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Now
The neighborhood was busy, but it was mostly inhabited by elderly humans with their caretakers. It was strange that the skinwalkers would send her here, of all places. They usually sent her on the most high-risk missions after dangerous supernaturals. Human clients were reserved for Quinn’s rescue team, not her.
Still, Silver stayed far enough away, just in case someone was around who could pick up her scent. She went to a secluded enough spot to discreetly tap into her powers and cloak her signature as well as her eyes.
Then, she made her way toward the address from Quinn’s message. The house she arrived at looked different from the rest of the neighborhood. From a distance, it appeared abandoned, with wild plants growing on the sides and yellow leaves blanketing the front yard. The broken windows were also nailed shut, and the fence was in poorly kept shape.
Silver carefully walked around until she found a window on the second floor that wasn’t blocked like the rest. It was easy to jump up, open the window, and slip through.
Though the house itself was technically not inhabited, inside, Silver found traces of squatters. Cots, blankets, and pillows were strewn on the ground in three of the rooms. The kitchen area was stocked with non-perishable foods and gallons of water. There were also clean plates and cutlery in the cabinets, and big buckets on the ground as well as in the bathroom, which didn’t appear to have running water.
Odd. Why would Levi or Quinn send her to deal with a bunch of trespassers?
It was only when she looked around the rest of the neighborhood that she began to understand. She had assumed the caretakers she saw earlier were human, but their signature revealed that they were werewolves, living among the humans in this neighborhood.
Silver had come across supernatural squatters before, but they usually lived a remote life. None had ever integrated themselves in human society this much.
Needing more information, she decided to take a walk around the area in search of answers.
Typically, during missions, Silver would stake out a location for at least two days before she moved in on her target. But given the tight deadline, she needed to make contact before nightfall. She had no idea what Levi and Quinn had gotten her involved in, but she had no time to waste.
Luckily, the rural town was quite small, and everything was connected, so it didn’t take long.
Her first stop was to one of the thrift store, to get a change of clothes so she wouldn’t stand out roaming in the streets. Every time she was around people, she was cloaking, allowing her to pass for a human while she observed the auras around her.
Ordinarily, Silver wouldn’t have risked cloaking for so long. It was already bad enough that she had to leave her staff behind with Adam. She couldn’t afford to deplete her magic before she even found out what the mission was. But her magic still felt strangely empowered. It had been that way for over a week, since they rescued Reese from the blood-ring, so cloaking wasn’t as draining as usual.
About an hour later, she had gone over the entire area and gotten a sense of what she was dealing with.
The town didn’t seem like an ideal place to raise a family. Most of the facilities seemed to be accommodating an older population, about half of which was made up of elderly people. There were a few children here and there, but they must have been attending school in the next town over because there wasn’t one around.
Silver identified three werewolves in the town. She removed her cloak as soon as she made sure they were the only supernaturals around and spent the next hour trailing one of them. She kept her aura perception on to keep track of their location and hid behind buildings, trees, and bushes where she could, or simply observing them from a distance when standing too close would give her away.
The three seemed to know each other and worked in close proximity. Two of them were caretakers in the town’s retirement home while the third one worked as a janitor at the same facility. There was a familiarity between them and the people in the neighborhood. Whenever she could get close, like to peek through a window, Silver noticed the locals chatting and laughing with the werewolves.
They must have been there long enough to form attachments.
It also seemed to be no secret even to the locals that the werewolves were a group. When the three of them went out for lunch at one point, Silver put her cloak back on and went in after them, observing them from inside while also getting herself some food. Many patrons and employees greeted the werewolves and inquired about their health and work. Two of the supernaturals were clearly partners, given the way they carried themselves around each other.
But the truly shocking part was when two humans joined the supernaturals. One of them greeted the un-mated werewolf with a kiss, while the second human hugged the others.
The five of them smiled and chatted whenever approached by the locals, but there was something forced about it. When left alone, their expressions turned somber, almost morose. At one point, Silver caught a look of pain crossing over one of the werewolves’ faces, prompting her human partner to pull her in for a hug and lay a kiss on her forehead.
Whoever they were, whatever they were doing here, something in their life had recently gone wrong.
