Page 9 of Prince with a Chance of Darkness (Grimm Cove #7)

Chapter Nine

Mina

Mill Hollow, South Carolina, two weeks later…

The sound of jack hammering pulled me from a dead sleep. It took me a few seconds to realize the jack hammering was happening in my head, not in the outside world. I lay in the somewhat lumpy bed, wondering what time it was.

Was Helen back from her hunt for that badass demon they were so hell-bent on finding? I turned to check the side table, only to find myself staring directly at a wall. A wall that hadn’t been next to my bed at the inn when I’d gone to sleep. A wall that was not only newly placed, but that had wallpaper that walked straight out of the 70s.

The wallpaper was striped with pink, orange, and brown. It looked like Neapolitan ice cream vomited everywhere. With a groan, I turned onto my back only to be greeted by a yellowed popcorn ceiling, complete with a water stain that, if I squinted, looked a little like Jesus. “What the…?”

The whisper that came from me echoed throughout my head, making it feel as if I’d shouted with a megaphone. What in the hell had Willa and I done last night?

I thought harder on it all. I’d pretty much forced her to go demon hunting in the forest with me. That much I could remember. The map I’d swiped from Aunt Helen had lined up with one in Willa’s never-leave-home-without-it annotated copy of Dracula .

I remembered traipsing all over the forest, searching each and every spot that had been marked on the map.

Willa had freaked out about spiders. I remembered that too.

Rain.

Thunder.

Lightning.

It had stormed. Yes. I remembered that too.

My mind raced with flashes of a huge black wolf. When I saw it vanish before my very eyes, I gasped and sat up straight in the bed. We’d stumbled across a wolf-shifter in the forest? Yes. I remembered that now too.

It had started to storm, and we’d run for cover and to put distance between the huge wolf and ourselves.

The cave.

We’d gone into a dark cave, seeking shelter from the storm. I’d suggested burning pages from Willa’s beloved book to warm us, and then there had been laughter.

Dark.

Twisted.

Wrong.

And then… Helen!

Panic rushed through me. I twisted on the bed and found the room had two queen beds. On the other bed was Willa. I exhaled a sigh of relief when I saw she was alive and well.

There was a giant bouquet of white roses, at least two or three dozen, on the table between our beds. They hardly seemed nefarious and did help to calm me a bit more.

Maybe I was remembering the events in the forest and the cave all wrong. Maybe I’d dreamed it all. Had it simply been a nightmare?

Then where are we now? This isn’t the inn.

Crap.

A sinking feeling came over me. “Willa?”

She didn’t budge.

I threw the covers back and froze. What was I wearing? The black satin pajama set I was in wasn’t mine, yet it fit like it had been bought or even made for me. Willa was in a white pair of the same pajamas. We were more of the T-shirts and sweatpants for sleepwear kind of girls. Not fancy pajama sets.

“If I am dreaming, this is the weirdest dream ever,” I mumbled as I stood, the room’s shag carpet tickling the undersides of my feet. I dove onto my sister’s bed, making her bounce.

Her eyes snapped open, and she grabbed hold of my arm with a grip that was downright painful.

“Ouch!”

She eased her hold, confusion coating her gaze. “Mina? What time is it?”

There was an alarm clock on the table between the beds, but it was blinking. “I’m not sure. Daytime. There is some light coming through the curtains.”

“Curtains? Our rooms have shutters. Not curtains,” she said, sitting up slowly. Her eyes widened as she glanced around the room. “Where are we and why does it look like some demented candy wonderland?”

I didn’t respond. I couldn’t. Her hair, which had always been exactly like mine since birth now had a long forelock of white that hadn’t been there before. I reached up and touched it, smoothing it with my hand, sure I was seeing things. Willa would never dye her hair. She wasn’t that cool.

She swatted my hand away from her face. “Why are you acting so weird?”

“Your hair.”

“What about it? Are you going to mock my bedhead?” she asked with a groan. “I’ll have you know, you’re not looking so great right this second either. What are you wearing? When did you get silk pajamas?”

I nodded to her. “Probably the same time you got them.”

“Huh?” she looked down at herself. “Am I high?”

“If you are, I am too,” I added.

She stiffened. “Where are we?”

I twisted around on the bed and opened the drawer of the bedside table. In it was a small notepad with a motel name and address on it. “Uh, we’re in Mill Hollow, South Carolina.”

Her eyes widened as she snatched the pad from my hand like I’d suddenly forgotten how to read and was wrong. “Shut up!”

I remained silent as my sister scrambled out of the bed and ran to the door of the room. She opened it, stepped outside and was gone for about a minute before she came back, walking in a daze.

“I take it from the zombie-march you’re doing that we are actually at the—” I lifted the notepad again to check it. “Rider’s Rest Motel. Weird name for a motel. Especially one as pink as this. What kind of horse are they referring to? My Little Ponies?”

“We’re at the Rider’s Rest Motel.” Willa shuffled her feet until she was across the room to me once again. She sat on the end of the bed. “How did we get from Romania to here?”

My hand went to my upper chest. I slid my fingers partially under the V-neck of my pajama shirt and tensed when I felt puckered skin where it had once been smooth. I unbuttoned my shirt enough to look down at the area in question. There was a scar there—right above where my heart was. “Willa?”

Her attention came to me. When her gaze reached the scar on my chest, she cupped her mouth. “Oh, God!”

