Silver

by Rhiannon Held

Andrew’s muscles tightened with the beginnings of a shift, and he jerked his thoughts to a stop. He was going to find the monster. Anything else could come after. And the first step to tracking the bastard was to go upstairs and pretend this conversation never happened, so Seattle didn’t evict him from his territory now he’d lost his patina of legitimacy.

  Silver roused herself when he put his foot on the bottom stair. “Are you—?”

  “I’ll be fine. You’ll want to stay down here; John and I are going to discuss things you don’t want to think about.”

  Silver nodded, and subsided back into her curl. Andrew took a deep breath to try to control his emotions, and headed upstairs.

  He found John in the dining room, the dish towel–wrapped bundle on the center of the long, solidly built table. All the adjoining rooms were empty, as if everyone but John had scattered to a safe distance from a ticking bomb. The stench of bloody silver was more psychologically overpowering than literally present, but Andrew felt it too. With any luck, it would help camouflage his scent from John.

  “Everything all right at home?” John asked.

  “Fine,” Andrew said. “He was just checking on my progress.” John frowned at him, and Andrew’s heart sped a little. He concentrated on his revulsion at smelling the silver to hide the scent of the lie. It seemed to work, as John looked away again after a moment.

  “I’ve been thinking.” John pulled on one leather glove and folded the top layer of fabric away to expose the crucifix on the top of the pile of silver implements. “That’s a human symbol. Wasn’t it monks that were supposed to have experimented with injecting silver, a couple centuries ago?”

  Andrew used a corner of the towel to turn the crucifix over. “A couple centuries ago in Europe, sure. But you know as well as I do the Catholic Church doesn’t go in for that sort of thing anymore.” The crucifix wasn’t particularly well made, probably available at dozens of Catholic stores.

  “But you know human crackpots. Any one of them could have followed in their footsteps. They could have even researched old records.” John used his gloved fingertips to stir the other silver objects, but nothing else seemed distinctive either.

  Andrew called up the scene in the Bellingham house in his mind again. “Can you imagine how many humans it would have taken to overpower a whole pack? But they weren’t overpowered. You said nothing was disturbed. Human or Were, there had to be some reason the pack didn’t see it coming.”

  John drew his hand away from the silver. “If it was a Were, someone they knew, they’d have let him into the house.”

  “More than that, there had to be a reason they didn’t fight him. If only she could tell us.” Rage boiled up in Andrew again, and he swept the pile of silver off the table to clatter to the floor. One butter knife made a dent in the opposite wall. If it had been someone Silver had trusted, someone she knew …

  John winced. “Maybe she’ll be able to, given time.” He came forward to clap a hand on Andrew’s shoulder, and Andrew realized his reaction must seem out of proportion to anyone who didn’t know about the other worries bubbling at the back of his mind.

  “It means we don’t have to go chasing a gang of humans, at least.” Andrew drew in a calming breath, and snagged the extra glove to pick up the silver. All this could go out with the trash. “Narrows down the possibilities.”

  “Not by much. Say it was a Were they knew. We found everyone in the pack in the house except Silver. I can’t think of any other friends of theirs that have gone missing lately.”

  Andrew set the silver on the table and straightened. He owed it to John to look him in the eye when he said this. “Someone wouldn’t necessarily have gone missing. Someone could have helped the man Silver talks about who did the actual deed. Or the man could have just cleaned himself up and gone home. Someone that unbalanced, he wouldn’t smell of guilt. I thought of it when I first got out here, and it still fits.”

  Suspicion flickered into John’s face. “What are you implying?”

  “Could be one of yours helped,” Andrew said, letting the stark words fall into painful silence.

  “No.” John growled the syllable, straightening his shoulders so their muscled bulk was even more obvious. “Impossible.”

