His footsteps slowed as he clocked the crowd outside Val’s bar. His gaze moved from one grim face to the next, noting reddened eyes and tear tracks down dust-covered cheeks. Then he realized the children were gone.
“What happened?”
Stony silence met his question. Dread curled its icy fingers around Mason’s gut as he looked from one stony face to the other. Instead of the warmth he was used to, their eyes were hard and unforgiving. He’d seen that look before. Right before they drew down on something non-human.
“Well come on. I’m no mindreader. Someone tell me what bloody well happened!”
Wariness thrilled through his veins like a fine concerto played by an orchestra. They were armed. Thanks to him they were always armed but this was different. The subtle change in their body language said he needed to be careful, very careful.
“Where’ve you been, Mason?”
He half turned at the voice behind him to find Joe, his rifle held loosely. Surprise joined the wariness and worry fighting for dominance in his veins. He needed Andy here, something was very wrong.
“What are you playing at? Please don’t tell me the gate’s unguarded…”
Joe shrugged. “Seems to me we got more worries in here than we have from out there. Where were you last night?”
“I went after Andy, the girl who saved our asses against the wolves yesterday, remember? She was wounded…” He trailed off as the silent tension in the group mounted.
“Andy…the paranormal chick we threw out a couple of days ago?”
Mason’s brow furrowed at the hostility in Joe’s voice. He turned a little more, trying to keep an eye on the weapons in the group. His instincts screamed at him to un-sling his rifle and take cover, but he stayed where he was. That the crowd had itchy trigger fingers was easy enough to see. Just one move would be enough to set them off.
“Well, it wasn’t really a case of letting her anything. If she hadn’t shown up then we’d all be dead, you know that Joe.” He looked around, searching the group for another face. “So do you Julia.”
Julia’s expression wasn’t as understanding as he’d expected. Instead fear and hatred filled her eyes. “Aye, but better us dead than those creatures take our kids.”
“Aye, she’s right.”
“Should have let be, like Fred…God rest his soul…said.”
“His fault… We should never have listened to him.”
The chorus of agreement from the parents in the group staggered Mason. They saw him as the enemy? Nausea rolled in his gut and clawed its way up his throat. In his travels he’d seen what happened when a community turned on one of its own, for whatever reason. The result was never pretty.
“What…the wolves took the kids?” he demanded, desperate to get to the bottom of this. Instinctively he looked for Valerie. Please don’t let them have taken Suzie. His heart dropped when he located her at the back. Her reddened eyes and tear-marked cheeks were answer enough.
“Aye. They took the kids. Stole in here in the middle of the night whilst we were sleeping and took them.”
“What about the guards?”
“Took out Katie on the outer wall with a crossbow. We don’t know what happened to Victor on the gate, no sign of him. It was only old Fred, God rest his soul, that tried to stop them.”
Mason was stunned. They’d protected the town for years against creatures, how could their methods fail so dramatically in one night? He’d only left to go after Andy because he was sure that the town was adequately defended.
“This is your fault.”
The shrill accusation came from behind him. Mason turned again, feeling like he was watching a tennis match.
“How?”
“If you hadn’t told that wolf no then they wouldn’t have taken our kids. God knows what they’re doing to them. Jamie’s only three—” Tears streamed down Julia’s face as her voice cracked.
Guilt hit him like a truck at Mach-one. This was his fault. If he hadn’t gone, then he’d have been here to stop them. He opened his mouth to argue. What would they have preferred? To lose five women, including some of the mothers of the children who’d been taken…
He shut his jaw with a click. He knew the answer. Of course they would have. Any parent would lay their life down if it meant his or her child lived. That was what being a parent was about.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t know…” He trailed off into silence, not sure what else to say. What else could he say? Then something prickled at the back of his mind.
God rest his soul. That wasn’t a phrase people used for someone who was alive. It was used for someone who was six foot under or shortly to head that way. Anguish clawed at his soul, both for the loss of a friend and the communities’ loss.
“Where’s Fred?”
“You’d better come through,” Valerie said quietly from the back of the group. Her voice was hoarse from crying. “He doesn’t have long left, so we’ve made him comfortable. It’s all we can do…”
The crowd parted, the hostile stares and the fingers curled around triggers making Mason jumpy as he walked through them. They hadn’t tried to relieve him of his weaponry yet, but he knew it was coming. Unless they planned on just turning him out of town, then someone was going to make a play for his weapons pretty soon. With the way things were going, that wasn’t going to turn out pretty.
He didn’t think they were going to let him walk. Tension was running too high, and mob mentality had already set in. With their children stolen right from under their noses, they needed someone to blame. Mason was no idiot. He was going to be the scapegoat. It was already cut and dried.
The trouble was, he couldn’t blame them. He was in charge of making sure the town was safe. He’d told them they could trust him, rely on him. This was his fault. He shouldn’t have left them alone last night.
