Black Rook (23 page)

“Good,” McQueen said.

Bishop’s deeper voice joined his father’s on the other phone. “You two couldn’t have waited to get into trouble when I could help?” He sounded annoyed, but also relieved.

“Take that up with the loony tunes who kidnapped me,” Rook retorted.

“Ms. Atwood gave us a very brief overview last night,” McQueen said. “Why don’t you and Knight fill us in on the details.”

“Who else is us?” Knight asked.

“Myself, Bishop, and Ms. Reynolds.”

“Devlin?”

“Resting at Dr. Mike’s for a few hours more. He had some serious gashes on his chest and ribs, but he’s stable and they’re healing.”

“Thank God.”

“Indeed.”

Rook spoke first, glossing over his visit with the Potomac run until he reached the actual attack. His descriptions of the fast and lethal way the hostiles moved matched the way Victoria had practically flown from the trailer door. The entire Potomac attack seemed like a grotesque distraction, meant only to get Rook alone and unconscious. As he reached the point of waking up in the trailer, strapped to a chair, Knight took over.

Knight detailed that first text from Rook, the photo, everything that prompted him to do exactly as Fiona asked. “After what they did in Stonehill, I knew they had no qualms about torture and murder. I made the call.”

“And not an easy one,” McQueen said. “I’m proud of you.”

Knight flinched, an odd misery in his eyes. “I got into my car and drove, like she said. I hated not answering your calls. Not knowing what was going on.”

When his story led him to the trailer’s front door, he and Rook began to tag-team the narrative. “Fiona seems like the one in charge,” Rook said. “She’s the Magus, too, I could smell it on her. And at one point, she called Victoria ‘sister.’”

Brynn jerked in her seat. This was new information. “But Victoria is a vampire. How is that possible?” she asked.

“Oh hell.” Rook was staring at the phone as though it was rigged to explode.

“What is it?” McQueen asked.

“Something I just remembered. When Fiona first confronted me in the woods, she leapt down out of a tree like . . . I don’t know. It was crazy graceful. And her hands were twisted and clawed, like a partial beast shift. I know her hands weren’t like that in the trailer.”

Bishop cursed. “That explains the scents and the footage.”

“Footage?”

“Devlin recorded about twenty seconds of the attack on his cell phone. We’ve been examining it, and judging by that and what we’ve determined via scent markers, there are four hostiles. Three seem to be identical in age and size, while the other—who is your Fiona—is older with similar features and longer hair. Our best hypothesis is that the three youngest, the triplets, are vampire-loup half-breeds.”

“What?” Brynn asked. “Vampires and loup garou aren’t compatible. Children aren’t possible.”

Rook and Knight shared a look she couldn’t decipher, but they didn’t seem surprised by Bishop’s theory.

A bizarre silence filled the car.

“In ninety-nine percent of cases, that’s correct,” Alpha McQueen said when no one else spoke. His voice had a strange hitch to it that worried her. “Black and Gray Wolves can reproduce quite easily with humans, but not with vampires or the Magi. However, White Wolves are able to procreate with those species.”

A chill wormed down her spine. Knight’s gaze stayed on the road, which was slowly filling up with morning traffic.

“Vampire-loup half-breeds,” Rook said. “It explains the way they’re able to move and kill so fast, and why their scents are so damned confusing. But that doesn’t explain Fi—hell.”

“What is it?” McQueen asked.

Knight gripped the steering wheel hard enough to make the leather creak. “I think he’s thinking what we’re all thinking, and it’s not a happy thought,” he said.

“Well, I’m not thinking it.” Brynn was beyond frustrated with the circular wordplay, too. She’d missed something, a logical conclusion everyone else saw, while she couldn’t.

“Fiona.” Knight glanced at her in the rearview. “She’s a half-breed, too. It explains the on-again, off-again clawed fingers, and it explains what I saw in her eyes.”

Brynn’s entire body trembled, and she clasped the steering wheel with both hands. “Which is what?”

“Copper flecks. I think Fiona is a loup garou-Magus half-breed.”

