Moonlight Heart: A Reverse Harem Shifter Romance (The Witch and the Wolf Pack Book 4)

by K. R. Alexander

  I swallowed, opened my mouth.

  “You’re the shadow in a diamond,” Zar said, studying me, his voice almost as soft as mine.

  “More of your wolf slang?”

  He shook his head and kissed my fingers again. “It’s only … how you are.”

  “How … is a shadow in a diamond?”

  “It’s looking past one shock of beauty and shine to see the prism underneath, the soul of the gem. Beyond that, the shadows: the sorrow. What’s wrong?”

  I only stared, still wrapped up in his words, as I so often was by Zar’s words: patterns and rhythms around us in the air.

  And the truth. I was no diamond, but the rest of it… How could I not be sad here? How could I not look into each of their faces and fear losing them? How could I not remain endlessly aware there would be another goodbye?

  Finally, I said, “This isn’t forever, Zar. Again. That’s why I’m sad. There’s nothing we can do about it, though.”

  “Of course there is.” He kissed my hand. “We’ll live in this Moon. Not in dread for the future, or distraction from the past.”

  I nodded, although I wished they would stop. I could no more live in this moment than I could spin a spider’s web.

  “Is it okay for us to visit Atarah? For the book? Can you call on silvers?”

  “Of course.” He straightened up. “I’ll take you. Will you use it for your magic?”

  “I’ll try. My scrying hasn’t been right lately. I’m not sure what’s amiss, but I know stress and haste are a horrible way to go about scrying. I’ll have a long, quiet effort this afternoon before dinner.”

  “You can come here.” Eager. “I’ll tell Merab. She’s our ruosculvoja—it literally means ‘food guardian,’ the top core supervisor of our stores and kitchens—and she’ll give us extra.”

  “Thank you, but Kage is cooking for me and Jason. They’ve been very gracious.”

  Zar gave me a blank look, as if I’d said a motorcycle was going to cook us dinner, but recovered himself.

  “Then I’ll see you later? When Andrew and Isaac are home?”

  “Yes. I’m hoping to take another trip to London tonight if everyone can.”

  “I can. Whatever we need to do.”

  As I stood, he was turning to take up the bag, telling Max he was going to a new home with me, and I’d get him back to his friend, then he stopped. He hugged me.

  “Did you see steam on the rooftops this morning?” he whispered.

  “I missed that.”

  “Sun wasn’t out until late. Everything was cold and soaking and gray. Then Sun kissed us. I watched the field. The steam like a summer mist, then roofs and road and the stones of the barn. Transformed by praise to Sun’s blessings.” He stepped back to look at me again. “That’s how I feel seeing you. Like the roofs and grass and stones. And that’s why we live in this Moon. That’s wolf magic.”

  “Yes…” I spoke slowly as I looked back into his eyes. “I believe it is.”

  Chapter 8

  Zar, bringing Max in his tote bag, wrapped in a blanket inside to protect the bones, led me to the center of the trailer park and a white home with charcoal trim. Like the outlines in a coloring book. The door was red. Zar knocked with a silver crescent moon knocker.

  We waited, then he said he’d try to turn her up later if I wanted to take Max back with me for now.

  We were just starting away when we spotted Atarah approaching on the path.

  “Afternoon, Eleazar.” She smiled. “And Cassia. I just heard you’d returned to us. Moon bless and guide your steps. May we help you?”

  She wasn’t as old as Diana, but middle-aged, with a strong, vivid energy about her. This was the sort of wolf I felt should have been able to lead our investigation. I knew she was also a scholar. Yet the silvers were needed here at home at a time when the whole pack was in danger and living in fear. So many complications to their performing their own investigation was one reason I’d returned.

  “Thank you, elder,” Zar said. “We’re looking for the Blood Tome, if we may?”

  “I’d like to use it for a spell,” I said. “To scry with it.”

