by Rae Foxx
“Oh, you have once, and you will again. It will be just like old times.”
He stood and looked around, his hands back on his hips again.
“What? You finally found out your murderer and you’re just going to stand there? Pathetic,” he barked out a laugh and looked at Poetry again. He reached out and stroked her hair. “I hope you enjoyed the show. I look forward to your arrival, when you come to beg me for help.”
The vile man whirled around, still laughing but paused just short of reaching the door. He turned around and his gaze zeroed in on Wulf. “Wulf, come now. It’s time to go.”
Everything in me cracked wide open at hearing such a familiar tone taken with my mate from the mouth of this monster. Wulf moved toward him, without question or retort.
I absolutely lost it, watching my mate, someone I’d trusted with my heart and my body and my life, just stroll toward the enemy as though they were friends.
Travis had been right. Briefly, my mind flicked back to the rough fucking Wulf had administered when we were in the bar. When he had punished me for accusing him of being involved with the murders, punished me for thinking he was a liar. My cheeks heated in a rush of rage and I nearly choked on it.
Lym laughed at my wide eyes. “Oh, that’s right, you didn’t know. Wulf is my son. He is the missing cousin from the explosion. I’ve raised him well. He is loyal to a fault, no matter how luscious the pussy is that tries to ensnare him.”
Wulf cringed a little, but not enough to sway me into thinking I was wrong about him being a traitor, a liar. He left with Lym, only looking back once to meet my eyes through the glass.
“I’ll fucking kill the both of you!” I screamed at the top of my lungs as they moved out of sight. “One by one with my bare hands!”
15
As Lym and Wulf left the building and were eventually out of sight, the physical release of his mental hold on us through the spell pulsed inside me.
But we were still frozen. Thawing out would be the real ball buster of this situation, and Lym knew it. Hell, he could get on his belly and slither out of here like a snail and I still wouldn't be able to catch him.
And I would catch him. Mark my fucking words.
As for Wulf? That rat bastard better run. He’d better hide in the best place he could find and hunker down with a prayer on his lips. Because when I got a hold of him, the breath he took when he saw me coming would be his last.
“That motherfucking rat cock sucking son of a bitch asshole dickhead jerk face!” I slammed all of the words together in one hell of a sailor’s curse toward anyone that would listen.
Evan chuckled at my outburst, but the comedy that gleamed in his eyes was short-lived. He muttered something about cutting the son of a bitch from dick to gullet.
I believed him, but he could do that after I finished with my former mate.
“I can’t believe it. My cousin is alive,” Travis mumbled, still frozen on the side of me, his eyes bulging as though it had been seconds instead of minutes since we’d found out.
“Get over it, Travis. Yes, you have a cousin who is a lying, manipulative, jerk rat bastard...did you not hear what I just barely called him?”
“But he…”
I turned my eyes to the ground. “Yeah. But he’s right. He made us trust him. Believe in him. Defend him. Pull him into my harem and into...well, me. I’ll have his head if it’s the last thing I ever do. But first, we’ve got to find Owen.”
My eyes ticked to Poetry who was still frozen, but somehow it seemed like she was already coming out of the trance. “How is it that you didn’t know that Dawn has been poisoning you all this fucking time, Poetry? I mean, did you just think that woozy and generally disoriented twenty-four hours a day was your new norm? Why would he want you poisoned this long? Why not just kill you and get it over with?”
My questions, as I suspected they would, went unanswered. Poetry wasn’t even paying attention at all.
“I don’t…” she sputtered out. “I’m not sure.”
Well, that was anticlimactic.
And not helpful one fucking bit.
I breathed out, knowing that we were stuck there for a while as I put together things in my head.
“Okay, why would Lym want Poetry muzzled, for lack of a better word? What is she going to say if she’s not controlled by the poison? Ideas?” I asked my boys, or the ones that were left. I growled again when I thought of Wulf and his blatant betrayal.
Disloyal motherfucker.
