by D. N. Hoxa
I raised my hands in surrender, completely lost for a moment. “Don’t you think they’ll go after him anyway?”
Izzy flinched. “Maybe. I tried to warn him, but he wouldn’t listen.” She kicked the trunk of a tree. “He never listens. So now I have to hide and hope they’ll keep forgetting about him forever.”
Things were much more complicated than I’d thought. “So…what, you just said, to hell with it, and joined a gang of murderers?”
When she looked at me, I thought she was going to shoot bullets at me with her eyes. I knew I’d messed it up. I should have tred more carefully, damn it.
“You’re one to judge. Screw you, Vicky. I don’t have to put up with this. I came here to warn you, and that’s that. If you don’t want to listen, that’s your business,” she said and turned around to leave. Like hell was I going to let that happen. I grabbed her by the arm and stopped her.
“Izzy, wait. I’m not judging you. I’m just saying, they’re bad news, and you need to get away from them, too.” As if she didn’t already know that.
“I know very well who they are, and I can’t get away from them—but you can. You’ve got hours, if not less, to disappear. They’re going to find you the same way I did,” she said. I could see the pain in the blue of her eyes that were starting to look a lot more like before. But I knew it was an illusion. Things had changed in the five years we’d been apart. We were no longer just a couple of teenagers with no responsibilities or any real issues. We had changed, and so had the world around us.
“You can’t ask me to just leave you here, for God’s sake,” I said, wanting to kick a tree, too. But I didn’t want to allow myself to get even angrier, when my wolf was already alert and listening in on our conversation. It was almost like…like she saw Izzy as a threat. I wasn’t going to waste time reminding her that Izzy and I had grown up together, so I just tried to push the thought of the wolf away from my mind.
“I’m fine! I was fine before you came into the picture, wasn’t I? Just go!” With her hands on my shoulders, she pushed me back.
Angry tears sprang to my eyes. “No.” She could forget it. I wasn’t going to leave her in the hands of those people! “The only way I’m leaving is if you come with me.”
“God, you’ve become even more stubborn!” she spit, turning her back to me. “You’re not safe with me, trust me.”
“I can keep us safe, I promise. You won’t have to worry about that,” I said in a rush.
“You?” she said, and I have to admit, it sucked a bit that she found that so ridiculous.
I straightened my shoulders. “My wolf. She can protect the both of us.”
Facing me once more, Izzy analyzed me from head to toes as if she was just seeing me for the first time. Then, as if she forced herself to come to her senses, she shook her head.
“I’ve done my part. I’ve warned you. Now, I have to go,” she said, making my heart jump. I grabbed both her hands in mine, squeezing tightly.
“Izzy, I’m not going anywhere without you. Please, don’t do this. Just come with me! We’ll figure it out,” I begged her. Up until that point, I’d had no idea I ever could speak to her like that or even touch her. But now that I knew who she was dealing with and that I saw the fear in her dull eyes, my personal issues ran out the window and her safety was all I cared about.
But Izzy didn’t care. She jerked her hands away from me and stepped back, freezing me in place.
“If they catch you, I won’t be able to help you. Go. Save yourself while you still can. If he gets his hands on your wolf…” Her voice trailed off, her eyes growing even more distant for a second.
“Haworth, isn’t it?” All blood left her face in an instant. I’d heard correct. The asshole’s name was Haworth. “Who is he? What does he look like? Where can I find him?” I asked in a breath. “And what the hell is he doing to those wolves?!”
Pulling her lips inside her mouth, she thought about it for a second. “A bad man. A very powerful bad man,” she whispered.
“Not more powerful than a vampire, I’m sure.” Red was fast and strong and very good with his hands. In a fight, I mean. Izzy had seen him in action, too, but she didn’t seem impressed. In fact, she laughed.
“Oh, Vick. I envy your naivety. Which is why you should get the hell out of this place as fast as you can because no vampire, witch, wolf or fairy is a match for Haworth. He’s worse than Erick Adams.”
