Blood Ties: The First (A Bane Pack Novel)

“Are you sure this is a good idea?” Felix asked. He glanced at Jenna in the passenger seat of his ’89 Toyota Camry.

“You saw what happened at that Burger King. You heard the reports,” she explained. They’d seen the news footage on her iPhone earlier. “Witnesses said that a huge wolf had crashed into the place and attacked a customer. Does that sound familiar to you?”

“I know it was a werewolf, but what’s that got to do with Kendra?”

“She was meeting Merle Bane there. I heard the conversation this morning.”

Felix was quiet.

“Oh,” he replied.

“No bodies have been reported, so if she isn’t there then that means he must’ve escaped with her. And if he escaped, he probably took her to the mansion.”

Her people had known about the Bane pack and their mansion for years. They have kept a close eye on them ever since their existence became known.

“And now you want to stroll up to a mansion full of werewolves and do what, ask them to kindly give your friend back?” he asked, sarcastically.

Jenna ignored the comment. Her worry for Kendra was making her desperate and desperate people do stupid things. But she didn’t care. She was going to get her back and that was all there was to it.

“We should at least tell the others,” Felix mentioned, already knowing the answer.

“No!” she yelled, almost frantically. “Don’t breathe a word of this to anyone. It will only make things worse. Trust me.”

He could see the stubbornness on her face and knew there was no way he could convince her to let him call for back up.

He threw his hands up in surrender.

“Okay, okay. Got it,” he replied.

They drove on, neither one talking. Eventually they headed outside the city’s limits, driving on the same road Conor used not long ago. Jenna was rooting through a black gym bag they’d gotten from Felix’s apartment. Inside was a handgun with silver bullets loaded in the clip, a crossbow with about two dozen bolts, a dagger, and a short sword. All of them were made with pure silver. In the backseat was a long, black briefcase that held an M24 sniper rifle. Felix had instantly hated having the thing at his apartment, but Jenna insisted. She’d told him she needed a secondary weapons cache, just in case. Unfortunately for him, it was hard to say no to Jenna Bishop.

“Turn in there,” Jenna told him.

Felix turned the wheel to the right, his beat up old car bouncing crazily on the suddenly uneven ground. In front of them was a dirt road that disappeared into a dense forest.

“Drive the car up the lane and make sure no one can see it from the road. We don’t want to draw attention to ourselves.”

He did what she said and pulled the car up as far as it could go. The dirt road became impassable after about fifty yards. He shut the car off and yanked his keys out of the ignition. He turned and stared at her.

“What now?” he asked.

“Now we walk the rest of the way,” she said with a bright, overly cheery smile.

Felix nodded grimly. He couldn’t help but feel this was a gigantic mistake. That of all the mistakes made in human history, this was probably in the top 5, easy.

Jenna grabbed her gear, shoved the M24 at Felix and got out. She carefully picked her way through the woods, heading in a northeastern direction and guided by a GPS system she held in the palm of her hand. Felix readjusted his hold on the briefcase and blundered after her.

| | | | |

“You are useless!” a man thundered. He was looking at the blonde woman. She stared back at him with casual boredom. She ran a hand through her hair and stifled a yawn. “Why would you try to attack Jenna Bishop?”

“I was told to do so by your puppet,” she responded.

“Now the Knights will be on alert. If they start asking questions things will fall apart,” he responded, his voice filled with unrestrained anger. “And if that happens, I will make you suffer endlessly. Regeneration might be a useful tool to your kind, but you’ll be cursing it by the time I’m done with you.”

The woman sidled up to him, her movements slow and sexual. She caressed the side of his neck with one of her soft hands and brought her lips closer to his ear.

“I do love it when you talk dirty to me,” she retorted. Then her nails sprouted claws and dug painfully into the skin of his neck. “But if you dare threaten me again, I’ll be sure to rip your head off and feed it to Merrick.”

She released him, stepping back.

The man rubbed his neck, glaring at her.

