Demon Peepers
By Belinda White
Copyright 2018 Belinda White
Kindle Edition
Cover Image by Livali Wyle
This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be resold or given away to other people.
Disclaimers:
While the location of this story is set in the real-life town of Spencer, Indiana, all the characters and places of business mentioned within are works of fiction, existing only in the Author’s somewhat warped mind.
Table of Contents
Copyright Page
Demon Peepers (The Benandanti, #3)
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
A Note From Belinda
Other Books by Belinda White
Join Belinda's Update List
Author's Note: Please note that the word "were" does double and triple duty in this novel. Beyond the normal meaning, to a Benandanti, Were can also mean a creature. And 'to were' can be interchangeable with to shift or change form.
Chapter 1
Viola was fast. I’d give her that. And it wasn’t just the rapid aging this realm had blessed me with either. She’d always been faster than me.
More ruthless too.
There was a reason Titania had put her in charge of the other team of royal guards. Viola was good.
I'm a Royal Faerie Guard. It's what I do. Or at least, it's what I did... before the big rescue. Viola was my counterpart on the queen’s second team of guards. The ones that were willing to take the jobs I refused.
Yes, there were a lot of them. And, yes, the refusals always came at a cost.
It turned out I had a sister here in the human realm. A very determined sister at that. When I thought of all she had risked to get me and her foster sister out of Faerie, I had to shake my head. I had a long way to go before I could even begin to understand human emotions playing such a big part in life.
In the land of Fae, we humans learned to hide our emotions. It was a necessary way of life. If the Fae knew our emotions and feelings, they would use them against us. In the worst of possible ways.
Not that living in the other realm was all that bad. I had my very own personal tree house, all the food I wanted, and some task to do for Queen Titania on a daily basis. A task that usually involved fighting someone.
Here, things were different. Yes, thanks to my sister (who I've grown fond of), I had my very own tree house here too. And yes, I also had all the food I could want. But what was lacking was the fighting. My body was truly missing the fighting.
A flash of green ahead alerted me to the fact that Viola had taken a hard left off the path. I pivoted on my paws and followed, grinning. In a wolfy sort of way. This might be a life or death situation, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t still love it. All that adrenaline pumping through my veins was exhilarating to say the least.
Under normal circumstances, there was no way I could have caught her. But there was something Viola didn’t know.
I wasn’t alone.
Rebel flashed me a vision of her. He was closer than I was, and we had her between us. I threw him a thought, and a second later I heard her scream of frustration, even as I rounded the last of the trees before the faerie gate.
Rebel had her face down on the ground, and she was trying to rectify that. Too late. We had her.
I glanced at the shimmering gate. She'd either already opened it, or had left it open for a quick retreat. Not the safest thing to do, and not something the queen would condone. But then, who was going to tell her?
We’d cut this too close for comfort. She'd almost gotten away. And no way was I following her back to Faerie. Even if she had just tried to kill me.
There were bad things waiting for me on the other side of that gate. I just hoped they stayed there.
I changed back into my slower skin form and removed her bow and quiver before nodding to Rebel to get off her back. He had a lot of heft to him. German Shepherds with wolf blood, Benandanti wolf blood at that, weren’t light weights.
When he stepped off, she bounced up. From the tightening of her muscles, I knew she was thinking about a sprint through the gate.
Damn. I should have closed it first.
Ah well, the notched arrow pointing at her would just have to do for incentive to stay put.
Viola grimaced at me. “So shoot, already.”
I frowned at her. She knew me better than that. I didn’t kill unless there was absolutely no other choice. Of course, she had just taken a shot at me.
“Still willing to kill for the queen, Viola?” I said. In the situation we were in, it really wasn’t a question.
She spat on the ground between us. “At least me and my girls have the guts to do the queen’s bidding.”
Viola flinched at my gaze. Like somehow she had forgotten I was aiming an arrow at her heart. A spelled arrow, at that. No chance of survival if one of those even grazed you.
“You think it was lack of guts that stopped me and my team?” I asked. “Maybe you’d better take a closer look at me.”
Changing from fur to skin meant that I was standing there in the middle of the woods stark naked. And that meant that she had full view of my scars.
She swallowed, then her eyes met mine. “All those are from the queen?”
I lifted one shoulder. “Some of them came while doing her bidding, but yes, most of them Titania inflicted herself. Or had them inflicted on me while she watched.” I could feel the cold heat in my gaze. “One doesn’t disappoint the queen without her taking retribution. You would have known that if you’d ever told her no.”
Viola squirmed but didn’t speak. She knew I was right.
“You are in a different world now, you know,” I said. “Me and my new family have proved difficult to kill, haven’t we?” I hesitated. I didn’t take the offer I was about to make lightly. Knowing Viola like I did, it was a risky proposition at best.
“You could join us.” There, I’d said it. Now it was up to her.
