Avery went inside, shoved aside the shower curtain. But behind it, the tub was empty. Avery backed out, continued up the hallway.
The next door was closed. Avery knocked.
No answer.
He pushed the door open.
She smelled it right away.
Blood.
Involuntarily, the wolf surged in her, scratching and whining at her spine, begging to be let out.
Dana gritted her teeth. She found the light switch inside the door and flicked it on.
It was a bedroom. There was the same brown carpet in here. Two sets of mismatched dressers, an open closet. Clothes spilled out it, onto the floor. A few were hung up, but most looked as if they’d been shoved inside.
There was a vanity against one wall, with a large mirror. In front of it, clustered lipsticks and perfumes stood tall like little soldiers. They were reflected back in the mirror, which had a large smear of red across it.
Blood.
He was on the bed.
Mrs. Shirley’s husband. He lay face up, his head dangling over the edge of the bed, his arms above his head.
His face was frozen in a startled expression. He was a good-looking man, dark blond hair, blue eyes. He had a strong chin. Dana thought it might even be described as chiseled.
He was wearing a white undershirt and a pair of black boxer briefs.
The shirt had been torn down the center. The ragged edges were sopped in blood, so concentrated that it wasn’t even red anymore but rather a deep black.
The man’s skin was ragged and torn, just like his shirt.
He’d been ripped into, right in the middle of his chest. His ribs were exposed. One was broken and stood straight up.
His intestines were spilling out of the gaping wet hole that was his stomach.
He was very dead.
Dana’s nostrils flared. The wolf inside her whined, pressing its snout against the base of Dana’s neck.
She stumbled out of the room.
“Gray?”
Her voice was hoarse. “Where’s the baby?”
“What?”
“There were toys in the living room. Oh, God, Brooks, you don’t think...”
She rushed down the hallway, throwing open the next door she came to.
It opened onto a room full of stacked boxes. There was a path through them to a desk with a computer on it, but on the other side of the room. The room was like a maze. It was clear they hadn’t quite unpacked yet.
She shut that door and turned to the only one that was left.
The first thing she saw was a crib, white bars, a mobile over it. Jungle animals. Dana could make out the long neck of the giraffe.
The second thing she saw was the red streak of blood across the bars of the crib.
Then she smelled...
Young blood. Sweet blood. Tasty—
“Shut up!” Dana screamed. She slammed the door closed. She would not let the death of this little one excite her. No. It was a baby for Christ’s sake, only a cub, too tiny to take care of itself, and eating something like that was an abomination, too horrible to consider.
Cub? The wolf suddenly settled, curling up inside her as if it had never stirred.
“Gray?” said Avery, appearing in the hallway. “You have confirmation of death?”
She shook her head, tears springing to her eyes. “I can’t look.”
Avery took a deep breath and threw the door open again. He turned on the light.
And was greeted by a wail.
Dana’s stomach knotted in relief. Alive.
She darted into the room. Besides the smear of blood on the crib, the baby was completely fine. Except for the fact he was screaming his lungs out, that was.
* * *
Coraline Shirley clutched her baby and rocked both of them as they sat on one of the couches in her living room. Her eyes and nose were red. She was still in shock.
“I knew this was going to happen,” she said. “I knew it would. I just knew it.”
Dana stood in the doorway to the living room, unsure of what to do. Avery was outside, making calls. He needed to call the police and notify the Sullivan Foundation.
They had found Coraline outside the house in the woods. She’d still been in wolf form, but she’d shifted back at the sight of them. She’d been horrified ever since. Speechless for the most part, only speaking up to beg to hold her son.
Dana wanted to ask Coraline questions, but she knew the woman wasn’t ready. She’d just killed her own husband, the father of her child, and it was a miracle that she hadn’t killed the baby as well. Dana had seen children killed in werewolf attacks. Not often, and never one as young as this baby, but it happened. Werewolves had no sense of what they were doing. They were unfeeling monsters who killed everything in their paths.
