The Trouble with Beasts (Howl for the Damned: Book One)

by D. Fischer

  Her hand reaches for mine, and her cold fingers fold around my own. “And then another flash of light happened, and you were yourself. But not yourself. You – you – it was like you were sleepwalking. I managed to get you back here, snuck you into the house, and convinced you to sleep. That was yesterday – last night.”

  I breathe deep, squeezing her fingers. “I don’t remember any of it.”

  “What do you remember?”

  My lips twist to the side. “The men. I was fighting one of them then, nothing. Blackness. Like I had fainted.”

  “I see,” she whispers. She sighs then suppresses a grin. “Well, you didn’t collapse. That I can assure you.”

  “Have you told anyone here?”

  “No.” She shakes her mess of hair. “But you should. At least your mother.”

  “Why? I’ve told her about blacking out, but she brushed it off. I thought I was sick. I was convinced I had an illness and I would die eventually. Why would I go to her now that I know I’m a freak? A freaking beast?” A murderer. I’m a murderer.

  “Because I have a feeling this is what she’s been protecting you from your whole life, Jinx.” At my raised eyebrow, she presses on. “You’ve been out for a while. It gave me time to think.”

  “And what did you come up with?” I ask smarmily when she doesn’t elaborate. I have no idea where she’s going with this, and I was born without patience.

  “She has refused to tell you about your father. That’s abnormal even for witches. My father was a marine. I’ve known that since I knew what a marine was. We all know at least something of the men our mothers slept with. But you don’t. She won’t tell you.” She searches my face, pausing to let it sink in. “And then, there’s the matter of her being so eager to get you out on your own. She never objected. She encouraged it. I never could understand why, but now it makes perfect sense.”

  Witches can strike out on their own, but it’s highly unusual. Most find being around non-magic folk intolerable. It’s not that we don’t like humans. Instead, it’s that we can’t share our secrets with them. The last time someone tried to get the humans to understand that most witches aren’t bad, they had hung her despite her having saved their village.

  The firstborn witch. We’ve all heard that story. Sometimes, I could swear I felt the tightening of a rope around my neck when our high priestess would retell it. Every line of witches began with the firstborn witch, and every lesson and caution the witches adapted since then was birthed from the firstborn’s death.

  It’s highly unusual for someone in a coven to so easily accept their daughter’s absence. Fear of discovery being the chief priority. I’m beginning to see Sara’s point, but I have no Wiccan magic. There’s nothing to discover but . . .

  “You think she knows I’m a wolf-witch?” I scowl. “A were-witch? A witch-were?”

  “Skinwalker,” Sara says, grinning slightly. Using her eyes, she motions to the laptop propped on a corner rocking chair. That explains why she hasn’t slept or showered yet.

  She picks a loose string on her sweatshirt. “It’s an old tale. We know you’re partly Native American, which has to have come from your father’s side. That’s where I began with my research because none of this is a trait of a witch.”

  Pausing, she cocks her head to my closed door, listening for eavesdroppers. Then, she whispers, “The Native Americans call what you are a skinwalker. You’re someone who can take the shape of another. The details are a bit murky, I’m afraid. They change from tribe to tribe.”

  “That’s a shifter.”

  She slaps my knee with her free hand. “No, it’s not. Shifters are born between two shifters. If you need the birds and the bees talk, I’d be happy to –”

  I hold up a hand. “Spare me.”

  “There’s very little magic about it,” she continues gently. “Not the kind we’re used to. This – what I witnessed – that was not a shapeshifting phenomenon. It was something else entirely. A different magic perhaps.”

  “But I can’t do magic.”

  Snorting, she gestures at my body. “Apparently you can. What if your father – your biological sperm donor – what if he could do magic? This different kind of magic?”

  I had always wondered what had made me so different from all the other witches. I had thought I was the abnormal anomaly, barren from a single ounce of witchy magic in my veins. It’s food for thought, and I ponder on it a bit longer as I chew the inside of my lip. What Sara says is probable. We have nothing else to go on, and the only way I can get true answers is from my mother.

  “So are you going to talk to your mom?” Sara asks quietly.

  “I suppose I have to now.” Because I know she won’t leave me alone unless I do. Even if I didn’t want to know, even if the small part of me that wants nothing to do with the father I never got to know or who never wanted to know me, I still need answers.

  As if reading my mind, she adds, “I think once we learn who you really are, we’ll be able to figure out why people are trying to kill you.”

  I snort, and she shrugs. “You know I don’t believe in coincidences.”

  And there’s that, too, I suppose.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Jacob Trent

  Sitting in the ‘backseat’ of my mind, I watch through my wolf’s eyes as he trots through the forest behind the compound’s building. The Riva Pack owns quite a bit of territory, all teaming with protected wildlife.

  The calloused pads of his paws scrape against dirt and crunch dry fallen leaves. He weaves around trees, occasionally stopping to sniff a scent and nudge through decaying debris. I let him wander wherever he chooses while my mind does the same. We both needed this – an hour of the outdoors without being bothered.

