Page 66 of Wolves’ Witch

Chapter Thirty-Three

Aubert’s sword hand itched with a need to cut, thrust and disembowel something. No more than a score of footsteps away was the man who had hurt their mate. He had betrayed her, and he was the reason for her imprisonment beneath the chapel. How close they had come to losing her was too much for him to contemplate. Aubert eyed the slovenly hut. He could not get to Faucher, but he would see Douglas paid for his transgressions. That he was working with their enemies one more reason to want him dead.

But Aubert, tucked away in a filthy alley with Isobella by his side, waited for Remi. She was nervous. As fixated as he on Didier’s miserable abode, her pulse rapid at the base of her throat. Aubert slipped his hand in hers again. He would give his favorite blade to have her safe back at the keep with the other women, but he understood the reasoning behind her presence. He would see her safe. They would see her safe.

Her hand was small and soft in his, and he ran his calloused thumb across her skin. She rewarded him with a skip in the beat of her heart. When they returned to the keep, they would show her what it really meant to be theirs. Shut themselves in her bedchamber and not let her out until she was claimed and bitten, boneless and satiated and thoroughly theirs. They would give her more than a miserly moment of pleasure in, of all places, the spartan and cheerless training room with the memories of past turnings seeping from the walls.

A soft step alerted him to the other presence creeping up behind them. Remi had returned.

Remi pushed past them and poked his head out of the alley, checking the street both ways. “Cordelia is not here, but she was. This morn. They tried to follow her, but they lost her in the crowd.”

“Probably witchcraft,” whispered Isobella.

“Right now, Didier is here all alone.”

“No Douglas?” Edmond made no effort to hide his disappointment.

“No. He left and he was in an awful hurry, looking for a horse and directions to the d’Louncrais keep. Our friend kindly gave him directions.” Remi’s grin was smug. “Not the ones he was looking for.”

Aubert tightened his grip on his sword, eager to storm the cottage. “Coin does not buy friends.”

“No, but it buys food and a warm coat and a place in someone’s stable for the night.” Remi’s eyes no longer held the hint of the mischievous and audacious boy they had caught picking Edmond’s purse. “And as long as there is more coming, it does buy loyalty.”

D’Artagnon had drawn his sword, and there was a feral eagerness in his eyes. “Shall we take care of Didier before Douglas returns?” He stepped out of the alleyway.

“Wait,” said Remi. “There is something else. When Cordelia left this morn, Didier followed her.”

Edmond’s eyebrows shot up. “Followed her as in snuck along behind her as though he did not wish her to know she was being followed?”

Remi nodded. “Yes.”

“But…” D’Artagnon frowned. “She is his mother, and they are working together.”

Remi shrugged. “Perhaps she should have paid him. Family ties do not always make for lifelong commitments.”

There was something in the slump of Remi’s shoulders that gave Aubert pause. He and Edmond had always had each other. Even when there was Sabine, he had never doubted that in all else his brother would be there for him. And he had his pack. As long as he remained one of the Langeais wolves, he would always have family. Something told him there was more to Remi’s interest in becoming a werewolf than it appeared.

“The thing is,” said Remi, taking them all in, “when Didier returned, he returned alone. What is more, he did not look well.”

“What do you mean?” asked D’Artagnon.

“He was coughing up blood.” Remi screwed up his face. “And it was leaking from his ears. And his nose and his mouth.”

Some sort of illness? A disease?

“And he was redder than a stonemason’s face on a hot summer’s day.”

“Cordelia.” D’Artagnon spun on his heel and bounded across the street. Edmond was not far behind him.

Aubert turned to Isobella and Remi. “Stay close, but wait outside until we know it is safe.” He dashed across the street, with Isobella and Remi on his heels. Who knew what they would find.

D’Artagnon flung the door open and was inside before they could stop him, Edmond trailing behind him. Aubert, his sword ready, ducked his head and slipped through after him.

A single tallow candle flickered on the table, casting eerie shadows across crumbling walls and dilapidated furniture. Mice rustled in the sagging roof and through baskets of shriveled vegetables, but it was the hum of insects swarming over the figure on the cot like a living cloud that drew all of them.

Remi’s spy was right.

Aubert scrunched up his nose. The stench of rotten food, sweat and stale urine was almost unbearable, but it did not mask the smell of death. Or of blood. There was a lot of blood. Didier had bled from every orifice. It stained his clothes, the straw mattress and the dirt floor.