Girl from Jussara (13 page)

“I only saw Raul a handful of times after he moved away with his dad.” I wasn’t sure why I was still explaining my life and my relationship with Raul to her. She was looking increasingly sorry for me. I took her pity as a sure sign she thought Alex would kill me on sight, just as both Remy and Alcaeus had speculated he’d want to do.

“He’d come for short visits when I was on summer break sometimes,” I babbled on. I knew I should probably stop talking altogether, but I had to ask, “What’s lobisomem?”

“Werewolf,” she answered without hesitation.

I nodded, as if in understanding. But I didn’t understand at all.
Werewolf?

My mind drifted to a random story Raul had told me during a brief visit when I was sixteen and lamenting I’d never be able to afford my college of choice. He had told me how the president of Argentina had passed a law giving the seventh son of a family automatic godfathership, which included a scholarship for all of his studies until his twenty-first birthday.

Raul had jokingly referred to it as the “werewolf preservation act of 1920,” explaining that there were widely believed legends that the seventh son in a family turned into a werewolf, and the seventh daughter, a witch. The legend was so well believed and feared that it prompted parents to actually abandon or kill a seventh-born child, and the law served to end the condemnation of Argentina’s supposed werewolf children.

Raul had teased that if the US government had a similar law for second-born witches, he was sure I was due to get a full ride to Berkley. But that was the extent to which he’d ever mentioned anything about werewolves or witchcraft to me that I could recall. And I didn’t remember him ever saying the name Reinoso.

Alessandra was studying me intently. She seemed to be dissecting each of my features one by one. I imagined her comparing them to Raul’s in her mind’s eye.

Once again, I knew I probably shouldn’t ask, but I had to know. “What did Alcaeus mean when he said Felix hoped to trade me for his son’s life? Is his son being held captive here as well?”

Alessandra looked torn as her eyes lowered, then flitted around the opulent bathroom that I was pretty sure was larger in size than my bedroom back home.

“No, Celio is free and unharmed for the moment,” she replied. “Felix just knows it’s a matter of time before Alex orders Celio killed now that he’s turned eighteen.”

I felt my brows lift to my hairline. “Why? What did he do? Why eighteen?”

She shook her head. “It’s complicated, Milena. Only Alex can tell you.” She sighed. “If he chooses to.”

I nodded slowly, reluctant to let it go. “Can’t you at least tell me … what Raul did? To make Alex so angry with him?” I knew I was pressing my luck now.

“It is not my place to speak for my brother,” she declined with finality, a sudden frostiness bleeding into her tone.

My jaw dropped. “You mean
Alex?
The Alex everyone keeps referring to is—he’s your
brother?”

Alessandra smiled in amusement at my shock. “Yes, Alex and Alcaeus are both my brothers, actually.”

It occurred to me in retrospect that she and Alcaeus did look related.

“Alcaeus and I share the same mother and father,” she elucidated, “but Alex, our younger brother, was born to a different mother.”

She looked to be only in her mid to late twenties! A brother younger than even she was hardly fit the image I’d conjured in my mind of the ruthless, codgy
Godfather
figure named Alex.

“And Remy is Alex’s older half-brother from his mother’s first union,” she expounded. “So we’re all half-siblings to Alex by blood, and Alcaeus and I consider Remy our brother as well, though technically we share no blood relation to him.”

Amid the increased pounding in my temple, I attempted to sort this information by visualizing it in terms of a family tree.

I was even more at a loss now to comprehend why on earth they all seemed so cowed by this little half-brother of theirs named Alex, when Alessandra cocked her head abruptly and then turned halfway toward the door.

“We should go,” she said.

I wasn’t quite ready to end our bizarre dialogue. But I was momentarily bereft of speech as I gathered my scattered wits and prayed my head would stop throbbing soon. Alessandra suddenly seemed far away, lost in her own thoughts. And those thoughts seemed to be rather upsetting to her, if I was reading her expression with any accuracy.

“He’s going to kill me, isn’t he?” I blurted.

Her eyes flew to mine in surprise. And she had the grace to sound apologetic as she admitted, “Milena, I don’t know. But he’s just killed two of your kidnappers, so we must go.”

“What?”

