40 – Flesh and Blood

Reed leaned over the Receiving Desk at the Serenity Police Station, giving the old sergeant her best, get-your-ass-in-gear look, just to remind him she was serious. He held up a finger, then put down the radio, and when he spoke to her this time, there was new respect in his voice, which was more like it.

“Lieutenant Burbank is not available, but I’ve got the next best thing coming to see you.”

Reed hmphed inside her head and gave him another look. She would be the one to decide that.

Someone called her name. There was a door behind the desk and it was partially open. A woman was holding it open with her foot. She had thick black hair and a baby in each arm. Ella. Trevor’s mate. The desk sergeant motioned that way. “See, the next best thing. You can go on back.”

Reed walked that way slowly, nervous and shy, but determined to follow through. In her head, she heard Troy’s voice saying the word, “sister.”

Ella’s smile was wide and warm and she was bouncing on the balls of her feet, excitedly. When Reed went through the door, Ella handed her one of the babies, just so she had a free arm for a hug. “I’m Ella. I’m so glad you’re here,” she said. “Troy loves you so much.”

Reed shook her head, glad for the cool wall behind her, shocked by the warm, heavy baby in her arms. She leaned into the wall, needing its support, eying the baby in her arms, recognizing him at once from the pictures Troy had showed her. Track. He grinned at her, a slobbery, mostly toothless baby grin, then without warning, he changed into a little black puppy wearing a diaper and a onesie. Reed did not drop him, but it was a close thing. She gaped, mouth open, mind reeling.

“Track!” Ella cried. “No, not here.” She spoke to Reed. “Sorry, they’re just little, they don’t know they aren’t supposed to do it yet, and we aren’t even sure if they are restricted from doing it around humans like the wolfen are. Normally we don’t take them out, but today…”

Reed held the puppy straight out and could not speak, or stop staring.

The little black puppy wriggled until she had to pull him close or drop him. He scrambled to Reed’s chest, then put his little paws up, and stretched its long neck, licking her on the face and lips and even inside her mouth, then he jumped out of her arms to the floor and ran down the empty hallway.

“Track!” Ella called. “Here, hold Treena, I have to catch him.” She transferred the child, then ran after him.

Reed found herself with another pudgy baby in her arms. A pretty little girl who looked enough like Troy to win her over immediately. The baby tilted her head this way and that, babbled like a perfectly ordinary baby girl. “Hi,” Reed whispered at her, feeling so out of her comfort zone that she was going to start hyperventilating soon.

Before Ella reached the end of the hallway, a police officer came around the corner, holding the puppy by the scruff of the neck, stiffly, out in front of his body, like he was a bag of dog poop. “This belong to you?” he said.

“Thank you,” Ella said stiffly, shooting him a dirty look at the way he was holding her son. She grabbed the puppy from the officer and curled him into her arms like a baby. “You are in so much trouble, mister,” she said. She motioned to Reed. “Let’s get down with the others until Trevor gets here. He says he needs you in the forest.” She stopped in the middle of the hallway and turned to face Reed. “Can you really control the forest?”

Control the forest? No. “I don’t think so. I think I just… talk to...” Her voice died off. She didn’t know.

“How do the trees move around?”

“I don’t know,” she said, her cheeks heating. The baby reached up and grabbed a handful of her curls and yanked, hard. Reed’s eyes watered.

Ella eyed her, the expression on her face saying she knew exactly what Reed was going through. The words she spoke confirmed it. “I remember feeling like that,” she said. “It’s ok, you’ll get through it. Soon it will seem normal.”

Reed’s head was swimming and her thoughts were spinning. Did she really want this all to seem normal?

Ella started walking again, then stopped in front of a box on the wall. She looked at a red dot, a light scanned her eye, and a hidden door in the wall opened up. “Everyone is in Eventine’s office. We’ve got cots set up in the great hall, in case this lasts all night, or for a few days, which happens sometimes.”

They stepped inside quickly, Ella heading down a ramp into what looked like tunnels. Tunnels underneath the police station. Reed had never even heard a whisper of such a thing. The corridor was narrow and the lights were not strong enough to make her feel comfortable, but Ella seemed confident enough that they were safe.

Reed examined everything closely, still trying to decide how freaked out she was. Pretty freaked out, but functioning ok, she decided. Look, she had a baby in her arms and everything. “Troy’s niece,” she whispered, touching the soft dark hair on Treena’s head.

“Your niece, too,” Ella told her.

