Half Truths (A Helheim Wolf Pack Tale) (17 page)

Marcus’s house
was in a nice suburb of Dayton-Hollis, surrounded by high brick walls with
electrified wire running along the top to dissuade even the most adventurous
thief. There were also two check points to get through before you even glimpsed
the house. Leona rolled her car to a stop beside the first one; a numerical pad
on a steel podium about the size of a small tree trunk. Punching in her code,
the sliding gate in front of her clicked and slid open.

The second check
point required a retinal scan. Leona looked into the scanner, being very
careful to keep her head steady. After a few moments, a red laser passed over
her eye and the gate opened. Marcus’s paranoia had become worse over the last
ten years, but that wasn’t surprising. He was quite old now, and werewolves
tended to lose their minds once they were over the age of around two hundred
and forty or two hundred and fifty.

She pulled into
the driveway behind Connall’s red Subaru Impreza WRX, killing the engine. When
she reached the door to the house, Connall was sitting on the front step with
George Orwell’s
1984
in his hands. Her heart started pounding. He
glanced up from the page and smiled wryly at her.

‘Where have you
been, Lover?’

Leona’s heart
was like a drum beating too loudly in her head. She licked her lips, meeting
his gaze for a moment. ‘Just running an errand.’

Connall narrowed
his eyes at her. ‘What kind of errand?’

‘One that
doesn’t concern you,’ she snarled. ‘Where’s Marcus?’

Connall closed
the book slowly, making a show of staring at her until she looked away. ‘He’s
waiting in the kitchen for you. You’re late.’

‘I know,’ she
murmured, stalking past him and into the house. She could feel Connall at her
back. Her free hand inched to the butt of her gun under her jacket.

Connall inhaled
deeply; the sound too close to her ear. ‘You smell of anger, Lover. Something
wrong?’ he asked in a purr.

‘No.’ Her wolf
was bristling. She pushed into the kitchen where Marcus was sitting at the
breakfast bar with the newspaper held out in front of his face.

‘Leona,’ he
drawled without looking at her.

‘Marcus,’ she
replied, waiting. Finally, the paper came down. Marcus was wearing a very
satisfied grin.

‘How was your
day, dear?’

She ground her
teeth together. ‘Fine.’

Marcus sharp
eyes looked over her. ‘Where have you been?’

‘She was running
errands,’ chimed in Connall.

‘Was she now?’ Marcus
replied; gaze still unwavering from Leona’s face. A lick of fear raced up her
spine suddenly. They must have known where she was. ‘Did you get everything
done that you needed to, dear?’ Marcus asked in a simpering voice; an
unusual-looking smile curving his top lip.

‘Yeah, did you
get everything done, Lover?’ Connall asked, barking a laugh.

Leona squeezed
her eyes shut. She must be imagining it. They couldn’t know. ‘What did you want
to see me for?’

‘Ah, yes. You
remember my little … friend from this morning?’ he asked, his voice lilting up
at the end.

‘Yes,’ she said,
suppressing the shudder.

‘Unfortunately,
she didn’t like the way I played, and she expired. Take care of her for me?’
His voice was still sweet, caring … dangerous.

She swallowed
hard. ‘Yes, Marcus,’ Leona replied. There was a small voice in the back of her
head that asked
why is he sending you to do this? This is Connall’s job.

‘I’ll come with
you,’ Connall said happily.

‘No. Stay here
with me Connall. I have something to discuss with you.’ Marcus was looking at
Leona while he spoke.

Connall pouted,
but turned back around to see his alpha.

As soon as Leona
pushed open the basement door, the smell of raw meat, open sewer and blood
overpowered her. She covered her nose and mouth with her hand and made her way
down the stairs into the darkened room. The smell grew stronger and stronger
until she finally reached the bottom of the stairs. Breathing through her
mouth, she flipped the light switch on the wall and gasped.

The girl was
naked, supine, and spreadeagled on the steel Saint Andrew’s Cross bolted to the
back wall. Her legs and arms were secured with chains diffused with barbed
wire, and all her skin was gone where the bonds had rubbed her raw. But that
wasn’t the worst of it.

Marcus had
obviously shifted his hands while he was with her, slicing open her belly so
that her intestines fell onto the floor. The puddle of blood surrounding her
entrails was only just getting tacky. Leona bent down to untie her ankles when
there was a moan.

