Heir To The Pack (The Cursed Pack Book 1) (19 page)

He turned to Annie, at
last, loathe to see the look of fear on her face. But she surprised him, yet
again. She looked remarkably calm and collected. Didn’t those awful words—
the boy dies
—haunt her as they
haunted him, already? He knew he wouldn’t sleep tonight, even after the hunt.

He must have looked
askance at her, for she gave him a smile. Not a burstingly happy smile, but an
acknowledgement of his attention.

“I like to have a plan,”
she said.

“You have a plan?” How did
she come up with one so fast?

“I believe so. Learn to
change. Find the witch. Kill her. That sounds pretty darn straightforward to
me. For some values of straightforward.”

He tried to follow that,
couldn’t, and simply stood staring at her.

“Come on.” She tugged at
his hand. “We have a lot to do. And I need to hug Jack.”

Me too, he thought, and
followed her from the room.

*
         
*
         
*

She’d made it sound
perfectly easy. If only Annie were as confident as she’d sounded. Yes, it was a
plan. Kill the witch. Whoever that was. If she hurt Jack, Annie would kill her,
without hesitation.

That wasn't actually true.
She had all kinds of hesitation. Even a week ago she wouldn't have been able to
imagine herself killing someone. Stone cold killer was not on her resume.

If someone had a gun
pointed at Jack's head, she could act. In the heat of battle she'd do anything
to defend her son. But planning to kill someone…that was a whole different
story. Did the witch have children of her own? Would she be missed? If Annie
had to kill her in cold blood, could she do it?

She'd have to figure this
out. Faking self-possession she did not feel, she held herself tall and kept a
bright smile on her face as they re-entered the family suite, through the
anteroom and into the living area.

Jack sat on the floor,
building a huge tower of Lego. The three older women, Daisy, Elaine, and
Marjie, watched from the armchairs. “Mama,” he said happily, “so tall!”

“Hey, Jackie,” she said,
kneeling down beside him. “What a great tower.”

“It’s my castle,” he said.
“I’m going to live in it. And be king.” He beamed up at her and added another
orange block to the top of the tower, with great concentration.

King, huh. Well, she’d see
what she could do to help.

Daisy caught her eye. “Interesting
day,” she said. “He’s been doing great.”

Annie thought so, too. He
had a rose in his cheeks, and much more energy than earlier. The pack’s
presence overall had a good influence on him. She wished she knew what had
caused his bad turn, earlier.

“Where’s Michael?” Dash
asked.

Elaine said, “One of the
guards took him back to his room. He seemed uncomfortable stuck here with all
of us, and I think he needed some privacy to grieve.”

Fair, Annie thought. It
had been a horrible day for all of them, but no doubt worse for him. “Is he the
Oracle’s son?”

Marjie cackled. “No. He
was her body servant. Oracles always take one.”

“Is that like a mate?” She
was curious at the distinction, and at the woman’s laughter.

“Sometimes. Sometimes it’s
much less. In this case, Michael was devoted to her, like a grandmother. She
was quite ancient. By the way, Dash, we went and checked out the magic you
found in the gardens.”

He stepped into Annie’s
view, focused sharply on Marjie. “What did you find?”

“Nothing you didn’t
already know. There was a ton of magic used out there. Whoever used it is
powerful, and we’re not familiar with that magic.”

“Damn it. I hoped you’d be
able to shed some light.”

“About that.” Marjie
crossed an ankle over her other knee, her stone washed jeans riding up to
reveal thick woolen socks above her work boots. She adjusted her red plaid
shirt. “Annie. I think you have questions for Elaine and I. That’s why we’re
here.”

Annie glanced at Elaine,
who blushed and smoothed her silver hair behind her ears. “I do?”

“Marjie has a way of
knowing these things, dear.”

Dash broke in, “For Gods’
sake. Let’s stop dancing around the issue. Joel’s daughter had a vision. Looks
like she might be the new Oracle.”

“Hmm,” Elaine said, pressing
her rosebud lips together.

“She had very specific
instructions,” Dash said, with a meaningful look at Jack.

“The witch still walks
among us,” Annie quoted, feeling the echo of the girl’s other words still in
her mind. She would not think about that now. She would focus on finding the
witch. And working out how to change. The other parts she would think about
later. “But which witch?”

