by Stec, Susan
As much as I want to throw Luna over my shoulder and carry her back down to the car, I give her a lingering peck on the lips and ask, "Sweetheart, do you think you can drum up a little of CeCe's wit, Jane's street sense, add it to Gracie's common sense, and shelf your blatant disregard for our safety?"
Luna nods Gracie's head, but her brow is furrowed and her right eye twitches with each bang on the wall down the hall.
"Okay, we're going to open the door, and we're just going to listen a second."
I inch aside, and Gracie opens the door. We both listen, but I keep my hand firmly planted on her midsection, just in case.
More banging.
"Doesn't that sound like someone is banging a head against a wall?" I ask.
Gracie covers my hand with hers to stop me from playing with the navel ring on her stomach. "Isn't that what I just said? And it better not be Jane's, because if Vuur bangs it too hard, Mom will lose the host!"
She looks over her shoulder at me. "Let's get the hell down there!"
Luna may be speaking softly, but she's working the anger loud and clear.
We step out of the stairwell. Someone screams, "Turn down the fucking TV!" from room two-oh-one, and we jump three inches into the air. Breathing hard, we both freeze.
The monster inside me trembles to be let out.
"One more time, and I slit her throat!" Vuur's voice barrels on the other side of a door down the hall.
"Jeeze, buddy, whoever the hell you are. Stop the banging! I'm under a friggin' knife in hea'. Youse guys got enough testosterone flyin' around to grow me one! What's your fuckin' problem?"
"Crap," Gracie voice whispers. "That's Jane."
"No," I say trying to gain control of the moment. "That's your mother."
"Oh, God," she squeaks. "We need to do something!"
The banging is louder, more persistent. The expectancy of a battle spreads my lungs and fire runs through my veins. I feel the beast in me swell. Sweat beads on my forehead. My hands itch with the change. I choke, and grab Luna's arm. "I don't think I can stop this!"
I fall to the floor, shudder and dry heave as I try to halt the change. My limbs crack and bend. My spine lengthens. On the fence of reality, I hear a loud crash, a splitting of wood and drywall.
I vaguely hear a woman shout, "Turn the goddamned television down! We're tryin' a little romance in here!"
"Gaire," Luna is saying close to my face. "If that banging came from who I think it did—you can't kill him. Can you hear me?"
I stiffen as my body continues to transform. "You mean I can't put the real Vuur down before he shifts?" I'm panting, my voice deep and gravely. I know the change is a hideous process, but Gracie's face is not registering disgust.
She looks down at me through thoughtful eyes. "Gaire, Vuur doesn't know my mother is under Jane's skin. What if he's trying to save the real Jane? They had this thing. It's hard to explain, and we don't have the time. Promise me. Just promise you'll make sure he isn't trying to save Jane."
I growl and feel bones under my facial features shift and extend. It's only a matter of seconds before the shift is complete. My clothes in shreds, I push myself into a standing position.
Gracie jumps back. "Okay, hold on bad-boy-wendigo-guy. Don't go doing something stupid . . . yet. Please," she says and grabs a clawed hand.
I snort and shake from snout to tail. "I'll try, but if he gets anywhere near you, I can't promise I'll be a good bad-boy." I curl my maw and give Luna a toothy smile.
My senses are ten times stronger. I smell filth on the carpet beneath my clawed feet. The strong scent of rancid body-fluids increases my lust for blood and the need to stop heartbeats pulsing behind old wood worn doors. Lights burn under small cages and beside each door, and make me hood the wendigo's eyes from the glare. I can feel the monster's pulse in my temples, chest, spine, and fingers dressed in long sharp claws.
There's a loud crash and a man's angry shriek. Gracie runs toward two-oh-seven. I spring down the hall after her. She slides to a stop in front of the room seconds before I get there.
Something solid hits glass.
A woman screams, "Vuur, stop!"
We burst through the door to find Vuur fighting Vuur, and Jane standing in the middle of the bed, knees bent, arms out, ready to leap.
