Wolf's Curse

by Kelley Armstrong

  “Tell that to the poor guy in the attic!”

  “We do believe Renée kills those sent to capture or assassinate her, and when she does, she uses the bodies for magic. That note doesn’t make it seem like that guy was coming by for coffee. Renée is a highly skilled practitioner who has devoted herself to the study of potions and other tangible forms of magic as you may have guessed by her workshop.”

  “So she sells dark magic—”

  “No, she sells powerful light magic. She’s also an inventor. She creates new potions and salves. Both those things make her a target. She’s selling magic and drastically undercutting other organizations, who’d like to kill her. There are also those who recognize her value as an inventor and want to hire her, by force.”

  “She’s a lone witch scientist, pissing off the establishment,” I say. “Huh. If that’s true, then I totally forgive her for scaring the shit out of us in the tunnels, and I kinda hope I get a chance to meet her again.”

  “Did you forget the guy in the attic?” Tricia says.

  “Nope,” Allan cuts in. “We haven’t. But if that guy came to kill or kidnap her, then she has the right to kill him. If she did and uses his body to protect herself or help her light-magic research? That’s fine by me.”

  I nod. “Me, too. If it’s true.”

  “It is,” Holly says. “Or that’s the story, and my family wants to confirm it and offer her protection, but she won’t meet with us. I wanted to speak to her personally.”

  “So you’re a kickass witch warrior?” Allan says. “Protecting the maligned and misunderstood.”

  Holly’s cheeks darken. “Not quite kickass yet. But that is our mandate. It makes the council nervous. The American coven kicked us out generations ago.”

  “Because to them, all dark magic is evil,” I say. “Even strong defensive light magic is forbidden. Which is why Paige left.”

  “Exactly. I’m hoping she’ll be our way back into the wider community. I just wanted to get to know her first. I also wanted to be the one to make contact with Renée.” Another flush. “I want a lot of things.”

  “Nothing wrong with a little ambition,” I say.

  Do I believe her? Yes. I know I still need to be cautious, but her story fits, and what I’ve heard of her family meshes with what she’s said.

  “All right,” Tricia says. “I’m not sure I’m okay with this, but I’m not a witch, so it isn’t my call.” She looks at Holly. “Sorry if I got prickly. I just . . . I’m a little freaked out by everything in this place. I’ve researched dark magic, but I’ve never seen it in use, and clearly, my prejudices are showing.”

  “When it comes to dark magic, everyone has that reaction,” Holly says. “I wish we’d stop using the terms dark and light. There’s a huge range.”

  “True,” Tricia says. “So I apologize for getting squirrelly, but if it’s okay with everyone else, I strongly suggest we don’t stick around here.”

  “I would agree,” I say, “but this is where Elijah expects us to be, and we’ve already gotten into trouble chasing after each other. I’ve met Renée. If she does come back, I think we’ll be fine. There’s clearly been a misunderstanding that Holly can set straight.”

  “I can,” Holly says. “She might not want to talk to me—and I’ll respect that—but we’d be in more danger if she caught us lurking around outside. She knows we’re here, and she’s probably waiting for us to leave, which we’ll do as soon as Logan gets back.”

  “In that case,” Allan says, “can I talk to you for a moment, Kate? In private.”

  Holly rises. “Tricia? It looks like you’ve scraped yourself up pretty good. I saw medical supplies in the workshop. We’ll get you cleaned up and bandaged while they chat.”

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Logan

  Renée walks to where Mason lies on the ground, as if he collapsed in a binding spell. She snaps her fingers, and he startles up so fast he nearly falls again.

  “You can cast dual binding spells?” I say. “And you don’t need to be within range to hold them?”

  “Impressed? You should be. Consider it a lesson. If I bind you again, you will stay bound.”

  “You,” Mason says, bearing down on her. “You—”

  I step into his path, hands raised. “Don’t. Please. She’s letting us go, and we need to get back to Kate and the others.”

  “Hold up, there,” Renée says, raising her hands. “I don’t think I agreed to let you go just yet. We still have the small matter of an assassin to resolve.”

