The Wild Side: Urban Fantasy with an Erotic Edge (8 page)

She kissed him before he could respond.

* * *

Her plan was simple. Armando hated it.

“Look,” she said as they headed to the studio, “we already discussed it. If Georg knows where my house is, how long before he comes back? I’m involved now, and I can help, so get over yourself and your overbearing loner-guy pose.”

Armando shook his head but finally gave up arguing with her. He dropped her at the front of the studio.

She let herself in, disarmed the alarm, and headed to the rear. She quietly went to the door and checked the peephole. She jumped back at the sight of an amber eyeball completely filling the view. She stood back.

“Liz, open the door,” Armando said.

“Don’t play games,” she scolded in a low whisper.

“Sorry,” he said.

Before he could continue, his ears pulled back, and he shoved her into the dark doorway. He turned to face the silhouetted figure coming down the alleyway.

“Working late tonight?” the man sneered. He kept coming. “I’m done talking to you. It’s time your packs accepted our leadership.”

“Georg, you can’t really expect seven fully autonomous packs to suddenly accept your rule.” Armando stood his ground, planted like a tree.

Georg shook his head. “I can’t believe the continued insolence of you curs.” He sighed loudly, as if in mourning for a time gone by. “Do those weak pups appreciate that you will die for them tonight? Would they even care?” He dropped his overcoat casually over a garbage barrel. He motioned to someone down the alley.

Liz wondered how bad the trash talk would hit Armando, but she remained still. As they glared at each other, she slowly pulled her pistol from her pocket. In their planning argument, Armando warned her off bringing the weapon, but lacking wolf claws and jaws, she was determined to protect him as best she could.

Raging howls stopped her cold. Tricked by the shadows, she took a moment to focus on the sudden swirl of dust and fog that resolved into two huge wolves staring each other down. Matched in size, they differed only in color, one solid gray in the dim light, and the other darker with an odd white tip on his ears.

Liz’s heart raced. Armando had not transformed into the cougar. How the hell was she supposed to know which wolf was him?

The animals circled one another, snarling, teeth bared, each looking for the other to back down.

Her heart pounded and she struggled to stay still as their circling stopped. White-tip leapt at the throat of the gray. It faked high, then dove low and grabbed the exposed flesh below the jaw. It lost its grip as Gray shook his head and rolled at the same time, forcing White-tip onto his back. Before White-tip could get up, Gray clamped its jaws on the exposed throat of White-tip, growled, and increased the pressure.

Liz was nearly paralyzed in confusion. She had to break up the fight enough to figure out which wolf was Armando. She dropped her gun back into her pocket and grabbed the broom from inside the doorway. As Gray shook his head, she planted her feet behind him and swung for all she was worth with her improvised bat. She bounced from the impact and fell back into the shadow.

The gray wolf released his opponent and fell back, more shocked than hurt by her blow. It spun, looking for its attacker. Liz froze and held her breath, wishing frantically that it would move before she passed out.

White-tip stood and faced her. She saw the glowing amber eyes. She clung to the wall, hoping the harsh breathing of the two wolves covered her sudden gasp.

Gray backed to the opposite wall and swiveled between Armando and her location. The broom lay on the pavement. Gray clearly couldn’t see her.

White-tip faced her direction still, sniffing deeply.

Without warning, Gray leapt over Armando and grabbed his neck from behind. It buried his teeth in the flesh behind Armando’s head and shook its whole body, ripping into Armando. Armando struggled to roll or swing his head to throw off Gray, whimpering in rage and pain. Gray forced Armando down, stood on him, and raised its head in a triumphant howl. It bent and opened its jaws wide to bite Armando another time—maybe, Liz realized, for the last time.

With more calm than she thought she possessed, Liz pulled the pistol from her pocket. She aimed for the biggest target, its chest, and calmly squeezed the trigger. She prayed the gray did not have amber eyes, too.

The impact of the close-range shot blew the gray wolf off Armando and tossed him on the pavement in a tangled heap. Armando jumped up and over him, nuzzling into the wound, assessing the damage.

As if the pain forced a change, the gray returned to his human shape. Its body slowly extended, stretched, and changed color. Jaw dropping, Liz watched as fur slowly became flesh. The gaping hole in the shoulder of the wolf now was a wound in a man’s right shoulder trickling blood. The man panted, but his eyes were alert.

