by Cecy Robson
“Bren, don’t fight me on this. You don’t know what we’re dealing with. You’re no good to Dan if you get your own soul devoured. Wait for backup!”
Celia stiffened when she caught Aric’s voice, but stomped on the accelerator when I pointed down the street. “I have backup. Celia’s with me.”
Aric swore. “Tell her I don’t want her involved.”
Celia narrowed her eyes at my phone and continued to drive. “I’m not letting Bren track Danny alone, Aric.”
His tone softened. He’d heard her. “Celia, it’s too dangerous. I don’t want anything to happen to you.”
“And I don’t want anything to happen to Dan,” she insisted.
“I know, love. But I have a pack of wolves ready to help you. Just give them time to get there.”
Celia released a shaky breath. Must have been the “love” comment. Smooth, Alpha asshole, real goddamn smooth. She collected herself and tried to reason with him. “There’s no time to waste, Aric. We need to find Dan, and we need to find him fast. These ghosts—they’re hungry. And right now, Dan’s their only meal.”
“Celia, please don’t do this without me.”
Her eyes focused hard on the road as she ignored him. “Which way now?” she asked when we reached the intersection.
“Left,” I answered after drawing in more air.
“Celia—”
I cut Aric off. “Looks like she’s listening to you about as much as she did when you were together. Later, bossman. I’ll call when I’m onto something.”
Aric snarled another curse before I could disconnect. I took another whiff. “Go up 431; it looks like they’re headed toward Mount Rose.” My phone rang. I tossed it in the glove compartment and lifted my body out of the car to sit on rim of the door.
Celia’s phone rang next. “Crap. It’s Aric.” The ringer abruptly cut off. I thought she answered until she hit a few buttons and nothing happened. “We must be getting closer. My phone’s dead again.”
“Or the collection of spirits is more than we thought,” I muttered.
I continued to hang out the car window to track the sour stench of Dan’s muffler. The rows of cedar-planked homes disappeared one by one until the thickening woods swallowed us like an approaching army. I slipped back into the cabin when the only aroma interfering with the cold autumn night was the lingering exhaust of Dan’s muffler.
“This is all my goddamn fault.”
Celia’s eyes cut from the long winding road. “It’s not. You’re not the one calling forth these ghosts to rise. We need to find out who is and shut her trap.”
“But Dan wouldn’t be here if I hadn’t bet he couldn’t land a decent lay.”
“Danny knows what you’re like—we all do.” Her voice quieted. “That doesn’t mean he doesn’t know you care.” Celia pulled up on her smeared lacey shirt. The gray blood was plastered all over it. She ripped it from her body in one hard tug and tossed it in the backseat, leaving only the skimpy black top beneath. I barely noticed how it hugged her full breasts. My focus remained on finding Dan.
“I bust his balls too much.”
Celia smirked. “Ballbusting is your calling card. Hell, it’s practically your middle, last, and confirmation name.” She patted my knee. “We’ll find him, Bren.”
“I just don’t want to find him in pieces.” I took another whiff. “I smelled his blood in the alley. Shit, I can smell some in the air now.”
Celia clenched her jaw. “I know. I scented it, too. I don’t smell anything now.” She sighed. “These things need him. If they wanted him dead . . . we would’ve found him already.”
She meant to say, we would’ve found his body ditched in the alley. I knew it because damn it all, I was thinking it, too.
When I met Dan, I was working at a gym in Palo Alto as a personal trainer. Cake job; I didn’t even need to work out. My beast gave the false appearance that I survived on protein shakes and spent every waking moment lifting. All I had to do was pretend like I could make some skinny ass wimp look like me by convincing him to buy the shit the gym sold to build bulk . . . along with locking him into a six month membership. The first wimp sent my way was Dan.
We tried squats first, just to loosen his spaghetti limbs. He face planted within the first four and cracked his glasses. A few of the meatheads watching laughed. I didn’t, and half-expected him to bolt from the humiliation. I would have. Instead the little turd wiped the blood from his nose and fixed his glasses. “Um. What’s next?” he asked me.
