Claws and Effect

by Amanda Arista

  “They came in, cleaned up the place and Tyler took care of me. Took me to the hospital.”

  I gulped. I was the reason she was in the hospital, and I was the good guy in that scenario.

  “It was only a broken wrist, but Tyler didn’t leave until I was comfortably at home.”

  I frowned. “That doesn’t sound like the Tyler that I know.”

  “He is a fractured man, Violet.”

  I read it, saw it in her eyes, felt it in the warmth that suddenly ebbed from her. “I think you like him.”

  Cristina looked away. “He was a good comfort in my time of need. We were both confused and seduced by Spencer’s power; we both knew that it was wrong, and we needed to be stronger.”

  “Past tense?”

  “I have not seen Tyler in a month.”

  “Do you want to see him? I’m seeing him tomorrow, I might be able to—”

  “No,” Cristina’s cheeks flushed a color that matched her dark red skirts.

  I fought a smile. It was cute. Rehabilitated bad guys in love. “I think it’s good. Gathering those around you who understand you is the key to building a better you.” The story clicked in my head. “Lambs to slaughter.”

  A horrified look covered Cristina’s features. “What are you talking about?”

  “I had it all wrong. Haverty gathered the weaker ones to him. Explains why he never asked you, his only psychic. Marked them like lambs to the slaughter for Jovan, promising their life, their souls to the demon in exchange for power. The power I now have.”

  Cristina gave me that crazy writer look that I was very used to, as though I were speaking in alien tongues backward. I started again.

  “Haverty offers up the ones he won’t miss in his pack for Jovan to bond with. Jovan gives Haverty the power. The others get bupkis.”

  “They why did the demon start talking to Spencer?”

  Damn. She got me on that one. “Chaos? I don’t know. So how do we break it?”

  Cristina ran her fingers through her hair and it stayed in perfect black ringlets around her face. “I have no idea. It’s not like a wedding ring that you can just take off.”

  I chuckled. “Thinking about weddings?”

  “And you are not, Miss OU T-shirt?”

  Shocked, I sat up a little straighter in my deck chair. “No, I mean. It’s only been a few months.”

  “And until you, his longest relationship was a weekend, a week tops before he was on to the next damsel.”

  I gulped. What did I expect? He was gorgeous. He’d come in and save the day on his white Bronco. I’d imagine it was easy pickings for him really, especially with those pouty lips. It seemed to work well enough on Cristina at one point too. I shook my head. “Let’s think about The Demon Lock instead.”

  Cristina gave me a sly smile before looking back to the lexicon. “The only thing I can see is that you burn the mark off and see if the lock breaks because you want it to. But usually sacrifices can’t be given back.”

  “I can’t just burn a mark off someone.”

  Cristina shrugged. “I will keep looking into it, talk to a few people. But I’m not powerful enough to work this kind of spell.”

  She closed the book and handed it back to me. Seth had been strong enough. Where had he gotten the power? What had he used to break the mark?

  “Just don’t do anything that makes you uncomfortable, Cristina. Call me if you need anything. “

  “Thank you, Miss Jordan.”

  THE HYENAS HAD started following him four days ago. Despite his efforts to hide the carcasses in places that wouldn’t draw attention, they had probably caught the smell of the deer and were now waiting for a free meal.

  He moved on, forsaking his old lair, moving eastward to where something called out to him. Drew him toward it. As he traveled, the Bigger ones grew thicker and traveling on two legs began almost as treacherous as on four. The Bigger ones were faster than him, stronger than him, and four times his size. He’d learned their strength firsthand after he’d jumped through.

  It had been months since he’d seen a human figure except his own in the moonlight. Been months since he knew the warmth of a fire or the feel of a bed beneath him.

  By the third day of the hyena’s presence, he knew that something had to be done. He could smell their rotten breath as they panted, waited for him to kill, so they could kill him. Smell the stink of their laziness. Those filthy beasts would only draw attention to his whereabouts like neon lights for the Bigger ones to follow, for the Bigger ones to find him again.

  But this time he had a plan.

  He crouched down in the grass, so low his belly sat upon the cold earth. He waited for the fattest deer to walk past him.

  He waited patiently for the right time to strike and when the moment came, he was nothing more than a black streak across the plains as he went for a simple throat kill. His teeth sunk deep within the deer’s neck as the rest of him knocked the deer off its hooves.

  He took no pleasure in the hot fearful blood that ran down his throat, only waited out the long last beats of the deer’s heart before it didn’t have enough air or blood to continue.

  He carefully let the animal down on the ground and sliced open its belly with a quick swat of his claws. The entrails filled the sweet night air with the tangy scent of blood.

  He then sat and waited.

  The smell preceded them. Their growls and high whistles to one another alerted him to their locations surrounding him.

  The leader, a larger spotted male, walked toward him. But it was the more agile female that he felt coming from the left.

  She darted at him quickly, but he flung her off into the darkness, only a small yelp of pain as her jaw met his claw.

  The next was a scrawny male that he quickly ripped into three pieces.

  With a loud scream, the leader growled and launched himself at the panther. He allowed the hyena leader to get in a bite here and a scratch there until the opportunity for a solid kill presented itself.

