Sliver of Silver (Blushing Death)

by Sabol, Suzanne M.

  “What are we looking for?” I asked, finally making my way through the room. She was dead. If she didn’t like it, there wasn’t much she could do about it. I flipped through her magazines, which were, of course, in a perfect fan on the coffee table. She had the latest issues of W, Elle, Glamour and Travel and Leisure. I saw no signs of a roommate and no boyfriend. The kitchen was just as clean as the rest of the first floor with a sink that was dry as a bone and a sponge with its own little shelf to dry on. There was nothing there. I headed upstairs with Derek close behind.

  “We’re trying to see if she knew her killer or killers,” he said as he scavenged in drawers, opened closet doors, and riffled through her clothes.

  The victim’s bedroom was a bit too pink and floral for my tastes and had a girlie feel that set my teeth on edge. The bed was made with military precision and the furniture around the room, including the headboard, had antiqued mirror façades. The room didn’t smell like Pack, or anything other than human. The only smell tingling the inside of my nose was ammonia and the pungent scent of household cleansers, making my eyes water.

  “What do you think? Was she a groupie?” Derek asked, sifting through the drawers of neatly folded and organized panties.

  “A groupie?”

  I dug through her medicine cabinet and found a bottle of vicodin looming over the other items like a shadow, a recent prescription, too. She was in a shit-ton of pain and probably hindered in her range of motion. Under the sink, four heating pads sat neatly stacked alongside an electronic massager. This girl had been weak and an easy target. A crippled gazelle.

  “A werewolf groupie,” Derek said, moving on to the woman’s closet for closer inspection.

  “The pack doesn’t have groupies,” I snipped. It wasn’t like a damned rock band. “This woman had back problems,” I said. “She has some pretty serious pain killers and treatment items under her sink.”

  “Why does that matter?” He turned away from the cream-colored blouse he had between his fingers and faced me.

  “She ran a long way with a slipped disc or something. Plus, she outran two werewolves for at least what would you say, 150, maybe 200 yards. They played with her, letting fear and adrenaline fill her system.”

  I went over to the nightstand. A picture in a pearlized pink frame of the victim with an older woman, her mother probably, sat staring back at me. They smiled as if the world couldn’t touch them, happy. Bad things weren’t supposed to happen to happy people. Had anyone told her mother? Did the poor woman already know that her world would never be the same? There was nothing I could do to change it, but I could do something her mother couldn’t; avenge her daughter. I could give her that much.

  “You’re sure it’s werewolves?”

  “I am.”

  “And I’m assuming the Pack has laws for shit like this,” he snarled, finally showing his anger. His tone made me feel like I was the one being interrogated. I didn’t like it.

  “It does,” I barked. If he could be an ass, so could I. I was better at it than he was anyway.

  “Let’s say someone breaks those laws,” he said, crossing his arms over his chest with a belligerent air to his words and a stiff line to his shoulders. I wanted to smack that damned egotistical sneer off his face.

  “Who enforces the Pack’s law?” he asked.

  “I do,” I said with a blank expression, my eyes cold, and my chin high. I was tired of playing cat and mouse with him. So I gave him what he wanted. An answer.

  “I’m not sure I like that answer, Kid. They don’t get their day in court.”

  No court of law would understand how the supernatural community worked and no prison could hold them. Werewolves, vampires, and everything else lived outside the rules of normal human existence. Hell, I wasn’t even sure I lived inside the rules of normal human existence anymore. Derek stared at me with a new expression crinkling the corners of his mouth. Respect. Unease. Caution.

  “I’ll be sure and let ‘em know at the next Pack meeting. Court and jail will look a hellava lot better than punishment by my hand. They could just break out of jail and be back on the streets,” I bit out with anger and sarcasm.

  He eyed me with interest, so I threw the latex gloves at him, hitting him in the chest, and stormed from the bedroom. The dead woman’s apartment told me nothing other than she was a neat freak. I wasn’t even sure why we were here. The only thread I had to go on was that the victim was my height, build, and blond. Derek hadn’t put that together yet but he wasn’t overly sensitive to all matters concerning me. Sometimes, I found that refreshing.

