The Wolf in His Arms (The Runes Trilogy)

by Lilly, Adrian

  Lucy shook her head. “I don’t know. I don’t know.” She bolted upright. “I got to go find my brother.”

  “I’m still coming.”

  Lucy waved him on as she staggered to the door. She paused in the doorway and faced Sue and Haley. “I know what you must be thinking, but we didn’t bring this on you. It was coming with or without us.” Lucy shut the door.

  A sharp, biting cold the wind whipped off Lake Michigan as Maxwell and Lucy stepped onto the sidewalk. Lucy immediately wondered if Alec had transformed and was freezing somewhere. “The car will be faster.” Without waiting for a reply, she darted across the street between cars.

  Maxwell waited for a passing car and then snaked between two others to follow her. “One of us should go on foot,” he said.

  “You want to drive?” She tossed him the keys. She turned her back to cross the street again.

  “Lucy!” He called a little too loudly. She turned to face him. “I will help you find your brother. We will find him.”

  Lucy’s face remained a stone mask. “I know we will.”

  * * * *

  “What have we done to deserve this?” Jason’s voice sounded broken.

  Ilene couldn’t bring herself to raise her head off the car window. The highway in front of them stretched into infinite points of dusty white. Snow flurries cascaded through the light and over their windshield like stars. “This isn’t a punishment,” she said weakly. She wondered how long it had taken her to realize it. Was it only now—in this moment?

  “Did Lucy say why they were in Chicago?”

  “No.”

  “But Alec isn’t hurt?”

  “He wasn’t shot. But he just lost his boyfriend. To say he isn’t hurt is wrong.”

  “You know what I meant,” Jason snapped.

  “This feels like we’re on repeat.” Jason remained silent as he concentrated on the road, ignoring her. “I’m sorry,” she apologized, finally. She reached across the seat and patted his arm.

  Jason nodded. “I accept.” He was silent for a moment. “I don’t know how to do this. What am I to say?” He stopped, but Ilene could tell he hadn’t finished, and so she waited, quiet. He began again, “Feeling is so hard. I’ve hurt so much; it’s hard to hurt anymore. I feel numbed.”

  Only the whirring of the tires broke the long silence; only the painful white of the highway lights broke the long darkness. “We still have to love,” Ilene said finally. “Love is pain. Love is loss.”

  * * * *

  Lucy stopped midblock to peer down yet another dark alley. She had walked blocks on a seemingly endless parade of darkened alleys and doorways. The night air chipped away at her, but it was the loss, the grief, that truly numbed her. “Alec,” she yelled into the alley, no concern for how anyone looked at her. She entered the alley. Bags of garbage littered the pavement next to an overflowing trash can. The stench assaulted her nose. One small dim light lit the alley about halfway down. She saw a figure draped in shadow at the end of the alley. “Alec,” she called again. She swallowed her hope. Each time she had seen someone in an alley, and she had allowed herself to believe, it had been a homeless person—some other lost soul in the freezing night. Sadness after sadness that she stumbled upon increased the woe weighing down her heart.

  The shadowed figure murmured recognition, and Lucy darted to him. Alec sat on the cold pavement, naked, his hands draped between his legs. His back rested against the brick side of the building and his head dangled limply. He looked up at Lucy. His green eyes were glassy and they reminded Lucy of shattered Depression glass. Blood crusted his lips and around his mouth. “Is Jared really dead?” He sounded soul-crushed.

  Lucy couldn’t speak, so she nodded. A sob burst through her lips in a spray of spit. Fresh tears rolled down her cheeks. Slipping her coat off, Lucy said, “Here.”

  Alec rolled over on his side, ignoring the offered coat. “I just want to lay here and die,” he gasped. His breath floated away in steamy clouds.

  “Alec, please.” Her outstretched hands shook with the coat.

  Alec curled up tighter as a sob racked his whole body. He covered his head with his arms and uttered harsh sounds that were a cross between a sob and a scream. Lucy draped her coat over him and stroked his hair. In time, she knew, he would be strong enough to stand. She would wait.

  Aftermath

  Lucy peered over the back of the couch to ensure that Alec was still sleeping. She returned to the loft’s open kitchen and sat at the table with Maxwell, Haley, and Sue. “He’s so exhausted,” she muttered, her own voice brittle as winter grass.

