by Lynn Red
“I’m... not sure whether or not that’s a burn. Is that a burn?”
Jeannie shook out her shaggy mane and brushed it back out of her face before snatching a ponytail holder off my desk and helping herself. “Look, I’m not trying to insult you or anything. I don’t mean you’re a whackjob or you’re stupid or anything like that. It just doesn’t seem like you. You’re the careful one, you know? Anyway, he seems like a nice guy. Who cares if he turns into a dog?”
Before I could respond, she was weaving her way back to the front of the studio, humming what I think might have been a Billy Idol tune. I heard her say ‘white wedding’ in a sort of snarling, growly voice and I could have hit her in the back of the head with a spit wad, assuming I was in middle school and had ever managed to master shooting spit wads. And assuming she wasn’t at the other end of the studio.
I shook my head, wandered back over to my bench to start in on at least trying to get the damn statue back together.
Stay safe.
Jake’s words echoed in my mind. I still had no idea what he’d meant by them, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that there was some kind of weird prescience in what he said. I had no reason to believe he was anything other than what he’d said – your average, everyday werewolf. But psychic? Come on. That’s about as stupid as zombies.
I snuffed a laugh and opened my epoxy. The pungent, acrid aroma hit my nose with a force I hadn’t expected. “Pff! A nose full of that will clear just about anything out of your head. Except I guess huffing epoxy.” My head was already getting a little floaty from the glue. It had been so long since I screwed anything up in such a royal fashion that I’d completely forgotten the whole ‘don’t use this indoors without ventilation’ thing, and went over to pop the windows all around my studio open.
One by one I walked from window to window, turning the cranks that eventually filled the room with fresh air, the happy chirps of morning birds, and also some angry squawking from jays that I think had a brawl with some of the robins. A pair of squirrels was going back and forth on the power line that stretched between the back of my studio, and the rest of the warehouse buildings in the district, and then all the way across the bottom end of the Lesser James River. Joke was it was so small that it was “less” a river and more a stream.
I said it was a joke – I didn’t say it was any good.
The squirrels were going back and forth. One of them, cheeks puffed out with stored acorns, seemed to be the pursuer, and the other, who was very lady-like and demure, continually turned away from him, denying the poor guy the only thing in the world he seemed to want.
I found myself drifting a little, perhaps because of my situation, or perhaps because of the epoxy fumes. Either way, the result was the same – I was watching the squirrels with a dreamlike haze in front of my eyes. The whole world had a kind of Vaseline glow, like the cameras from soap operas. Everything was warm, and none of the lines were crisp.
As I gazed dreamily at the ill-fated lovers, the back of my head started to hurt a little. Nothing major, at least not as far as I thought. Something tickled my spider-sense though. “Jeannie?” I called out, hoping she hadn’t strapped on some headphones and started dancing around in her underwear.
We have a close office relationship, what can I say?
“Hey! Jeannie!”
My voice sounded like the world looked. Fuzzy, indistinct and a little less clear than it should have been, especially as it was coming out of my mouth. That feeling of floaty distance came back, this time stronger than it had been previously. I’ve had some times with epoxy, but this... this wasn’t epoxy.
“Jeannie!” I called again, getting more frightened with each passing second. “Can you hear me? Jean!”
I only called her that when I was serious. Still, there was no answer.
And my head was getting really uncomfortable. I went to college for three semesters to get an art degree, so I’ve had my experiences with feeling floaty. But this was—
A crash in the front of my studio made my stomach lurch. I knew I was hearing glass break, but the feeling in the back of my skull had gone from floating to throbbing, and I didn’t even feel like I was in my own body anymore. It was like I was watching as Dane kicked the door to my studio in, and had Jeannie slumped over one of his massive shoulders like a sack of scrub-wearing potatoes.
I screamed, but my voice didn’t seem to work.
I tried to run, but there was nowhere to go, even if my feet had responded to the messages coming from my brain. And then he had me, too, and all that floating, fuzzy warmth went cold. My skin prickled and my heart seemed to stop all at once. Punching at his chest as he grabbed me, all it made him do was laugh.
