“You may as well leave them open now. You’ve already been caught, you peeping tom,” he said, and she wished she could call him a smart ass.
“Since you can at least open your eyes, do you need anything?” he asked, and she was surprised he was being even a small bit nice to her.
She opened her eyes and gave him a pleading look.
“Okay, we’re gonna have to play charades to try and guess what it is since you can’t tell me. So blink once for yes and two for no, cool?” he asked, and she blinked once in response.
“I’m assuming you’re thirsty and hungry,” he guessed correctly. “Can you try swallowing now, so we know if you can get anything down? If not, it would be a waste of time to even try. Blink once if you can and twice if you can’t.”
With all her might, Blair begged her muscles to work, but they refused. With angry tears springing up in her eyes, she blinked twice.
“I’m sorry. I know that’s miserable,” he said in a surprisingly soothing voice. “Trust me, I’ve been days without food and water before. I know how miserable it can be. I’ll run to the store and get an eye dropper. We can at least try drops of water, something small enough that it’ll slide into your belly without choking you. Anything else you need before I go?”
She blinked once, and saw a puzzled look on his face before he began to guess.
“Do you… want me to take your shoes off?” he asked.
One blink.
With sweet relief, she felt her shoes pop off. She wished she could moan out over how good it felt.
“Anything else?” he asked.
One blink.
“Ummm… if you have to go to the bathroom, things are gonna get real awkward, real fast…” She quickly blinked twice in response.
She hadn’t eaten or drank anything, so she had nothing that needed to come out. Even if she did, she would rather hold it until she damn near died before she asked him to toilet her.
“Okay, so if not the bathroom, what else could it be?” He rubbed his hands across his eyes and looked around the room. “You want to be covered up?”
Finally. One blink.
He let out a sigh of relief and pulled the blankets from under her, wrapping her inside them.
“I’ll put the T.V. on for you.” He clicked it on and surfed a few channels. “How about the news?”
Two blinks. Anything but that.
“Okay, umm…. RuPaul’s Drag Race?” he asked, clicking onto the next channel.
One blink. Yes, Queen.
“All right, enjoy. I’ll eat before I get back so my food won’t tease you,” he called and walked out with a robe and sandals on. If she could have laughed, she probably would have died laughing.
He must have realized the direction of her thoughts by looking at her eyes. “Well, I don’t have anything else clean.” He chuckled a little, too, and wrapped the robe tighter around himself. “They’ll let me into the corner store even though I look crazy.”
With that, he was gone, and she felt the corners of her lips straining to smile.
~
Scarfing down two burgers at a picnic table outside of a fast food joint, in his robe, got Terrance more than a few crazy looks, but fuck it, he was used to that by now. He was more focused on finding Hexxa and hoping that Blair healed quickly.
Even if her body stayed broken for a while more, once she had her voice back, she would at least be able to give him information he was going to need, to use her magic if she needed to, and at least eat and drink. It had been more than a few days with no sustenance for her, and if he didn’t get some protein and electrolytes in her, she would end up in the hospital, and everything would be lost.
Did witches go to hospitals? He really didn’t know, and with the way things were going, it’s not as if she could explain to him what it was she did need. She would probably need her sisters or their coven magic, but he had less of a chance of finding them than he did of finding and killing Hexxa. All he could do was hope that the Priestess kept her word and reached out to Blair’s family.
If Hexxa had reached her followers, then he would need all the help he could get. He had a magic knife given to him by a vampire that would kill witches, but other than that, all he had was his borrowed werewolf abilities.
“If I die, I die.” He shrugged, crumpling the paper sandwich wrapper and tossing it into the wastepaper basket. He kept reaffirming his stance on the situation because he knew that it was such a very real possibility.
With a small shopping bag filled with water, Gatorade, and soup, he flip-flopped his way back to their hotel room.
On his way up on the elevator, he thought about her dark eyes on his skin. He should have hated it, but he didn’t. He knew she was a witch and that he should want to kill her, but instead, he had wanted to brush the hair away from her face. He had wanted to lay his heavy body down on top of hers.
That’s disgusting. He shook his head hard. The girl can’t even move.
His mission was not one for romance; it was one for revenge he reminded himself more than once as the doors dinged open, and he headed towards their hotel room.
For some reason, the hairs on the back of his neck began to stand up. Not in fear, in… anger? He felt like a dog whose hackles were rising. This is something new – and probably part of being a werewolf, he thought. The closer he got to their door, the more anger and danger he felt; until he heard a voice speak.
“He’s clearly abandoned the girl. Just take her, and let’s go,” a deep voice said.
“The orders were to kill him and take the girl. I’m not one to half ass complete a mission,” another man answered him sharply.
“We’ve waited here for an hour. If he was coming back, he would have been back. He’s either given up and gone home with his tail tucked between his legs or decided the girl is dead weight and ditched her. Either way, us staying here waiting on him is just wasting time,” the man argued.
As quietly as he could, Terrance made his way to their door and peered inside. He needed to be ready for the fight, which meant he would need to know how many people were inside and what exactly those people were.
