Bite Me Tender

by Kate Lowell

  The air was suddenly heavy with a crackling prethunderstorm tension. Gram walked farther into the room, her eyes still locked on Levi’s. She pointed at Norris. “Go sit down, young man.” And to Norris’s obvious surprise, that was exactly what he did. At any other time, Levi might have laughed at the man’s expression, but not today. Instead he shook out his shoulders as if waiting on a fight and watched Gram closely. He’d found her hard to scent both times he’d met her—she was almost invisible to his nose now. That likely wasn’t a good sign.

  “I met Glyn in the parking lot,” she began, the look in her eyes cold as January. “I don’t believe I have ever seen him in the grip of such emotion. He was always such a passionless child, so addicted to his rules and his systems.”

  Her words froze him momentarily, his shock and disbelief almost palpable. How could she have known Glyn since childhood and not understood who he was? He’s not like that. He’s too full of emotion. That’s why he needs the rules. But that wasn’t a conversation to be held in front of the pack. “What do you want, Gram? Glyn’s not here; you know that.”

  “No.” She smiled, and it made the hair stand up on the back of his neck. This wasn’t the Gram he had met who pinched waiters and thought it was fun to play in traffic. This was a witch who thought someone in her family had been sinned against. And Levi was the sinner. He glanced back at the pack and saw what he expected. Some of them cowered against the wall, as far as they could possibly get from the confrontation. Some of them were obviously trying to work themselves up to a change. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

  The presence of pack coaxed his wolf back out into the open. It was as worried about the others as Levi was. “Back down!” he roared at them, and the wolf added its bass growl to his voice. For the first time in years, he was glad of his past, glad of the reputation it had given him. Every one of them, even the council, did exactly as he said. They lowered their eyes and dipped their shoulders, turning side-on to him and Gram where they stood and moving farther back in the storage room. He growled once again at them for good measure, then turned back to the witch. “If you have something to say, just say it. I need to find Glyn.”

  She sniffed at him, and he wasn’t entirely sure she wasn’t scenting him back. “Perhaps I don’t want you to find Glyn.”

  “That is none of your business. What is it you want?”

  Her lips pressed tight a moment, then relaxed again. “My grandson asked me to do what I could to help you succeed this month. Though it appears there is no further necessity.”

  Levi ground his teeth and took a deep, calming breath before answering. “Your grandson and I would greatly appreciate any assistance you can offer. This is going to happen. Glyn says so, and I believe him.”

  She sneered back at him. “Really? When this”—she waved a hand at the wolves watching warily from the other end of the room—“is all you can offer him as family? Perhaps he’s thought better of the whole thing. I knew I should have married him off to one of my cousins years ago.”

  It was those words that showed Levi how off-balance she felt in this situation. He’d known from the very first moment he met her how much she loved Glyn. She would never force a marriage on him. Not that Glyn would let it happen either. She knew that as well.

  Levi felt his hackles settle, and he held out his open hand, palm up in conciliation. “What can we do? I’ll do anything. I love him.”

  The silence stretched between them until Levi thought his nerves were going to trigger an early change. Eventually she sighed and stepped away.

  “Come.” She waved Levi toward the door. “I promised Glyn I would see what I could find in your futures and his. But I will not do it here in the presence of these mongrels.”

  “My office.” Levi opened the door and stood aside to let her go first. Before he left, he turned back to the pack. “Have your vote. Just don’t count on me going along with it.” That would give them something to think about. He closed the door behind him, echoing Glyn’s recent exit, and gestured to Gram to precede him up the hallway.