Startled, Leona
jumped away from the girl and looked up into her bruised and battered face.
There was a long, jagged cut from her temple to her chin; the serrated edge
cutting into the side of her mouth. Both her ears had been removed, blood
trickling from what remained. Leona’s heart was pounding too hard. She must
have imagined the sound. She began to crouch down again when one of the girl’s
eyes opened a slit. The girl was alive. She was still alive. And Leona was sure
her heart was trying to crawl out of her throat now.

One pale blue
eye stared down at her. Leona stood up to remove the ball gag from the girl’s
mouth; that one eye following her movements, staring down into her. If she
survived, she would Change, she would become one of them. The gag was finally
free; Leona dropping it to the ground beside her. It splattered dully into the
pool of the girl’s blood.

‘K-k-kill
m-m-me,’ the girl whispered, struggling for the words.

Leona’s head
swam. She had said those exact words to Marcus. But he’d left her for three
days to go through the Change while Connall watched on eagerly—hungrily.

‘K-kill,’ the
girl managed to say again, licking her painfully dry lips slowly, ‘m-m-me.’

There was a
noise upstairs. Leona’s head swung around. When she looked back, blood was
trickling out from the side of the girl’s mouth.

‘What’s your
name?’ Leona asked in a whisper, sliding a dagger free from her wrist sheath.
The girl’s one blue eye stared at the blade before looking back at Leona.

‘K-K-Karly,’ she
sputtered, coughing up blood quietly. It rolled off her chin, dripping down to
the floor.

‘Karly,’ Leona
said, staring hard into her face. ‘I won’t forget you.’ She brought the blade
of her knife up to her chest, driving it through her sternum and into her
heart. Karly gave one last gurgling breath before going limp; dead, finally.

Leona cleaned
the blade on her pants before sliding it back into the sheath. Tears were
rolling down her face as she untied Karly, letting her dead weight slump down
onto her shoulder once she was finally free.

Leona buried
Karly in the backyard beside all the other girls Marcus had tortured to death.
The other girls’ graves weren’t marked with anything. They would be forgotten.
Anger surged through Leona’s body at the thought, moving her before she
realised what she was doing.

Her hands were
raw and numb; clumsy. Taking the same blade that had finally given Karly the
peace she deserved, Leona etched her name onto a large flat stone, laying it at
the head of her grave. Leona sniffed, running the back of her hand under her
nose, noticing the time. She was going to be late.

‘So how did he
do her, Lover?’ Connall drawled from behind her.

Leona spun
around, wiping her face quickly to hide the tears. ‘Ah,’ she said, stalling,
trying to come up with something.

‘Let me guess …
was it strappado and spreader bar? It was, wasn’t it?’ he said excitedly. ‘Tell
me I’m right.’ Connall’s eyes were gleaming.

‘Yeah,’ she
replied. ‘You got it in one.’ Leona shoved past Connall, shuddering when his
hand caressed her bare arm as she passed.

‘Do you know
what I like to do after I bury a body, Lover?’ he asked.

Leona stopped
against her better judgement. ‘What?’

Connall stepped
up close to her body. ‘I like to fuck while their blood is still warm on my
skin,’ he whispered into her ear, his fingers trailing down her bare arm again.

Leona shrugged
him off. ‘You fucking disgust me,’ she snarled, stalking away. She’d be
punished for speaking out of turn, and Connall didn’t disappoint. He grabbed
her arm, whirling her around, and slapped her across the face. Tears sprung in
her eyes, searing pain blooming across her cheek bone.

She blinked and
Connall had the tip of one of his blades just under her eyeball. He pressed it
into her skin; the silver burning. ‘Be careful, Lover,’ Connall drawled,
lovingly running his hand down her unmarred cheek. ‘One little move, and I can
just pop your eyeball right out.’

Leona pressed
her lips together; holding in the whimper.

‘Are you sorry
for what you said to me?’ he asked, stroking the skin on her neck now. She
nodded minutely, the tip of the blade still buried in her skin, scratching
against bone. ‘Good.’ He kissed her roughly on the mouth, dragging the blade
down her cheek as his tongue stroked her lips. ‘Remember your place, Lover,’ he
said, pulling his shirt off to hold it to the wound. ‘You’d better go and clean
that up.’

