by Alice Bello
Oz shot to Lucy’s side, and with more strength than he looked to have in his lean, tan body, he wrenched her up from the floor and back to her feet.
Lucy’s head spun, and she leaned hard on Oz for a moment, but then her balance adjusted and she stood once again on her own. By then, though, a crowd had formed. No one had done anything when the deranged Axe Boy had been trying to chop her down like a cherry tree, but now that the lunatic was down for the count, they wanted to gape at him... and his amazingly still living victim. A balding man in his forties jogged up from the registers but stopped short when he saw that the deranged attempted axe murderer was bleeding. His flushed face turned pale and paler, until it looked like two percent milk.
He looked away and pulled a walkie-talkie from the waistband of his khakis.
“Maintenance! Rick here... we’ve gotta a biohazard floor spill by the GM doors.”
“Got that,” a small, sweet female voice answered.
He turned back to the scene, keeping his eyes deliberately averted from bleeding Axe Boy.
“The police are on their way. They said that if he wakes up before they get here, that we’re not to try to hold him. He’s too dangerous sounding for us civilians.” He pulled a sleek black stun gun from his back pocket, and clicked it once to show off its blue and white current. “But I don’t think he’s going to be getting up anytime soon.”
Lucy had to smile. He may turn pasty at the sight of blood, but he wasn’t about to let a bad guy get away, determination in his scowl.
“Are you alright?” Abbey whispered in Lucy’s ear. She turned and her friend’s eyes were bloodshot, and she was trembling.
Lucy pushed down the urge to tear into her about casting black magic. After all, her self-appointed best friend had just saved her life, quite literally. She reached out and squeezed Abbey’s arm. “Right as rain, Sabrina.”
Abbey smiled, and then pounced on Lucy, hugging her hard as a maniacal giggle floated up out of her throat like champagne bubbles. They almost toppled over backwards, because Lucy wasn’t a hundred percent on her feet yet. When Abbey did let go, she was practically vibrating with happiness. And maybe a little shock.
From the way her arms matched the powdered whiteness of her face, Lucy was betting on shock.
Just then cart wrangler Oz appeared behind Abbey and draped a black hoodie over her shoulders. “Maybe you two should sit down over there on that bench until the cops show up.”
Abbey’s eyes brightened and widened to a comical size as he looked down at her. There was one of those moments again, where if this was some stupid romantic comedy, canned soundtrack music would swell... right before the hero and heroine kissed.
Thank god it wasn’t a movie.
Rick, the balding manager interrupted. “He’s right. You two should go sit over there on that bench.” He pointed his stun gun in the direction of a gray metal bench, and then he turned and started talking to the tiny red-haired woman who rolled up pushing a cart of cleaning supplies and accessories that was bigger than she was. She listened intently, but walked slowly around the manager and looked at the rather wicked sight of the bleeding Axe Boy pinned under a cracked and broken flat-screen TV. She had freckles, and her red hair was worn in a pixie cut that flared out about an inch below her ears. Her nametag read Jenifer, with just one N, and she looked on with a definite air of satisfaction.
“That shitweasel made one hell of a mess out in lawn and garden.” She shook her head and smiled wider. “Tested that axe out on a bag of bird seed and a dogwood sapling. Glad he got knocked the F out!”
“Jenifer Rose!” the manager admonished with an indulgent smile. “No matter what, he’s a customer. We can’t condone physical harm to a customer.”
Just then Axe Boy moved, and blinked his eyes. The manager’s eyes popped wide open and his jaw dropped.
Jenifer with one N snatched the stun gun from manager Rick’s hand, bent over the still blinking Axe Boy, and unceremoniously unloaded a long, painful clicking jolt of electricity into the man. He twitched spasmodically and smacked his head against the blood spattered tile floor, and then went limp again when Jenifer let off the juice.
“That should keep him from hurting himself.” She handed the stun gun back to manager Rick and gave him a wink. “I’ll just stick close until the police show.” She clucked her tongue and bobbed her head of unruly red curls at the sliding glass doors. “And speak of the little devils.”