She pulled down the stretchy fabric of her tunic, exposing most of her left breast.
Damn. Titania had her on a leash.
I was familiar with Titania’s leashes. I’d worn them myself more than once. It was a favorite tactic of hers when sending her humans out into the mortal realm.
The sigil on Viola’s breast, close to where her heart resided, was not one of the smaller ones either. This one wouldn’t just inflict pain. It would kill her.
Titania wasn’t taking any chances. Not after losing me and my guard already.
My eyes met hers. Was there a sadness there?
“So, what color is it now?” she asked. “I haven’t checked it lately.”
“It’s orange.” I grimaced. “You don’t have much time left before it activates.”
She nodded and gave me a sad smile. “Then you won’t have to kill me after all. I’d hate to be the one to break your streak.”
“No streak to break. I’ve killed before, when I had to. Just not on the queen’s orders.”
“You think that matters to me? Whet
her you kill me or just let the leash’s time run out? Either way, I’m dead.”
I thought quickly, wishing that Shaylee hadn’t canceled on our patrol that morning. As heir to both the Faerie courts, there might have been something she could have done. But with the rapidly changing color of that mark, there wasn’t time to get her there.
Taking a deep breath, I nodded toward the gate. “Go.”
Viola’s eyes widened and her lips parted slightly. “You’re letting me go?”
“I’ll probably regret it, but yes. Go back to the queen.” I twisted the bow slightly to get her attention. “I’m keeping this, though.”
She nodded slowly. “Fair enough.”
Then she turned and darted for the gate. I wasn’t like her. She made it through to Faerie with no arrow in her back.
TIME WAS DIFFERENT here, and that had created a major problem for me. I was born here thirty-four years ago. But when I was scant hours old, I was taken from this world and a Faerie Changeling left in my place. Not just any changeling, either. None other than Princess Shaylee, heir to both the Unseelie and Seelie Courts of Faerie took my place. She is the foster sister my blood sister rescued as well.
But like I said, time was different between the realms. For Shaylee (being basically immortal), this wasn't a problem. For me, on the other hand, it was. I was aging. Fast.
When I came into the human realm, I was physically around twenty-one of your human years old. Now, it looked like Fate had decided to right things, and I was gaining on my thirty-four years very quickly. Try aging at the rate of about a year a week. Trust me, it wasn't fun.
My daily workouts had tripled, and I was still having a hard time keeping my muscles and body as toned as they needed to be. As a regular workout for me was a couple of hours, between workouts there really wasn't much time to check out my new world. Hopefully, that would come once I was up to my real age. I just hoped my body was still able to function properly when that happened. The thought of losing my skills really had me worried.
My firepit was a very short distance from my treehouse. As luck would have it, I had just enough wood for one more very hot bonfire. I built the small tower of wood over a firestarter. Those were fairly new to me, but I'd admit they came in very handy. When you needed a fire fast, they were a godsend.
As much as I wanted to keep the bow, I knew better. You can’t trust anything that came from Faerie. Well, unless it was made of steel, like my blades—but those items were few and far between.
The Fae really didn’t like steel.
Once the flames were leaping, I took a deep breath and threw in the bow and quiver of arrows from what I hoped was a safe distance. As I suspected, the flames turned dark green and very angry. The spells wrapped in the wooden craftsmanship had been potent, indeed. It was a good thing I hadn’t given in to my desires.
Once the flames returned to a much safer red, I let my thoughts drift once more.
When we escaped Faerie last month, Shaylee had made a deal with the Erlking that no member of his court could step foot into our realm. It sounded like a good deal at the time, as he was constantly sending out assassins to kill her and eliminate the threat to his throne. But looking back, it had left one major issue undealt with.
Queen Titania. She had been behind Shaylee a hundred percent in the beginning. But that was when she thought her master manipulation plan would work, and she could place her loving (and loyal) daughter on the Unseelie throne, and thus gain a measure of power over the entire world of Fae.
That hadn't worked out so well for her. The queen should never have involved the Benandanti. My sister and her very unusual pack-mates foiled her carefully laid plan.
That didn't mean we had ended her threat. It just meant that now we'd made her angry. And nothing in Shaylee's pact limited Titania from having full access to our world. In turn, that made me very worried. In general, I'm not one to worry a lot. But I figured losing one of her most prized possessions (me, a Benandanti werewolf) wasn't going to sit well with her. She'd come for me eventually.
And in the meantime, she’d keep sending her assassins. Ones that didn’t mind doing her killing for her. Ones like Viola and her team.
I needed to stay fully functioning, and for that I really needed to find a good sparring partner. When I first got here, I sparred with my fellow guards, but those sessions had quickly become fewer and less frequent. For one, they were located miles from my tree house and I had, as yet, no mode of transportation. For two, they did not have the zeal for further training. Instead, they would rather spend their time getting reacquainted with this land of humans.
