Bold Mercy by Laken Cane

Chapter Thirty-Three

Humans were resilient. Once Avis was gone and the attacks stopped, Jakeston picked itself up and slowly, with confusion and anger and lingering fear, began the long, arduous process of rebuilding their communities and figuring out how to live with their new normal.

The nonhumans simply went away. Bastien took his clan and they peppered themselves into new communities, unable to live as they had. Their lives were as chaotic and tenuous and frightening as the humans’, and maybe more so because now, they were known. The humans would be coming for them, and eventually, they would find them. They would find all of us.

Maybe governments would create divisions and teams and secret or not so secret labs, and the images of Avis and her vampires massacring humans in the diner would be shown, taken apart, added to, and used to keep people afraid. But for now, the rest of the world was torn. Some of them believed that Jakeston had been attacked by creatures who weren’t human. Some of them were hunters and knew the truth. But mostly, people who didn’t live in the city simply didn’t believe the stories of vampires on a rampage—or that vampires existed.

The councils were doing heavy damage control. So was the mayor. It made it easier that most of the world would rather laugh at Jakeston and its apparent out of control drug population than believe such horror existed. But humans had died, and more than one government organization sent agents into Jakeston.

Jakeston became its own little world, a world that knew the truth. Some of the people left for less dangerous places, but some of them stayed, and who knew what they thought. The media who’d attended the mayor’s meeting to introduce me were handled. I didn’t know how, and I didn’t ask. What they aired was heavily edited and while it still showed me and my friends as protectors of the city, the fight it showed after could easily have been staged. Most people believed it was.

The wolf packs stayed in their communities, for now. For now, the humans were suspicious of pale skin and people who couldn’t come into the sun. At least shifters had the sun. If Avis had succeeded in her attempts to make vampires less sun sensitive, things would have been worse for not only shifters, but humans.

We would continue to hide in plain sight for as long as we possibly could.

On the outside, things were calming. Life went on. But some of us knew that the power to turn humans with a single, poisonous, powerful bite was still out there, somewhere. Avis appeared to be the only one who possessed such power, but if she could do it, others could. Even now, the new power might be hidden in the humans she’d turned so quickly. Bastien was still master of the county, and he sent out teams to find and destroy the new vampires. But would they get them all? Unlikely.

I sat now on a park bench with Rick Moreno, staring out at the cold, empty grounds, discussing the threat we had yet to control. Samuel, aka Ray Christian, Lucy’s boyfriend. Serial killer.

Ash lay between us, his face on my leg, and I kept my hand on his warm body, reassuring myself that he was there. That he was okay. We’d gone to look for him after Lennon had disappeared, combing the streets for hours before finally, I’d gone home to change clothes. Ash had been lying by the front door, asleep. He hadn’t even been hungry. One of the neighbors had spotted him there and had given him a bowl of water. She’d also dumped what appeared to be half a bag of kibble on the porch.

Lucy was bouncing back to her normal bubbly self, but shadows lingered in her eyes. She couldn’t be near Rick, though she understood he had no memory of attacking her. She understood he wasn’t the one who’d hurt her, but still. It would take time.

She was furious with herself for misinterpreting her dreams about the serial killer, upset for having feelings for him, disappointed in herself for not seeing that the man she was dating was killing women. She’d never been happy with her gift, and now, it appeared as though she actively hated it.

“I’m no longer dreaming,” she’d told me, staring out the window of her room in Jared’s house. The Rose Inn was currently being renovated. One of the other pack members was going to run the place, and it had been renamed simply Shadowfield Inn.

Because Samuel was still free, Lucy couldn’t go home. She didn’t really want to, anyway, because she was still dreaming. She just couldn’t remember them when she woke up. She woke up screaming every single night, and my neighbors were done with that shit, especially after the nightmare of the vampires.

All our lives were in flux, and it was a rare person who had come out of November the same as when they’d gone in.

