The Wolf in His Arms (The Runes Trilogy) (19 page)

“What?”
Maxwell turned his head toward her phone, making the car swerve. Haley pressed
play and a grainy, dark image of the werewolf ripping the throat out of the man,
and then shambling away, filled the screen. The news report cut to a reporter.
“This strange attack comes just a day after a police dashboard camera in Las
Vegas captured this footage.” The shot cut to a large beast landing on the hood
of the police cruiser, shaking the vehicle like an earthquake. The beast leaped
off the car and onto an officer, even as he shot it. The report cut back to the
reporter. “Four officers were severely wounded in the attack in Las Vegas.”

“This
is going to get out of hand really quickly,” Haley surmised. “What do we do?”

“Hopefully
Lucy will know.” Maxwell stared out the windshield. “Because I don’t think
Alec’s going to be any help for a while.”

*
         
*
         
*
         
*

Detective
Lance Herald hesitated only briefly before picking up the phone and dialing Detective
Carmen Salazar. “Carmen? Lance.”

“Lance?
This is, um, unexpected. Good to hear from you.” In fact, hearing from him
startled her. They had not spoken since that day at the ruins of the Rune’s
home. She couldn’t help but feel that his call was a bad omen.

He cut
straight to the point. “Have you seen the news coming out of Chicago?”

“No.”

“There’s
a news report—a web video—that’s going viral. It looks like a”—he cleared his
throat—“beast attacking a man on a city street.”

“Beast?”

Lance
closed his eyes in a moment of decision. This moment, he knew, was coming for
months. He had to tell someone what he had seen—
thought
he had seen—through the smoke in the basement of the Rune’s
burning house. Seeing such a beast now caught on video encouraged him to
confide in Carmen. “If you used the term werewolf, you wouldn’t be too far
off.”

An
incredulous chuckle burst from Carmen’s mouth. “Seriously?”

It was
not the reaction Lance hoped for, but it was what he expected. “I just sent you
the link.”

Carmen
opened her email and clicked the link. She watched silently as the video
played. “Is this real?” She questioned. A nervous tremor shook her voice.

“I’m
afraid so.”

“You—you
believe it?”

“Carmen,
I...” Lance’s voice broke, and his mouth flapped silently for a moment. “I saw
it. The night of the fire. I couldn’t be sure. I couldn’t tell you.” His voice
trailed off.

“Until
now?”

“Yes.”

Carmen
took a few deep breaths, the time she’d spent following Ilene and the other
members of the Runes family churning in her mind. She had spent so many hours
feeling obsessed, doubting her own instincts. “After the fire, when we spoke,”
she accused, “you could have told me. I was
asking
you. I knew something wasn’t right.”

“Would
you have believed me?”

“You
know what I saw in that barn!”

“But
were you ready to accept what I saw in the house?” His voice cut her across the
line. “Are you ready now?”

“If I
am,” she exhaled, “what do we do?”

Lance expelled
a sour, derisive snort. “Hiding comes to mind.” He sighed wearily into the
phone. “There’s more. The guy you just saw killed by that thing. He had just
shot and killed someone. Jared Kincaid.”

Carmen
shuddered. “So this comes right back here.”

“Feels
like it.”

“Can we
get his body? Jared’s?”

“What?”

“As
part of an ongoing investigation. Can we request it be brought here?”

“Maybe.”
Lance began to wonder whether unloading his soul had been such a good move. “Why?
What are you up to?”

“Lance,
we both know the Runes family is all over this thing, whatever it is. If they
make a move, I want to know it.”

Lance
sat silently on the phone. Carmen only knew he was there from the sound of his
breathing. Finally he said, “You can request it. I’ll have no part in it.”

“Why
did you call me?”

“Because
I was hoping you’d have the strength to do what I can’t.” He hung up.

*
         
*
         
*
         
*

Sitting
in their apartment at the dining room table with Jason, Lucy shifted her eyes
across the apartment to the living room. Alec curled in a chair in the corner
of the living room, silent, with one of Jared’s shirts draped over him. Ilene
sat on the couch, just to be near him.

Cups
with coffee that had grown cold sat in front of her and Jason. The outside door
opened and Maxwell and Haley returned with groceries. She and Maxwell walked
through the dining room to the kitchen. “I know none of you feel like eating,”
Haley acknowledged as she unpacked the bags, “but you have to still nibble.”

“Thank
you for going,” Lucy said.

“We’re
glad to help, any way we can,” Maxwell said. He set a plate of cookies in the
center of the dining room table. He glanced at Alec. “Should I take him one?”
He whispered.

“No.”

Maxwell
and Haley sat at the table for a while. The choking silence weighed on them,
and they excused themselves to the study. Maxwell and Haley leafed through the
pages, finding the one labeled The Gen5 Pack. “So this is me,” he contended,
lifting the paper.

“And
Alec and Jared and Griffin. But what about these others on this list? Do
they”—and Haley gestured toward Lucy and Alec—“know anything about them yet?”

Maxwell
shook his head. “Not that they told me.”

“I wish
we could do something more.”

“You
could,” Lucy said, coming to the door. She hung in the doorway, as if she was
not fully committed to the idea of entering. “You could follow up on them, like
we did with you.”

Maxwell
looked down at the paper. “In Portland?”

“And
Las Vegas?” Haley added, looking up from the papers.

Lucy
leaned against the door. “It’s a long trip. We’ve got the money for the
tickets.” She finally entered the room and took a seat at the table with them.
“We have to keep moving forward, but,” she shook her head. “I don’t know when
Alec will be ready to continue. Hell, I don’t know when I will be.”

