Dark Wolf Rising (Bloodrunners) (11 page)

As he headed down the sloping glade, he caught sight of the Runners and three of their mates standing on Mason Dillinger’s front porch, each and every one of them watching him, as if they’d been waiting for him to make an appearance. For a moment, he wondered what the hell they were all doing, just hanging around together in the middle of the day, then realized they’d probably planned to get together for lunch so that they could gossip about
him.

“Where’s the human?” Jeremy called out, a bottle of beer clasped in one hand, while his other arm was wrapped around Jillian’s waist, holding her close to his side.

Hands shoved deep in his pockets, Eric made his way over to the cabin. “She’s grabbing a shower.”

Brody Carter stood near his wife, Michaela, his auburn hair hanging loose around his shoulders, while Cian lounged in one of the rocking chairs that had been placed to the left of the front door. The others were all either sitting in wicker chairs or standing with one hip hitched up on the porch railing, like Mason.

Keeping the chair rocking with one foot, the other perched on his opposite knee, Cian lifted his nose and sniffed at the air as Eric got nearer to the group. A deep sound of appreciation rumbled in the back of the Runner’s throat, as if he’d caught the scent of something good. “Damn, Drake. Your human smells tasty.”

Eric stopped in his tracks on the bottom porch step, his hands fisted in his pockets, and cut a narrowed-eyed glare at the grinning Irishman. “Don’t even think about it, Hennessey.”

“Think about what?” Cian asked, arching one ebony brow. “How good she smells?”

“About
her,
” he forced through his gritted teeth.
“At all.”

The Runner threw back his head and laughed. “Oh, man, this is too classic.”

Eric slid a dark look toward Brody, who appeared to be fighting back a smile. Damn traitor. “Shut your friend up, Carter, before I do it for you.”

“Aw, come on,” Cian drawled. “I’m your friend, too. You just have to learn to put up with me.” A lopsided grin kicked up the corner of the Runner’s wide mouth, his voice a little softer as he said, “And it’s easier if you just give in.”

“There’s nothing to give in to,” he muttered, something about Hennessey’s tone telling him he wasn’t going to like where this conversation was headed.

“S’that right?”

Eric could tell the Runner was no longer talking about the two of them. He was talking about him and Chelsea. “You need to back off, asshole.”

A sharp burst of laughter rumbled in Brody’s broad chest. “Come on, Drake. You can’t blame Cian for the yearning state of your heart. It’s written all over your pretty face. He’s just calling it like he sees it.”

Eric’s lip curled as he snarled at the grinning Bloodrunner. “Her goddamn life is in danger. That’s the only reason she’s here. My heart has nothing to do with it.”

“Hmm, I don’t know,” Brody murmured, slowly stroking his jaw as he played up his study of Eric’s belligerent expression, his deep green eyes shining with humor. “I mean, you
do
look like you’ve been bitten by the love bug, man. Big-time.”

“Piss off,” he grunted as he headed up the steps, looking forward to knocking the stupid grin right off Brody’s face. Just because he’d said similar words to the Runner when he’d been fighting his need for Michaela didn’t lessen his anger, though he knew he was feeling more frustration than anything else.

“Enough!” Mason barked, the gruff command at odds with the crooked grin on his face as he stepped in front of Eric, blocking his advance. Looking at the others, Mason said, “Let’s take this inside before the poor guy blows a fuse.”

“It’s at times like this that I wonder why I put up with you,” Eric muttered, following the others inside as they all made their way to the kitchen.

“You talking about me?” Brody asked with an expression of mock devastation as he leaned back against one of the counters, a grinning Michaela at his side. “I’m crushed, man. Crushed.”

“I’m talking about
all
of you,” he snapped, which had the crazy jackasses laughing and slapping him on the shoulder, as if he was meant to enjoy their ribbing when his goddamn life was being turned upside down.

“So bring us up to date, starting from the beginning,” Mason said, once everyone had made it inside and cold sodas had been passed around, along with a few cold beers. “Jeremy filled us in as much as he could, but I want to make sure we’re all on the same page.”

Crossing his arms over his chest, Eric leaned back against a counter and told them the story, starting with the call from the scouts on Friday night, then taking them through to that morning, without any unnecessary details about the effects of the drug Chelsea had been given...and what he’d had to do to ease her way through them.

