Bitten

by Kelley Armstrong

  "Exactly."

  Nick turned and walked to the house. He wasn't happy, but he'd do it. I'd make it up to him someday.

  As I pulled into a parking spot in front of the coffee shop, I could see Daniel through the window. He was sitting in a booth. His shoulder-length auburn hair was pushed back behind his left ear--his only ear, actually, after that little biting mishap a few years ago. His profile was sharp, high cheekbones, pointed chin, and thin nose, not unhandsome in a feral way, but his looks were more fox than wolf, which better complemented his personality.

  As I got out of the car, his green eyes followed me, but he didn't acknowledge me in any other way, having learned long ago that I didn't respond well to fawning. His body was lean and compact. Standing, we'd be on perfect eye level, making him no more than five feet ten. Once, when I'd needed to meet Daniel to deliver a warning from Jeremy, I'd worn two-inch heels and had quite enjoyed the sensation of talking down to Daniel, until he told me how sexy I looked. Since then he'd never seen me in anything but my oldest, grubbiest sneakers.

  Today Daniel was wearing a plain black T-shirt and blue jeans, which was pretty much what he wore all the time. He copied Clay's monochromatic, construction-worker-casual wardrobe as if it would lend him a certain cachet. It didn't.

  Marsten sat across from Daniel. As usual, he was groomed and dressed like he'd stepped from the pages of GQ, which only made Daniel look like a slob in comparison. Okay, Karl Marsten made everyone look like a slob.

  As Nick and I walked in, Marsten stood and strolled to the door to meet us.

  "You came," he said to me. "I'm surprised Jeremy let you. Or does he know?"

  I mentally kicked myself. I hadn't thought how it would look if I showed up against Jeremy's wishes. Dissension in the Pack. Wonderful. Trust Marsten to pick up on it in five seconds flat.

  "You look good, Elena," Marsten continued, not waiting for me to answer. "Tired, but that's to be expected. Hopefully all this will be over soon."

  "That depends on you," I said.

  "In part." He turned to the server behind the counter. "Two coffees. Black for the lady and--" He looked over at Nick. "One cream, two sugars, correct?"

  Nick only glared at him.

  "One black. The other with one cream, two sugars,"

  Marsten repeated to the server. "Put it on my tab." He paused, then turned to me with a wry smile. "I can't believe I just said that in a doughnut shop. I have to get out of this town."

  I looked away.

  "It's been a long time, Nicholas," Marsten continued. "How's your father? I invested in one of his companies last year. Thirty percent return. He certainly hasn't lost his touch."

  Ignoring him, Nick sat on a stool at the counter and studied the doughnut display. Marsten took the stool beside him and waved me toward Daniel.

  "I'll keep Nicholas company," he said.

  Daniel didn't look up as I walked over. He stirred his coffee and acknowledged me only with the barest nod. The server delivered my coffee. I pushed it aside and sat on the bench across the table from Daniel. He kept stirring. For a few seconds, I sat there. Under any other circumstances, I would have waited to see how long he could stretch this coffee-stirring feigned indifference before he cracked and looked at me. But the time for games was over.

  "What do you want?" I asked.

  Still stirring, eyes on the mug as if it might skitter away if he stopped watching it. "What do I usually want?"

  "Revenge."

  He glanced up and met my gaze, then broke eye contact to give me the usual slow once-over. I gritted my teeth and waited. After a few seconds I was tempted to snap my fingers in front of his face and tell him there wasn't that much of me to look at.

  "You want revenge," I repeated to get his brain back on track.

  Daniel leaned back in his seat, pulling one leg up to look oh-so-cool and relaxed. "No, I don't. I've never wanted that. Whatever the Pack did to me, I'm over it. They're not worth my time. But you are."

  "Here we go," I muttered.

  Daniel ignored me. "I know why you're with them, Elena. Because you're afraid to leave, afraid of what they'll do, and afraid of what will happen to you without their protection. I'm trying to show you that they can't hurt you and they can't protect you. If you want a partner, a true partner, you deserve better than some freak who has to turn around three times before he lies down. I can give you better."

  "So this is all about winning me? Bullshit."

  "You don't think you're worth it? I thought your self-esteem was higher than that."