  “Of course. Come in.” As she walked up to us by the door, Zar met her to kiss her hand, then touched his brow and chest with the first fingers of his left hand and nodded his head. It was the vow, the silent form of the wolf prayer and commitment to their goddess, Moon. Offering the sign of the vow to a silver must be a pledge to the leaders of the pack as it was to deity.

  Atarah let us inside to a space that, like Zar’s room, was full of books. I was pleased to see she also had a laptop computer and many touches of the modern mundane world. A blender and protein powder on the counter. A meeting space set with inviting chairs in a circle around the living room. The walls that were not covered in bookshelves were covered in star charts. A huge wheel of the zodiac in tapestry dominated one wall of the meeting room, with low shelves running below it. A telescope on a tripod stood by the door, ready to step outside and stargaze.

  The blue and gold book was nowhere in sight, but Atarah picked up an old-fashioned cookie tin from the table beside her laptop. It was a big, round thing. The kind you’d see at an office party at the holidays, packed full of a dozen flavors.

  She offered this large gift tin, painted in flying reindeer and Santa’s sleigh over a night sky of moon and stars.

  “I’m sure you can take it out for your purposes,” Atarah said. “Though you may wish to ward it. Can you do that?” Cocking her head at me.

  It was only then I realized she wasn’t offering me a nine-month-old cookie. She was offering the book. And how did she know about warding? Was Kage not the only wolf in the Sable Pack curious of the caster world? Maybe a little magic knowledge was expected by the time one reached the level of silver. Yet, was it simply about impressing core and elders for Kage? He hadn’t asked for lore. He’d initially asked if I would teach him to use magic—though, as far as I was aware there was no such thing as a shifter caster anymore than a chicken vampire. Then … perhaps that was why Kage wanted such a thing? Talk about special…

  “Yes,” I said. “I can ward it. But why the packaging?” I took it from her, startled by the weight, even though I’d known what was inside.

  “The biscuit tin seals the tome in metal and, in theory, blocks vampiric charms. Between you and me, I am unsure if this is even true or a superstition.” Looking a question at me.

  “I have no idea. Zar knows a lot more about vampires than I do.”

  “We’d come to the same conclusion,” he said. “I don’t know if it’s true either, but it’s best to be on guard with vampires.”

  “They are psionic,” Atarah said. “A vampire with a connection to this tome may be able to reach out and feel its presence. And may be able to tap into the minds of those around the book. When you take it out of the tin, ward it, and yourself. Perhaps they couldn’t reach you through that. The two energies clash, which is why vampires keep clear of witches and prey on mundane minds.” She smiled at me. “Also why our pack alone could never have even discovered this book.”

  “It sounds like we need your help finding the vampire we’re after in London,” I said. “Any ideas how to?”

  “I’m afraid not.” She glanced at Zar.

  “We think Dieter will be back,” he said to me. “Sometime. Unless something’s happened to him…”

  “There are still vampire hunters in London,” Atarah said. “Throughout history there have been groups and individuals among mundanes who have pursued vampires. It has happened to shifters as well. I’m not aware of any recent activity among such people and the vampires, but my information is also limited.”

  “You think it’s possible Dieter has been destroyed?” My stomach sank.

  “Possible.” She nodded. “But only possible. If there’s any way to find him…”

  “We’ll do all we can. Thank you for this. I’ll let you and Diana know if I have any new information. In the mean
time, I’m going to take a few wolves and go back to the city, tonight or tomorrow.” Considering who I was speaking to, I added, “If that sounds all right to you.”

  She inclined her head. “Our homes are yours and our time is yours. You need only ask. In fact…” With a slight frown. “Where are you staying?”

  “Oh … I’m…”

  “May I offer you a room? I have space here for guests from outside.” She beckoned me down the hall, through the meeting room set as a circle.

  The guest room held a fourposter double bed with no hangings, a wardrobe, bookshelf, towels, and books. The room, in white, silver, and blue, and earth tones of natural wood, was adorned in astronomy and astrology related artifacts: an oil painting of the moon with the shadow of a wolf’s face within it hung over the bed, another of the zodiac wheel with moon phases running around the twelve houses. There were moon and star bookends and books on astronomy and astrology on the shelves.