The ones we’d just passed in the foyer? How did she even know that?

“Quickly,” she urged. “It’s only proper you should be present when Felix is pleading his case and offering you as his trade.”

Proper?
Proper seemed a rather unusual way to put it. But I had no opportunity to argue that point, as she was lifting me off the ground a moment later and carrying me back down the hallway.

Good God, how could any of this even be happening?

“I think I’d rather walk to my death, thank you,” I muttered acerbically.

It occurred to me I shouldn’t be so rude or ungrateful when she had been nothing but kind to me and far easier to talk to and more forthcoming than anyone else I’d encountered since my arrival, but it wasn’t lost on me that she was also rushing me to my certain demise at the hands of her little half-brother.

“I’ll put you down as soon as we get close.”

I wasn’t sure what I’d expected to find when we approached the foyer, but the scene we came upon was far worse than any I could’ve envisioned.

There were more people gathered in the semi-cylindrical receiving area than before. We entered the open room, and Alessandra deposited me on my feet in time to see Felix suspended by his throat against a wall, his feet dangling at least a foot off the ground, his broken arms hanging uselessly at his sides.

A tall, dark-haired, formidable man in a tuxedo was holding him up by the neck with just one hand. Felix’s eyes bugged out in horror and his face went from red to purple to blue while the cruel man, whose face was turned from me, proceeded to mercilessly crush his windpipe.

My first instinct was to scream at the faceless, heartless man to stop and let him go, but the words died in my throat and ice coursed through my veins as he leaned in closer to my dying abductor and rasped, “No deal, Felix. I’ve no need of Raul’s worthless sister. Not as bait, as a trade for your son, or otherwise.”

He spoke in a forbidding, deep whisper, presumably meant for Felix’s dying ears, yet the words were clearly heard by everyone in the otherwise silent hall as they resonated off the stone walls.

“Raul’s dead,” he hissed. “I saw to it myself days ago. And thanks to you, his sister will be dead soon, too.”

Time and space ceased to exist as I sought to reconcile the meaning of his words. Raul was dead?

“So you’ve wasted your time,” he sneered, “forfeited four lives, and shortened your son’s allotted time left by coming here and interrupting my dinner.”

He’d died just days ago?

Raul was dead?

I’d never borne witness to much violence in my lifetime, let alone seen a man murdered right before my eyes, and yet I barely registered the visual of Felix’s eyes rolling back and becoming lifeless as the final vestiges of his very being were squeezed from him.

I don’t know how long I stood stock still, my own eyes wide and glazed over with terror, before the dark-haired devil whom I knew had to be the infamous Alex turned away from his fresh kill to visibly sniff in my direction like some depraved, wild animal honing in on his next unfortunate prey.

As his cold, dark eyes alighted upon me, they widened perceptibly. Felix’s dead body was dropped like a sack of trash a millisecond later as the dinner party host I’d so erroneously assumed would be civilized turned his imposing frame in my direction.

He was darkly handsome like Alcaeus, with facial features that more closely resembled Remy’s, but with none of the playfulness or boyishness of either of the two men. And his eyes were unlike any of his siblings’. They were a deep, dark shade of brown. His jet-black hair was cropped short, and he was expertly groomed and outfitted as if he’d stepped off the pages of
GQ.

On the surface, he appeared the perfect male specimen. I was certain many of the girls I’d gone to school with would’ve fallen all over themselves just to gain a moment of his attention. But beneath his polished veneer, I knew he was just a monster. A brute who had murdered my brother. And never before in my life had I wished more horrific, fatal harm upon another human being as I now fervently hoped to befall him.

As he breathed deeply in and out, audibly inhaling as if to suggest he could actually smell me from across the foyer, he seemed to regard me much like Alessandra first had—as if he was encountering an apparition.

Then his eyes widened further, and I could’ve sworn the most unfathomable expression of pure elation and inconceivable rapture transformed his confused, horrified features for the briefest of moments.

Strangely, it reminded me of the expression on the face of this lost little boy I’d helped once at the mall—his look upon laying eyes on his mother when they were at last reunited. It was an odd amalgamation of unmitigated joy mixed with relief juxtaposed against the profound terror of realizing one’s own supreme vulnerability for the very first time. The face of one who’d just been saved but would never be the same again for that rescue.