  “Assassin?” Mason and I say in unison.

  “Yes, assassin, and before you go telling me she’s not here to kill me, let me assure you I have no doubt about that. Her boyfriend made his intentions very clear.”

  “Boyfriend?” I say. “I’m not following.”

  Renée sighs and leans against a tree. “Keep up. I’m guessing your sister didn’t tell you about the dead boyfriend.”

  “I . . . No. Things were a bit chaotic and—”

  “Yes, chaos. Yes, running for your lives is a decent excuse for a lack of sibling communication. You are forgiven. I told your sister to warn the girl that if she doesn’t leave me alone, she’ll end up like her boyfriend.”

  “Boy . . .” My head snaps up. “The mummy. You mummified—”

  “—an assassin. After he tried to kill me. He trapped me in a circle of binding and then started preparing a particularly nasty ritual. One that involves keeping your victim alive for days while you bleed them to death. The blood of a spellcaster—collected at such a slow pace—is particularly potent, and that sorcerer wasn’t going to lose the chance to harvest valuable ingredients from me before collecting his bounty. Unfortunately for him, I’m protected against circles of binding. I faked capture just long enough to be completely certain of what he had in store for me so I could decide his own fate.”

  “You mummified him while he was still alive.”

  “Tit for tat. At the risk of defending myself, his death was much faster than what he planned for me. He was unconscious during the mummification and would barely have had time to wake before suffocating. I do hope he woke for a moment, though. Just long enough to realize what was happening.”

  “Bit of a sadist, aren’t you?” Mason says.

  “A sadist would have paralyzed him so he endured every moment of horror as she entombed him. Wishing a single moment of final horror on a man who planned to torture me to death? I’d call that justice . . . with a touch of vindictive spite.”

  I look at her. “So you’re telling me that the guy you mummified—the guy who tried to torture you—is Holly’s boyfriend? You’ve made a mistake.”

  “Hell, yeah,” Mason says. “I’m not saying Holly wouldn’t be capable of defending herself, but an evil assassin?” He snorts. “No.”

  “Holly,” the witch says. “You mentioned this Holly before.”

  “Right,” I say. “That’s the girl who’s with us. A witch named Holly Nakamura.”

  “Nakamura? Japanese, presumably?”

  “Yes. She admitted she came hoping to find you. She wouldn’t say why, but I can’t imagine her goal was assassination.”

  “It’s not. Her last name isn’t Nakamura. It’s Kimura.”

  When I blink, Renée says, “You know them?”

  “I know of them. They’re one of the most famous witch families. Or most infamous, depending on the source. Legendary guardians of dark magic and its practitioners.”

  Mason straightens. “Holly’s family protects people who practice ritual sacrifice?”

  “Hey,” Renée says. “You’ll be drinking blood and taking your annual sacrifice soon enough. I’ve never killed anyone who didn’t make it absolutely clear they intended the same for me.”

  “As for the Kimura family,” I cut in, “who they protect depends on who you talk to. Some say they’re dark magic practitioners who protect the worst of their own kind. Others say they don’t practice the magic themselve
s but defend the right of those who employ a limited range of dark spells. Holly said she didn’t disagree with all dark magic but doesn’t practice it herself, suggesting the latter interpretation is correct.”

  Renée rolls her eyes. “How do they protect us if we know stronger magic than they do? They just want to interfere and monitor us under the guise of protection.”

  “I know nothing about that,” I say, “and it’s something you need to take up with Holly. I can understand why you would mistake her for an assassin. Someone recently attempted to kill you, and now a young woman is looking for you. Presumably, the sorcerer was also young and, I’m guessing, warned that his lover would come after you? Perhaps in his dying words?

  “He didn’t have any dying words. Just a bit of gasping. When he realized I wasn’t caught in his binding circle, he said, ‘Oh, shit,’ right before I bound him. As final words go, it’s a bit cliché. Common enough, though.”

  I shake my head. “Whatever your reasoning, we have established that the ‘girl’ who’s with us isn’t out to kill you. If you want to speak to her, come with us. Otherwise, we’d like to leave.”

