Deceived By the Others (19 page)

“Shit, I’m sorry,” I said. “I never meant to—”

He cut me off. “Look, I don’t like you. Never did.” Nick shot him a look of surprise, pierced brows arching up in shock. “We’re following Chaz’s orders. So sit tight, relax, and wait for him to come back. You’re not going anywhere until he says you can.”

At first, I was chagrined. He had gotten in a hot mess with the pack and with Royce when I’d run off right out from under his nose. He’d been assigned to watch over and protect me from the psychotic vampire Max Carlyle, who very well might have called me back to his side once I was beyond the reach of the Sunstrikers or Royce’s people. However, Dillon had no right to treat me like a child, herding me around because Chaz said so. All those last words of his did was piss me off. I slowly got back to my feet, fists clenched tightly at my sides as I glared at him. Chaz had warned me that such a move was considered a direct challenge; right now, I didn’t care.

“Dillon, I didn’t do it intentionally. I’m sorry I got you in trouble, and I’m sorry you don’t like me. But I’m not going to sit back and wait for Chaz to get hurt. What if he was shot with silver again? What if that’s why he’s taking so long to come back?”

“She’s got a point, you know,” Nick said, nudging Dillon’s arm until he stopped returning my angry stare. “Maybe one of us should go check it out.”

“We’re both assigned to her. We can’t abandon our post.”

“Then let’s go together and take a look. We’ll stick close to the cabins. If they’re searching out in the woods, well, we’ll just come back here and wait like Chaz said to,” I offered.

Dillon frowned severely at me, the smooth brown skin of his brow wrinkling into a scowl. I wasn’t intimidated. He knew I was right; something could have happened, and if it involved silver again, it would take a human—like me—to do something about it.

“Fine,” he snarled, shoving away from the table so hard it pressed into Nick’s ribs, knocking the wind out of the other Were. “If he’s not in the cabins we’re coming straight back here.”

“That’s fine,” I readily agreed, rushing to the door. His arm snaked out to stop me before I could bolt outside.

“Stay right by us. We can’t protect you if you run off.”

As much as I wanted to roll my eyes at him and say something sarcastic, I went for the civil approach instead. “All right. Lead the way.”

Dillon glowered at me briefly before twisting around and heading outside, his smooth, swift gait requiring me to practically jog to keep up. Nick was chuckling at us, bringing up the rear.

We didn’t get very far before a trio of the geekiest looking guys I’d ever seen rushed out of the shadows between two cabins to come to a jerky halt in front of us. They all had T-shirts with odd computer or gaming references that could’ve come straight out of Arnold’s wardrobe. In fact, I could’ve sworn I’d seen a smaller, less faded version of the “/ATTACK GAZEBO” T-shirt that strained over the bulge of the bigger, hairier one’s distended stomach on Arnold’s skinny frame just last week. The two others had thick glasses that gave them owlish stares, distorting their narrowed eyes. The one in the lead was a couple inches shorter than me, wiry, and practically vibrating with excitement.

I might have laughed if they hadn’t been wielding bows with silver-tipped arrows aimed with deadly precision at the Weres on either side of me.

“Come with us,” the shortest one said, his voice pitched low and menacing. It might have been more frightening if he hadn’t paused, lowering his weaponry to pull an inhaler from his jeans and take a deep pull. He coughed, cleared his throat, then resumed speaking in a normal tone. “You’re ours now, newbs!”

“They’re not newbs, dude,” rumbled the overweight one, rolling his eyes.

The third, tallest and skinniest, put in a few words. “Are you sure? I hear the girl ganked some fangs a few months ago. Wouldn’t try to take her in a PVP round without major backup. Maybe we should’ve—”

“Doc, shut up.” The first guy ran his hand over his face, then lifted his weapons again, gesturing for us to move. “Let’s go.”

Unwilling to risk injury from silver shot, the two men at my side hastily complied with the order. I, on the other hand, was too confused by their strange jargon and overblown entrance to do what the short one said right away.

“Uh, excuse me, but who the hell are you guys, and what the fuck do you think you’re doing?”

