“Good.” I decided to lighten the mood with humor. “We’ve set ourselves up for a horror movie scenario with our lovemaking, so I’m glad I don’t have to worry about Jaws. How far around the villa do the wards go?”
“About a hundred yards from the perimeter of the building and around this cove,” he said, and he put his head in his hands. “Why do I keep telling you these things?”
“Because your heart says to.”
I walked to the surf and let the warm waves caress my ankles. “What do you think?” I asked Wolf-Lonna.
“You are becoming stronger and able to beat the wizards’ potions and spells, but I do not know if you are tough enough to defeat them in battle.”
“Okay…” I said under my breath. The sand in my bikini was driving me crazy, so I walked further past the breakers, where the turquoise water caressed me with its undulations. I tried to swim out farther, but an electric jolt stopped me, and my foot and hand tingled.
“So there’s the spell.” A large shape moved in the water farther out, so I decided to be prudent and not test it at the moment. I swam back toward shore, found a place where I could stand, and rinsed my skin and bikini. My hair swirled in the water around me, and I wondered if I looked enough like Max’s fantasy to entice him into the water for another round of lovemaking. If it had brought Wolf-Lonna back to me, maybe it would bring me back to him.
I glanced at the beach, and Max frantically waved his arms at me. I turned around to see a large fin cutting through the water heading straight for me inside the ward perimeter.
26
The adrenaline hit my system like an internal punch to my solar plexus, and I almost doubled over. I swam frantically toward the shore.
“Stop swimming! You are acting like prey.” Wolf-Lonna’s voice cut through my panic.
“What?”
“Stop and stand your ground. He is merely curious as to what creature could disrupt the electricity in the water.”
“You’re freaking kidding me.”
The shark drew alongside me and didn’t seem to be interested in taking a bite. I stood and watched it circle me. Max thrashed into the water, but I held out my hand.
“Don’t come in! It doesn’t want to hurt me, but I don’t know how it will feel about you.”
Since I stood, I estimated the shark’s length at about six feet. It was a hammerhead.
“Greetings, fellow hunter,” I said.
“Greetings, huntress.” The voice was deep and resonant in my brain. “How is it that you disturb the stinging wall?”
“I’m just now discovering that I can. Would you like me to swim out with you so you can get back through?”
“No need, although I appreciate your courtesy. Most human types do not care if we perish. There is a weak spot near the end of the cove I can slip through because I am small.”
I smiled at the idea of a six-foot-long shark being “small,” but I kept my amusement to myself.
“Have a safe journey, then.”
“You as well, Huntress. If you need help from my kind, please call upon us, and we will come. Like you, we do not have a good history with the wizards, so we tend to avoid the area.”
“Why are you here, then?”
“To guard the island. We do not wish another battle in the war of wizards and werewolves. You are not the only shifter here, Huntress.”
With a swish of its tail, it left me to ponder its strange words. I walked back to the beach through the breakers and resisted the urge to turn around and see what else might watch me.
Max folded me into his arms. “Are you all right? I was afraid you’d be bitten.”
“No, the shark was quite nice, actually.” I didn’t tell him about the shark’s comment about the weak spot.
“How did it get in?”
“I don’t know. It said I disturbed the wall.”
“Salt water can amplify our power or attenuate it. Perhaps your unique makeup interacted with it in such a way that it did. No more swimming too far for you, then.”
“I won’t.” For now. I walked back to my chair, but I couldn’t get comfortable. The breeze changed direction, and dark clouds appeared from out of nowhere.
Max sighed. “We should get back. Carrigan is getting suspicious.”
I looked up, and the first of many cold raindrops landed with a splat on my forehead. “He can control the weather?”
“No, it’s common for storms to blow up over the island. He’s on the trail at the edge of the cove.”
I stood and put on my wrap before gathering my things. Carrigan frowned at us as we ran through the pelting raindrops, which the large tropical leaves sheltered us from somewhat, but not all the way. Goose bumps stood out on my tanned skin.
