She gasped and jerked a bit in my arms.
I sat up and turned on the bedside light. Her nipples were tight pink buds and pierced by tiny silver rings.
“Miss Kitty, what did you do?” I started to reach toward her and then stopped. “Please tell me I didn’t hurt you.”
She squeezed her eyes closed for a minute. “You didn’t hurt me, Olivia. They’re just really sensitive now. I got them a few weeks ago. Gracie wasn’t happy that my butterfly was gone, so she asked me to do this. I wanted her to be happy. Berto helped the healing along, after I got over being too embarrassed to ask him to do it.”
“Are they sensitive in a good way or a bad way?” I asked.
She kissed me and pulled my hand to her breast. “With the right person, they’re sensitive in a good way.”
Pushing her back onto the bed I drew her nipple into my mouth. I licked it gently at first, before flicking the little ring with my tongue until she moaned. Straddling her I suckled each nipple in turn. Slowly, I kissed my way down her body. She made happy sounds deep in her throat when I tasted her sweet arousal. Licking and kissing, I harvested her moans like nectar. Orgasm rocked her body as I held her hips. Her breath caught as I kissed my way back up her body until our lips met. Our tongues danced and I shivered at the caress of her silky fur. She slid down and knelt between my legs, quickly drawing forth my own release. As my breathing slowed, she tugged a sheet over us, holding me close until I fell asleep in her arms.
* * * *
I dreamed that evil yellow eyes were glaring at me as I slept. I woke up to find Doctor Evil perched on my dresser staring at me. Kat was missing, but I heard the shower running. I joined her. I loved morning showers.
It was past lunch when we got downstairs. Leo had his grown-up face on. “Why do I think you’re up to something?” I told him.
“I’m just doing some recon for a mission. I have to see a man about a dog.” He was dressed in civilian clothes and had a mostly empty duffle bag. He gave me a kiss on the top of my head, and sauntered out the door. The sounds of a motorcycle engine filled the yard, followed by the clang of the gate closing.
Cordie was surrounded by papers. “I’m trying to get caught up on some work. I’d like to be productive when I go in on Monday.”
“I’ll be in the library. I need to do some research.” I took some iced tea with me. “I know, Grammy, I’ll be sure and use a coaster.”
Online werewolf research looked to be about as unhelpful as online magic research had been. I got almost two million hits straight off. This was going to be a long day. I waded through a ton of stuff on the history of the werewolf legend. It was interesting to read, but not very helpful. Supposedly werewolves had superhuman strength and speed. I could vouch for those.
Wolf’s bane and silver through the heart were supposed to be the best ways to kill one. Some poking around led me to monkshood as the most common name for wolf’s bane. If I wanted some locally, it looked like I should have planned ahead and bought a plant from a garden center in the spring. Nobody was selling the processed form, at least online, probably because of that whole deadly poison thing. More research turned up that the local Botanic Gardens had a small display of said plant. The Botanic Gardens were close—just across the park. Yay! The Botanic Gardens were also infested with exploding bluebirds of hate. Not yay.
I tried calling a few Pagan bookstores. Sometimes they carried weird herbs and stuff. I got the same answer from all of them. “Try a garden center, and we’re recording this number in case anyone turns up poisoned.”
The lady that answered at the garden center was even less helpful. “I’ve had it with the prank werewolf calls!” she told me, and slammed the phone down.
The Botanic Gardens, sadly, were moving to the top of my to-do list.
I turned to the question of silver next. I remembered a book series where the bad guys injected the good-guy werewolves with silver suspended in liquid. I wanted to see if that was even possible—not that I intended to get close enough to the werewolf to tell it to roll up its sleeve. I found out that some people actually used colloidal silver—silver particles suspended in liquid—as a health aid. One guy took so much of it that he actually turned his skin blue. Super creepy, in my opinion.
The colloidal silver would have been an awesome idea, if not for the profound local shortage of same. I called several of the places that turned up online. They all were sold out and didn’t know when they’d be getting another shipment. Apparently there’s a device to make your own, but those were sold out too.
