by Sierra Dean
“You’re okay.” I breathed the words out slowly, hoping I’d believe them if I took my time saying them. “You’re okay.”
“I’m melting out here.”
“Oh. Right.” I stepped aside, and he handed me the roses. “These are beautiful, thank you.”
“Don’t thank me, someone left them on your stoop.” He was already in the kitchen, his body inhabiting every space he entered like he could own the air itself. He helped himself to a glass of water and started snooping around, not bothering to ask for a tour. When he disappeared down the hall to my bedroom, I glanced at the flowers.
Black roses were an odd choice for a gift.
A card was tucked in between the dark green thorns, and I plucked it out carefully, slipping the envelope open. In beautiful gothic scroll was a short note:
Glad to know you’re safe, baby girl. The show was Oscar caliber. Ended with a bang. Big man says he couldn’t have done better himself, and he might call on you again. Lots of love, Del & Cain.
I set the vase on my kitchen table, balancing the card next to it, and stared at them uncertainly. I thought about Cain’s words when we’d made our deal. Life for a life. We had saved Hank, and Deerling was dead, but it wasn’t what Cain had asked for. In spite of the pleasant tone of the note, I worried about Del saying Cain might call on me again.
I still owed him a life.
Wilder returned, grinning, distracting me from my uneasiness. “Nice bed.”
“It is.”
A nice bed I’d be sleeping alone in for a while. I liked the idea, the promise of solitude and space. It was going to be a long time before I ever got privacy in public again, so I’d take my quiet where I could find it.
I looked at Wilder.
Okay, maybe I didn’t want to be totally alone.
“You’re okay,” I repeated.
“I am very okay, yes. Takes more than a brass bullet to take down a Shaw.” He puffed out his chest like an old-timey strong man, and I laughed.
I didn’t ask about Hank. Deerling’s confession had absolved him of blame for the murder. He’d gone home to Callum’s, and I’d seen him regularly during my time there. Aside from a few choice words about my taste in men, he’d seemed genuinely grateful for the effort I’d made to keep him alive. He’d even said thank you.
Ben hadn’t said anything to me about my new position. He acted like nothing had happened and went back to treating me like his kid sister. I wasn’t sure if that was good or if I should be worried about some intense blowback coming down the line.
“How are things between you and Callum? He came to visit me during my doctor ordered-lock down. He brought Hank, which was a surprise. We talked, but I was afraid to mention you. Callum did get my motorcycle back from the Franklinton impound, though. I thought that was pretty decent of him.” He smiled and took a big sip of his drink. He played it off like a joke, but he was probably more than a little serious. Callum was a scary dude.
I made my way into the living room, muting the TV as I sat. Maureen Cranston’s shrewish face was on the screen, and underneath her quotes said that CAPA was denying any involvement with Deerling and the Church of Morning.
All right, Maureen. Deny, deny, deny. But I was going to keep my eye on her.
I pulled my legs up under me and stared at Wilder, not entirely convinced he was really here.
“He was pissed,” I admitted. “I’ve never been yelled at so much in my life. I thought he would lock me up and throw away the key.”
Wilder took a seat next to me, waiting for what I had to say next. I glanced at the TV, then turned it off, not wanting to see the photos of Timothy Deerling they insisted on plastering up every ten minutes.
“I’m sure if you give him some time, he’ll be more reasonable.”
I raised my hand to quiet him, a slow smile sneaking across my face, one I’d been trying to hide since I got home, but in Wilder’s presence I was incapable of suppressing.
“He made me the Alpha of New Orleans.”
“He what?”
“Apparently stupidity is an Alpha trait.”
Wilder grinned, scratching his stubbled jaw. “I’ll be damned.”
I sat back on the couch, letting the news sink in for both of us.
“Does this mean I have to stop hitting on you?” he asked. “Callum mentioned you’re a single lady now. He seemed pretty relieved.”
I turned my head towards him. I thought the mention of my breakup with Cash would hurt, but instead I felt relief. Ignoring his comment about my uncle’s relief, I said, “As long as you find a better way to impress me, feel free to continue hitting on me.”
“Princess, I’d step in front of a hundred bullets for you if I thought it would get me laid.” He waggled his brows and inched towards me.
“Say that in front of my uncle and he’ll neuter you before it’s ever an issue.”
