Page 20 of The Blood Widow

Chapter

Ten

The witch’s hands were cold on my warm stressed-out skin. Before she started, I took a deep breath and tapped into my demon power for help, but it felt foreign. Nasty. Evil. I shook my head, and I pulled back, focusing on my vampire abilities instead. I put important information into a box and imagined an unreachable wall trapping the information in.

When the energy from the witch poked at my mind, I held strong. The sensation was like a fork poking my hand. It would hurt if she used force, but she wasn’t getting through with a fork. The witch gasped and pushed harder.

“What’s wrong?” the Alpha asked.

She ground her teeth before answering. “She’s blocking information. She’s powerful. I can’t see everything, but I’ll tell you what I can.” She pushed against me one more time before giving up. My eyes were closed in concentration. When she moved away, I opened my eyes.

The lights were too bright. I could barely register anything in the dark-colored room. Dark wood floors and desk, a black office chair, black bookshelves. Even the couple of frames in the room were black. If the papers were black as well, I might have lost my shit.

“She’s powerful but not an enemy. She told the truth when she said she wasn’t trying to come here. But she’s also hiding or running from something or someone. She has a lot of blood on her hands, but I don’t think she’s a threat. Her heart doesn’t want to kill,” Rebekkah said. The witch’s feet shuffled side to side, her purple robe swaying with the movement.

“That’s it?” the Alpha said.

He was getting on my nerves. Wasn’t that enough?

I finally gave up and actually looked at him as a woman looking at a man. My heart skipped a beat. I’ve heard stories of the Alpha, even if I couldn’t remember his name. When he was younger, he used to enjoy himself at strip clubs and wild, rich parties. He met a human at one of those parties and fell in love.

To keep her alive, he had to kill the previous Alpha, his father, who hated humans. They had a daughter together, but the wife ended up dying in an attack meant for the Alpha. He never went back to any parties or sex clubs. Everyone thought he had grown a beard and gained a hundred pounds out of grief. Nope. He must do the same thing I did and changed his skin when he went out. If it wasn’t for his eyes, I wouldn’t have recognized him.

The guy was fucking yummy with a capital Y. I might have given him all upper cases letters, but the scowl he directed at me tarnished the appeal slightly.

He wasn’t what I expected. The only thing on him that wasn’t carefully put together was his five o’clock shadow. His dark suit pants and black button-up shirt didn’t have a wrinkle in sight. His sculpted jaw and aquiline nose complimented his almond-shaped eyes perfectly. Even his high cheekbones and dark, smoothed hair were unblemished and put together.

Rumor said he loved the fighting pit, but his skin was unblemished, as though he hadn’t fought a day in his life. Except for his nose. It had a slight tilt to it. And it was in the middle ofthe night, the night in which he’d just found out his daughter had killed a member of a powerful family. Couldn’t he do all women kind a favor and be less composed?

His gray eyes sharpened on the witch as if she was in league with me. I wished. It would have made things easier.

The witch shrugged. “When I have something in particular to look for, it’s easier to find answers. You told me to look into her mind because you thought she was here to harm you. I’ve answered that.”

He ran a hand through the loose hair by his face. It went right back into place almost picture-perfect. I wanted to mess it up. Maybe get some gel and make it stick out in all directions.

He groaned. “Okay. See if she knows what happened tonight with my daughter. And if you find out the answer, I remind you that you’re sworn to secrecy as my employee.”

The witch nervously glanced at Rose. She nodded and stepped closer to me. Ugh, I wasn’t ready for another round of fuck with my mind magic. I locked my jaw and closed my eyes. I didn’t want to see the scared expression on Rose’s kind face, anyway. She must take after her mom because her blonde hair and blue eyes were nothing like her father. The only thing she might have gotten from him was her sharp cheekbones.

I grunted and forced any information the witch was searching for behind my defenses, but the bitch was too strong this time. She might as well have scalped me and stirred my brain into mush. She knew the Alpha wasn’t going to like her not having the information.

We both grunted at the same time as we squabble for the victor’s spot. It didn’t happen often, but she beat me. Her slight wrinkles got deeper with her gasping. Her eyes crinkled as she stared at Rose in horror. “What have you done, child?”

The Alpha slammed his fist on his desk. “I knew it. Figure out who she works for, and what she was planning on doing with the information. I want to know the underground dealer.”

This time I didn’t fight her. I was screwed now. Who cared if he knew I was the Blood Widow and went to help his daughter? They’d never let me go. That information could start a war. As long as they didn’t go after my friends, I was content with my fate. I’d either get away and run or die, but I wasn’t going to kill these people. It was worth the blood on my soul.

The force Rebekkah used didn’t change, so when she slammed into my brain without me defending myself, I whimpered. My body rocked, my thoughts strangled, it was like hundreds of fists slammed into my body at once.

“Sorry,” she whispered. When her probing got too close to my friends’ identities, I returned the favor and slammed my wall back up. She grunted and stepped away. “Nothing.”

The Alpha rose from his seat. “If you can’t do your job?—"

She cut him off. “You misunderstand me. She wasn’t going to do anything with the information. There was no underground dealer, except for the one she heard talking about it. I’ll give you the name of him to keep him quiet. But she wasn’t going to give him information. She was covering it up.”

“What?” Rose and her father said at the same time.

The Alpha stepped closer. “You must be mistaken, that doesn’t make sense. She doesn’t work for me, and Rose doesn’t even know her.” He glanced at his daughter to make sure. She shook her head.

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