Dire Needs

by Stephanie Tyler

  Jinx dressed conservatively for his role as Cain’s lawyer—a buttoned-down shirt and pants of the highest quality, Italian and custom-made, making him look like the rich guy he actually was. His hair was tied back with a piece of leather, giving him that perfect blend of business and bad boy that made all the women in the station—police and hookers alike—stare his way.

  While everyone was duly distracted, Rifter pricked his ears toward the interrogation rooms. Cain, not surprisingly, wasn’t talking. The young wolf wasn’t so much moon crazed when he’d arrived as… different. The Dires spotted that immediately. Cyd was far more uncontrolled, and Jinx suspected Cain was an omega.

  In real wolf packs, the omega was the lowest of the low. With the Weres, the omega was far more powerful than that, part myth, part legend, something so rare.

  Were wars were won and lost over omegas, which was ironic, since true omegas could help bring about peace and harmony to any pack graced with their presence.

  The pack that kicked out the twins had no idea they’d let an omega go.

  Cain had been right to keep his knowledge of what he was to himself. Anyone lucky enough to have him in their pack—and no doubt about it, it was the omega’s choice as to which pack he would grant his presence—would have a definite edge.

  “My client’s fingerprints aren’t at the scene. He was taking his nightly run, which, last I checked, wasn’t against the law,” Jinx was saying, his voice crisp and businesslike. “So either arrest him and set bail or we’re out of here.”

  Impressive. Rifter would’ve snorted if the police weren’t taking Jinx so seriously—and if the entire situation wasn’t more so.

  He waited for Jinx to walk into the room with Cain, and then he strolled around the large room seeing what other information he could pick up and caught sight of a raven perched outside on the windowsill. By the time he got to it, it was long gone, and Rifter knew without a doubt it was reporting back to Seb.

  Chapter 36

  After Rifter left, Gwen tried to settle back into the pillows and sleep. But she was far too restless, growing more so as the hours ticked away. She finally gave up and went to the window the way Rifter had. The thunder and lightning had stayed away, the night was clear and the moon lit the sky.

  Something stirred in her every time she looked at the moon now.

  She dressed and went into the hallway, saw Vice coming down the stairs. “Everything okay?” he asked her.

  “Can’t sleep.”

  “I was headed up to hang out with Rogue,” he said. “Wanna come?”

  “I haven’t… met him yet.”

  He stared at her for a long moment and then motioned for her to follow him. For such a big man, he was so silent. The stairs seemed to creak only for her, as quiet as she tried to be.

  They passed the room where Harm was staying. She wasn’t ready to see him yet, even though she’d asked Rifter if she could. Just knowing he wouldn’t stop her made her nervousness settle.

  Rogue looked almost identical to Jinx, except for the hair color. It was past his shoulders and his color was still the tawny golden tan she’d come to associate with the Dires. Even Liam had some of that cast, as did the young twins.

  “He’s beautiful,” she said, her voice low.

  “Yeah,” Vice agreed without a hint of irony in his voice.

  “He looks so alive. I wish there was something I could do,” she said.

  “He’s been looked at by Eidolon—he’s the demon doc in charge of UGH—Underground General Hospital.”

  “There’s a hospital for demons?” Maybe they were accepting applications.

  “There’s a lot you’re going to find out in the coming weeks,” Vice said. She turned from where she sat next to Rogue to look at him. Vice made himself comfortable on the floor with a blanket and she realized that he planned to sleep here, with Rogue.

  These men had been together for centuries. She’d known Rifter less than three days and it already felt like much longer.

  Having Rogue be out of it must be akin to having a limb cut off for them. “There’s got to be someone who can help him. If your… Elders can’t help, isn’t there another supernatural entity who can?”

  “It doesn’t work like that. Every supernatural group has a set of restraints on them, a higher power to hold them to a certain standard. We have the Elders. Witches, vamps—they answer to something similar of their own kind. The Elders hold all the cards,” Vice drawled. “As evidenced by the fact that they massacred our race.”