  "My IQ is higher than that. This isn't about me. It never has been. It's about you and Clay. You think he has me, so you want me. Your motivation is as complex as that of a two-year-old seeing another kid with a shiny toy. You want it."

  "You underestimate yourself."

  "No, I don't underestimate how much you hate him. What happened? Did he always get the bigger slice of birthday cake?"

  "He made my life hell. Him and Tonto over there." Daniel glared toward Nick. "Poor little Clay. He has problems. He's had a tough life. You should be nice to him. You should make friends with him. That's all I ever heard. All they saw was a cute little runt of a wolf cub. He bared his teeth and they thought it was cute. He ordered us around like a miniature Napoleon and they thought it was cute. Well, it wasn't cute from where I was standing. It was--"

  I held up my hand. "You're ranting."

  "What?"

  "Just wanted to let you know. You're ranting. It's kinda ugly. Next thing you know, you'll be laying out your plans for world domination. That's what all villains do after they rant about their motivation. I was hoping you'd be different."

  Daniel took a swig of coffee, then shook his head and gave a small laugh. "Well, you've put me in my place. You've always been good at that. You say bark and I say how loud."

  "I say let Clay go ..."

  Daniel made a face. "And I say why bother? Okay, there's a limit to my obedience training. I won't let him go just because you want it, Elena. You could pout and bat your eyes and plead and, while I'd find that damned arousing, it wouldn't make me release him. I'll make you the same exchange offer I made to Jeremy. You for Clay."

  "Why?"

  "I already told you."

  "Because I'm so damned irresistible. Uh-huh. Give me a better explanation or I'm out of here."

  Daniel was silent for a moment, then leaned forward. "Have you ever thought of starting your own Pack? Not recruiting a bunch of half-wit mutts, but creating a dynasty? We aren't immortal, Elena, but there is a way to ensure our immortality."

  "I really hope you're not implying what I think you're implying."

  "Children, Elena. A new breed of werewolves. Not half-werewolf, half-human, but complete werewolves, inheriting the genes from both parents. Perfect werewolves."

  "Wow. You really do want to rule the world."

  "I'm serious."

  "Seriously crazy. Sorry, but this womb isn't for sale or rent."

  "Not even for the price of a life? Clay's life?"

  I pulled back and pretended to think about it. Time to call his bluff.

  "So I agree to go with you and you'll release him?"

  "Right. Only, I'm not just going to trust you to come with me and stay with me, so let's get that straight right off. I've got a place I plan to take you, someplace suitably remote and secure. You'll be confined. Something like the cage at Stonehaven, but far more luxurious. You give me what I want, everything I want, and you won't be in there very long. Once I've convinced you that I'm the better choice, I'll let you out. If you try to run, I'll put you back in."

  "Gee, doesn't that sound tempting."

  "I'm being honest, Elena. It's an exchange. His captivity for yours."

  I pretended to think about it, staring out the window. Then I turned back to Daniel. "Here's my condition. I want to see him released. You'll do it in broad daylight and in a public place. I'll be there with you to watch it happen. Once he's free, I'm yo
urs."

  "That's not how it works. Once you're mine, he's free."

  "You have no intention of letting him go," I said. "That's what I thought."

  I got to my feet, turned, and walked out of the coffee shop. Both Nick and Daniel hurried after me. When I got to the car, Daniel's hand shot out and held the door shut.

  "You've seen the photos, haven't you?" he asked.

  I stopped, but didn't turn around.

  "I know you've seen the photos," Daniel continued. "You've seen what kind of shape he's in. You've seen that it's getting worse. How much longer do you think he can hold out?"

  I turned around slowly. I turned and I saw Daniel's face and I saw the satisfaction in his eyes and I lost it. For the past half hour, I'd been struggling not to think about Clay. As I'd talked to Daniel, I'd fought not to remember that he was the one holding Clay captive, that he'd drugged him and beaten him until there was scarcely an inch of skin left unmarked. I'd concentrated on talking to Daniel as I'd talked to him a hundred times before, as it if was just another message I was conveying from Jeremy telling him to shape up or face punishment. I'd really, really, really tried to forget what was actually happening. But when he stood there and threatened Clay, I couldn't pretend anymore. The rage inside me bubbled over before I could rein it back.

