Master of Shadows (35 page)

The werewolf shook his head in disgust. “For such a smart man, you are profoundly dim. Ever thought about asking God for forgiveness?”

Davon snorted. “I’d think you’d want to see me fry.”

“Yeah, well, I’m evidently a good bit brighter than you are, because it’s obvious to me Arthur’s right. You’re as much a victim as my boy was.” He folded his arms and stretched out his legs, then he directed a brooding stare at his toes. “I’m going to speak up for you tomorrow, but my people are probably gonna kill you anyway. I’d like to try to at least give you some peace.”

He wasn’t sure it would do any good, but he managed a smile. “Would you pray with me, Reverend?”

The werewolf looked up and gave him a genuine smile. “It’d be my pleasure.”

So they knelt together on the green shag, and Davon placed his right hand in the pastor’s clawed one. Stephen took the left hand, and they bent their heads.

Miranda watched Belle
practically dance around the well-appointed kitchen, humming in pleasure as she diced vegetables and cheese for omelets.
Whoever heard of a witch who’s a morning person?
Her obvious joy made Miranda miserably aware of her own dark mood.

The sound of boot heels on the stairs alerted her just before she caught the scent of another werewolf. Miranda tensed as her instincts howled a warning.

The man paused in the doorway, tall and lean and so powerfully masculine her body purred approval. His hair was thick and curling over dark brows, and his eyes were black and shrewd.

His nose was a hawkish blade that suggested something exotic somewhere in his family tree, an idea enhanced by his coloring. She wasn’t sure if the copper tint to his skin was a tan or genetics. His upper lip was a bit too thin, while the lower one had an intriguing fullness that made her imagine biting it. His cheekbones were broad—that exotic ancestry at work again—with deep hollows beneath them. His long jaw was a fraction broader than his temples, which gave him a caveman kind of vibe. None of which should have been appealing.

But it was.

He looks like a thug
, she told herself. Precisely the sort of man she shouldn’t trust. Just like Warlock and her stepfather, the kind willing to use fists and claws and teeth to keep her and her mother in line.

“Good morning, Belle,” he said, his voice surprisingly smooth and pleasant. She’d expected a Clint Eastwood rasp.

“Ah, Justice.” Belle turned from the cutting board to flourish her knife in Miranda’s direction. “Miranda, this is William Justice. Bill, Miranda Drake.”

He gave her a long, assessing look that made her straighten her shoulders and lift her chin. “You’re Warlock’s daughter. The werewolf witch.”

She gave him a smart-ass smile. “Yeah. And you’re the Wolf sheriff the Council of Clans just fired.” Belle had told her that much when she’d mentioned she had another guest.
Both of you have had to deal with idiots. Maybe you’ll find you have a lot in common.

“Satisfy my curiosity,” Justice said, walking over to accept the mug of coffee Belle offered. “Did you kill both your parents, or just your mother?”

Belle growled something in French. “Dammit, Justice . . .”

Miranda refused to let her gaze drop. “My stepfather broke my mother’s neck after years of abuse. So I stuck cut off his head and burned the house down.”

He lifted a dark brow. “Way to make a statement.”

“All he loved was that house and the money Warlock paid him.” She curled her lip over her coffee cup. “That’s all the Chosen
ever
care about. So I got rid of it all and took the money. God knows I bled for it long enough.”

He took a slow, deliberate sip of his coffee. Steam rolled up around his barbaric face. “You know, you could have called me at any time to report you were being abused. I would have arrested the bastard and put a stop to it.”

“Uh-huh.” She leaned a hip against the marble counter and cocked her head over her mug. “And what would have happened when the case went before the Council of Clans for trial?”

He didn’t flinch. “Hopefully, we would have found the evidence to obtain a guilty verdict.”

“You and I both know better than that. The Chosen members would have voted not guilty because my stepfather was Chosen, and he’d have bribed the rest. Then he’d have killed my mother the minute they let him out of jail.”

“I’d have protected you if you’d given me the chance.” Justice put the mug down on the counter with an irritated clunk. “Instead, you took the law into your own hands. Which makes you as much a killer as you claim he was. And your mother still ended up dead. I’d bust you, except—”

“You’re not a cop anymore.” She smirked. “Isn’t that too bad.”

