The Accidental Genie (27 page)

“Three, whore!” he bellowed with twisted glee.

A surge of howling anger thrust her upward as she steamrolled him, barreling into his gut and knocking him to the floor. The gun clattered to the cement, falling out of Victor’s hand and sliding sideways toward Charlene.

Jeannie threw herself on top of him, straddling his large body. She grabbed his shirt with one hand and put every last bit of power she had into balling her fist up and landing a clean blow to his nose.

Victor’s head jolted backward, blood spraying from it and spattering her in the face. The moment his head snapped back up was the second she struck again, screaming, “I’ll kill you!”

Her breaths came in sharp gasps when Victor fell limp against the floor. She leaned forward and bracketed his head, almost unaware his eyes were closed. “I hate you! I hate you!” she sobbed, hoarse and raw. Tears splashed on Victor’s torn flannel shirt, tears of shame, tears of finality.

Jeannie planted her hands on his chest and pushed herself back upward, gagging on his booze-riddled scent.

She forced air into her lungs while she stared down at the man who’d ruined her life. The eerie silence of the room met her ears, stifling her urge to smash Victor’s face in. To kick him, tear at him, scar him the way he’d scarred her.

Wiping the back of her hand across her mouth, she lifted her leg to move off him and locate the gun. She was going to tie Victor up like a trussed turkey and duct tape him so securely he wouldn’t be able to move an inch. Then she was going to set everyone free, send them home, and call Fullbright. And her nightmare would be over.

Forever.

Jeannie fell backward on the floor as a wave of dizziness accosted her, ignoring the humming noises Charlene and Betzi were making. She held up a hand, still trying to catch her breath. “Hold on. I’ll untie you. Lemme just catch my breath.”

But instead of her words quieting them, their muted noises grew louder, more urgent.

Jeannie’s eyes popped open.

Okay, so using the word
forever
in terms of ridding herself of Victor just moments ago had been maybe a little rash.

And, Jesus, she was really crappy at picking up signals lately. Warehouses that belonged to vendors who didn’t exist, muffled screams of warning—all missed signs. Missed in a big way. A relearning of the girlfriend code was in serious order when this was all over.

Victor’s howl resonated in her ears, high and enraged as he slammed into her again, hurling her to her back just as she’d fought to sit upright.

Seconds before he took his first blow, before the huge ball of his flesh slammed into her face, she caught sight of the gun out of the corner of her eye and memorized its position.

She let his fist connect with her face. Heard the bones crunch in her cheek. Welcomed the ire it drew from deep within her soul. Jeannie fell limp for a moment, allowing Victor to think she’d passed out just as he’d played her.

Her hands flattened on the floor on either side of her to give her leverage, and she counted in her head, waiting for Victor to relax. Letting him think she was once more, his prey.

Three, two, one!

Rearing upward, Jeannie lifted her hips, crashing upward against Victor’s groin and catching him off guard. He lifted off her just enough for her to roll out from under him and tuck her legs to her chest, giving her the kind of force she needed to ram the soles of her feet into his gut.

She drove upward hard, sending him flying backward. Jeannie didn’t waste time in scrambling to her haunches, reassessing where she was in the room, and making a dive for the gun.

With an infuriated Victor hot on her ass.

*   *   *

S
LOAN
woke to the sound of muffled cries and Jeannie, flat on the floor, a man sprawled on her back, yanking at the back of her head, wrapping his fist into her hair and preparing to slam her face to the hard ground beneath him.

There was no time to think. There was no time to plan an attack.

His shift, in all its raging fury, took care of that for him.

Sloan keened a howl, low and feral from his throat, when his clothes split and tore at the seams. Buttons from his shirt flew in every direction, fabric arced in the air in swirling colors, his change was so fierce.

As his bones twisted and morphed, Jeannie clawed her way across the floor to something he couldn’t see for the red haze of his change. So intent was her focus, she didn’t even turn her head at his howling screech. Determination, palpable and agonizingly raw, filled his nose. He felt it. Tasted it. Cheered it.

The man on her back, greasy, bloodied, his stench of disease and despair, clawed with her, racing her to get to something . . . Sloan’s blood coursed through his veins, hot and pulsing, while thick patches of hair sprouted from his body. He fell forward, moving from his human position of erect to that of his animal half on all fours. Sloan sniffed again and finally pinpointed the scent.

