A Cursed Embrace(2)

I reached for her once more, moving slowly to avoid irritating her fragile nerves. My fingers squeezed her arm. “We have a pack of werewolves watching out for us.” I smirked when I thought of Misha. “And a guardian angel master vampire who feels indebted to us for saving his billion-dollar backside. We’re going to be okay.”

I had an inner beast. Taran, an inner bitch. They both worked well to help us through our struggles, just in different ways. She sighed. “Yeah. Maybe.” She stomped back to the body, scrutinizing our unexpected visitor from his gushing head to his seeping toes. “When the hell are the weres getting here? No offense to this poor sap, but he’s making a ridiculous mess.”

I tried not to think about the mess. Or the wereraccoon. I’d first found him riffling through our garbage a month or so back. Since then he’d periodically hid, watching us, in the tall, dense firs surrounding our house. Was it creepy? Oh yeah. Did I want him around us? No. But he’d been one of many supernaturals who had shown up since my sisters and I were “outed” to the mystical community. And unlike the other audacious idiots I pounded, this guy seemed . . . skittish.

Streaks of blood and pus ran from the thick brush behind our house and up the porch steps to the body. The were’s feet hovered over the threshold while the rest of his naked body lay facedown across our dark chestnut wood floors. Blond curls stuck to his scalp. His head twisted in an odd angle and his eyes stared blindly beneath our couch. He couldn’t have been more than twenty-five, like me. Too young to die, especially like this.

Our training as nurses drove us to try to save him. But his throat had been slit where his pulse should have drummed, and the pungent scent of death told me there was nothing left to save. I didn’t have many friends. And I had the feeling the wereraccoon hadn’t had any.

Shayna played with her phone. She’d taken one look at the body and called her behemoth werewolf boyfriend right away. Since then she hadn’t stepped anywhere near the were and had kept her eyes averted. She knew as the earth’s guardians, her boyfriend and his kind would take care of it. Or maybe it was the pus. Shayna and I delivered babies for a living. While we dealt with other body fluids, pus never reared its ugly head. “Koda says they’re almost here . . . and that Aric says not to do anything stupid.”

Aric. His name filled me with heat while chills shot down my spine. I wanted to see him. I just wasn’t exactly ready. And I especially wasn’t ready for him to find me standing over a corpse. Again. “Aric’s coming?”

Shayna nodded hard enough to make her silky black ponytail bounce behind her. “He cares about you, Celia. He wants to make sure you’re safe.”

The cool April breeze swept through the opened door, sending goose bumps scurrying from my arms up to my neck. I wrapped my bare arms around my body. I usually dressed in a tank and jogging shorts when I went for my run; otherwise my inner tigress made me unbearably hot. But standing still did nothing to warm me. She flicked her tail inside me, excited to see Aric’s wolf. I only wished my human side shared her enthusiasm. “I doubt he cares as much as you think,” I muttered.

“Aric hasn’t called?” My sweet sister, Emme, curled her arms around mine. She reminded me of Natalie Portman—pretty, gentle, and soft-spoken. I almost smiled. Against my gold skin tone and lean muscles, her fair skin appeared lighter and her delicate arms more fragile.

A twinge of her pale yellow healing light that matched her hair slowly built until it completely enveloped us. I shook my head. “Don’t, Emme.” She attempted to soothe my emotions with her healing ability—the way she did my physical wounds. But disappointment was nothing to heal, rather just something to get over. “I’m not mad at Aric. You don’t have to calm me.”

Emme released me, sympathy further softening her gentle green eyes. She nodded and leaned against the back of our sofa, smoothing the skirt of her long blue dress.

Shayna frowned and stepped toward me, but apparently she was too close to the body. She backed away again and tucked her iPhone into the pocket of her jeans, fiddling with the holster of her sword as she spoke. “But you said Aric’s texted you quite a bit.”

Shayna’s glass remained perpetually half full and often overflowed with hope. I supposed it complemented her perky cheerleading persona. Me? No one would have referred to me as perky, and let’s just say my cup didn’t runneth over. “Only to tell me he’d call soon, but we haven’t spoken since . . . you know.” I didn’t want to mention the morning I’d woken in bed with Aric’s arms holding me tight. Good grief, had that only been a little over a week ago? I was trapped inside a burning mansion with a psycho master vampire. Aric had saved me from being burned to cinders.