I was looking at maps of the Botanic Gardens when I drifted off, only to be jolted awake when the front door slammed shut.
“Olivia!” Leo yelled. His voice sounded off.
“In here,” I called back.
He staggered in, carefully lowering the duffle bag to the floor. One of his eyes was swollen shut and he was covered with blood. His shirt hung in tatters and I saw more blood through the rips.
“Leo! What happened? Berto, come quick!”
“You have the number for that cop from last night, sis?”
“Lieutenant Clark? Yeah. You want me to call him? Who did this to you?”
Berto ran in from the kitchen and hurried over to Leo, who held his hand up. “Later. I need the cops to see this first.” He looked back at me and added, “Sit down, sis. Short version, Colby is the werewolf and the cops need to know.”
My hands were shaking so bad, I finally had to hand the phone to Berto to dial for me. “Lieutenant Clark, please. Tell him it’s Olivia Mitchell and it’s about the werewolf.”
For the first time today, saying werewolf actually got a quick response. I don’t think I was on hold even a minute before he picked up. “What about the werewolf?”
“My brother is here and he’s been hurt. He says he knows who the werewolf is. He told me to call you.”
“Same address? We’ll be right there.”
After we hung up, Leo pressed a black thumb drive into my hand. “Tell them you found this in your room after you broke up with Colby. Just follow my lead when they get here. You can do it.”
This time we got a couple of squad cars, plus Lieutenant Clark again. He nodded to us when they came in and said, “All right, we’re here.”
Leo said, “The werewolf is a guy named Colby Green. He was dating my sister. I’m certain he’s the one that killed that girl and bit Officer Curtis.”
“And why would we take your word for it?”
“I have evidence.” Leo gestured toward the duffle bag. “His laptop is in there. And my sister found this drive.”
I handed over the drive he’d just given me. “It was in my room. He must have dropped it at some point and I didn’t notice it.”
“Care to tell us how you came to be in possession of Mister Green’s laptop? And how, exactly, is this evidence?”
Leo winced as he moved. “Olivia wanted me to fix her phone the other day. When I was backing it up, I found some explicit pictures. She told me her boyfriend had taken them, without her permission, and then emailed them to her. There were also some fairly explicit text messages that he’d sent to shock her. Everything she’d told me about this person led me to believe that he was the type to post revenge pictures online. I went over to his apartment to speak with him and make sure he deleted any pictures or videos he still had.”
I don’t think anyone believed that he went there just to talk to Colby—unless he meant with his fists.
He had a drink of water and continued. “When I got there, the door was slightly ajar. I heard screams coming from the inside and believed someone to be in need of assistance, so I entered the apartment. Mister Green wasn’t there, but he did have some violent pornography playing on the television and his laptop was running at the table. His screensaver was entirely pictures of young women in compromising situations. While I was watching, I saw a picture of my sister. Mister Green wasn’t in the apartment, so I took the time to search the laptop for any
thing with my sister’s name. I found a large number of pictures and videos. I also found a directory labeled fun at the park. After what happened last night, I had to look. There were pictures of young women, before, during, and after he finished with them.”
Leo’s face was taut with strain. “All of those girls looked a little like Olivia, before she Changed. I grabbed the laptop and threw it in my bag. I couldn’t risk leaving it there and him getting it before the police could get there. I went downstairs to call, and ran into him in the lobby. He had a young girl with him. She was intoxicated and partially exposed.”
“I admit it. I put down my bag and punched him as hard as I could. The girl screamed, and then Mister Green howled and exploded into fur. He said he was tired of my meddling and was going to take care of me for good. The girl ran screaming out the door. I was trying to hold him off when a couple of really big guys ran in with the girl behind them. Mister Green yelled, ‘this isn’t over!’ He shoved the guys out of the way like they were nothing and ran out the door. By the time I got up and made it to the door, he was gone.”
