by Juniper Hart
She put her eye to the peephole to see what he looked like. It was too small. They’re designed to work one way. The other way around makes it look weird.
So, like a creeper, she tried to look under the door.
The hallway was entirely too narrow for her to stretch out, so she had to curve in an awkward position to be able to do it. She arched her butt way up in the air and folded her legs under her, which was astonishingly uncomfortable, but she managed to get her eye close enough to the carpet to see under.
All she could see were claws.
Long, sharp claws. They didn’t look manicured or cared for. They appeared to be jagged and untouched, like those of a wild beast. Shaggy fur was tossed over them. She wasn’t as impressed as she had hoped. She’d known he would be covered in fur. No big surprise there. That’s what werewolves do. What she wanted to see was something other than his feet. Was his entire body covered in hair? Was his face different? Did he look like a wolf? Did he have a tail?
She tried to scoot closer to see more, but the door was determined to block her view. Rather unexpectedly, he smelled different. She tried to catch a solid whiff to identify it, but she’d never smelled something like it before. It had a certain dog-like quality, but it also smelled like man and she thought she caught just a hint of the bodywash Reuben used. An unusual combination.
“Dammit,” she muttered, getting back up to avoid getting a cramp from staying in the miserable position. “Goodnight, Reuben.”
“Let me out!”
“Not gonna happen.”
Very quietly, she returned to her own room. The shadows were eerie, almost as though they were alive. She flicked on the light, banishing them. Screw it. She was sleeping with the lights on. She wouldn’t be able to sleep with them off, from the fear of hearing ghostly noises. In truth, she wasn’t going to be able to sleep with a glaring light right above her eyes either, but it was better than wondering if something was in her room with her.
The rest of the night was absolute hell.
Every time the tree outside would scratch against the window, it sounded like nails across a chalkboard. Every time someone turned on a car, she was sure it was vampires pulling up to kill her. Every single time anything happened, her mind feared the worst.
She realized, as she stared at the fan slowly going in circles, that she missed her old life less than she’d thought. In the little time she’d had to think about it, she’d assumed the novelty of her new situation would wear off, but she was getting more and more eager to learn. She’d always been a creative person. The concept of having a world she had never seen before –a magical underground – was enough to confuse and excite her. For heaven’s sake, she had a werewolf in the other room. There were other people in the hotel that would leave the next day without having any clue about their monstrous companion sleeping near them. How many times had she run into enchanted people without knowing it?
The hours clicked by, literally. The hotel room had a loud clock on the wall, which gave her a great reference point of how little sleep she was getting.
Eventually, though, the sun was up. She gave it a little while before going over to Reuben’s room. She was pretty sure that werewolves returned to normal when the sun came up, but then again, she’d also thought werewolves weren’t real.
“Hey, Reuben,” she whispered. “You awake?”
“Yeah,” came a quiet response from within. “I’m up.”
She glanced left and right down the hallway. She was mostly alone, except for one family at the far side that was going the other direction.
“Are you still all hairy?”
“No.”
“Are you able to get out on your own, or do you need me to open the door?”
“I’ll come out. Just give me a minute.”
“How do I know I’m going to be safe?”
“You don’t, I guess.”
That wasn’t quite the response she was hoping for, but then again, he wasn’t lying.
“Come stand at the door,” she requested.
“What?”
“You heard me. Take your shoes off and come stand near the door.”
She looked at the family. They were almost gone. She bent down to look under the door and saw Reuben’s human toes. He had gone back after all.
“Okay. You can come out.”
Reuben opened it from the other side. He looked hung-over. His hair was a mess. His eyes were tired. She guessed he hadn’t gotten much sleep. He’d probably been walking around as a werewolf the whole time.
He made a grateful expression before going to grab his suitcase.
“We have to leave before they track us here.”
She peered in his room and held in a gasp. The furniture was tossed everywhere. There were huge claw marks on the ceiling and walls. On the ceiling! Judging by the height, he must be tall as a werewolf.
“Holy shit.”
He shut the door, giving her a warning with his eyes. That was an off-limits topic to him, evidently.
“You get everything you need? Do you have my gun?”
She presented it to him. He didn’t take it.
“You keep it. You need it more than I do right now.”
She wasn’t sure if that was a nice thing to do or an insult, but it was true. He could handle himself in a fight. She could pull rugs out. That was about it.
Reuben’s face was still purple from where the vampires had hit him the day before. She assumed they’d hit him with the silver crowbar. In fact, he seemed to be almost afraid of the silver. Wasn’t that something she’d read in an article somewhere? That silver was the only thing that could kill a werewolf? She started to believe it.
“Can anything besides silver hurt you?” she asked as they walked towards the lobby.
“Nope.”
“Must be handy.”
He snorted.
“Yeah. Handy turning into a freak every night. I love it.” He smiled, but his heart wasn’t in it. “I’m just kidding.”
