Winter Tails: A Limited Edition Winter Shifters Collection

by Fox, Piper

  “WooooooooooHooooooo,” I yelled. It was the closest I’d likely ever come to a Rebel Yell, as I was a Tri-Delt who preferred Mimosas and brunch to hand-to-hand combat, but sometimes a girl has to break out of her shell.

  I swung the case a second time and connected with the second woman with a loud whump. It sounded totally different than when I’d hit the first one, and my brain registered it as significant, though I didn’t know why. Just as I was confident I’d disabled her, the wolf-dog growled and lunged toward me. I kicked as hard as I could with my left leg, the heel of my Manolo Blahnik slamming into its jaw.

  And I hadn’t even had a chance to properly scuff the bottoms.

  Even though it seemed like an hour had passed since I’d swung the first time, I knew it had to have been only seconds. The woman in the floral dress groaned and rose, coming toward me again. By that time, I’d grabbed the handle of my valise even tighter, and I went up the side of her head with it again.

  These Texas bitches were something else. If I weren’t so repulsed by them, I might admire their pluck.

  She staggered backward, a huge gash opening on the side of her neck. But...

  “There’s no blood,” I said, staring at her. “Why aren’t you bleeding?”

  From my peripheral vision, I saw the second woman moving toward me. I raised my valise, ready to deliver another shot to her head.

  She ducked this time, flailing her arms. “We’re on your side! We’re here to help, we are here to help!”

  “Why isn’t she bleeding?” My voice broke, and for the first time I realized I was shaking.

  “She’s not exactly human,” the other woman said, rubbing the side of her head. “We have to finish this ghoul. Now.”

  Ghoul?

  I dropped my valise, and it spilled its contents on the tiled floor of the depot.

  I was horrified. “New Year, New You” was supposed to be pleasant, relaxing, a step toward revealing my best self. I was trying to live my best life, and yet here I was, in El Paso, Texas, fighting a ghoul with a wild-looking woman and a wolf-dog, when I should have been in a spa in Atlanta with cucumbers on my eyes and new age music streaming through the speakers.

  I’ve hit a new low.

  I was a respected, Southern woman. A debutante, no less.

  This was shit I didn’t need.

  “Wha—, I mean, Who—.” I couldn’t find the words to ask questions. Instead, I stared directly into her eyes. They were a weird green and something about them, and her, was so familiar.

  “We’ll have time for a chat later,” she said. “Follow my lead.”

  The woman looked at her dog, gave a small nod, and the two them seemed to sync. They launched themselves toward the ghoul in a dizzying whirl of fur, fang, and human. The three of them tumbled over benches, across the floor and toward the door leading to the platform.

  Just before they slammed into the plaster wall, I saw the light glint off the edge of a blade, and for the first time, the seriousness of the whole situation clicked.

  I rushed toward them, my heels clacking on the tile floor.

  The only thing in the room that looked heavy enough to make a difference was a large bronze plaque on the wall. Some sort of historical marker, judging by the star in the middle and the writing underneath. I tucked my fingers underneath the edge and pulled with all my might. With a stretching sound, it came off the wall.

  I expected the disc to be cool in my hands, but it wasn’t. It was warm, then warmer, until, in a fraction of a second, it was blazing hot, and even though I tried to let go of it, it seemed to be stuck to my hands.

  I looked up, desperate for someone to help me get free of the bronze disc.

  The only thing I saw was the disfigured, mortifying face of the ghoul coming straight at me.

  And then everything went to black.

  Chapter 5

  Blaize

  When the ghoul changed direction in mid-fight, suddenly heading for someone behind me, I knew the clip-clopping noise of heels I heard must be coming from the woman the ghoul had been after to begin with.

  Dammit. She was going to get herself killed.

  I spun around to follow the ghoul just in time to see the other woman peel a bronze historical plaque off the wall of the train station. It was a good weapon choice, actually.

  How had the woman known to go straight for the only bronze in the building?

