“A little. But not knowing bothers me more. It’s dangerous.”
“So let’s leave.”
“I mean dangerous for others. We need to see who this guy is. More than ever, this moot gives us reason to stick around.”
Rayne tangles her hands in her hair. “And if something goes wrong? Because it will. What then? I don’t know anything about this Flint, and if even the Loup Garou are afraid of him, this one man—I’m not sure I can protect you.”
My eyes narrow. “I don’t need protection, Rayne.”
“Of course you don’t. But I still want to. I need to. I need—” She gives another low growl.
“What? What do you need?”
A setting of her jaw. “We need to leave. Right now. Get in the van.”
“No.”
“Get in the van.”
“I’m not leaving.”
Rayne gives me the full weight of her glare. I stare right back. There’s no way I’m leaving. Not now, not least because of the moot but because Rayne clearly has more to say, and driving away from here gives her the perfect way to escape it.
I open my mouth to press the matter, but Rayne, as ever, is so much faster. She grabs me, actually scooping me up over her shoulder into a fireman’s hold. She walks me over to the van while I’m still recovering from the shock of such a bold move, and then she’s shoving me into the passenger side.
“Rayne—”
“You’ll thank me later. We need to go.” She slams the door on me and walks around to the driver’s side.
I grit my teeth. No. No freaking way. I have the keys out of the ignition before she opens the door and then I’m scrambling back out onto the path. I pull back my arm, but damn it, she’s too fucking fast, and catches my wrist before I can throw.
“Don’t you dare,” she warns me.
I let the keys fall from my grip toward where I scoot my free hand round to catch. Hers moves to intercept. Rayne’s vampire speed wraps her fingers around the keys before I even get close so I turn into her body and shove back with my shoulder. The hard bone strikes her in the nose and again the keys fall. I continue turning, swinging my right leg round and catching the bunch with the side of my foot, punting the whole set of keys far into the darkness.
They sail away in a bright arc and land somewhere in the grass far away.
Rayne, with one hand cupped around her nose, the other still on my wrist, stares at me in bewilderment. “What are you doing?”
I glare right back. “I’m. Not. Leaving.”
“Did you forget that Opal is the one who told us to go? She doesn’t want us here.”
“She doesn’t have to know.”
A wordless grunt of anger leaves Rayne’s lips. “This is their land. You really think we can stay here and they won’t know? Are you insane?”
I pull my wrist away. It takes effort, but shock has loosened Rayne’s grip which is the only reason I’m able to do so. “I’m pissed off,” I shoot back. “Wendy is dead, Rayne. Aleksandar killed him and he did it so he could take the Dire Wolves to attack the Blood Moon. Them coming here and flouting all the unwritten wolf laws is what did this, and I have to follow through. I told Wendy I would look after his pack and instead I just helped deliver it into the hands of that madman. Now I have the chance to be part of the force that stops all the infighting and brings a little peace back to Angbec. It’s my job.”
“It’s personal.”
“Of course it is. But so is everything else. I saw you in there, Rayne. I know you. You saw Gina and Opal sucking faces and I saw the way you looked at me. Don’t you dare tell me this isn’t personal. Would you make this much fuss over any other member of Kappa?”
Rayne looks down at the ground. “Please stop…”
“No. We’re going to talk about this. You can’t just dump me then talk about protection and shit like that, as if you still have some claim to—”
“Shut up, Danika.”
It’s the panic in her voice, not the words, that make me pause.
Before I’ve thought it through, my gun is in my hands, held facing out into the dark.
“What? What is it?”
She darts up to me and snags my wrist. Again. “We need to move. Right now.”
* * *
I pull against her, but the grip is firm, even against me twisting. “Come on, Rayne—”
“There’s someone coming. They’re coming from behind and they’re not friendly. We need to move.”
I turn toward the van, but Rayne’s grip pulls me in the other direction. Back toward the seemingly abandoned church.