I should’ve listened to Travis. Not in general, just on this one thing.
But as I questioned everything, more things were stitching together inside my mind. Quinton said we were following the wrong clues. Lym told us he was the one controlling everything.
“Maybe there’s something more in the book?” Evan asked. “Then again, that would require the use of my arms and maybe my legs. Not sure I’ll ever be able to use them again.” I glanced over at him, but in a little glimpse of Evan, the real Evan, he waggled his eyebrows. “Don’t worry, kitten. I’m sure everything else works just fine.”
His comment cracked me up, and when I laughed I heard a crack from somewhere else along my body.
We were defrosting.
Something I thought I’d never say...like ever.
Evan groaned loudly, and before I could look to see what was happening, he had stretched out along the floor and was in the process of transitioning into a sand cat before my eyes. His little paws splayed out as he stretched his legs and then put his nose to the ground.
“See how far you can scent them,” I said to him, and he tipped his chin in acknowledgment before running his nose along the ground until he got to the door. With his paws, he opened it and went bouncing down the street while I tried with everything in me to move and stretch. Anything to get out of this fucking spell.
In minutes, Evan was back and I knew by the sadness in his eyes that the trail had gone cold. Anger rushed through me like a tidal wave, and with a long, ear-splitting scream, I moved my arms and then my legs. Within seconds, I was free of the chilly bonds and could move again.
“Keep moving, Travis. We have to find Owen.”
I knew that he had just found out about his long, lost cousin, but damn. That cousin was a Grade A asshole and had just walked away with the enemy. There was no time for reminiscing or wondering what if.
“Move your ass, Travis Motherfuckin!”
Maybe it was me yelling or calling him that, but whatever it was, it broke him from his glassy stare and he began to move and grunt until he was able to walk again.
“You lost the trail?” I asked, and Evan nodded his head, clearly as aggravated as I was.
“Go check for yourself. There’s nothing to track, Scarlet. Just like before. Just like the bakery. Like fucking aliens teleported them.”
I took him up on his offer. With the lynx and the sand cat on my trail, we bolted outside, following faint hints of the foul scent of both of them, but came up empty.
There was nothing.
How could a shifter leave no scent trail?
Either Lym was a really powerful shifter or a really shitty shifter. Either way, we were back to square one again.
“He said we don’t have much time, Scarlet. We have to do something.” The emergency in Evan’s voice was palpable, and it knotted my chest to hear it.
“Okay,” I put my hands out, palms facing my mates, and hit the pause button. “We know he did his communicating through the book. So let’s go back to the book and see what we can find. Criminals always give themselves away, right? Maybe he put something in there about his location. Something. There has to be something.”
We barreled back into the bookstore where Poetry was sipping tea again and looking at the ceiling.
The Prophet has to be silenced. Dawn will take care of subduing the foresight. Madwoman.
“There,” Travis pointed out the words after we flitted through the book, scouring it for something of worth to h
elp us. “This is what he was talking about with the poison and how long it would work.”
I glanced over at Poetry. All this time I’d assumed she was just a nut case, but I realized there might be more there. She was gifted and they had succeeded in taking that from her, making her out to be a kook. “How long have they been doing this to her?”
As though my statement was the key that unlocked her, Poetry stood and put her cup down. “If there is a bad spell being put on us, there is a simple solution. We perform a cleansing. Easy as pie.”
“I’d lay off the pie if I were you, Poetry,” I commented, but she didn’t get it. She was no longer frozen, but her brain was still fried.
“No, no, not pie. We are going to have a cleansing tea ceremony. Everyone stays put. We shall be cleansed!”
Okay, Lym was scary, but Poetry talking about being cleansed was fucking terrifying. Who even knew what she meant by that?
“Um, I think I’d rather stare at my brother’s amputated foot than to…”
Evan never got to finish his sentence. Faster than I’d ever seen Poetry move, she bustled in with an armful of what she called goodies. There were what looked like smudge sticks and herbs, and something that appeared to be a cross between a teapot and a boogie bong.
