The Deadwolves' Prisoner Read online

  Table of Contents

  Copyright

  The Deadwolves' Prisoner

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

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  The Deadwolves' Prisoner

  By: Hollie Hutchins

  Chapter 1

  Life didn’t pick favourites.

  At no point did some mysterious figure out in the ether point to someone and say, “yeah, that one. I like that one.” And then point to someone else and say, “you know what? Let’s make that guy’s life hell.” In a sense, life was reasonably fair. Not everyone got the same starting point, but in the sense that nobody was reselected to have bad stuff happen to them, it all sort of levelled out.

  Deep down, Mila Autumn knew that. She was smart. She knew that life simply was capable of being a jerk to her and hand-selecting annoying stuff to happen to her. Sometimes she had to remind herself of the positives. She was determined. She was good looking. And, most importantly, she was smart. By and large, stuff wasn’t headed in the wrong direction for her.

  And yet…she couldn’t help but feel that life was against her when she watched the Ghoul get absolutely wasted.

  Working at the Cheeky Sprite had its advantages. It paid well, the dental insurance was top notch, and it had flexible schedules for Mila, so she could work and go to college at the same time. On the other hand, the paranormal bar had a whole lot of bad stuff to counterbalance it. The server pay was high. Why? Because it was sometimes dangerous place that most people wouldn’t get near. A couple weeks ago, a Glorp-Glorp had gotten drunk and gotten into a bar fight, during which the server on hand had quite literally gotten sucked into and eaten. Did the Glorp-Glorp get his Visa revoked and returned to the paranormal world so it wouldn’t happen again? Yes. Was the server any less dead? No.

  Mila’s lip curled up in mild disgust and fascination at the Ghoul’s extravagant performance. Ghouls were, by and large, troublemakers. They were cursed spirits who died in a previous life and were held alive for whatever reason, stuck between life and death in a horrible spell that took literally eons to wear off. For dead people existing in a sort of Schrodinger’s Cat sort of way, they could really get down and hit the booze. And when they started…boy oh boy, they didn’t stop. Generally, they stayed away from the Cheeky Sprite because it was kind of nice for a bar. Not a dive bar, but somewhere that you might be proud to know. At least, that’s what Mila had to tell herself for her own sanity.

  This particular Ghoul had already downed far too much. If Mila was in charge, she would have a drink limit to avoid exactly what was happening then: a floundering Ghoul, full of liquor and drugs, flopping around like a beached marlin and wailing about some woman that had broken his heart in 1920 before he’d died. Whenever Ghouls had too much to drink, they quite literally fell apart. They were already shaky in terms of physical life, and whenever inebriation kicked in, whatever was keeping them together gave up and they’d phase through furniture and floors. The Cheeky Sprite had a cellar and every few weeks, a Ghoul would get so out of it that he’d drift through the floor and settle in the basement for the unlucky cleaning crew to find. It was a pain in the ass, and Mila had an exam the next morning in Accounting. She was trying to mentally rehearse all the stuff she’d learned while this idiot caused more and more of a scene.

  “Hey.” Mila stayed on her side of the counter. She’d learned to not directly confront any of the customers. As a half-elf, she was a species stronger, faster, and generally smarter than the average human. Compared to a Ghoul, she might as well have been a puppy. He could try to possess her or just go intangible, neither one of which sounded too appealing. Mila’s bright purple eyes darted down at the gun on the underside of the counter, designed for shocking troublemaking patients into leaving. She didn’t want to, but if it came down to that, the Ghoul didn’t have any sensation left so it would come off as mildly unpleasant. “Hey, buddy.”

  “Ellie!” The Ghoul wriggled in his seat miserably. He tried to grab a drink, but Mila snatched it away like a mom taking a toy away from a kid. He kept grabbing for it, unaware that she’d taken it away. “Sweet Ellie. I should’ve…” He held back metaphysical tears. “I should’ve…”

  Mila felt the eyes of the rest of the bar on her, even through the half-intangible form of the Ghoul. She forced a tight-lipped smile. Mila was not the person that was supposed to deal with this crap. There were supposed to be other people there to handle this kind of thing, and yet they’d apparently called in sick. At this point, she had two options: try to get him to leave or try to calm him. Neither option looked terribly likely, but she swung for the fences and tried to comfort him.

  “There was nothing you could’ve done.” She tried to avoid sounding like she was reciting a script. The protocol with dealing with difficult Ghouls was always the same. “Whenever the curse wears off, you’ll be back with her.”

  The Ghoul melted through the bar stool and settled in a pile of smoke on the floor like depressed Play-Do, something that fascinated Mila when she’d first started and yet did nothing for her now. “I want another drink.” The voice came from somewhere in the fog. “She was the handsomest Dame I ever saw.”

  “You’ve had plenty already.” Mila ran a hand along her face. Why did this always seem to happen during her shift? Adam was there earlier, and what did he have? Nothing! Okay, comforting him had obviously failed. He’d rather bemoan the world than feel better. “Come on, man, get up.”

  “Why? Nothing matters!” He flopped around, solidifying enough to turn onto his face. Part of him slipped onto a nearby Changling’s shoe, who pulled it away and huffed something about this being ridiculous before switching seats.

