Hot Springs Werewolf Complete Series (BBW Werewolf Erotic Romance) (23 page)

I kept my eyes on the road and tried to tell myself that it would be okay. I could feel a buzzing in my legs, a thrumming in my body and part of it was anxiety but most of it was excitement. I wanted to fight. I heard Red tapping out a message. To his pack probably. Get them to come down and tear the Toulouses apart!

"What are you thinking about?"

I looked at Red again and saw he was watching me. Damn, my eyes must have started glowing gold. I decided to be honest.

"Fighting."

"Good, isn't it."

I nodded and bit my lip as we left the town, heading out, the road quickly degrading and becoming bumpy.

"You'll learn how to control it. Don't worry - I'll teach you."

How can you teach me if I'm gone?

The peak of the Finch Mansion appeared over the treetops and I slowed as we reached the driveway and turned into it. The gate was closed. I turned off Boris and was about to say something to Red when a howl of pain split the air. I don't know how I knew but it was a man and it wasn't Donald Crisp.

Red turned to me, his eyes glowing gold.

"Stay close so we can protect each other."

Me protect him?

He kissed me suddenly and then leapt out of Boris. I fumbled with my seatbelt and then jumped out to follow him. We climbed the gate and ran up the drive. There came another howl - the howling of a wolf in pain.

At the sound, Red sprinted towards the house and inside. I followed. There was fresh blood splashed in the entranceway, sparkling red. I could smell the iron in it. As soon as we were inside I heard the sound of fighting from upstairs and snarling. Eadie Crisp.

I bolted up the stairs, Red one step behind me and reached the top floor just in time to see Eadie Crisp hurl a naked man through a window. He landed with a sickening crunch on the dirt outside. It was one of the weightlifter-type guys I'd seen at the bar. He stood up, nearly toppled over and then hobbled away. Eadie snarled and ran out the door.

"Eadie, wait!"

I followed her out but she was so ridiculously fast that I had no chance of catching up with her. I heard a crash and the sound of shattering glass from a room behind me and realized that Red was gone. I turned and ran back to a room behind me to find Red panting, blood trickling down the side of his face, standing next to a broken window. I looked out and saw another werewolf from the bar that night. He'd landed badly and was now trying to get up with a broken arm.

I wanted to scream and howl and fight and cry all at once. I was so far out of my depth it wasn't funny. All I could hear was my own frightened heartbeat, my gasping breath. If Red hadn't been here I wouldn't have sensed the werewolf in the other room. And then what? I'd be the one thrown out the window, if I was lucky. Red had changed me into a werewolf at my urging but I wasn't ready on any level. All this went by in a flash and then we heard another howl from downstairs. This time it was Eadie and she was in pain and something ignited inside me.

I saw Red and then the stairs, the ground floor and then I was landing on the floor below. A man had Eadie by the throat, pinned up against the wall and then suddenly I was on the ground outside the mansion, fighting to get Red off me.

"Harper, alphabet, Harper!"

I could taste blood in my mouth and the blinding rage inside me was like a fire burning out of control. I swiped at Red, my fingers like claws and connected, scratching lines across his cheek. He didn't pull back but moved forward and kissed me.

I almost bit him. I felt my lips move, my teeth ready to snap and then the scent of him overpowered the blood. I also realized I was naked, as was he, and underneath him. Parts of me slid back. Red, the Alpha werewolf. Owner of the house up the hill. Great dancer and even better kisser.

I kissed him and didn't need the alphabet to come back this time.

He broke the kiss and smiled at me and I saw he had blood on his face too, along with scratches from my nails.

"You got him. He's gone. But we need to go downstairs now."

Red stood up and helped me off the ground. I looked down and realized we were both covered in dirt and streaks of blood. I could feel my body thrumming like every cell was vibrating.

I followed Red back into the mansion, noticing fresh droplets of blood inside the entrance and spilled across the floor. We turned and went left, down the corridor I'd walked the first time I was here - the one with the big hole in the floor and the drop down to the floor below.

"What happened? I can't remember."