  “I don’t understand why they took out the whole race. Surely they could’ve made examples—”

  “We were too powerful—threw off the balance of nature. Weres and vamps are more equally balanced. Besides, my pack had been in talks to take over the human villages for years.”

  Her eyes widened. “Take over how?”

  “Kill most of them. Enslave the rest. In reality, the Dire clans weren’t much different from the weretrappers.” He looked pained at having to admit that. It was never cathartic—the truth always burned. “It’s more than ironic that we’re now charged with protecting humans from wolves.”

  “Why were the six of you chosen?”

  “We’ve figured it had something to do with our abilities. Not every Dire was born with them—and you know that Rifter’s was given to him as a curse. The Elders were supposedly created because they were sacrificed by their Dire parents, all because they had abilities too. Hati was angry at the Dires for doing that and saved them, made them his eyes and ears of the Dire world, so to speak. Anyway, we don’t dwell on what is. Nothing changes. Time moves forward and we move with it. We were always other. We didn’t fit in—didn’t want to.”

  “Why not?”

  “With the humans?” he asked, as if that answered the question completely.

  “Hey, let’s remember I’m half, okay?”

  “I remember,” he muttered roughly. “They’re uptight. When they give in to their instincts, they act as if it’s the worst thing ever.”

  “I can’t say you’re wrong,” she admitted. “So are there wolves—Weres—all over the world still?”

  “Wolves are everywhere. We just don’t make pests of ourselves. We want nothing to do with humans, but the weretrappers are obsessed with us. I’m sure you’ve seen sneakers hanging off live wires, right?” he asked, and when she nodded yes, he continued, “That’s a sign. You see that, it’s a sign that the weretrappers have found wolves in the area.”

  She turned in time to see Stray standing in the doorway. “All quiet outside.”

  “But the Dire army… they’re still… trying to raise them?” she asked tentatively, and Vice nodded.

  “How do we get them to pass back over?” she asked, and Vice cut a glance to Rogue. “Wait, Rogue can do that?”

  “His gift lets him communicate with spirits, Jinx’s with ghosts.”

  “I didn’t realize they were two separate entities.”

  “Most don’t. Ghosts are still earthbound and spirits have crossed over. So that’s why their gifts work best in tandem. The Dires passed and were brought back, so Jinx wouldn’t have much ability to help them find their way back. Rogue could summon the dead to help them. But…”

  But Rogue remained helplessly incapacitated. She brushed a hand over his forehead. “Did Seb spell him?”

  “Eidolon couldn’t be sure. Rogue is in there, but whatever happened during the experimentation was too horrible for him to revisit. Rifter can’t get into his dreams—at least not past the horror and fear part.”

  She touched Rogue’s pulse point, checked his pupils again. Listened for his Brother Wolf, the way she could now hear Rifter’s wolf, but she heard nothing. “There’s got to be something else we can do.”

  “Fight,” Vice said, his eyes a pale glitter, his countenance almost gleeful. From what Rifter had told him, Vice was a slave to his… well, vices, and she couldn’t hold it against him.

  “Ghost-hunting wolves?” she asked
, wanting to understand it more.

  “The spirits are a good indication of the supernatural balance,” Vice explained. “We monitor all of that. There are varying degrees of good and evil in our world—and even though we’re often portrayed as all evil, that’s just not the case.”

  Before all of this, she would’ve considered most of this so unbelievable.

  “Jinx can talk to demons, but he doesn’t have the kind of influence Rogue does. It’s why they make such a good team. A twin yin-yang thing.” He ran a hand through his hair and turned away from her.

  For the first time in her life, she realized she wasn’t just bringing danger on innocent people. That there was danger inherent in being who she was. “I wish I could do more.”

  “We might never have found Liam alive if you hadn’t been around. What happened to bring you to us is fated for sure,” Stray said.

  “Even though… Harm…”

  Vice turned and stared at her for a long moment. “I can’t hold a parent’s crime against a child.”

