Cutting Ties

by C. M. Torrens

  “This will be the biggest gathering we have ever held. It is not often so many want to travel so far to hear old men talk,” Étienne said with a chuckle.

  “I can imagine, but I’m glad this is a high priority. I’ll see you in a few days.”

  “Until then,” Étienne said, and Dante hung up and looked out over his pack.

  Not everyone was home, and he was trying hard not to worry about leaving them. Alphas had work to do outside the pack. It was just how things were. No matter how much he wanted to stay home and make sure they were all safe, he couldn’t do that and get the things done that needed doing.

  He pushed the thought aside and watched Jesse and Faith playing with a ball in the backyard, then wandered over to join them. Jesse was in a distracted sort of mood lately, and it was time to get to the bottom of it.

  Slipping up behind Faith, Dante snatched her up and tossed her high in the sky. She squealed with laughter, and he caught her easily, planting a big kiss on her cheek.

  “How’s my littlest?” Dante asked.

  Faith threw her arms around Dante’s neck and kissed him. “Bigger.”

  “Bigger? Bigger than what?”

  “Bigger than… bigger than yesterday.”

  Dante chuckled. “You’re growing fast, then?”

  “Yes. I’ll be bigger than River soon.”

  He grinned. “Is that right? Will you stop growing after that?”

  “No. I’ll be a giant!” Faith told him.

  “Oh my. How will you fit in the pack bed?”

  She frowned, and dark curls fell around her face as she cocked her head thoughtfully. “You’ll have to get a bigger bed.”

  Dante chuckled and sat down beside Jesse on the grass. Faith climbed down and raced around them. Her brothers Brady and Kent joined her in a game of tag. He watched them run around the yard and play for a bit before turning to Jesse.

  “You’ve been quiet lately.” Dante relaxed back on the ground, preparing for a long conversation. “Is there something we need to talk about?”

  Jesse picked at the grass in front of him. “There’s still no news about Claire.”

  Dante frowned. “No. But when we find the nest, we’ll find her.”

  “And… what happens then?”

  “When we find her? I don’t know.” Dante wasn’t sure what to tell him that he hadn’t already said. Guilt ached at his lover over having left his sister behind, but Dante didn’t see how he’d had much of a choice. At the time Claire wasn’t safe to take away from where she was. Even if she was with August, it was the best place for her. If they ever got her back, Dante was uncertain what to do about her. He had never let a mad stray live. It was just too dangerous. But Claire was a special case, and he wouldn’t know how he would handle her until he saw her for himself.

  Jesse’s hazel eyes grew torn and worried. “If I asked you not to kill her, would you listen?”

  “I always listen to you.” Dante held his gaze. They both knew how dangerous Claire could be.

  “That’s not an answer.”

  He loved Jesse with all of his heart, but he honestly wasn’t sure what to say. He couldn’t risk the cubs, but he knew all too well what guilt Jesse was going through. He had his own set of guilts when it came to August. The decisions you could and should have made could eat at the soul. The what-ifs.

  Dante tapped the weave between them, the connection that wove him to his pack and the pack to him. His sense of Jesse grew clearer, and he reached out and touched his pet’s hand. He let Jesse feel his love for him. Jesse wrapped his fingers around Dante’s hand and gave a little squeeze as a warm glow of love and affection flowed between them.

  “Why don’t we just wait and see, okay?” If he could help Claire, he would, but he wouldn’t make promises he couldn’t keep. Never. Not to Jesse.

  4. Monster under the Stairs

  GEORGE HAD been hearing some wild rumors lately. Rumors about a new sort of breed. Not shifter and not darkling, but something that kind of looked like both. But even he knew that was impossible. If darklings could make shifters into darklings the same way they made humans, they would have long before now. This was something new. George hadn’t really believed it until now, but it certainly explained a lot of the weirdness with the packs lately.

  He shook his head. If the average human knew what lurked in the shadows of the world they thought was theirs, they might never come out of their houses again.

