Claws and Effect

by Amanda Arista

  I wasn’t calm. The heat ran up into my face as the man paced slowly toward Myers. He drew a long knife out of his belt, the silver glinting off the handle. I knew that knife; three months ago I’d plunged it into Haverty’s chest.

  “Do you know what this means, Violet Jordan?” Carlisle said as he studied the blade.

  “You’re a thief?” I mocked.

  “It means that I’m his next successor.”

  “Bully for you.”

  The man popped the top off the vile and poured the entire edge of the blade with the green potion. It ran like lime syrup down the silver. As I squinted in the light, there seemed to be nothing etched down the length of the blade. I could have sworn . . .

  “Providing that I take care of you.”

  “Then why go for him?” I asked.

  The man faltered in his procession to Myers.

  “Why go for the kitten when you’ve got the cat right here?”

  The man’s glacial eyes glinted as they darted to me. The rest of his body turned slowly to face my direction and then he started toward me.

  “Why are you wasting time?” I kept talking. I got the distinct feeling of a snake charmer hypnotizing the cobra, and God, I hoped it work. “Are you scared that even another panther might be more powerful than you, might be chosen above your sorry self for the simple reason that he’s a panther and you’re not?”

  The man was so close I could feel the hurricane of fury beneath his breast. “Shut up,” he said in a low gravelly voice.

  “Make me.”

  With one strong thrust, he plunged the knife into my midsection. I heard the rip of my jacket and T-shirt and felt the dull point ram into my stomach. The man released my elbows as I grasped the hilt of the blade and fell to my knees.

  It hadn’t pierced the skin.

  The knife hadn’t gone through. Still hurt like hell. Drove the wind out of me. My stomach throbbed, and I gasped for air as I doubled over. I went down all the same. The knife handle was smooth and cool in my palm and I had to stifle a laugh as the knowledge filled my brain.

  Haverty had a mock blade drawn up. A bravado like that. This was a matching dagger to the cane sword charmed to protect a Haverty, not kill one. That’s what this twerp had gotten his hands one. The real one, the deadly one was still out there, waiting.

  The chill of the spell danced along my fingers. If this knife protected me, guess who it thought I was?

  I laughed as I got back on my feet.

  Stunned, Carlisle stepped back a few feet and then man who had been holding my arms backed away quickly.

  I looked down at the goop on my shirt and the silver of the blade.

  The little man had a look of terror on his face as our eyes met.

  “You’re little letter opener didn’t work,” I said as I tossed the knife between hands. Kinda made me wish Chaz had taught me knife fighting. “And you ruined my shirt.”

  The man rushed me from behind. Ducking to the ground, he passed over me and had to turn around, like a bull turning around to charge again.

  I winked. Though I didn’t know what kind of beastie he was, he was slow, lumbering, and the easier to take down now that I was this pissed. The Legacy burned through my veins and tripled the strength of every attack. I swept kicked his knee out from under him and them cracked his jaw so hard his head snapped. He conked out, and I had to jump out of the way to get free of the avalanche of a man.

  Nodding at my work here, I turned to the elemental. “You seriously need to get better . . .”

  I trailed off when I saw a gun to Tucker’s head and a knife to Myers’s throat.

  “Want to rephrase that?” Carlisle said between them.

  I licked my lips and focused in on everything. The wind in the trees stopped, the chattering of the children who couldn’t see us and the prattling of the mother’s who didn’t know how close their children were to danger seemed to fade into the background as I listened. Myers’s heart was racing and his panther clawed down his neck to be released. Long red welts formed along his long pale neck. Shifting now would only ram the knife into his throat.

  Tucker was not as calm as he had been before. His jacket was disheveled and his Adam’s apple bobbed as the other thug dug the muzzle into his temple.

  And the man in the middle was crazy enough to take out both.

  “What do you want?” I asked slowly.

  “I want you to choose.”

  I looked between the two men on their knees. I couldn’t choose.

