by Michele Hauf
Miles away the pack sensed that too. They milled around sniffing, wondering; she could feel them as clearly as if they stood inches away.
Suddenly desperate to quiet the increasingly agitated wolves, she grabbed Marc’s hand and wiped his finger across her pants. The vampire didn’t question her strange move. He just sat and watched. When the blood that had stained his hand was instead streaked across the leg of her pants, she closed her eyes and breathed again.
The wolves snuffled...then slowly they quieted.
She opened her eyes and found herself staring directly into the vampire’s.
“You’re important,” he said.
She widened her eyes. “Isn’t everyone?”
He flipped his hand so he gripped her wrist. “No, the pack heard you. Whatever you were thinking or feeling...they heard you.”
She jerked her arm free. “Wives’ tale. Wolves are individuals, not bees or humans. There is no hive mind.”
“Don’t lie to me. It’s a waste of time and only tells me I can’t trust you. Sure, wolves are individuals, if they choose to be, but the closer you are to the pack, the more important you are in their survival, the more keyed in they are to your hurts, wants, desires....”
The damned whisper again. Her skin tingled.
She squared her shoulders. “The pack senses things. It’s part of what keeps us strong.” And they watched her. She didn’t know why, but they had since her father had first delivered her to them.
Marc jerked his head back toward the dead were. “It didn’t help him.”
CeCe swallowed. He was right. If anyone in the pack had sensed Russell was in trouble, it hadn’t been in time to help the young wolf. She hadn’t sensed he was in trouble. She had failed him.
“My guess? He wasn’t important, not like you.”
Her gaze snapped back to the vampire. The truth was complicated and none of the vampire’s business.
She stood. “You can leave.” She knew she should hold him, keep him here to answer to Karl, but suddenly she wanted him to leave and take the strange way he made her feel, made her question things, with him.
Also standing, he cocked a brow. “I’ve always been aware of my ability to leave. Should I thank you for verbalizing it?”
She ground her teeth together. “I can take it from here. I’ll call the pack.”
He laughed. “Didn’t we cover that earlier?”
“The pack has to be told.”
He waved a hand. “Of course, as does the...do the vampires. A werewolf was killed, possibly a human, and according to you, by me.” He grabbed the cuff of his shirt and tugged it lower, over his wrist. “The vampires will definitely want to hear of this, but―” he scratched at a spot that covered the stitching on his sleeve “―there’s no reason to tell them now. Why not wait? Neither the human nor this werewolf is getting any deader.”
She growled at the callous remark.
His eyes flickered, but he didn’t apologize. Instead, he stepped closer. There were lines around his eyes she hadn’t noticed earlier. They made him look tired, more human and less monster. They also for some reason, for just for a moment, made her forget that she couldn’t trust him.
“If you didn’t kill Porter or this werewolf—”
“Russell. His name was Russell.” Suddenly it was important he acknowledge that, that they both acknowledge Russell as a person, not a body, a thing to be coldly examined and discussed.
He paused, then nodded. “Russell. And I didn’t kill them either, then someone else did. Chances are, another werewolf―” At her growl, he added, “Or vampire. If you call your pack here, there will be too many bodies, too many voices. The truth will get lost. Is that what you want? The pack will arrive. The vampires will arrive and where will we be?”
“In the middle of a war.” A war. Started by one simple, easy assignment—steal back some treasure, from a human, a drunken human too stupid to keep news of his discovery to himself. It shouldn’t have ended like this, and maybe it wouldn’t have if she’d called Karl when they first discovered that the treasure wasn’t at Porter’s house. At that point everything was still okay; Porter and Russell were still alive.
And despite the fact that she didn’t want to start a war any more than the vampire claimed he did, she couldn’t dig the hole any deeper. She had to call Karl and the pack.
However, the vampire didn’t need to know that.
She turned back. “Agreed.”
“You won’t tell the pack, or any other werewolf?”
“I said I agree. How about you?” Her voice held steady. She was lying to a vampire. That hardly counted.
“This is our secret. To assure it, we hide the body together.”
A breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding escaped her lips. She’d been afraid he would insist on taking Russell with him. She would need to know where the werewolf was so she could bring Karl back to him.
Marc’s next comment, however, sliced through her relief.
“And we work together.”
“Together?”
“Together. You don’t trust me and to be honest, I don’t trust you. The only way to be sure the other isn’t behind this, or working with whoever is, is to work together. Share information.”
Share the treasure—or steal it from her when she found it. She realized now that was his plan, keep her from calling in the pack so he would only have to deal with her.
He didn’t see her as a threat.
Some piece of her wanted to prove him wrong.
She dropped her gaze to the ground, but Karl would never agree to her working with a vampire, not even as a spy.
The sound of Marc’s laugh brought her head back up. “Are you honestly trying to make me believe you were going to let me walk away from here? Not follow me? Not try to listen in on every conversation I have? Isn’t it better we just share the information as we get it? We do both want the same thing, right? To find out who killed the human and your pack mate?”
