by SM Reine
His eyes were getting heavy, but Seth didn’t dare stop to sleep. He had to stay awake, had to keep driving, had to get somewhere that they could abandon Katja to better hands. Out on the empty road with Rylie, listening to random radio stations, he kept forgetting that they weren’t dating anymore. He kept catching himself smiling at her in the kind of way that would make Abel kick his ass.
The sooner Katja was gone, the sooner Rylie and Seth could go their separate ways.
Fatigue doubled the road. Seth couldn’t tell which lane he was in. Blinking, he rubbed his fingers into his eyes—and then jumped when the tires drifted over the fog line and buzzed loudly against the textured asphalt.
His hands clutched the wheel. He sat up straight against the seat.
Forty hours of driving. Damn, Seth was tired. He wasn’t sure he could drive safely for another ten minutes, much less an hour.
He pulled onto the shoulder, far enough that a car driven by any other exhausted drivers couldn’t clip his side, and killed the engine.
Tilting the mirror, Seth looked back at Rylie. It was dark and windowless in the back of the van. All he could make out was her slender body underneath a paisley-printed comforter, and her pale fingers touching Katja’s shoulder.
Seth dialed Elise’s number in his phone again, and only got the answering machine. She still wasn’t answering. She also hadn’t tried to call him back.
Worry crept over him. What if Elise wasn’t there anymore? What if she was on another case, or had quit the job entirely?
Paranoid thoughts. Exhausted thoughts.
He tipped back his can of Monster and found only drops at the bottom. There were more cans behind his chair. He grabbed one and swigged half of it in a single breath.
Seth jumped out of the driver’s seat, leaving the door open behind him, and walked briskly into the sagebrush. He hoped that the air and movement would wake him up. Instead, he just got clumsy and stumbled over a root. The energy drink sloshed over his hand.
“Crap,” he muttered, sucking it off the back of his wrist.
He walked until it was too inconvenient to walk any farther and unzipped his fly. He let his head loll back as he urinated, eyes falling shut.
Seth swayed. He was falling asleep on his feet. Need to drink more Monster. He drained the can, then crunched it in his fist, tossing it into the sagebrush.
Shaking himself dry, he zipped up and turned to go back to the van. He’d down a couple more Monsters and finish the drive to Vegas. It was the only thing he could do.
Seth only took two steps before he realized that there was a pickup parked in front of his van.
It was a beast painted cherry red, lifted on huge tires to the point that it would take a ladder to climb into the cab. The grille looked angry. The headlights were off, but the dome light was on—and there was nobody in the driver’s seat.
His hand immediately went to the small of his back, where he had tucked the Beretta 9mm. It wasn’t his weapon of choice, but it was hard to take a rifle out to piss, and any weapon was the right weapon when you needed to kill someone fast.
A dark shape lumbered around the van, as if inspecting it. Seth slipped through the sagebrush and sneaked up behind the truck’s driver.
Seth had never heard of anyone capable of shapeshifting into a form other than a wolf before, but if there were such a thing as a bear shapeshifter, he thought that this man would have surely been one. He was hairy everywhere except the top of his head, which seemed to have gone prematurely bald. Each of his arms was as thick as Seth’s waist. He looked like the kind of blue collar factory worker that Seth used to live among in the trailer parks—hard-working, grizzled, and aged prematurely by labor.
Except most of the factory workers didn’t walk around with a shoulder rig in full view, with two hand cannons positioned for a cross-draw. Nor did they have pierced bottom lips with the hole stretched wide enough to flash teeth through the plug, subdermal jewelry in rows down his neck, and industrials that looked like they had been carved from bone. He was white guy tribal, a desert hunter that lived in manufactured housing instead of a hut.
And he was looking around Seth’s van, where Rylie was sleeping.
Seth pulled his gun first. He aimed it right at that labret plug.
“Back away,” Seth said.
The white guy froze, lifting his hands to his shoulders. Each of them was big enough that they could have knocked heads off of shoulders with a single swipe. “You’re late,” he said without moving.
Exhaustion aside, Seth’s gun arm didn’t waver. “Drop the guns.”
“No.”
“I’ll shoot you.”
