Thinking of Megan, I sobered. “And the MacDonald?”
“He left.” She looked away. “He was very…grim.”
“Grim. Yeah.” Drawing my knees to my chest, I hugged them tight, trying to ward off the chill. “I can understand that.”
The question that had haunted me all these hours burst out. “Damn it, Colleen, I don’t understand. Why did she do this?”
“I don’t know.” She rolled her head against the wood of the door and met my eyes. “Even if I knew the reasons, I wouldn’t know, Kit. But I don’t know the reasons. I don’t have any answers.”
She sucked in a harsh breath and then spat out, “I hate her. It’s this huge ugly thing inside of me and I want it out, but I can’t get rid of it. Why did she hurt him, Kit? Why?”
The venom in her voice took me off guard and I blinked, staring at her, and for the first time, I saw something…more.
Oh, hell.
“Coll?” I whispered.
Her gaze flitted to me and then away. “Don’t,” she murmured, shaking her head. “I can’t…I can’t talk about it now.”
She came to her feet, her movements harsh and jerky, unlike her normal graceful motions. “She hurt. Tell me you made her hurt…” She screamed and spun away, shoving her hands through her hair. “Damn it.”
Quietly, I moved up behind her. She was tense, tremors wracking her entire body. Slowly, I slid my arms around her. “You don’t want to ask those questions,” I said softly as I hugged her from behind. “This isn’t who you are. You can’t carry that poison in you, no matter how mad you are, no matter how scared.”
She started to cry.
A few seconds later, so did I.
Evening gave way to night in a thundering torrent.
Justin hadn’t moved.
Damon told me Dair’s men had taken Megan’s body.
Chang was gone but I hadn’t even noticed his absence until he came through the doors, four of Damon’s enforcers at his back.
Two of them carried grocery bags. I guess Chang wanted to make sure there was meat for everybody. They moved straight into the kitchen and Colleen followed them with a frown. It’s a dangerous thing, messing around in a girl’s kitchen. Even more dangerous when that girl is a witch.
The other two moved to stand guard at Justin’s door and that had me turning to Chang.
“What is going on?”
Chang gestured to the couch. “Kit. Please. Sit.” He softened those words with a smile. “You look exhausted.”
I wasn’t exhausted. I’d cruised past exhausted and sailed straight in zombified territory some hours ago. It was possible that if I sat down, I wouldn’t get back up and I didn’t want to sleep until I had news—news about Megan or news about Justin or news about…something.
“I have information,” Chang said, as if he’d read my mind.
Sulking, I flung myself down on the long, wide couch, tucking my body up against Damon’s.
“How is Justin?” Chang asked.
“I don’t know,” I said waspishly. “When he’s done being all comatose and shit, you can wake him up and ask him.”
Chang looked away.
Aww, hell. Sighing, I rubbed my hands down my face. “Chang, shit. I’m—”
“Please don’t apologize,” he said, his voice gentle. But when he looked up, his eyes flashed—and stayed—green. The pupils slitted, going feline and his voice lowered to a rougher growl.
Next to me, Damon said something.
I blinked, not catching the words.
Chang responded in the same language and then he looked away, shaking himself like a bird settling his feathers. When he looked back at me, his eyes were normal. “Please, don’t apologize. This…travesty lies at our feet. Ours, Dair’s, perhaps even at the feet of the Witches Council—even the Assembly.”
Confused, I straightened, settling my weight on the edge of the couch, rather than against Damon. “What are you talking about?”
His lips twisted. “It all came from within our ranks. All of it. We never saw it.”
The faceless Barry now had a face—or at least something of a face.
He lay in a bloodied mess of limbs and torn flesh and silver pinned him to the floor in four places. Enough silver to keep him not just restrained, but trapped in his human form. They weren’t just relying on the blades pinning him, though.
He was also chained and I had a good idea of where Justin had gotten the idea for his cuffs.
Blades skewered his wrists. If he tried to rip his hands out or dislocate a bone, he’d have to cut his hand through completely. It had to be torturously painful. But I felt no pity as I hunched down in front of him.
“Talk,” I said quietly.
He just opened his one good eye.
The other was battered shut. He had done some healing—or I assumed he had—so I didn’t want to think about how bad that eye had looked earlier.
“I told…them…” He stopped and licked him lips. “I told them what I know. Just…kill me.”
Leaning in, I asked, “Do you want to die?”
His eye shone wetly at me. I could see the plea there. Yes. The answer was yes.
“You won’t,” I said, shaking my head. “I’ll ask Damon, real nice like, if he can keep you alive for weeks…maybe even months or a year.”
He started to cry.
A few months ago, I’d wondered if there was some part of me that had broken, ruined beyond repair, during those two weeks at Jude’s. Torture can break the mind, warp the soul. I felt nothing as I watched him cry.
“How many did you help capture?” I asked. He didn’t answer but I didn’t ask him to. “You sit there wailing and expecting pity, but you turned over your kind to be brutalized and tortured. For what?”
“We…” He sucked in a ragged breath. “We didn’t have any choice.”
