Jennifer Lynn Barnes Anthology (92 page)

I could have made it an order, but Mitch had known me since I was a kid, and he and Ali were what I’d call
close
. If I was going to convince my foster mother that this was a good idea, I’d need his support, not just compliance.

“It might not be a bad idea to pull in the peripherals,” Mitch commented, which I took to mean something along the lines of
why, yes, Bryn, I would be happy to stay here and help look after the pack in your absence
. “They’ll be more at risk on the edges of the territory than they would be here.”

“And,” Devon added, “as feisty as the tween brigade is, it couldn’t hurt to have a few more werewolves in residence who are at least close to full grown.”

The majority of the members of our pack were between the ages of nine and thirteen. Despite the fact that I’d only been fifteen myself the first time I faced down the Senate, I couldn’t
help feeling the others were just kids, that they should get to stay that way as long as possible.

“They shouldn’t know,” I said, making eye contact with each person at the table, one after another. “You can tell the peripherals that we’re going after Maddy, but the younger kids don’t need to where I’m going, or why.”

They didn’t need to know that a girl they’d looked up to and loved and missed like crazy might have become a monster.

I
didn’t need to know that.

Chase’s hand worked its way into my palm, and he wove his fingers in between mine. I gripped his hand, pushing back the memory of the crime scene photos and the image my brain had conjured of Maddy in wolf form, tearing out the victim’s throat.

“And if you get caught?” That was the first time Ali had actually spoken. “You can’t exactly tell the local sheriff that he doesn’t need to worry about tracking down this killer because you’ve got it under control. Three teenagers milling around a murder scene isn’t exactly what I’d call inconspicuous, Bryn, and no matter what you are in the werewolf world, out there, you’re just a kid.”

I hated that Ali was playing the voice of reason and hated that she was right. Most of all, though, I hated that she acted like I didn’t know the human world, like being part of the pack, heart and soul, had cost me my humanity already.

“We’ll be careful,” I said. I
did
know the meaning of the word
discretion
.

Sometimes.

“I’m good at not being seen,” Chase told Ali quietly. “I always have been, and you know that I would never let anything happen to Bryn.”

Lake looked on the verge of chiming in, but Ali didn’t give her a chance.

“So we’re just supposed to let you three go off on your own?” she asked.

I’d known this was coming. Mitch might have understood the rationale for my plan, but Ali didn’t think like a werewolf. She thought like a mother. “Ali—”

I didn’t get more than her name out of my mouth before she cut me off.

“I know, Bryn. Believe me, I know. Your life isn’t normal. No matter how hard I try, it’s never going to be normal, and I can’t protect you from that. I can’t protect you from anything, but you can’t just expect me to be okay with the idea of you taking off for parts unknown to track down some kind of killer.” She shoved her fingers roughly through her hair, a gesture of frustration I recognized all too well. “What if it’s not Maddy?”

I’d spent so much effort trying not to obsess over the likelihood that Maddy had gone Rabid that I hadn’t let myself really mull over the alternative, either.

“Callum said …”

“Callum,” Ali said tersely, “never tells anyone more than half the story. You’ll be lucky if you got a third, tops. He’s not God, Bryn. He’s fallible. He gets things wrong.”

Right now we didn’t have much else to go on.

Ali jabbed a finger at me. “All you know is that there’s a killer who
might
be a werewolf, and there was a girl near the crime scene who
might
be Maddy. Even if the girl is Maddy and the killer is a werewolf, that doesn’t mean they’re one and the same, or that there’s anything you can do about it if they are. So you’ll have to forgive me if I don’t like the idea of my daughter tromping through some crime scene like this is
CSI: Werewolf Nation
.”

I waited a few seconds to make sure Ali was really done talking this time.

“I have to go,” I said, softening the words as much as I could. “Callum said Maddy’s involved, and he wouldn’t lie to me, not about this. That means that either Maddy did this, in which case it’s my responsibility to stop her, or somehow, it’s all a big coincidence, in which case, we have no guarantee the killer won’t turn around and start hunting Maddy next.”

I willed Ali to understand.

“We can’t just leave her out there alone. It’s not right, Ali, and you know it.”

She swore under her breath. Victory—but only a small one.

“I’m going with you.”

Now it was my turn to glare at her. “What about Katie and Alex?” I asked. “You really want to leave them here alone?”

That was playing dirty, but I didn’t care. Callum had said that things were going to get bloody, and there was a wolf out
there hunting humans. I’d already lost one mother to a rabid werewolf. I wasn’t going to lose Ali, too.

“Perhaps I can be of some assistance.” Jed stepped into the room. I wondered how long he’d been listening.

Five minutes
, Lake and Dev said at the exact same time.

“I’ll go with them.” Jed cut straight to the chase.

“You’ll what?” Ali turned her mom glare from me to Jed.

“You don’t want to send the kids off by themselves, but you’re needed here.” Jed leaned back against the wall, not coming any closer, as if he sensed he’d walked in on something so private, it was almost sacrosanct.

“I’ve got experience with killers, and Caroline is the best tracker I’ve ever met. If anyone asks, I’ll say they’re all my grandkids and we’re on summer vacation. People can’t get too suspicious of four kids and an old man.”