“No questions right now. Move it!” he demanded, taking a step closer to me.

I did what he said this time, skittering back as he herded me closer to my bodyguards. They didn’t take us far—we went straight back to the cabin I’d been sharing with Chaz.

Once inside, they did a fair job of tying up Dillon and Nick with some heavy chains one of them had been lugging along in a backpack. Though the pair’s eyes gleamed with luminescence and both upper and lower fangs were visible when they lifted their lips in silent snarls, the threat those silver arrows presented was too much for them to risk defying those strange geeks right away. As soon as they were trussed up, the bigger guy pushed them into the cramped kitchenette and made them sit on the floor, back to back. He then hooked their chains together using what appeared to be carabiners—D-shaped rings with a spring catch, like the ones I’d seen my brother Damien pack with his mountain-climbing gear. Simple, but effective. Those two wouldn’t be able to disengage themselves without help.

As soon as Nick and Dillon were out of the way, the trio turned their attention to me. I’d retreated to the back of the room, putting as much distance between us as possible. There was nothing close to hand that might serve as a weapon, and I wasn’t too sure I’d be able to fight them off if it came down to it.

“You’re Shiarra, right?” the short one asked, pulling out a chair. The other two followed his example, slumping into seats around the table, blocking any escape through the door.

“Yeah. You ready to tell me who you guys are?”

He smiled at me, and I flinched at the sight of elongated canines. It was daylight; vampires couldn’t walk in daylight—

“We’re the Nightstrikers,” he said. The three of them sat a bit straighter, puffing with pride.

I stared blankly.

“Haven’t you heard of us?”

“No, sorry. Should I have?”

He frowned, as did the other two. The tied-up Sunstrikers shook their heads in silent puzzlement as he turned a questioning gaze upon them. The taller, skinnier one addressed earlier as Doc started talking, drumming his fingers impatiently on the tabletop as he eyed me. “We’re only the arch nemesis—nemesi? Nemesises? Whatever, the main enemies of the Sunstrikers. We’ve got the biggest following on the Other-net Web site.”

“Never heard of you,” said Dillon in a tone of dismissal that had all three of the geeks bristling with indignation.

“You’ve got to be kidding! We’ve been hunting Charles Hallbrook for the last twelve years.”

“Thirteen, doofus,” the bigger one said.

“Thirteen, yeah.”

Dillon and Nick exchanged a look before shrugging in their chains. The geeks were not deterred, though they were a bit crestfallen.

“Shit. I can’t believe you guys don’t know who we are! Anyway, I’m Floyd, also known as Doc. That”—the talkative one pointed to the big guy, who gave me a friendly wave—“is Howard. You can call him Spike; that’s what we all do. And Hawk is our leader.”

“You!” I shouted, finally putting two and two together. “You’re the ones who trashed our cabin! And took all my underwear!”

Dillon and Nick very nearly choked on their laughter. Spike and Doc both reddened and looked away, clearly embarrassed, whereas Hawk was blasé about the matter.

“We would’ve given them back before you left. Besides—”

“I thought you said we were gonna keep them,” Spike said, his face falling.

“Shut up,” Doc hissed, while their leader rubbed a palm down his face. None of them seemed to care that I was seething.

“Anyway, that’s not why we’re here.” Hawk, so short he barely came up to my chin, rose and paced with restless energy in front of the table. “We’re not like the Sunstrikers. We’ve been biding our time long enough. We’re an elite team—”

“Headshot! I call headshot.”

Hawk gave Doc a withering glare for interrupting before returning his attention to me. “We’re sick of your boyfriend’s shit, basically. So you’re going to play bait for us.”

Under the circumstances, I think it was only fair to say I was confused. I edged around the bed so I could sit across from the three, collecting my thoughts before speaking. Whatever else was going on, these guys were nuts, so I didn’t want to provoke them into doing something that might result in them hurting me, Nick, or Dillon.

“Okay, now, I get that you guys are upset about something. Clearly you have a beef with the Sunstrikers.”

