Werewolves & Wisteria (13 page)

He squeezed my hand again.

When the fire had burned down and the sun was coming up, I was too tired to care anymore. We left the pack and gathered by the Trooper, and when Charlie reminded me that he could just snap his fingers and get us home, I nearly cried in relief. We weren’t traveling with a werewolf because Vince was staying through the full moon, and the long drive was no longer necessary.

But before Charlie could raise a hand to transport us, Martha pulled a small vial from her pocket and gave it to him.

She smiled, pleased with herself. “I made it with Walter’s last threads of life. I don’t need to tell you how powerful they are as a protectant, coming from a werewolf. Drink it, and let your curse fall, and it still won’t be able to harm you.”

Charlie stared at it and frowned. “You let him die to do this.”

“He was going to kill himself, with or without me. He said the pack wouldn’t have him back, and even if we freed him from Stark, he would live in fear of him the rest of his life,” she said, looking at the ground. Charlie still didn’t look like he believed her, and even Lyssa looked troubled by the thought. “I told him I was going to take it, though, and he knew who it was for. Don’t let him die in vain, Charlie. Stark got away, and this can level the playing field.”

He looked at Lyssa, and so did I. Lyssa took a deep breath, and then nodded. Evil as it seemed, it was done, and Martha was right—it might have been our only chance to break Stark’s advantage.

“Why would you do this for me?” Charlie asked, focusing on Martha again. “You’re not going to get anything out of it.”

“Maybe I’m just here to help,” she shrugged. “Just like I’ve been saying all along.”

Charlie hesitated for a moment when he opened the vial, but then he drank it. I blinked, and we were home again. Gates was watching television, and with another snap of his fingers, Charlie had cleaned up the blood stains and set my apartment back to right. It was early Saturday morning, and I was going to sleep until Monday.

I had just said as much when a knock came at the door. Being the closest, Charlie reached over to open it.

She was standing there, wearing leggings under a knee-length skirt, with a beige hip-length cape wrapped around her shoulders. Her red hair was pulled back into a ponytail and while I knew she was at least sixty years old, she didn’t look a day over thirty. Being a demon’s bridge had its perks.

She looked at Charlie in surprise. He looked back, and neither of them moved.

“I’m sorry.” Kendra’s voice was barely a whisper.

Chapter 13

They stared at each other for a moment longer, and I saw tears welling up in Kendra’s eyes.

“I’m sorry,” she said again. She started shaking her head. “I couldn’t break it, and I didn’t know what else to do…”

Charlie embraced her, and she said something else that was lost into his shoulder. They stood there, and Charlie kissed the crown of her head before she turned her face up to kiss him. I turned to go to my room and give them some privacy. Lyssa gave me a smile and a wink and went to do the same.

But the odd look on Martha’s face made me stop.

I heard a scuffle behind me, and turned back to see that Kendra was staring at Martha with a fixed anger, even through the misty nostalgia in her eyes.

“I didn’t think you were coming,” Martha frowned.

Kendra’s voice was still so quiet when she spoke. “You wanted someone worthy, Charlie. This is the person.”

He didn’t hesitate. He didn’t even ask.

Charlie snapped his fingers, and Gates was human again. Martha was a cat.

“But she knew you!” Lyssa babbled. “You were friends, and the thing with the college professor, and that time on the Ferris wheel when—!”

“We were friends,” Kendra said, stepping forward and picking up the cat. She set her on the table. “
Were
friends. You know how much these girls mean to me after everything I did for their mother, and still, you’re here. The next word you say is the name of the person who sent you, Martie, or you’ll never speak again.”

Martha stared at her from behind feline eyes. “Draven. He needs the book.”

Kendra closed her eyes, looking down. “I told you. I
told
you…”

“I wasn’t here to hurt them,” Martha said calmly. “I only wanted to know them.”

“To
judge
them,” Kendra accused.

“Our family is dying. We need new blood—”

“You can’t have theirs,” Kendra said firmly. “We had a pact, Marti. I should have known that you would fold on it.”

“I wouldn’t want
her
blood anyway!” Martha said with a look at me. Having withstood so many jabs from Charlie, Kendra had finally raised her ire. “She’s already touched the darkness. She’s unworthy!”

