Hunted (Auralight Codex: Dakota Shepherd Book 2) Read online

  “Sure.”

  “I will let Raelya know.”

  “Right.” Andrei hung up, slipping the phone away. “There we go. So, you want some pizza?”

  I blinked. “Are you coming onto me?”

  Andrei laughed. We quickly discussed toppings as I walked him back to his truck. He would acquire guard-wolf fuel, then return directly, and he’d be here for the rest of the night to make sure nothing more interesting happened. I agreed to go inside until he returned.

  9

  The Walls Have Eyes

  The rest of my shift was uneventful, save all the fun I had teasing Joe with the pizza Andrei had brought me. Though, I soon gave in and offered a slice; teasing him was fun, but I wasn’t going to be here much longer, and my opportunities to be nice to my favorite co-worker were slowly dwindling.

  Joe walked the last perimeter check with me for the night just around dawn, then told me to go on and clock out saying he’d take care of the rest so I wouldn’t have to keep my friend waiting any longer. Earlier, when he’d asked about my friend sleeping in his truck, I’d said my normal ride wasn’t able to make it tonight so Andrei was there in her place.

  Joe had seemed to accept that almost too easily. I thought about that for a bit and realized I was likely to have an easier time bluffing my way through little things like that with Unawakened people now with my wolf unlocked; they seemed to buckle to the pressure a dominant wolf put on them fairly easily. I hadn’t even been trying to use my wolf against Joe and it had obviously affected him anyway.

  Being Awakened, I already had a handful of advantages on the Unawakened. As I understood, the Awakened generally had stronger willpower to begin with, and that tended to cause Unawakened people to either defer to them or avoid them. Being that we were already friends, Joe had seemed to defer to me more since my Awakening. He’d never really done that before, so it still weirded me out a little.

  But as a werewolf, my dominance tended to overwrite the will of Unawakened people in many cases as well. I had come to understand that this was partly because I was quite dominant; Raelya had explained that wolves like Steph who were not so dominant didn’t notice this effect so much, though they still could, in certain circumstances, push the wolf’s presence into their persona and use that to manipulate the Unawakened as well.

  Given my natural charisma, I wasn’t too surprised that Joe had taken to following my lead with the addition of my supernatural influences. He probably wrote it off to just being nice to me since I was leaving soon. My elementary SII training had taught me that the Unawakened were experts at justifying supernatural stuff away to themselves.

  I climbed into the truck, nudging Andrei awake and sat quietly for a few minutes while he stretched. “Good morning, little sister.” He smiled lazily at me as he started the truck.

  “Good morning, big brother?” I cheesed.

  Andrei snorted. “Okay, maybe I didn’t think this through.”

  “So, what do you think the odds are that the wolf-thingy was a one-time thing?”

  Andrei shrugged. “Hard to say for sure, kiddo. I’ll chat at Ralof about it and see what he thinks, but I bet he’ll want Raelya to sit with you for the next few days, if not the rest of the week.”

  I grimaced. “I hate to ask her to do that.”

  Andrei smiled at me kindly. “You know she won’t mind. We’re pack. Sometimes we run and play and cuddle on the couch, sometimes we pull guard duty for each other.”

  “I guess, as a pack of werewolves, if standing guard were the worst we had to do for each other, we’d be pretty lucky.”

  Andrei nodded. “Right on, kid. So don’t feel bad. If Ralof thinks it’s a good idea, trust him. Old man’s got good instincts.”

  I couldn’t argue with that. My wolf trusted Ralof explicitly, and really, I did too. Some part of me simply knew to trust him.

  “So, you moved into the pack house, eh?” Andrei and I chatted about my move, my job change, SII, and the supernatural on the way home. He drove a bit faster than I was strictly comfortable with once we hit the highway, but I wrote that off more to my being less used to riding around in cars than to his driving particularly. Andrei seemed to know what he was doing.

  Andrei dropped me off at the pack house with a wave and a smile. It still surprised me to some degree that Andrei had his own place. It just felt so much like he belonged at the pack house that I always expected him to live there. But he pulled right back out of the gravel parking lot and disappeared down the curving road, heading for his house some ten or fifteen minutes away.

