The Innocent: Chapter 6 (Patreon)

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Index 

Chapter 6

Camille

Abby turned around in her seat to give me one of the papers the teacher was passing down the rows, smiling as she read the assignment. “I love group work.” She looked up at me while turning even more, straddling the back of her seat. “Morning.”

“Hi,” I said, amused at the fact that she set her paper on my desk to do the work there.

“I already know all the answers too.” She wrote her name at the top of the sheet. “You can copy mine.” I had a particular thought, and though she’d been surprisingly successful at not responding to what was in my head, she narrowed her eyes at me. “I’m not cheating, thank you very much. I like history.”

“I know,” I laughed.

I did know, because she’d helped Kyla bring up her history grade at the end of last semester. It was nice she’d let me copy anyway since she was officially using my desk. She was left-handed, which meant that by facing me, she was occupying the same half of the surface I’d be if I were writing, and we’d be in each other’s way if I tried to work at the same time. That was my excuse anyhow, and I leaned back in my seat to let her start filling out the assignment.

“Is history what you’re going to major in?” I asked her. “Next year, at college?”

“Yeah,” she answered, scribbling down an answer to one of the questions. “European military history, probably.”

“Yikes…” That sounded… dull.

Abby huffed amusedly. “It helps me put a lot of the stuff I deal with for the Council in a historical context. I don’t know, it’s interesting to me.” She passed a brief look up at me. “What are you going to major in?”

“I have absolutely no clue,” I sighed, sinking down in my seat. “I’m not very good at being bored, so college is kind of the last thing I want to think about, you know?”

“You ever thought about being a Fish and Game Officer or a Park Ranger?” she asked. I laughed at the complete randomness of that, and her cheeks gained a visible tint as she let out an embarrassed laugh of her own. “Come on, I’m serious.”

“Okay,” I said with interest, even though I was still smiling. “Why?”

“You have a good nose, right?” she explained. “The best nose. You could track down poachers. You probably know the woods really well by now, and you’d be out instead of cooped up inside all day. You’d have some jurisdiction and access to information if you ever worked another case in the forest. And green is your color, you wear it at least twice a week.”

“I don’t wear green that-” Abby’s lips pursed as her eyes passed down my upper body. I glanced down too to look at my green flannel. “Oh.”

She laughed, and then watched me for a few seconds while I thought about her advice. “I mean, it’s not the only option,” she said, shrugging. “But it’s one option since you don’t want to go to school for a long time just to work a desk job.”

“No, it’s-” I paused, glancing away timidly because she already seemed to know me pretty well, and it didn’t feel like it was all because she had a personal glimpse into my head. “It’s actually the best idea someone’s had yet. Thanks.”

She smiled, and then looked down to continue working on the assignment. She read the next question, glanced up at me while she thought about it, and then sighed. “Shoot, I forgot.” She reached down to grab her backpack, pulling it up into her lap to get her history book out of it.

“What’s that?” I asked, pointing to a burlap sack the size of a watch face attached to the handle at the top of her bag.

“Protection charm,” she said, adjusting her backpack so I could see it better. “My dad gave it to me a while ago when I started helping out with Council stuff. It’s so old I think all the mojo’s gone, but it’s nostalgic.”

“He can’t make you another one?”

“He could…” She hesitated, set her bag on the ground, and shrugged. “I don’t know. Our relationship’s not what it used to be.”

My eyebrows furrowed. “I thought he was teaching you magic?”

“He is,” she confirmed. “But I’m not the prodigy he was hoping I’d be, like he was, and we don’t agree on much in general.” She gestured at me as an example and then let out a sigh. “I’m an all-around disappointment, I guess.”

“No offense,” I said, tilting my head to catch her fallen gaze, “but if your dad thinks you’re a disappointment, then he’s dumber than I thought, and the Council’s really in trouble.” She looked up again, her hazel eyes meeting mine with a clear appreciation. That had maybe come out more sentimental than I’d meant it to, so I added, “And I don’t even like you that much, so you know I’m not being biased.”

She laughed, muttering under her breath, “You try so hard to be intimidating,” and I couldn’t help chuckling a bit either. “But… thanks.”

I nodded, and while she opened her textbook to search for an answer, I asked, “What do you do for the Council, anyway?”

She finished flipping to the page, and then looked up at me to reply. “Not long ago I used to just check in on the unruly bunches from more peaceful races of supernaturals, like making sure covens weren’t storing illegal ingredients and stuff like that. But over winter break my dad let me go on my first real mission.”

