Masked By Danger by Christa Wick

Chapter Fifteen

Knocking twiceon a set of massive double doors near the heart of the cave system, Tanner shot a gravelly warning at Iris. "Remember Oscar is a cub, not a con."

Her fingers tingled with the threat of witch light, but Esme opened the door before Iris could succumb to the temptation of zapping the crabby old wolf on the tip of his scarred nose.

Stepping forward, Esme gently cupped Iris's shoulders, kissed her cheek, then repeated the assault on Tanner. He accepted the witch's attention with a stiff body and a look of spreading horror across his face.

"Are you coming in?" Esme asked him.

Tanner shook his head, his reaction a little too exaggerated unless they were entering some kind of plague house. Iris brushed past him, relished the way he recoiled from the contact, then stood quietly staring back at Tanner as Esme shut and locked the doors.

"I guess that leaves you to guard me," Iris said.

Catching the look that crossed the witch's face, she groaned.

"If Cade is here, why can't I smell more than traces of him?"

"He's in a shielded room," Esme explained, leading her down a hallway. "Denver and Oscar are with him. We hold a lot of security meetings here, so the first thing I did was put up an all-points spell in one of the bigger rooms, carve symbols in the rock walls and fill the etchings with silver—among other protective measures. Unless you're the one who did the spelling, it stops all abilities to detect what is on the other side—well, on either side. They are as in the dark about us as you are about them."

Coming to a stop, she gestured at another set of doors. "Here we are."

Iris waited for Esme to open the doors. Instead, the witch lightly curled a hand around Iris's wrist.

"You're trying to read me," Iris said. "I've noticed you touch people when you get stressed about them. Sometimes, you do it to push a calming energy at them. Other times, you're tugging at their thoughts. You're tugging right now. It feels like there are actual strings inside me that you're picking at. Disconcerting at a minimum."

"Sorry," Esme said, quickly withdrawing her hand. "It's a hard habit to control when I'm nervous."

"Well, stop worrying. I've questioned dozens of children while their trauma was fresh. I'm not going to be any less gentle or careful because Oscar is a shifter."

"Oh, I don't think that's my problem," Esme said, her gaze flicking at the double doors. "Not exactly. I think you will tread more carefully than you have with any child before. The energy in the room is bad, though. Denver is here to protect Oscar from you, and Cade is here to protect you from Denver."

Iris barked out a laugh then forced her expression into a stern frown. "Neither of them should be present, they can't help the process, only inhibit it."

Esme finally grabbed the door knob, her sigh escaping as she turned it and the internal bolt slid back. "And yet they are here, and here they shall remain."

The room was so well spelled that opening the door created a small breeze. With it came an odor that turned Iris's stomach.

"What is it?" Esme asked.

Iris brought a hand to her nose, desperately wishing she had the little stick of menthol rub she took to fresh homicide scenes.

"You can't smell it?" she said, slowly moving toward where the scent was strongest. Bypassing Cade, she stopped at the big club chair where Oscar sat on Denver's lap.

The cub looked up and smiled, his teeth like small pearls and his eyes like big, black opals. A beautiful, angelic child.

"Could you take Oscar for a second?" she asked the witch.

Esme complied despite the warning look on her mate's face. When she lifted the cub and started to walk away, the stench followed after her.

"You can give him back," Iris directed. "I'd like to talk to you in the hall again."

"What?" Esme asked once they were alone. "You literally turned green in there."

"There's an odor…something I've smelled once before."

"You've smelled all of them before," Esme snapped, her gaze sharp and worried. "What are you saying?"

"You were spelling Oscar at Cade's home," Iris answered, her brain casting around for explanations. "When I saw the cubs here in the caves, they were on the other side of a thick plate of glass. I can only tell you that, right now, he reeks of something I have only encountered once—the night Hank Mercer tried to kill me. He had two helpers, wolves I'd never met before. They weren't part of our clan. The scent is the same."

For a second, the claim against the cub was forgotten as Esme stared at Iris with a wide, distressed gaze.

"Hank Mercer tried to kill you? Does Cade know?"

"Focus," Iris bit out, immediately wishing she could take back the tone she had used. "Sorry, but what Cade knows isn't relevant now. But, yes, that's why I ran away. That's what you sensed when you said I needed to step the fuck up."

"I didn't say 'fuck,'" the witch whispered, her tenderhearted nature on display as her big green eyes grew luminous with the threat of tears. "And I'm sorry I snapped at you about it. But I feel you are incredibly important to our survival, regardless of whether you are Riya's heir."

Iris forced down the impulse to roll her eyes at the mention of the last All-Mother.

"Look, let's go back in, only spell Oscar as you were before. When I want you to stop, I'll tug my ear."

She demonstrated the gesture. "I want to confirm that the smell goes away when you're spelling him as opposed to something happening to him since he was at Cade's cabin."

Esme frowned. "I've held Oscar today. Shouldn't you smell it on me, too? Shouldn't you have—"

Iris threw her hand up. "I am not a wolf, damn it. I smelled Cade while I was still inside the club in Syracuse and he was a good thousand meters away outside. But even if you didn't have these damn doors spelled, my nose wouldn't tell me who was in the room. The stink would be there, though. I know that much."

"You feel that much," Esme corrected, her mouth stuck in a frown. "Maybe it's because you’re both a witch and a wolf…"

She trailed off before Iris could tell her to shut up again.

