by RJ Blain
Then I’d pick up Nicole’s bewitched stones and hope they were enough to make a difference.
I dug the moonstone out of my pocket and rolled it between my hands, its grief so strong it mirrored my own. Did it blame me for its owner’s loss?
It should have. I certainly blamed myself.
Clutching the jewel in my offhand, I drew the borrowed gun, flipped off the safety, and turned my leg so I could take aim at the fleshy part of my calf. At point blank range, as long as I hit close to the edge of the muscle, the bullet should, no matter what casting, penetrate clean through.
While I was willing to give up my life to restore the world and its weather to normal, one thing had changed.
I wanted to live.
If anything, it made what I needed to do that much harder. I wanted to turn around, tail tucked, and retreat to Elliot, indulging in what I’d never done before. If only I could, I’d let him hide me from the world for a little while longer so we could have a tomorrow.
Age and exhaustion made it hard to ignore reality. Unless I changed things, he might not have a tomorrow. Many wouldn’t. The storms would rage, incapable of caring for those killed in their fury.
I was supposed to safeguard humanity with—and from—my powers, not destroy it.
In the end, however bitter, I had two reasons above all to pull the trigger: Elliot and my puppies. My puppies would be safe in his care.
He loved them, too.
I wanted the future to include me in it, but I could leave this world for the next with a clear conscious if my last act was to protect my mate, my puppies, and my pack. There would be grief.
No matter how much I didn’t want to believe it, I was wanted. Richard couldn’t help it; it was what made him an Alpha, the same as me. And one by one, thanks to his influence, the pack wanted me, too.
I wasn’t quite ready to believe the line between want and need had been blurred, but I hoped for it all the same. That, along with the knowledge my mate slept close, a potential victim of my magic’s rampage, would drive me to hold on, no matter how bitter the defeat or difficult the victory.
Snowflake watched me from the snowmobile, his ears cocked back. I took aim, braced for the worst, and pulled the trigger.
I got the feeling once I recovered—if I recovered—my wolf would make my life as miserable as possible for inflicting the scalding pain of a gunshot wound on us while in the middle of the Canadian wilderness during a magically driven blizzard. The silver seared me from the inside, my entire body warming as the tarnish spread with each beat of my heart. I shuddered and dropped the gun, clenched my teeth so I wouldn’t scream, and turned my bleeding leg.
The blood-stained bullet showed black on the snow, and I snatched it up, set it on my boot, and reached for Nicole’s moonstone.
Blue-white frost erupted from my hand, swirled up my arm, and spread in a streaked sphere as it grew, sucking in the snow, and spitting it towards the clouds above. In the time it took me to gasp in five breaths, I sat on barren stone. The vortex grew, enveloping the snowmobile.
Snowflake yipped and dived for my lap, ramming his head against my stomach.
Silver was my bane, but it was also my strength. Like a child slapped across the face in a harsh rebuke, the storm recoiled, and in the screaming blizzard, I felt its hesitancy.
The weather lived because I had died, my magic sundered, scattered, and tossed to the four winds to rampage, uncontrolled. Something—no, someone—had brought me back to life. A bit of that impossible magic intertwined with mine, wild and free in the sky above.
Dante.
I couldn’t begin to guess how he’d done it or why, but as Nicole’s moonstone drew more of the snow and ice to me and shot it skyward, the old feelings I had believed lost strengthened. So many storms melded together I couldn’t count them all, and they were all laced with my magic—and his.
First, I needed to reclaim what was mine and capture what was his, so if we found Dante, it might be enough to be the spark of life he’d need to survive. If I could make my stubborn, uncooperative magic do what I wanted, just for once, I’d bring him back to his twin, to Richard, to everyone who waited, praying for a miracle they feared wouldn’t come.
I held tighter to Nicole’s moonstone, closed my eyes, and reached as I had when I’d summoned a hurricane and brought destruction to the eastern seaboard of the United States. I’d bring more destruction, too, but I meant to pull out every scrap of my power from the storms, so when dawn came, they would die out and life would go back to normal.
