The Gathering

by Lily Graison

  “No.”

  The entire night replayed in her minds eye and the reason for getting out of bed left her stomach queasy again. She could faintly smell other wolves on him. Their scents were mingled. They’d brushed against him at some point and she hated not being able to distinguish who exactly they were. “What did you do tonight?”

  “The usual.”

  “Which is?”

  He grinned. “Chase anything that moved.”

  “Oh.” Rayna ran her fingers lightly over the claw marks on his chest. “Did you chase anything in particular?”

  “Not that I can recall.”

  She made a “humph” noise in response. Thoughts of Charlotte played at the edge of her mind and Rayna bit her lip. “Did you see Charlotte?”

  “Charlotte?”

  “Was she out here?”

  Garrett lifted his head and Rayna lowered hers, avoiding eye contact. “Everyone was out here, Rayna. What’s with the twenty questions?”

  “No reason.” She shrugged her shoulders. “Just curious.”

  His hand under her chin brought her head up and she had no choice but to look at him. “Whatever it is you want to know, just ask. I don’t have anything to hide.”

  Laughter was dancing in the tawny depths of his eyes and anger flashed hot and vibrant across Rayna’s skin. She tried to rein it in but failed miserably. “Did you chase another wolf?”

  “I might have.”

  She felt her own wolf then. It slid against her bones and the noise that suddenly came from deep in her chest startled even her. “Any of those female? Did you chase Charlotte?”

  He chuckled, his eyes sparking bright amber before returning to normal. “You sound like a jealous wolf, Rayna.”

  Rayna grunted at him before pushing away and standing. She searched for her clothes, picking the soggy garments up off the ground while Garrett’s light laughter rang through her head. She shook out her jeans, wrung the water out of them best she could, and gasped when she was grabbed from behind, Garrett’s arms wrapping around her waist.

  “There’s only one female I want.” He kissed her neck, his tongue darting out to caress the mark he’d given her.

  She dropped her clothes and turned in his arms. “Promise?”

  He kissed her, a smile playing at his lips as he peppered kisses across her face. “I only want you, Rayna. You don’t ever have to worry about me straying. I promise. The wolf wouldn’t let me if I tried.”

  Her muscles relaxed, the irritation she felt slowly ebbing away. She smiled up at him, feeling ridiculous all of a sudden and wondered if her cheeks turned red when her face heated. She wrapped her arms around him, hugged him to her, and glanced over his shoulder. Her pulse leaped when she saw someone watching them from the trees. It only took her seconds to realize who it was. Jacob, the young wolf who had been missing since the day Malcolm had captured her and Garrett. When he turned and ran, she yelled his name. “Jacob!”

  Garrett turned, looking behind him. “What?”

  “It was Jacob.”

  “Where?”

  “Standing just beyond those trees.” She raised her arm, pointing out where he was before turning to grab her clothes. She jerked her pants on, jumping to get the wet denim up over her hips. Garrett ran to the trees as she slipped her shirt on, her bra forgotten. She’d just stepped into her sneakers when Garrett disappeared into the forest.

  Her newfound skills, thanks to the wolf, allowed her to keep up with Garrett as he streaked through the woods. His naked backside was easy to follow. She smiled as she watched him, pumping her arms at her side to try and catch up.

  They ran half the mountain and Rayna heaved in a deep breath of air when she saw where Jacob’s scent had taken them.

  She followed Garrett into the cabin Jacob lived in. “He hasn’t been here all this time, has he?”

  “No. We’ve been checking in case he came back.” They entered the small cabin, Rayna flipping on the lights when Garrett disappeared into the hall.

  The cabin looked exactly as it had the last time she’d been there. Nothing seemed out of place. It was still unlived in. The musty smell told her no one had bothered taking up residence.

  Since the day her and Garrett had been captured three months ago, Jacob’s whereabouts had been a mystery. They’d searched the mountain with no trace of him. And now, here he was. Back in Wolf’s Creek.

