by T. A. White
"Have Makoto run his DNA through the system and compare it to the body. I want a firm confirmation."
Daniel nodded and walked away without glancing in my direction.
Liam crossed the alley over to my side. "This is why we're so hard on our newly turned."
"You still don't have anything proving it was Caroline," I said in a soft voice. “Why would she come after the same companions from last night? She hasn’t been a wolf long, and I doubt she knows who any of the other spooks are.”
I certainly hadn’t when I’d first been turned.
“Vampires have a distinctive smell to a wolf’s nose,” Liam said, his eyes thoughtful as he stared at the bodies. “Perhaps her wolf became confused and thought they presented a threat.”
Maybe. Or perhaps her wolf thought it was me, then lost control when the companions had no doubt panicked.
“I still don’t believe it,” I said.
"You can lie to yourself all you want, but you and I both know she's the only one who would do this."
I didn't know what I believed anymore. This scene looked like the site of an animal attack. While there were many spooks that could have caused a similar scene, the chances were very small. It would have to be a pretty big coincidence for some unknown spook to attack these two in the same way a werewolf would.
I didn't want to doubt my friend, but the two victims had punctured a gaping hole in my defenses.
"Brax will be here soon. He'll be able to tell if Caroline was present." Liam's face was grim. "If she's responsible, it could have grave repercussions."
"What do you mean?"
Liam looked down the alley, his gaze distant as if he wasn't seeing the bodies, but something else. Something worse.
"Brax will not want to give up one of his own. He is many things, but he'll protect his wolves to his last breath," Liam finally said. "Thomas is new to his position, and the murder of a companion cannot go unanswered. Not if he wants a stable power base. He'll want to make an example. Your friend makes the perfect sacrifice."
I took a deep breath and released it.
His touch whispered across my shoulder as he gave me an enigmatic glance before moving away to give me privacy and time with my thoughts.
"Caroline, what have you gotten yourself into?" I whispered, staring at the macabre scene before me.
I didn't know if I was going to be able to protect her from what was coming. Worse, I didn't know if I should. The friend I remembered wouldn't have been capable of this. Not in a million years.
If she did somehow do this, it meant that Anton was right. My actions caused this, and I played a part in innocent deaths. Something I had sworn I would not let happen. Emotion tightened my throat and a burning started behind my eyes. I couldn't deal with this now. Maybe later in the dark of night when I was alone. But not now.
I owed it to Catherine and Theo to find their killer and deal with them. Friend or not.
Liam and Nathan gave me the time to come to terms with this new development, discussing the scene in quiet voices as we waited for the wolves' arrival. While we lingered, I forced myself out of the dark morass of emotion that threatened to overtake me and studied the scene. I wasn't a crime scene investigator and most of what I knew came from watching detective shows or reading books. That didn't mean I couldn't notice something the others had overlooked. I might not know what it meant now, but knowledge was power, and observation was something I was good at.
What were they doing in this alley? If they'd been going to Schmidt's, they'd parked a fair way past it. Granted, parking in this area around dinner time was a bit tricky, but there would have been many better places to park closer to the restaurant. Also, I didn't see their car.
Could they have been chased down this alley? If so, why would they have turned away from the more populated parts of the city? If it was me, and I was being chased by a monster, I would have made a beeline for the biggest number of humans in the area. At least, when I’d been human I would have.
That sounds callous, but most people have a strong will to survive. The recriminations and self-hatred would come later, after the threat had passed. During the threat—it's every man or woman for themselves.
"Woo, she's a messy eater," Clay said from my side. I controlled my jump, knowing that's what Brax's beta wanted. A tall, lean man, with short blond hair and pretty blue eyes, Clay looked over the scene with an amused grimace. As beta to Brax, Clay was number two in the pack. I hadn't had many dealings with him, but he'd struck me as easygoing but competent in his job. He took care of the things Brax didn't want to, or didn't have time for.
Brax stood by Liam's side, Sondra at his back. The alpha and Liam acknowledged each other with a nod before Brax moved into the alley, his eyes scanning the scene.
"It's possible this wasn't Caroline," I said.
"Nose doesn't lie, babe." Clay tapped his nose as he stepped forward, uncaring of the blood as it squelched under his shoes. He crouched next to Catherine, placing one hand on the brick to steady himself and then leaned close, inhaling deeply, his eyes shifting to the ice blue of his wolf. He straightened, his eyes changing back to their normal blue. "Yup, our girl was here."
I stared, unseeing at the scene. The news freezing my insides. I'd hoped. I'd prayed that we'd been wrong, that by some miraculous turn of events, Caroline hadn't been part of this.
"Could the smell have been faked?" Liam asked, his face emotionless.
"Anything can be faked," Clay said, standing. "I doubt it, though. I spent some time with the girl after her turn. This is definitely her."
"Then you're sure Caroline Bradley is the one responsible for these deaths?" Liam asked.
Clay glanced at his alpha, turning the responsibility over to him.
Brax picked up one of the limbs with his gloved hands and examined it closely. "These bite marks are inconsistent with her bite."
