by Deanna Chase
“And I’m not debating, either,” James said. “You will leave Northgate of your own volition, or I will force you to leave.” There was magic in those words, the promise of violence.
Elise’s confidence slipped a notch.
She gazed up at James. Somehow, they had moved closer together, as if gravity had drawn their bodies to the center of the yard. He looked much like he had when he had first saved her, almost fifteen years ago now. There was still a teenage girl inside of Elise that was desperately in love with him.
It was that girl who asked, “Would you really fight me over this?”
His brow knitted. He cupped her chin in his hand, and even with her warding ring in place, touching him was enough to create fissures in the walls between them. She tasted a hint of jealousy that he wasn’t showing.
“Some things are bigger than the both of us,” James said, his voice so soft. “Some things are worth taking a stand over. Northgate is one of them. I will do what I must to protect Seth and Abel, and this town, from you.” His thumb traced the line of her bottom lip. “Even if it means fighting you.”
Elise jerked away from him.
He hadn’t been panicking because he thought that Seth would hurt Elise. He had been panicking because he thought that she would hurt Seth.
Some things are worth taking a stand over.
Elise stepped away from him, stuffing that vulnerable teenage girl deep inside of her, chaining her away where she couldn’t be hurt by James fucking Faulkner again.
“I’d like to see you try to get rid of me,” she said. “But I don’t think you will. I think you want to know why Lucinde Ramirez was reported as having gone missing as much as I do. And I think you care that all of these people are dying.”
Sadness turned down the corners of James’s mouth. “Don’t test me, Elise.”
“And don’t fuck with me,” she said.
They stood on opposite ends of the yard, sizing one another up in the moonlight as it peeked through the clouds again—the briefest hint of light that traced James’s charcoal-dark hair with a halo of gray.
“Leave, Elise,” he said softly, pleading.
Elise folded her arms. “No.”
Stalemate.
He inclined his head, acknowledging that they were still not friends, no longer partners, and definitely not on the same side. Unspoken promises passed between them. Not the kind of promises that lovers shared, but enemies.
Elise mounted the steps to Lincoln’s duplex and went inside. She let the door fall shut.
When she pulled aside the curtain to look for James outside, he was already gone.
The rain drizzled a steady beat on the tin roof of the mobile home like a chorus of tiny drummers, slightly quieter than the pounding of rain on the windshield of the pickup. Seth sat back in the front seat of the truck as he cleaned his rifle, using the dome light to see. His feet hung into the rain, and his steel-toed boots were damp.
Trevin and Abel were securing the perimeter of St. Philomene’s Cathedral as werewolves, leaving Seth with nothing to do but maintain his arsenal. He caught the occasional glimpse of fur out of the corner of his eye, but by the time he lifted his head, the wolves had already moved on again.
There was no sign that Father Armstrong had been back since Rylie broke into his house, and no way to tell if he ever would return. Seth didn’t know much about magic, but if the guy had a bewitched Bible in his house, then it would be no surprise if he had some kind of magical alarms, too. He probably knew that people were onto him. If Father Armstrong was smart, he would already be halfway across the country.
Seth thought it was a waste of time to watch the mobile home, but Rylie didn’t. And Rylie’s word was law these days.
He snorted as he opened the action on his rifle, blowing a wisp of wolf fur out of it. He remembered the days before Rylie had become an Alpha. He had been the one to walk her through her first changes, explain what being a werewolf meant, and help her overcome her basest urges. Now she was the queen of wolves. As reluctant as she had been to enter that role, everyone obeyed her now. She had settled into it well.
And she had settled into it with Abel at her side. Not Seth.
Abel trotted out of the crimson-leafed trees, fur glistening with rain like diamond tips. He stopped in front of Seth and shook.
“Hey!” Seth protested, lifting his gun away from the spray. Abel’s fur stuck out in damp spikes. He looked ridiculous. “What did you find? Anything good?”
