Dark Veil (The Society Series Book 3) Page 7

  Cade watched as it landed on the driveway and shook his head slowly. If his life didn’t feel like it was falling apart, he might have laughed at Stephen’s reaction.

  “She is a vegetarian. You don’t need that shit. Go with the mental one.”

  “You’re not my type,” Cade drawled.

  “Oh, touché.” Stephen held up the last picture.” What about this one then? Natalie. She is the oldest ... I swear, their mother must have churned these girls out one after the other ... pop, pop, pop.”

  “Asshole,” Cade muttered as Stephen stuck his finger into his mouth and made a popping sound.

  “Oh, come on. Look at her. She’s pretty. She eats meat, no mental issues ... nice pair of …”

  Cade gave him a hard look.

  “Teeth ... I was going to say teeth.” His eyes widened suddenly as if impressed by something else he had just read. He jammed the paper in front of Cade. “Look at this. She wants to work for the DSA. Perfect.” Cade exhaled heavily and fixed his gaze on the house—where his mate, and entire reason for living, was calling to him. He went to join Stephen where he was leaning against the car. Stephen stopped his teasing banter and grew quiet.

  “If Gemma doesn’t come away with me … if she decides she doesn’t want our child …” Cade’s voice trailed off. “Fuck.”

  It was a mess for sure, one that Stephen was glad he didn’t have just now, although if he didn’t get his shit together, his father was sure as hell going to pick a mate for him—and their taste in women was very, very different. “What are you going to do?”

  “I have no idea. I don’t want to mate another woman. But if Gemma carries on being stubborn about this, what choice do I have? This is Phoenix’s life we’re dealing with.”

  There was no denying Cade’s words—the only way he could avoid mating with one of the Castle women and being with Gemma instead was if she agreed to run away with him. Stephen exhaled heavily before finally saying, “You’re going to have to pick one of them then … unless Gemma changes her mind.”

  A tick started to work in Cade’s jaw. “She wants to abort the baby,” He raked his fingers through his hair and expelled a frustrated breath. “She thinks that it will be best if I just go off and mate with this woman.”

  “And what do you want?”

  Grim determination was written in the lines of his face. “Gemma.”

  Stephen’s brow puckered in consternation. If the news of the baby came out, there would be problems—big problems—especially between wolves and tigers.

  “I can't let her have an abortion, Stephen. This is our baby.” He swore. “I can't even fathom it.”

  “I have to hand it to you and my sister,” Stephen said, shaking his head. “You make my shit look like child’s play.” He placed a hand on Cade’s shoulder, peace washing over him at the only contact his mind seemed to permit. He hesitated, then said in a sombre tone, “Whatever you decide, I’m here for you. If Exile is the way you want to go, as much as I hate the idea, I’ll help you in any way I can.”

  Cade stared at his friend, gratitude sweeping through him. He knew how much all this was costing him too, how hard it was to make this decision. “I don’t even know if Phoenix will come with us ... if he would even want to. He’s got pretty attached to you and your mum.”

  “Yes,” he agreed, “but you are more like a father to him—he looks up to you. He’s bonded with you more than anyone else.” Stephen didn’t mention that Phoenix had been looking for his real father. It wasn’t something he was willing to tell Cade about even now. It was Phoenix’s choice and his right to do what he wanted. Right now, Cade couldn’t deal with it ... he had enough to handle already. Stephen would talk to the boy himself—tomorrow maybe.

  Cade nodded, though he didn’t look convinced. He motioned towards the house with his head. “Shall we get this done? I can't think about this shit anymore.”

  “Sure.” Maybe focusing on the murdered girl and the mystery of the strays was just what Cade needed right now. Stephen’s father needed to know about the girl they had just found, as well as the other five before her. They were strays and didn’t matter, but they were being killed. Maybe Society and Council needed to take notice for once. What if it got too close to home?

