Raising Hell: A Hellcat World Novel (Hellcat Series Book 7)

by Sharon Hannaford

  The car wasn’t in sight, but Trish knew when she reached the right house. Brendan’s scent was strong here. She’d caught a brief whiff of it as she left the convenience store, and now it was easy to track. The house was set in a slightly overgrown garden, which stood out from others in the area by not having any children’s toys strewn about outside. Did the neighbours know or suspect what went on inside? she wondered. Did they care? She followed the weed-framed pavestones up to the front door and paused, giving herself a moment to breathe and beseech her wolf once more to keep her cool.

  She pressed the buzzer and waited. Brendan’s voice was annoyed as he growled something Trish couldn’t quite catch; it sounded like he was grilling the woman about who might be at the door. Trish pressed the buzzer again. More curt words and then quick, heavy footsteps. The door was flung open, his eyes already narrowed in suspicion, but his face carefully schooled into a charming smile.

  “Yes?” he asked as he looked down at her.

  Trish stayed quiet. It took almost two seconds before recognition widened his eyes and surprise made his mouth drop open.

  “Patricia?” he said slowly. Confusion chased away the affable smile, and his eyes slid from her face to scan the darkness behind her. “What are you doing here? How did you find me?” Perhaps he remembered that she had an older brother; little did he know that Trish had no need of his protection these days. The younger woman’s face appeared over his shoulder, hanging back uncertainly with fear-enlarged pupils. Trish made her second snap decision of the night.

  She put out a hand and shoved Brendan backwards inside the house. Caught off guard, he stumbled back, giving Trish room to enter the house and slam the door shut behind her. Before he could regain his balance, Trish shoved him again. This time his butt hit the carpet, and rage instantly darkened his expression. He tried to jump to his feet, but Trish was too quick for him. And she wasn’t even trying. She planted one booted foot in the middle of his chest and pinned him to the floor.

  “And here I thought I was the only special one,” she said casually, though her heart was pounding and her nails were digging into her palms. “That you only took your loving ministrations out on me. But it looks like you do it to all the women you woo.”

  He twisted away from her foot and lunged to his feet. A sick smile had replaced the rage. “What’s wrong? Did you miss it, Patricia?” he asked smugly as he adjusted his clothes. “Have you realised that it’s what you need?” The scent of his sudden arousal almost made her gag as her wolf bared warning fangs.

  “You truly are revolting.” Trish dropped the cool, icy façade, the one inspired by the way Gabi would approach a creep like this, and let the revulsion show on her face. Taking a step closer to him, she lashed out with one foot, catching him squarely in the groin. As he doubled over, his face turning purple, the scent of his pain replaced the arousal, which her wolf found immensely pleasing. “That should cool you off,” she ground out, ignoring his open-mouthed expression of shock as he cupped his bruised balls. She grabbed him by the front of his shirt and turned to the other woman. “Which way is the kitchen?”

  Frozen with wide-eyed alarm, the woman didn’t seem to hear her.

  Trish dragged Brendan a few steps down the hall. “The kitchen?” she asked again as she neared the young woman. This time she raised one shaking hand and pointed to the door on Trish’s right. A small diamond ring on her left hand caught the light, and Trish’s teeth clamped together.

  “What’s your name?” she asked as she manhandled Brendan through the door and into a spacious, older-style kitchen. She threw Brendan away from her, but with as little force as she could. He landed in an ungainly heap on his butt for the second time in as many minutes.

  The woman followed, but hung back at the door, her eyes still wide as she chewed nervously on a fingernail. If she’d had a cellphone, Trish guessed she would already have reached for it. Unlucky for Brendan that he’d probably taken it from her or refused to allow her one.

  “I’m not going to hurt you. I’m only here for him,” Trish told her. She took a moment to catch the woman’s eyes and hold them calmly. Brendan tried to move and she waggled a warning finger at him without breaking eye contact with his fiancée. The bruises on her face were clear in the bright light of the kitchen, some a mottled green and yellow and some fresher, purple and blue.

