by Sky Winters
Then, she turned her gaze to Boris, who looked at her with a sensual, hot stare, his gray eyes seeming to burn through her.
“Told you it was worth it,” he said, his lips curling up on one side.
Her gaze then drifted down to Boris’s chest, the top buttons of his black, button-up shirt undone, the top curves of his perfectly defined chest exposed, the wind nipping at the edges of the fabric. She felt herself drift into him, totally under his spell. Her eyes closed once again and her head began to move towards Boris, as though being pulled by a force out of her control. Her wet lips parted slightly, and at that moment she wanted nothing more than to fall into the embrace of this strange, sensual man- this artist who radiated with animal energy.
But the spell was broken by the clanging slam of the rooftop door. Turning her head, she saw Giovanni, her brother, standing in the frame with his face twisted in hot anger.
“Mona, step away from this fucker right now!” he yelled while rushing towards them at a pace that was so fast as to be inhuman.
CHAPTER 4
As he grew closer, Boris could see that Giovanni’s eyes were a deep yellow with small, red splotches in the middle. He stopped when he was mere feet from them, his lungs expanding and contracting with deep, full breaths.
“Mona, you stupid girl. Do you have any idea what this man is?”
“He’s…he’s,” but Mona didn’t know how to finish the sentence, knowing that simply stating that he was the lead singer of the band, which was all she knew about him beyond his name, clearly wasn’t the answer her brother was looking for.
“He’s a goddamn bear!” shouted Giovanni, his face shifting and twisting, as though his bones were restructuring under his skin.
Boris stood up, adrenaline pumping through his veins upon seeing that Giovanni was in the process of shifting.
“And what, you’re going to kill me for talking with a wolf? What good would that do?”
Giovanni’s hands clenched into tight, red fists, and Boris could see the first grey dustings on his skin from the fur beginning to form. Boris responded by letting the adrenaline work through him, beginning his own shift.
Boris noted that while Giovanni knew that Boris was a bear, he didn’t seem to be aware of his identity beyond that. He had no idea of the hatred that Boris held for Giovanni, or the lengths that he’d go to in order to satisfy the need for revenge that had been boiling in his heart for more than a year.
“There’s no goddamn way that I’m going to let my sister fuck around with a bear! Never!”
“Gio, don’t! Stop!” yelled Mona, her arms, too, darkening with fur. Her eyes changed in color from a soft blue to a wicked yellow, her expression fearful, as though not able to fully control her shifting.
“Stay outta this!” Giovanni shouted, his arms growing in size and the fabric of his clothing beginning to split and tear.
Boris felt his own body increase in size, his clothes now tight and stretched over the bulk. His fingers began to lengthen and sharpen, his hands changing into the large, crushing paws of a bear.
“Please! Stop!” said Mona, her red hair lengthening, her limbs growing and thinning into the lean limbs of a wolf. “I don’t know how to control it!”
“She doesn’t know how to control her shifting?” shouted Boris, his voice now inhumanely low.
“She’ll figure it out!” shouted Giovanni, his glowing eyes not turning from Boris.
“You want to protect your sister? How the hell are you going to do that when she’s in the middle of a shift she can’t control?”
A look of realization crossed over Giovanni’s now fur-covered face. He turned his head towards Mona, who was still in the early phase of her shift.
“Please!” she shouted.
Giovanni stopped his own shift, now considering the situation.
A moment passed.
“Fine!” he yelled, reversing his shift, his body returning to his human form within seconds.
“Good call,” said Boris, doing the same, shifting back to his human form.
Giovanni looked over at Mona. While her shift had stopped now that Boris and Giovanni were no longer near blows, she was still partially in her wolf form. And she was badly shaken by the near-fight.
“Come on, we’re getting out of here,” demanded Giovanni, his narrowed eyes still on Boris.
“Give her a goddamn second!” said Boris, his hand now on Mona’s back as she slowly shifted back to human form.
