Hell or High Water (Gemini Book 3) (8 page)

Pinpointing the exact moment things went south was as simple as remembering my first trip to Villanow, Georgia. Before Marie Graeson’s death, Charybdis had been an amalgamation of clues held together with supposition. After Marie, he became a tangible horror brought to life by the starkness of her brother’s grief.

I told Theo what I could, lips throbbing with pain as I skirted truths I had sworn to keep secret, and then I sat back while he digested all I’d said.

“Leopards don’t change their spots.” He nudged tattered scraps of paper across his thigh with an absent fingertip. “The killer fixated on you after the kelpie died, right? Why? You’re not his type, unless you count your ability to imitate Lori. Even his methodology doesn’t match his previous MO.”

“We don’t know how much of his MO is his own preference versus that of his avatar. He’s like a chameleon in that regard. He seems to amplify the natural inclinations of his host.” Or maybe not. The kelpie fit the profile. Ayer and Harlow did too. They had acted against their will, but the flavor of their transgressions mirrored the current host personality. All except for Bianca. Murdering her mate and threatening her unborn child? I didn’t need a friendship bracelet to know those actions were totally out of character for her. “Our working theory at the time was the kelpie’s murder spree was an attempt to create a circle around the state of Tennessee.”

“A circle of that size…” Confetti sprinkled the floor when he jerked upright. “There’s not a fae on Earth who could wield enough magic to activate it. Not alone.”

That might have been true. Once. Stinging lips warned me against explaining how Charybdis had escaped Faerie through a portal created by the Morrigan. “He wouldn’t have to be all-powerful.” Just very, very clever and willing to spill enough blood to grease the wheels of his scheme. “Not as long as the spell was self-sustaining.”

“True.” Perhaps surprised to agree with me, his eyebrows arched. “I can’t decide if it was worse when I thought he was a powerhouse of brute energy or when you convinced me of his ruthless intelligence.”

Strength we could overcome with enough force. Wits applied with vicious precision, now that was dangerous.

Mulling over that unsettling revelation, Theo cocked his head. “What happened to the spell? The circle, I mean? Can it still be activated, or has it been defused?”

“The kelpie was the only link between the deaths. Without it as a binder, a focus for the negative energy, the spell dissipated. The circle was never completed.” All that preparation, all those lives lost, and for nothing. “Charybdis holds me accountable for that.”

“You made it personal.” A grimace twisted his expression. “At least as far as he’s concerned.”

Admitting the case had felt personal all along—first because of Lori and then because of Marie—got stuck in my throat.

“He’s returning the favor tenfold.” I released a humorless laugh. “Let me show you something.”

Grateful I had changed earlier, I dug my phone from the hip pocket of my jeans and pulled up a set of images before passing it across the table. The folder contained pictures of each item I had found on the steps of my trailer while in Villanow in addition to the items Graeson had rescued from the water sprite’s cavern. “Do these mean anything to you?”

“Hmm.” He angled the screen to flash the geode. “You and Lori had an entire bag of those one summer and wouldn’t share. Lori sat on Mom’s porch and cracked them open with a freaking hammer right under the window to Isaac’s and my bedroom.”

I smiled at the memory. I wasn’t the only one Lori had lovingly tormented.

“How would Charybdis know about this?” His forehead wrinkled. “These memories are vintage. Did you talk to Cord or Dell about your childhood? Is there any way Charybdis could have, I don’t know, overheard?”

“I hit the high points.” Or were those low points? Yes. Definitely that. “Small details like this? No. I haven’t thought about this stuff in years, let alone talked to anyone about it.” I shifted in my seat. “Besides, he’s not into eavesdropping. That’s not how he gathers his intel. He likes taking it direct from the source.”

“That means he must have had access to someone who knew that information, right? That means Mom, Isaac, you and me. Or…” he frowned, “…your folks.”

“Exactly.” I rubbed the sore spot over my breastbone. “All of us were accounted for prior to this. Aunt Dot, Isaac and I stuck together, and he kept tabs on you. The only ones off the grid are my parents.” By their own choice. “I haven’t heard from them in years, and I haven’t tried contacting them either. They’re the most vulnerable, which is why I’m calling in favors to locate them.”

“I have contacts I can tap too. I’ll send out the first batch of queries before bed.” He swiped his thumb over the screen. “All of these are memories from our Tennessee summers. We have a lot of good ones from there.” His brow puckered, and he glanced up at me. “I figured that’s why you asked for the transfer.”

