13. Alec

Chapter 13

Alec

H is name was Dale Rodgers, according to local legend and rumors stretching back longer than Alec had been alive. He had never seen a picture, or the man in question, but he knew the voice sure enough. Alec’s little slice of rural Appalachia was considered to be a mere blip on a map to bigger and better places. How a man who ran one of the largest criminal organizations in the Southern USA had even heard of Alec to begin with was surely thanks to the dead man lying not far from where Alec hid in the dark.

Stepdad Stu never wasted a chance to make some money, and selling his fae stepson to the head of the mountain mafia was perfectly in line with his character, though Alec was still surprised Stu had the courage to approach the man to begin with—but then, greed emboldened men like Stu.

Alec kept himself small, listening to the men in the clearing as they moved around the bodies, swearing colorfully at the carnage, boots moving leaves and sticks.

One man swore, and Alec heard enough to recognize the voice. It was the talkative deputy from Hemlock, Deputy John. Which perhaps meant one of the others with him must be Deputy Earl.

Who it was didn’t matter—they came with violence in mind.

“I bet it was the boyfriend,” Deputy John said. “A big motherfucker like that could do this kinda mess. I told you he was a werewolf.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Deputy Earl complained. “I heard you the first million times. Where’s the werewolf now though? Huh? I don’t think they’re living out here in the trees. Ain’t nothing out here but critters gnawing on dead things.”

The third person in the clearing said nothing, but Alec heard them walking, and then the sharp line of a red laser cutting through the night, hitting the leaves on the ground several feet away. Alec froze.

“You find something?” Deputy John asked.

“Tracks,” the third person said, and Alec went cold. They were following the tracks toward the downed tree Alec hid within. If they had infrared goggles, Alec was dead.

“Tracks? What kinda tracks—” Deputy Earl said, but his words were choked off by a gurgle, and the air was thick with the scent of hot blood, raining down on the leaf litter with a thick spray.

“Shit!” Deputy John shouted. “What the fuck was that?”

“What? What happened?!” the third person shouted, the laser disappearing as they turned away in a hurry.

Alec risked a peek over the huge trunk—the light of the moon was enough to see a twitching body on the ground, night vision goggles knocked off into the leaves, two figures standing over their dying companion.

Lights flicked on, and Alec ducked down, closing his eyes to preserve his night vision. Beams of light swooped overhead and through the trees, and Alec knew his hiding spot wasn’t going to last much longer.

“Oh fuck, oh fuck,” someone gasped out. “His head’s been ripped off!”

Gunshots rang out, an automatic rifle tearing through the air and trees, bullets riddling the ground and pinging off the oak tree Alec hid behind.

“Quit it! What the fuck you firing at! You wanna hit the boss?” Deputy John shouted, interrupting the shooting. “Whatever it was is gone, just use your eyes?—”

A harsh scream completed that sentence, and a cacophony of shots tore through the woods. Voices crackled over the radio, but it died with a screech of feedback and then went silent.

The shooting stopped, too.

Ears ringing, Alec waited for a sign it was safe to look.

A huge shadow leapt atop the tree trunk, and Alec smiled up at his mate, visible in the fallen flashlight beams in the clearing. “Did you get all three?”

“I did, little greenbough,” Leif replied, reaching down with one huge arm and helping Alec climb up out of the branches of the fallen oak. He sat on the trunk beside Leif.

“How many more in the woods?” Alec asked, taking in the fresh mayhem. There were three new headless corpses in the clearing that weren’t there a few moments prior, and Alec leaned into his mate, satisfied.

“The big boss, and three more of his men.” Leif pointed with his muzzle deeper into the woods. “They heard the shots and the screaming.”

“Are they running away or toward us?”

“I believe they’re foolishly coming this way,” Leif growled out .

“Idiots,” Alec said with a heavy sigh. “You okay saving the boss for me? I want to have a word with him.”

“With pleasure, little greenbough,” Leif said, and with a mighty leap, he disappeared into the shadows.

Alec stayed seated on the trunk, eyeing the growing pile of bodies in the clearing. “This is going to be a big bonfire.”

He pulled out his new phone, pleased to see he had several bars of signal this deep in the woods, and looked up whether they were in a burn ban area. No sense in starting a wildfire just to dispose of some inconvenient bodies.