“Christ Almighty, Poetry. I’m not really down with the group colonics.” And to prove his point, Travis put both hands over his ass in protection.
Poetry put the things down on the counter and then flitted around it to start not one, but two, electric kettles.
Oh, shit. Two kettles of water. Now I was really scared.
“Ha. You would be blessed if I was in charge of cleaning your colon. But this is a ceremony. The tea will rid our bodies of any lingering magic, poison, and ill intent and the smudge will push out any negative energy or intentions. Yes.” She regarded the pile of things, rearranging them in a line. “Yes, this should be enough to handle it.”
Evan and I shared a glance. He may have been more scared than me.
I opened my mouth, intending to tell Poetry that all this wasn’t necessary, but the chanting had already begun. She bounced up and down with her own rhythm, her skirts swaying with the beat while her braids bounced over her shoulders.
While whispering some kind of prayer, she layered the herbs into the metal sifters that hung above each pot.
Evan took a seat on the chair and pulled me down to sit on his lap while Poetry did her thing.
Maybe cleansing was a good thing since we’d all been exposed to Lym’s magic and Dawn’s poison.
A method to Poetry’s madness.
The jury was still out.
While the water was still heating, she flicked on a lighter and lit the ends of two huge smudge sticks that more resembled joints than anything that might help with magic.
Then came the dancing.
Travis, clearly not being able to take it anymore, hung his head and scraped his nails against his scalp. He didn’t even flinch when his aviators fell to the ground. It was all too much for the poor man.
Evan chuckled against my back as Poetry’s dance rounded the counter. She wove the smudge stick in patterns all around us, and even did some kind of fencing move with the penis tree before doing a ballerina turn, causing her skirts to flow everywhere and knock down some dildos and crystals.
She ended her Lady of the Dance routine with a swirl in the air, right above her own head.
I almost clapped. Evan held my hands down.
“Now for cleansing the insides.”
Travis’ head popped up at that one. His eyes went wide and his gaze lingered on the door like he was still contemplating a run for it.
“Tea.” She patted him on the shoulder. “It’s just tea.”
Nothing was ever just tea with Poetry.
Cups of what smelled like rotten swamp ass were passed around, but none of us took a sip. She sat down in her chair, looking at us like we were nutty. “You will thank me later. Now, we drink!”
Evan and I, despite the temperature of the liquid, downed ours in one go while Travis chose to sip. As the pungent, sour, yet moldy-sweet liquid registered with my tongue, I knew he’d chosen the wrong route.
You had to vodka shot that motherfucker.
The tea hit my stomach and like it was water hitting hot oil, my stomach began to bubble like a cauldron. My eyes widened and the first of many gags hit my throat like a sharp whip. The force of the heave was so strong that I doubled over, falling to the ground at Evan’s feet.
I looked up at him, thinking the asshole should’ve helped me, but he was in a gag hell of his own. The gagging was like a rope that went down my throat and was anchored in my lower intestine, and someone kept jerking on it time and time again, forcing my entire body to curl into itself.
But my reaction was nothing compared to Poetry’s. Seconds after I had, her body hit the ground. While I heaved and jerked, she had gone into full-on seizures and body quakes. It was like her entire body was on vibrate, and not in the good way. She cried out, groaning and grunting as each quake took over.
I tried to reach out to her, but my own body gripped me with another round of heaves.
My chest heaved, trying to take in a deep breath, when Poetry ceased all movement. She then flopped on her back, her arms and legs splayed as though she were about to make a Vagile Ajna snow angel right there on her stained hippie carpet.
Two blinks later and she stared at the ceiling, now saying something, but this time there was no mumbling or moaning.
This time, her voice was as clear as a sane person’s.
“The brothers are in the shadows. Each stands in a different light. The light will be bright. The light will burn.”
Her head whipped around and her stare bored into me. “That is referring to Travis and Wulf.”
