Comes Now the Wicked Woodsman (6 page)

A few nods broke out in the crowds before the shifters in question uncomfortably looked around to find me staring at them. Yeah, my little sister could be a pain in the ass when she was on a mission to do good, but she had saved every sorry skin in this club.

Mallory gave one of his slick, interrupting coughs, his lanky frame pushing away from the bar as he began to speak.

"While I appreciate the desire some might have as regards Miss Hughes..." Pausing, he reached behind him and swiped his cell phone off the bar top. "I received a rather disturbing video this afternoon that suggests someone from one of the Illinois groups is behind this despite the smoke they may have blown up our esteemed pack leader's ass."

Nervous snickers punctuated the air before the room went silent once more.

"And you decided to withhold this information why?" Taron boomed, climbing down from the table.

The crowd parted around him as he stalked toward Mallory, the older wolf shrinking back against the bar.

Just when I thought he was about to piss himself, Mallory straightened and looked at the shifters gathered closest to him.

"I wanted everyone to see the video rather than having you pick and choose what information we get."

His authority challenged one time too many, Taron opened his mouth a little too soon.

"I'm being completely transparent." His big hand swiped at the phone, but Mallory managed to slide it to his opposite hand just as he landed a verbal blow to his pack leader.

"So you're just being slow letting us know that Paisley Williams was also shot?" Mallory sniped. "Is she also healing or did the shooter at least take care of that little problem for us?"

Fire flamed at my face and torso. I took a step toward Mallory, a growl on my lips, but Taron ordered me back with his eyes just as Onyx slid in front of me and placed a restraining hand against my chest, her alpha energy flowing through her palm to soothe me.

"Garland," Taron shouted as he cast his gaze about for the elk shifter who was just as much a tech nerd as my little sister and the club's go to for all our hardware and wiring needs.

The seventeen year old gracefully shouldered his way through the crowd of larger men and their mates to stand by Taron's side, announcing his arrival with a soft cough. Taron jerked his head at Mallory who handed his phone over to the boy.

"Can you get this to play on the television?" Taron looked around at the pinched and scowling faces. "We'll all watch it together."

"Yes, sir," Garland answered after a glance at the bottom of the phone. "What's the security pin?"

Saying nothing, Mallory gave the boy a guilty look and Garland grinned.

As the young elk passed within a foot of me, my legs twitched with the need to leap forward and snatch the phone from his grasp. We had no idea what was on there, only Mallory did. The video might clearly show Clover transforming and Paisley discovering her wolf.

With Onyx shadowing my every step, I followed after Garland as he approached the television with its seventy-inch screen. A big hand landed on my shoulder. Taron's alpha energy took over for his mate's in seeking to calm me.

I tried to shrug him off. The hand slid up to squeeze at the back of my neck.

"I know exactly how you feel," he growled softly into my ear, his proof standing next to him, her eyes as black as her name.

I huffed. I was in no shape to listen to reason. I was deaf to his reminder of his own mate being threatened just a few months before and how he had kept his advocacy for her so veiled she had thought he had abandoned her for the good of the pack.

Done coddling me, Taron directed a hard wave of his energy at me. Thrown off balance by its force, I landed on my ass in one of the chairs near the television. With both hands on the top of my shoulders, he exerted enough pressure to pin me in the chair unless I wanted to fight back.

A fight between me and my boss would tell the pack everything they needed to know.

Garland glanced up, found Taron and lifted a bushy brow. "Ready?"

No, no, and hell no!

"Yes," Taron rasped, his grip on my shoulders tightening.

Confusion rippled through me as I saw some of the video the pack had made last fall. It had been Clover's idea, a sort of post-apocalyptic movie trailer of the fallout of the Illinois packs attacking Night Falls and the human world learning of the existence of shifters then hunting them to the brink of extinction. We had also exposed the truth to the packs that different species of shifters could successfully breed with other shifters.

"What is this, Mallory? A joke?" Taron growled. "We've seen this."

"Give it a few more seconds," Mallory answered from where he watched some ten feet away from where I sat.

A leap and a half and I could be tearing his throat out. The thought calmed me and I forced my attention back to the television set just as the video switched from the pack's cut to Clover and Paisley coming out of Holly Ulster's cabin.

My body slowed as Paisley reached the barn and started tugging on the door. Clover grabbed a pair of gloves from her Jeep, put them on and started to tug on the other door. Overlaying the video was the quiet sound of the woods and the deep, even breathing of the shooter -- calm as a cat snoozing in a puddle of sunlight.

The first shot snapped through the air. I knew Clover was hit first and so I kept my gaze on her, saw the first shot slam into her shoulder and spin her ninety degrees before she bounced off the barn door and hit the ground.

Then the shooter took aim at Paisley, someone whose sole crime was being Clover's friend, someone who didn't know the pack's secret and had always been an outsider to the shifters gathered around me.

Wood splintered near her as she finally realized that Clover was hit.

My stomach tried to squeeze its way up my throat as Paisley dropped to the ground and rolled to where my baby sister lay bleeding. Pride swelled my chest as she dragged Clover into the safety of the barn. Anger soon followed as she foolishly darted across the aisle, exposing herself to the shooter once more to get the first aid kit from the supply stall.

None of it, not even seeing Clover hit the ground, compared to the moment Paisley wandered dazed from shock into the center of the aisle once more, phone to her ear as she talked to me. I heard as the shooter pulled back the handle on the bolt-action rifle and ejected the spent casing. Another bullet was inserted as the bolt closed.

The tip of the barrel came into view as the shooter angled for a kill shot, the breathing still that of a trained assassin -- calm, even, deadly.

