Haunted Wolves: Green Pines, Book 2 (7 page)

He edged closer, until his arm brushed her shoulder. “It’s not that I want a fight. But the problems that can be solved by one are a lot easier.”

“Yeah? Not in my experience.”

His lips pressed into a firm line, though she could tell his irritation was self-directed. “I suppose not.”

The need to comfort him welled, and she reacted to it automatically, like breathing. She slipped her hand into the crook of his arm and pulled him across the street. “Come on.”

The abandoned building on Vance Street was surrounded by dirt and lots in various stages of development. In a few more months, it too would likely be razed to make way for condos and multipurpose structures, all in the name of urban renewal. Until then, it was as good a place to check as any.

They picked their way around to a door with a broken padlock. The door squeaked on rusty hinges as they pushed it open, and Colin paused with his head cocked, listening intently. “Are the people you’re hoping to find human, or wolves?”

“Could be either.” Lorelei stepped over a stained mattress just inside the doorway.

Colin nodded and followed her, but his tension had worsened. He hovered behind her left shoulder, a silent shadow, as she made her way through the open archway to the left and into the large, cavernous room beyond.

A flurry of movement in the corner caught her eye, two forms that shrank deeper into the shadows. “Wait—” Lorelei stumbled over a broken bottle in her haste, and Colin caught her elbow, easing her upright with a soft touch along with another hand at her hip. “I’m looking for someone. She stays here sometimes when the weather turns cold.”

A young face peeked out of the darkness, big blue eyes above smudged cheeks that were thinner than Lorelei remembered—not from hunger, but because they belonged to a young woman instead of a little girl. Recognition sparked, and the girl smiled as the other figure reached out to haul her back. “Dad, it’s okay. It’s okay, it’s Lorelei.”

Her father loomed above her, inching forward into a shaft of moonlight that had snuck between the boards on the window. He squinted at Lorelei, his hands tight on his daughter’s shoulders. “Maybe it is, at that.” His smile was slower to come, ragged around the edges. “Been a long time.”

His name was Bruce. She remembered him the way she remembered almost everything from her days on the streets—hazily, hesitantly, because she still wondered if all of it had been real or just a nightmare. “It’s been a while.” She smiled at his daughter. “Hi, Amber.”

Amber’s eyes held shadows, but not as many as her father’s. She was all awkward adolescent eagerness now, a puppy desperate for a friendly face. “It’s Boz, right? I mean, that’s who you’re looking for.”

“That’s right. Is she here?”

“No, she’s down by the overpass again.”

Bruce sighed and met Lorelei’s gaze. “I tried to get her to come up here, last time we talked, but she’s…” Another sigh. A shrug. “You know.”

“It’s the noise,” she explained. “She likes the way the trucks sound when they—” Her voice cracked, and Lorelei cleared her throat. “Thanks, Bruce.”

Colin touched her shoulder, his whisper barely loud enough for her to hear. “Will he take money?”

It would sting Bruce’s tattered pride—but pride meant nothing next to the possibility of a safe place for his daughter to sleep, a hot shower and food in her belly. She wished they could stay at the condo, but Bruce and Amber were human. Taking them to a werewolf safe house could wind up being more dangerous than leaving them to sleep on the streets.

“He’ll take it,” she answered, her own voice pitched low.

Moving in near silence, Colin slipped his wallet free and emptied it of cash. After another moment’s thought, he pulled out what looked like a credit card. “It’s a prepaid cash card,” he said, holding the money and card out to Bruce. “Five hundred dollars, untraceable.”

Bruce looked to Lorelei again, his eyes wide with disbelief. “What the hell are you mixed up in?”

“I make soap.” The truth, after a fashion. “The money’s legit, Bruce. Take it.”

He huffed, but closed his fingers around the money quickly enough. “Thanks,” he told Colin gruffly, then smiled at Lorelei. He wrapped his free arm around Amber and mouthed the word again.
Thanks.

“If you need anything…” She’d written up cards bearing her cell phone number, and she dug one out of her pocket now. “I’m not in Memphis anymore, but I’m not far away. Please.”

