by Cecy Robson
She buttoned the top of her coat to protect her frail body against the cold. As a were, I’d keep the majority of my strength and reflexes till my dying day. Little old humans like her didn’t have that luxury. I grinned with my new set of chompers and winked her way. “Hey, sex-uh lady.”
Mrs. Mancuso smiled and tucked her neck skin into her brown wool scarf. “Oh, Brendan, you’re such a good boy to flirt with an old lady.” She furrowed her penciled in brows and glanced over at Celia’s former home sweet home. “Too good a boy in fact to be hanging out with those Wird girls.”
I nodded in agreement. “Don’t worry, Mrs. M, I’m trying to help them see the light. I plan to spend the next few hours reading to them from the Bible. They’ll come around, just leave it to me.”
The front door of the Wird house crashed open. There stood Celia—five-foot-three inches of long lethal muscles in skinny jeans and a tight white long sleeved T-shirt. The breeze picked up, sweeping her long mane of brown curls around her face. She pushed her hair out of the way, exposing her narrowing green eyes. Her supersized hearing had obviously picked up my chat with her not-so-favorite neighbor.
I waved. “Hey, Ceel. What’s wrong? Still mad I made you cancel your porn subscription?”
It was really hard not to laugh at her reaction. Celia subscribing to porn was like me joining a Justin Bieber fan club—so not happening. Her eyes shot open only to narrow further at Mrs. Mancuso’s stiff, reprimanding middle finger.
Celia stormed to the edge of her front porch, and while a wide driveway separated both houses, I still caught her golden skin reddening beneath the whitening glare of her porch light. “Mrs. Mancuso, I do not have a porn—”
“Harlot!” Mrs. Mancuso shot back. She lifted her broom defensively, daring Celia to cross the driveway and step foot on her property. Celia pinched the bridge of her nose. In a Mancuso / Celia Wird smack-down, Mrs. M won every time. Not that Celia couldn’t crush her like a fistful of berries, but because Ceel didn’t pick on those weaker than her, no matter how much they annoyed her.
I placed my hand on Mrs. M’s shoulder. “It’s okay, honey-bunches. I won’t stop until the sin is washed from her wanton soul.”
“Bren, that’s enough out of you.”
Mrs. M patted my arm, ignoring Celia. “You’re a good boy, Brendan,” she said once more.
She flipped Celia off again before shuffling into her house. I chuckled and jogged up Celia’s light blue porch steps. I topped the charts around six-five, so even one step below her I still towered over her petite form. I pinched her cheek. “What’s the matter, baby girl, can’t you take a joke—”
My voice cut off in a gurgled choke. Celia snatched my throat with her hand and dragged my ass into her old pad. She kicked the door shut behind us without losing her stride. Like I said, long lethal muscles. My hulking body slid across the dark wood floors. I grabbed her wrist to break her hold but from one strangled gasp to the next, she flung open the sliding glass door leading out and tossed me over her deck.
I rolled roughly twenty feet across the leaf-strewn back lawn, shocked stupid by her over-reaction. What the hell? This wasn’t the first time I’d busted on her with Mancuso.
Celia scanned the darkness in a glance, searching for a goddamn witness to my execution, I assumed, before she leaped over her porch and landed in a crouch in front of me.
I scrambled to my feet. “Ceel, what the fu—”
Apparently, my BFF wasn’t done. She clenched my arm and shifted me into the frozen ground. My body burst into a gazillion molecules, small enough to pass me through the earth like sand through a colander. I jerked, struggling to break free except all I managed to wiggle was my damn head. It was no use, her weird mojo had buried me from the neck down. I groaned. “Come on, Celia. You know I was only messing with you.”
Celia stalked around my head as if debating whether to kick it out into the forest behind me. “Were you messing with me when you embarrassed me in front of Aric and his entire pack?”
My jaw popped open but I quickly shut it. I should’ve known. The goddamn Warriors had either ratted me out to Celia’s sisters or phoned her themselves. That’s when I knew it was time call in a favor to my buddy the wereskunk. The Warriors were in for a big surprise next time they climbed into their vehicles.
