by Wen Spencer
"Is it out?"
"Yes." Mystery sounds followed. Only after "Freaking hell its cold out" did Elise realize that Clarice was opening windows. The fire alarm went silent.
"Clarice? Clarice?"
Clarice sighed loudly. "Central. Report?" And a quiet, heartfelt, "Stupid coffee maker."
"This is Elise. The Wickers have someone's blades. Who hasn't reported in?"
"Um." Clarice typed on her keyboard, checking the logs of family members reporting in. "My baby sister, but Lissette never reports in. She doesn't see the point. Her last report was last Sunday. She was in West Virginia. She was trying to pinpoint rumors that there's some type of extremely large bear in the area. It might be an escaped pet---people keep the weirdest exotic animals---or some kind of cursed prince---although that's extremely rare these days. I suspect it's because there's a lack of princes more than anything else."
"Clarice! Focus!"
"I'm sorry. I haven't heard from Theodosia."
"I talked to Theo on Saturday. Anyone else?"
"I'm still checking. I think that's everyone but..." There was a minute of typing. "Oh no, Cade dropped off the face of the Earth two weeks ago."
"Who?"
"Cade!" Clarice typed furiously. "He's one of Solange's grandsons. He just finished his training in Greece. He wanted to bum around Europe before coming home. He's not active yet, so I wasn't keeping tabs on him."
Solange was their Grandfather Saul's youngest sister. She'd been eighteen and just out of training when Elise's great-grandmother had been killed. Like Elise had at that age, Solange hated Decker with a passion because she was too young to understand her mother's relationship with the vampire. Saul had moved Decker to Boston to keep the two separated. The rift in that part of their family never really healed. Elise barely knew the names of Solange's sons and daughters. Her grandchildren were completely unknown to Elise.
Clarice, though, as the main operator at Central would have talked at length with the boy, setting up everything from plane tickets to making sure there was a winter coat waiting for him at the safe house.
"Cade was supposed to fly home two weeks ago. According to his credit card statement, he was at Heathrow, then nothing. I'm checking to see if customs has him landing at Dulles. He wasn't hunting. I didn't think! I didn't think! Oh no!"
"He landed at Dulles as scheduled?" Elise guessed.
"Yes. He was supposed to take the train to a safe house and pick out his car the next day. He wanted a Mini Cooper. Stupid, stupid me was waiting for his call from the safe house. When I didn't hear from him, I just assumed he decided to live it up in Europe for as long as possible. I would. I miss Greece. The sun. The beaches. The brilliant white houses. All our cousins. Remember that place called ángelos loutró poulión? They made the best elliniko cafe. There's only one Greek place close by and their 'Greek coffee' is only meh. It's like they never drank the real thing."
Elise would have interrupted Clarice but she could hear the furious clicking of keys. Clarice was searching madly for their cousin.
"I'm checking Dulles security tapes now," Clarice said. "Okay---he's off the plane at the gate. Oh Heavenly Father, watch over our beloved cousin and guard him from evil. He's walking. Walking. Walking. Escalators. Okay, here he is getting his weapon case. He's heading to the bus to the train station. Darn, going to need to get into the train station security system. Hold on."
While Clarice typed, Elise gave a heavily edited account of what she'd found in Utica. She shouldn't have bothered hiding her attraction to Cabot; Clarice connected the dots.
"Oh, he sounds sexy. I loved Grandpa Saul but I always thought it was a little creepy that Grandmother married her third cousin. Back in Greece, I always assumed I'd find a nice boy from another tribe. Yeah, right, all the angelic boys here in Philly." There were none. Their generation of East Coast Grigori had run heavily toward female. "The wolves have the right idea with arranged marriages. Okay, I'm in. Bus takes five minutes to get to the station, so 10:45 on October sixteenth. Yes, there he is. Walking. Waiting for the train to... Oh my god! Oh my god! Oh my god!"
"Clarice?"
Clarice whimpered. "He just stepped out in front of the train."
