by Hettie Ivers
Sloane’s radiant energy proved harder to resist. Sloane was family. From the moment we’d met at sixteen, I’d sensed we shared some deeper cosmic destiny that defied the fact we came from worlds that couldn’t have been more different. She’d accepted me with a love that was absolute, and I’d fancied myself her sworn protector throughout our college years, knowing she was too sweet and too sheltered to recognize the darkness that lurked in the hearts and minds of most men. But I’d failed her this time. And still she loved me unreservedly, calling to me with her tinkling laughter and sparkling, indefatigable optimism, tempting me away from thoughts of rifles and revenge, luring me farther from the pull of gravity and into the unknown where she and her husband, Garrett, and my beloved, Marcus, were rapidly flying.
Reluctantly, I followed, letting their energy carry me higher until the earth was but a speck of lint suspended in space below. As we joined other light orbs, I began to feel even more weightless. Boundless. I saw Marcus, Garrett, and Sloane’s energy balls burn brighter than before. I felt their elation, their uncompromising joy. I tried to let it in—to feel what they felt, to become the oneness that they were morphing into.
But another energy source caught my attention. There was a dark energy swirling amid the orbs of light. It looked lost. Out of place amongst the celebratory beams of light energy dancing about. It was searching for something.
How I knew a random, dark celestial matter was looking for something was beyond a living mind’s ability to fathom. But my soul—or whatever this was that was left of me—simply knew.
As it got closer, I realized it was so much more than dark energy. There were shades of grey. Color, too. And within the slivers of color were the faintest streaks of light.
They were barely noticeable at first, but the longer I observed them, the more those faint streaks fascinated and called to me until they appeared to burn brighter than all that was dark and ugly within the black orb. Glimmers of hope. My existence on earth had often been sustained by less.
And I knew. It was looking for a way back. Just like me. It wasn’t finished yet either.
I perceived its overwhelming yearning for revenge, as well as its long-harbored hope for salvation. But more than that, I sensed at its core it was looking for something to nurture it … someone to love it and believe in it despite the darkest shadows marring its very nature. It needed … a mother. And it had chosen me.
Or maybe, we’d chosen each other.
Marcus and I had been trying to conceive, hoping to start a family shortly after our wedding set for next month. Thoughts of being the mother I’d always wanted drew me closer to the curious dark orb, even as vibrations from Marcus and Sloane’s energy grew stronger, more anxious to keep me with them.
But I was captivated by the dark energy the closer I drew to it. It was as powerful as it was needful, bursting with a strange brand of magic beyond anything I’d ever encountered. An inexplicable enchantment surrounded and saturated it, rendering it a nearly indestructible force of being.
And yet, it was nothing without a host. It needed a willing vehicle through which to return—someone strong enough to care for it, while sensitive enough to nurture the faint light within struggling to emerge.
If I followed Sloane, Marcus, and Garrett, I knew I’d find peace and certainty. Whereas fear, anger, unprecedented confusion, violence, and struggle lay within the dark, mystical matter poised before me. It was a road that would lead me back into the arms of danger—and likely far more peril than ever before.
But it would lead me back.
Powerful as my will had always been, the bait of hope amid the worst stack of odds was a drug I’d never had strength enough to decline. It called to me like no other poison. And it was those thin rays of hope I glimpsed in the dark orb that tipped the scales in its favor, drawing me closer and closer while all of the other light orbs merged and shied away from it.
The energy of Marcus and Sloane grew frantic behind me. I could almost hear their human voices again, telling me this wasn’t my fight, pleading with me to walk away from this challenge—as they had so many times in life. I heard Sloane’s sweet, loving voice of reason, urging me to understand that I couldn’t save everyone, that it wasn’t my responsibility to change the world.
But the hope within the dark matter believed otherwise. And I did, too. Together, we could.
I focused my energy on Sloane and Marcus, imploring them to understand what I needed to do. Marcus’s energy was devastated, yet resigned. I felt waves of his love wash over me as slowly he let me go.
Sloane emanated an odd mixture of wistful yet mirthful comprehension as her inner light observed mine for the last time. She knew me too well. She knew I wouldn’t have the strength to leave her. I felt her final thoughts and emotions reverberate through me like a weary sigh as she relinquished me to the dark matter with a forceful shove of gravity that sent us both barreling back toward earth like a lightning bolt.
“If you have to go, go now. And Avery? Make it hurt.”
It was the oddest sentiment she’d never spoken. So not a Sloane thing to say or think. And I knew it would both mystify and delight me to the point of watery giggles every single day that I lived on without her and remembered.
* * *
Regaining consciousness within my wrecked body was far more painful than I’d estimated. Everything hurt. I felt the sting of flesh melding together, skin and tendons knitting and healing themselves within my torn throat. Deep inside, my cervix burned as if it’d been grated and doused in saltwater, even as I felt a foreign, welcome magic healing my abused vaginal canal.
I heard my heart pumping, slowly at first, then rapidly, as a life-giving surge of adrenaline shot through my veins once more. Experimentally, I flexed my fingers, leisurely grazing over the dirt and leaf litter they rested upon, until a feral grunt to my right sent my eyes flying wide.
