Half Truths (A Helheim Wolf Pack Tale) (14 page)

Silence
stretched out between them until Larissa thought the line had dropped. ‘Hello?’
she asked, looking at the screen briefly before putting it back to her ear.

Vaile cleared
his throat. ‘Yeah, I’m here. It must have dropped out for a second. I need
you,’ he replied.

Larissa’s heart
pounded harder. ‘You need me?’ she repeated, memories from that dream coming
back to her quickly, tauntingly.

‘Yeah,’ he
growled. ‘I need you to be at “The Imp and Impaler” ASAP. There’s been another
murder.’

Oh. That cleared
her head. ‘The same MO as before?’

‘Not sure. I
haven’t seen the body yet. Meet you there in twenty.’ He hung up without
waiting for her response. She dropped her phone onto the pile of clothes next
to the tub and got out.  Mechanically, she dressed; putting on a fresh uniform
and redoing her hair. Before she left, she fed Oscar, unsure when she’d finally
make it back to her apartment for some much needed sleep.

Vaile snapped his phone shut and
cursed loudly. Although he tried to scrub the idea away, his mind kept slipping
back to Grey.

Naked.

And in the bath
when she answered her phone.

He kicked his
small rubbish bin, denting the side before it careened into the wall, exploding
in a mass of crumpled up paper.

‘Vaile?’ His
head jerked up. Antain was standing just inside his partly opened door, arms
folded across his broad chest. The dark circles under his eyes instantly made
him feel like an asshole for not paying attention to what was happening at
home. ‘Is everything okay?’ his alpha asked.

Not by a
fucking long shot
. ‘Yeah,’ he replied, beginning to pace across the rug in
the middle of the room. ‘You haven’t been sleeping,’ he rumbled before Antain
could say anything else. His alpha’s eyes remained solid brown when he looked
up into them.

‘I don’t need to
sleep. I need to get my Eaton back.’ He sighed, stepping into Vaile’s room and
closing the door behind him.

‘I want to help
you find her,’ he pressed.

Antain sighed
again, rubbing the back of his head roughly. ‘Rhett and Sabel have it under
control. Your police work is important to you. I’m trying to keep everything as
normal as possible. Colton still attends classes, and you should still go to
work.’

Vaile ground his
teeth. ‘I know that, but
I
should be the one taking care of things for
you. I’m your beta for Christ’s sake.’

Antain perched
himself on Vaile’s desk, folding his arms across his chest. ‘I know you feel
like you should be doing more, but right now we need information. Sabel will
look after the recon, and when we come to planning and execution, you’ll be
there. Let Sabel do the grunt work for once.’

Vaile began
pacing again. ‘I just feel so lost,’ he muttered under his breath.

‘Are you talking
about Eaton, or the case you’re working on?’ Antain asked, his voice smooth and
persuasive. When he didn’t answer, Antain added, ‘Or is it about the human
female who smells like roses?’

Vaile stopped,
his head swivelling in the direction of his alpha. A fierce surge of
protectiveness welled in his chest. ‘How do you know about her?’ he asked in a
hard voice. Antain raised an eyebrow at him, challenging him to talk to him
like that again. Vaile dropped his eyes, and began pacing again.

‘I can smell her
on you when you come home. Is she the human you’re working with? Are you
interested in her?’

‘I’m not
interested in her,’ Vaile growled, upping the pacing.

‘Are you sure?
Is that why lust is rolling off your body right now? You want to talk about
it?’

‘No,’ he growled
again. ‘There’s nothing to talk about. She’s human. I don’t touch humans.’

‘There’s no
shame in wanting a human female, Vaile. I had my fair share of human lovers
before I met Eaton. A man—wolf or human—’ he smiled, ‘still has needs. Is she
willing?’

He stopped in
front of his alpha, knowing his eyes were rolling colours too quickly. ‘It
doesn’t matter. Nothing will ever happen between us.’

‘What’s her
name?’

‘Grey.’

Antain laughed.
‘What’s her first name, Vaile?’

‘It’s Larissa,’
he replied, noticing how his usually rough tone didn’t affect his voice that
time.

‘And do you find
Larissa attractive?’ Antain pressed.

Vaile sank down
onto his bed, resting his elbows on his knees and cradling his forehead in his
hands. ‘It doesn’t matter if I do or not.’

