Taken by Storm
Page 36
“You were right. Mitch says Samuel Wilson did have a twin.”
Chase didn’t respond in any visible way to Devon’s bombshell. Maddy looked down. Lake reared back. Of the three Weres in this room, she was the only one who seemed truly surprised.
The rest of us knew too much about the monster, firsthand. Even in death, he’d never let us go.
Later, I told myself. Later, I could process this. Later, I could think about what it meant, but right now I needed one more piece of information.
“I need to know what pack Wilson was born in.”
While male Weres sometimes transferred packs, females usually stayed in their natal pack until they died. If we knew which pack Wilson was born in, there was a good chance we’d be able to find his living twin. If Griffin was right, if his only real weakness was Lake, finding this monster’s twin was the first step toward identifying his Achilles heel.
“I suspected you might need that information.” Devon’s voice was too light, too calm. He was playing a part, and I had no idea why. “I asked Mitch that very question.”
“And?”
Devon cleared his throat. “Samuel Wilson,” he said, in that same, unnatural tone, “was born a member of the Stone River Pack.”
I had to remind myself to keep breathing. I fought the urge to gasp.
The Rabid who’d killed my parents had been born as one of Callum’s wolves. That revelation alone would have been a bombshell, but the implications were far, far worse.
At one point in time, Callum’s pack had counted among its numbers three female Weres, but now that Katie and Lake were in my pack, Stone River only had one.
“Devon.” I said my friend’s name and then swallowed hard.
No wonder he sounded so off.
The only female in Callum’s pack old enough to be Wilson’s twin was Sora.
Devon’s mother.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
I HUNG UP THE PHONE WITH DEVON AND SUNK BACK onto the stiff motel bed. Callum had to have known, back when we were hunting Wilson, that he was Sora’s twin.
Sora had to have known.
To catch a Rabid, you have to think like a Rabid.
Had she been talking about her brother?
Unwittingly, my mind flashed back to the day Callum had found me hiding under the kitchen sink in an old house I barely remembered—the day I’d seen a rabid werewolf kill my parents like they were nothing more than meat. Sora had been part of the cavalry that had come with Callum to rescue me. She’d been the one who Shifted, the one who leapt for the monster’s throat.
The two had grappled.
Flashes of fur. White, gleaming fangs.
My memory was piecemeal, at best, but the images were there, and they were hard to shake. The Rabid had gone out the window, and Sora had followed. The monster should have died that night. We’d attributed the fact that he hadn’t to his knack—a perfect match for my own. But maybe Wilson’s survival hadn’t just been a combination of Resilience and luck.
Maybe Sora had let him go.
Not because she wanted to, but because she couldn’t stick around to watch him die, knowing that she’d been the cause.
Now, he was back, and the only thing we knew of that might hurt a Shadow was attacking its twin. I hadn’t wanted to think about the implication of that when I’d believed Griffin might be the killer, and I certainly didn’t want to think about it now. For better or worse, after everything we’d been through, Sora was still Devon’s mother.
My Devon’s.
Hurting Lake hurts Griffin. I didn’t want to take that line of reasoning one step further.
To kill a shadow …
No.
I couldn’t go there. I couldn’t let the thought form in my head. I couldn’t let it be true.
There had to be another way.
Numb, except for the constant throb of my shoulder, I looked back down at my phone. Slowly, painfully, I dialed Callum’s number.
He answered on the first ring.
“Bryn?”
I could tell by the way he’d said my name that until I’d called, he hadn’t been sure that I’d made it. If Shadows really did interfere with his knack, he might not have seen the outcome of the last attack, or the way Jed had stitched me back together. For all I knew, maybe my future was so intertwined with this monster’s that Callum couldn’t see anything at all.
“I’m fine,” I said. Chase made a snuffing sound under his breath, and I amended my statement. “Mostly fine.”
“What happened?”
I don’t know what possessed me to reply the way I did, but the only words I could seem to manage were: “I got bit.”
A manageable bite, like this one, wasn’t enough to Change a person. Even if it had been, there was no way of knowing if a Shadow could do that kind of thing at all—and still, the only response I could muster was the same phrase Chase had said to me when I’d learned it was possible for someone to be born human and Changed into a Were.
“You got bit,” Callum repeated, using a tone that I recognized well as the calm before the storm.
“I’m fine,” I said, cutting his temper off at the pass. He rarely lost it, but right now none of us had the time to deal with the fallout if he did. “Jed stitched me back together. Pain sucks, but it’s manageable.” I let out a half laugh, short and harsh. “Just call it practice.”
The change in the room around me was immediate, and I realized I’d said that last bit out loud.
Practice? Lake said. Practice for what?