Wilder mock winced and leaned in for a kiss. I stopped him, my hand pressed flat against his chest.
“What?” he asked.
Staring at his eyes, the flecks of green shining bright in the midafternoon sunlight, I held my breath and let the moment just be. I drank in everything right about him, and me, and what had happened, choosing for once to not think about all the bad parts.
It had been hell.
But we’d made it out the other side.
“Nothing,” I replied.
He kissed me, and for once, I let myself be happy in how not-normal this life of mine was.
Thanks for reading Bayou Blues, I hope you had fun on Genie’s first adventure!
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This is the first book in the Genie McQueen series, but her big sister Secret has already had an epic story that starts with Something Secret This Way Comes from Samhain publishing! If you want to read moreof the McQueen sisters’ adventures, Secret has 8 books and 2 novellas available.
If you’d like to read an excerpt from Something Secret This Way Comes, the first book in Secret’s series, keep reading!
Some secrets are dangerous. This Secret is deadly.
Secret McQueen, Book 1
For Secret McQueen, her life feels like the punch line for a terrible joke. Abandoned at birth by her werewolf mother, hired as a teen by the vampire council of New York City to kill rogues, Secret is a part of both worlds, but belongs to neither. At twenty-two, she has carved out as close to a normal life as a bounty hunter can.
When an enemy from her past returns with her death on his mind, she is forced to call on every ounce of her mixed heritage to save herself—and everyone else in the city she calls home. As if the fate of the world wasn’t enough to deal with, there’s Lucas Rain, King of the East Coast werewolves, who seems to believe he and Secret are fated to be together. Too bad Secret also feels a connection with Desmond, Lucas’s second-in-command…
Warning: This book contains a sarcastic, kick-ass bounty hunter; a metaphysical love triangle with two sexy werewolves; a demanding vampire council; and a spicy seasoning of sex and violence.
Chapter One
In the sullen hours before daylight, a thick dewy fog was settling over the deep green lawns of Central Park. A waning moon hung over the cityscape like a Cheshire cat’s looming smile. It was cold enough in the spring air that an exhaled breath became a cloud with a limited lifespan. With enough of those escaped breaths, one could trace the path of the breather as they moved through the park and into the night.
Along the edges of the famous Great Lawn, just inside a jagged forest with a dazzling array of buildings creating an illuminated backdrop on the darkened landscape, one such trail was moving with great speed through the half-naked, outstretched
branches, the clouds short and anxious. Always mere inches ahead of these markers, a young woman was running for her life.
I was not the woman in question, although I was also running.
Like a fool, I’d believed I might be able to take a nice, quiet walk through Central Park that night, enjoying the heavy predawn stillness, which is almost never available in a city like New York. Typically the only solitude I’m allowed is during the brief allotments of hot water my shower provides me, and even then the pipes in my building rattle and bang whenever they’re in use. The shower is only quiet when the water runs cold.
Tonight I had wanted to be alone with the darkness before slipping away for my morning slumber, but that had been too much to hope for in the city that never sleeps. Even though a quiet night for me would involve getting harassed by a mugger or roughing up some drug addicts if they tried to scare rebellious schoolgirls, it still would have been preferable to what I was being forced to do now.
Too bad for me, and more specifically for the girl I was running after, she was being chased by something that wasn’t peaceful, quiet or even human.
Fear was radiating off her in waves that were so strong the thing after her would be able to find her regardless of how fast she ran or how well she hid. Fear had a cloying scent to it, not quite sweet, more like aged cloves and copper. I knew that because I could smell it too. And the feeling that accompanied it sent shivers reverberating through the base of my spine. There was a predator in me that related to what her assailant felt as he tracked her, the primal part deep down that could empathize with the frenzied vigor of collapsing victoriously on your terrified prey.
I could feel him too, and could finally recognize for certain that it was, indeed, a male. I wouldn’t go so far as to say man, because there wasn’t anything in him that resembled what he once had been. The shell he wore still looked human, but what was now inside that skin suit could not be described as anything other than monstrous.
All I could feel off him was his overpowering hunger. That coupled with the fact I hadn’t sensed from her any warning hints of anxiety escalating into fear. She hadn’t had time to worry. Instead she slipped immediately into a wild, blistering terror as she was chased at a perilous clip by his animal hunger. That instant fear was the only reason I was running at all. Because the girl was very human, and very vulnerable, and he had taken her by surprise, which was against the rules.
