Echo Falls (12 page)

He tried to sound professional, but the hurt came through and she couldn’t even manage to feel good about his wish for her safety.

“You and I are going to sit down and talk. You will tell me everything about your past and everything you know about the Hunter. No more excuses. No more withholding information. Don’t run because I
will
track you.”

He gestured at the door and she punched in her number code to get inside. Once the door had clicked shut, he turned and walked away without even a glance toward her.

“Aidan, wait,” she called, but he ignored her and got into the truck.

He drove off and she stood just inside the front doors until she saw his taillights disappear. She turned and looked at the stairs, knowing just being inside the building gave her no more safety than being outside. Her heart raced at the thought of Liam standing outside her door, but he would have more playing to do before he’d show up. She took a deep breath and went upstairs.

She got to the door to her floor and sighed. What had she thought before? ‘This is my life.’ That hadn’t changed in the last five minutes, now had it? Maybe if they had that talk tonight and she just explained that she wanted to protect him. She pulled out her phone, opened the door to her floor and began to dial Aidan’s number.

Just before she pressed the call button, she spotted something on the floor in front of her door.

Liam.

She deleted the number and put her phone back in her bag.

She approached the ‘gift’ slowly, not quite sure what it was. She doubted he’d left her a trap, but with Liam she couldn’t be sure. Instead of a rose, he’d left her a… She stared down at it for a few moments before putting down her bags and picking it up. He’d left her a quiver – a short one to hold crossbow bolts – with a single silver bolt inside. A card had been attached to it with three simple words on the front:

Guess who’s next?

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Phoebe stared as the first rays of sunshine streamed into her apartment. In the back of her mind, she noted that she hadn’t slept all night – and she didn’t care. She lay curled up on her bed on top of the covers, sill in the dress she’d worn yesterday.

Yesterday. That meant she only had a matter of hours before she would have to face Liam.

On the front of the card he’d left for her had been those three words, three words that kicked her in the gut:
Guess who’s next?

The warning had been clear enough. Aidan would be the next to die if she didn’t do what he wanted. And he wanted to meet. On the back of the card she’d found a date, time and café name. Soon, she’d be facing the man she’d run away from so hard and so fast only to be trapped so easily by him when she’d finally stood up for herself.

Her mind hadn’t been playing tricks on her at the wedding; he had been standing there watching her, possibly for hours. She’d put Aidan in danger by asking him to be her date. She tried to remember all the little touches and glances they had exchanged that day, each one making it even clearer that they had feelings for each other. Feelings Liam would use.

She didn’t know if he had been watching them in the truck as well, but her stomach roiled at the thought. If he had, she had firmly sealed Aidan’s fate.

She would just have to change it.

The wolf and human came together in their fierce and unwavering protectiveness of him. The feeling nearly took her breath away. The thought of him being hurt or at the mercy of Liam the assassin, the murderer, the hunter of werewolves… She pursed her lips, violent thoughts filling her mind.

She’d been wrong to relax and horribly wrong to think she could establish a life here. All her decisions about taking charge had come to be tested much sooner than she’d thought they would. So much for things being on her terms.

The only thing she could take comfort in was the fact that Aidan was still safe, at least for the time being. Knowing Liam, he wanted to play with her and would take his time doing so. He liked to play and he liked to talk. He could be an efficient killer, but when things were personal…

She squeezed her eyes shut. She needed to do something. To get ready. To think. But she couldn’t make herself move. Every time she tried, the memories of the night her life had turned upside down battled what little confidence she’d mustered.

“I’m home!” she called, holding the cabin door open with her hip and moving to get the bags full of groceries in her arms through.

She brought the bags to the kitchen where Liam sat looking at a manila folder on the table. When she moved around the table to hug and kiss him, he stopped her with one hand, his palm stopping just short of touching her chest. She backed off, knowing that he occasionally had his moods. She hoped the special dinner she’d planned would warm him up.

She loved him despite his bad moods and she loved his quiet ways of showing his affection for her. They always had amazing conversations in which he always expressed high hopes for his life and for humanity. He always had big ideas for improving so many things.

