Limitless

By Monica Millard

Weapon of Mass Destruction. Extinction Level Event. These are words that have been used to describe my powers and they're right. I’m like a runaway freight train with a car load of explosives. I'm terrified if Kaitlyn, my supernatural coach, keeps pushing me, I might unwittingly unleash my powers on my home and everyone I love.

All I want is five minutes alone to make out with Eli, my hot werewolf boyfriend, but something sinister is brewing. Friends are being attacked, one after another and it's my turn to be framed for murder. I must gain control of my powers, and fast, because I might be the only one strong enough to defeat the threat Ailanthus poses to my newly discovered way of life.

If it's a war he wants, it's a war he'll get.

Limitless is the third installment in the Mortal Monsters series.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Monica Millard
• Release date: Oct 31, 2019
• ISBN: 9781370588893

Monica Millard

Monica was born and raised in Alaska. She doesn’t own a dog sled team, but has worked in a place where there are buildings with caged exterior doors to keep employees from being eaten by polar bears.She lives in Wasilla, Alaska with all her critters, some four legged and others that stand on two. She writes Science fiction, fantasy, and Paranormal for young adults.

Book preview

Limitless

Mortal Monsters

Book Three

By Monica Millard

Smashwords Edition

Limitless

Copyright 2019 Monica Millard

All rights reserved.

Discover other titles from Monica Millard

http://analaskangirl.blogspot.com/p/books.html

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Cover image from Depositphoto.com

Also by Monica Millard

Mortal Monsters series

Faceless (book one)

Powerless (book two)

Chosen series

Children of the Gods (A Chosen Novel)

Chosen – A Children of the Gods Short Story prequel

The Fall

The Final Offering

Entertaining Angels Series

Entertaining Angels (book one)

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~ For R & D

While you’ve already crossed the finish line, reached the top of the mountain, I know that you are with me, cheering me on. This and all the books that are still to come, are for you.

Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright

Other Titles by Monica Millard

Dedication

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 Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter One

Eli is standing in the hallway just beyond the entry, close to the bottom of the stairs. He’s waiting for me, hands clasped behind his back. I can feel his buzzing energy, so much stronger than everyone else’s. It jolts me, but in a good way, like a shot of coffee.

I watch him from my vantage point above, on the landing at the top of the stairs. The sight of him still sends a thrill through me, every single time. Makes me feel like there are butterflies alive inside me. Not just in my stomach, but in my veins too, in my heart.

I can’t imagine ever seeing him as the loner in worn, faded, almost grungy clothing that I used to before. I can’t even conjure the picture of that boy anymore.

He’s changed, not just in my eyes, but physically too. In the last few months he’s gotten bigger, since accepting the change. He’s wider, stronger, more muscular. He’s also ditched the faded white tees, replaced by expensive looking, silk button up shirts or soft sweaters. The thick, black cargo pants and leather boots remain though.

He lifts his hand to rub his eye, but a hint of smile appears before it’s covered by the hand. He knows I’m here, watching him. He’s trying to hide his reaction, keep it from giving him away.

I give up my perusal and step onto the first step.

Eli turns, looking up at me. His face goes slack, the smile slipping away. It makes me feel a little like a princess descending the stairs, or maybe a prom date giving the big dress reveal before being whisked off to dance the night away, wrapped in the arms of my date.

Wow, Eli says, barely above a breath. You look… He shakes his head and the smile returns. You look incredible.

I bite my lip, wishing there was no occasion, just me dressing up to see that look on his face when he first saw me. I’m nervous about tonight. I still have no idea why Stefan wants me to be there when he meets your uncle. I shrug, like it’s no big deal, but we both know it is. I wanted to look professional.

Mission accomplished. He moves closer, and since I’m still on the bottom step, we’re a lot closer in height than normal. I’m grateful that my teeth are freshly brushed and that I swished a mouthful of that breath stealing fire water they call mouthwash.

His hands just find their way onto my hips when Mom makes her presence known. The way she’s clearing her throat, you’d think she swallowed a frog.

Eli’s hands disappear and he takes a big step back, putting plenty of space between us. I’m no legal expert, but I’m pretty sure my mother’s constant interruptions any time Eli so much as looks at me are grounds for justifiable homicide.

Ready? he asks.

Definitely.

He heads to the entryway closet, pulls out my coat and helps me into it.

Aren’t you going to eat breakfast? Mom asks, stepping into the hall with us.

I’ve got that covered, Eli says, leaning around me to look at my mom, even though he could probably see her just fine over my head. I’ve had to take care of myself for a while now. That includes cooking. With no one to guide me, my menu is pretty limited. Kaitlyn is teaching me some new recipes. Mackenzie’s my Guinea pig, er… I mean taste tester.