“Get your hand off of her,” demanded Giovanni. “She’s 21; she should know how to control her shifting by now.”
Boris held his hand on her back for a second longer- briefly enough to not inflame Giovanni’s anger further, but long enough to let him see that he wouldn’t simply do as Giovanni commanded.
But Mona stopped him before he could take his hand away, wrapping her now-hairless hands around Boris’s arm and lifting herself to her feet. With slow, careful steps she walked to Giovanni’s side.
“Listen, rocker boy- this is your one warning. I don’t give a fuck if you’re a bear or not; if you even think about going near my sister again, you’re fucking dead.”
And with that, he grabbed Mona’s upper arm and walked towards the rooftop exit with her.
But before they disappeared down the stairs, Mona looked back at Boris with a look of longing.
They left the roof, Mona’s slim body disappearing behind the elevator doors.
Boris knew that look; it meant that the seed was planted. He was planning to inflame Giovanni’s protective instinct, but Boris was expecting the standard “older brother/kid sister” sort of protectiveness. He wasn’t at all expecting Giovanni to be as controlling and tyrannical towards Mona as he had just been.
But it didn’t surprise Boris in the slightest.
He knew how cruel Giovanni could be. After all, he was the one who stole Melanie, Boris’s ex-girlfriend, from him, enticing her with promises of drugs and money. But he didn’t care for Melanie one iota- he simply saw someone new, another young woman he could use and abuse, getting her hooked onto heroin for no other reason than to have one more addict under his thumb.
Boris got over the heartbreak of Melanie leaving him, and under normal circumstances would’ve let the situation go.
But these weren’t normal circumstances.
Over the course of the months following Melanie leaving him for Giovanni, Boris was forced to watch as his love grew sicker and frailer by the day as the drugs did their insidious work on her body.
Weeks after he last saw her at a dive bar in Bushwick, her eyes sunken, her skin the color of curdled tallow, Boris heard that her body was found on the shore of Coney Island, the morning waves nipping her skin.
Her death was written up as a simple overdose- and it was- but that pat description failed to take into consideration the months of slow torture Melanie went through before she injected the dose that finally did her in.
And it was all due to Giovanni.
Boris knew that he’d be able to get back at him. The plan was simple: Seduce Mona and steal her away from him. Over time, he’d bring her into the fold, and she’d soon leave the wolves and their kind behind. And then he could figure out what to do with Giovanni.
How attracted he found himself to Mona, and how despicably Giovanni treated her, however, were two factors that Boris hadn’t counted on.
Looking around at the buildings that surrounded him on the rooftop, Boris considered his next move. He would have to move in fast, taking advantage of Mona’s obvious attraction towards him. But he’d have to step lightly, as the encounter between he and Giovanni reminded him that things were getting tense between the Italian Wolves and the Ukrainian Bears; one step over the line could mean open war.
Boris stepped back into the elevator, the glittering cityscape shut out by the elevator doors. Once he reached the bottom floor of the venue, he returned to the green room, where the post-show debauchery was in full swing. Ivan greeted Boris with a beer
, but Boris knew he wasn’t in the mood for the usual rock star nonsense. Sipping his beer as Ivan, Aron, and the rest of the partiers danced, smoked, snorted, and fondled, nothing was on his mind but the simple, sweet revenge.
CHAPTER 5
Mona watched as Giovanni clenched his jaw and his hands gripped the steering wheel, his fingers red with tension.
“What the fuck were you thinking?” he said, flashing an expression of barely constrained rage at her for a brief moment before returning his eyes to the road. “If you’re going to be a goddamn skank for any shithead with a guitar, at least make sure they’re not a goddamn bear!”
Mona looked at the back of her hands as Giovanni whipped the car down the lanes of Lower Manhattan, making his way to Nolita, the home neighborhood of the Italian Wolves.
