by Kate Wendley
Calling Anthony his friend sounded too much like a girl thing to say, and it made him laugh. “I suppose so. He’s not a bad guy, even though he does some scary stuff sometimes.”
She had a faraway look when she said, “Yeah, it’s some scary stuff.” She focused sharply on him, then, and forced a smile. “So how are you doing? How are things going with your girlfriend?”
His mood instantly soured. “Bad.”
“What happened?”
He started to tell her just little bits about his problems, but soon found himself spilling everything to her, including the fact that he couldn’t shift and that the doctor and everyone else was trying to help him. She was in such a unique position herself, and they were friends before he even knew she was in their world, so he supposed he felt safe, and even good to finally have someone he could tell all this to. Plus she didn’t have a hidden agenda or otherworldly ideas on what they could do to fix him. Kaia was one person in all this mess of his life that was almost in the same, vulnerable position as him.
“I’m sick of being sick, but I’m also sick of everyone seeing me as someone they need to help. And absolutely everyone is trying to help me.”
She was quiet as he let that hang in the air. It sounded childish to be mad that people were trying to help him, he knew that, but he felt it all the same.
She finally said, “It could be worse. They could all be ignoring you. Or refusing to help you.”
He stared her down as she gave him a challenging look, though her humble half smile kept his temper in check. He reluctantly chuckled and bumped her with his elbow as way of thanks for listening to him rant.
“How long have you been getting help? Just since you’ve been here?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s not very long for a lifelong illness. Don’t you think you need to give it some more time?”
His temper immediately let loose. “Have you ever been forced to drink blood? I have. Multiple times. And then I threw it all up.”
Her cheeks flushed and he felt like a jerk. “I’ll be drinking Anthony’s blood after he drains me. And then afterwards, assuming I survive the night, I’ll need help getting used to being a vampire. It sucks, but we all need help sometimes Vince. It’s just the way it is. Anthony says it’s why this family was formed.”
He scoffed. “You turning vampire is different.”
“Why?”
He knew in his gut this wasn’t going to go over well, but he said it anyway. “Because you’re a woman.”
She laughed out loud. “Screw you.”
He frowned, though he felt his mood lightening. He had a hard time being mad at Kaia, for lots of reasons. She was human, she felt like a longtime, trusted friend, and she was just as scared and confused about this crazy life as he was.
He looked away and said, “You sound like Penny.”
“Then she’s a smart girl.”
“Yeah. Or blind.”
“To what?”
He pinned her with a challenging stare. “To what things would be like if she had me around all the time.”
Kaia rolled her eyes. “Having a guy around that she connects with? Someone she feels good around? Why is that being blind?”
He inwardly grimaced because he hadn’t thought about Penny’s emotional needs like that before.
Kaia quietly said, “Girls have feelings too, Vince.”
He stared at her until she said, “Give this healing thing more time. Besides, you never know what might be the final trick to let your cat loose.”
He stopped and stared up at the stars. “The final trick.” He knew what the trick wasn’t, and that was blood. Or food. Or vitamins. Whatever it was, if there was a trick, it’d better be good.
Kaia started shivering, so they turned back towards home. On the way, they found a basketball on the lawn. “Play a game of horse?”
She chuckled. “Ok, but I’m not that great.”
They stopped at the basketball court and he bounced the ball to her to let her go first. She missed catching it and had to run after it. “Hey! Easy! I’m not a shifter you know!”
He laughed at that until what she’d said really sank in. If he moved out of Brookhaven he’d be going back to a world where he had to be careful of everyone he was around, all the time. He’d be going back to being careful with his emotions and hiding his eyes when he was mad or excited… and he’d still be sick and weak, only now he wouldn’t have his mom to help him with his bad days.
He took a hard look at the building in front of him. It was filled with people more like him than anyone out in the human world, yet no one was really like him.
The distinct sound of the basketball bouncing on the blacktop caught his attention and he turned to see it behind the hoop.
“You make it?”
She made a face and he laughed as he chased it down. He then promptly beat her at the game before taking her back inside.
**
They must have changed the guards inside over the last hour or so because now asshole Quinn was back, and he gave Vince the same shit eating grin as always. This time, though, his rude gestures and creepy looks were all because of Kaia.
Vince hustled her back down to the club, suddenly worried about her among all these shifters. Anthony was thankfully in his office and looked up as Vince shuffled Kaia inside and shut the door behind them. “Can you do that privacy thing you do?”
Anthony frowned, but Vince could feel magic building in the air.
“No one can hear us. What’s on your mind?”
He put his hand out for Kaia, and she slipped comfortably onto his lap as he sat in his rolling desk chair.
“Dude, you’ve got to keep that wolf guard upstairs away from the women. He’s a creep. He’s not one of Kaia’s guards, is he?”
“Who are you talking about?”
“Quinn, the werewolf.”
Anthony frowned. “Are there any guards you do trust?”
