Dire Needs: A Novel of the Eternal Wolf Clan (7 page)

“Where’s Rift?” Stray called through the door when Vice paced for the nine thousandth time in front of the room where Harm was being held.

“Still not answering his goddamned phone.” Vice’s body was tight with frustration. The sun had risen and Rifter hadn’t bothered to check in. The rest of them, plus Cyd and Cain, were holed up here safely. The house was spelled, unbreakably so, a gift from Seb to Rift before things got all kinds of fucked up.

Vice rested his forehead against the doorjamb and
wondered if Harm had stirred at Stray opened the door and assured him, “Harm’s still out cold.”

Vice blinked, and shit, he hadn’t spoken out loud, had he? He didn’t think so, and Stray looked confused too, but Vice didn’t have time to delve into it because it was late afternoon and all they had to show for it was a text from Rifter from hours earlier saying that he was busy.

Yeah,
busy
with a
human
.

“How long do you think Harm’ll stay down for?” Stray asked. “How do we know if he’s faking it?”

“We’ll know. But silver poisoning’s a bitch.” Harm had stopped mumbling minutes after they’d found him behind the bar and then sank into unconsciousness when Stray took him over his shoulder to carry him back here. Jinx had wanted to drag him by his dick but had listened to Stray and backed off. Eventually.

“Jinx tried to sneak in the window and cut his legs off,” Stray said matter-of-factly.

That was exactly why Stray was watching over Harm. Although Stray was just as angry, he was by far the more tempered of the men and their wolves. And Rifter would most definitely want first crack at Harm.

By rights, Rifter was their leader, no matter how hard the man tried to pretend otherwise. It had been Harm’s job, but he had refused to come back, even after learning of the demise of the majority of the Dires. Harm had been too busy fucking around. He’d been making music in lots of different genres and disguises. Take ten years off between gigs and then reinvent himself and reemerge. His latest incarnation was in a group intent on bringing eighties hair metal back into the mainstream. As of two years ago, when the band broke up, Harm had been on a giant stage in front of millions of fans, singing and fighting and screwing.

And doing interviews.

With that kind of media scrutiny, it was a wonder no one had discovered Harm taking a howl at the moon. And for years, Harm had reigned at the top of the charts, causing chaos wherever he went, trashing hotel rooms and the like.

But now Harm was here, and in no condition to do anything.

The Elders would have a field day with this one, but Vice knew he would never follow the wolf currently lying in chains on the floor of the basement, couldn’t go anywhere near that fucker without ripping his eyes out. Instead, he slammed up to the third floor, where Rogue rested, seemingly comfortably, on the king-sized bed facing the window in full view of the moon.

Rogue hadn’t moved, lay there like he was goddamned dead, and if his color hadn’t been normal, someone would’ve put him in the ground already.

Vice’s chest squeezed, the emotion coming on too strong, nothing he had control over. Excess roamed every part of his body, his mind, and he dropped to his knees next to the bed, the physical pain nowhere as bad as what Rogue or Rifter had endured, he was sure of it. But it was damned close, and for him, it had been a fact of life since long before he’d shifted for the first time.

Finally the pain eased, slightly at first before slinging full force back to pleasure. There was no gray area for him. Never would be.

Rogue understood that about him most of all.

Vice rubbed Rogue’s hand—still warm. The man hadn’t aged at all, looked exactly the same as he had when they’d left the house together for a night of leading people astray. But Rogue hadn’t come back, and Vice remembered searching the streets for him, a growing terror in his throat. And it took an awful lot to scare the man literally made from sin.

Vice stroked a hand through Rogue’s hair. They hadn’t cut it, and the fact that it was still growing was a comfort to Vice. He stood, pulled Rogue’s body toward him and stared down at the wolf on his back.

The eyes looked dull. Rogue’s wolf was out of it too, both man and his Brother Wolf trapped inside a body that refused to work.

All the Dires wore their wolves on their backs. To humans, it looked like an intricate, lifelike tattoo, but it was actually a glyph that began to slowly appear on their skin sometime in the weeks leading up to their first shift.

