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Next to them, Cosette and Chris sat side by side, whispering, their heads tilted toward each other. When had they gotten so close? I leaned in, trying to listen just a little, but then I noticed Cosette’s hand. She was wearing a glove.
On her sword hand. The one with the blackened fingertips.
She caught me looking and lifted her brows. That one motion shouldn’t be so expressive, but I caught her loud and clear. Don’t even think about asking. I was still going to—because I wanted to make sure she wasn’t hurt—but it could wait until there weren’t as many people around.
Meredith and Donovan sat at the end of the table, talking with Mr. Dawson. They paused their conversation as Dastien shut the door behind us.
Claudia set the book on the table with a thud.
“What’s going on,” Mr. Dawson said. “Did you find something?”
“Claudia did,” I said.
“Well, I found Luciana’s book of ley lines, but Teresa had the vision.”
“So you know what’s going to happen?” Meredith asked.
I wished. “Not that kind of vision. I saw Luciana flipping through the book. We think she’s heading to New Mexico. It would be awesome if we could find her before she does anything else terrible.”
“A sneak attack,” Chris said as he steepled his fingers. “I’m liking the sound of that.”
“Me too.” Cosette’s eyes flashed with bloodlust. “Let’s see her fight for her life for a change.”
“If this gets bad, you might need the pack with you,” Mr. Dawson said. “We can’t all up and leave now, though. There’s too much going on.”
“We’ll have two Alphas—including myself—and some of these young wolves are pretty alpha, too. Not to mention a fey and a handful of witches,” Lucas said. “It’s a solid group. We can get there, scout things out, and then call you if we don’t think we can handle the situation. New Mexico can’t be a long flight from here.”
Donovan shook his head. “Couple hours at most. I’ve got my plane here and—”
“You have a plane?” I asked before I could stop myself.
Meredith slapped his arm. “Yeah. You have a plane?”
The conference phone rang, and Mr. Dawson leaned to hit the button. “Yes?”
“You need to turn on the TV. The news…” Mrs. Kilburn—Mr. Dawson’s secretary—said. “It’s not good.”
Someone clicked on the screen.
The anchor was narrating from off-camera, but I couldn’t pay attention to what she was saying. My chest tightened as I watched the image.
There was a little girl on screen. Toddler. Her hair was in tight ringlets and she wore a red and white gingham dress.
She was also tied to a chair. She cried and screamed while eight too-big-to-be-normal wolves circled, lashed out at her with their long claws. A Cazador wearing the usual all-black pants and shirt was asking her questions. There was no sound, but from the movement of his lips and the pause before the wolves moved into action, it was obvious what was going on.
A ringing sounded in my ears.
“Shit. That’s Kaden,” Dastien said.
“Yes,” Mr. Dawson half-growled the word. “A group of Cazadores found a demon. They were able to capture it, and proceeded to question it. They found it odd how easy it was to catch, having watched the previous footage, but they thought questioning it before killing it would be helpful in the hunt for Luciana.” He gripped the chair in front of him so hard that it cracked. “I agreed at the time, but now I know. We were set up. The camera… It’s placed a little too well.”
It looked like the werewolves were torturing a child. A beautiful little girl.
We came off as complete monsters. The worst of the worst. Because if there was one thing everyone could agree on, it was that only a true monster would hurt the innocent.
Then the girl looked straight at the camera for an instant—a blink-and-you-miss-it moment. Her eyes were glowing bright red. If I hadn’t been watching for it, waiting to see her eyes, I would’ve missed it, too.
This was bad. Beyond bad.
