Claws and Effect

by Amanda Arista

  CLAWS AND EFFECT

  DIARIES OF AN URBAN PANTHER

  AMANDA ARISTA

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Epilogue

  Glossary of the Wanderer Universe

  About the Author

  Also by Amanda Arista

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Prologue

  Dear Diary,

  I know it’s been a while. Five months ago, after I was attacked in the back alley of my town house, I was rescued by an überhot guy named Chaz. He told me that there was a prophecy all about me and that I might turn into a werepanther. He was right on both counts.

  Four months ago, Spencer Haverty, my maker, the guy who bit me, tried to convince me to join the dark side. It didn’t work. So he poisoned me and left me for dead. Jessa, my best friend in the world, is also apparently an undercover fairy princess (I know . . .). She saved the day but bonded us together as the dynamic duo in charge of opening the Veil, a thin border between our world and the world where wild things live, including a demon named Jovan, who desperately wants to take over our reality.

  Three months ago, in an epic battle against my maker to save my best friend and the world as we know it, Spencer jumped through the Veil, and I ended up killing his father, the Primo of the Dallas Pride. As he lay dying, he gave me his power, all of it: the Haverty Legacy and the hellfire that comes with it.

  Yep. Welcome to my world.

  Chapter One

  I DIDN’T NOTICE THE intoxicating aroma of stale creek water until I was finished packing up my laptop and notes. Crap. And I thought today might just be a normal day. Silly Violet.

  I slowly scanned my coffee shop. Nothing new here. Same coffee guy. Same old man who sat in the corner everyday grumbling at the newspaper. Then, a shadow darted across the sun-filled window.

  I put my bag over my shoulder and moved carefully out of the café. The scent was still there, lingering. Watching. Waiting. Double crap.

  With ears peeled and eyes aware of everything around me, I stalked around the corner to the small lot where my car was parked. I kept my borders open but not relaxed, aware but not overpowering.

  And that’s when it hit me. A burst of wind lifted me up and threw me against the brick wall of the coffee shop. I cracked my head against the wall, but what was really painful was the crack of my laptop against the brick. I slid down the wall and landed on my feet. The laptop was new. Now, I was pissed.

  A slight, scraggly man walked across the parking lot. He looked greasy and smelled like lightening. Smelled like Sensei. The man’s dark hair hung over his ice blue eyes and his acid-washed jacket needed to go back to the eighties where it came from.

  I just smiled. My Jeet Kune Do sensei, an ancient wind elemental himself, had thrown me against more walls than I could count during our five months of training. And if this guy really was looking for a fight, this was going to be cathartic.

  “Thanks,” I said to him as he approached in long, determined strides for his small figure. I ran my fingers through my hair. “Wind-blown look is all the rage this season.”

  “You shouldn’t be laughing,” the man snarled.

  “Why not?” I was already looking for an escape route. There were three, providing that Little Boy Blew stayed where he was. Thank you, Chaz, for making me a paranoid little panther. While other couples were playing footsie on their dates, Chaz and I were playing Shoots and Ladders, discussing the best places to hide weapons and to get out of a place quickly and undetected.

  The man stopped six feet away. I pushed myself away from the wall. He couldn’t have been any taller than me in his oversized combat boots. Compensate much?

  His hands clenched tightly at his side, just like Sensei’s did. “You’re about to die.”

  “You know,” I said as I pulled off my already pulverized laptop and set it on the ground next to me. “People keep saying that. In fact, you’re the fourth.”

  And he was. Little showdowns like this were becoming a pretty regular thing. They all wanted a piece of Violet to prove something. And they all walked away bleeding. Of course, most of the time I had Chaz or Jessa with me. But solo might be fun. This little guy would be no trouble.

  “And the last.”

  I love men and their bravado.

  As with Sensei, I could sense the attack before it came, a whiff of lightening on the wind. Got to love those panther super senses. The man drew in his energy and punched it at me. His power extended out from his hand and a fist of wind hit the brickwork next to my head. Brick chunks flew off the wall and got caught in my hair. The noise made me jump. So, maybe he might be a little stronger than first assessed.

  Another attack came a second later, and I slid down the wall to avoid the attack, another crushed brick in the wall.

  “Ready for the real show?”

  “Sure,” I nodded.

  Turned out that two wind punches at a time wasn’t as easy to avoid. Dodged one of them but the other caught me in the chest. My shoulder blade ground into the wall, and I smelled blood.

  And then I smelled wet dog again.

  Holding my arm, I watched as a man the size of a linebacker tackled the small elemental to the ground. There wasn’t much of a struggle with such a surprise attack. The smaller man’s head slammed against the pavement and his eyes rolled back in his head. I didn’t miss the irony that the wind probably got knocked out of him. Either way, by the looks of the wound to his forehead that now dripped blood onto the pavement, he wasn’t getting up any time soon.

