Two hours later, I was jittery, but no closer to changing.
“Why are you being so nice to me?” I asked Giancarlo. I was on my third cup of very strong Italian coffee and feeling chatty.
“It’s part of my vow to protect your family.”
“Where did this vow come from?” I took another sip. My stomach flipped, and I coughed acid. I put the coffee down.
“It was another branch of the Benandanti, as I told you. Your ancestress who cursed the monks who now chase you also magically manipulated the Padre Superiore’s price such that only female children would become wolves. If they manifested the price and turned before they found mates, it became difficult, and they needed protection.”
“Right.” I remembered Aunt Alicia and how I’d always wondered why she was alone until Gladis Ann appeared. Then I thought she was a lesbian, and Gladis Ann was her partner. I took the picture I’d snitched from the scrapbooks at the FPB out of my purse and showed it to Giancarlo. He cradled it in his hands, and the creases at the corners of his eyes softened.
“Ah, Alicia. She was a woman of great passion.”
My stomach turned again, but not from the coffee. “Please, that’s like thinking about your parents in bed. It’s worse that she and I could have compared notes on you. Or did you hold back like you did with me?”
He placed the picture on the coffee table like the photo was made of thin porcelain and would break with any sudden movement. “I shall have to remember that you’re a bitch, and not a wolf kind, when you’ve had too much caffeine. Try changing now.”
I stuck my tongue out at him, but I obediently closed my eyes and tried to reach inside myself to find my inner wolf. My heart pounded, and my stomach heaved as it had with my last change, but otherwise there was no progress toward my lycanthropic state.
“It’s not working,” I muttered. Then I smelled it. Fuchsia. My left foot tingled.
“Max?” I asked.
“Hush, do not open your eyes.”
“What is it?” asked Giancarlo.
“He’s reaching for me, I can feel him.”
“Then go to him. I shall watch your body as you travel.”
The rhythm of the waves washed through me. The fuchsia scent flooded me, and I opened eyes that were not my eyes into the room I had seen before. Max, looking roughed-up and with a bleeding lip, sat on the sofa. Carrigan sat in an armchair with one ankle over his knee and sipped a cup of tea.
“Max, my dear lad, what have you gotten yourself into?”
“You sent Henry after me, Carrigan. Why?”
“Plans have changed since we spoke last. I tried to reach you, but you were blocking me.” He raised one hairy gray eyebrow. “Could it be you’ve become attached to the creature? I warned you not to address her by name too much.”
“She is not yours to take, Carrigan. You know what Henry wants to do to her.”
“She is dangerous, Maximilian.” Carrigan pounded a fist on the arm of the chair. “What will happen when she finally embraces what she is? Both sides of it?”
“Then she’ll finally be at peace with herself and able to embrace a full life, not the half-reality she was living.”
Carrigan leaned toward Max. “What would Deirdre say if she knew how you’re throwing your feelings away on that mongrel?”
“She would probably say she’s happy I’ve moved on and found love again.” He looked up at the portrait, and I could tell he was looking at my eyes, not at her.
“I doubt that,” Carrigan snorted and stood. “I shall leave you to ponder until you retrieve your sense from where it resides between your legs.”
Max shook his head. “My sense is where it always was, Carrigan. I had ample opportunity to indulge myself with her, and I didn’t. I wasn’t going to take advantage of her in her time of emotional distress right after she lost her aunt.”
Carrigan continued like Max hadn’t spoken. “You should have everything you need here, but be aware that the doors will be locked and the windows warded so you cannot leave, either physically or spiritually.”
“Thank you for putting me in a nice prison. It’s better than the dungeon.”
The other man muttered something under his breath and left, slamming the door behind him and locking it audibly. The air pressure changed like someone rolled up the windows in a fast-moving car, and my ears popped.
