Ascension (3 page)

"I’ll be there as soon as I can."

When he hung up, he turned to Malcolm and tensed. But Malcolm just yawned as if the whole affair had proved disappointingly dull, and strolled to the door. He took one step into the hall, then leaned back inside.

"Oh, if you need someone to look after the boy while you’re gone, just ask." He looked at me with a teeth-baring grin. "I’ll take good care of him."

When Malcolm was gone, Jeremy glanced at me. "That
is
a problem."

"I’m going with you."

"No, Clay, not this time."

He picked up the phone and dialed.

"Jorge? It’s Jeremy. How are you?" A short pause. "Is Antonio there?" A longer pause, then Jeremy winced. "That’s right. And he’s flying straight here Saturday afterward, isn’t he? Can’t believe I forgot that." Pause. "No, no. It’s not important. I was just calling to discuss our plans for the weekend."

Jeremy chatted for another minute with Jorge, then hung up. After a moment’s pause, he sighed, shook his head and looked at me.

"I’m going with you," I said.

"Yes, I suppose you are."

Lesson

We caught a plane to
Los Angeles
and arrived there late that day. Once in the city, Jeremy rented a car, bought a map and found the address he’d been given. When he reached the motel, he swung into the lot, then hit the brakes, and sat there, blocking the entrance, until someone trying to leave blared his horn. Jeremy pulled into the first parking spot, checked his scrap of paper, checked the address on motel office, and shook his head.

One glance at the place—and one whiff of the smell coming through the open car windows—and I understood his hesitation. The motel was a dump, the lowest, cheapest form of accommodation possible, the type usually rented by the hour or by the month. No werewolf in his right mind could sleep in a place that smelled like this. After triple-checking the address, a look of sadness mixed with apprehension washed over Jeremy’s face, a look that said the situation was worse than he’d expected, and maybe worse than he was prepared to handle.

"Come on," he said, opening his door. When I made a face, he added, "Breathe through your mouth until you get used to it."

Jeremy knocked on a room door. After some rustling from within, the curtain cracked open, then fell shut, and the door opened. Staying almost hidden behind the door, Peter ushered us inside, then closed and locked it. I took one whiff of him and knew something was wrong—very wrong. He hadn’t neglected his hygiene too badly, maybe a few days without a shower, but there was an unnatural chemical stink to his sweat, something that brought back flashes of my nights prowling the alleys in
Baton Rouge
. Peter stepped from behind the door. A dull sheen of grease coated his long red hair, a short beard covered his cheeks and chin, and his shirt and jeans were dotted with brownish-red splotches—dried blood.

"Thank god you’re—" Peter started. Then he saw me and stopped. "You brought the boy?"

Jeremy hefted his suitcase onto the bed and opened it. "Antonio’s out of town on business. There’s no one else I could ask. Not without answering too many questions."

"Oh." Peter’s gaze shot to me, then back to Jeremy. "I’m sorry. I didn’t think—"

"Clayton will be fine." He handed Peter a folded set of trousers and a shirt. "Get that clothing off first, give it to me, take a shower and put these on. Then tell me what happened."

Jeremy stuffed Peter’s bloodied clothing into a plastic bag and carried it out to the car. It took him a few minutes to return, probably because he couldn’t just throw the bag in the trunk, but had to find a hiding place until he could burn them.

When Peter finished showering and dressing, he came back into the bedroom, and took a seat in the chair by the television. Jeremy and I sat on the end of the bed.

It may seem to reflect poorly on Jeremy’s parental judgment that he’d let me listen in on what was certain to be a discussion unsuitable for a young boy, but that’s how things were done in the werewolf world. When it came to the violent facts of our lives, the Pack never covered our ears or sent us to the next room. These were things we had to know, and postponing such knowledge wouldn’t be protecting us, it would be the worst kind of recklessness. You couldn’t let a Pack son grow up believing werewolf life was all rabbit hunts and pleasant runs through the forest, or the first time he met a mutt would be the last. So too, with Peter’s story, there was a lesson to be learned for any young werewolf.

