For the Blood of a Crow

by T. S. Joyce

  “Move,” Rike snarled to the security guard blocking him.

  “I can’t let you—ack!”

  Rike’s hand crushing his throat shut him up. He shoved him out of the way and threw the rope barrier to the side with a crash and stood between Ramsey and the reporter, who was dumb enough to still be asking questions. The fire in his eyes said he didn’t care if Ramsey went after him. Anything for the story, right? God, Rike hated human nature sometimes. He yanked the microphone out of the man’s hand and chucked it at the wall so hard it stuck out of the sheetrock, vibrating above the reporter’s head. “Interview’s over, fuck-face.”

  “Come on, Ram, we need a ten-minute break,” Vina said. Behind Rike, Vina was holding Ramsey’s hand, rubbing his bicep, pulling him gently backward. Good girl.

  “We were promised interviews!” someone yelled from the audience.

  Rike jammed a finger at the man who’d yelled it. “And we’re trying. Can’t you see that? We’re here! But if you’re just going to needle him about Vina, he ain’t gonna play nice. Would you? If someone wanted to throw threats at your girl just to get your reaction? Would you sit through that shit, or would you rearrange that fucker’s face? Y’all wanna bleed? Keep it up!”

  “They’ll do interviews, but if they need breaks, they get breaks,” Hairpin Trigger yelled. He and The Warmaker were pushing people away from where Vina was leading Ramsey through the crowd.

  The Warmaker said, “You don’t like that, you can fuckin’ leave. Simple as that.”

  “So we’re just supposed to wait around here while that shifter gets his temper under control every five minutes?” a woman called into a microphone. God, these people were relentless.

  And there Rike was, standing in front of three dozen cameras, under blinding spotlights. A new reporter with a nametag that read Sara Struthers sat down gracefully into the chair beside him like she was a fuckin’ queen.

  “What are you doing?” he growled.

  “Rike Blackwood, Second of the Red Dead Mayhem Clan, you’ll do while your Alpha takes his break.” Her smile was feline. Fantastic.

  Everything was horrible, and he hated everyone, and now some scrawny dude with body odor was hooking a tiny microphone to Rike’s shirt collar.

  Under the orange glowing Exit sign, Vina ushered Ramsey. And right before they disappeared through the door, Rike saw it. She turned to Ramsey, cupped his cheeks, leaned up on her tiptoes, and kissed him. Ramsey’s body relaxed as he gripped her wrists, as if he wanted her to stay right there, locked up with him.

  Vina was magic.

  God, Rike wished someone could be magic for him like that.

  Swallowing hard, he plopped down onto the couch, draped both arms over the back, and glared at Sara. “Ask.”

  She put on some fashionable glasses that were probably all for looks and none for seeing and read from a set of notes held primly in her lap. “At the Alpha Challenge three days ago, the world saw the violence you shifters are capable of. Have you seen the footage?”

  “Don’t need to see the footage. I was there.”

  “Well, can you imagine how that looks to the human public? The first we saw of your kind was a girl turning into a polar bear, and chasing an SUV down the street. And the next footage we have is a brawl between members of the Red Dead Mayhem Clan.”

  “Cool. Would you like me to go find aaaaaall the footage of you violent-ass humans beating, shooting, and killing each other? What’s your question, lady?”

  Sara’s mouth fell open, then she closed it, opened it, and closed it again. She looked like a beached fish. He would’ve laughed if his mood wasn’t so piss-poor right now.

  “Well, point taken, but we humans have good sides too, and so far, we haven’t seen any good side to you.”

