Bloodlines (94 page)

Redford sidled over and put a comforting hand on Jed’s hip. “Victor told me there’s another kitchen at the other end of the mansion,” he said encouragingly. “So it’d be like having half a mansion to yourself. Think of all the places Knievel could explore.”

“Think of the yard,” Edwin piped up, craning his neck to look back at them. “Redford could go with us every full moon.”

Jed looked over at Redford, his eyes narrowed. “You want to do this?” he asked, clearly willing to keep fighting if Redford said no.

“I think we should,” Redford replied. “It sounds like it might be the best thing to do.” However much he loved their apartment, it was worth giving it up if it meant the Gray Lady would feel secure enough in picking the option that didn’t involve going to war tomorrow. And Jed seemed to realize it. His eyes went to Edwin, half slouched on the couch, bandage bright white against his shoulder, and then lifted to the window. Outside, the wolves of the pack were spread out, some human, some still shifted, tending to wounds, resting, not more than three dozen of them. Redford could see Jed counting them, jaw tightening.

“You came all this way with barely more than a handful,” Jed remarked, turning back to the Gray Lady. “What happened?”

She hesitated before shrugging, spreading her hands. “Hunters took some. We’ve had two new litters, so the pack isn’t as mobile. I left the rest back with the main group, for protection. This is what I could spare.”

Jed finally nodded. “Fine,” he gritted, none too happy with the prospect. “We’ll be a goddamn pack. You take yours and you go as far off the grid as you can. Keep the kids safe.”

“We’ll come too,” Anthony sighed. “If that’s okay with you, Victor?”

“Maybe we’ll section the mansion off into thirds?” Victor tried to joke.

“I don’t think that’ll be necessary,” Randall said. Removing his glasses, he bowed his head as he busily cleaned them. “Since we’ve decided, I really must insist that Anthony and Edwin get some rest. I assume you’ll want us to do this as soon as possible?” His gaze flicked up to the Gray Lady, who nodded. “Right. Then we have a lot of work to do tomorrow.”

“Very well, then.” The Gray Lady seemed satisfied as she stood, looking over them again.

Redford couldn’t help but remember first meeting her, and seeing her obvious disdain for nonwolf involvement with wolves. She hadn’t liked that he and Jed had been together, and he imagined she’d felt the same way about Victor and Randall. Her attitude seemed to have softened toward that, as she appeared to be smiling at them all.

“You make for a very strange pack,” she told them. “But perhaps a strong one because of that.”

“Do you need anything?” Randall seemed to realize he’d been neglecting the visiting wolves. “We don’t have much in the cupboards, I’m afraid, but I could go out and catch you something….”

“We are fine.” The Gray Lady stood, inclining her head. “We have the water of the lake and the game of the forest. We will eat, rest, and be gone before dawn. Thank you.”

Anthony stood to show her out, hovering at her shoulder as they left the cabin. They remained in silence until he came back a minute later. Anthony looked around the room and started laughing quietly.

“I guess we really are a pack, now.”

T
HE
WOLVES
left as silent as ghosts near dawn, and the sudden lack of their scent woke Redford.

He blinked up at the ceiling, letting his eyes adjust to the darkness. He, Jed, and Victor had stayed the night at the Lewises to help them with packing, and at the end of the night, Jed and Redford had retreated to the guest cabin after picking their way through the Gray Lady’s pack, that had parked themselves near the lake.

But now they were gone. Redford could only smell the faint hint of their trail. He wasn’t surprised. The Gray Lady didn’t seem like a person to indulge in drawn-out, formal good-byes. With the tension remaining between her and the Lewises, even though they’d come to a decision, Redford thought it was perhaps better that they had left without alerting anybody.

Unfortunately, now that he’d noticed, Redford was starting to feel too awake to get back to sleep. A quick glance at Jed revealed that he was still deeply dozing. Redford didn’t want to wake him, because Jed looked like he needed the rest. Instead he carefully got out of bed, putting on clothes as silently as he could.

The outside air was crisp and dimly lit in the beginning of dawn. Redford wound up walking his way toward the edge of the lake, only to nearly trip over Edwin.

“Sorry,” Redford blurted. “I didn’t see you.”

