by Mary Hughes
Sophia tried to get Bonnie’s attention. “Is there a back way—?” Too late.
The door opened.
A dark man with long mustaches surged onto the doorsill. “Our ‘alpha’ challenges the Challenge.”
“Figures.” Clyde’s voice was a bit muffled.
Bonnie cooed. “Ooh, Attila. I’m so glad you’re here.”
Attila was built similar to his namesake, short and broad-chested with small eyes and a scraggly beard.
Bonnie released Clyde to drag Attila inside and give him a big smooshie kiss. “Wanna do a threesome?”
Clyde growled. Sophia nodded. Good, something to distract him from beating up on Noah.
Mason slid inside next.
Bonnie’s eyes widened. Well, he was a handsome specimen of a man, big and muscular with his shaggy gold-streaked walnut hair. One hand still latched onto Attila, she grabbed Mason’s wrist. “Oooh, a foursome.” She planted Mason’s hand—on her breast.
Clyde’s growl darkened. Bonnie grinned.
Behind Mason, Killer shoved in.
The last time Sophia had seen him, he’d knifed Noah. Foreboding rippled unpleasantly along her skin. Unnerved, she cracked open her third eye.
A blood aura surrounded Killer.
She swallowed bile, her hand flying to her pearls. Comets and stars. Those murders in the trailer…
Her head began to ache. But the blood aura didn’t quite touch him. An accessory then, not the killer. She peered closer, head starting to throb. A gold flame writhed in the aura.
Her eyes snapped open. A wizard was involved.
Daniel’s evil wizard, the Hungry Ghost? Had Rodolphe graduated from stealing life money to stealing lives? She shuddered.
Then Noah stepped inside.
His eyelids were lowered, masking the gold of his eyes. Sophia breathed easier, seeing him come in last—it meant he’d allowed no enemies at his back. She’d half-expected him to play the indestructible alpha with the S on his fur.
But then the door opened again and the whole group slid forward into the living room as if a force-field had moved them. Sophia sucked in a breath.
The nameless man filtered in, still a big black wolf, leaving it a mystery as to how he’d opened the door. Her breath came out in a puff of relief. At least he hadn’t left them high and dry.
Although if it did come to a fight, she wouldn’t put it past him to sit back and break out the popcorn.
Bonnie brightened like the sun. “A sixsome, all for me.”
Clyde growled, low and angry, in response. Sophia mentally pumped air. At this rate Noah wouldn’t have to fight any of them, since they’d all be too busy with Bonnie.
Then Bonnie released Mason and Attila and clamped both hands on Noah.
Mine. Sophia roared and flew past astonished males like a tornado.
Bonnie’s mouth was millimeters from fastening onto Noah like a French-kissing lamprey when Sophia grabbed her by the camisole straps and yanked.
Bonnie was bigger, but Sophia was powered by sheer rage. Bonnie came away shrieking. Sophia threw the wolfwoman from Noah with all her strength. Bonnie stumbled, crashing into Mason and Attila. Attila grabbed for her, got a handful of bosom.
The coaster popped out. It hit the floor with a rattle that made Sophia wince.
“What the hell?” Clyde snatched up the coaster, glared at it, then switched his glare to—Noah. “Whadchew do t’ her?” He swayed in place, his eyes narrowed and vicious on Noah. He swiped his cigar from his mouth and, gaze locked on Noah, snuffed it by smashing the lit end into his own chest. Beater shirt smoldering, he dropped the crumpled cigar to the floor with a growl. “I’sh kill you.”
The coaster had done its work, but apparently Clyde was a mean drunk—and he’d take his frustrations out on Noah.
Sophia blurted, “No, I put the coaster—”
“Fuck you, Clyde.” Noah shook his head at her in a frantic No—and planted a fist in Clyde’s face. Crack.
Clyde reeled back—before dropping the coaster to leap on Noah.
They grappled, not even punching and kicking, but shoving and scuffling with mindless violence.
“Fight!” Attila dove for them. Mason lunged for Attila, grabbed him, and yanked him away. They overbalanced and fell onto the couch, rolling and scrabbling.
Bonnie clapped her hands. “Fight, fight!”
Nameless Guy sat on his haunches and lolled.
Then Killer circled around behind Noah, where his kidneys were all too vulnerable.
