The Wolfborne Saga Box Set

by Cheree Alsop

  “Look me up,” the man replied. He handed Virgo a card. “I’ll make sure you get the red carpet treatment.”

  The rest of the men and women wandered away in search of other prospective car buyers. Virgo pulled out his phone. I glanced at the sky, wondering how quickly the helicopter could be called back, then a sound caught my attention.

  “Excuse me?”

  I looked to the right to see a young saleswoman in a nicely pressed pantsuit. Her brown hair was pulled back in two braids and she held a towel in one hand.

  “Sorry,” I told her. “We’re really not here to buy a car.”

  “I heard,” she replied with a wry smile. She looked around as if to ensure that nobody overheard, then said, “But you mentioned Wolfsbane.”

  I watched her closely. “Yes, do you know him?”

  Her gaze flickered from Virgo and back to me. “Maybe,” she hedged.

  “Really?” Virgo asked. He hurried over. “Where can we find him? We’re in a hurry and it’s really important!”

  “What’s important?” she asked. Her gaze followed the helicopter as it circled in the air.

  “Something we need to talk to him about,” Virgo said, his words short with impatience. “And only him.”

  She held him with a glare. “First of all, if you need to talk to Wolfsbane, you’re going to have to stop calling him a him.”

  “Gregory Wolfsbane. It’s a man’s name,” Virgo told her. “I don’t know many girls named Gregory.”

  A knot tightened in my chest at the look she gave him.

  “It’s a penname.”

  He met her glare with one of his own. “How do you know?”

  She and I both waited for the obvious to sink in. His eyes finally widened and he stared.

  “You’re Gregory Wolfsbane?”

  Chapter Five

  Virgo called off the helicopter. His short, choppy motions as he spoke to Swift would have made me laugh if I wasn’t under the close speculation of the girl who had proclaimed herself to be the author we were looking for.

  “He’s a bit dramatic, isn’t he?” she asked.

  I couldn’t help smiling. “You have no idea.”

  “Are you?” she pressed. She looked me up and down like the other salespeople had done, sizing me up.

  “No,” I replied shortly.

  She nodded as if she had suspected as much.

  When Virgo returned, he began with, “How do we cure a dhampir that—”

  The girl’s eyes widened and she cut him off. “Not here! I work here!”

  Her eyes met the curious look of a man who was busy wiping down a truck a few rows away. She shook her head and muttered a curse word under her breath that was sharp enough to make me smother a grin.

  “Seriously,” she said as she marched us away from the car dealership. “You can’t just start a conversation about half-breed vampires around my coworkers. They’re going to think I’m crazy!”

  A suspicion was beginning to nag at the back of my mind, but Virgo nodded in complete agreement.

  “They don’t need to know. I’ve spent my entire life up to a few months ago keeping my own secrets, so I completely understand.” He looked around. “Where are we going?”

  “Lunch,” she said. She gestured toward a small diner on the opposite corner of the road. “You’re buying.”

  Virgo shot me a baffled look. “I am?”

  She nodded. “You barge into my place of work after causing chaos with your helicopter and then you demand to see Wolfsbane. I think I deserve a little consideration with all the questions I’m going to have to answer when I get back.”

  I gave Virgo a single nod.

  He sighed and said, “Fine. But if you order lobster or something, just know we’ll be doing dishes for a week.”

  That brought a laugh from her. “Don’t worry. I think the most expensive thing on the menu is the French dip, and I don’t like soggy sandwiches.”

  We slid into a booth at the far end of the restaurant away from anyone who could overhear us that wasn’t a werewolf; one quick sniff told me that no werewolf had ever walked into the establishment until now.

  “Coffee,” Virgo and the girl both told the waitress.

  I ordered water. The last thing I needed with my control stretched so thin was coffee. I could only imagine the chaos a caffeine-infused wolf would cause if I let myself slip.

  As soon as the waitress left, Virgo launched back into his question. “Wolfsbane, what we need to know is how to cure a dhampir from a demon bite, or many demon bites.”

