by Seana Kelly
I put my hands on his face and drew him in for a soft kiss. “Clive, you are my world. And, yes, there does need to be a next part.”
Clive stilled at my words, his eyes swamped with emotion. “Truly?”
“Yes. I know you have more sexy time vampy skills. Let’s see ‘em.”
His head dropped to my shoulder. “That word.”
“Skills?”
He plucked at a nipple. “Not that one.” His eyes gleamed. A second later his boxers were gone, and his fingers slid between my legs. I arched my back, echoes of the last orgasm still reverberating through me. His hand moved, and he settled between my legs, arms braced beside me.
“Still with me?”
“Of course,” I answered without hesitation.
He pushed into me, his mouth at my neck, his hand on my breast. I tensed. I didn’t mean to, didn’t want to, but he felt it.
“Look at me. Touch me. Stop thinking. Feel what I’m doing to you.”
He licked my neck before running his fangs down it. I shuddered, and he slid out and slammed back in. He bent down and swirled his tongue over my nipple while his fingers slid between my legs again. He worked my body like a virtuoso. Gripping his biceps, I clung to him, breathless. Wanting only Clive, I exalted in the connection and collected memories—the feel of him, the sound of his voice as he rumbled in my ears, the way he was able to make me feel whole and loved—for when he was no longer here.
The intensity built, my body straining. When it came, Clive was there with me, sharing the moment. I clung to him, my true north.
Rolling on to his back, he took me with him, holding me close as I curled into him. My racing heart slowed, and I grew sluggish with sleep. I was drifting away when I felt a gentle kiss on my brow. “Sam?” Clive’s voice was like a breath, my name an exhalation. I didn’t respond. Breath required no response. “I…” He sighed and then kissed the top of my head.
Embracing Clive, I’d found home. I awoke later to the sound of buzzing and then Clive’s voice murmuring in the background. When he threw the bedding back and stood, I forced my eyes open.
“You’re leaving?”
“Sorry. Go back to sleep. Russell called. He’s dealing with sticky diplomatic issues pertaining to our visitors. It also sounds as if my own nocturne isn’t happy about last night.”
What happened last night? Oh, right. Killer vampires. Like that was my fault.
“I need to go deal with it.” He already had his jeans on and was buttoning up his shirt. Once it was tucked, he put a knee on the bed and leaned over to give me a kiss. “I hate leaving.” He checked his watch. “I doubt I’ll get back before sunrise. Whether things settle down or not, though, I’ll see you tonight.”
“Okay.” I kissed him again, and then snuggled in for more sleep.
I awoke with a start. Something was wrong. Chills ran down my spine. My wards were being destroyed. Each felt like a flash strobing in my brain. The magic was being ripped out of me.
Someone was coming. I heard the muffled thump of many feet running. Closing my eyes, I reached out, testing what was left of each connection. The tunnel. They were coming up the tunnel.
I sprang from the bed and dressed, diving into sweatpants and a sweatshirt. I refused to be at anyone’s mercy, naked and defenseless. Not ever again.
The bookcase slammed open in the living room, books went flying as footsteps thundered into the room.
“Find her.” I knew that voice. It was Randy.
I raced silently on bare feet to the hidden doorway into the bookstore. Someone walked into my bedroom as I slid through the passage, closing the bookcase behind me. I stilled and listened. Were they still together or had they spread out?
“It reeks of vampire in here. She’s a freaky little wolf.”
“I don’t care what she fucks. Find her.” Crashes sounded through the wall from my bedroom.
“Lookey what I found.” A second later, glass shattered again and again, liquid splashing. It sounded as though someone had found my baseball bat and was demolishing my beautiful bar.
I ghosted through the dark to the last free-standing bookcase. I crouched down and jumped, landing on my toes and fingertips seven feet up, on top of the case. I’d never make it past them to the tunnels or stairs. I had to wait them out. I stretched out flat, trying to disappear.
“Where the hell is she?”
Someone was kicking displays, knocking books from the shelves. I froze, not wanting any movement to give me away.
“Turn on the lights, you morons!” Randy’s voice boomed in the bookstore.
