The Black Wolves of Boston (eARC) Page 5

  "Did anyone tell Alexander?" The Wolf King usually knew when something had happened to one of his Thanes. Jack was a special case; Alexander had shifted Jack back into the Boston territory after the rest of Seth's family had been killed. The knowledge that Jack wasn't directly under the king's protection had eaten Seth with guilt the entire way back to New York.

  "Alexander is in Belgrade; he left Friday morning. We couldn't remember who all went; so we called Bishop to see if your cousin was with them. Bishop told us that the king sent Cabot to someplace in Upstate New York. He went with Samuels. We should call Samuels."

  Hoffman made it sound like a collective of Thanes huddled around the phone acting with Borg-like hive intelligence. What most likely happened was that Isaiah made the phone call and told the Thanes loyal to him what he'd learned.

  "And?" Seth snapped.

  "And what?"

  "Did Isaiah call Samuels?"

  "He's not answering his phone."

  Wolves didn't have pockets. It was possible that Samuels wasn't answering because he left his phone with his clothes. It was comforting to know that at least his cousin wasn't alone. How quickly had Isaiah followed up on Seth's desperate calls? After spending Friday trying to learn something by phone, Seth spent Saturday hopscotching his way back from Mexico on commercial flights. It had been a frustrating twelve hours topped by another hour in the taxi with the awful knowledge that Jack wasn't anywhere near New York City.

  Seth felt Jack get stabbed on Friday. It was now nearly midnight on Saturday. "When did Isaiah try to reach Samuels and how many times did he try?"

  "Sometime this morning, after he got hold of Bishop, and then again at dinner, after he found out you were heading back from Mexico."

  Twice. Twice. Two Thanes missing---one of them seriously hurt---and Isaiah had made only two phone calls.

  Seth swore, making Hoffman cringe. Seth resisted the sudden urge to hurt someone because it wasn't Hoffman he wanted to kick hard. It was Isaiah. Hoffman was just one of the many Thanes that expected the Wolf King's son to rise to power and take them with him. Most of them were the weaker Thanes who were sick of being bottom of the dominance order at the castle.

  And most likely the reason Isaiah hadn't done anything was because losing Jack would devastate Seth.

  * * *

  Hoffman knew nothing else about what had been done about Jack, which wasn't surprising. He wasn't sure where Isaiah was either. The best he could guess was that Isaiah had taken one of the cars from the Castle's extensive motor pool, thus exiting via the garage.

  Hoffman did know that most of the Thanes had left the Castle once they learned that Seth was on his way home. The last fight between Seth and Isaiah that had gone to blows was when Seth was fourteen and Isaiah was twenty-seven. Isaiah started it by ambushing the boy. Seth ended it by breaking five of Isaiah's ribs, his collarbone, his right arm, and the north wall of the library.

  The Thanes might be loyal to Isaiah but they weren't stupid.

  There was one person that couldn't or wouldn't hide. Whether Seth could trust him was something he was never sure of.

  The Castle's massive gleaming kitchen, extensive larder and well-stocked wine cellar were the personal territory of Cook. As a man, he was a tall, blond Dane. He was always in the kitchen, dressed in chef whites. Even now, close to midnight, he was setting out bread and meat onto the long stainless steel island.

  He glanced up as Seth came through the swinging doors from the dining room. He looked down immediately since he wasn't dominant enough to meet Seth's angry gaze. No one but the king was. It didn't mean that the male couldn't dig at Seth. Thirty years he'd served the Wolf King but he still spoke with a thick accent. "Was it safe for you to leave your uncle like that---what with him just into his power? Alexander would have normally shepherded him through the amnesia, as he did with you."

  "Efrain didn't need me." Seth paced on the other side of the stainless steel island. "My grandfather has been bleeding out his powers for years. My uncle had been the Earl of Guadalajara in every way but name until last week. He had a few hours of amnesia." Which was nothing compared to the weeks that Seth been lost to himself when his father died, making him Prince of Boston. "Where is Jack?"

