“Yes, she is.”
“Carl has to go. I see that. I told him not to strike at you. I told him that stunt last night was a ploy to draw us out. That if we stayed calm, you couldn’t touch us. I’m not surprised he didn’t listen to me.”
“He’s predictable,” I said.
“Are you ready to replace him?”
“Yes.”
“I could help you.”
He could. In a word, a gesture, he could destroy Carl and Meg. All I’d have to do was step into the vacancy. That, and sell my soul to Arturo.
“I can’t owe you anything, Arturo. I don’t want to be in your debt for this.”
“I thought so. I had to try, though. Carl didn’t have your scruples when he took me up on that offer.”
I hadn’t heard that story. I hadn’t ever thought about the alpha male Carl must have had to fight to replace. When I’d been attacked, infected, when I’d joined the pack, Carl had seemed like a god, enduring and eternal.
Arturo stood in a fluid movement, incomprehensibly graceful. He was sitting, then he was standing, his hands curled behind his back. He neared my mother’s bed and leaned over it.
“They didn’t remove it all,” he said, scrutinizing her, studying her with a narrowed gaze. “She’ll have months of chemotherapy ahead of her. Even after that it could come back anytime, anyplace. Her bones. Her blood. Her brain.”
“How do you know that? You don’t know that.”
“I feel it in her blood. I feel it traveling.” He held a hand, spread flat, a few inches over her chest, like he really could feel tiny cells of cancer wreaking havoc. “Her blood is sick.”
I choked on a sob. My voice scraped like sandpaper. “Please, Arturo. Leave her alone.”
When he touched Mom’s face, a light brush of fingers along her chin, I almost screamed.
“What would you do to keep her safe, Katherine?”
Arturo had never been able to bring himself to call me Kitty. The name was beneath his dignity. Now when he said my full name, it felt like fingers curling around my throat, squeezing.
“Anything,” I whispered.
His hand rested on my mother’s throat, where he could squeeze and strangle her. “You’ll take Carl’s place. You’ll answer to me.”
“You can’t do this.” An empty, unconvincing denial.
“But I have done ever so much worse to get where I am.”
I flashed on the memory of him dropping Carl with a twist of his arm. He’d incapacitated Hardin with a word. He was too strong, I couldn’t stop him.
I wished I had telekinesis, to throw him across the room. I wished to bring down lightning bolts from the sky. I wished for a bag of garlic and a bottle of holy water. I wished I was religious and wore a cross around my neck.
I considered. I took a step back, into the doorway, where I could see Detective Hardin leaning just outside. Her cross would hurt him, but it had to touch him.
“Katherine,” Arturo said. “You shouldn’t have to think about this. I can feel her pulse under my hand. I can stop it.”
I needed another few seconds.
“Ben, too,” I said, stalling. I turned my back to him, feigning despair, to hide what I was doing when I shifted aside the collar of Hardin’s shirt. “Don’t hurt him. Ben and I for Carl and Meg.”
“Of course. I assumed as much.”
Hardin didn’t move, didn’t so much as blink. Her eyes were half-lidded, staring at nothing. I touched the chain, and my fingers started to itch. It was silver. Damn.