  “I meant the other girl. Not Holly Kimura. The girl who’s been skulking about the forest searching for my cabin. Apparently, her boyfriend didn’t give her proper directions, and now she’s been bumbling about trying to find me. As assassins go, I’m not impressed.”

  “Another camper?”

  “Older than you two, but she was staying in that monstrosity of a conference center. A benandanti assassin, intent on making me pay for her lover’s demise.”

  “Benandanti?”

  “Demon hunters,” Mason says. “An extinct race resurrected as part of Project Phoenix. In human lore, they’re Italian witch hunters. In reality, while they originated in Italy, they’re demon hunters with special skills for tracking demons plus enhanced fighting abilities.” He glances at me. “Anything to add, professor?”

  I smile, but his expression stays stony, and what could be a private joke between us falls flat at our feet, twitching with something that feels like mockery.

  I turn to Renée. “I know what benandanti are, and there are a couple of supernaturals at the camp right now who know one very well.”

  “Lovely, more teenagers. Just what my forest needs.”

  I could point out that Chloe and Derek aren’t teens, but that won’t help. “So the person you’re concerned about is a benandanti assassin who isn’t Holly but is a young woman from the conference. Someone from the camp. Someone you’ve seen us with in the forest. I’m sorry, but I don’t know who you could mean. There’s Holly, and there’s my sister, who you’ve already met.”

  Mason makes a noise in his throat. When I glance over, he rumbles under his breath, “There is someone else.”

  It takes me a moment to realize he means Allan, and my cheeks heat. I don’t even like thinking that. He’s a guy. End of story. Or it should be.

  “No,” Renée says. “If you are thinking of the boy-witch, that isn’t who I mean. And yes, I realize he’s a witch. A very interesting situation, and intellectually, I’m curious to know how he resolves it, but otherwise, if he chooses to be male, he is male, and therefore, I would not insult him by misgendering. I’m a witch, not a bitch.”

  Mason snorts a laugh under his breath.

  “All right,” I say. “Then who else . . . ?”

  There’s only one other possibility. The only other person from the camp we’d been in the woods with.

  “Wait,” I say. “Tricia?”

  “Is she in her late twenties? Nauseatingly perky? Was in the forest with you and your sister the day you arrived?”

  Mason’s all-purpose snort takes on a note of derision now. “Fuck, no. Seriously?” He rolls his eyes. “At least with Holly, I can see a hint of hidden badass. Tricia’s a cheerleader. Not the kind you see in movies, but the real ones. Fifty percent cheer, fifty percent leader, one hundred percent annoying.”

  I don’t disagree. She isn’t the stereotype of an air-headed cheerleader, but she’s a little too positive, too perky, too everything-is-awesome. And while I hadn’t witnessed much leadership in action, I’d seen it in her notes, so organized that I’d grieved for the conference we might have had if things hadn’t gone horribly awry.

  I bristle at Mason’s quick dismissal, though. If Tricia was our age, we would have gotten along. While her relentless optimism might be grating, I presume there’s more beneath it, and I admire her leadership skills and her obvious dedication to making a better supernatural world. Does that deserve sneering? If it does, then Mason should be sneering at me, too.

  Maybe he is, and he just didn’t care about that because he liked my packaging. That’s why Mason kissed me in the forest, why he seemed to warm to me, to even possibly enjoy my company. Not because he was attracted to my personality—romantically or otherwise—but because he found me attractive and hoped for a bit of fooling around when the opportunity presented itself.

  Umm, Tricia, a little voice whispers in my ear.

  Tricia? No, I don’t find Tricia attractive, at all. I—

  Oh, right. Tricia. I’m supposed to be thinking of Tricia. Like, processing the fact that Renée seems to be calling her a benandanti assassin, which is slightly more important than fretting about what Mason sees in me.

  “Tricia . . . ,” I murmur, working it through.

  “She’s bullshitting you, Danvers,” Mason says. “I don’t know what game this witch is playing, but she sucks at it. Tricia is not a benandanti assassin.”