  That was their flaw; immediate passion with no forethought. He could be both human and animal, both instinct and strategy. And he would never let a pack keep him bound again.

  His plan had worked, he thought, as he licked the hot blood from his paw. He left the site uneaten as a message to anyone else who might come across a sleeping panther in its tree.

  I JUMPED UP FROM the dream and the lexicon slid across my living room floor. Damn book. Creeping into my head. Letting him in like that.

  I kicked the volume across the floor, and cursed at it that it would be firebug fodder by the end of the week.

  I looked at the clock on my mantle. It was two on Sunday afternoon.

  Crap, I thought, as I threw myself up the stairs. I was going to be late for my date with the mongrels.

  As I was smearing toothpaste across my teeth and slipping on my shoes at the same time, my phone rang. I put it on speaker phone.

  “Hewwo,” I asked, my mouth still full on foamy paste.

  “Violet,” Devin’s smooth voice echoed through the bathroom. “Where did you want to meet for lunch?”

  Double crap. “I completely forgot, Devin. I’ve got plans with . . .” How was I going to explain shopping with a bunch of men not related to me? “I’ve got a meeting with some of the comic book guys. We’re going to the mall.”

  “Mall? You hate the mall.”

  “I don’t hate the mall. I’d just rather have my eyes gouged out.” A brilliant idea ran across my brain. I loved it when inspiration struck. “Meet me there, at the Galleria. I can guarantee a show but not lunch.”

  “Well, I do need to pick up a few things, but I’ll need to leave early for a date.”

  “Oh? Date?”

  “So yeah. I’ll meet you there.”

  I hung up and scrubbed the brimstone taste from my mouth. This was going to be interesting.

  “I DON’T KNOW WHAT I’m doing,” I confessed as I sat outside the dressing room of the Old Navy in th
e Galleria. Herding men through a clothing store and trying to steer all of them away from the plaid and carpenter jeans had turned into a two person job, and now I was exhausted.

  “I don’t know what you’re doing either,” Devin said as he crossed his legs. “But it’s pretty.”

  “What?” I asked as I swirled my macchiato.

  “You haven’t noticed that they are edible?” Devin whispered.

  I hadn’t. Still had the memory of what they did to me wedged in my brain. That sort of prevents a girl from seeing chiseled features. At this point, the only thing that I could be thankful for was that they didn’t smell of sewer water. It was more clean, standing water now.

  Tucker came out, clean, coifed, and in clothes that had been obviously washed this century. He looked at himself in the mirror only for a moment to run his fingers through his newly shorn hair and then walked over to me for inspection.

  “How do you feel?” I asked.

  “Better,” he nodded.

  The other three stepped out of their respective dressing rooms and looked down at themselves like their heads had been connected to someone else’s bodies. They too lined up before me.

  “Damn, Tuck, you look almost dateable,” Tyler said as he punched his brother on the arm.

  Tucker bore it with a clenched jaw.

  “Looking good, boys. I think we’ll take the lot,” I said standing up and grabbing my purse from the bench. “Grab everything in at least one other color.”

  The others went to change back into the moderately clean clothes that they had shone up in that day. Tucker stayed behind.

  “We will pay you back,” he said under his breath, his gaze ducked to the floor. “The hair cuts, the clothes. Everything.”

  His insistence gave me hope. Two weeks ago, I didn’t know if he had the kind of pride it would take to offer up something like that, to need to not be indebted to someone. It was a good first step.

  “Go get changed. I’m starving.”

  Tucker nodded and went back into the dressing rooms.

  “Bloody hell, Violet. This is more than just a charity case, isn’t it?” Devin asked.

  “Yes, it is.”

  “What is it about these guys? Did you beat them up in high school?”

  “They’re good guys who need help. And since it’s just me, I thought, why not? I’m paying it forward because someone helped me pick out a dress that saved the world.”

  Devin laughed as he rose. He thought I was just speaking in hyperboles, but it was actually true. “You are a wonder, Violet Jordan.”

  “I’m a something,” I muttered to myself as I threw my tote over my shoulder. It was just about to get a few dollars lighter, but I really couldn’t think of anything else I’d rather spend it on.

  THE BUFFET WE found off the highway said it was all you could eat, but the owners shot me dirty glances from behind the cash register as the men kept getting up and going for seconds and thirds and fourths. It was worse than a high school basketball team. I was glad Devin wasn’t there to instruct them on proper eating habits.

  Tucker ate with a little more reserve, though he did plow through two plates before he said a word to me. “Sorry about them.”

  “I’ll expect better next time.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said with military efficiency. I could see him curse himself afterward. But he was learning.

  It begged the question. “Were you in the military?”

  “Four years right out of high school.”

  “And your brother?”

  “When I came back, Tyler had been changed over, and he wasn’t strong enough to make it on his own.”

  I winced. “And he attacked you?”

  Tucker shook his head. “I chose.”

  I dropped my fork. Well, more like, my entire body flinched in disbelief and my fork flew across the room. The owners scowled harder.

  “You let him?” the words were like cotton balls falling out of my mouth. They left an odd taste that wasn’t the pork dumplings I was pushing around my plate.