He had to shift back before he could answer. It used to be that Rylie was the only one that could make other werewolves change at will, but Abel had been improving at controlling his transformation. He was still slow and graceless at changing, just like he was at most everything else.
His fur fell away. His skull reassembled itself, ears sliding into place and muzzle flattening. By the time he stood upright, he was mostly human, and reaching into the truck with clawed fingers.
Seth kicked Abel’s clothing out from under the seat.
“Didn’t find nothing,” Abel said, lisping around his retracting fangs as he dressed. “Some weird marks out in the woods, but no people. All the smells are days old. Nobody’s been around.”
“How do you want to do the watch?” Seth asked. “We could rotate every few hours, you and me and Trevin. Bet we could get Nash in on it, too.”
“I’m not watching this place.”
“Rylie said Elise is too busy to do it. We have to.”
“No,” Abel said, more forcefully than before. “I’m not going to stay here.”
There was something unfamiliar in his eyes—something like fear.
Seth set the rifle on the rack behind the driver’s seat. “What’s wrong, dude? You’ve been acting weird for days.” And he had all but fled the mobile home when he had gone there with Rylie, which was more than a little unusual. No matter what Seth thought of Abel and Rylie’s relationship, he trusted his brother to take care of Rylie. He would never run when she was in potential danger. Never.
“Shit, I don’t know.” Abel paced, bare feet slurping in and out of the mud. “This place is sick and wrong. Don’t you feel it?”
Seth’s mouth tipped into a frown. It felt wrong to be investigating a priest for murder, but that was about it. His kopis senses didn’t feel anything around the church. “Look, you’re dealing with a lot of stress right now, man. Nobody’s going to blame you if you need to bug out for a while.”
“It’s not stress!” he snapped. But there wasn’t the usual animosity behind his voice. Abel blew out a slow breath, folding his arms, unfolding them, fidgeting uncomfortably. “If something happens to me...”
“Nothing’s going to happen,” Seth said.
Abel lowered his voice. “It feels like I’m going crazy, man.”
It must have taken him a lot to admit to that. Seth set a heavy hand on his brother’s shoulder.
“I’ll work out shifts with Trevin,” he said.
Abel nodded. “I’m gonna stick by Rylie. Keep an eye on her.” By which he meant, keep an eye on Elise.
“All right,” Seth said. “Keep her in the wards as much as you can.”
Another stiff nod.
Seth wasn’t much for touchy-feely bullshit, where Abel was concerned. And comforting his brother was one of the last things he ever wanted to do. Abel had made no secret of the fact that he and Seth were adversaries wherever Rylie was concerned, even though Rylie had long since made her choice—and Seth hadn’t been the selection.
But even with the Alpha between them, they were bros. It hurt Seth to see Abel looking so jacked up. If Abel felt like he was going crazy, Seth couldn’t dismiss that. Abel was an asshole, but not insane.
“Let me take a look around,” Seth said.
He grabbed the rifle and hung it over his shoulder as he circled the mobile homes. The priests had netted off part of their gardens, which were long since dead. It looked like there were still herbs growing inside a small plastic greenhou
se out back. That was typical for witches, since they used plants as a type of sacrifice to collect energy for spells. The woman that had explained that to him, Stephanie Whyte, had used nicer terms for it—something about the circle of life. But a sacrifice was a sacrifice. Witches dealt in death. All of them.
Seth didn’t sense anything that made him want to run and hide, so he kept shuffling along the sodden grass, heading toward the back door of the cathedral. The colors of the stained glass windows were washed out in the darkness.
He tried the handle on the door. It was locked.
When his hand connected with the metal, he felt a jolt run up his shoulder—a shock of energy that said “demon” to his kopis senses. He had only run across demons once before Elise, but it was unforgettably unpleasant.
Seth withdrew, glancing over his shoulder. He couldn’t see the pickup or Abel.
Why would a cathedral feel like demons to him?
