Howl And Growl Complete Collection

by Cloe Cullen

  “It was Remus’ idea, apparently,” Nyx continued. “They were attacked yesterday by a group of Changelings after searching in the woods for anything that could help them find his trail. Remus thought the Changelings could have belonged to Lord Cadogan, so he wanted to sneak in and out without the Lord knowing.”

  “And when were they supposed to be back?” Bronwen asked, flicking her red eyes between them both. Icy fear began to crawl under her skin, imagining all the things that could go so very wrong with an attempt at sneaking into a Lord’s manor. It just simply wasn’t something any normal Vampire would do...except that Remus was no Vampire, and he’d done it before with Bronwen’s help.

  “Sometime today,” Lowell said, frowning. “But it hasn’t been that long since they’ve left. I think we just need to be patient.”

  Bronwen leaned back in her chair, rubbing her temple. “When did they leave?”

  “Early morning.”

  It took two hours to get to Lord Cadogan’s manor from hers, and another two to come back. With the few hours it would probably take to search his manor, the group would most likely be gone until just after midday. Peering outside, Bronwen spied the sun just overhead, indicating that midday was here already. Had the day really been moving so quickly? Maybe her nerves had clouded her mind to the passage of time.

  Even so, her mind wandered, expecting to hear Remus’ voice echo in the entrance hall any minute. But every second she didn’t hear him the more she trembled. What would Lord Cadogan do to them if they got caught? Would he bring them before the Commune to decide their fate, or execute them all right then and there? No, she couldn’t stand the thought of something so terrible happening. Unable to control her emotions, Bronwen rose to her feet, racing out of the parlor and to the front door.

  “Where are you going?” Nyx called.

  “To Lord Cadogan’s estate!” she said, throwing open the front door. “If something’s happened, I need to be there right now.”

  Bronwen stopped short though, standing in the middle of her door frame, her lips quivering as her eyes caught on the tall, burly Vampire standing just in front of her. With crossed arms, a mean twist to his face, and a devastating aura, Lord Cadogan glared at Bronwen with a savagery behind his eyes. He waited as Bronwen collected herself, taking a deep breath.

  Why was Cadogan here? Bronwen thought, her mind reeling as the Lord stared at her.

  “Well?” he finally said, sneering. “Are you going to invite me in, or not? Or do you intend for me to barge in like you and that mutt of yours did to me at my manor?”

  “Lord Cadogan…” Bronwen mused, hiding her anxiety under her calm demeanor. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

  Cadogan grunted. “There is no pleasure in this little meeting, Bronwen. I need to talk to you about something...sensitive.”

  Another cold chill swept up her back, causing Bronwen to stagger as she stepped back. “I really have something important to attend to, Cadogan. If you could come back another time…”

  “No, I need to speak with you now,” he insisted, taking a step where Bronwen had backed away. “This sensitive matter cannot wait. It’s about none other than your mutt and his little friends; you know, the ones who broke into my manor.”

  Bronwen froze in the doorway, hand gripping the frame so hard it began to implode beneath her fingers. “Surely I have no idea what you’re talking about. But you can come in anyway, if you so desire. My parlor is just this way.” She pointed off to her left as Cadogan surged past her, stalking to the parlor. He grumbled, shouting at Nyx and Lowell to move out of their chairs as he quickly sat down. Bronwen followed quickly, eager to hear what Cadogan had to say; if Remus and the others had been caught, then her worst fears were about to become reality.

  Cadogan began to speak as soon as she sat down. “This is the second time now, girl, that you and yours have broken into my home unannounced, walking in like you lot own the place. Two times, and somehow, I’ve been able to contain my wrath from seeping out and leveling this whole home of yours to the ground.

  “So those were your Changelings surrounding our home days ago,” Bronwen said, trying to unnerve the Lord as best she could. “You tried to intimidate us rather than use brutal force first.”

  “Wrong, again,” Cadogan spat. “The most I’ve done is spit on the ground in front of you at your ceremony to become the Thirteenth Lord. I haven’t aggravated you besides then, and yet every time I turn around, I find you or someone associated with you trying to find this Finn of yours in my manor.”

