Compelled

by Shawntelle Madison

  Tyler didn’t touch his until Zoya sat and took a sip. He didn’t trust them any more than I did at this point. I didn’t blame him.

  “You were quite clever,” Tamara said. “Although, that wasn’t too smart of you to let that wizard use you.”

  “What is she talking about?” Tyler asked.

  I wanted to smack Tamara and I’d just gotten into her home. “Nothing you need to worry about.” I didn’t dignify her words with a response. “You shouldn’t have taken that child from her parents. Your pack got what they deserved.”

  Tamara chuckled. “They weren’t my pack—not formally, anyway. Just a means to an end. But, yes, you reap what you sow, right?”

  She took one of Luda’s cookies and continued. “Are you ready to entangle yourself in my web? Are you ready to harvest from my tainted fields of knowledge?”

  My gaze never left hers. “Some prices are worth paying.”

  “Great advice from your grandmother. She told me that once, too. Not that I paid attention, though.”

  I got to the point; I didn’t feel like waiting. “So have you found a way to remove curses?”

  “Not yet, but I’m close, and that’s why I have to be careful. I wanted to find others who practiced old magic. Other werewolves like your grandmother who had the skillset to help me, but most of them don’t want to touch dark magic and try to change it into something else.” She shrugged. “Touching darkness is a scary thing. Like jumping into a pit and hoping the world is waiting there to break your fall.” She touched the birthmark on her face, making me wonder if she’d truly been born with it.

  “I can help you,” I said softly, “especially if you taught me once you figured it out.”

  Tamara made a face I was getting tired of during this trip: Yeah right. She crossed her arms and a sinking feeling soured my stomach.

  She was gonna ask me to leave.

  “I might be a beginner,” I said quickly, “but what I do have is an undying will. I can remember things, and I’m willing to do whatever is necessary to save my husband.”

  “I don’t think the term beginner is close to what you are. Can you command fire? Can you transform? What can you do?”

  “I can’t do any of those things,” I admitted. “But I’m willing to learn.”

  She shook her head with disbelief and I could feel my only chance slipping through my fingers. “How will your learning help me?”

  “That’s the thing about solving problems. I can take what’s scattered and bring it together. I see organization, or what you’d call patterns, in chaos.” Like the shitty way The Bends was before I got that place together.

  Tyler, who sat at my side, placed his hand on my knee. When I briefly peeked at his face, his expression told me to let it go. Like hell, I would. If I had to get on my knees and soil my family honor to beg, I’d damn well do it.

  “That’s your argument?” Tamara said.

  “Don’t you want to learn how to remove curses?” I replied.

  Tamara sighed. “More than you know.”

  I glanced at Luda, Zoya, and then Tamara. Zoya took a deep breath and briefly closed her eyes. Luda reached for her twin’s hand and offered a reassuring squeeze, but it was the pained expression on their faces as they glanced at their grandmother that hit me hard. What happened to them? Secrets seeped out of the cracks in the wall and hovered over us like a suffocating cowl. Was someone in this house cursed, too?

  “I’ll let you stay for a few days,” Tamara said to end the silence. She didn’t look my way, simply looking at the black and white landscape photos on the wall. “If you don’t show me you’re worth my time, I’ll either send you back home or—”

  “Or what?”

  Her smile widened and made my throat go dry. “I guess you don’t want to know what happens when I curse someone, do you?”

  Chapter 10

  Afternoon tea with Tamara turned into dinner. I expected Tyler to bolt and make a run for it, but the dwarf merely smiled and followed me around like a good friend. The twins, in turn, followed us. As to whether Luda or Zoya liked him remained to be seen. The taller twin hid her smile often behind her hand, grinning whenever Tyler said something. The shorter one was far darker, casting a smirk in my direction whenever I spoke.

  “You smell. How long have you been on the road?” Zoya asked.

  She didn’t need to remind me. My nose worked just fine, thank you. “Not too long. We stayed in a hostel last night and, after that, we traveled up north with my cousin’s folk music band.”

