Ignoring Karen’s goggled look, she rambled on. “Athens is closer. If there are any vampires, rabid fairies, or dragons looking to barbeque the local psychic, I haven’t heard. So, we are going to Athens.”
“Okay.” Karen’s face brightened for the first time since she slouched in Diana’s office chair. “Is there really a gnome in Tyler?”
Diana nodded.
“And you know it? Personally?”
Diana smiled.
“Yes. His name is Jaxeramilix.”
“What do gnomes do?”
“Jax sells used computers and designs custom visual basic databases for small businesses.”
“Wow.”
Diana pulled into the small parking area of the restaurant and killed the engine.
“Wow is right. But I think that’s a new hobby. Jax makes his real money from the stock market. He’s been around for a while and can spot trends.” Diana reached for the door handle. “No more weird stuff for now. Let’s eat.”
She and Karen needed to get away from all of the strangeness in Palestine. They never really talked much anymore.
Diana finally broached the taboo subject of Matthew. Richard had made good on his promise to disown his daughter, going so far as to stop child support.
Lately Diana and her daughter were more like two residents of the same house, rather than a family.
Karen frowned and looked up from her dessert. She stared around the dim restaurant before returning to her apple pie a’ la mode.
“Is something wrong?” Diana asked the next time her daughter began searching the shadows.
“Huh?” Karen jerked, absently rubbing at goose bumps on her arms. “Nothing. Maybe talking about Matthew and Dad is making me jumpy.”
Karen leaned forward, a conspiratorial smile on her face. “Did you know that Laina is pregnant?”
Wow. Diana stared at her daughter, her fork raised halfway to her mouth.
Karen smirked and took a sip of her soda.
“Dad refused to claim the baby, so she and Sherry are going to raise it together.”
Double wow. Speaking of odd families. It was time to deal with her own. “Karen, its time you told me what’s going on.” Diana aimed the Mom-Knows-All smile with deadly accuracy. “You can’t lie worth a flip. So spill it.”
Karen looked down at her empty dessert plate, looking a little green around the gills. She took a sip of her soda and finally heaved a sigh.
“I’m a terrible person.”
Used to the dramatics, Diana reserved judgment for after the confession.
“I hurt my best friend and now I don’t know how to find him because there’s a psycho killer after the wolven.”
“He? What psycho killer?”
Karen took another shaky drink of her soda.
“Brandon ran away right before last period today.”
“I thought Bradley was your boyfriend.” The feeling of uneasiness that had plagued her came back with a vengeance, making her slightly nauseous. “What psycho killer?”
“The one that is killing strays that come into the pack’s, uh, Adam’s territory.”
“Does he know about this?”
Karen nodded, looking pretty sick herself.
“And Brandon?”
Karen shrugged and grabbed her cloth napkin to wipe at her red watery eyes.
“Bradley dropped me off at your office and went to look for him.”
“Are you sure that you’re the one he’s upset at? Maybe something else is bothering him.”
“I told him that he needed to see a counselor.”
Karen told her about the confrontation with the teenage werecoyotes. Her stranglehold on the poor cloth napkin would have shredded the cheap paper kind.
The world had a nice faraway feeling. Diana wasn’t drunk, but the two glasses of wine and the information overload had definitely done a number on her. “I think I may need a counselor,” Diana mumbled and rubbed her forehead. “Let’s go home. There’s a certain fuzzy backside I need to chew out.”
Karen gave a faint smile at the weak joke as they got up to pay the bill and leave.
Outside, Diana settled the duster around her shoulders, inhaling the smell of it.
“It sure did get dark fast.” Karen plucked at the duster. “This is great. But isn’t it hot?”
“A little.” Diana admitted. She opened her purse to dig for her keys. “I’m kind of hoping to see Chase and Tank again.”
Karen gave her a funny look. She rubbed her arms again, glancing around the shadowy parking lot.
