Tethers (20 page)

“We’ll follow Icarus’s lead,” he said, gesturing to the werewolf, who had already bounded off. “If there’s anything to be found, he will find it for us. You slept through most of the journey, but I believe this farm in its entirety is large enough to be close to both crime scenes.”

“It just doesn’t make sense to me,” I said. “There are plenty of farms around the country. Why clear this one of its cattle, only to move on to a single human in two separate attacks?”

“The cattle for hunger, the humans to send a message?” he offered.

“Maybe it was just bad timing. The killer roams, and for whatever reason, something about these humans triggered its hunting instincts.”

“It’s a possibility.” He sounded doubtful.

I couldn’t blame him—I was reaching for an explanation.

We kept moving, growing muddier by the minute.

“I think I’d like this,” he said as we inspected a broken fence. “Toiling the land, growing my own food, trying to be self-sufficient.”

“Not me.” I avoided a puddle. “I like sitting in my kitchen, drinking tea with Carl while we consume vast amounts of pre-packaged confectionaries.”

“You must want more from life than that.”

“Staying alive has kind of been my top priority for a while now.”

We strolled to the next field. We hadn’t seen Icarus in ages. I hoped he wasn’t scaring any farmers. Phoenix’s face had gone intense and brooding, and my legs were restless. My conversation with Carl about flawed men kept running through my head and making me want to run. Phoenix viewing my memories made me want to never come back.

Icarus let out a sharp bark from somewhere nearby.

“He may have found something,” Phoenix said.

“Oh, joy. We get to run through muddy fields together.”

He ran ahead then turned to grin at me. “I’ll race you.”

I made as if to run, and he sprinted away.

“Sucker,” I muttered, strolling behind him. At the fence by the next gate, something caught my attention. On the barbed wire that kept the cattle away from the fencing, something fluttered in the wind. I looked closer and winced. It was a patch of skin, fur and all. “Gross.”

Phoenix found me. “Why didn’t you follow?”

I pointed at the patch of grey matted fur.

“Unpleasant,” Phoenix said after he whistled for Icarus. “But it may have been one of the cows trying to escape in their panic.”

“That hair doesn’t exactly look bovine. What did Icarus find?”

“Some bones. The teeth marks were distinctive, and not like a werewolf’s at all.”

“If we could just see this thing or at least know what we’re looking for,” I said. “Do you think it could be a shifter gone mad?”

He gazed at the hair. “I don’t know of any shifter in Ireland who is quite so dangerous in animal form.” He gave me a meaningful look.

I nodded at the ugly patch of hair. “Esther does not look like
that
in bear form. And she’s never alone, so stop hinting.”

Icarus bounded over and immediately sniffed out the patch of skin. His ears pricked back, the hair on the back of his neck puffed up, and his tail went between his legs. He growled and paced impatiently next to us as Phoenix took a closer look.

“This could be our killer,” he said. “Although that doesn’t tell us much other than the fact this thing is hairy and perhaps injured.”

Icarus refused to leave the patch of skin alone. If he wasn’t following a trail, then there was none left. It was time to move on to fresher evidence.

“Icarus is done here. We should get to the final crime scene. Do you know how to get there?”

“Shay gave me directions. It’s at the base of a mountain, apparently, and a popular spot for hikers, joggers, and dog walkers.”

“Well, we sort of have a dog, so we’ll fit right in.”

He raised a brow. “You have a curious sense of humour, Ava Delaney.”

“So I’ve been told.”

In the pickup, we rode in silence, not even listening to the radio. My fingers itched to turn something on to break the silence, but Phoenix’s quiet mood had unnerved me.

When we arrived, I stared at the wooded area in surprise. “You were right. All of these locations are close together, and near open ground. So how come nobody caught a glimpse of this thing?”