Kendra did a double take, and Charlie raised a hand to his mouth. Lyssa looked from me to the cat and back.

“What?” she asked. “Annie, what is she talking about?”

“She never talks again,” Kendra said to Charlie.

Martha hissed in response.

Lyssa had gone pale. She reached, looking for something to steady herself, and finally grabbed onto the wall before sinking to the ground.

“You said you saved her before…” she looked at Charlie. Then she looked at me. “Annie, did you…? Were you…?”

I clutched the sumac at my neck again, and it felt unusually hot in my hand. “Only for a very short time. Charlie brought me back.”

“You
remember
it?” she squeaked. Tears had started to pour from her eyes, and I felt like I was watching her learn news of my death. She was my sister, or at least, she had been—because she was looking at me now like I was a stranger.

Kendra had bowed down to help her to her feet. She held her in a tight side hug, saying things about how they would figure it out. She took her into the hidden rooms in the kitchen, like she had been in my apartment a thousand times before.

When she came back, she looked at Gates, confused.

She opened her mouth, and then smiled, offering her hand. “You’re the old cat. Gates, was it?”

Gates looked like a doe in headlights as she shook hands with Kendra.

“Gates…” Kendra wrinkled her nose and shook her head. “Were your parents Star Trek fans?”

Gates’ face lit with surprise. “You’re the first person to ever get that on the first guess.”

“She hates me,” I said, still staring after Lyssa. “She’s never going to love me again.”

I thought, or maybe I had hoped, that Kendra would deny it. She didn’t.

“We all have our challenges, Anise,” she said. “I’ve overcome worse, and so will you. And so will Lyssa. You’re sisters, so just give her time. For now, get some sleep. You look like you need it.”

Lifting Martha into her arms, she turned back to Charlie, looking grateful and apologetic and mischievous all at the same time.

“Charlie, let’s go home.”

And they disappeared.

Preview

Hawthorn Witches Novella #4: Vampires & Vinca

Coming March 2016

Chapter 1

- Kendra -

I laid awake in bed for a long time, just feeling Charlie beside me. He didn’t sleep, and he never slept, but he knew me. He knew that I spent a lot of sleepless hours thinking, and he was kind enough not to interrupt when he didn’t need to.

Stark was finally gone. He was still out there, but he was gone.

This was the moment we had dreamed of for more than a year after Stark had finally pushed us over the edge. There had been a lot of moments that had brought us together, actually, but none as fulfilling as this one.

It was snowing the day that I met Stark. He wandered into my greenhouse like a customer, even though I knew I had locked the doors.  He brought the cold with him when the bell chimed his entrance, but as he stood across the aisle from me, staring with frigid, mischievous green eyes, I thought he looked like a Norse god.

He didn’t say anything before he dug the knife into my chest, looking for my heart. I had taken it out days before when Adeline called me; someone had been skinned. There was a warlock lurking.

He never found my heart, though he kept me captive in the greenhouse for days afterward.

Charlie found it. Stark was out looking for another witch, in case I didn’t pan out for his plan. I tasted pure terror when Charlie lifted the veil I had laid over a hole in the ground beneath the juniper bushes.

I tried to face him with dignity when he came to me with my heart in his hands. It was my death knell.

“Is there somewhere safer?” he asked me. “Do you have any friends that can be trusted this much?”

Yes. I had many, but the years had left some dead and some unreachable. None of them would trust a demon bearing a heart.

He took it somewhere. I didn’t know where, and that was probably for the best.

I think my confidence in the following days was what inspired Stark’s affection. He let me out of the bonds, and told me to fix dinner.  I did it.  For three nights in a row. And just when he had started to make casual conversation with me, I poisoned him with my own special blend of nightshade and other toxins.

Sitting across the table from each other, I continued to calmly eat my soup as he started to drink more and more water to ease his dry mouth.  Then he started to sweat and cough, and when he fell from the table to vomit, his demon appeared to save him.

I thought he would kill me for sure after that, but once his health was restored, he laughed. He said I was the most clever witch he had ever met. Really, I was only the luckiest.

He laid protections against me after that. I did the same against him.

And then, out of mutual respect, we parted ways.