“What was it?”

“There was this healer,” she said, “they’re rare and usually really peaceful, helping sick people and stuff, but I guess she was using her talents to find healthy subjects to harvest, and selling their remains on the black market.”

“That’s horrible.”

“Yeah,” she agreed. “I helped bring her in so the higher-ups could deal with her. We did it, but I don’t think I’ll go on another one for a while.”

“Why not?” I asked.

“Her husband was there, but he was just a normal guy, you know?” She paused, looking down to stare at the assignment. “He grabbed a gun in a drawer nearby before we could subdue him, and Council Ops are always armed when we go out, so I didn’t know what else to do.”

“Oh, wow,” I murmured, pursing my lips sympathetically. “Are you okay?”

She shrugged. “It was really different from fighting vampires in the warehouse last semester. I can’t read vampires, but I could hear him and he was all panic, but then I pulled the trigger and it was just… silence. We were told he knew what his wife was doing, but… I don’t know. I’m just not a field agent. Investigating is more my thing.”

“I hate guns,” I said, nodding my understanding. She met my gaze again when I said that, and she just stared at me for a while. I knew she’d caught a glimpse of what I’d done when I was new to Changing. I’d attacked a man because my siblings and I scared his cattle on a run one night, and he fired a weapon toward us and I didn’t have enough control back then not to attack, but I didn’t want to talk or think about it. “Don’t be too hard on yourself though,” I told Abby, hoping she wouldn’t ask, “he didn’t give you a choice.”

There was a loud click from beside us as something hit the floor, and Abby and I both looked over. Constance had dropped her pen. The bar connecting her desk to her chair was blocking her so she couldn’t reach down and get it, so I leaned over and picked it up, holding it out to her. She snatched it from my hand faster than I could blink, without so much as a ‘thank you’ or a glance in my direction.

“You’re welcome,” Abby said for me. Nothing, not even a twitch, and I could see an emotional shift on Abby’s face – the surfacing of a familiar anger I’d been on the receiving end of last semester – as she adjusted sideways in her seat to face Constance. “Hey, what’s your problem?” Constance finally looked up, turning her head to stare Abby right in the eyes. She still didn’t say anything. “Did we do something to offend you?”

Abby’s voice had risen just loud enough that people in the class were watching to see about the noise, and that included the teacher. “Abby,” I whispered, putting my hand on her arm to get her attention.

It was too late, though. “Problem, Miss Johnson?” the teacher called across the room.

Abby abandoned her angry expression, taking a moment to compose herself and then shaking her head at him. “No, Sir.”

The teacher studied her for a second, and then his gaze went to Constance, and then to me. “Constance,” he said, pointing at an empty seat across the room, “can I have you move over there, please?”

Constance stood, but before she could leave her desk, Abby reached across mine and grabbed the collar of my flannel, pulling me close enough that she could reach my ear and whisper, “Get her scent.” I inhaled through my nose as she let me go, but it wasn’t satisfying. I tried again, and again, and was breathing deeper and deeper until Constance had crossed the room. “Well?”

“She smells like perfume,” I said, inhaling gently once more to catch whatever remained of it in my nostrils.

“Oh.” Abby’s face fell with disappointment.

“No,” I said, “that’s all she smells like.” I should’ve noticed it sooner, but everyone always smelled like perfume and cologne, or drowned themselves in scented soaps, and last time I’d been too distracted by the smell of blood from her arm. “She doesn’t have a natural scent. But her blood had a scent… could something be masking it?”

Her eyebrows furrowed, and she cast a suspicious glare across the room. “I don’t know. Something is seriously off about her.”

“What does it mean if she doesn’t have a scent?”

She shrugged. “We never track people by scent. Or have any information about it, really, unless it’s so foul a human can smell it.”

“You don’t think she’s what hit me in the woods?” I asked. Constance was short, and small, and honestly kind of cute if you didn’t take her personality into account. She was hardly intimidating.

“No.” Abby looked across the room, thinking for a few seconds like she was considering it. “I don’t know.” We both looked over again, staring for a minute before looking at each other. “…Maybe we should follow her after class just to make sure she’s not doing anything strange…”

I nodded my agreement, and we spent the rest of the class finishing the assignment and waiting for the bell to ring. Eventually it did, and Abby and I threw our jackets on, grabbed our bags, and hurried out the door to follow Constance. We stayed paces behind her in the crowded halls, that way she wouldn’t notice we were following, but before long we were leaving the building. I didn’t know what her second period was, but it soon became obvious that we weren’t heading to another education building either. We were leaving campus. Abby and I ducked behind walls for as long as we could, following her in the opposite direction the dorms were in, to a far side of the school I’d never been to before. She continued beyond the boundaries and into the woods, where there were a few small houses for the grounds-keeping staff.

