Chapter 6

Nick was the one to call the house phone. He didn't want to leave Annie alone and he knew there was no way she was leaving Pete. It didn't take long for the others to get there.

"He's not wearing his jacket." Antonio commented softly as they all took in Pete's broken body.

"He always took it off before a fight," Nick added, watching as Clay stepped closer to Pete. Annie, who still stood beside him, hadn't said anything since they found the body. Silent tears stained her cheeks as she looked anywhere but at Pete. Winding his arm around her waist, Nick pulled her closer to him for comfort.

"He didn't go down without hurting someone," Clay spoke again after examining Pete's right hand. He held it out to illustrate his point, showing blood on Pete's knuckles that was not his. When Jeremy asked who did it Clay pulled Pete closer to read any scent that was left on him. It was not a scent he was familiar with, another new Mutt. Whoever it was left another message for the pack as Pete's left middle finger had been bitten off, a 'screw you' to the whole pack.

Clay and Nick were the ones who carried Pete's body to the backyard where, morbidly, they had an incinerator. It was tradition that every pack member who died be burned and their ashes spread around Stonehaven land. Annie waited inside with Antonio when they burned the body, sipping at the tea he made for them. She was still too shell shocked to talk when the others returned and simply listened as Jeremy questioned Nick about how they had found the body. Annie was forced to speak when Nick looked to her after telling everyone he followed Annie outside.

"I got another email," She whispered hoarsely. "He used Pete's email address this time. Asking if I liked his 'present' and sending pictures of the last time Pete and I were together. The last one showed Pete's body outside Stonehaven."

"That Son of a Bitch," Nick cursed under his breath, running a hand through his hair.

Jeremy wanted everyone home immediately. He was frustrated, and feeling at fault for being the one to send Logan and Pete on their way without informing them of the danger. There was no way to know the Mutt would go after anyone in the pack, Jeremy had thought Annie was the only one they needed to protect. He had been wrong. Clay was the one to make contact with Elena and Logan. Logan had been with her, answering her phone, and assured them they would come back immediately.

Annie followed behind everyone in a slight daze as they all went to their rooms. It was late, they had a lot to do the next day in preparation for Pete's burial. When she and Nick stood outside her bedroom she couldn't make herself go in. "I don't want to be alone. I can't. Not tonight," she whispered, looking up at him with haunted eyes. She'd seen too much that night, knew she'd be plagued with nightmares and didn't want to face them on her own.

Without much hesitance Nick relented, pulling Annie into her room alongside him. They fell into bed with their clothes still on, Annie curling up to Nick, laying her head on his shoulder and her bad arm on this chest. His scent was comforting, having him there was so much better than wearing his t-shirt. As she slowly relaxed, she fell asleep with her face pressed into Nick's neck. It took a little longer for Nick to fall asleep as he stared down at Annie's bandaged hand. There were a multitude of emotions coursing through him: anger and grief at Pete's murder, yet a small bubble of contentedness and even happiness stirred inside him as Annie pushed closer to him.

He had thought her injury earlier was damaging, but that was nothing to the emotional scarring tonight had on her. Pete's death hit everyone hard, but Nick felt it might have hit Annie the hardest. She wasn't as accustomed to death, Jeremy tended to keep her away from that aspect of the pack. The last person she was close to that had died was her father, then within a week of each other both her roommate and her pack mate were brutally murdered. It was a lot for someone to take in, especially someone not familiar with the brutality that was death.

Several times that night Annie was jolted awake from nightmares. Each time Nick was there to calm her down and ease her back to sleep. It wasn't the best night sleep Annie had ever gotten, but Nick being there made it a Hell of a lot better than it would have been. Nick let Annie get the first shower the next morning, knowing it would make her feel a little better. Once they were both dressed in clean clothes they went downstairs together to find the pack already in the kitchen. Logan and Elena arrived together around noon and a short explanation of the previous night's events followed before they all stood around the urn that held Pete's remains.

