Addict (30 page)

“The king’s death should satisfy Winter.” The smaller were shook his head like he was agreeing with himself.

“Why don’t you let the girl go?” I remembered how Alan couldn’t control his hands at the end. If this asshole lost motor control, he could kill my niece.

“We’re not letting anyone go, bitch!”

The wolf howled. He was losing the fight to maintain any semblance of control. The smaller wolf tossed Courtney aside like a rag doll and leapt for me. He changed in midair, his clothes tearing around him. He became a dark, snarling wolf. My instincts took over and I dropped into a defensive position, softening my knees and shifting my center of gravity.

Suddenly the gun popped out of my hand, like it no longer fit. I scrambled to try to get it back, but the wolf knocked me over. I kicked up. I noted that Quinn was struggling now. Lisa had her daughter in her arms and was hunkered down in a corner, protecting Courtney with her own body.

The wolf’s claws tore through my sweater to get to the flesh of my shoulder. Pain flared, but I moved quickly, rolling to the side to avoid the worst of the blow. There was something wrong with my hand. It felt funny, but I didn’t have time to look at it. I only briefly saw that it had taken on a reddish tone to the skin before I flipped the wolf over me. I heard him hit the wall behind us.

“Get down, Kelsey.” My uncle was on his feet.

He hadn’t had the same trouble picking up his gun. He fired twice. I knew the rounds were silver. It was standard issue for guards. The shot echoed. Zack pulled the trigger three times. The wolf should have gone down, but even with three silver bullets poisoning his system, he jumped right back up. He snarled and moved toward me.

 It happened faster than Zack could get another shot off. I only had time to bring my arm up to try to stop his canines from latching on to my throat. I reached up and instinct led me. I caught the wolf by the throat and squeezed. The wolf’s lower body slumped. I was surprised that I lifted the heavy wolf with no problem at all. I tightened my hold and blood poured from the wolf’s throat.

“Shit, Kelsey, when did you learn to do that?” Quinn was suddenly beside me.

The wolf I held twitched, his feet kicking out, but I lifted him easily. I watched as the light that animated him died and he went still. I dropped the wolf, shocked at what I had done. The body hit the floor with a thud. That’s when I noticed my right arm, and I was the one going still at the sight.

My arm wasn’t my arm. It was scaly, the skin a deep red. Long, creepy nails jutted from the tips. Talons. I had flipping talons. Like the kind that could easily tear out a throat. Killing talons.

It was ugly and kind of a little baby bit cool.

“Well, Henri is going to want to see that, Owens.” The king stood lounging in the doorway. His blue eyes took in the entryway. I wondered how long he’d been watching.

Quinn touched my creepy arm, pushing up my sweater so he could get a better look. I was too shocked to protest, couldn’t take my eyes off the thick muscles and tough flesh. The king moved to my side, running his hand along the arm.

“Demon skin.” Donovan turned my arm over and inspected the long talons on my fingers. “Nice. Can you change it back?”

A thought suddenly occurred to me. I’d only dealt with one of the drug-crazed employees. I pulled my arm out of the king’s hand and looked for the second wolf.

“Whoa!” Quinn ducked as my claws barely missed scratching his face.

“Sorry.” I pulled my freaky arm close to my chest because I definitely wasn’t used to having talons.

Zack had his daughter and wife wrapped up in his arms. Courtney cried and clutched her father. Lisa was calm, but I could see the tension in her eyes.

Sitting across from them was a weird-shaped ball of green. There was no question of what it was. The vine had wrapped around the man so tightly, I could almost make out his face.

“He alive?” The king was smiling slightly at Dev.

The huge plant thing wiggled, and I would have sworn I heard a muffled scream.

“Of course.” Dev put a foot on the werewolf who was neatly wrapped in ivy. “He can’t answer our questions if he’s dead. I assumed you would want to talk to him. If not, then I can change his current status easily.”

Lisa touched my shoulder. Her eyes widened at the sight of my demon arm, but she merely said, “Thank you. I’m taking Courtney out of here.”

