Dire Desires ewc-3

by Stephanie Tyler

  And now, he was face-to-face with the man—wolf—he’d hunted for so long. “I believe you’re innocent, especially after the evidence Cain gave me.”

  “I’d like to see all your evidence. I’ll share mine. I need to find this wolf. You’re not the only one investigating me,” Harm said.

  Ellen came over, took his massive order. Cain just shrugged and finished his fourth burger.

  “We can compare. I need help with this. It’s what hunters do, right?” Harm asked and yeah, Cain was going to find Angus jobs within the hunter realm that kept him close to home. Well played, wolf.

  Cain’s eyes glowed for a minute, like he’d read his mind, and the soft glow around his body circled around him as well. Angus’s heart filled.

  “Okay, yes, I’ll help you, Harm.”

  “For a human, you’re not that big of an asshole,” Harm said.

  Angus could only hope that was a compliment.

  Chapter 38

  When they pulled up to Pinewood, there were several other parked cars hidden along the side of the road toward the woods. Jinx looked back at Gillian and Rogue, who rode in the backseat, and they both shrugged.

  He turned to look at Jez, but the vampire was already out of the car, walking toward Rifter, who was with Stray, Killian and Kate. Jez shook Rifter’s hands and then turned to Jinx and said, “We need to talk.”

  “What’s going on?”

  “I have a plan. It’s going to work, and we need to execute it now,” Jez said. When they’d first left the house, Jez told them they were simply coming here to test a theory.

  Jinx let the lie go, said, “Okay, so tell me.”

  Jez straightened, stuck his chin out. “I’m going to lead the monsters to hell.”

  “And you waited to tell me until right now?” Jinx demanded.

  “Yes. Because if you had time, you’d insist on a viable alternative.”

  “What’s wrong with that?”

  “There’s not one,” Jez said sadly. “I’m the viable alternative to your brother doing this. After what happened the other night, things are only going to get worse. Fast. Once I get the hellhounds and monsters to follow me, they’ll be gone—no more haunting for you, except your ghosts, of course.” He paused. “I don’t think it will help Rogue’s hell problem, though.”

  “Why would you do this? Did you always know, the way you knew I’d open purgatory?”

  “Yes. I’d hoped there was another way but I was prepared for there not to be.”

  Jinx couldn’t blame him.

  “You have to let Gillian help you. Let her ease some of your burden. She wants to. It’s what her wolf is telling her to do. Don’t protect her so much that you smother her,” Jez told him.

  “What are you, the Oprah of vampires?”

  “I prefer Dr. Phil. He looks . . . tasty.”

  “For the love of Odin—TMI,” Jinx muttered.

  “Listen to me, wolf—”

  “I’ve spent my life listening. Doing the right thing. Doing what I was born to do. Guess what? What I was born to do was open purgatory.”

  “And free my brothers. My family,” Jez pointed out.

  “And that’s a good thing?”

  “Yes, it is,” Jez said quietly. “Rebellion isn’t always wrong. Rebellion brings change. But you can’t change the fact that you see ghosts any more than you can stop your love for Gillian. If it’s freedom you’re looking for, well, maybe Rifter will give it to you without the snarling and the snapping.”

  “I don’t snap. Poodles snap,” Jinx huffed. “Jez, you just got your family back.”

  “They sacrificed. They paid. And they’ll help you while I’m gone. Your legacy was to lead the monsters out of purgatory and free my brothers and mine was to lead the monsters back into hell.”

  “Why didn’t you say something earlier?”

  “I wanted there to be another way,” Jez admitted.

  “Jez, there has to be.”

  “You’ve got to promise you’re not going to try to get me out. You have to promise me.”

  “I can’t do that.”

  “I can’t let you fuck with it. Not you or Rogue. You’re too tied to it—too many things can go terribly wrong.” Jez touched his shoulder. “I appreciate you wanting to do that, especially when you wanted to kill me a few short weeks ago.”

  “Not kill. Maybe maim a little.” Jinx forced a smile. “We have to find another way.”

