Savage (31 page)

I killed your father to protect you
, he said inside her head. It was his voice, yet different. Fuller, richer, more majestic. Otherworldly and imposing.
My own son. And I would do it again. It would kill me to do it to you. I couldn’t live through it, sweet Katie.

Be the best alpha that you can be, darlin’. Make them follow the law. Force them. Protect them from their own violent natures.

She nodded at him.
I will
. Katelyn paused.
I have to convince these packs to make peace
, she thought. Then, as if Cordelia could read her mind, her friend turned to Katelyn and slipped her hand in hers. The two squared their shoulders and calmly faced the crowd.

“You first,” Cordelia whispered.

“We don’t have much time,” Katelyn said to the assembly. “The humans will be here soon.” Suspicious gazes ticked toward her grandfather and Trick as if to point out that humans were in their midst, but she went on. “This has to be the last of the fighting between us. Or none of us will survive.”

“The humans
are
coming,” Cordelia echoed. “Dom is dead, and I declare myself alpha. And I say that we’re at peace with the Fenners. From now on.”

“You’re not even one of us!” someone from the crowd shouted at her. Jeers rose, but also a voice that bellowed guttural words in Louisiana Cajun French. The protestors fell silent, sullen.

“I
am
one of you,” Cordelia said emphatically. “I’m a werewolf. That’s all we are today. Not Gaudins or Fenners or even a McBride.” She gestured to the fire, and to the caved-in mine behind her. “Look at what’s happened. The Hellhound promised retribution if we fought and it didn’t do any of this. We did this to ourselves!”

“No.
We
did it,” said a man from among the untouched trees closest to the throng.

Hooded figures appeared. The Hounds of God. And with them came Jack Bronson, in handcuffs. The tremendously tall figure beside Bronson threw back his hood. It was Daniel Latgale, his face cut and swollen, his hands sooty and bloody.

He said, “I offer my deepest apologies to the alphas of the Gaudin and McBride-Fenner packs. Magus, my most trusted lieutenant, set the mine on fire, and that set off the explosion. God struck him down.”

Katelyn raised her chin. “You are his alpha. You lost control of him.”

“The same may be said of the alpha who led the Fenner pack before you,” he replied. “Lee Fenner. I believe we are even.”

He had her there.

“Magus might have been acting on his own in the cave, but you set the forest fire.” That was a guess. She hadn’t seen him in the chanting circle.

“It was our agreement,” he replied. “My actions were justified. There
was
fighting. A lot of it.”

Katelyn shifted her attention to her uncle. Jack Bronson, John McBride. She should be surprised to see him there, but somehow, she didn’t think anything could surprise her.

“Why have you brought
him
here?”

“So that he may confess his crimes before God and those he has wronged. It is written: ‘For I would go down to hell itself, and drag out the wicked by their entrails.’ ”

Katelyn leveled her gaze at Jack Bronson, realizing fleetingly how different their positions were than when they’d last met. He even looked different, wild-eyed, disheveled and crazy, a marked contrast to his previous cool, controlled demeanor.

“What did he do?” she asked.

“It’s his fault!” Bronson shrieked, looking over at her grandfather, who stood eyes narrowed, arms folded across his chest. “I waited and waited for my brother to share his power. I wanted to be a Hellhound. I wanted to feel that inner beast. But then he wouldn’t. Damn you, Mordecai!”

Katelyn’s grandfather betrayed no emotion as his secret was revealed to the entire crowd. Some of them murmured and drew back; others just stared in shock. Justin narrowed his eyes at Trick, and then looked away.

“Hellhound, forgive us,” Katelyn said formally, and she sank to her knees. “Spare us.”

“Forgive us,” Cordelia echoed, and, still holding Katelyn’s hand, did the same. Every other werewolf there bent his or her knee except for Daniel, who lowered his head while keeping a firm grip on Jack Bronson.

“
I
am the Hellhound,” Mordecai stated. “I have laws I must follow the same as you. You must never reveal the presence of werewolves to humanity, and I must stop you and punish you if you do. It’s not my place to forgive. It’s my place to enforce.”

They stayed on their knees, and Cordelia’s hand trembled in Katelyn’s grasp.

