Secret Worlds (538 page)

In the blink of an eye, he had crossed the room, and knocked the gun from Holbrook’s hand with one massive paw as if it were insignificant as a water pistol. The eddying air buffeted me with his passage, ruffling my hair as he passed close. Too close. Struggling to track his movements, I watched Samson move back into the kitchen, returning to the same spot where he’d started.

Risking a glance at Holbrook, I saw the gun lying on the floor between his feet and his bandaged hand cradling the other, his face contorted in pain.

“You okay?”

“I think my finger’s broken,” he replied, his voice muffled by the lingering buzz in my ears.

“You’re just gonna have to suck it up, cupcake,” I said a little harsher than I intended, but we had other, more dangerous things to contend with for the moment.

Drawing in a deep breath, he rolled his neck and resettled his shoulders, once again donning the mask of all-around badass.

Damn that man is sexy.

Ignoring the ill-timed pulse of arousal, I turned my attention back to the ravening wolfman across the room and fought the urge to turn tail and run.

Prison had not been kind to Samson. The charismatic young man that had swept me off my feet all those years ago was gone, replaced by the gaunt and sallow monster before me. Dark brown eyes that had once held warmth now shone golden and were full of madness. Any remnants of sanity he may have once possessed were now as much a shadow as his easy smile. Dark hair hung in long matted strands around shoulders that were narrower than I remembered, caked with dirt and debris. He reeked of sweat, blood, and grime, the stink coming from his soiled clothes as much as his unwashed body.

I shuddered in revulsion as his lips spread in a rictus smile, baring yellowed teeth. Sometime in the last eight years one of his front teeth had been knocked out, leaving a gaping black hole in his manic grin.

“You dated this guy?” Holbrook whispered.

“He was a lot cuter back then,” I shot back without taking my eyes off Samson.

“Hello, Riley,” my psychotic ex-boyfriend said amiably, as if he wasn’t standing next to the busted out frame of my back door, the blood of a half dozen innocent men crusted in the thick fur covering his arms.

His voice held none of the smooth timbre I remembered. Where before he had always sounded on the edge of laughter, his voice was now rough and hoarse as if he had spent long hours screaming.

Maybe he has.

It took me several attempts to find my voice, my mouth gone dry. “H-hi, Samson.”

“I’ve been looking for you, Riley,” he said, stepping into the kitchen, each crunch of glass beneath his feet sending a shudder down my spine.

“Oh?” I asked, my voice shaking ever so slightly.

“I left you messages. Did you get them?” he asked with the earnestness of a child, the sideways tilt of his head adding to his childlike demeanor.

“I did.”

“What did you think?” he asked, moving away from the kitchen table to trail a hand along the back of the sofa, fingers stained with I didn’t want to know what dancing over my grandmother’s afghan.

Anger flickered to life in my stomach, red hot and sour as acid. How dare he touch her things,
my
things, as if he hadn’t torn my life to shreds along with my guts. Holbrook’s bandaged hand squeezing my wrist tempered my anger, his ever-present sense of calm washing over me in a cooling wave.

“Think of what?” I said, struggling to recall Samson’s words.

“My messages,” he growled, the sudden flare of anger drawing my gaze from the dark smears on his hand to the furious snarl on his face. “What did you think of them?” he went on, enunciating each word with manic cheerfulness.

“Oh. Um…” I floundered, at a loss as to what he wanted me to say.

“I hope you liked them. Did you like them?”

“Oh. Yes. They were very…thoughtful.”

“I knew you’d like them,” Samson said, his words rumbling like grinding rocks as his half-man, half-wolf jaw struggled to form them. “But there’s one thing I don’t understand.”

Only one?

“Oh?” I prompted, my voice shaking. Clutching Holbrook’s hand tight for support I saw Samson’s gaze flit to our clasped hands for a brief moment, an angry light sparking in his eyes.

“Why would you sully yourself with a warlock?”

Not many people used the terms warlock or witch to refer to a magic user these days. Social conventions dictated that we refer to them as magi, harkening back to the belief that they were descended from the wise men of old.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, I…” I began to say, my words fading into nothing as I caught the flicker of energy in the corner of my eye, Holbrook’s fingers slipping from my grip.