  “You still deny it all, then?” Bronwen asked, wanting nothing more than to dig her claws into the Vampire before her. Deep down in her heart, Bronwen couldn’t decide whether Cadogan was truly responsible or not. “Because I will not stand for this kind of harassment anymore.”

  “And neither will I,” Cadogan said, his voice cold and unflinching. He paused to let his words sink in. “I have your mutt and his friends chained up in the dungeon beneath the Commune. My guards caught them sneaking in and overwhelmed them. Now they await judgment from the other Lords.”

  “Judgement?” Bronwen asked coolly, trying hard not to dig her fingers into her armrests. “What kind of judgement are you seeking?”

  “Death for every one of them,” he replied. “Including that dumb Vampire wench of yours...Magnolia, I think her name was. I can’t believe another of our kind has fallen smitten with these shifters of yours.” Bronwen leveled a wicked glare at him, the urge to leap up and rip his throat out just barely contained within her. Cadogan noticed, and grinned. “Whether or not you attack me here, the four will be judged. It might just be better for you to not pick a fight with me now, and instead stay alive long enough to testify for your little pets. Not that it’ll change anything.”

  Bronwen ground her teeth, but remained silent as Cadogan rose from his seat. “Well, you might as well accompany me to the Commune now. We’ll get this over with quickly, so that your fragile mind doesn’t break from the sheer panic of waiting for their deaths. Come, child, and see what you have wrought.”

  Chapter Twenty: Remus

  Remus’ head throbbed as he awoke in his cell, wiggling on the hard, cold floor. Dim sconces were his only source of light, and as his eyes fluttered open from a dreary sleep he focused on the sconces, trying to make out why there were so many shadows around him.

  “He’s awake,” a familiar voice echoed off the walls behind him.

  A long shadow arm stretched out over him, growing bigger as he watched blankly.

  “Let him rouse on his own,” snapped another familiar voice. “There’s no point in forcing him to come to this very second.”

  The shadow arm wavered above him on the wall, then retracted, causing Remus to groan as he tried to roll onto his side. For the moment, he lay face down, his chest and abs cold as ice, and his cheek smashed flat against the stone floor, drool puddling beneath him. He tried to bring his hands forward, but they wouldn’t budge from behind his back and he quickly realized they were bound in chains. The metal clinked and shifted as he growled and sat up, the cold chains biting into his ankles as well.

  “How are you feeling?” one hulking dark figure asked of him. Panting, his eyes stinging from dirt caking his eyelids, Remus looked through watery eyes to spy none other than Keanu gazing at him with troubled eyes.

  “My whole body feels like it's on fire,” Remus said through gritted teeth. Under the dim firelight, Remus glanced down to grimace at the myriad of black and blue patches covering his body, his skin pink around small cuts and other wounds that had dried a dark red. With his mind still foggy, Remus couldn’t remember much about how he’d gotten the wounds, instead focusing on the pain sizzling beneath his skin. “What...happened?”

  “We were caught,” a slender figure said from next to Keanu. It took a few moments, but Remus recognized her as Magnolia, her blonde head resting on Keanu’s shoulder. Lifting himself up to a sitting position, he saw she was bound much like him, though he
r cuffs were smaller due to her lanky physique. “It happened pretty quickly. And while I would like to blame you, the others won’t let me.” Her red eyes appeared to glow in the dark, and her gaze flicked between Keanu and a small figure off to the left. As Remus’ eyes finally adjusted to the light, he saw the figure was Lenna, curled up in a corner, her expression dark and drooping. It seemed as if her face was melting like wax.

  Lenna looked up at Remus slowly, her eyes puffy and cheeks slick with tears. “We got antsy in the manor…” she said. “Don’t blame yourself, Remus. I just couldn’t sit so still...and Keanu -”

  “I want Finn back,” Keanu said. “He’s like a brother to me.”

  “Point is, don’t blame yourself for any of this,” Lenna finished. “Living here in the Blackwood is harder than I ever thought it would be.”

  Remus blinked as the memories finally flooded back into his head, the moment in Lord Cadogan’s manor when he had tripped and tumbled forward into the path of two Vampires. That one moment had forced their hands into simultaneously attacking and alerting the Vampires. He remembered being swallowed up by an endless crowd of guards, a hundred red eyes boring into him. It was the stuff of nightmares and he swore under his breath as he sat cross-legged in the cell. “It was my plan,” he said. “You’re wrong, Lenna. I am to blame.” His thoughts suddenly turned to Bronwen, his heart snapping in half at the thought of her finding out he and the others had been captured. Thinking of the pain she must have been going through, realizing what happened, turned his stomach sour.