The world went black once, and then a second time. I fought, kicking and screaming, to keep myself in the here and now, but I couldn’t do it, whatever it was that invaded my studio, and my lungs, had a hell of a grip on me.
The last time I tried to scream, the only word I could manage to cry was Jake as the world faded once again, into a fuzzy, thick, mud-like blackness that matched the feeling inside my brain.
My body went cold, my fingers and toes rigidly stiff.
I felt the throb of a motorcycle’s engine against my belly, but then my nerves went black, just like my blinded eyes. Touch, smell, taste, it all faded into a brown-black malaise.
*
I opened my eyes God knows how long later, and the only thing I could think was that I really hoped there was nothing wrong with my epoxy, because that stuff represented the very last of the petty cash fund.
The sun coming through the thrown back drapes – very nice, thick, velvety ones that were the same color as a distant mountaintop – was so bright that initially I thought it must be a flashlight from a helicopter. I squinted at it, shuffled my feet and immediately fell straight onto my face, barely catching myself on my hands in the super-thick carpeting.
“Shackles,” I heard Jeannie say from across the room. “Welcome to the 1920s. Also, I retract my statement about trying to hook me up with Jake’s brother. I’m plenty into possessive and growly, but kidnapping is a little over the line.”
My head was still wobbly from whatever had knocked me out, but I was cognizant enough to connect a few simple dots. “He drugged us?”
“Drugged you,” she said. “Me he just sorta put a bag over my head and threw me over his shoulder. I gotta admit, you know how to find ‘em, Dilly.”
Somehow, Jeannie was smirking.
“What the hell are you smiling about?” I snapped, not really meaning to, but scared and panicking just a little. “We got kidnapped!”
She was shaking her head. I know she laughs and jokes as a defense mechanism, but sweet Christmas. “I was just thinking,” she said. “This is perfect. This is exactly perfect. The thing is, if I have to be kidnapped, I’m just glad I’m with you. Otherwise I’d be a nervous wreck right now. And also, I’m pretty glad that the person who kidnapped us is the rival of a billionaire heart-throb. It gives me some hope.”
I just stared at her, mouth slightly agape, and joined in the head shaking. “I mean, I guess you have a point,” I said. “And another good part is that we know where we are.”
“We do?”
“Yeah,” I said, “when Jake had me over the other night, I remember walking past this study. I don’t remember the thing looking like it could be locked down quite so securely from outside, but I remember it. Wait, that also means that...”
I went for my phone, which of course wasn’t in my pocket where it had been. Not even Dane was that stupid or brash.
“He said we could use the one on the table over there,” Jeannie said.
I looked at her quizzically.
“Oh. Dane. That’s his name, right?” she asked. “He took our phones and put the shackles on us, but said we could use the phone on the table. I’m not sure if it’s some kind of dominance posturing,” she trailed off for a moment. “Actually yeah, having been around him for m
ore than thirty seconds, I’m relatively certain that this is one hundred percent, testosterone-laden alpha male posturing. Is Jake like this?”
“I might be an idiot,” I said, “but even I wouldn’t fall for this sort of thing. A guy who goes to this length to seem awesome must have a dick the size of a gherkin.”
Jeannie snorted a laugh. “Well your fiancé did commission a statue of himself. And he does drive a fairly massive bike.”
“Right, but it isn’t loud. There are different levels of posturing. I think Jake’s is in the ‘lovably confident’ category and not the ‘comical douchebag’ one.”
Looking thoughtful for a moment, Jeannie nodded in agreement. “And he doesn’t have a faux-hawk. That’s something.”
We sat there for a second, both looking from each other’s face to the window, and then around the room. Slowly, the reality of what was going on sunk in. My mind started racing, and I wished for a little bit of whatever had been in that epoxy, just to keep me from getting quite so intense.
