“You, er, know what to do with that?” I asked in a harsh whisper, not daring to take a step away from him, but not wanting to stand too close either. I wasn’t sure which one was the bigger danger—the psychotic werewolf shaking with chuffing laughter, or the living electrical storm standing very close to me in the lurching shadows of my living room.
“We are so having a talk about this later,” I hissed, pulling my eyes away from Samson long enough to shoot a glare at Holbrook.
“How about we just try to get through this first?” he replied out of the corner of his mouth, his hands beginning to shake from the effort of containing the writhing ball of energy that had grown to the size of a soft ball. It gave off faint crackles of rogue energy that smelled of burnt ozone and freshly turned earth.
The creak of old wooden floor boards pulled my focus back to Samson. Dammit, I was tired of my boyfriends hiding this kind of crap from me.
Irritated by Holbrook’s deceit, I set my hands on my hips and demanded, “What do you want, Samson?” I was fed up with playing his twisted game; one way or another, this needed to end.
He looked dumbstruck for a moment as if he hadn’t anticipated being asked that question, confusion swimming in the brilliant gold of his eyes. I almost felt sorry for him, reduced to a shadow of the once charismatic and handsome young man he had been, and then I remembered the faces of all the innocent people he had killed to satisfy his own demented desires.
“You were supposed to be mine,” he replied after a while in something close to a whine. The vulnerable expression on his face struck me, so at odds with the horrifying form he had taken and the monster I knew him to be.
“You tried to kill me! You told me you wanted to fucking eat me.”
“No, no, no,” he chanted, raising massive claw-tipped hands to his head. “I tried to perfect you.”
Obviously, his recollections of the attack were a little different from mine, and I wondered if he’d been bat-shit crazy all along.
“You tried to…” I faltered, realization dawning as horrifying as his beastly visage. “You wanted to infect me?”
“I wanted you to be strong like me. I wanted you to be mine.”
“I will never be yours. You ruined my life!”
Holbrook’s grunt of strain beside me drew my gaze back to him. Sweat beaded on his brow, dripping down over his cheeks. The air was filled with the sweet molasses scent of him and the burnt ozone of his crackling energy, but beneath it I could detect the sour note of his fear.
“I perfected you!” Samson bellowed, causing the hair to rise along the backs of my arms and my knees to go shaky with fear. His sadness had evolved into blistering rage in the blink of an eye.
I didn’t even have a chance to cry out a warning as he leapt at us, crooked teeth gnashing at the air, but evidently I didn’t need to worry about Holbrook; he knew how to handle himself. I felt the concussive boom of the spell going off as much as I heard it, the force of it knocking me off my feet. I went down in a tangle, taking the side table with me. When the pounding in my head had cleared enough for me to open my eyes, green motes danced across my vision. I wasn’t sure if they were real or just the aftereffects of the brilliant green flash that had lit up the room when the spell collided with Samson.
Blinking a few times, I was relieved when my vision cleared and the thumping in my head eased into a dull ache. Judging from the remaining throb, I’d slammed my head against the floor when the force of the spell knocked me down. I rubbed the back of my head as I pushed myself up on one elbow and looked around the room. The shadows appeared deeper after the blinding flash of magic, and it took me a while to discern the shapes of Holbrook and Samson sprawled on the floor.
Holbrook was the first to move, rolling over onto to his side to face me, a pained expression etching deep lines in his face. A heavy sheen of sweat covered his brow and I noticed that he was holding one arm awkwardly against his side.
“Is it broken?” I asked, my voice sounding fuzzy and distorted through the ringing in my ears.
His voice was tight with pain when he responded. “Just dislocated I think.”
Crawling over to him I tucked a shoulder under his good arm and helped him up. His scent was stronger, as if the expenditure of magic had intensified it, and for a moment all I wanted to do was bury my nose in the skin of his neck and breathe him in. Easing him down into the armchair close to the front door, I looked over to the unmoving shape of Samson.
“Is he…”
“Dead? Doubtful. It was just raw energy. Unless it somehow managed to short-circuit his heart, he’s just knocked out.”
“For how long?”
“Your guess is as good as mine,” Holbrook replied with a shrug, grimacing when the movement aggravated his injured shoulder. “Hand me my gun, will you?”
“Maybe we should get out of here, or call for back up,” I said, scrambling to pick up the gun and hand it him.
“You think?”
Before we could make a move to the door, Samson let out a low groan, the sound of his claws raking across the floor setting my teeth on edge.