Elaine nodded, slowly. “Each
pack has one or two witches. Often they have a senior witch and an apprentice. Marjie
and I have shared the job for a long time, although I suppose we should take on
an apprentice at some point.”

Marjie snorted. “When you
find a girl that knows the meaning of work, we can talk about it. But Annie doesn’t
care about that, Elaine. She wants to know about her witch. The witch that
cursed the Lost Pack.”

It fit together perfectly.
A witch had cursed the pack, and as a result, Jack. She simply had to be the
witch Annie needed to kill. “Tell me everything you know.”

“The problem,” Elaine
said, closing her eyes, “Is that it’s folklore. We don’t know how much of the
story is true, and how much is bunk.”

“Why don’t you tell the
story,” Dash said, sitting himself down on the floor next to Jack, and picking
up a block. “We can judge for ourselves.”

“All right.” Elaine kept
her eyes closed. Annie might have thought her asleep, her face was so relaxed. The
tension in her mouth earlier had drained away. She sat straight in her chair,
and began to tell the tale.

CHAPTER
SIXTEEN

“Shura was her name. She
was born of the Russian pack, four hundred or so years ago in the dead of
winter, and her twin sister was born dead. Although she was a child of the
Alpha, and should have been crown princess, this was seen as a bad omen, and
she was fostered to another pack, in England.”

“Is that common?” Annie
asked. Superstitious. But they were talking about witches and curses, after
all. Fear of bad omens was par for the course.

Dash elbowed her, gently. “Let
her tell the story. I’ll fill you in later.”

“In those days, the packs
were more plentiful than they are now. There were hundreds, and the pack Shura
went to was large and strong. They ran through the north of England, cold
lands, but sheep were plentiful. They were short of women, and Shura was fresh
blood.”

Annie shivered. Fresh
blood. Genetic diversity was important, and the wolves had been wise to recognize
it. The choice of words, however, gave her pause.

“She was royal, she was
powerful, and as it turned out, she was a witch. The English pack thought they
had the best of it, having traded some large boy-child for this girl who would
give them strong pups, and many of them.

“As she grew, she was
chosen to be married to the pack Alpha’s son—a strong wolf, and a strong
warrior. Those were dark days for the wolves in England, but he’d
single-handedly fought off the many humans who tried to breach their family
home. He sought out enemies of the pack, and he slaughtered them without mercy.”

Dear God, she was talking
about one of Annie’s ancestors. Charming. Annie rather thought she hadn’t
inherited very much from that particular branch of the family, and she hoped
Jack hadn’t, either. Defending one’s family was fine, but the merciless killer
gene was one she could probably do without under any other circumstances.

“Shura was lonely, and being
beautiful and powerful had always made it hard for her to make women friends. Her
new husband was out fighting and drinking most of the time. But he had a
brother, a quiet, studious wolf, who kept her company.”

“Uh-oh,” Annie said,
unable to help herself. “This can’t end well.”

“It doesn’t,” Marjie said.
“But you knew that already.”

Elaine continued as though
they hadn’t interrupted. “He taught her to read and write. Naturally, spending
all that time together, they grew close. And soon, Shura was pregnant, and her
husband away fighting for months when the babe would have been conceived. What’s
more, when her son was born, he bore a remarkable resemblance to her husband’s
brother. And her husband...well, it was a different time.” Elaine opened her
eyes. “I’m sorry.” She looked over at Jack. “I’ll keep it G-rated.”

Annie wanted to pull him
into her lap, but he was busy playing. Better that he not pay too much
attention to the story, and ask questions that she didn’t want to answer.

Elaine went on. “Her
husband was very angry. He—took her son and her lover from her. She may
have done wrong, but this wrong was greater, and her husband should have
remembered that you never cross a witch.” She sighed. “Each werewolf born has
two spirits in their soul—the spirit of man, and the wolf spirit. Shura,
in her fury, cursed the entire pack. She banished their wolf spirits into the
abyss, to walk in darkness forever more.”

“The men mostly died as
soon as their wolves were torn from them, the women survived, as women alone. Most
of them did not last very long, in that time. We tend to say they were lost.” She
looked over at Annie. “But clearly, some—or at least one—survived. I
cannot even imagine what it was like to go on with only half a soul.”