  Gram dropped her bag unceremoniously on Levi’s desk and rummaged inside it, the leather creaking painfully in a way that sounded almost alive. Levi sat in the chair and watched in bemusement as she proceeded to line up a dozen candles in a variety of colors, some small vials that he suspected held essential oils, sticks of something that reminded him of the sidewalk chalk the cubs played with, and some brown and wizened plant stems. He followed her movements as she carefully placed the candles around the room, stopping occasionally to examine the pattern they made and make some small adjustment. She dripped the oils in the melted wax forming around the wicks; the fragrance of rue and some citrusy scent that reminded him of oranges filled the room and made his nose itch. She drew strange symbols on the walls, the floor, his desk, the chair, and each drawer of the filing cabinet. The plants were crumbled and spread around on the floor, adding the Sunday-roast smell of thyme, and some other faint bitter-green scent, to the growing miasma.

  A thought occurred to him just before he began to sneeze. Mistletoe and wolfsbane. Shit. “Dammit, Gram, that’s not funny!”

  She looked at him, and he realized she wasn’t trying to be funny. Rubbing the last of the stems between her hands and spreading the crumbs as she came to him, she looked absolutely terrifying. His nose began to tingle, and he started to get out of the chair.

  “Not so fast, dog.” Gram shoved him back down again. “There’s not enough yet to do you harm. As you have not yet done great harm to my grandson. But understand, he means more to me than you. I will fill this building and the one you live in with wolfsbane and mistletoe, and the living plants will uproot themselves to hunt you in the street. You will die unable to scream and feel every moment of it.”

  She took his chin in her hand, nails biting delicately into the skin on either side of his mouth. “Why is it that you cannot change him? His blood should be no problem. He is sufficiently weak—and a male, weaker still.”

  Levi stared at her as the essences of the herbs worked on him, a low wheezing noise accompanying each indrawn breath. He could feel the muscles in his chest working against the creeping paralysis, the tingling of the poison crawling down his throat and into his lungs.

  Gram’s eyes were wide, staring at things he couldn’t see. She looked at him curiously for a moment, then released her grip on his jaw. “You are a strange wolf, Levi Signer. Not what I expected at all. Perhaps I should have been swifter to look more closely.” She stepped away from him, and Levi staggered for the door with all the speed left in him. Out in the hallway, his breathing eased, but he took a few more steps away from the door just to be sure. Crazy Gram. Had she really just tried to kill him, or was this some weird sort of girlfriend revenge on behalf of Glyn?

  He heard footsteps behind him and turned to see her standing in the hallway, her bag once more slung over her shoulder, looking perfectly normal.

  “The effects should wear off in a day or two. Until then…” She shrugged and smiled a not entirely pleasant smile. “What is it you young people say? You’ll just have to deal.” She moved as if to walk past him. “Have fun cleaning up your office.”

  Levi’s wolf was no happier than he was, and despite its fear of Gram, it raced howling to the surface when he called it. He figured he could use the moral support as he slammed Gram into the wall beside the door into the bar. “I don’t know what you think you’re doing,” he growled, close enough that he could feel the heat of his own breath reflected off her face. “But I am not something to play with. I love your grandson, and I’m going to get him back. So keep your damn broom out of my business, or I swear I’ll break it over my knee, and you’ll be riding it in a whole new way.”

  She stared back up at him, then smiled that dipsy Gram smile. “Ah, there you are. I wondered what Glyn saw in you. It’s good.” She poked a finger in the center of his chest and pushed, moving him just far enough that she could slide into the open space in front of the door
. She paused in the middle of pushing the door open. “You should let that poor animal inside you out to play more often. He’s getting soft. And weak. Wild things are meant to be wild.” The look she gave him just before the door closed sent a shiver down his spine.

  * * * *

  Gram met Glyn at the door as he tossed his suitcases out onto the front lawn.

  “Giving up?” she asked, leaning on the porch railing.

  “I need some space,” he snapped back, closing the door and locking it. “What do you want, Gram?”

  “Talk,” she said, following him down the stairs.

  “Then get in the car. I want to be gone before Levi pries himself off his new friend.” He tossed the bags into the trunk and slammed it shut. When he looked up, Gram was already in the car. Well, mark it on the calendar. He slid into the driver’s seat, started the car, and put his foot down. The little Civic coupe tore out of the driveway like a werewolf was after it.

