The Wolf in His Arms (The Runes Trilogy) (26 page)

“I’ll
find it,” Alec assured him. “You two are faster at translating.”

“We
can’t tell her.”

“I
know. Not until we have the situation under control.”

“Will
we get it under control?” Jared doubted. “There’s this video. There are the
videos from Chicago. There’s even one from Las Vegas.”

“That
wasn’t us.”

“No,
but it was a werewolf.”

“And?”

“What
if all of these stories getting leaked are part of the werewolves’ plan?” Jared
speculated.

“That’s
why they attacked us in the middle of a crowded street. They knew what would
happen.”

Jared
nodded his head at his own conclusion. “They
wanted
it to happen.”

“But
why?”

“To
scare people. To deliver proof that werewolves exist.”

“But
why? What’s their next step?”

“I wish
I knew,” Jared whispered, perplexed.

Maxwell felt sticky and smelly as he knocked on the door of
Alec, Jared, and Lucy’s apartment. Haley exhaled a long, exasperated breath as
they waited. A moment later, Alec opened the door. “Welcome back, guys,” he
beamed. “We should get you guys a key.”

“Well, technically, we live in Chicago,” Haley corrected.

Alec ignored her. “But you’re like part of the family now.
Besides, until this whole werewolf thing is figured out...I mean, I guessed, I
assumed, you’d stay here.”

“And if we want to leave?” Haley persisted.

“Of course you can go. We’ll buy you a bus ticket.”

Haley silenced Maxwell as he tried to chime in by throwing
her hand up in his face as she blurted, “So, when we run errands for you, it’s
on an airplane? If we leave, it’s the bus?”

“We’ll throw in a little extra for a pop and chips from a
gas station,” Alec mused. “By the way, Jared wants to express his gratitude in
person.” Leaving them in the entrance hall, Alec called over his shoulder,
“He’s back here.”

Maxwell turned to Haley who stood by the door. “You were
awfully grumpy.”

She threw her hand up again. “Bleh. Bleh. He’s got a boyfriend,
so give it a rest.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Maxwell demanded.

“It means you get all gooey and cow-eyed around them.” Haley
softened her tone. “It also means I’m a stinky, sticky, cranky bitch.”

“Hmm. Must be a day of the week,” Maxwell said without
mirth, but he flashed a quick, appeasing smile. “Let’s hope they don’t send us
on another mission.” He traced Alec’s steps down the hall.

He entered into the back bedroom with Haley at his heels.
His smile slipped from his face and his eyes bulged as he took in the
transformation of the room. The stack of papers on the tabletop was nearly
gone. Instead, handwritten pages lined the walls. Some pages fanned out from
under each other like an accordion. Others were grouped in smaller clusters.

“Are those all translations?” Maxwell asked.

“Yep!” Alec enthused. Lucy and Jared looked up from the
pages they were translating.

“You’ve been busy.”

“So what have you learned?” Haley asked, brushing past
Maxwell’s shoulder to enter the room.

“We’ve learned that we have a lot of missing pages—” Jared
began.

“And incomplete information,” Lucy finished Jared’s thought.

Alec scoffed at them both. “Don’t listen to them. We’re
making real progress.” Alec’s face lit up. “What about you guys?”

“We managed to fetch something for Jared,” Haley replied
with barely concealed humor.

Jared looked at her quizzically, but Maxwell broke in. “It’s
in my bag. Let us shower and then I’ll get it, okay?”

“Then they weren’t there?” Jared asked.

“No,” Maxwell said.

“But you were successful?”

“We think so.”

“By the way, I wanted to properly thank you both,” Jared
announced. “I understand that you figured out that I might be...”

“A zombie werewolf?” Haley quipped.

Shock, followed by a smile, bloomed across Jared’s face.
“Yes. Thank you.”

“Haley’s the one who figured it out. She’s the brains. I’m
the pretty face.”

“I’m both actually,” Haley replied. “And, you’re welcome.”
She wandered over to a single page tacked on the corkboard. Skimming the text,
she gathered that the pages discussed something called Tutelars, who were
guardians of humanity. “Do you have more about these Tutelars?”

“We’re trying to match pages but with some pages missing,”
Alec explained.

