Mangled Read online

  I glared at him. The idea was too tempting for it to be a good one. If I let go completely and let his magic snuff the monster, I would stop feeling all the pain. The hurt. The betrayal. The fear. The goddamned exhaustion.

  But would I still be me? The thought made me want to chew on him all over again.

  He must have read the anger in my eyes. The witch held out his hand, palm up, exposing the prominent blue veins in his forearm. “Go ahead.”

  I stared at him. If I bit a human, I ran the risk of tainting them with the wendigo madness. “You want to be like me?” I asked, my voice low and rough with hunger.

  He looked into my eyes as if searching for something. “I can burn the taint away with magic. Most other witches probably couldn’t manage it. But I can. It’s not the most cost-effective use of power, but you need this.”

  I still didn’t move. He left his arm extended, watching me.

  “I don’t know you. Why should I trust you? For all I know your magical blood is poisoned or something. Or maybe you’d like a pet wendigo just like the hunters.”

  He sighed. “Tess, not everyone is out to use you. You don’t have to marry me, just take the edge off that hunger before someone dies, will you?”

  I closed my eyes. This is how it had started with Kwan. And now he was dead. “Helping me will kill you,” I said softly.

  He was still there. I could feel the steady tingle of his magic and the soft warmth of his human body. “You’ll need to get in line,” he said wryly. “There are lots of other threats that got there long before you.”

  I didn’t know what he was babbling about.

  “Cal,” Tommy said from behind the witch. “What are you doing?”

  The dogman burbled.

  “Shh,” Cal told them both. “Private conversation, gentlemen.”

  I snorted and opened my eyes to glance at Tommy. “Your brother wants me to chew on him. I told him it’s a bad idea.”

  Tommy considered his brother for a while, then shrugged. “He’s a masochistic bastard,” he said finally. Then he looked at me. “But he’s scary powerful, Tess. Even for one of them. He’s the prodigy of asshole witches.”

  “I can burn off the wendigo taint,” Cal repeated. “Easy.”

  Ahanu croaked loudly, making me jump. The adrenaline woke up the hunger again and I swallowed hard. Damned bird. I swore that was purposeful.

  I pushed myself up to my knees and reached out to grasp Cal’s forearm. I stared into his blue eyes as I brought his arm to my mouth. “No crying,” I said. “It will only make me bite harder.”

  He laughed. “Maybe I like it that way,” he said with a wicked leer. “I’ve just been accused of being masochistic.”

  I shivered and sank my teeth into his soft skin.

  Blood laced with power flooded my mouth and I bit harder. Cal breathed out a long breath, then grabbed the back of my head and pulled me closer, holding me there as I drank. I wanted to bite some more. To tear and chew and rend. But I didn’t. I held onto enough of myself to realize that even though Cal said he could burn away the poison my bite held, I had no idea if he could heal any faster than a normal human.

  Tommy cleared his throat. “I’m just gonna…go walk the dogman home now.” His tone was stilted. “I feel like I’m seeing something I really shouldn’t see.”

  I growled, but didn’t let go of Cal’s arm.

  When I finally lifted my head, at Cal’s urging, we were alone on the ground by my front steps. I swiped a hand across my mouth. For the first time in months, I felt like myself. As if I wasn’t about to lose myself to madness. Even if the creature in me still beat against the walls of its magical prison.

  Cal took off his outer shirt and ripped a swath of fabric from it, then used it to neatly bind his bleeding arm. Like it was nothing.

  “How do you feel?” He asked, studying me with those too-sharp eyes.

  I sighed. “Like less of a monster. Or maybe more of a monster. I have no idea.”

  He nodded. “You’ll survive.”

  I quirked a brow at him. “You assume I want to survive.”

  Cal didn’t give me some heartwarming speech to try to change my mind. “We all feel like that sometimes,” he said softly. “But we get up and keep moving anyway. Eventually the bleeding stops.”

  I thought maybe he just might know what he was talking about. And I wondered how he knew. Why did the big, bad witch with the looks and the power and the aristocratic stick-up-their-ass family know what it was like to not want to go on?

