Wild Game (Codex Blair Book 4) Page 14

  He nodded appreciatively. "Smart girl. I've got coke, if you want it."

  Coke. Aidan.

  The memory hit me like a bag of bricks. How long had it been since I'd properly mourned Aidan? Oh, Gods, how terrible was I for forgetting about him for even a minute. I was the worst sort of person, moving on, living my life as if he hadn't been a part of it. I closed my eyes on the memory, silently begging forgiveness.

  "Hey, you OK?"

  "Yeah, sorry, just...nothing. Coke is fine."

  He cast a strange look at me before opening the fridge and pulling out the requested coke and handing it to me.

  I cracked it immediately and took a sip, letting the spell of guest rites roll through us. Now, neither of us could attack the other. A breach of etiquette no one I had met would dare to break. I didn't actually know what would happen to you if you broke it, didn't know if it was a real spell or if it was just something handed down from parent to child throughout the generations, but I didn't want to mess with the tradition of it. Guest rites kept people safe in situations where they otherwise wouldn't be, and if everyone just started disregarding them...nope, that wasn't a good idea.

  "Shall we?" He gestured back towards the living room. I nodded my head and stepped to the side so that he could lead the way, my wary eyes remaining on him.

  "Has anyone ever told you you're paranoid?" He shook his head as he walked ahead of me into the living room and took a seat on his couch.

  I didn't care, I wasn't going to turn my back on a stranger. A dangerous stranger, a stranger whose powers I didn't know the first thing about yet.

  "Loads," I said with a shrug. "But it gets me through the day."

  "Yeah, all right," he said.

  "So, backing up a bit again, now that you've given me your coke and all, how is it that you know about and observe guest rites when you have nothing but disdain for mages?"

  "That's really eating at you, isn't it?"

  "You're still not answering my question."

  "You know, just because we live on the bad side of town, doesn't mean we don't have manners," he said, narrowing his eyes at me. "Just because we're not members of your precious little community, just because we don't bend the knee to the almighty Order, doesn't mean that we don't know just as much as you lot do."

  I perked up at that. "I never said any of that, but thank you. You've avoided the Order? How?"

  "And why would you want to know that?"

  I kept my face a still mask, drinking more of my coke. I didn't want to give too much away, but I was dying to know how they had existed so far without drawing the Order's ire.

  "Fine, don't tell me. But please, take a seat," he said, gesturing to the couch, inviting me to sit beside him.

  There were no chairs for me to perch in, nothing to give me the space I required. I didn't like to be close to people for the most part, with the rare exception. Like Finn, or Emily. Shawn, even. Certainly, not a stranger.

  "I'm fine standing," I said.

  He narrowed his eyes. "You look like your about to take off through the door."

  I shrugged. "Maybe I am. You'll have to forgive me, this is a strange place and I don't want to get too comfortable."

  "All right then," he said, sighing. "Anyway, about the Order. The short story is that they don't know we exist."

  "How can that be, though? I thought they knew about everyone with talent."

  "Ah, but we don't have the talent that you do. That's why no one in your community wants anything to do with us, they think we are beneath them because we cannot cast spells."

  I arched an eyebrow. "I find it hard to believe that a community of misfit mages is looking down on anyone for having a different degree of magic."

  "Think what you like," he said, shrugging. "That doesn't mean it isn't true."

  "What magic do you have?"

  "The ability to shift, something you don't have. It's a genetic talent, much like your magic, and cannot be taught. Another reason why the mages don't like us, there was a time when Lillai—I'm sure you're familiar with her—asked us to teach her, and we said no. She didn't seem to accept that it was impossible, and rather believed that we wouldn't share our secrets with her. She was displeased, and told the community that we were little more than scavengers, and dangerous ones at that. She is an esteemed member of society, her word is law, and that was the end of it."

