Werewolf Mage Box Set 1

by Harry Nix

  His tone was level, calm even, but Alex still felt the moment was balancing on a knife-edge. There was just so much she didn't know about this world, and despite talking to Nia about werewolf politics and the things that her father had done, it was an enormous, confusing mess. What was clear was that Jasper had worked to advance the cause of werewolves and despite the fact it seemed his people had been somewhat afraid of him, he was still held in some good regard.

  “He agreed to help us to bring my problem to the table, but then that night we were in a cabin and someone cast a binding spell on it and tried to burn us alive,” Alex said.

  Julius sat silent while Alex told the story, leaving nothing out. Breaking out of the cabin, challenging Jasper out of fury, and April stepping forward to pledge her land. Eric, the mage, declaring it would be a valid challenge and then suddenly finding himself in a fight with Jasper and losing badly until Alex got his teeth in his leg and accidentally cast Purify which had forced a black liquid out of Jasper's body. It appeared it had been hardening his bones and once it was gone, Alex soon killed Jasper, only to have his pack disappear into the darkness with only a few left behind. Only a bare fraction had returned.

  Julius picked up a half-melted ring broken and tapped it on the table as though testing its strength. He used his fingers to straighten it before dropping it in the pile of junk.

  “I had my suspicions, from time to time, that Jasper was, well, not entirely corrupt but corrupted to some degree. Years ago, it was easier, working hand in glove then one day something changed. I got the feeling that instead of both of us trying to push the boulder uphill, that sometimes he was standing on the other side of the boulder, trying to stop me. Have you discovered what the black liquid is?”

  Alex shook his head. “April was looking at it, but I think she needs to take it back to her home, where she has the proper equipment. I presume it's some kind of bone-strengthening potion.”

  Julius stared into the middle distance before picking up a blackened tiara and gently snapping it in his claws.

  “There are other rumors though—leaders who have died and then bled black. Damn mages and vampires, always meddling. There are ways to do it too. Poisons that get inside you and take hold. You should speak to your witch wife about it,” Julius said. He put the broken tiara down and picked up another ring, straightening it with his claws before dropping it again. On Alex's part it felt like someone had taken a baseball bat to his brain again. It never occurred to him that someone could be controlling Jasper. His mind immediately went to Eric the mage and his mate, Alara the werewolf.

  “Have you ever heard of Eric? He was a mage here and had a mate Alara. Could he have been involved?” Alex asked.

  “I met him once or twice. I put him down as an… administrator. One of Jasper's right-hand men, anonymous, and in the background. About as interesting as a chartered accountant,” he said. There was a moment of silence before Alex decided to change the topic. After all, he only knew one alpha, and soon the celebration would begin, so he needed to get as much information out of him as he could.

  “We don't have enough werewolves to hold all our territory. We were attacked by necromancers. I have one of them upstairs right now,” Alex said.

  Julius cringed, momentarily baring his teeth which were sharp and white.

  “You never admit to another alpha that you don't have enough in your pack to control your territory. Don't ever say that out loud,” Julius said.

  He was still picking up bits of broken rings and jewelry and snapping it or straightening it with his claws.

  “Nevertheless, they attacked us, bombed part of the village with silver. How does it work with the emissary and the seat at the table? We say Xavo did it and somehow they get punished?”

  “That's meant to be the idea, and sometimes there are minor punishments along the way; them giving a little to maintain the illusion that the werewolves actually have some power. But the fact is, even if this was reported by Jasper I’m sure it would go nowhere. Even if your prisoner gave the enclave name, they’d simply deny it, and the other enclaves demand a level of evidence that simply doesn't exist. He could give a sworn confession and it wouldn't be enough.”

  “What would you do if you were me?”

  “The younger, angrier me would say kill your captured prisoner and deliver his mangled body back to his enclave as a threat. The older, more mature version of me has a different answer—take him back to his enclave, stand out in front of it, and tear his head off,” Julius said, ending with a growl.

