Discovery of a Queen by Elizabeth Brown
Chapter Thirteen
When we finally reach the village the Rocky Mountain Pack called home, I’m surprised to see that it’s mostly untouched by the battle. Given the carnage on the battlefield, I assumed the town would be leveled, and we wouldn’t have much luck finding anything. But this gives me hope. There are a few bodies littering the main street, and what appear to be claw and scorch marks on buildings, but aside from that, the buildings all seem to be largely intact. The village is quaint, and the main street is lined with small cottages that have seen better days. There aren’t many stores, but there is a large neon sign for a pub, which doesn’t surprise me. Shifters love to party. What does surprise me is that there aren’t any cars parked by any of the cottages. A few have a bike or two, but no cars.
“Did you all have a self-sustaining thing going on here?” I’m curious. Most pack land is so far off the beaten path the pack is either self-sustaining or everyone has a car to get into the nearest town for supply runs. Now that my pack has the witch coven, it’s a lot easier to get to and from anywhere we need to go, but the Rocky Mountain Pack doesn’t have any witches.
“Sean, his old beta, and some of his enforcers had cars. They were always put out whenever someone asked for a supply run, so we learned how to be as self-sufficient as possible.” Patrick shrugs. “When I became beta, Sean said I needed to earn the right to use the car, but it was easier for me to command an enforcer to go into town to get things we couldn’t make ourselves.”
“Wait.” I hold my hands up and everyone stops walking. “Are you telling me they didn’t want to go get supplies for the pack? And the pack hadn’t already been self-sufficient prior to Sean taking power?”
“No. From what I understand, the old alpha actually had everyone on a rotation for going into town. Most of the pack had jobs in town too. Sean stopped all that shortly after becoming alpha.” I exchange looks with Caleb and Dante. That is highly unusual, and it makes little alarm bells ring.
“How long was Sean the alpha?” I focus on keeping myself calm and expect to hear the worst.
“About fifty years,” Patrick replies. Both Caleb and Dante curse under their breaths. “I realize I’m fairly young to be beta, but like I said, I wanted to try to make a difference.”
“This isn’t about you, Patrick. I’m not discrediting you in any way. This is about the shitshow Sean left for us to deal with. I can’t believe how badly he let your pack down.” While fifty years isn’t a long time for a shifter, it’s nothing to laugh at either. For the younger generations of shifters, this is all they would have known. I can’t fathom younger shifters growing up in a pack that doesn’t care about them, that has an alpha who doesn’t want to see the pack flourish.
“This way. The alpha’s manor is down here,” Patrick states, trying to diffuse the tension that has taken over the group at our discussion. He leads us down a dead-end road that comes to an abrupt stop at a large house.
While the packhouse on our land is a mansion, this house seems to simply be over the top. It looks like a small villa rather than a house. Patrick said it was the alpha’s manor, not the pack’s manor. I’d never met an alpha who didn’t live in a community centered home. This house is the only one on the street, and it’s set back far enough from the main road that it was clearly built for privacy. This screams sketchy.
The front door looks a little worse for wear, but it’s still locked when we reach it. Patrick mumbles that he doesn’t have a key, so I step up and use my magic to unlock the door. Patrick sidles up next to me and pushes the door open. The house is dark, and someone flicks on the lights.
“He lived here alone?” I ask, as I take in everything before me.
This place shouts wealth. There are marble floors and a polished hardwood banister, and signed artwork lines the walls. Most packs are fairly well off, it helps that we live so long, but for the most part, any money a pack member makes goes into a joint account for the entire pack. We all look after one another. If an elderly member of the community can’t work, the joint account helps fund that individual’s needs. It sends kids to college and funds repairs on everything—medical bills, legal fees, you name it. Individuals can certainly keep whatever they want of their personal funds, but typically there’s no need since the joint account provides all the money a pack member could ever need. But this looks like Sean was living the high life. I certainly hope the rest of his pack members’ homes look this good too.
Caleb and Dante both growl at the opulence before us. I can feel through the bond that Caleb is thinking along the same lines I am, so it’s safe to assume Dante is as well. All members of the supernatural community are the same. We work to build the community. Which, I feel, is something the humans could learn from us. Humans are so focused on instant gratification and individual fulfillment that they forget they’re part of a larger whole, and if that whole suffers, so do they. I’m not entirely sure how they don’t grasp the concept, but there it is nonetheless.
