The Vegan and the Wolf by Julie Steimle (red white and royal blue hardcover txt) 📕

Stewart’s eyes widened, watching them.

Mrs. Dell groaned, following on slow, stiletto heeled feet. “Howie… don’t stir them up like this before bed! It will be impossible to get them to sleep!”

“I’ll deal with it!” he called good-naturedly from the stairway and was gone.

With Rick and family cleared from the mezzanine foyer, Harlin turned his anger back on those present. “Let me go!”

Vincent tapped the papers he had handed to Harlin. “As of now, this order applies. Now get out of the hotel. You’re gatecrashing.”

Harlin shot Audry a foul look, yet he stalked away. Logic must have kicked in, and he didn’t look keen on getting arrested. At least… not with so many witnesses. 

Not two seconds after, Audry noticed that man Ewan leave the party also—an intent look on his brooding face.

Stewart walked toward Audry with a question on his lips. “You saved Rick Deacon’s life twice?”

“Yeah, when?” Vincent asked, coming closer in curiosity.

Sighing, Audry shrugged. “I don’t know. I guess in Paris.”

Stewart’s eyes widened on her.

So once more Audry dragged out her cell phone and showed the picture at the Eiffel tower. She explained the story of how they first met, how they ‘bumped into’ one another on top of the Eiffel Tower and how Rick acted like someone was after him when he was there.

Stewart nodded to himself. “Huh. A similar thing happened to me once. I saw him in Times Square, and there were these really weird Canadians after him. He begged a ride in my car and I just…” Stewart looked winded merely thinking about it.

Nodding, Audry thought about the entire thing. “Yeah. He’s… I swear crazy things happen when he is around.”

Nodding deeper in agreement, Stewart met her gaze. “Yes. That is very true.” His eyes then fixed on the bullet around her neck. “Two times, he said…”

Audry shrugged. “There was that one time I discovered hunters on the ski slopes and reported them to the rangers and the ski patrol.”

Stewart stared at her, eyebrows raised.

“No kidding,” their other friend said. “Wow. What were they after?”

“A werewolf?” Audry nodded wryly. She felt so foolish saying it.

She noticed Stewart stiffen, however, his mind shifting as if he had a bad memory.

“Yeah,” she said. “There is this crazy rumor on the internet that Rick Deacon and his father are werewolves.”

Their friends laughed. So did Vincent, shaking his head. But Stewart did not laugh. He gazed at Audry pensively. He then gestured to her bullet. Somehow she knew he would. “You should hide that. I know you are proud of it. But I know some people who would take it the wrong way and… I don’t know, use you as bait.”

“Bait?” Audry stared at him. This was a little different than what Silvia and Rick had said. “What? Why?”

Shrugging, Stewart headed towards the stairs to return to the party. “Because there are crazy people like that who believe in what you said.”

Audry got chills. Stewart knew people like that. That was why he was so spooked.

Yet Vincent leaned near her and whispered, “Don’t listen to him. Keep wearing it. Don’t let the kooks spoil it.”

Looking to him, Audry stiffened.

“You are not the kind of person who would get suckered into that kind of thing,” Vincent said.

Which was true.

“But,” Vincent added, “You don’t always have to tell the full story to everyone. Just say you dug it out of the leg of a wounded animal and leave it at that.”

Nodding, Audry agreed. She didn’t need to tell the entire story.

They returned immediately to the party.

But really, the rest of the evening was rather uneventful.

Mrs. Dell eventually returned as well, and she sought out Audry, briefly thanking her for watching her children and keeping them from entering the party. Oddly enough, there was a look of increased tender kindness in that woman’s eyes, almost a fondness that had not been there previously. It unsettled Audry at little.

But as the evening wore on, Vincent eventually decided it was time to call it a night. He hailed a taxi and they rode it back to Audry’s car where they paid for parking. And he rode with her back to her apartment—just in case Harlin decided to violate the order immediately.

Her cousin saw her in the door, then walked back out to where he could get another cab.

Audry stood inside her apartment, her head swimming from the events of the day.

Too much had happened.

Chapter Ten

Audry rolled out of bed to the sound of someone pounding on her bedroom door, and shouts. Her rear thudded against the carpet the same time the door burst open. Harlin charged in.

Audry screamed, scrambling to her feet.

Pale, hair awry and sweaty, Harlin struggled against Wendy and Laura who were trying to keep him from coming into the room. “Audry! He’s a werewolf!”

“Are you drunk?” Tricia called in, one hand cradling her cellphone while on the line with—hopefully—the police.

“No!” Harlin shouted at her. He shoved off Laura, sending her crashing to the back wall. He wrenched Wendy back by her hair. “I got the truth!”

Audry pawed the ground for her purse. The tazer was still in it and she needed to get to it fast.

Harlin advanced on her, seizing her by the arm and pulling her off the floor. “We have to get you away now!”

Audry kneed him in the groin.

In pain, he doubled down, but he did not let go. “…Audry.”

She pushed at him, digging her fingernails into his arm. “Let go! You are violating the court order.”

“I called the cops,” Tricia announced loudly from the other room.

