“They wouldn’t run with me. And I couldn’t go with ’em. Ronan treated me as an equal. I wasn’t givin’ that up. I wasn’t givin’ him up. So, we left town and laid low until the queen’s goons backed off.”
“You and Ronan?” He nodded. Guess that explains at least one of the times Ronan ran out on me. “It must have been hard for you,” I said. “An ulfar never leaves his pack behind.”
“Many were young. The pack didn’t mean as much to ’em. They knew little of our history and culture. I let go ’cuz I couldn’t protect ’em here. I thought he could. But it’s all changed now. They changed. ’Cuz of him.”
Fuck it, I thought, and took a leap. “You mean, Arno Gant?”
Jace spit on the floor. “It’s not safe to speak that name.”
“Not safe how? If I say it three times in a dark room will he appear?”
“Same old, Dahl. Always making jokes about the devil at your door. Someday, he or she is gonna come a knockin’,” he sang. “What’ll you do then?”
“Well, I’m damn sure not leaving my friends behind to deal with him, while I run off and save my own ass.”
His glare was chilling. I didn’t flinch. Jace was angry and brimming with resentment, but it had a singular focus. And it wasn’t me. The question was: had he acted on it? Did he kill Oliver Gant? Was he our snitch? Had Jace been sabotaging the black market, trying to shed light on their illicit activities in hopes of freeing his pack?
“What type of jobs did Ronan do for the Market?” I said.
“Small stuff, mostly. Surveillance. Gathering leads on valuable products. Making sure the humans on his payroll stayed in line. Hiring extra help to cater to his fuckin’ rich-ass clients. Nothing complex. Nothing I can’t do.”
“You don’t seriously believe you’re as good as Ronan? That you’ve been accepted? Gant knows you won’t fuck him over, because he has choke collars around the furry necks of everyone you care about. If you think I’m wrong, see what happens when he finds out the man you hired to drive that semi full of evidence out of town is in lockup instead.”
“That wasn’t my fault.”
“You can try explaining it. I’m sure Gant is a reasonable man. Or you could tell me why the Market’s business is bleeding all over my streets, and I can take it down before he harms a hair on their bodies.”
His smug expression wavered, but not enough.
“The blight didn’t stop at your world,” I said. “It’s spreading, Jace. It’s going to spread here. Help me, and I’ll get Aidric to relocate the ulfar somewhere safe.”
“If it’s spreading, where is there to go?”
“It’s not everywhere. Not yet. It won’t be anywhere if I can stop it.”
“Stop nature?” He snorted. “Such an idealist. Ronan hated that about you.”
I took the slap with a smile. “The Market has increased production. I’m not sure why, but Gant is kidnapping creatures off the street. Creatures who came here like you and I did. They want some place safe to live. They want a home. They didn’t ask for this.”
“Guess they should’ve run faster.”
I ground my teeth on his apathy, struggling to keep my voice down. “If you don’t want my help, if you want to stay and watch another world die—watch your kind die—go for it. I’ve never been fond of the ulfar, anyway.”
He snickered and tipped the jug high.
“Damnit, Jace. Give me something. Anything. And I’ll do my best to aim elsewhere. Because if you don’t, if I catch you or your pack helping Gant in any way, then you’re in the line of fire. My fire. In case you’ve forgotten, I’m a ‘burn the shit out of it and fuck the questions’ kind of girl, so you might want to talk now…while you still have lips.”
With a slow, deliberate swallow, Jace lowered the jug. His eyes flared orange, and I knew his answer. “Fuck off.”
A series of thuds permeated the door.
“What was that?” Catching a flash of movement, I ducked as Jace swung the jug at my head. He whipped the bottle back the other way. I scaled my arm as I raised it. Plates met glass, shattering the jug. Brushing off the hit with an unimpressed grunt, I wiped the whiskey droplets from my jacket and took a step.
Jace backed up to block the door. “Let it alone, Dahl.” His calm, baritone voice was barely audible over the thuds and muffled sounds bleeding in from the hall. “This is why Ronan kept leavin’ you. Your need to do right by the humans. Your worship of their way of life.”