“There’s always a choice.” The words were bitter. “Sometimes the alternatives suck, but there’s always a choice.”
“They wanted test subjects,” he whispered, voice shaking. “It was…find them some or they’d just…take them.”
The tremor cleared from his voice and he jerked against the silver pinning him, as though he’d indeed rip through it. I eyed him narrowly and reached for the Glock. I pulled it out and watched as his eye widened—with hope. He swallowed, though, when I shoved it against his groin. “I’ll blow them off,” I said softly. “Keep it up and I’ll do it. You’ll sing soprano for the rest of your life—however long it may be.” I leaned in and said, “I won’t let you heal, either. I know a way to make all mutilations permanent.”
“You wouldn’t.” He stared down at the gun pressed to his balls, almost mesmerized. “You couldn’t.”
With a shrug, I said, “A year ago, maybe not. But I’m not who I used to be.”
He shot me a look—and went still.
“We had no choice,” he said again.
“You always have a choice.”
“And what would you have done?” he half-spat. “You don’t even know what it’s like. You have no clan, no family. You’re alone.”
I didn’t let the words hurt. They weren’t true. I wasn’t alone. Not anymore. I hadn’t been alone for a very, very long time. “I would have found the person who made that deal and made them choke on the words. And I would have buried them in a hole so deep, they’d never be found. And if it was more than one, then I’d just settle myself in for a long, long hunt.” I leaned forward. “You could have gone to Damon. You could have. But you didn’t. Just like Megan didn’t.”
He flinched.
I nudged harder. “Start to talk…now.”
“A quick death.”
Damon’s eyes narrowed on me.
Clenching my jaw, I looked away. “He gave me the information I needed. He did give it to me. Make it bloody if you want, but…”
Blowing out a disgusted breath, he nodded. “The things I do for you,” he muttered.
I wished I could have smiled
, but I felt too battered inside.
“Did that help?” Chang asked, drawing my gaze to the others in the narrow, hall. It was grim and dark, made of cinderblocks painted black and the uninviting atmosphere seemed fitting for pain and torture and misery.
Scott and Doyle were there as well, although I wished I’d asked that Damon have them leave.
They both looked at me with something akin to…apprehension. I’d probably be doing the same. I felt half-mad—not remotely like myself.
Was this who I’d become then? Could I do the things I’d threatened Barry with and still live with myself?
Yes.
I tightened one hand into a fist. In that moment, I wanted to cry a little. I’d fought so hard to stay…human. Or at least walk a line far from the monster too many non-humans had become and here I was, teetering on that precipice.
“Doyle, Scott. Go.”
Damon jerked his chin at the entrance to the underground cells. I hadn’t even known this space was down here and I wanted out, up in the fresh, clean air, away from the blood and death that crowded my senses.
“You’re still you.”
Startled, I looked at Damon. Then with a frown, I turned away. “Chang’s supposed to be the mind reader, not you Damon.”
“I don’t need to read your mind to understand that look in your eyes, Kit,” he said softly. Then he shrugged. “Besides. I heard what you said. I don’t need to be a mind reader to know you’re torn up over this.”
“But I’m not.” I gripped the gun, squeezed it tighter and thought about the fact that maybe, just maybe, I could have done what I’d threatened.
“If you weren’t,” Chang said gently. “Then you wouldn’t be standing here looking so torn.”
Anything else I might have said was interrupted by a hard knock. Scott opened the door without waiting for a reply although he dipped his head in deference to Damon. “Alpha, my apologies.” His gaze came to mine. “There’s a man here to see you. A human. He says you met at Howlers. And he has some information he can only give to you.”
If I’d expected Charles Andrulis to show up with all the answers wrapped up in a tidy package, well…clearly I’d expected too much.
He didn’t have a package.
He had a phone.
He stood in a room where I hadn’t been before and Chang had led us there, assuring me that the room was soundproofed and completely suitable for a private discussion.
Damon hadn’t come with us.
He’d still been staring into the cell and I had a feeling there would be the bloody, painful death I’d asked for soon, if it hadn’t already happened.
As the door closed behind Chang, I stared at Charles. My gut said I could trust him and he’d willingly surrendered all weapons at the door. His gaze dropped to mine. “They let you in here armed.”
I lifted a shoulder. “They must like me.”
“They must,” he said, nodding. He drew a thumb down his stubbled jawline. “I was threatened with evisceration when I was led to this room.”
I mentally swore.
He cocked a brow. “Seeing as how that could be a death sentence if I wanted to make a case out of it, they must really like you.”
“Are you?”
“Am I what?” A guileless smile curved his lips.
“Going to make a case of it.”
“Naw.” He laughed, long and hard. “Of course not. I respect a man who makes it clear he won’t tolerate his friends being harmed.” He shrugged and turned away, his phone still on the table in front of us. “That big guy—former military?”
Scott. “You’d have to ask him.”
Charles turned back to me. “More important matters.” He nodded at his phone. “You might want to look at the pictures on there.” He leaned forward and pressed his thumb to the screen and it flared to life. “You know a lot of NHs dismiss any human on their turf. A woman could walk naked down Bart Street and not so much as have a single person look at her, so long as she’s human.”