Victor.
Ah. At last. That was who he had smelled when they’d first entered the warehouse. His scent had been all over Jeannie after the first attack. Anticipation, greedy and hungry, swelled in his chest.

For all he’d done to Jeannie, for all he’d stolen from her, Sloan would see to his death. And it would hurt. It would so bloody hurt.

A gun. Oh, Jesus Christ, there was a gun. Sloan spotted it moments before the last vestiges of the shift roared through his body.

“Shawty!” someone bellowed, as something dark and musty flew overhead.

Nina. He recognized the voice as Nina’s. Fuck. If she rushed into the middle of this and let her anger take control without realizing Victor had a gun, humans could die.

Sloan’s shift completed just as Victor reached for the gun while Jeannie tore at his fingers, trying to keep his hands from latching on to it, her nails leaving thick lines of blood in his ravaged skin.

Sloan lunged for the gun, launching himself in the air in a smooth leap, intent on keeping Jeannie within his sights.

As Victor’s fingers peeled Jeannie’s from his, he reached forward with his other hand and made contact with the gun. He reared upward and aimed at Charlene and Betzi, who slammed their eyes shut and cowered in the corner.

Helpless. They were helpless to even move to defend themselves, and it sent raw fury through his veins.

Jeannie’s scream, mingled with a hovering noise, was the last thing Sloan saw before he collided with something fuzzy and smelling of mildew.

Mat—it was Mat, aimed right for Victor’s head until he’d intercepted him.

Sloan crashed into the wall, breaking the cement blocks like they were made of cardboard. Chunks flew about the room, pelting the two women in the corner. He howled his outrage when he righted himself on all fours and saw that Victor had managed to get away from Jeannie, and he still held the gun.

Victor waved it wildly, his breath coming in harsh wheezes from his chest as he aimed it directly at Jeannie. “You fucking whore!” he raged, his teeth clenched and his legs wobbling as he stumbled backward.

And then Jeannie was using her hands to pull her bloody body across the floor, screaming, daring Victor in a white-hot rage that filled Sloan’s nostrils. Taunting him, daring him, while spreading her arms wide to block Victor’s view of Betzi and Charlene. “Do it, you fucking pig! Do it! Take me, you animal! Kill me! I dare you!” she ranted, driving forward, crawling, inching toward him as though her body were made of cement. She rose up on her knees, pitching to and fro, unsteady, enraged. “Do you hear me, you fucking spineless coward?
Do iiit
!” she bellowed, spit spraying from her mouth as she pounded her chest with her fists.

That very gesture on Jeannie’s part, the beating of her hands to her heaving chest, created a maelstrom of activity. Empty cardboard boxes rose up from the floor as if on two legs and leapt to the air, dancing in frenzied circles. Lavender smoke swirled in small tornadoes while wood pallets clacked together as though they were head butting. Paper soared like birds in a blue-hued sky, diving and twisting, attacking Victor’s head and making it difficult for him to see.

Nina took advantage of the storm Jeannie created and raced across the room toward Sloan, rearing up short when she caught his eyes. He felt the slight nudge of his brain where she rooted around to read his intent and then she screamed, “Midget! Duck!”

Sloan ran, directing his simmering hatred in one snarling leap at Victor, aiming for the gun.

Victor’s finger poised at the trigger, twitched erratically. Sloan heard the click of the first barrel loading with an eerie slow motion of sound and movement.

Victor hesitated as his wild eyes took in the scene before him, and his hesitation, the crazed uncertainty in his eyes, was exactly what Sloan needed.

“Invisible!” Mat screamed in a rumbling rage.

Sloan watched below him as Mat crashed into Jeannie, knocking her to the ground and covering her with his entire surface just as he arced over them and drove into Victor, pounding him into the ground.

He landed on Victor with a heavy grunt, driving him so firmly into the cement flooring Victor’s eyes rolled to the back of his head.

And now, he would die.

CHAPTER

15

“Invisible!” Mat honked again, coughing and wheezing.

Jeannie, battered and bloody, rolled her eyes to the left and let out a shaky sigh that hurt almost every part of her body. “Mat?” she croaked.

“Dollface?”

“Not invisible!” she and Nina yelped in unison.

Nina sat on her knees, clapping Mat’s threads. “But aces on that fucking takedown, dude. You rolled shawty like she was a Weeble. Knuck that shit up, brother.” She held out her fist to his fringe.

