“What do you want here, succubus? The Bittners don’t like intruders to attend their affairs.”
“A succubus? What the hell is a succubus? And who do you think you are, attacking me like this!”
Thoughts waged war in Gerry’s mind as she tried to figure out what was going on. She believed she felt the woman tighten her grip, but then she realized it wasn’t physical strength holding her still—it was magic.
“You’re a witch!” Gerry accused, twisting to get away.
“And you’re a demon. Now that we’ve got that clear, why don’t you tell me what you’re doing here?”
“Are you working for the Bittners?” Gerry asked, slow and easy as she tried to force herself into the girl’s mind. As she did, she twitched her nose and let her disguise melt away to be replaced by her normal form. “I’m not here to hurt them.” She continued, working to ease the strength of the magical ties holding her hostage. Now that she didn’t have to concentrate on maintaining her visual façade, she could throw more weight into her mental powers.
When the girl’s arm fell away from her, Gerry slipped out of her magical range and pressed her hands forward to use her magic to knock her back and into the wall.
“It’s you!” The black-headed woman gasped, seeing her true form for the first time. “The one Tylie told the children about.”
Her words tumbled Gerry into disorientation again, so she didn’t react when the girl advanced on her and took her by the shoulders. The movement wasn’t an attack but a plea. Her eyes were desperate and glistening with what looked like golden tears.
“You’ll get the children away from here?” she begged, “If I take you to the children, we’ll take them some place safe? To Jill? You’ll take us to her?”
Gerry realized her mouth was open in astonishment. She snapped her jaw shut and frowned at the young woman before her. How the hell do you know so much? she wondered through narrowed eyes.
“What’s your name?” she asked instead.
The woman’s lips stretched into a tight line as she considered whether to answer. She loosened her hold on Gerry’s shoulders before taking a step back. “I’m Belle. Should I take you to the kids?”
A long, soothing sigh escaped Gerry’s lips and she nodded. Her purse vibrated and she reached inside for her phone. Nicky was checking on her. She tapped out a response text advising him to wait and dropped the phone back into her clutch.
Turning back to Belle she asked, “Are the children here somewhere?”
She shook her head. “No, they’re in the carriage house with Buck.”
Gerry had a bad feeling when she heard the way the girl said the name “Buck” with a touch of disgust. Taking a deep breath, she reached back into her purse for the phone and texted Nicky: Carriage house. Now.
“Lead the way, Belle,” she told the girl as she pulled her skirt up to find the dagger sheathed on the inside of her thigh. “And while you walk, tell me what I need to know about Buck.”
She shrugged. “He’s not too difficult. Mostly he’s just stupid.” They made their way through the house, careful to avoid the party crowd. “He’s called Buck because his front fangs stick out a little too much. Bucktoothed.”
“A vamp?” Gerry asked.
“Nope, a werewolf.”
“Crap,” Gerry groaned. “He’ll smell us before we can sneak the kids out. I hate weres.”
“Buck lost his sense of smell a few years ago. There was this girl, you see, and she wasn’t much interested in him, but Buck wouldn’t take no for an answer. He followed her one night and the clever lady led him into a spice factory—right into the pepper grinding room. She jammed the gears on the machine and locked him in. His nose was never the same. His pack wouldn’t keep him around after that. So he took this job.”
She might have laughed but the object of their discussion was at that moment standing outside the carriage house, taking a leak against a tree. It was easy to guess this was him by his unkempt look and the wild mane of brown hair pointing in all directions. The partially clawed hand leaning against the side of the oak was a sure bet, too.
“Doesn’t the oaf know how to use a bathroom?”
Belle’s teeth shone in the moonlight as she flashed Gerry a grin. “He likes to mark his territory.”
“I hate weres,” Gerry said again, this time whispering in disgust.
Nicky caught up with them about that time, touching Gerry lightly on the shoulder as he stood in the shadows with them.
“Plan?” he asked, looking Belle up and down before turning back to the werewolf, who was just reentering the carriage house.
“Can you get to the children, Belle?” Gerry asked.
