Fate of the Alpha: The Complete Bundle (21 page)

E
rik returned
to the little house by the creek just as the sun began to dip behind the mountain, painting the sky a brilliant pink.

A quick stop at Rite Aid scored him the stuff he hadn’t been able to grab from home in his rush to escape Ophelia. He carried the plastic bags up the porch stairs and stepped over the toys to open the front door.

Zeke was playing video games in the living room. Erik could see LeeAnn’s hands caressing a glass of ice tea at the kitchen table, but the rest of her was hidden behind the arched wall.

“Hey, kid,” Erik said. “Hi, LeeAnn!”

He had almost reached the stairs when he heard her plunk the glass down. It was a hollow, awful sound.

He took a deep breath, turned around and headed back to the kitchen.

The small room was perfectly clean, but a sense of untidiness still hung in the air. LeeAnn sat at the round formica topped table, sipping at a mostly empty tea with a faraway look in her eyes.

Erik didn’t need his wolf senses to know the glass held more than iced tea.

He set his bags on the counter, pulled out a chair and sat down.

For a moment he was quiet, honoring her pain. He studied the cheerful floating coffee cups on the half curtains that framed the window. They seemed garish and silly compared to the poignant view of blue mountaintops beyond.

“What’s on your mind, LeeAnn?” he asked, in his best imitation of Michael Connor’s calming voice. Ainsley’s father had talked him through a rough patch or two.

She put the glass down on the table and traced the rim with a fingertip.

“Jake’s gone,” she said at length. “I don’t know what to do.”

Her voice was expressionless, yet it conveyed a depth of emotion that made it hard for Erik to breathe.

He glanced up at the bags, hoping the Dr. Phil book he’d tucked into one of them wasn’t visible as he scrambled to recall a quote that might be of some use.

“Life can seem like a long ride, LeeAnn, but remember that you are the driver. Every single day.”

He let the words hang in the air. In truth, he didn’t actually have a follow-up.

Just as he had resigned himself to the fact that, of course, the corny platitude had failed, LeeAnn’s nostrils flared slightly. She swiveled her head up from the tea to look at him.

“You’re right.”
She nodded, more to herself than to him. “I need to stop sitting around and feeling sorry for myself. I need to get out there and get this town back on its feet. For Jake. For all of us.”

“Life rewards action,” Erik said, pulling from the book again.

LeeAnn was already on her feet, her drink forgotten. She made it as far as the archway, and then turned back.

“I’m glad you came to our town when you did, Dr. Jensen. We are going to need someone like you to get us through this.”

Erik felt a wave of benevolence sweep over him. Though he knew he was not a psychologist - he had just helped someone in need.

If he could just get them through until the pack had a proper alpha again, everything would be fine.

The thought sparked an important question.

“LeeAnn,” he asked carefully. “Have you talked to Mary about what happens next?”

She frowned.

“Jake and me never thought he’d be gone so soon.”

“She has no idea?” Erik asked.

“None,” LeeAnn said flatly.

Her eyes went to the iced tea on the table. Erik winced inwardly. She had been so close. Why did he have to bring up more difficulties?

LeeAnn picked up the glass and considered it for a moment, then she strode over poured it in the sink.

Good girl.

“Can you explain it to her?” she asked. “This is the kind of thing you’re trained for, right?”

“Uh, sure, I’ll talk to her,” Erik replied, wishing he’d quit while he was ahead.

“Great,” she said. “Mary’s in her room, reading.”

Now?

“I’m going to pick up the girls from karate class, then I’m going over to Patty’s. She’ll help me get the other wives on their feet and into action.” LeeAnn smiled at him, proudly. “Thank you, Dr. Jensen.”

With that, she marched to the door, stopping at the coat tree to grab a blue pullover.

“Half an hour more of video games, Zeke,” She said. “Then it’s homework time. Tell Mary to stick a pizza in the microwave, you hear?”

Zeke nodded, his little face awash in the bluish glow of the television.

“Good boy,” she called back to him as she closed the front door behind herself.

Erik looked over at the boy, but he was engrossed in his game. That left Erik with no choice but to face the inevitable.

