Her jaw twitched. “Fine.”

  She went to the overturned desk. I groaned when she reached inside the drawer for her purse. What good would that do? Then Erica smirked as she plucked a .45 from her expensive handbag and placed the gun into an ankle holster on her leg.

  Huh. The woman who brought sushi for her lunches was packing heat? How plucky of her. And daring as well. The Code of conduct for werewolves also forbade us from using guns. Guess we were both rule-breakers.

  She saw my confused expression and blurted, “I have a Prada handbag. You can never be too careful in a neighborhood like this one.”

  I snorted. “Yeah, those old ladies with antique fetishes and tourists with their fanny packs are such a threat. The danger is crazy real.”

  Except now, with that thing out there, it actually was.

  Instead of closing the store, I put a college student in charge. That was a safer bet than the chain-smoking fire witch who set the counter on fire a few months ago.

  Erica and I left through the new gap in the dock doors and crossed through the parking lot. The overcast sky threatened to bring rain and make our hunt even more somber. Thank goodness, there weren’t any shoppers in our outdoor area. During this time of the year, we sold more merchandise on the rows of tables out here.

  “If you can’t do magic, how do you plan to defend yourself?” Erica asked.

  “My gun is in my car. I can’t take mine to work.” I didn’t carry a gun per se, but rather a magical weapon I’d acquired over the past year.

  On the way to my Nissan Altima, I caught a faint whiff of copper. My gaze scanned our surroundings. The Bends was a large, old building nestled between a parking lot and another flea market. There wasn’t much to see. South Toms River was basically a small town.

  The strong, metallic scent of human blood drew us to the edge of the parking lot between The Bends and the neighboring flea market.

  We found a glistening pool of crimson and nothing more next to a beat up, black pickup truck.

  “It’s human blood,” Erica remarked.

  “It’s fresh, too,” I murmured.

  She glanced at the busy four-lane road not far from us. The trail we needed to follow was clear. Whatever we were after had headed straight into town.

  “Looks like it had its first meal. Would you rather go back and wait for Bill?” I gestured in the direction we came from.

  “Wait for Bill?” She scoffed. “Yeah, right. Are you sure you want to be pack leader?”

  I frowned as Erica broke into a run down the Garden State Parkway.

  By the time I fetched my handy magical blade from the back of my car, the mid-morning sunlight was nearly gone. Humidity dampened the air and signs of an incoming rain shower increased with each southward step we took. The rising heat made the hunt miserable.

  No more than twenty feet away to our left, cars zipped past us on two lanes heading southbound on the Parkway. Clusters of trees gave us cover, but they also offered hiding spots for our prey. Not surprisingly, Erica took point. I was the better tracker between the two of us, but we’d get along better if I let her lead for now. Besides, fighting over who’d be attacked first was a waste of time.

  The goblin blade hummed in my hand. Usually as active as a fork sitting on the dinner table, the goblin blade twitched, as if it sensed something supernatural lurking nearby. The weird weapon ended up in my possession during a trip to save my dad from the werewolf Russian mafia in Atlantic City. While cornering a conniving goblin hellbent on capturing my mate and me, I took the silver blade he tried to cut me with—not knowing that the goblin blade transformed into a new weapon based on the nearest supernatural threat to the owner’s proximity. All the attempts I made to return the goblin’s toy failed.

  I guessed it was mine now.

  The trail took us southwest past the subdivisions. Past the little league fields and playgrounds with perfectly good morsels of humans for the creature to eat. Then the houses disappeared, and our path became all too familiar once we crossed Double Trouble Road and came to a stop at the end of a long driveway.

  “This place looks familiar,” Erica whispered.

  “It should. It’s my old house.”

  Chapter 3

  Before I’d fought Erica and moved in with Thorn at his house across town, I’d lived here alone as the pariah of the South Toms River Pack.

  I had memories here—most of them good—but right now unease tickled the back of my neck. Normally, the forest surrounding my two-story cottage offered a wall of protection from the judgmental outside world, but with that creature potentially stalking my hallways, I felt thrown off.

