Entwined Strangers (BBW Shifter Romance): Sorcery & Shifters Book 4 (10 page)

“Why are you asking?” Trent asks.

“Have you ever known Felix to let somebody important leave his employ?” I ask, answering his question with a question.

The fogginess in his Trent’s expression clears. Suddenly he’s himself again. Lucid. Focused.

“No.”

Simple. To the point.

“I gather you know something about what happens to people like that?”

“Yes,” Trent says matter-of-factly. “They’re killed.”

Trent isn’t searching for the answers anymore. There’s no question in his mind. I’m pretty sure I know why. What’s more, that doesn’t matter right now.

“The people who leave his service. Is it fair to say that he only has them killed if they know something damaging about him?”

Trent nods. “Yes, and sometimes for even less than that. He’ll also have somebody killed if they represent a loose end. To put what we did today in perspective, I am not a loose end. I am full-blown containment leak. He wants me dead more than anything right now. You too.”

“Why me?” I ask.

“Lots of reasons, mostly because you were inside his private sanctum, but also because we’re talking right now. He’s afraid of what I’ll tell you.”

“What about my friends?” I ask.

“He’ll want to kill them too, even more so when they get here. Anybody I come into contact with at this point will be a target. He’s afraid of what I’ll reveal.”

It occurs to me now that Candice, Kumi, Saffron, and I have all been operating in this city under a false sense of security. We’ve been protecting Trixie remotely while believing that we were insulated from Felix. I’m sure the warlock knows exactly where we live.

For that matter, my brownstone is probably being watched as we speak. All of our homes. This is a lot more serious than I realized. Those snipers were shooting to kill in broad daylight. If trained on our homes, they could take any of us out from a distance.

If my concerns about Mason and Trent were foolish before, they’re completely irrelevant now. I don’t think we can stay in my place for much longer. We need to leave before Candice and Saffron get here with Mason and Sylvia. I don’t want to make them targets.

“You need to get dressed. We have to go.”

“Jess, that’s not going to be possible, unless you can teleport us out of here. I gather you would have done that already if you could.”

“What about those aqueducts under the city?”

“We can try, but Felix will definitely have men searching through there by now. It’s only a matter of time before we cross paths. If he has even an inkling of where you live, then they’re probably headed in this direction, if they aren’t here already.”

“Well, if they try to gain entry from any direction, they’ll be in for a world of hurt. This house is thoroughly warded against intrusion, and not by me, by Saffron. I don’t know anybody who can cast a more powerful spell than she can.”

“I remember,” he says, “but Felix’s men are prepared for that. They have ways of sensing whether or not a protective spell exists. If they detect one, they’ll send in a marked werewolves, like me.”

Like him? That’s when it dawns on me. Baldy. Cropped Hair. Trent. They’re not the only men working for Felix who have been tattooed with runes that make them immune to magic.

“How many other werewolves are tattooed?” I ask frantically.

“Felix has two packs that I know about. Six in a pack, plus a leader. Two from my pack are dead. So that leaves eleven other wolves. All tattooed.”

Trent must be able to see the look on my face. The dread that I’m feeling.

He steps out of the shower and grabs my shoulders. “What? What is it?” he asks me.

I blink for a second. Then find my words.

“Kumi didn’t set any mundane traps. This house is only protected by magical wards. Any one of those wolves could walk right in here without setting them off.”

That’s when I hear it. Trent does as well. A creaking floorboard upstairs in the hallway. Right outside the daybed room where Piper is sleeping.

I’m being slammed against the bathroom wall before I know what hit me. Mason pushes me aside like I’m not even there. He’s already out of the bathroom, around the corner, and up the stairs before I really knew what hit me.

His little girl is in danger. Nothing else matters to him right now.

I can’t move anywhere near the speed that Trent does, but I bounce off the wall and run after him, vaulting the stairs three at a time in a futile effort to catch up. Trent is already well around the corner.

I can hear him racing through the house, running toward the daybed room where Piper is sleeping. I can’t even say I’m right behind him, but I’m almost there. One more corner through a maze of hallways and I should be able to see him.

