Entwined Enemies (2 page)

“She would do anything if I let him live, all the while powering through her own fear of me. I thought she was stunning.”

Trent grabs Sylvia by the jaw and pulls her face up to look at him.

“She still is, even after all these years. Possessive sometimes. Jealous, but she falls in line when push comes to shove.”

I notice a tattoo on the back of Trent’s neck for the first time. A star enclosed by a circle. Norse design, but a different style than the tattoo on Mason’s chest. A different artist.

Suddenly Trent wheels around and pulls up Sylvia’s blouse. Exposing her stomach. Revealing a tattoo of her own.

This one
is
the same style that Mason has on his chest, but centered on her belly button. Sylvia has a silver pendant as well, but it’s a piercing instead of a necklace.

“Anything I wanted meant turning Sylvia into a wolf. I didn’t want to wait years for her to master the wolf, so I sent her to that Romanian witch Mason told you about. The same one he found years later on his own. My hope was that Sylvia’s courage would endure against me. Alas, it has weakened over time.”

Trent pushes Sylvia to the ground as he casts her off, almost as an afterthought. She goes limp and crumples to the ground. He’s done this before. Humiliated Sylvia. Cowed her into submission. Many times, if I had to guess. Which helps me understand the nature of their relationship.

I’ve known strong women like Sylvia before. Woman who like having their power taken from them, or being made to heel, or grovel.

Trent looks back at me.

“Whereas you stand up to me because maybe
you’re just kinky that way
.”

He’s still not persuaded. I need to change the subject. I’m pretty sure he isn’t talking to hear himself speak anymore. He was for a while there, but now he’s zeroing in on me again.

“I assume you’re not being this forthcoming to pass the time,” I say. “Where do I fit into this tale?”

“You fit in perfectly,” Trent says. “Your paintings do, at any rate. As for the rest”—he eyes me from top to bottom—“we’ll have to see.”

Sylvia growls for the first time. It rumbles out of her like it does with Mason. She really doesn’t like me right now. I’ve caught the eye of her man.

Trent kneels down beside Sylvia, runs his fingers through her hair, and then grabs a handful of it and forces her to look in my direction.

“Sylvia showed me your work. The paintings you do simply to
pass the time
. They’re masterpieces, but you paint over them when you’re done. I mean to change that.”

“They’re not for sale,” I tell him.

“Good. I wasn’t planning on buying them.”

“Then what’s this all about? You’re like a cat with a feather in his mouth. Spit it out.”

I’m being demanding with a man who’s used to giving demands. He seems to like that, but I’m sure there’s a point when he doesn’t.

Trent lets go Sylvia, throwing her head forward, and stands up.

“When I found out what Mason and Sylvia’s parents do for a living, I recognized an opportunity. Galleries and people from all over the world send her mother and father paintings to be appraised, hoping the value will increase.

“You see, rich people don’t care about art, not really. They only care about how much art is worth. Truth be told, I don’t care either, but I do care about how much money can be made selling the originals, especially when nobody is aware that it’s been replaced with a forgery.”

Trent walks in my direction, towering over me as he does.

“When a painting is sent to her parents, it passes through Sylvia’s hands. That’s when I search for a forgery and buy it. When the painting travels back through Sylvia’s hands, returning to the customer, I replace it.

“The problem is that convincing forgeries are expensive and eat heavily into profits. A stolen painting doesn’t sell anything close to the appraised value. With your paintings, that would no longer be a problem. You can make forgeries from scratch and I wouldn’t have to pay you a cent.”

“I see. So that’s what this all about? Selling stolen paintings?”

“I saw an opportunity all those years ago. It paid off.”

“Well, you’re presuming a lot by sharing this with me, like my cooperation. Or do you mean to hurt me now? Threaten my life if I don’t cooperate? Based on what I’ve seen of how you treat women, I can only assume you favor such tactics.”

“Sylvia. Fetch the canvas,” Trent commands.

Sylvia rises off the floor and exits the room, walking directly past me as she goes. We exchange a brief look. If she could fire lightning bolts out of her eyes in that moment, she would.