“You can if you want, but it’ll tick Elise off,” he said.
That got Seth’s attention. “You know her? Who are you?”
“Name’s Lucas McIntyre.” He dropped one hand and extended the other for a shake. “I’ve been waiting for you’n Rylie.” He tongued his lip piercing and smiled. “You gonna shoot, or do you want our help?”
Seth had been right about the trailer thing. McIntyre lived in a single-wide out in the middle of what Abel would have called “bumfuck nowhere”—a patch of desolation so far from civilization that there were no roads, no lights, and only a single power line marching into the distance. The instant that their headlights fell on the trailer, cats fled from the broken foundation and blasted toward the sunrise, kicking up a trail of dust behind them.
But Seth was wrong about the tribal thing. He had imagined McIntyre as some lone ranger, some recluse that spent as much time adding new holes to his body as he did smoking crystal. He didn’t expect to be greeted by the shriek of little girls as soon as he pulled up behind McIntyre’s truck.
“Daddy!”
Seth stepped out of the driver’s seat in time to see two tiny dust devils slam into McIntyre. If he was a bear, then they were definitely cubs—short, chubby, and kind of wild looking.
He swept one under each arm with a roar, pulling them off of their feet.
“You little dumbasses, what if I was bringing something deadly back here? You’d get eaten up in one big bite, running out like that!” To punctuate it, McIntyre dragged the smaller girl up to his face and gave sloppy kisses to her shrieking face. Her hair was dyed blue, like the few remaining patches of hair on his scalp. “And why aren’t you sleeping? Where’s your mama?”
“I didn’t hear someone call my girls dumbasses, did I?” called a feminine voice from inside the trailer.
“No?” he shouted back, flipping the taller girl upside down so that her hair dragged on the ground. The girls giggled harder, kicking their bare feet against his meaty back. The taller one had to be six or seven; she was leggy enough that she landed a kick on the back of his balding head.
“Where are we?” Rylie asked, rubbing her face as she slid out of the van. She looked even more startled by the cacophony than Seth. She had just woken up as they approached the trailer. Her blond hair was attractively mussed, her eyes puffy.
“This is Elise’s friend,” Seth said, nodding at the man dragging his daughters back to the mobile home. “His name’s Lucas McIntyre.”
Shock widened Rylie’s eyes. “These are Elise’s friends?”
Seth had a hard time imagining the sleek, deadly exorcist among the cascades of giggles, too. She wasn’t exactly the family type.
McIntyre bodily flung his daughters into the trailer before returning. A grin lingered on his face, which looked out of place against all the piercings and tattoos. Well, maybe not all that out of place—now that the sun was rising, Seth noticed that one of his tattoo sleeves had been colored in with Crayola markers. One of his daughters had been using her daddy’s inked arms as a coloring book.
It totally wrecked Seth’s image of McIntyre. And it wasn’t doing favors for Elise’s badass appearances, either.
“So what’s the problem?” McIntyre asked, wiping his hands off on his jeans, like manhandling his daughters was hard labor.
; Seth couldn’t seem to find his words. It was Rylie who responded. “I have a sick werewolf,” she said, gesturing toward the van. “Elise gave us her phone number in case we needed help, and…well, we need help.”
“Think Elise can fix silver poisoning?”
“No,” Rylie said. “But I think she can fix demonic possession.”
McIntyre’s head swung around so he could glance at the house, as if afraid that the mere mention of such evil could hurt his daughters. He wasn’t smiling anymore when he faced them again. “Motherfucker,” he said. “It’s in the van? You brought it here?”
He didn’t wait for Rylie to nod before drawing one of his guns and opening the rear doors of the van. Katja was still limp inside under the paisley comforter, sweat slicking her brow. She didn’t look like much, lying there on an oil-stained rug with her hair over her face. But McIntyre was pale and breathing hard.
He climbed into the van beside her and peeled back her eyes. Whatever he saw, he didn’t like it. “Shit,” McIntyre said, wiping his arm over his forehead. And then he said again, “Shit.” He blew a heavy breath out. “Gonna get the ropes.”
He dropped out of the van and lumbered toward a shed behind his mobile home. Rylie chewed on her bottom lip as she gazed at Katja. Seth knew that she was wondering if they had made a mistake, because he was wondering the same thing.