  “It is at your disposal,” Atarah said as I gazed in. “You may stay here a night or a month, as you have need and your own time permits.”

  I wanted to kiss her hand and show her the vow as well, my own human gestures feeling inadequate. But my mind and actions stammered with my words and I finally just thanked her.

  Chapter 9

  I cast a circle on the living room floor at Kage and Jason’s place, played drum loops on my phone, sat on a blanket, and set out the warded and magical items I had with me. These were not magical items in the sense of singing swords or boots with wings. They were personal things that conveyed my own energy, energy of others, and helped me focus and channel.

  Nana’s ring, the bracelet Zar had given me, necklace and belt from Isaac and Jed, respectively, a power stone I kept on me of rose quartz, my notebook, even my hoodie and my shoes. Plus, visible only to me, my spirit animal companion, the red-eyed tree frog. Here was my own presence reflected in objects that worked with me in daily life.

  The ring I kept on my finger to feel. This was my most powerfully magical item as it had been worn and used in spellwork by four generations of witches. It linked me to their souls and strength.

  I opened the bag to reveal brown edges of poor Max’s bones. The body had been incomplete—one arm, torso, head. What had happened to the rest?

  I warded the bones now that I was in the mind of it from Atarah’s warnings, then warded myself and the cookie tin before opening this to reveal the old, blue and gold book. Warding the book, I felt no resistance, nothing dark about it: simply a book.

  Feeling better, stronger in my own purpose, I relaxed with these things into the trance.

  Only one distraction kept popping into my head this time: Kage’s confession of love at first sight—no barrier to kidnap—and a desire to learn magic. To grow his own knowledge of the magical community? To one day teach pups about casters? Noble, wise; yes. But had he been telling the truth? Who was he really trying to impress?

  With an effort, I cleared my mind, followed the drum beats, and I found my own meditation grove. Now, though, it was moonlit, filled with the rushing of a waterfall.

  I walked through the grove until I reached the bones of Maximilian Walkenhorst. In his energy, I sought the image of Dieter—his World War One combat buddy.

  Two young men shivered in a muddy crater in the ground, watching over the top for a chance to crawl out as machine gun bullets flew over their dark steel helmets and shells crashed behind them into the trenches of their comrades. One carried a rifle fixed with a bayonet, the other a revolver, both wore gray uniforms covered in mud, and both looked pale as chalk below all this darkness.

  One shoved the other, pushing him out first. There was fast shouting in German, hardly audible above the din. One was ordering the other out, the officer with the handgun: angry, demanding. The other would not go. At last, the officer stepped back and held the revolver up, aiming into the rifleman’s face.

  He climbed out. Then everything exploded.

  Dieter, the hunched, withered husk of an animated corpse, reclined in his heap of collected human clothes and rags in his thrown room of the abandoned bomb shelter below London.

  He leered at me in the glow of the flashlight and flicked out his tongue over black gums, through the space between his sharp, yellow fangs where he had no teeth left.

  “Mind the gap,” he said with a hiss of a laugh.

  Show me the steps to where he is now.

  Dieter crouched in a rainy London alley behind a nightclub, music pounding into the dark street like the pulse of the city. The desperate men and women approaching him for one of the baggies of white powder could not see what he looked like through his own charming shield. He was only a little old man in a rain coat, handing out bags like party favors. For each bag, Dieter took bottles of red liquid. Occasionally, someone would have none to give and offer cash. Dieter took this. And also pushed back their sleeve to press his mouth around a waiting wrist.

  The steps to Dieter tonight. Where is he?

  Darkness. A pure dark as there had been that night in the castle with Kage and Jason.

  In my mind, I walked through it and turned on a flashlight. There was Dieter, shuffling ahead down the passage of the bomb shelter. He looked over his shoulder, face screwed up at the light.

  Mind the gap. The hiss came in my ears, inside my head, and I jumped.

