Authors: Naomi Clark
I nodded numbly, grabbing Vince’s hand to
pull him back into his seat.
“
This feral hurts the Pack,
so I’ll deal with him. I won’t force you to join in.” He drummed
his fingers on the tabletop, an erratic rhythm that set me further
on edge. “But I will remember what you chose, when your Pack needed
you.”
I shrank away, sure I was about to puke.
“You can’t make me outcast for this.”
“
No, but I can make life
difficult for you and Shannon.”
He didn’t need to elaborate. There was any
number of ways he could make life difficult for a lesbian
wolf-human couple. Hatred burned inside me, chasing away my nausea.
“So you’re blackmailing me,” I said.
“
Don’t be melodramatic. I’m
not asking anything difficult or dangerous of you, Ayla! You take
us to the feral. That’s it. That’s all.”
A catalogue of broken laws scrolled through
my mind, conspiracy to commit murder being foremost. “Shannon and I
can leave,” I said, digging my fingers into the table until
splinters spiked into the skin under my nails. “You can’t make us
stay in town.”
He growled viciously at me. I growled back.
Vince brushed my arm, cautioning me, but I ignored him. For a long,
spine-prickling moment Eddie and I stared at each other, the air
between us crackling with energy, the alpha’s eyes blazing as he
tried to force me to back down through sheer will alone. He’d
obviously forgotten that I’d spent several years alone, Packless
and fighting my own corner. I wasn’t going to back down.
And then Shannon’s phone rang, buzzing
across the sideboard, and the electric tension between me and Eddie
snapped. We both reared back, our wolves retreating as the human
world intervened. I shook my head, clearing away some of the anger
and Eddie sat down abruptly, a frown carved into his face.
Vince laughed nervously and passed me the
phone. I answered without thinking. “Hello?”
“
Shannon?” A woman;
familiar but not immediately recognizable to me.
“
No, this is Ayla. Shannon
is…”
Probably on the other side of the
door, listening to every word
. “Who is
this?” I asked.
“
It’s Tina. I need to speak
to Shannon.”
I muttered a curse. This was the last thing
we needed with Eddie in the house. “Hang on.” I opened the kitchen
door and saw Shannon sitting at the bottom of the stairs, a studied
look of innocence on her face. “It’s for you,” I said, handing her
the phone and glancing over my shoulder at Eddie and Vince who were
watching with undisguised interest.
Shannon took the phone and retreated into
the living room, shutting the door firmly behind her. It wouldn’t
stop us hearing her end of the conversation, but it gave her a
measure of privacy.
“
Who’s that?” Vince
asked.
“
Client,” I said shortly,
starting to collect the dishes and cutlery, needing some activity
to take my mind off Eddie. The alpha went back to tapping his
fingers on the table, looking relaxed and chirpy, like he hadn’t
just tried to coerce me into murder. I shot him a filthy look. “You
don’t have to stay, Eddie,” I said, taking his empty teacup from
him.
“
We’re not done talking
yet,” he said.
“
Yes we are.” I gripped the
cup hard, resisting the urge to throw it at his head.
He stood, raising his hands in a pacifying
gesture. “For now then. But we’re going after this feral whether
you come or not. And if you don’t want to help, well… You
know.”
The ceramic cracked in my hands, jagged
shards hitting the tiles, my temper getting the better of me. “I
know.”
I waited until I heard the front door slam
behind Eddie before I let loose the scream that had been building
inside me for the past hour. A short, shrill scream of pure
frustration that left my throat burning and raw. “Fuck!” I kicked
the pieces of broken cup across the kitchen floor. “Fuck!”
“
Ayla!” Vince rested his
hands on my shoulders, pulling me back against him. “Calm
down.”
“
You calm down,” I said
stupidly, wriggling free of him to scoop up the mess I’d made. “I
can’t believe that just happened. I can’t believe that old bastard
walked in here and tried to blackmail me!”
Vince knelt to help me, picking a few
smaller pieces out from under the table. “He won’t really do
anything, you know that,” he said. “It’s all talk to bully you into
doing what he wants.”
“
Yeah?” I glanced up,
meeting his eyes. He didn’t look too sure. “They’ve kicked other
wolves out for less than this, haven’t they? I don’t know why I
bloody came back.”