  “You should sleep,” Sue said.

  “My parents will be here soon.”

  Maxwell cut is eyes to the couch where Alec was sleeping. He recalled helping Lucy bring Alec to the loft, helping her wash the blood from his face and getting him dressed. “Is there anything else we can do?” He reached his hand out and touched her hand briefly. “For you?”

  Lucy tried to smile but her face crumpled into sorrow and tears. “I just want to see my mom and dad.”

  “He didn’t hurt anyone else,” Maxwell assured. Lucy looked up at him and scrutinized his face, but she said nothing. “That’s good.” Maxwell continued. “It’s like he knew what he wanted to do, like he could control it.”

  “I can’t even remember when I change. Alec and Jared”—and her voice trembled on his name—“always locked me in a vault.”

  “What if we’re different? Because of what they did to us, the experiment?”

  Lucy tried to be compassionate; she could hear the hope in his voice. She could tell that he had witnessed his worst fears tonight: suddenly changing into a monster without warning. But to think now, that it could be controlled—offered him hope. “Maybe. I don’t know. I can’t think about it.”

  “We’ll wait up for your parents,” Sue said. “Take the guest bed. Maxwell will sleep out here on the floor to keep an eye on Alec.”

  Maxwell and Haley watched Sue lead Lucy to the guest bedroom. Haley asked, “Do you feel safe sleeping out here with him?”

  “Yeah. Absolutely. I feel safer than I ever have.” He hugged Haley. “I feel like he can be trusted.”

  She turned her eyes to Alec, sleeping deeply on the couch. “I wish we could do something for him.”

  “Right now, I’m afraid no one can do anything for him.”

  Lucy had been asleep less than an hour when Ilene and Jason rang the buzzer of the loft. Sue paced to the door, wringing her hands. She buzzed them in and greeted them at the door. “Hello, I’m Sue.” She waved them in.

  “Jason, and this is Ilene,” Jason replied.

  “Where’s Alec?” Ilene cut in. She pulled her gloves off as she walked.

  “Asleep on the couch,” Maxwell said as Ilene walked into the living room. “I’m Maxwell.”

  She seemed not to hear him as she peered over the edge of the couch at her sleeping son. “And Lucy?” She walked toward Maxwell, Haley, Jason, and Sue who gathered in the kitchen. “I’m Ilene. Did I say that?”

  “Yes. You did.” Sue nodded. “Lucy’s asleep in my room in the back.” Sue gestured to Haley. “And that’s Haley. Would you like some coffee?”

  “Oh, yes, please,” Ilene enthused. Maxwell took their coats and hung them up as Ilene and Jason settled in at the kitchen table. “What happened?”

  “Lucy and I were coming back from the market,” Haley began. She looked toward Maxwell, trying to let him know she would edit herself. “A man jumped us. Jared came to our rescue and the man,” Haley turned her head, as if turning from the memory.

  “What happened to the man?” Jason asked.

  “Alec chased after him,” Maxwell answered. He turned his eyes toward Alec and then back to Jason. “The man killed himself.”

  “What?” Jason bleated.

  “I’ll call in the morning to see what we have to do to get Jared home with us.” The coffee cup shook in Ilene’s hands. “I’ll call the funeral home that
handled the other funerals. I was really pleased with them,” she continued. “I’m sure they will be helpful. I’ll let them know Jared needs picked up here.” Coffee slopped out the side of the cup and slipped over her fingers. She looked down absently. “Do you have a napkin?”

  Sue walked over and handed Ilene the napkin. “If I can handle anything for you, please let me know.”

  “Us, too,” Haley said. She leaned her head on Maxwell’s shoulder.

  Jason took Ilene’s hand in his. “Thank you.”

  Lucy appeared, then, in the hallway, coming from the bedroom. She saw her parents and rushed to them, clutching them, and cried. They held each other. Maxwell, Haley, and Sue looked away.

  * * * *

  Alec didn’t awake until the next morning, and when he did, he sat motionless on the couch. He refused food, but accepted the coffee Ilene handed him.