“No shit. We wouldn’t be fragging your party if we didn’t have a beef,” said Spike.

“Right,” I agreed. “Here’s the thing, though. Don’t take this the wrong way, but I have no idea what the heck you guys are mad about or why you’ve done all this. Were you the ones leaving the notes?”

“Yeah. Didn’t you see our messages? You didn’t listen.”

“We thought it was some other people messing around. Plus we didn’t know what half of the messages meant.”

Hawk pressed his fingertips to his eyes, taking a few deep breaths. When he focused on me again, I was startled to see that there were no whites to his eyes any longer—they’d gone entirely pitch black.

“We were telling you to ‘get the fuck out’—seems pretty clear to me.”

“Sorry,” I muttered, looking away so I wouldn’t have to meet those freaky eyes. “Chaz thought it was some teenagers in the pack playing dominance games. We didn’t know.”

Hawk settled into a chair again, tapping his nails on the table. “Regardless, after tonight, I don’t ever want to deal with that asshole again. Do you know where he is?”

“No. We were looking for him when you interrupted us.”

“There’s too many for us to go searching the cabins right now,” Doc said, elbowing Hawk. “Maybe we should use them as bait to lure him into the woods? Don’t see how we can pull this off without training the whole pack—and there’s no zone line to shake ’em off, either.”

“Dude, this is worse than trying to run Onyxia. We can’t disconnect or call 50 DKP minus if someone pulls the crowd on the raid,” complained Spike.

“Many whelps! Handle it!” crowed Doc, and the three men dissolved into sniggering laughter.

Nick, Dillon, and I shared a helpless look. None of us knew what the hell they were talking about.

I cut in, speaking over their laughter. “Hey, maybe I could talk to him for you. Get him to apologize. What are you so upset about, anyway?”

Hawk shook his head, his easy grin fading into an unhappy scowl. “Oh, no way. You’d just try to get away. He needs to pay for what he did.”

“Which is?” I persisted.

“He was the popular kid. The school bully. He beat the shit out of us anytime he could corner us all through high school. Playing dominant alpha—setting the rest of the football team against us—”

“Yeah,” grumbled Spike, clenching thick fists until his knuckles popped. “As soon as we heard he was here from my granddad—” Ah, so Mr. Cassidy was covering for Spike, not for Hawk. That’s where the relation lay. “—we had to make him pay. The jockstrap headdresses and fake rubber breasts at prom were the last straw.”

I had to fight to keep from cracking a disbelieving smile. These guys were obviously pissed, though if Chaz was being a dickish jock to them in high school, I could sort of understand. Why they’d carried a grudge this long was beyond me, though.

Nick and Dillon had no such qualms. They were snorting with laughter.

Doc glared behind the thick lenses of his glasses. “We want to make him pay, just like he did to us all those times.”

“Plus, he stole my girlfriend,” Hawk insisted, gesturing impatiently at me. “He’s going to use you and leave you, too. Just like he did with her. You shouldn’t be with a guy like that.”

Right. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath to compose myself—a real task with Nick and Dillon still sputtering laughter from the kitchenette—then rose and approached the door.

“Guys, I’m sorry Chaz was mean to you in high school, but he’s a very different person now. He’s saved my life, more than once, and he’s a very caring pack leader. Why don’t we go look for him, and I’ll help you talk it out together? Maybe you can make some kind of deal, and he can make it up to you. That way nobody has to get hurt.”

Hawk regarded me dubiously, though he followed the others when Doc and Spike got to their feet and fell in beside me. The reek of Were musk, not of a breed I was familiar with, washed over me as they approached. “I don’t know. I don’t think it’s possible for someone like that to change. I really want him to pay for what he did.”

“We’ll talk it out. He’s not the same; you’ll see.”

They didn’t argue, following me as I opened the door. Nick called out plaintively. “Hey, what about us?”

“We’ll come back for you,” I promised. Considering the Nightstrikers were hefting their weapons in readiness, Nick and Dillon’s belittling laughter wouldn’t help matters any if I was going to get them—or Chaz—to talk reason.