When it did, the Inquisition could act and destroy Basin. I wanted in on that action, and at the very end of it, I wanted to teach Markus the errors of his ways.
If I had a say in the matter, when the last flicker of life died out in his eyes, it would be my face he saw, aware he’d crossed every last one of my lines. I would savor his death and present his body to my mate as an affirmation of our future together.
A future I could secure if I could take back what was mine and turn it on those who had taken it from me.
~Yes,~ a cold voice whispered, and Nicole’s moonstone froze my hand. Sparks of lightning burst from the blue and white vortex steadily growing, enveloping my wrist. ~We fight.~
How was the question. I had every other piece of the puzzle. I wanted to. I needed to. All other times I’d used my magic, I’d done so needing to protect or restore.
I’d never twisted my magic to do what I needed.
I needed Dante and Nicole back, and I needed Basin to fall.
~I can help you,~ the stone whispered in a seductive purr. ~I can give you what you need.~
“At what price?” I demanded through clenched teeth.
~If necessary, your life for hers.~
“What must I do?”
~Trust me.~
That price was far harder than laying down my life for Richard’s mate, for Dante, and for everyone fighting for survival because they’d been born a witch or had chosen to become a wolf. Trust hurt. Trust brought with it weakness and suffering.
Trust meant I’d have to believe one more time in someone other than myself, and I’d given everything I had left to Elliot.
I picked up the silver bullet and clutched it, my skin burning the longer I gripped it. “Do your worst, stone.”
~I shall,~ it promised, and its malevolence chilled me even more than the snow.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Death stalked me in silence, but as soon as I submitted to the moonstone’s demands, the vortex of blue and silver magic I held dissipated, the storm quieted, and the snow resumed its hissing as it fell on stilling winds. The numbness I’d grown accustomed to returned, but a deep part of me, the part equally wolf, woman, and witch, understood what had happened.
The stone controlled me and my magic, and it wanted me to shift. It didn’t speak in words; it tugged at me, calling to my wolf despite the silver in my veins. It cared nothing about the tarnish fouling my blood.
It desired Nicole, and it would drain me dry to get her back.
I respected that, and because I did, I dislodged Snowflake from my lap, wobbled to one knee, and stripped off the many layers protecting me from the weather. Where we’d go, I had no need for clothes. If I needed clothes, I’d steal some—or find an Inquisition outpost and howl until someone let me in.
The stone warmed with amusement and approval.
Then it waited until I wasn’t going to shred through multiple layers of clothing to shove me over the edge and bind me to my wolf’s shape, fueling my shift with its power—and my magic, which it siphoned from the clouds above.
Instead of flesh and fur, I became a frigid northern wind, ice and snow given shape, a wolf without true substance, no blood, no fur, nothing to slow me when I raced across storm-frozen ground to the east and south.
The stone knew where its mistress waited, and it wouldn’t tolerate delay.
I defied it, and with teeth of stone-hard ice, I grabbed Snowflake by the scruf
f of his neck. The stone considered me and my fox before bowing to my wishes. Where I went, he would go, too.
Where we went, the storms would still follow, but they would be harnessed to our cause, and when we reached those who held the stone’s rightful owner against her will, we—I—would channel all their fury into wiping them from existence.
The stone would enjoy it, as would I.
Shaking out my frosty coat, I considered my options. How could I best carry Snowflake without hurting him?
~Ride,~ the stone suggested.
The idea of a fox riding a wolf amused me so much I dumped Snowflake on my back. The moonstone floated in the air, pulsing blue and white, and snow rose from the ground, swirled around us, and settled around my shoulders and back to form a basket, cradling Snowflake so he wouldn’t fall when I ran.
I was aware of him as a spot of warmth on my back, which pleased me.