Two hulking police officers, both over six foot tall and built like freaking pro wrestlers, burst through the sliding glass doors, night sticks in hand, their free hands on their holstered firearms. They could’ve been twins, except one was blond and the other had bristly black hair, and a cheesy mustache.
“Relax boys,” Jenifer said. “We just fed him a few volts, so he’ll be out for a little longer. Probably could use an ambulance... and your handcuffs. I’d recommend hands and feet with this one.”
Oz spoke up, “Yeah, he tried to turn that girl over there with Abbey into stir fry!”
Mustache cop’s upper lip curled. “Huh?”
Jenifer gave the axe at her feet a little kick and shot the two cops with a sarcastic look. “He said this mad man tried to chop that girl sitting on the bench into chunks.”
Lucy felt her stomach contract at the imagery. She swallowed the gyros that threatened to come back up.
The two cops stood there for a moment, and then went to work, essentially hog tying Axe Boy, employing their handcuffs and a length of extension cord they commandeered from a nearby sales rack.
Soon more police arrived on the scene, and an ambulance. A still unconscious Axe Boy was thoroughly examined for a total of three seconds before the paramedics pronounced him good to go, and half the police officers picked him up and hauled him out the front doors.
Abbey held Lucy’s hand, but she kept stealing glances at Oz. Lucy had to smile. Maybe there would be a bright side to almost getting hacked to pieces by an axe wielding psychopath?
She looked over to where Jenifer was cordoning off the area where the axe and the pool of blood remained, and felt a shiver go through her body. Nope, no silver lining here.
Chapter 5
Before the police even started taking witness statements, the cavalry showed up. Gabriel, Micah and Dante Enoch swept through the doors of the Wal-Mart, and with only a cursory glance at the blood on the floor, or the legion of police officers that had begun to swarm like locusts, they all headed straight for Lucy.
She was so glad to see them. Her heart fluttered in her chest as she took in the worried expression on Gabriel’s handsome face. She stood and raced into his arms. The instant he pulled her to him she felt safe and warm... a feeling that almost pushed her to tears. But she blinked the tears away, pushing them back to where they came from.
Gabriel was dressed in an impeccably tailored blue Burberry suit, but his tie and collar were mussed where he must have pulled them loose. He smelled unbelievably good, and all Lucy wanted to do was snuggle up in his arms and rest her head against his strong, warm chest.
Maybe there was a silver lining to almost being murdered?
But then fractured images of psycho axe boy doing a Paul Bunyan impersonation made her knees go weak with fright.
No, still no silver lining...
“You alright?” Gabriel murmured. His voice was rough, like a growl... which it probably was.
“Shaky, but I’ll be alright.”
“Are you okay?” asked a cultured voice from the right. Dante Enoch, Gabriel’s uncle and the head of Enoch Industries’ legal department, stood beside them. He, unlike Gabriel, looked perfectly and elegantly neat—which someday soon she would need to ask him how he pulled off. But his eyes betrayed worry. It was a heartwarming thing to see in the old boy’s usually unflappable persona.
“I’m fine... really.” Lucy said sternly, glaring at both her werewolf protectors. Though she had a headache, and her butt was sore as all get out from falling on it..
. and her ankle smarted a bit—the bubble gum wrapper might’ve saved her life, but it twisted her ankle too.
A shadow fell over Lucy as Gabriel’s enormous mountain of a brother loomed over her. He turned his head and arched his neck as he inhaled deeply through his nose. And then he shook his head. “The blood over there isn’t Lucy’s. So don’t go ballistic.”
Lucy groaned inwardly. “Has anyone ever told you that the werewolf sense of smell is kinda creepy?”
Micah shot Gabriel a quick, knowing glance. “A time or two.”
Micah was the best tracker in his father’s pack, and for a bunch of werewolves, all tweaked-out with super human strength and preternaturally strong senses, that was saying something.
“What happened?” Gabriel asked.
“Have you ever seen your attacker before?” added Dante.
