5. An Interrogation of Sorts #2
“Webb. Marcus Webb. Old money. Old South. He is a collector. A warlock whose power has been sustained and amplified through siphoning. He feeds on power, drains it from the gifted, and uses it to sustain himself. He has been alive for longer than anyone knows. Decades. Maybe centuries.” Glenn’s voice was raw.
The runes pulsed beneath his skin with every word.
“I’m just the go-between. The Beaumont pack contracts him.
He does work for us from time to time, and in return he is given access to feeding grounds. ”
“Callum,” Jasper said. “Why Callum.”
Glenn’s face contorted. He was fighting the runes again. The effort lasted two seconds before his body jackknifed and a shriek tore from his throat.
“Wrong place. Wrong time. Webb wanted the girl, but Callum was there. He knows better than to take out a wolf so he reported it. He was ordered to bring him in. He was to be brought here” The words came in gasps.
“They want him for leverage, I would guess, but can’t say for sure. I’m just an intermediary.”
“Leverage for what,” Eli said. “Against whom.”
“Your father.” Glenn spat the words like they burned. “Basile has been running a long game to bring Asher Thornwood down, and your brother has presented a fortuitous opportunity.”
The barn fell silent.
Jasper stared at Glenn. The bond between him and Eli went taut, both of them processing the same impossible information.
“Our father,” Jasper said slowly, “has never acknowledged us. I don’t even know what the fucker looks like.
He gave us blood, a house, and nothing else.
He has never claimed us publicly. Never spoken to us or been a part of our lives.
” The bitterness in his own voice surprised him.
“How could Callum be used as leverage against a man who pretends we do not exist?”
Glenn laughed. It was an ugly sound, wet and broken, forced out of him by the runes’ compulsion.
“You stupid pups. You think Asher does not care about you because he keeps his distance?” The black tears were still flowing.
“Bodie Dubois did not set up your entire lives out of the goodness of his heart. Every move Bodie has made — the estate, the money, Mel, Dex, every last one of your little guardians — came from orders. Asher’s orders.
Your father has been protecting you from the shadows since the day you were born.
The Beaumonts know. The entire supernatural community knows.
They have always known, but games must be played you know. ”
Jasper’s chest went tight. He looked at Eli. His brother’s face had gone white.
“If the Beaumonts take one of Asher’s sons,” Glenn continued, the compulsion dragging the words out of him in relentless waves, “they have a hostage the great Alpha of Alphas cannot ignore. Cannot pretend it does not matter. It forces his hand. Forces him to negotiate, to concede, to expose himself.”
“Expose himself as what,” Eli pressed. “What is the endgame?”
“Does it matter? Even if it incites a war, the game is forfeit, Asher is done.”
Eli leaned in closer “Spell it out for me. What do the Beaumonts actually want?”
Glenn’s jaw worked. The runes flared. He convulsed. Another scream built in his throat. When it passed, he was panting, his corrupted body trembling.
“I don’t know. I do not know all of it. You know they do not tell foot soldiers the plan.
” His eyes rolled. The compulsion wrung him dry.
“But I know it has to do with Asher’s downfall, and his mate.
Naomi. I don’t know if Basile wants her, has something on her, or something planned for her, or —” A groan of pain cut him off.
The runes pulsed. “I don’t know the details. I swear on my blood, I do not know.”
Eli sat back. His face was carved stone.
Through the bond Jasper could sense his brother’s mind racing.
Cross-referencing. Naomi Thornwood. Their father’s mate.
The woman he had cheated on with their mother.
A sacrilege. He didn’t know his father, but it was hard to imagine their mother committing such a crime.
There was no greater sin among wolves than to violate the sanctity of a mating bond.
Any insult or interference with a mating bond was grounds for banishment; death even.
Their mother had never been willing to talk about it, but they’d heard stories. Rumors.
What did the Beaumonts want with Naomi Thornwood?
“And the girl,” Eli said. “Serena. Where does she fit.”
Glenn’s eyes found Eli’s. Something moved in them that might have been pity.
