Hunter's Trail (A Scarlett Bernard Novel)

by Melissa F. Olson

  Jesse went for the driver’s door without a word, and I loped silently toward the passenger side, gesturing to Will to climb up in the back. There’s no seat belt back there, but if we got pulled over, a ticket would be the least of our problems.

  Jesse started the van, driving carefully down the one-way road that led away from Will’s. I don’t usually like other people driving the Whale, but Jesse was a good driver, and he’d done it enough that the irritation at someone else behind the wheel had worn off for me. Will had climbed in the back of the van and was sitting on the floor in the middle, leaning his back against the rectangular freezer compartment and his feet on the long metal toolbox I have installed on the other side for less mobile cleaning stuff. “Hang on, guys,” he said distractedly, and proceeded to spend the next ten minutes on his phone, making arrangements for the bar that night. While he did that, I quietly filled Jesse in on what Eli had told me about werewolf packs.

  Finally Will hung up, and Jesse glanced at him in the rearview mirror. “Explain the theory,” Jesse said shortly. I bit my lip, but didn’t speak. Not how I’d choose to talk to the alpha werewolf of Los Angeles, but I was willing to cut Jesse some slack right now. Hopefully, Will would be too.

  “I think it’s a nova wolf,” Will said promptly. He was squinting at me in the dim light. “Have you heard about novas, Scarlett?” he asked.

  I shook my head. “The term sounds a little familiar, but no.”

  “What the hell is a nova wolf?” Jesse asked impatiently.

  Will grimaced. “It comes from the term ‘Casanova wolf,’ which was a wild wolf in Yellowstone . . . long story.” He paused, choosing his words. “The important thing to remember is that werewolves aren’t magical creatures. We’re magical wolves. The magic makes us stronger, faster, and better able to heal—not to mention infectious—but otherwise we’re just wolves like any other. And in the wild, wolves need to be a part of a pack. You’ve probably heard the term ‘lone wolf,’ but that’s not really a thing. It’s just a wolf leaving one pack to find another.”

  “And werewolves need packs too, we get it,” Jesse said impatiently. “What are you saying?”

  “You have to understand that the pack dynamic calms our inner wolf,” he said, sounding like he was working at patience. “It’s kind of ironic, but the reassurance of the pack lets us act more human when we’re not with each other. The packs are essential to retaining what’s left of our humanity.”

  “So a nova wolf is a wolf that’s just been away from a pack for too long?” I ventured.

  “No. Wolves never willingly leave a pack, like I said, unless it’s to find and join another. A nova werewolf is one who’s made and then abandoned.” Will’s voice darkened. “It happens very rarely, especially now that the success rate for changing a new wolf has dropped so low.” Jesse and I didn’t interrupt. Nobody knew why transformative magic, which creates werewolves and vampires, seemed to be dying, but it had been happening for a long time now. “Most alphas, like me, can feel the magic shift if one of our pack members creates a new cub,” Will went on. “We confront them, get them to find the cub and bring it into the pack.”

  “Did you feel magic shift?”

  “No, but . . . ,” Will trailed off, and I turned in my seat so I could squint back at him. His face was troubled. “My connection to pack magic is off,” he said finally.

  I nodded. If the LA pack was losing faith in Will, one by one, his connection to magic would be fluctuating too. “You think someone in your pack made the nova,” I stated.

  “Yes. I believe that someone in my pack took advantage of the pack’s instability in the last month to change in between moons. But he or she attacked a human and abandoned him.” Will shook his head a little. “It’s happening faster than I would have thought—usually a wolf has to be alone for a while before he becomes nova—but everything else makes sense.”

  Jesse sighed, like the wolves were trying to frustrate him on purpose. “If the problem is that the new wolf is alone for too long, can’t he or she just join a pack again?” Jesse asked.

  I could see Will shaking his head in my peripheral vision. “Nova wolves are almost always male, and no, it doesn’t work like that. That’s where the name comes in. In the wild, every wolf pack has a male and female alpha who breed. They’re usually called the breeding pair, and for whatever reason they’re the only ones in the pack who have offspring. That’s the norm. But a Casanova wolf is this weird anomaly in nature where a random male wolf sneaks from pack to pack, having sex with the other females.”

