by SM Reine
Rylie herself stepped from behind Abel in human form, shockingly mundane, and childlike in stature among the wolves. Abel bristled, silently threatening Elise. Just try to attack her, he seemed to say. Try it.
Elise’s throat ached with the memory of Rylie’s jaws, and she rubbed the punctures on her neck. Even if she hadn’t been there for benevolent reasons, she wouldn’t have rushed into another fight against a werewolf.
“Where are Seth and Nashriel?” Elise asked.
Rylie looked embarrassed. “The non-wolf members of our pack are hidden. Everyone else wanted to greet you like this once they heard that you had called me for a meeting.” She gave a helpless shrug. “Just in case.”
The innocence, the unassuming girl-child attitude—that was an act. Elise could see right through it now. Rylie might pretend that she hadn’t prepared her pack for bloodshed, but she was ready to murder to defend her people.
Elise didn’t need to grandstand. Given darkness and a reason, she could swallow every last one of them before they could inflict a single bite. But in the day, still unhealed from their last confrontation, she was in no place to fight them.
She decided to ignore the other wolves as they circled around her, addressing Rylie directly. “The cadavers were wounded after they were killed. The bite marks were inflicted by pit bull jaws, not wolf jaws. And someone’s fabricating the murder scenes.”
A growl rose from Abel as he lowered his head beside Rylie. She turned her cheek into his, rubbing her face against his fur. “Who?” Rylie asked, fingers tangled in his neck ruff.
Elise wasn’t about to tell the angry werewolf pack that someone in the sheriff’s department was probably involved. If there was no human blood on their paws, then she didn’t want to change that—yet. “I don’t know who’s behind it. Do you have any enemies that might be out to get you?”
“Maybe. The OPA doesn’t like us. Neither does the Union.”
“The Union doesn’t like anyone,” Elise said.
That earned a smile from Rylie.
“The Union” was short for “Union of Kopides and Aspides.” They were an organization that was attempting to unite all witches and demon hunters, like Elise and Seth, under a single banner. Whether or not the kopides and aspides wanted anything to do with the Union didn’t really matter. Their recruiting techniques were as graceful as a bull with a chainsaw strapped to his forehead.
Since the Office of Preternatural Affairs had taken over, the Union had become the public, militarized face of anti-preternatural efforts. But they had been assholes for years before the OPA ever appeared.
Knowing that Rylie had dealt with them was no surprise to Elise. It did, however, endear the girl to her somewhat.
“Let’s talk privately,” Elise said.
A ripple of displeasure spread through the wolves, like the rolling of thunder. They had only known Elise so far as an encroaching demon—something that had violated Nashriel’s mind, and tried to rip out the Alpha’s tongue.
But Elise kept her gaze steady on Rylie’s. She wasn’t offering to deal with the entire pack. Only the girl that had seen the garden in the darkest parts of Elise’s mind.
“Okay,” Rylie said.
Abel growled louder than ever. She buried her face in his neck fur, murmured in one of his massive ears, rubbed her hand over his jaw.
Elise didn’t expect Abel to back down gracefully. She had seen men like him before. The fact that he had stolen files from the sheriff’s office without telling Rylie spoke volumes about his personality, and there was no way he would allow her to speak without his presence.
Yet he stepped away, and the other wolves followed.
The pack melted into the trees. The rain fell harder, washing away their paw prints as soon as they were made, though the energy lingered long after the last tail had disappeared into the forest’s gloom. Elise rubbed her aching throat. It was still throbbing.
Rylie watched her pack leave. There was no sign of the shy girl in her face anymore. Only fierce pride, and a longing to be with them.
“I don’t like being wet,” the Alpha said. “Let’s go inside.”
There was coffee brewing in Rylie’s cottage. The sounds of percolation blended with the pattering of rain on the windows, but the smell was unmistakable.
“Want a drink?” Rylie asked. Elise nodded.