From their back side, they appeared to be two human men dressed casually in jeans and t-shirts. They could have simply been hotel guests for anyone walking past.
Taking a deep breath, he tried to catch their scent. His borrowed werewolf abilities were confusing to him, and he knew he didn’t have the best handle on them; but from what he inhaled, they didn’t appear to be humans, witches, or vampires. They had a dark, sulfur-like smell… something he had not experienced before.
The dagger he had wasn’t going to help him with this, but he wasn’t going to stand out in the hallway all night. So, he did what he felt was the most logical move.
Kicking the hotel door open as hard as he could, he surprised the two men and immediately move in to attack. Fists flying, he connected with them, but they wouldn’t go down. Terrance hit them as hard as he could, but the assault felt useless.
After one last punch, laughter met his ears. The assholes were laughing at him.
“What are you?” the taller, deeper voiced one asked after a final laugh. “You smell like a wolf but hit like a human.”
“If the High Priestess sent him to protect her, she’s dumber than we thought.” The smaller one laughed again.
Hit like a human… the words echoed in his head. The Priestess had told him how to use his werewolf scent, and walking into this mess, he had figured out what a werewolf feeling danger was. But was there a way for him to transform?
There had to be. Would he need a full moon or a spell? He knew he wasn’t a true werewolf, and the priestess hadn’t had time to explain everything to him. How could he call upon the wolf?
Hard blows began to rain down on him. Whatever these fuckers were, they were stronger than anything he had ever gone against in his life.
With one hit, he felt his ribs immediately snap. Blood exploded out of his mouth, and he roared in anger.
That’s when he felt it. All of those muscles he had first felt after taking the wolf elixir began to twitch. Was that the secret? Getting angry?
If that was it, then these goons were in for a wild night because angry was Terrance’s specialty.
He let out a roar and released the anger and hatred he had for himself and others, letting the feelings flow through him. Hot, boiling rage began to fill his veins, and his body began to change.
Their blows no longer hurt the way they did before; his body began bulking, changing, absorbing the blows and protecting itself from them.
His muscles changed and stretched, flexing like they had been dying to do this all along.
A power like he had never felt before filled him, and a roar that sounded like it came from a stranger’s throat escaped him.
Grabbing the men faster than he had ever moved before in his life, he smashed them together so hard he felt their bones crack.
“Holy shit.” He looked down at his fists nearly bursting with power, and a wicked smile plastered across his face.
Now this… this was something he could get used to.
He attacked them wildly and fiercely like an animal. All of his combat training seemed to go out the window. He didn’t need that now. He couldn’t control his body well enough to move with any form of strategy. All he could do was hang on for dear life as the wolf took over – clawing, snarling, slashing.
His teeth had grown into points and elongated canines, perfect for ripping their flesh. Blood poured into his mouth, and the taste was no longer metallic like when he had experienced it as a human. Instead, it tasted sweet, and he knew he could swallow blood and raw flesh now without being sick.
He could literally rip these men to shreds and eat their corpses, and it wouldn’t bother the wolf in the slightest. The thought should have terrified him, but it didn’t. It made him feel stronger, more like an equal to those who were going to threaten him from now on. He could meet them on an even playing field. He didn’t have to strategize and find a clever way to trap them. He could go right for the throat, and that is precisely what he did.
Through blood filled, curdled screaming, he ripped out the throats of both men.
Before the lights went out in their eyes, he saw wisps of black smoke escape both of their mouths and fly out the door and down the hallway.
“What the fuck are you?” he whispered, now realizing these were human bodies that had been possessed by something. Would demons do the bidding of witches?
Taking a deep breath, he began trying to calm the wolf down and felt his body slowly change back into what it had been before.
He grabbed both men and dragged them by their collars into the bathroom, dumping them into the bathtub.
Terrance had checked into this room using his own credit card and ID. He would be a wanted criminal now, but he didn’t have another choice. He didn’t have time to clean up this mess, and even if he did, with forensics now, he would never get this all up.
Looking at himself in the mirror, he saw a monster. His eyes had changed from brown to dark gold; his skin was stretched taut over too- muscled skin. Nothing about him looked human anymore. It scared him a little bit, but he liked it. He smiled widely at himself and watched his canines press, long and dangerous, against his lip.
This was definitely something he could get used to.
Finally, with a few more calming breaths, his body changed back to normal, and he could face Blair. For some reason, he didn’t want her to see him in his wolf form.
“Did they hurt you?” he asked, checking her over, and she quickly blinked twice for no.
“Okay, good. We have to get you out of here now, the police will probably be here any second. There was a lot of screaming.” He scooped her into his arms and grabbed the grocery bag off the table he had thrown it on.
Two blinks.
“What do you mean no? You want to get arrested?” he asked, exasperated.
She replied with an annoyed look and two more blinks. He was not excited at all to see that her eyebrows were now working so she could give him sassy looks.
“Okay, what then?” he asked, giving her a look just as annoyed as she had given him.
Pointedly, Blair looked from him to the bathroom where the dead bodies were.
