Not Dead Yet

by Alice Bello

  Gabriel looked up from his brother to Lucy. He looked spooked too. He was shaking his head as he gazed at her, finally saying, “Must’ve been a lucky shot.”

  Micah barked with laughter. “You mean a lucky flying, spinning snap kick to the solar plexus?”

  Lucy felt her eyes widen in their sockets. Had she really done all that?

  “Sorry guys.” He coughed as he leaned back against the padded wall behind him. “But that move takes years of training, and that kick also took some preternatural strength too.” His weary gaze moved back to Vin. “Vampire strength, I’d say.”

  Gabriel looked back at Vin, too, and then they both stared at Lucy. She felt her face burn. What were they looking at her like that for? And did they know what thoughts, what unwanted feelings she had every time the vampire was near her?

  She shook the thought out of her head. They were werewolves, not clairvoyants. And anyways, what was there for them to know? So what if she suddenly kicked big, dumb Micah across a room. She’d wanted to do that exact thing all week. And so what if she seemed to have some... well, downright disturbing mental connection to Vin Tokar? He was a vampire, so no one should’ve been all that surprised the blood he’d fed her would link them somehow.

  Okay, maybe I’m over rationalizing this, and I should be as freaked out as the werewolves seem to be. Hell, I should be somewhere shrieking my head off, pulling my hair out at the very thought that I was psychically linked to a freaking vampire.

  But truthfully, all the preternatural stuff was so new to Lucy, that she halfway still expected to wake up from whatever kind of dream it all was. And it would be so much simpler if it was just a dream, wouldn’t it?

  Perfectly natural.

  One moment she had everyone’s dream teen-life. The next she was reduced to flipping burgers just to put sales-rack clothes on her back. So why not have a dream where she got all the money and hope back in her life, a real future, and just to spice it up a la Twilight, she had both a werewolf and a vampire vying for her attentions.

  Perfectly understandable. Yeah, perfectly...

  But why was she feeling so guilty? Shouldn’t there at least be a few weeks where she got to feel nothing but sleazily happy, engulfed and besotted with the thrill of having two super hot, preternaturally powerful guys fighting over her?

  But they weren’t, were they? They had been talking and walking, both in GQ worthy business suits—Burberry and Prada, to be specific—just like two perfectly civilized business men going to a working lunch. Except it was night and the vampire would only be having the blood of the waitress. At least Gabriel ate human food. But then the question of what Gabriel ate when he was in wolf-form occurred to her.

  She didn’t want to know.

  Lucy snapped out of her long-lived little reverie to find all eyes on her still... even the vampire’s... especially the vampire’s.

  Lucy glanced at the clock on the gymnasium wall and sighed with relief. She looked straight at Gabriel. “We’re going to be late for dinner with the parents. Let me shower and change, and I’ll be out in ten minutes.”

  Micah smiled, and Gabriel got this look on his face. Something she’d said was strange enough to get his mind off what had just transpired on the gym mat. “Ten minutes... really?”

  Lucy frowned at him, making him wince and clear his throat.

  “What I mean is... you don’t need to hurry. We don’t have a reservation anywhere.”

  It was Lucy’s turn to look surprised. “What do you mean?”

  “We’re all meeting at your grandmother’s house. She insisted on cooking.”

  Lucy gasped. “Your mom and dad are coming to dinner at my house! What the hell were you thinking?”

  “I’ve had dinner with you and your grandmother. I’ve even eaten with your mom and brother. Why would this be any different?”

  Lucy sighed, her irritation with Gabriel not holding up. “Because you’re not a snob. But your parents... especially your—” Lucy stopped herself before she said something she would definitely regret. No matter how condescending the woman was, or how much of a bitch she kept on being—a very polite, cultured bitch at that—she was still Gabriel’s mom. Lucy couldn’t just trash talk her... even if she really, really deserved it.

  Gabriel smiled knowingly. “Especially my mother. That’s what you were going to say, wasn’t it?”

  “Guilty,” she answered.

  “We have nothing to be worried about. Mother assured me she’d be on her best behavior around your family.”

  “She said that? Exactly those words?”

  “Yes... why?”

