Death Mask (Wraith's Rebellion Book 3)

by Aya DeAniege

  “Her grandmother was a lower wolf, considered a dog by werewolves, but you might recognize the rank as a type of omega. Her only desire was to serve. Didn’t matter who, didn’t matter how, just to serve.”

  “Bitches take on omegas?” Helen asked.

  “There are more submissive wolves than there are leaders, that’s simply the way it is,” I said. “By the time they’re adults, the wolves have sorted things out. Short of a late bloomer, there are no fights over who should lead. Those who are dominant but don’t form a pack end up as loners and can challenge an alpha for his or her wolves, but it tends to end badly.”

  Helen nodded. “Daisy’s grandmother served a Bitch, who may have wanted Daisy as her successor, then?”

  Daisy paused. The wolf just sat down on the sidewalk and studied her paws.

  Did she just break our wolf?

  After a long moment of silence, Daisy woofed and looked up at Helen, who pulled out her phone and sighed.

  “Peter keeps texting me. Wants to know if we’re okay.”

  Daisy made several sounds. The sounds made Helen frown.

  “Oh, that’s probably her asking who Peter is,” I said.

  “Peter’s my brother,” Helen said as if Daisy should have known.

  Daisy cocked her head to the side and made a questioning sound.

  “You have my family under guard,” Helen protested as Daisy continued.

  “Hold on, hold on!” I said, raising my voice as the two of them attempted to communicate over one another. “Stop that. Daisy, Helen has two brothers. Helen, Daisy probably thinks you have one brother, the other one. If Peter were under guard, you wouldn’t be receiving texts from him. Wolves bite humans who don’t listen.”

  Helen said, “Oh,” as Daisy’s head snapped towards me and she seemed to glare.

  Glare hard like the time I had upset her. I had seen that look before. But back then, a moment after giving me that look, she had lunged right for my crotch.

  Making a little sound that was my best imitation of a pup submitting, I pulled my phone out and called the Den.

  “Hello?”

  “Hi, it’s me. She’s giving me a look.”

  “What kind of look?”

  “The eat my balls and hit me in the face with my own dick look.”

  “That’s rather specific... oh, oh yeah, I remember that look now. What’s the problem?”

  “I believe she wants me to tell you that Helen has two brothers, not one. The second one is named Peter. Troy can give you all the details.”

  “Uh, he’s a little busy at the moment.”

  “To offset?” I asked with an acidic tone.

  “No, on a voluntary basis.”

  “Well, unbusy him,” I demanded. “Because I’m not having my balls eaten and my face beaten with my cock because you decided mounting a willing body might be fun.”

  I ended the call and put the phone back in my pocket before I turned and gave Helen a glare that dared her to ask about the violence. She watched me for a moment, then looked at Daisy.

  “You just happen to surround yourself with gay wolves?”

  Daisy made several sounds. I sighed and rubbed my face.

  “Her boys vary like any wolf,” I said. “But she’s subject to the natural laws like any wolf. If she thinks she’s nearing a heat, she’ll request that the heterosexual wolves leave. It’s not that she surrounds herself with them, just that the homosexual and bisexual ones feel more comfortable around her.”

  “Other alphas will force them to do things, you mean?” Helen asked.

  “It’s coded in an alpha to breed his strongest members. Sexuality doesn’t change how dominant or strong you are, just whose genitals you prefer.”

  “So, she’s like Lucrecia, but doesn’t hate males?” Helen asked.

  “I suppose, yes.”

  “And, have you helped with the heat before?” Helen asked.

  “Heat only happens while she’s a wolf. But she does get pretty horny as a human too.”

  Please don’t press, please don’t press.

  I had known Daisy for some time, and yes, I had serviced her. I had also been serviced by her. There had been times where we had been secluded and what we had done was a page or hundred out of vampire erotica. Sex all over the place. But there was no way that I was telling Helen that.

  “You’re such a dirty old man,” Helen said.

