Beauty and Beasts Read online

  "I saw it from the window," she said. "It was the wolf."

  The two wolves were still battling, but none of them looked at them at all. They were all three staring at Robyn's lifeless body, crying helplessly when Amy suddenly thought of something.

  "Billie Jean," she said.

  "What?" Jazmine asked.

  "The dog. It's a dog I’ve been taking care of."

  "So what? Why are you talking about some stupid dog now, when Robyn is…when she is…"

  Amy had no time to explain. She looked at Jayden.

  "Do you still have that pocketknife you used to bring everywhere…the one your uncle gave you for your tenth birthday?"

  "Yes," he said with a sniffle.

  "Cut me."

  "What?"

  Amy reached out her hand. "Cut my hand. Just do it."

  "Amy, I hardly think cutti…" Jazmine started, but Amy stopped her.

  "Trust me!"

  Jayden grabbed his knife and folded it out. He brought the blade close to her skin, then slid it on her palm. Amy winced in pain, but it was nothing compared to what was going on in her back right now.

  "What good is that…" Jazmine said, but Amy didn't listen.

  She brought her hand over Robyn's lifeless body and let the blood drip on her wounds, leaving a streak of blood all across her body, making sure each deep wound got a good amount.

  "Why are you…?" Jazmine asked.

  Amy took in a deep breath, hoping and praying she was right. "Wait…and see."

  As they looked at Robyn, the blood began to sparkle in a greenish light, just like it had done on Billie Jean. It grew in size and spread across Robyn's entire body, healing every wound as it touched it.

  Jayden and Jazmine gaped and, frankly, so did Amy since she had seen it happen to Billie Jean, but at that time thought that it was more luck and coincidence than anything else.

  But it wasn't. It really wasn't.

  A few seconds later, Robyn took in a deep gasp and opened her eyes.

  Chapter Fifty-One

  Robyn!" Jayden exclaimed. "You're…you're…but how…?" He chuckled and cried at the same time as I lifted my head and looked at them. At first, I was certain I was dreaming.

  "What's going on? Why are we out here?"

  "The wolf…" Jayden said, tears rolling down his face. "A wolf attacked you and then…I thought I had lost you."

  I nodded, slowly remembering. "Then the other wolf came to save me, I remember it now, there was blood…so much blood, and then there was nothing, but…how?"

  "Amy's blood," Jazmine said. "It saved you. It healed you…somehow."

  She looked to Amy for answers, but she didn't look like she had any.

  "Amy?" I said and looked at her. "How did you…?"

  She shrugged, still holding a hand on the wound in her palm. Then her face changed; her expression became tormented.

  "Are you okay?" I asked and got up, realizing I wasn't even sore where the wolf had hurt me.

  Amy fell to her knees, eyes squinting, torso squirming.

  "Amy!" Jazmine said and grabbed her in her arms.

  "It hurts!" Amy cried. "It hurts so bad!"

  "Where? Where does it hurt?" I asked, panicking.

  "My back, my back it hurts so much!" Amy almost screamed.

  "What's on your back?" I asked as I spotted the bumps on it. "What are those?"

  "They’re tumors," Amy said, crying.

  "I’ve been meaning to…tell you…but…I didn't want you to…worry."

  "Those…are…tumors?" Jayden asked. "But they are…humongous?"

  "And they're…they're growing?" Jazmine said.

  "They are," I said. "They're getting bigger and…bigger…"

  Amy let out a loud scream as the supposed tumors grew sizably, and soon something pierced through her sweater. I let out a little shriek as a huge set of beautiful wings emerged.

  "Amy…you…you…"

  "What is it? Am I going to die?" she asked, torn in pain. "It hurt so ba-a-adly."

  She lifted her head and stood up, looking surprised. "Actually, it doesn't really hurt anymore," she said and moved her back. "Why, I forgot what life could be like without the pain."

  "Amy…you…"

  "I mean, it had gotten to the point where I had learned to live with it and forgotten completely that there could be a life without it. I never thought it would stop again ‘cause it was so constant and just wouldn't stop. But…ahhh what a sensation to be pain-FREE!"

  "Amy," I said. "Amy, you…you…oh, my…"

  Amy stopped talking and looked at me.

  "What?"

  I chuckled. I couldn't help myself. The entire situation was so bizarre and surreal.

  "You're beautiful."

  "What are you talking about?" Amy asked. Why are you all looking at me like that?"

  She looked at all of our faces, the small green eyes in her dragon face flickering back and forth between us.

  "Why are you looking at me like that?"

  "Amy," I said and approached her. "You're…you're a…dragon."

  "What are you talking about?"

  Amy froze, then looked down at her feet and scaly body. Then she let out a loud shriek in utter surprise, while her clawed hands felt her green body and skin.

  "My…I am…I mean…I…"

  "And…you have wings," I said and pointed at them. They were moving in the wind. The light from the streetlamps shone on them and made them glow in a green-blue color, looking like they were covered in silk. The patterns on them looked like beautiful paintings.

  "They're…quite spectacular."

  Amy turned to see them herself, but she only ended up looking like a dog trying to catch his own tail. It made me chuckle.

  "I…I can't believe it," Amy said, obviously baffled. "I mean…what the…heck?"

  I couldn't take my eyes off of adorable Amy until I heard a loud crash behind us and we all turned to look at the wolves that were still fighting and now had turned over a trash can.

  The bigger one of them bit down on the smaller, and it whimpered loudly, then shrunk down. It fell to the ground on its back, and the bigger one could easily have finished it off, but for some reason, it didn't. Instead, it growled loudly while the other one whimpered and crabbed backward away from the cul-de-sac, then turned around and left. The other wolf let out another snarl, then transformed back into a human.

