by Avery Flynn
“Red,” Liam whispered.
“Don’t you even.” She fought the urge to run at him and slap the horrified look off his face.
Liam gulped, but didn’t look away. He was a shitbag liar, but he wasn’t a chicken, she’d give him that. “As far as I know, it’s a love spell—that’s what the family lore said”
“But... ”
“But... ” Liam finally looked away from her. “According to the family stories, it expires after three days.”
She laughed. The only other choice was dropping to the litter-covered concrete in an aching heap. He didn’t deserve to see that he’d broken her. So she pushed out the hollow, empty sound until there wasn’t any air left in her lungs.
“Red, please... ”
She held up her hand, thanking the fates that it didn’t shake. “This is an idiotic plan. The King is going to find you, torture you and then, after you turn into a full-time wolf, keep you on a chain in his backyard. And if you ever break free, you better not even cast a shadow on my doorstep. If you do, I’m going to chop off your fuzzy head and mount it on my wall with all of the other trophies.”
Turning on her heel, she forced her feet forward, away from him and what could have been. The farther she got, the more the spell’s thumping in her head grew from a dull ache to a full-on knee-knocking beating that made her wish her skull would go ahead and explode already. She didn’t really care anymore.
Chapter Eight
Most of the time spells expired at either sundown or sunrise, and Red had spent the day cradling her aching head and hoping that this one ended when the sun went down. No such luck. She’d watched the sun set hours ago while downing enough painkillers to knock a unicorn on its butt and nothing changed.
Lying on her bed back in her apartment above Granny’s Pub and imagining all the brilliantly mean things she wanted to say to Liam, it took Red a second to realize the pounding wasn’t only in her head. Someone was at her door. Liam? The sound stoked an ember of hope that she’d done her best to stomp out. If it was Liam, her head wouldn’t feel as if she’d just gone three rounds with a band of sledgehammer-wielding goblins.
“I’m coming,” she yelled and immediately regretted it as the effort to make the sound slammed her already throbbing brain against her skull.
Hunched over and shuffling, she made her way across her spartan apartment to the door. She flipped the peephole cover and reared back from the visual assault of plaids and polka dots, glitter and gauze that could only be one person: Granny. Red rested her clammy forehead against the wood door. Fates preserve her, she did not have the strength for this right now.
“I know you’re there, chickadee, so you might as well let me in,” Granny said through the door.
“I don’t feel good.” And she wouldn’t until the spell wore off and her life returned to normal. Sunrise couldn’t get here fast enough.
“Don’t I know it, so does everyone in The Woods. Hell, I heard all about it while in the middle of the floor show at the cutest little drag club in Atlanta. You’re lucky I had my travel-sized flying carpet with me or you’d be screwed six ways to Sunday. Open up.”
There really wasn’t a point in trying to resist. Granny had been the closest thing Red had ever had to family and she wasn’t going to stop knocking until Red opened the door.
“It’s about time.” Granny swept into the room, still wearing her stage clothes, exaggerated makeup and sky-high heels that completed her ultimate drag queen ensemble. She strolled across the room like she owned the joint—which technically she did—and sat down on the well-worn couch with the all the grace and regal bearing of someone born into royalty. “I came as soon as I heard. Tell me everything.”
Joining her on the couch and curling up into a ball with her head on Granny’s lap, Red told her surrogate parent the whole story.
“Chickadee,” Granny cooed. “When all of this is over you are going to have to scrub down that booth with disinfectant. No offense.”
Sitting up, Red took in a deep breath and reached for the bottle of painkillers. “None taken.”
Granny snatched the bottle and dropped it down the deep valley of her impressive cleavage. “There’re only a few more hours until dawn. Once that sun comes up, your head will feel better but it’s gonna take a while for your heart. Trust me, first heartbreaks are rough.”