  “Which you know based on what?” Renée says. “Your deep personal relationship with her?”

  Renée means that we barely know Tricia, but spots of color touch Mason’s cheeks, as if she’s needling him personally.

  Mason’s jaw sets. “She’s a half-demon.”

  “I never saw any sign of her powers,” I say. “Did you?”

  “I barely saw signs of anyone’s powers,” he says. “We might be supernaturals, but we don’t go around casting spells and shifting forms every five minutes.”

  He’s right. It’s like having a world-class singing voice. Ninety-five percent of the time, we’re normal people.

  “Do you know her demonic type?” I ask.

  “Fire, I think.” His eyes roll back, accessing his enormous memory bank. “Yeah, in the introductions, the counselors started by mentioning their powers. She’s a low-level fire demon. She was also infected like the rest of them, remember? She’s the one who had them lock us up.”

  When I don’t answer, he snaps, “She tried to burn you alive, Danvers. Our annoyingly cheerful leader brought fucking gasoline to get the damn fire started.”

  I turn to him. “Why?”

  His face screws up. “Why what?”

  “Why was she running looking for an accelerant instead of helping light the pyres? She’s a fire demon.”

  His mouth opens. Then he scowls with a shrug. “It wasn’t lighting, so she went to get gas.”

  “But she left even before they had a problem lighting it. Yes, it’s not a perfect answer, but it’s a huge question mark, Mason.”

  “Agreed,” Renée says. “There is time later for a debate on whether she’s an evil assassin. Right now, I just need her found and removed from my damned forest.”

  “We’ll do that. I think Tricia is at the camp among the unconscious there.” I glance at Mason. “Yes?”

  He shrugs. “I wasn’t paying attention.”

  I look at Renée. “We’ll return to the cabin, collect my sister and the others and then go to camp where we’ll find and secure Tricia. Paige will be here soon, and she’ll make sure Tricia is fully investigated.”

  “Paige?” A look passes over her face. “Paige Winterbourne is coming here?”

  “With Savannah, her—”

  “I know who Savannah Levine is. One can hardly call herself a dark witch and not know Eve Levine.” She says it lightly, almost mockingly, but there’s a disconnect in h
er eyes, as if she’s covering mild panic.

  “You have nothing to fear from Paige,” I begin.

  “Of course I don’t,” she snaps.

  I look at her again. After talking to her for a few minutes, it becomes harder to see her resemblance to Paige. Yet I had mistaken her for Paige, and that can’t be a coincidental resemblance.

  This woman is related to Paige. How, though? As far as I know—as far as Paige herself knows—she’s the only child of a woman who died twenty years ago.

  “Paige is coming,” I say. “She’s probably less than a half hour away. I understand, given the council and the coven’s historic stance on dark magic, you may not wish to see her.” Though I doubt that’s your reason, I’ll offer you this excuse. “You can withdraw, and we’ll handle it from here. As I said, you have nothing to fear from Tricia. She’s at camp, unconscious—”

  “It’s me,” a voice calls from the forest, startling us all. Elijah jogs into the clearing, hands raised. “Just warning you I was here.” He glances at Renée and stops short. His expression ripples as if struggling against a reaction, and he gives a curt, “Hello again.”

  “Hello to you, too. I see you got out of my tunnel safely. You’re welcome.”

  “Gratitude is what you get after you guide someone from the forest. Not when you allow them to escape a trap you set.” Elijah glances at me. “Everything okay?”

  I nod. “We’ve negotiated safe passage. Is Kate all right?”

  “I wouldn’t have left her if she wasn’t.” The words come lightly, but annoyance laces his tone. “She’s fine. So are Holly and Allan. They’re all back at the cabin with Tricia.”

  “Tricia?”

  He lifts his hands. “Don’t worry. Whatever infection she had, it’s passed. Can’t say I’m thrilled about having her near Kate, but your sister wasn’t about to leave her stumbling around the forest. They’re all keeping an eye on her in case the infection returns. For now, she’s back to herself. Not exactly the fearless leader we met yesterday but . . . Hey! Where are you going? Kate’s fine. I—”