by D. N. Hoxa
“I don’t!” He shouted in my face. “But I will because it’s the reasonable thing to do.”
My wolf growled, but I ignored her. She didn’t get to threaten me or put thoughts in my head anymore. Even if it killed me, I was going to learn how to control her one way or the other.
But staying here in the Lair, talking to Red and Amara was useless. Enough time was already wasted. I took a step back.
“Then we’re done here,” I said, and without bothering to change clothes, I walked out the door.
Only when the first vampire faced me did I realize what I’d done, but I was too angry to admit it, go back, or—God forbid—ask Red to take me outside.
“Don’t follow me!” I shouted with all my strength instead, and with my head down, I ran downstairs as fast as my legs could carry me.
Getting on a bus back to Manhattan was scary—only after I got off. On the way there, I’d been too angry, too confused to think that Haworth’s people could be after me and take me away in the blink of the eye. Never mind, though. I’d made it to the only place I could go to—my friend Mandy’s. Her building apartment was in midtown, and I got there just before eight pm. She worked from home and rarely ever went out so I knew she would be there, even before I smelled her sweet perfume and the scent of her Chihuahua. By the smell of it, her boyfriend wasn’t there. Thank God.
When I knocked on her door, I felt like a complete failure. She was human and there was no way I could explain to her why I looked the way I did, in worse shape than a homeless person, but I could trust her not to ask too many questions.
“Vicky?” she asked breathlessly when she pulled the door open just a bit before closing it to get the security chain. “Oh, my God, what happened?”
I smiled. “May I come in?”
She let me use her bathroom to clean up and brought me clean clothes to wear. We were roughly the same size, so her jeans and shirt fit me just fine. I was in and out of the bathroom in ten minutes, but it felt like a different day altogether. Only after I’d washed the dirt off me did I realize how much I’d smelled of the forest. Of Izzy. Of…Red.
He’d stalked me before so it would be no surprise if he knew I was friends with Mandy, but for now, I didn’t want to think about any of it. I just wanted to relax, come to terms with what was happening, and hopefully, by midnight, I’d know what to do.
Lilly the Chihuahua didn’t like me all that much, but she didn’t shy away when I rubbed her chin or patted her on the head. She was a fierce little creature, but even she could smell my wolf and knew not to make a mess in my presence, like Mandy told me she usually did when she had other friends over.
Mandy had made us some coffee and had put some fresh smelling cookies on a plate on the coffee table in her living room. It was spacious, much more tastefully decorated than my apartment, with purples and yellows and greens that made you want to study every little figure, book, or piece of fabric she had all over the place. It didn’t even look weird. It looked really homey.
“I’m sorry to come here like this, Mandy. I had nowhere else to go,” I said when I took a sip of my coffee. She sat beside me on the other side of the couch with Lilly sitting on her lap.
“I called you,” she said. “What happened, Vicky? Are you all right?”
The urge to tell her everything was overwhelming, but I controlled myself. “I’m fine,” I said, and looked up at her. It was the least I could do. She was a petite girl, with wavy blond hair falling down to her shoulders and big brown eyes that made you want to trust her at first sight. “I just had a bit of a…problem.”
“With work?” she said, her wide eyes full of panic. “Did a dog attack you or something?”
I wished I could say yes. “No, no, nothing like that. But I, uh…I got lost in the woods and couldn’t find my way back for a while. It’s fine now, I swear.”
She sighed into her mug. “You don’t look fine. Grab a cookie,” she ordered, nodding at the table, and I did as she asked. I was hungry as hell, anyway. “Was it…was it a guy?” she asked, in almost a whisper.
A laugh escaped me involuntarily. “No, it wasn’t a guy. It was just…a problem. I’m fine, I promise. I just need some place to rest for a few hours and a friendly face. I’ll be heading out soon and will be out of your hair.”
