Page 9 of Watch Me Burn (Sanctuary #1)

CHAPTER 8

DYEA

T he answer is with a bit of magic.

I hate that that’s how I have to explain it. After we were all set, Linda pointed us in the direction of the woods. Since the sanctuary knew we were coming, all we had to do was start walking and, if we were granted sanctuary by the land itself, we would find it.

When ten minutes go by and neither me or Elise have any clue what we’re doing, I’m just about ready to suggest heading back to the airport when, suddenly, I see a structure in the distance. Hoping that it’s not one of the buildings abandoned more than a century ago when the boomtown went bust, I point it out to Elise and we head there together.

One structure becomes two, and over the crunching of our shoes on the old layer of icy snow, I begin to hear sounds. Talking. Laughter. Sounds of a living community, and I really, really hope that they are alive and that we haven’t stumbled upon an actual ghost town.

We didn’t. As we walk past the back of two obviously lived-in homes—each a narrow, two-story cottage with large windows and wooden porch steps—we emerge into a small village that’s about the length of five city blocks at most, with one large building at each end, and a scattering of homes creating an elongated oval inside of the trees.

I get the feeling that the magic brought us right where we needed to go, just like Linda said, because as soon as we appear, we catch the attention of two very different men who give the appearance that they’d been waiting for us.

One of them waves. He’s the smaller of the two, with a stout body, a beaming smile on his face, and a head of thick black hair that has a white stripe running right down the center of it.

Together, we head over to him—only to pause when the most rank stench seems to slam right into our nostrils.

It’s bad. Like, really bad. A combination of burnt garlic, rotten eggs, and death with the strangest orange overtones to make it really godawful.

It takes everything in me not to clamp my hand over my nose, and the only reason I don’t do that is because it hits me a second later that the scene is coming from the smiling man with the black-and-white hair.

He hustles over to us. “Hi, there. I’m Mayor Lou. Mayor because I’m the mayor of the village. Lou because that’s my name. Mayor Lou. Nice to meet you.”

I tap my chest, trying not to make a face, but my god , does the poor man stink. “Bridget.”

Elise gives him a small smile. “And I’m Elise.”

“Yes, we were expecting you. Welcome! And, please, don’t mind the smell. If it gets too overpowering, I can replace this,” he chirps, lifting up the piece of orange cardboard hanging around his neck.

Holy crap. Is that a car air freshener?

It is. It totally is. I wasn’t really paying attention to it since the eye-watering stench caught my attention first, but now that I’m looking at it, I can see the words ‘mandarin orange’ in white block print in the center of the orange rectangle hanging over his jacket. A piece of elastic string is looped through the hole punched near the top, making it big enough to fit over his head.

“What smell?” asks Elise. The picture of diplomacy, the sweet vampire pretends she doesn’t notice even as her nose wrinkles adorably.

Me? I do everything I can not to gag. I don’t want to be rude, and I’m hoping that I’ll get used to it in time if I’m sticking around Dyea, so I just give him a tight-lipped smile and nod while breathing shallowly through my nose.

He chuckles warmly. “Aren’t you two very kind. It’s alright. I know how strong it can be for newcomers. Another reason why I was one of the first villagers to relocate to the sanctuary when the witches opened it up to prey shifters. At least, in Dyea, everyone understands why I smell the way I do.” And then, when it’s obvious that we don’t, he chuckles again. “I’m a skunk shifter.”

Oh.

When they said this was a place for certain supernaturals who couldn’t quite pass as human in the real world, I don’t know what I was thinking. But a man with black and white hair wearing an air freshener that does nothing to cover up the pungent odor of his skunk smell?

Yeah. He’d stick out like a sore thumb.

What about his henchman? What is he?

At first glance, he looks like any regular old lumberjack you’d see on the cover of a romance novel. At least a head taller than Mayor Lou, he has this rugged masculinity to him that would be attractive if he didn’t look like he wanted to be anywhere but where he is. He has on a faded flannel shirt, buttoned all the way to the top, though that does little to hide his muscular build. His sandy brown hair is shaggy, in need of a haircut, and his eyes…

His eyes are the weirdest shade of gold I’ve ever seen. You can’t even pretend they’re hazel. That’s liquid gold, and he’s creeping me out by not blinking them.

He’s standing a few steps away from the mayor, clearly downwind from the two warring stinks clinging to him, but when his nostrils flare and his scowl deepens, I’m pretty sure it’s not the eau de skunk that’s affecting him right now.

I resist the urge to lift my arm and sniff my pits. Sure, we’ve been traveling all night and we’re probably less than fresh—and who am I kidding, Elise probably smells like blood and roses—but no way are we as bad as that .

He’s glaring at me. I can’t help but give him a stink face back, and it honestly has nothing to do with the poor skunk mayor.

“Don’t mind Conall,” says Mayor Lou brightly. “He’s our head of security here, but no one will ever mistake him for the welcoming committee.”

“More villagers just means more idiots I have to keep secure,” Conall grumbles.

His gaze returns to me after a moment where the mayor got his grumpy glare, and as soon as it does, my hands begin to tingle in the familiar warning that they’re about to spark and blow. Why am I the idiot? Because I’m the supposed human accompanying the vampire they granted sanctuary to?

Or is it something different? Is he different?

Shit. Can he tell that I ’m different?