Leo gestured at himself. “He didn’t bite me, but he did a number on me with his fists and claws. The guys both said they were calling the cops. I get the feeling the young lady is going to try and pretend this never happened.”
The technicians finished gloving up and retrieved the laptop from the bag. One started checking it out while the second got Leo’s fingerprints.
Lieutenant Clark stared at Leo. “So you claim this guy, that you went to ‘talk to’, just happened to leave his door unlocked and open with a violent video running and a laptop playing incriminating photos?”
“I already admitted to stealing the laptop and throwing the first punch. What would I gain by lying about the door? Maybe he was in a hurry to leave. I don’t know.”
“Okay, so given what you saw, why didn’t you call nine-one-one immediately?”
“I wanted to get out of there as fast as I could, once I saw the pictures from the park. I was going to call from the lobby, but I couldn’t let him take another girl to his apartment. Not after what I’d seen. After I fought with him, I just wanted to get away before he came after me again.”
Lieutenant Clark excused himself to make a call. I couldn’t hear all of it, but I did make out “APB” and “Colby Green”.
I caught a glimpse of what the officers had on the screen, and that did it for me. I reached the restroom just in time to be desperately sick. I couldn’t stop seeing the picture of that girl.
I went back to the room, still shaking. “That girl in the picture—Colby sent me a text. He said he wanted to tie me up in the park and...do stuff, and then leave me exposed for someone to find. When I told him he was crazy, he said he was just kidding. He described it just like that—everything except the killing part. He left that out.”
“There’s a blue thumb drive on the desk in my room,” Leo said. “I backed up Olivia’s phone before I wiped it for her. The texts and pictures should be on there.”
Cordie went up with one of the officers to retrieve the drive.
I felt like I was going to be sick again. I felt dirty for even letting him touch me. Make that person stop screaming, I thought, but the sounds were coming from my own throat.
Berto made me drink something bitter, and Kat just held me while the sharp edges went fuzzy.
Lieutenant Clark came back in. “When they got to his apartment, he was gone. It looked like someone had packed a bag in a hurry, so he probably circled back after you chased him off. He has to know you took his laptop, and he knows exactly what’s on it. I promise you, we’ll find him. Thanks to his laptop, there’s no shortage of pictures to circulate. Suitably cropped, of course. He can’t stay a werewolf all the time. We will have some extra patrols in this area, but we think he’ll be heading for the state line. We have the death penalty here. He’s not going to want to stay.”
One of the officers supervised while Leo changed clothes. The set he’d had on was now evidence.
Lieutenant Clark gestured at Leo’s eye. “You probably ought to get that looked at.”
“I will.”
“We’re not going to arrest you at this point, Sergeant Mitchell, but don’t leave town. If you could resist the urge to indulge in assault or burglary, that would be helpful too.”
“I’ll be here. Just catch the guy. I don’t want him anywhere near any of us, especially Olivia.”
As soon as the police left, Berto healed Leo again.
I asked, “Leo, why did I have to give the cops that drive? I don’t understand. Besides, if you copied stuff onto it, it’ll all have today’s date anyway.”
“I didn’t have to copy anything, sis. He had a whole box of thumb drives on his desk. I just made sure to pick one that was old enough. In case they can’t use the laptop as evidence in court, I needed something else incriminating that wasn’t stolen from his apartment. I also have one of my buddies tracking to see if he uploaded any of the pictures or videos. I’m waiting to hear back on that.”
I broke out in a cold sweat and felt like I was going to be sick again. “What if he gave me something? He wouldn’t use a rubber that last time. What if I made Kat sick, or Tessa?”
“Olivia, be calm. You need to breathe.” Berto took my hand and whispered a prayer. I didn’t feel anything, but he held my hand for a long time. “I believe you’re okay, my sweet. I don’t feel anything wrong, and for what it’s worth, you’re not pregnant either.”
I kissed him with tears rolling down my cheeks. “Thank you, Berto!”
