“I discussed it a little with your beta, too.” Andrew clenched his jaw so he didn’t speak too loud and wake Silver, though she seemed to still be more unconscious than asleep. “He seemed a big fan of mercy killing. She’ll be coming with me.”
“Lady. Craig!” Michelle spat the name as she turned. “I
can
control him,” she said without turning back to him as she jogged down the stairs. Most of the resistance faded from her tone, however, leaving resignation in its place. Andrew followed her down, and as he expected she didn’t stop him from detouring to the front door.
It worried him to load Silver into the car in daylight, but the neighborhood was quiet and modern enough that few knew their neighbors. And Andrew never underestimated the power of an authoritative manner to convince humans that he had every right to do whatever he was doing.
At some point in the drive, unconsciousness seemed to pass into true sleep for Silver. It was more peaceful than he remembered from their night in the hotel, no quiet whimpering from presumable nightmares. She turned onto her side on the backseat, injured arm tucked underneath her. She left her good arm a little outstretched like she was embracing something.
The smell of fast-food tacos for lunch didn’t wake her, and neither did shaking her shoulder after he’d finished. Maybe with the silver drained from her blood, a small portion of her natural werewolf healing had returned, keeping her asleep as her energy finally went to ease old injuries. Andrew picked another mall parking lot, child-locked the back doors, and left another message on Seattle’s phone. This time if he didn’t hear in a few hours he would keep going north and knock on Seattle’s door if he had to. Seattle could just deal with it.
His phone rang five minutes later, but it identified the call as from Boston, not Seattle. Andrew answered, and his tension eased as they exchanged greetings. “Is Rory pitching a fit about my being gone too long already?” Andrew asked after updating the older man on Silver’s condition. “It’s been two days.”
Benjamin chuckled. “Give him another day or two. But no. I need your permission as enforcer to take care of some business.” He paused, and Andrew filled in the rest. If it was just permission he needed, not action, he wasn’t surprised Boston was avoiding going through Rory. Andrew could give that easily enough over the phone.
“There’s a male lone who popped up around our northern border. I know checking him out would usually be your job, but under the circumstances I thought perhaps I could send one of my own people after him.”
“Please do,” Andrew said. There were other alphas he wouldn’t trust to kick a lone out of their territory without antagonizing him, but not Benjamin. He could handle it. Better it not wait until Andrew returned, too. The lone might get settled in.
“Thank you.” Andrew filled in a silent bow of Benjamin’s head. “And how goes your own search?”
“Seattle’s got something to hide, that’s clear enough. Whether it’s to do with Silver’s monster remains to be seen.” Andrew glowered at a point out on the blacktop. “I’m starting to think I should just go up there, permission be damned.”
Benjamin made a neutral noise that Andrew nevertheless could tell meant he disagreed. Andrew waited him out, and he finally explained. “Do you have any evidence Were are in immediate danger? Otherwise, you’ll have destroyed your chance of getting information from them for nothing. Your reputation is bad enough as it is.”
Andrew growled. He’d thought as much himself. It still helped to have a second opinion, though. “No, if anything, it sounded from Portland like the rest of the pack were in on the effort to hide it, not frightened. I’ll wait out the full polite interval.”
Benjamin’s chuckle held sympathy for Andrew’s impatience. “Good luck.”
After their good-byes, Andrew checked Silver in the rearview mirror—still sleeping—tossed the phone on the passenger seat, and settled in to nap himself while he waited for Seattle’s call. He hadn’t gotten much sleep the night before, after all.
The cell phone jerked him from a tired floating rather than true sleep.
SEATTLE
, the screen said this time. Took him long enough. “Dare,” he said into the phone, then muffled a yawn in his hand.
“Portland said you wanted a meeting.” The male voice on the line was flat enough it took Andrew a minute to match it to his memory of Seattle from the last time he’d accompanied Rory to the North American alphas’ yearly convocation. “Portland said,” huh? All Andrew’s messages must have slipped the man’s mind.