“I can talk to whatever guy I want, you asshole!” she said, crossing her arms over her chest in a huff.
“You think that, but you’re fuckin’ wrong. You think you can get involved with those Ukrainian pricks? You think I’m gonna just stand around while my kid sister lets some Red shithead put his greasy fuckin’ paws all over you? No goddamn way.”
He pulled a sharp turn, the rubber of the tires squealing and the honking of horns sounding around them.
“You’re gonna get us killed, you goon!” yelled Mona.
“Not if you don’t do it first,” said Giovanni.
“What the hell are you talking about?” she asked.
“Do you know how close we are to war with the bears? Real fuckin’ close. And if you get involved with one-a them, who knows if some stupid couples spat you two have’ll end up bein’ the match that sets this whole powder keg off.”
“That’s really rich, considering the reason for this whole maybe-war is that you assholes won’t stop selling drugs.”
Giovanni clenched his jaw once again, this time with such tension that Mona wondered if Giovanni was going to grind his perfect, white teeth into a fine powder.
“You stay out of the business of our business, you got that?”
“It’s because of you guys, getting into selling drugs instead of legitimate business like the tigers and bears, that we’re so close to war!”
“Not another word,” said Giovanni, his voice now low and grim.
Mona recognized this tone, it meant that Giovanni was done messing around. She took this as her cue to stay quiet, unless she wanted to watch Giovanni punch out the driver’s side window of the car, something that he’d done more than once before.
As soon as the talking stopped, the image of Boris Trotsky, the man who was the cause of this whole argument, floated into her mind. Boris had been the object of her fantasies for months, ever since she saw Blood and Claw play for the first time at a warehouse show in Brooklyn. She never thought that he’d actually want anything to do with her; she figured that a popular, unbelievably sexy musician like him could have his pick of any woman in the city. Why would he want someone like her?
But, against all reason, he did. She couldn’t get the way he looked out of her mind as he sat on the cement wall of the rooftop, the sleeves of his shirt rolled up and cuffed around his lean, thick biceps, the way he looked at her with his piercing, gray eyes…
She wanted him in spite of Giovanni’s protestations. In fact, the more of a production Giovanni made about Boris, the more Mona wanted him, partially out of lust, partially out of a desire to stand up to her domineering brother. Mona hated how Giovanni sought to control her every move. He said he did it to keep her safe, but the older she grew, the more she began to suspect his need to keep constant tabs on her was less out of brotherly concern and more an extension of his need to have as much as control as possible over every facet of his life.
After a time, they arrived in the familiar streets of Nolita. Slim, multicolored apartment buildings with wrought-iron fire escapes were the sign that they were back in the neighborhood where she had spent her life to this point. The garage door to their townhome opened as they approached and the car slid into the cave-like interior.
“You’re staying here tonight,” he said when they parked. “After that shit you just pulled…”
He shook his head, his voice trailing.
“Don’t be surprised if I keep you locked up in your goddamn room for the next week.”
She knew he wasn’t being totally serious, but keeping her in her room for days at a time, only able to leave for brief periods, was a punishment that he had meted out many times before. But only when she was a teen in high school.
“I’m an adult!” Mona protested. “You can’t just ground me like I’m some kind of kid!”
“Oh, yes I can,” he said, that familiar anger returning to his steely eyes. “As long as our money’s in my name, I tell you what to do.”
“Maybe I’ll leave! See if you can stop me!”
Giovanni slammed his palm against the textured rubber of the steering wheel.
“Oh, you’ll leave? Then what? Be a shop girl in one of these rich lay boutiques makin’ fifteen bucks an hour? Livin’ all the way out in fuckin’ Jersey, takin’ the train for an hour and a half there and back? That the kind of life you wanna live?”
Mona considered his words, understanding that he was right. There’d be no chance for a girl like her in the city without the resources that her ancestors had earned and left for them. But they were from a different time and gave the men in the family total control over the finances; she couldn’t go down to the bodega on the corner for a sandwich without making sure it fit into her allowance for the week.
