The Amber Lee Boxed Set

  Amber trailed off, but she didn’t need to keep going for Aaron to understand the gist of what she was about to say. Death. Destruction. Damnation. As if having a psychopathic witch running around loose in the wild, ready to strike at any moment, wasn’t bad enough; now they had another demon to deal with. Aaron had hoped he had seen the last of them on the night he went through his first change, but things seemed to be coming full circle.

  “I’ll do my best,” he said. “We’ll have Jackal with us, too.”

  She nodded. “I was worried you’d be against this.”

  “I’m with you,” Aaron said, pulling her close to him. “To the end.”

  “To the end,” she echoed, and kissed him deeply. His tongue searched for hers, lips parting, and they found each other. The kiss was warm and packed with love, care, and hope. Hope that everything would work out. In the end that’s all they had. Hope. Well, hope and werewolves. Yeah. They’d be okay.

  “We’ll leave in the morning,” Amber said, “Go upstairs and pack. I’m gonna order us a pizza, and go talk to Damien before turning in.”

  “Why don’t you let me call?”

  “I want to do something normal for a change.”

  Aaron nodded, let his hands slip off her body as he went past her, and walked upstairs. Amber ordered more food than she thought was necessary, but with three werewolves in the house even 6 deep-dish pizzas would get eaten. Hanging up the phone brought a kind of mundane satisfaction to her heart and a smile to her face. She wanted, for the first time since she learned she could do magick, to live a normal life where she didn’t have to think about demons and darkness and blood.

  But when she heard the voices coming from Damien’s room she knew; the dark would never let her go.

  Chapter Fourteen

  The voices—whispers—were just quiet enough that I could hear them, but when I knocked on the door to Damien’s room the voices ceased. Frank was in there, it sounded like, and they were talking about… her? Maybe. I wasn’t surprised to be the subject of conversation around here. Not after everything I’d put everyone through. When this was done I owed them a vacation or something.

  Damien answered the door a moment later. He was wearing pajamas, his hair was wet and sticking to his forehead, and he had bags under his eyes. I saw them when he brushed his hair over his head and out of his face. This was the first time I had really had a chance to see him in three weeks, and he looked beat.

  “Hey,” I said, “Frank with you?”

  He looked over his shoulder then back at me. “No, why?”

  “Nothing,” I said, “I just thought I heard someone.”

  “I was talking to myself.”

  “Yeah, I do that too. More often now.”

  “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine. I just, I wanted to see you. I haven’t seen you since I went up to the cabin and… I guess I missed you.”

  Damien nodded. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to sound weird. It’s just been a really long day.”

  I noticed him grimace as he shrugged his shoulders and my stomach twisted into a knot. Did I hurt him? “Damien, are you hurt?”

  “Hurt?”

  “Did I hurt you today?”

  “No,” he said, “You didn’t. I got out before everything started happening.”

  “Good.”

  The silence that hung between us was complete. It was as if we had been suspended in a bubble through which no sound could penetrate. Something was up with Damien. Maybe he had been talking to himself or maybe not. The last time I had a run in with a demon I thought Aaron was the one under attack, but it was me. These things are cunning and clever. Maybe it was trying to trick me into believing Damien to be up to something unsavory or maybe he really was just talking to himself.

  “Do you want me to leave you alone?” I asked, “I get the feeling you’re tired.”

  “Yeah, I’m not feeling too great. Is there something you wanted?”

  “I just wanted to tell you that I’d spoken to Frank, and that he thinks I need to go talk to my mom. I wanted to ask if you were willing to come with me.”

  “I don’t… I mean, I thought it was a given that I would be helping you out. Why’d you think you needed to ask?”

  “I don’t know. It’s just that I’m aware you guys have had to put your lives on hold for me and I don’t want to do anything to make you feel like I’m taking you for granted. I’ll understand if you’d prefer to stay.”

  “You really think I’ll be any better off here by myself?”

