“He’s almost to Canal!” yelled Henry, speeding past me. Damn, he was fast! I had no idea grims could move like that.
Shane banked right when Magazine intersected with Canal, grinning over his shoulder at us. Mateo’s growl echoed back to me. When we rounded the corner in the same direction, the streets packed with cars and people meandering the sidewalks, I almost careened right into a Lucky Dog street vendor.
“Where is he?” yelled Mateo, slowing but not stopping.
I couldn’t find him as I scanned the tops of heads. “Fuck!”
Henry passed me. “There!” Leading the way, he pointed toward the river. “He’s heading toward the water.”
We took off again, weaving through people, accidentally knocking a few.
“Watch out, asshole!” some suit yelled after us.
I moved back into the street. It was easier to weave through and around cars than people. Likely, Shane was headed to the moonwalk on the levee, a less populated place for people to stroll along the river. He could get away faster that way and also head straight into the chaos of the Quarter and lose us.
At the very end of Canal, I ran across the circular cobblestone parking entrance of the Hilton and toward the steps beyond leading to the moonwalk.
“Where’s that fucker going?” asked Mateo, running at my side now, neither of us even winded.
This was when werewolf genes came in handy.
“Gotta be heading to Jackson Square. It’ll be a nightmare of tourists right now.”
“As soon as we’re out of sight of the populace, I’ll catch him,” assured Henry.
Mateo and I shared a questioning glance. Just how fast were grims?
It was a rule that supernaturals couldn’t do anything in front of humans that revealed our super-human abilities. And while anyone could see that we were running faster than almost any human, it wasn’t outside the realm of reality, which was why Henry mentioned that we were almost out of sight of people on the street.
We pushed on up onto the moonwalk. Only a couple or two in the distance. Shane’s scent came stronger; we were gaining on him. My wolf rumbled a deep growl in my chest.
“We’re close.” Mateo’s voice had dropped into wolf-range, too.
His scent was so strong now. Near the water.
Then Henry blurred past us, basically disappeared in a streak of black. We saw him materialize and scale down out of sight. When we caught up a few seconds behind him, he stood right down at the edge of the water lapping against the rocks of the levee.
“What the fuck?” I stared down the embankment, a pile of jagged rocks.
Shane was in a speedboat, some other werewolf driving, already too far offshore for me to leap to him if I tried.
“What the fuck are you doing?” I called out to him.
His grin and golden eyes lit up under the moonlight.
“Don’t worry, brother!” he called out, sarcasm reeking in every syllable. “We’ll take good care of your girl before we give her back.” Then he laughed as the boat vanished, speeding into the darkness.
My blood chilled in my veins. “No.” This was a fucking decoy.
I reached for my phone in my back pocket, but Henry already had his in his hand, answering a call. “Talk.”
His coal-black eyes skated to mine with something I’d never seen in the obsidian gaze of that grim. Concern.
My stomach plummeted. He listened for five more seconds then clicked off, holding my gaze. I knew what he was going to say before he said it, but it didn’t diminish the lacerating pain of hearing the words.
“Violet is gone.”
Chapter 26
~VIOLET~
* * *
Waking with a jolt, I noted two things immediately. My head ached like the devil, and I was laying on an old sofa I didn’t recognize. I touched my fingers to the top of my forehead near the hairline where the pain radiated through my skull. There I could feel the edge of wiry stitches. Goddamn, they had hit me hard.
“Sorry about that.” I finally glanced around, finding Shane sitting in a wooden chair a few feet from me, hands clasped loosely, elbows on his thighs. “Rick shouldn’t have hit you quite so hard. He doesn’t know his own strength.” He leaned in as if to tell me a secret. “He’s not the brightest bulb in the box.” His smile did nothing to disarm me.
.
The warehouse was mostly empty except for some scattered shelves, wall-sized toolboxes, and a rusted-out car with no wheels up on blocks. Grease stains throughout and the double garage doors—currently closed—told me I was in an old mechanic shop.