I was alive. And viewing the world in Technicolor, judging by the scenery that assaulted my senses as I stared up into the changing fall foliage above against the backdrop of a bright blue sky.
I’d never been praised for possessing patience, and not even experiencing death was meant to alter that, it seemed. Because it took every ounce of forbearance I possessed to slowly test my limbs and arise as stealthily as possible once I saw, from the corner of my eye, the animal shift into its full humanoid form again and abandon the cooler of food he’d been rummaging through in favor of sniffing and licking at Sloane’s dead body.
The wind picked up, swirling leaves and rustling branches. In my heart I imagined it to be the spirit of my departed best friend, helping to conceal the sound of my movements, because her lifeless body provided whatever further distraction was required, enflaming the beast’s temporarily abated lust once more and causing him to claw at her clothes and tug her shorts to her ankles.
It seemed to take an eternity before I’d reached the tent that stood a scant few feet away. And I hardly allowed myself a breath until I had Marcus’s AR-15 nestled against my right shoulder. A rage blacker than anything I’d ever felt was the only thing that prevented me from screaming and vomiting my guts up when the werewolf mounted and began to violate the prone, motionless body of my best friend.
I was a crack shot. I could’ve blown the mongrel’s head off the first time I fired. But that was more than it deserved. The first bullet I fired into his shoulder, startling and knocking him off balance more than injuring. I knew it from the way stunned yellow eyes flew over his shoulder to glare at me in disbelief.
“Get off of her!” My throat felt raw. The order emerged garbled.
He snarled. I fired again, taking his ear clean off and disfiguring the side of his face. He howled and leapt from Sloane, spinning around to charge me.
The next bullet blew through his right knee, causing him to stumble sideways when he pounced in my direction. The fourth hit his left thigh, sending him flailing to the ground at my feet. And the fifth … the fifth shot took out his privates.
With great effort, I forced myself to pause, to breathe in and out through my nose and remember my own rules of engagement. I needed information first. Then I would make it hurt.
Unfortunately, I would discover that crazed, rogue werewolves weren’t the easiest source for gaining useful intel on the species. Eighteen minutes and twenty-six bullets later, the most critical things I’d gleaned were (1) I was going to turn into a werewolf in seven days, (2) I wasn’t likely to survive that transformation, and (3) werewolves were damned tiresome to kill.
By the time I was certain he was dead, there wasn’t much left of him that hadn’t been riddled with bullets. But I figured it was enough for a team of scientists to begin their process of dissection and discovery. It would have to do. Because there was no way I’d have ever allowed that thing to live. And by the time I found my phone and dialed 9-1-1, my entire body was shaking something fierce and I’d thrown up the contents of my stomach. Twice.
I held it together while I told the authorities everything that had happened, carefully omitting several key parts—such as the part where I’d been raped by a rabid animal, died, met up with a dark orb, and then came back to life with the assistance of said magical orb as it healed my torn neck and vajayjay.
I mean … I’d just handed them a monster straight out of Grimm’s Fairy Tales on a silver platter. No need to pique their interest to the point that they felt the need to dissect and investigate me next for being some kind of walking dead creature. I left out the interrogation part of my story as well, letting them think I’d simply gone nuts unloading the rifle in self-defense.
Cautious as I believed I was being, the greatest mistake of my life had already been made.
And no, it actually wasn’t getting killed by a werewolf and coming back to life harboring a soul attached to a magical, revenge-greedy dark matter that would soon become my unborn werewolf fetus.
As it turned out, my greatest mistake of all was alerting the authorities to the incident in the first place. I might’ve fared better in the years that followed had I simply tattooed a giant red target on my forehead and ass.
THE END
(For now)
COMING NEXT …
NO LIGHT
Werelock Evolution, Book 4
An ominous prophecy …
Being a single mom is tough. It’s even tougher when there’s a nasty prophecy floating around about your kid being a purported abomination fated to destroy the human race.
With the supernatural world on the hunt for her only child, Avery sees no alternative but to adopt an offensive, preemptive approach: Hunt the hunters and take them out first.
An immortal Casanova …
Centuries old and still living his life on the edge like the formidable werelock and self-assured player he’s always been, Alcaeus long ago dismissed the notion he’d ever find his true mate.
And after surviving the nightmare of parenting the preternatural hellion who was his orphaned baby brother and future Alpha, he certainly never envisioned he’d one day be lusting after a badass single mom on the run harboring a well-prophesied Rogue werelock for a daughter—on the brink of entering her pre-teen years.
With the fate of humankind hanging in the balance and the supernatural war of the century underway, cultures and parenting styles will clash.
Loyalties will be tested. Long-held ties will sever; packs will divide.
And a cocky playboy will need to dig deeper than the easy charm that carried him through four centuries to prove that sometimes the absence of light is simply the void between two beings destined to collide.
Excerpt from NO LIGHT
(Werelock Evolution, Book 4)
Hellfire, things were looking dicey. He hadn’t even broken a sweat, and I was still panting on the ground.
