The Hex Files_Wicked Never Sleeps

by Gina LaManna

  I reached around my waist, searching for something—anything I might use as a weapon. The Stunner had run out of juice during my last zap, and I hadn’t come stocked with an arsenal of weapons. All I had was a large vial of Aloe Ale on my travel belt.

  It’d been purchased from the Mixologist herself, a spell meant to heal small aches and pains, cuts and burns. The equivalent of a light dose of pain killers. I uncorked the cap, waded closer to where the vampire and the werewolf swayed in their deadly dance.

  Matthew struck first, slashing the shoulder he’d already injured. The werewolf yelped in pain, toppled backward, and fell. Matthew stepped closer, hovering over him.

  “Give it up,” Matthew snarled. “Show yourself, or I’ll kill you.”

  “Matthew, look out—”

  The wolf had recovered faster than Matthew anticipated and lashed out, his teeth gnawing for Matthew’s leg. The wolf snarled as his teeth hit skin as tough as stone around Matthew’s knee, but there was a crack, and Matthew’s face lost its moonlit shimmer. His expression went pale, slack, and he stumbled. The wolf had pierced Matthew’s skin, broken through bone.

  “Matthew!” I yelled but couldn’t reach him. I was too far, and the wolf was too close. So, I did the only thing I could think of and launched the Aloe Ale directly into the wolf’s eyes.

  He blinked, cried out in an earth-shattering yowl that had wolves across The Depth responding in turn. Writhing around, he tried to free himself of the blindness, but it was impossible.

  The wolf splashed in the stream, turning in circles, while I crumbled to Matthew’s side. “Matthew,” I murmured. “Matthew, we have to get out of here—it’s only a matter of time before—”

  “Dani?” The voice belonged to Nash. “Matthew? What the hell is that?”

  Nash arrived on the scene flanked by at least six other officers. They stopped short at the sight of us, the sight of the bodies, the wolf howling and scampering into the forest.

  “Go,” Nash quietly ordered to those around him, and they took off into the woods. Then my brother knelt, felt for Lorraine’s pulse, and acknowledged its absence. A light went out in his eyes, and I wondered if mine did the same when I saw yet another senseless death. “What happened here?”

  “We need to get Matthew help,” I said to Nash. “That’s not just any werewolf.”

  “I see that.” Nash’s teeth were gritted. “Never seen a wolf’s teeth penetrate vampire bone. Come on, Captain, let’s get you fixed up.”

  “You’re going to be okay.” I pushed Matthew’s hair back, leaned in to kiss his cheek. “I swear it. You’ll be fine.”

  Matthew managed to open his eyes, and he smiled. “Deal’s off.”

  “What?” I stared at him. “What deal?”

  “You kissed me,” he murmured, his hand seeking mine, finding it and squeezing. “Which means the deal is off.”

  Chapter 24

  Nash and I hauled Matthew out of The Depth. When we neared the Howler, we roped in a flying broomstick from an old woman who lived along the way and promised to pay her back in the morning. We threw Matthew on top and, though the vampire hated anytime his feet weren’t on the ground, it gave us an easier way to travel.

  I lifted the front end of the broomstick and Nash held the back, though it hovered on its own. We only guided it along. The entire way Matthew cursed at the craziness of the witches and wizards who’d ever dreamed of enchanting broomsticks.

  “With all due respect, King,” Nash said. “Stuff it—or you can walk.”

  The captain shut it.

  We made it to the hospital. I checked Matthew into the emergency room while Nash took care of a boatload of paperwork. My brother also sent out an alert to the chief and anyone else who needed to know Matthew was injured.

  “Will you shut your brother up?” Matthew growled to me. “I’ll be out of here before the alert even goes out.”

  “A werewolf bit through the bone in your knee,” I said. “Lay down for an hour, will you?”

  By the time we got Matthew in bed, he was arguing that he was ready to go. Judging by the hole in his leg, he was probably wrong. I stood guard next to Nurse Anita—a red-haired, feisty pixie whose specialty was treating cops—and gave her full permission to use whatever means necessary to treat the vampire.