"I do not know. Webb wanted her for his own reasons — reasons the Beaumonts never asked about and do not understand.
She was merely payment. For what, I do not know" His voice had become so hoarse it was barely more than a whisper.
"But what terrifies me is not Webb. It is that the Beaumont pack is willing to move against the Thornwood line, and they are not afraid.
They should be afraid, and they are not. "
The runes dimmed. Glenn’s body went slack, wrung out, emptied of everything the compulsion could extract.
Jasper stared at Glenn’s twisted face. The cold settled into his bones. Not anger this time. Something worse.
“Silver restraints,” Eli said, rising to his feet. “In the truck. We tie him up and take him. He might be worth something to the Thornwood pack.”
“No,” Jasper said. He met his brother’s eyes. “You used forbidden magics on him. If he ever told anyone —”
“Fuck,” Eli muttered.
“Yeah,” Jasper said. “We have to clean house.”
Jasper had known since they had pulled up to this property that nothing here could be left standing. No evidence. No trail. No breadcrumbs for anyone to follow back to Magnolia Creek.
He sent Eli to the truck.
Eli did not argue. The brothers had done their division of labor on the drive in without saying a word about it, and they did the rest of it now the same way.
Jasper went back inside.
He started with the men he had handled on the way in. The two on the porch. The one he had pinned to the wall. He carried them into the main room of the house one by one, the firefighter way, and laid them out on the floor.
Glenn watched from the kitchen where they had dumped him, silver-bound and wrung out. His corrupted eyes tracked Jasper’s movements with an understanding that turned his gray skin grayer.
“What are you doing?” Glenn said, writhing against his restraints. “Voss. What are you doing?”
Jasper did not answer.
He went to the kitchen drawer. The matches were where matches lived in old country houses, in the drawer by the stove, the strike-anywhere kind. He took the box.
Then he crouched beside Glenn.
“You will heal, maybe,” Jasper said. His voice was conversational. Pleasant. The voice of a man discussing weather. “Corrupted wolf. Occult modifications. Whatever you have pumped into yourself might keep you alive through what is coming. Maybe. Probably.”
He decided to not tell him about the runes Eli had carved on the house on the way out. It was kinder to let him believe he might survive, or perhaps it was more wicked. Jasper wasn’t sure, but it suited him.
He paused. “The men in the next room are less lucky. They knew the risks when they took the contract. Or maybe they did not. Maybe you forgot to mention that part.”
Glenn’s eyes went wide. “You can not — the men —”
“Are dead,” Jasper said. “Easy death. Lucky bastards never saw it coming.” Jasper stood. “You, on the other hand, are going to have a harder time of it. Silver rope and fire do not mix, even for an abomination.”
***
He walked outside. The night air hit him. Heavy with humidity and the iron-salt smell of the barn.
He struck the match against the side of the house.
He did not look back.
Eli was at the truck. The driver’s door was open. Jasper got in. He started the truck. He took the road back the way they had come. Behind them, the property went up.
Jasper pressed at his bonds as he drove.
Callum was at the grove. Somehow, someway he hadn’t been delivered into Beaumont hands.
Who was that wolf? It would seem their mother had allies she had never mentioned.
What other secrets does she have? The brindle thread of his bond with Callum was loosening by some increment Jasper could not measure but was grateful for none-the-less.
The muffled sensation was lifting by degrees.
The other thread. The one made of sunshine and shadow.
Serena’s. Faint. The smallest hum had started. His heart leapt, but he dared not hope. Still, it hummed in his chest the way his own heartbeat hummed. Present. Continuous. Alive.
For now.
“Old money,” Eli said. “Old South.”
“Yeah.”
“Bodie can work that.”
“He can.”
“It is not enough.”
“No.”
“We have to plan this,” Eli said. “If we go in the way we went in here, she will be dead before we are through the door. We don’t know that Marcus needs her alive. He could use the threat of killing her to slow us down. He will time it. He will make her watch us walk in.”
“We are not going to give him the time,” Jasper said.
The truck rumbled down the narrow back road. The fire behind them rose into the pre-dawn.