  “Maybe. I don’t know. What I do know is that I’m about to go and find out whether I’ve been lied to my whole life or not. I figured if anyone understood what that was like, it was you.”

  Damien nodded. “I’ll go with you,” he said, “I started this with you, and I plan on finishing it.”

  I hadn’t forgotten. Damien was the catalyst; the thing that set everything else in motion. If it hadn’t been for his sister and the clues we were able to follow, and the magick he had taught me to use, Acheris may have had what she wanted a long time ago. I suspected the old Sheriff who tried to kill me was her canary down the coal mine; the man she sent to find the witch from her prophecies. She always expected him to die when he found the right one. When he found me.

  Maybe I would have survived even if Damien hadn’t intervened, but he was always meant to.

  “Thank you,” I said. “I really am feeling okay. Maybe we can talk on the way over? Catch up? I ordered pizza. Wanna join us?”

  “Thanks, but I think I’ll turn in early. I don’t mind cold pizza.”

  Damien retreated into his room before I got a chance to wish him goodnight or ask if he wanted me to bring him a slice or two, but it wasn’t that which left me standing by the door feeling cold and prickly all over. The action of Damien closing the door had sent a gush of air racing at me. In that air I smelled blood, irritated flesh, and fear. It was faint, but it was there, all of it, waiting to be picked up by the right nose.

  But it wasn’t the smell that got me. The voices had returned; and there were many of them.

  ***

  ‘Leave it to me’

  Frank said, ending the written conversation I had been having with him on my smartphone. What I had heard in Damien’s room had set me on edge a little; enough to make me even more conscious of myself and of my emotional state. Pizza helped, lighting white candles all throughout my bedroom to bring the Goddess’ protection down helped, but the niggling feeling remained. Rats chewing at the walls of my mind, as if they needed any more breaking down.

  Frank didn’t want me getting worked up so he was quick to ask me to take it all out of my head. I felt better with him around me, especially now that I knew a bunch of facts about what had really been going on. He’d had more experience with demons than any of us put together. No amount of book-learning could bring someone close to Frank’s level of understanding.

  If that didn’t make me feel safe then nothing would.

  Not even Aaron.

  “Are you okay?” he asked.

  We were in bed together, with the TV on in the background and a cold pizza on the bedside table. Me nestled in the crook of his arm and he on his back, propped up against the headboard. Neither of us paid a lot of attention to what was on, but the sound and light was soothing and distracting. Outside, snow was falling and the wind had picked up.

  “Yeah,” I said, “I’m just still getting used to being normal while it lasts.”

  “Maybe it’ll last a long time.”

  “Maybe. Meanwhile, I’m happy to just sit here and watch TV with you. It’s all I wanted to do while I was down in the hole.”

  “Me too. First Berlin, then this.”

  “I almost forgot about Berlin.” And Luther, Helena, and the other witches; the ones Acheris’s dark fingers had touched. Each of them had in some way been affected by the devil’s witch. They had lost someone by her hand, or their lives had been cleverly manipulated into chang
ing in ways only Acheris and her demon magick could predict. To what end? I didn’t know. Maybe she had a plan, or maybe all of her manipulations and all her interference was simply an expression of her own inner torment.

  Chaos for chaos’ sake.

  A chilling thought.

  Aaron’s arm came around my shoulder and his thumb lightly smoothed my skin sending tingles racing throughout my body. Maybe it was the proximity, his heat, or the fact that we were for the first time in a long time alone and in the moment. But my heart had started to race, blood was rushing to my face and chest, and I realized I had been rubbing my toes together beneath the sheets.

  As my heart worked to send hot blood rushing all around my body at breakneck speed and my chest began to slowly heave, stoked by the fires of lust, I knew something was about to happen. I was aware of this only in a muffled way, as if I had been staring at something through a cloudy window, but it was happening. My fingers were starting to ache, my stomach was twisting, and my teeth were throbbing.

  Had the simple act of Aaron touching my skin in that way triggered the beast to come rushing to the surface?

