Chapter 23
Twenty-Three
“Damn, that werewolf melts my butter… He’s so miserable,” she added delightedly.
— KRESLEY COLE
Sanye looked increasingly tense as she turned her truck up the mountain. I tried Alessandro again. I wanted someone to know where we were headed. I was not going to be that person in a horror movie who didn’t tell someone where she was going and so no one knew where to look when she didn’t come back.
“Should we call 9-1-1? Or get more people to go with us?”
Lucky Jansen, Sanye’s daddy, was a bully, and I had my doubts about his business ethics, but I’d never heard that he dismembered bodies or buried nosy people in his backyard. On the other hand, Deelie Sue had sounded downright scared.
Sanye tightened her grip on the steering wheel until she was all but strangling it. “I don’t think that would be a good idea. Maybe it’s a miscommunication or she’s got a flat tire or something.”
I wasn’t sure what to make of that, but I was glad I wasn’t doing this alone. I was even more glad when we drove up to the Jansen house.
It was clouding over fast, the sky turning the dark purple that promised a thunderstorm. When we got out of the truck, thick, humid heat hit us. We were in for one heck of a storm.
A bunch of sports cars and trucks had been parked in the circular drive in front of the house, and a ton of motorcycles ranged across the grass. Mr. Jansen was indeed hosting that full moon get-together Sanye had mentioned.
She backed in, parking pointed out, and left the keys in the ignition. She was clearly planning for a quick getaway, and I wasn’t sure whether her foresight impressed or scared me.
We walked toward the front door together, holding hands. That connection felt good, as did having someone by my side. I’d never come up here, although everyone knew where the Jansens lived, halfway up the mountain in a custom-built house.
From the looks of the bikes and trucks, what I’d heard about Jansen was true: he ran with a rough crowd. I’d also heard that wise people avoided the Jansen place at all costs. It was not the kind of place you popped over to with a loaf of banana bread or to sell your Girl Scout cookies.
My plan had been to knock on the door and then, if Deelie Sue wasn’t the one who answered, ask for her. After that, my plan had involved driving back down the mountain as fast as possible.
Sanye surprised me by detouring before we reached the front door. She tugged me along the side of the house and out back. From the racket coming from behind the house, Jansen was hosting a barbecue or something. There was music—of the bone-jarringly, teeth-rattlingly loud ilk—and woodsmoke.
Sanye hesitated when we got to the back of the house. I spotted two lumberjack-sized men pacing back and forth. They were enormous. Like, the kind of tall where they could have painted a ceiling without a ladder or grabbed that last carton of milk from the back of the top shelf of the dairy case at the Piggly Wiggly.
The men were apparently deep in discussion about something and also apparently not in a good mood. The air was full of a lot of curses and threats of violence. Sanye stiffened and came to an abrupt halt.
“This will do,” she said, even though we were still outside and nowhere near the party Jansen was hosting in his backyard. Also, Deelie Sue was nowhere in sight.
I pulled out my phone to try calling Deelie Sue, but Sanye shook her head. “Reception’s all but nonexistent up here.” She sucked in a breath and called out to the two lumberjacks. “Brute. Big Bass. You all got a moment?”
The two lumberjacks—who I had serious doubts had been christened Brute and Big Bass by their mommas or in any church hereabouts—swung their massive heads our way. This was when I got my second surprise of the night. Amber rolled over their eyes.
“Are you here to visit with your daddy?” the stockier of the two asked. His hair was shaved close to the scalp, and he was dressed all in leather: black leather pants, black leather jacket, black motorcycle boots, and a black T-shirt with IRON WOLVES and a white wolf skull on the front.
The wolf skull had fangs.
Holy crap. Were Lucky Jansen’s biker buddies wolves?
“You can stop right there.” Sanye pointed to a spot a good twelve feet away from us. It was closer than I would have liked. “I’m not visiting. This is Alice Aymes. Her cousin is Alessandro Aymes, the animal control officer, and her friend, Deelie Sue, called us earlier tonight to come and get her. She needs a ride, so here we are.”
The two wolfmen exchanged a look, then the same one who’d inquired about our purpose up here on the mountain took a step forward and held out his hand to me. “I’m Big Bass. This here is Brute.”
I stepped forward on autopilot to shake his hand, but Sanye yanked me back. “We’re not here to make friends.”
“You should have a beer. Come on out back by the bonfire. I’m sure your daddy’ll?—”
“What’s the problem?”
Whatever invitation Big Bass had been about to make was cut off by a third man who appeared around the side of the house. He was slightly shorter than Big Bass and Brute and maybe a decade older, but they immediately tipped their heads, hunching their shoulders in on themselves.
