by Michele Hauf
Marc didn’t look down. He didn’t have to; the weight told him the object was metal. The smell told him it was covered in the werewolf Russell’s blood.
Russell’s murder weapon, and Marc guessed the legendary stake the werewolves’ feared.
The iron chain pressed against his tongue. The bitter taste of metal and garlic made him gag. But most importantly the chain kept him from speaking...from defending himself in any way. Not that anything he said would have changed the alpha’s plans, whatever they were.
There was desperation in the werewolf’s eyes.
He needed Marc to be guilty.
To save face with the pack? To believe in his own right to be leader?
Whatever the reason, Marc had no doubt that the alpha wasn’t here searching for the truth.
The alpha pulled on a leather glove and crouched beside him. He picked up the stake and stood it on its end, so the pointed tip was balanced over Marc’s heart. Still Marc didn’t look, not at the stake or the werewolf. Unwilling to give the wolf the satisfaction of his anger, he stared at the ceiling with bored insolence.
“This stake isn’t new. It’s been around since before the war. Some say it caused the war. Did you know that, vampire? The vampires wanted it for a long time. Then they stole it and hid it away.”
The alpha looked up, at one of the other wolves. “The mallet.” He held out his hand and an ancient wooden mallet appeared in his grip.
Still wearing the glove, the alpha edged the tip of the stake inside Marc’s shirt, onto his bare skin. The metal seemed to sizzle.
The werewolf cocked a brow. “Do you hear that? Like Pop Rocks. It’s the magic inside the stake, asking to be fed. Do you know what it likes to eat, vampire?”
He didn’t wait for Marc’s reply. He jerked his head and addressed one of his wolves. “The recorder.”
One of the males pulled a small digital recorder from his pocket. He sat it on the floor next to Marc’s head.
“Admit your guilt, vampire, and I won’t have to feed the stake.”
Marc snarled. It came out muffled and weak. He bit down on the chain, thinking of what he would do to the alpha if released. He could feel his eyes narrowing and his body hardening, could feel the most lost part of his soul rising up.
He had never hungered for blood as he did right then...werewolf blood.
The door to the room slammed open. Light streamed into the space, hitting Marc in the face.
He blinked, the light, the pain of it, knocking him out of his state like a bucket of water in the face.
He turned his head to see what new hell had joined them.
Framed in the doorway, backlit like an angel in some church window, was CeCe.
* * *
The door smashed into the wall. It had been slightly ajar, alerting CeCe that something was amiss. She had charged in without thinking, but now as the musky smell of anger fed by testosterone rolled over her, she paused.
The room was cast in shadows. Someone had removed a few of the boards that had covered the window. They lay splintered on the floor.
Her gaze dashed past them, searched for Marc. She found him too soon, not dead, not impaled by some vampire hunter, but in a situation almost as bad.
He lay on the floor wrapped head to toe in chains. The light streaming through the open door landed on his face. His eyes were nothing but slits and his brows bulged. He looked like the monster that had attacked her in the alley, but he wasn’t.
He was Marc.
Karl crouched beside him with the silver stake CeCe had pulled from Russell’s chest poised, ready to thrust into Marc’s.
Her heart lurched.
“Stop.” She stepped into the room, crunching one of the boards under her foot and shutting the door enough to block some of the sun streaming into the room.
She’d come to find Marc, to talk about what had happened and to, hopefully, retrieve Karl’s chain. She hadn’t decided what she was going to do with the chain when she found it, but she couldn’t risk Marc being found with it.
But apparently he had.
The wolves were here...attacking Marc... Her gaze shifted to the weapon in Karl’s hand...the stake.
It had been hidden in her room, inside her mattress. How did Karl get it?
Marc’s attention was on her, his eyes distant and unreadable.
She shifted her gaze to Karl. What she saw in his eyes caused the hairs on the back of her neck to raise. He wasn’t bluffing. He held the stake and he meant to use it.
She froze, held as still as a rabbit hiding in the snow. One twitch and the predator would be on her. Her only choice was to stay calm, pretend calm.
“I thought you were gone,” she said.
“We left the motel for a while.” Karl ran his thumb over the mallet’s handle, caressed it.
“I...” The stake glinted at her...winked...as if speaking to her, guiding her. Her heart thumped. “I went to my room and saw the stake was gone. I thought perhaps the vampire had taken it. It appears I was right. How did you find out?” She knew Marc hadn’t taken the stake, knew Karl had for some reason broken into her room while she was gone and taken it instead, but now was not the time to challenge him. Better to feign ignorance.
“Did you? When was this?” Karl’s thumb moved back and forth, rhythmic, lulling...terrifying.
“Just now.” Ten minutes ago. It was the time it had taken her to walk from her hotel to Marc’s. She had spent some time before that asking around the diner, searching for any sign someone other than Marc had taken Karl’s chain. Left with no other option, she’d gone back to her room, showered and built up her courage to face the vampire again.
“And where were you before?”