  I grabbed him by the shirtfront and threw him against my car so hard the driver's window shattered into a million bits of safety glass.

  "You sniveling hyena." I pressed myself against him until our faces were only inches apart. "You kidnap him with a hypodermic needle. You chain him up so you can beat him. But that's not good enough. You have to drug him first. You have to make absolutely certain he can't even summon the strength to spit in your face. Then you beat him. Did it feel good? Did it make you feel like a man, beating your enemy to a pulp when he can't lift a finger to fight back? You're not a man and you're not a wolf. You're a hyena, a bottom-feeding coward. If you lay another hand on him, I'll do something to you that will make that ear bite look like a paper cut. And if you kill him, I swear to God and the devil and anyone who will listen, if you kill him, I will hunt you down. I will find you and I will inflict on you every torture I can imagine. I'll blind you and I'll castrate you and I'll burn you. But I won't kill you. I won't let you die. I'll put you in hell and I'll make you live there for the rest of your life."

  I threw Daniel aside. He stumbled, recovered, and turned to face me. His mouth opened, closed, opened again, but he couldn't seem to think of a suitable reply, so he settled for turning on his heel and stamping back into the coffee shop, where it looked as if every one of the dozen customers had suddenly taken a window seat. As I looked away I heard a low whistle and turned to see Marsten leaning against the back of the car.

  "The bitch is back," Marsten said. "Well, well. This might get interesting."

  "Go to hell," I snarled.

  I threw open the car door, got in, and started it up as Nick jumped into the passenger side. The Camaro roared from the parking spot, tires squealing. I didn't look at the speedometer the whole way back to Stonehaven.

  I'd been right about one thing. The time for games was over.

  CHAPTER 32

  REGRESSION

  I left Stonehaven after everyone had gone to bed. I dressed in the dark, jumped out my window, then rolled my car a half mile down the road before starting it. I hadn't told Nick my plans. He was better off not knowing.

  I'd gone to my room early and spent the evening in bed, thinking. My meeting with Daniel had been a mistake. By refusing his offer, I'd only made things worse. Jeremy had been buying time for Clay. I'd stolen it away. To fix things, I had to act now.

  For several hours that evening, I'd tried mentally contacting Clay. Of course it didn't work. I wasn't even sure how to do it, but I'd held out some small hope that our connection might be enough. Maybe it would have been, but it was like demanding special effort from a muscle I'd ignored for too long. Nothing happened. When I couldn't get into Clay's mind, I decided to work on getting into the minds of the mutts who held him captive. Get into their minds figuratively, I mean. If I put myself in their position and tried to imagine what they'd be feeling or thinking, maybe I could find a weakness. Daniel and Marsten were easy to understand. I knew what they wanted and I knew how they operated. Marsten wouldn't leave any openings for me to slip through. Daniel's weakness was his obsession with Clay and with me. I could work on that, contact him again and try reeling him in with lies and smiles, but it would take time and I didn't have time. That left the new mutts. Here I was on unfamiliar ground. They weren't werewolves, I reminded myself. Not real ones. So how could I get inside their heads?

  For the longest time, I lay in bed, staring at the ceiling, overwhelmed by the impossibility of understanding these two. Then it came to me. They weren't werewolves, but they were human. I'd been human. I was still trying to be human. Why couldn't I get into their heads? All I had to do was strip away my wolf side, something I'd been trying to do for years already. Yet there was more to understanding these killers than that. I couldn't be the sort of human I'd been trying to be--even-tempered, passive, and caring. I had to be what I had been before.

  Every defense mechanism in my brain threw up barriers at the thought. Be what I'd been before Clay bit me? But I'd been even-tempered, passive, caring. Clay had changed that. Before him, I was different. I wasn't like this. That's what I wanted to believe, but I knew it wasn't true. I'd always had the capacity for violence. Clay had seen that. The child-werewolf looked at the child victim and saw a soul mate, someone who understood what it was like to grow up alienated, our odd behavior scrutinized by adults and mocked by children. By the age of seven Clay was a full werewolf with an inherent capacity for violence and a temper to match. By the same age my foster families had taught me how to hate, developing my own capacity for violence, though I'd been better at hiding it, turning it inward and struggling to show the world the passive little girl it expected to see. It was time I confronted that. Clay didn't make me the way I was. He only gave me an outlet for the anger and the hate. I had to go back there, back to the mistrust and the hatred and the impotence and the rage, most of all the rage, against everyone who had wronged me. There I'd find the mind of a killer, a human killer.