Giovanni’s expression softened as he clenched his fist tight for a moment before releasing it. He took a deep breath, then turned back towards Mona, his anger seemingly cooled.
“Listen,” he said, the harsh lights of the garage filling the car and casting his face in an almost sickly appearance. “I love you, Mo. You know that, right?”
Mona sighed and nodded. She hated the way Giovanni controlled her, but she would be wrong if she were to say it wasn’t mostly driven by his love for her and desire to keep her safe.
“Yeah, I know, Gio.”
“I just don’t want you to get hurt, that’s all. And things are bad with the bears, worse than you know. And that’s for a reason: I keep that shit out of your life. I make sure none of the violence and shit on those streets ever finds you.”
Mona nodded again, unable to dispute these words.
“Now let’s get up to the apartment. I got some people waiting for me.”
Mona’s stomach sank at these last words; she knew exactly what kind of people would be up there.
They got out of the car, left the garage, and entered the small hallway that led from the garage to the lower-level living room of the townhome. Mona could already hear the loud music playing through the door, along with the raucous carrying-on of men and women inside.
“I want you to get up to your room right when we get inside,” said Giovanni, his hands on the doorknob, his eyes a stern glare.
Then he opened the door, and the two stepped inside.
CHAPTER 6
The spacious living room was occupied by a dozen of fellow shifters, both men and women. They were lounging here and there on the expensive furniture that had been in the home for decades, and all were drinking, smoking cigarettes, making messes without any heed for what they ruined or who would be cleaning things up. Mona knew it would invariably be her.
“There’re my fuckin’ people!” said Giovanni, his arms outstretched as he entered the room with a cocky strut.
The group burst out into various uproarious greetings.
“Someone give me a fuckin’ beer,” he said to no one in particular, walking into the center of the room and collapsing into the only chair that was unoccupied, the one that everyone knew was reserved him, and him alone.
Mona stood in the doorway, noticing that no one got up to get the beer that Giovanni requested. She sighed, realizing that it was understood that the “someone” was h
er. She walked into the kitchen with quick, frustrated steps, and opened the tall, stainless steel fridge, taking a bottle of beer. Looking around the kitchen, she felt her blood run hot as she observed the mess of empty beer bottles, piles of takeout boxes from the barbecue place downstairs, and tracked footprints from the heavy boots the men of her kind favored.
She returned to the living room, seeing that a pair of young women, both blonde, both attractive, both with the same sneer on their faces, had joined Giovanni. The three of them were packed tightly into the overstuffed chair.
“There’s my beer,” said Giovanni as Mona entered.
She handed the beer over to him, which he took with a quick swipe.
“Thanks, sis.”
“This is your sister?” asked one of the girls, looking over Mona with a scan of harsh appraisal. “How old is she, 12?”
“Yeah, she looks like she should be in her room listening to Taylor Swift,” said the other, both of the women laughing.
“Hey, lay off,” said Giovanni, his expression turning severe. “That’s my fuckin’ sister you’re talking about.”
Recognizing immediately how serious Giovanni was, the two girls quickly clammed up, looking down at the floor.
“But seriously, sis- get up to your room. You’re gonna be there for the rest of the weekend.”
“But…“
“No ‘but,’” said Giovanni. “You don’t need to be around for what’s going down in here.”
Mona knew what that meant- as the evening went on, the beer would be replaced by harder and harder drugs. Looking around at the crowd, she only recognized a few familiar faces from the pack; the rest were junkies, or junkies in the making. The girls on Giovanni’s lap were his girls for the week, low-class girls with good looks and few brains, along for the excitement and thrills of being with a big-time drug dealer. Mona knew that they’d be swapped out in a few days for the next pair before they had the chance to see Giovanni’s true shifter nature, some drugs thrown their way to keep them hooked and quiet.