Me, either.”

  “You either a vampire, or you either no visions?”

  Mai smiled. “No visions. And no vampire, either.”

  Elain slumped against the counter. “I made such a point of ordering my guys to be nice to him.”

  “Well, un-order them,” Lina said. “That’s all. Then the problem will take care of itself. Go sit. I got this.” She pointed at the kitchen table.

  Elain poured herself a glass of iced tea first before taking a seat. She didn’t want to tell Lina and Mai about the tampered baby monitors yet, because she’d already lied to her friends once.

  Well, about that topic.

  She also didn’t want Lina blowing Brighton up, and Elain had no doubt if Lina thought Brighton was a threat to anyone in that family, especially their children, him being family or not, Lina wouldn’t hesitate to fireball first and ask questions later.

  * * * *

  They turned their topic of discussion back to the nuclear bomb vision once more. Then, a few minutes before one o’clock, BettLynn let out a sleepy yawn that Mai echoed.

  Elain knew she was the only one at the table who understood exactly why her friend was so tired.

  Elain wasn’t feeling so perky herself. Despite the amount of alcohol she’d consumed—and puked up—the day before, she suspected it was more due to the energy she’d expended during her…secret field trips.

  Especially when she’d gone back alone and killed the three men.

  Something else she couldn’t reveal to her friends right then, if ever. Only Ryan Ausar currently knew about that.

  “Sorry, girls,” Mai said. “I think I need to grab a nap. I have felt absolutely exhausted the past couple of days. I was actually happy when Ain called this morning to postpone our brainstorm sessions, until Mom called back and overruled him. Can we adjourn this until tomorrow? I know we are on a deadline, but I have a ton of chores I need to do, and I’m exhausted.” She hesitated. “God, that sounded horrible. ‘No, don’t mind the apocalypse. I have dirty laundry.’” Mai rested her head on her hands.

  Lina patted her on the shoulder. “It’s okay. Elain over there looks a little ragged, too. We can’t do this if we’re not at one hundred percent.”

  “Thanks,” Mai muttered.

  Elain considered telling her friend then that Mai was pregnant, but decided to wait.

  She had enough lies and omissions to keep straight as it was. “Seer Says” was wearing kind of thin.

  Cail returned to the house to grab lunch, but when he saw Connor was due for a feeding, he took over. Then Mom headed back to her house with Joss, leaving Lina, Elain, and Cail with the two babies.

  When Brighton returned to the house a little after one that afternoon, Elain felt Lina tense up without even having to look at her. It was like Elain could sense a force field going up around her friend.

  Just as Elain felt herself doing.

  “Hey, Brighton,” Lina said. “I was just getting ready to send Cail out with lunch for Ain and Brodey, but would you mind doing it?” She patted the small cooler holding their sandwiches and sodas. “They’re back at the main barn and Cail’s a little occupied.”

  Cail was currently—thankfully—sitting on the couch and feeding Connor a bottle, so it only made sense not to interrupt him to do it.

  Right?

  Right.

  “Uh, oh. Sure.” He gave Lina a smile Elain would swear was as forced as both hers and Lina’s. He took the cooler from her and headed out.

  Elain noticed he didn’t leave his knapsack behind, either. In fact, he never left it around. It was either on him…or it was in his bedroom with him. He never left it lying around the house.

  Elain and Lina exchanged a glance.

  “Oookay,” Cail said from the couch. “Mind filling me in on what that was about?”

  “Nothing!” the women said in unison, still staring at each other.

  Cail cleared his throat and Elain finally turned to him.

  “Babe,” he said, “I refuse to edict you over this, but if you Seer Says me—”

  “New-mom-nesting jitters,” Lina said, saving Elain from having to answer. “Look, I felt the same way. Hormonal soup, all of that. Having house guests just stresses a new mom out. Takes a couple of months to settle down.”

  “Oh.” He looked a little concerned. “I can ask him to leave, if you want. I don’t mind. Frankly, having him around is starting to get on my nerves, too.”

  Lina started to say something, but Elain interrupted her. “I don’t want to make you do that,” she said. “You hadn’t seen him in years before now.”

  “Yeah, and we can go years without seeing him again. We told you that. You are the most important thing.” He gently hefted Connor. “Well, you and these two.” Ellie lay asleep on the sofa next to him, on a blanket.

  Now Elain felt guilty, bitchy.

  Hormonally insane.

  She didn’t need any kind of silent connection with Lina to read her friend’s thoughts.

  Say. It!

  “Let m
e think about it,” Elain said while Lina softly groaned and rolled her eyes next to her. “But I appreciate the offer.”

  Cail looked from her to Lina and back again. “What’s going on? What aren’t you telling me?”

  Loophole…loophole…loophole—

  “I don’t think Brighton likes Dad,” Lina quickly said before Elain could come up with an answer. “And Elain doesn’t want to be a bitch about it. I, however, don’t mind being a bitch. It’s kind of a superpower of mine.”

  Elain shot Lina a glare.

  The goddess stuck her tongue out at Elain.

  “Oh.” Did Cail go a little pink in the face? “Yeah, I noticed that, too. We all have. You know, I’ll have a talk with Ain and Brodey and if nothing else, we’ll give Brighton a friendly deadline to make his departure and find his own place to live. How’s that sound?”

  Elain breathed a sigh of relief. “Thank you. I love you.”

  He motioned her over with his head, tipping his face up to receive a kiss from her. “Love you, too, babe. Seriously, stop worrying about our feelings here. We’re perfectly able to speak up.”

  She grasped for another straw. “Well, Code of the Ancients and all that. I don’t want you guys to be unhappy by running your brother off.”

  “Yeah, works both ways.” He arched an eyebrow at her again. Normally a gesture that, had she not felt so exhausted, might have earned that wolf a blowjob, at the very least. “We’re not happy if you’re not happy. You make us happy. Brighton’s our brother, and even at his best we do good to tolerate him. We can love him just as well with him living somewhere else.”

  “Maybe even better,” Lina muttered from where she stood with her arms crossed over her chest.

  “Exactly,” Cail agreed. “Seriously, stop stressing over this. We promised you coddling and pampering and spoilage.” He smiled again. “And we meant it. You made our dreams come true, babe. You think we won’t hesitate to toss Brighton out on his tail, think again.”

  “We could make him live in the RV,” Lina snarked. “Park it out by the big barn.”

  “Or ship him to Venice,” Elain said. Her house there hadn’t sold yet. They weren’t motivated to drop the price since they didn’t need the money.