“That’s right. I’m looking for the pack that—”
“You have something to write down the address?” Seattle’s voice stayed just as flat as he cut Andrew off. Andrew grunted his readiness, pen and an old gas receipt found, and Seattle rattled the address off almost too quickly to follow. He added an exit number off the final freeway and a couple turns and then hung up. Andrew was left to stare at the little message about how long the call had lasted. Michelle hadn’t exaggerated.
Andrew twisted to look back at Silver. Still sleeping. “I hope for your sake he had nothing to do with what happened to you.” Silver murmured in her sleep and turned over, tucking herself against the seat’s back.
Andrew checked the car’s clock as he started the engine, and frowned. He hadn’t realized how late in the day it was getting. Tonight was true full, and no one would be at their most emotionally stable if he forced them to stay in human and discuss Silver. But if he stayed here and shifted, he’d end up hunting, and he couldn’t hunt on their territory without them. Better he get there and get permission to hunt. There had been full moons he’d sweated through entirely in human before, just to prove he could, but he had been younger then. He felt no particular need to show off now.
He headed east from the urban area, to someplace called Issaquah. An Indian word, he supposed, like so many place names he’d seen on signs on the freeway. The foothills of the Cascade Range loomed high and green over the road, surface rounded by a blanket of trees.
The directions took him not to a housing development, as he had expected, but up increasingly steep and narrow winding roads. The only turns seemed to be blind driveways. He missed the one he needed at first, and had to travel quite a way to find a stretch of gravel shoulder wide enough for a U-turn.
Then, when he turned up the right driveway, a metal gate stopped him. Was this not the pack house, then? He couldn’t see any buildings up in the trees. Perhaps it was private land they’d purchased for their hunting grounds. It would make a certain sort of sense to direct him out to those if they’d end up there anyway when everyone went out running for the full.
He got out of the car and took in the layered Were scents. Many people came in and out of here regularly. Hunting grounds, definitely. He found a couple more recent scents, but no one immediately in evidence. Andrew came around to the back of the car and opened the door, resting his arm on top as he looked in at Silver. She didn’t stir. “Now we wait. More. Polite, aren’t they?”
Footsteps crunched behind him, from downwind at the gate. Andrew shut the door and turned. He had to remind himself not to make it too quick. It might be a human. Broken beer bottles and an empty cigarette package littered the side of the gravel road, so kids clearly used the place.
A moment later, it was clear the man was a Were. Even without a scent, Andrew could tell by the way he moved. His dark hair was carefully styled, and his face had a fineness of line that made it pretty. But that prettiness was matched by a grace that suggested he’d be a strong opponent. “Looking for someone?” the man asked, with a parody of politeness.
“Seattle’s a hard man to get hold of. Where is he?” Andrew watched the man. He was like a coiled spring, thoughts beneath the smiling exterior winding him up tight enough to snap. Something was definitely wrong here. What was a low-ranked Were doing meeting him? The alpha himself should be here. Especially if he had something to hide. He’d want to make sure his Were didn’t let something slip.
Something snapped into focus suddenly for Andrew. What if Seattle had been coerced? It would explain why his manner had been off. Kill much of the pack, leaving only enough to keep contact to allay everyone’s suspicions. If Silver hadn’t escaped, the killer—or killers—might have been able to get away with it for quite a bit longer, until far-flung relatives started to question the lack of contact from the lower-ranked were.
Or worse, what if the alpha had been in on it? Andrew could hardly think that without a growl rising in his throat, but betrayal was part and parcel of their human blood. Wolves were never so inventively cruel or wasteful of life.
“He’ll be here soon. I’m Pierce.” The man didn’t offer a hand. Andrew wouldn’t have taken it if he had. Whatever the alpha’s state, this man was certainly not to be trusted.
“Dare. What’s keeping him, then?” Andrew dug into his pocket to find the key fob and beeped the car locked. It wouldn’t keep Silver safe from a determined Were, but it would at least give Andrew time to stop the man without a hostage thrown into the mix. Andrew circled to keep himself between Pierce and the car. Was this man alone? Had he taken out the pack on his own, or had he had help? If he was alone, Andrew would take him down immediately, but it might be better to retreat and get reinforcements. Andrew was good, but not enough for more than two-to-one odds.
