Dark Secrets: A Paranormal Romance Anthology

by Colleen Gleason

  “The werewolf you murdered behind Valentine’s was Silas’s double?”

  Alex nodded.”

  A haunting tension spread across Polina’s body. This man was dangerous. Not just a murderer, a gangster. “And what do you intend to do with me?”

  “You’re immortal. I can’t kill you. But thanks to this”—he pointed to the dragon talisman around his neck—“I can incapacitate you, permanently. One thing Tabetha taught me is that a captured witch is better than a dead witch. No replacement. No weakening of your protective enchantments. I plan to keep you safe and sound for all eternity, a prisoner in your own realm.”

  She glanced to the gargoyles on her roof but in full sun and without her wand, they were useless.

  “Come, Hecate. Let me show you to your new room.”

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Valentine's

  “Good kitty,” Logan said, scooping Bonny up in his arms. “You used the litter box. Nothing chewed. What a good, good kitty.” He made kissing noises as he scratched behind Bonny’s ears. Digging into his pocket, he flipped a can of Yummy Vittles Chicken Flavor in the air and caught it. “Look what I picked up for you on the way home.”

  He carried Bonny to the kitchen where he dug out a can opener and, setting the cat down, twisted the crank to cut the food open. He tipped it onto a small plate. Bonny meowed and paced the granite island with her trademark irregular gate. Logan slid the plate toward the cat, who dug in without pause, then he retrieved the water dish from the floor.

  “So, what did you do all night while I was gone?” Logan scratched along the cat’s back starting at her shoulders. Bonny rounded her back as she ate, pressing her soft fur against Logan’s fingertips.

  “You’ll never guess what I did,” Logan said. “Spent the night at Polina’s. Yeah, it was weird. She’s definitely not human. But strangely, I don’t care. She’s not like anyone. I trust her. I even love her.” He folded his arms into a pillow and laid his head down on the counter. “How’s that for a surprise? I never thought I’d love a witch again.”

  Bonny finished her breakfast and proceeded to lick her front paws, purring like a lawn mower.

  “You like this stuff, eh? I’ll have to get more.” Logan looked at the can. “Huh. It says here I was only supposed to give you half the can. I guess this is your lucky day.”

  “Logan.” His mother’s voice made him jump. She stood in the great room, glowing like a lantern, her dark brown hair curled to her shoulders. The sleeves of her pale pink cardigan were pushed to her elbows.

  “Mom?” He hadn’t seen her in months. Not since the dream where she’d told him about how Polina had rescued him.

  “Polina needs you, Logan. She’s in trouble.” Her voice reverberated in the open space.

  He shook his head. “I just left her.”

  “Find Silas. You’ll need him.”

  “Silas? Does this have to do with the werewolves? The sun hasn’t even set.”

  His mother’s translucent head turned toward his front door. “Trouble.”

  One knock, then two. “Logan?” a man’s voice called through the door. “It’s Jonah. I need to talk to you about Valentine’s.” His voice was firm, matter of fact.

  “Do not go with him, my son. They’ve come for you. Do not take the bait.”

  Logan crept to the peephole and peered out into the foyer. Jonah waited. He wasn’t dressed for work, but the restaurant didn’t open for another three hours. The man raised his fist and knocked again. “Logan! It’s important, my man. You in there?”

  Maybe it was important. As much as he trusted his ghostly mother, he couldn’t abandon his restaurant.

  “Don’t,” his mother said again, shaking her translucent head.

  “I can smell you in there, Logan,” Jonah said.

  An odd thing for a human to say. Logan’s eyes narrowed. Jonah’s wavy dark blond hair was wilder than normal and the stubble on his face was almost long enough to be called a beard.

  He looked at his mother’s ghost again. She unraveled from the inside out and disappeared. Logan cracked the door. “You can smell me? I’ll have to change my cologne.”

  “Thank the goddess. You’ve got to come with me. There’s something I have to show you.”

  “What? Tell me.”

  Jonah balked. “It’s hard to explain. It’ll be better if you see for yourself.”

