Werewolves in Love 2: Yours, Mine and Howls (31 page)

Apparently not. They hugged her one more time. She waited until the rented Lexus rounded the bend and disappeared. Only then did she realize Sarah Jane had left without her purse or a suitcase.

Chapter Twenty-One

“So your mate’s ex-boyfriend—”

“No. A guy she dated.”

“A guy your mate dated shows up here in town and attacks Dylan. Then some Fae guy with a talent for mind whammy shows up to spring Dylan and the other guy out of jail, and it turns out he stalked Ally and Becca and Dylan in town, and his description matches the guy who killed your dad. And then you find out Dec’s your uncle, and he knows about the Fae guy, and Sarah Jane does too, and they both know Sindri. Have I got it?”

“Yeah.”

Michael was silent for a moment. “Well, that’s fucked up.”

“Yeah.”

“Kinda puts the Stapkis situation into perspective.”

“I guess.” He thought about it for a minute. “Thanks for not letting me kill my uncle.”

Michael shrugged. “If I’d thought you really wanted to kill him, I wouldn’t have tried to stop you. But I figured you shouldn’t do it in front of Ally.” He paused. “Dec’s your uncle. That’s just weird.”

The adrenaline rush of fury Cade had ridden while beating the shit out of MacSorley—or, rather, attempting to beat the shit out of MacSorley, which he hadn’t even meant to do—had disappeared the instant he walked out of the house. All the stress and confusion and pain and anger of the night had hit him at once, leaving him exhausted yet still restless.

The glass of the passenger side window was cool against his temple. It would be easy to go to sleep like this.

“So where do we start looking for the guy—what was his name?”

“Lind.”

“Yeah. How do we find out where he is?”

“We talk to the cops. Maybe he told them where he was staying when they booked him. If not, we just call all the hotels in the phone book.”

“And how do we find the Fae guy?”

“Hell, I don’t know. But we’ve got what, a dozen wolves in town now?”

“Thirteen.”

“Okay. Thirteen guys to track one Fae with long silver hair and a scar on his face. How hard is that?”

“What about his talent? If he can make them believe something, or do something? What then?”

“I don’t know.”

Michael took a deep breath and shifted in his seat, stretching and flexing. Cade could hear him thinking.

“You say he acted like he knew Dylan?”

“No, I don’t think so.” He paused, trying to remember exactly what Dylan had said. The events at the police station seemed like days, not hours, ago. “More like he knew who Dylan was. He asked who Dylan’s mother was and when Dylan told him, he acted like he didn’t believe it. And he kept saying warg olf—‘you are warg olf’—or something like that. You ever hear a term like that?”

“No.”

“Me neither.”

Michael drummed absently on the steering wheel, mouth quirked in concentration. He shrugged. “Warg means wolf, you know. Like my last name—Warg-man.”

Cade turned to look at him. “Wow. I’m not sure I ever knew that. So your last name is literally ‘wolf man’?”

Michael grinned. “Yep. One of my ancestors had a dangerous sense of humor.”

“I knew you had Norwegian ancestry,” Cade mused, “but I never thought about the name.”

Werewolves evolved in the far north of the Eurasian continent. Asian and Slavic werewolves had never migrated to the extent their western cousins did. Most werewolves who lived outside of northern Europe traced their ancestry back to Scandinavia and the northern reaches of Scotland.

“Warg is Old Norse,” Michael continued. “And your mom was of Norse ancestry too.”

“Yeah, so?”

“So…I don’t know. But the high Fae come from the same neighborhood.”

“Well, obviously. I mean, we know he knew her. But I still don’t get what ‘warg olf’ is supposed to mean. So warg means wolf. What’s olf?”

“Beats me. ‘Alf’ is another Old Norse word, though. Means fairy, or Fae. I’ve seen it written ‘ulf’ too. It’s where we get the word elf.”

Cade stared at his second in amazement. “Since when are you an Old Norse scholar?”

“I’ve got hidden depths.” He laughed. “Actually, I dated this German goth girl when I was stationed at Ramstein. She was obsessed with Nordic mythology, Odinism and all that Lord of the Rings type crap. There are werewolves in the Norse myths, so she was all excited to meet a Norwegian-descended werewolf.”

“Did she listen to death metal?”

“Oh yeah, big time. Had a friend who was a druid, went to Stonehenge, got naked in the woods, the whole thing.” He and Cade laughed. “Claimed she was possessed by the spirit of a Valkyrie once,” he continued.