Turning wide eyes on the man standing beside me, a jolt of surprise fluttered through me. Bright green lightning, the same color as his eyes, sizzled between his fingers and arced over his skin, raising the hairs along the backs of his arms. My hair began to lift off my shoulders in response to the flood of electricity in the air, my skin itching with the sensation of thousands of ants crawling all over my body. Deep inside, the wolf stirred in reply, and my eyes bled over to gold in a single heartbeat.

“Holy shit,” I breathed, unable to look away from the miniature forks of lightning dancing between his outstretched hands. The small shots of energy every time we touched made sense now, and I felt like a fool for not sensing the otherness in him.

“Surprise,” he offered with a lopsided smile though his eyes didn’t move from the smug werewolf standing in front of us, even as a ball of energy began to form between his palms, his brows furrowing in concentration.

“You, er, know what to do with that?” I asked in a harsh whisper, not daring to take a step away from him, but not wanting to stand too close either. I wasn’t sure which one was the bigger danger—the psychotic werewolf shaking with chuffing laughter, or the living electrical storm standing
very
close to me in the lurching shadows of my living room.

“We are
so
having a talk about this later,” I hissed, pulling my eyes away from Samson long enough to shoot a glare at Holbrook.

“How about we just try to get through this first?” he replied out of the corner of his mouth, his hands beginning to shake from the effort of containing the writhing ball of energy that had grown to the size of a soft ball. It gave off faint crackles of rogue energy that smelled of burnt ozone and freshly turned earth.

The creak of old wooden floor boards pulled my focus back to Samson. Dammit, I was tired of my boyfriends hiding this kind of crap from me.

Irritated by Holbrook’s deceit, I set my hands on my hips and demanded, “What do you want, Samson?” I was fed up with playing his twisted game; one way or another, this needed to end.

He looked dumbstruck for a moment as if he hadn’t anticipated being asked that question, confusion swimming in the brilliant gold of his eyes. I almost felt sorry for him, reduced to a shadow of the once charismatic and handsome young man he had been, and then I remembered the faces of all the innocent people he had killed to satisfy his own demented desires.

“You were supposed to be mine,” he replied after a while in something close to a whine. The vulnerable expression on his face struck me, so at odds with the horrifying form he had taken and the monster I knew him to be.

“You tried to kill me! You told me you wanted to fucking eat me.”

“No, no, no,” he chanted, raising massive claw-tipped hands to his head. “I tried to
perfect
you.”

Obviously, his recollections of the attack were a little different from mine, and I wondered if he’d been bat-shit crazy all along.

“You tried to…” I faltered, realization dawning as horrifying as his beastly visage. “You
wanted
to infect me?”

“I wanted you to be strong like me. I wanted you to be mine.”

“I will
never
be yours. You ruined my life!”

Holbrook’s grunt of strain beside me drew my gaze back to him. Sweat beaded on his brow, dripping down over his cheeks. The air was filled with the sweet molasses scent of him and the burnt ozone of his crackling energy, but beneath it I could detect the sour note of his fear.

“I perfected you!” Samson bellowed, causing the hair to rise along the backs of my arms and my knees to go shaky with fear. His sadness had evolved into blistering rage in the blink of an eye.

I didn’t even have a chance to cry out a warning as he leapt at us, crooked teeth gnashing at the air, but evidently I didn’t need to worry about Holbrook; he knew how to handle himself. I felt the concussive boom of the spell going off as much as I heard it, the force of it knocking me off my feet. I went down in a tangle, taking the side table with me. When the pounding in my head had cleared enough for me to open my eyes, green motes danced across my vision. I wasn’t sure if they were real or just the aftereffects of the brilliant green flash that had lit up the room when the spell collided with Samson.

Blinking a few times, I was relieved when my vision cleared and the thumping in my head eased into a dull ache. Judging from the remaining throb, I’d slammed my head against the floor when the force of the spell knocked me down. I rubbed the back of my head as I pushed myself up on one elbow and looked around the room. The shadows appeared deeper after the blinding flash of magic, and it took me a while to discern the shapes of Holbrook and Samson sprawled on the floor.