Desperate to end the throbbing in her head, Red considered going after the painkillers, but one look at Granny’s I-don’t-think-so expression and she put her hands back in her lap. “It wasn’t a real love spell.”
“Doesn’t matter.” Granny shrugged. “Your heart got involved just the same, otherwise when you found out the truth you would have dragged his muscly tattooed hot bod back to the pub and saved yourself a day of painful misery until the spell wore off, instead of putting as much distance between him and you as possible.”
Heartbeat ratcheting up to match the constant boom-boom-boom in her aching head, she lashed out. “You’re full of shit.”
“No. I am full of knowledge, that’s why everyone calls me Granny. We all know it’s not because of my age, seeing as I’m only... ” She coughed, the sound eating whatever fake age she had chosen this time.
“It’s not love.” Red’s cheeks burned as she fidgeted with a loose string on the couch. It was true. It had to be true. All it had been was a momentary magical indiscretion—nothing more.
“Maybe not, but it could be—someday. That’s what these spells do; they lower your inhibitions and open you up to the possibilities. They can’t make you feel anything you don’t feel already. Maybe you should give this sexy wolf another chance.”
Before Red could answer, a loud screech sounded, drawing their attention to the window. It was nearly pitch dark on the other side of the glass, but there was no missing the hot-pink dragon staring a hole into her.
“What in the wide world of wizards is that?” Granny asked, her hand pressed firmly against her chest.
“That is Harold.” The sight of him was all it took to drag her away from the edge of admitting something she didn’t want to acknowledge and right back into the familiar territory of being really pissed off.
Granny got up from the couch and sashayed closer to the window. “What does he want?”
“Don’t know. Don’t care.”
Harold tapped on the glass with one long acid-green nail. Red flipped him the bird.
“I think he wants you to open the window,” Granny said.
It was good to want things. She wanted to go back to the time before she’d ever laid eyes on Liam MacTíre and his ass so fine you could bounce quarters off it. “Not gonna happen.”
The dragon narrowed his beady little eyes and plumes of smoke puffed out of his snout.
Granny backed up. “We’re not insured for dragon damage, you go talk to him before he lights up the whole building.”
She didn’t want to. Every instinct in her roared for her to stay the hell away from that window. But Granny would kill her if Harold the hot-pink dragon went all medieval on the pub and turned it crispy.
Red opened the window. “What’s wrong? Did Liam get trapped in a well?”
Harold hovered right next the open window and jerked his chin toward his back.
The lying dirtball Liam had sent his pet dragon to fetch her. Crossing her arms, sticking out one hip and putting enough sass in her voice to play the part of the best friend in a poor excuse for a TV show, she responded in full bitchy glory. “Oh no. There is no way I’m going with you.”
More smoke from his softball-sized nostrils.
This time even she backed up. “This is blackmail.”
The dragon opened his mouth wide. Red braced for the worst. But instead of shooting flames at her, he spit out the Caladbolg sword. It clanged against the floor at her feet.
Her heart jerked to a stop before revving back up to warp-speed levels. Liam’s future depended on that sword. If he didn’t have it, then something had happened to him.
She sprinted to the window, not giving a damn about the dangers of dealing with a ticked-off dragon or the ever-increasing pounding in her head. “Where is he?”
Harold turned to the side again and motioned toward his back.
“He got captured didn’t he?”
The dragon gave a quick nod.
“I knew it.” Few things in the world felt as good as vindication, but this time being right didn’t do a damn thing to make her feel better. It did just the opposite.
“Are you going to go?” Granny asked.
Red didn’t weigh the options. She didn’t consider the angles or calculate the odds. There wasn’t a need. In her ripped, shredded and torn heart, she’d known what was going to happen next the minute she’d spotted the flash of hot pink outside her window.
“I’m going.” She picked up the sword. Its weight threw her off balance and she stumbled forward a few paces before righting herself. “If anyone gets to collar that wolf, it’ll be me.”
