by C. M. Owens
Ian shifts, bones snapping and cracking as his fur recedes. He stands as a man, anger etched on his face.
“She attacked your wolves just last night, brought a Van Helsing with her to do the dirty work, and you lob her onto our land today?” he bites out.
“It’s actually my land. You forget your place,” I say with just enough warning.
He takes a step toward me, eyes not lowering. “This is more our land than yours. We’re the pack. Your only role is to keep the other monsters in place so they don’t take cheap shots at us, but you’ve been failing in your role quite a lot in the past century or so, don’t you think, Alpha?” he asks, spitting the last word out like he’s forgotten how to respect the title.
A smirk dons my lips, and in the next instant, I’ve crossed the ten feet between us and am gripping his throat, all before he even realizes what I’ve done.
Slamming him against a tree, holding him only at his throat, I watch as the rebellious gleam in his eyes shows just a hint of trepidation. Ian has gotten ballsy, it seems.
All wolves need a reminder of their place from time to time.
“This is my land,” I say again.
He starts to speak, but my claws begin to extend, biting into his throat.
He wisely elects to remain silent instead.
“My wolves are on my land,” I go on. “I’ve done more for our people than you’ll ever understand.”
“Past tense,” he spits out with a venomous tone, eyes staying fixed to mine. “You used to do more for our people, but you’ve gotten weak.”
My gaze rakes over his face, seeing nothing but contempt, and wondering when the hell he got this stupid.
“Arion tore our people apart right under your nose, and all you did was give him a slap on the wrist,” he goes on. “Now this gypsy shows up, red cloak on as she hunts down our people’s spirits to strengthen her own, and you just brought her back. Even fucking cuddled her, you trai—”
My fist slams into his face twice before he can finish that sentence, and blood sprays as I drop him to the ground, his face slightly mangled but fixable.
“The next time you speak to me like that, it’ll be more than a little tough love, Ian,” I tell him as I turn my back, the gravest insult any alpha can give his beta, and walk away, trying to calm my own wolf before I tear him to shreds.
The last thing I need is my people fearing my sanity. Not right now. Things are too tense among my people, thanks greatly to Arion and his psychotic endeavors to always be right.
I can smell Ian’s retreat as I reach the car, and I huff out an angry breath when I realize Violet Portocale isn’t waiting there for me.
The snow is falling too fast, so there aren’t any immediate tracks. Sniffing the air, I take off in the direction where I smell my own scent mingling with hers, but stop.
There’s a patch of my jacket on the snow, and I frown, seeing a few more squares of fabric that have been torn off and dropped like breadcrumbs.
I follow those breadcrumbs to a dead end and sniff the air again, not finding the scent to go on farther, but weirdly find a lot of it in the other direction.
Turning, I jog in that direction, following a new trail of patches that do the same thing—lead me down a false path.
Then I catch a whiff of just her scent in a different direction, and I start running in a circle, smelling her but not seeing her, until I suddenly kneel in the snow, finding a few threads of her shirt and rolling them around between my fingers.
“Clever fucking stupid gypsy,” I mutter under my breath.
Her scent is scattered everywhere now, the wind picking up and blowing thin threads all around, along with pieces of my deconstructed jacket.
“You’re going to fucking freeze!” I call into the wind, cursing when no answer is returned.
“She said she can’t adjust this quickly,” the ghost says as she pops up at my side. “But she’s not as interesting as me, because I’m totally good with the whole violent wolf thing,” she adds cheerily.
Stalking to my car, I throw the door open and get in, revving the engine the second I crank it.
Anna joins me in the passenger seat as I spin the car around and start racing down the road, expecting to run up on the half-naked gypsy idiot who will be dead soon if she’s out in this shit with barely anything on.
She’s just mortal, and a daft one at that.
“I don’t mind the window-perving either. Feel free to watch me with your friends anytime you want,” Anna chatters on. “I do like riding in the front seat. Makes me feel more like your girlfriend.”
She reaches over and puts her hand through my crotch.
“I’d really like to show you what else girlfriends in the front seat do for their—”
Her words end on a scream, and she flies through the front windshield when I slam on my brakes and skid across the snow, barely sliding to a stop in front of Damien, as he stands in the middle of the road.
The ghost picks herself up from the ground, mutters something about monster drivers, and disappears.
Damn it. I bet she knows exactly where the freezing gypsy is.
“What the fucking hell?” I ask him on a growl.
“Don’t play dumb. I smell her all over you,” he says with a sneer. “And I need to talk to that little gypsy.”
“Good luck finding her,” I tell him as I hold up threads from her shirt that I pocketed earlier.
His lips twitch. “She’s learned to use her Portocale seamstress talents in some rather unusual ways,” he says with a shrug of his shoulder. “This method is less impressive than the last.”
“What was the last?” I ask him absently, sniffing the air and still finding her scent scattered all around.
“She strung me up on the wall, and I couldn’t break a few simple threads to free myself,” he states, quickly bringing my attention back to him as my eyebrows bounce to my hairline.
“You’re being serious.”
