Lunar Bound, page 5
part #4 of Sky Brooks World: Ethan Series
I glanced between her and Josh. “Did I interrupt anything?”
“Nope,” he said, continuing to pace. “Just working.”
“I called you several times.”
He shrugged. “I must have left my phone at home.”
“Really?” I picked up his phone from the table—right next to the notebook he’d been working in—accessed his call history, and held it up for him.
His lips twisted into a defiant scowl. “You’re not the boss of me.”
“Josh.” I started toward him. As I neared the Aufero, it came to life. A gray, opaque field snapped into existence around it. Wary of its power, I stopped in my tracks. Holding my breath, I slowly backed several steps away. After a tense moment, the orb seemed to determine I wasn’t a threat. The field collapsed and the orb went back to sleep. I’d felt its wrath before. Once was enough.
Josh and Sky glanced between me and the orb, wearing their fascination.
“What?” I demanded.
He shook his head as he lifted his jacket from the back of his chair. “I need a break,” he informed Sky, then walked past me without another glance.
Once he left, I cautiously took his place at the table. Keeping one eye on the orb, I sifted through my brother’s notes. I could feel Skylar’s intense gaze on me, building toward a question.
I sighed. “What is it, Skylar?”
“Nothing,” she declared, turning her attention to the Clostra.
Her heart betrayed her. “77 BPM.”
She scoffed at me. “Stop that!”
“I will when you start being completely honest with me. Don’t tell me something isn’t wrong, when something is.”
“Really?” She stared back at me, wide-eyed. “You are giving me the ‘you should be honest’ lecture?”
I waited, refusing to take the bait.
Guilt weighed on her expression. “I don’t like that you are keeping information from your brother. And I hate that I am part of it. You have to tell him.” She swallowed, then added, “Or I will.”
My reaction was automatic. I wasn’t used to receiving ultimatums.
In a single stride I rose from my chair and was next to her, intimately close. Startled, she sucked in a sharp breath. Her heart raced. I asked in a low, steady voice. “So you’ll break the promise you made to me?”
She frowned, confused. Did she not remember?
I moved closer until my lips lightly brushed hers. “You’re a lot of things, Skylar, but a person who would go back on her word isn’t one of them.” I let that hang in the air before I backed out of her space. “I will tell him when I’m ready. I don’t think it’s necessary for him to know, so I will tell him when I damn well please. Let’s have enough with the idle threats. I don’t like it.”
“I don’t like keeping your secrets.”
“Then forget that you know it,” I suggested. I never should’ve shared that secret with her. This was my mess.
Her anxious gaze turned hard, determined. “You have two days, or I am going to tell him.”
As angry as I was, I admired her resolve. Once roused, she was unshakeable. She didn’t seem to appreciate my admiration; for a moment, I thought she’d throw a punch.
“No threats,” I warned her, my tone deliberately soft. “I will take as long as I need and will tell him when I am ready.” I leaned forward and kissed her lightly on the nose. “Tell Josh to stop being such a jerk.”
“If I can’t convince you to stop being one, what makes you think I can persuade him?”
I chuckled on my way out of the library.
CHAPTER 3
I was on my way to the kitchen to heat up a steak when I received a text from my legal assistant. I’d spent the last few months negotiating a big-ticket buyout for an up-and-coming Chicago tech startup. The contract I’d drawn up was meticulous, perfect. Days away from putting signature to paper and finalizing the deal, the client was getting cold feet, making new demands. Most of my practice involved mergers, buyouts, negotiations. Occasionally I helped a little fish stand up to a big fish, but I wasn’t looking to make a splash. I didn’t want to walk out of a courthouse to find a dozen microphones in my face.
I texted Stacey that I was on my way to the client’s office, got into my Hennessy Venom GT—my newest purchase—and put its steering system to the test speeding along the narrow, winding private road that lead to the local highway.