‘I didn’t ask if
it mattered or not. I asked if you found her attractive. You—Vaile—do you find
Larissa attractive?’

Vaile bit back
the curse sitting on his tongue. ‘Yeah. I do. But I shouldn’t.’

‘Who says?’
Antain asked, cocking one brow at him.

‘I say!’ he
roared, standing up when a wave of his anger burned his blood. He sat back down
again after a moment, muttering ‘Sorry,’ under his breath.

Antain waved his
apology away. ‘I know that before you came to me Vaile, there was a female wolf
you were hoping to start a family with. What happened to her?’

He swallowed
thickly. He hadn’t thought about Sophia in nearly one hundred and fifty years,
and the pain of losing her lanced through his chest again. Sophia had been the
wolf he’d given his heart to. She had honey-blonde hair and green eyes that
could see down into his soul. She was the softness that smoothed his rough
edges. She was the other half of him.

‘Vaile?’ Antain
asked again. ‘What happened to her?’

Vaile cleared
his throat, hoping the words wouldn’t get stuck on the way out. He hadn’t
spoken about it to anyone since it had happened.

‘We had shifted
to go for a run. We were no more than a mile away from the house when a group
of humans came across us. I’d smelled them, but Sophia was right on top of them
before I could warn her. They put a slug through her heart, and blew half her
head off with the second shot. I hid in the scrub until they left, but it was
too late for Sophia. She was dead. I promised myself then that I wouldn’t have
anything to do with humans ever again.’

‘But that
changed when you joined the police,’ Antain murmured, vocalising exactly what
Vaile was thinking.

Vaile exhaled
noisily. ‘Yeah. It did.’

‘So, maybe, your
feelings have changed about humans?’

Vaile started
shaking his head, but paused. His feelings had changed, but when the hell had
that happened? He sighed loudly. ‘Times have changed, I guess.’

‘So, you could
pursue Larissa if you really wanted to.’

‘I’ll only ever
love one woman, and she was taken from me one hundred and fifty years ago. They
took my heart out that day,’ he ground out.

‘Surely it’s
healed by now. I think you’re punishing yourself for letting down Sophia.
You’re a good wolf, Vaile. You deserve to be happy. I think if you want
Larissa, you should tell her. Does she also want you?’

Vaile looked
away; her words coming back into his head with a roar. ‘I think so.’

‘So what are you
waiting for?’

‘She’s my
partner. I couldn’t do anything while I’m working with her.’ He suddenly
remembered where he was supposed to be. ‘I have to go,’ he said, plucking his
holster from the back of his office chair. ‘There was another murder.’

Antain frowned.
‘Another?’

‘Yeah. Thanks
for the talk,’ he grunted, shrugging into the leather harness and stalking down
the hallway.

Vaile pulled into the car park of
“The Imp and Impaler” and swore harshly under his breath. He didn’t want to be
back here. This would make it the second murder scene in less than twenty-four
hours, and that was always fucking bad. Glancing around the parking lot, he
looked for Grey’s car, but there was no sign of it. Just then, headlights swung
into the lot. He got out of his car, stepping directly into a puddle of slush.
Cursing under his breath, he shook off his shoe just as the scent of roses
entangled his senses.

He swung around
to face Grey. He wanted to say something about how nice she looked, how she
took his breath away whenever he saw her. But he didn’t say any of those
things. ‘Let’s get this over with,’ he said, stalking away from her and towards
the back door of the club.

The owner of the
club met them just inside the door. He was a small man with brown eyes sitting
in sunken sockets. His sallow skin screamed of poor health, but the Armani suit
he wore said he didn’t give a fuck as long as he had money.

‘Detective
Wolfe, I’d like to say it’s nice to see you again, but it’s not,’ he said with
an amused smile twisting his lips.

‘Suleman,’ Vaile
replied in a cool, crawling voice. ‘Has the club been closed?’

Suleman rubbed
his jaw. ‘Yeah, one of the uniformed cops did it when they arrived about ten
minutes ago. You do know that I’m losing a fuckload of money every time that I
do though.’

‘Murder has a
way of doing that,’ he replied darkly, looking down the partially illuminated
hallways branching out in front of him. One led to Suleman’s offices and the
staff locker room. The other led to the club. Vaile began walking down the
hallway that led to the club, but was stopped by Suleman.