Liz ran into the studio and grabbed a wad of towels. She ran into Armando, naked and himself, as she charged back out.

“What are you doing?” he growled, his voice raspy and deep.

“Oh, get the hell out of the way,” she yelled back. “I hurt him, and he’s bleeding. I just want to staunch the blood.” She shouldered past him and stopped when she realized the other man was gone.

“Where is he?” she said.

“Why would he stay?” Armando said. “Georg doesn’t know exactly how, but he lost. And he won’t be back.” His words carried a tone of finality. “His pups saw him lose to me.”

Liz looked around as Armando picked up his clothes and realized Georg’s clothes were also gone.

“We get a boost in recovery from the transition,” he explained as he dressed. “He’ll be fine in a few hours, but his pack will know I beat him.” He paused. “It’ll be interesting to see how the situation plays out. Maybe we should go see their show tomorrow night.”

“More importantly, I won,” he grinned down at her, “because I had you, my secret weapon.”

Liz backed away from his intense gaze and disappeared into the dark, then reappeared to grab his hand.

“No,” she said. “We won, and
I
have you.” She grabbed the back of his neck and pulled him in for a kiss. “Before we go to any show, though, you still owe me a slow, slow time in the tub.”

GINA MASSEL-CASTATER
works at a marketing and technology assessment company in the Research Triangle Park area of North Carolina. She is a mother and grandmother who has come late to the discipline of actually writing, instead of talking about writing.

She responded to my request for an afterword with the following:

Liz is a reaction to one of the oddities of aging: becoming slowly invisible in a youth-driven culture. I noticed that I could walk through a department store without causing a stir or even a “May I help you, ma’am,” from a salesclerk. On various trips to Las Vegas for business and pleasure, I noticed the effect was even more pronounced.

I wanted to see what would happen if the invisibility became an asset rather than a brutal rite of passage into the second half of life. Liz learns to embrace the power she has been granted.

I look forward to revealing more about Liz.

FOR A GOOD TIME, CALL . . .

TONI L.P. KELNER

Witch’s Haven had been customer-free for most of the day when the phone rang. It was the middle of November, so the yahoos who thought Salem would be the perfect place to spend Halloween had taken their SUVs back to whatever suburban nightmare they’d come from, and I’d already packed up all the tacky souvenir crap they would have wanted to buy. The local practitioners and practitioner-wannabes who kept the store going the rest of the year knew that my family—grandmother, mother, aunts, sister, cousins and all—were all off on their post-Halloween vacation. Excuse me, their Renewal Retreat.

That left me alone with a stack of paperback westerns, and I’d have been just as happy if the status had stayed quo, but the phone rang a second time. Since I was theoretically there to serve our customers, I reached for the green glass spray bottle my sister Ennis had left for me. She’d thoughtfully written out a label, in calligraphy, with the instructions.

For Maura:

Apply to both hands before using phone.

Do not let phone come into contact with bare skin.

“Because of course I’d forget how to use the stuff if she didn’t write it down,” I muttered as I spritzed first one hand and then the other. It even smelled nice. After a second of waving to make sure the potion had dried, I gingerly picked up the phone and put it to my ear. “Witch’s Haven.”

“Maura, that’s great,” Ennis chirped. “Your voice isn’t breaking up at all. I knew that potion would help. Now if I can just teach you more control . . .”

“I have plenty of control,” I said between clenched teeth. It might have been more convincing if there hadn’t been a loud snap at that moment.

“Control, Maura. Just keep repeating that chant I taught you.”

I took a deep breath, and managed to stop the feedback on the line. “I can’t chant and talk on the phone at the same time.”

“You can mentally chant while you speak—it’s really not that hard if—”

“What’s up, Ennis? Is something wrong?”

“No, of course not. What could go wrong with this many of the Kith in one place?” She giggled at the very thought. “The retreat has been just wonderful, Maura. I really wish you’d change your mind. Close up the shop and join us.” I might have been touched by her invitation if she hadn’t added, “Even you’d be able to sense the richness of the vibrations.”

“I don’t want to let our customers down,” I said, managing to cause only a couple of pops. “In fact, I can’t talk long—the store is so busy today.” Fortunately, Ennis couldn’t smell a lie over the phone.