  “I haven’t seen a way around this from day one. I’m not sure how much longer we can let those things roam.”

  Jinx knew he was right. But to have to give the undead that kind of death sentence was unthinkable to him. Jez was stoic, but not exactly happy.

  “Rifter knows about this—I went to him first, out of respect for your kind,” Jez explained. “Please go to him. Make peace while I’m still here to see it. It will give me comfort to know you’re with your pack again.”

  Jinx pushed the tears back and nodded. Reached out and embraced the vampire, who hugged him back and then pulled away fast, as if afraid he’d never let go.

  “Go, Jinx,” he urged and Jinx went to Rifter.

  “Rifter, I’m—”

  Rifter shook his head and reached out to trace the scars he’d left along the bottom of Jinx’s neck. “I’m sorry.”

  “Ah, Rift.” The wolves embraced and it was like they were young wolves again, surviving the Extinction.

  When they pulled apart, Rifter said, “Please come back to the mansion. You and Gillian. I realize you’ve mated and might want to spend time alone and that’s fine. But I’d like the mansion to always be open to you.”

  “I’d like that,” Jinx said and Gillian was next to him, her hand in his. The other wolves looked relieved but troubled at what was about to happen to Jez. They’d all grown fond of the vampire.

  “I can’t believe . . . he’s watched out for me and now . . .” He trailed off and Rifter said, “Let Jez have his honor.”

  Jinx could only nod.

  “It’s time, Jinx,” Jez told him. Jinx turned to see that the vampire’s fangs had elongated, his eyes black as polished marble and he walked backward, watching them all.

  Jinx swore he noted a slight tremble in the vamp’s body, but then Jez straightened and whistled. The hellhounds shook the ground as Jez circled them.

  “Dammit,” Rogue swore from behind him.

  “I know. There’s no other way,” Jinx said, his voice breaking. He looked behind him and saw that the other Dires were there—for solidarity. He and Rogue and Jez were the keys here. Kate had sprinkled a heavy salt circle around them and they all stood inside of it and watched.

  Gillian gripped his hand tightly and Jez walked into the middle of the cemetery and called for the hellhounds. They came at a rapid pace and the monsters followed as well.

  “He’s got a job for you—listen to him,” Jinx forced himself to call out. The words nearly died in his throat but the look Jez gave him made him play his role.

  Once he’d said it, Jez gave a smile, almost angelic and that was something to see on a vampire.

  From the safety of the circle, Jinx and Rogue joined hands and began to chant the ancient prayer Jez had given them. They’d memorized it in case the wind picked up and ripped it out of their hands. At first, getting the words out was hard, because it seemed as though there was an outside force working against them. But they persevered and repeated it three times, and halfway through the fourth time, it began to happen.

  Jez fell to the ground, as did the hellhounds. The smoke seemed to scream into the night and everyone covered their ears against the sound. The ground beneath their feet shook like a great earthquake had come, and then there was a blast of blinding red light. Jez screamed then, like he was burning alive and the smoke attacked him.

  Jinx moved to leave the circle, to help his friend, but Rogue held him back. “No, Jinx. Don’t you dare.”

  Jinx struggled as Jez continued to yell. In a matter of seconds, all of
it—the smoke, the hellhounds, the vampire, were absorbed into the hot flashes of light and then there was nothing at all.

  Chapter 39

  Vice scented Liam before he saw him. Vice was in the living room, lying in a daze on the couch because the kid seemed to work on little to no sleep and still wouldn’t stay with anyone for long periods of time without fussing. Now, he was asleep on Vice’s bare chest as Vice flicked through the millions of channels and found nothing to watch.

  “He’s asleep,” Vice offered when Liam edged in, hands stuffed in the pockets of his cargo pants. Liam nodded and slid into a seat that let him look at Vice but not get any closer. Vice pulled the blanket over the kid a little higher. “I know this is hard as hell for you.”

  “Yeah.” Liam looked lost.