Hopefully tonight they would have one of those amazing conversations when she revealed her biggest secret to him. When he would finally know why, on one night about every four weeks, she would more or less disappear. She’d bought all his favorites, right down to the garlic bread for an entrée and Shiraz to go with the meal. The meal and dessert came from the nearest Italian restaurant she could find, but the thought would still count.

“I have a surprise for you,” she said cheerfully, pulling the food from the bags.

“More?”

She looked at him. “Sorry?”

“You cannot surprise me any more than you already have.”

She turned and faced him, a tightness in her stomach telling her that this went beyond one of his usual brooding nights. “I’m not sure what you mean.”

“I am disappointed in you,” he said, pushing the folder toward her. “And in myself for not knowing sooner.”

“Disappointed?” She sat down across from him and began squeezing the tip of her thumb. “What do you mean?”

He nodded toward the folder and she took it, still confused. Frowning, she opened it.

“Oh no…”

Photos. So many photos and all of them of her in various stages of transforming into a wolf. During the last full moon, she guessed. No doubt she’d been photographed by a professional, as the photos had been taken with a very good camera and caught her face before transformation.

She smiled, hiding her shaking hands below the table. “This is the funniest timing.” She nodded at the food she’d bought. “I was going to make you a special meal. I got all your favorite things. Then, over dinner, I was going to tell you. Tonight.”

He stood up and walked over to her.

“I was,” she said. “Check the bags. All your favorites. I know it seems like a strange coincidence, but it’s true.”

“I believe you,” he said, placing his hand on her bare shoulder.

Her skin underneath his hand began to itch and burn. Crying out, she rushed over to the sink and washed off whatever he’d put on it.

“Silver powder,” he said, showing her his slightly sparkling hand. “As a powder on the skin of a werewolf in human form, it is an irritant. It will cause an allergic reaction of sorts if the amount of contact is small. More and it can become a flu virus, breaking down cells and causing illness.”

“Liam, you don’t need to protect yourself against me. I won’t hurt you.”

He chuckled. “I am not afraid of you. I pity you.”

She rubbed her shoulder, watching him slowly turn from the man she loved into a stranger who regarded her with disgust. She’d expected disbelief and some fear, but not this. It was almost as if…

“You know about werewolves.” She reached out to him. “Then you know that we’re not monsters. We don’t kill people. We can have normal lives.”

He grabbed her wrist and forced it down. “I know about werewolves because I hunt werewolves.”

Her chest tightened and her breath began to come in gasps. As he looked into her eyes, his eyes devoid of any of the love she thought she’d seen there in the past, he twisted her wrist and sent even more pain up her arm.

She whimpered, her wolf hoping that submitting to the dominant force would make him stop hurting her. Instead, the whimper only encouraged him. He shoved his other hand up under the bottom of her tank top, sending the itching and burning across her stomach.

She looked to the door. If she could get out, she could run to the cabin just down the road where her brother lived. They had been ‘infected’ by werewolves on the same night, and they’d been living in the cabins since.

Seeing her distraction, Liam pulled violently on her arm. As she flew forward, she knocked the bottle of wine to the floor, shattering it. She hit the floor soon after, groaning. When she started to call out, he rubbed more silver powder on her back. She squirmed and whined, her back searing.

“Do not think about escaping. It makes me angry.”

“I love you,” she sobbed. “Why are you doing this to me?”

“Because you are a disgusting abomination.” He put his foot on her back when she tried to get up, forcing her back to the floor. “What you are is not right, Phoebe. Not clean. You are no longer human and do not belong in this world. I will help you find release from what you are.”

“I was bitten! It’s not my fault.”

“That is where you are wrong.” He knelt down next to her, rubbing his hands together as if he were washing them. Then he pushed her onto her back. “It became your fault when you did not end your life after infection.”

His words stilled her despite the pain. Guilty? For living? For not killing herself?

“David!” she screamed.

That call for help earned her a stinging slap across her face.

“You and your kind do not belong here, and so help me, you
will
be eradicated.”

“But I didn’t do anything!”