  Andrew took a step back. “Or maybe one of them knows something about him passing through. Something they wouldn’t admit to their alpha for fear of punishment. The killer had no reason to travel directly to Bellingham by human means. It’s just another random human city unless you know a pack is based there, which you seem to think no one did but you. So unless it is one of your pack, he must have traveled through somewhere. It’s unlikely he came through Alaska, or he’d be hamburger by now, not walking around killing packs. I’ll talk to the members of the other packs one by one if necessary. I’m just starting at the closest.”

  “No.” John got up in Andrew’s face as he growled it this time. His scent soured with fear. Fear of what Andrew might find out? “I’m not letting you treat my people like criminals because you can’t think beyond your enforcer habits. Track the killer however you like, and I’ll help, but leave my people alone.” John turned and stalked from the room.

  Andrew stared at the pile of silver on the table, eyes unfocused. That could have gone better. It might be time for a strategic retreat. There was no way he wanted to stay the night here anyway. He should find a hotel.

  When he raised the possibility that one of John’s pack was involved, he’d just been following the train of logic. Now the idea started to chew at him, especially given the way John had smelled. He couldn’t leave Silver here if someone in the pack had been involved in her torture. It would be much safer if he took her with him.

  Andrew took the long way around the circular path through the ground-floor rooms to avoid encountering John on his way back to the basement door. Silver’s head came up at his footstep on the top stair. “Come on, we’re going somewhere else for the night.”

  “Good.” Silver uncurled smoothly and joined him at the top of the stairs.

  They reached the entryway before John arrived, face thunderous once more. “What in the Lady’s name do you think you’re doing?” Pierce thudded down the stairs to back up his alpha a moment later.

  Andrew glanced back at Silver to stall before answering. Her face looked set and he couldn’t smell anything more specific than frustration. He returned his attention reluctantly to John. The whole point of a strategic retreat was to retreat, not begin a fight about a different subject. He couldn’t just let this go, though. Silver needed to be safe. “We’re going to a hotel.”

  “She’s not.” John moved to take Silver’s arm and she backed up into Andrew’s chest. He gritted his teeth and tried not to touch her. They needed to keep this from turning into a physical fight, especially with Silver in the middle. He wished she’d let him talk his way out of this first. Somehow. What to say would occur to him any minute now.

  “And if I decide to leave, what will you do to stop me? Will you tie me up? Chain me up?” Silver gave the last question a vicious twist. John and Pierce flinched. Even Andrew’s stomach lurched. Apparently Silver could take care of herself quite well without his arguing her case.

  John stepped silently out of the way, face drawn and arm outstretched to herd Pierce to do the same. “Why him?” he asked softly when they were on the threshold. “We can take care of you—Silver.”

  “Why?” Silver didn’t bother to turn around. “Because he doesn’t look at me and see only someone I’ll never be again.” She strode for the car, leaving John and any other questions he might have behind. Andrew walked through the lingering frustration of her scent as he followed. Having seen the pack’s attitude, he couldn’t blame her for her reaction. Yet another reason to get her away from them for a while.

  14

  Silver was glad when she and the warrior finally managed to leave her mother’s pack’s den. It cleared her mind to breathe in air untainted by memories of what she once was. Worry for the
warrior pulled her farther from the mire of her memories. The mist had pulled close in on her, but she’d still heard the argument he’d had with his alpha. Something had happened, and now he smelled of desperation and the stress of a wolf who didn’t know his place in the hierarchy.

  She watched him secretly as he ran, looking for a place safe enough for them to stay the night. She kept waiting for Death to crow that it was her fault, her fault that the warrior had been taken from his life and forced away from his pack. But Death just ran with them, tongue lolling. He must think Silver was blaming herself quite well without him.

  When they reached a clearing and stopped running, Silver lingered beside the warrior where he stared into the trees without seeing. “Why did you follow your alpha for even this long?”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” The warrior kept his teeth covered when speaking to her as he had the whole trip, but his voice still snapped.

