Wolf's Kin (Monstrous Hearts #3)

Chapter Fourteen

"When were you last in England?" said Alice, watching the countryside unfold before them. They were on the open level of a tour bus as sedate as their surroundings. A guide pointed out spots and provided local history while the other passengers listened and took photos.

It leant a sense of privacy as strong as if they were alone in the woods, but Colton still leaned in until his mouth brushed her ear. "The Second World War."

The gentle hills looked greener than she believed grass and trees could ever be, but there was a brooding quality to the overcast sky that she couldn't quite place. They had left Texas in the middle of a thunderstorm, sweating from the suffocating humidity, but the dampness to this air somehow felt even heavier, like the chill of a gravestone.

Despite the goose down jacket she wore against the cold, she shuddered convulsively. "Did you see any fighting?"

"No. I'd long grown tired of killing." The flatness behind the words left them more sinister than the fiercest growl.

Sinister, and yet she only turned to him with a smile. If she was overdressed for the cold weather with her gloves and fur-lined boots, then he was beyond casual in comparison, wearing nothing more than a flannel over his t-shirt. His eyes looked sharp yet relaxed, revealing nothing of what he thought. "Are you familiar with this area?"

"Only with traveling through it. It's been another's territory since the Romans invaded, and I never felt like taking it away."

As with most of his answers, it left her with more questions. Just then, the bus crested a hill, revealing a patchwork of fields and trees below. Buildings clustered together in the very center, bright white and brick red and dark brown. Even from that distance, their shapes and colors marked them as centuries-old relics. It was a striking view, as if this little town had somehow hidden itself from time, protected and unchanged, while the rest of the world moved on.

Colton nodded, sensing her next question. "That's it. He won't be there but should catch our scents, anyway."

She bit her lip, unsure of how she felt about meeting another vargr. "And you really think he'll be friendlier than Giove?"

"No reason for him not to be."

The tour guide announced the name of the town as they entered it, but Alice immediately forgot it, overcome by what she saw. Every street and building looked like history captured and preserved from different periods, and the man's cheerful narration couldn't hide the sense of something ancient gutted into a shell of itself, all nastiness cleaned out and covered up with quaint charm. She had always hated the glassy eyes of taxidermied animals and now felt the same aversion as the bus took them into the main square.

They got off with a handful of other tourists at a 16th-century pub, admittedly beautiful with its thatched roof and whitewashed walls. Its interior was much more modern, offering both tables and bar seats. She didn't miss how Colton guided them to the far corner of the bar, or how he made sure his stool blocked hers from the rest of the room.

Her eerie feeling only grew as they settled in, and she still couldn't say why. The lighting was warm and cozy, and the air smelled like beer and roasting meat. The bartender was a grandmotherly woman in a cable-knit sweater who never stopped smiling, and the conversations from the other customers never rose above a murmur. All in all, it should have been a comforting atmosphere to anyone exhausted from sightseeing.

Yet if she closed her eyes, she thought she heard something else beneath the hiss of beer taps and the bartender's cheerful teasing toward another group of tourists. A whisper of a noise, a faint scream that echoed as if she were in a vast land and not a crowded little pub...