It was Amber who reached for it, clutching it with another smile. “Tell Boz that I miss her.”

“I will, sweetheart. You take care.” Lorelei turned, mindful of the shattered glass covering the floor, as Bruce and Amber began to gather their belongings.

Colin circled ahead of her, scouting the alley before gesturing her out into the fresh air. His gaze held hers for a long moment, and she knew the questions were poised on the tip of his tongue. A hundred of them, each one clear in his eyes—

But he only gripped her hand. “They’ll get out okay?”

“They’ll be fine.” Lorelei shifted the slight weight of her dark backpack. “We’ll either have to take a cab or circle back for the car. It’s too far to walk.”

“Which do you think is safer?”

The night was closing in on her. Lorelei latched on to his question like a rope and used it to pull herself up out of the encroaching panic. “The car. We may need to get out of there fast, and better we lose Fletcher’s fancy rims than our lives, right?”

Colin nodded and tugged her toward the street. “Fletcher will get over it. Hell, he may be glad I gave him an excuse to be grumpy about something.”

Casual conversation. Lorelei was usually good at it, but not here, now, with remnants of her past swirling all around them. The night was thick with memories, echoing off every inch of crumbling stone and cracked pavement.

Her past was part of her, another part that no doubt horrified Colin. He’d barely kept that horror in check, buried under solicitous touches and careful, careful words chosen to put her at ease, but he couldn’t hide it.

And things were about to get worse.

The only comfort Colin had to offer Lorelei was the illusion of privacy, and he’d sacrifice anything in its pursuit. Of course, so far he’d only offered up Fletcher’s car. The true test would come when Colin had to give her some scrap of himself.

It had to be soon. Lorelei’s past lay spread before them in heartbreaking detail. She picked a too-sure path through mattresses and bedrolls huddled in the darkness under the overpass, but it wasn’t her familiarity that made him so, so certain that he was staring at a bit of her history. It was the tightness in her shoulders, the bone-deep resignation.

She felt exposed, and Colin’s wolf wanted to curl around her in protective defense.

She stopped beside one mattress heaped with gray wool and tattered blankets. Colin could make out a form beneath the pile, but it could have been male or female, old or young. Small or large.

It was definitely
wolf
.

Lorelei knelt on the dirty, steep expanse of concrete beside the mattress. “Boz.”

The blankets twitched. “If you’re a ghost, I’m not looking. You’re not there as long as I don’t look.”

“I’m not a ghost. I’m here.” Lorelei reached out and brushed her fingers over one ragged edge of fabric.

Colin started as a dirty hand shot out to clutch at Lorelei’s wrist. The fingers were painfully thin, almost skeletal, and Colin reassessed how much of the mound on the mattress was made up of blankets. A starving wolf was a danger to everyone around them. A crazed, starving wolf—

And she
was
crazed. Wild curly hair poked out from beneath the blanket, followed by dark brown eyes that focused on empty air instead of Lorelei. “I told you, girl. I ain’t riding no motorcycle.”

“Okay,” she agreed, as if the statement had made sense. She unzipped her backpack and pulled out a small Thermos. “I brought you some coffee, Boz. The real kind.”

Boz surged up and wrapped both shaking hands around the Thermos. “Just coffee, no arsenic?” She laughed as if she’d made a wonderful joke, but the sharp-edged sound cut off abruptly when her gaze fell on Colin. She frowned and tilted her head to such an extreme angle that his neck ached in sympathy.

“He changed his face,” Boz said finally. “And got rid of his scars. Ink’s not supposed to heal.”

“This isn’t Zack. It’s Colin.”

“Colin.” The old wolf rolled his name around on her tongue, as if tasting it. “Still don’t see any scars.”

Maybe Colin should be worried that her twisted words made a bit of sense. Or maybe he was putting his own meaning there. Either way he nodded. “No scars. I was never brave enough to trace mine in ink.”

Boz pointed a gnarled finger at his face. “Brave isn’t your problem,” she proclaimed, then laughed again and turned her attention to Lorelei. For a moment, her brown eyes cleared. “Where did you go?”

