The Gathering (3 page)

Rayna snorted a laugh. “Not really but at
least your dangly bits are covered.” She looked at his crotch and
grinned. The pants were definitely a size too small. “Barely.”

He growled and grabbed her arm. “Let’s go. I
want to get Bryce and the others looking for Jacob. He couldn’t
have gotten far.”

The scent of rotting flesh grew stronger as
Bryce reached the mine. He stumbled back from the entrance, the
stale, tainted odor of old blood turning his stomach. His wolf
urged him forward, eager to check out the new smell. He refused.
His beast may not have been revolted but he was.

Dillon’s reaction was much the same. The man
threw a face but walked a bit closer. His wolf his curious, too.
“What the hell is that?”

Bryce shook his head. “No clue.” He turned
and looked down the path. “Where’s Garrett?”

“Coming up the hill.”

They waited. The new pack leader raised a
curious eyebrow when he reached them. “What the hell is that?”

Bryce grinned. “We were wondering the same
thing. It’s coming from inside the mine.”

They turned to look back at the entrance.

The old pack leader’s second in command,
Caleb, had been making a small army of werewolves for some unknown
reason and had been keeping them here in the mine. Since Caleb’s
death in the fight against Garrett, the mine had been forgotten.
Rayna seeing Jacob in the forest left the pack no choice but to
search the entire mountain again. The mine was their last stop.

“Do you really want to go in there?” Bryce
glanced at Garrett and hoped his answer was no. “Surely the kid
wouldn’t be hiding in a place that smelled as bad as this.”

Garrett sighed. “I don’t think Jacob is in
there.” He tilted his head to one side and studied the darkened
interior. “But, I want to know what Caleb was up to.” He glanced at
Bryce, then at the others. “Jacob’s scent wasn’t the only one I
found in the cabin.”

“It wasn’t?”

“No. I picked up Carmen’s scent as well.”

Bryce’s blood ran cold. Since the day she’d
disappeared they lived with the fear she’d be back. Carmen was a
threat to every member of the pack. She’d lured over half of them
to stand with her and Caleb in overthrowing Malcolm. She’d
instigated the entire idea of taking the wolves public, to let the
world know they were there. She was the strongest female in the
pack and many feared her. He did himself to a certain degree. The
woman might look like a walking sex dream but beneath all that
flowing hair, and those curves, beat the heart of a vicious
killer.

Turning to look back at the mine entrance,
Bryce knew they had to go in. If for no other reason than to see if
they could find out what Caleb had wanted those wolves for. “So,
who goes first?”

Garrett raised an eyebrow at him. “Well, it
was you who reminded me of this place.” He held out his arm toward
the entrance. “So, I think you should have the honor.”

Bryce rolled his eyes and took several deep
breaths before walking back to the entrance of the mine. Beams that
looked half rotten, and ready to fall down with the slightest
touch, supported the wide opening carved into the side of the
mountain. The dirt floor was packed. He followed a line of
footprints leading inside.

With every step the smell grew worse. When
they reached the first turn, he looked back over his shoulder.
Garrett and Dillon were right behind him, followed by Gavin, but
the others were still hovering around the entrance.

His enhanced night vision let him see things
the normal human couldn’t but the confined space inside the mine
made it almost impossible now. He pulled a flashlight from his back
pocket and flipped it on, aiming the beam of light in every
direction. “Which way?”

Garrett grinned. “Follow the smell.”

“Somehow I knew you were going to say that.”
Bryce took the left passage, sweeping the beam of light across his
path. When he saw the first dead animal, he stopped. “I think I
found what’s causing the stench.”

Garrett crouched beside him and studied the
animal, flipping it so he could see the other side of it. It had
been there a while but other than being bloated and a magnet for
anything crawling, there were no visible clues as to how it had
died. “Let’s keep going.”

The further into the mine they walked, the
more dead animals they found. Some had gashes torn into their flesh
with chunks of meat eaten away. Others looked intact, which only
made the mystery more curious by the second.

When they reached another fork in the tunnel,
Garrett stopped him with a hand to his arm. “Do you hear that?”