Beads of sweat were all over my forehead and my upper lip. It could have been my body reacting to the drug, but it was also the first reasonable reaction I’d had since waking up and worrying about fixing a statue’s arm. I chanced a glance in Jeannie’s direction to find her chewing on the corner of her top lip, her tell.
“We’re going to be fine,” I said, feeling like I needed to do something to comfort her. She didn’t show emotion very often, but I knew deep down she felt things way more than most other people. I knew it, of course, because I did too. “Jake is... this is his house. The guy who drove me here, Barney, he must be around somewhere. And anyway, Dane doesn’t want to kill me—kill us. He wants to take me before Jake can.”
Jeannie furrowed her brow. “What, you’re some pawn in a weird mating game? Hasn’t that struck you as a little demeaning?”
I thought about it for a second and then admitted that, no, it hadn’t. “Made me feel sort of special to be honest.”
“Yeah, I can see that. But on the other hand, what if this is just some kind of weird power play between these two? Some kind of... I dunno, challenge? Whichever one gets a mate first, they get to be the alpha?”
“How do you know so much about all this stuff?” I asked her. “I had no idea you were an expert on werewolves, or vampires, or zombies or witches.”
“Zombies are dumb,” she reminded me. “And I’m not. I just read a lot of weird magazines. I never really believed any of it until it became pretty obvious that we were dealing with a real-life lycanthrope. And I’m still not sure about vampires. Although I saw an episode of House M.D. where someone had apparently turned into one.”
“Porphyria’s just a blood disorder,” I said, doing anything to distract my mind from the very distinct possibility that Jeannie had just casually lobbed my way.
What if it was just a stupid game? Two alpha assholes fighting over some hapless woman, winner take all and damn the consequences? And what if this kidnapping was just Dane’s way of playing the game where Jake’s was to be suave, caring, stupendous at kissing my ladyparts, and really good at making scrambled eggs?
Two sides of the same coin. Two approaches to the same problem.
My stomach sank into my toes, and then felt constricted by the shackles on my ankles. God, it all made so much sense. How one of them showed up in my life and then a day later the other shows up, all threats and posturing.
“How could I have been so stupid?” I asked, my voice hollow in my throat and echoing in my head.
“You’re right,” Jeannie said, a confused look on her face. “Porphyria is just a blood disease. What are you talking about stupid?”
I shook my head, pushed myself to my feet and peered out the window. The sun stung my eyes, which could have been either the drug or a mark of how long I’d been unconscious. Either way, I felt like the heat from it was welling up in my belly, exactly the same way the heat from Jake’s fingertips had made me feel when he... Another tremble, a quake, spread from the base of my spine to the tips of my fingers. I knew I couldn’t think about that right now, or I’d go crazy from worry, or paranoia, or both.
“Nothing,” I said, trying to ward off the feeling of impending doom that was bearing down on me with the tenacity of a locomotive. “Just yammering. I was stupid for getting taken, stupid for falling into all this in the first place. It was all just a stupid dream.”
“Now that is stupid,” Jeannie chided me.
Before she could really get into the list of reasons why my logic was incorrect, a groan from an adjacent room struck my ears. “What was that?” I asked in a hushed hiss. “Did you hear something?”
“Master... Somerset,” a weak, feeble voice said again. “Where are... you?”
“That, I heard,” Jeannie said. “And it is creepy. Is this some kind of prison? With, er, lots of wood paneling and really expensive carpet and crown molding?”
“It’s his mansion. Jake’s, I mean. Or the family’s. I’m... honestly I’m not really sure who owns the place.”
A heavy, thick thud sounded from the massive oak doors at one end of the room, and immediately both Jeannie and I sat bolt upright. She looked like she was going for something she kept in her pocket, and I just didn’t have the first idea what the hell to do.
“Son of a bitch,” I heard Dane grumble, before a key turned in the lock, and then he kicked the door open.
“Ruined my entrance. But it kept you from trying to run, so win some and lose some, I guess. Oh!” he got very excited when he noticed I was standing. “Just the mate I’ve been waiting to see. Or should I say ‘prize’?”
