By the Book, page 26
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 Maudit Falls’ history who just happens to have a background in cryptozoology.”
“Crypto—” Bucknell looked at Eli and Doran as if asking for one of them to tag in. He was out of luck there. “Annie, this is too far. Do you want this town flooded with freaks looking for North Carolina’s own Sasquatch?”
“He’s not a freak,” Annabelle protested. “He teaches at a university now! He’s written books and consulted with—”
“Oh, he’s written books about monsters! Well, let me get the mayor on the line. She’ll want to give him a proper welcome!” Bucknell 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, damnit, 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.”
“Patrick,” Bucknell said, frowning. “Patrick West? That—”
Annabelle 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 drive 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. “Goodnight, 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, 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 wolves running away 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 cut off from the cutthroat politics of the Preservation—an assemblage of the alphas with the largest territories tasked with maintaining secrecy and managing disputes between territories. 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. Eli had felt trapped in a life that was becoming less his own every day and it had dragged him down into a hell that had taken years to move past.
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.
“You should see him on his knees,” Eli said and the two of them walked out of the lobby and down the dark hall toward the east wing. While “medical bay” was a bit of an exaggeration, Mutya was in the process of turning it into a functioning doctor’s office. While ruling packs liked to exaggerate all sorts of stories about the brutality of rebels, 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 hooved 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 I, 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 the Wolfman’ on the cover of any grocery store checkout rag, I’m not coming back.” She touched her pregnant belly absently.
“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. Eli and Mutya walked into the office.
A woman of about thirty stood by the window overlooking the waterfall, wearing one of the many sweatpants and T-shirts the retreat kept lying around all over the place, in case of impromptu shifting. She was white with chin-length hair dyed fire-truck red, and a heart-shaped face that twisted in genuine fear the moment they walked into the room. Eli didn’t get any closer, disconcerted. Pretty much any wolf would have been able to hear them coming in. Subtly he scented the air, but couldn’t pick up anything unusual. Just the adrenaline expected from a wolf who’d been running. “Is something wrong?” he asked as gently as possible. Not a particular quality of his, admittedly.
“Sorry,” the woman said after a slightly too-long pause. She shook her head as even she was surprised at herself. “I’m just a bit jumpy. Long night.”
“I’ve heard,” Eli said, carefully continuing into the room while still leaving her plenty of space. “My name is Eli Smith. I manage the retreat.”
“Gwen. Gwen E-Evans,” she added as if unsure. That was natural enough, at least. Many wolves took on the last names of their pack’s alpha. She might not have used this name in a long time. She might not have used it at all, for all Eli cared. He’d had about ten different identities over the course of his life, himself.
“Welcome, Gwen. Sorry you hit traffic on your way in.”
“That isn’t me in the photo,” she blurted. Eli froze and felt Mutya do the same beside him. “Sorry. I just—I couldn’t help but hear you talking in the hall and that isn’t me.”
“You believe someone from your pack followed you here?” Eli asked with a frown.
Gwen shook her head impatiently. “No, no, I’m not important enough for that. Besides, I only got to town an hour ago. There’s someone else out there. Someone who was already in the woods before I got here.”
“Did you see them? Scent them?” Mutya asked immediately.
“N-no,” Gwen said with a stutter. “It was like they were...hiding. Always staying downwind, and out of sight, stopping when I did. I even thought I was imagining it at first, but when I cut through the forest over the road, near that other big building, the one by the ski slopes, I...” She paused. “I knew there was someone there. I felt I wasn’t alone.”
There was a tense silence. Her words hung in the air, an odd echo of Annabelle’s story. Stranger still to hear it from Gwen. Humans were constantly freaking themselves out with their muted senses and insistence on ignoring every last bit of animal instinct. Eli could easily believe Annabelle had been “pursued” by anything from a chipmunk to a serial killer out there tonight and she wouldn’t know what else to call her body’s natural defensive instincts but a feeling.
It was far eerier to hear the same thing from a wolf. Unnatural.
Who was out there wandering the woods for hours? There weren’t any other wolves that he knew of in the area. The closest were the De Lucas, a large ruling pack to the south, but they had no reason to be in Maudit. And they certainly shouldn’t be anywhere near the retreat’s territory. And yet someone had been caught on camera. Someone was lingering around Blue Tail Lodge. And someone was stalking wolves like prey.
Eli felt his hair stiffen slightly and his body ached to slip into a form more defensive than this. He pushed down the urge swiftly. To show either of these women what his shifting looked like was about the only thing that could make this situation worse than it already was. Speaking of something unnatural...
“I’m suddenly very curious to see that picture,” Mutya finally interrupted the silence and Eli hummed an agreement.
“One might even say inspired,” he murmured.
Mutya rolled her eyes. “Well, then? Do you have a plan now?”
“Oh, plan sounds so stodgy,” Eli said. “But now that you mention it, I think tomorrow is an excellent time to get to know our neighbors.”
Don’t miss Pack of Lies by Charlie Adhara, available wherever Carina Adores books are sold.
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Match Grade
Some matches spark an inferno
Eirik Haldurson is a hitman. Kidnapped at age five and cruelly trained by his captor, he is today one of the most sought-after contract killers alive. Emotional distance from his targets, brutally beaten into him until it became second nature, is now the only way he can function. Lately though, that distance has started to elude him.
And when a Colombian drug cartel contracts Eirik to take out ex-soldier-turned-vigilante Matt Moreno, distance is suddenly as close as heat to fire. And all hell breaks loose.
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