Pack of Lies, page 3
“Based out of town,” Eli said smoothly. “I’m looking after things here for them.”
Bucknell studied him, assessing, and Eli felt the prickling urge to bare his teeth. As long as he lived, he’d never understand the human urge to stare so shamelessly. He channeled the urge into shifting his weight onto one hip instead, and predictably, Bucknell looked away.
“What about you, Mr. Smith? Were you outside this evening?” he asked some spot over Eli’s right shoulder.
“Outside? In the dark? In the woods?” Eli shuddered dramatically. “Thankfully there are plenty of renovations to keep me busy indoors.”
“You were renovating wearing that?”
“Oh, my goodness, no. But I had to put something on to answer the door. There are laws, you know.” Eli winked and Bucknell smiled faintly back, amused and dismissive.
“Well, I’m going to tell park services to add a couple men this way to keep an eye out for a potentially injured and dangerous animal in the area. I recommend letting your guests know the same.”
Eli cursed silently. “We’re not open to guests yet.”
“Your staff, then.” He looked around as if hoping to catch a member of said staff who looked more like his idea of a professional. Good luck to him.
“I didn’t think rangers did that sort of thing—track down animals hit by cars,” Eli said.
“They don’t. But the truth is—” Bucknell frowned and quickly swiped his hand over his face “—there’s been a number of reports of odd animal behavior recently and we want to keep an eye on it.”
“What sort of behavior?” Doran asked.
“Oh, nothing to worry about,” Bucknell said hastily. “People claiming to hear strange noises. Some minor property damage. But we want to make sure there isn’t a sick critter out there. So far all of the incidents have been up by Blue Tail Lodge,” he added, nodding toward Annabelle. “Have you noticed anything...unusual here?”
“Besides Goody Proctor dancing with the devil?” Eli said. “No, I can’t say I’ve noticed any animals at all.”
“It’s not an animal!” Annabelle erupted. “Animals don’t start fires in the woods. Animals don’t carve sigils into buildings or leave piles of deer bones on your doorstep or paint the windows with blood.”
Eli raised both eyebrows, but Doran beat him to it. “That sounds like, ah, people, doesn’t it?” he asked with the trepidation of one being forced to alert someone to the presence of the nose on their face.
“It’s no person either,” she said grimly. “And now I’ve got proof.”
Annabelle unzipped the puffy black coat she wore and pulled out a plastic box-shaped thing about the size of a large spread hand. It would have looked like some kind of clunky communicator better suited to a sci-fi movie from the fifties if not for the camouflage design. A wildlife camera. The infrared sort that hunters strapped to trees and took short bursts of images when the motion sensors were tripped.
“When the hell did you pick that up?” Bucknell demanded, sounding exasperated.
Annabelle shook her head impatiently as she turned on the little view screen on the back of the camera and started clicking through photos. “Earlier this evening. I was out tonight collecting them before I saw Mr. Dor—Julien’s car.”
“Them?” Eli asked, feeling cold. “Are any of these cameras on retreat property?”
She flushed and sat up straight on the couch. “No, no, certainly not.”
“Because you know that our guests’ privacy is very important,” Eli added sharply.
“Yes, of course, Mr. Smith. But this was up the road, nowhere near—Oh, here, look at this.” She began to hand the camera to Doran, but Bucknell strode forward and intercepted it. He looked at the screen with a frown, then blew out an exasperated breath.
“Annie, what on earth—”
“No, no, look at this,” she said, tapping on the screen insistently. “Does that look like a human being to you?”
“It doesn’t look a whole hell of a lot like anything,” Bucknell said, handing the camera off. Doran accepted it, looking at the screen with a neutral, politely interested face. Then walked toward Eli and offered it to him.
