The Wolf in His Arms (The Runes Trilogy) Read online

“Dad?” Alec asked.

  “You’re mother says he’s alive, and I want to know what the hell’s going on.”

  Jared appeared from around the corner of the outside hallway, saying, “I am alive, Jason.”

  Jason took a step back, looking at Jared. Alec tried to read his father’s face, fearing he saw Jared—all of them—as monsters. Jason pushed past Alec and Lucy and raced toward Jared. He looked Jared in the eyes for just a moment, before he snared him in his embrace. “Oh, thank God,” he said, sobbing and clutching Jared. Jason pulled back with a face inscrutable with emotion. “Come in. I have so much to learn.”

  Jason led them back into the main room of the loft, where they all sat in an awkward, relieved silence followed by nervous laughter. Jason said, “Guys, I’m a lawyer. I’ve been putting things together for a while, but I still don’t know everything.” He added, “I’m not as dumb as you think,” and Ilene felt that it was directed at her.

  “What do you know?” Alec asked.

  “I know that you and Rene healed when you should not have.” Jason walked the room as he spoke, and Alec could imagine his father’s commanding presence in a courtroom. “I know that Rene was trying to protect us.” He offered a contrite smile to Lucy.

  “When did you start putting it together?” Ilene asked.

  Jason looked across the room, his eyes moving from face to face. “After they approached me about a job.”

  “What?” Ilene sputtered.

  He smirked. “I have secrets too.” He stopped pacing and sat next to Ilene, taking her hands in his. “But secrets kill a family.”

  “When?”

  “Just this week. How does Rathborne figure into this?” Jason asked. Alec cocked an eyebrow and turned to Lucy and Jared who shook their heads.

  “Rathborne is the last name of The Wolf of Detroit,” Ilene answered slowly. “He was a serial killer early last century.”

  “His descendent—grandson?—offered me the job.”

  “How did that clue you in?” Lucy asked.

  “I knew your mother was looking up Rathborne.” He put his hands in the air in mock defense. “Okay. I was snooping. I saw the name connected to The Wolf of Detroit. Then I followed one link to another. Then I saw the videos online, the animal attacks. Then I put two and two together.”

  “You’re handling it so...well,” Jared said.

  “I’ve suspected for a long time. I was waiting—hoping, actually—someone would tell me.”

  “Dad—”

  “I’m not laying a guilt trip on anyone,” he insisted. “How were you to know how I’d handle it?” He shifted his gaze to Alec and Lucy. “Do you remember when you were kids and we went on that camping trip out west?” He smiled, deep in the memory. “I told you to never stop believing that the universe was filled with wonder.”

  “I remember the stars were so big, it was like you could hold them,” Alec said.

  “I believe the universe is unknowable. If I refused to believe what is right before my eyes, I would be elevating my beliefs above the magic of the unknown.” He sneered. “I can’t do that.”

  “What about the job?” Ilene asked.

  “I accepted.”

  “What?” The room filled with the question.

  “I didn’t know if access to their facilities might be helpful.”

  “When were you planning to tell me?” Ilene asked.

  Jason smiled smugly. “During this conversation.”

  Ilene sat back with her arms folded over her chest. Jason patted her knee.

  “Do you realize—” Alec began.

  “That you’re werewolves? Yes.” Jason reached across and hugged Alec and Lucy as if to prove his understanding changed nothing about how he felt. He turned to Ilene. “Why were you looking up Rathborne?”

  “It was a whim, really. I was taking photos in the graveyard, and his mausoleum intrigued me.”

  “It feels like they’re all around us sometimes,” Jared said.

  “And closing in,” Ilene agreed.

  The Wolves of Motown

  As Nadia and Helena arrived in Detroit, they exited Interstate 75 and drove into the downtown. The sun was just setting, and the buildings cast steep shadows along the streets. The downtown restaurants were filling with patrons. Nadia followed the road as it wound around a European-style traffic circle. Skaters glided across an outdoor ice rink in the park, and sat drinking coffees at a cafe. “This is not what I imagined,” Nadia said.

