Jennifer Lynn Barnes Anthology

by Jennifer Lynn Barnes

  One way or another, our killer wasn’t a female werewolf.

  The killer wasn’t even alive.

  If that wasn’t enough to stay the Senate vote, I wasn’t sure what would be. Glancing at Maddy out of the corner of my eye, I wondered what her response would be if Shay and the others really did start making their way here.

  The only way to prevent them from trying to claim her by force would be for me to reinstate our pack-bond, but I wasn’t sure she’d want that, either. The reasons she’d had for leaving were still reasons. Lucas was the elephant in the room, even now, one that made the already crowded quarters that much more claustrophobic.

  If Callum could call off the rest of the Senate, I wouldn’t have to press the issue. But if he couldn’t—

  I tried not to think about it, tried not to ask myself what the right thing to do would be, if she didn’t want me in her mind, but giving her what she wanted put her—and her baby—at the mercy of men none of us could trust.

  And if the baby really was female …

  That wasn’t supposed to be possible. It wasn’t possible for human mothers carrying a werewolf child, and it wasn’t possible for female Weres. Girl pups never made it to term. Not on their own.

  But Maddy was different. The same way that I was different, the same way that Lily and Phoebe and Sage were different. They were werewolves, but they’d been born human. They were Resilient. Maybe Maddy’s baby wasn’t a girl. Maybe she was wrong. But if she wasn’t, and the other alphas found out about it, my pack would be even more in their sights than it was now. Having a surplus of female werewolves was bad enough. Having girls in my pack who might be able to give birth to female pups—whatever alliances were brewing in the Senate, whatever plans Shay was cultivating, the second they got wind of it, the onslaught and machinations would increase tenfold.

  For most of the Senate, there probably weren’t many things that would be worth risking Callum’s wrath—but that might be one.

  Borrowing trouble? Chase’s voice was calm in my mind, and I wondered how he could just look at me and know.

  Am I that obvious? I asked.

  There was a sound halfway between a snuff and a snort, more animal in my mind than it would have sounded out loud. You are trouble, he said. It’s part of your charm.

  Maybe, but I had to admit that he was right: at the moment, we had enough on our plates already. The future—as tenuous and terrifying as it might be—would have to wait.

  Okay, I thought, as much to myself as to Chase. Griffin says his weakness is Lake.

  If Griffin was telling the truth—about everything—what did that mean for our killer? What was his weakness? Or, more to the point, who?

  Assuming the killer was a werewolf—and based on Maddy’s descriptions and the crime scenes we’d seen, I was betting he was—did that mean that this monster had a twin, too? Or was Griffin a special case? Maybe this ghost wasn’t tethered to a person. It could be a place, or an object.

  It could be anything.

  Or anyone.

  I didn’t want to look at Maddy, and I didn’t want to look at her stomach. I didn’t want to think about the child inside—the one who’d somehow brought these specters to life.

  I’d done things that dogged my dreams and chipped away at whatever humanity I had left. I made the hard choices so that other people didn’t have to, but I had a line, and this was it.

  Nothing was going to happen to that baby. Not if Griffin was telling the truth and not if he wasn’t. Not by my hand, and not by anyone else’s.

  “Rain’s clearing up.” Jed’s tone was mild, but all of us snapped to attention like he’d barked out some kind of command.

  First order of business was getting off this mountain and back to the real world. With cell phone service, I could call Callum. If we were lucky, maybe in addition to putting out political fires, he’d be able to tell us something about ghosts.

  Something that gave me more than Lake’s assurances and Maddy’s blind faith in Griffin to know that he was on our side.

  “We should go,” I said.

  “No.” Maddy’s voice was loud, borderline hysterical. It cut through me, like a knife to the gut. The Maddy I’d known was quiet, self-contained, controlled. This Maddy was just as strong, but on edge.

  So on edge that if we weren’t careful, she might fall. “I can’t leave.