  “This is completely unnecessary, and—” Matthew stopped talking. “What is Felix doing here?”

  I turned, unsurprised to see that Matthew’s hearing had been correct. He could pick out the footsteps of any cop from what felt like miles away. “Hey Felix,” I greeted the tech. “Did you bring flowers?”

  “A balloon.” He gave a broad grin and handed over a bright pink, heart-shaped balloon that read GET WELL SOON on it. “Whaddya think, Captain?”

  Matthew’s face went slack. Calmly, he picked the pen straight out of the nurse’s hand and sent it whizzing past my ear with such force that a few degrees in one direction, and the pen would’ve taken my eye out and gone straight through my skull.

  As it was, the writing utensil pierced the balloon with a resounding pop and hurtled straight into the wall beyond. It stuck there, halfway into the cement, with the limp pink plastic hanging from it.

  “I liked that pen,” Nurse Anita said. “I don’t like you as a patient, Captain.”

  “Glad to see that cheered you up,” Felix said as the nurse stormed good-naturedly out of the room. “How you feeling?”

  Matthew barely managed a quirk of his lips upward. “How do you think? I’ve got Anita pissed at me, Dani saved my life, and a bum knee. I’m annoyed.”

  “That’s not an accurate depiction,” I said to Felix. “He saved my life, and this is what he has to show for it.”

  Felix shrugged. “I don’t care who saved who, all I care is that y’all are both alive enough to see this.”

  Matthew and I looked curiously toward Felix as he stretched his hands before his body. His palms faced each other then spread, one of them leveling with his head, the other his waist. He held a HoloDisc on one palm, and from it, bright streaks of light snaked upward to his other palm. The hex painted a portrait.

  “This guy look familiar to you?” Felix asked. “It’s what the HoloHex artist came up with for you based on the info Donny gave.”

  Matthew pursed his lips, gave a slight shake of his head. “I can’t place anyone who looks like that. I don’t think it’s anyone I’ve ever seen before.”

  “It’s nobody I know,” I said, staring at the face between Felix’s palms. The image was just as Donny had described: reddish hair, average features, a male probably a few years younger than me. “But I can’t say I haven’t seen him before. I swear he looks familiar, and I hate that it’s not coming to me.”

  “Well, think about it.” Felix clapped his hands together and closed his fist over the HoloDisc, and then handed it over to me. “We’ll need the HoloDisc back when you’re done with it. Damn budget cuts.”

  I looked down at the disc on which swirling, twirling specs of light had been carefully constructed with a hex and formulated to show us the mystery man. We could flash it around the casinos, the hotel, wherever we needed—in hopes someone could place his face with a name.

  “We’re still working on the HoloHex for the Goblin Girl. I have the artist at the morgue,” Felix said. “We’ll have it to you first thing in the morning.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “Hopefully something will trigger someone’s memory, and we’ll be able to get an ID.”

  “What happened with the, ah, woman who disappeared?” Felix asked the question with unusual sensitivity. “Is she in the hospital, too?”

  Felix was an awkward sort of man—half goblin, half nymph. Nobody asked how that one had happened, but apparently it had. He was taller than me but shorter than Nash, with a little potbelly and a flop of brown hair that never quite looked fixed. He tended to wear ill-fitting jeans that were pulled up a little too high and button up shirts that always had a small stain from lunch on his pocket. In th
e pocket, of course, was an array of pens and potions.

  “She...” I cleared my throat. “Lorraine is dead.”

  Felix blinked. The news wasn’t a surprise to him, seeing as Matthew—a nearly indestructible vampire—had been brought to the hospital. It was a miracle I made it out alive.

  “Cause of death?” he asked.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Nash left one of his guys behind with her body and sent a tech team out there. We’ll know more later, but it looks like a werewolf, or a wolf of some sort, got to her.”

  He winced. “Ouch.”

  I gave a nod of finality because really, there wasn’t anything else to say.

  “Any idea which wolf?” He looked between the two of us, then gave a grim smile at Matthew’s knee. “Must’ve been one big-ass wolf to put a dent in the captain.”

