Deep Dark Secret (18 page)

“In spite of my father being the son of Mexican immigrants, the Rain family never deterred the friendship. It was ultimately obvious their friendship had formed a fierce loyalty, and my father became the apparent choice to serve as Jeremiah’s second when he came into power.”

Desmond was so immersed in the story it was like he was telling it from within a trance. I feared anything I said might break the spell, and I’d never know what had become of the two men. I stared at him in rapt silence and waited for him to continue.

“In Jeremiah’s thirty-five years as king, the Eastern pack functioned like a well-oiled machine. There were no territorial disputes, almost no internal conflict. People were happy. Alphas were treated as their own leaders and given enough power to feel important, but enough leash to not overstep their bounds. If there was ever a
Pax Lupo—
a peaceful time for the wolves—that was it.”

No wonder Lucas was struggling so much to maintain his position as the king. Not only was he young, but the shadow of his father’s legacy stretched far into the Eastern pack empire. There were old Alphas who would reject change and would resent Lucas for not maintaining the status quo established by his father.

Supernatural politics could teach the White House a thing or two about being convoluted.

“With how relaxed everything was, no one was expecting the invasion. We guard ourselves against internal upset, but these guys were a rogue wolf pack out of Germany. They didn’t go for the outlying territories either, which is what any smart usurper would do.”

Notably
not
what Marcus Sullivan had done.

“They came to the city and rounded up as many wolves as they could. I don’t mean these wolves joined forces with them. I mean they kidnapped them and held them hostage. This was six years ago, and it was summer. Lucas and I were doing a semester abroad in France. We didn’t find out about any of it until the dust settled.

“Jeremiah invited the Alpha of the German pack for a summit. They met at one of the old Rain warehouses in New Jersey, and right from the start it all went wrong. I only know what I know from the one wolf who survived, the Alpha of Philadelphia. Apparently the Germans went in with one agenda—to kill everyone in power and set their own leaders up in place. It never would have worked. The individual packs would have revolted.” He shook his head over how one misguided plan had cost him the head of his family.

“It was a bloodbath. The Germans were all killed, but so were all the hostage wolves, and most of the Alphas who had gone with Jeremiah. My father…” Desmond sucked in a breath, and I heard the tremor in his voice. “My father died protecting his king. But it didn’t matter. Jeremiah died the next day. His wounds were too extensive, and he was too old.”

“Des…” I touched his arm, and he flinched.

“So stupid.” He ran a thumb under each eye, though he hadn’t cried for the duration of the story. “Lucas and I got home, and suddenly he was a king at twenty-one, and I was his second. We had a whole damned pack to run and barely any idea of how to do it.”

“But you did it,” I told him.

“Did we? I don’t know. Sometimes I think we’re holding it together, but we never let it heal properly. I worry all it will take is one hard tap and the whole thing is going to fall apart.”

If that was how my uncle saw the Eastern pack, it was no wonder he was making his move now. And by the sound of things he was doing it exactly the way Desmond believed was the smart route to a hostile takeover.

I couldn’t let that happen.

Squeezing his hand, I rested my head against his shoulder. Whatever it took, I would play my role in all of this. Lucas’s pack wouldn’t fall apart because I wasn’t willing to be a pawn. It was time to put my pride on the back burner and live up to my title as pack protector. If I didn’t, it might be Desmond and Lucas who paid the price, and I couldn’t live with myself if that happened.

I wasn’t cut out for university life.

This was only my second trip to the Columbia campus, and I already detested the place. It wasn’t that the buildings didn’t have a certain academic charm to them, or that the feel of a miniature city within a city didn’t have an appeal. No, none of those things made me hate higher education.

The goddamn place was teeming with people who were begging to become victims.

Young women filed out of Mayhew’s lecture hall, and it was like watching an evolutionary progression diagram. Except instead of showing the development of early man into
homo sapien
, I was seeing a digression from good-girl student into
sororitos sluttius.
The shirts got lower and the skirts got higher as each new girl stepped out.

It was February, for God’s sake. I couldn’t feel the cold, and I
still
wouldn’t wear a micromini outside.