“It’s not worship. It’s respect. You should try it sometime.”
The sounds of skirmish ended with the slam of the heavy back door. Whatever was happening had moved outside. Ten dollars said Creed was in the middle of it.
Needing to move the ulfar aside, I seized his sturdy shoulders, and the skin on his hands split with a wet crunch. The fissures traveled up wrists and forearms. They parted with a spurt of blood and a musky scent, giving me a glimpse of the sticky, wet fur beneath.
“Don’t draw this line, Jace,” I warned. “I won’t hold back.”
His widening smile ruptured as lips and chin split down the middle. Sliding back, the seam tore further, making room for broadening bones and an extending black muzzle. Teeth grew, tapering to a gleaming tip. More flesh cracked open on his knuckles. Pieces glopped off onto the floor, and familiar-looking claws pushed from his bloated fingertips.
Watching the transformation, I shook my head. “You know the real difference between your shape-changing and mine?” I clamped on tighter. Scales rippled over my hands. “You’re too damn slow.” With a shower of sparks, flame burst from my palms. The surge of heat melted his outer shell of bursting flesh, and I shoved out more; feeding the blaze; searing the limbs of the emerging beast within.
Howling, dripping of mucus and blood, the broken, charred body in my grip split open faster. Fangs dipped for my neck. I let go and raised a last-second, flaming fist to meet the descending bite. Teeth scraped—then shattered on impact with my scaled punch.
I shook out my stinging hand, as I staggered back into the desk. “You son of a bitch. Why risk wolfing-out here? To protect Gant? I thought you hated him.”
Vocal chords no longer capable of speech, Jace released a garbled growl of rage—and lunged. Reaching behind me for the ashtray, I swung it in an upward arc, and belted him across the face. Bone broke under the weight of the heavy marble, and he collapsed, moaning, onto the desk in a cloud of cigarette butts and ash.
I hauled him up. Ulfar were resilient, but they were most vulnerable in those few moments of in between. It only took a couple of slams of his head into the wall before he was out cold. I put my scales away, then, and stared at the partially-transformed, slightly crispy werewolf sprawled out on the floor. If his crew hadn’t heard the commotion over the booming music, they’d smell the blood and come running. I couldn’t hang around and tussle with them.
I cracked the door and stepped out. The hall was empty. The wall across from me was dented. Someone had hit the plaster hard. Pushing open the back door, I ran out into the alley. It looked nothing like the night I last walked the corridor with Ronan. Afternoon sun was high overhead, dosing the dingy backstreet in light. It might have been cheery, if the bright rays didn’t call attention to the collection of beer bottles and dried splatters, normally lost in the dark.
Cars sped by at the end on my right. A chain link fence had been erected on the left side of the alley. I moved closer. A drop of blood painted one of the links near the top.
“Alex!”
Getting no response, I put a toe in the fence and climbed over.
Following the trail of overturned trash cans, flustered pedestrians, and scattered café chairs, I found Creed three blocks over. He was walking back, alone, with the phone to his ear. He was disheveled and out of breath, but in one piece.
I jogged over as he ended the call. “You okay?”
He filled his holster with an irritated shove and kept going.
I held pace with him as we
walked back in the direction of the club. “You want to tell me what happened?”
“While you were behind closed doors with that mountain, I heard someone in the next room. I went to investigate, and he jumped me. He was wearing a hood, like a one-piece ski-mask type of thing. That’s what you said the men in the factory had on?” He glanced at me for a nod of confirmation. “I hit him, but I couldn’t slow him down. He was too fast. He scampered up a fire escape like a goddamn monkey and was gone by the time I got to the roof.” Creed looked at me again. This time he caught, and held, my eyes. “He was fast and strong. Like Brynne.”
I looked him over. “Did he hurt you? Anything break the skin?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Good.” A scratch from an ulfar wouldn’t turn Creed furry. The legend of transference was a tale spun to propagate fear and discourage anyone from getting too close to the beasts. At least, it was for certain sub-species, like the ulfar. But their blood carried a dangerous pathogen most human immune systems couldn’t fight.