“Wait, we can’t go back there.”
She glares in the direction the keys fell, then back to me. “You’d rather stay out here in a van we can’t even lock, let alone drive?”
Touché.
And with that, we’re running. I know she’s pacing herself, carefully measuring her steps so as not to move too fast, but this speed is a flat-out sprint I know I can’t keep up for long.
We leap and bound across the grass, darting around rabbit holes and fox dens as we approach the stream. At the edge, Rayne springs across it, half dragging, half carrying me to make the distance in two long strides. Then onward, where the huge bulk of the church grows larger and larger before us.
Then from ahead comes a loud, quivering howl. It’s joined by two others, and then three wolves in hybrid form spring out of the grass and past us in the direction we’ve come. I can only assume it’s the trio Opal picked out to be guards, because they continue to howl and gruff their intent to each other while stretching out behind us.
Clearly we’re not a threat to them compared to whatever is coming.
The unexpected sprint is getting to me now. My breath is rasping in my throat, my legs sore from the abrupt burst of motion without proper stretching. Having one arm trapped and unable to provide balance also makes my gait clumsy and awkward.
“R-Rayne.”
She releases my wrist then chivvies me on ahead, now guarding my back as we get closer to the church.
The doors are open, perhaps the howls have alerted those within, and now a large rectangle of orange light falls out of the gap to illume the space below. I aim for that, now more comfortable with something to see.
Just as we reach the doors, more howls spring up, along with the rough bark of angry wolves calling out a warning.
I stop, unable to run anymore, and turn, despite Rayne’s protests, to see what is happening.
Wolves. At least twenty of them, loping slowly over the grass toward the church in one long line. They move at a casual pace, clearly unconcerned with cover or being seen. They seem to form a wide V-shape and, at the point, is a single figure carrying a torch. The stranger appears to be in human form, walking calmly on two legs.
Rayne nudges at my back, trying to get me through the door, though her attempts become a little half-hearted when she notices the approaching force. “What is that?” She shudders.
“I think that would be Flint Liddell.”
Gina looks out through the open door. She sees the approaching wolves, then us. Surprise, then irritation flit across her gaze. “You were supposed to leave.”
“Change of plans.”
“You annoying little…human.”
I shrug. “You’re not the first person to say that.”
She rolls her eyes and throws the door open still wider. “Get inside and stay out of sight.” She shucks her clothes as she speaks, leaving them pooled on the ground as she steps around us to meet the approaching force.
I surprise even myself by choosing not to argue. Instead, I push on through and back into the living area where the other werewolf women wait in varied states. Some still in human forms, others fully shifted, though most favour the larger, heavier hybrid forms best suited for fighting.
Most ignore us as Rayne and I walk through, instead focused on the door. So I step up onto the raised platform before the apse and hunker down beneath the wall of wea
pons.
Rayne points to the steps. “She said get out of sight.”
I spread my hands. “You really think they don’t know we’re here? A single human and a vampire among a huge pack of wolves? They’d know exactly where we are regardless of where we hid. At least this way we can see what’s going on.”
“I can’t convince you to move?”
“You know better than that by now.”
“Hmm.” She sighs and drops to a crouch beside me, with her hands dangling between her knees. “You’re a royal pain in the arse, you know that?”
I gape at her. “A pain in the arse clearly rubbing off on you.”
She smiles. “Yes, well. You have that effect on people.”
A sudden silence sweeps through the church. It raises the hairs on the back of my neck and sets my fingers tingling around the butt of my gun, but there’s nothing to see. Not for me, anyway.
Every single werewolf is now tensed and facing the door, teeth bared, fangs at the ready. Rayne shifts from a crouch to one knee and plants her fingertips on the ground, like an Olympic sprinter.
“What’s happening?”
Her smile dies. “They’re coming in.”
