Her aura brightened. The orange blobs broke into small circles that floated in her psychic envelope like cartoony polka dots.
Angela hooked her thumbs under the shoulder straps of her bra. “This is all you get until you play along.”
I unbuttoned my shirt and stripped to my tank top.
She said, “More.”
I took the shirt and tank off. The sea breeze caressed my skin.
Angela nodded, confirming that she was pleased. She pulled the bra strap off her shoulders and reached around to undo the clasp.
The bra released. Her breasts—firm, round—pointed from her chest.
With those preliminaries over, we were soon naked. Her aura sizzled. The orange polka dots separated into thousands of tiny bubbles that effervesced within her penumbra.
She approached. Her gaze slid from my eyes to my chest and lower. Those eyes came back to mine and they beamed with approval.
An invisible cloud of pheromones swirled around her. The scent and her body and her smile and her beckoning eyes sent my kundalini noir pulsing with desire.
She put one arm on my shoulder and drew close, stopping when our bodies were about to touch. Her free hand clasped my neck and she pulled me close, her mouth open, her eyes sliding shut.
Our lips touched. An electric lust sparked through me.
I reached to take her in my arms. She pushed away. “Later.” She motioned to my clothes. “Bring them.” She turned away and collected her clothes and keys.
We stored our clothing and my pistol in the Maserati. She beeped the locks and hid the keys among the roots of the bushes.
Angela faced me. The orange spots had become a mass of tiny points and surged through her aura like hot foam.
Her shoulders hunched. Her legs twisted. She bent forward in a stoop. Her ears grew long and pointed. Thick hair darkened her body until she was covered in fur.
Angela was a beautiful woman, and for me, her change into a werewolf was not at all grotesque, simply different and fascinating.
Her hands reached for the ground. Her fingernails curled into claws. By the time her hands reached the grass, they had grown into paws.
Her eyes locked on me. They glinted red as rubies lit by fire.
The shifting was done. Angela Cyclone was more than a werewolf. She was a supernatural wolf.
Her tail wagged. She sat on her haunches.
My turn.
Her transmutation had been quick and looked painless. I wish mine were as easy.
I chose a spot on the grass and lay down on my side. Angela trotted over so she could keep eye contact.
I summoned the transmutation.
My kundalini noir jolted in pain like I’d run myself through with a sword. My back arched. My vision dimmed to black. Smells disappeared. The outside world faded and I sensed nothing but the agony within me.
My bones twisted and bent into new shapes. My face felt like a hook was tugging at the front of my skull. Fire churned though my veins. Needles of pain tore at my flesh as fur emerged from naked skin. A new pain yanked at the bottom of my back, where a tail elongated from my spine.
I forced a breath, hoping the fresh air would soak up the pain. Smells flooded my nose. Rich smells. Complex smells. Inviting smells.
I opened my eyes. Breath by breath, the pain receded.
I drew my legs close and rolled to my belly. My kundalini noir burned strong. I pushed myself upright.
Angela circled me, her tail held high like a flag, her lupine bitch scent as irresistible as a gush of arterial blood. Her aura clung to her fur-covered body.
I darted for her. She bounded away, escaping through a gap in the brush.
She ran through the next yard, leaped over a fence, through another yard, and onto an open field facing the river. She ran nimbly, her feet racing across the ground, the leaves and grass whispering beneath her soft paws.
I chased after her.
Lights illuminated the shoreline, the buildings, and the deserted boat docks.
Angela and I galloped, our footsteps silent as the sea breeze. We were a pair of shadows racing through the broken darkness.
We ran along the edge of the sandy beaches. Angela veered into a clump of bushes and disappeared. I lost even her aura. I slowed to track her scent.
Something nipped my haunches. I whirled around.
Angela bounded away, her tail knotting into a playful curl, and circled north, our original direction.
Together we tore through the sea grass, breaking the stalks, the scent collecting on our fur.
