by L. C. Davis
I did. I wished I didn’t, but I did.
“Anyway,” Allen continued, “Brent would have had to get over it whether Nick transitioned or not when he became alpha.”
“But that’s not going to be for a while, right? I mean, your uncle is the alpha now, so…”
“Some packs pass the title on when the old alpha dies, but not ours. Once a new alpha finds his mate, he usually challenges the current alpha. It depends on when he imprints. Could be as a teenager, could be in his sixties.”
“A challenge?” I frowned. “That sounds...violent.”
“It is,” he said with a laugh. “We are monsters, Holden. But it’s not usually fatal.”
“Oh. That’s...good.”
“You can probably understand why you showing up made things tense.”
“Yeah,” I murmured. “I can. I never wanted to come between Nick and his family.”
“I’m sure. I’m not telling you any of this to make you feel guilty. It’s not like you had a say in Nick imprinting on you.”
The way he said it made it sound more like a question than a reassurance, and I instinctively scanned the crowd in search of Nick. I could use some backup before I tripped over a lie I hadn’t been prepared to defend. I didn’t see Nick, but I did catch sight of a man watching me intently from the other side of the dance floor. Even in a sea of tuxedos, he stood out with his broad shoulders and towering height. His face was set in a stern mask of disapproval and he was watching me with such intensity that I turned to make sure he wasn’t looking at someone else. When I turned back, he was gone.
“Holden?”
“I’m so sorry, I thought I saw someone,” I said, turning to face Allen. “Um, please, go on, what were you saying?”
“I just said it’s not like you chose for Nick to imprint on you.”
“Right. No, I didn’t.”
The band started playing a different song and while most of the set list had consisted of pop covers and a few well-known classics thrown in for the older crowd, this song was familiar only to me. It was an old folk cover off one of my father’s old Woody Guthrie albums. I knew it as soon as the trumpets picked up the peppy intro, because Ezekiel had gone through a phase where he played it on a constant loop. After all, his name was in the title and you’d think Woody had recorded it just for him.
Ezekiel saw that wheel, way up in the middle of the air… the singer crooned along to the lively tune. I swallowed hard. I was passively aware that Allen was still talking, but all I could see was the spinning wheel of eyes. There was a reason I hadn’t listened to that damn song in ages, and it wasn’t because Ezekiel had overplayed it.
“Holden, are you alright?” Allen asked. “You look a bit pale.”
Now the little wheel runs by faith…. And the big wheel runs by the grace of God...
“I’m f-fine,” I said, looking back into the crowd. I couldn’t find the man who’d been staring at me, but I did see something impossible. A ghost.
The back of his head, anyway. The boy turned his head before I could get a good look at his face, but what I did see was instantly familiar.
Tell you what a hypocrite he will do… He’ll talk about me and he’ll talk about you….
“I’m so sorry, I have to go,” I said, taking off after the shock of light brown hair disappearing into the crowd. He was headed towards the garden.
“Holden!” Allen called.
Brothers and sisters, tell you what you gotta do…
“Excuse me,” I said, pressing my way through Carla’s wealthy friends until I broke out of the throng at the garden entrance. The boy’s head was just barely visible over the hedges that led into the glorified labyrinth, but he was gone when I rounded the corner. “Ezekiel!” I cried. The song grew muffled as I ran into the maze and the tall hedges seemed to stretch on impossibly.
The Whitaker estate was big, but it wasn’t that big. I turned only to find myself staring down three corridors lined with hedges that stretched so high above me I could barely see the crescent moon.
Then I heard it. His laughter. Any lingering fear that I’d been chasing some random kid dissipated when I heard that laugh. It was Ezekiel. It couldn’t be, but it was. I took off in the direction of the laugh I’d never thought I would hear again, barreling through every impossible twist and turn the maze threw at me.
A strange crackling sound drowned out the song and my labored breathing and I froze in my steps as the hedges around me lit up and turned to walls of fire.
“Jedidiah!” His voice was panicked, small, desperate, just as it had been that night. Without hesitation, I lunged into the fire.
Nine
DANIEL
As I stood at the curb outside my building and listened to the clock at Town Hall chime eight, I felt like a fool and not just because I was wearing a monkey suit. On the long list of stark differences between Asher and Dennis, the former’s obsession with punctuality was right at the top. I was relieved to finally have something to call him that didn’t feel like conceding to the lie that had threatened my very sanity at times, even if I could only call him Asher when we were alone, but if the fucker stood me up after all he’d gone through to convince me to attend the gala with him, he was going to be known as Asshole henceforth and forevermore.
I wasn’t even sure why I’d agreed to go with him. Technically, I hadn’t. I’d just been too stunned by his behavior the night he came over to my apartment before to say anything different until it was too late. So here I stood, waiting at the curb like a teenage girl stood up for prom.
I hoped he was getting a good laugh at my expense, because the next time I saw him, I was gonna knock the fangs out of his skull.
And then he pulled up. I’d only ever seen his Mercedes, but it didn’t surprise me that he had an even more ostentatious red sports car to pull out of the garage for special occasions. He rolled down a tinted window and I rolled my eyes.
“Sorry I’m late.”