She prowled around the cottage’s sitting room as Rylie went to grab mugs. The layout was much like a one bedroom apartment: a living room, dining room, and kitchenette in one area, and a bedroom in the back. It was modest, but furnished like a page from a Martha Stewart catalog. Country living.
The windows were large—almost as big as doors—and might provide swift escape in the event of attack. At least, they would have if they could open. Elise moved close to inspect the windows, which were triple-paned and sealed tight. The frames were painted metal. Probably steel laced with silver.
Elise had a feeling that if she tore the walls apart, she wouldn’t find wooden studs inside. They, too, would be silver and steel. Judging by the noise her sandaled feet made on the floor, it was much the same underneath.
The cottage was a nicely-decorated prison for werewolves. Martha Stewart wouldn’t have approved.
“All the stuff you left behind is on the bedroom dresser,” Rylie said, bumping a cabinet shut with her hip. “Help yourself.”
Elise pushed the door open. The bedroom was obviously Rylie’s Space, from the sketches hung on the walls to the guitar propped in the corner. There was no sign that she was living with anyone else. Surprising—Elise would have expected the Alphas to cohabitate.
As promised, everything Elise had stripped off at Abel’s order was piled on Rylie’s dresser, including Lincoln’s sweater. She tucked the knives inside the belt of her shorts, hung the necklaces around her neck, and tossed the sweater into the trash. “How many witches are with your pack?” Elise asked, returning to the living room.
Rylie was pouring coffee at the counter. “None right now. Why?”
“The brass pentagrams.” Elise pointed to the apexes of each window. “Your house is spelled and warded.”
“We worked with a coven to create protections against remote viewing. Like I said, the OPA’s not a fan of us. We aren’t registered, and we’re not going to register.”
“Why?”
The Alpha carried the coffee mugs to the couch and sat down. “Are you registered?”
“They wouldn’t have a category for me,” Elise said. She took one of the coffee cups, but didn’t sit. “If the OPA wanted to fuck with you, they wouldn’t need to blame murders on your pack. Same with the Union. They’d raid your sanctuary, arrest half of you, and shoot the rest on sight.”
Rylie’s pale cheeks said that she already knew that. She turned the mug in her hands, staring into its brown depths. “I know for a fact that the wards the witches installed do work. We haven’t seen the OPA anywhere near the sanctuary. And, trust me, they’re looking for us.”
“Must be powerful wards.”
“Yeah.”
“In that case, is there anyone with a grudge that might want to draw the OPA to your pack?” Elise asked.
“There was someone else. A werewolf named Cain.” She traced a finger around the rim of her mug. “Seth and Abel’s half-brother. Different father. He wasn’t a Wilder.”
Seth, Abel, and Cain. All three of the sons of Adam.
It doesn’t mean anything, Elise told herself. Their mother had clearly possessed no real understanding of who Adam had been, or what he stood for. That was it. Nothing more, nothing less. But Elise’s nerves were on edge.
She set down the coffee mug and took a seat across from Rylie.
Elise was so wired that she almost exploded into an incorporeal mess when something heavy jumped onto her legs. She jerked back against the couch, lifting her hands to stare at the black thing in her lap. It weighed at least twenty pounds and looked like a dust bunny on steroids.
“What
the hell?” Elise asked.
The dust bunny’s head swiveled, focusing luminous eyes on Elise. It was a cat. Probably. It looked like it had smashed face-first into a wall and knocked itself silly, turning its mouth into a permanent frown and making its eyes bulge in two separate directions.
“That’s Sir Lumpy,” Rylie said. “He’s my…uh, my friend’s cat.”
“Lumpy” seemed like the best possible descriptor for him. He kneaded his paws into Elise’s shirt, plucking threads up with his claws, rumbling like an earthquake.
Elise hesitated, then rubbed his head. He purred louder.
Rylie smiled. “That’s a really big compliment. He doesn’t like much of anyone.”
“That’s…nice,” Elise said.
The cat started drooling as he continued to knead.
