Blood Rule (Book 4, Dirty Blood series) (20 page)

“
Yeah, we can see inside
fine,” he said after explaining how we’d stumbled upon the
invisible walls outside and finding our way to the door. “Really?”
he said, rubbing a hand over his chin. “Is there any way to— I see
... Yeah, right.” He snorted, shooting a glance at me and then
quickly away again.

I raised a brow at that, but he
ignored me and responded to something else Grandma said. “Now?
Okay.”

He motioned for me to follow and
opened the back door he’d come in earlier. Beyond the open doorway,
I could see a small porch with three stairs leading down to the
ground. Strange, I hadn’t been able to see anything of the outside
earlier. Maybe it was only visible if you were inside?

I crossed the threshold behind Wes,
fully expecting the porch and stairs to disappear the moment I
stepped out, but it remained, solid and fully visible. I followed
him down the stairs and turned to face the house.

“
I can see it,” I
said.

As I’d suspected, the exterior walls
were made of logs, fitted together like a toy set might be with
each log sitting on the other in a tongue-and-groove style. The
roof was made of metal paneling that glinted in the light. The
porch and railing were constructed of the same wood as the rest of
the house and carved intricately around the edges and along the
banister. The entire picture, the house with the greens and browns
and blues of the woods and waterfall as a backdrop, was like
something out of a movie. Or better, a postcard.

“
It’s beautiful,” I
whispered.

With his free hand, Wes laced his
fingers through mine.

“
Yup, I can see the whole
thing now,” Wes said into the phone. “Tara can see it too,” he
added. Had Grandma worried I wouldn’t? Again, I wondered if it took
a certain kind of hybrid to get in here.

Wes paused to listen and then said,
“He’s waiting for us back at the road. I need to get the bus moved
and bring them in. Will it still be visible when we get back? …
Uh-huh. Okay, will do … No, we didn’t hit any trouble. It was
pretty quiet. What about you?”

I grew restless waiting for whatever
news Grandma was giving him. Finally, he told her to be careful,
promised to call later, and hung up.

“
What did she say?” I
asked.

“
Let’s walk and talk,” he
said.

I happily agreed. We found the trail
and began the trek back to the bus. “What did Grandma say?” I asked
again. “Why can we see the house now?”

“
She said the wards are a
two-part deal,” he explained. “The first part is being able to step
foot in the clearing. Only hybrids can even find it to begin
with.”

“
What do you mean? It was
easy enough with GPS coordinates. Couldn’t anyone use them and do
what we did?”

“
Not according to Edie,”
he said. “Even with GPS, unless you’ve got mixed blood running in
your veins, this trail will take you in circles. You’ll end up
passing the clearing over and over without ever seeing
it.”

“
Hmm. Too bad we don’t
have a way to test it.”

He shot me a look. “Testing it would
mean someone’s gotten this close. I don’t love that
idea.”

“
I see your point. What’s
the second part of the wards?”

“
It’s invisible until you
get inside.”

“
What about if we leave
and come back?” I asked, thinking of George waiting by the
road.

“
Now that we’re here,
we’ll find it again.”

My brow creased. “But all we did was
walk inside. How does that make it visible to us?”

“
She said the words used
in creating that part of the ward are ‘Credendo Vides.’ It’s Latin.
Means, by believing is seeing.”

“
So, once we believed the
house was there, we were able to see it? Even without saying the
words?”

He shrugged. “That explanation’s
probably oversimplified but more or less, yes.”

“
Too bad that doesn’t work
with the rest of our problems.”

“
Agreed.”

We found George pacing the length of
the bus. His hair was disheveled, as if he’d been running an
over-zealous hand through it. “Where the hell have you been?” he
demanded.

“
We found the cabin, but
it took a while to get in.” I explained the invisible walls and the
accidental way we’d discovered it in the first place. He looked
slightly calmer when I’d finished.

“
No more leaving me out of
the loop for so long. Trying to read you drove me crazy,” he said
when I’d finished.

“
You couldn’t read her?”
Wes asked.

George scratched his head. “Not well
enough. It felt … foggy.”

“
Has it felt like that
before?”

“
When we first bonded and
she wasn’t letting me in or letting her mind go.”

Wes looked at me. “What about the
girls? Are they still foggy to you?”

“
A little,” I
admitted.

Wes frowned.

“
What do you think it is?”
George asked.

“
Something’s been off
since the others were taken,” Wes said. “Steppe did something. I
know it was him.”

“
I agree,” I said, “but
it’s impossible, right? There’s no way to break the bond. Vera said
so.”

“
No,” Wes said slowly.
“Vera said you shouldn’t break the bond, not that you
couldn’t.”

I tried to recall Vera’s exact words,
but all I remembered of that day was the scary paleness of her skin
and her closed eyes as she’d faded away from us.

“
Okay, but …” I rubbed a
hand across my face. “How could he remove the bond like that? I’m
the one that created the bond in the first place, and he didn’t
touch me. Wouldn’t he have had to, I don’t know, get to me? Do
something?”

“
Probably,” Wes said.
“Unless …” He and George shared a look. “Unless the bond isn’t
really gone.”

“
Wes, I hate to disappoint
but I can’t feel them. Not Chris, not Rafe, not Curtis. None of
them. Not even a little.”

“
Right, but remember when
Olivia had you and we lost our connection?” George’s face was lit
with an enthusiasm that made me wary.

“
Yeah.”

“
And I told you Alex
knocked me out and that’s why we couldn’t sense each other for a
while?”

