Andrew could almost hear Benjamin’s flickered smile at the pronoun—Andrew’s, not Rory’s. But Rory was the alpha, and Andrew liked it better that way. “At very least, the Roanoke doctor should be able to help her. Then maybe we’ll get some sense out of her.” Even beyond what his duty required for dealing with a lone, he found she roused in him the instinct many high-ranked werewolves had to protect those of lower rank.
“Mm.” Benjamin paused again. “Where are you staying the night? You could come here.”
The concern in his voice could have been just for the hurt lone, but Andrew had heard variations on this tune often before. Benjamin thought his life as enforcer wasn’t healthy, exercising Rory’s authority over Roanoke’s sub-packs but belonging to none.
It was tempting to spend some time with a pack. But he’d set himself outside the local pack structure for a reason. He wasn’t going to be responsible for anyone’s life again anytime soon. “I don’t want to try moving her again until she’s had time to rest. We’ll make the run to Virginia tomorrow.”
“Fair enough.” Benjamin sounded disappointed, but not surprised. “Take care of yourself, Dare. And her.”
They said their good-byes and Andrew rose to check on Silver. Still sleeping, if fitfully, whimpering to herself every so often. He wondered if she was deep enough under he could chance leaving to get dinner. His stomach was starting to growl. With his earlier shifting, his metabolism wasn’t very tolerant of missed meals.
He’d have to risk it. Andrew drove to a fast-food restaurant a few blocks down and took the drive-through to pick up two burgers, stacked with multiple patties and cheese and bacon. He’d never been sure how humans managed them, but they hit the spot after shifting.
He left one in the bag for Silver and munched on his as he approached the room. He folded the paper back over the burger and moved the bag to the same hand to free up a hand for the key when he reached the door.
Silver slammed into him the moment the door opened. Andrew dropped the food and snatched a handful of her sweatshirt as she bolted down the hall toward freedom. He wrestled her into his arms and lifted her feet from the floor, hoping she wouldn’t scream. A story about a teen runaway dragged home for her own good or some such would only hold up so well when he was healthy and male and she was female and pathetic. Fortunately she only panted harshly as she struggled. Andrew kicked the burgers into the room and slammed the door behind them the moment he set Silver down.
“The monster is
coming,
” Silver hissed, crouching. “I can’t stay here. Can’t lead him to you. Let me go.” She gasped and curled around her arm again.
“I am trying to get you to help,” Andrew snapped. He stayed blocking the door until he was sure her gasping was not an act to get him out of the way. “I’m taking you to people who can protect you from monsters.” Whatever those monsters were. Hallucinations, most likely. Hopefully the doctor could take care of those.
Instead of answering, Silver subsided into silence and lay in a curl on the floor, eyes closed. Andrew waited a few minutes and then knelt beside her and rolled her shoulder back so she lay in a more open position. She kept her eyes closed, but Andrew could smell she was conscious. It was awkward, but he needed to know what he was dealing with. He eased down the zipper on her sweatshirt to reveal an equally grimy tank top underneath, though no bra.
He drew out her arm and she fought him, straining her shoulder muscles against his pull. The rest of her arm muscles seemed unable to respond. Another moment and she sighed and gave up. He laid her arm flat on the carpet, exposing angry red welts running from the inside of her elbow toward her heart. His fingers brushed one of the welts as he tried to angle her arm for better light and pain shot up his arm like he’d touched something red hot.
Or something silver.
Andrew’s breath caught and he recoiled. What had been done to her? He knew European use of silver as punishment well enough from when he’d lived there. But that created burns in obvious places. Around wrists or ankles from binding. On the face or lower arms that had been raised against blows. Across the back from whipping.
The human world was also filled with silver, but those wounds were accidental and thus on extremities, like a burn on the palm from shaking hands with someone who wore a ring. In the past, the Catholic Church had used it on purpose to defeat or torture what they thought were monsters, but no one had believed in the Were for over a century. None of those things fit with the welts Andrew saw here.
Andrew leaned over the arm again, careful not to touch this time. If he made himself think in human terms the welts looked less like burns and more like blood poisoning. Had silver remained against her skin for a long time? Andrew traced the welts back to their source in the cup of her elbow with his eyes, and drew in a breath.