The shot rang out. Paisley jerked, her head snapping back and to the right. The phone slipped from her fingers and then she collapsed to the ground and the screen went black.

A short-lived silence of maybe ten seconds followed what looked like a kill shot, the sadistic shooter editing everything from the last slide of his bolt to Paisley hitting the dirt so that it played in slow motion.

When the whispers started up, they all had the same flow. Had Clover transformed? Had Paisley seen Clover shift? Was the shot that dropped the human actually a kill shot? That was good, right? Holly Ulster was dead. No one outside of the pack would know Paisley went missing in Night Falls. Would anyone at her school even bother to investigate?

My nails erupted and clawed at the chair as Taron pushed harder on my shoulders to keep me in place.

"Don't make me sit on you, cub" he rumbled softly in my ear before pulling entirely away and roaring the crowd back into some semblance of order.

"Enough! Paisley Williams is alive. Her good health is no threat to the pack."

"We need to focus on the shooter," Joshua agreed, his words surprising me.

Usually he was second in line to cause trouble for Taron or me, his cat's whiskers halfway up Mallory's ass, both of them jockeying to claim position as pack leader.

"Paisley was nothing more than collateral damage--"

"I wouldn't be so sure," Landa hissed as she slinked in front of the television, her face purpling. "Why would someone go out to Holly Ulster's and hide in the woods to shoot Clover?"

"There was datura on the bullet," Taron announced, his words greeted with a collective gasp. "And Paisley has nothing to do with last October."

"Plus everyone knows the two of them are thick as thieves," Joshua added.

I stared at him, slowly processing his words and the hard red spots that colored his cheeks as he glared at Landa.

Fuck, the bastard liked Paisley.

That was one revelation I couldn't process.

"Then why wasn't the shot of Clover in slow motion?" Landa snarled as she moved in on Joshua. "Why did the shooter stay until Paisley dropped?"

"But why the poisoned bullet?" Taron asked, his normally booming voice soft with contemplation.

Landa shrugged, her expression suddenly bored except for the color that refused to fade from her cheeks. "Maybe like Joshua said, they're thick as thieves. Shoot Clover or any other shifter up there first because you won't get a second shot."

One over-manicured brow shot up an inch or more as she seemed to reach some brilliant idea. "Or maybe it was a warning about getting cozy with humans. Clover's dumb video threatened to expose shifters to humans, but little Miss Hypocrite is practically all lesbian for one."

Fresh silence blanketed the room, this time lasting a full minute before Mallory broke in with the one question I had most dreaded.

"Tell us, Taron, does Paisley Williams know about the pack?"

"Has to," Landa smirked as she cozied up to Mallory, her breasts pressing against him as she draped an arm around his shoulder. Her gaze whipped around the room until it landed on Finch, one of the Woodsmen who had arrived to search the woods while I was healing my sister.

Landa smiled her bitchiest smile as her eyes hooked mine. "Didn't you say Braeden carried Clover out of the barn barefoot and wrapped in blankets?"

Fuck, fuck, fuck!

Finch said nothing. I glanced over to find him staring at his feet. He shouldn't have been gossiping with the she-cat and he knew it. But he'd probably fed her every last detail he had in the hopes of spending a little time under her skirt or with her mouth around his cock. Maybe her mouth had been around his cock while told her everything.

Landa's conjecture took immediate root in the minds of the shifters around me. The men and their mates stopped thinking about a single shooter and started worrying about exposure to the human world. Hadn't the entire pack agreed a few short months ago that nothing was worse than just that scenario?

Now a human had discovered not only that shifters existed, but also knew all their social connections within the motorcycle club and Night Falls and could betray them all.

"Paisley Williams is not a threat," Taron reminded the room with his booming voice and a snarl. "But I understand how some of you are quick to bring out the pitchforks."

His gaze landed first on Mallory and Landa, the two of them almost cuddling and both wearing a smirk, before it skipped to some of the more hysterical members of the pack.

"Some of you," he continued, his honey gold eyes skipping around to pick out the newest members of the pack, "I barely know at all and most of you don't know the girl, not even by sight."

"I know Holly Ulster," one of the newcomer's announced.

I glanced over my shoulder to see an old bear, the oldest shifter we had among us and probably older than any human in Night Falls, even the geriatric couple that ran the hotel on the other side of Taron's mountain.

"She was a fine dancer when she was younger," the old-timer mused. "And an even finer woman, the kind who respected all nature had to offer. 'magine she raised the girl up right."

I blinked away the threat of tears, told myself they were fueled by nothing more than anger and not the old bear's generosity in speaking up on behalf of Paisley.

"A month," Taron said, retaking control of the discussion. "That's what I am offering everyone."

No more sedate than a two-year-old cub the morning after Halloween, my attention darted around the room, reading the faces of those gathered. Heads shook in confusion as the relevance of the month offered remained out of reach.

Taron elaborated. "During that month, Paisley Williams will not move without a shifter by her side."

I nodded as his plan started to make sense. He wanted a cooling off period, but I wasn't sure he could keep the peace for a full month based on all the fear palpably running through the audience.

"She will be guarded," Taron went on, his tone taking on a slick tone that had me jerking my head back in his direction.

"And she will be courted."

"Wait..." I fumbled with the word before drawing a sharp breath to recharge my lungs. "What are you saying?"

"Paisley will be viewed as less of a threat if her connection to the pack is more than just your baby sister," he answered, a bearish grin pushing up the corners of his mouth. "And I know more than one Woodsman who wouldn't mind having her as a mate."

"I second the president's plan," Joshua jumped in.