“Right,” I said.
Serena and I had spent a couple of years playing with each other before I’d become the chief of the Vegas PPD. Hell, I’d played with damn near all the chicks on the squad back then.
“Ah, the good old days,” The Admiral reminisced.
I had to agree with The Admiral that time. Those were the days.
“By the time our afternoon together was complete,” she recalled, “your welts were all but gone.”
“Just think how quickly we could recover from them now!”
“Shut up.”
Her eyes were still dancing at the memory.
“But now I’m the chief and I’m with Rachel,” I pointed out, “so we should probably stay on topic.”
Serena shook her head, bringing herself back to reality.
“Sorry,” she said, swallowing. “This place really gets me in the mood, I suppose.”
“Me too, sister,” said The Admiral. “Me, too.”
“Right,” I said with a cough. “Well, the question I have is how to channel the healing magic effectively? I’ve done some basic stuff in the past, but I was never very good at it.”
“Ah, that’s both easy and challenging,” she remarked. “It’s challenging to get it right the first few times, but then it becomes second nature and you don’t even think about it anymore.”
Sounded like when I was firing Boomy, or any weapon for that matter. Or bringing pleasure to the ladies.
“That’s more me than you, pal,” noted The Admiral.
“I don’t just use you for that purpose, remember?” I debated.
“You don’t?”
With a sigh, I refocused my attention on Serena.
“I’m listening,” I said.
“The trick is to imagine a pure blue light flowing through your body,” she said. “Think of it like a beautiful body of water that is full of sparkles from the sun bouncing off a group of flawless diamonds.”
“I can do that…I think.”
She put out her hand and cut it again. Then she held it up to me.
I reached out and touched my fingers to hers as I closed my eyes.
At first, I found it difficult to concentrate because I was trying to picture water running down my arm. But the water concept was only intended to be an analogy. Once I changed my thoughts to light instead, I felt a soothing warmth flowing from my hand to Serena’s. She released a small moan, which didn’t make it easy to concentrate.
“That’s it, baby,” whispered The Admiral. “You know you want it.”
“For fuck’s sake,” I growled back at him. “If you don’t stop pestering me, I swear I’ll stick you in a chastity device for a week!”
“Shutting up as ordered,” he replied, sounding terrified.
I guess having irritated words with my dick caused a spark of power to flow through me, because Serena yelped and we both opened our eyes.
The wound was completely healed, and it only took about ten seconds.
“What happened?” I asked.
“You used your magic along with the healing spell.” She lifted the knife. “Let’s try it again.”
“Wait,” I protested, grabbing her arm before she could cut herself. “Use it on my hand instead. I’ve got to learn to heal myself, remember?”
She nodded and sliced away like there was nothing to it.
From my side of the equation, though, I’d have to say it hurt like a bitch. But I couldn’t let the pain drive my emotions. This was business. I had to focus and get the job done.
I closed my eyes, imagined the blue light, sent a shock of power down my arm, and yelped as the feeling of being cut reversed itself. It actually hurt worse than the original cut. That was strange, but when I opened my eyes, my hand was completely healed.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” I said, grinning from ear to ear as I studied my hand. “That’s fuckin’ sweet.”
“You’re a fast learner,” Serena commented as a sinister smile formed on her face. “I remember that about you.”
Thankfully, The Admiral said nothing.
Chapter 15
Power and speed were the domain of the werewolf, and Felicia married those two elements better than any wolf I’d ever seen. Even when she was only in partial-wolf mode, she was quite formidable.
“There are three ways we can go about this,” she said, reminding me of a sensei I’d studied under years ago. “You can stay in your normal form, go halfsies, or completely change over to wolf.”
“My guess is that I’ll have to be decently versed in all three modes.”
Felicia nodded and looked me over carefully. She walked behind me and was touching various points on my body, kind of like a doctor does during a physical. When she was directly behind me, I became a little nervous. Fortunately, she kept on moving.
“Have you turned into full wolf yet?” she asked after returning to stand in front of me.
“Yeah,” I replied. “Remember when we were fighting against Sylvester? I went full wolf then.”
“No, you didn’t,” she said seriously. “You were more like a burly poodle.”
“That’s not true,” I shot back, affronted by her tone.
“Did your clothes rip?” she questioned.
I thought back to the fight. They hadn’t. They’d barely stretched out at all.
“No,” I admitted finally.
“When you bit people, did their limbs snap off?”
“No.”
She duck-faced, crossed her arms, and deadpanned, “Burly poodle.”
“Fine, then,” I grunted, rolling my eyes. “I guess I haven’t gone full wolf.”
“It’s not much fun,” Felicia said, relaxing her attitude. “I only do it when I really need to, and one of the best things I got when getting my PPD enhancements was to completely control that aspect of my life.” She blew out a long breath. “Prior to that, it was…” She looked up at me. “Well, let’s just say that the timing wasn’t always perfect.”
“Right.”
“One of the problems you’re going to face is that your clothes are not magically enhanced.” She then looked up at me questioningly. “Correct?”