“Absolutely not,” she said, looking at me like she couldn’t believe I’d said that. “Steve is away on business anyway. He won’t be here until Friday, so you can sleep here for as long as you need to. This couch is as good as any bed.” She patted the couch with her hand.
“Thank you, Mandy. Really.” Just seeing her face brought back a sense of normalcy. I’d needed it more than I thought.
“No problem. Grab another one,” she said when I ate the first cookie. “And tell me what the hell happened.”
I almost choked on my coffee. “I told you, I’m f—”
“What happened, Vicky?” she cut me off, suddenly furious. “I called you and you didn’t pick up. That’s never happened before.”
“I lost my phone, that’s all. Look, it’s best if—”
“No, no. I’m not buying that. C’mon, spill it. I’m your friend. I want to know how deep the shit you’re in is.”
I put the coffee down and turned my whole body toward her. “I’m not in shit! I swear, I’m just having a bit of a—”
It didn’t look like she planned to let me finish a sentence anytime soon.
“You’re lying, and you need to stop lying,” she said. Even Lilly raised her little head to look at her. Mandy was usually so calm and peaceful.
“I’m not lying, Mandy!” I said, raising my voice.
“Oh, you’re not?” She gave me a knowing smile. “You’re not lying to me?”
“I’m not,” I said, shaking my head.
“Okay.” She left the coffee on the table and ran to the kitchen to grab her laptop from the kitchen island. “If you’re not lying to me,” she said and opened the laptop, typed in the password, and showed me the screen. “If you’re really not lying, then what the hell is this?”
It was an email.
From Finn Germain.
I almost passed out.
Grabbing the laptop from her hands, I read the two sentences twice before I allowed myself to think:
Subject: Urgent – Re: Victoria Brigham
Ms. Hills,
I’m a friend of Victoria Brigham and I need to find her asap. It’s a very urgent matter. If she contacts you or if you see her, please contact me immediately. This is very important, Ms. Hills. Victoria could be in grave danger.
Signed, Finn Germain.
And he’d left his contact information there, too.
“Do you know this man?” Mandy asked twice before her words made sense to me. But I couldn’t answer. The asshole. How dare he? He knew Mandy was human, and he’d included her in this, too?
“You have to tell me what’s going on, Vicky. I was scared to death! I even went to the police to file a missing person report, but they said that you were an adult and could choose to run away without telling anyone,” Mandy said in a breath.
I closed the laptop. “You went to the police?!”
“Of course I did! Those good for nothing asses. Then I receive this,” she pointed at her laptop, “and when I ran his name, I didn’t find anything at first. But then I did. Steve found out about an agency he owns—for Unusual Orders.”
“Oh, my God, Mandy!” I dropped the laptop on the table and stood up, my heart beating like crazy.
“He’s a dangerous man, Vicky! I took a look at his transactions, and he gets paid a lot of money for his job—whatever it is. I can’t believe you’re involved with someone like that!”
“Mandy, listen to me,” I said, trying to calm both her and myself down. “Did he call you? Did he email you again?”
“No, he didn’t,” she said, crossing her arms in front of her. “But I reported him to the police.”
“Oh, no.” I brought the heels o
f my hands to my eyes and pushed until my vision was full of black dots. What had I done? How the hell had I dragged Mandy into this?
“We’ve been friends for more than two years, Vicky. If you can’t tell me what the hell is going on, then I don’t know what you’re doing here.”
Mandy stood up, Lilly in her arms, and the way she looked at me, you’d think I’d just killed her dog.
“Okay,” I whispered to myself and took deep breaths. “Can I borrow your phone?”
Her brows rose. “Why?”
“Can I just please borrow your phone? Then we can sit down and talk, okay?” Right after I strangled Finn. Through the phone.
Mandy wasn’t happy about it, but she did as I asked. For the first time since I knew her, she smelled…different. Off. Like confusion, only worse. Shit. Maybe Red was right. Maybe I could learn to put this nose of mine to better use.
For now, I locked myself in the bathroom again, turned the shower on and dialed Finn’s number.