"In the tradition of pack members before us and the pack members that will follow, we come together today to bid farewell to one of our own." Jeremy started the speeches, raising his glass of scotch. "Pete was one of a kind. He squeezed the most out of life every day and night. We were blessed to be your family." They all took a sip from their glasses when Jeremy finished. Elena picked up where Jeremy left off, talking about how much Pete had helped her through her rough transition. Clay took his turn after, vowing that Pete's death wouldn't be in vain.

"The first time I met Pete I was fifteen, scared, and alone. Jeremy introduced me to the pack, and Pete was the first one to come up to me. He gave me a hug and said 'welcome to the family kid'" Annie recalled, tearing up a bit. She couldn't help but feel that his death was on her.

"All Pete wanted to do was spread his love. He was killed by a monster that hates us and everything that we stand for." Anger was etched in Elena's voice. Before she or anyone else could continue there was howling in the distance.

"I'm betting it's the Mutt that killed Pete." Nick ground out, gritting his teeth in anger.

"The Son of a bitch is taunting us," Elena added, setting her glass down on the table and looking towards Jeremy.

"Antonio, you Nick and Logan come around from the East, we'll come around from the West." Jeremy started giving orders as he slipped off his jacket. Slipping out of her own hoody, Annie moved to join Clay and Elena on the way to the door before Jeremy stopped her. "Not you Annie. You're already injured. You're staying here."

"I'm not staying behind. This guy is targeting me, meaning Pete's death is my fault. I'm not sitting by why you guys chase after his murderer." Annie insisted crossing her arms in an unyielding gesture.

"Jeremy there's no time to argue. Just let her come." Elena shouted as she and Clay ran through the door. With a nod of consent from Jeremy, Annie was flying out the door after Clay and Elena. Even with her injury, Annie was still the fastest. She soon overtook Elena who had been in the lead, tearing through the woods and following the scent of the new Mutt.

Stopping short when she momentarily lost the scent allowed Clay, Elena and Jeremy to catch up to her. Jeremy chided her for going ahead of the group, while Elena attempted to find out which way the Mutt had gone. Jeremy's lecture was cut short when Elena called out to them. She had found Pete's jacket hanging from a tree branch.

"He's baiting us," Jeremy remarked as he took a step forward. Antonio and the others reached them shortly after they found the jacket. They had lost the scent as well.

"We can still find him," Elena insisted at the same time that Annie murmured 'we can't let him get away.' For once they were both on the same page with the other as the two of them prepared to go running after the Mutt's scent. Unfortunately, neither of them got very far, thanks to the Sorrentino men. Nick grabbed a hold of Annie's upper arm, halting her progress, as Antonio stepped in front of Elena. "By the time we change he'll be long gone." Antonio spoke, trying to make them both see reason.

"Antonio's right," Jeremy added. "Tonight we mourn for Pete. Tomorrow we hunt." With that said, he turned to lead the way back to the house.

Nick didn't remove his grip on Annie's arm until he was sure she wouldn't try to bolt. Moving his hand down her arm he meant to hold her hand, but stopped when he felt moisture. Looking down he found Annie had bled through her bandages.

"Jeremy's right, you should have stayed at the house." Nick dictated, as he brought Annie's wrist up for closer inspection.

"I wasn't staying behind. What happened to Pete was my fault and some stupid injury wasn't going to keep me from the hunt." Annie fumed, tired of being babied.

"How was it your fault?" Nick's voice was demanding as he pulled her to a stop in front of him. They had reached the back patio at that point.

"Let's see. Some psychotic bastard is emailing me cryptic messages with pictures attached of people in my life, and the people in those photos are normally dead in the last one." Talking with her hands was something Annie always did when she was upset—it was her Italian side kicking in. This time it only caused more blood to saturate the gauze pads.