  “The cat or the dog,” the man smiled.

  “Neither. I’m getting both back.”

  I flexed my energy again, let the heat of the power that was not mine circle around us, making everything smell like soot. I reached out to Myers to stroke his cat, calm it for a moment. He couldn’t shift like this, especially if there was this sticky stuff around. And there was no way that I was not going to be there for Tucker.

  I licked my lips as I thought. I really only had one option, be two places at once.

  There was a dark echo in the back of my head and I cocked my head to listen to it. There is a you, and there is a dark sleek sexy one who can burst through walls.

  Did I have the power to carry that off? A wave of hot deliciousness washed over and around me.

  Did I have the control to carry it off? Could I use the power and still be Violet after? I’d spent three months pushing it away. Would it push back once it had tasted violence again?

  Myers winced as the thug drew the knife deeper into his throat. That was all the choice I needed.

  One. I readied to run.

  Two. My panther rose and readied to run too.

  Three. I prayed to what ever god there was that I could actually do this.

  And go.

  I split.

  My body ran for the guy with the gun. Most people don’t expect that. The man jumped back from Tucker and pointed the gun at me. And Tucker was flawless. In the flash of an eye, he knocked the gun from the man’s hand and was on his feet, snarling in the man’s face and wrestling him to the ground.

  My panther leaped invisibly from my chest and straight at the man with the knife to Myers’s throat. It was like when I’d thrown myself through Jessa’s door. I felt his fleshy pectorals as I landed. He stumbled backward with my power bearing on top of him and the knife clattered to the ground.

  Myers fell forward, one hand holding his neck.

  When my boys were safe, I snapped back together. As simple as that. I jerked as my power reentered by body and glared at Carlisle, the panther back in my eyes.

  “How did you . . .” He stumbled back a few steps, his mouth open. Wind swept through the small space between us, but I moved forward, my hair whipping around as his frightened energy spun around us, tussling with the hot fury that burned around me.

  He turned to run. Silly boy. Didn’t he know that you don’t run from predators? Too much of a temptation to chase.

  Three strides, and I pounced on his back. He went down quickly, my knee in his spine. We landed and the wind was knocked out of him.

  I grabbed his black canvas jacket and roughly flipped him over beneath me. “You will not touch my boys again.”

  “You’re nothing compared to him.”

  “Thank you. Come near me again, and I’ll kill you.”

  He sneered at me before he grabbed the back of my neck, pulling me close. His leg curled around mine before he arched his back. A gust of wind pounded into my gut and he threw me over his shoulder.

  Suddenly, I was on my back and breathless and he was nothing more than a ghost on the wind with the still conscience Rock and two Rolls lumbering after him.

  Tucker quickly hovered above me. “Are you okay?”

  I just nodded, still startled, still trying to catch my breath.

  “Are you sure?” he asked again as he pulled me to my feet.

  “That was awesome,” I finally managed out. “What was that?”

  “Jujitsu,” Tucker sa
id. “Low ground wrestling.”

  “Maybe we should look into some of that.”

  Tucker just smiled and shook his head. “You were just threatened. We were just threatened, Violet. And you’re cracking jokes.”

  “Defense mechanism. If I start doing Leno impressions, know we’re screwed.”

  Slowly, I calmed down. The noises from the zoo started up again and the cries of the children echoed around us.

  It was easy. Too easy. The power didn’t fight going back behind my borders. Like the satiated cat, it went willingly back into my center.

  Huh.

  I walked carefully over to Myers. He had rocked back onto his heels and was still holding his neck. I could smell blood.

  “How ya doing?” I asked looking down at him.

  “Had better days.”

  “Me too.” I knelt down and pried his hand off his neck.

  It was nothing, a long superficial wound that wouldn’t bleed more than a shaving accident. “You’ll live.”

  He looked at me long and hard. “I thought I’d lost you,” he whispered. “The power it . . .”