  The girl lifted a hand. “First of all, my name is Georgia Weeks, not Wolfsbane. Second, how am I supposed to know? Is this for a book you’re writing or something?”

  Virgo stared at her. “You should know! You wrote The Warlock Conundrum and a bunch of others I’ve read. And to be fair, though your view is skewed on the arrogance of a few warlocks, you’re spot on with most of it.” He held up a hand to stop her protest. “I know they’re fiction, but you’re right about so many things that your knowledge has to have come from somewhere. You’re not good at hiding it.”

  It was her turn to stare. “I’m right about so many things? What are you saying? That you believe in warlocks and werewolves and all that?”

  “Of course!” the warlock sputtered. “That’s why we’re here!”

  Georgia sighed. “I know what this is.”

  “You do?” Virgo asked.

  The knot in my chest was beginning to tighten.

  “Yes.” Georgia look at me and then back at Virgo. “You’re superfans. You’re obsessed. I’ve heard of this before. I just never thought it would happen to me.”

  Virgo’s eyes grew so wide I thought they would pop out of his head. “Superfans?” he practically yelled.

  The waitress who was nearly to us with the coffee and cups on her tray almost dropped it. The glass dishes rattled together loudly.

  “Are you trying to give me a heart attack?” she demanded.

  “Sorry,” Virgo muttered.

  He lowered his gaze to the table as she set the cups on it and filled them. His fingers drummed on the tabletop. She had to slide my cup of water past them, but he didn’t notice the disapproving look she gave him.

  “Thank you,” I said quietly.

  She nodded and turned away with a huff. The staccato beat of her shoes on the linoleum floor faded quickly away.

  “Superfans?” Virgo hissed as soon as she was out of earshot. “That’s what you think this is?”

  Georgia nodded. “It’s the only explanation. You’re readers who have become too invested in the story. You think the characters are real. You think….” She glanced at me as if saying the words aloud would be too preposterous, but she continued in a lowered voice, “You think werewolves, warlocks, and vampires are real because I’ve written them as real in my books.”

  I raised the cup of water to my suddenly dry mouth, but found I couldn’t swallow.

  “Of course they’re real,” Virgo said. “Why else would we be here?”

  Georgia met his frantic gaze. “That’s what I’m waiting to find out, and I don’t believe it’s for some cure. I haven’t even written about a cure for dhampirs in my books. To be honest, I haven’t written for years. The fact that you even have a copy of one of them is incredible. I’m pretty sure the rest are at discount stores somewhere being sold in the dollar bins.”

  Virgo let out a breath, his enthusiasm deflated. “That’s where I found it.”

  Georgia sat back in her seat with a touch of sadness on her face. “And that’s where it belongs, because they’re fiction. They’re not real. Too many people laughed at me for writing them and they didn’t sell, so I quit.”

  “You shouldn’t quit if you love it.”

  I don’t know why I said it, but there was heartbreak in her eyes belied by the self-deprecating smile she gave. When she let go of writing, she had given up more than she wanted to admit.

  “Really?” Georgia
said, turning her attack on me. “You say nothing while your friend here rambles on about a paranormal world that doesn’t exist and then you spout words of encouragement for something you don’t even know about?” She blinked as if surprised by her own vehemence. “Why are you here, personally? You seem a little too levelheaded to be swept up in his nonsense.”

  I met her gaze and held it while I said, “My friend is the one who was bitten by the demons.”

  Something sparked in the girl’s eyes. For a moment, I thought she would deride me the way she had Virgo, then her eyebrows pulled together and she said in a voice that was just above a whisper, “You really believe in this stuff, don’t you.”

  I nodded. There was nothing to say. It wasn’t my job to convince her. Disappointment filled me with such sharpness that I didn’t know what to do. The dream from Borig and Aspen had been simply that, a dream. Now Fray was who knows where dying from bites that had no cure. I had never felt such hopelessness before, and I had been in some pretty dire situations. I didn’t know what to do next.

