Chapter 10: Lightning Strikes

Silvana ran promptly outside, her boot heels clicking as she rushed down the manor’s marble steps.

Couples sat on the fountain, smoking cigars and sharing kisses. Bruce’s truck was still parked.

“Bruce, where are you?” Silvana shouted into her phone. But she got only a dial tone, and the last noise she heard him make inside was a holler of pain.

She hadn’t even thought Bruce capable of pain.

But where was he?

Silvana observed her surroundings. Even outside, the party raged on, and as she fluttered about searching for Bruce’s mask from the crowd, she saw a bolt of crimson lightning flicker above a hedge garden and illuminate the side of a well-maintained brown barn.

She knew he was inside.

Fast as she could and clutching her wound, she moved towards the barn, past the garden of trimmed bushes to resemble men and women on all fours and howling like wolves to the starry sky above her. Silvana unhitched the wooden beam securing the barn doors shut, and she burst through the doors to find Bruce with three long gashes across his bare chest. He was bound to the support columns of the barn by his wrists by magical red restraints that surged with scarlet lightning. His tuxedo had been torn, and the veins of his muscles were visible as he roared.

“Bruce!” Silvana shouted, checking over her shoulder to make sure that no supernatural creature could cause them further harm.

Bruce’s head fell to his bleeding chest. “It’s gone,” he muttered.

After a long breath he added, “I didn’t plan on involving you in this, but only a witch can remove these restraints.”

Silvana had a thousand questions but first held her hand above the cuffs holding Bruce back. She tried not to think about how she’d love to be handcuffed to his bed tonight, and for him to do whatever he wished to her. But she focused on the pain in his eyes, and concentrated on the binds sparking with small bursts of lightning at his wrists.

“This is a magic like nothing I’ve ever seen before,” she said, feeling the scorching pangs of pain as the lightning struck her fingertips.

“I don’t know if I’m strong enough to dispel it,” Silvana said, her voice tasked.

The restraints shocked Bruce and he hollered out, snarling like a feral animal. It made Silvana feel so little to see him in pain like that. Bruce huffed, composed himself, and said, locking his bloodshot eyes with Silvana’s, “I know you can do this, Silvana.”

She pictured the two of them, safe and away from the barn inside Bruce’s shower, and then cuddling together warm and cozy in his bed. Magic pumped through her veins and all around her. Her hair stood up and purple sparks shot from her palms as she said, “Tu Fui, Ego Eris!”

In a pink flash of light, Bruce fell to the ground, gripping his burnt wrists, and Silvana yanked her hand away. It was charred and burned. Bruce gripped his wounds, lifted himself to a knee and grabbed Silvana’s hurt hand.

“Let me see,” he demanded. She loved his protectiveness, but she was okay, and she sat him on the hay floor of the barn.

Silvana tore the bottom of her gown until the fabric rested just above her knees, then ripped off what remained of Bruce’s blood-stained shirt.

“I’m alright,” she told him. “Now, relax.”

He complied, making himself vulnerable for only a brief moment while Silvana wrapped his wounds with the torn fabric of her gown to stop the bleeding. Bruce was ashamed that Silvana needed to tend to him. He should have been strong enough to protect her.

“Why did you leave the party so fast?” Silvana asked, offering a hand to help Bruce up.

He denied her help, stubbornly rose to his feet, and told her, “I sensed a supernatural attack. It’s my duty as Alpha—“

He winced in pain and clenched his fists. He pounded a fist to the barn column he’d been strung up on so hard it broke in half.

“My responsibility as Alpha,” he said, collecting himself, “is to keep my people and this city safe.”

He looked away from Silvana and out the barn window. “That includes you, Silvana.”

Silvana found herself melting. Bruce was a brute, and he was caring. He was devoted, but most importantly to Silvana, he was loyal.

“I saw the board in your room with all the pinned pictures and articles,” she said.

