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35: Aftermath
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2024-10-29 19:42:56
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Where Wild Things Roam 36: Strike
Darby “I smell snow. What about you, Tessa?”Beside me, she scents at the air. Yes, Luna. At this elevation, there will likely be quite a lot.“It’s been a long time since I’ve seen snow, and not ever in your lifetime.” I’m chattering away mindlessly, trying to contain my anxiety. So many things happened over the weekend, besides the alliance to go after the vampires, I’m coming undone at the seams.I am looking forward to the experience. Though I may need a new ball. Yellow will be difficult to see against snow.“Your ball is not yellow anymore. I’m not certain they have a name for that particular shade of grime. Perhaps we should stop by the pet boutique on the plaza on the way ho
Where Wild Things Roam 37: Hecate Strait
Sean “Ready, little girl?”Tossing the two beaded braids below her ear over her shoulder, Sandy flashes me a heart-stopping grin and tucks her backpack of clothes in a sheltered niche above the water level at high tide. Naked and flinching at both the cold air and the sharp stones on the shallow cave’s floor, she grabs the two waterproof equipment packs and heads for the cold, northern Pacific water. “Last one in’s a smelly wolf.”“You’ll regret that.” Hobbling to the same niche where my mate left her clothes, I stuff my pack in beside hers. “Hold up, Sandy. My phone’s ringing.”Shoving my hand in the outer pocket, I retrieve the device, immediately alarmed to see Ian’s number. “Ian?”
Where Wild Things Roam 38: Torture
Darby Numb with shock and bitter cold from sitting against the cavern wall, I still notice when Slimy returns, his long leather duster sweeping outward like a cloak, blackness spreading out behind him like the darkest night. He’s still wearing his vicious grin, but it falls immediately seeing the punctures that linger, bright red and gaping open at my wrists.Crouching over me, he jerks my face up to look at him, turning it left and right. I assume he’s looking for more injuries, but at this point, the punctures are the least of what I’ve suffered. And frankly, I hope the fact that they’re visible creates a problem for him. A big problem.“Who did this to you?” he demands, his freezing fingers closing on my throat when I fail to answer, my eyes drifting away from his face to stare
Where Wild Things Roam 39: Hunt
Jack Tessa, Ian and I are deep into the mine now, with no signal to the mapping device and following a blind tunnel. There’s occasional jabber on the pack link as pockets of vampires are located and swiftly killed, but no one’s found any sign of Darby. Or any other non-vampire for that matter.The whole mine reeks of vamps, like a fucking cesspool of eviscerated decomposing body and rotten eggs. And I don’t mean eggs a little yucky and past their time. I mean the kind that explode the grey muck of ghastly stench that poisons your olfactory memory for the rest of your days. It’s fucking revolting.The fuck? Do they just not have noses? How the hell can these vamps live trapped in this stink?They are foul creatures, Triumvir.
Where Wild Things Roam 40: Tenuous
Leo “How long has she been like this?” Dr. Myers demands as soon as I materialize inside the specially outfitted hospital room with Darby, directing elemental air to lower her gently to the bed. A flurry of activity ensues as Dr. Myers waits for my answer, barking orders to the hospital staff inside the room.Flattening myself against the wall to keep out of the way, I reply over the blips and bleeps of the monitoring equipment and the hushed, rushed dialog between staff trying to save Darby. “It took me an hour and a quarter to get here. That was within a few minutes of Ian finding her.”“Her pulse is rapid and erratic, respiratory rate is high. BP is low. Temperature is 35°C.”Dr. Myers checks Darby’s pupillary response, then steps back against the opposite wall as a nurse uses medial scissors to cut Darby’s jacket and shirt off, exposing four circular burns like the ones you get from the cigarette lighters in old cars. “There are more injuries here, Dr. Myers.”I blanch, staring
Where Wild Things Roam 41: Reimaged
Darby There’s this twilight period between sleep and waking, where untethered consciousness warps into the illusionary and hallucinatory thoughts and impressions of dream. The fragmented evolving mindscape of bizarre sounds, abstract landscape, and ephemeral ideas that’s the knife’s edge of lucidity and oblivion. In this place, our meandering cognitive perceptions, odd and out-of-context when dismantled upon waking, seem completely unremarkable and entirely reasonable.It’s in one of these hypnagogic intrusions into the veiled plane between life and death, while my brain steadily reassembles the strictures with which I interpret the world, that a perfect symphony of low level fragrances—petrichor tinged with moss and vetiver’s fresh, intensely green woodsy-ness—flashes, like a sputtering burst at the