  Zoya nodded. “That’s still not an excuse for filth.”

  Kill her with kindness, my babushka would say. “No, it’s not.” I glanced at the coffee table and couldn’t resist running my finger along the edge. I drew a line in the dust, collecting it into a pile of dust bunnies.

  Her smile faded. Touché.

  “How about we let you two get settled then before the evening. During dinner, we can discuss our ‘arrangements’ for the week,” Tamara said.

  “That sounds good,” I said.

  As much as I wanted to get to know Zoya and her sunshine-like sister Luda, I really wanted to remove all the filth from our trip. Luda darted up first, gesturing for us to follow her up the stairs.

  The wood creaked with each step. “How long since the stairs have been checked?” Tyler remarked.

  “This is my parents’ home,” Luda said in heavily-accented English. “They’ve been dead now for the past ten years, so it has been a long time since Papa had fixed them.”

  “If you have tools, I’d be glad to look them over.” He offered the kind of smile that would make any woman melt between the cracks in the floor, but Luda simply chuckled.

  I poked him in the back and gave him the I-know-what-you’re-doing look. He shrugged back. For a guy who only preferred dwarf girls, he didn’t mind flirting with a stranger.

  The top of the stairs opened to a hexagon-shaped room about the size of my bedroom. The farmhouse had been well-constructed—many years ago, though. A few cracks and water stains in the wallpapered walls showed the age of the home. A single light bulb hanging from the ceiling added needed light due to the narrow window along one of the walls. Dark red curtains with a pattern resembling gumbo in a bubbling pot clashed against violet pattern wallpaper.

  The whole place needed someone handy for upkeep. The outside was in far better shape compared to the inside.

  Five doors from where we stood led to other areas. Luda pointed to the closest one. “That room is for Zoya and me. We won’t be sharing forever...” She stumbled on her words. “But for now that’s where we stay. Across the hall is my gram’s room. And next to our room is the bathroom. It’s the only one in the house I’m afraid.”

  We nodded the whole time while she explained things. Tyler and I each got our own room. They were small, but as Luda promised, they were tidy. Not to my standards in terms of cleanliness, but after a few days of living here, every dust bunny would end up on the endangered list. I nuked those suckers on a daily basis back home. Here they’d get the same treatment.

  No one disturbed us when we were in our rooms. Based on the steady breathing from his room, Tyler must’ve taken a nap. I took a long, hot shower.

  While I was in the ancient bathroom drying off, I couldn’t help thinking about my cellphone. Except for the brief time I’d checked for messages on the train, I’d kept the phone off. The temptation to turn it on nagged me. Had something happened back home? I rarely turned it off. With so many things going on with my pack over the last year—the attack from the Long Island Pack, my brother’s kidnapping, my father’s moon debt—the idea of cutting myself off from the others seemed unforgivable.

  An alpha female never abandoned her pack.

  I chose Thorn over them.

  My heart clenched as if someone punched me in the chest. The pain circled around my ribs and sucked away the breath in my lungs.

  All I could do was face myself in the murky mirror and accept wh
at I’d done.

  Because if I had to do it again. I would.

  Some prices are worth paying.

  When I got back into my room, I turned on the phone briefly. I had reception this time. There were thirteen messages, all of them from Thorn. He’d called the phone twenty times.

  Oh, shit! I should’ve expected this. I quickly turned off the phone. I was so gonna hear it from him when I saw him again.

  Not long after I freshened up, the sky opened to rain. I opened the window a bit and let in the fresh air. The crack didn’t let in too much rain, but the breeze removed the stagnation in the air.

  Dinner time came with a call from downstairs. No knock was necessary. In a werewolf household, if you couldn’t smell the food cooking or hear someone whisper “chow time” from the basement, you didn’t value your stomach all that much.