Bright lights flicked on, taking my invisibility with it. Now all I could do was pray they didn’t look up.
Randy strode past bookshelves. “Did you check the storage rooms?”
Light footsteps danced down the stairs. “Well?” asked a female voice.
“She’s not here,” he said.
“You are as stupid as you are handsome. Of course, she’s here. It wasn’t easy to lure the corpse away, but we did. With any luck, he’ll be pointed in the wrong direction when he finds out, and he’ll eliminate his second for us. As for Samantha, she’s here and cowering. All alone. Aren’t you, dear?” she pitched her voice louder at the end for my benefit.
Heels clicked on the floor. “Just like your mother. She hid, too. Even with that disgusting wolf father polluting your blood, you still take after your worthless mother.”
“Well, where is she?” Randy asked.
“Shh, I like to play with my food.” Her tinkling laugh made my skin crawl.
Cornered, my mind raced. How would I survive this? I couldn’t fight multiple wolves and whatever she was, not and live. Any movement would call attention to myself. I knew she was trying to get a rise out of me but staying put was a different kind of trap.
“I can’t believe how much trouble you’ve been. How have you been slipping out of my spells? From all accounts, you’re a weak excuse for a wolf with no magical powers. You’re an embarrassment to the name Corey. Sometimes the family tree must be pruned to ensure that it flourishes in the future.” Her voice was getting closer.
Movement and then, “Take your men and go. She and I need to have a little chat. I’ll let you know when she’s ready.”
“You sure?”
“You doubt my ability to deal with one weak wolf? Do you need a reminder of what I’m capable of?”
“No. I just—come on, guys. We’ll wait up top.”
Footsteps shuffled away. I took advantage and leapt to the next bookcase, landing silently on my toes. I caught a glimpse of men walking through the bookstore doorway, under The Slaughtered Lamb pub sign. I leapt again, landing without a sound and then slid down to hide prone across the top of the case.
Heels clicked past my hiding place, towards the corner I’d been in only moments before. I popped up and leapt twice more. If I dropped to the ground here, I might be able to make it through the bar and out a tunnel before she found me. I slipped over the side, hanging from my fingertips a moment before dropping lightly to the floor.
“Samantha, you’ve been such a disappointment. Werewolf father. Vampire lover. You’re a cesspool, befouling ancient magical blood. Your very existence offends me.” Her voice sounded from the back corner.
I took my chance and ran for the doorway. Electricity shot through my body. Pain, unendurable, unrelenting pain tore at me with knife-sharp claws. My brain fractured, sharp pieces grinding against one another, organs frying. Blood trickled from my nose and ears.
As I convulsed in agony, the click of heels approached. A woman leaned over me with my mother’s face. Tears ran from my eyes, pooling in my ears. I was dying, and she was watching with mild curiosity.
“Do you remember your Auntie Abigail?”
A memory flashed in my mind, seeing those same eyes but through water. I couldn’t breathe. I’d kicked my little feet, splashing in the bath as she held me under. Her voice was muffled, but I remembered. “You should nev
er have been born. Abomination.”
My mother came up behind her younger sister and smashed her over the head with a vase. When Abigail slumped to the side, my mother pulled me, choking, from the bath. She stuffed a few things in a bag, and we were running, the first of many late-night escapes.
“Oh, you do remember me. That’s lovely.” She smiled and my blood ran cold. “I have another memory for you,” she said as her fingers flicked.
I’m blindfolded and struggling, arms straining over my head, cuffed. The silver burns. My screams are nothing but breathy croaks. Slick, sticky blood runs down my body, dripping off my toes. The tickling of fur—he’s changing again. And all at once, the smell hits me. Years of nightmares and I’d never identified my torturer. Abigail knew. She’d kept him hidden. Made him faceless. Made him every man.
Randy. Barely teenaged Randy had tied me down as he cut me to ribbons. Teeth tore. Claws ripped. Nauseating scents clogged my nose. Liquid washed over my abdomen and legs, slashes burning anew. The long, serrated blade slid through my sternum as Randy began to carve. Horrific memories and long-ago wails echoed in an endless loop.
