Lunacy (17 page)

So I danced and sang around the kitchen while I threw
together some amazing scrambled eggs, complete with sliced
pepperoni and shredded cheese, half a rasher of bacon, and some
toast. I paused in the fridge, debating on what sort of jam I
should use on my toast when I heard the door open. "Hey, Mom and
Dad!" I hollered, not looking up. I was slathering thick gobbets of
raspberry preserves on my toast and had one piece half gone when I
turned at footsteps that sounded totally wrong to me. Not Mom and
Dad.

A few guys I recognized but didn't know stood side by
side with Alain Reece, apparently the guys from his band Blunt
Trauma, and I was brandishing a sticky butter knife at them. "State
your business here, before I call the cops." I said simply, my eyes
flicking back and forth between them. Five of them, altogether. Big
enough that I knew I couldn't take them in a fair fight, much less
with five on one odds, and I was damn sure that none of them were
human.

Alain shrugged, his hands up to appear
non-threatening. "Is there anything wrong with wanting to pay a
visit to an old child hood friend of mine?"

I laughed incredulously. "Yes, actually. There's a
lot wrong with it. You and I were never friends, especially during
our childhood. Considering I could have run you down with my car,
and should have, and now you're here... Your demeanor is
threatening, you're trespassing, and according to New York State
penal law, I can legally defend myself with deadly physical force
because I fear for my life right now." The boys all seemed a touch
taken aback at my lawyerly babble. "Sound reasonable enough to you,
Alain?"

He crossed his arms over his chest, bare chest, with
a smirk. I'd been so busy pondering the quickest way to get rid of
them all that I hadn't noticed they were all standing there naked
as they day they were born. They must have come here in wolf form
and then shifted to get into the house. I ignored it as best I
could, although it was a touch distracting. He really had filled
out in all the right places since we were little.

He took a step closer and I lifted the knife higher,
held it more steadily, feeling the cool metal heating beneath the
warmth of my fingers. "Come on, pretty boy. Want me to mark up that
face of yours with this knife? It is pure silver, so it's gonna
fuck your world if you keep coming closer."

Alain snorted, tossing his head back with laughter so
all that black and platinum blond hair mingled in a weird mixture
of contrasts. "You won't do it, Kacea. You're all talk. You think
that throwing around threats about legal repercussions and
permanent scarring frighten me? You should know better than that by
now." He stepped closer and I took a step back. Two more times this
happened, until my back bumped into the cabinets and I was
cornered. There wasn't really anywhere I could have run where they
couldn't catch me, anyway. But I was right next to the sink...

Alain was just out of arm's reach and then he took
that final step so he was within swinging distance. I struck,
faster than I should have been able to, but he still managed to
move enough that I didn't have the chance to hit anything vital.
The silver sank into his flesh like a blow torch through butter,
complete with smoke and the hissing, sizzling sound of burning
meat, like bacon in a frying pan. He exhaled sharply at the pain,
but leaned into me closer, trapping my arm between our bodies with
the knife shoved into his stomach just beneath his ribs. I tried to
give the blade a twist, but there was hardly enough room for me to
wiggle my fingertips.

He reached down and wrapped my whole wrist in his
much larger hand and started to squeeze. I felt my bones starting
to flex under the strain, but I did my best to stay silent. I got
the feeling that he'd be more encouraged by my pain. But once the
joints started to pop and things started to crackle like Rice
Krispies in a bath of milk, I couldn't maintain my silence any
longer. I gasped, but bit down hard on my lower lip so I wouldn't
scream.

His whole body vibrated with heat and his breath was
like the fetid gusts of a wind storm in the desert against my ear.
“Come on, Kacea... You've got more than that for me...” He
practically purred, just barely flexing his fingers a touch more so
the bones in my forearm shattered under his touch like dry tinder.
Multiple fractures. I could feel each and every one shooting agony
through me, worse than any pain I'd experienced in my life.