* * *
Gina backs into the church with her hands slightly raised. As she moves, fur begins to bristle across the back of her neck and down her spine, while her red hair deepens to a rich auburn colour. With each step, she grows taller and broader, until she’s moving on her toes with her tail swishing back and forth behind her for added balance.
Her hybrid form is taller than her human one but not by more than a foot. What she lacks in height she makes up for in pure breadth, blocking most of the entrance way with her wide stance and thick limbs. “My name is Gina Byron,” she calls in a loud, gruff voice, “second of the Loup Garou and ambassador for Opal Smith. You enter our territory en masse, in aggressive numbers without warrant or invitation. You have ten seconds to explain why we shouldn’t kill you where you stand.”
Bold words, but she keeps backing up, giving ground to whatever is approaching from the other side.
And then I see him. A man with skin so dark it appears almost purple and hair caught up in neat cornrows to his shoulders. His eyes are hidden beneath narrow, stylish sunglasses, but they don’t wholly cover the scar. It cuts across his whole face from his hairline on the right, across his eye, nose, and cheek before stopping on the left beneath his ear.
Rayne twitches beside me. “He’s evil. Pure dread and evil.”
Part of me wants to shrug off the comments, but even I feel the sudden shift in the air. As though all the oxygen has been sucked out and replaced with a poor substitute, watered down and thinned with fear, despair, and misery.
Gina spreads her arms and though she stands firm, her voice trembles. “Answer me immediately.”
The man steps forward with his arms spread. “I said I would come again, and so here I am.”
“Alpha Opal already gave you our response.”
“Not so. She insisted that she would ‘confer with her girls’ and return to us with a decision. But what better way to speed things up than to collect the final answer in person?” His voice is strange, like a mix of gravel and grinding metal plates. It’s also familiar, though I can’t for all my efforts place where I might have come across this man before.
The cluster of female werewolves move forward, forming a solid semicircle in back of Gina. None move closer than about six feet, a wary distance that speaks of caution and fear rather than anything tactical.
What’s wrong with them?
Gina’s long pink tongue flicks out across her lips. Such a human gesture of nervousness looks odd on a creature so large and powerful. “You have no right to enter our territory without invitation.” Her voice cracks, but she presses on. “Leave.”
“But we have been invited, little girl. There’s a moot.”
Rumbles and whispers of surprise. Even Rayne looks my way with a raised eyebrow.
Gina swallowed audibly. “What have you done with Opal?”
“Me?” Flint presses his fingers against his chest. “Not a thing. Are you always so suspicious?”
“When I have cause to be. She left here to invite you to meet with us and now you’re here but she’s not? I’d say that’s suspicious. Especially since you’ve clearly received her message.”
“What are you accusing me of, little bitch? You should take care in how you speak to your new alpha.”
Nerves and fear give way beneath a flash of anger. “You’re not my alpha.”
“Not yet, perhaps. But soon enough when that dainty doll, Opal, sees sense.” The man lifts his hands. “My name is Flint Liddell, alpha of the Blood Moon pack. Here is your so-called alpha.” He clicks his fingers and two of the hybrid figures at his back drag Opal’s wolf form into view.
She’s big, like most werewolves and a simple grey in colour. Her ears are large and tufted and the faint streak of darker fur forms a ridge down her belly. Small details I can plot easily now because she doesn’t appear to be moving.
Rayne hisses softly.
Gina shrieks. “What have you done with her? Opal? Opal.”
Flint grins. “Me? Not a thing. In fact all I’ve done is bring her home to you like the gentleman I am. Why don’t you come take her, little girl.”
The Loup Garou wolves tense visibly, all of them now looking to Gina. The desire for an order is strong and obvious.
Gina looks about ready to erupt. “You’ll pay for any harm done to my alpha, Flint Liddell. Hear me and know my words to be true.”
“Oh?” He sweeps off his sunglasses with a flourish. “Will I now?”
Gina jerks back with a cry.
The wolves around her cower and I see several tails lower to swing soft and timid between trembling legs.