  I went in, showered, and plopped down on my still-foreign bed. I wished I could sleep with Raelya again instead, but I had no idea if she was awake or asleep. I didn’t want to risk disturbing her, so I peeled back the covers and settled into the strange bed. It was for the best. If I never slept in it in the first place, I’d never get used to it. It was better than if I’d still been sleeping in the apartment, anyway. At least this place felt like home.

  I slept through most of the day, waking only a couple of hours before I needed to head out for work again. I attributed the oversleeping to all the rapid schedule swapping I’d been doing over the past few days.

  I woke to a knocking at my door. I sat up, blearily blinking away sleepiness and started to get up when I caught Raelya’s scent, and with it, the glorious smell of bacon. “Come in!”

  Raelya stepped into the room, smiling over the tray she held. “I thought you might like something to eat before you go to work.” She bobbed the tray indicatively as she brought it over.

  Two bacon sandwiches and a soda. I leaned over and hugged her. “Thank you.”

  Raelya set the tray on my lap and hugged me back. “It is nothing, Dakota.”

  “It’s something to me.” I smiled up at her appreciatively. “I don’t think anyone’s brought me breakfast in bed since I was five.”

  Raelya snorted. “It is more like a late lunch in bed.”

  I grinned. “Close enough.” I ate quickly then hurried to get ready for work so I wouldn’t be late. Raelya drove me to work, and then, as Andrei predicted, remained to keep an eye on me. I apologized for the inconvenience but she assured me she’d be fine. She had books to read, and the museum’s surroundings were lovely. She spread a blanket on the ground in the little copse of trees near the front of the building and settled in to read. I’d have to come up with an explanation for her presence to tell my co-worker, but she’d be happier than sitting in the truck all night, so I was determined to make it work.

  Dean was on with me tonight, so that explanation had to be a little stronger than if I’d been dealing with Joe. Dean had never liked me as much, not that I cared. He was a misogynistic asshole at the best of times, and a bigoted idiot otherwise. Pretty typical of the local wildlife to be honest: straight, white jerk of the gun-totin’ variety who preferred women who stayed in the home making babies and sandwiches to career women who out-performed him on the shooting range on a regular basis.

  There was no playful banter or friendly greeting as I punched in for the night. Just a terse shuffling around of paperwork as he handed me the interior assignment. I would have preferred to take the perimeter tonight since Raelya was outside and it would have been easier to keep an eye on her in return that way, but there was no point arguing with Dean about it. I knew he preferred to pull perimeter because it afforded him more opportunities to play around on his phone and smoke than working inside where there were more cameras.

  Oh well. Nothing I could do about that without getting into it with him, so I accepted my assignment with a nod without looking up. “Right. So anyway, my friend, Raelya is outside on the lawn.”

  Dean furrowed his brow. “And?”

  I shrugged. “Thought you should know. She’s going to be here all night.”

  “Why exactly?”

  Dean annoyed the hell out of me. I didn’t feel like playing power games with him tonight, so I decided to use my advantages, well, to my advan
tage. I drew on the wolf, pulled her close the surface, and turned my gaze on him with a gushing of willpower. “Look, Raelya is my best friend, she’s incredibly sweet for driving me all the way to and from the mountains until my notice is up, and it isn’t hurting anyone for her to be there. So if Raelya wants to sit on the lawn and read instead of waiting in the truck tonight, we’re going to let Raelya sit on the lawn and read. All right?”

  Dean wasn’t a pushover; he was pig-headed and prideful as the day was long. But the Unawakened are excellent at justifying things away to themselves, and the wolf’s dominance is hard for them to deny. So he rolled his eyes, scoffed and shrugged. “Whatever, Shepherd. But if something happens and she gets hurt and sues the museum, it’s on your ass, not mine.”

  “On your head.”

  Dean blinked. “What?”

  “The phrase is ‘it’s on your head’. The other one you’re looking for is ‘it’s your ass’. Maybe pick one or the other next time.” I didn’t vocalize the rest of what I was thinking. Telling him that combining the phrases made him sound like a jackass wouldn’t win me any favors.

