“I don’t know if almost dying maybe corrupted him since he was already pretty much sour milk, to begin with, but maybe…” He shrugged. “You ever knew a witch to die-”
“And come back to life and go on to suck his daughter’s powers down like a milkshake?” I asked, my voice flat. “No. Oddly enough, it’s never come up in conversation.”
Eli pinched me gently.
“Don’t be mean to Ace,” he chided. I yelped and glared at him, wiggling out of his arms.
“Don’t pinch me. I’m sensitive about my chubby bits.” I hunkered down and sighed. “Sorry, Ace.”
He didn’t look offended.
“We like your chubby bits,” he said instead, “but seriously, maybe something happened to him. I mean, there’s that old legend about White Wolf-”
Cash groaned and rolled his eyes.
“That’s lore. A legend. It was never real. Don’t tell me you believed-”
“Cash,” Finn cut him off with a warning. Ace’s expression was almost… hurt.
“What’s White Wolf?” I asked. All I could think of was that it sounded like a particularly exotic ski resort. Or something. A memory came back to me. “Isn’t that some roleplaying game company?” I was pretty sure some of the students at my college used to play it, a few floors down in my dorm.
“We have our own-” Charlie censored himself and looked at the other guys before continuing. “We have our own, uh, gods, sorta. Legends… myths.” My interest was piqued. I sat forward on the couch, trying to ignore the gnawing inside of me that felt a bit like being hungry but different.
I ached to use my magic, to stretch it out, to feel it tingle along my skin. I had faith that it could be fixed that I could get it back, but… what if that never happened?
I banished those thoughts and focused on Charlie instead.
“White Wolf is the story of a wolf who died and came back-”
“Kinda like Jesus,” Ace said, and then grinned when everyone groaned.
“Nothing like Jesus,” Charlie said, with a roll of his eyes. “Can you let me finish, or are you gonna talk over me. You wanna tell this story?”
“You do it better,” Ace replied, and bent down, sitting on the floor by my feet, leaning into my legs as he looked up at Charlie. “Go on. Storytime. Tell us.”
“I’m going to murder you and eat the remains,” Charlie promised, making the rest of us laugh. Cash punched him in the shoulder lightly.
“Your dad was the best at story-telling,” he said, “maybe you took after him with that?” Charlie’s expression softened, and I made a mental note to ask Cash about Charlie’s family later. We never really talked too much about pack life before they got hunted down since I’d figured maybe it was too sensitive to ask about. But things were, or should’ve been, settling down for us. Perhaps it was time to start opening up those old wounds and paying attention to the wolves that had given life and sheltered my pack.
“It’s… kinda cool you guys have your own-” I searched for the right word. It wasn’t quite a religion. “Spirituality?”
“You could call it that,” Cash agreed with a nod.
“So, White Wolf was a wolf that survived a hunting,” Charlie said, “It’s long and drawn out, and I’ll keep it simple. The hunters got his pack, his mate, his pups-”
I felt Finn and Eli tense beside me at the word pups. I put a hand on either of theirs, squeezing their fingers in mine. Losing pups was probably the worst thing that they could think of happening after losing a mate.
Charlie opened his mouth, but Wolfe flew into the room, eyes wide, looking panicked like he so rarely did.
“What?” Eli staggered to his feet. “What the fuck now-”
“They’ve gone,” he said, his voice dry and paper-thin. “Daria and Frank and… all three, they’ve been taken.”
Seven
Levi spat on the ground as we approached, looking roughed up. I expected he always looked roughed up, though, given that he dressed like an ageing punk. Did demons bleed? Apparently, these ones did. Landon didn’t look any better, his nose clearly broken and blood dripping down off his chin. Behind them, the apartment building that had once housed Max was half-demolished, as if a wrecking ball had hit it and then not bothered to finish the job.
“He couldn’t get us, being all that his holiness can’t kill his own goddamn kind,” Levi said, bitterness curling in his throat as he spoke. He glared at Wolfe. “Why didn’t you tell me the man was a fucking lich?”