  “You could have been an alpha—his alpha—long since, except that you won’t fight for it. You’re strong enough to hold a position even as a lone, except you don’t seem to want to be alone.” Silver stepped around him so she could see his face better. He was still too much in control for what she had planned. The impulse to hit her for implying he was weak barely danced behind his eyes.

  Silver met his eyes. “Are you a coward? Did you follow his authority because it’s easiest? Do you want to crawl back to doing it now, or are you going to stand on your own and get something done?”

  That provoked him into movement and the next moment he was nearly nose to nose with her. His hand was tight and heavy and warm on the back of her neck, keeping her looking at him. He needn’t have bothered. She wasn’t going anywhere. This was what Silver had been trying to get him to do. She wanted the coming dominance challenge. She let him feel in her muscles that his strength didn’t frighten her.

  “You don’t even understand—” His next words slipped by her while she watched the interplay of expressions on his face. “Why are you lecturing me on pack hierarchy?”

  “Because you’re off balance. It’s tiring to watch you. And what you seem ready to do will only make it worse.” Silver reached back to put her good hand on his, more gently. “I can’t help but think I’m not helping that. I can take care of myself. You don’t have to do any of this.” It hurt to say, hurt to consider facing the monster alone again, but it was true. The warrior owed her nothing.

  “Take care of yourself. Ha.” With the two of them standing so close, his scent filling her lungs with every breath, it was only a surprise that the spark of a dominance struggle waited so long before flaring to life.

  She’d always suspected he could have been an alpha, but knowing it and feeling it were two different things. That kind of strength had a visceral beauty all its own. This was a man who knew himself, even if that knowledge was buried somewhere for the moment.

  “Well spotted,” Death said, breaking the moment. Silver jumped and the warrior broke the stare. Death sat back on his haunches and looked up at the warrior’s face. “She’s feisty, Dare. Are you sure you want her?”

  “Go away,” Silver told Death. The warrior laughed a startled laugh. Whether it was at her speaking to those he couldn’t see, or whatever he’d found in the contest of gazes, she couldn’t tell.

  “Silver.” He let his hand fall from her neck. He said the word like he was trying to fit a new rhythm to his new sense of her. “Being an alpha is about responsibility, not just power. Knowing the consequences if I fail, I can’t take that on again.”

  “Too late,” Death said in the female voice that belonged to one of the warrior’s ghosts.

  * * *

  Silver was unsettling, pure and simple. Intellectually, he’d known that there must have been something about her that allowed her to survive when the others had not, and John had said she was strong-willed as a young woman. But he hadn’t expected to see a full alpha’s strength in her. It was deep, deep, like at the bottom of a well, but there nonetheless. Having found it, he saw it in her movements now, even under her uneven white hair and fine bone structure.

  He hadn’t thought she’d even registered that part of his conversation with Rory. Andrew stood beside the car, where he’d parked against the thin tree screen at the hotel parking lot’s edge, and watched as Silver wandered to look up into their branches. Her words had planted a seed in his mind, and he couldn’t seem to stop it from growing. What if he challenged John? He was already in water so deep he could barely reach the surface, why not push off and try to swim? He’d have to run when the other Western packs found out he’d done it, or they’d tear him to shreds. But if he could command the Seattle pack temporarily and keep people from finding out for long enough, he could use that power to track the killer without fighting John at every turn.

  Of course if he challenged and lost he’d be even worse off. He’d have nowhere to go, but that seemed inevitable at this point. More important was that he’d be unable to chase the killer through Western territory. The risk of a challenge was all or nothing.

  Andrew put a hand out against the car’s cool metal to ground himself with the sensation. The idea was unbelievably stupid, and yet. Silver might be right. If he was going to catch the killer, he couldn’t do things halfway. He couldn’t sit around whining about how Seattle was limiting the trails he could follow. He’d have to challenge, and he’d have to win.

  Andrew shook himself. He couldn’t make a decision like that tonight. Better to sleep on it, see if he’d come to his senses in the morning. Silver followed him when he touched her shoulder to regain her attention and led the way into the hotel.

