Daring by Elliott James

Author:Elliott James
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction / Fantasy / Contemporary, Fiction / Fantasy / Paranormal, Fiction / Fantasy / Urban, Fiction / Romance / Fantasy
Publisher: Orbit/Yen
Published: 2014-09-22T16:00:00+00:00

PART THE THIRD

Mission Impolitic

27

FLASHASSFORWARD

I was sitting on the couch in Eileen Williams’s living room when she came out of the shower. She was forty-three years old and looked at least ten years younger, auburn-haired and fit despite being a mother of four. She took one look at me and gave a startled scream before dashing for the bedroom down the hall where she and her husband kept a shotgun in the closet, flashes of buttock visible under the white towel she was wearing.

As soon as she reached her bedroom, she screamed again.

A moment later, she backed into the hallway, her face drained of blood. Nikolai was walking behind her. Eileen moved silently into the living room while Nikolai remained in the hallway.

“Have a seat, Eileen.” Eileen took long showers, and I took a sip of the coffee I had made while waiting for her to finish. Eileen or her husband apparently liked to grind gourmet coffee at the local grocery store and buy it in plain paper bags. It was okay.

Eileen was remarkably composed under the circumstances. White-faced and trembling but keeping it together. “May I get dressed first?”

“Nikolai will let you put on a bathrobe,” I said. “But that’s all.”

She wasn’t in any immediate danger, at least not from me, but it was good that she felt vulnerable. I wanted her to take what I was about to say seriously.

Eileen hesitated, then went back into her bedroom, followed by Nikolai. A few moments later, she came back with a creamy green bathrobe wrapped tightly around her. She sat in an armchair adjacent to me rather than across from me, reaching underneath her bottom to adjust her robe before crossing her legs. They were good legs, but I observed them with clinical detachment.

We were in a comfortable living room, brick outer walls with a big fireplace and one of those insulated heated floors that are not uncommon in Wisconsin. The living room furniture was oak with over-thick cushions. There was a sword hanging on the wall that looked ornamental and wasn’t, and there were a lot of sandstone pictures on the walls from Okinawa. The big coffee table that dominated the room had eleven frameless photographs lying flat on it. Eileen glanced at them and then looked away. She was crying but not sobbing. “You’re one of them, aren’t you?”

“I’m a werewolf, yes.” I didn’t offer her coffee, but only because I knew she wouldn’t drink anything I gave her.

She gripped the armrests of her chair as if to keep from floating out of it. “Are you going to kill me?”

I smiled sadly. This was how my pregnant mother had gotten the werewolf bite that eventually created me and killed her. Werewolves had tracked my father to his home and found her there. In a way, I had come full circle.

Life can be cruel and strange.

“I will die defending you if anyone tries,” I promised her. “But you need to get your kids out of school and leave Wisconsin as soon as we’re done talking.

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