Refuge (4 page)

“Could it have been unlocked by mistake?” I
asked, and their expressions told me that it was unlikely.

Seamus rubbed his chin. “Not many know the
beasts are here, and I can’t see why anyone would set them
free.”

“As a precaution, I’ll ask security to put a
second lock on the cages,” Sahir said as he reviewed the footage
again. “I’m just thankful Alex didn’t get loose as well.”

I shivered at the thought of the wyvern
flying around the grounds shooting flames at anything that moved.
“Yeah, same here.”

Seamus left after we finished going over the
surveillance videos, saying he had to get back to work. I stayed
with the hellhounds for another hour and spent a little while
getting to know Sahir who was new to Westhorne, too. He’d come here
from the compound in Kenya two months ago, and before that he’d
lived all over Africa and the Middle East. He was originally from
Afghanistan, but his interest in supernatural creatures took him
far from home. He considered himself more of a scholar than a
warrior, and he obviously cared a great deal for the welfare of the
beasts in his care. He told me few people came to the menagerie,
but I was welcome to visit the hellhounds whenever I wanted.

I was in much better spirits when I returned
to the main building later that afternoon. It felt strange to have
so much free time here, but Westhorne did not offer regular classes
for the trainees. Mohiri children went to school until they turned
sixteen, and then they began their warrior training either at their
home compound, or at a place like Westhorne where the seasoned
warriors took over their education. There were six trainees here
besides me, and I’d noticed their days were a lot fuller than mine.
In the mornings, I trained with Callum, but so far my afternoons
were free. According to Callum, it was to allow me a period of
adjustment before full training began. Eight hours with that
Scottish brute? I couldn’t wait.

Back in my room, I fired up the killer new
laptop that had been waiting in my room for me on my first day
here. It made my old one look ancient, and I was immensely grateful
the Mohiri loved technology. Their network connection blew my old
cable modem out of the water. I went to my happy place every time I
logged in.

The first thing I did was log into the new
email account my hacker friend, David, set up for me. David was
hiding from the Master, too, and he was pretty paranoid about
communication, which considering our shared history wasn’t a bad
thing. He had also shown me how to check for any kind of
surveillance software on my new laptop, in case the Mohiri were
keeping track of my online activity. I hated to be mistrustful even
before I got to know them, but I had to be sure. Thankfully, the
computer was clean.

There was one new message from David, and I
opened it, eager to see if he had any news. I knew the Mohiri had
to be looking for Madeline and the Master, but in the week and a
half I had been here, I hadn’t heard a word about their progress.
So, David and I were doing our own search for Madeline. Well, David
was doing most of the work, but he had as much vested in finding
her as I did.

The last lead I told you about turned out to be
bogus. I have a few more I’m checking out and I have some of my
friends helping. It might take me a few weeks, but if M is in the
country, I’ll find her. I’ll keep you posted. Stay safe.

I read the email again. David was really good
at what he did, and I bet his friends were, too. If anyone could
find Madeline, it was him. When he did, she was going to tell us
everything she knew about the vampire that had torn our lives
apart. I still hadn’t figured out how I would make her talk, but
I’d think of something. Maybe I’d threaten to feed her to the
hellhounds.

I tried for the hundredth time to think of a
reason why she didn’t just pick up a phone and call the Mohiri to
tell them who the Master was. Why spend your life on the run when
you could eliminate the thing you are running from? She was a
warrior, a vampire hunter. She should be ridding the world of
vampires instead of protecting the identity of one as dangerous as
a Master. I did not waste my time wondering why she didn’t give up
his name to protect me. Madeline had shown her lack of maternal
feelings a long time ago.

I closed my email and checked out a few of
the message boards to see what was going on out in the world.
According to my old pal, Wulfman, it was very quiet in Maine these
days, and I suspected that was because every werewolf in the state
was still on alert after all the vampire activity there a month
ago. I worried about Nate there alone after what had happened to
both of us, but Roland kept assuring me that Maxwell was monitoring
the area and the pack was keeping an eye on Nate, too.