  “He couldn’t do it alone. So we did it together.”

  I gulped. I couldn’t fathom choosing this life. If it weren’t for Chaz, I think I would rather had just curled up in that alley and died if I knew what was coming, if I could have predicted all of this.

  “And the others?”

  “Picked them up along the way.”

  “So you’re like THE big brother.”

  Tucker just shrugged.

  “Never had a big brother.”

  The boys came back to the table and the clank of their forks against their plates was noisier than the Battle of Bunker Hill.

  “So only child?” Tucker continued.

  “Had a cousin. He was just too cool for me.”

  Tuckers gaze traveled down the table. “Wouldn’t change it.”

  I gasped. “Even after Spencer?”

  “Because of Spencer.”

  The waitress reluctantly brought me another set of silverware, and I watched as her eyes lingered a little too long on Tucker before she left. “Explain, please.”

  Tucker looked down at his plate, and I watched his hunger fade away. “He had everything. Money. Power. A father who doted on him. Looks. Brains. And it still wasn’t enough.”

  “And you?”

  “I’ve got a brother who’s in jail more than he’s out. A know-it-all who’s OCD and a Shadow who doesn’t talk. But they are mine, and I know that.”

  “What was Spencer’s problem?”

  “Low self-esteem?” Tucker offered.

  I laughed and drew the attention of the others at the table. I gestured for them to keep eating but hoped that they were listening to this.

  “He never had to work a day in his life for anything, so he didn’t know what work was until he wanted that damn demon. And then he worked overtime.”

  “You still haven’t told me what happened.”

  “We don’t know.”

  Tucker didn’t speak but turned his head toward Shadow. I’d never heard his voice before. It was low and more like a growl than I cared to compare.

  “I don’t remember. There are fragments of time, moments of peace, but I don’t remember much until you.”

  “It was like being drunk,” Tyler chimed in, his mouth full of chow mein. “Like a month-long black out.”

  “According to the grimoires, it was a type of possession, only by a shifter instead of a demon,” Nash filled it. “The Havertys have always had this type of power.”

  I nodded. “Iris said there were certain parts to being a Haverty that I wasn’t going to like.”

  Tucker looked up from his food, his knuckles going white around the fork he still held. “I’ve said it before, and I will say it again, Violet Jordan, you are nothing like Spencer.” Tucker said. “And we have to break the mark.”

  I shook my head. “I’ve seen the spell. It’s darker than I care to imagine. It comes from a book that I can barely touch, it’s so evil.”

  “If it will allow us to be our own men, then we will do what it takes. You don’t know what it’s like, Violet.”

  Anger warmed my skin, I clenched my fists on the table. “What if it doesn’t take a spell? What if it just takes a choice? Just be your own men.”

  Tyler grimaced. “I’ve been my own man for too long now. I need a girlfriend.”

  Everyone at the table moaned at the crude joke. But it was a joke, and I was the first person to know that if they were joking, they were on the road to recovery.

  Chapter Six

  INSPIRED BY THE philanthropy of buying the mutts a new wardrobe, I splurged and bought myself a new laptop. Turned out that “Forces of Nature” were technically covered in the warranty. No where in the contract did it say that that force of nature couldn’t be wielded by a magical being.

  I spent all day Monday setting up my preferences and frankly was glad for a day spent on hold with the computer company to get my system to work right.

&nb
sp; I spent all day Tuesday typing out changes to my script that were two weeks late. My e-mail account had been filled with quick questions about Blood Moon: The Waxing: What kind of shoes would the hero wear? Would he listen to AC/DC or Rush? Why would he chase after a rabbit in Act II?

  While in my head dreaming up my fictional world, I nearly missed the dancing cell phone on the table before me. “Whoa? Hello?” I answered on the last millisecond of the last ring.

  “Miss Jordan, I need to see you about something.” Tucker voice was strained tight.

  “What is it?”

  “I can’t really talk about it over the phone. Can you meet me at the coffee shop?”

  “Three minutes.”

  I hung up the phone, and in the middle of getting my shoes on, realized that I hadn’t questioned why he needed me. He could be leading me into a trap. That could have been Jovan’s influence over him luring me into some sorted demonic . . .

  Wow, I really did a break from the script writing. And it was about coffee time anyway.

  TUCKER WAS PACING, still in the state he was in when he’d called, a state that got me to my coffee shop faster than you could say triple latté.

  Finding him was easier than it should have been. I could feel his anxiety from across the café. He was alone, but showered, and I could barely smell the remnant of chewed hoof at all. It was amazing what a shower and a shave would do.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked as I walked up behind him.

  Tucker jumped like a scared cat. His jaw clenched and so did his fists. “Don’t sneak up on someone like that,” he growled. “I could have hurt you, Violet.”

  I watched his very concerned face. I didn’t know what scared me more: that he was truly afraid he could have hurt me, or that he had called me Violet instead of Miss Jordan.

  “You could have tried, Tucker. But you didn’t. I trust you.”

  He licked his lips and ran his large hands through his hair. I watched as his heart slowed down in the pulse at his neck. Either I’d really scared him or he was just plain scared.