  I expected her to slam it into the ghoul’s face, as she had with the overnight bag. Instead, her eyes grew wide, terror sliding into them as she gaped at me, and she toppled over backward.

  The bronze plaque landed on her chest—and where her fingers gripped the edges, a strange smoke drifted up into the air.

  “Fuck,” I snarled. “Wolf, grab the ghoul and hold it still.”

  Wolf leaped forward, grabbing the ghoul by the arm and pulling it toward the ground. It growled, but I ignored it as I raced past, crouched down, and peeled the unconscious woman’s fingers off the plaque.

  Her fingertips were blistered and burned from simple contact with the metal.

  Just like my cousin Gracie’s would have been.

  “Who the ever-living hell are you?” I breathed out.

  I knew all the cousins. Everyone who might be forced to take on the curse when one of us died.

  Gracie hadn’t had any heirs. She was the last direct descendant of her line.

  There shouldn’t be any more Bronzes around.

  But the more I looked at her, the more I could see a resemblance to Gracie. Same blonde hair, same slightly square jawline, same skin tone.

  Everything.

  Consumed with examining the woman I was beginning to suspect was meant to be Gracie’s replacement, I only half-heard Wolf’s warning growl. But we were getting good at fighting together. I picked up the plaque, stood up, and swung it hard enough to smash the ghoul directly in the face. Her undead head split apart, and everywhere she came into contact with the bronze, she sizzled.

  That was one good thing about ghouls. If you wounded them with bronze, they cooked from the inside. Pretty soon, she’d be a pile of smoking ash and another spontaneous human combustion mystery for a television show.

  In the distance, sirens wailed.

  Dammit to hell. Some idiot had called the cops.

  I didn’t have time for local law enforcement.

  I had a cousin to revive.

  I glanced around the station. Most of the people had hightailed it out of here when the fighting started. The few remaining watched me with wary eyes.

  “Time to get out of here,” I whispered to Wolf, who gave me one of his disconcertingly human nods. “And we’re taking her with us.”

  This time, he whined.

  I picked up the woman’s unconscious form in a fireman’s carry. Luckily, I was stronger than I looked. A lifetime fighting monsters and demons will do that.

  As I headed toward the parking lot, the cowboy who’d been trying to hit on her approached us. “What was that thing?”

  “You don’t want to know.” I didn’t feel like educating anyone today—it never worked, and people just ended up thinking I was crazy.

  His eyes narrowed, but he didn’t press the issue, instead gesturing toward the woman I was hauling through the room. “Where are you taking her?”

  “For help,” I answered shortly. Glancing down at his bitten arm, I grimaced. “You need to tend to that.”

  He moved around to help me carry the woman. “I saw what happened. There was something wrong with that woman. Was she a zombie or something?”

  “Or something.”

  His face blanched. He’d clearly seen too many zombie movies. “Am I going to turn into one?”

  “Not if you help me carry her all the way to my van and then follow my instructions for cleaning the wound exactly.”

  It was mostly a lie—although he could turn if the bite killed him, the worst that was likely to happen was that he’d lose an arm to gangrene. Ghouls were nasty, b
ut only rarely contagious.

  “Oh. And lie to the cops for me about what happened here,” I added.

  “Deal,” he said, and we headed out into the bright sunlight and toward my van.

  Chapter 6

  MaddieAnne

  I couldn’t stop gasping for breath. It was like I couldn’t get enough air no matter how I tried. My lungs felt like they were made of Styrofoam, and hands burned as if they were submerged in lava. As if from a considerable distance, I heard myself moan.

  “Wake up. Wake up!” The voice was familiar, and irritating. With its raspy tone and the flat Western accent, it wasn’t exactly what one would call soothing.

  I opened my eyes, and immediately wished I hadn’t. I was flat on my back on a thin mattress in what looked like an RV. Wooden cabinets and drawers lined the walls, and it smelled like wet fur and Ramen Noodles. The tiny sink was the color of ripe avocados, and that nearly sent me right back into hyperventilation.