  Ilene made the arrangements as planned. Maxwell and Haley offered to drive Jared’s car back to Detroit, following Alec and Lucy, who would ride with their parents. They said their goodbyes to Sue and began the trip back.

  In Jared’s car, Haley scrolled through her phone, looking at the news. “It’s on the news,” she told Maxwell. Her voice sounded especially strained.

  “And?”

  “Someone caught the attack—Alec attacking the shooter—with their cell phone.”

  “What?” Maxwell turned his head toward her phone, making the car swerve. Haley pressed play and a grainy, dark image of the werewolf ripping the throat out of the man, and then shambling away, filled the screen. The news report cut to a reporter. “This strange attack comes just a day after a police dashboard camera in Las Vegas captured this footage.” The shot cut to a large beast landing on the hood of the police cruiser, shaking the vehicle like an earthquake. The beast leaped off the car and onto an officer, even as he shot it. The report cut back to the reporter. “Four officers were severely wounded in the attack in Las Vegas.”

  “This is going to get out of hand really quickly,” Haley surmised. “What do we do?”

  “Hopefully Lucy will know.” Maxwell stared out the windshield. “Because I don’t think Alec’s going to be any help for a while.”

  * * * *

  Detective Lance Herald hesitated only briefly before picking up the phone and dialing Detective Carmen Salazar. “Carmen? Lance.”

  “Lance? This is, um, unexpected. Good to hear from you.” In fact, hearing from him startled her. They had not spoken since that day at the ruins of the Rune’s home. She couldn’t help but feel that his call was a bad omen.

  He cut straight to the point. “Have you seen the news coming out of Chicago?”

  “No.”

  “There’s a news report—a web video—that’s going viral. It looks like a”—he cleared his throat—“beast attacking a man on a city street.”

  “Beast?”

  Lance closed his eyes in a moment of decision. This moment, he knew, was coming for months. He had to tell someone what he had seen—thought he had seen—through the smoke in the basement of the Rune’s burning house. Seeing such a beast now caught on video encouraged him to confide in Carmen. “If you used the term werewolf, you wouldn’t be too far off.”

  An incredulous chuckle burst from Carmen’s mouth. “Seriously?”

  It was not the reaction Lance hoped for, but it was what he expected. “I just sent you the link.”

  Carmen opened her email and clicked the link. She watched silently as the video played. “Is this real?” She questioned. A nervous tremor shook her voice.

  “I’m afraid so.”

  “You—you believe it?”

  “Carmen, I...” Lance’s voice broke, and his mouth flapped silently for a moment. “I saw it. The night of the fire. I couldn’t be sure. I couldn’t tell you.” His voice trailed off.

  “Until now?”

  “Yes.”

  Carmen took a few deep breaths, the time she’d spent following Ilene and the other members of the Runes family churning in her mind. She had spent so many hours feeling obsessed, doubting her own instincts. “After the fire, when we spoke,” she accused, “you could have told me. I was asking you. I knew something wasn’t right.”

  “Would you have believed me?”

  “You know what I saw in that barn!”

  “But were you ready to accept what I saw in the house?” His voice cut her across the line. “Are you ready now?”

  “If I am,” she exhaled, “what do we do?”

  Lance expelled a sour, derisive snort. “Hiding comes to mind.” He sighed wearily into the phone. “There’s more. The guy you just saw killed by that thing. He had just shot and killed someone. Jared Kincaid.”

  Carmen shuddered. “So this comes right back here.”

  “Feels like it.”

  “Can we get his body? Jared’s?”

  “What?”

  “As part of an ongoing investigation. Can we request it be brought here?”

  “Maybe.” Lance began to wonder whether unloading his soul had been such a good move. “Why? What are you up to?”

  “Lance, we both know the Runes family is all over this thing, whatever it is. If they make a move, I want to know it.”

  Lance sat silently on the phone. Carmen only knew he was there from the sound of his breathing. Finally he said, “You can request it. I’ll have no part in it.”

  “Why did you call me?”

  “Because I was hoping you’d have the strength to do what I can’t.” He hung up.

  * * * *

  Sitting in their apartment at the dining room table with Jason, Lucy shifted her eyes across the apartment to the living room. Alec curled in a chair in the corner of the living room, silent, with one of Jared’s shirts draped over him. Ilene sat on the couch, just to be near him.

