Sanctuary (Immortal Soulless Book 2) Page 11

  “It will be over soon, love,” Irene murmurs to the wolf. The message is for her alone, but I have no trouble hearing. “Release your fear. Embrace the pain. Accept what is. This will pass.”

  Violet finishes her circuit through the room and returns to me. “Don’t leave,” she murmurs. “Don’t run. Don’t make a sound.”

  I have no idea what to expect. No werewolf has, as far as I know, willingly let a vampire witness this. I step back, making myself as unobtrusive as I can. No one is looking at me now except the blonde, who shoots me hard looks every few seconds. I ignore her. I’d feel much the same about someone who wanted to come in and watch us feeding. She has no reason to welcome me.

  The wolf—Sasha—pants harder, then stiffens, breath held.

  “Let it come, love,” Irene says. Not coddling, but reassuring. By the look of the group, she is the oldest, as Paul said. Most look to be in their twenties or early thirties. She’s done this more times than any of them.

  Sasha whines. The whites of her eyes show, and her ears lie flat. She snaps at Irene, who pulls her hands out of range as though she was expecting it.

  “She’s in a lot of pain,” Violet whispers to me, breath tickling my hair against my ear.

  My stomach clenches as the canine body heaves, stiffens, relaxes, tenses again. As far as I can tell, she’s not breathing at all. Her lips pull back in an ugly grimace that bares every one of her huge teeth.

  And she changes.

  It’s torturously slow at first, and I understand why Violet warned me not to run. I’m supposed to be cold, uncaring. I’ve let go of much of my humanity, but the churning I feel in my stomach as I watch this tells me I still hold more empathy than is proper in a vampire. A few of the women in the room moan softly, and the redhead sways from side to side, hands held out toward Sasha as though attempting to take on some of her anguish.

  I force myself to look at Sasha. She’s still a wolf, and not. There’s no audible cracking of bones, but her skeleton is clearly changing beneath her furry skin. Her back legs elongate, the bones of her upper arms stretch, her skull contorts.

  She screams, and an electric chill flashes over my skin. The sound is halfway between wolf and human, and it’s all agony.

  My heart is a stone in my chest, pulling me down. I’m glad it’s not beating. I couldn’t take the rush of blood and adrenaline I’m sure I’d be feeling.

  Violet is watching me, but not with the hate the blonde has finally stopped shooting my way. She seems to be observing me. Judging me. And, I think, not on the same grading scale I’ve failed so badly on with vampires.

  I tune her out. This isn’t an ambush, and it’s not about me. It’s about the wolf-girl on the floor, and I fix all of my attention on her. Something is tugging at me. Power like what I felt in Silas and Violet, and it lifts me up even as the void in me recoils. The place thrums with life. It’s big and raw, burning through the air like invisible flames.

  Theirs is the perfect antithesis of vampiric power. No wonder we don’t understand each other.

  Sasha’s shape continues to shift until she looks like a skeletal, furry human. As her body fills out, forming round thighs and small breasts, the fur recedes. Long brown hair grows from her head, sweaty and messy.

  She curls into a fetal position on the sweat-soaked blanket, and Irene lays a quilt over her naked, trembling body. She smooths the girl’s hair back, and Sasha reaches a hand up to grasp Irene’s.

  A few of the others have tears leaking down their cheeks, but the mood is celebratory.

  “It is finished,” Irene declares, loud enough for all to hear. But I think it’s a reassurance for Sasha more than anything.

  The pain is over, at least for another three weeks.

  God. To go through that twice a month. I only observed without understanding, but I’m still left weak and shocked. The power ebbs from the room, leaving only the warmth and light of the fire.

  And a dark mood as the women’s attention returns to the intruder by the door.

  The blonde steps toward me, lips opened as though about to say something. She glances at Violet first, though, and closes her mouth. There’s no question what her message is. I’m not wanted here. Not welcome. Not ever. She storms out of the cabin, letting a cool draft in.

