Blood Enforcer (Wolf Enforcers Book 2) Read online

  “No. I remember waking up here, yesterday.” She wrapped her arms around her stomach. “Before that I was in the garage, below my apartment.” On the way to her engagement party.

  “You’ve been sick a long time.”

  “I’m a little unsure how long.” She smiled her how-to-get-flies-with-honey smile and asked, “Do you know exactly how many days it’s been?” Lana had said two weeks, but she didn’t completely trust the cagey doctor.

  “Close to two weeks.”

  The lasagna shifted in her overfull stomach and Glenna swallowed hard to keep it down. Two weeks. They’d kept her here two weeks. There was no way her grandmother had done this—she’d never have let Glenna miss the engagement party.

  He’d delivered the information as if they were discussing the perfectly blue sky, or the view of the snow on the back range, but it rocked Glenna’s world.

  Only years of hard-earned lessons let her keep her face schooled. She took a sip of water to cover her panic. Two weeks. Her family must be looking for her. Grandmother and Roger would be worried. And Sarah. Sarah would be frantic.

  “Oh, I really wasn’t sure. Thanks.” Another sip of water, eyes down to keep her secrets.

  She needed to call her family, but would he let her? Lana and Ellen had avoided all her questions, all her requests for information and a phone. “Well, I’m better now. I need to get back to real life. Do you have a phone I could use?”

  Something flickered across his eyes.

  “Sorry, we’re on limited phone use here. Only emergencies.” He smiled again, stood up. “I’m going to grab another soda.”

  “Well, if you can’t let me use the phone, can you at least tell me when was the last time my grandmother called?”

  Had his shoulders tensed?

  “I don’t think she has called. You should ask Lana or Ellen.”

  “I have, but they think I’m still too sick. I’m much better today though. Lana even said it was time I went home.” Lana had said no such thing. Lana had completely ducked the subject, but he might not know that.

  “Look, I know what you’re trying to do and it won’t work.” His eyes, that had been full of heat moments before, now were the eyes of a stranger. “Lana didn’t say you’d be going home. If I’m reading you right, Lana hasn’t said much of anything at all.”

  Glenna didn’t say anything. Sometimes you got more information when you stayed quiet.

  “You can’t go home, Glenna.” Sam’s face hardened. “Ever.”

  Her belly cramped and from deep inside a wail pushed to get out. She had to get home. Sarah needed her.

  Striving to keep her voice level she asked, “Who are you people and why won’t you let me go home? I have a life, friends, a job. I even have a fiancé, for Christ’s sake!”

  He stood, a strange compassion on his face.

  “Please, won’t you help me go home?” Her voice broke, cracking on the word ‘home’.

  “I can’t.” He ran a hand over his scalp through his sexy, rock star hair. “I understand your confusion.” His long, caged strides paced the deck. “Damn Lana for not telling you anything!”

  “So tell me, why are you keeping me prisoner?”

  He stopped and stared at her from across the broad deck.

  She waited. She knew how to wait.

  “You’re not a prisoner. We rescued you.” Sam shook his head and crossed back over the deck to her side. Grabbing a chair he flipped it backwards and straddled it. “We’re keeping you here for your own safety.”

  “I know propaganda when I hear it. Why would I need rescuing, or protecting?”

  “Shit! Don’t you remember anything? Serena should have...never mind.” He rubbed his face. “Don’t you remember anything?”

  “No. I remember getting ready for my engagement party...then I remember waking up yesterday, here.”

  His gaze shifted away from hers. “You were attacked. And you were hurt, badly. You had internal injuries and needed surgery. That’s one reason why you feel like crap. It’s been a few weeks, but your body is still healing. And there’s another reason.” He shifted his position on the chair before speaking, his eyes pinning her in place. “You were infected with lycanthroism.”

  Glenna’s head spun. Her food threatened to push up through her aching chest. She shook her head, denying his outrageous statement with both her body and her words.