  LeBlanc hated women. Maybe he'd been mistreated by his mother or laughed at by girls in school or maybe he had such low self-esteem that he needed to feel superior to some group of people and chose women instead of blacks or Jews. If it was self-esteem, I could use that. But to find the truth, I'd need to research his life, looking for some road sign to his psychopathology. Again, I didn't have time.

  What about Victor Olson? I started to dismiss the idea without a second thought. After all, I'd never even met the man. But did I need to? I pulled the two Internet article printouts from my dresser drawer and studied them. What did they tell me about Olson? He was a stalker. A compulsive stalker. In one article, he'd admitted to going out every night to watch his victims sleep, said that seeing their peaceful sleeping faces relaxed him and helped his insomnia. Would becoming a werewolf cure that compulsion or that insomnia? Of course not. Which meant there was a very good chance Olson hadn't abandoned his old patterns, that he was still watching young girls sleep, here in Bear Valley.

  I'd left Stonehaven to find Olson. The articles said he targeted girls from middle-class homes. I assumed he'd be looking for single-story homes, so he could peek through a first-floor window. There were only two such subdivisions in Bear Valley. All I had to do was cruise the streets and sniff him out.

  After driving around Bear Valley for over an hour, I began to realize how big a task this was. Sure, there were only two subdivisions, but each contained a dozen or more streets with at least a hundred homes. I only had several hours before dawn. To cover as much ground as possible, I drove slowly with all the windows down--except the smashed driver's window, which was now permanently down. Sometimes the wind favored me. Mostly it didn't and the only thing I sme
lled was the musty interior of my little-used car. Making matters worse, the police were out in full force, still looking for a killer. They were pulling over every car out that late that night, so I spent as much time avoiding them as looking for Olson. After two hours, I finished both subdivisions. No sign of Olson. For all I knew, he wasn't even out that night.

  I was circling the second subdivision one last time when I saw a lone car in the parking lot of a convenience store, now conveniently closed for the night. As I passed, I noticed the rental sticker on the car's back bumper. Of course. If the mutts weren't hiding in town, Olson would need transportation to Bear Valley. I swung my car down a side road, parked, and got out. I didn't even make it halfway to the convenience store when I caught the scent of an unfamiliar werewolf.

  I jogged around the corner and stopped short. A heavy-set, middle-aged man in a windbreaker walked along the sidewalk, less than twenty feet from the corner. Fortunately, Olson had his back to me. He was heading toward his car. I hurried back around the corner and ran for my car. He drove by as I was turning the car around in a driveway. Keeping my headlights out, I followed.

  As we drove out of Bear Valley, my heart pounded. I was right. They were staying in the country side. Olson would lead me right to them. We'd been heading northwest for almost twenty minutes when Olson turned into an overgrown drive carved into deep forest. He stopped the car past the edge of the woods. I was about to enact part two of my plan when I realized Olson wasn't getting out of his car. Staying well back, I killed the engine and waited. Ten minutes passed. I could see the outline of his head in the car. I leaned over, carefully opened my passenger door, and slipped into a ditch.

  I crept to the end of the drive. The forest was black. Even when my eyes adjusted, I could see no sign of a house. As I turned back toward Olson's car, I saw that the driveway went nowhere. It was only a turnaround or a one-car parking spot for a nature trail beyond. I moved into the woods and snuck closer to the car. When I was parallel to the driver's side, I stopped and squinted through the darkness. Olson's head was resting against the headrest. His eyes were closed. Asleep. I briefly wondered why, but the question was irrelevant. Maybe he couldn't sleep near the others. Or maybe he liked to be alone after his spying trips. It didn't matter. Victor Olson wasn't leading me back to Clay. At least not tonight. But I couldn't wait until morning. Come morning, Jeremy would know I was gone. The Pack would be looking for me. Even if I managed to elude them for another day, that would be another twenty-four hours for Daniel to kill Clay. And what if Olson wasn't just taking a break from the mutts? What if he wasn't ever going back to them? He knew where Clay was. I had to know--tonight.