Page 105 of Howl You Doin?
My gaze wanders around the room and lands on a metal sconce in the shape of a bat, lit with a purple flame. Holy shit.
“Go on then. Ask away, but don’t be shy with the details when it’s my turn to ask some questions,” she says, and waves her hand for me to get on with it while she rummages through a really old desk.
I loosen my arms and toe at the worn wooden floorboards that look like they haven’t seen a cleaning in a hundred years. “What do the Van Helsings mean to you?”
“They’re a group of hunters who hunt down the supernatural. Why?” She rummages through an old trunk and begins to snap her fingers this way and that while muttering. “You would think a neat freak would keep this place in a better state. It doesn’t look like she’s been in it for centuries.” Then she huffs in frustration. “Fuck this.”
The purple flame sconces flare suddenly, and the air in the room constricts.
I gulp down a wave of apprehension and stand still, trying to not get in the way as books and odd things start to whiz by my head, reminding me of a scene fromThe Sword and the Stonewhere Merlin starts tossing shit into his bag. My gaze catches on an old book with leather bound around it that magically slides into a shelf on the opposite wall neatly, and I have to admit, magic is seriously cool.
A crumpled note floats over to the wastepaper basket and drops in, and I blink. She’s cleaning while she looks through things. Now that’s a handy trick.
Reining in my wandering thoughts, I ask, “Out of curiosity, who all did the Van Helsings hunt? Were they like... really bad?” I ask, sliding into a vacant chair behind the large, ornate desk in the room, trying to keep out of her way as she works her magic.
Odette scoffs. “Did Connor bring them up?” she asks, her tone concerned and not nonchalant for once. “Yes, they were that bad. I mean, tracking down werewolves and experimenting on them is bad enough, but what they tried to do to Connor... oof. And don’t get me started on what they did to the ghouls.”
My stomach sinks, dread spreading through my middle. “What did they do to Connor?”
“What didn’t they do?” she responds. “That’s a better question to ask.”
My stomach flip-flops and sinks even further, and fear has my heart tripping in its cage.
I clear my throat and fidget with my fingers, picking at my cuticle as she stares. “Odette, my great-great-grandmother was a Van Helsing.”
“What?” She rears back from me, and the sound of fluttering stops as the ancient room goes dark, the purple flames extinguished. Her anger turns palpable in the air. “What do you mean, you’re one of them?” she hisses, her voice low and pissed right off.
“I didn’t know it was a big deal!”
“Keep your voice down.” Odette paces for a long moment in her designer shoes. “Shit, this is bad.”
I want to vomit. “Why is itbad?”
The Witch Queen huffs and moves to sit in the chair opposite me, worry lining her beautiful features. “It’s bad because they hunted him, captured and tortured him, and hekilledthem for it, Whitley.”
The blood drains from my face and I break out in a cold sweat. “What?!”
Purple flares in the sconce again, eerily illuminating the place, and I don’t like the way her brow is furrowed. She stares at me as if truly seeing me for the first time.
“Fate would be a cruel bitch,” she says. “No wonder you have lycan blood. Dr. Augustine Van Helsing discovered one of his own family members was a lycan and he wanted to ‘fix’ them while experimenting on them. Of course, no one knows about that dirty little family secret, but it’s the whole reason Connor was hunted so mercilessly. It’s your own ancestor’s blood that changed him—its delivery was just wrong since it was through a werewolf bite. The change nearly killed him.” Then Odettenarrows her gaze on me in what I can safely guess is spite. “The lycan and Van Helsing blood in your veins is the root of all his suffering.”
My heartbeat trips, thudding with alarm. The crackling of the flame flickering in the sconce echoes in my brain like static.
For the first time in a long time, probably since my grandparents died, I felt true hope. I pushed myself out of my comfort zone, chasing a dream and my own survival. I couldn’t stay in New Orleans, so I took the first opportunity I could and ran away.
I fled here and found him.
Now, I have a new dream, one he is the center of. Not only that, but he’s also now the center of my universe, and somehow, I’ve hurt him without even understanding how, or how much. It has to be okay. There’s no way I’m going to lose him or everything I’ve worked so hard for since I’ve started working here.
“Don’t tell him just yet,” Odette says, and purses her lips in thought as she resumes her pacing. Finally she pauses and flicks her gaze back to mine. “He hated them, Whitley. I thought they died out years ago. Most of us worked together to eradicate them.”
My heart seizes in my chest, and I grip the edge of the chair, my claws erupting as all my hair stands on end. “Odette... what do I do?”
“Let me think on this and figure it out. Maybe we can break it to him gently.”
“Break it to him gently that my ancestors are the reason he was in pain for three hundred years?” I bite out sarcastically and force my change to recede. This is a disaster.
“Don’t panic,” she says. “Everythingshouldbe fine.”