  I grabbed for my laptop and quickly found my keys in my pocket. The bulky pepper spray Chaz gave me was easy to grab.

  The large man stood up and brushed off his dusty trench coat. He looked down at the elemental and nudged the body with his foot. Seeming satisfied, he turned toward me.

  I’d never forget that smell. It had accosted me too many times and was associated with too many bad memories. But if it weren’t for his smell, I don’t know if I would have even recognized him from any other homeless person on the street. His brown hair hung down around his dark brown eyes now and his cheeks were a bit more sunken in and smudged with dirt.

  “What do you want, Briggs?” I asked. His presence here was more concerning than the fourth assassination attempt moments before. Two months ago, Briggs and his mongrels had my best friend strapped to a chair, ready to cut her into pieces. Now, he stood before me like a sullen child.

  “Nothing,” he said quickly.

  “Then why are you still following me?”

  I couldn’t read his expression, couldn’t guess what he was thinking, but his power was low, nothing aggressive, like a hot coal left alone in a fire pit. My brain was wiped clean of all the images of violence that his other form, a black lab, had caused and was replaced by that of a little lost puppy.

  “Because we need you.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Not this again.”


  “We need someone to protect us.”

  “No,” I said shaking my head as I walked past him toward my car. “I’ve already got enough on my plate. I’m not taking on a bunch of mutts. You’re grown men.”

  “We don’t know where else to go.”

  “You’re a police officer, Briggs.”

  “Not anymore.”

  I paused in my retreat to my car. There had been repercussions from my showdown against the Haverty Pride two months ago, but up to this point, it had all been aimed at me. An attack from a wind elemental here, a werewolf there. It had never occurred to me just how influential the Havertys could have been or what could befall a rogue member of the Pride after I had rid the Pride of both its head and its heir.

  I turned to face him and crossed my arms over my chest. I didn’t want to do this. I really wasn’t just being catty when I said I had a lot on my plate. Work was picking up. I had a movie filming this summer. Chaz was moving in piece by piece. Jessa and I now did patrols around the city to find weak spots in the Veil between worlds. My schedule was packed.

  But it was that damn kicked puppy look that got me. The way he would not match my eyes, the way his shoulders sunk. “Why?”

  I could have sworn I heard a boot steps on the gravel. As Briggs and I looked over to where the elemental had fallen, nothing was left but a scuff in the dirt and a puff of dust.

  I looked back up at the darkly clad man. It worried me how this huge man could look so lost. What worried me even more was that I was the only person he could turn to. A thought gleamed above all the crazy stories that usually ran around up there: I had to help them. The last prophesy of my mother’s. I needed to give them a direction because without one, they would perish.

  “Let me buy you a cup of coffee.”

  HE LOOKED UNCOMFORTABLE in the chair across from me. He kept moving like he couldn’t find the right spot. I was going to suggest that if he needed to circle to get comfortable he could; it wouldn’t bother me any. But he probably wasn’t accustomed to my humor yet.

  “I watched you from that corner over there a few times.” Briggs gestured to the convenience store across the street.

  “Why?”

  “Spencer,” he said as his eyes darted down to his black coffee. “He told us to keep an eye on you when he couldn’t.”

  “So you know where I live and where I work out and obviously where I get coffee?” I swirled my second caramel latté for the day. “Then why step in now?”

  “You needed help?”

  “From that pip-squeak?”

  “He’s not just a pip-squeak,” the man said as he leaned across the table. “He was the son of one of Haverty’s closest cohorts. He is actually powerful enough to be a threat, not to mention determined enough.”

  “Why do they keep attacking me?”

  It was a question I had been asking everyone else for the past two months, since the first attack. Chaz said that every pack was different and Iris was eerily silent about how it used to work when she was in charge.

  “You killed the Primo of the Pride. Makes you the Prima of the Pride.”

  “No, it doesn’t.”

  “In this pack, it does. Makes you the Prima whether you like it or not. And the others are vying for your position. Which means they need to kill you to claim the title.”

  I began to spin my coffee cup on the table between us. “What does that mean?”

  The man licked his lower lip and his eyes darted around the table like he might find that words hidden in the wood grain of the space between us. “Haverty was grooming Spencer to take over. How to exchange powers, how to keep different breeds in check, how to manage the family business. Spencer was responsible for new recruitment.”

  I had to laugh.

  “What?” the man asked confused.

  “His idea of new recruitment was snacking on me in a back alley.”

  The man didn’t smile. Still not used to my humor yet. Check.

  I changed the subject. Talking about how many others wanted to kill me was leaving a taste in my mouth that the coffee couldn’t mask. “How many of you are there in your little family?”

  “Don’t remember from the alley?”

  Nice. He was catching on to the Violet rhythm of things. “Five. Who are the others?”

  “Only four now. Nash, Shadow, and, of course, Tyler.”

  “Tyler?”

  Briggs nodded. “My little brother.”

