Wolfs curse, p.13
Wolf's Curse, page 13
I didn’t have high hopes of that. Which meant somebody needed to stop this.
That somebody was me.
I fought for control of our shared vocal cords, but they refused to obey me. My second try involved punching at the inside of our body so hard bruises formed.
Ambrose—through my lips—only laughed. “For a hard man, your memories are remarkably squishy. You hid this woman because her alpha wouldn’t allow her to sing? Is that even a punishment? India, show us your voice.”
She opened her lips and shouted out defiance in the form of melody. “R, E, S, P, E, C, T!”
Our backhand caught her across the mouth that was her instrument of creating beauty. Slammed her off her feet and onto her side on the filthy linoleum even as she continued singing lyrics of female empowerment.
Because she had to sing. The compulsion hadn’t been lifted. And apparently India had chosen to use the tiny sliver of free will left to her by tweaking the nose of a murderer.
Then she couldn’t rebel even that much. “Enough.”
India’s silence was immediate as we stalked toward her on equally soundless shifter feet. I could feel Ambrose’s intentions before he lashed out with one foot, aiming for India’s throat this time.
Damage to a throat could change a voice forever. Injuring India there would be worse than death.
“You’re clever.” Our foot paused as I spoke, both of us surprised by my ability to affect a body Ambrose had ripped away from me by force. I fully expected him to seize back control, but instead he arched his back under my praise like a cat.
“Tell me more,” he demanded, one pair of lips holding a two-sided conversation.
India’s eyes widened, but I couldn’t allow Ambrose to focus on her. Instead, I continued to stroke my possessor’s ego.
“You want Tru, but you didn’t seize her at the first opportunity. That’s clever. She would have wriggled loose if you’d acted prematurely. Instead, you’re reeling her in like a fish on a line. Erik was a ploy to draw Tru’s attention, to get her running scared. I can see that. But why choose him instead of someone more important to your primary objective? Why not take on Lynette?”
“A human girl isn’t enough like me to possess. A werewolf bitch isn’t either, although I have ways of making her obey me.”
Ambrose cracked our knuckles as he spoke, the gesture sending India cringing closer to the floor despite the grime coating its surface. Her alpha used to force her father to beat her. Knock some sense into the girl, the bastard had growled. If she mouths off one more time…
I’d wanted to rip out that alpha’s throat when I met him, but an Executioner had to be hands-off except in dire circumstances. An Executioner-in-training even more so.
Plus, there was my inherited fire to consider. The fire and my promise never to kill for pleasure.
So I’d stolen India away from her alpha right under everyone’s noses instead of doling out extracurricular manslaughter. I’d stolen her away and created a village where she could be safe without being alone.
I’d thought I was so clever until I’d ended up breaking India’s heart when I introduced her to my brother. Then I broke her spirit when I offered her a life in which she could make music but not share it, when I didn’t push her to reenter the wider shifter world after her alpha and father both died of natural causes.
Now, my shod foot was so close to India’s unprotected skin it threatened to break something even more fragile. Because she’d bounced back from those early heartbreaks, but she wouldn’t bounce back if she ended up with a voice as soulless as mine.
“A human girl isn’t worthy of you, you mean,” I answered Ambrose while calculating angles. The windows in this apartment barely let in any light, and not just because they hadn’t been cleaned in decades. They weren’t big enough for a man’s shoulders to fit through but India should be able to scramble out. The question was, could she survive a fall from the second story?
She had a better chance falling than staying. After all, those bushes I’d dressed behind were scruffy on the back but leafy on top. The landing wouldn’t be pleasant, but it would give her a head start. Maybe enough of one to prevent an alpha command from freezing her in place while my body tried to catch up?
It might work. Assuming Ambrose wasn’t lying when he suggested he couldn’t simply hop out of my body and into India’s.
