Chapter 21 - Silas
The kid was sitting in Silas’ home office, with his hands tied and his face flushed with fear. Silas, his brothers, and August were standing in the corner of the room, looking at the teenager who had been caught leaving evidence on their territory.
“We need answers,” Javi spoke out loud, walking around the little room like a caged animal. “We should know who hired him. Who’s the mastermind.”
“Agreed,” Silas nodded. “But how we get those answers matters.”
Javi ceased his pacing, turned, and stared at his brother. “We make him talk. Whatever it takes.”
“You mean torture,” August grunted, not hiding the disapproval in his tone.
“I mean, do what’s necessary.” Javi’s eyes flashed. “This boy has been working for the people who are out to destroy us. He doesn’t deserve our mercy.”
“He’s a kid,” Rael said quietly. “Look at him. He’s terrified. He’s not some mastermind. He is a teenager who was paid to plant evidence and likely did not realize what he was really getting into.”
“That does not put him in the clear,” Javi shot back.
Whimpering, the boy pressed himself against the wall. Silas could smell fear oozing from him, and he saw the way his hands, and if he was being honest, his entire body trembled.
It was at this moment that Elle opened the door and walked in. She took one glance at the scene, the boy, and Javi’s aggressive stance before tuning to Silas.
“What’s going on?” Elle demanded.
“We are trying to figure out how to question him.”
Elle’s eyes narrowed. “By questioning him, does Javi think of 'torture'?
Javi scoffed. “I think we need to get some answers. By whatever means necessary.”
“Absolutely not.”
Javi swiveled around to her. “Elle, this isn’t your decision to make.”
“The hell it’s not. I am also involved in this investigation.
” Elle stepped in between Javi and the boy.
“And I can tell you, torture will not work. He is scared to death already. You begin beating him, and he will tell you anything he believes you want to hear in order to get it over with. That does not provide us with credible information.”
“Then what do you suggest?” Javi’s voice was full of sarcasm. “That we nicely ask him to tell us the truth.”
“I would recommend that we use my magic.”
“Your magic?” Rael asked carefully. Elle, you said that your visions are random. That you can never know when they will occur or what they will reveal to you”.
“I know what I said. But my magic has been coming around. Getting stronger.” Elle’s voice started to sound more confident, but Silas knew it was just a front. “Maybe I can figure out if he’s lying.”
“Maybe?” Javi scoffed. “We should bet our whole investigation on the possibility?”
“You were going to bet it on torture.” Elle fired back. “At least I do not have to hurt a frightened child.”
Silas watched the exchange, his mind racing. Elle was right that torture was unreliable. But he also knew she was reaching, offering a solution she wasn’t sure would work just to protect the boy from Javi’s anger.
It made his heart ache with pride and love. “Everyone out,” Silas ordered. “Except Elle.”
“But—” Silas shut Javi up with a single glance. Without further ado, Rael and August walked out of the room, and after a moment of tension, Javi did the same.
Silas turned to face Elle as soon as they were alone with the boy. “Can you really do this?”
She exhaled sharply. “I don’t know. But Silas, we can’t torture him. He’s just a kid.”
“I know. I was not going to allow Javi to do so. But Elle, if it doesn’t work, if we cannot get answers out of him, my pack will swing into action, and I will not be able to stop them when they find out.”
“Then my magic better work.”
She faced the boy, who was staring at them, looking scared. Elle dropped to her knees in front of him and asked gently, “What’s your name?”
The boy swallowed hard. “C-Carter.”
“Carter. I’m Elle. And I would like to help you. But you have to help me first. Can you do that?”
Carter nodded hesitantly.
“Good. I am going to touch your hand now, and I want you to think about the person who hired you. Can you do that for me?”
Another nod.
Elle made contact and then covered Carter’s hand with her own. Her eyes fluttered closed and her face screwed up in concentration.
Silas waited, feeling uneasy. Seconds ticked by. Then minutes. Her breathing became labored, and Elle started sweating.
But nothing happened.
Five minutes later, Elle opened her eyes and drew her hand back with a scowl on her face.
“I can’t,” she whispered. “I don’t know how to make it work. It works, I know it has to, but I cannot control it. It’s impossible to make it show me what I need to see.”
He felt his heart sink, but he maintained a neutral expression. “It’s okay. We’ll find another way.”
“There is no other way. Javi will insist on torture, and I can do nothing about it, and it is all my fault as I cannot regulate my own fucking magic!”
“Hey.” Silas crouched by her side and cradled her face in his hands. “This is not your fault. Your magic is still new. You’re still learning. Nobody wants you to know everything.”
“But I should.” Her eyes glistened with tears. “Why have magic, when I cannot call upon it when I really need it?”
“I don’t know who hired me,” Carter spoke quietly, sniffling. “I really don’t.”
Elle and Silas looked over at him.
“A guy in a bar approached me,” Carter went on, the words falling out in a torrent. “He didn’t give me his name. Just told me he would give me five thousand dollars to place some documents on the ground of the Weston pack. He instructed me to make it appear natural. That’s all I know. I swear.”
“What did he look like?” Silas asked.
