The Wolf, the Witch and the Coffin

by Ophelia Preston

  Morning came all too soon and after showering, Chris received a call from Ron saying that he had been able to get into the apartment and gather a few items for Chris, namely clothing and toiletries. He dropped them off a few minutes later. Neither he nor Chris had heard anything from Shaya or Alex so they weren’t sure what was happening. I fed both of them and checked in with Gracie regarding work. I had a lunch appointment with another regular client. This one was for gypsum. Worried that Alex would demand the fight anyway, I asked Gracie to postpone it to the next available appointment, which was the following day.

  Feeling the strain from both men in my kitchen, I called Shaya.

  She informed me that Alex did not believe her about the pack not backing him and was still making calls. So far she hadn’t heard back from him.

  Ron confirmed that he had had a call and stated in no uncertain terms that he would leave New York, or form a new pack with Chris as Alpha before he would follow Alex.

  ‘Was he a bad leader?’ Chris asked.

  ‘Firstly, you are a good leader, you think of the pack before yourself and always have, so we respect and appreciate all you’ve done for us. Secondly, Alex is selfish. He wants power. He has treated us as lackeys ever since you went missing and could be abusive when he didn’t get what he wanted, or didn’t get it fast enough. Then he lets us be used by Conrad without trying to find you, allowing us to do horrific things. Conrad made us his clean-up crew and tried to make us his assassins. Not even your brother could persuade us to kill someone for him. Thirdly, I have suspected for some time now that he was behind your capture and that it was all so that he could gain power. However, he could not take on the role of Alpha with you still alive and unchallenged, which I think was why he was so desperate to get you back. We had told him that he could have a year to find you and after that we’d move on.’ It was the most I’d ever heard Ron say.

  ‘I saw Alex hitting Ron across the face for not looking into my abilities closely enough,’ I offered. I wanted Chris to know that Ron was not lying or exaggerating.

  ‘I’m sorry you had to go through that, Ron. I honestly thought he would do what was best for the pack if I wasn’t there for any reason. It was our father’s pack. That’s why I took him as my second over you. I’m moving you to second in command, Jerome to third.’

  Ron blushed and ducked his head.

  ‘Thanks Chris,’ he sighed, voice soft in emotion. Chris nodded. Ron went to see Shaya in case Alex finally made a decision. As soon as he was gone Chris pulled me to him, wrapping himself around me and holding on tight.

  ‘You ok?’

  ‘No. I can’t believe that we could all have been deceived for so long. He had to have been planning this for the last two years!’

  ‘I wish I knew what to say to make you feel better but I just don’t know. I’m sorry.’ I leaned my head against his chest and felt his lower to rest on top of mine. He breathed in my scent and his arms tightened around me, warm and safe. We stayed like this for several minutes before his phone went off. He stepped away from me as he began to talk to Shaya, I guessed. After he hung up he called someone else and spoke rapidly about accounts.

  ‘Will you come with me for this? I feel much stronger when you’re near me,’ he looked as surprised by that statement as I was. I nodded and we went over to his apartment.

  The whole pack was there, including Alex. He looked angry and more than a little afraid.

  ‘Pete tells me you tried to rob us. You have broken all your oaths to this pack. We therefore break all bonds with you. You leave New York in the next hour. If you are still within our territory within three hours you will be ripped to shreds. As an oath-breaker you are not entitled to any of our finances. You are officially dead to us. Get out, Alex, before I hurt you,’ Chris’s voice was calm, cold and broached no argument.

  Alex growled. He looked as though he was calculating his chances against the bigger but possibly still weaker werewolf.

  ‘I’ll take the woman then. I brought her in to this, she is my property,’ he looked at me. Chris growled so deeply, so violently that Alex actually took a step back.

  ‘Try it.’ That was as much a challenge as anything Alex had said. The man stupidly took a step forward and Chris hit him in the chest with so much force that he hit the opposite wall and crumpled to the floor.