“Noah!” Heart pumping and veins flushed with adrenaline, Sophia called a warning even as she leaped into action. She dodged snarling shifters, cut in front of Killer, and shoved him away from Noah with all her strength.
As Killer stumbled back, he grabbed her arms. He levered himself against her and not only kept his feet but whirled her hard into the wall.
She bounced off and hit floor.
Good news was, she rolled into Killer’s toothpick legs, tangled his feet, and tripped him.
Bad news was, he was wearing boots. Damn, that hurt.
He fell on top of her. She shoved him off then huffed, lying there, trying to get her breath back.
Beside her, Killer scrambled to his feet. Damned shifter speed.
Noah’s kidneys were still vulnerable—and he’d whipped out that slender, wicked switchblade.
“Nameless Guy,” Sophia shrieked, hauling herself to her elbows. “Go, go!”
The black wolf boiled up to human; his smirk didn’t change in the least. He tapped Killer on the back. “Outside, Fur Boy.”
Killer spun. “Fuckin’ what…?” He blinked, and his face blanked. The knife dropped from his hand. “Okay.”
Nameless Guy calmly escorted Killer outside. Sophia staggered to her feet, her mouth agape as she stared after them.
“Oh dear!” Bonnie fell to one knee like a lame duck—right in front of Noah.
Sophia tried to get between them but her heel twisted and she stumbled.
“I hurt myself.” Bonnie batted her eyelashes at Noah.
The damn alpha reached a chivalrous hand to help.
Leaving him open to Clyde, who cracked a fist into his skull.
Noah’s face went white. He fell back, hand slapping to his head. Blood trickled from under it.
Sophia kicked off her shoes, winched up her skirt, ran two steps, and sailed a kick into Clyde’s nuts, so fueled with anger she probably dented his prostate.
With a sound like a leaky balloon, Clyde fell to his knees, curling like a pill bug.
Bonnie squeaked. Dropping to the floor, she wrapped arms around him. “Clyde, honey, speak to me! Are you all right?”
The shot of adrenaline that had fueled Sophia suddenly left her. Collapsing against the wall, she held her aching ribs and gasped. Telling herself with a short rest, she could get back in the fight.
Noah, despite the blood trickling down his forehead, looked steadier. His feet were planted, and his eyes surveying the room were sharp. And Mason was actually winning against Attila. She let herself hope.
Then the screen door slammed open.
The room went silent. All fighting stopped. Even Clyde whimpered more quietly.
A man filled the doorway, so big he had to bend to enter. Clad only in stained sweatpants, he was frighteningly lean, a skeleton banded with muscle. He had fists the size of sledgehammers, a small cliff of a jaw, and brows that were bony shelves over insane eyes.
In a tar-paper baritone, he rasped, “You’re dead meat, Blackwood.”
Sophia swallowed dry fear.
He climbed through the doorway…and straightened. As his torso unfolded, it revealed a skull tattoo emblazoned on his naked chest. Its fiery tongue curled around his navel. His nipples were its dead eyes.
Sophia’s knees buckled. She braced against the wall to stop herself from slipping to the floor. She wanted to puke but controlled that too.
Her first coherent thought was worry for Noah.
Her mate
had speed, agility, and brains, but there were too many of them—and they didn’t fight fair.
No coming out of this uninjured, not even any guarantee of a win. She swallowed her gall. She’d have to try to tap her magic.
If she even could.
Chapter Eighteen
The wand appeared in Sophia’s skirt pocket, hot with battle magic.
She didn’t question how it had gotten there. Wands, once claimed, had strange properties. She simply slid her hand into her pocket and touched its smooth carbon fiber surface. The wand reminded her of all she’d renounced.
But it was also who she’d dreamed to be. Witch princess, Royal Senator. Madam High Minister.
Maybe if she’d waited after Rodolphe’s betrayal she’d have reconsidered cutting off her magic. In some ways she’d still been that young, idealistic fool, simply embracing the opposite of Rodolphe in the same blind stupidity.
She’d never know, because cutting off her magic wasn’t “like” cutting off a part of her—it was cutting off part of her.
The ceremony required a death sacrifice. Being a lawful witch, that death could only be hers.
Being a smart witch, she’d done it in pieces.
