Inquisitor (Witch & Wolf Book 1) (20 page)

“He’ll be on the first plane out. I’ll call with his arrival time. Don’t be late.”

I snorted. “I’m never late.”

He hung up. It didn’t surprise me he wouldn’t come, not really. We were both too old to play cops, robbers, and spies. He, at least, could say no. I had a killer to catch. Unfortunately, I wasn’t James Bond, and I never would be.

~*~

The row houses on the street where Dorothy Lane lived were falli
ng apart; each and every one of them was a decrepit reminder of how many parts of Baltimore were too rough to be residential, let alone a place for children to grow up. The brick exterior crumbled in several places, with chunks of mortar hanging from the cracks. I eyed the structure warily, wondering if knocking on the door would bring the whole building down.

At a little after nine in the morning, with only one coffee in me, all I could do was hope the kids wouldn’t give me too many problems. I cringed, stepping out of my Mustang.

I didn’t even know their names.

I made it up the stairs and lifted my hand to knock when the door flew open. A wispy-haired woman with wild eyes stared at me.

“You here for those wretched little animals? Take them! Take them before I drown them both!”

Spittle splattered on my cheek. I wiped it away with my gloved hand. “You’re Dorothy Lane?”

The door slammed in my face. The woman shrieked. A few minutes later, she returned, her bony fingers clutching the ears of a boy and girl. Both of them were crying, their faces splotched and their eyes so swollen I was impressed they could open them at all.

I reached down, careful to keep my grip light on their wrists as I took hold of them. As soon as I touched them, the old woman shoved them out of the house and slammed the door. My mouth fell open, staring at the weather-warped wood.

The children sobbed so hard they could barely breathe, let alone make any noise. I knelt on the step below them, putting my head lower than them, my throat exposed so they wouldn’t view me as a threat. “Come on, kids. My name’s Victoria.” I kept my voice low and soothing despite my rage. Once again, my wolf and I agreed on something.

We both wanted to rip Dorothy Lane to pieces.

The girl was the younger one, with strawberry blonde hair that had once been in pig tails. One of her ties was gone, leaving her waist-long hair in a tangle. The boy’s brown hair fared no better. Both of their eyes, now that I got a closer look at them, were hazel.

I drew a deep breath.

The scent of wolf forced a sneeze out of me. With wide eyes, I herded them into the car, buckling them into the back seat. Neither spoke or met my gaze, whimpering and whining quietly.

They were asleep before I managed to get the car started.

I drove all of three blocks before I found a place to park, twisting around in my seat to stare at my charges. Their scent strengthened in the enclosed space, and I covered my mouth with both of my hands.

Werewolf puppies. I couldn’t tell if either one of them had changed or were actual wolves, but I could smell their pedigree even with my human nose. It was enough to make my face itch.

Either their mother or father—or both—had been werewolves. I bit my lip, cursing myself for my blindness and stupidity. It shouldn’t have surprised me. It shouldn’t have eluded me for so long. Marrodin had always been a safe haven for those with unusual circumstances, for good people in bad situations.

Werewolves counted. Witches counted, too. I didn’t know how many wolves or witches worked for my company, but they did. Sometimes, when I had gone to branch companies, I caught a whiff of them.

It wasn’t a random string of deaths. It was an Inquisition happening right under my nose.

My eyes burned. The lawyer must’ve been the warning kill, mimicking the hunt of a werewolf. Their mother had been executed. The young cashier’s crucification was the ultimate punishment of a sinner against the church. The Inquisition didn’t believe in forgiveness. Children, like the boy and girl in my car, were sometimes spared.

If
the Inquisition believed them harmless or tools to be molded.
If
they were strong enough to be worth the risk.

If Samantha had been killed by the Inquisition, if her death hadn’t been a natural heart attack, how had they found her?

I swallowed. Mark’s mother had plenty of reasons to hate me, even before counting the fact I was a werewolf. My eyes widened. The engagement ring had been made of silver—old silver, passed down through generations. Had they both been testing to see if I was a werewolf? The witch in me had saved me from the black burns of silver poisoning. On any other wolf, the white gloves I’d worn would’ve turned black, as though stained with tarnish.

It would’ve been easy for them, working together, to frame me. Their plan might’ve worked too, if not for my allergy to my own kind.

Would Samantha have lived if I’d been officially charged with murder? I swallowed back my grief.

My phone rang. Neither of the children stirred. “Victoria,” I answered.

“One hour and thirty minutes. Terminal three,” a digitally-masked voice snapped. The line went dead.

I waited long enough to get a brush out of my night bag and brush the kids’ hair, taking the time to braid the girl’s. Not even sleep eased the grief and pain etched into their faces. Shaking my head, I slipped back into the driver’s seat and headed to BWI.

~*~

I arrived at terminal t
hree of BWI with two minutes to spare, carrying a child on each arm. The girl woke enough to fix herself to me like a koala, which let me get a good hold on her brother. While asleep, they gripped onto me tight enough I doubted I’d be able to pry them off without help.

By the time I made it to the waiting area, both of my arms were going numb, and I was aching from the constant weight of the two kids. To make matters worse, I couldn’t help but be a little jealous of them. I wanted to take a nap, too. There was a sickening amount of truth to the phrase ‘No rest for the wicked.’

A flood of people left the terminal, shoving me in their hurry to escape the stifling confines of the airport. Without knowing who I was looking for, I was left standing in a churning mass of people, wincing at each bump of a passerby. The jostling reminded me it hadn’t been that long ago I’d taken two rounds to the chest.

Werewolves healed fast, but it didn’t make me immune to bone-deep bruises.

“Victoria, whatever are you doing? You didn’t leave the children with a babysitter?”

