by Chase Connor
Never look back.
The man in the black hooded cloak will have no reason to return if you are not here, Rob.
He won’t have the ability.
In the furthest, deepest corners of my mind, I knew that my plan was full of holes and there were a million problems that Lucas and I should probably deal with before we made any major decisions. Together, we had a lot to discuss, questions to ask, things to tell each other, but I just didn’t care. I had come to Point Worth because I was tired and done with Hollywood. What would be so wrong about going back to Hollywood for the same reason? Point Worth and everyone and everything in it was going to have the same effect eventually. In fact, Point Worth would probably lead to mine or several other people’s deaths.
Get out while the getting’s good, Rob.
“Lucas,” I whispered into his hair as he kissed my chest again.
“Mm.”
“Do you want to live in California?” I asked gently.
Lucas’ lips froze against my chest. As if time was moving at a snail’s pace, his head slowly turned, and I was greeted with his confused, and possibly horrified gaze.
“What?”
I chuckled nervously.
“Would you want to live in California?” I asked again, refusing to lose my resolve. “With me. I want to leave Point Worth. Soon.”
“Rob.” He started to pull away.
Tightening my arms around his body, I kept Lucas’ body against mine as we stared into each other’s eyes. Lucas’ started to look slightly aghast at what I had been suggesting, but he stopped trying to pull away from me.
“How soon?”
“Tomorrow if we could.”
“Oh my god.” Lucas’ lips parted in shock. “You told me you wanted to stay here. Find a guy to live your life with. Who loved you. Travel. Live to be old and happy, and live a quiet life. What changed, Rob? I mean…did you not mean all of that when you said it?”
“Lucas.” I shifted in the bed, bringing myself to a seated position against the headboard. Lucas slid from my arms but did not pull away as he came to kneel in front of me. For once, his nudity presented to me in such a way was not a distraction. “I meant every word when I said it. But you know everything that’s happened since then. Can you honestly say that you want to stay here now? After everything that’s happened? Now that we know everything that we know? Again? We have our memories back, babe.”
Lucas stared warily at me.
“Don’t tell me you don’t remember everything that led up to me going into the cellar when we were sixteen and why. And don’t tell me thinking about not knowing me when I came back out doesn’t break your heart now that you have those memories. We loved each other, then and we love each other now. Those ten years away from each other were the worst ten years of my life. I want to leave this town—again—and never look back. Fuck Oma. Fuck the house. Fuck Jason and Andrew and werewolves and Kobolds and Oracles—”
“Oracles?”
“Fuck magic.” I finished. “I want to leave. But I don’t want to leave without you. I don’t want to do that again.”
“Rob—”
“I don’t know what is up with you and knowing how to use magic and all of that.” I shook my head. “I don’t care why werewolf bites don’t affect you, okay? I don’t care if I know your family history or any of that. Because…if we leave here…together…it won’t matter. We’ll just be Rob and Lucas—well, I’ll be Jacob Michaels again—but we’ll be together. Living a normal life. Well, kind of normal. Don’t you want that, babe? Don’t you want to forget about all of the weird things that happen here and having to deal with them just so we can be together? We can ditch all of that shit and just have the being together part. Isn’t that what you want, Lucas?”
“Rob—”
“Please.” I pleaded, a single tear dropping from my eye. “Please, please, please Lucas. Don’t tell me, ‘no.’ Okay? I can’t hear ‘no.’ When I decided this, there was something inside of me telling me it was okay because I knew you would go with me if I asked.”
Lucas looked as though he was going to cry as well.
“Of all things I know—the one I know the strongest is that I’m meant for you and you’re meant for me.” I shook my head, refusing to think of any alternative. “And I know that will work even better in California. I promise.”
“I have a job here, Rob,” Lucas said gently. “Two jobs. I’m a substitute English teacher, and I sling hardware for grandpa. What would I do in Los Angeles, Rob?”
