Surviving Today

by Mande Chambers

  “Cristian doesn’t give a damn if I want what’s in that box. He wants me to see the contents because he wants something out of it or me.”

  Kai shrugged, watching with mild interest as the small cut on her neck knitted itself together. “Either way, don’t open it until you’re home. Nice trick with the self-healing. It’s too bad you can’t use it more often.”

  With that, he disappeared again.

  Ten minutes later, Shanna found herself sitting at the kitchen table staring at the small wooden box. She knew she shouldn’t give into her curious nature and open the lid, but she had to.

  Hell, she wasn’t even sure it wasn’t a bomb. Cristian had risked Kai coming out into the open to make sure she received the box. That alone told her that whatever was in the box was important and wasn’t going to harm her.

  At least right now, in the physical sense.

  She unlatched the small silver lock, lifting the lid without another thought. She shifted through the paperwork, pictures, and scientific notes, her jaw dropping.

  No freaking way.

  There was no freaking way any of this was true. Or possible, for that matter. The man had officially lost his freaking mind. He and Christoph Yves had finally crossed the fine line that separated pure genius from insanity.

  There was definitely a hole in the bag that held Cristian’s marbles if he was willingly handing her this mine field of information.

  Shanna quickly put everything back in the box, closed the lid, and pushed back from the table. Glancing at the clock, she took the box down to her room.

  Taking a deep breath, she let it out slowly as she set the box down on her bed.

  Educ de homine cogitamus.

  Roughly translated, the spell said to bring forth the person she was thinking of.

  Reece Whitfield suddenly appeared in her room, dressed in his soccer uniform, dirty cleats leaving dirt particles on her rug.

  He dropped the soccer ball in his hand on her bed, shooting her an incredulous look. “Really?!” he demanded.

  She smiled sheepishly. “Sorry, I needed you here to run some information by you that just recently, uh, fell into my hands.”

  Reece crossed his arms over his chest, eyeing the blood on her collar. “So, how is Kai doing these days?”

  Shanna shrugged, pointing to the wooden box beside the soccer ball. “Same old homicidal jackass he’s always been. That’s not why I brought you here. You need to read what’s in that box.”

  Reece looked at her like she’d lost her mind, but flipped the box open, shifting through its contents. His eyes widened, all the blood draining from his face.

  “I need to know if this is possible,” she said, fear causing her voice to waiver.

  Reece slammed the lid closed like the paperwork inside had suddenly transformed into snakes that were about to bite his hand. He grabbed his soccer ball, backing away from the bed. His wide ocean colored eyes met her emerald green ones. “Let me do some digging of my own and get back to you on that one. If it’s possible, we need to stop it as soon as possible.”

  Shanna nodded. “I agree.”

  Reece waved his hand and disappeared back to where she’d borrowed him from without another word.

  She grabbed the box, hiding it in the back of her closet with a cloaking spell to protect it. With the lack of privacy she was afforded in this household, she couldn’t risk anyone finding the contents.

  Shanna was sitting on her bed, contemplating the potentially devastating information in the box, along with its potential impact on humans worldwide, when D walked in.

  He leaned a shoulder against the door jamb. “I thought we agreed to meet out front ten minutes ago.”

  She blinked, focusing on him. Her hand absently went her neck. She realized her mistake when she saw his eyes zero in on the bloody collar of her jacket. Fire flashed through his blue eyes like lightening, a gray storm threatening to take over.

  Shanna pretended not to notice, hoping he would let the matter be. “Sorry, got lost in thought,” she said hastily.

  D hissed out a breath, trying to keep his voice level and controlled. “I’m going to ask this once and only once. I swear to God, if you lie to me…” He let the sentence trail off as he attempted to reign in his rising temper. “What happened to your neck?”

  Damn. So much for him letting the matter die off. She should have known better than to have even a miniscule sliver of hope.