Chase didn’t ask, and I realized that he knew the answer—maybe he had always known the answer.
“Why didn’t you tell me that Samuel Wilson had a twin?” I turned my focus back to Callum, hoping that it would provide sufficient distraction for Lake. “That it was Sora?”
I wanted him to tell me that I was mistaken, that Sora wasn’t this monster’s twin, that I had it all wrong. I willed him to say that. I prayed.
“When?” Callum asked. “When would you have had me tell you? When we rescued you? When you latched on to Devon and he on to you? When Samuel resurfaced, and we realized he’d never stopped killing? When the kids in your pack killed him?”
Would I have wanted to know? I couldn’t help asking myself the question. If it hadn’t been for whatever happened that full moon, with Maddy and the baby, if the Shadows hadn’t come back—would I have wanted to know that the Big Bad Wolf was Devon’s uncle? That my second family in Callum’s pack had been his family, too?
“Once you realized we were dealing with a Shadow,” I said, neatly cutting those questions out of the equation. “Two hours ago, when we were on the phone, and you knew that a Shadow was stalking Maddy, why didn’t you tell me then?”
“Had we not gotten cut off, I would have.”
I believed him—not because he wouldn’t hide key information from me, but because we were dealing with an enemy whose actions he couldn’t foresee. If he’d had a line on the future, Callum would have had no qualms about withholding information, but I didn’t think he’d play fast and loose with my life, not when he had no way of knowing how that might turn out.
This particular Rabid had died obsessed with the idea of Changing me.
“He and Griffin can’t be at the same place at the same time.” I leaned back against the wall, wincing as my shoulder protested the movement. “If Griffin hadn’t broken back through when he did, I’d be dead. And if Wilson isn’t tied to Maddy, if he’s playing with her because he can and not because he has to, there’s no limit on where or who he might have killed.”
I could see the victims in my mind, their corpses lined up like paper dolls. The boy in the cabin. The girl in Winchester. The unidentifiable mass of skin and blood and bones in Missouri.
How many victims had we’d missed? How many more would there be if we didn’t find a way to stop this thing? In life, Samuel Wilson had been the worst kind of monster. He hadn’t just attacked teenagers. He’d killed children.
And now he was bullet proof.
“This is just the beginning.” I tried to stay calm. I tried to be rational. “Sooner or later, he’ll find a way to push Griffin out. He’ll come to finish the job, and then—”
Chase didn’t respond in any visible way to Devon’s bombshell. Maddy looked down. Lake reared back. Of the three Weres in this room, she was the only one who seemed truly surprised.
The rest of us knew too much about the monster, firsthand. Even in death, he’d never let us go.
Later, I told myself. Later, I could process this. Later, I could think about what it meant, but right now I needed one more piece of information.
“I need to know what pack Wilson was born in.”
While male Weres sometimes transferred packs, females usually stayed in their natal pack until they died. If we knew which pack Wilson was born in, there was a good chance we’d be able to find his living twin. If Griffin was right, if his only real weakness was Lake, finding this monster’s twin was the first step toward identifying his Achilles heel.
“I suspected you might need that information.” Devon’s voice was too light, too calm. He was playing a part, and I had no idea why. “I asked Mitch that very question.”
“And?”
Devon cleared his throat. “Samuel Wilson,” he said, in that same, unnatural tone, “was born a member of the Stone River Pack.”
I had to remind myself to keep breathing. I fought the urge to gasp.
The Rabid who’d killed my parents had been born as one of Callum’s wolves. That revelation alone would have been a bombshell, but the implications were far, far worse.
At one point in time, Callum’s pack had counted among its numbers three female Weres, but now that Katie and Lake were in my pack, Stone River only had one.
“Devon.” I said my friend’s name and then swallowed hard.
No wonder he sounded so off.
The only female in Callum’s pack old enough to be Wilson’s twin was Sora.
Devon’s mother.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
I HUNG UP THE PHONE WITH DEVON AND SUNK BACK onto the stiff motel bed. Callum had to have known, back when we were hunting Wilson, that he was Sora’s twin.
Sora had to have known.
To catch a Rabid, you have to think like a Rabid.
Had she been talking about her brother?
Unwittingly, my mind flashed back to the day Callum had found me hiding under the kitchen sink in an old house I barely remembered—the day I’d seen a rabid werewolf kill my parents like they were nothing more than meat. Sora had been part of the cavalry that had come with Callum to rescue me. She’d been the one who Shifted, the one who leapt for the monster’s throat.
The two had grappled.
Flashes of fur. White, gleaming fangs.