  Rike flicked his fingers toward the exit where Vina and Ramsey had just disappeared. “You just witnessed love. We feel that. We feel everything you do. Maybe how we express our feelings doesn’t look just like yours, but the human public will have to learn how to read us because we aren’t changing. We’ve lived in quiet for hundreds of years. We don’t want attention. We want to live our lives, police our own, abide by our own laws, and sometimes that means bleeding each other, because we aren’t like you. We are half animal, and animals don’t live like you. We have both worlds to balance. So where you saw extreme violence the other day, you came in on a powershift in a big Clan. We lost half our people that night. They left, and it fuckin’ hurts. It’s hard to breathe right now because my friends, my family, my Clan, got ripped in two. Ramsey had to fight to keep as many of us together as he could. Outside of a Clan, if you have rogue or lone animals, they get lonely. They get sick in the head and they make mistakes. Staying together means surviving and finding that same thing everyone else is looking for.” Rike gestured to where Vina and Ramsey had disappeared. “Happiness. Oh, we know it’s rare for a shifter to keep it. We live on the outskirts of a society that didn’t know about us and now will never accept us. But we still search for steadiness. For happiness. Just like you. We’re different and the same. And these next three days are going to feel like eternity if you keep poking at Ramsey. He is…like my brother. My best friend. I’d do awful things to keep him and his new mate safe. To keep our Clan safe. We aren’t trained to sit under your microscope and behave. And we aren’t changing to be more like you. So ask your questions, and we’ll answer what we feel like answering. But if you think you’re going to come in here and poke at a big Alpha like Ramsey, you won’t leave here in one piece.” He looked right into the camera lens. “That ain’t a threat. I’m saying knock it off because I won’t be getting in between him and anyone else from here on. Y’all can defend yourselves for your own actions.” When Rike plucked the microphone off his collar, the little contraption looked familiar.

  “Are there other Clans of shifters, and if so, what kind of animals are they?” Sara asked.

  Rike turned the little microphone in his fingers. It looked just like the bugs they’d found in the clubhouse a few days ago. Everyone thought Vina had planted them because she was new, and that’s what had caused the war within the Clan. It’s what had snapped Ethan, Rike’s own flesh and blood brother, to take half the Clan and start a new one.

  “Rike,” Sara said. “What kind of animals are there?”

  He stood in a rush, his heart pounding as he clicked the little off button. Someone here had bugged the clubhouse. They’d ruined Red Dead Mayhem. He scanned the crowd, but there were so many.

  “Hello? Animals,” Sara said, sounding irritated.

  “Oh, yeah, we got dinosaurs and shit so don’t mess with us.” He walked off, shoving the wireless mic in his pocket. Okay, they didn’t really have dinosaurs, but he was definitely going to mess with everyone’s minds if they put him in front of the cameras.

  He sniffed out the scrawny man and asked, “Where does the feed of this mic go?”

  “Oh, we have a van outside that is helping broadcast. It’s going anywhere we put that footage. Those mics are expensive. Can I have it back now?”

  “No. Who else has these? Who uses them?”

  The man shrugged and looked around. “They’re the best mics on the market right now. I’d say probably half the teams here are using them.”

  Crap. “Okay, thanks man.” Rike strode off, ignoring Scrawny’s protests for Rike keeping the mic. “You’re stealing, sir. Sir! You’re stealing!”

  Blah-blah, he’d done way worse.

  He snaked his way through the crowd who were gathering around Trigger and The Warmaker, asking questions. And no wonder, both of those grizzly shifters had bright gold glowing eyes right now.

  He still hated them, mostly. But it was nice of them to be here to take some of the attention. Ramsey had ordered the rest of Red Dead Mayhem to stay back at the clubhouse because most of them were injured from the fight Snooty Sara was talking about. Vina’s moose had trampled them good trying to get them off Ramsey, and they weren’t the steadiest rig
ht now. It would stress Ramsey out more if they were here, so the boys were waiting in Corvallis for a meeting tonight.

  Rike strode out into the hallway, but it split in two, and there were a dozen doors in each direction. He had no guess where Ramsey and Vina had gone off to. And really, if she was smart, she’d be on her knees blowin’ his dick right now to get him to settle completely. Rike should give her space to bring the calm and collected parts of his Alpha back around.

  To the left, there were double doors at the end of the hallway with sunlight blaring in, so Rike made a beeline for daylight. For open air and the sky, because sometimes looking up at that gorgeous blue freedom was the only thing that could make the dark parts of him feel less painful.

