Edged Blade (25 page)

I’d told him earlier I’d have to talk to her without
him
there, because she wouldn’t take her focus off him and it made it impossible for me to dissemble the truth if she wasn’t responding to me.

“Kit has questions about your kidnapping,” he said finally, folding his arms over his chest.

Her gaze slid to me. “Then she can read the report that was filed with the Assembly. It gives all the pertinent data, although I fail to see why she cares.”

“She cares because I’ve hired her to get to the bottom of what’s going on.” Damon rocked forward slightly—there was the impression of a giant cat, preparing to pounce. “She’s got questions. You’ll answer them.”

“Is that an order?” Her eyes rolled to gold and I caught sight of her animal. Wildcat. Small, capable. Deadly.

“It is.”

She dipped her head. “Very well.”

Damon glanced at Doyle and jerked his head. They strode to the door and Shanelle’s gaze tracked them. It wasn’t my imagination that I saw the faint smile forming in her eyes.

It faded when Damon paused at the door.

“Shanelle.”

It was the first time he’d used her name and her eyes widened fractionally.

“We worked together a fair amount of time,” he said and the words were easy, almost companionable. But menace leaked from him, choking the air. “You know what I do to people who piss me off—what I do to people who harm what’s mine. I suggest you keep that in mind.”

As he disappeared through the door, a muscle pulsed in Shanelle’s cheek.

I smiled at her. “Won’t this be fun?”

She flicked a look at me and then moved to the chair nearest the fire—the one farthest from me. Worked for me.

“Get this done, please,” she said, her tone snide.

“How did they take you down?”

She frowned.

“When they found you—Atlanta, right? Damon said you were last seen in Atlanta. So how did they take you down? You’re no low-level wolf. One or two people aren’t going to be able to manage it.”

She inclined her head.

“No.” Her mouth went tight then and she looked away. “But I never saw who did it. I don’t even
know
what happened. There was a pain…” She reached up with her left hand, going over her shoulder to touch some point on her upper back. “Here. Then darkness. I woke up in the place where you found me.”

“Was it Night?”

She lifted a brow, giving me an appraising look. Then she shook her head. “No. I’ve been drugged with Night before.”

It was my turn to focus an appraising look on her. Just what had led to
that
occurrence, I wondered? But I wasn’t here to chit-chat with Damon’s ex. “Any idea what it was?”

“No.” Shanelle wrinkled her nose. “I recognize some of the ingredients, because they shot me up with it several times. I smelled belladonna and foxglove—or at least it
smelled
like belladonna and foxglove, only more potent.”

Her gaze slid to my neck—for the quickest fraction. The tattoos twining up my neck started to burn, almost as if in reaction.

“The chemical signature was unique.” She pursed her lips. “It’s not wholly natural—the belladonna and foxglove were part of the drug, but there were other things in it as well. I’d recognize it if I smelled it again. It took roughly twenty-four hours for it to clear from my system. I was due for another injection not long after you arrived. Had you come earlier, I might have been unable to shift without impetus.”

“What sort of impetus?”

“What do you think?” The words were scathing. “They used pain—torture. But adrenaline is one of the key factors behind the change. If I was angry enough, scared enough, I would have been able to shift, but reactions would still be slower.”

“So this shit lingers even after the shift?” I asked, worry twisting through me. That was bad. Very bad. Usually a shift will heal wounds and it
should
chase any aftereffects of drugs from the system.

“Yes.” Lip curling, she echoed my words. “The shit lingers after the shift.”

Chewing on that a moment, I stared hard at her.

“Is that all?” she asked.

“No.” Rising, I moved toward the closet that had been outfitted for me to store my gear. I kept her in the corner of my eye, taking a ridiculously circuitous route around the room. But there was no way I was giving this woman my back. “Right before you went night-night in Alabama, did you hear anything?”

She was quiet and I turned to face her fully.

The harsh frown on her face carved deep lines into her face as she rose from the couch. “What do you mean?”

“Did you
hear
anything? Anything unusual? Anything weird?”

