by Wen Spencer
She jerked free her blades as the construct went up in a roar of white flames.
A third rook had lumbered out of the greenhouse while she had been focused on the first. It had been programmed to kill werewolves so it joined with the second rook in fighting Cabot. The two massive constructs had the black wolf pinned to the ground and were beating him with their flails. He was making horrible yelps of pain.
"Cabot!" she cried. Despite the calm of full vestment, her heart pounded with fear. A normal human would die from the damage that Cabot had taken already.
"I got this! Ow! Go for the kill! Ow!"
The Porsche came racing down the street, skidded into the driveway and roared toward the ooks pinning Cabot.
"Seth!" Cabot yelped. "You promised!"
The Porsche smashed into the nearest rook, knocking it off its root-like feet. The car accordioned from the impact.
"My God, my strength, in whom I will trust!" She charged, reciting the attack psalm. Why did she agree to this chaos? So many people would die if the prince was killed!
A massive black wolf exploded out of the crushed Porsche. "Isaiah, you shit, you didn't stick to the plan!"
Immediately the prince was wrapped with vines. He went down snarling.
"My shield and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold!" Elise slashed the vines holding Seth, freeing him. "I will call upon the Lord, who is worthy to be praised; so shall I be saved from my enemies."
She drove her blades into the heart of the upright rook. "Amen!"
"The last one is coming!" Seth shouted as the construct went up in white flames. "Isaiah! Get your ass back here!"
"Seth, get back!" Cabot cried as the prince tried to free him from the toppled rook.
"I'll free him!" Elise dodged a spiked flail. "Seth, get back before you're trapped again."
"Isaiah!" Seth roared. "Freaking hell! We're supposed to fight as a team!"
Elise slashed at the vines holding Cabot. She'd forgotten to track the fourth rook. A flail hit her full in the shoulder. Even muted by the vestment, the blow sent her tumbling.
"Elise!" Cabot shouted.
The prince leapt forward to yank her out of the way of a second blow.
The rook that Seth had knocked down had regained its feet. The two constructs chased Seth as he pulled her to safety. "The Wicker realized you're the biggest danger here. She's changed the rooks' target to you. Isaiah!"
This time it brought the Thanes running. The grey wolves were covered in the blood of puppets.
"We killed everything!" Isaiah cried. "The witch isn't here!"
"She's here!" Elise shouted. "The rook couldn't have changed targets otherwise. You missed her!"
"Buy her time!" Seth backed out of the fight. "Keep them off her! I'll scan for the witch."
Elise rushed through the attack psalm as fast as she could. Her focus needed to be true as her pronunciation. The tangle of wolf bodies, swinging flails and whipping vines fought for her attention. She was aware that Seth kept back out of the fight now that Isaiah was engaged in the battle.
With the seven Thanes intercepting the vines and flails, she was able to kill the remaining two rooks quickly.
"The witch is in the barn," Seth reported. "I don't know how you missed her. She just started a fire. There she is! Stop her!"
Dahlia Wakefield had used their distraction to run to the Bentley. The big car roared to life. The reverse lights flashed on. Leung raced to intercept it as Dahlia punched the gas pedal. Wolf and several tons of metal collided in a horrible meaty thud. The Bentley won the encounter. It flung Leung to the ground and rolled over his body. The Thane yelped in pain.
The Bentley slew sideways. Dahlia worked the spindle, mouth set with determination, not even glancing toward the oncoming werewolves. The woman had courage, Elise gave her that. Courage wasn't enough.
Silva hit the side of the car, shoulder first like a linebacker. He caught the undercarriage with both hands and heaved. The big car groaned as he rolled it onto its roof.
"Don't kill her!" Elise shouted. Their last chance at finding out the coven's plans was about to be torn limb from limb.
"Don't kill her!" Seth echoed Elise, making it a command that the wolves had to obey.
"Not all of us are Grigori's lap dogs!" Isaiah snapped.
Seth snarled wordlessly at his foster brother. It was deep-chested dangerous sound.
The werewolves obeyed. They shifted to human form so they could safely manhandle Dahlia without making her feral. The witch was pulled from the wreckage by Russo. He held her pinned to the ground. Seth knelt beside Leung to check on the fallen Thane.
