by Lexi Ostrow
She groaned, and had she not, Jonathon would have been lost to what mattered.
Breaking the hex.
He pulled back, stars dancing in his vision as his eyes opened. “I’m sorry.”
“I’m not.” She opened her eyes, and no regret or traces of hostility danced there. “I know I said it was the hex, but I might have been wrong.”
The words slammed into him like a freight train. They were wrong for each other on every level, but it didn’t stop his heart from beating a little bit faster now that the truth was out there.
“We don’t have time for this.” Jonathon leaned back into the seat and put the car back in drive.
“Don’t you dare shut me out.” Her hand covered his on the gearshift. “You don’t get to do that.”
He swallowed a lungful of air and held his breath as he merged back onto the mostly empty road. Jonathon wasn’t afraid of her being angry at him. He was fearful if they let themselves give in to their desires, it would get in the way of the task at hand. Saving lives.
“I’m not blocking you out.” His foot pressed firmer against the gas pedal. “I’m thinking about getting us out of the damn hex faster. I can’t do that if I do what I just did again.”
Her chuckle took him by surprise. It rang out in the silent car like a cackling witch, no pun intended.
“What?” He glanced sideways, not surprised to find a smug humor settled across her face.
“It’s just amusing. I’m a distraction.” Deidre swiped at her eyes. “I’m never the distraction.” She ran her fingers through her hair and sort of shoved strands in his direction. “I’m not blonde.”
“What the fuck does that mean?” Jonathon could remember the day he met her – Lita’s wedding.
Deidre barely smiled that day because her husband fell victim to Vexx earlier in the week. Still, her eyes sparkled with hidden intelligence, and even the bags under them did nothing to detract from the perfect symmetry of her face. Her dark hair lay in curls down her back, lilac flowers woven into the spirals. She’d taken his breath away the moment he’d caught up to Sam dashing into Lita’s sacred circle to call off the wedding she shouldn’t have been having.
“It means Lita and Ivy get to be distracting while I blend in.”
“If there’s one thing I can tell you, it’s that you don’t blend in. You’re not as prickly as Ivy, or as loud as Lita, but you stand out on your own. You’re beautiful and poised.”
She snorted. “This is just the me you’ve met.”
“So, you’ve alluded too. This you, well, I like her.”
“Well, I’m glad to hear it. Aside from a little bit of wallowing, I like her, too. Over there!” Deidre shoved her hand across the car. “Right there.”
Jonathon blew out a breath and slammed the wheel to the left. He’d been so damn focused on thinking about Deidre he’d damn near driven right past the exit. The tires screeched as he flew across the empty lanes and turned down the rocky road.
Eyes on the road, Jonathon noted several RVs, some with campers braving the heat to cook outside on an open fire and others obviously still inside or fishing for their dinner.
The trees grew thick, stretching toward the sky and blotting out the ridiculously bright sun. The shade could have been a warning, but he didn’t believe in omens.
“You think they’ll be easy to find?” The playful tone didn’t linger.
“I think if the entire congregation is on vacation as Elijah said, it’ll be impossible for them to hide.” He let the car follow the road’s curve to the left. “Besides, we’re not out in the elements looking for them. They’re in cabins.”
“Do we have a plan?”
“Yes, I go in, you stay in the car?” His lip quirked up, giving away his joke.
“Haha. Hysterical.”
“We’re going to pray the damn warrant cleared in the last hour. Follow my lead and so help me, if shit gets aggressive–”
“I will not run back to the car.”
“Good, because I was going to say you freeze the fuck of those gators, and we call in for backup.”
A turn off marked “Plantation’s Point” was less than three car lengths ahead.
“Do you really think it’s them?”
“I think Remy was pissed off last time I saw him. I think they have a motive. I don’t think they’d destroy New Orleans. They’re local. However, that doesn’t mean a congregation member isn’t working alone. Remy is a good man from what Elijah said of him the last time we paid him a visit after the murder you witnessed. If someone is doing wrong, he’ll stop it.” Jonathon took the right turn, seeing three cabins immediately off to the right.
