Bladed Magic Page 2

  This was where I belonged. Where I felt safe.

  But two days later, I had to keep reminding myself of that. I felt like I was going to come out of my skin.

  Something wasn’t right.

  I’d felt like this before and it wasn’t just that night I’d gone out and found that irritating witch outside.

  Months ago, I’d woken up, too restless to sleep, too energized to eat. Off kilter for half the day, then a woman had called. Her name was Colleen and we had a history dating back to my earliest days in Orlando.

  Many of our first encounters involved TJ and they started off with comments like, Let her look at you, kid, or I’ll sit on you. Or If you don’t sit still, I’ll just hold you down and she can do this without the tonic. You like crying like a baby? No? So shut up so she can fix you.

  I can still remember the first time the conversation had gone like that. She’d glared at Colleen. You really think threats are going to make her trust you more?

  That wasn’t the beginning of our friendship. I didn’t trust people that easily. But I’d known her for years and when she’d called me, I’d managed to stop my pacing long enough to take the call.

  Mandy…she’s missing.

  I didn’t know why she’d called me, but she insisted she knew I could help.

  So I’d tried, thinking the woman had lost her mind.

  I’d tried. And to my shock, I’d succeeded.

  But the phone wasn’t ringing and I didn’t really want to sit around and wait for another call, or some idiot witch to get whaled on, either.

  If I could, I’d go running, take my weapons to the gym downstairs and try to practice, anything to burn off this energy if I thought it would help. Except I was in the middle of my shift. I tightened my hand on the smooth surface of the bar, set my jaw and tried to think through the adrenaline crashing in my head.

  A hand brushed across mine.

  Instinctively, I drew back, dropping my hand to the silver blade I wore strapped to my thigh. “Yes?” I asked, my voice calm, while everything else inside me chittered with energy, anxiety and nerves.

  A wolf—shapeshifter, werewolf, whatever you want to call his kind—smiled at me. “I like TJ’s choice in help these days.” His lids drooped while his nostrils flared. “You smell like…”

  “You don’t want to finish that.” TJ’s low, rough voice filled the room. “Kit, tell him what he owes so he can pay up and get out.”

  The wolf looked at me a moment longer, and then slid a smile toward TJ. “Ah, come on, TJ. I don’t mean anything by it. If she’s going to work here, she oughta…”

  A heavy hand clamped down on his shoulder. Goliath, a mountain of a man who watched the door and TJ and everything else that went on in here, stood at the wolf’s back. “You don’t want to argue, do you, Rogers?”

  Something uncomfortable crept up my back as the two shapeshifters standing in front of me began to bleed off that awful power some of them carried inside them. It was a mark of their strength and it both terrified and fascinated. Part of me wanted to just run out of the room. The bigger part of me was irritated. I’d dealt with worse than this and here I was, still standing. The reason Colleen had ended up having to heal me that first time was because I’d gotten into a fight—of the bloody and final kind—with a newly changed werewolf. I hadn’t known he was already on TJ’s watchlist until later, but that still didn’t change the fact that I’d been the one to walk away.

  Taking a step forward, I met the wolf’s eyes. “I want to hear this,” I said, challenge threading into my voice. “Just what do I smell like?”

  Filthy pig—the whisper rose from the back of my mind and I steeled myself. Nothing he said could really be any worse than having my grandmother, cousins, aunts tell me that I was little more than a pile of offal, right?

  “Kit…” TJ’s voice was soft.

  It still slashed into me and I whipped my head around, staring at her. “I’m the one he’s messing with. I figure I got a right to know what he’s getting at.” Then I looked back at him. Leaning in, I stared. “So. Tell me.”

  Gold flared in his eyes and he smiled, a smile that was predatory, mean. Hungry.

  It sent a chill down my spine.

  “You smell…” He closed his eyes and breathed in again. “You smell like food. And sex. You’d probably be really good…for both.”

  Blood rushed to my face. Heat flared in my hand, something that had nothing to do with embarrassment, though, and everything to do with nerves and fear. Something whispered in the back of mind, but I ignored it.

  “That’s even better.”

  Easing forward, I brushed my hand against the silver-plated Louisville Slugger under the bar. It rested on two hooks and I knew just how it felt in my hands. “Really?” Narrowing my eyes, I cocked my head. “Come closer and see what you smell.”

  “That’s enough,” TJ said, her voice throbbing, a snarl beating under it.

  “You going to be there at my back for the rest of my life, TJ?” I demanded, not taking my eyes from the smirking wolf in front of me.

  I don’t know what drove me. Maybe it was the recklessness that felt like it lined my blood vessels all day. Maybe it was the way his smile widened and now, it looked decidedly wolfish.

  “You’ll still smell like meat.” His lids drooped. “And sex.”

  Goliath’s hand, to my shock, fell away from his shoulder.

  “You won’t say that in a few seconds.”

  He laughed. A split second later, he lunged.

  I’d been forced onto the training fields when I was just a child. I was twenty now and I’d been carrying a blade for so long, weapons almost felt like a part of me. I was no stranger to pain, either. I’d had my arm shattered, my collar bone busted, the skin of my back laid open to the bone.