  It took a minute to find the trance again and scry with the book.

  Clear intention.

  Clear action.

  What did I want from the book?

  Show me the way to a translator. Show me someone who can reveal the secrets of the Blood Tome to us.

  Instantly, I saw it. In the vision, I felt a rush of my own confidence returning. This was how scrying had always been for me before. Not a jumble of darkness and mucky images of blood and burning cities. Clear, complete, as if I stood before the manor house in the flesh.

  The classic English country manor sat in a lush, sprawling emerald landscape, hidden somewhat by seeing it at night. Yet this made it only more gothic and spectacular as the grounds were lit in pathway lights and the moon glowed richly from above. Inside was also lit. Not the disturbing pitch dark castle with the power cut.

  The windows were golden, inviting as the decadent aromas of roast meat and exotic spices drifting out. And lavender. A great lavender grove and lavender smells filled the air. This was warm and dry, the door opening as I walked up, perfuming every breath with summer magic of cookouts and fields of flowers.

  The mage inside offered me his arm. I hear you have a book that needs translating?

  You will help us?

  If I can.

  It appears we will be meeting for dinner.

  You are always welcome.

  I hope you don’t mind cooking for an army.

  My staff will see to it. The chance to study a real vampiric record? You are the one doing me the favor.

  How do we find you? Do you know Broomantle? I opened my palm on a slip of paper upon which was written Richard Craigson’s email address, organizer of the event I had attended. You know Richard?

  Yes. I will get in touch.

  How? You are part of my scrying. Your waking self will not remember this conversation.

  He smiled, squeezed my hand, then pressed the paper to his own temple where it vanished.

  It will come to me in a dream. He winked. And when we meet in the flesh, I fully expect deja vu.

  I laughed. I look forward to explaining it to you. I’ve seldom had such a vivid conversation in a scry. Good to feel strength in my own powers returning. I’d been wondering if I was losing clear scrying for a while there.

  Don’t doubt yourself. Or you will fail. Know I am waiting. And I’m sure we’ll find a way to meet face-to-face very soon.

  I will. Thank you. I started away, then looked back with a smile. Dinner smells wonderful.

  You must meet my chef. There is nothing to come out of this kitchen not magnifique—kissing his own fingers—if I do say s
o myself.

  I can’t wait.

  I walked back down the perfectly manicured path through little lights and tall hedges, feeling weightless in my step, those heavenly aromas still wafting over me.

  A mage, a proper older mage who knew about Blood Tomes and scrying and who would be a sounding board and offer advice…

  Even the idea of it filled my whole being with joy. Yet I wasn’t quite that innocent.

  You haven’t the faintest idea where, or if, this person really is. Meet first. Celebrate second.

  I turned my steps to my grove and the waterfall, meaning to seek out Nana for a chat. It had been a long time, yet she was usually there guiding me, showing me the doors that I need only open to find my way.

  Instead of Nana, Isaac stood waiting for me at the edge of the waterfall.

  Scrying and journeys and vision quests can be like that.

  Nana used to call them “vision questions” because she said the best ones both answered and asked.

  I walked into Isaac’s arms and he held on tight as the water rushed down in white sheets beside us.

  After a long time, as my heart pounded with intensity of a love that left me light-headed, Isaac took my hand and led me behind the waterfall.

  The cave here was not dark and wet and noisy with the spray of water, but a gentle spot of shimmering lights and star dust and glittering creatures that lived within rock and water. I thought at first they were simply lower world spirits come to greet us—helpers of the natural world. Then I saw the great, liquid eyes, the shimmery wings, the changing patterns. The faie. The elementals.

  I had never seen them like this—close and choosing to make contact. Never even in a scry.

  I looked to Isaac, but he was separate from me now, so I could hardly see him. Only there to guide me to this place, not a part of this next step. I moved on, opening my hands to them, offering a greeting and thanks for gracing me with their light.

  Still, they came forward, not shying away. Their beauty and nearness took my breath.