  “I’m starving,” Helena complained. “And this circle is making me dizzy. Let’s park.”

  Nadia parked the car, and they climbed onto the sidewalks, looking for a restaurant. “Nothing too expensive,” Helena groused, looking at the restaurants. She peered down the street, reading a sign. “What’s a coney dog?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Apparently they love them here. There are two coney dog restaurants next to each other and they’re both packed.” They continued to stare through the windows of the packed restaurants for a moment. “Which one?” Nadia insisted.

  “How should I know? The one with an open table.” They picked a restaurant and entered, walking to the counter. “What’s a coney dog?” Helena asked.

  “It’s a hot dog with our world famous coney sauce.”

  “What’s coney sauce?” Helena persisted.

  “It’s like a beanless chili sauce.”

  “So, it’s a chili dog.”

  The man behind the counter seemed annoyed. “Is a hamburger the same thing as a meatloaf? A coney dog is not a chili dog. It’s not the same flavors. Coney dogs are Greek.”

  After ordering and taking a bite, Helena decided that a coney dog was, indeed, not the same thing as a chili dog.

  “So, where to from here?” Nadia asked between bites.

  “Let’s see what Providence delivers.”

  * * * *

  Jared looked at the proffered flip-flop sandal and frowned. “It’s bound to have scent at least,” he complained.

  “We couldn’t exactly get in the apartment,” Maxwell reported. “But, I did look through the window. The apartment had a lot of blood in it. Like there was a struggle.”

  “Well, I guess I better hurry and use this, then.” Jared smiled. “I would prefer something that feels a little less—primal?”

  “Just wait until Haley starts her canine humor.”

  Haley shook her head. “That’s reserved for you, dear.”

  Jared turned his back to everyone, his discomfort with sniffing a well-worn shoe obvious. “I really did get stuck with the oddest gift,” he griped. As soon as he sniffed, an image flashed across his mind. “I see a restaurant. It’s here!”

  “Detroit?” Lucy exclaimed. “What’re they doing in Detroit?”

  “They’re downtown, I think.”

  “Are they at a nice restaurant?” Lucy asked.

  “I think they’re eating coney dogs.”

  “Sounds like it could be near Campus Martius,” Alec guessed.

  “I think you’re right,” Jared turned to face Maxwell and Haley. “Hope you two aren’t too tired. We got a good lead, and we can be down there in less than 10 minutes.”

  “At least with you guys driving we won’t get lost this time,” Haley replied. “Seriously, who designed the roads here, Rube Goldberg?”

  “It’s very European,” Lucy dismissed as they exited the apartment.

  Within minutes, Alec was driving the loop around Campus Martius, trying to focus on not hitting pedestrians as the others searched out the windows. “Is that them?” Lucy asked, based on Jared’s description.

  “No,” Jared said.

  “I don’t know if I’ll recognize them out of their makeup and costumes,” Haley admitted, referring to the poster she had seen of them.

  “There!” Maxwell squealed, pressing his face to the glass. Helena and Nadia were walking out of the restaurant and heading for their car. Jared dropped the sandal he had in his hand and jumped from the car as
Alec slowed. Maxwell followed him, and Lucy barked, “Stay here,” to Haley as she jumped out. Haley pulled the car door shut petulantly.

  “Nadia! Helena!” Jared called to them as he ran toward them. It was only as the fright on their faces registered that he realized how three strangers rushing them must appear. He stopped a safe distance from them. “I’m Jared.” He struck out his arm to stop Maxwell and Lucy. “We’ve been looking for you, and I think you’re looking for us.”

  “They have your eyes.” Helena clutched Nadia’s arm.

  “What do you want with us?”

  Jared softened his face. “Each of us,” he said pointing from himself to Maxwell to Lucy, “has been through what you’ve been through.” He paused. “How much do you know?” He glanced uncomfortably at people passing by on the street.

  “I know enough,” Nadia said.

  “We can help you,” Maxwell offered. “They helped me.” Maxwell looked around at passersby and lowered his voice. “After it attacked me.” The words registered cold familiarity on their faces.