  “Why?” I asked, and then felt myself blush. “I mean, apart from having a bunch of sex.”

  “Nova wolves are slaves to biology,” he said matter-of-factly. “Which includes the natural, evolutionary drive to procreate, and to lead. A nova wolf wants to become a breeding male.”

  “That’s all?” Jesse asked. His eyes were on the road, but a furrow had appeared between his eyebrows. “This is a werewolf that wants to have babies?”

  “Werewolves can’t procreate the old-fashioned way.” Will grimaced again, this time with his teeth showing. “Nova wolves want to create more werewolves. Emphasis on create. A nova wolf doesn’t want to join a pack or take over a pack. All it can think about, all it can do, is try to make its own pack.”

  I finally understood. “So you think the person who killed those two women is an indestructible, supernaturally fast and strong apex predator that’s specifically targeting humans,” I summarized.

  Will sighed, and I turned all the way around in my seat to squint at him. He looked tired, and older than I’d ever seen before. “Yes,” he said simply.

  Jesse and I looked at each other. “If this was Scooby-Doo, one of us would say ‘gulp,’” I pointed out.

  Jesse made a face at me. “Gulp.”

  Chapter 13

  We hit the canyon road and began winding down toward the freeway. Jesse and Will were both silent, but there was a weight to it, like you could just hear everyone in the van thinking.

  Will had said that werewolves behave more or less like ordinary wolves with magical enhancements. I’d never really thought of it in those terms before, but it made sense. I’d taken a lot of biology classes in high school, back when I was hoping to become a veterinarian, and I knew a little bit about wolf behavior. Wolves generally don’t attack people, not unless they’re truly cornered or starving to death. Basically, unless there are no other options. And I knew that werewolves have no particular interest in attacking humans, either. Eli had once mentioned that the one time the LA pack had encountered humans during the full moon, Will had directed his wolves away from the trespassing campers without an incident. That was part of why the Old World was able to stay hidden: werewolves in wolf form just weren’t the bloodthirsty, slavering meat fiends bent on eating people that you see in the movies. In their wolf form, they rarely attacked humans, and therefore rarely killed or changed anyone.

  So a big, indestructible wolf that specifically hunted humans was a nightmare. And because so few people change when they’ve been bitten nowadays, it wasn’t much better than a serial killer. “Why women?” I wondered aloud, breaking the silence that had fallen over the van. “Does he think males will challenge his dominance?”

  “No again,” Will answered tensely. “Remember, he wants to procreate. He wants to be the male half of the dominant couple, even if they can’t reproduce sexually.”

  “So he’s trying to make a mate.” I finished, catching on. “Holy crap, it’s Frankenstein.”

  “You mean Frankenstein’s creature,” Jesse corrected me primly. “‘Frankenstein’ was the name of the doctor who created it.”

  “No, I mean Frankenstein, the work of literature,” I retorted. “The title. We’re in Frankenstein, meaning the title.”

  “Kids!” Will barked. “Can we get back to the point?”

  “Sorry,” Jesse muttered.

  “What happens if he gets what he wants?” I asked. “If he b
uilds a pack?”

  “Wolf packs are territorial,” Will reported. “When he’s got his own, he’ll come after mine. Not to recruit.”

  “To kill,” Jesse stated grimly.

  There was another long silence in the van. We’d gotten off the freeway, and Jesse rolled down his window, letting the chilly city air surge into the van. It smelled like Dumpsters and Chinese food and car exhaust.

  My city.

  It’s easy to forget, especially given the last few months, that when it comes to the Old World, LA is supposed to be this oasis of peace. Although certain events or people might intrude on the status quo, compared to most places we have a very unique and somewhat delicate balance. No single supernatural faction runs the city, not even the vampires. But if Will were ousted, if the werewolf pack were obliterated and a new, psychotic alpha stepped in, that balance would be destroyed. Dashiell would have to start interfering with pack business more, just to keep their actions hidden. I doubted the nova would take kindly to vampire interference, and the conflict would escalate. There would be fighting. Soon people who have no business fighting would have to go to war. The peace would fall.

