Taking Back Sunday (17 page)

Through the day’s research, Sunday traced Michelle’s charm back to black magic from the Malay, or
Ilmu Sihir
tradition. Michelle with her long, dark hair, tanned skin, and lightly slanted eyes was clearly exotic. Sunday thought back to how Eunice and Elisabeth had described Michelle’s interests in witchcraft. They had mentioned something about Michelle studying her heritage. Maybe Michelle was Indonesian. Sunday shook her head and threw her hands in the air. Had she recalled it earlier, she might have been able to narrow down her search on the pendant much sooner.

“All this time
wasted
,” she muttered to herself.

It was two days since she’d encountered either Cyrus or the other werewolf, and by the looks of it, she wasn’t being followed. At least, for the time being, she was safe. There was no doubt, however, that Sunday needed to leave Columbia, and
fast
. As soon as this was over, she needed to break out and start running all over again.

It turned out that all of the incessant nagging about being sought wasn’t just paranoia. Had it not been for her stupid attempt at trying to live a normal life with friends who loved her, and a house she could call home, she would have recognized the real threat that the presence of the werewolf at the club had been.

She needed one more day to figure this out, and then she’d be gone.

Maybe it wasn’t that she hadn’t the ability to see the problems with Cyrus from the get-go, maybe it was that she hadn’t wanted to. Something about him made her want to trust him. It was in the way he listened to her and in the way that he his tough exterior to slowly crumbled with her. But he’d been holding back too. And his was a whopper of a secret. She felt stupid for finding out in the way that she had. She should have known sooner. Sunday kicked herself when her thoughts went full-circle and inevitably ended right back where she started, still wanting him, despite everything she now knew.

One more day
, she told herself.
One more day to figure this out.

There was no more playing the part of normality for Sunday, not anymore. Not since she realized the city was growing full with werewolves that knew her. But Sunday couldn’t abandon Kayla and Sammy just yet. She had to continue to follow Constance and seek clues about Michelle’s Malay charm. Before she could leave Columbia forever, she had to make sure that the only two people she cared about in this world were safe. She wouldn’t be able to leave any other way.

Sunday slammed her laptop closed and sighed wearily. Her eyes stung from the want of sleep, but she couldn’t just yet. First, she needed to explore Michelle’s house as she had Vicky and Elisabeth’s. She crept up to the side of the house where she would be hidden among the shadows. Just as she’d done hours earlier, she centered herself before placing her hands on the window above where she crouched.

Unguarded, she urged her awareness to expand. Gently, her mind filled with visions of the family through the years. Sunday sought instances of ritualistic magic. Finding nothing, Sunday removed her hands and wiped the sweat from her brow. Just as she had at Vicky and Elisabeth’s, she inched her way around the house, trying to get a read from all points.

After two hours, Sunday was delusional from the combination of lack of sleep, and the expense and reception of so much energy. It wreaked havoc upon her already fragile condition. She staggered back to the car, stumbling along the way.

It had been difficult enough to reach it and proved even more difficult to drive it, but Sunday did, navigating her way to a nearby church with a deserted parking lot. She took a spot at the farthest corner, and turned off the engine. She settled into the driver’s seat and reclined it as far back as it would go. As much as she loathed the idea of taking a break, she desperately needed to. In the time it took her to close her eyes, she passed out completely for what remained of the night.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

From a distance, Cyrus and Marcus watched Sunday pull into the parking lot and park beneath the expansive overhang of a neighboring tree. Sunday’s car was camouflaged, perfectly hidden in the shadow. Marcus circled the block once, and they determined that Sunday was stopping to rest for a few hours before continuing her surveillance the next day. They took spot in the lot of a twenty-four hour diner across the street of the church, and resolved to wait her out in the diner.

The exhaustive search for Sunday and then following her to the witches’ houses left little time to eat, and both men were starving. Though the werewolves were gifted with the ability to run on less food and rest than human beings, both he and Marcus were feeling the effects of the long hours.

As if reading Cyrus’ mind, Marcus let out a long, weary sigh when he sat across from Cyrus at the booth.

“She has to know how abnormal her behavior is,” Marcus said as the waitress came by and poured them coffee.