“Perhaps it’s marking its territory.” He pulled a map from under his seat and pointed. “This is the first scene, and here is the second. Between those is the cattle farm. The killer must be close. Perhaps it has a den nearby.” He frowned. “But that depends on how far it can run. The werewolves take up a significant amount of space, but there are a lot of them. I can’t see any of them coming all the way out here and none of the other werewolves noticing they were gone, or failing to scent the blood from their fur. The way that human was killed must have been extremely bloody.” He looked at me, his eyes bright with excitement. “I’m growing even more certain that we can prove it’s not a werewolf.”

“That’s not good news,” I said. “At least we know about the werewolves and how to deal with them. This is something different, maybe even something new. And it’s big, strong, and bloodthirsty.”

His face fell. “The problem is that you’ve just described half the supernatural population. So many are capable of this kind of violence.”

“But most won’t actually
want
to do this, right?”

“There are human criminals, Ava. Why not supernatural ones?”

“A supernatural serial killer,” I whispered. “That’s really bad.”

“Then let’s move on,” he said. “I’m not sure where the scene is exactly, but I have a rough guide, and Icarus will easily find the place. Shay said to keep to the south. So that’s what we’ll do.”

We got out of the truck. Phoenix called Icarus, who leapt out of the truck bed and immediately tried to run northwest.

“This way,” Phoenix said, but Icarus seemed reluctant to follow. “The new scents likely overwhelm him,” Phoenix explained. “He rarely leaves his own territory.”

We made our way south on a jogging trail, and eventually, Icarus followed then ran ahead.

“He’ll be there before we ever will,” Phoenix said, but he was walking so fast that I was practically jogging to keep up.

He glanced down at me. “Sorry. I’ll slow down.”

“I can keep up.”

“You’re quite short. You have to walk three times as fast to keep up.”

I frowned. “I’m not that small. And I can keep up.”

“I don’t want you to be out of breath when we get there. You won’t be able to talk.”

“Oh, shame,” I said, rolling my eyes when he exaggeratedly slowed down. “Hey,” I said after a few minutes of silence. “Have you ever had any dealings with mediums?”

“Mediums?”

“You know, people who see the dead.”

“Oh. Not that I can recall. Why?”

“You know how Emmett can see spirits sometimes? Well, Peter ran into this woman who claims Emmett needs a guide, and apparently, she’ll do.”

“I see.” He thought about it for a minute. “I can see why a child would need a guide, to help them separate what is real and what’s not. It must be confusing for a small child to see spirits and living people together and not have either acknowledge the other.”

“I can sense spirits sometimes,” I said sulkily. “I could guide him.”

“But you’re not a medium. If this woman is a medium, then perhaps she has experience with…” He gave me a curious look. “Are you upset about it?”

“Upset? No. But I don’t know her. She could be weird.”

He blinked a couple of times. “Peter told me that I’m weird.”

“Nobody’s letting you babysit Emmett, though, are they?” Then I realised what I had said and how foolish my concerns even sounded. “Just ignore me. I’m feeling… odd about it, that’s all.”

“Left out?” he asked.

“When did you get all perceptive and shit?”

He shot me a steady look. “I’ve had experiences, too, you know.”

“Yeah, but you’re very removed from them. You are weird, but you have a right to be after the life you’ve had.”

“Because I can’t remember my wife or because I can’t remember my children?”

“Both, obviously. But this woman is a human who happens to see ghosts. I mean, that’s different.”

“Do you think Lucia had difficulties as a child? Being unable to talk and having visions? That must have been terrifying for her.”

I realised too late that we were on a bad subject. “She had Lorcan to look after her.” Seeing his crestfallen face, I took his hand and stopped walking. “It’s not your fault, Phoenix. You did everything you could to be with your family. Your mother took your memories, took
everything
away from you. You can’t feel guilty about that. Lorcan did a great job of caring for himself and Lucia, and she did a great job of giving Lorcan the strength to do all of that. They got that from their parents.”

“He’s angry with me,” he said. “Lorcan will always resent me in some way. I don’t think even he knows why. Not completely.”