  What was he doing on the mountain and not living in his cabin? Why hadn’t he come home? Come to them when Malcolm was destroyed and the pack fell under Garrett’s protection?

  She wandered down the hall, stopping at the bedroom Jacob had used and peeked in. Garrett was standing in the middle of the room, his brows drawn down over his eyes. “What is it?”

  He turned toward her, frowning, before motioning her back into the hall. He grabbed her arm above the elbow and led her back to the living room. “What’s wrong?”

  “He’s been here.” Garrett flipped the lights out and stepped onto the porch. The sun had come up, the first rays shining above the mountain and painting the sky in brilliant shades of pink and orange.

  Rayna turned to him when he shut the door behind them. He had a worried expression on his face. He’d scented something inside the cabin. Something he wasn’t going to share with her.

  She stared at him, her gaze lingering on the set of his shoulders, his bare chest rising quickly before she looked down the line of his body. “Are you going back to the house like that?”

  He looked down at himself before shrugging his shoulder. “It isn’t like they haven’t seen me naked before.”

  Folding her arms under her breast, Rayna raised an eyebrow at him. “That may have been true in the past but I’d prefer you didn’t go flaunting yourself in front of the entire pack.”

  He grinned. “Still jealous?”

  She scowled at him and walked back to the door, flinging it open. “Go find something to put on. We’re not leaving until you do.”

  Garrett laughed and walked back into the house, his quiet, “yes, dear,” causing her to finally smile. When he came back out a few minutes later, he was wearing a pair of jogging pants, obviously belonging to Jacob if the length and size of them were any indication. “Better?”

  Rayna snorted a laugh. “Not really but at least your dangly bits are covered.” She looked at his crotch and grinned. The pants were definitely a size too small. “Barely.”

  He growled and grabbed her arm. “Let’s go. I want to get Bryce and the others looking for Jacob. He couldn’t have gotten far.”

  Chapter Two

  The scent of rotting flesh grew stronger as Bryce reached the mine. He stumbled back from the entrance, the stale, tainted odor of old blood turning his stomach. His wolf urged him forward, eager to check out the new smell. He refused. His beast may not have been revolted but he was.

  Dillon’s reaction was much the same. The man threw a face but walked a bit closer. His wolf his curious, too. “What the hell is that?”

  Bryce shook his head. “No clue.” He turned and looked down the path. “Where’s Garrett?”

  “Coming up the hill.”

  They waited. The new pack leader raised a curious eyebrow when he reached them. “What the hell is that?”

  Bryce grinned. “We were wondering the same thing. It’s coming from inside the mine.”

  They turned to look back at the entrance.

  The old pack leader’s second in command, Caleb, had been making a small army of werewolves for some unknown reason and had been keeping them here in the mine. Since Caleb’s death in the fight against Garrett, the mine had been forgotten. Rayna seeing Jacob in the forest left the pack no choice but to search the entire mountain again. The mine was their last stop.

  “Do you really want to go in there?” Bryce glanced at Garrett and hoped his answer was no. “Surely the kid wouldn’t be hiding in a place that smelled as bad as this.”

  Garrett sighed. “I don’t think Jacob is in there.” He tilte
d his head to one side and studied the darkened interior. “But, I want to know what Caleb was up to.” He glanced at Bryce, then at the others. “Jacob’s scent wasn’t the only one I found in the cabin.”

  “It wasn’t?”

  “No. I picked up Carmen’s scent as well.”

  Bryce’s blood ran cold. Since the day she’d disappeared they lived with the fear she’d be back. Carmen was a threat to every member of the pack. She’d lured over half of them to stand with her and Caleb in overthrowing Malcolm. She’d instigated the entire idea of taking the wolves public, to let the world know they were there. She was the strongest female in the pack and many feared her. He did himself to a certain degree. The woman might look like a walking sex dream but beneath all that flowing hair, and those curves, beat the heart of a vicious killer.

  Turning to look back at the mine entrance, Bryce knew they had to go in. If for no other reason than to see if they could find out what Caleb had wanted those wolves for. “So, who goes first?”