“What’s a-” My gaze whipped from Levi to Wolfe.
“Undead,” Wolfe said. “That would explain why he was able to rob Darcy of her magic.”
Levi whistled and glanced at me.
“So you’re running on empty then?”
“Where the fuck are they?” Eli interrupted the unhappy reunion with a low growl.
“Keep your fur on,” Levi said before swallowing. He looked almost… sad. “We don’t know. I was having my morning ablutions when the building near cracked in half, and the three of them were sucked out of the living room by a spout of water. A fuckin’ spout of water. What the fuck is this? Seaworld? By the time we got down to the ground floor, he had dumped half the building on us.” He looked over his shoulder at the small, two-story apartment building whose roof was caved and sagging. “I liked the carpet in there,” he muttered. “Just gotten my room organized how I wanted.”
Finn growled at him, and Landon swore under his breath. Charlie turned to Wolfe, murder in his eyes.
“You said they were safe-”
“As safe as I could make them,” Wolfe interrupted. “He’ll return to his enclave if that’s where he’s heading.”
“Home, to the rest of my family, whatever is left of it,” I said, feeling a sort of grim helplessness overtake me. I couldn’t do anything. There was no power in me at all. He’d stolen my magic, and even if I could hunt him down… what would I do? Stare at him? Curse him out? He’d stop my heart in an instant with his magic.
It wasn’t fair. As much as I used to hate my powers, now I wished more than anything, more than life, I had them back.
Daria would… maybe, be okay. But Frank?
“We need to stop shouting at each other and make a plan on what to do, now,” I said quietly. “Please. Frank doesn’t have a lot of time.”
“I expect we’ll be offered a trade,” Wolfe’s face was grim as he spoke. “You for them.”
“I’ll go,” I replied without hesitation. “I’m not risking Frank. Not for anything.”
“Like hell-” Finn snarled and then turned away. “Fuck! FUCK!” The rage shook his shoulders, and in the distance, I heard the low hum of approaching sirens. Wolfe sighed and looked at Landon, who grimaced.
“Let’s go before this gets worse,” Wolfe said.
“Landlady’s gonna have a snip at me, but ah, she’s a bitch anyway,” Levi replied. “At least the ride’s fine.” He nodded to his car, a black Lambo that sat on the street, untouched and un-phased by what had happened to its owner’s house.
All I could do was my best to comfort the guys, even though dread was gnawing at my guts, picking away at my nerves. My father would call. Wolfe was sure of it. The offer would be me for Frank and Daria, or likely just me for Frank. Daria’s family would want her back in the fold. It’s probably why he took them both and not just Frank. Daria was useless to him as anything other than a pretty ornament to decorate someone's arm on the witch’s council.
And even that didn’t exist anymore. I had to smile at the vengeful thought. I’d ripped away almost everything my father loved and adored. He may have taken my magic, but I hurt him first and worst.
The guys didn’t want to wait on a call from my father, and even Levi and Landon didn’t think that was a great idea either. Levi was ranting about wanting revenge, and he’d nearly gone right off to chase my father down, although how he could track him, I had no idea. Landon had stopped his friend with a simple glare and softly muttered, “don’t.�
� And as for Wolfe?
“I feel as if I cannot make a decision because if it is the wrong one, it will haunt me for the rest of my existence,” he said to me quietly when we were back at the penthouse, looking out over Seattle. My heart was heavy. The feeling of needing to do something and not being able to do anything was killing me. It was dragging down the guys, and I could tell from the look in Wolfe’s eyes he wasn’t feeling any better than the rest of us.
“You tried to keep them safe. You love Frank.”
“Daria isn’t so bad herself,” Wolfe said. “Smart little witch. Her passion for knowledge is probably the only reason she didn’t become an insufferable twit like your mother.” His words may have been light-hearted, but his expression was not.
“My father will likely go home; you said it yourself,” I swallowed around a lump before continuing to speak. “Shouldn’t we… go? Then?”
