Dire Needs Read online

  “Wouldn’t the Elders be concerned enough about this to tell us?” Stray asked.

  “Again, I don’t know if Seb is actually bringing them back or if they’ve been hovering. And the Elders never tell us shit.” Jinx’s voice was bitter, as Stray’s had been.

  Vice was sitting on the floor next to Rogue, the fight having mellowed him to the point of extreme calm. It was unnerving, given the circumstances, but not abnormal. The pendulum would swing in the opposite direction all too soon. “How can we fight against the dead—especially our own kind?” he asked as he blew the smoke from his hand roll so it drifted over Rogue’s head.

  Rifter half expected Rogue to reach out and take the cigarette from Vice’s hand and take a long drag, the way he’d done so many times in the past. But nothing happened and he pulled his mind back to the present, and Vice’s damned good question.

  It was a true concern, especially for the Weres. Tonight had been only the tip of the iceberg. If enough Weres were possessed, trained to do anything the weretrappers wanted, battles would not be as easily won as tonight’s was. The minds of the Dires were harder to penetrate, but maybe with their own kind…

  Jinx said, “I can try, but the dead… that’s just not really my thing.”

  He shifted a glance to Rogue, and Vice continued to smoke among the ruins of his own making.

  Rogue’s mattress was far more comfortable than the floors they’d been chained to during the three-week imprisonment. Rifter didn’t have to close his eyes to picture the cells with the silver-lined walls and matching bars, could still feel the ache on his ankles where the silver cuffs had sunk down to the bone.

  “You should be more angry with your own kind,” Seb told him during his one and only visit to Rifter. He’d been surprised the witch had the guts to come around at all. It had been the impetus for Rifter to escape—had forced the anger to well up past the drugs long enough to rouse Brother Wolf and formulate the plan to dreamwalk in a guard’s mind and escape. Through that same dreamwalk, he’d discovered where Rogue was being held, a mile away underground, and rescued him. After he’d carried Rogue out, Vice blew up the facility behind them.

  That had destroyed years of research. Killed eighty weretrappers and some feral Weres that had been experimented on to the point of no return. Rifter comforted himself with the fact that he had cost the weretrappers a hell of a lot.

  It had cost the Dires more.

  Rogue. Damn it. As tough as nails, the way they all were, but always more sensitive because of his gift, because the dead were always bothering him. Had Seb known what he was doing? Was Rogue purposely spelled?

  The demon doc Eidolon didn’t seem to think so. But now, with the possible rise of the Dire ghost army, it was looking more and more likely. “Why dream of this now? Seb’s always stayed out of my mind because it was too dangerous for both of us. He wouldn’t start now and give away his plans to me.”

  “Maybe he can’t stop you,” Jinx said. “Maybe Rogue’s manipulating this.”

  They stared at the prone man, sleeping peacefully. Whatever was going on in his mind, Rifter would bet it was anything but manipulation.

  “Are you sure Rifter isn’t causing this with his dreamwalking?” Stray asked. He’d taken one of Vice’s hand rolls, and he’d lost some of the jitters that came with the shift and the fight.

  “No,” Jinx said. “But he can see it happening, which means he should be able to see into Rogue’s mind.”

  All that swirling blackness would envelope and choke him—and yet, there was no other way. “Then there’s only one thing left to do. I have to get inside Rogue’s head and see if he’s the conduit.”

  “You’ve never been able to do it before,” Jinx said.

  “I’m going to have to try harder.”

  “And you might not come back,” Jinx pointed out.

  “Are you more afraid you’ll find out that your twin’s the one fucking us over?” Stray asked suddenly, and Vice had his teeth on the man’s neck before any of them could utter a word.

  “Yes,” Jinx said simply, and Vice let go of Stray. “It’s a risk we have to take. Rogue knows things. He might be using whatever strength he can to keep Rifter out… or maybe he’s been waiting for us to figure it out and let Rifter in.”

  “Jesus, Jinx,” Vice muttered, but Jinx continued.

