Otherworldly Bad Boys: Three Complete Novels (18 page)

“Should I go after her?” asked Dana.

“We follow procedure,” said Avery, shaking his head. “Secure victims first, then go after the rogue.”

Dana drew in a deep breath, nodding. She smelled the blood again.

This time it was intoxicating, a tempting bouquet.

Shift for me, Dana.

Cursing under her breath, she pulled back her sense of smell, closing off any avenue for the wolf to come through. Her hand went to the skin on her stomach. She traced the puckered outline of her scar. She’d have to trust Avery’s nose to tell her what she needed to know. She couldn’t trust herself not to screw things up, especially considering what had happened with Hollis.

Avery was going down the dark hallway of the house, and she followed him.

The first door they came to was open. They looked inside to see a bathroom with a claw-foot tub. The linoleum was white, but it reflected back the dark blue early morning sky. Even without wolf senses, Dana could smell the soap smells from the room, along with an undercurrent of mold. She’d bet that the Shirleys weren’t big on scrubbing.

Avery went inside, shoved aside the shower curtain. But behind it, the tub was empty. Avery backed out, continued up the hallway.

The next door was closed. Avery knocked.

No answer.

He pushed the door open.

She smelled it right away.

Blood.

Involuntarily, the wolf surged in her, scratching and whining at her spine, begging to be let out.

Dana gritted her teeth. She found the light switch inside the door and flicked it on.

It was a bedroom. There was the same brown carpet in here. Two sets of mismatched dressers, an open closet. Clothes spilled out it, onto the floor. A few were hung up, but most looked as if they’d been shoved inside.

There was a vanity against one wall, with a large mirror. In front of it, clustered lipsticks and perfumes stood tall like little soldiers. They were reflected back in the mirror, which had a large smear of red across it.

Blood.

He was on the bed.

Mrs. Shirley’s husband. He lay face up, his head dangling over the edge of the bed, his arms above his head.

His face was frozen in a startled expression. He was a good-looking man, dark blonde hair, blue eyes. He had a strong chin. Dana thought it might even be described as chiseled.

He was wearing a white undershirt and a pair of black boxer briefs.

The shirt had been torn down the center. The ragged edges were sopped in blood, so concentrated that it wasn’t even red anymore but rather a deep black.

The man’s skin was ragged and torn, just like his shirt.

He’d been ripped into, right in the middle of his chest. His ribs were exposed. One was broken and stood straight up.

His intestines were spilling out of the gaping wet hole that was his stomach.

He was very dead.

Dana’s nostrils flared. The wolf inside her whined, pressing its snout against the base of Dana’s neck.

She stumbled out of the room.

“Gray?”

Her voice was hoarse. “Where’s the baby?”

“What?”

“There were toys in the living room. Oh, God, Brooks, you don’t think...”

She rushed down the hallway, throwing open the next door she came to.

It opened onto a room full of stacked boxes. There was a path through them to a desk with a computer on it, but on the other side of the room. The room was like a maze. It was clear they hadn’t quite unpacked yet.

She shut that door and turned to the only one that was left.

The first thing she saw was a crib, white bars, a mobile over it. Jungle animals. Dana could make out the long neck of the giraffe.

The second thing she saw was the red streak of blood across the bars of the crib.

Then she smelled...

Young blood. Sweet blood. Tasty—

“Shut up!” Dana screamed. She slammed the door closed. She would not let the death of this little one excite her. No. It was a baby for Christ’s sake, only a cub, too tiny to take care of itself, and eating something like that was an abomination, too horrible to consider.

Cub?
The wolf suddenly settled, curling up inside her as if it had never stirred.

“Gray?” said Avery, appearing in the hallway. “You have confirmation of death?”

She shook her head, tears springing to her eyes. “I can’t look.”

Avery took a deep breath and threw the door open again. He turned on the light.

And was greeted by a wail.

Dana’s stomach knotted in relief. Alive.

She darted into the room. Besides the smear of blood on the crib, the baby was completely fine. Except for the fact he was screaming his lungs out, that was.

* * *

Coraline Shirley clutched her baby and rocked both of them as they sat on one of the couches in her living room. Her eyes and nose were red. She was still in shock.

“I knew this was going to happen,” she said. “I knew it would. I just knew it.”

Dana stood in the doorway to the living room, unsure of what to do. Avery was outside, making calls. He needed to call the police and notify the Sullivan Foundation.

They had found Coraline outside the house in the woods. She’d still been in wolf form, but she’d shifted back at the sight of them. She’d been horrified ever since. Speechless for the most part, only speaking up to beg to hold her son.

Dana wanted to ask Coraline questions, but she knew the woman wasn’t ready. She’d just killed her own husband, the father of her child, and it was a miracle that she hadn’t killed the baby as well. Dana had seen children killed in werewolf attacks. Not often, and never one as young as this baby, but it happened. Werewolves had no sense of what they were doing. They were unfeeling monsters who killed everything in their paths.

But somehow Coraline had gone into the baby’s room, smeared her husband’s blood on the crib, and then left the little guy unharmed.

How had she managed that?

Coraline continued to rock. “I told him something was wrong, and he said I was being paranoid. He said... And now he’s...” She pressed her face against the cheek of her baby.

Dana took a few steps closer to Coraline. “Wrong? Something was wrong?”

Coraline jumped, turning to look at Dana, as if she hadn’t realized the tracker was there.

“Sorry,” said Dana.

Coraline gazed at her warily, then began to rock again. “I told him this would happen. He wouldn’t listen.”

“Who did you tell?” said Dana.

“Keith.”

“Is Keith your husband?”