He headed up the stairs, unable to shake the feeling that he was about to face a firing squad. When he reached the top, he remembered to knock.

“Yeah?” Mary said, in a surly soprano.

“It’s Erik, can I come in?”

“Sure,” she replied in a suddenly softer more agreeable voice. Oh geez. The crush. Girls this age were impossible.

Erik opened the door. The small room barely had space for a bed and a dresser, forcing him to stand with his knees against the mattress as he looked down at the girl.

Mary sat Indian style, a quilt spread over her legs to combat the chill. Her blonde hair hung loose around he face. Like before, he’d caught her with her nose in a book, only this time, she’d put it down in her lap so he could read the title.

How I Live Now
.

“I heard that was good,” Erik said, hoping to break the ice a little before moving to the heavy stuff.

She nodded.

Her finger still held her place, but she didn’t seem to want to break eye contact with him long enough to locate the bookmark by her knee.

“How are you getting along, Mary?” he asked.

So much for easing into it.

She sighed, looked down, and found the bookmark. She placed it in the book, then closed it and began to caress its spine in a way that reminded Erik of how her mother had stroked the glass that held more than just tea.

He didn’t blame either of them for looking for an escape, however brief.

“It’s probably a sin,” she said finally. “But I don’t feel much different.”

“I understand,” he said. “When you’re fifteen, you can feel pretty invisible.”

The look on her face told him that wasn’t the response she’d been expecting.

Before he had time to chicken out, he gestured to the edge of the bed.

“Okay, if I sit for a minute?” he asked.

She nodded at him, her eyes, actually quite lovely now that they had regained some life, never leaving his.

He eased himself down on the very edge of the bed, trying hard not to make it seem weird.

“Mary,” he said, drawing on his memory of Michael Connor again to find the right tone. “How much do you know about how the pack works?”.

“What do you mean?” she asked, narrowing her lovely eyes behind the glasses.

“Well, your dad is the most important wolf around. Do you know why?”

“Because he’s the alpha,” she said, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.

“Right. But do you know what that means?” he asked.

“Everybody has to listen to him,” she said, not without a tinge of resentment.

“It’s more than that,” he explained. “Wolves are social creatures. We rely on our pack for our identity and our strength.”

The truth of his own words hit him, forcing him to pause. Erik missed the solidarity and comfort of his pack terribly. He took a deep breath and resumed.

“Mary,” he said. “Your dad is the one who holds the pack together, and protects it from anything, inside or out, that threatens the pack’s way of life.”

He looked up at her to make sure she was getting it.

“I never really thought about it like that,” she said.

“But no wolf can be alpha forever,” he said quietly.

Mary’s shoulders slumped slightly.

She knew. Of course she did.

“Do you know how the next alpha will be chosen?” he asked her.

She blushed furiously. God, she was so young.

“You’re next in line, Mary. When the time comes, you’ll have to find a mate.”

“You mean like...” her voice trailed off.

He nodded, glad he didn’t have to go into any more detail. She understood.

She looked down at her hands.

“I never... I never did anything like that...” She paused to consider, her face going even redder. “I mean, one time, me and Jimmy Brewer went to second base on the sofa in his garage. But I don’t think that counts. Does it?”

“No,” Erik tried and failed to hide his smile. “But I’m sure there are plenty of nice young men in this town who would make suitable candidates.”

“You are really not from around here,” she said with a dismissive shake of her head. “There’s nothing here but boys who think showing a girl a good time means letting her watch you play Xbox with your friends, then drinking until you puke in the woods behind the Shop ’n Save.”

“I’m sure they’re not all that bad,” Erik said, trying not to think about himself at her age.

“I’d rather find someone with ambition,” she said. “Someone who’s been outside Copper Creek for more than just a school field trip. Someone who’s done something meaningful, like become a lawyer... or a doctor.”

Uh-oh.

“Well, it’s good to see a girl who knows what she wants.” He did his best to deflect the implication. “Maybe you’ll end up as the alpha.”

She laughed.

“I’m not kidding,” he said. “You know the alpha of my pack in Tarker’s Hollow is female?”