Bodies truly were inconvenient things, and I didn’t miss mine. Later I might—if I couldn’t figure out how to shift from a wolf of ice, snow, and wind back to a flesh and blood woman. I’d worry about it after I undid all the damage I’d done by trusting Markus Dupree with my puppies, my life, and my heart.
My heart and puppies had survived his treason, and I looked forward to proving I wasn’t as weak and fragile as he believed.
My choice was made, and I would lay my regrets to rest along with Markus’s cold, lifeless body.
~Run,~ the stone ordered.
I obeyed.
I chased the wind, or perhaps the wind chased me. It didn’t matter. We went the same way, sweeping through the night. The moonstone illuminated my path and wiped away the snow that would slow me down, and when we reached a gully aspiring to be a canyon, ice arched over the divide so I wouldn’t waste time going around.
A simple truth occurred to me, and I slowed at the peak of the bridge and stared out over the shimmering world, where the most basic of nature’s elements clashed in its full glory.
I was to Dante as Dante was to Elliot, and in turn, as Elliot was to me. I was the sky and storm, Dante was the stone, and Elliot was the snow my magic shaped. Without Dante, my magic had no meaning. Without Elliot, my magic had no meaning.
Without me, their magic had no meaning.
I wasn’t sure where Nicole fit into the puzzle, but I supposed she did somehow. The stone certainly thought the world of her, as did Dante, Richard, and Elliot. When I wasn’t prideful and arrogant, when I wasn’t trying to prove I was better off alone, I thought the world of her, too.
I slowed only long enough to hunt, killing a moose unfortunate enough to cross my path so Snowflake could eat and remain strong. What he didn’t eat I finished, although I questioned why a body of ice and snow hungered for meat.
Perhaps a spark of life resided within my frozen body, waiting for spring to come so I could be reborn. I could believe in spring.
I loved the spring as much as I, before now, had hated the winter.
If I survived, I would learn to love the winter, too, and the man responsible for that waited for me to return home to him, unaware of my reluctant betrayal. He would understand why I’d left.
He would’ve done the same.
~Alpha,~ the stone murmured, as though that explained everything.
It did. An Alpha didn’t exist just to maintain order within the pack. Alphas existed to nurture, protect, and if needed, sacrifice everything for the sake of those too weak to protect themselves.
By right, I was an Alpha. By deed, I was anything but. And like the seasons, I needed to change, even if the change resulted in the deep winter, where death led to renewal. I was willing to die, but I’d hope for the spring. Elliot would be furious, and I longed for his wrath to reaffirm I lived, that I had a future beyond the destruction Basin had brought to my pack and family.
Deep in the night, surrounded by a cold, desolate frontier, I found peace when I expected it the least, in yet another simple truth.
All roads led to Rome, and my Rome wasn’t a final destination, but a sea of endless possibilities. One of those possibilities was death, but it was the others I yearned for, although to reach them, I would have to wage war and face my death.
I had battled the same war so many times before, but one thing had changed.
This time, I wanted to win. I wanted to survive. I wanted to live.
No, I needed to live.
I finally had something—someone—worth living for.
The sun rose, not that I could see it through the thick clouds blanketing the sky. While the snow still fell, the winds had calmed. I ambled, taking my time and catching my breath, as the moonstone’s magic waned beneath the lightened sky.
I twisted around to regard my precious, furry cargo, lolling my tongue at the little nest of moose fur Snowflake had made for himself. The fox slept, and the moonstone burrowed into the frosty basket and slept, too.
While I was as weary as the stone, I endured, forcing myself into a ground-eating lope, heading east and south as Nicole’s moonstone had demanded. At noon, the snowfall ebbed.
By nightfall, a few stars peeked through the tattered clouds.
The storms heeled, clearing a path for me so I wouldn’t have to fight against my own magic—and Dante’s.
I could still feel our power tainting the sky, and with the moonstone sleeping, I dared to take it for myself. My witchcraft warmed me from within, and the ice cracked and melted away to living fur beneath.