  Dean made a disgusted noise and just barely shoulder-checked me on his way out of the break room. The wolf surged in response and I had to battle her down. Leaping onto one of my co-workers in a fit of rage wouldn’t win me any brownie points with SII and I wasn’t about to screw up my dream job over one annoying co-worker I wouldn’t have to worry about in just a few days’ time.

  The first few hours of my shift were fairly uneventful. I did the standard walk-arounds and checked the cameras regularly, particularly focusing on the one that stared right at Raelya’s camping spot. She was there to look after me, but the wolf and I agreed that we were there to look after her too. Maybe that was just part of being pack. Maybe it was something more. Raelya was several times my age and I knew for a fact she could take care of herself with two hands literally tied behind her back, but some part of me felt like it just had to protect her.

  When my break time rolled around, I took my lunch out to the lawn and flopped down on the blanket next to Raelya. Soft cloth over plush grass made it a more comfortable seat than I’d anticipated. Raelya smiled over at me, pleasant as always, marking her book and setting it aside. “Lunch time?”

  I nodded. “Yeah, you hungry?” I popped open my Iron man lunchbox and retrieved one of the sandwiches I’d brought along from home and offered it to her.

  Raelya smiled and accepted the sandwich. “Thank you. I brought some snacks, but did not think to bring lunch. Silly me.”

  I grinned. “I’m pretty sure you made these sandwiches earlier, so fair enough.”

  Raelya laughed softly. “Ah, you are the sandwich thief then, yes?”

  I shrugged. “Elisa said, ‘help yourself,’ so I did. This morning was pretty rushed anyway.”

  “I was not complaining.” Raelya leaned over and bumped my head softly with hers. “How is your shift going?” She took a bite of her sandwich and made a quiet, pleased noise.

  I shrugged. “Same old boring stuff. I can’t wait to get this over with and get into SII stuff instead.” I tucked into my sandwich and echoed Raelya’s sentiment. Bacon was a glorious invention.

  “At least it is only a few days more.”

  I nodded. “You can say that again.”

  We chatted over our sandwiches until my lunch break was over. Dean sauntered past two or three times on his slow walk of the perimeter and he just had to shine his flashlight across us each time. The jerk. I glared at his back as he turned the corner on his third pass. Raelya nuzzled my shoulder gently and my wolf settled down. “You will feel better after the run this weekend.”

  I perked up at that. “I really can’t wait.”

  Raelya smiled. “I know it is difficult for you to wait, but when it is time and we are running with the whole pack, you will be glad you waited.”

  I smiled. “I’ll take your word for it.”

  I finished my sandwich and hopped to my feet, dusting off my uniform to rid it of any stray crumbs. “Well, I’d better get back to it.”

  Raelya smiled at me warmly. “I will see you again in a few hours, yes?”

  I nodded. “Yep.” I frowned suddenly. “Are you sure you’re okay out here?”

  Raelya made a shooing gesture. “I like reading outside, Dakota. Stop being so silly about it and get back to work.” She glanced around the little copse of trees and the bushes overflowing with flowers. “It is actually very nice here.”

  Raelya’s happy smile put me at ease. “All right. But if you need me, just—”

  Raelya tossed a book at me. “Dakota! I am a grown woman. I will be all right.”

  I caught the book with a laugh and tossed it back to her. “So am I, but you guys worry about me!”

  Raelya grinned. “And we will as long as you are a… What is it you say on the video games? New-bee?”

  I cackled. “Everyone has to start somewhere.”

  Raelya shooed me again and I turned to walk away. “You are still a pup, even if you are more capable than most.”

  I flashed her a grin over my shoulder as I trotted back inside. I was marveling at the fact that she and I could continue our conversation across a far greater distance than any humans could have managed due to our enhanced hearing as I stepped back into the building and that’s when it hit me.

  Raelya wasn’t the only one watching me.