  A lump formed in her throat. Acceptance. She would have it here.

  Chapter 37

  It couldn’t have been more than twenty minutes later when Gwen heard Liam yelling for help—for a doctor—and she ran swiftly down the stairs, Vice at her heels. When she got into the room, she found Max on the floor, curled on her side, and Liam pacing anxiously around her, his face ashen.

  “She called to me and I found her hunched over. She said there’s pain,” he told them. Gwen noted he’d taken the handcuffs off her, as if attempting to make her more comfortable.

  Max lay motionless and Vice growled, a warning, maybe. But without thinking about the fact that Max had betrayed her—indeed, Gwen’s only thought was saving the baby—she rushed to her. Dropped to her knees and pushed Liam out of the way.

  She felt Max’s pulse—rapid and uneven. Her skin color was okay, and she pulled up each of the woman’s lids to check her pupils.

  “Do you have an ultrasound machine here?” she asked. “This could all be from stress but—”

  She saw it in the men’s eyes before it happened. In seconds, a knife went across her throat—scraped her skin dangerously as Max steadied herself behind Gwen.

  The woman was strong. Gwen remained as still as she could, not sure who she was more pissed at—herself or Max.

  “Let her go,” Vice growled. “You don’t know who you’re fucking with.”

  “I know everything,” Max shot back. “She’s your queen. And if you don’t move aside, she won’t have a head.”

  Your queen…

  “Max, don’t do this,” she said quietly.

  “Stand up,” Max told her, and Gwen did so as carefully as possible, the swell of Max’s belly against her back, reminding her that any move Gwen wanted to use to defend herself would hurt the baby.

  As Vice and Liam moved forward, she put her hand up slowly. “Let her take me. Don’t hurt the baby.”

  She heard Max’s sharp exhale—surprise, maybe—and then the woman held her more tightly. The knife cut her a little and she gasped, more from surprise than from pain.

  Vice and Liam remained like stone statues, but their eyes… there was no denying their wolves would come out any moment if this continued.

  “Max, if they shift—,” she warned.

  “I know this world better than you do,” Max snapped.

  The young woman was like a wounded animal, scared, lashing out at everybody. Gwen tried to remain calm, because defusing this situation would save her life. “You’re making a mistake.”

  “I made a lot of them.”

  “Liam told you he’d let you stay until the baby came,” Gwen reminded her.

  “I don’t believe him. I just want to go have the baby by myself. And then Liam can do what he needs to for pack honor, if he can find me.”

  Liam growled in low warning, and Gwen willed him to shut the hell up. She told Max, “Let me examine you and make sure you and the baby are okay.”

  “Why would you do that for me? After what I did?” Max sounded like Gwen was almost too stupid to comprehend. “Let’s go—tell them to move—and point the way to the garage.”

  The men separated and let them through as Max walked them backward. Gwen felt the drip of blood run down her neck as she pointed down the hallway that would lead to the garage.

  “You’re too soft for your own good, Doc. I counted on that,” Max told her quietly. Almost sadly. “Open the door.”

  Gwen did, willing her hands not to tremble. They walked across the smooth floors to the truck closest to the automatic door. Max pulled her along to the driver’s side and turned her, but kept the knife to her throat.

  “This is silver and it’s the only thing that could kill a wolf. And since they don’t know if your human half renders you immortal, like the other Dires, I think you should continue to be smart.”

  “Take the truck and go, Max. No one will stop you.”

  “You’re my way out of here—and my way back into the outlaw pack,” the woman told her.

  Gwen had always known Max was tough, but this was the first show of real, albeit controlled, anger she’d seen from the young nurse. She also knew that if she drove off this property with Max, she was as good as dead. Or worse, if she got into the hands of the weretrappers.

  She attempted to keep Max talking, to find some trigger inside the woman that would make her relent. “How long have you known about me and what I am?”

  “Not for very long. At first, they told me they needed a doc to work with the witches. I told them you’d never agree to it, but when they were insistent on you, specifically, I got suspicious. I didn’t know… half Dire. No wonder they tried so hard.”

