Chapter Eight

I woke up disoriented and unable to understand where I was at first. I had a few moments of panic and began hyperventilating, because it was dark and freezing cold, and my head was aching. I was dizzy, and I could smell exhaust fumes that were gagging me a little. I wasn’t tied or anything—someone had just thrown me in the trunk of a car—but I was being jostled around enough that I was rolling from side to side with every turn of the wheel. I tried to brace myself a little against the sides and that helped a bit. I could hear the muffled sound of a radio and voices that sounded faraway.

I realized I was probably in the same car Willie’s boys had been driving when I’d met them at the cemetery. Thank the gods I wasn’t too claustrophobic, but if this went on long, I thought I might get that way. It must have already been a while though, because I only had to endure about fifteen more minutes of this until the car came to a stop with a squeal of bad brakes and the muffled voices getting louder. Suddenly the trunk was flung open wide, and I could see it had become “dusky dark” outside, as my mother used to say.

Wherever we were, there was still enough light outside that I didn’t have a great deal of trouble seeing Willie’s face looking down at me with a sneer. His boys were scattered behind him. I looked up at him and found I still had to shield my eyes, because my head hurt so much, and the light on a pole was shining down on me.

“Wakey, wakey!” Willie shouted, and I winced as his loud, coarse voice hit my ears. “Get out, asshole!”

I tried, but fell back, much dizzier than I’d expected or realized. I hoped these idiots hadn’t given me a concussion.

“I said, get up, damn it!” he yelled again, and this time jerked on my arm.

I may have mentioned that Mongrels are really strong, and he pulled me right out of the trunk and threw me on the ground. It did my self-diagnosed concussion absolutely no good at all—and I was sure I had one now, though maybe I was being a bit overly dramatic.

I looked up at him and snarled. And if I could have shifted at that moment, I would have.

“Watch it, Watusi! If you want my help, you asshole, then you better stop your bullshit!”

I was pretty sure that was why he’d kidnapped me right out of my apartment—if not and he was there for revenge for talking to Rolf about him, then I was dead anyway. I figured, what the hell—may as well stand up to him.

Willie snarled back at me, because that was just classic Willie, but he put out a hand to help me back to my feet. That may have shocked me more than any other part of this whole night, and I peered at him suspiciously before reaching for it, trying to figure out what was different about him. He was a little pale and sweaty, despite how chilly it was outside, and I realized he was scared out of his damn mind, and that was why he was trying to act so tough.

I jumped to my feet, straightened my shirt and glared at him. “What the fuck, Willie? You couldn’t just ask me for my help? You had to hit me over the head and kidnap me?”

He shuffled his feet and tried to give me a sheepish smile, which came out more like a grimace. He still held my arm, but I was seriously pissed off at him and pulled it out of his reach.

He laughed. I think that’s what it was, anyway. It was a rusty sound he didn’t use much, as smiles came so rarely to Willie’s face. It looked weird on him, like he was grimacing in pain.

“The boys got a little carried away, Levi. Sorry. Didn’t I say that?”

“No, you fucking did not!”

He flushed and shrugged. “I didn’t tell them to rough you up. I just said to make sure you came.”

“Whatever,” I mumbled under my breath and looked around me. “They made sure all right.” I glared around at all of them. Not one of them looked the least bit sorry.

“You did snitch on us though. So, in a way, you had it coming.”

I glanced over at him and rolled my eyes, but that was it. I wasn’t in a situation where I felt like I could argue like I wanted to. I had no idea where we were, except we had probably left the city.

I looked around and saw we were outside an old country church—it was painted a faded white, and the light I’d seen shone down on the front door. It didn’t look to be exactly prosperous. The name on the sign beside the steps said, Resurrection Missionary Baptist Church, with some minister’s name below that in smaller letters that I couldn’t read in the dim light.

Considering why we were probably there after dark like this, i.e. for nefarious graverobbing activities, I thought that church name was particularly appropriate—the “Resurrection” part anyway. But there was nothing about this scenario that didn’t give me the creeps. Looking around myself, I could see we were outside an old graveyard attached to this church. And if I’d thought that the Shady Pines Cemetery had been spooky—and I had—it had nothing on this old place. This was a straight-up graveyard in every sense of that word, and even the term made me shiver and glance around at the shadows.

