Taken by Storm (Raised by Wolves #3)(27)
Author: Jennifer Lynn Barnes

Caroline’s mother—Ali’s mother—had possessed a knack for manipulating other people’s emotions. She’d tempered Archer’s toward me with equal parts hatred, curiosity, and disgust.

But now he was just a guy—older than me, but younger than Ali—and I was the one playing with his emotions.

Specifically, his guilt.

“You didn’t come all of this way just to yell at me,” Archer said, though his tone suggested that he wouldn’t have had a problem with it if I had. “And if you’re trying to get me to say that I owe you, then you’re right.”

That was easier than I’d thought it would be.

“I need you to find someone for me,” I said.

“I don’t find people.” Archer fiddled with a sugar packet, flicking it back and forth over his index finger and his thumb.

“But you can find their dreams.” I didn’t wait for a reply. “You can talk to them. You can manipulate what they see. You can, if memory serves correctly, set them on fire—”

“You’re really not going to let that go, are you?” he asked. From the look on his face, I thought he might have been joking, but I wasn’t sure.

“I need you to find a specific person’s dreams,” I said.

“And then what do you need me to do?” Archer leaned back against the booth, his eyes dull, and I realized that he thought I was going to ask for something else, that I was going to use him the way Valerie had.

As a weapon.

“That’s it,” I said. “I just need you to find her dreams and tell me what you see. Talk to her, see if she’s okay, try to get her to tell you where she is.”

“Consider it done.” Archer looked like I’d challenged him to a game of chess. “Whose dreams am I finding?”

I told him and debated whether or not to mention the fact that we had no guarantee Maddy was the same person she’d been when she’d left the pack, and had every reason in the world to think that she wasn’t.

“If you can’t give me a general idea of where her body is, I’m going to need something that belongs to her. Clothing is best, or maybe a piece of her hair?”

Did he seriously think that I carried around an inventory of hair for every person in my pack?

I was saved from asking that question out loud by the telltale buzz of my phone against my hip. Withdrawing it from the pocket of my jeans, I noticed that I had a text from an unknown number.

SHE WAS HERE.

For a split second, I thought the universe—or possibly Shay—was taunting me with vague declarations about Maddy’s location, but then I realized that of the group I’d sent to Alpine Creek, Caroline was the only one not in danger of destroying a cell phone the moment she Shifted.

HOW LONG AGO DID SHE LEAVE? I typed back.

DON’T KNOW. The reply came almost immediately, and it was followed by an addendum, which set the phone to buzzing once more. LAKE SMELLS BLOOD.

Caroline and I were going to have to have a serious conversation about her texting habits. Seriously. “She was here”? “Lake smells blood”? These kinds of things merited a phone call.

Glancing back up at Archer, I noticed that he had a funny smile on his face. “I’m pretty sure this is the first time I’ve seen you actually look your age,” he told me.

Right. Because texting was so very teen.

Unsure whether he’d find me making a phone call equally amusing, I dialed Caroline’s number.

She answered on the third ring and cut right to the chase. “Maddy was here, but she’s not anymore. Lake smells blood. I want to go inside, but Chase and Lake seemed to think we should ask you first.”

Blood? Check.

Potentially rabid werewolf? Check.

Of course Caroline wanted to go inside.

“How far away from the house are you guys?” I asked, uncertain how close Lake would have had to get in order to pick up on the scent.

“We’re about a hundred yards out.”

My breath caught in my throat. At that distance, if Lake was smelling blood, it meant one of two things: either there was a lot of blood, or it was fresh.

“Archer,” I said.

“Yes?” His amusement seemed to have dwindled, based on the content of my conversation.

“Three questions,” I said, ticking them off on my fingers as I spoke. “One: do you have a car? Two: do you have plans tonight? And three: how fast can you drive?”

CHAPTER TWENTY

THE BLOOD WASN’T HUMAN AND IT WASN’T FRESH, but it was everywhere. The entire cabin smelled like copper and rotting meat. The floorboards—wooden and rotting themselves—had soaked up most of the actual liquid, but there was splatter on every wall in the house.

“You,” Archer said, coming in on my heels and appraising the “decorations,” “live a very strange life.”

I couldn’t exactly argue the point. Chase and Lake were waiting out in the forest. This much blood—even if it was animal blood, even if it was old—might have been too much for the predators inside them, and that wasn’t a chance any of us could afford to take, so that left Jed, Caroline, and me to appraise the inside of the cabin—with Archer tagging along.

“What happened here?” I couldn’t keep myself from asking the question. The pattern of gore made it look like something had been eviscerated.

Maybe multiple somethings.

“There aren’t any bodies.” Even Caroline sounded disturbed, and that couldn’t possibly have been a good thing. “There’s nothing but blood.”

As we walked from room to room, I noted the way Archer kept his distance from Caroline, and the way that Jed never took his eyes off Archer.

Four psychics walk into a rotting cabin….

I didn’t let myself finish the joke. Instead, I tried to piece together what had happened here. Someone had been living in this cabin—most likely Maddy. How long ago had she left? What had she done while she was here? Was she the one who’d painted these walls red with blood?

In the corner of the back bedroom, I spotted a bundle of blankets. As I knelt down to investigate, I saw a small brown tuft of fur. For a split second, I froze, but after ascertaining that the tuft wasn’t moving, I nudged it with the tip of my shoe, revealing the rest.

A teddy bear.

It was old, worn, and missing both eyes, and I was fairly certain someone had made a regular habit of gnawing on its ear.

“Who lives here?” Archer asked.

I picked up the teddy bear, running my thumb over the edge of its worn fur and wondering if it had belonged to one of my kids.