  “Nah,” I brushed his concern away with the wave of my hand. “Going to take more than that to take me down.” I winked at him and pushed up back to my feet.

  “Come on, boys. I’m starving. Dinner’s on me.”

  The three of us headed toward the exit. I crunched my cell phone under my heel.

  “Crap,” I muttered. “How the hell do you shift with your cell phone?”

  Tucker shrugged. “Don’t. I get those throw-away phones and toss them in bushes.”

  I laughed as I cradled both my boys back to the car.

  Chapter Eight

  NEEDING A MOMENT to myself, I called Jessa and begged her for a lunch the next day. We met at our new sushi place and ordered more food than two people could ever eat.

  “So do you know what the guy says to me? He says ‘Why don’t you just take your bony ass out of here and let me to my job?’ Can you believe the nerve of some people,” she said jabbing a piece of spider roll so hard with her chop stick it exploded.

  “And why did you hire him again?”

  “The Cleaners recommended him.”

  “For his work or his tight jeans?”

  Jessa smiled. “Both are pretty damn good.”

  “Has he asked you out yet?” I asked, rescuing a piece of her Philadelphia roll.

  “No,” she pouted. “Not that I would say yes. I mean the guy is an ape. Big long arms, hair everywhere. And if he did his job, we wouldn’t have to fight all the time.”

  I smiled. It was funny to see Jessa flustered over a guy. And refreshing.

  “How’s the Veil holding up?”

  “Good. I’m hoping that it stays that way, so I don’t have to see that man every day.”

  She was making my day better. The weight of the world was getting a little weighty, and I needed a little quite and feminine time. At some point I’d realized that I’d spent the past week in the company of males, and I just needed some girl time.

  “So how are you doing with the whole Shala thing?”

  I smiled. She was learning the vernacular. “Myers is a really fast learner, especially when I keep throwing him into adapt or die situations. He’s not going to need me for too many more moons.”

  “Is he completely Mrs. Robinson over you yet?” she laughed.

  “Hey,” I protested. “He’s a good kid.”

  “Who probably worships you.”

  “That just makes him a smart kid,” I repeated with a sly smile.

  Jessa stabbed at her Philly roll. “How are you and Chaz?”

  “He gave me a key.”

  Jessa gasped. “Really. Vi, that’s huge!”

  “And then he left again for a week. Haven’t talking to him in a week.”

  Jessa’s shoulders fell. “I knew it wasn’t going to be easy, but they’re really working that boy hard.”

  “It’s like they don’t want us to be together.”

  Jessa popped a piece of California roll in her mouth and narrated. “So not only are people trying to kill you, people trying to crown you, you’ve got people trying to break up your relationship.” She swallowed. “That sucks.”

  “How many drama queens can officially say that the whole world is actually against them?”

  The waiter came around and filled up our water glasses. He lingered a little too long over Jessa’s. I cleared my throat. The man jerked and scurried off sloshing the water in his pitcher. I simply wiped the water off my boot. It wasn’t his fault.

  “I think Chaz is coming back today. And I guess I need to tell him about what happened at the zoo.”

  “Yeah,” Jessa scrunched up her nose. “Make sure I’m not there for that one.”

  “I’m surprised he hasn’t been calling you because my phone . . .”

  As if on cue, her phone rang. When she saw the caller, her wide eyes grew wider and she showed me the display with Garrett splayed across the front. “Hello?”

  She jerked a little. Even I heard the intensity of his voice. I heard the words responsibility and cat mixed in there some where.

  Jessa shook her head and just handed me the phone with Chaz still ranting.

  “Chaz,” I said softly.

  He stopped talking. His breath was quick on the phone. It only took a moment for him to start up again. “Why haven’t you been answering your phone? I’ve been calling and calling and it keeps rolling to voicemail and then I get a message from Cristina tell me that she might have figured out your demon problem? I’m gone for four days and—”

  “Chaz!” I yelled.