Seth pressed a hand to the door of the church and shut his eyes, focusing on the sensations. An unsettling feeling crept over his shoulders, making his skin prickle with gooseflesh. The night suddenly felt darker. Heavier. Even heavier than it did when Elise was ghosting around as a mist, which was, until that moment, the creepiest thing that Seth had ever experienced.
His heart struggled to beat. His mother’s voice whispered to him from the depths of memory.
Failure, she hissed.
Seth had a destiny, and he had failed to meet it. His mother never let him forget that. She was dead now, but her disappointment lived far beyond the grave.
In a rush, he remembered all of the horrible things she had done to him: locking him in a basement, beating him, letting a demon break his fingers, trying to kill him and Rylie and everyone he loved so many times. The misery of the memories nearly overwhelmed him. His entire body trembled.
You’ve failed your daddy, boy.
Light flared. Seth pulled back from the door with a shock, stumbling in the mud.
“What are you doing?”
He flinched against the light, lifting a hand to shield his eyes. Someone was aiming a flashlight at him—someone whose outline looked suspiciously like a cop. Seth straightened his back, spread his jacket, pushed his rifle behind him. Hopefully, it was too dark for this woman to realize that he was packing heat.
“I was trying to get into the church,” Seth said honestly. “It’s raining hard.”
The flashlight dropped to his feet, and he blinked away his blurry vision. The woman standing in front of him was, judging by her badge and uniform, the sheriff. Her name tag said “Dickerson.”
“The church is closed for a private event tonight,” Dickerson said. Her tone was flat, but not unfriendly. “You need a ride somewhere?”
Seth shook his head. “No, sorry. I’ll go.”
He backed away without letting her see the rifle. He made it all the way back to the truck without looking where he was going. The doors were shut, and the engine was off.
Seth scrambled into the driver’s seat.
“Christ,” he muttered.
Abel was sitting on the opposite end of the bench. “What happened?”
Seth set the rifle between them and gripped the steering wheel. Sheriff Dickerson was still walking around the back of the church. Was she looking for something, or waiting for them to leave?
The shock of being discovered hadn’t made him forget the horrible, miserable feelings he had experienced when touching the door. It had been like stepping into a nightmare.
“I think you’re right, Abel,” Seth said slowly. “There’s something wrong here.”
Even in the darkness, the vindication on his brother’s face was obvious. “Trevin’s patrolling and that pig’s watching. Let’s get out of here.”
For once, Seth agreed with him. He wanted to put as much space between himself and that cathedral as possible.
He put the pickup into gear and peeled onto the street.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Elise arrived at the sanctuary shortly after dawn. Rain was pouring from the sky as though oceans were being dumped over the mountains, which left her soaked, but protected from the sunlight. She stopped the motorcycle on the top of the hill, looking down at the people in the streets of the sanctuary. They were continuing to build the cottages under tarp awnings despite the weather.
There had to be at least forty werewolves down there. Forty. That was a lot more than Elise had ever expected to find of a supposedly endangered species.
She kicked off and headed into the valley.
Seth and Nashriel were working side-by-side, shirts off and muscular backs glistening with rain. It was strange to see an angel getting into physical labor. Angels were intellectual creatures, and much more likely to be found behind the desk at a university than with a hammer in hand. But Nashriel was on top of the bare skeleton of what would become a cottage, hammering with abandon, and he gleamed with sweat and rain like his skin was encrusted with diamonds.
They looked up at the sound of the motorcycle. Elise approached them on a low gear, and the engine purred underneath her like a wildcat.
“What are you doing here?” Seth asked, wiping sweat off of his forehead. Elise would have had to be a lesbian or dead not to notice how appealing he looked while shirtless. He carried the muscles of a kopis well on a small-boned frame, and his shaven chest glistened with moisture.
“I’m looking for Rylie,” Elise said.
He appraised her with narrowed eyes, scratching the back of his neck. He probably didn’t even realize that he was reacting to Elise’s infernal energy. “Is everything okay?”
