Shattered Circle

“What?” Johnny rushed toward me. His gaze fell past me to her. “Aurelia?”

She didn’t answer. I’d knocked her out.

“You know her?” I stood, rather gracelessly.

Johnny took my arm to steady me. “Yup.”

I blinked repeatedly. My question was obvious.

“The Zvonul sent her to be my assistant.” He paused and, as a glare took over my face, his tone dropped to a justifying one. “She’s very . . . qualified.”

I jerked out of his grasp. “Qualified to kill me.” As I glowered down at the gorgeous unconscious woman, I asked, “Why is she in her underwear?” It looked like someone had dragged it through the cornfield as pieces of dried and broken cornstalks were stuck to it in various places.

Johnny stepped away. “She’s after power,” he said. “She’s been trying to get close to me since she showed up.”

While I was away in Pennsylvania with my mother.

I looked Johnny up and down. His clothing was disheveled, to say the least. There were flecks of grass and shards of cornstalk on him.

Riiiiiight. Everything clicked into place suddenly and I knew what his urgent need to talk to me had been about. “Let me guess. She got close, didn’t she?”

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Johnny’s mind was racing. He was stunned to learn that Aurelia had tried to kill Red, but Red’s coarse voice and the splotches on her neck were proof enough, even without the burn right in front. The w?rewolf had come close to achieving her aim.

“This is what you had to tell me,” Red said when he didn’t answer. “She’s why we had to talk face-to-face so urgently.”

The reproach in Seph’s glare was a physical slap. The hard note in her words, even over the gruff tone, was an accusation.

“No. She wasn’t.” He opened his mouth and shut it. He wanted to apologize again for losing it and attacking her before. He wanted to smooth that situation over before telling her about Evan. But with his assistant having tried to kill her, and Persephone’s obvious jealousy, he knew he had to back up and fix this before he could straighten the other mess out.

He knew what he had to do. He took out his cell phone and dialed. The Omori needed to come now.

“Yes, sire?” Gregor’s deep voice answered.

“I need you to come to Red’s farmhouse ASAP.”

“I’m on my way.”

“Bring the Omori with you.”

“Sire? Is there a problem?”

Johnny looked down at the unconscious woman and said, “Aurelia must be taken into custody.”

At that, Aurelia stirred and sat up, eyes wide in disbelief. Red retreated a few steps farther from the woman, then disappeared into the living room.

Gregor asked, “For?”

“Attempted murder.”

“Who’d she try to kill?”

“Red.” Johnny hung up. He heard Seph passing through the dining area to the kitchen. She appeared again, dragging a dinette chair and holding a rope.

“You can’t be serious.” Aurelia’s droll tone indicated that she’d recovered herself. “The witch is a liability to your rule.”

Johnny shook his head. “You’re wrong.”

Aurelia laughed, a single condescending note. “Of course you can’t see it. You’ve barely lived your life with the pack. Every den is bound by the common denominators of being wolf and fearing the threats of those who are not, but this pack has something more charmingly homey about it. I’ll give Ignatius the credit. That’s the legacy he built. A pack that was more than pack . . . by aspiring to be family.” The tone she used would have been more suitable as a response to learning her house was infested with bedbugs.

“That’s not a bad thing,” Johnny said.

Aurelia rubbed at the back of her head and climbed to her feet, keeping her left on the heel only. It was obviously injured. “It is for you.”

“How so?”

“You kept this family at arm’s length, and they were the good ones. What’s out there”—she gestured vaguely beyond the house—“is not the same. The higher the rank, the less familial it gets. In the Zvonul, they’re barely more than rabid pack animals. When they see threats, they eliminate them. As you should well know.”

Johnny knew. He had met the Rege.

Aurelia swung her arm to point at Red. “If you keep screwing around with the witch, they will off you and take your son.”

Beyond her, he saw Red’s eyes widen at the word “son.”

“You said no one knew.”

“The information is secured,” she said coolly. “If anything happens to me, if I don’t check in, locks will be opened.”

He glared.

“Also, if I go into custody,” she added in a snide sing-song voice, “locks will be opened. And you know what will happen then.” She paused. “Anticipating that Evan will be able to transform at will like you, they’ll turn him.”

Johnny felt his heartbeat in his ears. He felt his blood pressure rising. His fists clenched.

“They will raise him to be what they want in a Domn Lup.” The room remained silent for a long moment, then Aurelia added, “I’m sure their values and ideals would not be in keeping with how you would want him raised.”

With that, Aurelia spun and, though she advanced awkwardly using only the heel of her left foot, she rushed at Seph, who swung the chair up to defend herself. Aurelia grabbed the legs smoothly and used her momentum to push the chair at Seph, twisting it so the back of it cracked her in the side of the head. She went down. Aurelia leapt over her, landing on her right foot and her hands, but she was immediately up and rushing to the door that led to the garage.

Johnny was already in motion, following her swift move, but he fell on one knee, crouching over Seph. “Red? Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” she snarled. “Get her.”

Johnny ran into the garage and leapt the railing of the steps. Aurelia had escaped out the door to the rear and as he lunged through it, the flat of a shovel whacked against his head.

His knees buckled and hit the ground. Dazed, it took him a second to recover. He saw Aurelia hobbling across the yard toward the road. Even injured, she was fast. Her car is that way. Mine’s closer.

Pushing himself up, he ran in the other direction around the house, skidded up to the door of the Maserati, and jerked the now fobless key ring from his pocket. In seconds he was throwing gravel as he reversed up the driveway and squealed the tires on the road. Remarkably, Aurelia had made it to her car already.

Catching a glimpse of taillights, he shifted gears and floored the gas pedal.

CHAPTER TWENTY