As she walked by, I noticed everyone was watching from the doorway. They crowded together. Lee pushed his way through.

“Cool!” Lee held his hand out to touch it.

Donovan pulled his son away. “She’s not used to it yet so no playing. Lee, go with your mother. Z, I think you should take the kids home. Call Trent and have him come down to escort you.”

The queen nodded. “I’ll take Lisa and Courtney with us. Zack, they’ll be in the guest room when you’re done.”

Lee started to argue, but his mother pulled him back into the dining room. I supposed they would wait there until Trent came down to get them. I stared at the body of the wolf whose throat I’d split open. There was still blood on my claw.

I’d used that claw and could still feel it sinking into flesh. I’d done that. Me. And now I had demon skin. I wasn’t like the world’s most frequent visitor to a nail shop, but I did like the occasional manicure, and I was never going to be able to have another one. I wasn’t even sure my talons were paintable.

“Calm down, Owens.” The king put an arm around my shoulder. He was in a distinctly paternal mode. “It isn’t the first time you’ve had to kill someone and it won’t be the last. He was going to kill you. I’m going to back Lisa on this one and say thank you. Now, let me take a look at that hand and we’ll see what we can do.”

If he could do anything about getting back my perfectly normal, not talon-tipped hand, I was going to let him do whatever he needed to.

“Look at that.” Donovan traced the lines where human flesh met what he’d called demon skin. “This is where the frostbite was. You can see the line where Sharpe pushed that combo blood through.”

We were alone, only my uncle and Dev staying behind.

“Your blood and Gray Sloane’s, right?” Dev asked.

“What does it matter?” I couldn’t keep the panic out of my voice. My arm was covered in rough scales. How was I supposed to walk around with a demon arm?

“Do you want me to call Marcus?” The king let go of the arm.

I’d been shielding fiercely. My trainer had taught me well. I could do it on a subconscious level. I definitely didn’t want Marcus to see me like this. At least if he left he would remember my arm all human-like.

“No, she doesn’t need him,” my uncle interjected. “She’ll be fine.” He took my hands in both of his. He didn’t even blink at my claws. “Kelsey, this is normal.”

I felt my eyebrows lift.

“You’re a Hunter,” Zack explained. “Surely Marcus told you that strong Hunters can change their hands.”

Marcus had told me that I might be able to do that one day, if I trained hard. I’d done it instinctively, and there was obviously something wrong with that scenario. “But I was supposed to get a wolf claw. I got a demon hand.”

“Actually, that makes sense,” Zack said. “You have Sloane’s blood running through your body. You won’t have that forever. The next time you change, it should be the wolf in you that comes out. But this is amazing. No one expected this to happen for years. You’re extraordinarily strong, but now I need you to relax and think about changing your hand back.”

“Let me help.” The king’s persuasion brushed on the edge of my consciousness. I opened my mind, allowing him in. His voice whispered in my head, convincing me that there wasn’t anything wrong. My muscles relaxed and I felt my eyes close. The world took on a fuzzy, soft glow.

“Kelsey.” My uncle snapped his fingers in front of me. I was startled back to reality.

I flexed my hand. It was perfectly human again—or perfectly whatever I was. God, it was nice to have that arm back. We’d had a shitty day, my right arm and I. A shitty, shitty day.

The king slapped my back, a gesture of affection from him. “Good work, Owens. Go get some sleep. You have a job tomorrow. I’m going to see if Henri can get anything out of these two.” He lifted the cocooned werewolf, who wriggled, trying to break free. “Dev, get the corpse.”

The faery sighed. “He always leaves the corpses to me.”

Zack gave me a hug before walking into the dining room to find his wife and child. Donovan and Quinn left to take Henri his new subjects to study, and I found myself alone.

“Kelsey?”

“Lee.” He was a sneaky thing.

“Not just Lee.” Liv looked sober now. “He snuck me out, too. He’s a hard-core kid. Are you okay?”