  I would call it my nightmare, but even my nightmares were more genteel than this place. They didn’t have convenience food or unfortunate color palettes.

  The woman from the train station, the one with the wolf-dog, was leaning over me, concern in her eyes.

  “What happened back there?” I asked. I tried to pull myself upright, but when I touched my hands to the sheet, my fingertips felt as if they had no skin on them.

  “It’s complicated.”

  “Look, I appreciate the help and all, but I feel like I’ve been hit by a Mack truck. If you’ll just hand me my phone, I’ll call myself an ambulance.” I was finally able to contract my core muscles enough to sit up, but my whole body was sore.

  “No,” the woman spat, clenching her jaw. “No hospitals. I can help you.”

  If I weren’t in a 1970s version of hell, complete with zombies, I would’ve laughed.

  “Ma’am,” I said, “while I appreciate whatever you did back there to get rid of that thing, I’m pretty sure it’s best we part ways now. It’s not as if we’re destined to be friends or anything.” I moved to swing my legs off the bed, such as it was, but she blocked me, placing her hands on my knees and pushing my back onto the bed.

  “I said that I would help you.”

  While I might be a lady of culture and refinement, like all the best Southern women, I am about half sunshine and half hurricane, and this person was getting ready to feel category five winds.

  “Please do not touch me again,” I said through clenched teeth. I spoke slowly, enunciating each work like my beauty pageant coach had taught me. “I do not want you to help me. I want you to move out of my way so that I can retrieve my phone and get the hell out of this nightmare.”

  “At least let me see your fingers. If you want to go to the hospital after that, I’ll make sure you get there.”

  I shook my head. “Why?”

  “Because this situation is more complicated than you realize.”

  I didn’t want to show her, but I had some odd compulsion to honor her request. I flipped my hands over so that the palms faced the ceiling and placed them on my knees.

  She bent to look more closely at the burns.

  “There’s no doubt,” she said, mostly under her breath. She dropped my hands. “What’s your name?”

  It was just then I realized that I was in the van of a woman whom I’d helped to kill a ghoul, and we had yet to cover the pleasantries.

  “MaddieAnne Honeycutt.”

  “I’m Blaize. You prefer Maddie or Anne?”

  These Texans. Honestly. Was I going to have to explain everything to them?

  “MaddieAnne. It’s one word and one name.”

  I did my best to ignore her eye roll.

  “MaddieAnne,” she said, “there’s no easy way to tell you this or explain what it means, but I think you and I might be cousins.”

  Of all the things I thought she might say, ‘cousins’ wasn’t anywhere in the mix. The idea that I could be related to someone whose idea of a home included a chassis was beyond my comprehension.

  “Not possible.” I wasn’t willing to believe that even if she had a DNA test to prove it. No one in my family would ever name a child after a conflagration. It just wasn’t done.

  “Let me show you something,” she said. From a side table, she picked up the bronze disc I’d torn off the wall of the train station. “This will be uncomfortable, but it’s necessary.” She placed the edge of it against my forearm.

  “Jesus H. Christ,” I yelled, momentarily abandoning my “New Year, New You!” pledge to refrain from taking the Lord’s name in vain. “That hurts.”

  It burned, hot and cold at the same time, and it sent shock waves of electricity up my arm and all the way to my heart. She pulled it away just as tiny little blue-white explosions began to pop inside my head.

  “What in the fresh hell?” I asked.

  “You’re one of us,” she said, as if that explained it.

  It did not explain anything. “I sincerely doubt that.”

  She blew out a sigh and stared up at the van’s ugly ceiling as if trying to decide how to explain something to an idiot, or maybe a child.

  “Our family—sort of an extended family, really—carries a curse.”

  That I believed. Of her family, anyway.

  “We can’t use certain metals. For you, that’s bronze. I can’t use silver, and our other cousin Cassidy can’t use iron.”