  Another dead body. There was another dead body – two in fact. All of my instincts scream that Jinx and her witch friend were part of this. If that’s the case, then Cinder has been harboring a murderer. He plucked her right off the street and gave her a home. I have no idea what to do about that because once a wolf invites a stray into their cave for safe harboring, there’s no talking them out of it.

  I also question what exactly Jinx is. I can smell just a bit of witch on her, but there’s something other about her sweet aroma that tugs at something . . . almost ancient. Or even familiar.

  The bodies did have Jinx’s scent on it, but it was faint and nowhere near the bite marks along their necks. In fact, the torn flesh held no other scent but the men’s. How’d she do it? How did she manage to kill them without a lick of power and without a trace of scent? Maybe her witch friend wiped the scent clean before they left, though I’ve never heard of that being a possibility. I don’t know much about witches to cement that as fact.

  In the bushes nearby, a squirrel makes a break for it. Instead of chasing the rodent, my wolf only watches as he quietly walks through the forest. The song of birds hovers overhead, and the sun beams through the half-empty canopies. Leaves fall like snowflakes, soft and twirling. It truly is a place to restore one’s mind.

  The pack is supposed to gather as soon as everyone is off work. I had ordered it at the beginning of my wolf’s adventure, using mindspeech while my wolf drank from a still pond. A few won’t be able to make it, but there’s not much left of my pack anyway. Not after the Realms War.

  Last night, I had dreamed about that damn war again. People had died. My friends had died. In this dream, I had watched Allie in wolf form. Watched as a beast, a repulsive fucking thing, tackled her to the ground. She never rose again. There wasn’t a thing I could do – not from where I was standing, fighting for my own life. I have the physical scars to prove it too. But the scars on my back where claws had raked down my ribs are just a reminder of the last moment I saw Allie alive.

  Surviving feels more like a burden than actual death these days. And with all that’s going on in the city . . .

  I urge my wolf toward the pack’s compound, and he willingly obeys. In our shared thoughts, he brings up a
n image of Jinx – the object of his admiration since yesterday. Despite my own suspicions, he’s as determined to protect her as Cinderson is.

  I study what he shows me. She’s such a tiny woman. Without magic, I don’t know how she and her witch friend could have survived such an encounter with two large shifters. Magic has to be involved somehow. Shifters have more strength, sharper senses, and finer natural instincts than those who don’t have a beast squatting inside them. How did such a little thing take down two men?

  Magic isn’t meant to be a deadly thing. Not that way. And we would have smelled another shifter if one did perhaps come to her rescue like we believed happened last time. After all, the entire building was packed full with them, but not a single shifter other than the two dead ones were scented on the scene.

  Evo had arrived at Be Deviled shortly after Rex had called him. His hair was disheveled from sleep, and a Cheerio was stuck to his shirt. Fatherhood does that to the strongest of men, I hear.

  After studying the two men, using his training from the FBI, he had agreed with our assessment, and like me, his instincts are telling him that Jinx was involved with whatever went down. That was after he chided me about having prejudices against witches. I went on a bit of a rampage about them being the bane of shifter existence. At least currently.

  Okay, fine. So there’s only one witch, possibly two, that I have a problem with.

  Reaching the edge of the forest, my wolf peers up at the old brick school we now call home. The inside may have all the bells and whistles – the latest technology and comfortable, fashionable furnishings, but the outside remains the same as when I was a child.

  Aged and dirty grey brick, the compound is perched on top of a hill with the mass of graves. The windows were replaced two years ago, but we kept the structure of some of the more ornate windows. At the front of the building, some windows curve into a point at their top. I didn’t have the heart to destroy the beauty a past era had cherished.

  Two tall, thin towers stand on either side of the front as well, built into both corners of the compound. We don’t use them often. They’re just stairs that, once at the top, provide a view of the entire forest we call home. My father added them back when our pack was much larger. It provided extra means for watching over our territory, but we don’t use them today. Except for Amelia who enjoys the thrill of heights and the wind in her hair, but since the war, she quit going up there too.

  My wolf recedes inside me, bones cracking and reshaping in a tingly, pleasurable sort of way. Once on two legs, I grab my clothes from where I had left them draped over a bush and slip my legs into the gym shorts. I begin walking toward the house while I pull on my shirt, slip inside one of the back doors, and walk the short hall, which leads to the cafeteria. My bare feet trail grass clippings in my wake, but whoever is on cleaning duty today will grab it.

  The pack is congregated in the cafeteria per request, and I breathe a sigh of relief that I don’t have to go chase anyone down. Even Sam, Turner, Dan, John, Jason, and Joe. They prefer their wolf forms to their human ones and often spend more time outdoors than inside this compound. It’s a surprise to see them peering intently at me.

  By the big windows lining one wall, Rex had pulled out the large whiteboard on wheels. He doesn’t turn to greet his alpha, consumed with scribbling the dead’s names and other information we know on the board. His marker squeaks at the pressure he puts on it. The sound grates on my every nerve, and I grind my teeth at it, heading to the front of the room.