  She stood up. Grabbing the change of shirt she’d laid out earlier off the top of her dresser, she headed into the small bathroom. “It’s nothing to be concerned about,” she tossed over her shoulder as she shut the door in his face.

  Through the door, she heard, “Well, at least you didn’t lie to my face. That’s a nice change of pace. Anyway, that better not be the work or a certain brother of yours or you and I are going to have definite issues.”

  “We already have definite issues.”

  “Shanna…”

  She quickly changed into the shirt, opening the bathroom door. She stood in the doorway in a tight pale pink knit sweater and light blue jeans. “D…”

  “Let’s go,” he choked out, his eyes wide. She swore she saw him drool a little.

  Yeah, that’s what she thought.

  Three weeks later, Shanna was crossing the same park at night, steadily relaxing her breathing from her jog on one of the many running trails, when she suddenly found herself boxed in with a brick wall at her back.

  Her eyes narrowed, picking Kai out of the group of four men dressed from head-to-toe in black instantly.

  He smiled, dropping a canister onto the grass between them.

  She swore, watching as the canister opened. She moaned in pain, grabbing her head as a low, high pitched beeping sound emitted from the open canister a second before a pulse wave hit.

  “A magnetic pulse wave is so not playing fair,” she grumbled, letting her head go as she stood up straighter, glaring at Kai.

  Kai shrugged. “You having those pesky little witchy powers isn’t fair either. I’m just leveling the playing field.”

  “So much man power for a mere teenage girl,” she observed, ignoring his logic.

  “Yeah, well, we both know you’re not your average teenage girl. You took Daven out without breaking a sweat and he was one of our best. So, I’m not taking any chances.”

  Kai signaled to one of the men to his left. The man instantly shifted into a wolf. Kai pulled something out of his pocket, putting the small object into the animal’s mouth.

  The brown wolf padded over to her, nudging her hand. When he growled low in his throat, she rolled her eyes, holding her hand out. The wolf slid the bracelet onto her wrist. Transforming back into a fully clothed man, he reached over and pushed the small red button on the metal bracelet.

  “Seriously?” she asked the man. As he sauntered back over to Kai’s side, she shrugged nonchalantly, shooting her so called brother a pitying look. “If Daven was one of your best men, if you can really call him that, then I really think you and Cristian need to raise your expectation level on your experiments.”

  Daven was a sociopath that played with his victims until they were begging for him to kill them. She wasn’t the one to take him out, per se, but she wasn’t going to tell them that. She also wasn’t mourning his death.

  She was starting to think Cristian and his backers underestimated what she was capable of now that she was out from under their control.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me!” she yelled as a current of electricity suddenly coursed through her body.

  Kai laughed. “Did you seriously think that I would neutralize the Jekyll part of your genetic makeup without taking out the Hyde half? Yes, I know a steady stream of electricity isn’t enough to keep Hyde at bay, but the bracelet has a charm cast by our best warlock embedded into the current. It is more than capable of keeping Hyde in hibernation until we are done with this little meeting of the minds.”

  Shanna looked at Kai like he was
an idiot. “Meeting of the minds? Is that what we’re calling these run-ins now?”

  She gritted her teeth as one of Kai’s henchmen—or dogs, either term fit the shifter and werewolf he’d surrounded himself with—ran his hands over her body. He was seriously patting her down for weapons. She knew that they had known that she was a Regulator, even though they couldn’t sense her, before they had neutralized her powers, but really?

  It’s not like she really needed her knife to handle most situations her heritage got her into. Her powers from both sides of her genetic code usually covered her.

  Unless, of course, the supernatural creatures she hunted came prepared.

  She stared at Kai incredulously. “I’m in a tank top and running shorts with no pockets. Are you serious right now? My clothes are skintight, where the hell am I going to hide my Kerambit or any other weapon? Even with a cloaking spell, it’s impractical when jogging.”

