Ignoring the ill-timed pulse of arousal, I turned my attention back to the ravening wolfman across the room and fought the urge to turn tail and run.
Prison had not been kind to Samson. The charismatic young man that had swept me off my feet all those years ago was gone, replaced by the gaunt and sallow monster before me. Dark brown eyes that had once held warmth now shone golden and were full of madness. Any remnants of sanity he may have once possessed were now as much a shadow as his easy smile. Dark hair hung in long matted strands around shoulders that were narrower than I remembered, caked with dirt and debris. He reeked of sweat, blood, and grime, the stink coming from his soiled clothes as much as his unwashed body.
I shuddered in revulsion as his lips spread in a rictus smile, baring yellowed teeth. Sometime in the last eight years one of his front teeth had been knocked out, leaving a gaping black hole in his manic grin.
“You dated this guy?” Holbrook whispered.
“He was a lot cuter back then,” I shot back without taking my eyes off Samson.
“Hello, Riley,” my psychotic ex-boyfriend said amiably, as if he wasn’t standing next to the busted out frame of my back door, the blood of a half dozen innocent men crusted in the thick fur covering his arms.
His voice held none of the smooth timbre I remembered. Where before he had always sounded on the edge of laughter, his voice was now rough and hoarse as if he had spent long hours screaming.
Maybe he has.
It took me several attempts to find my voice, my mouth gone dry. “H-hi, Samson.”
“I’ve been looking for you, Riley,” he said, stepping into the kitchen, each crunch of glass beneath his feet sending a shudder down my spine.
“Oh?” I asked, my voice shaking ever so slightly.
“I left you messages. Did you get them?” he asked with the earnestness of a child, the sideways tilt of his head adding to his childlike demeanor.
“I did.”
“What did you think?” he asked, moving away from the kitchen table to trail a hand along the back of the sofa, fingers stained with I didn’t want to know what dancing over my grandmother’s afghan.
Anger flickered to life in my stomach, red hot and sour as acid. How dare he touch her things, my things, as if he hadn’t torn my life to shreds along with my guts. Holbrook’s bandaged hand squeezing my wrist tempered my anger, his ever-present sense of calm washing over me in a cooling wave.
“Think of what?” I said, struggling to recall Samson’s words.
“My messages,” he growled, the sudden flare of anger drawing my gaze from the dark smears on his hand to the furious snarl on his face. “What did you think of them?” he went on, enunciating each word with manic cheerfulness.
“Oh. Um…” I floundered, at a loss as to what he wanted me to say.
“I hope you liked them. Did you like them?”
“Oh. Yes. They were very…thoughtful.”
“I knew you’d like them,” Samson said, his words rumbling like grinding rocks as his half-man, half-wolf jaw struggled to form them. “But there’s one thing I don’t understand.”
Only one?
“Oh?” I prompted, my voice shaking. Clutching Holbrook’s hand tight for support I saw Samson’s gaze flit to our clasped hands for a brief moment, an angry light sparking in his eyes.
“Why would you sully yourself with a warlock?”
Not many people used the terms warlock or witch to refer to a magic user these days. Social conventions dictated that we refer to them as magi, harkening back to the belief that they were descended from the wise men of old.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, I…” I began to say, my words fading into nothing as I caught the flicker of energy in the corner of my eye, Holbrook’s fingers slipping from my grip.
Turning wide eyes on the man standing beside me, a jolt of surprise fluttered through me. Bright green lightning, the same color as his eyes, sizzled between his fingers and arced over his skin, raising the hairs along the backs of his arms. My hair began to lift off my shoulders in response to the flood of electricity in the air, my skin itching with the sensation of thousands of ants crawling all over my body. Deep inside, the wolf stirred in reply, and my eyes bled over to gold in a single heartbeat.
“Holy shit,” I breathed, unable to look away from the miniature forks of lightning dancing between his outstretched hands. The small shots of energy every time we touched made sense now, and I felt like a fool for not sensing the otherness in him.
“Surprise,” he offered with a lopsided smile though his eyes didn’t move from the smug werewolf standing in front of us, even as a ball of energy began to form between his palms, his brows furrowing in concentration.