Where Wild Things Roam 42: Bonds
Mattie“Hello Mattie.”“Alpha.” I know he hears the surprise in my tone. “Please, come in. Would you like some tea?” I offer, lifting a pot from the setting on sofa table in the living area of our Candlewood coven house. I’m taken aback by his presence at our door and worry for the reason. Though my coven is powerful, none of us engages in any significant form of white or healing magic. I ache to have to tell him that, if that’s why he’s come. “How is your mate?”Prompted by my question, he appears to think of his Luna and smiles, and I’m shocked again to see he—the ever-composed Alpha Ian—is blushing. “Recovering, thank you,” he replies in his smooth baritone, declining tea with a massive hand raised in a stop and slight shake of his head.“That&rsq
Where Wild Things Roam 43: Prescience
Ian“Thank you all for coming.”Though each of these individuals seated around the scythe-shaped table in the second story conference room has already committed to assist Candlewood in the war to take out Cordelion, with the actual attack looming like gathering storm clouds on the horizon, I’m all the more grateful to have them here.“Now, don’cha go gettin’ sentimental on us, Big Black Wolf,” Big Easy chides with a hearty laugh through a wicked smile that makes the skull tattoo on his face seem to come alive. He lays a hand on Vermillion’s on one side and Tarot’s on the other. “We come like we always do. Lookin’ forward to a good party.”Beside him, Vermillion’s lips curl in a sinister smile, the pointed tip of her tongue running over her elongated wolf teeth, but
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Where Wild Things Roam 54: Postlude
IanStanding at the bare office window in the temporary building housing me, Sean and our assistants, I stare unblinking even against the brightness, noting the construction crews’ progress clearing and rebuilding the Candlewood shops along the destroyed plaza. With the framing complete for the shops in the small notch where Suzanne’s boutique once stood, the contractors have started installing the building’s major systems, including plumbing pipes, electrical wiring and heating and cooling ducts. I cross my arms over my chest, pleased overall.Further around the plaza, crews are working on a new façade— the forties style diner storefront Darla and Joe have always wanted—and the Main street government offices like mine and Seans and Jack’s Security building will be restored to look as they did before. On the opposite side of the plaza, I see Charlie, dresse
Where Wild Things Roam 53: Afterward
JackLili? Anna?We’re good here, lover. Anna took care of the vamps—did you know she can see when they port in?—and ten, maybe fifteen minutes ago, the zombies all evaporated in this reddish mist. The packhouse is brimming with people though. Townsend’s working his way around with first aid. What happened? Is it over?I think you could say that. Stooping, I pull a dazed and wobbly Leo to his feet. I’ll give you the details when we get home. “Fucking Christ!” Leo wipes a hand over his face, rubbing his eyes, and surveys the destruction of the plaza. “What the hell happened? We get hit with an intercontinental ballistic missile?”“Kinda.” Turning him towards the shallow depression where Darby still clings to Ian, Tessa sittin
Where Wild Things Roam 52: Shifting Tides
CarsonWhen you’ve planned something out to the tiniest of details—using a fold, one the weres mistakenly failed to close, to march a massive contingent of hungry ferocious vampires into the snowy sleeping midst of your rival’s territory and cursing their own raised dead to send battling against them, then drink the blood of a god, becoming one yourself so you can take captive your rival’s reigning queen—to suddenly find yourself spectacularly upstaged after all that damn work, well, it grates on you.A lot.It was irritating enough when the Candlewood alpha made his grand entrance to my plaza mayhem by fucking dropping out of goddamned nowhere, pulverizing an entire building to absolute rubble, complete with rolling thunder and a superhero pose. But when he stands up buck naked, flaming like Lugh of the Long Arms himself, and strikes d
Where Wild Things Roam 51: Rising Waters
