Chapter Fourteen
The sun was slowly going down as I shut off my phone.
“That was Nisha; she is meeting with a pack in Montana. She seems to like the people up there, so she might have found a new group.”
“That’s good. You know, I still can’t believe the council made that deal with you,” Val called out from the bedroom. I strolled in to find her just where I left her, tied up to the bedpost by the manacles from the pit. “I also can’t believe you talked me into recreating that night.”
“What, it wasn’t good for you?” I straddled her chest and kissed her full on the lips.
“I didn’t say that.” She leaned forward to return the kiss, and I pulled back. “Tease.”
“Guilty as charged. Hey, you know what I read last night? Vampires and elves are real.”
“La-la-la-la, I can’t hear you.”
I leaned over and whispered in her ear.
“Okay, I heard that.”
I started to slide in for another kiss and was interrupted by pounding on the front door of the apartment.
“What the fuck. If this is Margaret about the music again, I am going to smack the hell out of her.” I climbed out of bed and grabbed my robe.
“Don’t know who she thinks she is. I should let a little leopard out.
That should keep her from coming back.” I looked through the peephole in the door. There stood Lycos.
“Fuck.” I turned around to run to the bedroom.
I had to get to Val, but before I took two steps, I heard the door come off the hinges as Lycos barreled right through it.
The wood of the door splinted under the impact and barely slowed him down.
He grabbed me by the shoulder and spun me around, then smashed his fist into my face. I crumpled to the ground.
“Nice place you got here, bitch.” He took a quick look around the room and laughed when he peered into the bedroom.
“Did I interrupt something?” He started to head that way, and I leaped up from the floor onto his back.
My claws sprang from my right hand as I reached around, trying to get at his throat.
He caught hold of it in an iron-hard grip.
Then he smashed backward, sandwiching me between him and a wall.
All the air drained from my body. He let go of his grip and spun around.
I was too stunned to move, and he picked me up bodily and threw me into the kitchen.
I crashed into the island and collapsed to the floor.
“You know, bitch, your sister was supposed to be my ticket to bigger and better things. I show the council I can take care of business, then I can write my own ticket. Then you came along and fucked everything up. Now I am an exile.” As he talked, he crossed the distance and kicked me in the gut.
In the bedroom, I could hear Val struggling to free herself. Lycos kicked me again, then stopped.
“You know what? I was going to kill you, but I think it will be more fun to kill your boyfriend and your sister first. The best part is you have to lie there bleeding, knowing you wrapped him up for me.”
“She’s my girlfriend, you…” The rest of what I was going to say got cut off as he kicked me again. I tried to put my hands under me to get back to my feet, but they buckled and refused to hold my weight.
“Whatever the fuck it is. It is dead. You lie there and bleed thinking about that.” Lycos reached behind him and pulled out a knife he had stashed in his belt. He turned it this way and that. The light gleamed off it, and I realized it must be silver coated.
He started to walk toward the bedroom, and I heard Val straining harder and harder against the manacles.
I began to crawl across the floor, not sure what I was going to be able to do, but I could not abandon her.
I looked up and saw Lycos standing over Val, passing the knife between his hands like he was trying to decide which hand he would kill her with.
Lycos turned and gave me a quick wink, then raised the blade in his right hand.
At that blink, something snapped inside me.
A yowl escaped my throat that no human could have made.
I raised myself to hands and knees, and as I rose, I felt bones and muscles melting and shifting.
Fur grew from my skin. There was a pain but also a pleasure to it.
I took three steps and leaped, now fully in my Totem’s form.
I impacted Lycos, knocking him to the floor.
My teeth found his throat, and I ripped and tore, destroying this threat to me and mine.
*
I was not sure how much time had passed, but I came back to myself slowly. I was sprawled across Val, and tears filled my eyes.
“It’s going to be okay,” she whispered over and over.
*
The next day, I got to enjoy the good side of being part of a global conspiracy.
The Scribe himself arrived, bringing with him people to dispose of the body, and the police who showed up to take reports were all bought and paid for.
I did not really have the bandwidth to consider how I felt about all of that.
Val was mostly no worse for wear. She had vowed never to have another bondage session again, but other than that, she was physically okay. I sat in the bed and watched all of them scurry about, strangely detached.
The Scribe approached me. “Can I talk to you for a moment?” Val made no motion to move from my side. “Alone.” Val still made no move.
“It’s okay.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah. If he gets uppity, I will eat him.” I tried to make it sound like a joke, but it just sounded sad.
“I’m not going far.”
“May I sit?”
“Sure.”
The Scribe sat down on the edge of the bed. “You are my lemons.”
I looked over at him; of all the things he was going to say, that had not been on my list. “What?”
“In America, there is a saying that when life gives you lemons, you make lemonade. I think you are my lemons.”
“I repeat. What?”
“A few weeks ago, you were an outsider. Now, you are an alpha shifter and one of the few people in the country who has seen the complete contents of the Book of Tales. What am I supposed to do with you? You have tied my hands so I cannot kill you. So, I must find a use for you. There is more beyond The Veil than just the Menagerie. I am sure you have read enough to know this. The council needs an agent, but not one like Lycos. I need someone who knows the truth of things but still remembers what it was like to live as a normal person.”
“You do remember all the shit that your council put me through, right.”
“I do. Just think about it.”
He got up and left.
After a moment, Val came back. I grabbed her and held on tight.