Cry Wolf (26 page)

“It does seem strange that they aren’t here singing your praises with the rest of the humans you keep around,” Kelly said. “What is a church without converts to flaunt?”

“I’m no preacher,” Abraham said.

“Could have fooled me,” Kelly replied. “You’re a shepherd to your flock, a Father to your impressionable children.”

“Kelly,” Malcolm said, putting a conciliatory hand on her back. “Are you even arguing with Abraham anymore or are you fighting something else?”

“You want to put your life and soul in the hands of this charlatan?” Kelly accused.

“I have already proved I’m no charlatan,” Abraham said.

“No, you proved you’re a witch. But Malcolm and I already knew that magic was real, and I already knew that you had it. That’s not what you have to prove.”

Kelly suddenly reeled back against the settee, the vision hitting her like an oven blast. Abraham got to his feet in mild alarm. The tableau before her wavered as though magic had rippled the waters of reality. Another vision came.

Abraham was in the middle of the room, tenderly cradling the face of a female werewolf.

“I can help you,” he promised the girl. “I can purge the abomination from your flesh.”

When she returned to the present, gasping, Abraham had knelt at her feet, cradling her face much as he had the other female werewolf.

“What is it?” Abraham asked eagerly. “What did you see?”

“Your magic is powerful,” Kelly said faintly. “It leaves an imprint. I just saw a tableau of the past. It was nothing.”

“It is a shame that something so extraordinary should be so fettered by your decision to make yourself meat for the beast,” Abraham said, caressing the corners of her mouth.

Kelly pulled her face away from his hands.

“And all for a little control,” Abraham murmured.

“Yes.”

“You call this control?” Abraham said. As he stood, he curled his fingers around a ceremonial steel knife that had floated to him from one of the covered tables edging the room.

“I find that many accoutrements of my trade are alarming to those unaccustomed to it,”
Abraham whispered in her head in response to her curiosity about what was on those tables under the blankets.

He loosened and removed his tie, backing up to discard it on the armchair. He undid two more buttons on his starched ivory shirt to expose one side of his collarbone and part of his chest.

Kelly saw what he was going to do before he did it. She rose to flee, but he anticipated her anticipation. Before she could leave, he sliced through the flesh underneath the collarbone with the edge of his knife.

This was not a shapeshifter with a tiny, closed cut. This was a human man shedding fresh blood. She stumbled back, clutching the arm of the settee.

When her previous pack had hunted humans, she would try to keep a fair distance until the leftovers had congealed and the flies had laid their eggs. But these were close quarters where the scent could not diffuse and where there were few easy exits. The blood dripped down Abraham’s chest beneath the pure fabric of his shirt, staining it dark red.

Malcolm lunged. In spite of her own staggering reaction, she snatched him out of the air, yanking him back by his shirt. He fell onto the settee. It buckled and snapped under his weight.

Malcolm snarled, fur rippling over his body to a stuttering beat of the crunch of bone and the groan of sinew. Kelly put herself between Malcolm and Abraham. She let her teeth and claws grow, snarling back at Malcolm.

“Smell it. Let yourself experience it,” Kelly said. Her voice had dropped an octave and rolled with a growl. “The harder you fight it, the more you’ll want it.” Even so, she drooled over her fangs and down her chin, which didn’t make her case very well. Abraham’s smell was so strong that she could practically taste his blood in her mouth.

“I thought I was ready,” Malcolm said. It was hard to understand him. His transformation was further along than hers. “I put everyone in danger. I can’t imagine wanting anything more than this.”

“That’s why I’m here,” Kelly said. “Remember what I taught you. And blame him, not you.” She glared at Abraham over her shoulder. He held his shirt away from the wound, his expression placid, but his gaze was hungry in an entirely different way than the hunger in Malcolm’s eyes.

“Just making a point,” Abraham said.

“Of course Malcolm would have trouble,” Kelly said angrily. “He’s new, I told you.”

“Yes, and your own salivation is highly attractive,” Abraham replied. “Let the wolf go. I can handle him.”

He brought the knife up and sliced another line under the one he’d already made, grimacing but continuing through the pain. Malcolm howled as though Abraham were attacking him instead. The scent of blood and flesh mingled with wine, cornsilk and incense. Kelly’s knees went weak.