  Mila closed her eyes. “Because…” She searched for the words. Because I’m going to electrocute you with a stun gun if you keep it up, was probably not the right way to handle the situation, even though there was nothing she’d like more than to get him out of the bar. People didn’t go to that bar to watch someone lose it. They went to get tipsy or high on something. Getting this drunk was like showing up to the Opera in a bikini. Would someone stop you? No, probably not, but you’d ruin the whole atmosphere. This Ghoul was doing the same thing here. She only had a little while until it turned from a funny spectacle to something they’d remember negatively about the Cheeky Sprite. In the dark room, shadowy figures of varying size and makeup watched Mila try to get the Ghoul together. She leaned over the counter and eyed the puddle. “Because otherwise I’m going to have to get you out, and you don’t want that, do you?”

  No response from the smoke. Mila swore under her breath. She hadn’t had much of an official job training. She’d basically been tossed out there and been like “don’t let anyone die.” She’d had to come up with her own rules on how to handle it, and it had made her tough. With a frustrated growl, she grabbed the industrial broom and a dustpan and went around the other side of the bar to find the Ghoul still there. The first time she’d had to do this, she’d freaked. Now, it was as simple as clocking out when her shift was over.

  “Last chance.” As, she watched the squirming, half-transparent Ghoul in a puddle, she grimaced. No matter how many times she saw it, watching someone lose control was uncomfortable. “
Don’t make me do this.”

  The smoke didn’t move. “Life is suffering.”

  A few years ago, Mila would’ve crouched and told him that it was all going to be okay. She would’ve comforted him and let him have a free drink and promise him that he’d find a female Ghoul that loved him for who he was. She would’ve done lots of stuff. Unfortunately, that naïve and optimistic part of her had died a long time ago. All she felt now was disappointment for him as she swept the fog into the bin and carried him to the door. Ghouls were perfectly capable of controlling their form, but this one was so wasted that he wasn’t trying. Bits and pieces of the fog slipped off the bin and onto the floor, which Mila kept snatching and putting back in.

  When she almost got to the door, he fully jumped out of the bin and spilled across the hardwood floor before spreading out across the feet of various customers.

  “Dude!” Mila caught a piece of him. “Get a hold of yourself!”

  “Ellie!”

  “Don’t make me get the Shop-Vac out!” She caught another piece of him. Ghouls were the most annoying customers to ask to leave because, if they didn’t want to go, it was almost impossible to force them. They’d just keep splitting up, which was the precise reason they had a Shop-Vac: to collect them in times like this.

  Mila crouched and kept grabbing at the surprisingly firm fog, collecting the Ghoul back into a pile. She glanced back and caught three-quarters of the bar staring at her butt, which was squeezed into the skimpy shorts that she was required to wear for work. She preferred to think of them looking at the Ace of Spades tattoo on her thigh and not about what their hungry gazes indicated. A cute girl in a bar worked wonders for tips, but it had some…negative side effects.

  Mila was about to whip out the vacuum and end this ridiculousness when the Ghoul finally coagulated and slid up the stairs towards the door.

  “You’ll find someone!” Mila called after him as he went under the door and vanished.

  Mila turned to look at the rest of the room to find the patrons were paying more attention to her than the hired comedian or the shitty karaoke singer trying to nail “Africa” by Toto in the corner. She flashed a smile like all of it had been planned and stiffly returned to her post.

  The rest of her early morning shift went decently. Most people stumbled out after a few minutes. Mila stared mutely at the glowing lights in the corners of the bar and watched the customers interact. There were the hotshot businessmen who had all the girls around them in most of the booths, mostly shady types that preferred to stay out of the public eye. The partiers stayed in the center of the dance floor, dancing much better in their heads than in reality. By this time of the morning, it had mostly died down. The people who were there now were generally serious drunks or questionable business dealers. A few people talked in quiet, tired voices as they realized they’d drunk too much and would regret it in the morning. Finally, it was around the time for Mila to concentrate more on cleaning than tending to the rest of the bar. Mila focused on the clock and let herself zone out. Four hours left. Three. Two. One.

  Accounting. Somewhere around her junior year in college, it had made absolute perfect sense to get an 8:00 a.m. accounting class. Why? Mila had no idea. Maybe at the time her schedule was different, but a shift in her working times made her life a living hell. Here it was, 2:30 in the morning. She’d get off at three, rush home and try to catch some winks of sleep before getting up and commuting to class in a half-comatose haze. She’d asked her boss to change her schedule tons of times, but it never got anywhere.

  With about thirty minutes before her co-worker was supposed to show up and take her spot, they arrived.

  The door swung open and Mila barely spared a glance before she saw who she was looking at: two tall, powerful men that were built like superheroes—brawny, lean, and inherently regal, with a lifetime of pain in their hard eyes that conveyed age beyond their appearance. Werewolves, no doubt. Their yellow eyes and impressive physique were a dead giveaway. Physically, if Mila didn’t know they were werewolves, she’d guess them to be in the twenty-five to thirty-year-old range, when in reality it’d be surprising if they were younger than seventy. Tons of them came in all the time, so Mila wasn’t stunned or impressed until she recognized one of them.