“What about you? Did you get something out of your friend, Jace?”
“He admitted to working for the Market. And the name, Gant, clearly spooked him. But he wouldn’t give me a location or anything actionable, no matter how nicely I asked.”
“You hit him, didn’t you?”
“A little. But he got away.” Hopefully, I thought. Ulfar healed fast. If I was lucky, he’d be gone by the time we got back. “And Jace is not my friend,” I added.
“Then how did you know he was there?”
“I didn’t. It’s been years since I’ve had contact with any of Ronan’s crew.”
“I saw you, Nite. You walked straight to that door, like you knew he was inside.”
“It was a hunch.”
“No one’s hunches pay off like yours. It’s…uncanny.”
“What do you want me to say, Alex? I have good instincts.”
“No. This is something else. Something you’re not telling me.” He gripped my arm and pulled me to a stop. “Have you bought from this market? Are you using one of their ‘magical items’ to track these creatures? Is that why you wanted a vial from Watson’s trunk? Is that how you get your hunches? Goddammit, Nite, if you’re involved with—”
“I’m psychic,” I blurted, deciding the truth was an easier fix than a lie. For once. Feeling abnormally honest, I added, “Sort of.”
“Psychic?” he laughed. “Seriously?”
“After everything you’ve seen, that’s what you find hard to believe?”
Creed’s amusement evaporated with a solemn, “Honestly, Nite, I don’t know what to believe.” But he did, based on the cautious, yet intrigued, onceover he was giving me. “And the ‘sort of’?”
“Do you know what an empath is?”
He nodded. “Someone who senses feelings instead of thoughts or future events. My aunt Jeanne claimed to be one. She’d come to family gatherings when I was a kid and follow people around, trying to ‘read’ them.”
“Did it work? Did she ever read you?”
“I don’t know. All I remember is that every party, every dinner, ended the same way: with Aunt Jeanne falling down drunk and blaming it on all the emotions in the room. Everyone thought she was nuts.” Creed swung another, less-skeptical glance in my direction. “But you’re the real deal?”
“I can usually tell when someone’s in emotional distress. I can experience it with them, though I try not to, if I can help it. Being empathic also means I get visions, sometimes, around dead bodies. It doesn’t always work, but if it does, I get a glimpse of how or where they died.”
“By glimpse, you mean you feel it?” I nodded. “That can’t be fun.”
“It’s not.” I gave him as serious a look as I ever had. “But it’s the truth.”
Meeting my gaze with a significant one of his own, he said, “You’re right, what you said in that damn freezer. Our partnership is a means to an end. I need you to solve these cases, to explain this crazy shit and validate what I never could. I need your perspective as much as I need you watching my six. But you don’t need either. You’ve hunted these things without me for years. You have skills, Dahlia,” he said with meaning. “I don’t understand what you’re getting out of this. Why you’re here, wasting your time with me, dangling stories and lore like hooks, stringing me along.”
“That’s not what I’m doing.”
“It sure as hell feels like it. But, being an empath, you already know that.”
I took a breath. “I told you, Alex, I got tired of being alone. I wanted something more, something else. Something normal.”
“And now my life is as fucked up as yours.”
I blinked at him. “You’re the one who won’t stop begging me for the truth.”
“Because you’re not giving me the truth,” he roared. “Blissful ignorance would be better than this damn limbo I’m hanging in.”
“What is wrong with you?” I shot back. “Why are you so angry?”
Confusion rippled across his stare. “I…”
He doesn’t know, I thought. He just is. But I knew. I understood now, what kept the man’s fuse so short, why he couldn’t be content for more than five minutes, why he was always pushing himself. The mysterious red band around his trauma. It kept Creed’s ghosts leashed and fresh, making them a volatile influence on his outlook and demeanor.