Over a period of three days, she suffered three potentially fatal wounds involving head, hands, and heart. But with a little luck, a lot of magic, and a powerful ceremonial rite, she walled off those deaths along with her magic in three metaphysical funeral domes.
She’d lived. But unlocking even a portion of her magic by breaking a dome could potentially kill her. At the very least, it would hurt like she was dying.
Break all three, and it really would kill her.
It would have been safer to simply expel all her power into another witch. Share Power was a spell used fairly often, sharing bits of magical energy that time and rest would replenish. More rarely a complete Evacuate was used, not fatal, but it was permanent. She hadn’t been brave enough to become irreversibly mundane.
Or maybe even then, she knew she’d need her magic one day.
“Ivan.” Noah straightened to his full height.
Sophia scanned for allies even as she prepared herself to tap her magic. Mason was locked in combat with Attila, and Nameless Guy was as good as gone. If she didn’t want Noah to face the monster alone, it was up to her.
Didn’t matter if using magic killed her. For Noah.
A deep breath shunted her horror into a place where she’d deal with it later, a technique learned from her brother the combat wizard. She hadn’t studied fighting outside of her intro class, but she’d practiced with Gabriel, something she was grateful for now.
She wrapped her fingers around the wand in her pocket, the stick smooth and warm and good in her hand. Pulling it out, the fittings flashed in her vision, gleaming silver and gold against the black. Silver like Noah’s eyes before the change and rich gold like after.
“Sophia, no!” Either seeing the glitter of metal, or even now attuned to her as his mate, Noah spun toward her.
Ivan, seeing the opening, launched a massive fist at Noah’s head.
She screamed.
Mason’s head jerked around, his eyes huge and horrified. He pushed himself off Attila, shouting Noah’s name, and barreled toward Ivan at ramming speed.
Noah swayed to one side at the noise; Ivan’s sledgehammer fist barely missed his skull.
Instead, it met Mason’s jaw. All the speed force of the beta’s lunge rammed into all the power of the huge wolfman’s fist. Bone crunched at sickening volume. Spinning once, Mason went down.
Ivan swung at Noah again.
Hand trembling, she opened her third eye to fracture the funeral dome for the first of her trapped magic. The head seal. In her third eye, the dome shimmered like hardened glass.
Noah had already swayed out reach of Ivan’s attack—but then Clyde shoved Noah between the shoulders.
As Ivan’s fist clipped Noah’s skull, Sophia slammed into her head seal. A horrible stereo crack sounded in her ears, one Noah’s, one hers.
Hers was amplified by pain slicing through her brain. She choked back a cry. Squinting through her physical eyes, she saw Noah had run Ivan’s bell with a stunning return punch of his own, but Clyde had leaped on Noah’s back. Bonnie clapped her hands and jumped up and down like a demented cheerleader, but if she decided to join the fight, or Ivan recovered, Noah was in trouble.
Sophia’s own situation was better. Squinting her third eye through a pounding headache, she saw a hairline fracture branching through her dome’s glass. She raised her wand again, readying herself for the magic that would pour out—and as the crack lengthened suddenly, her face sheared in half with acid pain, agony spilling out instead.
She screamed and clutched her head with both hands. Her wand slapped against her cheek.
“Sophia!” Noah shook off Clyde’s bear hug and surged toward her.
Clyde managed to grab Noah’s arm. The alpha’s momentum threw him into an arc around Clyde—toward Attila.
With a vicious grin of triumph, the mustachioed wolfman raised hands to seize the alpha.
Noah simply went with it—with a lifted knee.
His patella slammed into Attila’s gut. With a whoosh of expelled air, Attila’s grin disappeared. He tried to suck in a breath, couldn’t.
Instead of shaking off Clyde, Noah curled in on his grip like a yoyo, and punched Clyde’s temple. The wolfman reeled back.
Stomach heaving, vision blurry, Sophia breathed through her pain and reached for her magic. But her head seal was cracked, not broken. Her magic was still locked away. Damn it. Wiping her eyes, she saw Mason out cold, only Noah left fighting Clyde. And when Ivan and Attila recovered…without her fighting magic, there was only one move.
Retreat.
“Noah,” she croaked. “We have to go.”
Noah glanced at her—as Ivan slammed a pile-driver fist to the top of his head.