Micah pointed to the crime scene demanding, “How the hell did you hit him with a jumbo flat screen like that?”
“Whoa, boys... one at a time... ” Just listening to their questions made her head spin.
Just then a grizzled police detective in an extravagantly rumpled suit that had been tacky as hell back in the decade it had originally been pressed out of polyester, rambled up to them and asked, “Miss Hart? May I have a word alone with you?”
Dante Enoch’s eyes flashed from worried to the predatory focus of a great white shark. Lucy could have sworn he’d snarled under his breath as well, but the instant he turned the implacable lead council of Enoch Industries smiled ruthlessly, and the wrinkled detective took a short step back before regaining his composure.
“I am Dante Enoch, Miss Hart’s legal counsel. And you are?”
“Ah... Rooney, sir. Detective Frank Rooney.” Lucy got the impression that the veteran police officer didn’t call many people “sir.” But there was just an air of utter authority about Dante; she didn’t blame anyone for affording him such a wide berth of civility.
“It’s very good to make your acquaintance, Detective Rooney.”
Dante elegantly steered the detective away from them, and toward the crime scene. She heard him say something about extenuating circumstances, and that they wanted to get her to a hospital, to check her for injury and shock... yada, yada, yada...
“Lucy... I was so worried about you.” Gabriel crushed her to him, and she felt a welling of absolute bliss at his attentions. She’d missed him terribly in the last few months. She could only hope that once they were married and living together—hopefully somewhere separate from both her family and his—that they would make up for that lost time together.
Boy, am I a pathetic love lemming, or what?
“Excuse me,” a sweet voice interrupted, and Lucy wanted to seriously hurt whoever was horning in on her snuggle time. But when she looked at the voice’s owner, Jenifer with one N smiled back at her.
She just couldn’t be mad with a woman who had acted so quickly and decisively in her defense.
“Hi,” Lucy said, smiling as she reached out and took the red-heads warm, soft hand.
“Hi,” Jenifer responded, smiling. Her freckles made her green eyes sparkle. “Did I hear your name’s Lucy Hart?”
Lucy felt a twinge of discomfort. Either Jenifer with one N knew her somehow from her days of being a McDonald’s burger flipper, from her previous life as a spoiled, entitled B-I-T-C-H, or she knew about Lucy’s father’s rather nasty run in with the federal government—for which he was serving twenty years up state.
Lucy receded even further just thinking of her father. He still hadn’t spoken to her, even when her mother had told him she was getting married. Not a word for nearly a year. It hurt more than anything else had ever hurt.
Gabriel’s arms tightened about her. He must have felt her tension.
Lucy shrugged it all off, and plastered the smile back on her face. “That’s me.”
Jenifer’s smile doubled in brightness, and she laughed a most infectious laugh.
“I’m Jenifer Rose Chesser,” she said as if that answered the sixty-four thousand dollar question.
Lucy blinked at her and tried to keep the polite smile on her face.
“My mom’s Shirley... Shirley Chesser.”
Shirley... Shirley Chesser...
Recognition snapped in Lucy’s mind and she suddenly saw the striking resemblance between her bus driving confidant and the tiny red-head standing before her.
“Oh my god!” Lucy gushed, pulling out of Gabriel’s tight embrace and taking Jenifer with one N’s hand again. “I love your mother.”
Pink bloomed under the bitty red-head’s freckles. “She adores you, too. Always talking about you. Was worried about you a couple months ago... ” Her expression faltered. “I’m not going to tell her about you getting attacked and all. She has high blood pressure."
Lucy gulped. That she hadn’t known. “That’s a good idea.”
Jenifer looked over to where her maintenance cart was parked, and the blood and axe still there. Lucy could see the worry in her eyes before her eyebrows knitted together in a small, perplexed scowl.
“Don’t worry,” Lucy told her. “I won’t take the bus until we figure out what just happened, okay?”
Jenifer’s expression softened, the look relieved. “Thank you. I’d feel better about that.”
