by Alexx Andria
Pride at my little woman made me grin. I couldn’t stop. She was fucking bold and a little vicious. I liked it. Knock it off. Get back to business. “Got something to share? You know the PCA gives me the authority to do exactly as Lyric said. Don’t let it come to that. What are you hiding?”
Hawks was in a difficult position. I didn’t think he was the killer I was after but he definitely knew something that he didn’t want to share — and I wasn’t in the fucking mood to play nice anymore.
“You got five seconds to start talking, Hawks or I start sharpening my blade.”
Lyric
A newfound sense of savagery overtook my senses. Seeing Rachel again, her finger pointed straight at Hawks, filled me with such rage that I wanted to jump over the table and rip out his carotid artery. I'd never experienced such overwhelming need to exact justice than in that moment but it was gloriously satisfying.
And the fact that Beckham was totally ready to back me up was just the cherry on top.
We felt like an invincible team and that was just intoxicating.
Hawks, on the other hand, wasn’t gorging on good feelings. “All right slow down, just take a minute," he tried saying but Beckham was already giving him the death stare. Hawks knew his goose was cooked. He looked a little green around the gills as a confession burst from his mouth. "I don't know what happened and that's the truth. I would never hurt a human being but before I realized what’d happened I was in the forest and the girl was dead. I've never had a blackout before. I don't even hunt for humans when it’s season. I think it’s barbaric and I would never hurt an innocent person.”
Hawks looked desperate for us to believe him. I shared a questioning glance with Beckham asking, "Is that a thing? Does that happen? You can kill someone on a blackout? I don't understand."
Beckham narrowed his stare, considering Hawks’ confession. "What do you mean you don't know how you got to the forest? Did you know the girl at all?"
"No,” Hawks insisted. “I didn't know her and I don't remember how I got to the forest. I just remember shifting out of wolf form and there she was. She was dead and her blood was in my mouth."
Pure rage percolated my blood. “You killed her. You mindless beast. You fucking killed my best friend and then you lied to me when I came to you saying there was no way she wasn't murdered. You knew the entire time that I was right, you lying piece of shit.”
"Of course I lied. At the time I didn’t realize you were shifter, too. I don't know how you were cloaked from my senses but you seemed as human as anyone else in this town. I wasn't about to tell you that I had accidentally, somehow unbeknownst to me, shifted and killed your friend. Don't you see? I've been trying to figure out what happened to me and by proxy, your friend but I still don't have answers."
"So it’s just easier to package up the lie and move on with your life?" I asked, incredulous. "Rachel was a person who was very much loved. Don't you think you owed her family some kind of closure?"
"And what kind of closure would that be? I doubt the McCormicks were ready to hear that they lived among people who could shift into animals and devour them if they so choose. Come on now, use your head. I had to do what was best for everyone in the moment. I still don't know what happened. I'm trying to figure it out but I'm just doing it under the radar."
I growled, “That's not good enough."
"I understand you must hate me right now but I swear to you I would never hurt a human being like that."
"But you did,” I said pointedly. “My friend is dead because of you.”
He couldn't deny that fact. He hung his head with shame. "Yeah, you think I don't beat myself up every single night because of it? You've no idea how this fucked me up. I don't know why it happened and I don't know how to solve the mystery of your friend’s death. All I can say is that I am so sorry I never meant for any of this to happen."
I looked to Beckham. "So now what? We know who killed my friend but we still don't know why? Maybe we should take his head anyway. Maybe your witch can peer into his brain and pluck out the important details."
I was living in science fiction anyway so I didn't care if I sounded irrational.
My pocket felt warm. I reached in and pulled out the ugly crystal necklace and held it up for Hawks to see. "Does this mean anything to you? Rachel kind of threw it at me in her room. But she didn't tell me what the significance might be."
Hawks shook his head. "No, I have no clue what that could be." He paused for a moment, eyeing me with open speculation and a little fear. "So you get these visions from dead people?"
