"Um… yep," I replied.
"Well, I do believe this car ride is the setting for trading secrets. You went first—now it's my turn. The Dragons trained and house the feral Wolves."
I was stunned to silence. How was that possible? Did the Dragons practice the witchcraft that trapped the Wolves in their animal form?
"Why would you assume I know about the feral Wolves?" I asked her coldly.
"I never assume—makes an ass out of you and me," she replied smoothly, using one of my own lines. "One—it was on top of the pile of poop paper on Angela's desk. I would guess she might think you would come to her office so she left something to entice you on top. Two—on the car ride back to your Vampyre friend's house from the zoo, I heard feral Wolves mentioned as I came around."
"Did the Dragons trap the Wolves in their animal form?" I asked.
She'd been around for several hundred years… surely she knew some of what went on with the Dragons.
"That's a question for my father," she replied with barely contained hatred. "You may ask him before I rip his head from his body."
"You've got some big daddy issues," I said as I clicked my seatbelt and mulled over what I had learned so far.
"Don't you?" she asked.
"Nope," I said with conviction. "Never knew my dad. He was a WTF agent with my mom and they were both taken out when I was a baby."
"Did they find their killer?" she asked as she laid her head back on her headrest and shut her eyes.
"Nope," I said tersely. "Case was dropped—considered unsolved."
"Dude… um," Dima said slowly.
"Yes?"
"That's the strangest thing I've ever heard. No paranormal case is ever closed before it's solved. It's how we stay secret from the humans. We deal with everything in-house. Who closed the case?" she asked, now sitting forward in her seat.
"The Council closed the case," I said tightly.
"How much are you sharing?" Hank asked as he pulled back onto the highway.
"I don't know," I mumbled as I let my head drop into my hands. Decisions were getting harder and harder to make—at least good ones were.
Was Dima what she seemed to be? Was she going to turn around and kill us dead while we slept? Worse… if she knew about Granny, would she tell? There wasn't a species around who would be okay with a Vampyre-Werewolf hybrid. I didn't even know if that was what she would turn out to be. Hell, I didn't know if she would ever wake up again.
"We can tell her some, but nothing about Granny being turned," I told Hank.
"Affirmative. Careful about the Cows too. It was the Dragons who took them out all those years ago," he reminded me.
"I know you guys are talking," Dima said with a snort of frustration. "Look, trust me or don't—I don't care. I'm not sure how much I trust you either. Just tell me enough so that I'm not walking in blind. I don’t want to get killed in the first five minutes."
"Fair enough," I said. "We're headed to my best friend Dwayne's home. He has a lot of them. He's a three hundred year old Vampyre. He's very recently adopted eight Were Cows and they are being courted by the Vampyres who are protecting Dwayne's property. Dwayne is going to have a gladiator-type competition to marry off his daughters to the bloodsuckers. Also, just as a heads up, Dwayne's mind meld is what killed a few of your less than stellar Dragon kinsmen. It's very messy and smells like hell. I'll make sure he knows you're on our side unless you do something shitty and then he has full permission to blow you to smithereens. I have no mother-humpin idea why the Council is headed to Michigan and I don't like it. I would assume they know we're headed there and are going to use Angela as bait."
"I'm kind of lost and grossed out here, so I'm just going to stick to the part which made a modicum of sense. Why would they use Angela as bait and for whom?" Dima asked as she massaged her temples in confusion.
"For Essie," Hank answered stiffly. "Some of the Council want her dead."
"Oooookay," Dima said. "I can see how some might find her annoying and want to slap her around a little, but wanting her dead? Don't get it."
"You do realize we can still put you out of the car," I snapped.
"P.S.," she whispered loudly. "I can fly."
"Whatever," I muttered. "If I tried hard enough I could fly too."
The silence was loud and Hank shot me a look of displeasure.
Crapcrapdamndamn. Me and my big braggy mouth.
"Werewolves can't fly," Dima said evenly as she crossed her arms over her chest and waited for more of an explanation.
She wasn't going to get one… at least not an accurate one.
"Just wishful thinking," I told her with a laugh that I prayed didn't sound as fake to her as it did to my own ears.
"Hmmm," she said. "Anything you want to share on why you're able to kill Dragons when very few others can?"
"Um… nope," I said with certainty.
"Of course not," she muttered with annoyance. "Anything else?"
"Let me synopsize… do not kill the Vamps or the Cows. Dwayne will be furious if any of them die—well, maybe not the Vamps, but don't kill them. The Cows are sacred. Pretend we're in India. There are feral Wolves hanging out on the perimeter of the property and apparently some Dragons skulking around."