  Plus . . . Will was kind of my friend. At the very least, I didn’t want him to die.

  “I get that he wants to grow his pack,” Jesse said suddenly. The sounds of traffic streamed through the open window, and he had to shout a little for us to hear. “But why the two different methods? He ate part of one woman, scratched up the other . . .”

  I turned my head and shoulders to look back at Will, who nodded as if he’d been expecting that question. “I think he’s experimenting. I’ve seen attempts to change someone before, successful and unsuccessful, but I’ve never seen anything this calculating and cold. It’s just . . .”

  “Nuts?” I volunteered.

  “Scientific,” he corrected me grimly.

  “Hang on,” Jesse insisted. “We need to go back to the part where we’ve got two bodies, two nights in a row, both attacked by werewolves. You said they can’t change that often, so is there more than one nova? Could it be something else, like . . . I don’t know, a group of random werewolves experimenting with magic, or a werewolf serial killer, something like that?”

  “It’s possible,” Will admitted. Jesse took an on-ramp, and the sudden shift jostled the werewolf, forcing him to tilt sideways and catch himself on the van’s carpeted floor. When he recovered, Will added, “But I think perhaps he kidnapped both women at different times, restrained them, and changed. Then he tried the two different methods.”

  “It just took Kathryn Wong longer to die,” I whispered. Goose bumps suddenly broke out on my arms, and it had nothing to do with the air from Jesse’s window. “Oh, God,” I whispered, so softly that neither man looked at me. I wouldn’t have known how to speak if they had.

  I’d done it. The LA werewolf pack had been dealt a huge blow when Caroline, the sigma, was killed. And then I’d made everything so much worse by taking away the pack’s beta and stirring up rumors and animosity, making everyone doubt Will. I was the one who’d made the pack unstable, creating an opening in the pack’s magic for the nova to waltz into town and start killing women. “It’s my fault,” I said, realizing too late that I was speaking out loud.

  Jesse’s eyebrows furrowed with confusion, but Will had been looking at me in the dim light, and he had seen the moment when I understood what I had done. He gave me a tired little nod of acknowledgment that said, I know. You didn’t mean to. But now we’re screwed.

  Tears stung my eyes, and I swiped at them with the back of my hand. I turned my head to stare out the window, not wanting the two men to see me cry. After Olivia had killed my parents, I’d blamed myself for a long time. But I had been wrong then. It wasn’t like I’d made a series of bad decisions or mistakes that had led to Olivia deciding she needed to become my new mommy after dispensing with the old one. I had just been there, and she’d decided to take me, and I had no more responsibility in the matter than an apple does when it gets blown off a tree. I finally understood all that now, after I’d seen Olivia again and realized just how batshit crazy she really was.

  But this was different from that, and different from Eli feeling responsible for what he’d done after he’d eaten the wolfberry. My actions—my choices—had made the pack unstable and crippled Will’s magic, leaving it vulnerable to bad behavior and the nova wolf. I had deprived Lydia of the pack’s beta and driven Anastasia to a desperate rage that legitimately frightened me. I had carelessly opened a door that I didn’t understand and fucked around with a system that was ancient, complex, and delicate. And I had done it on a whim, out of pity for a situation I couldn’t even comprehend.

  When the van stopped a few minutes later, I didn’t move. “Scarlett,” Jesse said sharply, sounding exasperated, and I realized that this wasn’t the first time he’d said my name. I jerked my eyes to him. “This is the place, right?” he asked, in a tone that said, Get it together.

  “What? Yeah,” I said shakily. We were at Artie’s studio. I told Jesse to unlock the gate and pull the van around back, and he complied without another word. That was fine with me. I wasn’t in a talking mood at that point, anyway.

  “Scarlett,” Will said quietly, and I turned to look back at him. “Why don’t you and I take the remains inside. Detective Cruz can stay here and keep an eye on the van.”

  I nodded gratefully. I wasn’t sure if Will was trying to spare Jesse from having to physically destroy the remains, or if he was just trying to keep the worst of our disposal methods from the police. Either way, I was glad to spare Jesse the sight of Kathryn Wong’s body being shoved into the furnace. Jesse didn’t comment, which I took as agreement.

