Page 63

Kerry

“Hey, Kerry,” Hank said in an absent tone as he stared at his phone. “Have you ever heard of a dark witch who goes by Bennie?”

We’d just finished up with breakfast in a safe room at St. Pat’s and had started coordinating with our teams and making sure we hadn’t missed anything when my warden made me sit down with him on the couch.

“Yeah. Why?” I narrowed my eyes at him, cautious about where he was going with this.

I didn’t need any of them knowing some of the things I did for—and with—her, things I wished I could permanently erase out of my memories.

“You do ?!” He sat up straight and nearly dropped his phone in his lap. “How do you know her? And do you know where she is right now?”

“She’s here in New York, and I supplied some, ah, stuff to her over the years in exchange for some, uh, stuff.”

“What kind of stuff?”

Choosing to believe he meant what stuff I received from her, I said, “I needed food, mostly, when I was a kid, and then healing as I got older.”

“Healing?! You went to a dark witch for healing?!” Jax shrieked.

“It wasn’t like I could go to a neph healer, moron.” I shuddered, remembering the pain that racked me when my girl tried to heal me the night she found me. “A Divine healing on a possessed body woulda been more tortuous than whatever wounds I had to begin with!”

“Is this her?” Hank held up his phone so I could see a grainy black and white photo.

“Yep, that’s Bennie.”

“Did you ever supply her with a werewolf?”

I swallowed hard. I didn’t care about whatever had him riled up, but I was ashamed to tell the truth. I wasn’t a coward, though. I’d been bold enough to do it; I could be bold enough to admit it.

“Yeah, I did,” I said with my chin up and my shoulders back. “Lots of times. Bennie uses them to power her magic.”

“How?” Gigi frowned. “How can you use a werewolf—”

“They have immense self-healing abilities, so you can hurt one over and over and still keep it alive for years.”

“ Hurt one? How does that power magic?” Mira asked.

“Pain, baby girl,” Rome muttered as he raked a hand through his short hair. “After a witch makes a covenant with something Diabolical, she can use pain as her power supply, and what better source than a creature that can infinitely heal itself?”

“Well, so long as you don’t overdose them with wolfsbane, silver, or mercury,” I added, “or give them too many lethal injuries at once.”

“Did you ever supply her with a young she-wolf?” Hank interrupted before I could explain further. “Half-Japanese and maybe two years younger than you?”

“Why?”

“Just tell me!”

“I did not.” I narrowed my eyes, wondering what was going on.

“I only ever brought her monsters. The ones whose wolf halves were feral or their human halves were insane or both. They were destined for the executioner, anyway. I just got there before the werewolf king sent the Angel of Death to end them.”

“There’s a werewolf king?” Mira’s eyes bugged out.

“Yeah. Julian Hemming. He has an alliance with the Council,” I told her before Hank could.

“And he has an Angel of Death ?”

“He’s not a real angel. He’s a were named Angelo del Vecchio who goes by the name Angelo della Morte when he’s hunting monsters—”

“Go back to the half-Japanese she-wolf!” Hank barked, cutting me off. “Did you sell her to Bennie?”

“I don’t know what all this is about,” I glared at him as my temper spiked, “but I never sold a she-wolf period! To Bennie or anyone else!”

“Then what did you do to her?”

“I didn’t do anything to her!” I snarled. “I never met a half-Japanese she-wolf in my life!”

“Sorry. I was just excited that we might have found answers for her family.” Hank raised both hands, palms up and toward me, probably sensing how close I was to the edge.

“Why is she important, Hank?” Rome asked as I tried to rein my temper back in.

“A newborn half-Japanese she-wolf was stolen from her crib at the hospital on the day she was supposed to go home with her parents. None of the wolves could smell anyone or find any trail. All they had was a photo from the security camera, and it led nowhere. Until now. This is a photo from the hospital almost eighteen years ago.” He turned his phone to me again, and I recognized her right away, but waited until he slid his thumb across the screen to bring up the next image. “And this is from yesterday.”

“Well, that ain’t good for anyone , never mind a baby werewolf,” I muttered. “She’s Bennie’s, uh, special friend. She’s a neph, a Third and a messenger. If she ’ported in the parking lot, yeah, no one, not even a wolf’s nose, is going to be able to follow her trail.”

“What about her scent in the hospital?” Gigi asked with a frown. “I know the cleaning smells are strong, but surely a wolf would have been able to scent her among them.”

“Lots of different things she could have done,” Hank said with a sigh. “An amulet or talisman. A spell from her ‘special friend’ Bennie. Who knows?”

