The Fangs He Gave Me

Chapter 5: Veil Stone

I found a clothesline not too far from where I woke up. A leather jacket was hanging next to a bed sheet. It was my size but meant for a man, I took it.

Down the line was a pair of jeans that was close enough to my size and a pair of sneakers left to dry in the sun.

I said sorry in my head as I helped myself with the clothes.

I felt bad about stealing but what choice do I have? I can’t just walk around naked.

The city was already waking up by the time I got moving.

Strangely, I was walking as if I knew where I was going to. I walked down a narrow passage between the two shops without thinking and jumped over a pile of broken crates before I saw them.

I just moved, like my feet were reading a map my brain hadn't seen yet.

I frowned, still walking. "Kira."

Mm.

"Am I doing this, or are you?"

...What do you mean?

"I just turned down this alley without you saying anything. Same as the last two turns." I kept my voice low, eyes moving over the street ahead. "and I even jumped the crates before I noticed they were there."

Ermmm… I may be nudging you a little, she admitted.

I exhaled through my nose as I continued walking. "You're navigating me without saying anything?"

Yea, I can’t really explain how it works.

"Hmm"

...but it feels like we almost share a mind.

I almost laughed, which surprised me. I hadn't thought I had a laugh left in me this morning. "it feels kinda weird," I murmured, stepping around a broken bottle on the pavement without glancing down. "but I’m getting used to it."

I know right, she said quietly.

I kept following the pull of her instincts and tried not to think too hard about where mine ended and hers began.

Soon the old factory was in view, looking worse in daylight. It had so many broken windows land rust bleeding down the walls in long brown streaks.

The same gap in the chain-link fence I'd squeezed through last night still had a scrap of my dress caught on one of the wire points, dancing with the breeze.

My stomach turned when I saw it.

I slipped through the gap and walked into the yard.

The smell hit me first. Blood. I knew the smell now in a way I hadn't yesterday.

The dark stain on the concrete was bigger than I remembered. But there was no body. Gato was gone, and I didn't let myself think too hard about who had come to collect him or when.

My shredded dress was lying nearby in strips, torn apart like something had worried at it after I left. I crouched down and went through each piece with my hands shaking, turning them over.

The pocket had torn clean away from the rest of the dress. It had ended up further from the blood pool, but it was still in one piece. I could feel the small hard shape inside it through the fabric.

I picked it up.

Something happened when I did.

A warmth moved up through my fingers and wrapped my whole body.

"Ella." Kira's voice came out different than I'd ever heard it as I open it with my fingers and it fell into my palm.

A necklace with a stone pendant on a thin chain. The stone itself was about half the size of my thumbnail, dark gray shot through with veins of deep blue that seemed to move when the light hit them, like smoke trapped behind glass.

It was beautiful.

"Kira," I whispered, "What is this?"

"A Veil Stone." She answered, her voice sounding like she was in awe. "It hides your scent. Your wolf scent… with it, any werewolf or supernatural that tries to track you won’t be able to find you.You will completely be invisible to them."

I turned it over in my fingers. The blue veins kept shifting.

These are so rare, Kira continued. Do you know most wolves live their whole lives without ever seeing one in person?

Then she paused. Who was Dante, really?

I didn't have an answer. I thought about the blood on his clothes he could never explain. The calls that ended the second I walked in on him.

"I doubt this is what they killed him for," Kira stated, like she was working it out as she spoke. "If they knew he had a veil stone, they would have said something about it last night. They came for something else."

That was when it fell out.

A small black rectangle tumbling and hitting the dirt with a soft little click.

I stared at it.

A memory card.

I picked it up and held it next to the veil stone, one in each hand, remembering Dante pressing them hard into my palm in those last seconds before everything exploded.

He knew what was coming and he gave me both.

"That's what they killed him for," Kira said quietly. "Whatever's on that card"