"Not exactly. Just Rachel it seems. And for that I'm grateful I really don't want to become Grand Central station for every person who's been wronged and thinks they can jump onto my party line for a little closure.”
"What do you know about Belinda Ergo, the McCormicks new spiritual advisor?" Beckham asked.
Hawks’ expression screwed into a frown. "I don't know much about her. I heard she's new to town. She seems nice enough. A little on woo-woo side for my tastes but each to his own. Why?"
I answered, “Rachel couldn't stand her. She thought that Belinda was moving in her parents’ wallet. Belinda was convincing the McCormicks to do all sorts of things that went against character. Can you look Belinda up on your little computer and find out if there's something that stands out?"
Hawks hesitated. "I can't just do a background search on someone without having probable cause. It's against the law."
“Fuck your law. I think if you want to keep your head, you should move a little faster on anything that could possibly save your ass,” I said sweetly.
Beckham chuckled. "That's a compelling argument. I’d as she said."
Hawks scowled but went to the computer and typed in Belinda's name. Unfortunately, nothing came up and it was a stupid dead end.
“No record? Wait a minute? Isn’t that in itself kinda weird in this day and age. Everyone leaves a paper trail.”
I shared a look with Beckham and I knew right away he was thinking the same thing. You know, this pair bonding thing could work out. Some of it wasn't all that bad.
Beckham nodded. “I’ve got my superior doing a check on Belinda Ergo, but in the meantime I'd like to take a little drive out to talk with her. I think it would help if you came along."
Hawks agreed but added warily, "Fine. I'll come with you but let's cool it on the whole chopping off of heads rhetoric. We can't go threatening people without proof that they've done anything wrong. There's due process —"
Beckham shook his head. "Like I said PCA takes jurisdiction over this if she turns out to be the person I've been looking for — I am taking her head."
My man was a bad ass. Yeah, that was pretty hot. My respect for Beckham just climbed a few notches. Now if only I could stop this incessant desire to rip off his clothes and eat him like a snack.
One problem at a time.
Hopefully Beckham's contacts found a way to break this bond so my life could go back to normal.
That's what I wanted, right?
Yeah, so why did that prospect feel worse than the idea of spending my life curled up next to Beckham?
Lyric
We followed Hawks out to the McCormicks and both Maryann and George were home.
I hid in the backseat of the Rover so the McCormicks didn’t see me while Hawks and Beckham gained permission to talk to Belinda on the property.
Belinda’s yurt was located down from the main house, which worked in our favor. If there was going to be a scene, I’d rather the McCormicks miss the show. They’d been through enough already.
I don’t know what Hawks said to the McCormicks but we gained access without much fuss.
Beckham climbed back into the Rover and we followed Hawks down the driveway, past there main house to the yurt, about a half mile away.
George or Maryann must’ve given Belinda the heads up because she greeted us outside. She looked the same as at the funeral — that flowing chiffon
shift slithering around her body like it was made of a sentient being and that pleasant smile fixed on her mouth somehow seemed discordant with the energy swirling around her.
Violent purples and reds edged her frame for a brief second and I had to blink to clear my vision.
“Pleasure to see you again, Lyric,” Belinda said, ignoring the two muscular men flanking me. It was as if they were immaterial and all that mattered was me. “Have you come for answers about you’re lineage?”
Uh, that stopped me cold. Was it possible this woman knew why I was different? Or was she playing a game to buy time?
To Beckham I said, “Maybe don’t chop off her head until she tells me what she knows.”
Belinda’s tinkling laughter was somehow more sinister than a witch’s cackle would be in the same situation. “No one is taking my head, I can assure you of that.”
“We’re just here to ask you some questions,” Hawks said, trying to diffuse the situation but I could feel Beckham rippling with dangerous energy. He sensed something was off about this woman, too. Maybe I didn’t need answers and he should just take her head.