“Malcolm,” Kelly gasped.

The sound of rent cotton ripped through the room. In full wolf skin, Malcolm leapt at Abraham. In spite of Malcolm’s much greater size and his open mouth, Abraham showed no fear. He dropped the knife to the wooden floor with a clatter and faced his palm at the attacking werewolf.

It was as though Abraham had disrobed Malcolm of his wolf with a push of his hand, the fur and any remaining shreds of his clothing peeling back from Malcolm’s head down to his toes, disappearing as though they’d never been there. Malcolm plummeted like a stone at Abraham’s feet, naked but a man.

“Please,” Malcolm begged him, rasping as if parched, shivering with need and shame and confusion. “Please, help me.”

“Dear boy,” Abraham said, lifting Malcolm’s chin with eerie benevolence. “I will. Will you help me convince your friend? Of course you will.”

He looked up at Kelly, his eyes fiery. “I see why you like the boy. He is exquisite in his submission. The beast knows its place before a man with power, a man who will not be prey.”

“Why are you doing this?” Kelly whispered. She ran the back of her hand over her mouth. It took every ounce of effort to pull her teeth and claws back in.

“Come here, Kelly. Can you come closer without trying to kill me? Can you do it? Come to me,” he said, his deep tone like velvet.

Kelly took a step towards him, then another, each movement heavy on the ground because it wasn’t her moving her feet. She would have got even angrier at him for daring to control her, but then she came close enough to be drawn to him by nothing more than the beautiful smell of his blood and the flesh of man. Abraham released his shirt and held his robes open just as she folded the fabric of his shirt back herself. She curled her tongue in the air between them, tasting, and she whimpered.

She wasn’t helpless to the desire, not like Malcolm. She could say no. But God, he was inviting her, offering himself to her, and the memory of the sweetness of her last taste superseded her conscience begging her to resist that which he told her to take.

She ran her tongue over both wounds.

Abraham hissed. “I had forgotten how searing a werewolf mouth could be,” he said.

She barely heard him over her groan. She ripped the top half of his shirt open to give her better access as she lapped and sucked at the blood and the tantalising hints of the meat beneath.

Her teeth wanted to grow. She did what she’d told Malcolm to do instead and pushed it back so that her spine arched with temporary change. But when she tried to tear her mouth away from him, she couldn’t. Instead, she worked at the buttons of his jacket with her fingers, then his vest and the rest of his shirt, surprisingly deft for how impatient and distracted she was. She panted against the cuts, her tongue darting out now and then to taste the blood when she couldn’t hold herself back another second.

“What do you have planned, my dear?” Abraham asked. If she wasn’t mistaken, he sounded a little breathless.

“I think the question is what you have planned,” Kelly said against his skin, smearing the blood over her lips like lipstick and finally managing to get her appetite under control enough to raise her head. As soon as she could pull away, that made it easier to let go of Abraham’s clothing and retreat.

She almost tripped over Malcolm, who was still on the ground and staring up at Kelly and Abraham, the only two people in his world who could save him. He licked his lips when he saw what Kelly had on hers. He clenched his eyes shut against the overwhelming desire to hunt.

Kelly glared defiantly at Abraham. Then she fisted Malcolm’s hair and pulled him up higher on his knees so that she could kiss him, giving him a taste of Abraham’s blood. He would never forget it—he would never mistake it as anything but the blood of that man. He would know that scent and taste for as long as he lived.

Malcolm dug his fingers painfully into Kelly’s upper arms. After he had licked and sucked every last bit of Abraham’s blood from her lips, she opened her mouth to him. Leashed to her kiss and the lingering scent of blood on her mouth, he could do nothing but follow her as she led them inch by inch away from Abraham. When she thought they were far enough away if they needed to run, she yanked Malcolm back and pushed him behind her.

“You know, I usually have a good grasp on what people are like,” Kelly said to the man on the other side of the room, composed in spite of his open robes and his jacket, vest and shirt hanging loose. “But that’s because most people don’t know how to shut me out like you do, which doesn’t exactly make you trustworthy. These little games make you even less so. This man came to you for help. Instead, you torture him and me.”