“For generations, most of you believed that the Hellhound was a myth. A tall tale like so many here in the Ozarks. Like this lost mine. Now you know that I’m real, and that I’m living among you. As is my apprentice, Vladimir. So, that’s different.”

“Yes, Hellhound,” Cordelia said, and many of the others murmured their agreement.

“And because I’m different, I’ll give you this last chance to sort yourselves out and sink back into the forest and the bayou again. All you will ever be to the humans around here is folks like them. Clannish neighbors who mostly keep to themselves, but mix when it makes sense to.” He looked at Katelyn. “Who go to school and lead lives.”

“What about my life?” Bronson blurted. “What about my destiny?”

“Never featured you having one,” Mordecai said coldly.

“Oh? Well, I succeeded in spite of you, didn’t I? You didn’t want me here but I came, didn’t I? And I prayed to Fenris to make me a werewolf, and he showed me what to do. I made the required sacrifice.”

“A human sacrifice,” Daniel elaborated grimly. “I was not aware of this until today. But Magus knew. They made a pact to get the silver in the mine.”

“Insanity,” Justin said, as the werewolves reacted. “That’s
not
Fenris’s way.”

“It used to be. It’s how Fenris became a werewolf. You don’t know
anything
,” Bronson sneered at Justin, then smirked at everyone in his line of sight. “You’ve lost the old ways through your generations of inbreeding. You’re all pathetic.”

“You killed Haley,” Trick said, his voice low with deadly menace. The hair on the back of Katelyn’s neck rose, and she saw the effect his tone had on the others. Even when he was in his human form, Trick frightened them.

Bronson shook his head. “That wasn’t her name. It was . . .” He thought a moment as if trying to remember. “Becky.”

“Becky Johnson. You’re the killer,” Katelyn said. “All those people. You killed them.”

Bronson shook his head again. “No. Just two. Becky was the easy one. Kept sneaking onto my property because she had a thing for one of my seminar students.
She
came to
me
. Then, later, I got rid of
him
, too. So there’s my two. That’s it. And that was all it took. Magus made contact and —”

“
Magus
made contact,” Daniel said firmly, looking at Katelyn’s grandfather. “For silver. Like Judas.”

Katelyn remembered being told that Becky’s body had been moved from the Inner Wolf Center. That was why she and Trick had broken in in the first place. Had Trick known back then that Bronson had killed her?

“You also killed Mike Wright,” she accused him. “Say it.” She wanted it to be him. Mike had wanted to beat and rape her, and Trick had been thrown in jail as a suspect. Trick said he hadn’t done it, but she knew that there was someone else willing to kill anyone who tried to hurt her.

Her grandfather.

She wanted to be reassured that Ed hadn’t done it.

“You’re as deaf as you are pretty,” Bronson said. “I said just the two.”

“More than enough,” Mordecai growled. “You know the law. Werewolves do not murder humans. And you know the punishment.”

“He isn’t a Hound of God,” Daniel said. “Magus hadn’t fulfilled his end of their bargain. He’s not a werewolf. I swear it.”

“
What?
” Jack Bronson stared at him. “But he said that on the next full moon I would run through the forest!”

“He lied to you. As he lied to me. Clearly he was planning some kind of challenge to me. And after you and he found the mine, he would probably have killed you.” He studied each of the Hounds of God in turn, who were still cowering on their knees. “I’ll find out who his lieutenants were. And I will punish my own. But you, Bronson, are not one of my own.”

“Then he’s not ours to punish, either,” Trick said.

Bronson gaped at Trick. “
You?
He chose
you
? But I should be the one! It should be family!”

“He is,” Mordecai replied. “More than you ever have been.” He put his arm around Trick. “This is the Hellhound’s apprentice. Lay one finger on him, and feel our combined wrath.”

The werewolves kept kneeling. Trick couldn’t quite conceal a smirk as he stood beside his godfather.

“Stand,” her grandfather said. “There are still questions to be answered. Human deaths to be avenged.”

Katelyn wasn’t done with her uncle. His actions accounted for the deaths of two people, but not the others.

“If you didn’t kill Haley, who did? And how about Mike?” she insisted. Was their killer the wolf that had bitten her? And was that wolf buried in a pile of rubble inside the silver mine?

Jack Bronson knew all kinds of things he shouldn’t. Maybe he knew the one thing she wanted most to know.