Was everything okay? She studied Seth even as he studied her, wondering what it was about this young man that James thought might attract Elise’s less-than-favorable attentions. “Nothing new is wrong. Where is she?” Elise asked.
Seth gestured with the hammer. “By the lake. I’ll show you.”
“Don’t let me interrupt you.” She revved the engine and swung around the cottage. Nashriel’s eyes all but burned a hole in the back of her shirt as she wound down the path to the lake.
The pack stopped working as Elise cut through them, watching her passage with apprehension clear on their faces. She didn’t give them long to look. She accelerated, leaving the silence behind her.
Rylie stood on the grassy shore facing the waterfall, relaxing in the mist with her head tipped back and her eyes closed. It was strangely calm in the field between the lake and the back side of the cabins.
Elise stopped at the bottom of the path and dismounted from the motorcycle.
“I need a favor, Rylie,” she said. “The deputy—”
“Can you help me with this?” Rylie interrupted, turning to face Elise.
She wasn’t just standing around after all. She had been momentarily resting, leaning on the handles of a post hole digger. Once Elise knew to look, she saw the supplies, too. Rylie had a stack of fence posts hidden behind the bushes. There were pegs in the earth with string stretched between them, marking where she planned to build. She had already built half of a split-rail fence around the back side of the sanctuary.
Elise hadn’t pegged Rylie, with her coltish legs and delicate bones, as someone that would get her hands dirty. But she had worked up as much of a sweat as Nashriel and Seth. Her shirt stuck to her back, and the knees of her baggy jeans were muddy. Rylie didn’t even have an awning to protect herself from the rain.
“Sure, I’ll help,” Elise said, shrugging off her jacket and taking the post hole digger.
“I used to work at my aunt’s ranch, when she still had one,” Rylie explained as she hefted a post over her shoulder, carrying it back to the hole Elise began to dig. “We kept a few hundred heads of cattle. Cows are cleverer than you’d think—they can be real escape artists. There were always fences to fix. You’d think I’d be used to how boring it is by now, but it’s still as miserable as it’s always been.”
“Why doesn’t your aunt have a ranch now?”
Elise asked.
“We started using it as a werewolf sanctuary, and the Union raided us. She’s living in the city with her girlfriend now.” Rylie jammed the post into the hole and grabbed a shovel. “It’s probably better for a zombie to avoid hard work anyway. She’d break herself.”
Rylie scooped soil into the hole around the post.
“Zombie?” Elise asked.
“Diversity, thy name is my family,” Rylie said.
“I assume you’re counting Nashriel among your family.”
“Call him Nash. ‘Nashriel’ is too weird,” she said. “And yeah. He’s my…” She hesitated. “Actually, I don’t know what to call him. But he’s definitely pack.”
“Family,” Elise said. Rylie gave her a confused look. “You said ‘pack.’ I think you mean family.”
“Same thing,” Rylie said. “You know what’s nice about pack? We all work together. We’ve got each other’s backs. We pull in the same direction.”
“Are you trying to tell me something?”
Rylie shrugged. Laughed. “Nothing, really. Just babbling. I am so stupidly bored of building this fence.”
Elise placed the next post, and then they set the joining rails together.
“What were you going to say about the deputy?” Rylie asked as Elise started to dig the next hole.
“He’s in danger. I need somewhere to hide him. Since you know the area, I thought you might have suggestions.”
“Bring him here,” she said.
Elise lifted an eyebrow. “Aren’t you worried about danger following him here?”
“Not really. You saw the pentacles we have on our cottages, right? We’re warded against unwelcome people sneaking in.”
“Like I did?” Elise asked.
“We carried you into the sanctuary, past the barriers, on your first visit,” Rylie said. “Otherwise, you never would have gotten in.”
“Pretty powerful wards.”
“We have powerful friends,” Rylie agreed.