“You want me to take you to the men?” Now, he was thoroughly confused. “You know I killed them?”
An eye roll and one blink came as a response.
“Okay, so you’re not afraid of dead bodies. Got it.” He sighed and carried her over towards the bathroom. Did the witch want their livers or spleens or something?
He stood in the doorway like he was about to carry a bride over a threshold, and he heard the tiniest whisper escape her throat. He strained his ears, and even with the use of the wolf, he couldn’t understand what she was saying. But before his eyes, the bodies began to burn in a fire made of deep amethyst.
Even their bones burned until nothing but ash remained, and with a soft breeze, both men were scattered away.
She had destroyed all the evidence and saved him from being wanted by the police.
He turned his face down to give his thanks to her, but she was already slumped over on his chest, passed out in exhaustion. Placing her back on the bed, he hurriedly cleaned himself up, dressed, and got them out of there as fast as he could. Even with the mess cleared away, he didn’t want to explain to the cops why he had a perpetually passed out woman with him.
Snagging the blanket since she had complained about being cold before, he wrapped her up and got moving.
After a few more miles under his belt, he found a small bridge, large enough to only carry one car across at a time, and decided to take a break there. It was a good view for Blair as it was surrounded by pretty trees and woodlands and would hopefully give them enough coverage so if anyone else was following them, they wouldn’t be discovered. He really needed to get her awake and get some food in her before things got critical.
Swaddling her in the blanket, he held her close and, using the eye dropper, filled it with water and put it to her lips.
“Hey, I know you wanna sleep, but you’ve got to get up for a little while and just drink something.” He pressed the dropper to her lips, but she didn’t open her eyes or her mouth.
Worry crossed through Terrance’s mind, and he checked for her pulse. It was still there, but it was definitely faint.
“Come on, girl.” He shook her gently. “Just drink this water and swallow this soup, and I’ll leave you alone.”
Again, he got no reaction from her, and again, his heart clenched in worry.
“Hey! Open your eyes, and eat this food,” he yelled at her, shaking her hard.
Immediately, her eyes snapped open with annoyance, and an angry look crossed her features.
“Hate me all you want to, little witch, but you’re gonna eat this.” He shrugged off her anger, one hundred percent more willing to accept her hatred than her death.
She wasn’t strong enough to fully open her mouth, but he didn’t care. As long as she could swallow without choking, he was happy.
For what felt like hours, he sat, cradling her softly, and eye dropping first a water bottle, then the sports drink, then the cold broth of the soup.
“I’m sure it’s nasty, but you just gotta get through it,” he said in a voice more soothing than he thought he could muster. “In the military, we had an expression called, ‘embracing the suck,’ meaning we all know it sucks, but you gotta do it anyway. So, just get it over with. No use complaining.”
She still glared at him like he was the devil himself, but she swallowed each eye dropper full that he gave her.
“Feel any better?” he asked when she was finished.
Two snappy blinks met him.
“Hey, Miss Witch-of-Light, none of this is my fault. Literally, none of it. Furthermore, I just killed two demons for you when I could have saved myself the aggravation and just left you to die and gone after this witch
on my own. So, could you spare me all the irritated looks?” He glared at her just as angrily until she backed down, her eyes changing from pure fury to sadness in a matter of seconds.
“Oh, no, don’t do that.” He panicked at the sight of her first tear. “No, no, no. Go back to being pissed off. I’m a huge dick bag. You hate me. Go back to hate.”
It was too late. The tears were flowing.
He couldn’t stand to see those big, beautiful, brown eyes full of so much sorrow.
“I know. You’re just scared and exhausted. I know.” He rubbed her back and held her tighter to himself. “It’s okay to lose your shit. It’s okay.”
Comforting people was not something that Terrance ever wanted to do. Usually, if he saw someone crying, he would back out of a room slowly and pretend like he didn’t see them. But with the current situation they were in, he had to do something.
“If you cry so hard you give yourself snot bubbles, you’re on your own, though,” he said and heard a tiny snort of laughter. “Hah! You laughed; you feel better and therefore cannot cry anymore.”
Blair shot him a dirty look, rolled her eyes, but then her face smoothed out, and she seemed to genuinely feel much better.
“Just remember you owe me. One day when I’m having a terrible hair day, and none of my outfits look good on me, I’m going to lose my shit, and you’re going to have to let me cry on your shoulder.” He gave her a sideways glance, and they both fell into laughter together.
“See, I can make you laugh or piss you off. Those are your two choices with me. No more crying, though.” He booped her on the nose with his finger and knew that if she could have, she probably would have punched him for it.
For a long while, they sat in silence, just watching the woods around them and the daylight turning to night. Terrance realized he had been nice to her, nicer than he had been to anyone in a very long time, but he didn’t want to think about what to make of that. They had a long journey ahead of them, and he wanted to focus on it or they could end up failing.
After hours of silence, he heard Blair softly clear her throat.
Pulling back, he looked down at her, expecting her to speak, but all she could manage was half a hoarse whisper.
Wicked Hunt Page 3