The tribal wolf tattoos they had were real tats they’d all gotten together, a simple gift of solidarity toward Rifter, their king, and also to honor his dreamwalking curse.

When one of us is cursed, we all are.

And honestly, that held true. They just didn’t happen to have a Native American shaman do so from birth.

“Damn it, Rogue, come on,” he muttered, rubbing the tribal wolf tattoo that sat over his own heart.

Harm’s return was probably not the best thing to share with Rogue, but hell, maybe the brother needed to get angry with him.

“Harm’s here. Maybe he wants back into the fold. If you want your say, you’ve got to wake your sorry ass up.”

Vice growled the words, but Rogue didn’t so much as twitch.

Motherfucker.

Maybe bringing Harm up here in the flesh would help. Maybe Rogue or his wolf would catch a scent. Vice would do anything to bring Rogue back to life.

“Wanna smoke?” Vice lit up a rolled one, made with his special blend, and put it close to Rogue’s nose, because one day he was going to wake this motherfucker up.

Rifter wouldn’t even walk through Rogue’s dreams before their capture—said
they were too fucked up. Now when he tried, Rifter couldn’t get into Rogue’s dreams. He couldn’t be sure if Rogue was a plant from the sorcerers or weretrappers, and Rifter did not want to get trapped in his dreams.

So Jinx tried to figure out a way to wake his twin up while he continued his work dealing with ghosts and demons and other shit most humans believed happened only in horror movies and prime-time shows, although Vice had to admit that
Supernatural
was pretty damned good. He wondered if maybe he could get a consulting job with the network for it. You know, when his time freed up, since Jinx had snared him into helping him full-time on supernatural-activity watch to battle the dead and demonic.

It was certainly cutting into his fun time. The supernatural activity in the town had increased markedly over the past months, no doubt the work of Seb’s witches. Although Jinx had yet to confirm the source for sure, Linus was worried about the possibility that the weretrappers were using Weres to capture their own kind. Rogue had been suspicious that it wasn’t simply greed causing the Weres to turn on their own. He and Jinx had gotten reports that the spirit world in New York was suddenly quite active, and they knew that with the weretrappers working with the witches, anything was possible.

“If you sing that
Ghostbusters
song one more fucking time,” Rogue would threaten him during the times Vice had worked with both twins on a ghost job. Now Vice whistled it, hoping to see any sign of life from the sleeping man.

Nothing. Just the steady beat of Stray’s music. Metallica was the group of choice today. Hours of headbanging fun.

“Gotta keep doing your goddamned job since you won’t wake up.”
Vice blew smoke over his packmate and wondered if the man lying on the bed knew Vice was dying inside from this.

His phone rang, an unrecognized number. “Who the fuck is this?” he growled, and Rifter growled right back.

“Bring me some goddamned clothes.” He rattled off an address and hung up without giving Vice the chance to ask any questions.

Vice plugged in the street address and pulled up the name Gwen Kadlin.

He was still at the human’s house. Naked. Which meant he’d shifted and something had gotten fucked up. Vice finished his smoke and touched Rogue’s forehead for a second. “You’re safe here, brother. Just know that.”

And then he went downstairs to share the news.

Jinx looked up expectantly. He held an axe in his hands, but Vice shook his head. “It was Rifter. Let’s go grab him.”

“Where is he?”

“Holed up at the human’s house.”

“What the fuck?” Cyd muttered.

The Were twins had been instructed not to breathe a word about Harm and what happened to the weretrappers to anyone. Now Vice added Rifter’s current status to that list.

“Or I’ll kill you dead,” Vice intoned, stepping forward as if ready to do the job, and both Cyd and Cain nodded in silent surrender, each baring their throats slightly, a subtle sign of submission to the Dires.

They would make good warriors if Jinx could help them outgrow their moon craze. Some Weres never experienced more than a twinge of it when they were new. Others, like the twins, experienced such a wild pull for years after their first shift that they needed to be monitored closely for years during the full moon. They were dangerous—to
themselves, to other wolves and, more important, to humans. They’d been known to murder indiscriminately and have no memory of why they committed the deed or the deed itself.

Slowly, Cyd and Cain had improved. Gained control. But until they passed their first five years, nothing was guaranteed.

