Darkness Returns (24 page)

Lockman caught up with her. “Where are you going to go?”

Without turning around. “I already told you.”

“The circus? Give me a fucking break. You belong here.”

She glared over her shoulder at me. Her eyes glowed red. “Here? Where they cage me? Where they force me to face the kind of soul that threatened to devour mine?”

“No.” That’s not what he meant at all.

Then what
did
you mean? Would you just get the words right for once?

“You belong with me,” he said.

The red in her eyes dimmed. She sighed through her nose, which made a soft snorting sound, like a piglet. Or an aging vampire.

“I’m sorry about what I said. I know you’ve tried your best.” She raised her eyebrows. “Your best kinda sucks, but still… You’re a good man, Craig Lockman. But I’m not your responsibility anymore.”

“Jess…”

She climbed out the window and leaped into the dark, disappearing as she fell away.

For an instant, Lockman thought she might have jumped to her death. How many floors up were they? He ran to the window and looked out. A second later he heard the steady
whap
of giant wings. He glimpsed her dark form next. Despite a nearly full moon that cast a phosphorescent glow across the open land surrounding the building, her vampire skin absorbed the shadows, turning her into one herself. Pretty soon he lost sight of her, and could only guess her distance based on the sound of her flapping wings as she flew away.

Lockman longed for that cool touch against his neck, but he didn’t get it. All he felt was the heat of his own shame. He had driven her away again.

Chapter Thirty

Convincing Trent and Aaron—a.k.a. Ball Scratcher—of her rightful place as Alpha was one thing. Convincing the rest of the pack took a gathering in one of the casino’s meeting halls that Trent, who had become her advisor of sorts, probably vying for Beta position, explained could just fit the most important members of the Vegas pack. Those who couldn’t attend the meeting in person would get their info from those who did, and they would accept it without question.

The whole while, Teresa made every effort to mask her doubts. Any hint of fear or weakness would derail her ascension…and she’d grown too used to the idea of taking the role of leader of a werewolf pack.

The meeting started with a dramatic display of Scud’s severed head, which she held aloft by the hair while standing behind a podium on a raised stage before the hall. Rows and rows of chairs, every one of them occupied, stretched before her like church pews at a Baptist wedding.

As she showed off the head, a whole mix of scents rose in the room, swirling around her, filling her nostrils. Lots of fear. Which was good. Plenty of anger, which she expected. A hint of sexual arousal threw her off a bit. She had to remind herself, she had joined the animal kingdom. Violence equaled power. And power could make you horny.

Really not so different from mortals now that she thought about it.

After holding up the head and rotating her arm to give all the attendees a good look, Teresa set Scud down on the podium, face out, a constant reminder of what she had accomplished and what it meant to the pack.

For those who needed more than a visual demonstration, Teresa began her prepared speech. Not even a speech really. A few choice words. Words that would lock her in place as the new Alpha, or trigger a pack war.

“Scud Dellany meant to kill me, to exile me from the pack in the most ultimate of ways.” She paused, let her eyes meet several of those facing her. “But he showed ultimate weakness, as well. Which allowed me to kill him in my place.”

In any other kind of gathering like this, Teresa would have expected an excited murmur, some disbelieving whispers, a rustle of uncomfortable bodies shifting in their seats.

Silence filled the room.

The only change was the smell. Some of these dogs, even in human form, had wet themselves.

Teresa smiled. It was good to be king.

“By killing him, by showing his weakness, pack law affords me his place as the pack’s rightful new Alpha.”

Now came the wave of muttering. And a few soft growls. If she couldn’t handle some dissent, though, she didn’t deserve Alpha status. Right now she had Trent and Aaron covering her tail. Aaron might not know the best tool for scratching his…tool, but Trent had brains and strength in a tight package, almost as slick as his waxed mustache. With him at her side, she could do this.

She could really do this.