Mat’s fringe lifted, but just barely. He groaned. “Jesus, doll. I tried. My aim’s still shittier ’n a drunk palooka shootin’ fish in a barrel.”

Jeannie reached a hand upward, stroking his matted threads. The effort to move set off a string of deep aches. “But you saved me, Mat. If not for you and Nina, Victor would have shot me. What more can a girl ask for in a guardian?”

He purred, then shot out a cough that released more dust.

Her eyes turned to Nina.
“How?”

“Brokeback carpet,” she answered with a grin. “He sensed something was wrong just like he did the last time this fuck got his hands on you. So he used his crazy fucking Jeannie GPS and got a line on where you were. He even flew a little. Yeah, we coulda gotten here faster if we’d crawled, but he had your back.”

Jeannie’s eyes filled with tears of gratitude. “Oh, Mat. Thank you . . .”

“Ain’t nuthin’, dollface. Anything for you,” he crooned.

Sloan’s snarl, ragged and feral, made Jeannie give Mat an urgent pluck of her fingers to his fabric. “Sloan!” she yelled. During the chaos, she’d caught a brief glimpse of Sloan when he’d sailed across the room and slammed into the warehouse wall.

But it hadn’t registered. Hearing his puffing breath and low growl made it real. Really real. He was a werewolf. And she was a genie.

Oh, Jesus Christ.

Mat rolled away from her, and Nina helped her up, the tug she gave her so hard Jeannie had to fight back a sharp gasp of pain.

Nina eyeballed her while she helped her hobble to Sloan. “I say we let Sloan eat the motherfucker—but that’s just me. This is more about you. Either way, shawty, he’s gotta go. He’s seen. Heard. And he’s a wife-beating, kid-killing fuck. I’ll let you decide how it happens, if you want the choice on your shoulders. But go his ass will.”

Victor’s life in her hands.

How ironic.

Letting Nina help her, she caught her first real glimpse of Sloan in werewolf form, and it was many things. Awesome. Wondrous. Hairy. He was enormous and fierce.

She gripped Nina’s arm. “Ohhh . . .”

“Scary shit, right?” Nina quipped, tightening her grip around Jeannie’s waist. “No worries. He can understand everything you say. I love when he’s in were-form. Means he can’t fucking talk back.”

More humming noises rang in the air, echoing in the cavernous space.

Jeannie’s head whipped around. Charlene and Betzi were still tied up, and by now, probably so petrified after Sloan’s shift and her shit storm of debris they were going to need to borrow her therapist. “Nina, get Charlene and Betzi. I can do this.”

“A’ight, Slice, but you remember what I said.” Her warning was clear. Victor would be disposed of. Somehow. Some way.

Jeannie nodded, wincing at the pain she experienced in her ribs when she knelt beside Sloan.

He loomed over Victor, all four of his paws planted firmly on each side of him. His dark fur glistened under the one lightbulb, almost blue black. His teeth dripped saliva, letting it fall to Victor’s petrified face. He dropped his jaw wide open when she put a hand on his enormous head and thrust her fingers into his fur. “Sloan. Let him go. Please.”

Victor gulped, his eyes pleading with Jeannie. “What . . . What the fuck
is
it?” he squeaked as his chest rose up and down and sweat rolled off his forehead.

Sloan bared his teeth, starkly white and pointy, opening his mouth wide.

Jeannie tugged on his ear. “Sloan! Stop. Please,
please stop
.” She couldn’t stand any more blood, any more violence. “Please,” she whispered in his ear, stroking the velvet of it.

“Get it off me!” Victor screamed, thrashing his head from side to side, barely able to move. “Get it off!”

Like lightning striking, Jeannie knew exactly what to do with Victor. “Sloan,” she urged. “Let him go.
Please
. I know what to do.”

Easing back some, Sloan plunked back on his haunches, still pinning Victor’s torso to the floor. He cocked his head in question.

Charlene and Betzi ran to her side, stopping short at the sight of Sloan. Charlene sobbed, pressing a fist to her mouth while Betzi grabbed Jeannie’s hand and squeezed it. “You got some splainin’ to do. But until then—wow. Like wow-wow. You are one badass, boss.”

Jeannie’s smile was wan, but she turned to them and rose. She threw her arms around both their necks, cringing at the stabbing pain in her ribs. “I’m sorry. Oh, my God, I’m
so sorry
.” And then her fingers were wiping at the residual glue at the corners of their mouths from the duct tape and rubbing their hands to promote circulation. Touching them reassured her they were still alive, and she hadn’t caused two more senseless deaths. “Are you two okay?”