“They’ve recently been updated to handle stains,” I answered.
“Right, but they’re going to rip apart if you go full wolf in them.”
Damn it. She was right. Without the magic tailoring, my suit would be destroyed if I shapeshifted. I swear, it seemed like the universe just wanted me to repurchase suit after suit.
First-world problems, I know.
“Do you think going half-wolf would cause that?”
“No,” she said, “and it’ll be much easier for you to think properly that way, too. You’ll still be highly interested in hunting and fighting, but you’ll also have your wits about you.” She cracked her neck. “Frankly, I’d bet that you’d be a better fighter like that than if you went full.”
“Then we’ll just—”
“However,” she interrupted, “you won’t be nearly as strong or fast.”
“I figured as much,” I replied, “but these suits aren’t cheap, you know.”
As soon as this was all over, I was going to have the works done on all my clothing. Every available option, no matter the cost. It was either that or spend countless days trying shit on and spending tons of coin on new suits. To be fair, I did rather enjoy shopping for outfits, but it just seemed wasteful to have to throw them away every time they got gooey or bloody. And now that ripping was in the mix, too, I couldn’t even justify passing them along to one of those charity places.
For now, I would just do the half-wolf thing and be done with it.
That was a problem, though.
If I didn’t know how to go full wolf, I sure as hell couldn’t go half wolf either, and without proper guidance, I’d probably end up shredding my suit.
“Okay,” I grunted, not wanting to do this at all, “how can I make sure I don’t end up in full-wolf mode?”
“Simple,” Felicia replied. “All you have to do is stop yourself about halfway through the transition.”
I had a feeling it wasn’t going to be ‘simple.’
“And how do I start the transition in the first place?”
“You already know the answer to that,” she replied. “If you didn’t, you wouldn’t have been able to pick up my scent the way you did when we were at New York-New York battling the goblins.”
I gulped, feeling embarrassed about that.
“I…uh…”
“You couldn’t have controlled it, Ian,” she stated before I could say anything that would make an already awkward situation even worse. “Your pheromones were through the roof, which caused mine to respond in kind. If either of us had morphed, the other would have been ravished.”
“I would…” The Admiral wisely stopped himself before he could finish that sentence. “Sorry.”
I looked at Felicia. “Isn’t that going to happen right now, if I change here?”
“Quite possibly,” she replied. “But I will fight to keep myself under control. I can’t stop you from smelling my scent, though, so that’s something you will have to combat. If you don’t, you’ll never be able to fight because you’ll be too busy wanting to rut.”
“Ah, super.”
“Agreed!”
So take the horniest guy in the world and then give him the ability to pick up the scent of any woman who is even remotely interested in sex. Sounds like a match made in hell.
“What if I can’t control it?” I asked.
“I’ll shoot you,” she replied, pulling out her Desert Eagle. “Now, do you remember what happened the last time you started feeling the wolf inside you as it tried to emerge?”
“Rage,” I said after a few moments. “The goblins were trying to harm Rachel and I was pissed off about that.”
“Good.”
“Good?”
“I don’t mean that it’s good they were trying to hurt Rachel,” Felicia chided. “I mean that it’s good you remember the level of rage you felt.”
“It’s not easy to forget.”
“Yes, but it’s the amount of anger you channel that will determine how far you morph.” She stuck her gun back in its holster. “You never morphed beyond those heightened senses you had at New York-New York, which means you did have some measure of control. The difference here is that you’re going to have to let yourself go a little further into your rage. Once you’ve made enough of a change, you can then just let your anger simmer.”
“Simmer?”
“Yes,” she affirmed. “If you let it build too quickly, you’ll lose control of it. If you don’t let it build quickly enough, it’ll never grab hold.” She gave me a stern look. “You need to let it build fast at first, so that the morphing can happen. Then you need to edge it back until you have it under control. If you can manage that, you’ll be set.”
“Okay,” I sighed. “I think I’ve got it.”
I didn’t, but there was no way to get things rolling without just letting go and taking a shot at it.
So, rage it was.
I started thinking about things that pissed me off. Not just minor things, but rather those items that made me madder than hell.
People cutting me off on the freeway. Tailgaters. Getting to the bottom of a box of cereal and finding out that there wasn’t a toy inside. Wanting a cup of Bones Coffee and finding that we were out…again.
There were thousands of things that could probably do the trick, but I had to be careful what I chose since I didn’t want the werewolf to surface at an inappropriate time. I imagined myself turning into a wolf because a little old lady picked up the last box of Entenmann’s cookies at the grocery store.
Not good.
The item I finally latched onto was the vision of Rachel hanging in the middle of the werewolf arena in London. That image was burned into my mind for all eternity. She hadn’t seemed all that bothered by it, but it made me seethe to know that she could have been killed all because Rex, the werewolf, wanted to test his mettle against me.
“Got it,” I said.
“Good,” Felicia replied. “Now, you need to really push that feeling until the change takes hold.”
“How will I know if it’s working?” I asked.
She looked at me. “You’ve heard us howl, right?”