“But what about Adam?”
“What about him?” Diana looked up from her purse. “Oh! I don’t know.” She fished out the keys and gave a general wave in the air. “Everything is just so … crazy. It’s like I’m connected to them all. But then again, I’m just some busybody lady who’s the mom of Bradley’s girlfriend.”
And she’d had sex with him twice. Sort of.
Diana sighed and slumped.
“And Adam makes me so … so ... did you know he’s enlisted Bob Benedict in his cause for me to date him? He’s insane.”
“Is that a good insane or a bad insane?” Karen looked hopeful.
Was her daughter looking for a surrogate father?
Adam’s sexy, bossy image flashed through her mind. For some strange reason she could see him taking Karen to the annual Father-Daughter dance. She laughed the image away and answered honestly.
“I truly don’t know. Don’t tell him, but I think the hairball is growing on me.”
“You know Mom? I don’t think anyone but you could call Adam Weis Fido, fuzzy, or a hairball and get away with it.”
“You think so?”
Karen nodded. Her features were soft and thoughtful in the dim lighting. They reached Diana’s Cavalier and parted to get in on each side. Karen paused at the end of the trunk to share a smile with her mother.
“I’d bet the bank on it, Mom.”
“Think you’d bet your life on it?” A gravelly voice cut into their conversation.
The dark form of a tall man grabbed Karen from behind. She jerked up straight, her eyes wide with fear.
The silver teeth of a hunting knife glinted in the dim parking lot light. The blade pressed at Karen’s throat.
Diana lunged forward, not thinking of anything but getting to her daughter. The knife flicked forward at her face.
“Ah-ah-ah,” the man sing-songed. He was a dirty specimen of a biker. The kind that lived in old Mad Max movies. His greasy hair hung around a long, thin face covered in a patchy beard. He bared teeth that Diana expected to be broken and rotten, but were movie star straight, if dingy. His breath was soured beer and old cigarettes.
Dog, the werewolf who’d tried to rape her, breathed a nauseating, ghostly shudder down her spine.
“Hands up bitch, or I’ll go ahead and skin your pup now.”
Fear and rage coiled into a fierce ball in Diana’s middle. Strength rushed through her.
He wasn’t going to let Karen go. Diana felt his determination to kill. The hate that lived in him, reached out to touch her with slimy tentacles.
The knife was still closer to her than to Karen, if only by inches. He held her daughter against him. His hand gripped her hair.
Diana lunged while he was still spread thin, stretched between them.
Her hand closed around the wrist holding the knife, forcing him to relinquish control of either Karen or the knife.
He let go of her daughter, just as she figured he would. The attacker bore down on Diana. She hit the gravel hard. Rocks pierced her knees. She fought with both hands to get the knife in her possession.
“Run!” Diana screamed. Or tried to when the sound cut short as his fist collided with her jaw.
Her head swam in a splotchy underwater. She felt her grip loosen.
“Nnnn,” she groaned.
Burning fire slid into the top of her breast.
“Mommy!”
“Get the ke
ys.” The gravely voice coughed in Diana’s ear. “Stupid bitch.”
Pain radiated through her body pounding in the beat of a drum. The world spun as she was jerked upright by one arm and shoved against the side of the car. She had to stay conscious for Karen’s sake.
Keep Karen safe. That was her mantra.
“Get in and drive or I’ll finish her off now.”
Karen got into the front seat while the man shoved Diana into the back.
She tried to pay attention as the car vibrated to life, but mostly conserved her strength while trying to figure a way out of this mess.
The sensation of her lung filling with something other than air, began to intrude on the throbbing burning pain in her chest. Diana choked and coughed.
“Where are we going?” The sound of Karen’s high thready voice gave Diana something to focus on.
“Shut up. I’ll tell you were to go,” the man rasped, coughing a dry smoker’s cough. A rustle, a brief flare, and the rancid odor of cheap cigarettes wafted in the car.