Bryce held his breath, listening for any
sound. He heard it moments later. “What is that?” A barely-audible
tapping was coming from somewhere inside the tunnels. There was a
discernable pattern. Three taps, a pause, and then three more taps.
It continued without fail.

Garrett shook his head. “Don’t know.” He
looked down the right tunnel, then the left. “It’s hard to tell how
many tunnels are in here and with the acoustics I can’t even tell
which direction it’s coming from.”

Neither could Bryce. “Want to split up?”

Garrett nodded. “Dillon, you and Gavin stay
here in case the others decide to join us. Bryce, take the left
tunnel, I’ll take the right. Yell if you see anything.”

Bryce headed down the left tunnel, his
flashlight beam sweeping the packed dirt floor and across the
walls. There were more dead animals along the path, some nothing
but skin and bones. He’d seen too many things since the day he’d
been turned into a werewolf to be squeamish but even this made him
sick to his stomach. The sight alone didn’t bother him. It was the
eye-watering stench that did it.

He rounded a sharp turn and the tapping grew
louder. Movement further up the tunnel made him pause. He aimed his
light toward it, seeing something crouched near the wall before
disappearing. He looked behind him, wondering if he should yell for
Garrett and decided against it. It could be another animal… one
that hadn’t died yet.

Taking a few cautious steps, he eased up the
tunnel, his flashlight beam scanning the corridor. Whatever he saw
move had disappeared.

When he reached the spot where he thought
he’d seen it, he stopped. The smell of decay was thicker here. Dark
splotches covered the earthen floor and the number of animals
littering the tunnel was mind numbing.

A sound further up the passage drew his
attention and he aimed the beam of light into the darkness,
listening to what sounded like shuffling of feet before taking a
cautious step. He’d only taken four when a dark shadow flew past
him. He turned as something grabbed him, launching itself onto his
back, and biting into his neck.

Bryce yelled and fell to his knees, reaching
behind him as whatever was attached to his back sank its teeth
deeper into his flesh. The pain caused his vision to blur moments
before his claws lengthened and he slashed at whatever had a hold
of him. The sound of people running, and Garrett’s voice, barely
registered as he weakened. The thing on his back was draining him
quicker than he could fight it off.

“Christ! What the hell is that?”

The thing on his back was yanked away moments
later. Bryce screamed as the creature was ripped away, taking his
flesh with it. The pain in his neck was excruciating and he fell
face first onto the dirt floor as multiple voices yelled and
someone touched his back.

“Fuck man, are you all right?”

It was Gavin, one of the few remaining Alpha
males in their wolf pack. Bryce turned his head to the side, trying
to filter out the scent of rot as he gasped for air.

The commotion at his back was a riot of
shouts, shocked gasps and a loud hissing. He placed his hands on
the floor and raised his body up off the ground. The cave went out
of focus again. Whatever the hell attacked him damn near drained
him. Blood leaked from his neck and he raised his hand to cover it
before Gavin stopped him. “Don’t touch it, man. Your hands have
lord knows what on them. Here, use this.”

Bryce heard something rip before Gavin handed
him the remains of what looked like his t-shirt before pressing it
to his neck. When the pain subsided, he noticed the commotion had
stopped and nothing but the hissing and soft whispers remained. He
turned to look behind him.

A glance into the corner showed his attacker
and his eyes widened when he saw it. Or rather, her. It was a girl,
crouched in the shadows. Her hair hung past her waist and stood out
on her head in a mass of tangled curls. She was pale as death and
hissing at them, his blood dripping from her fangs.

Climbing to his feet, he blotted at his neck
one last time before tossing the shirt away and staring at the
girl. Taking a few steps closer, he stopped next to Garrett. “Is
that what I think it is?”

Garrett nodded his head. “If you’re thinking
vampire, then, yeah.”

She sat there, unmoving, and Bryce felt his
stomach roll at the thoughts of that… thing, touching him. He hated
vampires. Loathed them. His disgust grew when his neck started to
throb where she’d bitten him. His first instinct was to kill her
where she sat. He wasn’t sure how the others would react,
though.

The girl barely blinked. She watched them,
unflinching, and seeing her so still unnerved him.

