Rivals: Episode Two Page 5

  “I’m not proud of my actions,” I said, “but what’s done is done and we can only move forward. Your attack was in a public place where innocents could have been killed. That is more disgusting than any crime I committed.”

  He reeled back ever so slightly. “That’s rich. The lion protecting the sheep. Or wait, what are you again? A wolf? Bear? Pussy?”

  “I’m a werebear.” Saying it felt powerful. The bear inside of me roared and raged, wanting to burst forth and strike at Xavier, especially at his underhanded insult he delivered with a slick edge. It took a lot of self-control to reel the bear in. “And I’m less of a predator than you are, you blood-sucking scum.”

  “I have lived centuries past your years, bear. I have seen humanity at its finest and I have seen it at its worst. I’ll assure you that what I have done pales in comparison to what the human race is capable of. But tonight? Tonight is going to be different.”

  I stood a few feet away from him now. A cat screeched into an alleyway to our left. “Different, huh? How so?” I asked, goading him on.

  “I’m finally going to get the revenge I’ve been thirsting for all those years.”

  “Revenge? I thought we were here to bury the hatchet.” I felt the situation spiraling out of control. Although the bear inside of me wanted to rip out Xavier’s throat and throw his corpse into a dumpster, my rational side knew I needed to somehow de-escalate the situation.

  “Bury the hatchet? You think your actions could be simplified down to a simple phrase? As though the situation is as easy as digging a hole. You’re a bigger idiot than I had thought.”

  My knuckles felt strained as my grip tightened around the handle of the suitcase. “Fine. What I did was fucked up, I understand that. But I don’t need to apologize for what I did either.”

  “You’re right. You don’t need to apologize.” And before I could blink, Xavier was behind me. “You need to pay.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  KIMBERLY

  My body still trembled with the after-shocks of Xavier’s love making. Days had passed since our rendezvous in the middle of the ocean, and yet I still felt perpetually wet from my encounter. And it wasn’t salt water I was wet with either.

  I needed to calm down. Xavier told me I didn’t have to come into work and that he just wanted me to lay low for a while until he was able to sort things out with Gaige, whatever that meant. So I decided that it was time for a little ‘staycation’. I had called Rachel and told her about my idea and she was all for it. So we hopped online, booked a room at the Fountainebleu and packed our bags.

  The five-star hotel stood right at the edge of the beach and was massive, with two nightclubs, restaurants galore, gyms that were nicer than four LA Fitness’ put together, and rooms that you never wanted to leave. There was even a pool with a giant sculpture octopus in the middle! It was paradise and what was best of all? I actually felt safe. For once, I could relax and not worry that I was going to be attacked in my own home.

  I was also having trouble wrapping my head around the fact that I went out with a murderer, especially the fact that it was Gaige who was being accused. I hadn’t known him long at all, but I considered myself to be a pretty good judge of character, and I would have never pinned Gaige as a killer. It was terrifying to think that I was actually intimate with someone who had the mental tickings of a cold-blooded predator.

  It never crossed my mind that there could have been more to the story. I was so swept up in it all that I couldn’t even sort out my own questions.

  The door to the bathroom clicked open and a curtain of steam poured out. “You missed some incredible tanning opportunities, Kim. Like, literally the sun didn’t go down for a second,” Rachel said, a towel wrapped around the top of her head. It leaned to the left, like a risky game of Jenga down to the last blocks.

  “Rachel, you know I’m not a fan of going out to places where the majority of people are scantily clad. This body,” I motioned up and down, “isn’t beach ready and probably will never be.” I sat back on the bed, the mattress conforming to my butt. It was like I had just sat down on a cloud high up above all my worries. “Just let me enjoy this incredible hotel without having to actually go outside.”

  “Says the one who had sex on a freakin’ yacht. You are not allowed to be self-depreciating anymore. The next time you bring yourself down, I will personally make a booty call on your behalf and make sure you get the closest dick, stat.”