Max stood and walked to the portrait. “Deirdre would have looked nice with light green eyes, but I like them much better on you, my dear.” He held out a hand, and I was surprised, but I reached out and took it. The pale paint flaked off my hand when it touched his, and I stepped out of the portrait frame and on to the credenza below. I was relieved I wore my own clothes, not the frilly dress in the portrait. Fibers from the painting clung to me and then snapped back into place. Max put his hands on my waist and lifted me into the room. He didn’t release me even when we stood toe to toe, my hands on his biceps.
“Speechless for once?” he asked.
I nodded, dizzy from the transfer and not willing to do anything that would cause him to let me go.
“I wanted you to hear that so you would believe me,” he said.
“So I would believe what?”
He smiled and winced, and I reached up to cup his cheek.
“So you would believe I have feelings for you. You seemed quite angry in your kitchen.”
“I was.” His stone face came to mind. “You didn’t show me anything.”
“You know you don’t show any weakness, especially emotional weakness, in front of a predator.” He hugged me to him. “And I regret it now.”
I couldn’t resist teasing him. “Right, because you walked right out into a trap.”
He placed a finger under my chin, and his turquoise eyes sparkled. “Silly girl, I was going to come right back after he left. I didn’t count on Henry and his ilk knocking me out and kidnapping me to get me out of the way.”
The doubt that had been niggling at the back of my mind came to the forefront. “So why didn’t they come after me while I was unguarded?”
“Because you can change, and now that you’re aware of both sides of your heritage, they don’t want to take you on while you’re conscious. They were going to wait until you were asleep and take you then, perhaps drug your delivery food or something.”
“How do you know?”
“They spoke of it while they thought I was knocked out.”
I stepped back. “Something’s not adding up.” I looked at the portrait. “I can get back, right?”
“Yes, you will need to at some point. Your spirit can’t be separated from your body for more than a few hours without serious consequences.”
“But you were with me for more than that the night you chased off the Benandanti.”
“I have more training in doing this.” He reached for me, and I moved away.
“I’m sorry, Max, but something isn’t right here.” He followed me around the room, and pain lanced through my foot and into my calf. I stumbled into an ottoman and landed on my butt.
“Lonna, what is it? Let me help you.”
“I can’t. I have to go.” I mentally reached out to the picture, and I was horrified to see Deirdre’s lips curl into a smile over pointed teeth that were not quite fangs.
“Take her, Henry,” she said.
In a moment, I became a snarling wolf, the change easier in spirit form. Max’s face bubbled into the rounded features of Henry the rogue wizard.
“Ah, so you can change in this form.” He looked at me with blue-gray eyes, his expression analytical. “But as for your human body… Let’s see how strong that connection is.”
He snapped his fingers, and something tugged on the link to my body hundreds of miles away. It thrummed with increasing speed, and my heart felt like it would burst.
“Follow it home, now!” That was truly Max’s voice, and I obeyed. I leapt at the small hole in the center of the painting about three inches in diameter that threatene
d to close at any moment. I took it on faith I could get through. My spirit was squeezed and molded and tumbled in every direction. The pain almost distracted me from the sensation that my memories of the scene were unraveling with the tugs of invisible fingers, but I held on to my recollections with every ounce of will I could muster. I finally landed on my couch in my body and opened my eyes.
And screamed.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Giancarlo as a wolf lay on the floor in front of me, his brown eyes open to the ceiling. The last of the light leaked out of them, and blood oozed from a bullet wound in his chest. One thug lay dead by the open apartment door. His throat had been ripped out. Another one brandished a gun in my direction. He lay slumped against the wall, his other arm cradled in front of him at an odd angle.
“Silver bullets,” he said with a cough, and then he, too, died.
I ignored him and knelt by Giancarlo. “I’m sorry, old friend,” I said. “I didn’t know it was a trap.”
“They came for you when they thought you were unguarded and vulnerable. I stopped them.”
“Yes,” I said, tears choking me. “Yes, you did.” I smoothed the fur on his head.