Vince shook his head. “They won’t make you
outcast for this. How can they? Eddie just sat there and said the
alphas were planning to kill this feral. If they make you outcast,
what’s to stop you telling the whole world about it? That would do
Alpha Humans all sorts of favors, wouldn’t it?”
I grunted, not any more convinced than Vince
sounded.
Soft footsteps made me look up. Shannon
leaned in the doorway, watching me and Vince scramble around under
the table on our hands and knees. “That was Tina,” she said. “She
wants us to go round.”
“
Is Molly okay?” I sat up
quickly, banging my head on the underside of the table. I hissed
and rubbed my head, scooting backwards across the tiles so I could
sit up properly. “What’s it about?”
“
She didn’t say. Just said
she wanted us to come over.” Shannon sat down, her pretty face
anxious. “I heard…everything.”
“
I thought you would.” I
leaned against the dishwasher, closing my eyes. “What do you
think?”
“
I had no idea Pack
politics got so…Machiavellian,” she replied. “You told me Hesketh
and Kinsey were kicked out of the city.”
“
They were,” Vince said
grimly. “Nobody laid a finger on them inside the city.”
She blanched. “I had no idea,” she
murmured.
I opened my eyes to meet hers, my insides a
knot of temper and worry. Would she hate me now, knowing I knew
about Hesketh and Kinsey? Would she think me an animal, savage and
inhuman? I truly believed they’d got what they deserved. This feral
though…I wasn’t sure it was the same kind of thing. Eddie had been
talking cold-blooded murder and I didn’t - couldn’t - believe that
was the solution to the Silver Kiss problem.
Shannon sighed and shook her head. “How many
other people have they done this to? How many humans and wolves
have gone missing at the Pack’s command?”
Vince and I both shrugged. I’d been out of
town too long to know if Hesketh and Kinsey were the rule or the
exception. And Vince wasn’t part of the Pack’s upper echelons.
Neither of us was privy to the alphas’ secrets.
“
Jesus Christ,” Shannon
said. Then she stood and moved to where I sat, offering me a hand
up. “Let’s go and see Tina.”
FIFTEEN
Tina met us on the
doorstep, a
cigarette hanging out of her mouth and shadows under her eyes. It
was immediately clear why she’d called us. Her front door was
tagged with the same graffiti as ours: the Alpha Humans symbol and
the word
abomination
scrawled underneath. That was bad enough by itself, but above
the symbol was the sinister message
we’re
watching you
.
My heart flipped. “My God.”
“
Tina, are you okay? Is
Molly okay?” Shannon hurried to her side, catching her
arm.
“
She’s fine. We’re fine,”
Tina assured her. “Just a bit shaken. Molly won’t come out of her
room.” She turned to stare at the graffiti, lip curled in a snarl.
“Bastards. They must have done it last night. Who the fuck do they
think they are?”
“
Have you called the
police?” Shannon asked.
“
What good would that do?
They didn’t help when Molly was missing.” Tina pushed the door open
and pushed us through to the kitchen. “Molly hasn’t said anything,
but I think this is something to do with when she was gone,” she
told us, voice hushed. “I think she got herself in some real
trouble—you saw the state she was in. Beaten black and blue.” She
closed her eyes for a second as if picturing Molly’s wounds. I know
I was. “What if some Alpha Human thugs got to her?” She opened her
eyes and gazed at me, intense and demanding.
I opened my mouth to tell her we’d had the
same graffiti. That probably loads of wolves across the city had
and it didn’t mean Molly was in danger. But Tina caught my hand,
digging her nails into my wrist and silencing me.
“
What if it’s like your
cousin?” she whispered. “What if they kill her?”
I blanched, my throat going dry. I couldn’t
have answered her even if I’d wanted to. I dropped my gaze from
hers; hoping Shannon would fill the sudden, tense silence.
She did.
“
Molly still hasn’t told
you what happened to her, I take it?” she asked Tina.
Tina shook her head. “She won’t talk to me
at all.” Her eyes gleamed. “What could have been so bad that she
won’t talk to her own mum about it?”
