Twenty-Sided Sorceress 3 - Pack of Lies (13 page)

“Yeah,” I said. “I’m pretty sure she’s the one killing people and framing wolves. I think she wants the Peace to fall apart. Just wish I knew why.”

None of us had answers for that, alas. Yet.

Levi called Ezee and Max. Turned out that three gamers who all played
Tetris
could figure how to move a tiger out of a small room and into a truck. The whole four people with preternatural strength thing helped, of course. We only had to remove two doors to do it.

I rode in the back with Alek, my cheek pressed to his chest, listening to his heart. In my own heart, the joy of knowing he would survive was fading. In its place rage simmered. White heat flowed through my veins, my magic responding to my mood.

As soon as I was sure Alek would live, as soon as he was okay, I was going to balance the scales another way. I was going to find Eva, and this time, I was going to choose murder.

Using a lot of shifter strength and a heavy-duty canvas tarp, we managed to get Alek into the Henhouse and onto a makeshift pallet of quilts in the formal living room. I hovered as they moved him, not wanting him out of my sight. He breathed easily, his heart steady when I pressed my face against his chest.

“He’ll live, I promise,” Vivian said to me. The awe was still in her eyes.

“I know,” I said, still pressed against his fur.

Everyone crowded into the living room, asking questions in low voices. Rosie shushed them and handed me a warm washcloth. She was wise enough to realize I wasn’t going to leave Alek’s side until he woke up, until I heard from his own lips that he was going to survive. I must have looked a mess. My shirt was stained with Alek’s blood and covered in long white tiger hairs. My hands had blood under the nails and streaks of dust and dirt going up my arms. I couldn’t imagine what my face looked like. Or my hair.

“Eva did this,” I said as I handed back a much grimier washcloth to Rosie with a nod of thanks.

“The Justice?” Rosie asked. The others echoed her, their faces full of disbelief.

“I believer her,” Max said. He looked at me with unhappy eyes.

“I, too, believe her,” Harper said. She came into the room, a quilt wrapped around her. Her normally pale face was even whiter, but she moved easily and without evidence of pain. “I heard Liam’s message. Max and I listened to it after you left.”

“She is a Justice,” Junebug said. “How could she kill like that? Attack another Justice?”

“It’s worse than that,” I said and I told them everything. About the Lansings, about the poison, the set-up with Dorrie’s body.

Stunned silence followed my story.

“But, the Council—” Ezee started to say.

“Fuck the Council,” Levi said. “They pick and choose. You know that, Ezekiel. Where were they, where were their Justices when we needed them? When Mama needed them?”

“Levi,” Junebug and Ezee both cried out, looking at him.

Levi’s eyes were shiny with pain and unshed tears. “I’m sorry,” he said as he took a deep breath. “I…this situation, it’s too hard. But I believe Jade. The Justices are not infallible, the Council is not infallible, and I think it will only get more of us hurt to continue believing such things.”

“All right,” Rosie said softly. “If this Eva woman is corrupt, why is she doing this? Why now?”

“I have a guess,” Vivian said. She was curled on the overstuffed couch, her legs tucked up against her chest, her arms wrapped around them. “You are all too young to remember how it was before the Peace. You are not wolves. You do not understand. I was a child then, but it was still dangerous to be without pack. My mother moved us around, unwelcome because she was an alpha, but she had no desire to run a pack. An unmarried woman, traveling with a small child, was crazy in those days. There was little work, and I won’t speak of the work she
could
get. We were always in danger. From other wolves. From humans.”

She paused and looked down at Alek’s huge, slumbering form. “There was too much fighting among wolves; too many alphas and not enough pack. Stories started being told around human campfires, in human brothers and taverns, of wolves the size of ponies, of men who changed shape and howled at the moon. Men were dying. Men disappearing. Then the Council of Nine sent their Justices to America and the shifters of the new world learned the power of the Council. They learned to fear. Back then a Justice only showed up when someone was slated to die—they were executioners as much as judges, killers as much as protectors.”

I brushed my hand over Alek’s fur. He couldn’t hear this story, lost as he was in healing sleep, but I knew he would agree with Vivian. He would be thinking that the Justices were killers still. I recalled his face, his eyes piercing and earnest as he told me that this is who he was, what he was.

“Eva was one of those Justices,” I said. Alek had told me as much.

“Yes. She put down the bloodiest of the packs, killed their alphas as examples of what the Council would do. She formed her own pack, a group of bloody hunters she called her Hands of Justice. If it hadn’t been for Wulf, who knows how long the killings would have gone on. My mother and I lived on the edge of Wulf’s territory by that time. He gathered alpha wolves from all over the new territories and the original States, and they pledged in blood on the sword of his father to keep the Peace, to allow wolves to live within their territory, to allow alphas to be pack brothers and sisters. Because all territory would be his territory. All alphas subservient to the alpha of alphas. He fought and defeated all challengers for weeks, until they had submitted, until they had signed.”

“What about the Bitteroot pack?” I asked, thinking of what the wolves had said as we’d stood by Liam’s body.

Vivian shook her head. “Aurelio, who is called Softpaw now, refused to sign. He refused to challenge Wulf as well. Instead he left, taking his pack. They live as wolves. Perhaps they thought the Peace a concern for those of us who walk on two legs.”

“And Eva?” Harper asked.

“She was one of three Justices who witnessed the Peace. My mother told me a Justice tried to challenge Wulf, but that she was sent away by the other two. I had never met Eva before yesterday, but the story fits together now.”