“There you are,” he said to Max and ignored me. “What is the meaning of this?”
“We were taking a break,” Max said, which wasn’t technically a lie. He walked next to Carrigan, and I trotted along behind like an obedient servant. Or slave.
“She was to get a break this afternoon, not you. We have too much data to go through for you to be slacking off. We need to plan out tomorrow’s experiments based on today’s results, remember?”
We’d reached the end of the trail where it let out to the beach, and therefore the end of the sheltering trees. The rain came down in sheets, and I could only see a large, dark shape where the wizards’ mansion should be. We were all soaked.
“Further delays. Come back when you can safely see your way through,” Carrigan huffed, and he disappeared.
“Where’d he go? Oh, astral projection, right?”
Max nodded. “He doesn’t leave the mansion in any form if he can help it. He must’ve been really pissed to come looking for me.”
I shivered, and he put an arm around me. “Don’t wizards know to bring umbrellas to the beach? Is there some other way you can protect us from the water?”
“As an energy wizard, this is opposite to my talents, and it would take too much for me to zap all this water to steam.”
“I don’t know, that sounds entertaining to me.”
He laughed, and we ducked back inside the canopy of leaves. It still rained, but the foliage gathered the drops or broke them into mist, so the rain didn’t fall as relentlessly. He put his arms around me and pulled me to his chest.
“You know they say making love in the rain is the most romantic,” he told me and reached under my cover-up to play with the strings on my bikini bottom.
I would’ve started panting if Wolf-Lonna wasn’t already doing so in my head. “Aren’t you concerned Carrigan will pop in again? And what about needing time to think?”
“No, he’s probably back in the library with a big tumbler of bourbon to warm up his soul. It’s just you and me, and I have no doubt I want to do this.”
“In that case,” I tilted my head so our lips could meet, and he took possession of my mouth. Cold fingers raked across the back of my neck, and a full body shiver made me cry out, scraping Max’s tongue with my right canine tooth. He jumped back, holding a hand over his mouth. Blood streamed down his face.
“What was that for?” He gingerly touched a finger to his tongue.
I swallowed his blood and folded my arms over my chest. The rain mingled with the tears on my cheeks. “Henry is out here, Max. I felt him watching me.”
“That’s impossible,” he said. “Stop obsessing about him.”
“I would if he would quit stalking me.”
“How do you know it’s him?”
I told him about Henry watching me that morning as I did yoga. He listened, but his expression remained skeptical. The rain let up, and, holding hands, we dashed back to the mansion. He dropped my hand once we got in sight of the windows, though, and the cold wind seeped into my bones.
Saraya and another dark-skinned servant with similar bone structure met us at the door with big bath towels warm like they’d been tumbled in the dryer. Max didn’t meet my eyes.
“Sa
raya, did someone arrive while we were away?”
“Yes, Doctor Max. Master Henry is here. He and Master Carrigan are in the library.”
Max’s eyebrows shot up. “Henry? Are you sure?”
“Yes, Doctor. Master Carrigan would like for you to join them as soon as you are dried off and comfortable. He said for Miss Marconi to wait in her room until she is summoned for dinner.”
Of course.
The time on the clock said four-thirty when I got back to my room, and after a quick, hot shower, I put on a long black skirt and sleeveless gold top with a dipping modern neckline I couldn’t imagine Deirdre wearing. I found a coin necklace that seemed to match.
I lay down on the bed to see if my rumbling stomach would settle. Just knowing Henry was in the house made me uneasy, but the crashing of the waves, particularly insistent since the storm had frothed them up, lulled me to sleep.
This time I found myself in a small, dark room with a single torch on the wall. A sarcophagus stood in the middle with about three feet on any side. The only other light in the room came from two oval-shaped light spots at face height on one of the shorter walls.
Deirdre, glowing slightly and somewhat transparent, sat on the box and trailed her fingers over it.
“Where am I?” I asked.
She looked up and motioned for me to be quiet. “I never liked that outfit,” she said so quietly I almost couldn’t hear her. “I always felt it made me look like the mainland harlots my father complained about.”