I gasp. Can’t help it. Flint’s eyes are yellow. Not amber yellow or the golden hue of a werewolf about to shift, but bright sunshine yellow. Almost cartoony, crayon yellow.
Rayne jabs me in the ribs, but it’s too late. Apparently my exclamation is loud enough to draw attention our way and Flint angles his head toward the apse. A strange warmth washes across my chest and the moisture in my mouth vanishes as though burned away.
“Oh, more friends. Mmm, a human and a blood sucker, how sweet. For us? You shouldn’t have.”
“No…no please.” Gina’s voice is barely audible. “They aren’t for you.”
“Such poor hospitality.” Flint sighs in mock-hardship. “I thought the hosts of a moot were to provide food and sport. Why else would I bring my people but to enjoy a hunt with the rest of the packs?”
Rayne gives me a savage glare that says well enough what I know she must be thinking.
I lift my hands in defeat.
Fine. Maybe we should have left. But we can’t now, so there’s no point crying about it, is there?
Chapter Thirty
I stand from my crouch, walk down the chancel, and off the single step leading down. My steps are dragging, feeling heavy and weak, but I force myself to keep going. I won’t be bullied by this creep. No way.
The semicircle of Loup Garou part to let me through and snap shut behind Rayne who stands right at my side. The pair of us take places to either side of Gina and stare at the arrogant newcomer.
“I’m Danika Karson.”
Flint’s creepy eyes grow wide. This close his pupils are visible as long black slits rather than the circles one might expect. His nostrils flare as he scents the air. “The SPEAR? Yes, yes, even I’ve heard of you. Seems you have quite the reputation. Can’t think why.”
“I’m good at my job.”
“Is that so? And I thought it might be just because you’re rather…striking. Not beautiful, I think that descriptions belongs more with your miniature companion here, but you have quite the presence about you.”
A quick glance at Rayne shows me the fangs between her lips. “My name is Rayne. Spawn of Vixen.”
This time all subt
ly is lost. Flint looks at Rayne from top to bottom. Then bottom to top. “Interesting.”
“Shut up,” Rayne snaps. “I want to know what you are.”
Flint growls. “Whatever do you mean, pretty girl?”
“What. Are. You? You’re not human, nor vampire. You’re certainly not a wolf.”
He cocks his head. “Do I not look like a werewolf? Maybe this will help.” He lifts his arms and tilts his head back. His shift seems to begin in reverse, from his feet rather than the top of his head. It licks up his body like a weird backward waterfall, bringing fur out on to his exposed skin. The scarred ruin of his face stretches and elongates to produce a muzzle and nose with the same odd slash mark from right to left.
“Is this better, pretty girl?”
I fight the urge to cringe. “He looks like a wolf to me.”
“But he doesn’t smell like one. He smells wrong. Like rot and evil and hate.”
“You slander me, pretty one—”
“Don’t call me that.” Silver springs into her eyes. “You’re not welcome here. Did Miss Gina not just say you need to leave? Remove yourself before I put you out.”
I raise a hand. “Hey, hey, calm down. We’re not here to fight, remember. You said it yourself. We shouldn’t even be here.”
Flint grins and talks right over me. “I’d like to see you try, blood sucker. Maybe I’ll enjoy some sport after all.”
“Try me,” Rayne snarls.
“Woah, there, now.” I step across her with my arms raised. “What’s the matter with you? Calm down.”
But she doesn’t hear me. That or she ignores me. Her right hand lashes out, shoving me aside and into Gina so she can reach Flint. Her expression is a mask of uncharacteristic rage as she launches at him.
Her tackle slams into his front and the pair hit the ground hard enough to send tremors racing up my legs. Rayne aims a bite at his throat, but Flint is slippery-quick, bringing an arm across to block her mouth. As she chomps down on his forearm, he brings the free hand around to grab at her ID lanyard.
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