But Belinda had different plans. She snapped her fingers and both Hawks and Beckham stiffened with what looked like rigor mortis, but all the while her gaze didn’t leave mine. “Shifters are so easily manipulated. Their animalistic urges are so deliciously fun to play with.”
I was a shifter too. Why wasn’t her little Thanos snap working on me, too? “Ohh, you’re so much more than a shifter, you silly thing,” Belinda cooed at me, flicking her wrist, sending both men flying to land in stiff heaps on the ground away from us. “I knew the minute I saw you that there was a reason I was brought to Diablo. Don’t you feel it, sweetheart?”
I swallowed, shaking my head, scared of what might happen to us all. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Who knew that the desperate shifter woman who came to me for a baby would survive the ritual long enough to give birth? To be honest, I felt the odds weren’t in her favor but I was curious if I could break her clan’s breeding curse. Call it hubris, if you will, but I knew it would be quite the feather in my cap if I could do it.”
I swallowed. She wasn’t making sense but in a terrifying way, just as I’d known with Beckham, she was telling the truth. “You knew my mother?”
“Know? Not really. She was more of a lab rat — so desperate to prove her worth to her pack alpha who didn’t want anything to do with her. Sad, really. But she was just the meat, my darling. You’re the prize. I had no idea where you’d ended up but I’ve been searching for your energy for so long. Someone cloaked you from me and until recently, I’d all but given up.”
“So…you’re like a witch or something?” I asked, trying to make heads or tails of her narrative. There was something mesmerizing about the way she talked. Her beauty was almost too much to bear but everything about her felt wrong.
“I am The Witch. And you belong to me, Lyric Johnson. Or rather, your essence. You’re special. In a way, one might say you’re an anomaly that never should’ve been born. You see, your mother wasn’t a breeder but she sought me out to make her one. I succeeded but you see, I had to enrich the sauce, if you will, in order to succeed. And out came you. More than a shifter, not quite a witch, something in between. I had no idea how you were going to turn out but I’m quite pleased.”
Beckham moaned and Belinda’s head whipped in his direction, brilliant eyes flashing. “Quiet! You’re interrupting.” She returned to me. “As much as I’ve enjoyed our reunion, I’d like what belongs to me. I can fairly taste your power from here and it’s simply delicious.”
“What the fuck?” I took a faltering step back as she advanced toward me. “Just what the fuck do you think you’re going to do?”
Her slow smile was a thing of pure menace as she said, “Why, darling, I’m going to suck out your soul and eat it. I’ve waited eighteen years for you to season and I’m starving.”
She lunged at me with the super speed of something unnatural but I sprang into action, fueled by pure adrenaline and the will to survive. I thought my friend Rachel and how terrified she must’ve been in her final moments and that rage blotted out my fear. My bones cracked and my skin split, my teeth changed, elongating into sharp points as fur sprouted from my pores, a growl ripping from my throat as I stood on all fours, my jaws dripping as I snarled, ready to go to war.
Belinda shed her beauty like a snake shedding its skin, revealing the true horror lurking beneath the layer of civility she hid behind.
She smelled of deception and cruelty, of rotten things best left in a mouldering grave, and she reeked of absolute corruption.
“I’ll suck the marrow from your bones,” Belinda said in a gravelly voice as she slithered toward me with unnatural jerking movements as if her bones were nearly too brittle to sustain her frame. She had to be a thousand years old if she were a day. “For eighteen years I’ve been forced to sustain myself on the pitiful offerings of mortals while I searched for my sweet, succulent prize. Come now, darling, don’t be shit and stop fighting the editable.”
The tiny flutter of a heartbeat at her carotid drew my attention. I didn’t second guess myself. I sprang at her, fangs bared. She wasn’t expecting my savage attack and couldn’t deflect fast enough. My teeth sank into the rubbery skin at her neck and fetid black liquid gushed as I clamped down hard enough to rip her head from her shoulders. We crashed to the ground and I held her down with fang and claw even as she tried to free herself.