  Alex sat back in his chair, Julius’ sudden violent nature surprising him somewhat. For someone who spoke in Latin and clearly thought on a higher level than most, the fact he was advocating blood and violence was a surprise.

  “Ignore me, ignore that. It’s just when I think about the silver being dusted over the village, it's hard not to get furious. The other approach is to try to use the mage, get every bit information out of him that you can, and then send them back unharmed. But then your next move might still be blood and violence, because what can't be solved with words will soon be solved with swords.”

  There was a rap on the door, and Juno entered without waiting for a response. She nodded to Julius before smiling sweetly at Alex.

  “The celebration is about to begin, may I steal you for a moment?” she asked.

  Although she was all sweetness and light, Alex felt the hackles on the back of his neck rise. Julius obviously felt it too because he gave Alex a look shared between husbands since the beginning of time when their wives went on the warpath. He quickly made his excuses and got out of there. Juno closed the door, and still with her sweet smile on her face looked Alex up and down.

  “Perhaps you can tell me why the necromancer is uncuffed in his room?” she said.

  “Trying to get him to trust me,” Alex said.

  It was cold in the room already, but the temperature suddenly dropped. Juno rested her hand on the table, and Alex saw faint tendrils of cold begin to creep out from it.

  “So, I've been standing up there outside his room, and he's been inside able to cast any spell he wants, able to escape if he wanted, and it’s all so he might trust us—some random teenager from some random necromancer enclave. Meanwhile, we just buried one of our pack, and another one is downstairs unconscious who may never awake. Outside is an entire pack of werewolves who want to kill him, but they can't. All so he can become your friend,” Juno said.

  She still had a smile on her face, which is probably the scariest thing about it. The ice creeping out from her hands had reached the pile of jewelry and began frosting it over. Alex wasn't sure whether he should hug the little witch or make some excuse and get out of there. He tried the third, and probably the dumbest option, which was to talk.

  “I'm going to set him free. His name’s Stephen and he’s just eighteen. He's a disposable foot soldier. But I think I can use him and maybe I can put an end to the attacks, change it. All I need is you to trust me,” he said.

  The frost spilled out across the jewelry as Juno gritted her teeth. Before she could speak he decided that was a good time to hug her, stepping across the room, closing the gap between them, wrapping his arms around her. She was stiff as a board, colder than marble, but after a moment she finally relaxed and the frost began to recede. Juno mumbled something into his fur.

  “What was that? Alex asked.

  She stepped back from him and Alex saw, with alarm that she’d somehow summoned a fireball to her hand without him seeing a spell screen.

  “I said in that case, you're going to guard him tonight all night long until you take him back to Baxter because he can't stay here. Yes?”

  She passed the fireball from hand to hand like it was nothing, although it was crackling, and Alex could feel the immense heat of it.

  “Yes, absolutely. I’ll guard him myself and take him back tomorrow.”

  Juno stared at him for a moment before extinguishing the fireball. Then she stood on
her tiptoes and gave him a kiss before patting him on the stomach and walking out. Alex let out a sigh of relief when she was gone.

  He'd seen the little chaos witch when she was angry, and who knew what spell she had up her sleeve.

  He looked down at the pile of broken jewelry, most of which was covered with frost and the bits and pieces that Julius had straightened with his claws. He understood Julius's position and the rest of the pack too. There was some part of him that found a bloody pleasure in the idea of taking those who would attack them, standing them in front of their home, and dismembering them as a warning, but that was only if he thought of Stephen as one of them. Unnamed. An enemy, and not a person, not a kid. Brought up in an enclave taught to obey and then sent off to die.

  Alex headed outside as the sun began to set, hoping to grab some food before settling in to guard duty for the night. He’d barely made it out the door before Nia came running over.

  “Someone has attacked my father's pack, he’s leaving now,” she said. Alex took off up the hill with Nia beside him. They caught up with Julius, who shifted to hybrid form to speak with them.