"What does that mean?" I asked, afraid to hope.
He handed the bone off to Clay before moving onto the next piece.
"It's possible her bite has changed. The demon taint has affected her and made her transformation unstable. Her wolf is not as static as ours. It can be larger following some changes and smaller others," Clay said.
"But this is different than her bite in the past," I said.
Clay frowned and hesitated, as if he didn't want to confirm that. "Yes, it's different."
"It's still likely that she's the one responsible," Sondra said from the mouth of the alley. Her eyes were sad as they took in the scene.
"But not definite." I could work with that. This changed nothing. I still needed to find her, talk to her and get her side of the story before deciding what needed to be done.
"Even it isn't her, it's only a matter of time before she loses her grip," Brax said. "The full moon is in two days. The chances of her surviving a change with her sanity intact with no support from the pack are very small."
"Why is the pack's support so important?" I asked.
"In the first years after welcoming our wolf, it can be difficult to maintain a sense of “self” through the change and after. We're pack animals. We need that social bond to be healthy. We're stronger with the others around us. With a pack, you can rely on the older members to guide the change and safeguard your identity when you might be too weak to do so for yourself," Sondra said. "Without a pack, most wolves, especially in the beginning, go mad. Some never come out of their first change. It's why we're so diligent in hunting down those who might have been bitten in an attack or by accident, so we can bring them into the pack before it's too late."
"Aileen, we need to know where she is," Brax said.
"I can't help you because I don't know." It was the truth. I really didn't know. "She called me a few days ago and apologized for getting me involved. When I tried to get her to meet with me or at least consider some kind of compromise that would involve contact with the pack, she flipped out and hung up."
"How did you get that cal
l?" Nathan asked. "We've been monitoring your phones."
That confirmed one suspicion and made all my precautions worth it. I didn't answer him, not wanting to give up my secrets so easily. They'd guess eventually but maybe not until after the next call.
"What did you do to her that scared her so badly she's willing to risk her sanity?" I asked. Because that was the real question. Caroline wasn't stupid. If they'd explained to her what they’d just told me, she never would have run. Her mom's grasp on mental health was shaky at best. I doubt Caroline would have done anything to risk hers.
Brax's attention focused on me, the great power that followed him around like a pet ratcheted up to nuclear intensity. "What makes you think we did something?"
"She wouldn't have just run like this. Not without a reason. Something happened to make her pull a disappearing act. I want to know what it is before I help you."
He cocked his head, the predator in him coming out. "So, you do have an idea?"
I shrugged. "A few."
Liam advanced on me. "The time for games is over. There are dead on the ground—people I swore to protect. Tell us what you know."
"Doesn't work like that," I said. "I won't hand her over—destroy our friendship—without knowing why she ran in the first place. If I do, this will just happen again, and next time she won't reach out to me first." They needed my help, whether they wanted to admit it or not. The only question was if they could get past their alpha-ness and superiority complexes to see that.
I might be a novice at the spook stuff, but I knew my friend and I knew how humans thought.
"There was an incident about a week before she ran," Sondra said, the shadows playing across her face sharpening and softening her edges as she walked into the alley. Her high-heeled sandals clicked against the brick, the shoes at odds with the otherworldly grace in her movements.
"What kind of incident?" Liam asked.
"The kind that shook her confidence and caused her to shut down," Sondra answered, holding Brax's eyes with a small, sad smile. "Until then, she seemed accepting of the wolf. She wasn't happy about having her life disrupted, but she was willing to learn and gain control."
"Her demon taint was stronger than expected," Clay explained. "One of our other new pups had difficulty controlling their wolf and attacked her. Caroline's wolf took over and defended her, but savaged the other wolf."
"We tried to make her understand that her response was self-defense, but her wolf’s reaction to a minor infraction was extreme. She didn't just subdue her attacker, she nearly ripped her head off."
"It is an understandable reaction for one of us," Brax said. "Our world is brutal and requires a certain amount of violence to survive. We didn't blame her or hold her at fault."
"I think she was afraid of the wolf within after that," Sondra explained in a soft voice.
"It didn't help that the demon taint has made her wolf a little different than the rest of the pups," Clay inserted. The violence around him didn't seem to bother him as he maintained his good ol' boy charm. It made me revise my assumptions. Anyone who could keep a smile on his face while surrounded by this much carnage was a lot more twisted than I’d thought.
"How so?" Nathan asked.
"She's bigger than the normal werewolf. Faster. Stronger. And I suspect her wolf's needs are slightly different than the norm as well," Clay said.
I wonder if they had told her all this. If it made her feel even more out of sync than she had before. She would have felt isolated, like a freak who didn't belong. It's hard to trust, when you're afraid the people who should be helping you are one bad mood from pronouncing you too much trouble.
"She left me a note," I said, choosing to trust that they'd told me the truth. Trust had to start somewhere and even if I found Caroline, I wasn't sure I could help her. This would take knowledge and finesse much greater than I possessed. I pulled the folded-up note from my pocket and handed it to Brax.