It took a moment to adjust to the camera’s night vision—the silvery trunks, the stark white branches cutting across the frame like cracks in the glass—but then Eli saw it. In the back of the frame, disappearing behind a cluster of trees, a figure was running, hunched over, one long arm dangling toward the ground, the other reaching forward to disappear along with the head and shoulders behind a tree. Its form was blown out—too light for any useful detail—and the obvious, swift movement blurred its body and legs. The only clear part was the right arm hanging down. Long hand loose. Claws sharp.
It was quite obviously a werewolf.
Obvious to Eli, anyway, being a werewolf himself.
The others didn’t seem to see it that way. But then there were very few humans in the world who knew werewolves even existed—a scattering of individuals “aware” because of who they loved, some government agencies brought into the loop ostensibly to help keep the secret, the unlucky few who could not be convinced they hadn’t seen what they’d seen. Many of these people had been fed the same PR-packaged lines about how werewolves were just like “you and me.” Average folk who also happened to possess the ability to fully turn into wolves whenever they wished. Like finding out your accountant occasionally put on a corset to go to the Renaissance fair and drink mead.
It was of course nonsense. Eli had never felt “just like” any human being, whether he was trying to or not. They were an entirely separate species living among the unaware, with their own cultures, customs, politics and histories. Their own stronger senses, bodies, hierarchies and instincts. Their own goddamn troubles, too, like how in the hell to manage a secret sanctuary for werewolves when fanatical humans are wandering around the woods hunting for monsters with cameras strapped to trees, just to name a random example off the top of his head.
The time stamp at the bottom of the screen said the photo had been taken less than two hours ago. It was impossible to tell who it was with their face hidden and their body caught in the intensely private moment of midshift. But what were they doing out there?
Eli’s thumb brushed over the camera’s delete button without pressing down. It would be too obvious to erase the photo now, here in front of everyone. But tempting. So tempting that his hand trembled against the screen. Every wolf in the world had a responsibility to maintain the secrecy of their kind. If that wasn’t drilled into them by their own pack or the ever-watchful Preservation, they learned it quickly enough from how cruel the world was to the perceived other. But that wasn’t the only reason he felt tempted.
There was an acutely raw intimacy in witnessing a wolf’s shift. How slow or fast, painful or cathartic, where it began, how it ended, how much control the wolf had over “slipping” specific body parts like the claws, teeth or eyes without triggering a full-blown change—most thought it was a reflection of their most private selves. An honest, trembling declaration of everything they spent their lives hiding away. Seeing a wolf’s shift midway like this, uninvited, unwelcome, on a wildlife camera, was...grotesque. And to hand it back to these people to pore over and dissect felt complicit.
“What do you think?” Julien murmured, standing beside him. “Here be monsters?”
“Monsters be everywhere,” Eli said, and handed the camera over with a sigh.
Julien looked at him strangely—surprised, approving, grim?—but he accepted it. Their fingers brushed and Julien turned abruptly to Annabelle and passed the camera on. Eli watched it disappear into her coat again.
“So what do you do with something like that?” Julien asked. “Is there some kind of hotline? Is Agent Mulder going to be moving into the room next to mine?” He winked and suddenly looked a lot more like a movie star than the wide-eyed man who’d washed up on Eli’s shores out of the cold.
Annabelle smiled a bit helplessly back, eyes bright, the forgotten ice pack hanging at her side. “As it happens, we do have an expert arriving tomorrow to look at the markings in the woods. I’m sure he’ll have loads to say about the picture!”
“What?” Bucknell asked, alarmed. “What expert? What are you talking about?”
Annabelle raised her chin stubbornly. “An expert in local history who just happens to have a background in cryptozoology.”