Pierce craned his neck to look in the car window behind Andrew. “I thought I smelled—” He drew in a sharp breath, and the smell of shock then rage bloomed on him. “She is. She is alive. Lady.” His next breath was deeper as he shoved the emotions down again. “So you brought her back? Ballsy of you. What, did you get tired of her?”
So he did recognize Silver. Was he pleased to find her alive, or just surprised? His scent was muddy with general aggression. Andrew watched Pierce tightly, but after that first burst of emotion, the man made no move that would telegraph the first blow in a fight, or pulling back to shift before true combat. He seemed content to talk. That wasn’t good. He could be stalling for those reinforcements. “I suppose you were overjoyed I found your loose end for you.”
“Inconvenient, isn’t she?” the man sneered.
The need to kill the man rose up to choke Andrew, and he lunged. After that first poor blow, his composure returned as he found a fight’s quiet mental space. But that first lunge left him open, and Pierce took advantage of it, hammering a blow into his jaw. Andrew had to retreat and begin again, circling, always moving to keep the other man off balance.
Pierce’s problem was that he was used to fighting humans, with their slow reactions. Andrew had figured out long ago that beyond ritual combat in wolf form and beating up human morons in bars, few Were had the first clue about fighting on two legs. This guy was better than many, but he still lacked finesse and put too much power behind each blow.
Andrew felt an energy drain as the bruise on his jaw healed. He couldn’t waste too much time. He needed to take the man down quickly. Pierce lost his patience and launched himself at Andrew, trying to grapple, and Andrew chose his moment. He grabbed behind the other man’s head, slamming his knee up into Pierce’s face at the same time.
Pierce made a keening noise, stumbling back and pressing fingers to his broken nose. If he didn’t shove it back into place within moments, it would start healing that way and need to be rebroken later. “Butcher,” he said thickly. “Where’s your weapons now? How could you do it? Use silver on another Were?”
Andrew stopped halfway to Pierce and a planned blow to smash his head against something and knock him unconscious. What? What was the man talking about? It didn’t ring false like a cheap distraction tactic.
Speaking of distractions, instinct screamed at him, and he started to turn—he shouldn’t have gotten so caught up in the fight as to let Pierce turn him until his back was to the downwind direction—and something smashed into the back of his head.
Andrew managed to catch himself on his hands as he went down, but his vision blurred. “Took you guys long enough,” Pierce whined. “Lady. That hurt. He might have killed me while you were fucking around.”
Andrew didn’t hear the reply because the weapon fell again in another blow to his head. Something cracked. He wasted a little time clinging to the wash of light and pain and voices above him, but the darkness won out in the end.
11
Andrew woke with difficulty from the strange, disjointed dreams that came from healing a concussion. He’d had ample experience with them, and they were just as hard to shake this time as he fought his way to consciousness. Rory would be furious he hadn’t finished whatever job had gone wrong—only this wasn’t just another enforcement job, he remembered. Silver’s talk of Death seemed to have wormed its way into his unconsciousness, and he blinked away the illusion of lights like eyes in the darkness wherever he’d woken.
He tried to shove to his feet, but the cool metal bite of handcuffs held him to a wall by one wrist. He collapsed seated again and jerked the cuffs harder, trying to break them or whatever they were attached to. They rang against some metal ring, presumably set into the wall. False fireworks swam in the darkness when he moved his head too quickly in a last yank. His concussion wasn’t done with him yet, but he had to get free and find Silver. His stomach clenched as he imagined what they could be doing to her right now.
No matter what he did, the handcuffs didn’t give, however. Andrew leaned against the wall to save his strength. He checked his pockets with his free hand to find they’d taken his phone too. He’d have to tempt someone in close enough to get a hostage to force his release. He could only hope it was in time for Silver. The knowledge that he’d failed to protect her settled sourly in the pit of his stomach, joining the throb in his head and the ache in his now bruised wrist.
While he waited, he took stock. The stony scent of concrete was pervasive, but covered over with paneling and carpet. The faintest of gray lines marked windows on the other side of the room. His blindness spoke to how well the windows were covered—his night vision could do a lot with a little light, but he needed at least some. A daylight basement, then. Empty of anyone else for the moment.