The waitress raised her eyebrow as she scribbled the werewolves’ orders. Each man asked for full breakfast meals, with added side orders of chicken wings, mozzarella sticks, and onion rings. Both men chuckled as she walked away, calling out behind her to keep an eye on their coffee levels because they’d want their mugs full the whole night. They’d need a whole lot of it to keep them going at the pace they had been for the last few days.

“I don’t think she has a choice,” Cyrus responded when they were safely out of the waitress’ eavesdropping range. “Those women are the only people she’s probably ever cared about. If something is putting them in danger, she’s bound to do anything to stop it.”

“What’s the latest word on Constance?” Marcus asked.

Neal and Angel had been keeping them abreast of the goings-on with the witch, and determined that she was stalking Eunice Johnson. Earlier in day, she had followed Eunice from her home to her job at the library. When she was sure that Eunice would be out of the house for a few hours, she returned to the elder witch’s house and placed hex bags in the bushes of her lawn. After that, Constance revisited some of the locations to which Angel had previously followed her.

At one spot in particular, a warehouse in the old Congaree Vista district, the witch got out. She locked herself inside a warehouse for over an hour. She was alone. From what they knew, the Incarnate hadn’t ever followed Constance, so was unlikely that she knew about the location.

“The latest word is the same word at last check-in,” Cyrus huffed.

The little they’d uncovered in the way of Constance frustrated him, and he had shared his feelings with Marcus earlier. The longer it took to make any headway, the bigger the threat it was to Sunday; moreover, the less he’d be able to surpass Sunday’s own investigation and get the lead from her.

“She’s still following the other witches,” Cyrus added. “I think she’s checking them out for connections to Constance and to the murder at the hippie shop.”

Marcus’ brow furrowed, and he looked down at his coffee. After a few seconds, he looked up to Cyrus and shook his head.

“Has she made any connections that we haven’t?” he asked.

Cyrus’ nostrils flared, and he fixed his lips into a tight, thin line as he shook his head.

“How would we know?” he finally answered. He let out a hard breath and rubbed his beard callously. “We don’t have any way to know what she’s thinking or what she’s doing when she’s in that car. She’s casing their houses and probably using her ability to figure things out, but she’s not exactly broadcasting her findings on the morning news. If we could just work this out
with
her…”

Cyrus’ voice trailed off, and he looked out the window toward the parking lot where Sunday slept. He was certain that, if given the chance, they could work with Sunday. His mind raced with scenarios of approaching her with the evidence the pack had gathered that she might not have uncovered yet. In his fantasies, she accepted his help and they teamed up. If he could get Sunday to give him a shot, then he could use the opportunity to tell her the truth and convince her that he had her best interests in mind. Apart from that long shot, he was at a loss as to how he would manage to keep her from fleeing again.

“We don’t know anything about what she’s even
doing
, Cy,” Marcus said, slamming his coffee mug onto the table. His eyebrows knotted as he glared at his brother. “Angel’s
right
, you know.
Retrieval
of the Incarnate is our mission. Not
helping
her solve some murder mystery.”

Cyrus didn’t flinch, but the truth hurt. He was on a mission. Now, with three packmates in tow, there was no way to get around the contract with the Pastophori. As much as he regarded Marcus as his only confidant, Cyrus held back from sharing that he’d been hatching a bigger plan of his own. Cyrus was intent on getting to Sunday and on making her accept the help of the hunters in whatever was happening with her coven. That much he
was
telling the pack was true. After that, however, his plans were diametrically different from what he’d been leading the werewolves to believe.

The longer he watched her, the more his affection for her grew as had the need to protect her from the Pastophori of Iset and his pack. How he would do it, he wasn’t certain. But he was planning to remove Sunday from the threat of recapture. If it took kidnapping her himself and dragging her into the furthest corner of the world away from preternatural civilization, then he would do it. He was ready to turn his back on his pack, his brothers, to secure the safety of his mate. She didn’t have to love him for it. She just had to go along with him. He would keep her from the cult, and that was all.

They had started into the first plate of their meals when Cyrus’ phone rang and Neal’s name appeared on caller ID. Cyrus answered the phone through a mouthful of rare T-bone steak.

“She’s consorting with vamps,” Neal snapped.

