Silver (16 page)

The room smelled like every two- or three-star hotel room Andrew had stayed in across the country. Cleaning products couldn’t erase the ground-in scent of hundreds of humans, but the layered effect made it easier to bear, because no individual scent stood out.

“Can I wash—?” Silver said once he’d dead-bolted the door behind them. He nodded to the open bathroom door on his way past in invitation, but after a moment remembered she would probably need help. He dropped his shoulder bag on the nearer bed and returned to the bathroom.

When he arrived she was already standing in the shower, turning the taps. Her clothes got soaked in the first rush of water. The movements seemed habitual, like her hand knew the motions without her mind quite directing it.

She raised her eyebrows at him, lips quirking in something that looked like amusement, and then waited. Andrew removed himself and closed the door behind him.

The running water rumbling in the pipes made a soothing background as Andrew dumped out his bag on the bed and sorted through. He was nearly out of clean clothes, but he didn’t feel like doing anything about that at the moment. His stomach grumbled, and he stopped to search for any local restaurant information compiled by the hotel so he could order pizza.

Someone turned on the TV in the next room and an evening news anchor’s strident tones intruded. Andrew couldn’t even really blame thin walls or the human’s choice of volume, since you couldn’t do much about werewolf ears other than get a house well buffered by land. That was the worst thing about hotels.

The rumble of water ceased soon after he finished ordering. Andrew cocked his head, listening to the noises of her puttering around rather than turning on his own TV. He should check her arm once she was done.

She peeked around the bathroom doorframe at length, towel held over her chest with her good hand. Her hair lay flatter when wet and the moisture darkening the color made it look more normal. Without anything to tuck it into, her bad arm looked even more pathetic, dangling lifeless by her side. She’d managed to soak the bandage thoroughly in the water.

“C’mere,” Andrew directed, motioning for her to come closer so he could deal with the wound. Now she wasn’t half hidden by the doorjamb, the towel was awfully short, part of Andrew’s brain informed him. It revealed a lot of leg.

And curves. She was still scrawny, but the towel swelled slightly at chest and hip. He swallowed, and reminded himself that he was interested only in checking her arm.

Her scent changed when he touched her and it was hard not to respond to the femaleness of it by drawing his fingers more slowly than necessary along her undamaged skin. Soaked, the bandages peeled away easily, and the knife scores underneath looked healthier. They were still scabbed over and red, but it was a healing red rather than the angry red of a fresh or infected wound.

“How’s the pain?” he asked, probing lightly with his fingertips along her arm. Silver sucked in a breath once when he got too close to a scar’s edge, but otherwise shook her head.

“Can you do anything with it?” Andrew switched his grip so he could curl up her fingers with his other hand, repeating the motion and then letting them flop back several times.

“I—” Silver hesitated on the edge of an immediate denial. “I think maybe—”

Her middle and ring finger twitched. It was slight enough that Andrew wondered if he’d shaken her hand by moving himself. She gasped and they twitched again.

Silver let out a ragged breath, holding either tears or laughter just before the threshold of sound, and then threw her good arm around his neck. “I felt that!”

Andrew almost couldn’t move, though his arm came up and fitted around her waist without conscious thought. Her scent was all around him, filling every breath.

She shivered, the crackling tension that had sprung up between them finding form in the movement. The towel had been tucked, but it was coming free. Andrew was about one more shiver from getting an eyeful as he looked down between them. Her breath was hot against the side of his neck. They were frozen that way for who knows how long—breathing, feeling, towel clinging desperately to friction.

Silver’s next breath came husky, and she nipped at his neck. Andrew shoved her away, suddenly sure that if he didn’t stop this now, his body would take over entirely. He retreated behind the closest bed instead.

“Oh,” Silver said, flushing. Her towel puddled on the floor and she snatched it up. Wrapping it again one-handed was a long and awkward process. Her scent muddied to embarrassment and anxiety.

Andrew knew he should say something, but the silence stretched. What was he supposed to say, though? He wanted it as badly as she apparently did, but she was crazy? That he didn’t want to take advantage, but then again, hadn’t she proven herself pretty hard to take advantage of? And she’d started it!

