by Raquel Lyon
Before she could answer, Rust let out a shrill bark and jumped up. He darted, growling, into the woods.
“Something’s got his tail in a twist,” Charlotte noted.
“He hasn’t had breakfast yet. Probably sniffed out a rabbit. Won’t catch it, though. Useless bugger. Are you going to answer my question?”
“I don’t know you well enough,” she said, the frown lines deepening on her forehead as she stared past the trees Rust had disappeared between.
I was surprised by how much her words rattled me, and catching sight of her scar had already pushed my guilt button. I hoped offering her the chance to wound me as I had her would release it somewhat. “Shall we go another round?” I asked. I could afford to give her a bit of time and feign a lapse of concentration before collecting Rust from wherever he’d run off to, and splitting. It was only fair.
“Con,” she said, still frowning as her focus returned to me, “there are no rabbits in this dimension.”
Chapter Thirteen
No rabbits, huh? That wasn’t what I wanted to hear. “Some other woodland animal, then?” I asked hopefully.
Charlotte drew the corner of her lip through her teeth as she shook her head slowly, and then said, “Nope. The only animal you’re likely to see around here is a bat… and that would be of the vamp variety.”
I let out a small puff of breath. “You know that’s just a myth, right?”
“Not in this dimension, it isn’t.”
Whether she was right or not—and I had to trust that she knew what she was talking about and probably was—somehow, I couldn’t see Rust going after a bat unless he was completely deluded and thought he could fly. I rubbed my chin as I ran through other possible explanations in my head, all of which relied on there being no… “And there’s definitely a protection charm around this place?”
“That’s what I was told.”
“Has that box thingy ever lit up?”
“Not yet.”
“And you’ve never thought to test it?”
“It never crossed my mind. The Assembly wouldn’t lie to me or give me something that doesn’t work.”
I wouldn’t be too sure of that. “So, my dog’s a moron as well as a loser.”
Her concern mounted. “I didn’t say that. He could be onto something.”
“Onto something? Unlikely.”
“All the same, I think we should investigate.”
I let the broom handle fall to the floor. “No. Not we… me. You stay here. He’s my dog, my responsibility. I’ll go.”
“It would be safer with two of us. I can protect you.”
“Are you kidding? Did you really just say protect me?”
“This realm is crawling with vamps, and they’re stronger here,” she said, yanking her staff from the soil. “I’ve been lucky enough to stay under the radar of all but one—and he won’t be spreading the word of my presence—but they don’t always travel alone, and even though I’ve seen you can fight, if a team targets you, you won’t stand a chance.” She picked up the broom handle and thrust it in my face.
I stared at it and shook my head. “I wouldn’t be too sure about that, if I were you. I’ve gone up against my fair share of vamps.”
“Alone?”
Well, no, but I wasn’t about to strengthen her suspicion of my inadequacies by revealing that either the encounters had been in one-on-one situations or full-scale demon battles, so instead, I said, “Charlotte. I don’t know how much you’ve been told about me, but there’s something you should know.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“Yeah.” I turned from her questioning gaze. “Remember when Travers said I was sharper than I looked? Well, I’m tougher than I look, too.” I shucked off my jacket and placed it on the tree stump. It was my favourite and a bastard to remove the blood from, so better safe than sorry. “Now, don’t freak out. I won’t hurt you. I promise I have complete control.”
My fangs sprouted as I called on my dark side and allowed it to crack through the surface of my human skin.
“No way.” Charlotte gasped as I faced her again. “You’re a vampire, too?”
“Hell, no. I’m as warm-blooded as they come, and”—I grimaced as the change progressed, and before it completely consumed me, I squeezed out the words through the rest of my lengthening teeth—“I work alone.”
I let out a roar and left Charlotte’s stunned expression behind as I bolted for the trees and picked up Rust’s scent.
It felt good to be in more familiar territory. Nowadays, I felt more alive and in control as a wolf. It hadn’t always been that way. I’d known from infancy what I was and what would happen to me once I reached the age of seventeen, and it had scared the shit out of me. It wasn’t the life I’d wanted. I’d wanted to be human, like my mother, but she hadn’t wanted me or anything to do with our world, and my father had dumped me on my cousin’s family in order to continue his playboy lifestyle.
Throughout my childhood, Sebastian had been my only happiness. He’d been the one to share my journey, to keep me on the straight and narrow, and to help me to understand my dark side and use it for good. He’d always been unequivocally comfortable with our heritage and lifestyle, but it had taken me years to fully embrace and accept it.
Every day I wondered what my life would have been like if my father had been human, and I’d been raised by normal parents in a normal family, But all I had to remind me of what could have been was one tatty photo of my mother as a young and innocent woman, laughing into the camera.
The ground sped by as I followed the Eau de Rust, even though using my nose wasn’t strictly necessary. Amongst the trees, enough snow had penetrated the canopy to allow me to follow his winding paw prints dotting the white carpet, but the trail was long and seemingly never-ending. Where had that idiot got to? As soon as I found him, he was going on cabin arrest before he could screw up my assignment any further.