Leung murmured, "I'm fine. Just give me a minute to shake it off."
Elise started with the questions that she thought that the witch might actually answer. "What do you want with Joshua?"
Dahlia laughed. "Why should I tell you? You're going to kill me regardless. I've had a Grigori death sentence on my head since I was five."
The Grigori only killed witches who did blood magic, which meant that Dahlia had made her first human sacrifice at five years old. The idea boggled Elise for a minute.
In her silence, Isaiah inserted a threat. "We can make you wish that we would just kill you." He snapped Dahlia's left wrist to illustrate his point. The woman screamed with pain.
"Isaiah," Cabot growled a warning. His gaze was on Seth. The prince looked younger than sixteen in his shock and dismay. Cabot didn't have the dominance to stop Isaiah.
"What do you want with the newborn?" Isaiah ignored Cabot, taking hold of the woman's other wrist.
Seth winced but did nothing to stop Isaiah. "The newborn" was his brother and his responsibility.
"The king keeps you ignorant of everything, doesn't he?" The witch gasped. "Has he told you why he hasn't given you New York? New flash: you're a big disappointment to daddy dearest."
Isaiah snapped her other wrist, making her scream. "What about the boy?"
"We were going to take you eighteen years ago!" The witch gasped and sobbed. "Then we learned that you were useless to us. Not worth the bother. We needed someone strong, and you're just a weak, disappointing worm..."
Isaiah shattered her arm and dislocated her shoulder.
"Oh, grow a spine!" Elise trusted the vestment to keep her safe from the Thane. She pushed between Isaiah and the Wicker. "She's lying to you so you kill her quickly. They're masters of manipulation."
"We're immune to her powers," Silva said.
"Not if you believe simple lies." Elise decided that to move on to other, less dangerous questions. Seth had said that his foster brother might hurt Joshua. If the Wicker continued to enrage Isaiah, the possibility would become certainty. "Who is still alive in your coven?"
The witch sobbed in pain. "No one. They're all dead. You've killed them all."
It was an obvious lie since "Heath" was last in Belgrade.
"Where is Heath?" Elise asked.
Dahlia threw her a frightened look.
Elise nudged her broken wrist. "Where is Heath?"
Dahlia wet her mouth and possibly lied with the truth. "Belgrade. He was to open a breach and then wait for the Wolf King."
"I know he was there. He came home..."
"No! He's still in Belgrade. You'll never find him. Not even the Wolf King could find us. We waltzed all around him for twenty years. Unseen. Phantoms."
"Where's Thane Samuel's skin?" Seth said.
"My new coat?" Dahlia said. "I left it in the barn. It suddenly got too warm for fur."
Dahlia must have doused the building in accelerant as a fire was raging inside.
"Oh shit, it will burn." Cabot took three running steps before realizing he'd be leaving Elise and Seth alone with a witch and Isaiah. He jerked to a stop.
"Let it burn," Isaiah said.
"We need to be sure she isn't lying," Elise pointed out.
"I'll get it!" Hoffman raced off. Silva followed after him.
"What did you mean?" Isaiah
lifted the woman up to snarl in her face. "Why were you going to take me? You were honestly going to take the king's son out of the Castle?"
Honestly? Who did he think he was talking to?
Dahlia whimpered in fear and pain. "The Monkshood coven had been chased from their homes in London, from Bristol, from England, and then out of Boston. They were tired of running. Their plan was brilliant but flawed. They'd staked everything on the wrong wolf. A leash won't control a feral. Pritt Eskola wasn't strong enough to take New York. Linden found their grimoire with all their well-tested spells against werewolves. We could do it right; we just had to be sure to take the right wolf. That he wouldn't go feral on us. We thought you were a golden opportunity. The king's own son. His first male child born for centuries. Who could ask for more? We had to be sure. We were nearly as disappointed as the king when we learned how stupidly weak you are..."
Elise realized that Dahlia was either stalling for time or baiting Isaiah. If it was the later, she succeeded. With a snarl of anger, he tore her throat out in his bare hands.
"Damn it, Isaiah, we didn't learn what they were trying to do!" Seth cried.
