by M. L. Briers
“Blood?” Gran asked.
“Aye,” Ross said.
“I can help with that,” Gran offered, and I swallowed hard at the thought that our Ross could be a murderer, or his wolf could, there was a difference, no?
“Me too,” Malachi said, and I snapped a look at him. He eyed me back with a challenge.
“Not one hair on his head,” I whispered my warning, and he grimaced.
“Rushing to judgment about me again, Maggie McFae,” he sighed. “Shame on you. I was just going to say that I could look into his mind for answers…”
“Vampire voodoo,” I muttered.
“As opposed to that voodoo that you do so well?” He grinned, and I sneered.
“Ross is fine. Gran can help him,” I snapped back.
“I never said I would help him overcome his beast – I said; I could help him recall if he killed two people or not, one a hapless tourist. Even you must have some sympathy for that man?”
“Don’t be telling me what I must and must not be doing, vampire.” I folded my arms and eyed him with contempt.
He pulled his head back on his neck and mouthed the word; vampire back at me before offering me a look of amusement. I was about to snap at that bait when I was distracted.
“It’s okay, Maggie,” Ross said. “You can stand down. I’d like his help. I think I should know.”
“Why, Ross, you can’t take back what’s done, and if Gran can help you with your wolf…”
“A man needs to know,” Malachi said, and when I turned my steely gaze back on him, he looked almost remorseful, as if the man remembered something, but then it was gone like a flash of magic.
“It stops you forever wondering,” Bat-boy said from somewhere over my right shoulder and I hadn’t even heard that stealthy eejit come to stand in the doorway behind me.
“Fine, do your voodoo,” I berated Malachi. “But if anything bad happens…” I left that hanging. He knew what I meant, and I didn’t need to spell it out for him.
“Ah, if only I had someone so loyal,” Malachi said, turning a dark gaze to Duncan, and I had to wonder what that was all about.
~
“Can you concentrate and move on from the scratching and the sniffing, and the licking of things that I don’t want to know about,” Malachi said, as he stood behind Ross; who was sitting in one of the straight back chairs from the dinner table. His hands were at Ross’ temples on either side, and he was looking into the man’s mind with his vampire voodoo.
I have to say that he was a braver man than I, not that I was a man, but…meh. I couldn’t imagine how the thought processes of Ross’ mind worked, but I definitely wouldn’t want to poke around in it.
“I have no control on…” Ross grumbled back.
“Then let me help you…” Malachi said.
“Whoa,” Ross bit out.
He jumped in his seat, and I jumped in mine. I wasn’t sure if Ross had reacted to pain or something else because he’d already been wearing a grimace, but as I went to push up from my chair to call a halt to the farce, Duncan put his hand on my shoulder and stopped me.
“A little trust goes a long way,” Bat-boy whispered.
“But, it’s Malachi,” I hissed back, bringing a smirk to his lips, and that seemed to be the default mode because when I turned back to watch what was happening to my friend, Malachi was smirking as well.
“It’s okay, Maggie,” Ross assured me as one side of his mouth lifted upwards in a crooked smile. “It’s just like watching a movie in fast forward, is all.”
That was kind of how my life felt to me at any given moment since things had started happening on the island once more. The only problem was, I wasn’t in possession of the remote control. If I had been, then I might just have pressed pause while I figured things out and got a little sleep.
I mean the first mutilated sheep had appeared before everyone’s supernatural family members started to appear out of the woodwork like someone had shouted lottery win. I remembered Jack getting the call the first time I’d seen him back on Skye.
So, Jack was definitely here, but what did that mean? Did I think Jack was the sheep killer? That he’d become a deranged psycho that had progressed to murdering people?
No, just that Jack had really stupid bad timing. Then the werewolves showed up, and Malachi.
I highly doubted that the vampire went around mutilating sheep; he didn’t seem the kind of man that wanted to climb over hills and through Glen’s in the pursuit of a tasty snack. Not when he could so easily have picked up a human in any pub or on any given street corner.