  Malcolm Davies, Stephen and Gemma’s father, was in his office, as always, sitting at his desk writing away on something. Stephen wondered how it was that he didn’t either die from the boredom of it all or go blind from all the reading. One day it would all be his, and he wasn’t looking forward to the shackles that chained his father to the desk. He had no desire to be a pen-pushing leader.

  Malcolm sat reading the file they had given him and listening carefully as they informed him about the girl and the five strays. It seemed they had all been injected and then dumped—not all of them in water, but all of them had tattoos behind their ears, like some kind of mark. There were high rates of tranquilizers in their systems, too. It suggested they had been given them frequently, and in excessive doses. But this also meant that the culprit was probably Human. No Other would need to chemically restrain someone. What they were being killed for was another thing that they couldn’t figure out.

  “Who else knows about these?” Malcolm inquired when they were done bringing him up-to-date.

  “Just DSA,” Cade said. “They’re strays … no one is interested.”

  He nodded and slowly rose to his feet. “I’d like it to stay that way.” Malcolm was as tall as Stephen, but he was slender in his stature compared to his son’s well-built frame. He strode across the room, his long legs covering the distance quickly as he headed to the other meeting room—the silent room. This was where he went when he wanted privacy. “Come with me,” he instructed them both. “And close the door behind you.”

  Malcolm moved to the other side of the room where he kept more files and more papers. He searched through one of the drawers until he located an envelope. He opened it and pulled out some pictures, which he slid across the table to Cade and Stephen.

  “What are these?” Cade asked.

  “Another three that you can add to your pile.” Stephen felt his stomach turn over. Three more … bloody hell. And his father hadn’t said a thing to him. He was meant to be the alpha’s second, and yet he had these secrets. He stared hard at his father, his anger evident, but Malcolm showed no reaction.

  “Where are these from?” asked Cade.

  “Other Societies.”

  Stephen turned his attention to the photos, deciding he needed to sit and have a heart to heart with Malcolm later on. If he was to take over one day, Malcolm had to fucking talk to him about shit. He picked up one of the photos to get a closer inspection. All the victims were female. Age didn’t seem to matter; neither did what species they were, or even their colour. The only thing they had in common was their gender.

  Malcom pulled out a folded map and laid it out open on the table. The locations of where the bodies had been found had been marked with red crosses. “See here?” Malcolm pointed to a spot at the top of the map. “Inverness. This is where the first body was found. The Society there didn’t bother so much; they were just strays in their eyes. Then the next one moves down a bit, still Scotland, but just before the border.” He ran his finger from one point to the next. “Then this one—Cumbria.”

  Cade grabbed a pencil from the pot in the middle of the table and indicated to the map. “May I?”

  Malcolm gave a curt nod. “Of course.”

  Cade added red crosses to six more locations on the map, then pointed to one. “The one here was found dumped in an alleyway. Same thing ... homeless, tattoo behind the ear.” He moved onto the next cross, and then the next, giving details about each incident. Each and every one had been a vagrant, each marked behind the ear. “Then we have this one, tonight.”

  Malcolm stood looking down at where Cade was pointing on the map, his expression pensive with each new bit of information.

  “When did the one in Cumbria happe
n?” Stephen asked him.

  “It was August—late August.”

  “So that is just before the first one we have,” Cade said contemplatively. “The one before tonight’s was three weeks ago ...”

  “That means this dump was recent,” Stephen mused.

  “Exactly.” Cade frowned. “Did we have a high tide recently?”

  “I don’t know.” Stephen glanced down at the map, his mind looking for links. “Five bodies are a lot for the area. They get killed, and whoever it is moves on.”

  “Chances are they have moved on again then,” added Cade.

  Stephen took the pencil from Cade and drew around the Manchester area. “Here,” he said and then drew around Liverpool. “And here. One is left, one is right. They're the two major places if we’re looking for Society areas.”