His brow furrowed as he read over it before handing it to Liam. "What does this mean?"
I shrugged. "I don't know, but she doesn't have a cat."
"No, she doesn't," Sondra said, peering over Clay's shoulder to read the note once Liam had passed it over. "It was one of the questions I asked when she first woke up. We usually foster any animals until the pup is ready to resume their life."
"Senior year, that's high school, right?" Nathan arched his eyebrows in question.
I forgot that as centuries old vampires they might not be up on current school lingo. "Yeah, it's high school."
"Would she go back to the school?" Brax asked.
I shook my head. "I doubt it. We both hated that place. Neither one of us could wait until it was time to get out of there."
"School's not in session. Might be a good place to hide, especially if you're familiar with the layout," Sondra said.
"Were there any places there that you guys liked to hang out?" Brax asked.
"Not really. Neither one of us were the type to skip class and any extracurriculars took place in the classrooms."
"I don't care. It's a lead. We need to send someone over there to check it out," Brax told Clay.
"On it, boss." Clay pulled out a cell phone, his voice hushed as he walked out of the alley for some privacy.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
"ANYTHING ELSE YOU can think of?" Brax asked, arching an eyebrow.
I rubbed my hands together as I stared at the bodies, feeling like the worst sort of traitor. "Yeah, my downstairs neighbors talked to her before she left. She told them she was calling in a favor and to let me know that not all is as it seems."
I left out the part about how those same neighbors weren't exactly human and how they'd shielded her from detection when Brax and Sondra had paid me their little visit. Those were not my secrets to tell.
"It's odd she would tell such a thing to a stranger," he said, his eyes never leaving my face.
I shrugged. "He's a charming guy."
In every sense of the word, I suspected.
Clay stepped back into the alley. "I sent a couple of wolves to check out the high school. We should know something soon."
"I don't suppose you'd let me speak to the wolf Caroline savaged," I said, lifting an eyebrow.
Brax studied me before sliding a sidelong glance Liam's way, asking without words for his thoughts. Liam's arms were crossed over his chest, his face inscrutable. He looked dark and dangerous, the kind of man whose very presence threatened your piece of mind—the bogeyman with the face of a fallen angel.
"She may see something you missed," Liam said after a long pause. "She's shown a certain talent for this sort of work."
"More like she's a trouble magnet," Nathan said, his lazy humor peeking through for a moment.
"Either way, I don't see how you have much choice at this point," Liam said. "The city's master isn't going to be happy about this latest turn of events, and he'll hold you responsible since Caroline's one of yours."
Brax's face darkened, but he didn't argue. He looked resigned, determined.
Sondra paled, her eyes going to the bodies before coming back to me. There was something in her gaze, something I almost thought might be pleading. That couldn't be right, though. Sondra was a fierce warrior. Self-assured and confident in her abilities. There was nothing I could do that she couldn't do one hundred times better.
There was subtext here that I just wasn't getting. Frustration at my lack of knowledge ate at me.
"I can bring the pup around tonight," Brax said.
"Not tonight," Liam responded, looking up at the sky. "We'll be here a few hours longer, which will put us too close to dawn. Bring them tomorrow, first thing after sunset."
I started to protest. If catching Caroline before she did any more damage or went insane was so important, then we should do anything that might find her a priority.
Liam silenced my protest with a cutting look. "Unless you'd like to take blood straight from the vein."
I closed m
y mouth and hesitated. My gaze falling on the bodies.
"I thought so."
It was the last line I hadn't crossed. The few times I'd drunk from Liam didn't count. He was a vampire, and it was unlikely that I could kill him should I lose myself in the taste of blood.
"I'll do it," I said, not looking up. "I'll drink from the vein."
I crossed my arms over my stomach to hide the tremble in my hands as I stared at the bodies. There were times you had to bite the bullet and do the things that were hard. When you screwed-up as badly as I had, it meant sucking it up and doing what needed to be done, sacrificing if necessary. It was the only way to make amends.
"From Thomas. You'll take blood from your sire's vein," Liam said, making his demands clear, his gaze drilling into the top of my head.
My head lifted in surprise, and my mouth parted in denial before I bit it back. "What would be the repercussions of such an act?"
His expression softened. "Does it really matter?"
Did it?
My lips firmed. "No, but I still want to know."
Caroline was worth the sacrifice, and if it meant I didn't have to stand at another scene like this one, I'd take the chance.
"It will strengthen you and give you the ability to stay awake longer while the sun is up." He hesitated before continuing. "It will deepen your connection with your sire—bring it more into line with what it should be."
"Will he be able to control me?" I asked through numb lips. "I've heard that a sire can compel their yearlings."
Liam's gaze went to Brax and his wolves.
"I'll bring Lisa by before sunrise," Brax said before stalking off into the night, his two wolves shadowing him.
Liam waited until the three were well out of hearing range before answering me. "It might, though you have shown a surprising resilience to any form of influence."
The way he said that made me think he’d tried at some point only to fail.
"Most sires form some sort of connection with their yearlings; the form of that connection depends on both the sire's needs and the yearling's strengths."