"You tore your clothes off and ran to the bottom floor where you tackled a meat-head werewolf and threw him across the room like he was nothing. Then you chased him up the stairs, fought him in the entranceway and ran him off out the front. It was beautiful."

Red smiled at me as we skirted the edge of the hole and I followed him, for some reason not worried about the floor collapsing beneath me. I only had a fragment of memory but it was clear enough to know I'd jumped down there (stark naked I silently added).

We followed the corridor around and came to a staircase. We went down. The bottom floor was dark and filled with all sorts of rubbish - old clothes, bits of wood, dirt. It was like when the Finchs left they'd abandoned everything on this floor, leaving it for time and the elements to break down. I could also smell blood and faintly, the sound of Eadie crying.

We rushed through the dark, the area lit only by the gaping holes in the floors and the skylights that had been mostly boarded over. Finally we reached a room that looked like it had been a library. Bookcases were built into the walls and there were rotting books strewn everywhere amongst the decrepit furniture. I felt a shock of cold as we entered - this was the room I'd rushed into. There was the wall where the werewolf had been holding Eadie by her throat.

Eadie was in human form, slumped against a door set into the wall. It had a rusted metal wheel set in the center, like something you'd see in a bank vault. She was crying and pulling on it, unable to move it one inch.

Red rushed forward to her and helped her up.

"It's okay Eadie, we'll get him out, I promise."

Eadie looked up at me as I approached and I saw she was exhausted and nearly broken. She'd given almost everything to find Donald and now she had nothing left. I wrapped my arms around her, feeling the fragility of her body. It was hard to believe this was the woman who'd bitten Edward Toulouse's hand off just an hour or so ago.

"We'll need to do it together," Red said after trying to turn the wheel by himself. The mechanism was rusted and didn't want to give but the Toulouse werewolves had managed to move it so that meant we could too.

"We'll get him out," I said to Eadie, repeating Red. She nodded and sniffed, tears trickling down her face.

Red and I stood side by side at the lock. I was to push down and Red was to pull up. We counted one, two, three and heaved. There was a moment of nothing but us straining against the rusted metal and then came the sound of grating as the metal moved and the lock disengaged. The heavy door ground open.

The stench of blood rolled out like a wave. In the gloom I saw Donald Crisp laying on his side in a spreading pool of blood. Eadie rushed in, a blur again and then was above him, holding her hands against his body.

"We have to shift him to werewolf!" Red yelled. I'd never seen him so frantic, not even when Edward Toulouse had a gun pointed at us. He turned to me and grabbed me by the arms.

"Shift and then lap up some of his blood. Back to human and then together we'll shift to werewolf again. We need to get him over or he'll die."

Red turned away before I could answer, tore off his clothes and shifted, bounding forward to lap at the blood. I saw Eadie shift and do the same. As I shifted I heard voices upstairs. It was Fen and Jake - and others. Red's pack was here. I shifted, the world suddenly becoming rich with the scent of blood and went to Red's side to lap at the spreading pool.

It was rich and metallic and as I lapped at it, some part of me marveled that I would do such a thing at all.

:Harper, back now!

I heard Red's voice in my mind and at his command I shifted back to human as he and Eadie did. The taste in my mouth went from nuanced to blunt metal.

"Donald, change! Change! Now!" Red roared.

We shifted and as we did I felt the connection to Donald, felt his blood in my body toppling over like a domino, shifting from human to wolf. I felt Red and Eadie around me, the connection of Donald's blood a tenuous fiber between us. We shifted and the pull of it reached out, grabbing for Donald. There was a moment when it trembled, as weak as spiderweb and then his blood toppled and Donald shifted too, transforming into a gray wolf.

Red shifted back to human and heaved Donald up on his shoulder. I was about to follow when I heard Eadie's voice in my mind.

