Shimmer (Wicked Woods #2) Read online

  George leaned over and whispered something to her. Aunt Sophie looked past Briony to Kevin, and Briony felt his touch on her tense.

  “Is he? Well then. It seems that we have our answer.”

  Chapter 7

  With things finally decided, most of the others went back to enjoying their afternoon on the boat. Briony, however, couldn’t help feeling a little worried about Kevin, and what might happen as he tried to contact other werewolves. Would they trust him? Would they want anything to do with him? After all, he had thrown one of their own around to help Briony shortly after they had first met. He had stopped the werewolf Carol, who came after Briony at the diner, from biting Briony the first day Briony met Kevin. Would they take that as badly as the vampires had taken Fallon lashing out at one of his own?

  Briony raised that question as Kevin was going over a few of the details with George and Aunt Sophie.

  “I’ll be fine,” Kevin assured her. “No one cares much about the odd brawl. After all, werewolves spend a lot of time fighting among themselves.”

  “Oh, that makes me feel so much better.”

  “I’m certain the young man will be all right,” Aunt Sophie said. She managed to sound a little concerned, which is more than Briony thought she might have managed for a werewolf. Then again, she was probably just thinking about how much it would hurt Briony to have yet another person close to her hurt.

  “I’ll be fine,” Kevin repeated.

  Briony thought for a moment. “Do you even know the right people among the werewolves to get a message to? I mean, do they have a leader of some kind?”

  “There’s a werewolf king,” George said from the wheel. “An alpha wolf. Kevin will need to speak with him.”

  “Of course,” Kevin said, “that runs into the slight problem that I don’t know anything about him. I ran with a couple of the local groups for a week or two when I was first turned, but I didn’t stick around long enough to get to meet the king. Some of the stuff they did…”

  His voice held a haunted note as he tailed off. Briony put her hand in Kevin’s, ignoring the look Aunt Sophie gave her as she did it.

  “That’s fine,” George said. “I think I know more than enough to let you find him.”

  “And should it come to it,” Aunt Sophie added, “I’m sure you could always sniff him out in the forest. Or simply ask one of the other young werewolves in town. There seem to be plenty of them around these days.”

  Was there an edge to that? Briony wasn’t sure whether it was intended as just a comment, or as some kind of reminder to her of what Kevin was. She decided to ignore it. Kevin didn’t.

  “There are a lot in human form, Mrs. Edge. Trying to fit in. Trying not to get killed. Would you rather we did that, or would you rather we went out into the woods and gave in to the hunger?”

  “At least in the woods there aren’t ordinary people around, young man.”

  “Nobody to keep them human inside, more like. Nobody to remind them that they aren’t just animals.”

  George coughed pointedly. Both Kevin and Aunt Sophie glared at him. “Is this really the best time to have this discussion? We have a nest of vampires to deal with, remember?”

  The two of them gave up their argument reluctantly. Maybe it helped that Briony still was holding Kevin’s hand. She doubted that her great aunt wanted to have that particular conversation again. Aunt Sophie went off to play with Jill’s daughter Sarah, while Kevin wandered over to Maisy and Steve. Briony stayed where she was as George started to guide the boat back to shore.

  “I will say this for you, girl,” George said. “You’re not someone to make things easy for yourself.”

  “That’s true,” Briony admitted.

  “Just be sure that you know what you are doing. I hear you spent the night at that boy’s place?”

  Briony nodded, more than a little embarrassed to be having this conversation with her boss. “It wasn’t like that. Kevin was just trying to keep me safe.”

  “I don’t doubt it,” George said. “Just remember that there’s more than one kind of safe.”

  Briony started to ask him what he meant by that, but she was pretty sure she could guess. She had to admit too that George had a point. Being that close to Kevin was certainly… tempting.

  “Come back to the diner with us,” George said, apparently changing the subject. “Come and see how the ‘renovations’ are going. It will give you some more time to reassure Sophie that everything is all right, and that she can leave you where you are for a few days, until it’s safe to come back.”

