Gray Bishop (3 page)

“Bishop?”

He stopped walking, instantly alert by the tone of Rook’s voice. They were nearly at the gate to the yard, and Rook was staring at him oddly. “What?”

“You were growling and glaring at the sidewalk like it pissed you off. What were you thinking about?”

“A lot of different train cars were on that track.”

“Let me guess. The engine pulling them all along the track was the triplets?”

“Basically.”

“Wondering when they’ll make another play for Knight?”

“Yes.”

Rook was smarter than he gave himself credit for, and a lot more observant than Bishop used to think. They had never been particularly close, a distance created by the fact that Rook was ten years younger and could have taken the future position of Alpha away from Bishop simply by his nature as a Black Wolf. Even though he was the oldest, Bishop was Gray—a fact that had been a handicap for him his entire life, and had made him work his ass off to be the kind of man who could lead his run. The kind of man his father would not hesitate to leave in charge, Gray or not.

The distance between them had only widened during the four years Rook was away at college. Rook’s abbreviated attempt at a professional music career had ended in disaster and sent him back to Cornerstone seeking direction for his life—a direction that Bishop often feared included being Alpha. Instead, Rook had chosen Brynn and a life as Bishop’s right-hand enforcer. Bishop’s respect for Rook had doubled with that choice, and for the first time in a lifetime, they were actually friends.

“We’re overdue to hear from them,” Bishop added. The triplets had disappeared after Fiona’s death, but they were fanatical in their hatred of the loup garou as a species, and they were also unhinged. Their silence worried him—a fact he only shared with Father.

“Yeah.” Rook started walking again, and Bishop followed him toward the stone path to the house. “Every day I expect a call from another run, telling us about an attack.”

Bishop expected the same thing, which was why Father kept in constant contact with the other Alphas. So far, two of the three runs closest to Cornerstone had been massacred. Their next neighbor was Springwell, Delaware, a smaller sanctuary town of just over four hundred loup, lead by Joe Reynolds. Alpha Reynolds was a good friend of their father, and he’d sent his daughter Jillian and a squad of enforcers to help out during the Fiona debacle. All but Jillian and an enforcer named Mason Anderson had returned to Springwell. The pair were staying in town to help with the search for the triplets.

And, he suspected, so Jillian could continue to mess with his carefully measured control. The woman had thrown Bishop off balance from the instant they met, and she had continued to do so without even trying. She wasn’t beautiful, but she had an inner strength and determination that spoke to him. Or more important, spoke to his beast, who reacted to her instinctively in a way that drove him crazy on a regular basis.

The easy manner in which they used to work had been blown to hell the night Fiona was killed, and it was Bishop’s fault. He’d given in to his attraction, and then he’d been cruel to Jillian. He didn’t blame her for her frosty politeness toward him over the past few weeks.

He and Rook went inside and straight down the long hallway to the kitchen. Mrs. Troost, their housekeeper since before Bishop was born, had laid out a platter of sandwiches and a note that cold broccoli salad was in the fridge. Bishop and Rook helped themselves to food, then took their plates outside to the back patio.

Brynn and Shay were seated on opposite sides of the long picnic table, beneath the shade of an umbrella. They looked up at their arrival, Brynn’s face breaking into a wide grin. Shay simply watched them approach, her face blank, her eyes empty. Always empty. The girl’s spirit had been broken, and Bishop’s beast snarled with the unfairness of it all.

“Mind if we join you?” Rook asked.

Brynn deferred to Shay, who nodded slowly. Rook sat next to Brynn, such an odd contrast, the pair of them. Rook was a head taller than Brynn, his muscled arms decked out with tattoos and scars, with a ragged ear that made him look downright dangerous. Or like the alternative rock band star he’d tried to be. Brynn was small and pale-skinned with stick-straight black hair and big blue eyes. A true odd-couple in terms of physical appearance. Very much matched in every other way.