Rick didn’t believe the killer known as Samuel had stopped killing. He believed he’d been killing more, but with the chaos caused by the vampires, there were a lot of deaths to sort out. A lot of missing persons.

It was the perfect time to be a serial killer.

And with a serial killer’s instincts, it didn’t take him long to figure out we were on to him. A lot of that had to do with the one excuse Lucy made to him when he called her. She told him she couldn’t go to dinner because she wasn’t feeling well, so he offered to come over and cook for her. He’d nurse her back to health, he’d said. She’d frozen and hung up on him. He’d called back one time, and when she didn’t answer—I had been rocking her sobbing, shaking body in my arms while Rick and two other cops got to work trying to track the bastard.

They hadn’t found him, and in the past two weeks, there’d been no sign of him. Maybe he’d gone to a different city. Maybe.

Lucy and I continued to believe that her dreams hadn’t been a portent of Samuel capturing her—they’d simply shown that she was with him. They’d given her the warning, the feeling of doom, the fear. That was all.

Rick didn’t believe any of that. He believed that one day, Samuel was going to take Lucy. He wasn’t finished with any of us yet. Just in case, until he was caught, Lucy was going to be surrounded by constant protection. The killer wasn’t a powerful nonhuman—he was simply a man with a twisted brain, and God knew there were plenty of those in the world. Joe, completely back to normal, and three of the mayor’s security team were her constant, subtle companions. Wherever she was, they were there, as well, though she couldn’t see them.

Jared had offered his wolves to help, and they would have done it simply because he asked, but they didn’t want to. They had their own lives and worries to deal with. I’d refused his offer.

Saul, my “handler,” had informed me yesterday that a meeting had been scheduled between me and the council for the eighteenth of December, and they would send a car to pick me up. I hadn’t refused that.

“How are things with Jared?” The detective was a little too casual with his question, but I could see the tightness around his eyes. Jared had given Lennon her freedom in exchange for her healing Rick, but he’d done that for me. Not the detective. Whenever they were around each other, there was a tension in the air that hadn’t been there before.

Lucy said it was because Jared knew Rick cared too much about me. He also believed that I’d chosen Rick over the pack. He was wrong about that. I’d chosen me over the pack. The pack didn’t want me there, even more now that Lennon had been marked as a traitor and banished, despite the fact that she’d only been trying to drive me out and protect them. I didn’t hear them speak those words, but I saw the accusations in their stares. I noticed how they avoided me when I came to Shadowfield.

My father had planted the seeds, and Lennon had tended them, watering them until they’d sprouted into a huge, thick, impenetrable forest of trees.

And that was okay. I didn’t belong there. I’d always known that, really. I belonged in the city, chasing out ghosts and talking to spirits and killing rogues with my friends. The city had changed, and we would change with it.

Then we’d see—but I believed we—we being the wolves—would be okay. For now.

“Things with Jared,” I replied, “are…different. Just like everything else. November was a real son of a bitch, Detective. It appears as though the demons were either killed or sucked back into their own worlds. And the spirits, if they found themselves here, are being quiet.”

Honestly, I knew next to nothing about what had happened to the demons. I’d killed some of them. Maybe there weren’t a lot to begin with. I also had no idea how Avis had gotten them to do her bidding. Someday I might get the answers to the questions of the worst November I’d ever experienced, but if I never did, I wouldn’t be surprised.

“Some of the spirits that came through,” he said, his gaze distant and his voice somewhat wistful. “Do you think they’re still here? Just hanging around, waiting to cause trouble?”

Almost before the question was completely out of his mouth, a scarred, beautiful black angel with tangled hair and glass-green eyes sat down beside me.

“Nicole,” I murmured. “I remember you now.”

“Pardon?” Rick said.

I smiled. “Yes,” I told him. “I think some of them are still here.”

Waiting to cause trouble?

That remained to be seen.

~*~

Ready for more Kait? Click here for Bad Medicine, book 4.

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