Blood Debt (Judah Black Novels Book 2) (15 page)

Daphne looked to Nina, who said with a shrug, “Sal wouldn’t be spending so much time on him if he didn’t think there was a chance. Of course, these days, seems like he’d do anything for you.”

I turned and stumbled a little. Daphne propped me up so I could look Nina in the eye. “If you’ve got something to say on the subject, just come out with it.”

Nina took a step forward. She was tall and lean and beautiful, a perfect mix of the Shoshone and Latina genes she’d gotten from Chanter and his late wife. Neither childbirth nor motherhood had slowed the diva down. It hadn’t muted her sense of fashion, which I supposed was good for someone who owned a nail salon. Nina’s makeup, clothes and appearance were always perfect. She looked like someone who could have walked onto a magazine photo shoot at any moment and been right at home. A starker contrast than Nina and I, you’d be hard pressed to find anywhere in Paint Rock.

She pressed her angular nose down in my face. “My cousin’s too good for you,” she announced with a low growl only a werewolf could manage. “I don’t like the way you jerk him around, playing his heartstrings like a two-bit, out of tune guitar. You call him up at all hours, getting him involved in this vampire mess…” She waved a manicured hand. “Bitch, you are trouble on two legs and trouble is the one thing this pack doesn’t need. Sal certainly doesn’t need it, not after the hell he’s already been through. You don’t own him. He’s not at your beck and call. He’s nothing to you. He belongs to
us
.”

“Nina.” Daphne put a hand on Nina’s shoulder, pulling her back. “Come inside.”

Nina took a step back. Her eyes were golden, a sure sign she was angry. I suspected it had more to do with the full moon rising in the distance than me, though things between Nina and I had never been smooth. She gave me one last growl before spinning on her heels and marching back inside, hips swaying.

“It’s the full moon,” Daphne offered. “Nina means well. She’s just overprotective.”

“You’d think she’d be more grateful. I saved her kid last summer.”

Daphne sighed. “I don’t think she’s not grateful. Look at it from her perspective. She and Sal were raised together. They may have different parents, but that’s her brother. No woman’s ever going to be good enough for her brother.”

I had to laugh. “Oh, me and Sal aren’t a thing. We just hang out sometimes. He helps me with Hunter. We’re friends, Daphne.”

She pursed her lips. “Look at our past. We let ourselves get close to a human once before, a human Sal chose to bring into pack business. Zoe was a bitch, but we accepted her. We made her part of us. When the split happened… One werewolf doesn’t just divorce a spouse. The whole pack does. To us, when someone who was pack leaves or dies, it feels like losing a sibling or a parent. It’s no simple matter.” She gestured back toward the front door. “Nina was friends with Zoe. That rejection hurt. Now, rather than risk facing rejection again, she alienates herself from all of us. And now that the full moon is rising, she’s more vulnerable than ever. She doesn’t want you to see that.”

I crossed my arms. “Then why are you telling me?”

“So you understand,” Daphne answered. “Nina lashes out because she’s afraid. If you really want to be a part of this pack like you said, if you want your son to make his place here, you’ll love her anyway.”

“That’s a tall order, considering she hates my guts.”

“She doesn’t hate you. She hates that you could hurt her. There’s a difference.”

I looked down at the ground and, realizing I was standing on a bloodstain, moved two inches to one side. “You’re going to be a damn good shrink, Daphne.”

Daphne laughed. “Well, technically, I’ll be an addiction counselor. As much as I love listening to people whine about their family and relationship problems, I tend to think addicts are in greater need.” She gave me a wink and a smile and then gestured back toward the house again. “Speaking of addicts, Chanter said he wanted to see you when you were free.”

I nodded and we went into the house together, me limping alongside her.

Valentino and Nina Garcia have the biggest, nicest house of anyone in the pack. Even with everyone crammed inside, the place felt roomy. We stepped into an eclectic kitchen with Americana décor. The gentle hum of a dishwasher permeated the room along with the soft and welcome scents of lavender and rose. The blinds were closed and the curtains drawn, blocking most of the outside light.