Carson“Oh-ho-ho, yeah!” I chuckle-growl wickedly, stretching and looking from one hand to the other. Not that I needed to see it. I can definitely feel the power of a fae god pulsing inside me. There’ll be no wiping this smile off my face, that’s for sure. “Well, on to bigger things.”Reaching inside my leather duster, I draw out one of the iron cuff bracelets I’d used before on my lovely little princess. Nudging her father’s limp form with a toe, I roll him over and stooping, slip the iron cuff over his wrist, loving the sound of his weak groan. “You just wait right here, Dad, while I take care of your daughter.”I glance around the wrecked plaza as I make my way to the front steps of the hotel. The entire host—undead and were—have stopped what they’re doing and stare wide-eyed at me. Ex
Where Wild Things Roam 50: Invaders
CarsonI’d have preferred launching a rapid assault into Candlewood to capture my lovely fae Luna while she was still in her grove. But if she and these filthy weres are going to make it difficult, then I can certainly adjust.I’m flexible and obliging that way.In fact, it might even be better. Because if I’ve got to march a vampire contingent through that boring little dump town to get her, I’m letting them loose to wreak havoc and tear it apart at the seams. Wipe those hairy were bastards off the face of the planet like that stupid slacker Cordelion was supposed to.Since it’s a land attack, I don’t have to contend with whatever that scary as hell sea monster thing was and Madame Soublet’s doing an admirable job keeping my snowy-haired necromancer kitten and her vampire-devouring smoke phantasm busy here in New Orleans.True, I’ve no real counters for the bird woman, or the nifty fiery fox the weres brought to Cordelion’s reservoir slaughter. Absent intelligence otherwise, I have to
Where Wild Things Roam 49: Deadly Tic-Tac-Toe
JackAn anxious looking Dr. Myers is waiting outside Darby’s door when Sean and I arrive.“Good morning, Dr. Myers.”“Good morning, triumvirs.” She glances, nodding, to each of us in turn. “I assume you’re here to talk to the Luna as you’d previously mentioned.”“If we can.” There’s a faint hint of concern in Sean’s voice. “Is there something wrong?”“Not really, no.” Dr. Myers inhales deeply, then continues slowly. “The hospital’s staff psychologist has been in this morning already. It’s only been a few days and based on the Luna’s responses this morning, I don’t think we’re at therapeutic dose on the antidepressant yet. If you’re going to talk to her, I would ask that you do so gent
Where Wild Things Roam 48: Second Chances
JackSo when’d you figure out you’re fae too, Tess? I blur along with her, about two seconds behind Leo with Darby, and with Sandy and Sean somewhere behind, undoubtedly arguing about why she went and did what she wanted after he told her not to. I’m sure I’ll get an earful for encouraging her later.What else can I do? Not like I could have stopped her.When you shouted that our Luna was walking out over the water. I thought to shift and break the window to escape the closed office. The thought was what broke the glass. And this—this—travel? You thought and it happened too?No. I could see how the lady triumvir did it when she carried you to the reservoir. So I followed. Fae are somewhat strange, are they not, triumvir? Wolves are much simpler.
Where Wild Things Roam 47: Desperate Measures
CarsonIf I thought it sucked clawing and dragging my blackened flesh out of the scraping clinging earth, I was sorely mistaken.Compared to the blinding screaming pain of crumpling every severely damaged nerve against every inch of edgy crisped flesh into the smallest iota of space, then twisting and squeezing it through a port, crawling over frozen coarse loam and grit to lay in the snow was child’s play.When I come to, I have no clue how long I’ve been draped like a wet towel over the back of a Queen Anne wingback chair in the downstairs parlor. Just that the scratchy cotton-polyester upholstery I spent a small fortune for during the renovations here feels like I’m lying on ground glass.Ahhh, home.The scent of garden violas drifts on the mercifully warm moist air and from somewhere in the distance, the
Where Wild Things Roam 46: The Call
Anna Jack’s arm tightens around me reflexively as I try to leave the bed. “Roll over, lover,” I whisper, pushing against him, and obliging even in his sleep, he does as he’s asked. His hand unconsciously seeks Lili as my replacement and he pulls her against him on the other side, allowing me to slip out. I kiss his temple, then hers.It doesn’t make any sense. I pad quietly to the French door that leads to the courtyard, ruminating. Then again, neither does what I’m about to do. I don’t know why, but it’s all I can think of since Ian’s funeral. Now that all the strangers have departed for their home territories, there’s time for me to pursue it.The bitter cold raises fierce gooseflesh over my entire body as I soon as I step outside and I shiver. Fighting th