I grimaced at the British accent. Unless my guess was off, I pegged him as local to somewhere south and east of London. I faked a smile. “You know how hard it is to find someone on such short notice.” If he wanted to play the British game, I was up for it. I wondered if, like me, he was trying to guess where my accent was from.

Unless he had a time machine, he’d never know. I might’ve left Britain not
quite
two hundred years ago, but the accent was tenacious. Maybe my wolf had somehow preserved it, because it refused to go away.

The speaker proved to be tall, dark, and handsome with a great smile. His youth made me wonder if could legally drink in the US
or
Canada.

“Let me take him,” he said, reaching out for the boy.

To my surprise, the older of the two children cracked open an eye, took one look at my British companion, made a growling noise, and clung to my neck.

“Or not. A mother’s boy, I see.”

I winced, shaking my head. “Morte,” I hissed, hoping he understood at least that much of French.

A frown marred the man’s face. “When?”

“A few days ago.” Sighing wouldn’t change the past, or my inability to figure out where the Inquisition was going to strike next. I wasn’t sure how much I could trust Donnie’s assistant. There were many talented and skilled younglings in the world, and if Donnie said this one was as good as he had been in his prime, I should’ve been content with that.

But, the Inquisition wasn’t the normal type of enemy. Any one of the people milling about could belong to the organization, just waiting for me to slip up and reveal I was witch and wolf.

“You have a car here?”

Not trusting my voice, I nodded.

“I’ve only one case. Let’s go.”

We cleared out of BWI in record time. Neither one of the kids woke up, not even when I needed my new friend’s help getting them back into my Mustang. Rolling my aching shoulders and stretching out my arms, I glanced over the hood of the car at Donnie’s assistant. “What are Donnie’s terms?”

The Brit’s dark eyes narrowed as he considered me. “You jump straight to the chase. Good. Get in, and we’ll talk.”

I matched his expression, watching him for even the slightest change of expression. Drawing a deep breath didn’t help me gage his mood since the fumes of jet fuel and exhaust clogged my nose. With a shrug, I slipped into the driver’s seat, buckled up, and started the car.

It took twenty minutes to get free of the traffic around the airport and get back on the interstate. Neither of us spoke. I rolled down the window to clear the stench out of the interior of the car.

“Well? Start talking. What’re Donnie’s terms?”

“Donnie told me you’re aware of the Inquisition.”

Chills ran through me. It’d been in the code when we’d spoken that the Inquisition was likely aware of my existence and I suspected they were behind Samantha’s death. I still didn’t know how they’d found her—found
us
—but they had.

I also didn’t know if they were aware of the fact that I was a witch or a wolf. “Yes, I’m aware.”

“Donnie trusts you a lot, then.”

I shrugged, ignoring the prickle of his stare on me, weaving my Mustang through traffic. Braving I-95 in the morning didn’t seem wise, so I decided to head southbound via a more obscure route. Maybe the back roads through the mountains and forests would do me some good. At the very least, it’d please my wolf. “We’re friends.”

“It’s not like him to make friends with such a young lady.”

I glanced at him out of the corner of my eye, once again using my favorite ploy of adjusting the rear view mirror. The corners of his mouth were turned upwards in a smirk. “He usually doesn’t have any use for kids, so you must be really something special if he trusts you with this sort of work.”

The Brit sucked in a breath. “Well played.”

“If we’re done posturing, what are Donnie’s terms and why did he send you to me? While I’m glad he delegated, his choice of alternates is… interesting.”

The thinly-veiled insult didn’t go by unnoticed, but to his credit, he didn’t do more than grimace before forcing a more neutral expression. “You have a sharp tongue, Ms. Hanover.”

“Vicky.”

“There’s some interesting news on the wire,
Vicky.
A young woman, one Allison Ferdinan, was murdered in Detroit after fleeing New York. An SUV’s mangled husk was pulled out of Lake Erie last night, so damaged that they’re saying the bodies were likely so torn up the fish probably ate what hadn’t been incinerated.” He leaned back, linking his fingers behind his head. “The footage captured was quite brutal. Two women shot down in a soured deal, from the looks of it. I don’t suppose you know anything about that, do you?”

I made a non-committal noise.

“It was a nice piece of work, I’ll give you that. You showed just enough of your face to get a positive ID. The gunman firing out the cameras was a stroke of genius.”

I kept my eyes on the road, careful not to grin at the praise of my handiwork. The hardest role had been Donnie’s, but as always, when it came to his explosives and gun work, he was the best. “Donnie’s good, what can I say?”

“Donnie?” I heard the surprise in his voice.

“I promise you I didn’t shoot myself, good sir. If you’re his alternate, you know how good of a shot he is. I couldn’t have made those hits. Of course Donnie was the shooter. You’ve got much to learn, if you’re going to survive in his business.”

“Why that old rascal,” the Brit murmured.

“For a Brit, you sound pretty American.”

He laughed. “I’ve been here a while. You sound pretty American, too.”

“I’ve been here a while,” I echoed. The itching feeling in my face intensified. I drew a deep breath. The scent of wolf had strengthened. Tilting back the rear view mirror, I stared at the kids for a moment. Both were still asleep. Why had the scent of wolf grown stronger? In sleep, their wolf heritage should’ve been at its weakest.

Cursing my allergies, I tried to take a deep breath, focusing on the strongest of the scents. My nose identified the wolf as male, but I couldn’t figure out anything more. I readjusted the mirror.

“Donnie sent me because there was a bounty on your friend’s head of ten million dollars, issued on Halloween and claimed last night. My condolences, ma’am.” There was genuine regret in the man’s voice, which took me a bit by surprise. “There was also a bounty for Allison Ferdinan, but it has been since stricken from the dockets, likely as a result of your murder.”