“What happened to the
witch? To Shura?”

Marjie broke in, her gravelly
voice dark in the afternoon sunlight. “There is always a price for magic. It is
said the curse backfired on her, and stole her human spirit. Her wolf spirit
walks the earth to this day, scaring big wolves and little children alike.”

The room fell silent. Annie
stared down at Jack, imagining what it would have been like to be Shura, to
have her child taken from her—and presumably killed. If she’d had a
witch’s power, would she have done the same as Shura?

“Well, I gotta say, that’s
one creepy-ass story.” Gaelan walked into the room. His usual saunter had been
replaced with a slower, slouched pace, and his face was pale with dark shadows
under his eyes. He sat down hard on the floor with a thump, muffled by the rug.
“We’ve finished cleanup in the gardens, Dash. The Baja pack want to have
memorial words said for Rosa at the start of tonight’s hunt. That’s on you, big
guy.”

His words helped to take
the edge off the tension, and brought Annie back to today’s problem. She rolled
her shoulders backwards, trying to shake the folklore nightmare out of her
bones. Hearing the story hadn’t helped that much, but... “Hold on,” she said. “You
said her wolf spirit walks the earth. Does that mean she can’t take human form?”

Marjie frowned. “That's
the legend.”

“So somewhere in the woods
out there, there’s a witch-wolf roaming? How will we find her?” Annie glanced
at the window, half expecting to see the shadow of the wolf against the woods.

Dash stood. “We’ll hunt
her. Tonight.”

Brave as that sounded, it
didn’t make any sense. “What? How will you know it’s her, and not another wolf?
There will be hundreds of wolves out there hunting, and she could be any one of
them.” Annie squirmed, thinking of the danger. Any one of those wolves could
run alongside Dash in the darkness, follow him into shadows, tear out his
throat. “Aren’t you afraid?”

Dash grinned, but it
didn’t reach his eyes. They were cold and dark, his pupils dilated. His face
was set. “I’m not afraid of a four hundred year old wolf girl. She’s lucky she
took the Oracle by surprise. When I find her, she’s mine. I know the scent of
her magic. It was all over the greenhouse, and the garden.”

Waves of testosterone
positively poured off him. She needed to find the right way to explain. “But
what about Michael? He’s male, and huge, and she took him down.” Dash bristled
at her words, but she continued anyway. “She must be strong, and obviously she
has magic. If she could curse an entire pack...”

“I will find her,” he
said. “If she comes within a mile of me, I’ll scent her, and I’ll hunt her
down.”

She couldn’t argue with
machismo. Annie looked askance at Gaelan. “Are you hunting tonight?”

“The pack will watch his
back,” the big blond promised. “I’ll be here guarding you.”

“I would go if I could,”
she said, surprising herself. Hard to imagine hunting rabbits in the dark,
surrounded by wolves, one of whom was a killer. But she would help Dash if she
could.

Was Shura immortal? She
couldn’t be, surely, or Joel’s daughter’s vision would be impossible. And that
was another thing. Annie voiced her thoughts. “The girl, Shoshanna, she said
I
had to kill the witch. Not you.”

Dash squatted next to her.
“Annie. For the love of all the Gods. I’m the Alpha. I’m the strongest fighter
here.”

Gaelan snorted and Dash
shot him a look.

“Ignore him. I’m the
strongest. If anyone has a good chance of taking her down, it’s me.”

He wasn’t thinking
logically. He was thinking with his ego and his hormones. “But what about the
vision she had? She said I had to change.”

Her words, or her anxiety,
finally got through to him, and his face softened. Dash lowered himself back to
the floor, put his arm around her, and squeezed. “I appreciate you wanting to
help. But up until this week, you thought you were human. You’re Lost Pack. You
don’t have a wolf form, and I’m willing to bet you’ve never been in a fight in
your life. Jack is my son, too, and I am perfectly willing and able to fight on
his behalf. A wolf would kill you inside ten seconds. I can’t afford to lose
you, and neither can Jack. I don’t care what the vision said.” He paused for
breath. “Now, will you let me do what I’m good at?”

She jerked herself out of
his grasp, and got to her feet, pulling him off-balance and leaving him
sprawled on the floor. Good. She hoped he’d learn something from the
experience. “Fine.” She glared at him. He might be right about her getting herself
killed, but she couldn’t just ignore the vision. They could have this argument
again later. “Go play wolf-warrior in the woods tonight. But if you get
yourself killed, I’m going to be furious.”