  From the time I was a child, I’d been tortured, beaten down, all but broken. The sound of her voice was a whisper in my blood even now. Useless waste…so weak. So pathetic.

  Time slowed to a crawl, even though I knew it was all in my head.

  I already had the bat in my hand and I was moving, swinging as he cleared the bar. It connected with his head, a resounding thud I felt all the way up my arms. I moved again as he went down, this time bringing the deadly metal down on the back of his head, hearing the solid crack of bone.

  Heat flared in my hand.

  The voice in the back of my head now wasn’t that ugly whisper, but a joyous, gleeful song. Call me!

  I let her come. A length of silver gleamed in my hand a moment later. Once, the sword had belonged to my mother and now she came to my call. I danced back, hurling the bat down as I settled myself into position, my sword up and ready.

  Seconds passed and I waited.

  The wolf wasn’t old, but he wasn’t weak, either.

  Within a minute, he was on his feet, wobbling a little and his eyes were unfocused. Blood and other things stained his hair while fury blistered his features.

  “You…” he rasped, his voice thick.

  “Do I still smell like meat and sex?”

  “You smell like something dead,” he growled. “You just don’t know it.”

  “Blah, blah.” I braced myself as he lunged at me. One slice of the sword had him howling and leaping back in shock.

  Weres weren’t used to dealing with weapons, a fact I’d learned a long time ago. They fought with claw and tooth and brute force, things I didn’t possess, and never would. They knew the danger, but they never expected somebody like me to be fast enough.

  The shock of silver, something poisonous to his kind, hit him with blazing pain. I bet. A few seconds passed and then, as I saw his muscles tensing, I leaped up onto the bar. Never let the opponent get the high ground. One of those lessons beaten into me.

  A hand with nails going black swiped out at me and I jumped out of the way just in time.

  Behind me, somebody muttered, but I didn’t look away from the wolf in front of me.

  Distraction
could be deadly.

  This time, when he came at me, he was focused on nothing but me, no taunts, no jibes—he wanted my blood and nothing else. I flipped away, twisting my body mid-air so that I landed facing him. I heard wood screeching and realized people were pushing furniture out of the way.

  He was only a few feet away now and was starting to lose control of his human form. Fuck. As he drew closer, I held my ground and shoved my left arm up, blocking him as he lunged for my throat. The other hand held my blade and that, I drove deep, deep into his gut.

  It wasn’t exactly the recommended technique, but it had the desired outcome.

  His shift stopped and his body locked up in complete, utter shock, frozen by the silver in my blade. As he went to his knees, I held still, not letting myself give into the urge to drag my sword up and wrench it until I’d destroyed more internal organs, driving him further into the anaphylactic shock that would further injure his system. If I did that, he’d have no chance to stop me. I could then pull out the blade, decapitate him.

  My training demanded I do just that.

  Everything else shouted, No.

  Hot blood spilled out all over my hand.

  It smelled of wolf. It smelled of smoke.

  “What do you smell now?” I asked.

  He shuddered, wracked by the pain of the silver in him. He’d heal, slow. If he was older, stronger, he’d be able to fight through it and I’d be toast, but I’d gauged him the minute he came through the door. It was a weird knack I had. He would never be alpha-level and he was maybe ten years older than me. Not strong enough to fight past the damage I’d done to him.

  The gold continued to swirl in his eyes.

  “That’s enough,” TJ said, her voice flat.

  I wasn’t moving a fucking step until he did.

  Goliath settled it by leaping over the bar—just straight up and over like a marionette on a string—and clamping one massive hand over Rogers’ neck, pulling him carelessly off the blade I’d skewered him with. “You heard the boss. It’s done.”

  He stumbled back, crashing into the bar hard enough to send some of the glasses stacked crashing to the floor. Hate gleamed in his eyes. I smiled at him while blood dripped from my fingers. His blood stained my right hand. My blood stained my left hand and arm and fire from his bite ate at me. I was going to have to call Colleen. Again. Second healing in just as many weeks. The last one had been free. This wouldn’t be. Just wasn’t fair to expect that much of a witch, even a friend.

  “You won’t be smiling when that virus eats you. You’ll change or you’ll die. And if you change…” He rasped, his eyes still that golden shade of wolf. “We do this again. I’ll show you what happens to the weak and stupid.”

  “No.” I shrugged as another fat drop of blood rolled down my fingers and plopped to the floor. “I can’t be changed. Sorry about that.”

  A growl trickled through the room and TJ rolled her chair closer. In her hand, she held a crossbow, the bolt in it tipped with silver. Her eyes gleamed yellow-gold as well and when she smiled, her teeth looked far sharper than normal.

  “I’ll show you what happens to the weak and stupid if you show up here and threaten my staff again,” she promised. “Now…get out. You’re lucky I’m feeling nice tonight. Goliath will watch over you for the next few minutes while you heal enough to walk home.”

  Goliath practically dragged his bloody ass out of there. Once they were gone, it was like somebody popped a bubble and people started to breathe, started to talk.

  I glanced at TJ. That gleam in her eyes hadn’t faded. And now she was glaring at me.

  Well, shit.