  “No, this is my problem to handle, my battle. Stay here and celebrate Bish. I’ll let you know how it goes,” he said. He quickly hugged Nia then clapped Alex on the shoulder before transforming back to wolf and bolting away before either of them could speak. Alex felt the urge to follow, but it was a long trip back to where Julius’ pack was, and Alex still knew the conventions remained. If Julius didn't invite him into his territory, there could be a serious problem.

  “We really need to get a satellite phone of our own. What are the chances the Alpha leaves his pack and then it’s attacked immediately? We should smash the thing to pieces,” Nia said bitterly. Alex wrapped his arms around her, aware that she thought this was all her fault, as she had been the one to contact her father about Bish.

  As they walked back, Alex looked across the village. He couldn't get the thought out of his head why the attack yesterday hadn't been worse. They'd only sent six soldiers and ten drones to dump silver on them. They'd sent ten teenagers to run the drones, the senior mages who’d summoned the dead making their escape.

  Alex could see that it was almost a perfect plan. If they’d just sent one or two other squads of the dead on either side armed with silver bullets, the casualties would have been much worse. Hell, they could have been wiped out entirely. Between bullets and silver dust bombs to pin them down, all it would take is some grenades and fire and they could have been killed down to the last werewolf. So why hadn't they been?

  They arrived back at the village where everyone was setting up for the celebration. Juno waved to Alex and then pointed upstairs at the house. Stephen was still unguarded, and Alex was very aware that any moment werewolves could go up there to murder the young mage.

  He kissed Nia and then with a thousand thoughts racing in his mind went inside and upstairs, shifting into wolf and sitting outside Stephen’s room. The celebration got going and he heard the squeals of children laughing, playing, and shouting Ito cow. Alex stared into the dark and tried to construct a plan that didn't start with murdering every mage alive.

  7

  Alex woke up outside his exploded apartment building. It was early morning, maybe five or so, and there was a chill in the air. He was in boxer shorts, and his feet were a roar of agony. He could also feel that the fishhooks of the Great Barrier had been pulling on him.

  “Seriously, what the hell?” Alex said aloud. He looked down the street where a lone jogger was making her way. He figured it must've been her who’d seen him in wolf form and then the Great Barrier had pulled, the pain of it forcing Alex to transform and come out of whatever sleepwalking nightmare he'd found himself in.

  He looked down at his feet and saw they were bloody and then the pain from his hands hit as well. His nails were cracked and there were smears of blood across his palms. As he stood there, his mind slowly coming back together, the pain began to creep its way up his forearms and legs. The last he remembered was being in wolf form, curled up in front of Stephen's door, the sounds of the celebration outside continuing. He must've fallen asleep and then…

  Alex wasn't entirely sure how far away the village was from Baxter, but he knew it was a decent drive in Boris just to get to the impromptu car park and then a long walk. Had he just run the entire way in wolf form? It seemed impossible but then he reflected that the other times he’d been carrying passengers on his back, Juno or April, on the long trek to the car park. He supposed without passengers, running at full speed, it was possible that he had made his way here overnight.

  The pain in his feet and hands was growing stronger now, so Alex opened up his spell screen, and quickly cast his new and improved healing spell.

  It was strange how it worked now, the healing magic going to the site of the greatest injury with a zap that felt distinctly uncomfortable. The flame lit on his finger, and Alex touched it to his bruised and bloody hand, but the zap jolted right through him down to his feet first, which were far more injured. He watched his natural mana draining away as wounds on his feet were repaired. There was a second zap as the healing suddenly lurched up to his hand and then a third as it snapped up his arm across his shoulders and down to heal the other hand. He let his natural mana drain down almost to the bottom before releasing the healing spell. The pain had significantly subsided, the healing stitching up wounds, removing injuries.

  Now he was feeling better he took a proper look at the rubble of his old apartment building across the road. A temporary fence had been erected around it. When the mages, or whoever it was, had detonated the apartment building, they’d managed to collapse it straight down on top of itself with a precision explosion. All that remained of the apartment building was a pile of broken bricks, metal, and bits of rubbish. Most of it was blackened from the fire. It was quite amazing to see just how small the entire building was when it was smashed into pieces.

