by Susan Illene
“If you want, I could run the shop for the day after you’re done with the other guy,” he offered. “It sounds like you should get some rest.”
That actually sounded like a great idea. Between her nerves and the nausea, she didn’t know how she could do a full day of work. “Thanks. I’d appreciate that.”
“No problem.”
This was exactly the reason he was her employee, and why she worked hard not to lose him. It was hard enough to find good artists, but even more difficult to find ones who were reliable and trustworthy enough to cover her store when she was gone.
They headed back to the front where a gray wolf stood. The animal wasn’t much bigger than a healthy Alaskan wolf at the end of summer and had maybe an extra twenty pounds of meat and muscle compared to the native breed. No one would guess he wasn’t native to the area with such a small difference in size.
“So I guess it worked,” she said, meeting Derrick’s gaze.
He studied her closely, a hint of concern in his expression, before turning his attention to the wolf. “Appears so.”
“Are there any more bets you have to pay out?” she asked.
The alpha chuckled. “Not this time. I learned my lesson already.”
That was good to hear.
“He can’t leave here like that,” Bambi pointed out. “When’s he gonna shift back?”
“Give him a few minutes. Younger wolves gotta have a break first before they can shift again,” Derrick explained.
Cori took a deep breath, glad her nausea had subsided enough she could handle being in the same room with Bambi. “I’ll go get my booth ready.”
Doubt entered the alpha’s gaze. “You sure you’re up for it?”
“I’ll be fine,” she said, giving him a dismissive gesture. “My nerves have just been shot, and I might be coming down with something.”
He frowned, looking like he was about to argue that idea but then thought better of it. “Alright—if you’re sure.”
“I am.”
Cori headed back down the hall to her booth and started cleaning up the mess from the first guy. Then she prepped her tools for Derrick, wanting to ensure everything was laid out and perfect before he came into the room. He might have a higher pain tolerance than the first werewolf, but he’d still be more intimidating to work on. Seeing what he could become only reminded her that he wasn’t even close to a normal human.
“Ready?” he asked, coming in just as she finished her preparations.
Cori gestured at the chair. “Yep, have a seat and put your bare back to me.”
He did as requested, pulling his black t-shirt off before doing so. He had a very broad and muscular back that spoke of pure, raw power. The man could probably lift a bus if he were so inclined. After hesitating a moment, she set the outline right over his spine between his shoulder blades.
Once she pulled the paper away, she started her tattoo machine and readied it with ink. Cori would do the permanent outline first before shading with color. The first guy had taken her about forty-five minutes, but she hoped she could go faster with Derrick.
He looked over his shoulder and sniffed at her. “You smell…different.”
“It’s probably the gloves and all the cleaners I use for sterilization,” she said, bracing her hand on his back as she began to work.
He didn’t flinch as the needles poked into him. “Yeah, I’m sure that’s it.”
She worked quietly for a few minutes before speaking again. “Do you know anything about the mating bond?”
Derrick stiffened. “Why do you ask?”
She lifted the tattoo machine from his skin.
“Well, it’s just that I’ve been getting this bad feeling since yesterday. First, it was cold chills, and today it’s been nausea, but through everything, I’m feeling this horrible sense of doom. If Bartol hadn’t called me about an hour before it started, I’d swear something was wrong with him, but he was just about to leave to Prague. I can’t imagine he’d run into trouble that fast.” It felt good to voice her anxiety, so much so that it took some of the edge off of her tension.
“I know a little about the bond,” he said carefully.
“Do you think I’m being paranoid?”
“I wouldn’t say that.” Derrick paused and bowed his head in thought. “But I’d wait a while longer before jumpin’ to conclusions. It might be your own fears causin’ you to worry, or maybe you’re just gettin’ sick, like you said.”
He must have overheard her and Asher talking.
“Maybe,” she agreed.
Cori went back to work on the tattoo, forcing herself to concentrate on him being able to turn into a wolf during the day. She thought of how unfair the rule was and that there was no reason he shouldn’t be able to shift when he wanted. It was hard to say whether she totally believed that since every powerful race should have some handicaps, but Derrick was a decent man for the most part. He’d never intentionally hurt an innocent human that she’d heard about. Melena had also mentioned a few times that the alpha wanted nothing more than for supernaturals to live in peaceful coexistence with all the races, which was something she could appreciate even if he could use an adjustment on his personality.
It was a little over half an hour later when she finished. Unlike with the first werewolf, Derrick’s skin healed within minutes of her working on it. She’d had to go more quickly and deeply to get the tattoo to stick, but at least he bled less. As she wiped his skin clean, she found the cloth was barely tinged red.
“You’re done,” Cori announced after applying a bit of ointment.
She held up a mirror so he could see the work she’d done from over his shoulder. He studied it closely for almost a minute. “Not bad.”
“Do you have any other tattoos?” she asked, setting the mirror back down. “I didn’t notice any.”
“Nope.”
He’d acted like it was nothing and showed no signs of this being his first time. She felt a little humbled that he’d let her experiment on him. “Thanks for trusting me then.”
“We still gotta see if the tattoo works,” he said gruffly, standing up.
