Wolves of Haven: Lone (28 page)

“What’s in that area?” Damian
asked.

“There’s an old saw mill,” Connell
said, familiar with the area. “The area surrounding it is heavily
barb wired,” he said, explaining that the pack simply couldn’t just
run in there. “There were some injuries from booby traps over the
years; the old guy that bought it from the town thirty years ago
was a real whack job that has a thing about teenagers trying to
steal his precious rotten lumber.”

Pierre gave him a look. “Isn’t that
before your time?” he asked.

“I went through all of the previous
cases that I could get a hold of before taking the job,” Connell
said as if it were obvious. “We’ll have to wait for the ETF since
they are the closest with bomb experience.”

Damian nodded, fighting the urge to
growl. He would be breeching the mill before the ETF reached the
Island. “You have your orders, Inspector Pierre will be your point
of contact. That is all,” he said, heading for the door with Ulrik,
Varg and Connell behind him.

Once speeding down the road, Ulrik
started stripping his clothing off.

“Where do you think you’re going?”
Connell demanded, following his lead.

“I’m from the Ukraine,” Ulrik
reminded him. “I know better than you could imagine the smells of
explosives and other materials used by crazy bastards trying to get
a body count. This little wolf has seen more square bombings than
you could imagine,” he informed him before shaking violently and
fine black and blue hairs exploded from his skin as he effortlessly
transformed into a wolf.

Connell shook his head. “One day,
Kid, you’ll have to tell me how in the hell you do that so
seamlessly.”

The wolf sitting in the backseat
next to Varg simply smiled. There was much his pack didn’t know
about him and where he came from, but he wasn’t willing to risk
losing the only family and security he’s ever known by telling them
anytime soon.

“Six miles ahead,” Varg said,
pulling his shirt off. “Fifty yards past the ground marker is the
overgrown trail leading to the mill. It snakes around, encircling
the parcel before doubling back. Drive past it three miles then
stay right when the highway splits. It’ll turn to gravel after a
hundred yards. Take the service road until you can’t go any
further. Along the river might be our best way in. You can’t see it
from three sides and with night approaching. It’ll be the only way
we can get in undetected, utilizing the river to guise our
approach.”

Damian nodded. “Let the others
know. Give Kid that bagged shirt. If you smell that scent, run.
Don’t worry about us or Akia and just get the hell out. Do you
understand?”

Ulrik didn’t need to sniff the
shirt, from the moment the Ziploc bag was opened, the scent was
like a punch in the gut, and a deep growl rolled from his chest.
That scent he was no stranger to, and when he once again was faced
with the embodiment of evil, he’d run and not stop until there once
again was an ocean between them.

Akia struggled to open her eyes,
but when she did everything was blurry. The area smelled different;
rust, rotted wood, fresh water, steel, blood, almonds, and the
faint traces of something she could only describe as evil. She was
propped up against a hard, cold steel beam, her hands secured
behind her around the beam with handcuffs. Her sidearm and cell
phone were both missing. It felt as if she was hit with a
sledgehammer in the head, and the blood staining half of her was
the result of said sledgehammer.

“Master, I have brought you a
gift,” Leclair beamed from across the mill, his voice carrying and
echoing throughout the open area.

There was a humming in the
background, which broke up, and if Akia didn’t know any better
she’d swear that it was coming from a phone.

“She is the one that has ended our
fun here,” he continued. “Yes, she is rather plain looking, and I’m
not entirely sure what they see in her, but the wolves of Haven
have taken her in as one of their own.”

He knows about my pack, but not
that I’m a werewolf; that might help in this situation.

“Yes, Master. I know that you told
me specifically to have patience and that they would come,” he
stammered, “but the other you did not get the pleasure of killing.
I thought this would make you happy, a replacement since that young
bitch died-”

That doesn’t make me feel special
in the least. I’m a replacement for Miss Winterfeld. I’m not
entirely sure if I should feel as rejected about that as I
do.

“But, Master,” he argued, pacing
back and forth, “sacrificing one that is revered by a pack of
reputation, regardless of them being tiny in the eyes of others,
would make a statement!”

Politics, I fucking hate
politics.

Akia struggled to focus on the
ground in front of her. If she could focus on that much, she might
be able to get the rest of the place to come into focus in a timely
manner.

There was no denying that
Leclair was agitated; he was pacing and tugging on his hair as the
hum of reprimanding echoed from the phone in his hand. She couldn’t
clearly make out what the other line was saying, but the few words
she did hear were
regret,
disappointment,
and
pretentious.
It made her curious as
to how she was played as she apparently had been, especially by
someone that was taking orders and doing things that he wasn’t
ordered to do. She’ll admit, Leclair knew exactly what to say, when
to say it, when not to open his mouth, and played the role
exceptionally well. He never lied to her, he simply didn’t answer
yes or no and redirected when possible. Gut instinct told her that
Leclair had done this before, in the killing sense, but the crimes
being werewolf apparent was new. He was skilled at killing, just
not skilled at being a werewolf, that was
obvious.

“Master, please,” Leclair shouted,
“hear me out!”

A wolf without a pack is not
a wolf, but a lost soul in the sea of man,
Beowulf once explained to Akia when she was younger and asked
why it was so important to sacrifice so much for the pack.
Without understanding the meaning of family, a
werewolf will never understand what it means to be a wolf. Wolves
are not lone creatures, and you are no different. Your gender
doesn’t make you a singularity. It makes you special, and that is
why the pack, your family, will sacrifice everything for
you.

