by Raven Hart
A yelp from Jerry brought me back to myself. I released the red wolf who, if not already dead, soon would be. I looked toward Jerry. He was outflanking the Nate wolf, who was trying to work his way to Samson’s side. Wanda was holding off all six females, who had backed off from the circle. Their hearts didn’t seem to be in the fight.
Samson and Seth were locked in another death roll. I charged the two wolves who were trying to enter the fight on Samson’s behalf. One ran off, and the other one whined and wouldn’t make eye contact. It seemed like Samson wasn’t popular with all the males—at least not popular enough for them to willingly spill their blood for him. I bared my fangs and roared as loud as I could, and the timid one fled behind the first.
I tried to get closer to Samson and Seth and so did one of the two remaining males. The other wolf did a screen move on Jerry and freed up Nate to go for his former mate, Wandawolf. Unfortunately for Nate, this was the moment Huey finally burst into the clearing. Despite my earlier efforts, Huey still pretty much looked like something out of a Japanese horror movie. Nate hesitated long enough for Huey to lunge onto him and put the bite on him much as he had the previous night.
Huey rode Nate into the woods like a rodeo cowboy, the zombie’s formidable choppers firmly clasped onto the flesh between Nate’s ears. Jerry lunged for the wolf circling him, and Wanda, having neutralized the females, joined her new mate. I grabbed the wolf trying to get the drop on Seth and bit him deeply between the shoulder blades. He ripped himself free of my fangs and arms as I spit out a mouthful of his fur. He wheeled to face me again and this time he was real mad. He pawed at the ground like a bull. Frothy foam dripped from his muzzle, which looked as wide as a cinder block and just as tough.
Out of the corner of my eye I could see that Nate was back from the woods, having bucked Huey off somewhere. He was heading straight for Seth.
Where the hell was Werm?
Seventeen
William
When I regained consciousness, I had no idea how much time had passed. The scent of the soil reminded me of my homeland. Only there was something evil in it, too. Then I sensed a human and smelled blood. Renee.
I remembered then and opened my eyes. Alarmed for her safety, I quickly determined that she was still in my arms; an air pocket had formed around us, but we were buried in darkness. I couldn’t tell how much time had passed, and I didn’t know how much oxygen remained for Renee in the little space. At least I wasn’t using any. Renee’s breathing was regular, and I sensed that she was asleep and unharmed.
When she awoke I would use my glamour once again to keep her from being frightened by our predicament. My natural instinct was to start digging. I could dig myself out in the fullness of time and reach the surface as a leathery, starving husk of a creature. I could recuperate at my leisure, but as far underground as we were, my digging would do Renee no good.
I would hold her until she breathed her last breath and weep while the human I loved so desperately died in my arms. Then I would abandon myself to the earth to rest with her remains forever. What a tragic waste. Renee was the most promising mystical being I had encountered in half a millennium.
I couldn’t let that happen. I closed my eyes and focused my mind with the power of every drop of blood, every bone and sinew in my body. I called out to my kin on this continent—but most of all I called to Will. I felt my call rise through the earth. The soil throbbed with its vibrations.
By the power of the voodoo blood, save this child.
Jack
The wolf I was facing lowered his body and leaped, just as an explosion shook the earth hard enough to throw me to the ground, the wolf landing awkwardly behind me. The other wolves seemed stunned by the concussive blast. Though Samson’s cabin was a quarter of a mile away, the light of the fire that consumed it was clearly visible. Unfortunately for Samson, the sight distracted him just enough for Seth to deliver the killing bite to his neck.
Nate and the remaining pack wolves could only slink away in horror.
Jerry, Wanda, and Seth lay down in the clearing, panting. Huey came slogging back out of the woods. “What happened?” he said. “What’d I miss?”
I pointed toward the blazing meth house. “Werm came through for us,” I said. “He blew up Samson’s cabin.”
“Hmmm doggies,” Huey remarked.
The three wolves thumped their tails on the ground. Wanda licked a wound on Jerry’s shoulder and he nuzzled her head.
“Ah, puppy love. Come on, Hugh-man. Let’s let the werewolves do whatever they do on nights when the moon is full and bright. Me and you will meet up with Werm at the Corvette and go to the house.”
“Can we ride with the top down?” Huey asked hopefully.
“It’ll be cold, but what’s a little chill to two vampires and a zombie?” I said.
Huey patted his mud-soaked head and asked without a trace of irony, “Do you think it will mess up my hair?”
“Buddy,” I said, “you don’t have much hair to begin with, so I wouldn’t worry about it. I would recommend that you hold on real tight to your eyeballs, though.”
When I got back to William’s after dropping off Werm and Huey, everything was blessedly quiet. The light in the foyer was on, so I went upstairs and found Deylaud and Reyha watching over Melaphia, who was sleeping peacefully in the guest bedroom.
“Is Mel okay?” I asked.
“She’s fine,” Deylaud whispered.
“What happened after I left?”
“Connie stayed and watched over Mel until she was finished with her ceremony,” Deylaud recounted.
“Or whatever it was.” Reyha shivered.
Deylaud continued, “Then Mel quieted down some, but she was still in magic mode. She and Connie talked a long, long time out in the garden.”