“The air whistled,” she said. That glow was back in her eyes.

Lovely. “Would you recognize it again if you heard it?”

“Yes.”

Taking a chance, I turned more fully to face the closet and used my body to shield the action as I freed the strap that held the Glock in place. I hoped I wouldn’t need it, but she was strung tighter than the bow that waited for me in its case.

“Good.” I pulled the case out and gave her a brilliant smile. “Let’s go outside.”

Damon hadn’t gone far—he was leaning against the wall but as the door slid opened, he straightened, looking at me. “Get what you need?” he asked calmly as Doyle moved to position himself at my side. Guard position. There was a feel in the air he didn’t like either. The boy was becoming wickedly astute. I don’t think Damon quite picked up on the same thing I did, but he wasn’t quite as driven by his instinct the way I was.

“Almost.”

Shanelle stood a few feet away. I gestured to her. “I need her to listen to something.”

Damon had brought in targets and there was no denying they were there for me. He was already doing everything he could to make it easy for me to be at home here—to
feel
at home.

I could have told him all I needed was him, but when I caught sight of the new gym—something clearly designed more for me than for his wolves—my heart melted.

“Nice,” I murmured.

“Glad you like it.” He folded his arms over his chest. “It’s been…well...” He jerked a shoulder. “I had it ready for Christmas, but…”

He didn’t continue. I didn’t need him to.

But I did wonder.

Had he planned to ask me to move in even then? Back before…

One hand clenched into a fist and I forced the memories out of my head. Moving on, I told myself. I was moving on.

As Shanelle wondered around the room, her mouth a tight, flat line, I put the case for my bow on a nearby table. He’d even gotten practice blades. Ignoring them, I opened the case and pulled the bow out.

Shanelle was staring at me when I turned around.

“Listen.” That was all I said when I chose a target. The gym was long and skinny, definitely long enough for a lazy round of target practice, although I tended to prefer moving targets. I didn’t need one for this demonstration.

Shanelle’s frown deepened as I let one single arrow fly.

She sucked in a breath.

“That the sound?”

Her gaze shifted to me. That was the only movement she made for a span of tense seconds. She stared at me like she wanted to see straight through me—or maybe inside me. Remove the layers of skin and bone and peer at everything. It was an unsettling sensation.

“Yes,” she said after a taut moment. “That’s the sound.”

Perfect.

We had a pattern, at least. And now we had at least some idea of what the person taking these people down could do—they could use a bow and arrow…and they hunted some big, mean-ass game.

“Have you asked all your questions now?” Shanelle asked, her tone growing pissier by the second.

“Ooooohhhh, no,” I said, shaking my head. Now I needed to ask so many more.

Back in Damon’s quarters, my bow stored, I folded my arms and returned Shanelle’s glare with one of my own. “I need to know more about where you
were
.”

Damon was in there this time and his expression was thunderous, but he remained silent as Shanelle replied tightly, “I’ve given you this information. I was in Atlanta. I stopped for food.”

“Where?”

She opened her mouth, then closed it. Vaguely, she waved a hand. “Some dive. Just a
dive
. You know the kind of place people go if they don’t want to be noticed? That’s why I went. I’ve been through Atlanta before, stopped there before. That’s why I went this time. I didn’t want anybody to notice me.”

“Were there others there? Anybody you recognized or knew?”

She opened her mouth, another biting response on her lips, but then she stopped. “I don’t know. Maybe the regulars? Seems like I’d seen a few of the customers in there before. Like they were just there all the time. But I can’t be certain.”

“What’s the name of the place?”
Please let it have a name.
Some dives don’t. Legally, they might, but I can’t think of how many places I know by location—
the rec club on Bart Street. The bar over on North. The strip club on Green.

My head was already hurting at the prospect of going to Atlanta, but if that was what I had to do, then okay.

“Fangs.” She curled her lip. “It was just called Fangs. Sounds more like a blood bar, but there’s this wolf in the window with these giant teeth, so you know it’s for people like us. Shifters and the like. And…yeah. I might know them. Might not, but I might.”

