A Very Alpha Christmas Read online

  As she turned towards the bed, she tossed the unloaded crossbow onto her comforter without looking and finally turned to look at the TV.

  At first she couldn’t really make out what he was saying or what was on the television. Frowning, she fiddled with the towel wrapped tightly around her chest and stepped closer to the screen. She tried to make sense of his words, which were growing more horrified by the second….and what she was seeing in front of her.

  It was New York City on a cold fall day. Clearly chilly enough for people to have coats on but not yet cold enough for snow to be falling to the ground. The cold didn’t seem to be stopping people running around like ants on the television.

  “The city that never sleeps,” she whispered with a wry grin. She had fond memories of New York and the city as a college co-ed. Mostly memories of hunts that had gone so wrong and yet so right.

  As she watched, the background scenes of people milling about changed to an aerial view of the skyline.

  Now the setting took on a much more somber tone. Nothing about her view of New York City from nine hundred miles away looked right this morning. Rhiannon frowned, turning up the volume, and her eyes flicked from one skyscraper to another as she tried to make sense of whatever the blond newsman was saying.

  Smoke was rising from a tower that she didn’t recognize on the television. But there was a lot of it and it didn’t look like a small fire, either. It was huge—the plumes of smoke rose from the tower like dark-gray clouds or the smoke stacks of the old railroad days in the nineteenth century.

  As she watched, the man said, “You’re looking at a very disturbing live shot.”

  Well, obviously, Rhiannon thought bitterly. It would take a huge fire or explosion for one of those building to be on fire like that. And it was the middle of the morning. There would have to be people in there.

  Rhiannon continued staring as she listened to a new commenter speak to her newsman.

  He was talking about when he’d seen. Something about a plane crash.

  What does that have to do with the fire and how it started? It couldn’t have been a gas line—the fire would have started in the lower levels of the tower, she wondered as she quickly flipped to another station.

  Whatever the cause was, it was clear that this news station had no idea what was going on.

  As she flipped through, she was hoping for a news station that was actually reporting the news. A skyscraper fire was interesting, but she needed to know if she was going to get caught in a traffic jam on I-285 nearly eight hundred miles away.

  Unfortunately none of the other stations were helpful. Some were on commercial and the ones that weren’t seemed to be reporting about the same skyscraper fire.

  Rhiannon shook her head. She was starting to have a bad feeling about this as she flipped back to her original channel and could see a close-up of the floors on fire.

  The ‘expert’ the news channel had brought on was now talking about a deliberate hit by a plane.

  “How is that even possible?” Rhiannon mouthed to herself almost silently.

  She listened as the expert further speculated that it could have been a missile that targeted the building.

  “A missile?” she scoffed. “Who fires a missile at a tower hundreds of feet up in the air?”

  Whatever had caused that fire, it couldn’t have been normal. What kind of fire started at the very top of a building that was clearly hundreds of feet in the air? At least.

  She still hadn’t figured out what was going when her phone started buzzing like an angry bee over on her dresser, where she’d left it after collapsing in bed last night.

  She raced over and snatched up the phone. Only a few people called her cell phone number, because not many had it. She had to answer it. Whatever it was, it wasn’t good. Her mother either wanted something or her boss wanted something.

  Rhiannon wasn’t sure which person was worse.

  Dragging her eyes away from the TV, she quickly pointed the remote and muted the news.

  “Where are you?” demanded a voice that sent shivers down her spine.

  Rhiannon rolled her eyes, even though he couldn’t see it, and replied, “Well, good morning to you, too, Michael.”

  It had to be her boss. Well, it was better than her mother. Marginally.

  “Don’t ‘good morning’ me,” he snapped. “You were supposed to be at the Void cross point ten minutes ago.”

  Irritation crawled up Rhiannon’s spine. The demon might have been fine as hell, but that gave him no cause to talk to her like that.

  “I’m on my way,” she snarled right back.

  “Heading out the door now, I suppose?” he said drily.

  “Of course,” she said while looking down at her towel-wrapped form and wincing.

  He sighed heavily. “You’re a terrible liar.”

  “This is my day off, you ingrate!” she shouted. “Have a little compassion—”

  “If you want compassion, be on time for once,” he said.

  “—and you’re a terrible boss,” she continued, unabated.

  “I do try to be reasonable, Rhiannon,” he said testily.

  “Reasonable?” she asked as she rolled her eyes. “You call assigning someone a case at seven o’clock in the morning reasonable?”

  “It’s actually at eight thirty,” he managed to say before she interrupted him with a shriek.

  “Eight?” she shouted. “Then why did you say my meeting was a full hour earlier?”

  “Because I knew you’d be late!” he shouted right back.

  “Am not!”

  There was silence on the other end of the phone.

  She spluttered. “Are you calling me a liar?”

  “I don’t know,” he snarled. “Are you lying?”

  Her stony silence was her only response.

  He sighed in exasperation. “As you’re so found of telling me, Rhiannon, as a demon I have the hearing of a bat, and I know your car ignition hasn’t been sparked.”