  Lucy shot Micah a worried glance, which he returned, shaking his head. And then she turned and marched away in a huff.

  “What?” Gabriel said.

  Micah laughed. “Mom’s playing you, bro. She’s going to be merciless.”

  “Oh.” God love him, but he really was gullible when it came to his mother’s motives.

  Why hadn’t they just run off and eloped? She’d asked him that not even a week ago. Gabriel had said that his family would never forgive him for denying them the chance to be there. That his family was very important to him... as was hers. But now she knew that it wasn’t going to be some special, heartbreakingly beautiful journey to the altar. No, it would be heartbreaking, but not beautiful or joyous at all.

  It was going to be torture.

  Chapter 2

  Her eyes opened to nothing but blue. It was a surprise for Delia, seeing anything after the sunrise. That’s when every vampire in the world died, literally. No thoughts, no dreams, nothing. Once the sun rose whatever it was that animated them—be it a soul or magicks—departed, leaving them lifeless and vulnerable. Nothingness was all the day brought for a vampire. Even in her sleep imposed prison it was always the same. When the sun rose she became nothingness. But once the darkness came her mind would awaken, and she would plot her revenge against her lying, cheating ex-love and his blood-sack of a whore.

  Over and over she would imagine her vengeance, plotting how she would abduct them both, how she would torture them, making the other watch as she did truly terrible things to them both.

  Nothing that they didn’t deserve.

  And if she wasn’t trapped in the little blood-sack’s necromantic spell, she’d have had her fill of revenge. But that’s the thing, if you can only think of vengeance, but can’t actually inflict it, the hunger, the need for it becomes all the more powerful.

  She would see them both dead and bloody. That much she knew.

  But sometimes, no matter how hard she tried, Delia would fall asleep and dream. It wasn’t like she’d never slept. She enjoyed the languorous lounging about that sleep could offer. But this sleep was not a bit restive. It was horrifying. Every time Delia would dream, she dreamed the same thing. About Lucy Hart chasing her with that damned silver dagger. The one Delia was certain Gabriel had given her; faerie forged and wickedly sharp. It had slid into her like she was butter. And if the little blood-sack had had the guts, or the strength, she could’ve inflicted so much more harm than she had.

  But this wasn’t reality, or a memory, this was Delia’s mind torturing her. This was her being hunted down by Lucy Hart. And in her dreams Lucy wasn’t just some fragile, metaphysically gifted teenager who had just gotten lucky. She was a monster—sleek and dark and merciless. Enough so that Delia felt some admiration toward her murderer, yet still she went mad with fear every time she set sights on Lucy Hart.

  There was a name flickering, echoing in the back of her mind whenever she saw Lucy this way, though she could never make it out, and she knew, just knew that it wasn’t her own voice saying it.

  But just the soft whisper of the indecipherable word made her body turn frozen with fear.

  So that was what Delia Tokar was used to seeing in her dream prison, in her imposed slumber, her jail. Visions, fantasies of her vengeance upon her lover and the one for whom he’d forsaken her. That and her own hunting and death by
the hand of the same little blood-sack.

  So when she’d opened her eyes, feeling that the sun was high in the daylight sky, she was surprised to see all that blue.

  And it was a hell of a lot of blue. A vast, never ending sea of blue, stretching as far as her eyes could see. She could feel, too, that what she was seeing was only the tip of the proverbial iceberg. That even as immense as it all seemed, the thing before her was ten, a hundred times bigger, and endlessly powerful.

  Just as she could feel that, and that it was maybe as old as time itself—it was looking right back at her. No eyes. No, just an endless, unreal blue that quivered and rolled like the waves of the ocean, but was so clearly not water.

  Delia didn’t know whether she was upright looking straight at it, or if she were hovering over it looking down. But it didn’t matter. Everything was so peaceful, so quiet. Except when she’d close her eyes, even for a moment, it felt as if a gale force wind would slice across her, pulling at her like a thousand eager hands trying to snatch her away.

  Delia waited in the silence of this new daylight dream, but nothing happened. For so very long there wasn’t the slightest change, just the gentle throb and glow and flow of the great blue sea of power.