“That would be walking into a trap, and it’s so obvious-”
“So what if it’s not. Because it is obvious. Because that would be the dumb thing to do,” I said, “to go running right to the ancestral family home? Maybe he’s not expecting us to do that because that is the stupid choice.”
Wolfe gave me a withering look and then sighed.
“I can’t tell if it would be more idiotic to stay or to go,” he admitted. “I am… at a loss.”
“Well, get unloosed fast,” I replied sharply. “Frank doesn’t have the time.” Wolfe inhaled and turned on me, his eyes flashing with quiet anger.
“Then you choose if you are so eager to wear Frank’s blood on your hands,” he said. I shivered at the pent up rage that echoed in his words but stood my ground.
“We either go home, or you tap into that underground network of demons and otherworldly creatures of yours, and you find someone who knows where my father took them. Those are our only options. Call somebody.” He stared at me as I spoke. “Why aren’t you doing that? Why didn’t you do that in the first place?”
His lips parted, and he couldn’t speak, his voice dead in the back of his throat. His eyes searched my face, pleading in them.
He was scared. Wolfe was afraid. And paralyzed. I reached out for him and hugged him fiercely, wishing that I could fix what was broken in him just as he’d taught me to use my magic powers.
“I already lost her,” he mumbled, and I knew he meant Max. I would never understand his feelings for her or how they had developed. It still didn’t make sense to me, but I wanted to respect how he felt. “I can’t lose the two of them as well. It’s too much. I have lost so many over the years…” The weight of responsibility slipped off of him and onto me. I was ready for it.
I may not have had any magic in me enough to give someone a static shock, but I could at least confront my father, and I’d do whatever it took to bring him to his knees and finish it, once and for all.
He’d hurt so many people. He’d taken Max from us. He wasn’t going to claim Frank and Daria as more of his victims.
I set my jaw.
“We’re going home,” I said, “if you could call that heap of rocks home.” I sighed and turned to the rest of the guys where they were talking, making their own plans on what they were going to do once they got their hands on my dad. Good. I was going to need them angry and ready to rip him to shreds. He deserved it, too. Nobody in the world had it coming more than my father; I was pretty convinced.
“Did I hear that, right?” Eli asked. “You guys come to a decision?”
“He’s expecting us to not go to him,” I said. “That would be the dumb choice. So let’s be dumb.”
“I fuckin’ love you,” Cash breathed and walked to me, lifting me up in his arms for a rough kiss. “I love being dumb with you.” I kissed him back briefly as Levi made a gagging noise. Finn shoved him, and Levi shoved back before both Landon and Eli growled at them and exchanged mutually annoyed ‘our children are irritating us’ glances. It would’ve been funny if things weren’t so deadly serious.
“I’ll see to chartering a plane then,” Levi said, “I’ve got a buddy who keeps one, y’know, for blood parties at mile high heights.”
“Ew,” I said, “that’s… just make sure it’s clean.”
“Of course, Sparky,” he said with a wink before going into the other room, his phone out. His voice echoed back to us.
“So we get there, overwhelm the fucker, knock his teeth through his asshole, and get our kids back?” Charlie offered.
“Sounds simple,” Finn said.
“Simple is better,” Eli muttered. “Less moving parts. Fewer things can go wrong.”
“Wolfe?” Ace asked, glancing at him. The old vampire was quiet, shadows in his eyes.
“They will not expect us to be so foolhardy, and I think it is the best plan, a better plan than any I could hope to come up with,” he said, his voice thin. Cash shrugged and kept hugging me.
“Our girl’s smart as fuck. Smarter than that undead ass of a father of her’s.”
“Mmm,” I murmured in thanks. I’d been ready to face my father down before and take his life. Now I had less power, no powers at all, and the stakes felt even higher than they had previously. I hated that. I hated how he ruined everything. If I had any say in it, this would be the last time he interfered in my life and tried to hurt the people I loved.
He was going to get what was coming to him, for once.
Levi poked his head into the room.