"That's it! I'm calling the fucking cops!" the woman down the hall yells.
I kick the door shut and run the deadbolt.
"Which one?" Luna shouts at her mother dressed in Jane.
"Fuck, Fuck, Fuck!" Jane screams back. "The one with the f'n ropes around his arms, idiot. Go left!"
Both women leap onto the men's chests and lock lips with them. They move around the room like two inebriated couples trying to outdo each other on a dance floor.
I'm frozen in place as the Vuur under Jane's lips disintegrates into a fine black powder and clings to the doppelganger trying to push her away. The Vuur under Gracie manages to pull her off his chest and darts toward the cloud of smoke being drawn into Jane.
"Stop him!" Luna screams at me as I take Vuur down.
We roll on the carpet, my fangs inches from his throat.
"But don't you dare kill him!" she yells in my ear. "He was not trying to kill Jane!"
Vuur turns his head to glare at Gracie and spits on the carpet. "Let me guess, another doppelganger?"
Gracie smiles. "Hey Vuur, last time we met I was wearing Jane."
My words are deep and threatening: "Don't move."
Vuur turns nose to snout with me. "I wouldn't think of it. However, if you will just let me up, I'm sure we can handle this situation one monster to another." Vuur's nose wrinkles. "Your breath is horrid. What do you feed on?"
"Honey," Gracie says. "Just back your snout up a bit, Gaire, and if Vuur even looks like he's going to shift into the dragon, you have my permission to kill him."
Vuur slowly turns his head back to Gracie. "Young lady, you are just as obnoxious under that host."
"Yeah, I taught her everything she needed to know," Luna's mother says out of Jane's lips. "Now youse guys back it down a level . . . or five. You're stirring the bitch in me."
My eyes pierce where my teeth cannot, as I straddle Vuur, daring him to move a muscle. Deep in my chest the growl is soft but menacing.
Gracie slaps my snout. "Stop that! Settle down."
"Well," Luna's mother says, gliding over me like a black storm cloud. "Now that I've managed to destroy the doppelganger who fully intended to destroy Luna, I believe I will be leaving before day breaks. I have a group of elders to address." She smiles wickedly at me. "Damn, I wish I could have worn Jane to the meeting."
As she glides toward the bolted door, she says, "It looks like Rogaire can clean up here without further assistance."
"And who, per se, are you?" Vuur asks Luna's mother. "But more importantly, what have all of you done with my Jane?"
"Your Jane?" we all say at the same time.
"Yes, I've grown rather fond of her. It's a good thing I have such excellent sleuthing skills and was able to find Jane on her street corner. It seems you owe me, wendigo."
I'm nose to nose with the shifter again. "For what?"
"For not leaving your doppelganger in Purgatory and instead taking her to Michigan to find you."
"He's right," Luna says through Gracie's lips. "If he didn't take Jane and me with him, I might not have found you. He might not have fallen in love with Jane, and she might be dead right now. Heck, I might be dead by now. This could have turned out a whole lot different if Vuur had just started looking for you again."
"He almost killed me," I growl.
"I do believe the strength in that sentence is the word almost, wendigo," Vuur says. "Your breath is fetid, your skin is oily, and your weight is making the dragon in me stir. Do we wish to go there?"
My chest rumbles.
Luna puts her arm over my hairy shoulder and plays with my white mane. "Can we leave now?"
"Where is Jane?" Vuur asks.
/>
"Why don't you both go set Jane free? We've—let's not forget my part in all of this—created enough drama in the human world for one day," Luna's mother says as she seeps through the door frame. "I'll be watching all of you," her voice echo's down the hall over the sound of approaching sirens.
TWENTY FOUR
Gaire
"How long will you keep Gracie?" I ask.
"Until I shed her," she answers. "She'll be home in a few days."
"I think it's a good idea to hang onto her until then," I tease. "She tempers the monster inside me and there's the necromancer-witchy thing. She may turn out to be helpful."