She shook her black head. “I’m not high in the trust department with the Bittners right now. I don’t think Buck would let me in. He knows I’m supposed to be keeping an eye on the party.”
“I’m surprised he hasn’t smelled us yet,” Nicky muttered. Gerry opened her mouth to explain but finally rolled her eyes and motioned for Belle to do so. While the young woman retold Buck’s story, Gerry inched closer to the carriage house and looked into the window.
The burly Buck was in human form, though he apparently didn’t take much interest in his looks. His t-shirt was wrinkled, stained, and hanging partially out of the waist of his pants. He had a rubber-band holding his hair back behind his head, but the tangled strands still spiked around his crown.
Gerry looked around and saw a lit room with lots of movement—like children bouncing around. She honed in on that room and the playful thoughts within. Buck parked himself by the door with a beer in his hand. He leaned back in his chair and chuckled at something, probably a television across from him and out of her sight.
She walked around the building to find a window into the room with the children, but there were no other windows along that side of the carriage house. The only way to rescue them would be through Buck.
“So,” Nicky murmured, coming up behind her. “What are you thinking? Might as well tell me before you go off and do something crazy.”
Gerry slapped at him behind her back and shook her head. “We have to go through him. I don’t see any other way.”
He followed her back to the window and looked in to consider the werewolf. “I’ll get him out here. You and the girl grab the kids after he’s far enough away. That…” Nicky trailed off. “Why are you shaking your head?”
“I have another idea. It just came to me.” She grinned and twitched her nose, shifting into the shape of a very tall and slightly heavy woman. Her breasts were so buxom it was a wonder she could stand up straight, and her short black hair curled like a dark, fuzzy crown.
“Who the hell are you supposed to be?” Nicky asked, eyes wide in a look of horror.
“Ah,” Belle interrupted, approaching them. “He’s thinking about her, isn’t he? He always dreams about her. But sometimes he dreams about loving her and other times he thinks about killing her. Better be careful about which one it is tonight.”
“Gerry.”
Nicky’s tone was a warning, but she had no intention of listening. He knew her bull-headedness and made no move to stop her, He just grabbed his own dagger from his waist and pushed Belle protectively behind him while Gerry made her way into the carriage house.
The body of one Jo Beth Haywood was bulky and difficult to maneuver. Still, Gerry managed to slip into the carriage house without a sound. Buck was dozing now, snoring with a hiss through his oversized front teeth. She plopped her ample rear into a chair at the table opposite him and sat with one hand on a knee. The other hand she brought up to her mouth and placed two fingers between her lips to whistle.
Buck lurched from his seat, dropping his beer bottle. He was about as graceful as a bull in a china closet, but when his eyes caught Jo Beth’s he stopped cold and blinked.
When he grinned, Gerry rolled her eyes and turned away from him. Channeling the wolf’s dream woman was easy. She could sense and feel his desires
and knew the way he expected—and wanted—Jo Beth to react. She could easily imitate the dream… almost without thinking. These days she usually used her shifting powers to recreate only the image of a person. She could deduce the person’s actions and mannerisms when her transformations were based on a file or eye witness accounts. When she used her true succubus powers, she could manifest herself into their innermost desires to lure and entice.
Buck was getting sucked into that web now. Jo Beth was feigning disinterest, but she wasn’t running. That was his fear, so she stayed away from that nightmare projection and maintained the coyness she knew he liked about Jo Beth—the Jo Beth he knew before she had realized this oaf would stop at nothing to have her.
“Been a long time, Jo Beth,” he grumbled, running his tongue along his buckteeth and making a smacking sound with his lips. “You still working at the liquor store?”
“Pfft,” Jo Beth waved her hand at him. “I quit that damned job months ago. Ain’t working now. Don’t mean I wouldn’t like to have a drink though. You know I loved me some Jack straight. Don’t got the money for it these days.”
“Hehehehe. They got lots o’ alchy at the big house.”
Jo Beth looked down at her grunge-style clothes and shook her head. “I cain’t get in there like this. They’d call the cops on me.”