I didn’t see him again for weeks. The snow thawed on the grounds, and new life had just started to fringe green on the earth. Charlie burst through my door at two in the morning, his master slung over one shoulder, frantic and and more frightened than I had ever thought a demon capable of.

Stark had been mauled by a werewolf, and while he had taken great care to ward himself from infection, the fur and saliva and blood was in the wounds. Charlie couldn’t remove it, and he couldn’t heal it as a result. He was going to die.

I was going to let him.

That night started my true education in demons. Charlie begged me to save the life of his friend. He told me that Stark had saved his life years before and brought him back to health, and even though it ripped at me to watch someone, even a demon, lose a loved one, I refused to intervene.

Then, he had appealed to our one commonality.

“If he dies, I may very well go with him,” he said. “I saved your life. You owe me this.”

I had my arms crossed over my chest when he said it, and I felt the steady rhythm of my beating heart. I got the things I needed, and I saved his life—not for Stark, but for Charlie. And we never spoke of why I had decided to help him again.

Nursing Stark back to health was a trick, because he refused to eat anything I brought him the first week. He was quick to learn.

I ate from the same cups and bowls that he did to finally convince him. There were still things that I might have poisoned him with, things that I had a built up a tolerance for, but I neglected to mentioned them. Stark didn’t seem to have much knowledge of witches as living entities.

Two weeks passed before he was well enough to leave bed. He only said two words to me in the entire time we were together, and he looked me in the eye when he said them.

“Thank you.”

And then he walked out the door.

Charlie had thanked me every single night, waiting until Stark had passed out or gone to sleep, but those two words spoke volumes more.

He came back the next month, asking my assistance in harvesting living orchids direct from the Himalayan mountains. He offered to let me keep some as payment for my time. But the Himalayas were too far, and even wild orchids hardly covered the time, expense, and frustration of getting there.

That was where Charlie came in.  He snapped his fingers, and we were there.  Across the world to the most exotic place I had ever been before, and back home again in the same afternoon.

He came back again for bromeliads and sage, and then for peonies, and then for common marigolds. I knew he didn’t need them.  He could have got them anywhere, but he came to me.

Like all of my most fantastic mistakes, alcohol was involved when we became more than just acquaintances. I can’t say in total honesty that the alcohol was to blame. 

The world looked upon Stark as a monster, but the life of a witch is that of a solo practitioner. We don’t have a common religion, and we don’t congregate with others outside of our own families. Even then, we tend to secrecy and seclusion. It gave me an objective view to those things that the world described as good or evil, and Stark was one of those things.

I make no excuses that being with him was a good idea. It wasn’t even the strangest relationship, or the worst, that I had ever fostered.

I learned things from him, and he learned things from me. I came to enjoy his presence, and Charlie’s, when they were around. Then, I came to prefer it.

On the night that he hit me hard across the face, though, I knew I had to get rid of him.

Charlie was the one who came to me that night as I stood by the workbench holding ice to my cheek and trying to find a spell to kill him. I didn’t have one, and I knew it—the magic of my ancestors wasn’t about hatred, revenge, or death. There were a few curses that I had learned from Stark, but none of them were bad enough, and I hadn’t managed to work any of them on my own. But, oh, how I wanted a spell to kill him that night.

Charlie took the ice from my hand and touched my face. I expected it to hurt, but the pain went away. I touched my cheek and the swelling was gone. He had healed me.

He already seemed to know, but he asked anyways. “Tell me what happened.”

I didn’t know. His rage seemed to come out of nowhere, and Charlie told me that was how the end usually came about with Stark’s relationships. He tired of his games after so long, and then things got ugly. Impatience and boredom had always been weak spots for the warlock.

Charlie lamented my situation with me, because I knew it wasn’t going to end with a mutual parting of ways now. He said that he would help me any way that he could, and told me that even as close as they were, he had tired of Stark’s tirades long ago. I had seen Charlie do terrible things at Stark’s request, but I knew they were different because of how they treated me when we were alone.

I eventually asked Charlie why he had hidden my heart when we first met. It was one of those late nights when I was sitting by the workbench, nursing my wounds and wishing I came from more vindictive stock. He hesitated before telling me that I reminded him of a friend he’d had a long time ago. She was a kind witch who had been his first bridge into this world. He had watched her die, ripped apart by werewolves, and he couldn’t take seeing it again if it could be avoided.