  “Things are goddamned falling apart—there are supernatural disturbances like I’ve never felt—things are falling apart. Weird murders. The weretrappers are trying to enslave humankind and the Weres.”

  “With the help of witches and demons,” Stray added.

  “No matter what, the weretrappers are stronger and more insidious than they once were. They’re becoming as inhuman as the things they’ve called upon,” Jinx said.

  “You think they sold their souls?” Rifter asked, and Jinx nodded curtly.

  “Fucking, fucking humans,” Vice shouted at the ceiling, as if the Elders would hear it and come down to what—help?

  They could, of course, but the Elders had long claimed they wanted the Dires to have free will. Rifter and his brothers were told the big picture, the right thing to do. But there was seemingly no end in sight for their redemption.

  Maybe doing what they were doing was supposed to be its own reward? After all, how long is too long for a human life?

  It was something Rifter had never been able to answer.

  In the meantime, the Dires had seen it all, done it all, but there were always new challenges. Getting close to humans without shifting was one, but that required a special skill set.

  If he was right, there could be another race partially destroyed, the rest enslaved. And if the mutant superwolf Dire army created by the weretrappers took hold, humans were fucked.

  The wolf world was large, underground. Meeting places for groups of packs took place in the mountains where humans couldn’t easily travel. This happened infrequently, but when Linus had called, Weres listened.

  Now it was a crapshoot. Loyalties were split and broken.

  “If Rogue’s the conduit for the Dire ghost army, we need the spell broken. We need a witch.”

  “Yeah, they’re going to be so helpful to us,” Jinx said.

  “We’ll have to be persuasive.” Vice’s eyes glinted with more than a hint of Brother Wolf behind them. His chest was smeared with blood and the tattoo over his heart seemed to beat with a life of its own.

  “Even if we do that, Seb can use Gwen to kill us. We’re too hard to study. Unstoppable. With us out of the way, he can reproduce her DNA and use the Weres. Even on their worst day they can outmatch an army of humans.” Rifter balled his hands into fists. “I need to talk to Gwen—about her shift. Her parentage. Everything. I think you should all be there.”

  “You might want to ask her that first,” Jinx pointed out.

  “While you do that, Liam and I are going to have a nice talk with Max,” Vice added.

  “If you’ve already had a second mating,” Jinx started, and Rifter held up his hand to stop him from saying anything further.

  The third mating was literally the charm. She would shift—and there was no way Rifter could let that happen now—not until they figured out how her body was going to react.

  There were a few half humans, half Weres. Most were significantly weaker than their lycan counterparts. It was looked on as a disability, a liability, and usually those halfs weren’t totally accepted into the pack.

  That wouldn’t be the case with Gwen. He wondered if the Elders knew this.

  “They know everything,” Stray said bitterly, and Vice and Jinx looked between Rifter and Stray questioningly.

  “I’m not going to finish the mating.” Not yet.

  “You’re going to have to explain a lot to her. You’re going to have to tell her about Harm,” Stray continued. “I’m thinking that killing her father isn’t going to go over well.”

  “He deserves it,” Vice snarled, and nearly snapped Stray’s head off, but Stray was fast,
hit the other side of the room and prepared to strike.

  “Not now—we’ve got to stand together,” Rifter said. Alphas were all too used to having all their orders followed without question; this situation should’ve been next to impossible, but it had worked thus far.

  Vice muttered, “Sorry,” and Stray shrugged, and Rifter left them to clean up and went to find Gwen, but not before he stood over Rogue. He stared at his brother’s closed eyes and wondered what kinds of hellish secrets Rogue was keeping now.

  “Rogue, we need you,” he muttered, amended, “I need you,” because Rogue would know what he went through. The experiments, the nightmares both he and Brother Wolf suffered as a direct result.

  But Rogue remained silent, as he’d been, disturbingly so, among the ruins of Vice’s earlier tantrum.

  Chapter 26

  The Dires went upstairs after the fight—battle debriefing, Gwen supposed, although that didn’t stop her from pacing as restlessly as the others, all of them keeping an eye on the property.