"What if I don’t want to temper your bad side?"
"But you never know when summoning a ghost can come in handy," I say.
"Good thing I know where Gracie lives," she playfully says. "I mean, in case we lose her or something."
"I thought you said you're strictly catch and release."
"That was yesterday," she says, a taunting grin on her face, eyes making quick movements toward the kitchen.
"Great to know. There's two previous ladies I wouldn't mind revisiting," I say and run an index finger down her jaw and over the corner of her lip.
Gracie wiggles nervously, gently wraps her fingers around my promiscuous one, and pulls my hand to her lap. I give her gesture a friendly pat. We sit on her terribly uncomfortable sofa in the middle of way too many scents wafting off the candles in the room, and exchange a mild electric current flowing between us.
She's still wearing the halter top, jeans, and strappy sandals I'm sure Gracie felt was risqué enough advertisement for a corner on OBT. The outside of my lips quiver a grin and I mentally laugh at the thought of her trying to hook in the outfit. It shows plenty of body for me, but on the street . . . not so much.
My mind wanders to the featherbed upstairs, and the open French windows drawing the night inside.
Gracie lifts her lids and stares at me through Luna's eyes, speckled with darting red flecks. In a quick fluid movement, I grip her hands, lean my upper arm into her chest just under the ribcage, and roll her over my shoulders and around my neck.
"Wave bye-bye to Nan and her friends," I tell her and then even out her weight on my shoulders.
I chuckle when her fingers wiggle goodbye over the edge of my clutched palm, as I take on the stairs two at a time.
Gracie
A herd of ghosts huddle by Nan as she covers the eyes of two young girls. They are back out of the photograph on the kitchen wall. Nan's smile spreads across her face. The ghosts' howls and cackles rise above the giggles of the girl's tethered to Nan's hands, as we climb the stairs.
Gaire shoulders Gracie's bedroom door open, and then shuts it with his booted foot. Gently, he slides me to the floor. "Am I on top, or you?"
I laugh. I can't help it.
Over a grin that begs to be kissed, he teases, "Hey, I ran the whole show the first time and it didn't go very well."
I draw my lips into a pucker and shake my head. "Nah-ah, if I remember correctly, I tried to seduce you the first time. You pushed me away."
Gaire grits his teeth, eyes stormy.
"Hey, I'm down with a little rough."
"After the mind-fuck downstairs, you deserve rough," he says and lifts me onto the feather bed. "But I'll save that for another Jane, sometime down the road. Tonight it's all about your Gracie side."
On my knees at the edge of the bed, I pull the leather tie at my back and leave the one around my neck secured. The moon is full and it softly lights the room. A gentle breeze from the open windows flutter my halter hanging mid-chest and to my navel.
Gaire moves closer and reaches out. I shake my head, and his hand falls to his hip.
Unzipping my jeans and kicking off my sandals, I squirm out of my pants and kneel before him in my halter and white cotton hipsters. When I reach out for his hand, he smiles and gives it to me.
As Gracie tilts her head and looks up into his eyes, I place his hand into her panties.
"I want you inside of me," I whisper as his fingers slide into moist warm flesh.
"You're so wet for me." His whisper is deep and throaty. "I want to taste you first."
His words are tempered by a throaty growl.
I smile wickedly and pull his fingers out of Gracie's panties and up to his mouth.
"Bad girl," he says and slides his tongue over them, nostrils flaring.
"Are you ready for rough now?" My grin moves up to my provocative red eyes.
"No, how about this time I please you first."
He pushes me onto the bed, rips my panties down my legs and over my feet. Gaire kneels between my legs, his fingers running up the insides of my thighs. "Then it will be all about rough," he says as his face nuzzles into the black curls between my legs. His tongue flicks over my clitoris, and nibbles.
I suck in a breath between my teeth, and let it out in short whimpering pants.