The place was cold, but Shane had set up a small space heater near the sofa where I lay, keeping me relatively warm. Several werewolves stationed against the walls were watching us. The two I’d seen at the Cauldron weren’t there; most likely they were outside guarding the place.
I was still in my dress, my shoes gone. I wasn’t sure if they’d fallen off when they’d snatched me or if they’d taken them to keep me from running too far on bare feet.
When I sat up, I winced from a sharp pain on my hip, drawing my attention down to where the dress was torn open right above my panty line, the white satin of my underwear showing. There was a scrape about three inches wide that had dried over with crusted blood. Not too deep, but it stung.
“I’d have taken care of that, too, but I thought maybe you’d want to tend to that one yourself.”
Shane was calmer and more cordial than I’d ever seen him. The hardness was still there, but the menace was gone. “Again. I apologize.” His gaze was on the opening of my dress and the angry-looking scratch. “Rick wasn’t so gentle getting you over that wooden fence.” He stood and held out two capsules of Advil and a glass of water. “Take this.”
Without having Isadora nearby to help me out, I was grateful to have something for the pain. I sat up completely and drank the pills down, then held the glass with both hands in my lap.
“Sorry about that, too.” He tapped the edge of his lip, motioning to me.
The sting of his bite still throbbed a little. “No. You’re not sorry for that one.”
He grinned. “You’re right. I’m not.” Deep laughter rumbled in his chest. “I thought Nico’s head was going to explode.”
He’d kissed and bitten me just so Nico would be so enraged he’d chase after him. Which of course led him and Mateo away from me, leaving me more vulnerable. No one would’ve thought these guys would abduct me from a large crowd right under their noses.
“Now that you have me, what is it you want?”
“You already know that, but since I was sure you weren’t going to give it willingly, I took matters into my own hands.”
For a millisecond, my heartrate skipped, wondering if this was some sort of werewolf gangbang situation, but my instincts and, more importantly, my psychic magic told me otherwise. The violence radiating from the werewolves in this room wasn’t directed at me. It was more of a sliver of viciousness focused inward.
Shane stood and walked to a table next to the sofa and lifted a duffle bag and a smaller bag that looked like what a doctor might carry in the 1940s for house calls. He opened the duffle bag, revealing my cordless tattoo machine, charger, antiseptic wipes, latex gloves, and clear tape from my shop.
Basically, my entire drawers had been emptied and carefully placed within. Then he opened the doctor’s bag where every bottle of ink I had stored in my cabinets had been wrapped carefully and placed. Most of them were regular ink, but there was also the vial labeled NMW for the New Moon Werewolf serum.
“I want you to give us the same spelled tattoo you gave Nico.”
“Do you even know what the spell does?”
He dipped his head in one nod. “From what I gathered from pieces of conversation at your shop and at the Cauldron, it will help us control the wolf.”
“You bugged our pub, too?”
“That was especially helpful when your sisters had dinner at that table near the kitchen. A r
outine they seem to stick to. Chatty bunch.”
Wow. He’d been spying pretty damn good.
“So you kidnapped me, banged my head and body around, to make me give you guys tattoos.” I might’ve sounded a tad put out.
“Again, sorry about Rick’s rough handling.”
“I don’t even know that it works yet.”
Partially true. My psychic eye had told me that it would. If I were to trust my magic, then I was ninety percent sure I had the right spell. The vision was so strong with the witch sign, the magic so potent the night of the new moon.
“After you give us the tattoo,” he went on as if I hadn’t protested, “I’ll deliver you safely back to your family.” He cleared his throat before adding, “To Nico.”
Nico.
I licked my dry lips and took another gulp of water, wondering what kind of agony my werewolf was in right now. He was undoubtedly shredding from the inside out over this.
“It’s going to take some time.”
He shrugged. “Whatever it takes.”
“You know, you could’ve just asked.”