  Pictures of the dead woman with friends and family lined the wall down the stairs, painting a life that appeared well lived. She smiled in every one of them and jealousy burned in the pit of my stomach. Derek’s heavy footfalls behind me filled the tense silence and I pushed on, ignoring the nausea bubbling in my gut and the thud of my heart racing in my ears.

  “Did you notice that she kinda looks like you?” Derek asked, hesitating on the stairs. His voice was too casual, too sure.

  “Nope,” I clipped over my shoulder as I shuffled to the front door. So much for not making the connection.

  “No really,” he said. “The same soft features, the same build,” he stammered describing her, finding the right word, instead of saying something he might regret later.

  I glanced back at him, giving him a surly glare.

  “You could be cousins. Come look at this!” He pointed at the pictures on the wall and leaned in for a better look.

  I turned on the perfect little porch, staring back into the house. I didn’t want to go back in. I wanted to get the hell out of there and forget I ever saw her happy laughing face.

  Derek waved his hand at me, impatient. He wanted me to look and wasn’t going to accept I don’t wanna as an excuse. Trudging back across the threshold, I approached him on the stairs.

  I took a deep breath as I climbed the two soft green-carpeted stairs and closed the distance between us. I stared at the woman in the pictures, really saw her.

  She was dead because of me. I knew it in my bones as I stared into her gray eyes, porcelain complexion, soft features, and wheat-colored hair. It wasn’t a suspicion anymore and I couldn’t ignore it. I explained how they’d done it, but they’d tracked her, lured her, and killed her.

  “They thought she was you, didn’t they?” he asked. His voice wasn’t much more than a whisper. Sometimes, Derek was just too damned smart for his own good.

  “I don’t know,” I whispered.

  “What does your gut tell you now?” he snapped. Anger gave his voice an edge that sounded foreign but I knew I deserved it.

  “My gut says ‘yes,’” I said, staring at nothing and everything.

  “Maybe you should take that back to your Pack and discuss it,” he bit out.

  Turning on my heels, I left the house without looking back at him. That familiar tug of anger twisted in my gut, burned through my muscles, and made my fingers itch to draw my sword. Anger would definitely wash away the guilt. It would also help me kill those fucks.

  “Oh, believe me, I will,” I growled. “You can count on it.”

  I’d been avoiding the Manit, the time werewolves gathered during the waxing, waning, and the full moon, for months. They joined as a pack and communed with their primal beasts, hunting, killing, and probably fucking. I’d never made it that far as a guest and didn’t particularly want to know. The Manit reminded me too much of Danny. Tonight, I had a reason or two to make an appearance whether they wanted me there or not.

  Dean had left in a hurry the other night without any explanation and I wanted one. I didn’t know why it was important, but deep in my gut, I knew it was. Whatever he’d latched onto was gnawing at me, plus I was just nosey. At the Manit, I could see who was uncomfortable with me bein
g there and who the new faces were. Last, but certainly not least, I had to keep an eye on Jackson.

  Chapter 6

  I felt like I was sitting still while everyone passed me left and right on my way North. I checked the speedometer just to check. “Seventy my ass,” I scoffed.

  Finally, I reached the farm out in the middle of fucking nowhere, in Delaware County after forty minutes of driving in a near silent haze. I turned down the familiar long dirt drive as if I was in some sort of a dream. Everything seemed so surreal. My heart raced as my tires kicked up rocks and dust behind me. I hadn’t been down that drive since Danny’s last Manit, more than six months ago. My chest clenched in agony as I remembered him and the pride on his face as I held my own. Blinking back tears, I slipped into the tall grass along the drive and parked.

  There were more cars parked along the drive than I remembered the last time. The car sank just a little into the soft earth as I shut off the ignition and the tires pressed the heavy weight of the car into the ground. I took hold of the steering wheel of my Grand Am in a death grip with white knuckles and broken fingernails as I sat in the silent car, trying to work up the nerve to get out.

