NOT DEAD YET: A Lucy Hart, DEATHDEALER Novel (Book Two) (15 page)

“Because I missed you.”  She leaned in against him, breathing in his clean, oh-so-sexy scent, feeling the warm, hard muscle of his body beneath her touch. 

“Mom said you had a hard day.”

Lucy tensed.  He really wasn’t going to like this…

“It was eventful.”

Gabriel’s body tensed and he took a slow breath.  Lucy would bet all her hair care products that he was smelling her, scenting her.

“What happened?”  His voice hardened, and Lucy leaned back away from him, avoiding eye contact.

“There was a little problem when we went wedding cake tasting.”

He sighed and almost smiled.  “Didn’t like any of the cakes?”

“Yes… well, no—I loved the citrus and the Italian wedding cake.”

“But that’s not the trouble you’re talking about, is it?”

She took a deep breath and told him about the kitty cat from hell.  When Lucy was finished Gabriel’s dark eyes seemed like a near black storm cloud.

“But everything’s okay.  No one’s hurt—well, except for Paul, but I’m sure he’s almost healed by now.  You werewolves and your accelerated healing rates.”

“And look at me!  I don’t have a scratch on me.”

He pulled Lucy to him, holding her against his chest, hard.  Hard enough it felt a tad bit crushing.  “Breathing is about to become an issue,” Lucy gasped.

Gabriel jerked and then let her loose, but not out of his grasp. 

“On the up side, we know now your mother likes me… well, she’ll kill a fiery hell beastie to keep me safe.”

Gabriel’s eyes widened.  He even looked kind of baffled.

“Of course, she threatened to kill me herself if ever I break the heart of or hurt her little snickerdoodle.”

Gabriel looked down at Lucy, one eyebrow raised in question.

“Fine, she didn’t call you snickerdoodle… but that is a really good nick name for—”

Gabriel leaned down and kissed er again, taking her breath away, and tasting so divinely sweet Lucy lost all track of time, where they were, and what she should be doing.

Nothing mattered, as long as she was with him.

~*~

Lucy relaxed on the sofa in front of her Gram’s dinky thirteen inch TV.  Lucy may have been able to convince her grandmother that her life needed the love and lethally dangerous involvement of the preternaturally furry set.  She may have been able to get her to endorse said insane notion for the sake of love.  But Lucy couldn’t get her grandmother to budge on the topic of replacing her fifteen year old Magnavox color television with a newer, sleeker, less grainy pictured, larger set.

Lucy took it in stride though. 

Her grandmother was addicted to
The Weather Channel
,
The Nature Channel
, and a few choice reality television programs Lucy would rather not envision her Gram sitting down to watch.  (She’d probably claw her eyes out if she came home and found Gram watching
The Jersey Shore
.)  So at least the dinky set boasted over two hundred channels of cable programming.

Lucy had a bowl of popcorn on her lap, and a Diet Coke sitting on a coaster on the coffee table.  She was watching a re-run of
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
.  In it, Buffy’s little sister had glimpsed the supposed ghost of her departed mother, and was asking the entity that was knocking once for “yes,” and twice for “no,” if she was alone. 

Lucy knew the series by heart.  She’d resisted watching it at first, but the reruns were on all hours of the day and night, so she’d slowly become addicted.  It didn’t help that for having over two hundred channels, there really wasn’t anything good on.

Buffy’s sister asked the question.  There was a pregnant pause for effect, and then the two loud knocks, as if the entire cast of
The Lord of the Rings
was trying to bash in the gates of Mordor.

Just then a loud crash came from outside the house.  Like the sound of a huge stone shattering against pavement.

Lucy sat up, left the popcorn on the coffee table and rushed to the tiny foyer by the front door.  She picked up the baseball bat her grandmother always kept by the door in the umbrella stand, checking its heft, warming up her wrist just in case she needed to use it.  It wasn’t her Gram’s enchanted baseball bat.  No, that one was jammed into the back of her closet upstairs, and it was filled to the gills with what remained of Gram’s necromantic powers. 