“Nothing,” I answered quickly. “Or anything you wanted. I have money. I’ll work, babe. I’ll do whatever it does to make you happy or nothing at all. Whatever you want. Anything you wish is my command, Lucas. I swear.”
Lucas stared into my eyes.
“Wishes got us into this, babe.” He answered softly.
“Don’t.” I slowly shook my head, both eyes leaking now. “Please don’t blame me for all of this.”
“I’m not.”
“I know it’s all my fault. Okay?” I was on the verge of sobbing. “All I can think of is…shit…how we got here. I can’t even have a coherent thought about most of it because it’s all too much. I couldn’t explain it if I wanted to. And I know it’s my fault. I get that. I thought I was doing the right thing, babe.”
“The road to Hell is paved with good intentions, Rob.” Lucas sighed.
I swallowed hard, willing myself to accept that Lucas had made up his mind about me. He had made a decision. The blame for everything was squarely on me in his mind…and California was the last thing he would choose. I sniffled, hoping that I could save some of my dignity.
“But I don’t blame you.” He looked up at me. “I know it’s not your fault. What happened.”
Hope filled my mind and my heart as I looked at my boyfriend cautiously, wondering if he was being honest.
“This whole town is full of secrets, Rob.” He whispered. “Everything here is…fucked. No kid should have had to make the decision you were forced to make. You found an alternative. I don’t blame you—because that’s not your fault at all.”
My eyes were freely leaking now.
“You did what had to be done when other people just ran away, babe.” He shook his head in disgust. “And it worked. Maybe not great, but it worked. How can I blame you for that?”
I gave a wet laugh.
“And you came back.” He smiled gently. “Just like you said you would. You brought me back, too. If you want to make a new wish for the future, I will be by your side for that one, too.”
“Are you saying…”
“I’ll go to California.” He gave a firm nod, though he looked nervous.
A heavy, relieved exhale poured from my throat as I pulled Lucas forward so that I could hold him against me. He chuckled as our bodies pushed against each other’s once again.
“I don’t know what the hell I’m going to do in Los Angeles.” He grumbled. “I mean…the people. The lights, cars…it’s pretty…uh…busy, right?”
“I’ll buy you a house in Hidden Hills or Calabasas with a big yard and a swimming pool and hills and trees around us so you can still feel like you’re not in the big city. I’ll buy you any fucking house you want, babe. A mansion if you want it.” I laughed as I started kissing his face, which made him chuckle. “If you don’t want to drive, I will, or we’ll get Ubers or hire a driver. We can have groceries and dinners delivered. We can do whatever needs to be done so that you’re comfortable there, okay? Anything.”
“Promise?”
“Anything.”
“Just make sure that I can look out the backdoor without seeing a stream of cars driving by on a highway and I won’t complain about a single thing, Rob.” He smiled at me.
I laughed. “I can do that.”
“What if you—uh, what’s it called?” He frowned. “You have to shoot on location or something? Like in some other country for months on end?”
I looked at him like he was cr
azy. “You’ll come with me, babe. I mean, unless you want to find some job and stay home while I’m off on location, you’ll come with me. But that’s totally up to you, too. Anything you want, remember?”
He smiled.
“I mean, I guess I could be your personal assistant and just travel with you.” He said. “You’ll have to fire the one you have.”
“I could use two.” I teased. “Besides, you’ll be assisting me with things that Jessica doesn’t have the qualifications for.”
Lucas laughed and gasped as I grabbed a particular part of him as I held him against me, overjoyed that he had agreed to my request. I kissed Lucas repeatedly, kisses he happily returned as we smiled and held each other, confident in our decision. We probably would have ignored our cold dinner in the kitchen, forgone showers, and laid in bed together, kissing and snuggling until we fell asleep, completely exhausted. In fact, we probably would have been more than happy to kiss and snuggle until dawn came. The loud boom that echoed through the house, right before all of the lights fizzled out, kept us from doing that, though.