“Average height. Brown hair. Nothing distinctive. He wore a baseball cap and sunglasses, so I couldn’t see much.
Look,” he sat up. “I’m sorry. I was not aware of what the documents were about.
I believed that it was only some silly joke between the packs.
I needed the money. My mom is ill, and we cannot afford her medicine, and I just—I am sorry. ”
Silas growled in frustration. They’d caught someone, but it was a dead end. Whoever was orchestrating this was smart enough to use intermediaries to keep themselves hidden behind layers of separation.
“What do we do with him?” Elle asked quietly.
“We detain him until we can figure out if he’s lying out of his ass or not. If his story turns out to be true, we shall send him off with a warning.” He stood up and assisted Elle. “He’s not our enemy. He is just a child who has done wrong due to some explainable reasons.”
Elle looked relieved. “Thank you.”
They left Carter in the cell and had guards stationed outside. Then they returned to Silas’s office. But Elle looked worried.
Silas gave her some space and did not intrude because she may need time to digest her inability to use her magic in the way she desired. However, after an hour of Elle sitting silently on the sofa, her eyes staring at nothing, enough was enough.
“Talk to me,” Silas took a seat next to her. “What is happening in that pretty head of yours?”
“Nothing.”
“Elle.”
She breathed out and looked straight at him. “I failed. I said that I could use my magic to get answers, and I could not. I’m useless.”
“You’re not useless. These things take time.”
“I have no time. Women are being sold, and I struggle to understand how my powers operate. I’m unable to fulfill the promises I made to this pack. I am not supposed to be a burden, and yet, I am one more burden you need to cope with.”
Silas grabbed her chin and forced her to look him in the eye.
“You are not a problem. You have provided us, in the last few weeks, with more intelligence than we have gained in months of research. Those visions of yours guided us to that auction site. With your knowledge, we have come to know the structure of the operation. You are helping, Elle. The fact that you are unable to do everything does not imply that you are not doing anything.”
Elle’s eyes filled with tears. “But I want to do more. I need to do more.”
“I know. But you cannot pressure yourself like that. It’s not fair.” He pulled her into a hug. “You’re trying all you can. That’s all anyone can ask.”
Elle sighed and rested her chin on his shoulder. Then she whispered, “There’s something else.”
“What?”
“I’ve had this ringing in my head since we got Carter earlier this morning, when the alarm had gone off. It won’t stop.”
Silas drew back to look at her, his wolf becoming alert. “A ringing? Like a headache?”
“Not exactly. It’s more like... a frequency. There is a noise that is always just there, and it makes it hard for me to think.” Elle rubbed her temples. I thought it would pass, but hours have passed, and it is still there.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Worry coursed through his body.
“Because you already have enough to cope with. And I can work through it. I simply have to overcome the pain.”
“Elle, no. When you are hurting because of your magic, we must discover why. We need to—”
“I can manage it—” she placed her hand on his forearm. “I’m not a fragile vase that’ll break at any slight pressure. I have endured more than a headache.”
If it were up to Silas, he would make her sleep or find some means of silencing whatever was making this ringing in her head. But he knew Elle. He knew that nagging her when she was adamant would never accomplish anything.
“Okay,” Silas said carefully. “But should it get worse, you tell me. Promise?”
“I promise.”
A couple more minutes passed as they held each other, lost in thought. Silas was mentally counting how long they might hold Carter in custody, how they could cross-check his story, and what they should do next.
That is why he was not ready when Carter crashed through the office door.
The boy had somehow broken free of his bonds and overpowered the guards. He looked wild-eyed and desperate, heading straight for one of the windows in the sitting room.
“The fuck?” Silas immediately got up, looking to intercept, when Elle grabbed the hem of his shirt.
“Let him go.”
Silas stopped, confused. “What?”
Carter did not wait. He jumped through the window, breaking the glass, and vanished into the darkness.
“Elle, what the hell—”
“The ringing,” Elle said, her eyes wide with shock. “As soon as he ran, it got quieter. Not gone, but definitely quieter.”
Silas looked at her, his brain going crazy to figure it out. “Your magic was tracking him?”
“I think so. I do not know how or why, but when he came closer, the ringing got loud. And now that he is farther off, it is calmer.” She looked up at him with a smile. “Silas, I think I can track him. It is my magic, I believe, that is pointing me to where he is.
Silas felt hope blooming in his heart. “Are you sure?”
“No. But there’s one way to find out. We follow him. From a distance. If the ringing changes as we get closer or farther from him, then we’ll know my magic is working as a tracker.”
Silas’s wolf howled in approval. This might be the key to the success of their investigation. If Elle could track people with her magic, they could trace Carter back to the one who hired him. They could get answers.
“Alright. Let’s test it.”
They hurriedly rounded up Rael, Javi, and August and told them what had happened as they prepared to follow Carter’s trail. The boy had a head start, but shifters were fast at picking up after trails, and with Elle using magic to show the way, they could be even faster.
As they went out into the night, Silas was getting a feeling that he had not had in weeks.
Hope.
Elle’s powers were evolving into something they could make use of. She was not worthless or defective or inept.
She was extraordinary. And Silas was going to make sure she knew it.