“A trip to the emergency room,” I answered him honestly.
He ignored me and moved toward the weights. I followed and maneuvered him back to the rowing machine where I’d thought he wouldn’t get hurt. Hell, the motions were too much for him. He flailed around as if drowning. Hands-down the most uncoordinated piece of work I’d ever seen. Somehow he managed to belt himself in the schnoz with his knee. I yanked him up by his now bloody shirt and tossed him a towel . . . which he of course, didn’t catch.
The others laughed. They stopped laughing at the sight of my glare. I crossed my arms and loomed over Dan. He blinked up at me with his shattered lenses. Damn. He probably saw twelve of me. “Why are you here?”
He glanced around. “To get in shape.”
I didn’t need to take a whiff to know he was lying. “Sure you are. Why are you here?” I asked again.
He lowered the towel from his battered nose. “I want to look better so I can meet women.”
I nodded. “You want to get laid.”
His face heated and he backed away, pointing to the display cabinet. “Will this, uh, help? You know, build more muscle?”
“Nope. It’ll just make you crap out your left lung.” I motioned around. “None of this shit is going to help you. You can’t squat worth a crap and anything above fifty pounds might kill you. Don’t waste your time. Don’t waste your cash. Get the hell out of here and find some nice librarian to bang.”
The gym fell silent. Funny thing about your first week of work, the boss was always watching. She stormed out in the middle of some pilates class and fired me on the spot. Fine by me. She was a lousy lay and her place smelled like moldy jock straps. Dan chased me to my car after I yanked off my official gym T-shirt and tossed it on the floor on my way out. “Sir, wait!”
I opened the door to my POS Camaro and slipped inside, slamming the door so the rusted lock would catch. The engine coughed, sputtered, and finally caught. I sighed when I realized Dan was lurking by my door, his glasses just barely hanging onto his face. I rolled down the window. “The name’s Bren. You call me ‘sir’ again and I’ll beat your ass.”
Dan’s shoulders slumped. “Sorry. I didn’t mean . . . you were honest in there.” He hooked a thumb behind him toward the gym as if I didn’t know where he’d meant. He lowered his head. “You also didn’t laugh when the others did. That was, you know, cool.”
Blood smudged his nose. The afro on the top of his head was more Bozo than Tito. And his thin frame was one false move away from shattering. He looked like a clown that had been run out of the circus school for embarrassing the profession.
And he was thanking me for being nice.
It wasn’t hard to tell he’d been dumped on. And hell, couldn’t I relate? I huffed. “Get in.”
“Huh?”
I jerked my head and grinned, something telling me I was in for one hell of a time. “I said get in, Stan.”
“It’s Dan . . . Dan Matagrano.” He walked slowly around the car and climbed in. “Where are we going?”
“To get you laid,” I said before put-put-puttering out of the parking lot.
• • •
“He just wanted to get laid,” I said out loud to Celia.
“What?” She’d been playing with her blue tooth, trying to call her sisters for help. White noise blared out of t
he speakers the more she fumbled with the touch screen.
“Dan. When we met. Even then he just wanted to get laid.”
Celia shook her head. “No. I just think he wanted to stop feeling so lonely. It was a hard time for him then. He was finishing up at Stanford and the competition was cutthroat.”
I laughed without humor. “So he said. Pricks. His fellow graduates were always trying to sabotage his work. At least I helped him by getting him some tail.”
“You’re wrong, Bren.” Celia smiled sadly. “You helped him by becoming his best friend. Yes, you pick on him. Yes, you give him a hard time. But you’d crush anyone to bloody rubble who tried to hurt him.” She pursed her lips. “And don’t ever think he doesn’t know that.”
I nodded hoping she was right only to abruptly straighten when we rounded the curve and the stink of Dan’s muffler disappeared. “Shit. Turn around.”
“What?” Celia slowed and glanced around. I jumped out and doubled back down the road before the car stopped. “Bren! Bren! What’s wrong?”