  Liam held the rifle, and Cyd and Cain, now shifted back to human form, carried guns as well. None of them talked much, except for an occasional comment on the weather.

  Gwen remained more toward the interior, where Liam had asked her to stay, rifle still in hand, and she hadn’t been able to let her guard down either. She heard the talking upstairs, gruff male voices, and the rustling continued in her ears.

  Rifter would explain more to her; she knew that. Patience had never been her strong suit, though, and this was pushing all her boundaries.

  Suddenly, she heard a creak coming from inside the room to her right, and she went in, rifle up, because Liam wasn’t close by.

  The window was open and a figure was going out instead of going in. Were or not, she didn’t know, so she pointed the rifle and said as firmly as she could, “Stop and turn around—hands up.”

  The figure stopped dead—and Gwen caught sight of a familiar ponytail and then the flash of a bare arm covered in tattoos. When Max turned around and saw Gwen, she looked anything but relieved.

  No, her eyes were swollen—she’d been sobbing, apparently. And she was handcuffed as well. A wooden chair lay destroyed in the corner.

  “Max? What’s going on—why are you here?” she asked, instinct telling her to keep the rifle pointed on the woman, whom she considered a friend, the one whose phone number was still in the pocket of her jeans upstairs.

  Max opened her mouth to speak, but nothing came out. She turned and tried to go back out the window quickly, but not wolf quick—Gwen could already tell the difference. Her bare feet slapped against the floor as she put the rifle down at her side and grasped the back of Max’s shirt, pulling her down.

  “Let me go,” Max pleaded.

  “It’s too dangerous out there. You have no idea.”

  “It’s more so in here for me—you have no idea.” Max struggled and Gwen pinned her against the wall.

  “Stop, Max—I don’t want to hurt you.”

  “What’s going on here?” Liam demanded from behind them. When Gwen turned, she saw his eyes were half lupine and she let go of Max and backed up.

  “She was trying to go outside—I didn’t want her to get hurt,” Gwen explained, couldn’t tell which one of them Liam was mad at. “Why is she here?”

  “Shit, forgot about the hospital connection,” Liam muttered. “Who the hell were you going to meet?” he asked, his voice rising to a near bark at Max, who swallowed hard but remained still. “I don’t recognize you anymore. What the hell happened to you?”

  She flinched at his yell, and he backed up, shaking his head. It was as if he was seeing a ghost, but Max was most definitely flesh and blood. But now the wolf tattoos on the young nurse’s arm began to make a bit more sense to Gwen. “How do you two know each other?”

  “She’s my mate,” Liam bit out. “Although not for much longer.”

  Max was shaking and Gwen took her arm and led her past the broken chair to the couch, the chain between the cuffs clinking. “Why not?”

  “She betrayed me. When a mate betrays her mate, it’s grounds for death.” His words were blunt, his tone, anything but, and Max drew in a harsh breath as if she’d been physically slapped. “What do you know about what’s happening out there?”

  Max finally spoke, not able to meet either of their eyes. “Something big—I don’t know exactly what. It almost sounded like another pack was coming in to help them take over.”

  Liam turned away and Gwen wished she could leave the two of them alone. But Liam insisted that she stay. For both Liam’s and Max’s sakes, it was safest, but to watch the pain etched on their faces…

  Her relationship with Rifter was just starting—theirs was ending with a terrible, and brutal, finality.

  “I know where the outlaws are staying,” Max admitted. “I had to get close with them.”

  Liam’s eyes blazed, but this time Gwen watched the young woman stand her ground as he demanded, “How close?”

  “They were going to kill me.” Her words were a partial plea but also a statement of fact. “They knew, as your mate…”

  “It would hurt me the most—which meant they either left me alive on purpose or their aim was to pick on the old pack ways.”

  “I didn’t do anything with them. I avoided it.”

  “You shouldn’t have bothered.” Liam turned to walk away.