“Bushes,” I hissed, watching as Constance strode past a truck parked in a driveway and right up to one of the house’s front doors. We shot behind a snow-covered bush just as Constance turned around to make sure nobody was watching. Not seeing anyone, she grabbed the handle, and I heard the lock crunch all the way from here when she twisted it.

Abby gasped. “Did she just-”

“Yes.”

She disappeared inside the house she’d just broken into, and I grabbed the sleeve of Abby’s jacket, hauling her across the open space to the side of it. We crouched beneath opposite sides of one of the living room’s large windows, peering in through the corners. Constance strode into the living room, and we ducked a little farther out of sight, still being able to watch as she began searching through bookshelves.

“Does this constitute strange?” I whispered.

“This is beyond strange,” Abby said. Constance found what she was looking for, shoved something into her pocket, and started back for the front door. “What did she just take? Did you see?”

“I have no idea,” I answered.

We crept toward the front of the house, and because I was taller, I leaned over Abby’s back so we could both peek around the corner. Constance walked to the truck, opened the unlocked door, and then jumped into the driver’s seat. The vehicle started up so fast that she must’ve found the keys inside.

“She’s stealing the truck!” Abby said. “Our cars are all the way across campus! We’ll never get there in time to follow her.” But I’d already had an idea, and discarded my jacket to the snow and began to unbutton my flannel. “Camille, what are we-” She turned, stopping midsentence when she realized I was taking my shirt off. “Wha- uh-” Her eyes scanned my bra, and then wandered down to stare at my bare stomach while her mouth hung open, and she breathed “uh” a handful of times like she was trying to remember what she’d been saying but couldn’t. Maybe I should’ve given her a warning before starting to take my clothes off, but I was so used to it on runs that it was second nature, and I thought she’d have heard me think it and been prepared.

“You forget how to read minds all of a sudden?” I asked, tossing my shirt down on top of my coat.

Her eyes widened and then slammed shut. “Shit.” She spun around. “I’m so sorry. God. Shit, that was so inappropriate, I’m sorry. So sorry. Crap. I’m so sorry.”

Okay, she was flustered. So flustered that she was still swearing quietly to herself, and… was it wrong if I was maybe a little flattered? I paused from the hurried removal of my bra, looking up at the back of her head while my cheeks flushed, hoping she wouldn’t say anything about that thought.

She didn’t. She leaned closer to the edge of the house to look. “She’s backing out. You’re just going to follow her, right? Don’t do anything stupid.”

“I won’t.” I slipped my jeans down at the same time as I kicked out of my shoes. “Stay with my clothes. I’ll be back soon.”

“I can’t stay here!” she protested. She began to turn around again, but then must’ve remembered I was nearly naked, and deliberately faced forward. “We’re not supposed to be out here, that house just got broken into, and oh, yeah, a truck is missing!”

I could hear that the truck had finished backing out, and it started retreating down the road. “Then go deeper into the woods if someone comes and I’ll find you. I need clothes when I get back, Abby.”

I didn’t give her another chance to resist, I Phased and took off running, hearing her call after me in a loud whisper, “Be careful.”

It wasn’t until a minute after I’d been following the truck, keeping hidden in the woods, that the urgency wore off and I started feeling the increasingly familiar dull nag of fear. Constance was at least as strong as I was, and she didn’t have a scent. It didn’t make any sense why she’d have been in the woods the night we found Devon, seeing as her only obvious connection to the whole thing was being Patrick’s neighbor, but I wasn’t ruling out the possibility that it had been her. And if it was, then she was stronger than I’d seen, she was fast, and she could probably kill me if she caught me trailing her.

I chased after the truck as it pulled onto the main road, staying well within the forest that lined the street, trying to ignore that my heart started racing for reasons other than the run. Trying not to think about what I was doing, and that I was doing it completely alone.

Constance drove about four miles away from the school, pulling onto a few smaller side roads and eventually ending up at… a junkyard? That was the last thing I expected, but she cruised past the gates and came to a stop near the owner’s mobile home. I crept toward the opening of the gate, hidden enough behind piles of car wreckage and machine salvage that I could peer around and see what was happening.

