by R. J. Blain
Its glow intensified to a shimmering radiance, and the bracelet clicked, its hinges opening. I lifted my right arm to deflect, hopping back another step to avoid touching the animated, ancient jewelry.
My heel caught on a step, and with a startled cry, my foot slipped out from under me. I pinwheeled my arms for balance, my left hand slapping against a smooth stone wall without finding purchase.
The way back into the storage room slid closed in silence, leaving me alone with the shining scarab. It latched onto my right wrist, and the golden bands snapped closed over my skin before its light winked out.
I fell down the curving stone steps into darkness.
Chapter Three
The beep of an incoming message roused me, and I batted at the annoying device in the hopes of silencing the damned thing forever. Its proximity to my ear hurt, painful enough to penetrate through the pounding in my head.
My phone pinged again.
Stifling a groan, I grabbed for the device, and my fingers closed over the leather of my handbag. Every muscle in my body tensed, and a split second later, my nerves reported there was absolutely nothing right about anything.
My yip echoed around me and was answered by silence. Shuddering, I cracked open an eye to enjoy a close up view of a dusty stone floor. The blood rushed to my head, and I inhaled my alarm, resulting in a nose full of dust and dirt. Sneezes tore through me, and pain zapped through my back all the way up to my toes.
I forced open my second eye. Tumbling headfirst down a staircase was a good way to get killed, and I marveled I still lived while my arms and legs twitched and spasmed.
“Fly bitten bilge rat,” I hissed through clenched teeth, squirming on the staircase to make a grab for my phone, which had miraculously remained in my bag where it belonged. The scent of dried blood—mine—warned me the staircase had likely won more battles than it had lost.
Once I had my phone in my hand, I braced for the pain of my stupidity, and rolled onto my back. My hips, legs, and feet were above me on the staircase. One of the high heels was missing, and while the other one was still on my foot, the heel had snapped in half. In the darkness, my eyes didn’t perceive color quite as well, but my dress’s days were over, stained and ripped in more places than I cared to think about.
Declan: 0, Staircase: 1.
To delay inspecting the damage I’d done to myself, I unlocked my phone with my thumbprint and blinked at the message and missed call tally. Over a hundred messages waited for my attention, and the twenty-three calls startled me. I checked the messages first, groaning at the repeated string of incomprehensible gibberish.
To execute a job, I had used a relay to work with my clients, a younger man I’d helped get on his feet a few years back. In exchange for helping him with the funding to set up a computer security business, he’d agreed to help me as my go-to techie.
Adding software to the camera to take pictures when my phone received a certain text string had been his brain child, allowing him to control the cameras hidden in my clothing and accessories. Most of the missed calls were from him.
He was also one of the few who knew I had dressed up as a woman for my hit on the castle, making all of the necessary arrangements to pull off my transformation from man to woman. Groaning, I checked the battery icon, which warned me my phone was about to go into its death throes.
Anthony had planned for that, too, forcing me to carry two spare battery cases for my phone. My hands shook as I peeled the device out of its first case and dug through the purse for a replacement, wiggling it into place. Blood had long since dried on my fingers, pulling at my skin with my every movement.
My phone rang in my hands before I had a chance to dial, and I didn’t recognize the number. I stared at it, wondering who had my contact information and would call me from a restricted number.
Missing the call staring dumbly at the screen wasn’t one of my finer moments, and I groaned again, flopping limp onto the stone landing. I closed my eyes, swallowed, and willed the pounding in my head to ease.
Declan: 0, Staircase: 2.
My phone beeped at me again, and I lifted my arm so I could see the glowing display. The gleam of gold captured my attention to the scarab cuff. I winced at the pain of rotating my arm. The cuff wrapped firmly around my wrist, and while I could make out the seam of the hinges, I couldn’t locate its clasp.
My phone reminded me I had just missed a message, and I forced my gaze back to the notification. I unlocked the device again and tapped to access the message, which informed me Anthony wanted me to answer my phone.