  They drove without even the radio to break the silence. Glyn headed for a small hotel on the edge of town. Clean but inexpensive and not far from his office. It was as good a place as any to hole up and nurse his wounded pride.

  In the end, Gram rented the room for him because he had thrown his wallet into one of the suitcases in his hurry and couldn’t find it. She brought him the room key where he sat behind one of the huge potted plants in the lobby, his head in his hands.

  “You did actually pay for it, right?” he asked her. “I mean, you didn’t just Obi-Wan him and have him hand the key over, did you?”

  Gram crossed her arms over her chest and regarded him reprovingly. “Glynnie, if these are the kinds of friends you are hanging out with, I’m not sure I agree with you becoming a wolf anymore.”

  Glyn laughed and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Never mind. It was a joke. Thanks for paying for the room. I’ll pay you back as soon as I can get to the bank.”

  She waved that off and picked up one of his suitcases. “Come upstairs. We’ll get some takeout and have a chat.”

  Lovely. A chat with Gram. Just what he needed while his world crumbled around him. “I’m tired, Gram.”

  She smiled and wrapped an arm around his shoulders. “I know. Come along and let your gram look after you.” And Lady help him, he was tired enough that it sounded like a good idea.

  Inside the room, she handed him the phone book, with instructions to pick out whatever he wanted to eat. As he paged through the ads, she busied herself putting his clothing away in the dresser next to the bed. Nothing appealed to him, with his stomach churning the way it was, so he tossed the book aside and flopped limply down on the ugly green comforter.

  Gram finished putting away his things, then sat next to him and propped herself against the pillows. Glyn crawled over and laid his head on her belly, like he used to when he was small and his cousins had been teasing him for being mostly normal.

  “I guess I’m going to need to find a new apartment.”

  She rubbed small circles over the top of his back. “You could always come back to the coven.”

  Glyn shuddered. “I don’t fit in there, Gram. This is where I fit. With Levi.” He tightened his arms around her and sniffed, not caring if it made him sound like a five-year-old. “If he brings that little tart into his bed—what if he does and he decides I’m too much trouble?”

  “Well, I’m not sure throwing a fit and beating his friends up was a good choice, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

  Glyn lifted his head, startled. “How did you know?”

  She smiled down at him, fingers combing his hair away from his face. “Did you think I wouldn’t recognize your handiwork? I saw enough of it on your cousins when you were small.”

  He snorted and laid his head back down. “Well, it wasn’t like I had the power, or the control, to make them stop the way you would. Fuck.” He closed his eyes, and the scene in the storage room surged forward from where he thought he’d locked it away in his memory. “You know, that’s just what it felt like. Like no one wanted me. Even Levi.”

  He could hear her grin in her voice when she answered him. “Oh, he wants you. That wolf of his wants you too. But it didn’t like being taught manners, the spoiled thing. I suspect that it might prove a bit more agreeable the next time.”

  “You mean his damn wolf has been stopping this the whole time?”

  She shifted underneath him, and her hand resumed its circles on his back. “Not exactly. Levi is a good man. A very good man, strong and loving despite his anger, and he takes his responsibilities seriously. Not at all the kind that should be a werewolf.”

  “How does that follow? I’d think that’s exactly who you’d want as a werewolf.”

  She chuckled. “Except that your Levi feels bad that his wolf is locked up all the time. He feels bad that he can’t go back and fix all the things that happened in this pack before he took over. And he feels terrible about hurting you on the full moon.”

  “You’re shitting me, right?”

  She slapped his shoulder lightly, then went back to kneading the tension out of his muscles. “Such language! And to your grandmother, too!”

  “Pull the other one, Gram. Where do you think I learned it? It wasn’t from Mom.”

  She huffed at him, and they both laughed. Glyn continued, “So you think he’s been holding back because he’s afraid to hurt me? That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.”

  Gram tapped him on the nose. “He has reason. He killed a few when he was still new and learning how to change people.”

  “That was a hell of a talk you guys had.”