"She wasn't going to tell us anything useful." Isaiah flung Dahlia's body aside. "She was dead the moment we showed up. Letting her rant just allowed her to spit in our faces."
With a loud "whuff" the barn exploded.
"Shit!" Seth cried. "Hoffman! Silva!" Fire was the one of the few things that would kill a Thane.
"We're here." Hoffman came stumbling back with Silva. Both Thanes were covered with soot and coughing. "Samuel's skin might have been in there, but there was too much smoke. We couldn't smell or see a thing."
"The damn bitch poured gasoline everyplace before setting the fire." Silva paused to kick Dahlia's body. "The explosion was a big kerosene heater that just went up."
Isaiah waved at the huge plume of black smoke rising from the barn. "We're going to have firefighters here shortly."
"Is there anything still moving?" Elise asked Seth.
"Everything is dead," he said.
She let go of the vestment. Pain washed in from where the flail had hit her in the shoulder.
Cabot caught her as she staggered. He'd transformed into human sans clothing. It felt wonderful to lean against his strong body. "You're bleeding! A lot!"
She looked down at herself. The thorns had torn open her clothing and sliced her arms and legs. Blood gleamed red against the whiteness of her skin. "Oh. That. It looks worse than it is. It heals quickly."
"Good." He looked worse than her with massive bruises on every part of his body. "I was worried."
She found an unbruised spot on his shoulder to lay her head on. It felt like finding the eye of the storm. The rooks blazed about them, waves of heat coming from the holy fire, blasting back the chill of the late autumn afternoon. The king's son had discovered the crumbled Porsche; he howled in anger. The Thanes sulked in circles around the prince and Isaiah, whining complaints that they should be fleeing the scene. Yet she felt calm and safe.
What she felt toward Cabot wasn't glamour. If it was, there'd be no room for this moment. She would feel desire, not relief that they both survived. This serenity might even be love.
He kissed the top of her head. She looked up into his golden eyes.
Yes, it could be love. What a frightening thought. Allies with benefits had been simple and doable. So far, it had been a possible one-night stand that never came to pass. She could have walked away and never have seen him again. He would have been an embarrassing memory. Love? With a Thane? What a mess.
He lowered his lips to hers. Even though a cold logic whispered that she was walking straight into an emotional minefield, she kissed him.
38: Seth
Isaiah wouldn't shut up about Seth wrecking his Porsche. They were hiking back through the forest to where they'd left the cars. Behind them, sirens from fire trucks drew closer, responding to the thick, black smoke rising from the barn. Isaiah sent all the Thanes ahead so he could continue his whine-fest without witnesses.
"Four months!" Isaiah shouted as he pointed back to where they'd left the crumbled wreck of his sports car. "It took four months from the time I ordered it until it arrived at the dealership."
"At least you can get a new one!" Seth snapped. "If I lost Jack, there would be no getting another cousin."
"It was my car! You had no right to take it from the Castle!" Isaiah stabbed his finger toward Seth. "This wouldn't have happened if you kept your hands off what is mine!"
Seth slapped his hand aside. "It wouldn't have happened if you'd done what you were supposed to do! You knew that Jack was hurt! With the king in Belgrade, you were supposed to keep track of all the Thanes! You ignored the situation until after I took the Porsche. You were supposed to work as a team with the Grigori. If you'd done that, I wouldn't have had to use the Porsche against the rook."
"We were here for the Wickers," Isaiah said. "The constructs were nothing but a distraction that we ignored."
"You could only ignore the rooks because the Virtue was killing them," Seth growled. Said Virtue looked like she'd been dragged through a mile of barbwire. "She couldn't take the brunt of all four at once. You were supposed to protect her."
"That was your plan, not mine," Isaiah stated. "I don't risk my life protecting anyone."
"We're not at the Castle. This is my territory. You do what I tell you to do!"
"I'm so sick of the 'I'm a prince' swagger," Isaiah said. "No one cares."
"I'm sick of you being an asshole because you aren't a prince. I'm betting the voices in your head sound like a whiny little girl. Boo hoo hoo, daddy hasn't given me a pony."
Isaiah roared and threw a punch.
