Chapter Thirty-Six
I took the call and put him on speaker.
“Kait,” he said when I didn’t speak. “I guess you’re probably pretty mad at me right now.” He paused. “Oh, okay, typical woman, giving a man the silent treatment. You know men never do that, right? That’s okay, honey. You just sit there and listen.”
I hung up on him.
Jared grinned, then pulled up in front of his house and shut off the car. We sat there waiting for Voss to call back, because we knew he would.
He did.
“You’re kind of a bitch, aren’t you?” he said, but there was a grudging admiration in his voice. “Makes me even more eager to settle your ass down. So anyway, about the police detective. We should talk about him, don’t you think?”
I put my window down and stared up at the moon, bathing in her beauty and magic. The moon calmed me, even as it filled me with energy.
“How’d you do it, Voss? I know you have magic, but putting someone to sleep like you’re a fucking wicked witch with a big juicy apple, that’s something I’ve never seen.”
“You should be impressed,” he said. “And you should know how I did it. The full moon. You’re a wolf. You feel it.”
I shivered. The full moon hung huge and powerful in the night sky, and its effect was magical. On someone like him, the effects would be even more extreme. It was making him—and his magic—stronger. It was taking an already warped supernatural to a whole new level.
“Werewolf,” I said.
He laughed again. “Such contempt! Like you’re better than a lowly werewolf. But who has the magic, sweetheart? I do.”
“So that’s why you’ve been hiding,” I said. “Waiting for the moon to give you courage.”
He didn’t take the bait. “Now, honey, I need to tell you something about Moreno. There’s a limited time when I can pull him out of his comfy sleep. The full moon giveth, and the full moon taketh away. I have only a few hours to fix what I broke.”
I pressed my palm against my chest. “What do you want for waking him up, Voss?”
“It’s simple, girlie. I want to do something fun before I head back to my city.
Something fun with you. I crave the challenge of you.
I want to hunt you, but not while you’re cowering behind your alpha or the walls of his house.
I want to hunt you in the place you think of as your territory—Silverwood.
In the end, I’m going to catch you, and we’ll fight before I break you like a wild horse.
When I’m done playing, I’ll either take you back to Colorado with me or I’ll leave you lying on the bloody ground crying for your mommy.
But I’ll wake your boy up before dawn. I swear it. That sound fair?”
“Fair,” I said. “Does that sound fair.”
“I had to hold someone hostage so you wouldn’t keep hiding like a scared cat, and I needed a way to get you motivated to run. Did I find the way, Kait?”
I looked at Jared. I could feel his rage, his fury. He wanted Voss, but Voss wasn’t easy to find when he didn’t want to be found. Which made me wonder…
“Why can’t we track you? Satisfy my curiosity and then I’ll make up my mind about playing your sick little game.”
One of Jared’s wolves pulled up behind us in my car, then got out and loped away.
“I can change my scent,” Voss said. “I can hide it, warp it, make it stronger…whatever I want. It’s mine, after all. You can’t hunt me. I’m the hunter. You’re the prey. Whether or not I catch you before dawn, the game is over. I’ll fix your detective and head home.”
He didn’t seem to even entertain the notion that he would be dead before he left Huntersburg. It dawned on me then that the name of my little town was quite appropriate for the hunt that was about to take place there.
And maybe it wasn’t a coincidence.
“Voss,” Jared said, “you’re never going back to Colorado.”
“Oh ho,” Voss yelled. “He speaks! Welcome to the party, J! It makes me happy to think about you sitting home while your girl is out here with me. Oh, and another special thing about my power. I don’t have to be physically next to Rick now that I’ve touched him.
I can free him from afar. And this is the part I want you all to pay close attention to.
I can cure him from afar, and I can kill him from afar.
I’m holding his life in my hands. If I die before I free him, he dies as well.
You paying attention, Jared?” He lowered his voice, and suddenly, he wasn’t a loud, crazy blowhard.
He was a sadistic killer. “Go home to Silverwood, sweet Silver Claw, or I’m going to let Rick Moreno die in his sleep. I’ll see you in your woods.”
And he was gone.
For a few seconds, Jared and I only stared at each other, silent.
Finally, he took a breath, got out of the car, and came around to open my door. The second I stepped out, he pulled me into his arms. “Stay here,” he said. “I’ll go to Silverwood.”
“I can’t,” I whispered.
“Rick would tell you not to risk your life for him.”
“Yes,” I agreed. “But he knows I’d do it anyway.”
He kissed me, taking his time, holding me so tightly I wasn’t sure he’d let me go.
But finally, he stepped back, his stare fierce, his eyes glittering in the darkness.
“I don’t doubt your abilities,” he told me.
“I know you’ll destroy him, in the end. But fuck, Kait.
I don’t want him to hurt you. I don’t have the control to stand outside those woods and not go in when I know you’re in trouble. ”
I shook my head. “Don’t come to Silverwood. I need you at Rick’s side. The very instant he wakes up, call me. That’s when I’ll destroy Gavin Voss.” Then I pulled out my phone. “I’m calling Max.”
