The Pull

by Amber Lynn

  “I’m going to be one of those husbands, and you know it.”

  He was getting ready to say something else, but a phone ringing stopped him. The noise came from underneath me, so I figured it was his wake up call.

  “Don’t think the conversation about your bubble is over. That’s Harry, so I better get it.”

  “Don’t let me stop you.”

  I hopped off his lap and made it back to my chair. Jack was skilled, but I didn’t think he could get his phone out of his pocket with my butt on it.

  “I’m hoping this is an emergency,” Jack said, daring Harry to say anything other than the world was on fire.

  “Since you didn’t make it home last night, your definition may differ from mine at the moment, but five dead bodies should register pretty high on the emergency scale.”

  “Shit. Give me the details.”

  Jack looked at me apologetically. I had to roll my eyes at him. Finding killers was the profession he’d chosen, and when it came down to it, I preferred knowing those killers were behind bars.

  “It was a book club. The call came in last night and I didn’t want to interrupt, so I’ve been doing all the cleanup. They weren’t aged like the other two, but I’m pretty sure it was him.”

  “Why do you think that?”

  I couldn’t help asking. I knew Harry would only bother Jack if he thought the deaths were paranormal in some way.

  “Good morning, Kennedy. It’s nice to hear your voice. Jack, maybe you should head over here and I can give you all the details on the way.”

  Harry couldn’t see me, but I narrowed my eyes to let those in the room know I wasn’t happy about his attempt to keep something from me.

  “We were just talking about Kennedy needing to protect herself better. Go ahead and tell her why you think it’s him. Maybe she’ll decide staying locked up at home today is a smart idea.”

  “If you guys have worked things out, she should probably spend the day out at the ranch. The bodies were normal, but burned into the walls in the living room around them was a bunch of scribbles, which ended up being words in some ancient language Vik was able to decipher.

  “Among the general rambling about how he thought he was the best thing since sliced bread, were lines about how she belongs to him and he’s going to come for her. I thought you’d want to see it all for yourself, but maybe that’s not a good idea. Any way you look at it, the boss says you need to come in.”

  Jack was silent as he stared at me. There was a chance the crime scene had nothing to do with me. Harry hadn’t said what language the writing was in, so it could’ve just been a normal, everyday weird cult initiation. I’d never heard of any of those happening in the area, which made the possibility unlikely.

  “Was there anything else at the scene?”

  Something in Jack’s voice told me he wasn’t going to the scene. If he left at all, he was going after Helki, and I wasn’t the only one who heard it.

  “I don’t think family emergency is going to work on this one. Should I tell him you’re dead or that you quit.”

  “Tell him I’m getting married.”

  Jack hung up the phone and put it down on the table. He stood up, gathering the dishes from the table and took them over to the sink. Before doing anything else, he squeezed the edge of the sink, and I was afraid repairs were going to be needed from the force he exerted.

  “I’m sure you’ve got something suitable in your closet to get married in. You should probably go change.”

  “You were serious about that? Don’t you think you should go process the scene and make sure it was him?”

  I stood up to go do as he directed. I knew his feelings on the matter weren’t going to change. He’d made his mind up that we were getting married, and that evidently was what we were going to do.

  “You said he got power from the sex. They’ve found one scene, but I’m sure it’s not the only one. He’s juicing up to kill me, and if I’m going to die, we’re going to be married when I do.”

  I had no response to his declaration. He hadn’t given up the fight, but he was worried about how powerful Helki would be when they faced off. He had to know I wouldn’t let anything happen to him.

  “I’ll help you get dressed. It sounds like I get to be a bridesmaid today,” Abbie said, coming over to me and grabbing my hand to lead me upstairs.

  Chapter Nineteen

  We were upstairs ten minutes. I picked out the only white dress I had, which was a shift dress covered in crochet lace. I didn’t know why I had it in the back of my closet, because I’d never worn it and had bought it on impulse. I didn’t usually give into impulse, but that one had finally paid off.

  Abbie played with my hair for a few minutes, sweeping it into an updo with a few red strands curled around my face. How she got the iron hot enough to pull off the curls was something I’d have to ask her about later. As far as I knew, she didn’t have any heat magic, and less than a minute shouldn’t have been long enough to make a curl that lasted.

  I didn’t have any white shoes to go along with the dress, so I settled for a pair of strappy silver heels. They were the dressiest shoes I owned, with little fake diamonds lining the strap across my toes.

  For only taking ten minutes, I thought I looked pretty good when Abbie stood me in front of my bathroom mirror. The circles under my eyes were better than they had been in recent days, but they were still noticeable, so I used a little magic eraser.

  “I hope he’s planning on stopping somewhere to get something for him to wear. It will be a shame if you show up to your wedding looking like a princess and he looks like he came from a long day of fishing. If he doesn’t think you have time to stop, you’re going to have to whip up a suit for him.”

  I laughed. There was nothing wrong with the way Jack looked, and I really didn’t care if he didn’t have time to change. Jack was preparing for a battle, and if being wed helped him in some way, it was the least I could do. I was afraid what the satyr could do to him if he’d really killed five women.