He chuckles when I elbow him in the ribs.

Oh. That’s great, she says, a little too loudly for the enthusiasm to be completely genuine.

I try not to let the forlorn look she’s sporting when I glance back dampen my mood as Eli leads me out to his warm truck.

Eli holds the door open for me and then closes it once I’m settled inside. I slide across the seat and meet him in the middle. Even though we’re officially a couple now, it still amazes me that I’m allowed to sit close to him, rest my head on his shoulder and my hand on his thigh. It all feels so natural, and yet I’m convinced it’s all going to be a dream I’ll wake from soon.

Eli threads his fingers through mine and holds my hand pressed tightly against his thigh as though he’s reassuring me that this, we, are real. Sometimes, I swear he must be able to hear my thoughts with his supernatural hearing, because, too often, it feels like he knows what I’m thinking.

How he maneuvers his truck around my truck and my mom’s one handed is a mystery to me. It’s only February, but winter has loosened its tight clutch on us. No sub-zero temperatures so far this week. In fact, it’s been almost balmy. Which, while I enjoy not having to wear so many layers, it’s actually a bad thing. There are puddles of water sitting on top of snow that’s turned hard and become thick ice.

Even in four-wheel drive, with studded tires, we don’t actually drive down the driveway, we ice skate. Eli squeezes my hand and then lets it go to grip the steering wheel. He’s a much better skater than I am, because we aren’t sideways when we make it to the bottom, but my heart is pounding just the same.

I pull out my phone and send a quick text to Mom.

Driveway is an ice rink. Be careful if you leave. It needs to be sanded. Again.

I’ll ask Marcus if he can have someone swing by and put down some sand and gravel.

Thanks, but you don’t have to do that. I shouldn’t get special treatment. He probably doesn’t have people sand the driveways of any of the other kids at school.

Eli shifts into park, takes my face in both his hands and captures me with those dark eyes of his. I couldn’t protest if I wanted to. You are special, Mackenzie. Even if you weren’t basically the ambassador between Marcus and an entire species, or the most powerful and therefore most threatened supernatural, or his nephew’s girlfriend for that matter, you’d still be special. He cares very deeply for you. You think his protection only extends to threats on your life from supernatural forces? He’ll want you to be safe in your own driveway.

Before I can respond, he kisses me. Soft at first, lips barely brushing mine, but far too quickly, my hands are in his hair and we’re both breathless.

He’s the one to break it, pulling away with a regretful look. His eyes have a hint of a glow to them. It makes my stomach flutter in terrible, wonderful ways.

We’re gonna be late, Eli says, calmer now, but still a little breathless.

I shrug. Who needs school?

He looks like he’s considering it for a second, skipping school to spend the day making out, but then he shakes his head and that one dimple he has appears. You’re a bad influence. Behave.

I pout, but it does no good. He puts the truck back in drive, but waits to pull out onto the road until the runner chick and her son, who are always out on their morning run about the time I leave for school, to cross over the driveway in front of us. We both blush, realizing they probably witnessed our kiss.

The roads aren’t much better than the driveway, with the cycle of melting during the day and freezing during the night that’s happened over the last few days. Everything is glazed in a sheet of dangerous, deceptive ice. Invisible until it’s too late.

Eli slows the truck to a crawl after we fishtail and nearly eat it into a hard packed snowbank. We’re for sure going to be late for school at this pace, but better late than not at all.

Eli slows even further to take one of the several ninety-degree turns on this road.

My heart sinks when the red and blue flashing lights fill the air just over the hill.

The state trooper car looks like it’s just arrived. The driver’s door is hanging open and the occupant is approaching the mangled vehicle slowly. Inching sideways toward it, arms raised in the air out to his sides for balance.

Gooseflesh breaks out on my skin, tightening it unpleasantly in warning when the vehicle jolts and the trooper jerks back.

His hand flies to his radio and he says something frantic into it. He turns back to his car moving more swiftly than before.

Eli rolls down his window just as the truck gives another jolt and my borrowed hearing makes me privy to the sounds of groaning metal and the anguish of mortally wounded creatures, both human and not.

The trooper emerges from his SUV with a rifle.

I’m too busy being horrified by the sounds of suffering to recognize what’s about to happen and I’m not quick enough to bury my face in Eli’s shoulder when I do. The trooper points and the shot silences one set of screams with a final, foggy exhalation rising up into the air. Slowly, it dissipates.

The vehicle stills. The world stills. Silence like no other fills the spaces where breath and life should exist.

The trooper’s radio squawks, something about ambulance in route, as well as fire department.

Stay here, Eli says, turning towards me, gravity in his voice that quiets any argument I might think to offer.

I nod. He kisses me on the forehead and then gets out of the truck.