  The henchman currently feeling her up, turned her around, pressing her face into the brick, so that she was standing spread eagle against the wall. He continued his pat down on her backside. “You’re wearing a bra,” he returned, putting more pressure in the center of her back to keep her still. “You could easily hide a small weapon in your sports bra.”

  Shanna winced involuntarily as the abrasive brick bit into her cheek, drawing blood out of shallow scratches.

  Damn. He had a point.

  She’d done it before.

  And, while her Regulator blade was similar to the three-point-five inch curved blade carried by Special Forces soldiers, it was a completely different weapon. Regulators usually referred to it as a Kerambit knife to keep its true name and purpose from the creatures they hunted. She didn’t know why, it was a stupid rule handed down through the generations.

  Holy crap.

  Kai actually had someone smart on his team. Good for him.

  They guy let her go, adding, “I’ve seen weapons placed in some rather interestingly strategic places. So, if it’s all the same to you, I would rather play it safe.”

  She spun around, rubbing the burning invisible tattoo on her forearm. She just bet he had, seeing as he was a vampire. Vampires, contrary to popular culture, didn’t always go for the neck when drinking blood. Other veins or arteries throughout the body were less obvious places to leave fang marks.

  “I’ve got a better place to look,” Lucian Lanthani, Kai’s best friend and right hand man said.

  Thank God that man is one hundred percent human like Kai, Shanna thought as she glared at Lucian. “You’re a sick fucker, you know that?”

  Lucian shrugged. “I like ‘em young, so sue me. We all know, though, while you look fourteen, you are much, much older than that. Infinity Coven witches live forever, hence the name. There may be ways to kill your body permanently, but everyone—who knows about your kind anyway—knows that you’re just reborn into another life cycle. And those of you who are Regulators, well, the other side of your genetics can only be killed by one person in all the realms, so there’s that.”

  First off, had he seriously used the word ‘hence’? Wasn’t that too complex of a word for his IQ level? Second of all, the man did have a point. As sick and twisted as it was, he was one hundred percent right. And finally, she so wasn’t touching the first sentence of his statement with a ten foot pole.

  She shuddered. “I’m not even going to touch that one.”

  Shanna looked around the group of men built like linebackers. “As fun as this little meeting of the supernatural is, I’m not a fan of hanging around a psychotic shifter under your command, a vampire who obviously isn’t afraid to break the rules, and a werewolf who doesn’t have a clue as to what he has gotten himself into.” She made the hurry up motion with her hands. “And I really need to get home. Is there anything in particular I can help you with to speed this up?”

  Kai backhanded her.

  She took it without uttering a sound.

  She spit the blood pooling in her mouth out onto the grass, mentally gagging at the nasty metallic after taste. Her eyes went ice cold as she looked at him expectantly.

  Kai smiled. His famous switchblade materialized in his hand.

  She eyed it warily, her heart sinking into her stomach. Without any of her supernatural powers, he could do some serious damage with that thing.

  Suddenly, there was a henchman on either side of her, holding her against the wall.

  Her heart dropped to her toes, her pulse speeding up like she was running a 10k race.

  She felt the pinch of the needle, the world going fuzzy.

  She heard Kai say, “She’s all yours, Lucien, but I get to watch,” before a curtain of blackness appeared before her eyes.

  Shanna swore a blue streak as she carefully bandaged the three inch cut to the right of her left ribcage, careful to keep the bleeding to a minimum as she pulled the wrap tighter.

  She bit the inside of her cheek to the point of blood as she cleaned the five inch gash just below her panty line on her left thigh. Tears burned behind her eyes as she carefully bandaged the wound.

  Thanks to the effects of the MP wave and the charm on the bracelet, even though it had been removed after they were done with her, she wasn’t capable of healing herself. And, even if she could, she would still have scars that would eventually need to be explained.

  Either way, a cover story needed to be set in motion.

  And, to be quite honest, whatever drug had been in the needle was seriously messing with her abilities.