  Fang.

  Fang, the rather undisputed kingpin of the Werewolf Underworld in Manhattan. There was a guy that liked to come in all the time and talk to her at the bar. It made him feel better, so she listened, and the guy absolutely loved werewolves. He thought they were the most fascinating creatures on the planet. At this point, Mila could write a full textbook on the intricacies of the werewolf culture, complete with citations and anecdotes off the top of her head.

  Mila watched the two make their way over to a secluded booth. Physically, both were similarly made up. As far as persona went, Fang stood out like a sore thumb. He seemed…regal, somehow. Mila couldn’t put her finger on it even if she’d cared, but the handsome kingpin emanated control. He was the leader here. If something went wrong, people were supposed to go to him and he’d protect them. Some of the other businessmen who recognized him wilted away.

  Mila watched for longer than she should have. This was the Cheeky Sprite. Powerful individuals frequented it all the time, and most of them were rather intimidating individuals. Mila wasn’t really the kind to be scared anymore. Obviously, if something twice her size started threatening her, yeah, she might start worrying. But as far as werewolves, they generally didn’t warrant the bad reputation that their species got. For every one of them in the drug business like Fang, there was one who was just trying to make a nice family life and struggled with math. In many ways, they were just like humans. Phenotypically, no. Your average human wasn’t near as strong and couldn’t phase into a beast at will.

  Something became obvious after a while of looking at their mannerisms: she was looking at two different clans. To put it simply, the werewolf community was based heavily in clans, where members were a part of one clan or another and presided over by a single Khan for each group. It was like a bunch of little nations, and they were fiercely independent even over stupid stuff. There’d been a veritable bloodbath over which clan got to send their children to the better private school. It didn’t take a genius to piece together that differing clans hated each other after eons of fighting. She recognized Fang because he tended to show himself more than most werewolf clan leaders. He was also quite distinctive in his trademark custom Italian suit that fit his brawny body perfectly, along with a tattoo of the Dark Wolves on the top of his hand. In many ways, he was a new generation of Khan. Instead of operating in the dark, he liked to show himself out and about.

  The other guy was probably a high-level member of a differing clan, but Mila couldn’t see his tat because of the way he was positioned. Mila suspected that if she walked up and got near them, she’d feel the heat coming off their conversation. She couldn’t hear a word of whatever they were saying, but she didn’t need to in order to know an intense debate was going down.

  Something compelled Mila to keep studying Fang. She couldn’t put her finger on it, but even as she served other customers, he drew her attention and kept it. She barely noticed when her co-worker, Jackson, slid behind the counter beside her.

  “Is that Fang?” Jackson’s voice made her jump and spill a drink she was working on.

  “Jeezus, man!” Mila hadn’t expected him to show up ten minutes early, and somehow he’d snuck around without her spotting him. She put the drink down and wiped the spill up. She eyed her heavily tattooed, hipster co-worker with amusement as she realized that he now had to be the one to break the intense debate over there by serving the two werewolves. “Yeah, it is.”

  Jackson was a Demonspawn, which meant several things: one, he had a tail and tiny horns, and two, it meant he couldn’t pull off the hipster look because it was nothing short of absurd to look at. Glasses and a beard didn’t fit with the overall demon vibe going on. Mila had never found the courag
e to tell him that he wasn’t doing himself a favour by picking that style. Luckily for her, her shift was up. Whenever Jackson showed up, she was out the door.

  As she gathered her stuff, she smirked at Jackson. “And guess what!”

  “What?” Jackson checked in and checked his camera to flash a smile with a hungry, seductive look.

  Mila groaned internally. Jackson, the woman slayer. She never got the appeal. Was he handsome? Yeah, but like a model. She got the impression that a well-trained squirrel could beat him in hand to hand combat, which wasn’t necessarily a bad thing…but with Jackson, it was an immediate turnoff. She’d heard all the sneaky tactics he liked to use: cool pictures of places he’d never been, showing pictures of dogs he didn’t own, blah blah blah. He liked to play the “tough and sweet” role and he was damn good at it. Mila had been sold and even considered dating him until one time she saw him panic and shriek when a cricket landed on his shoulder. For reasons she couldn’t explain, the general female population went for him. Mila wanted a man who could protect her when stuff got out of hand, and yet someone who she could cuddle with during a dark and stormy night. “The wolves haven’t been served.”

  Jackson’s smile vanished. “What?”

  She grinned and pointed finger guns at him. “Have fun with that, buddy o’pal.”

  Before he could complain, Mila was out the door with a victorious wave. To be fair, Jackson had started it. He had a bad habit of leaving the tough stuff for Mila to deal with. If, for instance, he’d been working and the Ghoul had fallen apart, he would probably wait until Mila arrived for her to have to fix. It was awful generous of him and now he was getting payback for all the times he’d tried it on her. Mila didn’t envy him. By the time she’d bolted, it looked like the Khan’s negotiation was crumbling. As she’d heard entirely too many times by the man that liked randomly sprouting knowledge about the clans, whenever that happened, someone often ended up dead. Werewolves didn’t agree to disagree.