  I nodded, marinating on the information that he had given me. It was only his side of the story, but his description of Lillai fit with what I already knew of her. She had said as much of them when she'd sent me to find them, so it wasn't much of a stretch that she had told the rest of the community that. But had she done it because it was true or because she had been slighted? Time would be the tell of that.

  "Now, I'm curious as to how you have avoided the Order," he said, leaning forward, and resting his elbows on his knees.

  "Who says I have?"

  "You have, though not in so many words. You only speak of the community of mages, which indicates that you don't have connections with the Wizarding world. You are here, alone, and you are too young to have someone let you run around unsupervised. It is no great stretch to understand that you are not a member of the Order, and that you are risking quite a lot, running around, and playing Sheriff of London."

  I bristled at his words. How dare he? I wasn't playing at anything, and I didn't have any delusions of grandeur. If anything, I thought my position was absolute shit and frequently wished that there was someone else who would take over. I didn't understand why the Order hadn't sent someone new to take care of London now that Aidan was gone. They did know that he was gone, didn't they? Surely, they had him report in on what was going on, surely, they knew...

  Before I could fall down that rabbit hole, I made myself refocus on Chase.

  "I am a person of no consequence, and have not done anything to avoid notice. Simply put, there has been no one to report me to the Order, and I don't exactly know how to do it myself."

  The look on his face told me he didn't believe me for a second, but he let it go. "Why are you here?"

  Ah, now we got to it. "There have been a few attacks on citizens of London, innocent people who have nothing to do with the community, have no ties to magic whatsoever. I know that it was a wolf that attacked him, far too large to simply be a miraculous transplant to the area. It ripped them to shreds. I need to know who did it." My tone had an edge to it, one that clearly stated that I would brook no back talk.

  He leaned back in the couch, throwing a hand on either side of the top. "I fail to see what that has to do with any of us."

  "You're shifters. It was a wolf. It wasn't a werewolf, so it has to be a shifter," I said.

  His eyes darkened; he might have been willing to let the first insinuation go if I had changed my tune, but now that I was digging in he was clearly not pleased with me. "You come into my house and insult my people? You have a lot of balls."

  "I don't have balls. I have a backbone, though, and you're not going to break it. I know what I saw, Chase."

  "And I know my people—they wouldn't do this. You've got the wrong group. There are things you don't know about, things you don't seem to care to know about. This city has more going on in it than I think you'll ever understand."

  I lifted my chin. "What kind of things."

  He smirked. "Dig deeper. I'm not your teacher."

  Of course. Cocky bastard. "All your assertions aren't doing anything to dissuade me. I know something's going on, and I'm not going to let people keep dying. What you're saying isn't any different from what any other leader would say for their people."

  "Then let me show you something that might change your mind."

  "And what could that be?"

  "Take a walk with me," he said, standing up and heading for the door. He looked over his shoulder to see if I was coming.

  I pursed my lips, but I wasn't about to stay in someone else's house without them, that would just be weird. I fol
lowed.

  Hopefully this wasn't another adventure in almost dying.

  23

  Chase led me out of the house and we began our walk through the neighborhood. It was very different from my initial entrance; there were children that came running up to him for a hug, random people who called out a cheerful greeting. I realised that I had been given the rare opportunity to see a different side of this world, the side that they reserved for when they were safe, alone, away from prying eyes. True, I got a few reproachful and untrusting stares as we walked, but the consensus seemed to be that if Chase had decided to walk with me, I must be OK.

  "You seem surprised," he said, casting a sidelong glance at me.

  "I didn't expect them to show this side of themselves around me," I said.

  "I did. Part of what I wanted to show you. These are families, a tight knit community of people that don't want any more trouble than what comes knocking on our door. Peckham gets a bad reputation, and I won't say that it's wholly undeserved as we are not the only people living here, but you can't judge an entire community based on a few bad apples. I do what I can to weed them out."

  I nodded, managing to hide the fact that I was impressed with him, with what he was doing for this neighborhood. I had expected to find a disorganized mob here, not a pack with a leader.

