The Wolf Within (26 page)

He grimaced and I couldn’t help breathing in his scent, trying to see if I did smell like him. Problem was I couldn’t smell myself over all the wolves in the room. But his scent did seem more familiar to me.

Damn. I wrinkled my nose. Was the scent more familiar because it was like mine? Was Ben right?

Bonded?

Shit.

I didn’t want to think about the possibility. I wasn’t going to let stupid werewolf physiology run my life. I’d just buy stronger perfume and hope for the best.

“What’s that face for?” Dan asked as I frowned harder.

“Gee, Dan. What do you think I might be mad about?”

He looked vaguely guilty for a moment. Then jerked his head toward the door. “Can we go somewhere and talk about it?”

“Was that a request?” I arched an eyebrow at him. “You’re not just going to swing me up over your shoulder and carry me off like a caveman?”

He rubbed his forehead for a moment then sighed. “I can if you want me too. But for now I’m just asking nicely.”

He wasn’t getting away with it that easily. “Maybe you should’ve thought about that before you pulled caveman act number one.”

His eyes narrowed, darker gray than silver for once. Stormy gray. “I didn’t plan it like this, it was just that—”

“That?” I prompted.

He blew out a breath. “Some of the guys were talking before you arrived. You know, guy talk. They said some things I didn’t like. I didn’t want them hassling you.”

“So you decided to hassle me yourself. Why, Daniel, I’m touched.” I noticed Petra standing a few feet from us, looking annoyed. “Though, I’m not sure your friend there feels the same way.” I nodded in her direction, saw Dan follow my gesture with his eyes.

He looked back at me, confusion on his face. “Petra? There’s nothing between Petra and me.”

Sure, and I was happy being a werewolf. For a smart guy, he was batting for the moron major league tonight. “Sometimes I have to wonder about the Taskforce. I thought they only recruited the bright ones.”

He shoved his hands in his pockets. “Look, can we just go and talk somewhere?”

I considered him. We did need to talk—or rather, I needed to yell. But between the beer and the lingering energy from the moon and the fact that, despite my wishes and my determination to prove Ben wrong, Dan still smelled—and, if I was completely honest, looked—way too good, I wasn’t sure I trusted myself to be alone with him. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“Ash—”

The fact that the pleading tone in his voice made me hesitate told me I definitely needed to leave before I did something stupid. “Tomorrow,” I said. “I’m tired, Dan. We can talk tomorrow.”

***

One good thing. Apparently werewolves don’t get hangovers. In an attempt to fall asleep and not deal with everything happening to me, I’d made good friends with the contents of my Cuervo bottle after the pack meeting. It had helped a little—I’d slept eventually. And I didn’t have my normal post-tequila splitting headache.

I did have Dan knocking on my bedroom door just as I wandered out of the bathroom in my robe. I didn’t have to ask who it was. His scent announced him.

“Just a minute,” I yelled, scrabbling for clothes. I needed more than thin silk between me and Dan. I shucked the robe, pulling on panties and a bra.

Dan opened the door and walked straight in as I grabbed frantically for my robe . . . a little too slowly. His eyes flickered over my body, his dimple blinking to life for a second then his expression turned serious. I couldn’t help a perverse sense of irritation that he hadn’t looked longer.

“What are you doing? I said just a minute,” I snapped.

He shook his head. Just once. “We don’t have time. Get packed.”

“What?” I was meant to stay at the retreat for a few more days until everyone was happy I wasn’t going to turn into a ravening beast or something. “What’s happened?”

“Holiday’s over,” Dan said, face serious. “There’s been some murders.”

My knees buckled and my robe slipped from suddenly numb fingers. “Who?”

“No one you know.”

Things swam around me for a moment then my vision cleared. As my panic receded, I fought the urge to pick up the vase on my dresser and fling it at Dan’s head. “You couldn’t start with that info?”

He looked at me, puzzled. “What?”

“You scared the
crap
out of me.”

“Oh. Sorry.” His eyes were kind of glazed looking and I realized I was still in my underwear. And that the bra I’d grabbed was one of my skimpy lace ones.

So maybe he wasn’t so indifferent.

And maybe I didn’t want to think about that.

“Turn around,” I squawked.