Leif

His prey were carrying large flashlights and they were jogging through the heavy leaf layer toward the spot where Leif killed their buddies. They were loud, their breathing harsh and panicked, and none of them were the least bit observant, despite being dressed in quality camo gear with large hunting knives strapped to their waists. They stunk of stress and fear, and his primal instincts rode him hard, demanding he kill the interlopers.

They were hunting his mate.

He waited for the group to pass him in the darkness, and with one arm reached out and plucked the last man in the group off his feet, crushing his skull. He tossed the body aside, the others making enough of a racket that they heard nothing as Leif continued to follow them.

Two men and the mafia boss remained.

He presumed the man in the priciest camo getup was the boss—he carried a handgun and a rifle, and the two men remaining with him carried automatic rifles of some kind. Humans and their guns.

The boss had his handgun out and pointed at the ground with one hand, sweeping the area with his high-intensity flashlight with the other; he paused with the light illuminating the killing ground where Leif had left the corpses of his men.

“Come out and face me, you monster!” the man shouted, firing his gun into the air twice.

Leif rose from the shadows behind them and reached out, claws raking across the throats of the two henchmen from behind. They managed to fire a few times, narrowly missing their own boss as they jerked and flailed, dying as they hit the ground.

“Fuck!” the mafia boss swore and he turned, firing point blank into Leif’s chest, emptying the gun.

The shots hurt, but he began healing immediately, the bullets forced out of his chest, bouncing like fat raindrops of blood onto the leaves as his body healed.

He loomed over the human who was sweating and shaking; terror made him keep pulling the trigger even after the click signaled it was spent. He tossed aside the handgun and struggled to move the rifle off his back into his hands, but Leif ripped the rifle away from him as the human stumbled back and then fell on his ass, flashlight falling to the ground, the beam lighting up Leif as he roared in challenge and rage, bending the rifle in his clawed hands, the wood of the stock shattering and the barrel bent in half.

“Thank you, my mate,” Alec said from the shadows, though Leif saw him easily. He still sat on the trunk of the fallen tree, hands in his pockets, watching intently. Leif puffed up, growling happily—his mate was pleased.

“You...what…what the fuck!” the ma fia boss shouted, scrambling at his waist for a large hunting knife, struggling to get it free.

Alec’s grin in the shadows was sharp and deadly.

Alec

Leif was amazing. He was deadly and powerful and Alec wanted to give him the world.

He would, too, once he dealt with the human monster in his midst.

Leif grabbed Rodgers by the throat and dragged him to where Alec sat on the tree. The flashlight was bright enough that it lit up the clearing, one of those huge high-intensity lights poachers used lazily to shoot deer from the road.

Rodgers was wearing hunting gear that looked brand new and never used, and the knife he struggled to pull from his belt seemed to be stuck in the sheath.

“Let me help with that,” Alec said, leaning forward as Leif lifted the struggling human off the ground. Alec brushed the man’s hands away and unlocked the sheath guard, pulling the huge hunting knife free. “Leif, my mate, this is Dale Rodgers, boss of the mountain mafia in these parts.”

Leif pushed Rodgers to the ground on his knees, making him look up at Alec. His eyes were wide with terror and anger, and Alec thought he smelled piss. That pleased him.

“You know who I am?” Alec asked casually, holding up the knife to the light, admiring the serrated edges near the hilt and the sharp point .

Rodgers gurgled a bit and Leif loosened his grip just enough for the human to speak. “I don’t…who…monsters!”

Alec smiled, the motion a bit crooked but genuine. He pointed the knife at Rodgers. “You’re here with two crooked cops, henchmen, and armed with automatic rifles and tricked-out hunting gear. At night. In the deep woods. No one hunts at night with automatic rifles unless it’s for hogs, and there’s no hogs on this mountain, not with it being werewolf territory.”

Rodgers rolled his eyes in an attempt to look at Leif, but Leif’s grip on his neck made it hard. Alec tsked, holding the knife, waving the point a bit. “He isn’t your biggest worry right now. I am. Do you know who I am?”

Rodgers flailed a moment before he gasped. “That fae mutt I got from Stu.”

Leif growled, squeezing tight for a second, Rodgers’s eyes bulging.

