Her Werewolf Hero

by Michele Hauf

  “Stay in here,” he muttered. “I can only maintain your vita within a certain range. The farther away from me you get, the quicker you die. Both of you.”

  Kizzy rushed over to the cage. Claire scooted out from inside, but she was too weak to stand. When Kizzy took her hand and studied her face, the werewolf smiled at her and said, “I like you. You’ve got spunk. I tend to overlook humans with their weaknesses. What has made you so strong?”

  Kizzy helped Claire to sit on the floor and lean against a rusted iron column. She maintained a firm hold of her hand. Touching another person seemed to ground her. To remind her that she was still alive.

  “I’ve always been independent,” Kizzy said. “But I think dying eight months ago following a car accident really put my head on straight. I don’t take bullshit from anyone anymore. Unless, of course, he’s an asshole soul bringer.”

  Both women eyed their keeper, who kept one eye aimed on them.

  “How are you?” Kizzy asked. “Are you okay?”

  “If I may be so bold...why do you care?”

  “I care because you are a fellow woman, and you are an innocent in this matter. Whatever went on between you and Bron centuries ago is none of my business. I want you to survive this and to be free.”

  She smirked. “Are you Bron’s newest wife? Lover?”

  “Not his wife. Lovers...?” She didn’t need to lie to this woman, nor did she want to. “We are. Did you two ever...divorce?”

  Claire shook her head. “The pack considered our marriage annulled the moment he was banished. Served him right. Unfaithful bastard.” She sighed and chuckled softly. “I had thought I’d gotten over him and what he did to me way back in the nineteenth century. I have lived a good life. I remarried the new pack leader and had seven children. I’d completely wiped Bron Everhart from my heart. And now, look. My heart has been removed, and all I can think about is the man who originally broke it.”

  “He’s told me a little about that time. This isn’t an excuse, but I suspect he was a bit of a rogue. Untamable. Not much for settling down?”

  “You nailed that one, sweetie. Unfortunately for me. I chose not to give him another thought the night he left the pack. Merely assumed he’d taken his bastard child and got on with his life.”

  “You don’t know? Isabelle, his daughter, she died. She was put out by the pack in the freezing winter. When Bron was finally released from the compound, he found her, frozen to death.”

  “Oh, mon Dieu.” Claire gasped and turned down her head. Her hands shook on her lap.

  Kizzy touched her wrist, but the woman flinched away. “It’s what he told me.”

  “I had no idea,” she whispered frantically. “I...I was the one who ordered the girl put out. But I hadn’t thought she would—as I’ve said, I never consider humans and their weaknesses. We wolves can survive the cold. Oh, mercy. I hurt him so cruelly.”

  Kizzy pulled the woman into a hug. “It’s over. You have both survived. And when Bron returns from Purgatory, you can get your heart and walk away from him forever.”

  Claire nodded. “We were both terrible to one another. I must apologize to him. You...you love him?”

  “I think I do. I said it to him. We’ve only known one another a few days, but...yes... I do.” Kizzy clasped her hands before her mouth and smiled to think over the past few days and their whirlwind accidental romance amidst a crazy chase and run. “He’s a brave and honorable man. I think he’s changed since that time long ago when you knew him.”

  “That happens to a person over the centuries. He needed to grow up.”

  “He has. You would be proud of him.”

  “But the girl. Oh, I am so sorry.” Claire sniffed back a tear, and Kizzy clasped her hand. The werewolf gave it a squeeze. “So how are you? Are you okay?”

  “I’m weak, but I know Bron will find the sin eater and bring her back. We’ll both be okay. He’ll save us.”

  Claire clasped her hand tightly. Nothing else to say. They would hold vigil for the man who had touched their hearts in manners so opposite yet long lasting.

  * * *

  It didn’t take Bron long to get a handle on the conditions of Purgatory. They were ever changing, vile, and not something a man could predict. One moment he trod sun-baked earth, sweating and struggling to hold the slippery heart in hand. The next moment he walked into the teeth of a blizzard, which singed his nostrils and eyes with an icy burn.

