Page 102 of Gemini Hunted
(If they are, I don’t blame him.)
Wretched, he bows his head so his beaded dreads hide his half-shifted face.
“Roy,” he growls, all hoarse and wolfish. Blindly he gropes to lay a hand-slash-paw on the corpse’s gnarled leg.“Roy.”
Then he’s howling with grief again.
“Oh, shit. Guess he knew the guy,” I whisper to Neo under the howling. Which makes the whole thing even more awful. I barely know our residentloup-garou,so I give Jae’s own mates the space to comfort him and wrap myself harder around Neo, who also needs comfort.
Vasili tucks in behind us and hugs us both tight, Neo and me, simultaneously lending us his alpha strength and guarding our backs. Our Goblin King has seen worse—hell, he’s probablydoneworse, even if he’s never actually crucified his enemies (that I know about).
But he doesn’t like when we’re upset.
And he definitely doesn’t like when we’re in danger.
“I knew the wolf as well,” Lucius says quietly, making the whole thing even more awful. “We all did, all the wolf shifters.Roysimply means ‘king’ in Cajun. This man is…was…Jean-Baptiste Boudreaux. King of the Cajun werewolves.”
“Roy, man.” Jae shakes his head and covers his face with his hands. I get the uneasy sense he’s fighting to stop howling and hold off his shift. His voice is thick with his wolf’s guttural growl. “Why are you even here, you?”
“May he rest in peace.” Lucius lays a steadying hand on Jae’s bowed head. Which Jae tolerates from him, since Lucius’ own wolf is, like, uber alpha. “All your king’stroubles are now ended.”
Our headmaster doesn’t need to say it, but we’re all thinking it.Too bad the same thing isn’t true for the living.
Some shifters aren’t totally sentient when they shift. They go feral, like Malky the great white from House Tiberius, who bit a chunk out of Mordred’s tentacle during our dive and gulped it down right in front of him.
Now I’m getting the uneasy sense Jae might be the same kind.
While theloup-garouvisibly shudders under his mates’ protective clutch, Zephyr summons a flare of pale witchlight with a hiss. His witchcraft sets his Unseelie swords glowing like lightsabers. Then he prowls the shadowy confines of the tomb, blades held at the ready.
He’s checking the place out.
Securing our perimeter.
Hunting through the dark for our enemies like the wild animal he is.
Without a word of discussion, like he’s been guarding us his whole life, Mordred summons his trident into an outstretched hand and strides off in the opposite direction to do the same.
Right now, a little extra vigilance definitely feels like a good idea.
“Silver nails.” Lucius is, respectfully but thoroughly, examining the dead wolf’s body. His calm demeanor steadies me too, despite the deep disquiet that seeps through our mating bond. Deferentially, he peers at the grisly wounds that mark the clawed feet and outstretched hands of the dead werewolf.
Jean-Baptiste, I remind myself.That werewolf had a name. Probably a family. This is fucked up.
“If it’s any comfort,” Lucius murmurs, “I do believe the wolf king expired by other means.”
My Irish Catholic upbringing rises irreverently to the fore. “You mean a spear through the side, like Jesus?”
“No, Ms. Gemini.” Lucius, who’s a devout Christian himself, spares me a look of mild reproach from his whiskey eyes. “And before you ask, he isn’t wearing a crown of thorns either.”
“You mean he was killedbeforehe was crucified?” Vasili stops rubbing Neo’s unhappy back and gives Lucius a sharp look. “Then why the silver nails?”
“The silver nails were likely… an insurance policy of sorts,” Lucius says, “against the legendary resilience of theloup-garou.To ensure the dead king would not… rise.”
Through his curtain of fallen dreads, Jae gives the corpse a haunted look. “Yaya, like azonbi. This he could do, him. If not for the nails.”
“Oh, fuck me,” I whisper. The concept of that poor werewolfrisingfrom the dead like a damn zombie gives me a cold shiver, like a ghost walking over my grave.
Respectfully, Lucius examines with his flashlight the gory row of puncture wounds that stipple the dead wolf’s chest. Including the puncture that drove through the wolf’s furry throat, which was surely the killing blow. Under all the grizzled fur and dried blood and the tatters of the wolf’s ripped shirt, plus my instinctive reluctance to look at the grisly carnage too close, I’m only now noticing what Lucius apparently saw right away.