“I don’t know everyone yet, man, but definitely not that guy.” He rubbed the back of his neck and dropped onto the lone couch in the room. “This probably sounds weird, but some of those guards just don’t feel right. They’re too… angry. They feel malicious, like they’re just waiting to strike.” He shook his head in confusion.
Kaia frowned in worry, and he felt bad for talking about this in front of her.
Anthony said, “That doesn’t sound strange at all coming from a jaguar. Your race has a keen sense of others’ moods, as well as subtle changes in your environment. The other animals, as well as vampires, aren’t as naturally attune to those energies. You should never dismiss your natural talents.”
“Really?” When he put it like that, it made Vince sound like he actually had some skills. Maybe he wasn’t a complete waste of a shifter after all.
Anthony gave Kaia a good long look, then said to Vince, “If you don’t mind, I’d like your impressions of all of my guards, vampire and shifter.”
**
The apartment was empty by the time he made it home, his mom probably staying over at Ed’s again. Vince looked around at all their new stuff, still feeling like he was a guest in someone else’s place, and didn’t want it to be that way.
His head was a mess by the time he went to bed. It’d been weird to have Anthony asking for his opinion on family matters, mostly because he acted like he trusted Vince when Vince wasn’t even sure he even trusted himself. And Vince still wanted too many things that he didn’t know how to get. He wanted to stay in the supernatural world, he wanted to become a full shifter, and he wanted to be seen as a fully capable man in his father’s eyes, no matter how stupid that sounded.
Most of all, though, he wanted Penny back. He wanted to make a life with her. Kids, a place of their own… everything. He wanted it all, but not like this. Not while he still could barely take care of himself.
Chapter 26
Penny didn’t hear from Vince for the next two solid days and didn’t know if it was because h
e was sick, if he was working, or if it was because he really was just stringing her along. If he’d really cared about her he would’ve tried to talk her out of her bad mood, wouldn’t he? Well he hadn’t, and he wasn’t exactly beating down her door or texting her sweet nothings, either, so this breakup was really happening.
She wiped away her tears and decided to go distract herself down in the club, which turned out to be really easy because rumors were flying about some wolves getting canned at the office for embezzling money. She sidled up to the bar and kept her ears open as hushed conversations happened all over the place. Chester gave her a sideways glance, then gestured towards her with a question in his eyes. She nodded, so he got busy making her a Harvey Wallbanger.
He brought the mixed drink over as if they had some very important business to discuss, which they did.
She kept her voice low when she asked, “What’s going on?”
He looked around, then leaned closer. “Word is, Sebastian and Torin are taking over the wolf office. They fired everyone but the mail clerks. Postings for the open jobs are up on the intranet.”
“Really?” She pulled out her phone and looked it up. “Wow. They need everything from a CFO, a Controller, a Treasury Director, all the way down to accounting clerks. Holy cow, they really cleaned house.” She gave him a suspicious look. “You still have a job, though.”
He scowled. “I work in the bar, not the office. Besides, I don’t deal with the kind of money those guys do, and I have everything I need right here. Word is, those fools have been pilfering money for at least a year or more.”
“How much?”
“Don’t know. Had to have been a lot, though. What I do know is that means it hasn’t been used to help the rest of the family. Those fools weren’t just stealing from Anthony, they were stealing from all of us.”
“All of the wolves, you mean. There are other animals in this family, and the money to support us doesn’t go through the wolf office.”
He cocked an eyebrow, then had the decency to look embarrassed. “Yes, yes. I mean the wolves.”
She looked around the club, everyone pretty much doing the same thing as her. They were gossiping and spying on everyone else, seeing who looked guilty and how many wolves were still here tonight.
“So what happened to them?”
“Well, most of them don’t live here in Brookhaven. You know, if you make the kind of money the top guys make, you’d want a nicer place than what we have here.”
“Hey, I have a nice place! I’ve seen what’s out there to rent in the human world. The apartments here are good.”
He scowled again, as only an old man can, and it made her smirk at how easily she could rile him up. “I know that! What I’m saying is, those with money like things fancier than this.”
“So are they going to get punished by the pack?”
He lifted his eyebrows. “I guess we’ll see.”
They both cringed at that thought. Pack punishment meant they would be disciplined as their wolves, out at the ranch, by those above them in the pack. Punishment ended only when their superiors decided it ended. And that was only the pack punishment. After that, they could also have other restitutions they had to do, like volunteer work around Brookhaven or for shifters out in the human world. If they slacked on that, then back to the ranch for more pack punishment.
They both looked around the club again, their eyes and ears wide open.
By the end of the next day, Penny was sick of listening to the gossip and jumped at the chance to get out for an impromptu meeting of her apocalypse survival group. If Vince wasn’t going to give her the time of day, she might as well immerse herself back in her training. After all, you never knew when a major world catastrophe would happen and she was going to be prepared.
**
“How far is it?” She could kick herself for agreeing to go with Darius to help him with his friend’s new security system. He’d been at the apocalypse group meeting, which ended up being fewer people than she thought would be there, and was so relentless with his technical questions that she finally gave in and said she’d go with him to take a look at their set up.