  “Amanda, my name’s Amanda,” the woman said at last.

  “This woman’s crazy, Amanda,” Brendan growled. “Get my phone and call the police.”

  “Amanda.” Trish smiled, ignoring Brendan. “I’m Trish.” Amanda could easily have passed for Trish’s cousin, possibly even a younger sister. Her dark hair was a little curlier, and her face was a little more heart-shaped, but eyes, height, colouring and body type were almost identical. Brendan clearly had a type.

  The man in question moved again, trying to pick himself up off the floor.

  “Stay where you are, or the next time I kick you, you can be sure you’ll never have the chance to be a father,” Trish warned him.

  “Maybe I should just leave,” Amanda said, beginning to back out of the doorway.

  “No, I think it would be better if you stayed,” Trish said. “I know you’ve seen some of what Brendan is capable of, but I think you should know the true extent of his accomplishments.”

  “Patricia,” Brendan began, his voice laced with wheedling, a tone she remembered well from the early days, “we left things on a bad note—”

  “Shut up, or I’ll break your jaw, the same way you broke mine.” Her voice was cold but calm as she spun back to him, allowing just a little of the wolf to show in her eyes. He instantly shrank back from her, his eyes wide, veins popping out in his neck. Trish turned back to Amanda, wanting to reach for her and pull her into the kitchen, but knowing that would only scare the younger woman more. So instead she retreated a little to set her spine against one of the kitchen counters, leaning back and forcing her body to relax. She was now in the perfect position to keep an eye on Brendan while facing Amanda.

  “I know exactly where you’re at.” Trish broke the tense silence as her gaze settled on a fist-sized dent in the cupboard door across from her. “He is so charming in the beginning. It’s such a whirlwind romance. He’s so attentive and appreciative.” The memories of the early days of her relationship were crystal clear in her mind. She had missed so many warning signs. She knew what real love was now, what being in a healthy relationship truly meant, bringing the wrongness of her first relationship into stark relief. It had been years, but she remembered so vividly how it had been with Brendan. “No one has ever treated you better. You feel like a princess, like the centre of his world. You are on such an emotional high that you ignore the warning bells; it’s all moving too fast, this is too intense, this is too good to be true.”

  She allowed her eyes to meet Amanda’s. She knew she’d hit the mark; Amanda’s mouth had become a grim line. But Trish was a long way from finished. “If I had to guess, I’d say you don’t have much family and few close friends. Early conversations between you and Brendan would’ve revolved around who you were close to and who you could turn to.” Her words seemed to hit Amanda like physical blows, and the girl’s eyes were suddenly glistening with unshed tears. “And those few you did have, he quickly found ways to separate you from. With glib words like ‘they’re jealous of us’, or ‘they don’t understand true love’, perhaps ‘they just don’t want you to be happy’.” She hated the desolation marring Amanda’s expression, but she couldn’t turn back now. “Then came the put-downs, the sly words designed to shred your self-esteem, and the clever ways to make you feel that you were extraordinarily privileged to have someone who loved you.”

  “I loved you, Trish. You were the one—” Brendan began.

  “Shut. Up. Last warning,” she said through gritted teeth, letting the wolf step forward as she turned her head a few degrees to glare the pathetic excuse for a man to silence. He subsided, but she sensed he w
as getting antsy, preparing to try something stupid.

  She turned her attention back to Amanda, knowing nothing he tried would help him. “The first time he hit you, he was oh so apologetic. He didn’t understand how it had happened, he didn’t mean to hit you that hard, it would never happen again.”

  A muscle ticced in Amanda’s jaw.

  “And even now, after it’s happened so many times, you still think there’s hope, that he’s truly remorseful and that he will try to change.”

  Amanda’s arms had crept around her torso, as though trying to hold herself together.