“Here, you’ll need this if you’re going to take on the king.” Granny held out a red cape. Unlike the ones downstairs in the pub, this one was enchanted and had saved Red’s life more than once when she was a young girl trying to make it out of The Woods alive. “It’ll save both of you this time.”
She sure as hell hoped so. Red wrapped it around her shoulders and jumped out into the pre-dawn sky.
Chapter Nine
Shouts and gunfire echoed outside the Royal Flush Toilet Emporium warehouse. Blood dripped from where a bullet had grazed Liam’s upper arm and his thighs burned from maintaining a crouched position for the past ten minutes. He wanted nothing more in the world than to bust out of here and find Red, but that wasn’t going to happen until he found a way to get past the two redwood-sized armed guards standing on the other side of the crate where he’d sought cover.
Liam had been in worse pinches in his life. There was the time he and Max got caught six miles under water right outside of Atlantis’s protective bubble and their oxygen tanks had malfunctioned; or the quick escape from a six-story window with a grown-up Goldilocks, who’d failed to mention the apartment wasn’t hers. But this was different. Without Red by his side, invisible jackhammers were drilling a hole into his skull, making it hard to think or move with his usual finesse.
He’d like to blame the love spell for the bone-marrow-deep ache in his chest too and the way Red stayed on the edge of his thoughts, but he couldn’t. The pain tying his lungs in knots was the result of his own stupidity as was the love-sick obsession. Now he was stuck with his back literally against the outside wall of a wholesale toilet warehouse and his entire life was about to go down the shitter unless he got the fuck out of here and found Red.
He had to persuade her to give him a second chance. Somewhere in the past few days, he’d gone from wanting her to needing her in a way that had nothing to do with the love spell. If he couldn’t make things right with Red, reversing the MacTíre family curse didn’t really matter so much anymore.
The Redwood twins were restless. They’d been ordered to stand post by the warehouse’s back door, but being away from the action had made them fidgety. All the tell-tale signs were there. The near-constant trigger checks. The barely restrained steps forward anytime a shot sounded. The lack of cocky shit-talking natural to every soldier of fortune ever hired to pull a trigger. They were on edge and prime for the picking.
Liam redistributed his weight onto the balls of his feet and rolled his shoulders. The king had warded the emporium against magic, making most of his arsenal unusable, but unlucky for the Redwood twins, he’d always enjoyed a little bare-knuckle brawling. He withdrew a dagger from its ankle sheath and stood. The magic promising the serrated edge would land true wouldn’t work here, but Liam hadn’t trained long and hard with various knives just so he could depend on magic.
“What’s that?” The Redwood twin on the left pointed at the pre-dawn sky just starting to turn pink.
Liam looked up. The air had turned wavy directly above them, like the horizon on a steamy hot day. Harold. It had to be. But instead of a hot-pink dragon, a rope appeared. It uncoiled in its fall and hit the concrete with a solid thwap a few feet from the twins.
In the next heartbeat, a figure in a red cape slid down the rope. The cape’s material billowed around her, protecting her from view, but Liam didn’t have to make visual contact to know who it was.
She landed without even the smallest of sounds and flicked back her hood. Red winked at the guards. “Hey fellas, wanna have some fun?”
Liam rushed around the side of the crate, dagger in hand. There was no way he’d let her battle these two on his behalf. “Can I join in?”
Red slid on a nasty pair of brass knuckles, their gold color gleaming in the dawn’s first light. “Only if you can keep up.”
She didn’t wait for the nearest guard to make a move. Her fist plowed into his gut with enough force to make him bend in half a fraction of a second before her knee came up, crashing into the guard’s nose. Blood spurted everywhere.
Liam’s inner wolf approved, scratching at the surface in hopes of getting some action. He wasn’t about to disappoint.
He landed a solid elbow hit to the other guard’s ear, making him reel back as he clutched the side of his head. Holding tight to the dagger’s hilt, Liam slashed the guard, drawing blood that soaked through the now torn edges of his T-shirt.