"Annie, having a stalker isn't your fault. There was no way for you to know he would kill Caroline or Pete. This is not your fault." Nick insisted, grabbing her flailing arms and pulling her into a hug. Resting her head on Nick's shoulder Annie mumbled something that sounded like 'why are they doing this to me, to us?'

"That's what we're going to find out." To Annie's surprise it was Jeremy who responded to her mutterings. He had joined them on the patio after realizing the two of them had lagged behind the others. "And they will pay." Jeremy left them on the porch after that, heading towards the woods to go for a run.

No one was in the kitchen when they entered. Annie wanted to head straight upstairs, but Nick insisted on redoing her bandages before anything else. Most of the abrasions had started to heal pretty nicely, it was only the deeper punctures that were still bleeding. The light layer of skin that had started to heal over them got torn from the movement during the chase, causing the punctures to bleed again. Nick cleaned it out with isopropyl alcohol once more, before wrapping more gauze around it and finishing it off with another kiss.

Once Nick was satisfied that Annie's wound was taken care of he let her lead him upstairs. She wanted to spend the day remembering Pete's life and a huge part of Pete's life was music. He always used to send her CDs he'd burn either of his own songs or the song's he was into at the moment. Annie had about forty CDs from him and kept them in a case on her bookshelf. Starting with the oldest one she loaded it in her CD player and turned the volume up. Nick had disappeared for a moment, going down the hall to his own room and returning with a full bottle of Grappa he brought back from Italy. Sitting on the bed the two spent the afternoon listening to Pete's songs, sharing memories, and drinking. Lots and lots of drinking.

Nick woke up before Annie the next morning. Both of them were still wearing the clothes they had the day before. They had fallen asleep on top of the covers. One of Pete's CDs was playing on repeat and there were tearstains on the bedspread where Annie had cried the night before. The bottle of Grappa sat empty on the floor by the bed. Making sure not to wake Annie, Nick slipped out of the room to clean up. When he returned twenty minutes later Annie was just stirring.

"Ugh, my head's killing me. Why is it so bright out?" Annie grumbled as she blinked against the sun filtering through her windows.

"Those would both be effects of the epic hangover you are sure to have after last night." Nick responded, turning off the music and coming to sit beside Annie. Offering her a glass of water and some pain killers Nick couldn't help but smile fondly at the rumpled mess that was the girl in front of him. Once Annie took the medicine from him he moved his hand to smooth her hair down.

"How long do these things usually last?" Annie asked after downing the water and setting the glass on the floor by the empty bottle off alcohol.

"For us, usually only an hour or two." When Annie sent him an accusatory glare and asked why he didn't seem to be having any trouble Nick had to laugh. "I've told you before Principessa, I'm a big guy. I can handle my liquor."

Annie didn't find any of it as funny as Nick did. Knowing a shower would probably help her to at least not feel like a bum, Annie spent her first hour of the hangover taking a very long, hot shower. It ended up making Annie feel a lot better, the hot water had worked out knots in her tense muscles and soothed her headache. She was almost feeling like herself again.

She found Jeremy in the kitchen with a cup of tea and a single plate set out for Annie. Apparently she had missed breakfast. He asked how her arm was doing, honestly with the hangover Annie hadn't even really noticed the pain. It still hurt, but it was healing. Unfortunately for her, she seemed to heal at a slower rate than the guys, even slower than Elena. It had never bothered her before, when she hadn't received any major wounds. She kind of resented it now. Since Jeremy brought her attention to it she realized the damp bandage wouldn't do any good, it would only harbor bacteria and promote infection. Ripping it off, Annie patted the wound dry before applying yet another gauze bandage to it.

"I would think it would have healed by now," Jeremy commented when he saw the injury for the first time. Today marked the second day since she received the injury, on most werewolves a bandage wouldn't even be required anymore.

"One of the many mysteries of my being. I almost heal as slow as a human," Annie joked, slapping tape on the bandage to hold it.

"Almost, but not quite." Jeremy concurred softly. Nick found them shortly after that, noticing that Annie had a new bandage on.