“And the treasure. Don’t deny you want that too.” She couldn’t let it lie, couldn’t let him believe she was that stupid.
He slipped forward, fast and silent as the wind, so his chest was inches from hers and his breath stirred her hair. She didn’t step back; she didn’t let herself.
“Perhaps. It is why we both came here, but some things are more important than treasure. Don’t you agree?” He looked down at her. She couldn’t look up, couldn’t meet his gaze. Her body tingled. She wanted to believe it was with the excitement of lying to him, playing him, but she couldn’t lie to herself, not that thoroughly.
“If you don’t agree, I’ll have no choice. I won’t be able to let you out of my sight. Not until I know without a doubt that you or one of your pack didn’t set all this up to frame me.”
She stared at a button on his shirt. It was shell, expensive, and nothing like anything a werewolf would put on his body.
But he was right. She wouldn’t let him walk away. She couldn’t. And what good would following him do, when he knew she was watching him? Better to pretend to work together, to pretend to share. If she could get his trust, he would tell her more. Then she could sneak away and call Karl, tell him everything.
With the pack here, she’d be stronger, better able to resist whatever magic the vampire cast around her. Able to see it as false. And once she delivered him to Karl, the pack would accept her too, see her loyalty.
Russell would still be dead, but after she found the treasure, she’d have everything she came here to get...a mate, a place, a family. Russell would have appreciated that. It’s what he had wanted too.
Chapter 7
Marc knew CeCe didn’t trust him; he also suspected that the first chance she got, she would contact the pack unless he could think of a way to sto
p her, and unfortunately, he had gone without sleep for four days. As he aged, he could tolerate more and more time in the day, but he had pushed himself too far already. Before the sun set, he would be out, lost in the cursed vampire death, and the werewolf would be free to do whatever she chose.
He slipped his hands under the dead werewolf’s shoulders. Then, while he waited for CeCe to grab hold of the wolf’s feet, he glanced at the sky.
The sun was high and hot. He could feel it draining his resources. He didn’t know how much longer he could last. He needed a plan.
“Where are we headed?” she asked from six feet away...the length of the dead wolf’s body.
Marc could easily have handled the other male’s weight on his own, but CeCe was easier to keep an eye on when she was busy carrying her half of the burden.
“Somewhere no one will find him.”
“You’re familiar with the area?”
The question was innocent, or appeared to be, but Marc knew better.
“No. I’m a vampire.” He paused and sniffed the night air. “And the town’s name says it all.”
“A cave? We’re looking for a cave?” CeCe adjusted her grip on the werewolf’s feet and glanced around the dark woods.
“You don’t like caves?” Marc guessed. Caves were cool, dark and closed in. The perfect place for vampires hiding from both daylight and would-be slayers.
She shrugged, but Marc could feel her unease.
“Caves are underground, cold, with no light. Who could like that? Besides bats and—”
“Vampires,” Marc murmured, and sniffed again. The scent of the underground was closer. He jerked his head to the right. “A few more feet. Watch your step.”
He moved another ten feet, then motioned for CeCe to lower her half of the dead werewolf to the ground. She followed his instructions, then stood back, her hands grabbing her upper arms. “I feel a breeze. It’s cold,” she said.
Marc walked a few more feet, then knelt. The scent of the underground was strong. Two feet in front of him was an opening in the ground. He could tell by the chill and scent of the air he’d found what he’d been searching for, a cave.
Without speaking, he returned to where CeCe stood, slung the dead werewolf’s body over his shoulder, and walked back to the opening. Then he dropped the body. The dead wolf fell through the partially obscured opening and into the cave.
He waited for the body to hit.
“What—” CeCe leaped forward. Marc slung out his arm, stopping her from falling through the opening too. Her weight pressed against his arm. He shoved her backward, causing her to fall onto the ground.
She sprang to her feet, her hair bristling and her eyes glowing. “You threw him into a hole. How deep is it? How will I—?”
“Get the pack to him?” As Marc had suspected, despite what she had said, she had every intention of calling the pack into their investigation. She was making it nearly impossible for him to trust her. Unknowingly, she was sealing her own coffin with her actions.
Not wanting to reveal his thoughts, he shook his head. “Surely wolves aren’t that afraid of the dark.”
Ignoring him, she moved forward. Inches from the opening, she stopped and fell to her knees.
Before the werewolf Russell’s body had fallen through, vines had covered the cave’s opening. Now the entrance was glaringly obvious.
Obvious enough that he knew that any hiker who wandered this direction would find it. Ignoring the female werewolf, who seemed intent on tumbling into the cave after her dead pack mate, he began gathering vines and fallen limbs.
As he approached, CeCe looked up. “What are you doing?”
Marc dropped his load and began positioning branches and vines across the entrance. “The idea was to hide the body. As I told you before, I’m a vampire, not a magician. Once I leave, any ability I have to keep people from seeing something leaves with me. Your friend’s weight broke through what covering there was. I am simply replacing it.”