“And with death, so goes our hex.” She sounded wistful and Jonathon didn’t blame her.
“Exactly. This might never reach the police or Council ears. Not if we decide not to share when it’s all done.” He was giving her a way out. A way to pretend this never happened and keep anyone else from worrying about future attacks.
“No. We tell them.”
Jonathon nodded. He didn’t need to praise her. Deidre was a grown woman who likely didn’t give two shits what he thought. Still, he appreciated her sincerity when she could run the other way.
Someone stepped off a porch, and Jonathon slowed the car down to a crawl, lowering the window.
“Evening officer, what’s a man from the NOPD doing all the way out in these parts?” A thick Cajun twang poured out as a young man with gleaming white teeth, and an innocent smile leaned inside the patrol car.
“I was hoping to speak to Remy. He around?”
“No, Sir. This close to the moon he’s getting ready to help first-timers shift. Keep them safe and make sure they don’t die.”
Not the actions of a man who ordered a hit on an entire city of thousands.
“Where can we find him?”
“Sorry, we don’t give out secrets like that. The wolves don’t share where they have their nursery, Eagles don’t share which trees they teach their young to fly from. This ain’t no different.”
Jonathon put the car in park and tapped the small iPad on the car’s dash. He understood the logic, but not getting the information wasn’t an option.
Come on, Tanner.
Jonathon narrowed his eyes at the lack of new email notification. The warrants hadn’t been approved yet.
“Excuse me one moment,” he leaned on the window button a bit, a warning to get the teen to pull back, which he did. Jonathon didn’t speak until the window rolled up, and even then, he kept his voice low and his eyes on the growing number of weregators approaching the car. “The warrants are in but nothing approved. I’m going to suggest they let us wait for him, but we have no grounds to enter or question if they don’t want to let us in.”
“I know how it works,” Deidre gave a small eye roll.
“Okay then,” he rolled the window down and plastered on his customary smile. “Well, we’d like to wait for him then. Can’t imagine he won’t be back for dinner.”
“That won’t be necessary. We’ll tell ‘im you came.” A beefy man, with arms as big as Jonathon’s head, stood where the younger weregator had been. “This ‘ere’s private time.”
Jonathon did his best not to wince at the awful accent. “We’d just like to talk to him about an incident in the station a few hours ago.”
“As Terry said,” a woman leaned on the hood of the car. “My brother is busy. Waiting’s not an option this close to the moon. He’ll see you back in town.” She leaned back and crossed her arms over his chest. “Unless you’ve got a warrant.”
Lie. “No, Ma’am, just looking for information on what we hope is a rogue gator,” Deidre shouted out his window.
See, smart. She didn’t open her window.
“Well, then, you be off, and we’ll tell him when he returns. Couple days max.”
Jonathon’s fingers bit into the leather-wrapped steering wheel. They might not have a few days. “Sure thing. You have a nice day now
.” Jonathon rolled the window up, ignoring the glare from Terry as he did and threw the car into reverse.
“You’re just going to leave?”
“They’re hiding something, but I have a feeling it’s just the new teens readying for a shift. Gators haven’t been found guilty of any more crimes than other shifters – but they’re just as territorial. Hanging around when we aren’t wanted could leave us in a bad spot.”
“What now? We just go back and wait it out? Or we go back and find more intel that could get us a warrant to go after the eagles?”
“Both, though we’ll be back here tomorrow at the latest. Tanner can’t fuck up a warrant filing that badly.”
Deidre snorted. “You apparently don’t hang around him often. There are days he’s the most insightful man I’ve ever met, and there are other days I wonder how he hasn’t fired his weapon at his foot.”
The comment should have drawn a chuckle, but all Jonathon could focus on was the growing number of weregators gathering where they’d just pulled back from. If they weren’t behind the hex, Jonathon would still keep close tabs on them if he survived the next week. He didn’t like the way they gathered, and he knew to trust his gut.