The plan was tenuous and it wasn’t ready to be deployed yet either. Because Ambrose was still watching India with the canny interest of a predator. “And Cedric?” I continued, attempting to draw the evil spirit’s attention away from her. “Why walk him over a cliff?”
“The bastard stunk of arousal. He wanted Tru. And Tru is mine.”
Ambrose’s fury riled up my sympathetic nervous system in a way I’d trained it not to rile. The fire spun through me. And as it did so, Ambrose’s attention toward India lapsed.
This was how I’d free her, I realized. Using my own body’s tendency to fire, I’d let Ambrose fan the flames until they burned out of control.
Once the fire raged, India would be forgotten.
I’d have to be careful, though. Would have to ensure Ambrose didn’t vent his ire on the woman at our feet.
Which meant it was time for more deflection. “Tru’s not yours though, is she?” I said softly. “You don’t even have a body. You’re dead.”
“Not anymore.” Our fist slammed into the wall, denting plaster. “I have this body.”
“Do you though?” As I spoke, I tried to move our eyes as well as our lips. It worked. Meeting India’s gaze, I glanced from her to the window then resolutely turned my attention away again. “If you really had this body, you wouldn’t be intent upon reeling Tru in. How long can you stay in my skin? A week? A day? Or even less?”
He growled. We growled. And that almost covered up the snick of the window’s lock.
“You aren’t just dead,” I prodded, speaking more loudly and hoping India would take advantage of the noise to push up the sash. “You’re rotten. I saw your bones. Well, most of them. What’s the deal with the missing skull?”
Our shoulders shrugged. “Do I really care that some bitch wanted a part of me? She woke me up. That served my purpose.”
“So you’re grateful?”
Our voice was a saw blade. “Predators aren’t grateful.”
“Predators don’t risk wisping away into nothing.”
Our heart rate picked up further. Not anger this time but fright, which I’d found was even better at building up that internal wildfire.
Ambrose was afraid of losing himself to the void. So I used that, poking at his insecurities. “You got lucky with the skull. You won’t get lucky again.”
“I won’t have to get lucky. Tru is the key.” The fire, unfortunately, was damping down as fear transitioned into anticipation. “She gave me one life already and that won me a century. The bitch’s wedding vows died with her, though, did you know that? But she’s mated to your body, which will be more effective than a human marriage. She’ll come here willingly. She’ll give herself to me thinking she can save you. And then this body will be all mine.”
Now I was the one causing our shared heart to pump double time. I was the one letting fire speak for me, telling us both something I only half believed. “Tru wouldn’t walk into a trap.”
“But she’s already closer than she was five minutes ago. Can’t you feel it?”
I’d been so intent upon Ambrose threatening India that I hadn’t paid attention to the bond I’d worked so hard to pretend didn’t exist. The bond connecting me to Tru.
Now, I couldn’t help myself. I let myself become distracted by Ambrose just as he’d become distracted by me.
I had to look, and when I peered deep inside ourselves I saw that he wasn’t lying. My mate bond to Tru was strengthening by the minute. Which would have been wonderful…yesterday. Now, every second that passed, she drew closer to the evil that intended to steal a new body using her death.
It didn’t matter that the new body was mine. What mattered was that Tru couldn’t be the one who fell to fuel Ambrose’s hunger.
Fire tried to grab me, but I wasn’t lost to it. Wasn’t so lost I couldn’t work within the cold memory of this fire’s purpose.
So I spat out words aimed at India. “Go and sing!” I ordered.
Ambrose understood what was happening the moment I spoke. Our shared body pivoted despite my attempts to hold it frozen. We reached out to grasp India…one moment too late.
Because she’d already slid through the gap too small for us to follow. She fell, her voice rising into melody so loud she couldn’t hear Ambrose’s furious orders. The yodel hiccuped as she struck the bush but it didn’t cease.
Together, we watched India running naked and alone through a human neighborhood, Ambrose with no way to stop her and me with no way to help her. Then, at last, he wised up enough to slam me back down from behind his eyes, down into his belly where all I could see was the glowing tether connecting me to the woman I’d loved from the moment I set eyes on her.