“Then Mel calmed down some more,” Reyha added. “She came up here and went right to sleep. Connie said she thought Mel would be fine, so she went back to her apartment.”
“Good,” I said, relieved. “It sounds to me like Connie was able to talk Mel down from whatever voodoo high she was on. I assume the voodoo doll was for whoever is holding Renee.”
“We were afraid to ask,” Deylaud said. “We didn’t want to get her all worked up again. But that seems to be a good assumption.”
Reyha said, “Connie said to tell you to come by her apartment when you got back, no matter how late it was.”
“Okay,” I agreed. I figured she wanted to hear how the fight turned out and make sure Seth and I had survived. There was still plenty of time before daylight. “You guys call my cell if there’s any more trouble.”
They nodded and I said good night. I headed off to Connie’s through the tunnels, enjoying a great sense of relief. The fight had gone my way. It would be a while before any of Savannah’s other nonhuman kingpins wanted to stir up trouble with yours truly.
And the latest crisis with Melaphia was over, at least for now. I hoped with everything in me that whatever magic she’d worked with the voodoo doll would help William free Renee.
William
My call reverberated around the little cell in which Renee and I were imprisoned. It had gone upward and outward, hopefully to resonate in the minds of Olivia and Will, spurring them to action and serving as a magnet to draw them to our location. But the call also found its way downward. There was no controlling its path. I felt the earth roil and grind beneath us, and I knew that if Olivia and Will did not hurry, something else might come up from down below to claim Renee and me.
I closed my eyes and wished, not for the first time in my long existence, that there was someone or something to which I could pray.
The noise began as a breath, then grew to a whisper. Before long it was a pulsing roar. Something was coming directly toward us.
But was it coming from above or below?
Jack
Connie came to the door barefoot. She wore only a black satin bathrobe. Nice. “C’mon in.” She gestured toward the couch. I s
at, only then realizing how tired I was.
“So, how’d the fight go?” she said. “It looks like you came out without a scratch.” She sat beside me, resting one arm along the back of the couch and drawing one leg up under her. The robe fell open to reveal long expanses of smooth, shapely thigh. I tried to be a gentleman and not look, but hey, I may be dead, but I’m also a guy.
“Fine. Um, do you mind if I take off my jacket? It’s kind of warm in here.”
“Please do,” she said. I tossed the leather bomber onto the arm of the wing chair. “Is Seth okay?” she asked.
“Yeah. He’s pack leader now. He killed Samson.”
“Half of me thinks I should arrest him.”
“Don’t think of it as Seth killing a human being. Think of it as a wolf killing another wolf, a bad wolf, in a fight that’s part of the natural order of things.”
“You make it sound simple.”
“It’s not.” I sighed. “Nothing about being unhuman in a human world is simple.”
“I’m starting to understand that.”
“What do you mean?”
“Jack, I learned so much from Melaphia tonight.” Connie’s eyes lit with an intensity that made me sit up straight.
“I was going to ask you about that. What happened after I left?”
“Melaphia finished the ritual with the voodoo doll. After that she was fine, but not back to normal exactly. She was still alive with magic. I started asking her questions about who and what I am.”
“I thought you already worked with her on that. Once you found out you were something more than human, I know you had at least one ceremony to find out what you are.”
“‘Something more than human.’ That’s a nice way of putting it. She did work with me a couple of times, but then she clammed up. It was like she didn’t want to talk about it anymore.”
“Well, after Renee was kidnapped she withdrew from everything and everybody.”
“This started before Renee was kidnapped. But for whatever reason, she opened up to me tonight like never before. She gave me a world of information in a short period of time. I think I know what I have to do to be at peace with events from my past that I’ve never learned to deal with.”
I thought about the stuff Seth had told me and I was glad for her. The thought of Connie being haunted by tragedy made me so sad. “It sounds like whatever Melaphia told you was as good as therapy.”
“Yeah. There are a few things I have to work out, but I think I’m going to find a new way to experience life. And that’s not all. Mel gave me suggestions on how to develop my power and control it.”
“Oh, yeah. I guess you’d need to know that, what with being a goddess. Control is important with power. I mean, after all, that’s why you and me can’t…” I hesitated, awkwardly groping for the right word.
“Be together?” Connie suggested.
“Yeah.” I shifted uncomfortably, my body tightening at the thought of what lay under the incredible shrinking bathrobe. Not only was the gap creeping open from the bottom, but it was also sliding apart at the cleavage end.
“Uh, Connie, speaking of that. If I didn’t know better I would say that you’re teasing me right now. Given the fact that I can’t touch you without catching fire and I can’t bear to look at you half naked without touching you, don’t you think that’s a little mean?”
She swung her free leg back and forth and chuckled low in her throat. “Ooh, that would be mean.”
“But you’re not mean,” I said. “You wouldn’t tease me like this unless—”
She looked at me, and the light in her eyes thrilled me to my cold, hard core. “With what I know now, I think we can do it, Jack. I think we can make love. I’ve made…preparations.” She pointed to her little altar where a red candle still burned. She’d made her plea to whatever entity she thought could help us.
