Davina gave her a small, sad smile. “I wish I had something definitive to tell you that answered that question. There’s mention in one of the books about ghouls kidnapping people to use as labor, but that might be little more than folktale. There’s no firsthand account of it ever happening, and even if there was, it wouldn’t explain what’s going on with your sister. If they’re still keeping her against her will and she somehow escaped, why would she run from you?”
Tears welled in Jenna’s eyes. “I don’t know. None of this makes any sense.”
Trevor’s heart ached to see Jenna so worried. He wished he could think of something to say to reassure her and make her feel better, but he couldn’t. From the looks on Davina’s face and those of his pack mates, none of them had anything to say that would help make this situation better, either. The only thing they could do now was rescue Hannah and bring her home. And he was going to do everything in his power to make that happen.
Davina told them a little bit more about ghouls, specifically where they liked to live underground and how to find them. The plan revolved around tracking the ghoul Trevor had fought all the way back through the sewer tunnels and crawling through that rabbit warren of tunnels until they found something.
From where he stood near the far end of her desk, Mike frowned. “Let’s put the plan for finding these things on hold for a minute and focus on something equally important—how we take them down. Trevor told us that when he fought that one last night, the wooden stake he tried to stab it with didn’t even scratch its skin.”
Davina picked up a folder from the other side of the desk and opened it, then flipped through a few pages with a lot of redacted crap all over the place. “I was going to get to that at some point, but now is as good of a time as any. Long, heavily redacted story short, a STAT team recently had a run-in with these creatures in Turkey and then again in New York City. Bottom line, for all intents and purposes, ghouls are bulletproof. I suppose that spending generations chewing through stone has essentially made their flesh as hard as rock. There were several guys like the four of you on the STAT team, including an omega, and it was all they could do to come out of those fights in one piece.”
Jenna gave Trevor a curious look. “What does she mean, like the four of you?”
Trevor bit his tongue to keep from cursing as his worst fear was seemingly coming to fruition. Davina had slipped up and outed them as werewolves minutes after Jenna had learned her sister had been kidnapped by creatures that eat people. She’d think he and his pack mates were monsters, too.
“She means that they’re SWAT cops like us,” Hale said casually, leaning over Davina’s desk like he was trying to study the book—upside down. “Omegas are what we call the last guy who enters a room during a breeching operation.”
Davina looked at Trevor and his pack mates, obviously confused. But she had nothing on Jenna, who appeared completely baffled. Trevor couldn’t believe she was going to buy any of this, even if it did sound pretty good. It was utter BS, of course, because an omega was simply another type of werewolf.
“Um, okay. I guess that makes sense,” Jenna said. “So does this mean we can’t do anything to stop these creatures, even if we somehow manage to find them?”
Davina flipped through the file again, turning several more pages until reaching the last one. Once there, she skimmed down a few lines to a portion that was more heavily redacted than the rest.
“There was a man who was able to take out one of the ghouls with nothing more than a metal pipe. The details are extremely lacking in the file, buta dead ghoul was confirmed, and the guy”—she swept her lavender gaze over Trevor and his pack mates—” who wasn’t one of you SWAT cops—, took credit for it. I’m going to keep digging for information, but if you want a place to start when it comes to stopping these things, I’m guessing that would be it. A metal pipe.”
Trevor looked around the office, relieved to see that he wasn’t the only one who was worried. While Connor might believe ghouls existed, he was obviously still in denial that the creatures had kidnapped Hannah. Hale and Mike, on the other hand, clearly understood that at some point very soon, the four of them would be coming face-to-face with the creatures. Ones that seemed impervious to any of the weapons Trevor and his teammates would typically use against them—natural or supernatural. But the idea of trusting a cryptic note in some files about a guy killing one with a metal pipe, mentioned only in passing within a STAT report so heavily redacted it was nearly illegible, was a little disconcerting.
But one glance at Jenna and the firm look of conviction on her face suggested she didn’t care. She was going to do whatever it took to find her sister, no matter how dangerous it might be. Which meant that Trevor would be, too. Because he’d do anything for her.
Anything.
CHAPTER 8
Jenna didn’t say anything as she led the way up the steps to the second floor of her apartment building, then down the hall and into her place. It wasn’t difficult for Trevor to imagine why she was so quiet and what she was thinking about. Everything they’d learned tonight was obviously weighing heavily on her. He could understand that. It wasn’t that long ago when he’d gone through the same revelation and learned that the world was far scarier than he’d ever imagined and that supernatural creatures really existed. Of course, he’d already been a werewolf at that point, which he supposed had lessened the shock a little bit, but the knowledge that the world was filled with other supernaturals had made his head spin. He had no doubt that it had to be more of a game changer for Jenna.
They’d stopped at In-N-Out Burger for takeout on the way back from the club, so after washing up, he, Jenna, and his pack mates spread out around the living room to eat.
“So there are other monsters out there besides ghouls,” Jenna said, pausing with a french fry that she’d dipped in her milkshake halfway to her mouth. “And there are entire books on them and stuff.”
“We call them supernaturals instead of monsters,” Hale corrected, digging into his second cheeseburger. “Not all of them are bad. Some are just different.”
Jenna regarded him curiously. “You’ve encountered supernaturals who aren’t bad then?”
“A few,” Hale murmured before taking a big bite of his burger.
Jenna sat there expectantly, like she was waiting for Hale to elaborate. But since it wasn’t like he could admit that the entire SWAT team was filled with supernaturals—and that Connor’s soul mate was a witch, like Davina—there wasn’t much he could tell her.
When it became clear that Hale wasn’t going to say anything else, Jenna looked at the rest of them. “Okay, so I guess that brings us back to what we learned tonight about these ghouls. I know Davina said she’d do some digging and try to find more information on the creatures’ weaknesses and whether there might be more than one way into their tunnels, but what’s our plan? I mean, what are we going to do about these things?”
Trevor opened his mouth to offer his thoughts, only for Connor to cut him off.
“First off, you don’t need to know what the plan is,” Connor said, his voice firm and clearly on the edge of being angry. “Because you aren’t going to be involved in any of this.”
Trevor braced himself. When Connor had pulled this same kind of stunt back in Dallas, she’d walked out on her brother, refusing to speak to him for days and ending up in Trevor’s apartment. So, he was a little surprised when Jenna simply took a small bite of her cheeseburger and regarded her brother calmly as she chewed.
“You don’t get any say in whether I’m involved in this,” Jenna said almost casually, pointing at him with a french fry.
“I’m your brother,” Connor said with none of the casualness his sister had displayed. “Of course I have a say in whether you risk your life.”