  ‘How...how can you be this strong already?’ Alex gasped.

  ‘Because I am Alpha and my pack back me!’

  With little more choice Alex picked up the bag someone must have packed for him and gave one last glance over the pack as he left.

  ‘Pete?’ Chris turned to the red haired man working on a notebook.

  ‘He didn’t get a penny. I was able to track all the money and retrieve it before the transaction was completed.’

  ‘Good. I can’t stay here just now. Ron, mind if I bunk with you for a couple of days? Just until his stench is gone? Thanks. Guys, we have a full moon in five days. Let’s hope we can leave our frustrations until then, when we can let it all go. Jerome, you are now my third, Ron is second. I need you to write up everything that has happened since my abduction, everything you can think of. I know our former pack member treated you all appallingly and you know I would never do that but I need details, need to know the extent of his depraved behaviour and everything you have had to do. Shaya, when is this Koji man getting here?’

  ‘Tomorrow. He had to rearrange his schedule to do it but he’ll be here then.’

  ‘Good. I need to clear my head for a few hours. Ron, you got everything in hand?’ he asked his new second. Ron nodded and turned to the others, who looked like they were about to burst with pride.

  Chris took my hand and we went back to the car.

  ‘You free for the day?’

  ‘I am,’ I smiled.

  ‘Good, I need to feel the ground under my feet,’ he drove out of the city. He knew that if Alex wasn’t gone within the hour Ron would call.

  Chapter 5

  We drove out to the surrounding countryside, I wasn’t paying attention to road signs so I wasn’t sure exactly where we were but we were heading north. A small forest appeared on the horizon and Chris pulled the car in there. He wrapped his jacket around me and we headed into the woods.

  It was peaceful here, the air was crisp and birds called to one another. The ground felt soft, alive, and seemed to hum beneath our feet.

  ‘My wolf needs this. It wants to break out now, take over.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because he thinks it will help me, stop the hurt. It would only be temporary. Tell me about your abilities. Are you psychic?’ he changed the subject. His eyes met mine and the intelligence behind them shone out.

  ‘No, not psychic. I can’t see the future, or the past, or read minds. And while I can locate and use objects I can’t pick up where they have been or who touched them. I have a few basic protection spells, a few offensive spells a small cache of healing spells, mostly what I do is work with stones. I can sense emotions in people sometimes, whether someone is lying; that sort of thing. I know how you are feeling right now,’ I explained. He watched me carefully.

  ‘How am I feeling?’

  ‘Caged. Wounded, enraged, betrayed.’

  Rather than say anything he just looked up at the sky. The air really was clean here, fresh, and the sun warmed our skin.

  ‘I’ve never met anyone like you before,’ he said finally.

  ‘What, a witch?’

  ‘No, someone so honest, so open. You’re like a spring breeze.’ He held out his hand and I took it. We walked through the woods, enjoying the quiet.

  ‘Are you not cold?’ I asked after a while. There was a cool breeze seeping through the trees.

  ‘No. Our bodies have a different internal heating system from humans, I think,’ he smiled.

  We spent a couple of hours walking before driving back to the city. Chris asked me to dinner and I agreed. We grabbed a bite in a local bistro and went to see a movi
e. He had missed a lot of good films in the year he’d been away and was determined to catch up.

  By the time the movie was over Chris looked much more relaxed and calm. He smiled more easily and walked me home, pausing at my door. His head dipped down, as though he was about to kiss me, when his phone rang. Cursing silently, he answered.

  ‘Sorry, I need to go. Can I see you tomorrow?’ he asked finally.

  ‘Of course. Seven?’

  ‘See you then,’ he flashed a smile before he left.

  More dreams haunted me that night.

  I attended my lunch appointment the following day, a company that specialised in gypsum and other evaporites. It took over an hour to find the large deposit and I was very tired by the end of it. Unlike metals and precious stones, gypsum was an evaporite mineral which had a fainter ‘echo’ than the others. It was harder to find and had a cool, airy feel about it. After eating a good meal I was able to see myself out.