  He leaned up against his battered old Toyota and smoked a cigarette while he waited for Alpha Dante to join him.

  The man was younger than he had expected. Cautious, like any alpha, but at least he had agreed to come himself to see this thing George had found.

  On his way into the city, he had seen the van swerve toward the small dirt road, miss it, and plow right down the embankment into the wood. The driver had taken off as soon as the van came to a stop, and of course George had followed.

  The now-battered van sat at the bottom of a steep incline as he waited for the alpha to join him. He had already checked the van. There were signs of a fight, claw marks on the side of the van, and blood smeared all over the inside. In one corner was a small pile of foraged food, berries, and a half-eaten rat. Not an ounce of paperwork to be found. The outside of the van was dented up in several places. And when he had run the Nebraska plates against missing vehicles, he found the van had been stolen from Mississippi but was traveling eastbound on Highway 70 toward Denver, which could mean just about anything.

  It was well after midnight when the car pulled up, and he vaguely wondered when the alpha slept. Since their first meeting, he had done a little asking around to those who would actually talk. But Alpha Dante’s top heavy, Trevor, was a male he had saved from Victor, and it was said he was stuck to Dante’s side like glue. Sure enough the heavy was the same one he had seen with Dante earlier in the day. Another heavy stepped out of the car a second later, followed by the man himself.

  George flicked his cigarette butt into the dirt and stomped it out. The heavies had already spied the van and were smelling the air.

  Dante scanned the area and walked up to him. “How did you find it?”

  “I watched it go off the road. The driver took off and I followed him.”

  “Do you always do such incredibly reckless and potentially dangerous things?” Dante asked.

  “I hunt. Potentially dangerous things are a given.” George shrugged and pointed down the road. “It took off down there to a little burned-out cabin—”

  “I know the one,” Dante said.

  “It smelled the strays,” said the second heavy. He was wearing a long duster and hat and gave the impression he just stepped out of an old Western.

  “They haven’t been here since the place was burned,” Dante said.

  George led the way, but Dante seemed to know where he was going. Down the dusty street and around a bend of trees was the small burned-out cabin he had found the hybrid driver hiding in.

  “Was he still alive when you found him?” Dante asked.

  George nodded. “Just barely. I didn’t kill him, if that’s what you’re asking.”

  “You’re lucky,” Trevor said as he crouched over a spot of blood on the ground just outside the cabin. “He probably would have torn you apart if he hadn’t been so badly wounded.”

  “Yeah, I kind of got that impression.” George walked through the burned remains of the building with the group of shifters. He led the way to pull up a door in the floor that went to the basement.

  He pulled out his flashlight and turned it on. All three shifters winced at the sudden light but said nothing, and Trevor jumped down the hole. George scrambled down after him with Dante and the other heavy taking up the rear.

  The concrete basement was almost empty but hadn’t been touched by the fire. Half the basement in the back was walled off in a sort of safe room. He waved the flashlight under the stairs and let the light fall on a bundle of cloth and canvas. Blood, which had grown t
hick and sticky, stained the floor and cloth in large blotches. Some had dried to a dark rust during the day and the scent of death was just starting to reach his senses, but the shifters could smell it.

  Trevor reached out and pulled the canvas aside.

  A twisted creature lay dead underneath. It had a muzzle and hair covered his body, like a shifter caught midshift, but it wasn’t. Its hands were mangled and bone-like claws seemed to have grown right out of the fingers. Its back was hunched, and long canines jutted from its short muzzle, uneven and twisted.

  George made a face. “So? What is it?”

  He moved in a bit closer, crouching down beside the body to get a better look. It had suffered a serious gut wound, four claw marks across the stomach and more on its back and thighs. It looked like the gut wound did him in.

  “Did it say anything?” Dante asked, moving in closer.