  “Any idea why it came here?” A hint of suspicion lined Erica’s words.

  “You have to be kidding me.” My sigh was heavy with sarcasm. “I dunno. Especially since the last crazed monster meeting I held was at my mom’s house.”

  Erica rolled her eyes. After she pulled her gun from her ankle holster, she hurried down the driveway and I followed. As we approached the house, the shadows along the trees grew ten-fold. The cottage, with its bright red shutters and whitewashed wood, seemed more like an evil witch’s hideout from a fairytale than a regular home.

  I scanned the area from the tree line to the house’s roof. Branches swayed about with a growing wind. The squirrels and rabbits that freely roamed during the day had already sought shelter from the storm. While I checked for danger, I tried to push away the obvious doubt eating at me.

  Erica had a right to be suspicious. Something weird showed up at The Bends, and while that wasn’t all that usual, it could have gone anywhere but went straight to my former house. Not the place where I currently resided, rather the place I used to live. Had an old enemy sent me a gift? After everything that had happened over the past year, the likelihood that I had a cushy spot on someone’s Shit List was quite high.

  As we got closer to the house, the knife’s hilt grew warmer against my palm. My heartbeat sped up. With each step, anxiety bled into my senses, making it harder to focus on what I had to do.

  Erica glanced at me. “You all right, Natalya?”

  My face grew warm with embarrassment as I nodded. Hiding fear among fellow pack members was near to impossible. The wolf within me whined, but I didn’t so much as speak. I came here to handle business and I planned to do it. I tossed her the keys to the door. Erica fumbled with the lock then paused. Her head tilted to the right. Did she hear something from inside?

  Then I heard the faint scratching on the porch roof overhead.

  The wooden hilt in my hand elongated, extending until the wood became marble and the metal blade darkened from silver to black. Within moments, the weapon grew to match my five-foot-eight height. Tiny letters, like the ones I’d seen on the trunk, were carved into the stone.

  Not good.

  Every time this damn blade transformed, it told me what I was about to face. A broad sword or a battle-axe I could handle, but when the goblin blade morphed into a weapon like the one I now held, I had no idea what kind of madness I was about to step into.

  For all I knew, the lance’s strange writing read, “Run, stupid!”

  The scratching wasn’t far away now. The closest thing I could compare the noise to was fingernails dragging something heavy across the porch roof…

  Claws appeared first.

  But they were much bigger than what I’d seen sticking out of the trunk.

  Erica twisted toward the movement, her gun drawn, but neither of us had time to react before a pungent mass flew between us. With a wet plop, the creature landed on the porch stairs.

  My face contorted with disgust.

  What I’d seen earlier had been no arm, but the legs of a beast with a serpentine body, a rooster’s head, and black, bat-like wings. The hands from earlier were in the place where I expected to see feet. Its scaly, green torso shined from a putrid, bubbling fluid covering its skin. The creature, now the size of a Great Dane, hissed at us from its hooked orange beak.

  “Oh, gross!” Erica shot first and asked questions later.

  Bullets pelleted the creature, but the few that reached their target didn’t keep it from rushing me. My lance went up in time to deflect its attack, the blade stabbing deep in its midsection. Gotcha. It squawked and bounded away, crashing across the porch and through the living room window.

  I headed for the front door, but Erica grabbed my arm. “Are you crazy? We need to call for help against th-th-that thing. Those bullets did nothing.”

  “That thing is a basilisk.” Only once in my life had I seen one, and that was in a picture book. Unlike the harpies and other malevolent creatures I’d gotten up close and personal with, the basilisk was very rare. Legendary.

  “I don’t give a fuck if it’s a chicken or a snake. It’s not natural.” Her normally refined composure collapsed as she jerked her gun toward the house. “If we can’t get help from those warlocks, then we need the pack. What about the Stravinskys?” She paused briefly. “What about Thorn?”

