Craved (17 page)

When the pain dulled and the dizziness
disappeared, I was lying on cold cement. I squinted my eyes at the
new location, unsure if what I was seeing was real or not. I was in
a large building with steel walls that were worn. Steel beams
spanned the ceiling with large industrial lights hanging from them.
Once I got my bearings, I realized I was in a warehouse. The
warehouse I’d seen from Amy Harper’s memories.

A few cots were set up in the middle
of the floor while rusty piles of scrap metal and a few broken
refrigerators sat in a far corner. Dirty windows lined the entire
top of the twenty-foot walls and allowed a small amount of
moonlight to penetrate the otherwise dark warehouse. I stood up and
stumbled a few steps, still feeling the last waves of dizziness.
Closing my eyes, I tried to focus on standing still and shaking the
waves of nausea that teased my stomach. When I opened my eyes
again, the dizziness had vanished.

“Bridget?” I called, my voice echoing
in the empty expanse. The ghostly realm or whatever it was, was
quickly becoming annoying. One minute I was at home and the next I
was waking up in creepy deserted places. At least I only had one
spirit pulling me away and not more. That would be a sure fire way
to drive me insane.

Bridget didn’t answer so I walked
hesitantly toward an office-like room. The door gave way and I
stepped into the small room. Clipboards with names and numbers sat
on a worn desk. I picked one up and scanned the many names but
wasn’t sure exactly what I was looking at. When I got about half
way down, I froze. In crisp black ink, was the name Aiden Blake.
Was this a list of vampires buying brew? If so, what was Aiden’s
name doing on it?

“This is their headquarters,” a voice
said from behind me. I dropped the clipboard and whirled around to
face the potential threat. Hovering in the doorway was Bridget. She
was more solid than I’d seen her before, the gray giving way to a
more colorful hue. I could see the blonde in her hair and the
purple of her shirt. Her eyes were filled with sadness and despair,
a look I desperately wanted to forget.

“Their headquarters?” I repeated,
hoping she’d give names. She nodded her head and turned back to
look at the cots that sat in the middle of the floor.

“The vampires, the ones who are
draining witches.” She disappeared before me and reappeared in
front of the cots, as if she just teleported. She reached a hand
out toward me, so I walked over to where she stood and without
hesitation, grasped her hand. I didn’t think too much about how it
was possible to touch a spirit. I assumed the same rules didn’t
apply in the spirit realm as they did in the living
reality.

As soon as I made contact with
Bridget, the warehouse awoke and was active. My eyes widened when I
saw Bridget laying on one of the cots and a needle sticking out of
her arm. Her skin was paler than a vampire’s. She was lying in her
bra and a pair of jeans and had bruises on her arms. I looked over
to my spirit friend and noticed that her face wavered in and out
but, as I watched, I noticed the sadness consume her face, she was
crying. I gripped her hand tighter and drew my attention back to
the other Bridget. She gave a shallow cough and then her arm fell
limply at her side.

A man walked out of the office over to
where she lay. He pressed his ear to her chest and listened for a
few seconds before removing the needle and retrieving the bags full
of Bridget’s blood. I was so furious at what I was seeing, that I
lunged for the man but fell straight through him and landed on my
face on the other side of him.

I picked myself up and followed him
toward the back of the warehouse where I saw six other men sitting
around a table full of bottles and funnels. It was a blood filling
station. Nausea instantly overwhelmed my stomach as I watched the
men filling brew orders. All of the men looked ordinary and
unfamiliar, all except one. The man I’d seen before in jeans and
the zip-up hoodie stood next to the table with a clipboard and
checked off names. When he looked up however, his face was blocked
to me. Weird. Where his face should have been was a mass of black,
like those identity blobs you see in front of peoples’ faces on the
news, the ones that don’t want to be identified.

I pointed a finger at the hidden man
and turned to Bridget.

“Who is that?”

“Always hidden from us,” she said, her
voice garbled as if she were speaking underwater. The only way he
could hide who he was would be to cast a spell. Was the leader of
the brew distribution a warlock? Not knowing was killing me! I had
seen the man a few times now and still had no clue who or what he
was.

Movement behind me made me turn to see
a man lift Bridget’s dead body up and over his shoulder where he
carried her to a door. I followed and saw that a van was waiting
just outside the building where the man threw Bridget into the
back. The van took off. I already knew where her body would end up,
in Willow Creek Park. The whole place was absolutely horrible.
These men were heartless cowards that deserved to be
staked.

My anger was bubbling when I began to
feel dizzy again. The air felt like it was being sucked out of the
room me along with it. It felt as if I were floating toward the
door when oblivion struck and everything went black,
again.

The next morning, I woke up on my
bedroom floor, right where I had passed out the night before. I was
groggy and lethargic but I managed to stand up and make my way to
the kitchen where I sat before reaching for the telephone. I didn’t
know how, but I knew we had to find that warehouse, because it
would lead us to the person behind the operation.

I dialed Micah’s number and waited for
him to answer. After the third ring, a woman’s voice greeted
me.

“Hello?”

“Hi,” I said, pausing. “I need to
speak with Micah.”

“One moment,” the woman said with
uncertainty.

The woman was most likely
Jamie, Micah’s new flame. I thought about what Micah told me the
night before and wondered if Jamie felt the same detachment towards
Micah as he did towards her. I shook my head, it wasn’t my business
anymore and I shouldn’t care what kind of relationship they
had.
Aiden, I need to focus on my
relationship with Aiden.