“Forget it,” he said, walking again. “But I’m about done with this ‘Confession of the Month Club’ bullshit. Whatever is left, whatever you’re holding back, you better start spilling it a hell of a lot faster—and soon.” He picked up the pace. “Come on. We have a bar full of people to question.”
I let him get a few steps ahead to blow off some steam. His condition wasn’t my fault, but I wasn’t helping it any, either. I was the one who pulled the lid off this overflowing can of worms. Only, his accusation was dead on. I didn’t pull the lid off, I punctured it, and I’d been letting little tidbits and half-truths dribble out the holes—just enough to get the job done. And I didn’t know any more if it was the right thing to do. I was telling Creed what was convenient for me, the little morsels I wasn’t afraid to give away.
But who was I afraid for?
To Creed, these creatures were unequivocally the bad guys. They kidnapped, maimed, and killed with no value for life or property. In his eyes, hunting them, made me one of the good guys. Even if I occasionally broke the law, he believed I was on the right side of it. When he discovered I wasn’t human, when he learned I was one of those things he despised, that I was part of the reason Sam died, what happened then? What would Alex Creed’s sense of right and wrong do with the knowledge that his partner—the woman he trusted with his life—was a monster?
Fifteen
“You were right.” Evans sidled up beside the vending machine as I took my aggression out on the keys. “I spoke to the guy who pulled Dane over last night. He’s positive the matchbook wasn’t on him at the time of his arrest.”
“Now we know why the evidence bag was misplaced.” Bending, I fished my BBQ chips and soda from the well. “Our snitch is getting brave.”
“You think it’s the—” beaming, he glanced around and let out a little howl. In case I missed the clue, he stuck an animated whisper of, “Werewolf,” on the end.
I was starting to regret filling Evans in on what happened at the club this afternoon. “Technically, he’s an ulfar, not a werewolf,” I corrected softly. “And I’m sure. If Jace wanted to cripple the Market, he’s had years to do it. And if it was him, why not confess? Why attack me and run? If he was scared, he could have left a message or one of his crew behind. But there was nothing but humans in the club by the time Creed and I got back. And after two hours and forty-three minutes of questioning, I can safely tell you—” I popped open my drink, “not one of them knows a damn thing.”
While the one who does, crawled underground to wait out the storm.
“Let me get this straight.” Evans pluc
ked the bag from my hand. Opening it, he put his back against the machine and shoved in a chip. “You think a bookworm, who set himself on fire years ago, is now some paranormal crime lord with a pack of ulfar to back him up?”
“More or less. Ulfar are born warriors. Strong as bears, cunning and ruthless as wolves. At least, they were. Jace is his own animal, forged on the streets of this city. But to hear him say it, most of his pack grew up under the guidance of an unknown entity. I have no idea what they’re capable of now.”
“I swear, I take a few hours off…” Evans reached in for another chip.
“Let’s talk about that.”
He groaned, like a teenager caught sneaking out after dark. “Again?”
“Yes. You’ve been lying and keeping secrets from me for who knows how long. And I know, saying that makes me a hypocrite. I don’t care,” I said with force. “If I find out you discovered another way to Drimera, and that’s why you took time off yesterday—” I grabbed my chips “—if I ever find out you’ve gone back there alone, again, I will kick your ass.”
“How would I? You changed the alarm code.”
I let my glare answer for me.
“Sorry,” he grimaced. “You’re right. I could have been killed, and I put you at risk. No more hijacking of your secret exit.” Evans put his hands on my shoulders. “Promise.”
“Okay.” But something still felt off. “Any luck with finding, Norman Key, our hit and run driver?”
Evans stole two more chips and went back to leaning on the vending machine. “His prior addresses all came up empty. No belongings, no paperwork on file with the landlords. No dust,” he said pointedly. “None of the neighbors remember him. It’s like he was never there. I convinced Harper to take another look with me in the morning. And while you were hanging at the strip club,” he flashed an innocent smile to counter my frown, “Ronnie and I checked out the rest of Oliver Gant’s vacant properties. If the buildings were used for anything illegal, they don’t seem to be now.”
Smoke & Mirrors Page 18