Bishop sat on the same side as Shay, keeping a solid arm’s reach of distance from the spooked girl. The only people she seemed to allow close proximity to her were Knight and Dr. Mike, the town’s physician. She was underweight, average height, with long, strawberry-blond hair and pale, gray eyes that had no life in them. She was also quite pretty. He imagined the girl had a heart-stopping smile, and he hoped one day to see it.

“Your ears must have been burning,” Brynn said to Rook. “Shay and I were just talking about you.”

“Oh?” Rook said. “Good things, I hope.”

“She asked about your ear. I was telling her about that night.”

Bishop paused before taking a big bite of his roast beef sandwich and studied Shay’s profile. She was staring at her half-eaten sandwich, hands clasped in her lap. Shay had been informed about the events that followed the attack on her town in bits and pieces over the last two weeks, mostly by Brynn and Knight. She’d been badly wounded and catatonic for a while, until Knight coaxed her back into the world. No one wanted to overwhelm her or frighten her with the reality that Cornerstone was still under attack by an unknown, unstable enemy. That she was showing curiosity about the people she lived with had to mean she was making progress in her recovery.

“I’m surprised Knight hasn’t told you about that yet,” Bishop said softly.

Her gaze flickered toward him. “I don’t ask.” Her voice was soft, melodic, and almost impossible to hear. “It hurts him to talk about it.”

It hurt all of them to talk about it. Bishop didn’t test her statement, though. He could be blunt to a fault, but he knew when to hold his tongue around grieving women—except when it came to Jillian.

He’d have deserved it if she had hit him for throwing her late husband in her face last month.

“Did Brynn tell you how she faced off against a Black Wolf with only a shovel?” Rook asked, levity in his voice.

Brynn had been down and on the ground when Bishop, Jillian, and Father arrived at the barn, but the mental image the description conjured up made Bishop smile. Brynn was small, but she was fierce when it came to Rook.

Shay glanced up at Rook. “She mentioned defending you until help arrived.”

“I was scared out of my wits,” Brynn said. She leaned against Rook’s arm and rested her chin on his shoulder. The picture was obnoxiously cute. Bishop attacked his sandwich so he didn’t have to see it.

“Where’s Knight, anyway?” Rook asked.

“I don’t know. He said he had to do something at the auction house, but that was over an hour ago.”

Bishop frowned at his food. Father had temporarily shut down the auction house until the triplets had been dealt with. Their weekly auctions were what kept outside cash flowing into Cornerstone without tempting humans to stay too long, or get any ideas about moving to town. They hadn’t had an auction these last two weeks, and they weren’t likely to have another one for the foreseeable future. They couldn’t risk the triplets attacking with so many clueless humans in the way, and the fewer outsiders around the better.

Father’s office was at the auction house, and he used it for both auction and run business, so it was possible Knight went to see him. Bishop sent a text to Knight’s phone anyway, asking for a location. Knight was the triplets’ primary target, and even though he was relatively safe within the confines of town, Father insisted he not wander around alone. No one wanted to risk losing him again.

“Paranoid much?” Knight said, his voice a welcome sound from the patio doors.

Four heads turned. He stepped outside with a glass of iced tea in hand, sunglasses on even though he’d just been inside.

“Who’s paranoid?” Rook asked.

“Bishop.”

Rook snickered, then shoved broccoli salad into his mouth without asking for clarification.

“I don’t like you walking around alone,” Bishop said. He didn’t give a damn if that made him paranoid. He preferred to think of it as smothering and overprotective.

“I went to the auction house and back,” Knight said. “I didn’t even stub my toe.” A month ago, his tone might have been light and teasing. Today it was bordering on hostile. Knight didn’t like being handled, but damn it, he’d been kidnapped twice in his life already. Bishop wasn’t going to allow that to happen a third time.

Instead of joining them at the table, Knight flopped into one of the patio’s lounge chairs, angled away. He seemed intent on ignoring them—something else he wouldn’t have done a month ago. Rook had twisted around to stare, and as he turned again to finish his meal, Bishop caught a stray emotion on his face that stirred up his gut.