  Tyler’s earthy scent wasn’t in the hallway so I knocked hard to get the dwarf up. He came out looking pretty rough—clothes-wise anyway. The guy could be in rags and he’d probably make them look good enough to be photographed. But he did smell like somebody who had slept into their sweaty clothes.

  “You might want to change clothes after you eat,” I whispered.

  “Oh, I smell bad?” His face scrunched up.

  “Kinda of.”

  To a werewolf, he stank. Most humans would consider him sweaty from a hard day’s work.

  He darted into the bathroom. “Tell them I’m on my way.”

  I stifled my laugh.

  Dinner that night was garden potatoes, asparagus, and generous portions of pork sausages. Everything was fresh from the farms around us. They tasted so good. Tyler kept eating what Zoya scooped and placed on his plate. Even Luda and Zoya grunted with each bite, scooping large portions on their own plates.

  As good as the food tasted, I couldn’t help but feel a set of eyes on me. Whenever I glanced at the head of the table, I spotted Tamara staring back at me, her brown eyes pensive. For every five bites Tyler took, she ate one. She chewed slowly, too. Pretty weird for a werewolf. Half of her plate still had food by the time everyone else finished. I offered to help with the dishes, but Tamara shooed the girls away with Tyler to help.

  “You should go to bed now,” Tamara said. The way she said it made me pause.

  “It’s not even nine.”

  “We’re on a farm. There’s work to be done in the morning.” She jerked her chin to the stairs to indicate that I should go.

  “I understand.”

  “Oh, and Natalya.”

  “Yes?”

  “If you want to stay here, I suggest you keep your phone turned off.”

  Asking how she knew would be pretty fruitless. The damn thing beeped as it booted up. But as to why she wanted me to keep it off was another matter entirely. Whether sinister or not, I’d find out soon enough.

  The morning didn’t come with a knock. It came with a violent push off my bed.

  I flopped onto the cold, hardwood floor with a hard thump. My noggin hit the floor last, but whether that happened or not didn’t make a damn bit of difference. Tamara stood in the doorway. My door usually squeaked, yet she’d entered without a sound.

  “Move your ass, girl,” she said. “We got work to do.”

  As she turned to leave, she threw behind her back, “Meet me in the middle of the field.”

  Waking up on time was something I always strived to do. In anticipation of what was to come, I had set the ancient alarm clock by the bed to five a.m., a great time to wake up. This woman shook me out of bed at four. I blinked at the ticking alarm clock, finally raising my wobbly arm to turn it off. It was pretty useless now.

  My morning routine made the day start right. After the stay in the hostel and now waking up at Tamara’s, I damn wished I’d taken my happy pills. My stomach churned with discomfort as I quickly washed my face in the bathroom and threw on my shirt and jeans. With a sigh, I touched the jean’s fabric, wishing for my skirt. Another day, another opportunity to adjust.

  I could do this. Big girl panties, right?

  Tamara waited in the middle of the field behind the house.

  The sky had opened to a downpour that had turned into a soft rain. But the damage had already been done. Between the house and Tamara was a field awash in mud, wet grass, and who knows what else.

  Was this some kind of test? I took the two steps down from the house and hesitated before hitting the ground. This was supposed to be the easy part, yet during my time in Russia, it hadn’t rained. My sad jacket would be soaked after some time out here.

  Instead of taking a step back toward the house, I marched right out into that damn field. I even stomped in a puddle to gather my confidence.

  I ignored the wetness seeping into my shoes. I ignored the mud covering my shoes. And I even avoided a panic attack by constantly reminding myself why I was here. My purpose.

  Damn. My purpose really needed to work better when I was cranky in the mornings. Just the thought of scraping gunk off my shoes just about made me go back.

  Tamara gave me the evil eye, so I decided to stand there with a straight back.

  “You’re not very fast,” she said.

  “You’re not very good at keeping time. You said in the morning.”

  “It is morning.”

  “I mean like dawnish morning.”

  Tamara didn’t show amusement. “The last time I saw you, you didn’t defend yourself with magic. Was there a reason for that?”