  “Ha-ha,” Matthew groaned as Nurse Anita returned and bent over his leg, slathering a wicked purple potion that had a nasty odor onto the wound.

  “This might sting,” she said, and then grinned. “I’d pretend to be sympathetic, but it serves you right for stealing my pen.”

  Felix wrinkled his nose. “I best get back to the station. I can already hear the tech team tapping on my door and asking for overtime hours. See ya, Captain. Detective—it’s good to have you back.”

  “Speaking of the big-ass wolf,” I said, turning back to Matthew. “Do you think it was...”

  “Grey?” Matthew raised an eyebrow. “It’d make a lot of sense, wouldn’t it? Especially if he were involved in the new PowerPax drug distribution. Let’s say they used it on Joey—a test run, maybe?—and Lorraine helped Grey deliver the dose. Or watched him do it. Either way, she knew. We came sniffing around, and he realized she was too much of a liability.”

  “But he loved—”

  “If you give me the love argument one more time...”

  “It’s true! It just doesn’t seem like him.”

  “Danielle.” Matthew leveled his gaze at me, so deadly serious that Nurse Anita started a false whistling tune and disappeared from the room, closing the door behind her. “You must understand something.”

  I stepped closer to his bedside, keeping my eyes averted from the festering wound on his leg. Now that the purple goop was all over it, the injury was healing at an impressive rate. It was sickening to watch.

  “Beings like me, we have only one mate. One love. One true other half.” Matthew reached over, took my hands in his, and looked me in the eyes. His gaze was as soft as I’d ever seen it. Velvet, kind, loving—and it drew an ache from my heart that I didn’t know still existed.

  “Lorraine is not Grey’s mate,” he said simply. “And that means we can’t discount the fact that he might have killed her. Before you argue—I don’t doubt that he loved her. I don’t doubt that they were happy together. I don’t doubt any of that, but I know for a fact it wasn’t...” He sighed. “She wasn’t his.”

  I swallowed. “How do you know?”

  “These things aren’t subjective,” Matthew said, his gaze all to serious. “It’s like knowing how roses smell, or what the sunrise looks like. To a werewolf it’s the urge to drink the moon, or for a vampire, the taste of blood. When we meet our other half, we know.”

  He stopped, abruptly. My heart—I wasn’t sure if it still beat.

  “What are you saying?” I asked. “What does this mean for us, Matthew?”

  He looked over my shoulder as the door opened. Nurse Anita stood there with Nash at her shoulder.

  “Those claws belonged to some sort of werewolf,” Nash said, striding into the room, oblivious for the moment he’d interrupted. “But they don’t belong to any legally registered shifter in the system.”

  I looked up at him, lifted a chin. “There’s a shifter who goes by the name Grey—is he registered?”

  Nash pursed his lips. “I’d heard the two of you discussing him, so I specifically checked. He’s not in the system. Nor has anyone seen him since Lorraine disappeared.”

  I turned, met Matthew’s gaze. “Fine, we’ll look for him.”

  “It could be him,” Matthew said. “But the scent wasn’t quite right. Of course, he could have been wearing a Cloaking Spell, or perhaps he was on the drugs himself and it made him an entirely new creature.”

  The thought of a new creature, a new breed of werewolf enhanced by a drug as strong as PowerPax, was terrifying. “We need to find him,” I whispered. “Before he kills another.”

  Nash gave a quiet nod. “First, you both need to rest. Matthew, you’re staying here for the night—Chief Newton’s orders. I’m going to take Dani home.”

  Matthew didn’t argue, which surprised me.

  “Fine,” I said, “but give us a minute first.”

  The nurse and Nash disappeared, along with a tall, broad ogre that would be the security guard from the precinct placed outside Matthew’s room for the night.

  I turned to Matthew and looked deep into his gaze. There, I saw something that scared me, terrified me—frightened the very core of me. I saw the rawness of Matthew’s soul, the way he’d fought for my life, even after I’d turned him away.

  “About mates,” I said, then trailed off. “Are you and I...”

  Conflict rose in Matthew’s face and he raised a hand, pressed it sweetly against my cheek. “No, Dani. Not unless you want us to be.”