Joe stepped out of the shadows. “I’m going with you,” he said. “Even if I have to hide in a tree until it’s over, I’m coming.”
“You can’t, Joe,” I said, and went to wrap my arms around him. I hugged him, hard and fierce, and then stepped back and called Max.
He answered immediately, and he didn’t once bitch about me ditching the office. He cared about Rick, too. “Tell me what you need,” he said.
I told him everything about Voss. I told him about Voss’s magic being tied to the moon, about his ability to shift into a wolfman, about his hold over Rick. And I told him that Voss wanted to end the hunt before daylight and that he’d promised to wake Rick up before he left.
“See what you can find out,” I told him. “Work fast, because I’m heading to Silverwood now.”
“Not alone,” he said. “Someone can go with you, Kait. They can hide in the woods.”
“Max,” I said quietly, “imagine if Jared or Joe were hiding in the woods, watching, and they saw the werewolf hurting me. They would attack him. They’d kill him. And then Rick would die.”
“Then that means you can’t kill him, either,” he said. “So what are you going to do?”
“I’m going to do what he wants me to do,” I said. “I’m going to fight, and I’m going to run.”
“At least you can hurt him,” he whispered. “Can’t you?”
I smiled. “Oh hell yes. I can hurt him a lot.”
“Kick his ass, then,” he said. “If he has a weakness, I’ll find it. I’ll call you back in a few minutes.”
“It’s going to be a short night, really,” I told my quietly raging alpha and the supremely worried vampire. “Dawn will be here in a few hours.”
“Eight hours,” Joe said. “That’s not a short night, boss.”
He wasn’t wrong. “I need food,” I said, “and I want to see Rick. Those things will shave an hour off the night.”
As though he knew I was delaying, Voss texted as we were walking into Jared’s house.
I’m waiting, wolf.
I replied quickly. I’m going to have dinner and then visit Rick. I’ll be there when I get there.
What was he going to do if I was late? Kill Rick and ruin his night of fun? No. He’d wait for me, and I knew it.
So I took my time.
I ate and drank more than I should have been able to hold, but I’d need the energy for the coming night. I packed it away grimly, steadily eating my way through so much food that even Nell, accustomed to seeing wolves eat, was shocked.
My mother rushed into the house just as I was finishing up. “Kait,” she cried. “How could you not tell me what’s been happening?”
She flung her arms around me as I stood, nearly knocking me over. “It’ll be fine,” I told her. “You know I can handle a fucking werewolf.”
“I saw you handling him when you fought him before,” she said. “When it took you two days to begin to heal from it. Don’t do this, Kaity.”
“I have to, Mom. I won’t let Rick die. I’ll kick that bastard’s ass, and then I’ll come home. The moon is here. She’ll help me.”
“She’ll help him, as well,” she murmured, but she was already resigned. She knew I was going to do what I had to do to save Rick.
“Susan,” Jared said, “I want you to sit at Rick’s bedside. Call me when he wakes up.” He looked at me. “You’ll shift and lose your phone. When Susan calls me, I’ll be at your side immediately.”
Joe nodded. “I will, too. We’ll make sure Voss doesn’t leave Silverwood. I’m going to call the guys.” He slipped away.
“Jared,” I started, but I knew it was useless to argue. Jared would be waiting just outside the woods. And if for whatever reason I couldn’t do it, he’d make sure Voss died there that night, in Silverwood.
I explained to my mother what would happen if Voss was killed before Rick woke up. I made sure she understood that she had to call Jared the second he woke up. Not a moment before.
“I’m not a moron, Kaity,” she said, but her eyes were wet and there was only worry in her stare. “I understand. You can count on me.” Then she wrapped me up in her arms. “Don’t let him devastate you, honey. Don’t die. Don’t die.”
“He doesn’t want me dead,” I told her. “He wants to break me. He wants to put me in my place and make me see him as the big strong man. He may even think he wants to take me back to his pack in Colorado.” I smiled down at her, and I made sure she saw the confidence in my eyes. “I’ll see you in the morning.”
“I will be close,” Jared told her. “As will her pack. Nothing will happen to Kait. I swear it.”
I knew that even if it meant Rick would die, Jared had his limits. He was going to watch, and wait, and when he needed to step in, he would step in.
And there wasn’t a single thing I could do about it.
Abruptly eager to fight Voss, to run through my woods and be a wolf under the full moon, I went to Jared’s bedroom to dress for the night. I buckled a weapons belt around my hips, sorely missing my demon blade as I slid other, lesser blades into the sheaths.
I allowed myself two minutes to visit Rick. I whispered into his ear, believing some part of him would hear me.
And finally, I drove out of Shadowfield, rushing into a moonlit night that I hoped would not destroy me.
I couldn’t trust Gavin Voss. He might never wake Rick up.
He might not be able to. He might fight and hunt all night long just for the fun of it, and come morning, Rick might have already slipped away.
Gavin could sneak from the woods just before daylight, knowing we couldn’t kill him until we were sure Rick was okay.
So many maybes.
But I had no other choices.
The detective would not die, and I had to believe that, or Gavin really would break me.