  “The werewolf disease?” She shook her head again. “There’s no way I have that or I would still be in quarantine.”

  He sat there staring at her. Like he was waiting for her to hear the other shoe.

  Like she was the crazy one.

  The sun had dropped and now hovered over the tops of the western peaks. The temperature had dropped too, and a chilly breeze lifted the tiny hairs on her arms. She shivered.

  “Is that what this is? Quarantine? Is that why no one has visited me?” She missed home, her bed, her sister. She even missed Roger’s irritating habits and her control-freak grandmother. “When can I see my family?” She swallowed. “Can I see them?”

  “No. You can’t.” His voice was implacable, his eyes shuttered.

  The lump in her throat grew, pressure built behind her eyes.

  She blinked rapidly. She didn’t cry. Ever. Not since she was ten years old.

  “When does it start? When do I...when do I get really sick?” She swallowed. “How long until I go crazy, how long until I die?”

  Sam’s lips quivered. His eyes twitched. He barked a laugh.

  Then he sat up, laughter exploding out of him in huge howls. He gasped and choked and wheezed until she wanted to take a fist to his back and pound some sense into him.

  Glenna’s fists clenched. “This isn’t funny!” He looked like he was never going to stop. “Lycanthroism is a serious illness,” she said. “People get very sick. They die!”

  When he finally settled down he wiped the tears from his grinning cheeks. “Thanks, I didn’t know how much I needed that. The last few weeks have sucked and that really helped.”

  “Good for you,” she said, crossing her arms over her chest. “Glad I could help.”

  “It’s just that you sounded so serious. Like you’ve swallowed the whole government lie, hook, line, and sinker.”

  “Maybe you can enlighten me.”

  “First off, you’re not contagious. It doesn’t work like that. If you were, don’t you think we’d all be here without masks and crap?” He opened his mouth to keep going but, his phone sang out a jazz riff. He pulled it out. “I have to do a perimeter check. Hey, I know you want answers, but you look beat and I need to do the rounds. Why don’t you go inside and get some rest. I’ll be back in a little while.”

  She wanted to argue. Wanted to pump him for more information but it was as if at his words her body decided she was done, exhausted from the unaccustomed stress of being out of bed, being outside, being with him.

  “Fine. But when you get back I want an explanation.”

  “I’ll answer your questions. After you get some sleep. Right now you look like a stiff wind would blow you apart.”

  “You know, I am tired, but the sun feels great,” she lied and stretched her arms wide. Yawned. She didn’t want to end up back downstairs again. It had taken her too long to get up here. “Do you mind if I just rest here on the deck until you get back? You won’t be far away, will you?”

  “Worried about me, sugar?” His eyes gleamed.

  She flushed. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

  He laughed. “No, I won’t be far. There’s a path that runs along the side of the road, I’ll take a quick peek into the woods on both sides, then I’ll do the path. Ten minutes, fifteen tops. You just sit here and I’ll be back before you know it.” He gave her a wink.

  She crossed her arms and averted her face, not watching him saunter down the steps until he’d gone a good fifty feet towards the woods. Then she settled back down on the lounger and watched from under half-opened lids until he was hidden in
the woods. Worried about him, sure, she was worried. But not because she’d miss him.

  She was going to do something she was sure was against the rules and she only had a few minutes to do it. She was going to search the house and see if she could call for help. Or find some keys and take one of those cars sitting down below the house. And she damned well didn’t want any eagle-eyed body guard catching her or Lord knew what the penalty would be.

  Chapter Nine

  Alastair McHenry stared out of his office window of the principal’s office in the hundred year old house that was Ridge School. He tapped his chin with his fingers, going over plan after plan, looking down at the empty basketball court, but not really seeing it. Even if the pavement had been full of his entire school of screaming adolescent pack boys, he wouldn’t have noticed. His thoughts seethed, blinding him to anything but his anger.