My forehead beaded up with sweat and tears flowed
unbidden from my eyes, but I wasn't going to scream for him, no
matter what he did to me. My brain quickly ran over my options. If
rape was on their minds, it was better than dying, but I still had
no intentions of just lying down and letting that happen. He seemed
distracted enough by my tears and the hand that now uselessly clung
to the knife in his side. My other arm was still free...

I may not have been left handed, but I'd be damned if
I was going to do anything less than make this asshole wish he was
dead by the time I was through with him. He'd likely return the
favor, but as long as I dished as well as I took, I was alright
with that. I closed my eyes for a second and called to all of that
raw power inside of me, glad I had stopped right by the sink while
they advanced on me. Alain said something else smarmy -and likely
filthy- that I didn't even bother wasting the focus to hear and
when my eyes snapped open, they were full of the light of a snow
covered mountain top at noon.

“Suck on this, motherfucker!” I snarled, leaning
backward and flipping the faucet on, grabbing a handful of water
and throwing it towards him. Everything slowed down in my mind
then, as the water droplets became a menagerie of glittering shards
of ice that sank into his bare flesh like they belonged there. A
few whizzed past him and narrowly missed the other boys. They
scrambled over each other to get out of the way, knocking over two
chairs and upending the table in the process.

Alain swore loudly and took a step back, grabbing
shakily at the makeshift daggers I'd impaled him with, his fingers
having trouble grasping at the slippery icicles. Without wasting a
second since my arms were both finally free, I grabbed a plate in
my left hand and brought the ceramic down hard onto his head,
breaking it into several pieces and knocking the young man to his
knees. It sent jolts of fire through my arm, but I managed to grab
onto the handle of a skillet in the sink behind me, glad for once
that Mom and Dad hadn't bothered to wash the dirty dishes from
breakfast before they'd left for work in the morning.

I braced it with my left hand and wound up like I was
stepping up to the plate at Yankee Stadium, following through with
every ounce of strength I could muster, swinging the cast iron
skillet towards the side of his head. If I'd had the chance to
connect, it would have caved his skull in like a blacksmith's
hammer crushing an egg against an anvil. But rather than having the
skull shattering satisfaction I was hoping for, all that kinetic
energy came to a screeching halt about an inch from his head as an
unseen force pressed down upon me. The tendons in my arms stood out
as I tried to fight against it to no avail, and another man stepped
from the shadows.

His hair was long and feminine, thick and straight
auburn to his waist. His frame was very slight in comparison to the
heavily muscled wolves before him and they parted to allow him to
pass, walking casually forward to come to stand behind Alain. His
hand was held out before him at about waist level, fingers splayed
wide. Clearly this man was the one who had saved Alain's brains
from decorating my linoleum like a Jackson Pollock.

When he spoke, his voice drew me to look into his
eyes, a brilliant blue like the shell of a robin's egg. They had a
faint glow, but it was different from the heat of the werewolves'
amber gazes. His was like mine, a cold light, but deeper and
somehow dark in a way that made me think of bioluminescent grave
moss. "Even for being so freshly awakened, your power is truly
impressive, little goddess."

His voice rolled over me in a rush, sliding against
my skin like I imagined the hands of an experienced lover might.
Firm, assured, exploring… I shook my head to clear the odd haze of
lust that fogged over everything. “And who the fuck are you?” I
snarled, my hands still trembling with the effort of trying to
crack Alain’s skull like an egg.

His chuckle was velvet rolling inside of me and I
finally dropped the skillet, my fractured wrist giving up the
ghost. Heat curled in my belly and he spoke before I could scream
further obscenities at him. “I am Enoch. But with time, you will
know me as Master.”

I scoffed at that one, rolling his name over in my
mind. It sounded familiar. Almost… Biblical. “Holy shit…” I
murmured, raising my gaze to meet his and the smug expression on
his face. “You mean like Enoch, eldest son of Cain?”

My parents weren’t very religious, but they’d always
encouraged me to be knowledgeable. If you read the Bible like it
was a novel, it had some awesome parts. Lots of smiting.

He laughed and the sound of it startled me from my
thoughts. “Dearest Kacea, your mind does have a way of wandering
off, doesn’t it?”

