Marked Clan #2 - Red

by Maurice Lawless

  “Connor neglected to mention this when he told me about you.”

  “Yeah, he wouldn’t,” I said. “He doesn’t believe in all this –wolves, curses, death hiding in every dark corner. He lives in a nice shiny world with clit piercings and cuddly bikers. He and my mom were both like that.”

  Dree moved away from the wall, and rested her head on Slate’s body. She faced away from us. I guess this was her time to say goodbye. I turned so I couldn’t see her. It felt too much like spying otherwise.

  “Thank you so much for helping me out,” I said. “I know I’m taking big time advantage of you. I’m not a good enough lay to counter that.”

  “You manage,” he said, cracking a smile. “But this can’t continue much longer. You understand that right? I don’t mean interfering with our social life—I mean if you keep getting injured, losing blood, you’re going to die.”

  I sighed and scratched at the bandage on my back. “I know. I had this handled before now. This new pack is just much more powerful than I’m used to. I can’t just tease their dicks out of their pants and take them down.”

  He gave me an odd look, and I realized what I’d said. “Not that I’ve done that recently. Not since…well not since our first date. I just mean…oh fuck. Whatever. This is me, take me or leave me.”

  If he had something biting and incisive to say, the sound of Dree’s startled yelp and claws rattling on hardwood drowned it out. Slate was moving, and by the looks of things, she was mighty pissed to have died.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  The next thirty seconds were a blur. Dree held Slate’s confused head as she spasmed and snapped at her, and Justin and I did our best to keep her still while he checked her vitals. With a yelp, Slate’s body went still, and then her fur began to recede. Her hips straightened, her chest ballooned out to its usual fullness, and in a matter of minutes she was once again human.

  “The fuck happened, lass?” she said to Dree.

  “I think…you died,” she said.

  “Aye,” Slate said. Her voice was throaty. If I didn’t know better, I’d say she sounded drunk. Her accent was almost as thick as Poppa’s all of a sudden. “That’s about what it felt like. Christ, I feel like shite.”

  “But,” I said. “I injected you with a full vial of my blood. It should have killed you…permanently I mean.”

  Slate sat up, looked dizzy, and leaned herself against one of the kitchen cabinets.

  “Don’t know what to tell ye, lass. The best I can say is your blood and mine aren’t as different as the others. Probably saved me.”

  Justin had left the room while this exchange was going on. He came back with a bathrobe and draped it over Slate. “Tell me I’m not the only one weirded out by her accent change.”

  Dree shook her head. “It happens sometimes. Usually under a lot of stress. She’ll lose it once she’s recovered from whatever this is. Death? I don’t know.”

  “What does she mean our blood isn’t as different?” I asked.

  Slate shot a hand out from under the bathrobe and nodded to me. “Because, Lass, I’m your aunt. Well, a few times removed anyway. Lorelei Mackenzie. Mighty fucking pleasure to make your acquaintance.”

  What the fuck?

  I didn’t get to shake her hand before she passed out. Justin took her vitals again, but shook his head. “She’s fine. Strong heartbeat, good breath sounds. She’s just sleeping. Let’s get her into my bed.”

  I was still shell-shocked by her last statement, but the three of us managed to get Slate tucked in and returned to the living room. Slate was not a pretty sleeper. No, not Slate—Lorelei. I knew the name. Poppa had told me the story of her death a hundred times over. It was the reason he hunted the wolves. Her murder at the hands of a gypsy boy was the catalyst for all this. Except she wasn’t dead.

  “Could one of you fill me in on what happened tonight?” Justin asked. Dree took the initiative, and I filled in the details she hadn’t received from Slate. Once we were done, I felt like I’d had to live through it all over again, and I was exhausted.

  “I-I want to go home,” I said. I got up and carefully slipped on my top, then went for the door. Justin put a hand on my shoulder.

  “Are you sure that’s a good idea? They came for you at the shop. Who’s to say they aren’t waiting there now?”

