Chapter Nine
Early Tuesday morning, the wind had a crisp chill to it as two hostile groups of wolf shifters stood by the roadside in the rural area just north of Encantado city limits. Primo Bianchi’s dull black eyes fixed on Arturo as if he hoped to make him burst into flames with his gaze alone. Primo’s men crowded around him, bristling with aggression and peeling their lips back to show that they’d let their fangs descend.
Ooh, so scary – to a human, maybe.
Arturo was supremely calm and amused. He stood with Romano, Dominic, Ottavio and Carlo, sipping coffee from a mug and making idle conversation. His lack of response to Primo seemed to aggravate the man even more – which was entirely the point.
There had been a ghoul attack nearby, hours earlier. A man had been killed while he was mowing his lawn. His neighbor had called the police and sirens had alerted all of the residents to take shelter indoors, and a police squadron had arrived and quickly killed two ghouls, who were tearing at the door of a small ranch house.
The Council of Mages had decreed that the Bianchi pack and the Blood Oath pack temporarily set aside their feud. Both packs had been summoned there to send out their best scenters to find out where the ghouls had come from. Benedict stood by the roadside, sipping hot tea from a cardboard cup and watching silently. If either pack attacked the other during the search, they would be punished.
The scenters and foot soldiers were searching the woods, following the ghouls’ trail.
Where could they have come from? It didn’t make any sense. There was only the one portal, and it was constantly guarded.
The last time ghouls had erupted from the main portal was a year ago. They’d overwhelmed the guards by their sheer numbers and swarmed through the woods and into the suburbs, killing thirty-seven people before they were hunted down, and since then, the number of guards assigned to the portal had been increased five fold.
Occasionally lesser portals opened, but they only stayed open for a few hours. And this was the second recent ghoul sighting.
“What if it’s a new larger portal?” Dominic mused. “A permanent one?”
“That wouldn’t happen in our territory!” Ottavio growled. “We’ve got it under control!”
“Yeah, we’ve got it unner a troll!” Carlo echoed, always loyal to his brother. “Wait, there’s a troll?”
Ottavio shot him a look of disgust.
Dominic snorted, quietly enough that Ottavio could just barely hear him. Ottavio believed that brute force was the answer to everything. He was an idiot. Sheer numbers and physical strength of their pack had no more to do with a portal opening than it had to do with a volcano erupting. They were forces of nature. They just happened.
“We have to consider all possibilities,” Arturo said in a calm voice.
“Of course we do,” Ottavio agreed instantly.
Carlo looked at him in confusion. “That’s not what you just said.”
Ottavio bunched up his fist to punch his brother in the head, but Arturo said, in an icy voice, “Stop.” He flicked a glance over at Primo. Primo glared back at them with dull hatred. “Do you want him to see us as divided?”
“Of course not.” Ottavio shifted his weight from one foot to another. “I just get antsy, seeing them over there looking at us like that. We should be able to challenge them right here. All this politics? This crap isn’t natural. It goes against our nature. We’re wolves, damn it!”
“We’re men too, Ottavio.” Arturo’s voice was calm but firm. “If we want to live among men, we need to live by their rules.”
Dominic strolled off to make a phone call, to check in with one of the men he had watching Zoey. The answer he got made him growl, low and long. She was working her bike messenger job today, and she kept managing to shake his people and disappear for long stretches of time. It frustrated him to no end; he couldn’t wait until the month was up and he could claim her for his own. He loved the chase, but his wolf wanted to know where she was at all times.
As he tucked his phone back in his pocket, he saw a van pull up. Giuliana hopped out and hurried over to them, her small face already set in a defensive pout. Great. This should go well.
Arturo gave her a narrow-eyed look of annoyance. “What are you doing? It’s far too dangerous. There may be ghouls near here,” he snapped.
“Gee, it sure would help to have a med-mage handy if that were the case, wouldn’t it?”
“We have one.” Arturo glanced over at their med-mage Dante, who was pacing by the roadside, his attention focused on the woods.
“And I’m better than him. Easily twice as powerful. You know that.” Her voice rose and her face flushed with frustration.
“No. Go home, Giuliana.”