  He should have stuck with his original plan, and taken Glenna all himself. Instead, he’d listened to his mentor’s advice. And because he had, everything had gone to hell. Now Glenna, his future mate, had been taken by the Ram’s Haven pack. She was out of his reach protected by a couple of shifters, her medical needs being seen to by his very own cousin, Lana.

  It was intolerable.

  At least Lana was on his side. She wasn’t the reason everything regarding his future mate had fallen apart. No, that responsibility lay entirely on Bryan’s shoulders.

  Bryan—his little brother who had been flawed from the moment he’d taken the Bite and the virus had twisted his mind. Pack law demanded kids like Bryan, who couldn’t control themselves and therefore their new talents, be killed. It was harsh, but over the years it had preserved pack secrets, and pack safety. But Adam, Alastair’s mentor, had other ideas and he’d talked a much younger Alastair into hiding Bryan’s deficiencies.

  And increasingly Alastair was paying the price.

  Infecting Glenna had been a simple plan. Bryan would use his spelltalker talents to dim the garage lights, and Alastair would use his mind-control skills to handle Glenna. The plan should have gone off like clockwork. They’d done it several times before, but the women had died immediately from the virus and with each death Bryan had gotten more and more frustrated.

  This time, Alastair had been sure that Glenna would survive. He could see it in her face—she was a fighter.

  He’d had her well under his mental control, lying down on the cement floor of the garage ready to take the Bite. He’d just dipped the teeth of the wolf’s skull into the live virus and spun out a thread of power into the planes between the worlds, when things had gone haywire.

  Bryan had gotten excited. Instead of sticking to what he was supposed to do, he’d jumped into Alastair’s spell. The images of a pack of howling wolves clawing and biting at Glenna had her terrified. She’d started screaming and scratching, fighting Alastair hard.

  He’d been forced to hit her over and over again, sinking his fist into her stomach until she curled up into a ball—just to get her under control.

  The lights Bryan was supposed to be controlling went crazy, flickering on and off, like a lightning storm gone haywire. Car alarms had gone off and the cacophony was terrible, distracting Alastair just when he’d needed his focus the most. Finally, he’d beaten Glenna into submission and managed to score her with the wolf’s teeth, penetrating her skin and administering the live virus into her bloodstream. Then, the police had arrived and they’d had to run, leaving Glenna, broken and bleeding, on the floor of the parking garage.

  Just thinking about it had Alastair’s blood pressure rising and he leaned his forehead against the cool of the windows to calm the pounding in his head. It had taken the better part of the month for Alastair to even speak to Bryan again.

  But now, Lana said that Glenna was up and alert. She’d survived the Bite. Now was the time he needed access to her, before she knew what she was. He had old spells he’d accessed from walking the planes between the worlds, spells to make her his in the old way. She would be his—he just needed to get her back under his control.

  And that meant he needed to extract Glenna out from under the enforcers guarding her. He needed a distraction, and for all his faults, Bryan was terrific at distractions.

  Alastair picked up his second cell phone, the one he’d paid cash for, and punched the code word he had for Bryan—loser.

  Out behind the school, a single boy came out of the building. Thomas. As he listened to the phone ring, Alastair watched Thomas slouch across the pavement to the ball shed and extract a basketball.

  No motivation. That was the problem with the way the pack did things. Thomas had been a bright kid—until he’d taken the Bite and survived the fever. Now he knew he was a spelltalker with no chance of shifting into a wolf. The boy had lost his enthusiasm.

  No matter what Alastair and Adam did for these kids they had to adjust to life in the pack as a second class citizen and they knew it. It wasn’t fair.

  “Hello?”

  “Hey there, little brother, are you busy?”

  “Screw you. You haven’t called me in weeks.”

  Alastair smothered a sigh. He’d have to soothe Bryan’s hurt feelings, but it would be worth it. “I’m calling you now.”

  “Hey, Alastair, you called me. What do you want?”

  Bryan’s irritation came loud and clear over the phone. Alastair wanted to slam the thing across the room. But he gritted his teeth and dealt with his brother. After all, even if he was getting more and more unmanageable, Bryan was still a useful tool.

