Page 63 of Wild Wolf

“Shit,” I hissed, moving closer to the wards again but I was forced to turn as that same brush of fingers ran down my spine.

I eyed the space around me warily, not seeing anyone there but I could feel them as if their presence had laid an imprint on the world around me like the shape of a body nestled into blankets.

“Speak,” I commanded, leaning into my connection with the moon and feeling the rippling fabric of The Veil flickering around me as if someone were trying to push through it from the other side of death.

“Whitney cannot follow this path,” a voice called to me in desperation and I almost flinched at its proximity. “He is headed towards a fate that can’t be undone.”

“What fate?” I demanded, my eyes scouring the nothingness though the presence seemed closer than ever, the impression of a beautiful woman with wide, deep-set eyes which were filled with pure terror, filling my mind.

“His father resides in that house. The man who never knew he existed. In life I was forced to forget my son but in death I see it all…”

Her voice trailed away and I cursed in Faetalian as I rounded on the house again, pushing my will against the wards. There wasn’t time to be subtle. So I threw everything I had at them and hoped I’d be able to find a way through before Sin Wilder made a mistake that might ruin his entire life.

CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT

Amansion overlooking the sea. How cliché, Tibsy boy.

My muscles were primed for action as I slinked through the darkened halls of this fancy man’s house, passing by his fancy trinkets and even fancier décor. Oh yes, old Tiberius Rigel liked his finery. I’d have bet he was born with a silver spoon stuffed up his ass, unlike me who had a rusted toothpick shoved in there before I was tossed away like trash in the nearest garbage can. It would probably have fucked up a weaker Fae than me. Done something to their mind, cracked ‘em good and turned them into a real reprobate.

Lucky for me, I could shrug off stuff like that. One good shrug was all you needed to get through a childhood based on a foundation of trauma. Yup, there were no scars left on my mind, baby. I was different, sure. Quirky, definitely. But it was around about the time people started whispering the word ‘crazy’ at me when I got stabby. A perfectly reasonable reaction, actually. It was just that society tended to frown on that kind of thing. But society-rule-makers were just a bunch of Fae in top hats attending balls and haw-he-hawing at pretentious jokes about governmental things that couldn’t interest me even if I was paid big bucks to listen.

Tibs here was one of those Fae, or at least, he had been. Whichever it was, I didn’t much care, but I did have a bit of a bug to bear with him. A jiggy little bug that kept doing a jive in my bear’s ear. Because all in all, I couldn’t say the stars had been particularly gracious to me in life. They tended to favour swanky cocksure rich dicks like Tiberius Rigel from the moment of their conception to this here moment of their death. His demise would include a nice healthy dose of stabby glory in payment for all his good living, but he had done a damn lot of good living. It wasn’t exactly justice in my books.

I wasn’t against wealth exactly; it was the hoity-toity attitude that came with it. The privilege, the bluster and most of all, the entitlement. They took it for granted, all this. Their shiny shoes shimmying along their shiny halls, never suspecting that bad omens would come creeping in their back window. I had a knack for breaking through magical wards and Tibs had had some seriously hard nuts to crack, but I’d cracked them alright. And now here I was, fate-bound to deliver him his end, like I was sent by The Ferryman himself, ready to ship his soul off beyond The Veil.

It didn’t matter who he was or what he’d done, I was on this job because I had a sixth sense when it came to Jerome, one that could feel his rage in the air. He hadn’t taken kindly to my wild girl refusing him and I knew how to settle that matter. The best way to solve all matters. With death and dancing.

I paused where the moonlight fell in a pool over a table facing the window. There were photos lined up on it in gilt frames, family pictures, Tibs beside a teen boy with a mohawk, his arm slung around his shoulders and big ass grins on their faces. So he had a son. And one glance to the left showed him on a boat trip with a girl that just had to be his daughter. My gaze lingered on those happy faces, the memories alive with joy and good feelings.

I hooked up the photograph of him with his son, a frown burrowing into my brow like a hungry mole. Was Tibs a good father? Had he considered tossing either of his kids into the trash? Had he beat them? Belittled them?

