Wicked Creatures

by Jessica Meigs

  “Well, maybe he did,” she said quietly. “It’s obvious he cared about you—”

  “He loved me,” Zachariah interrupted, his voice cracking. “He told me so, all the damn time, even if he never actually said the words until…” He trailed off and shook his head, closing his eyes. “Doesn’t matter now.”

  “Hey, it always matters,” Riley said. “Always.”

  “I don’t want to talk about this anymore,” Zachariah said. He stood abruptly and staggered to the bathroom, slamming the door behind him.

  She picked up a spare bullet from the table and flopped back in her chair, scowling at the wall. “Well, that went great,” she grumbled before flinging the bullet across the room. It collided with a bang against the wall and clattered to the floor, rolling underneath the table by the bed.

  Scott dragged himself out of what could only be described as the sleep of the dead. He groaned softly and stretched his arm to the side, feeling for Riley as he lifted his face out of the pillow he’d had it buried in. He was surprised to discover that she wasn’t in the room with him. He hadn’t heard her leave—which was probably a testament to how hard he’d been sleeping, especially considering his recently enhanced senses—but he could still smell her strongly on the cheap white pillowcase covering the pillow beside his.

  He groaned and rolled onto his back, crossing to Riley’s side of the bed. The intensity of her scent became stronger with the motion, and he fought off the baser animal instincts inside him that wanted to roll around and revel in it, instead crawling out of the bed with great reluctance. After a pit stop in the bathroom to freshen up and use the facilities, he went into the other room to see what was going on in there.

  The only person he saw in the room as he stopped in the doorway was Riley. She sat in one of the chairs at the small table by the window, looking for all the world like she was sulking. He heard the water beyond the closed bathroom door turn on and the distinctive clank of a belt buckle hitting tile. “Where is everybody?” he asked, and as a little dart of alarm roiled through him, he added, “And where’s my niece?”

  Gravel crunched outside, and Riley brushed the edge of the curtain aside to look before answering. “Outside with Damon and Angelique. They just pulled up.”

  “Well, where the hell have they been?” he demanded, storming to the door and flinging it open. “He’s not supposed to take her in public right now. There’s a fucking Amber Alert out on her, for Christ’s sake!”

  “Don’t take the Lord’s name in vain,” Riley said. “Especially since it appears we’re working for Him now.”

  “My statement stands,” he gritted out, feeling like his hackles were rising at the idea of Katie being put in any sort of danger. Shaking off the emotion, he stepped out the door. Katie was in the process of sliding out of the backseat of a black SUV, tugging the hems of her shorts down as she tried to catch ice cream drips from a cone of vanilla soft serve before they fell onto her hand. She looked for all the world like a happy, normal teenager and not the terrified one she’d been three days before, when she’d been kidnapped by Brandon’s men from the parking lot of the restaurant where she worked, had seen Scott kill a man with his bare hands, and had witnessed Ashton—who’d unquestionably been her protector in captivity—get murdered right in front of her. He couldn’t help but wonder just how scarred she’d end up being from the experience.

  All the more reason why he didn’t want her out of his sight.

  “Damon, what the hell did you think you were doing?” he demanded, focusing his ire on the man exiting the driver’s door.

  Damon raised an eyebrow and took his sunglasses off then leaned back into the vehicle to retrieve a couple of drinks. “What are you talking about?”

  “I expressly remember asking you not to take Katie anywhere, especially if I’m not there,” he said. “It’s too damn risky, and if anything happens, I want to be there to stop it.”

  “You’re assuming that if something happens, you’ll be able to stop it,” Damon replied, thrusting one of the drinks into his hands.

  “You are clearly forgetting what I’m capable of,” Scott said, keeping his voice low so Katie wouldn’t hear.

  Damon ignored the comment. “I think it’s safe for you to take her home today,” he said. He tossed a set of keys at him carelessly, and Scott’s hand darted out of its own accord and caught them. “You can borrow my car. And you should consider having a talk with her. She’s starting to ask questions.”