But somehow Coraline had gone into the baby’s room, smeared her husband’s blood on the crib, and then left the little guy unharmed.
How had she managed that?
Coraline continued to rock. “I told him something was wrong, and he said I was being paranoid. He said... And now he’s...” She pressed her face against the cheek of her baby.
Dana took a few steps closer to Coraline. “Wrong? Something was wrong?”
Coraline jumped, turning to look at Dana, as if she hadn’t realized the tracker was there.
“Sorry,” said Dana.
Coraline gazed at her warily, then began to rock again. “I told him this would happen. He wouldn’t listen.”
“Who did you tell?” said Dana.
“Keith.”
“Is Keith your husband?”
“Was.” Coraline’s expression was fierce. “Was my husband. He’s gone now.”
Right. Dana wished there was some way to comfort this woman. “I’m so sorry.”
Coraline squeezed her eyes closed. She let out a heartbreaking sob. “He wouldn’t listen. But I knew. Oh, I knew. I knew. But in the end, it didn’t matter.”
Dana sat down next to Coraline, placed her hand on the woman’s shoulder. “What did you know?” she asked gently.
Coraline shied away from her touch.
Dana backed off. “Sorry,” she said again.
“It was nine... ten months ago. Silas was just born, only a few months old,” said Coraline.
“Did something happen?”
“I think I shifted,” said Coraline. “It was a full moon. I was outside the house. We have garbage that we burn out there. You have to walk the bags up over the hill, and I was taking the garbage up to the spot, and I thought... There might have been another wolf, or maybe not. Maybe it was only me. But I think I shifted.”
“Nine or ten months ago, you think you saw another wolf, and that you shifted?”
Coraline nodded. “Yes, that’s what I think. When I got back, Keith said, ‘Where you been for so long?’ and then I was sure that something strange had happened, that I’d been gone longer than I was supposed to be.”
“Go on,” said Dana.
“You have to understand, I only ever shifted the one time, at the SF, right after I got bit. I always kept it down, like they taught me.”
“I do understand,” said Dana.
“Oh, right. You’re wolves too. The people who work for the SF, they’re all wolves. Sometimes, I don’t remember that.” Coraline began to rock again. “I knew something was wrong after that.”
“What kind of something?”
“I couldn’t stop thinking about being a werewolf,” said Coraline. “I would think about it all the time, think about shifting, think about claws and teeth and fur. And I started feeling it sometimes. Like an itch. An itch on the back of my neck. You ever felt anything like that?”
Dana nodded slowly. It was odd how she’d been feeling something very similar to that while searching this house.
“I told Keith, I said, something’s going to happen. I’m going to shift one of these days, and I’m going to kill you all.” She rocked faster. “I said he shou
ld lock me up. He laughed at me. He said I was being crazy. He said...” She looked up at Dana. “Keith was a wolf, too, you know. He thought I was crazy because he never felt anything like what I felt.”
“I don’t think you’re crazy.”
“I was worried, you know. They say it’s not a great idea for werewolves to have kids. And it’s usually pretty difficult to conceive, you know? But me and Keith, we were pregnant so fast. Maybe that’s why it was. Maybe there’s something wrong with me. Something abnormal. But Keith said I was fine. He said it was all in my head. But I knew I was gonna do it at some point. I could feel it. I just knew it...” Fresh tears were flowing over her cheeks.
Tentatively, Dana put a comforting arm around Coraline, who stiffened at first, but then relaxed, burying her face in Dana’s shoulder, sobs wracking her body. Dana patted the girl’s arm, making soothing noises.
* * *
“Absolutely not,” said Ursula, leaning against her desk in the tracker office. “If we allow you to see him now, after we told him otherwise, then we’re only reinforcing his behavior. I’m not authorizing your seeing Cole Randall. Not today.”
Dana was sitting in a chair across from Ursula’s desk. She leaned forward. “But that’s clearly why he’s doing this. He wants to see me. He’s going to keep killing people unless I go to him.”