  I shrugged him off, gently. “If I know my uncle, our place is crawling with cops right about now. He’ll make them watch the place for weeks, and probably have someone come in and beef up security by tomorrow morning. I’ll be fine. Right now I just want to sleep in my own bed. I have a lot to process.”

  I just hoped Connor was conscious by now. I shoved the thought out of my brain. Of course he was. Even if he’d been out cold, one of the other businesses or a regular would have stopped in to check on him…right?

  “At least let me drive you,” he said.

  Dree stood. “I’ll watch over Slate, in case she wakes up. If that’s okay?”

  Justin nodded. I left the keys to Slate’s sedan with Dree, and followed the doctor to his car. My brain was stuck on a loop. Lorelei Mackenzie. Slate. Lorelei. Slate. Wolf. Aunt. What. The. Fuck?

  Justin drove carefully back to the shop, like he really didn’t want to take me there. It was sweet, if misguided. I doubted Donald would snatch me twice in one night, especially considering the fact that he thought Slate was dead.

  I could tell we were close to the shop from the ring of flashing red-and-blue lights. Just as I suspected, half the precinct was playing Ring Around the Rosie by our front door. We parked a ways down and walked up. The front door was taped off, and Connor sat heavily on the hood of one of the cruisers. A detective in a shabby-looking brown suit and gunmetal gray hair scribbled notes next to him.

  It was kind of surreal walking into that crowd. The detective had just asked what I was wearing when he last saw me, and one of the patrolmen tapped his shoulder. The detective’s eyes went wide.

  Connor shoved past him and tackled me in a suffocating bear hug. “Sweet Jesus Almighty, Bon! I thought I’d lost you. Are you okay? What did they do to you? I swear on your mother’s grave I’ll hunt down every last one of them and feed them their own testicles. Just point me in the right direction.”

  Once I’d extracted myself from him, I took a deep breath. “I’m okay, Connor. Just some scratches. Doc here fixed me up.”

  The detective walked over and flipped up a fresh page in his notebook. “Evening, Miss Mackenzie. I understand you’ve been through a lot tonight, but would you mind answering a few questions for me?”

  Connor wound himself up for a tongue lashing, but my hand on his arm stopped him before he blew. “I think I’m up for that,” I said. “But can we do it inside? My apartment is upstairs. That’s not part of your crime scene, is it?”

  The detective shook his head and guided us carefully through our own shop so we wouldn’t disturb anything that the crime scene folks were working on. Once I was inside my apartment, I immediately started feeling better. The throbbing pain in my back was less noticeable, and the shock of Slate’s confession seemed easier to handle.

  “His name was Donald,” I said once I’d outlined my night to the cop. He wrote down everything. “He called the girl that knocked Connor out Lauren, I think. I don’t know much about him, but a friend told me he might have ties to some of the gangs around here.”

  The detective nodded. “We’ll run your description and the alias through our organized crime database. Is there anything else you want us to know, Miss Mackenzie?”

  “PJ, please,” I said. “And I think I got everything. Right now, if you all don’t mind, I’d just like some rest.”

  The detective nodded. “We’ll be poking around downstairs for probably another hour or two, but we’ll have two cruisers posted through the night and next couple of days. Sleep well, Miss…PJ.”

  I shoved Connor out, despite his protests to keep an eye on me. Justin left without incident. I locked my door behind t
hem all. It seemed silly, but little things give you comfort sometimes. I was sure that after the night I’d had I wouldn’t sleep, or if I did it would be dreamless and peaceful.

  I was wrong.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  The stream was cold against my ankles. I bent my head down to take a sip, and saw myself reflected in the surface of the water. The line of my elegant muzzle was interrupted by an angry red gash. They killed him, and scarred me in the process.

  Who?

  I tried to save him. He was my mate. No—more than that. He was the first man I’d loved since….

  Man? We’re wolves, aren’t we? I’m confused.

  Dogs barked behind me, followed by the harsh shouts of their masters. They were coming to finish me off. The other pups would wonder where I was soon. I had to lead the hunters away. They would kill us all. I had to run.