He sat up, gave her a lazy
smile that raised her blood further. He’d look sexy as hell, if she didn’t want
to punch him in the face. “I’ll be fine. And I’m a lot less likely to get
killed doing this than you.”

“Right,” she said and
marched as slowly as she could manage to the bedroom. She did not want him to think
she was storming off. Even though she was. She couldn’t bear to give him the
satisfaction. She swore she could feel his smug smirk following her all down
the hallway.

No matter how nice he’d
been to her, how much he wanted to help Jack, how damned hot he was, he was
still a man. A stupid, hormone driven, muscle bound,
furry
man. She knew there was a reason she’d never gotten married. And
it wasn’t just because she’d never been asked, by Dash, or anyone else.

If they could get through
this, she’d punch him in the nose. Not speak to him for at least an hour. He’d
pay, one way or another.

Her legs wobbled, and she sat
down on the bed, suddenly and ruefully aware that she didn’t plan to make him
pay by walking away.

She’d be damned if she’d sit
here, the little woman at home, while Dash went out fighting the bad guys. Finding
the witch and confronting her was Annie’s job. Therefore, she’d have to find a
way to get there first. In the meantime, she needed to figure out this change
business.

Taking her notepad from
the bedside table, she began writing down everything she knew about werewolves,
their changes, the curse, and the Oracle’s death. Problem immersion was a tool
she’d used many times in her job. If you filled your head with enough
knowledge, your subconscious mind would often put it together for you and find
the answer. She’d also discover where the holes where, and what research she
still needed.

Besides, losing herself in
logic and deduction always made her feel calmer.

She tore out pages as she
went, organizing sheets into related groups across the bedcover. One group said
things like “Dash changes easily” and “Alpha can call another’s wolf”. A second
group contained “Shura lost human spirit” and “Pack lost wolf spirits”. A third
held facts about the Oracle’s murder. Yet another pile consisted of a single
piece of paper, containing only the words from Shoshanna’s vision. “She must
change.”

When she was done, the papers
covered the bed. She tilted her head, trying to get some perspective and
understand the relationships between the facts.

A soft knock came at the
door, and she grunted, but did not raise her eyes from the collage of facts. “What?
I’m thinking.”

 
“I’m sorry.” Dash’s tone was low, and she
looked up at him to see his head hanging. So he knew he was in the doghouse. Or
was that the wolf house? Good, regardless.

“Apology accepted.” She went
back to staring at the papers, trying to form them into a solution. “Oh! I
can’t believe how much I missed.” She wrote, “Who attempted to abduct Jack?”, “Who
attacked the house in Missoula?”, and “Who chased us on the way up here?”, tore
them off the pad, and made a new cluster.

Dash appeared in her
peripheral vision. “What are you doing?”

“What I’m best at. Analysis.”

He reached down and picked
up a pile, read through the notes. “Huh. And this helps?”

She nodded. “It does.”

“Let me see if I can fill
in some of the gaps,” he said. “Last things first. The attacks could have been
anyone from another pack. There are no serious contenders right now for leadership,
but if I were distracted or dead that would be a different story. Plenty of
cowards out there.”

His gaze went distant, far
away from her. “I didn’t think it was the Russians, but I’m suspecting them
more, now. They came to tell me I had lost their support.”

“Oh,” was all she could
say. “Why? Because of Jack?”

His eyes focused again, on
her face. “No, because of you.” He sighed. “We got sidetracked when we went to
talk to the Oracle.”

“Oh,” she said again. It
was hard to remember anything before her visit to the Oracle, but... “The white
box.”

“The white box.” He
nodded. He had a touch of red in his cheeks. Was he embarrassed?

Her hurt and fear from
earlier flooded back. So much had happened since. He’d sworn to help her. He’d
kissed her. In the last twelve hours or so, somewhere along the way, they had
become a team. She’d almost forgotten that some other woman had written him a
passionate love note. Almost. Apparently she’d become even better at denial
than she’d previously thought.

“I, in the note,” she
said, putting it together, not even bothering to try and hide the fact she’d
read it. “Stands for Irina, doesn’t it?”