Cade stopped laughing. “Old Ones aren’t supposed to be able to do that anymore.”

Michael shrugged. “I’m not saying I believed her. Chick smoked a lot of dope. I’m just saying I’ve seen some strange stuff. Very strange.” He frowned and fell silent for a few seconds, then sighed. “But anyway. So alf means elf, or Fae. And the high Fae were called elves in human folklore. So now we’ve got the high Fae dude who killed your father calling Dylan a wolf Fae?”

“That’s not the only weirdness.”

“What? You mean there’s more?”

“Yeah. For one thing, MacSorley.”

Michael shook his head. “You’ve never liked the wolf, I know that, but I don’t see anything strange about the guy, Cade. I just don’t get it.”

Cade put his arm across the back of the seat, leaning in to look at Michael more closely. “You didn’t notice MacSorley defending himself back there? Since when does a fucking beta
fight back
?”

“But, I thought—” Michael looked at him quizzically. “You were just teaching him a lesson, right? You weren’t
loco
or anything.”

“First of all, even if I had been disciplining, he didn’t submit. But the fact is, I lost it there. He put his hand on my mate and told me how to talk to her. Betas don’t do that. And when I turned around to rain down hell on him, he didn’t back down. He felt like a fucking alpha, Michael. A strong one. Watch the road, wolf.”

Michael had jerked in surprise, the truck swerving toward the center lane. He got the wheel under control, but Cade could see he was rattled.

“What the fuck?”

“Yeah, I know. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

They rode in uneasy silence for a few more minutes.

“Damn,” Michael finally said. “And I thought Ally was weird.” He gave Cade a sideways glance. “No offense, Alpha.”

Cade waved him off. “’s okay. I know she’s weird. I might even tell you about it some time.” He shifted uncomfortably. “And then there’s something else.”

Michael groaned. “Don’t tell me. Becca’s really a cat?”

Cade laughed. “No, not that weird, but still… I don’t think I’ve told you, but when I was fighting Courtlandt… For a minute there, I could read his mind. Like, actually see what he was thinking. I knew Rufus sent him, and I knew he was threatening Aaron to make him spy on me.”

“And you’re just telling me this
now
? Holy shit, boss.” He rubbed his hand across his face, shaking his head once more. “That’s kind of…significant. Isn’t it?”

“Yeah, it is. But what all of this means, I have no fucking idea.” Cade lit a cigarillo and rolled down his window, closing his eyes against the cool breeze blowing into the cab. “Something’s going on here. Something huge is happening to my life, something’s
changing
it, and I don’t know what it is. If I don’t know what it is, I can’t prepare for it. I just have to wait.” He took a long drag. “I don’t know how to just wait.”

“Hey, Cade…” Michael stopped, cleared his throat, looked at him sideways.

Cade raised an eyebrow. “What?”

“It’s just…Dec kept saying he needed to talk to you. So maybe you should listen.”

Cade didn’t answer. But he thought about it for the rest of the way into town.

The police station was the first stop.

Hank Cash and Mrs. Holmes retained little of their earlier cheerfulness. They were subdued, uncertain, like people who’d lost track of what was going on but were embarrassed to admit it.

Mrs. Holmes said Lind mentioned staying at the Florence Rose. Even though, according to Dylan, the Fae had told Lind to leave town, they decided to check at the bed-and-breakfast.

Lind was still registered. Michael, who had a very effective sardonic charm on women when he bothered to activate it, chatted up the cute blond on duty at the front desk. He slouched against the counter, his blue eyes fixed on the girl, dazzling her with a smile that melted females and would’ve shocked most of the wolves who knew him. He asked her name, if she was in college, if she had a boyfriend—oh, she didn’t? Did she have plans next week?

She didn’t. So he made some for them.

Then he told her they were old friends of Lind and wanted to surprise him. Cade was only a little surprised himself when she gave Michael the room number—and her phone number—and waved them on their way.

Michael was still grinning when they got to the room at the end of the hall.

“You really gonna call her?”

“Sure, why not? She’s cute as hell.”

Cade snorted. “She’s also young as hell. Can’t be much over twenty-one.”

Michael just shrugged and grinned wider.

They knocked, but they could already hear that no one was in the room.

Michael tried the door. It was unlocked.

They looked at each other.

