Wolf's Cross: Book 4 (Loki's Wolves)

by Melissa Snark

  Following a beat, Jake chuckled and somehow his inflection implied an eye roll. I'm here if you need me, kid.

  Thank you. Without staying goodbye, Victoria cut the psychic connection. Maybe it was abrupt but the last thing she wanted to do was fall into the habit conducting an internal dialogue with Jake. Especially since Freya already had more than enough reasons to be angry with Victoria. No sense in giving the goddess more. She tilted back her head and looked straight up into Logan's smoldering gaze.

  From the granite set of his jaw, he seemed determined to have it out with her. His grip shifted from her hands to her upper arms, and he cast his uncle a furtive glace. His volume dropped to a hiss. "Damn it, you're talking to him, aren't you?"

  "Who I pray to is none of your concern." Victoria's brow rose. She wondered just who it was he assumed she was praying to. The list of potential deities wasn't all that long.

  His handsome face contorted in a grimace. "You're making a big mistake even talking to him..."

  "Him who?" She studied Logan, coolly, and then belated realization overcame her. The worst speculation she'd indulged in crystalized a horrified certainty. Somehow, she knew. She just knew the truth in her gut. Her hands locked on Logan's arms hard enough to leave bruises and she whispered in the hopes none of the gods would overhear.

  "Logan, have you been talking to Loki? Is he your..." Soul sick, she couldn't finish the question.

  "I'm an atheist, Vic. I decided the whole priesthood thing doesn't work for me. I can't keep vows or my pants zipped, and my taste in partners runs more to dumb blondes than young men, by the way." Logan bared his teeth in a cryptic, contrary show of defiance. He would offer nothing further, helpful or otherwise.

  "I'm not dumb," Victoria protested without thinking.

  His smile widened dangerously. "Who says I was even talking about you?"

  Oh, burn. Smarting from the sting, she turned back to Mike. "I'm sorry for the interruption. I had to make sure my pack was okay."

  "I understand. Are you ready to proceed?" Mike indicated the autopsy table.

  "Yes." She preferred to leave but the sheriff had asked for her help in solving this crime. And besides, the skinned wolf must be the handiwork of the drifters who had cured wolf pelts piled high on their bed over at the Fireside Inn. The guys Sawyer suspected of being Odin's worshipers... Just the whole line of thought made her ill. She recoiled from the logical conclusion, and wondered if a no-holds-barred conversation with Jake was in order. But she needed more information first. Immature suspicions... Poor word choices... Misunderstandings... She refused to risk her alliance with the hunters over an unlikely coincidence and unproven suspicion.

  She pulled her mask back into place and approached the dead wolf first. Robbed of his fur, nothing remained of his face but his teeth and eyes—brown eyes full of misery. Even his nose had been stripped away in the skinning process. Ichor clung to his pale flesh; not a living creature. A macabre mannequin.

  Bursting with unshed tears, Victoria bent toward his rear legs. Sleeves of fur remained on his ankles and the tops of his paws. Victoria touched the pad of the paw, turning it for inspection, and discovered a distinctive star-shaped scar. She rubbed her fingers over the deep points.

  "His soul's moved on. Thank the goddess." She fervently hoped and prayed the poor animal hadn't suffered. Fortunately, the souls of animals seldom lingered. Well, except for cats—lazy, contrary creatures.

  "Where do the souls of animals go?" Logan asked. "Is the whole 'rainbow bridge' thing a metaphor for Bifröst because— Shit, I never made that connection before."

  Leaning over, she checked the wolf's teeth. "He was full grown but not very old. I'm guessing about three years."

  "Close. He turned three last month," said the man suddenly standing beside Victoria. A chilly blast accompanied the manifestation of the spirit. Fog congealed out of the air around them, forming a thick bank that swirled about their ankles, and frost formed on the bodies and autopsy table.

  "Sounds like you knew him." Victoria tilted her head, deliberately keeping her motions slight and her voice soft. Sprits tended to be skittish and ephemeral, and terribly shy. Often, they lacked self-awareness, little more than lingering echoes of the soul that had already passed on. Loud noises and bright lights as well as unpleasant revelations, such as the bad news of their own death, could startle a ghost into destabilizing.