  That was what it was. Power. Power like Delia had never seen or imagined.

  Finally, just as Delia took a breath to speak, to ask what it wanted, a low, contralto female voice answered her unspoken question.

  To help you get what you so very much want.

  ~*~

  As she’d told them, Lucy showered and changed in less than ten minutes. She’d forgone washing her hair, and ended up putting it into a hopefully elegant twist. She did take time to remove and reapply her makeup, though—any woman of Vivian Enoch’s stature would be able to spot a sloppy makeup touch up a mile away, and she didn’t want to give the ice queen any more ammunition.

  She already looked upon Lucy as a parasite, a money hungry gold digger—which in all truth she was... well, she had been... maybe she still was—but she was something else that was far more important: she was in love with the ice queen’s son.

  Gabriel followed Lucy in his midnight blue Jaguar—it was funny that a wolf drove an expensive car named after a cat. But there wasn’t a high class automobile named after any wolf, not as far as Lucy knew. Maybe that should be a new line for Enoch Industries? High end items designed and named specifically for the affluent werewolf.

  Lucy smiled at the idea, but then a thought stole across her mind and made her tense up like a spring. Gram and her mother were both alone with Vivian Enoch. Well, Gabriel’s father, Jonas, was present too, but though he was king, his wife was the queen of snobbery, and vicious beyond compare. Not even a week ago she had told Lucy that before she picked out a wedding gown that she should seriously consider a color other than white.

  “In this day and age, young women just assume they should wear white because they’ve seen pictures of princesses in white gliding down the aisle. But what they miss is the promise such a color implies.” She’d shot Lucy with a cold, hard stare. “So if you are not pristine in that way, my dear, I would think about a pink gown or maybe champagne... yellow would go well with your tart skin tone.”

  Lucy had almost lunged to grab hold of the passive aggressive shrew’s neck and squeeze. But she’d held back; Lucy Hart, bastion of restraint.

  But by god, if that diamond studded Russian wolf hound said one mean word to, or sneered at, or gave her mother or grandmother one dirty look... she’d raise every corpse in that cemetery out back again and have them take a few bites out of the ice queen’s hide!

  That thought almost made her smile. But truthfully, Vivian Enoch was her beloved’s mother, and she would have to find some way to make peace with her. But Vivian still needed to be nice to her family... well, she could insult Seth if she liked, but beyond that, she was toast.

  When she pulled up into her grandmother’s driveway she gave a silent sigh of relief. No cars yet. That meant they had gotten there first. Leave it to Lucy’s soon-to-be in-laws to be fashionable late, even to a dinner in Four Corners.

  Of course, maybe they’d gotten lost? If Lucy didn’t live there, she’d have never known it existed either.

  She jumped out of her shiny red Mustang convertible and ran back to Gabriel’s Jaguar. He had barely gotten to his feet when she grabbed him by the wrist and started pulling him toward the house. She wanted him inside and settled before either of his parents showed up.

  It was one thing for them to be late, but if Vivian knew that Lucy had been late as well, she’d find some snide quip to make.

  Just then a mud splattered Jeep zoomed onto Lucy’s street, the twin carburetors of its exhaust sounding more like the filthy beast of an automobile was literally chewing up the road beneath it.

  The Jeep swerved out and then fishtailed before it rocketed into the driveway... stopping only a few precious inches from Lucy’s back bumper.

  She shot the driver an icy stare. Micah didn’t even flinch. He was used to her bad temper, and until earlier that day, he’d been immune to her kitten-like strength too. The memory of kicking him across the gymnasium at Enoch Industries made her shiver. She hated that she’d actually caused him harm—though as a werewolf he’d bounced back without a scratch minutes later. What really bothered her was that she remembered vividly how much she’d enjoyed it at the time. She’d hungered for it, and wanted to do it again.

  Hell, she wanted to do it again right now…

  She shook that thought out of her head. “You should really look into a pair of glasses, Micah,” she said, folding her arms over her chest. “You almost hit my car.”

  Micah swung his huge, muscular body out of the open cab of the Jeep. He wore jeans and a threadbare t-shirt with the peeling logo of a punk rock band. Oh, and huge work boots. At least the ensemble was clean... unlike his vehicle.