“
I’m sure it’s not
personal, Tina,” Shannon assured her. “Molly’s been through a lot
and she probably doesn’t want to worry you anymore.”
“
Her keeping secrets from
me worries me,” Tina spat. “We might not be in this situation now
if she hadn’t kept so many secrets from me.”
Shannon gave her a brittle smile. “Well,
that’s what you wolves do, isn’t it? Keep secrets.”
Her comment hung in the air between Tina and
me, icy and cruel. It was such a non-Shannon thing to say, she
might as well have slapped us both. The unspoken message—you wolves
are different from us humans—was such a physical blow anyway I
think I’d rather she had just hit me.
I cleared my throat, trying to shake off the
chill her words gave me. “Maybe we should speak to Molly?” I asked.
“She might talk to us.” I looked to Shannon for confirmation and
she nodded, suddenly on my side again.
“
It’s worth a try.” She
stood, pressing her hand to Tina’s shoulder. “We’ve been hit by
graffiti artists too,” she told her. “I’m sure it’s nothing to do
with Molly, it’s just those sick bastards having their
fun.”
Tina shook her head. “Maybe. I hope so. I
can’t take anything else, I swear…” She ran her hands through her
hair, looking fragile and defeated. “Go on, go and talk to her. She
won’t tell you anything.” She nodded towards the stairs.
We went up, leaving Tina lighting up another
cigarette. Molly’s room was dark and smelled stale, like the
windows hadn’t been opened for a while. Posters of bands and film
stars lined the walls; the carpet was littered with clothes and
shoes. A typical teenage girl’s room, I supposed. Molly was in bed,
almost lost under a massive duvet. Her dark hair was a tangled
snarl around her narrow face and her eyes gleamed in the darkness,
too bright, too wary.
“
Hi Molly,” Shannon said,
closing the bedroom door after me. “How are you
feeling?”
“
Shit,” Molly replied,
voice raspy.
“
You look shit,” I agreed,
finding a clear space on the floor to sit. Molly frowned at
me.
“
Didn’t you have a lip ring
before?” she asked.
I touched my lip with a grimace. “It got
ripped out.”
She shivered. Shannon perched on the edge of
the bed, resting her hand on Molly’s hair, stroking the knotted
mess soothingly. She did the same thing to me to calm me down. I
looked away, wishing I still had a piercing to chew on.
“
So, you’ve seen the
graffiti?” Shannon asked, taking a no-nonsense approach.
Molly grimaced. “Yeah, so?”
“
So your mum thinks you
might be in trouble,” Shannon said. “You don’t know why Alpha
Humans have tagged your front door, do you?”
“
No.”
“
It’s nothing to do with
where you were when you ran away?” Shannon persisted, gentle but
determined. I thought she might have met her match in Molly,
though. The girl shrugged and burrowed deeper into her
duvet.
“
I’m not telling you
anything. I don’t have to.”
“
We’ve been tagged too,” I
said, hoping the common ground might draw her out.
“
Yeah?” She glanced at me
through her mane of matted hair. “Well, you’re a couple of dykes,
aren’t you? Alpha Humans probably hate dykes as much as wolves,
fuckers.”
Shannon blinked and I growled softly. Molly
just kept staring at me, a challenge in her eyes. Whatever she’d
been through, it was far worse than me, those eyes told me. There
was no threat I could make that would match it.
Shannon stood. “I guess we’re wasting our
time here,” she said.
“
Piss off then.” Looking
drained, Molly sank back under her covers. She yawned and rolled
over away from us. We were dismissed.
I stalked from the room, Shannon in tow.
“Waste of time,” I muttered.
“
She’s still hurting,”
Shannon said. “Still afraid.”
“
Well she’s going to stay
afraid if she doesn’t tell someone what happened! How many other
wolves are going to be hurt and afraid because of this Silver Kiss
shit?” I bunched my hands into fists, wishing I had something to
hit. I just kept hearing Eddie’s words, over and over. He could
make life difficult for us. Molly could make life easier. All she
had to do was open her mouth and tell us what had happened to her.
I knew it was tied into Sly and his drug dealing. If Molly spoke
up, gave a statement to the police, all this could be over and
Eddie could fuck off.