He slapped her again and then straddled her hips, bending so his hot breath hit her face. She turned her face away, but he grabbed it and forced her to look at him. He showed her a thick vial full of what could only be more silver powder, and she began to sob.

“Beg,” he said. “Beg to be pure again.”

“Please!” she’d cried. “Please. I can be better. I can be pure. I don’t want to be a werewolf. I swear I don’t!”

He grasped her hair and pulled her face closer to his. “Beg for my love.”

“Please,” she said between sobs. “I love you.”

He smiled. “You will find peace, Phoebe. I will be the one to give it to you. You will not have to live as an abomination anymore.”

He ripped her shirt open and then began to pour silver powder over her while she screamed.

Suddenly the front door burst open and her brother David ran in. Liam had made the mistake of underestimating the hearing of a werewolf, even in human form, and lowered his arm in surprise.

That was all Phoebe needed. She grabbed his wrist and bit down as hard as she could. He groaned, drawing something silver from his waist with his free hand while trying to shake her off.

David slammed into him, knocking him off her. Liam had dropped his weapon – a silver crossbow bolt – and she rolled out of the way. David and Liam fought on the floor, a chaotic flurry of punches, kicks and groans. She slid back to sit against the wall, looking around for a weapon.

Liam kicked David off him, sending David into the table. David stood and brushed himself off, the look on his face telling her he was going to turn into a wolf. He stood barefoot and shirtless. Liam had already recovered, pulling something from inside his jacket.

David needed more time.

She jumped on Liam from behind and pulled his hair. He howled as she scratched and bit wherever she could. Grabbing a lock of her hair, he pulled until her grip on him loosened. Then he shoved her away.

“Run!” David yelled, his voice already muddled and deeper with the change.

Liam sneered. “A whole family of filth!”

Phoebe froze, unsure. She couldn’t just leave David.

So quickly that she barely managed to move, Liam pulled out another bolt and threw it at her. It glanced her side but blood still quickly welled from the wound.

“Run!”

Phoebe cried.

She had run. She’d obeyed her brother and changed as she’d run for her life into the woods. Completing her transformation gave her more energy and lessened the pain of her wounds, but she still ran to the nearest stream and jumped in, attempting to free herself of the last remains of silver powder.

The urge to run further welled up in her, but that was the human fear. David, her brother, was the only pack she’d ever known, and she wouldn’t abandon him to Liam.

She’d never been a very brave person so she counted on that, assuming that Liam would not expect her to go back to the cabin. But by the time she got there, Liam had already gone.

David’s still warm body had been left – perhaps for her to find – on the floor of the lounge, half on the overturned couch. He’d reverted to his naked human form, but blood still covered much of his skin. The wolf knew immediately that he no longer lived. Her human mind began to work and caught the shine of the silver bolt in his chest.

The wolf almost began to howl in mourning before the human took over and reverted back to her human form. As a human, she dug her fingernails into her palms and tried to bite back the sobs. She couldn’t let herself mourn. She had to survive. David had died so she would survive.

She’d gathered what clothes and food she could carry and then what her brother had in his cabin. With what she had and David’s secret stash of emergency money, she’d taken his car and set off. She stopped at any ATM she could find to drain her savings for more cash as she drove.

For months she’d run from town to town, staying in motels and always leaving when she got the least feeling that Liam had gotten near. Somehow, he always did. Echo Falls had been her paradise in some way she couldn’t quite put her finger on, and she’d stayed. She hadn’t sensed him and stupidly began to believe she never would.

Of course he’d found her again. It had only been a matter of time.

Her phone rang, breaking her out of her thoughts. A couple more hours had passed. She had to get ready. If she could get herself to move.

Her wolf didn’t hold grudges for those months. Her wolf forgave her for denying her for so long. And now, the wolf comforted her. The wolf gave her the strength to sit up, wipe the tears from her face and check her phone.

Aidan had called. The memories of last night’s conversation left an empty feeling in her chest now tinged with fear for his life. She pressed her phone to her chest and sighed.

For now, she would have to say goodbye.

She looked at the time on her phone. She had just enough time to shower, dress, store knives where she could and try to think up some sort of plan before meeting Liam.

Great.