  He stood and gave me a hand up, then stretched his tall form, popping his back. I turned to head inside, but he stopped me, grabbing my wrist and tugging. When I turned around, he was just there, so fast I didn’t have time to react. Firm lips moved over mine, tasting of magic and human warmth. A long arm snaked around my waist and pulled me closer, pressing our hips together, pressing my breasts against his hard, warm chest. His heart beat hot and steady through the thin layers of fabric separating us. His fingers curled into my hair, pulling slightly as he angled my head, bowed me backward for better access.

  I groaned and had to make a conscious effort not to bite his lip. Not a hunter. Questionable healing abilities. I pulled against his hold, breaking away, but he didn’t release me, and our bodies were still melded together, the rise and fall of our breathing perfectly synchronized. Another man had played the dutiful keeper and fed me. He had also seemed to think sex was a natural part of the bargain. He was dead. I turned my head away.

  “Looking for compensation for the blood?” I asked, my voice sounding nasty even to me.

  Cal pulled back farther. “What?”

  I looked at him then, putting every bit of my hurt into the look. I had to keep my distance. I couldn’t give in to my body’s stupid instincts. My heart couldn’t survive it. Every time I wanted someone, it ended in disaster. And this guy was danger dipped in menace, and topped with suspicion. “That’s what they all seem to want. You really are a masochist, aren’t you? Get your jollies off bloodletting? Want me to scratch you up good next time?” I dug my fingers into his hips, letting my claws pierce the fabric, but not the skin.

  He straightened and gripped my upper arms, holding me back so he could glare at me. “I don’t know what the hell you are accusing me of,” he said softly. “But I’ve wanted to kiss that evil mouth of yours since the first time I saw you.”

  I drew away and he let me go. “Sure,” I waved a hand flippantly. “See you around.” I started up the stairs and the magic he had woven over me pulled at me, urging me to stop. I turned and glared at him.

  He smiled that overly charming smile at me and bowed like a prince from a fairytale. “Sleep well, wendigo girl.”

  Then he turned and climbed into his ridiculous SUV and drove off into the rising pink of sunrise.

  I stared at the horizon, my eyes burning. I was confused, and tired and…wrung out. But I was more whole.

  Maybe the thing I needed to anchor me to my humanity was another human.

  And maybe I had just lost every last bit of my fucking mind.

  I slammed the door behind me and fell into my bed like a rock.

  Chapter 12

  Cloud kept to the shadows, rushing from one pool of deep darkness to the next, bolstered by a slight pull of magic—only a little, not enough to tire her. Her tomahawk flashed, severing the head from the shoulders of the creature that rose up in front of her. There were dozens of them. And they were angry. Aggressive.

  Even when the natures of some should have been more docile.

  She spun as talons dragged over her shoulder and down her arm, leaving shallow furrows that streamed blood. The bird creature that grabbed for her should have been harmless, poking about in the marshes for fish and snakes. Not trying to feast on her immortal hide. She slashed upward, gutting it. Then she planted a foot in its feathered chest and held it down, thigh muscles straining, as she slit its throat. It clamored and warbled, but finally went lifeless.

 
She dashed into the shadows again, skimming the edges of the melee. Other hunters moved around her, most doing as she was, picking off the outliers in the group of monsters.

  Cloud’s throat ached as she clamped down on the feelings threatening to overwhelm her. She wasn’t a feeling person right now. She was a weapon.

  The elders were behaving strangely. And they watched her with a scrutiny that they never had before. She was one of their most trusted. Her commitment was legendary, even if she did tend to keep to herself while carrying out her destiny. But she felt their eyes, even now. She was shackled by them. Had Brutus let on more than she thought? Did they know about Tess? And yet, if they suspected…why hadn’t they made a move?