My heart pounded fast in my chest. I inhaled, thinking I’d lost the trail completely and raced further down the hill. I caught onto the weakening odor until it became more intense—telling my wolf I was headed in the right direction. The squealing tires and revving engine behind me told me Celia had turned the car around. I raced back, meeting her halfway. “Go back down the hill. They’ve taken Dan into the woods.”
“Are you sure? We didn’t pass anything even remotely resembling a road.”
“I’m positive. The smell of exhaust cleared out.” I frowned. “Didn’t you notice?”
She gunned it. “I haven’t scented anything since we left the club. How are you picking up anything with all the decomposing foliage around?”
“Tracking’s the one thing I was always good at, Ceel— Stop!” I pointed to a break in the trees blanketed with ferns. “Right there.”
Celia made a hard left and stomped on the accelerator to push the sedan up the small incline. She swore as the Lexus tore over drying wood and something hard slammed beneath the undercarriage.
I threw open the car door when the wheels spun. “We’re making noise, babe. Come on. We go on foot from here.”
Celia rushed out. “Maybe you should howl, and call the pack.”
“And give away our location to these ghouls?” I shook my head. “They’ll take it out on Dan and kill him for sure.”
Celia started to say something but then nodded reluctantly. “I guess you’re right.”
We abandoned the path and jetted through the thickening forest with me leading the way. We might have hit the three mile mark when the air charged with the aroma of crushed herbs. Magic . . . more specifically, witch magic. I bit back a snarl, knowing we’d found the idiot forcing the spirits to rise.
We slowed to a stop. Celia crouched beside me and stole a wary glance, her tigress eyes replacing her own and taking in the darkness. “This is where the dead are being raised,” her husky voice murmured. “I can smell the witch. She’s near.”
“Yeah, I know. Problem is, she knows we’re here, too.” I scanned the area, sensing the magic build like a small wave. “We must’ve triggered some kind of alarm.”
The cold breeze stilled and the air crackled as if electrified the further we advanced into the dark forest. Celia nudged me and motioned to the sky. Dark clouds condensed like billowing smoke, swallowing the moon and the scattered stars littering the hemisphere. In a slasher flick, we’d be slated for our dooms and an audience full of movie goers would be screaming at us to snag some garlic, a crucifix, find the nearest church, or just plain run. The slasher himself was about to break through the trees and get us.
Maybe. But let him try. No way was I ditching Dan.
Our beasts moved us like shadows, becoming one with the forest and blending us into the encroaching darkness. My coursing blood pounded hard in my ears. Dan’s scent of blood and fear intensified, inciting my beast to growl. He was still alive, and hurt.
Celia must have scented my increasing rage, and urged me to go faster. We leapt across a small brook where Dan’s paisley hanky was left abandoned on the other side. I bent to lift it when the air charged once more.
Tarragon filtered through my nose and made me sneeze, cutting off my building snarls. Mist trailed from the rows of sweeping firs, cloaking the forest floor and edging its way across the thick ferns like a giant tarp. The hair on my body stood on end and my eyes caught view of Celia’s blanching face. She knew what the mist possessed.
I just hoped it wouldn’t possess us.
My head turned slow enough that I felt my tendons and muscles slide beneath my skin. Silver trickles of light illuminated from the ground, gradually lengthening until they formed into legs, torsos, arms, heads. Bodies of dead men and women. Pale versions of their former selves. Spirits.
“Oh, Jesus. Sweet Jesus,” Celia whispered.
Cold sweat trickled down my spine while The Exoricist, Poltergeist, and every damn movie dealing with possession flashed through my mind in goddamn blue-ray, director’s cut glory. I swore when they circled us, not sure how to get us out of this. Aric was right, I’d rushed in too quickly. And I’d fucking dragged his mate in with me.
Celia startled when I gripped her arm. It was my way of assuring her that I’d protect her with my life. Thing of it was, that didn’t mean I’d manage to save hers. She trembled beneath my hold, or perhaps it was me doing the shaking. This shit was seriously messed up.