“What a load of poppycock,” I muttered. I kept hold of my cell so I could answer it if it rang again and began the tedious process of testing for any breaks. My back throbbed when I moved, but I doubted I’d broken anything on the way down. I thanked my wolf for my ongoing survival, doubting a human could’ve lived through such a fall.
Declan: 1, Staircase: 2.
My phone rang again, and after swiping my finger to answer, I put it in the general vicinity of my ear. “Hello?”
“Jesus Christ, Declan. I thought you were dead,” Anthony bellowed in my ear.
“At current tally, the staircase won.” I groaned, used my feet to push the rest of the way onto the landing, and hissed at the new reports of aching, sore muscles. “Not dead yet.”
“What happened?”
I sat up, grimacing at the fire consuming my spine. Leaning against the wall, I took several moments to catch my breath. “I don’t even know.” Had Scully somehow managed to drug me? Drugs made sense. Flying, face-assaulting scarabs didn’t. Under the influence of some drug, Scully could have easily opened a secret door in the wall and shoved me down it. “I fell down a staircase.”
“I guessed that from the camera feed. Pretty damned glad I installed a night-vision camera in one of the pieces right now. Take it from the top and keep talking. I’m pinging for your location now.”
“I’m at Castle Transylvania, the French edition. I think I missed the boat.”
“That was about twelve hours ago, Declan.”
Declan: 1, Staircase: 3.
“Why are you calling me from a restricted number?”
“My phone is charging. Your client traced me, is sitting about ten feet away, looks grumpy as hell, and might just shove his Beretta up my ass if I don’t get a successful ping on your phone with the exact location of Castle Transylvania. I’m on his cell. The yacht captain’s out; he left without you and went to shore, and even if I find him, I doubt he’d give the location. Fucker’s on Scallywag’s payroll.”
“Of course he is, he wanted to make the arrangements for the yacht from the beginning, Tony. Why do you even sound surprised? How did the client trace us?” I also made a note to steal my friend’s name for the yeasty gibbet.
“Hell if I know. He showed up about six hours ago with a check for two hundred thousand if I pinpointed your exact location.”
“If he even thinks about groping my ass, I’m ripping his hand off and feeding it to him.”
In the background, someone barked a laugh and said, “I have no interest in your ass, Mr. McGrady.”
“I’m on speaker, aren’t I?”
“Sorry, Declan. The gentleman with the Beretta makes the rules. The two hundred thou doesn’t hurt much, either.”
“Yeasty giglet,” I grumbled.
Anthony snickered. “You can’t be hurt too badly if you’re digging through your antiquated insult grimoire.”
While I could have left my friend and conspirator hanging, I got down to business. “Concussion is almost a guarantee, but I think I escaped without a major break. Jury is out on fractures,” I reported. “As for what the hell happened, I don’t know. I was in Scallywag’s storage room poking around while he was on a call in the hallway. Found a secret door in the wall, tripped over my heels, and ended up taking a plunge down the staircase.”
“He didn’t push you?”
“I can’t confirm I wasn’t drugged
and hallucinating things.”
“You didn’t eat or drink anything, did you?”
“Of course not,” I snapped. “The guy’s a lecherous piece of pond sludge. He had plenty of chances when I was doing my job while he was copping feels.”
“Jesus Christ. You’re serious?”
I sighed.
“Pardon my intrusion, but that behavior from Benjamin Scully is not unprecedented. He is a suspect in the disappearance of seven young women. When you pitched your plan to infiltrate his castle for the photographs disguised as an heiress, I thought it would be an excellent opportunity to confirm whether or not he may be the one behind their disappearances. More importantly, I was seeking evidence to prove I am not the one behind their kidnappings.”
“He wanted to play ‘Guess the Van Gogh,’ so I buy into the theory,” I replied, the man’s bet immediately coming to mind. “If I guessed the title of his second Van Gogh, he was going to give me Girl in the Woods. If I failed to guess it, he wanted me to extend my trip by two weeks.”