“Okay, that’s quite enough of that,” Belle snapped. “I’ve been working my butt off on this breakfast, and we’re all going to sit down and chew on it instead of each other.”

Ouch,
Miranda thought, with a belated thought for the manners her mother had drilled into her head. She’d been rude to another guest in a friend’s home. Joelle would have been mortified. “Of course, Belle. I’ll set the table.”

“I’ll help,” Justice said, biting off the words.

“I don’t need your help.” Miranda stalked to the china cabinet to get the dishes.

“Isn’t that too bad?” Justice said, deliberately echoing her earlier snark as he got the silverware out of the drawer Belle indicated. “Because you’ve got it anyway.”

Somehow they managed to set the table without breaking into outright combat, then sat down to eat. Which distracted Miranda nicely from her fellow guest, because Belle’s omelets were light and deliciously fluffy, while the bacon had a perfect smoky crunch. Between that and the canned peach preserves the Maja served with her scratch-made biscuits, Miranda hadn’t had a meal so good in ages.

But even as she ate, she was acutely aware of Justice’s dark gaze flicking over her face. Miranda lifted her eyes to give him a defiant glare in return.

God, he was a handsome bastard.

The key word there is “bastard,”
Miranda told herself. He might not be Chosen, but he was male. Which meant that like every other male she’d ever known, he couldn’t be trusted.

And yet part of her wished he was the hero he seemed: a man willing to fight to protect the weak. A man she could trust to have her back so that she didn’t have to struggle every single minute. She was so damned tired of being alone and afraid.

Okay, that was self-pitying,
Miranda decided, suddenly impatient with herself.
And the rest was just plain stupid
.
Stupid and stupidly romantic
.

She really needed to hunt down that part of her mind and bludgeon it to death before it got her killed.

 

Belle walked around
the two suits of armor she’d arrayed on a pair of mannequins in the center of the spell circle: her own and Tristan’s much larger one. The scales glittered in the candlelight like ancient treasure in a dragon’s horde.

“The problem with these suits is they’re magic, and that damned beast of Warlock’s eats magic,” she told Miranda. The girl had accompanied her into the basement to tackle the problem right after breakfast. “And since I used my blood to make Tristan’s, if the beast bites the suit, it also gets its teeth into me. Tris and I are now Truebonded, so we’ve got to fix that or we’ll both end up dead the first time Beastie starts to gnaw.”

“Yeah, that would definitely suck.” Miranda cocked her head, considering the armor. Tall and pretty, she had red hair as brilliant as a fox’s coat and eyes that seemed to glow against the cream of her skin. Her oval face had an Art Deco delicacy, with its long, thin nose and cupid’s bow mouth. You’d never guess she could become a seven-foot werewolf.

Today she’d conjured herself a pair of snug blue jeans and a black T-shirt with the words ONE OF LADY GAGA’S LITTLE MONSTERS scrawled across her generous breasts. No wonder Justice’s eyes had glazed when he’d seen her this morning.

Too bad they got along like two badgers in a burlap bag.

Belle muttered and paced around the armor again. It was early afternoon, and she needed to solve the problem with the suits before the vampires woke at sunset. They’d likely end up going into battle tonight, which was no doubt when the Council of Clans would put Davon on trial. She wouldn’t put it past them to try him during the day, but being a vampire, he’d be unconscious. Trying a comatose man would make for poor political theater. She hoped.

The key to the rescue was Elena Rollings. If only the councilwoman would use the communication gem she’d magically slipped her. Petra could find Davon again in a pinch, but it would be a good sign if Elena contacted her. For one thing, they’d know she, at least, hadn’t drunk the werewolf Kool-Aid. Or eaten the kibble, or whatever.

Abruptly Miranda turned to her with a wicked grin on her face. “I think I know how to put a kink in Beastie’s tail.”

After the girl described the spell she had in mind, Belle grinned back. “Oh, child, I do like the way you think.”