That Theo had gotten his wires crossed wasn’t surprising. He visited every few months, but his life was separate from ours. Decisions we made had no bearing on him one way or the other except as a new destination when he bought plane tickets.

“The spot came available, and Vause mentioned it.” Despite all the good memories, Aunt Dot broke tradition the summer after my family dissolved. The next June the four of us ditched the mountains and began exploring the rock formations in and around Goblin Valley State Park in Utah. “Aunt Dot perked up at the idea. She’d been missing the mountains, I think. After I saw how much it meant to her, yeah, Vause pushed the papers through for me.”

“What’s her take on this?” He bent to pick up his mess. “Have you contacted her for help locating Mom and Izzy?”

“No.” I ducked my head, ashamed that I had ever put my job before my family’s safety. “She’s missing.”

“Missing?” Theo sat up slowly. “Magistrates don’t go missing.”

“I spoke with her Unseelie counterpart, Magistrate Martindale. Vause disappeared from behind her locked office door. Security at outposts with assigned magistrates is tight.” No one got near them without a background check, an appointment and a vigorous pat-down. “Whoever took her killed one of her guards in the process, and those guys are hardcore.”

Theo loosed a low whistle. “Is this related to Charybdis?”

“Your guess is as good as mine.” The truth was I hadn’t put much thought into what it meant that she had been taken. She had professional ties to me but not personal ones. On the surface it didn’t seem related. “Vause was taken within hours of when Aunt Dot and Isaac disappeared.” Yet Charybdis hadn’t bragged on his coup. Why was that? Unless he was innocent for once. But if he wasn’t to blame, then who was? Who else would dare take on a magistrate? “I don’t see how Charybdis would have had time to make the trip to Maine and then back to Georgia in that timeframe.”

“I don’t believe in coincidence.” Theo shoved the trash in his pocket and crossed his legs. “Sounds to me like you’ve got him running scared. Why else would he risk so much? Attacking a magistrate? That’s asking for a marshal to put a few rounds in you.” His restless foot started wiggling. “She must have known something. Maybe she got a tip? He could be scrambling to cover his tracks.”

“None of his actions make sense unless I confront him.” The very nature of his gift birthed an obvious hunger for connection, though he broke everyone he touched. Perhaps because of that, he craved the temporary fixes even more. “He’s getting something out of the hunt. We think he chose ritual sacrifice as a means of powering his circle because he’s familiar with collecting that type of energy. Right now he’s happy prolonging the chase. Otherwise why taunt me by lashing out at the people closest to me?”

“That would explain why he started with your friend—Harlow?—and escalated from there.” Theo uncrossed his legs and sat forward. “A magic user would fashion a circle out of familiar magic to make it easier to manipulate. There I agree with you.”

“He was patient with the girls,” I recalled softly. “His timeline was so precise. It made him predictable.” Glancing around the familiar trailer gutted me. The whole place felt empty without Aunt Dot’s warmth making it a home. “This time he made a wild grab. Several really. He’s lashing out faster, acting erratic.”

“Did you ever figure out his endgame from before? Why he wanted the circle? Could his previous timeline be tied to a critical event?” Theo held my gaze, absent of scorn. “Is it possible he’s getting sloppy because he’s desperate to meet the original deadline?”

The soundness of his observations impressed me, and I repaid him the compliment of sizing him up in much the same way I had noticed him appraising me earlier.

How much of our mutual animosity was habit? How much of our reciprocal dislike was the product of childhood pettiness and teenage angst? How much was grief and time to blame for the rift so deep between us that he had started a new life away from his mom and brother in order to be absent from mine?

No definitive answers popped into mind, and that bothered me.

I didn’t have so much family that I could afford to give up on what little I had left.

“Ellis.”

I bolted to my feet and skidded through the living room on my way out the door.

“I’m coming.”

“Cammie?” Theo trailed after me. “What happened? What’s wrong?”

The hum of the pack bond, the joyous rallying of each individual voice as it recognized Graeson’s presence, drowned out my cousin. I ran straight to the makeshift tent and shoved aside the heavy plastic tarp. Groggy hazel eyes locked with mine and hauled me to my mate’s side as though our hearts were magnetized.

Hot tears rolled down my cheeks and splashed on his forehead.
“I thought I lost you.”

“I told you, sweetheart,” he rasped through a tight voice, “you won’t get rid of me that easy.”