Formulating a strategy to tackle the problem proved elusive as other worries intruded—Sky, for one. Drawing Michaela’s ire was dangerous. Sky wasn’t defenseless, not the way she’d been when we’d first saved her from the Seethe. Winter trained Sky hard, and she’d committed. I’d bet on her in most fights, but Michaela was in another league. There weren’t many in the pack I’d expect to go up against her and come out in one piece. She was cunning, patient, and never met a grudge she wouldn’t nurse for years in order to exact her revenge.
Worries rattled around in my brain until I realized I’d parked in Sky’s driveway, next to Steven’s car. I must’ve been on autopilot that last few miles, following my thoughts. Grimacing at my lack of control, I put the GT in reverse, but couldn’t make myself back out of the driveway. Curiosity got the better of me. I needed to see this greenhouse with my own eyes to believe that she’d go that far to please Quell.
Climbing out of the GT, I put my palm over the hood of Steven’s car. The engine was still warm. Walking around the property, I noticed David—one of Sky’s nosey neighbors—on his porch with a cup of coffee held frozen halfway to his lips. Following his stare, I found Steven in Sky’s backyard, a tool belt around the waist of his jeans. The muscles of his back rippled as he pulled off his t-shirt and tossed it over a nearby sawhorse.
David must’ve felt the pressure of my stare. He met my gaze, panicked. He jerked his coffee toward his lips and spilled it onto his shirt. Mumbling curses, he strode inside.
Steven didn’t seem to notice, or didn’t care.
As humans, David and his partner Trent didn’t pose a direct threat to Sky, but they weren’t harmless. The pack thrived in the shadows. Like all supernatural beings, we kept humanity at arm’s length, integrating only whenever and to what extent was necessary to maintain our anonymity. There was always a risk of our world bleeding into theirs. Sky’s neighbors felt protective of her, closely watched the comings and goings on her property. They could easily see something they shouldn’t. Worse, they could become collateral damage. I’d argued both points with Sky and lost. I wasn’t sure if she’d befriended David and Trent out of defiance or to maintain her link to humanity.
She’d grown up among humans, believed herself one of them. Until Demetrius’s vampires had broken down her door and killed her adoptive mother, Sky’d thought she was an anomaly.
I couldn’t stop her from buying her townhouse, but I’d done my due diligence investigating her neighbors. David worked as an event planner, while Trent was a PR consultant with a large Chicago firm. Neither had a criminal record and their social circle was largely comprised of their upper-middle-class clients and fellow professionals—they had no supernatural connections outside of Sky. I could manage their nosiness. If they saw too much or became too nosey, there were indirect pressures I could apply through the pack’s municipal connections to encourage the men it was time to move along. That was a last-ditch option, useful to protect David and Trent as well as Sky, but I could hardly keep them safe if she was going to start a war with Michaela.
Steven turned at my approach, threw a frowning glance at the nearly finished greenhouse. All it needed was some trim and a paint job. I walked around the structure, noting the unearthly plants inside that reeked of fruit and blood. How a vampire could feed from such an abomination when human blood was so plentiful and easily obtained mystified me. The Seethe had its share of human admirers that volunteered their blood, yet Quell had fed exclusively from the plants until Michaela had destroyed them.
Sky thought he was special, a vampire that could be saved. Quell was only suppressing his evil nature. Since the loss of his own Hidacus plants, his nature was closer than ever to the surface. He’d left a trail of at least three bodies that we knew of. So far he’d controlled himself with Sky, but that wasn’t going to last. Scowling, I considered destroying the plant myself.
The consequences would be severe.
“She showed it to him this morning.”
That was a surprise. “Did he feed from it?”
I followed Steven’s gesture to a dark ooze that covered a part of the plant where a stem had been snapped off. So much for a final plea for Sky to change her mind. Quell had fed from the plant, violating Michaela’s order. I could hear Sky’s argument repeating inside my skull. “She forbade him from having the plant. It’s my plant at my house. She doesn’t get to have a say.”
It was a legal argument. Michaela wouldn’t care about semantics.
“Quell loves her,” Steven said, his disgust plain.
I growled, “I’m aware.”
My expression hardened into a mask as I asked, “Does she love him back?”