Fear.

Fear of what, he didn’t know and couldn’t ask, but fear all the same.

His phone buzzed. Rook jumped at the same moment. They retrieved their phones, to an identical message from Father: 911 Office.

Bishop got up without a word, barely listening to Rook explain their abrupt departure to the women. Knight wasn’t following them, which surprised him briefly until he realized Knight’s exclusion could mean they had a lead on the triplets.

The auction house was a five-minute walk, and a ninety-second run. Despite the late summer heat, Bishop jogged down their road to Main Street, made a sharp right, and pounded pavement to the end of the official town limits where McQueen Auction House had been built three generations ago. Rook stayed on his heels. Devlin and his cousin Winston met up with them at the front door, and they all followed Bishop inside.

Father was behind his desk, standing with his arms folded, agitation all over his face. “We’re waiting on two more,” he said in lieu of a greeting.

They fell into line around the room, waiting for their Alpha to begin the meeting. Bishop studied his father’s face, but found no hint as to their agenda in his set jaw or narrowed eyes. Moments later, two pairs of footsteps pounded up the stairs to the office. Jillian Reynolds came in first, Jonas right behind her. Bishop’s beast stirred at her appearance.

“This information stays in this room for now,” Father said. He picked up a folded sheet of paper with four sets of numbers printed in black marker. “I received this in today’s mail. No return address, no distinguishing scents attached. Postmarked from Welton, our nearest neighboring town.”

Bishop accepted the paper when handed to him. The numbers seemed familiar in some way. “Coordinates?”

“Correct. The coordinates are for a location just off Route 12, about six miles from here.”

“No indication of what we’re expected to find there?”

“None. That was the only thing in the envelope.”

“Feels like an ambush invitation.”

“My thought as well. I want you six to go there and see what we’re meant to find, if anything. Go in as pairs, one beast and one skin, from different directions so you can see from all sides. Keep in constant contact with each other.”

“With respect, Alpha, is six of us enough?” Jillian asked.

Father’s eyes flashed with annoyance. “Six is all I will risk sending. This could be an ambush, or it could be a tactic to draw my enforcers out of town and make us more vulnerable to an outside attack. Once you’ve left, I’ll inform the other patrols of what’s going on so everyone is on their toes.”

The plan was a good one. They didn’t know what they were going to find out there in the woods, and putting all of their strongest fighters in one place was a bad move.

“Understood,” Bishop said. “We’ll leave right away.”

“Good. Be careful, all of you.”

Verbal affirmatives rose up, and then the group filed out of the office and downstairs.

Bishop hung back. “Was Knight over here within the last hour?”

“No, I’ve been alone all morning,” Father said, concern furrowing his brow. “Why?”

“He told Brynn this was where he was heading.”

“Knight probably needed a few minutes to himself. I don’t like it, either, son, but he does need personal space in order to control his empathy. If your mother was around others for too long, too consistently, she became agitated. Especially when something was already bothering her.”

“Right.” Their mother had been a White Wolf, too, so Father had a unique perspective on the responsibilities and side effects of the burden. Balancing the emotional control of seven hundred-plus loup garou was a monumental task. “I’ll let you know when we’re close to our location.”

“Be careful, son.”

“I will.”

Jillian pulled onto the side of the road exactly one mile from the location she’d punched into the SUV’s GPS before leaving Cornerstone, then shut down the engine. They were on a side road off Route 12, and she hadn’t seen a car on it yet. Route 12 itself wasn’t a heavily traveled road, simply the most direct way to get from Cornerstone to Pennsylvania’s other major highways.

In the passenger seat, Winston Burke raised the walkie-talkie and said, “Three in position.” He handed the walkie over to Jillian, then got out so he could undress and shift. The process of shifting from skin to beast took a full minute if changing fast, and up to two if they took their time.

Moments later, Bishop’s irritating voice came over with, “One in position. Two?”