"I know what you’re thinking," Peter said, looked down at his hands as he worried a hangnail. "You’re thinking that Dominic was right, that I wasn’t mature enough to handle it." He looked up, meeting Jeremy’s eyes. "But it wasn’t like that. I didn’t walk away from the Pack and forget everything. I remembered the things you and I used to talk about, how to keep better control, how to make it easier. I Changed twice a week. I hunted. I never had more than one drink at a sitting. I was careful, more careful than I’d ever been in the Pack because I knew I had to be. One screw-up and that’d be it; Dominic would have me killed."

Jeremy didn’t protest this. He couldn’t. It was true. The only thing more dangerous to Pack safety than a renegade mutt was a renegade mutt who used to be a Pack wolf.

"I tried. I tried so damned hard!" Peter ripped off the hangnail, and winced with the pain. The finger started to bleed and he stared at the blood. "I saw it coming. That’s what makes me so mad. I saw it coming, but I kept telling myself I could handle it." He wiped his bloodied thumb on his pants. "When I started the tour, it was me and three other guys doing the A/V work. Last year, one guy quit. They said they’d hire a replacement, but they didn’t. Then this summer, they fired the third guy, and didn’t even bother promising a replacement. So it was two of us doing the work of four. Concert days, we’d be up at dawn, work all day setting up, work through the show, get maybe two hours sleep and be right back at it. Once I was so beat, I screwed up the sound levels, and I knew if I did it again, I’d be out of a job. The other guy I work with was taking stuff, stuff to keep him awake."

"Drugs?"

Peter nodded. "For most guys here, it’s like taking coffee. Everyone does it. I told myself I’d be careful. I took a little, and it worked. I could stay up during a concert run, then crash on the tour bus afterwards. I watched for other effects, but there weren’t any. So when things got busier, I took some more. Then when I started having trouble sleeping, I took something for that. On my days off, when I got down, feeling lonely, thinking maybe I shouldn’t have left the Pack, I’d take something to make me feel better. Pretty soon I was—" He swallowed. "I was taking a lot. And noticing problems—mood swings and trouble Changing—but I thought I could handle it."

"And then two nights ago . . .?"

Peter blinked, as if surprised Jeremy knew. "There was this party, with the crew. I took some dope, no more than usual, but it made me edgy. I—I haven’t Changed in a few weeks. I tried once, but I couldn’t, so I gave up. I was feeling real edgy, like I had too much energy, so I thought maybe if I—" He glanced at me. "I thought some, uh, company might help. So I went back to this girl’s room, and we were—" Another glance at me. "—together, but it only made me edgier. Things got rough and she didn’t like that, so she tried to leave, but I—I, uh . . wasn’t done. When she tried to get dressed, I didn’t think, I just reacted. I threw her and she hit her head." He inhaled sharply. "I didn’t think I threw her that hard, I really didn’t, but . . ."

Jeremy brushed back his bangs. "Okay, we can handle this, and I’ll help you, but only on one condition—"

"There’s more," Peter said. His gaze darted away from Jeremy’s. "I—she—" He stopped and swallowed. "She had a roommate. I was . . . " Another swallow, harder. "I was cleaning up the room when the other girl came in. I—I killed her."

Peter lurched to his feet and walked to the window. He pulled back the curtain, then quickly shut it. Jeremy said nothing, just sat there, his eyes downcast, hiding his reaction.

After a moment, Peter shuddered, then turned around. "The first girl—I can’t say that wasn’t my fault because it was, because I let myself get into that situation, but I didn’t mean to kill her. With the other one, I knew what I was doing. She walked in, she saw the body, she saw me, and I couldn’t think of anything else to do."

"Where did you bury them?" Jeremy asked, his voice low.

"I—I didn’t. I left them there."

Jeremy’s head shot up. "You left—?"

"I panicked. I took off, and I checked into the first motel I found, and I was going to take a shower, clear my head, and plan stuff, but then I just crashed. When I woke up, it was yesterday evening, and I didn’t know if I should still go back, so I called you—"

"Okay," Jeremy said, lifting a hand to cut him off. "We’ll see what we can do. If it’s too late, we’ll have to deal with that. But back to my condition. One thing you have to agree to if you want my help."

