Page 6 of Wind with a Chance of Wolfsbane

Jonathan liked that the man hadn’t jumped at the opportunity. That he was clearly taking time to think about it. He’d made the mistake of putting power-hungry men in charge before, and it had ended in disaster. To date, the people who had worked out best as leaders in the organization were the reluctant ones. The people who never saw themselves as leadership material.

“How was the flight?” asked Dwayne.

“My wolf will be happy when I can run,” stated Jonathan.

“You’re going to find that hard to do in the city,” replied Dwayne. “Leo’s been taking Kellan and me just outside of the city to a state park. It’s not huge, but it works. There is a place about an hour and a half from here that he’s been telling us about. It’s bigger.”

ChapterThree

Willa

“I swear,you’ll be late for your own funeral, Willa,” snapped my aunt as she peered into the van at me. Her long dark hair was pulled back in a tight ponytail, and she was wearing black from head to toe. It was all she ever wore. It meant she was always ready to either rob a bank or go into a state of mourning.

Helen was in her mid-thirties and had been raising my sister and me since our parents passed away when we were ten. She wasn’t what anyone would term maternal or nurturing. She was basically two steps away from being feral on most good days. We’d have probably been better off if a wild pack of wolves had taken us in than her, but I avoided saying as much.

“What’s the holdup?” asked her long-term boyfriend, Lester. His brown hair was thick and unruly. It was also starting to show signs of age as gray crept into his temples. He was a workout buff who spent more time in our family’s home gym staring at himself in the mirror than he did picking up a book. He was a couple of years older than Helen, yet somehow managed to look a decade older than her. He’d been present in her life ever since I could remember and had disliked me for nearly as long.

I also remembered that our father and mother had never cared for him. Not a shock. He put the “creep” in creepster. He smiled a little too long when Helen was on one of her lunatic ranting waves, and we’d watched the way he encouraged her to be violent whenever possible. I wasn’t sure what kind of sick relationship the two of them had, but it reminded me a lot of an Oliver Stone movie I’d seen once about a couple who were killers.

I didn’t want any of the behind-closed-door details.

For some reason, he always seemed to have a problem with me no matter what I did or didn’t do. I’d gotten somewhat used to him over the years and stayed out of his way as much as possible to avoid conflicts.

He was leafing through passports that he’d had in the front pocket of his ever-present army jacket. It wouldn’t have shocked me any if the guy slept in the thing. Mina often joked that he probably did the dirty wearing it. Since the absolute last thing I wanted to think about was my aunt and her creepy boyfriend’s sex life, I blocked the thought from my head.

Lester liked to sit around telling stories about his time in the service as he proudly adjusted the old jacket. I had a feeling most of it was total and utter crap that he’d made up or stolen from other service members. He thrust a passport at Helen. “Here.”

She took it and put the passport in her back jeans pocket before casting an annoyed look at me. “Just leave it, Willa. Come on.”

“I’m not leaving it,” I said quickly, getting on my hands and knees to feel around on the floor of the van. I pushed my black-framed glasses up my nose. Without them, I could see about as far as the end of my nose.

I set the small backpack I’d be taking on the plane with me during the flight on the seat. I’d already checked the bag thoroughly. Within it was a book I was never without, another book to read on the flight, my journal, some pens, ChapStick, and gum to help with my ears.

Mina, my identical twin, was currently outside the van looking through my suitcase. “Willa, are you sure you had the necklace on when we left the house?”

“Yes,” I said, touching my neck where the tiny silver chain with a pendant of a cross always was. I never took it off.

Mina had a matching one. They’d been gifts from our parents on the day we’d had our first communion.

I half expected Helen to order Lester to drag me from the van and head into the Detroit airport. She’d been in a hurry from the moment she’d come tearing into the house just after dark, shouting for us to get up and pack a suitcase. That we were going to Romania, of all places.

Since we had two weeks left until we turned eighteen, putting our foot down and playing the adult card didn’t really work for us. Not that it would have anyway. Helen wasn’t exactly the type of person anyone said no to, no matter their age. Not if they wanted to live to tell the tale later.

I’d seen grown men buckle when dealing with her.

She ruled with an iron fist and held the purse strings. We were at her mercy.

For now.

She was the head of our family since our father had passed, putting her in charge of the entire Murray line. We were in the business of hunting supernaturals. We came from a long line of demon hunters. It was a line that could be traced back hundreds of years. One steeped in history and lore.

It even had a brush with fame, albeit a fictional one, when Bram Stoker wrote about one of our ancestors in his novel titledDracula. Of course, he’d left out the part about Wilhelmina Murray being from a line of slayers and made her out to be innocent of the truth about supernaturals. There was a lot more he’d changed if her journals were to be believed.

To date, I’d not been able to get anyone in the family to confirm or deny their authenticity or validity. That hadn’t stopped my obsession with Stoker’s story. It was a fixation I’d had as far back as I could remember.

A little part of me hoped the trip to Romania meant we’d be visiting some of the regions Stoker wrote about, but I highly doubted Helen would go out of her way to feed into my deep love of the storyline. And if Lester had any say in the matter, he’d see to it we avoided said areas at all costs. His dislike of me was that great. That was fine. I didn’t like him either. He was basically the boy version of our aunt. All work, no play kind of people.

Helen lived and breathed hunting demons. It was pretty much all she ever talked about. If a demon wasn’t near the tourist areas that revolved aroundDracula, she’d never in a million years take me there. She was that level of intensity.

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