26. Kate
“Why are we staying here?” Ivy whines.
“I told you,” I remind, for the tenth time. “We need a real meal and some sleep. Plus, I have to figure out how to get us to Moonwake… unless you can morph into a four-legged creature who can run for hours at a time.”
“You call this a real meal?” She holds up the two paper bags she’s carrying. I’m toting the other four. “Are shifters not susceptible to heart disease? Because witches are.”
“What happened to the kid I met two nights ago? She didn’t complain.”
That’s all she’s done since we hopped onto the train that brought us from Seattle, Washington to Portland, Oregon. Before Trez and I started racing street bikes, which is how we bought our first set of wheels, we’d jump different transits to get here. From Portland, we’d shift and travel the rest of the way on paws. Sometimes, we lucked out and found local trains running through smaller towns.
“I’m not a kid,” Ivy snaps back.
She is, but nothing I’m going to say to her will convince Ivy of that fact. I was the same way at fourteen, maybe even worse.
“Look, the cost of food and the motel room for the night took most of the money I have. It’s not like we have many options. The only thing I know to do is steal someone else’s ride.”
“Then let’s do that and be on our way,” she chirps up, sarcasm rolling so thick off her lips it makes me cluck my tongue in annoyance.
“It’s not that simple.”
“It is. You just don’t want to get there. I thought you wanted to find your brother, or is seeing your mate what has your panties twisted?”
“Okay, miss know-it-all, tell me the easy way because I’m not carjacking anyone.”
With my luck, I’d give an old man or old lady a heart attack and have to live with that on my conscience for the rest of my life. No, thank you.
And maybe I’m ignoring her remark about Kane.
She may have a point, and I don’t like that a part of me is scared to go back to Moonwake. The closer we get, the more prominent the ache in my chest gets.
“We use magic, of course.”
I look at her like she’s grown two heads.
“Yeah? Exactly how is Earth magic going to start an engine? Huh?”
She rolls her eyes, continuing to act every bit of her annoying and defiant age.
“I know other magic besides drawing from my elemental magic,” she confesses.
“Light or dark? Because if you say dark, you can forget about it. I’ve experienced enough of your coven’s witchy shit to last a lifetime.”
Just the thought of the magic Salem pulled out of me sends a chill down my spine. I’ve never felt that much pain in my life. Not even brute force could amount to the grip she had on me. I was paralyzed in the literal sense until she released me.
“Not all dark magic is bad, and if you only use it?—”
“No.” I cut her off, then veer left, walking the path to the room I rented for the night.
Ours is room twelve with two double beds. I’m starving. The sooner we scarf down the burgers and fries, the sooner I can get some shut-eye and leave dealing with finding a vehicle and adding theft to my rap sheet for tomorrow.
Dark magic is out of the question, and I’m about to reaffirm that stance with Ivy when the hairs on the back of my neck stand, alerting me to something.
But what?
I turn, doing a one-eighty to face Ivy. Her eyes widen, but she stops before plowing into me. I shove the bags in my hands out for her to take, then pull the key from my pocket.
“Go to the room. Don’t open the door unless it’s me,” I order her.
“Why? What’s up?”
“I don’t know. Something is off, or we’re being watched.” That feeling dawns on me.
“You shouldn’t have taken the crystal off your wrist like I told you.” She huffs, struggling with everything gripped in her hands and resting on her arms.
“The time for I told you so can wait.”
After Salem did her voodoo, she made me wear a bracelet with a lone crystal wrapped in leather around my wrist. Ivy already wore a similar smoky quartz on hers. She’s still wearing it, along with an amethyst stone on her other wrist and a necklace with a white crystal dangling from it.
I tore mine off during the train ride and tossed it out the open cargo door into the passing wind with a fuck you and your dirty magic salute.
“Looks like I get two for one.”
I whip around to face the parking lot while shoving Ivy behind me and backing her up against the brick wall between rooms four and five.
A guy in jeans and a dark T-shirt stands twenty feet from us between two sedans parked on the second row of parking spaces, an empty spot between the two vehicles.
He cocks his head to the side to peer around me, a handgun dangling between his fingers at his side. There’s a tattoo on his neck, and with the street lamp shining at the right angle, I can see the symbol clearly.
The mark of the slayer of monsters.
A monster hunter.
The tattoo is mostly black, a shotgun pointing down with two daggers crossed behind it and a bullet on each side of the X. Red ink drips from the tips of the blades like blood.
“What are you, sweetheart? You’re too small to be a werewolf.”
“I’m a wolf shifter, you dumbass, not a werewolf,” I reply, even though it’s Ivy he was speaking to.
I should have smelled him before he’d opened his mouth. Their scents are all the same like their members are required to wear their own brand of monster-killing cologne.
“Same difference, bitch.” His human brown eyes snap to mine.
“It’s not, but call me a bitch again, and I just might become feral like one.” My hands go to rest on my hips.
“You’re a smoking hot wolf bitch, I’ll give you that.” Then he snickers. “I might have to take my time with you. Find out if you’re just as hot on the inside as you are on that fine exterior.”
He nods his head in my direction as he licks his lips, making bile threaten to come up my esophagus.
Gross.
“There you go, using that word I warned you not to say.” I smile, despite knowing there are definitely going to be silver bullets in the gun he’s waving around, and getting myself shot again is not on my bingo card tonight. “The only thing you’re going to feel is my claws ripping you to shreds.”
If I can’t be the one to kill Dick, thanks to Salem taking that luxury from me, then maybe I can take out all my years of aggression and hatred for the man I thought was my father on this douchebag. Maybe even send a message to his friends that I’m the wrong supernatural creature to fuck with.
“No, I’m the man whose dick you’re going to swallow just as soon as I pry all those sharp teeth and claws from your body, dog.”
“You should have gone back with the werewolf name-calling. It’s more of an insult than being called Fido, you dickless twat.”
With his free hand, he cups himself between the legs and jerks his hand and junk upward.
“Oh, I’ve got di?—”
Before he finishes that statement, a sharp intake of air comes from Ivy’s mouth a hair’s breadth before claws sink into the side of his neck. My eyes never blink, watching the whole scene.
His throat is sliced open, blood spilling over ripped flesh.
Then, his deceased body is shoved sideways, landing ten feet from the man standing in the hunter’s place.
Our stares lock.
“Jag.”