  Cook cut a round dark loaf of rye bread into thin slices. "I was feeding Bishop. He'd been tied up expediting a new passport for the king to go to Belgrade; it was being complicated by the normal problem of Alexander being born before all this silly paperwork was invented. Anyhow, I was feeding Bishop lunch when the Ithaca police department called him. They talked to him about a stolen car that had been found in a lake. He made me put a second piece of bread on his smørrebrød so he could carry it and he headed off to see the car."

  Smørrebrød was the Danish open-faced sandwich he was making now. Cook treated it as an insult to his cooking to add more bread to it.

  "Ithaca?" Seth seized on the name. The city wasn't a Source point so it was geologically stable enough that it didn't require a wolf pack. It was protected by an overlap of three different territories: Binghamton, Syracuse and Buffalo. It made sense that the Wolf King's lawyer would be called in to handle any large legal mess since it wouldn't be clear which territory should shoulder the responsibility.

  Cook spread a thick layer of liver pâté onto the pieces of rye bread. The rich smell reminded Seth that he hadn't eaten anything all day. Cook's food was good but it still struck Seth as strange and exotic. "While Bishop was in Ithaca, the Prince of Belgrade called saying that the situation was worse than he thought. He needed help immediately. The king wanted Bishop in Belgrade, so he had Samuels call him and order him back."

  Alexander was born when humans were still struggling with the concept of forging metal. He did not use phones and barely tolerated things like cars and airplanes. Because the Thanes constantly had to act as go-betweens for the king, everyone ended up knowing snippets of information. The problem was not all the random pieces went to the same jigsaw puzzle.

  "Does this have anything to do with Jack?" Seth asked.

  Cook shrugged and topped the liver pate with slices of salt beef and meat jelly. "I'm telling you what I know. After Bishop got back, the king called in Samuels and Cabot. They came through the kitchen, arguing over which of them would drive. Samuels said that since it took nearly five hours, they could take turns. They asked me for something to eat on the road. Cabot put down his phone and forgot it." He took it out of his pocket and gave it to Seth. "I did not notice until it started to ring."

  Hard evidence that all lines of information had been cut filled Seth with grief. Where was his cousin? What happened to him?

  Ithaca matched up to the vague northwest direction he was getting when he focused on Jack. The city, though, was in the middle of nowhere. If he guessed wrong, he could be hours from wherever the two Thanes had actually gone.

  Cook added raw onion rings and garden cress to the smørrebrød and pushed one of the plates across the island to Seth. "Eat. You're scaring everyone."

  A hungry wolf was a dangerous wolf.

  Seth picked up the heavily loaded rye bread. After a week of spicy Mexican food like his mother used to make, it was an assault of rich, earthy flavors. He knew the smørrebrød tasted good but it made him homesick for a home that no longer existed. His parents were dead and their house had burned to the ground. All he had left was his cousin, hurt and possibly dying. The smørrebrød tasted of death and sorrow.

  "Who did the king take with him?" He went to the drink refrigerator for something to wash the taste out of his mouth. Cook named the Thanes that had gone to Belgrade. The list made Seth growl in frustration; Alexander had taken everyone that Seth trusted---. "Where's Isaiah?" Seth asked.

  "Out," Cook stated plainly. Either he didn't know or he didn't want Seth to know. Seth wasn't sure which. Isaiah had been the little motherless boy before Seth showed up. Worse, Isaiah's mother had chosen to abandon her son when she committed suicide. It was one of the many reasons why Isaiah
didn't like Seth.

  "Did anyone call Bishop and tell him that they couldn't get hold of Samuels either?" By "anyone" Seth meant Isaiah but he was being diplomatic. He was never sure which of them Cook favored. Perhaps he was truly neutral as he seemed---if he was, he was the only Thane out of thirty-one.

  "They tried." Cook kept to the plural. Maybe someone other than Isaiah actually acted on the information. "No one could get through to Bishop."