“She’s done,” Abigail called up the stairs. “I’d hurry, if I were you. She won’t last much longer. Do what you will, because it ends tonight.”
She stepped over me and left as feet pounded on the stairs again.
Randy leered down at me. “Hey, Princess, did you miss me?”
Thirty-One
It’s a Hard Rain
It was raining glass. The electro-shock had ended when my aunt left, but the damage had been done. Glass shards fell, screeching in my head. It was hard to hear anything over the cacophony. Randy loomed, his mouth moving, but I didn’t know what he was saying. Tall men and a woman gathered around. I’d been found. It would all start again. My pain would be used to power my aunt’s spells. I couldn’t fight, couldn’t move. Paralyzed, it rained glass in my head as my torturers salivated in anticipation.
Randy hauled up my slack body. My skin crawled at his touch. He threw me over his shoulder. My eyes were as disconnected as the rest of me, so as he climbed, I had no choice but to stare at the frayed back pocket in front of me. My mind shied from what was about to be done to me. I wished I could see the bookstore and bar one last time, to say goodbye to my Slaughtered Lamb. Instead, my head and arms bounced against his back in time with his steps. Mine was an ignominious end.
Wind, carrying brine and eucalyptus, hit my nose as he passed my obliterated ward. My brain was slowly dying while imprisoned in an unresponsive cage. Glass continued to shower in my mind as the world swung and tipped perilously. A second later, I slammed onto corrugated steel. Breath left my body. The full moon hung heavy in the sky, standing vigil.
Something rumbled to life, and the other man settled down next to me. The view changed as air trickled into my lungs. The moon remained my constant companion, as tree branches whipped by, streetlamps sliding in and out of focus. Truck bed. I’d been thrown into a truck bed. I wondered if Clive still had vampires keeping an eye on me. After last night, it was doubtful. How had a bookish bartender inspired so many homicidal impulses?
He cared for me, though. He’d said as much, and I’d heard the truth in his words. Death may be stalking me on glass feet, but I’d been cared for. I’d found a home and friends. That was more than I’d thought possible. I hoped, whatever was next—please, not Hell—I’d be able to hold that memory close.
The truck flew around a corner, and I rolled, slamming into the wheel well. I’d lost the moon. A dirty, leaf-strewn truck bed was a far less poetic ending.
Memories flashed, like fractured home videos reflected on falling glass. Glimpses of stolen memories. They hadn’t been stolen because of my mother. That was incidental. It was my aunt who had erased herself, not caring if I lost my mother, as well. She’d been there, at my mother’s funeral, raging that the name Quinn had been put on the stone. What had she said? She’d been standing on the grave, rage charring the ground at her feet. “…got rid of that dog…put his name on her stone? No! Corey and Quinn…abomination!” Her eyes were on me as she seethed, smoke rising from the newly laid sod. Lightning arrowed down from the sky, splitting my mother’s tombstone between Corey and Quinn.
The truck took another sharp turn. The moon was back. The rhythmic thump of the tires on the road and the girders overhead told me we were crossing the Golden Gate Bridge.
I wished I’d had time to learn about magic. I would have liked exploring my Corey side. Not the psychotic branch of the family that produced my aunt, but the totally normal wicchey side. I wished I still had my mother’s pendant with me, not just because it was all I had of her, but because it carried stronger spells. My mother knew exactly who she was protecting me from. Coco’s magic was different, a dragon’s magic that lacked a target.
Wait. Coco was connected to the necklace around my neck. Maybe… Coco! Coco! I repeated her name over and over. She’d once said she’d heard me screaming in her head. Maybe she’d hear me now.
Once over the bridge, they left the freeway and headed up into the hills. The deluge in my head had petered off to a drizzle. Words were starting to come through. “…left up here…that crazy bitch…ATVs…remember, she’s mine first…” The man sitting in the back with me was talking through the cab window with the other two.
My head bounced against the metal of the truck bed as we turned off a paved road and headed up a gravel one. I’d lost the moon behind a forest of trees. My nose itched, and my hand was halfway to my face before I realized it was responding to impulses in my brain again. Twitching my fingers and toes, I prayed this meant whatever she’d done to me wasn’t going to kill me.