When he answered after the third ring, I almost reached out and slapped the air.
“How dare you?!” I hissed into the speaker.
He stopped breathing. “You’re alive.”
“Of course I’m alive! You’re contacting humans now? What the hell is the matter with you?” Maybe it was the fact that he wasn’t in front of me, but I wanted to call him every name in the book and kick him in his good leg, too.
“Are you with her right now?”
Oh, shit. “No.”
“Victoria, tell me where you are,” he demanded.
“You don’t get to order me, Finn. I’m not yours to boss around. But I’m warning you, if you harass my friends again, I’m going to cut your other leg off!”
“You’re a fucking lunatic,” the werewolf barked. “Shut up and listen, will you? You’re in deep shit, Victoria. I’m trying to help you.”
“Of course you are! It’s why you emailed my friend—to help me!” I spit. If he thought I was buying that, he was dead wrong.
“The ECU knows about you,” he said, and the ceiling fell right on my head. Figuratively.
“What?”
“They know about what you can do. They’ve issued a search warrant for you. They want to bring you in for questioning.”
The first person to cross my mind was Red. Could that vampire really have ratted me out? If so, I was going to…what?
Beat him? Kill him?
Yeah, right.
“Was it you?” I asked Finn, just to ease my mind a bit, because I already knew he wouldn’t have done this. He wanted me to work for him too much.
“It was Oscar,” the werewolf said, and this time, the whole building collapsed onto me.
Breathing became impossible. My wolf howled at an imaginary moon, making me lose sight for a split second. She was trying to claw her way out, the image of my father crystal clear in her head. She had no love for that man.
“You lie,” I whispered to Finn. He could be lying. He was Finn Germain, after all.
“He’s desperate, Victoria. He sent you after Isabelle, and he figured that by sending the ECU after you, he’d be sending them after her, too, and find her faster.”
“So you spoke to him,” I said with half a voice.
“I didn’t. It’s just a guess,” he said with a tired sigh. “Listen, kid, they’re not on high alert about you right now, but that could change quickly. I need you to tell me where you are so I can tell you what to do.”
“I can’t.” He probably knew I was at Mandy’s, which was why I needed to leave as soon as I ended the call. Fucking hell, where was I going to go now?
“You need to stop whatever you’re doing, and you need to disappear. I can help you. Nobody’s going to find you—and it’s not forever. Just until this dies down a bit. Then you can come back,” the werewolf said.
His words sounded like heaven. He definitely was a guy who could make me disappear if he wanted to. He could keep me safe and far away from everyone. But disappearing was no longer an option, no matter that I hadn’t even heard about the price I was going to have to pay him for his generous offer.
“You can’t help me, Finn. But thanks for trying.”
“You’re going to go after her, aren’t you?”
“Yes.” No point in lying to him now.
“I found out who Haworth is, and, kid, let me tell you, you should be running on all fours now. The ECU is putting together a team just for him and his people. It’s already a lost cause,” he said, making me shiver all over again. I hadn’t realized it, but at some point, my legs had given up on me and I’d sat on the floor. If the ECU got to Haworth before me, that was it for Izzy. She wasn’t going to make it out with her freedom—or even her life.
I wanted to ask Finn about Haworth, but I already knew he wouldn’t tell me.
“Can you promise me two things?” I asked, my voice a scratchy whisper.
Finn sighed loudly. “I won’t come after you, kid. But this is the last time I’m warning you. I’ve done my part.”
I smiled at myself. Maybe he was a werewolf who could read minds. “And could you not tell anybody else about me or contact anybody else about me again, ever?”
“Yeah, yeah, sure,” he said. “But when you end up dead, I’m not shedding a tear.”
“Hey, Finn,” I said before he hung up. “You’re a good man. I hope one day we’ll work together, you and me.”
I hung up because whatever he was going to tell me, in the state I was in, could potentially make me change my mind. I didn’t want to risk it. So I wiped the tears I’d cried without realizing, got up and walked out the door.