  She knocked aside a strange ram that had head-butted her into a tree, making her momentarily lose her breath. She was never going to get the council off her back at this rate. Angry, she kicked the ram again, ignoring its bellow of rage. She leapt, feet landing on the creature’s solid back, then propelling her forward and up. She tucked into a tight ball and hit the ground in a roll, rising to her feet in the same motion, tomahawk flashing, the weapon glowing with hungry hunter magic. It had taken her days to make it, slowly imbuing it with her magic. But it wasn’t like she could just go to Tess’s house and ask for her old one back.

  She hacked her way through to the center of the field, where a massive creature stood, it’s roar shattering the night. It looked like a twisted cross between a grizzly bear and a scorpion. Its armored tail lashed about, dripping poison, the stinger long enough to impale a human.

  She narrowed her eyes. Fuck the council. Let them suspect her. She would give them reason to let her do her job without their rules. She let loose a high, ululating cry that rose like a hunting wolf’s call. She moved like the shadows that were her cloak, slashing and dancing away, leaping over the deadly tail to hew it off at the base.

  The creature screamed and swiped at her with its sharp claws longer than her forearm.

  She took it apart, piece by piece.

  She was standing in the center of the field, breath coming in sharp, rasping gasps, dripping burning black blood, when she felt it. Magic. But not hunter magic.

  The creatures around her had multiplied, but they were milling about now, maybe startled by the brutal death of their bear leader. More hunters joined the fray…but they weren’t hunters she recognized. They were clad in black, stretchy clothes head-to-toe, but all dressed the same, as if in uniform. They moved in slowly, forming a loose circle around the creatures that remained, most of which were benign beings who had been cowed into fighting. Magic started to rise.

  A hunter rushed past Cloud. “Move it!”

  She pulled on her own magic and slipped into the space between shadows. Materializing out of the numbing cold of the inbetween place, she arrived outside the circle of newcomers. Her hair lashed about her in a wind that didn’t feel natural. Energy rose up out of the earth itself. For a split second, the wind stopped, and nothing moved, every creature gone suddenly silent.

  Then there was a deep whump of sound, a percussive blast that knocked her back against a tree, sending pain lancing through the side where the ram had hit her earlier. When she looked back at the clearing, the creatures were gone. Blasted to oblivion.

  She looked about, taking in the startling destruction. The black-clad newcomers slowly faded away into the trees and then were gone.

  “What the hell was that?” She whispered.

  Another hunter, a man she had come across in passing over the years, slipped from the tree trunk behind her. “The council’s new hunters,” he whispered. “You see them, stay out of their way.” Then he was away, fading into the dark.

  Cloud’s vision swam with fatigue and she scrubbed a hand over her face in a vain attempt to clear her eyes before she stepped into the shadows to escape the cursed place.

  She lost her grip on the shadow magic and stumbled out of the dark space before she made it back to the little motel where the rest of her stuff was. She had planned to pay for another night and spend the day sleeping. And probably worrying about what the hell the council was up to, so she could avoid worrying about other things. Other people.

  She stumbled again as she tried to make her way to the road she could see a few hundred feet away. Her vision swam again. She could usually see in the dark nearly as well as a monster. But tonight things blurred and swirled together and confused her. She shook her head, feeling suddenly hot, then achingly cold. When the shivering started, she cursed.

  The scorpion-bear.

  She crouched and ran her hands over her body. Where?

  She realized someone was singing an old Ojibwe child’s song and her head snapped up, searching the clearing. The song stopped. She ran her hands over her arms, her chest. The singing started again.

  She laughed and fell on her butt to sit when she realized it was her singing. Stupid.

  She frowned shook her head again. She had been looking for something…? Feeling her body. She remembered hands on her body. Small, greedy hands with claws at the tips. And the taste of Tess in her mouth.

  Shit. Shit. Shit.

  She tried to clear her head and focus through the haze that surrounded her. Something about an insect…poison…she ran her hands over her thighs. What was she doing? Legs. Pain lanced through her body when her hand found a hot, swollen lump on her calf.

  “Damn it.”

  She managed to get her tomahawk out of her belt, though her hands shook when a new round of intense heat was followed by shivers. She grimaced at the dirty blade, still coated in monster blood. She wiped it off on her pants as best she could, then she drew the blade along her calf, parting fabric, skin, and muscle with ease. It burned, and she hissed in pain, blacking out for a while.