“No fooling?” she eyed him dubiously.

“Honest,” he replied.

Mary’s eyes widened behind her glasses.

“What’s she like?”

“She is the single most amazing creature I have ever encountered,” Erik said. “You should really meet her sometime. She’d like you. Have you ever read any Tolstoy?”

Mary shook her head with a puzzled look.

“Never mind,” he said, glad to make it through that minefield of conversation in one piece. “Hey, speaking of books, is there someplace where your dad might have kept some?”

“You mean the romance books he keeps in the attic?”

Wow.

“I was, um, thinking of something a little more businesslike,” he replied.

“He has an old desk in his and mom’s bedroom. Where he does the bills. You might find something in there,” she said uncertainly.

“Thanks, Mary,” Erik said, getting up from the bed. He couldn’t help but notice how she leaned slightly toward him, as if she didn’t want him to go.

“The filters you’ve always used to view the world will be changing,” he told her, lifting more advice from the book in his bag. “You can acknowledge your history without being controlled by it, Mary.”

She gave him a look that told him she had no idea what he was talking about. Fair enough. He had no idea either. One out of two wasn’t bad though.

He headed downstairs again before she could ask.

It seemed odd to go into LeeAnn’s bedroom without her permission. But Mary was ensconced in her book and he could hear Zeke’s video game going. This might be his only chance.

He eased the door open and stepped across the creaky pine floor to a worn, moss green area rug. The furniture looked like it must have been passed down from LeeAnn or Jake’s mother. An antique roll-top desk nesteld in one corner.

Erik found the wooden top unlocked and oiled. It rolled up smoothly to reveal a neatly organized desk. There was a tray with bills in it, a check book, a mug with pens and paperclips in it. He opened the drawers to reams of paper, a three-hole punch, a well-used Bible, and a new video game still in its wrapper. Zeke’s Christmas present?

No books of any kind, besides the bible.

Where would Jake have kept them?

And why did he have the growing sense that they were important?

J
ulian remained remarkably calm
, considering the circumstances.

From the moment Ainsley had recounted her dream, he’d shared their certainty that the gateway was in the old field house.

He had never been this close before.

Ever a woman of action, Ainsley was determined to investigate immediately. She’d leapt over the porch railing and headed around the side yard and up Princeton leaving Julian and Grace scrambling in her wake.

He was fairly certain that there were about a hundred things they ought to have done to prepare first. But when he’d broached the idea of stopping to make a plan, Ainsley had given him that terrifying look. And when Ainsley wore that alpha expression, he knew better than to argue.

He was powerful in his own right. Very powerful, in fact. He had been practicing magic longer than the lifespans of both his companions combined. But he didn’t envy anyone who brought out Ainsley’s bad side.

The trio rounded the corner onto Elm. The row of cherry trees that spanned Elm from Princeton to Yale appeared to be burning, their leaves gone to golden on the underside and red on top. Tarker’s Hollow could be so picturesque on the surface - ironic under the ugliness of the circumstances.

Julian turned to Grace to see how she was holding up. She didn’t look back at him.

He told himself it was because she was nervous about the task at hand.

“Ainsley!” An ancient woman rode toward them on a large bicycle.

“Hi, Mrs. Hooper,” Ainsley said politely, still walking.

“Are you ready for Halloween?” Mrs. Hooper shouted happily as she glided past them.

Ainsley waved in lieu of an answer and kept walking.

They crossed Yale, Ainsley diverting them around the construction area and into the woods. Smart. It was broad daylight - anyone out on Yale would have seen them enter the construction area and might have wondered what they were up to.

None of them spoke until they had made a half-circle through the woods, putting the field house squarely between them and the view from the street. Ainsley had developed quite the head for tactics.

As they approached the back of the old stone structure, Ainsley spoke at last.

“Ready?” she asked perfunctorily.

Grace nodded. Julian followed suit, though he would have liked to stop and strategize.

An old rusty padlock secured the barn doors. Fortunately, Julian had prepared an unlocking spell. Before he had a chance to step forward, Ainsley tugged at the metal, popping it off as easily as a child pulling the wings off a fly.

