Bayou Blues

by Sierra Dean

  A cold sensation crept up my spine. “Does she still have people here, Ben? Now that we’re out, are they going to start thinking the cops made a mistake?”

  He shook his head. “Her mom moved away years ago. Last I heard she died. The stepdad was killed in prison. No one likes a guy who kills kids, right?”

  I wanted his words to make me feel better, but instead I felt bad for the girl. No matter who or what had killed her, she’d never gotten her chance to grow up and get the hell out of this town.

  “You’re missing the point,” he said.

  I wasn’t. I was thinking like a pack ruler, and he was thinking like someone who was too emotionally attached to the girl’s death to see anything else. I felt for my brother and was heartbroken he’d been so hurt, but if he was going to be king, he couldn’t let his personal feelings get in the way of looking for the truth.

  For the first time it struck me that maybe I should be gunning to take over Callum’s throne. I hadn’t seriously considered it because Ben had been grooming himself for the job his entire life. He was literally born to be king. But wasn’t I just as good? We were the same age, the same rank, and all the claims he had to the throne applied to me as well.

  I’d never wanted to fight him for it, and I’d long convinced myself I didn’t want it. But things felt different. I felt different. And I was starting to wonder if I was more cut out for the role than I—or anyone else—had given me credit for.

  “What’s your point, then?” I asked.

  “My point is Wilder killed her.”

  Chapter Ten

  I stared out my bedroom window, watching the sun fade from yellow to orange and the sky darken around the light like a closing fist. When all the light had vanished, I opened my windows and the double doors onto the veranda and let the night air waft in.

  The heat of the day was still heavy, but with the ceiling fan going and the cool evening breeze sweeping across the floor, soon my skin was prickled with goose bumps. I wasn’t cold. Werewolves rarely got cold. But I wasn’t feeling warm and fuzzy either.

  Thanks for nothing, Ben.

  My brother had managed to derail my plans before I’d gotten a chance to fully act on them. I’d been hell-bent on running off to Wilder and helping him find Hank. Then Ben had said those three magic words.

  Wilder killed her.

  If—and it was a big if—Wilder had killed Holly, it explained a lot about why he’d left town and why he wasn’t popular with the pack. He’d put everyone at risk, and he’d murdered a girl. Maybe murder was too strong a word. As a young wolf he might have lost control. There were legitimate, albeit awful, reasons that sort of thing happened. If he’d been out on his own without a pack member to guide him, if he hadn’t yet learned to control the wolf instead of letting it control him… Things went disastrously wrong from time to time.

  I didn’t know this man well enough to be making excuses for him, yet they kept popping into my head unbidden. I wanted reasons to think well of him while still believing my brother. Ben wouldn’t lie to me about something this big. He might willfully mislead me on smaller points, but not this. He wouldn’t ruin a man’s reputation for kicks.

  Doubt nagged at me, but I ignored it because I wasn’t sure which of them I was doubting.

  “Dammit.” I kicked my bag, knocking it on its side and sending my textbooks sprawling onto the floor.

  School seemed foreign to me right now, like something people on another planet did. Studying and writing papers felt wildly unimportant in the face of everything else going on in my life. People were threatening my pack. How could I be expected to write a criminology paper when truly abominable things were happening all around me?

  I grabbed my phone and sent Cash a text. Miss you, hope the house doesn’t feel too empty without me.

  A minute later I got the reply, Don’t worry, I’ll welcome you home in every room when you get back.

  Cheeky bugger.

  I was in the process of flirting back when a flicker of light outside caught my eye.

  My bedroom faced the woods rather than the collection of small cabins behind the mansion. There shouldn’t be any light in the trees now that the sun had set.

  Unless someone was out there.

  I slipped on my shoes and went onto the veranda, squinting into the gloomy darkness, trying to understand what I was seeing. My senses should have been at their peak right now, the day after a full moon. Scent and hearing were more reliable than sight, but still I should have been able to spot someone standing in the trees without difficulty.

  The light had vanished as quickly as it appeared, making me think I must have imagined it.

  I was ready to stop looking and go back inside when a pungent waft of sulfur hit me. I wrinkled my nose, and my eyes watered at the suddenness of its arrival.

  “Oh God.” I gagged.

  The smell was so powerful I could taste it. It coated my tongue like poison. A cold sweat broke out across my skin because the memory of my last encounter with that smell was still fresh in my mind, the woman with her blistered, peeling skin and her limbs all jumbled and wrong.

  I ran across the veranda until I reached a wrought-iron spiral staircase leading from the second-floor balcony to the one below and made it to the main floor in record time. I looked around, hoping I might spot someone to drag with me. If it was the woman I’d seen before, I wouldn’t mind having someone else around to back me up, confirming she was real.

  And if it wasn’t her, having someone else with me would be more strength against whatever was out there.

  The smell was growing fainter, and if I didn’t move now, I might lose my chance.

  Argh. I was just going to have to go for it.

  I hauled ass for the tree line, running like someone trying to escape, but I needed to find the woman before she vanished. If I could see her again when I was in my human form, I might believe I hadn’t conjured her out of the dark recesses of my imagination.