Only in this case, the man before me still appeared hopelessly lost. And judging from the way his expression swiftly morphed into that of unadulterated rage, I wasn’t sure he’d wanted to be found at all—much less saved.

“Fuck,” Alessandra swore under her breath at my side.

Fuck was right. I was sure if eyes could spit fire, Alex’s would have charred me alive already.

And then they did. Either I was going completely mad or his irises had turned a bright golden yellow color as they glowered wildly at me.

“Fuck, fuck,
fuck,”
Alessandra whisper-swore again as every single pair of eyes in the room seemed to fixate upon me in marked disbelief.

Alex’s lips pulled back into a snarl, and a deep, unearthly growl vibrated up from his chest and ricocheted off the walls.

“No,”
he ground out in a low, deathly grim rumble that sounded more animal than human. “
Not mine!
”

I hadn’t a clue what he’d meant by that proclamation, but I was pretty sure any small chance I’d had of surviving the night had just evaporated.

“This … can’t be happening,” Alessandra stammered cryptically. “You’re … human … you’re Raul’s sister … ”

“Fuck me sideways!” I heard Alcaeus’ voice buoyantly exclaim. “No wonder she smells so good and I feel so protective.”

My eyes darted to where Alcaeus stood just a few feet from Alex. He was grinning from ear to ear like a man who’d just won the lottery. Earlier he’d wanted to save me from Alex. And now, right as I was about to be murdered in cold blood, he looked ready to celebrate.

“Well, isn’t this just a juicy slice of poetic justice?” He chuckled heartily, slapping a thoroughly unamused Alex on the back.

“Alex, please meet Raul’s little sister and my new best friend, Milena,” Alcaeus introduced with a flourish.

“She’s injured,” he added happily to the otherwise silent, tension-saturated room. “Head trauma,” he informed the incensed-looking Alex with glee. “You might want to get right on that, in fact, because Remy and I weren’t able to get her to cooperate long enough to heal it.”

“Alcaeus, please stop?” Remy’s distressed voice implored. He was standing on the other side of the room. He didn’t seem to find the situation as funny as Alcaeus did. “This is not the time to antagonize him. Think of Milena.”

My eyes darted back and forth across the room from Remy to Alcaeus to Alex. Remy was right. Whatever Alcaeus was doing seemed to be exacerbating the situation and escalating Alex’s level of ire. His face was flushed and he’d begun growling at the mention of Remy and Alcaeus’ failed attempt to heal my head injury. But Alcaeus waved off Remy’s warning.

“I mean, sure,” Alcaeus broadcast to the room as he absorbed Alex’s every strained reaction with relish, “she enjoyed me licking her inner thighs all right, and she most definitely enjoyed Remy kissing her,” he said with a mischievous wink in Remy’s direction, “but in general she doesn’t much care for warlocks creeping around inside her head. Isn’t that right, my dear?” He looked to me for confirmation.

I shook my head in bewilderment. Alessandra was now swearing like a sailor next to me. Alex hadn’t ceased growling; his unearthly yellow eyes raked over me as he fisted his hair and his whole body shook with barely suppressed fury—the personification of a geyser ready to blow.

“Alex, please?” Remy beseeched, “I beg you, please don’t hurt her. None of this is her fault. Take your anger out on me.”

Alcaeus snorted. “He’s not going to hurt her. He might be a stubborn, bitter asshole, but he’s never been stupid.”

I didn’t know what the deuce was happening or what they were talking about. All I knew was that Alex had begun cursing a blue streak and yanking at his tie until he’d torn it to shreds in frustration from his neck. He’d just managed to shrug out of his fancy tuxedo jacket when suddenly with an angry roar he burst from his own skin before my very eyes!

Buttons went flying and expensive-looking fabric was torn to shreds as an enormous, viciously snarling black and grey wolf took the place of the enraged man faster than I could blink.

Werewolf!

Almost all the other occupants in the room parted and backed away, bowing their heads in deference to the beast and affording him greater space as with hackles raised he took his first horrifying step forward in my direction.

My mouth fell open and I instinctively took a miniscule step backward. Alessandra’s hand shot out and captured my wrist.