As if I have no say in the matter, she turns and continues on her way to my study on the third floor, bearing regal.
Someone used to being in command.
And I, god damn fucking moron that I am, begin to follow her.
She’s been my punishment all these years.
Soon she’ll be my death.
But for now she’s also my only means of fighting back against the ones that did this to me—her people. Even if she kills me right after it’s over, the thought of helping her bring those faceless assholes down sounds real damn good about now.
I’m fixin’ to sink my new teeth into someone who actually deserves it.
I clear the first set of stairs before she even has a chance to get halfway up to the third floor. “Why spare me in the name of your vengeance?”
The ends of her long hair brush the top of her ass softly; her fingers imitate the silky caress as they slide over the wall.
She touches my home like she’s trying to learn something from it.
My entire body breaks out in goosebumps, aching to trade places.
“Why?” I demand a second time.
“You think I’d give them your death, that influx of power? No, werewolf. They’ll die first”—she pauses at the entry to my study and tilts her head back to stare at the ceiling—“and then you can die. I’ll be the only one left, the only one that can feed on your soul.”
That shouldn’t sound half as sexy as it sounds.
Fuck me.
CHAPTER 6
When I was first changed into this, the night of my celebration for winning the Lafon case, I was already quicker than her.
Three days later, she doesn’t stand a chance.
If there’s one thing I’ve learned holed up here for more than seventy-two hours, it’s that this change is exponential to an extreme.
Every minute that passes alters my molecular structure even more.
This body is so far from human by now that the fact I ever was one seems like a fantasy.
A bygone dream.
I’m within the study instantly, feet from her as she stands in front of the large, yellow armchair that faces away from the fireplace.
Maybe she only had a second prior to me entering, maybe two, but it was enough time for her to unleash her powers.
And I’m not talking about her hellish fire.
Objects float in the air above her head, moving in concerted circles that are too controlled to be random. Her hands are held up to her sides, elbows bent, fingers steepled.
My tribal, ebony Makonde figure—a piece I hand picked myself on a trip to South Africa—floats down from the chaos of other objects and stops inches from her head. It twirls slowly for her as she reaches up. Her fingers follow its outline half-an-inch above the sculpture’s actual surface.
Like a blind person caressing someone’s face to see them.
She is.
There it is once more. That instinct. An influx of knowledge that seems to have come encoded with the change.
And it’s telling me that she is doing exactly that—she’s somehow garnering information from that statue as she studies it, absorbing data off the atoms hovering above it.
What the hell is she seeing?
Is she bearing witness to the moment when I found that at the street market and needed to have it, despite the price?
Or because of it, rather.
A dark gray, French ceramic bowl glides down toward her left hand, mimicking the trajectory of the Makonde statue. She repeats the motion with her fingers, tracing the bowl, while continuing to brush the statue with her right hand.
Different location, same story. An object I needed to own, not just because of its appearance but because of how much it cost and what it meant.
I was part of the “big leagues” now. Could afford those reminders of how far I’d come.
I’ve already seen her scorn at my life choice and I tense as I imagine what she’s seeing—the judgmental thoughts going through her head as she pries. “What are you doing? Are you looking into my sh—”
She spins to face me, hair and skirt swirling, hands held up by her shoulders. Every object follows the momentum, until each of them freezes in the air around her.
Again my mind screeches to a halt.
Again reality crumbles, shattered pieces of my identity left in its wake.
“Yes.” Her fingers twitch; my possessions do the same, commanded by her will. “I’m looking into your shit.” And she flicks her fingers open.
With a deafening bang, the objects hit the wall behind me. The door frame. Pretty sure I just heard one of the heavy figures break apart the glass frame next to the bookcase.
Fury.
Red-hot lust.
Disbelief.
How is anyone supposed to sift through all that?
I don’t. I stand here, motionless—stupefied—as she calmly takes a seat on the dark yellow armchair and smooths her skirts over her exposed thighs. My teeth grind against each other, my jaw working double time, the blood in my veins a disorienting roar. “Why don’t you just finish me off already?” It’d be a mercy compared to this.
As if she’d ever have any mercy to give. “I told you, werewolf. I have uses for you. And aside from finding a way to escape your deserved fate, I know you’d also love to help me bring my coven to its knees before I kill you.”
“Who told you I’d want to escape my death?” I mumble under my breath, sitting on the matching armchair across from her.
Sky blue eyes narrow at my comment.
More incredulity from her.
This witch doesn’t like me one bit and I suspect it’s a feeling she’s been harboring for a while. “Just how much do you already know about me?”
“I know everything.” The lack of intonation in that statement is a statement in and of itself.
“So they give you a dossier on your victims or some shit like that.”
Her mirthless chuckle is as beautiful as it is menacing. “Or some shit. And you are not a victim, werewolf.”
My legs vibrate with energy, my mind. Heart. I run my hands down my quivering thighs, shifting on the edge of this seat. Impulse control hasn’t been this bad since my days as a junkie. “My name is Silas, as you well know. Use it.”