  Seth took out his phone and dialed Bishop. After nearly a minute of silence, a recording cut in, explaining that all circuits were busy. A second and third attempt got the same result.

  The king would only send one Thane unless he thought the mission might be dangerous. Alexander would know where they were, even from the other side of the world. He would know, just as Seth knew, that Jack was hurt. He would know, and he would do something.

  Unless something on the other side the world had his complete attention.

  "What's wrong in Belgrade?" Seth asked.

  "There was a massive breach; larger than the one that killed your family. It leveled part of the city and killed the prince before Alexander arrived."

  "Did Alexander get the breach closed?" The dark, cold tears in the fabric of reality were what Seth hated most about being the Prince of Boston. He'd never been allowed to see one but he could feel them when they happened. Normally they were tiny rips allowing through only small things like growlings and skitterscratches. Jack would sit on Seth in New York as Alexander took Thanes to Boston to close the breach and hunt down anything that slipped through the opening. The Thanes couldn't feel the breach or sense the monsters at a distance; they hunted by scent alone for creatures that Seth could track from hundreds of miles away. Seth would be stuck in New York as people died in his territory. Seth thought there could be nothing worse before Jack disappeared to some place where Seth couldn't track him.

  "Alexander closed the breach," Cook said. "He has half the Thanes with him, killing what came through the tear. The biggest problem is that the prince's nephew inherited his power, not his sons. Those idiot Serbian wolves started to fight over if the boy was the true prince or not. When the heir is lost to alpha amnesia, that's when he's vulnerable."

  Seth snorted. "The power goes where it wills." His uncle Efrain had two older brothers. When the power started to leech out of his dying grandfather, though, it slowly became apparent who was the true heir. Any power struggle was dealt with years ago. "Is Alexander bringing the new prince back to New York with him?"

  "No. He's several years older than you."

  When Alexander arranged Seth's trip to Mexico, Seth thought it meant that the king was finally going to allow him to act like a prince. There were princes scattered across the world that could have guided the new earl through the amnesia. Seth thought that his other responsibilities would quickly follow; that Alexander would allow him to return to Boston, deal with the breaches, and protect his territory. There would be no more three-hour delays as the Wolf King drove the hundreds of miles between the cities. There would be no more people dying needlessly.

  Shortly before Seth left for Mexico, though, Alexander announced that Seth would be attending Columbia University just a few blocks away. Seth growled softly. If he had to sit on his hands and feel people die for the next four years, he was going to go slowly mad.

  "If he's not bringing the new prince here, then the king is staying in Belgrade until the amnesia wears off?"

  Cook went still and silent as he realized the logical end to the conversation.

  If the Wolf King wasn't returning, then Isaiah could ignore the situation until Jack was dead.

  "You can't go looking for him," Cook said quietly.

  "No one can stop me."

  * * *

  In theory he wasn't allowed to drive between nine p.m. and five a.m. He only had a junior driver's license. Nor was he allowed to take the Porsche Boxster, since it was considered Isaiah's car, despite the fact that the registration only had Alexander's name on it. He decided that karma gave him certain privileges. If Isaiah was going to put Jack's life in danger, Seth could take his Porsche.

  4: Decker

  If Decker had known what adorable noises werewolf puppies made when distressed, he would have gotten one years ago. Joshua huddled by the front door, trying to look all directions at once, making cute little whimpers.

  "When was the last time you actually cleaned?" Joshua finally cried.

  "When I moved in. 1959." Maybe grinning wasn't the right approach. Decker smoothed away a smile with his hand. "It will go fast. I'll help you at night. And maybe we can talk Elise into helping..."

  "Oh, she'll just burn it all down!"

  Decker considered and then nodded. "Yes, she has threatened to do that in the past."

  He tried to see his home with fresh eyes. He'd grown used to the clutter. At first it had been a relief to be alone, safe from accidental discovery, no longer afraid that his "trusted" servants would grow too curious for their own good. (To be fair, the last disaster wasn't his servant's fault but the results were the same.) The house, though, had been huge and empty and echoed.