There wasn’t any gate to scale over, but the place was dark and big, covering maybe three acres behind the church. Gravestones stood up all over it, like eerie signposts on a dark road to hell.Some of the graves had gravel over the tops and some were overgrown with grass and weeds. It must have been one of those older churches where the families tended to the graves, and some families didn’t give a shit, so the graves were overgrown.

I think it was a poet I once read in school who had been outside a graveyard once and noticed its “breathless darkness, and narrow houses.”That description had made me shudder then, like it did to recall it now. Breathless—get it? And the narrow house part referred to the grave itself, where the people were. Could anything have been more morbid?

At least we were spared the spooky fog that had been hugging the ground the last time we dug up a grave.

I felt a pang in my chest at those words, and I could almost hear Rolf’s voice in my head— “Did you hear what you just said? The last time you dug up a grave?” I considered the fact that I was totally going against everything Rolf had asked me not to do. “I don’t want you to see or talk to Watusi again. Stay strictly away from any cemeteries. And don’t get involved with him and his gang and their craziness in any way.”

Yet here I was, and he was going to be so furious at me. Hell, I couldn’t even blame him, though I had been kidnapped and this wasn’t my choice. I doubted he would believe me though. And this whole grave-robbing thing was wrong on so many levels.

“Did you check on reversing the curse like I asked you to?” Willie asked. “Some things have been happening.”

“What kind of things?”

“Bad luck…things going wrong. You know—things happening. My grandma even got sick.”

“I’m sorry about your grandma, but isn’t she like ninety-six or something?”

“Yeah, so what? She was always fine before. Now she’s weak and can’t walk too good.”

“What did the doctor say?”

“She hasn’t been to any doctor.”

“Well, damn, Willie, you need to take her.”

“Whatever. Mind your own business. And anyway, I asked you a question.”

“Yeah. I found my mother’s notebooks. She had written a little about curses. But listen, Willie, I have no idea if it works or not. If this curse is real, the paper I found about it said it could be dangerous.”

“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it,” he replied.

“What? Cross it when we come to it? Won’t that be a little too late?”

“You worry too much, Levi. You always have. Now everybody needs to fan out and look for a fresh grave. The name on it should be Emily Bolagi.” He peered down at it as if trying to decipher his own handwriting. “Yeah, that’s what I wrote down. Emily Bolagi. What a funny name.”

Says Willie Watusi, I thought to myself, barely keeping from saying the words out loud. He would have failed to see the irony though. He grabbed a shovel from the trunk—so that was what had been digging into my hip—and took off to walk among the “narrow houses,” while I slunk along behind him.

He thrashed around, stumbling over weeds and mounds of earth and leaning over to peer down at the names on the tombstones, showing absolutely no regard and a lot of disrespect. After about twenty minutes of it, he stopped and leaned on his shovel.

“Damn it, I can’t find any tombstones with the name Emily Bolagi on them. What the fuck?”

“Yes, but wait. Didn’t this lady die recently?” I asked. “It hasn’t been long enough to put up a tombstone yet. That takes weeks. There’s probably just a small marker from the funeral home.”

“Oh yeah, that’s right,” he said, looking over at me. “See, I knew you were smart.”

Resisting the urge to say nobody had to be smart to figure that out, I just kept following him around the graves. Then, on the far side of the big lot, one of the gang members yelled out.

“Hey! I think I found it! There are two here that have that same last name.’

We made our way over to the other side of the graves—with me stepping around or over them and Willie just plowing right across them. Sure enough, there were two funeral home markers—one with the lady’s name on the grave that one of his guys was standing by, and the other one that had the name Ben Bolagi on it. That grave looked newer than the first one, though both looked fresh.

This must be the man who robbed the bank and set this all in motion to start with. I looked over at Willie. “Is this the one who took the money?”

“Yeah, it is.”

I started to say something about crime didn’t pay, but then remembered who I was talking to and stayed quiet.

