I glanced at my brother. His face was stony. Neither of us was going to like what we found, I guaranteed it. “Um, okay, I’ll go first,” I said. “I’m dying to … brush my teeth.” I started toward my tiny bathroom. “And, Juanita, thanks for taking care of Danny. But you have to promise me one thing: the next time you hear any noises, please call first. Or better yet, lock your door and don’t come out. I would never forgive myself if you got hurt on my account.”
“Okay, Chica. I call first next time.” She winked and headed for the front door.
The bathroom door was shut and I eased it open, listening before I slipped inside. The smell was so thick I coughed, covering my mouth with the palm of my hand as my eyes landed on the only place they could possibly go in the small space—the bathtub. There, lying naked and dead, was my super, Jeff Arnold. He looked awful, his pasty skin and thinning hair only accentuating his crumpled pale visage. “Oh my gods.” I pushed my hand tighter to my face. I knelt down by him, and the stinky peach mixed with death made me produce bile. I had no idea what kind of supe he was, but it was obvious he’d been one.
The front door of my apartment clicked shut, then Tyler was crowded behind me, followed by Danny in the now open doorway.
“What the fuck is all this?” Tyler turned toward Danny. “When you didn’t answer your phone I thought that asshole detective Ray Hart put a bullet in your brain.”
“No bullet, mate,” Danny said. “The reason I couldn’t call you is this guy here”—Danny gestured toward Jeff—”broke my bloody phone during our brief interlude. I couldn’t very well leave and go out and make a phone call, now could I? Then I had to deal with your neighbor well enough after she heard all the commotion. Though she makes an excellent pie. It was truly delicious.”
“Danny, what happened here?” I pushed by them and made my way out of the bathroom. I had to get away from the stench. They followed me into the living room. I placed my hands on my hips and turned in a full circle, trying to get my brain back on board with what I just witnessed. “I’m having trouble understanding why my super is lying dead in my bathtub.”
“Well, it’s a very simple story actually,” Danny started. “I was minding my own business, convalescing as ordered by your father. My wounds were quite severe, as I’m sure you were informed—not to worry, though, all shipshape now—when I heard someone sneaking into your apartment as bold as day. He wasn’t technically breaking in, you see, since he had his own key, but nevertheless he woke me out of a perfectly lovely sleep. I’d been dreaming about the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders, who are, for the record, a naughty lot of—”
“Danny,” I said sharply. “Please stay on topic.”
“Of course. So naturally I did my duty and came out to investigate the disturbance. Our man was toting a rather large bag of very suspicious goods, and when he saw me he had the nerve to pull out a gun.” Danny infused some outrage. “Which I kindly knocked from his hands as quick as you like, and I was about to break his sorry little neck when out of nowhere he dropped to the floor and began shifting into a bloody weasel.”
“A what?” Tyler and I both balked.
“A bloody weasel shifter the size of a large dog.” Danny spread his hands to indicate a hefty size. “Then he jumped on my back like a possessed little fuck and went after my flesh like a piranha … scenting blood.”
Jeff was a shifter? Never in a million years would I have guessed that. The peach smell, obviously his signature scent, wouldn’t have meant much to me as a human, and he’d definitely stayed clear of me since. He must have had a lackey deliver my new set of door keys, because I would’ve picked up the peach scent if he had brought them himself. But the million-dollar question was, what did he want? And who was he working for? There was no way a guy like Jeff Arnold was a one-man operation. He didn’t have enough motivation in one of his pinky fingers, let alone enough brainpower to hatch a plan to catch a wolf. He was likely recruited for the job or someone had forced him into it. Either way, it shouldn’t be too hard to track down the trail.
“I’ve never heard of a wereweasel before,” my brother said. “And I’m positive I’ve never smelled one.” He wrinkled his nose. “I would’ve remembered that stink anywhere.”
“Well, I can assure you they bloody well exist,” Danny bristled. “But what the little shite wasn’t expecting was a werewolf counterattack, and I’d like to kindly point out that a weasel and a wolf make a highly unbalanced fight. After I shifted, it took me under three seconds to take him out.”
