Quinn Security

by Dee Bridgnorth

  Crooning beside him was Courtney Harrington, who, by the looks of it, was very much enjoying the dashing silver-fox’s gentlemanly advances. Dante tucked a lock of Courtney’s hair behind her ear as he leaned in and whispered sweet nothings. She tipped her head back and laughed then grinned up against his smoothly shaved cheek like some kind of sex-kitten in the throes of falling in love.

  It was sickening.

  Lucy wasn’t Courtney’s biggest fan, and the feeling was mutual, so getting Dante away from the giggling girl, getting him alone, ideally outside and away from people, was not going to be easy.

  Steeling herself with determined conviction, Lucy marched right up to their table and Courtney’s smile drooped and a scowling, territorial grimace came over her otherwise pretty face.

  Lucy locked her serious gaze on Dante and asserted, “Leave her alone.”

  “Excuse me,” Courtney sneered. “But no one invited you.”

  “Dante,” Lucy said, speaking firmly. “This is the end for you.”

  “What?” Courtney balked, offended. “Lucy, get the hell out of here.”

  “No,” she shot back, giving the clueless girl only a fraction of a second of her time and attention before cutting her glaring blue eyes back to the man who had murdered her parents.

  “You’ve already stolen one man from me,” Courtney hissed, so furious that she was now rising out of her chair. “I’m not going to let you steal another!”

  “Do you know who I am?” she asked Dante, ignoring Courtney and her rising hysterics.

  The exchange had now garnered more than a few prying eyes. Lucy didn’t want to cause a scene, but she would if it came to that.

  Coolly, Dante rose to his feet as though he’d never been more pleased in his life and gave Lucy the once over, intrigued.

  “I do,” he allowed with immense pleasure. “And this time, I won’t make the same mistake.”

  He was referring to Leeanne Whitaker and it turned her stomach.

  “What’s going on here?” Courtney asked him. “You know this witch?”

  Without taking his eyes off Lucy, Dante informed his date, “She’s no witch.”

  “I beg to differ,” Courtney balked.

  “I don’t want to do this here,” Lucy warned. “But I will if I have to.”

  “Please,” Dante suggested, gesturing towards the exit at the front of the bar. “I welcome privacy.”

  “You what?” screeched Courtney before she widened her accusatory eyes at Lucy. “You can’t be serious.”

  Ignoring the sorority girl’s attempt at confrontation, Lucy walked briskly out onto the sidewalk as Dante followed after her, but it had been wishful thinking to assume Courtney would give up and stay in her place. She spilled outside right alongside them and dared to lurch up into Lucy’s face.

  As Courtney flew into wild hysterics, threatening to fight Lucy right then and there, Dante gave his manicured hand a little flick and the girl, in an instant, froze and quieted with robotic obedience.

  Just like that, he had stolen Courtney’s mind from her and she didn’t stand a chance at regaining control.

  “Inside,” he ordered, and Courtney turned and zombie-walked herself back into the bar, leaving Lucy and Dante.

  As Lucy girded up every shred of internal light she could feel coursing through her veins until it had collected into a powerful ball in her chest, she had no idea that her best friend, Whitney was now emerging from the ladies’ room inside Libations, the gun loaded with silver bullets in her purse.

  If she’d known, she never would’ve done what she did next.

  “You used me,” she told him, feeling the sting of tears welling up in her eyes. “My parents are dead because of you. It’s time for you to go back to hell now. And I’m going to send you there.”

  With that, she pushed the ball of light that had built in her heart down both of her arms. Light pooled in her palms as she lifted them, and just as she shot that very light out at him, Whitney burst out onto the sidewalk and yelled, “Wolf!”

  Chapter Nineteen

  KALEB

  He’d seen them from all the way across Main Street, the length of it stretched out before him—Lucy’s light pitted against Dante’s devilish darkness—as he sprinting in his wolf form, tearing through the heart of the Fist.

  His body stung with pain—the bloody gashes to his shoulder, the fractured hind leg, the countless bruises swelling up under a thick layer of dark fur—but he ignored all of it.