  Alex stood there in the chill, searching his memory for what might have happened but as usual, there was nothing there but the deep black. He'd always been a sleepwalker and a sleeptalker but had never been this bad. At most, he had left his bedroom and gone outside, before waking up a few minutes later, but to run miles and miles through the night completely unaware? It was, simply put, terrifying.

  There was also the other question of why it was he was in his boxer shorts. He'd shifted fully dressed, so did that mean at some point in his sleepwalking he'd shifted back to human form, stripped down, and then continued his run? Why would he do that? He still had his shifter charm, which was running low now. Soon he would need to buy another one unless he wanted to start tearing his clothes when he shifted.

  That was just another problem on a long list, all of which could be solved with a giant pile of money that he currently didn't have. Alex looked over the rubble from across the road and tried to work out why his sleeping self had brought him here. The last time he’d gone sleepwalking, Juno and Nia had said it was because he'd been living in Juno's house, not shifting to wolf and not going for a run, and that eventually the wolf would break out and go running itself. But now he'd been living in the village and every day he was in wolf form, out in nature, so why would his wolf run all the way to Baxter?

  Alex saw another jogger approaching. He stepped behind a tree and waited until she passed.

  Maybe it’s later than I think.

  Alex looked around, trying to judge by the sunlight what time it was. Maybe it was closer to six than five and that meant he only had a limited time before the streets were full of people. Already he could hear the sound of cars here and there.

  In human form, his sense of spell was greatly diminished but still the overpowering scent of Baxter itself was there every time he breathed in. Exhaust fumes, plastics, tires. Alex took a quick look around and then shifted to wolf form. Thankfully, the Great Barrier didn't trigger, which meant no one had seen him.

  Howey’s house was actually closer bu
t Alex couldn't think of a good story of why he’d show up in his boxer shorts at the front door, not anything that would make sense, and he knew that Howey and Puzo probably thought he was crazy anyway given how he’d vanished from their lives. So, although it was further away, he started running back to Juno's.

  In his wolf form Alex was fast, but it had been later than he thought. The sky quickly lightened so instead of slipping from shadow to shadow, he was now running in the open daylight. The Great Barrier twinged again and again as people saw a wolf running along the street. The closer he got to Juno’s the worse it got as there were now cars driving down the street and groups of people out for morning walks. He hid briefly in a front yard but was forced to run when a woman looked over the front fence and saw a wolf sitting there.

  He leaped a picket fence then sprinted, jumping between front yards before finally abandoning that and just bolting down the sidewalk at full speed. Eventually, he made it to Juno's, sprinting around the back, opening the small gate in the back fence, and slipping inside. Alex stopped in the backyard, shaking his head at himself, and smiling. He’d spent a while at Juno's, and there was a kind of peace outside. The succulent cuttings he'd taken from Jane's home were all still alive in the garden bed where he had planted them. A few looked like they'd grown, taking root.

  Alex went to the door and found it locked. He checked the windows on the back of the house, and lifted the mat but there was no key, and he couldn't see anything obvious nearby where one would have been hidden. Wondering if the house wards were going to trigger he tested each of the windows until he found the one over the kitchen sink was unlocked. He managed to get his fingers under it and push it up. Carefully, Alex pulled himself up over the windowsill and levered himself inside.

  The window was quite small, though, and he was coming out over the kitchen sink. Thankfully, there were no drying dishes sitting there but it was still awkward. He had both hands on the edge of the sink, tipped at a forty-five-degree angle, pulling himself down. Eventually, he got to a point when he managed to pull one leg in. He was just about to get the other in when a blast of magic hit him with immense force. The window smashed as he was flung sideways and then hit the kitchen wall, stuck on it a foot off the ground. The pressure of the blast was like a scouring wind and his boxer shorts disintegrated off his body.