“So,” said Michael.

“Yeah,” said Cade. “What the hell, let’s take a look around.”

Clothes hung in the closet. An open suitcase with more clothes spilling out lay open on one of the two double beds. A razor, toothbrush and various other personal items attested to the fact that Jakob Lind was still staying in the room.

But ten minutes of vigorous snooping yielded nothing of interest.

“Why would he take off without locking the door?” Michael frowned.

“I don’t care. I want to know why he’s in town to begin with. And what’s his deal with the Fae?” He stopped in the middle of the room, crossed his arms and scowled as he surveyed.

“What are you looking at? Or for?” asked Michael.

“Hiding places. Places the maids don’t clean.” He pulled out the dresser drawers, one at a time, and held them aloft to look at the bottom. On the third one, he got a hit and grunted with satisfaction.

“Here we go.” A large manila envelope was taped to the bottom of the drawer. He ripped it off and opened it, spreading the contents on the bed. They stared down at a dozen or so snapshots of Dylan at various places around town, including several close-ups.

“So he’s in town looking for Dylan, not Ally,” Cade mused as they gazed at the pictures. “Ally said Lind seemed interested in the pup from the first time she met him. It gave her the creeps. Lind told Dylan it took him six months to find them. Maybe he meant it took him six months to find them in Houston? What if he was already interested in Dylan before he ever met Ally?”

“You said he took it bad when Ally quit seeing him?”

“Yeah. He showed up at the stable a while after she dumped him. He attacked her.”

“He tried to attack a female who can break a wolf’s neck? Fucker’s lucky to be alive.”

“Yep,” Cade said absently. “So. He tracked Dylan down in Houston, then followed them when they came up here, and he’s been taking pictures of the pup around town. And when he gets arrested, the Fae gets him out. So was he following Dylan for the Fae, and if so, why?”

Michael looked pensive. “Can’t be anything good. If this is the guy who killed your dad, and he’s following your nephew around—your nephew who looks a hell of a lot like you did at that age—and he’s asking questions about Dylan’s mom—”

“And Becca’s, remember. He wanted to know about Becca’s mother.”

“All right. We have to assume the worst about his reasons.”

“Agreed. I just can’t figure out why now. Why’s he come looking for Dylan—or me, or Becca—now? Thirty-three years later?”

They poked around in the bedside tables and under the counter in the bathroom but didn’t find any more pictures.

“I don’t think we’re gonna find anything else, Cade. And you’re wasted. You need sleep. Let’s get home and think about this in the morning, yeah?”

“Yeah, okay.” He sighed, taking one last look around the room. He was missing something, there was something he should remember…but he was so damned tired. “You’re right. Let’s go.”

It hit him halfway down the hall.

“Hey, wait. Wait a minute.” They stopped. “Scotland. Scarista Beach.”

“Huh?”

“Scarista Beach, in Scotland. It’s where we stayed, and where the Fae attacked my dad.”

“So?”

“Dylan visited Scarista Beach when he studied in Scotland last year.”

Michael looked blank for a minute, then comprehension dawned. “You think the guy would still be hanging out there what, thirty-three years later? I mean, how likely is that?”

“How the hell should I know? I’ve never known any high Fae. I assume most of them are crazy. So maybe he’s been hanging out at the scene of the crime ever since. All I know is Dylan was at Scarista Beach, he looks like me, the Fae guy shows up here after Dylan gets here, Lind is taking pictures of the pup… You know,” he murmured more to himself than Michael, “Stapkis doesn’t bother me so much. I mean, yeah, he’s crazy, but I understand him. I can protect my family from him. But this Fae guy—and Lind, and hell, maybe MacSorley—I have no idea what that’s all about, how it relates to me. That’s what’s got me paranoid and acting like an asshole.”

“You’re not paranoid, bro. Someone really is after you.” Michael shrugged. “The asshole part, that’s being a Pack Alpha.”

Cade flashed a grin at his best friend. “Thanks, wolf.”

“Any time.”

They weren’t out of town before he started to nod off, his head once more pressed against the cool glass of the passenger window. His cell phone rang. He started in surprise, then pulled it out and stared at it.

Michael looked over. “You going to answer that?”

“Yeah, I—yeah. I just don’t know what to—” He sighed and hit the call button. “Hey. Look, baby, I know I was an asshole back there—” he felt Michael smirking at him “—and as soon as we—”