  “How can you help?” Helena pleaded. “Can you undo what was done?”

  “I can’t undo what was done to any of us. But, together, we might be able to stop them.”

  Nadia studied Jared’s face intently, and then her eyes seemed to shift far away, down the sidewalk. Her eyes squinted in concentration. “Mom, they’re telling the truth. We can trust them.”

  Jared sighed. “We can talk more at our place, if you want to follow us.”

  Nadia nodded.

  “Now we got to find Alec and Haley,” he said.

  “They’re coming around the corner,” Nadia said. She smiled at Jared’s stunned expression as they appeared.

  “How’d you do that?” He asked.

  “It’s a gift,” she chuckled.

  * * * *

  The room was dark, though the dim glow of light in the hallway squeezed under the door and light radiated in through the window from the exterior building lights. Collin wondered how long it had been since lights out had been called—15 minutes? He finally said, “Tony? You awake?”

  “Yep.”

  “Did you notice Mark today?”

  “He’s big as a dump truck. Can’t miss him.” His voice bordered on annoyance.

  “No. Did you notice his eyes?”

  “What the hell are talking about his eyes for?”

  “His eyes are green.”

  “So?”

  “You didn’t notice.”

  Collin could hear Tony turning over in his bed in the dark. Collin could see Tony’s silhouette, that he had turned to face him. “Notice what?”

  Collin propped himself up on one elbow. “His eyes used to be blue, dude. Now they’re fucking green like everyone else’s.”

  “Are you on something?”

  “What?”

  “Are you taking something?” Tony’s accusation bit through the darkness.

  “No. Fuck.” Collin slammed his head down on the pillow. “You haven’t noticed that everyone has green fucking eyes?”

  “Who?”

  “Ms. Ruhl. Proctor Roth. All the teachers, all the students who have been here for a while. All the guards. And now, Mark.”

  The timbre of Tony’s voice changed. “Okay, that’s fucked. But so what?”

  Collin snatched at the nugget of fear he could hear behind Tony’s bravado. “If Mark didn’t start with green eyes, maybe the other students didn’t either.”

  Tony said nothing.

  “Remember Mark said they gave him a shot, and it made him sick, and now he sits with the others, and he has green eyes.”

  “Man, you’re talking Invasion of the Body Snatchers bullshit.”

  “But, he’s still Mark. He’s in there. Just different.”

  “So what do we do?” Tony asked, sounding for the first time that he believed Collin.

  “We have to get out of here.”

  “The doors and windows have alarms. And it’s winter and we have no coats and it’s the middle of fucking nowhere. I’ve never even been in the country before.” Collin saw him jerk his finger toward the window. “Creepy ass people live in the countryside.”

  “Creepy ass people are all over this school.”

  “So, are we gonna build a raft and Huck Finn it out of here on the frozen river?”

  “Do you know how to hotwire a car?”

  Tony sat up, his voice in a tight, harsh whisper. “I’ve never stolen anything, dude. I’ll make a break for it, but I ain’t all about grand theft. I don’t need more trouble.” Tony lay back in his bed. He stared up at the ceiling, thinking, maybe Collin’s just a bit crazy. Maybe he just wants me to help him breakout. “Let’s just take some time to think about it.”

  Collin could hear Tony’s voice deflate, so he said, “Sure. Just look around for yourself, okay?”

  “For sure.”

  * * * *

  Back in the apartment, they gathered around the dining room table. Helena marveled at the grand, old architecture and woodwork before settling into a chair, distrust still etched on her face. Nadia seemed more convinced of their honesty. Jared asked, “Nadia, how did you know to trust us? And that Alec and Haley were coming?”

  “It’s a gift?”

  Jared nodded. “Another gift better than mine.”

  Alec patted Jared lovingly. “What exactly is your gift?”

  “Back up,” Nadia said. “So you each have a gift?”

  “Yep,” Alec said. “Seems like Maxwell and I have the same gift. Kind of a premonition-ish ability.”

  “Mine’s often more -ish,” Maxwell disparaged himself.

  “And you?” Nadia asked of Lucy.

  “I’m gift free,” Lucy said.

