by Jane Godman
“You still think this Konrad guy will have gone back to his master?” Wilder asked.
Samson nodded. “To the bounty hunter, Chastel. Yes, the Guardians are no use to him now. He will have run back to his master to let him know we are coming for him.”
“So if the Guardians are no longer any use to Chastel and his henchman, why are they any concern of ours?” It was Lowell who spoke up from the far end of the table.
“Because they are feral. They have no idea how to behave. If we leave them to their own devices, they are capable of causing havoc in this area. I want to try, if we can, to send them back to where they came from.” Samson took a long swallow of cold water. “Which may be a tall order, since none of them seem to know their own origins.”
“And tomorrow we go to Ulu?” Wilder had his smartphone out. “Because I need to get started on organizing how to get us there and where we stay.”
Samson laughed. “Now you really do sound like Gunnar. Next thing we know you’ll be doing a double-check to make sure Madden hasn’t brought too much luggage.”
“That was one time.” Madden’s finely tuned ears picked up the conversation. “Am I ever going to live it down?”
“The rest of us were prepared for a war zone.” Samson grinned across the table at Valetta. “But Madden is so vain, he had to pack several changes of clothes as well . . . just in case the opportunity to party presented itself.”
It was always this way. They could be apart for hundreds of years, yet as soon as they came together it was as if they had last seen each other five minutes ago. They complemented each other well with their distinct personalities. Lowell saw it as his job to save the world, whether through his environmental day job or his part in the brotherhood. The other pack members might joke about Madden’s vanity, saying that he needed to be surgically removed from his mirror, but he was a strong team player and a fiercely loyal friend. Sebastian was the maverick of the group, with his wild ideas taking them off on a tangent and getting results. Vigo, in his intensity and desire to prove himself, was always striving to do more and be the best he could.
Samson looked at Wilder as he sat hunched over his phone, making the necessary arrangements for their trip the next day. Until he had met Jenny, Wilder had been badly damaged by his experiences in the brotherhood, to the point where Samson thought his friend might walk away from it all. Now, having led them on their last mission against the mighty Fenrir, and fallen in love in the process, Wilder—strong, quiet, and conscientious—was back to full capacity and loving life. And me? Samson turned the spotlight on himself. What the others saw was the joker. They thought he was untouched by it all, that he bounced back first and moved on without looking back. It was an act that had become second nature. They don’t know the real me. Hell, that’s because I’ve been pretending for so long, even I don’t know the real me.
When they’d finished eating, the members of the brotherhood, together with Valetta, piled into a combination of the different vehicles they’d arrived in and drove out toward Crystal Falls. Leaving the cars at the foot of the steep incline where the road ran out, they made their way on foot toward the cave compound. They were about halfway up the narrow track when Samson, who was in the lead, first picked up the scent. He halted abruptly, holding up his hand and bringing the others to a standstill.
“What is it?” Valetta, who was immediately behind him, almost careened right into him.
“Fear.” He turned his head, scenting the air again. “No, fear isn’t strong enough to describe it. It’s terror. Absolute and overwhelming. And there’s blood. A lot of it.”
He took a moment to consider their options. They could continue along this track and approach the compound without coming out into the open. It would give them a view of what was going on without being seen themselves. He had a bad feeling about the scents that were coming to him on the midnight air, but he couldn’t ignore them. With leadership came new responsibility. He nodded decisively and gave the signal to keep going.
When Samson reached the ridge that looked down onto the Guardian compound, he parted the foliage and paused. For a moment he was unable to believe what he was seeing. It looked like a battlefield or an over-the-top film set. The whole area outside the cave was strewn with the bodies of Guardian members. Samson was used to seeing carnage, but brutality on this scale? This shook him to his soul.
“What can you see?” Valetta pushed forward to come alongside him.
Samson’s first instinct was to shield her from this, but then he realized that there was nothing he could do. She would have to know. Gently, he placed his arm around her shoulders and drew her to his side as together they looked down on the bloodied and brutalized remains of the young men they had been with just twenty-four hours earlier. Valetta gave a sob and turned her face into his shoulder.
The other brotherhood members moved forward, ranging themselves along the edge of the ridge. “My God.” Jenny raised a shaking hand to her lips. “Who did this?”
As she spoke, there was a movement amid the bodies below. Samson recognized the lone figure wandering among the dead, holding a knife outstretched in his hand. It was Axel.
“I don’t know, but I’m going to find out.” His voice was grim.
“I’m coming with you.” One look at Valetta’s face told him there was no point in trying to dissuade her. And his own instincts told him it would be wrong to use his dominant pack position to subdue her. She felt a sense of duty to the Guardians that he could understand. The pain in her eyes was a plea he couldn’t ignore.
“Okay.” He took her hand.
“We’ve got your back.” Wilder didn’t need to say it. It was the one thing Samson knew without question or doubt. The words were something to say when there was nothing to say, when the massacre you were staring at was too awful to comprehend. He nodded in response.
Leaving the others on the ridge looking down, he and Valetta walked side by side along the track and into a scene straight out of a nightmare.