“Maybe we should go,” she said.
“What?”
“They’re not pack,” Rylie said. “It was crazy to bring pack trouble to other people.”
Seth’s heart plummeted. She wanted to take Katja—a demon-possessed werewolf that had gone insane and almost killed Summer on the full moon—back to the sanctuary? But that would mean escorting Rylie and Katja back across the country. It would mean having to delay saying goodbye.
“But they’re the experts. They can handle it,” Seth said.
“I’m the expert on werewolves,” Rylie said with surprising fierceness. “My werewolves.”
God, she was beautiful when she got angry, even when that anger was internally directed. It hurt to see her blaming herself. Seth put his hands on her shoulders, forcing her to look at him. “They’re kopides. Elise is an exorcist. They are the best, and you can’t do anything better for Katja than entrusting her to them.”
It didn’t look like Rylie agreed, but she didn’t get a chance to argue. McIntyre returned with an armful of jangling chains and ropes. He dropped them behind the van.
“I won’t hurt her,” he said gruffly. “Just gotta hold her. You understand.”
Seth nodded. “Yeah.” He kept one of his hands on Rylie’s arm as McIntyre climbed in with Katja again.
The door to the trailer opened, and the taller girl emerged with a woman at her back—presumably her mother, and McIntyre’s wife. They were wearing matching floral-patterned pajamas and carrying drinks. “Lemonade,” said the girl, extending two glasses.
Rylie took one. “Thanks,” she said. Her voice was a little raspy—not a good sign. She was going all Alpha over the sight of a man chaining up Katja. He shot a look at her hands. Blood dotted her right thumbnail. It was loosening, threatening to be replaced with a claw.
“My name’s Seth Wilder,” Seth said, distracting the ladies from Rylie’s unexpected baritone. He stepped between them to shake the woman’s hand. Instead of shaking, she shoved a sweating glass of lemonade into his fingers.
“Leticia McIntyre,” she said. “This is my eldest, Dana. Deborah’s inside feeding Ace.”
“Ace is here?” Seth couldn’t help but grimace. “He’s alone with your kid?”
Leticia smiled. “He adores her.”
Seth somehow doubted that. Ace was a pit bull that Elise had taken from a murderous cult in Northgate. He had been used to mutilate cadavers, which meant he had grown up from puppyhood with a taste for human flesh. Lord only knew what else that cult had done to him—the dog had a bad attitude. For the two weeks that the pack had taken care of Ace, he had bitten three different people. The idea of him being left with a child was worrying.
But Leticia didn’t look worried, and Rylie was growling again. Seth had bigger worries than a pit bull.
He glanced into the darkened van. Katja was completely trussed. McIntyre lifted her into his arms and climbed out.
Rylie took a step forward, but Seth put an arm around her shoulders, gripping her tightly. “It’s fine,” he said in a low, soothing voice.
She tensed. “But Katja…”
“She can stay in my office until Elise looks at her,” McIntyre said, jerking his head toward the shack. “Doesn’t look like much, but it’s air conditioned, and I’ve got a kitchen and a bathroom. It’s about as good as any motel room you’ll find out here.”
It took all of the strength in Seth’s upper body to hold Rylie still while McIntyre walked away with Katja. Rylie didn’t relax until they were out of sight.
“Nice of you to bring her all the way out here,” Leticia said. “She’s in good hands.” She gestured toward the mobile home. “Want to come inside? It’s cooler.”
Seth hadn’t even realized that the temperature was creeping up on them. The sun had barely crested the horizon, reflecting bright gold against the mobile home’s siding. Like a frog in slow-boiling water, he hadn’t noticed that the sweat was starting to make his shirt stick to his chest and back.
“I don’t know,” he said hesitantly.
At the same time, Rylie said, “Of course.”
The McIntyre home was decorated in white leather and antlers—clearly Leticia’s style, not her husband’s. Rattlesnake skins were framed on one wall. Their sixty-inch flat screen television was playing an episode of Yo Gabba Gabba, which the younger daughter watched from the floor. She was watching it upside-down with her head toward the TV and her feet propped on the flank of a dozing dog, one hand jammed in her mouth and the other hand playing with her hair.