  “That doesn’t sound too bad.” I didn’t like bronze, anyway. It was tacky.

  “And we’re Called to hunt monsters in the Southwest.” I could hear the capitalization of Called.

  I stared at her blankly.

  “You felt some compulsion to take a train here, didn’t you? And then that ghoul showed up. And I was pulled here, too, I assume to help you.”

  “Monsters in the Southwest?”

  “Yeah. I’m afraid you’re stuck here.”

  I ignored that, choosing instead to focus on the whole bronze-allergy thing. The monster-hunting bit was obviously this poor woman’s delusion.

  “That’s complete and utter fucking bullshit.”

  So much for “New Year, New You!”. I was now cussing with wild abandon, fighting ghouls with Louis Vuitton luggage, and worrying about the wolf-dog blood on my Blahniks. I had never wanted to be in North Carolina so badly. “No one is allergic to bronze, hell no one even cares about bronze, and I assure you we are not cousins. I know my lineage through the War of Northern Aggression, back to the Revolution, and all the way to the shores of Ireland, and your people are not my people.”

  “Drop the haughty Southern Belle act. I’m telling you the truth.”

  “Act? You think it’s an act?” I stood, towering over her. “Move out of my way before I do something we’ll both regret.”

  Blaize rubbed her finger along her jaw. “Fine. You don’t want to listen, that’s on you. But don’t say I didn’t try to explain it to you. If you charge off half-cocked, you’ll regret it.”

  “I have never done anything by half measure,” I sniped. My head was pounding, my dress was ripped and torn, and I was quite sure I did not want to see my reflection in a mirror. “I need to get to LA and forget this little adventure ever happened.”

  Maybe there was still time to salvage at least one part of my ill-fated trip. I’d booked a suite at the Beverly Hills Hotel, and I sure could use a little pampering after this fiasco. If I stayed in El Paso a minute longer, I might lose what was left of my mind.

  “Where’s my valise?”

  “You mean your carry-on thingy?”

  I took a deep breath. It was almost as if she’d never been anywhere other than this God-forsaken hell hole. “Yes. The Louis Vuitton?”

  She pointed to the door. “I grabbed what I could, but some stuff may have gotten lost.”

  While the leather looked a little worse for the wear, it was still Louis Vuitton and I was still MaddieAnne Honeycutt.

  I wrapped my hand around the leather handle, made my way out of
the back of the hell-wagon, and headed for the train station.

  Chapter 7

  Blaize

  “Wait here,” I said to Wolf, climbing out of the van and shutting the door behind me.

  I skirted around the edge of the train station, avoiding the police officers who had gone inside to question people. Instead, I walked right up to the chain-link fence that separated the train tracks from the rest of the world.

  I watched MaddieAnne Honeycutt, Southern Belle Extraordinaire, as she marched out of the station, battered carry-on case in hand. She strode across the rocks in her high-heeled shoes and onto the steps of the train.

  There, she stopped long enough to glance over at me. I could see the derisive sniff she gave before raising her chin, tossing her head, and boarding the train as a voice announcing its departure came over the PA system.

  Wolf trotted up beside me, clearly having ignored my orders to stay put.

  “You know,” I said conversationally, “if you were a real dog, you wouldn’t know how to open the van doors to follow me.

  I swear his sniff matched MaddieAnne’s perfectly.

  “Come on. I guess we’d better figure out where she’s headed.” I could still feel the Calling, deep down, connecting me to her. It was the first time I’d been Called to a person, not a place, and it was strange to feel it on the move.

  I shuddered at the thought of what she had yet to learn. Because one thing I knew was that where there was one ghoul, there were bound to be others. I’d explained to the cowboy that the bite on his arm would swell up in an hour or two, and that he should get it to a doctor as fast as he could. It would look like a standard infection from a human bite—our mouths are dirty as hell—and the doc should give him some good antibiotics. He needed to take them all. But immediately after he got the meds, he would need to open and drain the wound and then cauterize it.