Diana prayed to God that someone had seen them in the parking lot and called nine-one-one. Her next hope was Adam.
She tried to concentrate, to send a message, the feeling of danger to her wolves. A pothole jarred the car, sending pain throughout her body. Her concentration scattered.
She choked again, and sputtered, and coughed again.
Chapter Nineteen
Adam walked to the back of the house, entering through the kitchen and dropped his load on the table.
“Hey! Anybody home?”
He didn’t’ see Bradley’s truck or sense anyone, but called out anyway. It seemed the thing to do since he was late getting in.
Probably everyone was at the Ridley house. He’d thought about going out there while at the grocery store, the feeling that he needed to check up on his females ate at him.
He thought about the migraine that had sent Mack home and to bed. A bloody migraine, his friend called it. The kind the psychic occasionally got when he had a bad premonition, seeing, or whatever the hell the man called it.
Whatever the images, they were bad enough that they had to be pieced together, instead of viewed as a whole.
One of the reasons Mack wasn’t in active service anymore was that sometimes he randomly experienced someone’s death before it happened. Sometimes the psychic was able to track down the designated dying in time. Sometimes not.
Seeing Mack go through that much suffering on someone else’s behalf made Adam respect the man like no one else. It also put him on edge.
Who was the target? Him?
Not so far fetched an idea with everything that was going on.
Mack assured him that it was no one the psychic knew.
What was it like to know someone was about to die? That you might be able save them if you could find them in time?
How did you choose who to save? Should you try? Or was it messing with the natural order of things?
Adam ditched the philosophy since he was one of the saved.
He paced across the kitchen.
Where was everyone? He checked the fridge for notes and found none. He concentrated on Diana Ridley, his biggest frustration.
He imagined they were at Diana’s enjoying homemade lasagna. She was having Italian food tonight, planned specially to exclude him. It was either a feeling he gathered from her, or he was being particularly paranoid because of Mack.
Either way, he picked up the phone and dialed her number. After four rings, the answering machine picked up.
“Diana? You know, using caller ID to avoid me is cowardly.” He took a calming breath. No sense in totally pissing her off. Again.
“Look, I’m just trying to locate the boys. It’s a school night and no one’s here.”
He felt so stupid rambling on like an idiot to her answering machine. “Are you sure you’re not there? Because—Beep!”
His time was up. Briefly, he debated calling back, but decided against it. If she were there, one of the boys would have interceded to let him know where they were.
The wolf inside him strained, unhappy with his conflicted feelings. He needed to pace, to run, to find the answer. Mara, Paul’s mate, always said that he needed to embrace being two halves of a whole. He was both wolf and man.
Instinct told him there was trouble in the air. The man, having female troubles, second-guessed his feelings. He took a deep breath and reached deep inside himself to find that he was still conflicted.
Trying to follow the threads of his pack was useless. He ran into walls everywhere. Bradley, Brandon, and Diana, his touchstones had blocked him out again.
Thin, faint ghost trails mixed in the personalities that made up his pack.
Not for the first time, Adam wondered if one of Garrick’s wardens still lived to cause him trouble. Would they still be connected enough to the boys to be part of the pack fabric?
Sometimes, if there was a strong enough attachment to someone when a wolf transferred, a ghost thread, a faint bond formed in the pack fabric to the loved one left behind.
Could the blood shared with Diana create a pack link to the strays? Dozens of questions with no answers circled his brain.
Forget it. He was Wolven. Head alpha. Canis Pater of his own pack. He’d follow instinct and hunt down his pack, every last member, be they supernatural or human.
Those bound by blood to the pack would have to answer his Call.
Adam shoved the gallon of milk in the fridge. His cell phone rang, making him jump and bang his head. He scowled, a little embarrassed and thankful no one was around to see his blunder.
He grabbed the offending gadget from his belt and looked at the ID and blinked.