A blood-curdling scream ricocheted off the mountains as her fingers curled into sharp knife-like points and scrabbled at my jaws trying to free herself but I was hanging on for dear life. Great gobs of black blood flowed from her artery as it sprayed like a wild hose under pressure until she stilled with a jerk and her life force finally stopped dribbling down my throat. I gave her a final vicious shake and then dropped her like a broken rag doll from my jaws, whining at the disgusting taste in my mouth.
Beckham and Hawks groaned and staggered to their feet to stare at me in wonder.
“Jesus…” Beckham mouthed in awe and maybe a little fear. “What are you?”
What was I? No fucking clue but I was a bad ass that was for sure and I could tell them right now, I didn’t think I could ever go back to being who I was before this moment.
College? Not likely. My life had just taken a huge turn and I couldn’t put the genie back in the bottle.
My vision shimmered and I caught Rachel, smiling. She waved and then faded like mist.
I wasn’t an expert but I think that meant Rachel was at peace and maybe she’d stop haunting me.
Maybe. We’ll see.
In the meantime…
I stilled my mind and focused on my human form. My bones knitted back together and I was standing, naked before Hawks and Beckham. Beckham pulled his shirt from his own body and handed it to me with a dark look at Hawks for getting an eyeful of my goodies as if to say, “Stop looking at my girl’s tits” and I stifled a giggle.
I dragged the back of my hand across my mouth and asked, “What’s an epic hero supposed to do to get some water over here? That fucking sour old bitch tasted like shit.”
Hawks actually chuckled with respect and sprinted inside the yurt to find me something to drink. Beckham folded me into his arms, something beautiful shining in his eyes. “What the hell just happened?” he asked with a faint note of reverence. “I mean, that was pretty…incredible.”
“I know, right?” I returned, taking the moment without pretending false humility. “Apparently, I’m some super shifter with witch accessories. Custom-made. I guess that’s why I can see ghosts and auras and shit.”
“Yeah. Also why the witch’s powers didn’t work on you. She must’ve used her a piece of her own magick to break your clan’s breeding curse.”
“About that…do you think you can find out more about my ancestry with the help of the PCA?”
“Yeah, I think that’s doabl
e. But first, I have to do this,” Beckham’s mouth closed over mine and kissed me with all the hunger and passion I felt inside of me for him. It was just the pairing, I tried to tell myself but a part of me didn’t care. Who’s to say that human love wasn’t some kind of genetic coding, too? Love was a weird thing anyway. All I cared about was that I felt like I was home when I was in his arms and I wasn’t willing to give that up.
Especially after staring a death hag in the face and coming out the other side with your soul still intact.
It had a tendency to put things in perceptive real quick.
I also knew Beckham felt the same because his feelings mirrored mine.
This pair bonding shit is some powerful stuff.
“You still want to break the pair bond?” I asked, testing the waters.
He answered with a slow shake of his head, captivated by my green eyes. “Not even a little. Knowing you could’ve died…and I could do nothing to stop it? Fuck that. You’re mine and I’m yours. We will face everything life has to throw at us together.”
I grinned. “Good. It’s about time you realize I’m a catch.”
He laughed. “Trust me, I always knew.”
Hawk appeared with a glass of water but gave the hag’s lifeless body a wide berth. “What are going to do with that?” he asked, gesturing to the carcass.
“Take the head back to headquarters for processing. We’ve only been aware of her activity for the past few years. If she hadn’t gotten sloppy and careless, we never would’ve found her.”
Beckham walked to the body and with one hard yank, ripped her head from her shoulders. “I have a bag in the Rover.”
I sprinted to the Rover and found the transportation materials and handed them to Beckham who then made quick work of zipping up her head so it didn’t leak disgusting fluids everywhere and then burned her body.
Beckham turned to Hawk. “I trust you can handle the McCormicks?”