“Crypto—tell me you’re not talking about West,” Bucknell said bleakly. “After the things he said to—”
“That was between him and Ian and had nothing to do with me,” Annabelle cut him off firmly. “Patrick teaches at university now. He’s written books all about this sort of thing and consulted with—”
“Oh, he’s written books about monsters. Never mind then, our problems are solved.” Bucknell rolled his eyes. “And what happens if he decides to finally write a book about Blue Tail Mountain? The lodge? Do you want this town flooded with freaks looking for Maudit Falls’ own personal Sasquatch?” He took a quelling breath, glancing at Julien and Eli. He lowered his voice. “Annie, you said you were done with all this...stuff. The lodge can’t take any more bad publicity and I’m, well, dammit, I’m worried about you. Ever since Ian—”
Annabelle’s face turned suddenly cool. “Patrick’s arriving tomorrow afternoon. If he says there’s nothing unusual going on here, nothing but people being jerks, I’ll let it go. There’s absolutely nothing to worry about.” She stood. “I’m sure Julien is anxious to get his vacation started and Mr. Smith can return to—” she glanced at Eli, eyes flickering down his body, and lightly blushed “—his renovations.”
“My car—” Doran started.
“Isn’t going to be in any drivable condition tonight,” Bucknell said roughly. “I’ll take you two to the lodge and give Liv a call tomorrow. She’ll tow your rental to her shop and ought to have a set of wheels you can use in the meantime.”
They said their goodbyes—Annabelle apologizing for disturbing his evening and Bucknell promising extra “presence in the area to keep an eye on things.” As they opened the doors to leave, the unsettled lobby air pulled the scent of Mutya lingering in the other room just out of sight past Eli’s nose. He wondered how long she’d been listening.
Just before following Bucknell and Annabelle outside, Doran paused, and turned back around to face Eli, silhouetted between the huge wooden doors, with the moon at his back. “Sorry again, about before. I shouldn’t have let myself in like that.”
“Next time I catch you on a heist, you can make it up to me.”
“I wasn’t—” Doran shook his head. “There isn’t going to be a next time.”
“That’s the spirit.” Eli winked.
Doran sighed, though Eli was sure there was a reluctantly amused twitch to his lips. “Good night, Mr. Smith.” The heavy doors closed with a thud behind him. After a moment the sound of Bucknell’s car started up and drove away. Eli listened to it gradually fade down the long driveway and disappear onto the road.
Two. Weeks.
“Well, fuck,” Mutya said from behind his shoulder.
Eli blew out the breath he’d been holding. “I couldn’t have put it better myself. Any idea who might have been out running this evening?”
“Not only can I tell you who, but I’ve got her in the medical bay right now.”
Eli turned to her, surprised, and arched an eyebrow. “Anyone I know?”
“Not yet. But I’m happy to introduce you. While you were out here telling ghost stories around the fire, you got your first guest, Mr. Smith.”
She grinned, a slightly unusual expression to pair with informing someone that there was an injured runaway on the premises, but she was a slightly unusual woman. Short, Filipina and heavily pregnant, she had a full, round face emphasized by a blunt bob and a blunter attitude. Dr. Mutya Capili was one of the first, and only, people on the retreat’s staff. She’d gotten semi friendly with the retreat’s new owners, Cooper Dayton and Oliver Park, last summer during a murder investigation, and when she’d heard they were buying the place, and what they intended it to be, she’d agreed to sign on as part-time medical support. Eli would have preferred someone with personal experience in what they were dealing with, but there was hardly a line out the door of wolves begging to be associated with a shelter for runaways from abusive rebel packs.
Unlike the ruling packs that dominated the culture, rebels had no territory. Other things besides property bound them together. That wasn’t always a bad thing, despite what the ruling packs in charge believed. Plenty of rebel packs led stable lives, happy to be left out of the cutthroat politics of the Preservation—an assemblage of the alphas with the largest territories tasked with maintaining secrecy and managing disputes between packs.
But like anyone else, rebels could occasionally be vicious and cruel. And, considered outsiders by the majority, wolves who ran from abusive rebel packs were often left with nowhere to turn. It was one of the reasons Eli hadn’t left the rebel pack he’d been in as a young man even when it became clear that the alpha, James, was leading them down a path of no return.
