by Cara Villar
Trying to figure out what I am? I grinned. Me too.
“Hi,” I said with a bright smile.
“Hello,” he replied in a deep, flat tone, reminding me of the bass beat of the music playing. He tilted his head in curiosity, frowning. “Is there something you wanted?”
“Yes,” I replied, nearly bouncing. “I’m here to arrest your boss.”
The guard stiffened. Then all the others did. The club seemed to go motionless for an instant, freezing for a split-second in time as what I said registered with every one of Ambrose’s men. Then the mountain moved.
But I was faster.
His fist moved like a swinging demolition ball, slow, unceasing, and unstoppable. So I didn’t try to stop it. I just twisted sideways until his arm skimmed my torso, then rammed the heel of my hand up into his nose. He jerked back in a spray of blood before bringing his arm up to swing, allowing me to duck under it as one of his companions lunged. Using the first guard’s arm for balance, I gripped his wrist and rammed my booted foot into the chest of the second guard, mid-charge. He flew backwards, landing with a raspy wheeze, the cracking sound of his concaved breastbone reverberating up my leg.
Suddenly, I was spinning. My back slammed against a solid chest and a thick arm was wrapped around my throat.
“Bad move.” The voice was deep, monotone, and his fetid breath was laced with fresh blood. The Vampire I’d punted in the nose had me around the throat.
Shit, he’s got good recovery time. I kicked, squirmed, yanked and gasped for air, watching through rapidly darkening vision as Felix and the Wolves joined in the fray with the other Vampire guards.
Felix moved like smoke. Smooth, dark, uncontained. Vince was sleek in his moves, fast despite his size, and downright vicious. Des was cunning. Mark was grinning.
As my vision flickered in and out of consciousness, I was dropped unceremoniously to the floor. My flop to the ground was hardly elegant as I gasped like a fish washed ashore and coughed up a lung. I was vaguely aware of the mountainous guard beside me, blood covering his face as he sprawled at my feet, and I glanced up to see Felix grinning at me.
I scowled at his smug expression, but took the hand he offered, pulling me to my feet. He tilted up my chin to check my throat, his touch sending tingles through me as his thumb brushed back and forth over my skin.
“I’m fine,” I told him, softly.
Lime and mint colored eyes met mine. “And you better stay that way.”
Grinning up at the sexy Vampire whose lips I could still feel, I turned back to the booth where our quarry was sitting. I saw Vince on the other side, teeth fully distended and claws positively huge, smack two guys head together like a couple of coconuts, while Des and Mark watched his back.
Surprisingly, all but three of the guards ended up unconscious on the floor. The remaining ones crowded calmly around Ambrose, two in dark, uniformed suits and ties, the third in a silver suit with no tie whatsoever. His eyes were sharp, pitch-black pools of disdain, missed nothing, and took in my little team with the arrogant superiority of the upper-class. I didn’t know who he was, but already I didn’t like him.
“Ambrose.” Felix growled, low and predatory.
A plume of smoke, but no answer.
“I’m here to arrest you for several counts of murder, treason and exposure of the Immortal Races under the authority of The Immortal Commission.”
That sounded great to me, but silver suit just sneered, like the very idea of arresting this psycho was preposterous.
Ambrose stood, his back to me, his movements slow and unhurried. “I do not adhere,” he tugged the smart lines of his suit-jacket forward to button it, “to rules instigated by an ancient collective borne of millennia-old fear and a contract that became void once the mortal line that made the deal died out.” There was something uncomfortably familiar about the breadth of his shoulders, the sweep of his spine, and the coffee-colored streaks in his chocolate-colored hair.
“Nonetheless, as a Vampire, you fall under those rules,” Felix replied, stern and unrelenting.
Vince shifted closer, his eyes glancing between me and Ambrose as I frowned at the Vampire, a heavy weight of dread starting to form in my stomach.
“I fall to no one,” Ambrose replied, an edge to his voice.
Then he turned around.
And my heart stopped.
My world stopped.