  Running off to get married wasn’t the smartest thing. We barely knew each other, and were making plans based on the undeniable pull we felt to be close to each other. It was the same pull that had brought me to the town in the first place.

  “You don’t think I’m crazy for not protesting us getting married?”

  “You’re joking, right? I knew you two were going to get married the night you met him at the lake. I tried to warn you about his intentions, but you were too busy planning your guys’ future that you didn’t listen. It might be surprising that it’s only taken you two dates, but I knew it’d happen.”

  I looked at Abbie’s reflection in the mirror skeptically. She shrugged and adjusted my hair. From my count, we hadn’t been on a single date, so she needed to do a little extra math.

  “First, I wasn’t planning anything. I was too busy dealing with you telling me how awful wolves were and that I’d made a mistake even talking to him. Then we had to deal with unnatural weather events, so I can honestly say relationship planning didn’t cross my mind that day.”

  “I suppose that’s probably true, but it doesn’t change the fact that you have never been happier than when I’ve seen you with him, and on the opposite side of the coin, never been more depressed than when you kicked him out. I don’t think you can control the forces drawing the two of you together, so you might as well stand back and enjoy the fun. The way he’s always undressing you with his eyes, I’m guessing that’s a lot of fun.”

  “I’m not going to touch anything you just said. The fact that you’re all for this makes me think we’re both crazy. We should probably get back downstairs to see if Jack’s come to his senses. One of us has to realize I don’t even know his last name.”

  I kept trying to tell myself that running out and getting married was the last thing we needed to do. I already wore a cute little mark that claimed me as his, and there was a chance I carried his child. As cool as it would be, I stil
l doubted the latter. For some reason I believed Leto’s curse didn’t end with her death, and I fully believed it existed in the first place. If Nikki was able to talk to the spirit of someone from that time, I felt a little more inclined to listen to what they claimed.

  There was no reason for me to, but I hadn’t felt any lies when the curse was mentioned, or when Jack originally told me we couldn’t have kids. After Jack’s declaration that he didn’t want to die without being married, I couldn’t resist looking to verify his kids still existed, and they did.

  Knowing that, there was no rush to get married, which only added to the proof that I was foolish for not making him wait. People didn’t rush out to marry after spending two nights together, at least not sane people. I believed there was even a waiting period when you got a marriage license to prevent someone from rushing in.

  I imagined Jack knew that, and had a plan to get around the delay. As a cop, he probably knew some useful people in the courts system.

  “Before we go downstairs, I want to hear you say it.”

  I was done applying a little magical makeup to my eyes and lips, so I turned to face Abbie. The narrow part of the bathroom in front of the sink wasn’t ideal for two people, but we were small and made it work.

  “We don’t really have time for me to recite the alphabet backwards in Portuguese, so maybe you can wait until a little later. Crap, I forgot that I needed to call and make sure whoever was opening with me knows I’ll be running a little late.”

  I moved to leave, but Abbie held out her arm to block me. I’d been joking about the alphabet, but I did need to make the phone call at some point.

  “You know exactly what I want you to say. Have you said it to him yet? I’m sure he’s told you.”

  I did know what she wanted to hear, and she was lucky I’d already told him.

  “I’ve never had a friend like you before, Abbie. There are times you drive me crazy, and you probably don’t realize it, but there have been days when you were lucky I didn’t kill you.”

  “I know you love me, silly. What I want to hear is that you love him.”

  Abbie’s eyes softened and I didn’t miss a little liquid pooling in her lower lids.

  “It makes absolutely no sense based on the amount of time we’ve spent together, but I do love him. I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t have spent the night and morning doing what we did if I didn’t love him.”

  “As fun as I’m sure the physical part of that was, I wouldn’t be so quick to claim that. Is he as aggressive as he is in his day-to-day life?”

  I chuckled and walked out of the room. I didn’t want to make Abbie jealous, so I headed downstairs without answering. Jack’s mood hadn’t gotten any better, which seemed wrong for his wedding day. I wanted to try to do something to cheer him up, and I hoped seeing me ready to become his wife would help.

  When I rounded the corner to the kitchen, I stopped in my steps. Jack wasn’t alone in the kitchen, nor was he still standing in front of the sink. Seeing Helki holding him up against the backdoor, with a knife directly in front of his heart effectively stopped my heart beat.

  “How’d you get in here?”

  Helki looked over his shoulder, letting me see Jack’s face. I was happy to see he didn’t have any of the swelling I noticed taking place on Helki’s face. Jack’s lips were moving, but with a thick hand around his throat, he couldn’t form words.

  “Wow. It looks like I’m interrupting something. Where are you guys off to?”

  “I asked you a question first. How did you get in here?”

  “The better question is how did he sneak in here? I found it extremely funny last night that not thirty minutes after you told me there was nothing between you two, there was a whole lot of something going on between the two of you. Did you honestly think I wouldn’t know?”

  “Did you honestly think we’d care what you thought about it? Let him go and get out of my house.”

  Helki laughed at my demands. The only physical response he had was to close his hand tighter around Jack’s neck.