The woman who couldn’t come here. Who I couldn’t allow to walk into the trap Ambrose had set for her.
Because he was right. Tru would do anything for those she cared about, and this mate bond made her care for me.
I’d created it without her permission. But I wouldn’t let it harm her.
This time, I let the fire grab me. This time I used inherited flames in the only way I could to save the woman I cared about.
Cupping the raging fire in both hands, I wrapped it around the most important connection in my life. And I held it there, despite the burn suffusing me, despite the pain in my gut promising loss would be agonizingly permanent.
I held the fire in place as the tether charred to ash far too slowly. I could only hope to burn all the way through our connection before Tru became caught in Ambrose’s trap.
Chapter 27
Tru
I accepted the huge water gun Rosa handed me and I called Kira to take over damage control on the video front. Then I drove, using instinct and some intangible direction sense to guide me toward my mate.
“Rosa thinks the solution is to push Ambrose out of Drake’s body with water,” I said aloud, speaking to Neko even though—ability to open portals through time aside—he was really just an ordinary kitten. Still, it was better to discuss what was to come with his furry head than to let my churning thoughts twist up my gut and confuse the mate bond guiding me south and east.
“But Ambrose won’t simply go poof,” I continued as Neko rubbed his cheek against the passenger-side door then reached up to scratch his ownership into the seat back. “He’ll just possess somebody else. Then we’ll have to identify the new victim before we can do anything about it.”
Neko chirruped out what I decided to take as agreement while I veered left onto a different highway that felt like it angled closer to Drake than the one I’d been following previously. Increased proximity soothed something raw inside me, but at the same time a pang in my belly negated that comfort.
And no wonder. It was supremely disloyal to ignore the obvious way to save the alpha werewolf who thought three steps ahead to protect everyone around him. If the shoe was on the other foot, Drake wouldn’t hesitate to force an evil ghost out of me with the water gun before worrying about the fates of harmless bystanders.
“And if I asked him, he wouldn’t hesitate to tell me to protect the Strays before himself,” I countered my own thoughts.
I only realized my voice had turned agitated when Neko paused his explorations in order to push himself up under my elbow. He was purring the way he purred when Lynette suffered through a particularly bad night and needed to be lulled to slumber. The kitten wanted to help, and he would. Just not yet.
“You’re going to have to be ready to open up a portal,” I told Neko, taking one hand off the steering wheel to rub between his velvety ears before nudging him back onto the passenger seat. “If we can pull Ambrose through to the past, Okaasan should be able to help me neutralize him.”
Or at least I hoped she could. My mother’s knowledge of spirits had led me directly to Kami, and the fact my no-longer-doppelganger hadn’t turned out to be the villain was on me not on my mother. Okaasan had warned me about assumptions and yet I’d jumped to entirely the wrong conclusion.
Again, that pang in my belly tried to derail me. Again, I returned my focus to the most important issue—my evil husband.
“Ambrose must have written a letter to set up our arranged marriage,” I mused aloud. “My mother would have kept it. Maybe we can use that connection to cage him long enough to force him out of the human sphere?”
I was grasping at straws, but straws were all I had.
And so I drove and talked to a kitten who tired of my monologue and fell asleep partway into the journey.
And the pain in my gut grew and grew the closer I drove to Drake.
Ambrose ignored my phone calls, but the mate bond had tightened into a firm tug by the time I pulled up in front of a house-turned-coffee-shop. He was in there. I knew it.
The fact my husband had chosen a public place after using videos of Erik and India’s shifts against us didn’t bode well, but I ignored my trepidation. Tucking Neko under my leather jacket, I smiled at the barista then wended deeper into the complex arrangement of rooms that still felt more like a home than a business.
The downstairs was well populated with humans sipping lattes and enjoying newspapers. But once I reached the second story there was no one in either the first or the second room I passed through.