Everything I had ever thought to be true up until that single instant disappeared, and my most cherished, most hated memories were blown to pieces like delicate porcelain. I couldn’t move, speak, or breathe. I couldn’t take my eyes off the man I had married over three hundred years before and thought to be dead.
“Glenn.” My lips formed the name, but barely a breath emerged to sound it.
Dark eyes fixed on me, wide, shocked, disbelieving. “Willow.”
Run, Willow…. Run…Blood… so much blood…
I drank him in like I was starved. His deep brown eyes that lit up with amber in the sun. His two-toned brown hair that curled at the ends, and was always wind-tossed and always in need of cutting. His high, sharp cheekbones, the slashes of dark brows, his nose long but a little crooked from fights with the boys from the neighboring village. His lips, full and soft, almost heart-shaped. Everything was so familiar, right down to the warmth and love in his eyes.
Then the mask dropped into place, turning the warmth to ice, his disbelieving expression to frigid indifference, and he turned to silver-suit without another word to me.
“Alexander.” A vague hand gesture. “If you please.”
“Sir.” Alexander gave a clipped nod, and pulled a cell phone from inside his jacket. Ambrose was already turning away.
I lifted a hand, wanting answers. “Wait—a”
BOOM!
Blinding light. Searing pain. The feeling of weightlessness as I was thrown through the air and the instant breathlessness that comes with having the wind punched out of you on landing.
The last thing I saw before the world went dark was rubble, flames, motionless bodies, and my husband walking away without a backward glance.
22
In the Spring of 1694, Glenn Cutter asked for my hand in marriage. By the Summer I was his wife. The following Summer, we had our first child. I never knew such joy could be had. But fate was a cruel mistress, and by that same year’s winter, our baby died.
Three years later, we were still barren.
I could see the longing for a child in Glenn’s eyes when he watched the children run free in the village, but he was too much of a good man to ever say so to me. I was nineteen. He could have left me, found someone more fruitful, but our love was borne of too much history. Glenn was one of my first memories, and one of my last as a mortal woman.
Run, Willow…
I squeezed my eyes shut against the whisper of his last words to me. They’ve followed me every day since I woke to a cold dawn and bloodied snow, alone. My conscience spoke always in his tone, his words, as soothing and familiar to me as my own voice. How could I not have known his voice the moment he spoke?
Glenn is Ambrose. Ambrose is Glenn. What happened? What the hell happened?
The Glenn I knew wouldn’t have gutted and hung a woman. He wouldn’t have skinned an innocent maid. He wouldn’t have ambitious designs of over-turning millennia of tradition to become a dictator. He wasn’t the cold, unfeeling, stranger I had seen in the club mere hours before, who had blown up said club, killing and injuring nearly one hundred people. That man was a heartless Vampire called Ambrose and was wanted by the Immortal Commission for various crimes against the races.
How had my gentle, woodcutter husband become that?
And how the hell had he survived?
Had he left me lying there in the snow? Dying? Alone?
I’d never found his body, but something inside me had told me he’d died. Like a part of my soul had been ripped away, leaving the rest shredded, bloody and raw. Oh, so raw.
“R
ed?”
Had the Glenn I’d known and loved died that night like I’d believed, only to rise as Ambrose? The soft-spoken man to the out-spoken murderer?
“Red?”
His eyes had been so cold. I’d never seen them so empty, so bland of expression. Glenn’s eyes had always sparkled, with laughter, love and passion. The man I had seen, the Vampire, had eyes so flat that they were like glacial pools of ink. The same thing that told me my husband was dead, also told me that Ambrose might well be beyond saving.
“Red?” A hand atop mine, stilling the wooden spoon I had gripped in a distracted fist. I looked up from my bowl of mix into emerald eyes dark with concern. “You need to stop.”
I blinked up at Felix for a moment, taking in the familiar plains of his face as my mind slowly resurfaced from my thoughts.
I kissed him right before I met my thought-to-be-dead husband.