A shiver ran down my spine. “I’m not as naive as you think,” I said, but I had a feeling she was right. “If you could just let me help you—”
“No.” Putting her hands on my cheeks, she gave me a tiny little smile. “Go. Please, just leave. Don’t make me have to see what he does to you.” And she stepped away.
But my mind was already made. I wasn’t about to let her out of my sight, even if I had to drag her away kicking and screaming. So I grabbed her by her arms, and I pulled her toward me.
“Izzy, please!” I pleaded, and I certainly didn’t expect her to hug me. Except, when she did, her arms were really strong and squeezed my neck really tightly. “What are you…what are you…”
Something cold pierced my back. It spread under my skin like wildfire, except it was cold. My wolf watched, as confused as I was. She knew what it was as well as I did. A tranquilizer. The same thing her “friends” had used to kidnap me.
“It’s okay, Vick. It’s okay,” she whispered in my ear.
She was right. I was very naive. It took me until then to realize what she was doing.
And by then, it was too late.
When I opened my eyes, I saw a mixture of green and brown, and my reflection in the vivid colors. It startled me to see my own eyes in his, and I jumped up breathlessly.
Red didn’t try to stop me. He stepped away, giving me some space and a second to take in my surroundings. I was in the basement again, lying on the couch in the living area. Izzy’s face was all over my mind. The way she’d looked, the way she’d sounded…the way she’d injected the tranquilizer in my back…
And I’d done nothing about it. I’d just let her.
I didn’t know if I hated her for it more—or myself.
“Drink some water,” Red said, his voice sharp and cold, not a hint of the usual amusement in it. When I looked down, I saw he’d set a bottle of water close to my feet. I grabbed it and took a sip just to do something because I couldn’t even feel the water in my mouth. All I could feel was dread. And desperation. And fear. Lots and lots of fear.
“Wanna tell me what the hell happened? I thought you knew that person,” Red said, folding his arms in front of his chest, looking down at me as if he was reproaching me. It took all I had not to flip him off.
“I did.”
“So why did I find you all alone outside, out cold?” he demanded.
“Because I fell asleep in the fucking grass. Happy?” Maybe it wasn’t fair to take my anger at Izzy out on him, but there was nobody else around that I could smell, so he was just going to have to suck it up and deal.
“You’re being difficult. When you’re being difficult, it’s hard for me to focus. And when it’s hard for me to focus, it’s hard for me to keep us safe!” Red said, raising his voice with every word.
“Don’t worry,” I said. Getting up was a bit more difficult than I thought. My legs were really wobbly. “I can smell others coming from farther than you can.”
“And what the hell do you think you can do about it?” he said, and the next second, he was standing right in front of me, his eyes dark as if a cloud had suddenly gathered over his head. Any other time, he’d have scared me shitless, but I was already very scared.
“I’ll warn you.” I put my hand on his chest and pushed him. It was like he wasn’t made out of flesh and blood—just steel—but I didn’t pay him too much attention because he fell back a step. I just walked over to the bathroom, locked myself inside, and breathed until my vision cleared. Splashing cold water on my face didn’t help at all, bu
t my legs were not threatening to let go of me anymore, at least.
When I walked out into the living area, I found Red just like I’d left him—mad as hell. I was being a bitch and I knew it, but I was mad, too—mad and afraid—and I was used to dealing with those emotions on my own. I just didn’t know how to include him in the process.
“Do you want to tell me what happened?” he asked after I sat down at the dining table to try to get my head straight.
“Nothing happened. We just had a talk and then she left.”
“How did she find you here?”
I shrugged. “She just did.”
“If we’re going to work together, you can’t lie to me, Victoria.” God, when he said my name like that, it was worse than when my father reproached me. I refused to answer, so he came and sat down across from me. Maybe it was a weird vampire thing, but when he stared at me like that, I had no choice but to meet his eyes. “I recognized her smell. She’s one of them. Who is she to you?”