  “She had a reason,” Gwen said with a sudden, unerring clarity. She wasn’t sure if she sensed it or smelled it, because the wolf inside of her was slowly trying to rise, but she knew what Max was hiding. As Max stared at her, Gwen walked forward, sat next to Max on the couch and asked, “How far along are you?”

  She heard Liam’s sharp intake of breath, and Max said, “Thirty days. They were going to kill me—I couldn’t let them experiment on this baby after I died.”

  “Do they know?”

  “I don’t think so. I didn’t want them to find out. Can you understand that?”

  A wolf’s mating instincts were strong, but her mothering instincts were more so. Gwen knew there was far more to this story, but she was in the way here. Slowly she stood and walked past Liam, who remained so still she figured he must be in shock.

  She closed the door behind them and slid down against the wall next to the door, curled into a ball. The stress of the day—of the past days—had begun to take its toll.

  What kind of life will you have?

  You were born and bred to deal with violence. And she had to admit that truth—she’d always veered toward working in the ER—which was the most bloody and violent of all the internships. And she’d been good at it.

  Liam felt the shift coming on and did everything in his power to stop it. He heard Max talking to him, telling him to remain calm, and if he remained in human form it would be a goddamned miracle. Much like the baby Max was carrying.

  His baby …could it be? The timing was right if she hadn’t betrayed him—the big if—because the typical gestation period for a wolf was sixty-three days and they’d been together in January for sure.

  He breathed deeply and shoved his wolf down. He’d never lead the pack with such little control over his own personal life. Vice was right about that.

  Even though Max was human, the wolf DNA in the baby would influence the gestation. She must’ve been so confused by it all—the pregnancy would be as hard as anything on her body.

  It all made perfect sense, or at least Max’s inability—and refusal—to fight the way she normally would have. In the past, he’d watched her take out much bigger and badder than her human self should’ve been capable of when she’d been threatened, and with that, she’d gained a lot of respect in his world. At least from those who knew about her. Hanging out with Weres was a dangerous proposition for a human. Because of that, only a few close pack members knew she was his mate.

  Apparently, the cat was more out of the bag than he thought.

  He’d met her inside Howlers. It had been a hot summe
r night and his body was twisted up, readying for the full moon. The first five years after the change were the worst, he’d been told, and so far year four hadn’t been any better than year one.

  Strange cravings ran through him, and although there were other female Weres there—pretty ones too—Max caught his attention because she was flirting shamelessly with another wolf when said wolf’s very angry Were girlfriend and her friend confronted her.

  He’d been prepared for Max to go down quickly, but she’d taken out two female Weres and had been halfway to taking out the male when Liam stepped in and dragged Max away.

  It was for her own good. The male had been about to shift, and at that point, Max thought Weres existed only in horror movies. The jukebox blared Meatloaf’s “You Took the Words Right out of My Mouth” over the outside speaker, with the singer appropriately asking about baring throats to wolves with red roses.

  “Calm down—I’m not going to hurt you,” he told her as she struggled worse than anything he’d ever wrestled. He had nail marks on his forearms and neck where she reached up to grab him, and she said, “I’ll hurt you, then.”

  “I’ll bet you say that to all the boys,” he said.

  He’d had to let her go, afraid he would really hurt her. She punched him in the jaw—hard enough for him to see stars. He grabbed her wrist and pulled her to him, and then he was kissing her, despite the stunning pain radiating thanks to her right hook.

  Danger. Adrenaline. The forbidden, all mixed together with the beautiful, strong woman, and the best part was, she kissed him back.

  His lip had bled and she’d run her tongue across it, like she could heal it. Wrapped her arms around him and held him close, like she wouldn’t let him go. She was as protective as any female wolf he’d ever been with.

  “Thought you wanted the guy you were all over in there.”

  “I thought you’d never notice,” she admitted. For the next month, they were inseparable apart from his full-moon run. Her temper was bad, her attitude at times equally so, but never with him. At times, she seemed to melt, like he’d been the only person in the world she could be herself around.