So he could read my thoughts. In that case…

I’m a little teapot, short and stout. This is my
handle, this is my spout… My expression was blank, empty, and I
watched him closely to gauge his reaction.

Unsurprisingly, Enoch was amused but slightly
displeased. He walked toward me then with the slow, assured gait of
a predator. Something not human, and ultimately more dangerous than
the furballs he surrounded himself with. Alain, broken and unhappy,
moved to make room for the slender man who seemed to control them.
He came to a halt mere inches away from me and something like
electricity crackled across my skin from his nearness.

False bravado made me speak to fill the uncomfortable
silence between us, getting back to my question he‘d artfully
dodged. “But if there was any truth to that, then you’d be almost
six thousand years old…”

Before my very eyes, his completely changed. All
color within his eyes was swallowed by an inky darkness more
infinite than the depths of the oceans that sent a shudder of fear
down my spine. "What are you?" I whispered, my voice thready and
not sounding at all like me.

He smiled then, and it wasn’t the least bit pleasant.
A maw full of row upon row of sharp teeth, carnivorous and
shark-like, grinned at me. I wanted to run and hide in a corner,
curl up in a ball and cry, but I was immobilized with terror. When
he spoke again, his voice was different, hollow and oddly ringing.
“I told you, silly girl… I am your Master.”

He reached out to touch me with fingers now tipped
with claws as black as his eyes, and the moment his skin touched my
cheek, the world around me faded and I was plunged into a void of
darkness and an infinite sense of nothingness.

Chapter 16

I don’t know how long I was out, but it seemed like
an eternity had passed while I was unconscious, floating in that
cottony abyss of oblivion. When I did wake up, I instantly wished
that I could slip back into the quiet that had cocooned me after
Enoch knocked me out. My arm felt like it was on fire, my wrist
still twisted at an odd angle that was far from natural, and even
farther from comfortable.

Wincing against the pain, my eyes flicked about and I
quickly took in my surroundings. I assumed I’d been kidnapped by
Enoch, Alain, and the rest of his band. Make that his pack. I was
on a couch in a room that looked like an old parlor. Like something
you’d see in a bad vampire movie based in New Orleans, complete
with a plush red velvet couch with a matching loveseat and chair
adjacent. The walls were done in a rather elegant black and white
damask design, and as I set my bare feet to the floor, I discovered
that the carpet was just as opulent as the surrounding furnishings
implied. It was a sizeable room, and it had two doors that entered
it, but no windows. That left me wondering what time of day it
was…

I went to lean on the arm of the couch, resting my
hand on the thick padding. It tore a brief shriek from my lips at
the agony and I clutched at it with my left, cursing myself for
letting them know I was awake. So much for having enough time to
hatch a proper escape plan...

A better idea came to mind. Since I wasn’t
restrained, I could try to heal my arm so I’d be in top fighting
form once my captors did arrive, as they undoubtedly would. I
slumped onto the couch and held my left hand over my fractured
right forearm, closing my eyes and focusing, drawing on that deep
well of energy within me that sparkled with magickal potential. I
visualized the bones knitting back together and the flesh sliding
back into the places it was supposed to be without a scratch to
show what damage had been done, and then reality punched me in the
throat.

Every nerve ending in my body felt like it was on
fire. More specifically, like I’d just stuck my fingers into an
electrical outlet. I convulsed and twitched myself right off the
couch. My heartbeat stalled from the voltage suddenly running
through me for seemingly no reason. As soon as I stopped fixing my
arm, the immediate shock disappeared and only the residual pain
remained.

I could smell charred flesh, and it smelled a little
like dinner. It set my stomach to growling and then to roiling when
I realized that the tasty meat scent was coming from me. My neck
felt hotter than anything else and I lifted my hands to find a
silver choker was wrapped around it. “What the fuck?” I murmured,
running my fingers all around the thin band, maybe half an inch
wide. It felt smooth, and I couldn’t find a seam or clasp on it
anywhere. Panicking, I tried to slide fingers under it to try
tugging it off. Only succeeding in making myself cough, I gave up
finally.