When the last girl had left, I ducked into the classroom and stood at the top of the stairs watching Professor Mayhew pack up his big leather books. When he didn’t notice me right away, I cleared my throat.

“Oh, Miss… I’m sorry, I’ve forgotten your name, love.”

“Yeah, must be hard to keep track of them all.”

“Beg pardon?”

The stairs were deep and narrow, but I managed to descend without taking my eyes off him. “I was wondering something. Does the quality of a girl’s bedroom performance impact the level of the grade she gets, or is it her willingness that does it? Like, if she’ll only blow you, is it a one-letter grade bump? What does she have to do for an A?”

Mayhew propped an elbow on his lectern and stared at me with his hooded gray eyes, unfazed by my words. After a moment of contemplation, he shrugged one shoulder. “I didn’t put as much thought into it as you evidently have. The arrangement was mutually beneficial, Miss McQueen. What is it they say? If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it?” He affected a perfect redneck accent for the last phrase, making me shudder.

“I see you have no problem remembering my name when the discussion is about blowjobs.”

“Maybe I hadn’t forgotten you at all.” He tilted his head to the side and smirked at me. “So are you here to offer, or did you want to see if I’d deny it?”

Good question. I wasn’t here to offer him anything other than the pointy end of my knuckles. But I
had
expected him to deny it. His cavalier confession was throwing me for a loop.

Taking advantage of my momentary uncertainty, Mayhew hopped off the raised platform so he was standing uncomfortably close to me. It was a peculiar gesture for a man with a permanent limp, a little too lithe and graceful to be natural.

Something was wrong here.

I stepped back, and Mayhew followed me, catching my wrist and pulling me back towards him. His strength was shocking. My synapses were firing on full blast, screaming at me to do any number of things. Instinct said I should punch him, kick, slap, claw and do anything it took to break free of his hold.

My body responded by doing nothing and letting him tug me against his chest. “I was wondering how long it would be before you found your way back to me,” he said, nuzzling his nose against my throat.

A thousand furious thoughts bounced around inside my skull, but none of them shook my limbs out of their leaden stupor.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” My mouth still worked, apparently. As usual, though, it didn’t do me a fat lot of good.

“What does it look like, love? I’m grading you.” His voice was smooth and had an undertone of something dangerous. Not a threat, but the promise of violence lurking under his tweed-clad professor veneer. It pained me to acknowledge it, but my body responded to him.

“Don’t. Fucking. Touch. Me,” I growled through gritted teeth.

Fingers skimmed my arms, ducking inside my jacket and traveling down to my waist. He looped his thumbs into the belt loops on my pants and jerked my hips so they were flush with his. His lips grazed my neck, and my brain kicked me. If my mouth worked, so did my fangs.

I bit him in the ear.

Mayhew tried to pull away, but this time I held fast. He let go of my waist and dug his fingers in my hair, his lips grazing my own ear. The whole time he hadn’t once cried out in pain, which was astonishing given the fact I had inch-long fangs buried in the soft tissue of his earlobe.

He nipped at my diamond earring stud, tugging it with his teeth, and whispered in my ear, “If you want to play that way, I can show you how much pain the human body can withstand without dying.”

My fangs retracted almost instantly. The words hadn’t been a threat, they’d been a promise. And judging by the hardness pressed against my thigh, that promise excited him.

“What do you want?”

Mayhew licked the shell of my ear, and I fought against the urge to gag. The words he was whispering weren’t English. I wasn’t a master of archaic languages, but if I had to make a guess, I would say he was speaking to me in Latin. It sounded old and stuffy enough.

Undeterred by my attack, he started exploring with his hands again.

“You’ve come to make me an offering,” he said, finally uttering words I could understand.

“I’d rather chew on my own eyeballs than make any kind of
offering
to you.”

He leaned back and met my gaze, looking puzzled. “You shouldn’t be fighting me.”

Oh, God, this kept getting worse. The last time someone had frozen me he had been the most powerful witch I’d ever met.

Oliver Mayhew didn’t smell like magic.

