Ascension (13 page)

"Smell that mud?" I said. "Stonehaven’s mud, still wet. On Stephen’s shoes."

Malcolm’s eyes went wide. "Stephen? Did you shoot—"

"Don’t pull that," I snapped. "Stephen didn’t do this on his own. He’s too stupid to think of it, let alone carry it out."

"You little—"

Stephen flew at me. I nailed him in the gut and he toppled backward. Daniel jumped from his spot by the wall. I met his glare.

"Try it," I said. "Go on. Show me you’ve grown a pair, Danny."

Daniel didn’t move. Stephen got to his feet and charged. I feinted out of the way and was turning to strike when someone grabbed my hand. I roared and wheeled to see Antonio holding me. I stopped short, but he used my momentum to yank me off balance, and threw me out the door into the hall.

"This isn’t over," I heard him say to Malcolm.

The door slammed and Antonio turned on me. "Either we continue this out here or you go downstairs to the car quietly."

"But he—"

Antonio loomed over me, eyes blazing. "Where are Wally and Raymond?"

"What? I—they’re not here."

"But who is, Clayton? Who is here?"

"I—I don’t—"

"You’re here and I’m here. The two people most likely to come after Malcolm if he hurt Nick. And where is Jeremy?"

I scrambled to my feet. "Oh shit!"

Antonio grabbed my arm. "He’s okay. He’s down in the car with the others. Fortunately, only one of us is as hotheaded as Malcolm hoped. Think before you act next time, Clay. If you’re going to protect Jeremy, he needs to be your first priority at all times. No one else can matter. Let me look after everyone else, including Nick."

"I’m sorry," I said, rubbing my face. "I didn’t think—"

"Well, that was your first mistake." He thumped me on the back. "Now, come on."

I nodded and followed him down to the car.

The next night, when Nick felt well enough to join us, Jeremy convened a meeting. The subject? How to break the stalemate. Knowing this impasse put us in danger was one thing, but seeing Nick nearly killed, on our own property, surround by all of us, finally brought home the urgency of the situation. Jeremy knew we had to act. Since he wasn’t yet Alpha, he didn’t need to make all the decisions alone. He could solicit advice, so he did.

"I’ll fight Malcolm," I said as I plunked onto the sofa beside Nick. "Set it up and I’ll take him out."

"Presuming you do ‘take him out’, then what?" Jeremy asked.

"Well, then I give you—" I stopped and thought about what I was saying. "Er, I—uh, sorry."

"I appreciate the sentiment and the offer," Jeremy said softly. "But I wouldn’t expect anyone to respect an Alpha who had his title won for him by another. The answer to our problem, I believe, is obvious. Malcolm clearly wants a fight, and I doubt he’ll settle for anything less. If that’s my only option then I’ll have to—"

"No way," Antonio said.

"I know I’m not on his level," Jeremy said. "But perhaps under the right circumstances, with a good strategy, I could outwit him. Strength isn’t everything."

"In this case, it is," Antonio said. "Malcolm gets you in the ring, Jer, and he’ll fight like he’s never fought before. He’s been waiting for this his whole life. He’ll kill you."

"Maybe that’s a chance I have to take."

"It’s not a chance, it’s a certainty. If you challenge him, you’ll die, and then the only thing you’ll have accomplished is to break the Pack in half, because none of us would stick around if Malcolm becomes Alpha. The only two he’d
let
stick around are me and Clay, and if he kills you, nothing in the world would make us follow him. We’d rather be mutts."

Jeremy was silent for a moment. Then he gave a slow nod. "Maybe, then,
that’s
the only solution. To break the Pack in half."

"Two Packs?" I said.

Jeremy nodded.

"It might be the only way," Jorge said.

"How would that work?" Peter asked.

"I have no idea," Jeremy said. "So let’s talk about it."

By morning we’d come up with a proposal. We’d split the Pack in two, each with an Alpha. Jeremy’s side would retain New York State as its territory, and Malcolm would take Pennsylvania, where the Santoses lived. That would mean Malcolm would give up Stonehaven as his home, but Jeremy would compensate him for that with a generous monthly stipend. In time we hoped to persuade the others to move their territory farther west or south, and put more distance between us, but for now, the division would be the boundary between the two states.

