Cry Wolf (32 page)

“Are you out of your fucking mind?” Kelly asked.

“Abraham is right,” Ahmir said, putting his hands on her shoulders. “He said to come to him when I was ready. I’m not ready yet, but at least I can help. An abomination must be exterminated. It’s like the immune system in our bodies, attacking the intruders that try to attack it.
We
attack human beings.”

“But
you
don’t,” Kelly said. “You put on a good show as a bodyguard, but you’ve never killed anyone, not with your own teeth.”

“Not yet,” Ahmir said darkly. He looked down. “I want to.”

“But you haven’t,” she replied. “That’s the important part. It’s a choice, don’t you understand? Yes, maybe we’re more dangerous than most humans. We have some disadvantages. But so do some human beings. It all comes down to the choices you make, no matter how hard they are. You’re surrounded by humans all the time and you’ve never killed one of them. Abraham surrounds himself with werewolves, vampires and other magical beings, and he’s killed almost every one of them. He makes them think he’s going to make them human again, but he kills them. Who’s the beast now?”

“He wasn’t going to kill you,” Ahmir said, but he looked troubled by what Kelly had said. “He said he found a way.”

“A way he was going to share only with me,” Kelly said.

“There’s a way?” Malcolm spoke up.

“In his spell book, there was a new spell that wouldn’t kill…” Kelly trailed off, looking over her shoulder.

Malcolm stood in partial shadow, wrapped in the blanket, so still that he could have been a Greek statue.

Her own words came back to her, that if she had a way to take the werewolf out of Malcolm, she would do it in a heartbeat. Now hers seemed to stop. She forced herself to look away from Malcolm and back to Ahmir.

“Somehow, it doesn’t make it okay that he was going to spare just me,” Kelly said. “Now, Abraham is sleeping, and Malcolm and I are leaving.”

“Kelly,” Malcolm murmured.

“With the spell book,” she said. Saying the words felt like swallowing needles. “I like you, Ahmir. You’re nuts, but you seem like a nice guy. Even so, I’ll hurt you if you try to stop me.”

“Then you’ll have to hurt me,” Ahmir said mildly. “I owe him for the favour he’ll do for me when I’m a better man.”

“You owe him
nothing
,” Kelly spat.

Just as Ahmir began to squeeze down on her shoulders, he collapsed into a sizable heap on the ground. She had warned him.

“Are you just going to leave him there?” Malcolm asked.

“What do you recommend I do, Malcolm?” Kelly said. “I guess I can take him along with us, but it’s been my experience that people who don’t want to come with you make uncooperative hostages. Look, I don’t know if that spell was even going to work or whether it’s safe or…”

Malcolm didn’t have to reply—his answer was written on his face. Kelly rubbed her eyes, hung her head and called the Book of Shadows to her. It floated into her hands, the bedroom door closing behind it.

“What is it?” Malcolm asked when she just stood there, considering the book with suspicion.

“Even if he did awaken all of my magic, that was way too easy. Someone like Abraham wouldn’t let his spell book be taken so easily. It should have more loyalty to its master.” She opened the book to the well-worn pages.

The ivory paper was blank.

“Damn it.” Kelly threw the book against Abraham’s door and squeezed past Malcolm towards the end of the hall. “The spells disappear when the book is out of his possession. I doubt he’s going to give us the secret when he wakes up and discovers I’m not exactly okay with him killing us. We need to go. Before someone wakes up.”

“Killing
me
,” Malcolm corrected her through clenched teeth. He hadn’t moved.

Kelly threw her hands up in the air. “Malcolm, if you think werewolves are so damn evil, then go back in there, hand him his knife and beg for him to put you out of your misery as though you were one of those violent dogs they put to sleep. You know? The kind of dogs that Renee and all the other shapeshifters try to save? You make your choice, Malcolm. Do you think you deserve to be murdered? You think that’s what you’re worth? Then go ahead. Get out of my sight and stop pulling me down with you.”

Kelly hurried through the corridor. Even though she intended to return to settle the score with Abraham, she just wanted to leave and run the scent of Abraham and storm-drenched cornstalks from her body. She wanted to get the taste of wine and blood out of her mouth. And she needed to hunt before she came back for more human prey.