“Do the other pack homes look like this?” Caleb questions slowly, his voice a low hiss.
“No. The rest of the pack lives far more modestly than Sean did. Frankly, once I became beta and I started to look into things, I quickly realized that while Sean might have been getting extra funds, he was spending far more than he was making. I’m not entirely sure of the financial state of the pack though. I was just starting to look into it when the Council arrived.”
This time, I join Caleb and Dante when they growl. What a leech. If Sean wasn’t already dead, I’d challenge him myself. He wasn’t fit to be alpha. How the hell are the demons able to corrupt so many alphas? Admittedly, this is only the second one I’ve come across, and nothing is official against Sean right now, but even one alpha is too many. Demons shouldn’t be able to infiltrate a pack that deeply. To do it to two packs defies everything I’ve ever known about being part of a community.
“Take us to Sean’s study.”
Patrick nods at me and guides us to the second floor of the manor. The door in front of us is also locked. What was with this guy and keeping people out?I quickly unlock the door with magic and step into the study.
Like everything else in this trash heap, it’s over the top and far too expensive. An ornately carved desk dominates the room. Instead of bookshelves, there are antique guns mounted on the walls. There is only one tiny window, and that has bars over it. What the hell was this guy doing in here?
Turning to look at the others, I order, “Patrick, take Caleb and Dante to other areas of the house. The basement and Sean’s personal room specifically. If the doors are locked, break them down. We need answers, and it’s best if we split up. Patrick, once you’ve done that, I want you to go collect any of the information you were working with before the attack.” Surprisingly, no one argues, and they all move off.
I’m inspecting the guns on the wall when I hear a crash, followed seconds later by a second crash. Sean apparently has a lot to hide. Not a good sign. Thankfully, the guns appear to just be for show. While guns don’t hurt shifters or vampires, they can hurt witches and humans. I make my way over to the desk, taking a moment to look out the small, barred window. It’s just a view of the trees. What was he trying to protect himself from?If demons wanted to get in here so badly, bars on a window wouldn’t stop them. So were they just for show?
I turn back to the desk. The top has been cleared off completely except for a laptop. I’m going to bring that back with me and have Kelly hack into it. There are three drawers on either side and the typical center drawer. All are locked. Fighting the urge to roll my eyes at the level of paranoia, I unlock all the drawers with a wave of my hand. I completely pull out the center drawer. It’s filled with pens, sticky notes, highlighters, and paperclips. An obscene number of paperclips. Who needs this many paperclips? I flip the drawer over, looking for anything attached at the base or any sort of false bottom either inside or outside the drawer. Nothing.
I move on to the set of three drawers that go down the right-hand side of the desk. Starting from the bottom, I pull out the drawer completely. This looks a little more promising. This drawer was meant for filing, and even though he was a paranoid little shit, Sean seems to have at least kept great records. I stack the files on top of the laptop to look through more thoroughly later. Again, I search for any false bottoms. I place both discarded drawers on the floor beside me. I repeat this process for each drawer until I come to the middle drawer on the left-hand side.
“Very clever, little queen!”Malick steps out of the shadows, slowly clapping his hands. Instantly on guard, I reach for my dragon only to find her missing. How can he keep doing this? I grasp for my magic instead and feel it swell inside me. Sending it cascading out around me, I realize Malick isn’t really here. Am I…In his mind again?
“We have a winner!”Malick grins at me as he leans a hip against the desk. “You’re once again inside my mind, little queen.”
“How?”
“I can’t give you all the answers! What would be the fun in that?”He chuckles as he stares into my eyes. I fight the urge to punch him in the face, knowing it won’t do me any good.
“What the hell do you want?”
“Why, I should think that was obvious, no? You. And you had best prepare yourself, I am going to have you soon.”
* * *
With a heaving breath,I realize I’m back to myself again. Taking a shaky, deep inhale, I sit down on the chair I pushed out of the way earlier to get to the desk. I hate that I’m this unsettled by Malick. Hate that he has the power to rattle me at all. I run my fingers through my hair and take another deep breath.
“Are you okay?”Caleb’s voice soothes my rattled nerves and helps steady me.
“Malick.”
“I’m coming.”And I’m weak enough not to tell him there’s no point. Every fiber of my being is calling out for my mate.