  What was worse, though? A real charred dead woman stalking me, or her being the creation of my messed-up mind? That wasn’t the easiest question to answer.

  I was thankful I’d had the foresight to put on shoes before going outside. Not that the twigs and brambles would do much lasting damage to me, but it was still a lot more comfortable to run when your feet weren’t getting torn to shit every few steps.

  The sulfur smell got more powerful the farther into the woods I got. I knew I was heading in the direction of the older homestead, a slightly crumbling house used for storage these days and not much else. If she was real, was she hiding there?

  Was she something that needed to hide?

  I tried to think of a logical explanation for what she might be. She’d smelled human…well, she’d smelled like barbequed human. But that didn’t necessarily mean anything. With the brimstone stench and the burnt flesh, there was a lot of stuff to throw me off her true nature.

  A fae, maybe? I didn’t have much exposure to the fairy races, only a bog fae who had tried its hand at living in the swamp. Nasty bastard. But nothing like the creatures Secret had told me existed in the world just outside the reach of human eyes and imagination. There were things out there people still wouldn’t believe today, in spite of what humans now knew about the supernatural.

  Could this woman be one of those things?

  Demon. My brain offered up the alternative, and it was enough to draw me up short and make me think chasing her might not be the best idea.

  Demons were something I was woefully unprepared to deal with, and between the smell and the appearance of this woman, I was starting to think she might be exactly what I most feared.

  But didn’t demons try to blend in? Wasn’t it their common practice to take over a host body so they could move about unseen within humanity? My burnt stalker stuck out like a sore and terrifying thumb. No one could miss her if they came within a hundred feet of her.

  Maybe she was powerfu
l enough she didn’t need to go unseen. Maybe she was here on a mission.

  “Fucking hell.” I looked back over my shoulder to the warm yellow glow of the mansion. In the woods behind it the lights of the small pack cabins twinkled like fireflies, and the sound of early revelry was floating towards me from The Den.

  This was the stupidest idea I’d ever had, running headlong towards something that might be a demon. Was I trying to get myself killed? Save the Church of Morning the trouble? One dead werewolf, you’re welcome.

  I turned my head to the woods for one last look, and there she was, face-to-face with me.

  She opened her mouth, her teeth shockingly white against the charcoal black and red of her skin.

  “Yooouuurrrrr turrrnnnn.” Her breath crackled like a fire.

  Her fingers grazed my arm.

  I screamed.

  Chapter Eleven

  The moment the sound escaped my mouth, she vanished.

  But not before I felt the caress of her crackled, rough fingers against my cheek. She was real, she was so real. And I didn’t care if she could disappear in a puff of smoke, or whatever she was doing. For all I knew she was putting on the One Ring à la Frodo Baggins and disappearing from sight while still standing right in front of me.

  Well. That was an unsettling thought.

  My hands were shaking, and my heart was in my throat. No doubt someone at the house had heard my scream. People would be here any moment. I didn’t have much time.

  I held one hand out in front of me like I was trying to touch the darkness, though I was secretly terrified I might brush up against her.

  Gathering my wits about me, I muttered the words La Sorcière had taught me during my first years in the woods with her. She’d told them to me in French, but as time passed I learned it didn’t matter what language you spoke a spell in. The important thing was the intent behind it. I could have spoken in absolute gibberish, and as long as my focus was sharp, the spell would work the same.

  “Cloak of night conceals your face, but eyes that shine can see the space, where secrets dwell you cannot hide, the light that blooms will cast dark aside.”

  My fingertips tingled like they’d been asleep and were only now waking up. My fingernails glowed a faint orange color, and then red flames burst from my palm, engulfing my whole hand in crimson flame. It might have been scary to anyone who had never seen it before, but it was painless. At worst it made my palms a little itchy. Nothing compared to how much it could hurt to shift into my wolf form.

  The light from my spell pierced the darkness in a way no flashlight could, casting a wide circle of warm red light around me.

  “Go,” I whispered. Four small orbs appeared and darted off, one in each direction. If they found what I was looking for, they would shoot up like a flare gun, guiding me to exactly where I needed to go. They would only react to something I wanted to find, so if they bumped into anyone or anything else, they’d whizz right by it.

  Once the orbs vanished into the trees, the flames faded from my hand and my skin was normal once again. It was a handy spell in that it only used up my own energy and didn’t need blood or other ingredients like bigger magic demanded. Just some words and focus.

  It meant I could use the incantation to find my keys.

  Not that I’d ever done that.

  Okay, I’d done it a half dozen times. But only because I was utterly hopeless at leaving my keys in places where I would remember them later. What good was being a witch if I couldn’t use my magic to benefit myself from time to time?

  The longer the orbs were gone without sending off sparks, the more worried I became. Either she wasn’t real, or she was a demon who had vanished into the ether. Both options frightened me to no end.

  But she’d touched me. I’d felt her ruined skin on my cheek.

  There was no way I was imagining that.

  “Genie?” A quiet voice broke through my reverie, and I glanced back to see Magnolia approaching through the trees. Behind her a few other pack members had followed, drawn by my scream. No sign of Ben or Callum though, so they couldn’t have been too worried.