“Alpha?” Abram intruded on the moment I chose to rain kisses on Graeson’s face and neck. “This guy says he’s with you?”

Theo. That fast I had forgotten about him. “He’s my cousin. My other cousin. Theo.”

“Don’t crowd her,” Abram warned him. “Our alpha has claws when it comes to her mate.”

Rocking forward as though he had been shoved, Theo caught his balance several yards from Graeson’s pallet. A stern-faced Zed stood guard near the entrance flap, his frame as slight as the saplings used as tent posts, and his fingers tapped out a quick cadence on his thigh as he sized up my cousin.

Blood draining from his face, Theo absorbed the scene before him. The hodgepodge shelter, the bloody cloths, the dagger with brown crust flaking off the handle. Antiseptic gave the air an astringent quality, and I sneezed, but not before I noticed a shadow flicker across the material near the rear flap. My money was on Dell pulling sentry duty.

“This is Cord Graeson?” The hot glide of Theo’s voice through the quiet startled my attention back to him. “Good gods. What happened here tonight? Why didn’t you tell me?”

Meeting his gaze, aware I was pulling the hair-trigger on our ceasefire, I still told him the truth. “I didn’t trust you.”

Theo bit the inside of his cheek and nodded once. He left without saying another word, and I huffed out a tired sigh at blowing our temporary truce right out of the water.

“
S
o that was Theo
.” Arms pinned straight at his sides by cloth restraints to prevent him from scratching his wounds in his sleep, Graeson flexed his fingers until I put my hand in his. “He smells more hurt than angry.” A frown struck his face as his nostrils flared. “Why do I smell your blood?”

Cocking an eyebrow at the patient, I humored him. “We fought, like always.”

“He drew blood.” The dangerous observation rumbled through his healing chest.

“I drew more.” My cheeks tingled. “I introduced him to my wolf.”

A smile split Graeson’s lips. “I hate I missed it.”

“I do too.” I opened my mouth, but the words dried up, and I clicked my teeth together.

As usual, he didn’t need me to speak to hear what I left unsaid. “Ellis, you aren’t to blame for what happened to Jensen or to Bianca.” He twitched his wrist until I glanced at him. “Or to me.”

“Charybdis took Harlow because she was my friend. He followed me to Villanow and took my family right from under my nose. He followed me here, killed a pack member and shattered Bianca. He almost killed you, because you’re mine. All of this is because of me.” I made a fist and rapped on my breastbone.
“Me
.”

Gold saturated his eyes, his alpha glare in full force. “What he does is out of your control.”

“That doesn’t change the basic truth of the situation. When a person is the cause of a problem,” I argued, “it is by definition their fault. He targeted my friend, my family, my pack and my mate.” Guilt surged hot and sour up my throat. “Those actions hurt me, and he knows it. He craves it. He won’t stop coming after me until I have nothing else to lose.”

“Don’t say it.” His hand crushed mine in an effort to anchor me by his side. “Don’t even think it.”

I braced for a fresh wave of hurt, because I had to put it out there since it had clearly crossed both our minds. “You would all be safer without me.”

“I can’t—” Jaw flexing, he tried again. “I can’t do this without you. We’re a team.” His fingers dug painfully into my wrist. “I should have asked before naming you alpha, I know that, but I was afraid you’d say no.” He noted the red marks on my skin and eased his grip. “I was scared you wouldn’t want this.” His mouth tipped down at the edges. “That you wouldn’t want me.”

“How could you think that?” It boggled the mind. “You’re the most confident man I know.”

“Not where you’re concerned.” His chin dipped. “I can want you, crave a life with you, shift the pawns until the queen is within my grasp, but I can’t make the final move. That’s yours, and it terrifies me.”

“I’m what the big, bad wolf is afraid of?” I nudged his lip upward with my finger, forming a half-smile that didn’t stick. “I’m flattered.”

“Ellis—”

“No, give me a minute. Just listen. Let me get this out, okay?” I found somewhere else to look, because his reaction held the power to break me. “I’m messed up. I don’t fit in. Anywhere. I haven’t in so long I don’t remember how belonging feels.” I frowned, realizing that was no longer true. “Or I didn’t. Not until I met you.” His fingers stroked my arm, but I kept staring at his chest, at that spot that made my lips tingle when I kissed it, at the blood seeping under the bandage wrapping his ribs. “You’re bossy, opinionated, bark too many orders, think you know everything—”

His hand dropped to his sides. “Is this supposed to flatter me back?”