  The only pain that could truly stop him would be the anguish that would come if he let anything happen to Lucy, his one true mate.

  Nothing in this world mattered to him like she did. No one could compare. He couldn’t see a life without her. And Kaleb would let nothing stand in the way of him spending the rest of this life bonded to her.

  But he hadn’t seen Whitney Abernathy step out onto the sidewalk. His gaze was locked on Dante’s back as he sprinted closer and closer to the rogue werewolf who would stop at nothing to destroy this peaceful town in his effort to take back a thrown that was never destined for him. Kaleb hadn’t seen Whitney lock her terrified eyes on him, hadn’t heard her scream wolf!, and hadn’t noticed when she’d pulled a gun from her purse, squaring her shoulders and taking aim at him.

  All Kaleb could see, though the tunnel vision of his fearless determination, was the love of his life shooting light from her angelic palms, as Dante twisted his body and blocked her every light-blow with his own shields of otherworldly darkness.

  Closing in on the monster, Kaleb felt his legs burn, an electric zing of adrenaline flooding his veins. He sprang into the air and sailed, growling, snarling, seething to sink his fangs into the back of Dante’s neck.

  But he never made it that far.

  Airborne, he heard Lucy scream.

  “No!”

  BANG!

  It felt like a thread of hellish fire slicing through his heart.

  The bullet struck him so hard in the chest that he flipped as he fell, catching only a glimpse of Whitney lowering her smoking gun.

  He slammed against the pavement, wincing his eyes closed, and when he opened them—determination to kill Dante still raging through his blood—he saw Lucy rushing towards him.

  Dante Alighieri was gone.

  Vanished?

  “Oh my God!” Lucy exclaimed as she dropped to her knees before Kaleb.

  Whitney rushed over, laughing victoriously, until she witnessed Kaleb transform before her astonished eyes back into his human form.

  Covering her gaping mouth in horror, Whitney gasped, as Lucy cradled Kaleb in her arms, sobbing and rocking him and screaming for help.

  Then, slowly and no matter how hard he fought, Kaleb Quinn’s world went dark until there was nothing left.

  Chapter Twenty

  LUCY

  Panic was too small a word for the emotion that had consumed Lucy.

  Cradling Kaleb’s limp body in her arms, he felt like dead weight.

  Dead.

  She could barely see through the blur of tears that had filled her eyes, as she rocked him, paralyzed in terms of knowing what to do next.

  Launching into inconsolable hysterics was Whitney.

  “That’s… that’s… Kaleb? No! It was a wolf! I saw it!” she stammered at a shrill volume as she paced around Lucy and the lifeless man who she was convinced had been a dark wolf. “Is Kaleb…? Was he a…? No! Kaleb? Kaleb was a werewolf?”

  Courtney stumbled out of the bar, whatever spell Dante had transfixed her with now broken. Wherever he’d vanished to, it was far enough away that his dark hold on the girl had fallen apart.

  “Oh my God!” Courtney exclaimed as she pulled her cell phone from her pocket. “I need an ambulance!” she yelled into the phone.

  But as she relayed the shooting, stumbling and stammering through the unthinkable, Lucy knew that an ambulance and all the medics in Jackson Hole wouldn’t be able to undo what had been done.

  Kaleb had been s
truck through the heart with a silver bullet.

  And he had long since slipped away.

  Maybe…

  A hopeful thought entered her mind, remembering Dean Quinn, the bullet that had pierced his shoulder. Had it been a silver-plated one? Hadn’t Sasha saved his life? She couldn’t remember, but she had no time to waste. If there was even the shadow of a chance that Kaleb might make it through this, be pulled back from the other side he’d crossed over to, then she had to try.

  She felt the power of her inner light swell deep in her chest and when Whitney and Courtney fell deathly quiet, she knew she had begun to glow. But she didn’t care. This was no time to keep secrets. She willed the light of her inner strength swell until it swallowed both her and Kaleb and in a series of flickering flashes, she disappeared with Kaleb, out of this dimension and into the next.

  When she emerged back into the physical with Kaleb hanging loosely in her arms, she was falling to her knees with him outside of the little stone house where Sasha and Nikita lived.

