“Yes.”
“I’ll be down there first thing in the morning. I’m calling a Pack Council meeting tonight. The entire Council should be able to make it into the city by eight a.m. if they leave now. If your secret is officially out, we will address it then to the whole Pack. This thing will be out and we will deal with it accordingly.”
“Dad!” I shouted. “You can’t leave it like that. What’s going on? You have to tell me what’s going on. Danny said a word … he said ‘Lycan’ to me. What did he mean? I know what a Lycan is, but why did he call me that?”
Lycans were our ancestors, the original werewolves. We evolved from them thousands of years ago. We were different from them now, but I didn’t know exactly how or why.
“Jessica, we will talk about this tomorrow,” he said firmly.
“I want to talk about it now.”
After years of dealing with each other, we’d both learned some very valuable lessons. If my father had no intention of telling me over the phone, he would hang up and that would be that. I would either accept his decision or hold it against him later, making his life harder than it needed to be.
I waited.
He sighed. “Jessica, I don’t know anything for sure, because I haven’t seen it myself, but I think it means you are able to do something no other werewolf has been able to do for thousands of years. There have only been myths and legends floating around about what our ancestors were truly capable of doing.”
“What do you mean?”
He sighed. “A True Lycan has not been witnessed in my lifetime. The term ‘Lycan’ specifically means you are able to maintain a perfect suspended form between beast and human. You are able to shift at will, while maintaining your human form. No other wolf can do such a thing.” He paused. “Including myself.”
Holy crap.
“It’s the ultimate fighting weapon, and it is revered in our legends as unparalleled. In the days of old, Lycans ruled the supernaturals. There were none stronger. We’ve evolved over the centuries to accommodate man, and have lost some of those great abilities.” My dad sounded tired as he added, “There is an old proverb among us that states, ‘He who holds the power of Lycan will be lord over all.’”
I was stunned into complete silence.
“I will be there in the morning. I will stop at the Safe House for an update from Tyler first. You are to stay in your apartment and you are not to leave. Do you understand me?”
“Yes.”
“Jessica, that is a direct order.”
“I understand.”
“Hand the phone to James.”
I did.
10
I ran a wet washcloth over my face and rinsed the last of the smeared blood down the drain. I’d been avoiding the mirror. Trying to imagine what I looked like as a half wolf, half human didn’t come easily to me.
I squared my shoulders over the sink. It was now or never. The mess in my living room wasn’t going to wait indefinitely.
Lifting my head, I gazed into my reflection.
I looked like my normal self, only more worn out.
My hair was messy, falling everywhere, but it was back to my regular length. I had contusions all over, but they were healing fast. I leaned in closer and saw a violet fleck flash like a banked ember in the farthest reaches of my irises. Calling them yellow now would be silly. There was nothing yellow about them.
I had violet eyes.
Just like my father.
I hadn’t remembered to tell my father that bit of news, but my eye color was the last thing I’d been thinking about. I grimaced in the mirror. Lycan must’ve been a horrid sight. A wolf in its full animal form was the most unbelievably beautiful creature in the world. But half a wolf?
Likely the worst.
The most captivating wolf in the world was my father. The image of him in his true form had been as much a part of me as anything I could remember as a little girl. He was glorious—his fur dark as coal, towering above all others, strong and dangerous, but breathtakingly beautiful at the same time. Truly magnificent.
I stepped away from the mirror, tossing my shredded running shoes into the plastic bag I’d grabbed from under the kitchen sink. My clothes would soon follow.
I tied up the contents and opened the bathroom door and headed out into the new chaos.
“The coast is officially clear,” Nick declared, turning to prop my broken door in the jamb behind him as he and Danny came back in. The door had been unlocked, but knowing I was in danger, James hadn’t waited to see, he’d simply come through it. “We corralled your neighbors and ushered them back inside their apartments quickly.”
James and Tyler had rolled the dead body into one of my spare sheets, and were in the process of discussing the best way to remove it from my apartment.
Danny chuckled. “Yes, we told the lot of them out there in the hallway that we were having a huge party and it had gotten a little out of sorts. And they bought it hook, line, and sinker.”
Nick snorted. “They bought it after I told them to buy it.”
“The only other issue was the police outside, but Nicky here took care of that as well.” Danny slapped Nick on the back. “Mighty fine gift, persuasion is.”
“The police were here?” I asked in alarm.
“Relax, Jess.” Nick came over and put his hands on my shoulders. “It wasn’t Ray, and they were just here to investigate a ‘noise’ disturbance—not a gruesome werewolf killing. I convinced them they were at the wrong building. Everything’s fine now.”
“Thanks.” My wolf paced inside my mind. She and I were both still agitated. “We have to get him out of here quickly.” I glanced at the rolled-up corpse. “And then we have to figure out what the hell is going on—why he was even here in the first place. I’ve only been a werewolf for a day. It seems too quick to have someone after me already, almost like this guy had been sitting by the phone.”
“We need to bring him back to the Safe House so we can look into his identity and figure out what’s going on,” James said.
“Agreed,” Tyler said. “We’ll take him off the balcony. Danny and I’ll go down in front and you can drop him out to us.”
I raised an eyebrow and interjected, “Um, that seems a little on the unsubtle side, don’t you think? Tossing a body-shaped object off my balcony is bound to be noticed by someone.”
They stared at me blankly.
Reasoning with wolves was going to require patience, but right now I had none. “Well, how about this, then,” I said. “If it does get noticed—and subsequently reported—I can’t afford any more scrutiny on me right now. In case you’ve all been living with your heads up your asses the last few days”—my voice rose several decibels as I spread my fingers apart and started emphatically ticking off—“I just finished killing a werewolf we know nothing about. I will likely have to testify in court about killing a pedophile imp. My apartment has already been the scene of a vicious, unexplainable break-in, which happened … oh, that’s right … four f**king days ago. An identified drug that could knock out a stable of animals was taken from my home”—my voice peaked as I slammed my pinky finger—“and I just made some freaky, impossible transformation into a beast, bound to have every superstitious werewolf in the entire goddamn universe gunning to end my life. So I refuse, refuse to add tossing a human body wrapped in my own bedding from my balcony to that damn list! Are we clear?” Tension radiated off me like a furnace. It swirled around the room, hot and palpable.