  Did she really just utter my husband’s name? “He left town this morning on pack business. He’s not available, but I could call my family—”

  A crash inside the house told me the basilisk was wrecking the place. My place. If it so much as broke a single … Screw waiting. I yanked my arm free and kicked down the door.

  With the curtains drawn, the inside of my house was dark except for a few slivers of light reaching across the floors. My eyes adjusted to the dark to see that the living room, where the basilisk had entered, was trashed. The intruder’s escape path was evident from the scratches across the wood floor, the gouges it ripped into the couch as it scampered over the furniture, and finally, to the wall where it crashed into my storage boxes filled with fragile collectibles.

  Rage built in my stomach when I spotted massive dents in the boxes. “That motherf—”

  “Quiet!” Erica picked up a lamp and crept toward the stairwell, following a slimy path. “We need to sneak up on it.”

  “Don’t you have more bullets?” I hissed.

  Her head whipped in my direction to give me a dark look. “I haven’t been caught breaking the Code’s firearms rule yet, but I’m smart enough to not carry a bunch of extra clips around.”

  “Then I should take point.” Reluctantly, she let me go up the staircase first. A few times on the way up, I had to grip the banister to keep myself from slipping. Gooey shit covered everything.

  By the time I reached the top of the steps, most of the determination that fed me on the bottom floor disappeared. The stench was overwhelming—practically to the point that I couldn’t track my prey by scent.

  Where is it?

  We crept along the hallway. Two bedroom doors were open. The wet trail ended along both.

  So where could it go next?

  The dead silence ended as we were thrown to the floor from above. That sneaky bat-chicken-whatever-the-hell-it-was clung to the ceiling and dropped down on us ninja-style.

  I rolled out from under it, jumping up to swing the lance. Only to have it clank against the wall. Could you tell I often used these things?

  The basilisk continued to pin a now-growling and snapping Erica against the floor, the claws from its four hands digging at her torso.

  I swung the magical lance around—correctly, this time—and repeatedly stabbed that son-of-a-bitch like my life depended on it. “Get off her!”

  The basilisk’s squawk turned into an ear-piercing shriek when one of my jabs pierced between its black wings and went deep. It whipped its long tail in my direction, forcing me back.

  With a hard twist to the right, Erica slammed the lamp across the injured basilisk’s rooster head and sent it careening into my old bedroom. It landed on my bed, bleeding from its wounds and seeping goo on the sheets and floor.

  I jumped over Erica and rushed it. Hold tight to the lance, Nat. Time to end this.

  The lance’s obsidian blade slid straight through the basilisk’s body into the wall, effectually impaling it. For now, anyway. It reached for me, clawing and biting at the pole. The flapping of its wings made it hard to hear anything else.

  Then it slid forward along the pole, edging toward me. Its nimble fingers got closer and closer.

  “Erica!” I gasped. If I moved back, I’d free it.

  She slowly got up, holding her bleeding stomach. Was she hurt badly? With each step she took toward me, her steps grew steadier. “I’m here.”

  “Pin it,” I grunted, jerking my head to the dresser on the other side of the room. Using her shoulder, she shoved the dresser across the floor until it held the basilisk in place.

  “I’m moving!” I warned her. I stabbed it again and again. I got in more stabs than the chicken kabobs got at my aunt’s house during Stravinsky family barbecues.

  The basilisk grew silent. When it finally moved no more, I stumbled away.

  “Is it really dead?” Erica asked.

  “Good question.” I advanced on the carcass, ready to do a few more hits for good measure, but the basilisk melted into a rotten puddle that smelled like wet trash decaying under the sun.

  “It’s gone,” I said.

  Erica sagged against the dresser and panted.

  “Will you be all right?” I approached her to check the wounds, but she shied away.

  “It’s just a few scratches.” She shrugged, but I could smell her pain along with her pride that wouldn’t let her show weakness. Especially not to me.

  There were so many horrible things she’d done to me in the past—beatings, verbal abuse—but the pain I’d experienced should be her burden and not mine. I let her be and fetched her a towel.