“Sorry, hot-stuff,” I muttered.
She rounded on me. “Sorry that I found out, or sorry for acting like a monstrous prick?”
Was that a trick question? I shrugged . . . well, I tried to anyway. “Both, I guess.”
“You guess? That’s seriously all you have to say to me.”
“Come on, Ceel. I said I was sorry. Aren’t you done yet?”
“No, I’m not done! I can’t believe you would talk about me in such a repulsive way to Aric and his entire gang of midnight streakers! You’re supposed to be my friend!”
“For hell’s sake, you know I didn’t mean a damn word of it. I only meant to distract him so I’d win the fight.”
“Couldn’t you have distracted him another way?” Celia bent and slapped me upside the head. “Did you have to say that Misha and I do it like orangutans?”
“I would never say that . . . I said you did it like monkeys.”
That earned me the ultimate glare. Beneath the rising moon, Celia’s green eyes morphed into that of her beast and fired with anger. Her fangs had also begun to protrude, a neat trick and not something weres could do unless they were trying to turn someone into a werebeast. Her body’s reaction told me two things: One, her inner golden tigress was itchin’ to unleash and beat my ass. And two, shut the hell up, jackass.
“Whatever, Bren,” she hissed. “Trying to win a fight at my expense is dirty and unfair. I would never do that to you!”
“Celia, everyone there knew I did it just to bust his balls. Besides, that asshole deserves a few jabs to his ego for dumping you.”
I should’ve stuck to the “shut the hell up, jackass” game plan. Celia stilled, her eyes resuming their round human shape and her fangs dissolving back to into average incisors. She stared hard at her worn shearling boots. Shit. Way to go, idiot.
“What happened between Aric and me is no one else’s business—do you understand me? Save your lewd comments for your drinking buddies and watch your mouth when it comes to me and him.” She veered around slowly and headed toward her deck, her hips swinging in that catwalk of hers . . . though I didn’t miss how her shoulders slumped slightly. Misery had that effect.
“Where you goin’, Ceel?”
Celia didn’t bother looking back. “To Misha’s. The vamps aren’t perfect, but at least when they insult me, they do it to my face. I may or may not be back to free you tonight. Enjoy the view of the backyard.”
“Aric referred to you as his mate,” I said quickly before she could bounce up the steps.
My comment froze her in her tracks. When she glanced over her shoulder, I thought for sure she’d let loose the waterworks. Had I been free, I would have kicked my own ass.
Her eyes brimmed with tears. “Don’t you dare play with my feelings like that.”
I swore a few times in my head. “Ceel, I may be an asshole. But you know I’d never intentionally hurt you. Look, get me out and I’ll prove it to you.”
She crossed her arms over her perky bosom. “Bren, I swear, if this a trick—”
“It’s not. Come on, get me out. It’s cold down here.”
Celia yanked me by my moppy hair and shifted me free from my earth-packed prison. She waited with clenched fists ready to pound. Before I got knocked out for the second time that day, I fumbled for the note in my back pocket. She frowned when I grabbed her hand and placed the wrinkled and torn pieces in her palm.
I grinned. “Think of it as a puzzle you have to put together.”
She clasped her hand over the ripped bits of paper when the wind
picked up, and walked up the wooden steps leading to her deck. I followed, watching as she used a few pebbles gathered in an old mason jar to weigh down the rumpled pieces while she arranged them on her patio table. It didn’t take her long to put the note back together. Debbie, or whatever the hell her name was, hadn’t taken the time to shred the evidence. After all, she had an unsuspecting fiancée to deal with and the rage of a jilted werebitch to unleash.
Celia crossed her arms again and read Aric’s words in silence, paying close attention to where her wolf openly proclaimed their matehood. Damn shame he never told her himself.
“Do you mind if I keep it?” she asked after a while.