Part of Rook was glad he hadn’t been the one to say it, to put that expression of utter horror on Brynn’s face. He twisted in his seat and watched her closely as she digested the news. They’d suspected the existence of a Magus-loup offspring since the day Brynn Atwood walked into McQueen’s Auction House with her bewildering scent, but even Rook hadn’t considered that there might be more than one. Or what that meant for Brynn.

Her horror melted into blankness, giving away little of what she was thinking. He couldn’t imagine her confusion. Until a few minutes ago, she hadn’t even been aware vampires could breed with loup garou, much less a Magus. Then again, she could also be working really hard to repress her disgust at the idea of a Magus together with a loup.

No, she wouldn’t have kissed him earlier if that disgusted her. Unless she kissed him because she’d forgotten for a minute that, beneath his human skin lurked a beast.

“It’s a logical conclusion based on the facts as we know them,” Father said. “The questions become who are their parents, and what do they want?”

“They want to breed,” Knight said. “Why else go through so much trouble to capture me?”

He spoke with the same cold detachedness he’d had the entire conversation. Hell, he’d sounded the same since last night, and Rook didn’t like it. He knew Knight, knew when he was trying hard to keep it together—usually because of his empathic abilities. This was something else, a fear that had dug deep into Rook’s mind and stayed there like a bad guitar riff.

It all made a horrific kind of sense. The only other known male White Wolf was sixty-odd years old and lived in Wyoming. The four hostiles would have no use for a female White if they planned on being the baby mamas for a second generation of half-breed psychopaths.

“They were going to leave me to die from the silver,” Rook said. “They planned to take Knight with them, but the cavalry showed up first.”

“Just in time, from what I hear,” Father said.

Rook wasn’t so sure about that.

“So they want to breed what, exactly?” Bishop asked. “Some all-powerful mixed race meant to slaughter us all?”

“Possibly. Four of them have murdered four hundred and thirty loup garou in the last forty-eight hours. That’s five percent of our race’s entire population in this country.”

“They had the element of surprise in Stonehill,” Rook said. “Dozens were dead before an alarm could be sounded. In Potomac, there was time to act.”

“Devlin confirmed that. He said several of the enforcers were able to shift, and that the hostiles were less effective against the beasts.”

“O’Bannen fought hard against Victoria,” Brynn said. She seemed to have gotten back out of her own head and rejoined the conversation. “If he’d had help, maybe he’d have won.”

Rook flinched.

She noticed. “I didn’t mean you or Knight. I just meant if he’d been with another loup, someone more useful than I was.”

“You got us out of that trailer, Brynn,” Knight said. “You were useful.”

“Bishop, what is it?” Father asked.

Rook could easily imagine the face his eldest brother must have made to get their father’s attention with such abruptness.

“I have a horrible guess as to who the White Wolf is,” Bishop said. “The one who produced Fiona and the Terrible Trio. Do you remember the scent marker from Stonehill that Devlin mentioned yesterday morning? The one he thought he smelled on Shay Butler because of her proximity to the attacks?”

“The memory of spring grass,” Knight said. His voice went from cold to furious in no time flat. “You think the half-breeds’ mother is Chelsea Butler. Shay’s mother.”

“Yes. The timing of her disappearance fits.”

Rook experienced a new kind of bitter rage at the idea of a precious White Wolf enduring such a thing, and he worked to keep his building horror under control as he said, “You’re saying Shay’s related to the same people who slaughtered her entire town?”

“I am.”

Knight swore a blue streak that their father didn’t admonish him for. They all felt that way.

“Is Shay awake?” Rook asked.

“She’s awake, but extremely agitated,” Father replied. “She hasn’t been able to tell us much about the attack, only that the girl who first wounded her stopped mid-fight and left her there. She doesn’t know why.”

“If the hostiles didn’t know about Shay, her scent might have surprised them into not killing her.”

“Possibly. It is the most likely explanation.”

“But if they didn’t know about Shay, then why attack Stonehill specifically? Why not us? Why not Delaware?”

“I don’t know, and much of this is still speculation. We can continue discussing the details when you three arrive home.”

“We should be there in about two hours,” Brynn said.

“Good enough. In the meantime, we’ll share necessary information with the other Alphas so they can take steps to protect their White Wolves.”

