Embracing the Wolf (Anna Avery #2)

“Yeah, but my parents can,” Adam said softly. “If, and that’s a big if, they’re responsible, they’re not going to let Anna read them.”

“Which would only make them look guiltier,” I said. “If all the other wolves go through the questioning and they don’t, won’t that raise more than a few questions?”

“Or we can steal hair from their brushes,” I said with a smile toward Wade. It had worked once, so why not try it again?

“I don’t know, torturing vampires sounded like more fun,” Adam said with a devilish smirk. Wade and Elle nodded their heads in agreement. What a bunch of deranged weirdoes.

“I still say we at least check this motel out,” Wade said. “They might have just moved to a different room.”

I snorted. “As if we’re that lucky.”

“Aren’t we due for some luck?” Elle said with a grimace.

It was true; things hadn’t exactly been peachy on the mountain. I tried to ignore that it had been since I arrived, but maybe things started going haywire before I showed up, or maybe that was wishful thinking.

“Fine,” I said, “but maybe try knocking on the doors before kicking them in. I doubt the motel will be happy to learn all their doors need to be replaced.

Wade smiled. “Where’s the fun in that?” With a wink of his eye, we moved on to the next room. He raised his leg, ready to land a blow when I arched an eyebrow at him. Slowly, his leg lowered, and his arm rose. He rapped on the dingy door and raised both his eyebrows at me as if to say, “happy?” I pursed my lips and rolled my eyes, hugging my arms to my chest.

Adam’s arm slunk around my shoulders as he held me tightly against his warm body. I looked up at him and gave a small smile. Things were still tense between us, but also good. A relationship that’s perfect all the time is either fake or not as happy as the people want those around them to think. I could handle a few arguments with Adam if it meant we would bounce back, and we would.

A middle-aged man with wiry brown hair answered the door. He was wearing a pair of dress pants and a button down shirt, the first few buttons undone. His tie hung around his neck, and just behind him, a woman holding covers to her chest watched us with uncertainty. I held my hand to my mouth as a snort traveled up my throat.

“And you wonder why I’m cautious about relationships,” I whispered to Adam. It wasn’t a secret that seedy—rundown motels such as this one were a cheater’s paradise.

Adam leaned down so that his mouth brushed my ear. His warm breath sent a tingle tiptoeing down my spine. “If he had woman like you, he wouldn’t even think about cheating.”

I rolled my eyes and nudged his side with my elbow. Adam rubbed the spot, pretending I had hurt him and chuckled.

“Can I help you?” the man said, eyeing the four of us with caution. He was smart to be wary of us—what with Wade with his shaved head, leather coat, and scowl, and Adam with his impressive height and build. Not only that, humans could tell there was something off about us. They just didn’t know what; their minds wouldn’t let them believe we were monsters.

“Sorry to—” Elle began, tilting her head to look at the female, “interrupt, but we’re looking for a man and a woman. She has shoulder- length brown hair, pale skin and the man has longish brown hair and pale skin. You haven’t seen them by any chance, have you?”

A wrinkle appeared between the man’s eyes. “No, we just…uh got here.”

“Of course you did,” Wade said with a smirk. “Lunch break rendezvous? A little afternoon delight, perhaps?”

Red colored the man’s face in anger, his eyes thinning into slits while the woman’s face reddened out of embarrassment. When he opened his mouth to say something, Wade held up his hand and shook his head.

“Don’t care,” he said, and headed toward the next door. The three of us followed him and I caught a glimpse of the woman before the man slammed the door. Her head was down, her face slack.

That could have been you. My inner voice said. I slid a glance at Adam but his eyes were on the next door. In the beginning Adam offered himself to me, but he was still mated to Eve. Had I given in, I would have become his mistress. I’d fought tooth and nail from lowering myself to that, but I had to wonder if Eve was still alive and Adam and I weren’t bonded, would I have eventually given in?

I shook the thought away. I knew the reason I finally gave in to Adam was because we were each other’s other halves. We had been drawn toward each other from the first moment we laid eyes on each other. Had we not been chantes, there was no way I would have become the other woman. I knew that just as sure as I knew we were not going to find the vampires are this motel.