Lucy wouldn’t have touched it for all the Clinique, Prada, or Ben & Jerry’s in the world. 

She tiptoed to the front door to take a peek out the glass window cut in the thick oak front door. 

She saw nothing.

That alone made her heart thud in her chest… and then shoot up into her throat.  Gabriel had assigned six werewolves to guard her house, day and night.  He’d said that she had no choice in the matter—not that she was complaining.  After all the attempts on her life of late, she was frazzled and wanted nothing more than to have a sextet of psychotic furry killers guarding her from whatever psychotic killers who-ever-it-was-trying-to-kill-her sent.

Just thinking about it made her head hurt.

And the werewolves hadn’t been a bit covert about it. They’d posted a sentry for each side of the house, and had two circling in a fifty yard circle. All armed for bear, all highly caffeinated—all ready to kill anything that came to do Lucy the slightest bit of harm.

And the guard stationed at her front door was missing.

She fought down the perfectly rational inclination toward blind panic, took a deep breath and pushed visions of ninja assassins bursting through her windows with throwing stars and samurai swords out of her mind.  There was probably a perfectly good reason the front-door guard wasn’t at the front door.

Of course!
  Lucy drew in a relieved breath.  There had been the crash.  No doubt the guard had gone to investigate.  And since there were high winds, it was probably one of her Gram’s multiple potted plants that had fallen and made the offending ruckus.

She stood there for a minute, waiting, watching, listening—and heard nothing but wind whipping through the leaves on the trees.

It would be so stupid to go outside
she told herself.  But what if the werewolves needed help?

Sure... the highly trained, supernaturally strong, fast and nimble werewolves would really need her help.

But what if they did?

In a massively stupid move Lucy reached out, unlatched the deadbolt, and turned the door knob.  The wind helped push the door in on her, surprising her with how abruptly it opened.  She walked slowly out onto the front porch—jumping with fright at the shrieking whine the porch swing made as the wind pushed it to and fro—and called out the name the front door guard had given her.

Pam, the six foot three, broad shouldered and seriously muscled werewolf bodyguard didn’t answer back.

Lucy called her name again, inching closer to the steps leading down into the front yard.  And that was when she saw it.  At first she didn’t realize what she was looking at.  Just some scattered chunks of stone, the remains of a rather large statue?  But then she saw werewolf Pam’s snarling face peering up at her from the rubble.  A stone mask with shocked, scowling eyes and an upturned lip.

Lucy gasped and turned, looking to her right, baseball bat clenched and ready to swing.  She whirled about to check her other side.  At the end of the porch stood a stone statue that looked amazingly like George, the werewolf charged with guarding the southern exposure of the house.  He had a fierce expression on his stony face, and his gun was drawn and aimed straight in front of him.

He’d been petrified before he could get a shot off.

Two werewolves turned to stone.  One a pile of rubble.  Both seemed pretty dead.  Simple cold fear welled up from her stomach, and Lucy’s heart pounded in her chest as she backed carefully into the house once more, kicking the door closed, and throwing the lock again.

Turned to stone... was Medusa slithering around outside?  Had her personal anti-fan-club sent a freaking gorgon to dispatch her?

Okay... she needed help.  Big time help.  Maybe the Marines...

She moved to the wall phone right beside the stairs leading to the second story.  She picked it up and got no dial tone for her effort.  They’d cut the phone.  Shit!  But then Lucy had a cell phone in her purse... she’d left the purse on the kitchen table when she’d come home.

She stepped back from the wall phone and turned to head off to the kitchen.  A woman stood in the middle of her grandmother’s living room.  She was short, petite, and she had gorgeous red hair that washed over her shoulders in crimson waves.  She was dressed all in black—a silk blouse, black jeans, and a black leather jacket.  All hugged her ample curves.

Lucy had seen her before.  “You work at the dress shop.”