“I’m not getting in that thing.” I hesitated, looking over compact car that hovered barely an inch off the ground and didn’t even have a door handle, as far as I could tell. “I don’t even think I’d fit.”
I jumped back when the door slid open vertically. Because doors that opened out were just so inefficient. “Is there any price you won’t pay for attention?”
He grinned. “Come on. You know you want to.”
I grimaced to save face, but it did look kind of fun. With considerable effort, I folded and bent my limbs into submission and felt an episode of late-onset claustrophobia when the door slid shut. It occurred to me that maybe trapping myself in a tin can with a monster I knew little more about than the fact that he had a taste for blood and a habit of stealing bodies wasn’t the best idea. At least I knew his weakness, so I was reasonably sure my blood was safe.
“Are you really afraid of me?” he asked, a hint of amusement in his tone as he shifted gears.
“I’m not afraid,” I muttered.
“No? Good.” The car took off and before we were even out of the town square, the speedometer passed sixty.
“Fuck! Slow down,” I growled, digging my nails into the armrest.
“Go easy on the Italian leather,” he said, speeding up.
“Where are you going? The Whitakers live that way.”
“I’m taking you off to my shadowy lair to make you my immortal bride.”
I stared at him, trying to figure out whether that was sarcasm in his tone or just insanity.”
He glanced over at me and rolled his eyes. “Didn’t you read the invitation? The gala’s being held at the Mills.”
“Your dad’s country club?” I asked dryly. “I think I’d prefer the shadowy lair.”
“Relax, he won’t be there. He knows I will be.”
I frowned. If there was one other person in this world who suspected the truth about Asher, it was Dennis’ father. He’d always been the typical rich asshole who insisted his kid could do no wrong, but after
it happened, I hadn’t so much as seen them in the same room together once. “Does he know you’re you?”
“He doesn’t know, but he’s always been suspicious. It seems you and he are the only ones who didn’t see it as a positive change.”
“I wouldn’t say that,” I muttered. The car was still going uncomfortably fast, but since the guy in the driver’s seat had technically gotten away with murder, I doubted reminding him of the speed limit was going to get him to slow down. “Look, maybe whatever you are can withstand a crash at ninety-miles-per-hour, but I already died once this way.”
To my surprise, he actually slowed down. Not as much as I would have liked, but enough that I was no longer concerned about losing my grotesque lunch.
After a short pause, he said, “I wouldn’t let anything happen to you.”
It was his casual tone as much as the words themselves that took me off guard. “Uh…thanks?”
“If you die, you won’t go to Heaven or Hell,” he continued. “You don’t belong in this world any more than I do. If you died, they would simply destroy your soul. I wouldn’t do something that would cause that to happen.”
I wasn’t quite sure how to reply to that. For most of my life, I’d simply assumed that no longer existing after death was a given, and I still wasn’t sure I preferred the alternative, but I at least wanted the option.
Fortunately for me, he didn’t seem to expect a reply. He turned on the radio and I tuned out when he started humming along to Enya because no matter how much of a technical improvement Asher was over Dennis, he could still be incredibly fucking creepy when he wanted to be.
By the time we arrived, the cars in the parking lot outside the Mills were spilling over into the grass. I got out of the car and Asher smoothed his suit down. I’d never actually been out with another guy. I wasn’t the type of person you went out with so much as the kind you ended up going home with, so I didn’t have a clear idea of the protocol. The garden was lit up like some kind of Christmas spectacle and I could tell from the scowl on Asher’s face that he was less than pleased about what Carla’s decorating crew had done to his family’s country club.
“That woman has no sense of subtlety,” he muttered, grabbing a couple of drinks off a tray. He offered me one and I decided to let it be my only drink of the night. I seemed to be strangely more susceptible to the effects of alcohol right after I’d eaten, and I didn’t want to risk humiliating myself in front of him and the rest of the town like I had that night.
“That we can agree on.” My knowledge of event planning ended at laying out chips and dip and streamers, but I was still struggling to remember why I was there in the first place. The last time I’d willingly gone to a town event, it had been to talk to Lucas Whitaker about running Holden out of town.
Asher took my hand and suddenly, I remembered perfectly. “Shall we dance?” he asked with a smile that made it hard to breathe. Under the moonlight, surrounded by music and dancing and laughter, I felt like we were at junior prom again only instead of watching him dance with Christina Merlin, he was asking me and instead of him, he was everything I’d painted him as in my wildest dreams.
I almost said yes and then I remembered where we were. Who we were. “I don’t dance.”
“Everyone dances,” he said, pulling me with him onto the dancefloor. He turned my hand in his grasp and put his hand on my back, pulling me close. “It’s just a matter of how well.”
“Not well,” I muttered, falling into step with him because that was only slightly less embarrassing than falling on my face. We weren’t the only same-sex couple on the dancefloor, and there weren’t as many people watching us as I’d feared, but I still felt like I was having one of those dreams where you show up at school and realize you’re only wearing the striped pink underwear your mom bought because they were on sale and didn’t stop to think there’s a reason why they were on sale.
“You know, for someone who spends so much time trying to convince people he doesn’t care what others think, you spend a lot of time worrying about what others are thinking.”