  The room smelled like every two- or three-star hotel room Andrew had stayed in across the country. Cleaning products couldn’t erase the ground-in scent of hundreds of humans, but the layered effect made it easier to bear, because no individual scent stood out.

  “Can I wash—?” Silver said once he’d dead-bolted the door behind them. He nodded to the open bathroom door on his way past in invitation, but after a moment remembered she would probably need help. He dropped his shoulder bag on the nearer bed and returned to the bathroom.

  When he arrived she was already standing in the shower, turning the taps. Her clothes got soaked in the first rush of water. The movements seemed habitual, like her hand knew the motions without her mind quite directing it.

  She raised her eyebrows at him, lips quirking in something that looked like amusement, and then waited. Andrew removed himself and closed the door behind him.

  The running water rumbling in the pipes made a soothing background as Andrew dumped out his bag on the bed and sorted through. He was nearly out of clean clothes, but he didn’t feel like doing anything about that at the moment. His stomach grumbled, and he stopped to search for any local restaurant information compiled by the hotel so he could order pizza.

  Someone turned on the TV in the next room and an evening news anchor’s strident tones intruded. Andrew couldn’t even really blame thin walls or the human’s choice of volume, since you couldn’t do much about werewolf ears other than get a house well buffered by land. That was the worst thing about hotels.

  The rumble of water ceased soon after he finished ordering. Andrew cocked his head, listening to the noises of her puttering around rather than turning on his own TV. He should check her arm once she was done.

  She peeked around the bathroom doorframe at length, towel held over her chest with her good hand. Her hair lay flatter when wet and the moisture darkening the color made it look more normal. Without anything to tuck it into, her bad arm looked even more pathetic, dangling lifeless by her side. She’d managed to soak the bandage thoroughly in the water.

  “C’mere,” Andrew directed, motioning for her to come closer so he could deal with the wound. Now she wasn’t half hidden by the doorjamb, the towel was awfully short, part of Andrew’s brain informed him. It revealed a lot of leg.

  And curves. She was still scrawny, but the towel swelle
d slightly at chest and hip. He swallowed, and reminded himself that he was interested only in checking her arm.

  Her scent changed when he touched her and it was hard not to respond to the femaleness of it by drawing his fingers more slowly than necessary along her undamaged skin. Soaked, the bandages peeled away easily, and the knife scores underneath looked healthier. They were still scabbed over and red, but it was a healing red rather than the angry red of a fresh or infected wound.

  “How’s the pain?” he asked, probing lightly with his fingertips along her arm. Silver sucked in a breath once when he got too close to a scar’s edge, but otherwise shook her head.

  “Can you do anything with it?” Andrew switched his grip so he could curl up her fingers with his other hand, repeating the motion and then letting them flop back several times.

  “I—” Silver hesitated on the edge of an immediate denial. “I think maybe—”

  Her middle and ring finger twitched. It was slight enough that Andrew wondered if he’d shaken her hand by moving himself. She gasped and they twitched again.

  Silver let out a ragged breath, holding either tears or laughter just before the threshold of sound, and then threw her good arm around his neck. “I felt that!”

  Andrew almost couldn’t move, though his arm came up and fitted around her waist without conscious thought. Her scent was all around him, filling every breath.

  She shivered, the crackling tension that had sprung up between them finding form in the movement. The towel had been tucked, but it was coming free. Andrew was about one more shiver from getting an eyeful as he looked down between them. Her breath was hot against the side of his neck. They were frozen that way for who knows how long—breathing, feeling, towel clinging desperately to friction.

  Silver’s next breath came husky, and she nipped at his neck. Andrew shoved her away, suddenly sure that if he didn’t stop this now, his body would take over entirely. He retreated behind the closest bed instead.

  “Oh,” Silver said, flushing. Her towel puddled on the floor and she snatched it up. Wrapping it again one-handed was a long and awkward process. Her scent muddied to embarrassment and anxiety.