“
Was
.” Coraline’s expression was fierce. “Was my husband. He’s gone now.”

Right. Dana wished there was some way to comfort this woman. “I’m so sorry.”

Coraline squeezed her eyes closed. She let out a heartbreaking sob. “He wouldn’t listen. But I knew. Oh, I knew. I
knew
. But in the end, it didn’t matter.”

Dana sat down next to Coraline, placed her hand on the woman’s shoulder. “What did you know?” she asked gently.

Coraline shied away from her touch.

Dana backed off. “Sorry,” she said again.

“It was nine... ten months ago. Silas was just born, only a few months old,” said Coraline.

“Did something happen?”

“I think I shifted,” said Coraline. “It was a full moon. I was outside the house. We have garbage that we burn out there. You have to walk the bags up over the hill, and I was taking the garbage up to the spot, and I thought... There might have been another wolf, or maybe not. Maybe it was only me. But I think I shifted.”

“Nine or ten months ago, you think you saw another wolf, and that you shifted?”

Coraline nodded. “Yes, that’s what I think. When I got back, Keith said, ‘Where you been for so long?’ and then I was sure that something strange had happened, that I’d been gone longer than I was supposed to be.”

“Go on,” said Dana.

“You have to understand, I only ever shifted the one time, at the SF, right after I got bit. I always kept it down, like they taught me.”

“I do understand,” said Dana.

“Oh, right. You’re wolves too. The people who work for the SF, they’re all wolves. Sometimes, I don’t remember that.” Coraline began to rock again. “I knew something was wrong after that.”

“What kind of something?”

“I couldn’t stop thinking about being a werewolf,” said Coraline. “I would think about it all the time, think about shifting, think about claws and teeth and fur. And I started feeling it sometimes. Like an itch. An itch on the back of my neck. You ever felt anything like that?”

Dana nodded slowly. It was odd how she’d been feeling something very similar to that while searching this house.

“I told Keith, I said, something’s going to happen. I’m going to shift one of these days, and I’m going to kill you all.” She rocked faster. “I said he should lock me up. He laughed at me. He said I was being crazy. He said...” She looked up at Dana. “Keith was a wolf, too, you know. He thought I was crazy because he never felt anything like what I felt.”

“I don’t think you’re crazy.”

“I was worried, you know. They say it’s not a great idea for werewolves to have kids. And it’s usually pretty difficult to conceive, you know? But me and Keith, we were pregnant so fast. Maybe that’s why it was. Maybe there’s something wrong with me. Something abnormal. But Keith said I was fine. He said it was all in my head. But I knew I was gonna do it at some point. I could feel it. I just knew it...” Fresh tears were flowing over her cheeks.

Tentatively, Dana put a comforting arm around Coraline, who stiffened at first, but then relaxed, burying her face in Dana’s shoulder, sobs wracking her body. Dana patted the girl’s arm, making soothing noises.

* * *

“Absolutely not,” said Ursula, leaning against her desk in the tracker office. “If we allow you to see him now, after we told him otherwise, then we’re only reinforcing his behavior. I’m not authorizing your seeing Cole Randall. Not today.”

Dana was sitting in a chair across from Ursula’s desk. She leaned forward. “But that’s clearly why he’s doing this. He wants to see me. He’s going to keep killing people unless I go to him.”

Avery snorted beside her. “King, I keep trying to tell her that there’s no way Randall can be doing this. He’s locked up here.”

“No,” said Ursula. “Gray is right.”

“I am?” said Dana.

“Not about seeing Randall. You’re not going to see him,” said Ursula. “However, he does seem to be behind this in some way.”

“That’s impossible, though,” said Avery. “I mean, he can’t force other wolves to go rogue.”

“What if he can?” said Dana. “He seems to have a certain kind of charisma—”

“Maybe to you, Gray,” said Avery. “But objectively, he’s just kind of stringy and pathetic.”

Dana wrinkled her eyebrows. “Stringy?”

“He’s built like a nerd. That’s all I’m saying. He’s not exactly football-player material.”

“I don’t think he’s built like a nerd,” said Dan.

“Well, you wouldn’t, now, would you?”

Ursula raised her eyebrows. “Are you two done?”

Dana lowered her head. “Yes.”

Avery stifled a snicker.

“Good,” said Ursula. “Randall’s behind this somehow, and the only realistic way he could be behind it is if he’s communicating with these wolves.”

“Communicating?” said Avery.

“He does get letters, and he has access to the computer,” said Dana.

“The first thing we have to do is move those rogues we brought in away from Randall. I’m putting in orders to have them transferred off the maximum security floor. I don’t want them close to him. The second thing is to revoke his email privileges,” said Ursula. “And he doesn’t get to send or receive mail either. We don’t want him communicating with anyone.”

“Okay,” said Avery. “That makes sense.”

“I don’t know,” said Dana. “The wolves we just brought in don’t seem like they were in communication with Cole. They’re both horrified by what they did. They didn’t do it on purpose.”

“What does being horrified have to do with anything?” said Avery.

“Well,” said Dana, “if they were in touch with Cole, then they’d be shifting on his say-so. They’d know they were doing it. But these guys had no idea they were going to shift.”

“You can’t know that,” said Ursula. “They could be putting on an act.”

“There’s also the fact that they shifted without a full moon,” said Dana.

“Yes,” said Ursula. “Rare but possible.” She pointed at the three of them. “We’d all be able to do it, if push came to shove. Our training allows us that kind of control.”

“Cole made me shift when he had me trapped in the basement,” said Dana. “It wasn’t a full moon then.”

Ursula bit her lip. Her voice was gentle. “Gray, I think that you made yourself shift, but you did it because he ordered you to.”