One of them. Ugh, that sounded so nasty. “She’s not one of them.” I refused to accept it.
“So who is she?” Red pushed.
I caved because I wanted to get this over with as quickly as possible. “She’s my sister.”
Suddenly, the darkness in his eyes disappeared, leaving way for the real him. Which was funny. I had no idea who the real Red was.
“Your sister?” He sounded like he was choking.
“And she found me by doing a spell with my blood that got spilled at that place. She also said that others were going to do the same. We only have hours, if that.” I assumed it was already nightfall because Red wouldn’t have been able to go outside to get me otherwise.
“Do the others know about her?” he asked.
“No, they don’t.”
“Are you sure? If they did, they could use her blood to track you easily. It’s very important that you’re sure.”
“I’m sure!” I said, a bit too loudly. Telling him that he had nothing to worry about was out of the question, because to do that, I’d also have to tell him that Izzy was not my real sister. We didn’t share the same blood.
Letting go of a long breath, Red lowered his head for a moment. “We need to relocate.”
“Yes.” I’d gotten that much on my own.
“But I need to know, is there anything else you’re keeping from me?” The vampire looked at me like he was holding his heart in his hands, offering it to me eagerly, which was how I knew he was manipulating me. Maybe I wasn’t as naive as Izzy thought.
“Look, you’ve already stalked me. You know what my life is like. The only reason I got involved in this was because I was looking for my sister. I found her—or she found me, and that’s that.”
“Now that you know where she is, what are you going to do?”
“Get her back. I’m going to get her back.” Whether Izzy liked it or not. I was going to get her away from those people one way or another. “And I’m going to help you in the process, just like you’re going to help me.”
“But she doesn’t want out, does she? It’s why she left you unconscious and ran away.”
Bastard.
“That’s none of your business. We made a deal and now you know everything about my motives, and I can’t say the same about you.” He hadn’t told me shit about the thing that was stolen from him, while he played twenty-one questions with me whenever he got the chance.
“What about the piece of steel?” he asked then.
Once more, I’d completely forgotten about its existence. I took it out of my back pocket and put it on the table.
“I have no idea what it is.” It looked like…nothing at all. Just a steel plate, perfectly round, about an inch thick with a small opening all around. There was nothing written or engraved on either side, except for a rhinestone I hadn’t noticed there before.
“Where did you get this?”
“I-I-I…” My voice trailed off when I thought about the wolves and the dead witches. And the guy who’d given me this. Taking in a deep breath, I gave Red the short version. “I was looking for my sister when I ran into these werewolves that just smelled…strange and kind of like her. I followed them, I don’t know why. They led me to that apartment complex, where I found four wolves, real life wolves attacking three witches, just tearing them apart with no mercy. So I went in the apartment.”
“There were wolves tearing apart witches and you just…just…walked in?” Red asked, suspicion dripping from his voice.
I flinched. “Well, I sort of have this…thing with animals. They listen to me. They never attack me—not even bears. But these wolves were different. They didn’t stop when I told them to, and they smelled really strange. Like someone had messed with their body odor with a lot of magic. Nothing I’ve ever smelled before. Anyway, I tried to help the witches, but I couldn’t. And before one of them died—a wolf had torn his chest open—he gave this to me. Said they couldn’t have it, that I couldn’t let them find it.”
A throbbing ache began behind my eyes and quickly spread all over my head. What the hell was I thinking, following those werewolves that night?
“So you’re an animal whisperer,” Red said, and for some reason, he seemed to find that funny. The half smile on his face said so.
“At least I’m not a bloodsucker.”
His smile froze for a moment, and he nodded, as if to say he had that coming. And he did. I realized that my head was still attached to the rest of my body just because he needed me, but I was taking full advantage of it for as long as I could. There was something about him that brought out the bitch in me. Probably his nature.
“So what does it do?” Red said, nodding at the circle sitting innocently on the table between us.
