A Howl Lot Of Wolves : A Paranormal Women's Fiction Novel (A Mackenzie Mystery - Book One) Read online

  A Mackenzie Mystery

  A HOWL LOT OF WOLVES

  By

  M L BRIERS

  Copyright © 2021, M L Briers

  All Rights Are Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced whatsoever without written permission of the author, except for brief exerts in reviews. Any unauthorised reproduction or distribution of the material herein is illegal and may result in criminal proceedings. No part of this book may be scanned, uploaded to the internet or distributed via electronic or print without prior consent.

  Note from the Author;

  All names, places, and incidents contained herein are purely fictional and have no basis in actual events or linked to actual Humans, Witches, Vampires, Werewolves, Lycans, Werebears or persons living, dead or undead.

  Copyright © 2021, Cover Design by; [email protected].

  Table of Contents

  A Mackenzie Mystery

  A HOWL LOT OF WOLVES

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT

  CHAPTER ONE

  ~

  “Hey, Lucy, you got some explaining to do!”

  Melanie Mackenzie jumped like a cartoon cat and dropped the half-slice of toast she’d been holding in her hand at the sound of the loud voice, Desi Arnaz’s voice that her best friend, Kayleigh, had somehow programmed into her phone. It went off every time she received a call from her mother. She didn’t know how she’d done it, so she didn’t know how to remove it, and Kayleigh wasn’t telling.

  “Hey, Lucy, you got some explaining to do!” He bellowed again.

  Wouldn’t you know it? The toast had landed butter side down in between her sock-clad feet, and she rolled her eyes at the thought of adding cleaning that up to her morning chores before she left home.

  Kenzie, as she was known to her friends, cursed four times because one wasn’t enough, two didn’t feel right, and three could have been classed as calling on the spirits. She didn’t want to call the spirits just to curse them off – that would be bad in karma terms – and her week had already gone to the dogs, and it hadn’t even reached the weekend yet.

  “Hey, Lucy, you got some explaining to do!”

  “Seriously?” Kenzie sighed and reached for the phone and the woman who loved to make her life a living hell.

  Bright and as chirpy as nobody should be in the morning, her mother immediately started with the questions. “You’re still coming today?”

  “Yes, I’m still coming.”

  “Good because your grandmother is itching to see you, and she isn’t getting any younger.”

  “No, but she’s chock full of herbs and spellwork that she’s basically embalmed at this point.”

  Angela Mackenzie ignored that. Selective hearing, just like Gran. “You’re packed already?”

  “I’m packed already.” She licked the butter from her fingers and downplayed the fact that she’d rather face the hounds from hell than visit with her mother and grandmother.

  Needs must, and it had been a while since she’d been back – two months after the breakup of her marriage when her ex, Todd, had decided the grass might not be greener on the other side of the fence and had come crawling, or slithering on his snake belly, and had expected her to welcome him with open arms.

  Oh sure, like that was ever going to happen. But Todd being Todd, he’d persisted to the point where she’d escaped medium-sized town life and had sought refuse with her mother.

  Why? Because there was no way in Hades that he was brave enough to pursue her there.

  It had done the trick, and by the time she’d run back home screaming with the madness that was her family, he’d moved on to another victim.

  Her mother’s voice dragged her back to the moment and away from the warm and fuzzy feeling of how her ex’s life had gone from bad to down the toilet and flush. “You’re staying for the week?”

  “Staying for the week.” Kenzie rolled her eyes and winced at the thought. She’d have preferred to keep the date vague just in case she decided to bail, but her mother had pinned her down, and she’d confirmed.

  A whole week back home in small-town boring-ville with her family – what wasn’t to love?

  “You’ve told your boss?”

  Ugh! Did it ever end? “Ma, I’m a grown woman. I told my boss.”

  That wasn’t exactly true, she had asked for time off the daily grind of working at Pete’s bar and grill, doing the books, running the kitchen, serving the customers, and he’d said no, so she’d told him to shove his job and had left.

  On the bright side, she’d just been paid; on the dark side, she’d have to grovel for her job back when she returned. But it was Pete, and he’d give the job back to her in a heartbeat because he couldn’t keep staff in the sawdust and eyeball bar that had become a haunt for bikers and had scared off the normal customers, and nobody could cook the books like she could.

  “You can remember how to get here; I mean, it’s been a while?”

  Guilt trip time. “I have a map,” she said, not giving into her mother’s particular brand of sarcasm and matching it with her own.

  “You’ll be here for dinner?”

  “I’m not crossing my heart and hoping to die on that hill, but I assume around that time,” Kenzie said, although dying on a hill might be preferable to spending a week with her mother.

  “Don’t talk about dying before a road journey – it’s not good karma,” her mother scolded, and she could imagine the scowl she’d just managed to produce on her mother’s face.

