Part I here

Alice felt like a love-struck teen as she scampered up to the twins and cursed the feeling. They may have rescued her, but they had kidnapped her too. She had a right to know their intentions. How dare they make her feel this way?

“Hold up,” she panted and came to a stop.

The two men turned slowly and regarded her as they might a little sister in the playground.

“You okay Alice?” John asked.

“What the hell do you mean, am I okay?” she said with more vehemence than she meant. “What the hell am I doing here? What the f…?”

“Alice,” Adam warned and glared at her, “Don’t finish…”

“…the f-freak is going on?” she completed the question, knowing neither liked cursing, especially on the lips of a woman, and then she got angry again. Who the hell did they think they were? Anyway, what were they renegades from the 1950s? The thought brought on a wave of panic and she decided to cast it away and focus on the anger.

“Alice, do you want to take it down a notch?” John soothed her.

“Do I want to…? You bastards, I don’t care who you think you are…”

“Sorry what was that?” Adam said in a solid ice voice.

The heat rose and suddenly Alice was uncertain. She remembered the last time she had called him a bastard, or was it John? “I just mean…”

“Calm down Alice, we were going to find you, but I don’t think you are in the mood for a conversation right now,” John said with smooth paternalism. He looked at Adam and tried to will him into letting her outburst pass.

“Maybe she doesn’t want to calm down eh Alice? Maybe you need a trip to the woodshed,” Adam crossed his arms and gave the hard stare.

Alice remembered the wolf, but somehow it was the memory of her spanking that surged through her. She swallowed hard and felt like a teen again. “Look I don’t think…” she licked her full lips and took a step back as her hands found the rolling curves of her heroine-worthy bottom.

John made a relaxed gesture to restrain his brother and turned to Alice. “Alice, go to your room, before I put you across my knee,” he said with an emphasis on the ‘I,’ “We will talk later.”

“Look I just want to…” Alice almost cried.

“Alice,” John said sharply, “Go to your room.”

The lawyer just gaped at them and then let out a growl of frustration before fleeing. Just like a teenager, she thought, even as she did it.

Adam watched her go with a sense of relief and regret. “You should have just let me spank her,” he said with a sigh.

“I am not sure that is the answer just now, besides, we haven’t sorted out just who has spanking rights on that one,” John answered him, his own gaze following denim-clad sphere of Alice’s with a need he could not put a name to.

Adam laughed. “You sound just like Jared and the other elders, I am proud of you boy. We will soon knock that 21^st century neo-feminist socialism out of you yet.”

“You know what I mean,” John snapped, hating that Adam was halfway right. Alice was out of her depth and she was right to be angry. At least up to a point.

Adam sighed heavily as the smile vanished from his face. “Yeah, I do,” he said with real pain etched on his face. “I suppose you are going to say it is all her call.”

“Well isn’t it?” John didn’t sound convinced, his words sounded as if they were out of a book he had once read.

“I am really not sure with that one,” Adam said thoughtfully. “I mean ordinarily, despite what you may think, I would agree. But we have a little situation here. She knows about the curse and can’t face it, also we have a lock down and hunters.

“And there are two of us and she isn’t going to choose is she?” John put in.

“Shit,” Adam laughed, “I had hoped you hadn’t realised that and still thought you weren’t in with a chance.”

“I don’t, and neither do you,” John said suddenly, “I mean, she is an outsider, look at the danger we already put her in… we have to let her go no matter what she wants.”

“Shit,” Adam looked to the heavens. “You have got it bad haven’t you? My instinct is to take her away from here and never let her go, but that is just me.”

John’s face crashed and he tried to smile. “You too eh, we are in a mess,” he sighed.

Adam extended a fist and gently pinched his brother on the arm. “Pity we can’t turn her eh?”

“I am glad we can’t, this is not her world,” John answered, but he had thought of that so many times. No one had ever been turned on purpose, not even with a scratch or a controlled bite, let alone by drinking from a wolf paw print. That was just in the movies.

“Wasn’t some old guy turned about 80 years ago?” Adam said as if it was unimportant.

“He was savaged half to death and was in hospital for weeks. Sundance said he was never the same again and eventually went mad,” John related the story.

“Hanged himself in the woods didn’t? No one knows why he turned and not so many others,” Adam remembered the tales.

“He went to a nuthatch I think and no, I don’t think he committed suicide,” John shook his head; that way was not for Alice.

*

Alice did not miss the irony of going to her room after being sent there. It was not because she had been told to, she had to remind herself, but she didn’t want to see anyone and had no other place to go.

Once there she took a deep breath and sagged against the door; her barrier to the world.

The room was small and utilitarian. The cot was narrow like a bunk and the thin quilt had a coloured chequered pattern in olive and gold. It was old probably; she thought and she focussed on the idle thought to distract her. Then the world surged up into her face and she tried to hold it back with trembling lips until it exploded with a hiss.

With a wail she hurled herself face down on the bed and cried. Great heaving sobs wracked her until she was bawling like a spanked teen and then some. The twins didn’t love her; she had just been a fuck to them. The world was not how she supposed and even now was rising up to crush her. She had never felt so overwhelmed.

On the other side of the compound Stacy was in her element. She had been right. The damn Stone family were freaking werewolves or something like it. What did Coleridge know? She wondered and what was he planning? It occurred to her that she should probably be on his side against the monsters, but something didn’t feel right with that train of thought.

Earlier she had noticed one of the out buildings was or had been an office. The cobwebs were thick on the windows and it had been hard to look in, but through the murk she had seen old file cabinets. There must be some proof, some history to all this, her journalist brain urged her. Damn she needed a coffee. Her mind raced and she made a frog face with her lips and then let them go with a thoughtful pop.

It was her American duty to get into that office. Her readers had a right to know didn’t they? Besides the building was old and the locks looked battered and rusted. The key was probably long lost so it wouldn’t matter if she eased it open a little. Who would know?

Stacy was already halfway across the yard before she had made up her mind. After all, where was the harm?

To be continued...