He nodded, then hedged. “It’s not the same. She plays along because she thinks his obsession with her is innocent. It’s getting worse. I tried to talk some sense into her but…” His frown deepened as he glanced back toward the house. “I can’t stay here. I can’t watch her do this to herself anymore.”
A small weight slipped off my shoulders. Steven and Sky shared a sibling-like bond that I’d never been comfortable with. I tolerated his presence in her house because he provided her an added layer of protection. Once our preparations for our trip to find Maya’s creator were complete, we’d be away from Chicago for at least a month. I’d already decided Steven would stay behind. He’d have time to settle into his own place, and Quell would learn to survive—or not—on his own.
The long trip could solve multiple problems. I just needed to get Sky on the road before the situation with Michaela got out of hand.
“It’s probably for the best,” I said.
He nodded.
I was going to say more when a movement caught my eye, something in the woods behind Sky’s house. Steven noticed as well.
“Don’t,” I whispered as his head started to turn. “Jackal.”
Steven’s eyes widened slightly. Jackals were rare.
Most were-animals in the Chicago area belonged to the Midwest Pack. The rest we kept tabs on. Unaffiliated were-animals largely kept to themselves, but there were a few minor packs. Only two of those deserved my regular attention. The Worgens were one such pack. According to Steven, that was the name of a race of characters in a video game. Made sense considering the Worgens spent most of their energy streaming video games online. They were also accomplished hackers. We hired them on a few occasions, watched them closely the rest of the time. Most of their wolves were turned, which helped explain their awkwardness—some of it anyway. They had their own ideas about relating to their animal, and not much of an idea how to relate to the rest of the world, supernatural or otherwise.
Sebastian had invited the Worgens to join our pack. They weren’t a fit, but their skills were valuable. We didn’t want another faction turning them against us. Integrating them would’ve been a challenge, but they’d turned the offer down. Rather than take offense, Sebastian recognized that the Worgens weren’t ready to give up their fraternity lifestyle—they’d created a banner that featured beer, pizza, and gummi bears. We’d give them time to grow up. Eventually, danger would find them and the Midwest Pack would be there to pick up the pieces.
If the Worgens had a jackal, I’d know about it.
The Ares Pack was of slightly greater concern. Anderson, the Alpha, was ambitious. In recent months, he’d stepped up his recruiting, which meant he had a plan. I doubted whether it was a good plan. Last count, Ares had just tipped over one hundred members, but they were also made animals—inferior. From what I’d seen, Anderson preferred sheer numbers to actual training. Their fighting skills were poor. Still, Anderson was going to force our hand eventually. Even ants could be dangerous if the host was big enough.
Ares didn’t have a jackal, either.
I intended to find out how a strange were-animal found itself outside of Sky’s house. Might be random, might not. For the moment, its attention was fixed on the neighbor’s backyard, where David and Trent appeared to be setting up a small picnic on their patio. While David deliberately ignored Steven and me, his partner did little to hide his peeking in our direction. Distracted by Steven’s bare chest, they’d yet to notice the jackal hunting them.
As long as Steven and I were within sight, it would have to be patient—assuming the neighbors were the jackal’s target.
I gestured to the greenhouse, raising my voice for the jackal’s benefit. “Let me know when you’re done here.” I added in a whisper, “I’ll go around into the copse. Wait for my move.”
“Will do.”
He pretended to go back to work while he positioned himself for the best possible run at our unexpected visitor. As I strode away, I made a point to twirl my car keys around my index finger. The moment I rounded the house and was out of sight, I pocketed the keys and hurried around the far side of the house, crouching below the top of the fence line. Where the fence ended, I dropped into a narrow gulley, crouched until I reached the copse, then warily made my way toward the jackal’s position. A light breeze rustled the brush, bringing with it the jackal’s scent. My nose wrinkled. It was off somehow, not quite natural.