“One more kiss, Bellissima?”
“Of course.” I kissed his cheek and his forehead, and he took a deep breath.
“Now you must find your Maximilian, the true one.”
Although there were now three dead men in my apartment, I only cried for one.
Giancarlo’s blood soaked into my jeans, and my tears mingled with it. My skin tingled, and the sensation spread along my limbs through my capillaries and into my arteries and veins until it reached my heart, where I still held my sorrow, but found something else.
He was a good guy, Wolf-Lonna said. And a good hunter. He will be missed.
I clapped my hands over my mouth so I wouldn’t cry out and took some deep breaths to calm myself.
“Where the hell have you been?” I couldn’t help but speak out loud.
Before she could answer, Max stumbled through the door. His eyes took in the scene with the two dead men and one dead werewolf. “Did you…” He gestured to the thugs, and I couldn’t help but notice a red mark on his forearm that stood out among his freckles.
“No, Giancarlo did.” I smoothed the fur on his head, and the tears started again. “But not before one got off a lucky shot.”
Max knelt on the floor beside me, and regardless of what his feelings may have been for me, I was happy to have him there.
“Ask him if he has any rabbits.”
“Hush,” I said and brushed at the air beside my head like there was a buzzing fly.
“I didn’t say anything.” Max stood and held a hand out to help me rise. He didn’t look too steady on his feet, so I got up on my own.
“I was talking to Wolf-Lonna. She came back.”
He took a step and stumbled, and I helped him to the couch. I had to ignore the corpses in the room and focus on my relief at Max’s and Wolf-Lonna’s reappearances.
“I’m happy to hear that, but would you mind if I used your facilities before we analyze all this? I’ve been locked in a trunk for six hours.”
“Yes, of course. By the way, don’t trust Carrigan.”
“I ascertained that by some comments Henry’s men made when they thought I was unconscious.”
I shivered at the similarity between his statement and the one Henry-as-Max had made in the house in the tropics, and he put a hand on my shoulder. “Whatever he did to you as me, I’m sorry.”
I shook my head. “It’s not your fault.”
While he was in the bathroom, I resisted the temptation to put sheets over the staring dead faces of the men around me. I couldn’t even look at Giancarlo. I went into my bedroom, changed pants, and found a tiny shred of normalcy by putting up the laundry I’d just washed. “Classic denial reaction,” I said to myself.
“You do what is necessary,” Wolf-Lonna told me.
“I just wanted a normal life.”
“Someone I trust is on his way,” Max said.
I jumped and dropped the shirt I’d held. “Did you project yourself in the bathroom?” I asked.
“No, I used the telephone. I do occasionally communicate through normal means.”
“Vultures!” Wolf-Lonna snarled inside my brain just as flapping sounds filled the living room.
“What in the world is that?” I asked.
“My friend Colby and his cleanup crew.”
“They’re vultures?”
“In their spirit projection forms, yes. Don’t worry, they’ll have the place cleaned up in no time.”
My stomach turned. “Giancarlo! They can’t eat him.”
Max grabbed my arm before I could go out there. “Don’t worry, they’ll package his body and return it to the Lycanthrope Council. They’ll want it.”
“What about my aunt’s? Oh, they may have already taken it.”
He frowned. “That’s not possible. They always leave it with the family until the funeral, and that hasn’t happened yet.”
I filled him in on the conversation with the funeral home guy and what Peter had told me.
“If the driver’s memory had been tampered with, it must have been the wizards,” Max said. He rubbed his eyes. “I wish I knew why Carrigan decided you’d be worth more dead. There’s still a lot to explore. What did he say during his staged conversation with Henry?”
I shrugged.
“Tell him,” Wolf-Lonna said.
“No. I can’t be rejected by him again. What if he turns away or looks disgusted at Henry’s fake declaration of love as him?”
“What if he doesn’t?”
“That’s just as frightening.”