  I can’t go anywhere.” She ran a hand through her hair, and her voice settled down into a steadier pitch, low and even, sure. “If I go somewhere, that thing is going to follow me. I have to stay here.”

  “No.” I was surprised by how calm I felt, how naturally I could just step back into the role of giving orders, without questioning for one second that they would be obeyed.

  “You don’t get to decide,” Maddy told me, the tone in her voice closer to heartbreak than defiance, like there was a part of her that wished I could.

  “Maddy, if you don’t leave, I can’t.” In my mind, it was as simple as that. Until I got word from Callum that the others weren’t coming for her, I couldn’t take the chance of leaving Maddy here alone. “If I can’t leave, I can’t call Callum. If he can’t tell the rest of the Senate that he’s heard from me personally, he might not be able to stop them.”

  Maddy’s eyes narrowed in a way that reminded me that I wasn’t the only one who’d gotten through the dark parts of life by sheer force of will. I could outstubborn most people, but not her, not once she made her mind up about something.

  “I think it might be okay.” Griffin inserted himself into the conversation, walking through me to stand by her side. “Lake’s here now, Maddy, and I feel …” He searched for the right word and seemed to find it in the expression on Lake’s face. “Solid. I feel solid.”

  Griffin had a way about him that made it easy to believe what he was saying. I could see his words weakening Maddy’s resolve. Was he comforting her—or trying to lull her into a false sense of security, so she’d go closer to town?

  Stop it, I told myself. Like Chase had implied, there was a fine line between planning for all eventualities and borrowing trouble. I’d told Lake I believed her. I’d decided to trust Griffin—for now. And that meant assuming that everything he’d told us was true: the killer only came around to torture Maddy when Griffin was gone, and if Lake could keep him grounded in the here and now, at least until we figured out a plan, Maddy could go back to civilization.

  Or at least to a crappy motel.

  “You don’t know that it will work,” Maddy said, turning her stubbornness on Griff.

  “Mads, if you think I’m going to let Ugly here go anywhere”—Lake’s lips pulled back into a terrifying smile—“you’ve got another think coming.”

  Ugly wasn’t a word I would have used to describe Griffin, but I knew better than to argue with Lake in sister mode.

  “It’s settled, then.” Caroline—who hadn’t said a word since Griffin had told us the only time he felt pain was when Lake did—was all business. “We all go. Bryn calls Callum. And if this thing does show up …”

  Her baby blues glowed with predatory hunger.

  “Somehow, some way, we damn well make it wish it hadn’t.”

  Those were big words from such a little girl, but eminently effective, because within moments, we were headed down the mountain, Maddy, baby, and all.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  “GRIFFIN?” CALLUM SAID THE NAME THE SAME WAY I would have said Lucas’s, like Lake’s twin was the one he thought about—his regret—staring up at his ceiling at night. “Mitch’s son.”

  “Yes.” I didn’t say much more than that. I waited for Callum to answer my unasked questions, to tell me that I was right to trust Griffin or vaguely hint that the choices I was making were wrong. But for once, Callum sounded like he hadn’t seen this coming. It was a novel enough experience that I figured he might need a moment.

  After a few seconds of heavy silence, I decided he’d had enough time to adjust. “We don’t know how
or why we can see him now, but whatever happened went down on a full moon three months ago. Maddy was Shifting at the time.”

  Another silence fell. This time, it was Callum who broke it. “You think her baby had something to do with it.”

  I hadn’t actually told Callum Maddy was pregnant, but I wasn’t surprised he knew. In fact, the only thing surprising about this was that he’d thought Maddy might be the Rabid in the first place.

  He hadn’t seen this turn of events coming at all.

  “We don’t know for sure that it’s the baby,” I told him. “But Maddy’s never had a problem with ghosts before.”

  That was an understatement—like the rest of us, she’d had no idea that ghosts even existed. The question was, had Callum?

  “Griffin says that he never left, that he was always here, and we just couldn’t see him.” I waited to see if Callum would take the bait.

  He did.