“Well, if you’re there anyway, you can take care of that herb delivery from Rodric.”

“He hasn’t brought them yet.”

“Well, duh! He can’t come to the shop—he’d have to cross ley lines, and that would diminish his powers for a week! You have to go pick them up and get instructions for storage.”

Slight crackles. “You said he’d call when he had the order ready. He hasn’t called.”

“Bother! He said it would be this week.”

Since it was only Wednesday, it was hardly reason for concern, especially since Ennis was going to be gone for another week and a half. “Anything else?”

“Don’t forget that we’re setting up the circle tonight, which means we’ll shut off our cell phones and—”

“I know what happens in a circle,” I said. Just because I had no power to add to the ritual didn’t mean I hadn’t seen plenty. I’d even enjoyed them—it was the rest of the retreat that I dreaded, when people talked about techniques and methods that were meaningless to me or, even worse, stopped talking about them whenever I came near. Of course, even that was better than when I was a teenager, when the Elder Sisters of the Kith took turns trying to coax an Affinity, any Affinity at all, out of me.

“Of course you do,” Ennis said in that soothing tone that made me want to pull every hair out of my head or, far more satisfying, hers. “I just wanted to remind you that you won’t be able to get in touch with us by mundane means, and since you can’t use magical methods, I don’t know what you’ll do in an emergency.”

“I think the Salem Police, the Massachusetts State Police, the National Guard, the Coast Guard, and the Girl Scouts will be able to take care of anything that arises,” I said.

There was a pause as she tried to figure out if I was joking. “Well, I suppose you could send somebody to find us, but that would disrupt our—”

“I’ll be fine.” Despite my best efforts, there was a particularly loud pair of pops. “I better let you get to the circle.”

“One other thing. Aunt Hester asked me to give you a message. She had a premonition, something about a man wanting your help.”

“Seriously?”

“I know.” Ennis giggled again. “Her record isn’t very good when it comes to you, is it? But you know Aunt Hester—she insisted that you needed to be told.”

The phone line crackled ominously. As far as I knew, the only one of Aunt Hester’s predictions that had ever failed to come true was the one about my Affinity. She still insisted that I was destined for great power some day. Not even my mother believed her anymore.

Ennis went on. “Anyway, she said you should do your best for him. Which is silly. Even if somebody did ask for anything important, you’d know better than to get involved. I mean, what could you do?”

“Bite me, plant girl,” I muttered, wincing at the resulting sound effects from the phone.

“What? There’s a lot of interference.”

“Just trying a new chant. Anything else?”

“No, that’s it. But if anybody does ask for help, just take his info and tell him somebody like me will be in touch after the retreat. You stay out of it, okay?”

The phone crackled so loudly I had to pull it from my ear, and I said, “Gotta go. There’s a customer waiting.” Then I slammed the handset down before it started sparking. If we ended up needing a new cordless phone, Ennis could pay for it. Did she have to be so freaking superior? Sure she had one of the most powerful Affinities of our generation. Hell, she could make plants do anything for her short of dancing the lambada whereas my only talent seemed to be destroying telephones, modems, and anything connected to them. Did that really make her better than me? I decided against answering that question.

I managed to get through the next couple of hours without having to use the phone, and the only customer was a bus-trip refugee looking for “real witches.” The herbs that make up most of our stock didn’t hold her attention for long, and Aunt Phoebe’s anti-theft spell meant that I didn’t have to keep an eye out for shoplifting, so I ignored her until she got bored and left.

Around four, the phone rang again, and as I reached for it, I managed to knock the spray bottle off the shelf. It promptly fell onto the floor and shattered into a ridiculous number of pieces. Ennis’s potion spread over the floor, which would now be impervious to my phone-destroying powers until the end of time.

“Shit!” I could ignore the phone and let it go to the answering machine, except I’d probably short out both machines when I tried to retrieve the message, and it might be important. Or I could dip my hands in the pool of potion in the floor, and get cut by the glass shards. Or I could answer the phone like a normal person and hope for the best. But what I did was to pull down the arm of my long-sleeved Witch’s Haven T-shirt so that my hand was covered, and use the makeshift glove to hold the phone in the general vicinity of my ear.