  Once he realized how clutter could soften the hollowness of his existence, he abandoned all pretense of cleaning. He left things where they were laid; there was plenty of space. Finding what he needed in the clutter was never a problem; all he needed to do was focus his gift on what he wanted.

  Every now and then he'd move a pile that had grown too large, shifting it to one of the upstairs rooms by the armful. It wasn't until the last year or so that he'd noticed that he was running out of space. It was only in the last month that he realized that the clutter was a symptom of an illness. He was sick of the loneliness.

  He'd gone out looking for a cure. His gift had taken him clear across the city to find a wolf puppy running into trees. He could not remember the last time he'd laughed so much. Pure luck had dropped Joshua into his lap. Decker would have to be careful not to scare his puppy. And at all costs, he mustn't let it escape.

  To someone young, the job probably looked Herculean in scope. Fifty years of clutter filled the house to bursting.

  "We'll get it cleaned up in no time." He tried for reassuring. "One room at a time. We don't even have to do all the rooms. We could just do the rooms you're going to use."

  "Me?"

  "I only use the library when I'm awake." Decker waved toward the large room. Its floor-to-ceiling built-in cherry bookcases were what made him choose the oversized house. At some point, however, the pleasure he found in reading dimmed. He'd continued buying material out of habit. The room was a static flood of books, fallen piles of novels creating cascades, as the volumes sat waiting to be read.

  The clutter had been the first symptom of his illness. The second was that he'd stopped reading all together. Of late, he didn't even want to stir from his sleeping chamber. He really needed to keep hold of this puppy if Joshua was the cure to what ailed him.

  "There are five bedrooms. Maybe six." He hadn't been upstairs to check them for a decade. "We can clear out one for you. Two if you want. Down here on the first floor, there's the front parlor..."

  "The what?"

  "It's the room you receive visitors in." Not that he ever had visitors beyond Elise.

  "A living room. Okay."

  "Yes, a living room!" He remembered that was what the real estate agent had called it. (She'd unfortunately been sensitive enough to be scared silly by him; the woman endlessly repeated the house's features like a mantra.) "With a fireplace and original moldings. A large dining room, an updated kitchen with a butler's pantry and first-floor laundry room." No, he shouldn't be listing out the rooms. Joshua was whimpering again. "But we can start with just one room. One of the bedrooms. You'll need someplace to sleep." There was the small matter that the stairs were currently impassable.

  "Where's the bathroom?" Joshua asked.

  Decker stared at Joshua as he tried to remember if there were bathrooms.

 
; "There are bathrooms, right?" And then blushing bright red, Joshua added. "I've got to pee."

  "I think there's one..." Decker scanned the house from the foyer. There were lots of doors he never opened; maybe there was a bathroom behind one of them. Surely there were toilets somewhere in the house. When he was born, the world operated with chamber pots and outdoor privies. He'd noticed the outside accommodations disappearing but he'd never had need for whatever replaced them. He had a shower in his sleeping chamber, along with a dressing room. The house had been newly remodeled when he bought it. Surely the contractor had put in modern plumbing. Or was it before toilets moved indoors?

  Joshua opened the coat closet, peeked in and closed it. "Nope." He went to next closed door, blocked shut by a stack of newspapers hip high. He unearthed the door enough so he could crack it open. "Oh, here's one."

  "Voila!" Decker waited until Joshua disappeared into the small room before frantically clearing the steps up to the second floor. He hadn't felt this way since he was a human teenager. He'd forgotten it wasn't a totally comfortable feeling.

  There was a lot of mysterious swearing and banging and the clatter of china on china coming from the bathroom. The pipes started to rattle and knock from air inside the plumping. Decker didn't think urinating was that large a production---at least it wasn't when he still needed to do it.

  "Is everything okay?" He called, flinging newspaper and junk mail over the railing at reckless speed.

  This resulted in more whimpers and curses from the bathroom. "I'm fine!" Joshua cried after a moment. "All the water was turned off! I don't think anyone ever used this bathroom before!"