Fifteen minutes later, I'm floating beside the bed, a cloud of sooty smoke, wicked red eyes, and a toothy-sharp smile. Gaire looks pretty peculiar, with his wolf-like face, set of manic eyes, and a protruding jaw lying on a lacy sage striped pillow. His body, skinny and alien looking, is curled in a fetal position on top of a flowery peach comforter.
"We need a purpose," I say. "Not a witch. Everyone needs a purpose in life. Before Gracie, our purpose was to find love, someone to share our lives with. Now..."
"A purpose?" he asks. His voice is heavy and sandy. "We have a purpose, Luna. We need to stay alive. There's still a price on my head, and more than one bounty hunter out there. Not to mention the cool and collected assassin I happened to smite twice, and the hotwired hooker who accompanies him. She looked pretty pissed at you. What if she talks Vuur out of his promise?"
"Jane wouldn't do that," I taunt.
"Let's not forget my father. He'll kill me the moment he lays eyes on me. Until then, he is willing to pay anyone who gets there before him.
"And you're still two years from being cut loose. You need to keep up appearances, literally. Your elders, and my breed, believe a wendigo feeding off the human flesh a doppelganger wears is what pushes us above ground for more. You make one more wrong move, and you'll have a price on your head. I'm sure as hell not going to let that happen. Don't you think that alone is purpose enough?"
"As far as I'm concerned they would have to prove that. Neither you nor I have done anything to prove their ancient beliefs. And to answer your question, no, nothing you have stated is a purpose. All of it is survival. You've lived so long in survival mode you've confused it with resolution. A purpose would be to make a difference, make changes in the way others think Down Under, especially about my breed and yours."
"No creature has ever been able to change what is Down Under. It would be useless to try." He raises his hand to keep me from voicing a rebuttal.
"We don't need to charge out of here on a mission to change the world, Luna. That's a bit daunting."
"Well," I say, "how about we start with your father and my elders?"
"You'll never change what my father thinks of me."
"Your mother would be a good place to start. He took her to his bed. There has to be a reason he did."
"That was a weakness."
"Yes and therefore springs a hope," I tell him using the voice Gracie gifted me, but I feel the Jane in me when I say, "And the doppelganger we killed? He raped and murdered innocent humans, making authorities believe the serial killer was a human. This kind of behavior puts my race in more jeopardy than I do when I double up. That doppelganger bent ancient rules to feed his perversions. And others have done so for several hundred years, damning a race that doesn't even know we exist. Righting that is a purpose."
My body roils as I lay beside the wendigo on Gracie's bed.
"Truth be told, I'd like nothing better than to be able to enjoy the best of both worlds with you," he says, and covers a yawn with his long stick-like fingers. "So I get it. That will never be
possible if there's not a better world below the sewer drain. But I'm afraid trying to reason with my father and your elders will be impossible."
"Exactly." I'm smiling now, although it must look garishly revolting. "In which case, we move on to purpose B."
Gaire's left eyebrow raises. A smile tickles the underside of one cheek. "Having sex with every human above the sewer drain, one night at a time, while husbands all over the world think their wife is dreaming in bed beside them?"
"Well, sure, that," I say with a giggle, "and kickin' us some Down Under ass, until somebody wants to listen."
"Going rogue?"
"Going rogue," I answer.
About the author
One's real life is so often the life that one does not lead~~Oscar Wilde
From USA Today Bestselling Author Susan Stec,
I love laughing with my daughters, class B scary movies, fine cuisine and hamburgers from Wendy's. I'm addicted to electronics, dark chocolate, vintage eyeglass frames, and fuzzy warm socks.
There isn't just one thing I'm passionate about. I'm married to a wonderful man, have two adult daughters, three grandsons, and three dogs. I live on fifty acres, hunt and fish, and I will get up in the middle of the night to listen to the coyote sing. I sculpt stained glass, paint watercolors, make jewelry, but most of all I write. I write because I have to and because it amuses me to live vicariously through my characters.
More about me, my characters, and my books:
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