Bundled in a faded blue quilt, Edwin barely glanced up at Redford. “Smelled you coming,” he said with a shrug, low and hoarse. “What are you doing up?”

“I couldn’t smell the pack anymore, so I woke up.” Redford awkwardly stuck his hands in his pockets. Edwin was seated on the same log that Redford, Anthony, and Jed had fished from. “Is it okay if I sit here?”

Edwin was oddly quiet, like he’d become a ghost himself, the mist around them softening his features, hiding him behind a gray thread of silk. “Go ahead.” He nodded, knees drawn up to his chest, still staring out over the lake. “They left about an hour ago. It woke me up too.”

Redford sat hesitantly. The way Edwin had spoken, Redford wasn’t entirely sure if that was willing or grudging permission. He tried to study Edwin without being too obvious about it, wondering if his injuries were bothering him. “Are you okay?”

For a moment, Edwin didn’t move. It was almost as if he’d been waiting for that question, gathering up his answers in advance, ready to say the same thing he’d been telling his brothers all evening.
I’m fine. It doesn’t even hurt. I wasn’t scared at all
.

Instead, he let out a slow breath, watching as the condensation curled up into the air, smoke signals lost again in the early morning fog. “Do you know what the worst part was?” Edwin turned then, to look at Redford, his brilliant-blue eyes clouded, the corner of his mouth tugged upward in a parody of a smile. “They knew. They knew I understood them. So they talked to me. They told me exactly what they were planning. And now I know what happened to the other missing wolves.”

Most people listening to this, Redford was aware, would give Edwin a sympathetic
I can’t imagine
. But Redford could. He’d been through it himself. Filtiarn and his wolves hadn’t been kind.

“I’ve been kidnapped before,” he offered. “It was the most scared I’ve ever been in my life. So I know how you feel.”

Edwin seemed to absorb that, his gaze wandering again back out to the lake. Silently, he scooted a little closer to Redford, shoulder resting against his. “They’re skinning them,” he whispered, horror in his tone. “The wolves they catch. They liked my coat, so they didn’t kill me. They were going to make a
rug
out of me.”

What could Redford say to that? He shook his head, disbelieving at first, everything in him wanting to deny that that was what the hunters had been kidnapping the wolves for. It seemed preposterous, like something out of a bad horror movie.

But the hunters had spoken to Edwin, and they would have had no reason to lie.

“God,” Redford whispered, stunned. He couldn’t think of anything to say.

Perhaps luckily for him, he was saved, not by the bell, but by the sound of Victor groggily stumbling out of the guest cabin, his glasses held in his hand. “Does nobody sleep around here?” he grumped and parked himself on the end of the log on the other side of Edwin, still looking half asleep. “Why are you two not in bed?”

“Why aren’t you?” Edwin returned, eyebrow raised.

“Because we can hear you two out here.” Randall came next, following after Victor, winding up shoved up next to him, head resting on Victor’s shoulder with a yawn. “Sound carries, little brother. And I could smell the wolves leaving, so I was awake already. What’s going on?”

“Apparently nobody can sleep,” Redford replied, bemused despite the horrible realization still circling around in his thoughts. Any second now he was expecting Anthony and Jed to join them. It seemed to be that kind of morning.

“What are you two talking about?” Randall asked, absently taking Victor’s hand in his own, playing their fingers together.

Edwin hesitated, expression going a little blank as he ducked his head. Apparently he was more comfortable discussing it with Redford than with Randall. “I, uh—”

“What the fuck is going on?” As if summoned by Redford’s thoughts, Jed was shuffling down toward them, hair all stuck out at ends, rubbing his eyes in sleepy confusion. “Redford? What’s wrong?” He made it to the log, collapsing into Redford’s lap and yawning hugely. “It’s a fucking party and no one invited me?”

“God, can’t a guy get any sleep?” Anthony came up behind them with a tray of mugs and a coffeepot. “What the hell. Are you all insomniacs?”

They passed around the coffee in companionable silence, the clink of mugs loud against the gentle lap of the lake’s waves. When they all had their mugs, the steam rising from them to join the mist, Redford looked at Edwin again. He’d seemed hesitant to speak when Randall had arrived, so Redford decided to make the announcement for him.

“Edwin discovered what they were doing to the kidnapped wolves,” he said.