The rest of the country wasn’t lucky enough
to have werewolves guarding it, and I read about at least two dozen
disappearances in California, Texas, and Nevada that looked
vampire-related. I shuddered every time I thought about a human in
the hands of one of those monsters. I still had nightmares about
Eli even though I’d killed him. I had no illusions about my ability
to fight off a vampire, and I knew things could have turned out
horribly for me if circumstances had been different. If Nikolas and
the werewolves had not arrived when they did. If Eli hadn’t been
too distracted to see me reach for my knife.

My phone rang and I reached for it, knowing
it had to be one of two people since only Roland and Nate called me
at this number. I was already smiling when I answered it.

“You owe me big time, demon girl,” Roland
quipped, snickering at the nickname he’d made up for me last
week.

I leaned back in my chair and scowled at the
wall. “If you don’t stop calling me that, I’m not talking to you
anymore.”

He laughed at my weak threat. We both knew
that would never happen. “I think you’ll forgive me when I tell you
about my little trip to a certain cave today.”

My stomach quivered in excitement. “And?”

“And that place is a bitch to get to. You
couldn’t find a less dangerous hideaway?”

“Remy found it, not me, and you have to admit
it’s the perfect spot. Now tell me.”

“Do you know how bloody cold it is up on that
cliff?” he moaned. “I think my toes are still frozen.”

“Roland!”

He sighed. “Message delivered and
answered.”

I jerked upright, my heart racing. “Answered?
He left something for me?”

“More like he drew something on the wall of
the cave. I took a picture of it with my phone. I don’t know how
you can read this stuff. It looks like hieroglyphics.” I heard him
playing with his cell phone. “I just sent it to you.”

I scrambled to check my email, and I had to
wait another thirty seconds for his message to show up. When I
opened the attachment, I stared at the picture for a minute before
tears pricked my eyes. Leaving home had been hard enough, but
leaving without saying good-bye to Remy had killed a little piece
of me. After a lot of pleading on my part, Roland had agreed to
leave a small note in the cave for me. Remy could not read human
writing, and I knew how to write a few dozen troll words, so my
short message translated to
, I miss you. Sara.
On the cave wall, written in
Troll was,
I miss
you too, my friend.

“Well? What does it say?”

I translated the writing for Roland, and he
huffed loudly. “That’s it? You made me freeze my ass off climbing
down a cliff twice to find out if he was still your friend? Hell, I
could have told you that and saved myself the trip.”

“You don’t know trolls, Roland. They have
very different ways, and the elders are really strict. If they told
Remy to stay away from me forever, he would obey them.”

He sighed again. “Sara, I might not know
troll ways, but I saw you with Remy. Meeting him is not something
I’ll ever forget. No matter what happened back then or what orders
he got from his elders, that troll will never stop being your
friend.”

Roland was usually playful and goofy, and
sometimes I forgot how insightful he could be. “I think I just
needed to hear it from him. Thanks for doing this for me. You’re
the best.”

“I know. I get that a lot.”

I rolled my eyes and laughed. “Good to know
some things will never change.”

He laughed with me. “What can I say? Women
love me.”

“You’re hopeless, you know that? One of these
days, you’re going to meet someone who doesn’t fall all over you,
and I hope I get to meet her.”

“I have met her, and she broke my heart back
in elementary school.”

“Oh, don’t start that again.” I closed my
eyes, still embarrassed by his and Peter’s recent confessions that
they both had crushes on me when we were kids.

“I bet your face is red right now,” he
teased.

“Stop it or I won’t tell you about what
happened today.”

“More exciting than my day?”

I told him all about the hellhounds, the
menagerie, and the wyvern. He whistled and told me I had to send
him some pictures. “I’m not sure if I’m allowed to do that, but
I’ll ask. Maybe you can come visit me and see them yourself.”

“Yeah, a werewolf visiting a Mohiri
stronghold, that should go over well.”

