Pack Violet Shadow

by C. M. Stunich

  “I can feel it, Zara,” he snarled, but I was already there, climaxing over a bathroom sink at the University of Oregon. Wow. What a strange life I led. My body locked down on Silas' and brought him to orgasm just a few messy moments after my own.

  We stood there, still locked together, trying to catch our collective breath.

  “Zara Wolf,” Silas said, his voice heavy and thick and full of male satisfaction. It would've annoyed me if I hadn't glanced up and found the same expression on my face, feminine satisfaction written into every inch.

  “Silas Wolf,” I said as he pulled away with a groan and I quickly made my way to the toilet. It wasn't pretty, but it was a fact of life. “Bring me some clothes,” I told him, feeling the memory of his body against mine, warm and hard and wild.

  Silas did as I asked, handing me a pair of sweats, a tank top, and even a bra and panties.

  “Thank you,” I told him, taking the stack and looking up into his face.

  First, sex.

  Now, vampires.

  I just had to figure out a clever way to clean up the rest of Silas' mess.

  Montgomery dragged the vampire's bloody body from the back of the SUV and threw him over his shoulder like a sack of flour.

  “Jax, do a quick sniff and see if there are any hikers or backpackers out here,” I said, putting my hands on my hips and looking around the empty parking lot. We'd taken the Yukon to a remote area on the far side of the national forest, far enough away from the edge of pack property that we should be able to get through this interrogation without Nikolina or any of her guards sniffing us out.

  I tried to keep my back straight, head up, but I felt lazy and warm and sated. My wolf wanted to curl into a ball next to Silas and tuck her head under his chin. I was wearing sweats and a tank, my feet bare, my body throbbing with desire. The sex had stripped the vampire bite from my neck, but somehow, it hadn't taken the lust from my blood.

  It'd only amped it up.

  “How long do you think the werewolf blood sustains them?” Aeron asked from behind me. I glanced over my shoulder at her, my lips set into a frown. I didn't really want her around for this, but I supposed if she was claiming to be our ally, then this was as good a test as any. The fact that Julian was missing … it wasn't going to be a secret that his disappearance was our doing anyway. “Maybe we should just chain him up, leave him in the sun, and see how long it takes before his flesh starts to melt off?”

  I looked at the faerie princess and raised a brow.

  “Maybe,” I said, reaching up and pushing bloodred strands of hair from my face. “But only after we get the information we need from him.” I should've been weirded out by the rictus grin spreading across Aeron's face, but I was more concerned with the strange, tense nature of the boys around me.

  They worked to get the wooden cuffs and chair out of the back of the Yukon, the ones we'd picked up from the Pairing House earlier, in complete silence. The tension was palpable enough to cut with a knife.

  “Silas and I mated,” I said, feeling like a broken record. Nic and I mated; Che and I mated; Silas and I mated. “If you need to talk about it, then just say something instead of moping around.”

  I think I was speaking more to Che than anyone else, but it was Anubis who turned to look at me, his blue-black hair spiked up in all sorts of random directions.

  “I think we'd like to hear from Silas what, exactly, it was that he knew. In regards to his father, I mean.” He paused, glanced away, and licked his lips. “Alpha,” he added respectfully. It was cute, seeing him act all formal when he was dressed so casually in jeans and a tight red tank with black Japanese symbols on the front of it. “Your wisdom is unquestioned—”

  “Not by you,” Che said, pausing to look at me like I was the worst kind of traitor there was. Silas was on my right, leaning against the SUV with his arms crossed in front of him, staring at the pine needle covered pavement, spots of snow still staining the ground, even with the bright spring sunshine beaming down on us. “But I question it.”

  “Do you now?” I asked, staring him down and ignoring Aeron's chuckles behind me.

  “Thank you, Darkest Deeps, for blessing me with an immunity to this nonsense,” is what I think she said, but I had no idea what that meant so I ignored it. For now. After this was over, I'd have to have a talk with her. I couldn't have a faerie girl clinging to my fur when there was so much other shit to deal with. Besides, the glamour she was wearing was strong, so strong that I was damn near certain that she didn't make it.