  “Please!” she called out, again and again, until Nikita burst through the door. “Please!” she pleaded, locking eyes with Kaleb’s mother. “You have to save his life!”

  “Sasha!” Nikita called out as she rushed towards them and dropped to her knees in front of her son.

  The elderly woman creaked her rattling bones through the open doorway, stepping out into the light of the full moon, but as Sasha stooped to examine Kaleb’s body, her pained expression went suddenly long with a realization that Lucy had refused to accept.

  “No,” breathed Lucy. “You have to help him. You have to save him.”

  “There’s nothing to save, my child,” Sasha told her gravely. “Kaleb isn’t in there anymore.”

  ***

  At the exact moment Lucy’s head fell to her chest from where she was kneeling outside of the little stone house tucked deep in the wilderness of Yellowstone, Nikita and Sasha looking on in heart-rending mourning at the lovers who were never meant to be, back in the heart of Devil’s Fist, PO Rachel Clancy was scrambling to get out of her apartment. She’d heard the gunshot from the street below, having been pouring over the paperwork forms to put in for an official warrant for Dante Alighieri’s assets when the shot fired out, startling her.

  The sounds of commotion had been building on the street below, Whitney Abernathy and Courtney Harrington’s frantic voices among it all.

  This time, thanks to the fact that she rented the apartment directly above Libations, Rachel Clancy would be the first on the scene.

  As she padded down the staircase that connected her apartment to the rear side of the bar, she realized she had two different shoes on, no bra, and only half of her brown hair in a ponytail, but it didn’t slow her down one bit. She broke out into the dim parking area behind Libations, and ran her sweatpants-and-tee-shirt-self up Trout Street. As she turned up Main Street, next, she cocked the police issued Glock she’d grabbed and neared a small cluster of residents, Whitney Abernathy and Courtney Harrington among them.

  When the girls glanced over their shoulders at her and opened up to let her into the circle, Rachel realized what everyone had gathered around—a dark bloodstain on the pavement.

  “Jesus,” said Rachel, tucking her gun down the back of her sweatpants. She wouldn’t be needing it. “Who was shot?” she asked Whitney as she looked from one resident to the next.

  Other than having been struck with shock and left in a state of utter bewilderment, no one appeared harmed in any way, shape, or form.

  Whitney looked white as a ghost, and when she didn’t readily respond, Rachel saw the gun in her hand. She snatched it with some degree of caution. The girl had been getting trigger happy, that was for damn sure. Yes, it was remarkable that Whitney’s aim had been accurate to shoot and kill Pamela Davenport while galloping on horseback no less, and yes, Rachel’s mind was still reeling to have learned that Pamela had been a werewolf, but that didn’t mean the streets of Devil’s Fist should turn into the Wild West, courtesy of the sheriff’s daughter.

  “Whitney?”

  Courtney responded on the red-headed girl’s behalf, but her tone of voice indicated that her brain might not fully believe what her mouth was telling the off-duty police officer.

  As sirens wailed up Main Street, Courtney said, “Kaleb Quinn.”

  “Good Lord,” breathed Rachel, thinking of Dean Quinn, who’d also been shot weeks prior.

  “Well, where the hell is he?” she demanded.

  Whitney only murmured, “He was a wolf. I saw it. He was. You saw it, right, Courtney?”

  Rachel cut her discerning eyes to Courtney, who shrugged at her and regretted to inform Whitney, “By the time I came out, Lucy Cooper was holding Kaleb on the pavement—”

  “He was a wolf!” Whitney insisted as two police cruisers came to screeching stops at odd angles in front of the little, worried crowd.

  “The only thing I definitely saw for sure,” Courtney was quick to tell Rachel, “was Lucy turning into a witch, just like I’ve been saying!”

  “She took Kaleb?” Rachel asked, confused. Lucy was a buck-twenty soaking wet. The girl had no meat on her bones, no muscle strength. Rachel was having a hard time picturing the little pint-sized thing hoisting a man of 6’2” into her arms.

  “She didn’t take him,” Courtney complained. “She vanished with him. I’m telling you, she’s a witch!”