  “Breathe,” I whispered to myself. My stomach twisted into knots and my palms sweated against the steering wheel. I wasn’t normally like this.

  I wasn’t afraid. I wasn’t! Being back in that circle, alone, would be painful and I was going in there willingly. I was stupid, not scared.

  A gentle rap on my driver’s side window startled me, and I almost jumped out of my skin.

  “Get a grip,” I growled to myself. It was too dangerous to be off my guard, especially when surrounded by things that could eat me.

  Kurt stood with his face filling up the driver’s side window, smirking at me with a mischievous glint in his eyes. He was on permanent rotation as one of the wolves guarding me. He and Jade had something going but neither was talking. All I knew was that he was way too overprotective of her and she always arrived at my house smelling of him.

  Kurt was a stocky guy, solid, like a brick wall walking beside me. I got out of my car and nudged him with my shoulder. He nudged me back. Playful, comfortable, and, most importantly, familiar. My stomach stopped churning as he grinned down at me, flashing his pearly whites. I wasn’t alone. Kurt was there and he wouldn’t let me falter. That little shoulder nudge was the closest thing to a hug the two of us would ever get. I took it thankfully.

  “You weren’t waiting on me, were you?” I asked with a grin, teasing. We strode side-by-side through the calf-high grass. I’d worn a pair of work boots and jeans and was glad of it even if I was sweating like a pig in a sauna.

  “Not waiting, just watching,” he said with a sideways glance in my direction. “Dean thought you’d make an appearance tonight,” he said with another slight nudge at my shoulder.

  “Oh, he did, did he?” I said in a saucy tone.

  “Yep, just had a feeling.” The smile on his square face grew to almost beaming. There was an inside joke I wasn’t getting and anger burned through me. Good. Anger, I could work with, use like a chef and his knives.

  “Your Gaoh has too many feelings,” I snapped, trudging through the grass ahead of Kurt.

  “Funny,” Kurt said with a wistful glance. “I don’t think anyone would have accused him of that for a very long time. Not since Janey died.”

  We trudged the rest of the way through the grass and into the woods in silence. It was probably best. I’d never asked about Dean’s dead wife, his mate. Now, wasn’t the time to start.

  The circle was big, much bigger than I remembered. Patrick had said something about an influx, but damn. I thought he meant it was going to happen not that it had already happened.

  Thirty more people formed the Manit circle than the 20 or 25 people I remembered. I’d never seen some of these werewolves before which made me nervous. I should’ve been paying attention, known who the possible threats were, and I didn’t.

  I pushed through the tight circle of people until I was in the first row, still hidden among the very warm bodies. Dean towered in the center of the circle, his arms crossed over his chest in an imposing stance that made my body warm, and tingle beneath my skin. I hummed with the heat of his power as the moonlight glimmered across his shaved head.

  Jackson stood a few feet behind Dean, stiff and gloomy. He glanced over the crowd with a smug smirk on his face. His eyes finally rested on me.

  His gaze was cold and angry and he leaned forward, speaking low and guttural in Dean’s ear so that only Dean would hear. The growl in his voice made the words indiscernible to my ears and the hairs on the back of my neck stood on end. Dean raised his hand, halting Jackson’s speech. Dean managed to shut him down with an authority I envied. I usually had to pull a weapon to get my message across.

  Jackson stepped back in obvious annoyance, grinding his teeth and sneering. He focused his gaze on me, fire in his hate-filled gaze and a snarl on his lips.

  Dean’s usually dark, olive-green eyes were a fierce crystal clear Caribbean blue. My body tingled in low, dark places as the eyes of his wolf bore into me, touching me in a way that merely a glance shouldn’t be able to touch.

  Ours.

  He waved me over, motioning for me to stand beside him. Perfect! I stepped from the crowd, tentative and apprehensive. I felt everyone in the crowd turn and evaluate me like a piece of meat as a stress-filled silence fell over them. I stepped up beside Dean but remained far enough away that I could still see Jackson hiding behind Dean’s broad back.