  Clutching the heart to his chest to secure his hold, he stepped onto soggy ground. His boots suctioned into mud as red as blood. And the meaty smell made him wonder if it were not mud but in fact blood. He wouldn’t think about it.

  He saw...things. Dark, shadowy figments that were most often human shaped yet with black spaces for eyes, mouth and nostrils. Others were more solid, perhaps souls attempting to cling to the human form they once held? When he walked near one they swayed away from him, as if fearing his presence, and misted into nothing.

  Damned eerie, the lot of it. He was sure he hadn’t felt his own heartbeat since arriving.

  And when he came upon a bridge that stretched into the foggy distance, he decided that must be the path to a Toll House. CJ had explained there were twenty that the departed soul must pass through. He didn’t need to go there. And if the sin eater was not allowed to pass through the Toll Houses, then she would not be there either.

  He tried calling out her name, Desdenova, and then Nova, but his voice echoed back to him, and the air thickened like pudding, clogging his throat so he struggled to take a breath. And yet, breathing felt...odd. Unnecessary. So he didn’t try again.

  He neared another soul. A mostly solid soul that appeared as a man in dark clothing. His arm was torn off, and his scalp was bloodied. Must have been what he looked like when death took him. And once closer, he was more misty than solid. He spied Bron—his black eyes averting to the heart—and his mouth dropped open.

  “Kizzy’s heart!” The soul lunged for him.

  The creature jumped onto Bron’s back and snaked an icy hand down to claw for the heart.

  * * *

  The soul bringer hadn’t moved from standing before the window. Kizzy felt Claire’s head heavy on her shoulder. She had fallen asleep, which was a good thing. Better than being alert and having nothing to do but worry whether or not she would ever again get back her own heart.

  A heart that sat in a black box on the floor in the middle of the warehouse. As if a forgotten gift after the birthday party celebrants had left for cake in the next room. Could she put it back in Claire’s chest for her? Probably not. But the need to do something more than sitting was strong.

  She remembered the digital camera and tugged it from her pocket. Clicking a picture of the box, she then took a few of the soul bringer, silhouetted by the high sun beaming through the open window. He didn’t notice. The camera mechanism was silent. These were photos she might never publish. Not without a wild explanation of what they really were.

  What if she did publish them and people believed? Would there be hysteria? Fascination? Laughter? Was the mass population really ready to believe in all the creatures that only moved about on the silver screen and in the pages of books?

  Publishing such photos was a big decision. She should not take it lightly. And she would not. But she couldn’t stop taking the pictures; it was how she recorded life. As strange as it had become.

  She hoped Bron got back soon, so she could record him. To commit him to pixels. To know that he was alive.

  “It’s been hours,” she called across the room. “How long will this take?”

  “You starting to think your hero has abandoned you?” Blackthorn taunted.

  “If he gives up on me, he gives up on you, as well.”

  The soul bringer shrugged and turned toward her. Leaning against the wall,
he crossed one ankle over the other and peered across the concrete floor at her. “I am not without mercy.”

  “Could have fooled me. You sent harpies after us.”

  “I thought they could get the heart out for me.”

  “Nice.” Kizzy kicked out her feet before her, and when she wanted to put her hands behind her neck, she did not because that might wake Claire. “How’d you ever fall in love if you’re so all about the lacking emotions?”

  “Nova showed me what love is.”

  “A sin eater and a soul bringer.” There were so many wonders she had yet to discover. “How long were the two of you together?”

  “It seems like mere moments, but I was allowed a few decades with her. I would give my life to have Nova back. Alive.”

  But if she had died, then Bron would be bringing back a dead woman, right? Kizzy wanted to ask, but as much as she hated the guy, she couldn’t put that terrible question out there.

  “I understand that. Love is great. I’ve been in love a couple times.”

  “I don’t understand the human penchant to love so often,” Blackthorn said. “A love so great should only happen once.”