So, I was right, and we didn’t find the vampires, but we found evidence of their presence in the form of two dead bodies. By the time we made it to Room 12 the stench of death was so strong, Wade didn’t bother with knocking. He kicked the door down only for us to find a man and a woman sprawled on the bed with two puncture wounds in their neck and wrists. With all of their blood gone, their complexions resembled a grayish, waxy hue. Their wide dead eyes stared up as though caught in the last moments of their death. Blood dotted the blankets and carpet like macabre confetti, and one of the women’s hands still clutched the sheets.

“Vampires aren’t normally this stupid,” Wade said, walking around the bed to inspect the dead bodies.

“What do you mean?” I asked. “They kill to eat, right?”

“Vampires don’t need to kill to eat,” Adam answered. “A few sips here and there will sustain them. What Wade means is that vampires don’t leave bodies with traces of vampire attacks out in the open for humans to find.”

“Maybe it’s a message,” I said. “They knew we were coming, knew we would find these two.”

“Perhaps,” Wade said, “but we already knew they wanted to kill you. What’s killing two humans and leaving them for us supposed to convey that we don’t already know?”

I snorted. “You’re expecting me to explain vampire motives? Let’s just agree that they’re insane, and nothing they do makes sense.”

Wade rested his arms on either side of the dead woman’s body and leaned down. In a swooping motion, he sniffed from her stomach all the way up to her matted blond hair. My lip curled up in disgust when he closed his eyes and remained poised over the woman. I glanced over my shoulder to make sure no one walked by and saw the four of us in a room with two dead people, much less Wade sniffing one of them.

“We should—uh—leave before someone thinks we did this,” I said.

Wade ignored me and said, “I would guess them to be dead for almost a day.”

A thought occurred to me then. “The vision I had was right before the vampires appeared on our mountain last night. Maybe they picked up these two after the fight to feed off of and heal themselves.” I might have been reaching, but I didn’t want these two humans to be dead because the vampires were trying to send some cryptic message.

“Makes sense,” Elle said, hugging her arms to her chest as she stared at the lifeless bodies. “Our best bet is finding who hired them. We find the employer, and we can find the vampires,” she added.

“That means spending all night reading the wolves,” I said with a grimace. Of course I wanted to find the person responsible, but my visions were not guaranteed. I was still a little confused as to why it sometimes worked and sometimes didn’t.

“Elle’s right,” Wade said, standing up. He withdrew his cell phone and began scrolling through his contacts list. “Anna, see if you can get a read on these two. I have to call someone to clean this up.”

“We already know the vampires killed them,” I said. “Why do I need to read them?” Truth was, I wasn’t thrilled about touching a dead body—let alone two.

Wade held his phone at his side and took a deep breath. “Because, you know as well as I do that visions tell more than who’s guilty. Maybe the vampires said something that will clue us into who is behind their being here.”

I swallowed around the disgust and nodded. He was right, and finding answers was more important than my discomfort. I walked around the bed, the backs of my knees hitting the opposite mattress. With uneasy steps, I moved closer to the dead couple. They didn’t look older than their mid-twenties. As I looked upon them, I wondered if they had families, and a pang of hurt filled my chest. They would never know that these two died from a vicious vampire attack. I wasn’t sure how clean up worked in these situations. Would their families assume they were just missing, left to wonder where they were or what had happened, or did the clean-up crew have a witch or vampire on their payroll that could alter a human’s mind?

“What are you waiting for?” Elle asked.

I looked up at her and noticed her eyes shifted from me to the broken down door. Time was definitely of the essence in this case. I reached a hand out and clasped the woman’s wrist. Flakes of dried blood gathered around the puncture wounds. I ignored how cold she felt, as well as the bile rising in my throat.

Within seconds, the present slipped away, and I was standing in the motel room from the past. The man and woman sat like zombies on the bed, their legs dangling over the edge. The vampire woman crawled onto the bed and drew the woman’s hair to the side to expose her throat. I stood so that I was facing the horrendous show head on.

“If you’re watching, white wolf,” the vampire said, surprising me. “Their blood is on your paws.” And then she sunk her fangs into the woman’s throat. The woman didn’t scream or even flinch as the fangs drove into her flesh. A lone tear was the only sign that she was feeling anything. I watched it slip down her cheek until it splashed on her clasped hands.

The female vampire withdrew her fangs, her mouth slick with a fresh coat of blood. She closed her eyes and let out a moan that sounded sexual. I cringed, backing up until my back hit the wall. Whatever reservations I might have had about being a werewolf, it could have been worse. I could have become one of these monsters. All in all, sprouting fur and paws was like winning the lottery in comparison.