by Harry Nix
He felt a little bad about doing it. The girl was shaking like a leaf.
“What was my name?” Alex said.
“It's… it’s… it's Alex. Alex Lowe,” the girl said.
“And what's your name?” he said in a softer tone.
“Harmony Fenwick.”
Alex stood there for a moment, knowing that a fire was burning upstairs and perhaps even now the police and the fire brigade were coming. He knew the spell preventing the sounds from getting out wasn't Juno's but who knew the source of it and when it would break.
There was a worry floating through his mind – what would happen to Harmony when she went back to the main Corvus compound? Somehow he didn't think that mages who got off on pain and torture would be the most forgiving people.
“It’s not a good idea to stay a pain mage, you understand?” Alex said.
Harmony nodded, finally wiping away the last of her tears.
“What I'm saying is that after you tell them, go find another enclave, go find different magic,” Alex said, wondering why all of a sudden he was bothering.
Harmony nodded again and Alex felt a great indecision inside him, like he was possibly sending this girl off to her death.
“Can I please leave now?” she said.
Alex nodded and the girl bolted, rushing past Juno and up the stairs. Juno was still out of it. He put her over his shoulder and went back up the stairs. The fires were spreading but Alex took a moment to grab as many dropped wands as he could hold in one hand, before heading out the gate.
As soon as he stepped out of the bubble the sound of the spreading fire vanished as well as the scent of blood and burned flesh.
Alex took a quick look around, hoping he could see Harmony, maybe tell her to stop, and he’d find some other way to send a message. But she was well and truly gone. He did see Boris, parked in an alleyway, so he shifted to his human form, stuffing the wands into his bag and then carried Juno over.
He found the keys in her pocket. After buckling her into the passenger seat he took off through the dark, heading for Juno’s.
He was almost there when he heard the whoop of the siren and saw a flash of blue lights behind him. Alex pulled into the driveway and the police car came to block him in. Hoping he wasn’t about to get shot, Alex got out of the car. He quickly glanced down at his clothes and saw there was no blood. They’d been hidden by the shifter charm during the massacre.
“Alex Lowe, good evening,” Monroe said as he got out of his car, as though I'd they just come upon each other upon a delightful moonlight walk.
Alex walked over to him. He was in his human form and even with his diminished sense of smell he caught a new scent, the closer he came to Monroe.
Magic he thought, and with a sudden intuition cast flame finger directly in front of Monroe. The Great Barrier didn't pull.
“Yeah, I get it, you're the werewolf mage. Put that away before someone sees you,” Monroe said in a gruff tone. Alex canceled the spell and then looked him up and down. He appeared to be a man in his fifties but what was he really?
“So what are you?” Alex asked.
Monroe scratched the back of his neck. “Didn’t anyone tell you that's a rude question to ask?”
“I'm kinda new at this whole supernatural thing. It’s only been a few weeks.”
“What do you mean a few weeks? Haven’t you been a werewolf your whole life?”
“Nope. There was some kind of spell on me so I didn't know. Then I shifted, and suddenly I had magic,” Alex said.
He became aware that he was giving away all the secrets. There was something so comfortable about Monroe. It was easy to talk to him with his kind of comfortable sleepy grandpa demeanor. Alex shut his mouth and then crossed his arms as if to try to make a barrier to remind himself not to say anything incriminating.
“Were you just at the Corvus outpost?” Monroe asked. What Alex didn't answer he shook his head.
“I know you were because I saw you, after Juno went in with a head full of fire. Do you want to explain why she did that?”
Alex found the urge to answer almost overwhelming. He wanted to set this record straight.
It's a spell Alex thought.
He cast Know Thyself. There was indeed a spell working on him but it was question marks. Monroe hadn’t told him the name so it didn’t have one.
“Whatever it is that you've cast on me you need to stop it right now,” Alex said, letting the growl into his voice.