Chapter 9
Lucas and I were frozen in time, startled into a near-catatonic state as the darkness overtook the house, and the booming sound echoed off of the walls. As quickly as it sounded, the booming sound disappeared, and the echo of its existence stopped bouncing off of the walls. Lucas and I turned our heads to look at each other, our eyes not used to the darkness that was suddenly thrust upon us. The two of us knelt there together, listening, barely seeing, waiting for something to pop up out of the darkness, to clue us in on what had caused the sound and the lights to go out. There was nothing but the darkness and the silence, other than the sound of our own breathing, however. Slowly, I indicated to Lucas to get out of bed and put his pants on.
Quietly, and in unison, the two of us let go of each other and shifted to the edge of the bed, making as little noise as possible. My brain started to concoct reasons for the noise and the sudden extinguishing of all of the lights in the house. Maybe a transformer blew outside. There was no rain or storm of any kind to have caused problems, but it was totally possible that an equipment malfunction happened randomly. A flipped breaker was also possible, especially since Lucas had built the house himself—I had no idea if he did the electrical work himself—so that was added to the list.
It was also possible that a storm was starting to roll in that we had not noticed due to all of our fun and dramatic talking in the bedroom. A sudden rainstorm, accompanied by lightning and thunder, was not an oddity in upper Ohio in early Spring. More times than I had fingers to count, crazy, violent storms had popped up out of nowhere during Spring in our neck of the woods. It was not totally out of the question that we had Mother Nature to worry about more than anything else. The only problem was the twisting and turning in my gut, letting me know that whatever happened was not natural.
As though I could simply sense it, I knew something was very wrong, even though I had no evidence to support that feeling. With everything that had happened in my lifetime, though, I did not feel in that moment that I had to be rational. All things considered, I had every right to be as irrational and come up with as many crazy theories as I wanted. The first thing that came to mind was:
Magic.
Whether what had happened was a genuinely intentional act committed by a magical practitioner or some other type of act accompanied by magic was beyond me. I knew of no one—besides Oma and myself—who could cast magic in Point Worth, though my knowledge was limited. It wasn’t like I went to the monthly conventions to network or simply to make new friends in the community. I wasn’t even sure that those in the world who could do magic wanted others to know about it. Oma and I were pretty damned secretive about it, after all. As far as I knew, it was a pretty rare ability, so I was guessing that any convention I could have gone to would have been pretty lame and not worth the cost of admission. Of course, that thought only led to two other possibilities.
Black-hooded cloak.
Werewolves.
Lucas slid off of his side of the bed as I slid off of the other side, and together, we found our pants in the dark. Sliding into my jeans, I could see Lucas sliding into his boxers in my peripheral vision, though the darkness distorted things a bit. For all I knew, he was trying on a pair of yoga leggings. The thought, regardless of the seriousness of the situation, made me smile slightly, though I was still ill at ease.
“What was it?” Lucas whispered before looking around the bedroom floor in vain for something to put on over his boxers.
“I don’t know,” I whispered over my shoulder as I started to creep towards the bedroom door.
“Don’t go anywhere.” He hissed desperately. “We’ll go together.”
I paused and turned my head slightly to watch Lucas as he scrabbled around for a second, finally locating what he was looking for by the large window that looked out at Lake Erie. He stood from his stooped over position, triumphantly holding a pair of what looked like basketball shorts. Time and darkness seemed to press in on us as I waited quietly for him to slip them on. Lucas tied the drawstring in the shorts, giving me a proud look from across the room, the whites of his eyes and his teeth the only clearly visible features in the darkness of the bedroom. I shook my head nervously with a smile at him as he beamed back from his place next to the window.
“Now we can—”
The window shattered, shards of glass slicing through the air towards me as Lucas’ eyes grew wide in horror. I crouched quickly with a scream, my hand flying up out of instinct, as I focused my magic outward. A halo of barely visible blue light appeared, and every piece of glass that hit it turned to sand. The other shards of glass flew past me, not connecting with my vulnerable, exposed flesh. Before I could pull my magic back in or stand from my crouched position, two arms, several times more massive than a normal man’s—and much hairier—came through the window and encircled Lucas’ waist.
