At least my hands were now free. I dug my right hand in my jacket pocket. Seeing the motion, Jesse tried to keep Remus talking. “And who’s with you?” Jesse asked, his voice tense but steady. “Who’s the gray wolf?”
Remus went alert, looking anxiously at Jesse. “That is our mate,” he informed him, his hot breath on my neck. He took his free hand off my chin—it felt like he was leaving a greasy film behind—and wrapped it around my waist instead. I suddenly could feel his fingers worming under the waistband of my pants, pressing into my skin. It wasn’t sexual, exactly, but intimate, like he was digging for warmth. Ick, ick, ick . . . I focused on breathing, trying not to panic. You can take a hundred showers when this is over, Scarlett.
“I picked her and Brother Wolf transformed her. She is ours now.” I couldn’t see Remus’s face while I was being employed as his human shield, but I saw Jesse react to Remus’s expression with revulsion. “Where is she?” Remus asked Jesse, plain curiosity in his voice, like he couldn’t find one of his shoes. “Have you done something to her?” He sighed elaborately. “I hope not. We went through such trouble to make her. Most of the potentials were too weak.” He tilted his head, as if listening to an inner voice. “Although that’s true, number five tasted . . . interesting.”
“Oh, yeah?” Jesse said casually. Very slowly, I started to ease the Taser out of my pocket.
“Oh, yes. But now we have our mate. Brother Wolf tells her what to do, and she must listen,” Remus giggled, as though he hadn’t heard Jesse at all. “We own her.”
Holy shit, this guy was nuts. We’d miscalculated, thinking that it would be a while before he could control Lizzy Thompkins as her alpha. But Henry Remus wasn’t a normal alpha werewolf; he was a sick, twisted imitation. And Lizzy was in thrall. “She’s fine,” Jesse said reassuringly, keeping his voice level. “She’s hanging out on the path back there with a friend of mine.”
Shadow. I’d almost forgotten about Shadow. I looked at Jesse questioningly, but he was focused on Remus, not wanting to give anything away.
I made a show of squirming, like I was uncomfortable, to cover up the movement it took to get the Taser in position with my thumb on the trigger. Remus gave me a little shake to keep me still. He was . . . ah, God, he was sniffing my hair.
Clumsily, as best I could, I reached my arm around and tasered the sick fuck on the hip.
That was what was supposed to happen, anyway. But I was dizzy from being shaken again, and instead of making a clear connection between his skin and the two electrodes on the Taser, I think maybe one electrode brushed against his skin briefly. It was enough to get Remus to let go of me and stumble back a few feet, but it didn’t have nearly the effect it should have. I swayed from the dizziness.
Remus was already starting to step toward me again when Jesse yelled, “Scarlett, down!” I dropped as fast as I could. Jesse flew through the space where I had just been, and hit Remus in a flying tackle that felt very satisfying to watch, especially after he’d just pulled the same crap on me. “Get out of range,” Jesse told me tersely, and I complied, scooting away from Remus on my hands and one knee. The full moon was high in the night sky, and as soon as he popped out of my radius Henry Remus began to change again. Jesse yelled something in French—later I learned that it was the word “release”—and suddenly, the bargest streaked into the picnic clearing like a flying demon dog from hell. I knew then that I had chosen the right name for her, because in the dark clearing she was nearly invisible, like smoke in the darkness. Jesse scrambled away from Remus, picking up one of the flashlights and pointing it at the nova werewolf.
I’d never seen anything like Shadow’s attack. She was effortlessly fast, pouncing on Remus like a supernatural puppy on a squeaky toy. Remus was bigger, but in the few weeks that he’d been a werewolf, he hadn’t actually had to face a single challenge. His half-developed fighting instincts weren’t prepared for something that had been trained her whole life to kill him. The poor crazy bastard never had a chance. Shadow pinned him in an instant, and while he was still trying to squirm away, Jesse yelled, “Tuez-le!”
Shadow tore out his throat.
Remus fell back, panting shallowly as the skin reformed on his neck. As soon as it was more than translucent membranes, but before Remus could even take a full breath, Shadow reached down and ripped it off again, spitting the skin onto the ground next to Remus’s head. Then she did it again. And again. He began to visibly weaken after the third time she ripped his throat out, and by the fifth, he was barely moving his legs anymore. Shadow kept going until his blood stopped pumping into the ground. There was a brief shimmer as his body changed, and then Henry Remus was lying there dead.
Shadow came over to me and sat down daintily, blood soaking her muzzle and front paws where she’d dug at the wound. Jesse and I both stared down at Remus’s body, and then Jesse went over and nudged it with one toe. “What about DNA?” he asked me. “Will his be normal?”
I nodded. Werewolf magic, like most forms, depends on life to sustain it. When Remus had died, the magic had left him, evaporating back into wherever it had come from to begin with. “I don’t know about bargest saliva, though. Maybe your pathologist friend could do something with those tests?”
“Mmm,” Jesse said noncommittally.
“Where’s . . . ,” I began, but just then she came limping up from the bridle path, a tired-looking wolf with gray fur and bright blue eyes. Shadow stood, looking at Lizzy with a confused face like she’d just dropped out of the sky. I put a hand on her collar.