Seth jerked back out of range. He could whip Isaiah back in line with dominance but he was tired of pulling punches. The wolf in him wanted blood. Twice Isaiah had nearly gotten Jack killed. "Really? Really? You know that you can't deal it out at my level. You're just a Thane. I will wipe the floor with you. Daddy's not around to stop me. I will happily beat the living shit out of you if that's what you want. Just bring it."
Isaiah caught himself and backed away, growling. He probably remembered last time they'd fought; Seth had thrown him through the north wall of the library. He'd been in a great deal of pain for a day and a half as all the various broken bones healed. "You've had it so easy. It was all just handed to you."
"My entire family was killed!"
"You had a family! I never did. I have a king, not a father. My mother killed herself when I was a month old. Cook is the closest thing I ever had to a mother and you know how warm and cuddly he is. You had the entire package most of your life! I went to your house for your third birthday. The cake. The ice cream. All the presents. Cabot playing protective big brother and your little brothers under foot. It was heaven. You know why I was at your house? So Cabot's father could take me to Russia to live for a year. I don't speak Russian! I'd jump through hoops to call home to speak to anyone that understood English, and not once during that entire year, did my father talk to me. All my life I was told I'd be the Prince of New York. I'd have a wife and kids. I'd have packmates close as brothers. What have I gotten? Shit. I've gotten shit! And every day I'm not made prince, the whispers over how I'm a disappointment grow louder. Do you think I couldn't hear Albany? A damn marquis. I should have been able to make him crawl and beg for forgiveness. Instead it's me that had to back down!"
"Your life is shit so it makes it perfectly fine to attack an orphan half your age?"
"You're a fucking prince. Suck it up."
"Act your age!"
They'd reached the cars. The Thanes had already rinsed off blood, dressed and divided into the two Bentleys. Hoffman, Leung and Tawfeek were in the front car, Silva and Russo were in the back.
"You're going back to the Castle." Isaiah pointed at the second car. "Get in."
Seth didn't want to get into a car for four hours with Silva and Russo. They were nearly as ba
d as Isaiah. Nor did he want to go back to the Castle yet; he'd promised Ewan that he'd return. He should see Joshua before heading back to the Court of Albany. He didn't dare take Isaiah to Decker's, nor any of the Thane he controlled. The vampire's resting place was a family secret; one Seth would keep even if his brother wasn't hiding at the house. Dahlia had driven Isaiah to new heights with his jealousy. Anything that belonged to Seth wasn't safe from his foster brother.
"We'll take the train." Seth pointed to the Amtrak station in Westwood just five miles away. "The Virtue can drop us there."
Isaiah glanced at Cabot and Elise as if he was considering threatening them to force Seth into cooperating.
"Oh, fucking hell, Isaiah!" Seth shouted. "You told me to take the train in Utica. All the Wickers are dead. I'm in my own territory and I have Jack with me."
"Fine. Go!" Isaiah flung out his hand to indicate that Seth should lead in the Virtue's Jeep.
As long as Isaiah didn't follow him onto the train platforms, Seth would be able to get to Cambridge and then to Albany. Seth waved Jack and Elise to the Jeep. He would explain the plan once they were in motion. "Let's go."
* * *
They were within a mile of I-93. The Thane should have taken the exit before the train station to head southwest to New York City. The big black cars didn't move out of the passing lane to exit. They passed under the sign reading: University Ave MBTA/Amtrak Station Right Lane. Elise turned on her right turn signal and started to shift across the five lanes. The second sign appeared another hundred feet or so down the road. The Bentleys stayed in the fast lane.
"Where the hell are they going?" Seth tapped on Jack's shoulder. "Call Isaiah."
Isaiah's phone went to voicemail.
A moment later, Jack's phone rang.
"It's Leung," Jack passed the phone to Seth. "Isaiah's making him do the dirty work."
Seth glanced behind them. Both of the Bentleys were still in the far left lane. Seth answered Jack's phone with, "Where are you going? You missed your exit."
Thane Leung didn't bother to repeat the message. In the background, Isaiah murmured something so low that the phone didn't pick it up. "Your highness," Leung translated it to something politer. "With the king out of the country, Albany is at high risk of a breach. The more wolves in the territory, the more stable it will be."