He barely had time to look at me in disbelief.
“Rob.” He gasped.
Then my boyfriend was yanked out of the window and into the night.
Roaring with rage and fear, I darted to the window, launched myself through it, and landed on the soft grass below. Werewolves are fast. By the time I had landed, corrected my footing, and raised my hand in preparation to send some fire towards the werewolf, he was nowhere in sight. Neither was Lucas. A scream to the left made me whip around, hand at the ready, searching desperately for some sign of my boyfriend. My stomach sunk when my eyes landed on the werewolf, Lucas over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes with flailing human appendages. I screamed angrily as the werewolf jumped into the back of a pickup truck at the side of the house.
Taking off at a full run, I thought about sending fireball after fireball towards the pickup and the werewolf who had Lucas wrapped up in his arms. However, I knew that there was no guarantee that Lucas would come away from the assault unharmed, so I lowered my arms to my side, pumping them as I ran as fast as I could towards the truck. The taillights lit up red, casting the surrounding yard in an ominous shade and it took off, werewolf and Lucas in the back. Screaming with rage, I ran faster, doing my best to catch up to them, to give myself a clear shot at Lucas’ captor. But a human is no match for a pickup truck. Dust and gravel flew out at me as the truck sped off and I was forced to slide to a stop, barely staying on my feet, so that I could watch the truck drive off into the night.
Two red, rapidly shrinking eyes taunted me as they flew off into the night.
My whole body shook as I looked up to the heavens and screamed with rage.
Chapter 10
Jason barely had a chance to get out of the way as his door flew inwards. As soon as he had unlocked the door and began to swing it open to see who was banging away on it, I had violently kicked it in. He screamed out in shock as he jumped back and the door slammed into the wall behind it, the doorknob busting through and sticking into the drywall there. Jason stood there, merely in pajama pants,
breathing heavily as he stared at his door now affixed to the wall. Heat and anger poured off of me as I stood framed in the doorway, glaring at him. I started to raise my hand, to do something to harm him. Not because I thought he had anything to do with Lucas being taken, but because he was one of them. He was a werewolf—just like the person who had ripped Lucas out of his own home and stolen away into the night as I pathetically tried to save him.
After the truck disappeared into the darkness, those two red eyes practically laughing at me, I screamed into the night sky. Fire shot from my hands into the sky, flying in an arc over the front lawn and landing far out from the shore into Lake Erie. There it sizzled and steamed and sent up more proof of my rage and fear. Why hadn’t I gone back to Hollywood sooner? Told Lucas that I didn’t want to stay in Ohio? He would have gone with me sooner—before it was too late. I had shaken those thoughts away. Too late. Lucas had just been taken, not harmed.
Hewasfinehewasfinehewasfine.
Please, God. Let him be fine.
He better be fine.
I will burn this entire state down if he is not fine.
He didn’t do anything to deserve this.
Slowly, I lowered my hand at that thought. Jason was a total douchebag, but he hadn’t done anything to be turned into a piece of bacon, either. Yet. His eyes shifted from the door and the wall to me, a look of anger trying to chase away the fear in his eyes. Glaring through the doorway at him, I stepped over the threshold into the house.
“They got my fucking boyfriend,” I growled.
“What?” Confusion shadowed his face. “Who? Who got Lucas?”
“Your fucking people.” I snarled. “Werewolves.”
“My pack?” He was actually shocked.
“I have no fucking clue.” I snapped. “You all look alike when you’re furry, you piece of shit.”
“No, we—” He stopped himself. “That’s not the point. A werewolf took your—Lucas?”
“Yes.”
“When? Where?”
“From his house, asshole,” I growled again, stomping closer. “We had just got done…stuff…and some furry shit-hook came through the window and grabbed him like a sack of potatoes.”