“He was so busy surviving before that he never really had a chance to process how his life turned out. I think maybe he feels like he’s wasted a lot of years as a vampire slave, then more hiding and fighting in the war here. He needs to spread his wings a bit and figure out who he wants to be before he can get to know who you are.”

His expression softened. “You’re quite good at that.”

I was confused. “At what?”

“Making sense to me. It’s easy to be on top of things when it comes to the Senate, but with my own family, I feel slightly lost. Then you say a few words, and everything seems better. How do you do that? It’s a skill I’d like to use on Lorcan.”

I bit my lip to stop from laughing. “That sounds like you want me to teach you to manipulate Lorcan. Just show him you care, and it’ll all work out.”

Icarus howled suddenly, and Phoenix blinked and took a step away from me. “He’s found it. We should go.”

As he headed on along the path, I was struck by the similarities between Phoenix and Peter. Each had lost his son early. Neither had thought to find a family again. Neither knew quite how to connect with his son. And I was the one they both turned to for help. Me, who would never have a child of my own, who had never had a loving family, either. I wasn’t certain if I was giving them advice or telling them what I would want from my parents if I somehow met them—if they turned out to have been alive all along. I shuddered. I had never realised how hard it must have been for Lorcan and Emmett to reunite with fathers they didn’t really remember.

Lorcan’s memories came from Lucia’s visions, he had once admitted to me, and Emmett had been so young when he was kidnapped that he hadn’t even realised he had a father. The misery that had filled their lives was over, but the desire to forget the past and move on was just that: a desire. Nobody had actually taught Lorcan or Emmett to deal with the past or how to move beyond it. Emmett couldn’t even talk about his past.

There had to be something I could do to help everyone. Weirdly, Peter and Emmett were suddenly getting along a lot better than before, while Phoenix and Lorcan had moved farther apart. Who was I to say what was right or wrong in that situation?

I trod through the trees, wondering why exactly Phoenix would turn to me for help. He could go anywhere, find anyone, and boss the world if he wanted to, but when he came to me for help, he was as fragile and innocent as a child. Carl had once warned me that Phoenix couldn’t be a replacement for Peter, that I couldn’t go from trying to fix one man to the next. At the time, I had been annoyed, but I had begun to wonder.

Chapter Sixteen

The second crime scene didn’t resemble a crime scene at all at first glance. Aside from a patch of flattened grass near a tree, the area was as it should have been. But Icarus was beyond the spacious glade, standing next to a dense grouping of trees and guarding what I imagined was the real scene of the murder.

“This is where the body was dragged,” Phoenix said. “It’s almost as if the kills happen away from view and then later are dragged into the light.”

“That’s creepy,” I said, trudging into deeper undergrowth.

Icarus moved on, leading us to a narrow clearing that had obviously seen some action. The grass and plants had been torn up, blood splattered the trunks of the trees, and the air still held the scent of death. “This is it,” I said. “This is where it happened.”

“Did she try to fight back?” Phoenix asked as he paused next to a distinct bloody handprint on a tree.

“It’s messy, but it’s not…” I whirled around in a circle, trying to figure out exactly what was bothering me. “You know what? This is a pretty small space. Icarus is just sitting there, and he practically takes up all the room. How would a werewolf fight or kill something here without, I don’t know, knocking a tree down or something?”

Icarus chuffed as though he agreed.

“It’s possible a werewolf could have killed here,” Phoenix said, “but very unlikely if the attack was as frenzied as the evidence leads us to believe. The Senate can’t possibly believe the werewolves did this when I tell them everything we’ve found.”

That was a bit naïve. Unless we found the perpetrator, most people wouldn’t care about the details.

“Why don’t they clean up this mess?” I asked, desperate to get out of the death site.

“Is the blood bothering you?”

“No, it’s dead.” I shivered at his surprised glance. “That sounded wrong. Since I joined the Eleven, I haven’t had as much trouble with my thirst issues.”
Or the counting issues, for that matter.
“It’s just that anyone could walk by and see all of this.”

