Beautiful Creatures Series

Days passed slowly as Melissa waited for Aster’s reply. She did not want to go after Mackenzie and Gordon with Aster in Feral. She did not want her daughter harmed in the crossfire. She waited three days for Aster to leave town and join her in LA. Melissa was not in LA, but no one knew that. By the time Aster got to Melissa’s place in California, the pack would be dead, and Malissa could fly back to LA and deal with Aster.

She had been staying in a hotel in Aspen with her new accomplices, but she had checked in under an alias so Gordon would not know she was back. She had convinced Donald to wait a few days, but he was getting anxious to carry out their plan. They had located an abandoned farmhouse in the country where they were going to take Mackenzie and torture her to death. Melissa wanted to be there to watch the torture.

After day three, it was clear Aster was not going to leave Feral. She had chosen sides, and that pissed Melissa off. Her daughter, her own flesh and blood, had betrayed her. Fine, Aster wanted to side with Gordon, then she could die with the others. It was time to put their plans into action. They would wait until the middle of the workday. Most of the pack would be spread out. She could get in and out of Feral unseen.

Melissa looked down at the bullet in her hand. It had taken time to make up enough special bullets to deal with the pack. She now had a number of bullets with Wolfsbane hollow tips. Lycanthropes were very hard to kill. While a regular bullet, if well placed, could kill a Lycanthrope, there was still a good chance that the one-shot would just dig the bullet out and regenerate. However, with the wolfsbane, they could dig the bullet out, but the wolfsbane would be released into the bloodstream upon impact, and they could not dig that out.

Wolfsbane was like poison to Lycanthropes. It on its own could not kill a Lycanthrope, but it made them weak, and as long as it was in the bloodstream, a Lycanthrope could not regenerate. If wounded with Wolfsbane in their system, the Lycanthrope was almost guaranteed to die from their wounds. It took days for a Lycanthrope to metabolize wolfsbane out of its system. By that time said Lycanthrope was 99% certain to die.

A few well-placed bullets and Gordon would not get up. This time he was not going to survive.

As for the pack, Melissa had Donald and his men backing her. Only Donald and his close bodyguards knew what she was. Once his men had killed off the pack for her, Melissa would turn on her co-conspirators and kill them herself. Covering her tracks and insuring her secrets. By the end of today, Colorado would be flooded with blood, and Melissa would be in the wind once more. Perhaps she would move to Paris. She had always wanted to see the Eiffel Tower.

Deciding to it was time to put her plan into action, she took out a burner phone and paid a prostitute to call Mackenzie’s cell phone, pretending to be a bride who had gotten her number from a friend of hers who was just dying to have Mackenzie plan her dream wedding. The prostitute set up an appointment to meet at a house. The neighbourhood was in a new development that was closed for the winter. The built homes were unoccupied, and the rest of the sites were tented to protect them from the harsh winter snow.

By the time Mackenzie realized it was a trap, it would already be too late.

***

“I’ll go with you,” Gordon said, putting away his tools. He did not have another appointment for a few hours, and he could close the shop for a short time.

“I don’t need you to go with me to work,” she said, leaning on the counter. “I love you, but if I show up with you on my heels, you will make the couple uncomfortable.”

“Why?”

“Do you ever look at yourself? I personally love your bad boy look, but this business is all about impressions, and the one you make is intimidating.”

“Intimidating?”

“You look like an ex-convict,” she said, wincing. “I’m sorry, I don’t know how else to explain that to you. In tattooing, that gruffness is good, but not in my business. People expect someone classy and sophisticated. I’ll only be gone a few hours.”

“But…”

“Gordon, I know you mean well, but you can’t be with me every hour of every day for the rest of our lives. At some point, you have to let me venture out alone.”

“I don’t feel comfortable….”

Mackenzie said with finality. “I’m

“You promise?”

“I promise.”

“Just be careful… please.”

Gordon frowned. He

He was conflicted.

went home, he contemplated his options. If he was careful, he could follow her, and she would never know

Fuck it.

Gordon had made

was following

***

get back to work. Sure, spending her days with Gordon was great, and she loved being with him, but she was starting to feel like a prisoner. She wanted to get out and resume her own life.

the GPS in her car, she pulled into a new residential development. There were only a few houses built, a few tented frames, and many empty lots with nothing but clay. It did not look like this place had anyone

one on the paper lying on the seat next to her. Reaching the house, she walked up to the icy window and framing her eyes with her hands. As she leaned into the glass, she looked inside. The house was empty — void of any furniture. Mackenzie was getting a very bad feeling. Now she wished she had

leave and stopped short when she came face to face with Melissa. Melissa offered Mackenzie a cruel grin, then she jammed a taser against

her, and Mackenzie collapsed on the ground. She lay on her side, twitching

drift, and she turned quickly, a gun in her hand. She turned it on Gordon and shot him twice in the chest. It stopped Gordon cold in his tracks. He looked down at the bullet holes in his chest and then collapsed to his knees. He sat there on his knees, struggling to get back up

now, lying on the ground. “Now you are going to bleed out. Just know I’m going to take everything you love. I’m going to Kill Mackenzie and the baby. I’m going to kill our traitorous daughter, and I’m going to massacre the whole pack. By the end of the day, everything you spent your life building will be nothing more than flames and ash,” she then placed her foot on Gordon’s shoulder and pushed him over onto his back. “Now, have the decency to

guns in their hands. They all stood over Mackenzie. She recognized two of them right off. One was the man she had seen on the news as Donald Falcone, the mob boss who had been looking for her for the last ten years. Whereas the other was a face that to this day haunted her dreams: his son and

to you,” he snarled. “My, how you have changed. So pretty. Time to put

my car,” ordered Donald. “Let’s get out of here before someone stumbles across us, and we end

call out for help as Donald slammed the truck closed on her. Not long after, the car launched forward, and Mackenzie began to cry.

regained minimal movement. She had developed some cramping in her belly, which concerned her. She was losing the baby. She had to get away. She needed

painfully dragged herself out of the trunk. As soon as her feet hit the grown, she tried to run. She got thirty feet when a wave of pain washed over her. She clutched at her belly and dropped to her knees in too much pain to stand. Donald’s goons were on Mackenzie in a flash, dragging her into a farmhouse. They were in the middle of nowhere. No one

took her inside the house and forced Mackenzie onto a wooden chair, then proceed to tie her up. One man stepped back and looked down at his hands. “Gross, she’s already bleeding,” he complained. Mackenzie looked down to see blood trickling down

***

his blood was on fire. He could not move. He watched as Melissa and the men she was with carried Mackenzie off and threw her into the trunk of a car that had just pulled up. Gordon had tried to get up, but his body would not obey him. He

to

could not let them kill her.