If she was going to return, she had to keep a level head. The more frustrated she became with Abraham and his cult followers, with werewolves who insisted on telling themselves that they were scum of the earth when there were more terrible monsters in more pleasing skins, the more she thought that she might tear the farm apart and leave nothing but a sinkhole in the process.

And all for a man who deserved nothing but a quick gutting—nothing too impressive, because he deserved much less than he believed he was worth.

Malcolm didn’t run after her in the house, but he caught up with her halfway down the hill. He didn’t say a word. Kelly bit back a sarcastic remark that would not have been helpful. He just kept his eyes on the ground, gritting his teeth. His feet quickly became coated with wet grass.

Most of the damage from the storm had been cleaned up. The bulk of the debris was natural—stirred-up soil, fallen and windblown branches, pieces of cornstalk strewn about, a section of fencing that had been broken. The dark night was quiet. Even the nocturnal creatures weren’t speaking. All she heard was the sprinkling of rain remnants from the trees to the grass.

She climbed into her truck. Malcolm went into the trailer. She swallowed past a lump in her throat at being alone and switched her radio off. Eyes attuned to any movement that might interrupt their escape, Kelly manoeuvred out of the makeshift parking lot and onto the highway.

She drove until the sun touched the clear horizon. Then she pulled over into a highway rest stop to use the facilities and stretch her legs. The magic had woken her up, but now she was antsy, as though she had drunk both too much and not enough coffee. There were a few trucks in the parking lot, but she couldn’t see any truck drivers, so she stripped and started running.

Kelly didn’t go far. She ran over her own tracks along the length of the private fence lining the highway before doubling back again and again and again. There were trees blocking highway travellers from seeing her, so she wasn’t afraid of exposure, and she desperately needed the run. She wished she could just keep going, run wherever her feet took her and hopefully end up somewhere as hospitable as the sanctuary or Damien’s pack.

She was afraid that not killing Abraham when she’d had the chance there in his bed was going to backfire on her. Once again, having to protect Malcolm had held her back. She had no patience for it anymore, especially if he couldn’t understand how much she’d sacrificed for him just these last two weeks.

Kelly wasn’t his mate. She no longer had an obligation to take care of him or blow the horn in his pity party.

She heard his footsteps before his scent crossed her path. She didn’t give any indication that she knew he was there. He fell into rhythm with her, his stride matching hers, and she let him follow as she headed back to the trailer. Before joining her, Malcolm had put out a bag with new clothes for both of them behind some trees close to the rest stop. Kelly pulled on the jersey dress, leggings and practical sandals. Malcolm came up behind her and groaned back into human form before putting on his own clean clothes.

They still didn’t speak as they returned to the truck. This time Malcolm got in the passenger side. They stopped by a fast food restaurant for breakfast sandwiches and ate them in silence in a discount department store parking lot. Malcolm took their trash and threw it in a trash can then returned.

As Kelly turned the key in the ignition, Malcolm put his hand over hers and pulled the key out.

“I’ve had some time to think,” Malcolm said. “I think I fell asleep during part of it, but they say you do some of your best thinking in dreams. I’m not sure what rollercoaster freeways and marshmallows have to do with my dilemma. It seemed significant at the time.”

He took a deep breath then let it out. Kelly clasped her hands in her lap and stared at the interlocked fingers.

“I don’t suppose you remember what the spell is that Father Abraham wrote down,” he said.

She shook her head.

“All right. Then I’m going to stop looking,” Malcolm said with a note of finality. “I promised I’d stop after this. Even if there is a spell to turn me back or at least to turn me human, you don’t know what it is, and Father Abraham isn’t going to give it to me. So there might as well not be a spell at all.”

He looked out of his passenger window, tightening his hand on his knee. “Ki and Max were just trying to help, but Ki has Max. She loves me and I love her, but it’s not the way she loves Max.
He’s
her mate. Even though I liked the way things were, it was stupid of me to think that it could be that way again. Mostly because it wasn’t as ideal as I remembered it. I used to come to her when I needed it, and she would accept me, but how many times did she come to me when she needed me? She never came to me.”