  “Thanks, doctor Rachel.”

  She opened the closet and pulled out her pajamas. “No problem. I’ll make sure you get at least 500 ccs of hot, sweaty, sticky man love. It’s what I prescribe all my patients.”

  “You must be really in-demand then,” I said, giggling.

  “Booked for the next few years, but I’ll squeeze you in.” She slid into her shorts underneath the towel and put on an over-sized WWE shirt. “I still can’t believe you had sex with a vampire.”

  “It wasn’t really sex…” Rachel gave me a scrunched faced, “Ok, ok. I know, I can’t believe it either,” I said, having flashbacks to that incredible night. The way he looked, how the ocean air embraced us like a warm blanket, how he felt in my grip. I took a deep breath and let it out in an exasperated sigh.

  “Do you think it’s going to happen again?” Rachel asked, sitting down on the bed beside me.

  I shrugged my shoulders. “No idea. I mean, he did mention he was… ‘linked’ with me.”

  “Oh that’s right, I remember you telling me. I’m still not sure I can wrap my head around it,” she said, her head cocking to the side and leaning her tower of towels further.

  “Just think of it like Jacob falling for Bella’s unborn kid.”

  “Ohhh, right. That.” She shook her head. “Wow, so I guess she was on to something with those books.”

  “Who knows, maybe she knew a shifter or two before writing them.”

  “Ok, so wait, wait. Back it up. Are you saying Xavier and you are like, destined to be together?”

  I looked up at her, my lips pursing together. “It sort of sounds like that. But I don’t know, Rach. I don’t think humans feel that whole ‘link’ thing. I mean, don’t get me wrong, there’s an obvious connection between us. I really, really like him. But I guess I’ve just been let down so many times already, I don’t want to completely open up just yet.”

  “It sounds like you were pretty open,” Rachel said, nudging my side.

  “Very funny.”

  “I do know that I think I may have found someone special. If it’s not all just some big cosmic prank that is,” I said, still having some trouble coming to terms with it all. “I do think I feel myself changing through all of this.”

  “Well, that’s expected, girl. If you weren’t a changed woman after everything that’s happened then I would be worried.”

  “Yeah, you’re right. I’ve gotta admit though, even if I am scared, I’m also happy. I’m so happy my life finally has some excitement. I thought I was going to have to follow in my mother’s footsteps. Find a job in some boring office, refreshing web pages and randomly filling in excel spreadsheets just to look busy. I saw myself settling down with some man who most likely stayed in his sweatpants all weekend and would never lift a finger to help clean or cook. That’s where I thought I would be five years from now, Rachel. But now? Everything seems so much brighter, so much more exciting. I can actually feel alive again and not feel like I’m just going through the motions. Things feel right for once.”

  “Good, I’m so glad you’re actually experiencing the life you’ve deserved. Just promise, you’re going to be careful too.”

  Suddenly, two sharp knocks sounded from the door.

  “Coming,” Rachel said, looking back at me with a ‘did you order pizza?’ look as she got up from her perch on the bed.

  I shook my head, sitting up in the plush white bed.

  Rachel peeped through the peephole and asked “who is it?”

  No answer. “Hello?” Sti
ll nothing.

  She looked back at me again, her eyebrows coming together in concern. That was when the door slammed open and threw her into the bathroom right behind her. I could hear her fall to the floor with a grunt intermixed with a yell. I couldn’t even form a scream. My throat tightened in fear and my muscles froze as two burly men, jet black shirts and pants, scars across their gruff, violent faces, ran towards me.

  “That her?” one of them asked.

  “Yeah, she reeks of Xavier.”

  Before I could even blink away the tears, they were on me. Thick, grubby, strong fingers wrapped around my forearm. Their touch was incredibly warm, something that stuck out to me through the fear. I looked up at the one closest to me and locked eyes, pleading with him without saying a word. I couldn’t. I was trying, but my mouth would just make shapes and not produce any sort of sound. The man squinted his eyes, and for a split second, just a fraction of that moment, I thought he was going to take pity on me. But then his scarred lip lifted up in the corner, signaling just how pleased he felt at his catch.