My gaze fell on another photo of the teen boy, but he was older now. A man with strength in his eyes. I pursed my lips and placed the photo down, adjusting it back into position while my heart cracked and old, ancient, childish desires poured out. If I’d had a childhood like these kids clearly had, would I be this…different? Would the world want me if I’d been raised in privilege, inviting me to its swanky balls and hailing my name from the hills? Would I be the felon I was today if my mother hadn’t tossed me into the trash?

I headed on, finding a kitchen and coming to a halt by a block of knives. I hadn’t brought my own, and there was something poetic about him dying by a knife that had recently chopped a tomato for his fancy man salad. I picked the largest one and twisted it in my grip, the cool steel kissing my palm in greeting. Darkness swept through me, my demons awakening, urging me on, whispering of blood and chaos. I might need to use magic too, the asshole was one of the strongest Fae in the kingdom after all, but I was one powerful motherfucker myself, and I had a lot of experience in bringing bad men to their knees. Was he bad though? I hadn’t done my research on this one. I usually liked to know their crimes by heart, liked to pick them for those very reasons and whisper the names of their victims in their ear as they died, sometimes accompanied by a lovely little lullaby of my own creation. But this was the first time I found myself out on a job for one reason that went beyond whether the man in this house was a cretin who deserved his death.

I was here for Rosalie. Because she didn’t yet understand the danger my brother posed. She didn’t grasp the lengths to which he would go to get payment from her in light of her refusal. She didn’t know. But I did. I’d watched Jerome pluck a man’s eyes out for less than Rosalie’s refusal, I’d seen him peel skin from the bone with a smile on his face, I’d watched him gut people for less than a hundred auras debt to him. He was beautifully, dangerously monstrous, but I had never before felt the threat of him until my honey pie had painted a refusal upon his door. That threat of him to her had ignited a spark of wild fear in me, and I didn’t subscribe to feelings like that often. But his eyes on my girl with a no sliding from her tongue had set my nerves aflame. So here I was, doing the deed he’d set and not questioning a thing about it, because better Tibs died tonight than my wild girl died tomorrow.

So whether he was a good daddy or not, whether he had lived a supreme life, saving baby kittens and building orphanages with his bare hands, it didn’t matter. Because his number had been called and the king of death was going to hand deliver him his order.

I moved deeper into the house, finding a stairway, climbing up the cream carpeted steps and seeking the floor above for his room. He must have been sleeping. All was quiet and still, no sound of a headboard thumping away while he railed his girlfriend, boyfriend or paid hooker. I’d seen no other Fae in those photographs downstairs, no mother or other father smiling proudly in those pictures. But as I made it to a white door, I paused to take in a portrait beside it of a woman whose beauty had my head cocking. She was regal, her eyes bright, yet oh so dark. Her name was written in calligraphy at the bottom and it was a name which fit her impeccably. Serenity.

You could see the love in the strokes of the brush. Whoever had painted this had adored this Fae and had tried to immortalise her for all to witness. I knew with a strange kind of certainty that Tiberius was the culprit, and it was so clear to me that this was his room before I even opened the door.

My hand fell on the knob, my silencing bubble extending to cover the noise as I twisted it and pushed it wide.

The moonlight shining through the window at my back cast my shadow across his floor, right up to the end of his bed. The shape of him lay beneath his comforter. He was sleeping so soundly, I considered not waking him before I slid my knife into his temple. But that was too easy, no fanfare or splatter. Besides, I liked them looking me in the eyes when they went, so they knew who their maker was in the end.

I took a step forward but a hand snatched me from behind and I whirled on my attacker, bringing the knife up and throwing my weight at them. My knife kissed the bronze skin of a delicate neck and brown eyes narrowed as they met mine.

“Rosa,” I gasped, yanking the blade away from her throat as I pushed my silencing bubble out around her.

“Stop,” she growled, the word a command. “You can’t kill him.”

“Oh yes I can,” I snapped, offended that she thought I was incapable of killing this rich fucker. “In a hundred ways before he wakes.”

“That’s not what I meant.” She gripped my hand and I noticed there was something about her that was off. She was feeling something that I couldn’t place, but I knew it was important.

“What is it, sex pot? Speak quick before he wakes and I have to get knife-happy.”

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