  Trish went on: “It feels hopeless now, you pushed away your friends, you ignored their warnings. It seems you have no choice but to suck it up and stick it out.” Trish reached up and pulled her hair back to show the bare strip of scalp two inches above her right ear. “This is what you can expect to get for sticking it out with him.” She turned her head so that Amanda could see the scar. A closer examination would reveal evidence of the eighteen staples that had been required to suture the wound closed. “He broke my jaw in two places and fractured my skull the last time. I lost count of the cracked ribs, the fractured fingers, the black eyes and hair ripped out.” Anger began to simmer inside her as the memories resurfaced one by one. She closed her eyes and breathed to bring the rage down a notch and thought of beautiful Breanna waiting at home for her, of Kyle’s warm arms that would embrace her, and his warm breath in her ear. When she opened her eyes again, Amanda was standing less than two feet in front of her.

  “I’m sorry for what happened to you,” she said to Trish. “It’s time this came to a stop, isn’t it? There shouldn’t be a next one.” Tears ran unnoticed down her cheeks, but anger darkened her soft brown eyes. “He needs to understand this isn’t right. We must make him stop.”

  Trish nodded. “That’s exactly why I’m here. Does he still have the baseball bat?” The unbidden flash of fear across Amanda’s face answered her question. “Go and get it,” she urged.

  Brendan’s cries of pain and childlike begging shouldn’t have moved her, shouldn’t have made her feel sorry for him, but it wasn’t something Trish could control. She forced herself to stand quietly as Amanda methodically beat the man with his own baseball bat, but inside she cringed with every blow. Causing deliberate pain to anyone wasn’t what she stood for.

  The same could not be said for Amanda, however.

  “I think that will do,” Trish said when she couldn’t take any more, stepping forward to grab hold of the baseball bat. Amanda was panting, her hair wild around her face, and she briefly wrestled with Trish for possession of the bat. “He’s done,” Trish said without raising her voice, but strengthening her grip on the weapon. “He understands. Go and pack your bags and anything you want from here; empty his wallet. I’ll take you somewhere safe.”

  It took a few seconds for the girl to come back to herself, and when she did, she seemed stunned to see a bloodied Brendan curled into a foetal ball at her feet, gasping and sobbing. Releasing months of rage, frustration, fear and vulnerability must have been like some kind of dam breaking inside her, and Trish was suddenly worried that she’d done the wrong thing. But Amanda released the bat with a loud exhale and a nod before patting down her hair, tucking some stray curls behind one ear, and leaving the kitchen without looking back.

  Brendan lay on the kitchen floor. Droplets of blood splattered the linoleum and the oak-veneered cabinet doors. Fear laced the air so strongly that her wolf bayed in anticipation of a hunt.

  “Please…please…” Brendan couldn’t get many words out, his mouth was puffy with swelling, and a trickle of blood ran from one corner. One eye was swollen shut, but the other was open, and she made sure he could see her as she raised the bat and slowly clenched her fist. The bat groaned for a moment and then disintegrated into what could only be described as splinters. His eye closed and he tried to turn his face away from her as he swallowed visibly. He had seen his own death in her eyes; he knew what was coming.

  Only it wasn’t.

  She crouched down beside him, avoiding the bloody smears, and spoke in a low voice. “Brendan Van Deek, I will be watching you. I can keep track of you in ways you cannot even imagine. If I ever find out you’ve touched another woman hard enough to leave the tiniest mark on her skin, if I hear you’ve said the kind of things that make her cry in fear or humiliation, if I know you’ve tried in any way to control her life, I will come back.” When she fell silent, his eye reopened, fixing on her face. She smiled, but she knew it wasn’t a pleasant expression. “You don’t want me to come back, do you, Brendan?”

  His breath was coming in small mewling gasps. He shook his head violently.

  “You will never contact Amanda again, and you will find a psychologist and an anger management class, and you will teach yourself how to behave around women.”

  He nodded, a desperate little dashboard mannequin.