  “Oh, Elijah is going to have fun with you,” he said, and in that instant, I could see a vicious predator looking down at it’s prey, just before the blood was spilled.

  Hope you enjoyed Episode Two of Rivals. Continue reading for the first two chapters of Episode Three.

  Episode Three is available on Amazon.

  Subscribe to my newsletter by clicking here and be the first to know when new episodes are published.

  M.G.

  XAVIER

  In an instant, I was standing behind him. It may have been a cheap move, but this shifter didn’t play by the rules so I wasn’t going to either. He showed his true colors the moment he murdered my sister in cold blood.

  Nothing was going to cut it. I never truly knew what a desperate desire for revenge felt like until the night my sister left this earth. Before then, I was making peace with what I was, able to find myself living without a constant need to fight and hunt and feed. That only happened in the beginning stages of my vampire years, but I had dealt with all of that. And yet here I stood, hungry for revenge. Gaige Grayson turned me into this monster.

  My vision clouded with red. My fangs felt primed to tear into tender flesh. A thirst was filling me as my hand shot up and encased Gaige’s face. The surprise left the shifter’s defenses down, so it wasn’t hard to pull his head back and expose the pulsing artery pumping blood through his neck. His eyes were wide with shock but immediately narrowed with anger as he processed what I was about to do.

  “Revenge never tasted sweeter.”

  I opened my mouth and exposed the sharp fangs that worked similar to a rattlesnakes. They were hollowed, but not for blood sucking, instead for injecting a venom guaranteed to knock out whoever I held in my hands. It was a venom that every vampire had and was used to ease in the feeding process. But before I could plunge my teeth into his neck, Gaige partially shifted, his hands becoming huge, furry trunks of muscle ending in dangerously sharp claws. Vampires were hard to kill, but we weren’t completely immortal. A swipe across my face would decapitate me and render me as dead as anything else without a head.

  His reaction speed was faster than I expected. He dropped down underneath me and swung his leg around, hammering my ankle with a force akin to a truck slamming into a brick wall. I buckled in a moment of weakness, falling to the floor and allowing Gaige to gain the upper hand. His unhuman grip closed around the back of my neck, threatening to squeeze and possibly end me forever.

  “All of this for something so inconsequential to you,” Gaige said.

  I spat onto the pavement underneath me. “Fuck you.”

  “You have billions to your name, why would you hold it against me for stealing a fraction of that?” he shook my neck.

  What the fuck was he talking about.

  “I thought by bringing you the money tonight,” he continued, “you’d finally let all this bullshit go. But instead you try to fucking kill me. You see where that gets fucked up?”

  Something didn’t add up. I tensed my body and in a blur, sped out from under Gaige’s grip, risking his reaction speed and hoping he wasn’t quick enough to snap my neck before I got away.

  I stood up, my spine still intact. “Is this a fucking joke?”

  Gaige stood to face me and shook his head. “I’m being fucking serious. I don’t want to deal with this shit anymore. I thought I finally found a good girl and you come along and fuck that up. Then you try to kill me? Just fucking take the money and we’ll forget everything that happened.” He picked up the black suitcase and threw it my way. It landed on a corner and cracked open, dropping stacks of tied bills all over the floor.

  “Money?”

  “Yeah, the money I stole from you two years ago. When I was working as a developer for you. I saw an opportunity to jump ship and try to carve my own path, and I didn’t have the capital at the time to invest in anything. So yes, I needed the help and it looked like a victimless crime at the time. Clearly, you took it more personally than I had anticipated.”

  “But Ara?” I asked.

  “Ara?” Gaige responded, sounding genuinely confused by the name. “Ara… Ara… you mean the lawyer found murdered a few years ago? What does she have… Oh fuck. Ara Thorn?... She was your sister.”