Furniture creaked as everyone settled back, and a chorus of held breaths released sighed around the living room.

“So she wants to be the alpha of alphas?” I speculated.

“Or she wants more chaos, for the wolf packs to fight again, so that she can bring her own version of justice down,” Levi said.

“I guess that fits with what Alek said about her,” I said. “He said she liked to execute first and ask questions never.” It fit somewhat too with the whole “trying to set up wolves to look like killers of the humans in Wylde.” A massive wolf hunt and lots of human attention would cause huge risk to the shifter population and to their secrecy. The Council would send a Justice. Eva clearly believed it would be her.

I just wanted to know how the Council hadn’t seen this coming. If they were really some kind of gods, why wasn’t there an army of Justices here to stop Eva? Why only Alek, and why hadn’t they warned him?

“What are we going to do?” Ezee asked.

“We? Nothing,” I said firmly. “I’m going to wait until Alek wakes up, then I’m going to go kill me a wolf bitch.”

“But she’s a Justice,” Junebug said.

“She’s evil,” I said. Didn’t get much more evil in my book than murdering a family, killing and framing an innocent woman, and then killing anyone who got in your way. Oh, and the fact that she shot and poisoned my lover was like the deserves-to-die-horribly cherry topping on a giant I-will-smite-you sundae.

“But the Council—what if they come after you? She is still a Justice,” Harper said.

“Fuck the Council,” I said, smiling grimly at Levi as he nodded. “What’s one more thing trying to fuck up my life, right?”

“We have to warn the alphas. At least call Sheriff Lee and whoever is in charge at the Den now.” Max had his phone out.

“Freyda,” I said, remembering Liam’s sister. She had seemed smart and steady. I just hoped she would believe us. “Will they believe us?”

“I don’t know, but warning can’t hurt,” Ezee said. He pulled out his phone as well.

“Straight to voicemail at the Den,” Max said. “Says they are closed this week and to leave a message.”

Vivian got up and retrieved her coat, getting her own phone out. She tried calling Henry, then Freyda directly. Every call went to voicemail.

“Sheriff Lee is busy,” Ezee said. “So dispatch tells me. They said if it is an emergency to call nine-one-one.”

“No,” I said. “That would get humans responding; too many problems with that.”

“They are holding vigil tonight,” Vivian said. “They will inter Wulf’s body at dawn in the Great Hall. Then the challenges will start and go until there is only one alpha. It was likely to have been Liam. I am not sure who is likely now. At moonrise they will pledge their blood to the sword and reaffirm the Peace.”

“So we’ve got until dawn or maybe later even before things get really hoary,” I said. “Will Alek wake up by then?”
Please, Universe, let him wake up by then
.

“He might,” Vivian said. She stared at her phone and then sighed, shutting it off.

I realized everyone was looking at me, waiting. I felt like the game master of my own life suddenly, caught without the notes or my dice, woefully unprepared. I didn’t even know what system we were playing.

“You all have seen the evidence for yourselves and yet find it hard to believe Eva could do these things. If we try to go warn them tonight, we’ll be outsiders, interrupting and accusing a Justice with no way to prove what we’re saying,” I said, thinking aloud. “We need Alek. I don’t see a way to salvage the Peace and stop Eva without him.” I wanted to go after her myself, as soon as possible, but I knew that just killing her would make things worse for my friends, for Alek. For a lot of shifters, probably.

It wasn’t what Alek would want. Balancing the scales. Killing, but only to save as many lives as possible.

“We stay here, we stay alert, and we wait for Alek to wake,” I said. It was something like a plan, at least. “At dawn we will go and try to warn the wolves and stop Eva.”

“And if he doesn’t wake by dawn?” Harper said, worried green eyes focused on the huge sleeping tiger at my side.

“I’ll storm the castle and do shit the hard way.” My magic responded to my anger, rising in me until my normally light brown skin glowed pearl and violet for a moment. It felt like there was a switch inside of me now, waiting to be flipped. I was ready to stop reacting, ready to stop defending.

Ready to kill.

None of us slept much that night. Levi and Ezee and Rosie traded off watching out a crack in the front blinds and sitting with the rifle. People came and went from the living room, but mostly my friends left me alone with Alek. Rosie brought me a hot cup of sweet orange tea at some point. I stayed seated on the floor beside my tiger, watching him breathe.

I must have dozed off at some point. A damp nose against my neck woke me. Wolf. She walked to the window as though she could see through the curtains, her lips peeling back from teeth as long as my fingers in a silent snarl.

An odd hum buzzed in my ears and my skin tingled. My wards. Something or someone was moving out there. I sent my awareness spiraling out into the circles I had placed around the Henhouse. One, two, then others. At least six bodies out there, not human.

So not the assassin. I was willing to bet they were shifters, wolves. But friend or foe? Looking at Wolf’s snarling face, I assumed foe.

“Where have you been?” I whispered to her. “You could have warned me about Eva a little sooner.” It was useless to complain. Wolf had her own priorities and ideas about things. Eva was of the physical world mostly, not a threat that Wolf could protect me against. I guess, technically, not one she needed to, since Eva couldn’t kill me. Still, I couldn’t help feel a little warning would have been nice. She was warning me now, after all.

Next to me, Alek moved. His huge head lifted and his eyes opened. He twisted, scrabbling in the quilts, pulling his legs beneath him, his lips coming back in a snarl. Then recognition bloomed in his pale eyes and he shifted to human.