I jumped to my feet and took a step back. “Who are you?” When all else fails, keep the enemy talking.
“Told you, I’m a friend.”
I retreated another step. “Right. Where I come from a friend is someone you know, not a scary stranger you just ran into in a parking garage fight.”
“What?” He made a mock pouty face. “I get no brownie friend points for saving your life, Avery?”
“How do you know me?” I asked before my rattled brain had a chance to realize my mistake. “I mean … how do you think you know me?” I stupidly corrected, knowing from the smile growing on his face that he wasn’t buying any of it. “You have the wrong person. My name’s Cynthia, not Avery.”
“Well, Cynthia,” he played along, stalking closer and extending his hand straight out to me in offering, while I continued my awkward retreat, “it’s a pleasure to meet you. My name is Raul.”
I didn’t take his hand. It took the last shreds of my floundering dignity and the logic that it wouldn’t help me anyway to stop myself from continuing to back away.
“How’d you do that? How’d you kill him? How’d you survive those bullets?” I pelted questions at him. “What do you want from me?”
Wow. I so needed that silencer. For my mouth.
“May I have your backpack, please?”
“Huh?”
“Your backpack, Avery.”
“You want to rob me?”
He laughed. There was a warmth and sincerity inherent to the sound that I’d not expected as it echoed through the parking structure. “Nah, silly,” he teased as if we truly were old chums. “I want to program my contact information into your phone in case you need to reach me.”
“For serious?” I squawked. “You did all that because you wanted to give me your phone number?”
“Will you just hand me your phone already? Please?”
With fumbling fingers, I rummaged through my new backpack and managed to locate my new cell for him. Then I stood staring like a mouth-breather in headlights as he thumbed in his information.
“There. I’ve programmed myself under both ‘Scary Stranger’ and ‘Friend’ so however you choose to remember me, you’ll have my digits.”
I accepted the phone back with a bewildered, “Right.”
“If you need me, I’ll be a phone call away. Anytime. Anywhere. Understand?”
I knew I should just shut up and be thankful he hadn’t killed me with that silent mind death trick yet, but my willful tongue often had designs of its own.
“How’d you move without moving before?”
He opened his mouth to reply then paused, before answering, “Let’s just say I’m a student of Darwinism.”
Clearly. “Caught that much. Why’d you help me?”
“Because some would say I’m also an active proponent and purveyor of Darwinism.”
I shook my head. “A true proponent of Darwinism would have left me to fend for myself. Natural selection and all that.” Why was I arguing this point?
“Look, Avery …” He exhaled, and a deep, disconsolate chasm creased his brow, making him suddenly seem far older than his otherwise youthful appearance. And making me curious to know the hidden pain that had etched its way into this man’s soul.
“I know who you are and what you’re hiding. I understand better than you do the odds you’re up against, because I know the rogue hunter who’s coming for you.” He hesitated. “The one your friend Wyatt told you about. Milena Caro-Reinoso.” His features contorted as he forced out the last three syllables of the Alpha female’s hyphenated surname, saying “Reinoso” like it was a disease. “You need to understand, Sloane is in grave danger.”
My pulse sprinted at the mention of first Wyatt’s and then my daughter’s name—at the realization that this powerful stranger knew far, far more about us than he should have. I knew he heard it, but I schooled my features nonetheless.
Muttering a dismissive, “Thanks for the tip,” I turned my back on him and headed for the rental car. Whatever his game was, he didn’t want me dead. Least not yet. Or I would’ve been dead already.
“I’m the only one who can stop her,” he called out from behin
d me. And then he was standing smack dab in front of me, blocking my path.
“Jesus!”
“Milena’s not like the other rogue hunters you’ve taken out,” he proceeded calmly, while I stood clutching my backpack to my racing chest. “You won’t win this fight. Not alone.”
I couldn’t suppress the growl that escaped me at his rude assertion. “Are you finished?”
“Don’t let your pride dictate your daughter’s fate.”
“Pride?” Oh, that got my canines out. Claws as well. “My pride has nothing to do with this. This is about me protecting my child from hunters and supernatural opportunists alike. I will die before I tell you where she is, so either kill me or get the fuck out of my way, pretty boy.”
He stepped aside, making a sweeping, gentlemanly gesture with his arm for me to pass.
I did. Maneuvering around him as quickly as possible.
“You’re still limping from a fall you took a full ten minutes ago,” he pointed out, raking my last nerve as I fished through my backpack, willing the car keys to materialize. “I took eighteen bullets to the chest five minutes ago, and I’m standing here without a scratch.”
“You want a fucking ribbon?” I threw back over my shoulder. Ass.
He laughed. “I want you to understand that we’re on the same side.”
Where the fuck were those keys?
Ever wonder how Lupe came to be the boss of Alcaeus?
What’s her story?
Did she and Al ever hook up?
Find out more about Lupe’s history and her relationship with Alcaeus in this 20K word novella, Girl from Jussara.
Available on
Amazon
GIRL FROM JUSSARA
Werelock Evolution Series Prequel
What if your “soul mate” was a monster? Would you embrace your destiny? Or chop his head off in his sleep?