  “Try.” Logan’s gaze flicked to his threshold, hoping that Grateful’s enchantment was all it was cracked up to be.

  Jonah’s face fell. His hand shot out toward Logan in an attempt to push through the door, but his knuckles hit the invisible barrier between them, the magic rippling faintly purple.

  “What the fuck?” Jonah asked.

  Logan’s eyes drifted to Jonah’s shoulder, to a tattoo of a harvest moon with three claw marks ripping through it. The placement was high on his shoulder. Had the man been wearing his uniform, he would have never seen it under the sleeves. It was an odd tattoo, and he’d only seen something like it one time before.

  “You can’t come in because you’re a werewolf. Why are you here, Jonah? Full moon tonight. Don’t you have something better to do with your time?”

  Jonah’s smile melted into a sneer. “Don’t fight me on this one. You’re a nice enough human but there are bigger forces at work here.”

  “What kind of forces?”

  Jonah shook his head and took a step back from the door. “You made friends with the wrong werewolf, bro. It’s not you we’re after. You’re just the bait. Cooperate, and I’m sure the alpha will release you when it’s all said and done.”

  Logan remembered what Silas had said about the leadership of his pack. This was obviously some sort of pack war. Which reminded him of the dead man in his alley. “Who killed that werewolf they found in my dumpster?”

  “A simple case of mistaken identity. I thought he was Silas. That was his job, you know. He was a decoy.”

  Logan didn’t understand. Silas had said the man was a decoy for the alpha. “I’m not coming with you.”

  “I can wait here all day, brother, and if I’m still here when I shift tonight? Well then, we are going to find out what a three-hundred-pound wolf can do to your foyer.”

  “Wait, you shifted last night. Who managed the restaurant?”

  “Closed it down before sunset. You’ve got some angry customers.”

  “You bastard.” Logan slammed the door and locked it for good measure.

  “What do I need to do?” he asked the empty space next to his coffee table.

  His mom appeared again. “Find Silas. Show him how to get to Polina. Trust your heart. The time has come for you to make a choice. You have my blessing either way, my son.” She faded away. Bonny meowed at the fade-to-black routine, and continued to stare at the space where his mom had been.

  Was it too much to ask for his mother to provide him a few details? Maybe explain how he was supposed to get out of his own apartment with a werewolf watching the front door. But no. An explanation was not forthcoming.

  Not sure how much Jonah could hear standing in the hall, Logan texted Silas.

  Where are you?

  Just woke up. Recovering from last night.

  Trouble. Meet me in your office in twenty?

  What kind of trouble?

  The kind my dead mother thinks is important.

  Oh fuck. See you in twenty. Be careful.

  Logan bolted into his room and changed into mountain gear: jeans, steel-toed work boots, a T-shirt, and jacket. He packed some necessities in a backpack, then rushed to the window in his spare bedroom. There was a fire escape, although the thing hadn’t been used in decades. Logan didn’t even think it was technically operational. It was more the type of thing that had remained due to the building’s historical significance.

  Praying the rusty hinges would hold, he unlocked and pried the window open, then stepped out on the rickety piece of metal. At eighteen stories up, the narrow stairway to the alley be
low seemed indefinite. But nothing was going to keep him from helping Polina. Leaving the safety of his condominium, he gritted his teeth and started down.

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Away

  At the top of Silver Sparrow mountain, where the snow never melted and the air was thin from the altitude, Alex forced Polina and Hildegard into a dark cavern. Polina had never encountered power like the amulet’s. It wrapped around her, holding her fast, and caused a worrisome red glow around Hildegard. Alex dropped her and her owl in the back of the cavern. Finally free, Polina called on the metal of the mountain below her for help, but she couldn’t connect.

  “Don’t bother,” Alex said.

  There was no door or walls, but Polina discovered she was locked within a six-foot cube of energy. She could feel the magical force buzzing around her. It made her skin prickle. She banged on the invisible wall with her hands. “Let me out! Alex, you must know you can’t get away with this. Other witches will come. They’ll find me.”