  When she came to, she tried to squeeze the pocket of venom, and was rewarded with a gush of blood and fluid and a surge of nausea.

  She needed a healer. One that knew monsters. She needed Kwan.

  She fell backward and lay shivering on the ground, looking up through the bare tree branches above at the cloak of stars in the sky. So pretty. She could just sleep here, under the stars. Surely when she woke up she’d feel better.

  Images swirled behind her eyelids and she danced in and out of awareness. “Shit.”

  She rolled over and got to her hands and knees. “Get up, Cloud,” she chanted to herself, “get up.” She heard another voice in her head as she said the words, one that had shouted at her with irritation. Get up. If that is all it takes to defeat you, how will you fight them? The monsters?

  So, she got up. She stumbled along as much as she could, and she crawled when she couldn’t walk. “Get up, Cloud,” she chanted. “Get up. Get up. Get up.”

  She had no idea where she was going. Only that she needed help. Only that she wasn’t allowed to die. Never allowed to die. Only to fight. And fight. And fight.

  *****

  I woke as darkness was falling, my senses suddenly on alert. Something was wrong. But I had no idea how I knew that. I turned my awareness to the creatures in the forest and felt their anxiety. I shifted to sit over the edge of my bed and yelped.

  Struggling to get control over my gasping breath and racing heart, I glared at Death. “Lurking around people’s bedrooms is beyond creepy, you know.”

  He wore his dapper older man form today. “Go to the woods,” he whispered. “You don’t have long.” His sad silver-blue eyes terrified me. What was making Death look sad?

  I leapt to my feet and headed toward the door in my sweats and thin t-shirt, not caring that it was probably thirty degrees outside. When I didn’t feel his presence at my back, I turned to look for him. “Aren’t you coming?”

  He faded back into the shadows in the corner of the room, his shape melting into darkness. I will avoid making the same mistake twice.

  I didn’t like the sound of that.

  Tearing out my back door, I leapt off the porch and hit the ground running. Something was causing a di
sturbance a few miles away, at the edge of the forest. I pulled on my creature speed, irritated that it was less than it had been. Everything felt dampened. Suppressed.

  The price of magic witch shackles, I supposed. Cal’s binding was tighter than the dogman’s had been. Hopefully that meant it was more permanent.

  I darted around trees and over obstacles without conscious thought. As I got closer, I recognized the problem. Cloud was here. No doubt terrorizing the local creatures. Maybe this was it. Why she danced around killing me, I had no idea. She clearly hated the sight of me.

  I slid to a halt under the bare branches of a big maple tree, my feet slipping in the deep drifts of dead leaves that scattered the forest floor.

  Cloud lay curled up in a ball at the base of the tree, and for one brief moment, my chest clenched, and I was sure she was dead. But no. If she were dead, she would be nothing but dust.

  Hunters didn’t age well after you took out their life spark.

  I paced closer. Her breath made little white puffs in the chilly air. Snow wasn’t far off. My monsters were watching her curiously from a distance, but they weren’t attacking. I felt confusion in them. Did we like her or not like her? Was she welcome or a threat? I had nothing to tell them—I didn’t know the answers to those questions myself.

  She shivered and moaned, and I walked over to her as if I had a death wish. Why couldn’t she either attack me or stay the fuck away already? I was sick of trying to decide if I wanted to murder her or…well, fuck that anyway.

  I squatted down by her leather-clad form. “Cloud?”

  She started shaking harder, and for a moment I thought she was crying. Then she started singing, fingers reaching up weakly to bat at the tree branches above her. It sounded like a happy, bouncy little kid’s song. Her honey-brown eyes held only a faint hint of their usual golden glow, the pupils blown wide and her expression glazed.

  I could smell her blood, but it smelled wrong, repulsive and…dirty. Not the sweet, power-rich delicacy that it had been. “Hey, look Ninja-Indian Chick, happy hour is over. You don’t have to go home, but you can’t stay here.”