by L. A. Banks
Sasha parked her jeep two blocks away and tucked her Glock into the back of her jeans’ waistband, covering it up as best she could with her tank top. She slipped around the back of the building, avoiding the shadows, not wanting to escape into one and accidentally bump into Hunter and Silver Hawk—she was not ready for that yet. But there had to be something in that cellar that she hadn’t seen before. Without any male triggers to create a diversion and in there alone, maybe she’d get to the bottom of it.
She kicked in the back door after listening to be sure there were no human authorities still snooping around, and slipped inside, her wolf night vision helping her to stay concealed in the darkness.
Hesitating for a moment, she stood at the top of the cellar steps. She could still smell the ash and added trace of human sweat. “Aw, man . . .” Sasha let out a hard breath. Humans had been down there mucking around in a supernatural crime scene. Something still drew her, pulled at her, and she crept down the steps on guard.
“Shit!” The humans had left boot prints everywhere, as well as their scent layer. Now any hope of going back to examine a fairly intact crime scene was shot.
Sasha stooped down to where the victim had been and stared at the eerie impression of the body that was left. Crouching closer, she stared at the floor and then began brushing away the slight film of remaining ash. Beneath it a strange series of new symbols became visible. They were totally different from the ones that had been on the actual Phoenix’s body ash. Why had Desidera’s body been lying right on top of this larger sigil, hiding it?
The images burned into her mind’s eye. Sasha stood up quickly, bolted up the stairs to find Ethan’s office. She needed paper and pencil, had to copy it down exactly as she found it. Yanking out drawers, she finally ran to the copier and snatched a stack of pages, swiping a pen from the desk on her way out.
But as she returned to the ashy spot, there was nothing there except unintelligible soot.
CHAPTER 13
Hunter entered the bed-and-breakfast with Silver Hawk. Both men stopped and just stared for a moment. Winters was sprawled out on the sofa amid pizza boxes, beer bottles, and a blaring TV tuned to the Sci Fi channel. They paused, tilted their heads, and then stared at each other.
“We’ve lost our familiars for the night,” Hunter said, staring at the ceiling.
“And our dark arts specialist,” Silver Hawk said calmly, with no judgment in his tone.
“Oh, hey,” Winters said, rousing slowly and yawning. “Everything cool?”
“You tell me,” Hunter said, growing edgy. “Where are my men?”
Winters sat forward chuckling and rubbing his eyes. “Oh, man. Those guys went out hours ago. As soon as the moon went up, they were out. But you can probably hear better than me,” he added, hunting for a cold slice of pizza, “and the reason I’m down here drowning out the sound . . . Fisher and Woods brought back live game. And Bradley and ’Rissa are ‘researching,’ if you get my drift.” He bit into a slice, and then made a gesture to offer Hunter and Silver Hawk a bite, which they declined. “Sometimes I wish . . . I just don’t know how those guys do it. The one Woods pulled is killer.”
“What direction did Bear Shadow and Crow Shadow go?” Hunter asked, his tone dangerous. “I gave them a direct order to protect this location!”
Silver Hawk landed a steady hand on Hunter’s shoulder. “They have not had the benefit of your clarity in the shadow lands. This is not how they generally conduct themselves as your lieutenants. Be mindful of that.”
“They rolled out with a blond and a brunette from across the street, left their jeep—probably going to the girls’ place . . . which is a good thing—could you imagine the racket that would have been going on in here with five couples knocking boots? Sheesh.” Winters yawned again and stretched. “It’s cool, though. When the pizza dude came, I was on the porch and saw Bear driving a really cute chick’s car with Crow and her friend in the backseat all snuggled up . . . so I think your guys are doing just fine. No worries, no attacks, everything is peace, as they say. But I doubt you’ll see ’em before tomorrow morning. Seems like all of New Orleans was over at Finnegan’s tonight.”
“Humans?” Silver Hawk said, incredulous.
Hunter briefly closed his eyes. This was bad. There were so many ways that volatile combination could go wrong that he couldn’t even think about that right now.