  “You’d think. But love is so great because it has to be. It is wide and everywhere. It is our reason for being. It sometimes breaks, and then you get to find it again. That’s the cool thing about love. You can never run out of it. There exists an endless source.”

  “Humans make up ridiculous explanations to ease their pain and suffering. I will only and always love my Nova.”

  “I’m sorry for your loss. I truly am. But you can hold her in your heart forever. Do you, uh...have a heart?”

  He nodded and rapped his chest. “It is glass and does not beat. Nova used to tell me she could hear it pulsing when she put her head to my chest. I would slide my fingers through her hair and know she was wrong, but still I believed her.”

  He dropped his head, and Kizzy wasn’t sure, but was he sobbing? Nah. Not a big strong soul bringer like him.

  “You vex me, you humans,” he hissed as he stood and marched over to the black box. Grabbing it, he strode up to her. Kizzy flinched, which startled Claire awake.

  “Very well,” Blackthorn said. “She has suffered for no good reason. And she has served her use.” He tore off the cover and thrust the box toward Kizzy. Inside, the heart pulsed slowly. “Take it out. I cannot touch an earthbound heart.”

  Tentatively, she reached inside and picked up the slippery organ. It was warm and pulsed even more, so that she had to hold it with both hands to not drop it. Stunning to look upon something so vital to a person’s being.

  “Oh,” Claire said on a fading sigh. “Mine.”

  Bending over Claire, Blackthorn drew the blade he’d taken from Bron down her chest. Her ribs seemed to gape open in expectation of receiving the heart.

  “Put it back in,” he muttered as he stood over Kizzy.

  “Uh...” Kizzy reacted. She pushed the organ back into Claire’s chest. A bright beam of white light radiated out. And the cut sealed up, breaking off the glow. With an exuberant sigh the werewolf sat up straighter. Claire held a hand over her chest and nodded that she was okay.

  “You know that was an act of love,” Kizzy said to the soul bringer.

  “It was a means to show I am not doing this to harm but merely to gain that which I most need. If I could have gone after Nova myself, I would have. But I am not allowed in Purgatory. And besides. There is only one way to gain entrance to Purgatory.”

  “With the heart?” Kizzy asked.

  “The heart is merely a portal. Entrance requires but one condition.” He smiled the tiniest smile and then announced plainly, “Death.”

  Kizzy nodded. Of course all souls in Purgatory were dead. Even the soul bringer’s girlfriend had died to end up there. Keith was there. He’d died in the car crash.

  Had she gone there when she had died on the operating room table? For Keith to have been able to clutch her heart? Maybe.

  “He means Bron,” Claire whispered as she massaged her rib cage.

  “What?”

  The soul bringer strode across the warehouse back to the window where he’d held post. When he leaned a shoulder against the brick wall and turned a switchblade smile on her, Kizzy gaped.

  “Bron? But—no. He’s not dead.”

  “Apparently,” Claire rasped, “he had to die to get there. I’m sorry, Kizzy.”

  “But. No, that can’t be. How can he find the sin eater if he’s dead? And when he returns? He can’t exist and be dead. No.”

  Kizzy touched her chest, knowing that there would be no heartbeat beneath, yet feeling as if what was missing raced toward a cliff. “You bastard!”

  She lunged up to stride across the floor. When she was but five feet from the soul bringer he flicked his fingers, which lifted her from her feet and sent her flailing back to land on the hard, concrete floor.

  Kizzy screamed a loud and soul-crushing sound that was heard for acres beyond the abandoned warehouse.

  And it was felt in Purgatory.

  Chapter 24

  Bron heard the scream and knew it was Kizzy’s voice. Was she here in Purgatory? Had the soul bringer somehow sent her in his wake? He wanted to know, to seek out the voice, but the bedamned soul riding his back proved a solid and insistent force. A soul should not feel substantial, and yet, its fingernails dug in at his shoulders painfully.

  “Get off!” He shook his body, but the thing was weightless, and it mercilessly clung with its one arm. “Who are you?”

  “You’ve got her heart. It’s mine! I won’t let her go!”