I frowned at him, because my face needed a constant reminder not to connect with his. “You’re one to talk. Everything from your hair to your tie clip and cufflinks has to be calculated perfection at all times. For someone who tries to convince everyone he’s not a serial killer, you spend a lot of time being anal retentive.”
“A serial killer is someone who kills more than once, in a pattern. Technically, everyone just thinks I’m a run-of-the-mill murderer.”
“See? That shit is not helping your case.”
He chuckled. “Keep talking like that, and I might get the idea that you actually care about me, Daniel.”
I gave a less-than-convincing scoff and looked away because being this close to him and making eye contact was playing with fire. “Wait, are you leading?”
“Yes,” he said, smirking. “Is that a problem?”
“No. I’d just rather be the one leading.”
“Then by all means, if it’s that important to you.”
I hesitated. It occurred to me that I didn’t exactly know how to lead and was struggling enough just to keep up with him. “It’s fine. Whatever, it’s just dancing.”
“It is just dancing,” he agreed, slipping his hand a bit further down my back. Had he always been this warm? My skin was as close to normal body temperature as it ever got those days, but I wasn’t sure.
I scanned the dance floor, both because he was right and I cared way too much what everyone else was thinking and because I thought I’d heard Nick’s voice and I wanted to make sure he wasn’t in need of rescue from Tiffany Whitaker. She was usually on her worst behavior at these things, especially since Nick had moved out and so rarely saw her otherwise. When I finally found him across the courtyard, I realized Holden already had it covered. They were talking with a few of the younger Whitakers and they all seemed to be having a reasonably good time.
The song stopped and so did Asher. When I looked back at him, I realized I hadn’t been as subtle as I’d hoped. I was ready to apologize for being distracted when he nodded toward the garden. “There’s something I want to show you.”
I followed him, more than happy to get away from the crowd. He went to the entrance of the garden maze and skirted around it, walking further out of the eyeline of the gala guests. It occurred to me that if I had any common sense, I would be slightly wary of him since I still didn’t know what he was capable of, but I wasn’t. I hated myself for it, but now that I’d stopped hating him, I felt so much more at ease around Asher than I ever had around Dennis.
“What are you doing?”
He held a finger to his lips and slowed his pace as we approached a far more remote area of the bike path that wound around the club. It occurred to me that while I could still see the edge of the garden past the maze’s entrance, none of them could see us. Asher stopped at a bench on the path where the woods bordered the manicured lawn that eventually became a sprawling golf course if you went far enough, and he leaped down into the drop-off.
I leaned over and saw him stooped down, designer tux and all, peering into some hollow on the other side of the bench. I watched curiously as the ever-so-dignified defense attorney held out his hands and started making clicking sounds. Just as I was beginning to contemplate the fact that Asher was both a supernatural creature of unknown origin and certifiably insane, I saw a small, twitching black nose edge out of the hollow. A den, it seemed.
“Come on,” he said in a soft, entreating intonation as he rubbed his fingers together, calling the creature further out. A small gray fox sniffed the air around him and decided that whatever Asher was was fine by him, walking up to him and letting him stroke its plush fur like he was fucking Snow White.
It was all I could do to hold my tongue because what the actual fuck? Asher looked up at me with a smug smile plastered on his face and cocked his head for me to come join him. The moment I even thought of taking a step, the fox fro
ze and looked at me sideways. Asher made a soft shushing sound and rested his hand on top of the fox’s back, which should have sent it flying, but it sat because he was a fucking forest prince on top of everything else.
Of fucking course he was.
I grudgingly eased my way down the slope and the fox clicked at me in warning when my foot slipped, backing up to Asher for security. I was as curious as I was irrationally angry about all of it, but I wasn’t about to pass up a chance to get that close to a fox that wasn’t heavily sedated and wounded.
“Just relax. Animals are good at reading energy, and if you’re nervous, she’s nervous.”
I reluctantly lowered myself to the ground and sat. I was never gonna get the grass stains out of the tux, but I hated it anyway and the experience was completely worth the pittance I’d paid for it ten years earlier.
“You gonna introduce me to your friend?” I asked dryly.
“Animals have names, as a matter of fact. Just not ones you’d be able to pronounce.”
“You know that for a fact.”
“I do,” he said, moving forward to look into the den. I caught a couple of white glimmers that might have been eyes, but I was admittedly too distracted by the sight of Asher on his hands and knees to pay much attention until he reached in.
“Be careful,” I warned. “You don’t know what’s in there.”
“I’m pretty sure these guys aren’t capable of doing anything to me that a silver bullet can’t.”
As charmed as I was, I was definitely gonna tuck that nugget of information away for later. Ever since Asher had confirmed that he wasn’t a vampire, I’d been researching things I had previously restricted to the realm of folklore in an attempt to narrow down the possibilities so I’d at least know what I was up against. Maybe he was an incubus, too. At least then I couldn’t be blamed for my own weakness.
Asher pulled two squirming gray blobs of fur out of the den and the chirping sounds the kits were making were the final nails in the coffin of my ability to play it cool. “Holy shit, they’re cute.”
