I See Me (22 page)

Desmond snarled.

“How dare you suggest —” Audrey began, but Desmond cut her off with a raised hand.

He glared at Jade. The dowser stood, hip-cocked and arms crossed, glaring back at him.

“He’s a tiger too?” I whispered to Beau. I’d assumed Desmond was a werewolf.

“Cat of some kind,” Beau whispered back.

“This is brilliant,” I murmured. “Like a cool, not lame summer blockbuster with magic, and unrequited love, and everything. I don’t know how I can be making this all up.”

“You aren’t,” Beau said.

“It’s not love,” Jade snapped. “It’s possession and power plays.”

Desmond frowned. But he didn’t correct her.

Jade sighed, then rolled her neck and rubbed it as if it ached. Desmond’s expression softened, just a tiny bit. I seriously doubted that Jade noticed, though, because she’d turned to look back at me.

I realized that I’d been stoking my necklace. Embarrassed at the gesture, which felt a bit lewd, I stopped. Jade smiled at me like I was a cute toddler, and with a wave of her hand toward Beau and me — like she was offering us up as an example of something — she looked toward Desmond again.

He remained silent and stoic.
 

“I’m not going to bicker,” Jade said.
 

Audrey snorted but Jade ignored her.

“I don’t know her magic,” Jade continued. “I can only guess it’s connected to that of the far seer —”

“I don’t give a shit about your guesses,” Desmond interrupted.

“I don’t give a shit about whether or not you give a shit about my guesses,” Jade snarled. “You’re not going to use her for bait —”

“Watch yourself, dowser,” Audrey growled. “You don’t tell anyone here what to do, least of all the alpha.”

“Jesus, already,” Kandy said. “Just stay out of it, Audrey.”

“Is that an order, enforcer?”

“Yeah, whatever.” Kandy flipped a finger in Audrey’s direction.

Desmond had time to sigh — apparently equally frustrated with his beta and Jade and Kandy — but barely.
 

Audrey lunged across the room for Kandy.

Jade slid her foot forward on the dark hardwood, tripping the werewolf as she passed between the dowser and Desmond. After the way Audrey had taken Beau down, I really wouldn’t have thought it possible for Jade to trip her so easily.

Then all hell broke loose.

Exactly what Lara had been hoping for … along with the cupcakes. Which were, in fact, delicious.

Everything happened in a blur of movement before me. I saw it all from the safety of Beau’s arms as he picked me up, skirted the dining room table, and leaped over one of the leather couches. He placed me in front of the huge stone fireplace. I crouched behind him as he turned to create a barrier with his body between the chaos erupting in the room and me.

As I shifted to one side, I wrapped my arm around his thigh, watching the scene exploding before us with disbelief and more than a little excitement. It was like seeing a vision, but without the pain or the white light. Without the nagging need to draw what I was seeing.

Audrey, tripped by Jade, had fallen and slid face-first across the dining room floor toward Kandy. The green-haired werewolf leaped up and over her, laughing manically and landing surefooted and steady on the dining room table. Her eyes now matched the green of her hair.
 

Audrey twisted to the side, using the slick hardwood to her advantage as she spun — still on her ass in her tight skirt — to face the dining room table again. She rolled forward and shot to her feet without her hands touching the floor. She lunged for Jade, who was now her nearest opponent.

At the same time, Lara jumped on the table behind Kandy and wrapped her arms around the green-haired werewolf’s neck. The two women grappled, falling sideways onto the massive wood table, which groaned in protest. The pizza boxes went flying, spilling slices all the way into the entranceway. Oddly, both women were laughing as they wrestled.

Desmond took one step toward Jade, who was watching Audrey come for her. Jade turned to see his approach seconds before Audrey barreled into his shoulder like a freight train going off its rails. And then hitting a massive concrete wall.

Audrey stumbled back, holding her nose. Blood spurted through her fingers. She backed off, as if Desmond getting in her way was a warning to wait.

“Really, Desmond?” Jade snapped. “You think just standing there is going to solve this one?”

“I’ll move if you want me to, Jade,” he growled. “At your bidding.”

I wasn’t sure if this was supposed to be an angry retort. Because it sounded a lot more like a come-on.

“I can’t figure out if Desmond is totally pissed at Jade or really likes her,” I whispered to Beau.