  I glanced over my shoulder expecting to see Dean standing there glaring from the opposite corner, but he wasn’t there. I glanced around, but nothing stood out in the darkness of the parking lot, even with the street lights illuminating most of the area surrounding the museum and the security lights near the building flooding my initial surroundings with even more light.

  But the feeling was distinct and almost palpable. In fact, it was so palpable that I wasn’t even sure it was possible for such a feeling to come from simply being watched. Then I realized what the feeling reminded me of: focused will and intent. I wasn’t just being watched; I was being watched with some kind of magic.

  I didn’t know much about magic. SII had given me access to a tutor who had taught me all the basics so I could learn to control my green burny hands to avoid accidentally setting my surroundings and loved ones on fire, but Nita had only really covered the barest ideas of what magic could do other than help me control the Hellfire that blossomed from my palms, sometimes surging forth with even the slightest prompting. We hadn’t covered if you could watch people with it, so my instinct was unfounded, but it felt right. So I hurried back out to where I could lay eyes on Raelya again.

  Raelya glanced up as I peered over at her. “Is everything—” she straightened and stilled. Her posture and expression shifted ever so slightly and my wolf understood her query. What is wrong? her body asked.

  I glanced around then trotted over to her. “Someone is watching me. I think… with magic.”

  Raelya glanced around covertly. “Are you sure it is magic? There is no one here?”

  I frowned. “Do you sense anything?”

  Raelya shook her head so faintly I almost missed it. “I do not. Perhaps I should take a walk around to be sure.”

  “No, don’t head off alone.”

  Raelya raised an eyebrow. “I am here to protect you tonight, Dakota.”

  I peered down at her. “People can watch other people with magic right?”

  Raelya frowned. “I am not sure. I do not know much about how magic works, but I think that is possible.”

  I reached for my phone and paged through my contacts, searching for Nita’s number.

  “Shepherd!” Dean startled me as he flashed his light over at us again. This time Raelya bristled a bit as well. “Break’s over. Get back inside.”

  I turned to glare at him, but ended up shielding my eyes from the flashlight. “Go inside, Dean. I’m taking perimeter for now.”

  Dean lowered his light slowly. “What? Hell no, I’m not going inside so you can stand around wit
h your thumb up your ass hanging out with your girlfriend.”

  I felt the growl rumbling in my chest before I could find it in me to hold it back and my body was moving toward him without waiting around for my permission when suddenly, Raelya was in front of me, having moved faster than I was capable of tracking, focused as I had been on my asinine co-worker.

  “Do as she said, Dean. Now.” Raelya’s eyes were gleaming with amber in the darkness.

  Dean stiffened like prey before a predator, which was exactly what he was, though his sleeping mind did not know it. It took him a few beats to bring words forth again. “You got some kind of emergency?” He had already taken a few steps toward the museum entrance.

  Raelya nodded barely. “Yes. Now go!” Raelya’s normally smooth, melodic voice carried across the grounds with a hint of a growl. Dean turned and hurried inside looking angry and spooked at the same time. I’d never seen him looking so vulnerable and unnerved and it excited the wolf to see him running. I had to restrain the urge to chase after him and scare him further.

  I turned to Raelya instead with a wolfish grin. “Nice.”

  Raelya shrugged, smiling at me. “You will learn to work with your wolf as such in time, new-bee.”

  I laughed as I lifted my phone. “I’m going to call Nita and see if she knows anything about this.”

  Raelya frowned. “Do you still feel it?”

  I glanced around. “I…” I had thought it was still there until I started looking for it again. Now I couldn’t tell. “I’m not sure. It’s not as strong as it was before. But I can’t tell if it’s gone or not.”

  “Call her then. Find out what you can. I will keep my eyes open.”

  I did as she said, tapping through my contacts until Nita’s grumpy, acerbic glare greeted me from the proper icon. The phone rang a few times before she answered which was sensible since it was right smack in the middle of the night. “Who the hell is this?”

  “Nita? It’s Dakota. I need your help.”

  “Are you in danger?” Nita’s sleepy voice sobered slightly.

  “I’m not sure. I think someone is watching me somehow with magic. Is that possible?”