A desert wind blew in from the west, pelting the aged tombstones with rocks and debris. Two more werewolves emerged from the darkness. They took positions on either side of the scraggily, bad-breathed Goliath.
Great, just great.
“What’s the password?” he growled.
Like I knew. “Out of my way you, hairy oaf.” I started to move around him until his hand closed around my arm in a vise grip. “Ow!”
“Don’t play with me, girl. I’m not afraid of your kind.”
Too bad everybody else was.
“Listen, brainiac,” I said, fighting the urge to stomp his foot,
“I’m here on the Alpha’s orders, so unless you want to take it up with Finnegan—”
The guard growled low in his throat, his face a mix of shadows. “Finnegan should have told you—”
“Well, he didn’t.” Not that he wouldn’t be on my shit list for that. But to be fair, the guy had a pack to run. And an emergency it seemed.
I craned my neck around the wall of weres to see if I could catch anybody peeking out from the crypt.
There was no little stone house-like structure or stone angels to guard it. The Topanga Pack buried their alphas bunker-style. The shadow of the hole gaped low and menacing in the canyon bedrock. Thirty stone steps surrounded by sandstone walls ended in a solid oak door.
Lovely. No help in sight. Whoever was there to meet me was already inside—waiting.
“He’s not answering his phone,” barked the bodyguard to my right.
“I’m thinking he might be busy,” I snapped. I would be, too, if I could get past these clowns.
The top dog didn’t just open up the Crypt of the Alphas for his health, or an all-night kegger. It was unsealed maybe once or twice a year for matters of pack justice. I was his only interrogator, a position I rather liked. So when Finnegan ordered me to get my ass down there, I’d bailed on my dinner date with a bucket of KFC’s original recipe and made a beeline for my boss.
Until I’d run smack-dab into a boulder.
“You know I’m not a threat,” I said. For heaven’s sake, it’s not like the overgrown Chewbacca and I weren’t on a first-name basis. We’d played together as kids—Mary Poppins to be exact. And I wasn’t the one dressing up as the flying babysitter.
Just because he’d avoided me for the past twenty years didn’t mean I’d forgotten. The bodyguard had other secrets, too. Everyone did. That’s why my bugged-out powers came in so handy.
I’d been born with the Truth gene, an obnoxiously rare and recessive trait that showed up about once every seven hundred years. Lucky me. I could ask a question and literally make a person tell the truth.
Within limits. But I wasn’t about to start broadcasting that little tidbit.
“Want me to start asking you questions?” I asked.
“Can it, McPhee,” he said with a snarl, casting a glance at the wolves on either side of him. His eyes had widened a touch. I recognized the fear.
Good.
I reached into my back pocket for a rubber band and proceeded to pull my long red hair into a ponytail. Lucky for him I wouldn’t be unleashing my powers in the middle of the Wolf’s Lair flats. First off, it would be downright mean, even if my old buddy was being an ass. Second, using my powers gave me a massive hangover.
This joker wasn’t worth it.
“What’s it going to be, meathead?”
He scowled.
“I can stand here until Finnegan comes out looking for me. No sweat off my back. Though it may mean the skin off yours.”
He growled low in his throat as I started whistling the Jeopardy theme song.
“I don’t have time for this bullshit,” he grumbled, standing aside.
“Thank you.”
I nudged him with my elbow as I brushed past.
He growled low in his throat. “Freak.”
Oh goody. Things were back to normal.
I descended the thick stone stairs into the darkness of the tomb. I might not win Miss Popular 2011, but my pack was stronger because of me.
Frankly, I’d rather be needed than accepted.
The coarse walls were broken every so often by burial carvings and caked with canyon dust.
“Where were you?” Finnegan’s voice boomed before I’d even reached the bottom of the stairs. “Never mind,” he added. “Just get your ass down here.”
It was cooler underground, the air stale. I could smell the pack leader’s agitation even before I came upon him pacing in the center of a small, circular room.
A turquoise and orange pack crest spread across the ceiling. In the flickering light, I could read the inscription: Riamh daing-nithe i gcúinne.
Never backed into a corner.
Damned straight.
It didn’t look like our pack leader was doing so hot tonight. Finnegan jammed his hands into his copious red hair. His bulbous nose had gone red and his beard twisted sideways where he’d been yanking on it.
Behind him, a shirtless human sat lashed to a wooden chair etched with runes and death spells.
“We need you to question this ... gardener,” the Alpha said, as if he wasn’t quite sure what a gardener even did. “He’s from Eternal Life Estates.”
I wrinkled my nose. “In Vampire County?”
The humans called it Malibu.
It was where trophy wives went to die.
Or not die ... as the case may be.
Finnegan gave a tight smile. “I’ll remind you of my littermate who moved to Eternal Life Estates.”
I nodded. Sunshine McCarty, the bleached blonde, boob-enhanced darling of the pack. Growing up, she liked to tease me by pretending I was a boy.
As far as insults went, it was pathetic.
Let her yank out her eyebrows and wobble around on stiletto heels that, let’s face it, would make it impossible to knee anyone in the balls. I liked to keep my options open.
I studied the olive-skinned gardener. I didn’t get why any were—or this human for that matter—would move in with the vampires. Sure, it beat Botox. Once you married a vampire, you stopped aging. Trophy wives for centuries.
Ridiculous.
I blew a few strands of hair out of my mouth. No matter what I did, my hair always ended up in my face. “What do you want to know?”
Finnegan folded his arms over his chest. “Sunshine was killed three nights ago.”
I shook my head, not sure what to say. Comforting words weren’t exactly in my nature. Not that the Alpha would want to hear them anyway.
He gave me a long look, the candles flickering shadows over his burly features. “She was murdered.”