  I looked around us, spotting a little park. With a little tug on the leash, Daisy headed towards the grass. It wasn’t difficult to convince a wolf to go to grass instead of concrete, even when there was a job to do.

  Once within the bounds of the park, I unhooked Daisy from the collar and let her go. She went immediately sniffing around all the things as a dog might have. To an outside observer, she was just a dog exploring while her owners sat on a park bench.

  In reality, she was giving us space while getting a good nose full of scent. Instead of running around, it would give her some time to ponder what she was smelling.

  Sitting on the bench beside Helen, I glanced at her.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  She shrugged, her eyes on Daisy. In all the time I had known her, I had never seen such weariness in her features.

  “Helen, please,” I said. “We talked about shutting me out.”

  “It’s just. I feel like the witches have set us up. They don’t do that whole thing that you do, but it’s like they set it all up,” Helen said, sounding hollow.

  “Is this about the plucky sidekick being killed?” I asked. “Because at this point Balor, Troy, and Daisy are the plucky sidekicks.”

  “That doesn’t make it better,” she said.

  “I’ve also cleared my system,” I said, draping an arm around her shoulders to pull her close and kiss her temple. “My powers are working. We just need the element of surprise.”

  “Death is alive,” Helen said.

  I hesitated, my lips pressed against her temple again. Frowning, I pulled away slightly and looked at her as she looked back at me woefully.

  Sasha had done me a huge favour, giving me a command that no being could ride me the way Death rode Helen. Neither of us could be possessed, for lack of a better word. But that command had been to Helen and myself.

  The Great Maker couldn’t banish Death from riding another vampire. She’d have to do so individually, and that’d simply take too long.

  Our plucky sidekicks are in danger.

  “Because who else could have released my name and Troy’s name?” Helen asked. “The police were told you made a vampire but not who was made. That’s why you were erasing us.”

  A cold washed over me. Then I felt like a fool because that hadn’t occurred to me before. When I had first heard the news, I had assumed Margaret had done it. I hadn’t looked any further into the matter, because that was Bob, the Elder Council’s, mess to clean up. What mattered was getting us out of harm’s way.

  We couldn’t turn ourselves in without revealing who the new vampires were, which would put them at risk.

  I would have rather been locked in a human cell in solitary confinement for a hundred years, rather than risk Helen. Balor would have said the same.

  “Right, just because you eat him, doesn’t mean he’s dead,” I muttered. “How do we kill a being that can body hop?”

  “Oh, well, everyone knows you take him out to the woods and kill him, then yourself. Except he’d probably body hop into an animal or insect and escape anyway.”

  “Really?”

  “No!” Helen shouted at me, making me wince at the volume as it throbbed through my head. “I am so young, so much younger than you are. Every night I get up is completely beyond anything I’ve ever done or experienced before. I don’t know what to do. It’s taking all I am to remain calm enough to not run screaming for the hills.”

  Stable ground, she needs stable ground.

  It didn’t matter the race, without stable ground to retreat to and collect oneself, bits
slowly fell away. That instability and moodiness I had sensed in Helen hadn’t been her having a problem with me. She was simply feeling vulnerable and fragile because I kept pushing her to do new and different things.

  “What’s a regular night for you?” I asked. “Before all this, before vampires and interviewers? Just, what would you be doing tonight, if not for this?”

  “I don’t know, why does that matter?”

  “I’m just wondering what your comfort zone is like,” I said. “I mean, you’ve lost all your things, you’ve moved in with me and even the home you’ve known for the past week has been ripped apart. So, I guess I’m trying to figure out how to make someplace home for you. As humans seem to say, where is your heart?”

  “Oh,” she said, relaxing against me.

  I hadn’t even realized that she had been tense. When was the last time she had relaxed?

  “I don’t know,” she said after a long moment of silence. “I’ve never been home, I’ve never had a home. I don’t exist or live anywhere. I’ve just sort of shuffled through from one mess to another.”

  “That’s not helpful,” I said, putting on a fake pout.

