I studied them as she pointed each out. Eddie was the one who claimed to be Wolf’s brother, but they all had some indefinable sameness to them that marked them as belonging together. I didn’t know if that meant they were siblings or simply was a marker of their werewolfiness, but I knew it meant trouble if they all turned against me at once.
I’d be werewolf dinner. And that was if I was lucky and died quickly.
“Nice to meet you all,” I said noncommittally.
“You may go,” the woman said.
“Thank you, alpha,” Eddie replied before leading them all out of the room.
I turned back to the alpha. “I’m not saying I’ll work with them. However, before I make that decision, I need to know more about what’s going on.”
She nodded. “I believe last time you were here you had some interaction with the pack that controls the territory south of Tombstone.”
“If you mean the werewolves I killed after they attacked? Then yes. I did have some experience with them.”
“They have sent a hitman after you,” the alpha said bluntly.
Chapter 3
I blinked several times. “A hitman? Why?”
Actually, I knew why. I had spent my entire life hunting werewolves. It was no wonder some of them had finally tried to hit back.
But I was beginning to figure out there might be some degrees of monstrosity.
I would never call Wolf a monster. But I knew he could change into a person.
“Why tell me this?” I glanced at my companion. “Is it because of Wolf?”
“That’s what you call him? Wolf?” A laugh underscored her amusement, and Wolf lifted up one lip in a sneer.
“Does he have another name?” I asked, genuinely curious.
This time, the alpha just grinned. “Oh, no. Wolf will do perfectly.”
I wished someone would let me in on the joke, but not enough to continue that part of the conversation.
“So why am I here? You could have emailed that information.”
“The pack to the south of us has both taken over land it should not have and teamed up with...something else.” Her voice thrummed with anxiety over that last part.
“What kind of something else?”
“I was hoping you could give us that information.”
“What can you tell me about it?”
She paused, her gaze sliding over everyone in the room. “It’s female. She’s powerful. And she can rip apart humans or wolves in a matter of seconds.”
Well. That didn’t sound like Arizona vacation fun.
“Why, other than as repayment for the information about the hitman, would I ever agree to take care of that problem for you?”
The alphas smile chilled me. “Because if you help us, we won’t hand Wolf over to her to be devoured next.”
“Nobody’s feeding Wolf to anything.” The other wolves in the room tensed up until their alpha gave a signal for them to relax.
The alpha shrugged. “Works for me. But until this predator is dead, Wolf will be spending his nights—or days—anytime you’re not engaging the monster—with his pack.
“And after we kill this thing, he’s free to go? Forever? No more pack ties unless he wants them?”
“Agreed. Or he could come back to the pack if he likes.” She flashed an indecipherable glance his way.
Go back to his pack? Was that something Wolf even wanted to do? It had never occurred to me that he might be traveling with me out of necessity rather than desire.
He had far too many secrets. I needed to try to find out what some of them were.
After we finished this hunt.
I gave in to all of her stipulations, of course. It’s the right thing to do when your partner’s life is threatened, right?
“Well then, I guess I need to get to work, Ms....” I waited for her to supply a name.
It took a long time. “You may call me Gwen,” she finally said.
No indication if that was a real name or not, of course.
“We’ll be back tomorrow, then.”
“I fear you have mistaken my meaning. Wolf stays here starting tonight. I realize, of course, that you might want to go back to town for a while, so Wolf will simply stay here visiting with friends and relatives until you are ready to return.”
I glanced down at Wolf, who gave me a simple nod.
Okay, then. I’d go back to town, get a hotel room and food, get some rest, and then come back out here later to pick up Wolf and hunt this thing down.
Maybe, with any luck, Wolf and I could take out the hitman who was after me and the monster that was after his old pack, all in one fell swoop.
It was a nice dream, anyway.
Chapter 4
After I woke up from a long nap in a local motel, I headed out in search of food.
I kept starting to say something aloud and realizing that Wolf wasn’t with me. I’d grown used to his presence.
As I crossed the parking lot toward a couple of nearby restaurants, I glanced out of the corner of my eye at the dark blue Chevy sedan that had been parked in the motel lot for the last three hours. The same dark-haired man in sunglasses I had seen when I was checking in was still sitting behind the wheel. Nondescript car, nondescript man. Another hunter, maybe? Not that I knew of any others working in this part of the country. My cousins and I usually had it covered. Not a cop—or at least not one on any official duty. He was alone, had been ever since I’d caught my first glimpse of him. And almost certainly not a werewolf. They wouldn’t have waited around this long to make a move.
Crap. That must be the hitman.
I was either going to have to lose him before Wolf and I went searching for whatever the thing in the desert was, or we would have to get him to follow us. But not tonight. Tonight I was going to get a good night’s sleep before we started the hunt.
I considered stopping to let the guy know I’d seen him—but that might lead to a fight. Tonight, I felt like treating myself to a relaxing evening. One that involved a long, hot bath in a tub instead of a hurried shower in campsite or truck stop.
