Tales of the Golden Judge: 3-Book Bundle - Books 1-3

by Hart, Melissa F.

  “What are you saying?”

  “I'm saying that you're going on about having the Icefang's lover. You don't have anything, nothing, nothing he wants, nothing he's coming for.”

  “You're…”

  “Absolutely right,” she said. “What, did you see us touch and fuck last night? Did you see him take me into the woods earlier? We might have mated there and given each other pleasure, but we are not lovers, you monster. I mean nothing to him.

  “You're wrong!”

  “No, I'm right,” she countered, her voice shockingly cool and controlled even in her own ears. “The Icefang is a judge, one of those who embody the law to his people. I'm a woman who doesn't even change her skin. We met last night, we had pleasure of each other's bodies, and now you think that he is crazed enough with romance to come looking after me? You fool.”

  The man stared at her for a long moment, and she could hear nothing but the wind that whistled through the trees. There was a rustle of leaves, a crack of a twig, and even as she waited for his response, she tried to twist her hand out of the rope loop. It was harsh against her skin, and she knew that if she survived, if she was lucky enough, she would have terrible scrapes on her wrist and her hand. Of course, that was if she survived this at all.

  The man roused from his stunned calm to a torrential fury in the space of a moment. Faster than Violet's eyes could follow, he straddled her chest, crouching over her like some kind of demented carrion animal. His eyes burned into hers and his long bony hands wrapped themselves around her throat.

  “Foul, foul, foul,” he snarled in her face. “Foul thing, you're wrong, don't you dare defy me. I'll kill you just like I killed your wretched family...”

  “Go on and do it,” Violet said, cold and remote from the whole situation. “No one will care. No one will mourn. One more empty act in an empty, empty life.”

  The man shrieked loudly enough to make her want to cover her ears, and there was a terrible moment where his hands tightened on her throat. Her vision began to darken under his terrible grasp, but less than a heartbeat later, he was gone as if he had never been there.

  Gasping with surprise, Violet twisted her head to look, and she found that all she could see was a broad back that she recognized instinctively.

  “I thought you could smell a lie, Wormdeath,” Carson said calmly. His voice was perfectly level, but Violet could see the way that his shoulders shook and the hard clench of his fists. He was furious, and it was only the force of his will that kept him in check.

  “She's lying,” he said, addressing the man who was climbing to his feet slowly. “She is... everything to me. She is precious to me, and you're right. Of course I came here for her. I would have come for anyone you had taken, but for her, I would walk through hell barefoot.”

  “She's your whore then,” Wormdeath said flatly.

  Violet flinched from the word even as she continued trying to work her hand free. Close, she was so, so close.

  Carson's laugh was flat and ugly. “You're a dead man,” Carson said calmly. “You were from the moment you thought you were worthy of laying hands on her.”

  Carson's form blurred, and where there had once been a man, there was a wolf, and the balmy night air turned positively frigid. The wolf leaped at the man, and now she could see Wormdeath for what he was. The man's mouth opened, revealing two long and sharp teeth, stained brown.

  Vampire, Violet thought in amazement, and then the two men were joined in battle so furiously she didn't know where one ended and the other began.

  They hit the ground like a rolling tornado of snarls, and Violet worked more frantically at the slowly loosening loop of rope

  It gave enough that she could sit up, and now she could see how dire the battle was. She already know that Carson was terribly strong, and that he controlled an ice magic that was his legacy as one of the judges of his people. Despite his powers and his strength, the vampire Wormdeath was an even match for him.

  She held her breath when the vampire lunged at Carson's throat, only to have Carson deflect him with a snap of his powerful jaws. Carson's ice powers, wielded like a surgeon would a scalpel, came to the forefront when blades of ice started to dance through air, spinning in deadly arcs and swiping at the vampire that the werewolf fought. No matter how deeply they cut, however, they did not draw blood. Violet was terrified to see Carson lose ground.

  She didn't dare cry out. Instead, she worked on freeing her hand from the rope. It was slow work, and she could feel the rope get slippery with her own blood. It was perhaps the blood that finally did the trick. Her hand pulled loose, and because the rope ran under the stone bench, her other hand was freed as well and she sat up.

  Violet didn't have time to get to her feet before the vampire rose above Carson, his powerful arm back for a devastating blow. Carson squirmed out from underneath it, but even when it struck him glancingly, the blow threw him across the ground to the bench where Violet crouched in fear.

  To her shock, the white wolf was drenched in blood from a dozen wounds. When she caught his yellow eyes, there was pain and fury there, but there was also terror. The wolf leaped immediately back into the fray, but his movements were slower, and to Violet's horror, the vampire had slowed not at all.

  They were circling each other more carefully now, but Carson was slowing down more and more. The loss of blood left him wavering on his feet. When the vampire knocked him down, he was barely able to defend himself from the man's tearing nails or dreadfully sharp teeth.

  With every bite, the vampire seemed to grow stronger and Carson weaker. Violet watched the pitched battle with tears in her eyes, but she wasn't waiting for nothing. She was small, she was far frailer than either of these men, but she wasn't defenseless. She felt for the small knife she had carried strapped to her wrist for her meeting with Carson what felt like years ago.