  Eating was part of the grounding process but I also tend to use up a lot of energy when I go on these hunting expeditions and need the fuel to replace what I have lost, otherwise I feel weak and shaky. It means I eat a lot more than the average person would on days when I search.

  Olivia Choi, my next door neighbour, was waiting for me when I got home. She and I usually did coffee on Saturday afternoons. It was a day I didn’t often work on but occasionally had to if my client wasn’t able to meet any other day.

  Coffee and chocolate cake and a long chat about men ensued. She was in her early thirties, just a couple of years older than me, and single too. She had long black, silky smooth hair and amber eyes, was petite and stunningly beautiful. I told her about meeting Chris, though not the circumstances around it.

  ‘Is that the tall, tall beautiful man who came round the other night? I saw him waiting for you. Lord girl, he’s stunning!’

  ‘He is. He’s coming round at seven, not sure where we’re going yet, or if we’re eating here. How about you? Anyone on the horizon?’

  ‘A couple of possibilities. Nothing concrete,’ she smiled and we talked about work, friends, people in the building and other less important things before she left to let me get ready for my date.

  Chris arrived at seven o’clock exactly. He was dressed casually, which was how I had decided to dress. He handed me a bunch of tulips and I wondered how he knew they were my favourite flowers. I thanked him and popped them in a vase before we left.

  ‘Thought we’d grab a bite in a local Chinese restaurant and then another movie?’ He really wanted to catch up on his movies. I grinned and nodded. I loved films too.

  We talked about everything and anything, from our favourite movies to what our earliest memories were. I tried to catch him up on as much of the news of the past year as I could think of. He told me about the bars his pack owned and the restaurant they had majority shares in. This was how the pack made its money. They had started out with one bar, Alex and himself running it, then moved on to a second and then the restaurant.

  He explained that the pack in the past had been individual earners and simply put equal shares of money into a pack account for anything they required to purchase. His father had been an architect and his mother a nurse. He decided the pack owning a business was good business, as they could utilise the individual pack member’s skills in making the business profitable and it had worked for them so far.

  Chris then went on to ask about my upbringing and I explained that we had been poor in my early years but we managed. Then my father had taken been taken on by an accounting firm and my mum had gone back to cooking in a hotel when we were all in school, and they had made enough to put a deposit down on their business, the Bistro. It had meant all of my siblings and I had grown up surrounded by food and cooking.

  The night stretched into the wee hours of the morning and Chris escorted me to my door again. This time when he leaned in to kiss me his phone did not interrupt. His mouth was warm and hard against mine, his arms pulling me against him and then up off the floor as he pressed me against the door. The heat of his body filled me as his tongue darted between my lips for a moment. A growl escaped his lips, sending vibrations through my whole body and I almost went completely limp against him.

  His lips left mine, making a slow path down my neck. I groaned and he pulled back suddenly, lowering me to the ground. His eyes had gone a bright blue and I knew something had changed.

  ‘Better go inside,’ he growled, head lowered.

  ‘Are you ok?’

  ‘I’m fine, just lost control for a moment, but I’ll be fine. Just...I’ll see you in a couple of days.’ He kissed my head and left abruptly. My first thought was that his wolf had tried to surface and my second thought was to wonder whether this would happen every time we kissed. That would put a real damper on our budding relationship!

  Sunday was a rest day. I took everything at a slow pace and enjoyed being on my own, cleansing my apartment and meditating. There was a large part of me that seemed to crave Chris’s presence, his touch, his voice. Dreams kept haunting me and I began to wonder what the hell was wrong with me.

  I didn’t hear from him that day at all, not that that was a surprise given the imminent arrival of Koji that afternoon.

  Monday was back to business, with my open clinic being held in the office from ten o’clock. It was surprisingly busy.