* * * *
I wasn’t sure what the press knew, or how they found out about our dealings with Colby, but the gate was the only thing that kept them away from our door. They were circling like vultures out there.
“I want to hear what they’re saying,” I told Kat.
She turned on the television for me and found a news broadcast. “I don’t think this is a good idea.”
They were interviewing Vivian Davis on the sidewalk in front of our house. “Of course I knew nothing about this. I can’t believe he fooled me like this. When I think how close I came to being one of his poor victims, I feel sick.”
The cameras switched back to the news room and the blonde anchorwoman. “An anonymous source at the police department informed us Colby Green has been identified as the alleged Cheesman Park Killer by Special Forces Sergeant Leonardo Mitchell.” A picture of Leo in his best dress formal picture appeared over the anchor’s left shoulder. “Sergeant Mitchell has refused to comment on his part in identifying the alleged assailant, or to address the rumor that Mister Green was formerly dating his sister, Olivia Mitchell.” They had my old high school yearbook picture, and a blurry picture of Dark Elf me in the back yard. Great…
“I feel sick. Turn off the TV.”
“You can’t stay out of trouble, can you Olivia?” said Tessa from the doorway.
“Tessa! Where have you been? You startled me.”
“I had some business in the Springs. I was meeting an old friend for dinner. I just got back. She’s lying, by the way.”
“Who’s lying?” asked Kat, “The anchorwoman?”
“No, sweet cheeks. The other Dark Elf, Vivian. When she said she knew nothing about it and Colby fooled her, she was lying. There’s no telling how much she knew, but she knew something.”
I couldn’t believe it. I didn’t like Vivian, but still… “Are you serious? You think she might have known he was raping and killing women? She’s running for freaking State Attorney General. What the hell?”
“Like I said, she knew something, but I can’t tell what.”
“Unless we can prove she knew what he was doing, she’s just going to come across as a woman betrayed,” said Kat. “It’ll probably get her even more publicity.”
Tessa strolled over and gave me a kiss. She whispered in my ear, “See. I told you it wasn’t broken.”
Leo hurried into the room. “Olivia? Who is this? I hear
d you talking.”
Tessa positively beamed at him. “Well helloooo, handsome. Who are you?”
“That’s my brother Leo. Don’t you dare hurt him.”
Tessa backed Leo into the couch and straddled him, taking his face in her hands and kissing him deeply. “I won’t hurt him. I just want to play.” She kissed him again and licked his neck. “He tastes so good. Not as good as you, but good.”
Leo stood up abruptly, dumping her from his lap. “I don’t know what your game is, but I don’t know you.”
“Leo, this is Tessa. I’m sure we told you about her.”
“I hope it was all good,” she said, and playfully ran her hand up his arm, squeezing his muscle. “I hope your brother and I get to be good friends.” She leaned in and nipped at his lower lip. “I’d like to be real good friends, Olivia’s brother.”
I avoided looking at what her hands were doing. Eyes above the waist, Mitchell, I told myself.
He was trying to look stern, but it was a losing battle. She kissed him again, and this time he kissed her back. “Let’s go to your room, Olivia’s brother, unless you want to stay here and let her watch. That could be fun, too.”
He scooped her up and threw her over his shoulder. She squealed when he swatted her on the rear. “We’ll be in my bunk!” I swear she winked at me as he carried her off.
Report 9
Monitoring Report
Memo
To:General Dxxxx
From:Major Parker
As requested, I have the status update from Sergeant Mitchell.
Sergeant Mitchell has had two combat encounters with a werewolf. That creature is faster and stronger than any soldier we’ve seen. I have someone trustworthy researching the vulnerabilities of the creature. We’d like a closer look at one to assess its merits.
The sister has demonstrated magical ability in the presence of Sergeant Mitchell. She has thrown fire and water and even summoned one of those exploding birds. She was heard to state that her magic was “much stronger” since she returned from the Grove.
Forging Day (Crucible of Change Book 1) Page 21