“I knew I should’ve installed a wire,” Anthony grumbled.
“Too much data,” I reminded him.
“Did you take this bet?” my client asked, his voice deepening, probably from annoyance or anger.
“Do I look like a nitwit to you? Of course I didn’t take that bet. Van—”
“Forgive Declan, sir. He’s a right surly bastard when he has a headache.”
“Your British is showing, Anthony,” I complained.
“I’ll stop showing my British when you use a curse that wasn’t dated a hundred years ago. In Britain, thank you very much.”
“You’re using logic on me. Don’t use logic right now, Tony.”
“How hard did you hit your head?”
With my left hand, I began the tedious process of checking my scalp for injuries. I found three bumps, and the second one resulted in fresh blood staining my fingers. “At least three times, and one’s a bleeder. No idea how bad.”
“Can you walk?”
“Give me a few minutes. Sitting up wasn’t a cakewalk.” My stomach chose that moment to gurgle, reminding me it had been far too long since I had anything to eat or drink. “I’ll manage.”
“You sound like you drank a bottle of my rye, Declan.”
Was I slurring? I couldn’t tell, which probably wasn’t a good sign. “Why is the client there, and why is he armed with a Beretta?”
“He likes your work, apparently, and felt I needed some additional motivation to locate you.”
“Should I ask how a computer security specialist got located?”
“Fuck you, Declan. I already fixed the hole. It won’t happen again.”
“You can’t fix a hole in your head if gun-happy over there decides to take a shot,” I snapped back.
“I have no intentions of hurting your accomplice, Mr. McGrady. I do, however, have every intention of working with him to ensure your recovery. It wouldn’t serve my purposes to lose such a talented asset,” my client replied.
“I can get myself out of the castle on my own, thank you very much.”
Professional Pride: 1, Common Sense: 0.
Anthony sighed. “Declan, the job’s botched. Let me arrange an extraction before you kick the bucket in some jackass’s dungeon.”
“Like hell the job’s botched. I got the photos, and I’ll get myself out. There’s gotta be a Declan-sized window down in this dusty hell-hole somewhere.”
“Why are you talking about yourself in the third person?”
“Anthony, have I ever, ever questioned you when you decide to do something extraordinarily stupid?”
“Yes, every time I do it.”
“Poppycock.” I grumbled curses under my breath. “You worry about getting me a ride out of this joint, and I’ll worry about getting out so I can get a ride out of this joint. Deal?” I clenched my teeth, gathered every last bit of my willpower, kicked off my broken shoe, and staggered to my feet. “I’m on my feet. Let me get my bearings. You got my coords? You’re giving me a headache.”
“I got your coords, Declan. I’ll make arrangements for the extraction team.”
“Check my honey traps for any contact from Scallywag. If he’s out to make me disappear, he probably took the bait I left him. Details are in her email.”
“You set up new honey traps without telling me?” Anthony hissed.
“Do I look like a fly-bitten giglet to you? Of course I set up new honey traps. I trust Scallywag about as far as I could toss him right now. He groped my ass.” I hung up before my flaring temper could get the better of me.
It was official. This was the worst job I’d ever taken, and I had a feeling it would get a lot worse before it got any better.
Dust swirled around me with each and every step, and I needed the castle’s cold stone walls to keep on my feet. My wolf was quiet in my head, probably exhausted from the strain of keeping me alive after my tumble down the staircase. I had no idea how far I had plummeted, but it had been more than a couple of stories.
The spiral, containing a small gap in the center of the staircase, continued into darkness far above.
Instead of trying to climb more stone steps than I wanted to count, I explored a maze of narrow corridors. Arrow slits in the stone reassured me I was on the ground level.
