If he could’ve killed me with his brainpower alone, I’d already be dead. But very slowly he blinked twice.
“Good. See you in a few minutes, Ray.” I shut the closet doors. Garbled curses followed me back into the living room.
My brother was on the phone calling for a cleaning crew to deal with Jeff.
I got down to business. “Okay, Danny, were you able to get anything off of Jeff before Juanita came in? We’re going to have to figure out who he’s working for and why he was here in the first place.”
“His pockets were clean and other than some low-level surveillance equipment and a few cheap bugs, there was nothing of value in the bag he carried. I’d planned to sneak down to his apartment as soon as the detective was settled, but your lovely neighbor waylaid my carefully made plans.”
“His apartment’s a good place to start. I’m assuming it shouldn’t be too hard to piece it together. Jeff was not the brightest bulb—” A force slammed into me, knocking the breath out of my body as I hit the living room wall. My wolf howled, springing at the red lines that had suddenly emerged in my mind, snapping her jaws fiercely.
It was one of Selene’s spells.
Why now? No time to ponder, we had to get rid of it. We conquered the last one, we need to get this one too. My wolf growled and lashed at the red amassing quickly in my mind.
I gasped for air, sliding down the rough brick into a sitting position, trying my best to breathe. The spell was cutting off all my bodily functions.
“Jess, Jesus Christ, look at your hands.” Tyler knelt beside me and grabbed a hold of my wrists.
Danny squatted next to him. “That looks like trouble if I’ve ever seen any.”
I forced my neck down so I could see my hands lying in Tyler’s grasp. Red veins were spreading upward at an alarming rate, starting from the very tips of my fingers like an oil spill, slowly seeping up my forearms. Pain raced up to my shoulder, ahead of the spell, and back down my spine, zinging it with fire. This wasn’t the same spell she’d hit me with in the clearing. This spell was different.
The bitch gave us two.
She must have snuck one in under Valdov’s nose. This one must have had a waiting period before activation. If the vampire knew she’d put a spell in my body to kill me, there would’ve been backlash. Sneaky witch.
All my limbs stiffened; I couldn’t move anything.
Inside my head, my wolf kept hacking at the spell. I pushed power into her, trying to feed her control. My arms throbbed and burned with a searing heat. My body’s instinct was to change, but it was too risky. The spell would probably kill me before I could shift. I had to defeat it now.
“Jess, can you hear me?” Tyler voice echoed in my ear. “What’s going on? You have to answer me.”
My eyes were open, but I couldn’t blink.
Tyler turned to Danny. “Get my father on the phone. We need help.”
No. “No,” I managed on a harsh breath. Both boys turned to stare at me. “Don’t.” I had to deal with this on my own. If my father found out, there was no way he’d let me leave town. I had to find my mate. At all costs. No matter what was going on with Jeff, or any of the other craziness, finding Rourke was my priority. My only priority. “No.” It came out slowly. “Please.”
My brother and Danny waited, both of them crouched next to me, concern on their faces.
I battled the insidious spell, pushing more control at my wolf, trying to draw power from my body and direct it at her, pumping her full. She ripped and struck at the red mass in a fervor, too fast for me to follow. I gasped for more air, my lungs barely inflating. We have to do this, I told her. We have to be stronger than her or we lose him forever. It’s giving a little, I can feel it. We’re almost there. I promise you she’s not going to win this. We are stronger. My wolf snarled, gnashing her teeth, forcing the lines back into submission, tearing the spell apart before it could fully metastasize in my body, which was exactly what it was trying to do.
I channeled one last burst of power, using everything I could gather, and aimed it at my wolf. A moment of clarity hit my mind, a bright concentration of power, and the spell snapped once and for all. The lines broke apart, dangling limply in my mind like a tattered spiderweb swaying in the wind.
Then very slowly all the color dissipated, seeping back the way it’d come, like eels sliding back into their holes.
My wolf continued to growl, lashing at the retreating lines until no red remained. But the ugliness hadn’t gone away forever. The spell was still there.
It’d just gone dormant.
When the last remnant of red vanished I fell forward, coughing for air, taking in short deep breaths. After a solid minute of panting, I finally looked up, sweaty and spent. “She’s trying to kill me.”
“Who’s trying to kill you?” Tyler asked. I’d forgotten Tyler had been out cold when Selene had blasted me in the clearing.
“Selene.” I rested my head back against the wall. “It seems she left me a fun parting gift from our party together in the woods.”
But she wasn’t going to win.
“It looked a bit touch-and-go there for a second,” Danny said, his face worried. “You’re not talking about Selene the actual Lunar Goddess, are you?”
“The very one.” The whore was trying to kill me.
“What kind of a spell is it?” Tyler asked. “It looked like it was going to consume your entire body.”
“I think it was a … death spell of some kind,” I said quietly, knowing Tyler wasn’t going to take that news well.
“What the hell does that mean?”
“It means I have to kill the bitch before she kills me.”
The End of Book One
about the author
A Minnesota girl born and bred, Amanda Carlson graduated from the University of Minnesota with a double major in speech and hearing science and child development. After enjoying her time as a sign language interpreter, she decided to stay at home and write in earnest after her second child was born. She loves playing Scrabble, tropical beaches, and shopping trips to Ikea. She lives in Minneapolis with her husband and three kids. To find out more about the author, visit www.amandacarlson.com or on Twitter @AmandaCCarlson.
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interview
Have you always been a writer?
Yes, ever since I can remember. I started writing in junior high, using my yearbook to add faces to my stories. Over the years, I’ve written humorous essays about my kids, articles for various publications, but did I consider myself a “writer” before the publication of this book? Not really. For me, it’s one of those validation milestones that has made all my other endeavors feel worthy. Now I feel like I can call myself a writer, and it feels damn good.
What do you do when you’re not writing?
I have three kids, so it’s safe to say when I’m not writing I’m trying my best to keep up with my motherly duties. I usually wrap my writing day when they get home from school, but my kids are understanding and give me extra time when I need it. Minneapolis is full of beautiful lakes and I love to walk with pals. By the end of the week I need to escape, so movies are a delicious treat. The more action-packed the better. I also love playing