True. “Point being…?”
“Point being…” He smiled. “It’s useful, how blind people are to me sometimes. Like when I was at your place the other day. I stopped by because I’d heard some…disturbing intel. About the wolf pack.”
I clenched my jaw. “Stop beating around the bush.”
He shrugged. “I’ve got a visit with the wolf Alpha in a bit. Have more info to share, but this…”
He shoved the phone across the table to me.
I caught it and scooped it up, staring hard at the images.
I sucked in a breath.
“She didn’t see you?”
“Like I said. People are all but blind to me. My own camouflage.” Charles smiled at me, but I barely registered it, too busy staring at the image of Shanelle Maguire striding down the walkway that led around the back of my condo.
Shanelle.
Chapter Nineteen
I heard them coming.
I didn’t hang up the phone.
Colleen continued to speak in low, soft tones.
She was no longer alone with Justin.
Damon had sent two of his trusted enforcers, but that wasn’t enough for me. I put out calls to the Green Road. There would definitely be witches tied into this, I had no doubt, but some Houses were less susceptible to this level of evil. And even if whoever these sons-of-bitches were managed to get a warrior to go turncoat, it wouldn’t be possible to find one who could hide such wrongness from her house. This kind of thing stained the soul in a way no witch could hide.
Colleen had given me two names, people to ask for and I’d been comfortable with them—I knew them both.
But some of the stirring in my gut settled as our conversation concluded. “He’s waking up. The worst was the swelling on his brain. His energy was split between holding his protections up and healing him which is why he’s still not responding much, but I can feel him stirring, deep inside. He’ll be okay, I…I think.” The words wobbled and she cleared her throat before she finished speaking. “No. I know he’ll be okay.”
“Yeah. He’s too stubborn not to be.” Relief made me queasy, but I didn’t have time to indulge in it, any more than I had the ability to reach through the phone and drag Colleen in tight for a hug.
Showtime…
I could hear the rumble of the Challenger’s motor as he pulled into the parking lot and cruised to a stop. I could see it, the gleaming black paint as Damon stopped next to my shiny new bullet of a car. Doyle’s was next, and although I didn’t see that one, I recognized the feel of him.
And Chang.
Scott wasn’t there.
He’d left his other top men back at the Lair, on what I guess was his version of high level alert. Nobody out and nobody in who wasn’t clan. If anybody had even one iota of doubt, the person went into lockdown—a.k.a. a cell—until Damon cleared them. He wasn’t taking any chances with his people.
I supposed we could have done this back at the Lair, but it felt wrong. This was my case. I wanted to do it on my turf and that was something I guessed shifters, of all people, would understand. Shanelle clearly did—and she didn’t like it. She gave me a pissy look as Chang none too subtly marched her inside. He didn’t touch her, but the body language was there all the same.
She clutched her phone in one hand and was dressed in sparring clothes.
I must have interrupted training.
Her gaze cut to Damon’s and I could all but see her fighting for control. He bared his teeth in a smile. “You got something to say?”
“No, Alpha.”
I could practically hear her grinding her teeth as she spoke—it was an obvious lie and we all knew it.
“Why don’t you go ahead and say it?” I said, settling more comfortably in my seat and stretching out my legs. I was going to take a page from Damon’s book and try the lazy, I-don’t-give-shit attitude. As I slumped, I reached for the gun I’d placed in my lap earlier.
She was standing in the perfec
t position for me to put a bullet in her leg, should I need to—and she wouldn’t even know until it hit her, thanks to the barrier of the desk.
“Say what?” Her eyes spat fire.
“Whatever it is you’re biting back.” I shrugged and flicked Damon a look. “Maybe he can give you a pass on that. We’re kind of on my turf right now.” His lids flickered and I could all but here his mental snarl. The things I do for you…
But he gave a lazy shrug. “You got something to say, Maguire, here’s the one chance you get—but I’d suggest you be nice.”
She opened her mouth, then shut. Finally, in a cool, modulated voice she said, “If your investigator needed information from me, I don’t see why she couldn’t have come to the Lair for it instead of having me dragged in here. First I’m ordered to return to the Lair—and not long after I did that, I’m ordered to leave—as is, no chance to change out of my gear or shower. If it was that urgent, it seems like it would have been easier for her to come to me. Or she could have simply stayed at the Lair. She had been there earlier.”
“Well.” I shrugged. “What can I say? When I’m working, I like my own space. You want to sit down?” I nodded at the seat across from my desk.
“I’ll stand.” She folded her hands at her back, military-style. “Shall we begin?”
“You familiar with Megan Banks?”
Her lids flickered. I saw the truth there. She canted her head to the side and lifted one shoulder in a slight shrug. “The name’s familiar.”
“She runs with the wolves.”
“Ah…” Now she smiled. “Brunette. Tall. Ballsy.”
“Not so much now. Now she’s sort of dead.”
Her pupils spiked. “And this has…what, exactly to do with me?”
“Know a guy named Saul Tremble?” I asked instead of answering.
She lowered her head, staring at the floor. “What’s with all these questions, investigator?”
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