Some Lycan Hot

by Michele Bardsley

  “You cured Dana. And Lee Stormwell. And Octavia. She’s been ailing for eighty years!”

  “They made the adjustments necessary to their recoveries. I did very little.”

  “That’s not what they say. You were given the credit for their sudden health. So help me.”

  “I cannot.”

  Well! Alaya could hide the horror of her twisted flesh, but not the hideousness that lay in her heart. Sandra knew there was something magical, otherworldly about the herb shop owner. She had given her gift of healing to everyone in town. Every damned one except for the person who needed help the most—Sandra’s beloved husband, Garrett.

  “You are lying!” yelled Sandra. She slapped both hands on the counter. “You can help him. I know you can!”

  “I’m truly sorry,” said Alaya. The sympathy in her gaze turned to pity. “If I had a way to save your husband from his cancer, I would.”

  Taking care of the town as the major, and of Garrett as his wife, had taken too large a toll on Sandra physically and mentally. She felt worn and ragged and furious. She and Garrett had been high school sweethearts. They were supposed to die together—when they were hundred years and a day.

  He had promised.

  And now he was leaving. Without her. They still had another forty-five years to go, damn it!

  “Please,” she said, her voice breaking. “Please!”

  “I can give you something to help you sleep,” said Alaya. “I have several kinds of tea that will ease your stress.”

  “I don’t need your herbs,” she said. “I have a cabinet full of prescriptions for stress and sleep and depression. Surely, you understand that I need him. Garrett. Have you never loved anyone?”

  The question startled the woman, and Sandra felt a surge of hope. Maybe she had connected with Alaya. Maybe she would hand over a secret, just one secret to reverse the cancer. To save Garrett.

  Sandra grabbed Alaya’s hand. “You do know, don’t you? To be in love. To have a soulmate. The world will not be the same without him in it. There is no world without him.” Sandra felt a sob catch in her throat. The tears gathered, but she held them back, and swallowed down the desperation. The anguish. The goddamned heartache.

  “He is past my help,” said Alaya softly.

  Sandra heard the finality in the woman’s tone. She dropped Alaya’s hand, and stepped back from the counter. Grief ravaged the last drops of kindness in her soul. “You bitch. You don’t deserve happiness. If you do have a soulmate, I hope you lose him. Forever. Then you’ll know my suffering. And no one will help you, either. You will know true agony.”

  “Sandra—”

  “I let you in this town! I signed your permits, sold you this building, and encouraged people to accept your ungodly ways because I’m open-minded. I’m a believer in tolerance. But you just lost your support. You won’t have friends. You won’t have customers. You won’t have anything when I’m done with you.” Sandra heaved her large purse over her shoulder, turned, and marched out. The bell above the door signaled her departure.

  Sandra made it to her car and slid into the driver’s seat. The tears came then, and the sobs, and the utter hopelessness that had paralyzed her when the doctors said they could nothing more. And Garrett … he had accepted that he would die.

  He’d always been the graceful one, the peaceful one. He had been her calm, her compass.

  Sandra wiped the tears away, and decided she needed to leave downtown before someone saw her raccoon eyes and stained blouse. God, she was complete wreck. At least she’d been able to publically keep her composure—until today.

  Sandra backed her Mercedes out of its parking spot, and took lesser known streets out of town. Finally, she got to the narrow two-lane road that took her home.

  Despite the fury that vibrated in her bones and made her teeth grind, she drove carefully. The winding road was dangerous on a good day, much less on a wintry day like this one with her mind fogged with misery.

  Damn that woman! Sandra hadn’t become mayor because she took no for an answer. She hadn’t made Broken Arrow, Oregon a tourist destination by accepting defeat. And she sure as hell wouldn’t let her husband die! Alaya Bennington had something in The Winter Goddess that would help Garrett. And Sandra would dismantle the shop piece by piece until she found it.

  “ARE YOU OKAY?” asked Treese. Her long, rainbow-colored dress swished as she exited the stockroom and joined Alaya at the counter. “Why doesn’t anyone else in this town see that Sandra Ruthridge is a conniving, lying, thieving sell-out?”