  “I need to talk to you,” I whispered.

  Dean glanced down at me with stern, commanding eyes. He cocked his head, an expression that was positively canine and focused on me for a long moment. His eyes trailed fire up and down my body with each passing second before he even acknowledged my existence with a nod. I guess that meant talk.

  “I went to the victim’s house today,” I said. “She . . . uhm . . . she,” I stammered. Why was this so damned hard?

  “She looked like you,” Dean growled. Those crystal clear Caribbean blue eyes blazed with ferocity as he met my gaze. The only indication he gave that he was uneasy were the muscles playing along his jaw, flexing and tightening as his face turned to hard granite.

  “Well, yeah,” I said, a little annoyed. “Even Derek noticed,” I snipped. Once I spoke those words out loud, a weight lifted from my shoulders.

  He nodded and dropped his folded arms to a relaxed military stance, with feet shoulder-length apart and his hands clasped behind his back. The muscles over his chest flexed and tightened.

  “Thought so,” he said, nodding. “Strays.” A rumble of growls moved through the crowd in reaction to that single word snarled with contempt.

  “As in stray DOG?” I asked.

  He nodded.

  Like I said, Dean was the silent type. “They don’t belong to a Pack. Right?”

  Dean nodded again.

  “Gaoh!” Jackson snapped from behind Dean’s broad back in a gruff, angry tone. “How can we trust her?” The glare he shot me was all challenge, violence. “She only comes here when it’s convenient to her. She doesn’t care about the Pack,” he barked with a slight smile cresting his thin lips.

  The tone of the crowd changed to rambunctious agreement as shouts of “He’s right,” and “That’s true” rippled through the crowd.

  Lifting my chin, I caught Dean’s warning glare. Only the anger shining in his eyes reflected the emotion tightening his jaw. His face remained a façade of expressionless authority and power.

  “She is responsible for our previous Beta’s death, no matter how substandard he was,” Jackson cooed, a devious smile curling into a sneer.

  A twinge of pain twisted my gut as my blood-soaked hands flashed through my mind. Rage filled me. How dare that skeezy bastard
talk about Danny? He didn’t have the right and if it was the last thing I did, Jackson would pay for that remark. I narrowed my gaze on him and let him see the monster behind my eyes.

  I clenched my jaw and flexed my fingers repetitively as I stared deep into Jackson’s empty dark eyes. Before I knew it, my hand rested on the gun holstered at the small of my back. The cool metal felt familiar and welcoming in my hand, clearing my head of all the emotional bullshit that made me question myself. The feel of my gun in my hand let the rage in my system percolate to near boiling. The holster’s safety notch clicked as I dislodged the gun and slid my finger across the trigger.

  I could kill him right where he stood and not be one bit sorry for it.

  He’s a danger to us and ours to discipline, that soft voice whispered through my mind, and I couldn’t help the malicious smile that turned up the corner of my mouth.

  Dean’s large, warm hand settled gently on my shoulder, shaking me out of my focus by the hum of power passing through my skin. Heat reached down to my womanhood, tilting my world on its side. I gripped the metal of my gun harder, to focus.

  Jackson, I wanted to hurt Jackson, I reminded myself.

  Dean shook his head, staring down at me with trepidation in his crystal blue wolf eyes. Rubbing his thumb lightly across my clavicle, he sent shockwaves rippling through me. It was a slight touch that rocked me to my core, making my body ache for things I didn’t understand.

  Ours . . . Mine.

  I rolled my shoulders and stretched my neck as I relaxed into Dean’s warm touch. I let his strength, his power, flow over me in hot waves. I allowed my body to relax and released the death grip I had on the butt of my gun. Later. I could hurt Jackson later.

  “Enough, she was not to blame,” Dean boomed over the crowd, quieting them all into chastised silence. His Caribbean blue eyes never left mine.