“No, Dare. I swear it on the Lady. I’m here to help.” Laurence’s tone was uncharacteristically subdued, and Andrew could just imagine his tail-between-the-legs posture.
Andrew put his face in his hand. He’d have to check Laurence out by scent in person to be sure he was sincere. They could use the support if he was. He was a capable enough fighter, given the right orders. “Are you insane? Did Rory seriously give you permission to come out here?” Andrew couldn’t imagine that the man had defied his alpha. Not Laurence. That would mean thinking for himself.
“Rory’s going crazy. He knows we all think he fucked up, letting that guy get to Ginnie, and he’s getting paranoid about his position and the rest of the sub-packs, and he’s just—we need you back, Dare. Please.”
Andrew got to his feet to turn on the overhead light. The single lamp he’d left on was casting annoying shadows. Better for his eyesight for things to be either bright or completely dark. “You should know why I can’t do that.” He snarled. “Especially now.”
“No! I know.” Andrew could hear Laurence tucking an invisible tail again. “That’s why I came to help you. To … get away for a while, and allow you to come back faster.”
The hesitation was heavy with something unsaid, but Andrew was too worried about a dozen other problems to bother figuring it out. Should he have Laurence come straight here to check his story, or somewhere unrelated? But picking him up from somewhere else would thin their strength even more. If Laurence gave anyone the pack house address, it wouldn’t get them here that much faster than following Silver’s scent. He growled for Laurence to hand him back to the Seattle woman. “Shove his ass in a taxi back here, so you can stay at your post.”
Andrew ended the call and went to warn the others and find some coffee.
When Laurence arrived and turned away from paying the driver, he moved like he was in pain. Andrew let him come up to the house rather than meeting him on the driveway, both to allow the cab time to turn out of sight, and also to verify his initial impression.
The longer the man walked, the more unmistakable it was. No bruises were visible on Laurence’s skin, but that meant nothing on a werewolf. If Laurence was still in any pain, however minor, it meant the damage had soaked past his ability to heal it all at once. And it had been a long plane ride over from Virginia.
“You working with our killer?” Andrew planted himself on the path downwind from Laurence. The man’s head shake smelled legitimate. “He the one that worked you over?” Another shake. John and Pierce slipped into the doorway, arms crossed. It reminded Andrew of how Rory liked to have a couple thug types standing by whenever he met someone. He must be starting to look like a real alpha. It disgusted him. He waved them back, but not before he caught Laurence noticing their body language.
“Rory did this, then?” Andrew growled to distract him. He held the door open to bring Laurence into the entryway, shut it, and then crossed over to the man. He put a hand on the side of Laurence’s neck, to keep him still and calm, then ran a hand down the man’s side. Laurence winced when Andrew found the cracked ribs. If those were left, it meant the energy of healing had probably gone into something like a punctured lung.
As Andrew kept his hand on Laurence’s neck, a corner of his mind noted how the man relaxed into the gesture. Dammit, he wasn’t part of Roanoke anymore, and he didn’t want the pack he had, never mind another follower. “Laurence,” he said sharply, reminding the man that he’d left a question unanswered.
“I told you Rory was going crazy. Paranoid. I think he’s got the other sub-packs under control, but he’s feeling so unstable, he takes it out on me.” Laurence lifted his chin. “I came out to where I could follow someone sane.” His attention went again to John and Pierce, both watching silently. “Seattle?” John didn’t move, Andrew winced, and Laurence looked like he’d gotten his answer. It only strengthened his worrying expression of loyalty.
Andrew let his hand drop. “That fact absolutely doesn’t go beyond this pack, understand? This is temporary, and I don’t want anyone riding in to beat me down when I have a killer to catch.” Only temporary. He was going to hang on to that with everything he had. “I’m not going to crawl back to Roanoke afterward. I doubt Rory would take me back even if I tried.” He sighed. “Come on. You need to eat and rest and heal up if you’re going to be any good to me.”
21
Silver put Death on watch for Dare as the Lady’s light gave way to sunlight the next morning. They brought her food down in the den, and she made sure to stay silent and cowed, avoiding Dare as much as possible. Death was right, he knew her too well. The others saw a weak, broken thing, and dismissed her.