  “Remember how I covered for you with Adam?” Alastair had taken the blame. After all, he’d been the one in charge. And besides, Adam loved Bryan like the son he’d lost. Alastair had never understood it, but Adam would let Bryan get away with murder.

  “Yeah. So what?”

  “So, you owe me.”

  “You owe me.” The whine in Bryan’s voice rose higher. “I’ve helped you over and over again and for what? I’m supposed to be getting a mate next and you don’t even have yours. This whole thing’s fucked up.”

  Alastair took a deep breath and counted to ten before responding. “That’s what I’m calling about. I need to get Glenna McReynolds back from under the pack’s watchful eye and take her to where she’ll be safe. When she changes and goes through the fever, I need to be there.”

  “How are you going to do that?” Bryan snorted his derision. “Lana says they have enforcers on her twenty-four seven.”

  “I’m a spelltalker, remember? I know the shifter on guard and he’s already lost his marbles once. A little push from me and he’ll be down that road again.”

  “That’s one enforcer. What will you do about the rest?”

  “That’s where you come in. How would you like to cause a diversion so I can slip into Lana’s and retrieve my property?”

  “A diversion?” There was a moment of silence on Bryan’s end.

  Alastair waited for his brother to take the bait. One, two, three...

  “What do you have in mind?”

  Alastair smiled, glad Bryan couldn’t see his pleasure at how easy his little brother was to manipulate. “Something that will take all the Windy Gap’s and Ram’s Haven enforcers’ attention and moves them all far away from Lana’s house.”

  He could almost hear Bryan’s brain clicking through the alternatives. Poor simple Bryan. Faulty from the moment the fever had taken hold of his brain and screwed up his wiring.

  “I have an idea.”

  “Good. Do it.”

  “Don’t you want to know what it is?”

  “Of course not. I trust you.” He didn’t. But Bryan didn’t know that. Alastair wanted plausible deniability. It was so much easier to lie if you didn’t have much to lie about.

  “Thanks, Alastair.”

  “Enjoy wreaking havoc.” He hung up the phone, a smile on his face.

  Bryan trusted him—looked up to him. That’s what was important. That was one of the few things that kept the angry young spellt
alker under control. Without Alastair, Bryan would be a loose cannon.

  Outside on the court Thomas was lining up another shot. He went up on his toes and let the ball roll off the tips of his fingers, hitting the rim, the ball bouncing off to side away from the net. The boy’s shoulders slumped and he looked defeated, but only for a second. Then he was across the court racing after the bouncing ball. Alastair nodded down at the court. Thomas had what it took. The boy would make a successful adult spelltalker, despite the odds.

  That’s what life came down to—lining up one shot after another until one went into the basket. That’s what made the spelltalkers successful in pack society. They’d already been failed by their DNA, but they were determined to make every effort count. It was why they needed strong mates and a chance at pack equality. Once he had the method down of infecting the right humans he could make sure every boy like himself got his chance. All the Thomases. And all the Alastairs.

  Chapter Ten

  Glenna bided her time, waiting until she was sure Sam was deep in the woods on his rounds before getting up and moving as fast as her body would let her into the house. Just in case he was watching, she picked up her glass and casually went back into the house as if she were simply doing what he’d told her earlier and going in to rest. Once inside, she grabbed the old yellow phone receiver off the wall and brought it to her ear. Wow, this thing was old. She’d played with one like this in the kids’ museum on a school field trip years ago, but she’d never seen one in anyone’s house. She inserted her forefinger into the nine and cranked the plastic wheel. But there was no dial tone and no sound of ringing. She slammed the receiver back into its hanger and wilted against the wall, listening to the wall clock ticking away the minutes of her life.

  She was so tired she was having trouble staying focused. Every movement made her even more tired. She’d never felt like this in her life but she might never get another opportunity like this. Two weeks of not moving had done nothing for her muscles.