  “Well, I’m sorry that—oh, you’re being sarcastic,” she said, giving my arm a slap. “That’s not nice, Mr. Fedora.”

  Daisy stiffened and turned towards us ever so slowly. It was the wolf equivalent of, “Did I just hear what I thought I heard?” Except wolves had excellent hearing and she damned well knew what she had heard.

  So, I shrugged at both of them. Helen giggled just a little. Daisy eyed Helen as if she were a bear trap, then sniffed the air while still looking at us.

  Meaning, she was doing her job but didn’t want to miss the next thing that happened.

  Wolves are nasty gossips.

  “What are we doing in this park?” Helen asked.

  “Giving Daisy some time to regroup, basically,” I said. “See, our target knows where Council Chambers are, we tell all vampires. She probably knows Wraith is Younger Council and would head there to start her search. Break some legs, toss about some threats.”

  “So, you’re expecting her to be in the downtown area, and you think a wolf can smell that over all of this?”

  “They are like bloodhounds, except faster, and with better noses. And better intelligence. Daisy, like most dominant wolves, has learned to track. She can tell if someone backtracked or use her higher thinking to figure out where someone might have come out on the other side of say a river or a perfume shop and then adjust what she’s searching for to find them still.”

  “You tried to get away wading through a river?”

  I hesitated, then winced. “Maybe.”

  “You should have just flown.”

  “If only.”

  “My point is, she can fly, sort of. Won’t that affect the ability to sniff her out?”

  I looked to Daisy, who gave her head a shake, then approached Helen and set her head in the woman’s lap. Helen responded as any human might have, by stroking Daisy’s head and scratching behind her ears.

  “No, it won’t,” I said finally.

  “What’s wrong?” Helen asked.

  A werewolf’s muzzle pressed right against her stomach. Helen bent towards a hundred and fifty pounds of muscle, claw, and tooth. Her fingers were all but tangled in the fur that I had seen matted in shit, mud, and blood throughout the years.

  I had watched Daisy rip into both myself and others, in all her forms.

  Because, no. The forms of werewolf are not human and wolf alone. They ranged between those shapes and include what humans would probably call a hell hound, a creature that was twice the size of a wolf, almost as tall as a human, and was more myth than nature.

  Bitches were supposed to pass on how to turn into a hell hound to the new generation. That’s what made them so much more dangerous than the males, who sometimes stumbled upon the skill by accident.

  The only wolf capable of becoming a hell hound, as far as I knew, had her head in my Progeny’s lap.

  Ignorance really is bliss.

  “Quin?” Helen asked.

  “Telling you about wolves would be complicated,” I managed to get out.

  “Too bad you messed up the setup of the first book,” Helen said. “Otherwise you could just tell me. But you did, and now can’t so I guess you can’t tell me about what’s bothering you without upsetting this adorable bundle of fur in my lap.”

  The last bit was said in a baby voice.

  To a werewolf.

  “Guess you’ll just have to follow Daisy around with the tablet and write a book about them.”

  “You think they’d allow that?” Helen asked.

  “Considering she wants to have sex with you?” I asked. “Yes, I think that’s a possibility.”

  “What?” Helen squawked.

  I made eye contact, frowned, then looked down at Daisy’s head pointedly. Which was pressed tight against her legs, nose right at her stomach. As Helen looked down, Daisy lifted her head and sneezed, then walked off.

  “Oh god, why is that happening?” she asked.

  “More dominant wolves tend to carry on multiple partners. It’s not necessarily that she’s got the hots for you.”

  “She’s in heat,” Helen said. “Hence the gay boys and Balor being used as a werewolf pincushion.”

  I chuckled. “Yes, but she knows I’m not taking her offer without you. I’ve never had a threesome where all the attention was on me.”

  “Don’t pull that little orphan boy stuff on me,” Helen said in an irritated tone. “I’m also a little orphan.”

  “Right,” I said.

  Helen pulled out her phone, then frowned and made a face.

  “Peter’s in town.”

  “So?”