Antonio and Peter took the proposal to Malcolm. He turned them down flat. Wouldn’t even negotiate terms. He sent back a message to Jeremy saying that the only way the Pack was splitting was if we all left the country and started a new Pack in Canada or Mexico . . . after Jeremy deeded Stonehaven to him. In other words, we could put our tails between our legs and flee, and he might let us live. Jeremy didn’t dignify that with an answer.

Over the next few days, Antonio and I held some private meetings, to discuss taking matters into our own hands. Antonio wanted to kill Wally or Raymond, and thus swing the vote in our favor. I didn’t see the point of such political wrangling. If you want to kill a beast, and make sure it’s really dead, you don’t sever a leg and hope it bleeds out—you lop off the head. Kill Malcolm and our problems would be over. While not opposed to the general theory, Antonio knew Jeremy would figure out who had killed Malcolm and, whatever the history between them, Malcolm was still his father. To have him killed by someone Jeremy had raised would be too much. Personally, I though Malcolm had long since lost any paternal rights, but I wasn’t sure enough about the situation to test it. Not just yet. So we reverted to discussing Antonio’s plan. The trick, though, was to kill Wally or Raymond without it being obvious that we’d done so. Otherwise, we reduced Jeremy to Malcolm’s level, because everyone would assume
he’d
ordered the death.

Midweek, Antonio had to return to New York for an unavoidable business meeting, and we agreed to think the problem through and come up with some ideas before he returned on the weekend. Jorge and Nick went back to New York with Antonio. Normally, Peter would have stayed with us, but after the attack on Nick, we decided Peter was better off with the Sorrentinos. He was a more experienced fighter than Nick or Jorge, so it made sense for the four of them to stick together, and let me devote my full protective attention to Jeremy.

Dinner Thursday night started like any other. Our dinners were still made by the same woman who’d been cooking for us since I’d first arrived at Stonehaven. I could cook, and had been doing so on weekends for a few years, but even now that I was home full-time, Jeremy knew Pearl needed the income, so we still had our meals delivered on weekdays.

That night it was her specialty: Shepherd’s Pie. While Jeremy dished it up, I threw together a salad in the kitchen. I walked into the dining room to see him leaning over the steaming pan, spatula only partway through the first cut.

"Smell this," he said.

I did. The scent of hot beef and potato wafted up. My stomach rumbled.

"Smells great. Now hurry up and scoop it out or I’ll take the whole dish."

I reached for the casserole, but Jeremy pulled it back.

"I’m serious. Something smells off."

"The meat?" I said, leaning in for a closer sniff. "Seems fine to me. Doesn’t matter anyway." Our stomachs, like a wolf’s, were strong enough to withstand meat that was undercooked or past its best-before date.

Jeremy waved me away from the food, forked up a mouthful and sampled it. Then he made a face and discreetly spat it into a napkin. I scooped up a fingerful and ate it. It tasted fine, but I didn’t say so. If Jeremy thought our food had been tampered with, I wasn’t going to argue. His sense of smell and taste were marginally better than my own and, even if he was imagining things, he was entitled to a little paranoia these days.

Jeremy started for the door, paused, came back and took the casserole with him.

"Hey, if you think there’s something wrong with it, I’m not going to eat it," I called after him.

After one last look in the direction of my vanished dinner, I tucked into the salad. A few minutes later, Jeremy returned.

"I called John," he said. John was Pearl’s son, who’d taken over delivering our meals when his father died a few years ago. "He says he didn’t see Pearl this afternoon. When he got to the house, the cooler was inside the front door, so he took it and left."

I laid down my fork. "And he didn’t think that was strange?"

Jeremy shook his head. "These days, Pearl often naps in the afternoon. Even I knew that."

"Does Malcolm?"

As Jeremy pulled something from his pocket, he gave a half-shrug that I interpreted as "probably." He laid the Shepherd’s Pie in front of me again.

