Captive Mate - Eliot Grayson Page 0,54
for a lot of their planning. And now Hawthorne was dead, and whatever he’d known, whatever he’d been plotting, had died with him.
What had he been doing for those missing two years? The answer hadn’t concerned me much before, but it had suddenly become a much, much more urgent question.
New supernatural organization. Oh, my fucking gods. That’d been tried a few times over the decades, and always ended in rivers of blood and no organization at all. Not something a lone shaman like me wanted to be in the middle of. I cleared my throat, trying for something less insane than screaming demands for details. Fly casual, Chewie. “Has Bill heard from them? The, uh, organization? Since Sam died?”
“I don’t think so. I’m not sure my dad was so eager to tell whoever Hawthorne was working with that he died, for real this time. And I’m also not sure even Sam knew exactly who Hawthorne was working with, actually. That asshole really played his cards close to his vest, you know?”
Yeah. I knew. And it suddenly hit me that whatever plans Hawthorne had for Nate, they were probably bigger, and a lot worse, than whatever petty power-draining I’d thought it was going to be.
Not that petty power-draining was all that petty when it was you getting drained. An unexpected pulse of hurt went through me. How could Nate do that to me, when he’d had it done to him? My jab about like father, like son had been just that — poking him where I thought it’d hurt. But really thinking about it…how could he? I wasn’t that awful. That hateful. Was I?
“Fuck it,” I said. Much as I wanted to pin Colin down and dissect his brain until more information came out, I didn’t have the time and he probably didn’t know much more in any case. “That’s for later. Right now, we have other problems. If you can’t talk Bill out of pursuing this fucking stupid-ass crusade of his, we have to find another way. You can’t possibly want more of your pack to die for nothing.”
“Of course I don’t. I’m just not sure what we can do.” He sighed heavily. “You really think Matthew’d listen?”
No. “Yes. He has to.”
Wordlessly, Colin pulled his phone out of his pocket, tapped at it for a second, and then handed it to me, Matthew’s contact information already on the screen.
All I had to do was press send. I felt like I’d been frozen in place, caught in some weird magic of Dor’s. Matthew Armitage, right there on the screen. Like he was just a person, someone you could call on the phone, and not — whatever he’d become to me. It felt like he ought to be unreachable. Distant. In another universe.
I touched the button and held the phone up to my ear.
One ring. Then two. I started to exhale. Maybe he wouldn’t answer. I could send a text.
“Yeah. Colin?” Guarded. Defensive. Matthew’s voice, gruff and deep. The rest of my breath rushed out of me in a whoosh.
“It’s not Colin. I’m — I’m calling from his phone.” No shit, Sherlock. I licked my bone-dry lips and started to sweat as Matthew said nothing. “Hello? It’s Arik.”
“Yeah. I got that.” His voice had gone down another octave. “I guess I don’t need to ask where the fuck you are. Should I ask what the fuck you’re doing, or just assume you’re going for round two of attacking my pack? Different Kimball, different day, same bullshit?”
That hurt, piercing me deep in a place I’d thought I’d walled off years ago.
“Different Kimball,” I managed to say. “Different day. And similar bullshit. But this time you have advance warning. And I’m not involved in creating it.”
Matthew laughed, an ugly, bitter sound that echoed in that same place inside me. “Right. I’m sure this call is totally altruistic. Fine. Tell me what you called to tell me.”
I drew a deep breath — a shaky deep breath, but close enough. I hadn’t really expected another reaction, had I? Like, say, relief that I was all right and Parker hadn’t caught up to me? Or even a hello. I’d have taken it.
“Parker and the Kimballs are planning an assault tonight, before dawn. Apparently Jonathan Hawthorne was involved in something. Some kind of supernatural group that’s trying to — I don’t know what, because Colin doesn’t know more than that Hawthorne had a larger agenda. But he got Sam Kimball on board with the idea that taking your