Witches of Skye - Love Lies Bleeding (Book Three): Paranormal Fantasy

by M. L. Briers

  “Of what?” I demanded and could have head-butted the nearest brick wall. I’d just taken dumb to a whole new level.

  “Our pack,” the first guy offended back, and his tone made me feel like my question was definitely a stupid one, not that I needed it – der.

  Ross had killed Fraser, and Fraser had become the alpha when he’d killed Lachlan, but if nobody had reported Fraser’s killing spree to the pack, then in truth, Ross had taken them both out.

  Oh boy, this was not good on so many levels.

  “And?” I was determined to get to the bottom of why they were here, even if I didn’t trust them I still might be able to start thinking a couple of steps ahead of them.

  “He needs to lead the pack or face a challenge for alpha,” Muscles said, and from the attitude that oozed from the man, I got the impression that the challenge part might come either way and from him.

  “Oh, go back home,” I bit out. There was no way in Hades that I was going to stand by and watch Ross fight that man.

  “Rules,” Muscles said.

  “Laws,” the other guy added.

  “Great double act, do you two play clubs?” Malachi said.

  “You need permission to be on Skye, and you’re not going to get it from…”

  “The alpha’s here – we’re here,” the first guy growled.

  “Is it just me or is it like talking to a brick wall?” Malachi said.

  “Brick walls are smarter,” I offered with a shrug.

  “True, but you don’t get the same level of satisfaction when you hit one,” Malachi said, practically offering the challenge up on a silver platter.

  Muscles shifted his weight on his feet and tightened his hands into huge fists at his sides. The glare of his eyes said trouble, and the flare of his nostrils as he dragged in a deep breath said that he was barely containing his aggressive nature.

  Mr Short Temper looked as if he was about to do something very, very stupid.

  ~

  Night is day – day is night – hide this space and time from sight. Night is day – day is night – hide this space and time from sight. Night is day – day is night – oh, boy, here we go!

  It wasn’t the easiest thing to do, to use a cloaking spell on such a big thing as an outdoor area, but I’d pulled on my magic, and that of my sisters, and was giving it a damn good try.

  I’d done it with objects, and even the cat on occasion, but this was so much bigger that I could feel it draining my magic reserves – I wasn’t exactly the battery bunny of the magical world – no witch was – everyone’s power supply had a limit and needed a top-up from the natural world around us.

  We were like mobile phones, and I needed to find a source to plug into. The Loch seemed like the obvious choice; tidal power eat your heart out, I was going for something more radical.

  The back door to the bistro burst outwards, just as Malachi and the two shifters started going at it.

  “Go get ‘em,” Moira hissed out at Ross the moment that the big man growled in anger, and I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Ross was still training his wolf if training was the right word, and going up against a couple of shifters didn’t seem like the logical choice to keep his beast on the down low.

  “If he shifts…” I warned her, as my siblings took control of their own magic and helped me create the illusion of normality while building an impenetrable wall around the area. I just hoped that nobody walked into it – how would we explain that one?

  “I’ve got Scooby snacks,” Moira chuckled, not taking her eyes from the fighting.

  “Just flash your breasts,” Eileen giggled. “That’ll get his attention.”

  “He’d trip over his own paws and knock himself out,” I tossed in for good measure.

  “Can we p-lease concentrate on what we’re supposed to be doing and not my perky breasts?” Moira bit out, but I did note the reference to perky that she’d dropped in there.

  Even in the midst of a vampire-werewolf fistfight, she still managed to give herself top billing – bless her.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  ~

  “Holy crap!” Eileen bit out, and that certainly did take us by surprise because the last person I would ever expect to swear was her. I turned my head to look at Eileen and followed her gaze.

  There he was — coming towards us like he could see everything that was going on. Jack Mackie — what were the odds?

  “He’s going to walk right into the barrier,” Moira warned, but it was already too late. Jack was at the threshold, and even if we could have pulled the magic back now, there still wouldn’t have been time.

  I didn’t know what would happen; I was kind of waiting for the cosmic thud, and then for Jack to fall down on his backside. That didn’t happen, Jack walked straight through the magical barrier, and my heart was in my throat.

  How the heck had that happened? Although, Moira put it more succinctly than I could as I was choking on my heart at the time… “What the f…?”

  Exactly!

  “Detective Mackie!” Eileen practically screamed his name, and I know why she did it because it was the equivalent of someone smacking each and every one of them around the back of the head.

  Immediately all supernatural beings were behaving like choirboys — well, not quite, but close.

  “Are you flipping kidding me?” Moira demanded of Jack, but he only offered a cursory look in her direction.

  While it was true that nobody had their claws and fangs out, people were slightly bruised and bloodied. Mainly the shifters, but Malachi did have a few scratches, and his clothes had seen better days.

  “What the hell is going on here?” Jack demanded, and I choked on my heart again, but it was more of a strangled chuckle than anything else.

  He flicked those eyes on me, and I offered him a look that I could only imagine was a cross between a startled rabbit when she saw Ross’s wolf and someone who had just seen an alien spaceship land in the car park.

  “What’s wrong with you?” Jake demanded, but I couldn’t answer him, I think my brain had farted.