The owner came out of his mobile home just as Constance was getting out of the truck. “I know you?” he asked. He was a massive man, made even more intimidating by the chew he spat sideways and the fact that his faded black trucker hat was almost too small for his head. “Why you driving Alvin’s truck?” Constance didn’t say a single word to him, just strode past him and went right into his home. “Hey!” he shouted, stomping after her. “You can’t go in there!” He disappeared inside.

This already seemed like the kind of situation where someone might get hurt, and I was about to creep through the gate and get closer when the man hit the ground outside. Constance had thrown him so powerfully through the door that he hit the dirt and rolled. She didn’t wait for him to recover before she started throwing things or crashing through drawers in his house. He finally came to a stop on his face, pushed up with a furious growl, spat the wad of tobacco out of his mouth, and stormed back to the house. He disappeared again inside.

I left my hiding place, aiming for the side of the home where I could hear better and remain unseen, but I hardly got halfway before there was the unmistakable cocking of a shotgun. The sound alone was enough to make me stop in my tracks, but then the weapon went off. The deafening bang of gunfire filled the air, and my heart leapt to my throat as I sank two steps backward, ready to run.

“That stung,” Constance’s voice growled. “And that’s not the gun he used. Where is it?” Something glass shattered against the wall. I should help the man. I should go in there to try and protect him, but I was frozen in place. Constance got shot and she was fine and that wasn’t normal.

“Who?” the man stuttered.

“Alvin,” Constance said. “Where is it?”

There were five long seconds of silence while one of my front paws hovered in the air, a heartbeat away from taking off in the opposite direction. The man had a gun, but as much as I hated them, I’d been at gunpoint before. I could deal with that. But there was almost no doubt in my mind then that Constance was what hit me in the woods. She was involved in the occult in some way that made her strong, in some way that I couldn’t fight against or protect myself from, and the last thing I wanted to do was go inside that home.

My pulse was racing. This had nothing to do with me or werewolves, and it wasn’t my responsibility to be chasing the occult after it almost killed me. That was Abby’s job. The Council’s job. I was here for no good reason that I could see, and I’d already done what I’d come for – to see what Constance was up to – and maybe she wouldn’t murder this man. Maybe I could back away and everything would be fine, and I could listen to Abby and not do anything stupid. Only, I knew what Kyla would do. I knew that it wouldn’t have mattered to her that we didn’t know this guy, or that Constance was dangerous. Kyla would try. She’d do the right thing, the stupid thing, and protect him.

Before the weight in my limbs could get any heavier, I bolted to the house and through the door. The man let out a startled scream and lifted his shotgun, but I took the barrel in my teeth before he could fire and ripped it from his hands, whipping it outside. I turned to face Constance, setting myself between her and the man while my upper lip curled. There were bleeding holes from the shotgun in the torso of her jacket. Every one of the pellets had pierced skin, deeply, and I don’t know how she was standing. She didn’t even look like she was in pain.

Constance’s eyes met mine, and she held my gaze while her jaw clenched and her body tensed. A second later, something silver appeared in one of the thick buckshot holes in her torso, and the first steel ball pushed from the wound and hit the floor. Others followed, until each one that had hit her was scattered across the linoleum. She was still bleeding so badly that almost the entire front of her shirt was stained red, and the wounds weren’t healed, but I’d never seen anything like that in my life. She passed me a smug smile before looking back up at the man. “I’m going to ask one more time. Where is the rifle?”

I growled to make my point clearer, the rumble from my chest filling the one large room of the mobile home. The man behind me must’ve gestured somewhere, because Constance glanced upward toward one of the long overhead cabinets. It was higher up than she was tall, and she gave an annoyed sigh while she glanced around, gaze landing on a full case of beer. She ignored my growls and kicked the case beneath the cupboard, stepped on top of it, and reached inside. Her hand came out with a rifle in its grip, and the mere sight of her holding a weapon escalated my threats to a full-blown snarl.

She stepped off the box, looking pointedly at me. “Don’t make me kill you, Camille,” she said, ejecting the magazine from the rifle. I was so startled that she knew it was me that my rumbling ceased. “It’s not your turn.”

She pulled a single long bullet from the magazine and then jammed it back in, and that sound snapped me out of my shock. I snarled again, snapping my teeth and taking a pace forward, putting myself between her and the door because whatever her plan was, it couldn’t be good. But then she did something else I didn’t expect. After she put the bullet in her pocket, she grabbed the barrel of the rifle, using her inhuman strength to bend it so far backward it folded over, rendering the weapon completely useless. Then she threw it down at my feet.