A Wicker must have caught him by surprise and in that moment of control, "pushed" him.
Clarice started to cry.
Elise forced herself to say, "What about his knives?"
Clarice sobbed for a minute before brokenly saying, "He set the case down on the platform. A man in a business suit picked it up and walked away."
Joshua was right. There had been angelic daggers at the barn on Friday. Since the police didn't report them, they were still in the Wickers' control.
21: Seth
"Not far" apparently was within walking distance as Albany led the way out of the Hotel Utica into the crisp morning. Isaiah ranged ahead, despite not knowing where they were going, in hopes that he would seem like he was leading. The honor guard straggled far in the rear. The Albany pack seemed to be setting a painfully slow pace until Seth realized that the old wolf wanted to talk and his grandsons were giving him privacy to do so.
"I inherited my alpha when I was young, just like you. Ninety years ago. I was sixteen." He didn't look over a hundred years old but neither did Alexander. "Albany had burned quickly through my family. All the Marquises of Albany burned out and died before they were thirty-five. My mother's people are from Tallinn; they're like granite. Her father lived to be a hundred and seventy. Alexander brought my mother here to America when she was twelve and changed her himself. The king was afraid that my father would die without an heir."
Albany waved his pipe toward the east. "It's the Hudson Valley. It mainlines the New York power straight up the river. When Alexander leaves New York, which is far too often, there are dangerous spikes in Albany."
"I don't blame you for---" Seth caught himself before dragging Jack into the middle of two alphas. Technically Seth was as guilty of missing Joshua in his territory as Albany was of not rescuing Jack when he was wounded. "I don't blame you for anything."
"This is not an apology, it's a warning. I'm probably the oldest living werewolf after Alexander. If the source does not kill you, it sustains you. I make no claim to genius but I have a certain advantage over most people; you've seen a hell of a lot by the time you get to my age. I was born when the Wright brothers were just getting the first plane off the ground. Most houses had no electricity, no running water, no telephone, or even indoor plumbing. The movies were silent, television was just a dream, and this newfangled Internet they have? Pure magic. I've seen massive changes."
"I don't understand," Seth admitted when Albany paused to puff at his pipe. "What are you warning me about?"
"Writing on the wall is too big to be read close up. It can only be read at a distance. Sometimes that distance is only gained with time. Things happen for a reason. We are not ruled by random chance. The hand of fate is upon us."
Seth had been told such drivel over and over again since his family was massacred. It never brought him comfort. "This mess is wholly of the Wickers making."
"They wish. Certainly, it smacks of them desperately grabbing at the reins, but the king has worked for centuries to sway fate in the direction that he wants. He sees the writing on the wall and reads it better than anyone because he has the distance gained by time. Everything he does, he does because he knows what is coming."
"He didn't save my family."
"He saved what he could. And he would have saved more, if your father hadn't fought him so. Alexander wanted all your brothers at the Castle. Because he'd lost his firstborn to the Wickers, your father refused."
Seth hadn't known. He stopped walking, rattled by the news. "If Alexander knew there would be a breach, why he didn't he do something?"
"He didn't know exactly when the breach would happen. Over time, you learn to sense it coming, but it always takes you by surprise." He waved his pipe at the maple tree they were standing un
der, the last leaves falling from its branches. "It's like winter. You know it's coming. You can see it in the bare branches. You can feel it in the air. When you get to a certain age, you can even taste it. But the exact minute when the snow will start to fall? No."
Seth considered the old wolf for a moment. What was the point of this conversation? Albany was setting a slow, leisurely pace to have it. What was so important?
"What should I be looking for?" Seth asked.
"I've watched for a hundred years as the king shuffled around his pawn pieces. Pulling a wolf from here and putting them there. Breeding this line with that line. Everything he does, he does for a reason. I can see the handwriting; I can guess what's coming." He paused to relight his pipe and waved the match in the direction of Isaiah. "Other people, they've got their nose against the paint. They have not a clue what letter they're staring at, let alone what the whole message says."