  Gwen cocked her head. “Were you ever my friend?”

  Max shrugged. “I never had anything against you. I don’t really have friends—never did.”

  “What about Liam?”

  “He was my lover, not my friend.”

  The words came out so brutally cold. Gwen saw red on Liam’s behalf. Had Max used him and the baby as an excuse?

  Then again, she hadn’t fought—not once. She was truly protecting the life inside of her. She heard the rustling in her ears and her sight faded in and out for a second, even as every other one of her senses went into sudden, sickening overdrive.

  Something took her body over—something vicious and kind at once. She blacked out for a second, and when she came to, Max was staring down at her belly and Gwen held the knife pointed straight at her baby.

  “Gwen, we’ve got this,” Vice told her. She looked up and saw the men on either side of Max, restraining her—and looking at Gwen strangely. “Bite it back, Gwen. Breathe and give me the knife.”

  When she did, Vice’s hand burned—actually smoked—at the touch of silver, but he smiled instead of grimacing at the pain. Liam handcuffed Max’s hands behind her back and yanked her toward the door leading to the house, and Vice held out his free hand and helped Gwen down from the truck.

  “What’s going to happen to her?” she asked, although Liam had already told her. A part of her was hoping what he’d said was being reconsidered.

  “Dishonoring a mating is grounds for death. And after what she just pulled on you—”

  Gwen looked into his silver eyes. “You’re going to kill her?”

  “It’s Liam’s job to do so,” Vice stated coldly. “It’s pack rules, Gwen, not mine. Traditions are made to be honored. If we lost those, we’ve lost everything.”

  She understood what he was trying to cling to—those ways had gotten the Dires through thousands of years. And death by dishonor wasn’t a foreign concept to humans, either. “She’s pregnant.”

  “She betrayed him—she needs to die,” Vice said, because to him, it was that simple. Betrayal was punished with death—simple and effective.

  Max turned toward them—she looked miserable too. Not the confident woman who ran the ER nurses with surgical precision, but when she leaned in to
Gwen, the same spark shone in her eyes for just a second as she begged, “I know I can’t be forgiven for this, no matter the circumstances. But please, let me have the baby safely. And then I’ll banish myself.”

  “Do we look like a day-care center?” Vice demanded with a snarl.

  “My son is still heir to be king of the pack, regardless of what I’ve done. The Weres respect that lineage,” Max said, her chin held high even as regret flashed in her eyes. “Liam’s son should not be punished for me. Will you protect me until the baby’s born? Keep it safe?”

  Gwen held her breath, wondering if Liam—if any of them—would refuse that. She doubted they would, or could, but the thought of Max being turned over to the trappers… the witches… the rival gang…

  “Why would Liam want the baby of a traitor?” Vice asked, and Gwen took a few steps back from all of them.

  She was in a whole different world here, didn’t know any of the rules, and the rustling in her ears was so loud, she couldn’t think. She covered them, knowing it wouldn’t do any good, and she left the room with Vice at her heels.

  Gwen leaned against the wall outside Max’s room. Her body had broken out into a sweat, but she was shivering, like she had the mother of all fevers. She was vaguely aware of Vice’s words, but they were a jumble, mixed together with Stray and Harm talking in the ancient language.

  Talking about her—the shift…

  She brushed off Vice’s help and raced upstairs, the sinning wolf at her heels. She heard his muttering loud and clear, something about how women who could hear through walls were really goddamned dangerous.

  She fell on the top step and Vice told her, “Don’t do this, Gwen. Try to hold it off.”

  “I don’t know how,” she managed, but the chills stopped, long enough for her to stop shivering uncontrollably.

  “That’s it—just breathe and concentrate. Let’s get you back into bed.”

  “No,” she said fiercely, then picked herself off the ground and walked into the room where Harm was being held in time to hear the man who was her father beg, “Letting her shift is the biggest mistake you could make, other than not killing her.”