“Both,” he whispered back.

“I could go for some popcorn.”

Beau laughed, but kept a wary eye on the fight amping up before us.

Desmond lunged for the dowser.

Except Jade wasn’t where she’d just been standing. She was behind Desmond, a few feet closer to the side of the kitchen island.

This disturbed me in ways I hadn’t even fathomed yet. As in, I felt like my brain might start leaking fluid out my ears if I tried to understand what had just happened. “She didn’t just like, teleport, did she?”

“Nah,” Beau replied. “Moved crazy-fast, though.”

I glanced over to see that Kandy was still wrestling with Lara. The green-haired werewolf appeared to be pinned with her back widthwise on the table, but then got her foot up between her and Lara. Then — still gripping Lara’s upper arms — she somersaulted backward off the table and catapulted Lara over her head.

Lara flipped in the air, spun over the leather couch, and slammed back first onto the square glass coffee table.

Beau crouched down in a ball before me, shielding his face with his arms and me with his body. The shattered glass from the table sprayed everywhere, but only sprinkled over our sneakered feet. This reminded me that the shifters were all barefoot.

“They expected a fight,” I murmured. “They didn’t want their feet to slip on the tile or the hardwood.”

“They always expect a fight,” Beau responded. “But this is just a tussle. Dominance games.”

Kandy landed on her feet facing the kitchen, then immediately spun to glare at Lara, who was lying in a pile of broken glass.

Lara sat up, laughing. More glass fell off her, tinkling as it hit the ruins of the coffee table underneath her. Her violet-paisley print silk blouse was shredded, but she didn’t appear to be otherwise injured.

Audrey, her nose apparently healed but her cream blouse dotted with blood, went after Kandy.
 

“Tag teaming?” I asked Beau.

“Yeah, wolves do that,” he answered. “They fight in pack formation. You take on one, you take on all of them.”

Attacking from the side, Audrey barreled into the green-haired werewolf. Kandy twisted away at the last second, though, so that they hit the table instead of flying past it. The huge table lifted off the ground and then slammed back down into place. Kandy and Audrey fell to the side, grappling with each other as they rolled across the floor.

Lara leaped from the shattered remains of the coffee table and landed on the back of the couch. She perched there for a moment, watching the other two werewolves wrestle. Then — with a cackling laugh that was completely at odds with her outward pretty-in-purpleness — she launched herself at the pile that was Audrey and Kandy.

“Stop them, Desmond,” Jade said. “They’re ruining the furniture.” She was actually eating a cupcake, leaning back against the kitchen island now.

“I can’t stop them,” he replied. “Not until Audrey has exerted her dominance. Her position as beta is —”

Kandy screamed. Her terrible howl made the hair stand up on the back of my neck and my stomach instantly queasy with empathic pain. Something cracked nastily.

Jade wasn’t at the counter now. She was standing amid the tangle of limbs that was the werewolves. She reached into the mass and yanked Audrey back by her ponytail.

Audrey snarled. Her face rippled as her teeth grew into fangs.

Beau moaned, then looked resolutely at the floor before us.

Audrey reached wolf-clawed fingers up for Jade’s hand and arm, but the dowser didn’t seem to notice the werewolf’s attempt to free herself at all. She was gazing at Kandy hunched in pain before her, her face etched with concern.

I remembered the vision glimpse I’d had of Kandy before seeing her here in the dining room. In the white wash of my hallucination, I remembered Jade screaming for someone she loved, then carrying the green-haired werewolf’s body from the rubble of the temple, or wherever they’d been in my mind.

I moaned. Beau reached back and laced his fingers through mine. I shook off the echo of the hallucination at his touch.

Lara scrambled back from Kandy, keeping her body low to the ground. She paused a few feet away, her back to the front windows, panting and watching.

Kandy slowly rose. She was holding her shoulder.

Audrey was twisting and snarling, but still didn’t seem able to break away where Jade held her by the base of her ponytail and nothing else. The dowser’s arm was stretched out and down, which cranked Audrey’s head back at a vicious angle. The beta werewolf continued to claw at Jade, but didn’t leave a single scratch on her. To me, it looked like those claws could shred metal.

“It’s my fight, Jade,” Kandy spat.

“That arm isn’t fully healed yet. And now she’s —”

“My fight,” Kandy growled.