“Lonna,” he said and moved to stand beside me. He lifted my chin with a finger so I had to look in his eyes. “He somehow rode the link you and I have, and the only way it worked was for his statements to have a kernel of truth to them. He didn’t count on you coming back.”
“Or on Giancarlo stopping his men from…what? Taking me?”
He crushed me to him. “They would have done more than just take you.”
A little flare of hope ignited in my heart that he was that concerned about me, and if Henry’s words had contained some truth… I rested my head on his shoulder and breathed in his magical fuchsia scent. I was also very aware of his salty maleness.
“Max, I’m too embarrassed to tell you. In the kitchen, you didn’t seem like you’d care if you never saw me again.”
“I couldn’t show any weakness in front of Giancarlo, especially emotional attachment. He was ready to rip my throat out from the time I appeared, and we needed to work together to protect you.”
Every time he said something similar to the conversation I’d witnessed, I felt dizzy like the wisps of memory were still being tugged at in my brain. At least now, folded in his arms, I knew I wouldn’t fall.
“They tried to scramble your memories on the way back,” he said. “All I could do was watch but not do or say anything. You fought off their spells magnificently.”
“I heard you.” I looked up at him. “You told me when to run.”
He smiled, and I became acutely aware of the distance between us, or the lack thereof. “I would tell you it’s because there’s a bond between us that goes beyond magic, but you’d hit me for being corny.”
“No, I wouldn’t.” I closed my eyes and sighed. “I might kiss you.”
A knock on the door startled us apart, and Max opened it to a young man with dark hair and eyes. He was dressed all in black, and his skin was smudged with rust-colored stains, the origin of which I didn’t want to think about.
“We took care of the thugs and wrapped up the wolf. What do you want us to do with him?”
“Take him.”
“Are you sure? The lady can wear him as a fur coat if she likes.”
“Don’t be vulgar,” I snapped. “He was a friend of mine.”
The young man’s eyes wide
ned. “You’re the one they were talking about!”
“Yes, and she is under my protection.” The sharpness in Max’s tone promised untold hurt if the guy betrayed us.
“Best watch yourself, Maximilian. Carrigan’s going to be in a tizzy when he finds out his plans were foiled by a werewolf.”
With a bow, he changed in a flapping of oily black wings, and I got a glimpse of black-tipped claws and a cruel beak before he disappeared altogether.
“Nothing like a vulture to kill the mood.”
Max laughed. “You’re adapting to our strange culture very well.”
“For a half-blood?”
“No.” He closed the door and stood behind me. “For a double-blood,” he murmured in my ear, and his lips made the sensitive skin there tingle.
“Keep talking.”
“Let me love you the way I should have. Let me release your true nature.”
His words caused a little trill of anxiety in my stomach, and my spine melted. He reached around me and cupped one of my breasts in his palms. I moaned and arched my back, and he pressed his pelvis into me. I could feel the length of him, and he was longer and thicker than I remembered from even our brief encounters.
“I’m almost afraid to. We keep getting interrupted.”
“Don’t these mortal doors have locks?”
“Theoretically.”
“Stay here.”
He made a quick tour of the house, and I sensed him snapping wards into place.
“Now we won’t be interrupted.”
“Are you sure?” I turned to face him, and I had to close my eyes at the intensity in his gaze.
He didn’t answer, but his lips found mine. He clasped the back of my head with one hand and held my waist with the other. Both spots and where our torsos touched tingled, and soon I was on fire from my forehead to my toes.
“Bed,” I gasped when we came up for air. He tumbled me on top of my neat piles of laundry, and our bodies fit together perfectly, albeit with an annoying amount of clothing. I unbuttoned his wrinkled shirt and pulled it out of his pants, and he tossed it on the floor. In the sunlight, the hard muscles of his chest sparked with golden-red hairs, and I licked my lips.
Long Shadows: The Lycanthropy Files, Book 2 Page 20