“—but you’re also the kindest and most thoughtful man I’ve ever met,” I continued, choosing to ignore his outburst. “You know me, the real me, and you’re still here. You’re still trying every day to win a heart I’m pretty sure has belonged to you for a lot longer than I just realized.” I laughed self-consciously. “Maybe you’re the one I should have asked before I…”

His core tensed, breath held. “Before?”

I braced my forehead in the curve of his neck so I could breathe him, so I didn’t have to look him in the eye. “I fell in like with you.”

“I’m beginning to speak Ellisese fluently.” He tilted his head so his cheek rested against my hair. “That’s as good as an
I love you
.”

I didn’t say he was wrong, and when I pulled back, it was to see the brackets around his mouth deepen until his face struggled to contain his smile.

“Camille,” Abram called through the tent flap. “Visitation is over. He still needs his rest.”

The sobering reminder of our present circumstances dimmed the light in his eyes, but it failed to extinguish the slow burn in my chest and southernmost regions when his fingertips brushed my hip.

I was a coward, too chicken to show him my true heart. But down where dusty childhood hopes and faded grownup dreams lay fallow in the barren field caged behind my ribs, the seeds for love had sprouted. The ground there had been dry and cracked, and Graeson had toiled to break that hard outer crust to access the fertile soil beneath, but every sincere word and each thoughtful gesture nurtured the roots and sent them tunneling ever deeper into my soul, until there was no way to weed those seeking tendrils without ripping out the heart of me.

“He’s awake,” I protested. “Can’t I stay a while longer?”

“No, ma’am.” Abram popped his head inside, nose wrinkling as he took in the bandages stained with Graeson’s blood when they hadn’t been prior to my arrival. “He needs his rest, and the herbs I’ve given him will knock him out again soon. Besides, you two are too newly mated to be left unsupervised. Between the bloodlust and, well, lust, your pheromones are tricking Cord’s body into priming itself for action he’s not getting.” His eyebrows winged higher as he stared hard at the hand straining against the restraints to massage my hip. “I rest my case.”

“Regaining consciousness is a good sign.” I turned a more critical eye on Graeson. “That means he’s healing, right?”

“Cord is young and strong.” Abram raised his hands in a placating gesture. “He’ll make a full recovery. He needs a few days of rest, that’s all.”

I stood and bent over Graeson, pressing a lingering kiss to his forehead. “Behave for the doctor.” I tapped the end of his nose. “I’ll see you in thirty minutes if you’re a good boy.”

Smile going soft at the edges, he caved to a fierce yawn and let his eyes close. “Not if I see you first.”

Abram chuckled softly and waved me toward him, away from the patient whose drugs had obviously kicked in if he thought that was a witty comeback. Gripping my arm, he led me a few yards from the tent. “A word of caution.” He jerked his chin toward Graeson. “This pack is small, and these wolves are loyal to Graeson, but there are more than a couple dominants in the bunch. Injured alphas don’t stay alphas for long.”

“You said he was going to make a full recovery from this,” I hissed.

“He will, and I’m not trying to frighten you.” He patted my shoulder. “You aren’t a warg, and you aren’t used to the posturing alphas do to keep their packs healthy. That’s why I haven’t been hard on you for wanting to spend so much time with Cord, even though it makes the other wolves antsy.”

“That’s crap.” I shrugged off his hand. “No one would make a peep if Jensen was in that tent and Bianca was tending him.”

“They aren’t alphas.” He sighed and tucked his hands into his pockets. “The pack needs to see you spending less time with Cord, not because you don’t care, but because you’re confident he will recover and soon. They need to see you’re not concerned, that they have no reason to be worried either. It will settle them.” He leaned closer. “Dominance fights start in a few hours, and the last thing you want is for one of these wolves to get it in their heads they’re alpha material.”

Magic tingled in my veins. “A move against Graeson is a move against me.”

“You can’t interfere with a dominance fight unless you want him disqualified.” He shook his head. “He would lose alpha either way in the shape he’s in now.” Voice pitched low, Abram hammered home his point. “There was magic in that blade. Fae origin is my guess. The others don’t need to know that, not right now, not with everything that’s happened tonight. Not when there will be blood spilling here soon.”

I bit my lip until I tasted pennies but nodded that I understood.