  And make no mistake, that was what I was dealing with. They were shifters, they had a pack mentality, and I was walking with the Alpha, whether or not he wanted to call himself that. I didn't know too much about it, obviously, but this was how I saw it.

  As we progressed through the neighborhood a woman with flame red hair and vibrant green eyes came running up to us.

  "Chase!" she said, a little out of breath. "I didn't know you were back." The way her eyes devoured him was almost too inappropriate to handle, and I looked away, feeling like I had pried on a moment of intimacy.

  "I'm busy, Esme," he said, his tone brusque.

  "Too busy to talk to me?" She sounded hurt.

  "As it so happens, yes. We have a guest, and I am taking her to see Jennifer."

  I looked back at them then, confusion in my eyes. Esme's expression shuttered, a flicker of pain crossing her face before she closed in.

  "Oh, I'll...I'll catch up with you later, then?"

  "If I have time," he said, his tone dismissive.

  I arched an eyebrow but otherwise kept my thoughts to myself. This girl, Esme, was clearly infatuated with Chase, and he wasn't doing a good job of letting her down easy. But maybe he had already done that, and she just hadn't taken the hint. Either way, it was none of my business what he did with his pack. I wasn't involved.

  Esme walked away, looking rather dejected, and we kept up our walk through the neighborhood. We took a turn down one of the blocks, and eventually came to a small cemetery.

  "What are we doing here? I thought you were taking me to see someone..." He'd said he was going to take me to see Jennifer. I didn't understand what was going on.

  "Give me a minute, and you'll see," he said, and when he spoke this time his voice was thick with emotion.

  Oh, no. My heart squeezed like it was in a vice, and I had to resist the urge to place a hand on his back in my own meager attempt at comfort. He was taking me to see someone who had already died. We walked farther into the graveyard until we reached a gravestone of about regular size, with one smaller gravestone on either side of it.

  Jennifer Hull, Tom Hull, Emma Hull.

  The little gravestones depicted ages of five and six, the woman's gravestone was only twenty-two. She'd been younger than me when she'd died, and for some reason that bothered me more than anything else.

  "This is my family," he said, staring down at the gravestones.

  I tried to think of something to say, but I came up with nothing, so I remained silent. I didn't entirely understand what I had been brought here, why I was being shown this, but I knew better than to question it. He was understandably overwhelmed by having brought all these emotions up again, and I didn't want to poke that any more than was necessary. I wouldn't have wanted anyone asking me impertinent questions while I was visiting Aidan.

  He took a few steps to the right and gestured at a few more gravestones. "These are the markers for my Beta's family."

  Ah, confirmation of the pecking order. So, he was the Alpha, then, and that was how they outlined things. I tried not to focus on that too much, feeling that even having my thoughts stray away was somehow disrespectful to being shown this. He took me around the small cemetery, showing me family after family. Some of them were complete, not a person left to mourn them, and some of them were survived by loved ones that didn't know how to go on without them. Either way, it wasn't a pretty sight, and I didn't want to be there anymore.

  I don't normally have a problem with graveyards, they're a peaceful place for me where I can relax and feel at one with the world. But here, with Chase, it just felt like I was intruding. It was so obvious that I didn't belong here.

  "I have showed you all of this so that you can understand something," he said. "We are people, just like you, just like the members of your community. We have lost loved ones, and we have brought life into the world. Just because your community doesn't want anything to do with us, and ours wants nothing to do with yours, doesn't mean that we are evil."

  I started to speak, to defend myself from the allegations that I'd thought they were evil.

  But a mist was rolling in, and only inside of the cemetery.

  24

  The mist coalesced around us, blinding us, thickening the air. It wasn't natural, that much was obvious.

  "You trapped me," I said through gritted teeth.

  "This is not me, I swear," he said, reaching out and gripping my forearm. "Cast a light."