“We can still salvage things,” he said, his mind functioning so quickly it would’ve driven anyone else insane. He reworked his carefully laid plan, one that had taken him years to put into motion, and smiled to himself cruelly. “And your colossal error of attacking a Bishop might work out in our favor after all.”

He told her what he wanted her to do.

She smiled widely, her eyes flashing with amber color.

| | | | |

The blonde sat in her car across the street from the Bishop woman’s apartment building. She could still feel a slight twinge in her shoulder from where the bitch had shot her with a silver bolt from a crossbow. She rubbed it fitfully and went over her instructions in her mind.

Stay and watch the building. Eventually Jenna Bishop will come out. Her partner, for lack of a better word, had told her that one of Ms. Bishop’s biggest weaknesses was her stubbornness. She would want to find her friend at all costs and that would leave her exposed.

When she comes out, you will follow her.

Wait until she is vulnerable.

Then take her.

Sure enough, two figures arrived in the alley in a flash of bright, electric blue light. She squinted against the harsh brilliance for a moment before she was able to see again. One of the figures was unmistakably Jenna Bishop. Her blonde hair practically glowed and she sported a bright pink cast. The other was the Hispanic fellow, the mage.

Jenna was just a human girl with a lot of knowledge on how to fight. She would be the easier of the two to take down. The mage, on the other hand, could do some fairly nasty things to her if she wasn’t careful.

He’ll be my first target, then Jenna.

She watched the pair from her car some more. When they disappeared around the back of a building, she got out and calmly went after them, making sure to stick to the shadows and make absolutely no noise at all. She was an old pro at stalking prey and she applied every single one of her techniques now.

She followed them as they travelled about a mile in each direction from Jenna’s apartment building. On the return of their last trek, both of them looked distraught and worried. Jenna was holding out her phone to the mage and the mage was looking at it, his face growing pinched and nervous. She focused her hearing and faintly, she caught the sounds of a news anchor talking about a scene involving a giant animal at a fast food restaurant downtown.

When the story was finished, she saw Jenna tuck her phone into her pocket and follow the man into an underground parking lot. Both of them were obviously in a hurry. Soon, they came out in an old car that looked like it was barely able to hold itself together.

The blonde hurried back to her own car, got in, and carefully trailed them.

Eventually, they ended up at an apartment complex in a bad part of town. It was made up of several nasty looking buildings that were beat up and run down. Windows were broken and the brickwork on the outside was crumbling in places. The doors to nearly every apartment were peeling and a rank odor of urine seemed to hang over the entire place like a hideous cloud.

She couldn’t imagine what they were doing in a place like that, until the mage produced a key, unlocked a door and led Jenna inside.

The poor bastard lives there? She laughed to herself.

They came out a few minutes later toting a big gym bag and a long briefcase. It wasn’t hard to guess the bag and briefcase contained weapons, but the fact Jenna obviously planned to go on the attack against an entire pack of werewolves was a shock. Well, at first anyways. Then she remembered her fight with Jenna. She was a warrior, through and through. She would fight until she had nothing left to give.

It made sense that she would fight for her friend.

But to go after all of them? That went well beyond stupid.

The blonde followed them once again and when it became apparent where they were heading, she knew she was right.

Jenna Bishop was heading to the mansion. She must’ve known who took her friend and was, judging by her accessories, getting ready to fight the entire Bane pack to get her back. And with nothing but a bag full of weapons and a lone mage too. That was gutsy.

“We can’t have that,” the blonde said to herself. “I have other plans for you.”

Roughly twenty minutes later, she was pulling onto the same dirt road Jenna and Felix just went down. Her car ran smoothly over the rough ground. A short time later, she found the mage’s shitty car abandoned at the end of the dirt road. She hung back with her lights off, making sure to wait before going all the way in just in case they were lingering in their car.

She watched the car for about five minutes and when she knew for sure Jenna and the mage weren’t inside it, she got out and started walking. The stilettos she’d stolen from the boutique wobbled as they sunk into the soft earth. After a few minutes, she took them off and walked barefoot instead. She stopped next to the Camry and stared into the woods. They were dark, eerie, and filled with thousands of scents, tastes, touches, sights, and sounds.