  “Amber?” he asked. He could tell I was heaving now, and I had stretched and contracted my legs a few times with the rhythm of my breathing. The beast was coming, but it wasn’t anger that had brought the animal out—it was lust. And as my eyes sailed across the landscape of Aaron’s half-concealed torso, trailing up and up to where his chest met his neck, where his neck met his jaw, and where his jaw became his delicious lips, I had no doubt of what I needed to do.

  “Rip my clothes off,” I said.

  Aaron stared at me, wide eyed. “What?”

  In a heartbeat I was on top of him, straddling him, with my hands feeling every ridge and groove of his chest and abdomen. “I need you to rip my clothes off and make me yours or I’m going to tear off of my own skin.”

  He didn’t need any more encouragement than that. Aaron grabbed the shirt I had been wearing—incidentally, one of his—and ripped it from the collar down exposing my bare breasts and belly. In an instant his lips were around an aching nipple and my hands were in his thick hair, guiding him to where I wanted him to go. The pain in my chest was there and still growing, but it receded as the pleasure of the moment started to overwhelm my senses.

  I searched, blindly, and found Aaron hard and ready under his briefs. He felt me struggling around and helped remove them, and when he was free I angled my hips to meet him. Before I could slide him inside me he pulled me up, flipped me to my back, and ripped my panties off with his teeth. He hadn’t had me like this—hadn’t tasted me in such a long time—I had almost forgotten what his tongue felt like. But he helped me remember, and when the throes of climax gripped me for the first time in forever he stood by the edge of the bed, pulled me toward him, and pushed himself into me.

  The first push sent ripples of ecstasy coursing through me in soft, warm waves and the moan that peeled out of my throat mirrored the feeling. Weeks of repressed hunger exploding out of me like a flaming pyre roaring into the throat of the night. I had his head in my hands with my cheek pressed against it, and as we moved together, our bodies responding instinctively to each other’s’ rhythms.

  I called his name, he called mine, I told him I loved him, and my words spurred us both to finish together, our bodies stiffening and tensing, pulsing, throbbing. Finally we came to a slow, gradual halt, and when it was done I let myself fall on my back, breathing and sweating and warm all over, but calm. I had made enough noise to alert the entire house of what we had done and was full with Aaron’s seed, but I was calm.

  That’s what was most important.

  Aaron kissed my cheek and traced the curve of my breasts with his fingers. I couldn’t help but smile. “That was quick,” I said.

  “Maybe we should go again.”

  “Maybe,” I said, looking up at him, “I mean; if this is what we need to do to keep the wolf at bay I don’t see why we should deny it.”

  His lips curled into a smile, and his smile made my face light up further. It was good to see him happy. Healthy. “I don’t see why we should deny it either.”

  “I kinda pounced on you, didn’t I?”

  “You did. It was… different.”

  “This was my first time as… as a werewolf…”

  “And?”

  “I felt like a Goddess.”

  Aaron rolled me on my back and kissed me deeply, removing the tattered remains of the shirt I had been wearing and sliding down to lay claim to my body. This time we could take it slow. And the time after that, too. We were, for the first time, there, present, in the moment and in the flesh. There was no magick, no Acheris, and nothing to be sad about; only things to be grateful for and hopeful for.

  The Goddess knew we could use all the hope we could get.

  ***

  Not even God himself could keep the snake out of the Garden of Eden; and this little witch is no God. Let them have their moment. This changes nothing.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Aaron swam out of sleep, lethargic and slow, and for a long moment forgot he wasn’t at the cabin anymore, forgot that Amber wasn’t locked up anymore. His mind struggled to remember that the cabin had burnt down and that they were back at home. Memory came back to him like a slow rising tide, but it came. And when he got out of the empty bed he found Amber sitting cross legged in the center of the bedroom.