Charlie soothed my nervous anger and healed my wounds. We had talked during the year I was with Stark, but never like we did that night. Our friendship didn’t last long after that, because Stark had heard a rumor that there were leprechauns hiding in a small town down south. He left to investigate, and he left Charlie behind, fearful I might be harvested if the rumor had attracted others of his kind.

Our late nights got later. Our talks became more personal. Our dislike of Stark and his crude methods became more mutual. Once again, it became more than I should have allowed.

I had met at least a dozen warlocks in my life, and none of them had the bond that Stark did with Charlie, because Charlie wasn’t his slave. Charlie came and went as he pleased. He insulted Stark, and Stark returned the slights in kind. They disagreed, and fought, and apologized, and gave each other gifts and trophies of their conquests. They were friends that only the centuries together could forge.

I intended it as revenge when I took Charlie to my bed, and compared to our early attempts on each others’ lives, it seemed innocent enough. I think there was a taste of that motive for Charlie, too. It was revenge, but to us, it became so much more. I never told Stark that it happened, and neither did Charlie, and Stark was too prideful to even consider the possibility that someone could betray him without his knowledge. He never saw it.

I probably should have felt guilty for what I was doing, but like I said, seclusion and an objective absence of judgment breeds a dangerous indifference. 

Some time later, Stark needed werewolf claws for one of his spells. Charlie often liked to tell me certain anecdotes while we laid in bed together, but this time was different.

“We tracked it to a house,” he said. “But the werewolf wasn’t home. His child answered the door instead.”

Charlie swallowed. He didn’t look at me.

“He killed him, after meeting his kid?” I pressed, frowning.

Charlie closed his eyes, shaking his head. “He killed the kid. He didn’t want to have to wait.”

He sat up in bed, rubbing his hands over his face. I was horrified, but I didn’t know why Charlie was. In the hundreds of years they had been together, he had surely seen or done worse.

“Charlie?” I sat up behind him to put my hands on his shoulders.

“They won’t work for the spell,” he said. “Children usually don’t work for this purpose, and he knows that. We’re going to have to find the guy and kill him anyway. And Stark knows who you are.”

I laid my cheek against his shoulder, confused. “What?”

“He
knows
who you are,” Charlie repeated. “He knows about the book. He’s been waiting you out, trying to find it. The time here is a drop in the bucket compared to all the years he’s lived, though this is the most patient I’ve ever seen him. I think he was hoping to win your affections. He’s starting to doubt that plan. He’s done. He’s going to kill you for the book, Kendra.”

I felt dread rise in my chest. I didn’t understand how it was possible for Stark to know about the book, but he had surprised me before. Charlie grabbed me by the shoulders to put some distance between us.

The look in his eyes as he analyzed me was so emotionless that it scared me. “I’m going to sever the bond. I won’t let him do it.”

It was like he had kicked me in the gut. “Charlie, no, if you do that—”

He would likely die. He knew. But so would Stark, and that was his plan. He wanted to weaken his master enough that I could kill him, and if Charlie had survived the ordeal, we would be reunited when I summoned him.

I told him I wouldn’t allow it. He said he was ready to die. He fell into a depression over it that we both had to hide from Stark. Friend or not, Charlie was afraid of being cast aside or burned up in a spell if Stark felt his usefulness had run its course. Meanwhile, I flirted like my life depended on it. It did.

I found a way, an old spell from an even older book, that would allow a demon to secretly take a second bridge, but the items that the spell called for weren’t easy to come by. I told Charlie I would become his bridge, and then we would get around Stark’s protection spells by leaving him in the Other Side instead of trying to kill him. We made plans for him to become a human, like me, but building a soul for him was going to be much harder. It would be worse, even, than the ingredients to make me his bridge behind Stark’s back.

I made a deal with him. I gave him my hair and made him promise that he wouldn’t sever the link with Stark unless all of our plans had already failed, and if I died before he did, I promised him my soul so that he could be human.

It was all downhill from there.

Charlie nearly gave us up several times as the weeks passed by. I could see him fighting himself not to say or do anything every time I became the object of Stark’s affections. It was worse when I was the object of his frustrations and anger.

But I told him we would make it out alive, and that was what mattered. He held to our deal.