  * * * * *

  “If you think I’m going to let you come between me and everybody that snarls at me, then we got a problem,” I said shortly as I fought to wrap a bandage of snowy white around my arm.

  TJ sat in her chair on the far side of the back room, her eyes still flickering between gold and their normal brown. “That wolf could have torn you apart.”

  Pausing in the middle of my shoddy first aid attempts, I lifted my head. “Yeah? Then how come I had him on the floor before he so much as touched me?”

  “You were lucky.”

  “No. I was making a point.” And everybody out there had seen it, too. I felt more than a little satisfaction over that. But my smug grin faded as I lifted my head to look at TJ. I set my jaw. “I could have killed him. All I had to do was call my blade and I could have taken his head the second he came at me. I didn’t.”

  She opened her mouth, then closed it, a scowl darkening her brow. After twenty seconds, she blew out a breath and then spun her chair around to stare outside. “It might have been better if you’d done just that, Kit.”

  “I’m not a killer.”

  “You might well have to become one after this.” Her hand brushed the curtain aside and moonlight streamed in, gilding her face with silver. “You still don’t get this world. Fuck. Just where did you come from that you think you can taunt wolves like that and not realize they’ll want blood back?”

  Something hollow settled in my gut. Finishing the makeshift bandage on my arm, I settled on the floor in front of the fireplace. It wasn’t cold. It was November, but the temperatures in Wolf Haven, Florida—formerly Winter Haven—hadn’t yet dropped below sixty degrees. I felt chilled, though. “You don’t want to know where I came from, TJ.”

  Even if she did, I wouldn’t tell her.

  “I get the idea that it wasn’t fun,” she said, her voice almost as hollow as I felt. “I’ve seen the scars on you. And I know what a girl looks like when she’s running away. More to the point, I know for a fucking fact that you’re lost about how our world works. You need to figure it out, and fast, because you’re in for a rude awakening. That wolf isn’t going to walk away from this.”

  Sliding her a look, I saw that she’d soundlessly turned to look at me.

  “He’ll come after you. Again. He’ll watch. He’ll wait. First to see if you die. Then to see if you change. When neither happens, he’ll try to kill you again. Can you handle that?”

  I didn’t doubt her words, even though I hadn’t realized this would happen. Whatever happened to getting your ass kicked and just walking away? Or hiding…that’s what I’d had to do most of my life. Get my ass kicked, my ass whipped, then slink away, heal. Have it done all over again.

  The world of shifters was unlike any other world I’d known though.

  “No,” I said quietly. “I can’t handle him trying to kill me.” I’d lived through that more than a couple of times already. “I guess that means I’ll just have to kill him first.”

  When TJ didn’t answer, I turned my head to see her watching me. Now, she had a faint, but satisfied smile on her face.

  “Don’t look so happy about it.”

  She shrugged. “If you’re going to pick fights with furry people, you gotta be prepared to see them all the way through, Kit.”

  Some of what I felt must have shown on my face because her face softened with something that might have been sympathy. “We don’t live in a soft world, kid. As much as I hate to say it, and as clichéd as it sounds, sometimes it comes down to this…it’s kill or be killed. You’ve already had to bloody your hands. You’re not as strong as everybody else and most of them out there aren’t going to pick fights with you. But when those fights end up on your doorstep, or if you go and pick a fight like you did tonight…” She leaned forward, her gaze holding mine. “Finish it.”

  Colleen arrived almost two hours later. Adrenaline was still riding high, probably to combat the pain that had yet to fade. The fever was burning hot, too. I couldn’t turn were, but that didn’t mean my body liked the virus currently tearing through my blood.

  As I told her how my arm had gotten torn to hell—again—her face was folded into tight lines.

  “The good news, I figure I’ll settle down once you finish with my arm,” I said in overly bright tones.

  Colleen paused in the process
of wrapping a poultice around my bruised, torn and bloody flesh. The bleeding had started anew once she’d torn, peeled or cut away the bandage. “Settle down?”

  “Yeah.” I made a face. “I’ve been edgy all day. I get that way sometimes.”

  A troubled look came across her face. “Edgy how?”

  “I don’t know. It’s like I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop, except I never saw the first one. If that makes sense. Where did that saying come from anyway?” I looked away as she took a pair of what looked like oversize tweezers to an area on my forearm, pulling something out of the flesh that she’d missed earlier. Then she continued the process of wrapping me up.

  “I don’t know and quit changing the subject. How often do you feel like that?”

  I went to shrug and then stopped. Colleen made me sit through these Q&A sessions a lot, and had for the past year or so. Some people thought I was some sort of weird witch offshoot—the name they applied to the non-humans in our world who weren’t witch or were. Sometimes you’d see a weird mutation of the races that interbred, and there were other non-human races in the world besides witch, were and vamp, although those were the dominant ones.

  People assumed I was either an offshoot or a weak witch.

  Colleen knew better. I wasn’t a witch. I wasn’t an offshoot. I was one of the rarer races that few people knew about. Even fewer understood my kind. I didn’t understand my kind, but then again, none of them had ever seen fit to teach me anything that didn’t involve some sort of physical pain.