  “Good,” she said, rising to her feet. “I’m glad we understand each other. There are things in this world that you don’t know anything about, Brendan, dark, dangerous things. I think it best if you keep it that way. Try anything like this again and the monster under the bed will be very, very real, and it will be coming for you. Don’t forget that, Brendan. Not in a week, not in a month, not in a year. Not ever.” She gave him one last narrow-eyed glare, and he recoiled from her. Her wolf whuffed in satisfaction. “Oh, and don’t think you can leave town and do this somewhere else. I have eyes in every town and city you could ever think to hide in.” Then she spun on her heel and left him to his misery.

  CHAPTER 2

  A weight fell from her shoulders as Trish opened the door to Haven. Home, not just to her and her little stitched-together family, but also to the members of the Silver Ridge Pack, at least in a secondary sense. Their Pack. Hers and Kyle’s. The tiny hallway was cool and tidy, and someone had put fresh flowers in the vase on the hall table. A beautiful disarray of wildflowers and herbs. The sight brought an immediate smile. Flora had clearly been scavenging in the garden today.

  Trish set her handbag on the hall table and went to put the warming yogurts in the fridge.

  Every Pack had a Haven, but this one was extra special. Their Haven, on its several acres of bushland bordering a large wildlife reserve, had been gifted to the Pack by their friend Gabrielle Bradford—Dhampir, rogue Vampire hunter, and Consort to Julius, Master Vampire of the City and all-round badass. The front part of the house was relatively unchanged from her original cottage, but they had needed to add rooms to accommodate the unexpectedly large family they had become. A staircase replaced what had once been the linen cupboard at the end of the hallway, and she jogged lightly up the stairs to the newly added second floor. Flora would be studying in her room, and Kyle would most likely be in his office, out at the separate Pack quarters. She would track him down next. Right now, her need to check on Breanna took precedence over everything else.

  Her daughter’s door stood slightly ajar, and pale, pink light radiated from the room. The unicorn nightlight was the three-year-old’s current favourite, but that could change next week. Trish’s heart seemed to swell inside her chest as she padded inside on silent feet and looked down at the little girl’s cherubic face, peaceful in slumber. Movement at the far side of the bed revealed the furry, brown body, dark eyes and creamy mask of a ferret, blinking at her sleepily. She leaned over to give him a reassuring scratch under the chin, and he resettled himself comfortably into the covers. Trish gently brushed the fine, pale blonde hair from the sleeping girl’s forehead to place a gentle kiss there. She hated missing out on a goodnight snuggle, but she knew the child wouldn’t have lacked attention from Kyle, Flora and whoever else had been around at bedtime.

  Staring down at the child, with her heart full to bursting, she wished she could simply forget that Breanna wasn’t really theirs. It should be easy, considering the child had come into their lives when she was only hours old, but the thought was never far from Trish’s mind. T
his child was destined for great things. She had never been, nor ever would be, normal, and Trish and Kyle weren’t her birth parents, just her custodians, doing their best to prepare her for the weight that would one day be placed on her shoulders.

  As always, Trish spared a thought for Breanna’s twin sibling, wondering where in the world the other child was and how they were being treated. She knew what the prophesy said about this other child; the one everyone assumed had been spirited away by a half-crazed Dark Magus soon after birth, the one destined to oppose everything peaceful and orderly in the world, but right now that child was only a child, the same age as Breanna and just as deserving of love and protection. Trish shook herself from her morbid reverie, pulling the covers over Breanna’s shoulders and tucking them in around her before leaving the room.

  Flora’s door was closed, and music played quietly enough that Trish knew she was wearing headphones, so she left the teenager to her privacy, knowing she would come downstairs for dinner soon. Trish’s wolf was getting antsy, and there was only one thing that would calm her after everything that had happened tonight. Trish jogged downstairs, turning back towards the front door, and ran straight into a solid wall.

  A solid wall of warmth, strength and rock-hard muscle. A wall that felt more like home than anything else in Trish’s world.

  Kyle, tall and broad enough to make her feel dainty, with soft, dark blond curls that would make any surfer proud and a physique so ripped that any gym rat would sell his soul for it.

  And every inch hers.