That was what the retreat was for, just as he’d told Annabelle Dunlop. A place where the “guests” could seek sanctuary without fear of being pursued by rebels, where they could catch their breath and rebuild before finding a new pack somewhere else. Sure, he’d left out the whole wolf pack politics bit. But she’d seemed to understand well enough. Wolves weren’t the only creatures in the world who needed to escape.
“Is she injured?”
“Just a little shaken up. Not as much as the crowd you were entertaining in here,” Mutya said, jerking her head at the lobby with a snort. “Seems she was running in our direction when she played leapfrog with a car in the road. Was that Julien Doran? The actor? My Christopher and I went to see one of his movies a few years back. Ooof.” She fanned herself dramatically.
“He looks even better on his knees,” Eli said, and the two of them walked out of the lobby toward the east wing. Behind them, Cooper’s cat Boogie took the opportunity to dart between their legs and out of sight down the dark hall. Apparently she’d had her fill of welcoming visitors for the night. Eli wished he could join her.
While “medical bay” was a bit of an exaggeration, Mutya was in the process of turning it into a functioning doctor’s office. Ruling packs liked to exaggerate all sorts of stories about the brutality of rebels, but the truth was it was a good idea to have medical support on hand. And not just for emergencies. One of the biggest hurdles in leaving a pack was losing its access to carefully built networks of health care, finance and legal protections hidden from the humans. Not quite as dramatic as the popular gory stories of rebel mutts forced to fight it out in cage matches or getting their canines pulled for stepping out of line, but insidious nonetheless. It had gotten harder and harder to secretly share this world with humans without the network of a pack to help. Even the WIP, the only other branch of wolves out there besides ruling and rebels, were forced to work together for some things, and they were literally lone wolves rebranded, fighting for the dissolution of packs entirely.
“Where’s our guest coming from?” Eli asked.
“A rebel pack passing through west of here. She says her name is Gwen and heard rumors of a sanctuary spot opening up.”
“She says?”
Mutya shrugged. “She didn’t want to talk much, and I didn’t push. But she did volunteer that she ran into the road because she thought someone was chasing her.”
“There seems to be an awful lot of that going around,” Eli mused. “She must have been running quite a long time. That photo was taken a couple hours ago.”
Mutya just shrugged again. “What had the humans all in a tizzy? Haven’t they ever seen a wolf before?”
Eli shook his head, then hesitated, reluctant. “She was...midshift.”
Mutya hissed, stopping just outside the door to her office. “What?”
“She was mostly hidden behind the trees,” Eli amended. “So it might in fact not portend the end of life as we know it.”
“That’s not how that ski lady made it sound.”
“No,” Eli agreed. “But she also seems to believe it’s a hoofed mountain hermit named Sweet Pea, so I don’t know how much luck she’ll have rousing fear in the hearts of men with that as her battle cry.”
He reached to open the door, but Mutya stopped him. “What are you going to do?”
“I was thinking of beginning with an introduction, then seeing where it goes from there.”
Mutya made a disapproving tsking sound. “About the cryptozoologist, the photo, the cops in the woods. As ridiculous as Sweet Pea sounds to you and me, your first guest will be your last one if the whole town decides to play pin the tail on the monster in your backyard. Maybe you should call—”
“No,” Eli said quickly, and she looked up at him suspiciously. He tried to look more relaxed than he felt. “Ollie and his whippet have just managed to leave for some semblance of a honeymoon this week. Let’s not light the beacons quite yet, mmm? At least not until I’ve had a chance to inquire after our guest. Who knows, I may be one tête-à-tête away from inspiration.”
She snorted. “Someday I’ve got to find out where Cooper found you. All right, then. Tête your tête, but don’t forget I’m heading out in the morning for the next couple of days. Christopher and I need to finish moving. And if there’s so much as a whisper of ‘Locals Locate Wolfman’ on the cover of any grocery store checkout rag, I’m not coming back.” She touched her pregnant belly very deliberately and her expression dared him to argue.
“Consider your notice noted.” Eli couldn’t even blame her. He knew better than most how dark things could get when humans believed they’d found a monster to despise.