“They don’t want people to come here again,” he explained. “If something is hunting nearby, the fewer people around, the better. The main routes that lead here have been blocked off. One would have to travel a mile off the tracks to find this.”

“That’ll just intrigue those who shouldn’t be here,” I said. “The thought of kids being curious about the crime scene and coming across the killer instead is going to haunt my dreams.”

“Not many people know the exact location.” He looked around. “We have to find this creature before anyone else does.”

“It’ll take luck or else a lot of time spent searching.”

“The farmer we visited,” he said. “What was the Senate’s response to him?”

“They said they’d reimburse him.” I made a face. “They’re going to be broke if they have to keep reimbursing people for stuff like this.”

He sighed.
“We’re
going to be broke. You have to stop thinking of it as us and them.”

“
We
would never have put the werewolves to death.”

“You’re the only person who tried to do anything to stop it. That makes me sad.”

“Shay did help in the best way he could. And most people didn’t actually know about it.”

“But you’re the one the Senate chose to lock up. You were their biggest threat. Or the werewolves’ biggest advocate.”

“That’s what Willow asked me to be. She didn’t seem to like it when I advocated for the werewolves, though. The Senate have been keeping their heads in the sand, big time.”

He glanced at me. “This is why you should be on the Senate.”

I groaned. “No bloody way.”

“You could help me do a lot of good.”

“Nope. I would lose my mind within a week and kill the rest of the Senate.”

He shrugged. “Would that really be so bad?”

“Yes! Besides, I’m not a leader. I don’t want to have to deal with stupid politicians and annoying paragons.”

“Don’t remind me. You know what the scary part is, Ava? That paragon could go on a killing spree, and I wouldn’t be able to do a thing about it.”

“What? Why?”

“The paragons are a higher power. As in, they have more power than I ever will, and they’re above our laws.”

“They’re not above the Eleven,” I whispered. “And the Eleven hate the paragons because they came after them before. When I confronted Regis, I felt the Eleven with me, as though they were watching me, adding their power to mine. It was… disturbing, and it’s just another reason why I couldn’t be on the Senate—there’s no way I could remain fair.”

“You’re just making me want you on the Senate all the more. Imagine having another kind of power with us. That could be useful.” He sounded interested then deflated. “But the paragons have armies. These armies destroy their enemies. And we have rapidly become Regis’s enemy. Do you know how one becomes a paragon?”

I shook my head.

“They claim to have a noble proving, one that will fit the right person to the job, but it’s a lot simpler than that. The one thing all of the paragons have in common is their own personal armies. Those with power… rule.”

“Why don’t they turn on each other then?” I asked. “Get rid of the competition.”

“They do. They won’t admit it often, but they spend more time conniving and looking for weakness in their peers than they do actually influencing Senates and Councils.”

“See what I mean?” I shook my head and unthinkingly reached out to pet Icarus while he was sniffing at something. “I couldn’t—ow!”

Icarus had snapped his head around and laid his fangs on my arm. He pulled back at the last second, leaving bloody red stripes behind. If he had meant to bite, I likely wouldn’t have had an arm left.

“You shouldn’t disturb him when he’s following a scent like this,” Phoenix scolded as he approached.

The werewolf licked my wound once before turning his back on me.

Phoenix moved my other hand out of the way and pressed a stark-white handkerchief against the wound. “It’s not so deep. It’ll be fine.”

“Hey, thanks for the bucketloads of sympathy,” I remarked, only half-joking.

He blinked at me in surprise. “But you’re strong. I know you can take it.”

That set off a weird whirlwind of emotion inside me. On the one hand, I wanted him to show concern for me for what was likely a completely childish reason. On the other, I felt good knowing he saw me as somebody who could take care of herself, as someone on par with him. That was oddly gratifying, and my chest warmed.

I smiled up at him, and he cocked his head to the side, a curious look on his face.

