Half Wolf (14 page)

Chapter 15

R
ed-orange flames of anger and anxiousness burned in Michael’s gut. He had never felt stronger, and at the same time less like himself.

He passed Rena and Devlin in his race to the library, seeing only Dylan ahead. Dylan’s vibe was also red-hot, his wolf churning up energy on a nuclear level. None of the Landau clan Michael knew of could shift at will. He wondered what Dylan would think of his ability to do so.

He and Dylan approached the steps to the old library building together. Dylan didn’t comment about Michael’s new shape, knowing better than to divert energy from the search for Cade. It was also likely that Dylan had seen this kind of special ability before.

There were no signs of students or staff near the doors. After the fake alarm Kaitlin had set off earlier, most of the people had finished up and moved on. One or two were left, and Michael’s impression was of aged humans closing up shop.

He and the Weres had to be wary of being seen. Those two people in the building had no idea what kind of evil their library might house beneath its brick walls, if Cade had been taken there. And that seemed likely.

The foreign wolf’s odorous trail was easy to follow. Dylan responded to Michael’s soft growl with a nod of his fair-haired head. The scent was so strongly wrong here, it seemed the damn wolves had left a trail of breadcrumbs behind.

Might be a trap.

“Correct,” Dylan agreed, hearing Michael’s wariness. “This is much too easy. Any creature with a sense of smell would be able to follow this trail.”

Michael watched Dylan check to make sure the hallway beyond the doors was clear, hoping the two people in the building were out of sight.

“Stairs leading down,” Dylan said. “Just inside this hallway. Chavez is never this easy to track, so the ease of this discovery has to be a trick. We’re being manipulated, Michael, and they’re using Cade as bait.”

Michael anticipated what Dylan would say next, allowing him to say it.

“If we bust down those doors leading to their den, they might be waiting. We don’t have any idea how many there will be.”

Dylan sniffed the stale air in the corridor before continuing. “I’m guessing more than one Were, and that their ringmaster won’t be in residence. Chavez’s MO is to let his wolves do the dirty work for him.”

Killing Clement’s pack was the dirty work Dylan was alluding to. Yet with his own pack and the Weres Dylan had brought with him, there was a good chance of stopping this criminal before it was too late.

Nevertheless, Michael’s senses were sending up red alerts. His senses detected vampires. The odor of rotting flesh overrode the harsh wolf scent pervading the hallway. He knew for a fact that the two opposing kinds of creatures would never have joined forces. The world of Otherness didn’t work that way. So, why were both scents leading them deeper into this library, each of those odors as strong as the other?

Has to be that these rogues have taken over the old location of a nest
, he said silently to Dylan.

“Or obliterated that nest,” Dylan said as Rena and Devlin arrived.

Rena wrinkled her nose. “The place reeks.”

“Why are the doors still open?” Devlin asked. “Shouldn’t this building have closed up some time ago?”

“Yes,” Adam Scott replied, striding in on long, muscular, jean-clad legs. “It should have been closed up tight, which doesn’t bode well for any humans left inside.”

Michael was glad to be in wolf form so he didn’t have to elaborate on the sickening ideas taking shape in his mind about what would soon happen to any unsuspecting humans there were. Rena’s expression registered her disgust over the same idea.

He looked past Rena for Kaitlin and didn’t see her. He didn’t sense her closeness when she had promised to keep up.

“We can’t just waltz in there,” Devlin said.

“And we can’t leave Cade,” Rena countered.

Dylan nodded. “We can’t all go in there. Some of us have to remain here in case more beasts decide to cruise by.” He looked to Michael. “Do you agree, Alpha?”

Michael growled and tossed his head toward the doorway behind them, ready to get on with this and get Cade back.

“Which of us has to remain?” Rena asked Michael. “Please say that isn’t going to be me. Cade is my friend.”

Of course, Rena already knew that staying put was the case, and she also knew why. He had asked her to take over Kaitlin’s care if anything should happen to him, and there was a decent chance something would. Though Rena hadn’t agreed to this scenario, she wouldn’t cross the wishes of an Alpha who was supposed to take care of them all, but who suddenly harbored doubts about his ability to do that.

