Crimson Daggers- The Complete Trilogy

by Emma Savant

  The thought sent chills down my spine despite the heat, and I mentally reached out for the energy of my talisman. It still thrummed gently beneath us. He couldn’t shift here.

  If only that knowledge made me feel safer.

  I felt the weight of the dagger in my boot as we walked forward into the darkness. Brendan had told me not to come armed, but I could only imagine what kind of idiot might follow through on that promise. I hadn’t brought a gun or any of my sisters. That seemed like enough of a compromise.

  The corridor opened onto another room, this one mostly bare and set with a series of low, round wooden doors.

  “Bedrooms,” Brendan said. “Some of the wolves like to be close to an exit.”

  “I can’t say I blame them.”

  The space was cozy, but the lack of windows felt a little claustrophobic, too. Everything about this place was wide and closed-off, designed to suit the inclinations of werewolves. I kept one hand on the wall as we moved deeper into the den.

  “Is it all one long hallway?” I said.

  “You ever seen a wolf den?”

  “This is my first.”

  “Mother wolves create dens almost twenty feet long,” he said. “It made sense to pattern our dens after theirs.”

  “You’re not wolves,” I said. “You’re werewolves.”

  “We’re more similar than you’d think,” he said. “Or have you based everything you think you know about us on old black-and-white Humdrum movies?”

  “The witches in my coven have been researching monsters for centuries,” I said. “A whole section of our library is dedicated to shifters.”

  “Wow,” he said, in a voice so sarcastic I was surprised he didn’t choke on it. “A whole section. You must know a lot.”

  “Don’t be passive-aggressive,” I said. “It’s not attractive.”

  He glanced over his shoulder. “You care whether I’m attractive? That’s nice.”

  “Shut up.”

  The corridor opened again, this time onto a room much like the first. But this had other people in it.

  Other monsters.

  They looked up at me, and the air was tense. It was clear they’d known I was coming, and the muscles in my arms and legs tightened in preparation to run or fight.

  Brendan stopped and held a hand toward me. “This is Scarlett,” he said.

  I scanned the room. Six people. Six pairs of eyes fixed on me, with all the focus I could have expected from predators. Six people who, I silently prayed, would not be able to shift now that my spell had snaked its way through their home.

  “Scarlett,” Brendan said in the slow, measured voice someone might use to talk to an aggressive animal. “These are members of the Wildwood pack.”

  These people seemed ordinary, dressed in T-shirts and tank tops. One of the women had a pair of dark-red leggings that looked like a pair I’d bought just a few weeks ago.

  It chilled me, how easily they could hide in plain sight.

  “We’d like to share our stories with you,” Brendan said. “If you’re willing.”

  “I thought we were here to talk truce,” I said.

  “This is an important part of that.”

  The eyes on me were all attention. Whatever I said would change the air in this room, and I wasn’t sure whether a no would lead to disappointment or my getting torn limb from limb.

  I didn’t want to find out.

  Brendan offered me a seat on a chair separate from the rest of them. I couldn’t tell whether this was meant as a courtesy or because they didn’t want to be anywhere near me, but I was glad for the space. Several of the people here were practically sitting on each other’s laps in a way that reminded me of the mansion cats curling up together on cold days.

  The wolves were watching me, but they were paying attention to Brendan. His every move was carefully noted by everyone in the room. They shifted when he shifted; they relaxed when he leaned back into his chair. He was the alpha, and they acted on his orders and his alone.

  Brendan nodded to one of the young men on the far end of a couch.

  “My name is Matt,” the man said. “I’ve been a member of the pack for about four years now. I was in the foster care system in my teens.” He glanced at Brendan, who gave him an encouraging nod. “I was placed into a home that, um, wasn’t great, so I ran away. Brendan found me in the forest. He brought me here. I was in bad shape, and the pack took care of me. After I started feeling better, I wanted to stay, and I asked them to turn me.”