I held up my hand. “Totally normal.”

“Awww.” Lee was terribly disappointed. “The other way was cool.”

I put one arm around Lee and the other around my BFF. Even if Marcus left, I wasn’t without people who loved me.

Chapter Sixteen

I cleaned up and Lisa offered me a new sweater to replace the ruined one. My job was hell on a wardrobe. I waited until Trent came to escort the queen to her home. My uncle had walked Liv back to her place before joining the king and Dev. I walked up with Trent, the queen, my aunt and the children, Lee’s small hand in mine. It was the first time I’d been up to the royal residence. The penthouse was stunning, and I didn’t care. I couldn’t see much past my own misery. Somewhere Marcus was waiting on a plane that would take him far away from me. I was about to be alone again.

I thought about that the whole way down. As we approached my apartment, I was still thinking about the fact that I had to do this all by myself.

“Owens, you want to grab a beer?” Trent asked as we walked out into Ether.

There was a convoluted path to get to the penthouse and back down. It proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that Quinn was completely paranoid. We exited Quinn’s office elevator straight into the nightclub. I wasn’t in the mood to party. All I could remember was that I met Marcus in Quinn’s office. It was the first place we had sat together and talked.

“No.” The last thing I needed to do was get drunk off my ass. I would end up hitting on the big were, and I was pretty sure it would embarrass the hell out of him. Alcohol and depression tended to get me in trouble. I look for affection in the strangest places, and he was actually quite attractive. Big and broad, Trent was solid. He was the kind of guy a woman could count on. I mean, if he cared about her. Trent was the kind of man who wouldn’t walk away if he was invested. Not that he was invested in me. “I’m tired. I need to get home.”

I needed to watch Marcus pack. I needed to get ready to be alone again.

Trent wouldn’t leave me alone. He followed me out of Ether as I made my way into the residence wing of the building. The dude took his job too seriously. I tried to explain to him that I’d managed to take out the crazy drug addict all on my own, but he wasn’t having it. He walked with me up to my room. He kept trying to get me to talk, but I answered every question he put to me as succinctly as possible. I wasn’t in a “get to know you” kind of mood.

“Owens.” He stopped me before I put my key in the lock to my apartment. When I turned to face him, he was in my space. He was an awfully big guy. He was only slightly smaller than Gray. “You sure you’re okay?”

I practically growled at him.

His hands came up. “Hey, I’m just asking. You had a rough night. I know how these things go. Is the vampire really leaving?”

“You already know?” I hadn’t told him and he hadn’t been at the party.

The big were shrugged. He leaned against the wall. “It’s a small world. You’ll have to get used to it. Everyone knows everyone else’s business. Marcus pulled aside Michael House’s new girl down in Ether. He asked her to make his flight plans. You going with him?”

I shook my head.

I swear that werewolf smiled. “It’s for the best, you know. You shouldn’t be with some dead dude. You’re a wolf. You belong with other wolves.”

“I don’t know a lot of other wolves.”

He was kind of super cute when he grinned. He had one dimple. Not two, only one creased the right side of his face. “You know me. You know your uncle. We’re not without connections. The full moon is a week away. You wanna run with us?”

I couldn’t help it. A little smile tugged at my lips. “Yeah, I’d like that.”

I loved to run with the wolves. It filled something inside me. I wasn’t tied to the cycles of the moon, but I felt their pull. When the moon was full, I had a need deep inside to run and loved being part of a pack, if only for a night or three. I missed it. If Trent could get me in with the Dallas wolves, I’d think about being nicer to him. I’d killed their alpha and two betas a couple of months before. If he could smooth the way, I’d be happy.

He smiled back, leaning against the wall. “Good. You’ll like the pack. They’ve been asking about you. I know you think you’re going to have a hard time with them, but the majority was happy to see Castle go. And anyone who wasn’t will have to deal with me. I’ll drive you out. We have to go up to Denton, but it’s worth it. Maybe we can grab some dinner first since I doubt you’ll hunt the way we do.”