“We’ll
go,” Haley agreed. “We want to help.” She cut her eyes to Maxwell, and he
echoed her willingness with a nod.

*
         
*
         
*
         
*

The assistant
coroner called Carmen when Jared’s body arrived at the county morgue. She
arrived within minutes of the call and headed straight back to see the body.
The new assistant coroner—Carmen could never remember her name—greeted her and
took her to the drawers. Without pomp, she heaved the drawer open and flipped
the sheet down to Jared’s waist. Carmen looked at his pale face, his eyes and
lips closed, his dark hair swept back. A small hole drilled into his chest by
the bullet was the only indication of violence.

A swirl
of emotion suddenly hit Carmen. Flashes of memory from her early investigation of
the missing persons cases struck her. She remembered her plummet into darkness
as she entered that barn. Like ghosts, the smell of decaying flesh hung in her
nostrils, the damp air clung to her skin. Now, looking at the soft dead face of
a young man somehow implicated, yet again, made her tremble. “Thank you for
letting me see him,” Carmen finally said.

“They
didn’t perform an autopsy,” the assistant coroner informed her. “Did you need
one?”

Carmen
shook her head. Her mind drifted to the murder of the previous coroner, and she
thought of this woman. Have I put her in danger? Carmen wondered. “I just
needed to see the body. You can release it to the family.”

In a
motel room on the outskirts of Las Vegas, Nadia sat on the edge of the bed and
turned on the television. Shadows from the dead bugs trapped in the dim ceiling
light made the room seem even dingier than it was. Helena had walked to a
vending machine for a cup of coffee. Nadia didn’t know how she could drink it; Helena
hadn’t stopped shaking since the attack. Nadia reconsidered; her mother had no
plans of sleeping tonight.

Nadia
flipped through the channels, finding a breaking news report. As she feared,
the footage showed the street outside their apartment. “An animal attack here
left four officers hospitalized and the city on the lookout for an unidentified
animal,” a reporter explained. “The dash cam of one police car captured this
footage.” The screen filled with the grainy image of a large animal leaping
onto the hood of the car, and then leaping toward an officer even as he fired.
The screen cut away from the footage to the face of the reporter. “Residents
are urged to call the police if they spot the animal. The animal should be
considered extremely dangerous and should not be approached. All four officers
attacked are listed in stable condition.”

Turning
off the television, Nadia stood and walked to the window. She pulled back the
curtain to see her mother. Helena was returning with two cups of coffee. Nadia
opened the door for her. She offered a cup to Nadia, and despite her nerves,
she took it. The coffee was watery and flavorless. “It was on the news,” Nadia
said. They sat side-by-side on the bed.

“Did it
say anything about us?” Helena asked.

“No.
But they have to know he came from our apartment. He injured four officers.”
Nadia turned from her mother. “I’m going to make the call now.”

Helena
nodded and turned her attention to the television.

Nadia
clicked a contact in her cellphone. “It’s Nadia. Yes, he arrived just like you
said. The report’s on the news now. He wounded four officers.” She listened for
a moment. “We’re leaving for Detroit in the morning.” A moment later, she hung
up.

“Mom,
we’ll be okay. This will all be over soon.”

Helena
grunted. “Even the drive to Detroit won’t be over soon. I don’t know why we
have to drive.”

Nadia
smiled indulgently. “Because you need a car in Detroit. Everyone knows that.”

Leaning
back in his desk chair, Collin watched the teacher, Miss Marjorie Ruhl, jot a
Latin phrase on the chalkboard. The school mandated his first class of the day,
entitled Civility and Civilization, designed to teach wayward students how
“civilized” people behave within a civilization. “Rules are the fabric of a
society,” the teacher explained. “Without them, society would crumble. Those
who break the rules, written and unwritten, are a threat to civilization.”

With a
sneer twisting his upper lip, Collin listened to the teacher drone on about the
threat their actions caused society. As far as Collin could tell, society
wasn’t all that great. While he had only been at Cornerstone for a week, he
found himself ticking off the days to freedom. While the school felt like
incarceration, he knew that jail would have been much worse. He reminded
himself to just get through the three months.

Collin
stared at the back of Miss Ruhl’s head as she turned to the chalkboard again.
Her shiny brown hair was piled in a careless twist. She turned and spoke,
enlivening her delicate features: her slender nose, her high cheekbones, her
toothy smile, and full lips. Her green eyes trailed across the room from
student to student as she explained the quote.

Collin
looked down at his desk. He recalled the disappointed look in his mother’s face
as he had told her about all the green eyes. He had promised his mother that he
would “reform.” Collin tried to shrug off the number of green eyes as
coincidence.

Yet
something at this school unnerved him.

Collin
glanced around the room filled with young men all around his age. He avoided
most of them, not knowing how damaged they were or why they had been sentenced.
He spent his free time with his roommate, Tony, and with Mark, who also had
arrived with him. Mark was quiet but angry. He could be volatile and Collin
knew that Mark’s temper would eventually get him in trouble.

Collin gazed
out the window. Beyond the gardens behind the school, brown grasses swayed along
the icy flow of the river. Leafless trees reached up toward the slate-gray sky.
He focused his eyes on his reflection in the glass. His large brown eyes never
looked fierce, no matter how hard he tried. His dimpled cheeks always looked
like a sweet child. How sweet—how soft—he looked made him feel vulnerable. He
glanced around the room at the other boys. Many had firm jaws, tattoos, and scars.
But the students who had attended the school the longest sat in obedience, hanging
on the teacher’s words. The angry tattoos and scars juxtaposed their docile
behavior. Yet, Collin had witnessed them keep new students in line with a
stringent zeal. Collin stole glances at those eyes he always avoided. A cold
revelation swept down his spine.