I slid, feet smacking against the rear gate as the truck powered up a steep hill. The engine died, and both doors opened up. A moment later, Randy leaned over the side, and sneered, “Enjoy the ride?” Chuckling at his own joke, he plucked me up and threw me over his shoulder again. “They’re over here, under the tarp.”
Pretending to still be floppy and unmoving, I stole glances at who was with us. A man and a woman. The man smelled like the wolf who had chased me off the cliff and into the ocean, the woman I remembered from the Crypt night club. She was a member of the Bodega Bay pack. I knew it. She’d been far too keen when Randy’s name had been brought up.
Randy scrambled up a hill and then dropped me on the ground. “Shit, this isn’t even going to be fun.”
“She’s more Joe’s speed,” the woman said. “You like drugging your dates, right Joe?”
“Screw you.” A boot shoved me down a short incline. I kept my body loose as I rolled, crashing into the base of a tree. My back hit the trunk. Flopping my head onto a mossy patch, I watched the men.
“It still counts, though, right?” Joe said.
“What?” Randy responded.
“You know. That wicche and her—” He whispered, “Friend. What we do to her still counts even if she isn’t screaming and crying, right? We still get what she promised?”
“It has every time before. Why wouldn’t it now?” Randy looked between the two of them. “Everybody gets what they want. It’s a—whaddaya call it? A symbi—a relationship. We all get something. They get the fear and pain and blood. We get the thrill and the rewards. Relax. We’re covered.”
Randy dug into his pocket and extracted three keys, tossing one to each. They caught them on the fly with grins.
While they were distracted, I tested my muscles to see if they were working yet. Lying in pine needles meant I couldn’t move without being heard, so I tensed each muscle group, looking for minute movements, internal flexing. I’d regained some control, but not all. At this point, if I tried to stand, I was sure I’d fall.
Joe, closest to a dark bulk hidden beneath branches, pulled off a tarp revealing three ATVs. Each of the wolves pulled a three-wheeled motorbike out from under the tree.
“Keep an eye out on the way to the cabin. It’s still a full moon, so the Bodega pack c
ould be out.”
“Nah, boss. They’re probably sleeping by now,” the woman said.
“That’ll make our lives easier. When we get close to the cabin, you two park the bikes and shift. I want you circling. If you see or smell anything, howl. I doubt anyone will even notice she’s gone before noon tomorrow, and by then, there won’t be much left to find.”
There were appreciative chuckles from the other two.
“Just in case, though, keep watch. I’m going to be busy getting reacquainted with our party favor and I want to know if some hero’s about to crawl up my ass.”
“You got it,” Joe said as he swung a leg over the ATV.
I didn’t know how he was planning to transport me. My body, as far as he knew, lacked the tension needed to sit. A moment later, he turned and watched me, speculation clear in his eyes. Had I done something to give myself away? Coco!
Doing my best to control my breathing, I kept my gaze fixed on one spot, and willed my body to betray no resistance. He’d make a mistake. At some point, he’d toss me aside, and I’d escape.
He picked me up and threw me back over his shoulder as he sat down on the ATV. Shit. He wasn’t throwing me over the seat. He’d feel it. If he barreled down a sharp incline, and I braced, he’d feel it. If he cornered around a tree, and I adjusted my weight, he’d feel it. He’d know I was regaining feeling and strength. I had to let self-preservation go. Whatever happened, I couldn’t react.
Tree branches slapped at my legs, tangled and pulled my hair, but I didn’t flinch. Randy’s arm pinioned my legs to his chest. He took a downslope turn, and I slid off his shoulder. My head hung inches from a wheel kicking up rocks and dirt, and still I didn’t react.
He took his hand off a handlebar to pull me back up. The ATV hit a tree root and jolted, flipping sideways. I was thrown down a hill, rolling into a ditch filled with vines and shrubs. I heard Randy swearing on the path far above. This was it.
Popping up, I swayed a moment, muscles cramping. I found my balance and ran. Randy yelled for the other two, who were ahead of us when he crashed. Sprinting up the gully, I heard the whine of engines slowing and turning around. Three. There would be three hunting me in a matter of minutes.