They’d already been driving about twenty minutes, and they were heading northwest, further and further away from Brookhaven. At this rate it’d be after midnight before she got back home again, which meant she’d be tired as hell for work tomorrow.
“Not far. We just want to pick your brain to get the system up and running.” He gave her a look that seemed off, but Darius himself was a little off. Always intensely focused on whatever topic he was interested in, she didn’t really worry about being alone with him, but some little warning bell in the far back of her mind started chiming anyway.
She played it off and kept him talking about the security system as she pulled her phone out.
“What are you doing?”
His suspicious tone made her alarm bells ring even louder. “You said you were having trouble with the recording function. I’m googling to see what other people have done to fix the problem.”
He said with a challenge in his voice, “So what do they say?”
“Dude. I just googled it. Give me a freaking minute.”
She tried to inconspicuously keep herself positioned in a way that he couldn’t see the screen of her phone as she texted Suzanne. She didn’t know what to tell her, though, other than that she needed help.
Wait. There was some kind of friend tracking program that she could install on her phone. She googled it as fast as she could, then hit the install button.
“Well? What do other people say?”
She told him what she’d already told him before about the install, hoping he didn’t remember their other conversation about the topic.
His face turned hard and he grabbed her phone and threw it out the window.
Her heart raced, but she tried to play off his craziness to keep him from going completely psycho. “Dude! What the hell? You owe me a phone.”
“I didn’t want anything to happen to you, Penny. I thought you’d be cool. You’re coyote so you’re smart. Just be smart. Ok?”
He gave her a crazed look and she got a bad, bad feeling.
Chapter 27
Anthony checked on Kaia, asleep for the night in his bed. Sebastian and Torin had been trying to be discreet with the wolves they knew were embezzling, but after another twenty thousand dollars went mysteriously missing, they decided to clean house once and for all.
They fired everyone in one fell swoop and decided they’d deal with whatever happened after that. Except it left Anthony more nervous than ever about Kaia’s guards. He wouldn’t feel completely safe having her here until she was vampire, and in less than two weeks she’d either be one, or she’d be dead.
He tried to purge that thought from his mind. He had power, real power, and he’d use every bit of it to keep her from slipping away from him.
He sat next to her on the bed as she slept, her eyes moving rapidly beneath her lids. She was deep in a dream state, so he was startled when she started mumbling.
He leaned closer and whispered, “What was that, my sweet?”
“Waleska. Pine Bark Drive.”
He froze. She’d had premonitions in her sleep before, but it was when she was deathly sick. Could she be having another one now? “What’s there, my sweet?”
She mumbled something incomprehensible and he remembered he needed to be more specific with his questions. “What’s in Waleska, on Pine Bark Drive?”
“Penny.”
“Vince’s girlfriend?”
Kaia stirred more fully and opened her eyes. “Hi baby.”
“My sweet. Were you dreaming?”
She frowned. “I don’t remember. Why?”
He shook his head. “No reason. You should go back to sleep. I just wanted to say goodnight again.” In another two days she’d quit her job and then she could stay up as late as she wanted. Until then she wanted to live a normal, human life, and he’d
help make sure she did.
“I love you, Anthony. No matter what happens, I love you.”
He lowered his head and touched his forehead to hers. “Am I that transparent?” He was just as nervous as she was about her turning. She could die, and he could be the one to kill her.
“I’m worried too, but I want this. I want to be with you.”
He smiled and pulled back enough to be able to look her in the eyes. “I love you, Kaia. With all my heart. I am yours, and you are mine.”
He gave her a chaste kiss, then tucked her in and let her go back to sleep.
As soon as he shut his bedroom door behind himself, leaving Frederick and Dylan to guard her for the night, he texted both Vince and Suzanne. ‘This might be a false alarm, but have either of you seen Penny?’
**
Vince frowned at the strange message from Anthony on his phone. He texted Penny, and when he got no response, he texted Anthony back. ‘I haven’t heard from her for a few days. Why?’
Suzanne replied to them all. ‘What’s happened? I got a partial text from her a couple hours ago and she’s not home now.’
Anthony didn’t waste time responding. ‘A premonition. Meet me in my office.’
Vince’s heart beat like crazy as he ran down to the club. Suzanne looked like she’d just barely beat him there. “What’s going on?”
Anthony was on his phone, sitting behind his desk staring at them as they entered his office. “Yes. She said the same thing.” He nodded, then said, “Thank you Echo.”
He put his phone down and frowned. “There have been two separate premonitions this evening about Penny being in the small town of Waleska, Georgia.”
Vince asked in confusion, “What does that mean? Is she in trouble, or just visiting friends?”
Anthony’s face was devoid of emotion as he said, “Echo doesn’t usually have premonitions about happy things. And Kaia, well, I’m still learning what her premonitions mean.”
“Kaia has premonitions?”
Anthony carefully said, “She’s not aware that she does. It’s infrequent and either when she’s sick or in the middle of sleep.”