  I listened with my lips pressed together. Even I had the social savvy to know I should read the room and keep my mouth shut.

  “So, uh, that’s me,” Matt said. He laughed nervously and nudged the person next to him with his shoulder.

  Before she could speak, I held up a hand.

  “What were you before?” I said. “In our world?”

  He blushed. “I was a Humdrum, actually,” he said. “I didn’t know about the Glimmering world until the pack rescued me.”

  I made a noncommittal sound and looked at the girl next to him. She looked to be about my age, maybe a little younger.

  “I’m Cheyanne,” she said. She gave me an awkward, cheerful wave. “I was born into the pack. My parents are both Wildwoods, and I’m one of the pups. I’m here because I want to be. I love our community and I can’t imagine wanting to go anywhere else, although my mom’s kind of pushing hard for college, so I don’t know. We’ll see.”

  “Does your mom want you out of this environment?” I said.

  She cracked a smile. “No, she just thinks I’d be a good engineer. I’m really into additive manufacturing right now.”

  “Have you gone to school before?” I said. “Outside of the pack.”

  “For a few years,” she said. “I did my last three years of high school with the pack. It was a better education.”

  I glanced at Brendan, who was ignoring me. He gave Cheyanne an approving smile and gestured to the next person.

  They went around the room, sharing their stories.

  Kathy was in her mid-forties and had spent her life trying to exist as a werewolf in Glimmering society. She had been exhausted from trying to rein in her instincts and control her full-moon shifts and had joined the pack so she could live in a way that felt natural to her.

  Drew had been dealing with severe depression. After Brendan invited him to spend time with what Drew jokingly called “these therapy animals,” he’d asked to be turned when his time in the forest relieved his symptoms in a way medication and therapy hadn’t.

  Monroe had spent time with the pack when she’d started dating a Wildwood, and, after a few years, decided she valued the community and structure so much that she wanted to be a permanent part of it.

  And Valerie, who had a friend in the pack, had asked for their protection after she escaped an abusive relationship and ended up joining them when she decided she felt more at home in the den than she ever had in the outside world.

  Each story was unique, but the sincerity of the tellings were the same. The message, which Brendan seemed determined to hit me over the head with, was clear: these people had chosen to join the Wildwoods and found value in their life here.

  I would have been more impressed if they hadn’t just kidnapped my grandmother.

  32

  “I can tell what you’re getting at,” I said in an undertone to Brendan. He led me through the next dim portion of the corridor. The werewolves had watched me with hopeful eyes while Brendan had thanked them for their stories, and I’d tried to be polite. But their optimism and heartwarming stories hadn’t been enough to change my mind. “Terrorist organizations manage to recruit people, too. The fact that those people joined of their own free will doesn’t excuse what you’ve been doing out here. And they’re what, a sample size of six? You have more wolves than that.”

  “How do you know?” he said.

  “A friend told me,” I said.

  He jerked his head sharply around to loo
k at me, and I avoided his eyes. I wasn’t about to drag Alec into this.

  “We’ve never turned someone who didn’t ask for it,” Brendan said. “Not since I’ve been the alpha.”

  “Your dad did, though.”

  There was a long silence. The scent of damp earth pressed in on us.

  “Damn, Brendan, do you not have windows? It’s dark in here.”

  “Sorry,” he said. “Here.”

  He held out a hand. Warily, I took it, and he led me through the corridor and into another open space.

  This one was a kitchen, filled with gleaming copper and lit by a fireplace to one side and a cluster of wired-in overhead light fixtures. Copper pipes wound their way along the walls, leading to a few carved stone sinks and faucets.

  I let go of Brendan’s hand, and he jerked his away from me. A few people were working at a large wooden table in the middle of the room, chopping carrots and peeling onions. They glanced up, and one older man smiled warmly.

  “This is pretty clever,” I said, gesturing at the pipes. “Didn’t realize you have plumbing.”

  “Come on,” Brendan said. “We’re not animals.”