“Buddy came through,” he said, “we’re good to go in as soon as an hour if you like.”
Energy rippled through the room as the guys looked at each other and then nodded. Relief flooded through me. We were doing something. It was better than crying about what had happened and waiting for a call from my fuck-head of a father.
“Y’know,” Levi said a while later as we took the elevator down to the bottom floor where a car was waiting for us to leave for the airport. I glanced up at him.
“What?” I asked.
He smirked.
“My friend, he had a party, but he cancelled just for us, so if you wanna… offer him a little nip and sip, I’m sure that wouldn’t go amiss.”
I rolled my eyes.
“Fuck off, Levi,” I growled.
“With pleasure, Sparky,” he replied and then gave an utterly innocent look to Elias. “What?”
“Stop fucking around,” Eli said. The elevator dinged. “Let’s go.”
Eight
Private jets… not something I’d thought I’d find myself doing ever in my lifetime, and from the looks on the guys’ faces, it was not going to be their preferred method of travel, probably, ever, even without the TSA happy-ending that we usually had with a commercial flight.
Eli seemed to shake himself off as we hit the tarmac, a scowl on his face.
“If they ain’t with your father,” he muttered, murderous lights in his eyes. “I’m gonna kill him until he tells me where they actually are.”
“We’ve already tried murder,” I said, trying to tamp down on the feelings of massive anxiety that were eating their way out of my gut like a herd of drunk alligators. I got to my feet, anxious to get moving, confront my father, find the youngest members of our pack… and I kept turning it over and over in my mind that Luca should have been able to do something. His powers were so strong, but he was young, and maybe…
I hoped that I was wrong. I hoped that gut feeling that was gnawing at me from the inside-out was telling me that he had somehow, for some reason, betrayed Daria and Frank. There was no other reason why he could’ve been taken, not without a helluva fight.
“Sparky,” Cash said, his hand coming down on my shoulder. I blinked down at my hands, where they pulsed and crackled with static spots. I bit my cheek on the inside to stop my powers from acting up. The last thing I needed was to lose control over myself. Not now, when everything counted on me having my shit, and my wits, together.
The door to the plane swung open, and the cold air hit my face. I ducked out and clanked down the
staircase on wobbly legs. Whatever was coming was coming. I put it out of my mind until we gathered in the small airport, a long stretch limo waiting for us just beyond the tinted glass.
“You couldn’t go for something less… obvious?” Finn asked. Wolfe snorted.
“There isn’t a car made on this planet that will fit your little horde,” he said, his eyes dark with feeling. “Get in, or you can walk.”
“I’m gonna go on record and say I think this is a terrible idea,” Ace offered as he slid inside, his knees bumping against mine. I stared out the window. I just wanted to be there, at my father’s house, ripping it apart, stone by stone, until he gave us back what he took.
The guys were murmuring, and the silence broke open for a moment, giving me pause. I looked up.
“What?” I asked. They were all staring at me.
“We’re rethinking our plan to storm the battlements,” Wolfe said, and my throat tightened.
“We’re going there, now,” I said, as the limo bumped and swayed over the road. “He could be killing them-”
“That’s not your father’s style,” Wolfe said smoothly.
“I don’t fucking care what you think,” the words squeezed out around my gritted teeth. “Eli?” I looked at him. He couldn’t be okay with leaving Frank with those… those monsters that called themselves my family. No, no way. Not a chance in hell.
His gaze slid from mine.
“Frank can take care of himself.”
“Like hell, he can, or he would’ve,” Landon said, speaking up for the first time in hours. Eli’s head turned, like on a swivel, and he glared at the demon. Landon stared back, expression flat.
“We stick to the plan,” Landon said. “I don’t give a shit what kind of trouble you furry fucks are used to getting up to.” He leaned forward, his elbows pressing hard into the tops of his thighs as he glared down the limo at the guys. The heat, the pure power in his gaze was enough to make me shrink back into my seat… then I took a breath, filling my lungs with air, feeling my own power collecting in my gut and pooling inside of me.
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