  “You need my help with something? I can call Gwen.”

  “I need your help, but you don’t need to call Gwen.” Liam clenched his jaw and said, “I know I can’t ask this, that I’ve asked too much already. But if I keep him . . . I don’t know if I can ever fully accept him into my pack. But if he’s yours, Vice . . . if he’s yours . . .”

  “You will accept him.” Vice stared down at the innocent charge on his chest and maybe for once in his long life, he was speechless. It was the last thing he’d expected to hear from the young king, the Were he’d saved months earlier, the one he’d been training nearly nonstop.

  The one who’d been through some of the worst personal pain, dealing with the loss of his father and his mate.

  “Yes,” Liam managed. “I’ve been wrestling with this, Vice. I didn’t know the right thing to do, but after hearing about the baby having bonded with you . . . I knew the right thing, for both of you.”

  Vice blinked and cradled the babe in his arms. Wanted to say, I can’t be trusted with a half-human, half-Were life, not with my general fuckedupitness. But Liam was looking at him like he could. And hell, he’d been put in change of making Liam a king.

  The wolf before him was nearly there. Would be, once Vice agreed and so he did. “I’ll keep the Were and raise him as mine. When he comes of age, he can choose to pack with the Weres or the Dires. No matter what, he’ll always have a home with us.”

  “Thank you, Vice. I can never repay you.”

  “Good thing you don’t need to try.”

  It was done. How hard could raising a babe be, after all? Couldn’t be any worse than a Were’s teenage shifting years, right? And he’d made it through Cyd and Cain’s general insanity.

  The baby woke then; his eyes were shining bright and a laugh emerged from his throat as he stared at Vice. And just then, Vice knew exactly what his name should be.

  Chapter 40

  It had been forty-eight hours since Jez walked the hellhounds and dragged the monsters kicking and screaming into that hole in the earth. Gillian still couldn’t get the image out of her mind, and she knew Jinx and Rogue weren’t faring much better.

  “Do we have to contact his brothers?” she asked now. Jinx had told her and Rogue and the others about the other eleven vampires.

  “I tried his computer but it was wiped clean. He said if we needed them, they would come,” Jinx said. “Maybe they just sense us?”

  “According to Jez, they all knew what he needed to do on his end,” Rifter reminded him. “I’m sure it’s a blow to them as well.”

  Rogue had his head on the table, was staring into space. “We have to get him out of there.”

  “I know.” Jinx put a hand on his twin’s arm and Gillian’s stomach twisted as she thought of her own twin out there, confused and alone.

  “As much as I hate to say it, we still have a pressing problem,” Stray reminded them. The TV was on mute behind them and Gillian knew if she turned around, she’d find news of her parents upping the ante on the reward. They’d gone into overdrive since her escape but from what she’d seen, they hadn’t mentioned having her in their grasp. The thoughts Kill tried to plant hadn’t worked exactly as they’d hoped, since her parents were now saying things like, “She’s been seen in the vicinity of this house. We think she may be trying to hurt us.”

  She would make them believe she was innocent. Had to. She put her fingers on her temples and massaged them now, thinking about everything that had happened. The memory Jez had triggered was still there, and she could access it over and over, although it was still like watching a TV show. It was still as if it hadn’t happened to her.

  Huddled against the wall, refusing to get up. Whatever the wolf had planned, he wouldn’t just stop, right? The Greenland pack had to have been following her—or that wolf had, at least.

  Was he out in the woods looking for her? Surely the Dires wouldn’t have given a thought to scenting another Dire in the woods. But how else would he get to her?

  “My parents,” she breathed.

  * * *

  It was so obvious, she didn’t know how she hadn’t seen it sooner. Gillian knew she had to go back to the Blackwell mansion, had to go to her parents to try to warn them. Jinx and Vice were with her in the woods; the others were in the area, waiting for the signal.

  She wasn’t sure what she would say to the Blackwells, but Killian and Stray promised they could change her parents’ memories if things got bad and they discovered she was a wolf. Since that would be a new memory, it could be easily discarded.