Seth snorted quietly. "The Thanes gossip about little else but what the king intends."
He started them forward again.
"The Thanes aren't even aware of the writing or the wall," Albany said. "Fate doesn't care about intentions. It happens. Alexander has been trying to create a bloodline to hold New York for longer than I've been alive. Eskola's line might have held if he hadn't been killed before his sons were of age. Alexander is a patient wolf but he decided to take the drastic course of standing direct stud for the alpha. He doesn't like to do that; he's a good breeder and knows not to inbreed too often. Isaiah's mother, Raisa, was the result of a hundred years of careful breeding, bringing together the strongest bloodlines and yet none that he'd bred himself into for generations."
"I know." Seth didn't add that it was ancient history.
"What you don't know is that everyone recognized that the baby was a failure the moment he came out of the womb. Raisa killed herself because she knew how she'd betrayed the king. Stupid girl. There would have been other children and one of them might have been what the king wanted."
Seth stumbled with surprise. He'd heard lots of explanations as to why Raisa had killed herself---she was unbalanced was the most given reason---but no one ever laid the blame on Isaiah before. "What?" And then the implication sunk in. "You think Alexander never intended to make Isaiah the Prince of New York?"
"Let me read the writing I can see on the wall." Albany waved his pipe, left to right, as if pointing out words written in giant letters. "Alexander gives mates to his princes as soon as humanly possible." He put the pipe back in his mouth. "Your father at twelve. You at thirteen. That is how it always goes. The oldest I've ever heard of, in a hundred years, is eighteen. The Prince of Los Angeles had ten older brothers but the alpha skipped them and settled on him. It took even Alexander by surprise. Part of it is simply to keep his princes from going off and falling in love with the wrong female. Wolves are stupidly loyal creatures; Alexander learned that lesson long ago. But if the prince is the result of a thousand years of careful breeding, you protect that investment of time by encouraging him to have heirs as soon as possible. If Alexander planned to use Isaiah's bloodline, he would have arranged a mate for the boy years ago."
Albany stopped Seth and turned the prince to face him. "Take care. There is something written bigger than what I can read. Alexander doesn't keep Isaiah close because he loves him; that is not our king. Alexander needs him. You have the strength to kill the man, and certainly he's stupid enough to tempt you to do so, but you must resist it."
Seth locked down on a growl of anger. "It wouldn't be a temptation if Alexander would just let me go back to Boston. I was supposed to go to Harvard next year. He says now that I'm to go to Columbia."
"Alexander is waiting."
"For what?"
"The writing on the wall to change."
22: Elise
The wolves were gone from the hotel. Elise viewed the room with a mix of relief and dismay. Had Cabot taken his cousin back to New York? No, the Porsche had been in the parking lot, next to her Jeep. Were they coming back to the room? Probably, they'd left the donuts and Seth's suitcases. Considering the lack of hotel rooms, they might not have a choice.
Maybe she shouldn't have admitted that she was attracted to Cabot.
Actually, thinking about it, there was no "maybe." She should have kept her mouth shut.
She gathered her things. The most intelligent thing she could do was to see if she could get a second room.
"Sorry," said the owner who was manning the front desk. "We're full because of the funerals. The first one starts in an hour for Chris Barnes. Closed casket. They say that the wolf tore his head off. Poor kid. I swear, half the county will be at one funeral or another today."
The parking lot was full of families dressed in black. As far as she could tell, it was three sets of parents in their late thirties and a dozen sons, ranging from eight to seventeen. Various shades of red hair marked them as one extended family. The oldest boys were in suits, looking like they were going to a prom, not a funeral. They milled about the cars, talking about the cold and the chance of rain. Everything and anything but the reason they were gathered together.
It made her think of Cade. There should have been a funeral, all her cousins coming together in grief. What had happened to his body?
Seth had parked his Porsche next to Elise's Jeep. She eyed the low-slung sports car. Where had the werewolves gone? She'd forgotten to exchange information with them so she couldn't even call them. Nor could they call her. She wrote her phone number down and tucked it under the windshield wiper.