Sixteen
Remy focused on losing the gator. Not the one propelling through the water behind him, but the one he shared a body with. He always viewed his animal half as another entity because he didn’t feel in control when he shifted – even after over four hundred years.
Climbing onto the swamp bank, the grass crunched under his foot as the thick trunk-like appendage began to shrink. His vision remained slightly blurred outside the water, but he didn’t need to see. The gator behind him was not a threat, even as a natural alligator. The creature could sense the differences and would give Remy a wide path.
Wide enough to let the change continue. Remy’s snout shrunk, the scent of mud disappearing as his human senses took over. The mildew lingered in his nose, but the rest was gone. The world grew a little sharper as his eyes shifted back, losing the extra eyelid.
Remy let his neck to the side and rolled his shoulders, throwing off the final vestiges of the change before he pushed off the ground. The humidity stuck to his bare skin, and he rubbed a hand down his leg.
“Naked. Fantastic,” Remy rolled onto his back and closed his eyes.
Word of the incident in the police station set his blood on fire. Here he was, trying to safely rid the New Orleans area of bad people hurting his kind, and his damn kind were doing the hurting. He should have gone straight into the city and handled it, but Remy knew the cops would be coming for him.
The cover story wouldn’t be questioned. Alphas personally took on the first change of any teen, regardless of the wereanimal species. While it was required alphas report new shifters, they do it at years end. No way for whatever cops came to see him to know that.
“Hopefully, Galena did what she was supposed to do.”
Remy could only lay naked on the damp ground for so long. The natural predators wouldn’t get him, but the god damn mosquito population would eat him alive. Sure, he could get up and walk away, wereanimals being out in the open meant naked people sometimes popped up on the side of the road.
Only, his body didn’t want to move. Swimming from just outside New Orleans up to Baton Rouge for anyone would be tough. Could you be risking the lives of the elderly? Sneering at the thought, Remy forced himself to sit upright.
His people would make do. They would swim as long as they needed to, even if it meant merely floating down the swamps when their arms grew too tired.
“We’ll be fine.”
Remy glanced past the swamp bushes toward the slowly setting sun. It shouldn’t have taken him hours to get here, but it clearly had. Streaks of fiery red didn’t paint the sky, but the sun sat lower, almost near the horizon line. It was close to seven. Sunset was near eight-thirty, but Remy knew the sun better than most, and he knew the day was closing.
“Come on, Sis. One simple call. That was all I needed you to do.” Remy ran his hand through the peat moss, enjoying the softness as it brushed against his human hand. Many people didn’t like the swamp, even in his congregation, but it brought him peace of mind.
Nature had a pecking order. It didn’t kill indiscriminately or out of fear. That was why he lived in nature. Why he forced his congregation to follow him out just past the limits of the city in Marrero.
An engine sounded in the distance, not with an explosion or a loud rev, just noisy enough for Remy to hear it coming.
Campers were plentiful in early fall, but his path didn’t bring him near the campgrounds. He’d swum to Baton Rouge only once before, preferring the quiet swamps to the brackish water that merely lined the roads out this way.
Remy hissed and flailed his hand as the buzz of a mosquito crept up into his ear.
“Go eat someone else, you fucker.” The back of his palm connected with the beastly insect.
The car drove closer and shut off.
Remy pushed off the damp ground and placed his hands in front of him, covering up his dick as not to offend the weregators coming his way.
“Remy?” A woman’s voice called down from the road above.
“Hello there, Adelaide. I’m glad to see you received my sister’s call.”
A plastic grocery bag tied off at the top landed at his feet.
“Get dressed, and then you can get up here and tell me what’s so damn important I had to gather alphas from half a dozen cities and meet you on the side of the road.”
Tearing at the plastic, clothes tumbled out, a sneaker thunked against his thigh and the rest fell onto the ground.
