* * * *
I don’t know how or why, but an hour later I pulled into the parking lot of the Oracle. I sat in the car, fingers clenching on the steering wheel, and just stared at nothing. Just as I hadn’t made a conscious decision to drive there, I got out of the car and hurried into the building without really thinking about what I was doing
I stepped into the newsroom and was nearly bowled over by the amount of noise and activity. It was much different than the last time I’d been there. For one thing, the room was nearly full to bursting with Weres. There weren’t wolves digging through the trashcans or anything, but I could recognize the signs. It was in the way they stalked through the room, the way they crouched on the balls of their feet in the middle of the room and eyed the interns like they were walking bags of meat.
The glowing yellow eyes in their human faces was also a pretty big clue.
“What the hell?” I whispered. Immediately every Were in the room turned to look at me, as if my muttered words had been some sort of signal only they could hear. The humans in the room didn’t notice anything at first, despite the marked drop in the noise level. But then, one by one, they turned to follow the unflinching gaze of the Weres.
“Phaedra?” It was Sonya. Dressed in jeans and a simple button down, she hurried through the room to stand before me. Her face was flushed and her now short hair was as messy as it could get, random strands sticking up like porcupine quills all over her head.
“Thank God you’re all right.”
I was still looking at the wolves over her shoulder. Was it just my imagination or had some of them begun to come closer?
“What’s going on?”
Sonya’s face closed down. “You don’t know.”
It was a statement, so I didn’t bother nodding. I simply looked at her.
“It’s all over the news.”
“Sonya.” It was hard to stay patient with her, but somehow I managed it. “What happened?”
“In my defense, you don’t have a cell. It’s hard to keep people updated when they don’t have cell phones. You should look into that.”
“Maybe the Feds will reimburse me for the one I lost when they kidnapped me. Now spill it.”
She bit her lip. “It might be easier if you saw for yourself.”
There were several televisions scattered around the room. Each one was usually tuned into CNN or whatever local news channel was on at the moment. Since the televisions were always on silent, it was easy to forget they were there.
Sonya led me towards the closest wall mount. We stayed close together as the Weres around us began to form a path to clear our way, muttering amongst themselves as I passed. Grabbing the remote from an empty desk, she turned up the volume until the announcer’s voice filled the room. I knew everyone must have already seen it, but the room settled down as others stopped whatever it was they were doing to watch the national broadcast.
“…the slaughter of dozens of innocent people? Who is Gabriel Evans? Why would officials just turn a blind eye to his crimes?”
The camera panned over to zoom in on the face of the man the anchor was interviewing, and the floor seemed to drop out from under my feet. I clutched Sonya’s arm and tried not to snarl right along with the rest of the Weres when Marcus shook his head sadly on camera.
“Money may not be able to buy happiness, Robert, but it can certainly buy clemency. Gabriel Evans is a mob boss in a pressed suit. There are dozens of accounts of murder, kidnapping, and human trafficking, but not once has the Briarcliff Police Department investigated any of the allegations. It may have something to do with the half a million dollars Gabriel ‘donated’ to the police force.”
“Judge Jensen, you and your wife were victims of Evans. What do you have to say about this recent turn of events?”
The camera panned again, and I was looking into the faces of Judge Joseph Jensen and his wife Penelope. Unlike when I’d first met her in Gabriel’s office, Penelope wasn’t running the show today. Instead, she tried her damnedest to look old and fragile in her seat next to her husband. Joseph, meanwhile, was every inch the respectable Judge. Clean cut and radiating offended disapproval.
I didn’t know if I wanted to give the couple an Oscar or choke them with one.
“Well, to be honest, I’m not surprised,” Joseph said. “The man tried to blackmail my wife and me just to close a business deal. We’ve suspected for a long time about what sort of man Evans truly was, so the fact that he murdered all of those people…” The judge shook his head, and his mouth worked as if he wanted to spit the taste of Evans’s name out of his mouth.
Penelope sniffed and grabbed a tissue from the table, wiping away the tears that appeared like magic in the laugh lines at the corner of her eyes.
“Those poor people.”
Joseph patted her hand in a show of comfort.
“Werewolves are a danger. A menace. They caught the massacre on tape for Christ’s sake. What more proof do we need before the politicians in Washington get off their asses long enough to take action?”
“The debate the last few weeks has been that Werewolves are just like the rest of us,” Robert, the anchor, countered. “Are you saying that we need to eradicate them all because of the actions of just one man?”
“Of course not,” Marcus said, “Gabriel is an Alpha. The pack, the men and women who follow him, do so out of fear and necessity. They can’t survive in this world without a strong hand to keep them under control. But if the Alpha is corrupt, then that affects the entire hierarchy. It’s like cutting the head off a snake. We don’t need to punish the many because of one person. We just need to erase the threats and appoint men and women we can trust to act as replacements. It’s the only way to coexist.”
“Who do you consider threats?”
“It’s the Alphas that make up the current regime. The only reason there’s been so much violence and public panic this past month is because the Alphas who lead the packs just aren’t doing their jobs. Or worse, they’re encouraging and even rewarding the bad behavior of their packmates. Gabriel Evans may have been the first Alpha to get caught, but I promise you he isn’t the only one out there getting his hands bloody.”
“Wouldn’t undoing their current system cause even more chaos? And how do we, as humans, choose the right people to lead a bunch of bloodthirsty Weres?”
Marcus opened his mouth as if about to drop a name, and then shook his head in self doubt. “That isn’t for me to say. It would be a job for the government. Once the bill goes through to have any confirmed or suspected Weres contained and tagged, the powers that be will be able to take the time they’ll need to choose appropriate leaders to keep them in line.”
I didn’t hear anything else after that. I lowered myself to the ground, my fingers a punishment as I fisted my hair in my hands. Burying my face between my knees I began to rock.
This was because we’d broken our end of the deal. This was how Liam retaliated.
We should have run.
I should have let us run.
Though, none of this would have ever happened if I’d stayed away from Gabriel in the first place. One thought kept spiraling through my head, over and over and over again.
“My fault,” it wailed, “this is all my fault.”