:Wait

I understood immediately. We were connected and if we shifted back to human, Donald might too. Red was halfway up the stairs before Eadie and I shifted back. We followed as fast as we could, Eadie seeming to be revived now that's we'd found Donald. Upstairs the house seemed to be suddenly filled with werewolves. I saw Fen and Jake plus some other faces I recognized from the night Red was challenged. We rushed outside and found that someone must have opened the gate. Fen's truck was parked out the front and Red was loading Donald into it. I saw three young women I didn't know grab Eadie and use wipes to get most of the blood off her. They must have done it before because she was clean in a few seconds. They gave her a black tracksuit which she put on and then she jumped up into the back of the truck next to Donald and Fen. Jake got behind the wheel and they raced off in a cloud of dust. The last I saw of Eadie was her bent over a gray wolf, dressed like a rapper.

With Eadie gone, the women turned their attention to me. I didn't get a chance to protest before they started wiping me down, getting rid of the blood and dirt. I was flooded with the scent of lemon from the wipes and the moment they finished and handed me a clean tracksuit I felt the world swirl around me. I thought I might be sick but then I felt a clench in my body and burst into tears instead.

Red had been giving orders to his pack - that much I'd been vaguely aware of and then he was taking me in his arms, holding me against him. He'd been cleaned off too and smelt like lemon floor polish. I put my head against his chest and caught the faint scent of him, under the lemon.

My tears dried up quickly and I felt a flash of embarrassment that the rest of his pack had seen me cry. I mumbled something to Red and stepped back to put on the tracksuit. My clothes were somewhere on the bottom floor of the mansion, probably torn to pieces and covered in blood and dirt. A young man approached us and when I looked up I gave a start. It was Marcus, the one who'd challenged Red. His arm was in a cast and he had it in a sling. He gave me the keys to Boris and put a plastic bag at my feet before giving me a quick smile and walking away. I looked down and saw someone had collected my clothes from inside the house.

"We're very organized when it comes to things like this," Red said, touching me on the shoulder.

I looked back at the mansion and saw a group of men were scrubbing the entranceway clean of blood. Others were skipping around them, flowing in and out with buckets and sponges. In amongst the parked cars was a small truck with a portable water tank on the back. It had Guile Constructions printed on the side of it.

They were organized and that scared me more than anything else. What kind of world was it to be a werewolf? You needed lemon wipes and portable water because you'd be getting covered in blood so often? I turned to Red and saw him watching me. I just wanted to get away from this. He seemed to read my mind. He turned and gave some quick instructions before taking my hand and together we walked down the drive and back to Boris.

*

I
drove, turning down Red's offer to take the wheel. I needed something to concentrate on. I heard my phone buzz from inside the plastic bag that sat between us but whomever it was, they had to wait. Back we went, through the city and out the other side. Red seemed to understand I needed silence and time. He sat beside me (in a black tracksuit also) and didn't say a word. Soon we were pulling up at the cabin and I got out, feeling like I was dead on my feet. Red followed me inside and I gave him a hug, even as I felt rice crunch under my feet. I'd cleaned up most of the mess Edward had made but uncooked rice seemed to be everywhere.

Not that it mattered because you'll be leaving soon.

"Do you want to talk?"

I shook my head, mute, afraid that if I started talking I wouldn't be able to stop and then I'd tell Red that I wanted to leave, that I might leave, that there was a tomorrow or the next day when he'd get up and Boris would be gone and so would I.

Red ducked his head and nuzzled his nose against mine. He still smelt like lemon but underneath that was him, that wonderful warm scent that was his alone. It relaxed muscles I didn't know were tense.

"I'll be okay. I'm going to do some writing."

The lie came out easily, like I'd had it waiting and ready. Writing on my busted laptop I guess.

"I want you to come by tomorrow evening. About eight. I have something to teach you."

The barest hint of that look he had crossed his face and despite my tiredness and tension, I felt a flutter inside me. Somehow I don't think Red had a game of chess in mind.

I nodded, afraid to say yes aloud and then kissed him softly on the lips. I felt the slightest prickle of stubble and when we broke away I saw the scratches I'd given him were already almost gone.

Scratch on his face. Leaving or not I suddenly had to know if he'd lied to me that night so many nights ago when he came to my door, bleeding from a wound and said it was from a fallen tree.

"You came here with a cut on your face and told me it was from a fallen tree."

It wasn't a question and I looked up into Red's eyes to see what he'd say.

"Just settling a little misunderstanding with Talia."