  Briony nodded. It was probably a good idea. Besides, she wanted to see how things at the diner were. When they got back to dry land, she and Kevin followed George and Aunt Sophie down to the diner while the others headed home. Briony knew that something was wrong the moment George began to run. She followed automatically, with Kevin keeping up easily and Aunt Sophie surprising them both by matching them stride for stride.

  As they got closer, Briony began to make out the scene that had George so worked up. A uniformed police officer stood out in front of the diner, a middle-aged man in an expensive looking suit next to him. On the ground in front of them, flashing silver in the sunlight, were weapons. All the weapons that had been so carefully hidden away in George’s office. There were knives and crossbows, short swords and silver wire garrottes. Everything that the Preservation Society kept stored for use against the creatures it hunted. The weapons had been thrown down carelessly, like they were simply garbage to be discarded on the sidewalk.

  George reddened as he came to a halt in front of the men, and Briony didn’t think it was from the running. “What is the meaning of this?”

  “We were rather hoping you could tell us,” the man in the suit said. “After all, it isn’t every day that you see an arsenal like this left lying around where anyone might get hurt. Officer Harrigan?”

  The police officer straightened up. He was a big, bulky man, who looked like he probably got used as a battering ram on police raids. “Yes, Councilman Jones?”

  “You can serve the notice now.”

  “Yes sir.” The police officer reached into a pocket, handing George a piece of paper.

  As George read it, he went from red to practically puce. “You can’t do this. You can’t just take what’s mine.”

  “The law says we can, sir,” the police officer said.

  “Oh, don’t go around being polite to these crackpots, Harrigan,” Councilman Jones put in. He turned to George. “We’re confiscating these weapons, and if you try to stop us, Harrigan here will arrest you all for obstruction. Is that clear?”

  Briony started to reach out to put a restraining hand on her boss’s arm, but Aunt Sophie beat her to it. “Yes, I think we can safely say that we all understand exactly what is happening, thank you.”

  She watched the two of them with a level expression. Briony did her best to match it as the two men collected the scattered weaponry and loaded it into the back of a waiting car. It wasn’t a squad car, and it looked far more expensive than most of the people in Wicked could have afforded, so Briony assumed it was probably the councilman’s. She filed the information away for future reference.

  “Briony, Kevin,” Aunt Sophie said once they were gone, “let’s get inside and see what has been going on. Come on George.”

  The four of them headed into the diner. At least nothing seemed to be out of place there. Briony had half-expected the whole place to be ripped apart, with smashed furniture and broken crockery. Instead, the diner looked exactly as it usually did before the start of business each day. Even when they went through to George’s office, there was nothing much different. The secret cubbyhole that served as a weapons stash for the Preservation Society was open, and someone had cleaned it out, but beyond that nothing seemed to have been touched. Of course, that was more than bad enough.

  “So much for them doing any renovations,” George said, and then swore. Briony could only imagine how embarras
sing it must be, having been taken in by fakers like that.

  “Do we know who the workmen were?” Aunt Sophie asked. “I know you, George. I can’t imagine that you would let just anyone into this big a secret.”

  George looked embarrassed. “There was a guy who came into the diner not that long ago. He said he was from a group like ours out on the west coast, passing through on business. He knew things that most other people wouldn’t have, and he didn’t seem to be asking for information, so I figured he was probably who he said he was.”

  “He recommended the changes?” Aunt Sophie prompted.

  “He got talking about the security measures they’d had put in. And I-”

  “And you had to keep up with the Joneses.”

  George nodded. “It sounded like a great idea. Silver plates in the walls. A Faraday cage around the office so that no one could intercept communications. Impressive stuff. He put me in touch with a company that could get it done quickly. I checked them out, obviously, but I must not have done enough.”

  He sank back into his office chair, looking dejected.

  “What did the man who came in look like?” Briony asked.