Valetta felt like her body and her brain had become two separate things, working in different directions, giving her conflicting messages. Her brain kept telling her she would wake up at any minute. That this couldn’t be happening. That it was another of Chastel’s stunts. Meanwhile, her body was reacting to the shock of what she was seeing. Her breath was coming in rapid bursts or not at all as though she had forgotten how to do this thing called breathing. It meant that, by the time they reached the cave entrance, she was gasping wildly as though she had just crossed the finish line of a marathon. At the same time, her heart was racing, her skin was cold and clammy, and she felt nauseous. It’s stress, her stubborn brain told her, the voice in her head mildly patronizing. But there is no need for this, because none of it is real.
In the end it was the smell of the blood that did it. That unique coppery tang of fresh blood. Valetta was a werewolf. The aroma of fresh blood was the sweetest perfume in the world to her, just not when it belonged to people she knew. Leaning her forearm against the cave wall, she bent over and let nature take its course. Reality took over. Her body won the fight with her brain and her stomach emptied its contents onto the ground.
Samson kept one arm on her shoulder, but when she straightened, his eyes were on Axel. The youth was coming toward them with the knife extended before him. Blood dripped from the blade and his whole body was coated in gore. As he drew closer, Valetta could see that his eyes were wide with terror.
“I tried to stop it . . .” He choked back an agonized sob.
“Put down the knife, Axel.” She spoke slowly and clearly.
He looked at the weapon as though seeing it for the first time, before throwing it to the ground with an expression of horror. “I must have picked it up without thinking. Oh, God.” Sinking to his knees, he covered his face with his bloody hands.
Ignoring Samson’s attempt to hold her back, Valetta moved toward him. Dropping to her knees beside him, she wrapped her arms around him, trying
to still the desperate trembling of his slender body. “What happened here?”
Axel pressed his knuckles to his temple, so hard they left an indentation in the flesh. “Here. Inside my head. Over and over. That voice. His voice. Kill them all. That was all I could hear. I thought I’d go mad.” He collapsed against her, sobbing uncontrollably.
“Whose voice was it, Axel?”
The gentle note in Samson’s voice calmed the storm of weeping and Axel lifted his head. “The same voice that is always there. The one that controls us all.” With a sinking feeling of dread, Valetta knew what he was going to say next. “It was Chastel.”
“And you tried to fight it?” She lifted a hand to stroke Axel’s hair, trying to ignore the squeamish feeling she got when her hand came away darkened with blood.
“I did fight it.” His eyes were anguished, pleading with her to believe him. “I didn’t do any of this. I came here later than the others. His hold over me isn’t as strong. When the killing started, I did everything I could to stop them.” He sank his head into his hands. “They were in a frenzy. Just running around with knives and slaughtering each other. I ran and hid in the trees. But I couldn’t look away. I could see it all. They were laughing as they killed their friends. The last one left was Owen. When he was done, he stood like a statue in the middle of all the slaughter. It looked as though he was still listening to Chastel’s voice in his head. Then he picked up the knife and slashed his own wrists.”
Samson placed a hand on Axel’s shoulder. Valetta could see he was as moved by the younger man’s story as she was. What kind of mind could conceive a plan so awful? Chastel had callously used this gang of young men, and when he no longer had any need for them, he had destroyed them in the most hideous way imaginable. To him they were disposable items and he’d played a cruel game with them, torturing them and sending them on this devastating rampage for . . . what? His own amusement? Had he somehow watched as they killed each other? Orchestrated it like an evil puppet master?
“Axel, try to remember. How did Chastel and Konrad get you to join the Guardians? Which pack do you belong to?” While not exactly rare, Arctic werewolves were not a common species. Valetta wondered how Chastel had found and recruited this many Arctic werewolves to form his fake gang. So many young lives lost was going to cause a problem for the packs they had come from. Almost a generation of young lives had just been wiped out.
Axel’s smooth brow furrowed. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“Where is your pack based?” Was it her imagination, or were his eyes darkening? No longer gold, they seemed to be changing color as she looked at him. Valetta blinked. No, it was real enough. Within minutes Axel’s eyes had gone from gold to dark brown.
“What do you mean, my pack? My folks live in Anchorage. Pavel and I were in jail there. We robbed a petrol station. Konrad helped us escape.” He ran a hand through his hair . . . bloodstained hair that had changed from white blond to sandy brown as he was talking. “All of us were escaped prisoners.”
Samson caught Valetta’s eye. She could see he was as perturbed as she was by the change in Axel’s appearance. Hardly surprising. One minute he had the classic looks of an Arctic werewolf, the next he had dark hair and eyes and an olive complexion.
“Axel, I know you’ve been through a lot already today, but can you do something for me?” Axel’s eagerness to do as Samson asked was almost pathetic as he nodded. “Will you shift into your wolf form for me?”
The younger man’s expression changed to one of helpless confusion. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. What wolf? How would I shift? Is it a joke?” He looked back and forth from Samson to Valetta as though seeking clarification.
“Forget it. It doesn’t matter.” Valetta stepped in to reassure him. Even though she had seen him shift a dozen times, it was obvious he no longer had any recollection of that time. Recalling the illusion Chastel had created that Konrad was a werewolf, she realized he must have applied the same sorcery to the whole pack. Now it was no longer necessary, he had withdrawn the spell and erased the memory of it. Not my memory, you evil fucker. I remember it all. She looked at Samson’s face and knew he was thinking the same thing.