Seth did a double take at the pit bull. It had a pink belly, pink nose, and floppy ears, like he remembered, but it wasn’t trying to kill anyone.
“Is that Ace?” he asked.
“Yep,” Leticia said.
He was putty under Deb’s feet. He huffed out a long sigh, making his lips ripple.
When Rylie stepped toward him, he growled without moving.
Yeah, definitely Ace.
The first time that Seth had seen him, he had been chained in a basement with a chain growing into his neck and human bones scattered around him. But his neck was healing now, and decorated by a properly fitted collar with spikes. He wasn’t bloody. And it kind of looked like the same girl that had colored in McIntyre’s tattoos had been scribbling on the white fur on his shoulder.
“Funny thing about pit bulls,” Leticia said, guiding Rylie and Seth to sit at their dining room table. “They’re bred to be animal-aggressive, but not hurt people. If they don’t like humans, it’s a socialization thing. Humans hurt him. Adult humans. Ace doesn’t like me or Lucas. But the girls…”
Dana sat down with her sister. Ace wagged his whiplike tail once and went back to sleep.
“He’d never hurt them,” Leticia said with confidence. She tugged up the leg of her pajama pants to reveal a bandaged ankle. “Don’t go near them when he’s babysitting, though. You guys hungry?”
“Starving,” Rylie said.
Leticia banged through her kitchen, dropping a skillet on the gas stove and pulling out a package of bacon. “I’m sorry about the circumstances that brought you here, but we’re glad to have you. Elise said nice things. I was hoping we’d get to meet.”
Seth blinked in surprise. “Elise said nice things about us?”
“Well…not exactly,” Leticia admitted. “She didn’t say bad things. That’s her idea of a glowing endorsement.” She pointed at Rylie with the spatula. “You’ll have whatever meat we’ve got, I’m sure. But you…” She aimed it at Seth. “Are you on the all-meat diet, too? Or can you have something healthier?”
“I’m not hungry, thanks,�
�� Seth said, stifling a yawn. Guzzling a dozen Monster energy drinks in as many hours seemed to have killed his appetite.
Leticia eyeballed him dubiously. “We’ll see about that.”
She hummed tunelessly as she cooked, frying the bacon and whipping up pancake batter. Rylie stood to help Leticia.
Seth fidgeted at his seat, tracing a finger along the cracks on the surface of the dining room table. The setting was too domestic for him—kids and the dog, women cooking breakfast, the sage sparrows singing outside. He had been planning to drop off Katja and make a swift escape. The pace of things here was slow. Like they might not get to leave for days.
McIntyre strolled into the kitchen, dusty and tired. He grabbed a beer out of the fridge, slapped Leticia on the ass, and fell into the seat across from Seth.
“You want a beer?” he asked.
“It’s seven in the morning,” Seth said.
“I didn’t ask what time it was.”
Why not? “Sure,” he said.
McIntyre tipped back on the rear legs of his chair to open the refrigerator and grab a second beer. He slid it across the table to Seth.
“You guys can sleep here before you leave, if you want,” he said. “We’ll make up the beds in the girls’ room.”
“Leave?” Leticia asked, hovering nearby as Rylie dropped pancake batter on the griddle, like she didn’t quite trust a werewolf to cook properly. “But they just got here. Elise will want to know.”
“She’ll be safe with us,” McIntyre said. “There isn’t a lot of room for friends here, Tish.” It seemed that the big guy had the same idea that Seth did. McIntyre wanted them gone. That was absolutely fine.
“I can get a motel,” Seth said.
“Like hell you can,” Leticia said.
McIntyre shot her a look. She sighed, grabbed a quarter out of the silverware drawer, and dropped it in a jar that had been labeled “Bad Words” in sloppy letters.
When she spoke again, it was in more measured tones. “We have to wait for Elise and Anthony before sending them away.”
“No,” McIntyre said. “We don’t.” He gave Seth an apologetic shrug. “Dangerous business around here. It’s been hectic. Union’s everywhere and all—you know how it is.” Something gave a muffled thud. McIntyre stood, beer in hand, and looked out the window. “The shed,” he said.