  Moira leaned in toward me, “I have to say right back at him?” She whispered. “He walked clean through that barrier.”

  “I know.” I managed to get out.

  “How the heck did he do that?”

  “I don’t know.” I may have sounded like a robot, but that was only to be expected — Jack should never have been able to penetrate the magic that surrounded us, let alone seen right through it.

  “He was looking right at us,” Eileen shuffled along toward us and hissed out a whisper.

  “I know, right?” Moira offered back in disbelief.

  “Only someone with magic should have been able to do that,” Eileen stated the obvious, and I really felt like kicking her in the shin.

  My brain was a washing machine on spin cycle, that really fast end of wash spin cycle that went around so fast that all you could make out was colours. My thoughts weren’t exactly a pretty rainbow — there was more chaos in my brain than someone throwing diamonds into a crowd of festival-goers.

  “Who wants arresting first?” Jack demanded.

  “Actually, Jack,” Malachi started, and boy did I know what was coming next.

  “Actually, Malachi,” I said, lifting my hand and pretending to cut my own throat with it. I needed to know how Jack saw what he had, and how he’d gotten through the magical wall.

  “Belay that thought,” Malachi said, tossing me a curious look.

  “Jack…” I didn’t quite know how to brace the subject.

  “Not now, Maggie,” Jack tossed back over his shoulder without even turning to look at me.

  “Now might be a good time,” I insisted.

  “If you’re going to tell me that this is one of those things that I don’t want to know about — then I don’t want to hear it,” Jack offered back.

  “Yeah, it really is one of those times,” I said, feeling guilty, not just for having to brush Jack off like
that, but also for what Malachi was about to do — and may even still have to do.

  “I’m supposed to let this slide?” Jack sounded more miffed off than anything, and perhaps he should have been.

  “Boys will be boys,” Moira tossed back. “What say we just pat them on the head and send them on their way with a caution?”

  “This is exactly the reason I hate coming to Skye,” Jack bit out.

  “Then stop coming back.” I couldn’t help myself — it basically popped out of my mouth before I’d even put my brain in gear. Not that my brain felt like it would go into gear, it was still on the spin cycle.

  “Fine — get the hell out of here before I change my mind,” Jack bit out.

  Now, I really didn’t know whether to laugh or cry because like it or not, and I didn’t, Jack was going to want an explanation.

  “You don’t want me to rinse his…?” Malachi asked, and I swear I was growling at him without even knowing that I was doing it. It was only when Moira elbowed me, that I shot her a glare.

  “Nix on the growling sounds, Ross is touchy enough,” she hissed.

  “Maggie, we need to talk,” Jack bit out, and that really didn’t sound like I had much choice in the matter.

  “We need to pay Gran a visit,” I said because I really wanted to know how that man had did what he’d done, or done what he did, or … ugh! Spin cycle!

  ~

  “Maggie, I want some answers,” Jack said, and I thought that was rather predictable of him and rather annoying as Gran wasn’t home yet.

  I stood by the dining room table and tapped my fingernails against the wood as I considered my options. Did I just give it to him straight up? Tell him about werewolves and vampires and watch him freak out like a child on the first-day nursery school throwing his arms in the air and running for the nearest exit? Or should I be more subtle about it and talk to him like a five-year-old that I was telling a fairytale to?

  Decisions — decisions.

  I wanted to speak to Gran first and hope that she had some kind of clue as to how he saw through our magic. It wasn’t right — it wasn’t normal — and it was kind of off-putting. Especially as he didn’t know that he’d walked through a magical shield that should have repelled him.

  Did he have magic? Did he have magic and just didn’t know it? All these questions and more will be answered on the next episode of — I’m going bloody insane.

  Gran was in her sixties, why did she feel the need to have a life and not be here when something truly mega happened?

  “Maggie,” Jack tried to urge me on, but I had this vision of him running down the road waving his arms in the air and screaming at the top of his lungs when I told him of the true monsters that inhabited our world, and I just couldn’t shift it from my brain.

  “Well…” I thought that got off to a good start before I hesitated.

  The sound of Moira’s car chugging along the road towards the house actually made me feel grateful that she was home. I don’t think I’d ever had that feeling before, and probably would never have it again. “Ooo, car.” I pointed an absent finger back over my shoulder at the window.

  “Look…” Jack started, and I turned on my heels and headed for the window, anything to buy time.

  “Yep, it’s Moira!” I confirmed what I already knew, and from the look of him, what he didn’t really care about.

  “Oh, good,” Jack shrugged his shoulders, thrust his hands into the front pockets of his jeans, and sighed.

  “Why are you back?” I asked.

  Normally I would have led with that line, especially and considering, the fact that he said he was gone for good this time.

  “Dead people,” Jack said.

  “More dead people?” I hadn’t heard anything.

  “Not yet — but with you around anything is possible,” Jack tossed back.

  Numpty.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  ~

  “Hi, Jack, you’re still here,” Moira said with a little too much acidity in her tone, and then she slowly rolled her head toward me, tipped it to the left, opened her mouth slightly and question me with her raised eyebrows. I was back to wanting to shave off those stupid eyebrows again, and that would definitely buy me some time.