It was a simple question, but like the rabbit, CeCe smelled a trap. She glanced around, noticed one of Karl’s three companions was missing. “Where’s Neil?” she asked.
Karl’s lips pressed into a thin pale line. A vein throbbed at his neck. He looked down at Marc. “Perhaps we should ask the vampire.”
“The—?” Her attention shot around the room. The wolves, she realized, were all too still, too quiet. Something had happened. “Where’s Neil?” she repeated.
Karl shifted his grip on the mallet, so his fingers wrapped around its head. “He’s in the truck.”
The truck. A bit of air left her lungs. Not what she had thought.
Karl moved the stake from Marc’s chest to his neck, wedged it against his throat. “Dead, drained, by a vampire.”
A thick, dark line of Marc’s blood swelled onto the silver.
CeCe stared at it and swallowed. “When? When did you see him last?”
Intent on pressing the stake harder against Marc’s throat, the alpha didn’t answer.
“When did you see Neil last?” she repeated. Her voice was harsh, rough with emotion.
Karl looked up at her, his brows lowered. The other wolves moved but with no real purpose, just a physical expression of the alpha’s annoyance and their awareness of it.
But CeCe didn’t back down. She waited.
Finally, Karl flicked a hand toward one of the others—Robert, one of the wolves who predated CeCe’s acceptance into the pack. The golden-haired wolf glanced at his watch. “Been four hours now since we saw him alive, an hour and a half since we found him dead.”
“Marc didn’t do it.”
He couldn’t have. He’d been with her during that time.
“Marc?” The stake shifted again, lifted as Karl rolled back onto his heels to stare at CeCe. “You know the vampire’s name? Are you close?”
“No. Of course not.” She didn’t hesitate in her answer. She couldn’t afford to. Marc couldn’t afford for her to.
Karl narrowed his eyes to study her. “Where’s my chain,
CeCe?”
Even knowing that the chain was missing, she moved her hand to her chest. Her mind whirred. Marc had it, she knew that now, had really known it all along, which meant odds were good the wolves would discover it eventually.
She hung her head. “I lied. I didn’t come here looking for the stake. I came looking for the chain. I took it off while I showered. When I came out, it was missing, but I recognized the scent in my room.”
“The vampire?”
She nodded.
“When was this?”
She bit the inside of her cheek. “Ten minutes ago. It’s just the chain I noticed was missing, not the stake.”
“So, you believe he’s a thief, but not a murderer. Interesting.” Karl moved the stake up and down, causing it to bob over Marc’s neck like a wobbly guillotine.
“But I’m right, aren’t I? He is a thief—he had the stake.” A push to see if Karl would admit he had taken it from her room. She wondered what else he and the others had been doing since leaving her.
“It’s here.”
Not an answer, not to the question she had asked. A new anxiety clawed at CeCe.
Marc lay stiff and unmoving, incapable of doing anything else, but she felt energy emanating from him, knew he wanted to say something, tell her something.
“And my chain?” She walked farther into the room, hoping it would distract Karl from what he was doing, or was about to do.
The other wolves blocked her. She walked up to them with confidence, as if she had every expectation that they would step out of her path.
Karl rose. Another knot of tension loosened, allowed her to breathe a bit more freely.
“Have you looked around? Searched for clues?” she asked.
“Clues? We don’t need clues. We have a werewolf drained of blood, two holes in his neck, and we have a vampire. That, plus the confession the vampire was about to give us is all we need.”
“Confession?” She noticed a box then, the size of an MP3 player, lying on the floor next to Marc’s head.
Karl was being thorough, covering his bases to satisfy both the pack and any vampires who questioned his decision to kill Marc.
“He hasn’t given it to you yet, and he won’t.” She knew Marc would never admit to doing something he hadn’t done, not even to save his own life.
“You don’t know that.” Karl turned the stake so it shone in the light. Fresh blood stained the tip.
“He won’t.”
“Then there’s no reason to wait.” Karl moved back toward Marc.
CeCe grabbed him by the arm. “What’s wrong with you? You aren’t thinking.”
He turned on her. “There’s nothing wrong with me. I’m not the one defending a vampire.”
“So, you kill him with no evidence, then what? What about the others? Do you expect them to take your word of his guilt?”
“I’m the alpha.” His attention shot to the other wolves. All lifted their chins, agreeing.
“Not the pack.” She knew the pack would follow him. He was all they had; the string that held them together.
“The other vampires,” she added.
“They don’t need to know. He disappears. I’m sure vampires have disappeared before. No one will know. No one will care.”
No one will care. It wasn’t true. CeCe would care, surely someone else would too. The words cut her; she didn’t look at Marc to see if they hurt him too.
Her gaze dropped to the stake in Karl’s hand. The incised figure eight was toward her.
“Are you so sure?” she asked.
“Vampires aren’t—”
She shook her head, cutting off Karl’s lecture. She pointed to the symbol. “When I first saw this I thought it meant vampire. Now I know it does. Look at his arm.” She pointed at Marc.
The wolves turned, but none moved to touch the vampire. “He’s chained,” Karl replied, as if that nullified her claim.