"I'm in a nursing program. I can bandage my own wounds just fine," Annie assured him, letting him inspect her work. He had to agree, there was nothing wrong with the wound's dressing. Once Nick was finished with his inspection Jeremy asked the two of them to round up everyone for a meeting in the den.

They came across Logan first, who tagged along as they went looking for Elena and Clay. It didn't take long for them to find Elena as she came in the front door just as they reached the hall wearing nothing more than jeans. She was holding her shirt across her chest for decency's sake.

"Jeremy wants us in the den," Logan told her, halting her progress towards the stairs.

"Mind if I change first?" She asked, glancing down at herself. Logan and Nick simply shrugged in response as Annie stated 'of course not.' The three of them started moving on to find Clay after Elena disappeared up the stairs only to have him come through the front door as well. Stark Naked. Annie immediately diverted her eyes. Nakedness might not be an issue among wolves, but that didn't mean Annie wanted to see her pack brothers junk just walking around the house.

"Clay," Nick spoke first, sounding a little surprised that Clay had followed Elena in, especially with his lack of clothes. "Did…did you two have a nice run?"

"What's that supposed to mean?" Clay demanded, sending Nick a challenging look.

"You know, like a run. A little frolicking in the woods. Maybe some…some nuzzling." He responded in a playfully suggestive manner.

"We ran. Period." Clay grunted in response before moving past Nick to the stairs.

"Hey listen, I don't mind when the girls romp around the house naked, but please, put some clothes on. You're making Logan here feel inadequate." Nick called after him, Clay ignored him as he continued on his way upstairs.

"Don't displace your own insecurities onto me." Logan did have a response to Nick's statement, and it made Annie laugh, far more than it normally would have had she not been hung over from drinking half a bottle of Grappa the night before.

"I'm still recovering from the alcohol," Annie insisted through dying laughter as Logan and Nick turned to look at her.

The meeting didn't start until Clay and Elena came back downstairs. Antonio was out tying up Pete's loose ends and contacting the other pack families. First order of business was Annie's newest email. There would be no tracing it, seeing as the twisted Mutt had used Pete's address to let her know of his death. Whoever the Mutt was he had a sick sense of poetic irony. Even though there was no use in tracing it, Jeremy still wanted to see the pictures the Mutt sent in order to get a feel of where he had taken them. Annie agreed, claiming she'd get him her email address and password so he could check into it himself. Once that was settled he moved on to the source of all the problems.

"We have two Mutts to deal with. For starters, we need to identify the dead one from the rave and find out who made him. Maybe that will help us get a better grasp of how he seemed to know Annie." Jeremy paused, looking to Annie who sat on one of the couches beside Logan, hugging her knees to her chest. She didn't like thinking about how or why the Mutt knew her. "Nick, you and Logan go to the flop house where he lived." Jeremy ordered, turning his attention to Nick who was sitting in the chair beside the couch where Annie was. "Turn it upside down. Wipe it clean when you're finished." Nick nodded his head in understanding.

"I'm supposed to be speaking at a psychology conference tonight in Toronto." Logan spoke up, reminding Annie of Elena—making excuses as to why his life in Toronto needed him more than the pack. Although, Annie could admit that if Logan didn't show at the convention there might be worse repercussions than if he had gone.

"I can handle the flop house by myself," Nick responded, cutting Logan a break and letting him go to his convention.

"I could go with you." Annie's muttered response surprised both Nick and Jeremy as both would have assumed she'd rather not go to the house of the psychotic Mutt who somehow knew her name.

"Okay, Annie you'll go with Nick. I want you to be very careful" Jeremy looked to Nick at that last part before continuing around the room and adding "all of you. We thought the threat to the pack was over when the first Mutt died, that we only had to worry about Annie's safety, and Pete paid for our mistake. We know better now."