“So you just left her at the Travelodge in Wesley on Friday night and drove away?” Mason asked, the corners of his mouth dipping with a frown. “You didn’t think to put a set of eyes on her?”

“No.” He grabbed his beer off the counter, took a long drink, then wiped his mouth and said, “To be honest, it never occurred to me that she wouldn’t listen when I told her to get her little ass out of town.”

Brody laughed. “You’re such an alpha, Eric. You think too much like a wolf. But she’s human. A stubborn one, from the sound of it. She doesn’t think like pack.”

His response was wry. “Trust me, I noticed.”

“So now that she’s here, what’s the plan?” Cian asked, propping the kitchen chair he was sitting on on its back legs. That was one of the things Eric had noticed about the Runner once he’d started spending so much time at the Alley. The guy was always in motion, never quite managing to sit still.

Before Eric could answer Hennessey’s question, Mason said, “You’re going to have to trust her with our secret. We don’t allow humans to stay here without knowing.”

“If her sister is where I think she is,” he said, shrugging his shoulders, “she’s going to learn the truth eventually, anyway. Might as well be now.”

“Are you going to do it?” Brody asked.

“Hell, no. She doesn’t exactly trust me.”

This time, it was Cian who laughed. “Smart girl.”

“Who, then?” Mason asked.

“Torrance, if she doesn’t mind,” he replied. “I thought it might be best, since she’s human and still pretty new to our world.” Part of him felt like a coward for not doing it himself, but his gut told him this was the kindest way for Chelsea to learn the truth about his species.

“I don’t mind,” Torrance said with a smile, her green eyes soft with understanding.

“Take Jillian with you when you go over,” Mason murmured, pride and protectiveness burning in his gaze as he spoke to his wife.

She nodded. “Good idea. And I’ll take Michaela, too.”

“I’ll stay here,” Carla Reyes, the lone female Runner, murmured, speaking up for the first time. “The last thing this woman needs is me there freaking her out.”

Her partner, Wyatt, snorted from his place on Eric’s right. “Yeah, you
are
pretty freaky, ReyRey.”

Carla replied with a sharp smile, looking ready to go for blood, but Mason put the conversation back on track before things got out of hand. “Then that’s settled. Torry, Jillian and Mic will go over and talk with Chelsea this afternoon. Which brings us to the next problem.”

“Figuring out what we’re going to do about the idiot assholes running things at that club,” Jeremy supplied, his gruff tone making it clear what he thought of the situation. He sounded as ready to kick ass as Eric felt, but this wasn’t a situation they were going to be able to charge right into.

“Jeremy’s right,” he said. “But first, we need to know exactly what we’re dealing with.” Pushing away from the counter, Eric hooked the empty chair in front of him with his foot and joined those who were sitting around the kitchen table. “We need to find out why they have all those human girls working there, and what the hell they’re doing with the drug they used on Chelsea. We also need to find out if the Youngblood pack has finally washed their hands of the Donovans. That might explain their partnership with the Whiteclaw.”

“Either that,” Wyatt offered, his dark eyes hard with worry, “or they’re looking to beef up their numbers because they plan on making a move against us. The whole goddamn region knows we’re ripe for the picking.”

“Shit,” Brody muttered, pulling a hand down his scarred face. “We could have handled the Whiteclaw or the Donovans on their own, but they’re going to be a pain in the ass together. We should have seen this coming.”

Mason shook his head, a disgusted look on his face. “We’ve been so focused on keeping the pack together, we’ve lost sight of what’s happening around us. We’ve been worried about the troublemakers who wander onto our land, when it’s the ones controlling things beyond our borders that we need to be focusing on. The ones plotting in the background. It could turn out to be a mistake that ends up costing us.”

“It’s more than likely already costing those girls at that club,” Eric said grimly, finishing off his beer with a final swallow. “We need to know what’s going on down there. And to find out what’s happened to Chelsea’s sister. Whoever the girl is with, it’s someone who has a connection to that place.”

“Wyatt and I can get a surveillance group on the club,” Carla said, “but it would help if we could get to someone on the inside of the operation. Is there anyone we can talk to from either the Whiteclaw or the Donovan family who might give us some answers?”

Sayre Murphy’s soft voice floated in from the hallway. “You could ask Sophia Dawson.”

