The Wolf in His Arms (The Runes Trilogy)

  The Wolf in His Arms

  Book Two of The Runes Trilogy

  Adrian W. Lilly

  © 2014 by Adrian W. Lilly. All rights reserved. Cover design by Sandra Schroeder.

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Amazon.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Dedication

  To Chris. Always.

  Table of Contents

  The Arrangement

  Loft Living

  Paper Weight

  The Dazzling Demeters

  Beauty and Pain

  Mother and Son

  The Trail

  Wednesdays with Adam

  The Reform School

  Home

  Lucy and the Egomaniac

  Alone, Together

  Explorers

  Geraldine’s Room

  Maxwell

  Anxiety

  A Quiet Moment, Stolen

  A Night to Remember

  Making Plans

  Translations

  A Midwest Mid-winter

  The Wolf at the Door

  A Mother Scorned

  Voices

  The Offer

  Monsters for a Monster

  Aftermath

  Leaving Las Vegas

  Uncivil Obedience

  Burning Down the House

  Awakenings

  The Post

  Music and Moonlight

  Scripture

  Sin City

  Investigations

  A Book of Revelations

  Confessions

  The Wolves of Motown

  And Then There was One

  Island in the City

  Training Wreck

  Night Falls

  The Last Night of the World

  Confrontation

  Project Conflagration

  A Letter from Adrian

  Also by Adrian W. Lilly

  The Arrangement

  Lucy groaned audibly and then flung her head back onto her bed. She looked up at the ceiling as she felt the headboard to her bed rattle from the thumping coming through the wall. She groaned again, louder, and covered her head with the pillow.

  When Jared had suggested that the three of them move in together, Lucy had some misgivings. Mostly, she worried that her new “condition” would put Alec and Jared in danger. As it turned out, the real danger was lack of sleep. As soon as Alec and Jared thought she was asleep, they were at it like rabbits—and she was suddenly awake.

  She reached for the earphones on her nightstand and turned on her iPod. She chose a mix of classical music and cranked the volume up. As violas and piccolos soothed her ears, she closed her eyes, hoping to drift back off to sleep.

  Her bed quaked delicately with each pounding through the wall. Letting out a great grunt of annoyance, Lucy tossed the covers off. She rose, glared at the wall separating her bedroom from Alec and Jared’s, and trudged into the hall to the kitchen. Without flipping on a light, she filled the teakettle and clunked it to the burner and gruffly turned the dial. A flame leaped to life, licking at the bottom of the pot.

  A few minutes later, she sat on the couch with a cup of chamomile tea and the soothing classical music still floating through her ears. Lucy pulled her knees to her chest and rested her chin on her knees. Tears formed along the rims of her eyes and gently rolled over her cheeks. The worst part of waking in the middle of the night was the loneliness that swallowed her like a giant, Biblical fish. Her longing for Rene and the life she’d had a few months before huddled in the darkness with her, frail and sad as she.

  Lucy wiped her eyes and tossed back a few sips of the tea, determined not to feel sorry for herself. She made a mental list of things she would do. The first, she decided, was tell Alec and Jared that their late-night escapades woke her. She knew they were trying to work their voracious sexual appetites around her, but the late-night rendezvous were a fail. Second, she decided to add an extra hour at the gym the next day. If one day they would go into battle, she decided immediately, she would transform from a bookworm into a bad-ass bookworm. She had started with self-defense classes, and now she was working her way up the belts in taekwondo.

  Her mind immediately flipped to her nuisance of an instructor, Mitch McCallahan. Lucy scowled just thinking about the boorish, rude, egotistical jerk. He was, unfortunately, an amazing instructor, and Lucy was determined to become as good as she could as quickly.

  Lucy set the empty teacup on the coffee table and curled up on the couch. She thought she might try her bed again, but decided it safer to stay on the couch and sleep. She closed her eyes and drifted off as violins cried a melancholy chorus in her ears.

  * * * *

  Waking, Alec stretched his arms over his head in a large V, his knuckles scraping the headboard. Jared nestled against his chest, and stirred, gripping him tighter, momentarily. “Timetoge’up?” Jared mumbled.

  “Yes,” Alec croaked with his dry mouth. “Coffee.”

  Jared nodded vigorously and pulled away, stretching. He slung the covers off his body as he did every morning, as if that were the only way to coax himself from bed. The covers pulled off Alec, exposing his bare chest to the cold air in the apartment, and he clamped his arms to his chest and shivered. He smiled as he watched Jared’s bare butt cross the room and grab underwear, jogging pants and a tee-shirt.

  Alec tossed the covers off with a groan and hurriedly pulled his own clothes on. He followed Jared out to the kitchen where he was grinding coffee beans. Alec paced up behind him, resting his chin on Jared’s shoulder. “Love that smell,” he said of the coffee beans.

  Jared smiled as he scooped the coffee into the coffeemaker. He turned around and rested his hands on Alec’s shoulders and kissed him on the cheek. “I love mornings with you.” After filling their cups, they padded down the hall to the living room in the front of the apartment. “Uh-oh,” Jared said, nodding to Lucy sleeping on the couch. “I think we must have woken her last night.”