He shouldn’t be surprised. Why shouldn’t the very psychic he’d just planned to aggravate call him? Adam pressed the answer key with his thumb.
“Hey, Mack. Feeling any better?”
“Hey, yourself. I’m better.”
Adam felt a little better about almost Calling the pack with Mack’s health improved. Not that Mack had anything but unofficial ties to the pack. Ties bound in blood one dark night, when he tried to trade his human life in place of Adam’s on Garrick’s claws. Mack survived the massive damage done by the werewolf attack, barely.
For distracting Garrick and saving his life, Adam shared his blood with the psychic. Considering the severity of the injuries, wolven blood was the only medicine that would have worked.
Mack Spencer would have been dead before an ambulance arrived. Even then, the psychic had been restricted to bed rest for two weeks.
The careful tone of Mack’s voice alerted Adam that something wasn’t quite right.
“Anyway, I had this urge to run back out to the job and make sure our vandals didn’t show back up.”
Urge. The fine hairs on the back of Adam’s neck stirred. Psychics don’t get urges, Mack once said, unless it’s about food or sex. They get premonitions.
“Did our hot wiring hounds show back up?”
“Not the hot wiring kind. A couple of the bike riding variety. They want to talk to the Canis.”
“I’m on my way.”
“Good. Because, I finally put together that puzzle.”
Positive that middle-schoolers on bicycles weren’t waiting for him, Adam slammed the door behind him, already on his way to the truck.
He remembered Diana’s injuries and the type of medicine used to heal them. A territorial growl rumbled from his chest. If those strays so much as laid a paw on another one of his people, he’d rip their throats out.
He knew the strays dispatched with the other members of the gang. That much he’d gotten from a brief handwritten message found in the mailbox. The strays promised no trouble while they were in the area. The scents around the box and on the note matched those Diana had carried that night.
Despite the promise, Adam didn’t feel comfortable with the remaining two members of the Hell Hounds running around his territory.
The Hellhounds we
ren’t a pack. They weren’t a single gang. They were nomadic animals with no loyalty to any pack, forming small groups simply because hunting with a group was easier than hunting alone.
He was about to find out if he could hold a territory and his choice of mate without any wardens.
Adam tried to reach out to his pack members without using the call. Everywhere he searched, he met a blocked tension that heightened his anxiety.
A pain lanced through his chest. Adam gasped and nearly plowed into the back of the car in front of him. Fear and determination flowed from Diana as the shield around her emotions weakened and dissolved. The sensations he received from her weren’t overpowering. They were surprising and muffled.
Adam pushed down the panic that threatened to overwhelm him. She was in danger. Hurt. She needed him.
Think. Where would she have gone?
He dialed her home number again and got the answering machine.
“Diana, call me on my cell as soon as you get this message. It’s important.”
He pushed the end button, spying the red Ranger truck Bradley drove. Sure enough the teen was at the wheel, his pack brothers crammed inside the cab with him.
Adam flashed his lights and laid on the horn. He didn’t care who he annoyed on the street.
Adam slowed while Bradley made a U-turn and pulled in behind him. With a hand wave out the window, he signaled for them to follow.
Did he just get a truckload of teenagers for backup? A sixteen-year-old with a brand new license was the oldest of the lot.
There was no help for the cramp in his abdomen, or the situation. He consoled himself with the knowledge that at least he knew where the boys were. He could send them off with Mack if things got too rough.
Adam sped down the rutted, unpaved subdivision road to the end, where two motorcycles gleamed under the yellow yard lights mounted in the front yard. After the break in and vandalism, Adam was making it a policy to have his properties well lit at all times. The red Ranger pulled in beside him.
Four teens spilled out of the truck as Mack and the two leather clad strays stepped out of the house. One of the strays was dark-skinned, often called African American by humans, or simply black. Supernaturals didn’t make racial distinctions. Their prejudices were species orientated.
Weremones Page 20