He moved on to giving Clay and Elena their orders. They were to go into town to assess the mood of the locals and try and catch the scent of the new killer. Jeremy was originally going to send Annie into town with them, she had a certain way of relating with the local's that normally helped to smooth things over. However, Elena wasn't terrible when it came to relating to humans. Especially since she used to be one, not to mention she currently lived among them. He finished their orders by making a point to Clay that, should they find the new Mutt, they were to take him alive.

…BNB…

"Alright, so you're going to stay behind me when we enter the flop house. Got it?" Nick asked as he parked on a side street near the dead Mutt's house.

"It's not like he's going to be there. He's dead." Annie pointed out as she unhooked her seatbelt and stepped out on the sidewalk.

"He's not working alone. I want to make sure no one else has come looking for him." Annie couldn't help but feel that Nick was being a tad overprotective. He would never have made Logan stay behind him had he come with Nick. It was because she was a girl, and not just a girl but the baby of the pack. Nick's newly expressed feelings for her probably had something to do with it as well. In fact, that should probably be moved to the top of the list of reasons as to why he was being anal about him going in first as well as the other precautionary measures being taken.

As Annie had predicted, the flop house was empty. It was also pretty disgusting inside. Graffiti covered the walls, there were unmentionable stains on the carpets and what furniture there was seemed worn and dirty. The smell was just as bad as the visual. Pulling gloves out of her pocket, Annie offered a pair to Nick before putting on her own. It would make wiping the place after easier if they didn't have to worry about getting all of their fingerprints.

"So what exactly are we looking for?" Annie asked as she started in the bathroom.

"Anything that helps identify the Mutt. Papers, medications, clothes, cards." Nick responded as he began rifling through things in the other room.

Annie opened the medicine cabinet to see if, by some miracle, there were prescription bottles in there. Unfortunately identifying the Mutt wouldn't be that easy. The cabinet was barren except for a rusty pair of tweezers. Moving to the cabinet below the sink Annie said a silent prayer that there wouldn't be any rats before throwing the doors open. There weren't rats, but there were some cockroaches which made Annie immediately shut the doors. Checking the bathtub, just in case, and coming up empty handed had Annie retreating back to the main room.

Starting at the opposite side as Nick so as to cover more ground in less time, Annie searched under chairs and behind a table. It wasn't until she got to the wall beside the bed that she found anything. Thumbtacked to the wall was a Polaroid picture of Annie with her name scribbled underneath it. In the photo Annie wasn't looking at the camera, not realizing a photo was even being taken. In that essence it was similar to those in the emails. However, that photo wasn't in any of the emails, and unlike the others, Annie was the only subject. This wasn't meant for her to see, this was given so the Mutt could identify her.

"Nick," Annie called out as she pulled the picture from the wall. It was incredibly creepy that the Mutt had kept her picture tacked right next to the bed. "I found something."

Abandoning his own search momentarily Nick went to Annie. When he saw the picture he silently took it from her. Annie told him where it had been, making Nick shake his head and murmuring about what a creep the guy had been. Telling her to keep it he went back to his side. At the end of the search the only things they had come up with that were of any worth were the picture of Annie and prison issued shoes. After taking the time to wipe down the house and make sure no evidence of them had been left behind the two of them left for the pack house. Elena and Clay were already back and were with Jeremy in the basement.

They filled Annie and Nick in on what Elena and Clay had found. The two had tracked the new Mutt's scent to a motel room off the main road. It was empty, but Elena found a scrapbook of sorts stuffed under the mattress. It had news clippings and trinkets from every woman he had killed, and there were quite a few. All the murders had gone unsolved. The man's name was Thomas LeBlanc, he showed up at the motel while Clay and Elena were still there along with Zachary Cain and Karl Marsten.

"I knew that son of a bitch was up to something. It was just too coincidental that he was in the area when I called him." Nick shouted at the new development. "And to think he was trying to make a deal with us. 'I'll find out who bit your little problem.' Of course he could find out, the little bastard was the one to bite him."