  I held back a groan. The young woman standing over the stove did not.

  “That’s a quarter for the bad jokes jar,” she said.

  “I’m the alpha,” Brendan said. “I don’t have to pay that jar.”

  “Yeah, you do,” she said, pointing a wooden spoon at him. “You’re the only one who has to pay into that jar because you’re the only one whose jokes are that bad.”

  She set her spoon to the side and pulled her short, curling brown hair out of its loose ponytail, then tied it back up more tightly. She looked at me and tilted her head. “Oh, hey, you’re the witch, right?” she said. “You staying for dinner?”

  I glanced at Brendan, who was wearing a half-suppressed smile. He gestured at me to respond.

  “Um, I don’t know yet,” I said.

  On the one hand, it seemed like a good chance for them to poison me.

  On the other, they were seeming more and more like a kind of weird forest hippie commune than a pack of murderous creatures of the night.

  “You should stay,” the girl said. “We’re making pork chops with raspberry sauce, and it’s going to be amazing.”

  “You kill the pig yourselves?”

  “No,” she said with a grin. “Shelley stacked a bunch of coupons and got like forty pork chops for five bucks. Extra’s in the deep freezer,” she added to Brendan.

  “This is Cate,” Brendan said, pointing to the girl. “That’s Jerrold, and that’s Susan.”

  I nodded at them all, then whipped my head back toward the girl.

  “Cate?” I said. “Wait, do you know Alec Forrest?”

  Her eyes widened, and she wiped her hands on her apron. “Um, yeah,” she said slowly. She squinted a little at me and tilted her head. “Used to, anyway. You know him? How’s he doing?”

  “He’s fine, I guess,” I said.

  Brendan folded his arms and turned a questioning stare on me. “You know Alec?” he said.

  “He mentioned you were acquainted.”

  “No thanks to him.” His voice took on an edge; I’d struck some kind of nerve. “Kid’s got problems.”

  “Don’t we all.” I turned back to Cate. “What do you think of the Wildwoods? The pack?”

  She shrugged and smiled. “It’s family,” she said. “They drive me crazy, but I love them.”

  Jerrold handed her a bowl of diced onions, and she tipped it into the pan in front of her. The onions sizzled, and in a moment, their sharp smell filled the cavern kitchen. She gave the food a stir and turned back to me.

  “Listen, I know you’re here because your family has some kind of feud going with us. I don’t know what your family believes, but the pack has been good to me, and I’m proud to be part of it. And I’m sorry this idiot kidnapped your leader. I told him it was a stupid idea.”

  “The Crimson Daggers owe us,” Brendan said, but he sounded less convinced than I’d have expected.

  I whirled on him. “What’s up with that, anyway?” I said. “Since we’re getting everything out in the open. My grandma killed your dad, which I guess sucks for everyone, but that was years ago. Why try to extort us now?”

  His jaw hardened, which was irritatingly attractive.

  “This isn’t the place to have that conversation,” he said.

  Cate drifted across the kitchen and rested her elbows on a table in the middle.

  “No, Brendan, I really think you should chat,” she said in a voice heavy with sarcasm. “See what Scarlett here thinks of your conundrum.”

  “It’s not funny,” he said.

  “I know it’s not funny,” she said. “It’s stupid.” She rolled her eyes. “We’re outgrowing our den. Everyone’s two to a bedroom right now, which is kind of an issue. Wolves need their space. It’s getting just about impossible to hide in the forest here, especially when everyone goes on their full moon runs—and I’m not about to tell a bunch of werewolves that they’re not allowed to go running when the moon’s like that. I’m not a monster.” She winked.

  “You have five thousand acres here.”

  “To hide in, yeah,” she said. “Not to live in. And we really, really want to start living. Can you imagine if, every time you felt like you needed to go for a run, you had to hole up in your room instead? You’d go crazy.”