  “He stopped for food, and someone approached him. Said he knows you, a vampire named Nergal?”

  A cold flooded me. As I watched Helen react to my going still, Daisy woofed and came over. She lapped at her lips and looked at me.

  That was her threatening to change back to human to make demands. Except wolves could only change their natural body.

  Which meant that a naked woman would appear in the park.

  “Nergal is the god of plague and war of the Sumer culture,” I said. “Husband to the goddess of the underworld.”

  “Why would Bau make Progeny in a place that had vampires ruling?”

  “She didn’t,” I said. “The Sumer gods were just myth and conversation. Lu’s the only one who spent any time there. Besides his Maker of course. It’s a message and a threat.”

  “Oh, okay,” Helen said, sending a text off. “Where are you, let’s get coffee minus the vampires?”

  Daisy barked several times yapping and pawing at my knee.

  “Daisy, unless you’ve got a chihuahua in your repertoire, I don’t think you could pull it off,” I said.

  Suddenly there was a naked woman.

  “A chihuahua?” Daisy demanded. “What do you take me for? Some dime bag werewolf?”

  “Wait, you can do other forms?” Helen asked.

  “Yes,” Daisy snapped at her.

  “Can you do another canine?” Helen asked. “Something that Death might think Quin would have? Oh, can you change your coat based on a description?”

  Daisy frowned and looked at Helen. “Why?” she asked.

  “I’ve got an idea.”

  Wolves apparently carry many forms. They are the creature which spawned skinwalkers and shapeshifters. I’m told those are two different things, though I’m not certain how.

  Wolves can take on any canine form and draw power from the cycles of the moon. At the most basic, their form is wolf in nature, hence werewolves. Most only ever had the one form, I’m guessing because that’s all they really needed. The type of wolf they were by default was nothing to laugh at. Daisy had come to Quin’s hip. I was glad that it was so late at night, otherwise we would have gotten more than a few looks about her size and the shape of her coat.
>
  With a description from Quin, Daisy changed her shape. The moment she was settled into her new shape, the name came spilling out of Quin’s mouth.

  His dog from all those years ago in Constantinople. Obviously, Daisy’s morphing was spot on, nearly perfect. Quin looked away, then glanced back at me.

  “You sure about this?” he asked.

  “Only way to explain a dog with us,” I said. “I can’t tell she’s a werewolf. Mortals wouldn’t be able to, and on the off chance that Death is there, he’ll think you found a doppelganger.”

  “There must be a way to tell a wolf from a canine,” Quin said. “After all these years, I can tell the difference by looking at them. He might have the same ability.”

  “You’ve spent a lot of time with the wolves. Death spent it with Lu, locked up in houses and stuff. No wolf was going near him. I think we’ll be fine.”

  Anyone who really knew Quin would think that he had found a dog that looked like his from all those centuries ago and that he had taken it on in some sense of sentimentality. They might even try to hurt Daisy to hurt him, but that would work in our favour.

  “True,” Quin muttered. “Otherwise he’ll know what’s up. Might even warn her.”

  “She is kind of his Maker too,” I grumbled as we walked around the corner to the cafe. “Twenty-four-hour cafés. Who would have guessed that vampires living in the city would extend so many store and service hours?”

  “Good for us, though,” Quin said.

  Peter was standing just outside the door of the cafe. His eyes fell on Daisy, and I swore I saw a bit of fear. Maybe the wolves had already found him, though. Maybe they were waiting just around the corner, and that was why he reacted to Daisy’s presence like that.

  He had never been afraid of dogs before.

  “Hi,” I said.

  “Hello,” Peter managed. “Can we, uh, get a coffee?”

  “You two head in,” Quin said. “I’ll wait out here with Daisy. We adopted her recently, and she has abandonment issues.”

  We couldn’t leave her tied up outside. I knew that I wouldn’t appreciate being tied up outside a café while my friends went in for a nice coffee. I patted Quin’s arm.

  “Want me to bring you something?” I asked.