"We've got it Nick, Marsten is a piece of shit. Let's move on to what you guys found." Clay Interrupted Nick's venting, placing a hand on his shoulder in order to shake him out of it if need be. It turned out that wasn't necessary.

"We found these at the dead Mutts flop house," Nick threw the shoes on the table for the others to see. "Prison issued." He added in disgust.

"How do you know?" Clay asked, grabbing a shoe to take a closer look.

"On the inside they're stamped Hixson Correctional Facility. Turns out to be one of Tennessee's finer establishments." Nick's voice dripped with sarcasm. The fact that an actual convicted felon had a picture of Annie in his room, by his bed, didn't exactly please him. Clay questioned why the Mutt would even keep the shoes after he escaped. Jeremy's answer was simple, the Mutt was a collector. The shoes were a trophy of his escape and his triumph of the penal system.

"I suppose I was meant to be the next item in his collection then," Annie muttered as she set the Polaroid on the table beside the shoes. "This was tacked up next to his bed." Clay was the one to grab it first, taking a closer look at it. There was nothing much to see or say about it. It was pretty straightforward: a picture of Annie that she hadn't known was taken.

"It's an identifying photograph. So the Mutt would know who she was, what she looked like," Clay confirmed Annie's thoughts on the matter. No one liked the idea of someone sending Mutts after Annie. What was worse, no one could think any reason for it. After Clay set the photo back down beside the shoes, Jeremy began going through photos of men who had recently escaped from Hixon. Elena quickly identified the Mutt from the rave as Scott Brandon. He was serving a life sentence for a brutal string of rapes and murders in 2009.

"So that's what he had planned for me then," Annie winced as Jeremy read out the Mutt's sentence.

"I highly doubt that was the intent. You're of much more value to them alive." Jeremy's assurances weren't as reassuring as he probably thought them to be.

"Marsten and Cain are purposefully turning these psychos into werewolves," Nick summarized what they had found out, trying to focus on the facts. The truth was when he had seen the photo of the Mutt from the rave that Elena had picked out of the lineup, he wanted nothing more than the opportunity to tear the mutt's throat out. The Mutt was lucky he was already dead.

"That doesn't track," Elena spoke up. "Cain's not smart enough to make his own pack, and Marsten's the ultimate loner."

"The way he was talking to Annie at the club I would say Marsten's not as committed to the loner lifestyle as you might think." Nick muttered coldly under his breath.

"Nick has a point. Maybe Marsten was a loner, but he's not working alone anymore. People change." Jeremy added, looking to Elena and Nick before risking a glance at Annie. He hated to think changing the psychos had anything to do with her, but thus far the evidence wasn't promising.

"Marsten was talking about using a warehouse which means they've probably got an operation going." Clay added, reminding everyone that this thing could be even bigger than Marsten and Cain.

"First they convert new mutts, second they put the spotlight on us so that it restricts our movement. Third they attack us directly; murdering Pete." Jeremy began summarizing the events that they knew had taken place. Trying to piece it together to find the big picture of it all.

"We're not dealing with run of the mill mutts," Clay retorted. "These are cold blooded killers who seem to have an unhealthy interest in Annie. If they were to take us out it would be chaos." Adding to Clay's synopsis, Nick mentioned how if there was no pack enforcing the rules those mutts could run wild. Jeremy concurred, claiming if that happened, it wouldn't be long before the werewolf society would be revealed to the humans and then man would do what man did best: war. Until one side or the other was completely wiped out.

"There's only one way to make sure that doesn't happen. We bury them." Clay fumed with a dangerous and slightly scary look in his eyes.

"It's time to take the fight to them," Jeremy agreed.

A/N The sixth chapter is here! As always, it was a lot of fun to write and I can't wait to hear what everyone has to say about it! Thanks again to all who favorite, follow, and review. It means more than you know and keeps me motivated :)

Rach

xoxo