“Huh? Right. Sorry.” He didn’t sound sorry. And his one-eighty didn’t exactly set land speed records.

I started wriggling into the nearest clothes, trying not to blush. “Why rush back if the victims are no one we know?”

Dan’s back stiffened. “Because they think it’s Tate that did it.”

I sat back down on the bed with a squishy sort of thud. “Why?”

“His MO. Three dead vampires. Drained.”

I didn’t want to think what that meant exactly. “Why do you need me?”

“You’re still the best forensic accountant in town, aren’t you? Now that we know Tate is around and manufacturing dodgy vaccines, we’ve got a better chance of tracking him down. Plus I have to go and Ani doesn’t want you going anywhere without another wolf so she’s assigned you to me.”

“Assigned?” Man, werewolf matchmaking sucked. Subtlety apparently wasn’t big in their arrangements. I yanked up my zip given I had nothing else to take out my frustration on.

“To look after you.” Dan said as if I should know that.

“Won’t babysitting me be tricky if you’re chasing a murderer?”

“I’ll be multi-tasking,” he said, deadpan.

I smiled despite myself. He always could make me smile. And I didn’t like that he was starting to do it again. It was bad enough finding him physically tempting without falling for his mind as well. I pulled my case out from under the bed and unzipped it. “Men don’t multi-task.”

“We drink beer and watch sports at the same time.”

This time I laughed out loud. Then I got serious. “Tate’s not a baseball game.”

“I know. Are you decent?”

“Uh-huh.”

Dan turned around. He looked disappointed when he saw me fully dressed. For a moment I felt pleased then I got a grip and started packing.

“I know you’re mad about the claim thing but this hasn’t got anything to do with that,” Dan said. “I need your help tracking Tate and I also need to make sure that nothing happens to you. You and I are going to be spending lots of time together. Okay?”

I didn’t really have a choice. I wanted to bring Tate down as much as Dan did. “How much time?”

“24/7.”

Not a good idea. “I am
not
sleeping in the same room as you,” I said.

He shrugged, face carefully blank. “That’s fine. But you will be sleeping under the same roof. So, your place or mine?”

“Mine.” I wanted the home-field advantage. Plus my spare bedroom was way down the other end of the house from mine. Plenty of distance between Dan and me.

“Fine.” He headed for the door. “You’ve got about twenty minutes to finish packing. Meet me at the car.”

“What about breakfast?” I yelled after him.

“Jase is taking care of it,” floated back to me.

Great. Breakfast was under control. So how come I felt like nothing else was?

***

“Have you remembered anything else about the stuff they injected you with?” Dan asked when we’d been driving for about half an hour and I’d eaten all the bagels Jase had prepared. I hadn’t touched the coffee though. I was wired enough without caffeine.

I shook my head, exasperated. I’d been asked this question over and over. “It’s not like they were discussing the chemical formula with me. I’ve already told your Taskforce guys everything I remember. All I know is the label looked like Synotech’s logo.”

His mouth twisted. “I just thought something might have jogged your memory.”

“Like what? Changing? You think becoming a werewolf makes me smarter or something?” I frowned, wondering if that were even possible.

“Or something would be right,” Jase muttered from the back seat.

I twisted around to give him my best ‘not helping’ look. He grinned at me and slurped up the last of the blood he was drinking out a travel mug. The smell made my stomach rumble despite the fact it was stuffed with bagels, cream cheese and lox. Gross. I turned back to Dan.

He changed lanes and hit the accelerator, scowling at the oncoming traffic. “Changing does give people different abilities.”

“Well I’m sorry, but it hasn’t given me a photographic memory.” Mostly it seemed to have given me a raging case of hormones. Not really helpful in defeating Tate. I reached for one of the coffees. Even if I didn’t drink it all, maybe the smell of French roast would keep me from noticing Dan so much.

“The details are still kind of fuzzy.” I didn’t really want them to become any clearer. Not if it meant remembering all of what Tate had done to me.

“Marco could help you remember,” Jase said.

I jerked, almost spilling my coffee. Not in a million years. “No way. There will be no more vampires rummaging around in my head. Tate didn’t tell me much. Just that the vaccine would overcome my immunizations and that if I turned, people I bit would turn without having to drink my blood.”