  He paused to look at the miniscule space between his mud-mobile and her shiny red masterpiece. “There’s plenty of room.”

  “For what?” Lucy groused, “The contents of your brain-pan?”

  Micah smiled at that and waved it away. “Please, I was trained at defensive driving when I was twelve.”

  Lucy let sarcasm drip from her tongue. “Where… the Crash-Test Dummy School?”

  Micah took a breath to say something else, but then he stopped, scented the air and unceremoniously sprinted for the front door to Gram’s house. Lucy’s eyes felt like they’d bugged out of her skull. Gabriel shot her an alarmed glance and raced after his brother. They were both gone by the time her pitiful human reflexes let her take the first step. She ran too, but running in heels was not the same thing as sprinting in Nikes.

  She came through the door and heard Micah make a groaning sound. She followed the sound back through the house to the kitchen. She’d expected to find her grandmother’s kitchen besieged by demons or at least some hungry thugs, but all she found were two werewolves drooling over her grandmother’s cooking.

  Gram had made not one, but four beef roasts and a braised lamb. She knew werewolves had voracious appetites, she explained. There was also garlic whipped mashed potatoes, glazed carrots, fresh-baked bread, gravy, and a raspberry cake with white chocolate icing.

  It was a culinary wet dream, and Gabriel and Micah were entranced.

  Micah reached out a hand to swipe some icing from the cake.

  “Not so fast, wolf!” Gram scolded as she appeared out of seemingly nowhere and clamped a glass lid over the cake. “No sampling the vittles until dinner.”

  Lucy rolled her eyes. What was Gram up to? She never spoke in colloquialisms. Was she going to make herself out as some sort of backwoods madwoman?

  Micah dropped his head in shame and murmured, “Yes ma’am.”

  Gram smiled and put her hands on her hips, obviously pleased with Micah’s obedience. He looked up and gave her a roguish smile, and Gram turned a little pale for a heartbeat. But then she shook off the short-lived stunned expression
and shooed them all from the kitchen.

  The instant they traipsed through the kitchen door both brothers froze. If they’d been in their wolf forms they would’ve had their ears perked up, listening.

  Micah gave a hoot and jogged to the front door. Gabriel sighed uneasily and took Lucy’s hand, giving it a squeeze. “They’re here.”

  ~*~

  The King and Queen of the werewolf pack drove a jet black Mercedes, an immaculately maintained older model. The car came to a stop in front of Gram’s house, and two brawny men in suits got out of the front seats first. Their eyes scanned the block for danger, and then they opened the back driver’s side door. One of the suits leaned into the car and held out his hand. Vivian Enoch emerged from the car, gave the house a cursory glance, and then locked her sights on Lucy.

  There was no doubt about it, the old girl hated Lucy’s guts, and wasn’t afraid to show it.

  “This is going to get ugly,” Micah murmured mirthlessly behind her.

  Gabriel wrapped his arm around her shoulders and pulled her closer. His warmth felt good.

  “It will be alright,” Gabriel whispered in her ear. “I promise.”

  “So now you have magic powers?” It would take some major sorcery to keep his mother from being the woefully strident bitch Lucy knew she could be.

  “No, she promised me.”

  Micah snickered and shook his head. “She’s playing you bro. Don’t you get it?”

  Gabriel turned and looked his brother in the eye. The look was bone weary and serious as a heart attack. “She’s never broken a promise to me.”

  Micah blinked. There was something remorseful in his eyes, something that made Lucy want to reach out and take his hand. She didn’t like seeing hurt in her future brother-in-law’s eyes. Lucy needn’t try a guess to see that clearly Vivian had broken a promise to Micah—a big one.

  Lucy turned her attention back to the black Mercedes. Jonas Enoch had already exited the vehicle and Vivian was gently brushing non-existent lint from his shoulder. Lucy trained her sights on Vivian like a hawk. It was bad enough she’d been rude and bitchy to Lucy. But to know that she’d hurt her own son so deeply that it radiated from him like smoke from a house fire, and that with one word here tonight she could do the same to Gabriel...