  "His official designation was OR-41, but I called him Malfoy." The spirit's pattern seemed stable—exceptionally so. Whereas many ghosts faded away at mid-thigh or waist, he had solid feet encased in a pair of brown hiking boots. The rest of his attire matched the hiker motif from his tan vest to his khaki pants. Not designer, name-brand attire either, but rugged clothing that had a lived in look to it.

  "Why was that?" She turned toward him more fully. The ghost's appearance was the same as that of the dead man on the table, right down to the gaping cut across his throat. He was Caucasian and in his mid-forties with black hair and gray blue-eyes. She judged him to be physically fit.

  A sad smile touched his lips. "Malfoy was born in the Cascade Range, but he was a wanderer. At about a year and a half, he left his pack and moved steadily south through Washington and on into north Oregon. He got into constant trouble—chicken coops, trash bins. Hell, a couple times he even robbed fast food drive thrus—snatched the sacks right out of folk's hands. He had no fear of people. His ability to evade detection was uncanny. No one ever caught him on camera but his star-shaped paw print was always found at the scene of the crime."

  "Was he one of us?" Logan asked, and Victoria winced, more than half expecting the ghost to vaporize in reaction to an unexpected voice.

  "One of who?" A quizzical look on his face, the man turned toward Logan.

  "A wolf shifter," Logan said but when the ghost stared at him, he clarified. "Was he a werewolf?"

  "No, of course not! Werewolves don't exist..." A bark of laughter escaped the spirit but then he trailed off, frowning. "Do they?"

  Blankness dropped over the spirit. His profile thinned and he wavered like a sheet on a windy day. Frantically, Victoria waved Logan off, but she really wanted to smack him. She had to get the conversation under control before the ghost destabilized.

  "We're about as real as ghosts." Victoria murmured. "What's your name?"

  "Kevin. Kevin Danbury," he said without hesitation. His form gained substance, returning to three-dimensional solidness.

  Victoria bit her lower lip. She recognized him now.

  "I'm a Wildlife Biologist with the Federal Department of Natural Resources..." Kevin's voice grew stronger the more he talked.

  "I heard your interview on the radio this morning." Victoria had spoken with dozens—hundreds—of spirits through the years and Kevin impressed her. His stability was exceptional, as was his influence over their environment, judging by the thick blanket of fog that hung at knee level over the morgue floor.

  Mike Trash cleared his throat. "That's impossible. He was murdered sometime last night. The coroner places the time of death at between six and eight p.m."

  "The interview was recorded in advance." Kevin noticed the look on Victoria's face, and he mustered a wry smile. "Is something wrong?"

  "You." She shrugged. "You're amazingly lucid and cognizant for a spirit..."

  "This morning, a hiker found the bodies about ten miles north of here on the edge of Desolation Wilderness. I was one of the first officers on the scene but Kevin here refused to speak with me and Logan..." Mike aimed a reproving glance toward the ghost.

  "You're not nearly as cute as she is." Kevin returned a cheeky grin.

  Victoria snickered, and Logan echoed her amusement.

  "Once I understood the killers might constitute a threat to the pack, I realized I ought to involve you," Mike concluded, addressing Victoria.

  "Thank you. I appreciate that." Relieved to have the mystery solved, Victoria dipped her head in a show of courtesy. Frankly, she wasn't used to having ano
ther spirit speaker around, let alone two. It freaked her out a little. Given the circumstances, the sheriff's decision to bring her in on it made perfect sense.

  "Kevin, please continue," Victoria prompted the ghost.

  Kevin opened his mouth and hesitated as though reviewing where he'd left off. "OR-41. Malfoy had way more than three strikes against him. Our only choices were to move him or put him down. When an unmated adult female with pups appeared in the Echo Lake area, it was heaven sent. We decided to relocate him to a protected area within Desolation Wilderness."

  Victoria bit the insides of her lips, quelling the impulse to advise the man that Sophia wasn't unmated—she was widowed. Only such a distinction wouldn't make sense to this man, so she tried to regard Kevin's motives as they were obviously intended—well-meaning, if misguided.