  I gave this some actual thought. The feeling she was talking about was probably the same one that crept up my arms every time I needed to go punch something but the ballroom and gym were already full of Daggers. The situations weren’t exactly the same, but I did know what it was like to hide, and I did know what I was like to feel stifled.

  I wrapped my jacket more tightly around myself in spite of the kitchen’s heat.

  “What does that have to do with my grandmother?”

  “Some genius here has held a grudge against your family for a while,” Cate said, shooting a contemptuous look toward Brendan. “And this same genius decided that since your grandma is rich, holding her for ransom would be the quickest way to get enough cash to buy a plot of land that actually belongs to us.”

  I whirled on Brendan. “You tried to steal my grandma’s money so you could buy land?” I said. “How about you go get a job like the rest of us?”

  “I have a job,” he said in a voice that was thick with patience I could tell he didn’t feel. “I told you. I work at the airport. Most of us have jobs. But we also need to eat and pay for internet and stuff.”

  I paused. “You have internet out here?”

  “Satellite,” he said. “It’s not cheap.”

  I wanted to roll my eyes. I wanted to roll my whole body, because this was the stupidest, most self-centered, most asinine thing I’d ever heard.

  “You thought my grandma was your ticket to a quick buck?” I said.

  “What was I supposed to do?”

  Susan and Jerrold, who were both older—and, I suspected, wiser—ignored our entire conversation.

  “You’re supposed to deal with your own financial insolvency like any other young person these days,” I said. “You’re aware that a couple of entire generations are dealing with not being able to afford their own places right now, right?”

  “Most of those people aren’t responsible for a pack this size,” Brendan said. “You have no idea what it’s like to be in charge of this many people.”

  “I still wouldn’t kidnap an old lady to fix my problems. Good Goddess, Brendan.”

  “Yeah, good Goddess,” Cate said.

  I shot her a dirty look. She held up her hands, bit back a smile, and went back to stirring her onions.

  Brendan’s gaze darted between us, and the he seemed to give up entirely. He strode into the corridor without looking back. I hesitated, then jogged after him.

  33

  “It’s not just about having space,” he said in a low voice, after we were away from the kitch
en.

  The darkened corridor opened again, and this time, my sense of claustrophobia gave way to one of relief.

  Somehow, improbable though it was, we had come out into a stunning garden.

  Windows set in the ceiling allowed soft light to filter down to the hard-packed floor. The windows were strewn with pine needles and leaves, and probably hard to notice from above, but there were enough gaps in the forest litter to illuminate this underground space in a way I hadn’t seen so far in the den. Herbs and vegetables grew in circular patches, and the whole garden was ringed by boulders just the right height for sitting.

  Brendan stalked across the garden and settled on one of them. More cautiously, I followed after him.

  He checked the area, eyes sharp and darting, to make sure we were alone.

  “Having room to let people live their lives is important,” he said. “It is. Because we don’t bring random people into the pack. We only turn people who come to us asking for it. We get people who are suicidal and people who feel called to this life. They need space to live and run and be werewolves.”

  “Why did you turn Cate?” I said.

  He let out a sharp, derisive sigh. “What did Alec tell you?”

  “Doesn’t matter. I want to hear what you’re going to say.”

  “Cate was miserable,” he said. “Her parents are vile people. She was about to get on a bus and leave. I gave her another option.”

  I shifted on the rock, trying to get comfortable.

  “So your wolves need room to stretch their legs,” I said. “I can understand that. What I cannot begin to fathom is why you thought kidnapping my grandmother was a good idea.”

  “You’re really dwelling on that, aren’t you?”

  “What else am I supposed to be dwelling on, here?”

  He leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees. A patch of spearmint in front of us seemed to catch his attention, and he stared at the pointed leaves for a long moment.

  “It’s not just about the land,” he said. “I need to get my people somewhere safe. I told you we didn’t kill anyone in your pack, and I meant it. I’m sorry about the woman who died, but we didn’t touch her. We don’t do that.”