  He stopped again. And the waiter stopped what he was doing and the rest of the tables around us stopped eating and looked at the woman yelling into her phone.

  I turned away from them. “My phone was destroyed in another attack by Carlisle. I haven’t had a chance to replace it. I am fine. The house is fine. When are you coming home?”

  “I’m about two hours out.”

  “Okay,” I said softly. “I will be there when you get home with a new phone and an explanation of everything.”

  “You can’t just . . .” he dropped off, but I could hear his racing hart over the line.

  “I know. It’s been a rough week, so get home.”

  “Okay, Violet.”

  He hung up, and I handed the phone back to Jessa.

  “You can never say that man doesn’t care about you,” she said as she slipped the phone back into her mammoth purse.

  “I know.”

  “But why don’t you tell him everything?”

  “Probably the same reason I can’t watch reruns. I don’t like rehashing everything over and over again.”

  “I’m pretty sure that’s part of the relationship package. Especially your relationship package.”

  I sighed and lumped down in my chair. “I know.”

  “Do you do that a lot?” she asked as she stabbed at another piece of spider roll. I was suddenly not hungry.

  “What? Get reprimanded by my boyfriend? Yes actually.”

  Jessa stuck out her tongue. “At least you’ve got a man. No. I was talking about knowing he was going to call.”

  I frowned. Why couldn’t I tell Jessa about the added bonus weirdness of my life lately? “Yeah, actually. I’m ten for ten with telemarketers.”

  “Is it part of Jourdaine thing?”

  I nodded. “It’s the only explanation that I have. Got a little stronger last December. Don’t even know if its strong enough to try to control.”

  “So you don’t know if you’ll be as strong as your mother?”

  It was my turn to stab at things and the claw sticking out of the end of my spider roll looked like it could use a small battle with my chop sticks.

  Jessa continued. “ ’Cause if you could guide me in the direction of a new man, I’d really appreciate it. I’m not really trusting my own instincts lately.”

  Thought Jessa dated six
ty times more than I did, I hadn’t heard of anyone since Spencer, since he’d seduced her enough to get close to me, and even though she talked about going out and men still showered her with napkins with their numbers, she hadn’t been on a noteworthy date in months.

  And here I was complaining about my boyfriend. Worst best friend ever.

  “Wanna come to the cell phone place? I have to get a new phone.”

  “Lords, yes. You need a smart phone, no more of those flip things.”

  Shopping was enough of a distraction to get her back to nongloomy Jessa.

  AT THE CELL phone store, I just pointed, Jessa nodded, and we walked to the counter. It was the easiest purchase I’d made with her in a long time.

  When the sales associate asked me if I wanted the data plan, Jessa said yes.

  When he asked me if I wanted the insurance plan, I said yes.

  When he asked me if I wanted to add any more lines to the plan, I hesitated. Tucker had lost his cell phone, and I didn’t even know if the others had cell phones with no income to speak of. I needed a way to get in contact with them.

  “Yes.” I answered.

  Jessa looked at me. “For Chaz?”

  “Actually for Tucker.”

  She did a whole body shiver just at the mention of his name.

  “I’m sorry Jessa, but he’s saved my ass more than once now. And we crunched his phone during the last attack.”

  “I know,” she frowned as she picked at the edge of her purse. “But don’t expect me to like him.”

  I looked back at the salesperson whose mouth was hanging open. “Can I help you?”

  “No,” he fumbled around on his desk. “No. What’s the name on the other account?”

  “Can you just put mine?”

  “Yes, Miss Jordan.”

  “Thank you.”

  IT TOOK TWO trips to the car to get in all the groceries. I figured that I could make Chaz a special meal, which was me thinking way outside of the Violet box. It probably should have been the first clue that something was going to be off about this evening. I’d even looked up how to make a marinade for the steaks.

  I just wanted to be a normal couple before we had to start discussing the demon marks and wind elementals.