“You never know. Stranger things have
happened.” I picked at the label on a bottle of Coke on my desk.
“So, any special plans for the big birthday next week?” I felt a
pang of sadness at the thought of not being there for his
eighteenth birthday. It is a huge milestone for a werewolf because
they are considered an adult at eighteen, and they are included in
hunts and start doing patrols with the other adult wolves. It was
bittersweet for both of us. We were excited for his coming of age,
but sad that we wouldn’t be able to celebrate his birthday
together. My own birthday was a little over a month away, and it
was hard to imagine him and Peter not being here for it.

“No big plans. I think I have to work the
next day anyway.”

“You have a
job
? Who are you, and what have you done
with Roland?”

He groaned. “And what’s worse is I’ll be
working for Uncle Max at the lumber yard. Every weekend.”

“Didn’t you always say you’d rather work at a
fast food joint than for Maxwell?”

“I have no choice. I gotta make some cash if
I’m ever going to get some new wheels, and the lumber yard pays
good money.”

Guilt settled over me. Roland’s pickup had
been ripped up by a pack of crocotta trying to get to me. He loved
that old truck.

“I know why you’re quiet all of a sudden, and
you better stop it,” he ordered. “That was not your fault. Besides,
one of the guys in the pack might sell me an old Mustang he has in
his shed. It needs some work, but my cousin, Paul, said he’d help
me fix it up. You remember him; he’s the mechanic. I just need to
get enough for a down payment and it’s mine.”

I smiled at the excitement in his voice. “I
wish I was there to see it. You never did finish teaching me how to
drive.”

“Forget it! I saw what happened to the last
car you drove.”

“Hey, that was so not my fault, and I got
away from the bad guys, didn’t I?”

“They must have lots of cars there you can
practice on, and they can afford to replace them.” He made a sound
like a snort. “I bet Nikolas could teach you, if you don’t kill
each other first.”

My hand jerked, almost knocking over the
bottle of Coke. I pushed it out of my reach and glared at it. “I
haven’t seen him since he dumped me here and took off.”

Roland was quiet for a moment. “I’m sure he
has lots of work to catch up on and he’ll be back soon.”

“He can stay away for good for all I
care.”

“Come on, you don’t mean that. Nikolas is not
such a bad guy, and coming from me, that’s something.”

“I don’t want to talk about him.” My face
heated up, and my palms prickled as resentment flared in me at
hearing my best friend defend
him
. I knew I was overreacting, but I
couldn’t stop the angry hurt that came every time I thought about
Nikolas leaving the same day we got here. After everything we went
through, he couldn’t even be bothered to say good-bye.

A soft
hissing
pulled me from my silent rant. I
looked at the Coke bottle a few inches from my hand, and gasped at
the brown soda bubbling up as if it had been shaken. My hand
closest to the bottle was crawling with blue static, and sparks
leapt from my fingers to the bottle that looked ready to
explode.

I jerked my hand back and tucked it under my
other arm, and almost immediately, the soda began to settle down.
What was happening to me? Whatever it was, it was getting
worse.

“Hello? You still there?”

“Yeah, sorry.” I tried to keep the tremble
from my voice. “I got distracted for a minute. I need to tell you
something.”

“Okaaay,” he said warily. “You haven’t been
selling troll parts on the black market have you?”

“Roland!”

“Sorry.”

I sucked in a long, slow breath. “You know
how my friend Aine said my Fae powers might start to grow? I think
it’s happening – or something is going on anyway.”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t know. It’s like my power is on the
fritz or something.” I described the little flare-ups I’d been
having, including the strange cold spot in my chest. “I almost made
a bottle of Coke explode a few minutes ago, just by touching
it.”

“Hmm.” He was quiet for a minute. “Maybe it’s
tied to your emotions.”

“What do you mean?”

“You haven’t been very happy since you went
there, and you got mad when I mentioned Nikolas. Faeries are
supposed to be, like, happy all the time, right? Maybe being
negative screws with your Faerie magic.”

I snorted. “Great explanation.”