Red showed Lucy her teeth, a purely predatory expression.  “Not really.”

When in doubt and scared out of your mind, be a smart ass.  It had served her well in the past.  “So you’re dropping the dress off?  Boy, that’s dedication.”

Red pursed her lips, and then shook her head.  “Not here to deliver a dress.”  She held up a glass of water and a tiny doll wearing a white wedding gown.  Lucy blinked and squinted.  The doll had mahogany hair like hers, and the dress was freaking identical to the one she’d just had fitted earlier that day.

That can’t be good...

“Guns, knives, axes... ” Red clucked her tongue.  “My competition has no imagination.  Just because magic seems to roll off you like water, doesn’t mean one should just throw caution to the wind and go all axe murderer.”  She dangled the wedding dress clad effigy over the glass of water. 

“I fashioned this with that hair I plucked off your dress... remember?” 

Yep, Lucy remembered.  She’d thought what a nice gesture.  Now it made her blood run cold.  She’d been so close, and still Lucy hadn’t had the slightest clue how close to death she was. 

She shot the woman her most ferocious smile. “What, you going to stick a freaking pin in it?” 

The red haired woman smiled, and then dropped the doll in the glass of water. 

It was instantaneous.  Lucy gasped as she felt the icy water engulf her, and then she suddenly couldn’t breathe anymore.  Everything seemed to slowdown, the air around her turning to freezing, thick goop.  Her feet slipped out from under her, but she didn’t fall to the floor.  Instead, she slowly floated up close to the ceiling, bobbing up and down as if she were in deep water. 

“See?” the woman said.  “Imagination... now isn’t this so much nicer than meeting your death at the end of a knife or a gun?”  She looked down upon the glass of water in her hand with fondness, and then set it on the coffee table next to Lucy’s can of Diet Coke.  The witch plucked a kernel of popcorn out of the bowl and popped it into her mouth and dusted her fingers off dramatically.  “No muss, no fuss... and no blood to clean up after.  Really, you should be thanking me.”

Lucy’s lungs betrayed her, burning, constricting and heaving, trying to pull in breath.  But no air would come.  This witch’s magic was going to drown her... or smother her... it didn’t really matter which it was.  She’d be dead all the same.

She thrashed her arms and legs, trying to free herself of this watery grave.  But nothing happened, and her lungs burned all the more.  Her body grew numb, and the world was starting to go dark. 

Something moved beside the red haired witch, and the woman shrieked and spun about, clutching at her head.  Standing about twenty feet away, Abbey held a long, thin chunk of red hair in her hands, her fingers working it. 

“What do you think you’re...”   the witch gasped when Abbey held up the hair, which she’d fashioned into a noose of sorts, and a heartbeat later, a cigarette lighter.  A Zippo already burning and held precariously close the lock of hair. 

“Let her out of your little voodoo trap,” Abbey said flatly.  Her face was gaunt, and her eyes were about as flat and lifeless as her tone.  “Or you burn.” 

The red haired witch shook her head, her eyes wild, but then seemed to gain control of herself.  “That will never work!” 

Abbey passed the hair over the flame, just for a second.  The woman let out a scream that made Lucy jerk.

The world was getting darker and darker...

The witch held her blistered arm to her chest, panting in pain. 

Abbey shook the lock of hair closer to the flame of the Zippo. 

“Okay, okay... ” the witch gasped in agony.  “I’ll release her.” 

“Now,” Abbey said in a low growl. 

Oh god, oh god... I’m not going to...

The woman reached over and pulled the doll from the icy water: Lucy fell to the floor, gasping for breath. 

“Get out and leave the doll,” Abbey said, an icy edge to her words.  Lucy saw shadows caress her friend like the hands of a lover.  They even blotted out the pretty, green irises of Abbey’s eyes. 

The witch hissed, clutching her arm closer to her.  “I’m not leaving without my hair.” 

Abbey smiled.  It was wrong in so many ways.  Lucy didn’t even recognize the frightening young woman before her.