  Carson thrust the vampire away from him one more time, each exchange more drunken than the last, and finally, she caught his eye. She pointed at herself frantically, and she knew that if it had been less desperate, he would never have agreed. The only indication that she received that he understood her message was a slight nod.

  From somewhere deep inside him, he pulled on a last reserve of strength. He surged forward, more blades of ice spinning through the air, and the vampire fell back under his onslaught. The maddened creature was driven back step by painful step, and each one cost Carson dearly. He took slashes to his face and his chest, and it looked to Violet that he was more red than white.

  She gripped the knife firmly in her hand, gritting her teeth so hard they hurt. She would only have one chance, and that chance was costing Carson blood and pain.

  Finally, one final lunge toppled the vampire against the slab where she knelt. For a single moment, the wind was knocked from the monster, and his face looked up at her, eyes wide.

  She aimed for those terrible ancient eyes and with strength and precision that she didn't know she possessed, she drove her knife straight into one. A moment behind her strike, one of the blades of ice stabbed the other, and with a single anguished scream, the vampire dissolved into a pile of thick dust, the smell of autumn leaves even stronger.

  “Oh god, oh god, Carson,” Violet babbled, sliding off the slab and going to the wolf. When she got her arms around his neck, when he seemed to realize that it was over, Carson returned to his man's form, resting bloodied and weak with his head in her lap.

  His face was smeared with blood, but he still managed to reach up to touch her cheek with his trembling hand.

  “How could you?” he muttered, and that was all he managed before he lolled his head on her lap. For one terrible moment, she thought that he was dead, but the rise and fall of his chest was strong.

  She reached into her pocket for her phone, still there in spite of everything, but before she could dial, there was a tiny tug on her sleeve. She looked down and squatted on the ground next to her was an enormous brown rat. She was too tired to shriek, and if
she had moved, Carson would have hit the ground. Like any city dweller, she had a healthy respect and aversion to the city's vermin, but this one looked clean, inquisitive, and even helpful.

  “Are... are you one of his people?” she whispered through cracked lips. “Can you help us? Please, please, if you can, help us. Help us.”

  The rat twitched its whiskers, and in a moment, there sat a plump woman dressed in a sharp brown suit. Her hair was the same sleek brown of the rat’s, and her small black eyes were bright and sharp.

  “What a mess he is,” the woman tutted, “but sure and all, I've seen worse. Give him here, girl.”

  Violet automatically slid back, and though she expected the woman to make a few mystic passes with her hands, the woman simply went to work with the skill of a trained nurse. She pulled bandages and gauze from her shoulder bag, wrapping the wounds that could be wrapped and applying pressure where they could not.

  Violet bit her lip, staring at the woman's work and wishing she could do something. When she felt another brush at her arm, she almost yelped, but then she stared.

  Sometime after the woman had started work, the place had filled up. There were a dozen people sitting around now, silent except for the shuffle of feet on grass, and to a single one, they had all the sharpness and avid glance of the woman who was working on Carson so effectively.

  Rat tribes, she remembered Carson saying, and she turned back to him.

  Finally, the woman turned away from him, and though she looked serious, there was still a sense of satisfaction on her face.

  “It'll be touch and go for a while, but he's tough, perhaps one of the toughest judges I've ever seen. I think he'll live.”

  Instead of raising a cheer, the rats around her leaned in close and whispered to one another. It was, Violet thought, a rodent-like chitter, and it was as joyous and satisfied as a cheer would have been.

  “Abe, Maise, and Crawford, come here with that stretcher, we need to fetch him away.”

  As three of the younger rats scurried to obey, the woman in charge turned to look at Violet.

  “You've done him a great service today, Violet,” the woman said, and Violet blinked.

  “You know my name?”

  “We know many things,” the woman said dismissively. “But you must go home now.”

  “What? I can't, he—”

  “He has a hard fight ahead of him, and because of a debt we owe him, we will not leave him here to die. You can rest assured of that. Once he saved one of my sons from a terrible death, and I have not forgotten. However, our homes and our tunnels are secret. We cannot allow you to go.”

  “Please...” Violet choked. “Please, I have to know that he's all right.”

  “He will be.” The woman's voice was unforgiving, and finally, Violet had to give way.

  “Tell him...” She choked on the words that she was going to say, and finally, she shook her head. “Tell him that I wish him the best,” she said finally, and the woman nodded.

  The rat tribe bundled Carson up like a package, and in the growing dawn light, they took him away. In less time than she would have thought possible, they all disappeared, and she was alone.

  For a long time, she sat still and watched the graying down sky, and finally, when she was certain that her limbs would support her, she got up and made her way home.

  ***

  After one of the most exciting and confusing nights of her life, Violet's apartment looked small and simple. It was like a part of a life that she had left behind, and now that she knew about the textured and varied world of the shapechangers that lay underneath it all, her own home looked flat and dull. It was like she had come back around to looking at the front of a stage set again after being allowed to walk behind the scenes, and now nothing was the same.