Until I ran into Mandy.
Seeing her shocked me. How the hell had I forgotten that I was in her house, using her phone?
“Human?” she said, squinting her eyes at me.
I laughed, but it sounded more like a scream. She’d eavesdropped on my conversation. Of course she had. And she wasn’t going to let it go until I told her.
But could I? There was no law that I knew of that forbade us from telling humans about our world because even if we did, they wouldn’t believe us, or they wouldn’t remember anything about it afterward. So it was really unnecessary.
Unless you’re me. There are a lot of perks to being Victoria Brigham but a lot more downfalls, too.
I handed Mandy back her phone and sighed. “You might wanna sit down for this.” Screw it. I was going to tell her the truth. It couldn’t get much worse than it already was, could it?
13
Two hours later, my mind was on Red much more than it had any right to be, but I told myself that it was just because I was afraid of him. That he’d follow me and find me and make me do something I didn’t want to do. Or just chain me to his apartment in the Lair, like he’d said.
“Ugh, the prick,” Mandy said, working on her two laptops at once. She looked like a freaking ninja like that. Her third coffee was steaming next to her second laptop, and her eyes were open so wide, I feared they were going to pop out of her skull any second.
I’d told her the truth—that there were paranormals out there, and that I was a werewolf. Well, kind of a werewolf. And that my sister was in trouble. I didn’t mention anything about me being wanted by both Haworth and now the ECU. They wanted to question me because they knew what I could do. Was it a freaking crime to have a better sense of smell than most?
Maybe they thought so. Maybe that’s how Oscar Hogan had made it sound to them when he reported me.
Before, when I spoke to Izzy, I thought I understood her, but I was wrong. Now, I knew exactly how she felt. To be ratted out by your own father…though it probably hurt me less because that man and I were not blood related. Still, he’d raised me, always put food on the table and never abused me, so, yeah, it hurt. It hurt like hell, and now that I was no longer telling Mandy about everything, I had time to focus on the pain.
Mandy took it all in like a champ. Sure, she laughed in my face, asked me if I’d taken
my meds, or even if I’d run away from a mental institution that morning, but in the end, she swallowed every word I said and she didn’t question me. She wanted time to process it all, too. That’s why, when I’d asked her to break into Finn’s database again and to search for whatever he had on Hector Haworth, she’d jumped right to it and hadn’t said a word since.
“He’s constantly locking me out, like he knows somebody’s trying to take a peek.”
I smiled. “He probably does.” Finn, the mind-reading werewolf. It did have a ring to it.
“Don’t worry. I’ll get in before the night’s over,” Mandy said, never even looking away from her screen. Her words were slurred together, like she didn’t want to waste any brain cells on focusing on the conversation.
“It’s okay, Mandy. Really. I have to go, anyway.”
Just when I thought her eyes were glued to the screen, she stopped typing and turned to me. “Go? Go where?”
“Somewhere else. I’ve already put you in enough danger.” It was only a matter of time before either the ECU or Haworth’s people found me. And before that happened, I had things to do.
“But…but you don’t have a phone. How am I going to tell you what I find?” I could tell Mandy was scared by the sound of her voice. She was afraid for me.
“I’ll call you. Just keep your phone close. I’ll call you some time after midnight.”
She swallowed hard. “Vicky, I think it’s safer if you just stay here tonight. You can leave in the morning.”
But the morning was too far away. “It’s okay, Mandy. I’ll be fine, I promise. I’ll call you.” I put the mug down—the coffee had gone cold long ago—on the table, and kissed her cheek. “Are you okay?”
“Mhmm,” she said, but it wasn’t very convincing.
“Are you sure? Because if you need me to, I can stay.” I didn’t want to, but I’d already let the genie out.
“No, I’m okay. It’s fine,” she said, this time with more heart.
“You can’t tell anyone about this, Mandy. I mean it—not even Steve.”