“Of course.”
“We do that because it hurts like a bitch when we actually start to change.”
“Ah.”
I closed my eyes and pictured the scene in London.
It was an inaccurate representation. In fact, it wasn’t even the same room. I needed it to be worse and more vibrant. Therefore, I imagined Rachel being tied to a rack with blood seeping from various wounds on her body. She was moaning horribly, whimpering in a way that threatened to make me want to kill anyone and everyone who was within range of my fists.
“Okay, okay,” Felicia soothed, “slow it down now.”
That’s when I noticed the pain in my hands, feet, and face. I opened my eyes and found that everything was clearer than normal. Where I would have expected the colors to be dulled, they were quite the opposite. Glancing down at my hands, I saw they were elongated and my nails stuck out like claws.
I sniffed the air and a low growl escaped my throat as the smell of valkyries filled the room.
While Felicia might be able to fight back releasing pheromones, the warrior babes down here had zero desire to keep themselves in control.
My libido was threatening to take over.
“Control, Ian,” Felicia said, which caught me off guard since she usually referred to me as ‘Chief.’ She moved back into my field of vision, bringing my focus again to her. “You have to maintain control. If you slip up even for a single minute, you’ll go full wolf and then there’s no telling what you’ll do.”
My head recognized the logic of her words, but my body wanted to continue down the path it was on.
The physical pain was incredible. A howl began to rise up in my throat, but I fought it with all my might. Releasing that howl would result in the complete destruction of my suit, and I couldn’t have that.
Too bad I was losing the battle, at least until I began to recall how the various genetic aspects of my person balanced each other out. If I wanted to avoid going full wolf, I didn’t need to manage my emotions, I just needed to allow another facet of myself to gain some hold over things.
But which one?
When I considered vampire, I found that I loathed myself. That seemed logical seeing as how vampires and werewolves weren’t exactly the best of friends. I’d hate to have to kick my own ass, though. That would be embarrassing.
Pixie was an obvious choice. A cursing werewolf would be a novelty, if nothing else.
Werebear…no. Talk about a killing machine. That’d just be nuts.
I finally landed on fae. It was the only one, aside from weresheep and wererabbit, that would allow me to maintain half wolf without making it any worse. There may be moments of vanity, but I kind of dealt with that on a regular basis anyway.
“Well, that’s interesting,” Felicia said with a grimace.
“What?” I replied, my voice sounding slightly different than before.
“You’re either the best-looking werewolf I’ve ever seen…” She then tilted her head again as if appraising me from an entirely different angle. “…or the ugliest fae.”
“Nice,” I replied, finding that I could feel the power flowing through my veins, but I wasn’t contending with the rage anymore. “The lady who checked us in at reintegration was far less attractive than I look at the moment…I hope?”
“You mean the werebear?” Felicia asked.
“She wasn’t a werebear,” I corrected her. “She was a fae.”
“No fucking way.”
“Yep,” I stated. “Anyway, I think I’ve got the hang of this now, and I already know how to fight, so I shouldn’t need any pointers there.”
“I
’m sure you’ll do fine,” Felicia agreed. “If you do ever go full wolf, though, just remember that your bite is worse than your bark.”
She then grabbed my chin and looked in my eyes.
“Substantially worse.”
Chapter 16
Next up was Chuck. I was kind of looking forward to this training stint, to be honest. People had always mistaken me for a vampire over the years, and now that I had the teeth to go with the mystique, I thought it’d be great to know how to use them properly.
“Not a lot to say, Chief,” Chuck said, shrugging. “The fact is that we really don’t do much more than what you already know how to do. We just get quicker, more agile, have razor-sharp claws, and pointy teeth.”
It made sense, actually.
Even Felicia couldn’t give me much beyond controlling how far I changed over to wolf form. Aside from that, I got stronger, faster, and could bite through a block of wood. Oh, I could also scratch my ear with my back leg, and I could lick myself. That thought sounded great until I remembered that my dick talked to me.
“Yeah,” The Admiral agreed, “I wouldn’t want you licking me either, pal.”
“What about venom?” I asked.
“Definitely don’t want you biting me, dude.”
“I was talking to Chuck, idiot,” I responded. “Obviously, venom is a thing,” I continued aloud, “otherwise I wouldn’t even be in this mess in the first place.”
Chuck carried a look of dread.
“Yeah, sorry about that.” He looked at his feet. “That guy should never have poisoned you.”
“Well, he did,” I stated hotly. I wasn’t mad at Chuck, but the memory of Sly the vampire snapping into my neck pissed me off. “Anyway, it’s not your fault that it happened, but I want to understand it in case I need to employ it.”
His look of dread changed over to shock.
“You really shouldn’t even be thinking about that, Chief,” he whispered, glancing around to see if anyone else was within earshot. “That can get you into deep reintegration.”
“If used against a normal, yes,” I countered. “I was talking about the potential of hitting a super with it.”
Clash of Flames: An Ian Dex Supernatural Thriller Book 7 (Las Vegas Paranormal Police Department) Page 6