  Looking ahead, Remus saw a thick wooden door set into the stone wall, a small barred square the only opening into the outside corridor. The echoes of heavy armored boots clopped on the ground, approaching the cell. Soon enough, a pale, red-eyed guard glanced inside the cell, regarding them all with a deep frown.

  “You all ready to be brought before the Lords?” he asked casually.

  Remus’ heart caught in his throat, and he had to swallow it down in order to speak. “We’re being brought before the Lords? Are we at the Commune?”

  The Vampire clicked his tongue but nodded. “Looks like you fools screwed up real bad. You’ll be judged before the other Lords as per Lord Cadogan’s instructions. I don’t expect any of you to live very long…”

  On the other side of the door, the Vampire fumbled with the lock, eventually swinging the door open as he strode inside with three others. The first Vampire scowled down at Remus, though his gaze lingered on Magnolia. “What would make a Vampire do something so stupid, I’ll never know…” he muttered as he dragged Remus to his feet.

  Shoving Remus out the door, the Vampire shouted at him to hurry up and move, so Remus did, following the trail of lit sconces, glancing back to see the others close behind. The prison seemed to be underground, as they walked up at least a dozen sloped walkways, and the air became less dense the farther up they went. Eventually, the group reached a spiraling stairwell, climbing to an exit in one of the pitch-dark corridors of the Commune. Remus winced at the thought of Bronwen waiting in her Lordly seat, anxiously awaiting him and the others to be brought before her and the other Lords. Their exploits into Lord Cadogan’s manor would be revealed, and most likely they would all be judged harshly.

  He didn’t have to imagine it for too long as a minute later he was shoved out under the skylight, thirteen pairs of seated Vampire eyes locking onto him. Remus’ eyes met Bronwen’s, her normally cool exterior seeming to quietly crumble as her eyes widened and fingers rapidly tapped her armrest. The Vampire leading Remus forward clasped his shoulder and forced him to his knees, the shifter grunting at the sharp pain as his knees struck the ground. Keanu was placed next to him, and Magnolia next to him. Lenna was placed on the other side of Remus. Lined up, as if on display, the group glanced at all the eyes resting on them.

  Most of the eyes were blank and uncaring, though two sets frightened Remus in particular. The first set belonged to Lord Cadogan, who sat with a wicked smile drawn across his lips, staring down as he leaned his temple on his fist. The second was owned by Lord Silvan, his easy-going smile and interlocked fingers in his lap sending shivers up Remus’ spine. He couldn’t decide which Lord scared him more.

  “Here are the trespassers who broke into Lord Cadogan’s manor!” one of the Vampires that led them announced. He motioned to Remus with an open palm. “This one led the group inside, distracting the guards outside and sneaking through the Lord’s home, one room at a time. It appears they were attempting to rob Lord Cadogan, or possibly do him harm.”

  “Each a damnable offense,” Lord Cadogan said coldly. Leaning forward, Cadogan peered into Remus’ eyes. Remus, unsure of how to react, stoically raised his posture, glaring right back. Clicking his tongue, Cadogan pointed at him. “Beat him.”

  The first fist battered his skull immediately, causing Remus to fall to the side and land on his face. Feet proceeded to jab at his stomach and back, others using the hilts of their swords to smack his bare skin. Remus coughed out a few gasps of surprise, lurching at the pain.

  “Enough!” Bronwen wailed, rising to her feet. “There’s no need to beat him, Cadogan!”

  “This beast killed some of my servants,” Cadogan growled, eyeing Bronwen. “He deserves so much worse than a few hits to the stomach.”

  “Stop!” Keanu’s voice rang out beside him. Remus finally got a chance to breathe as the Vampires stopped their attack on him, instead staring at the bulky bear shifter, their eyes twitching. “It wasn’t just him. If you’re to hurt anyone, hurt me instead.”