  Will carried the body bag, I held the doors, and we got the body into the furnace without incident. I thought about saying something as Kathryn Wong’s body went into the furnace. If Will hadn’t been there with me, I might have.

  When we got back to the car, Jesse wouldn’t meet my eyes. I didn’t blame him. All three of us were subdued and quiet on the way back to Will’s.

  Finally Will spoke into the terse silence. “I’ll call a pack meeting for tomorrow night to try to get things stabilized. What do you two need to hunt the nova?”

  I looked at Jesse, who said promptly, “We need a roster of all the pack members.”

  Will’s eyes narrowed. “You can’t just go around interrogating the pack,” he objected. “That won’t exactly help them trust me again.”

  “Tough shit,” Jesse said shortly.

  “Jesse!” I hissed.

  He looked at me. “I’m past being polite, Scarlett. One of them made a monster. He has to answer for it.”

  The alpha looked between us for a long moment, and then nodded reluctantly. “All right. Talk to the pack,” he said quietly. “But Scarlett can’t go.”

  I understood, but Jesse looked puzzled. “They all hate me right now,” I explained. “They think I have a cure and I’m keeping it from them.”

  “Isn’t that . . . sort of true?” Jesse asked, not unkindly.

  It stung anyway, and I worked to keep my face straight. “Yes. But Will’s right. I can’t go rubbing their faces in it.”

  Jesse looked uneasy, and I realized he was a little afraid to track down the werewolves without me around to negate them. I understood, but there wasn’t really anything to be done, and finally he nodded in agreement. “If we’re going to split up,” he said slowly, “You can at least make yourself useful.”

  “What do you have in mind?”

  “If I’m getting this, there are two ways to stop the nova,” he said, glancing at Will. “Either we find out who made him, or we find out how he’s choosing his victims.”

  “You want me to go talk to the victims’ families?” I blurted out, my eyes wide.

  Jesse nodded. “You can start with Leah Rhodes’s roommate and go from there. I’ll help you come up with a cover story and give you some questions.”

  “What if�
��I don’t know if I can—” I sputtered. I had interviewed people without Jesse before, but only Old World people. Talking to civilians had always been Jesse’s purview, not mine.

  “You’ll do fine,” Jesse said curtly. “You’ve done two major police investigations already. You can handle this.”

  Not wanting to freak out any further in front of Will, I just nodded.

  We arrived back at the alpha’s house. I had been a touch nervous that there would be flashing police cars waiting for us when we arrived, but the nova wolf hadn’t called the police the night before, and he hadn’t called them tonight. Whatever was going on, he was keeping it in the Old World for now.

  Will went inside to get a pack roster for Jesse, who carried my duffel bag to the van for me and loaded it in the side door. When the door clicked shut, I asked, “While we wait, do you want to talk about those interviews tomorrow?”

  “No,” he said without hesitating. “I just . . . need some space, Scarlett. I’ll go in and get the list from Will, and call you first thing in the morning.” He abruptly turned on his heel and marched toward Will’s front door, leaving me standing there with my mouth ajar.

  I’d seen Jesse mad, distraught, and worried before, often at me, but I’d never seen him be cold. Maybe he was regretting taking the deal with Dashiell. Or maybe he just didn’t want to be my partner anymore. Focus, Scarlett, I chided myself. Jesse was going to do what he was going to do; there was no use worrying about it.

  No matter how many times I told myself that, the nagging fears stayed with me the whole way home.

  It was nearly eleven when I parked the White Whale in the structure near Molly’s house and limped my way to the back door. My leg felt far away, as if the big lump of pain that had wound itself around my knee like a tentacle was actually separating it from me. I wanted nothing more than to go to bed with several ice packs and some of the good drugs. As I rounded Molly’s decorative shrubbery, however, I saw a small figure with shoulder-length blonde hair huddled on the concrete step leading to the doorway, arms hugging her knees, her head turned away so one ear was resting on her legs. I tensed, gripping my cane hard like I might use it for a weapon, but took a few cautious steps forward—and felt her hit my radius. Not a werewolf, not a vampire. It was like my radius had been thrust into a prism.