The world was a torrent of scents—the humid beach, nesting gulls, the decay of the mudflats from across the water, fish and crab rotting along the shore. Wet sand squished under our paws and moist earth spattered against our bellies. Lamps from human dwellings striped the night with light and shadow.
We headed back in the direction of Angela’s home. Dogs broke into yapping howls, warning the island that wolves prowled the neighborhood. Not to worry, humans didn’t understand canine.
The closer we got to her house, the more we slowed our gait. We slunk through the shadows, using our noses to guide us from fresh human and dog scents.
We stopped in the brush close to the roads—listening, sniffing, then darting across when we were certain no one suspected our presence.
Angela led me through a path in the pines and scrub to her house. Again, we stopped and watched. Listened. Sniffed.
We entered her backyard. Angela circled to face me. Orange dots swirled through her aura like bubbles in boiling water. Her glowing eyes gazed into mine. The playfulness was gone, replaced by anticipation.
She ruffled the hackles of her neck and slowly approached me, her eyes never leaving mine.
We stood wet nose to wet nose. She stretched her neck and rubbed the tip of her snout against mine.
My kundalini noir buzzed like I’d swallowed a hive of horny bees.
I raised my head to let her sniff my throat. Nip my skin.
She strutted beside me, leaning into me so her shoulder scrubbed against my shoulder, my ribs, my haunches.
I raised my tail. She raised hers.
The fragrance of her sex dug into my nostrils, the smell so overwhelming, so intoxicating, that I started to buck my hips and wanted nothing more than to lose myself in her pleasure. I closed my eyes to focus on her aroma.
Angela walked around my other side, again rubbing against me until her rear brushed along my snout. She turned before me and lowered her chest to the ground. Her ears splayed flat.
Her eyes stared at me.
Her ears stood up. She raised her head and looked past me. Thorns formed on the penumbra of her aura.
She growled and sprang beside me.
I spun around, my lust frustrated.
Something black whooshed in front of Angela. Something with wings, something bigger than me.
A bat.
A giant bat.
Large fangs glistened in its mouth.
Not a bat but a vampire.
Angela leaped at him.
A blade flashed in the vampire’s hand. Angela snapped her jaws, yelped, and staggered to one side. A dagger tumbled to the gravel.
My kundalini noir burned like fire. I lunged for the vampire, my teeth bared, my jaws ready to rip him to pieces.
I moved fast.
But the vampire moved faster. He jumped straight up. His wings unfolded and beat the air with a mechanical hiss.
I snapped the empty air under his boots.
He sailed to the roof of Angela’s house, where he cocked his legs, jumped again, and continued to the next house. He repeated his motions, reaching higher with each jump until he soared over the river, back in the direction of Charleston.
Who was he?
I turned to Angela. Her limp favored her right hind leg. I smelled blood. Hers.
The knife lay on the gravel and crushed seashells. I brought my nose close to the blade to sniff the scent of the vampire. The metal put off a heat.
Silver.
Deadly to both Angela and me.
I’d had my back to the vampire when he’d attacked. Was he after me? Or Angela? Or us both?
Birds called.
Birds?
I looked to the east.
A thin line of blue stained the black horizon.
Dawn approached.
Angela was wounded, and my most feared enemy was on the way.
The morning sun and its deadly rays.
CHAPTER 38
I rubbed antiseptic balm into the wound on Angela’s right calf.
We were back in human form, on a queen-size bed in the small bedroom of her cottage. I couldn’t apply first aid in wolf form. As I wasn’t a veterinarian, Angela had to change into human form as well. I could treat women, not wolves.
The windows of the bedroom faced south and west, away from the rising sun. Blinds covered the windows. The slats of the blinds glowed from the morning light. But I was safe.
Angela lay on her back with the bedsheet covering her torso and thighs. She had tucked the top of the sheet under her armpits. I sat beside her, dressed only in my trousers, and cradled her wounded leg across my lap.