Flames lick across the tips of her nails before disappearing once more. “Watch it, were—”
“And while we’re at it, give me your name,” I interrupt her.
She crosses one leg over the other and her dress parts again. “I have no interest in your name other than to add it to my list of confirmed kills. Get over it.”
“Well, I’m very interested in your name,” I reply.
“Get over it.”
My eyes narrow as another wave of hunger crashes into me.
Her eyes narrow in return.
Does she fucking know she’s been the centerpiece of my fantasies for a decade? She’s treading dangerous ground and doesn’t even seem to realize it. “You’re going to have to kill me,” I warn her, my voice monstrous and inhuman.
Because I’m monstrous and inhuman now.
“I will. When I no longer have use for you.”
“You’re an all powerful witch. What could you possibly need me for?”
“And, for some reason I don’t understand, you’ve become an all powerful werewolf. Even after only three days, you seem to possess the strength of a centuries’ old creature.”
I rip my gaze from her and her golden skin, those baby blue eyes that appear to glow when compared to the midnight blue wall. My eyes land on the shattered pieces of the Makonde statue.
If that isn’t a metaphor for the current state of my life.
“Why did they turn me into this?” I ask.
“What’s more painful to the human mind than death?”
Her question catches me off guard. “I . . . what?”
She drapes her arms over the thick armrests. “Change, werewolf. Change.”
“I don�
�t get it. Why punish us more than necessary when our deaths benefit your kind?” Witches. Sadistic. Evil. Is that voice right about them? It seems to think it is.
As if to prove my instinct’s point, she shrugs one shoulder. “It’s the same as making a deal with the devil, isn’t it? In the end you suffer for your greed.”
Telling. Very telling. “So you’re comparing your kind to the devil.”
She makes an exasperated sound and rolls her eyes. “Doesn’t everyone, always?”
Seconds tick by, and I find myself frozen speechless.
It’s her.
It’s really her.
She’s in my home.
This isn’t the fucking time. Keep it together. It’s always the time to want her, though. That’s a lesson I learned the hard way over the years. “But why turn us into werewolves specifically?”
She’s losing her patience with my questioning. Although she maintains that same air of calmness, I can smell her frustration mounting from over here.
That’s not the only thing I smell.
Everything about her makes my fucking mouth water.
“We don’t turn everyone into werewolves. Some are changed into vampires—”
“What the fuck, man?” I resist the urge to jump to my feet and run far, far away from this mindfuck. “Vampires are real, too?”
Now she’s amused by me. She tries to hide her burgeoning smirk, but it’s pointless. “Consider yourself lucky we didn’t turn you into a ghoul.”
Is she trying to break my mind or is she for real? “Jesus.” I cup my face with my hands and do the most pointless thing of all: I pray to wake up from this nightmare. To return to my simple life.
But then she wouldn’t be here.
I can’t be this pathetic. Impossible.
My temper flares in another round of internal chaos. “That doesn’t fucking explain why I was turned into a werewolf.”
Ignoring my outburst, she stares out the window, and the sunlight glints off the golden Hamsa pendant between her breasts.
That symbol was actually in one of the books I stole, a guide to spirituality.
It’s a Middle Eastern amulet that stands for protection.
“You were turned into a werewolf because it was most convenient. We simply reached into your DNA and played with it.”
And “played” with it.
I slide to the edge of my seat. The only thing that keeps me on this chair is the glare she aims at me; I lean close to her regardless and point right at her face. “It’s not right.”
She pushes her tongue into her cheek, detached and disgusted in equal measures. “Neither is defending rich, sexual offenders, but you had no problem doing that, did you?”
My mouth snaps shut.
“There’s an evil in you, LeBlanc. It’s always been in you. And I know that evil thirsts. It hungers.” Her ringed fingers glide along the armrests, then slide down to trace the tattooed lines on the tops of her thighs; a move she’s aware will distract the fuck out of me. “You’d love nothing more than to cause some havoc before I lead you to your grave. Stop denying it.”
I’m entranced with her skin, those markings, her thin, elegant fingers and the movements they’re making, but I’m shaking my head, rejecting her statement.
She’s out of her seat in a flash, on her fucking knees in front of me, that beautiful face and eyes inches from my own. “You enjoyed it,” she whispers. “You ripped them to shreds with your beastly teeth, choked on their blood, gorged on their screams, and you. Enjoyed. It.”
I would’ve dragged her to me and eaten her mouth had she never uttered such a heinous thing. “N-no. How could I enjoy something I don’t even remember doing?” Awful, cruel flashes are what’s left of that night in the recesses of my memory. A gift I’m beyond grateful for.
Remembering everything in full detail would destroy me. I’m sure of it.
“There’s an evil in you, LeBlanc.”
Or maybe she’s right and I’d be utterly fine with what I did.
She slams her hands into the seat on either side of my hips, leans in, sharing air with me, and smirks. “You . . . enjoyed . . . it.”
I growl at her audacity. That’s it. I know one way to shut that infuriating mouth up.