  “Go figure,” Jack said, and he didn’t sound too happy about it either. Muppet.

  “I’ll put the dinner on,” Eileen said as she ducked back out of the room from the place where she had been cowering behind Moira.

  That statement of intent was a lie, Eileen couldn’t boil water. That little snake just wanted out of the conversation that I wasn’t yet having with Jack, and who could blame her? I wanted out of the conversation too.

  The sound of another car bouncing up the road took my attention back to the window. There was my father, oh goody, someone else to explain it all too.

  “Can we just get on with this?” Jack asked.

  “What a way to proposition a girl?” Moira put in, and I’d have to say that was the most unhelpful that she’d been all day, and Moira could be very unhelpful.

  “I’m waiting for Gran,” I said and urged Moira to behave with a death glare that I aimed her way.

  “Hello, girls!” Dad called as he came into the house, tossed the door closed behind him, and stopped dead in the doorway as he spotted Jack. “Why are you here? Did someone die?” His head snapped around on his neck, and he glared at me. “Did someone die?”

  “Nobody died!” We all manage to say together like a team of synchronised swimmers going for gold.

  I have to say that dad did look relieved. He turned his attention back to Jack.

  “That doesn’t explain you being here then?”

  “Awkward,” Moira said, rolling her eyes up to the ceiling and down to me.

  “Apparently, I have some explaining to do,” I said.

  “What did you do now?” Dad demanded. Then, when I didn’t immediately answer, he turned his attention towards Jack. “What did she do now?”

  “The list is endless,” Jack tossed back. I don’t think he was feeling the love.

  “Really, Maggie, you have to learn to control yourself,” Dad berated me. Which would have been fine if I’d actually done something wrong.

  “I didn’t do it,” I tossed back.

  “Do what?” Dad asked.

  “I don’t know — but I didn’t do it,” I tossed back.

  “See what you did?” Moira berated Jack.

  “How did I do it?” Jack demanded.

  “How is it that someone did something and nobody knows what it was or who did it?” Dad asked.

  “Good question,” Moira chipped in.

  “Well, he’s blaming Maggie for it,” Dad said, getting frustrated to the point where the little twitch under her eye was starting to act up.

  “He is,” Moira said, stirring the pot. “It’s a total miscarriage of justice if you ask me.”

  “Oh, for the love of…” Jack tossed up a hand, rolled his head on his neck, and offered me the kind of glare that I was very happy wasn’t backed up by magic.

  “Can everyone just stop?” I said. Jack had had enough, I’d had enough, and I was pretty sure that my father was about to have a case of the vapours. “Moira, go to your room!” I even pointed, of course, she just chuckled, folded her arms, and grinned from ear to ear.

  “Not a chance in Hades,” Moira said happily.

  “Look, while this whole family reunion has been … different. Can someone please tell me what’s going on?” Jack demanded.

  “Well, someone needs to tell me first,” Dad said.

  “It was a truly biblical moment,” Moira said, and I groaned inwardly. “While nobody walked on water…”

  “Moira,” I hissed, zapping her just a smidge, and she yelped. Obviously, I’d zapped her a little more than just a smidge, but I was as nervous as the cat on the roof when it was waiting for Ross and the vampire twins to show up, and I had brain fog.

  Oh, no. That was going to happen – Ross
and Bat-boy could turn up at any moment, and what then? How did I explain vamps and wolves to a man that was facing the nightmares in the flesh?

  “Maybe we should do this another time?” I rushed out and got a stone cold look from Jack. I guess I couldn’t blame him as I had been stalling for a while now. “Maybe we could meet up later?”

  “With him?” Moira snorted her contempt for the man. “The love ‘em and leave ‘em, guy?”

  “I did no such…” Jack protested.

  “He what?” Dad’s attention was piqued, and not in a good way.

  “Nobody loved ‘em and left ‘em…” I protested.

  “He better not have,” Gran said, bringing everyone’s attention around to her. “I’ll cut off his meat and two veg and throw them in a fast-moving Loch.”

  “Oh – boy,” I groaned. I would have loved for the ground to have opened up and swallowed me whole at that moment in time, but sadly…

  “You people really are insane,” Jack muttered to himself.

  “Us – people?” Moira said, eyeing the man with contempt once more.

  “Aye, people on Skye – witch people – take your pick…” Jack said.

  “And put it in the back of your…” Gran muttered.

  “Gran!” I snapped. “Was being accused of murder once not enough for you?” I demanded, unwittingly reminding her that it had been Jack who had done that, and she turned the evil eye, or two of them to be precise, on him.

  “Some things are worth the price ye pay,” she said, even freaking me out a little.

  “I’m…” Jack stalled, I mean he stalled like a car with a dead battery as he took a long moment to eye my Gran. Moira sniggered and Dad and I both groaned. “Is that a threat?”

  “More like a promise if you’re back making trouble for our Maggie again,” Gran hissed back.

  I had hands for a reason, to bury my face in. I begged for Moira’s help with my mind, and she heard me – perking up no end.

  “Okay, that’s all … a thing,” she announced, and I groaned. “Moving on…”