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“I left them back at home with my skintight leather cat suit. I didn’t realize we were breaking into the Tower of London to steal the Koh-i-Noor diamond. Next time I’ll dress up.”
“The Koh-i-what?”
“It doesn’t matter.” A lesson on the finer points of priceless diamonds could wait for another time. “Did you bring a weapon or anything? I’m guessing the church will be empty at this hour, but I don’t want to take chances, especially considering those guys on the highway seemed to be gunning for us specifically.” A lot of supes liked to think they were tough enough on their own against humans and guns or knives were for pussies. In a one-on-one brawl this was probably accurate.
I was sticking to my initial plan, which was primarily recon. We knew Hank was in town somewhere, and the church was the most likely place, but there was no way to know for sure. We couldn’t waltz in, guns blazing, not unless we wanted to get ourselves killed.
But the two guys in the truck worried me. If they worked for the Church, there was a chance they might have called ahead and warned someone we were coming. I was just hoping we might be able to get a look at the building before anyone else showed up. We could figure out a more aggressive plan of attack when we had more information.
Wilder returned to his bike and opened one of the leather saddlebags on the side. From inside he withdrew a small handgun, much more compact than I would have expected from a big guy like him. He checked to see if it was loaded and made sure the safety was on before tucking it in the back of his pants and lifting his shirt to cover it.
“Satisfied?” he asked.
“Probably as satisfied as I’m going to get, considering the situation.”
Frankly, even if we had a bazooka, I wasn’t going to feel prepared enough.
We trudged onward, soon wandering off the cracked sidewalk and into the middle of the street. The town was so empty it felt like we were on the set of a zombie movie. My nerves were on edge because it reminded me far too much of my previous experience with the walking dead. Zombies might not be real, but if you get enough powerful necromancers in the same place, it doesn’t matter that the bodies are being animated by magic. It feels like the end of days.
This was different. There were no bodies around us, living or otherwise. No ambient noise, nothing to indicate anyone else existed in a ten-mile radius. We were driven only by the glow on the horizon that was too bright to be morning. It must be the church.
A chill crept up my spine, and I couldn’t shake the sense of dread following after me. Obviously this was all wrong. We shouldn’t be here in the first place, not by ourselves and not so unprepared. But even with a dozen other werewolves in tow I didn’t think anything could keep this situation from being super creeptastic.
Not to mention I half-expected a truck to peel up behind us at any moment and run us into the ditch.
I kept close to Wilder, but his presence did little to make me feel better. Once the teasing had stopped, he seemed to remember what it was we’d come here to do. His jaw was tight, and a look of determination had come over him.
It was hard to feel comforted by someone who appeared to be on the verge of a killing spree, no matter who that homicidal urge was directed towards.
The uneasy sensation continued to make my heartbeat flutter, and more than once I checked behind us. But every time the road was empty. These guys weren’t just a group of idiot redneck fanatics. They’d found me more than once while I was driving, and they’d been able to capture Hank. Werewolves could smell humans coming, so it begged the question of how they’d managed to bag a full-grown male werewolf.
This wasn’t amateur hour, and Wilder and I were going to need to be smart and careful. I was glad I’d joined him, now, because careful didn’t seem to be a major concern to Wilder.
It took me a minute to admit to myself that I was also frightened of seeing her again. The mysterious female figure who appeared to be haunting me. With her face burned to charcoal ruin, I couldn’t figure out who she was or what she wanted from me. All I knew was she scared the crap out of me, and I refused to believe she was all in my mind.
Crazy people see the dead following them.
I wasn’t crazy.
I followed Wilder as we made our way off the street and passed the edge of town where the sidewalk literally ended and the gravel shoulder of the highway began. The light from the church got brighter as we drew nearer. They certainly weren’t trying to be subtle about their presence here, which made me wonder yet again why they were in Franklinton at all, if they weren’t trying to hide. There was no way to find this place when I looked online, but now that we’d arrived, it was lit like an airport landing strip guiding us in.
It took us almost fifteen minutes to get from the town limits to the site of the church, but once we had the place in view, I could tell why we hadn’t seen anyone in town. And I immediately regretted not mapping out a Plan B.
A dozen cars, everything from beat-up pickups to a shiny new Mercedes, were parked in a neat row in the paved church lot. Not a lot of people, but it was probably the entire remaining population of the town.
Living in the south, I’d seen more than my fair share of churches, but all the same this one took my breath away. It wasn’t as big as a megachurch, but it dwarfed the small-town chapel that had likely once been in its place. I guess that website of theirs drew in a lot more donations than I’d suspected.
The building was a good three stories tall, and the entire exterior was pristine, glittering blue glass, the kind used in huge office towers. Around the front were evenly spaced magnolia and gardenia trees, their white flowers all in full bloom, giving the air a fragrant sweetness of honey and lemon that overwhelmed any other scents and brought a flood of memories swirling back to me.
La Sorcière had taught me all about the magical properties of flowers. Both gardenia and magnolia promoted peace. But gardenia was also used to protect from outside influence. These zealots could pretend to be oblivious, but I suspected the trees hadn’t been planted just because they looked pretty.
My theory was confirmed when I glanced between the magnolia trees and saw the tall stems of pretty purple flowers swaying lightly in the night air.
“Wolfsbane,” I announced.
It was long believed by magical practitioners to protect against vampires and werewolves. Thankfully not all herb lore was accurate. But its presence alone was all I needed to know they weren’t fooling around. They had fail-safes in place.
Fuck. “Why the hell is the church lot this full after four in the morning?” Too early for regular service, too late for midnight mass. Right on time to be weird and concerning. It also put a serious damper in my plan to scout the area. With this many people around we wouldn’t be able to check the perimeter and look for signs of Hank. Fuck times a million.