  “What does that mean?”

  He put his hand behind my head, pulled me toward him with gentle force. I reached for him, my lips on his as we connected over his hospital bed, my arms wrapping around his neck as his hand slid around my back and pulled me close.

  When we finally parted, he sighed. “If you must know, I love you. I still do.”

  “You already said that a vampire can love someone,” I said, “without it being his one true love.”

  “Yes.”

  “So that means...” I blinked back tears. Surely, he would have just told me if we were meant to be together and saved both of us the heartache. If I was his mate, his love, his other half—it wouldn’t be so hard to be together, would it?

  “Goodnight, Danielle.” He kissed me once more, and this time, it tasted like goodbye.

  Chapter 25

  “Brother and sister out for a midnight stroll, huh?” Nash glanced over toward me. “Cute.”

  “I suppose.” I wasn’t in a chatty mood.

  My mind was lingering back at the hospital on how I’d left things with Matthew. Or if we’d left things at all. A part of me felt broken inside, as if an open door had been permanently closed, locked, key cast aside into the water.

  Some part of me had always assumed that my breakup with Matthew wasn’t the end. It was just a temporary pause on moving forward—a break from everything happening so fast. From having to decide how to be in a relationship with someone so different than everything I was used to, but so important to me nonetheless.

  “Why’s this one worse than the others?” Nash asked as we walked. “You’ve seen plenty of dead bodies. Was Lorraine someone special to you?”

  I blinked, looked up, and realized my brother thought it was the case getting to me. In a way, maybe it was, but not how he’d expected. “No, sorry—just thinking.”

  “Is it about Matthew?”

  I looked down. “Do you think he could have done it?”

  “Hell no! Plus, wasn’t he with you all day? And yesterday?”

  “Not Matthew—Grey. The new werewolf who’s been around town. He and Lorraine were dating and nobody has seen him since she disappeared.”

  “Yeah, I guess he could have. I mean, why take off if he wasn’t involved somehow?”

  “True. It just—it doesn’t feel right to me.”

  “Why not? You know something we don’t?”

  Nash smiled, but I couldn’t force it. “No, that’s the problem. Gut feeling, but those don’t work out well for me.”

  “Danielle.” Nash gave a knowing sigh. “You have to let him go. None of that was your fault.”
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  “I dated a murderer, Nash!” I stopped, faced my brother. “Tell me how that’s not my fault.”

  Nash had many similar traits as me, but so many different ones, too. Where I was plain and practical, he had swaths of dark hair and a gleam in his eyes that drew women to him from across the borough. He was handsome in an objective sort of way—not the I’m-his-sister-and-forced-to-say-it way. Even as I spoke, his perceptive eyes turned bleak, and I knew he was imagining things from my lens.

  “How could you have known?” Nash asked. “He came over for dinner how many times? None of us saw it coming. Ma wanted you to marry him!”

  “You were all just so blinded by me,” I said. “Poor, heartbroken Dani—we told you things wouldn’t work out with the vampire.” I mimicked my mother. “We’re just so glad to see you happy again.”

  “Dani—”

  “I suppose in a way I was happy. Not that really carefree, true happy you see when a couple is absolutely, totally in love, but happier than when I’d been wallowing in the months after Matthew and I broke up.”

  “You didn’t wallow. You went through a grieving process. You and Matthew dated for two years. It’s fair for you to have a few months to grieve.”

  “We both know that I was desperate,” I said. “By the time I met him, I just wanted anyone to love me.”

  “You’re the least desperate person I know,” Nash said. “You opened yourself to love, and you fell for the wrong person. It could’ve happened to anyone. That’s on him—not you. Risking your heart for love is one of the greatest things you can ever do—one of the bravest. And when it works, it pays off for you.”

  “How do you know?” I snapped. “I don’t see a ring on your finger.”

  Nash straightened. “Just because I haven’t found the right person doesn’t mean I’ve never been in love. I’ve been burned, and I’m sure I’ve burned others. Yes, it sucks. But I never thought you should have let it affect your job. You are the best Reserve the borough has ever seen.”