  “Gratitude often blinds us to the faults of others,” said Alaya. She was tired and felt guilty, helpless. Sandra had many burdens as mayor, many of which she’d created by making decisions that benefitted her rather than Broken Arrow. All the same, her husband’s cancer had come as a shock and rattled the mayor to her core.

  No matter what drove Sandra to be controlling and arrogant, she loved her husband. Her grief was real. And so was her fear.

  Garrett was a gentle soul. A good man. He had tempered his wife’s hardness with softness. Without him, Sandra would be lost. Alone. Bitter.

  Feelings Alaya knew all too well.

  “Hey, you in there?”

  “Where else would I be?” Alaya patted her friend’s arm. “Sandra’s agony is no less tragic because she’s … prickly.”

  Treese sighed. “Your empathy is boundless—and not always deserved by those who receive it. Sandra’s pissed, and she doesn’t make idle threats.”

  CUT SCENE 2: ALAYA BENNINGTON 1.0

  ALAYA CARRIED THE guilt all the way home. Once, she had been able to offer comfort and solace to those in pain. As a priestess of the Moon Goddess, she had used her gifts to help the grief-stricken. Loss could wound the soul deeply, and some never healed from the devastation.

  Leaving her post as High Priestess had been a difficult decision. But with the goddess returned to her children, and Damian re-taking his crown of lycanthrope leadership, she was no longer needed.

  She tried to believe that lie. Exhausted, she flipped on lights, dropped her purse on the hall tree, and went into her bedroom.

  Sandra’s grief, her desperation, had brought everything back—living in the village where Roma and full-bloods lived as one people, nearly dying from wounds and burns, loving Darrius with her whole heart. Her whole being.

  “Whole” being the operative word.

  Alaya turned on a lamp, plugged her cell phone into its charger, and sank onto her bed, lifting a hand to her forehead. She tried to rub away the ache pulsing there, but she knew it would turn into a full-blown migraine if she didn’t tend to herself now.

  The headache was a hint from her body that her thoughts were poisonous. Spirit, body, and mind were connected, and oftentimes treating physical ailments started with healing emotional and spiritual lesions.

  The only cure for lies was truth.

  And her truth was an oh-so-bitter pill to swallow.

  She’d left the Order of the Moon Goddess because she was afraid Darrius would finally find her. She’d spent too long in hiding, too long justifying her choice as honorable, to admit she’d been wrong to let him go.

  Let Darrius find another wife.

  Let him have the family he deserved.

  Let him live free of the woman who was scarred and barren and burdensome.

  Alaya put her head in her hands and massaged her temples. She had left her calling for the same reason she had never contacted Darrius after she’d lived through the attack on their village.

  She feared he would look at her wounded body and she would witness his revulsion. His rejection. She couldn’t bear the thought that his love was not strong enough to accept her—scars and all.

  What a coward she was. She felt shame as keenly and deeply as a dagger plunged into her chest.

  For nearly seventy years, she had managed to steer clear of the royals—and in doing so, she had convinced herself that Darrius no longer cared about her. He was bette
r off, she told herself.

  Yes. She’d convinced herself she’d made exactly the right decision … until Damian and Kelsey arrived at the last standing temple of the Moon Goddess.

  Her carefully constructed world of rationalizations crumbled into dust.

  So, she ran again.

  Damn. The pain cleaved at her skull, and Alaya pressed her fingers against her temples. She needed a cleansing—both of mind and body. Since the day she’d revealed herself to Damian, she’d known the time would soon come for her to confront Darrius.

  She knew, for whatever reason, the time had come to acknowledge the past, and set them both free of its bonds.

  Of course, she assumed Darrius was as tied to their past as she.

  Alaya resisted the urge. She entered the master bathroom and ran a hot bath. She sprinkled lavender and chamomile petals across the swirling water, and added a few drops of Eucalyptus essential oil. Hopefully the aromatherapy would settle her emotions and dispel the headache.