They all set to work right away with their shovels. I took a few steps back, trying to keep a respectful distance and wishing I was anywhere else. They were fast though—I guess practice made perfect—because in no time at all, they had exposed the woman’s coffin and were working to pry it open. I stood hugging myself and a distinct chill had fallen as it got later and darker. It was promising to be a really cold winter. A full moon had risen and was shining down disapprovingly on us, or so I imagined. I looked around nervously at the shadows, thinking I sensed movement in the dark.

Willie jumped in the grave and yanked hard on the cover with a pry bar, and I heard a loud crack as he broke into the casket. Like before, I didn’t want to look closely at the occupant of the grave and looked away as the others rambled around through the coffin, picking up the body and looking for the money bag.

After a few moments, Willie, with a loud, victorious cry, straightened up with a large bag in his hand. “It’s here! I told you assholes I’d find it!” he shouted. He jumped back out of the grave and threw the bag down at my feet.

“Okay, it’s showtime, Levi. Do your thing before I open it.”

I just looked at him in shock. “What? I can’t do anything here!”

“Why not? What are you waiting for? Do the damn spell.” He looked at me with suspicion in his eyes. “You did find one, right? You weren’t lying?”

“I found one, like I said, but I have no idea if it’ll work, Willie. And it needs certain ingredients. This is dangerous if a curse really exists.”

“Like you keep saying. Okay, I heard you the first ten times you said it. And the curse exists. I told you.”

“All the more reason to do it right. Or just put the money back and let’s go. These idiots of yours didn’t let me take my book of spells to bring with me, anyway. There were a lot of ingredients I’d need before I can even try.”

“What do you mean? What kind of ingred—whatever it was you said?”

“Peppery herbs and a red cloth and a red candle. Some words I’m supposed to say.”

“Then say them! Look, Leroy has a red shirt. Give it over, Leroy!”

“No! I still don’t have a candle. And I don’t remember the words. I didn’t commit the words to memory!”

He looked stumped for a second and then nodded. “Okay, there’s got to be some candles in that church. Let’s go break in and get them.”

“No. Willie, you’re not listening to me. I have to have my mother’s book. And I’m not going to break into any church. Are you crazy? Besides, we also need something personal from the one who laid the curse in the first place before we can send it back to him. And you don’t even know who that is, do you?”

“Maybe I do. Maybe I know a little more than I said at first. What if I did know who put the curse on it? What then? And what do you mean by personal stuff?”

‘I don’t know. Some hair or nail clippings. Maybe a picture or a drawing of them.”

“And if I get you those things, you can do it?”

“I can try, but I told you. I don’t know if any of it will work.”

“It’ll work. I got confidence in you, Levi. Your mom was good at this, and the apple don’t fall from the tree. Okay, let’s get them before your boyfriend shows up.”

“What? What are you talking about?”

“You know what I mean. Your damn Alpha. And I should still make you pay for snitching on me to him—but if you take this curse off the money we just found, then I guess I can let it go.”

I turned to look at him incredulously. “You didn’t just ‘find’ the money, Willie. You dug up a person’s grave and took it! And what did you mean, let’s get them. Do you or do you not know where we can find the man who did the curse?”

“He’s right here,” he said, gesturing down at the other Bolagi grave. “Ben Bolagi.”

“What? Are you kidding me?”

Maybe I was shouting a little too loud. I saw his eyes get really big as he stared at me—or was he looking behind me?

Because it was at that exact moment that all hell broke loose.

Big bright lights suddenly started shining at us as loud voices shouted, “Police! Put down those shovels and come out with your hands in the air!”

The voices seemed to be all around us, and I gasped as I stuck my hands in the air. But then behind me, I heard somebody yell, “Run!”

And right beside me, Willie pulled out a pistol and shot it toward the voices. I was horrified.

I fell to my knees and crouched down as low as I could to the ground, my arms over my head, but Willie yanked me up beside him and started literally dragging me with him as he made his way through the tombstones. I jerked my arm out of his grip, and he yelled and cursed at me and then turned and ran. The last I saw of him, he was headed toward the woods behind the graves, still clutching the bag.

