When a Pack Dies (2 page)

“Want one?” she asked with deliberate, bored annoyance, jiggling the mug in the air.

He growled quietly then threw the paper towel onto the counter. “Nah. I’m going back to sleep. Let me know when you decide to take that pickle out of your ass. Maybe we can do it in our skin instead of in our fur,” he added nastily, slapped her backside then ambled back toward the living room.

Fina exhaled shakily. When the smell of brewing coffee had filled the first floor, she padded down the hall and headed upstairs, stepping over the fifth and eighth steps which squeaked. She peeked into her bedroom. The smell of blood was thinner up here and she stopped cringing every time she turned a corner. Fina dressed quickly, not bothering to clean herself even though she desperately needed to scrub herself raw in a scalding shower. If she was going to escape, she had to make her move while the rogue werewolves were still asleep. They assumed she’d accepted their claiming and why shouldn’t they? After their Alpha had mounted her, Fina had been too in shock to fight. She’d either blocked out the memory or simply stopped paying attention after the third wolf. A trumpet of hysterical laughter tore at her throat and Fina clamped her hands over her mouth, stopping it from forming. Wearing lightweight clothes, she headed back downstairs, moving slowly but deliberately. If any of them woke up and saw her, they’d assume she was moving around the house normally.

She kept moving and didn’t freeze or bolt when a shaggy head lifted off the back of a chair and pale eyes watched her as she walked past the living room. They glowed in the near darkness before shutting tiredly. The werewolf’s head drifted back down. Silently, Fina continued down the hallway, picked up her sandals, handbag and opened the front door. She closed it behind her but not enough for the latch to catch, making that unmistakable sound. Moving deliberately and expecting to be tackled from behind any second, Fina walked to her little SUV, opened the driver’s door, got in and drove away.

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Fina didn’t know where she was heading until after she turned in at the sign marking the entrance to Whitesage Nursery. The sun was starting to come up and she pulled into the parking spot marked Reg Whitesage, Owner. For an insane minute, Fina reminded herself that her father would give her hell if she stole his spot. Keys in hand, she headed for the side door of the nursery complex...the door marked Office. She scratched her cheeks, annoyed by a sudden itchiness and realized there were tears on her face. Fina stopped letting them bother her and simply let them fall as she unlocked the door to her pack’s primary business, turned off the security system and headed for her father’s office.

Her hand was trembling and she shook it, making it obey before turning the tumbler on his wall safe. The tumbler clicked one last time and the bolts pulled back. Fina turned the handle and her hand went straight for the papers bundled in the back. She checked them with numb deliberation...her father’s will, deeds to the pack’s land, investment statements. There was a tidy stack of twenty and hundred dollar bills and Fina took those too, closed up the safe and left the office. Her next stop was one building over—the refrigeration drawers. The secure drawers holding the company’s trademark stock of rare, exotic and antique fruit and decorative plant seeds were small and unassuming and unless you knew what they were, you’d overlook them completely. She opened up one of the computer terminals nearby, keyed in new access codes and wiped the old ones out. Fina made sure the refrigeration units were locked into a hibernation setting and headed for the exit. She moved to one of the few windows that opened, cranked it and breathed in the outside air. She didn’t scent the rogue wolves. She closed it up again and returned to the main office, re-armed the security system, locked the door and stepped outside.

She breathed in again but as fully as she could this time, letting the humid air pass over her tongue and into her nose. There was blood in the air, lingering traces of it. With the dawn, the wind had died down and Fina detected traces of the slaughter of her pack, overlaid with the scents of other werewolves. She knew who they were because each one of them had left his stench on her body.

Back in her little SUV, Fina bundled up the papers and money, shoved them under the seat and drove away. It was going to be another scorcher and when the wind picked up in a few minutes from now, it would come out of the south-east. At the next intersection, she turned north, heading upwind. The windows were shut and the air conditioning was on...much of her scent would be contained in the vehicle but she wasn’t going to take any chances.