Avery snorted beside her. “King, I keep trying to tell her that there’s no way Randall can be doing this. He’s locked up here.”
“No,” said Ursula. “Gray is right.”
“I am?” said Dana.
“Not about seeing Randall. You’re not going to see him,” said Ursula. “However, he does seem to be behind this in some way.”
“That’s impossible, though,” said Avery. “I mean, he can’t force other wolves to go rogue.”
“What if he can?” said Dana. “He seems to have a certain kind of charisma—”
“Maybe to you, Gray,” said Avery. “But objectively, he’s just kind of stringy and pathetic.”
Dana wrinkled her eyebrows. “Stringy?”
“He’s built like a nerd. That’s all I’m saying. He’s not exactly football-player material.”
“I don’t think he’s built like a nerd,” said Dan.
“Well, you wouldn’t, now, would you?”
Ursula raised her eyebrows. “Are you two done?”
Dana lowered her head. “Yes.”
Avery stifled a snicker.
“Good,” said Ursula. “Randall’s behind this somehow, and the only realistic way he could be behind it is if he’s communicating with these wolves.”
“Communicating?” said Avery.
“He does get letters, and he has access to the computer,” said Dana.
“The first thing we have to do is move those rogues we brought in away from Randall. I’m putting in orders to have them transferred off the maximum security floor. I don’t want them close to him. The second thing is to revoke his email privileges,” said Ursula. “And he doesn’t get to send or receive mail either. We don’t want him communicating with anyone.”
“Okay,” said Avery. “That makes sense.”
“I don’t know,” said Dana. “The wolves we just brought in don’t seem like they were in communication with Cole. They’re both horrified by what they did. They didn’t do it on purpose.”
“What does being horrified have to do with anything?” said Avery.
“Well,” said Dana, “if they were in touch with Cole, then they’d be shifting on his say-so. They’d know they were doing it. But these guys had no idea they were going to shift.”
“You can’t know that,” said Ursula. “They could be putting on an act.”
“There’s also the fact that they shifted without a full moon,” said Dana.
“Yes,” said Ursula. “Rare but possible.” She pointed at the three of them. “We’d all be able to do it, if push came to shove. Our training allows us that kind of control.”
“Cole made me shift when he had me trapped in the basement,” said Dana. “It wasn’t a full moon then.”
Ursula bit her lip. Her voice was gentle. “Gray, I think that you made yourself shift, but you did it because he ordered you to.”
Dana leaned back in her chair, drawing a deep breath.
“You frustrated?” Ursula asked her. “You think I’m not listening to you?”
“I’m fine,” said Dana. “There’s a correlation between Coraline, Beverly, and Arnold. All three of them became obsessed with werewolves months before this shift happened. I think that Cole may have had some kind of contact with them, maybe some kind of hypnotism.”
“And he’s triggering it while he’s locked up here?” said Avery.
“Possibly through email?” said King.
Dana sat back up. “I guess. Maybe?”
“I’m taking this seriously, Gray. I’m not discounting what you’re saying. But we have to pursue this as rationally as possible,” said Ursula.
“Seriously?” said Avery. “Hypnotism?”
Ursula spread her hands. “We don’t know what’s going on, Brooks. We’re trying to piece this together.” She sighed. “It doesn’t help that we aren’t exactly trained to be detectives. We’re more like bloodhounds.”
“We’re going to figure it out,” said Dana.
“We’d better. The pressure I’m getting from higher up isn’t good. This all couldn’t have come at a worse time, you know,” said Ursula.
Avery crossed his arms over his chest. “If this is all because of Randall, I don’t see why we don’t just kill him. Problem solved.”
Both Ursula and Dana glared at him.
“What?” he said.
“We’ve got to start somewhere,” said Ursula, “and so I think we need to question all of the rogues about Cole Randall and about any possible connection they might have with him.”