At least a dozen transparent bodies closed in around us. I stilled as the sudden whiff of their pain cut through the rapidly freezing air. My building panic faded and retreated deep into my core . . . and an odd sense of peace washed over me like a soothing shower. “They’re not going to hurt us, Ceel.” I didn’t know how I knew. I just did. My wolf had risen to his feet within me, alert, but not in furious defense of hungry spooks about to devour our souls.
Something beckoned me to turn around. The spirit of a young woman, maybe twenty-five or so, with long, dark hair approached us, carrying a small bundle. Her expression held the grimness of someone who experienced a rough life and an even more wretched death. I didn’t want her to show me what she clutched so caringly in her arms. I clenched my jaw harder and harder with every step she took until I thought I’d snap it from the tension.
She was a lot smaller than me. Her small bundle rested inches from my stomach. I wanted to grab Celia and bolt past her, except the spirit begged me without words not to turn away. She wanted me to see, to feel, in a way her suffering would no longer allow. Slowly, she unwrapped the faded gray blanket, likely light blue when it had mattered. I expected to find something out of my most ghoulish nightmares—a hideous face, disfigured, amputated, or equally scary as hell. It wasn’t. In her arms lay a baby, nuzzling close to his mother’s chest. Thick lashes grazed his chubby cheeks. Tiny lips pursed together. And a dimple dabbed his small perfect chin. He was . . . cute.
Was cute.
He opened his large eyes, blinking away sleep.
The mother raised him to me, insisting I hold him. But that was no longer possible. He was dead.
And so was she.
Celia leaned over the baby, smiling as best she could. Tears ran thick in her voice. “Your son is precious.”
The ghost smiled and nodded while her cheeks streaked with her pain.
To our right, the ghost of a young soldier smiled and waved. He shuffled forward, walking with an unsteady limp and dressed in a tattered WWII army uniform. I swore again, taking in the growing numbers rising from the mist. The spirits the witch had raised tonight had had their fill throughout the years. Their victims—men, women, and hell, even babies had suffered brutally at the hands of these assholes.
Celia’s fury flared with mine. I placed my hand on her lower back and urged her forward. “We gotta get rid of the evil spirits an
d kill the bitch who raised them.” I jerked my head back toward the woman and her baby. “It’s the only way they’ll get their peace.”
The ghosts before us nodded with approval and parted, allowing us through. Rows of arms pointed in the direction of a steep ravine. Our pace quickened. A little boy about six hurried beside us, trying to show Celia his small Matchbox truck. He wanted her to take it, but of course, it was no longer possible.
Celia swallowed hard when she tried to pat his head and her hand went right through him. “When we reach them, I’m taking out the witch. You go after Dan.” She froze as we took in the brambles of dying blackberry bushes layering the ravine and the cold breeze shot upward. “I can smell Danny,” she whispered.
The growl I’d forced back burned my throat. “Yeah, he’s near. Stay close to me until we absolutely have to separate.” I linked my fingers around hers. “Can you shift us down through these thorns?”
She nodded. “Hang tight.”
We leapt high into the ravine. I barely caught sight of another spread of forest before ramming my eyes shut and holding my breath. Traveling via Celia left you with eyeballs and a stomach full of dirt if you didn’t take the necessary precautions. My body jerked forward, pulled along by the sheer strength of Celia’s power. We resurfaced in the patch of woods just as an explosion of blinding light and the roar of breaking wood thundered above us.
I shoved Celia out of the way half a second before she was struck by the giant fir breaking through a sea of dense branches. She landed atop a thick bed of moss unharmed. What sucked was I didn’t move fast enough. The giant trunk slammed into me, pinning me to the forest floor and mashing in my chest.
Broken ribs punctured my lungs like knives. I howled from the burn, struggling to breathe. All I managed were a few gasps and a shitload of wheezes. Warm blood pooled somewhere beneath me while searing pain ravaged my chest and catapulted out into my collapsing limbs. Mother’s ass, even my tongue hurt.
Celia scrambled to me, her expression blanching with fear. She pushed at the trunk. It wouldn’t budge. She knelt beside me, searching my body for signs of life. She gasped when I blinked back at her. “Oh my God, Bren. Are you okay?”