No one said a word for long moments and the
silence was deafening. He finally spoke up. “What the hell is a
vampire doing in Caleb’s hideout?”

“That’s a very good question.” Garrett lifted
his flashlight, the beam reflecting off a thin wire attached to the
wall. The end disappeared in the girl’s hair. “A better question
would be, what is a vampire doing tied to the wall in Caleb’s
hideout.”

Bryce edged closer but stopped when the girl
shrank away from him. For a creature that tried to kill him minutes
ago, she was skittish as hell now.

He watched her turn her head, staring at
everyone in the tunnel before she looked back at him. Her mouth was
smeared with his blood, and she was a sight he would never forget,
but when she lifted her head and looked him in the eye, his breath
caught.

Her eyes were quite large and almost white,
the irises the palest ice blue he’d ever seen. The color didn’t
shock him as much as what he saw in them did. Fear. Since she
wasn’t human, he couldn’t smell it like he normally could but there
was no mistaking what he saw in her face. As aggressive as she’d
been, this girl, this vampire, looked terrified, something he’d
never seen before in the species. Vampires weren’t scared of
anything but this one was.

He took a step closer to her, stopping when
she shrank away from him again and lowered her head. He bent at the
knees, stooping down to get eye level with her before tilting his
head to try and see her face. “What are you doing up here?”

She looked up but didn’t say anything. She
flicked a quick glance to his neck before meeting his gaze, her
eyes shimmering with color for a brief moment before turning back
to that pale ice blue.

When she licked her lips, dragging in the
remains of his blood from her face, finding the animal corpses made
more sense. She’d been surviving off of the animals stupid enough
to venture into her tunnel and he was one of them. She’d attacked
him to feed. Nothing more.

Casting a quick glance up at Garrett, his
pack leader raised an eyebrow at him before he looked back at the
girl.

She was still watching him, and he wasn’t
sure what the hell to do. Apparently no one did.

He bit back a sigh when no one offered to say
anything. “I’m Bryce. This is Garrett.” He pointed out the packs
leader to her. “We live down the mountain, near Wolf’s Creek. Who
are you and what are you doing here?”

She opened her mouth but shut it without
speaking. She flicked a glance up at the others before raising her
hand and pushing her hair away from her face. The moment she did,
he sat back, stunned.

The metal wire attached to the wall was
around her neck. In her neck would be a better way of putting it.
Dried blood coated her skin and he could see the wire below both
her ears. Where it met around her throat, though, was imbedded into
her flesh. “Christ,” he whispered, moving closer to her. “Who the
hell did that?”

Garrett leaned down to look. His eyes widened
a bit before he blew out a breath. “She’s damn near cut her own
head off trying to get out of here.”

“Yeah.” As much as Bryce hated being anywhere
near the girl, a stab of pity hit him when he looked at her.
Regardless of what she was, being treated like this was inhumane,
even for a vampire.

He’d met many vampires in his life he would
rather see dead but this was torture. He couldn’t abide by
that.

A glance back at her throat and he winced.
The front of the wire couldn’t even be seen it was imbedded so
deeply into her flesh. “How the hell do we get that wire off?”

Dillon made a sound before moving a step
closer. “Do we want to do that?”

Bryce didn’t look behind him but answered him
anyway. “If this was you, would you want someone to help you out of
some lunatic’s trap?”

Dillon was quite for a long moment before
saying, “Yes. Guess I would.”

“Thought so.” Bryce studied the wire around
her neck again and shook his head. “Anyone have any ideas on how to
remove that wire?”

“Wire cutters?”

Bryce turned his head. “Anyone have any?”

Henry, one of the oldest wolves in the pack,
stepped forward. “I have a pair in my pick-up. I’ll go get
them.”

He nodded and looked back at the girl who
hadn’t taken her eyes off of him.

Garrett moved closer and bent down beside of
her. “Can you talk?” She flicked a quick glance at him before
staring back at Bryce but a quick shake of the head gave them their
answer. She couldn’t talk. “The wire must have cut too deeply.”
Garrett sighed and scratched his chin. “It’s going to be hard as
hell to get any answers out of her if she can’t talk.”