People were darting everywhere as the lights danced around the tombstones. I tried to stand back up, but somebody ran right up behind me and pushed me down hard. I fell face down in the dirt covering one of the graves. That’s when I heard more shots ringing out and a big, heavy body fell on top of me, grinding me down into the dirt even more.

I lay there trembling for what seemed like the longest time, until a familiar voice in my ear urgently asked me, “Are you all right? Are you hit anywhere?”

“N-no. I’m okay.”

The man on top of me, who was Rolf, of course, got off me then and pulled me roughly to my feet to glare down at me like he hated me. “In that case…you have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to talk to a lawyer before we ask you any questions. You have the right to have a lawyer with you during questioning. If you can’t afford a lawyer, one will be appointed for you before any questioning if you wish. If you decide to answer questions now without a lawyer present, you have the right to stop answering at any time. Do you understand these rights as I’ve stated them to you?”

“I…uh…what?”

“Do you understand your rights?” He shouted down in my face.

“Y-yeah, I think so.”

Rolf jerked me around and pulled my hands behind me—I felt cold steel clamping around my wrists.

“What are you doing? Am I being arrested?”

“Be quiet,” he hissed at me. He sounded really, really angry, and my heart sank. Did he know that I’d been kidnapped out of my apartment, or did he think I’d gone out here to meet Willie willingly or because I wanted to? I wanted to tell him, but he began pulling me toward the parking lot.

“Not a word, Levi. Do you hear me?”

“Yes, but…wait! I have to tell you…”

“I don’t want to hear anything you have to say. I don’t want an omega, and I don’t need one.”

“What? Who asked you? Besides, are you trying to convince me or yourself?”

He pulled me behind him so roughly that I stumbled and bit my tongue. He grabbed me around the waist so I wouldn’t fall, but I was shivering in the cold, and I couldn’t believe this was actually happening and that he was saying these mean things to me.

“I don’t understand. How are you here? Why am I being arrested?”

But Rolf apparently wasn’t in the mood to be answering questions—admittedly, I probably wasn’t talking too plainly considering the tongue thing and the fact I could barely catch my breath. I was taken to his car and shoved down in the back seat, and the door was closed behind me. He wasn’t being rough now, exactly, but his touch was cold and impersonal, and I needed him to talk to me and tell me something good. Needless to say, he didn’t.

I could hear the snick of the door locks as he turned on his heel and stalked back to the graveyard, just leaving me there alone. I think I may have been in shock. I put my head back on the seat and groaned. Maybe this was all some kind of crazy dream I was having. If it was, I wished somebody would hurry and wake me the hell up. Though, come to think of it, I guess this whole thing did make me look awfully guilty. For Rolf to find me like that, in a heated argument with Willie in front of a desecrated, open grave, a corpse clearly displayed in an open casket—with a money bag at my feet… I guess it looked pretty bad. I moaned again and closed my eyes. Gods, I was so fucked.

****

Rolf

I had gotten the call from Conroy, the man I still had stationed outside Levi’s apartment building to watch his movements, as I got off for the day. It was around five o’clock, as I was just getting off work and anxious to get home to Levi. But instead, Conroy gave me the news that Watusi’s gang members had just physically carted Levi out of his apartment, and I panicked for a bad moment or two. What the fuck was I doing getting so involved with a lead suspect in my case that I wasn’t able to do my job effectively? I could only stand there in a complete panic over whether or not my omega was hurt.

Had they knocked him out or roughed him up or even shot him? I knew that Watusi was really angry at him and once he got his hands on him again, I wasn’t sure what he’d do. I had a few bad moments until Conroy broke the silence by saying he’d been watching and ready to step in, but Levi had seemed to rouse a little as they put him in the trunk. I still wasn’t happy, though, because why the hell had he not stopped them?

“Damn it, are you saying you just sat there and watched this thing happening? Is Levi all right? At what point were you planning on stepping in, Conroy?”

“I couldn’t ‘step in’ as you say when there were about six of them and only one of me. I was actually walking back from getting coffee, and I left my weapon in the car, because this was only supposed to be surveillance. And I did call for backup, but dispatch said the closest unit was four miles away. By the time the uniforms would have gotten there, they would have been long gone. Since they didn’t notice me, I figured it was better to follow them, see where they took him and then call it in.”