“What? Who?” Cyrus slapped his fork down as he interrogated Neal.

“The Constance bitch,” Neal growled.

“Are you positive?”

“Affirmative,” Neal replied. “Blood-sucking leech-corpses are running a funeral parlor, Bennett’s Funerals and Cremations, on Millwood right smack in the middle of human bait. The scents had us confused. It’s a good set-up for them. Never seen it before. Full nest of them. At least three met with the witch in a backroom while a viewing was on. Still going on. Black family, so I went in and pretended to be a friend of the deceased, while Angel started on the research from the car.”

Neal paused, and even though Cyrus couldn’t see him, he sensed Neal’s rising anger. Vampires hosting family gatherings for the bereaved were well over the limit of what werewolves considered acceptable communion with the mundane. Vampires. The only two they’d come across in town had been the tourists at the Lair. Now they had to deal with a witch who was in communication with a whole nest of them.

“You got anything on the nest or what Constance was doing there?” Cyrus asked.

“Funeral home’s been there since 1885. Family-owned according to the website and on-site literature.” Neal took a deep breath, fuming.

Vampires not only running a funeral home in Columbia, a highly-populated capital city, but having been there through the spawning of generations and generations of mundane families to provide them with a never-ending food supply was too awful to believe.

“We figure they’ve got humans working for them, keeping the daylight hours and all that. Maybe familiars. Maybe full-on mundanes. But the people the witch met with were full-on vamp. Walked her into a room marked ‘Employees Only’. They stayed behind closed doors for twenty minutes before Smith exited alone. A few minutes later, two of the vamps followed.”

“You guys still on her?” Cyrus asked.

By now, Marcus had also stopped eating. Werewolf hearing acuity made it possible for Marcus to follow the conversation without Cyrus having to relay what the caller was saying on the other end. As Neal continued speaking, both werewolves stared out of the diner window intently watching the church’s only entrance.

“Angel stayed on her from the funeral home back to her house,” Neal began. “We regrouped here after about an hour when the witch turned out the lights. We’re back at the stakeout location down the street. Car’s parked in the driveway. Angel’s just checked the windows. She appears to be sleeping.”

“Stay on her,” Cyrus commanded. When Neal asked for an update on the Incarnate, Cyrus answered. “Sunday’s passed out in a church parking lot. She’ll be on Constance tomorrow, and Marcus and I will be on her tail. I want intel on her warehouse, and I want whatever else you can gather on the nest. Angel and I came across those two tourists at the goth club. I want a location. Phillip and Joshua are the names. Angel can fill you in with a description.”

Cyrus stopped and shared a long, hard stare with Marcus. They were both thinking the same thing.

“I don’t want any of us to tip-off the local pack,” Cyrus warned. “We don’t know their relationship with the nest. They can’t have gone on too long without realizing there were vamps living among the mundanes. Everything has to stay undercover. No blips on anyone’s radars. Anything happens, I want to hear about it immediately.”

When Cyrus ended the call, Marcus slapped the table between them, causing the waitress and a couple of mundanes at the other end of the diner to startle.

“What the hell’s going on here, Cyrus?” Marcus demanded.

As Marcus glared at him, Cyrus closed his eyes and rubbed his temples.

First, finding the Incarnate. Then, falling for the Incarnate. Now, witches consorting with vampires. The truth was that Cyrus had absolutely no idea what they’d stumbled into. The more the situation spiraled out of control, the more he wanted nothing more than take Marcus out of the equation and dash to Sunday’s car. He wanted to push her out of the driver’s seat and take off, leaving nothing in their wake.

Pressure was building in him and he didn’t know how to make it stop. The hatred and confusion that had fueled him through the years of hunting Sunday hadn’t prepared him for the way felt about her now. He could laugh at the thought of it: the Incarnate needing the protection of a werewolf who, at his fiercest, couldn’t compete with the power she’d unleashed in the throes of a passionate make-out session. In a fight, he’d be smart to run behind her and cower in the corner while she took over. Thinking he would be able to do a better job of protecting her than could do herself all this time was a joke. He’d been right to tell his brothers that they’d need to get her permission to take her anywhere she didn’t already want to go, and he’d be a fool to consider it any different for him.