I shrugged with one shoulder. “Go ahead. I think I’ve worn out its uses.” I paused, wrestling with whether I should open my yap again. Aric had majorly f’d up when it came to my girl, and shattered what little confidence their relationship had brought her. It was his fault. All of it. But she needed validation that what they had had been real—and not some game he’d played to get in her pants.
She angled her chin in my direction. “What is it?”
I plucked another pebble from the mason jar and tossed it in my hand a few times, struggling with whether to shut my trap or squeal like a little bee-atch. In the end, my loud mouth won. Hell, it usually did. “I hate to admit it, but that wolf does love you. I know I’ve told you before, but you need to believe it, kid.”
I wandered to the edge of the deck, unable to bear her reaction. As it was that bittersweet scent of her sadness belted my schnoz like a sucker punch. I pitched the pebble past where her property ended, swearing beneath my breath. The small round pebble soared over the cluster of bulky pines, up the steep incline, and into the forest. I heard it land a few seconds later, its dive to the ground muffled by the thick bed of pine needles carpeting the forest floor.
Celia leaned against the weathered rail next to me, her voice strained. “Maybe he does, but he’ll be married soon—and it won’t be to me.”
I wrapped my arm around her shoulders and pulled her close. She leaned against me, despite how muddy the shift had left me. Celia was always cool about forgiving me. Maybe she realized I wasn’t such an ass-wipe after all . . . and that I’d do anything for her and her sisters. “Come out with me tonight. You could use a good laugh.”
She lifted her head. “Are you going to a comedy club or something?”
“Not exactly.” I chuckled again. “Dan’s convinced he can get laid without me. I’m betting he can’t.”
She rubbed her brow. “Oh, no. Poor Danny. For the love of all things holy, what did you bet him?”
“I—” An unearthly cold hit my spine like a frozen spike and my head whipped in the direction of the forest. The sour stench of rot and torture burned through my nose and rolled my stomach. I snarled and shoved Celia behind me. There, at the edge of her lawn, inched a spirit dressed in a sheer flowing gown of red.
Her long black hair drifted around her like bands of seaweed in water. Her coal black eyes sparkled despite the lack of moonlight where she watched us. She smiled with jagged teeth. “Have you seen my children?” she asked in an eerie cry that seemed to echo from all directions.
“Holy shit.”
It was my only response before I attacked.
Chapter Three
“Bren, don’t!”
I ignored Celia and leapt off the deck, landing in my six-hundred-pound timber wolf form. The spirit’s high-pitched cackle raised the brown fur on my back in perfect “come and get me” mode. She disappeared through the evergreens just as my jaws opened to bite.
Normally my fangs wouldn’t have done jack shit against a spirit, but this one had taken a physical form. Good for me, bad—seriously bad—for her. Her long sheer gown swirled like flickering flames behind her as she sprinted around the firs in a dizzying blur. Damn it, she was fast. I hauled serious tail to keep up, using the blood red color of her gown to lure me to her like a goddamn bull.
“Where are my children . . . help me find my children.”
Her shrilled voice mocked and taunted me, disorienting my senses as it echoed from all directions. So I ignored everything but my sight and used my speed to propel me closer to her evil, decaying ass.
My paws thundered over the thick vegetation and masses of crumbling bark. We’d barreled halfway up the mountain when I pounced. The force of my weight slammed her thin figure across the earth, digging a small trench into the soil. My claws held her down while I dug my fangs through her skull. Gray matter spilled like chunks of rotten cauliflower. She screamed with rage and pain. I had her. I totally had her.
Too bad that’s when her children decided to show up.
And let me tell you, they were ugly little bastards.
Two boys donning rags of slithering insects broke through the trees and thick ferns. Their clawed little fingers stretched out, batting the air as they hissed with long black tongues. Their eyeless sockets fixed on me. “Mama. Mama,” they blubbered in low, throaty voices to the beat of “red rum.”
They launched onto my back, biting with sharp little teeth and puncturing their nails through my fur. I bucked and rolled, trying to hang tight to their mom and wrench the creepy shits off me. I would’ve managed if not for the scorching hot pain that shot through my rear. Something ripped through the muscle of my hind leg. And it wasn’t pretty. It seriously wasn’t pretty.