Those things, however, weren’t a problem to her. For Jenna and her pet mage, however, their limited senses would definitely be a major weakness and something that she could exploit.

She got out and quickly undressed, putting all of her clothes in a neat pile on the driver’s seat of her car. Then she shifted, letting the world of the wolf take complete control.

She picked up their scents with little trouble.

Then she went back to doing what she does best. Hunting.

| | | | |

“The very beginning?” Conor asked. “That could take awhile. Our history is a really, really long one.”

“Just get on with it,” Kendra told him, impatient.

“All right. Well, our race can be traced back to a single Knight from around 1263 AD. His name was Sir Alrich. He was a noble man and he fought hard to keep his lands safe. In his travels he met a woman named Edolie and they both fell in love. They spent a lot of time together and the more they did, the more Edolie began to change. Alrich started to see her true nature. He didn’t like it and so he left her.”

“What do you mean her true nature?” Kendra asked.

“Nobody is really sure. Some people say she was a monster. Others say she was something else entirely. I’ve heard a rumor that she was actually the goddess of the moon, Bendis.”

Bendis Tattoo, she thought, a shudder creeping up her spine.

“Why would Merle name his shop after her?” she asked.

“Your father had a weird sense of humor,” Conor replied.

Kendra accepted that. She’d been on the receiving end of his humor a few times and knew what Conor was talking about.

“Okay, so what happened after Alrich left her?” she asked.

“He met another woman and had a family with her. He started a new life for himself. All the while, Edolie’s anger at his betrayal warped and twisted her mind. She hunted Alrich for years. Finally, she found him and took her revenge. She kidnapped his wife and kids while he was away and dragged them to a deep pit she dug in the ground. She threw them inside and waited for him to come back. When he did, and he saw what she’d done, he was furious. He demanded that she take him to his family. She obeyed and brought him to the pit. As they both stood at the side, Alrich was more concerned with getting his wife and kids out. He forgot about Edolie and turned his back on her.”

Conor took a breath and continued.

“With her plan fully realized, she placed a curse on him. She turned her magic on him and changed him into a mindless beast...a giant wolf that would kill anything in its path. After the curse had taken its hold, she shoved him into the pit and watched him rip into his family and left him like that. As the light of day returned and the moon disappeared from the sky, Alrich changed back and saw the remains of the family that he loved so much. Grief-stricken and full of rage, he left his home to hunt her down. What he didn’t know was that the curse was never lifted. Every full moon he would change and hunt. The ones that he didn’t kill, turned too. Soon, hundreds of werewolves were roaming the country and slaughtering innocent people.”

“I thought you said werewolves weren’t killers.”

“There’s more,” he explained. “He met an old man in a village. The man knew what he was and told Alrich that he could help. Turns out, he was a powerful mage. He wasn’t able to take away the curse completely, but he was able to change it. Instead of turning on every full moon, he gave Alrich the power to turn whenever he chose. Instead of being a mindless, killing machine, he would retain his humanity in the wolf form. Instead of turning anyone that was scratched or bitten into a werewolf, the mage locked the curse inside family lines. They could only be awakened if the blood of a werewolf parent was introduced into their child’s body. Otherwise, that part of them would remain dormant for their entire lives.”

She reached a hand up to her neck in sudden shock. She remembered the ink. She remembered the reddish tint to it when Merle held it up to the light.

“My tattoo,” she whispered. “Merle put his blood into the ink when he gave me the tattoo.”

“Yes,” Conor said, grasping her hand. “It’s a rite of passage for us. It usually happens when we turn eighteen. We are given a choice of whether or not we want to take on the burden Alrich did when he turned his curse into a blessing. He hunted down terrible creatures that preyed on humankind. That’s our goal. We protect people. We keep humans safe. Almost nobody refuses to change. When we accept the burden, we’re given a tattoo with one of our parent’s blood mixed in. After that, the werewolf takes hold almost immediately.”