  By the time I caught my breath, it took everything I had, including popping a few anti-anxiety pills, to stop myself from really looking at the sad state of my former home. I hid my collection—my shameful hoard of Christmas collectibles—in this house and sooner or later I’d have to survey the damage.

  At least Erica and I were alive. The rest could be dealt with in time.

  I opened the bedroom window to air out the room and spotted someone standing outside.

  Bill. Of course, our boss’s smug goblin showed up after we made chicken noodle soup out of that monster. The cavalry had arrived. Conveniently late, I might add.

  “Holy shit,” he marveled as he looked around. “I hope you got good insurance, Nat.”

  To humans, Bill was just a tall, thin man with wire-framed glasses. But I’d seen goblins for real, and they were quite ugly and reeked of magic with a bitter tang of iron. The invisibility spell he used was quite welcomed.

  “Good insurance?” I snapped. “I bet The Bends has no plans to compensate me for the damages.”

  Bill was the kind of guy who scrambled for dropped change off the flea market floor. I wouldn’t see a damn penny for what the basilisk did to my house. I took in the disaster that was once my bedroom. My old bed smelled like snake shit. My whole house smelled like snake shit. Which meant there was no way in hell I could sleep tonight at the new house I shared with Thorn until every inch of my old house was wiped clean of this slimy crap.

  Atomically pissed now, I began to clean while Erica slowly healed. As I tossed soiled linens out my bedroom window, Bill joined us.

  He tsked at the sight. Erica continued to sit against the dresser as if she was glued to it.

  “So, what are we taking back to The Bends again?” she murmured. Even her voice sounded tired.

  She had a good point there. The trunk had disappeared when the basilisk bolted from The Bends, and now the trunk, the stone, and the creature were gone.

  “I don’t know.” I turned to Bill. “What do you know about the steamer trunk or the basilisk we found inside?”

  He shrugged. “Nothing, Nat. It showed up on the dock this morning. Probably part of a delivery from a wholesaler.”

  I sighed. Of course, he didn’t know where it came from. Nothing he’d bought before, though, had ever attacked us like this. “What about the person who owned the black truck? I’m pretty sure that was the basilisk’s lunch.”

  “That’s what took me so long to get here. I had to take care of that mess,” Bill replied. “Some guy just passing through town.”

  Bill’s nonchalant attitude forced a growl from my throat. “How do you know he didn’t have a family?”

  Bill stiffened. “I said I took care of it, Nat. Unless you’re willing to cast a spell. Perhaps call in a favor?”

  “Not happening.” He knew very well I’d learned a thing or two, and I wasn’t willing to pay the price to do werewolf magic.

  “Some prices are worth paying,” my Grandma Lasovskaya always said. She’d saved my life using werewolf magic, but I’d seen the cost and it wasn’t worth it. Now that we had each other again, I intended to live as long as possible with Thorn. No spell would take him away from me.

  I paused in the middle of working as my unease grew again. The basilisk had known where I lived.

  Someone placed a target on my back.

  “You don’t know where it came from or why that thing went to my old house?” I asked.

  Bill shrugged and pushed his glasses higher on his nose. The smile on his seemingly innocent, pale face sent a chill up my spine. “That’s the crazy thing about dark magic, Natalya. You might think you’ve dodged the worst of it, but what goes around always comes back around for more.”

  If this was just the beginning of what was coming for me, I was scared senseless of what might be next.

  Chapter 4

  Three hours later, my bedroom and the slime trail down to the front door had been wiped, scrubbed, and decontaminated. The only stench here now was lemon-fresh goodness.

  I dreaded checking on my collection. Just thinking about what I hid away here—exactly 523 Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, and even Festivus holiday decorations—stirred my stomach in ways that threatened to make me lose my lunch. Living in another house with Thorn let me pretend I was normal. At first, I’d carried over a few boxes to my new place and stored them in corners, but over time I’d brought them back here so Thorn and I could build a home together.

 

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