I sucked on my teeth. His blood was too thick, too bitter. I didn’t know what it was, but Mayhew wasn’t human.

The good professor didn’t quite know what to do with me. He seemed to be debating whether or not he should release me or carry on with his dirty business. I didn’t want him touching me, but he had to understand letting me go wouldn’t be in his best interests.

He kissed me.

Also not in his best interests.

I bit down on his lip hard, ignoring his earlier promise of sadistic experimentation. Again my mouth filled with his strange, noxious blood, but I didn’t release my bite. It felt like swallowing crude oil. The moment his blood hit the back of my throat, I gagged, choking on the burning sensation. As soon as I stopped biting him, he forced his tongue into my mouth.

My limbs began to tingle, as though I’d rested funny and every part of my body had fallen asleep and was only now waking up. Before I could react, something cold like a sharp inhale on a below-zero morning was pulled out of my lungs, leaving me gasping for air. Then everything went black.

There was a crick in my neck when I woke up.

An ancient-looking man with deep wrinkles and a permanent scowl was staring at me. He held a broom handle in one hand and presumably had just finished poking me with it, judging by its angle and the sore spot on my ribs.

“Guh.”

“This ain’t no goddamn Super 8, lady. We got ‘em goddamn dorm rooms for a reason.” It looked like he wanted to give me another prod. I appeared to have fallen asleep in a classroom. Where was I?

“What time is it?” Rubbing my eyes with the heels of my palms only made everything blurrier.

“It’s one in the goddamn morning.”

“No, that can’t be right.” But then again, what time was I expecting it to be?

The obliging old man jammed his watch in my face. Unless his Timex was way off, he was telling me the truth.
What the fuck
? I tried to remember something, anything from earlier in the night, but I drew a blank.

“Where am I?”

“You gotta be joking.”

I shook my head, trying to keep the wave of panic from swelling up inside me. “No. I’m not.”

“You’re in the goddamn English building.”

“What English building?”

“At Columbia. Jesus, girlie. You hit your head or something?” He now looked a little guilty for prodding me with the broom.

“Sorry,” I mumbled, ignoring his question as I pushed past him and out of the classroom.

Outside, I called my number-two speed dial. It rang twice and a groggy male voice answered.

“Keaty, something weird is happ—”

“Huh? Secret, you called my cell, not Keats.”

I couldn’t place the voice, but he obviously knew me. Something in my chest tightened. Should I know this man? I must, but my brain wasn’t giving me a mental image to match with the words in my ear. A frustrated growl escaped my throat, and I hung up.

On the next attempt I dialed Mercedes’s number by memory, not trusting my speed dial.

“What’s wrong?”

I hadn’t said a word yet. “I…uhh. Cedes?”

“Who else?
You
called me. At one. What’s wrong?” In the background a masculine voice mumbled something and she replied, “It’s fine, go back to sleep.”

“Cedes, this is going to sound a little strange…”

“Like that’s a shocker.”

“Have you seen me today?”

She didn’t answer me for such a long time I said her name again. At last she said, “What do you mean?”

“It wasn’t a trick question. I need to know if you’ve seen me today.”

“No, I worked the day shift today. But we talked on the phone earlier. Tyler said you put on quite a show at the station tonight, though.”

“Tyler?” Was that a name to pair with the voice on the phone? It didn’t sound right for some reason, but at the moment now nothing was right.

“Tyler Nowakowski.”

I shook my head. Although she couldn’t see me, my silence was enough of an answer. When she spoke again her pitch was a little higher, and she sounded worried. “What’s your name?”

“Secret,” I replied with a snort. “As if I could possibly forget that.”

“Where do you live?”

“West 52nd Street.” When she didn’t respond, I added, “New York, New York.”

“Who are you dating?”

“No one.” Like she could ask me that. Gabriel had just left me. I wasn’t too keen to leap headfirst into the dating pool at this point. Or, you know,
ever
. But who the hell had I called by accident? It definitely hadn’t been Gabe’s voice. Or Keaty’s. “No one?” I said again, only this time it was a question.