  Malcolm studied the map in a long silence and then nodded slowly in agreement. “I think you’re right. So far, these bodies have turned up near Societies. There is a little one in Lancaster, but that’s part of this one mostly.” He glanced at Stephen and then Cade. “I need you to both go scope these areas. One each. Cade, you go to Liverpool,” he pointed at Stephen, “and you take Manchester. I’ll call their alphas and let them know you are coming. This stays under wraps. You speak to the alphas only. I want to know if there are more. If this is something Human …”

  “We can't let them know we know,” Stephen agreed.

  “We can't give them a head start. I’ll make arrangements for you to stay somewhere.”

  “And Phoenix?” Cade asked Malcolm. “I can't leave him home alone, and I can't leave him with my father. Trevor would …”

  “Take him with you,” Malcolm cut him off.

  “He’s just a kid,” Stephen protested. “Maybe we can take Gemma, too? She can look after him.”

  Cade shot Stephen a look of What the fuck … but Stephen ignored him.

  “Fine. Gemma goes, too. The four of you leave tomorrow first thing. Get your animals focused. I’ll make the arrangements.”

  There was nothing else to discuss. Malcolm left the room, leaving Cade and Stephen staring after him. They said nothing to each other as they emerged from the room and out into the hallway. A sound from the stairs had Cade’s head whirling around, his heart thudding fiercely in his chest as his eyes fell on Gemma standing there.

  After a minute, Stephen rested his hand on Cade’s shoulder. “I’ll see you out.” This wasn’t the place for the shit they needed to talk about.

  Once outside, Cade turned to Stephen. “What was that all about?”

  Stephen raised his eyebrows questioningly.

  “Us all going.”

  “Well, you are in an impossible situation, and how could you leave without being noticed? Take it as fate offering you a hand. Now you can both leave your homes. They expect us to be gone a while. You’ve just been handed a head start. Now you have to decide if you want to take it. Just make the right decision.”

  Stephen left Cade at his car debating his words. He didn’t have a clue whether Cade would grab the opportunity or not, but he hoped to hell that his logic would make the right choice and not lead them onto a path that got them killed.

  Chapter Nine

  Gemma leaned against the window, staring at Cade as he stood outside talking to her brother. He didn’t look her way at all, absorbed in whatever it was they were talking about. She pressed her palm against the cool glass and felt the prickle of tears behind her eyes. He didn’t even glance back at the house as he walked away. Maybe he had decided he wanted nothing more to do with her. Maybe he really was that upset with her. Her heart was so heavy in her chest that it made it hard to breathe.

  Days had gone by and she hadn't seen nor heard from him. It wasn’t like him—not at all. It was against the wolf, too. She thought his wolf would have been clawing at the walls to get here … but apparently not. It left her feeling unsettled inside. She had thought that he would never leave her, that it would never be over between them—it couldn’t be—yet, as he took each step farther away from her, her crying heart began to wonder.

  She ran a hand over her flat stomach. Their unborn child was growing inside her every day, and she was alone. This wasn’t how she had imagined it would be when she had a baby. It was meant to be a magical time, not one that made her scared not only for her life, but for Cade’s and the baby’s, too.

  Gemma cracked the window open slightly so that she could listen to them, but they were too far away to hear anything above a muffled sound. She tried to lean in closer, but she only caught words here and there—nothing that she could make any sense of. Stephen saw Cade to his car and then he stood at the foot of the driveway to watch him drive off. Longing tugged inside Gemma as she watched the glow of the red lights slowly vanish in the dark of the night. Cade was going back to his home and his life, and it seemed she was a part of neither. He had seen her, yet he had left.

  She slumped onto her bed and hugged herself for comfort. Her tiger pushed inside, asking for release. She hadn't shifted in days—not since she had found out that she was pregnant—but her tiger grew more demanding with each passing night. Gemma lay on her side, curling her feet up on the bed and closing her eyes. Nothing mattered. Not even running. Her tiger could very well burst through, but she didn’t care in that moment. She lay with her hand resting on her stomach. It was still flat and she couldn’t feel the life growing inside her yet, but she knew that it was there. Her skin hummed with the new life, a strange calmness to it—some kind of peace within. Maybe all expectant mothers felt this way. She wished she could ask her own mother, or even share these moments with her. Even that had been stolen from her—from both of them. Emily had borne three children. Gemma sighed and let her eyes close, hoping that sleep would take her and give her some peace. She didn’t wish to be awake anymore. But just as sleep reached for her, there was a light knock on her bedroom door before it opened, jolting her from her limbo.