  “Great,” Alec mumbled. “Let’s have our coffee in the kitchen and let her sleep.”

  “You did wake me,” Lucy said groggily from the couch. She sat up with a great stretch and rubbed her eyes. Her face turned to a scowl. “We need to talk about your bedroom acrobatics”—she smiled when both of their jaws dropped—“but coffee first.”

  They followed her to the kitchen, where she poured herself coffee and sat at the table. “Sit,” she said.

  “We try to, ah, work around your schedule,” Jared started.

  “I know,” Lucy said, nodding. “But you guys are not quiet. In fact, my entire bed shakes. Seriously.”

  Alec looked down at the table, silent. Lucy could tell he was blushing.

  “Why not just schedule your fun time while I’m at the gym?”

  “We do,” Jared said. He arched his eyebrow. “That’s round one.”

  Lucy rolled her eyes histrionically and sipped her coffee. “Well, waiting until after I’m asleep is no good.”

  “We could move our bedroom to the living room,” Alec suggested. Jared snarled his lip, and Alec added, “It’s not like we have guests.”

  Jared countered, “What about this: if you’re home, we knock, tell you to put headphones in, and you can plan on coming to the living room. And we’ll make it a reasonable hour, since the late-night thing isn’t working.”

  “I r
eally don’t want to know every time you do the nasty,” Lucy said.

  “And I don’t want her to know,” Alec agreed.

  “I appreciate your incredibly mature feedback, and I’m open to other suggestions,” Jared said.

  Alec finally suggested, “We could schedule it.” He turned his gaze to Lucy. “You’re not to be in your bedroom between 11 p.m. and 12 a.m. any night. We may or may not be—”

  “Copulating?” Jared interjected with a smirk.

  “Yeah, that.”

  Lucy nodded. “I think that’s reasonable.”

  “Since we resolved that, and we’re all up, shall we have breakfast?” Jared asked, standing and walking toward the refrigerator.

  Alec stood, casting his eyes down at Lucy. “You sit. We’ll make breakfast to make up for waking you.”

  Lucy stood anyway to refill her coffee cup. She leaned against the counter as Jared broke eggs into a bowl for scrambled eggs and Alec laid bacon on the microwave dish. He popped it in the microwave.

  “So two days until the full moon,” Lucy said. She leaned against the counter.

  “We’ve not had a problem so far,” Alec said.

  “True. But I don’t want to get too relaxed.”

  Jared dumped the egg mixture into the frying pan. “The spot we’re using is perfect. We can use it until we find a cure.”

  “Sure,” Lucy said. She admired Jared’s optimism for finding a cure—something she no longer shared.

  “We’ve barely made a dent in the files from the barn,” Jared said, as if reading her mind.

  Lucy nodded. While months passed, grief and depression took their toll, debilitating her. After the shock of the night of the fire had worn off, the grief over losing Rene sank in, and Lucy had spent days on end in bed. She had canceled classes for the previous semester, though she was taking classes again now. Alec, too, had taken a semester off. Jared had soldiered through and was now writing his dissertation, a process he planned “to drag out.”

  Alec and Jared had made finding Lucy a place to transform safely their priority. Jared found an abandoned building: six vacant floors with an empty bank in the first floor. The vault in the basement made the perfect place to transform. Each full moon Jared and Alec camped outside the vault while she thrashed at the walls maniacally until the morning. She never remembered any of it.

  Lucy thought of the morning after her first transformation. Jared eased the vault door open, Alec pressed against it in case they needed to slam the door shut if she were still a werewolf. Though Alec tried to hide his feelings behind a faltering mask, Lucy could read him: apprehension, embarrassment, and relief as he handed clothes to her and breathed, “Lucy.”

  Lucy did not need to remember the full moons and the monster they made her; the mornings after, and the looks on their faces told her everything. And each time she changed, the walls of the vault became more gouged and pummeled so that she doubted Jared’s assertion that they “could use it until we find a cure.” Lucy feared that one day the door would rip from its hinges and she would awake with them dead, and no memory, just a new morning of regret.

  “Luce?” Alec said.

  She looked at him quizzically.

  “Breakfast is ready,” he said with a smile. “What were you thinking about? You really zoned out.”

  “My annoying instructor, Mitch,” she lied.

  Alec nodded but she could tell Jared saw through her, as he always did. “I’m famished,” she said and grabbed a plate of steaming eggs and bacon.

  “I’m gonna hit those files after breakfast,” Jared said.

  “Together,” Alec said, smiling at Lucy.

  “Together,” she agreed.

  Loft Living

  Morning sun flooded through the old paned windows of the downtown Detroit loft as Jason poured a cup of coffee. He looked across the snack bar from the open kitchen to the large main living space. On one side, custom-built shelving covered the brick wall. Pottery, books, and glass art filled the open shelves. Wooden doors in the shelving hid the television. A sectional sofa and cocktail table were oriented to take advantage of the city view and a table and chairs set off to the side. Doors led out of the loft onto a large balcony. A light dusting of snow covered the floor and handrail. The openness and the sunlight appealed to him and Ilene since the fire.