Jed went absolutely still on Redford’s lap. It only took a quick glance up for Redford to know that Jed had probably already known that particular answer. Shifting his weight, Jed cleared his throat, looking guilty. “Yeah, about that.”

“They skinned them, okay?” Edwin was scowling now, hunched in on himself, practically disappearing into nothing but a pile of quilt and messy blond hair. “New topic, please.”

Anthony was the only one not sitting on the log, Redford noticed. He was standing near the lake’s edge, and where the mist was merely passing over the rest of them, it seemed to
embrace
Anthony, gathering and curling around his legs. Redford wasn’t sure if it was a mystery of nature or a trick of the eyes, but he recalled the story Anthony had told them about his mate, and he thought it might be something much more than just randomly shifting fog.

“That’s over now,” Anthony said firmly. He looked nauseous at the revelation, but determined to help Edwin move past it. “They’re not going to be kidnapping anybody else.”

“You don’t know that.” Edwin’s voice was quiet, something ragged in the edges. “We keep killing these guys or scaring them off, but more just keep coming. And they’re all doing the same thing.”

“Why didn’t you say something before?” Randall’s expression was one of pure horror. “While the Gray Lady was here? She should know—”

“You weren’t there when they attacked.” Edwin shuddered, gaze flicking up to Anthony and then away. “I could smell them. One more push and they’d be in full-on bloodlust and I just…. I didn’t want to see that. I didn’t want to know what they’d do.”

“And you were right to do so,” Anthony replied. He turned from the lake’s edge. Randall slid off the log to rest against Victor’s legs, giving Anthony his spot to sit. “They didn’t need another reason to keep slaughtering.” Anthony gripped his mug tighter, looking regretful. “I do wish we could have told them, though. Now we don’t have the chance.”

“What good would it do?” Jed had finished his coffee and had started in on Redford’s. “Who cares what they’re doing with them. I mean, no one thought these guys were taking the wolves to go live on a nice farm in the country. If they knew that the vamps are redecorating in furry style, there would have been no stopping a war. At least now we have time to check things out, make sure we’re ready. Make sure we know who we’re actually fighting.”

“You don’t think it’s vampires?” Randall glanced at Victor, an unreadable expression on his face.

“I think we don’t trust slippery guys in offices who pay people like me to go out and kill. The whole skinning thing is very Hannibal Lecter, liver and fava beans, yeah. It’s sick. I’m not saying it’s not. But it’s also a detail that doesn’t really matter, big picture.” Jed reached out, gripping Edwin’s shoulder. “You’re alive. Let’s count that as a win.”

“I really wasn’t scared,” Edwin told Jed. “I mean, I wasn’t doing a jig or anything. But I was more upset over what they were saying had already been done. I knew I would be okay.” Edwin took a sip of his coffee, wrinkling his nose at the taste. “Anthony wouldn’t let anything happen to me.” He said it with such confidence, as if he were simply stating that the Earth was round, that the sun rose every morning. Not an ounce of anything but absolute faith.

Anthony looped an arm around Edwin’s shoulders to pull him in close against his side. He seemed at a loss for a response, choosing to reply with actions instead of words. They all sat there, close and tightly packed together, a
family
in every way Redford understood it to be. Not all by blood, no, and not all the same, but just as important.

They watched the sun rise over the lake, burning away the last tendrils of mist, chasing the ghosts off in favor of a blaze of brilliant light. Today they would be moving into Victor’s mansion, and Redford smiled at the thought of it.

He had a pack, now.

R
EDFORD
HAD
always known Jed was particularly picky about where he stored his weapons—he just hadn’t thought Jed would actually search through each of the forty-six individual rooms in the mansion to find the perfect spot, before they’d even moved anything else in. Victor wasn’t happy with the idea of guns and explosives being stored in his house, but after a fight with Jed in front of the furniture truck, Victor had eventually given in out of sheer exasperation.

There were three trucks crowded into Victor’s driveway. Two were the Lewises’, and one was Jed and Redford’s. Though the mansion came complete with furniture, Anthony especially hadn’t wanted to part with the chairs and the bed frames he’d made, and Jed had given Victor a twenty-minute lecture on how his couch was perfectly broken in to his ass specifications. He even demonstrated, pointing out the groove in the cushion. Victor didn’t seem as interested in the subject as Jed.