“I dunno,” Winters said with another lazy stretch. “I guess? Couldn’t see that far from the porch to tell if they were human girls or not. You guys forget that I don’t have all that sexy night vision and super hearing and whatever. I’m just the tech guy.”
Hunter nodded and rubbed his jaw. “All right. Where are Doc, Sasha, and Shogun? Did they take him to Tulane?”
“No, didn’t have to. Dude recovered, from what I heard,” Winters said with a nonchalant shrug, scratching his head. “Everybody is just wacko tonight. Sasha bursts in here arguing with Doc—after she put Shogun on the phone. He, I guess, spoke to his men from the ambulance, and then they were out. But after Sasha and Doc had this ‘I’m your father and you won’t speak to me like that’ blowup, Doc went across the street to eat and cool off; she headed for the shower and then came down five minutes later and grabbed one of the jeeps.”
Silver Hawk stepped in front of Hunter and grabbed him by his shoulders. “Remember what we saw on the spirit walk. Remember that things are not always what they appear.”
“Did Shogun’s men say where they were going?” Hunter said, a low growl underscoring his words.
“No, they were out real fast, but Doc was having a conniption about them probably heading toward some Werewolf strip club in the bayou.” Winters flopped back against the sofa. “All I wanna know is, how come I got stuck here holding down the fort? Like, I wouldn’t have been discriminating about a lap dance. Seriously.”
Hunter looked at Winters and then at his grandfather.
“That should make you feel better, son,” Silver Hawk murmured, releasing Hunter’s shoulders.
Armed to the teeth, Hunter jumped into a jeep—pump-action shotgun on the backseat in plain view. The decision to find Sasha or his brother wore on him, but the draw to hunt for Shogun won out. Right now, Shogun was the most vulnerable. He could pretty much guess what had sent his brother into the notorious brothel, as well as what had probably pissed Doc off. There was only one thing that would have broken down Shogun’s pride to the point where he’d pay for companionship at a known enemy’s house . . . where he’d allow his men to follow him on such a suicide mission. He just prayed that he’d make it in time.
Sasha scribbled down the symbols quickly, as best she could remember them, folded away the paper, and then shoved the paper and pen into her back jeans’ pocket. Speed was her friend as she dashed up the cellar steps and exited the building, her mission singular—go to the other Phoenix’s house and see if there was also a symbol beneath where Penelope’s charred remains had been. It was a job she wasn’t looking forward to, but somebody had to do it.
Based on what Rodney’s advisors had told her and what Bradley had disclosed to the team, a theory took root in her mind as she drove. From what little she did know about Fae magick, if all the symbols were gone, had simply vanished, then it definitely had nothing to do with the human intervention—it would have to be either that someone had doubled back to erase them, or maybe the symbols faded a certain amount of time after they had the desired treacherous effect . . . Or maybe the symbols could only be seen right after an incident in broad daylight, before they simply melted into the night as a dark spell. Night covered a lot of things.
She pulled up to the double-wide trailer that she’d been to with Ethan, Margaret, and Hunter, and easily jimmied the door. The outline of the body was still there where it had been lying on the floor, curled in a fetal position. Sasha bit her lip as she looked at where the poor young Phoenix who never came back from the ashes had lain.
Moving through the small home, Sasha
found a dustpan and broom, and, as reverently as possible, shifted the thin layer of ash to a neat pile, expecting to see a symbol scorched into the floor. Ethan wanted to have a proper memorial, and there just hadn’t been time. Once all this was over, she’d be sure to help him do that.
Sasha stooped and scribbled down the strange absence. There were no symbols here combined in geometric figures that seemed to move on the floor as though alive as she’d seen at The Fair Lady. Why? Both girls had been killed the same way, but only one set of symbols showed up.
That stilled her. The question was, had the floor at Ethan’s been previously marked by an invisible symbol, like a land mine for the victim to trip over, or was the symbol what appeared after the fact to mark the spot where the victim fell? But whatever the case, why wasn’t there a large sigil here, a land mine for Penelope to trip over?
Bradley would know what to do with that key information, so would Sir Rodney. The issue was going to be explaining to Sir Rodney why it was necessary to inform her human squad . . . Damn, the Fae were so touchy.