  To trick a wolf's nose?

  That had to be queen's work.

  “Silas, tell him what you told me,” I said, staring at Che and hate, hate, hating that he was refusing to break eye contact with me. Much longer and I'd have to put him on his back.

  “I knew my father was involved with the missing pack members. I didn't know how or why or what he was doing to them, only that he knew, that he was partially responsible somehow.” Silas dragged a finger over his scar out of habit. “That's it. He's threatened to kill me—and all of you—if Zara doesn't pick me at the end of the Pairing Year. Beyond that, I don't know. I don't know fucking anything.”

  “Yeah,” Che said with a skeptical laugh, leaning his head back and digging his fingers through his dark hair. “You knew so little you had to kill a guy to keep him quiet.”

  “I lost it,” Silas whispered, but his anger seemed to be under control. When I glanced over and met his gold gaze, sparks flickered through my body. Yes. A natural response to stress was a coupling. In that case, I probably need a good dozen or more orgasms to even my mood out … “I just lost it. I saw my dad's face written all over Julian's smirk, and I flipped. I know I made a mistake, and I'm sorry.”

  I caught Nic's expression from across the parking lot, his beautiful, stern face silhouetted against a sea of fir trees, oaks, pines and spruces. He scowled and turned back to the task at hand, clamping Julian's pale, floppy wrist to the wooden chair he was slumped in.

  Montgomery was on his other side, back stiff, shoulders tense.

  “I knew my father was involved with the missing pack members.”

  That statement was probably getting to him, I was sure of it.

  “Doesn't cut it for me,” Che said, shaking his head and dropping his chin to look at me again. “Not by a long shot. I feel like I just sat around and waited for my alpha female to mate with a traitor.”

  “Your female?” Silas said, and if the sex had calmed him down in regards to the anger issue … it'd revved him all the way up with this one. He stood up from his slouch and turned fully to face Che.

  “My female,” Che repeated, lifting his lips in a snarl.

  “Enough!” I shouted, my voice echoing around the quiet, snow drenched forest. It was just us in this tiny parking lot at the end of a dirt road with nothing but an outhouse and some picnic tables for company. I let myself scream loud. And when I was done shouting, I curled my hands into fists, my nostrils flaring wide, and I panted with adrenaline. “We have enough enemies as it is. Why make more? We're supposed to work together.”

  I put a hand to my chest and closed my eyes.

  I could feel Tidus ahead and to my right, Jaxson padding up behind me on quiet paws, Anubis standing next to the SUV ad biting his lip. Nic and Montgomery kept on task, making sure that when we removed the wooden knife, and Julian woke up as an undead vampire, that he'd be perfectly immobile. The eight of us—and Aeron—could take him on, but it wasn't a fight I wanted to have if I could help it.

  I'd had about enough action for one day.

  Well, enough of one kind of action. I supposed I was open to some more of the other kind, the naked, sweaty, sexy kind …

  “You all feel like you're mine,” I said with a slight curl of my lips, letting the wolf into my voice before I opened my eyes and looked around at each boy in turn. “Mine.” It was a simple, animalistic concept that I knew they'd understand. Because we weren't human, we were fucking werewolf. “M
y males.” I let out a long, low breath. “So if you think of me the same way, as your female, then you should know that when you fight, it hurts.” I nodded and dropped my hand to my side. “It hurts me, more than it hurts either of you.”

  I padded between them, feet sloshing in half-melted snow, and made my way over to Julian.

  The entire clearing was silent as death.

  Fitting, I supposed, as I looked down at a corpse.

  Reaching out to take hold of the knife's wooden hilt, I yanked it hard and spattered black blood across the front of my shirt and sweats.

  The boys got up close to me, creating a circle around the vampire. Jax had shifted back to human form, his naked body pressed up almost against mine on the right side. Nic was on my left, and then it went Che, Anubis, Montgomery, Tidus, and Silas. They all stayed quiet, thank Mother fucking Earth. I guess my words had had their intended effect—they seemed chagrined.

  “How much longer until he wakes up?” Tidus asked a few minutes later, his voice reverent and low, completely different than his usual bubbly tone.