  “Gem?” Stephen entered without invitation or answer and closed the door behind him. There was no need to turn the light on—they were both tiger, their eyesight perfect in the dark.

  “He’s gone home?” she whispered.

  “Yes.” He sat down on the edge of the bed and brushed her hair off her face, his gentle touch soothing. It was more than she deserved, but she needed this connection, the warmth that he was offering.

  “I've fucked everything up, haven’t I?”

  Stephen’s lips curled into a small smile. “A little bit, but life is boring without the shit we throw into it.” He slid further back onto the bed so that Gemma had to move her legs to avoid getting them crushed. He patted the side of the bed next to him and motioned for her to join him. She sat up and shuffled over with her blankets, wrapping them around herself as he placed and arm around her and she nestled against his chest.

  He must have been for a run. He smelt of the earth, a scent that she craved, one that called to her inside. She closed her eyes and made herself push past it, but her skin prickled, her tiger agitated.

  “He’s not going anywhere, you know.”

  “He didn’t even say hi.”

  Stephen pulled her in tighter against him, making her feel safe for a moment—safe from the outside world at least. “He doesn’t want to fight.” Stephen shifted to get comfortable, but didn’t let Gemma go. “Are you really going to let him get mated to one of those woman?”

  “What choice do I have?” she said miserably. She had thought through every possibility at least a hundred times. Her mind was tired, none of the damn scenarios seeming to end in any kind of happy ever after. Most of them ended with her or Cade, or both of them, dead, and that wasn’t something she was willing to risk. “If I get rid of the baby, then there is no threat. Everything would be how it was.”

  Stephen slid down a little so that he could face his sister. He stroked her cheek with warm fingers. “If you get rid of the baby, Cade will never forgive you … and maybe neither will you. Can you really do
it? Could you let someone kill your child?”

  No. No, she couldn’t. She knew it, Stephen knew it, and maybe deep down inside, Cade knew it, too. She closed her eyes and rubbed down her arms. The itch bubbled just under the surface of her skin, all the stress of everything making it feel a hundred times worse.

  “Are you okay?” asked Stephen, frowning. “And I don’t mean all of this shit, I mean physically.”

  She bit down on her lip and nodded. “What was he here for? Cade, I mean.”

  Stephen hesitated, concern etching his features. When Gemma waited patiently, he said, “I found a girl today. She was dead … probably murdered.” Gemma’s breathing grew shallow, as if she was struggling to breathe. Stephen scowled at her. “Are you sure nothing is wrong?”

  “I’m okay,” she whispered. “Tell me about the girl.”

  He paused before reluctantly continuing. “I was running near the Estuary and I spotted her in the water. Some fucker had weighted her down, but the tide must have gone out and I saw her. I had to call it in ... got the DSA down there.”

  “Cade is working on it?”

  “Yeah. He got called out.”

  Gemma sat up slowly, crossing her legs as she did. Her mind swam with everything, her tiger very close to the edge. One wrong move from anyone and she was going to snap. The tiger just needed the nod. “Was it someone important?” she asked. Not that she cared so much right then, but it helped to focus her mind.

  “Just a stray.”

  Gemma opened her eyes and frowned. “I don’t understand. Why did Cade need to come here if it was just a stray?” She rubbed up and down her arms again, the itch seeming to spread upwards. No matter how much she scratched, she couldn’t quite get rid of it.

  She could feel Stephen watching her, but she couldn’t stop scratching. The itch inside just got deeper and more intense. “She was body number five.” He eyed her suspiciously. “They all have tattoos on them, so they are linked in some way. We needed to tell Dad that.”