Caroline? Jed wanted us to take Caroline—who had been raised to kill werewolves—along on our hunt for the one Rabid we might
not
want to kill?

Didn’t that sound like a fundamentally bad idea to anyone else?

Ali narrowed her eyes at Jed. “I don’t like that Bryn has to do this, and I don’t want to drag Caroline into it.”

“Sitting here, doing nothing day after day, isn’t any better for her. Caroline needs this, and you need me.” Jed smiled, and for a second, I thought Ali might hit him. “If push comes to shove, I’ve got some contacts in law enforcement who might be able to get us out of a jam.”

Ali’s jaw twitched, but after a long moment, she nodded. “Fine,” she said, “but you call me every night. Every single night.”

It took me a second to realize that last statement was aimed at me.

“I’ll call,” I promised, and an instant later, she was beside me, hugging me so tightly, I couldn’t breathe.

“If anything happens to you,” Ali said, burying her face in my hair, “I’m never letting you out of the house again.”

For a few seconds, I just let her hold me. I held on to her for dear life.

Then I straightened and pushed my hair roughly out of my eyes in a gesture I’d picked up from her. “You don’t need to worry about me, Ali.”

I might as well have been telling the wind not to blow. As I glanced around the table at the others, I was suddenly overcome with a horrible sense of premonition, one that told me that everything was changing, and that once we found Maddy, things might never be the same.

I’m sorry
, Callum had told me.

You need to be human for this
, he’d said.

But it was his other words that haunted me, as I looked from Ali to Devon to Lake to Chase.

Every future I can find is coated in blood
.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

T
HAT NIGHT
, I
COULDN
’
T SLEEP
. W
ITH
A
LI IN
M
OM ON
the Rampage mode, I couldn’t risk letting Chase sneak in the window, and every time I closed my eyes, I saw bodies.

My parents.

The crime scene photos.

Lucas.

Fighting it, I listened for the sound of the twins sleeping in the next room, and through the pack-bond, I felt the two of them snuggled up together like pups in a litter. No matter how many times Ali put them to sleep in separate beds, they always ended up in one. Needing to see them, I crept out of my room and into theirs.

Kaitlin’s foot was resting lightly on Alex’s cheek. His rump was up in the air. When one of them moved, they both moved. They were dreaming the same dream,
colors
and
sounds
and
running
.

Ali’s babies were safe and warm and happy, and I wanted desperately to believe they could stay that way forever, that
Katie would never have to deal with the certainty Lake had lived with all her life, that she would never know what it was like to be looked at as a possession, a prize.

I wanted to believe that I would get to see them grow up. I wanted for their lives to be absolutely nothing like mine.

Giving in to the desire to be close to them, I climbed into their bed. Katie—in human form—yipped in her sleep, but didn’t wake up. Alex snuggled in close to my right side. I let their thoughts override mine. I let their senses override mine.

I dreamed their dreams, and I slept.

I woke with the dawn to find two little faces curiously watching mine. Katie was sitting on my stomach. Alex was perched to one side.

“Whatcha doing?” Katie asked.

“Sleeping,” I replied, closing my eyes.

Alex poked me in the side of my face with a damp and chubby hand. I half-expected him to say something, but no words accompanied the poke.

“You go ’way?” Katie asked, wriggling to get comfortable and elbowing me directly in the kidneys. “Mama’s sad.”

I gave up trying to sleep and opened my eyes.

“Big sister has to go away for a little while,” I said. “You two have to take good care of Mama while I’m gone. Okay?”

Alex nodded solemnly. Katie screwed up her face until her little baby forehead was as wrinkled as a shar-pei. “Why?”

I wasn’t sure if she was asking why I was leaving or why I wanted her to go easy on Ali while I was gone. Given that
why
was my sister’s favorite question, it was probably both. I took the easy way out and didn’t answer. Instead, I blew a stream of breath out onto her face, and she huffed back.

I was her alpha, and she was my girl.

Peeling myself out of bed, I managed to detach the little barnacles from my side. They ran ahead of me into the kitchen, where Ali was already making breakfast.

“Sit,” she said.

I sat.

She placed a plate of food in front of me.

“Eat.”

Ali couldn’t protect me. She couldn’t keep me here or give me the life she wanted for me, but she could feed me.

Wisely, I ate.

“You slept in the twins’ room last night?” Asking questions she already knew the answers to was Ali’s way of demonstrably
not
prying.

Yeah, right.

“I had a lot on my mind. They keep things simple.”

As if to corroborate my statement, Katie knocked over her glass of milk and started screaming like an irate banshee.

Without missing a beat, Ali flipped into triage mode,
sopping up the milk and distracting Katie from her tantrum. “It’s not your fault.”

At first, I thought she was talking to Katie, but then I realized the comment was aimed at me.

“I know you, Bryn. I know what you’re thinking, but what happened with Maddy wasn’t your fault.”

Ali and I had never talked about Maddy’s leaving. We’d never openly acknowledged what Lucas had done, or the way I’d been forced to fight back.

“I killed him,” I said, staring down at my plate. “I killed him, knowing what it would do to her.”

For a long time, Ali didn’t say anything. I wanted her to tell me that I hadn’t had a choice, that if I’d let a challenge go unanswered, I would have been opening the pack up to more, but after all these years’ of living among werewolves, Ali still didn’t think like one.