  “What did you tell her?”

  “That she needed to talk to you,” he said.

  Scott scowled and shoved the drink back at Damon then motioned to Katie. “Come on, Katie. Damon’s right. It’s time to take you home.”

  “Don’t you want to eat first?” Angelique asked, holding up a paper bag.

  “I’m not hungry,” he replied, twirling the keyring around his middle finger. “Let Riley know where I’m going, would you? And if I’m not back in three hours, assume I’m not coming back and get the hell out of here.” He glanced at Katie and asked, “You ate already?”

  “Yeah, I ate,” she said, still focused on her ice cream cone. Scott had a sudden image in his mind’s eye—a memory, really—from about twelve years ago, when Katie had been five; she was sitting on a picnic table in the backyard, eating an ice cream cone with the enthusiasm of any child given a sweet, as Scott tried to explain to his older brother Andrew exactly why he’d dropped out of Navy SEALs boot camp, something that had been an almost life-long dream. It had been a difficult decision, he’d said, but he had decided it wasn’t for him. No, he wanted to travel around more, so he had elected to become…an insurance adjuster.

  Yes, it sounded as ridiculous in memory as it had at the time he’d said it. And even then, he didn’t think Andrew truly believed he was going to become an insurance adjuster. But it wasn’t like Scott could be honest with him; by then, he’d already signed paperwork that said he couldn’t tell anyone, including his family, what he was up to when he joined the Agency.

  “Finish that up and hop on in,” he said. “We need to have an important conversation while I drive you home.”

  “Sir, yes sir,” Katie replied with a half-assed salute and a grin. She stepped into their hotel room, presumably to toss the remains of her cone and wash her hands, because she came out empty handed, still drying her palms against her shorts. “I’m ready.”

  Within five minutes, they were on the road, heading back into the depths of Washington, D.C., the silence in the car heavy as he drove. It wasn’t until they’d entered the actual city that he cleared his throat and spoke.

  “I guess you’ve already figured out that I’m not an insurance adjuster, huh?” he started.

  “Gee, Uncle Scott, I’d never have guessed,” Katie said wryly, wrinkling her nose. She paused, hesitating, and he remained silent, letting her stew over whatever she was thinking about. Finally, she blew out a breath and asked, “So what are you?”

  “Well…” Scott drew the word out slowly, thinking over the best way to explain it to her. “I work for the government in this sort of CIA type—”

  “That’s not what I mean,” Katie interrupted. She shifted in the leather seat, twisting to face him, and said, “I figured out years ago that you worked for the government. I mean, you, an insurance adjuster? Even when I was ten, that didn’t make much sense.” She fidgeted for a moment then continued. “You were moving like nothing I’ve ever seen before. Like…I don’t know. You were really fast, and you killed that guy like it was nothing. You ripped his throat out, Uncle Scott. How did you do that? How were you able to do that?”

  Scott pressed his lips together and thought over the best ways to tell her what had happened to him. There was really no good way to explain it where it’d sound remotely believable. Hell, just him thinking it was unbelievable, and he was the one who’d experienced it. “It’s going to be…pretty difficult to believe,” he warned her as he steered the SUV into a slow right turn.


  “Lay it on me anyway,” Katie said. “After what I saw when those people were holding me captive, and after what I saw during that fight, I’m at a point where I’m ready to believe just about anything.”

  Scott stifled a disbelieving snort of laughter, drummed his fingers on the steering wheel, and decided to just blurt it out, since there was really no good way to say it. Like ripping off a Band-Aid, he thought, and he said in a rush, “I’m a werewolf.”

  There was a lull in the conversation, a long pause as Katie chewed on his revelation. Finally, after what felt like an eternity but was actually only about thirty seconds, she asked, “A werewolf? Like, the kind that turns into a wolf at the full moon?”

  “Yeah, something like that,” he confirmed, “though I’m not restricted to changing only at the full moon, apparently.”