“And then what? You guys track down monsters and kill them?”

“Yes. It started with Alrich and the mage. They spent the next several years hunting down the werewolves that he created. The mage changed their curses as well when he could, and they killed the ones that couldn’t be saved. The ones that had taken too much of the wolf inside them and were nothing but animals. When Alrich undid the damage he caused, he started hunting other monsters. That’s what we’ve done for centuries.”

“What happened to Edolie?”

“He never found her, and she never appeared again,” he replied. “No one really knows who she was or what she was, only that she created us.”

Kendra was silent for a long time.

“How come you can’t change completely?” she asked. Immediately she wished she hadn’t. Conor looked embarrassed.

“My mother is human,” he said. “I’m a half-breed. When I change, I take on characteristics of a wolf and a man.”

“Wouldn’t that be the same for me?” she asked. “My mother is human too.” A sudden thought raced through her mind. “She is human right?”

“Yes, she is,” he responded. “The reason is because of that.”

He pointed to her hand, the one with the Alpha mark on it.

“Being an Alpha doesn’t just make you the leader of the pack. It also gives you a certain amount of power. Even though you’re a half-breed like me, being the Alpha allows you to take on your complete wolf form.”

She remembered the surge of power she’d gotten during her fight with Merrick. It felt so incredible at the time and she wished she could lose herself to it again.

“Don’t,” Conor said simply.

She jerked her head up. His eyes were on hers. It felt like he could see right through her and peer at every dark thought that came writhing through her mind.

“Don’t what?” she asked, angrily. She tried to play off what she’d been thinking but it was no use. He knew exactly what was going through her mind.

“You let that power take control and there’s no going back,” he said, his voice quiet. “You want to know the real reason why Merle didn’t want me taking control of the pack?”

“Yes,” Kendra said, even though he was begging her with his eyes to say no.

He breathed deeply for a second and then looked at her.

“I let the wolf control me,” he said. “I lost myself to the blood hunger for five and a half years. I…,”

He stopped suddenly.

Kendra was hanging on to his every word.

“I killed people, Kendra.”

In that moment, Conor looked broken. His shoulders slumped forward, his face seemed worn and haggard, and his eyes held a deep, soul-searing pain that she couldn’t begin to understand.

“Too many people. Merle thought that if I became the new Alpha, the temptation to abuse my new power would be too great. If I did that, then the rest of the pack would follow. It’s one of the things about being an Alpha. After a while, your pack starts to take on certain personality traits of their leader. That’s why Merle insisted you take his place. If Merrick had killed him, then our pack would’ve destroyed themselves.”

Kendra stopped listening after the words “I killed people.” She couldn’t imagine the man in front of her as a murderer, or as something more beast than man. The truth, however, was that she didn’t want to. She really didn’t know him, but sometimes you can just tell certain things about a person. Conor seemed strong and unbreakable. He was a rock. If he could turn into a monster then what chance did she have? How was she supposed to control the wolf when even he couldn’t?

“I have to go now,” she said. “I need to get out of here.”

“That’s not a good idea,” Conor tried to tell her, but she was already shaking her head.

“I can’t. I can’t sit here and look at the people that got hurt because of me. I can’t lie to myself and say everything is all right. That I can control the werewolf side of me. You couldn’t, Conor! You killed people!”

He cringed at the sound of her words and the shame in his eyes grew even larger. She hated herself for being so harsh, but at the same time she hated him for disappointing her. He

He told her they weren’t monsters. He told her they weren’t animals. But they were. She was.

She got up and left the room full of pictures from a past she couldn’t remember. Conor tried to get up and follow her but she snapped at him to sit back down.

She had to be alone. She needed time to process everything.

She walked out of the room and found her way back to the front doors. She forced herself to ignore the confused looks on the weary faces of her pack. She hesitated with her hand on the doorknob for a second. Then she went out the door and just walked.