  Magnolia’s cheeks were flushed, and when she reached me, she placed a hand on each of my arms, her eyes grazing over me to make sure there was nothing amiss.

  “I’m okay,” I promised.

  “We heard ya scream.” Randall, a middle-aged werewolf I’d known most of my life, came up behind Mags. He looked rattled, but seeing me in one piece made him soften visibly, like letting his guard down took physical effort.

  I felt terrible for frightening them, but I was glad they were here. The mere presence of other wolves calmed my nerves.

  “An’ I saw yer little light show,” added Marshall, Randall’s younger brother. At least by now everyone was used to a fireworks display every now and then. They’d all come to accept the magic as a part of who I was.

  Once I’d assured them I wouldn’t be blowing up any more cabins, that is.

  Not having to explain or deny my powers was one of the nice things about being at home as opposed to being in Tulane. Cash had enough trouble with the werewolf stuff, so I’d decided to leave witchcraft on the back burner for the time being. And there were still religious groups out there who associated being a witch with being a devil worshipper.

  Being a were-witch would probably put me on a lot of top-ten lists for biggest monster in America. I’d be the poster child for why the world was suddenly in a handbasket on its way straight to hell.

  No thank you.

  So I kept my powers on the DL unless I was around people who already knew about them. The pack, my sister and her colleagues. It was a short list, and I intended to keep it that way.

  “I thought I saw something and came out here to check on it. Turns out I was wrong.”

  A shrill popping sound grabbed all our attention, and we watched as a spray of glittery red light rained down a couple hundred meters away, near where the old manor house was.

  Panic tightened my chest. The lights had found something, but now that I had the backup I’d been craving before, I didn’t want to take them out there. I also didn’t want to go alone.

  “An’ what was that all about?” Marshall asked.

  Instead of telling them what the seeking orbs were really doing, I fibbed. “Guide lights. I thought if I was going to keep walking around, it might be a good idea to see where I was going. That’s all.” I was a terrible liar, but it was close enough to the truth they might buy it. The truth was, I’d seen the face of the thing following me, and even though I wanted to know what she was, I was afraid to face her again, with or without them.

  “You sure you didn’t see anything?” Randall asked. “With those Church freaks gunnin’ for us, maybe we ought to send folks out to check.”

  “It wasn’t the Church.” I glanced back in the direction of the raining light, feeling woozy.

  Mags must have sensed my nerves because she put her hand over mine and squeezed gently, bringing my attention back to them. “Let’s go back.”

  “Okay.” I was going to have to accept that I’d lost the woman for now. Until the next time she came after me, that is. I let Mags get a couple steps ahead of me then whispered the closing incantation of the spell. “Your job is done.”

  The glitter faded, and the other orbs blinked out into nothing.

  But not before I saw the faint red shimmer of sparks in my bedroom. The seeking light had found something else.

  Something a lot closer to home.

  Chapter Twelve

  I walked up from the veranda with Magnolia, wanting someone with me in case the creature from the woods was in my bedroom. Magnolia might not be the toughest wolf in the pack, but she was my friend and the fastest runner I knew. If things went from bad to worse, she could get to help in a hurry.

  I expected to be hit by the smell of sulfur the minute I got up the stairs, but there was only the familiar scent of aging wood fr
om the house basking in the sun all day, and the constant aroma of werewolf that was as pervasive as the trees around us.

  Maybe I’d imagined it. I paused with her outside my bedroom, peering in through the open doors to see if anything seemed out of the ordinary, but it looked as empty as when I’d left it.

  I was losing it.

  “Sorry about all that.” I gestured to the woods. “I think the whole thing on the highway has me a bit spooked.”

  “Girl, if you weren’t scared, I would think you needed your head examined.” Mags pushed her almost white blonde hair behind her ears and smiled. She was two years older than me but had the face of someone who would always be young, round cheeks and bright eyes. How she had managed to turn out so sweet with a mother as neurotic and power hungry as Amelia, I would never know.

  I hugged her, glad for the first time to be back.

  She returned the embrace, laughing. “Look, if you want, we can go out there tomorrow when it’s light out and have a look around, maybe see if whatever you thought was out there left anything behind?”

  I smiled and nodded but knew I was unlikely to take her up on the offer. But if I did wander out there again, I wasn’t going alone. Coming face-to-face with that monster had damn near scared the shit out of me.

  She gave me another hug. “It’s good to have you back.”

  “It’s good to be back.”

  Neither of us mentioned that the stay wasn’t permanent. I knew Mags would love it if I came home for good, but I wasn’t ready to give up my independence, no matter how flimsy it was. She vanished down the stairs, leaving me alone in front of my bedroom.

  As I stepped through the open doors, the long curtains swirled around my ankles, tickling the back of my legs. Nothing here felt out of place or wrong, but I had the vague sensation I wasn’t alone. The bathroom light was on, casting a long, bright column across the room but making it harder for me to see into the darker spaces. I considered shouting for Mags to return, but without the smell of sulfur, I wasn’t particularly afraid of whatever might be in here with me.