Even though the thing after her was without a shadow of a doubt dead, I knew if I wasn’t faster than him, the girl would soon be among their ranks. And once she was gone, his betrayal of the laws which governed the undead of the world would become my problem anyway, so a little preemptive interference was just saving myself and some vampire bureaucrats a lot of hassle.
At this point, I’d tell myself anything to justify the chase.
The girl broke free of the tree line and started making a wild, hobbling sprint across the Great Lawn. That was the first moment I realized I had actually passed him in our pursuit. I was still sprinting after them through the woods, holding out hope that his hunger would distract him from becoming aware I had joined his hunt. I could smell blood on the air and knew she must have cut herself somewhere in her escape.
As she limped across the field, I saw that one of her feet was bound in a broken stiletto and the other was dragging the mated shoe behind, strung to her only by an ankle strap. She was sobbing, choking out screams, and part of me swallowed those noises with deep pleasure. An animal hunger within wanted me to get to her first so I could rip her to shreds myself.
But that wouldn’t do. I had never killed a human, not a pure-blood human anyway, and I wouldn’t start tonight or any night, I hoped. I wasn’t an undead killing machine like he was. I was something else altogether, and while what I was certainly wasn’t any easier to believe in than vampires, it did allow me enough illusions of humanity to know killing people, at least those who didn’t have it coming, was wrong.
I felt like my chance was now or never, and I broke free of the trees, sprinting after her. I didn’t dodge the clever fingers of a branch sharpened by the storms of winter, and was clawed across the face with a painful swipe, but I just kept running. I ran until every muscle in my body burned and screamed, and then I ran faster. If I was human, I would have fallen down exhausted, vomited on the grass and lay defeated for an hour. But I was not human, and I could have completed a marathon at this pace if I needed to.
It took almost no time at all for me to catch up to her, but it felt like hours. He was out in the open now, following us both, and still I ran. I kept going until I reached her and grabbed her hard by the arm, dragging her behind me as I continued my pace. She was screaming and trying to shake free of me, unable to distinguish me from her actual attacker. As she clawed at me with surprising might for a girl of her slender build, I acknowledged there was only one way we were going to get out of this with her still alive.
I stopped running and slapped her hard and fast across the face. She replied with stunned silence, and we both stood staring at each other.
This girl looked so much like I would have if I had anything like a normal life. She was slender and petite, with blonde hair. But unlike me, she had an unnatural tan, acquired by spending hours in a light-box coffin, and she wore more makeup than I’d ever thought to own.
“You need to listen to me very carefully.” He was coming, and fast. I only had seconds. “I can save you from this. I can keep you alive.”
Terror vanished from her face and was replaced with the more frightening emotion of hope. I’d gotten through enough that she knew I meant to help her. Her grip tightened on my wrist as she began to come to terms with what I was saying. Her tear-filled eyes were wide and eager. Her earnest hopefulness made the bottom of my stomach lurch. It was my responsibility to keep this maladjusted socialite version of myself alive.
“But I need you to stay out of my way.”
I tried to loosen her grip, but she wouldn’t let go, and I could see him now, a blur of rage and energy heading straight at us.
“Let me go and you live. Let. Me. Go.” I shoved her off me with a little too much force.
She stumbled and collapsed, but understanding seemed to sink in at last.
“Now run away as fast as you can.”
She scrambled backwards and got to her feet. She shot me one last desperate look before she started to run again, and I had enough time to turn around before I was hit dead on by a vampire charging for me at full speed.
Also By Sierra Dean
Secret McQueen
The Secret Guide to Dating Monsters
Something Secret This Way Comes
A Bloody Good Secret
Secret Santa
Deep Dark Secret
Keeping Secret
Grave Secret
Secret Unleashed
Cold Hard Secret
A Secret to Die For
Misfits & Mayhem
A Low Down Dirty Shane
Boys of Summer
Pitch Perfect
Perfect Catch
Dog Days
Autumn
Winter
Spring
Summer
Other Works
Chasing Kings
Sierra Dean writing as Ashley Bailey
London Part One (A Rebound Fling Story)
