Chapter Nine

Alastair McHenry stared out of his office window of the principal’s office in the hundred year old house that was Ridge School. He tapped his chin with his fingers, going over plan after plan, looking down at the empty basketball court, but not really seeing it. Even if the pavement had been full of his entire school of screaming adolescent pack boys, he wouldn’t have noticed. His thoughts seethed, blinding him to anything but his anger.

He should have stuck with his original plan, and taken Glenna all himself. Instead, he’d listened to his mentor’s advice. And because he had, everything had gone to hell. Now Glenna, his future mate, had been taken by the Ram’s Haven pack. She was out of his reach protected by a couple of shifters, her medical needs being seen to by his very own cousin, Lana.

It was intolerable.

At least Lana was on his side. She wasn’t the reason everything regarding his future mate had fallen apart. No, that responsibility lay entirely on Bryan’s shoulders.

Bryan—his little brother who had been flawed from the moment he’d taken the Bite and the virus had twisted his mind. Pack law demanded kids like Bryan, who couldn’t control themselves and therefore their new talents, be killed. It was harsh, but over the years it had preserved pack secrets, and pack safety. But Adam, Alastair’s mentor, had other ideas and he’d talked a much younger Alastair into hiding Bryan’s deficiencies.

And increasingly Alastair was paying the price.

Infecting Glenna had been a simple plan. Bryan would use his spelltalker talents to dim the garage lights, and Alastair would use his mind-control skills to handle Glenna. The plan should have gone off like clockwork. They’d done it several times before, but the women had died immediately from the virus and with each death Bryan had gotten more and more frustrated.

This time, Alastair had been sure that Glenna would survive. He could see it in her face—she was a fighter.

He’d had her well under his mental control, lying down on the cement floor of the garage ready to take the Bite. He’d just dipped the teeth of the wolf’s skull into the live virus and spun out a thread of power into the planes between the worlds, when things had gone haywire.

Bryan had gotten excited. Instead of sticking to what he was supposed to do, he’d jumped into Alastair’s spell. The images of a pack of howling wolves clawing and biting at Glenna had her terrified. She’d started screaming and scratching, fighting Alastair hard.

He’d been forced to hit her over and over again, sinking his fist into her stomach until she curled up into a ball—just to get her under control.

The lights Bryan was supposed to be controlling went crazy, flickering on and off, like a lightning storm gone haywire. Car alarms had gone off and the cacophony was terrible, distracting Alastair just when he’d needed his focus the most. Finally, he’d beaten Glenna into submission and managed to score her with the wolf’s teeth, penetrating her skin and administering the live virus into her bloodstream. Then, the police had arrived and they’d had to run, leaving Glenna, broken and bleeding, on the floor of the parking garage.

Just thinking about it had Alastair’s blood pressure rising and he leaned his forehead against the cool of the windows to calm the pounding in his head. It had taken the better part of the month for Alastair to even speak to Bryan again.

But now, Lana said that Glenna was up and alert. She’d survived the Bite. Now was the time he needed access to her, before she knew what she was. He had old spells he’d accessed from walking the planes between the worlds, spells to make her his in the old way. She would be his—he just needed to get her back under his control.

And that meant he needed to extract Glenna out from under the enforcers guarding her. He needed a distraction, and for all his faults, Bryan was terrific at distractions.

Alastair picked up his second cell phone, the one he’d paid cash for, and punched the code word he had for Bryan—loser.

Out behind the school, a single boy came out of the building. Thomas. As he listened to the phone ring, Alastair watched Thomas slouch across the pavement to the ball shed and extract a basketball.

No motivation. That was the problem with the way the pack did things. Thomas had been a bright kid—until he’d taken the Bite and survived the fever. Now he knew he was a spelltalker with no chance of shifting into a wolf. The boy had lost his enthusiasm.

No matter what Alastair and Adam did for these kids they had to adjust to life in the pack as a second class citizen and they knew it. It wasn’t fair.

“Hello?”

“Hey there, little brother, are you busy?”

“Screw you. You haven’t called me in weeks.”

Alastair smothered a sigh. He’d have to soothe Bryan’s hurt feelings, but it would be worth it. “I’m calling you now.”

“Hey, Alastair, you called me. What do you want?”

Bryan’s irritation came loud and clear over the phone. Alastair wanted to slam the thing across the room. But he gritted his teeth and dealt with his brother. After all, even if he was getting more and more unmanageable, Bryan was still a useful tool.

“Remember how I covered for you with Adam?” Alastair had taken the blame. After all, he’d been the one in charge. And besides, Adam loved Bryan like the son he’d lost. Alastair had never understood it, but Adam would let Bryan get away with murder.

“Yeah. So what?”

“So, you owe me.”

“You owe me.” The whine in Bryan’s voice rose higher. “I’ve helped you over and over again and for what? I’m supposed to be getting a mate next and you don’t even have yours. This whole thing’s fucked up.”

Alastair took a deep breath and counted to ten before responding. “That’s what I’m calling about. I need to get Glenna McReynolds back from under the pack’s watchful eye and take her to where she’ll be safe. When she changes and goes through the fever, I need to be there.”

“How are you going to do that?” Bryan snorted his derision. “Lana says they have enforcers on her twenty-four seven.”

“I’m a spelltalker, remember? I know the shifter on guard and he’s already lost his marbles once. A little push from me and he’ll be down that road again.”

“That’s one enforcer. What will you do about the rest?”

“That’s where you come in. How would you like to cause a diversion so I can slip into Lana’s and retrieve my property?”

“A diversion?” There was a moment of silence on Bryan’s end.

Alastair waited for his brother to take the bait. One, two, three...

“What do you have in mind?”

Alastair smiled, glad Bryan couldn’t see his pleasure at how easy his little brother was to manipulate. “Something that will take all the Windy Gap’s and Ram’s Haven enforcers’ attention and moves them all far away from Lana’s house.”

He could almost hear Bryan’s brain clicking through the alternatives. Poor simple Bryan. Faulty from the moment the fever had taken hold of his brain and screwed up his wiring.

“I have an idea.”

“Good. Do it.”

“Don’t you want to know what it is?”

“Of course not. I trust you.” He didn’t. But Bryan didn’t know that. Alastair wanted plausible deniability. It was so much easier to lie if you didn’t have much to lie about.

“Thanks, Alastair.”

“Enjoy wreaking havoc.” He hung up the phone, a smile on his face.

Bryan trusted him—looked up to him. That’s what was important. That was one of the few things that kept the angry young spelltalker under control. Without Alastair, Bryan would be a loose cannon.

Outside on the court Thomas was lining up another shot. He went up on his toes and let the ball roll off the tips of his fingers, hitting the rim, the ball bouncing off to side away from the net. The boy’s shoulders slumped and he looked defeated, but only for a second. Then he was across the court racing after the bouncing ball. Alastair nodded down at the court. Thomas had what it took. The boy would make a successful adult spelltalker, despite the odds.

That’s what life came down to—lining up one shot after another until one went into the basket. That’s what made the spelltalkers successful in pack society. They’d already been failed by their DNA, but they were determined to make every effort count. It was why they needed strong mates and a chance at pack equality. Once he had the method down of infecting the right humans he could make sure every boy like himself got his chance. All the Thomases. And all the Alastairs.