Soon, the mansion was out of sight.

| | | | |

Felix was out of breath. His back hurt. His legs hurt. It felt like even his hair was hurting. Jenna was up ahead and picking her way through the thick forest like a pro, her flashlight swinging back and forth. She was inhuman. He envied her strength and also felt a little embarrassed that she was kicking his ass at hiking. He wasn’t usually the type of guy that had to beat a girl at everything just because he was a guy, but sometimes it would be nice for him to beat her at something, even if it was just this one, small thing.

“Come on, Felix,” she said, her voice sounding perky.

He grinded his teeth together, annoyed.

“I’m…right…behind…you,” he panted. He looked at his watch. It was almost a quarter past midnight now. They’d been hiking through the forest for an hour and twenty eight minutes and seven seconds.

Eight seconds. Nine seconds. Ten seconds, he counted in his head.

“How…much…farther?” he asked.

“Two miles,” Jenna replied. She had the nerve to not sound winded at all, like hiking for over an hour through a dark forest was a weekend hobby of hers.

Felix managed to stifle a groan. He’d already lost a ton of man points on this venture. He wasn’t eager to have the rest of them stripped away by whining like a two year old.

Another hour and ten minutes went past, making it one twenty-five in the morning. For Jenna, it was no big deal. For Felix, it was torture. He was tired, physically exhausted, and every muscle in his body was sore. He had to stop himself from guzzling the water they’d brought along whenever they stopped for breaks. No matter how much he drank, his throat refused to stop feeling dry and scratchy.

Mercifully, Jenna finally stopped at a raised clearing that provided an excellent view of a sprawling mansion. It looked to be almost a mile down a very steep slope that was studded with massive trees. The line of sight to the mansion, however, was very good.

She set her gear down and held out her hand for the case Felix was still carrying. He gave it to her. She grabbed it with her good hand and brought it over to her stash of weaponry.

She bent down and flipped the locks open. It was awkward with her other hand in a cast, but she managed it. She assembled the rifle (which was also awkward to do with a cast on) and laid it on the ground so that it was pointed at the mansion. Then she flipped open the scope and peered through it.

Exhausted, Felix collapsed onto the ground and sighed with relief.

“How long are we gonna stay here?” he asked.

“As long as it takes to verify that Kendra is in there. After I do, we’re going to make a plan and get her out,” Jenna responded.

“And how do you think we’re going to get inside a mansion crawling with werewolves, find Kendra, and then manage to get her out? Assuming, of course, that she even wants to come with us. She’s one of them now, remember?”

“Shut up, Felix,” was her only response.

Felix did just that. He sat next to her and watched the mansion too. At one point, it was clear that some sort of alarm was going off. Lights came on in a bunch of windows. They were too far away to hear anything clearly though and after a few minutes the alarms just quit. The mansion went dark again. Jenna’s worries were only growing and the alarm going off didn’t help. She had to get Kendra out of there.

She got up from her position and started pacing. She went through idea after idea. Finally, she formed a plan that might work.

“What we need is a distraction. When they come out to investigate, I’ll go in, grab Kendra, and get out again.” Jenna smiled at Felix sweetly. “Easy as pie.”

“You’re crazy if you think—“

Jenna moved up to him and covered his mouth with her hand. She stared hard at him and he swallowed the rest of what he was going to say.

Faintly, he heard a twig snap.

Jenna ran to her bag of weapons. Felix’s eyes blazed with blue, electric light and two orbs of glowing energy hovered over both palms.

They weren’t fast enough, however..

Before Jenna was able to get a gun out of her bag, a werewolf exploded out of the trees and crashed into Felix. It was so fast; he didn’t even have time to realize what was going on. He flew back, the balls of energy dissipating as his concentration broke. He landed hard, the air forced out of his lungs. His head crashed into the ground next and stars exploded in front of his eyes and then everything went dark.

“Felix!” Jenna shouted.