  “Alright!” Rachel asserted. “Calm down!”

  Right now there was no body. No crime. And very strange accounts.

  “Whitney, you saw a wolf?”

  The girl was coming back into herself, as two uniformed police officers started towards the residents with their flashlights blazing. She didn’t have much time.

  “With my own two eyes,” she insisted.

  “I believe you,” Rachel assured her. “And that’s what you’ll tell the police.”

  “What?” Whitney asked.

  “Just tell them that. Trust me,” Rachel insisted before she turned to Courtney and ordered, “Can you leave Kaleb out of this?”

  “Why?” she asked in an uppity manner.

  “Because Rick Abernathy has never believed a woman his entire career,” she reminded her. It wasn’t the real reason Rachel needed the bizarre accounts of these girls to stay private. She was working on her own investigation. She believed in werewolves and, whatever Lucy Cooper was—a witch or otherwise—she was inclined to believe Courtney about it. And she didn’t need the sheriff sabotaging her efforts. “If you want to be made to feel like a hysterical woman who’s a total joke, then go right ahead.”

  “Fine,” said Courtney.

  “And you’ll stick to the wolf story, right, Whitney?” she asked the girl, needing to make for damn sure this would be their secret for the time being.

  “I don’t want to have to lie to my dad,” she said.

  And Rachel felt her chest flare with the heat of frustration.

  “But I will,” Whitney added, just in time for one of the police officers to reach them.

  “Officer,” Rachel greeted him with her head held high, just as the sheriff swung his SUV up along the curb and stepped out.

  “Damn, Clancy,” he remarked, looking her up and down. “You look—”

  “Save it! Whitney here shot herself a wolf that was charging down Main Street,” she informed him. “No one was hurt. I want a perimeter set up. Get these people out of here. And I want a sample of that blood bottled so I can send it off to Jackson Hole for testing.”

  The officer sobered up from chuckling at her state of disarray, cleared his throat as she glared at him, and agreed, “Yes, Ma’am.”

  The sheriff joined them and asked, “Hidy-ho, folks. What’d’we got ourselves here at this hour?”

  Rachel cut her warning eyes to Whitney and the girl pressed her mouth into a hard line, then informed him in a flat tone, “I shot me a wolf, Daddy.”

  “Atta-girl!” he said, clapping his large hand over his
daughter’s shoulder. “Then why all the long faces?”

  ***

  Kaleb’s body had gone cold in Lucy’s trembling arms. He felt heavy. Lifeless.

  She hadn’t moved from where she’d dropped to her knees in front of the little stone house.

  Sasha and Nikita were still looking on, pained expressions on their faces, but they were stoic, either too proud or too strong to shed tears.

  Kaleb isn’t in there anymore.

  Sasha’s gut-wrenching determination echoed in the grieving corners of Lucy’s mind.

  There’s nothing to save.

  Lucy felt empty, like part of her had died, as well. There was nothing left. She felt hollow.

  One true mate.

  That was Kaleb’s voice now, the memory entering her mind.

  Was she?

  Had Lucy been Kaleb’s one true mate?

  Had he been killed before they could know for sure and get to experience a long, happy life together as man and wife, or as werewolf and Astral Goddess as the case would’ve been?

  It killed her.

  Soul-murdering remorse washed over her all over again and she keeled over his limp, cold body, letting out a long sob even though she barely had anything left inside of her.

  “Come,” said Sasha in a solemn voice and as Lucy lifted her head, Sasha and Nikita were taking hold of Kaleb’s legs. “Let’s get his body inside.”

  It was an effortful struggle, but soon all three women were laying Kaleb’s body down on a long, stone slab inside of a strange, little room within the stone house.

  The room reminded Lucy of another point in time, from the long-ago past, with its jars of tinctures and herbs, its candles and brass washing basin, there were so many crystals that Lucy wondered all of the powers that Sasha herself might possess.

  Nikita drew away to the open doorway and stood with her hand on the thick, wooden edge of the door.

  Sasha neared Lucy and placed a knotty, warm hand on her arm. “Do what feels right,” she advised. “Whatever’s in your heart. The journey to the other side is a long one.”