  Her fingers were clasped together, her head was tilted back, and her breathing was slow. She’s meditating, he thought, and he thought it best not to disturb her until she was ready to come out of it. Besides, he had to plan a trip to Amber’s parent’s house, and the thought occurred to him that not everyone would fit in his—barely—four-seater mustang. Besides, the weather report looked bad for today; no way was he going to let Jackal ride her bike across the state in the cold and the snow.

  So he called his uncle, asked to borrow the van, and went to pick it up. It wasn’t the most comfortable of rides but it would get five people to where they wanted to go and back. Beggars can’t be choosers, right? When Aaron returned with breakfast the house was active and, for lack of a better word, normal.

  “We ready to go?” he asked.

  “We are if you got churros,” Frank said. “If you didn’t get me a churro then we’ve got a problem.”

  “I did get churros,” Aaron said, “Got something else I think you might like, too.”

  “Hear that?” Frank said as he walked toward the front door, his step full of swagger, and stepped outside. The others followed. “He came on to me.”

  “It’s not quite the mystery machine, but…” Aaron said as he revealed the van he had acquired.

  “Ah, you remembered the joke!” Frank said. It wasn’t exactly a replica, but it was a van—and between the witches and werewolves there were five passengers. “Good job. It’s nice to know humor isn’t lost on you after all, Scooby.”

  “I’m riding in that?” Jackal asked.

  “Unless you want to freeze to death or wipe out on the road, yes,” Aaron said.

  “Can I at least drive?”

  “No.”

  Amber took the breakfast bag out of Aaron’s hands and brought it to the van. Maybe it was the cold bite in the air, maybe it was her pale skin against the snowy backdrop, but her cheeks were so flushed with blood they were practically steaming. Then Aaron remembered. It was neither of those things; it was what they had done last night that was giving her the glow.

  “C’mon,” Frank said, patting Aaron on the shoulder. “If we’re gonna do this we should do it sooner rather than later.”

  Aaron nodded and headed into the van. Amber smiled at him and turned away to hide her face from the world, not that she had to—at least not in his eyes. When Damien, the last passenger, filed into the back of the van and sat on one of the bean-bags Aaron had thrown in, he started up and peeled out of the drive.

  Amber’s parents lived far enough away as it was, and the wind and the sn
ow made driving difficult. The worst part was leaving town. The roads had almost iced over and by the time they hooked into a main highway the sky was grey and heavy with icy rain. This didn’t make a lot of sense to begin with given California’s regular climate, but there was nothing regular about Raven’s Glen.

  “I don’t like it,” Aaron said to Amber once they were on the road.

  “Like what?”

  “Something doesn’t smell right. Can you feel it?”

  “No… is everything okay?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Aaron rolled his shoulders and kept his eyes on the road, on high alert. He caught Damien’s eyes in the rearview and that startled him, though he didn’t let it show. Didn’t seem like Damien had managed to get much sleep, judging by the color of his skin. He nodded in the mirror and Damien nodded in response, but his eyes were… cold.

  Thud.

  Something had hit the van.

  “What was that?” Jackal asked.

  “I don’t know,” Aaron said.

  “Did we hit something?” Amber asked.

  Thud-thud.

  “Sounds like something hitting the roof,” Frank said.

  Aaron saw them coming before they cascaded all around the van; it was a sheet of hailstones. His instincts told him to swerve, but where could he go? He kept the van steady as the hail fell from the sky. Thousands of tiny, icy pebbles slammed the van creating a rising wave of static noise so loud it drowned out all else. They fell on the van, on the van up ahead, and on the road, bouncing around as if they were alive.

  And then one of them made a crack in the windshield.

  “Holy shit!” Amber said. “That one looked big.”

  The sky grumbled and roared and lightning split it in two. Another pebble came, this one the size of a golf-ball. It smashed against the windshield so hard it created a spider’s web of cracks around the point of impact before bouncing off. The car up ahead swerved hard and Aaron had a split second to react. He veered right, narrowly avoiding a head-on collision and swerving around the out-of-control car.