“Just what we need, a vampire population explosion,” Dan said. He slurped his own coffee and I suddenly noticed he looked kind of tired.

Then told myself how Dan felt was
not
my problem. “We don’t even know if he’s got the vaccine in circulation,” I pointed out.

“No, but that’s what you’re going to help me find out.”

“Can I tell Lord Marco about the vaccines?” Jase said.

Dan looked at him in the rear view mirror. “Why would you want to do that?”

“He might know something useful.” Jase said

“Like what?” Dan asked.

Jase shrugged. “Who knows with Old Ones? But I keep thinking that there’s a reason vampires are turned the way they are. If Tate is messing with that, then the results could be unpleasant. Lord Marco’s network is pretty good.”

I twisted to look at Jase. “You ‘keep thinking’ or you’ve got a ‘feeling’.” I did the air quotes thing and Dan’s gaze flicked to me, puzzled. I still hadn’t had a chance to ask Jase about the voice I’d heard in my head at Tate’s but I was going to do it real soon. If my PA was psychic, I wanted to know about it.

“Does it matter?” Jase asked, looking down at his lap.

His reluctance didn’t make me feel any better about any of this. “Maybe. So which is it?”

“A feeling,” he admitted. “It just feels wrong.”

Wrong, huh? Great. Just great. My stomach twisted and I turned back to face the windshield, wishing I hadn’t eaten quite so much breakfast. “I think you should let him tell Marco,” I said to Dan. “We need all the help we can get.”

He nodded but didn’t look at me. Which was just as well. I didn’t want him to see that I was freaked out. I wanted to find out the truth about Jase’s abilities before I filled Dan in completely.

“I agree. I’ll have to get permission. But I’ll see what I can do.”

“Good. So, tell us more about these murders.”

Chapter Twenty

By the time we reached my house two hours later, I regretted both breakfast and my curiosity. Turns out I’m better suited to being an accountant than listening to Dan describe a crime scene and why the injuries the victims sustained made them think that Tate was involved.

Even vampires didn’t deserve to be drained of blood and mutilated. What sort of vampire drank another vampire’s blood, anyway? They couldn’t survive on it, so it could only for kicks.

Jase looked pale too. The garage door came down behind us, blocking out the sun so he could get out of the Jeep and he got out of the car without a word.

“Has there been anything else like this going on?” I asked him quietly as we unloaded my luggage.

“Rumors,” Jase said. “A few vamps go missing every so often. They pick the wrong victim, or something goes wrong in the dark clubs.”

“But more lately?”

He looked uneasy, flicking at the luggage tag on my suitcase. “Maybe. I don’t really hang out with that sort of crowd.”

Thank
God
. That was one of the reasons Jase and I were still friends. “Can you see what you can find out?”

“Sure. But Lord Marco’s the one you need to speak to.” He picked up one of the bags and I realized he was humming.

Damn. He was
really
nervous. Which made my palms start to sweat. I tightened my grip on the bag I held, telling myself not to overreact. “What about the other lineages?”

“Lord Marco’s the oldest. They’ll tell him what he needs to know.”

Double damn. I didn’t want to say what I was about to say but I did anyway. “In that case, I think we should pay him another visit.”

Jase’s eyebrows shot up and he glanced back over his shoulder at Dan, still in the car on his cell. “What about waiting for permission?”

“Oh, I’m willing to wait. For a little while. But the Taskforce isn’t paying our salaries, remember?”

“They’re paying us a pretty good hourly rate. And didn’t you sign some sort of confidentiality agreement? You could go to jail.” He was almost whispering.

“Better jail than dead.” I hoped I sounded more confident than I felt.

Apparently not because Jase still looked unconvinced. “You know, Lord Marco’s a good guy, for an Old One. But you shouldn’t be so quick to trust everything he says. The Old Ones have their own agendas.”

“You’re telling me this
after
you talked me into letting him thrall me?” I punched his arm. “Thanks a lot.”

Jase winced slightly which made me smile even though my hand hurt. Before I’d changed, my punching him would’ve made about the same impression as a fly landing on his arm. Go me.

“You needed to talk to him. He’s better than Tate, that’s for sure.”

I hoped he was right.