Valentino was the main reason they kept the house shuttered during the full moon. Migraines were a common symptom among werewolves during the full moon, as were other symptoms like body aches, fever, chills, upset stomach, and general malaise. It wasn’t a fun time for them. But, when the moon was finally up, they’d shift and run the streets, stretching sore limbs. Somehow, shifting alleviated the symptoms better than any medicine known to man. That’s where all the myths about them only shifting during the full moon came from. It wasn’t true they could only shift then, nor did they have to. The smart werewolf, though, listened to the body and moved with the cycles of the moon and Earth. That’s what Chanter would say, anyway. Since I wasn’t a werewolf myself, I had no idea what it was like.

We went on through the kitchen and into the living room. There was a sofa sectional with an attached recliner, a big screen HDTV and all the trimmings of a home with a young child. Toys were strewn from one end of the sofa to the other. Leo Garcia was toddling back and forth amongst the mess, leaning on a push mower toy, the kind that made a popping sound. Only, this one didn’t. Someone had removed all the little poppers from the toy so it only made a gentle
whoosh
as he pushed it, blowing quiet but colorful confetti through the clear top like a snow globe. When he saw me, he stopped, smiled and flapped a chunky little palm at me. “Juba.”

“Hey, champ,” I said, squatting down to give him the high five he wanted. My leg tingled and burned, screaming at me not to put more weight on it. Still, I wasn’t going to miss the chance to chat with my favorite one-year-old. “How’s the potty training?”

Leo giggled. “Uh-oh.”

I pinched my nose in exaggerated fashion. “Pee-yoo!”

He imitated me. Nina came by and snatched him up without a word, carrying him down the hallway toward his nursery for a change. I gave him a sneaky wave. He giggled back.

“And where is your son?”

I looked up to see Chanter coming in from the den. The old man looked a lot worse than the last time I saw him. He’d lost a lot of weight, despite refusing the chemo, and a lot of the muscle tone was gone, leaving the skin just to sag. The old biker vest he wore hung off his arms, now two sizes too big. Even the faded ink on his arms looked older. He came in and sat down in the recliner, cigarette burning between his fingers. He smashed it into a half-full ash tray. It was only then I noticed the green oxygen tank hidden behind the sofa. He wasn’t using it but seeing it and knowing it was his felt wrong. The alpha was supposed to be the strongest wolf, not the weakest. In his current state, it looked as if Chanter was barely hanging on.

But I didn’t mention it. No one did. In no uncertain terms, he’d forbidden anyone to talk about his cancer or his refusal to treat it. Anyone who did risked the wrath of the whole pack now.

“Detention for another half hour or so,” I answered, standing. “He said he’d walk over after school.”

“He’d better,” Chanter grunted and then coughed. Out of instinct, I moved forward, ready to help him if he needed it. The old werewolf swatted me away. We didn’t talk about it. “Is he fighting at school again?”

“It was a girl this time, Chanter. Thank God she didn’t need stitches. This is the second time this year and we haven’t even made it to Thanksgiving break yet.” I plopped down on the sofa close to Chanter with a sigh. I swung my leg up onto the cushion beside me. For the first time, I noticed dried blood on my jeans. “What am I going to do with that kid?”

“Hm. Good question. But it must be hard for a young man in the world today, especially when his mother would rather spend her time chasing monsters than talking.”

I gave him a reproachful glare. “You know that’s not how it is.”

“Sure I do. You don’t have to convince me. It’s Hunter you have to convince.”

Daphne came in from the kitchen, two open beers in her hands. She offered me one and gave the other to Chanter before sitting on the opposite arm of the sofa. I took a long drink and reveled in the taste of cheap beer and good company for a moment before continuing.

“I’m not so sure it’s my approval he needs,” I said, turning the beer bottle around in my hands. “It’s been fifteen months, Chanter. I hate to ask but at what point does he get a spot here in the pack?”

“When he is ready,” said the old Indian before taking a swig.

“And when is that going to be?”

“Soon.”

I rolled my eyes. That’s what he always said. “To be honest, I’m going to need something more concrete. You said he would start the Change soon, too. So far, he hasn’t transformed into a little wolf boy. You’d think I would have noticed.”

Chanter laughed. “The Change happens first in the mind, girl, and body second. He’s embraced the possibility and now he fights with the acceptance of what it means to be what we are. Once he works through it, the Change will come. But that’s on his time, not ours. As difficult as it is for us, we have to be patient. Now, let me see your leg.”