Almost recovered from my gag-spell, I had conjured enough energy to slap Evan on the foot. “Shit. That’s what that means.”
Poetry’s body convulsed again like a volt of electricity had passed through her. “The mirrors are on either side of the street. Nothing alike, but containing the same danger. The line of doors is a path that many women have walked, but the last one in will send it all to the ground.”
This time she didn’t tell us what it meant. I felt like I was inside a cheap Mad-Libs book and someone hadn’t finished the page.
“What the hell does that mean?” Travis’ voice was raspy and gravelly because of the gagging. “Wait…” He said before anyone could answer. “There are only two places in Cummings Cove where a line of doors lead to where women go. The bar, and Big Dick’s Cummings Inn. And they are right across the street from each other.”
“I’ve been to the bar. Trust me. There is nothing there,” I chimed in, knowing that my cheeks had gone red with heat.
“Well, then. Let’s start with the Inn.”
16
“Are you sure she’s safe in there?” Travis asked, looking over his shoulder at the street as we waited for Evan to emerge from the bar. He was checking things out, trying to make sense of Poetry’s latest vision.
“Poetry is fine. She’s locked in our apartment. Anyway, I’m hoping this won’t take long. I’m here to find the bastards and be done with the both of them.”
Bastards. Plural. I couldn’t believe I was hunting my mate.
Evan came out of the place with his nose scrunched. “That place is fucking shady as hell. I mean, not Cummings Cove shady, just regular ass shady. Dayum. I feel like I need a shower.”
I snorted at that. Owen would’ve liked it.
“Yeah, well, did you go in the back rooms?” Travis asked.
Evan shook his head.
“Then you saw the nice parts of that bar. Trust me. Isn’t that right, Scar?” I growled in response thinking about those back rooms. The last time I had been in one of those rooms was with the wolf bastard, and the last thing I wanted to think about was his hands on me and how that had made me feel.
Goddamn him. I was going to t
urn his ball sack into a purse.
I laced my fingers and stretched them outward, cracking my knuckles while I let the rage bubble and build inside me.
“Let’s do this shit. Big Dick, here we come. Wait, I didn’t mean…”
Evan chuckled. “Oh yeah, you did. No take backs. Come on, let’s get you a big dick.”
Right there in front of the bar, we fazed back into our animals and pounced across the street to the Inn. I felt safer with Travis’ lynx next to me, instead of just mine and Evan’s tiny forms.
The Inn was one of those shady places where the doors faced the streets instead of facing inside a hallway, because who needs safety when you’re at Big Dick’s?
My sand cat mate sidled up to door after door, pressing his little ear up to them, listening for something while using his pink nose to sniff for clues. Each door received a mew from the nasty scents I knew were there. I could smell them a mile away.
Travis did more of the same, except with a bigger body, of course. His Lynx was long and lean, his toes spread out as his paws pressed down on the concrete while he sniffed around. Large golden eyes peered at me now and then, checking on me, always checking to make sure I was okay.
I pressed my nose to the bottom of one of the motel doors, inhaled deeply, and almost gagged. This shit was worse than that cleansing tea of Poetry’s. It smelled like rotten apples and old lunch meat, mixed with the sourness of meth, and the pungency of cum in an old condom. Gross. The place had certainly earned its name.
I didn’t expect much in terms of finding him by scent. Who knew that Lym had the power to mask his scent? I wondered where he had gotten the ability from as I moved to the next foul door and almost gagged at the scents I found there. I mean, did he seduce some poor witch into giving him powers? Maybe he was blackmailing one of them too. That seemed to be his thing.
The thought of a witch being involved in all of this, pulling her strings and orchestrating magic on behalf of Lym, was both terrifying and angering. I bet his daddy wouldn't have liked that one single bit. No one in Puritan Village liked witches. Witches were the taboo, among almost every other thing under the sun. They were considered evil and Satanic. The villagers thought they were dangerous, which was why my parents hadn’t wanted me going anywhere near Bloodwood Academy.