I finally get line of sight again, except Trent is not the only person I see. There are four people, two of which are bodies, their blood pooling on the floor.

Trent is standing next to the corpses. Both of the bodies are men, and both of the bodies are dismembered. One has been parted from his head. The other has been cut in half sideways.

A grisly sight, but one I have no problem stomaching, especially after recent events. At first I think Trent is responsible, but his hands are raised, held up as if in surrender. The reason is quickly apparent.

The edge of a sword is being held at his neck. A long Japanese blade that I recognize right away. She calls it a katana. I’ve have seen Kumi use it many times before, always to deadly effect. Today is no different.

She’s actually higher than Trent at the moment, but not because she’s taller than him. Kumi is higher because she’s braced in the hallway a few feet off the ground, a foot planted on the walls in near splits, and perfectly comfortable holding that pose.

Trent, on the other hand, has been caught by surprise. He wouldn’t have sensed Kumi until the sword was already against his neck. That doesn’t surprise me in the least. She has a way of not being heard or seen until she wants to make her presence known. It’s not even a magical trick. She’s just really good at hiding her presence.

“Kneel!” Kumi bellows with a Japanese accept. Trent can’t see her behind him, but she’s scowling. Not a good sign.

He does what she tells him.

Kumi isn’t dressed for battle, which means her dead opponents on the floor were unexpected. She’s wearing black slipper shoes, capri pants, and an embroidered white blouse under a collarless short coat.

Her face is beautiful and fierce, but more the latter than former right now. A dollop of blood drips off her sword onto the floor.

“Kumi! He’s with me! Don’t kill him!” I yell.

She spares a glance in my direction before re-training her eyes on Trent.

“I know, but I still want him to kneel.”

Kumi steps out of her position between the two walls. She lands soundlessly on the floor. Her sword arm adjusts to keep the blade in exactly the same place against Trent’s neck.

“I didn’t like him at first either,” I say, “but he helped me escape from The Vault today.”

She looks at me with surprise, probably because she knows how impregnable The Vault is as well. That’s saying something coming from Kumi.

“He broke in and got you out?”

“Not quite. Trent was already inside at the time.”

“I don’t suppose your friend could remove her sword from my neck?” Trent asks.

I look at my friend. She’s not standing down, completely alert and ready to cut Trent’s head off in an instant. I’ve seen her like this before. The moment before she’s about to strike.

“Kumi? What’s going on?”

“I know this one. We’ve fought before. He’s fast. Very fast. And strong. Trent, you say? I didn’t know his name before today.”

“And I didn’t know yours,” Trent says, still keeping his hands up.

That explains why Trent asked me about Kumi earlier, confirming that she’s Japanese. I thought it was a strange question at the time. He might have suspected that she was somebody he faced before. Trent even asked if she would listen to me.

“Saffron is here in the city,” Kumi continues. “She brought me up to speed and so I headed right over. She told me to expect Trent and his daughter. I didn’t expect it to be somebody I’d met before.”

“Saffron is here?” I ask, not hiding my surprise. “But she was several hours away! Did Mason drive that fast? Wait. Is Mason here too?”

Suddenly I’m feeling insecure. No, that’s not right. Dread is what I feel. I have to face him sooner than I was expecting. I have to decide if I’m going to tell Mason the truth or not.

“No. Your werewolf boyfriend is not here yet,” Kumi tells me.

She looks at Trent in front of her, naked, still dripping wet from the shower. Kumi sniffs the air.

“Just your werewolf on the side here.”

Blunt as ever.

“He’s not my… that’s is to say, Trent and I… it’s complicated. We’re allies for now.”

“So I’ve been told,” Kumi says without hiding her disdain.

“The sword?” Trent asks, still looking at me.

“I don’t understand,” I say to Kumi, ignoring Trent for now. “How did Saffron get here before Mason? The last time we talked, they were all in the same car together.”

Kumi looks at me. Her mouth opens, as if she’s about to say something, and then closes again, and she thinks before she speaks.

“I gather this one has been keeping you busy before I got here?”

She tilts her head toward Trent and then deliberately looks upward.