  The herb and tomato scent of lunch wafts from the kitchen where Glenda clinks and clanks pots and pans together. In her thick Russian accent, she had announced over cinnamon rolls that she’s baking lasagna. The entire pack knows not to disturb her when she’s preparing Italian meals. She makes everything from scratch and insists it takes all of her concentration to get the sauce right. As the oldest member of my pack, she more often than not keeps to herself and the area she calls ‘her kingdom.’ If it doesn’t have to do with food, the greying woman isn’t interested.

  I pause, listening to Glenda sing the Russian lullaby, Bayu Bayuski Bayu. Her perfectly pitched voice echoes lovingly in the wide-open space, lulling us into a sense of easy dread for what the future may hold.

  Baju-bajuški-baju, ne ložisja na kraju.

  Pridët seren’ki volčok i uhvatit za bočok.

  On uhvatit za bočok i potaŝit vo lesok,

  i potaŝit vo lesok.

  Pod rakitovyj kustok.

  K nam, volčok, ne hodi, našu Mašu ne budi.

  Every time she sings it, it’s stuck in my head for days. The song is meant to instill fear into children in hopes that fear itself will keep them safe.

  Cinder rests against a pillar. He appears more disheveled than usual and watches me under glaring, tired eyes, willing me to read his thoughts on this entire ordeal. Last night, he made it clear that there’s an explanation for all of this. That Jinx couldn’t possibly do something like this. I had let him prattle on, reserving my own judgment to preserve his protective feelings toward Jinx.

  What? I send to him through the link. Alpha’s can communicate telepathically with their wolves, and though the wolves can respond, they can’t initiate it.

  She didn’t do it, Jacob.

  I suppress another sigh and crack my neck. It’s going to be a long day if he continues to fight me on this, but at the same time, I don’t want to dismiss his instincts. Even though mine are screaming Jinx is to blame, each and every shifter’s instincts should be considered.

  Give me another possibility, and I give you my word I’ll look into it.

  He glances away, his jaw ticking, and crosses his arms. He doesn’t have another possibility. Hell, he himself said that sometimes Jinx acts weird.

  I often wonder why he’s strangely protective of her – if it’s something more than friendship as the loyalty he has toward her runs almost as deep as his loyalty to the pack. Cinder sleeps with everyone, so I wouldn’t be surprised if he felt some kind of obligation to her because they had sex in the past.

  Abruptly, my wolf growls at the thought, but I shove him down. Cinder isn’t the only one who’s protective of her, and I know I’ll have to contend with my own beast later.

  Upon seeing me or scenting me, the gathered shifters take a seat at the dining chairs.

  “Was any other information gathered on Jinx?” I ask once the room is silent aside from Rex’s marker scratching and Glenda’s voice.

  “Nothing besides the obvious,” Chip answers. He jerks his head to the side to move the wave of black strands nearly covering his large-framed glasses and then pushes them up his nose. He leans back and stretches his skinny arms. “She’s a witch of the Lotus coven.”

  “Powerless witch,” Travis murmurs his interruption.

  Chip continues as though Travis hadn’t said a word. “No one knows who her father is – I couldn’t find it anywhere on the internet, but I’m digging a bit deeper.”

  I had asked him to do a bit of research on Jinx. If she’s powerless as a witch, I want to know why. What went wrong during her gestation in the womb? It’s uncommon for a witch to not have a lick of power, and it’s even more uncommon for one to best not one shifter but two without them.

  “I doubt you’ll find anything about the witches on the internet,” Damien grumbles. The brute’s hand is wrapped so tightly around a cup of milk that I worry the plastic will crumble under the stress of it. Damien doesn’t like witches. He holds quite a grudge against the entire species, in fact. “They’re as secretive as all those Divine gods Jacob keeps talking about.”

  I roll my eyes, smother a retort, and look to Amelia. She’s been helping Damien deal with his issues as deeply rooted as my own.

  “From what I’ve been told about Jinx, she seems like an independent woman. She takes care of her body, which tells me she’s not self-sabotaging. Estranged with her mother and coven, obviously, because she doesn’t live there.” She chews the inside of her li
p thoughtfully. “That’s something I’d like to dive deeper into, but she’s not here to answer those questions. The fact that she trains vigorously just to protect herself makes me wonder why she doesn’t feel safe in the first place. Witches are often confident because they have magic on their side. That’s not the case here though,” she adds as Trevor opens his mouth to call Jinx powerless again. “So we have a magicless witch who has chosen to live outside of her coven and above the bar of her shifter friend.”

  You don’t think she did this either, do you, I say in mindspeech to Amelia.

  She quirks a brow. From a psychological standpoint, it doesn’t add up.

  “Maybe we should bring her here,” Reese says. She sits next to Amelia.

  Reese, Amelia, Glenda, as well as Chip’s mate, Bia, are the only female shifters in the Riva Pack. Even so, Reese and Amelia cling to each other as most friends do, but it’s rumored in the pack that they share more than similar professions. According to Cinder, which isn’t much in the weight of truth, they’ll ‘scratch each other’s itch’ from time to time. Despite Reese having shown quite a bit of interest toward me, it’s not uncommon for unmated shifters to share a bed, no matter their gender.

  “That’s not a bad idea,” Rex says, whirling to the group. Dry erase bits are smeared across his rosy cheek. I squint at it and the persistent determination toward this whiteboard chicken scratch.