“No idea.” I grabbed the steel piece in my hand. It weighed no more than a tennis ball, and it fit my palm perfectly. Red reached his hand for it, and I gave it to him. It wasn’t like he was going to run away with it or something.
He inspected it, analyzed every inch of the circle, and while he did, I analyzed him. It was hard not to. He looked so at ease like that, so completely clueless that, if I hadn’t seen him do what he did to my kidnappers, I’d have never in a million years imagined it right now. His hark hair fell over his eyes, and he pushed it away every few seconds. It was such a normal thing to do. If he kept this up, I was going to forget that he was a blood-sucking monster. Even my wolf was certain now. She pushed the thought into my head: not a threat.
And it was probably all his doing. He meant for me to see him like that—so normal, so calm and harmless looking. So goddamn handsome, it wasn’t fair.
Then, something clicked, and the smell in the room suddenly changed.
The feelings in my gut changed, too.
I watched Red raise the steel plate in front of us. A piece of steel right where the white rhinestone had been embedded had risen up less than an inch, with a perfectly round opening in the middle. It looked exactly like a ring.
I reached out for it and grabbed it from Red to inspect it. It definitely smelled different now. It smelled like…a lot of things. Like magic, for one. Like rope. Like blood—and a bunch of other stuff I couldn’t name yet.
“This is weird,” I mumbled and tried the ring on my middle finger. It fit me like it was made especially for me. And as soon as the ring was on and the plate touched the palm of my hand, it extended.
Mesmerized, I stood up, and the disc slid down and down until it touched the floor, and then it came back up to my palm again. Smiling, I opened my fingers and pushed it down again, just to make sure I hadn’t imagined it.
“It’s a yoyo!” I said, laughing, and watched the thin, almost transparent rope that attached the plate to the ring shimmer as the plate went up and down from my hand to the floor and back.
“Victoria,” Red said, drawing my eyes to him. He’d stood up and had backed away from the table, looking at the toy like it was the devil itself. “That’s not a yoyo.”
“We
ll, it’s not a traditional yoyo, but it definitely feels like it. Come on, it has the ring and the thin rope and it goes up and down exactly like a yoyo.”
“I’m telling you, that’s not a toy,” Red said, his eyes dark again.
I stopped playing and took the ring off my finger to inspect the plate again. Except when I tried to pull the ring up to see the rope, it wouldn’t budge. Hmm. Maybe it needed the finger inside the ring. So I tried to put it on again.
“No, don’t,” Red said, startling me. He looked…scared. Not that I had known him long enough to know what he looked like in different situations, but the open mouth and wide eyes were pretty clear indicators.
“Hey, relax. It’s just a—”
“Can’t you smell it?” he cut me off.
“Well, yeah. It smells of magic and of…things.” I wasn’t sure what yet.
Surprised, Red met my eyes. “It’s enchanted. And it’s silver. And it’s wolfsbane. And messir.”
I raised a brow. “Wolfsbane? Are you kidding?”
“Put it down, Victoria,” he said, slowly raising his arms at me. That made my wolf very curious, but she…couldn’t wake up? Strange. It was almost like I could see her trying, but she couldn’t come forward.
“Red, wolfsbane is a myth. It doesn’t hurt werewolves. And what the hell is messir?”
“Fairy poison,” he said. “And yes, wolfsbane, properly fueled with magic, hurts werewolves. A lot.”
I’ll be damned. He sounded dead serious, pun intended.
Suddenly, the weight of the yoyo in my hand grew. “If it’s enchanted, what the hell does it do?”
Just as I said that, something burned my stomach, right below my ribcage. It was my wolf. Her howl took over my thoughts for a second. What the hell? I dropped the yoyo on the table, and as if a spell had been broken, the burning sensation disappeared, and my wolf awoke.
I could feel her squeezing me, struggling to come out.
“Oh, shit,” I whispered, stepping away from the table. She was coming. She wanted out, and I had no idea how to stop her.