“Thank you.” He glanced down, grabbed the blue boxers off the ground to step into them. He was damn near dry from just the ten or so minutes outside of the water. “I promise this is important.”
“It had better be. You might be in charge down in your neck of the woods, but the four of us that answered this stupid request had to get favors from casters to get here quickly.” A man whose voice Remy knew well rasped.
“Uncle, if you’re so miserable, you could have called in, I trust Galena gave you all that information.” Remy tugged the black shirt over his head, fighting to get it down because of its slightly too small size.
“My niece didn’t give me that option.” Louis grouched, leaning his head off the road. “This is asinine, nephew.”
“No, it’s important.” Remy stepped one foot into the jeans and hopped to get the other in. “Who told you my size?” He tugged, ignoring the sharp breath he had to take to slide the button shut.
“No one, and don’t be ungrateful.” Adelaide, Baton Rouge’s alpha, snarked.
Sighing, Remy didn’t even bother with the white tennis shoes, he could tell with a glance they were too small.
“Where’s the access ladder?”
“About three feet behind you,” Adelaide might as well have rolled her eyes.
Turning, he spied the rusted ladder. “Give me just a second.”
The earth squished between his toes as he walked, and Remy enjoyed every second of it. He did not enjoy the rust under his hands as he gripped the ladder and pulled himself up. When it crunched under his foot as Remy wrapped his foot over the bar, he sighed. Shoes would be nice.
Pulling over the top of the wall, he was surprised to see two faces he didn’t know. His Uncle’s surly green stare and wrinkled forehead seemed displeased simply to see his nephew. Remy swung his feet over the wall and winced as a pebble stuck into his bare right foot when he landed on the road. Biting back a curse, he nodded at the Baton Rouge alpha.
Adelaide looked perfectly put together. Not a strand of her auburn hair was out of place in its tight bun. Her suit gave off the impression she’d just come from court. While he lived off the land, she preferred to live in the city with her congregation. She was as ruthless in court as she was an alpha, and so, Remy respected her.
A young dark-skinned man with intelligent eyes and a black
suit to mirror Adelaide’s couldn’t have come from Louisiana. Remy knew the other two alphas, and they were women. Beside him, a short Hispanic woman with hair down to her waist fixed a dark brown stare at him. She looked as displeased as his uncle.
“Rembrandt DuChard. New Orleans’s alpha.” He extended his hand to the man first, who grasped it readily.
“Steven Lakes. Gulfport.”
“Nice to meet another area alpha.” Remy turned to the woman. “And you are?”
“Andrea,” She rolled her “r.” “Texas. I was visiting Adelaide when your sister’s request came through and could not resist.”
Interesting. It was known Adelaide favored women, but the alpha rarely entertained others who equaled herself in power in case they sought to take over her congregation.
“Must we talk on the side of the road?”
“Not enough space in that fancy Jeep of hers.” His uncle gestured toward the black car. “Some of us relied on stored potions when the order is to go immediately and we aren’t close by.”
Remy’s uncle never hid his annoyance that his congregation pulled in fewer funds, but he didn’t dare to challenge his nephew. Remy was as vicious as he was smart with his leadership. He would kill family, just as other wereanimals did.
“Fine, then I’ll cut the small talk and be blunt.” The neckline on the shirt pressed against his neck and Remy tugged it back. “My kind are being murdered – both accidentally being mistaken for a predator and on purpose as trophies.”
He watched four sets of eyes. None seemed particularly surprised, but Andrea’s eyes did narrow. She must experience it.
“I’ve spoken to the Council Elect for the shifters. Elijah was kind, understanding, and useless. He plays politics instead of hardball. I blame having a family.”
“He has grown soft. I’ve known him since before you were born, and the man never used to hesitate to do right by his pack.” Louis crossed his arms over his chest and scowled.
“Right. Which leads me to my next point. I have decided to take matters into my own hands as a good alpha would.” He paused. Still no reaction. “Before I begin, I’d like your word that this will not leave our ears.”