A sense of freedom breathed through me as I relaxed into my run and could almost imagine I was back racing through the undergrowth at the Towers, chasing after my latest victim. The only difference here was the darkness preventing me from enjoying the beauty of the blurring colours of the landscape as I whizzed through it and the distinct lack of the whiff of scared rabbit, or any other animal for that fact. Char was clearly on the money about the absence of wildlife, and if there were any bats hiding in the tree canopy somewhere, their odour was untraceable on the bitter wind. The only scent I detected was Rust’s, and it was getting stronger by the second.
I was closing in. About time, too.
But wait…
Gradually, the smell of something more sinister began to mingle with and then overpower Rust’s canine odour, until it filled my senses.
Blood: the human variety, and lots of it.
I slowed to a jog, every part of me winding tighter with thoughts of what I might find. I flung my head left, then right, searching for signs of the inevitable carnage I knew lay in wait, but my feet moved steadfastly forward towards their goal.
And then I spotted something, up ahead, in a small clearing—a bundle of fur crouched and licking at a mound of mangled clothing and contorted body parts on the ground. I hit the brakes and trepidation inched my feet closer as I kept one eye on the periphery of my vision, wary that the perpetrator might still be in the vicinity. I stopped fully at the edge of the treeline and waited to see if anything appeared before allowing my human form to reclaim me.
“Rust!” I hissed. “Get away from there. Come here, boy.” I gave a low whistle as I scanned the area again.
Nearby, the crack of a twig alerted me to the fact that we weren’t alone, but all I could smell was blood, and in the absence of the furred variety, I could only imagine what kind of grizzly was closing in. I whistled to Rust again, wishing I’d bought a more obedient dog. Now was not the time for him to be playing the deaf game. I had to get him back inside the safety of the perimeter before returning to investigate whatever the hell had
happened here and hunting down the possible cause.
I almost jumped out of my skin as a small cough sounded in my ear, and reflex twisted me around to face the source.
“Nice ass,” Charlotte said. “It’s been a while since I’ve seen one of those.”
“I thought I told you to stay behind.”
“It’s a shame your clothing covered it so quickly,” she continued.
“Did you really ignore my instructions and follow me all the way out here to check out my ass?”
“No. I came because I don’t take instructions; I give them.” Her gaze drifted over my shoulder. “Though the ass was a nice distraction.” Her brows scrunched. “What’s that?”
She took a step past me.
“Wait. I haven’t had the chance to check it out yet,” I said, snagging her arm, which she immediately shrugged from my grip.
“You don’t get to tell me what to do,” she shouted, striding purposefully in Rust’s direction.
Damn the woman.
I caught up to Charlotte with my senses on high alert as she squatted and shooed Rust from the scene. He backed up, lowering his head as he stared at me. I held his gaze to indicate my displeasure and show him who was boss, until he blinked and licked his lips, and I turned to look down at what had held his attention enough to defy me. It wasn’t the prettiest of scenes, but I’d seen worse.
The ground was bathed in blood from two bodies, the faces of which I vaguely recognised. I held back a gasp as I realised why. I’d met these particular humans before, one in Warsaw and one in Lyon. I might have only seen them briefly, moments before I’d dusted their demon companions, but it had been long enough for me to watch them flee. They should have been getting on with their spared lives, not lying in a pool of their own body fluids. How in Heaven’s name had they ended up here… together?
Charlotte stood up and wiped the blood from her hands onto the front of her pants before turning to me. “I guess I spoke too soon,” she said, eyeing me curiously. “What is it? What are you thinking?”
“That you spoke too soon,” I said dismissively as I noticed a trail of blood leading away from the bodies and set off to follow it. The scent of blood was far too strong to be coming from only those two.
“Don’t bullshit me.” Charlotte spoke over my shoulder as she tagged along behind. “You know something, don’t you?”
“I don’t know anything. But I suspect they’re not alone.”
My suspicions were confirmed when, a few feet ahead of me, a harrowing scene stopped me in my tracks.
Sometimes I hated being right.
A row of trees was macabrely decorated with more bodies, swinging from ropes tied around their feet, their torsos having suffered a variety of abuses. And from the pallid colour of their complexions, it was obvious there couldn’t be a drop of blood left in them. This was not the work of a gleaner, and if it was the aftermath from one vamp, he was one greedy, sick motherfucker.
I looked along the line of upturned faces, and my heart sank to my stomach with the realisation that I knew each and every one of them. In my years as a gleaner, I’d saved all of their lives—as much use as that had been. Now they were all dead, and their fate, it seemed, was down to me.
Chapter Fourteen
Only the sound of Charlotte’s rapid breathing in my ear broke the silence of the darkness as I stared at the blood bath. The deaths weren’t my fault, but it sure felt like they were. The people were dead. Gone. There was nothing I could have done to prevent their fate, and yet another layer of guilt piled onto my already sizeable stack and nettled me as I struggled to understand why someone would go to such detestable lengths.
I turned away, unable to look at their faces anymore, a row of innocent lives wasted for no reason. Except there had to be one, hadn’t there? These weren’t just random killings. It was glaringly obvious that somehow the perpetrator knew me and had made sure I would be involved. But who, and why?