Frustrated, she stepped closer. “Then trust me. He has that mark, without the break.” She pointed to the stake. “On his arm. I don’t know what it means, but it means something. It means he’s important to someone.”
Her. Marc was important to her.
Anger flashed in Karl’s eyes. “You don’t know that.” But she could see her claim had struck. The alpha’s life was protecting the pack. If she was right and the vampires did come forward to enact revenge for Marc’s death, he’d be putting each and every wolf at risk.
Karl stared at her for a second, his expression unreadable, then he jerked his head toward Marc. The other wolves trotted to the vampire and pried the chains apart. Then with Karl standing over them, they worked his sleeve up, far enough that the lower half of Marc’s tattoo was fully visible.
Karl nodded, giving them permission to step back, and returned his attention to CeCe. “He has a tattoo. The same as on the stake. It doesn’t mean the vampires have a connection among them. It doesn’t mean this one matters.”
But he did. More than CeCe had imagined anyone could. “He’s part of something. I don’t know what, but he is.” She put as much certainty into the words as she could.
“It’s why he’s here,” she muttered, working things out for herself, but aloud.
“Why?”
Lost in her own thoughts, CeCe looked up. “He was sent here, like me. Why else would he have come? Which means the vampires have to have some kind organization, some kind of leadership.”
“Meaningless,” Karl replied. “He saw something on the news, like we did, jumped at the chance to steal our treasure. Vampires are like that.”
She frowned, frustrated. “Two vampires? He wasn’t the only one here. And now...with Neil...” She looked up. “There are more. Who knows how many?”
“Now you want me to free this one because others are here too? That’s an argument to eliminate what we can.” His gaze went back to Marc.
She shook her head. “Not until we know what is going on—how many vampires are here, what they know, how this vampire―” she avoided using Marc’s name “―fits into all of it. Killing him could restart the war. You know that. You don’t want that.”
“You still sound awfully sure.” Karl’s gaze was assessing.
She didn’t waver. “I am.” Karl was tough and at times, yes, abusive, but he loved his pack. She couldn’t imagine him doing anything that would put them at risk—to do so would tear him up inside.
“So, you’re suggesting what? We let him go? Undo his chains, dust him off and send him on his way?”
“No.” She knew the wolves would never agree to that. “We—”
A wolf howl sounded from Karl’s pocket. With a frown, he pulled his phone free. The conversation was one-sided and brief.
“How many?”
“Are you sure?” Karl walked to where Marc lay and stared down at him. He nudged the vampire in the side. Marc’s upper lip rose. His eyes glowed with hatred.
CeCe could feel it, knew the other wolves could too. She didn’t know what she expected from Marc. He had been chained and prodded with a stake. But the snarl felt all encompassing, delivered to every wolf in the room.
She might trust Marc, might even manage to save him, but it didn’t mean he would trust her in return, not after hearing her conversation with the alpha.
“Ten minutes.” Karl shoved his phone in his pocket and motioned to the others. Without questioning, they moved toward the door. After they had exited, he walked back to where she stood unsure and anxious. “Prove I should trust you. Stay here. Watch him. I’ll call you if I need you to do anything.” He dropped the stake onto the bed and held out the glove he’d been wearing. When she didn’t take it, he flapped the leather.
She let him drop it onto her palm, curled her fingers around it, felt it bunch in her palm. “What
is happening?” And what might he need her to do? She was afraid to ask, afraid to hear the answer.
“Nothing. I’ll call you.” His expression told her not to ask questions.
Knowing she’d pushed him too far already, she bit back her response.
He turned as if to leave, then looked back. “What you were looking for, what you came here to retrieve, is over there.”
She glanced to the side and saw Karl’s chain lying in a pile in the corner of the room. It was surrounded by broken pottery, what had obviously once been a lamp.
She made her way through the debris, pottery crunching under her feet. Then she did as she knew was expected―she picked up the chain.
It was heavy and warm, although the room wasn’t. She moved her hands up and down as if testing its weight against her palms, then she turned, her hands raising to slip it over her head, but Karl had already left. The door to the room was closed, and she was alone...with Marc.
She lowered her arms, let the chain swing from one hand. Then she threw it onto the bed. It landed next to the stake.
Shaking inside, she walked around the mattress and stared down at Marc. His eyes met hers. She couldn’t see what he was thinking, couldn’t even guess.
Prove I should trust you. Karl’s words burned through her mind.
Prove it by leaving Marc as he was, by making sure he didn’t escape, that he was still here when the pack returned, waiting for their justice.
“He’ll kill you,” she murmured. The words were soft, but she knew Marc had heard.
He closed his eyes as if he didn’t care.
But he had to. He had to want to live.
Almost as much as CeCe wanted him to, but she wanted the pack, too. And saving Marc would cost her that, would cost her the only thing any werewolf really valued, the only thing that kept them sane.
Physically, she could save Marc, but could she really? Could she give up everything she was and ever planned on being?
To save a vampire?
The thought was beyond ludicrous.