The question about how the specific symbols she’d uncovered functioned was just one more to add to the dozens of others that twisted around one another in her brain. And how the heck did one use a freakin’ symbol to kill somebody? She’d heard of chaos magick used to make someone sick, to hold on to a lover, or to give someone a serious case of bad luck—otherwise known as doing roots . . . But to actually make them char? No. That was definitely a new one. She flipped open her telephone and left a message for Sir Rodney, detailing her find. All she got was instant voice mail. She closed her eyes. He was in the Sidhe; his advisors were in deep, and so was Ethan. Her and her team, as well as Hunter and his men, plus Shogun and his family, were on the other side of the Fae fortress. Just great.
Sasha stood, let out a weary breath, and headed out the door.
Silver Hawk spotted his friend of many years sitting at a table alone, nursing a drink, a half-eaten plate of steak and potatoes pushed away from him. He slid into the chair in front of Xavier Holland, causing him to look up.
“It’s no fun to eat alone without family, brother. I would have joined you.”
Doc nodded and looked down into his glass. “I don’t know what came over me . . . I flipped, as though Sasha was my teenage daughter . . . as though I had a right to tell a grown woman what to do. It was complete madness, and I knew it, and still I couldn’t stop myself.” Doc let out a long sigh. “I need to sit down with Sasha . . . as well as my son, Crow Shadow. There is so much for us to talk about, so many blanks in their lives to fill in—as well as in my own . . . But each of us has been holding back, afraid of even going there. It’s as though we acknowledge the lineage, respect it, but have yet to come together to discuss how any of this had made us feel . . . And tonight, I went after her as though I had that right, and I don’t.”
Silver Hawk closed his eyes and rolled his neck. “This darkness has us all in its grip. I do not ever want to know what you saw that may have caused that argument, for I fear I already know. Then, I could not be impartial at a time when I must be.”
Silver Hawk opened his eyes to stare into Doc’s intense gaze. For a long while both men said nothing.
Shogun looked up into a gorgeous smiling face, but it was not the one he longed for. Her perfect brown complexion made her entire body seem as though it had been dipped in cinnamon. As she straddled him, her pendulous breasts swayed above him and her taut nipples competed with her eyes for his attention. Interesting how her nipples were the same color as her eyes, bittersweet chocolate.
Her mouth was kiss punished and full, her eyes smoldering still, and her hair was sticking up all over her head. Then he looked down and realized that huge tufts of sandy brown hair were in his hands and all over his chest and the bed.
“I’m so sorry,” he said quietly, wondering how she could still be pleasant after what he’d done—money paid or not, it had to hurt like hell.
“Aw, sugah, it was just weave,” she said, laughing and kissing him. “Gonna take me about three or four hours in the salon chair to get it all put back in, but it was worth losing every track.”
He didn’t understand. “Weave?”
She brushed the fallen hair off his chest and pulled it from between his fingers. “A girl can’t tell all her secrets,” she said, still smiling brightly, canines fully exposed. “But you could spring for the hairdresser . . . since four hours off the clock to get beautiful again is a real killer on the revenue.”
He nodded and traced her smooth hips with his palms. “Not a problem.”
She leaned down and took his mouth and then sat back, beginning to slowly move with him still lodged deep inside her. “You are so damned sexy and such a doll . . . What is wrong with that girl?”
“Excuse me?” Shogun held her hips firm, not letting her move.
“Oh, don’t get all tight on me and paranoid. Of course I’d know about her . . . Ya called her name about a half dozen times and then came so hard I thought I was gonna have to call an ambulance for you, sugah. And right about now, you feel like you’re ready to go like that again. Just feminine observation . . . but if thinking about her makes you act like that, I’ll be her for you any night. Your time, your dime.”
“This stays here,” Shogun said, staring at her hard and then sitting up fast with her on his lap. He held her around the waist and spoke to her over a low growl. “You understand?”
Unfazed, she adjusted her legs to wrap around his waist as she kissed him and held him by the shoulders. “Everything that happens in here stays in here, always. House rules. I don’t even know what we were talking about.”