“I did that.”
“No.” I stared him down. “You came into my place of business and made demands for something I wasn’t sure I could deliver at the time. It was rude.”
He sneered. “I’m used to having to use force to get what I want with other supernaturals.” He sat back in his chair, amber eyes fixed and adamant. “Werewolves have to take what they need from your kind. Or go without.” He flicked a hand down to the open bags. “It’s obvious you now have what I need. What we need. And you’re gonna give it to us.”
Ah, now there was the menace that had been hidden and tucked away. But behind all of that anger was a sheet of pain blanketing the man. I was only able to see it with my psychic eye, delving in and discovering that there was more than the malicious front he showed me now.
Then it hit me like a tornado-lobbed brick. What he was demanding was something anyone would want—control over their baser instincts to maim and hurt and harm. For a werewolf, that meant power over an uncontrollable impulse that could force him to kill someone in a blink without meaning to.
My anger over being abducted and wounded by these asshats melted behind a need to help them. They were like Nico. Like Mateo. In need of something, peace and healing, that I could possibly give them.
Holding Shane’s hostile gaze, his jaw clenching, I set my glass of water aside on the table and stood. “Okay.”
He narrowed his disbelieving gaze. “Okay?”
“Let’s get to work.” I stood and moved the bags back to the table. “Who’s up first?” I started to set out my instruments. “I need an extension cord for my charger.” Met with silence, I glanced over my shoulder at Shane’s widened, surprised gaze. “As lovely as it is to be in your friendly company, I’d rather not be here longer than necessary, so let’s get started.”
With the first genuine smile I’d seen on the man since that first time we’d met on that Austin rooftop, he stood and removed his leather jacket.
“Ty!” he called out. “Get that extension cord from my trunk.”
“Ty?” I mumbled, watching a younger werewolf head out through a door into the night.
Shane shoved up the long sleeve of his gray Henley. “Nico told you about him?”
“Yeah.” I busied myself, setting out everything I needed, then retrieved the bottle marked NMW. I’d even drawn a cute crescent moon on the label.
“He told you his wolf almost killed Ty?”
I turned, pointedly giving him my sincerest of expressions. “Why the hell do you think I was working so hard to find the right spell for werewolves?”
“You mean for him.”
“Yes.” I gulped hard, turning back to my supplies. “Anything for him.”
Ty rushed up, all wide eyes, carrying the extension cord. I smiled at him, which caused streaks of red to appear high on his cheekbones. I couldn’t help but observe the scarred claw marks running under his chin and down one side of his throat into his T-shirt.
“Thank you,” I said sweetly, which made him blush harder. “Could you plug it in for me?”
While he zipped off to do that, I dragged the table closer to the sofa. Then I pulled the wooden chair Shane had been sitting in closer to the sofa. I angled the lamp on the table as best I could to get the most light. He had rolled up his sleeve past the elbow, revealing one patch of bare skin not inked with other roping tattoos.
“Um, actually, that’s not going to work.”
“What do you mean?” That ice-man demeanor was back in a flash. Obviously, he thought I was refusing to give him the tattoo again. Damn, this guy was temperamental. But he was a fucking werewolf. What did I expect?
“I can’t explain it, but my psychic ability tells me this one needs to be close to the heart. So”—I flicked a hand toward his chest—“take off your shirt.”
The lascivious grin he gave me rivaled anything I’d seen Nico or Mateo wear time and again. A deep roll of laughter rumbled out of him as he pulled off his shirt and tossed it on the back of the sofa.
“I’m all yours, baby.” That wicked grin was aimed directly at me. “Right on top of my heart is fine by me.” He tapped a finger over the left pec of his broad chest.
I popped on my latex gloves, which they’d thankfully included when they’d somehow robbed my office space during the gallery opening celebration. Thankfully, they’d packed my razor as well. I shaved the spot I needed to tattoo and cleaned the area with antiseptic wipes.