  “Fifteen minutes, give or take,” Anubis whispered, and then we all stood and waited, attention focused on Julian and not much else. Aeron stood off to the side, leaning against a tree with her human glamour so smack-on that I kept scenting human and getting little thrills of alarm. It made me wonder how many times I'd encountered a fae in disguise in the past. Hopefully not many.

  I could only guess that glamours made by a faerie queen were expensive … and the fae did not pay for things in any sort of reasonable currency. They paid in blood and bone, death and suffering, sex and favors.

  “T-minus thirty seconds,” Anubis said after a while, checking the phone in his pocket and then looking up at me. I took a deep breath, crossed my arms under my breasts, and waited.

  When Julian did come to, it was with a gasp of startled shock, jerking awake in the chair with a scream of rage. He thrashed against his restraints, snapping at the air in front of him like an animal, yowling like a demon, his brown eyes flashing a cherry red that was probably his true color, underneath the thin glamour he'd been wearing.

  “You bitch!” he screamed at me, which was not a particularly creative insult to throw at a female werewolf. “What have you done? You fucking cunt.”

  “Address my Alpha like that again and I'll have your throat,” Anubis snarled, grabbing a handful of Julian's hair and yanking his head back. “Show some respect.” The wood seared the back of the vampire's head and he shrieked in agony, his voice echoing through the swells and valleys of the forest.

  We'd put him in a relatively shaded area, and vampires were certainly slow to burn, so it'd be a while before we got to see exactly how long-lasting werewolf blood really was.

  “Julian,” I said carefully, as his brown hair faded to a strange silver color, the cheap glamour flaking off like it'd never been. That wasn't the important part of his disguise. No, the glamour was weak, possibly even made by a vampire instead of a witch. It changed his hair and eye color, sure, but it was the witch hazel and the wolf blood that really disguised him, hid him in plain sight. “How do you know Silas?” I asked, and not because I doubted my new lover's words, but because I wanted the rest of the men to hear it directly from the horse's mouth.

  “Fuck!” Julian yelled out, sagging in the seat as the wood drew his strength out of him and left welts across his remaining wrist and both ankles. Only his bloody clothing kept the rest of his skin from searing against the chair. His left arm was still missing, but that didn't seem to bother him much. If he drained a human or two of blood, it'd grow right back. “Where the fuck am I?”

  “How do you know Silas?” I asked again, gesturing to the Alpha-Son of Pack Obsidian Gold. “You greeted him by name this morning. I'd like to know how you two became acquainted.”

  “Tell him you'll cut his cock off if he doesn't answer!” Aeron called out with a disturbingly enthusiastic chuckle. She was of Faerie after all, and the fae, well … they reveled in torture. It was an art form to them.

  “I don't know Silas,” Julian said, looking around the group as best he could from his position in the poisonous chair. Staring down at him like this, helpless and shackled, I almost felt sorry for him. I had a feeling he really was around our age, maybe eighteen or so. If he hadn't murdered our teacher right in front of me, I'd have probably been sympathetic. “I just know his dad.”

  Che scowled and looked away, but he didn't say anything.

  “How is Allister involved in this shit?” I asked, hoping this interrogation would go smoothly. I did not want to cut some kid's dick off to get answers.

  “Really?” Julian asked, sniffling and glancing down at his missing arm like he'd literally just noticed it was gone. The arm itself was lying on the ground about three feet from where we were standing. It was morbid as hell, that was for sure. “You think I'm going to sit here and spill all my secrets? Don't be ridiculous.”

  Julian's tongue traced over his lips, probably searching for more of my blood. Too bad for him we'd wiped it all off ahead of time.

  “It's that or we kill you,” I told him with a sad side smile.

  “Aren't you going to kill me anyway?” he snapped, literally snapped his teeth like a rabid dog. “What does it matter if I talk?”

  Montgomery pulled a wooden knife from his belt, reminding me that I needed to either have a new one made or dig one up out of the Ebon Red weapon stores. There was an entire building on pack land that was filled with weapons, artifacts, old spells, and 'were' history. It was hardly used anymore, but always on twenty-four hour watch.