  “I didn’t know it could speak. It just kind of hissed, snarled, made a half lunge, and passed out. It died a few minutes later.” George fished a cigarette from his pocket, and the flash of his lighter made grim shadows dance through the room. “Gonna tell me what it is?”

  Dante hesitated. “It depends on who you ask. We aren’t exactly sure. We’ve been calling them hybrids, but don’t know much.”

  “What do you think they are?”

  Dante stared at the creature a long moment and shook his head. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say it was an attempt by a darkling to make a shifter. But that can’t happen. It’s impossible. And they smell too… human. Not like a stray. A human.” He shook his head again. “I don’t know.”

  “A lot of these running around?” George asked.

  “Enough to worry about,” Dante admitted.

  “Pack did this.” Trevor pointed to the marks. “A trained heavy going for the gut and tendons in the thighs and legs. Died a slow death. Like to see more of that happen.”

  “No, too dangerous to let them wander around wounded.” Dante pried open its mouth to look at its teeth. “So odd, these creatures.”

  “Careful, don’t let those teeth cut you,” Trevor warned.

  Dante got to his feet and turned to George. “So you have a personal matter to discuss with me? Speak.”

  George cleared his throat. “I have a friend. A stray. He went mad—”

  “There’s no cure for a stray’s madness,” Dante told him. “No alpha can control them.”

  “So I’ve heard, but that’s not the trouble. Not long after the madness took him, there was trouble. He took some serious damage to the head. The madness is gone, but he can’t shift anymore either. He needs to see a proper doctor, a shifter or pack or something. Someone who knows them.”

  George tried not to get too anxious as Dante paused to think over his request. It could be a dead end, but something was better than nothing. He missed his friend.

  “Don’t expect much, but there’s a doctor in Jackson, Mississippi. His alpha is Mark. I don’t know him well, but we’ve met a few times. You can try him,” Dante said.

  “What’s his name?”

  “Ethan.”

  George stared at him a moment. “Uh, I can’t really look up Ethan in the phonebook.”

  “I don’t know the surnames their pack uses. We don’t use them like you do,” Dante said with a shrug. “Is this a new stray you’ve brought into my territory?”

  “No, he’s lived here his entire life.”

  Dante frowned and glanced at the duster-wearing heavy. “Really? He was sired here?”

  “Yep.”

  “Who was his sire?”

  George hesitated. “I’m not entirely sure, but… I suspected it was Victor himself.” Victor made it clear he didn’t like strays, but Nathan he always left alone. He wasn’t sure if that made him the sire, but it seemed a little odd to him.

  His curiosity got the better of him, and he blurted out the next question before he really thought over the potential consequences. “Did you kill Victor?”

  Dante’s face went distant, and his dark eyes shadowed with old grief. “I loved Victor more than you could imagine.”

  The alpha left it at that, and George bit back his curiosity. He wasn’t sure if that meant he killed Victor or if he wouldn’t have dared. But Dante had been helpful, and he didn’t want to piss him off now. He changed the subject back to the monster under the stairs.

  He stared down at the dead creature with its long claws and distorted muzzle. Odd didn’t even begin to cover these creatures. He couldn’t help but wonder why they smelled human. Had they been human at one time?

  “What happens if I see another one of these?” George asked.

  “Hope it’s just as wounded,” Trevor answered. “Or if you have a god, pray.”

  George rolled his eyes. He’d tangled with some pretty serious shit over the years.

  “No, he’s not joking, Hunter,” Dante said. “These hybrid… things, they are extremely dangerous. Their bite makes shifters very sick. Some even die. They are nothing like strays. They are like pack and darkling both, fast and dangerous. If you run into one of them, kill it quickly before it kills you.” He motioned to the heavies and turned to the dead body. “Bag that up. We’ll take care of it.”

  The heavies moved to bag and carry out the body with Dante close behind them.

  “Good luck with your friend, Little Hunter,” he said.

  George followed and watched them load the car and drive into the night.