It was like you were asleep again. My dragon brushes against my mind like a cat rubbing against its owner. One minute you were going through the drawer and the next I couldn’t reach you. I can sense her fear, it mirrors my own. Caleb stalks into the room, quickly kneeling in front of me and taking my hands.
“What the bloody hell happened?” His voice is gruff, and his accent is thicker than normal.
“It was like last night.”
“Last night? You never said anything about being with Malick last night.” I wince. I didn’t exactly have time to tell him.
“There’s a lot to share. I want to do it once in front of everyone. Will you help me go through the rest of the drawers? We can tackle the basement together.”
“No need.” His tone is still gruff, but his accent is back to normal now. “The basement is filled with cells. They were empty, but the scents in most were recent. Hopefully whatever you find in here will shed some light on who he was keeping down there.”
I give a shaky nod, and Caleb stands to go through the drawer I abandoned. He stills and slowly lifts something out of it. I blink and focus on the item in his hand. A shiver crawls down my spine, and I instantly feel as though I’ve been submerged in an ice bath. It’s a demon talisman. From what I understand of them, they’re used when the demon has made a deal with an individual. It acts as a two-way radio and a spyglass all rolled into one nasty little package. They are typically either an actual mirror or, in this case, a piece of obsidian.
“Put that on the desk. It’s best not to touch a demon talisman for long.” Caleb looks disgusted and quickly drops the talisman on the desk. There isn’t anything else in that drawer, so he opens the last. It’s another series of files, which he puts on my pile.
He spends a small amount of time taking apart the rest of the desk to ensure nothing else is hidden within it. While Caleb’s tackling the desk, both Dante and Patrick return to the study. Patrick has a small pile of files and Dante has a portable safe, what appears to be some journals, and a large trash bag. We’re going to have our work cut out for us when we get back to the packhouse.
“Ayla, we found the alpha,” the wolf shifter from my pack who went with Connor announces. I let out a tired sigh and physically nod before realizing that the wolf can’t see me.
“Thanks, Sasha. We’ll be right there.”I look at my companions and gesture to the front of the house.
“They found Sean. We need to gather all of this and head out. But first—” I look down at the talisman on the desk. “First we need to put that in something so we can neutralize it before going back through the portals.”
Dante nods, gently places his items down, and speeds from the room, returning moments later with a small cloth pouch. He flips the bag inside out to grab the talisman and puts it in the bag. I take it from him and tie the strings of the bag to my shorts. I really wish women’s clothes came with pockets. Once it’s secure, we head toward Sean’s body.
“You said you found cells in the basement,” I start. Caleb nods and points to his front pocket. Why do guys get all the pockets? Rude.
“I got pictures on my phone.”
“Oh, that’s great!”
He grins at me. “I was thinking that they were probably used to house the shifters he was selling before he could get them off pack land. It’s a risky move, but if the pack met somewhere else and they weren’t allowed at his house, it’s doable.”
“We’d have pack meetings at the old town hall,” Patrick informs us. His eyes flick between me and Caleb before he continues, “Sean never had people at his house, not even women, as far as I know. He would always go to the lady’s house. Some of the females had made it a bit of a competition to see if they could get Sean to take ‘em home. He never did.”
“Dante, what’s in the bag?” I point to the large, black trash bag he’s carrying.
“Drugs. It’s nothing commonly used by humans, at least from what I can tell. It doesn’t smell like cocaine, meth, heroin, or anything like that. This is new. It smells enchanted.”
“I wonder if that’s how he sedated the females. But there are easier ways to sedate shifters, even strong, dominant female shifters. I know Malcolm said something about producing a new drug, but do you have any idea if it was just to get shifters high or if Sean planned on using it for something else, Caleb?” Caleb shakes his head. “Damn. Hopefully, we’ll be able to put more pieces together once we get back home.”
* * *
We makeit to Sean’s corpse fairly quickly. He was taken out right outside of town. The state of his body suggests the demons who killed him didn’t want him recognized. If we thought Jonas was bad when he showed up in our town, Sean is at least ten times worse. His face looks as though it’s melted off, his skin has been shredded, and he’s been scalped.
It only takes me a quick glance to confirm that he’s tainted, and it’s as though I’ve been hit in the face with a baseball bat. Memories flood my mind, breaking through a dam and inundating my brain with images, smells, and impressions, all of it coming at once. It overloads my system. I collapse to my knees, clutching my head. It’s too much. The world goes dark.