“Strange, it didn’t feel like torture to me,” Abraham said. “Or for you. Besides, your friend wasn’t the one I was testing.”

“But you hurt him anyway,” Kelly snapped. “Quit with the fucking Wizard of Oz crap and just give him what he wants so we can go.”

“Funny you should say that,” Abraham said. He beckoned them with the crook of his finger. Their feet dragged over the wooden slats of the floor in a resistant shuffle. “Like you, I can’t see very far into your mind, but your friend’s mind is an open book. He wants many things, some of them more complicated than others. I can give him a fair number of them just tonight without removing his lycanthropy at all.”

Kelly shivered off his conjuring spell and reached behind her for Malcolm’s hands. Their fingers interlocked, but Malcolm’s head sagged against her shoulder. Then he pressed his lips against her neck.

The screen that blocked the bed suddenly snapped closed to rest against the wall. Kelly didn’t know whether Abraham had done it or her, but before she could determine the cause, her body seized.

She saw
the Father from behind, fucking a woman. Kelly thought the woman might have been fae, but she honestly couldn’t see her that well because Abraham wore his robes, and they obscured most of the woman. There was no other way to describe what they were doing than fucking—passionate but inconsiderate, desperate but lacking anything approaching intimacy. He used her, and she let him.

When she received past knowledge like this, it usually didn’t hit her so hard. The magical traces he left behind were so much more potent than other people’s. She wondered whether she left a similarly strong trace and what Abraham might see if he walked her old haunts.

She shuddered back into the present as Malcolm brought the straps of her jumper down over her arms. She clutched at it, even though the corset-structured bodice kept it from falling down. How could he think about sex at a time like this, when Abraham had decided to make Malcolm as miserable as possible before he ‘cured’ him? Not to mention Abraham’s devoted mission to royally piss her off…

She caught a glimpse of Malcolm’s eyes when she turned to glare at him. They were glazed and not in an aroused way.

Kelly snarled, sending an uncontrolled burst of magic in Abraham’s direction. He shouted with surprise as he flew back, but he got a handle on himself before he fell in a heap on the floor. Kelly threw up what she hoped was a shield that would keep Abraham’s spells from passing through, but Kelly had never done anything like it before and it felt tenuous at best.

“I’m out of control,” Malcolm said. “I’m doing things I don’t want to do. Or I do want to do them, but…” The glaze over his eyes had fallen away, but he still looked lost, dazed, as though he had suffered a concussion.

Kelly guessed that being pulled hither and thither by the whims of a witch might have had something to do with it.

“If you run for it, do you think you could control yourself out there with all those people?” Kelly asked, stroking his hair.

He shook his head. “It doesn’t matter how much I ate earlier. I feel like I haven’t eaten in weeks, not after I smelt…” His entire body shuddered. “I can’t go out there.”

“Then would you object to me making you sleep?” Kelly asked. “It would be safer in the interim, and I think Mommy and Daddy need to have a talk, witch to witch.”

“I think he wants you. He wants you in his bed,” Malcolm said. “He wants me to help him.”

“I gathered that much,” Kelly said darkly, but even so, something even darker stirred in her abdomen.

“Are you going to?”

Kelly couldn’t tell him no, because sex could be power, even for a woman being taken. Their kind of elemental magic thrived under sexual conditions. If that was the battlefield he’d chosen, so be it.

And God help her, she still had the taste of him in her mouth, and as far as she could tell, there was no reason she couldn’t fuck someone she hated.

“I don’t know,” Kelly said.

“Are you safe?” Malcolm asked, concerned for her now.

Abraham’s magic probed the weakness of her clumsy shield, and Kelly stumbled in Malcolm’s arms.

“I don’t know.”

“Would you be safer if I were out of the picture?” Malcolm asked helplessly.

Kelly bit her lip. She wished that she could tell him that it wasn’t true. But up until now, this entire encounter had been to the beat Abraham had set because he had used Malcolm to distract her. As things were, she had to protect Malcolm from Abraham, Abraham from Malcolm, herself from them and them from her. Abraham only had to protect himself while he pulled their strings.