  Cups with coffee that had grown cold sat in front of her and Jason. The outside door opened and Maxwell and Haley returned with groceries. She and Maxwell walked through the dining room to the kitchen. “I know none of you feel like eating,” Haley acknowledged as she unpacked the bags, “but you have to still nibble.”

  “Thank you for going,” Lucy said.

  “We’re glad to help, any way we can,” Maxwell said. He set a plate of cookies in the center of the dining room table. He glanced at Alec. “Should I take him one?” He whispered.

  “No.”

  Maxwell and Haley sat at the table for a while. The choking silence weighed on them, and they excused themselves to the study. Maxwell and Haley leafed through the pages, finding the one labeled The Gen5 Pack. “So this is me,” he contended, lifting the paper.

  “And Alec and Jared and Griffin. But what about these others on this list? Do they”—and Haley gestured toward Lucy and Alec—“know anything about them yet?”

  Maxwell shook his head. “Not that they told me.”

  “I wish we could do something more.”

  “You could,” Lucy said, coming to the door. She hung in the doorway, as if she was not fully committed to the idea of entering. “You could follow up on them, like we did with you.”

  Maxwell looked down at the paper. “In Portland?”

  “And Las Vegas?” Haley added, looking up from the papers.

  Lucy leaned against the door. “It’s a long trip. We’ve got the money for the tickets.” She finally entered the room and took a seat at the table with them. “We have to keep moving forward, but,” she shook her head. “I don’t know when Alec will be ready to continue. Hell, I don’t know when I will be.”

  “We’ll go,” Haley agreed. “We want to help.” She cut her eyes to Maxwell, and he echoed her willingness with a nod.

  * * * *

  The assistant coroner called Carmen when Jared’s body arrived at the county morgue. She arrived within minutes of the call and headed straight back to see the body. The new assistant coroner—Carmen could never remember her name—greeted her and took her to the drawers. Without pomp, she heaved the drawer open and flipped th
e sheet down to Jared’s waist. Carmen looked at his pale face, his eyes and lips closed, his dark hair swept back. A small hole drilled into his chest by the bullet was the only indication of violence.

  A swirl of emotion suddenly hit Carmen. Flashes of memory from her early investigation of the missing persons cases struck her. She remembered her plummet into darkness as she entered that barn. Like ghosts, the smell of decaying flesh hung in her nostrils, the damp air clung to her skin. Now, looking at the soft dead face of a young man somehow implicated, yet again, made her tremble. “Thank you for letting me see him,” Carmen finally said.

  “They didn’t perform an autopsy,” the assistant coroner informed her. “Did you need one?”

  Carmen shook her head. Her mind drifted to the murder of the previous coroner, and she thought of this woman. Have I put her in danger? Carmen wondered. “I just needed to see the body. You can release it to the family.”

  Leaving Las Vegas

  In a motel room on the outskirts of Las Vegas, Nadia sat on the edge of the bed and turned on the television. Shadows from the dead bugs trapped in the dim ceiling light made the room seem even dingier than it was. Helena had walked to a vending machine for a cup of coffee. Nadia didn’t know how she could drink it; Helena hadn’t stopped shaking since the attack. Nadia reconsidered; her mother had no plans of sleeping tonight.

  Nadia flipped through the channels, finding a breaking news report. As she feared, the footage showed the street outside their apartment. “An animal attack here left four officers hospitalized and the city on the lookout for an unidentified animal,” a reporter explained. “The dash cam of one police car captured this footage.” The screen filled with the grainy image of a large animal leaping onto the hood of the car, and then leaping toward an officer even as he fired. The screen cut away from the footage to the face of the reporter. “Residents are urged to call the police if they spot the animal. The animal should be considered extremely dangerous and should not be approached. All four officers attacked are listed in stable condition.”

  Turning off the television, Nadia stood and walked to the window. She pulled back the curtain to see her mother. Helena was returning with two cups of coffee. Nadia opened the door for her. She offered a cup to Nadia, and despite her nerves, she took it. The coffee was watery and flavorless. “It was on the news,” Nadia said. They sat side-by-side on the bed.