I spent almost two hours in the coffee shop across from the motel, lingering over my coffee long after I had stopped accepting refills.
I like hanging out in coffee shops. It’s one of the easiest places to spend time alone. I can bring a book or my laptop and as long as I have it in front of me—whether I’m using it or not—I can sit and watch people for as long as I want, and no one thinks twice about it.
So I sat and sipped my coffee and watched people move in and out of the shop for over an hour.
I sometimes wonder what might have happened if I’d followed my more usual routine of going back to my own motel room immediately.
Would I have walked in on them? Could I have saved the man who had been tailing me? Or would I just have gotten myself killed too?
Some things it’s better not to think about too much.
BY ALL RIGHTS, I SHOULD have had some strange shiver of premonition. But I didn’t. Back at my motel, I simply noticed that the blue Chevy was empty. Bathroom break? I wondered. Must be hard to run a stake-out all by himself.
Or perhaps he’d tried to take up a position where he could get me?
If he was really a hitman, he had a terrible sense of how to hunt prey. I’d made him in the first ten seconds.
Slipping a knife out of the sheath I kept it in at the small of my back, I slid up beside the door, away from the window.
I was almost to my door when the smell hit me.
I gagged, then forced myself to hold my breath and slide the key-card into its slot.
I knew what I was going to find when I opened the room, but my knees still buckled when I saw it.
Blood.
Everywhere.
It had hit almost every surface in the small hotel room, slung about with abandon like confetti sprinkled across the bed and draped across the walls in long trails like party streamers. If I hadn’t known what it was, it mi
ght have looked almost festive.
Festive. Fun. The monsters who had done this had had fun as they disemboweled the man who had been watching me walk in and out of my hotel room. At least, I assumed it was him. I could see the ends of worn-down cowboy boots sticking out from behind the far side of the bed. They were festooned with what looked like intestines.
My knees gave out and I sagged against the doorframe, clutching it for support.
I had been assuming that the thing I was hunting was a monster like a chupacabra—more animal than human.
But this wasn’t an animal attack.
Whatever had done this had done it for fun.
I became suddenly aware that I was holding the door wide open. Anyone who happened by might see into the room.
Even worse, I was leaving fingerprints all over the door frame I clung to.
I hesitated, considering stepping into the room and closing the door behind me. After a moment, though, I pushed myself up from the door frame and took a slight step back.
Glancing around to make sure no one was watching—no one I could see, anyway, I amended silently—I grabbed the hem of the shirt I was wearing and wiped off the doorknob. Then, with another glance around, I wiped off the doorframe.
I took a deep breath and peeked inside one last time. The carpet was soaked in blood, and I could see the edges of a large pool of it seeping out from under the far side of the bed.
Any fingerprints I’d left in the room were just going to have to stay there, I thought. I didn’t dare risk going into the room and tracking any more traces of my presence over the blood.
So, with the hem of my shirt still wrapped around my hand, I stepped back and pulled the door shut behind me.
That’s when I heard the sirens.
Damn. Double damn.
Who had called the cops?
I didn’t think the werewolves usually liked to have any humans involved in their affairs.
Live humans, anyway.
In my experience, werewolves seemed perfectly happy to leave dead humans lying about.
Maybe even in other people’s hotel rooms? Had this been the wolf-pack’s doing? Or the thing in the desert?
From somewhere in the desert darkness behind the motel came a laugh—low and feminine and thoroughly evil.
I ran, of course. Not literally—at least, not immediately. I managed to walk calmly to my van, get in behind the wheel, start the engine, and drive away at a sedate pace.
I didn’t realize I was shaking until I got to the interstate and headed back toward the pack lands.
Chapter 5
I came tear-assing into the pack’s home territory in a cloud of dust, the van’s wheels screeching to a stop as I stepped on the brakes.
“Wolf!” I called as I jumped down from the driver’s seat. He bounded out of the dark, grinning at me. “Thank God you’re here. I think the something that is hunting out in the desert just came to town and killed the hitman who was after me.”
The lupine grin disappeared instantly, and Wolf loped over to the van, waiting to be let in.
“Where are you going?” Eddie asked, looming up behind me out of nowhere.
“Hunting,” I replied shortly.
“We’ll come with you.”
“I don’t think that’s necessary,” I said, trying to keep a lid on the anger that was beginning to bubble up through my fear.
He paused, looking distracted for a moment. “Our alpha says it’s required.”
“You just asked her?”
“I did.”
So the werewolves could communicate via telepathy?
Great.
Still, I now knew more about the wolves than any other hunter in the history of the Silver line. For whatever that might be worth.
I’d consider all the implications later. Right now, there was something running around Tombstone, Arizona that could rip up a hitman and decorate a room with his insides.
“I’ll take all the help I can get,” I said, opening the back of the van for the werewolves I’d been introduced to earlier.
They all came out of the dark in their human forms, piling into the back of the van. I slammed the door shut, then turned to Wolf. “Are you ready for this?”