  “Show her,” Virgo said. “Turn into a werewolf.”

  Her head jerked back slightly as if his comment caught her off guard.

  I shook my head. “I can’t.”

  It didn’t matter. She could believe that water didn’t exist for all I cared. Even if my leg wasn’t messed up, proving to her that the world she had written about was actually real wouldn’t change Fray’s fate.

  The waitress returned with several plates loaded with sandwiches and chips. I ate mine in a wash of numbness. I couldn’t even find joy in the flavors that mingled on my tongue. My time in the Lair had made eating normal foods a real treat, but the crunch of the potato chips and the grains on the crust of the bread were lost to me, just as Fray was.

  I set the half-eaten sandwich back down and stared out the window.

  “Is your friend going to be okay?” Georgia asked Virgo quietly.

  “I don’t think so,” the warlock replied.

  “Is there anything I can do to help?” she asked.

  “Not anymore,” he said.

  I tried to shut them out. It was frustrating being a werewolf. The conversations around the diner all hummed in my ears. The smells from the kitchen, the cleaners that had been used to wash the floors, and even the scent of the detergent that had cleaned my water cup flooded my nose with the demand to be noticed, categorized, and stored for later recognition.

  The whisper of the air conditioner through the vent above our heads and the clatter of plates being run through the washer in the kitchen cried to me. My leg ached with the muted need of my body to phase after the last full moon. My head hurt with the want to figure out how to find Fray. I felt as though the very ends of the thread of hope I held onto were slipping through my fingers.

  A scent caught my nose and my head lifted. I tested the air again. Malicious intent, anger, and frustration struck me in a wave. I kept my eyes down and focused on the sounds around me.

  A shoe scuffed on the floor. A fork scraped the last vestiges of food off a plate. The murmured talking of unaware patrons was loud enough to cover up the low voice, but not to my ears.

  “Put everything in the bag, and quietly. I don’t want to have to use this.”

  Adrenaline spiked through my veins. I turned just enough to see the man in front of the cash register. He held something beneath a jacket. It was easy enough to guess by the outline that it was a gun. The woman’s fingers shook as she withdrew money from the register and put it in the paper bag. Nobody else appeared to notice what was happening. I had to give the man credit for his smooth approach, but he had chosen the wrong diner.

  “Yes, like that,” Virgo was saying. “He does it like that, only much, much faster. Zev, you should show her.”

  I glanced down to see the warlock in the middle of giving Georgia a lesson on how to twirl the butter knife between her fingers. I plucked the object clear, spun it once, and threw it.

  “Like that! Except—Zev, what are you doing?” Virgo asked.

  My eyes followed the blade even though I knew the throw was accurate. It nailed the robber on the side of the head hard enough that the impact sounded like a door slamming shut. He staggered a few steps to the right and the jacket slipped free from his gun. Someone screamed. He raised the weapon dazedly, but I was already there.

  My cane became my weapon. Leaning my weight on my good leg, I slipped the cane beneath his raised arm and slid it up. It struck the butt of the gun and sent the pistol flying above us. I brought the cane down across the back of the man’s head with a loud crack, then continued the sweep down and knocked his legs out from under him. He slammed to the floor with an unconscious thud. I caught the gun before it could hit the ground, flipped it so that I held it by the barrel, and set it on the counter. The entire attack had taken merely seconds.

  Shocked silence filled the diner. Someone’s napkin drifted to the floor with a soft shush. I checked my periphery to ensure that no more robbers had been hiding among the patrons, but with the man unconscious, the scents in the air returned to normal.

  “Penny, are you alright?” the cook called from the back window.

  The woman behind the register burst into tears. Two waitresses hurried over. A man knelt and checked the pulse of the one on the floor.

  “Better call the sheriff,” he said to someone from his table. He pointed at me. “And get this hero some pie.”

  Talking erupted. Several of the men patted me on the back while the ladies consoled Penny and told her how brave she was. The man on the ground was hogtied as prettily as any calf in roping videos I had seen. The man who did it had a pleased grin on his face at the practical use of such a skill.