 Savagely whipping around toward her, Harlin looked likely to spit nails. However, he turned back toward Audry, palely begging her to listen to him while tightening his grip on her arm. “No. You don’t understand. He really, actually is a werewolf. I got it from the horse’s mouth.”

“If Rick said something like that, he was messing with you,” Audry snapped.

“Not him!” Harlin snapped. “Ewan Steed! He—”

“Had a nervous breakdown and became a drunk,” Audry bit back. She shoved him off with her foot, dislodging his grip. Staggering back, she looked once more for her purse. “Now get out before—”

“That’s a lie. Your lover is a monster!”

Moaning, Audry finally spotted her purse. It was barely sticking out from under her pillow. Audry had forgotten she had put it there as a precaution. She grabbed it. “He is not my lover.”

Harlin glowered brutishly at her. “Stop lying.”

Unzipping the purse, Audry reached in for the tazer. “I have never lied to you, Harlin. Unlike you, I had no ulterior motives to our relationship. I had no intention of becoming anyone’s lover—not his and especially not yours. Now get out.”

He shook his head and reached for her. “You have to see reason—”

Audry pulled out the tazer. “Back off.”

Harlin stared at the device. Raising his hands, he barely backed up. “Whoa. Where did you get that?”

“Rick’s mother gave it to me,” she snapped.

His eyes widened more on her. “What? You’re taking things from a werewolf’s mother?”

“Oh for pity’s sake, Harlin! You have completely lost your head!” Audry felt like pulling her hair out. “Werewolves aren’t real! He and I did not have an affair. And you are not my boyfriend anymore. Get a life!”

“I’m just trying to protect you!” he pathetically protested.

She doubted it. Desperation was all over him, but Audry could tell his desperation had nothing to do with her safety and everything to do with his desire to finally make her another of his conquests. It had always been a power play.

“I have a tazer and I will use it,” she said.

Harlin stared at it. Then his eyes lifted to her. He straightened up, squaring his shoulders. “You wouldn’t hurt a fly.”

Audry stiffened.

“You’re a devout vegan. You’d rescue a wounded tiger about to eat you,” he said, advancing on her.

She tazed him.

Harlin convulsed, dropping to the floor.

“Some animals you have to put down,” Audry said, glaring down on him.

Seizing her, Wendy and Laura pulled her with them out of the room. They hurried together into the front room, grabbing a coat for Audry as she was in nothing but her pajamas. As she threw it on, they hurried outside, waiting for the police.

Two police officers came shortly after, a tall dark haired man and a short brown haired guy. As they were taking Wendy’s statement along with Laura’s—each gal urging the police to go inside after Audry’s ex—Harlin emerged from the apartment.

The second he saw them, he immediately ran for it.

The police made chase.

When he was about to dive into the stairs, a cadet in uniform—one much shorter than him, blocked his way. Harlin pushed to get past her, but the cadet laid him out flat with a judo move. Harlin stared up from the concrete, moaning—too stunned to realize what had just happened.

The two cops jogged over to assist.

“Did they call for backup?” Tricia murmured, peering after them as the female cop was now cuffing Harlin. He had already started to scream, “Let me go” while struggling to get back onto his feet.  

“I don’t remember,” Wendy murmured with a bewildered stare. That backup looked underwhelming in size. This wasn’t a she-man in a police suit after all, but a gal around their age with normal build and a mostly nondescript, average face.

Audry walked over to where the police had gathered around her ex-boyfriend to heave him off the ground, staring at the female cop who was now shoving him toward her fellow officers. There was a six inch scar up the cadet’s right forearm. Audry recognized the female cadet’s face once the cadet turned with a nod to her and smiled. She was also wearing the same exact red crystal around her neck as Silvia’s brother Daniel.

“No!” Harlin screamed. “You have to believe me! I was just coming to warn her! Honest! Her lover is a werewolf! A monster!”

The cadet raised her eyebrows but said nothing.

“On crack?” one of the policemen muttered.

“We’ll get him drug tested,” the other replied, leading him off to their squad car.

The one turned to the cadet and said, “Good nab, Cadet. But lay off the kung fu. We don’t want you to overdo it and get called on police brutality.”

The cadet shrugged. It had been effective, and he wasn’t actually hurt.

“You were supposed to stay with the car,” the other hissed at her.

“I was supposed to observe you. And besides, he would have gotten away,” the cadet replied. She then winked at Audry and said, “I heard you tazered him. It’s smart that you have something for self-protection.”

“Just don’t overdo it,” one of the policemen said with a look to Audry.

Audry rubbed her forehead. “What was I supposed to do? Let him rape me? He barged into my room while I was still in bed.”

They stared at her.

“You were not in bed,” Harlin snapped back, glaring pettily at her.

“You woke me up!” Audry shouted at him. “And he is violating a court order.”

“Can you verify that?” the policeman in charge asked, now interested.

“I can,” the cadet said with a nod, raising a hand.

The two cops stared at her, surprised.

The cadet shrugged. “I was there when she was in court getting the temporary order.” She then looked to Audry.