My ideal move was to veer deep into the copse, position myself so that Steven and I could close on the jackal between us. The presence of witnesses complicated the situation. We’d have to drive the jackal deeper into the woods and run it down. Tricky, giving the jackal an avenue of escape, but I doubted it could outrun my wolf, or Steven’s coyote. If it did, we’d track it as long as necessary.
I kept close to the edge of the copse, watching the ground beneath my boots.
The dense brush prevented line of sight, but I knew by the jackal’s scent it was just a dozen feet ahead. As long as the breeze was on my side and its attention was fixed on Steven and Sky’s neighbors, I might be able to take it down alone—easier done in wolf form, but that was too risky. If seen, the jackal could be confused with a large dog, but my wolf was much larger.
The breeze swirled, shifted direction. Before it could deliver my scent to the jackal, I charged through the brush in front of me. In three strides I caught sight of the dark stripe on the jackal’s flank as it turned and darted deeper into the woods.
I heard David ask in surprise, “What was that?”
Still hidden from sight, I shifted into my wolf, leaving my shredded clothes behind as I raced after the intruder.
Behind me, I heard Steven declare just before he crashed into the copse, “It’s a wild dog. Go inside!”
For a few strides, there was just the scent to follow as I leapt over broken branches, darted under dense overgrowth, until the jackal cut across my line of sight twenty feet ahead. Behind me, I heard Steven’s coyote catching up. Desperate to escape, the jackal veered toward a hiking trail. I grinned as I lowered my nose to the ground and slipped beneath the low-hanging branch of a half-fallen pine tree. On an open trail, the jackal was able to accelerate away, but speed wasn’t its advantage. It should’ve stayed in the brush, used natural obstacles. On an open trail, Steven and I were nearly twice the jackal’s speed.
By the time the jackal realized its mistake, I was snapping at its tail. It veered right, tried to dart back into the woods. Steven cut it off, leapt, and landed in the dirt with nothing to show for his efforts. The jackal had disappeared, snatched from existence in the blink of an eye.
Magic hung in the air.
I stood next to Steven, sniffing as he climbed back to his feet. We changed back into human form at the same time, gave each other troubled looks.
“That’s not possible,” he said, catching his breath.
I nodded. Even rarer than a jackal was a were-animal that used magic. I did, inherited from my mother, but few knew. Were-animals that could use magic had a tendency to die young, thanks to the witches. They thought they had a monopoly on magic and were willing to kill for it.
Steven’s nose wrinkled as he sniffed the air. “That animal doesn’t smell right.”
There was that, too. I didn’t like mysteries. I liked them less when they circled around Sky.
“Ares?” he asked, doubtful.
“A loner, most likely. Probably looking for easy prey. Put out the word. If that jackal’s not already on its way out of town, it will be soon, but I’d prefer to get some answers from it first.”
“I’ll get someone to watch Sky’s house.”
“She has enough on her mind to worry about,” I said, surprising him. “She wasn’t the target. A loner wouldn’t have a reason to target her, and Anderson wouldn’t start a war by attacking Sky.” His first move would be to take out me or Sebastian. If he were smart enough to take out our top five ranks at once, he might have a sliver of a chance. “Still, I’ll pay Anderson a visit, make sure he’s not getting too big for his britches.”
Steven nodded. “You want me to go with you?”
He wanted the chance to make his own feelings known, but that wasn’t necessary. By walking into the Ares Pack alone, I wanted Anderson to know just how little I thought of him.
By the time we returned to the house, David and Trent had locked themselves inside their home. While Steven went inside to dress, I found my keys and phone among the shredded remains of my jeans. Half a dozen text messages from Stacey waited for me; the situation with my client was deteriorating quickly. I growled at the distraction. The pack came first, but putting Anderson in his place was more formality than necessity. He could wait until I’d cleaned up this other mess.
The heart of the problem was a power play between two board members—pack politics played out in suits, in conference rooms at the summit of a high-rise office tower. I went through the motions my job required, negotiating between the board factions, trying to keep the deal alive, but the endgame was obvious. In the end, the board would have a new Alpha. The deal, which would’ve benefited them all, was the sacrificial lamb.