The road took her through their little hamlet. The automatic streetlights switched off, making Fina start. She gripped the steering wheel tighter and kept driving. The little general-store-slash-post-office marked the northern boundary of her pack’s lands. Humans lived beyond that and, in the quiet, empty, dawning light, Fina drove past their sleeping homes. She drove past the high school...they’d finished writing their final exams last week. She and Helen were going back to college in the fall. Fina was studying business administration and would come back to work full time in her family’s business after she graduated—work with her father and older brother and the other members of her pack. Fina lacked the ability to question the sanity of her deep-seated denial. She and Helen were best friends even though Helen was human and had no idea she’d lived amongst werewolves her entire life. Fina’s hand was already reaching for her cell phone before she yanked it back. She wanted to go to Helen’s home—knock on the door and collapse in Helen’s mother’s arms and weep and scream and—and Fina kept driving, obeying the speed limit. She rubbed her sore eyes impatiently. Humans and human law enforcement couldn’t help her. She couldn’t send them into a den of rogue werewolves. The death count was too high already.

Fina exhaled shakily. She was alone, barely out of her teens and her pack was dead. She had nowhere to go and no one to turn to. She could ask another pack for sanctuary but after the rogues, she had no stomach to trust other wolves. She couldn’t be sure of her welcome, despite the fact that she was female. She would appear weak and useless.

In their world, power was held by the strongest. Alphas could be challenged for leadership although it was usually done honorably, one-on-one. Rogues and strays were viewed with distrust and often eliminated but unless the rogues that had killed her pack went after another pack, no werewolf alive would be quick to challenge them. They’d be monitored of course and nervous, wary eyes would track them. But the cruel truth of it was that her pack lands had been taken over and Fina had two choices—bond with the rogues or leave. She’d already made that choice and was about to press down harder on the accelerator when her foot shifted to the brake pedal. She switched on her turn signal and pulled up in front of the local primary school.

Fina’s wolf eyes spotted something that defied logic. There was a small boy sitting on the curb in front of the locked, dark school, with a backpack beside him and a small, electronic game in his hands. He didn’t even look up when she stepped out of her vehicle.

“Ryan?” Fina said, her voice barely above a whisper. Ryan Upton was the son of her father’s Beta and she’d babysat the loud, exuberant six-year-old often enough that she’d considered foregoing the pleasures of motherhood entirely. She knelt in front of him. Ryan loved his toys, especially his electronic gizmos, but she saw that the game in his hand was simply cycling on a Game Over message, even though his small, dirt-crusted fingers were moving randomly over the buttons. She brushed his dark-blond hair off his forehead. Like any werewolf, even as a child, he inhaled, instinctively focusing on her scent before her face. He jerked upright and scooted back from her.

Fina knew why. She smelled like the rogue wolves.

Ryan’s brown eyes were frightened and too large for his small face but his shoulders went down when he recognized her.

“How did you get here, Ryan?” Fina asked as she picked him up. He didn’t protest. Even when she leaned over to pick up his backpack, he sat with disturbing stillness in her arms, his thumbs still pressing buttons. She sat him in the passenger seat.

“My dad and I, we were going to have a sleep-out last night. In the tree house he built.” Ryan Upton continued to focus on the game in his hands and lifted his arms only when Fina fastened the seatbelt around him.

Fina knew Ryan’s mother would die before letting her only cub wander out alone. Ryan’s father would die before letting rogues take over his pack.

Ryan continued unemotionally. “Something happened because he told me to climb up into the tree house by myself. He told me to get into my sleeping bag and stay there until he came and got me. I waited and went to sleep but I knew I had school today and I got here early.”

Fina was astonished that Ryan had obeyed his father and stayed put overnight. The kid only listened to her when she threatened to take away his toys. She shut the passenger-side door, looked around, scented the air deliberately, got back into her vehicle and drove back onto the road. She turned on the air conditioning, closed the external air vents, checked the rearview mirror and pressed on the accelerator.