“I don’t see why we had to go,” Crow Shadow said in a forlorn voice as he and Bear Shadow trudged down the street. “They wanted us to stay until morning, and were even gonna make us breakfast.”
“Two things,” Bear Shadow said, counting off with his fingers as they walked. “Number one, these are human females, and the closer it gets to midnight, the more selfcontrol you’ll lose as your wolf makes you more aggressive . . . Gotta go before a tragedy happens.”
“Okay . . . True, true,” Crow Shadow said, rubbing the nape of his neck. “I can see that.”
“She was already fatigued, yes?” Bear Shadow said as they crossed the street.
“Laid out,” Crow Shadow said with a wide grin and then slapped Bear Shadow five.
Bear Shadow chuckled and shook his head. “That was my point.”
“So, what’s point two?”
“If you stay till morning, you stand the risk of getting attached.”
Crow Shadow nodded. “She was real nice.”
Bear Shadow nodded. “Mine was, too.” He let out a long sigh. “I made the proper excuses for us both . . . There was no reason to be dishonorable and hurt their feelings, after they were so . . . nice.”
“But, man, how the hell do you just get up out of some woman’s bed and not have her get her feelings hurt? We’re Shadow Wolves, we can’t lie . . . like—”
“We had to get back to the base, which is no lie—it is not my fault if she interpreted that as though we are soldiers . . . which is also not a full untruth. We are warriors.” He glanced at Crow Shadow from the corner of his eye and then looked straight ahead, speaking slowly and succinctly. “Warriors that have defied a direct order from our alpha, the commander and chief of the Shadow Wolf North American Federation, to guard the house. Hunter . . . is going to . . . 6 ip.”
Crow Shadow stopped walking, but Bear Shadow didn’t. Crow Shadow bent over and grabbed his hair with both hands. “Oh, shit! We didn’t even wait till Sasha got back safely . . . You know, to put our own eyes on her, man! Hunter is gonna—”
“Flip,” Bear Shadow called out, now a half block away.
Crow Shadow jogged to catch up to him. “What were we thinking, man?”
“We weren’t,” Bear Shadow said flatly. “I had absolutely no blood flow to my brain, and that is definitely no lie.”<
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“Like, when did it occur to you, man, that we were gonna get our faces ripped off?”
Bear Shadow let out a long weary breath. “Maybe after the third time I was done. Could have been the fourth.”
They walked along in companionable silence for several blocks, each man caught up in his own thoughts.
“But I would have liked to have breakfast with her, man, if this was going to be my last meal,” Crow Shadow said solemnly. “Southern hospitality and all.”
“If you would have stayed,” Bear Shadow said carefully. “You would have been on her body all night and she would have possibly wound up in ER in the morning. You didn’t need to add that to the list of offenses.”
“Okay, okay . . . But she was still nice.”
Bear Shadow stopped walking and his abruptness made Crow Shadow skid to a halt.
“Did you use protection?” Bear Shadow folded his arms over his barrel chest.
“Huh?” Crow Shadow’s eyes widened.
“Tell me you did not mate with a human female multiple times and not use human protection—just tell me.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, man,” Crow Shadow said, waving his arms as he walked in an agitated circle.
“Great Spirit, I know this is my punishment for giving in to my weaknesses,” Bear Shadow said, opening his arms, closing his eyes, and turning his face to the sky in supplication.
“What the hell are you talking about, Bear! Stop yanking me around!”
Bear Shadow leveled his gaze. “Brother, brother, brother . . . human females are on phase once a month. They can get pregnant at any time. They aren’t like she-wolves that go into heat biannually.”
“Shut . . . up . . .”
“You really didn’t know?” Bear Shadow rubbed the tension away from his neck.
“You should have told me that shit, man!” Crow Shadow walked in a circle. “I thought those skins were just to keep humans from catching diseases from each other—and since we purge all infections and whatever, I thought I didn’t need ’em . . . and she had ’em, but once it got going and the thing didn’t fit . . . she basically said she didn’t care and I got to howling and she was all hot and to the point of crying, like, and then . . . aw, man . . .”