“You’re the villain here,” she said, eyes meeting mine once more, “not me.” I bared my teeth as another rumble left my chest. She looked deliberately at the door. “Don’t test me.”

She skirted sideways, and though my growling got deeper and louder, I hadn’t decided on stopping her. She hadn’t killed the man, and though she’d threatened me, she wasn’t trying to kill me either. Not yet anyway. Instead, she’d completely destroyed a weapon capable of killing, and I didn’t know what to do. I was confused, and still afraid of her. Despite the force behind my snarling, my heart was racing and my stomach was in knots. She wasn’t human, she couldn’t be. I didn’t know what kind of supernatural she was, but what she wasn’t was afraid of me. There wasn’t a trace of concern on her face or in her eyes as she took a few more sideways steps toward the door.

It put her close enough to touch me if she reached out, and she looked at me one more time while one corner of her mouth pulled into a smile. Then she was gone. She got out the door faster than I could’ve reacted, and was in the driver’s side of her truck less than two seconds later. The engine roared to life, and she reversed out the gate and sped down the road.

I took off out the door, sprinting as fast as my four legs could carry me in the direction of the school. I didn’t bother following the road because I wanted to get back before Constance did, and instead cut straight through the woods. It took me a fraction of the time to reach the school limits, and I raced around the edges until I found the street back to Abby. I tore through the forest behind the houses, glancing behind me as I neared Alvin’s home to see if Constance was coming up the road yet, or if she even would. It was because I wasn’t looking that I didn’t notice Abby was waiting. She was facing the other direction, staring into the woods like she was searching for me that way, but I looked forward again at the same time as she heard the crashing of my paws and began to turn.

There was no way I could stop in time. Though I tried to, I skidded through the snow at running speed, and Abby only got out half a startled yelp before we collided. I smashed into her, taking her to the ground with the force of my speed and the entirety of my weight. The wheezing grunt she let out as she hit the snow was enough to shift my focus away from the crisis of Constance, and onto the fact that I could’ve just broken at least a handful of her bones. I rolled off her, jumping to my feet and reacting the only way I knew how in wolf form, the only way that felt natural in my new state of panic. I nudged her repeatedly and frantically with my muzzle – her ribs, her hand, her arm and shoulder and face, anywhere I could elicit a reaction to make sure she was okay. It was apology and inquiry and my tongue followed every few nudges on instinct because she was so hurt that she wasn’t making a sound.

Before long, she breathed, “Okay,” and tried to push one hand against my head the next time I nudged her. I was still too worried for it to stop me, and as I moved back up to her face, she let out a bark of laughter. “Okay!” She brought both hands up to shove me off, yelling through pained laughs, “Ah, okay! I’m fine! That tickles! Use your words! I can hear you!”

Oh… right… I backed off, calming myself down and trying to adjust to the fact that I didn’t need physical expression to communicate with her like this. Sorry, I thought, lowering myself to lie down a foot away from her. She chuckled and dropped her head back in the snow. Are you okay?

“No offense,” she said, grunting as she pushed herself up to sit, “but you weigh a freaking ton.” Once sitting, she reached up to wipe the sleeve of her jacket over the moisture on her cheek. “Seriously? Was that your nose or your tongue?” She pulled her arm away to look at her sleeve. “Can’t say I’ve ever let a girl lick me there before.”

I was grateful to be in wolf form when she said that, because even if she could hear how embarrassed I was, at least I wasn’t blushing like I would’ve been in human form. Sorry, I thought again.

“You were panicking,” she pointed out, rising to her feet with a last pained groan. “What happened?”

My mind flashed involuntary glimpses of what had happened at the junkyard, and Abby’s eyes went wide. Turn around, I told her. She did, and I Changed and rushed to my clothes. “It was her,” I said, hurrying into my jeans with a renewed sense of urgency. “Constance killed Devon, she had to have.”

“Camille,” Abby prompted without looking at me.

“I think she’s going to kill the guy that lives here,” I continued, reaching behind me to do the clasp of my bra. “She’s got some kind of agenda and I don’t think Alvin will be the last.”

“Camille,” Abby said, turning around even though I was still in the process of pulling on my flannel. “She threatened you.”

My eyes met hers as I did up the buttons on my shirt. “I know.” I reached down for my jacket, a fresh nag of fear in the pit of my stomach. “Kyla’s in science right now. We have to tell her.”

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