“Almost there, thirty seconds or so,” Rook replied.

The teams had been formed quickly by Bishop before they left the car lot, as had the skin versus beast assignments. She and the McQueens would go in on two feet, Jonas and the Burkes on four.

Jillian pocketed her key and cell phone, then joined a shifted Winston by the fender. He shook himself out like he was wet, re-acclimating to this form. Shifting was painful and only done when necessary—or when forced to during a quarterly. After their first shift as a child, every one hundred and one days, all loups endured a forced shift that left them at the mercy of their inner beasts from sunset to sunrise. It’s why most households had a quarterly cage in their basement.

The only time in her life Jillian had forgone a quarterly was during her pregnancy. Phantom pain stole through her abdomen at the thought, and a flash of old grief closed her throat. She had been frustratingly emotional about the loss of her mate and her unborn child these last two weeks, thanks to a spectacularly nasty comment by Bishop after what had been an intensely erotic kiss. She had tried to be understanding once she realized the secret he’d been carrying with him that night. He had been angry and grieving an impending loss. He had also seriously overreacted to their kiss, and she understood that. The passion in that kiss, the way her beast had reacted to it and to him, had scared her, too.

But the fact that he had yet to approach her and apologize for shitting on her late husband’s memory pissed her off.

I hope he gets ticks romping through the woods.

The silly, unkind thought was distracting her, so she focused on Rook’s announcement that he and Devlin were in place. Everyone was shifted and ready, so they headed into the woods. Jillian used her phone’s GPS this time to track their path, unfamiliar with these rolling mountains and the trees and animals in them. The wilderness was shadowed and spooky even in the middle of the afternoon.

After half a mile of silent walking, Winston froze, ears forward. Jillian stopped, deferring to his beast’s heightened senses. His nose was working, scenting the air. He moved forward again, more cautiously, and Jillian cursed his inability to speak and tell her what he smelled. She couldn’t ask the others if their beasts had scented anything. They were to be radio silent unless attacked.

A quarter mile from their target, Jillian’s gut rolled. The cloyingly sweet odor of rotting meat tickled her nose and filled her throat. Death. Winston had smelled it a ways back, which meant a lot of dead things that had been left to rot.

They slowed their approach even more, sticking to soft ground, away from broken sticks and underbrush. Careful not to jostle any shrubs or young trees. Nothing to announce their presence as the scent of death grew stronger. Other scents hit her hard—loup garou and human scent markers, non-distinct. But more than one.

Less and less was this feeling like an ambush. She was fairly certain this was a message.

Their destination was a small clearing, and in the center of it was the slaughter. Limbs, gore, blood, torn earth, and broken tree branches scarred the area. Blackflies buzzed in a thick cloud over the mess, adding to the horror of the discovery. Jillian shivered at the sight of it, overwhelmed by the viciousness it took to rip people apart so thoroughly.

A low birdcall signaled Bishop’s arrival. She spotted him through the trees, his face the very picture of horror. To her left, she spotted Rook as well. Black shapes moved soundlessly around them, sniffing for clues, searching for any sign of their enemy.

Jillian converged on the brothers, nauseated and sweating from more than simply the day’s heat. None of them spoke for a long moment.

“I count at least five heads,” Rook said, his voice hoarse. “Hard to know for sure.”

Not without digging into that mess.

She thought the carnage left behind in Stonehill, and again at Potomac, had been bad. This was beyond that.

“A message,” she whispered.

“They smell like half-breeds,” Bishop said.

“I agree. Do you recognize any of the scents?”

“No. Then again, we aren’t exactly friendly with the half-breeds that live around here.”

“So why slaughter half-breeds as a message? Why not someone from town?”

Bishop snarled.

Jillian realized her mistake. “I’m not saying I wish someone you care about was in that horror show, I’m talking logically here.”

“The triplets aren’t logical,” Rook said. “They don’t use reason the way Fiona did. They probably smelled loup in them, saw an easy target, and decided they’d do. Whoever they are.”