 

They were going
to try him in a state park, for God’s sake. Davon stared out the window of Linda Corley’s SUV, watching the dark forest roll past, splashed here and there with silver pools of moonlight. He might have enjoyed the trip, but his wrists lay heavy in his lap, wrapped in chains and secured with a heavy padlock. You’d think he was a gate.

The truck stopped, and he looked around to see a wiry man in a state Department of Natural Resources uniform standing beside it. Linda rolled down the window and Davon caught a whiff of fur as the man leaned in to study him avidly. “That him?”

“Yes, that’s the accused,” Linda said, a bit primly.

“Figures he’d be black. Go on in.”

Linda obeyed, the set of her shoulders suddenly gone stiff.

“A racist werewolf,” Davon drawled. “Interesting. Gives the whole thing a lynching aspect I hadn’t considered.”

“This is not a lynching,” the woman snapped, glowering at him in the rearview mirror. “Marvin’s just a dick.”

“No? White folks taking a black guy out in the woods to kill him . . . Y’all gonna get out the hoods and bedsheets next?”

“Shut
up
, vampire.” Davon went to work cultivating an uncomfortable silence to give her a chance to think about what she was really involved in. He might have made his peace with God, but he wasn’t above pointing out the hypocrisy of his werewolf captors.

He did wish he’d been able to call his parents, but he had no idea what to tell them.

The caravan of council vehicles snaked on along the mountain road between towering dark trees. Finally they pulled into a parking lot marked with a sign that read, FAMILY PICNIC AREA.

What, are they serving—vampire?
Davon wondered. Well, at least his sense of humor was back.

An hour later, it was gone again, mostly because the end of his wrist chains had been padlocked to a stake driven into the ground, as Rosen announced, “for the safety of our audience.”

What the hell did they think he was going to do? There had to be two thousand werewolves in the crowd.

Guess it’s time for Kabuki theater, doggy style
.

Judging by the snippets of conversation he heard, some of the wolves had been driving for hours to attend the trial. Evidently some kind of order had gone out that morning.
Lovely. Just in case everyone isn’t in a bad enough mood
.

Then, as Davon watched in bemusement, the werewolves spread picnic blankets out on the grass and proceeded to wander around catching up with old friends.

Somebody started a bonfire. He eyed it nervously.
Are we planning to roast vampires and make s’mores?

At least they’d left the kids at home this time.

That reminded him.
They’d better get this show on the road if they expect to kill my ass before Arthur shows up with the marines
.

What the fuck am I doing?
Davon thought suddenly. Why had he turned himself in to these lunatics? Had he been high?

Shit. Too damned late now.
His stomach felt like his half-blind grandmother’s embroidery: one big knot. He shifted his booted feet and wished they’d let him take off his armor. Guess they wanted to play up the Knight of the Round Table aspect, though Davon was hardly one of the elite.

A man in Dire Wolf form walked out into the center of the picnic area, not far from where Davon stood. He stopped, came to attention, and lifted a large silver hand bell he began to ring in clanging peals. The crowd quickly fell silent, and he bellowed, “Hear ye, hear ye! The Council of Werewolf Clans meets to deliver justice to the vampire Davon Fredericks and the family of James Wendel Sheridan, his alleged victim.”

Moving slowly in single file, the members of the council emerged from the trees. Like the guy with the bell—the bailiff?—they were all in Dire Wolf form.

They moved to the massive wooden table a pair of brawny wolves had earlier unloaded from a rental truck. It and its accompanying thirteen chairs were crudely built, in a way that suggested both tradition and great age.

The wolf who’d sat down in the center chair lifted a large mallet and brought it banging down on the table’s dark wooden surface in three steady raps. Must be Rosen. “Who brings this case before us?”

“I, Galen Vanderberg, Wolf sheriff of the Council of Clans.” It was the guy with the bell. Okay, apparently not a bailiff. Also not Justice either.

“Present your evidence,” Rosen said.

Feeling the knots in his stomach tighten even more, Davon shifted in his chains and prepared to listen.

 

Belle and Tristan
stood at attention under the starry Avalon sky as Arthur inspected the ranks. There were five hundred warriors assembled for the rescue mission—every experienced agent Arthur could pull in from the field without causing chaos in operations.