  "It won't do any good," I said, thinking of the darkness that Lilith had created and how nothing but Emily's light had been able to penetrate it. "Incendium." I called fire forth into my hand, holding it out. It did little to combat the mist, as it more reflected the light than cut through it, but it allowed us to see one another again. "And now we've got a beacon pointing whatever is out there at us."

  "It's better than going in blind," he said, and it was at that point that I realised he was stripping. He already had his shirt off and was starting to unbutton his pants.

  "Whoa, boy!"

  "Calm down, I don't want to rend my clothes, and if we're getting into a fight, I won't get to keep them."

  It was then that our enemy revealed itself, a giant black wolf creeping through the mist, its amber eyes glowing bright through the mist. My gut clenched—the werewolf from last night. So, that ruled Chase out as a suspect. I backed up a few steps, my hand holding the light turning to a fist, the fire climbing up to swirl about my forearm. Would fire hurt the beast? I didn't see how it wouldn't, but there were all sorts of myths around werewolves, and the predominant one was that only silver would get the job done properly.

  The wolf opened its jaws and, I swear, it roared. No wolf should be able to make a noise like that, but it did, and I'm not ashamed to say that it struck terror in my soul. I inhaled sharply, searching for the steel I needed to put in my spine, and forced myself to stand sharp. This was a fight, it didn't matter what I was fighting, and I was going to come out on top. There was too much for me to do now for me to just die.

  And then Chase shifted. I heard the cracking of bones to my right but didn't dare take my eyes off the wolf, for its eyes were locked on mine as it slowly advanced, paying Chase no heed. It was here for me, I could tell, though I didn't know why. I had only been assigned this case yesterday, there was no way it would have known...

  Chase entered my field of vision, a roar of his own answering the call the wolf had laid out. At first I thought he was another wolf, but no, his black coat was too smooth, the proportions were wrong. He had to be a giant dog. But...that wasn't right either. I had never seen nor heard of a dog of this size or style, his forelegs and muscles about its head and the fr
ont of its body were ginormous, his back sloped down in a narrow fashion, and though there were obviously muscles in its hind legs, they were nowhere near as huge.

  A hound. A massive hound.

  They locked together in combat, each coming up on their hind legs to lock their forelegs together, each of them aiming for the others throat. They were down on the ground an instant later, and it took a second for me to see the spot of blood on Chase's neck. My heart sped up at the sight—he was going to lose, I could feel it already.

  "Stop this! Use me, USE ME!"

  The mark called to me to intervene, and I backed up again, not wanting to give in. I couldn't do anything at the moment, for fear of hitting Chase. If my aim was off, if they moved too quickly, I could take him out as easily as I could the werewolf. No, it wasn't safe, I wasn't willing to risk the political upheaval that would come with eliminating the leader of a pack that was a mere thread away from violence.

  They came together again, their bodies twisting, fangs flashing, before they were down on the ground and circling one another. Almost in unison, they snarled at one another, saliva dripping from the fangs of the werewolf. Chase was more elegant in his movements, despite his size. The wolf...it was huge and powerful, and I didn't doubt that it could crush Chase, if it could keep up with him. He was fast, darting in and out and nipping at one side of the wolf and then the other. Drawing him out and dancing to the side.

  It was truly a sight to behold, the two creatures battling one another, beautiful in the most primal sense of the word. I let out a breath I didn't realise I was holding when I started to get dizzy, reaching down to grip one of the gravestones to steady me. When had I let the fire fall from my hand? I didn't know, so entranced was I in watching the two creatures battle.

  My heart started hammering against my chest when the werewolf pinned Chase to the ground, its fangs inches away from his throat. A rumble filled the air, it took me a moment to realise that it was the werewolf growling. It placed its lips near Chase's face and waited.

  A minute ticked by and neither of them moved. This was the first sign that there was actually something intelligent inside the beast; it was asking Chase to submit. Submit and live, fight and die. What was he going to choose?