“Careful, Dale. Can I call you Dale? He’s my mate, the wolf who has you by the neck. He’s very protective of me. Which is wonderful, since no one has cared about me since my mother died.” Alec gestured to the nearby corpses with the knife, Rodgers’s eyes following the steel as the edges caught the flashlight beam like fangs under the moon. “Are you going to answer my questions? Or is Leif going to eat you, one piece at a time?”

Leif growled low and long, Rodgers shaking in his grip.

“Alright! Alright! Call off your dog!” Rodgers screamed.

“Rude,” Alec said, tapping Rodgers on the nose with the flat of the knife. “My next question is an easy one. Who do you work for?”

“Work for? No one. No one tells me what to do!” Rodgers all but shouted, anger and fear strangling his voice, his hands scrabbling at the grip Leif had on his neck to no avail.

“You sure?” Alec sighed, looking around him at the carnage. “I don’t want more bodies in these woods. Is anyone gonna come looking for you if you don’t come back?”

“Lots of people! Everyone is gonna tear these woods apart if you kill me!” Rodgers spat out.

Leif grumbled and leaned over Rodgers, sniffing at his neck and face. “His scent is full of lies, and his heartbeat agrees. He is lying.”

“Oh, really!” Alec smiled. He put the point of the knife to Dale Rodgers’s chest, the mountain mafia boss shivering as Alec pushed the knife tip through his clothes, stopping just shy of piercing skin. “Who is going to come after you?”

“I…my men! They won’t rest until I’m avenged,” Rodgers tried to bluff, Leif chuckling as Rodgers lied again. Leif shook his great shaggy head, red eyes glowing in the night.

“Seems like no one’s gonna care you’re missing,” Alec declared. “The great Dale Rodgers, mountain mafia boss, goes missing and no one cares. Well, people might rejoice down in Hemlock, that’s for sure. Goddess knows that town will benefit with you dead and gone.”

Alec kept the knife pressed to Rodgers’s chest.

“Stu forced my mother to make drugs for him until it killed her, then he planned to do the same thing to me, except this time he sold me to you,” Alec said, making eye contact with Rodgers. “I was chained and forced to work with dangerous chemicals and poisons. It would have killed me eventually, like it killed my mother. You bought me, a person, and forced me to make drugs that hurt people. I was damn near starved, living in a cold cell for weeks, and beaten if I was too slow or refused to work. I blew up the warehouse to escape, and you chose to send people after me, either to kill me or drag me back. You sent them to their deaths. Tonight, you did it again. These people are all dead because of you.”

Alec leaned in and pressed enough on the knife that it cut Rodgers’s skin, making the man hiss in pain.

“I love my mother, but I am not her,” Alec told Rodgers. “She refused to fight. She faded and died instead of escaping or protecting her only child. I won’t be the same. I have someone to fight for, to live for, and I’ll never let anyone use me again.”

Rodgers’s eyes went wide in terror as Alec pushed the knife into his chest.

No need to use his powers, not when he had something important to save all his energy for after they dealt with the mess.

Leif

The bonfire they made out of the fallen tree burned bright and hot, sending smoke and embers high in the sky, lighting the surrounding forest, the trees seeming to dance in the flickering lights.

Alec leaned into his side, holding the knife he’d used to kill Rodgers. “What are you going to do with the knife? Keep it?”

“I don’t really need a knife,” Alec said. “I’ve got an amazing mate with fangs and claws.”

Leif growled happily from low in his chest, hugging Alec tighter to his side. Alec smiled up at him, his wildflower scent mixed with coppery blood and hints of contentment. He was amazed by Alec’s calm, but he was happy and equally content with the choice Fate made for him in a mate—Alec was not at all bothered by the violence he was capable of, and he never shied away from the blood and carnage.

“I was saving my energy, but I can spare a bit for this,” and Alec held the blade up in the light. Leif watched in impressed awe as the blade shimmered, and then fell away into dust, Alec holding his hand out for the wind to blow away the remnants of the hunting knife.

“How...” Leif asked.

“I changed its molecular structure, turned it into metal dust.” Alec brushed his hands together. “No murder weapon to find, even if there was a body left to examine after the fire.”

“I am so impressed right now,” Leif said, and he hugged Alec to him, careful not to crush his mate.