“I can help with that.” She turned to face Maxwell. “You can
shower first. You have boy stink all over you.”

Alec and Jared turned to him with knowing grins, and Maxwell
rolled his eyes. “She thinks boys stink. Not that I have the stink of any
other
boys on me. I wish.” He pivoted
sharply on his heel and left to shower.

Haley walked to the table and stuck her hands out, palms up.
“Put me to work.”

Lucy smiled and plopped unmatched documents into Haley’s
hands. “Good luck,” Lucy condescended.

Annoyed
by Lucy’s dismissive tone, Haley began to scan the pages. She read the cut-off
last sentence of one page and looked for words that could complete the thought
at the top of any other page. She grouped possibilities. She set aside single
pages with no potential matches. Lucy’s challenge drove her; Haley could not
stand to be dismissed.

“I’ve
matched three pages,” she boasted as Maxwell returned from his shower. “There’s
no header yet, but it’s a series of short passages. It’s like an encyclopedia.”
Haley brought the translated pages over so they could all read the passages:

Lycan
—Mankind with wolves beneath
their skin. Lycans are humans who have been punished by the gods for misdeeds
as humans. The Lycan curse is spread through bite, scratch, and birth rite.
Lycans are ruled by the moon.

Tutelar
—Wolves who have turned into
men. These guardian spirits have turned into men to protect humans from Lycans.
The Tutelar spirit is passed only through linage, though not all members of a
clan receive the calling. The spirit affects female and male members
differently. Male Tutelar’s pass the spirit from one generation to the next.
Female Tutelars...[ripped page]

Silvias
—Rare cases of a Lycan, in the
throes of his malady, mating with a wolf have occurred. The resultant offspring
is a hybrid, often known as a feral child, believed to have been abandoned in
the woods. The child, however, is a dangerous beast, and must be handled as all
Lycans. Like any mutt, not all Silvias look alike. Some appear human until the
moon and turn wolf; some appear wolf until the moon and appear human.

“These
pages don’t sound like the other pages,” Lucy noted. “They sound like they were
written by someone observing werewolves. Not by werewolves.”

Jared
touched the edge of the original pages. “Look how they’re torn, as if they had
been ripped from a book.”

“Do you
think someone has been gathering information on the werewolves—or Lycans?”
Haley asked.

“Maybe
the Tutelars?” Alec suggested.

“And
this is their book. That the werewolves stole pages from,” Jared added.

“So
what are we?” Maxwell asked. He paced away from the table. “We’re Lycans. We’re
their experiment.”

Haley’s
nose wrinkled in thought. “You had to translate these pages, right?”

“Yes,”
Lucy confirmed.

“That
doesn’t make sense. Why would pages they stole be in the same runic language?”

“Very
smart, Haley!” Lucy said.

Haley
stifled a delighted smile, as Maxwell mugged at her inappropriately.

“So, do
these pages belong to the werewolves?” Alec asked.

“Or did
the language belong to someone else?” Jared interjected.

“Now
I’m confused,” Haley said.

“That
makes two of us,” Maxwell added, and Alec nodded in agreement.

Jared
turned to Lucy. “We know that the werewolves are conducting breeding
experiments. What if
these pages
started the experiments?”

“You
mean inspired the experiments. As in, gave the werewolves, er the bad
werewolves”—she added for clarity—“ the idea to start breeding for control.”

“Right.”

“But
why adopt the secret language of your enemy?” She asked.

“I
don’t know,” Jared admitted.

“Don’t
they say that right out in the open is the best place to hide,” Haley
suggested.

“But
our eyes,” Lucy said, pointing, “are a dead giveaway.”

“Do you
know that all werewolves have green eyes?”

“Every
werewolf I’ve ever seen has had green eyes,” Jared countered.

“But
these pages explain that there are different
types
,” Haley insisted.

“And
nothing mentions green eyes,” Maxwell added.

“What
if the green eyes are a result of the experiment!” Alec blurted out. “That’s
why we all have green eyes. Each of us”—and he pointed to Jared and
Maxwell—“and Lucy because she was turned by Darius.”

“The
more we learn the less we know,” Jared conceded. The room fell into an uneasy
silence.

Haley
broke the silence. “Actually, sometimes knowing that you don’t know all the
answers is the best wisdom.” She smiled. “Now we don’t assume all werewolves
have green eyes.”