Betzi waved a hand in the air with careless abandon. “Like this was all that much different than a night out at The Dawg House for me?
Please.
Well, okay. There’re usually no guns and whatever he is”—she pointed to Sloan—“at The Dawg House, but still. Now our girl Charlene? Miss Unicorns and Twizzle Sticks? Probably not so much.”

Charlene nudged Betzi with her toe. “Oh, hush, mate,” she said, her spine straightening until she caught a glimpse of Sloan. Her voice trembled, but as was the Charlene way, she sought to reassure. “I’m fine. So fine. Fine, fine,
fine
!” she shouted, then winced at the echo of her voice. “Sorry,” she repeated more quietly. “I’m okay. I just want out of here.”

Jeannie grabbed Charlene’s hand and brought it to her face. Tears wet her cheeks again. “I’ll explain. I swear. Everything from start to finish. Go back to my place. Wait for me. I’ll be right behind you.”

Betzi shook her dark head in a firm no. “The hell. We’re not leaving you here alone with a dog, whatever the heck that thing was that flew through the air like some kind of shag rug UFO, and a guy who’s just this shy of the cray-cray and clearly wants you to die for reasons unknown. Um, no. You come with us.”

Nina tapped Jeannie on the shoulder. “Your friend with the wiseass mouth’s right. You go back to your place with them. Take Mat. I got this fuck covered.”

Jeannie emphatically shook her head, which made her nose throb. “No. No more violence. I’m not leaving him alone with you, MWA. Besides, I have an idea.” She leaned into Nina, tugging her down to her level so she could whisper her thoughts.

Nina grinned with so much malice, Jeannie hesitated, until she said, “You go with your little girlies here. You need bandages and shit. Promise I won’t hurt the fuck—
much
.”

Jeannie ran her hand over Sloan’s head once more, reveling in his soft fur and valiant chivalry on her behalf. “Please, Sloan. Let it go, okay?” she begged.

He nudged her with his muzzle, his enormous body still firmly planted on Victor’s. She took it as acknowledgment of her plea that he would respect her wishes.

“Take her.
Now,
” Nina demanded, hitching her jaw in the women’s direction.

Charlene and Betzi said no more, huddling Jeannie into their sheltering embraces and walking her out of the warehouse.

Victor’s screams pierced the warehouse walls, so pitiful and heart wrenching that she almost turned around. “Tulip! Don’t leave me here! Don’t leave meeee!”

But Betzi and Charlene tightened their grip. “No!” Charlene reprimanded, stopping the trio cold. Her eyes, always so soft and friendly, were full of fire when her gaze fell upon Jeannie. “You will not look back. I don’t know what just happened back there, mate. But I know whatever that man did to you was horrible. You will come with us and you will never,
ever
, look back.”

Victor’s last petrified scream was drowned out by Charlene’s hands over Jeannie’s ears.

Betzi dragged her out of the dark warehouse and into the blinding sunlight. Stopping, she looked down at Jeannie, and without saying a word, flung her arms around her. Sobs wracked her body—loud, gulping sobs in a release of pent-up terror.

Betzi was the tougher of the two. The least sympathetic. The quickest to anger. To see her sob so openly made Jeannie’s heart ache with sympathy.

Charlene, the tallest of the three, enveloped them both, resting her head atop Betzi’s and letting out a shuddering breath.

The sunlight shone down on them.

The cold air bit at their quaking huddle of bodies.

Explanations and apologies could be made later.

For now, there was this.

*   *   *

A
S
Charlene and Betzi had patched her up, putting salve on her wounds, icing her nose, and checking her ribs to be sure they weren’t broken, Jeannie heard how Victor had lured them to the warehouse. He’d simply called Cee-Gee Catering and booked an appointment, claiming the abandoned warehouse was his place of business where he planned to hold a party for his employees. Betzi and Charlene, being the employees they were, had gone to scout the location. He’d made Betzi call her at gunpoint, for which Jeannie would never forgive herself.

Jeannie, in turn, told them everything about the last few days. It was a lot to absorb. Not just her past and her relationship with Victor, and the lie after lie she’d told them concerning her former life, but what Sloan and Nina were, and how her crazy genie powers had continued to evolve since she’d first discovered them.