  Kenzie considered that an early point to her and chalked it up on the little tally board in her mind. Her mother disapproved of almost every choice she’d ever made in her life, and she wasn’t afraid to rub it in when those choices had gone wrong.

  “I gotta go, Ma, or I won’t make it for dinner.” She didn’t wait for a reply and another question – like was she wearing good panties just in case?

  Her mother drove her nuts, and she was about to be in control of a deadly weapon on the long drive home. Mowing down innocent pedestrians wasn’t on her to-do list for the day, so don’t drive mad or crazy was the best way to avoid that.

  Everybody’s mother drove them nuts at some point in their lives, but Kenzie’s mother had managed to perfect it to an art form.

  One whole week – yikes, she thought, and not even time off for good behaviour.

  ~

  “What did u do to your hair?” Angela Mackenzie, short, rounded, and judgemental, stood at the top of the porch steps and looked down on her daughter as she rolled her suitcase toward the house.

  “Washed it,” Kenzie replied. She stopped at the bottom of the stairs and took a breath for what would be
the last moment of freedom for a week. Then she yanked the suitcase from the ground and started up the stairs.

  “Still a smarty pants, and at your age, and what’s with the block fringe, are you five?”

  “Sometimes feels that way,” Kenzie muttered.

  In truth, she’d probably gone as far as she could go without feeling the need to bolt for freedom like a racehorse on steroids. She’d nearly turned back on the road about a thousand times, but her playlist of songs that blasted out in the small confines of the car, and singing at the top of her lungs, had distracted her for the most part.

  “We should go to Maureen’s.” Her mother looked hopeful.

  Kenzie stopped on her short climb to eye her mother with horror. “I only just got here; can we save the torture session for tomorrow?” Kenzie asked, and a bright smile that felt like a strain to hold in place.

  Angela put her hands on her hips and cocked just the left eyebrow at her daughter. “You love Maureen’s…”

  “When I was ten,” Kenzie said. “I like my hair, and I don’t need the town butcher…”

  “Beauty technician,” Angela corrected her.

  Kenzie snorted. “Scissor sister with attitude, to give me a snip and fluff,” she informed her. “I don’t do fluff, and it’s not the eighties.”

  Angela eyed her daughter from head to toe, and the scowl slowly descended. “You look like you’re auditioning for a gothic movie,” she said with a level of disapproval that Kenzie was used to, but not lately.

  “You don’t like it?” Kenzie asked, and fake modelled the outfit that she’d chosen, especially for her coming home day.

  Black ankle boots with buckles on the side, black jeans, a deep purple bodice top, and a beaten-up leather jacket that she’d found in a second-hand store and loved to death completed her outfit.

  Maybe the black hair cut into a block fringe and plated on either side of her head was a bit much, but it went with the jet black eyeliner and lashings of grey eye shadow and thick black lashes. She was a rebel without a clue, and usually, she would have toned it down, but she needed to look like she could kick a biker’s backside at work without her magic, and she loved to torment her mother.

  Angela Mackenzie had seen it all before, well, maybe not this rebellious incarnation, but something or another over the years. If there was one thing her daughter was good at, it was trying to pull her chain. But, she gave as good as she got. “Depends if you’re dating a vampire or not.”

  “Well, there was this one guy,” Kenzie said and snapped on a bright grin. “But, I’ll leave that story for after dinner. The truth was, Kenzie wouldn’t have dated a vampire if her life depended on it – have one as a friend – but nothing more. Her mother didn’t need to know that.

  “What am I going to do with you?” Angela asked, but it was rhetorical.

  There wasn’t anything she could do. Her daughter was a rebel and always would be – and it hadn’t changed when she’d been married. But then she’d warned her not to marry Todd the Toad, and look how well that had worked out.

  “Feed me a homemade apple crumble and frosted super-sweet cream,” Kenzie said, and when she smiled, there were those dimples that her mother loved.

  “Deal. But you’ve got to promise to eat your dinner after,” Angela frowned, and Kenzie offered her mother another diabolically adorable smile. Under all that makeup and attitude, there was still her little girl – forty-six years old and still a handful of dynamite ready to go off. “Let’s go see your grandma.”

  “I didn’t get my tetanus shot,” Kenzie replied and slapped her forehead.

  “I heard that, Melanie.” The family matriarch called from somewhere inside the house and made Kenzie chuckle.

  Kenzie leant into her mother and dropped her voice. “Other peoples’ grandmas’ at least have the good graces to go deaf in their old age,” she whispered.

  “Unlucky for you,” Grandma June called.

  Kenzie rolled her eyes and sighed. “How does she do that?”

  “It’s…” Angela allowed a slow, teasing smile to grace her lips. “Magic,” she added, and there was a little sparkle of mischief in her mother’s eyes that Kenzie knew well.

  One of these days, she was going to get a look at the Grimoire that her grandmother had hidden so well over the years that even Kenzie couldn’t find it – but she’d given it her best shot.