She whirled on the werewolf, which loomed in front of her like a nightmare made real. Saliva dripped from its mouth and its amber eyes bored into hers. She could feel her heart hammering in her chest, but she fought against her fear, just like she’d been trained to do. She steadied herself and stood up. The gym bag was on the ground half-opened, the bright silver of one of her weapons glittered in the moonlight like the damned thing was mocking her. It was so close but if she even twitched in its direction the werewolf would slaughter her.

“All right then, let’s go!” Jenna yelled. “What are you waiting for?”

The werewolf let out a deep, rumbling growl and obligingly charged forward.

Jenna put up a decent fight, but she couldn’t hold the beast off. She ended up in a limp heap about a foot away from Felix.

The werewolf shifted back, her blonde hair fluttering in the breeze. The spiky, tribal tattoo across her left shoulder stood out starkly against her pale skin.

“A pleasure to see you again, Ms. Bishop,” the woman teased.

She laughed, the sound cold and merciless.

Then she tossed Jenna’s weapons as far into the woods as she could, picked up the limp bodies, and disappeared into the woods.

| | | | |

Kendra didn’t know where she was going, but it didn’t matter anyway. She looked around. It was dark but her eyes quickly adjusted and she saw things very clearly. She heard the sounds of the world around her. There were insects chirping. An owl was hooting off in the distance. Something was rumbling through the forest off to her left. Leaves were rustling in the breeze. It was all so overwhelming, yet at the same time she could feel herself adapting to all her recent changes. She found she could filter things out or tune into other things. She could adjust herself to her heightened senses and that was a relief.

What wasn’t a relief was that she’d been thrust into a world she wanted no part of. Those people depended on her and all of them were nearly killed because of her. One of them had been killed, she reminded herself. On top of all that, she just lost her biological father who (as it turns out) has been masquerading as her friend for years, the brother she didn’t remember having was a psycho, and the man she was starting to trust was a murderer.

She wanted to get back to her old life. That’s what she really wanted.

Really? You sure about that? she asked herself. She thought the answer would be a flat out yes but she wasn’t so sure now. The truth was, being a werewolf wasn’t all bad. She was prettier now. She was strong too and powerful.

She felt, maybe for the first time in her life, like she was her true self. Like she was who she was always meant to be.

And then there was Conor.

She didn’t want to let herself believe she could have feelings for him, not after what he’d told her about his past, but the truth was, she did. She had a whole boatload of feelings for him. He was easily the most attractive guy she’d ever met.

And dangerous, she thought. And sexy. And he is super protective of me.

That, more than anything, was a draw for her. Her childhood had left her with a lot of abandonment issues and feeling like no one in the world cared about her. Conor risking his life for her again and again was something completely alien to her. No one cared that much for her. She could count the number of people that came close on one hand, and one of them was dead now.

So what do I do?

She didn’t know the answer.

She stopped walking and took a good look around. She found herself in a peaceful clearing with a view of the mansion. The building looked absolutely beautiful in the moonlight. It was very picturesque.

Then she suddenly sniffed deeply. She turned around sharply a few times, confused. She caught the hint of a very familiar scent. At first, she had trouble identifying it but then it suddenly clicked.

That’s the same scent from the alley yesterday, she thought to herself.

She remembered it from when she’d gotten her tattoo. It was someone’s very distinctive cologne. Something slightly woodsy. Mixed into the scent was the smell of ozone, like a bolt of electricity had sizzled its way through the clearing. There was no mistaking them. They were the exact same scents she’d caught in the alley across the street from Bendis Tattoos.

And now another memory of where she’d smelled that woodsy cologne before hit her.

Felix! But what would he be doing out here? Maybe it’s one of the wolves. Maybe they wear the same cologne.

She sniffed more deeply and caught another smell. This one was a perfume that smelled like cotton candy. It was very, very faint but unmistakable. That was a fragrance she’d know anywhere.

Jenna?

She couldn’t fathom why Jenna would be here or why Felix would be with her. But she didn’t have time to worry about those questions. She took in another deep breath to confirm the last scent she’d smelled other than Jenna and Felix’s scents.

Her heart started hammering in her chest.

The last scent was the smell of blood.