She doubted that. Most men would love the sort of power he had, and it probably gave him an ego boost. She didn’t know him well enough yet to argue. He was obviously passionate, and something about him told her that he had some hot buttons. The last thing she wanted to do was set him off. Besides, if he wanted to act like he was joking, that was fine. It wasn’t her job to make him tell the truth.
“Where are we headed?” she asked him after they’d checked out and were back on the road.
“To the Enchanted Society,” he replied. “That’s where you’re going to demonstrate your hacking skills. Something interesting for you that you probably didn’t know – enchantment and technology aren’t that different.”
“But I can explain technology. Enchantment can’t be explained.”
“I can explain enchantment; it’s sort of like magic. Anyone who is born from magic or enchantment can explain it, and those who study technology can explain it. Anyways… there’s going to be a code. A long code. What you need to do is change the code just a little.”
“What does it do?”
He paused. “It frees me. Do you know when the full moon is?”
“Last night?”
“Wrong. It’s not for four days. My damned transformation is happening every night. I need a coder to put it back to where it was.”
“And you think this is on a computer?”
“Not just any computer. The Enchanted Society’s computer.”
“Thanks for clearing that up,” she said sarcastically as she rolled her eyes.
“You’ll see.”
He accelerated to get in front of a slow car.
“I assume you have some questions about me? I kind of showed up out of the blue to rip your world from under you.”
“So who are you really?”
“Well, I told you my name. As for my past, I’m a merc.”
“Merc?”
“Mercenary. I’ve served in all kinds of enchanted turf wars. If you have
money, I can do it.” His expression grew dark. “But I don’t always take on jobs. That’s why I am cursed with this spell. I was asked to kill a powerful vampire’s sister. Her jealous ex-boyfriend wanted her dead. I refused him because I didn’t want to kill her. I can always control my transformation, unless it’s the full moon. That sneaky little bastard cast the spell on me so I’d lose control over shifting. He set me up to go to a dinner with her vampire clan the first day he cast the spell. I never even saw it coming.”
“You mean, you…”
“I killed them. Dozens of them. Didn’t mean to, but they didn’t care. They didn’t care that one of their own set me up.”
“That’s why they’re chasing you.”
“Yep. That’s why they’re chasing me.”
“But why don’t you just explain what happened?”
He glanced over at her for a moment.
“Oh, I did. Trust me. I explained myself a million times over. They don’t care. They just want me dead, but I’m not going to let them put me six feet under.”
She wasn’t sure, but it looked like his grip had intensified on the wheel. His knuckles grew white.
“Starting to understand why I need you? I can’t take many more days of this. Clever of him, really, to set me up with a curse that makes me work only during the day when they almost exclusively work when the sun goes down.”
Cara sat back.
“That’s terrible.”
“And what’s the deal with you?” he asked.
“What do you mean?”
“Why are you still single? You don’t have any horrible defects.”
She looked over at him, trying to decide if he was joking around with her or if he completely lacked social skills. His face was completely serious, but the very end of his lips was turned up and his eyes were gleaming with amusement.
“Umm…thanks? I guess I never found a guy I wanted, and I’m not too social. I get paid to work, not to make friends. Not to mention that love isn’t what I thought it would be. I don’t think I’ve been in love before. If I have, it never excited me. So I just leave when my relationships get boring. None of my boyfriends really ever did it for me, and I feel like they deserved better than my lukewarm feelings.”
He met her eyes and put his hand on her knee, before turning his face back to the road. She took in a breath of air, but her body refused to let her exhale. A fire burned inside of her, unlike anything she had every experienced.
“I’ve never met anyone quite like you, Cara.”
“I don’t know how to take that.”
“I tried to rescue other women, but when they died, I felt nothing. I feel like keeping you alive is just as important as breaking the spell.”
He squeezed her knee, setting off a whole new range of sensations.
Cara stared at him, wide-eyed, but said nothing. Between his electrifying touches and the threat of imminent danger, she was completely turned on.
He pulled off the interstate towards a huge complex of skyscrapers. Businesses lined the streets. They drove up to a building that stood out among the others. It wasn’t as tall as the other skyscrapers, but it was somehow more impressive. Sheets of glass lined the walls and the modern design indicated that it had been built recently. At the very top was a simple logo: a stylized ES. Just two letters. She guessed it stood for Enchantment Society.
“Well,” he said as they pulled up to the parking lot. “Welcome to the Society.”
“That’s a nice building.”
“It’s magnificent.”
She looked up at it. Even though it wasn’t quite as tall as the ones next to it, it was still at least thirty stories high. If someone jumped off the top, they’d have enough time to read a whole book before hitting the ground.
“And you say there’s a computer in there that you want me to hack? Do you know what kind of language it uses?”
“Nope. That’s why you’re here. It’s probably different than anything you’ve ever seen. After all, it’s enchanted.”
“Great. So what’s the plan here? Do we have to bust through the doors or something? Sneak in through the back?”
He opened the front door.
“I was just going to walk in using the front doors, but I like your style,” he said smiling.