It would kill Jinx to have to take them down.

“Jinx, you need to come with me to get Rifter and bring him back,” Vice said.

“I think you should break the news about Harm to Rifter before he gets here. Otherwise, he’ll try to kill you along with Harm,” Stray called up the stairs, and yeah, when the hell would he admit he had a gift?

“I’m not dealing with that bullshit,” Vice yelled back upstairs.
Or your mind-reading crap either.

“Ah, fuck off,” Stray told him and slammed the door.

Through it all, Jinx just sat staring blankly out the window, but his hand tightened on the wooden handle until his knuckles turned white. Vice sighed and wondered when he’d become the responsible, levelheaded one, because if that was true, they were all in a hell of a lot of trouble. “Fine, I’ll break it to him,” he conceded.

Jinx spoke for the first time in hours. “Good. Then Rifter will let me cut off his arms
and
legs.”

I
t wouldn’t take Vice long to come and get him.

Rifter’s body still felt heavy as hell, like he was glued to the bed, which was giving him a hard-on. Not being able to stop thinking about Gwen wasn’t helping.

Gwen.

He didn’t have a bond with her, but he still dreamwalked with her without touching her. And it didn’t work like that—at least it never had before.

But trying to figure out why it happened was getting him nowhere. Instead, he stumbled around her house a little more, into the spare bedroom to look at the paintings he’d caught a glimpse of last night. They were of full moons—and wolves that looked disturbingly familiar. Brother Wolf wasn’t awake at all to agree, but Rifter was mesmerized.

The paintings were signed with the name Annie Woodall. A relative or just paintings Gwen liked?

He moved in to study them more closely—caught the scent of smoke. Fire. Sifted through them until he came to one that showed a wolf chasing the moon and felt dizzy again. Humans knew of the Norse myth, of course, but this painting felt… personal, as if the artist knew that what she was creating had special meaning.

He swore he could hear his mother repeating the oft-told story in his ears as the moon in the picture seemed to take on a life of its own.

The legend said that in the beginning, there was a Norse god called Loki, a shifter who had a wolf son named Fenir. Fenir had twins: Skoll, who chased the sun, and Hati, who chased the moon.

When Fenir was killed by the god Odin, Hati created two beings in his image who would become known as Mother and Father Wolf, Dire wolves born in human form so they could walk among humans without fear, but change to their true form at will. He reveled in their worship and their protection and instructed them to breed, and they did, creating a race of Dires. The race of Dires worshipped him as well, and chased the moon with him.

But as the packs of Dires grew, they became unmanageable and jealous of what the humans had—power, wealth, respect—and they became hard to control. They began to kill humans, and Hati grew very upset and warned them to stop or they would pay.

Every once in a while, a Dire was born with special gifts, and the Dire wolves weren’t sure if they should fear or worship them. Knowing that Hati was becoming angry with them, the Dires decided to sacrifice the four with abilities to Hati in hopes that he would be appeased by this gift.

Hati took those four Dire wolves and made them the Elders—a high council of Dires who would govern their people. So they’d once been living, breathing Dire wolves, now suspended in time and the otherworld; Hati made them all-powerful and put them in charge of the earthbound Dires.

You’d think that would make them slightly more sympathetic to the remaining Dires, but no, it actually made them harsher.

There was Leifr and Meili, who was said to be a brother of Thor. Eydis was the lone female of the group. Legend said when the fourth was outvoted on an important matter concerning Dires and their abilities, Hildr asked to be killed rather than go against what she believed in.

To this day, the Dires didn’t know the hows or whys but always hoped that one day they would.

Thankfully, a knock on the back door pulled his near-hypnotic attention away. Vice and Jinx were there, Vice handing him clothes and pushing his way inside. “I thought we decided we were laying low during the day.”

“I’m not out running the streets,” Rifter muttered, shutting the door behind the men. “Waiting for night blows. Might as well be a fucking deadhead.”

It had been their word for Vamps for as long as he could remember, wasn’t sure how the Grateful Dead followers had gotten hold of it. Granted, there were a lot of vamps who did follow the Dead back in their day…