Page 149 of Endless Anger
“Oh? What would you call it then?” she snaps.
“It doesn’t fucking matter. Avernia campus police won’t give a shit. You’ve seen them handle the other deaths this year.”
“So what? You want to just do this on our own?” She makes a face, giving me a once-over. “No offense—or full offense, actually, because I don’t give a fuck—but I’m not sure I trust you enough for that.”
Whipping out my phone, I pull up the contact we both know we’ll need, and hit the call button. She pales, slinking back and slamming her mouth shut.
My heart ricochets in my chest like a stray bullet, apprehension slashing at my insides.
There isn’t any other choice. If we go to the dean, he won’t be any help considering hewantsLucy gone. The police will side with the founding families, and they’d take too long to do anything anyway.
There’s only one person in the entire world whose hunting skills would give him the actual means of locating her—who’d travel to hell and back to find her.
Alistair Wolfe answers the video call on the third ring; the camera cuts to his lean face, aged the way my father’s is, though when he makes eye contact with me, his takes on a bit of an edge that Dad’s lacks.
For as long as I can remember, that edge was there, though it’s never felt more deadly than right now.
Still, his blue eyes are exact replicas of his daughter’s, and the reminder that I cannot fuckingfind herpounds in my skull.
“This had better be good,” he says, his English accent muted and raspy from sleep.
Aurora shoves her face in the camera’s frame. “Hi, Uncle Ali!”
“Rory,” he coos, his features softening. There’s a long, drawn-out pause in which it feels as if we’re waiting for something. Or someone.
Nobody talks, and Alistair’s face quickly becomes solid stone again.
Some rustling comes from his end as he appears to push back sheets and climb from the large four-poster bed he shares with his wife. I hear her softly call out and ask where he’s going, though I don’t catch his reply as he leaves the room and walks down the hall.
Tapping sounds scatter as he enters his office, and the camera shifts, revealing a chocolate lab with a partially white face trailing behind him. Clearing his throat, Alistair settles in behind his desk, propping his phone up on some sort of stand.
“Speak,” he demands.
Growing up, everyone always seemed more afraid of his wife, Cora, but to me, she was easier to navigate because she lacked a filter. What you saw was what you got.
Alistair Wolfe spent most of his life in politics. He’s a renowned hunter on Aplana Island. He knows how to track his prey, how to lure them in, and how to kill with a single blow.
You’d never see it coming, which makes him far more dangerous.
Add in the fact that I’m positive he’s never cared much for me, and I could probably piss myself right now over what I’m about to tell him.
Aurora edges away, her swallow audible.
“Asher.” Alistair rubs his eyes and then drags his hand through his black hair. “It’s my assumption that you would not bother me in the middle of the night unless something was very wrong, and considering you’ve been attached to my daughter since she popped out of her mother and she’s nowhere to be seen at the moment, I’m inclined to believe it involves her.”
“And Foxe.” My mouth dries up, trying to keep me from saying the words. “They’re missing.”
43
LUCY
I wake up to screaming.
Not the distant kind you can tune out or celebratory shouts of excitement and festivities.
The kind that pierces your soul as it rips from a person’s throat, guttural and raw and animalistic. A last-ditch attempt at prolonging life.
My body registers it all before my brain has a chance to catch up, and the screams snake their way into my veins, rattling my bones to the marrow. An ache flares behind the right side of my skull, spreading across my temple, and as I slowly manage to work my eyes open, I’m met with darkness.