What must have been an innocent question from Jeannie suddenly came right back. The knot in my stomach, the lump in my throat. What if this was all some kind of cruel game and I was just the idiot caught with my pants down, in the middle of it. How the hell did I get myself into this? I thought it was just a date, just a weird guy wanting a statue, and then I was sitting there, kidnapped by some guy’s brother after I accepted a marriage proposal?
Standing had gotten to be too much.
In one entirely graceless motion, I let my knees relax like I was going to plop down in a chair. Only, the chair didn’t exist, and my ass hit the ground hard enough to make me bite my tongue. I let out a wild yelp, and then some words that probably didn’t make a whole lot of sense. I mean, they didn’t even make sense to me, so I’m sure they sounded like a squid with a mouthful of spaghetti to anyone listening.
Dane cocked his head to the side. “Wait,” he said. A wide, used car salesman grin spread across his face as he widened his stance and put both of his hands on his hips. When he did that, it emphasized how thin his waist was compared to the massive bulk of his chest and his legs. “You mean to tell me that my brother hasn’t...”
The look on my face, partway between confusion and terror, caught his attention. For a moment, his eyes flashed and the grin that crossed his face was almost childlike in its giddiness. “Oh, my,” he said, invoking memories of my grandma Gertrude. “Oh he didn’t, did he? Oh this is wonderful! I never imagined I’d get to claim you and rat out my brother for the scumbag he really is!”
It was the exact same way I saw my brother act when he had his seventh birthday party at a Chuck E. Cheese, and someone fell off the slide. Just pure, unadulterated joy coursed through the big man with the slicked hair. I noticed then for the first time that part of his hair – a shock on the front left side of his hairline – was starkly white, which sort of glimmered amid the sea of inky black. Whatever he was inside, the outside of the man was absolutely gorgeous.
And I’m not above admitting that I hated myself a little for having those thoughts. Just like the white splat of hair on Dane’s head was adrift in black, so were my feelings. On the one hand, I couldn’t stand that I would even consider anything that this murderous, kidnapping lunatic had to say.
On the other? Ugh, it just made too much sense not to be true. I held my breath until it burned
the fibers of my lungs like hellfire. “Who are you?” I snarled at Dane, surprised at my own ferocity. “What gives you the right to kidnap me and my friend and mess with our lives?” I took a step closer to his smug, obnoxious ass. “Huh? Got some kind of rivalry with your brother that you can’t let go?”
I stuck a finger in his chest, which he looked down at with a dismissive grin. “Who am I?” he asked mockingly. “What I am is the more important point. You’re inferior, you’re a weak, pathetic human, and I am lycan.”
The way he said that word – lycan – got my cheeks burning. I hated him so badly at that moment that if I could have killed him, I probably would have. He snatched my finger off his chest and bared his teeth. “You’re nothing, Delilah. Your friend is nothing. You’re just pawns in a three thousand year old game of politics.”
Jeannie and I exchanged a glance. “Okay,” she said, “so you’re some kind of furry James Bond villain who is planning some kind of world domination? And your brother is the good-guy version of you?”
Ignoring what she’d actually said, Dane turned those stormy eyes in her direction. “This one, I like,” he said. “This one I really like. The mouth on you, girl, I could do without, but I like the way you think.”
With that lightning speed that I’d grown accustomed to, Dane suddenly had Jeannie by the neck. “Your mouth has gotten you in trouble before, hasn’t it?”
“Plenty of times,” she croaked, as he squeezed. “And... gotten me out... more.”
The look on the wolf’s face was so blasé, so uninterested in everything going on, that he really could have been a Bond villain. He had the detached cool of someone who just didn’t give a shit – or at least, didn’t anymore. I’d seen the look on his face before. When you’re trying to prove you don’t care, or you’re too cool for whatever’s going on, it was that look.
I knew it so well because I’d worn it for so long.
Seeing that, I knew he had a weakness, even if I couldn’t nail down exactly what it was just that moment. There were cracks in the armor of cool, though, and that was the most important thing.