  I limped back to the table and slid onto the booth. It was hard to ignore the looks on Georgia and Virgo’s faces.

  “Did you hear something?” Virgo asked. “That’s what clued you in, wasn’t it? I didn’t notice anything at all, so it must have been something you heard.” He tipped his head toward me and gave Georgia a knowing look. “See, he’s a werewolf.”

  She didn’t take her eyes off me. “That doesn’t prove he’s a werewolf, but if you told me he was a ninja, I’d believe it. That was incredible!”

  Virgo laughed. “Werewolves are tons better than ninjas because they can phase into—”

  “Virgo,” I said in a warning tone.

  He closed his mouth as I listened to the footsteps come up behind me. Tingles ran up my neck in anticipation of an attack. It was only through the scents of calm and happiness that I was able to look over my shoulder with a forced smile instead of a growl.

  “Chocolate cream pie, the best we have to offer,” the cook said as he delivered the pie to me himself.

  “You really don’t have to,” I told him.

  He speared me with a look. “Now, son, when someone does something as brave as you did back there, you deserve a reward as special as Penny’s homemade pie.” He glanced over his shoulder, then leaned down to say, “Penny would bring it to you herself, but she’s a bit out of sorts. We don’t get trouble like that often, and she’s had some heart problems going on. I told her to take it easy until the ambulance crew arrives to check her over.”

  “That’s a good idea,” I replied. “And thank you.”

  He stood up to full height and gave me his most serious expression. “No, thank you. You’ll be eating free at this establishment any time you’re hungry, I promise you that.”

  “That won’t be necessary,” I began.

  He shook his head to refuse my denial and walked away.

  “Like a true hero,” I heard him say under his breath. “Doesn’t want any thanks or even pie. But wait until he tries the pie, then he’ll change his mind.”

  I pushed the aforementioned object toward Virgo and Georgia.

  Virgo gave me a searching look. “Are you sure you didn’t get shot? I’ve never known you to turn down food.”

  I rolled my eyes. “I’m fine. I just don�
��t like chocolate.”

  Virgo was in the middle of eating a forkful of the pie when he choked on it. Georgia had to pound him on the back to get him to stop coughing. Several of the patrons were looking our way by the time he was done.

  “See!” he said, spitting out pieces of chocolate and whipped cream. “He is a werewolf! The facts are right there!”

  “Quiet,” I warned the warlock.

  At my glance, the patrons turned back to their meals.

  Georgia grimaced and used a napkin to wipe up a piece of crust from the table. “Because he doesn’t like chocolate? Lots of people don’t like chocolate.”

  Virgo leaned closer to me. “Is it that you don’t like it, or are you allergic like a dog?”

  I sat back in the booth and willed the adrenaline to leave my body. “Dogs aren’t allergic to chocolate; they simply don’t possess the necessary enzymes to break down the ingredients the way a human’s body does.”

  His eyebrows rose. “I’ll bet if we check you out, you won’t have the ability to break it down, either. What are your symptoms?”

  “Chocolate gives me a stomachache,” I replied while wondering why I was even humoring him.

  He pulled out his phone.

  I sighed. “What are you going to do? See if dogs get stomachaches, too? I don’t think they complain of stomach pain to their humans.”

  Georgia watched the conversation between the two of us as if she was highly entertained. I kept an ear on the commotion behind us, alert for when the sheriff would show up. If there was a chance to slip out, I would take it; but the number of people clustered near the potential robber and hence the door made it impossible.

  “Increased blood pressure, vomiting, dehydration, death, and,” he shoved the phone in my face, “Abdominal pains! It says so right here!” He crossed his arms with a smug expression. “See, a werewolf.” He slid the pie closer to him and Georgia. “We’re eating this to save your life.” He took another bite, then said, “You’re welcome.”

  Georgia laughed. It was a light, happy sound. A red blush stole across Virgo’s cheeks and he grinned before taking another bite.