Lunacy (Blood Trails Book 13), page 20
“You can’t quarantine her without my permission.” Cormac straightened his spine. “We’ll leave. Go to a hotel.”
Suddenly the senior Osbourne’s nostrils flared and he whirled around just in time to see Liam appear in the doorway, one hand holding his cell phone as it chimed with Brenna’s text. Cormac’s fists clenched at his side as his son stepped into the room.
Liam’s blue eyes had darkened to match his father’s. At some point after we’d parted, he’d clipped his police badge to his jeans. Now the gold shield caught the light when he angled his hips just so. I smiled. Not a subtle statement, that.
“If Magda is sick,” he said calmly, “she may have caught something here. That makes her my responsibility. She stays.”
Cormac’s eyes flashed with fury, his head twitching as he resisted the urge to tilt his head up to make keeping eye contact with his taller son more comfortable. “That’s not how I see it.”
“Then you’re welcome to challenge me formally,” Liam said softly.
Everyone in the room froze. Even Peasblossom stopped squirming, her wings completely still. Scath had been silent since taking up her position on the chaise, but now she lifted her head, the gleam in her eyes returning as we all waited to hear Cormac’s response.
The older alpha didn’t speak for a long time. Not in awkward silence, or the muteness of someone too angry to speak. He was silent in the way someone was when they were thinking very very hard. Considering a very big decision.
Like engaging their son in a challenge fight that would cost one of them everything.
Finally, he took a deep, slow breath. “This situation doesn’t justify a formal challenge. This is just another example of your incompetence when it comes to running New Moon. And I’ll be including this in the report I make to the Vanguard.” Without waiting for Liam’s response, he whirled to look at me. It occurred to me that vomiting was probably very rare for shifters, what with them being germ-killing factories and super healers. In retrospect, Magda getting suddenly ill would be quite suspicious.
Oh well. In for a penny…
I met Cormac’s eyes. “Perhaps you should go have a lie down too? Whatever’s troubling poor Magda could be contagious.”
Cormac looked very much like he was considering tossing me out through the closed window. Or worse. I looked into his eyes, felt the temper radiating off of him. It made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.
Bring it, I thought, letting the sentiment show in my face.
Cormac gritted his teeth, making the muscle jump in his jaw. Whatever he was planning, he wouldn’t do it here. Not with witnesses. With a snarl of disgust, he left the room.
“Take Magda to the infirmary,” Liam told Brenna. He looked at me, and despite the tension in his shoulders, I couldn’t help but notice a small spark of amusement in his eyes. It didn’t last, though, and he nodded toward the door. “Looks like we need to have a word with Danielle. I’ll call Ruth and ask her to bring her to one of the meeting rooms.”
I cleaned up the tea while Liam made the call to Ruth, then we both headed downstairs. The skin between my shoulder blades twitched as soon as we left Brenna’s office, my entire body hyper-aware that I’d angered Cormac. Embarrassed him.
He didn’t strike me as the sort of man to take that well.
Liam led me to one of the large meeting rooms. The door was open, and I could see Danielle inside, sitting on the opposite side of a long table. Ruth sat beside her, and the head counselor looked wary as I entered the room. I wasn’t sure if the look was concern for her patient, or if she’d heard what happened with Cormac. Possibly both.
“So Danielle,” Liam started as he pulled out a chair for me. “Seems a friend of yours has come back from the grave.”
Danielle leaned forward and propped her chin on her elbow, letting the already too-loose shirt slide off her opposite shoulder. “Excellent. I’ve always wanted to see a zombie.”
“No one wants to see a zombie,” Peasblossom corrected her from the top of my head. “Zombies are scary, and stupid, and they smell bad. And depending on how they died, they—”
“Tell us about Daryl,” I said, interrupting my familiar before she could warm to her topic.
Danielle leaned harder against her hand, tilting her head. “Jackal killed his own brother.”
I raised my eyebrows. Interesting response. Scath had taken a seat beside me, and I felt her go completely, utterly still.