“I know a way in. I can get us some Jack, so c’mon.”
She gave him an uncertain look when he held his big hairy hand out to her.
“You gotta hold my hand though, Jo Beth.”
When she slipped Jo Beth’s Vienna sausage fingers into the were’s, all of his feelings and thoughts surged into her consciousness at once. Buck was explosively elated. This simple meeting of their hands was like a dream come true to him. It was also just the tip of the iceberg. A werewolf’s sex drive was nearly unstoppable—and Buck wanted Jo Beth with every fiber of his being.
Liquid heat filled Gerry’s senses. She sucked in a breath and choked on it. The primal desire channeling to her from the werewolf seared her to her very depths and left her wanting. She turned her head without thinking, searching the darkness for Nicky. Her body lit afire by Buck’s craving, she watched as her husband snuck into the carriage house to rescue the children.
Nicky didn’t like the idea of letting Gerry out of his sight with the bucktoothed werewolf, but they had a job to do and there was no way around it. Besides, the sooner he could get the children to safety, the sooner he could get his wife away from wolfie. He’d seen the way the men at the party were panting after her, and he figured her succubus powers were working in overdrive. Couple that with a wolf’s already heightened sex drive and it made for a dangerous cocktail.
There were two girls and a boy in the carriage house. They were bouncing around, giggling, and bantering over a game of Mario Cart. When they saw Belle their eyes all lit up, and the smallest of them lurched into her arms with a yelp.
“Hey, Nona. You’ve grown a whole inch since last time I hugged you!”
The girl giggled and tossed her an incredulous look before taking her hand and tugging her into the room. “Let’s play dolls.”
“No, play Mario with us!” the boy demanded, vying for her attention too.
The other girl joined in, waving the video game remote at her. “Yeah, play Nintendo with us.”
Nicky considered things a moment before frowning at the woman. “Don’t you live here? They act like they haven’t seen you in a month.”
Belle shrugged, reaching her hand out to the boy and pinching his ear affectionately. “Like I told Gerry, the Bittners don’t trust me right now. They’ve kept me from the children for several weeks.”
“And how’d you manage to lose their trust?” His cautious look was intended to make it clear to her that he didn’t trust her either. She raised her chin and faced him with a hard stare.
“I don’t answer to you. I’m helping you get these kids to safety, but I don’t belong to you.”
He snickered. “Then who do you belong to?”
The littlest girl, Nona, approached him and tugged on the pocket of his slacks. When he dropped his hard black eyes to her, she grinned like an imp. “Are we leaving?”
The smile that curled his lips was unexpected, but by the time it was on his lips, it was too late to take it back. He nodded and forced his gaze from hers and back to Belle.
“We should get them out of here. I don’t want to leave Gerry with your wolf friend long.”
Belle wrinkled her nose and rolled her eyes. “C’mon, kids. Gather your things and let’s get going.”
“No!” the boy wailed. “My bop isn’t here. I have to go get my bop.”
“What the f—heck is a bop?”
“Jeremy,” Belle spoke to the boy, dropping down to a crouch and ignoring Nicky’s impatient glare, “I know how much your bop means to you, but we need to get out of here. You know we’ve been trying to find a new home.”
“My bop!” the boy cried, tears welling up in his eyes. Clearly he wasn’t willing to relinquish his bop.
Belle stood and held the boy to her legs. “I can get his bop. It’s a stuffed toy. The only thing he has left of his mother. Can you stay with them while I fetch it and then we can go?”
Nicky was shaking his dark head before she finished asking the question. “We need to get them out of here. Don’t argue with me. You can go get the damned pop or bop or whatever it is.”
“I’m not letting you take them.”
“And I didn’t say that!” As he spoke he pulled his cell out of his jacket and tapped out a text message before tucking it back into his pocket. “Listen, I am in charge here. I don’t need your help to get these kids out of here. This is our mission, and right now Gerry is out there with that damned hairy beast.”
The beautiful girl opened her mouth to speak, but before the words could form on her lips, the golden glow of Langston’s door poured into the room.