Derrick grabbed hold of his t-shirt and led the way out of the room. Sometime while they’d been away, the younger werewolf had shifted back to human form and gotten dressed. He was relaxing in the seating area she had at the front of her shop by the windows.
Bambi had crawled up onto the stool behind the counter and sat there with her legs dangling. If not for her pudgy nose, oddly shaped ears, and unusual orange hair—all making her look like she was at least forty years old—she might have appeared like a child sitting there. She was certainly kicking her feet back and forth like one. Cori made a mental note to scrub the stool with her strongest cleaners before she left for the day.
“Well, ‘bout time,” the troll said, annoyed. She’d come to the back and looked in a few times, but mostly she’d stayed at the front of the shop while Cori worked on Derrick’s tattoo. “I gotta get back ta work soon, been wastin’ my lunch break on this.”
Bambi ran the herb store just a little ways down the same shopping center. It was one of the only reasons she bathed more frequently than most trolls since she didn’t want to scare all her customers away. Cori often wondered if she took over the business after the last owner, Felisha, died as a sort of remembrance of the fairy. Bambi would never admit to sentimentality, but the one positive thing that could be said about her was if she liked you enough to hang out with you, then it meant she cared in her own way.
“Keep complaining, and maybe I’ll give you a tattoo that will undo your anti-cleanliness curse,” Cori warned. She had no idea if that was possible, but one could dream.
The troll bared her sharp teeth. “Ya’d never get close enough.”
Asher snickered but shut up when Bambi growled at him.
Cori turned her attention to Derrick and found he’d already stripped his clothes off. She kept her gaze on his face, not wanting to see anyt
hing she shouldn’t and yet not wanting to appear weak like she had with the first werewolf. That had been too embarrassing. She would ride it out this time without getting nauseous if it killed her.
His muscles and skin began contorting. She waited for the nasty popping and crunching sounds, but the shift went much more quietly. Derrick’s body was going through the change with hardly a noise to give it away. Fur sprouted from his skin and then his muzzle elongated. When he reached the final step, his legs bent into the proper angles of his animal form. In a matter of moments, they had a massive wolf standing in front of them that easily outweighed any others she’d seen by at least twice as much.
“Holy shit,” Cori said, gaping at him.
Bambi hopped off her stool and came a little closer. “I swear he’s gotten bigger since last time I saw him like this.”
Cori wasn’t sure if it was because he was an alpha, over a century and a half old, or because he had a mix of demon and angel blood in him. All she knew was she’d never imagined he could become a wolf that huge. Suddenly, he seemed a lot more intimidating than any of the other supernaturals she’d met. This was an animal that could tear anything apart with little effort and probably take on several enemies at once. A person would have to be stupid to challenge him, which explained how he beat a vampire who was over a thousand years old in a duel—or he would have if Felisha hadn’t gotten in the way. Then again, he’d fought as a human that time, so she didn’t know how much that affected his fighting abilities.
Derrick paced around the shop for a few minutes, stretching his legs. When he finally came back to his original place, he started shifting back. The alpha didn’t need the longer break his younger pack member had required, and the return to human form went as smoothly as it had to his wolf body.
Cori waited until he got his pants and shirt back on. “So are we good?”
“I’m satisfied.” He grabbed his jacket and pulled an envelope from the inside pocket, handing it to her. “Here’s your payment for today.”
She opened it and silently counted three thousand dollars in there. He’d said she’d get more for each of the werewolf tattoos, but he hadn’t said how much exactly. “This is…more than expected.”
“It needs to be. I don’t want my whole pack runnin’ in here botherin’ you to get the same tattoo.” He ran a hand through his long, brown hair. It had been tied back in a queue, but he’d lost that during the shift. “If you charge high enough, they’ll think more carefully about it.”
“Why not have the whole pack be day shifters?” she asked, though it wasn’t because she was greedy. It just seemed like it would be a good deal for the alpha and would make his pack more sought after for membership if they had such an advantage.
He gave her a rueful smile. “If you spent more time around werewolves, you’d get it. For our newer members, it takes months and often years to learn how to handle their animal side. Some never get control all the way and have to be watched closely. The last thing I need is to have to keep an eye on them durin’ the day, too.”
“I guess that makes sense.”
Derrick sat down to pull on his boots. “Don’t let any of them get the special tattoo without my approval first. You can do regular ones on them all you want, though.”
“You didn’t test me to see if I could control myself without giving the gift,” Cori pointed out.
“I’ve seen enough,” he said.
“So what’s next?” she asked.
“I’ll let you know, but for now let’s leave it at humans and werewolves.” He stood. “Handle that alright for the next few months, and we’ll see if there’s somethin’ you can do for other races.”
“What about that vampire?” She hadn’t gotten an update lately and had worried about it.
“He’s fine, just weaker and don’t need or like blood no more.” Derrick grimaced. “You probably won’t get many takers askin’ for that, so I wouldn’t worry about it, but give me a call if it ever comes up.”
“Sounds good.” She shook his hand. “Thank you for the business.”
“I appreciate you as well for fixin’ a long-term problem I’ve had.” With a final nod, Derrick grabbed his fellow pack mate, and they left the store.