Silver followed the two humans after leaving the restaurant and realized that they also worked similar jobs, though in different facilities. One was the town gardener, and the other worked at the local supermarket.
Later that day, when the five of them were done with work, they met up at the same diner where they’d had lunch. Silver observed them from outside this time as they shared another meal, keeping tabs on their movements by tracking their auras.
Around sunset, they all got up and left the diner. They broke off into three groups and went in seemingly different directions, but Silver had a feeling that was a ruse for the sake of the locals watching them. Following a hunch, she didn’t follow after them, instead rushing ahead to get to the abandoned house before they did.
Then, she waited, hidden in the shadows of the wilderness behind the residence, her signature cloaked, just in case. She wasn’t too surprised, though no less intrigued, when all five of them snuck into the house at different times through the back door, which was then locked from the inside by the last person to enter.
Silver saw her opening when she was sure that they had settled in the same room. She dropped her cloak and casually walked over to knock on their front door.
The house fell dead quiet after that. Silver could almost feel them holding their breaths.
“It’s alright,” she called to them as quietly as possible. “I’m a friend of Levi and Quinn. They sent me here.”
Everything was still for a moment. Silver began to wonder if, for once, the skinwalkers had mistakenly sent her to people that had no idea who he was. But he had never failed her in that regard.
Maybe he’d been captured and forced into leaving a message that would lead her into a trap.
The thought alarmed Silver for a second, but then she recalled that nobody, not even Remi, could read the code she and the skinwalkers had created. If one of them had really been captured, they couldn’t be forced to lay a trap for her because there was no way for their hypothetical captors to be sure what they were writing.
Whatever the situation turned out to be, Silver was sure that only the three werewolves and two humans were inside, and there were no other supernaturals in the area. Plus, her magic was still near full charge, so if it came down to a fight, she’d be fine.
After a long silence, there was a soft click at the door, and then it opened, just a crack. A short woman—seemingly in her early thirties but possibly older due to being a werewolf—peeked out through the opening, a frown drawn over her dark, gold-rimmed, frightened eyes.
“Are you here for our children?” she whispered hopefully.
Silver frowned. “Your children?”
Though she held herself with a certain level of self-assurance, the woman’s voice quivered as she spoke. “Chief Levi said he’d send someone to save them.”
For a second, all Silver could do was blink.
Bring them back, the message had said.
Not to the sanctuary. To their parents.
Straightening her shoulders, Silver tapped into the persona she usually adopted when dealing with her clients in these types of jobs. “What happened to them?”
The werewolf hesitantly looked Silver up and down, her eyes lingering on the latter’s face. “Last week, he sent his vampires after us.”
“Who did?”
“The vamphyr we ran away from. They took our children hostage. Said this was the price we had to pay for our freedom and that they belonged to him now.”
Clearly, Levi and Quinn remembered exactly which of Silver’s buttons to push to convince her to take on a mission. “How long ago did you escape?”
“About a decade. No one ever came before, so we thought they didn’t know where we were. Turns out, they were just waiting for our children to grow up. Master Henry likes to start them young, but not so young that he has to care for them when they’re helpless toddlers.”
Silver’s stomach twisted in knots, and she barely heard the last words the woman spoke. “You worked for Lord Henry?”
The werewolf nodded, a flash of hate momentarily overtaking her fright. “For fifteen years. Alice and I were both pregnant when we got away. We would have died if it wasn’t for Chief Levi and Chief Quinn’s help.”
That made Silver shudder. She remembered what happened to pregnant staff members. Part of her had assumed werewolves might have gotten a slightly easier sentence, but that was obviously a misguided thought.
If the timeline was right, these werewolves would have gotten away well before Silver was captured. They couldn’t have been part of the convoy that accompanied Lord Henry when he visited Master Benjamin, which explained why she didn’t recognize them.
Gritting her teeth, Silver bit back the annoyed cuss she wanted to direct at the skinwalkers. She should have told Adam to wait longer, because now she had no choice but to bring him and Reese over while she helped these people.
“I’ll get your children back,” she assured the werewolf. “But I might need help from a friend, and you’ll have to trust us both.”