  “Maybe forty, pale blond hair. Nothing special, though I suppose he probably counted as good looking. Just a guy in a nice suit.”

  “Pietre.” Briony, Kevin and Aunt Sophie said it at almost the same time.

  George raised a questioning eyebrow.

  “You’ve just met Wicked’s most important vampire,” Aunt Sophie explained. “He’s one of the oldest in North America, turned at the time of the first settlers in America…yes, he was on the Mayflower. Though why he would bother coming along himself for a stunt this petty is beyond me. It seems like a terrible risk.”

  “He probably meant it as a message,” Briony guessed. “Another way of telling us that he can get to the people close to you. By the sounds of this, he was planning it even before I was taken.”

  Aunt Sophie nodded. “It makes sense. You are certainly doing a good job of getting into his head, Briony. Even so, I can’t help feeling that there must be more to this.” She shook her head. “It can’t just be personal. But right now, I simply can’t imagine what else it might be.”

  George stood, going over to the stuffed moose’s head on one wall and pulling the lever that closed the hidden door. “There’s no point in worrying about it now. Let’s settle for getting this place ready to open. I’m not going to let these things scare me into staying closed.”

  Briony was glad to hear that. George being active and in control was better by far than George feeling sorry for himself. Even so, there was one question she had to ask. “With all the weapons gone, what can the Preservation Society do now?”

  “We do what we always do,” Aunt Sophie said. “We use our wits, and we fight as best we can.”

  Chapter 8

  With the vampires’ move against the diner, Briony didn’t dare go back to school immediately, and Kevin insisted that she could not go home to the inn. As such, she spent most of the next few days in Kevin’s cabin, becoming increasingly frustrated by the long periods she had to wait alone there. Kevin spent much of his time out trying to make contact with the werewolves, approaching small groups of them either in town or deep in the woods.

  Briony had to admit that worried her. Getting to spend time alone with Kevin had been great at first, but one of the big attractions Kevin had over his brother Fallon was that there did not seem to be the ever-present threat of being bitten. Since he had gone out looking for other werewolves, though, something seemed to have changed in Kevin. There was something even more imposing and physical about him than usual whenever he was near, and he had dropped more than one hint that he wanted to take their relationship further.

  It wasn’t somewhere Briony was willing to go with him. Not yet, at least. Kevin had claimed that he understood when she had said as much, and had even seemed understanding about it. Even so, cooped up in a tiny cabin with him, there was a sense of something pushing at the two of them every time they were together. Kevin obviously sensed it too, because he started spending more and more time away from Briony, away from his home.

  Finally, Briony decided that she had to do something about it. Over dinner, she declared to Kevin that she would be going back to school.

  “After all, I can’t stay away forever. And it will get me out of the cabin.”

  “That sounds like a good idea.”

  Briony had expected Kevin to argue. Especially since he was the one who had insisted that she come to stay there in the first place. “You don’t think it’s too soon, do you?”

  Kevin shrugged. “You have to go back at some point, Briony.”

  That seemed to be that, though it did not feel to Briony like they had even begun to talk it through properly. Shortly afterwards, Kevin headed out, not saying where he was going. Briony could guess. It would be another attempt to get close to the Werewolf King. So why couldn’t he just say that? Did he really have to be so secretive about it?

  It was late before Kevin got back, dirt crusted on his face from his time in the woods. Briony went to brush it off with her thumb, and Kevin caught her wrist, pulling her into a fierce kiss as though he couldn’t get enough of her. His hands trailed down her spine, finally resting on the small of Briony’s back. For a moment, just for a moment, Briony thought that they might drift further. As Briony kissed Kevin back, matching his passion, her hands began roaming under his shirt, feeling the smoothness of his hard chest and stomach. When her hands moved to the small of his back to pull his hip closer to hers, Kevin groaned and suddenly broke away from her, taking a step away. The two of them stood staring at one another, breathing heavily, eyes still hot with desire.