  ‘You had us all scared stiff, Emmy. We were so worried for you when you didn’t show up at your last clinic! We knew something was wrong! Are you sure you’re up to this?’ Mrs Vasquez, one of my regular customers at the clinic asked. I smiled. She was a sweet woman and was always losing her keys.

  ‘I’m up to it. I’m fine, honest. No one harmed me. It was simply a case of desperate people looking for something urgently. I want to thank you all though for contacting the police. It’s good to know someone is looking out for me,’ I smiled at those present. My regulars blushed and smiled back. I turned back to Mrs Vasquez. ‘Keys again?’ She laughed and nodded, removing her scarf from her head. It had been raining outside again. We settled in to our routine.

  Given that most of the items were within a short distance I could manage several searches in one day. I managed to help seven people that Monday and anyone left over would go to the top of the list for the following open day.

  I had the strangest feeling that I was being watched any time I left the office or my apartment and almost called Graben to report it but decided it was possibly the last few weeks catching up with me.

  Graben was a detective who had come across my card on the body of a murder victim a couple of years ago. After I had been ruled out as a suspect and they had found the culprit, he had kept hold of my details in case he needed any information on the occult. I was the first witch he had met on official capacity but his mother told him that his Grandmother had been a witch and he was interested in the supernatural. Any time anything weird came up he consulted with me on it and if I could help, I would.

  As I was leaving a store with a few items I was running low on, I bumped into a man I’d never met before. He stared at me so intently that I felt myself blushing and apologised for bumping him. He nodded, his hand touching mine lightly. I felt dizzy and would have fallen had he not caught me. He insisted on buying me a cup of tea before allowing me to go anywhere without aid. I agreed although I wasn’t sure why.

  His name was Ernesto and he had moved from California the week before. He was a little overwhelmed by the Big Apple and asked the name of a good night club for salsa. Gracie had told me about a place and I mentioned it, thinking I could maybe set her up with him, when he asked me out. Again, I felt compelled to say yes and found myself agreeing to meet him there at nine o’clock.

  As I made my way home I was startled by my actions. I never went out with strangers, Chris being the only exception. Having had so many abduction attempts throughout my adult life, I was more wary of people I didn’t know and had a short dating history as well. To accept this man’s offer was very
unlike me. I wasn’t attracted to him, although I did find something appealing about him but when I tried to pin down what, I couldn’t come up with anything.

  A quick dinner and sift through my wardrobe later, and I was walking into the club with Ernesto, in the mood to party.

  I began to realise something was wrong when I agreed to dance with him to a very slow, easy song that I would not normally dance to. I knew something wasn’t right because every time I tried to think about leaving I became more and more drowsy, almost as if I’d been drugged. Ernesto seemed none the wiser.

  I managed to get my phone out and ring Chris while Ernesto was in the bathroom.

  ‘Emilia?’ he sounded surprised.

  ‘Chris, I need your help. I think I’ve been drugged or put under a spell. I’m with a guy I don’t know and every time I try to leave I feel worse. Can you help?’ I sounded pathetic even to myself. I’d been getting myself out of situations for a long time and never relied on others to help me. To ask someone for help seemed beyond stupid. Chris didn’t respond. He was swearing as he hung up, without asking where I was.

  Damn it, trying to focus on anything was getting harder and harder. How was I supposed to get out of this? I tried focussing my mind but it began to fog again almost instantly. Ernesto had me up for another dance and was smiling happily, glancing occasionally at a couple of men in the corner every time we passed them.

  Ernesto had suddenly become more friendly than I would like and I tried to pull away but felt as though all my energy had slipped away. My hands pressed on his chest and I managed to say ‘no’ but he didn’t want to listen.

  I was suddenly pulled out of Ernesto’s arms and a face blurred before me before lips covered my own. I recognised Chris’s scent and heat even through my stupor and kissed him back, melting against him. Even as I did my mind felt as though cold water had been splashed over it and suddenly I was able to think again. I pulled back enough to see Chris’s face. His concern for me was soon replaced by rage and I suddenly thought he might not have been the best choice to help.