Witch hunters. I haven’t been able to forget about them since that first hunter tried to grab me in Clarity. I came all the way up to Alaska because it’s the only place in the States that might be able to hide a fire witch. And I have to hide because they hunt in pairs.

Before we left Clarity, Jasper told Elise that despite the best care that the human hospital could give him, the first witch hunter died before Thorn could find out who his partner was and how much they knew about me. I had another panic attack when I declared that I was a murder, but Elise was quick to calm me down. Turns out that it wasn’t the burns that killed him. Nope. As though he realized that he’d been caught by vampires and wasn’t making it out alive, he woke up from his sedation with enough time to use the supplies in his hotel room to kill himself.

So one day. But what about the other one?

Now, I’m not saying that Conall is that prick’s partner. If Conall has lived in the sanctuary town long enough to be head of security under Mayor Lou, I doubt he was lurking around Clarity with his partner, trying to snag any unsuspecting witches they came across.

Does that mean he isn’t a witch hunter? Probably, but that doesn’t mean he’s not a threat. In my very limited experience as a witch, whenever someone makes my palms tingle like this, they’re a threat.

Plus he definitely looks like a lurker…

Then there’s the reality that while witch hunters hunt in pairs, they’re part of an interconnected network of human fanatics. If he somehow figured out I was a witch before I even knew, did he only tell his partner? Maybe every damn hunter in the world knows that Bridget Hayes is a witch. My saving grace is hoping that they don’t know I’m a rare fire witch, but after the way I left scorch marks on Coronet Ave, I wouldn’t be surprised if the partner does know.

I promised that I’d keep my identity—and my temper—underwraps in Dyea. Something tells me that’ll be harder than I thought, and I’m looking at that ‘something’ as he glares down at me.

“Follow the rules and we won’t have any trouble.”

What is it with supes and rules? I thought the one perk to being kicked out of the Fang City would be that I could hide out in this hidden supe town and do what I wanted because the population is so small and the witch hunters wouldn’t know where to find me.

I should’ve known better. A teeny tiny population means more eyes on me—including his .

“The sanctuary rules are put in place to keep us all protected,” the mayor says in an apologetic tone. “No fighting between villagers, and if you want to challenge someone, we ask that you leave Dyea first. Of course, neither of you are shifters, so I don’t expect that to happen.”

“You don’t expect it to happen anyway.” Conall snorts. “Prey shifters don’t challenge, Lou. You know that. And vampires don’t bother. They just kill each other and step over the drained corpse to head to the canteen.”

Mayor Lou frowns. “That was a vampire dispute. Joaquin knew better than to steal blood from Mercy’s donor because his decided to leave the village. He could’ve recruited a new one, but he didn’t. His final death was deserved.”

Conall doesn’t argue, though the expression that turns his broody expression skeptical does it for him.

The mayor ignores his head of security. “Anyway, since you brought your own donor, Ms. Van Duren, I’m sure you won’t have a problem following the rules set out for vampires here.”

Elise agrees. “Of course.”

“Perfect. Now, Madame Montvale told us that you wouldn’t mind sharing a house?—”

“No need for that,” cuts in Conall gruffly. “We have more than enough. I thought the vampire would take this one,” he adds, gesturing toward the narrow, two-floor cottage near where we are. “The other one can take the empty house down that way.”

Mayor Lou reaches up, scratching the back of his head. “I thought you didn’t want anyone taking that place? When Felicity arrived last summer, you made her take the cottage near the river.”

“Because she’s a selkie, Lou.”

“Oh. I thought it was because you didn’t want anyone taking the territory near your den.”

Conall’s glower becomes impressively more pissed off. “You thought wrong.”

A fresh plume of stink fills the air. “Right. Sorry. Well, if Conall thinks that those placements work for our new villagers, he’s never been wrong before. I think?—”

I think that Mayor Lou has the title, but this Conall wants to run the show.

No, thanks.

“I’ll stay with Elise.” I take a couple of steps closer to the cottage assigned to her. “It’s got two floors. We’ll fit.”

Before he can argue, Elise adds, “We have to stay together. She’s my donor.”

Unless it’s my imagination, the big, gruff lumberjack sniffs. And, you know, good on him because the skunk spray mingled with orange is making my stomach turn, but instead of gagging, he just narrows his gaze on Elise. “You bite her?”

What business is it of his if she does or not? Our cover story is that she does, and that’s all that counts. Besides, I promised Elise that she could. What’s a little blood between best friends, after all? Especially when she uprooted her entire life to be my supe guide up here in the wilds of Alaska.

I cross my arms over my chest. “We stay together.”

I expect him to argue. To put down one of his massive boots and tell me that I’ll stay where he put me, thank you very much.

To my surprise, he doesn’t. He swallows back what I’m sure would’ve been a lovely retort, scowls again, then turns to the mayor. “Are you done with me? I was just about to head out on a run when they arrived. I’d like to get back to that now unless you need me to help move them into here.”

Look at that. I guess I won that little stand-off.

Mayor Lou nods, and I get a fresh wave of spoiled citrus.

Conall shifts on his heel, already jogging away before it hits me that the grump didn’t even say goodbye. He just left without a backward glance.

He must really want to get back to that run.

The mayor waited until he’s out of earshot before he grins up at Elise and me. “Come with me. I’ll show you around your new house.”