"Hey!" a woman shouted behind her.
Elise spun, hands going to her concealed weapons.
It was Joshua's sister. She was nearly Elise's age, which meant she was four or five years older than Joshua. She was all lean muscle and carried herself with the poise of a warrior. She'd pulled her blonde hair back into a too-tight bun. She wasn't the type of woman that needed makeup to be pretty, which was good, because she'd done a haphazard job at applying it. She wore black, although it wasn't clear if she planned to attend the funerals or not. Skin-tight yoga pants weren't normally considered proper attire to such things, even when paired with a black tunic sweater. The black Doc Martens combat boots finished the questionable ensemble.
Didn't U.S. Marshal Stewart say the girl knew judo? Joshua was a brown belt. His older sister most likely had a black belt.
Elise really hoped that the Wickers hadn't gotten hold of the girl. She would make a dangerous puppet.
"Where is he?" the girl snapped.
Elise moved back. She didn't want to fight Joshua's sister; the girl wasn't her real enemy.
The girl pointed at the Porsche. "Where's the guy who was driving this?" She stabbed her finger toward it three more times before managing to dredge up. "Seth! The guy from Boston. This is his car. Where is he?"
"How do you know Seth?" Elise was trying to remember the girl's name.
Joshua's sister threw her hands up in the air. "He came to my house and wrecked my bedroom!"
The girl's shouts and hand waving drew the attention of all the other hotel guests in the parking lot. "He's friends with my brother---or something. Scratch that, my brother doesn't know anyone who has girlfriends like you. All his friends are dorks. Oh my God, you're beautiful."
Bethy. Her name was Bethy and she obviously wasn't a puppet, just a loose cannon. Seth hadn't mentioned going to Joshua's house but it was simple enough to figure out. Sole survivor of a werewolf attack was going to be a newborn werewolf. As an alpha, Seth would be responsible for making sure said newborn wasn't dangerous.
Elise wasn't sure how she ended up Seth's girlfriend in Bethy's mind.
"I don't know where he is." Elise pointed at the paper tucked under the Porsche's windshield wiper. "I was leaving him a message."
"He took one of the pictures from our mantle. I realized it after he left. The little jerk."
The hotel guests obviously recognized Bethy from her parent's press conference. They point
ed at her and whispered her name to each other.
Bethy ignored the onlookers. "I'm sick of people walking into our house and taking things! I want it back!"
The Wickers were the other people who had taken Joshua's things. Bethy might recognize the heart stone.
"Do you know what this is?" Elise took the silver moon out of her pocket and held it out so only Bethy could see it.
"That's Joshua's!" Bethy grabbed at the loop.
Elise jerked it out of reach. "I can't let you have it. It's evidence in a murder investigation."
"It was taken on Saturday. It has nothing to do with the barn."
"I didn't say it was part of the massacre. I'm investigating six murders elsewhere. What is it?"
"What?" Bethy put out her hand, palm up in a silent demand for the silver moon's return. "That's not possible. I saw it Saturday morning after we brought Joshua home from the hospital. Someone took it that afternoon."
Elise stepped back out of range of a quick grab and held up the loop. "What is it?"
"It's a rattle!" Bethy gave a "give me" wiggle of her fingers.
Elise swore. A baby rattle? Of course.
Bethy repeated the gesture, larger. "Usually it's in my mom's jewelry box, I saw it Saturday morning while my mom was picking out what to wear for the funerals. It was one of the things that went missing after Joshua ran away from home."
"Was it made for him?" Elise whispered. The crowd was drifting closer, curiosity drawing them in. "And how do you know he ran away from home? Who told you?"
"Porsche boy!" Bethy continued at the same loud volume. She seemed oblivious to the scene that she was causing. "After I talked with him I came into town and checked. Joshua's dirt bike is in the garage's storage shed. Why am I telling you this? You're probably a reporter and you're going to put this all on the news. Give it to me!"
Elise took a step back and shoved the rattle into her pocket.