  Bailey was important to his lost memories. That realization had hit him like a sack of anvils. Did he want to open that up? Ethan wouldn’t talk about the early days. Every time Rike had asked him, he’d said, “You don’t want to know. Trust me. It’s better if you don’t remember.”

  He had guesses, but nothing solid. And nothing had given him flashbacks like that little fair-haired wolf-girl. She must’ve been Turned. Some shifter animals could have female offspring, but not bears, mountain lions, or crows, and definitely not wolves. Not ever. She’d been bitten by someone. And the overprotective parts of him wanted to slowly kill, over days, whoever had done that to her. His soul could take black marks like that. He’d conditioned it to feel nothing for evil deeds. Or maybe that was just the Blackwood in him. Ethan fought to stay good, too. He was failing right now. Fucker. Betrayed his Alpha. Betrayed Ramsey. Ramsey! Their friend who took them in after he and Ethan had ruined their lives. Ramsey who had helped them bury Lucian. Ramsey who saw Lucian’s ghost just like Rike did. Just like Ethan did. Ethan had turned on the man who’d given him a second shot at a decent life.

  Rike hadn’t spoken to his brother in three days. He was pissed off at him enough to never speak to him again. Ethan was acting more and more like Lucian.

  God, he was surrounded by darkness…and then that little she-wolf had come in and shocked his system. She had a good aura, or whatever it was that his instincts told him was good. She was light. It had made him want to stand closer to her when they’d been watching Ramsey’s interview.

  He pushed the doors open and tilted his head back toward the sky as he came out. And standing on the edge of the parking lot, he sighed and closed his eyes, just to enjoy the sunlight on his face.

  ****

  Bailey was sitting on the curb, scrolling through her social media feed when the door blasted open. Out came the man of her nightmares. She froze. How many times was she going to see him in one day? It wasn’t fair. She’d gone fifteen years with nothing. Not even a hint on what had happened to him, his brother, and their monster father. And now he was everywhere.

  Rike strode right out to the edge of the curb and put his hands out, lifted his face to the sky. She could hear his sigh of relief from here.

  She understood. With a sympathetic smile, she said, “I get like that, too. That claustrophobic feeling when my animal is around too many people for too long.”

  He had a powerful profile. Broad chest, trim waist, powerhouse legs pressing against his jeans. A chain dangled from his beltloop to the wallet in his back pocket and made soft clanking sounds as he turned toward her.

  His eyes were black like the feathers of his crow.

  “Your animal is so much bigger than I remember,” she murmured, shoving her phone in her back pocket. “You’re so much bigger.”

  “It’s a purposeful thing.”

  “Why? Why have you grown your body to this? It’s beautiful to look at, but no man spends that much time making himself a beast for no reason. Why?”

  His face snarled up for just a second before he gave his attention to the sky again. “So no one can hurt me.” Ever again. He didn’t say that part, but she heard it anyway.

  She shouldn’t talk to him. This was dangerous territory, and if any of her Clan ever caught her talking to any crow, much less this crow, she would be in so much trouble. But he was right here. Right. Here. And they were alone.

  “I knew your father.”

  “No one knew my father.”

  “Knew of your father then. You remind me of him. Makes me sad.”

  Rike shook his head, and from here, she could see his jaw clench. “You don’t know me either. You didn’t even know my name.”

  “Not your new name. I know your name from before.”

  “Before what?” he growled.

  She shook her head against the memories of the night he left. “You really don’t remember?”

  His chest heaved and his nostrils flared as he glared down at her. “I think you’re messing with my mind. I don’t even know if you’re real.”

  That stung. She huffed a breath at the pain his words caused. “I’m not real? I’ve been real this whole time. Fifteen years wondering if you were real because my worst memories centered around your family. They centered around you leaving. Around what your dad did. My Clan will never think a single kind thought about a crow because of Lucian. It takes one hell of an evil man to divide two ally shifter cultures for eternity. But at least you don’t have the memories. Convince yourself I’m not real. I don’t give a shit.”