  “Like they did before? They may come, but they won’t find you. Not here. Ironically, the same enchantment that masked my amulet will mask you. You know, when you refused to return Sam from your hellmouth, I knew what you deserved. This is your own personal hellmouth. Enjoy your eternal prison. Goodbye, Polina.”

  His footsteps receded with the light he’d carried. A bend in the cavern and they were plunged into total darkness. All went quiet aside from the howl of the wind outside the entrance to the cavern.

  “Can you free us?” Hildegard’s small voice asked in the darkness.

  Polina flattened her hands against the force that walled them in and shook her head in the darkness. “Not an ounce of metal in this enchantment. I can’t even make contact with the other side.”

  “I can’t see,” Hildegard confessed. “An owl can see in the dark, even with a new moon. In order to blind me, this place must have no light. None at all.”

  Polina backed away from the wall. “He means to bury us alive.”

  “Aye,” Hildegard said.

  Polina’s heart started to pound. The memory of the year she spent as a prisoner under Tabetha’s tree came back to her, and then being buried alive with Grateful in Washington. The walls closed in. There wasn’t enough air. She pounded her fists against the inside of the container. Screamed and then screamed again. Sprinting, she threw her weight against the wall. It didn’t budge.

  She jumped and punched the roof to no effect. Shoulders, feet, head, and hands were fruitlessly ineffectual. All she managed to accomplish was to bruise herself to the point of pain. Defeated, she slid down the side of the prison, buried her head in her hands, and cried. There was a flutter of wings, and then Hildegard’s feathers pressed into her side.

  “Don’t worry yourself, my lady. When Poe notices I’m missing, he’ll tell his witch. Grateful will come.”

  “Do you think she’ll be able to find us?”

  There was a long pause. “I don’t know.”

  A horrifying realization had Polina grabbing her stomach. “Logan expects to hear from me. What if he comes looking for me? What if they hurt him?”

  “He knows better,” Hildegard scoffed.

  “He most certainly does not,” Polina said. “I could hardly get him to leave this morning. For someone with only one life, the man is foolishly brave.”

  “You love him.”

  “Yes.”

  “A foul time to be buried alive.”

  “Yes, it is.” She stroked Hildegard’s wing. As she pulled her hand away, a clump of feathers fell off into her fingers. “What’s happening, Hildie? You’re molting.”

  Hildegard coughed. “I’m not sure. I feel strange. I feel…”

  Polina’s familiar toppled onto her side, her body suddenly rigid. Polina gathered her into her arms. “Hildie? Hildegard? What’s happening?”

  But Polina knew what was happening. Hildegard was dying. She could feel the life force drain from the tiny body in her arms. There was more than one way to torture and kill someone, even a witch who couldn’t physically die. It wasn’t enough for Alex to bury her alive. He’d ensured the loss of the one thing she had left, the living creature she’d shared the bulk of her existence with. He’d cursed the familiar she loved.

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Silver Sparrow

  “How long until sunset?” Logan asked, staring up at the sky above Smuggler’s Notch.

  “Four hours.” Silas had his gun drawn and was following Logan away from the marked path. “Are you sure this is the right way?”

  “Positive.” Logan plowed into the thick fog.

  “The smell is… indescribable.” Silas covered his nose with his sleeve and breathed through his mouth.

  “You called Grateful, right?” Logan asked.

  “Yeah, but she didn’t answer her phone. I had to leave a message.”

  “Fuck.”

  “I have backup on the way from the supernatural police force and the Lycanthropic Society.”

  “Should we wait? It sounds like this guy wants you dead,” Logan said.

  “No. We’ve waited long enough. Alex is dangerous. We’re going to find Polina and then we’re going to take him down.”

  Logan nodded. “Man, I wish just this once my mother was wrong and Polina is okay.”

  “Hmm.”

  Logan navigated between the trees. This was the way. As long as he kept heading uphill, he should run into Polina’s place, Aurorean House, eventually.

  “So, you and Polina, eh?” Silas asked. Unlike Logan, who had to watch every step, Silas navigated the woods like he was born to be there. As a werewolf, maybe he was.