Hmm, maybe the loitering gossip squad had better beware of that one.
So, who killed sheep? Werewolves. Ross and Fraser, and Lachlan, but as I said before, I don’t think the man despaired enough at his own personality to do away with himself.
Fraser was Lachlan’s son, and he’d looked pretty cut up, no pun intended, about his father getting murdered, no, his alpha. He’d said his alpha instead of his father, which sounded kind of weird, but maybe that meant more in werewolf circles than it did to me.
Then there was Ross and that whole argument outside the bistro that I’d overheard. Lachlan had threatened Moira; he certainly didn’t make any bones about not liking her – could our Ross have killed the man to protect her?
But, it was Ross. Lovable, kilt wearing, playful Ross … who was still trying to get a grip on his wild side.
Was I missing something? I was no Miss Marple, but I didn’t think that my friend could have done such a thing. Mind you, seeing him fight Fraser today had shown a different side to the man.
“My God, man!” Malachi exclaimed, and all eyes turned towards him as Ross was startled once more. My heart was certainly pounding. “How do you live such a boring life and where do you put all that food?”
I felt deflated but in a good way. Eejit vampire had made my mind take off to visions of Ross standing over Lachlan’s dead body, all claws, and fangs, and I let out the breath I’d dragged in at the thought of it.
“So, not him?” I grumbled a growl of my own at Malachi.
“Not unless I zoned out from boredom at the good part,” Malachi said, and I breathed again.
“Eejit,” I muttered, looking anywhere but at his smug face.
“That’s good to know,” Ross said, and he did look like a weight had been lifted from his broad shoulders. “I wonder if there’s any more pie?”
“If you can’t find anything in the kitchen, there’s a rubbish bin outside you could trawl through,” Malachi said Ross only grunted in return as headed towards the kitchen.
“Well, that leaves Malachi and Fraser, and my money is on Malachi,” I announced with a sneer for the man.
“Me?” He looked somewhat surprised as well as amused.
“You turned up like a bad penny right at the time of the tourist dying,” I tossed back.
“So did Jack, and the werewolves…” he added on a half-thought.
“Jack?” I snorted a chuckle. “And Lachlan didn’t kill himself.”
“No, but Fraser could have done it to be the alpha of his doggie pack,” he shot back. I heard another grunt come from the kitchen and assumed Ross had overheard the slur.
“Then he would have claimed the kill,” Duncan reminded him.
“Then, Sherlock, we appear to be out of suspects, except…” he left that hanging and my heart raced once more.
“Who?” I demanded, unable to take the suspense of who I’d missed off my list a moment longer.
“Perhaps…it was Fiona,” he said.
“Gran!” I bit out, relieved that I hadn’t missed a clued, annoyed that he was winding me up like a spinning top, and surprised that he had the backbone to say it within earshot of my grandmother.
“Aye, I confess,” Gran said from the other side of the doorway. “It was me with the pinking shears protecting my own.”
“What are pinking shears?” Malachi asked, and I rolled my eyes.
&n
bsp; “Jazzy bladed scissors for making clothes,” Duncan offered, and surprised didn’t quite cover what I felt about the man knowing that.
“Moving on, and stop deflecting.” I turned a frown from bat-boy to Malachi.
“Deflect – me?” He put a hand on his muscled chest and tried for innocent, but the amusement danced in his eyes.
“You had motive, means, and you’re nasty.” I shrugged.
“I …” he offered me a curious look. “I thought I was being quite charming.”
“About as charming as oozing pus,” Gran shot back, and I grimaced at the thought, but give Gran her dues, she did have to get her shots in where she could.
“She has a soft spot for me.” Malachi grinned at Gran, and she snorted like she was hunting down truffles. “Well, then it’s Fraser,” Malachi said with a shrug.
“Or someone we haven’t seen, or might be missing,” Duncan offered, rather unhelpfully, because I was back to wondering who I’d missed once again.