  “He stayed for Lake.” This time, there was no question in Callum’s voice.

  “He stayed for Lake,” I repeated, and then, because I couldn’t help myself, I asked the question never far from my mind where Callum was concerned. “Did you know?”

  Did he know that Griffin’s spirit hadn’t ever really left Lake? Did he know what kind of person Lake’s brother was now?

  “There are stories, Bryn. Old stories, about what happens when a female werewolf outlives her twin—but if you’re asking if I knew that there was a way, any way, to bring a Shadow back, the answer is no.”

  “Old stories,” I parroted. With Callum, there was no telling how “old” the stories in question might be. “About Shadows.”

  The word felt funny on the tip of my tongue, but given that Griffin claimed to have been watching Lake for years, going where she went, aging as she did, it seemed somehow appropriate.

  He’d been her Shadow, in more ways than one.

  “I didn’t know it was more than a story, Bryn.” On the other end of the phone line, the man I’d come to see as omniscient expelled a breath. “This explains some things.”

  I waited for him to elaborate. Given proper motivation, I could use patience like a weapon. He’d taught me that.

  “I’ve never seen a future that included Griffin,” Callum said finally. “And when I foresaw the murders, I only saw Maddy.”

  There’d been a kind of cold comfort in knowing, these past couple of years, that Callum could see the future. No matter how awful the situation I got into was, the fact that he’d probably seen it coming had helped me believe that there might be a way out of it.

  Experience had taught me that Callum might willingly step back and let me go through hell. He would let me, maybe even make me fight my own battles. But I didn’t believe he’d let me die.

  “You can’t see ghosts.” I said the words out loud.

  “Shadows,” Callum corrected. “Ghost is a human word, and Shadows aren’t human. They never were.”

  “Fine,” I amended. “You can’t see Shadows.”

  “No.” That admission seemed to cost him something. “I can’t.”

  “And you’re just now figuring this out?” Maybe I shouldn’t have sounded so shocked, but Callum had been alive long enough to see entire empires rise and fall. There wasn’t much he didn’t know.

  “Werewolf twins are relatively rare, Bryn. One twin dying a violent death while the other lives on is even rarer—and besides, this is the first instance I’ve heard of where anyone except the living twin has been able to see, feel, or interact with a Shadow in any way.”

  Violent death? I couldn’t help looking toward Lake—and Griffin. I thought he drowned.

  Since those weren’t words I could say out loud—or even think to anyone else in the room—I turned my attention to a topic that Callum might actually be able to shed some light on.

  “Think this will stop them from coming after Maddy?” I didn’t specify who they were. I didn’t have to.

  “Do you recall what, precisely, the proposition was that the Senate passed?”

  I got the distinct impression that Callum wasn’t asking because he didn’t remember.

  I wasn’t exactly in the mood for a test. “They voted to intervene if the Rabid became an exposure risk,” I said.

  “No,” Callum corrected, “they voted to intervene if the girl became an exposure risk.”

  I’d spent my formative years skirting Callum’s orders and looking for loopholes. I knew how to speak the truth without really telling it better than anyone I knew.

  “The girl,” I said slowly, “isn’t a risk.”

  “No,” Callum agreed. “She’s not.”

  “So the Senate can’t use the Winchester attack to justify coming here,” I continued. “And since neither you nor I will give them access to our lands …”

  Maddy was safe—at least from them, which meant one less thing to worry about for me. I just wished Callum had known something more about Shadows—how much of their original personalities they retained, how likely it was that Maddy had raised two, how exactly one might go about fighting a Shadow, besides trying to get at it through its living twin.

  For a moment, I let myself consider the implications. If Griffin wasn’t telling the truth, if Lake was wrong about him …

  “How many female Weres are there besides Lake who have a dead twin?” I needed to know. There were so few natural-born females that if the number was bigger than zero, it wouldn’t be bigger by much.

  Callum didn’t get the chance to answer my question. The line went suddenly dead. I tried to redial, but three things stopped me dead in my tracks.