Holbrook was the first to move, rolling over onto to his side to face me, a pained expression etching deep lines in his face. A heavy sheen of sweat covered his brow and I noticed that he was holding one arm awkwardly against his side.

“Is it broken?” I asked, my voice sounding fuzzy and distorted through the ringing in my ears.

His voice was tight with pain when he responded. “Just dislocated I think.”

Crawling over to him I tucked a shoulder under his good arm and helped him up. His scent was stronger, as if the expenditure of magic had intensified it, and for a moment all I wanted to do was bury my nose in the skin of his neck and breathe him in. Easing him down into the armchair close to the front door, I looked over to the unmoving shape of Samson.

“Is he…”

“Dead? Doubtful. It was just raw energy. Unless it somehow managed to short-circuit his heart, he’s just knocked out.”

“For how long?”

“Your guess is as good as mine,” Holbrook replied with a shrug, grimacing when the movement aggravated his injured shoulder. “Hand me my gun, will you?”

“Maybe we should get out of here, or call for back up,” I said, scrambling to pick up the gun and hand it him.

“You think?”

Before we could make a move to the door, Samson let out a low groan, the sound of his claws raking across the floor setting my teeth on edge.

“You filthy fucking warlock,” he snarled as he swung his massive, shaggy head up to lock glowing eyes on us. “You’d dare to use your foul magic against me?”

Struggling to hold the gun in his bandaged hand, Holbrook raised the Glock, pain and exhaustion making his aim waver.

Heedless of the gun aimed at him, Samson let out a thundering war cry and launched himself at us, the taunt muscles in his thighs bunching and flexing to propel him forward in an impressive leap. A massive muscled arm swept me aside as easily as a rag doll, knocking me into the wall, as he continued forward towards Holbrook. I heard the loud clap of gunfire, the room lit by the muzzle flash for a brief moment, and felt a rush of satisfaction when Samson grunted in pain. My gratification was short-lived, however, as the deranged wolfman plowed into Holbrook, curling taloned hands around the smaller man’s shoulders to lift him off his feet and drive him backwards into the front door.

Holbrook’s head struck the solid wood with a meaty thump, and I watched horrified as he went down like a sack of potatoes, his eyes rolling back in his head until only the whites were showing. When the air was suddenly colored with the rich scent of blood I assumed he had a head wound, and could only hope it wasn’t too bad. The Glock skittered out of his slack grip, sliding across the floor to land between Samson and me. Samson’s gaze drifted to the fallen weapon at the same time mine did, and I knew there was no way I could reach it before he did.

As much as I hated to leave Holbrook alone without knowing how bad his injuries were, he’d be dead for sure if I didn’t lure Samson away.

“Come and get me you psychotic fuck,” I challenged, and then threw myself through the window next to me, covering my head with my arms as I fell through the shattering glass and tumbled to the snow outside.

ROLLING TO A breathless stop, I launched into a run, not waiting to see if Samson had taken the bait. Over the sound of my bare feet crunching on the frozen snow I heard the telltale tinkling of more glass breaking as he burst through the window frame.

I’d already stripped off my shirt by the time I reached the tree line, and was glad I’d changed into sweatpants when I began to shift, the flimsy cotton tearing away as the wolf emerged. The change flowed over me like water sprouting from a spring, and before I knew it I was dodging through the trees on four feet. Samson’s angry roar rang out behind me, cutting the air like a whip crack. Part of me wanted to run as fast and far as I could, but the rational side of me was aware that I had to make him chase me, leading him away from Holbrook. After that, I had to figure out how the hell I was going to kill the crazy son of a bitch.

I sensed the moment Samson locked on to me—something inside of me was aware of his presence, too. Was that why I’d been having dreams all these years and been able to see his actions in the twisted visions that had haunted me in recent days? Was I somehow inexplicably joined to him through the wolf? I’d never heard of being tied to another were, but there was so much about being a werewolf that I didn’t know or understand. Hell, I didn’t even know if everything I had experienced was normal for a were, or if Samson had done something to make me something else, something different. Sprinting through the trees, my heart pounding like a piston in my chest, I cursed my naivety. What else didn’t I know about my own kind, and how my ignorance could be used against me?