“But why did he not claim the kill and become alpha?” I asked, and if I hadn’t of been sitting down, I might even have stomped my foot in frustration. I was confused by the whole werewolf pack protocol thing.
I made a mental note to read one of Eileen’s stupid books on the subject – not the muscle man beats his chest, rescues the babe, and has a happily ever after – but the ones written in a time before the villagers rose up with pitchforks and run them off or killed them.
“Perhaps he’s planning a slow takeover of the family business,” Malachi shrugged again. “Who knows what’s in the mind of a werewolf?”
“Apparently, you – now,” I offered back.
“That man is freakishly hungry all the time,” Malachi snorted.
“Don’t knock it. He keeps my business ticking over in the winter months,” I said, resting back against the chair and rocking a little.
I was glad to know that Ross was in the clear. As long as Malachi wasn’t lying about anything.
How much could I trust that vampire?
I’d been warned by Gran and his own cousin about him – that had to stand for something, right? Just because the man was as sexy as hell and made me chuckle that didn’t mean that he wasn’t a lying, cheating, bloodsucking fiend of epic proportions.
I suppose as, with everything in life, I could listen to the opinions of others, but ultimately, it would be down to me to come to a decision. I didn’t hold with that train of thought that said because your best friend didn’t like someone you couldn’t like them either.
Not that I liked Malachi – yet – but he was growing on me like a rampant fungus, which was a little disturbing.
CHAPTER TWENTY
~
“You know, you could be a bit nicer to me.” Malachi startled me once more with that whole; appears as if by magic thing as I tended to the plants in the greenhouse, and I curbed the urge I had to zap him so hard I gave his hair a frizzy perm.
That was the second time I’d been lost in thought and hadn’t felt him approaching; it was getting annoying. I wasn’t Gran with her freakish; knowing when company was coming thing without the aid of a broom falling over, but still, he should have pinged my magical radar.
“I like to start as I mean to go on,” I tossed back over my shoulder.
I turned my body towards him a little more, but I was easing my stance around him now. I hated to say that I was getting used to having him around, especially after Gran’s warning, but that was the crux of it.
“Ouch — such resistance to us becoming … friends.”
I tossed a quick look at him along with a snort of contempt. I didn’t much care for the way he’d said; friends. And what is it with men? Even when they felt unwelcome, they still stood there as if they belonged.
First Jack, then bat-boy, and now Malachi. I seemed doomed to being around annoying, strong, opinionated, self-confident, eejit men. But at least one of the three wasn’t mine — that wasn’t to say that the other two were, Jack and Malachi were nothing to do with me in that way, but Duncan was Eileen’s problem.
Jack and Malachi did seem to be circling around my planet in a strange sort of dance. Both were as sexy as hell and as annoying as people who blamed the devil for everything and let’s not forget busybodies that gossiped. Both were off limits for varying reasons, but mainly of the supernatural kind. Not that I entertained thoughts of Jack anymore, love spelled or not, and the fact that he seemed to rub me up the wrong way every single time we met now only strengthen that determination within me to put him firmly in my past.
If only the man would stay there and not to keep coming back to the island that would be helpful. The fluffy-haired numpty.
And then there was Malachi. I’d been around him, and I’d seen the darkness that was woven within him the very first time we’d met. The man might have been trying to project a different part of himself now, but I could feel that bad-boy part of him trying to scratch to the surface.
Even now, as he stood there looking slightly amused, slightly cocky, very sexy in his stance — there still seemed a part of him just under the surface that was begging to be unleashed — kind of like Ross’ beast, but Malachi’s Demons were a whole different monster.
“You have no answer for that one?” Malachi said.
“Sorry, got bored, I zoned out there for a moment,” I lied, pulling my magic tightly around my body so that he couldn’t read my thoughts.