“I have ways of being persuasive,” Trent warns, “but I’m not unreasonable. I would offer you a modest percentage for the forgery work, not a payment for the painting. It would be more of a wage. That way a trail of money would exist, proof that we’re all in this together. You would be working for me after all.”

“And if I refuse?”

“You can always refuse, but we haven’t even gotten to the persuasive part yet.”

Mason nods behind me. I turn around to see that Sylvia has returned holding an ornate frame with a very familiar picture.
The Vision of Endymion
. I walk up to the image and touch the painting. Feel the oil on canvas. This isn’t mine. It’s the original. The actual painting by Sir Edward Poynter.

Trent keeps talking behind me.

“The beauty is that nobody even knows it’s missing. It’s been replaced with a perfect forgery. The one you painted. That means it’s covered in your fingerprints. Yours and Mason’s.”

Mason eventually took the painting back to Sylvia’s place for safekeeping. Not the perfect reproduction I created for the summoning spell, but a near copy. Sylvia has had access to it the whole time.

“Wait, you don’t think I had Sylvia convince you to paint that image for him, did you?” Trent continues. “To make him love you more? Ha! Don’t answer. Of course you did. I can see it on your face already. The fact that it
also
happens to be his favorite painting only made the request less suspicious.”

Trent walks up behind me and leans in close, whispering in my ear.

“Run back to your loft, Jessica Aberdeen. I need you to see something so that you know I’m serious. Unfortunately, you won’t find Mason in the same shape that you left him. Then come back here… if you really want to see what I look like with feathers in my mouth.”

I turn to face Trent.

“I was just there. I left him in my apartment.”

“And I just sent two of my pack to pay him a visit.”

“You’re bluffing.”

“Am I?” Trent looks up at Sylvia. “The pendant in your belly button. Take it out.”

I turn to Sylvia. She looks up at Trent without saying a word. There’s a look of reluctance and dread on her face. She didn’t know about this part of his plan.

“But you just told me to put the pendant back in.”

“
Do it
,” he commands behind me in a voice that feels like a punch.

Sylvia’s eyes go wide. She swallows hard and looks back to me. There’s a moment between us. A look of regret. She can’t say the words, but I can tell she’s sorry.

Sylvia puts the painting down and then carefully removes the silver pendant from her belly button.

The moment she does, Sylvia lets out a bloodcurdling scream. Suddenly, without the magic pendant and tattoo at work, Sylvia can feel everything her brother is feeling. She collapses to the floor, writhing in pain that can’t be faked.

“Do you believe me now?” Trent asks without losing his composure.

This man is pure evil.

I don’t say anything after that. I just run. I’m out of the house and on the street. I don’t even know how I got there so fast. I can’t move my legs fast enough. I have no problem finding the energy.

Sylvia and Trent must have been planning this for a while now. They used my affection for Mason to get what they wanted. Now I’m implicated in whatever criminal enterprise they’ve concocted. Sylvia has been playing me as well, but something tells me Trent pressed her into betraying her brother.

Even so, to choose a man like him over her own twin? There must be more to it, but I have no time to puzzle that out right now. My thoughts rush back to Mason. I need to reach him, to find out what Trent meant. I know it won’t be pretty.

I can still hear Sylvia crying out in pain. I can only imagine what that means for Mason.

I panic more the closer each step brings me back to my apartment. My lungs are dry, but I don’t care. There could be shards of glass in my chest and I wouldn’t let them slow me down right now.

I’m coming up on the block where my apartment is located. It’s blazing hot. I’d be sweating buckets without the spell cooling me off. A secondary effect of Maintain the Flesh.

My breathing is labored, but I know the pain in my chest is temporary. It won’t stop me from reaching Mason. I can see the house where I live upstairs. Then the lower stairway door. It’s open.

I imagine myself vaulting up the stairs when I get there, leaping up them like they’re not even there. My feet won’t even touch the steps. Mason will be in my arms again soon.

That’s when I see them.

Two burly men, thick-necked and rippling with muscle. One is bald, and the other has short-cropped hair. They’re walking down the stairs and out the front door. They don’t see me yet, but it’s too late to hide. I’m out in the open. Maybe I can run between them, dart between their bodies before they know what hit them.