A small sigh, all the more horrible for how soft it was, and Noah collapsed to his knees.
As the alpha knelt, swaying, on the floor, the monster wolfman wound up for a finishing blow.
“Help!” Sophia screamed it, even as she opened her third eye, took kamikaze aim, and plunged with all her might toward the hairline crack.
Nameless Guy shot through the door.
She hit psychic glass. The dome’s crack widened slightly—and two skillets of pain smashed her skull. Nausea wrung her guts like a washcloth. She gasped and staggered. Only running into the wall kept her from falling to the floor.
Nameless Guy cut between Ivan and Noah and slapped Ivan so hard he left a hand print on the massive wolfman’s gaunt cheek. “Hey,” he shouted in Ivan’s ear. “Here, doggie, doggie. Yeah, you.”
Ivan lumbered into a turn, swinging sledge-fists at Nameless Guy. Nameless Guy danced lithely out of the way. Ivan kept swinging like a bull. Nameless Guy kept doing the lambada, keeping Ivan occupied.
Noah stumbled to his feet. Relieved, Sophia shut her eyes, panting, and tried to get herself under control. But she felt it when, instead of dealing with Clyde, Noah headed for her. She snapped her eyes open.
Clyde grabbed for Noah’s arm. Without even looking, Noah punched him in the face and kept coming for Sophia. Clyde’s nose spurted blood.
“Clydee!” Screeching like a banshee, Bonnie launched herself, clawing, at Noah. Noah barely blocked her. Attila, breathing again, seized Noah from behind, tethering him for Bonnie’s scratching. Blood and weals striped Noah’s cheeks.
Despite all the blood dripping from various shifter wounds, it was the sting of copper from Noah’s blood that cut through Sophia’s awareness and went straight to her lizard brain.
She shrieked. Mine. Screw pain, screw magic. She leaped for Bonnie, grabbed the wolfwoman by both arms and pulled her off her mate. The wand, still in Sophia’s hand, blazed against Bonnie’s flesh.
With a pained howl, the she-wolf twisted loose. The fiery wand line on her arm must’ve burned like hell but either h
er adrenaline was pumping or she ignored it to fist her hands together—and slam them into Sophia’s head like launching a volleyball.
Sophia’s world shook and went suddenly, inexplicably silent. Light flared too bright. She crushed her lids shut.
Her skull exploded with pain. Sound rushed back but fractured, like it was filtered through crystal shards. She slit her eyes open. Her cheek was smashed to the wall, where she’d landed after the punch. Her vision buzzed like she was holding a blender at high.
Through her blurred sight she saw Bonnie scratching more long weals on Noah, Attila still attached. Behind them, Clyde tore strips off his own shirt and wadded them up his nostrils.
Sophia gritted teeth against a wave of nausea, pushed away from the wall, and stumbled toward them.
Bonnie spun on her and planted a fist in her belly. Pain exploding in her gut, Sophia folded in two.
Clyde swung a punch at Noah. Noah dodged—into Attila’s waiting fist. Noah collapsed to hands and knees.
For the first time, Noah stopped fighting back.
Attila, Bonnie, and Clyde ganged up on him, less like a pack of wolves bringing down a great stag and more like a trio of vicious thugs. They went at him, pounding on him, raining blows on his head, shoulders, gut.
He made a small, terrible noise. Blood ran from his nose, his mouth, his ears.
Sophia willed her head to stop spinning and her guts to stay out of her throat. She tried to straighten, managed a hunched stoop, and raised her wand in front of her, two-handed. It blurred in her double sight.
Bonnie started to shift. Clyde howled, human voice changing midway to a sound far more animal and eerie. Noah feebly blocked Attila’s punches and wavered to his feet.
Sophia tried to open her third eye. For the first time her vision on the etheric was blurred.
Bonnie’s wolf circled Noah, darting in and out to nip at his hamstrings. Clyde opened huge wolf jaws and chomped Noah’s shin.
Bone splintered.
Noah gasped, the sound more agonized than if he’d howled in pain, and fell to one knee.
Despite not being able to see the crack in her head dome, Sophia launched her will, herself, at the glass where she thought the fracture was.
She hit hard glass, bounced off, and slid to the bottom of a dark mental well.