They’d nodded with wide eyes, but as Jeannie sent them home, she wondered if she wouldn’t lose them as employees for all she’d put them through. For all she’d hidden. While their words had been sympathetic and kind, their eyes still held residual fear.

Jeannie had to wonder if that was what the paranormal lifestyle was always going to be about. Lots and lots of fear followed by lots and lots of alone time while people avoided you and distanced themselves from your life.

Now, Jeannie and Nina sat together, side by side on her bed, looking down at Jeannie’s bottle.

“You know, the next time someone has the unmitigated gall to tell me they had a bad day, I’m going to slug them in the head.”

Nina snorted, her eyes distant. “You sure know how to bring the crazy.”

“What’s on your mind, MWA?” Jeannie patted Nina’s hand.

She popped her lips. “You and Sloan.”

“Look, it’s like I said. He had nothing to do with our . . . you know. I mean, he had something to do with it, but I was the one who forced him to have something to do with it. It’s all on me. Promise. And despite all the saving I’ve needed lately, I’m a big girl.”

“It’s not that.” She paused, rolling her tongue along the inside of her cheek as if she were deciding if she should make a confession of some sort. “Today, in the warehouse . . . I’m gonna tell you a little something about Sloan—and if you fucking share it with anyone, especially him, I’ll chew my way through your esophagus. Got it?”

“Esophagus.” She nodded. “Check.”

“It wasn’t so much that I didn’t or don’t like Sloan. He’s nice enough. He’s good to his nieces and nephews, he loves that little shit Hollis like nobody else—even me. He’s also pretty good to his pack. He’s loyal and all that bullshit. What I didn’t like were the chicks he dated and I was forced to hang out with at every fucking party we’ve ever had with Marty and Keegan. Every last one of them has so much air between their dumb-ass ears, they were like a vortex of asshat. Yeah, he’s banged a lot of broads, and I haven’t been shy about telling him he’s a dick for it. I understood for a while because I wasn’t exactly above a one-night stand from time to time before Greg. But I fucking grew up. Sloan’s been around a lot longer than me, and he’s still living like he’s twenty. But after today’s crazy, I see him a whole lot different.”

Jeannie’s hairs bristled on the back of her neck. She wanted to share Sloan’s revelation with Nina, but it wasn’t her story to share. “How so?”

“Because of you. There’s something about
you
that makes Sloan want to be fucking better. I felt it today in the warehouse. He didn’t just want to protect you and slaughter that son of a whore, Victor. He was
proud
of that crazy crap you whipped up with all that shit flying around. Pride in someone else when you’re as fucking selfish as Sloan is don’t happen often. That usually only happens when you find someone you really dig.”

“Am I hearing experience talking?”

She turned to Jeannie. “You know what? Yeah. Yeah, you are. I’m not ashamed to admit I wasn’t exactly all cuddles and shit before I met Greg.”

“And this post Greg is what you’d define as teddy-bear-ish?”

Nina chuckled, nudging Jeannie’s shoulder. “It’s fucking closer than I was before. When I met Greg, after we got past all the crazy bullshit of the vampire thing, I wanted to be a better person.”

Jeannie fought a visible shudder. “So you were even worse before your mate?”

“I know. You’re having trouble believing that shit.”

Jeannie laughed, holding her sides with a wince. “It’s a big pill to swallow.”

“Here’s my point. I actually like Sloan with you, dude.”

Old fears, and the habits they wrought, were hard to break. Suddenly, she was overwhelmed with the feelings Sloan was evoking in her. The utter agony she’d experienced when she was unsure at the warehouse what exactly would end Sloan’s life. Their intimacy, an intimacy she hadn’t ever experienced in her entire life as an adult.

Jeannie’s breath was ragged. “I’m afraid to like him, too much. I’m so afraid to like him and then get lost in him, like I did with Victor.” Last night and earlier today had begun to sink in, and her brave performance in front of Nina and Wanda when she’d declared her sexual independence was beginning to lose its luster.

Nina’s snort was sharp. “First, midget, who the fuck wants to like a guy like Sloan? Seriously. He’s a total player. Second, he’s a shit, but he’d never let you get as far as Victor let you go. Sloan’s an ass, but he’s not a controlling one. Anyway, he’s different with you. Really different, I’m not sayin’ me-and-him-are-gonna-hit-the-blood-bank-together-like-BFFs different, but I am saying I know when he tells you he gives a shit about you, he means it.”