“Dead serious,” he assures me as he lifts a thread of her shirt from the snow and easily tugs it in half, something even mortals would be capable of. “I’ve never seen the Portocale gypsies use their seamstress gifts as an offensive weapon. Violet Portocale may not know all our secrets, but we apparently know none of hers either.”
I stare at him for a minute before my jaw clenches. She opened a window to the past without much effort. That alone is attention-snaring.
“Where’s Vance?” I finally ask.
“Probably tracking these threads scattered throughout the land, same as you are,” he states idly as he pulls out his phone.
“Actually, I’m here,” comes Vance’s voice from behind Damien.
The gypsy’s threads have officially obstructed my senses, because he’s not that good at sneaking up on me.
“She locked us in Damien’s house with a simple potion,” Vance tells me, jaw grinding like his pride is hurt and he’s pissed about it.
I try not to smile. I really do.
But my unbidden smile slips quickly when I tell him what I just witnessed.
“She opened a window to the past in less than five minutes to search for her mother’s death in a spot that wasn’t her death spot. No ritual. No energy drawn from a stronger source. Just five-fucking minutes. As though it’s something she can casually do anytime she wants.”
“That’s impossible. You have to push yourself to the brink of death to open a window, and it needs heavy supervision or you could actually die, especially as a mortal,” Vance argues. “Why would you even let her attempt it?”
“I didn’t know she was going to do it so abruptly, which is why I was hurrying us along. I thought we’d be out there until at least nightfall, and I was prepared to link to her to let her see for herself Marta didn’t die on my land. And I didn’t say I understood it. But I did just witness it. I don’t think she even understands the magnitude of what she did, but I heard her heart slow for three short minutes until it was less than twenty beats per mi
nute. It began beating normally after the two minute window into the past closed.”
It seems none of us really know what to say for a minute. Damien is finally the one to break the silence.
“I’ve forgotten how annoying it can be to not have all the answers.”
“Imagine how she feels right now,” is all Vance mutters in response as he turns and walks away.
“She should feel real damn proud of herself for leaving us all stuck out here with our thumbs up our asses,” Damien calls to his back.
Chapter 17
VIOLET
A loud knock at my door has me groaning as I turn over in the bed.
“Breakfast!” a woman sings from the other side.
“She doesn’t want breakfast. She wants to hide from her life,” Anna tells the woman who can’t hear her.
“Go. Away,” I say over my shoulder.
“Are you okay, Ms. Carmine?” she asks as she knocks again.
“No. She’s terrified of sexy monsters because she doesn’t like stepping outside of her comfort zone,” Anna answers.
“Fine,” I snap.
I’d normally be nicer, but that Do Not Disturb sign has been getting ignored for the past three days, because that woman knocks breakfast, lunch, dinner, and sometimes in between—just to check in.
“You should have chosen a hotel instead of a Bed and Breakfast if you don’t want fairies tinkling in your coffee cup,” Anna goes on, her attention riveted to the TV as she watches American Werewolf.
“Maybe if she knew you only had a bra and panties to wear out in public, she’d leave you alone,” Anna adds on a drawl. “That stolen toga you wore in should suffice, though.”
The curtains start unraveling, the threads quickly dropping into a heap, and light spills inside the room, causing me to squint. When the threads start forming a very floral jumpsuit, Anna scoffs.
“Just because you can make clothes out of curtains without getting out of bed doesn’t make you interesting. You lack the wow factor I have in spades,” she states, jutting out her chin.
The zipper and zipper tracks unravel from the cushion of the sofa, and it pops onto the new one-piece, hideous jumpsuit that will have to do, because the bedding here is too thin. And the comforter is…even more hideous with little kittens on it.
The stolen toga is one of those thin sheets I snatched from a basket near the window when I walked in.
“My ancestors once made robes and gowns for royalty. Does that make me more interesting?” I ask Anna, happy for the distraction.
“No. That simply makes them marginally more interesting. I bet they’d be proud their descendant is a gypsy drug dealer,” she states dryly.
“Stop calling me that,” I groan.
“Stop being that and I will. And stop selling polka dot pajamas on the side. Polka dots haven’t been cool since the early nineteen-hundreds when I was commanding the British army.”
I pull a pillow over my head as she begins to devolve into a spiral of absurd lies.
“We should sell rainbows instead of gold. The gold should be a prize at the end of the rainbow,” she resumes.
“The leprechauns beat you to that already,” I grumble from under the pillow, just as there’s another knock at the door.
“Go away,” Anna and I both say.
The knocking grows more insistent, because Ms. Bleaker, the owner of this particular B&B, is very persistent about getting me to eat, even when she has to hand-deliver the food.
Making a frustrated sound, I stand up, pull on the new hideous jumpsuit, and yank open the door, expecting to find the short little woman with a huge bun on her head.
Instead, all I catch a glimpse of are two dark figures, the glint of a blade as the sun catches it, and solid black eyes, before I’m gasping for air and stumbling back into my room.
I see blood.
Where did the blood come from?
I hear screaming.
Why is Anna screaming?
The figures clad in all black barely enter my dimming vision when I collapse to the floor, feeling a burning in my throat as the disorienting dizziness overwhelms me.