His hard, mean gaze snagged on my face, and he looked briefly surprised. I was almost certain he recognized me, which did not make me particularly happy.
“Sanye has come back, and she’s brought a new acquaintance.” Big Bass jerked a thumb in my direction.
“I’m here to pick up Deelie Sue, Snake.” I couldn’t see Sanye’s eyes, but suddenly I wanted to. She sounded tense and angry, and I could have sworn I heard her growl at the new arrival.
If Brute was a wolf, and Big Bass was a wolf, was she one as well? Was I the only fully human person up here tonight?
Wait. I wasn’t one-hundred-percent human either.
And what kind of a name was Snake?
“What are you doing here?” The man I really hoped did not turn into a massive reptile stared at me. Disapproval and anger shaded his voice.
“I came for Deelie Sue, Mr. Snake. I let my cousin and a few other people in town know that we were coming up here to pick her up.”
Snake considered that. Shrugged. He nodded to Big Bass. “Go get Deelie Sue and bring her here.”
Big Bass turned on his booted heel and took off at a rapid clip. His biker buddy, Brute, followed silently.
This left Sanye, Snake, and me standing around in the gathering dark. The moon was up already, full and bright in the evening sky. I spared a moment to hope that what Ford had told me was true and that the Moonlight Valley werewolves did nothing more scary than get a bad case of the hives during the full moon when they didn’t shift.
Sanye and Snake glared at each other, silently communicating their dislike of each other. Sanye had not brought up her family much, although once or twice she’d briefly mentioned her childhood had not been a good one. She did not spend time with either of her parents, and I’d gathered their distance was both her choice and a boundary she’d drawn because she did not condone their behavior.
To my surprise Snake decided to strike up a conversation with me. “I was sorry to hear your…uh, your aunt had passed.”
I nodded. “She did.”
He studied me hard enough to pick me out of a police lineup. “I knew her when we were in high school.”
“My Aunt Sally?” Given that she had been a people-hating hermit and Snake was a werewolf biker, that was a surprising bit of news.
“Yeah.” He tipped his head at me. “Sure did.”
“Huh.” That was one heck of a coincidence. “It’s a small world.”
“Not as small as you thought,” he muttered, but I heard him.
He knew something. A cold shiver went down my back. “Were you good friends?”
“Hard to say.” He seemed to think on it. “She was funny and smart. Told a great story and could talk your ear off. Real gorgeous lady. She was a cat person, if you know what I mean, though, and that made our friendship a challenge.”
His gaze held mine. Crap. He definitely knew about the shifter in my family tree. Was that good? Bad? Did the Iron Wolves have an anti-cat policy?
Sanye nudged me gently in the side. “She was like you then.”
I opened my mouth to deny it, but?—
Maybe?
I wasn’t sure I wanted to have anything in common with Aunt Sally. She’d had a whole bunch of traits that weren’t something to boast about: her disliking people, for one, and her insistence on keeping her family in the dark, for another. She’d hugged her secrets tighter than a miser hoarding gold and then she’d gone and died, leaving me with questions but no answers.
“She changed,” I said. There was a flash of lightning followed a few seconds later by the rumble of thunder. Instinctively, I counted. One one-thousand, two one-thousand, three one-thousand. Four… “She was not a talker. She kept to herself.”
Snake looked like he was about to say something, but Big Bass and Brute reappeared. They had four other guys with them, all big, shaggy-haired, and muscled. I was willing to bet my new inheritance they were wolves. Sanye stiffened by my side but held her ground.
Unfortunately, I was right. There was another flash of lightning, but the sounds that followed were raw and familiar, wet and loud. Where there had been two men a moment before there were now two large, rangy wolves glaring at me with hungry eyes.
“What the hell?” Snake turned to glare at the newcomers, putting his body between us and them. “What are you all doing?”
The men and the wolves kept moving toward us, and I didn’t know which was worse—the ugly determination on the human faces or the animalistic hunger on the wolves’.
“We’ve got to go.” Sanye took a step backward, her fingers curling around my wrist and pulling. “Run!”
It was too late. Sanye and I whirled, aiming for the driveway and our truck, but we were no match for either the bikers or the wolves.
I got three steps before someone lifted me off my feet, hard arms banding around my middle and tossing me over his shoulder.
I heard Sanye curse, realized she was shifting. Her wolf, pale and beautiful, darted off into the shadows pursued by one of the other wolves.
Snake strode forward, raging. “What the fuck is this? You do not shift in front of humans. Put her down right now!”
“Sorry, Snake,” Big Bass said as I bucked against his hold; I made zero headway. “Piston wants to see the girl.”