“Before we start arguing pack law,” she went on, “I think you all know Trent Zurich.” He nodded his way. “And Aaron Klaplazki.” She tilted her head his way. “They’ve seen the evidence up close. Not just the head, but over at the warehouse where the rest of Scud was until we burned him.”

That got the biggest reaction of all. Cremating their former king sent a twang of under-the-breath curses and gasps of disbelief all through the hall. They all exchanged looks with the eyes of dreamers asking,
Can this be real?

Teresa almost wanted to pass the head around so everyone could get a close up confirmation that the story was true, the law was in place, and they now answered to her. She didn’t want to rub their noses in it either. Besides, she still had her last play to cap this all off.

“Not a lot of you know me personally,” she said over the noise of their disbelief, preferring to keep them off guard until her last word. “But you know of me. A version of me. Many others of you then helped welcome me to the pack.”

The choice of words there nearly gagged her. She gritted her teeth and stared them all down, daring one to so much as titter. They didn’t. The humiliation was part of bringing a wolf in. Once you survived it, the event became an honor, not a point of shame.

“The point is, things are different now. I am not your enemy. But I can lead you to your enemy. The wolf killer, Lockman.”

More growls. Several faces grew thick with hair. Some even looked as if parts of them had shifted—claws, snouts, and wicked teeth in pink and black gums.

“But this is even bigger than him,” Teresa said, raising her voice, tapping her passion. “Because his daughter, the Chosen One as some refer to her, poses a threat to this world, a world we have learned to live in and command as we see fit. A world crowded with mortals, but still one that belongs to those of us whom the mortals most fear…and respect.”

Every wolf’s eye, no matter what state of shift it was in, from the most mortal-looking to the glowering black orbs gazing out from under furred brows, stared at their new leader and began, Teresa hoped, to understand what she meant.

“This isn’t about one little vamp going on a rampage in Alaska,” she said. “This is about a creature prophesized with the power to destroy the world.” She pounded her hand on the podium next to Scud’s head to emphasize her next four words. “She. Can. Not. Live.”

“Sounds like a personal crusade to me,” someone in the back shouted.

Teresa didn’t waste time trying to call them out. What they believed about Jessie as a threat didn’t matter. The question came down to what it always does.

Power.

And she was about to offer them a great deal more than they’d ever had.

“The wolf killer has joined a new Agency. One much more powerful than the one you must all remember disrupting your operations, dismantling the businesses and homes you tried to build in this world you never asked to find yourselves stuck in.”

Shaking heads. Scowls from all manner of shifted faces.

“But I have inside knowledge. I believe I can get us into this Agency’s headquarters. And I think, as a pack, we can take it over. With those resources at our disposal, not only can we staunch the threat of the Chosen One, you can finally get your revenge against Lockman.”

Another voice from the back. Teresa was pretty sure it was the same one. He had a craggy waver when he spoke. “You would hand over your friend to us?”

She had expected the question. She’d been asked it once before already. A lot had changed since that last time. She had a very simple answer.

“I am the Alpha of the Vegas pack. All of you are my family and my only friends. The last wolf I killed, I did so with honor.” She placed a hand on top of Scud’s head. “And I am just as interested in you as bringing this
dishonorable
wolf-killer to justice.”

They stood. Almost all of them. They howled and they bayed. Many tore loose from their clothing, unable to hold back the shift. A full moon was on the horizon. Strong emotion would make it hard for any of them to stay out of their true form.

Teresa glanced to Trent. His waxed mustache had lost its neat shape as his beard had grown as thick as the hair on his head. Hell, even Teresa felt the soft fuzz on her own face tickling the corners of her lips and the cups of her ears.

She signaled with her eyes toward the crowd.

He nodded, knowing his job, and started counting and indentifying those that had refused to stand with the others. They would each have one more chance to join the will of the pack, or leave it forever.

One man far in the back sat with his arms crossed and his jaw set. He looked as mortal as everyone else had when they first entered the hall. Nothing had provoked even the slightest shift. Not even anger had drawn out a beard.

Teresa nudged Trent and pointed toward the man. “Who’s he?”

