Free The Wolf in His Arms (The Runes Trilogy) by Adrian Lilly Page A

from his seat and looked up at The
Fullerton Building, once the focal point of the nearly derelict neighborhood
main street. Its dark, broken windows gaped like ominous portals to individual
hells. Dankness wafted out of the abandoned building, smelling like a
long-closed cellar. In the fading light of the sun, Alec watched as pigeons
alighted on the window ledges high above. He shivered. The vacant building
always gave him the creeps. Had it not been for Jared’s company, he would never
be able to stay the night in the building. I’m
a werewolf who’s scared of the dark , he mocked himself.
    Coming
around the back of the car, Alec grabbed the bag for the small pop tent he and
Jared would sleep in as Jared grabbed the backpack and sleeping bags. Lucy had
her items slung over her shoulder. She shook with tense, anxious energy. Jared
double checked that the car was locked and said, “Let’s go.”
    Jared
looked around the empty street. One street light shone at the nearest corner,
and otherwise, the street was dark. No headlights approached; no one walked the
street. The emptiness reassured him that this building was the best choice for
Lucy to transform. Ensuring the safety of others and keeping Lucy’s conscience
clean were his priorities. Lucy led the way around the back of the building,
where they entered a door that had been pried open sometime before they began
using the building.
    Lucy shone
her flashlight into the entrance of the dark building as they entered. A
cavernous, door-lined hall stretched before them, branching off into other
halls. Lucy panned the hall with the beam of the flashlight, and confidant the
hall was clear, she headed for the stairs to the basement. Lucy kept her hand
on the handrail as she descended the slick marble steps into the basement.
“Love this place,” she grumbled.
    “I
expect zombies every time we come down here,” Alec admitted, his voice tight.
    The
concrete and solid steel vault was in the back of the basement at the end of a dead
end hallway. The fact that the vault was built to be hard to break into also
made it hard to break out of. The vault was about twelve feet deep and eight
feet wide. Jared shone his flashlight inside. The light fell over the claw
marks in the concrete as he entered the vault behind Lucy. “Let’s get you set
up,” he offered Lucy.
    Keeping
Lucy comfortable until the change was a challenge since she shredded anything
left in the vault with her. Working together, they spread out the sheet of
plastic they used to protect her from the damp, cold floor and then spread out
the old blankets she would use this one night. On the next full moon, they
would come with different plastic, different blankets.
    In the
hallway, Alec assembled the pop tent as Jared set electric lanterns around the
perimeter where they would sit vigil. Jared double checked that the two rooms
leading off the hall were empty, and then he shut the door that led into the
main part of the basement. He latched the lock that he had put on the door after
their first night and secured it with a padlock. Now, no one could surprise
them while they waited until morning.
    He
turned to see that Alec had lit the camp stove and that Lucy was situated on
the blankets inside the vault. As Jared approached to close the vault door,
Lucy nodded to them.
    “We
don’t need to shut the door just yet. Not yet,” Alec said.
    “Shall
we talk about the translations?” Jared asked.
    “No,”
Lucy said softly. “Let’s talk about something else. Something normal.”
    A brief
silence fell between them, and they all chuckled.
    “Normal’s
hard to come by these days,” Jared said.
    “So
what does Mitch do exactly to piss you off?” Alec asked.
    Lucy
frowned. “It’s just his demeanor. He’s an excellent trainer—I admit—but he bugs
the hell out of me. He’s so smug.”
    “And
today?” Alec looked at his sister, draped in shadows within the vault, the dim
lantern light only partially