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“Angry,” Connor said. “Very, very angry.” He walked away, put space between him and the bed.
“Where are Marcus, John, and Zane?” I asked.
No answer.
“If she has to ask again,” Connor said, “we’re both going to regret it.” There was a threat in his words—a danger—that I hadn’t heard from Connor before. A ruthlessness that said he understood that leadership often meant unpleasant things in order to protect the collective.
“Beyo,” I said quietly, “you helped us tonight because you knew what they were doing—playing vigilante—was wrong. You know their hurting Carlie was wrong. Don’t let them hurt anyone else. Let us find them before they hurt someone else and before they’re too far gone to come back from this. Tell us where they are.”
Beyo swallowed. “There’s a cavern out by the waterfalls. You follow the trail that runs past the creek. When the trail ends, you follow the creek for a while, and there’s a cave back behind some boulders. The local SOA chapter has a Web site, and it talks about the cavern—that’s how we found it. It was used for some of their rituals. We said we’d make the cavern legit. Not just a club, not just a cult. But real. The Sons of Aeneas, like meeting our destiny.” He sighed heavily, chest rising and falling and so thin, I could see the outline of his ribs through his shirt. “If they’re thinking like humans, they’ll go there. Lay low until the coast is clear. And if they aren’t there, I don’t know. It’s getting harder to come back.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Every time we change, it gets harder to remember who you are. Harder to not feel like you’re just the wolf. Only the wolf.”
A chill snaked up my spine. That was a feeling I could very much relate to, and it was a little unnerving to hear it described so well.
“Broken magic,” Connor said quietly, and I nodded. “Who will they attack next?” he asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Will they try again for Elisa?” Connor asked. “They’ve already failed twice.”
“You and Elisa,” Beyo said, and Connor’s eyes went wide. “She’s your responsibility. Zane said you should both be punished.”
Connor’s look was a mix of pity and anger. “Who else?”
“I don’t know,” Beyo said. “Whoever hasn’t done right by the clan.”
Defined,I thought,by a bunch of narcissistic and magically damaged twenty-year-olds with savior complexes.
Connor looked at Beyo for a quiet moment. “Anything else you want to tell me?”
Beyo shook his head. “I want to sleep now. I just want to sleep.”
***
We left him alone, returned to the living room. Alexei sat in a dining room chair he’d turned toward the door, crossed his ankles on the table. He looked back over his shoulder when we walked in, then kicked his feet down again, rose.
“You get anything?”
“Explanation and possible location. Magic’s gone bad, twisted them,” Connor said. “They’re having trouble coming back from the shift.”
“What will happen to Beyo now?” I asked.
“Whatever the Pack decrees,” Connor said. “Given one Pack member is dead by his hand, others injured, he may not survive the punishment.”
The Pack lived by its own code, which was probably one of the reasons Connor had been so angry at what Beyo and the others had done. The Pack was there to enforce, to protect. Beyo and his friends had tried to bypass that system and hurt other Pack members in the process.
“You think Cash will believe all this?”
“Oh, I wouldn’t worry about that.” Connor slid his screenhalfway from his pocket. “Had the recorder function engaged.” He slid it back again. “But I’m thinking about not telling him.”
“Interesting choice,” Alexei said.
“They used a cavern out by the waterfalls,” Connor said. “You know it?”
Alexei shook his head. “No. That where the others are?”