  “I only know so much.”

  Tamara chuckled. “You mean you know nothing?”

  I shrugged. “Kind of.”

  Tamara sighed. “You’re not much use to me like this.”

  “Give me one week. I might surprise you.”

  Tamara’s eyebrow rose. A trail of rainwater formed on her hair and streaked down her cheek. Her clothes were soaked, but she didn’t care. She merely blinked when the water got into her eyes. She sighed deeply. Her cheeks caved in as if she were chewing on it. She smacked her lips and glanced at me from head to toe.

  Time stretched out, and I hoped she would say something. My jacket was soaked by this point, but somehow, through sheer willpower, I remained where I stood. My Aggie would be proud.

  “Lesson one,” she finally said, “know your power.” She held up her hand and presented the palm. “The amazing thing about power is that it’s in everything around us. Power swims in this whole hand. It’s all over me. Do you understand this?”

  Nick had taught me a lot about this. Once he’d showed me how he saw me through his eyes. That power pulsed bright white under my skin like a fire. As to how I could use this inner strength was the important question.

  “Yes.”

  “The fundamental exchange is the driving power behind the spellcasters. They have the ability to draw power from a source and manipulate it to do what they want.”

  Fundamental exchange. This was a new term. I nodded.

  “Think of them as master clay molders. In the range of things, we are a source of power. Our power to shift comes from within. Without our power we cannot change from one to another.”

  That I knew, too.

  “For us, drawing from our power isn’t the same as shape-shifters. As a conduit, the path to using the power isn’t the same. They have to work less than we do. They’re better at it too, since they are playing in the pool you could say.”

  “But...” I tried to find a way to ask without bringing Nick into it. “A spellcaster once told me he draws from himself sometimes.”

  She chuckled. “They can, but compared to us, their inner strength is a pebble next to a mountain. Most of them could never change their flesh like us without an imbued weapon.”

  I shifted and my feet squished in the mud. “You said most of them.”

  “The world is a massive place, Natalya. You should never assume the shadows don’t hold new dangers.” She glanced to the woods in the distance. Her eyebrows lowered as her nostrils flared.

  “Is someth
ing wrong?” I asked.

  She took a deep breath, and then shook her head. Nothing you need to worry about. “Now I will most likely have to undo the garbage you’ve learned before. I bet all somebody taught you to do was light a campfire or something.”

  I couldn’t light a cigarette, even if I wanted a smoke. Lighting a fire right now didn’t exactly seem like a genius thing to do anyway.

  “Just go ahead and teach me.”

  “Let’s start with water, then. All around you is matter to be manipulated. Either you move it, freeze it, or vaporize it. You can play with it like clay. Are you following me so far?”

  “Yep.”

  “Manipulating matter requires two things: tapping into the inner source, and the words to do the push for us to make the connection.”

  I didn’t interrupt her. It was nice to learn something my grandma was so eager to hold back about. This was something I needed to learn.

  “The memorization is the easy part. Finding your way to unleash your power is another thing entirely.” She went through a series of phrases for the manipulation. And it wasn’t something simple like move water around. Each way you could alter water had a three-word phrase. And Tamara was perfectly able to info dump them all.

  Instead of mumbling like a damn fool, I chewed on each phrase and swallowed it into my head.

  Pretend like she’s Bill, I told myself.

  Every morning Bill went though his work list, his order list, and a bunch of other bullshit he remembered at the moment but would forget by the time he grabbed his morning coffee.

  For a goblin who loved money more than his relatives, he sure didn’t work hard toward learning more of it.

  “What are you doing?” she asked out of the blue.

  I opened my eyes to see her staring me down.

  “This is what I do to remember stuff.”

  “So how do you freeze water then?”

  I read the phrase in my head.

  “Vaporize water.”

  I read the next one underneath that.

  Three-word phrases weren’t so bad compared to the one spell Grandma had me learn. Now that took some time.