Blood & Wine

13 | Dasher

Something was wrong with Eden. When she shut the door behind her, a breeze lifted her hair from her shoulders and seemed to surround her in a small tornado.

Calla yawned. "Oh, shit, you look mad," she said, stretching. Her hand popped me on side of the head, and I nudged my head into her palm for her to scratch my scalp like she had been doing a few minutes ago as she half-slept, somewhat thrown on top of me.

Eden walked farther into my room, cracking her knuckles as she stepped out of her boots and sat on the edge of my bed. "Fynley makes me want to set the entire race of werewolves on fire until there are none left," she said. She cut her eyes to me. "Your witch half would save you."

I joined Calla in yawning. "I understand." They rubbed me the wrong way, too, and if I had anything to do with it, I'd help her burn them all alive. I had yet to find one I liked. I did only know a few, and all of them had been trying to kill me. "What happened?"

She sighed. "Oh, the usual," she replied. "Fynley taunted me, I taunted him. It didn't end with bloodshed, but I was reminded how much I want to put an ice pick through his throat. Or embed him with a thousand silver needles."

Calla placed her other hand on Eden's arm and squeezed. "I have a thousand silver needles."

Eden and I both looked at her.

She shrugged. "I hate werewolves," she said as an answer.

I was more concerned about where she had gotten the silver needles from, especially a thousand of them, but I figured it was some sort of magic spell. Which reminded me that I had a lot to catch up on—and a lot to catch them up on, too.

We waited on Eden to take the lead as usual, but she looked... distracted. Her gaze was distant, like she saw something we didn't. Maybe the dead? I glanced at Calla, who gazed at her with worry.

Finally, Eden said, "Fynley got on my nerves. We agreed for me to be there, but he also told me I need to look into who your father was in order to figure out why the other werewolves want to kill you." She leaned back on the bed, sticking her short legs into the airing closing her eyes.

My father. I waited for the pain, for the hurt—but all I felt was missing him. It was like my joints were aching instead of my entire femur being broken in half. "He was in the military. He had a small family he only somewhat dealt with but never introduced us to. That's all I know about him," I explained.

My dad had been a quiet, stoic man who loved us dearly. He'd never talked about his past or his family, nor his time in the military. Every time we tried to bring it up, he shut us down, and when I asked Mom about it, she said, as long as I loved him, it shouldn't matter who or what or where he came from.

Eden turned her head to look at me, her eyes still far away. "That's fine. I traced your living family members to India and Italy. I'm not sure about the witches in India, but I have some friends in Italy that I can contact to pass along your blood."

Pass along my blood? I had only taken a semester of biology in college, but I knew it wasn't as easy as 'passing on my blood' across the ocean. The blood would dry out. "How?"

"Magic," Calla answered with a grin. "When do you plan on doing it?"

"Later tonight," Eden responded. "Which will be Dasher's second magical lesson, albeit one he probably won't be able to do for some time."

I shrugged. "That's fine." I wanted to see magic, and not just protection spells and charms, but I wanted to see what they actually did. I wanted to watch it happen, whatever it was. "Did Fynley hit on you?"