“It’s the crimson lightning,” Bruce said forcefully. “It zaps the evil spirits to our world.”

He kicked the barn door open. “We’ve got to search the area.”

Silvana stepped in front of him and held her arms up. “No, you need to heal. Call your brother Kurt.”

“When did you meet Kurt?” Bruce asked, stomping past Silvana and into the garden. He sniffed at the air.

“The first time you led me to your bedroom and told me about your aunt.”

At the mention of his bedroom, Bruce got distracted. He let himself dream of Silvana’s naked body in his sheets, and all the things he would do to her once this night was over.

“I don’t know Kurt well,” Bruce sighed. “We were raised separately and have only begun living together to save expenses for our aunt.”

Silvana kept her guard up as they roamed through the hedges. “Is she doing better?”

Bruce took hold of Silvana’s shoulders and said, “Yes, she’s doing much better. And that’s because of you.”

He rubbed the side of her shoulders. She leaned in to kiss him but he turned his cheek. Silvana’s heart sunk.

“Do you sense the supernatural?” she asked.

Bruce bent down with a strong grunt and examined the lawn near the hedges. “I was attacked by the spirit of Cecilia Duponte.”

“I’ve heard that name,” Silvana said. “She’s the werewolf killer of the late 1800s. They called her The Wolfmother because of all the wolfskins she’d wear.”

“That’s right,” Bruce told Silvana, nodding at his chest. “The Wolfmother sent her Hellhounds on me, and that’s how I got this.”

Silvana shivered. The pictures of Hellhounds in her textbooks were horrifying; they were these humongous dire wolves that moved at superspeeds and attacked with incredible strength.

After investigating, Silvana and Bruce determined that the spirits had at the very least left the area.

“Listen, Silvana,” Bruce said, inhaling deeply through his nose, “I’ve been irresponsible about all of this.

A gentle rain picked up.

The chill made Silvana cross her arms and she waited for Bruce to warm her, but he didn’t.

Bruce shook his head. “We can’t continue this,” he said flatly.

Silvana’s eyes teared and she lost all the breath in her body. “What do you mean?” she asked, placing a hand on his forearm.

He tore his arm away.

With shaking fists Bruce confessed, “I was distracted tonight because of my feelings for you. Somebody could’ve been hurt.” He dry swallowed. “Or even worse, you could have been hurt.”

“Bruce, what’re you saying?” Silvana pleaded, confused and heartbroken.

“I’m saying that we need to be realistic. Your father wants you to be Guardian, and my pack wants me to hold the title. I don’t want a war over this.”

Silvana was then hit by all the responsibilities she’d avoided by spending time with Bruce. Her father wanted her to take the most important role in the city, and she was less than prepared to do so. She’d had the best few days of her life with Bruce, and had been truly happy, but she’d been dodging what her father considered to be her purpose.

Still, she said, “Bruce, I don’t care about any of that. I only want to be with you.”

Bruce rubbed a hand to his jaw and said, “I saved you. You saved me. That needs to be the end of it.”

Although he said the words, Silvana couldn’t accept them as truth.

In the light downpour, Silvana began crying silently, letting the tears drip off her cheeks with the rain.

She reached a hand out to Bruce and said, “I thought I was your mate.”

Bruce turned his back on her and scratched at his eyes. Silvana could feel the pressures he was facing and only wanted to help.

“I think we’re stronger than the obstacles around us,” Silvana said, her voice distorted by sobs.

“As much as I want to be with you, Silvana, we need to end this for your safety.”

Silvana watched the rain turn the grass under her feet muddy.

“Is that how you really feel?” she asked.

But before Bruce could offer his heart’s secrets to the woman he loved, crimson lighting struck between the two of them. Silvana and Bruce blasted backwards and tumbled into the mud.

Standing before them was a red, cackling spirit made of lightning. She wore wolfskin clothes and waved a hand.

Scarlet lightning wolves howled, then attacked Bruce and Silvana.