“Like I was saying about Cain, he tried to kill us and didn’t succeed.” Rylie sipped her coffee, hiding a smile behind the mug. “Obviously. But this kind of subtlety was more his style. He played with us before attacking. He liked to send messages.”
“Has he returned as a zombie?” Elise wasn’t joking. She had seen zombies, slaughtered them with her swords, watched them destroy half of her city.
Apparently, Rylie had seen zombies, too. “It wouldn’t be the first time.”
“How did Cain die?” She had stopped petting Sir Lumpy, and he protested by jamming his head into her hand, smearing saliva all over her fingers. She grimaced, but obediently scratched between his ears.
“Head crushed by a boulder.”
“He won’t be coming back from that. The head needs to be mostly intact to resurrect a corpse. They might be able to reanimate whatever else remained, but it wouldn’t be Cain.”
Relief rippled through Rylie, easing the tension in her muscles one by one, making her shoulders droop, her fingers loosen on the mug. She had genuinely believed that Cain might have risen from the dead to blame murders on them.
Elise had been hunting demons since she was a small child. She had been on the run, nomadic and mercenary, since she was sixteen years old. She would be thirty-one in December, and she thought she had probably seen it all.
Apparently, Rylie had, too. Yet she didn’t show it the way Elise did. She didn’t have the scars, the hostility, the inability to trust. She had stared into the faces of the gods and walked away with gold eyes and a shy smile. And she had a pack, a family.
Elise wasn’t sure if she admired the kid or hated her.
Rylie set her coffee down. “Cain worked with other people. He had allies, maybe even…some kind of secret cult? He had followers in the Union.” She worried her bottom lip between her teeth. “There were even traitors among people I considered friends.”
“And they’ve survived?” Sir Lumpy rolled onto his side, sprawling over Elise’s thighs.
“Maybe. The friend of mine, the witch that had worked for Cain—he’s dead. But the people in the Union? Maybe. Who knows who else might still be in the Apple?”
The Apple. A chill washed over Elise, making the fine hairs on the back of her neck stand on end and the injury on her bicep ache. “What did you say the cult was called?”
“The Apple,” Rylie said again.
Elise shut her eyes. But there was no shutting out the memories.
She was instantly in the garden again, staring up at the Tree. Its trunk was wide enough to contain an entire city inside its core. Hidden underneath the roots was a lake of sap, the blood of the Tree. And dangling from the desiccated branches hung glossy red apples.
The apples, and the Tree, were both gone now. They couldn’t hurt Elise anymore.
Or so she believed.
Was this why James had lured Elise to the werewolves of Northgate? Were there ends left yet untied?
“Elise?”
She opened her eyes. Rylie was leaning toward her, worry painted on her features.
“Cain led this cult?” Elise asked, trying to keep her tone level. Her black fingernails dug into her kneecaps. Sir Lumpy nudged her wrist with his slimy nose.
“Yeah, I think so. For a while. But I think it must have existed before he did, too, because Scott—the witch—had been in it for a long time, longer than Cain would have been alive, and…” Rylie trailed off. Her brow furrowed. “What could the cult have to do with the garden?”
Elise’s breath hitched. “Did you see that? My memories?”
“No, I only know what I saw when I bit you,” Rylie said. “That garden. The apples.” She gave a shaky laugh. “It’s all a coincidence, right?”
Elise didn’t believe in coincidences. Not anymore.
She shooed the cat off of her lap so that she could stand, and he washed his paw vigorously as if he had to get the sink of demon off of his fur. It was raining harder outside.
“There’s no reason to think that Cain or the Apple would have anything to do with these murders,” Elise said. “All we know right now is that someone is trying to blame a series of murders on werewolves. It may not even be a personal attack on your pack.”
“Do you really think that?” Rylie asked.
Elise’s mouth pressed into a thin line. “I need to see the files that Seth and Abel stole.”
Rylie nodded at the kitchen counter. “They’re over there. Top drawer, right of the stove.”