  Wind chilled my wet fur. I ran just fast enough to stay ahead of them, but not so fast as to lose them. They must not get to my pups. Without them, I was back to wandering the world alone. They’d made sure of that. They were no better than Da, lashing out at what they didn’t understand.

  Who is Da?

  A dog burst out from the brush in front of me. I’d let them get too close. It was a stupid, young mistake. Motherhood was clouding my judgment. Love was clouding it. He was clouding it. Could I blame myself, really? He was the only one of our kind I’d ever met—wolf and human, lovely as both, and so strong.

  Another dog emerged on the other side, flanking me. The hunters were close now—I could smell their cloud of tobacco, sweat, and gunpowder. My only path was through. I lunged at the first dog and sank my teeth into the flesh of its neck. Blood flowed into me, and my mind cleared. I ripped and rent the dog’s flesh, ignoring the snarls and bites of its partner.

  The hunters came into the clearing, and I heard the sound of a shotgun being cocked. I looked over at the barrel just as the man in front squeezed the trigger.

  My entire body jerked, and I found myself back in my bed above the shop, fully human and feeling like a train wreck. Slate let go of my hand and leaned back in her chair.

  “How are you feeling?” she asked.

  My brain was in a fog, and most of my body felt sore. I realized then that the one part of me that should hurt like hell didn’t. I felt my left shoulder blade. There was no gauze, and my fingers came back dry. I felt not so much as a tender spot where I’d been sliced open the night before.

  I panicked. “What did you do to me? Why am I not bleeding?”

  Slate crossed her arms. “I did nothing. Donald was the one who attacked you. Don’t you remember?”

  “Oh, I remember all right,” I said. I’d retained every detail, down to the hypnotic, arcane prayers he’d recited in Gaelic. The searing pain of the dagger came back to me, and I shivered.

  “The rite he was trying to perform,” Slate said, “I’ve seen something like it done once before. You’re lucky he didn’t finish.”

  “Who is Da?” I asked. It fell out of my mouth before I could stop it. Slate’s cryptic expression didn’t change.

  “My father, Cathal Mackenzie, was the one who cursed me. It was a mistake. He cursed Danny first, and all women he slept with after.”

  “Danny,” I said. “You mean Lupin?”

  “Aye,” she said. “Your Poppa didn’t tell you the whole story. It’s not his fault. I’m sure Da changed the details to make himself look better, to explain away my disappearance. Or maybe the guilt made him do it.”

  She laughed—a single, mirthless chuckle. “No. The way I remember him, it was definitely the former.”

  Raised voices from downstairs made us both turn our heads. I rushed into whatever clothes I could find (since when did I sleep naked?) and went to my door. Dree was sitting in my kitchen, sipping from my Woodspring mug.

  “I’d forgotten what awful coffee your machine makes,” she said. It didn’t stop her from drinking it, apparently. The carafe was half empty. Who had let them in? Wasn’t I supposed to be under guard or something?

  I went downstairs and found two full-grown police officers straining to hold back a tiny waif of a girl. She couldn’t be more than seventeen, eighteen at best. When she saw me, she screamed, “Please! I just want to talk. If they find out I’m here, they’ll kill me. I took something you need!”

  “Where is my uncle?” I asked one of the officers. He looked away from the tiny girl long enough to answer me.

  “Went out on errands, locked the front door. This one yanked it open like it was nothing and barged in. Probably on meth, PCP, something. She has the look.”

  My eye caught something out of place—a pile of weathered pages stacked on the counter by the register. The officer nodded at them.

  “She brought those in with her.”

  When Slate walked down behind me, the girl stopped struggling. I looked over just in time to see the naked fear in her eyes. She went from trying to push past the officers to trying to flee for her life in a split second.

  “No, not her! Not again!”

  The officers struggled with her. Obviously her skeletal five-foot-nothing frame was too much for them. Slate walked over and grabbed a handful of her hair. She stopped struggling immediately. Her cries turned to whimpers.