Deep in my chest, I carried as much of Dante’s power as I could, and I prayed it would be enough.
I tried not to think of what I’d do if I found his lifeless body. I wasn’t him.
I couldn’t bring the dead back to life.
My awareness of the undeniable flow of time spurred me, rode me, and drove me on, until the day and night melded into a meaningless blur. While I’d grown fur and flesh, I stopped only for Snowflake’s sake, heeding his whined whimpers when he hungered.
Later, I’d be scolded for invading farms and killing livestock, but I’d pay penance one way or another. In time, I’d allow the guilt to take root and goad me into doing the right thing. Elliot would delight in teasing me over it, so the first thing I’d do when I saw him would be confess my every last sin and wait to see what he would do.
The wolf in me delighted at the prospect, and the modern woman in me was disgusted.
I thought the woman was wrong.
I was in no way lessened for having my mate as my goal, my motivation, and my wish for the future. He didn’t lessen my accomplishments. I didn’t lessen his goals. I didn’t lessen him, either.
The woman would bother me again in the future, but for the moment, I had won the battle.
Elliot was, in all ways, mine. He was my weakness. He was my strength. He was my reason to head east and south, and he was my reason to return north and west and reunite with my friends.
He was the reason I had friends.
I’d been a blind fool for far too long, and I had allowed my fear to make me weak.
One day, we would part. Death came to us all, but for some, it took far longer. A witch of his strength might, like the ocean, withstand the tests of time. Perhaps I would influence him, giving him years just because he was mine and I was his.
And if not, if the years grew long and his time grew short, I’d break every rule the Inquisition had ever made for him and learn how to dance through the ritual required to transform man into beast.
My thoughts comforted me, and while I was aware of the moonstone listening, it said nothing.
For all it was a rock, it had a heart, and it wasn’t one made completely of stone.
I lost track of the days along with the storms; some blew themselves out, a few tried to dog at my heels, and others slipped back into the ruts and returned to where they belonged. Whenever I strained to sense them, the moonstone helped, drawing a bit more of my magic back into me so I could expand my reach, listen, and learn.
The seasons returned to the
ir charted course, and it had only needed a silver bullet and one tiny stone to do it.
If Basin could be so easily defeated, I’d be pleased.
I expected the type of war I’d waged when I’d been young and set against old, cunning Alphas who couldn’t believe a little girl could kill them. Despite myself, I remembered.
No one liked believing property could be a threat. The Inquisition had forged me into a weapon once. I’d become a weapon again, but I’d forge myself into the demon I had once been because I wanted and needed to, not because I was forced to.
Blood would flow, and it wouldn’t be mine. I’d break every rule of the Inquisition, turning my teeth and claws on Normals, making certain none of them lived to speak of the monster who’d come for them seeking vengeance.
~Justice,~ the moonstone chided.
I’d become justice for the dead, too.
I’d become a vengeful justice, a nightmare on stealthy paws, and my fur would drip red with blood as it had so many years before.
~Mercy?~
I slowed, twisting my ears back and canting my head so I could glare at the stone riding in the icy basket with a sleepy Snowflake. The fox chirped and stretched his nose towards mine. I nuzzled and rewarded him with a lick of his muzzle.
What use was there in showing mercy to the merciless?
~Mercy for the innocent,~ the moonstone corrected.
I could live with that, so I agreed. There was no justice in slaughter, only in the deaths of those deserving of death.
Those who fought for Basin had killed my friends, targeted children—targeted my children—and had crushed my sense of security and peace in their hands. For them, there would be nothing but death.
But it would be a merciful one. I could give the stone that much.
The moonstone warmed with its affection and approval. ~You understand.~
I did, and I was pleased with my understanding of how the world would work when I hunted.
The weather warmed, and the snow melted. Snowflake ran with me, and when he lagged behind, I picked him up in my jaws and carried him or slowed to his pace. The days slipped away, and the natural cool of a southern winter took hold.