That looked like a needle mark.
Had she been injected with silver in a liquid form, like silver nitrate? Was there still silver in her blood? That would explain why touching the welts had burned him. His stomach clenched as nausea rose. There were stories—myths, really—that the Catholic Church had tried injecting silver into the Were they had picked up along with the vampires that were the Inquisition’s real target. All kinds of impossible stories existed about the Inquisition, however, most easily disproved.
More important was to figure out what he could do about it if she had been injected. She should have the silver removed as soon as possible, but if it was in her blood—should he cut her? Hope the silver drained before she bled out?
The silver did look like it might be fairly contained in the welts, especially since touching the rest of her skin hadn’t burned him. But what if cutting into them released it into the rest of her bloodstream instead of bleeding it out? Did it work that way in humans? Andrew had no idea. He would have immediately forgotten the information if he’d come across it before.
Better he let the doctor the Roanoke sub-packs shared look at her before he did anything stupid. Andrew left her injured arm where it was and checked her wrists and ankles for other signs of silver, but found nothing.
After watching her a little longer, Andrew scooped the woman up, laid her on the bed, and returned to his now much squashed burgers. He needed the time to settle before he presented this to Rory. Injected silver. He could barely believe it himself.
When he could put it off no longer, he got out his phone and called his alpha.
“You find her?” Rory sounded distracted.
Andrew checked his watch. He’d probably caught the pack getting ready to go out for an evening run. “Yes. She’s brain-damaged from silver exposure.”
Shocked silence. Then, “Did a European dump her after her punishment?”
“It’s injected silver, Rory. That died with the Inquisition, if it ever happened at all.”
“I wouldn’t put it past some of the European packs. Though I suppose you’d know.” Rory tossed off the comment as if he didn’t realize how insulting it sounded.
“I just married a European. I’m as North American as you are.” Andrew stopped to ungrit his teeth enough to continue speaking. Rory was just rattled by the European politics ending up on his doorstep. “You’re the one who resorted to silver when things went wrong in Memphis.” And given his reputation, it was Andrew who had taken the blame for that incident. Of course.
“Don’t forget Sacramento’s son, down in Florida. That was all you. I never told you to kill the boy.”
“A clean death, without silver. You agreed with me at the time, Rory. It was necessary.” Andrew flexed his free hand into a fist. This old argument was beside the point. “Trust me. I’ve never heard of a Were doing something like this before.”
Rory growled. “Humans, then. It has to be.”
“Humans don’t believe anymore, not in this century.” Silver jerked in her dream and Andrew paced over to look down at her. “If a werewolf can’t exist, you don’t bother using silver on it.” But. But it did sound exactly like the stories about the Catholic Church.
“Whoever it was, we have to find them. Is she going to be able to tell us?”
Silver gave a soft cry and covered her face with her good arm. “I doubt it.” Andrew pulled the blankets free and laid them over her.
“Well.” Robbed of the clearest path to action, Rory sounded a little lost.
Andrew rubbed his temple. “Warn the doctor we’re coming. We’ll leave in the morning. Maybe she’ll get more lucid once she’s been treated.”
“Right.” Rory sounded annoyed as he hung up, and Andrew suppressed a sigh. Normally he would have worked to make it sound more like the other man’s idea, but it had been a long day.
He checked the windows to make sure they didn’t open wide enough to allow an adult woman through, then returned to the door. He would hear if she got up, but he didn’t know if he would be able to catch her before she reached the door if he slept in the other bed. There seemed to be nothing else for it but to sleep in front of the door.
Andrew grabbed a towel from the bathroom and dropped it on the floor. Even more shifting with the moon not yet full would tire him out, but it would save him a crick in his human back. He could feel the day’s efforts building to exhaustion in the time it took to push into wolf, but he made it, and curled up on the towel after scuffling it up around him.
4
Silver woke before the snakes and she lay still for a long while, reluctant to disturb them. She heard the warrior’s sleeping breaths on the other side of the den. Death was nowhere to be seen. That gave Silver hope, and she eased her arm back to its place against her chest. The snakes hissed in their sleep, but did not wake, so she sat up.