  As the tub filled, she disrobed. Alaya studied her naked self in the mirror. The facial scar she hid with scarves started at her right temple, just a thin line of jagged skin that turned into a gnarl of flesh on her cheek. Half her neck and her shoulder bore the twisted marks of the fire that should’ve taken her life.

  In a way, it had.

  She must see Darrius.

  Relief trickled through her, and her headache lessened. Yes, now that she’d made the decision, she was feeling better. She turned off the water. Urgency prodded her to take action immediately, before she talked herself out of it—again.

  Her belly trembled with nausea and her fingers shook as she hurried out of the bathroom, across the bedroom, and to her cell phone.

  Alaya scrolled through the contacts until she came to Damian’s name. He had given her his private phone number should she ever need him.

  Hot tears pricked her eyes. How she had missed her friends.

  Her finger hovered over Damian’s highlighted name. Then she took a calming breath … and placed the call.

  You can see why Alaya was a kinda bummer. It bothered me that she was a freaking whiny werewolf. Lycanthropes don’t whine! They’re snarky and brave and, most of all, do not have self-esteem issues. It took me a while to realize that Alaya’s reasons for disappearing for seventy years were stupid. Having scars are badges of honors for warriors. She wouldn’t hide from the world. She doesn’t need approval. Fearing rejection wasn’t a strong enough reason to keep her away from Darrius.

  CUT SCENE 3: SANDRA’S VENGEANCE

  MAYOR SANDRA RUTHRIDGE had never broken and entered before. She felt her heart race as she stood at the back door of The Winter Goddess. Unbeknownst to her real estate clients, she always had duplicate keys made to all the commercial buildings she sold. This was the first time she’d illicitly used a key to enter someone else’s legal property.

  Garrett would be ashamed.

  The key clicked and the door popped open an inch. “This is for you, darling,” she murmured. “You’ll forgive me. Like always.”

  She entered the storeroom, and locked the door behind her. She flicked on her flashlight and shone it around. Boxes were neatly lined on labeled metal shelves. That was rather convenient. She would start in here, and if she found what she needed, she wouldn’t have to risk going into the front of the store.

  Her visit to Garrett just before her little “shopping trip,” only made her more desperate to find something—anything—to help her husband. She couldn’t quite put her finger on what made Alaya different than others, but she knew the woman had extraordinary healing powers. Sandra had seen the results with her own eyes. Why the bitch wouldn’t help Garrett ate away at Sandra ever since she’d embarrassed herself by begging for help. Begging! Maybe Alaya Bennington was jealous of Sandra, and simply wanted her to suffer. She was used to the envy of others. She had the perfect life, after all. At least she did until Garrett got sick, and his cancer became hers and eroded everything.

  Sandra perused the shelves, aiming the flashlight’s beam at the various labels. One shelving unit was filled with office supplies, another held restock items for the customer bathrooms, and yet another contained cleaning provisions.

  Damn it. She turned a corner and examined the next row of shelving units, and the one after that. Most held the store’s more mundane sellers—herb poultices, dream catchers, smiling Buddha statues, and books about nonsensical subjects. Vampires? Werewolves? Fairies? Sandra chuckled as she read the spines. Good God. Who on earth was Theodora Monroe? A nut case, no doubt.

  She moved on, frustration growing with every step, every shelf that held nothing, nothing that would help her. Frustration surged and her grip on the flashlight tightened. She wanted to throw all these useless things onto the ground and stomp until them until they dust under her Prada heels.

  She stopped and took deep breaths until she had control again.

  Five more minutes of searching, and then she was at the end of the storage room. Only one shelving unit was left and it had been labeled “Miscellaneous.” Only one of the items caught her eye: a heavy dark wood box decorated with odd symbols.

  Sandra ran her fingertip along its ornate edge. It looked old. More than old, really. Ancient.

  Hmm.

  Holding the flashlight steady, she examined the box more closely. It didn’t appear to have a lock of any kind. Foreboding slithered through her, as cold and dry as a rattlesnake, but she ignored the feeling. Here was her solution. She was sure of it.