“Thank you, Death. I’d figured that out for myself.” Chin tilted up, Silver returned to the bathroom and her clothes. Andrew exhaled in relief. It was just the long dry spell talking, that was all, confronted with the scent of an interested female Were. Better than a cold shower, he needed to get out of the hotel and into fresher air.

Silver stayed in the bathroom, and Andrew stayed in the main room, pacing until the pizza guy arrived. He paid the boy, subtracted a few pieces to take with him, and left the rest in the box open on the bed. “I’ll be back in a few hours,” he told the room generally. Time to go see what kind of wilderness Seattle could muster for him to run in.

15

“Idiot.” Silver straightened from sitting with her head in her good hand. She could smell Dare still, though only dimly. “Idiot. As if he didn’t have enough to worry about.” She wasn’t speaking to Death for the moment, but the habit of organizing her thoughts out loud did not die so easily.

“Oh, he always has this effect on
las chicas.
” The accented female voice was back again.

Silver pointed to Death. “You. Will be quiet, or I will tear out your throat with my teeth, whether my wild self is here to help me or not.”

Death made a gesture much like a shrug, ruff fur bristling up and smoothing down as the muscles underneath moved. His silence was mocking, but at least it was silence.

“We can always pretend it didn’t happen.” Silver returned to her earlier train of thought. “I’m sure he’d be as happy as me to do that.” She squirmed as a flutter below her stomach reminded her she hadn’t started this out of nowhere. She hadn’t felt that flutter since her wild self ran away. But it wasn’t like she needed him to take care of it, anyway.

That was best done under running water, though, or he’d smell it the moment he came in. Silver sighed and stood to go find some.

*   *   *

The run helped a little, letting Andrew lose himself in the exertion, but the park was small, and he found himself not ready to go back when he’d done a couple circuits. He ended up at a bar, not really watching the game on TV, and intimidating any humans away from sitting near him.

When his phone rang, he considered ignoring it. He checked the ID first, at least, and frowned down at Benjamin’s name. Dammit, he didn’t want to talk to anyone right now, but he owed Boston better than a snub.

“Yeah?” Andrew could hear from Benjamin’s silence that his greeting had come out sharp.

“You’ve certainly dropped a bomb in Roanoke, boy.” Benjamin’s voice was dry. “May I ask what you were thinking, breaking with Rory?”

Andrew swallowed a growl. He really didn’t need this right now. “He didn’t leave me any choice. He ordered me back there—to guard him personally, probably, the pussy. I’m not leaving her here. I don’t trust any of these people, they all either want to put her down, or they’re completely incapable of protecting her.” He didn’t realize how loud he was getting until the nearby humans glared at him.

Ben’s silence after that was thoughtful, and Andrew realized he’d sounded much more sure of himself than he had been at the time. He couldn’t think of any other decision he could have made, even with the time he’d had to think it over and regret it, so perhaps he’d made the right decision after all.

“I’ve been waiting for you to find the thing that would bring you back to yourself, boy. After Spain. You took your time about it, I must say. A waste of talent.”

Andrew gritted his teeth. He didn’t need the voices of his past haunting him yet again. “Don’t.”

“As you wish.”

Andrew considered bristling at the soothing tone, but he knew Benjamin wasn’t being patronizing. “It’s been a long day,” he said in a sideways apology. “And I don’t know where I’m going to go once I catch the killer.” That was more than he’d planned to admit, so he hurried to cover it over with a subject change. “Any progress on that lone?”

“Nothing yet.” Frustration seeped into Benjamin’s tone. “I haven’t heard from the woman I sent after the lone. It’s unusual for her to not report in promptly. But it’s only been a day. She’s probably hot on his trail in wolf, hasn’t had a chance to get back to her phone.”

They said their good-byes after that, the conversation too strangled by subjects Andrew was avoiding to continue. Andrew set his jaw as he put his phone away and ordered another drink. He wasn’t going to think about any of this right now.