  I step away from the door to let the others exit as they wish without having to pass by me. Most of them pause to lay their hands on Sasha’s head before they go, and a few kiss her sweaty hair.

  Soon it’s just me, Irene, Violet, and Sasha in the cabin.

  “Thank you,” I say softly. My voice trembles. I’m not afraid now, but the emotions that flowed through the room are still affecting me. “All of you. Especially you, Sasha.”

  The girl rolls onto her side and clutches the blanket tight. Her face is pale and blotchy, covered in a lingering sheen of sweat. She offers me a small smile. “I didn’t have a lot of time to make the choice,” she says, speaking slowly, as though remembering how to use her lips and tongue. “And I was already feeling the change. I wanted to say no.” She looks closely at me, green eyes sparkling. “But Violet said you seemed like you had good intentions, even if you didn’t know how to express them well.” She coughs. “I hate this. Hate being afraid of you and ashamed of my fear.”

  I have so much that I want to ask, but it seems inappropriate. I can’t say that this one experience has opened my heart to them or overcome the instinctive enmity between us. But something has changed. Maybe it’s just that we’ve shared something now. I asked, and they gave me an answer beyond anything I’d anticipated.

  “I’m so glad you let me in,” I tell her. “And I hope you’re feeling well soon.”

  Irene smiles down at the girl. “Won’t take her long to be back on her feet, eh, Sasha? We’ll get a good meal into you as soon as you’re ready.”

  I thank them again, and Violet escorts me out.

  Someone has taken a key to the side of the Jeep. I’m not surprised, or even angry.

  “Is the change always that bad?” I ask.

  Violet tilts her head to one side, thinking. “Bad isn’t really the word for it,” she says. “It’s painful. Always. But there’s beauty in the pain of change. We endure it twice a month because it is the essence of what we are. And it does at least get faster when we learn to let go and accept it. Sasha’s not there yet.” She takes a deep breath of the night air, which seems especially cool and fresh after the warm, smoky cabin. “Was it painful for you when you changed?”

  “Dying was painful,” I admit. I’m not supposed to talk about it, but there’s no question of me brushing her off. They’ve gone against their own traditions by letting me in. I’ll trust her with this. “I don’t remember changing. I remember waking up without a heartbeat, without life or a connection to the living world that I’d always taken for granted, and panicking.” I’m not going to go into details. They’re not important. “So I guess I had one hard change, and lost myself. And you have a lot of hard changes, but…”

  “But we’re still us. Still alive.” She looks away. “You apologized for your ignorance. I guess I can for…” She pauses. “Sorry about calling you soulless earlier.”

  “It’s not untrue.”

  Violet shrugs. “We probably say a lot of things about each other that are true, but unkind.” Her eyes narrow to bright slits. “We’re not going to be friends.”

  I try not to smile. “Obviously.”

  “Good.” She takes another long breath. “The thing is, we have reasons for being defensive.”

  “I know. I mean, I don’t actually know what vampires have—”

  “Not just you.” She nods back toward the rest of the sanctuary land. “Them. The males. Irene had good reasons for breaking away from them, and a lot of us were around for that. We remember. We keep to ourselves as much as we can. It’s safer.”

  “I see.” An awkward silence falls between us. “I may have to come back if more questions come up. If you’d all been in human form t
he other night I could just leave you alone, but we have to consider all of the possibilities.”

  Returning isn’t a terrible notion. Something special happened in that cabin, a kind of communal support and love I’ve never experienced in the vampire world. Even if I wasn’t truly a part of it, it’s left me feeling a little empty and lonesome now that it’s over.

  “I get it,” she says. “You can’t trust us just because we offered you something. We’re all still human enough to lie, especially when our packs are threatened. Remember that when you question the others.”

  “I will, thanks. And for trusting me enough to let me in.”

  I open the Jeep’s door and climb in, but Violet places her hand on the door frame before I can close it. She leans in.

  “Trust is what we do, though you have to earn it. What about you? Vampires seem to think your clans are superior to our packs. Do you have anyone you can trust?”