The guard roared and charged Liam, hitting him with bone-cracking power and taking them both down to the pavement. The dagger flew from his grasp. The guard landed a trio of vicious hits to Liam’s side. He retaliated with a head butt hard enough to make the other man’s eyes cross. Taking advantage of the moment, he flipped the guard over and let loose with a right hook to the jaw that knocked the man out cold.
Sucking in a deep breath, Liam jumped to his feet and ran toward Red in time to see her do a spinning kick move that knocked the second guard’s feet out from under him. He landed hard and his thick skull bounced against the concrete. The guard’s chest rose and fell, but his eyes were shut tight. The Redwood twins were down for the count.
Gut twisted with worry, Liam rushed to Red. The guard had been twice her size. Sure, she’d knocked him on his ass, but the guy had to have gotten in a few good licks. He reached for her, wanting nothing more than tactile confirmation she was okay, but she held him off with a don’t-even-think-about-it glare. There wasn’t a mark on her. “How?”
“Unless it’s about us getting out of here, don’t even talk to me.” She put some distance between them before pressing a button on the nearly undetectable communication unit in her ear. “Anytime you’re ready.”
He hobbled over, a bit more wobbly than his usual strut, but then again, getting tackled by one of the Redwood twins would do that to a guy. “Still pissed, huh?”
“What gave you a clue?” She withdrew a wide ribbon from one of the cape’s many inner pockets and tied the satin material around his arm where a bullet had grazed him, staunching the bleeding.
He covered her hand with his. “I’m sorry.” It wasn’t the first time he’d ever said the words in his cursed but otherwise privileged life, but it was close.
“Yep, you sure are.” She pulled her hand away. The vein in her temple pulsed an erratic beat, but she kept her big-eyed gaze away from his face.
His thumb grazed her cheek before stopping at the edge of her chin and lifting it up. The guarded look in her eyes undid him. This was his fault. He’d done this to her, but she was still here. That had to mean something. “So why’d you come after me?”
She sucked in a deep breath as her gaze flicked to the left. “That damn dragon threatened to burn down the pub.”
All he wanted to do was kiss her. Fuck the guards around the corner. Forget the Caladbolg sword he’d given to Harold. Never mind the rest of the world. He just wanted her. “That’s the only reason?”
She blinked rapidly and turned to stare at him. “The only one that matters.”
Slapping his hand away from her chin, Red closed herself up again, blocking him from seeing whatever was going on behind her damp eyes. She stepped around him.
Space. She obviously needed it. And if that was all he could give her, then so be it, no matter how much seeing her without touching her killed him.
He shoved his hands deep in his pockets. “So what’s the plan?”
She motioned toward the gate. “We walk out the front.”
And she’d thought his plan had been idiotic? “What about the twenty guards armed to the teeth standing in front of it?”
“Don’t worry about them.” A fireball exploded on the complex’s eastern side and Red smirked. “Harold’s a fabulous diversion.”
###
Right in the nick of time before Red forgot about everything else and fell back into Liam’s arms, Harold lit up the east side of the Royal Flush Toilet Emporium. If she could, she would have kissed every hot-pink scale on his head for saving her in more ways than one. Temporary as it may be, the love spell had gotten under her skin and was making her edgy and unsure—vulnerable. Exactly what she’d always fought against being.
“Come on.” She grabbed Liam’s hand. “That’s our cue.”
They sprinted toward the front gate. Halfway there, the ground rumbled under their feet. She sped up but it was too late. A pair of green ogres flanked the King, the three of whom blocked her and Liam’s path to the gate. The green ogres may have been only hip high to the five-foot-nothing King, but they were as deadly as a runaway train. Teeth sharpened to spikes, hands powerful enough to crush diamonds and breath so nasty it made plants wilt, the ogres specialized in personal security for the hard-to-secure.