“
What about it?” Hope
leaped in my chest. Despite rational thought, I wanted to believe
his theory. “You think they’re unconscious?”

“
Maybe.”

“
And if you’re right, how
does that help me get it back?”

“
Remember at the
beginning, when you and I worked together on strengthening our bond
so that we could learn to use it better?” George asked.

“
Yeah, we made it stronger
so that we could turn it up and down when we wanted.”

“
Right. Maybe we should
try that again,” he said, his words rushed by the excitement of the
idea.

I couldn’t tell him no, not when he
was this excited, even if the void in me made it hard to believe in
the possibility of a solution. “All right. Let’s get the girls to
the house and then we can work on it,” I said.

George, Wes, and I headed for the
bus.

I tried not to let on my lack of
enthusiasm at George’s idea. The idea of having hope frightened me.
If this didn’t work, I didn’t want to sink back into the same
depression. I couldn’t handle that again.

***

“
Try harder. You’re not
concentrating on connecting,” George insisted for what could’ve
been the gazillionth time.

I ground my teeth together, resisting
the urge to tell him where he could stick his connection. “I am
concentrating,” I said through tight lips. I kept my eyes shut as
proof and pulled my crossed legs in tighter. My muscles protested.
The rug underneath me had been comfortable when I’d first sat down
two hours ago. Now, my limbs were stiff and my butt was
numb.

And I still hadn’t sensed a single
thing from the others.

“
No, you’re sitting there
with your eyes closed and pretending to concentrate,” George
said.

I couldn’t argue with that. “My butt
is numb. I can’t think when I can’t feel my body parts. Maybe we
should take a break and come back to it later.”

“
No way,” George said.
“You can do this. Come on. Try harder.”

“
I’ve been trying for
hours. I haven’t connected with any of them.”

“
Means we haven’t figured
out how to get around the block. You need to relax
more.”

I let my shoulders slump dramatically.
From his vantage point behind me, Wes laughed. George must’ve
glared at him because the sound cut off abruptly.

“
That’s not what I meant,”
George said. “Now, try again.”

George obviously wasn’t deterred by
the lack of results—or my deteriorating temper. We’d already tried
simple concentration and when that didn’t work, meditation—until
I’d almost fallen asleep. Now we were back to concentrating. For
all the good that did.

On the upside, my connection to
George, Janie, and Emma had strengthened. It surprised me to find a
sadness similar to my own lurking in each of them. Even though they
didn’t share a mental bond with their pack mates like I did, the
physical absence had left a hole in them. There was a loneliness in
all of us.

I hadn’t said anything to George, but
I knew he wanted me to awaken the bond almost as badly as I wanted
it for myself. It made me sad and then, when my efforts to sense
something from the others yielded nothing, it made me
angry.

That’s where I was now. I was pretty
positive George knew it, but he kept trying to talk me down and
keep me focused on the goal.

“
Concentrate on one of
them at a time, Tay,” he said. “Think of Chris. Your connection
with him was stronger than the others, right?”

“
Right,” I said. And
despite my frustration, a pang shot through my gut. I missed him. A
lot. He always made me steadier. When I got overwhelmed by the
sheer number of Werewolves who looked to me for guidance, Chris was
there, telling me I could do it. I could lead them.

“
Think about Chris.
Picture his face in your mind,” George said. His voice evened out,
like an overly dramatic hypnotist. He was trying too hard. We both
were.

Still, I kept my eyes closed and
called up Chris’s face in my mind. I searched the connections in my
head, removing the line that led to George and then Emma and Janie.
When that was shoved aside, the emptiness loomed and I
panicked.

I couldn’t go through that again. I
refused. It was too big, too scary.

I opened my eyes and the bond with
George snapped back into place like a rubber band. What little
concentration I’d had vanished. “Didn’t work.”

George threw up his hands and stood.
“I give up.”

“
You can try again later,”
Wes said, trying to smooth the tension.

“
She
can try again later,” George corrected. He headed for the
back door. “I’m going for a run.”

“
No way, you can’t leave—”
I began, but my words were cut short.

A sudden vibration shook the floor and
walls, rattling the dishes and windows in its intensity. The sound
of rattling glass drowned out everything else, including the falls
and whatever Wes was saying from across the room. From the shape of
his mouth it looked like “What the hell,” but I couldn’t be
sure.

We all froze.

Upstairs, Janie and Emma jumped up and
then immediately crouched down again in an effort to keep their
balance. I wasn’t sure whether to attempt to reach them or wait it
out. I didn’t have a chance to decide. As abruptly as it began, the
quaking ceased and everything was still again.

I stared at the boys. “What
happened?”

“
Earthquake?” Wes
said.

George rubbed a hand over his hair,
disheveling it all over again. “Didn’t know Colorado had
those.

Wes walked over and extended a hand
down to me. I took it and let him pull me to my feet. I kept my
grip on his hand, waiting for my balance to steady.

“
You okay?” he asked, his
eyes searching my face for an answer.

“
I think so,” I said,
taking stock.

George felt dazed and so did the
girls, though theirs was turning more to fear than shock now that
it was over. “George, can you check on Janie and Emma?”

“
On it,” he replied,
hurrying upstairs.

“
That was really weird,” I
said, reaching out to right a lamp that had fallen over.

I wandered the room, straightening
pictures and making sure everything was back in its place. Wes
caught my hand and pulled me toward him. “Come here. We can clean
up later.” He traced his fingertips down the side of my face,
watching me closely. “You’re doing great.”