The Shepard's Agony by Mandy Rosko Page A

been there herself, the house was conveniently close to their usual Moon Night spot, only a twenty minute drive. Evey had given her the address the last time they’d seen each other, which , once Gwen stopped to think about it, was nearly a year ago now . Would she even still live there?
    “ How did you and a vampire ever end up being friends?” he asked.
    Gwen was glad he was talking, anything to take her mind off what she was driving away from.
    “ We met a few years back when the pack was having trouble with a coven of witches. Werewolf fur and skin are supposed to be very potent ingredients for potions and spells …” Why was she explaining that to him, she didn’t know . Of course he knew about it.
    Shepard swallowed and nodded, but didn’t say anything for fear of upsetting her. Selling werewolf fur was the reason his family stayed in the hunting business all those years.
    “ Well, anyway, Evey was having some of the same trouble. She had a warlock on her trail who wanted to pull out her fangs with a pair of pliers.”
    Shepard flinched in sympathy . Feeling his teeth with his tongue, he was grateful they were there. He understood the problem immediately. Vampire fangs were even more precious on the black market than werewolf fur, mainly because most vampires had a habit of being filthy rich and capable of avoiding such things either through their own strength or the power of those they’d manipulate around them. Most of the time, werewolf pelts were actually sold to the vampires, the bastards.
    Jacob ’s teeth were all he had since he could no longer hypnotize people after Garrett put those needles in his eyes. A rare enough talent already, and Jacob could never do it again.
    “ We worked together. And , since Evey was a witch before she was turned, she had some inside information to help us … uh, solve the problem. We’ve kept in touch since then.”
    So they killed all the w
itches,
Shepard thought before picking up on what she’d said.
    “ Wait, you said she was a w itch before she was turned?” He didn’t understand. How did that work? Even as a vampire it didn’t explain why she would go against her own kind.
    Gwen shook her head, knowing where his thoughts had run off to. “She was a Wiccan witch, not the other kind. She’s alright.”
    “ Like it matters ,” Shepard muttered. He’d worked with enough witches to know that he didn’t like them. The last witch he’d seen had been an old blind woman with a cackling laugh and a crooked nose ; classic look for a witch . The woman had poisoned Jimmy just to see how long it would take for her new potion to kill him.
    He wasn’t the kind to hit a woman, not an old, blind woman either, but he did what he had to do to get her to hand over the antidote . Jimmy spent a month sick in bed after that.
    Some w itches weren’t born into the practice, they had to learn it and they were never as strong as those with natural talent. In Shepard’s eyes, anyone who wanted to learn it was not to be trusted and he wasn’t about to stop to get to know anyone to find out if their talent was natural. It was all bad news.
    “ Witches might be human, b ut they’re still dark creatures,” he said.
    Gwen’s eye twitched. She could feel bitter emotions coming from him and she didn’t like them. “Dark creatures?”
    “ Completely dangerous, you shouldn’t t rust any of them—”
    The tires screeched and Shepard briefly saw white when his forehead smashed into the dashboard.
    He hadn't been wearing his seatbelt and the first thing he did after grabbing the spot on his forehead that was flaring with pain was curse.
    “ Ah! Fuck! What the—?”
    The next thing he knew, he was in the air, thrown out of the truck.
    Damn. He let his guard down and forgot about her strength.
    Opening his eyes, Shepard looked up and saw Gwen’s angry face leaning over the seat and glaring down at him.
    “I happen to be one of those dark creatures you think can’t be