I looked down at the bowl full of blueberry muffin mix, then to my blue socks with white polka dots, and then around Jade’s kitchen at all the cakes, muffins, breads and pastries I’d made since the night before. Trays and tins, ingredients and utensils littered the counters and floor, along with the results of my baking binge. No doubt my dark red tank and baggy plaid pajamas were batter-smeared and flour-puffed all over too. Wow. I’d really been on a roll.
My husband is alive.
I looked beyond the mess I’d made and saw Jade and Fletch, rumpled and weary from a night spent at the club talking with police and giving statements. The Weres were there too, standing nearby, watching me with varied expressions from hostility to suspicion to showing absolutely nothing at all. That was Vince. His expression was carefully neutral.
“You have questions, don’t you?” I said, and was surprised to hear my voice was nothing but a husky murmur. What time was it? How long had I been baking? I had vague recollections of making it home in a daze, and then making a beeline for the kitchen. I remembered screaming for more vanilla extract, or had it been it muffin cups?
“We all have questions, pet,” Felix replied softly, drawing my attention back to him, his fingers brushing along my cheek. “Only you’ve been a little—“
I jerked away, moving around the island with my bowl.
He frowned. “—distracted.”
Numb. I was numb.
“Red?” Vince’s voice was a deep rumble from the shadows near the kitchen archway.
I looked up and met wolf eyes gone night-glow. “He said something to you.”
I turned away again, setting the bowl down and grabbing a muffin tray.
“What did he say?”
“He said a name,” Des piped in, the jeer in her voice let me know without looking that she had a vicious sneer on her face. “One to add to your list, wolf-killer?”
“Watch your tongue in my house, were-bitch,” Jade hissed, low and laced with dominance, despite her tired appearance.
She could probably take Des too, come to think of it. Des might have the power of a wolf behind her, but Jade’s panther was a Shifter-born. They were inherently stronger-willed, if not more physically imposing.
“What name?” Felix asked, though his gaze did not waver from me.
“He didn’t say a name.” This from Mark, who shrugged when everyone turned to him. “Well, it didn’t sound like it to me.”
“What did it sound like to you?” Vince asked softly, his icy night-glow eyes making me twitch as I spooned out mix.
“Like… ‘we know’”
“Ha!” Des barked a laugh, cutting Mark off. “You haven’t got a clue.”
I gritted my teeth as I toed open the oven and slid in the tray.
“I know what I saw!” Mark snapped back. “And I saw Red say something back to him.”
I slammed the oven door shut and stood there staring at the glass. The burning sensation running up and down my spine was everyone looking at me, and I could do nothing but stand there and clench my hands under their scrutiny.
But what did they expect me to say?
I could see the judgment in their eyes, could feel it crawling over my skin, and yet, I had no idea how I felt. Well, actually, I knew exactly how I felt. I felt elated that Glenn was alive, despair at the coldness in him, anger at the wasted years and disgust at what he’d done. Then there was the denial. Maybe all the crap I’d read, seen had been told were done by someone else. Oh, how I wish my instinct would have let me believe it was someone else.
So what did they expect me to say?
Hi, there. That was my husband. Yes, the evil dude who gutted a Vampire, skinned a maid and is plotting to take over the Immortal world and enslave humans.
Sounds better in my head.
“Red.” Felix’s hand touched my elbow, and I instantly moved away from him.
How could he stand to touch me? How could I stand to let me touch me? I was married, and I was married to a murderer.
“Red, what did he say to you?”
I turned on the tap at the sink and stuck my hands under the hot water, suddenly cold to the bone. “He said a name.” I pumped a massive blob of hand wash from the dispenser into my palm. “My name.” It smelled like honeysuckle.
Mark growled. “I know he didn’t say Red.”
A beat of silence, then, “Red?” Felix’s tone was soft with confusion.
“You’re right; he didn’t say ‘Red’.” Scrubbing. Scrubbing. Clean. So unclean. “He said ‘Willow’.”
“Willow?” Des echoed, the derision still in her voice, along with incredulity now.