So much for his spell. Maybe there would be a more imposing lock inside somewhere.

Ainsley slid the barn doors open. The scent of gasoline and grass trimmings filled Julian’s nose, as they stepped into the gloom.

As soon as his eyes adjusted to the dim light, he could make out the riding lawnmowers that filled the space. Various tools hung on a pegboard along the back wall, each nestled inside a traced outline of itself.

No stone corridor, and no floor with a patterned groove like in Ainsley’s dream.

But there was something. A tingle in the air, a pulse. Julian couldn’t put his finger on it, but there was magic at work in this place somewhere.

He glanced at Grace to see if she felt it, too. She didn’t return his gaze, but the tension in her shoulders and the grim set of her jaw gave him his answer.

Even in this place, with danger around the corner, he couldn’t help but revel in the fiercely controlled stance of her small body. Oh, but he had seen her soft and begging.

“What now?” asked Grace in a whisper.

“I’m afraid I’m at a loss,” he replied in kind. “I’ve done magical searches for the location before, but it is too heavily shielded. Spells won’t help us.”

“Maybe we need a simpler method.” Ainsley dropped to all fours and sniffed at the ground.

She stood and walked very slowly toward the front wall of the field house, Grace trailing close behind.

After a few steps, she stopped and cocked her head to the side, listening as she stomped her foot three times.

Julian heard nothing, but Ainsley must have been satisfied. She dropped to the ground again and began feeling around with her hands.

Grace moved closer and Julian followed, feeling suddenly protective.

“You’re sure?” he asked.

“It’s right here,” she replied, thumping the floor with a fist. “Hear that?”

He didn’t. But he did trust Ainsley’s ears more than his own. Julian knelt and touched the spot with one hand. With the other, he reached into his jacket pocket and fished out a piece of chalk.

In the age of videoconferencing and touch screens, he remained very much a chalk and slate kind of teacher. He crushed the chalk to dust in his hand and then muttered a few words of finding. He tossed the dust into the air as he finished.

It hung there for a second, before floating peacefully to the ground.

“Wow,” Ainsley said, staring at the tiny white dusting. “Let’s hope the bad guys are made of chalk. They won’t know what hit them. Julian, what...”

She trailed off as the chalk dust began to dance.

It moved slowly at first, as though the ground vibrated beneath it, picking up speed and spreading along the floor. In the span of two breaths, most of the dust had gathered in neat, straight lines, revealing the edges of a simple floor hatch. The remaining particles highlighted a small pull ring on one side.

“Neat,” Ainsley said, reaching for the ring with both hands, no doubt intending to tear the thing from its hinges if need be.

“No!” Grace and Julian said as one. He met her gaze briefly, but she only looked away.

“There’s a ward on it,” Julian whispered.

He tried a spell of removal.

Nothing.

It wasn’t until he had given a spell in the direction of each corner that he felt its energy dissipate.

“This was done well by someone powerful,” he said. “Probably the same person who set the trap that... that was meant for you, Ainsley.”

She nodded once and reached for the ring again.

The door’s ancient hinges protested loudly, but it opened. The dark obscured any view of what waited below.

“
Lux ex tenebris
,” Ainsley said with quiet confidence.

To Julian’s amazement, motes of light encircled her hand like a thousand tiny fireflies, then took off down the hatch, illuminating the rungs of a ladder.

She had taken the light spell he’d taught her and given it her own touch. A spark of her mother’s nature magic. Impressive.

“Someone’s been paying attention to her lessons,” he said.

“You can give me a gold star if we live,” she replied, already lowering herself into the opening.

Grace scanned the field house one last time, then did the same.

Julian followed as close behind them as he could, without risking stepping on Grace’s head. The idea of her in the darkness below the field house distressed him, even though he knew she was very capable of taking care of herself.

A small gasp from Ainsley at the bottom did little to ease his mind.

As soon as Grace was clear, he dropped the rest of the way down to the stone floor below and turned to survey the scene.

The faintly lit corridor that led away from them matched Ainsley’s description to a tee. No wonder she had been unsettled.