“What?” I said, faltering under the intensity of his gaze.

“When you smile like that, I want to smile back.”

I rubbed the nape of my neck self-consciously. “Smiles are catching.”

“No, it’s different.” He tipped my chin to force me to look at him. “Do it again.”

I brushed him off. “I’m not a toy.”

“No, I didn’t mean…” He tutted. “I’m sorry. I’m not good at… being normal.”

“I know,” I said softly. “That’s okay. I wouldn’t know normal if it slapped me in the face with a fish.”

I did laugh then, at the look on his face, and he grinned back, his face softening.

“This is what I mean,” he said, and he moved noticeably closer. “I’m
able
to smile. It’s not a chore. It’s real. Is that what friendship is, Ava? Or is it…” He bit his lip.

He had nice lips. I mean, it wasn’t like I was constantly checking him out or anything, but I wasn’t made of ice. I
had
thought about what it would be like if Phoenix and I took things in another direction, maybe more often than was healthy. I didn’t need another stunted relationship, and Phoenix wasn’t ready for anything closely resembling a relationship anyway. But sometimes I got lonely.

“When I was away, I discovered some things about my past,” he said in a low voice. “I saw memories of Helena and me. I saw my own happiness, joy, anger, and pain, and none of it felt real. Not like this. You’re the only one who doesn’t judge me. Even Lorcan can’t…”

“All Lorcan needs is time.”

“He looked at me like he hated me.”

“He doesn’t hate you. Family is important to him.” I caught sight of a ring on his finger. “Is that new?”

“Only to me.”

I took his hand to take a closer look. His fingers were cold and covered in my blood. My wound had stopped bleeding, but it was deep enough to make a mess. I ran my thumb over the surface of the silver ring to wipe away a crimson smear, and a shiver crept up my spine. I had been around enough relics to know when I was in the presence of one. “It feels
ancient
.”

“It is,” he whispered as though in awe himself. “It’s a family heirloom. It was my father’s, and it was brought to me by some of his kin who returned to Ireland after Fionnuala’s death. They’ve told me stories of him.”

“That’s so great.” I glanced at him. His cheeks were flushed with colour.

“They want me to lead them properly,” he said. “To tell them what to do, to lead them, to build an army of our own.”

“Slightly more ominous.”

“They’re old-fashioned,” he said. “But they want things to be different than before. My mother gave up on a lot of our ways in exchange for things she needed to personally grow in power. All the fae want now is for me to help them restore their pride once again.”

“So they accept the twins?” I made to let go of his hand, but he held mine instead.

“Most of them do, yes.”

“And they don’t mind that you just up and leave them?”

He covered my hand with his. “I’m sorry if that made you unhappy.”

“I barely saw you even before that. Ever since the whole thing with the first vampire kidnapping Lucia…”

He squeezed my hand. “I’m no longer angry about that, but I felt… uncomfortable around you. I was so angry at the time. I recognised the distress in your eyes when I blamed you, and it made me fear I was becoming my mother.”

“You’ll never be her,” I said fiercely.

He hesitated before brushing strands of hair away from my face. “Peter told me something about you that’s been playing on my mind.”

“Oh?” I tried to sound light-hearted, but dread dragged my tone down. “Care to share?”

“He’s very angry with me still. Over my anger about Lucia, and from before. The time when I used the whip on you to convince my mother I was still on her side.”

I froze. “Peter’s a very angry person.”

“He told me you still have nightmares about that day.”

“How would he even know that?” I snapped, letting go and turning my back on him. My breaths grew ragged.
Does everyone know I have nightmares?
They didn’t know that Phoenix never wielded the whip in my dreams—other people did. The dead, my past tormenters, all of my fears held a whip in my dreams. But never Phoenix.

He rested his hands on my shoulders. “You said he kissed you. I assumed you and he were…”

“No, not since he left.”

The grip on my shoulders tightened. “You don’t like it when people leave.”