  Garrett raised an eyebrow at him. “Well, it was you who reminded me of this place.” He held out his arm toward the entrance. “So, I think you should have the honor.”

  Bryce rolled his eyes and took several deep breaths before walking back to the entrance of the mine. Beams that looked half rotten, and ready to fall down with the slightest touch, supported the wide opening carved into the side of the mountain. The dirt floor was packed. He followed a line of footprints leading inside.

  With every step the smell grew worse. When they reached the first turn, he looked back over his shoulder. Garrett and Dillon were right behind him, followed by Gavin, but the others were still hovering around the entrance.

  His enhanced night vision let him see things the normal human couldn’t but the confined space inside the mine made it almost impossible now. He pulled a flashlight from his back pocket and flipped it on, aiming the beam of light in every direction. “Which way?”

  Garrett grinned. “Follow the smell.”

  “Somehow I knew you were going to say that.” Bryce took the left passage, sweeping the beam of light across his path. When he saw the first dead animal, he stopped. “I think I found what’s causing the stench.”

  Garrett crouched beside him and studied the animal, flipping it so he could see the other side of it. It had been there a while but other than being bloated and a magnet for anything crawling, there were no visible clues as to how it had died. “Let’s keep going.”

  The further into the mine they walked, the more dead animals they found. Some had gashes torn into their flesh with chunks of meat eaten away. Others looked intact, which only made the mystery more curious by the second.

  When they reached another fork in the tunnel, Garrett stopped him with a hand to his arm. “Do you hear that?”

  Bryce held his breath, listening for any sound. He heard it moments later. “What is that?” A barely-audible tapping was coming from somewhere inside the tunnels. There was a discernable pattern. Three taps, a pause, and then three more taps. It continued without fail.

  Garrett shook his head. “Don’t know.” He looked down the right tunnel, then the left. “It’s hard to tell how many tunnels are in here and with the acoustics I can’t even tell which direction it’s coming from.”

  Neither could Bryce. “Want to split up?”

  Garrett nodded. “Dillon, you and Gavin stay here in case the others decide to join us. Bryce, take the left tunnel, I’ll take the right. Yell if you see anything.”

  Bryce headed down the left tunnel, his flashlight beam sweeping the packed dirt floor and across the walls. There were more dead animals along the path, some nothing but skin and bones. He’d seen too many things since the day he’d been turned into a werewolf to be squeamish but even this made him sick to his stomach. The sight alone didn’t bother him. It was the eye-watering stench that did it.

  He rounded a sharp turn and the tapping grew louder. Movement further up the tunnel made him pause. He aimed his light toward it, seeing something crouched near the wall before disappearing. He looked behind him, wondering if he should yell for Garrett and decided against it. It could be another animal… one that hadn’t died yet.

  Taking a few cautious steps, he eased up the tunnel, his flashlight beam scanning the corridor. Whatever he saw move had disappeared.

  When he reached the spot where he thought he’d seen it, he stopped. The smell of decay was thicker here. Dark splotches covered the earthen floor and the number of animals littering the tunnel was mind numbing.

  A sound further up the passage drew his attention and he aimed the beam of light into the darkness, listening to what sounded like shuffling of feet before taking a cautious step. He’d only taken four when a dark shadow flew past him. He turned as something grabbed him, launching itself onto his back, and biting into his neck.

  Bryce yelled and fell to his knees, reaching behind him as whatever was attached to his back sank its teeth deeper into his flesh. The pain caused his vision to blur moments before his claws lengthened and he slashed at whatever had a hold of him. The sound of people running, and Garrett’s voice, barely registered as he weakened. The thing on his back was draining him quicker than he could fight it off.

  “Christ! What the hell is that?”

  The thing on his back was yanked away moments later. Bryce screamed as the creature was ripped away, taking his flesh with it. The pain in his neck was excruciating and he fell face first onto the dirt floor as multiple voices yelled and someone touched his back.

  “Fuck man, are you all right?”

  It was Gavin, one of the few remaining Alpha males in their wolf pack. Bryce turned his head to the side, trying to filter out the scent of rot as he gasped for air.