Giuliana glared at him, stalked back to her truck. She slammed the door and drove off with a screech of tires. Her tantrum wasn’t lost on Primo and his men; they made a big show of laughing much harder than the situation called for, doubling over and slapping their knees. For a brief moment, Arturo actually looked annoyed, then his face smoothed again.
Dominic cleared his throat.
Arturo glanced at Dominic, his face deceptively mild. “What?”
Dominic kept his voice diplomatic. “Her safety is your greatest concern. I understand that. We’ve both suffered the pain of loss. But I worry that she will chafe at her restraints to the point where she might lash out and do something that puts her in danger.”
“If she were so foolish, I’d confine her to my property.”
“Of course,” Dominic nodded. And Giuliana would absolutely explode. This was one of the rare cases where Arturo was wrong, but he had a blind spot where his niece was concerned. Dominic had heard that Giuliana looked a little like Arturo’s late daughter – unlucky for her.
“Here comes someone – oh, it’s just Fabiana,” Romano said.
Annoyingly enough, Fabiana was a scenter, so she’d been included in the search party. She came trotting out of the woods, and walked towards the Blood Oath pack instead of her own.
She shifted and stood there, naked, blinking her big brown eyes. Then she arched her back and made a huge show of tossing her shining black hair back over her shoulder, looking right at Dominic as he did so.
Then she trotted over to Dominic and Romano.
“Romano, leave us.” She flipped a slim hand in dismissal. Disdain dripped from every word. “I need to speak to my future mate.”
Romano’s lip wrinkled back in a snarl. Fabiana had no idea how close she was to becoming lunch.
Dominic spun on her and snapped “Don’t ever give orders to my enforcer. While we’re at it, don’t call me a liar, because I never, at any time, committed to a mating to you.”
She stepped back and burst into tears. “Don’t hurt me!” she cried out loudly. She adopted a falsely cringing posture, throwing up her hands in front of her face. As if. She-shifters were vicious as hell when cornered; if he’d made a move to hurt her, she’d have shifted and gone straight for a vital organ. Probably the one between his legs.
Primo, his Capo Luigi, and his enforcer Salvatore came barreling towards them. Arturo, Ottavio and his men rushed to Dominic’s side.
And Benedict stood back and sipped his tea and watched, with an expression of mild interest.
“You threaten my female?” Primo bellowed. “That is a new low, even for you!”
“You really are spoiling for a showdown, which we are happy to provide, right here,” Arturo drawled in a bored voice. “Your hearing every bit as good as ours, and you know exactly what your female just did to provoke my Capo. What would your men do if one of your females came up barking orders at a high-ranking enforcer?”
“Bite her face off!” Luigi snapped furiously. Primo spun around him and punched him in the head so hard he fell to his knees.
“You do not ever speak for me!” he howled.
He sent a wave of force so intense that they all felt it, and Luigi clawed at his throat, eyes wide and panicked. Luigi had just made his boss look like a fool, by acknowledging that their pack’s female had spoken out of turn.
Fabiana’s gaze shuttled nervously back and forth between her pack and our pack’s. She was one of those women who got through life by manipulating men with her sexuality – either seducing them or stirring up trouble by flirting with mated men. When she couldn’t do that, she had no idea what to do with herself, so she stood there, fluttering her hands and looking pathetic.
Finally Primo released Luigi, who fell to his hands and knees, his face grape-purple. He gasped and wheezed, desperately sucking in air.
“You are aware that when a wolf makes a claim, that decision is final,” Arturo said. “Your parents’ pairing was a moon-bite.”
“My own father was actually choosing a mate. He was not trying to get out of a legitimate mating contract by biting the first floozy who -” Primo suddenly turned red, clawing at his own throat. Arturo stood there, pumping out waves of power that made Dominic’s head hurt. Everyone backed up quickly; even though Arturo was directing the power straight at Primo, it made their heads pound.
Several of Primo’s men hurried forward to try to help – and Arturo’s power caught them up too. They gasped, their eyes bulging from their heads. The rest of Primo’s men backed up warily.
Finally Benedict hurried over. “Enough!” he bellowed. “I demand that you release them! If you wish to kill Primo, issue a formal challenge and do it by the book.”