I wished I could train my thoughts as easily as I trained my magic. Don’t think of the man as sexy — check. Think of the man as a walking corpse that would desiccate without the blood that he drank from poor, unsuspecting victims — check.
That thought made me wonder again. Perhaps Malachi had a taste for blood, decided to snack on a sheep, and was just happened upon by the bad timing of the tourist. Perhaps Lachlan had challenged him after the argument they’d had outside the bistro. Perhaps Malachi was the murderer after all.
Perhaps — perhaps — perhaps. I had a lot of nothing.
“I get the feeling we are going to be firm friends,” Malachi said.
“I get the feeling you are delusional,” I tossed back.
Friends with the murderer? Friends with the vampire? How different were those two things? The heck if I know, but the thing is, did I really want to find out?
~
The next morning as I let myself out of the back door with a cup of coffee in hand, to witness the majesty of another sunrise after a night a rubbish sleep, I noted three cars strategically dotted around our house and recognized each one of them.
Either they got here early, or never left last night.
I deliberately slammed the back door, and couldn’t help but chuckle when three heads popped up, one in each car, and all eyes were trained in my direction. Two vampires and a werewolf playing guard dog — I didn’t know whether to be impressed or worried by that turn of events.
I supposed that Ross and Duncan had a reason to be hanging around, but what possible reason could Malachi have? Billy no friends with nothing better to do?
Maybe he was deflecting — or he could have been using it as an opportunity to get what he wanted – a means to an end – but what end? At this point; I couldn’t put anything past him.
Ross waved, then he started the engine and drove away. In his mind, I guess I had just become the gatekeeper to the house. It’s nice to know that he trusted me with Moira’s safety – I guess.
Bat-boy and Satan’s Claws didn’t appear to be going anywhere. I suppose that they didn’t really have lives that they needed to get on with, in more ways than one. Duncan, offered me a two-fingered salute, and not in a bad way before he laid back down, but Malachi just kept staring.
That man could be unnerving in more ways than one, and I had to wonder what his end game really was. Gran was being pretty tight-lipped over her history with him, and I didn’t bat-boy was going to share about last night look that Malachi had given him.
It wasn’t that I wanted thou
ghts of Malachi to fill my mind at any given time, but they did seem to creep in there when my mind wandered. I just needed to keep busy, busy-busy meant no time for stray thoughts, or stray vampires to enter my brain.
I lost all interest in watching the sunrise and went back inside the house to get my day started. If I was going to stay busy, there was no time like the present and a gazillion tourists to help with that task.
~
I groaned inwardly at the sight of Jack walking into the bistro and up to the counter. I curse my lack of sleep because if my brain had been in gear and I’d been quicker on my feet, I could have escaped into the kitchen and sent Moira out to deal with him. But there he was, giving me an expectant look.
“Coffee?” I asked in the hope of keeping things quick and simple between us. The first one was doable; it was the second one that was proving to be more problematic.
“I wanted to talk to you,” Jack said, and there went the hope of quick and simple as my heart groaned and my stomach sank.
“More witchy goings-on?” I asked, wondering how I could sidestep his questions this time.
“It’s about yesterday.”
Jack looked uncomfortable, and my heart sank to meet my stomach at the look of the man. Jack being uncomfortable meant that he was going to broach a subject that I didn’t want to hear, let alone talk about.
“More sheep?” I deflected and tried to sidestep the issue again.
“More about Ross,” Jack said.
“Trust me when I say that some things are better left unsaid,” I offered back, cryptic, yes, but I felt that his detective brain could figure that one out for itself.
“More witchy stuff?” He asked, smarty-pants.
“Some things can’t be unheard…”
“Or unseen,” Jack said.
I didn’t know what Jack had seen, but it didn’t bode well for him if word got out. Humans would think him insane, and the supernatural world would want to silence him.
“But all are best forgotten,” I offered back.
“And what if you can’t forget?” Jack asked with a flick of his eyes toward one of the many tourists that were in the bistro; this one was approaching the counter.