  “I’ve got an electric engine,” she snarled.

  “And pigs do fly,” he said in quick retort.

  Growling, she finally said, “I’m getting in the shower—I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”

  “As I thought.”

  She nearly threw the phone across the room but instead she settled for, “You’re a rat bastard,” and hung up.

  “Let him figure that saying out,” she huffed as she headed for the shower.

  3

  She managed to get halfway across the room before her phone rang again.

  Snatching it up, she yelled into the receiver, “What do you want from me, Michael? Yes, yes, I was lying. Yes, I’m getting dressed. Yes, I will be there!”

  “Well, that’s all well and good,” said the mildly affronted voice of her aunt, “but I’m not Michael.”

  Rhiannon stifled a groan as she sat down on the edge of her bed and closed her eyes in prayer.

  “Aunt Katherine, I’m sorry—”

  “What’s more,” her aunt continued unabated, “I certainly don’t appreciate your tone of voice, young lady.”

  “Aunt Katherine, I know—”

  “How dare you talk to me or anyone else that way? Especially your superior—Michael, isn’t it? I didn’t raise you that way. Your father certainly didn’t teach you that, and I can’t believe—”

  Rhiannon let the phone sink to her shoulder, gritted her teeth, and flopped back in the bed. She knew her aunt. She also knew that once that woman got into a tirade about something it would be at least five minutes before she stopped. She was like her twin sister in that way. Except, or so Rhiannon had heard, her mother was even less forgiving than the aunt who had raised her.

  Rhiannon hadn’t been able to get a word in edgewise her entire life and it wasn’t going to change now. So she couldn’t defend herself; there was nothing acceptable to say in her aunt’s mind anyway. Or her mother’s, for that matter. But that didn’t change things. She couldn’t hang
up, either. Because if she thought the tirade was bad, oh, disrespecting her mother directly would be even worse.

  She’d be in lower Hell before you could say Sunday.

  So she waited and by the time it was over she was ready to scream into the air. Her aunt hung up with Rhiannon’s ears burning and she threw the phone into the bed comforter with a hard jerk of her hand and stormed into the shower, which had better be hotter than Hades by now.

  Without any time to lose, Rhiannon raced out of the house like a bat out of hell. Once she managed to pull her car out of her driveway and pull into the traffic outside her community, she was nervous as she could get about this new task.

  She didn’t think it would be that hard, but you never knew what was in store when you were dealing with magic and magical entities that had no wish to return to their level of Hell.

  Hitting the highway, she started whistling and weaving in and out of traffic to get to her destination faster. She wasn’t the best driver in the world, but desperate times called for desperate measures.

  She couldn’t have hit traffic at a worse time; it was rush hour on the interstate—she could tell that with just a glance at her dashboard clock. Which was why she was now off on the side roads with her radio off and her eyes glued to the road ahead.

  Rhiannon was what her college mates liked to call a ‘weird duck.’ She didn’t listen to any music while driving, preferring to keep her entire focus on the cars ahead and around her.

  Hyper-vigilance she liked to call it.

  A bitch to drive with, her friends tended to say.

  Who knew so many people hated driving in silence?

  Ignoring the honking horns around her, the witch who was always late to her latest engagement put the pedal to the metal and drove faster.

  Hell, if she got pulled over the cop might even escort her to her latest appointment in style. It has only been three years after all since the world had learned about the true existence of Heaven and Hell, and it wasn’t what they had thought it would be.

  An ancient philosopher had depicted the closest reality to the different realms of life inhabited by humans and demons and everything between as well as beyond. But it hadn’t come close to the reality that she had begun to learn about in college and lived day-by-day.

  Fortunately for most humans, they didn’t have to know what that reality was. Not yet.

  And well, the ones that did, the ones that were read into what really went ‘bump in the night’ and lurked just one fringe universe away—or one ‘realm’ away as her magical kindred liked to call it—well, those lucky individuals were so scared out of their minds that they tended to push witches and wizards to the front of the pack any chance they got.

  She didn’t blame them either. If she was in law enforcement and didn’t have magical powers, she’d be falling behind whomever was closest as well.

  Which made life much easier for her when she was going on assignment and had to get somewhere quick.

  Unfortunately, the law enforcements both local and national had not elected to give her badge and all the cool toys that came with it. Namely a car with a bullhorn and siren.

  So she made do by turning her beautiful German-made mid-sized car into something that not even the blindest pedestrian and fellow thoroughfare user could mistake for anything less than magic-made.

  She had painted the car fluorescent banana-yellow three months ago and aside from the hideous color, it was the best decision she had ever made. She could swerve in and out of traffic, around vehicles, and through intersections like a crazy woman.

  “That’s right,” she shouted from inside her vehicle as she grinned. For once this morning was turning out right.

  “Get out of my way!” Rhiannon shouted at a red sedan and a woman who almost had a wreck as she came around the corner. The owner couldn’t hear her, but she clearly got the message.