  Carefully, she lifted the lid. Carved on to the inside was an image she recognized: a weighing scale. No, this particular version was called … a balance. Beneath it was some kind of inscription. At first, she couldn’t read the strange words then she blinked, and suddenly she could: Daughter of Justice. She from whom there is no escape.

  What did that mean? She looked down and spotted the only item in the box—a coin. “Well, I don’t see how that helps me,” she murmured. She picked up the coin. Whatever had been engraved in the copper had long ago worn away. Time had taken away its sheen, too. What was the importance of this box and its strange little coin? Maybe nothing. After all, Alaya hadn’t locked it away.

  Her phone rang, and she yelped.

  The trilling noise was only partially muted since her purse was unzipped. She gripped the coin, placed the flashlight next to the box, and retrieved her cell.

  “Hello?”

  “Mrs. Ruthridge, it’s Dr. Macintosh. I’m afraid your husband has passed.”

  Sandra lost her breath and she sank to her knees. No! It wasn’t true! She had just seen him. She fed him a few bites of Jell-O. He’d smiled at her, and whispered, “Love you.”

  “Y-you said if h-he took a turn for the worst, you w-would call.” Grief tore at her. She couldn’t breathe. God, she couldn’t breathe! “I should’ve been there with him. He wasn’t supposed to die!”

  “I’m so very sorry,” said Dr. Macintosh. “Sometimes, it happens very quickly. He fell asleep, Mrs. Ruthridge. He died peacefully.”

  Sandra’s throat knotted and hot tears streamed down her cheeks. Garrett was gone? How could that be? Grief howled inside her like an imprisoned beast.

  “Mrs. Ruthridge? Would you like me to call someone for you?”

  “No, thank you,” she said. “I’ll be there in a few minutes. I know there are—” She stifled a sob. “—arrangements to make.”

  “There is no hurry,” said Dr. Macintosh. “One of the nurses will sit with him until you arrive.” He paused. “Please. Call someone. You shouldn’t be alone.”

  “I appreciate your advice,” she said. “Thank you.” She ended the call before he could say anything else. His obvious compassion was salt in her wounds. She didn’t want his sympathy, damn it.

  Sandra shoved the cell phone into her purse. She stood and grabbed the flashlight. Her legs wobbled uncontrollably, and she slid to the ground once more. She turned off the light and sat in the dark.

  While s
he tried to find the strength to face what lay ahead, she grappled with her new reality. Garrett was dead. She hadn’t been able to save him. If Alaya had only offered just one healing secret, Sandra’s husband would be alive. Recovering. Healthy.

  Her grief tore at her, and she cried. For the longest while, she could nothing but sob and wail and moan. When she was out of tears—and the grief became as steady and strong as her own heartbeat—she realized she felt something else.

  Rage.

  Alaya Bennington had killed Garrett.

  Fury wrapped around her grief, hardening into resolve.

  The bitch deserved punishment!

  Sandra’ hand suddenly felt warm. The coin. She lifted her fist, and opened her hand. The little circle of ancient metal glowed fiercely. It lifted about an inch off her palm and began to spin. It brightened and brightened until the space around Sandra was filled with the radiant light. Then she heard a female voice:

  I am Nemesis. She from whom there is no escape. I have looked into your heart, Sandra Ruthridge, and I have seen your pain. The scales of justice must be balanced. And I shall wreak your revenge.

  Sandra braced herself against the shelf, and watched the figure of woman walk out of the light. She was tall, over six feet at least. She was dressed in a tight black leather vest and even tighter black leather pants, and shiny black boots. Her long dark hair was woven into a long braid, and her face was porcelain beauty—strangely expressionless except for her eyes. Her eyes burned with the same kind of fury that consumed Sandra.

  The woman—Nemesis?—held a sword. She pointed the tip at Sandra’s heart. “Do you accept my gift, mortal?”

  “G-gift?”

  “Vengeance. You have suffered loss at the hands of another. And I bring you justice.”

  Sandra understood. This being would make Alaya Bennington pay for the death of Garrett.

  “Yes,” she said. “I accept your gift.”