“Why is he called that?” Hudson asked.
I blinked as a painful memory tried to surface. “Because once he scents you, once you become his prey, there is nowhere you can run, nowhere you can hide. The Hound will find you and he is an expert at torture which leaves no scars.”
A growl rumbled from Hudson. “He hurt you?”
I chewed the inside of my cheek, the last thing I needed was The Terror of Tennessee launching retribution on an elemental because of a buried hurt.
“It was part of my training when I visited my grandmother. Don’t blame the tool.”
Hudson snarled and it cut through the room, causing the hairs on my arms to rise. His tiger was showing. “I blame your grandmother. She is your family. She is meant to protect and cherish you, not put you through exercises which would break a weaker person.”
“That’s not the end of it,” Harry said. “Caleb was next to me one minute, thenpoofhe was gone. Never to be seen again.”
Ah, so that’s what had Harry so riled up, he’d witnessed the afterlife coming for someone like him. Did that mean he was ready to follow them? Or was he terrified that he would be caught in the white light?
“I’m sorry,” I said softly. “That must have been traumatic.”
Harry nodded. “They burned the bodies.”
I frowned. “Like cremation?”
“No, they took the ones in the church and threw them in the school, and then they set the school alight. ”
Why do that? If The Order had staged the scene in the first place, why go to this extreme to then cover it up? Unless…
“They burned the bodies,” I whispered. “I don’t think this is sanctioned activity by The Order.”
“But massive elemental magic was delivered to the people of Peach Tree,” Hudson reminded me.
“I know, but then it was covered up—poorly enough that I would see through it, but good enough that the authorities wouldn’t.”
“Perhaps they didn’t expect you to investigate?”
“Then why ward against my gift?”
Hudson leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees. “That, I don’t know.”
There were too many moving parts. I could try to use my contacts within The Order to see what was officially being said about Peach Tree. My stomach twisted, I was missing something important. Perhaps my grandmother’s visit would shed some light, but if she didn’t want me to know, then I wouldn’t know. She wasn’t the head of The Order because she folded under scrutiny.
My phone buzzed on the coffee table and I glared at it for a second. If it was my grandmother, I couldn’t be held responsible for my actions. It wasn’t. I let out a sigh of relief and picked up the phone.
“Boys, what do you have for me?” I asked.
“We have a location,” Lenson said.
“Excellent.”
“I’ll send you the coordinates.”
“Thank you.”
“But Cora, you should go prepared.”
“I’m always prepared.”
“Tell her about the concentration,” Rockhard shouted.
“You’re on speaker phone, you idiot, no need to shout, she can hear you,” Lenson grumbled.
