Darknight(100)

“‘This ‘thing,’ Angela, is a Porsche Cayman.”

“I’m surprised he gave it to you to drive instead of the BMW.” Not that it really mattered, but discussing the car seemed safer than just about anything else.

“I think he wanted me to impress Eli.”

I supposed that made some sense. “It doesn’t seem very practical for Flagstaff,” I said, almost primly, as he edged out onto the street and then pointed us back toward Route 66.

“Probably not, but Lucas likes his toys. You should see his stereo.”

Midlife crisis? I wondered. Not that I thought Lucas was quite old enough for one of those. He was a couple of years older than Damon, but not yet forty. “I can imagine.”

Connor even smiled a little, but it disappeared as we began heading northwest toward Damon’s house. “Might as well do it now,” he murmured.

“What — ?” I began, turning toward him.

But then his features began to shift, not a great deal, as Lucas had the same long nose and high cheekbones as most of the Wilcox men, but still, in a few seconds, the man sitting next to me wasn’t Connor anymore, but his cousin, right down to the laugh lines in the tanned skin around his eyes and those first faint patches of gray at his temples.

I swallowed. “That’s…still kind of amazing. And disconcerting.”

He shrugged. When he spoke, even his voice sounded different. It had the slight lilt to it that I’d noticed in Lucas’s inflection, as if nothing could suppress his inner joie de vivre. “I’d say you’d get used to it, but really, I hope I don’t have to use this power often enough for you to get to that stage. I hate it.”

“It feels like lying,” I thought. Connor’s words to me only a few short weeks ago. And how much worse now, when he was using it to perpetrate the worst lie of his life, the one that would fool Damon into thinking this man was coming as a friend?

Breathe in, let it out. I did this again, and again. My aunt had taught me this technique to center myself, to keep my energies clear and unflagging. Despite my efforts, a sudden worry surfaced, and I shifted uneasily on the leather seat. “What if — what if Damon still figures out it’s not Lucas? What if you, I don’t know, don’t smell right or something?”

“It’s a possibility. But the way Marie explained it, he’s taken on the shape of a wolf, but he’s not actually a wolf. His senses aren’t the same. Sharpened, yeah. Better than a regular man’s, but still not close to those of a real wolf.”

I had to hope she was right. Or this could turn out very, very badly.

For us, that is. After all, if everything went according to plan, it was going to be a very bad day indeed for Damon Wilcox.



* * *



For all its low-slung sportiness, the Porsche handled the snow-slick roads out to the property very well, and I began to revise my initial estimate of its impracticality. The problem was, since Connor didn’t have to drive all that slowly, we got there a lot faster than I would have liked.

He downshifted as we approached the driveway, hand white-knuckled on the gearshift. “Angela, I don’t think I can do this.”

I’d halfway expected this reaction. How could I not, when we were about to go in Damon’s house and, in Marie’s words, “put him out of his misery”? I licked my dry lips, then said, “All you have to do is get me in there. I’ll do everything else.”

“And what will you do? Do you even know how to fight him?”

“No. I mean, I don’t know now. But I will when the time comes.”

“That’s…crazy. That’s no plan.”

I shifted in my seat, staring at the face of Lucas Wilcox, and hoping to see something of the man I loved beneath those features. Of course I couldn’t; the glamour was perfect. It had to be, for this to work. “Connor, all of this is crazy. The only thing I know for sure is that I love you, and I wish with all my heart that we didn’t have to be here doing this. But I also know we’re the only hope of stopping Damon. Stopping the killing.”

As those words left my mouth, Connor twitched, as if recalling again why we were doing this. It wasn’t simply that Damon had dabbled in forbidden magic. That could have been overlooked, if it had caused no lasting harm…or at least no harm to anyone except himself. But, as much as he might love his brother, Connor couldn’t allow any more innocent blood to be shed. Whatever the cost, he knew that had to stop, here and now.

A grim nod, and he pulled into the driveway. As he parked in front of the center garage door and took the key from the ignition, I could almost see the shift in his demeanor, the way the cloud of doubt lifted from his brow, and suddenly he really was Lucas Wilcox, cheerful and untroubled.