  The biologist exhaled. "Look, I'm not a fool. I hold a doctorate degree in Biology, and I've dedicated my entire life to studying wolves. I understand it was a shot in the dark, but frankly, it was the only chance Malfoy had. Besides, it was necessary to introduce a genetically unrelated gray wolf to the area to reduce the risks of inbreeding. There aren't any other documented wolf packs for hundreds of miles from here. We're not even sure where the Echo Lake Pack originated."

  "Storm Pack," Victoria interrupted with a knit brow. Golly, but the man was long-winded and she couldn't help wondering if he'd worked as a lecturer or a used car salesman at some point.

  Kevin blinked. "Excuse me?"

  "We're the Storm Pack." Logan said with a sarcastic inflection.

  Bristling, Victoria spared him a sharp look. It wasn't what he said but how he said it that set her on edge. His tone made her wonder if maybe he thought the pack should be called something else—the Koenig Pack, maybe? The thought riled her because the renaming would've been a likely outcome if Arik had lived. He hadn't though. He'd died before they even had a chance to discuss it.

  Logan held her gaze, and cocked an eyebrow, sprouting that smug smirk of his that always, but always, made her want to clobber him. With an effort, she forced her attention to the biologist.

  "Oh. Right. You're wolf shifters? Werewolves?" He hesitated until Victoria offered a nod of acknowledgement. "Sorry, I suppose I seem slow on the uptake. Must be part of being a dead guy and all..." His laughter broke in the middle and his form wavered again. A section of his arm vanished at the elbow, leaving his unconnected hand floating in midair.

  "Actually, so far as the newly dead go, you're refreshingly lucid. Please don't get upset. I know this is a lot to process all at once. You're doing remarkably well." Feeling sorry for the poor guy, Victoria laid a reassuring hand on his forearm. Her abilities extended to touching spirits as well as speaking with them, but she always did so with caution. The moment she touched him, his elbow reappeared. His flesh was ice cold.

  "Right. What an incredibly nice way of saying, 'Get a hold of yourself, man!'" With an awkward laugh, Kevin threw his hands up to show he'd pulled himself together.

  "Beats a sharp slap." Logan's tone implied that's how he'd have handled things.

  "Do you always have to be such a jackass?" Releasing the ghost's arm, she turned her irate displeasure his way but the spirit actually intervened on Logan's behalf.

  The biologist waved her off. "Nah, it's fine. He's right."

  "Kevin, do you mind explaining?" Mike asked. "It'd be helpful if you could elaborate."

  Visibly disturbed, the spirit rocked on his heels. He exhaled a stream of vapor that formed wispy fingers adjoined to a frail palm. The spectral hand drifted across the autopsy table, grasping for something just beyond reach before merging with the fog bank still roiling about their feet.

  "Malfoy was released three days ago up near Eagle Lake. He wandered for a bit and then headed southwest. I followed him on foot—"

  "Was he wearing a radio collar?" Victoria asked.

  A wry smile twisted Kevin's lips. "Yes. When the Department relocates an animal, it's standard practice. Malfoy only had his on for about five hours before he managed to slip the collar. After that, I had to track him the old-fashioned way." His sorrowful gaze flitted to the wolf's skinned corpse, then darted away as if the sight were too painful to linger upon. "Houdini would've been a fitting name for him too."

  Damn near bursting with impatience, Victoria nodded. She didn't want to disrespect the poor man or trivialize his feelings, but she would've preferred a more succinct account. The killer—or killers—presented a real and present threat to her pack.

  "Yakkity-yak. Enough already," Logan interrupted in his typical abrupt manner. "Let's cut to the chase. Who murdered you? Who skinned poor Malfoy here?"

  Victoria winced, a reprimand on her lips, but she bit her tongue. In truth, Logan's abrasiveness worked in her favor this time. He had the candor to say what she longed to, and suffered none of the compunctions of politeness.

  The spirit offered a heavy nod. "It was almost dark when I came upon the hunters—"

  "Hunters?" The sharp, involuntary interruption tore from Victoria. If she hadn't already been standing, she'd have shot to her feet. Her hands clenched and her entire body stiffened. She stopped breathing. For one awful second, she believed in her heart that her hunters must be involved. Sawyer reverted to his former ways, or hunters gone rogue. Jake's second-in-command wasn't called Skinner for being bald.