Ambrose waited for me in the third.
He looked like Drake always had, tall, broad, and so attractive that the pain in my gut sharpened. Because what I hadn’t been able to force myself to say aloud, even to a kitten, was the way I intended to draw Ambrose with me into the past.
“Have a seat,” the man who looked like Drake but wasn’t him rasped, kicking out the empty chair on the other side of the small, round table. In the twenty-first century, his action meant nothing. But both of us had been raised in an earlier era. Both of us knew Ambrose was sorely disrespecting me by not coming to his feet as soon as I entered the room.
So I’d play the same game. “I’d prefer to stand,” I answered, dropping Neko to the ground.
The kitten’s sudden movement drew just as sudden of a reaction from my opponent. Now there was a handgun trained on me, small and terrifying as its barrel settled unerringly in line with my left foot.
“I won’t kill you,” Ambrose purred. That same purr from Drake had titillated my senses. From Ambrose, it felt like fingers invading my personal space, stroking lines of horror across my skin. “But even werewolves don’t bounce back when tiny bones shatter. Shall we find out if foxes react in the same way?”
Breath tried to elude me, but I somehow managed to keep my voice even. “I’m not threatening you. Neko is only a kitten.”
“So he is. Perhaps it would be even more amusing to splatter his furry little body across the floor?”
For a long moment, we both watched as Neko explored this space just like he’d explored my new car. He was cautious, picking up on my mood and steering clear of Drake even though he usually would have leapt up to demand scratches.
The kitten also wasn’t anywhere near pouncing at shadows. Who knew how long it would take him to decide to open a portal?
Until that happened, I needed to keep Ambrose occupied. So I let fear creep into my voice as I asked, “Amusement—is that why you wanted me here?”
“In a manner of speaking. Come closer.”
I didn’t want to take another step toward this man who’d killed me once already. And, at the same time, my body craved the solace of contact with Drake’s body. The connection between us was so solid now that I didn’t know how I’d missed it previously. Traveling with the mate bond as guide must have fed it, turning the tether two-sided as I dropped the barriers that had previously held me back.
My timing was terrible. I couldn’t choose Drake as a mate right now because…
“I said come closer.”
Ambrose marked each word with a tap of his gun against the table. The barrel was now pointed at Neko and I didn’t let myself think. Just stepped up to the table until I was blocking the shot and peering ever so slightly down at the face that had grown dear to me, now twisted by malicious hate.
“Your blood and the completion of your mate bond will cement me in this body,” Ambrose said as if he was demanding something as simple as a spare penny. “Then I’ll enjoy my husbandly privileges while allowing the previous tenant to watch.”
Until this point, I’d thought Drake was completely absent. But I caught a spark behind his eyes as Ambrose threatened me, like a wolf rising rampant inside a two-legged shifter’s body.
Drake was listening, unable to do anything. This was torture and I needed to end it.
Which is when Neko finally decided to open up a portal to the past.
Chapter 28
Tru
I caught my first glimpse of the swirling pool of light as a reflection in Ambrose’s eyes. “What is that?” he demanded, his rasp even rougher than usual.
Rather than answering, I opened my mouth to do what I had to do—break my mate bond to Drake, form a new mate bond to Ambrose, and use that bond to suck my evil husband through the portal along with me.
But I couldn’t do it. The pain in my belly intensified as warm memories played back through my mind like a movie on a cinema’s big screen.
Drake at Rosa’s stove in a ruffly apron, spatula at the ready as he cooked for the entire household. He’d nurtured everyone equally but he’d had eyes only for me.
Both of us hunting a mouse in Rosa’s living room, him herding and me pouncing. I’d known where he’d be without the need for words and he’d seemed to understand my movements just as easily. That mouse hadn’t stood a chance, and when I carried it out the back door and dropped it by the leaf pile, Drake had said something wry and at the same time warm about the dubious merits of catch and release.