Liam didn’t blink. “Did he.”
Danielle’s eyes glittered in the overhead lights. “He did. Cormac told you Jackal was in the military. Well, so was his brother. One night, Jackal was on patrol, and he was attacked—violently. Turned. You know what that does to a person?”
Liam managed to keep the sarcasm out of his voice when he answered. “I have an idea, yes.”
“It does a number on your brain,” Danielle said as if Liam hadn’t answered. “He was hysterical, half-mad. Covered in his own blood, alone in an unfamiliar place. And that’s how his brother found him.”
“They sent his brother to look for him.” I closed my eyes as horror washed over me, a sudden aching empathy for the large shifter. “Poor Jackal.”
When I opened my eyes, Danielle was looking at me. She’d dropped her arm and leaned back in her chair, and I watched something very like hatred flowed into her eyes. “Intense emotions can trigger the change faster. And a new wolf is always starving. By the time Jackal came around, got some of his mental faculties back, he was covered in more blood than before—and had a belly full of his own brother.”
Bile splashed the back of my throat. Danielle was quite the storyteller. But unfortunately, I’d heard stories like this before. Had seen events like what she described play out right in front of me. And worse. She wasn’t going to get the reaction she so clearly wanted.
Not from me anyway.
I frowned as I realized Scath was no longer sitting beside me. I looked on the floor and under the table, thinking maybe she’d returned to her feline form, but she wasn’t there either. I looked at Liam and he glanced at the door. Scath had left?
Ruth was watching me, and when I straightened up in my seat, I saw the concern on her face. There was a crease between her brows, as if she’d seen Scath leave and was worried for the sidhe. Scath must have left when I closed my eyes. What had made her go? Leave without saying a word?
“There was no mention of what happened to his brother in Jackal’s file,” Liam said evenly, returning his attention to Danielle.
Danielle’s face twisted with disgust. “The Vanguard found out, and they stepped in before word got around. A few memory wipes here and there, and no one even remembered Jackal. Unfortunately for Jackal, he was from Cormac’s territory.” She glared at Liam. “What’s the point of having a place like New Moon if people like Jackal aren’t sent here first?”
“He should have been sent here,” Liam said carefully.
“Well, he wasn’t. Cormac caught wind of what happened—that bastard has connections in the Vanguard. He argued that he could help Jackal. Said it would be better for him to acclimate in the pack he’d be coming home to.”
“No, he should have had therapy,” Liam said.
“He ate his brother,” I murmured. “If anything would qualify you for instant therapy, that has to be it.”
“Does that give you some understanding of how powerful Cormac is?” Danielle asked. “What a monster he is? He could have helped Jackal. But he didn’t just stop him from getting the help he needed. He made it worse.”
“Worse how?” Peasblossom asked, her voice soft.
Danielle glared at Liam as if the pixie hadn’t spoken. “He threatened to tell Jackal’s mother that he was the one who killed his brother.”
My temper flared, the magic inside me heating until it burned, scalding my lungs with my next breath. I was really starting to hate Cormac. It was a sentiment that, if the look on her face was any indication, Ruth and I shared.
“Jackal isn’t a violent man,” Danielle said, her voice more subdued now. Some of the anger leached out of her, and her shoulders fell. “He’s a gentle giant. But people don’t see that when they look at him. They see a big scary guy. And that’s what Cormac wanted him for. He drags him around like his personal punching bag. Any time he needs to look tough or intimidate someone, he turns and beats up Jackal. And Jackal just takes it, because he has no choice.”
“I’ll get Jackal some help,” Liam said gently. “Some real help.”
“He could stay here,” Ruth agreed, her voice saying clearly that she intended to do everything in her power to make that happen. “We could help him.”
“But you can’t, can you?” Danielle challenged. “He’s not part of your pack, he’s part of Cormac’s pack. And Cormac would never give permission.”