Bishop moved closer and squatted next to what looked like part of a torso. “Wounds are pretty consistent with what we saw in Stonehill.”

Jillian eyeballed a hand separated from the wrist, each finger bent and broken in some way. “This wasn’t just a slaughter. This was fun for them. They made these people suffer before they killed them.”

Her beast stirred with anger, fueled by the strong odor of meat and blood. Past the hand was another, easier to spot in a puddle of congealed blood. So small. A child’s hand. “Goddammit.” She didn’t stop the growl that rose from deep inside, or the fury lashing at her mind.

They’d murdered a child.

A warm hand slid around her wrist, and a flash of awareness came with that contact. The same heated flash she felt the few times Bishop had touched her. She blinked at him, her eyes stinging with tears, and she saw murder in his own. Murder and hate and a deep need for vengeance. Half-breeds or not, children were never targets. Children were precious gifts to be protected, always.

Bishop held her gaze, never wavering, his silent support everything in that moment that was keeping her from losing it. Keeping her from shifting and allowing her beast control. Bishop knew about the car accident that killed her husband. No one outside of her own run, however, knew about the child she’d lost.

“We’ll stop them,” Bishop said in the strong, determined voice of an Alpha.

It calmed her a bit, and for that she was grateful to the frustrating man. “We should inform your father.”

“I’ll do it,” Rook said. He moved away to make the call.

Bishop continued to inspect the bodies, while Jillian took photos with her phone. She wanted them on McQueen’s laptop and off her memory card as soon as possible, but they needed these. Something in the pattern of the bodies or parts might be useful. She took photos from all angles, not paying close attention to Bishop’s infrequent inspections of various areas.

Rook joined them a while later. “We’re to collect as much evidence as we can, then leave it and try to find the triplets’ trail.”

“Leave them like this?” Jillian asked.

“The longer we’re exposed, the greater the danger that the triplets could attack.” Rook grimaced. “We’re in the woods, and we can’t burn the bodies without risking a huge fire. Our father is sending another team out to take care of them later. They won’t be left to rot.”

She made a noise of acquiescence. She hated leaving them behind, but they couldn’t afford to stay exposed.

“We’re almost done here,” Bishop said. He was a few yards away, studying something. “I’m not seeing a greater message in the body arrangements beyond a great big fuck-you to us.”

A black beast slipped over to Bishop’s side. The heavy odor in the air prevented Jillian from scenting him, and she wasn’t familiar enough with the shifted enforcers to be certain who it was without scent. But his eyes were asking a silent question: time to go?

“Any trace of the triplets or where they went?” Bishop asked.

The beast shook his head and whined. No.

“Search again, more widely. We need to be certain.”

He huffed, then loped off.

“We don’t even know their names,” Jillian said softly, of the corpses surrounding them.

“No, we don’t,” Rook said. “And we never will.”

***

Bishop didn’t give a damn who the dead half-breeds were. He didn’t need their names in order to seek vengeance for their pain and for the suffering of a child. Jillian’s reaction to that discovery had nearly cut his legs out from under him. In the roughly three weeks they’d spent in each other’s orbit, he had seen her shaken once, and that was his fault. Even after the fight with Geary and his henchman, she had been calm and steady.

Today she had been as close to losing it as he’d ever seen a loup in skin. The beast had flashed in her eyes, demanding to be let out so it could slaughter something. And she hadn’t slugged him for touching her, so points to him.

The slaughter frustrated him, because it seemed so random. The triplets—Victoria was the only one whose name they knew—had sent an odd message. They’d lured them out into the middle of nowhere, the perfect place for an ambush, but they were nowhere to be found. Broad daylight was probably helpful, in that they did have vampire DNA, however he didn’t know for certain if sunlight was poisonous to them. Perhaps they saw better in darkness, so they attacked in darkness. So many unknowns surrounding this unstable enemy, and Bishop hated not knowing whom he was fighting.

