Page 18 of Cast in Shadow
When I turned back to face the driveway, a large, cinnamon-colored wolf was blocking my path. The earthy reddish-brown of her coat darkened as it spread down her body, turning to a shimmering black by the time it reached her feet.
Bridget was pretty enough in human form, but her wolf was stunning. Not as big as some male alphas I’d seen, but she’d give just about any other male in a pack a run for their money.
I opened the door and stood on the footrail, propping my forearm on the frame. “It’s not a trick. Salus is real, and I’ve already told them about your granddaughter. She has a bed waiting for her. I can’t promise you the same, but like I said, I can get you a meeting.”
She stared at me for a long time with copper eyes that seemed to see everything, including the unease rising inside me at holding her gaze as the seconds ticked by. Facing off with an alpha was risky business. It was always a fine line between earning their respect and challenging them to a fight to the death.
Bridget’s wolf dipped her head in the barest acknowledgement, and I returned the gesture. Then I slipped back inside and shut the door, taking my time buckling my seatbelt. She would call. Maybe not today or tomorrow. Buteven if the woman didn’t believe what I said about Salus, her wolf did.
Maybe she wasn’t as feral as she wanted people to believe.
The first hint of a smile I’d felt in days graced my lips as I put the Jeep in drive and headed back to HQ. Next on my to-do list was tracing Megan’s steps. My team had been tracking news and police radios nonstop since Emerson’s interference. We’d gotten lucky so far, in the sense that there was no sign of her raising hell near Brynworth.
Still, I couldn’t shake the feeling that we were standing in the eye of the storm. With the amount of power she’d acquired from the coven she’d slaughtered, there was a good chance she was working on something much bigger than creating chaos for the fun of it.
8
The hum of electronics in the surveillance room always scraped my nerves, but that wasn’t the reason I was gripping the edge of the desk hard enough to make my knuckles groan.
“Are we sure it was her?” I asked, barely able to contain the anger in my voice. For two days, we hadn’t had a single sighting of Megan Navali. No sign of new dark summonings. Nothing, until this.
On the big screen in front of us, a camera panned left to right before reversing course and sweeping back over a scene straight out of a horror film. Blood, gore, and barely identifiable body parts littered the shot. The only saving grace was that it was in black and white.
There must have been at least half a dozen bodies in that mess.
“Give it another minute,” Dennis said, swallowing hard.
Before I could snap a response, Megan Navali strolled into view. Her hair whipped wildly around her face, and her grin had me grinding my teeth. It reminded me of a killer clown,coiled up with wicked delight, and on her heels was a darkness that didn’t belong there.
“Does she have a death wish?” I asked, more to myself than anyone.
“What do you see?” Nguyen asked from behind me.
I didn’t bother turning around. My focus was fixed on the screen and the smear of black stretching out behind the reckless witch. “Penumbra.” Reaching out, I ran my index finger along the dark streak. It stretched behind her, running a different direction than the shadows cast by the sun.
The kind of power it would take to create darkness like that?—
Before I could finish the thought, she turned her head toward the camera, revealing glassy black eyes.
“Shit,” I whispered.
“Black eyes? What does that mean?” Dennis asked.
“That she’s messing with power she doesn’t understand.” I stared at the screen in disbelief, until she winked at the camera a second before the feed cut out. “How many dead?”
Dennis hit a few buttons on his laptop and the image rolled back to Megan just before her insidious little wink. “It’s hard to tell. This is all we’ve got right now. We’re still tracking down other feeds from the area, but there isn’t much to choose from that far out.”
“Where is this?” I tapped the screen.
“The reserve at the south end of the valley,” Nguyen said. “We can be there in thirty minutes.”
“When did it happen?” We were already too late to stop the destruction, but with any luck, we might be able to get eyes on her.
“The digital time stamp puts it at about one o’clock this morning.” Dennis sounded rough, and when I turned to look at him, his face was a telling shade of green.
I shoved away from the table, grabbed the small trash can from beside the door, and set it next to his chair. “Try not to puke on the tech, okay?”
It wasn’t meant as a joke, but he offered me a weak smile. “Would never dream of it.”