“What?” I asked faintly, unsure I really wanted to know.

Flashes of being in the cave came back to me. Helen and Lester—her creepster of a boyfriend—had been there. Why had they been there?

“She stabbed you,” Willa said, her hand still partially over her mouth.

I started to ask who she was talking about but stopped. I felt it then, the pain of when our aunt had stabbed me with a dagger that had our family crest carved into the blade. Helen had been rambling about an intervention. Some scheme to free a badass demon to help return things to the way they used to be—before supernatural and slayers broke bread together.

I huffed, my spine stiffening. “Ohmygod, that bitch totally stabbed me!”

Willa moved off the bed with lightning speed and slammed the motel room door shut. She locked it and slid the small chain into place.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

She glanced over her shoulder at me. “What if Helen is here? What if her and Lester and his crew of creeps are out there?”

“Then I’m not sure that flimsy chain on the door is going to do much to stop them,” I returned.

She offered an unamused look. “Be serious, Mina.”

“Dude, I am. That chain wouldn’t stop a toddler having a tantrum. It’s not doing a damn thing to stop Helen,” I replied.

“Could you try to be serious?” she asked, returning to the bed. “You were stabbed in the chest by our psycho aunt.”

I rubbed the scar again and cocked my head to the side. “Willa, how do you explain the fact I’m here—alive?”

She sat next to me and her eyes moistened instantly. She brought her fingers to my scar and touched it before leaning, putting her forehead to mine. “Is it wrong that I don’t care. I’m just happy you are alive.”

I closed my eyes a second and images flashed through my head from the cave. There was a rat like demon guy and zombie like things.

No. Not zombies.

Ghouls.

And there was a huge black wolf. The same wolf from the forest. I gasped as he morphed from a wolf into a tall, hot naked guy.

“What is it?” asked Willa.

I opened my eyes to find her staring at me. “Pretty sure we got attacked by some rat-demon-dude and there were ghouls and a naked wolf-shifter guy there.”

She opened her mouth but closed it fast. She jerked back. “The Weird Sisters!”

“The who and the what?” I questioned, my attention on her newly acquired white chunk of hair. I touched my hair in the same spot and drew the long strands forward, in front of my face to examine them.

“What in the hell are you doing?”

“Seeing if I have a white streak in my hair too. Like you,” I stated.

“Like me?” she asked before rushing across the room to the bathroom. She entered and less than a second later, she screeched. “Ohmygod! I have a white streak in my hair!”

“I’m aware,” I said.

She rushed out of the bathroom holding the section of hair like I needed the extra visual. “White hair!”

I tugged my top open. “Dagger scar. We both got issues, babes. Try to reel in the freaking out.”

“I think this warrants a freak out, Mina!”

I shrugged. “Fine. Freak out.”

She grunted. “Well now it seems ridiculous since you called it out like that.”

I glanced toward the flowers and reached out, pulling the card from them.

“Who are they from?” she asked, approaching.

“It’s not signed,” I said before reading out loud. “Do not go home. It is not safe. Your aunt is no longer a threat but she made more than her fair share of enemies. It would be best if the two of you attended college as planned and keep a low profile.”

Willa snatched the card from my hand and read it out loud too.

“You do know I can read, right?” I asked.

She lowered the card. “Sorry. I’m struggling to process all of this.”

“Same.”

She sat next to me again. “What now?”

I shook my head. “No clue. Who do you think wrote this and how do you think we got all the way here from Romania?”

“And how are you alive,” she said before touching her hair again. “And how did I get this?”

We had far more questions than we had answers.

Willa reached past me so fast she nearly knocked me over.

“Hey!”

“Sorry! Look,” she said, handing me a folded piece of fancy paper with my name written on it. She held one with her name on it.

I took it and opened it. The handwriting matched the card. It was small and perfect cursive like it was supposed to be—not the bastardized version most people I knew did. As I read my letter, I snorted. “This has to be a joke.”

Willa finished reading hers and handed it to me.

I gave her mine and began reading hers over. “We need to lock you up once a month around the full moon? What kind of sick joke is this?”

She arched a brow. “Increased aggression and predatory instincts that might kick in? So, you before your period?”

“Bite me,” I snapped.

She let out a half-laugh and handed my letter back to me.

As I took it, flashes from Romania and the cave returned. I saw myself squaring off against Helen—fighting with her, getting stabbed and then being thrust out of the cave, at a beautiful, yet eerie looking woman with dark hair. A woman who didn’t seem to cast a shadow and seemed to float. She caught me and…

I shot up and off the bed, panic welling in me as I clutched my letter tight, refusing to believe what my mind had shown me.

“Mina?”

“A vampire forced their blood down my throat,” I said.

“What? No.” She shook her head. “That’s how they make a vampire.”

My hand went to the scar on my chest. My panic reached epic levels and nervous energy left me rushing toward the door, needing air.

In an instant, everything changed. I was no longer me. I was nothingness. Dark mist. I was aware of what was happening but was powerless to stop it. As quickly as it started, it stopped and I was back to myself. Only I was across the room near the door.

I twisted around fast to be sure Willa saw it happen and I wasn’t nuts.

She was sitting on the end of the bed with her jaw hanging open. After about thirty seconds, she gulped. “Holy shit.”

Holy shit was right!

She gulped, clutching the letter tight. “We should probably lock me up once a month around the full moon like the letter suggests.”