It was still bullshit, but I decided to let it go. For now. “And? Where the fuck is he?”

“I’m trying to tell you, sir. They took him to another cemetery, to a church way out on Mason Road. I’m there now. I parked where they couldn’t see me and walked in, but they’re still just talking. Some of them are walking around and looking at the graves.”

“What about Levi? Is he all right? Have you seen him at all?”

“Oh yeah, he’s with them. He looks fine. Maybe he knew we might be watching his apartment, and they did this on purpose to make it look like he was being forced. Because he’s talking to that Watusi guy now and they look pretty chummy. Do you think he’s maybe involved in this thing?”

I growled in the phone, and he began backing off. “Of course, I could be wrong. Come out here and see for yourself. Maybe they’ll have broken into another grave by the time you get here. Maybe you can catch them in the act.”

“I’m already on my way,” I said, running back to the station to find a vehicle. “Get back out there and watch them, but don’t let them see you. Make sure Levi is okay until I get there. And if your backup arrives, tell them to stay out of sight and just observe until I arrive. Stop them and make the arrest only if they try to leave before I get there. This thing is enough of a clusterfuck as it is.”

“Yes, sir,” he said, and quickly hung up.

I didn’t know if I should be furious or concerned that they had forced Levi to come with them. Maybe Conroy was right, and he’d gone along with them willingly, and had just tried to make it look good. Damn it, he had some explaining to do for sure. If I found out that he’d been lying to me, I wasn’t going to go easy on him. Not one bit. I wouldn’t feel any sympathy for him at all, and I’d take him straight to jail.

Now if I could only convince my heart of that before it slammed right out of my chest. I hit the steering wheel of my car in frustration. Damn it, why was he risking himself like this? I told him to cut all ties with those criminals.

By the time I got to the graveyard, parking well up the road and walking in with no flashlight. I wanted nothing to warn them someone was there, and I could see perfectly well in the dark. I found Conroy and the others staged in front of the old church and out of sight of the graveyard. When Conroy saw me, he hurried over.

“I have a few men stationed in the trees, sir, just watching them. Do you want us to move in?”

“Give me your report first.”

“They’ve dug up another grave and broke into the casket. Levi Jones is definitely with them.”

I cursed under my breath but tried not to show too much emotion. “Okay, move in on them. Make sure they don’t run into the trees behind them. Get some more backup out here to help.”

He nodded and moved off to do as I’d asked. I went to the side of the church and peered around the corner to see if I could find Levi. He was at the far side from where I was, standing by an open grave, arguing with Willie Watusi. He wasn’t being restrained and he didn’t seem at all hurt. So what the hell was he doing there? Had he been lying to me all along? It sure looked like he was in on this thing—whatever it was—right up to his pretty little neck.

Conroy came up behind me to whisper to me that the officers were ready to move in and I gave him the go-ahead. Seconds later, the men turned on their powerful flashlights and began to sweep them over the graveyard, shouting, “Freeze! Police! Put down those shovels and come out with your hands in the air!”

Of course, none of them did that—instead, the idiots began running for the woods, scattering like roaches. All, that is, except for Levi. He fell to the ground, just as the officers I’d sent there began firing warning shots over their heads. I saw Watusi bending over Levi and trying to pull him up, but Levi jerked his arm away and fell back down. Watusi took off running and I ran over to Levi and threw myself on top of him, angry as hell, but still terrified that he could be hit by a stray bullet.

When the shooting stopped, I got up and pulled him to his feet, quickly checking him over to see if he was all right and then cuffing him as soon as I knew he was. I gave him his Miranda rights. My voice was shaking, and I hoped he didn’t notice it, but I didn’t think he did. He seemed to be freaked out and confused by everything that was happening. I pulled him to my car and put him in the back seat, barely speaking to him at all. I knew I was confusing him, but what could I possibly say to him? Besides, I needed to calm down before I talked to him. I started walking toward the other men who were searching through the graveyard, and tried to just not think about how I was going to handle this thing with Levi. There would be plenty of time for that later.