She’s gone—a wind I’ll never truly catch, will I?—hips swaying as she walks to the wall of bookcases on the left. Touching the books in that same way she touches everything, studying, learning from the surfaces, she continues, “They somehow found a way to block me from entering my coven.”
I’m seriously considering the merits of asking her to get on over here and learn my dick like that. Although she infuriates me. Although she can’t stand me and wants to see me dead at her hands. “Why did they betray you when you must be the most powerful one in the coven?”
A surprised glance over her shoulder, followed by an involuntary twitch of her lips. She faces away from me, hiding it, but it’s too late. I caught it. “You said it. I’ve become the most powerful. They’ve been on edge since my change.”
“Your change?” I don’t know why I think she’ll actually answer that question.
“They finally grew a fucking pair and decided to try ending me.”
“They send you to kill me and try to finish you off while at it.” And I have a feeling they would’ve succeeded, too, had I not been quick enough to get us both out of there.
A flaming goddess she may be—literally—but I don’t think even she could survive an entire building being brought down around her.
Could she?
“Yes. Exactly.” Bored with her inspection of my books, she turns and leans against the bookcase. When she crosses her arms, the dark gray cuff around her bicep tightens.
“That’s dirty of them.”
“Beaucoup crasseux,” she agrees. Very dirty.
I ignore how hearing her speak in flawless French revs up every part of my body. “Still confused on the whole ‘needing me to help’ part.”
“Your strength is already physically greater than mine. Magically, you stand no chance against me—”
“I’m immune to your flames.”
She spins her fingers. The frame on top of the fireplace flies like a frisbee toward the wall above the entryway.
Did I say frisbee? Sorry, I meant bullet. It shatters with such force that the remaining flecks shoot back in our direction.
I glare at her yet again as what seems like snow falls between us. “Do you have any idea how much that cost?”
Her shit-eating grin would be endearing if she wasn’t turning out to be such a pain. “Why do you think I broke it?”
Lord give me patience.
And the fortitude to control my sexual impulses around this woman. She makes me want to dominate her in ways that aren’t healthy for either one of us. Fuck the attitude right out of her. “I’m sure you can kill your ex-coven on your own.”
“You’re right about that, but using you against them is much more satisfying. Seril will lose her shit when she realizes I’m gaining a profit off ‘her’ customer.”
“You mentioned this Seril before. Who is she?”
“The one you sold your soul to.”
“That old hag?” I cry, repulsed by the memory of her alone.
“Old hag?” She laughs. “Is that what she appeared to you as?”
So . . . that wasn’t Seril’s true form? “She looks different?”
“Man, she must’ve seen some fucked up shit in your soul to hit you with that one.”
I’m taken back to that night—that toothless grin stretching across her ancient face. “That’s not fucking funny.”
But she’s laughing to herself, teeth perfect and white against her complexion. The joy on her face is almost pure, damn her. “Yes it is.”
“She scared the hell out of me!”
“Which was the point.”
“And that creepy entourage—one had a bird on his hat—”
That stops her laughter. “They were
n’t her entourage. They’re The Bestowers, and they’re the main ones we’re after.”
“The what?”
“The leaders of the coven. The ones that most benefit from the souls harvested.”
Yup. My mind goes right back there, the memory imprinted crisp and clear, straight HD quality.
He nods this sage nod and somehow manages to take a drag of his cigarette although his mouth is covered by linen.
“Your coven is led by some weird fucking assholes.”
“You have no idea,” she mumbles. A small, maroon pouch appears in her hand and she flings it my way.
Dear God, her aim is awful. When it comes to anything but her fire, that is.
I manage to catch it anyway, my reflexes taking me by surprise, but not as much as the pouch itself once I look at it. “You’re kidding me, right? A gris-gris? Don’t tell me these things actually work.”
The look on her face is as respectful as it is grudging. “Wolf-boy knows a little something about magic.”
“Any New Orleanian worth his salt knows what this is,” I grumble. “What is this supposed to do for me, though?”
“You can’t mystically hide yourself. I can. It’ll help keep the humans from spotting you, recording any semblance of you . . . the mortal world believes you dead. Although that’ll soon be fact, it’s best to keep you hidden from them while we enact our revenge.”
“I haven’t signed onto anything.”
“Oh yes, you have,” she croons in a way that makes my skin break out in goosebumps.
And tells me there’s another fact that hasn’t escaped her:
I’d kill to spend my last moments near her.
Ten years trapped by the image of her, going through the motions of a “successful” life.
If this is how it must end, I’m going to milk every moment of it and I don’t give a damn what that makes me look like.
My idiocy is a well-documented fact, spanning a decade worth of bad decisions. Might as well stay true-to-character until the bitter end.
“Are you done mentally whining about your fate? We have places we need to be.” She straightens off the bookcase.
Any more sass from her and I’ll have her arched over one of these armchairs while I feast on her clit. Plain and simple. “Gee. And here I thought you’d be fixin’ to break some more of my stuff before we go.”
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