I frowned. Chanter would want to try and heal me or, at the very least, want to help me bandage any damaged tissue. I didn’t want him to waste his energy on me. I’d heal on my own time. But refusing him would do no good so I reached down, pulled off my shoe and rolled up my pant leg, making a face when I saw the injury for the first time.

There were some dark spots on my ankle, each about the size of a dime. They were a deep shade of red surrounded by purple. The marks extended up my leg in an irregular pattern, all the way to the knee. Between the marks, some black veins had surfaced. I panicked when I saw it, remembering the zombie Doctor Kalma had put down in the morgue. These were the same markings.

Chanter got out of his recliner casually, as if he’d seen the marks a hundred other times. He knelt in front of me and took my leg in his leathery hands, moving it back and forth. “This is the only place it touched you?”

“Shit, Chanter, what is this?”

“Calm yourself, girl. It’s nothing that can’t be remedied. But we’ll have to tend to it soon before it spreads.”

“This can spread?” I shook my head. “Holy Hell…Chanter, the girl in the morgue, she had marks like this. She came back to life like a freaking rage zombie and tried to eat me.”

Chanter nodded.

“Have you seen this before?” I asked.

“No. But, when you get to be my age, very little surprises you.”

“What’s causing this? I’ve never heard of a fae who can turn people into zombies.”

“Fae you say? I thought you were hunting a spirit.”

I took a deep breath to calm myself. “I’m not so sure anymore.”

“Technically, if they’re dead and don’t want your brains, they are revenants,” Chanter said. “There is a long, well-documented connection between many different spirits and the undead.” He brushed a hand over one of the black marks. “Some say evil possesses them and makes them walk again. The old Norse had a type of revenant they just called the again-walkers. Very creative, the old Norse folk. It’s nothing new, Judah. It’s only new to you.”

“Like the draugr in Ed’s video games,” Daphne pointed out.

Chanter nodded. “Precisely that. This thing may be connected to that myth.”

What Chanter was saying made a lot of sense. “What do you know about them?” I asked Chanter.

“Some,” he admitted. “But not much. Like television zombies, they are supposed to be undead things and, like your zombies, they can infect the living, spreading their curse. I believe they’re associated with drowned sailors or some such nonsense.”

“That last part doesn’t fit this thing,” I said shaking my head.

“Not every aspect of every myth is true, girl.” He grunted as he wrapped his fingers around my leg. “How is the other one? The one you brought with you?”

“Worse,” I admitted. “He got impaled with some iron. I owe Creven my life, Chanter. And Kim will go ballistic if he dies.”

“Creven. This is the one in the shed?” I nodded. Chanter gave another grunt and continued looking at my leg. “You’re the supposed expert. You tell me what you make of the creature you’re hunting.”

I thought hard about what I knew, which was surprisingly little. Just a short while ago, I had been so sure it was a spirit. But, if it was some kind of zombie making giant, it would account for many of the other signs as well. The shaking and knocking Sven described could have just been footsteps. I still had no idea how it had gotten into Aisling, how it had gotten to Kim’s. If there was some kind of ice giant walking around the Concho County desert, you’d think someone would have noticed.

One thing was for sure. The giant didn’t like whatever magick Creven had been throwing at it.

Chanter coughed, drawing me back from my thoughts.

I pulled my leg away from Chanter. “You shouldn’t heal me, Chanter. I can wait for Sal.”

“Bullshit,” Chanter growled, grabbing my leg again and this time holding it in an iron grip. “He’s got his hands full with the other. As it is, he’ll have to do it in a series of treatments or else risk weakening himself. Now, shut up, hold still and let me help you.”

Chanter wrapped his hands around either side of my ankle and closed his eyes, taking up the same position I’d seen Sal use in the shed. After a moment, I felt a vague tingle on my skin and looked down to see some of the black lines fading.

The healing lasted only a minute or so before I heard Chanter stifle another cough, then a wheeze. Daphne got up off the sofa arm and gently put her arms around Chanter, holding him while he tried and lost the fight against a coughing fit. In the end, she wound up helping him back to his recliner and fitting his face with the oxygen mask. Deep red splotches of effort dotted his graying face.

I watched and suddenly felt guilty.
I shouldn’t have let him try to use his magick
, I realized.
Not as weak as he is. He’s too far gone
. I rolled my pants leg back down and mumbled a word of thanks before getting up to go back outside for some air.