Grace put a finger to her lips. Ainsley nodded, then indicated that they should follow her down the corridor.

They walked in silence for some time, the air damp and the stones moist beneath their feet, Ainsley’s fireflies lighting the way. Julian wondered what part of Tarker’s Hollow they were under now, but his sense of direction was useless in the meandering tunnel.

At last, they came to a large, open archway.

“Be careful,” Ainsley hissed, and slipped into the room beyond, Grace and Julian in tow.

The room was as Ainsley had described it - domed ceiling and an intricate pattern of grooves spiraling to the center of the floor.

“What is this?” Grace whispered, nodding to the rusty discoloration of a the indentations near her feet. Julian could tell by the devastated look on her face that she knew it was blood.

The rusty stain trailed away from the grooves and Ainsley followed it with her light.

In the corner, an exsanguinated corpse in a yellow raincoat leaned against the wall, head tilted at an unnatural angle. The brash colors of her dyed hair and the coat contrasted with her ashen skin, as though she were a partially colorized picture.

“Lilliana,” Grace whispered. “She came to me for help.”

Julian knelt to examine the body. At his touch, the papery gray skin turned to powder.

“She’s a dried out husk,” he whispered. “It’s not like she bled out. It’s like the fluids were sucked out of her. This was magic.”

“At least it was over fast,” Ainsley said.

“Actually,” Julian said. “For maximum effect, she would have been kept alive until the very last drop was gone.”

Grace went pale and sucked in a breath.

Ainsley elbowed Julian, hard enough to leave a bruise.

“Sorry,” he said. “At any rate, this is bad.”

“No shit,” Ainsley replied, gesturing to the desiccated corpse.

“No,” he explained. “It means that the creature inside will be stronger now. It’s been fed,”

They all looked back at the grooves in the floor.

Ainsley sniffed the air.

“Charley and Garrett have been here,” she informed them. “Recently.”

“It looks like they tried to open the tomb,” Julian said. “But failed without the key.”

“So they still don’t have it,” Ainsley said.

“It would appear not,” Julian said. “Why did they think you had it in the first place, Ainsley?”

“Beats me,” Ainsley shrugged.

Grace shook her head and her features returned to their usual expression of calm concentration.

“What do we know about them?” she asked in her policewoman voice, sending a shiver down Julian’s spine.

“Charley has been fooling us our whole lives,” Ainsley said. “He’s good. He won’t be sloppy.”

“What about Garrett?” Julian asked.

“He’s new in town,” said Grace. “I heard him say he was sent to speed things up when Charley wasn’t getting results. He’s had contact with two people. One of them is dead. He got what he wanted from her.”

She looked back at Lilliana’s body, hunched in the corner.

“They other is in a coma,” Grace continued, really hitting her stride. “He said the incident with Sadie was ‘unfortunate’.”

“So he didn’t mean to do it. He lost his temper,” Julian said.

“That could help us later,” Ainsley noted, already scouting his weaknesses for when she faced him again.

How different she was from the prim girl he’d met in the coffee shop barely two months ago. That Ainsley couldn’t bear to sit at a table until all the crumbs had been cleared. This one was actively plotting to kill a man that had wronged her.

“So, Sadie had something he wanted,” Grace said. “Could she have had the key?”

“And he got angry when she wouldn’t give it to him,” Julian added.

“Where would Sadie keep a key?” Ainsley asked. “All she cares about is her garden and...”

“
Her dog!”
Ainsley and Grace said together.

“Yes,” Grace continued, picking up the thread expertly. She was a joy to see in action. “Camilla Parker Bowles must be part of it. Could the key be hidden on her? Maybe on her collar?”

“It would be too big for that,” Julian interjected.

“
In
her?” Ainsley offered.

“It’s...possible,” Julian said.

“Poor Camilla Parker Bowles is lucky Garrett didn’t come after her with that cane,” said Grace.

“Let’s go get the dog and take her to Volker for an X-ray,” Ainsley said.

“No, you do that, Ainsley,” Grace said. “Julian and I are going back to the hospital. I know what’s wrong with Sadie.”