  "Mom!" Jayden shrieked and ran to her. He grabbed her as she fell and helped her walk, supporting her. She was hurt.

  Amy slowly turned human again, her wings sort of settling back into her back, while Jayden helped his mother toward the house. As he did, his older brother Logan came running into the cul-de-sac.

  "What's going on? What happened to Mom?"

  I stared at him, then turned to look in between the houses where I could still see the wolf that had attacked me as it ran off, limping.

  We all glared at Logan, wondering the same thing:

  If the wolf that attacked me was the same that had killed the others, then Logan wasn't the killer after all.

  If it wasn't Logan, then who was it?

  There were still six months to the Halloween Block Party…

  Afterword

  Dear Reader,

  Thank you for purchasing Beauty and Beasts (The Vampires of Shadow Hills #4). This story is becoming so exciting to write. I love these characters so much. I’m still rooting for Jayden and Robyn and sincerely hope they'll make it, but you never know what will happen. Even I don't. We'll have to see what happens in the coming books. And, of course, there are a lot of unanswered questions still. I hope to have them all answered in the coming books.

  Thank you for continuing to read. Don't forget to leave a review if you can.

  Take care,

  Willow

  Books by the Author

  Paranormal Romance/Suspense/Fantasy/Sci-fi Novels:

  Flesh and Blood - Grab your copy today

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our copy today

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  About the Author

  The Queen of Scream aka Willow Rose is a #1 Amazon Best-selling Author and an Amazon ALL-star Author of more than 50 novels. She writes Mystery, Paranormal, Romance, Suspense, Horror, Supernatural thrillers, and Fantasy.

  Willow's books are fast-paced, nail-biting page-turners with twists you won't see coming.

  Several of her books have reached the Kindle top 20 of ALL books in the US, UK, and Canada.

  She has sold more than two million books.

  *LATEST RELEASES*:

  ☞ - Flesh and Blood (Vampires of Shadow Hills #1)

  ☞ - Blood and Fire (Vampires of Shadow Hills #2)

  ☞ - Fire and Beauty (Vampires of Shadow Hills #3)

  Willow lives on Florida's Space Coast with her husband and two daughters. When she is not writing or reading, you will find her surfing and watch the dolphins play in the waves of the Atlantic Ocean.

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  I am Wolf, Excerpt

  The Wolfboy Chronicles

  Chapter One

  I WAS NO MORE than a boy when it happened. Seventeen years old and still living in my native country of Romania. The year was 1940. Those were years of many changes. The Nazis had invaded our neighbors in Poland and caused many problems to Jews in our country as well. Including my parents.

  Being Jewish in Romania had never been easy. Anti-Semitism had thrived for centuries. In Romania it began as early as in 1579 when the sovereign of Moldavia, Petru Schiopul, ordered the banishment of the Jews on the grounds that they were ruining established merchant businesses and for allegedly exploiting the Christian population in order to enrich themselves. That was when it all started.

  Now it was worse than ever. Students formed movements against us at the major universities, organized and financed by the Ministry of the Interior. One such movement became very significant during those gruesome years. They called themselves “The Legion of the Archangel Michael.” The legion formed terror cells and claimed responsibility for the murder of several Jews. Later that movement became known as the “Iron Guard” and was responsible for persecuting hundreds of thousands of Jews in Romania.

  My family was among those persecuted.

  In 1940, we were still a wealthy family living in a small castle in the mountains outside of Bucharest, the capital. Times were hard, even though we had a family fortune. My father had recently lost his job because of his Jewish heritage.

  As German penetration into the Romanian economy increased, a considerable number of Romanian politicians agreed to serve German interests in exchange for directorships in German-Romanian companies. German trade agreements with Romania always demanded the removal of Jews in the branch involved. Up until then, my father had been an influential man. He had held several places on boards of big companies and, despite being a Jew, he was well respected. People would listen to him and his financial advice.

  In the summer of 1940, it was suddenly over. They took his steel company from him. The very company he had built from nothing and made into a huge success, employing thousands of Romanian workers. One day during that summer in 1940, he arrived at the factory and found it had been shut down. All the workers had been sent home, the fence cut down, and all the windows broken.

  The entrance to the building was b
locked. A man from the Iron Guard handed my father a piece of paper stating that the company was closed and the state had taken over the property and factory. For days, my father went to lawyers all over town to try and reclaim his factory and the right to produce steel. Most of them wouldn’t even speak to him out of fear for their lives and their families’ lives, they said. That was when my father knew he was defeated and realized that all there was left now was to protect his own family. So we started cultivating the land surrounding our property in the mountains. Soon we became self-sufficient, and there was no longer any need for us to go into town, which my parents now considered as dangerous. My three brothers, my sister, and I were all forbidden to go back there again. It was too dangerous, they said. But when you’re seventeen, that only makes it more interesting.

  I was supposed to ride into the forest and find wood for our fireplace that day in December when it all happened. My mother needed wood to cook on the stove and heat up the kitchen, where we ate our meals. They had to close most of the castle down during the cold months of winter. They simply couldn’t heat all the rooms, especially because they had high ceilings and walls of stone.

  I really wanted to go find the wood, as promised to my dear mother, and on top of it I was planning on hunting down a few animals, maybe even a deer to feed the family for the next couple of days. But something drew me in the opposite direction. Something, a feeling, a teenager’s curiosity—or maybe just stupidity—made me pull the horse in the wrong direction. I hadn’t been in the capital for months and I wanted to know what was going on.