“But if it goes on too long, you know your mother is going to come banging on my door.”
“I’ll tell her I saw you and you said you were taking... a little trip to wine country with you super hot fiancé here.” She wriggled her eyebrows.
Lucy laughed. She could see more and more of Shirley in her daughter. “You do that.”
Jenifer peered over her shoulder to find a gaggle of teenagers clustered around the fallen axe and the puddle of blood.
“Get out of there, now!” And with that she beat feet in their direction, making them scatter like pigeons.
~*~
She’d told what had happened about a hundred times to the police detective heading the investigation. They’d been at the police station for hours. Gabriel and Dante hadn’t left her side for a minute, and the police, though they asked many questions, were very, very polite.
They did say that the homicidal axe boy had no record, not even an identity they could dredge up. That didn’t sound all that good. And from the look on Dante’s usually emotionless, dapper face, she saw that that alone was a reason to worry.
Finally, after Dante politely put his foot down to more questions, they were allowed to leave. The moment she was out in the dark, cool air of night, she felt better. Just breathing it in, letting the night into her, anchored her in a way that nothing else did.
Again, another reason to worry.
Dante and Gabriel had come in separate cars, so she rode with Gabriel. She didn’t know where they were going, but just then she didn’t care. As long as it wasn’t a Wal-Mart or a police station, she’d be thrilled to be there.
As soon as she was in the car, and Gabriel angled into the driver’s seat, he said, “So what didn’t you tell the police?”
She blinked at him incredulously as the car idled, but his even gaze at her as they sat there told her he knew better.
Damn him and his observant behavior.
“Well, there was the part where I was moving way faster than I should be able to... again.”
Gabriel looked away as he put the car into drive and started to put distance between them and the police station. She could tell by the tension in his shoulders that he wasn’t happy about that at all. They’d already figured it was a vampire related strength—probably from when she’d drunk Vin Tokar’s Blood.
She still shivered inside just thinking about having done that... but it had tasted so sweet, and it had saved her life.
She rolled her eyes and plunged on. “And I didn’t tell them that it was Abbey who saved me.”
He looked at me bewildered for a beat, and then back to the traffic ahead. “Abbey? How?”
“I’m not a hundred percent su
re, but it seems my witchy best friend and neighbor has gotten her black belt in magical Kung Fu.”
She could tell by the way his eye brows crinkled that she had to explain more clearly. A good education and a career in business didn’t allow for her sweetie’s vocabulary to stray much.
“She used magic to drop a TV monitor on him, just before he tried to chop me in half.”
“Oh,” he said in relief, and then he turned and gave Lucy a startled look. “Oh... ”
“Yeah. And though I’m concerned she suddenly has all this power... I guess I have no place to complain.”
Gabriel looked straight ahead, and then took a deep breath. “What else can your little witch friend do?”
I shook my head. That was a very good question.
~*~
Abbey Adams patted the ground down, and replaced the small circle of grass she’d carved out of her grandmother’s lawn. Her knees were sore; even through the pair of blue jeans she’d changed into: spending nearly an hour kneeling in the dirt took its toll.
She pulled herself to her feet once again, and marked off twenty steps. It was the exact spot where her grandmother’s property and Lucy’s grandmother’s property met. With a groan she hit her knees and pulled the last crocodile tooth from the canvas sack they’d come in.
She’d wanted the bones of a Komodo dragon, something dead that had its lineage and DNA linked to a primordial past. But the best she could find between the three magic shops she’d journeyed to were the crocodile teeth. They weren’t as exotic as she’d wanted, but for the spell she’d planned on doing their pedigree would do. Plus they had been fresh. The beast had died no more than a month prior. She’d be hard pressed to find better, especially on such short notice.
Abbey had decided to install the ward as she watched the police haul the axe-wielding psychopath away. She needed to know when or if anything hostile came near her friend—or her grandmother—again. She would be ready for them this time. She didn’t have many friends... none at all in Four Corners, except for Lucy. And she’d be damned if anything was going to happen to her.