  The lights started flickering.

  The door to the cheap motel room we’d rented slammed shut.

  And Griffin disappeared.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  IN AN INSTANT, CHASE WAS BY MY SIDE AND LAKE WAS at Maddy’s. Caroline slipped effortlessly into the shadows, her back pressed up against the corner of the room, her eagle eyes sharp.

  Something dark and primal crept over Jed’s eyes.

  For a second, there was silence, and then I heard laughter—a deep, throaty chuckle that sounded absolutely nothing like Griffin.

  Not Griffin.

  Caroline went to draw a weapon, but I met her eyes, and she read the order in mine. Blades and bullets might pass straight through this predator, but the rest of us in this room weren’t immune. The last thing we needed was someone going down to friendly fire.

  Lake, try to find Griffin. I kept my words short and to the point. Wherever he went, whatever just happened, get him back.

  I stepped sideways, appraising the room, feeling the air on my skin and trying to pinpoint the origin of the laughter.

  Nowhere. Everywhere.

  To my left, cracks spread along the surface of the mirror, giving it the gossamer appearance of a spiderweb.

  Then it shattered.

  Jed lunged to his left. A blade of glass flew into the wall behind him, grazing his back.

  There were too many of us in this room. Too many targets, too much glass.

  Run, my instincts whispered, from the most ancient part of my brain. Run, and it will chase you.

  The thought came out of nowhere. I’d spent enough time worrying—and trying not to worry—about Griffin that I hadn’t thought much about the alternative, yet now I knew beyond knowing that if I ran, this thing would follow.

  A hand clamped over my arm. Chase. He didn’t want me going anywhere. Our eyes locked, and we stood there, staring at each other, neither one of us willing to give.

  On the far side of the room, cracks began spreading along the surface of the window. They spiraled outward, and then there was a whoosh of air, and glass exploded inward. The shards rained down, embedding themselves in skin—mine, the others’—tiny, razor-sharp, incessant.

  If we stayed here, this thing might pick us off one by one. We couldn’t see it, couldn’t touch it, couldn’t fight back. Short of decapitation, Lake and Chase would survive, but Caroline
and Jed were a different story.

  Maddy’s baby was a different story.

  Griff’s close, Bryn, but he can’t break through. Lake’s words were punctuated by the rumbling sound of the dresser, vibrating against the floor. Whoever or whatever this is, it’s shutting him out.

  Griffin had been telling the truth—about everything. I’d doubted him, doubted Lake—

  The top drawer of the dresser flew outward, crashing against the opposite wall with enough force that it splintered into pieces.

  Another drawer. Then another. Shards of glass from the mirror. The nightstand.

  In the middle of the room, Jed straightened suddenly, and his eyes narrowed, his pupils pulsing. There was something almost reptilian about his stare, but as the Shadow tore the room to pieces, debris biting into my skin, Maddy’s, Caroline’s—Jed’s posture changed from defensive to offensive.

  Our assailant might not have been solid, but his makeshift weapons were. Bleeding adrenaline and power, Jed lashed out with a roundhouse kick, shattering one of the dresser drawers. A piece of debris became a staff in his hands, and then he was nothing but a blur of motion, deflecting projectiles with agility and speed that were beyond that, even, of a Were.

  Run. Run, and it will chase me. I couldn’t shake the idea. What was happening in this room wasn’t our killer’s MO. It hadn’t Shifted yet. It hadn’t laid a ghostly hand on any of us directly.

  Maybe it wasn’t used to facing off against groups.

  That thought unlocked another one in my mind, a memory: the victim in Winchester was a girl. A teenage girl. Human. Before she had been reduced to blood and bones, she might have looked a little something like me: brown hair, tan skin.…

  The Wyoming victim had been a boy. A teenager. A human.

  Most killers had a type. If this ghost—Shadow, whatever—was thirsting for prey, of all the people in this room, Caroline and I were the only two who might suffice.