“What’s her name, Kerry?” Gina took Hank’s phone to study the photo. “I don’t recognize her, but maybe I’ve heard of her.”

“Runa, but don’t ask me her last name.” I scrubbed my hand over the back of my neck as I dug into my memories. “I wasn’t in the best condition whenever I had to go to Bennie’s, but I remember her stinking of corruption. Oh, and she has a heavy Spanish accent.”

“I don’t know that name, but I’ll see what I can dig up.” Gina held up both hands when I cut my eyes at her. “Discreetly, of course. No one will track me, I promise you that.”

“Speaking of tracking,” Jax said and pointed at Hank’s phone, “is that your Sanctuary-issued one? You know it can be tracked if it is.”

Hank and I rolled our eyes at the same time. My warden was no dummy, and this was far from his first rodeo.

“This is a burner I picked up a couple of days ago,” Hank told him.

“Start at the beginning, please, Hank,” Rome rumbled. “And is the dark witch’s name really Bennie?”

“Yeah. Short for Talia Ben Elihud.” I nodded. “She’s not very nice. You won’t like her one bit. Part of me is grateful to her, but the rest of me wants to scrape all her skin off and drop her in rubbing alcohol.”

“Eww!” Gigi gagged, and Mira made a disgusted face.

“She’d deserve every second of the agony, believe me, and even that wouldn’t be enough to make up for all the wrongs she’s done.”

“So to start from the beginning,” Hank said after I fell silent, “Bennie had a mate. A wolf shifter. About twenty years ago, the alpha of the pack, Nathan Barlow at the time, had to kill him because he went feral, and Bennie took revenge by cursing Nathan’s mate and unborn child before she fled.

Fast-forward to the present, a couple of wolves smelled a dark witch at a diner near the pack border and called their current alphas.

Nathan tagged along to see what was up and—”

“How’s any of this my business?” I interrupted. Bennie got around. I didn’t see how it connected to what I was trying to accomplish. “And what’s it have to do with a kidnapped baby she-wolf? I mean, that’s sad and all, but what does it have to do with me ?”

“One, the kidnapped baby wolf is from the same pack as Bennie’s mate.

It could be just a coincidence, but I find that very suspicious.

Two, Nathan recognized Bennie’s scent immediately.

Three, Bennie wasn’t there alone. Nathan and the current alphas smelled both Diabolical and Divine power, so they asked my friend Angelo to find out if anyone in the neph community knew Bennie’s whereabouts or who her three companions were. ”

“And your friend Angelo texted you,” Gigi finished up. “Well, we know one of her companions was Runa Someone. Do you recognize the other two, Hank?”

“One looks just like Kerry’s sketch of the shadow prince.”

Grabbing his phone, I nearly crushed it as I stared down and saw thick black hair, lizard-leathery skin, and green-gold eyes with black slitted pupils.

“They never get the eyes right,” I muttered and handed the phone back to Hank with a shrug. “I’ve been meaning to pay Bennie a visit, anyway. Still not convinced this is any of my business, but maybe she’ll have some useful information since she’s working with him.”

“What about the fourth person photographed with Bennie?” Mira asked.

“Kerry, try to stay calm, okay?” Hank took his phone back, angled it away so I couldn’t see it, and swiped to the next photo. “You can’t lose your temper. We need you awake and functional right now. If we have to put you in a coma again, it’ll only slow down the whole search for Gemma.”

Just hearing her name, I stiffened, my nostrils flaring wide as my hands tightened into fists, but I gave him a curt nod, determined to keep it together.

Then he showed me the last photo, and that determination was all that kept me from lighting this place up with blue fire.

Samuel freaking Castle.

Of course it was.

“Okay,” I growled, “ now this is one hundred percent my business.”

#

Before Jax, Rome, and Mira took me to the Huskarls’ training center to try and cool off, I left Hank with clear instructions to get the Angel of Death here with his wolves as soon as possible and not take no for an answer.

The moment they arrived, I planned to use them to sort out the dark witch and her little neph buddy once and for all.

The wolves could have Runa and try to get information about their lost she-wolf before they killed her, but Bennie was mine.

That which was going to give me some answers before I cut her up into teeny, tiny pieces and burned them.

Those thoughts were put on hold soon after we returned from the training center, though, and Josef Krall came running to tell me Mingo had contacted him. He and Queen Parvenah had arranged a meeting with Darius, and I coulda jumped for joy to finally have something going my way.