“I can make a case to the Vanguard that—”
“The Vanguard that sent him to Cormac in the first place?” Danielle interrupted. “You’re not listening to me. Cormac has friends in the Vanguard. His reputation is widespread, you can’t tell me they didn’t know what he was when they sent Jackal to him.” She shook her head. “He has connections in the Vanguard. He has to. It’s the only way to explain why he gets away with the things he does.”
“There’s got to be an oversight committee,” I agreed with Liam, turning to him. “Someone should have stepped in to stop him from terrorizing his pack.”
Liam rubbed a hand over his face. “The Vanguard is meant to make sure shifters are policing themselves, not to police shifters. If Jackal was attacking humans, they might intercede, but there are enough old school shifters who would see it Cormac’s way. They’d see Jackal as high-risk, and they’d consider Cormac’s control over him to be appropriate.”
“He beats him,” I said, hardly daring to believe what I heard.
“Spare the rod, spoil the child isn’t just a human philosophy,” Liam said quietly.
Ruth folded her hands on the table, then unfolded them and shoved her hands under the table. The head counselor definitely had some thoughts on corporal punishment. Thoughts along the lines of taking the rod to the people who used it on those in their care.
I was starting to like Ruth.
“Is that why you beat Stephen?” Danielle asked.
Liam didn’t wince. “Stephen challenged me. It was his decision to make the conflict physical. I did what I had to do to maintain my position and that’s it. I stopped when he was defeated, not a second after. There are those who would have made him an example.”
“So you should be commended for only beating him a little?” Danielle said sarcastically.
“If you want to discuss the physical nature of shifter hierarchy, we can,” Liam said. “After we talk about why you and Daryl killed Dustin.”
“I think there are a few other things we need to discuss first,” Danielle said, relaxing into her chair. “I’m not done talking about Cormac.”
“I am.” Liam pushed his chair back. “But if you’d like to sit in a cell for a while and collect your thoughts, that can be arranged too.”
Ruth tensed, but didn’t say anything. I was fairly sure the counselor in her was at war with the werewolf. Care for her client’s mental illness dueling with her respect and obedience to her alpha.
“Wait,” Danielle said suddenly. “You’re not going to put me in a cell.”
“I’m not? That’s usually what we do with murderers.”
“Well, no it’s not,” Danielle pointed out. “Emma—”
“Let’s go,” Liam said, pushing his chair back.
“Cormac is my father,” Danielle blurted out.
Peasblossom let out a squeak of surprise.
I stared at Danielle. That’s why she looked so familiar. How did I not see it before? She had Brenna’s nose. Liam’s eyes.
“Don’t believe me?” Danielle said, jutting her chin out. “I’ll take a DNA test. Right now.”
Liam stared at her for a long minute. I could practically see the thoughts running through his brain. Now wasn’t the time to determine Danielle’s parentage. But that also wasn’t something to be dismissed out of hand. Finally, he looked at Ruth. “You have samples of my blood on file. I assume you took some of Danielle’s blood when she got here?”
“Yes,” Ruth confirmed. “I can run the test, and I’ll have the results tomorrow.”
“Fine. Until then—”
“You want to know how I was born human?” Danielle crossed her arms. “It’s because my mom was human. And since I was born human, Cormac didn’t want anything to do with me. Like me being born human was some kind of sign he wasn’t ‘shifter enough.’ He abandoned my mother, left her with no pack, no protection. Told her if she ever came back to his territory, he’d kill her. All because he didn’t want anyone to know he’d produced a human child.”
“You got yourself turned on purpose,” I realized.
Danielle nodded. “I wanted him dead, and I needed to get close enough to him to do it. He’s the reason my mother lived and died like she did. A drug addict and a prostitute.” Her eyes glistened with unshed tears. “He’s an alpha. He’s supposed to take care of people. His people. She was his lover, and he threw her out like so much garbage. He’s not an alpha, he’s a bully.” She narrowed her eyes, squeezing a tear out to run down her cheek. “You could have stopped him, but you didn’t. You ran away. Saved yourself. What kind of alpha does that make you?”