My head hurt and bile churned in my stomach. I needed to get away from the craziness to think. What did any of this have to do with me? Had I snuffed some demon’s relative and now they had a grudge? Were the Assembly aware of my connection? Was that the real reason I was sent here? Was the mention of another gleaner just a ruse? Maybe they thought that delivering me directly into the enemy’s hand like some kind of ransom would put an end to it all, one way or another?
I strode back to the cabin in silence, ignoring Charlotte’s insistence that we investigate further, and moving quickly to gain distance from her constant ear-bashing.
“What is with you?” she shouted, slamming the door behind us when we arrived.
“Nothing.”
“Don’t lie. You shot away from there like a freaking roadrunner. I’ll admit to having misgivings about you being up to the task, but I never had you down as a total wuss.”
I swung around. “Who are you calling a wuss?”
“I say what I see,” she said, holding her chin high, “and despite housing a big mean dog in there somewhere, I reckon I’m looking at six-foot-two of ’fraidy cat.”
“Six-one.”
She huffed and her face soured. “That was the best lead I’ve come across in months, and I should be following the trail, right now.”
“Then why aren’t you?”
“I can’t face whoever did that on my own. I’m good, but I’m not Superwoman. That’s why I asked for assistance. But I wouldn’t have wasted my time if I’d known they were going to send me someone who baulked at the first sight of a bit of blood and guts.”
“From about a dozen people!”
“So? This isn’t Disneyland. What did you expect when you came here?”
“This wasn’t my idea, you know. I didn’t choose to be here at all. To be honest, even if I had, and had thought about the things I might encounter, discovering those people out there wouldn’t have been one of them.” I stared at Charlotte’s face, flushed from the exercise, and my brain changed it to a death pallor as a sudden realisation hit me. “And I doubt they’ll be the last.”
“Which is why we should be out there… stopping it.” Charlotte’s voice slowed and softened as she studied me a little too closely. “What do you mean by those people? Tell me what you were really thinking when you found them.”
Damn it. Had an inflection snuck into my comment? It must have, or she wouldn’t be fixing me with that stare of hers, waiting for an answer. I should have been more careful, but then again, she was bound to find out sooner or later. I might have no knowledge of who was behind the deaths, but one thing was certain: the bodies lying out there were only a fraction of those who could be. I’d saved hundreds of lives in the space of three years, and I was looking at one right now. She really didn’t need to be told how my mind was picturing her with her guts spilling out all over the place.
I pulled a chair from the table and stretched out in it with my head leaning against the high back, then studied a spider crawling across the ceiling to prevent having to look Charlotte in the eye as I said, “I knew them.”
“Who?” she asked.
“The dead people. All of them. I’ve crossed paths with each and every one of those humans at one point or another.”
“You’re kidding.”
“I wish I were, but I have to presume that they’re all dead because of me.”
Charlotte sat down at the opposite end of the table. Silence hung in the room, until she flicked through the stack of papers. I twisted my neck to see her pull one out and push it across the surface.
“What about this?” she asked.
My gaze dropped to the photograph of my scorched name. How on earth had she got hold of that so soon? “What about it?”
“Can you explain it?”
“No.”
She flashed me a disbelieving look before my interest returned to the spider. “I’m starting to think there’s more to your being here than I’ve been told.”
“Oh, really. You think?”
&n
bsp; “Yes. And I want the truth. Do you have any idea who’s behind all of this?”
“No.”
“Are you sure?”
“Positive.”
“You aren’t lying to me, are you?”
“Is your brain squashed as tightly into your head as your ass is into those pants? Trust me when I say I don’t know.”
“Well, they clearly know you.”
“That much I gathered.”
“So, how do they know you?”
“I wish I could answer that, but I don’t have a psychic stuck up my sleeve.”
And maybe I didn’t need one. Maybe Charlotte was the answer. She knew me. Point of fact, she was the only person who’d known me—and most of my movements during my gleaner time—but she claimed to have forgotten that period of her life. Was she lying? I contemplated why she would, but couldn’t figure it out. She was bound by the curse, and the chances were far greater of her becoming a victim than being the perpetrator. I was positive she was hiding something, but it wasn’t that.
“If you would shut up for a minute and let me think, I might be able to come up with something.”
“We don’t have time to think. In case you haven’t noticed, innocent people are dying out there.”
“Do you think I don’t know that? Do you think I don’t care?” I sat up and clasped my hands on the tabletop as I fixed her with a determined stare. “I care. I care that you might be the next target.” Shit. Now she’d pushed me into saying too much.
“Me? Why would I be a target?”
“Well, you know me, don’t you? And what if that demon you tracked to Carwick knew you were there in the background, following him, and was actually tracking you? He could have lured you here to suffer the same fate as the rest of them.”
A demon like Tyron Reith, for instance, whose family owned Carwick Castle. He was a bad enough seed to be behind a homicidal plot. Hated me too, except the last I’d heard of him, he’d been dragged down to Hell for his mutinous crimes. Although that would have given him the opportunity to gain knowledge of my movements…