“Who bit me?”

The air around her electrified; she wasn’t the only one waiting to hear his reply. Her life, her destiny came down to this: a single name.

The answer.

Her uncle looked at her coolly. “I don’t know who bit you.”

There was that same joy in her pain that he’d evinced when he’d told her that her grandfather had killed her father. She saw the bitterness and deep-seated evil of John McBride and she was sorry that she’d asked him, even as the fear that she’d never know the answer settled down around her shoulders.

Suddenly, there was a rustling in the trees. Everyone turned just as Jesse stumbled out of them.

“Jesse!” Justin ran toward him. “Oh, my God! Where’ve you been?”

“I know! I know who bit Kat!” he said excitedly. “I saw.”

Justin put his arms around him. “No, buddy, you don’t know that.” His tone was friendly, but his voice was off. He began to walk away with Jesse in tow.

“But I do,” Jesse insisted, stopping. “Mustn’t tell. It’s a secret. I told Lucy and then she ran away. Bad, bad!” He pounded his forehead.

“Jesse?” Katelyn said.

Justin waved his hand. “You know Jesse. He’s just a big kid. He doesn’t know anything,” he insisted, an edge of fear in his voice.

“Tell me, Jesse. I promise I won’t run away,” Katelyn said, a sick feeling beginning to coil itself like a serpent in her stomach.

Jesse blinked and looked around, as if he had just noticed that everyone was looking at him. He looked at his brother. Justin was silently pleading with him.

“It’s okay,” Katelyn said, hearing the edge of fear in her own voice.

Jesse smiled uncertainly at her.

“Justin bit you. He wants to marry you.”

“That’s not true,” Justin said carefully. “You got bit how long ago? I couldn’t change back then.”

Jesse sucked in his breath and covered his mouth with both hands. He lowered his head and shook it back and forth in terrible distress.

“Could he change back then?” Katelyn’s grandfather asked Jesse.

“Lucy!” Jesse screamed. “I want Lucy
now
!”

He pulled away from Justin, turned, and ran back the way he had come. Justin made as if to bolt after him, but Mordecai stepped into Justin’s path.

“Think we need to hear a little more from you,” he said to Justin.

“I didn’t do it,” Justin said, but his guilt was written all over his face.

Desperately Katelyn tried to find a good reason. That he had fallen in love with her and had bitten her in a moment of passion without permission from his alpha. That he had had to hide what he’d done for fear of reprisal.

But what he had done to her in the forest had been deliberate, calculating. Passion had been completely absent.

“
You’ve
been killing people,” Cordelia said slowly. “
You
, Justin. You wanted to make my daddy look like a crazy killer. So when you issued a challenge it would look so noble and not like the treachery it was.”

As Cordelia spoke, Mordecai stood in Justin’s path, watching him the way a snake watches a mouse. Katelyn’s heart was thundering, wild. She wanted to kill him herself. Justin knew that his life was on the line, but he seemed curiously detached. Distracted.

He was looking past Katelyn’s grandfather into the forest.

He was looking for his brother.

“He was talking about getting rid of Jesse,” Justin said. “I had to become alpha. I had to protect my brother.” He looked at Katelyn with a haunted expression. “After I bit you, and you got away, I realized you went to Cordelia. I knew she was keeping it a secret from her father.”

“You fixed it so we were discovered after Katelyn’s first change,” Cordelia said. “It was
you
who got me banished.”

“The alpha’s favorite daughter. The one he had picked to succeed him. It worked out great,” he said.

Katelyn dug her fingernails into her palms. She wanted to hurt Justin for ruining her life. But . . . was it ruined?

It was different. And in so many ways, it was more magnificent than she could ever have conceived of.

She was the alpha of a werewolf pack.

And she had never felt more amazing than when the wolf took her over.

“Katelyn, I did come to care for you. To love you,” he said.

“
After
you found out that I’m immune to silver,” she said. She looked at the shock on the faces of the other werewolves. “That’s when you decided to dump Lucy for me.”

“No.” He shook his head. “Way before then, darlin’. Don’t sell yourself short. I wanted you. God, I wanted you.”

She dug her fingernails into her palms. There had been so many times when she had felt the desire rise between them, wolfish and savage. She had never given in, and now she was so glad.