  Now, in the woods, she could still smell the blood. The hellhounds must’ve completely obliterated the bodies, because as far as Stray could see, there had been no reports of any of that.

  There was no real plan of how she was going to tell them. Gwen had suggested using the phrase, serial killer stalking and Gillian rolled that on her tongue, trying to make it all sound plausible.

  She would not bring up wolves.

  “Killian and Stray took care of the press for now,” Jinx told her. They’d been camped outside the gates ever since the reward got upped—she was now worth ten million dollars.

  “Suppose they don’t believe me?” she asked.

  “We’ll make them,” Jinx promised.

  “I like believing you.”

  “You always should, mate.”

  “I like that too.” She flung her arms around him, nuzzled against his neck. Neither one knew if the mating would be accepted officially by the Elders, but in her heart, it had been official from almost the first time she’d laid eyes on her warrior.

  “You just keep yourself safe, Gilly. No matter what—you keep yourself safe.”

  * * *

  Hours into the stakeout outside the Blackwells’ mansion, Sister Wolf smelled the danger and Gillian took off at a dead run toward the house. The other Dires were behind her and she jumped onto the front staircase between the columns, lunged over the dead security guards. The smell of blood lay thickly metallic in her mouth and she broke through the locked front door like it was butter.

  “We’ve been waiting for you,” the man said. Not man—Dire. Like her. Just like her.

  His eyes were the same unmistakable aqua blue. He had a gun to her mother’s head. Both parents were side by side, tied to chairs. Neither was gagged but her mother appeared frozen with fear.

  Did they remember what they thought Gillian had done? Even with Killian’s help, she couldn’t imagine that this wouldn’t trigger some memories. But her parents weren’t looking at her with hatred in their eyes. Come to think of it, they never had.

  And this time, the fear they had wasn’t directed at her.

  She glared at the wolf holding them hostage and fought the urge to run at him. It went against everything she wanted to do by simply standing there, but she did. She would take her opportunity when it arose, and it would.

  “Gillian, have a seat.”

  “Who are you?”

  He jammed the gun hard against the side of her mother’s head. “Sit. Down.”

  She complied, tucking her hands underneath her. Hopefully, the others wouldn’t slam in here the way she had.

  “I’m your uncle. Call me Uncl
e Sam.” He pointed to her parents. “You knew you were adopted.”

  “I did.”

  “You don’t look happy to meet your biological family,” he said, almost mournfully. “Didn’t you want to search us out?”

  “No,” she said honestly. “I’m happy with the family I have.”

  Her father gave a tenuous smile in her direction and her uncle growled.

  “Ungrateful. Just like your mother.”

  “Where is she?”

  “I killed her maybe a month after she gave you and your twin away. Abominations, both of you,” he spat. “She was told to put you down when she discovered there were two of you in there. And if she didn’t, we were to put her down. She didn’t listen. She ran—hid. And now, look where we are.”

  Her heart ached for the woman who’d carried her, who’d cared enough about her to give up her babies so they’d be born in freedom. “We’re here because of you,” she told him. “If you hadn’t gotten involved, everything would still be fine.”

  “Really? It’s fine to let abominations walk the earth? The Elders may deem it so, but our pack follows the old traditions,” he sneered. “By doing my job, I’ll be paying my debt to the warriors of old.”

  “Why didn’t you take me when you killed my friends?” she demanded.

  “We don’t want you near us. We tried that once, with Steele. We don’t want twins, abilities or not. My pack figured they’d lock you up and throw away the key. Drug you. Keep the shift at bay. And if you had abilities, the other Dires would find you. That was fine with the rest of my pack but I couldn’t let it end there.”

  Her father’s eyes widened at the admission and a tear ran down her mother’s face—they only understood part of what the older wolf was saying, but it was enough.

  “Why not just give me to the other Dires to begin with?” she asked.

  “We don’t help them. They’re the reason our kind is nearly extinct.”