  “Is that how you were able to do that to that other man?” she asked, her voice laden with curiosity. He’d expected her to be freaked out by everything that had happened; maybe she took more after him than she did her father. The thought made him queasy. The last thing he wanted was for his niece to get involved in the kind of life he’d led.

  “Yeah, that’s how,” he said. “Though that man wasn’t a man at all.” He spotted an empty parking lot in front of an abandoned strip mall and pulled into it. He put the car in park and unfastened his seatbelt, twisting around as much as the limited space in the front seat would allow. Then he held his right hand up so she could see it and, after a moment passed, during which he closed his eyes and focused, the bones in his hand cracked and broke, bringing tears of pain to his eyes. He bit back a gasp, not wanting to alarm Katie too much, and opened his eyes to see that he’d successfully—consciously—forced his hand to shift into the long-fingered, clawed, furred appendage that served as a scarily effective weapon. The pain from the shift quickly faded, leaving behind tingles like his hand had fallen asleep.

  “That…that is…” Katie trailed off like she was at a loss for words, and Scott’s stomach somersaulted. The idea of Katie rejecting him because of this horrible thing that had been inflicted on him against his will was almost too much to bear. Of all his family, he’d taken the greatest pains to cultivate and maintain a relationship with Katie, the only niece he had, the only child of his only sibling.

  But he shouldn’t have worried. Because while his guts had been twisting themselves into knots over his fear of rejection, a large grin had spread across Katie’s face, and she burst out with, “That is so cool! You’re like a superhero or something!”

  Scott raised his eyebrows in surprise at Katie’s reaction. That hadn’t been what he’d expected at all. “You can’t be serious.”

  “Of course I’m serious,” she said. “My uncle is Wolverine 2.0! How much cooler could this possibly get?”

  Scott chuckled and willed his hand to change back to just a hand. It did so, painfully, and he flexed his fingers a few times before twisting back around in his seat and shifting the car into drive. “Look, you can’t tell anyone about me,” he warned her, pulling back into the street. “And I mean anyone. Not even your father and mother. For one, they’d probably put you in the nuthouse. But worse…there are bad people after me and my friends—I’m sure you’ve figured that out already—and the less you and your parents know about any of this, the better. I can’t risk them using any of you against me, not again.”

  “You should talk to Dad,” Katie said, settling back in her own seat. “Between the two of us, he’ll probably listen to you.”

  “When has your dad ever listened to me?” he replied.

  Katie fell silent at that. There wasn’t anything to say in response. But, he reasoned, she was right about one thing: he needed to talk to his brother, and he needed to find a way to convince Andrew to pack up his family and go into hiding until everything that was going on around him had been resolved.

  Zachariah had retreated to the bathroom to get away from Riley and her apparent need to talk and ask questions, and once inside, he’d automatically turned on the shower and begun to strip. He hadn’t had a bath in a few days—he’d been too dosed up on Valium and whatever other sedatives Damon had been loading into him—and he was sure he was starting to smell bad, though he was beyond caring. He just wanted to get in the shower and stand under water so hot he could barely tolerate it and forget everything that had happened three days ago.

  He hadn’t even made it into the shower before that plan was completely derailed by the sight of the dried blood underneath his fingernails.

  That had been enough to send his stomach into a revolt, and he’d fallen to his knees in front of the toilet and vomited up what felt like everything he had inside him. This time, though, unlike every other assignment he’d worked in the past three years, there was no Ashton to come see if he was okay. He wouldn’t show up to support him after bad episodes ever again.

  “Oh, fuck, fuck, fuck,” he chanted under his breath. He rocked back from the toilet, wiping at his mouth with the back of his hand, and slumped against the wall. He banged his head on the wall once, twice, three times, hard enough to hurt. He wanted to hit it harder, hard enough to bleed, hard enough for him to feel something beyond the hollow space in his chest, but he wasn’t sure he could hit that hard right now.