“You shifted? Right here?” I asked. “In my apartment?”
“Of course I shifted,” Danny said indignantly. “I had to shake off the bloody wereweasel who was ripping chunks out of my back with his devilish little claws and sharp, pointy teeth. I couldn’t get the bastard off without shifting. But, of course, that’s when the detective came sniffing around, so I—”
“What!” I shouted, grabbing on to his arms. “Danny, you said this happened last night. Ray came here in the morning. Please tell me he did not see you shift!”
“No, I never said it was at night, you just assumed it was. And yes, he did see me, but I had almost fully finished by the time he came round, so he didn’t get to see the lot of it. But he did see me toss a weasel—the size of bloody Benji—against the wall. After that I had no choice—”
“Danny,” I half yelled, half begged. “Please tell me you did not kill Ray Hart.”
“Of course I didn’t kill him!” He had the nerve to look shocked like poor Jeff wasn’t lying in my bathroom lifeless. “I don’t kill people who don’t threaten me directly. No need to worry your pretty little head about it. I haven’t killed him, I’ve just tied him up in your closet for the time being. Not that we won’t be killing him later, because he’s uncovered our secret, but I couldn’t just let him walk out of here, now could I?”
I stood there frozen. Ray was tied up in my closet?
Danny continued without pausing, “Damn well nearly pissed his pants when I launched myself at him. It was lucky for me he fainted dead away. Always makes the job of securing them a whole lot easier when they go limp. But I didn’t actually realize it was the detective until Nick came by just in time to fob off the police when they came to the door searching for him. Nick convinced them they’d already checked this apartment thoroughly. Bloody convenient, persuasion is. Wish I had that knack. It’s quite handy in a mess like this.”
I didn’t bother to answer, since I was already running down the hallway toward my bedroom.
My bed had been well slept in and the floor was littered with takeout bags and empty plates. It seemed poor Danny hadn’t been without resources after all.
I approached the closet doors slowly and stood there for a full minute gathering myself. I wasn’t sure what I was going to see when I whipped them open, and visions of the recent dead man in my bathtub gave me pause.
My fingers grazed the knobs and in one motion I yanked the accordion doors back. To my immediate relief there was a very angry, but very alive, detective sitting on a pile of my shoes.
He was gagged with what looked to be a pair of my pantyhose. Both Ray’s hands were tied behind his back with something I couldn’t see, but it seemed to be holding him well enough. He glowered at me with so much hatred and loathing—if he’d been a wolf, I might have shied away for a second.
But he wasn’t.
I squatted down to his level. “Hi, Ray. So glad to see you’re alive and well. Are you enjoying your little stay in my closet?”
He didn’t try to move, which meant he must’ve been sufficiently freaked out by what he had witnessed with Danny and the canine-sized wereweasel. Instead, he unleashed a string of curses I couldn’t fully understand due to his gag but immediately recognized in their entirety anyway. His faced turned beet red with each effort and saliva pooled along the corners of his mouth.
“Ray,” I chastised. “I’m going to need you to calm down. I know you’re incredibly agitated right now, but
look on the bright side—you’re still breathing. That’s a very big accomplishment at the moment. Most people in your current position wouldn’t have breath left in their bodies after what you witnessed.”
More swearing and some agitated movements.
“Listen, as much as I’d love to have a big heart-to-heart, you’re going to have to hold on to those thoughts for now,” I told him. “I just came back here to make sure you weren’t dead. Now that I’ve seen you with my own eyes, I’ve got to get back to my living room and sort out another round of chaos that’s become my normal life. If you can believe it, I have bigger things to attend to than you right now, so you’re just going to have to hold tight.”
I stood up right as Ray’s leg struck out, connecting solidly with my knee.
The blow staggered me back a foot, but I recovered in a snap. Furious didn’t even come close. I sprang at more-than-human speed right into Ray’s personal space. His eyes widened in surprise and fear leaked out of him like air from a punctured tire.