  Through the pack bond, Logan's anger rolled like the swells of a coming storm, and tension delineated every inch of his long frame. His amber eyes acquired a burnished glow like old gold, cutting through the fog that still thickened the atmosphere. Beside him, Mike Trash looked every bit as wary.

  Then her common sense asserted itself with a vengeance, leading her to bitch-slap her own lack of faith in her allies. Of course, Sawyer and Jake weren't involved. Kevin had to mean hunters in the generic. If he didn’t know about werewolves, how could he know about Hunters.

  "Yes, hunters. There were three of them." The biologist's face twitched. He registered their reaction even if he didn't know the reason for it. "They'd already killed Malfoy and had hung his body from his hind legs. They were in the process of skinning him when I stumbled into their camp. Of course, I wouldn't have let them know I was there if I'd known what they were up to but by the time I realized..."

  "It was too late?" Victoria felt awful for him but she was glad he was finally sharing the important information about the enemy.

  "It was too late." Kevin spread his hands to communicate his loss and frustration. "The big guy came at me with a knife. It's embarrassing because I didn't even react to defend myself. He was that fast. All I remember is his face... Pain."

  "I'm so sorry. You didn't deserve this. Neither did Malfoy. I'll do everything I can to help you cross over once we're done here." Victoria laid a hand on his arm again, offering the only comfort she could. The interrogation was unfortunate but necessary; especially if Kevin needed assistance in crossing over. A spirit's most likely reasons for remaining were revenge or unfinished business. It sounded like he desired both.

  "Can you describe the hunters?" Mike asked in a professional cop-voice, neutral but authoritative.

  The spirit bobbed his head in agitation but remained coherent. "There were two men and a woman—all Caucasian. The guy who attacked me was in his mid-twenties, long dishwater blond hair. Scruff." With an absent motion, he stroked his jaw. "The woman was the oldest. Thirty-something, frizzy brown hair. The other guy was younger, maybe twenty, not very memorable except I recall the woman calling him DNR which I thought was weird, but I was too sickened by what they'd done to Malfoy to think about it..."

  Surreal paralysis seized Victoria, rendering her unable to speak or move. Each second spent listening to Kevin's account—each damning detail—moved her farther off-center from her conviction until she hit another crisis of faith that left her scrambling for something to cling to. She thought she might die at any second—cease drawing breath, her heart still in her chest, and her spirit would step neatly out of
her body.

  "Was there anything distinctive about them?" Mike asked in his maddeningly dispassionate manner.

  Kevin's face slackened and his chin dropped to rest against his chest. His entire posture altered, the animation gone, and the spirit lost his two-dimensional aspect. He grew paper thin. "I-I..."

  "It's okay if you don't..." Victoria managed in a strangled voice.

  "No, I do." The spirit's hand rose to touch his upper arm, tapping a specific spot. Too specific. Damningly so. "They all had the same tattoo of a dagger right here. I remember noticing it because they glowed as if they were enchanted."

  Victoria's heart broke and she reflexively grabbed her upper arm that bore the exact dagger tattoo Kevin had described. The hunter mark. The sleeve of her shirt concealed it, but she could feel it there through the thin cotton—buzzing with raw magic.

  "I knew those fucking hunters couldn't be trusted!" Logan’s rage surged through the room, as palpable a force as a volcanic explosion. The spirit's pattern wavered, filling with lines of static when the werewolf's outburst disrupted his coherence.

  A slight movement at the periphery of her vision marked the sheriff's retreat from the center of the room. The human was smart enough to realize he didn't want to be standing too close to angry werewolves.

  "Logan! Stop! Let me handle this." Victoria shouted to compete with his sheer volume. Common sense urged her to speak in a soft voice in an attempt to calm him down, but her instinctive reaction to the male werewolf was never reasonable or measured. She fed on his excitement.

  Worse, he provoked her.

  "It was." Logan slammed his fist against his palm and glowered at her. He paced with furious energy, a destructive force seeking release. "I bet it was that Sawyer guy. He has stone-cold killer eyes."

  "He's not like that." She rushed Logan, seized hold of his forearms, and all but stood on his toes to close the distance between them. He grabbed her in return, probably hard enough to hurt but she only registered pressure. No pain. Her passion burned white-hot, obscuring any sense of caution or compunction.