Fangs
. My mind was whirling as I started to connect things.

Fangs. Howlers. Both Icarus and Shanelle had been taken down by arrows—something that would incapacitate them, but not kill. Arrows would be chancier on creatures
not
vamp or were. But hey…there was drugged booze for that, right?

Lots of loners went through dives like that. Shanelle was right on the money there. People went to places like that because they didn’t want to be recognized or remembered and very often, they weren’t.

“Were you able to eat before you were shot or did it happen on the way in?”

“After,” she said, her voice losing some of the tension. “Why?”

“They watched you,” I murmured. “They were
watching
to make sure you were alone. That you didn’t have people joining you, people who’d look for you.”

She didn’t respond to that. I took a deep breath. “Okay. One more time.”

She did, and this time with a lot less bitchiness. I committed it all to memory, word for word. When she was done, I asked more questions, trying to dislodge more information or shake free another memory, but there was nothing there.

I’d gotten everything I was going to get.

I actually remembered to say
Thanks
on my way out the door, too.

I shot a message to Justin to call me and then I called a number I really didn’t like to call.

Call it a personal dislike, but Megan of the Wolf Pack just rubbed me the wrong way. Oh, she was friendly enough, when she wanted to be and she could hold her own in a fight—she
should
be able to, because she was the Alpha’s right hand man. But we just rubbed each other wrong.

“Better be important, Colbana, it’s late and I got a date with a book and a bubble bath,” she said, her voice blunt.

“Wow. Aren’t we all warm and fuzzy?” I said.

“Yeah. I’m a bunny rabbit. Want to see my teeth?”

I could practically see her baring them. “Nah. If I’d wanted to do dental inspections, I would have gone into dentistry. Listen, when I was there talking to you and the MacDonald, I asked for information on disappearances. You been able to run any of that info for me?”

She was quiet a moment. “Some. Not a lot. Most of what we have is just after the fact stuff, because people are just gone. The only wolf we know for a fact that
did
disappear was Drake—you helped him get out. But he’s…”

Alarm bells screamed inside my head. “He’s what?”

“He’s dead. I had to put him down a couple of days ago, Kit.”

I stopped in the hallway, shoulders slumping as I thought of the angry, scarred man. I’d told him I’d get him out…

Fury screamed inside me. “Why?” I demanded, not hearing the ragged snarl in my voice.

“He was losing control.” Her voice gentled. “The trauma. The attacks. Everything he’s gone through…it all but killed me to do it, but when I went to check on him and see how he was, he didn’t even know who I was. He attacked me. It was me or him.”

Numb shock settled in and I moved over to the wall, leaning against it for a moment before I slid down to sit on the floor. “What…” I cleared my throat. “Did he have family? A wife? Was anybody brought in to try and help?”

“Drake was moving to join the Pack. He was a loner from upstate New York. No family. Nobody. It’s harder for them to hang on when bad things happen. A lot of things are harder when you’re alone.”

Yeah. They were.

“I gotta go,” I murmured. Disconnecting, I lowered the phone into my lap and stared at nothing.

“He’s not the only one.”

I met Justin’s gaze over the table. It was early—too early, but I’d managed a few hours of sleep. Now I was fueling myself with caffeine. Damon had already stuffed me full of food with a bacon and cheese omelet—he’d all but hovered over me until I’d cleaned the plate, too. But coffee…what I’d really needed was more coffee. I couldn’t get decent tea here. They thought it came in
bags
.

Justin had joined me at the Lair for coffee and he now sported a nice, shiny black eye. Really, if I’d been thinking straight, I would have kept him and Damon apart for a little longer. Damon could have done a lot more damage—although Damon had ended up scorched and singed around the edges. Sometimes I think they liked hurting each other. Justin seemed quite content with his black eye, though.

“Not the only…what?” I asked although judging by the creeping dread in my gut, I already knew.

“One that died.” His mouth went tight. “Rihall. She was one of the witches.”

“Please tell me she wasn’t the one who’d escaped,” I said, my hands closing into fists so tight they ached.