Samson jerked his head slightly, signaling that he needed to speak to her and she rose to her feet. “Poor bastards. What kind of chance did they have against a monster like Chastel?”
The words were almost an exact echo of Valetta’s own thoughts and she momentarily leaned her forehead against his chest, deriving strength from the contact. “We can’t leave him.”
“We can’t leave this”—Samson made a helpless gesture as he indicated the bodies littering the ground—“any of it. It’s a fucking horror story.”
A high-pitched wail from Axel drew their attention back to him. Curled up in a ball, he was clutching the sides of his head and rolling back and forth. “Leave me alone!” It was a desperate plea. Leaping to his feet, he snatched up the knife.
With lightning reflexes, Samson made a move to shove Valetta behind him. The movement was unnecessary. She was in no danger. Before he was hidden from her view by Samson’s superior size, she saw Axel dig the knife deep into his own throat and draw it across from one side to the other.
Chapter Ten
The next morning the group traveled south, in a subdued mood. Even hardened warriors such as the brotherhood couldn’t help being moved by what they had witnessed at the Guardian compound. It wasn’t just the bloodshed that got to them, it was the unnecessary waste of life and the evil sense of glee that lurked behind it. It strengthened their resolve to get Chastel; Samson could see it in their eyes. It was one more thing the bounty hunter was going to pay for.
Hendrik wasn’t happy at being left behind. Samson had been forced to be blunt with him. “You would slow us down.”
Hendrik had begun to protest, then thought better of it. His broad shoulders had slumped in defeat. “I suppose you’re right. I just feel so helpless waiting here.”
“You can keep in touch.” Samson’s lips tightened. “And let me know how the police inquiry into the massacre is going.”
On their return from the compound the previous night, Samson had made an anonymous call to the police suggesting they might want to take an urgent look at the biker compound. A police investigation wasn’t going to get anywhere, but at least this way those young bodies would be returned to their families and eventually be given the human burials they deserved. Chastel had used them like pawns in game. No way was Samson going to leave them out there on the edge of the wilderness to rot. He had thought of Anna, his heart lurching, and turned back to Hendrik.
“Valetta will be safe. You have my word.”
When the brotherhood was on the move, it thrived on the ability of a good organizer. Until now, this job had always been completed to perfection by their onetime leader, Gunnar. At the end of their last mission, Gunnar had surprised them by announcing his retirement. Wilder, stepping into the role, had a tough act to follow. He was determined to do well. His face was serious, his head bent over his cell phone as he checked schedules. They flew south from Fairbanks to Homer and then took a four-hour boat ride to Chisik, a remote island tucked away in the Tuxedni wilderness.
Alaska had more than its share of magical scenery, but this place was stunning. As they approached the island, an old abandoned cannery and a few isolated fishing lodges were the only signs of civilization. Even now, at the height of summer, snowy outcrops lingered like splashes of white paint on the rustic landscape. The shrill cacophony of wild birds grew louder the closer they got to the shore, as though the gulls, kittiwakes, ducks, cormorants, and others were issuing a warning that feathered life-forms ruled this part of the world. Two-and four-legged creatures would be tolerated, but not permitted to dominate.
Samson moved away from the others and went to lean on the deck rail next to where Valetta stood slightly apart from everyone else. He was concerned about her. Since Axel’s death she seemed to have shut him
out, not even making eye contact with him most of the time. Despite the searing intimacy of the sex they had shared, Samson felt uncomfortable. Even though he had recently been inside her, driving himself into her as deep and hard as he could get, he didn’t know Valetta well enough to understand her moods. Didn’t know how to break down these new walls she was putting up between them. His instinct was to draw her into his arms and soothe away the anguish he could see in her eyes. The flash of fire he saw each time he tried to get close warned him to stay away. He knew she was hurting and it caused him an equal amount of pain that he didn’t know how to help her.
Last night, he had wanted to go to her. Not for more sex—although, if he was honest, that seemed like one way to obliterate the blood-splattered images from both their minds—but to hold her and comfort her. And because holding her gave him his own measure of relief. But, as soon as they had returned from the compound, Valetta had gone to her room. Later, when the house was in darkness, when the events of the day had been analyzed a hundred times, and when everyone else was in bed, he had paused outside her door. There was no sound from within. When he raised his hand and knocked, calling out her name softly, there had been no response. She could have been asleep. He had no reason, other than his overdeveloped extra sense, to believe she wasn’t.
Now, he cast a sidelong glance at her profile. She didn’t look like someone who had slept.
“Many of those fishing lodges are empty. Wilder has hired the largest for the duration of our stay. You and I will share a room.” Valetta’s dark eyelashes fluttered down and Samson silently cursed his own clumsiness. “Because I need to watch over you.” Not because I’m making assumptions. No matter much I might want to make assumptions.
“The Guardians . . .” Her voice seized up with emotion and she forced herself to continue with an obvious effort, “They are all dead because of me, Samson.”