  “Please. I didn’t ask for this! They found me! I was fucked up. High on whatever junk I could score for a blow. I didn’t know what they wanted to do to me. Please, please don’t kill me.”

  I ignored her for the moment and looked over the pages. One of them was filled with runes, similar to the ones in Poppa’s book. They had a different pattern though, and they looked much newer. The paper wasn’t as weathered as Poppa’s. Could these be some of Donald’s notes?

  “Guys, Slate, hold on a minute. I’ll listen to her. Let her go.”

  All three of them gave me a look that asked, “Are you sure?”

  “Really,” I said. “Just give her a minute to calm down. I’m sure she had something important to talk about. Look, we’ll do it here in Connor’s office. If she tries anything, I’ll bang on the door. Deal?”

  The cops let the girl go; Slate didn’t. What was the history between these two? I walked over to them and put a hand on the woman’s shoulder.

  “It’s okay, Slate. I don’t think she came here to hurt me. Look at those pages she brought. I want to know more. I think you might too.”

  Slate let out a muffled growl that made it clear she wasn’t done with the girl, but let go of her hair. The girl gave me a tentative smile of thanks, but I didn’t return it.

  “I’m not your friend. If Slate wants to kill you in horrible ways, there’s nothing I can say to stop that. Honestly, I’ve spent the last five years of my life hunting things like you, so one less monster on the street isn’t going to hurt my conscience.”

  The deer-in-the-headlights look returned. She shifted from one foot to the other and looked at the floor. Damnit, maybe that was too much.

  “But right now you have information I want, so let’s talk.”

  The girl nodded and we retired to Connor’s office. Slate brought in the pages and closed the door behind her. Thanks to last night’s intimate piercing fiasco, the blinds were all pulled down giving us privacy from the uniforms outside.

  “Now talk,” I said. “Say what you came to say, and don’t leave anything out. If I get the feeling you’re lying to me, Slate gets to play.”

  Slate leaned against the door and crossed her arms. She couldn’t look non-threatening if she tried, so it was a good show. The girl swallowed hard and focused on me. Between a wolf and a hunter, I was the less threatening one. Go figure.

  “My name is Serena,” the girl said. “I’m new to Donald’s…group.”

  “Pack,” Slate corrected.

  “Pack,” the girl said. “Like I said, I was a junkie. Donald found me one night on a street corner. I just thought he was a John, you know? Guy looking for a little action. He took me back to his place, gave me a shower and so
me food. Said he could get me off junk.”

  Serena pushed a lock of her hair behind her ear. It made her seem younger. Maybe I was wrong about her age. Her eyes were sunken in like she hadn’t slept in days. If she was a junkie, becoming a wolf might have actually been a step up.

  Slate shifted behind her, and Serena jumped like she’d been shot. I looked over at my aunt “several times removed,” the only other Mackenzie woman I’d known besides my mother. She stared at Serena with what looked like mild amusement.

  “Jesus, Slate. What did you do to her?”

  “I picked her out as a weak link when we first came here. I wanted information, so I tried scaring it out of her.”

  Slate walked over and put a hand on Serena’s bony shoulder. The girl twitched, and then started to shiver.

  “It worked.”

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Once we put the pages she stole in front of her, Serena got over a little of her fear and started talking. She said everything with her hands waving in front of her, like she couldn’t let them just lay still in her lap. I wondered if it was a nervous tic.

  “I grabbed the pages that I saw him use the most. I figured they’d be important. I can’t read them though. They’re not in English.”

  “Gaelic,” Slate said, reading over the girl’s shoulder. “They talk about a ritual, probably the one he tried with you, PJ.”

  Slate flipped through the pages, and pointed to one scrawled box of English. She read it aloud:

  “The first rune binds, the second changes. The third and fourth seal off the ages. The final pair described the form upon your flesh that shall be worn.”

  “Creepy,” Serena said. I didn’t argue with the sentiment. My shoulder blade itched all of a sudden.

  “Take off your shirt, PJ,” Slate said. She held one of the pages in her hand. It was the one filled with runes.

  “What?”