Leona turned
away from him, not taking his shirt with her. Hot blood ran down her face,
dropping off her chin. The silver was eating at her skin, stinging. This would
scar just like all the others, but that was exactly what Connall wanted. He
wanted to mark her as his own so that no other male would touch her.

Up in her room,
she looked in the mirror. The new cut was straight and deliberate. Slathering
on the Neosporin, she felt her skin knit back together again before she wiped
off the excess. Leona pulled off her clothes, dumping them onto the floor. They
were covered in both Karly’s and her blood now. She turned on the hot water in
the shower, letting it wash away the blood, guilt and sweat from her skin.

Slumping
forwards, she braced her arms above her head, letting the scalding water barrel
over her head and shoulders. She didn’t even realise she was crying until her
wracked sobs echoed all around the bathroom. She was so screwed. Killing the
water, she towelled off and threw on some clean clothes.

Murmured voices
on the other side of her door stopped her as she slid her tank top down over
her stomach. Pressing her ear to the door, she heard Connall and Marcus having
a conversation.

‘Tell the new
recruit to try for the félvair tonight. One of my spies has told me that she’s
unprotected at the moment,’ Marcus said.

‘You got it,’
drawled Connall. Leona edged away from the door, retreating to her bedside
table. She had to tell Rhett. At least then he would know she was serious. Seizing
her mobile phone, she texted Rhett the warning.

Félvair in trouble.

She hit send,
hoping that she wasn’t too late.

Even though Rhett would kill her if
he found out, Indi didn’t stay in her apartment once he’d left. If he couldn’t
be honest with her, why in the hell should she make his life any easier?

She kicked
through the slush, crossing the street away from her apartment. She didn’t know
where she was going only that she had to get out of that shithole of an
apartment of hers. The winter sun had ducked down into the horizon a while ago,
leaving the streets cold and dark except for a few streetlights.

Her stomach
rumbled angrily. She was so hungry, but she knew that the smell of blood would
send her stomach into revolt. Sucking back the curse sitting on the tip of her
tongue, she hung a left heading towards the park. She’d been focusing on
avoiding black ice when she heard a car pull up beside her.

‘Ind,’ called a
familiar voice. She looked up to find Jerry in his shiny yellow Porsche pulling
up beside her.

She smiled
widely at her brother. ‘Jer, what are you doing down here?’

‘I could ask you
the same thing,’ he said disapprovingly. Indi crossed her arms over her chest,
waiting for the lecture that was surely coming.  ‘Get in. I’ll take you back
home.’

With a growl,
she got into the car. ‘I would have been fine, you know.’

Jerry looked
over at her with a smile tugging playfully on his lips. ‘I know the cops have
said the rapist is gone, but I find it hard to believe. I don’t like you
walking alone at night.’

When the idea
struck her, she wanted to scream. ‘You don’t drive around Hell looking for me
at night, do you?’

Jerry laughed; a
booming, happy sound. ‘Of course not. I was just on my way out.’

‘Where were you
going?’

Jerry’s cheeks
flushed with colour. ‘I have a date tonight,’ he admitted wryly.

‘A date?’

‘Yeah, this guy
who I used to go to school with came in today. He’s just moved back to town
after getting a divorce.’

‘He was
married?’

‘Yeah. He
thought he could get rid of the feelings if he was married to a woman. But it
didn’t last. So he divorced her and moved back to Buxton.’

‘What’s his
name?’

‘Ben Rardin,’
Jerry replied, grinning stupidly.

Indi smiled back
at him. ‘I’m glad you’re happy, Jer.’ The Porsche pulled up in front of Indi’s
apartment building half a minute later. ‘Well, I hope you have a good time on
your date, Jer.’ Indi leaned over the centre console and kissed Jerry’s cheek.

Cold air slapped
her across the face when she stepped out of the car. Jerry waited until she was
inside the glass doors before driving away. She waved at him, truly happy that
he was finally finding some happiness after the clusterfuck with Mark. Climbing
the stairs up to her floor, she wondered when she was going to be able to find
that same happiness. Sure she knew where to get it, but whether or not she was
actually going to get it was a different story.