I growled to enhance the effect. “Listen to me very carefully, Raymond Hart. You have forced your way into something that was never any of your business to learn. Do you understand me? You’re a self-centered, egotistical, thick-necked, mean-assed cop. One who could never leave well enough alone.” He winced at the force of my words. “I never, and I repeat never, deserved your dogged pursuit of me. Nothing has warranted your extreme hatred of me, and now you’re in way over your head, and guess what? It’s become my fucking job to dig you out. Do you understand the irony of this whole situation? It’s certainly not lost on me.”
He blinked.
“Now, in a normal scenario you don’t live to see tomorrow,” I said, my voice icy calm. “That’s just how it works. So if you don’t want to end up dead, you’re going to have to start treating me like I’m your best friend until I have a chance to figure this out, and it’s going to take me more than seven seconds to do it. Understood?”
More fear swirled in the air, accompanied by slight annoyance. Ray gave me a few more rapid blinks. He was a piece of work, that was for damn sure.
“Contrary to what you might think, I don’t want to kill you.” He deserved to know that much from me. “You can choose to believe me or not, I don’t really care. But right now, you have no choice but to wait patiently. If you make any move to escape, or do anything stupid, we will know it immediately. Don’t test us. The big guys in the other room won’t hesitate to take you out, and I won’t be able to stop them.” I couldn’t resist adding, “Blink twice if you understand me.”
If he could’ve killed me with his brainpower alone, I’d already be dead. But very slowly he blinked twice.
“Good. See you in a few minutes, Ray.” I shut the closet doors. Garbled curses followed me back into the living room.
My brother was on the phone calling for a cleaning crew to deal with Jeff.
I got down to business. “Okay, Danny, were you able to get anything off of Jeff before Juanita came in? We’re going to have to figure out who he’s working for and why he was here in the first place.”
“His pockets were clean and other than some low-level surveillance equipment and a few cheap bugs, there was nothing of value in the bag he carried. I’d planned to sneak down to his apartment as soon as the detective was settled, but your lovely neighbor waylaid my carefully made plans.”
“His apartment’s a good place to start. I’m assuming it shouldn’t be too hard to piece it together. Jeff was not the brightest bulb—” A force slammed into me, knocking the breath out of my body as I hit the living room wall. My wolf howled, springing at the red lines that had suddenly emerged in my mind, snapping her jaws fiercely.
It was one of Selene’s spells.
Why now? No time to ponder, we had to get rid of it. We conquered the last one, we need to get this one too. My wolf growled and lashed at the red amassing quickly in my mind.
I gasped for air, sliding down the rough brick into a sitting position, trying my best to breathe. The spell was cutting off all my bodily functions.
“Jess, Jesus Christ, look at your hands.” Tyler knelt beside me and grabbed a hold of my wrists.
Danny squatted next to him. “That looks like trouble if I’ve ever seen any.”
I forced my neck down so I could see my hands lying in Tyler’s grasp. Red veins were spreading upward at an alarming rate, starting from the very tips of my fingers like an oil spill, slowly seeping up my forearms. Pain raced up to my shoulder, ahead of the spell, and back down my spine, zinging it with fire. This wasn’t the same spell she’d hit me with in the clearing. This spell was different.
The bitch gave us two.
She must have snuck one in under Valdov’s nose. This one must have had a waiting period before activation. If the vampire knew she’d put a spell in my body to kill me, there would’ve been backlash. Sneaky witch.
All my limbs stiffened; I couldn’t move anything.
Inside my head, my wolf kept hacking at the spell. I pushed power into her, trying to feed her control. My arms throbbed and burned with a searing heat. My body’s instinct was to change, but it was too risky. The spell would probably kill me before I could shift. I had to defeat it now.
“Jess, can you hear me?” Tyler voice echoed in my ear. “What’s going on? You have to answer me.”
My eyes were open, but I couldn’t blink.