Jeremy sighed as he shot a chastising look toward the empty archway. “Sayre, what have I told you about eavesdropping on Bloodrunner business?”

A second later, his sister-in-law came into view, an impish grin on her face. At eighteen, she still looked more like a girl than a woman, though it was clear she was going to be a stunner, with those blue-gray eyes and all that curly, strawberry-blond hair. Eric pitied the poor boys up in Shadow Peak who would no doubt lose their hearts to the waifish girl.

“I didn’t mean to overhear,” she explained, “but Torrance said I could use the computer in the office, and your voices just drifted in. If you didn’t want to be heard, you shouldn’t have been talking so loud.”

Looking as if she was fighting back a smile, Jillian said, “Sayre, what did you mean about Sophia?”

Pushing her hands in her pockets, the girl propped her shoulder against the archway. “She was dating this guy from the Whiteclaw pack last summer. His name is Brandon something or other.”

“What happened?” Cian asked, and from the corner of his eye Eric could see that the Runner was watching Sayre like a hawk about to go in for the kill.

Sayre’s grin faded as she shifted her gaze over to the Irishman. “She broke things off because he started giving her the creeps. Got too serious on her.”

“She got commitment issues?” Cian murmured, locking his hands behind his dark head as he regarded her with a hard, steely stare.

With a shrug, she said, “I can’t say, Hennessey. You’d know more about that than I would.”

Cian scowled. “I’ve never laid a finger on Sophia Dawson.”

Sayre gave an exaggerated gasp. “Wow. You mean there’s actually a woman in this state over the age of eighteen who you haven’t nailed? I’m shocked. But I was referring to your own commitment issues. I figure it takes one to know one.”

The kitchen went unusually silent, everyone seeming a little stunned by the strange interchange between the womanizing Runner and Sayre. Finally, Mason cleared his throat and said, “What does everyone think of Sayre’s suggestion?”

In Eric’s opinion, the idea had potential. If Sophia went to see Brandon in Hawkley, the Whiteclaw pack’s hometown, she might even be able to get close to Perry, if that’s where the girl had been taken. Sophia and Perry were close in age, and lived similar lifestyles from the sound of things, despite the fact that one was human and the other a Lycan. They might meet up by chance in the town, or even be introduced, depending on how willing Brandon was to cooperate.

They all weighed in with their opinions, the consensus seeming to be that so long as Sophia didn’t do anything to put herself in danger, their best bet of getting some quick intel was to send her to Hawkley to question this Brandon guy.

“Okay,” Sayre said. “I’ll call Sophia and ask her if she can come down to the Alley in the morning. Just watch out for Max. He’s going to be pissed if she agrees.” Max Doucet was Brody’s nineteen-year-old brother-in-law. He was also a human who had been changed to Lycan by a rogue wolf, and a soon-to-be Runner in training.

“They’re not dating now, are they?” Michaela asked, looking concerned. Considering the fact that Sophia had a reputation for being a party girl who often got involved with the wrong crowd, Eric didn’t blame her. He knew exactly what it felt like to be protective of a sibling. Especially one who had known their share of grief.

“Not yet,” Sayre replied. “But it hasn’t been for lack of trying. Max likes her. A lot.”

Leaning back in his chair, Eric rubbed one hand against the edge of his jaw. “I think I should pay the Whiteclaw a visit, as well. Explain what I was doing at the club.”

“Oh, yeah?” Jeremy asked, lifting his brows. “And what explanation will you give them for the dead guy you left behind?”

Eric rolled his shoulder. “I’ll just make it clear that I had unfinished business with the human and he got in the way.”

“I gotta hand it to you, Drake. You are one ballsy son of a bitch,” Wyatt murmured, slapping him on the back as he headed toward the refrigerator for another beer.

“I also think we should have Monroe run a trace on Perry Smart’s number.” Monroe was a Fed whose sister was married to a male from the pack and a good friend of the Runners. “I doubt it’ll turn anything up, since they’re probably expecting it, but it can’t hurt to try.”

“If you get me the number,” Mason said, “I’ll call Monroe.”

Eric gave him a nod. “I just have to get it from Chelsea.”

“Good. And now that we’re done with that for the moment...” Cian drawled, lowering his arms as he leaned forward and braced his elbows on the table. He settled his dark gaze on Eric. “Let’s get back to the juicy topic of the day.”