Abram raised his hand like he might try patting my shoulder again, but the aborted gesture turned into a wave as he left me alone with my thoughts and returned to Graeson since being a healer gave him a pass to stake out the tent all he wanted.

Huffing out an irritated breath, I tamped down my jealousy and focused on his advice.

Right now, I had the goodwill of the pack. According to Moore, each member had their reasons for leaving the Chandler pack. Whatever they were had made aligning with a rogue dominant and his fae mate look good by comparison. I had known those things, of course, but Abram’s somber delivery made me think the reason we had an excess of dominant wolves was because these wargs were on Bessemer’s shitlist too.

It made sense to me. In retrospect, knowing what I knew about Graeson’s tendencies to nurture the ones who needed him most while also having a skewed perception of who those people might be, that he would choose other dominants causing friction to take under his wing in an attempt to hold them all together.

The six wargs who left Georgia to follow Graeson had proven they were willing to skirt an alpha’s laws. They had also proven they were willing to take the punishment for their actions. Did that absolve their initial rebellion? Was their behavior a product of an instinctual loyalty to Graeson they were helpless to defy as their wolves aligned themselves with a more dominant alpha? Or were their actions the misguided but well-meant byproduct of wargs who thought they knew best, like Graeson?

The former would explain why Bessemer let the others go without a whiff of confrontation—even the heavily pregnant Bianca. Had the tradeoff for peace been worth the sacrifice of a pup? Granted, with Bianca being a half-blood, Bessemer might have bet on the child being born unable to shift.

A cold lump settled in my gut as Abram’s confidence gnawed on my overburdened conscience, and I groaned until the noise turned into a frustrated growl.

All this time I’d assumed that Graeson handpicked the people who came with us. That he’d offered the likely ones a choice and those brave enough had taken him up on his offer. Not once had I considered that he might have cobbled together the misfits and troublemakers and offered them refuge with us to spare them from life under Bessemer’s rule.

The stubborn man with a heart too big for his own good might have excised the cancerous tumor in the Chandler pack only to absorb the infection into ours.

For once I took comfort in an absolute truth: Graeson did nothing without a reason. These were the wolves he wanted. Broken, dangerous, twisted or otherwise, this was the pack he had pieced together. He had presented me with the fully assembled jigsaw, sealed with Mod Podge and suitable for framing.

Now I had to trust that Graeson was more than an intriguing set of tattoos, and that he hadn’t bitten off more than our wolves could chew.

* * *

B
orrowing
my she-wolf’s keen nose, I trailed the sour notes of bitterness and regret straight to Theo. I found him slumped in Aunt Dot’s recliner, toying with a short remote, one of five, taken from the ruler-straight line up on a side table at his elbow.

“Hey.” I reclaimed my spot in the kitchen to avoid crowding him. I was learning it wasn’t wise to corner wounded animals. “I should have told you we’d had trouble.”

“You think?” He plucked at the rubberized buttons with his fingertips. “What happened?”

“We lost a wolf tonight.” Recalling Jensen’s pride at learning his child would shift made my heart ache. “A pregnant female shifted and killed her mate while under Charybdis’s influence.” Glossing over the details of Jensen’s death did nothing to stop the images from flashing through my mind. “She’s currently on lockdown in my trailer.”

“And your wolf?”

A week ago I would have snapped that Graeson wasn’t my wolf, but I had since grown a possessive streak. “Graeson was attacked by the same woman. She magicked a ceremonial blade with a nasty spell and used him as a pincushion. It stunted his accelerated healing abilities, but our pack doctor says he’ll make a full recovery in a couple of days.”

“A ceremonial blade,” Theo mused. “Makes sense. There’s bound to be latent power buzzing around in there with all the blood it’s tasted, right? Assuming you’re right about how Charybdis harvests energy, he might have warped those magical remnants to fuel his spell.”

“I hadn’t considered that.” The ceremony had been one of joy, for us, but I didn’t know the dagger’s origins. I wasn’t sure it didn’t come with baggage that might overlay ours. “We’ve been working on the assumption he requires negative energy, but maybe there are several flavors and that’s just his favorite.”

“Happiness and joy are powerful but fleeting.” His jaw flexed. “Grief and regret are just as potent, and those feelings tend to linger, fester. Mix in a healthy dose of thirst for vengeance and guilt, and you’ve created an emotional Molotov cocktail.”

I cocked my head in his direction. “I don’t remember you being this smart.”