Marked Clan #2 - Red (17 page)

I walked back into the kitchen and pulled my bedroom door closed. Slate and Dree sat at the table expectantly. Other than a slight color to her cheeks, you’d never guess Slate had downed a half bottle of good scotch in the course of a couple of hours.

“I think you’ve made a friend for life,” I said. “No one has ever drunk Connor under the table before…except Poppa.”

Slate laughed again, and it transformed her whole face. She looked decades younger and infinitely more human. I had to admit, I liked this side of her.

“Wolf metabolism,” Dree laughed. “Almost impossible to get drunk.”

“Almost,” Slate said. She chuckled one last time, and then regained her usual foreboding composure. “We should prepare.”

I heard thumps and a muffled cry from my pantry. I tensed up, but Slate raised a hand to calm me. “Nothing to worry about. You didn’t wonder where Serena went?”

I opened the pantry door and saw the tiny woman hog-tied and crammed into a space that used to contain a couple of spare boxes of garbage bags and some insect poison. She pleaded at me with her eyes.

“What did she do to you, Slate?” I asked.

Slate shrugged. “I did what you asked—I did not kill her. What more do you want?”

It was dark by the time I gathered all my things, and I still hadn’t figured out how we were going to lose my helpful police escort in order to go on our hunt. I tiptoed past a sleeping Connor and into my kitchen.

“Any ideas on how to get out of here?” I asked.

Slate pulled out her phone and dialed the only member of our group not present in the room. “We’re ready,” she said. “You know where to meet? See you then.”

She put away her phone and stood. “Lupin has a few ideas on that. He’s quite the showman. Knows how to draw a crowd.”

I jumped at the sound of screeching tires and a very nasty sounding crunch. Slate led us downstairs and out the front door of the shop. The police cruiser normally parked there was headed two blocks down, to the scene of a nasty accident involving a lamppost and a belligerent drunk. I couldn’t see him from here, but his voice carried. He sang a rousing rendition of
Danny Boy.

We piled into Slate’s car. Serena sat in the back between Dree and myself. What can I say? I didn’t trust her any more than Slate. The tiny wolf’s less-than-precise instructions turned out to be enough to find the place. We drove to the ballpark, ditched Slate’s car, and walked a long circle around the building. From what I could tell it was the remains of an old Chinese restaurant. Yeah, I know, sometimes stereotypes exist because they’re true.

Slate took point. I was next in line, my dagger ready, a half a dozen pens slipped into my belt just in case. I covered it all up with a thin hoodie that would minimize my skin-to-skin contact with Donald’s people. The wolves with me had no weapons—just loose clothing they wouldn’t mind leaving behind.

Lupin stepped out of the shadow of a parked car and joined us a few blocks north of the den. He took up rear guard; I guessed as much to keep an eye on Serena as anything else.

“How did you get away so fast?” I asked him.

“Detour through the park,” he said. “Lost them pretty quick.”

“You’re a horrible singer, by the way,” I said.

He feigned hurt. “Alas, the critics.”

We hugged the wall of a building just a block from the old restaurant. Slate held up a closed fist and signaled us to stay put. I saw one armed guard with direct line of sight and two on either side of the building. They carried short automatic weapons, partially hidden from view by bulky zip-up hoodies.

The guard facing us turned away, and Slate used the few seconds to close in. She moved just as gracefully as a human, seeming to slip fluidly from one shadow to the next until she had one hand on the man’s mouth and the other behind his head. She snapped his neck before he could get his fingers around the trigger. Slate picked him up, careful to secure his gun first, and dumped his body behind a parked car nearby.

I watched the other two making rounds. One walked behind the building out of my sight, but the other was close to rounding the corner on Slate. She must have heard him, because she flattened against the side of the building.

A blur of darkness crossed the street behind the guard, and within a second he was on the ground. Lupin took his gun and rolled the body into the gutter. I hadn’t even seen him pass me. Slate relaxed and walked around the corner to him.

There was still one guard left. Lupin went around the opposite side of the building, and Slate signaled an all clear. I crossed the street with Serena. Slate looked at me once we regrouped.

“This is too easy,” she said, and grabbed Serena in a chokehold. “There’s something this one isn’t telling us.”