"We'll figure that bit out later," Esme said, then pushed into the room, her lips already moving, the nearly inaudible murmurs clearing the air around her as Oscar started to fall asleep in Denver's arms.

"That's enough," Iris said a few seconds later, forgetting all about the ear tug. Noticing the question burning in Denver's gaze, she butted her chin in his direction. "I'll answer your questions after I've spoken with Oscar."

The cub roused at her use of his name. Lifting his gaze, he offered a disarming smile of recognition. When Iris requested a pen and paper, he charmed both away from her and began filling the first sheet with spiraling, impersonal doodles as she asked him about the day Denver found him.

"I was hungry," he said, pulling tighter to the big wolf holding him. "Denver gave me beef jerky."

"Do you remember who gave you food before Denver?"

The pen froze in his hand, his face going blank for an instant before he shook his head, the dark curls bouncing as he offered one of his disarming smiles, the black gaze alight with tiny fireflies.

"I think you do remember," she said, placing a hand on Oscar's knee.

Magic flowed from her fingertips, lapping like the ocean tide at the boy's resistance.

Her chest squeezed in recognition at how many times she had used the same trick during homicide investigations. She hadn't been a fool about the wards she carved into her skin or the chants she knew, but she had been blind to using magic as an interrogation technique.

"Don't," Denver growled when he realized what Iris was doing. The chin that had been smoothly shaven when Iris entered the room now sported half an inch of stubble as he fought to keep his wolf in check.

Cade and Esme rose from where they sat.

"I really need you to leave—" Iris began.

Denver didn't let her finish. He slid Oscar onto the chair and stood, moving so that he loomed over Iris.

"No, you're leaving," he said, each word carefully enunciated as his fangs threatened to erupt. "You can start with the other cubs. Their memories are fresher and they arrived in better health."

Redirecting her attention to Denver, she leaned closer, an almost pleading tone coating her words. "You don't have to leave the room, but the clan needs as much space as you can give me. Oscar needs it."

Esme intervened, placed her open palm against Denver's chest and coaxed him toward the furthest corner. Her fingers softly glowed with witch light as the big wolf relented.

Iris turned her attention back to Oscar. Clearly feeling the distance that had been added between him and his fiercest protector, the boy looked up with a glitter of tears swimming in his gaze.

Seeing that broken look, Iris couldn’t help but do something she had never done with any other child she had interviewed; she scooped him up then sat down in the chair with him bundled on her lap.

The stench of what he’d been through covered him like a blanket, but she held him close and put her cheek against his as she spoke.

"We're going to play a game," she said, keeping her tone light despite her stomach curdling inside her body. "I want you to close your eyes and picture the color gray. Then, when I say a word or words, I want you to make a picture of them against the gray. Okay?"

Oscar nodded, his small frame relaxing in her arms and his head lulling back against her shoulder. Iris started easy, saying Denver's name.

"Gold," the boy said, joy lightening his tone.

"That's great," Iris continued, her eyes shut and her mind alert as the gray behind her own eyelids started to fill with Denver's image. Clearly, the cub viewed Denver as a giant because the image crowded the corners of Iris's vision. "How about Denver in his truck?"

A smaller version of Denver appeared, only his head and the top half of his upper chest visible through the vehicle's window. Lifting his hand, a toy fire engine appeared, its metal frame all red and shiny.

"And the first time you rode in Denver's truck, the place where the trip started."

The gray returned, the outline of dark slate bricks and black asphalt the only shapes discernible. The image matched the information in Oscar's file; Denver had found him in an alley on a cold, misty morning.

Oscar trembled against Iris. She wrapped her arms around him a little more tightly and urged warmth into his body in case he was merely remembering the damp chill of that place.

"Before the alley," she prodded.

Pure white, blinding in its brightness, filled her mind, the neurons of her brain momentarily seared.

She slipped into the memory, living it in real time with Oscar as the unbearable brightness eased to show her the antiseptic walls of an operating room.

In the room's center were not one, but two surgical tables. A pregnant woman was strapped down on the first table, her body seemingly nude but for restraints and a sheet that covered from just below the woman's collarbone to her ankles. The other table remained empty, but prepped.

Her mind’s eye turning as Oscar’s focus shifted, Iris saw the rolling tray between the two tables, its contents covered with a thin, sterile fabric. Carried by someone, Oscar was brought to the empty table. Iris watched as the scared cub—naked, shivering, and flailing—stopped fighting the person carrying him. With terror in his eyes and voice he clung desperately to his captor then, in an effort to stay off the table he could see he was destined to be strapped to like the woman.

The grip on him tightened as a deep, masculine voice told him quietly, “You're going to be my brave boy."

Oscar made a soft squeak of compliance as the man placed him on the steel gurney. The cub looked up, showing Iris a tall man wearing clothing as white as the room and a paper mask over his mouth and nose.

The man had black hair and a dark, volcanic gaze that frightened the boy even further.

The man’s pupils were indistinguishable from the irises. And the small veins that should’ve been red against the white of his eyes were black as tar.

That's the Bogeyman...

Oscar wasn’t speaking to her in his memory; he was talking to himself, his fearful brain strangling the name before it could escape his lips.

She felt the terror he did as he remembered why it was he knew that name.

Another cub had called the dark man that—once.

No one ever saw the boy again.