  “Yeah,” Logan said. “I think she could be the one. I know it’s crazy, but I’ve never felt this way before. It feels, I don’t know, destined somehow.”

  Silas laughed. “Or it could be the sex.”

  Logan paused and looked back at his friend. “Excuse me? I’m over thirty years old. I think I can tell the difference between love and lust.” He hooked a hand around a birch tree and pulled himself up a steep incline.

  “Yeah, but that was human sex. This is magic vagina. Magic vagina can tame the wildest of beasts. Take Soleil and me. I thought we were forever, then she dumped me like a hot rock.”

  “Love isn’t always forever. I get it. But I intend to enjoy it while it lasts.” Logan ran a hand through his hair and continued up the mountain.

  It took almost an hour for them to reach the front yard of Aurorean House and ten seconds to notice the blown-out front window. “Whoa. What happened here?” Silas drew his gun again.

  Logan sprinted over the lawn and through the door that hung open on its hinges. “Polina? Polina?” He yelled her name and scoured the house. “Fuck. She’s not here. There’s glass all over the kitchen. He has her. I know it.”

  A preternatural growl came from the front yard, followed by two gunshots. “Silas!” Logan rushed to the door. A man had Silas pinned to the ground and was kneeling on his arms.

  “What the hell?” Logan charged at the attacker only to be stopped in his tracks by an invisible force.

  The man turned to face him. He looked a hell of a lot like Jonah, enough that Logan did a double take. There was a slight difference in the length of his hair and he was dressed differently than his sous-chef had been just hours ago. Two gunshot wounds gaped in his chest. As Logan watched, the holes filled themselves in.

  “Run!” Silas yelled.

  Logan couldn’t move from the neck down.

  “You must be Logan,” the man said with a wicked smile. “I’m Alex, alpha of the Bloodright pack. I believe you’ve already met my Zafka, Jonah. You’re in my territory.”

  “Why can’t I move?” Logan asked.

  “Oh, that. You should know, I’m not like other werewolves. I’ve evolved.” He lifted the dragon amulet that hung around his neck. Logan had seen a similar talisman around Tabetha’s neck once, a scarab beetle that accentuated her power.

  “Yea
h? Who gave you that pretty necklace?” Logan asked, voice thick with ridicule.

  Alex’s smile morphed into a sneer. “I should thank you for leading Silas here. See, I recently marked this realm as my own, and when an alpha assaults another alpha, like me, inside their territory, werewolf law says I have the right to take his life.”

  “Silas isn’t an alpha,” Logan said.

  Now a genuine smile slid across Alex’s face. “Is that what he told you? He’s always so careful to protect his position. Let me educate you. Silas Flynn has not only been the alpha of Fireborn pack since the day I murdered his parents, he’s also head of the Lycanthropic Society. And now, I have the legal right to kill him and usurp his position in his pack. Oh, and with the size of the pack that will give me, the Lycanthropic Society will have no choice but to install me as their new leader.”

  Logan looked at Silas, who had calmed beneath Alex, eyes dulling and staring right through Logan. At once he knew it was true. Silas was the alpha. A deep well of guilt rose within him, and his mind filled with questions. Why had Silas lied? Why had his mother told him to bring Silas when she must have known the truth? And worst of all, what had Alex done to Polina to mark her realm as his own?

  “I’m sure you two can come to some arrangement,” Logan said. “Maybe, if we all sat down and took a deep breath, we could work something out without anyone getting hurt.”

  “You’re thinking like a human. That’s not how werewolf culture works. Here’s what’s going to happen. I am going to take Silas here to my pack’s camp. As custom dictates, I’m going to chain him to the sacred totem of my people. Tonight, when the pack shifts, they’ll eat him alive. It’s how it’s always been done, and it’s how it will be.”

  Logan’s eyes shifted toward the human camp.

  “I hope you’re not counting on the other alphas to come to his rescue. They can’t. He gave up all rights to their protection when he crossed into my territory. Of course, he probably couldn’t smell my marking over Polina’s enchantment. That witch is the gift that keeps on giving.”