The warrior’s wild self was ascendant now, so he must have switched it with his tame during the night. Both selves dozed, curled against each other.
Death sauntered into the den. He didn’t even acknowledge the warrior this morning. Instead, he sat on his haunches, watching Silver. The grace of his movements was arrogance today, the Lady’s full light glinting on his fur as it ruffled up with his strides.
Silver looked down at her hand to find it bathed in familiar dimness and waited for Death to speak, but he was clearly enjoying her anticipation and discomfort. She gave in and spoke first. “You seem pleased with yourself.”
“He’s going to take you away, Silver.”
Silver shivered. Death had never used her mother’s voice before. She wanted to wince and promise to obey like the cub she had been when she heard it last. “He doesn’t have the monster’s smell on him. Maybe he’ll protect me as he promises. I’m tired of running. Maybe the Lady is telling me I should look for help instead.” She lifted her chin, defiant.
“Leave him. He doesn’t care for you like we do. Why won’t you come to us? We’ll help you. Your brother and his mate, we’ll all help you find your wild self.”
The guilt pulled as strongly as if her mother really had spoken, even when Silver focused on Death’s tongue-lolling smirk. Why didn’t she join her family? If Death hadn’t taken them, she would have run to them first. She had to remember that these were not her family’s words, they were Death’s. Her family would never want her to surrender to the fire. And if Death didn’t want her to go with the warrior, perhaps that was just what she should do.
* * *
Andrew woke to Silver’s voice, but it was quiet enough he didn’t register specific words for several moments. Probably just rambling again. He shoved himself back to human during a pause.
When he was done, he found Silver watching him. “Where will you take me? To your pack? The monster follows me. You might be leading danger to them.” She looked at his face, rather than off into empty space like before.
“What danger?” Before, he’d assumed the monster was a hallucination, but
someone
had injected her. Was that who she feared? But she folded in on herself, whimpering again. Andrew blew out a frustrated breath. One moment the woman seemed lucid—he’d had no idea she’d processed enough of his conversation last night to understand he was taking her somewhere—and the next he asked a simple question and she was lost to the poison again.
“Yes, I’m taking you to the Roanoke pack. You’re in Roanoke territory now, remember?” If she even knew what Roanoke was. It might be better if she didn’t. The Western packs believed it was only a matter of time before Roanoke started pushing its territory past the Mississippi. If she came from a Western pack, that mistrust might have survived subconsciously.
Silver straightened. “Will they help me? Help me find my wild self?” She tipped her chin to her arm. “If any of them speak Snake, they could ask. I think the snakes know where she went.”
“Uh. Sure…” Andrew said. Snakes? Rory’s mate was a patient woman. Maybe she could find some sense in the hallucinations if the doctor couldn’t stop them.
Silver stayed still while he dressed and packed but followed willingly enough when he shouldered his bag and took her arm. “You never said they were your pack,” she commented as he guided her across the parking lot to the car. “Where’s your pack?”
“Rory is my alpha, but I’m not part of his pack. Since the Roanoke pack unites a number of alphas, it’s a huge territory and Roanoke himself can’t be everywhere.” Andrew had heard Rory’s father managed to make it seem like he could by sheer charisma, back when he built the pack before Andrew’s time, but that was neither here nor there. “That’s why he has me as his enforcer. I can’t really belong to a particular pack when I have to keep them all in line.”
Andrew nudged Silver to sit in the passenger seat. He didn’t try to buckle the seat belt this time, and she sat calmly. “It must be nice to be lone, then,” she said.
Andrew eyed her for a second before he shut the door on her. Something about her tone was disconcerting. She sounded like she knew too much even while she spouted nonsense. He wasn’t lone by nature. He felt the itch to have Were around to talk and run with, sure, but circumstances had intervened. He left her in the car and stomped to the lobby to check out.
He hit the same drive-through again on the way to the highway. The half-dozen breakfast sandwiches smelled greasy and tasted worse, but they provided a fast way to replace the calories he’d burned. He pulled across two parking spaces to unwrap them and tossed three to Silver. She almost choked herself trying to eat the first one-handed and too quickly, but she growled at him when he put a hand out to try to slow her down. He let her be. Who knew how long she’d been on the run, half starving.