  Being magical had its perks. Namely that being of a magical background and on her way to an enforcement scene gave her license to drive like a bat out of hell.

  Rhiannon had the feeling it was going to be the only thing she enjoyed about this morning, so she might as well take pleasure in the simple things in life.

  As she was driving she felt a dark shiver go down her spine. The kind of shiver that said Duck for cover or Check your closet, there’s a serial killer in there.

  In this case, though, it was her second-sense kicking.

  Rhiannon cursed and slowed down. She didn’t have a choice. Ignoring the honks, she turned quickly to the right and pulled off onto the embankment.

  Clenching her left hand into a tight fist, she breathed deeply and waited for whatever was coming.

  There was more than one reason why she tried to get from place to place quickly and she rarely left the house. She was more susceptible than most to the mental fatigue that came with being a witch with strong seer gifts. It meant that she had the foresight. She could sometimes see what was coming; she would get flashes of visions or premonitions about places.

  She knew the old saying well: ‘With great power, comes great responsibility.’

  But sometimes, just sometimes, she’d trade in all the power in the world for a week without a headache that left her sobbing on the floor or downing enough liquid Advil to give even an addict a run for their money in the high department.

  Just. One. Week.

  But it looked like her prayers would never be answered. She was born with a gift and she couldn’t always control it, but she could damn well manage it.

  It wasn’t always straightforward. It wasn’t even always visions that came to her. Sometimes it was just feelings. Joy when she suddenly knew that her grandmother’s farm would get a bountiful harvest in the fall. Sorrow when she felt one of her blood sisters die three states away. Confusion when she had been on a case seeking a lost child who’d been trapped in a place she couldn’t find.

  But there was always one consistency regardless of whether it was a vision or an emotion that overwhelmed her.

  She always felt pain.

  Rhiannon could feel the sight starting to gather on the horizons of her mental awareness like a bank of dark clouds rolling in before a terrible storm.

  This was bad. This was very bad.

  The last time she’d had a vision like that, she’d been in bed for a week afterwards and Hurricane Floyd had hit in 1999. When it left, her aunt had gone with it, and so had two of her baby cousins. It had been a dark time, and to lose all of those family members so young had been a terrible blow.

  To know that the hurricane had been coming to North Carolina at the time, to see it, and know that it was too late do anything for her family other than warn them—that had been almost as painful as living through the psychic pain that came with being a seer.

  She tried to control her breathing and slow her heart rate down as she quickly scrambled into the backseat of the car. She knew this was going to be bad. Better to be lying down than sitting up when it happened.

  She knew what she was in for now. She just didn’t know how it would present itself—she was hoping for a traditional vision. Those were the easiest to ‘solve.’ But even if her visual visions were better than the auditory ones, it was never quite clear. That would make it too easy. Instead, the visions were always something that was coming for her like the bright light of a train piercing the darkness as the train sped toward her.

  The vision was the light. The train was the outcome. Unfortunately the vision only gave her an idea of what was coming; the outcome was entirely up to her. If she heeded the warning signs of the oncoming future she could twist it, maybe change it if need be. But if she, and others like her, ignored them—heaven help them all. Because just like the warning whistle of a locomotive announced immediate impact and the trembling ground beneath the trains promised a gargantuan machine, she knew that the darkness that was overtaking her all indicated one thing—a warning sign of trouble to come.

  The best thing to do was to get out of the wa
y.

  Too bad she’d never been very good about heeding warnings. One of her many faults.

  “What’s it matter now?” she said bitterly. “What’s coming will come.”

  The visions might actually materialize five minutes into the future or five days. But they always came with a bang. She made it to the backseat of her small car with her keys securely clutched in one hand. The last thing she remembered before blacking out was pressing the topmost button on her car fob—and hearing the click of the locking doors before she descended into the darkness of her own mind.

  This time almost wished she didn’t know what was coming. The feeling coming over her reminded her of being covered with creepy-crawlies or drowning in mud. It made her stomach roil and the taste of vomit hit the back of her throat.

  Still, she knew better than to will away her vision. Instead she focused on it like a laser beam—she had to. Turning her head this way and that, she saw it in one of the visions passing through her mind like a screaming banshee only to quickly vanish seconds later. Not quickly enough that she couldn’t see the visual in her head of a very specific display on a large billboard above the heads of a crowd of panicked individuals running for safety.

  She didn’t have much time before the next vision flashed over her, but she had made sure to lock the display in her mind’s memory so she wouldn’t forget it. Its bright screen had been hard to ignore anyway. Lit with neon lights that encircled a flashing screen with two actors romantically entwined and text that had screamed in big, bold letters that the scene was from the future. Far in the future and much further than her usual visions. The stark lettering had been clear, it was coming on opening night—September 14, 2001.

  Three days hence.

  4

  When Rhiannon woke with a throbbing headache and a groan, it wasn’t with the refreshed sense of a much-needed nap. It was with a head that felt like she’d spent all night out in the bars listening to raging music while imbibing one too many salt-rimmed margaritas.