Like we couldn’t protect ours
. It dangled on Rook’s tongue. Instead, he said, “We’ll see you soon.”

When Rook tucked the cell phone away, he might as well have tucked away the conversation, too. Knight drove on autopilot, his expression empty, eyes forward. Brynn had settled in against the backseat, angled to stare out the driver’s side window, and didn’t seem inclined to talk. She was probably still processing everything. She now knew of the existence of a loup-Magus offspring, and the revelation had turned her world inside out.

Rook had no idea how she’d take it when she learned she was part loup, too—or how much she would hate him for keeping that truth from her.

Chapter Fifteen

Knight watched familiar faces pass by as he drove slowly down Main Street and made a left toward home. More folks than usual were outside on the sidewalks, chatting in clusters, discussing whatever official statements the Alpha had likely made about recent events. One of the downsides to living in such a small, close community as Cornerstone was that secrets were very difficult to keep. Even if word of the massacre at Stonehill hadn’t made the complete rounds yet, the eighteen refugees from Potomac had chummed the waters and brought out the curious and the gossips. Father was always honest and fair when it came to keeping his people informed, but he also knew when to withhold things. He was positive that his father would keep the news of the vampire-loup hybrids from everyone except the town’s enforcers.

Once they arrived home, they went through the expected rounds of hugs and “good to see you”s from Bishop and their father. Knight kept his guard up, blocking out any stray emotions from leaking through and tweaking his empathy. He couldn’t deal with anyone else’s stress right now. He needed zero emotional contact for as long as possible so he could collect himself and prepare to face the inevitable questions.

The six of them in the know finally congregated in the library to talk.

“Geary and his son Jonas have agreed to keep information about the hostiles to themselves,” Father said once they’d all settled. “They’ve taken over the old Flynn Boarding House for now.”

Cornerstone didn’t have an actual hotel. They didn’t like to encourage outsiders to stay longer than a few hours at a time. The boarding house was built to maintain the impression that their town was no different than any other old settlement town in Pennsylvania—it was just rarely ever used.

“Alpha Geary isn’t staying here?” Rook asked.

Traditionally a visiting Alpha and his people were guests in the home of the resident Alpha. Even though most of their extra rooms were being used by Jillian and her squad, no one would have refused to move for the comfort of another Alpha.

“I offered. He prefers to remain close to his people.”

“Understandable, given the circumstances,” Jillian said.

“Why are you still here?” Knight asked before he could censor himself. He was standing by one of the room’s windows, while everyone else had helped themselves to the furniture. Father, Bishop, and Rook all twisted around to give him identical expressions of surprise. Jillian blinked like he’d spoken in an alien language. Only Brynn didn’t react at all; she hadn’t reacted to much of anything since their arrival.

It took Knight a moment to realize just how rude he’d sounded, which was not like him at all. Controlling his empathy sometimes meant a less sensitive brain-to-mouth sensor. “My apologies,” he said to Jillian. “I just meant that with everything that’s happened, aren’t you needed by your own run?”

Bishop and their father relaxed back into their original positions now that the crisis moment was over. Rook, on the other hand, kept giving him that
look
. The same one he’d occasionally tossed Knight’s way since the previous night. The
look
that said “I know what happened, but I don’t know how to talk to you.” And the
look
was getting damned annoying.

Jillian leveled him with a steady gaze that would serve her well when she stepped up as the Alpha female in Springwell. “After considering recent events and revelations, as well as the fact that your town now seems to be the epicenter of the hostiles’ attention,” she said, “my Alpha has advised us to remain here and assist for as long as Alpha McQueen allows it.”

Epicenter of the hostiles’ attention
was certainly a colorful way of saying “they’re coming for you, and that’s why we’re here.” Years of practice at deferring to others and knowing his place allowed Knight to say, “Gratitude, Ms. Reynolds,” when all he felt was guilty for her remaining there in the first place. She and three of her kin were on the front lines of the most brutal, terrifying battle the loup garou had faced in decades when they should be back in Delaware with their own people.

She canted her head to the right, a gesture that seemed to accept both his apology and his gratitude.