Of course, I’m wrong.

The bald man stops me. A ham-fisted mitt grabs me by the arm. Yanks me back. He’s fast. Really fast. I lose my footing, but the baldheaded man keeps me from falling down.

“Where do you think you’re going in such a hurry?”

“I… I have to… inside.”

I can barely speak.

“You here to see the guy upstairs?” the man with cropped hair says. “There’s no rush. He’s not going anywhere.”

Something about the finality of how he said that. My heart sinks.

“So you’re the girl boss was talking about? The one he has plans for?” the bald guy says. “Yeah, he told us all about them.”

“Please… let me… let me go.”

I barely manage to whisper the words. I need my voice back, the ability to speak. I can’t cast spells if I can’t speak.

Suddenly Baldy has his hand around my neck. A blur of motion. As fast as Mason. He’s a werewolf. I’m sure they both are.

He lifts me off the ground like I weigh nothing, even with his arm extended. I definitely can’t talk now. I have to grab his sinewy forearm just to keep myself from being strangled.

“I’ll let you go when I’m good and ready,” he snarls, drinking me in with his eyes. “My, but you are a piece of work. I can see why boss singled you out.”

Baldy pulls me in close until we’re face to face. I can smell iron on his hand, which means blood. Something tells me it doesn’t belong to him.

Mason. I have to reach Mason.

“That won’t always be the case,” Baldy says. “He’ll tire of you eventually, and when he does, it’ll be my turn.”

He licks the side of my face and jams a sausage finger between my legs, pushing against the denim crotch of my cut-offs. He drives the fabric up into me until my lips wrap around his intrusion.

“Well, aren’t you accommodating? Good thing that boyfriend of yours broke you in. There’s a lot more of me than he ever had.”

Had. Past tense.
Oh, Mason, what did they do to you?

Baldy brings his hand up and tastes his fingers.

“Peaches and syrup. Who would have guessed? Maybe I should take my piece of you now.”

“Put her down,” the man with cropped hair says. “Boss wants us back.”

Baldy looks back at his companion and growls. That’s when I can see a tattoo on the back of his neck, identical to the one Trent has in the same place. A Norse star surrounded by a circle.

His partner growls back at him.

That’s when Baldy opens his hand and drops me onto the ground without looking. I collapse in a heap, not unlike how Sylvia fell earlier when Trent pushed her down. I really have no strength to keep myself upright.

Baldy looks down at me, sticks out his tongue, and grabs his crotch. His pants can barely contain his erect cock.

The man with cropped hair walks over and kneels down beside me until we’re face to face. He’s holding a set of keys. I recognize them. They belong to Mason.

“Don’t talk to your parents. Don’t talk to the police. Don’t talk to anybody. They can’t protect you from us. You know what we are, and, when you go upstairs, you’ll see what we’re capable of doing. If boss sends us back here, we won’t play nice with you like your boyfriend did.”

There it is again.
Did
.

“It’s real easy to understand. Do what boss tells you. Don’t follow his directions, leave boss unsatisfied in any way, and he will throw you to us. And if you think my friend is rough, know that I’m the perverted one.”

Cropped Hair has a thinner face than Baldy. Harder. I believe him. He gets up and walks away. They cross the street together to the Mustang parked across the street—to Fancy. Mason’s car. The man with cropped hair has a Norse star tattooed on his neck as well. A sign of their pack?

Baldy makes an obscene gesture in my direction, flicking his tongue between an index finger and his thumb as the man with cropped hair gets into the driver’s side. He roars the Mustang to life as his partner gets into the passenger side. Heavy metal starts playing.

That’s when I cast my spell. The nastiest one I know.

They hurt Mason. I don’t know how yet, but they talked about him like he’s already dead. For all I know, he
is
dead. Now they’re stealing his car. They can’t possibly hear me over the engine, but if they can, it won’t matter in a second.

“
Caro Tollere
.”

Remove the Flesh.

I wait for the interior to explode with blood.

Nothing.

I say it again. Louder this time.

“
Caro Tollere!
”

No effect. My magic is either failing me or doesn’t work on them, just like it didn’t work on Trent. They must be warded against it somehow.