  “I didn’t just look forward. I looked back. Sometimes you need both to tell you where the key event lies in the timelines.”

  “Oh.” Glyn thought about that for a moment. “Shit, and I’ve been such a jerk.”

  “Blood tells. Do you remember the old stories I used to tell you?”

  “Like the witch version of Grimms’ fairy tales?” He rolled to one side so he could look up at her more easily.

  She nodded down at him, crossing her hands over her stomach. “Do you remember ‘The First Witch’?”

  He looked up at the ceiling and frowned. “Is that the one about the woman who died, but she refused to die because she loved the forest too much? And her will was so strong that she made herself a new body out of the living energy of the forest?”

  Gram nodded. “And you wonder why you’re—what is it you young people call it?—high maintenance?”

  Glyn arranged one of the pillows under his head. “I just thought that was from being your grandson,” he said and ducked when she swatted him. His skin tingled just as one of the lamps flickered and jumped to the side, leaning over to peek at them. “Oh, dammit! Go back to being inanimate!” he shouted at it.

  His grandmother patted his hand. “Don’t worry. I’ll fix that.”

  “Thanks.” Glyn curled up against her side and wrapped his arm around her waist again, wishing it were Levi in the hotel with him instead. The thought made him sad. Unless Gram really was a miracle worker, it wasn’t likely to ever happen.

  Gram fixed the animated lamp with a casual flick of her fingers and settled back to rubbing slow, comforting circles on Glyn’s shoulder.

  “Gram?”

  “Yes, Glynnie?”

  “Tell me about Granddad?”

  “What do you want to know?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know. Why you did it? Why you had a kid?”

  Gram ran gentle fingers through his hair. “He was a musician; you know that. I saw him playing at the beach one afternoon. And without a grain of magic in him, he saw me and knew me for what I was, and it didn’t scare him one little bit. The bravest normal I’d ever met.” She laughed and patted Glyn’s back. “I could be me, the real me, and it never bothered him. Sometimes I would try to force him to do something, or to lay a small spell on him, and…it was like dueling air. He would slip out of my grasp and stand there laughing at me as I stumbled.
And then he’d kiss me, and I’d forget what it was I had been trying to do.”

  “Mmm,” Glyn said, his eyes drifting closed. “Like Levi. Everything just slides off him. First time, outside of when I lived in the coven, that I haven’t been scared of what might happen if I let the witch out a little.”

  Her hand went back to combing his hair. “Maybe there’s more witch to you than I thought. That’s a very witchy need. Do you still want him, even after tonight?”

  Glyn lifted his head to look at her. “Lady, yes!”

  She cupped his chin and smiled at him. “And the other young man? Do you want him too?”

  Fuck. She knew everything. “It doesn’t matter. I live in the human world, and that stuff isn’t acceptable here.”

  “But you do want him?”

  Glyn rubbed his cheek against her hand. “I’m your grandson. I want everyone. But I won’t share Levi. And I don’t expect him to share me. So it’s best if I don’t go looking for temptation.”

  She smiled fondly at him. “That’s a witchy need too, not wanting to share. Lesser beings need to know their place and appreciate our attention. You need to think more about what you inherited from me.” She paused, stroking his hair away from his eyes. “Very well. Tomorrow I’ll tell you what I saw, and we’ll make a plan. Tonight you can sleep.”

  “Don’t think I can.”

  “Oh, you will.” Over his head, he saw her hand moving in a familiar pattern.

  “Dammit! You don’t need to put me to sleep like a child!” But he was yawning even as he said it, and his eyes were closing on their own again. He laid his head down on her belly and thought of one last thing he wanted to ask her. “Gram?” His voice was gravelly with fatigue.

  “Yes, Glynnie?”

  “You found the man that killed Granddad, right? What did you do to him?”

  He felt her go still underneath him, though her fingers kept up their stroking. “I did find him. Eventually. And I chased him into a pack of werewolves.”

  “But you said he’s not dead.”