  I moved to step forward, but a barrier went up at the entrance of the kitchen. I muttered a few different spells in various languages to demand the barrier disappear, but I ran into a solid wall after every try.

  “Do you know how many people I had to essentially kill in order to make it through your barrier? You’re strong, Velia, but I made sure I was stronger. I tried to play nice. I even went away for a little while and reenergized without killing anyone. I was sure after you got to the point in the vision where you found out wolves killed the rest of your family that you wouldn’t want anything to do with him.

  “Evidently that only lasted as long as he could stay away. When the two of you get in a room together, keeping your hands to yourselves seems to be an issue. I’m guessing if he’s dead, that won’t be a problem. If you would’ve done that to begin with, you would’ve seen that I could be a nice guy, and didn’t have to kill anyone to recharge as long as you offered yourself a few times a week. I could’ve made you happy, but now you’re going to have to feel pain before we get to our happy ending.”

  The guy was a delusional nutcase, and every word out of his mouth proved it. I could sense Jack struggling against the hold, but something appeared to be keeping his arms and legs from moving.

  Looking closer at his hands, I saw that they’d grown fur and had claws sticking out of them. Without knowing much about his changes, I didn’t know if it was natural, or something Helki had caused.

  “If you let him go, I’ll leave this house with you and not look back. We can go anywhere you want to go, and I’ll do whatever you want, but that only lasts as long as he stays alive. If you kill him, eventually whatever power boost you have now will fade away and I’ll be able to get the upper hand. If he’s dead when that happens, I will rip your heart out and pulverize your body into smithereens.”

  In my mind, the satyr was dead no matter what. Breaking into my house and assaulting Jack was over every line he could possibly cross. I just had to figure out how to kill him.

  “That’d be fine and dandy if I had any assurance that you haven’t broken Leto’s curse on her descendants. If you managed to figure out how to do that, you could be carrying his child. I’m not going to raise a werewolf brat.”

  I growled at his wording, mostly because Jack couldn’t, and I knew he would’ve wanted to. The fact that he knew about that curse raised all sorts of questions, but at the same time solidified the reality of it.

  “I don’t really know anything about her curse, but I’m guessing you probably know more about werewolves than I do. I assume you know the part about them having to do certain things to try to impregnate someone. Before we went at it like rabbits, we agreed it wasn’t right for us to have kids now, so Jack made sure to keep his swimmers infertile.”

  I was lying through my teeth, because I doubted running out and getting a pregnancy test would prove anything.

  “So there’s no chance you’re pregnant? I want to kill him for touching what’s mine, but if you can assure me there’s no baby, I may take you up on your offer to leave. If you are pregnant, he’ll be able to track the kid, and we can’t have that.”

  “How do you expect me to prove it? I don’t exactly have an ultrasound here, and I don’t think you’d be able to see anything since the baby would only be hours old.”

  “I’ve heard wolf mothers can feel their children within days of conception, so I guess it’s a little early to tell that way. Zap your little friend there with some of your magic. If you can give her a good jolt, we’ll walk out of here.”

  I’d kept Abbie behind me, trying to keep her out of the line of fire. She hadn’t gone to hide, but I could sense she wanted to be invisible.

  I didn’t bother turning around to face her or questioning the command. I quickly waved my hand and changed her clothes to a solid black evening dress.

  “There. You didn’t specify what you wanted me to do, so I hope a change of cloth
es is sufficient.”

  He nodded and let go of Jack’s neck. Jack quickly moved to attack the satyr, but with a flick of his wrist, Jack’s neck snapped. The eerie sound of it breaking echoed through my head.

  “No, you promised.”

  I ran at the barrier as I spoke, bracing myself to bounce off of it. The barrier was down, though, and I made it through, only to be stopped in my tracks when Helki moved to grab me.

  I fought against him, trying to get to Jack, but he wouldn’t even let me see around him to check on him. I started rattling off curses, and he was quick to counter every one of them. He shouldn’t have been as strong as he was.

  “You promised if I let him live that you would go with me. Are you backing out of that promise?”

  He dragged me towards the door as he spoke, refusing to let me see Jack. His hands were both on me, so I wasn’t sure where the knife he’d been holding went. I wanted to keep it in my view, but I couldn’t see much of anything. I hoped he’d decided it wasn’t necessary against me.

  “Don’t you think snapping his neck breaks that promise?”

  I strained against his hold. If I could only get to Jack, I was sure I could do something to help. A few of the words I’d muttered while trying to hit Helki with my magic had been directed towards Jack. Helki worked to block those even more than the magical punches I tried to throw at him.

  “Obviously you haven’t spent enough time with the wolves, which makes me happier than you can imagine. A little neck break will only keep him down for a while. Then he’ll be right back up, chasing after us.”

  I didn’t believe him, but there wasn’t much I could do as he threw me over his shoulder and carried me outside.

  “Abbie, get his phone and call Nikki. Get her over here as soon as you can.”

  It was all I could do, since beating on Helki’s back only seemed to tickle him. I judged that by the fact that he was laughing.