  The whole meeting went far better than he expected. And he was right. Dante didn’t know anything about Nathan. These hybrids were definitely new, and mental images of gene-splicing scientists came to mind. If the monster under the stairs was an average example, they didn’t seem like the sane, let’s-talk-it-out types.

  What was most unnerving was the way the packs were acting. They were taking this new creature very seriously. Territories were buttoned up tight, and potential problems were dealt with immediately. All of it started around the same time Victor had died. He couldn’t help but wonder if a hybrid killed the old alpha.

  He shook his head and walked back to his car. George had a shit-ton more questions than he had answers. It was time to do some more digging. Hopping into his car, he headed back toward the city. He’d talk to Mrs. Sawyer about the doctor tomorrow, but until then, there were others he could talk to about these dangerous new hybrids.

  5. Past Mistakes

  ODIN STEPPED into the path leading to the clan house and glanced around. The estate in Norway was one of the oldest still standing. It was a massive wood structure with a grass roof. Repairs kept the place in good shape. Most of the others in Europe had been swapped out with bigger and better construction over the past few centuries, but it was always nice to see some clan houses still stood in their original glory.

  He picked his way over the stone path and felt the sense of a ward wash over him. An ancient ward barring entrance from any Nephilim of ill will, which kept all clan houses safe. He ignored the few curious looks of young Nephilim as they hovered around chatting, oblivious, like all of the young were, to the dangers closing in around them.

  Since the whole hybrid mess started, he had been speaking with Alpha Dante. Admitting he knew more about them than he originally intended to let on led to a sort of … not quite a trust, but at least a mutual sort of working relationship. Eveline was dangerous, and it was best if they were warned that she could make many of these creatures. How exactly she was doing it was still a mystery, but there was one person who might be able to find out.

  The wood of the porch steps creaked underfoot, and he pushed open the front door. The small entry led into a massive common area with chairs and tables set around an oversized hearth. No one of interest caught his eyes; most of them he didn’t know, and he whistled to get their attention.

  “Where’s Baardsen?” Odin asked.

  One of the young ones pointed up.

  Odin grunted his thanks and climbed the worn wood steps to the top floor. Doors lined
the hall, and the small study door at the end stood open a crack. Sitting in a chair by the window was a very young-looking boy. He couldn’t have been more than thirteen when he was made, usually forbidden, but Baardsen never said who his parent was, and a parent never came forward to confess. Since Baardsen was never a problem like many made too young, the kid was left alone. Now he ran the clan house here and had for almost seven hundred years. He wasn’t an Ancient, but he might as well have been with all the information he’d tucked into that little head of his.

  “Hello, Old Man,” Odin greeted with a smile.

  The boy looked up from his book with a smile, round cheeks dimpled and blue eyes bright with life. His dark hair was cut short around his face, and he wore simple jeans and a T-shirt that could have melded into any schoolhouse playground.

  “That’s rich coming from you, Odin. How’ve you been?”

  “Been worse,” Odin said with a shrug and took a seat across from him.

  “What do you need?” A gentle smiled played on Baardsen’s lips as he set the book aside.

  “Who says I want anything?”

  “You always visit when you want something.”

  “That can’t be true.”

  Baardsen grinned. “What do you need, old friend?”

  Odin sat back in his seat and glanced out the window. Gray and white clouds drifted over the blue sky, shading patches of the landscape in their path. It was beautiful up here. He did miss this country and the language, even if he was a little rusty. Maybe when this mess was all over, he’d move here again.

  “Eveline is awake,” he said after a long moment.

  Baardsen poured them each a cup of wine from a pitcher beside him and sat back. “I’ve heard a rumor or two about that.”

  He wasn’t sure coming to Baardsen was the best idea. He had issues when it came to pack or, well, shifters in general, but he was also the man who had answers or knew how to find them.

  Odin sipped his wine. “You aren’t surprised?”

  Baardsen chuckled. “Are you?”

  “No, I suppose not. How would you feel about leaving Norway?”