The gash on her leg was as long as my index finger and deep enough to bleed profusely. I’d closed the wound with strips of cloth medical tape. The wound had scabbed over and flesh grew where the lips of the wound touched. Werewolves healed fast, though not as fast as vampires.
She studied the wound. “Think it’s going to scar?”
“Pretty sure of it.”
She dropped her head against the pillow. “Damn.”
I said, “Scars add character.”
“Men don’t mind showing character. Women hate it.”
After we’d transmutated to human form, I retrieved our clothes and my pistol from Angela’s Maserati. I had bandaged her wound with my tank top and supported her as she limped inside. I had hoped that the evening would end with our naked bodies rubbing against each other, but not this time, thanks to the bat-wing vampire.
The mud and sand had sloughed off the fur during the transmutation, but dirt caked our feet and hands, and grass stained our flanks. We had showered together. My attention was on getting her clean and tending to her wound rather than play. Unfortunately.
The vampire’s dagger lay where I’d placed it on the nightstand.
“Any idea who this guy was?” Angela reached for the dagger.
I had given it thought and, not surprisingly, drawn a blank. “Has to be related to Paxton and the two vampires who came after me with the crab.”
She inspected the dagger. It looked new but resembled a war-surplus trench knife: stacked-leather grip, steel hilt, a thick blade with deep blood grooves. What made this dagger a custom job were the sharp silver edge and the reinforcing steel spine. This dagger was made to kill vampires and werewolves.
Angela passed the dagger from hand to hand, careful not to touch the silver. “Was he after you or me? Or both?”
“Me, I’m sure of that,” I said. “He showed up when I had my back to him. While I was preoccupied with you, he intended to run me through.”
“And me?” She waved the dagger back and forth.
“I’m sure he didn’t mean to leave a witness.”
“What was that flying suit he wore?” she asked. “When I first saw him, I thought he was a giant bat. Or a dragon. Even a devil.”
“Interesting disguise. Stealthy. A human sees him, they won’t believe their eyes.”
“Seems a lot of trouble to make him fly.”
“The suit didn’t make him fly. It aided his powers of levitation. Basically it let him take longer and longer hops through the air.”
“Any idea on how to find out where he got it?”
“No, but I know where to start asking. You know King Gullah?”
“Only by name.” Angela rested the dagger on the nightstand. “Do you think he’s in on it?”
“I doubt it. Gullah is a shady character, but he wouldn’t bother with a bat-wing contraption. I’ll talk to him because he might know somebody who knows somebody.”
“When you find the bat-wing guy, call me. I want to work on his complexion with my claws.” Angela tossed a tube of aloe vera lotion. “Until then, make yourself useful. If we can’t have sex, at least get busy with this.” She flexed her calf where it rested on my lap.
“What do I get out of this?”
“My gratitude.”
“That all? After I saved you from that vampire?”
Angela raised her foot and pressed it against the bottom of my chin. “Like hell. I saved you.”
I grasped her ankle and held her leg still on my lap. “Okay, rubbing your leg is privilege enough.”
She rubbed her toes against my belly. “You’ll never get anywhere with a werewolf if you give up so easy.”
“The worst mistake any human, any vampire, any supernatural can make,” I said, “is to underestimate me.”
She brought her other leg from under the bedsheet and propped her left ankle on my shoulder. “Felix, don’t make promises you can’t deliver.”
I ran my hand down her leg and cupped the bedsheet in the gap at the top of her thighs. “Don’t worry, when you’re ready, I’ll deliver.”
She lifted her leg off my shoulder. Her face became veiled in melancholy. I wasn’t sure what had brought the change in mood, so I stayed quiet.
“Lie beside me.” She raised her head so I could slide my arm along the pillow. Her neck felt pleasantly warm.
Angela’s eyes tightened and relaxed to the anxious cadence of her thoughts. “How are things between you and Wendy?”
The question surprised me. “They’re not.”
Angela rolled onto her side, facing me, and traced a finger along my ribs. Her touch caused a hot tingle. She laid her hand flat on my chest. Her skin contrasted with mine, tanned and warm versus translucent and cool.