If I could find a window large enough for me to slip through, escape would be easy. The arrow slits were only four inches wide, which eliminated them as an option. They also let in the cool autumn air, and I shivered as my skin chilled. I wondered if Scallywag knew about the passages. Unlike in his main galleries, there was no evidence of security. If the blankets of dust covering the floor were any indication, no one had been in the place for years.
I lost track of how long I spent wandering around the castle, but when I finally found a stone wall with a lever, I hesitated, sniffing at the air.
The sweet scent of cinnamon lingered, and I recognized it as the signature of another werewolf. My wolf roused, and his attention fixated on another marker.
Female. My eyes widened, and I sniffed again. No, females. I couldn’t tell how many, but there were at least three different undertones, and my wolf whined in my head, as eager as any puppy.
We’d never met a female of our kind before, and while it wasn’t yet winter, his enthusiasm bled into me. The phone call with Anthony and our nameless client set me on guard.
Could the missing women be missing werewolf women?
My anger surged, and I flexed my hand, aware of the cool metal of the bracelet circling my wrist. Most collectors limited their pieces to the old and unusual, but Scallywag seemed like the exact sort of filth to take his interest to the next level.
I had only crossed paths with two male werewolves, and I had given them a wide berth, slipping away from them in thick New York crowds, unwilling to take the risk of meeting them. My wolf’s uncertainty on how other males would react kept me at a distance, scoping out everywhere I went with my nose as much as my eyes.
No one knew I was a werewolf, and while I wanted to keep it that way, others of my kind would know the instant they caught a sniff of me unless I was really careful. Digging through my purse, I pulled out the bottle of perfume, which was a mix of cinnamon and lilac, two scents I found confused my nose and masked my nature.
Dousing myself in it would buy me time to find out the truth of what was hidden in Scallywag’s castle. I sprayed myself until the scent clogged my nose and made me dizzy before returning the bottle to my purse. If there were women—werewolf or otherwise—locked away as hostages, I’d steal them away and set them free.
After all, I was a thief, and limiting myself wasn’t my style. I’d never stolen anything living before, which intrigued me.
If there were women trapped in Scallywag’s castle, I would find them. What I would do with them, I had no idea. My wolf had a few ideas, but the last thing I needed was multiple females knowing I was one of them.
As long as my wolf didn’
t slip into the winter rut, I could ignore the temptation of female werewolves. If I didn’t, I’d risk a lot more than the chance of securing a mate.
My wolf wasn’t pleased by my thoughts, but he didn’t fight me over it, either. That was something we agreed on; our on-going existence came first, and our life wasn’t worth the risk of any female, werewolf or otherwise.
Freedom, however, was. The thought of anyone being held captive as a piece of a living collection infuriated me so much I could smell it through the cloying perfume clogging my nose.
The only way for me to go was forward. I took hold of the lever and pulled.
A soft click was the only indication something had happened. I pressed my hand to the stone wall and gave a push. It shifted under my hand, and I shoved it open. Sliding my purse off my shoulder, I removed the perfume, my cell, wallet, keys, extra battery case, and passport, and cruise ticket and stuffed them into one of the pouches I had strapped to my thigh. Hopefully, the leather and remaining odds and ends inside would keep the door from closing behind me.
I slipped inside, hoping I wasn’t about to make a critical mistake.
Chapter Four
Declan: 0, Pack of Angry Women: 1.
Most men would have found the idea of being plowed over by a group of scantily clad ladies appealing, but all I could concentrate on was the fact I had a new bump on the back of my head, bruised or cracked ribs, and a blinding headache. I wasn’t even sure how I’d ended up on the floor pinned beneath a lingerie-clad woman, but she and her friends moved fast, and after my tumble down a staircase, I was no match for them.
A delicate foot pinned my throat to the floor, and my blurred vision denied me the opportunity to take stock of those surrounding me. Since one pinning me down wasn’t enough, one of her friends joined in.
I didn’t even bother to fight them. They’d win, and I knew it. I couldn’t even make out more than a blur of skin broken by splashes of color marking their bras and panties.