He circled the scene again while the three beasts continued sniffing the perimeter, confirming that he’d seen everything. A flash of blue caught his eye, on the edge of a puddle of blood, tucked up beneath a tree branch. He picked his way over and squatted down. Nudged the branch away with his fingertips. In the dirt lay a small plastic chess piece with a blue ribbon tied around it.

The white knight.

Bishop’s stomach knotted as he palmed the piece. He sniffed it, but his nose was shocked by the decay around him. Here was the message.

His skin prickled with awareness of someone behind him.

“Shit,” Rook said.

“What did you find?” Jillian asked from a few yards away.

Bishop stood, his nerves jumping, and held up the chess piece. Jillian narrowed her eyes, her thin mouth puckering in disgust. Rook glared at it like he could make the thing combust if he hated its meaning enough.

“Your choice. Daddy.”

Fiona’s hateful words hit him like an arctic wind. The blue ribbon could mean everything, or it could mean nothing. Only one person knew that for sure, and he wasn’t talking to any of them about it. But surely Knight wouldn’t conceal something so important . . .

“You were there in that trailer with him,” Bishop whispered, careful to make his words only for Rook. “Does the blue ribbon mean something?”

Rook’s expression was gut-wrenching. “I don’t know for sure. Not for sure.”

“Fuck.” His instinct as the Alpha’s son told him that he needed to take that chess piece straight to the Alpha so he could sort out its meaning. The scared older brother who wanted to protect Knight demanded he go to him first.

As the future Alpha, he needed to make good decisions, always in the best interest of their people. Sometimes that meant considering the run as a whole, and sometimes it meant considering the needs of a single member. He would have to show the discovery to their father eventually, but not right away.

This was too fucking personal. “Let’s get the hell out of here,” Bishop said loudly enough for everyone to hear.

As Jillian joined him and Rook, he said, “The chess piece is between us three until I say otherwise.”

“Are you sure that’s wise?” Jillian asked.

He glared, but she didn’t even flinch. “No, I’m not sure. We know the triplets did this. We didn’t need the chess piece to tell us that.”

“So why conceal it?”

“I’m not concealing it, Jillian, I’m going to investigate it.”

“I think it’s a mistake.”

“The Alpha will be angry I didn’t go to him right away, but I’ll take responsibility for that. You’re on record as disagreeing with me.”

She rolled her eyes. “Oh good.”

They walked back through the woods to their separate cars, the same way they’d come. Jonas fell into stride beside him, clearing his nose frequently as they walked. Bishop didn’t blame him. Even as they put nearly half a mile between themselves and the slaughter, the odors clung to him. He waited for Jonas to shift back and get dressed, then turned their car toward home, windows down for desperately needed fresh air.

“That was beyond . . . just . . .” Jonas struggled for the words.

“Yeah,” Bishop said. “They had to have been killed yesterday for all scent trails to disappear.”

“Agreed. Never seen anything like it.” Jonas’s voice cracked, and Bishop didn’t fault him the emotions that must be pummeling him. Jonas had lived through an attack that left over a hundred of his run members dead. He’d seen slaughter up close, at a devastating level that Bishop would not wish on his worst enemy.

And more than anything else, he did not want that devastation coming to Cornerstone.

The drive home was silent, and the six of them trooped upstairs to report to Father. He sat behind his desk, nose never wrinkling at their combined stink, listening with perfect attention as they all took turns narrating what they had seen and smelled. Jillian uploaded the photos she’d taken, and at the first image, Father’s breath caught in a strangled gasp.

“My God,” he whispered.

“They’re messing with us,” Rook said. “Letting us know they haven’t forgotten their objective, even though they probably don’t have half a brain between them to figure out how to succeed.”

“Which continues to give us an advantage,” Bishop added. “Reckless people are dangerous, but they also take risks. They act before thinking. They go in without an exit strategy.” The only calculated part of this slaughter was the chess piece.