Elise found the manila folder in with the whisks and cookie cutters. It was as thick as a text book, with more folders inside; each one was labeled with the name of another victim. She flipped through them quickly. Everything was either hand-written or done on typewriter.
“How did you get this from the guys?” she asked, spreading the folders across the counter. Sir Lumpy jumped up, settling on top of a stack of pages and folding his paws underneath him. His body was shaped like a loaf of bread. A moldy loaf of bread.
“I asked Seth for the files, and he gave them to me,” Rylie said.
Elise shot a look at her. The girl shrugged.
“They knew I wouldn’t want them to break into the sheriff’s department, so they figured they’d rather ask forgiveness than permission,” Rylie said. Elise’s disbelief must have shown on her face. “They meant well.”
Elise shook her head. If Rylie wasn’t angry about their lies, there was no point in arguing about it. They had bigger problems.
There were eight separate folders within the files: six for the murders, two for the missing persons. These were the originals, too—not photocopies. The Grove County Sheriff’s Department must have been losing their minds over the loss.
Inside, she found photos of the cadavers and crime scenes. There wasn’t enough detail for Elise to tell if those scenes had been falsified as well. She set them aside, then wrested the folder that Sir Lumpy was attempting to incubate from underneath his fat rolls. He glared at her out of one bulging eye.
The missing persons reports didn’t include photos. They had been hand-written in blocky letters with blue ink. Interestingly, Lucinde Ramirez’s report was in different handwriting than most of the other paperwork. The ink was black. The letters were like slashes, nearly illegible.
James’s handwriting was neat and precise, not this messy excuse for cursive. If it was his work, he must have had someone else fill out the report.
Elise skimmed the details.
Lucinde Ramirez. Nine years old. Height and weight were listed. Her features were described as Latina. It didn’t yield any new information.
Frustrated, Elise tossed those aside, and looked at the reports on the murder scenes again, searching for the coroner’s name. It was printed at the top of the page, along with the sheriff’s name, in uneven typewritten letters: Stephanie Armstrong, MD.
She flipped the forms over. The coroner had signed off on the back. Her handwriting was sharp, illegible. Identical to the handwriting on Lucinde Ramirez’s missing persons report.
“Armstrong,” Elise murmured.
Rylie came over to stand in the kitchen, arms hugged around her body. She didn’t move close enough to lo
ok at the photographs of the crime scenes, although Elise could tell that Rylie glimpsed them, because her heart rate sped. “What did you say?”
“Armstrong. That’s the coroner’s name. Where have I heard that recently?”
“You mean, like, Father Armstrong?”
That was it. The young priest that worked with Father Night was named Father Armstrong. Was he married to the coroner? No—there was that inconvenient little oath of celibacy interfering with that. They could have been related, though. It was a small town, and a good start.
Elise closed the files again. “I’m going to church.”
“What did I miss? What did you find in those files?”
She hesitated with her hand on the front door, studying Rylie—this quiet, blond twenty year old werewolf in charge of an entire pack, who had seen zombies and had the hatred of the Union directed at her.
Seth and Abel Wilder might try to protect Rylie from whatever was happening, but Elise didn’t think that she needed protecting.
“I’ll fill you in on the way,” Elise said. “Let’s go.”
FOURTEEN
RYLIE PRODUCED A set of car keys and led Elise to a covered parking area, which held five vehicles: three trucks, a van, and a steel blue Chevy Chevelle SS.
Rylie went for the muscle car.
“What are you doing?” Abel asked, striding up with a long-legged gait that made him move at the speed of a run, even when he looked like he was strolling. In the haze of stormy daylight, Elise could see exactly how hideous his scars were. Whatever had attacked him had practically chewed off half of his face, leaving ragged gouges in the shape of teeth near the corner of his mouth. Raw pink flesh crawled down his neck and covered his shoulder.
“I’m investigating,” Rylie said.
“With my car?”
“Yes.” She stretched up on her toes to kiss him, one hand cupping his scarred cheek. She didn’t hesitate to touch him for even a split second. “I have my phone if you need me.”