  She thought about the events that had transpired. The vampire murderer who had killed her parents was dead. He had been turned to dust, and with him went one of the driving forces of her adult life. The urge to find the killer who had robbed her of her parents had driven her forward and made her fierce, and now that it was gone, she was still those things, but it was different. She was different, and she felt as if she needed to learn to get back on her feet all over again.

  Violet disarmed the program that would have sent her description of Carson and the evidence that she thought pointed to him as the murderer, and after a moment, she deleted the pictures entirely. Then, methodically and with as much deliberation as she could manage, she went through and deleted all of the information that she’d had on the murder. She was free. It was hard to believe, but she was.

  Instead of being strong enough or awake enough to celebrate it, she went straight to her bed, where she fell straight into a thin and troubled sleep. When Violet opened her eyes, it was dark, and she stared out the window at the night sky.

  Somewhere out there was the most beautiful and powerful man she had ever met. He was fighting for her life, but he lived in a world that she couldn't enter, couldn't ever join. As she stared out the window, her tears dripped down her face like rain. She stood as still as a stone, because stone could not be hurt, but finally, as the hour dragged on and exhaustion pulled her under, she went back to bed. There would be more days to mourn, other times to cry.

  ***

  When she awoke the next day, she was rested, but there was still a gaping hole where her heart should be. Violet tried to scold herself about not having known Carson less than a week ago, but as her mother had always said, the heart wanted what it wanted, and she was left with the pain. She carried it with her, and it almost felt comfortable, like an ache that reminded her of something wonderful.

  She threw herself back into her work. There were plenty of people to see and things to do, and she took on more and more cases, trying to keep herself busy. Throughout it all, she refused to send her cousin Vicky Campbell anything except the tersest note saying that she was fine. She couldn't take gentleness at this point, couldn't deal with it at all. She knew that her cousin would coo over her, comfort her and love her, but that wasn't what she needed. She needed to work, she needed to feel productive, and if she also needed a certain white wolf, well, she knew she would never see him again.

  Things continued like that for her for more than a week. Her heart felt like a lead weight in her chest, but she could move, she could walk and she could talk.

  Then one night, there was a knock at her door, and when she answered it, her heart started to beat again.

  “How could you?” Carson asked, as if no time had passed at all. He looked as healthy as he had before the fight, with only a pink scar stitched on his chin revealing that anything had happened at all. He held himself easily, and it occurred to her that either werewolves healed quickly or the rat tribes knew some kind of truly impressive magic.

  “I don't know what you mean,” she stammered, and he reached up a hand to her cheek, stopping just short of actually touching her. The hand hovered, and there was a moment of tearing longing on his face before he pulled his hand back with a sigh.

  “Will you allow me in?” he asked, and numbly, she stepped back. He seemed to overwhelm the small space she lived in. Seeing this man in her own space made all of her adventures seem realer than she knew them to be, and she shook.

  He glanced at her, and in a single moment, he caught her up in his arms, holding her tight. “Oh darling, have you held this in you since that night?” he whispered.

  “I don't know what you're talking about,” Violet said softly. “I don't understand.”

  “All of this rage, all of this fear, this is still in you? Let it out.”

  “What?”

  “Let it out,” he repeated. “You're safe now. This is the place to let this go, to put it away so that you don't have to look at it any more.”

  She winced, thinking of her fears and her nightmares. “Please,” she said. “I don't know what you want...”

  His eyes, which she could now see were an electrifying blue, narrowed, and
then he simply looked sad. “If you don't know what I want, be assured that you will know in just a little while. First, however, you need to answer my question. How could you tell Wormdeath such a thing?”

  “What things?” she asked, confused. When she looked up, there was a genuine grief on his face.

  “You told him that I didn't care about you,” Carson said softly. “You told him that you were nothing to me.”

  She drew away from him, suddenly overflowing with the rage and the pain that she had kept all bottled up from that night.

  “What was I supposed to think?” she cried, her voice going higher and louder. “We met in a goddamn parking lot, and the first time we had sex, it was in the woods with our clothes on. We'd known each other for less than two days. What am I supposed to think about that?”

  He stepped closer to her, and there was nowhere for her to run. She was suddenly so tired and frantic that she nearly struck him, but instead, she allowed him to clasp her shoulders in his hands, drawing her close to him.

  “You should have thought that I saw you, and I wanted you. You should have know that suddenly, nothing else would do. Wolves fall in love fast, and we are famous for our passion. Some call it a flaw, but the wolf who allows it to lead his life is a lucky one indeed.”

  Violet licked her lips nervously, but now as she looked up at Carson, she felt a deep peace at the edges of her mind. There was rest and calm, and she would do anything to get it.

  “Do you allow your passion to lead your life?” she asked him softly.

  For the first time, he smiled. “You were there in that parking lot with me,” he rumbled. “You were in the forest with me, and you doubt that? I don't need to spend days or weeks or years wondering if I am doing the right thing. All I know is what I want, and from the moment I saw you and the moment I smelled you, I knew that you were what I wanted, from that moment until the end of all my born days.”