“It’s not a good idea to get between werewolves,” Desmond said. “My werewolves.” His voice was low, steady, and edged with a warning.

“Yeah?” Jade asked. “You think Audrey has any chance of laying a hand on me?”

“Unhand my beta, dowser,” Desmond said.

“Is that an order?”

“A request.”

“Screw you, Jade,” Audrey growled. “I’d rather die than kneel at your feet.”

“That can be arranged,” Jade snarled. She twisted her arm up and around her head as she spun and then released Audrey, throwing her down and to the side so that the werewolf slid across the wood floor and spun to a stop at Desmond’s feet. As she did so, she pushed the huge trestle table out of the way with what looked like just a brush of her fingers.

Then Jade stood — a warrior suddenly, in jeans and printed T-shirt — facing off against Desmond and surrounded by werewolves. She was holding a jade knife in her right hand.

My ears plugged.

“The knife,” I whispered. The glowing green stone of the blade and hilt appeared more vibrant than it ever had in my hallucinations. It fit in Jade’s hand as if it was a natural extension of her reach.

Any second now, the white light that preceded a hallucination would overwhelm my sight. Any second now.

“Now it’s a fight.” Though Desmond only whispered, his voice rippled around the room.

“You didn’t have to do it.” Jade’s voice was low and filled with epic amounts of sorrow.

“I did,” Desmond said.

“Oh, Jade,” Kandy whispered. She squeezed her eyes shut in a grimace of regret. When she reopened them, they were no longer glowing green.

Desmond stepped forward. His hands were loose at his sides. Jade didn’t move. He was maintaining his inscrutable expression, and I couldn’t see the dowser’s face. I couldn’t tell what, if anything, was passing between them.

I pressed my hand to Beau’s forearm. It felt like a twisted knot of muscle and bone.

Audrey rose behind her alpha. She looked worried, maybe even scared, for the first time since I’d met her. “Warrior’s daughter,” she said. Her tone was now measured, formal. “We have not communicated effectively.”

“I’m not confused, Audrey,” Jade said. “I know what he did.” She slowly raised her knife and pointed it at Desmond’s heart.

Some sort of energy washed around the room. It was similar to the wind that had accompanied Blackwell and the amplifier device he’d used in the restaurant.

“Magic,” I whispered, as I straightened from my crouched position behind Beau. Goosebumps rose on my arms and legs.

Beau tried to stand beside me and failed. He was shaking, as were Lara and Kandy.

Jade laughed. “Nice try, Desmond. But I don’t come to your heel.”

All the tiny hairs on the back of my neck stood up.

Beau moaned.

I didn’t understand what was happening, but I wasn’t going to just stand here and watch Beau suffer. “Please stop,” I cried. “Please. I don’t know what you’re fighting over, but … but … just stop.”

Jade looked at me over her shoulder.

I tried to smile — to placate her somehow — but failed. The tension in the room was almost suffocating, but the weight of my mother’s necklace was oddly soothing. I reached up to wrap my hand around the raw diamond.

Jade’s eyes followed this gesture.

“If we can’t have Paris,” Desmond said. “At least we’ll always have Blackwell.”
 

It felt like Desmond was attempting a joke of some kind, to ease the tension between him and the dowser, but I didn’t get the reference to Paris at all.

Jade sighed, which she seemed to do a lot. Then she slid the knife against her right thigh until it disappeared.

My ears popped.

“Cool,” Beau said, as if he hadn’t been shaking in pain seconds ago. “Invisible sheath.”

I turned to stare at him. He laughed and shrugged his shoulders.

Jade crossed to Kandy and reached for her shoulder. Then with a practiced twist and a sharp yank, she snapped it back in place. Kandy yowled but stayed on her feet, though Jade might have been holding her. By the sound of the injury, I’d thought that the arm had been broken, not dislocated. And maybe it had. Maybe Jade had just straightened the bone so it could heal properly.

“Shapeshifters heal quickly?” I asked Beau.

“Yep, and some quicker than others. Depending on the strength of their magic. And their connection to their alpha and to each other.”

“The pack shares magic?”

“Yes.”

“But you don’t have a pack?”

“No.”

I stared at Beau. He didn’t sound like he regretted anything, not even this, but my heart suddenly felt heavy for him.