  She wasn’t willing to risk what was needed to heal injuries this severe.

  She swallowed a scream as she started to pull her tank top off, the movement causing the deep incision that crossed her lower abdomen, similar to a C-section incision, to bleed even more. She couldn’t curb the bleeding on that wound.

  She reluctantly pulled her bloody shirt back down, reaching for the phone on the night stand.

  She quickly dialed a number and thanked whomever was listening that it was a Saturday night. All the other teenagers in the house were out partying and it was date night for Finley and Melina.

  Someone finally picked up the other end of the phone.

  “I need a huge favor,” she said into the receiver as she watched the blood seep through the new bandage, soaking it completely. “I’ll explain when you get here, but I need you here immediately or you’re going to finish this particular life cycle out without me.”

  Two weeks later, it was the middle of May and close to the end of the school year. The knife wounds were completely healed, thanks to a quick response from Reece that night and the most complicated spells known to man. It had taken a few hours for the wounds to finish healing, turning into freshly pink scars.

  While Reece had been able to heal the physical wounds with his magic—unlike her and Rhyder, he was a full-blooded Infinity Coven witch—the internal pain would stick around until the normal healing time for the wounds (if she had gotten staples and stiches) passed.

  With the gingerly way she was moving, she and Reece had no choice but to bring Finley up to speed on what had happened so he could come up with a cover story.

  Yes, Finley knew what she was.

  No, she wasn’t ready to go into how he knew.

  If anyone asked, and they would, she was to tell them she was involved in an accident. Human verses car, with the car winning and driving off. That was what Finley came up with to explain her funky walking style.

  Collapsing into one of the oversized chairs in the open area of the library, she fought another phantom wave of pain. It wasn’t bad as it used to be, but she still had to grit her teeth.

  She was supposed to be meeting D out front for a ride home, but she figured he would come looking for her if she wasn’t out there.

  She took a deep breath, blowing it out slowly. This was getting ridiculous. She needed to find a way to avoid Kai and his men when they showed up in the city. The run-ins were escalating and she wasn’t sure she’d survive the next one.
/>
  “So, you’re really sticking with this car accident story, huh?”

  Shanna looked up, stifling a groan. She flipped Karmichael off. “Shut up. It works and how the hell do you know if it’s true or not?”

  Karmichael shook his head. “You forget, I know what you are and what your life is really like. So, you’re not going to tell them the truth, are you?”

  “Nope.”

  He sighed. “Yeah, I thought so. C’mon, let’s get you out front before Tiern has a conniption fit.”

  CHAPTER 27

  August 2015

  Montana

  I need you Megs!

  Holy crap!

  Megan winced at the loud, desperate cry—scratch that, shout—in her mind and fought against the floating sensation fighting to keep it’s grasp on her.

  He needed her. Something was seriously wrong.

  Dangerously wrong.

  She opened her eyes, breathed deep, and jumped off the bed.

  Whoa. Someone needed to stop the planet so she could get off.

  “Jesus Christ!” a startled Derrick exclaimed as he jumped back, knocking over the chair beside the bed.

  Corbin chuckled from the corner of the room. “You get used to that eventually. No, not really. It’s a nice thought, though. Welcome back Megs.”

  Since no one was in a hurry to stop the out of control planet, Megan took a minute to allow the world to right itself. She pulled her tangled hair into a haphazard ponytail. “Where is he, Evans?” she demanded, her voice raspy.

  “’Hi, Corbin. Thanks for the help earlier. Thank you for taking care of my unconscious body while I was off partying on the Sleep Express to Dreamland.’” Corbin tossed her a water bottle. “Godzilla is out in the barn with Hewey, Dewey, and Louie. Larry, Curly, and Moe might be somewhere in the vicinity.”

  Megan caught the bottle and drained it in one gulp. “How long has it been since the overgrown rampaging lizard—nice reference, by the way—regained consciousness?”