  CHAPTER TWO

  ~

  Dinner was fantastic, and Kenzie was stuffed to the brim with her mother’s cooking. That was the big upside of coming home; the downside was it was – home.

  Small town, small ideas, and nothing much ever happened. It was probably why Kenzie had been classed as a hellraiser when she was a teenager, she never could stay out of trouble, but really, she was just trying to liven things up in a dull world.

  Kenzie stood at the kitchen window, washing the dishes by hand. Her mother never believed in having such a thing as a dishwasher in the house, let alone any ‘new-fangled technology,’ which was probably a good thing, or Kenzie might have been low-jacked and watched every moment of every day.

  Still, she was happy with her work. At her house, she tended to save up all of the plates, cups, and bowls in the sink and do a massive dish wash when she’d run out of things to use. At least here, there would be a bowl when she needed one.

  Kenzie stared out of the window at the back garden. Apple trees, roses, and lavender; the scent carried on the breeze and in through the open window, and no matter where she was, those smells always reminded her of home.

  Safe, boring, home, where life went slower than a snail in the midday summer sun. She’d stood there a million times over in her childhood and wished for something crazy to happen, and it never had.

  The sound of a chainsaw ripping to life startled her from her memories and made her jump in place. The slippery plate in her hand dropped back into the soapy water, and it splashed back over her. She let out a curse that would have turned a nun white with shock – or maybe not so much nowadays.

  “I heard that!” Grandma June called from the other room as her mother padded into the kitchen on sock-clad feet to see what all the fuss was about.

  “When did you get neighbours?” Kenzie asked, confused. She hadn’t seen another house in the area as she drove up, but then she hadn’t really looked. Her childhood home had always stood alone on the edge of town, and she’d been tired from her drive and glad to pull up outside.

  “We don’t have neighbours, well, we do, but not neighbours-neighbours,” Angela informed her.

  Kenzie scowled. “Then you’ve got an escaped lunatic with a chainsaw on the loose. I’ve seen a horror movie like this.”

  “Well, at least you’re dressed appropriately then.” Her mother smiled.

  Kenzie’s chin almost hit her chest and her mouth parted, but her mother’s witching finger was under it in an instant to snap it back into place with a click of her teeth. “One point to you,” she said with a smirk.

  “You’re forty-six going on seventeen, do you know that?” Angela asked as she tilted her head to one side and her eyebrows tried to reach her hairline, as the weathered lines on her face smoothed out a little.

  “A second childhood, I think I earned it,” Kenzie replied. “But am I the only person here worried about Mad Max with the buzzsaw?”

  Grandma June took a slow walk into the room and snorted a chuckle. “Nothing to be worried about; it’s just hunky Harley.”

  “I know the sound of a Harley, Gran, and that’s not it,” Kenzie informed her.

  “I’ll bet you do,” Grandma June said, and the light of amusement shone in her eyes. It was like the elder always knew what was going on, even when she hadn’t been told. Sometimes that was creepy. “But that’s not a thing; it’s a person.”

  “I’m pretty sure it’s a person wielding a saw,” Kenzie replied.

  “That’s because your Grandmother keeps finding branches for him to cut down so she can keep him around. The hunky
moniker isn’t just for show.” Her mother cocked an eyebrow at her grandmother.

  “Way to go, Gran,” Kenzie said, impressed by her grandmother. “Oh, I gotta see the guy who got Grammy to swoon.” She headed for the backdoor.

  “It’s not swooning; it’s lusty wishful thinking that she still had her youth,” her mother said, but Kenzie was already gone, eager to see the old man who had caught her grandmother’s eye.

  Perhaps there was a little fun to be had at home after all. Maybe Kenzie could do a little matchmaking.

  Kenzie scanned the tree line and followed the sound of the saw. She spotted a ladder and followed it upward, but all she could see was a pair of work boots and the bottom of his legs.

  Kenzie couldn’t wait for the guy to finish and climb back down, so she started across the well-manicured lawn and headed in his direction. She’d help loves young dream along by introducing herself and asking him in for a drink and some of her mother’s apple crumble – that ought to seal the deal – and if it didn’t, she was sure she could work her magic in other ways.

  What was the worst that could happen? Grammy drooling down her chest would be a sight to behold.

  “Hello,” Kenzie called, and she stopped dead in her tracks when a large branch crashed down in front of her. “What are you nuts?” she snapped and jumped back.

  Apparently, the old guy wasn’t all there in the brains department, but truth be told, that might just help seal the deal with Grammy.

  The sound of the saw died, and Kenzie looked up just in time to see a head and shoulders poke out from between the thick leaves. Kenzie’s heart stopped and started with a jolt to her ribs.

  Hunky Harley was right – but that was no senior citizen – that was a grade-A, sex on a stick, glossy magazine looking guy in his late forties looking down at her with a curious stare – a bit like she was tree fungus, and he couldn’t tell which species.