  The commotion at his back was a riot of shouts, shocked gasps and a loud hissing. He placed his hands on the floor and raised his body up off the ground. The cave went out of focus again. Whatever the hell attacked him damn near drained him. Blood leaked from his neck and he raised his hand to cover it before Gavin stopped him. “Don’t touch it, man. Your hands have lord knows what on them. Here, use this.”

  Bryce heard something rip before Gavin handed him the remains of what looked like his t-shirt before pressing it to his neck. When the pain subsided, he noticed the commotion had stopped and nothing but the hissing and soft whispers remained. He turned to look behind him.

  A glance into the corner showed his attacker and his eyes widened when he saw it. Or rather, her. It was a girl, crouched in the shadows. Her hair hung past her waist and stood out on her head in a mass of tangled curls. She was pale as death and hissing at them, his blood dripping from her fangs.

  Climbing to his feet, he blotted at his neck one last time before tossing the shirt away and staring at the girl. Taking a few steps closer, he stopped next to Garrett. “Is that what I think it is?”

  Garrett nodded his head. “If you’re thinking vampire, then, yeah.”

  She sat there, unmoving, and Bryce felt his stomach roll at the thoughts of that… thing, touching him. He hated vampires. Loathed them. His disgust grew when his neck started to throb where she’d bitten him. His first instinct was to kill her where she sat. He wasn’t sure how the others would react, though.

  The girl barely blinked. She watched them, unflinching, and seeing her so still unnerved him.

  No one said a word for long moments and the silence was deafening. He finally spoke up. “What the hell is a vampire doing in Caleb’s hideout?”

  “That’s a very good question.” Garrett lifted his flashlight, the beam reflecting off a thin wire attached to the wall. The end disappeared in the girl’s hair. “A better question would be, what is a vampire doing tied to the wall in Caleb’s hideout.”

  Bryce edged closer but stopped when the girl shrank away from him. For a creature that tried to kill him minutes ago, she was skittish as hell now.

  He watched her turn her head, staring at everyone in the tunnel before she looked back at him. Her
mouth was smeared with his blood, and she was a sight he would never forget, but when she lifted her head and looked him in the eye, his breath caught.

  Her eyes were quite large and almost white, the irises the palest ice blue he’d ever seen. The color didn’t shock him as much as what he saw in them did. Fear. Since she wasn’t human, he couldn’t smell it like he normally could but there was no mistaking what he saw in her face. As aggressive as she’d been, this girl, this vampire, looked terrified, something he’d never seen before in the species. Vampires weren’t scared of anything but this one was.

  He took a step closer to her, stopping when she shrank away from him again and lowered her head. He bent at the knees, stooping down to get eye level with her before tilting his head to try and see her face. “What are you doing up here?”

  She looked up but didn’t say anything. She flicked a quick glance to his neck before meeting his gaze, her eyes shimmering with color for a brief moment before turning back to that pale ice blue.

  When she licked her lips, dragging in the remains of his blood from her face, finding the animal corpses made more sense. She’d been surviving off of the animals stupid enough to venture into her tunnel and he was one of them. She’d attacked him to feed. Nothing more.

  Casting a quick glance up at Garrett, his pack leader raised an eyebrow at him before he looked back at the girl.

  She was still watching him, and he wasn’t sure what the hell to do. Apparently no one did.

  He bit back a sigh when no one offered to say anything. “I’m Bryce. This is Garrett.” He pointed out the packs leader to her. “We live down the mountain, near Wolf’s Creek. Who are you and what are you doing here?”

  She opened her mouth but shut it without speaking. She flicked a glance up at the others before raising her hand and pushing her hair away from her face. The moment she did, he sat back, stunned.

  The metal wire attached to the wall was around her neck. In her neck would be a better way of putting it. Dried blood coated her skin and he could see the wire below both her ears. Where it met around her throat, though, was imbedded into her flesh. “Christ,” he whispered, moving closer to her. “Who the hell did that?”