Akia knew that the others would
come looking for her, and most likely Damian had already figured
out who was behind the murders; he was an exceptional detective.
And since Leclair was one of the worst wolves she’s ever had the
displeasure of meeting, it shouldn’t have been that difficult to
slip the cuffs and snap his neck.

The sound of a cell phone smashing
against the far wall pulled her attention, and it was followed by
the blurry figure stalking towards her.

“This is your fault,” Leclair
snarled, pouncing on her, getting in Akia’s face. “And you will pay
for it,” he hissed.

“Like the others?” she asked, her
voice coming out drowsily and heavily slurred.

He knotted a hand in the back of
Akia’s hair and jerked her head back when it fell forward. “You
have disgraced me in my master’s eyes,” he snarled in her face.
“Now the only way to get in his graces again, to earn his respect
once more, is to kill you: slowly, painfully, and properly. You
will be my prize kill,” he purred, his eyes moving over her face
many times.

Akia started crying, playing the
role she hated playing, but it was necessary at that moment as she
worked on the handcuffs cutting into her wrists. “Please don’t,”
she whimpered with a choked sob.

Leclair growled in perverse
pleasure, apparently buying her routine. “You will be my
masterpiece, and since I’m feeling overly generous, I’ll leave bits
and pieces of you strung across the beach so your precious family
can find you. Once the Rohypnol is completely out of your system,
the fun will begin because I want you fully awake when I have my
fun. Who knows, I might even escalate to sexual sadist before
cutting you open.”

Again, she whimpered; he was
playing with fire, and if he wasn’t careful Eve was going to answer
his call.

“Would you like that, Bitch?”
he asked before pulling his tongue up her face. “Yes, I think you
would. I’ve never had a problem with getting laid, but there is
something slightly appealing about the idea of fucking a bossy
little bitch that thinks she’s someone that a man, this
wolf,
should be
respecting and taking orders from. You’re a creature of
inferiority,” he snarled, his lips so close to hers that she could
almost feel them with each word that left them. “By the time I’m
done with you, you’ll know that I’m the Alpha.”

The clicking that echoed throughout
the open space was accompanied by her eyes snapping up to meet his,
the burning gold and amber causing his to widen, and she
smirked.

“You really should have used
zip-ties,” Eve said before slamming her forehead into his face,
shattering his nose.

Leclair howled in pain and fell
backward off of her, and she was suddenly on top of him slamming
her fist repeatedly into his face, holding the ratchet end of the
opened handcuff between her fingers, the crude weapon tearing
chunks of skin and muscle tissue with each pull.

“An inferior creature?” she sneered
with a perverse smirk filling her face. “I strongly suggest you
reevaluate that statement and your position. In case you neglected
to notice,” she stabbed the pointed ratchet into his eye, and he
howled in pain, “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the lone wolf. It’s
you who’ll be bowing before me,” she snarled and twisted before
pulling the metal free, pulling his eye from the socket in the
process.

He thrashed and punched, trying to
free himself from under her, but the woman was as relentless as she
was vicious.

“And for my next trick,” Eve
purred, “I’ll show you what your Master didn’t.” She pulled her
hand back and her nails elongated, tearing through the soft issue,
thickening into razor sharp claws. She looked from her hand to the
beam stretching the length of the area above them and smirked at
the security camera mounted to the beam. “You’re next,” she said
before slamming her clawed hand through the side of Leclair’s
ribcage, easily slicing through the bone, muscle and
tissue.

Leclair howled in pain, his punches
slowing as he quickly started to bleed out, the concrete under him
turning to a rapidly spreading pool of blood.

Eve curled her claws around the
ribs then ripped them upward, snapping them off, freeing them and a
lung from his body, exposing his heart. “Your Master,” she said,
looking from the camera to the man under her, “showed you the
forbidden arts, and yet he neglected to instruct you on how to use
them.”

He tried to change, to embrace his
wolf, but misuse of the Iron Claw had hindered him, and the blood
loss was too much.

“Funny, he didn’t warn you of what
might happen if you use the forbidden arts incorrectly,” she mused.
“You know what’s amusing? My Master taught me well, very, very
well. In fact, I used them on him when I ripped his heart from his
chest, just as I’m going to do to you.” She held her hand up and
the claws retracted and the soft tissue mended as her fingernails
smoothed out and rounded to match each fingertip. “Beautiful, isn’t
it?” she asked, but he was in too much pain to answer. “I wish we
could have played longer, since you were so very eager to make this
bitch beg, but our time is up. You’ll bleed out soon, healing from
wounds inflicted by another wolf take so very long, much, much
longer than you have, and I truly want you to be alive for my next
trick. Goodbye, Stray,” she said with a smile, the canine teeth in
her white smile elongating as she wrapped her hand around his
sluggishly beating heart then ripped it free from his
chest.

Eve continued to sit on him as she
devoured his heart, taking her time to savor the flavor of
stupidity and false superiority that his blood was seasoned with.
Eve was enjoying the control she had at the moment, and as she
tried to figure out how she could retain that control she
speculated as to who was on the other end of the cameras littered
throughout the space. Yes, it was dangerous to make her presence
known, but she was tired of living in the shadows of wolf kind, and
it was about damn time that she had her time in the sun.