She kept her eyes on her food, and waited. “He’s out of sight,” Death said. “Chewing the same bone again with talk of plans, since there’s nothing new. Only the new one left to watch over you.”
Silver stole a glance at the man she vaguely remembered from Dare’s not-pack. She hated to use his kindness against him, but she had little choice. She pushed to her feet. She wasn’t cold, but it wasn’t hard to find shivers anyway. Just thinking about the monster made her muscles feel weak and she courted the shaking. Weak. Weak and needing protection.
“Are you cold?” the new man asked, concern settling onto his face. He came closer.
Silver shook her head. “No. Just sometimes I can’t help but think about—” She drew in a breath, making that shake too. She lifted her useless arm to hug it across her chest, tight. She saw the idea of a hug enter his expression and prayed to the Lady’s clouded face it would continue to grow. She needed that protection, didn’t she?
The new man enfolded her in an embrace to help damp the shaking. “Don’t worry, I’m sure Dare knows what he’s doing.” He was slight and hardly taller than her. It made her feel even more dishonest. She leaned into the gesture and took a deep breath. Death panted in amused anticipation.
Silver slammed her knee into the new man’s crotch and ran when he doubled over. Up, out of the den and for the entrance. She could only pray speed was enough, combined with the others’ surprise. They’d hear her steps, but maybe they wouldn’t understand at first what had happened. Her legs weren’t injured. She could run fast enough. She hoped.
Then she was through. They might still catch her, but at least she’d gotten that far. “And now we run again.” Silver didn’t let herself think about the monster, just concentrated on running as fast and as far as she could.
“And now we run,” Death echoed.
* * *
Andrew pushed up off the couch at the sound of running footsteps. Those sounded light. Silver? But Laurence had promised to guard her. “Laurence?” he shouted as he ran for the front door himself, John following. It hung open, Silver already outside. A wheeze from the basement was the only answer he got. John thumped down to check on Laurence as Andrew strode out on the front step. No sign of her, just her lingering scent on the air.
“You moron.” Andrew strode back to smack the back of Laurence’s head as he came up from the basement, still wheezing and hunched over. “I told you to watch her.”
“But—she was so upset—” Laurence hung his head.
“She does that.” Andrew scrubbed his face. All right. They still had time.
“I’ll go after her on foot. Easiest and fastest way to track her, and she listens to me slightly more than she does any of you. She might actually come back with me rather than making us drag her.”
Andrew nodded to Pierce as he arrived from the bedrooms upstairs. “You and John follow in the car. We can take her back that way, and I’ll keep in contact in case I need backup. Laurence, you stay put here. Stay out of the others’ way.” Laurence whined in further apology, but didn’t otherwise argue. Andrew couldn’t really bring himself to blame the man for being fooled by Silver. She was good at that trick. Andrew paused to collect nods at his orders, and then pounded out the door.
It gave Andrew a strange sense of having come full circle to be chasing Silver again. The background behind her scent was different, composed of evergreens and the nearby bodies of water and a particular tang to the air that made Andrew think of mountains whether they caused it or not. But it was her and him and the quiet noises of a suburban neighborhood as he tracked her.
Her trail crossed a couple major roads at crosswalks, which stilled at least one of Andrew’s worries. He had to remember how much more lucid she was now than when he’d first found her. He reported the first couple intersections to John on his phone, but he moved faster when he didn’t have to hold it to his ear. After that, he called only when she made a major change of direction.
Houses got closer together, then condo buildings got taller, and he started having more and more trouble following Silver’s exact trail. Her scent was on the wind, but that left far too large an area. Pedestrian traffic picked up as he grew closer to downtown businesses.
He lost the trail entirely somewhere in the middle of a courtyard between several high-rises. A fountain splashed in the center and silver-colored concrete blocks marked a pattern of lines among the red brick. The crowd of people walking in every direction was thick, far too thick for it to do any good even if Andrew bent as if to tie a shoe and got his nose closer to the ground.
It was hard to smell anything other than humans, their perfume and deodorant and sweat swirling together. Andrew paused to give John his location, hung up, and pushed toward the courtyard’s edge. He’d have to pick Silver’s trail up on the other side. He’d never find it in here.