He dropped a limb onto the hole in front of her, then stared, telling her without words to move. After a few tense moments, she did. He knelt in her place and fluffed the greenery they had crushed while milling around the opening.
Satisfied the cave was as hidden as it could be, he turned to face her.
“He’s gone now,” she murmured. Worry was clear on her face.
“Not gone, hidden. There is a difference.”
“I felt inside and dropped a rock. The hole is deep. We...”
“Once we learn who is behind this, who killed him, you can retrieve the body. The floor of the cave isn’t that deep, maybe thirty feet. Surely even a wolf in human form and outfitted with ropes can rappel that far.”
He dropped the remaining vines that he had gathered and strode into the woods. Her obsession with the pack was frustrating. Such blind loyalty is what made the war possible. Vampires had trusted vampires; werewolves had trusted werewolves. And neither had allowed themselves to see any truth or fairness in the other. If anyone had been thinking for themselves, analyzing all the information, the war could have been settled with a simple meeting between the two groups.
But no one had, not even Marc.
And that was the fact he had to face. Sixty years ago, he had made a bad choice, trusted when he should have questioned. He wouldn’t do that again, and he wouldn’t let the female werewolf do it either.
Truth was all that mattered, was the only thing in the end that could save any of them from the mistakes they had made before.
And Marc was willing to do anything, risk anything to make sure that this time, the truth was what everyone saw.
* * *
As the vampire strode away, CeCe stared at the hole he had covered. She poked the largest of the branches he had dropped over the opening with her foot and considered her options.
Thirty feet. Wolves leaped, but they didn’t climb, and thirty feet was well past even Karl’s vertical leaping ability.
She or another wolf might survive jumping into the cave, but they wouldn’t be getting back out, not without the climbing gear Marc had mentioned.
Which meant Russell’s body was lost to her, at least for a while.
She had also, thanks to the vampire, lost her phone. She could find it easy enough, but not now. Retrieving it would have to wait until later today, after she lost the vampire and placed her call to Karl using the phone in her hotel room.
And that, despite what she had told the vampire, was her first move: return to her room and call her pack. Begin to make right the wrong she had done.
Ready to put on her cooperative face and follow the vampire, she turned.
But Marc had returned and now stood only inches away, a dark expression on his face.
“You can’t do it. It’s too much for me to expect that you can.” He sighed after he spoke, as if accepting something of great personal upset.
Prickles of unease wove up her spine. She took a step back, only to be reminded by the crackle of breaking wood that the cave entrance lay less than a foot behind her.
Marc blew air out of his mouth. He looked tired. She realized then the reason for his hat and sunglasses. Not the same as her reasons for choosing skin-covering clothing, not sun allergies.
The sun was wearing on him, draining him.
Calling the pack would be no problem at all, not with Marc weakened like this. Perhaps he would even pass out. Perhaps that part of vampire lore was true.
And if Karl and the pack traveled fast enough, they could be in Cave Vista before nightfall tonight, before Marc awoke. All CeCe would have to do is follow the vampire and see where he slept. Then taking Marc, questioning him and finding the treasure would be no problem at all.
Triumph shot through her.
Marc grabbed her by the arm.
“I would like to trust you, but that would just be stupid of me, wouldn’t it?”
She jerked backward. Her foot plunged through the vines and she sank to her thigh through the cave entrance’s makeshift covering.
She realized then what he planned to do with her. How he would stop her from getting to the pack. “No.” She wouldn’t be dropped into that hole.
She couldn’t be.
* * *
Marc’s fingers dug into CeCe’s arm as her body slipped and threatened to fall into the cave where her dead pack mate now lay.
He could feel her fear and see her panic.
Her eyes slanted and her pupils turned to slits. She was shifting. She yelled again. This one turned to a bark.
Minutes, seconds, he had no idea how much time he had.
His gaze dropped to the ground, where her leg had already descended into the cave’s entrance.
The quickest, simplest solution to his problem was obvious.
He loosened his hold and lifted his foot to break more of the covering he had just added.
“No.” Panic shone from her eyes.
Thirty feet. She was a werewolf; she’d be fine. He knew this, but still...fear emanated from her.
He stared into her wild, now golden eyes, seconds counting down, neither of them moving. Her fingers wrapped around his forearm, grasping, asking without words for him to help her, not to let her fall.
He cursed, then jerked and pulled her free.
She lay on the ground, breath heaving from her chest, her hair and eyes feral.
He cursed again, knew his weakness was a mistake, that he should rectify it while he still could, shove her into that hole, but he couldn’t.
Wild and beautiful, trapping her would have killed some part of her, stolen something he feared could never be replaced.
Instead, he reached into his back pocket and pulled out the handcuffs he’d found at Porter’s. He’d brought them with him today and was glad of it. With the wire of pure silver hidden beneath their hard steel exterior, they would stop her from shifting.