Bambi came to stand next to her. “Well, I guess you fucked up good there.”
Cori frowned down at her. “What?”
“Only you’d manage to make a screw-up turn into somethin’ good.”
“I don’t know what I’d do without your glowing encouragement,” Cori said, shaking her head.
“That’s what I’m always tellin’ ya.”
Chapter 20
Cori
Cori picked at the food on her plate. Her mother had made meatloaf and mashed potatoes, which was her favorite meal as a little girl, but she couldn’t seem to stomach it at the moment. Instead, she kept lifting her cell phone from the table to check it, a forlorn feeling coming over her every time the screen was blank. Just to be safe, she’d had her mom call her twice already to be sure the phone worked properly.
“I can see why Asher insisted on taking over the shop for you this evening,” Joy said, holding a spoonful of mashed potatoes in front of her. “You can hardly sit still, let alone do any work.”
Cori only had two people stop by that afternoon requesting work from her—both of them humans—and it had been agony to get through their tattoos. All she’d wanted was to hightail it out of there and book the next flight to Prague.
She shoved her plate away. “The last time I heard from Bartol was on Sunday. It’s Thursday, Mom.”
“He was late once before,” Joy pointed out.
“He was late by less than a day—not two!”
Her mother sighed. “You’ve been acting strangely ever since that last phone call. Was it that bad?”
“It was great, actually.” Cori rubbed her face. “We were talking, as in really talking and saying things a couple should be saying. I was sure things were on the right track.”
“You shouldn’t have encouraged him to go in the first place. Sending your man after a powerful demon like that was silly. If I’d been here and known what was going on, I’d have told you as much.” Joy sighed and went back to eating.
It wasn’t worth talking about it with her mother. Other than cooking and organizing the new cabin just the way she wanted, her mom had little else to do aside from nag Cori about how she should have taken her relationship with Bartol more seriously. Despite having never met him in person and only talking to him on the phone, Joy thought the world of him. This was what happened when Cori made the mistake of telling her mother details about her personal life. If her mom didn’t approve, she never heard the end of it.
“Okay, look.” She sat up straight and directed her gaze at Joy. “Bartol and I have this mate bond that can tell us if something is wrong, and I’m telling you that he is in trouble. I can feel it in my gut—hell, I can feel it in my whole body.”
Joy glanced at the clock on the wall. “It’s after eight. Do you think your friend, Melena, would mind if we dropped by to talk to her about it?”
“I’ll text her,” Cori said, glad to finally be doing something.
The sensor replied a minute later saying that she and Lucas were home, and it was fine if they wanted to stop by the house. It was a small miracle that both of them were there, considering their busy schedules.
Cori stood. “Okay, let’s go.”
Her mother was already up and putting food away. “Give me a moment. We can’t leave this food out while we’re gone, or it’ll attract bugs.”
One thing about Joy, she couldn’t stand to leave a mess. There was no point in reminding her it was winter and probably not a problem. Cori jumped in and helped to speed things up. Every fiber of her being told her that she needed to get help for Bartol fast, or else they might never find him, but she had to go along with her mother’s priorities. Arguing with the woman would get her nowhere.
Cori hated that she’d
waited this long to speak up. The problem was no one took her seriously because Bartol wasn’t that late on calling, and they thought the bond couldn’t possibly be strong enough to reach thousands of miles away. While the last part might have been true a month ago, they’d been strengthening their relationship during their phone calls. She knew—she just knew—they were closer than ever. The link between them was telling her something was wrong, and she wasn’t ignoring it anymore.
***
A half hour later, Cori and her mother pulled up in front of Melena’s house. A large, hulking figure appeared before the Tahoe. The man’s long black hair lifted with the breeze, partially covering his face. He crossed his arms and spread his legs wide apart.
“Who is that?” Joy asked, frowning.
“An idiot.” Cori shut off the vehicle and unbuckled her seat belt. “But some people call him Kerbasi.”
Her mother’s eyes rounded. “Kerbasi? The one who tortured Bartol?”
“That very one.”
Joy got out of the SUV before Cori could stop her and stomped over to the guardian. She poked a finger into his chest. “You have a lot of nerve, young man.”
Kerbasi lifted an imperious brow. “Young man? I came into existence when the pyramids were still being built.”
“Humph, as if that matters. From what I’ve heard about you, you haven’t matured a day since your birth.”
Cori caught up to her mother. “Don’t bother lecturing him. He loves a good argument, and you’re giving him exactly what he wants. Why else do you think he’s out here harassing us?”
“Harassing you?” Kerbasi had the gall to appear offended.
Joy dropped her finger, balling it into a fist. “Come near me again, and I may very well shoot you.”
“Like mother, like daughter,” the guardian replied, clucking his tongue. “I’m beginning to think the concept of humanity is rather overrated.”
Cori guided her mother into the house, Kerbasi trailing behind them. She wasn’t going to say a word to him and would just have to pretend he wasn’t there. He wasn’t worth the delay to argue with him. The more you tried to make the guardian stay away, the harder it was to get rid of him.
