CHAPTER 9 #3
He somehow felt even better than he looked.
If pressed, I couldn’t have found the words to describe it.
It was like I was meeting him all over again for the first time through my power.
I shifted the focus of it, concentrating it around him.
He looked at me with his wolf eyes, and I could feel some dark, primordial part of himself rising up to meet my own.
His chest heaved beneath his suit jacket.
His pulse picked up, and my own heart raced to match it.
I grinned at him, feeling the sharp prick of canines against my lips.
Home. He felt like home to me. And now I knew that I felt like home to him, too.
That I wasn’t the only one struggling to figure out what that meant or how I felt about it.
There was something incredibly comforting about that.
It reminded me that I wasn’t as alone here in the city as I thought.
Before either of us revealed anything we weren’t ready to, I closed my eyes and shrank the cage back down to its usual level, the one I’d kept it at for so long that I didn’t have to focus to maintain it.
When next I opened my eyes, it was to see Michael leaned as far back in his seat as he could get, gripping the arms of his chair. He stared at the wall, slowly but steadily pulling himself back from whatever brink I’d driven him to.
“That was intense,” Monica said from across the room.
“That was only half power,” I told her.
Disbelief echoed over the bond.
“Fucksake,” Kevin spat. He stood and started pacing in the narrow space between the chairs and the wall.
“We were bred to kill vampires,” I reminded him. “We needed to be able to see and hear and smell each and every tiny weakness.”
“You could have warned us about how bad it would be. I almost fucking shifted,” he said. “I haven’t come that close to losing control since my balls dropped.”
James’s chair creaked as he leaned forward. “Did anyone else feel like their own senses were heightened?”
“Yes,” Michael said in a clipped tone.
Ronald’s brows drew down in thought. “But was it because of her power, or because we were closer to the shift and our wolf senses supplanted our human ones?” Surprisingly, he turned to look at Emma.
She shook her head, fingers once again flying over her tablet.
“There isn’t much information available about what the MacKenzie Valley pack could do aside from their increased size and strength.
Those were the most obvious differences.
Any mention of magical abilities is almost done offhand, and what records there are seem written to serve as a cautionary tale for the rest of you. ”
Was she tapped into some sort of preternatural Google?
“That’s because we didn’t mingle with other packs,” I said. “And the few adult wolves the vampire spared were ordered to silence. Trust me, they’ll never talk.”
She set the tablet down and met my gaze. “That explains why my queries to the packs with surviving members have been ignored or declined.”
Monica’s braids clicked as she turned to look at me. “Do you know the answer, then?”
“I don’t,” I said. “Not definitively. I was too young when the attack happened. Either I wasn’t told, or I just don’t remember.
My parents are divided over the issue. Dad thinks it’s the power that increases your senses, and Mom says it’s the shift.
They’ve been around me more than anyone else so… ” I shrugged unhelpfully.
She frowned. “What’s your gut say?”
I took a deep breath and thought about it for a moment. “That it’s the power.”
“And you never sought to learn greater control of it?” she asked.
I shook my head. How the hell did I even explain this?
“It doesn’t work like a mystic’s magic does.
There’s no greater control to learn. If I concentrate really hard, I can shift the brunt of it in a direction, bringing whatever falls within it under greater scrutiny.
Aside from that, it’s just a passive ability.
This power was bred into us so we could find weaknesses in our enemies and intimidate vampires at range.
Imagine twenty wolves like me, fully unshielded, stalking you through the wilderness. ”
I watched that thought sink in. This was a room full of predators, with the exception of Emma.
The idea of becoming prey was alien to them, unwelcome, but I could see them all imagining it, being lost in a dense, old-growth forest and sensing an unstoppable tide of death crashing through the undergrowth toward them at impossible speed.
“The feel of it kicks everyone else like a mule,” I said. “So far, it’s only proven effective at giving me an eventual headache or getting me into fights.”
Ronald rubbed a hand over his face. When he pulled it away, he looked tired, like I’d just aged him ten years.
“To sum it up, you don’t know how strong you actually are, and you’re saddled with passive power that’s not good for anything aside from painting a giant target on your back.
Great. Just swell. I have such an easy, relaxing job.
” He sighed. “The only good thing I see is that thanks to the lack of data, no one else knows what your power does, either.”
“Bad thing,” James supplied. “Not knowing means everyone else will want to test her so they can try to figure it out for themselves.”
Ronald looked to Michael. “We keep a detail on her at all times. That’s the only way this will work.”
“Agreed,” Michael said. He turned to me. “Layla?”
“Whatever makes everyone happy. I’d rather have wolves on my tail than witches. And since I don’t know much about city politics, they can keep me from accidentally stepping on anyone’s toes if you’re not around.”
Ronald reached across the table and grabbed a notepad and a pen, writing as he talked. “It’ll have to be people who are more loyal to Michael than Mary.”
“Who’s Mary?” I asked.
Michael gave me a weird look. “My mother.”
“No one bothered to tell me her actual name.”
“Apologies,” he said.
His gaze went to his suit, and he began the now familiar routine of setting himself to rights. I could feel him getting calmer with every tug of fabric. This must be his own ritual. How he soothed his emotions and stilled his thoughts, settling his inner self as he did his outward appearance.
Around us, the conversation continued.
“And people who have good control, just in case the shield on her power slips for some reason,” Monica said.
“And people who are secure enough in their roles that they won’t try to challenge her,” James added.
“I can lead one of the teams myself,” Kevin said.
Ronald looked at him.
Kevin’s answering smile was bloodthirsty. “Imagine the possibilities for carnage. And if she does let loose and whales on someone, I want to be there to see it.”
Ronald harrumphed. “It’s the possibility for carnage that worries me.”
Michael tightened his tie, once more the polite businessman I had first met. He turned to me. “What was that memorable phrase you used at dinner last night?”
I kept my mouth shut and sank down in my seat, hoping he’d forgotten it.
A gleam appeared in his eye. “Ah yes, that you have enough strength to beat a young vampire to death with an affordable midsize sedan.”
Across from us, Kevin guffawed. “Please boss, let me lead a team.”
This was all going to end so badly, wasn’t it?