"Close your eyes," he said.

I did. He instructed me to sniff and I again smelled the pie. Then he held something else in front of my nose and I inhaled a vaguely familiar odor—one that I’d also faintly smelled on our dinner.

"Yeah, that’s it," I said, opening my eyes. "What is—?" I knew the answer before I even saw the bottle in Jeremy’s hand. "Sedative. The stuff from your medical bag. Is any missing?"

He shook his head.

"But Malcolm’s seen it before, plenty of times. We all have. If he knew the name, he’d know what to get, and he’d know it works on werewolves." I looked at the casserole. "So he dumped enough in there to kill us."

"No, we’d smell that much easily. This is just enough to knock us out."

I pushed my chair back and stood. "Well, I’m not waiting around to see what he planned to do next."

Jeremy laid a hand on my shoulder. "I think we should do exactly that. Malcolm expects us to be asleep early tonight. Let’s give him what he wants, and see what he does with it."

Endgame

Three hours later, when I heard the garage door knob turn, I was sprawled out on the sofa in the study, the most likely place for me to crash pre-bedtime. Sure enough, the footsteps headed straight for me. I counted three sets and, almost the moment I’d finished counting, identified them: Wally and his two oldest nephews, Stephen and Andrew. Disappointment zinged through me as I realized Malcolm wasn’t among our uninvited guests, but I wasn’t surprised. As much as Malcolm might like a showdown with his son, he wasn’t stupid enough to take that risk. This way, if things went bad, he could claim that the Santos had acted on their own.

I held myself still as they came into the room. I was lying on my back, with my left arm slung up to hide my face, in case I slipped up. As they walked into the room, I struggled to keep from tensing. I could end this here. We had to let them make the first move, or Malcolm would claim he’d only sent them to retrieve his shaving kit or something equally ridiculous.

"Out like a light," Andrew said, leaning over me.

"Probably because he scarfed down most of dinner himself," Stephen said.

"Let’s just hope he left enough for Jeremy," Andrew said.

Stephen snorted. "Like it matters. Even if Jeremy’s wide awake, I could take him with one hand tied behind my back."

"Maybe so," Wally said. "But you’re not going to try it. Andy, I want you to stay here, make sure Clayton doesn’t wake up."

"Let’s skip that step," Stephen said, stepping close enough that I could feel the heat of his body. "How about we stage a little ‘accident’? Damn, Mal, I know you wanted Clay left alive, and we really tried, but he woke up and we just had to—"

"Don’t even think about it," Wally said. "Even if he does wake up, we’re following orders, tying him up and leaving him alive. You don’t want to test Malcolm on this."

"Goddamn it!" Stephen snarled. "He hates Malcolm. We’re the ones who—"

"It’s not fair, I know," Wally said softly. "When all this is over, we’ll take care of Clayton, and things will change. Now, Andy, as I was saying, you stay here. If he so much as stirs, come and get me. Got it?"

"Got it."

The moment Wally and Stephen left, my heart started pounding, urging me to take care of Andrew and go protect Jeremy. Yet I knew it would take them a while to find Jeremy . . . if they found him at all. Jeremy had crisscrossed the house, from top to bottom, laying enough trails that they’d eventually get frustrated and give up trying to track him. Then they’d check the obvious spots he might have passed out—his bedroom, his studio, the bathroom—but he wasn’t in any of those. I had at least fifteen to twenty minutes before they began to suspect that Jeremy wasn’t asleep at all.

I forced myself to count off five minutes before I peeked. By that time, Andrew had retreated to Jeremy’s armchair. He sat there, staring at me, unblinking, as if I could wake up and pounce in the millisecond it took him to blink. The stink of fear wafted from him. That was why Wally had left him behind, because if I did wake up, Andrew would make damned sure he called for help instead of trying to take me on by himself.

After another couple of minutes, Andrew began to relax and, as he relaxed, his gaze wandered to the bookshelf. Two more minutes passed. Then he eased up from the chair, gave me one last look, and turned toward the bookshelf.