He took one of Kelly’s hands then looked at her. “I accept being a werewolf. Maybe if another spell surfaces, I won’t even want you to use it. Maybe with enough time, I’ll love being this as much as you do. But no matter how long it takes for me to let myself be the beast, I want you to know that I will follow you into the pack.

“I don’t know if I love you. But ever since you arrived at the sanctuary, even before you picked a fight, I was avoiding
you
as much as I was avoiding them because you inexplicably became the centre of my world. Everything else disappeared, and I couldn’t see anything but you. Then the way you make me feel. If it’s magic, unintentional magic, I don’t even care. I will make love to you and let you do whatever you want with me. I will hunt with you. And I will run with you. As disappointed as I am that a good part of my past is gone, you’ve shown me that the moon has light as well.”

Something was choking her. She couldn’t swallow. All the muscles she wanted to be tense were too loose and the muscles she wanted to relax were too tight. Her body flashed cold then hot. For a second, she didn’t think she could even breathe.

“I know I’m not the alpha male you’re used to being with. I don’t need to be the centre of your world like you are mine. But until the next change in my life, I will follow you.”

Just as Malcolm was about to get out of the cab and head back to the trailer with the proverbial tail between his legs at another bridge burnt, one of his long legs already out of the door, Kelly grabbed him by his collar and hauled him back in.

She yanked him to her and opened her mouth to accept him in, hot and slick and savoury, as passionate as it was unhurried. The angle was awkward, but Kelly told him without words how much she’d wanted him to say those exact things.

She didn’t need love. She knew love took time, but she hadn’t let herself admit even to herself how much she wanted him to be with her, to join her in the pack, because to admit it had been to admit defeat—the defeat of loving someone who would abandon her in a New York minute as soon as the opportunity arose. She didn’t always love the men with whom she had sex, but she could. In spite of how infuriating Malcolm could be, he had finally decided to reject the most infuriating part of himself—his denial.

She didn’t need an alpha. She just needed a man who wanted her in spite of knowing who and what she was. It was a special kind of man who could watch his choice of woman get fucked several times by someone who wanted to kill him, yet still want to be with her because he thought she was a good person.

“Hey!” someone yelled at them through the windshield. “There are kids here, you know.”

Kelly bit her lip as she pulled away, trying not to laugh. She raised a hand at the lady leading her two children back to her car and mouthed, “Sorry.”

The lady briskly walked off. Malcolm closed the truck door, and Kelly started the engine.

“I’m going to take you back to the sanctuary,” Kelly said. “And then I’m coming back and I’m going to kill him. I hope that’s okay.”

“By yourself?” Malcolm asked.

“I notice you’re not objecting to murder.”

“I usually do,” Malcolm said. “But I didn’t object to Renee killing the hell out of Grant and not just because of what he did to me. It’s pure self-defence. But you’re going to take him on alone?”

“You think I can’t?” Kelly asked.

“It’s not that, but wouldn’t it be easier with help? It would be a distraction for him to have to deal with more than one person.”

“He’s been siphoning power from werewolves, vampires, witches and who knows what else for decades. A few extra fighters aren’t going to distract him enough. But it will distract me, because I’ll care what happens to those people. He won’t. This isn’t up for discussion,” Kelly said, speaking up before he could.

He thought it loudly enough for her to hear—
We’ll see.

* * * *

As soon as they buzzed into the sanctuary, Kelly couldn’t stop giggling.

“What?” Malcolm asked.

“Apparently the shifters and the werewolf pack got along well in our absence,” Kelly said. “They had a picnic.”

“They had a picnic?” Malcolm said incredulously.

“It was Renee’s idea.”

“Of course it was,” Malcolm said. He rolled his eyes, but Kelly could tell that there was no real resentment behind it.

They pulled up to where she set up her trailer, taking care not to run over any of the dogs excited by their arrival.

Both she and Malcolm spotted Jake running to get Ki in the shapeshifter barn.

“Shit,” Malcolm muttered. There was no mistaking the pain in the creases of his face.

“I’m sorry,” Kelly whispered. “Should I leave now, see the wolf pack before I go?”