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An hour before dusk, Fina opened the motel room door and held Ryan back so she could walk in ahead of him. She was so used to him barging ahead, being loud and annoying that his acquiescence was eerie. It wasn’t just letting her check out the room before letting him enter either. After she’d picked him up, she drove for two hours before stopping for gas and breakfast. She paid with cash. Ryan didn’t complain when she ordered pancakes, fruit and milk without consulting him. He just picked up a fork with one hand after she cut his pancakes up into bite-sized pieces, started eating and kept playing with his game with the other hand. Lunch was the same, only they had cheeseburgers. By then, Fina’s brain had stepped out of autopilot. It had to. It wasn’t just her anymore. She checked the map in her glove box, drove to the nearest large town and headed for the Wal-Mart. Ryan sat in the cart, his thin legs dangling in the air, his fingers moving randomly over another one of his electronic games—the batteries had died on the first one—while she bought them each two changes of clothes, underwear, socks and a pair of shoes, along with an ear-jack equipped portable radio. She also picked up a jumbo pack of batteries.

Ryan walked beside her now, holding onto her purse strap with one hand as she entered an electronics store in the same plaza. She bought a laptop, wireless internet service and a new cell phone. The cash wouldn’t hold out if she used it on big-ticket items so she used her credit card...well, her father’s credit card. Fina thought she’d lose it when she signed the receipt but the light pressure on her bag forced her to keep it together. The rogues would have figured out hours ago that she’d taken off and was probably not coming back. They weren’t vested in her and although their Alpha would probably knock some heads around for letting their one and only female get away, it would be a lot easier to look for other women to join their pack than track her down. They had their own land now. Chances were pretty good they’d be able to lure a few young or disenchanted females away from other packs. They wouldn’t look for her, that is, until they realized she’d taken all the pack’s assets and Fina had a plan to systematically strip every last penny from the pack’s coffers. When the human authorities figured out that a massacre had taken place—if they ever did—the rogues would have to vacate the pack’s houses for awhile at least or until they came up with a cover story for their presence. Who knew? Maybe they’d figured that part out already. All she knew was that they’d be seriously pissed when they realized they were living on land they couldn’t legally claim title to, with businesses they probably had no clue how to run and not a cent in the bank to tide them over until they figured out how.

She loaded Ryan and their purchases into her vehicle and headed for the largest crossroads in the area. A poster slogan she’d read in some history class had been popping into her head that afternoon, not often but often enough for Fina to latch onto it weirdly.

Go West, young man.

If it worked for young men, it would work for her too. Fina reached the crossroads and turned onto the westbound interstate ramp.

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Just after noon the next day, Fina was using a payphone in a mall maybe forty miles from her home. She’d doubled back in a big circle, paying cash at every stop. “May I speak to Percival Dust please,” she said politely to the woman who answered.

There was hesitation on the other end of the line. “One moment please,” the woman finally replied and put Fina on hold. Canned music echoed through the remarkably busy mall, considering it was a Thursday, but then the high school kids were out of school now and the grade school kids would get out the end of next week. Fina glanced over at the mall’s daycare service. Ryan was inside the fenced-off area, sitting on a colorful, square cushion, playing with one of his electronic games. When a little girl came up to him and asked him what he was doing, he showed her. Fina had asked him to be quiet and polite and wait for her. She was still surprised every time he obeyed.

“Percival Dust here.”

Fina gripped the top of the payphone and sighed. Kevin Percival Dust was her pack’s lawyer. Her father had picked him because he wasn’t local, although still in Tennessee. He was good at his job, he worked out of a mall—which meant that if one of them had to go in covertly they could pretend they were shopping—and he was happy to indulge his clients’ quirks for a slight markup from his usual fees. One of the Whitesage account’s quirks was a safeword. If they needed an urgent meeting and asked for Percival—Kevin’s middle name—instead of Kevin, he’d introduce himself back as Percival if it was okay to come in. Until now, Fina was pretty sure nobody had had to use the service.