Serena sputtered. I was worried she’d alert whoever was inside, but Slate tightened her grip to cut her off. Lupin returned, holding two automatic weapons. He pulled out the clip on one of them and showed it to me. “Silver rounds. They were expecting us.”

“I…swear,” Serena choked out, “I didn’t know.”

Slate shook her head. “Well then, you get to be our little mouse tonight. We’re going to shove you inside there and let you find out if there’s a trap.”

She dragged Serena over to the only door we could see without chains on it and pulled it open. Then she unceremoniously tossed Serena in and stood to one side, head cocked and listening. I looked at Dree who shrugged.
This is Slate. What can I say?

Lupin handed me one of the automatics. “You know your way around a gun?”

“Never handled one of these before, but I gather it’s point and shoot.”

He nodded. “Be careful. They’re modified—no safety. Make sure you only aim at something you want to kill.”

No sounds came from inside the door. In a way, it was worse than gunfire. It was practically a given now that we were walking into a trap. I deferred to Slate. She nodded and slipped in the door. No guts, no glory, I guess. I stepped in after her.

Chapter Thirty-One

I followed Slate inside, staying low and looking around as best I could in what turned out to be a pitch-black space. The restaurant was one large, open room. I saw bunk beds lined up against one wall, a kitchen that looked like it had been used recently, and several mismatched pieces of furniture. Serena wasn’t lying—this had been a den until recently. But where was she now?

Another disquieting thought punched through to the front of my mind: Why could I see so much? There were no lights on in the room, and only the tiniest glow came in through the door. Movement at the corner of my eye drew me to a wide doorway. A private dining room? I stayed low and made my way toward it. Slate followed suit.

I heard a brief, harsh whisper from inside the room followed by thick silence. Shadows poured out of the doorway, and I took a hard blow to my abdomen. I flew back against the wall, but managed to keep my grip on the gun. I recognized the face of one of Donald’s wolves coming toward me. I aimed for his torso and pulled the trigger.

The report bounced off the walls and nearly deafened me. The scene suddenly became a series of stills lit up by the flash of the gun’s muzzle. I saw the first few bullets hit their target, but after that the kickback sent my shots wild and into the ceiling. I let go of the trigger.

Another wolf leaped for me, this one in his changed form. I held back his jaws from locking on my throat and slammed a pen into his back. He dropped, and I rolled away. Five more pens left. I had to make them count. The gun still had half a clip at least, but it was so unpredictable. I kept it with me anyway.

Slate and Lupin were in wolf form now, tearing out throats and snapping backs one after another. I didn’t see Serena or Dree. I ducked under a lunging wolf and let loose with the gun into its belly.

I stood, but was knocked off my feet by something heavy. I rolled and saw Donald handling a loveseat like a folding chair. Something was draped over his shoulder, but I couldn’t quite make it out. “So nice of you to come over for a visit,” he said.

I scrambled back, right into the waiting arms of another of Donald’s people. This one smelled female. His right-hand bitch, perhaps? She pulled my arms behind my back and held them there like a vise. She twisted my right arm until I dropped the gun.

Donald set down the chair and walked over to me. He dropped the bundle on his shoulder at my feet. Serena’s lifeless face stared up at me. “Poor Serena. Your late friend was right to go after her—she was always a weak link. But even the weak can serve their purpose.”

I watched the action behind Donald. Slate was under a literal dog pile of wolves, with Lupin on top, pulling them off with his teeth. I still didn’t see Dree anywhere. I was on my own for the moment. Stalin wasn’t just a crazy guy from Russia.

“So you wanted me to see those pages,” I said. “For what, bragging rights? Your penmanship sucked, by the way.”

He laughed and reached down to my belt. He came away holding my dagger. “Now this looks familiar. It’s a different line, of course. Did Lorelei give you this? Your grandfather was always more for firearms, if I remember correctly.”

“Don’t talk about Poppa like you knew him,” I spat. “He hated your kind till the day he died.”

Donald hefted the dagger in his hand and thrust it at an invisible assailant. “Oh, but we both know the irony of that, don’t we? Your late great aunt was one of us. Tell me, how did that strike you? Knowing your whole family vendetta was based on a lie?”

“You’re not exactly innocent little pups though, are you?” I said. “One form of trash is as good as the next. So what if you didn’t kill her back then—you’ve killed plenty more and turned at least a dozen on your own. Sick fuck. You need to be put down.”