  I think about Paul. I won’t tell him what happened here tonight because he’ll probably care more about the damage to the car than about making progress with the wolves or the death in Bloody Bight. And if I did tell him, I couldn’t trust him not to tell the elders that I was messing about with powers that oppose ours.

  There’s Daniel, who I want to trust more than anyone, but whose loyalty to his nature and his clan will always run deeper than his loyalty to me. Trixie, who was my best friend, who became something unthinkably dark and helped lure me into the same.

  “I don’t know,” I tell her. “As long as my goals line up with theirs, I can trust them to have my back.”

  And that’s as far as I can go.

  All I can think about on the way back is what might happen if I step too far out of line.

  Chapter Eleven

  The sky opens up on the drive back, and for a few minutes the windshield wipers can barely keep up. The rain abates somewhat before I hit the main road through the sanctuary, but it’s still unpleasant, especially given the condition of the road. The Jeep splashes through mud puddles in the deep potholes.

  A dark shape waits outside the gate when I return to the compound, tall and broad-shouldered, pacing back and forth with his head down, eyes shielded from the dim lights by the dark hair that’s dripping rainwater down his face. His t-shirt and jeans are soaked and cling to his body. It’s an impressive sight, and a clear warning of his strength. More impressive is the fact that he’s not shivering in the cool, damp air.

  I grit my teeth. I did say he should come down to talk to us. I just didn’t really expect he would.

  I reach for the flip phone on the seat beside me and send Paul a quick message: silas front gate need backup. I’m not panicking, but I want to know I’m not alone here. God knows what Silas’ packmates told him about how Harold got banged up. I doubt their side of the story sounds much like mine.

  At least Silas is outside the gates, not waiting to ambush me within. I’ll take that as a promising sign, but I’m not about to lower my guard.

  I roll the window down all the way. I don’t want to seem fearful or defensive.

  “If you’re looking for a ride, there’s not a lot of traffic out this way.” I keep my tone light. I want to see how a friendly opening will affect him.

  He doesn’t smile. He also doesn’t lunge at the car and try to pull me out by my hair, so that’s something.

  “I was told someone wanted to speak to me,” he says, stepping closer to the vehicle. His voice gives nothing away.

  “You were told right.” Shit. I have no idea where I’m supposed to interrogate a pack leader. I can’t take him inside the compound, but he’s already soaked, and I have no intention of joining him. “Garage?”

  He nods, and waits.

  Right. I climb out and unlock the gate so I can drive through. “You um…” I push my hair out of my face. It’s already dripping, as is my shirt. Silas’ gaze flicks lower before returning to my face. “You need a ride?” I ask.

  He looks up into the rain. “No. Race you.”

  He takes off through the gate, heading for the compound.

  He’s waiting under the small overhang next to the garage when I pull up and click the button to open the garage door, and follows the Jeep in. “You’re slow for a vampire.”

  I climb out and lock the Jeep, leaving the garage door open. The space echoes with the sound of raindrops hitting the metal roof. “I don’t like the thought of the dressing-down I’d get if I left the gate unlocked, so that did slow me down a bit.”

  He cocks his head slightly to one side. “I have a hard time believing Paul is the alpha around here. The one you said was your backup, maybe. But not him.”

  “Well, our rules aren’t the same as yours.”

  He paces around the Jeep, looking over the contents of the garage. I follow, watching him closely. I feel like a mall security guard watching a known shoplifter, but he doesn’t try anything. He’s just looking, though I don’t think there’s anything in here that would be of much interest to him. This is the door they come in twice a month for registrations. There’s nothing here he hasn’t seen.

  “What happened last night?” he asks, stopping beside the end of the work bench and picking up a wrench.

  “Don’t touch that.” I reach out to take it from him and place it on a high shelf. He moves on to poking at a jack that someone left out. I leave him to it. “I needed to ask about a murder.”

  He looks at me, eyebrows raised in mock surprise. “You don’t say.”