“We left town.” The words rasped out of Lorelei’s throat like sandpaper. “I’m sorry.”

“Evil was hunting you. Running was smart. Boz’s girl was always smart.” She managed to wrench the top off the Thermos, though judging from the sound of cracking plastic, it was due less to dexterity than to a hint of werewolf strength. Sharp as the smell of fresh coffee was, it couldn’t overwhelm the scent of despair in the night air.

Lorelei’s pale face shone bright in the darkness. “Christian Peters is dead. Do you know—has anyone been looking for me? Come to ask you where I am?”

Boz frowned over the edge of her coffee. “I wouldn’t help the hunters find you, girl. Not ever.”

“I know that,” Lorelei said hurriedly. “Never. I just need to know if someone has tried. If another bad man took Christian’s place.”

Hunching lower, Boz shot Colin a wary look. “He’s sharp edges. He smells like death. Like the cold ones.”

“Boz—”

“No, listen!” the woman hissed as her fingers locked around Lorelei’s wrist again, this time with more force. “Cold and quiet, that’s what it’s been. But now you’re here, and there go the screams again.”

Colin stepped forward and slid his hand onto Lorelei’s shoulder, his fingers trembling with the need to curl tight and yank her away from the mere whisper of danger. “I’m an enforcer,” he said into the silence, keeping his voice soft and even. “Do you know about enforcers?”

“I know you’re dark,” Boz snapped. “The hunters had other colors, red and blue, but not you. Oh, not you.”

It jabbed at the heart of his worst fears, and it was a sign of his own insecurity that it hurt that much. He refused to let it show, only nodding. “Maybe I am. Who better to keep her safe from the hunters?”

But it only seemed to agitate the old woman more. “The hunters are
gone
. Cold, I said. Behind the plastic and scattered on the wind. No one left.” Her grip softened, and her other hand crept out of the blankets to stroke the back of Lorelei’s hand. “But you’re here.”

“I’m—” Lorelei cleared her throat and closed her eyes, but tears glittered on her lashes. “I can’t stay, Boz.”

The woman was a broken wolf. His instincts rebelled at the idea of bringing her into his pack, bringing her closer to Lorelei, to fragile Mae and young, tired Kaley. A broken wolf could drag a pack down. Zack knew that—that was why he’d left.

But the tangy salt of Lorelei’s tears was a knife to his gut. “The condo has two bedrooms,” he told her softly. “She can stay there.”

Lorelei opened her eyes. “Will you come with us? Colin and me?”

Boz rocked a little, gaze shifting from one to the other. “Tell the man. Tell him he don’t need to worry none. You found your her, but old Boz can’t touch the moon. Only the cold. Only the screams.”

Lorelei shook her head and stroked the woman’s hair. “You can leave Memphis. We live on a farm, you know—there’s trees and grass, even a pond.”

Can’t touch the moon.
It was one way to explain how a wolf this fractured had crept along in the shadows without revealing too much. A woman so fractured that her wolf didn’t rise at all. Shane would have been able to tell him if the whispers of such things were more than just rumors, but looking at Lorelei, Colin didn’t need to ask.

Lorelei knew.

He cleared his throat. “There’s not much room in the Corvette, but we can all fit for the ride to the condo. We can get some food into her, and you can ask your questions again.”

“I don’t need to.” She zipped up the small backpack and tucked it under the blankets, close to Boz, who’d resumed her rocking and staring. Lorelei rose and folded her arms over her chest. “She already answered them. I know where to go.”

Colin hesitated. “You don’t think she’ll come with us?”

“No.” Lorelei turned away. “I don’t know how many times I’ve asked. She never has.”

The thin thread of relief shamed him, but he was honest enough to admit it in the quiet of his own tired mind. “We can come back before we leave,” he offered, nonetheless. “We can try.”

She nodded and wiped her cheeks. “Come on.” The words drifted behind her as she started down the sharp incline toward the road below. “There are warehouses in Whitehaven. Christian used them.”

After giving Boz one last searching look, Colin hurried to catch up with Lorelei. “What did I miss?”