Avery and Dana nodded.
“Next, I think we need to try something preemptive,” said Ursula. “All of the rogues have fit Cole Randall’s profile. We need to compile a list of every wolf that could conceivably fit the profile.”
“It’s going to be pretty big,” said Dana.
“I know,” said Ursula. “But we can reference that list against Cole’s emails, see if anything lines up. That might give us someplace to start.”
“All right,” said Dana. She wasn’t looking forward to the massive amount of paperwork ahead of her, but it would be worth it if they could figure out what Cole was up to.
“If the situation escalates, then we have a list of potentials. We can pull them all in, and that will ensure everyone’s safety,” said Ursula.
Avery looked surprised. “All the potentials? But we don’t have the resources to collect that many wolves. There are only four trackers.”
“I’m not saying it would be easy,” said Ursula. “It’s a last resort.”
“Especially considering people don’t take kindly to being locked up for no reason,” said Dana.
“Find me something in the email,” said Ursula. “I don’t want it to come to that.”
* * *
Dana had never been more disgusted with Cole. He’d forced those two rogues to shift somehow, she just knew it. And because of that, he’d almost killed a baby.
A baby.
He was sick and unfeeling. He was insane. He was literally a horrible person.
And it seemed like she thought of him more than ever.
After her briefing with Ursula, she’d only wanted to get a morning catnap before diving into paperwork, but when she lay down, she was assailed by thoughts of Cole.
And if that wasn’t bad enough, her wolf seemed to be feeling frisky as well.
She was sitting up in bed, sweaty, exhausted.
Shift for me, Dana.
“Shut up,” she muttered. “Shut up!”
The back of her neck itched. The wolf was there, clawing inside her skin, trying to get out. It felt exactly the way that Coraline had described it
.
Dana fumbled for her scar, stroking it. Pain would keep back the wolf.
Cole must have done something to the both her and Coraline. He’d gotten inside their heads. Somehow.
But how?
Shift for me, Dana. You’re very beautiful. Think about my lips on your skin.
His voice was satin and sex. She could feel heat growing between her legs.
She threw the covers aside and leapt out of bed. Dammit.
There was nothing she was going to be able to do except go for a run, was there? No matter that she was exhausted, that she hadn’t slept in god-knows-how-long. There was no other way to banish him from her head than to push her body until it broke.
She stumbled across the room and opened the drawer where she kept her running clothes. Pulling her nightshirt over her head, she shrugged into her sports bra.
It rubbed against the scars that Cole had given her.
She shuddered.
She yanked on her sweats quickly, urging herself not to think about Cole. To think about anything else but him.
The wolf surged forward. Like the time with Hollis, she wasn’t in control. A wave of intense scent washed over her. She’d activated her wolf sense of smell involuntarily. She could smell the dirt on her tennis shoes as she tied them. The scent of her own deodorant was nearly overpowering.
Dana slammed the wolf down. Jesus. What was going on with her?
That had only served to remind her of one more thing she didn’t want to think about. Hollis.
Ursula hadn’t brought it up, but it was only a matter of time. She didn’t know what she was going to tell her boss. Hollis might have promised not to write about her attacking him, but she was fairly sure that she’d ruined any chance of him writing something flattering about her. She’d let down Ursula. She’d let down the SF. And she was scared to death of herself.
She felt like she was losing herself. Like the wolf inside her was swallowing her whole.
You and the wolf are one, whispered Cole. Join with her.
Man. Fuck Cole Randall.
It was noon, and it was a warm spring day. The sun beat down on Dana as she began to run around the interior of the fence. Within minutes, sweat was pouring down her face. This was torture.
Hopefully, it was enough to keep Cole away. To keep the wolf away.
I want to see Dana again. I think she can be convinced to join me.
Ugh. There it was again. Cole’s damned voice. The wolf seemed to be moving too, excited to hear him.
She’s the most important part of the mission. Without Dana, there is no victory.