Page 21 of Cold Sacrifice

“Wes,” he said finally.

Wes Korda was blind.

But when I took a few steps to reach him and offered him my hand, he immediately held out his own hand to shake mine. I figured he was very good at anticipating another person’s movements and intentions.

The second our fingers touched, I realized something that startled me. This man who would attempt to pull Voss’s memories from me was a wolf.

I could only imagine the stories he had to tell.

“Where are the elders?” I asked him.

He didn’t use his cane as he walked to the patio and stood in front of the small sofa. “Please,” he said. “Sit, and we will begin.”

He waited for me to sit down before he sat beside me. “I’d like to take your hands, Kait,” he said. “I’ll do this as quickly as possible so you can be on your way. I’m sure the elders told you it would likely require several sessions before I am finished.”

“They didn’t tell me much of anything,” I said. “But I’d like it if you could get what you need from your first attempt.”

“I can’t do that.” He waited for me to place my hands in his, and when I did, he tightened his grip around my fingers and lowered his head. “You’ll feel a slight vibration. Maybe a gentle tugging. You won’t be in any danger, and I won’t rifle through your private memories. Once I find Gavin Voss’s thread, his is all I will…see.”

“How will you know which thread is his?” I asked.

“He was a mutant werewolf with an unnatural magic,” he said, somewhat dryly. “I’ll know.”

Then he went quiet and still, and as he’d said, I felt a slight vibration and, more uncomfortably, the tugging. It wasn’t a lot, but it reminded me of Anika Draper pulling my magic from me. For a moment, I worried that he might be taking something from me. It wasn’t like I could trust him. I didn’t even know him. But I’d volunteered to help the council in their attempts to find the one who’d created Voss’s magical werewolf, so I could only sit there and hope Wes wouldn’t turn out to be an asshole.

I glanced around the area while he worked. The place felt fake. Like the woods at the edge of the yard would be a huge mural if I reached out to touch them. The plants and flowers looked plastic, if I stared at them long enough. The sky seemed too still. Even the scents of the outdoors were muted and subtly perfumy, and the sounds of birds seemed mechanical.

The council and their trickery at work. I didn’t know what the purpose of it was. Why not just have me inside the house, instead of setting up something that looked like a movie set?

Maybe they’d honestly thought it would relax me and were trying to be nice.

“Try to relax,” Wes said, startling me with the sudden sound of his voice. “I won’t hurt you.”

“I’m not afraid you’ll hurt me,” I said. “I was just wondering why we’re sitting in the fake outdoors instead of inside. This has to take a lot of effort to maintain.”

He didn’t reply.

Done with the scenery, I studied him, instead. If one of my hands had been free, I’d have looked up his name to see what I could find out about him. He had to have existed outside the council at one time. Maybe he still did. Maybe they brought him in when they needed him to “read” someone.

I saw scars around the edges of his sunglasses, and once again, I wondered about his story. He was a wolf. He could have shifted and healed his eyes. Unless magic had taken them. Strong magic could have destroyed his vision, his shift could have been forcefully delayed with silver, and he could have been blinded forever.

I shuddered.

He wasn’t a large man. My height, slender, cute. And he had a peacefulness about him. He was…calm. But the scars around his eyes weren’t the only scars I spotted. I saw old, thin scars on the back of his hand, his wrist, even around his throat.

Maybe he was calm now, but at one point in his life, Wes Korda had lived a violent life. All wolves did, to a point. But some of us lived through more violence than others. It seemed to choose us, that life, and maybe we even chose it back.

“Who are you?” I murmured, unintentionally.

It didn’t matter. He was so deep into his search for Voss’s creator that he didn’t appear to have heard me.

He released my hands abruptly and sat back, a light sheen of sweat across his forehead. “That’s all I can do today.”

I frowned as he wiped the moisture off his face and his hand trembled. “It hurts you?” I asked.

“I’m fine,” he said, and reached for his cane. “You can go now.”

I didn’t miss the way the cane jumped into his hand, sort of the way my blade did for me. Wes Korda was an enigma.