“Just
all werewolves in this experiment,” Alec said.

“Now we
have to figure out what made our eyes green,” Jared griped. “Guess I’ll add it
to our long list.”

The
loft felt confining as Ilene looked out the window over Woodward Avenue. Campus
Martius was just blocks away, and the streets buzzed with activity below.
Generally, she loved the noise. But tonight, the activity felt like a swarm of
bees in her head.

“Ilene,
are you okay?” Jason looked up from the magazine he reading.

His
concern warmed her heart. She turned to face him. She hated the lies, keeping
him in the dark. But he had been in the dark for so long, she was afraid the
light would blind him. Perhaps there’s no longer a choice? She wondered. “Just
nerves.”

“How
about some tea?” He stood and walked briskly to the kitchen. He ran water into
the kettle and set it on the stove.

“Jason,
forget the tea.”

He
looked across the snack bar. “So...”

“Maybe
we should sit.”

He
approached her with an oh-boy expression on his face and sat next to her on the
sofa. “This sounds serious.”

“It
is,” she swallowed hard. “And I don’t know where to begin.” She looked toward
the ceiling, her eyes wet with tears of confusion and remorse. “The kids are on
their way over because we could think of no other way to explain this to you.”

“Ilene,”
he said and grabbed her shaking hands. “Just tell me.”

“Jared
is alive.”

Jason
pulled back, his face pinched with doubt. “What?”

“Alec,
Lucy, and Jared
 
are on their way here to
help me explain everything to you.”

“Explain
everything what?” He bolted up, stepped away. Ilene stood and reached out to
him but did not touch him. “How is Jared alive?” He tried to keep the suspicion
out of his voice.

Ilene
opened her mouth to answer, but a knock at the door interrupted them. Ilene
sat, and Jason crossed the loft to the door. He took a deep breath, and then he
opened the door. He looked across Alec’s face, then Lucy’s, and then his eyes
swept past the unfamiliar faces. “Where’s Jared?” He asked.

“Dad?”
Alec asked.

“You’re
mother says he’s alive, and I want to know what the hell’s going on.”

Jared
appeared from around the corner of the outside hallway, saying, “I
am
alive, Jason.”

Jason
took a step back, looking at Jared. Alec tried to read his father’s face,
fearing he saw Jared—all of them—as monsters. Jason pushed past Alec and Lucy
and raced toward Jared. He looked Jared in the eyes for just a moment, before
he snared him in his embrace. “Oh, thank God,” he said, sobbing and clutching
Jared. Jason pulled back with a face inscrutable with emotion. “Come in. I have
so much to learn.”

Jason
led them back into the main room of the loft, where they all sat in an awkward,
relieved silence followed by nervous laughter. Jason said, “Guys, I’m a lawyer.
I’ve been putting things together for a while, but I still don’t know everything.”
He added, “I’m not as dumb as you think,” and Ilene felt that it was directed
at her.

“What
do you know?” Alec asked.

“I know
that you and Rene healed when you should not have.” Jason walked the room as he
spoke, and Alec could imagine his father’s commanding presence in a courtroom.
“I know that Rene was trying to protect us.” He offered a contrite smile to
Lucy.

“When
did you start putting it together?” Ilene asked.

Jason
looked across the room, his eyes moving from face to face. “After they approached
me about a job.”

“What?”
Ilene sputtered.

He
smirked. “I have secrets too.” He stopped pacing and sat next to Ilene, taking
her hands in his. “But secrets kill a family.”

“When?”

“Just
this week. How does Rathborne figure into this?” Jason asked. Alec cocked an
eyebrow and turned to Lucy and Jared who shook their heads.

“Rathborne
is the last name of The Wolf of Detroit,” Ilene answered slowly. “He was a
serial killer early last century.”

“His
descendent—grandson?—offered me the job.”

“How
did that clue you in?” Lucy asked.

“I knew
your mother was looking up Rathborne.” He put his hands in the air in mock
defense. “Okay. I was snooping. I saw the name connected to The Wolf of
Detroit. Then I followed one link to another. Then I saw the videos online, the
animal attacks. Then I put two and two together.”

“You’re
handling it so...well,” Jared said.