A blond man coming from the other direction jostled Andrew and caught himself on his shoulder. Andrew lifted a hand to sweep him aside, but froze when he saw what the man held shielded between their two bodies. A gun barrel and silencer flashed with a sliver of sunlight, and the smell of metal and acrid gunpowder drifted up to Andrew’s nose, sharp over the Were man’s own scent.
“I’m so glad to meet you. I’m Stefan. You must be the delightfully protective male scent I found all over Selene’s trail in the east and in her home. These are silver bullets, by the way—I know, how clichéd, yes?—so you might want to come with me to discuss this somewhere else.”
Andrew recognized the voice immediately. He stayed frozen for several seconds longer as his instincts screamed at him to pounce, and he overrode them. Not here. Not with a gun on him. If those were silver bullets, he’d probably be dead after the first shot, and who knows how many others after him when Stefan caught up with Silver. “Can’t say I return the sentiment. What do you want?”
“Just to talk.” Stefan ground the silencer’s barrel into Andrew’s side. “Let’s go this way.”
Andrew twisted to try to get a better look at the man’s face, to read anything more about his intentions. Now he was close, he had the same poisoned, infected stench of silver metal that had underlain Silver’s scent at the beginning. Same as the scent of that lone in the east, so long ago, and that half-familiar scent at the Bellingham house, Andrew realized. How could he have been so stupid, and not linked the two before now?
The man was fair in an Eastern European way, lank hair falling into his eyes, and gaunt to the point of emaciation. One arm dangled free. Like Silver’s. He was the other victim. Andrew gritted his teeth until he felt they would crack. As long as Stefan was here, with a gun on him, Silver was safe.
Stefan jabbed the barrel again, into the center of Andrew’s back this time. “Faster, please.” He laughed, an even, pleasant sound with the same mad lack of context. He shoved Andrew into an access road between two buildings, Dumpsters along its length. Several cars and small delivery trucks sat at service entrances.
Pain burst in Andrew’s back and his legs collapsed beneath him. He didn’t register the sound of the silenced gunshot until after the pain, though it had come first. He’d been shot before. He knew what it felt like, or at least what buckshot in the flank or leg from rednecks taking potshots at “coyotes” or “stray dogs” felt like. This was worse, but not so much worse. It didn’t burn like silver.
Stefan grabbed him by the back of his shirt and dragged him into the shadow of a compact car. Andrew tried to summon breath to call out and attract human attention, but the pain made it hard to breathe. How far was Silver? Could the others find her before Stefan did? The pain swelled up again as Stefan hoisted him up into the trunk. When he had his hand free, Stefan pulled out a crowbar that had been tucked at the front of the trunk. He smashed it into Andrew’s temple. Darkness.
22
Silver stopped to drink at a small spring that bubbled up when she leaned her weight on the soil around it. She raised her head to check the wind. Was the monster on her trail? She couldn’t find his scent. What was taking him so long?
“The trap falls apart if he doesn’t take the bait,” Death said in her brother’s voice. She could almost see her brother’s frown in her mind, so caught up in the thinking of a thing that he forgot about its why. The why was all Silver could think of. The trap was to save Dare and her mother’s pack. If she failed in this, she failed them.
She hesitated a long time, until the spring’s water built up and dribbled over her fingers, painfully cold. “We’re going back,” she told Death. “Maybe the warrior was right. The monster’s too smart for such a trap. I need to warn my mother’s pack.”
Death dipped his head that he had heard, but his manner was too bland for Silver to tell if he agreed. “If you think you can find them in time.”
Silver snarled at him. “If I didn’t think that, I’d give up. I’m not giving up.” Her next breath twisted into her throat and choked her. The monster was here. Closer than she’d realized, hidden as it had been under the forest’s normal scents. Lack of breath made her weak, which was good. She couldn’t just run, she had to think. Had to strain her nose to find Dare’s scent, or those of the pack. She had to go to them.
She found the former alpha first, strong and solid. The thought of that loosened her throat, let her breathe again. He was circling around toward the monster, which let her move away from the monster. Thank the Lady.