  The loft, on the sixth floor, had been Ilene’s idea. He knew the old building, with a security guard, parking garage, solid steel doors, and concrete floors were a form of protection—isolation—that they both craved after that night. Another old home with long, dark corridors would have never done.

  Ilene spoke little of the night, though he knew, like he, she was traumatized. He awoke some nights, still feeling the rope burns around his wrists. He could smell the smoke drifting across the lawn, as he lay helpless, as his children were trapped inside. Jason clutched the edge of the counter, fighting the panic that swept him whenever he recalled too vividly that night. He winced, just thinking of the night, and took a calming breath. “Ilene,” he called. “I’m heading out. Are we still meeting for lunch?”

  She emerged from their bedroom down the single hall in the front of the loft where the two bedrooms and guest bath entered. She ran her fingers through her short hair. “Yes, yes,” she answered breathily. “Of course.”

  He studied her a moment, her hair now so short and streaked with gray, like his own, now gray at the temples, though his blond hair hid it well. He kissed her briskly on the lips. “I’ll see you at noon.” As he rested his hand on the doorknob, he called over his shoulder. “Say hello to Adam for me.”

  “I always do,” she replied, and he could hear love, gratitude, and anguish compete in her voice, like the subtle notes of a fine wine.

  Ilene locked the door as Jason left, and she walked down the hall to the living room. The morning sun beating through the window panes painted a lattice on the floor and across her skin as she walked to the window. She looked down on Woodward Avenue and could see it flow around Campus Martius. A wan smile brushed her lips as she looked down on pedestrians scurrying against the cold, the fountain shut off for winter, and the statues in the plaza covered in a glimmering sheen of ice.

  Paper Weight

  Alec, Jared, and Lucy sat around the table in the back bedroom used as a study. The piles of papers they had poured over countless times remained as much an enigma as the day Alec and Jared absconded with them from the barn. Jared pointlessly shuffled the pages in front of him, as if the mere act would help him make sense of the symbols jotted down in perfect script.

  Over the past few months, he cataloged the paperwork. Most was written in the indecipherable runic language. Only a few medical reports were written in English, and while interesting, they offered no direction for finding the pack. If he and Alec were to continue their search for other members of the pack, he needed something that mentioned them specifically.

  Jared closed his eyes, concentrating, hoping to force a vision. He breathed deeply trying to force out his negative thoughts that he had tried this exact, futile exercise dozens of times. The silence around him finally made him speak. “Nothing,” he said.

  “Do you think something’s blocking you?” Lucy asked as if the question had not been asked a dozen different times in a dozen different ways.

  “I don’t know,” he replied. He looked across the piles of papers between them on the table where they sat in the back bedroom they used as a study.

  “What we do know,” Alec said, “is that your gift allows you to hone in on someone, even from great distances.”

  “Right.”

  “What if the problem is that there are too many smells.”

  Jared looked at Alec thoughtfully. That was a new suggestion. “How do you mean?”

  Alec lifted one of the pages. “Look how old these are. Hundreds of people have touched them over the years. What if it’s, like, sensory overload.”

  “Alec, that’s brilliant!” Lucy said. She turned to Jared.
“You need to hone in on a smell.”

  “I don’t know how.”

  “Just try.”

  Jared shoved the page away. “Well, not while you two are sitting here staring at me.” He frowned. “Sorry. I’m just frustrated. We sit here and look over this stuff”—he gestured over the stacks of papers—“and get nowhere.”

  Alec rubbed Jared’s shoulder. “I know. I know.”

  “There’s a pack out there, and we need to find it.”

  “But you found Alec.”

  “I trailed Darius,” Jared corrected. “He found Alec.”

  “And you could trail Darius—” Lucy continued.

  “Because he was my father.”

  “What about this?” Lucy said, palming the Meredith Stone. She lifted the stone to the light and studied the intricately carved facets. “The symbols on here match our paperwork.” She turned her attention to Alec. “Darius sent this to you. Why?”

  Alec shook his head. “I don’t know. He didn’t say anything. It’s not like there was a note, saying, ‘Here. Use this to decipher our secret language.’”

  Jared perked up. “But what if that’s exactly what it’s for? What if it’s like the Rosetta Stone?”

  “The Rosetta Stone was like a key,” Alec said. “How did it work?”

  Jared sat back hard, rocking his chair as frustration coursed through him. “The Rosetta Stone was helpful because it was also translated into a language archaeologists already knew.” Jared sighed. “We don’t have that.”

  “What if this isn’t it?” Alec asked.

  “What isn’t it?” Jared asked.

  “What if this isn’t the complete stone?”

  Lucy’s head snapped up. “This is only one part of the translation. One language. This language,” she said, tapping a stack of papers. “We still need the half in English.”

  “The name bothers me, too,” Alec said. “The Meredith Stone.” He looked from Jared to Lucy. “It can’t be a coincidence that Meredith is our mom’s middle name.”

  “I’ve always felt that she knows more than she’s told us,” Lucy said. “But I’m not ready to go down that road. Not yet.”