Rena’s face colored. “Shit. Kaitlin must be outside.”

Kaitlin wasn’t outside, though. She wasn’t even nearby. Growling his displeasure, Michael gathered himself to go and find her.

Dylan stopped him, speaking softly to keep the echo in the empty corridor to a minimum. “You’re needed here, Michael. Let’s break down some doors. Tory is outside. She’ll watch Kaitlin.”

Michael growled again and showed his teeth, seeing no need to shift back and speak for himself. After seeing his canines, the pack would get the picture that he was torn between wanting to find Kaitlin and needing to rescue Cade, and that one of those two victims was a hell of a lot weaker than the other.

“Michael?” Dylan said. “This is your ball game. Your call.”

Swallowing needs that had curdled in his throat, Michael turned from the doorway. They had to save Cade, and his heart hurt over having to make that choice. He was counting on Dylan being right about Tory watching over Kaitlin.

They headed for the stairs leading to the basement in single file, with Michael in front, silent on his lethally clawed paws.

* * *

Kaitlin could no longer feel her body. She was as light as the air she breathed. Walking was impossible when standing required effort to keep rooted to the ground. Eventually she got to her feet and teetered, unable to regain any real sensation in her legs.

She was scared, and alone. She had promised Michael to keep up and was paying for that breach of promise. Detouring off course hadn’t been her plan. It had been automatic, as if she’d been lured away from the pack by a power outside herself that was too compelling to resist.

That wayward power didn’t seem to be wolfish, or fanged. Werewolves were muscular and heavier than she felt at the moment. Without a full moon overhead, the things she was feeling couldn’t be blamed on that. She felt odd, and as though the slightest breeze might blow her away.

The taste in her mouth was no longer connected to Michael’s breath, and more like licking starlight. Her insides had cooled. Some new thing was vying for space in an already overcrowded body.

Her vision sharpened. The grass she stood on was bright green, when at this time of night that grass should have been as colorless as everything else cloaked by darkness. Shadows glittered beside her, revealing their secrets and letting her know that no vampires hovered.

Crazed werewolves had apparently gone elsewhere, too. For that, she was truly lucky...if anyone could have called a person who was now half wolf and possibly also partially something else beyond that, lucky.

So, what other thing would show up to complete the assault on her humanity? Besides werewolf and vampire species, what else was there? She hated to think there could be anything more.

Do I feel like a wolf, at all?

Maybe she was beginning to. She had growled when Michael rolled her in the grass. The scope of her senses was widening. Those things left little doubt that when Michael had given her his blood, he had also transferred some of his specialized wolf particles.

As for this new thing inside her...

Would that negate her place in the pack if and when it showed up? What the hell else was left for her to be? Another kind of animal?

Her vision, so clear at the moment, showed several footprints lingering in the grass. The trail Michael and the rest of the Weres had taken lit up with a phosphorescent glow in the infrared spectrum. Birds in the branches watched her. Bugs flitted soundlessly through the leaves.

None of that erased the drive to follow Michael. Tasting starlight couldn’t overpower the strength of her need for him. She had to man up and face this next challenge. She had to confront the future while accepting that life was leading her on a new path, wherever that path led.

Ignoring the other tug on her attention, and on legs that felt as though they belonged to someone else, she started after the Weres, hoping it wasn’t too late.

* * *

The stairs led to a lower floor of offices, continuing to a subterranean level filled with machines and air-conditioning units. Some of those machines were on, and the noise was deafening to Michael’s sensitive wolf ears.

The floor was damp. Like most old building basements in Florida, where sweltering weather often caused a buildup of moisture between walls and in enclosed spaces, this basement was particularly rank with mold and mildew. This kind of pollution was likely part of the reason for needing a new library on the other side of the university’s campus. If mold seeped into the ventilation system, those spores would affect the longevity of books and the health of the people reading them.

The Weres couldn’t cover their noses. Scent was what had led them here and what would hopefully allow them to perceive an attack before one actually happened.