  “I think,” Kevin said, his voice thick, “that it might be a good idea if you went back to your great aunt’s house.”

  Briony could not help agreeing. Even with more distance between them, she could practically feel the connection between there. She could certainly feel the urge to close the distance once again. “Don’t want me around anymore?” Her voice was soft and vulnerable, filled with yearning.

  “Briony…” Kevin didn’t finish that thought. “You should get your stuff together,” he said thickly. Briony could see the strain in his face as he ran his hand through his hair, trying to gain control.

  “Now?”

  Kevin nodded. “I’ll be around if you need help. I won’t leave you without protection, but I can’t do this. I can’t be this close to you and not…”

  He didn’t finish that either, but he didn’t need to. Briony felt the same way about him, too. The physical attraction was too strong. She wanted him much too much. Was it her hormones or was it truly that she was supposed to be his mate…like those swans? But they both knew the physical pull they had toward each other was getting stronger and stronger. If she couldn’t pull back now…

  Briony collected her few belongings in a couple of minutes, and Kevin drove her back to the Edge Inn. Aunt Sophie met Briony at the door, drawing her into a hug.

  “It’s good to have you back, darling. I thought you were going to be staying with your werewolf longer, though. Nothing happened, did it?”

  “No.” That was, Briony suspected, kind of the problem.

  Aunt Sophie gave Kevin a cool look, but did not say anything as she brought Briony inside. Briony heard the rumble of Kevin’s truck as he drove off.

  “Well, for nothing, it certainly seems to have left you quiet. Come on, I’ll make us some cocoa, and you can tell me all about it.”

  Briony had not realized how much of a home to her the Edge Inn had become until then. Sitting there talking to Aunt Sophie in its kitchen felt so much more comfortable than the cabin had. Once she got upstairs and into her own bed, she was asleep in seconds.

  School the next day felt almost the same. For all that Pepper and her little gang of friends tried to make Briony feel like she didn’t fit in, there was a definite sense of coming home as she walk
ed through the gates. Of course, most homes didn’t come complete with a week’s worth of lessons to make up, but you couldn’t have everything.

  Maisy and Steve were there, quickly welcoming Briony back. Even Claire, of whom Briony had seen very little since her friend Tracey’s death, gave her a slightly brittle wave from the edge of Pepper’s cluster of friends. Maisy was full of questions when she heard about what had happened at George’s diner.

  “The master vampire came there himself?”

  “I guess he wanted to make a point,” Briony said. “He’s showing us that his vampires could be anywhere. Besides, this thing he has with Aunt Sophie, it is obviously very personal. He seems to be targeting everything she holds dear. I mean, he’s already captured me once.” Briony shuddered at the memory of it.

  “It sounds like he won’t stop trying, either,” Steve guessed. “I mean, you must be the most important person your Aunt Sophie has left.”

  “I hate to think what they might have done to you if Kevin and Fallon hadn’t been there,” Maisy added.

  Briony nodded at that, but she could not help the flash of pain that went with thinking about the two of them. “I don’t suppose Fallon has been back to school, has he?”

  Maisy shook her head. “I haven’t seen him.”

  Neither had Steve, which worried Briony. Was Fallon just lying low the way she had, or had something worse happened? Had he managed to outrun Pietre’s vampires? The thought that he might not have gotten away was a frightening one.

  The first class was history, which Briony might have enjoyed more if she had been able to keep up with the required reading. As it was, she did her best to keep out of sight as the teacher talked and asked questions, taking down notes and discretely asking Maisy at the end if she could copy her notes from the previous classes.

  After history, there was biology, which Briony found quite boring at the best of times. That had a lot to do with their teacher, Mr. Kramer, whose idea of a good lesson seemed to involve talking in a flat monotone for the whole hour, while expecting them to keep up with all the details. About the only interesting thing was generally the question of how the man could keep the drone going without the apparent need to take a breath.