“Very well,” Arturo said, and released all of them. They collapsed, faces purplish, wheezing and clawing at their throats.
When Primo could speak again, he turned to Benedict. “You saw what he did to us!” he croaked.
“I remain neutral.” Benedict stepped back, a smirk curling his lips. Fucking weasel, Dominic thought. Benedict and the rest of the mages would be delighted to just stand back and watch the two packs fight to the death.
“Do you wish to meet me in the death arena?” Arturo demanded. “You can bring two of your strongest men with you; it won’t help.”
Primo stared at him with burning hatred. Arturo had just handed him the ultimate humiliation. If Primo said yes, Arturo would kill him. But if he didn’t say yes, he looked weak in front of everybody.
The moment stretched on and on. Primo shook with rage. He couldn’t bring himself to admit defeat.
“I’ll take that as a no,” Arturo drawled – and turned his back on him. He was dismissing Primo completely as any kind of threat.
Boom. Now Arturo had just handed him the ultimate humiliation. And soon enough, they’d hear their answer – in sneaky ways, through stealth attacks, because they were cowardly bastards.
“Here the come,” Romano called out, and gestured at the woods. The scenters and the foot soldiers came trotting out, looking as glum as wolves could look. They shifted back to human form and walked up to the roadside, pulling on the clothing they’d left behind.
Arturo snapped his fingers at Ciro, his best scenter. “What did you find?” he said impatiently.
“The scent goes through the woods, to a small dirt road, and then vanishes,” Ciro said, looking frustrated.
“Like they were let out of a car?” Arturo said skeptically.
“That’s difficult for me to say. The road has a lot of car smells, some fresher than others.” Ciro looked unhappy. “I’m sorry, boss, we didn’t find any sign of a lesser portal and we have no idea where they could have come from.” The other shifters nodded in agreement.
Primo gestured impatiently at his own lead scenter, a wolf named Pasquale.
“We found the same thing,” he muttered, making a face as if agreeing with the Blood Oath packs’ scenters left a sour taste in his mouth.
“So, both of you failed,” Benedict said irritably. He scowled at Primo. “Your pack leaves first. The Blood Oath pack will wait twenty minutes. You both will return to your respective territories before hostilities are permitted to commence.” And he headed to his car and drove off.
Arturo waited until both Benedict and the Bianchi pack left before gesturing at his men. “Wait for me in the cars. You too,” he added to Romano, who glanced briefly at Dominic before walking away.
Then he returned his attention to Dominic with a frown. “Ottavio seems to have issues with you these days,” Arturo said coolly. “He thinks he’s not doing your job. Specifically, there seems to be more trouble in the territories that I’ve assigned to you.”
“I don’t care about Ottavio’s opinions. I care about yours. Do you think I’m not doing my job?” Dominic swallowed a surge of anger. Ottavio loved to make other high-ranking wolves look bad, because he thought it made him look good by comparison, and he lived and died for Arturo’s favor.
“If I thought that, there would be so many pieces of you that nobody could stitch them back together. But I have concerns. Many businesses have folded up shop. And there was the issue with the garbage collection. What have you found out so far?”
Dominic grimaced. Arturo wasn’t going to like his answer. “Several of the owners of the businesses claim various family or personal issues, and the rest have left town. Several of them were human, and therefore when they left, they didn’t go to other portal cities, making them harder to track. The owner of the waste disposal company was a low-level mage, he’s fled to another portal city. I was going to give you my report this morning, but then the call about the ghouls came in.”
“The fact that some of them not only closed up shop but fled town raises all kinds of red flags. I need you to find those business owners. Top priority.” Arturo walked off without another word, heading to his chauffeured Bentley, where Ottavio and Carlo waited for him.
Dominic went to his own car, where Romano was sitting behind the wheel. As they drove off, he felt a stirring of uneasiness. He didn’t give a rat’s ass what Ottavio thought, but something just wasn’t right. There were too many things going wrong lately. Impossible ghoul attacks, businesses closing shop and vanishing…hell, even the garbage pile up. Why would Jordan have thought he could get away with that kind of scam for any length of time? Were people starting to perceive the Blood Oath pack as weak and losing control?