Not that I blamed them. They had that luxury, and I did not. Mine was not the only head that the queen wanted in her trophy room. At this point, she wanted Shaylee's as well. And once a Royal Guard, always a Royal Guard. It's just that my protection detail had changed.
If it weren't for the princess's quick thinking, I'd be tithe-bait awaiting my sacrifice back in the Seelie Court. She earned her protection. All Titania ever did for hers was steal a Benandanti child. In other words, I owed her nothing.
Well, technically, that's not true. I did owe her, just not anything she would care to receive by my hands... or my sword for that matter.
It took some time, but I waited until the fire had burned itself completely out. Then I dug a deep hole and buried the ashes. Like I said, it was best not to take any chances. Before I started filling the hole, I carefully laid the lone remaining arrow, tightly wrapped in my sweatshirt, on top of the ashes.
The last of the covering dirt had just been pushed in when I got the call. Not from the cell phone that Taz had given me. A direct mind call. There was a pack meeting at the main house in half an hour. Urgent business to discuss.
That was fine by me. I needed to let them know about the latest assassination attempt, anyway. But I did worry a little about what else could be going wrong.
I kind of already had my hands full. More fuel to the fire would not be a welcome thing. I quickly marked the spot of my buried item, and headed home.
Rebel hadn’t stuck around for the bonfire event. As soon as he’d seen me safely back to my treehouse, he had loped off toward home. I hoped that the rabbits thought to bring his family along for a visit. I knew that Rebel missed them.
Reb had been my sister's packmate for well over sixteen years. It seemed the Benandanti blood in his system gave him a much longer lifespan than most creatures of his breed. Good thing, too. Reb was special to all of us.
I grabbed the lever and pulled down the ramp into my home proper, then went inside to change and get dressed. At first, it was difficult for me to put a finger on just what I was feeling. It must have been a bit of excitement... and maybe just a small amount of hope.
Hope. There sure wasn't a lot of that in Faerie. That's one of the nicer differences I'd found here.
This was a full pack meeting, and there was a member of the pack I hadn't met yet. And a few others that I had only seen once or twice. None of them, however, accounted for my feeling of excitement.
I was rather hoping that Sheriff Dunwood would be there too. As he had yet to accept my sister’s invitation to join the pack, his attendance wasn’t guaranteed. Hence the hope.
I glanced at my meager choice of clothing and grimaced. When I had walked out of Faerie, I had done so with nothing more than my life, the clothes on my back, and my blades. Taz, my sister, had tried taking me shopping, but I had kind of freaked out. Too much too soon kind of thing. Now that I looked at my scant selection, I wished I had given it a second try.
My guard uniform seemed to be the safest bet. It was more formal than my jeans or "sweats" as Taz called them. And I really wanted to make a decent impression. This world came with a lot of pressure to fit in. At least in Fae, I knew my place. Here, I was learning as I went.
I dressed and then walked over to the house with plenty of time to spare. The rabbits, Rose and Lily, were already there, but there was a feeling of con
fusion in the air. It didn't take long to figure out why.
Chapter 2
My sister’s old cabin would never have held the entire pack. Her new home, an early wedding present from her mate, did. They even had a table that would fit all seven human members. There was even an eighth seat for Dunwood, if he ever decided to accept membership into the pack.
I made my way to join the others that were already seated at the table, having to wind around four active and mischievous pups to do so. As I had hoped she would, Rose had indeed brought Maggie, Rebel's Husky mate, and their offspring for the meeting and to visit with Daddy Reb.
As this was a full meeting of the pack, that made sense now that I thought about it. After all, the pups were Benandanti, or at least part. Obviously, the Benandanti gene was a dominant one. You could easily see the intelligence gleaming in their eyes. Rebel had his paws full with those energetic offspring.
Once I made it to the table and sat down, Rose turned to Taz.
"So, what is this urgent matter we need to discuss?" Rose asked.
My sister’s mouth opened, but nothing came out. She may have been rendered speechless, but luckily her mate had not.
“We thought you called the meeting,” he answered, pulling his phone out and passing it across the table to Rose. “I got a text from you. Didn’t I?”
“You did not,” Rose said, glancing up from the phone. She looked troubled.
But not as troubled as I felt. I had years of first-hand experience with Titania’s methods of manipulation. It would be just like her to get us all gathered together and then make one fatal strike that would decimate the entire pack.
Even as I stood to warn the others and try to separate the pack, the knock came on the door.
My heart was in my throat as I desperately looked around for a weapon. I’d foolishly left all my blades at the treehouse. Creator help me, but I’d grown too complacent here in the human realm. And I had absolutely no excuse after having dealt with a would-be assassin just that morning.
I totally blamed the Dunwood distraction.
Demon Peepers Page 1