My memory was piecemeal, at best, but the images were there, and they were hard to shake. The Rabid had gone out the window, and Sora had followed. The monster should have died that night. We’d attributed the fact that he hadn’t to his knack—a perfect match for my own. But maybe Wilson’s survival hadn’t just been a combination of Resilience and luck.
Maybe Sora had let him go.
Not because she wanted to, but because she couldn’t stick around to watch him die, knowing that she’d been the cause.
Now, he was back, and the only thing we knew of that might hurt a Shadow was attacking its twin. I hadn’t wanted to think about the implication of that when I’d believed Griffin might be the killer, and I certainly didn’t want to think about it now. For better or worse, after everything we’d been through, Sora was still Devon’s mother.
My Devon’s.
Hurting Lake hurts Griffin. I didn’t want to take that line of reasoning one step further.
To kill a shadow …
No.
I couldn’t go there. I couldn’t let the thought form in my head. I couldn’t let it be true.
There had to be another way.
Numb, except for the constant throb of my shoulder, I looked back down at my phone. Slowly, painfully, I dialed Callum’s number.
He answered on the first ring.
“Bryn?”
I could tell by the way he’d said my name that until I’d called, he hadn’t been sure that I’d made it. If Shadows really did interfere with his knack, he might not have seen the outcome of the last attack, or the way Jed had stitched me back together. For all I knew, maybe my future was so intertwined with this monster’s that Callum couldn’t see anything at all.
“I’m fine,” I said. Chase made a snuffing sound under his breath, and I amended my statement. “Mostly fine.”
“What happened?”
I don’t know what possessed me to reply the way I did, but the only words I could seem to manage were: “I got bit.”
A manageable bite, like this one, wasn’t enough to Change a person. Even if it had been, there was no way of knowing if a Shadow could do that kind of thing at all—and still, the only response I could muster was the same phrase Chase had said to me when I’d learned it was possible for someone to be born human and Changed into a Were.
“You got bit,” Callum repeated, using a tone that I recognized well as the calm before the storm.
“I’m fine,” I said, cutting his temper off at the pass. He rarely lost it, but right now none of us had the time to deal with the fallout if he did. “Jed stitched me back together. Pain sucks, but it’s manageable.” I let out a half laugh, short and harsh. “Just call it practice.”
The change in the room around me was immediate, and I realized I’d said that last bit out loud.
Practice? Lake said. Practice for what?
Chase didn’t ask, and I realized that he knew the answer—maybe he had always known the answer.
“Why didn’t you tell me that Samuel Wilson had a twin?” I turned my focus back to Callum, hoping that it would provide sufficient distraction for Lake. “That it was Sora?”
I wanted him to tell me that I was mistaken, that Sora wasn’t this monster’s twin, that I had it all wrong. I willed him to say that. I prayed.
“When?” Callum asked. “When would you have had me tell you? When we rescued you? When you latched on to Devon and he on to you? When Samuel resurfaced, and we realized he’d never stopped killing? When the kids in your pack killed him?”
Would I have wanted to know? I couldn’t help asking myself the question. If it hadn’t been for whatever happened that full moon, with Maddy and the baby, if the Shadows hadn’t come back—would I have wanted to know that the Big Bad Wolf was Devon’s uncle? That my second family in Callum’s pack had been his family, too?
“Once you realized we were dealing with a Shadow,” I said, neatly cutting those questions out of the equation. “Two hours ago, when we were on the phone, and you knew that a Shadow was stalking Maddy, why didn’t you tell me then?”
“Had we not gotten cut off, I would have.”
I believed him—not because he wouldn’t hide key information from me, but because we were dealing with an enemy whose actions he couldn’t foresee. If he’d had a line on the future, Callum would have had no qualms about withholding information, but I didn’t think he’d play fast and loose with my life, not when he had no way of knowing how that might turn out.
This particular Rabid had died obsessed with the idea of Changing me.
“He and Griffin can’t be at the same place at the same time.” I leaned back against the wall, wincing as my shoulder protested the movement. “If Griffin hadn’t broken back through when he did, I’d be dead. And if Wilson isn’t tied to Maddy, if he’s playing with her because he can and not because he has to, there’s no limit on where or who he might have killed.”
I could see the victims in my mind, their corpses lined up like paper dolls. The boy in the cabin. The girl in Winchester. The unidentifiable mass of skin and blood and bones in Missouri.
How many victims had we’d missed? How many more would there be if we didn’t find a way to stop this thing? In life, Samuel Wilson had been the worst kind of monster. He hadn’t just attacked teenagers. He’d killed children.
And now he was bullet proof.
“This is just the beginning.” I tried to stay calm. I tried to be rational. “Sooner or later, he’ll find a way to push Griffin out. He’ll come to finish the job, and then—”