“Drop her,” Donald said. The woman holding me let go of one of my arms, and I reached for a pen. Before my fingers wrapped fully around it, she grabbed my neck—skin to skin. I felt the flash in my brain coming and willed it down.

No, goddamnit. I don’t care what happened in this bitch’s past! I just want her and her boyfriend here dead! Leave me alone!

I didn’t get a chance to see if it worked, because as suddenly as she’d clamped onto me Donald’s right hand girl was ripped away. I glanced back and saw Dree’s familiar pelt digging into the woman’s neck. So
that’s
where she went. I bent down for the gun, but when I popped back up Donald was gone.

“Goddamnit!” I screamed to no one in particular. I took out my frustration on the corpse of a nearby wolf. A howl from outside the building had all the remaining wolves in retreat. Apparently they needed to regroup.

Lupin and Slate joined me and helped restrain the woman Dree tackled. She hadn’t killed her…yet. This could be useful.

“Do these go semi-auto?” I asked Lupin. He nodded and flipped a switch just above the trigger. I let a round loose in the woman’s gut. She screamed.

“Now, I’ve heard a gut shot is one of the most painful wounds you can get.” I tapped the remaining pens on my belt. “I have a nice quick injection here that can kill you quickly, if you tell me some more about your boyfriend there. Care to make a deal, roller girl?”

She spat at me, and I put another bullet next to the first. “Okay, then. Let’s do this the hard way.”

Sirens interrupted me before I had time to properly motivate Laurie Loveless. Lupin went to the door and looked out.

“They’re about five blocks away,” he said, “We have to go, now.”

I wasn’t about to let this one go without giving me
something
. I grabbed her face in both my hands and looked her straight in the eyes. “Spill your past for me, bitch.”

The flash wasn’t as disorienting when I willed it. I was part of a pack, sprinting through the woods in pursuit of something. It ran just ahead of us, concealed by shadows. I looked right and saw a massive dark brown wolf leading us. I was just behind, and the others followed me.

Our Alpha led the hunt. We entered a clearing and fanned out, following our instincts to box in our prey. We were drunk with adrenaline and the scent of blood. When I saw what we hunted, I wanted to leave the memory immediately.

She’s just a child, for God’s sake! What could she have done to deserve this?

A tiny girl, probably no more than ten years old, sat in the clearing. She wore a torn yellow sundress with bare feet. She had caught her ankle in a root and twisted it. She couldn’t run anymore. Her eyes were bright with fear.

Donald gave the signal—a single, short howl—and we closed in around her. I clawed at the inside of Lauren’s mind, but I was in for the duration. The worst part was I could feel her anticipation, her
joy
, at hunting this girl. It didn’t matter how old she was, or what she may or may not have done. Lauren lived for the hunt, lived to please her Alpha.

The quiet sounds of the forest and our advance were broken by a shotgun report. The wolf to my left yelped and dropped to the ground. The rest of us regrouped to face the new threat.

Lauren knew the man with the shotgun as the child’s father. He charged in and scooped up the girl, then turned to run. We didn’t need a signal to follow. This time Lauren led the charge. We nipped at the man’s heels and sank into his pant leg. We tasted blood, and it was intoxicating. We wanted more.

Let me out. I don’t need to know any more. I hated Donald before, and this just further convinces me you all need to die. Just let me out of your head!

The man ran toward the lights of a small house. He was burdened, so we closed in on him easily. I leaped and bit down on his calf hard enough to bring him down. He threw the girl and screamed at her to run for the house. She limped, but made it inside before the others of my pack caught up.

The man leveled his gun at my head, but Alpha lunged and knocked it away so the sting of the shot only grazed my side. The rest of the pack boxed the man in, and I locked my jaws onto his gun hand. His weapon dropped.

Alpha didn’t go for the man’s throat. Instead he ripped at his abdomen, spilling his intestines and making him scream for mercy. Alpha pulled and gnawed at the man’s insides while we watched, holding him down at first. After a while, he stopped struggling. His scream turned to anguished sobs, and then just to moans. Alpha backed away and let the others get a piece of the man. With his heart still beating, the blood stayed fresh and warm. We tore him to pieces while his daughter looked on from the house.