Trent’s eyes narrowed. “Don’t know.”

“One of ours?”

“I don’t think so. But he looks familiar. Maybe from another pack. Sometimes the neighbors come by to check out what’s new. Makes sense they’d send someone if they heard about you.”

Teresa’s thoughts started cycling on overdrive. “How many neighboring packs in Nevada?”

A shrug. “Half dozen. None of ‘em big as us, though.”

“Still, that’s a lot more wolves. They all friendly?”

Trent snorted. “Wouldn’t say friendly, but they ain’t hostile. We don’t do pack wars out here in the desert. Scud was pretty good about keeping the peace.” He ducked his head. “Not that—”

“Forget it. I want a meeting with their Alphas. Can you set that up?”

He hesitated, but only for a second. “I guess. Yeah. You want to bring them in on this?”

She licked her lips, staring at the man with the crossed arms who stared right back at her. “We’ve got a big pack. I think we could make it on our own, but it might hurt. Six more packs? We won’t feel a fucking thing. I don’t even know what their setup is like yet, but this Agency won’t stand a chance against six packs of werewolves. No one could.”

Chapter Thirty-One

The air felt like shaved ice scraping against her body as she flew. Jessie had climbed as high as she dared, and traveling over the Midwestern terrain at night, except for the occasional house light or blinking yellow traffic lamp at a lonely intersection, below looked as black as above. She squinted against the wind, pretended she soared through the darkness within herself. Only here, no souls approached her expecting a meal.

Since the farthest she had traveled from Kress’s building was to the private airport about four miles away, she really had no sense of where or how far she had gone until the glow of a distance city beckoned her.

She had an idea where she was before she got there, but once she saw the St. Louis Arch, she felt a fist-sized twist in her gut, as if she’d swallowed a rock. Her north-bound travel had been no mistake, her direction more deliberate than mere instinctive wandering.

Flying above St. Louis, though, tore through the dreamlike fugue that seemed to come from the whistle of the wind in her ears as much as it did her own denial.

Do you really want to do this?

Where else would she go? And what did she have to lose?

She’d done a good job of making her dad hate her, or fear her at the least. She knew that whole argument had fallen on her shoulders, and yet she kept lugging it along, as if those petty things she said meant anything in the scheme of things.

And what, exactly, was the scheme of things?

Everyone thinks I’m the Chosen One, when all I really am is a gross monster.

Yes, she knew she sounded like a whiney baby. She figured she’d earned the right to complain. After all, she looked more bat than human now. Some folks had issues. Jessie had picked up a lifetime subscription.

Thus, the point of this trip, the reasoning behind her destination. Her last chance at doing something, helping someone outside of herself. Prove that even monsters could care.

Or some dumb shit like that.

Navigating by air, in the middle of the night, without the GPS on her iPod would have been a bitch. Even her built-in vampire GPS wouldn’t have worked since she didn’t really know what sort of scent she was searching for, at least not until she picked it up about a mile away from the Detroit hospital.

Once she caught a whiff of the desperation and chemically flooded blood, she tucked her iPhone in her pocket and flew the rest of the way guided by her own devices.

The old building had great stone ledges outside their barred windows. She circled the building, making her body into a shadow to avoid the glass eyes of the surveillance cameras outside, until she found the window she was looking for.

The first time she tried to land on the outside ledge, her boots slipped. The ledges were ample, but she couldn’t find the traction to stay on them without having to continue flapping her wings for balance.

She kicked the boots off, didn’t even gasp at the change to her feet, the talons that had torn through her black knee-high socks at the toes, or how the toes themselves had curled into finger-like appendages. When she flexed them she saw that she could easily grip something with them, even hang upside-down in a belfry by a rafter probably.

Rather than bemoan her mutation, she teared up only a little, then flew to the window and used her new claw-toes to grip the ledge so that she could crouch there and peer in, wings folded behind her and aching from her long flight.

I just flew in from Duluth, and boy are my vampire wings tired.