Monroe chuckled and then waved his fingers. A small trickle of gold dust fell from them. The compulsion to talk vanished, as did the question marks from the list of active spells.
“I'm a fae, or fairy, but we prefer fae,” Monroe said. They stood there looking at each other for a moment before Monroe spoke again. “We found the Bronson's. Both dead and clothes muddy. To the normals it will look like they were kidnapped so the apartment block could be blown up. But you and I know the necromancers took them so they could track you.”
Alex had heard a similar story from Stephen, the young necromancer they’d captured. His mind suddenly leaped across to wondering if Howey and Puzo were at risk now. Would they be executed and brought back from the dead just to hunt him down?
“So anyone who knew me is at risk?” Alex asked.
Monroe shook his head. “It's a very short-term thing from what I understand. Provided you don’t live with them, or beside them, they can’t be used that way.”
They stood there in silence, Alex realizing that Monroe was using a technique on him, trying to get him to fill the awkwardness.
Despite the fact there was no spell on him compelling him to trust Monroe, Alex felt like he could.
“Bailey's dead. You know him?” Alex said.
“The pawnbroker. I heard his shops were empty and seared clean. Do you know who did it?”
Alex told him about what he had found, Bailey tortured and pinned on a spike. Monroe wasn't writing anything down but kept nodding and sometimes gritting his teeth.
“So that explains why Juno went after Corvus, being the most likely to torture,” Monroe said. Alex nodded and then just let it all out in a rush. The blood golem, the missing werewolves, the attacks, the necromancers. He glossed over drugging and eventually killing the mercenary but said that a dying mage had given the name.
“That was you at the mall with the silver everywhere and the screaming normals?” Monroe said.
“I was meant to be meeting with the head of Xavo. I got Henry Markovic instead. We talked and then someone attacked. I don’t think Henry was behind it, as far as I know.”
“Wherever you go, problems follow. You notice that?”
Alex felt a small burst of anger, partially because Monroe had nailed some of his own thoughts.
“I'm not causing this. The mages back off and I’ll go live my life in the middle of nowhere.”
“I heard there was a change in one of the packs. You have some new territory... in the middle of nowhere.”
Alex nodded, but didn't answer otherwise.
Monroe lowered his voice and stepped closer. It was only then that Alex noticed he had a stain on his shirt, a small sticky handprint from a child.
“The mages and the vampires have been working together for as long as anyone can remember and anyone who is not a mage or a vampire gets destroyed. So, personally, I'm glad that Corvus outpost is gone. You need to watch out now kid. You fight one of them and the rest can get pretty angry,” he said.
Alex wasn’t quite sure what to say so he stayed silent.
“What happened to your eyes anyway? They’re glittering,” Monroe said.
“It’s a long story,” Alex said. The tiredness was catching up on him.
“It always is,” Monroe said. He got back in his car and then drove away without another word, leaving Alex standing out on the street wondering what exactly the hell had just happened.
Alex finally gathered himself, went back to Boris and retrieved Juno and his bag before going inside.
The lounge was still cold. The television was partially frosted over but most of the ice had receded. Alex dumped the bag of wands on the table and carried Juno to the shower fully clothed. It was finally under the warm spray that the little witch stirred, sleepily opening her eyes as Alex scrubbed the blood off her clothing.
He began to undo her buttons to get her out of the bloody clothes.
“You’re cute so we can if you want to but I'm just super tired so you're gonna have to do everything,” Juno murmured, throwing her arms around his neck. She kissed him on the side of the neck but then fell asleep again.
She didn’t wake up again, not even through him drying her off and laying her on the bed.
Alex laid down beside her, feeling the lure of sleep calling. It was hard to believe he was back in this bed again. The intervening time was like something out of a horror movie.
As he dropped off to sleep his last thought was of Harmony. He hoped the scared teenager would be okay.
23
Alex padded through the forest with Juno sitting on his back loudly eating from a bag of chips.