  “God, Ash, what the fuck did you think you were doing?” he asked, knowing he’d never get an answer. “Why didn’t you just let me take the bullets? I might have been able to survive it.”

  He pulled his knees to his chest and wrapped his arms around them, closing his eyes and trying to figure out how to cope with a world without Ashton in it.

  Zachariah hadn’t realized he’d fallen asleep until someone knocked on the bathroom door. He forced his eyes open, blinking away the gumminess that came with it—he’d apparently been crying in his sleep, judging by the wetness on his cheeks—and looked up at the door, trying to remember if he’d locked it, just as it swung open to reveal Angelique standing in the doorway.

  “Ah, shit,” she said, her eyes wide with surprise at what she’d just walked into. She raised her voice and called out, “Damon, you better get in here! This is something more in line with the kind of stuff you should handle.”

  Then Damon showed up at her shoulder, an alarmed look on his face—well, as alarmed of a look as Zachariah thought he was capable of demonstrating. It was no wonder he looked alarmed, though, considering Zachariah was sitting naked on a motel bathroom floor looking like his world had ended.

  Damon stepped into the room. “Angelique, the door,” he ordered. It clicked closed behind him, shutting the woman away on the other side. He stepped over Zachariah’s discarded jeans, turned the water in the shower off, and snagged a towel off the rack, dropping it onto Zachariah’s lap to cover his nudity. Then he sat on the edge of the sink and, reclining there as casually as if he were propping against a conference table during a board room meeting, he stared at Zachariah with an intensity that made him distinctly uncomfortable. “Talk,” he ordered, “and if I hear any iteration of the word ‘no’ in whatever you have to say, I’ll hit you so hard it will make your ancestors dizzy.”

  “Doesn’t that include you, too?” Zachariah pointed out.

  “Don’t think I won’t smack the smartass right out of that mouth, either.” Damon shifted, folding his arms imposingly over his chest, and added, “Now talk.”

  “What the fuck am I supposed to talk about?”

  “How about we start with why you’ve been sitting on the bathroom floor naked for the past hour, feeling sorry for yourself instead of doing something a little more productive?”

  Zachariah scowled. “Hey, fuck you, Dad,” he snapped. “You’re the one who’s been keeping me drugged these past few days. Don’t start acting like you care now. Just because you donated sperm to my mother twenty-eight years ago doesn’t make you my father and give you license to get involved in my life.”

  He’d crossed a line. He knew the minute the last word had left his mouth that he’d
gone too far. Though his arms were still folded, Damon’s right hand curling into a fist was still visible. “You’re grieving, and I understand that, which is why I’m not going to smack the shit out of you for insinuating that your mother was a whore, whether you did so intentionally or not,” he said, his voice steady and even. “But my understanding doesn’t extend to excusing your words. If you think I didn’t love Mary and that I didn’t grieve when she died, you’re a fucking idiot. You’re not the only person here who’s lost someone who meant something to him. If any of us understands what you’re going through, how hard it is to lose someone that close to you, it’s me. But you can’t fall apart right now. There’s too much bad shit happening, and we can’t drag you along with us if you’re only going to be dead weight.”

  “Then drop the dead weight,” Zachariah muttered. “Leave me here and go. Let me do what I need to do.”

  “We can’t do that, and you know it,” Damon replied. “You’re too important. And we need you. Your sister needs you.”

  “You don’t need me. You just need what I can do. Whatever the hell that is.”

  There was silence for a long moment. Zachariah closed his eyes and focused on counting his breaths, listening to how ragged they sounded compared to his father’s. He couldn’t seem to get his thoughts to string together into anything resembling coherency without a struggle. It was the drugs, he supposed. This was why, after what had happened to him three years ago, he refused to take anything stronger than over-the-counter painkillers. Even now, a craving for more, for something stronger, was tickling at the very back of his brain. He could have kicked Damon’s ass for doing this to him. Even if he hadn’t had any way of knowing about his addiction problem, since he and Ashton had so studiously hidden it for so long.