  “Lie. I can hear a change in your voice when you lie.”

  He was the most infuriating man. Her emotions were swinging too wide around him, and the snarl in her throat was impossible to stop. “Look, I moved on, you moved on, and we should just let the ghosts rest.”

  Rike gave her the most wicked smile she’d ever seen on a man. “Lucian’s ghost is right behind you.”

  Chills blasted up her neck, and she slapped at them as she ducked away from the building. “He’s dead?”

  “He’s been dead for years. He likes to haunt me, though.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I was the one who killed him.”

  Bailey stood there frozen under the weight of that admission. What an awful thing for a son to carry—the murder of his father.

  “I see the disgust in your face. The fear. Don’t worry, Bailey, I won’t burden you with stories of my father. I actually knew him. I saw the monster up close and personal. Don’t tell me I’m like him. You didn’t know him and you don’t know me.”

  And she got it. If Rike wasn’t a Blackwood monster like she’d assumed, she’d just given him the biggest insult, telling him he reminded her of his awful father.

  “I’m sorry.” She choked on the last word and had to try again. “I’m sorry I said that. I was wrong.”

  Rike stared at her with those black eyes, black hair, black beard, all black and gray tattoos, black shirt, Blackwood name—he was darkness, but there was feeling in his eyes, and she’d never seen that in Lucian’s.

  She swallowed hard, stood in a rush, strode over to him, and hugged him, pinning his arms to his sides. She squeezed as hard as she could, not careful with her wolf strength because a big man like him could handle her. And then she lost her mind and did something she used to do when they were kids. She kissed his arm, just a peck.

  With her cheeks flushing with heat, she released him and made her way toward the main road on the other side of the parking lot, wiping moisture from her eyes as she hurried away. She didn’t have a ride. She’d realized that the second Donna told her to go home early and she’d come outside. She’d ridden in the catering van, and her little Ford Ranger was still back at the Hot Buns Bakery. She’d been waiting out here for Donna to get off work, but she was fine with walking now. It was only ten miles or so. No big deal for a wolf. Plus, it would give her time to get her head on straight again.

  She made it one block down the main road when she heard the Harley engine roar to life. When she turned around at the noise coming straight for her, she was dismayed and excited to see Rike barreling toward her on a blacked-out Softail with big handlebars and loud pipes. The machine rumbled the ground under her feet. She stood there wai
ting as he slowed and pulled the motorcycle up beside her.

  “You need a ride?”

  “I already told you, I’m not supposed to talk to you.”

  “Why not? Are you mated? Are you paired up?”

  She shook her head. “No, but I have a prospect. I’m promised to someone.”

  “Well, lucky for you I can’t have a girl. They don’t stick, so your honor is safe around me.”

  “Do you remember my father?” she asked.

  He shook his head. “Don’t remember more than your name—Bailey Wulfe.”

  “My dad is Darius Wulfe, long-standing Alpha of the Wulfe Clan, and one you do not want to piss off. His Second is the one I’m supposed to choose. Trust me, Rike, you don’t want their attention any more than you and Red Dead Mayhem already have it. I’m princess wolf there, the only female, and my dad is protective since…” She swallowed hard and cleared her throat. “He’s protective since you.”

  “Your Clan doesn’t scare me, Bailey. Nothing does. Get on, and I’ll give you a ride.”

  Nothing does. The way he’d said it with such unwavering conviction told her he wasn’t lying. He really wasn’t afraid of anything. Tough man. She shouldn’t put his life in front of her Clan, though. In front of Samuel or her father.

  But…

  He was here. Right here. With her. And as much as she wanted to be strong and never think about him again, she could spend the rest of her life remembering today when she got to see the broken boy as a man.

  “You said you saw the disgust on my face when you admitted to killing your father.”

  He nodded once.

  “You read me wrong. No one in this world misses him. You did everyone a favor. It’s not a burden to me you admitted that. It’s a relief he doesn’t exist anymore. You did a good thing.”