He wouldn't say she was back to her old self, or entirely happy, but overnight she’d recovered somewhat, even cracking a few jokes here and there. In the morning they'd gone to the Grease Trap and had breakfast before visiting a variety of magical shops to offload the rings and wands in exchange for cash.
They’d bought a magical defense ring for a breathtaking sum and Alex was already was working on copying across the gibberish code, hoping later he’d be able to work out how to edit it so it was stronger. They’d also bought a few more protection rings and at the last minute had kept a wand that fired bolts of electricity, so Alex could examine it.
Juno had floated the idea that they should start their own shop as a good way to get access to magical items and various spells so Alex could study them. Alex wasn't sure about the idea but Juno had good logic behind it.
They’d talked about the hearts and minds that they needed to win and Juno's position was that running a shop where mages could bring in rings and wands and have them strengthened for low prices would win him a lot of goodwill, in addition to making connections. After all, it was becoming clear that not every mage in an enclave thought the same way.
Despite buying the magical defense ring they still had a decent wad of cash. Alex deposited some of it into Howey’s bank account to help out with the rent and they took the rest back with them. He had to work out how much food a pack twenty-strong ate and then see how much money he needed to keep it all running.
With everything they’d had to do in the morning, it was now mid-afternoon with a reasonable amount of walking ahead of them.
As he walked and Juno crunched chips, occasionally passing him one, Alex found his mind straying back to Harmony. Hopefully they hadn’t shot, or rather, tortured the messenger.
Thinking about her led him to think about the attack on the Corvus outpost itself and Juno. They hadn't discussed it at all; not her leaving her home, the frost in the lounge, nor her seemingly unstoppable magic power literally tearing mages in half.
Juno’s magic went up and down of its own accord but it also seemed connected to her emotional state. She’d become enraged and her magic rose to the occasion. It almost seemed to Alex like the magical version of going wild.
But Alex was staying silent about it. If Juno wasn't ready to talk he wasn't going to ask, at least not yet.
They continued marching along, Juno soon finishing a bag of chips. Alex had grown tired of copying the gibberish code from the magical defense ring and instead had returned to his homebrew fireball spell.
It was longer than his homebrew healing spell and he felt like he was close but not quite. He had the bits to summon the flame in the palm of his hand and then another part he thought would change the size but still wasn't quite sure how to disconnect it from his body so when he tried to throw it, he didn't end up with a long thin line of flames.
He’d examined Juno’s spell quite a few times but there wasn't anything he recognized that performed the function he wanted.
The day was warm and it was pleasant walking through the forest. The further away they got from Baxter the better Alex felt. The scent of the trees seemed to grow the feeling of happiness inside him. He felt like he wanted to dive into a lake to wash pollution off his skin.
Although, he did recognize it was his current form affecting his position on the issue of civilization. The wolf loved the wilderness. The hybrid version of him wanted to fight, to take his mates to bed. The human version of him wanted to go to the Grease Trap and have hot showers and sometimes watch a movie, although preferably nothing from the Air Bud series.
Alex could see he would have to make a decision soon. After all, his pack was now twenty-strong but it was quite a distance from Baxter, which didn't exactly make going back and forth to fetch rings and other things to edit very easy.
And what if he decided to take up Juno’s idea to run a shop? He’d essentially have to live in Baxter and then what would happen? He'd abandon his territory and drag a bunch of werewolves into a city that they hated?
Maybe he could visit Julius, check the map and see if there was any land closer to Baxter that didn’t smell like exhaust fumes all the time.
But of course that probably meant challenging another Alpha. Surely it couldn't be a good thing to murder for territory. He could somewhat justify killing Jasper, at least on the grounds that he perhaps was behind the attack. But taking territory to make your commute easier? There must be a better way.
This is what Julius had been talking about. The wild violent nature of werewolves and trying to overlay civilization atop it. In civilization if you wanted a piece of land, you worked out how to buy it, if you could. But for werewolves that acquisition was based on violence.