  “But your eyes.”

  “I got my eyes another way.”

  Nadia turned to Haley. “And you?”

  “I’m a—what d’ya call it?—honorary member. I have no gift, but I have plenty of skills.” Maxwell rolled his eyes histrionically behind her, making Nadia look down with a giggle.

  “So, can you read minds or something?” Jared asked.

  “No,” Nadia said. “I have incredibly keen hearing. I heard Alec say my name from two blocks away. They didn’t know I could hear them, but everything they said sounded like what you were telling me, that you wanted to help.”

  “That’s how you were the Dazzling Demeters!” Haley blurted out.

  Nadia smiled. “Any whisper in the audience, and I could nail them.”

  “We should make a chart or something,” Alec said.

  “Brilliant,” Jared and Lucy said simultaneously.

  Alec leaned toward Maxwell and Nadia. “They think they’re the brains, but nah.”

  “Can you fill me in, please?” Nadia asked, her voice strained with impatience.

  “I’m sure you guessed we’re all part of the same experiment,” Jared said. “We’ve been trying to unravel this together for the last year, almost. I’ve been at it a bit longer, but I was on my own at first. One thing we do know is they like to get rid of the family.” He leveled his eyes on Helena.

  “They tried. They failed,” she said with a shrug.

  “A guy—Vincent—showed up at our apartment. He, ah—”

  “Changed into a snarling bitch of a werewolf?” Maxwell asked.

  “Yes, that,” Nadia replied with a chuckle.

  “What do you know about Vincent?” Jared asked.

  “Not much. He said he was there to collect me. That I was part of something.”

  “The something is this. Us.” Jared gestured to the group. “We’re not much, but I guess we’re a big deal. Unfortunately, Vincent and Griffin are part of it to.”

  “We’re the good kids and they’re the bad kids,” Maxwell clarified.

  “But what’s the point?” Helena asked sharply.

  “We’re still working on that,” Lucy said. “Like Jared was telling you, we’ve been working on it a while. We’ve been sidetracked.�
��

  “They killed my twin brother,” Alec said. “And Lucy’s boyfriend.”

  “I’m so sorry,” Helena said, and she reached across the table to them.

  “And they killed Jared,” Maxwell added and then cringed at their horrified faces.

  “I wasn’t really going to spring that on them just yet.” Jared looked down at the table, trying to collect his thoughts.

  “Look,” Haley said, “we went to Portland—that’s where Vincent’s from—and he killed himself, yet he’s up and walking around and taking people. Resurrection has something to do with you green-eyed folk.”

  “Well said.” Jared thought for a moment. “We also liberated some paperwork from a lab of theirs out in the middle of nowhere. It’s in some sort of runic language, and we’ve been translating it as we can.” He shrugged. “I think you’re caught up on what we know.”

  “So you don’t know what they’re up to, and you don’t know how to stop them, and you don’t know what we’re going to do next,” Nadia attested.

  “Right,” Maxwell said cheerily. “So, it’s the four of us against Griffin, Vincent, and all the bad werewolves. Yep. We’re gonna die.”

  Lucy scowled at Maxwell. “Now that we’re all together, we do know what we’re going to do. We’re going to do what I’ve been doing all along: train. You need to hone your gifts and learn to control the beast inside you.” She turned to face Alec. “It seems all of you have a special blessing that people like I do not. It looks like you can control yourself even when you’re in a werewolf state.”

  “We also need to find you a new place to transform,” Jared said to Lucy. “And, maybe me.”

  “And me?” Alec asked. “If Lucy’s wrong about my ability to control.”

  Nadia studied their faces for a moment. “And what about the papers you ‘liberated’? We need to translate those.”

  “Looks like we need to get busy,” Lucy said. “Training starts in the morning.”

  “I need to find our full moon spot,” Alec corrected.

  A worried look crossed Lucy’s face, but she hid it quickly with a smile.

  “What does that mean?” Helena asked.

  “I need to find Lucy a place to change—safely—on the full moon.”

  “I’ll help you,” Helena offered. “I won’t be training. I need to keep busy.”