“Yes.” I flicked off the tap and spun, irritation lacing the word and making it harsh. “Willow. My name. Is Willow.” I began walking towards her, enunciating each word as she straightened from her slouch against the far wall. “Willow Ashwin. Are you happy now? You know my real name. Congratulations.” I stopped a foot away, and dropped my voice to a low murmur. “Congratulations. You know it, and so does he. He knew it, and he said it. You want to know why he knows my name? Hmm? Well, let me tell you. I’ll tell you it’s because he knew me once, over three hundred years ago. Very well, in fact. And I know his name too, because he was the center of my world. Wanna know why he was the center of my world, and I know his name? You sure? It’s a real gut-wrenching shocker, a super heart-achy piece of knowledge that I’ve been working my way through trying to understand, but can no longer brood on because a bunch of half-strangers want to know my deepest, darkest secrets, so prep yourself, sweetheart.” I slammed my wet hands on the wall on either side of her head, taking a perverse pleasure in her flinch and how wide her eyes went. “He’s my husband.”
“Jesus…”
“Bloody hell.”
“Shit.”
“I thought you said wolves killed him,” Felix said, and I turned to face him. His body was tensed right up, like a band stretched to the limit.
I gave him a bitter smile. “Yes, well…not only is my husband alive and Immortal, but he’s also a cold, murdering Vampire intent on world domination, and we have to hunt him down and probably kill him.” A bitter laugh. “And I’ll mourn all over again.” I reached for a hand towel. “You see I’m working through a few issues right now.”
“Wow,” Des said, and I physically tensed. “Looks like we got more than one wolf-killer to worry about—”
“Des.” Vince’s tone was sharp, cutting off his lieutenant with a fierce wave of dominant Alpha power that raced over my skin like a hot wave. Des cringed and subsided. Then her words sank in.
“What does she mean ‘more than one’?” I asked, and she snorted disbelievingly, but didn’t say a word.
Fletch moved to stand beside me, but didn’t touch, sensing, as was his way, that I just needed someone there to support me. Jade wasn’t far away either. I couldn’t look at either of them. What kind of role model marries a merciless killer? That’s not just bad-judgement. That’s just plain stupidity.
Vince uncurled from the shadows and moved to stand before me, and I craned my neck back to meet the
eyes of my Alpha. “I think we should sit down for this story.” And he offered his hand to me. “Come sit outside with me.”
I glanced around at all the other faces, at the concern etched in Felix’s eyes, to the weary pull of Jade’s, to the enmity in Des’s. Then I looked back up into clear blue, and saw nothing but an Alpha who had business with one of his pack. I swallowed several times before I could speak, so unexpectedly grateful that he wasn’t judging me too.
“Just you and me?”
He nodded. “Just you and me.”
I took his hand.
The clear sky was just beginning to turn pink with the coming dawn as I took a seat beside Vince on the wide swinging bench. The air was cool and crisp as I sank into the mattress-thick cushion and propped additional pillows all around me, but the icy breeze was cut off by the strategically placed evergreens positioned around the porch that stretched the width of the house. I crossed my legs, tucked in my sock-clad feet, and waited for Vince to start talking as the sun began to rise.
“Do you remember when I asked you to tell me about the night you were bitten?” He asked at least.
“Yes.” I looked over at him. “I asked you why.”
“And I said,” he balanced the ankle of one biker-boot clad foot on the opposite knee. “Because of your reputation as a wolf-killer.”
I rubbed the bridge of my nose. “I kill lots of things.”
“That’s not what I meant.” Vince cleared his throat and shifted on the seat to face me. “When Des calls you ‘wolf-killer’, it’s not because of your reputation as a bounty hunter, or the fact that you operate under the Red Riding Hood guise. It’s the original legend of Red Riding Hood, among others, in our history.”
I frowned. “As in…your Werewolf history?”
“Yes.” He nodded. “The mortal version has a few variations, but the basic concept is; wolf stalks little girl, little girl leads wolf to grandma’s house, wolf sneaks in, eats grandma and takes her place, tricks little girl and eats her, then the huntsman comes, cuts open the wolf, and saves the grandma and little girl. Right?”