‘The body is
this way, Detective.’

Vaile arched a
brow, but followed when Suleman led the way towards his office. ‘It’s one of
our own this time—a bartender. I found him in the men’s locker rooms after he
didn’t come back from his break. I was about to tear him a new asshole when I
walked in there, but stopped when I saw this,’ he paused to push open the heavy
black door.

The guy was
lying on the floor of the black-tiled room, his eyes unstaring at the ceiling.
He was naked, except for a pair of socks. Grey handed Vaile a pair of latex
gloves which he slid on before crouching down at the Vic’s head. His throat had
been slashed again—his chest red with blood—but not enough blood had pooled on
the floor which indicated that it had been collected in some way. There were
furrows in his skin, and Vaile would have bet his canines he knew what the
symbol was.

The CSI crew
were busy collecting samples and possible evidence all around him. He turned to
one of them. ‘Found anything suspicious yet?’ The guy shook his head and went
back to his work.

‘What’s his
name?’ he asked Suleman without looking up.

‘Luke Baker, but
his Goth name was Raven.’

‘Raven?’ Vaile
asked, trying to keep the mocking tone out of his voice. He glanced over at
Grey who only shrugged her svelte shoulders at him. ‘So, tell me again exactly
what happened.’

‘Raven had his
break from nine to nine-forty-five, but when he didn’t return I went looking
for him. The other bartender said that he’d been talking to a woman before his
break and they’d left together, but they went out the front door even though
I’ve told all my employees a thousand times before never to use the front
door!’

‘Do you have a
description of the woman?’

Suleman nodded,
sticking his head out the door, yelling, ‘Pitbull! Get back here.’

Vaile shook his
head, keeping his comment to himself. Standing up and peeling the latex from
his hands, he dumped them into the biohazard bin and walked out into the
hallway. Grey followed closely behind, stripping her gloves off and pulling out
her notepad and a pencil. Vaile glanced up when the sound of heavy footfalls
approached from around the blind corner. The guy who appeared had a shaved head
and a goatee. He was too thin and smelled of tobacco and weed.

‘Pitbull?’ Vaile
asked.

‘You can call me
Mike,’ he replied, flashing a tongue ring as he spoke.

‘What did the
woman look like?’ he asked in a cold voice, getting straight down to business.

Mike shuffled
nervously from foot to foot, his blue eyes shifting nervously between Grey and
him. Vaile swallowed the growl that threatened to trickle from his throat.
‘S-She was pretty tall for a woman,’ he stammered.

‘How tall?’
Vaile snapped. ‘As tall as me, or as tall as you?’

Mike’s eyes
shifted back to Grey. ‘A few inches taller than her,’ he replied, gesturing
towards his partner with his chin. Vaile snapped. His wolf was beyond pissed
off.

‘She has a
name,’ he ground out, finding his control slipping with each breath that he
took.

Mike took a step
backwards, his hands out in front of him. Vaile’s wolf was slowly winning
control. ‘I-I-I’m sorry, man. Look, I’ll tell you whatever you need to know.
Just ask me.’

Grey placed her
hand on Vaile’s arm, shocking his wolf out of its anger. He glanced down at
her. Grey chewed her lower lip then let her hand drop. ‘Fine,’ he snapped. ‘She
was as tall as my partner. What else?’

‘She had dark
skin like she was African or something. Her hair was done in cornrows, and she
was really muscular.’

Vaile could see
Grey taking notes furiously from the corner of his eyes. ‘Eye colour?’

‘It changed. It
was black, but then it changed to gold.’

‘Her eyes
changed colour?’

‘Yeah. I haven’t
seen anyone with the new TrickedOut lenses yet.’ This time the kid managed a
grin which was soon wiped away with one hard glare from Vaile.

‘TrickedOut
lenses?’

‘Yeah. They’re
those coloured contacts that change colours depending on the light. You can buy
them online for like five hundred bucks or something.’

‘I’ve never
heard of them before.’

‘My cousin has a
pair,’ Grey said softly without looking up from her notepad. Vaile grunted then
looked up at Mike. Forcing a smile onto his face, Vaile said ‘Thanks.’ The kid
took an unsteady step back from him. Vaile could hear Mike’s heart pounding
twice as hard as it had a minute before, the smell of fear and sweat breaking
out on his body.