“Your body looks like it belongs in a science lab.”
“Humans would think the same thing,” I replied. “That’s why we have the Great Secret.”
Angela pulled her hand away. “Does it bother you she’s with Calhoun?” We were back to Wendy.
“I’m over it.” Or at least trying. “Why are you asking? You jealous about Wendy and Calhoun?”
“I’m pretending that I’m not.”
“What’s the arrangement between you and him?”
“Sexually? Werewolves are polyamorous. We like to fuck as much as we like to fight.”
“Calhoun gets his pick?”
“Being an alpha has its perks as well as its headaches.”
The silence returned.
“I need to warn you about Calhoun,” she said.
More silence.
“He comes across as the voice of reason and understanding, but he can be as ruthless as Bourbon. Trust me, if the situation was reversed, with Bourbon as the presumptive top alpha and Calhoun out in the cold, he’d be rattling the cages for war.”
Angela lifted her head and pushed my arm free. The melancholy got deeper. “After Inga Latrall’s death, I was shocked at how fast Calhoun rallied the other clan alphas behind him.”
“You’re not suspicious he had something to do with her accident?”
“Calhoun is ruthless, not stupid. He wouldn’t risk it. A top alpha like her dies so suddenly, it shakes up the hierarchy. Pack and clan alphas start maneuvering for turf. They cut deals like the Mafia. Bourbon wasn’t as good at it as Calhoun.”
I thought about Sean Moultier, Bourbon’s number one pack alpha. What was he keeping from his boss? Had Sean cut a deal with Calhoun?
Angela glanced at the clock on the nightstand. Time was ten after eight. “We better get going.”
I looked at the blinds to confirm that it was safe to go out into the sunlight. Before we went anywhere, I had to apply the sunblock foundation and makeup that I’d brought in my knapsack.
Once properly covered and dressed, I joined Angela in the kitchen.
She had put on a blue dress and poured coffee into plastic to-go cups. I was hungry, though sadly, I hadn’t brought blood.
We drove back into Charleston. I thought of the city and its surroundings as a resort. So I was surprised, naively of course, by the crush of morning traffic clogging the bridges. Everywhere you went, people had jobs and appointments.
We finally made it over the Scarborough Bridge, passed the city marina, turned onto Rutledge Avenue. It was after nine; Lemuel should be at work. I was looking forward to a snooze in my casket.
We drove by the dry cleaners south of the mortuary. There were no cars parked along the curb in front. As far as I remembered, there were no memorial services scheduled for the day, so the place should be quiet.
A white Ford coupe was parked in the mortuary’s driveway by the front door. Wendy’s car.
What did she want this early in the morning? Why was she here? Didn’t she go out last night with Calhoun? I’m showing up with Angela and I imagined the drama. My guts knotted.
Angela made no comment about Wendy’s car. Maybe she didn’t recognize it.
My ears buzzed. My fingertips started a faint quiver.
Danger.
Wendy’s presence shouldn’t cause this kind of alarm. I concentrated on my sixth sense. What was the problem?
I couldn’t pick out any one stimulus. The clues remained vague and out of reach. A smell? A sound? The pressure of a lurking gaze?
I panned the neighborhood with a fast scan.
Someone was watching.
Angela turned onto the mortuary driveway.
My sixth sense bundled into a hunch, and that hunch tripped the red alert in my head. The buzzing in my ears was loud as a shriek.
“Back up,” I shouted.
Angela touched the brakes and stared at me, her face lit up with confusion.
“Don’t stop,” I shouted. “Back up. Now. Now.”
Angela put the Maserati in reverse and craned her head around to look out the rear window. “What’s the matter?”
“Give it gas.”
She mashed the accelerator, and the Maserati shot out backward from the driveway.
I jerked the steering wheel and we swerved into the street.
“Keep going,” I shouted. The alarm in my head was screaming. I straightened the steering wheel and we tore away from the mortuary.
Werewolf Smackdown Page 16