She didn’t have to tell me twice. If she was mistaken, I didn’t care if I burned alive as long as I was loving her while I did it. “Let’s do it,” I said, reaching out for her.
“Wait a minute,” she said. “I have to make sure the prayers and chants are going to work. I don’t want to hurt you. This is important to me.”
Connie got up from the couch and moved to stand right in front of me. Then she untied the satin sash and let the robe slide off her shoulders, revealing her to be completely, gloriously naked underneath. If she wasn’t a real goddess, she’d still be a goddess, if you know what I’m saying. Venus herself had nothing on Consuela Jones. She took my breath clean away.
“Are you aroused?” she asked.
“Are you kidding?”
She gave me a quick up-and-down glance. “Okay. I guess you certainly are. Here goes, then.”
Slowly, Connie raised her hand, palm out. I did the same. We both held our breath and brought our hands together. When we touched, I felt her warmth, her strength, her passion. But not the wrath of God.
“I’m not electrocuted,” I said.
“And you’re not on fire,” Connie agreed.
“Not in a bad way, anyway.”
Wordlessly we brought our other hands up, touched our palms, and wove our fingers together. I’d touched women more intimately before, but never with such depth of emotion. It was like we were already one.
After a moment I stepped closer to her, picked her up, and carried her to the bedroom. I set her on the bed and stripped off my shirt while she undid my belt and pants. While I kicked off my boots she laid a line of kisses down my belly that had me shivering all over. When she got my jeans down, she took hold of me in both hands like she’d just found a treasure she’d been searching for for a long time.
With a quick look up at me, she tasted me and I arched my back, trying to keep myself in check. “Wait a minute, honey. I’ve been waiting so long for this I might have some control issues of my own.”
I laid her back on the bed, and she linked her arms around my neck. “Jack,” she said in a breathy whisper. “I want you to know that whatever happens later, even if something goes wrong, you mustn’t blame yourself. Promise?”
“Sure. Promise,” I said before I started kissing her. She sighed and I held her still closer. I released her lips and laid a path of kisses down her neck and collarbone. She arched her back, aching for her breasts to be touched. I obliged her, kneading them gently, and framing one nipple between my thumb and forefinger. I took the other one in my mouth and sucked, drawing a sharp moan from her.
She reached down and touched me with long, sure strokes until I was wild with wanting her. I moved lower, deliberately out of her reach, and she opened her legs for me. I gave her bottom a gentle squeeze as I tasted her, and she writhed under my touch and made soft kitten noises.
“Now,” she demanded simply after a couple of minutes.
“Yes, ma’am.” There would be time for more leisurely explorations the next time. And the next time. And the one after that. I think it was that thought as much as the sensations I was feeling that made me so happy.
I raised myself and looked her in the eye while I entered her, only a little at first. Her eyes were wide and as dark as night. She wrapped her legs around me, bringing me down to her, deeper inside her. I heard myself groan and entered her fully in one smooth stroke. We both gasped and then began to move. She met me stroke for stroke, her body fitting to mine like we had been made for each other. I was beginning to think we had been.
She clung to me like she was afraid to let me go for fear she’d go spinning off the earth. Like I was her lifeline in a roiling sea. As for me, I was a real, living, warm-blooded man again, if only for those moments.
I felt us floating upward together toward some kind of heaven. I tried to slow my pace to make the moment last, but Connie wouldn’t let me. She urged me on in her body’s silent language.
We cried out as our pleasure spilled over the crest we rode together. The power of it, like nothing I’d ever felt, took us over as we surfed out every wave of sensation. We held eac
h other tight as we floated back to the shore.
Neither of us could speak for a while. I held Connie and she stroked my chest with her fingers. “What’s this scar?” she asked absently, running a forefinger along the jagged mark. “The one in the middle of your chest.”
I opened my mouth to say That’s where the minié ball tore through my chest and killed me. But I stopped, reluctant to remind both of us that I was nothing more than a reanimated corpse. Not a real, live boy after all. No, not by a long shot.
“It’s nothing,” I said. I took her fingers in mine, brought them to my cooling lips and kissed them. They were warm and alive like the rest of her.
“Jack, that was…” she trailed off.
“I know. Me too.” I released her fingers and touched the tip of her nose. “Next time we’ll take it slower. I promise.”
“Next time,” she repeated. She looked at me with such profound sadness that for a second I was scared.
“What? What is it?”
She forced a little laugh. “Nothing. It’s just that we had to wait so long, and it was so wonderful, it still doesn’t seem real somehow.”
“It’s real,” I said with more conviction than I felt. “And there’s plenty more where that came from.” I gave her a wicked wink and she tweaked one of my nipples.
“There better be,” she said playfully.
“For right now, though, I’d better get back to William’s. It’s almost sunup.”
“One last kiss then,” she said, and locked me in a tight embrace.
I kissed her like I’d never kiss her again, molding our bodies so close I hardly knew where I left off and she began. She released me slowly, and kissed the length of my arm to my fingertips as I rose from the bed. I took my clothes and dressed quickly in the living room and went back to the bedroom for one more look at her beautiful self curled in her soft cloud of a bed.