  “And you’re the one responsible for taking her from me.”

  “What?” Gaige said, reeling back. “No fucking way. Why would I take out your sister? I’d have no motive. Sure, you and I became rivals in our work but I’m not a fucking lunatic either, I wouldn’t strike out unprovoked. I went to go see her looking for legal representation at the time, but that’s it.”

  I shook my head. “This doesn’t make sense. We found your hair at the crime scene. It was a werebear’s scent in that room. She died the same day you met with her.”

  “I swear on my word, Ara was alive when I got there and alive when I left.”

  That’s when I felt it. A sudden twang of pain radiate from my left shoulder and outwards. It was clear that nothing around me could have inflicted that pain, which only meant one thing.

  “Kimberly’s in trouble,” I said.

  “What? Fuck. How do you know?”

  “We’re linked. Vampires have weak—but noticeable—connections to their partners outside of the physical realm. I could feel when she’s in trouble, only in times of dire need, which means I need to go.”

  Gaige got his keys from his pocket and ran back to his car. “Where was she last?” he called back.

  For a fraction of a second I was going to stay quiet. I decided against that upon realizing how Gaige could be an asset in keeping Kimberly safe—for now.

  “Fountainbleu,” I said, speeding to my own car with a laser focus on making sure Kimberly was safe.

  GAIGE

  What in the fucking world was going on?

  Growing up, I was never the sharpest tool in the shed. It normally took me five minutes more to solve something that could be done in two. I compensated and managed to make shit work. But now, I was starting to feel that lag. First, Xavier thinking that I murdered his sister in cold blood, but then if it wasn’t me, who the fuck was it? And why the fuck would he think it was even me?!

  Then, to top it off, that mother fucking bloodsucker managed to somehow “link” with Kimberly. I imagined that was something resembling IMPRINTING in shifters, but there was no way we both could have been meant for her. Which is why I knew he was full of shit. Kimberly was mine and even if she didn’t know it yet, it was as clear as day to me and I was going to make sure she realized it.

  But first, we needed to find her. If Xavier was telling some sort of truth, then Kimberly could be in trouble and she was my first priority. This mess with murders and money could be figured out later.

  My engine roared to life as I slammed the door shut and threw the jet black Porsche in reverse. The roads were empty as I sped behind Xavier, racing underneath red lights and cutting corners dangerously close to
the pavement. At one point, I saw Xavier’s car lift up off the ground, tires screeching like banshees as they tried to grab traction, and finally slamming down onto the pavement in a straightaway, his exhaust sounding like shotguns exploding behind him as the car raced ahead. Not to be outdone, I pushed on the gas pedal and pulled up to the side of him.

  I knew where Fountainbleau was. There was no reason I needed to be behind him.

  I pushed down harder, pulling ahead of Xavier and making a sharp turn down an alley between two apartment complexes.The buildings blurred by as the car roared down the narrow road, setting off a few car alarms behind me.

  The alley ended and opened into another street. I could see Xavier in my rear-view mirror, not too far behind me. Ahead of me was the hotel, a huge structure sprinkled with lights coming out from various windows. It was late and so not everyone was awake, just those that enjoyed the night. The kind of people who reveled with the demons that the darkness tends to bring out.

  I didn’t pull into the valet, not wanting to draw much attention to myself. Instead I slowed down and pulled into an open parking spot on the street. I figured Xavier had the same thought when I saw him pull up to the spot behind me.

  “Have you felt her again?” I ask as I shut the door to my car. Xavier was already ahead of me.

  “No,” he called back.

  “Fuck.” I break out into a run and go past Xavier. The huge entrance was meant to exude a certain sense of luxury, but all of that was lost on me. The finer details meant shit as I ran through the sliding glass doors into the lobby. Again, it was a lobby made to attract the rich and famous. With huge crystal chandeliers dangling overhead and lights in blues and purples highlighting the golden walls, it gave off the illusion of being inside of Poseidon's throne room.