He approaches the trooper and the scene slowly, hands up and opened. I never realized until now how disarming being the size of a pixie is. At his height, Eli must have to deal with people seeing him as a threat all the time.

He holds his hand out towards the destroyed vehicle. His chest rises and then falls like he’s just taken a deep breath. The driver is trapped, being crushed. I can help with that. I can move the moose.

I can’t see his face, but the tone of his voice, the way he said he could move the moose, makes me think he’s taking a leap, hoping the trooper is in the community, that he’s a supernatural, or at the very least, supernatural friendly.

I could kick myself for not thinking about it before he got out. I could have told him, but then I think of his deep breath. Maybe it wasn’t a leap, maybe he knows too.

The trooper nods and they move toward the truck.

They don’t stand around, staring at it or trying to figure what they are going to do. Eli sticks his head and hands inside the driver’s side door. At least, he sticks them in as far as he can with the moose body blocking it and the buckled metal frame making the opening much smaller than it should be. He slides his hands gently between the body of the moose and the dash, lifting the creature, pushing it, carefully, slowly out through the smashed opening where the windshield once was.

He’s so measured. Every step, every movement though achingly slow, is full of purpose.

I gasp and then cover my mouth to keep from distracting him, when he finally moves the moose enough that he’s no longer blocking the driver’s side window.

The driver is Caleb Kire. Not that you could tell from looking at his face. It’s a mess of colors that aren’t naturally occurring in humans. Purple, blue, but mostly red. It’s his hair that gives him away. It’s light brown, but peppered throughout with streaks of blonde highlights and copper-reds. If I didn’t know him, I’d say he was a surfer bum that just moved to Alaska and the sun bleached effect just hadn’t faded yet, but it’s his natural state.

I find that despite my effort to keep from distracting Eli with a hand over my mouth, I can’t stay in the vehicle, watching, while I can feel the life draining out of Caleb right before my eyes. His energy is barely more than a faint pulse, a trickle, and it’s quickly seeping out of him along with his life blood.

Eli turns to stop me from getting close enough to see the worst of it, but the words die on his lips, frozen, like his outstretched hand. He lets it drop and takes a step back to give me room.

He was probably right to try and stop me. If I weren’t so focused, the scene in front of me, gruesome as it is, after my own ordeal might be too much for me. Caleb is split open at the middle. A jagged piece of torn and twisted metal from his door is piercing his stomach.

I close my eyes and try not to remember the way the vehicle jerked as the moose kicked and flailed. I try not to imagine the way it must have forced that very piece of deathly sharp metal further into him with each twitch. I try not to feel my own scars throbbing. All of it in vain.

Instead of dwelling, I reach in through the broken window and I place my hands on the skin of Caleb’s stomach. He groans and his eyes open. He stares at me, his eyes glassy, but somehow focused enough for me to see him in there.

I don’t take my eyes off of his as I remove the metal from his body with strength and tenderness I’ve borrowed from someone else. I don’t blink when I pour myself into him, lending him my own strength, giving it to him in huge chunks.

I only break eye contact when my own energy finally fails and my eyes flutter and then close.

I hear shouting and feel arms catch me, just as oblivion takes me.

Chapter Two

Someone is standing over me. I don’t open my eyes yet to see who. The sensation of déjà vu is too strong. I’ve been in this position before and opening my eyes did me no favors. So, I wait.

I know you’re awake, a familiar, deep voice says with a hint of amusement.

I open my eyes and am confronted not only with Eli, but with his uncle as well. They are both smiling, but wearing that soft, concerned look that they’re trying to hide behind a smile.

In spite of myself, I feel my face drift into a lazy smile, muscles all working independent of thought or will. Marcus. You’re here. I blink a few times. Wait. Why are you here? My words are muffled by the mask over my mouth.

There she is, a man in a paramedic uniform says. He checks an IV bag, fidgets with the straps on my oxygen mask so I can lower it to talk, and then he gently brushes a piece of hair off my forehead. You gave us quite a scare, young lady. His voice sounds stern, but his eyes say he’s a kitten, soft and cuddly.

He turns to my two towering guardians, bent far over me just to fit into the tight quarters of the ambulance. I’ll give you a moment. Then we really have to go.

Marcus nods and all three men inch out of the back of the ambulance. Marcus and Eli climb back in after the paramedic walks away.

Eli is the first one in, his eyes for me alone. Marcus on the other hand, is staring after the paramedic, watching him put distance between us.

It’s then that I realize I not only can’t tell if the man is a werewolf with super hearing we should worry about, I also can’t tell if he’s super at all.

I look up at Eli, and he must see my panic because he bends down lower, taking my hand gingerly. What is it?

Is he…? I look out the back doors