“Where are we?”
“My tomb.” She gestured around us. “My dear brother’s last gift to me, making sure I could never leave my family in death as I had tried to in life.”
“What do you mean?”
She stood and beckoned me to follow her to the glowing ovals. “Look.”
I put my eyes to them and found I looked through the portrait as I had before. Maximilian stood to one side of the room, his expression carefully neutral. Carrigan sat in his armchair, and Henry on the couch.
That’s right, I never found out what’s beside the library.
“Does your father know?”
“No.” She stood so closely her cold breath tickled my ear. “Henry never told him, as far as I know. He thinks I was buried at sea, just as I had died.”
Something cold and slimy pressed into my back, and fear danced through my stomach. “What are you doing?”
“I am rejoining the land of the living,” she murmured. I tried to go back to my body, but my spirit was paralyzed, and I couldn’t move.
“You’re the first woman Maximilian has had feelings for,” she said. “I’ve heard him talk about you, and his words are cold and clinical, but I know my Max, and his tone betrays him. I knew your curiosity would get the better of you, and you would come to my tomb in a form I could capture.”
The cold spread from my spine in icicle fingers along my ribs and squeezed my lungs like a suffocating corset. I gripped the inside of the frame, trying to force the sensation out or escape, but it didn’t work. Henry looked up at the portrait and raised his glass.
“To my dear sister Deirdre,” he said interrupting whatever Max had been saying. “You know, it still feels like she’s alive somehow. I’d bring her back if I could.”
“Oh?” Max asked and studied his whiskey.
“It’s one of the benefits of loosening the restrictions on blood magic. If you were man enough to.”
The color drained from Max’s face. “Henry, what did you do?”
“Nothing recently, Maximilian. Your fiancée was a determined woman. I just promised to help her win you no matter what happened.”
Hot anger flooded through me from my heart outward, and Wolf-Lonna snarled, “Occupied, bitch!”
I collapsed on the floor and tried to catch my breath before remembering that as a projection, I didn’t necessarily need it. In the half-light, a dark shape tussled with the glowing Deirdre, who tried to cover her face and throat. A thin wail came from her, and I heard footsteps stomp through the library to the portrait.
“Henry, you will explain immediately,” Carrigan said.
“I plead the fifth, dear Father. You’ve forbidden me to use blood magic.”
“Don’t refer to that revolutionary documentation as justification. Deirdre?”
The pain in his voice struck me in my lower abdomen. He’s a jerk, but he did love his daughter.
“Henry, what did you do?” Max asked again.
“Only ensured Deirdre would be able to come back if given the opportunity.”
A knife ripped through the canvas, and I stepped back and out of the way. Another tearing sound brought my attention back to Wolf-Lonna, whose outline glowed red. She had torn Deirdre’s throat out. Blood flooded my mouth, and I woke and barely made it to the bathroom before vomiting it and the rest of what I’d eaten that day. I looked up to see Wolf-Lonna, a petite black wolf, looking at me with a lupine grin.
She looked into my eyes, and I saw Henry and Carrigan standing over the tomb. The lid was open, and Deirdre’s body was preserved except for one thing: her missing throat.
“That injury was done by someone else,” Wolf-Lonna said, and I came back to myself.
“What the hell happened down there? And why can I see you now?”
Before she could answer, a key turned in the lock, and she disappeared.
“Lonna?” Max’s tone was tinged with panic.
“In here,” I moaned. I couldn’t stand, so he found me on the bathroom floor.
“Are you all right?” He knelt beside me and did the electric running his hands over me thing. I batted them away.
“Your bitch of an ex-fiancée tried to kill me and take over my body,” I said. “That is not okay.”
He helped me stand and brought me back to the bed. He cleaned my face with a washcloth, and I was horrified—and embarrassed—to see it come away with blood.
“Let me clean up,” I said and stood, but he stopped me.
“It’s fine. I’m a doctor, remember? I’ve seen worse.”