Tyler turned to Danny. “Get my father on the phone. We need help.”
No. “No,” I managed on a harsh breath. Both boys turned to stare at me. “Don’t.” I had to deal with this on my own. If my father found out, there was no way he’d let me leave town. I had to find my mate. At all costs. No matter what was going on with Jeff, or any of the other craziness, finding Rourke was my priority. My only priority. “No.” It came out slowly. “Please.”
My brother and Danny waited, both of them crouched next to me, concern on their faces.
I battled the insidious spell, pushing more control at my wolf, trying to draw power from my body and direct it at her, pumping her full. She ripped and struck at the red mass in a fervor, too fast for me to follow. I gasped for more air, my lungs barely inflating. We have to do this, I told her. We have to be stronger than her or we lose him forever. It’s giving a little, I can feel it. We’re almost there. I promise you she’s not going to win this. We are stronger. My wolf snarled, gnashing her teeth, forcing the lines back into submission, tearing the spell apart before it could fully metastasize in my body, which was exactly what it was trying to do.
I channeled one last burst of power, using everything I could gather, and aimed it at my wolf. A moment of clarity hit my mind, a bright concentration of power, and the spell snapped once and for all. The lines broke apart, dangling limply in my mind like a tattered spiderweb swaying in the wind.
Then very slowly all the color dissipated, seeping back the way it’d come, like eels sliding back into their holes.
My wolf continued to growl, lashing at the retreating lines until no red remained. But the ugliness hadn’t gone away forever. The spell was still there.
It’d just gone dormant.
When the last remnant of red vanished I fell forward, coughing for air, taking in short deep breaths. After a solid minute of panting, I finally looked up, sweaty and spent. “She’s trying to kill me.”
“Who’s trying to kill you?” Tyler asked. I’d forgotten Tyler had been out cold when Selene had blasted me in the clearing.
“Selene.” I rested my head back against the wall. “It seems she left me a fun parting gift from our party together in the woods.”
But she wasn’t going to win.
“It looked a bit touch-and-go there for a second,” Danny said, his face worried. “You’re not talking about Selene the actual Lunar Goddess, are you?”
“The very one.” The whore was trying to kill me.
“What kind of a spell is it?” Tyler asked. “It looked like it was going to consume your entire body.
”
“I think it was a … death spell of some kind,” I said quietly, knowing Tyler wasn’t going to take that news well.
“What the hell does that mean?”
“It means I have to kill the bitch before she kills me.”
The End of Book One
The story continues in book two of
the Jessica McClain series:
Hot Blooded
extras
about the author
A Minnesota girl born and bred, Amanda Carlson graduated from the University of Minnesota with a double major in speech and hearing science and child development. After enjoying her time as a sign language interpreter, she decided to stay at home and write in earnest after her second child was born. She loves playing Scrabble, tropical beaches, and shopping trips to Ikea. She lives in Minneapolis with her husband and three kids. To find out more about the author, visit www.amandacarlson.com or on Twitter @AmandaCCarlson.
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interview
Have you always been a writer?
Yes, ever since I can remember. I started writing in junior high, using my yearbook to add faces to my stories. Over the years, I’ve written humorous essays about my kids, articles for various publications, but did I consider myself a “writer” before the publication of this book? Not really. For me, it’s one of those validation milestones that has made all my other endeavors feel worthy. Now I feel like I can call myself a writer, and it feels damn good.
What do you do when you’re not writing?
I have three kids, so it’s safe to say when I’m not writing I’m trying my best to keep up with my motherly duties. I usually wrap my writing day when they get home from school, but my kids are understanding and give me extra time when I need it. Minneapolis is full of beautiful lakes and I love to walk with pals. By the end of the week I need to escape, so movies are a delicious treat. The more action-packed the better. I also love playing Scrabble—to a slightly unhealthy degree. There’s nothing better than flipping from my WIP to make a move on the Scrabble board. It clears my mind, and when I jump back, I’m ready to write again.
Full Blooded Page 29