He nodded, so I moved to the front and let us in, even though I wasn’t sure I was ready to go hunt this thing, whatever it was.
BACK AT THE HOTEL, my room door was ajar.
“Fuck,” I whispered, pulling into a parking spot several doors down and pointing out the door. At least there weren’t any police cars hanging around.
Guess those sirens were for something else earlier.
I turned to face the van full of werewolves behind me. They’d been unnaturally quiet all the way back over here, and I’d spent the entire time wondering if they were communicating silently.
“Normally,” I said, directing my comments toward Eddie, who seemed to be the unofficial leader of this group, “this is where I’d ask Wolf to try to catch the scent of whatever did this. But feel free to offer other suggestions.”
“There’s someone in that room,” Shelley said, pointing toward the room I’d napped in earlier.
My attention snapped back to it just as Eddie said, “Okay. We’ll go get whoever’s in the room. You and Wolf can start working on tracking the Beast.”
The Beast. I could hear the capital letters in the word. I could also hear the derision in the way he said Wolf.
But we’d have to deal with that later. I reached across to the glove box and pulled out the Glock .9mm I sometimes kept in there for special occasions. I checked to make sure it was loaded, then grabbed the extra magazine and shoved it into a jeans pocket.
“Sounds good,” I said to Eddie, opening my door and sliding to the ground. Wolf followed me, and one of the other werewolves opened the back door, slipping to the ground, half in human form, the rest wearing their wolf shape.
I let all of them go ahead of me. Wolf hung back beside me.
“Our entire goal is for you to get a sense on whatever this monster is that did this. Unless it’s the one in the room right now, then whatever is going on in there is our second priority. Agreed?”
Wolf gave a sharp nod, and I clicked off the safety on the Glock.
Just as we reached the door, sounds of growling and snarling erupted inside. Through a tiny gap in the curtains, I couldn’t see anything other than a few blood splatters across the television screen.
“Well, shit. Guess we’d better go help.” I hadn’t wanted to get involved in any inter-pack squabbles. I preferred to just kill them all. I wasn’t sure which wolves were the good guys and which were the bad guys here.
Assuming there are any good guys other than Wolf.
So I would just keep following events until I had enough information.
I kicked open the door and rushed inside, crouching down low enough to create a smaller target and throw someone’s aim off if they were expecting a person.
Without waiting for what I saw to make sense, I ducked down behind the nearest bed, the one next to the window. Then I leaned around the edge to double check what my eyes had told me.
Shelley was sitting on a man I didn’t know, cheerfully ripping up a bedsheet into long strips and using them to attach the other werewolf to a chair.
A second man sat perfectly still, as Austin held him there with one claw sunk into his neck. “Don’t move, or I’ll rip your throat out.” I suspected that was not the first time Austin had said those words to this captive.
“These guys are members of the Sierra Vista pack—the one Gwen told you about earlier.” Eddie spoke to me without turning his head to make eye contact. “We don’t know why they were here. Not yet, anyway.”
Shelley grinned widely. “Oh, but we are about to find out.” She hunched her shoulders up and clapped her hands, like a little girl who’d just gotten the best gift ever. “This is going to be fun,” she crowed.
Chapter 6
As it turned out, by hanging
back just a minute or so, Wolf and I had missed a big fight. Lucky for us, Shelley had seen it all and was willing to recount it. In glowing, excruciating detail. Apparently, Eddie had been a big hero in her version of the tale.
“He actually tackled the asshole,” Shelley said, clearly delighted with her story. She batted her long, mascaraed eyelashes at Eddie.
“Quite the man, huh, Eddie?” I said. He glared around the room.
“So what’s next?” Austin asked.
“I guess we need to question those two guys,” I replied, glancing at Wolf for confirmation. He nodded.
“Let’s see if we can get them to tell us exactly what their pack ordered them to do,” Eddie said.
The werewolf from the Sierra Vista pack snarled and spit on the floor. “I don’t gotta tell you nothing.”
“Or speak in grammatically correct English, either, apparently,” said Shelley. She winked at the werewolf when he shifted his angry glare over to her.
Austin didn’t say anything. He just started rummaging around in the werewolf’s pocket. He pulled out a battered leather wallet and opened it up.
“Jason Stearn,” he read off the driver’s license.
“Been following Blaize for long?” Eddie leaned over the back of Stearn’s chair and propped one foot up against the crossbar on the bottom. Eddie glanced up at me and then away.
“You kill people for fun, don’t you, Jason?” Zach asked. He leaned into Stearn’s face, using his body to bracket the werewolf between himself and Eddie.
Stearn growled again.
“Guys,” I said. “I need to get information about the Beast. Why did it come here?”
“I don’t think just talking to him is going to get us any answers,” Shelley said.
“Oh,” said Zach. “I intend to do more than just talk.” He pulled a switchblade out of his pocket and snicked it open.
“The trick is to keep him from shifting to his wolf form,” he told Eddie.
Scarlet and Silver Page 2