“Then why are your hands trembling?”
He smiled and caressed my cheek, which made tears come to my eyes. “Because I was afraid it was your blood.”
My stomach turned, and again, I barely made it. He didn’t follow me, and I was grateful he allowed me to spare my dignity. I did clean up before I came back out, and I ditched the clothes for the white robe that had been hung on the back of the door.
“I’m not normally so squeamish,” I said and sat beside him on the bed. I trembled, and he pulled me to him.
“You’re not normally fighting for your soul, either,” he told me. “I don’t know what you might have heard, but that’s why blood magic is forbidden. It takes away the freedom of choice.”
“Like bringing people to an island and experimenting on them doesn’t?”
“They always have the ability to escape, although it may be difficult. Once your soul is lost, that’s it.”
I pulled away. “Is that how Carrigan justifies it? News flash—as we discussed, islands are damned hard to get off of.”
He sighed. “Look, I don’t know how you did it, but you managed to defeat the spell. Did you have help?”
“No, it was just me and my soul.” I heard the thump of a tail on the floor, but she was still invisible.
“There’s something you’re not telling me,” he said.
“Well, if you don’t know it already, I’m not going to.” I crossed my arms. “So there. I heard that from you enough.”
“Which again, I don’t remember.”
“Not my fault.” I stood and walked to the balcony. “Admit it. I was right about Henry being here.”
“Yes, and that puts you in even greater danger. He drew your blood while you were unconscious, and I cannot guarantee he will be ethical in its use. Carrigan’s experiments are only beginning. Tomorrow they will force you to change with a combination of your blood, other chemicals, and blood magic. He will then
be able to cause you to change and control you while you are a werewolf.”
“I will not consent.”
“Consent isn’t part of this anymore.” He stood behind me. “You need to escape. I’ll help you. Tonight.”
I turned back to him. “You said before you wouldn’t until you had all the information. What changed your mind?”
The answer came in a voice that didn’t belong to Max. “You did, my dear.” Carrigan stood at the door, Henry behind him. “Maximilian, I’m disappointed. I never took you for a traitor.”
“And I never took you for a sneak.”
“How did they sneak up on you, Max?” I asked. “You sensed Henry when he arrived. I saw it.”
He shook his head, his expression panicked.
“The same way he slipped away to have a tryst with you this afternoon,” Henry said. “Our Doctor Fortuna is a sneaky one himself.”
I glared at him, and the light caught something at his neck: a small vial with ruby-colored liquid. He was able to mask his and Carrigan’s approach because he has Max’s blood.
Wolf-Lonna became visible and growled at them. Henry took out a gun and aimed it at Max, as did Carrigan.
“You can attack, wolf lady, but you can only get one of us at a time. Someone will get a shot off, and that will be it for your lover.”
“Your cooperation, Miss Marconi,” Carrigan said. “Remember our terms. I could fix it so you never see Maximilian again.”
“Fine,” I said. Wolf-Lonna disappeared, and she returned to my head. She wasn’t happy.
“We’ll figure something out. If I can break through their spells and change, then it will be three on two, or whoever else they’ve got here.”
“You could break through and change, but you don’t want to,” she complained.
“I can’t! I tried this morning, and it didn’t work.”
“Because you don’t want to face all that goes with it.”
They took Max away at gunpoint, and I stomped my foot after I heard the key turn in the lock.
I walked out on to the balcony. The bottom edge of the big pink sun kissed the ocean waves at the horizon and spread its glow like blood on the water. I squinted at the sea, wondering if my friend the hammerhead was out there. Why didn’t they just shoot me? If the end goal is to take me apart to figure out an anti-aging product, they could have easily done so by now, especially after Max betrayed them. I drummed my fingers on the railing and looked down at the sand below, wondering if it would break my fall if I jumped. It was a good twenty feet to the sand below, and I couldn’t help but think that trying to escape that way wouldn’t end well.
Lycanthropy Files Box Set: Books 1-3 Plus Novella Page 51