Liam opened his mouth, but she kept going.
“You should run while you still can, Shade,” she said. “The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. He’ll be no better than his dad someday, you just wait and see.”
“You planned to kill him,” Liam said. “But you didn’t. You killed Dustin. Why?”
“He wasn’t your brother, if that’s what you’re wondering,” Danielle muttered. “And I never said I killed him. As for Cormac…” She rubbed a hand over her face and sighed. “Magda begged me not to.”
That didn’t surprise me. Unfortunately, it was all too common for abused wives to protect their husbands. Any attempt to protect Magda from Cormac was going to involve a lot of patience. And time.
Alarm bells started going off in my head. Danielle was giving up an awful lot of personal information. Doing an awful lot of talking without saying anything relevant to the murder investigation she was being questioned about.
“Danielle,” I said suddenly. “Why are you stalling?”
Before Danielle could answer, alarm bells went off.
Real ones this time.
Danielle smiled.
Chapter 20
The urge to scream “What have you done?” at Danielle was strong, but both Liam and I swallowed it back. The smile on Danielle’s face widened as if she sensed our frustration.
“Sounds like there’s a problem,” she drawled.
Liam’s phone rang before he could respond, and he had to settle for pinning Danielle in her seat with a hard look that made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. Danielle’s smile wilted at the corners, and her arms tensed as if she had to fight to keep her relaxed pose. Liam didn’t take his eyes off her as he snatched his cell phone from his pocket. He glanced at the screen as he swiped up to accept the call, the muscle in his jaw jumping in a way that told me whoever was calling, it was bad news.
“This isn’t a good time,” he growled.
The person on the other end of the call spoke, their voice not loud enough for me to hear, even when I rose from my chair to stand right beside Liam.
His entire body stiffened, and he looked at me. “She’s here and she’s fine. Now’s not a good time.”
He listened some more, then something moved behind his eyes as he took the phone away from his mouth. “Did you text Flint?”
“No,” I sputtered. “Why on earth would I do that?”
“He says you texted him and told him there’d been an attempt on your life and you needed help.” Liam shifted his attention back to Danielle.
Danielle smirked, but the expression lacked the arrogance it needed to make it work. Liam’s aura had grown hotter, and I could almost feel him directing that energy at Danielle. Every time she tried to stick her chin out, the skin around her eyes tightened, and she leaned back.
“Flint says you asked him to come here,” Liam said, talking to me without taking his attention from Danielle. “And he did.”
“He’s the one setting off the alarms?” Peasblossom sniffed. “A bit showy, even for a sidhe.”
“He’s not setting off the alarms,” Liam said, looking down at his phone. “Sam messaged me. There’s a group of armed humans approaching from the woods. Sam set off the alarms, and they’re sending a team out to investigate.”
Flint must have said something else, because Liam put the phone back to his ear. “She’s not the one that texted you. This isn’t a good—” He stopped, and his eyes narrowed. “I don’t need your help.” Another pause. “She doesn’t need your help either.”
He pressed his lips together. For a split second, he looked like he might pitch the phone through the wall. Then he rolled his head, tendons popping in his neck as he handed me the phone.
“Flint,” I said, trying to keep as much of my irritation out of my voice as I could. Sidhe were more cooperative when you were polite. “This is a really bad time. Please, can I call you later? I’ll explain—”
“Shade, far be it for me to interfere in the budding romance between you and the detective sergeant,” Flint said, his whiskey-smooth voice holding a sinful promise even over the phone. “But allow me to give you some perspective. The humans at the doors of New Moon right now aren’t alone. I saw more of them creeping through the forest across the street. And I can guarantee you there are more sneaking around the back of the property. They may look like a group of hunters who’ve wandered too far from their campsite, but hunters don’t wear tactical gear, and they don’t generally carry grenades.”
I clutched the phone tighter. “Who are they?”