Right. The pool has probably been replenished enough for Candice and Saffron to cast spells again. Saffron would have teleported into town immediately. Candice would have started flying here. They would have left Mason and Sylvia to get here on their own.

This is Kumi’s way of being subtle without revealing anything to Trent. It doesn’t come easily to her.

“How much do you trust him?” she asks.

“Well enough. I trust him insofar as we have a common enemy right now. His former boss wants him dead. It just so happens that his former boss is Felix.”

That catches Kumi off guard. “He worked for Felix? That explains a lot. If anybody kills him, it should be the warlock. It would be a lot more painful that way.”

“I’d actually prefer it if nobody killed me at all,” Trent says over his shoulder.

“You two have fought before?” I ask Kumi.

“Yes. Here in town. I never understood why there were so many werewolves in this district. I coated one of my swords in silver specifically to deal with his kind. Now I know why I kept running into so many shifters. They’ve been working for Felix all along.”

“
Fighting
is an exaggeration. You surprised my men and executed them before they could lift a claw,” Trent says angrily.

It’s clearly a bitter memory for him. He doesn’t disguise it in his voice.

“There’s no bad way to kill a werewolf,” Kumi throws back at him. “Not much better than dogs, if you ask me.”

She doesn’t realize it, but one of her foxtails appears when she mentions dogs. It swishes back and forth furtively. My eyes bulge.

Kumi stares at me with curiosity. I look down and then sway my head from side to side. She frowns, but then follows my gaze and spots the indiscretion. The foxtail swishes behind her and disappears a second later.

“If I promise that I won’t attack your friend, will you ask her to remove the sword from my neck?” Trent asks me.

I grimace a little at Kumi, pleading for her to stand down. She glances at Trent and then raises a questioning eyebrow at me. I shrug and nod sheepishly. Kumi lazily blinks her eyes in agreement.

“Fine. If you swear to it,” I tell him.

Trent has already proven that he’s good for his word. If he promises, that’s good enough for me.

“I won’t attack Kumi…”

“Or any of my friends,” I add.

“Or any of your friends, so long as we all remain allies with a common enemy. And they don’t attack me first.”

Trent turns his hands up into the air, as if to sarcastically ask if that’s good enough. I smile that it is. She whips the blade away from Trent’s neck and takes a step back at the same time, always cautious.

Trent stands up. “Is Piper in here?” he asks, pointing to the door next to us.

I nod, and Trent cracks it open quickly to look inside. He gingerly closes it again a moment later. It’s almost comical how careful he’s being after everything that just happened.

“She’s still fast asleep,” he says.

Kumi artfully replaces the sword into a scabbard at her waist that wasn’t there a moment ago. I’ve seen this trick before. It’s an illusion will make the scabbard disappear the next time you look away or blink. Yet the sword will always be there. Ready to be drawn again.

The three of us look down at the bodies at our feet.

They’ve been there the whole time, but they haven’t been relevant until now. It’s like we all had a silent agreement to ignore their existence until this moment. Until we knew if any more bodies would be added to the pile.

There’s a lot blood and viscera. It will definitely need to be cleaned up.

Trent crouches to look at the faces of each man, including the beheaded one. He’s still completely naked from the shower, but totally unselfconscious about it. Wearing nothing must feel more natural to werewolves than wearing clothes.

“I recognize them. Both lieutenants. Not easy to kill. They belong to Felix’s second pack of wolves.” Trent looks up at me. “Now his pack and mine are both down by two men. That means nine werewolves with runic tattoos left, thanks to you,” he says to Kumi. “How long have you been upstairs?”

“I arrived while you two were still passed on out on each other in the meditation room. Then I waited upstairs for you to wake up. That’s when these two shifters showed up and started stalking through the house.”

I look to Kumi. There’s more going on than I’m aware of right now, especially with regards to Candice and Saffron. More than Kumi will say in front of Trent. I know this only because Kumi is here right now and not at her post watching over Trixie.

“I gather Saffron took over for you?” I ask.

“Yes,” Kumi answers.

“If two werewolves were sent here,” Trent adds, “then I’m sure there are more breaking into all of your homes, lying in wait.”