“Oh.”
Why was she disappointed about that? His wild energy excited her. She liked not knowing what was going to happen next. Cara felt like she’d just gone skydiving. The adrenaline in her brain was intense. How was he so calm? How could he contain it? Sure, he knew more about the enchanted world, but still, he did have killers after him. No matter how experienced he was, he had to be afraid. Right?
But she didn’t have much time to think about it because they were walking into the Enchanted Society’s building.
Chapter 6
The sliding doors of the Enchanted Society’s building opened with a pleasing hiss, wafting fresh, chilly air on Cara and Reuben. Before she entered, she wondered what she’d see inside. Indescribable secrets? Aliens? Unicorns? She had no idea.
She went in, and what she saw was beyond anything she could have imagined.
People and creatures of all shapes and sizes wandered around inside. She saw bluish people with pointed ears and golden eyes walking with business suits on. She saw big, muscled troll-like creatures with construction gear over their huge frames. One strange multi-legged family was coming out of the elevator with beach gear on.
“Oh. My. God. How…What…I don’t—”
“Pretty amazing, huh?” He smiled and walked towards the elevator. “Come on, little human. I’ll protect you.”
Although Cara knew he was joking, it was nice to know she had a powerful ally to keep her safe. She hoped he’d stick around with her after he gave her directions to the mage. The deal was pretty simple after all; once she fixed the whole coding disaster for him, he was supposed to give her directions to someone who could cast a spell on her. Presumably, that’s when the gig would be up. Cara didn’t want it to end, but she knew she couldn’t thrive in his world. He couldn’t always be there to protect her. Or could he? The thought excited her.
Would she have to go back to her dull life where her greatest thrill was catching a podcast on the way to a job that she hated? She hoped not. She was just getting a taste for the world of enchantment. The last thing she wanted was to pull out and go back to a boring life, always wondering what would have happened if she’d delved deeper.
They walked around the multi-legged family. Apparently, the little kid wanted to see the beach.
“How do these people hide in the real world?”
“You mean the human world? Because this is also the real world.”
“Yeah. Sorry.”
They got to the elevator and he pushed the button.
“Through enchantment. People come through the Society for spells. Once the spells are cast, humans can’t see them for what they are. Until I opened your eyes, you’d see a nice human family. They come back every month or so to repeat the spells.”
“So, these spells can protect me from vampires?”
The elevator doors slid open and they stepped inside.
“No, sorry. Different kind of spell. Think physics and chemistry. Sure, they both use numbers, but they’re totally different.”
The doors shut, leaving them alone inside.
“So here’s the thing,” he said. “We walked in here, but we’re going to need to get out of here quickly when you change the code.”
“But I thought you said we could just walk in.”
“We can. They’re open to all enchanted creatures, and even humans who know this world exists. They’re not open to people who break into valuable records. Just think of this as a bank. If you broke into someone’s account to give yourself the money back that they had stolen from you, would the bank be okay with it?”
She paused.
“I suppose not.”
“But hey, it can’t get much worse.
If they catch us, I kidnapped you. I forced you to do horrible things. You’re just a scared little human kidnapped by a mean werewolf. They can’t do anything to you. You got it? That’s your story.”
“But what about you?”
“Oh, this doesn’t even make the list of the top ten stupidest things I’ve done.”
Cara laughed. Their eyes met.
Reuben looked her up and down before pushing her against the elevator wall. He kissed her voraciously and she responded, losing all her inhibitions. His large, strong hands wrapped around her narrow waist as she let out an involuntary sigh.
And with that, the doors opened to a small lobby with a bank-style industrial vault door on one end with two red security guards guarding it. Once again, Cara was left unsatisfied.
Reuben’s demeanor changed from intensely passionate to focused and dangerous.
“This is an unauthorized area,” one guard said with a warning tone. “Go elsewhere, civilian.”
Reuben didn’t go elsewhere. He walked towards them.
“Sorry, man. You two seem like nice guys.”
With that, he popped one of them in the face with his fist. The guy’s head snapped back and he crumbled like tinfoil. The other guard, suddenly realizing he was in danger, pulled out his baton and whacked Reuben before he could block him. The baton shattered across Reuben’s back.
Reuben rolled his shoulders, sending the splinters of the baton onto the ground.
“Bad move, dumbass.”
The poor guy didn’t stand a chance. The time it took Reuben to knock him unconscious was about the same amount of time it took the average person to come to a complete stop at a stop sign.
He shook his hand.
“Ow. Ow. Little guys have hard heads.”
She hadn’t realized it, but she’d stepped back out of fear. He seemed to notice.
“Don’t worry. I won’t hurt you. Just…get your hacker mind on.”
He went to the vault and grabbed the rotating steel handle.
“Okay, I’m about to transform. Don’t freak out, okay?”
“I thought you said you couldn’t control yourself!”
“I can’t. But I also can’t hold it for more than five or ten seconds without moonlight.”