“V,” he started as he drew level, and tried to catch her eye. Of all the people in town, he was closest to Valerie. Something deep inside needed her to understand how sorry he was for letting them down. How bad he felt that their kids, that Suzie, had been taken.
“We’ll get them back. I’ll get them back... I’ll get Suzie back. I promise.”
“He’s in there. You might want to hurry. State he’s in, he won't last long.”
She gave the door a sharp nod, and turned to walk away quickly. Mason watched her for a long moment. Pain lanced through him. Valerie didn’t cry in front of people. Not ever. Blanking his expression, Mason took a deep breath, steeled himself, and walked into the bar.
Darkness enveloped him in its welcoming embrace. Mason paused to let his vision adjust, and regretted it. Out of the dark the smell of death hit him like a sucker punch to the gut. Bile rose and hammered on the back of his throat. He swallowed it down, and tried to breathe through his mouth, his ears...tried to breathe through anything if it meant he didn’t have to suffer through the smell that was packed into the dark room like a crowd hundreds deep.
He’d smelt death before, so the coppery tang of blood mixed with a fouler stench was nothing new. The smell of a gut wound was unmistakable. He’d know it anywhere. The contents of his stomach rose sharply again, bile burning up his throat. He’d smelt it before, but it was a hundred times worse with the realization that the person whose guts were leaking out over the floor was a friend.
His footsteps rang out against the floorboards in measured treads as he walked towards the bar. His eyes adjusted, and the room was transformed from blackness to shades of gray. Within seconds, Mason wished it hadn’t.
Fred sat slumped in front of the bar, head dropped forwards onto his chest, with his back to the wooden surface. Sat was a relative term. Most of Fred sat in front of the bar, in more or less a humanoid shape, but there were other bits Mason didn’t need, or want, to identify scattered around the room.
His sight had adjusted completely to the dim light in the room as he rounded the last table—the one riveted to the floor—and looked down at the slumped figure. Blood decorated the bar, the floor, and other surfaces around him in thick, black arcs that spoke of violence and pain. Mason couldn’t help the wince as he looked at what remained of his friend.
He was in a worse condition than Mason had thought. A red towel covered his midsection, from chest to mid-thigh, covering the worst of the damage. It was sticky with blood and other fluids, but that wasn’t the worst of it. Fred had always been a well-built man, retaining an impressive beer gut despite the recent heavy rationing. However, now Fred’s abdomen looked as lean as his own. Mason gritted his teeth. He would not be sick. He wouldn’t dishonour the older man in that way. How Fred was still alive was beyond him, if he was still alive.
“Wondered how long it would take you.”
The voice was little more than a wheeze, but Mason caught it. He dropped to his knees next to Fred, not caring that his jeans were instantly soaked, and grabbed for the hand the older man lifted.
“Sorry, mate, traffic’s a bitch.”
Fred’s hand was cold, the skin icy to the touch. Mason didn’t need to press on the nail beds to know Fred’s circulation was severely compromised. The wounded man chuckled. The sound degenerated into a cough, which was more a death rattle. For long moments he struggled to breathe.
A tiny muscle in the corner of Mason’s jaw jumped. His throat was thick with emotion as he fought back the hot prickles at the backs of his eyes. In all his time on the road, all the times he’d nearly died, and all the times he’d watched others die, he’d never felt as helpless as he did now.
“What happened, Fred?”
Fred rolled his head back to lean it against the bar. Mason winced. The skin was shredded to the bone. A gaping hole in one cheek revealed the whiteness of teeth, and the eye socket furthest from Mason was empty.
“Jesus…”
“Yeah. I’m not gonna win any beauty contests, am I?”
The self-deprecating comment startled a laugh out of Mason. “No, now that you mention it, I doubt it’s on the cards. What happened, man?”
Fred started to speak but another coughing fit hit him. Mason looked away as blood and spittle flew. Good thing he seemed to be immune to the Lycan infection, or Fred’s tainted blood would have done him for sure.
“Sorry ’bout that. Anyways…Jed happened. Or them bastard wolves of his did. They come out of nowhere, Mason. Not like they normally do…this was sneaky. They were in human form, got the kids real quiet like. One of them had on Victor’s coat…you know, that long jacket he always wore.”
Mason bowed his head, shaking with anger.
“Go on.”
His voice was tight and controlled. The sheer force of feeling surging through him was like a tidal wave. One tiny slip, one little crack in the iron wall of his control, and it would spill over. Then whoever was in the way would be in for a world of hurt.
“I was in here, heard something out the back.” Fred shrugged. “Went to investigate, didn’t see the one sneaking up on me and, well, the rest you can see... Bastards thought they’d done me for, and didn’t bother to finish me off. I need to warn you—”