"Anything," Peter said.

Jeremy’s condition seemed simple enough: Peter had to rejoin the Pack. The problem, as they both knew, was that if Dominic found out what had happened here, Peter was a dead man, no matter how vehemently he might promise to reform. For this, there were no second chances.

Peter could argue that the whole Pack suspected Malcolm killed the occasional human for sport, and remained not only alive, but a Pack brother in good standing. But Malcolm was a
Danvers
, and an integral part of the Pack, someone Dominic could rely on to keep the mutts in check and solve other unsavory "problems." Peter was a nobody, a kid who hadn’t been a full-fledged werewolf with the Pack long enough to prove his worth. Peter had defied Dominic by taking this job, and proceeded to prove Dominic’s fears well founded, so his execution would stand as a lesson to the rest of the Pack youth.

The trick, then, would be to clean up Peter’s mess so well that
no one
would ever know it had happened. Even with that, getting him back into the Pack would require serious negotiating, but Jeremy had played go-between before, and he was ready to do it again.

Peter trusted Jeremy enough to agree. Not that he had much choice in the matter, really, but at least he was clever enough to realize his best shot when he saw it. So the plan was set. Soon it would be dark. They would use the next few hours to prepare, then they would return to the murder scene and—if it hadn’t been discovered—clean it up.

As tempting as it would be to flee town afterward, it was too dangerous. Peter couldn’t remember who, if anyone, at the party had seen him leave with the girl, so he couldn’t disappear at the same time she did. He’d have to return to work and, if all seemed fine, give his notice and work out his two weeks. Jeremy and I would stay in
Los Angeles
with him for the first week, to help him through any complications that arose. Then Peter would hole up at Stonehaven with us while Jeremy negotiated his return to the Pack. A solid, straightforward plan . . . one that was about to hit a very big, very determined obstacle.

Every adult member of the Pack knew how to dispose of a body. Normally, though, the task involved a dead mutt, and took place in a forest. Even a mutt knows that if he wins the battle, he’ll have a body to get rid of, so he’s not going to pick a fight in a public setting.

Cleaning up a murder scene in an apartment was more difficult, but Jeremy knew more than the average twenty-five-year-old knew—or
should
know—about cleaning up a crime scene. Body disposal was taught to werewolves approaching their first Change, and since these lessons were now Jeremy’s responsibility in the Pack, he’d done what he always did—learned everything he could about the subject. He also had hands-on experience. The lab tech may have been the first human he’d ever killed but, thanks to his father, it wasn’t the first human body he’d disposed of.

All this did not, however, mean that he was an expert in the matter. He made mistakes that day, including returning to the murder scene without first making sure the crime hadn’t been reported. For all we knew, someone had found the bodies, and the police were staking out the apartment, hoping the killer might return. Luck was with us that night, though. The girls lived in a rundown tenement, the kind of place where no one would pay much attention to a scream or a thump in the upstairs apartment. And they didn’t lead the kind of lives where an employer or friend or family member would start worrying if they didn’t show up for a couple of days.

The apartment was exactly as Peter had left it . . . or so I assume. I never saw it. The educational portion of this trip ended well before I got a look inside that room. Jeremy set me up in an alley next to the building, where I was to stand watch. This was probably just an excuse to keep me out of the apartment, but I played my role to the hilt, keeping my eyes, ears and nose on alert.

Jeremy and Peter presumably cleaned the room as best they could. Then they brought the wrapped bodies down to the car, which was parked in the back alley, loaded them up, and we left.

After we buried the bodies—okay, after
Jeremy
and
Peter
buried them while I played lookout—we had one more job to do: burn Peter’s bloodied clothing. Jeremy knew not to dispose of them anywhere near the bodies, so we headed out of the city. First we dropped Peter off at a nature preserve Jeremy had found on the map. Before we found a motel for the night, Peter had to Change. No matter how difficult it might be with the drugs still in his system, Jeremy insisted on it.