“What do you want? I usually have a stencil copied on transfer paper to outline the tattoo, but I’ll have to freestyle something so keep it simple.”
“How about that? Turn around, Ty.”
I glanced over to see that not only was Ty standing close and watching, but several others had moved in for a better view. The back of Ty’s jacket bore the Blood Moon in jagged lettering with a symbol of a stylized wolf’s head. It was made with sharp lines, filled in with black, the white of an almond-shaped eye, the wolf’s mouth open and revealing sharp canines. It was a cool design. Pretty, even. And simple enough.
“It would be easier with a stencil, but I can do that. Just no bitching if it isn’t perfect.”
“None at all. It’s the ink I’m after more than the tat.”
“Give me your jacket, Ty.” I held out my hand for it.
“You can use mine,” said Shane, pointing to the one he’d draped on the table.
Some chestnut-haired guy passed it over with a dimpled smile. Jeesh. Was it a requirement that all werewolves be smoking hot?
“Thanks.” I draped the jacket over Shane’s bare abs so that I could see the wolf’s head as I worked.
“Trying to cover me up?” Shane asked playfully, bending the arm closest to me behind his head.
“Be still,” I ordered, setting to work with my cordless tattoo machine.
“Whatever you say, Miss Savoie.”
After a few minutes of working in silence, I glanced up at him. Those wolf-gold eyes were half-lidded and staring at me.
“Nico is going to kill you,” I informed him matter-of-factly.
“Oh, yeah,” he agreed. “He’s going to try to gut me, I have no doubt.”
The others were silently watching from behind us.
“As long as you’re prepared for the fallout.”
We were silent again for several minutes. My tattoo machine was silent, so the only noise in the place was the creak of the wind against the steel roof outside and the shuffle of feet when someone moved around.
“I knew that night, you know,” he said so low it was a whisper.
“What do you mean?”
“New Year’s Eve. In Austin.”
I glanced up at him, his expression no longer playful or stern—the two expressions he wore the most. Now, it was rather sad.
“What is it you knew exactly?”
By now, my hand was glowing with magic, the ethereal shimmer
shining in the darkened room, lit only by a few lights left whose bulbs weren’t busted by vandals. Most likely by teenagers who used this place for drinking or sex or both.
“That you were it for him. That you would drag him away from us.”
A little shock and a little anger sparked my emotional response. “So you’re blaming me for Nico leaving your boyband over here?”
“No.” His voice was soft and steady. “It was fate. I see that now.”
“Fate? You believe in that?”
“I’m a werewolf.” He gave me a sardonic look. “Cursed by a witch who hexed every male descendent of the original witch hunter till the end of time. Her blood hex hasn’t lost its luster or potency, and it’s been a couple of centuries so, yeah, I believe in fate.”
True. Witches and warlocks were born with innate magic. Vampires were either born or made with their gifted abilities. Who knew how grims came into being? But werewolves were cursed by birth. Their magic wasn’t a gift. It was an affliction they couldn’t escape. One very malicious witch facing her hunter decided the fate of hundreds of his descendants. For eternity.
I suppose he did believe in fate. Because it was sealed by the pain of their monster within and all the harm that beast could unleash on those they loved and cared about. There was no pain or accompanying dread or heartache that came with being one of the other supernaturals. And no one really seemed to notice. Or care about the troubles of the outcasts of the otherworld. The werewolves.
But I did. I hoped that I could help change their fate. Though I couldn’t do it alone.
“Back then, I just didn’t want to acknowledge it.” His voice dropped even lower. “Or accept it.”
“I’m sorry, what?”
“That he had to leave,” he clarified. “He was my brother. My best friend. Then he left, and I was angry.”
I tried to assuage the obvious pain he still felt over Nico. “He felt like he had no choice. After Ty, that is.”
“I know.” He paused before adding, “I know all of that now. It doesn’t make it hurt any less.”
Witches Get Stitches Page 27