My hand weakly comes up, feeling the gash across my neck, and I squeeze, trying to stop the blood from pouring out as my vision grows dimmer.
“They should have mentioned how good her blood smells,” I hear a man saying around a groan.
In the very next instant, I see him blasting through the wall as Anna charges him. So many pretty dots dance in my vision as she shouts at them, and the second one goes flying out the window.
Pain explodes in my chest, and my head falls downward, seeing the knife sticking through me, causing my heart to stutter in its rapid beats that are echoing in my ears as I try to piece together the scattered scene going on around me.
“You have to fight, Violet!” Anna shouts. “I can’t take on the entire army without my captain! Release the kraken!”
It’s the last thing I hear before it all fades to black.
Chapter 18
VIOLET
“It’s better to die than to fight. When people think you’re dead, you don’t have to fight so hard,” Mom tells me as she ties on her cloak.
“But if I fight with you, maybe we won’t ever have to fight again. You can train me. Teach me to be as good as you,” I tell her as I chase her through the house.
“You’re too gentle for the world of fighters, Violet,” she says quietly without looking at me.
“Right now, I’m sick of sitting here and worrying about you, when I could be at your side.”
“I work better alone,” she scoffs. “Besides, the more badass you are, the more people want to take you down a notch. We only need one warrior in the family. We also need one secret weapon.”
“How am I a weapon if I can’t even defend myself?”
She turns, her eyes staring directly into mine with more seriousness than she usually reveals to me.
“Because you’re the perfect storm, Violet.”
“That makes no sense.”
She smiles sadly as she gently brushes my hair out of my face. “Let’s try not to draw attention to the perfect storm. People want to kill the things that are different, or they want to use them to their advantage. Trust me, Violet. In all things, trust me. And always wake up.”
“Always wake up?” I ask her incredulously as she hands me two bracelets, two anklets, and a necklace, all of them adorning the same charms on them.
“Yes. First you fall asleep,” she says as I start pulling them on. “But always. Wake. Up!”
Startling awake, the first thing I hear is Anna chattering, and I barely peek open an eye in the really dark room to see her outline as she rocks back and forth.
“I tried to possess them. I almost succeeded on one. I think. He flicked salt over his shoulder like he knew what was going on. Why does everyone carry salt?” she’s rambling.
My lips won’t part to make a sound, and my throat aches as the feel of satin tickles against my neck, a ribbon stirring into place. Looks like I got a chance to do step one of the survival lessons my mother instilled in me long ago.
It’s sort of odd in the sense that step-one is to let the enemy kill me. Generally speaking, that’s the very thing most people’s survival plans try to avoid.
I’m not all that special. I just simply can’t seem to die.
My super power is actually fainting on command so that I can wake up when I want to, instead of dealing with the searing pain of feeling my “fatal” wounds being sewn back together.
Enduring the pain, I lie still, listening, allowing my head time to stop spinning from all the blood I lost. Apparently I went unconscious before I could purposely faint.
Step two is to return the favor, because obviously they’ll never see it coming. But I can’t risk making any noise until Anna stops spinning inside this room we’re in. Or is the room spinning around her?
“I’m going to rip their eyeballs out just as soon as I trust what�
��s going on around me so I don’t muck it up this time too,” Anna rattles on, a catch in her voice that causes me to roll my eyes. “Such a waste of a good vagina.”
She’s grieving my corporeal vagina, because she’s actually expecting the new-and-unimproved ghost me to rise, no doubt.
It’s fortunately a welcome distraction, which brings me to step three.
Step three is to never panic, because I’m not entirely sure what I am at this point, given the fact there are apparently an abundance of monsters in existence, but I do know I’m incredibly terrifying when I panic.
There’s a moment where my brain shuts down, and the only thing on my mind is survival. Which is odd, since I can’t actually seem to die. Maybe that’s why that true panic is very rare, thankfully.
Most people don’t simply wake up after having their throat slashed.
The healing ribbon that is still painfully threading itself through my throat means I’ve woken too soon.
My fingers and toes are numb. I really lost too much blood.
Did they have to overkill me? Was the throat slashing not enough, for fuck’s sake?
Since I can hear the patter of feet outside the door, I have to bite through the pain and hold my silence, because I need that satin tied off real tight before I go trying to escape this place. My pain tolerance is my second secret weapon.
With any luck, there’s just the two men who blindsided me earlier. Should be simple enough, if so.
As the final drag of the satin pulls into place and tugs the skin tightly over my heart, the room mostly stops spinning. I think we’re actually in a dark closet.
More light spills under the door, like there’s a second door beyond it that’s opening.
“Get her. She’s not a Portocale. Whatever was supposed to happen didn’t happen, so your fucking source was wrong,” a man is saying in an exhausted tone.
“You smelled her blood too, and it was—”
“It was sweet. Sometimes, sweet blood is just sweet blood. Doesn’t have to be gypsy blood, and certainly doesn’t have to be Portocale blood, you stupid shit. We don’t have the special talent to sniff it out, unlike some,” the man adds, saying the last part a little bitterly. “Just get her out of here.”