  Ah, hell. This had to be the boyfriend. The bastard who had gripped Kizzy’s heart from Purgatory and put her in this mess in the first place. Keith...something or other.

  Clutching the heart to his chest with both hands, Bron twisted and attempted to swing the soul from his back—when he stepped into an icy wall. Turning to crush the soul with a forceful shove against the wall, he was rewarded with a throaty moan. The fingers at his shoulders slipped away.

  Scrambling away from the maniacal thing, Bron ran as quickly as the slick ice surface would allow. Ahead loomed a dark forest of what appeared steel trees. Behind him he heard the soul shout that he would never let her go.

  Cursing this madness, Bron ran. And when he entered the forest, razor-edged branches cut his cheeks, shoulders and thighs. But before he could ascertain a safe passage, the ground dropped away, and he fell into a muddy pit lined with long black, gleaming thorns that oozed a metallic substance from their pin-sharp tips.

  Checking the heart he held had not taken any damage, Bron stepped to the center of the pit. It was about twenty-feet in diameter, but he maintained a mere five-foot circle in the middle safe from the thorns. He could use them as ladder rungs to climb out, but perhaps for the moment he was safe down here from Keith’s soul. He had no idea how strong or powerful the souls were. Keith was dead. A figment of the man he had once been. Right?

  This mission had turned into a proper adventure. And he was just fine with that. Hang on to the heart. Beat off the souls. Let the shrapnel fall where it will.

  “Wh-who are you?” asked a shivering voice from the darkness.

  Panting and scanning the sky above for signs of Keith, Bron checked again to ensure he hadn’t let go of Kizzy’s heart. “No one,” he gasped when he determined the voice didn’t sound like a threat. “Just here for a stroll.”

  The owner of the small voice crept forward, and clinging to a pointed thorn, her face was revealed. Heart-shaped, pale, with long black hair. And she looked solid. Not like the souls he had seen since arriving. More calm than Keith’s soul and expressly fearful. He could smell her fear as he had not been able to scent anything from the lost souls.

  She was...embodied. Th
e soul bringer had said she would be.

  “Are you Desdenova Fleetwood?”

  She gaped at him.

  “I’ve been sent by Blackthorn Regis to rescue you.”

  “Oh, mercy. You must be his champion! I had hoped he would send someone to save me. I’ve been hiding in here. The demons. They want to take me to the Toll Houses for torture.”

  “You’re safe. I’ll get you out of here.” Bron stretched his gaze up toward the gray sky. “I just need a moment to figure how.”

  With a banshee howl that stirred all sorts of things in the darkness, the insistent Keith dropped from above. The annoying soul of Kizzy’s ex-boyfriend swiped at him. Bron lashed out—with the hand that held the heart. Keith snarled, revealing extremely sharp teeth for a dead soul, and snatched at the heart. The slippery organ loosened in Bron’s grip and...fell away.

  “No!” He could not return to the mortal realm without that heart. And by all the gods, he was its protector.

  He loved Kizzy. Life was not worth living without her. And he had come so far. Beyond all his better arguments against hurting Kizzy to help the enemy, he was here in Purgatory claiming a dead woman for a soul bringer who had threatened Kizzy’s life. He would not fail now.

  Bron swung and punched Keith’s soul, but his fist soared right through the figment. The soul misted into a black curl and spiraled upward toward the pit opening.

  The bottom dropped out of the pit, and it grew longer and deep. Suddenly falling, his instincts kicked in. Shifting to werewolf, Bron pushed off from the spiked wall of the pit with a foot and free-fell, diving, wishing his body would soar downward faster and faster. He could smell the heart. It smelled like her. The human woman who loved him without question.

  And when he paralleled the falling heart, the werewolf snatched it with a clawed paw, curling the deadly instruments carefully about the slick organ. With his other paw, he grasped blindly and managed to grip one of the steel stakes jutting from the pit’s wall. The pointed tip tore his paw in two. He yowled and dropped his hold. Thinking to reach for a hold with his other paw, at the last minute, he put the heart into his maw, gently, and managed to secure a grip.