Silver was asleep on the far bed when Andrew returned to the room. Her breathing changed as he entered, so she’d undoubtedly heard him and was awake, but she didn’t open her eyes, so he politely pretended she was still asleep.

It was later than he’d intended since he’d wasted a lot of time walking himself sober. Usually werewolf healing resulted in a better alcohol metabolizing rate, but one could always swamp it if one really tried. Those last few whiskeys after talking to Benjamin had probably been a mistake.

At least he hadn’t drunk-shifted. He’d busted plenty of young Were for playing stray doggy along the freeway because they thought it would be funny when smashed.

He ran himself a glass of water in the bathroom to kill the hangover—fast healing didn’t do much for dehydration in the absence of water—and stood in the entryway to watch her as he drank. He could see perfectly well in the room’s darkness, but colors were washed out. Silver looked almost normal when her white hair was seen only in the context of light and dark. He wanted to stroke it.

Her wounds showed dark on the arm flopped beside her, the lines curling over the pale skin. Snakes indeed. He could see their shape now in the contrasting light. Tiredness washed over him. He needed sleep if he really was going to challenge John tomorrow. And yet he was standing here trying to find the features of the strong woman she must have been underneath the stress and blankness the silver had washed over them.

Water. Bed. He pulled himself away and padded to the other bed, drinking as he walked.

Silver smelled like she might be awake when he looked over at her the next morning, but her breathing was still even. It was possible she was dozing, close to the surface but not quite awake. They smelled much the same. Either way, the shower’s noise would wake her more gently than he could.

The shower smelled a little off from Silver using it the night before. Andrew pushed that thought away and dressed and shaved quickly. They could raid the continental breakfast on the way out through the hotel lobby.

“You ready?” Silver asked from the doorway. Rather than shove it inside her jacket, today she’d tucked her bad arm into her jeans’ hip pocket. It still didn’t sit quite right, but it looked more natural. She used her other hand to settle some of her hair’s fluffiness.

“As I’ll ever be.” Andrew gripped his rental car keys until they pressed painfully into his hand. Sleep hadn’t changed his decision. He had to do what was necessary to catch the killer, including risking challenging Seattle. Even if that meant he was taken down by the other Western packs afterward, when he could no longer order the Seattle pack to keep quiet about what had happened. He needed to find Silver’s attacker as soon as possible; having to find him before the Western packs found out about the change of alpha was no more time pressure. He couldn’t think about losing the challenge. He’d just have to win.

He spotted a Denny’s on the drive to the pack house and pulled in on an impulse. Better to face this after a proper meal. After seating them, the plump waitress eyed him with distaste when he ordered Silver’s drink for her. Andrew stared the waitress down until she went away.

Silver’s attention was caught by a small child at a nearby table. The girl banged her neon green plastic spoon on the neon purple dish her parents had brought with them. They were no fools, either, as the dish contained about three molecules of scrambled egg, hardly enough to bother wiping up should they reach the table, the floor, or her hair.

Andrew clenched his jaw, jerking his own eyes away. His daughter would be a teenager by now, he reminded himself. A teenager who probably hated him. It was only in his memory that she lingered at that age, and a few years older.

“Tell me about your mother’s pack,” he said to break the silence. Silver had her chin cupped in her hand to watch the child, and she looked up in surprise. It was a calculated risk—he didn’t want the memory to drop her into the madness, but this might be far enough from the trauma to be safe. And she might have some insights that would help him in dealing with them this morning.

Silver’s eyes flicked across his face, and her expression remained lucid. “The former alpha always had a sense of honor, like you. Not many would have ceded my brother territory rather than beat the disobedience out of him. His nephew, the current alpha, is very like him. You two might get along well, if not for the competition for power.” The waitress delivered his coffee and her juice, and Silver dragged a finger along the condensation on her glass without drinking. “The pack raised us. A human hunter took my mother by accident a little after our Lady ceremonies.”

Andrew waited a moment, but that seemed to be all the information that was forthcoming, so he slipped in to fill the silence. “They seem like a healthy pack. No fear. Other than of me, of course.”