Reed smiled at that, examining Ella more closely, finally deciding this was not a mass hallucination. She did belong here, Troy wasn’t crazy, and she really was… half… angel, and Ella really was… her half-sister. She could believe it, she really could.

A tunnel branched off to the right and Reed couldn’t help but follow it, pulled through the cramped, damp corridor, by something she could not name, past each dim wall light, following the tunnel that sloped downward.

Ella grabbed her around the elbow and pulled her back the other way. “Not that tunnel,” she said. “That’s where Rhen’s body is. There’s guards and they aren’t wolven.”

“Rhen’s body?”

“Troy never mentioned her?”

“No,” Reed said, biting back the words, We don’t talk much when we’re together.

They passed another tunnel and a blast of heat came out of it, like a sauna. Ella pointed that way. “Graeme is down that way with Kendra. She’s younger than Track and Treena and not able to control her body temperature yet.” She gave Reed a look. “She’s your niece, too.”

Ella stopped in the darkness and leaned against the wall, made a kissy face at Track in her arms, then met Reed’s eyes. “What about Khain? Did Troy mention him?”

“No.” Reed stopped too, and shivered in the heat, not knowing why.

“What did Troy tell you?” Ella asked curiously.

Reed shrugged. “Not a whole lot. My fault. I didn’t want to hear it.”

“Khain is a demon,” Ella told her, her tone serious. “And Rhen is the creator of the shiften.”

“Are there… bad wolves?” Reed asked quietly, suddenly, having to know, looking around to be sure no one was listening to them.

Ella’s eyebrows raised. “There’s one that I know of, but he’s bad enough for an entire army. His name is Grey Deatherage.”

Reed shivered again, the damp from the tunnels setting in, or the conversation creeping her the hell out. Probably the damp. “What does he look like?” Reed could see the face from her dream clearly.

Ella indicated a doorway. “I’ll bet Eventine has a picture of him.”

She opened the door and swept inside. Laughter and talking floated out of the room.

Reed stayed where she was, taking deep breaths, until Ella stuck her head back out. “Come on, everyone’s dying to meet you.”

Reed nodded, gathered her courage, and stepped inside.

***

The office itself was normal enough, long and spacious, with lights blazing up front, but darkness stretching over boxes and boxes stacked in the back. It looked like an office, because of the desk covered with papers and computers, and the certificates and awards on the wall. There were also a few office chairs, a couch against a far wall, and several fake plants. Reed knew they were fake because they didn’t say ‘hi,’ to her. Haha. The joke fell flat in her own mind. Too soon.

Reed heard a meow somewhere near the back, but she saw no cats. She was glad for the baby in her arms, because everyone was staring at her. She opened one of her hands in a wave. “Hi,” she said.

There were five adults in the office besides her and Ella, plus the two children they held. Track was struggling to get down.

“Close the door, Reed, please, so he can’t get out.”

Reed did, and Track jumped out of his mother’s arms, racing for the back of the office, crashing into a box in the dark, chasing something.

Ella tried to start introductions, but two of the women were already up and moving toward Reed, even embracing her. They all talked at once, but she caught their names. Leilani and Heather.

“That’s Jaggar, he’s Leilani’s mate,” Ella said, pointing out an intense-looking male on the couch. Ella hadn’t needed to tell Reed whose mate he was. He couldn’t stop looking at Leilani. He tore his eyes away long enough to grunt hello, and then his attention laser-focused back onto Leilani. She went to sit down next to him, curling into his side. He kissed her on the forehead, seeming content to sit there all day.

“That’s Harlan and Eventine, they are getting some pictures of Grey for you.” Harlan came over and shook her hand, while Eventine waved.

Reed leaned in close to Ella. “All sisters?”

“Not Eventine, she’s one of the only female wolven. She’s in charge.”

“I thought Trevor was in charge.”

“Sure, he’s the Lieutenant of the KSRT, but Eventine is… special. It’s kind of a long story.” Ella leaned in close to her and whispered, “She’s Rhen’s daughter.”

Reed had already forgotten who Rhen was, but remembered that her body was down one of the tunnels and it was guarded. Her whirling brain didn’t think it could handle the information right at that moment and so she only nodded and broke off to look at the pictures on the wall. They were all of Eventine, and a few had her kissing and holding hands with a man who looked just like Harlan, but twenty years younger.

Eventine motioned for her to come over, then turned her monitor around, showing Reed a picture of a man.

“That’s Grey Deatherage.”

Reed’s heart contracted in her chest. The man from her nightmare.

The bad wolf.