  Crap, there was family involved. Family always made things more complicated. I leaned forward across the table and lowered my voice. “And you’re all dogs, right?”

  He nodded again. Yay, yet another man who didn’t mince his words.

  As I felt his low anxious energy across the table from me, my decision felt more solid. Give them a direction before someone else does. “Okay.”

  “Okay what?” Briggs asked.

  “I’ll do what I can.”

  His eyes rose to finally meet mine. They were dark, wide, and brown, not doglike at all.

  “It’s not a great promise, I know. But I’ll try. And in return, I want something.”

  His eyes dropped to the table. I got the sinking feeling in my stomach that no one had ever given him anything that he didn’t have to pay for in some way or another. I didn’t want to be that, didn’t want to be any closer to Spencer than I knew I already was.

  “I need information, anything that you can give me about how the pack works, how he did whatever he did.”

  Briggs ducked his head in a small nod.

  “And for starters, I want all of you fed and washed and clothed.”

  Didn’t think it was possible, but his head and shoulders ducked down a little further. “We don’t exactly have the income for something like that.”

  “Don’t worry about it.”

  The sentence stunned me almost as much as it stunned him. I usually wasn’t too free with my money, and I had just promised away an easy grand. Wasn’t like I had college funds to save for, and I almost owned the town house already. Had a nice little nest egg for something, might as well be for a Dallas version of “What not to wear.”

  “But let’s just talk first. All five of us. Can you guys meet me at the Galleria on Thursday?”

  He nodded a sharp curt nod, like that of a military man. “Yes, ma’am.”

  I winced at the title. “I’ll meet the boys and you can fill me in on a few things.”

  Briggs looked confused for a moment.

  “What?” I stood and put my bag on my shoulder again. I heard the distinct sound of plastic against plastic and my heart sunk. My computer warranty didn’t cover hurricanes.

  “I just haven’t figured out the game yet,” he said with a small furrow between his brows. “You have to want something more in return than just information.”

  I shook my head. “It’s something that I need. And you’ll quickly find out, Mr. Briggs, that I don’t play games.”

  He licked his lips and looked down at the coffee he had used more as a hand warmer than refreshment.

  “So Thursday at the Galleria around two.” I made it sound like an order. I knew he could take orders and frankly, this one was for his own good.

  THE RUMBLE OF the Dodge Challenger as it pulled into the garage was unmistakable; it vibrated the entire house. I was the girl in the neighborhood with the rough and tumble boyfriend. All the women thought the car needed a new muffler. The men just drooled when he parked on the street. If only they knew how much he had actual paid for it to sound like that.

  I was in the shower. When I’d gotten home, I still had the smell of Briggs in my nose and thought a shower with my scented soaps would get the chewed pig hoof out of my nasal passages. And even though it was healed by the time I got home, I didn’t want Chaz to see the dried blood on my shoulder. He was funny about things like that, me getting into fights on the playground, me bleeding, et cetera.

  The crack in the door let in his scent before the offending chill in the air. God
, I had missed that smell. His scent was beginning to fade from his pillow during this last trip of his. Despite the scalding water, my skin chilled in anticipation of just seeing him.

  How pathetic is that?

  “Hello, London,” he said as he stepped through the fog of my hot shower. He closed the door quickly.

  Chaz wiped the steamy door and peered in.

  “Hello, stranger. I’ll be done in a minute.” I leaned forward to rinse my face.

  “No rush.”

  I looked over at him just to see the outline of his shirt as he pulled it off and heard the clink of his belt as his jeans hit the floor.

  He slid the glass door open for a moment and stepped in. His strong hands slid around my waist and he pulled me to his solid frame. I rested my head back on his shoulder.

  “This really isn’t fair.”

  “I’m only doing my part to save the environment,” he said into my ear before he began to kiss down my neck.

  “Right. You just want me to wash your back.”

  But I wouldn’t have wanted to change anything about that moment. I had missed him, missed him more than I wanted to tell to him. My brain began to fog and the world quickly faded into just him and me and our shower.

  His hands began to slide around my slippery frame.

  “You have the best body,” he whispered into my wet neck.

  I twisted in his embrace and ran my hands up his perfect chest. Just wasn’t fair that I had never seen him work out. He ran with me, on my slower days, but he didn’t skip meals and he didn’t pump iron. He was just made all muscley and rippley. Must be nice to be a guardian. I had to get a mystical curse to loose fifteen pounds.

  Chaz looked down at me with contented hazel eyes. It had been ages since I’d seen his tell-tale furrow. Right now, he was happy. I could see that in his eyes and feel it in the heat below his waist.

  “Miss me?”

  “Every moment.”

  Chaz kissed me slowly. The water ran swiftly down my back in steaming rivets, but all I could feel was the long line of his body as his tongue slid across mine. Parts below my navel tightened as his hand slid down my back and smoothly over my rear.

  Soap from my shampoo began to taint our kiss, and I pulled back into the stream of water to rinse.