  “You know something about it?”

  “I heard you’d been asking around.” He crosses his arms, finally giving me his full attention. “And I heard you spoke to some of my pack members.”

  “I did. Pleasant bunch.”

  He shrugs. “You came into our territory for reasons that had nothing to do with anything that benefits us. For your reasons. Vampire reasons. You can’t have expected a warm welcome.”

  “Vampire reasons, and human reasons. And ultimately werewolf reasons. If we don’t get to the bottom of this, people in town might get a wee bit antsy about living too close to this place. And they’re not going to volunteer to move.”

  “Hmm. Are they making threats now?”

  “No. They’re giving us time. They seem reasonable, but everyone has their limits. One of their children died. That’s not the kind of thing people shrug off.”

  He lifts the hem of his shirt and wrings it out, offering a display of his completely unrealistic washboard abs. Definitely not human, this one, though he’s not as hairy as I’d expected a werewolf to be.

  I wrench my gaze away as he lets the shirt fall. He smirks.

  Asshole. I’m not going to pretend I couldn’t use a good shag right now, especially if a fresh source of blood isn’t going to be showing up any time soon. Anything to make me feel alive and a little less lonely after witnessing the obvious closeness of Irene’s pack. But he’s not the answer, no matter how much I might enjoy a challenge.

  “Everyone in my pack was accounted for that night.”

  “Were they? By you, I presume?”

  He grins. No fangs on him, just straight, white teeth. “By me. Among werewolves we don’t require more than that.”

  “If I asked your grandfather, would he say your word is good enough?”

  He narrows his eyes. “I think he would. He might not like me. Hell, he might hate me. But he knows I’d never sell out my pack. Or his, for that matter.”

  “Or Irene’s?”

  His jaw muscles flex, the only sign of his irritation. “Or hers. Don’t pretend you know anything about that situation.”

  I lean against the work bench. I’m still ready to be at his throat at a moment’s notice, figuratively speaking, but he doesn’t have to see that.

  And a fine throat it is. I sense his pulse, hot and strong, beating there. Werewolves are not human, and therefore not prey. Feeding on them is strictly forbidden. Still, I wonder how his power would change the experience, whether it would be as repulsive
as it felt at first, or whether someone like this might turn into an acquired taste.

  Focus.

  Right.

  “Let’s not talk about the packs, then,” I say. “What if I asked you why a wolf might, in theory, have killed a teenaged boy in Bloody Bight? Why would a theoretical wolf, not necessarily a member of any one pack, threaten the peace here?”

  He chuckles. “I guess that’s a better question, though I think you’re overestimating our desire to be here and protect this place and its peace.” He reaches up to rub the back of his neck. “I dunno. You tell me. What would make anyone commit murder? If that’s what you think it is. Why would you kill?”

  I swallow back the wave of dark panic that washes over me at the question. He doesn’t know. He can’t. And I can’t let my past actions fuck me up forever. It’s done. It’s over.

  I force my mind away from the dark warehouse where I found a flood of pure bliss. This isn’t about me.

  “I suppose it might not be murder,” I say. “If it were a wild wolf, I’d say it was instinct or hunger.”

  “You don’t think we have those things?” He’s looking more closely at me now, though I don’t know what he’s seeing that’s so interesting.

  “No. For one thing, I’ve spoken to two of you in wolf form, and almost had my car pissed on by another. I know there’s no typical canine mind working in there, whatever you look like. Also, the body was dead, but not eaten.”

  He nods. “Fair enough, though I’d note that anyone who was hungry enough to kill might have been chased off before he or she could eat.”

  “Are any of you that hungry?”

  He seems ready to give a smart answer, but pauses. Maybe he caught the genuine concern I didn’t mean to let slip out in my voice. “As far as I know, no,” he says. “We do well enough to get by, even if we’re not exactly talking fancy dinners. Does that mean we’re all cleared?”

  “Hardly.”

  The corner of his mouth twitches. “Go on, then.”