“Hello?” Micah said into the
phone.

“It’s Gwen. Are you busy today?” I
said.

“The pack is having a cookout, but
nothing important, why?”

Werewolves loved to eat. I’d been to
many pack cookouts and remembered how fun they were. They would
change into their wolf forms and play football. Big wolves that
crashed into each other as they caught the football in their large
mouths, it was amazing to watch. Being around weres was fun; most
were laid back, good ol’ boys, so much different from
vampires.

“I saw the warehouse again last night
and I thought we could drive around and try to find it…or if you’re
busy, maybe Wyatt can come with me?” I felt strange asking Micah to
spend the day with me when his current girlfriend was probably
standing within hearing distance, but I hadn’t called him for
romantic purposes. If it were nighttime, I would have called Aiden
to go with me, even if I was still slightly ticked at him for
standing me up at the Gala.

“Wyatt is busy. What do you
mean you
saw
the
warehouse again last night?” Micah asked with curiosity.

“Bridget Downey’s ghost keeps pulling
me into the realm of death and showing me things. Last night she
showed me the warehouse I’d seen in Amy Harper’s memories and it
was horrible. We have to find it, Micah.”

“What makes you think we’ll be able
to?” he countered. I shrugged my shoulders, suddenly realizing that
he couldn’t see me.

“It has to be close to Flora since the
bodies are showing up here. It’s not like they’re going to drive
too far away from their headquarters.” I didn’t know this for sure
but it made sense, time was money and they wouldn’t want to spend a
lot of time driving to dump bodies.

Micah was too quiet for my liking and
I suddenly felt stupid for calling him. “Never mind, I can go by
myself.” I’d be safe during the day, since vampires weren’t active
until nightfall. If the man with the hidden face was a warlock,
though, I could run into some trouble, but I wasn’t going to tell
Micah that.

“Can you meet me here in an hour?”
Micah finally asked.

“Really Micah, I can go by myself. I
didn’t mean to interrupt your day. It’s just…I need to put an end
to this, I need to catch the bastard behind this.” I suddenly felt
really tired, like I did the other day. Walking with the dead was
exhausting.

“You don’t think I want to catch this
asshole? Meet me in an hour at my house.” His voice said that it
was a done deal and I heard the click of the phone. Well, looks
like I would be visiting the Flora weres today.

I had to be in top shape if I was
going to track down a warehouse and possibly a warlock so I grabbed
the baggie of teabags Ms. Ozland gave me and plopped one into a mug
of hot water. It smelled of spices, cinnamon and possibly nutmeg.
The smell however, did not match the taste; it was horrible. I bit
back the bile that threatened to surge and quickly downed the cup
of tea, rinsing my mouth with a glass of orange juice right after.
I coughed and gagged but didn’t vomit, thank the
Goddess!

Within seconds, I felt my energy
returning, so much so, that I could feel the familiar hum of magic
within me radiate against my skin. The tea might have been
disgusting, but it worked fantastically.

After hopping into the shower, I
dressed in jeans and a white sweater and slipped on a pair of brown
leather boots. October was normally decent in Missouri, but this
year, it had been abnormally cold. I brushed my hair into a side
ponytail and was ready to leave. I checked Fiona’s room before I
left, but it was empty. I jotted down a note for her to call me
when she got in and taped it to her door. If she were mad at me
from last night for supposedly hitting on the guy she was
interested in, then she’d most likely be over it by today. Or, at
least once she talked to me, she would understand that I hadn’t
kissed Ian. I magically filled Aura’s food and water bowls and then
picked her up and snuggled her against my chest. She was too
anxious to eat, so I set her down and left.

*******

To humans, Flora looked like a
cornfield, owing to the enchantment spell that’s cast over it. In
truth, Flora was pretty big. The werewolves owned a small part on
the outskirts of town where the forests were thick, allowing them
plenty of running room. It took about fifteen minutes to reach the
weres’ territory and as soon as I hit their area, my nerves leapt
like jumping beans and I had to take deep breaths to calm myself.
The whole pack knew why Micah and I weren’t together anymore. They
knew that it wouldn’t last when we first started dating, even when
I didn’t.

There was only one were I did not want
to see and that was Micah’s father, the man who pressured his son
into being with a were woman, instead of me. I knew the entire
fault couldn’t be laid on Micah’s father’s shoulders. Micah was a
big boy, after all, and fully capable of making his own decisions,
but I was more comfortable putting most of the blame on his
father.

Micah lived in a small ranch style
house with a large tree filled yard. He had remodeled it since I
had seen it. It now had wood siding, new windows, and a large porch
on the front. I didn’t know if Jamie was living with him yet, but I
suspected the remodeling had been for her.

I pulled my car into his driveway and
got out before my nerves overcame me and made me turn right back
around. I shouldn’t have been so nervous around Micah anymore but
his words from the night before had left me confused and piqued my
anxiety. The front door was open, leaving the screen door as the
only obstacle blocking my path. I knocked twice and waited uneasily
and, just my luck, Jamie answered the door. Her brown hair had
hints of auburn and was pulled half up in a barrette. Her eyes were
the same amber color as Micah’s and she was around five-foot-five.
She was pretty, though and had the same edginess most weres had.
She may look sweet but she could easily rip a head off.