  Cadogan seemed to ponder his words a moment, allowing Remus to spit out a few drops of blood. His wrists burned like crazy, and his mind fizzled as his breaths warmed the floor. Glancing between Remus and Keanu, Cadogan nodded, smiling. “I can’t see why we don’t make you both squeal. Proceed!”

  Remus’ rest was over, catching the next round of fists, hilts and boots to the spine. Keanu looked to his friend in sudden fear, his own head cracking from a sudden fist to the jaw. The dais was suddenly a torrent of blood flying from lips and shouts from the shifters. Magnolia screamed at the guards beating Keanu, earning a few clouts herself, though she never backed down. Lenna hissed at the guards hounding Remus, though the worst they did to her was kick her in the stomach so that she doubled over, forehead pressing against the dais as she coughed up mucus.

  “I said ENOUGH!” Bronwen shouted once more, her deadly tone slowing the limbs of the guards. “Is this judgement? Does one Lord command us all now? Since when is punishment brought out before passing judgement?” She glanced at Lord Silvan, “Let them rest for now. We need peace with the Clans, not to give them more excuses to fear us.”

  “They don’t deserve peace with how they act towards us,” Lord Cadogan moaned. “They attack our servants, attempt to steal our possessions, disregard our laws...what they deserve is death. Swift execution.”

  Bronwen trembled as she stood, causing Remus’s heart to drop. He couldn’t help but whisper an apology to her, wishing he hadn’t been so brash. “And what do the rest think? Lord Silvan?”

  Silvan sighed, uncrossing and crossing his legs as he stared down at Remus, a strange look in his eyes. “Unfortunately, Bronwen, I might just have to agree with Cadogan on this one. I’ve supported your decision to bring the Clans into our fold, and have waited eagerly to see how they’d react in their new environment...but sadly, I’m rather disappointed. I also agree they deserve death...but not simply by execution.” As Bronwen’s jaw dropped, Silvan smiled, causing tendrils of terror to close around Remus’ heart. “I suggest death by combat. At least make it entertaining!”

  “NO!” Bronwen shouted.

  “See!” Cadogan gestured to Bronwen. “See how quick her denial is to their obvious, malicious intent? Her defiance of our customs, laws that have been in place since the first King rounded all of us up, is proof of the shifter’s hold on her. The shifters are dangerous...and so is Lady Bronwen.”

  “Should we take a vote?”
Silvan asked innocently.

  “We shall,” Cadogan answered. “All who vote for these four’s innocence, raise your hands!”

  Bronwen’s arm shot up first and to Remus’ surprise, four other arms rose one by one. Cadogan grunted. “That’s five...all who favor death by combat, raise your hands!” The remaining Vampires lifted their hands into the air, including Cadogan and Silvan. Remus wanted to howl out in pure rage, butterflies racing and boiling in his stomach, but breathing so raggedly that the best he could do was throw a longing look up at Bronwen, who looked about to explode herself. “That settles it then. We’ll set up the combat trials right here. Take them away to their cells in the meantime. We’ll discuss who dies first…”

  With a curt tug up to his feet, Remus growled and spit out one last glob of blood, locking eyes with Bronwen before being shoved back into the corridor from which he came. He watched as Bronwen clammed up and lowered herself back down into her chair, her eyes never leaving him.

  If Remus survived this new ordeal, he was certain he’d be telling this tale for years to come.

  Chapter Twenty-One: Bronwen

  As soon as the meeting had ended with the order of Remus’ and the other’s deaths, Bronwen had stalked from her chair, her rage and fear seeping out into a deadly aura around her.

  First, she attempted to journey beneath the Commune to the holding cells, wishing to speak with Remus herself. She couldn’t stand the thought of being forced to stay away from him in these dark days, and yet she was denied. The Vampire guards keeping her away shook at her fury, cowering under her shouts of vicious threats, but they remained steady in their jobs of keeping her out. Bronwen thought to use brute force to get past but realized the other Lords wouldn’t look kindly upon those actions. Even if she were a Lord herself, she wouldn’t be able to withstand the onslaught of twelve other, stronger Lords. As much as she hated them all, hated herself for not foreseeing Remus’ stupid decision to sneak into Cadogan’s maze-like manor, she hated most her inability to crush any chance of danger closing in on the shifter she held so close to her heart.