“Damn, you guys have all the tricks,” Belle muttered.
A woman stepped out of the golden door. Her hair was blonde and curly, and she had a cheerful and youthful smile on her lips. Nicky knew Jill was in her thirties, but compared to Belle, she looked like a child. Jill had become a vampire when she was about the same age as the other woman, but it was the exuberant life in her eyes that contrasted with the cold, hard look in Belle’s eyes.
Langston lowered his head and stepped through the door after Jill. “So are we ready to go to our new home?” he asked, addressing his question to the wide-eyed children.
“Yeah,” Nicky responded, taking the little girl’s hand from his pants pocket and handed her off to Langston. “Gerry’s distracting the guard…” he glanced at Jill with a smirk. “This gal wants to go back to the house to get something for one of the kids.”
Belle’s eyes were wide. Nicky thought she was going to object so he took the boy’s hand and brought him to Langston as well. “Don’t fight me on this, gorgeous. The kids are going with the big guy and if you want to fetch the bop, you can. If you want to escort them, you can. Your choice.”
She shook her head and smiled. “No, they’ll be safe with her. They can go with her.”
A derisive snort escaped Nicky while he watched Belle hand the last child over to Jill. As soon as Jill and Langston were through the golden door with the kids, Nicky turned on his heel, dagger drawn, and headed out the door.
“You coming, gorgeous?”
Belle sprinted to catch up with him and led the way back into the mansion. She guided him through a maze of back halls and rooms until they found Gerry, in the form of Jo Beth, and Buck in a small room filled wall-to-wall with liquor.
The werewolf had one hand against the wall on either side of Jo Beth’s face, his body pinning her down onto a counter. She had her legs wrapped around his body as he sniffed her from breast to mouth and ear to shoulder. It didn’t matter if his sense of smell worked or not. This was a prelude to mating, and Jo Beth seemed all too willing.
Nicky
came unglued. A roar broke from his throat as he raised his dagger at the wolf. Buck reacted instantly. Hackles began at the back of his head and inched down his back as his body contorted into that of a true wolf but twice as big. The animal leaped with a feral growl.
“Son of a bitch, Nicky!” Gerry screamed, twitching her nose to return to her natural image. “I had this under control.”
Nicky tried to speak but the werewolf jabbed an oversized paw in his face while they rolled along the ground. The knife went clattering to the floor as the pair rolled back over back, the air bursting from Nicky’s chest with each impact.
“Crap!” Gerry rushed in to try to get a jab at the wolf with her blade, but they were wrestling too fast for her to get a mark on the right body. She groaned in frustration.
A furious but pained scream tore from Nicky’s mouth when Buck slashed his shoulder with razor-sharp claws. Reacting in kind, he head-butted the werewolf who lurched back with a howl. Blood gushed from Nicky’s forehead just as the wounds on his shoulder began to heal.
Gerry turned to Belle and gave her an angry glare. “You’ve got powers, don’t you? Do something! I can’t get through to the damned were now that his mind has turned to fighting.”
Belle bit her lip and looked worried. She shook her head before speaking. “I’m not very good at it. Mostly I just detect other paranormals.”
“Well that’s just great!”
“Ayah!” Nicky cried as he kicked the were hard in the family jewels. The big wolf squealed like a puppy and slid off of Nicky’s body. Before he could recover his faculties, Nicky slipped his belt from his waist and fastened it around the wolf’s neck like a collar. The animal hacked for air when he tightened the leather like a noose.
Confusion wrinkled Belle’s face as she turned to Gerry again. “What is he exactly? I can’t get a read on him, but he certainly can handle himself.”
“He’s dhampir. And yes, he can handle himself quite well.”
Nicky caught Gerry’s smirk as he wrestled the werewolf closer to the ladies.
At that moment Buck returned to his human form and looked Belle in the eye with a ferocious glare. “This isn’t right. You said…” Before he could finish the words, Belle reared back with a marble paperweight and struck him in the temple. He crumpled to the floor at Nicky’s feet.
The Bend-Bite-Shift Box Set Page 46