Alex heard a howl from the trees and recognized it as one of his new pack members. He also heard Nia and his heart left at the sound.
Alex howled with all his might, Juno hanging on for dear life and laughing. Werewolves came running out of the trees, Nia leading the charge. She practically pounced on him.
Juno managed to scramble off his back at the last moment as Nia pushed Alex over and rested on top of him, nuzzling at his face. She eventually let him up and shifted into her hybrid form.
“More werewolves are waiting to join the pack,” she told Alex.
Alex nodded and then Nia shifted back to her wolf form. Juno got on her back, grumbling that at least this time she wasn’t going to be thrown off.
As a group they walked the remaining way back to the small village. When they arrived Alex saw a congregation of werewolves up on the hill, on the outskirts. He wanted to see April first before dealing with them so he went down to the main house. As soon as he shifted to hybrid form, Nia stepped closer and looked at him with concern.
“Your eyes have so much silver in them now,” she said.
Alex had seen himself in the mirror on and off but the change must have been too gradual for him to notice. He looked down at his hand, the one torn off and regrown.
It still had a few small flakes of metal in it. It seemed the metal was slowly disappearing. Alex had hoped this was what would happen with his eyes. He realized then that he’d cast purify at the Corvus compound to get the bullet out of his chest and it hadn’t ripped the silver out of his eyes.
April came rushing out of the house to give Alex a kiss and then stepped back, looking at his eyes too.
“Wow, they really sparkly,” she said.
“Are you, like, a secret Twilight fan?” Jacob said from behind Alex and started laughing. Alex turned around to look at the young werewolf.
“Hey, you’re the one called Jacob, who’s a werewolf,” he said.
With his mates laughing and Jacob and a few of his pack, Alex felt great happiness rising up inside him. It felt like he was home.
“They've been waiting a while up there,” Nia said, pointing to the assembl
ed werewolves on the hill.
“I’ll be right back,” Alex said, shifting to his wolf form and padding up to them, some of his pack accompanying him.
He did a quick headcount when he got there. Seventeen werewolves. Twelve women, four men and one child, a little girl who was maybe five years old. Alex wasted no time in holding out his hand and pulling each werewolf across the line one by one, bringing them into the pack.
With the new additions they’d be up to thirty-seven… and their food situation would become much more serious.
When he was finished, he told them to take back their homes and get some food.
After that, Alex raced back to the main house, eager to see Nia, Juno and April, an idea on his mind about his silver-infused eyes. He found the three of them in the kitchen along with Esme and Lydia. They were all talking and cooking but mostly drinking out of teacups filled with whiskey. Juno’s eye were reddened and she was hitting the whiskey harder than the others. Alex assumed she’d told them about Bailey.
“Here’s old bright eyes,” Esme said when he walked into the kitchen. Lydia and his three mates all broke into laughter.
“April, can I talk with you?” Alex said, nodding towards the door. April wiped off her hands and followed him out down from the kitchen to a smaller room set up like a meeting space. She gave him a kiss as she passed by him.
“Is there any risk casting a superpowered Know Thyself? I want to know what’s happening with my eyes,” Alex asked.
She shrugged, a movement he watched with great interest, considering she was wearing a white tank top and no bra. She was still wearing the stolen necklace which was resting in her cleavage.
“No risk apart from draining your mana. But there’s a limit to what it will show you. You'll find out the percentage of fat on your body and how much your bones weigh, how much calcium you have but once you get to a certain point that's it.”
Alex took a seat at the table.
“You want to be my spell buddy for a minute?”
April nodded and sat down beside him, within arms reach.
Alex opened his spellcasting screen, quickly checking through the various manas. He had his standard blue, which was filled to the top. Red, sex magic was full, gray pain mana was full. Death was but a sliver that he’d pulled through the dead chicken. Nature was three-quarters full. Alex hadn't used it so wasn't quite sure how strong it was, but he figured he had enough to cast massively powerful Know Thyself spell.