Other Weres had been here, all right. Several of them. Buried deep in this maze of machines was Cade’s familiar scent, as well. They were close to where the big wolf was being held. Michael’s fur ruffled with tension.

There wasn’t enough room for the pack to travel through the rows of machines shoulder to shoulder, which would have been the optimal formation for confronting an attack. But if Michael’s instincts were correct, two or three of Chavez’s wolves were all that called this place their temporary home. He sensed no big attack about to happen. Nothing jumped out of corners with knives or razor-sharp teeth.

Put more at ease by what his nerves were telling him, Michael rushed ahead with a harrowing howl that seemed to echo for miles. The battle calls of his pack added to the eeriness.

The room they were seeking sat at the end of a long tunnel of overhead pipes. The stench of that doorless room’s inhabitants added to the foulness of the rest of the place, causing an instantaneous gag reflex. Adam Scott shoved past Michael with his weapon drawn and aimed. The Miami cop stopped just across the threshold, and lowered his gun.

Cade was there, and standing. Slightly bloodied and covered in filth, the Were Michael had long called his friend turned to face them with a wicked smile on his face. At his feet lay two of the Weres that had helped to capture him. Both of them were dead.

Michael downshifted back to his human shape with a sound of crackling bones and grinding body gears. As he stood upright on two legs, Rena broke the silence. “We should have known you could handle this, Cade.”

Cade’s smile showed a chipped front tooth. “Piece of cake.”

Dylan asked the next question, backtracking to the door to peer into the gloom beyond. “Is this all of them?”

“Here, yes,” Cade replied. “Their chatter told me they aren’t alone in Clement, and that there are at least four more.”

Rena asked with relief in her tone, “Only two of them took you?”

“Sorry to be a disappointment on that score,” Cade said.

“Why did they take you?” Michael asked. “You don’t fit their profile. They like bad guys.”

“I hate to say this,” Dylan remarked thoughtfully. “Can we entertain the possibility that these Weres went out on their own, without Chavez’s blessing? Or that Cade might have been a decoy for some other action?”

Michael spun in place, understanding what Dylan had been getting at and not liking it one bit. He was out the door before anyone had time to question why, running on human feet, scaling the steps when he reached them in leaps and bounds while sending silent messages to Kaitlin that he hoped she could hear.
Watch out for Weres you haven’t already met. Bad news is on the prowl.

Racing out of the building and across the grassy quad, Michael encountered no one. He was thinking with a one-track mind. Abducting Cade could indeed have been meant to throw them off the scent of the real reason for that pathetic abduction. One such reason could be tied to Kaitlin.

If Kaitlin was the goal and more crazed wolves caught up with her, he’d go ballistic and hunt them all down, to the ends of the earth if necessary. He would dedicate the rest of his life to the task of finding them if they hurt her.

The park was empty, its long swathes of grass lit by the moon. Tonight, for the first time since he’d been patrolling here, the place felt eerie and unfamiliar. The scent of wolf was everywhere and nowhere, pervasive in spots, merely a hint in other places.

When the scent became strongest, it was a fragrance he recognized. Female. Pure-blooded Lycan. He hadn’t met many Lycan she-wolves, since they were rare and scarce in the States. Teams went in search of them all across Europe to bring back, in order to facilitate imprinting and the continuation of Lycan family bloodlines.

Dylan’s friend Tory stepped into his path, blocking him from moving past her with a sparkle in her eye and a halting hand gesture. The lithe leather-clad redhead didn’t speak and shook her head to make sure he didn’t speak, either, using her expression to encourage his silence. Seeing that he got this and would comply, she sent him a message.
Follow me.

In stealth mode, they moved forward. Without his special abilities, Michael wondered if he would have seen Tory out here. Her black leather outfit blended with the night’s shadows that moonlight didn’t reach. Only her flaming mane of bloodred hair stood out when he looked really hard past the darkness.

Tory wanted to show him something and didn’t have to point out what that was. He scented Kaitlin easily. And Dylan had been right about Tory watching over Kaitlin in his absence.

Grateful
, he sent to her. This was one good thing in a night of missteps.