  Werewolves didn't often need weapons; we were weapons.

  “Actually, no,” I said as Monty came around the outside of the circle and Jax moved swiftly out of his way. “I'd prefer if you had a frank discussion with us and then took a message home to your queen.”

  “Puh-lease,” Julian said as Montgomery knelt down in front of the chair, his black trench coat fluttering around his feet as he reached out and put one long fingered hand over the vampire's. “I'm not a fucking moron. I'm not leaving this chair alive.”

  “No,” I said as Montgomery flicked his emerald eyes up to me. “But you might leave it as one of the undead if you cooperate.” I nodded my head ever so slightly, watching as Monty's carefully crafted facade fractured into small pieces, revealing the cool, icy rage underneath.

  His family was missing.

  And he wanted them back.

  “You cut pieces off our wolves,” he said, so quiet I could barely hear him, adjusting his gaze to look up into Julian's red-eyed stare. “And you ate them. You tried to make us eat them.”

  The vampire didn't flinch, holding my mate's gaze with a steady, seething anger.

  “So now, I'm going to cut pieces off of you. For each question you don't answer, I'm going to take my pound of flesh.” Montgomery lifted the knife up, this short shining piece of wood that shouldn't rightfully be able to cut anything, and used it to cleanly slice off the very tip of Julian's middle finger.

  I didn't know the entirety of the science behind it, but something about the raw, earthy nature of wood was anathema to a vampire. It sliced through them like a warm knife through butter, and it was the only known way to kill an undead. Even flames couldn't be counted on to completely eliminate an Ageless undead Blood—if the fire didn't sever their head, there was a chance they'd regenerate.

  'I don't know if I can watch this,' Tidus said, taking in a long, deep breath. 'I can handle violence when I have to, but torture?' He exhaled and closed his stormy gray eyes for a moment.

  Julian though, he barely flinched—and neither did Montgomery.

  “How is Allister involved in this?” I repeated, not wanting to give away too much of what I knew. We knew the vampires were daywalkers because they were drinking wolf blood, but they didn't necessarily know that we were aware of that. The witches had purposely revealed their cards with the Ebon Red flesh, but the vamps had only accidental
ly let a certain amount of information slip. That was what I needed to play off of.

  “Allister Vetter,” Julian said, watching the tip of his finger bleed black blood over the wooden arm of the chair. In a minute or less, it'd stop and heal over, just like the wound on his shoulder. But to actually grow it back, he'd need to drink blood. And lots of it. In fact, if his injuries were severe enough, only the blood of the dying would suffice. “That idiot was right, wasn't he? You smelt the wolfsbane.”

  “Wrong,” I said, crossing my arms over my chest and looking up just in time to meet Tidus' eyes when he reopened them. “I tasted it.”

  'If you want to leave, you can go,' I told him, making sure to project my voice to the rest of the alpha pack. 'I won't hold it against you.'

  Nobody moved and after a while, I realized that no matter how horrible this became, they would stay.

  “Allister Vetter,” I repeated and Julian leaned back, smirking at me.

  “It bothers you, doesn't it? Knowing that one of your own is the orchestrator of this whole mess? Coven Triad didn't go to him; he sought them out.” Julian grinned as he said it, and I knew this was a confession compelled out of him less by torture and more by arrogant glee. He wanted to see me react. “Not everyone's as excited about this new pack structure as you are, Ebon Red.”

  I didn't engage, just stood there and watched him as the trees above us ruffled and fluttered in the afternoon breeze. Tiny spots of sunlight caught on Julian's skin and he watched them with a nervous flick of his tongue over his lips.

  Too long in the sun, and he would burn nice and slow. Eventually, his neck and head would separate and he'd die, but it would be long and drawn-out and painful. I stepped aside to let a shaft of sunlight cut across his face and he flinched.

  “Kingdom Ironbound,” I said, just to gauge his reaction. He was staring up and over my shoulder at the blue sky and the golden eye of the sun with a wariness that told me he wasn't quite as used to his daywalking abilities as he pretended to be. “Crown Aurora.”