A little spirit girl about five or six, with—no lie—long writhing centipedes for pigtails, munched on my leg like it was a box of Cracker Jacks. Blood poured out of me like a leaky dam, splattering her dress of beetles and roaches, and making her chew that much faster.
Son of a bitch. I released Mommy Dearest and severed one of her daughter’s wrists. The kid’s hair didn’t appreciate that one bit. Seven centipedes snapped from her barrettes and slithered along my fur, searing through my flesh like trickles of boiling water and snaking their way along my back. Her brothers giggled in haunting demonic little spurts, like they were having the time of their undead lives. And because laughing at my royally screwed self wasn’t fun enough, the pint-size ghouls continued to stab their claws into my hide while the insects lining their clothing slid from their bodies to join the swarm crawling across me.
I growled and snapped at them, only to fill my jowls with a throng of wriggling bugs. The spirits held tight and their insect army scrambled faster. I swore, knowing I was in serious trouble. If these bugs made their way into my brain, they’d devour me from the inside out and use my soul to raise more dead. Shit. Where was a can of Raid when a werewolf needed one?
The centipedes wriggled their way across my thick fur. I felt every damn movement of their tiny legs as they marched across burning my flesh. The first squirmed its way into my ear just as the sound of sloshing water reverberated behind me.
Celia, my little hell kitty, gasped behind me. She sprinted forward, holding tight to a giant green pail in her hands. The child spirits hissed at her, this time in alarm. Whatever Celia carried was something they obviously feared.
The contents of her bucket splashed against me, forcing the spooks from my body. The boy who didn’t move fast enough hollered with a mind-numbing wail. His clothing scurried away in a frenzy and tunneled into the earth while his body was eaten away by whatever Celia had doused him with. His ribs cracked, one after the other, exposing his rotting and disintegrating organs.
Celia gagged from the reek of his dissolving innards. Luckily the leftover centipede rammed up my nose conveniently blocked part of the rancid scent.
“Oh God.” She swung her pail, sending the spirit’s remains soaring into the trunk of an old tree. It exploded in a swarm of flying creepy-crawlies that fell to the forest floor and burrowed deep into the earth.
Back to hell where you belong, asshole.
I lunged at the two remaining kiddos, biting through the spirit boy’s neck while Celia severed t
he little girl’s head from her shoulders with a slash of her sharp claws.
“Mama . . . Mama . . . Mama,” the decapitated heads cried in garbled and distorted voices before their skulls and bodies caved inward and sank slowly into the earth.
I changed back to human and brushed off the drying shells of the remaining centipedes. My puncture wounds started to fill in. They stung like a mo-fo as they sealed. Still, it didn’t compare to the pain of rebuilding the half-eaten muscle in my thigh. My flesh seared and my nerves bellowed as the power of my beast restored the bulk of the ravaged area. Slowly the ache receded as the skin knitted closed and reformed a new pink layer.
My wolf’s healing ability was one hell of a gift, but not without its agony when it worked that hard and that fast. I pushed the pain deep within me so no more than a grimace wrinkled my features. Outward displays of pain could mark a were as weak and get him killed. I hadn’t survived this long as a lone by being a wimp.
Celia watched the earth reclaim the dead. Her pretty face scrunched when a couple of toadstools sprouted where the ground had swallowed the little buggers. She kicked at them, sending pieces to scatter against the soil. She then bent to retrieve her bucket, careful not to look at me directly. For all the time the weres and I had changed around her, she’d yet to get used to naked bodies walking around like it was no big deal.
“Holy water?” I asked, pointing to her empty bucket.
She caught my motion in her peripheral vision and nodded. “The wolves have had my sisters keep a couple of buckets on hand since these ghosts have started showing up around Tahoe.”
I gritted my teeth as the last pangs of my healing thigh subsided and wiped the sweat off my forehead. “Good idea. The pack and I have had our share of face-offs with the phantoms and the freaky lately.”