A ridiculous, outrageous waste of six-thousand-dollars meant to impress the very people I slaughtered about an hour ago.
Her lip curls in disgust at the sight of it. “How do none of you realize what you’ve become?”
“I realized,” I admit begrudgingly, yanking the cuff of my sleeve over the watch. “But it was better than the alternative.”
“That being?”
“What I once was.”
My reply angers her for some reason. “You were worth a million times more back then, you blind fool.”
Her statement is like a slap and I rear away from her. What does she know about my life back then? About who I was?
“I will be back to finish you, wolf. Not because my treacherous coven deserves the energy of your tarnished soul, but because beings like you deserve to die.” She turns to leave me.
The sight of her back does odd things to me, a chain-reaction that has me following after her in a burst of energy. Don’t let her get away. She can’t leave. “Wolves, you mean.”
“That, and vile leeches that are willing to risk their souls just to have all the riches and power their pathetic mortal lives can offer. Leeches that don’t care who they hurt as long as they get their way.”
Okay. A little too close to home for my comfort. And as we walk to the end of the loading dock and toward the street, I find myself lashing out in defensive denial. “You’re the ones that offer us those lives for your own twisted motives! And I didn’t hurt anyone.” Even to my own ears, the rebuttal sounds false.
She spins on one booted heal and rushes back to push at my chest—my body doesn’t react to her attempt, and it fuels my suspicion that my strength does hold in human form.
As well as the fact that I can sense it growing, an infusion that’s like hot energy over my muscles.
“While I deal with the mess of my people, I invite you to analyze that bullshit statement long and hard.” Leaning into my space, her breath ghosts along the bottom of my jaw, her eyes flashing like cold steel. “Think about who you’ve been defending, Mr. LeBlanc, attorney . . . at . . . law. So the next time I come back to kill you, you’ll understand exactly who you’ve hurt and why you deserve to die.”
She’s right.
Merciful Lord, she’s right, and I’ve known it for years, but I willfully shoved it aside as I ran from the memory of who I once was.
I’m as bad as the people I killed—the ones whose approval I so obsessively courted—and I deserve an even worse fate than theirs.
I left their remains behind, broken body parts, scattered entrails and blood, to be consumed by that plague of centipedes that managed to destroy the hotel.
As I ran from it, this witch clutched in my arms, it had begun to come down in a cloud of sheer dust.
“Oh,” she says as an after-thought, expression sardonic. “Just so you know, the only place you’re safe from us is your home. It’s the one spot in this entire city we can’t kill you in.”
She’s talking about my five-bedroom townhouse on Bourbon Street. The one I paid an insane amount for.
The same home that’s located mere blocks from where the Ritz-Carlton stood.
“The cops will probably realize I’m still alive if I go there. It’s not difficult to imagine they’ll realize why the penthouse was rented out, who was supposed to be in the building when it came down—wait.” I stare at her in abject horror. “They’ll probably find the torn bodies.”
“Trust me, they won’t. They won’t find anything but dust scattered all over that part of the city. Seril’s magic is infallible in that sense.” The glint in her gaze speaks volumes.
There’s history between her and this “Seril”.
“You’re right about the cops though. Good luck keeping off their radar long enough for me to come after you. And by all means, try running. I’ll always know where you are and so will the members of my coven. There’s nowhere you could go now, so your place is your best shot. Got it?”
“By that logic, one of your coven members”—Fellow witches of hers, my fucked-up brain cries—“can locate me on my way back!”
Her smirk is taunting and not a little bit disdainful. “Good luck, werewolf.” She vanishes after her parting shot, simply disappearing into thin air.
It’s tempting to imagine that my hallucination is over. That since she’s no longer in sight, this nightmare has come to an end, and I’ve come out of whatever mind trip this was unchanged.
Maybe one of the guests slipped something into my drink.
A cute fantasy. How’d I end up in the back of this warehouse then?
Fuck it. Doesn’t matter. Need to get to the safety of my home—if that witch didn’t lie to me about that—and regroup.
I’ll have to avoid her kind and the authorities. As a lawyer, I could probably talk my way out of it, but it’s a risk I’d rather not take. No telling how uncontrollable the “change” is. Imagine turning into a wolf in front of a squad of cops.
My life is over. It is. I might still be alive, for now, yet everything I built during the last decade has been demolished as thoroughly as that hotel was.
Like the criminal on the run I officially am, I take off across the street in a panic, only to clear an entire block in mere seconds.
Seconds.
Disoriented by my own speed, I pause at the next corner, on the verge of hyperventilating. I look back the way I came. The world tilts as I’m sucked into the pit of shock once more and it takes an insane amount of will to not get completely lost in it.
I slam my fists into the sides of my head. “Get it together, Silas. You can break down later. Get your ass home.” I’ll finish losing it once I’m in the confines of my townhouse.
Bracing myself for the dizzying pace, I throw myself into it, heading straight toward my goal.
Which happens to be near the epicenter of the destruction we left behind.
CHAPTER 5
- Bourbon Street, French Quarter, New Orleans, LA (USA)
For the third day in a row, there’s a hard, obnoxious knock on the door, followed by another shortly after. By this point I’ve not only memorized the rhythm, but the hissing voice that comes shortly after.
“Let us innnnnnn, Silas LeBlanc. You know you want to. You need the misery to end already.”
It’s her kind, that I know without a doubt. Not just due to logic, but the angry surge barreling from my gut.
Witches. Disgusting. Must die.
Except, I’ll bet they have all the mythical fire power to undue me in seconds, even if I aim the full force of my new strength at them, and I might be a fool, but suicidal I am not.
Or, at least I haven’t been for a long time now.
The knocking doesn’t abate and it adds to the unbearable cacophony of noise that’s been assaulting me ever since this fucking change.
It’s all so crisp. Magnified. I can hear bugs crawling across surfaces. Bird wings flapping.
Tidbits of conversation that shouldn’t be audible to anyone that isn’t near the people having those discussions.
As well as the craziness of my eclectic city.
Upstairs in my third-floor library, I disregard the beings at my front door, and push past the noise level through sheer willpower alone. Spread out on the marble table before me is every book on witchcraft and werewolves I was able to get my hands on.