by SM Reine
Oh, shit…not again.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Through the parking lot, Lilith trailed behind Tasha with her guard up, constantly scanning for any sign of danger. She didn’t track anything…at least nothing beyond a distant awareness of the lyr. She might not be able to see him, but she sensed him nearby—a still and watchful presence. Fortunately, he hadn’t alerted Gideon’s weres, which meant he didn’t want trouble.
When they reached Tasha’s rental, Lilith slid into the rear seat and allowed her aching body to relax.
Letting her head fall back, she hated the state of her jangled nerves, the rough jolts of pain that arced from her shoulder up the back of her neck. A headache was forming, and it would be a doozie, but she couldn’t go back to her apartment above Chill and crawl in bed until she had things sorted, figured out her next move. Tasha might suffer under the delusion she could go home and lock the door, but Lilith knew better.
Once an idea lodged in a werewolf’s thick skull, once he decided he wanted someone, he didn’t stop. Ever. They were as determined and persistent on two legs as they were on four.
But she was also afraid they all had something more serious to worry about than a looming pack war.
She couldn’t forget the eerie soft voice of the demon: I want the blonde.
They had only focused on Lilith when it was clear she stood between them and Tasha. Something about Tasha had attracted the creatures, and this was a completely new threat.
She needed quiet and safety so she could think about the things that had attacked them and plan what to do next. She needed a place the weres would not suspect.
Looking out the window, she watched the colorful lights of the main street shops blur into neon rainbows as Tasha sped south on the way back to the Lost Legacy Spa.
She leaned forward, rested her hands on the back of the driver’s seat. “Gideon knows you’re staying at Lost Legacy, right?”
“Oh, no,” Tasha said. “I mean, yes.”
“Yeah, that means he’s probably already sent his guys there.”
“They’ll be waiting for us when we drive up.” Tasha turned and looked at the sleeping woman in the passenger’s seat. “What about Erin?”
“It’s probably good for her to sleep it off,” Lilith said.
“Well, we can’t stay in the car all night.” Keeping her eyes on the road, Tasha fished in her purse with one hand, finally lifting her cell phone. She handed it back to Lilith. “Call the spa and ask for security. Tell them about Gideon’s men.”
Lilith exhaled forcefully to prevent the laughter that threatened. “Tasha, do you remember the third man accompanying Gideon’s men when they were searching the parking lot?”
“Tall guy, handsome, dark hair?”
“Yeah, that one.”
“I remember him. He was with Owen in the bar.”
“His name,” Lilith said, “is Remy Lemarchal. He’s the head of security for all of Lost Legacy.”
“Oh,” Tasha said in a small voice. “But he was with Gideon’s men…”
“Yeah.”
The car rumbled over a bridge and took the curve around the bay south of town. Ocean waves crashed on the right and the slopes of the Coastal Range loomed on the left, massive and dark as a primeval forest.
“I have an idea,” Lilith said. “Someplace we can go until things quiet down and we can figure out what to do.”
“Is it far?”
“It’s about an hour away. Up in the mountains,” Lilith said. “I have a cabin.”
Tasha slowed the rental to a stop at a red light.
Crossroads were supposed to be metaphorical, Lilith thought. It represented a time when you thought things over, the critical factor being time. The luxury of days to consider your options, make tidy lists of pros and cons and brainstorm all the possible ramifications of each choice.
She wasn’t afraid of risk or of making decisions. Knowing precisely how much to risk and when had kept her alive down the years. She also knew it was foolish to pass on golden opportunities.
It was what she’d done after she’d learned that Lost Legacy’s alpha was going to be laid up for awhile, leaving Owen nominally in charge. That was a laugh, and the reason she’d called him to talk. He’d been so attracted to Tasha McNeil, she could have laid a Grand Mal hex on wolfie-poo without him noticing. Only the joke was on her now that her neatly laid plans had gone kaflouey in the space of a few hours.
That was one of the pitfalls of an extraordinarily long life; you tended to take time for granted. She was out of time, not to mention running low on options.
Gideon Black wouldn’t wait long.
A few clouds scudded over the surface of the moon. Gibbous phase. Growing and fat and nearly, but not quite full. There were only a few days left before the full moon. Whatever Gideon had in mind, he’d launch using the power of the full moon.
She needed to plan, and Tasha needed a speedy education in all things werewolf in order to have a prayer of surviving whatever mayhem Gideon was about to unleash.
“What do you think we should do?” Tasha asked.
Lilith knew what she should do: push Tasha out of the way, take over the wheel and steer the rental north to town and drag the woman back to face Gideon Black and Owen White. It was beyond belief that Tasha’d allowed a were to mark her, spent at least one night in bed with him and claimed not to remember consciously agreeing to the whole thing.
Lilith might have been more understanding if Tasha were younger. But she was a woman grown with enough spare cash lying around that she could afford a healthy five figures for ten days at the spa. Dahling.
Okay, that wasn’t fair; Tasha wasn’t that sort. She had come back for Lilith when the move for self-preservation would have been to hightail it to civilization and pretend the high strangeness had never happened.
Consent.
It was the one factor where Lilith was in total agreement with the weres. She had the skills and power to bend Tasha McNeil to her will. If she’d wanted to gain access to the Council of the Kinraven through sheer force, she could have done that decades ago. She wanted her freedom, and she wanted a seat at the table of great powers, and she wanted to win it fair and square. It was such a New World sort of ideal that it made her want to snicker, but if she did that, she’d be lying to herself.
Consent mattered.
It was what Gaebryl had denied her since she’d become his upon her mother’s death.
“The choice is yours,” Lilith said. “Turn left here and we can go to my cabin. Or you can go straight back to Lost Legacy.”
Tasha’s fingers drummed on the steering wheel. “What if there’s something seriously wrong with Erin?”
“I’m only guessing since I haven’t examined her, but she just went through ten days of diet and strenuous exercise. Her system probably isn’t reacting well to booze and bar food. If she’s not better in the morning, we can take her to the hospital.”
“If it’s just too much alcohol,” Tasha said, “she might be embarrassed if we took her to the ER.”
As the stoplight shifted, yellow glowed on the pavement of the intersecting highway. The bottom disk on the north-south side flipped to green. Tasha turned the wheel left and headed up the mountain road.
Lilith sat back and closed her eyes…and failed to notice the pair of headlights that swung left at the intersection and followed in their wake.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
When they reached the cabin, Lilith made Tasha stay in the car with Erin while she checked the wards she’d placed a couple of months ago when she’d last visited.
No more taking chances with the innocent and the ignorant.
The outside of the log structure was unchanged. Her wards remained neatly sealed and untouched except for some nibbling at the edges by minor earth spirits. She’d expected that and often placed an extra ward or two for that reason. The tiny magickal creatures considered the flows trapped within her spell constructs like tasty treats.
Taking a deep breath and letting it out slowly, she sketched the symbol and spoke the words that opened the seals.
As the magickal wall fell and the solidity of the place, her home, flowed into her, it made the knots in Lilith’s heart relax and unfurl. She loved the rustic, sturdy cabin, and how it was deeply rooted to the earth energies of the mountain and the slow-moving consciousness of stone and soil. The vagaries of magick and humans and the politics of the Kinraven were all things too fleeting for the soul of the mountain to care about. Her mother had hated that fact of the high reaches, but Lilith loved it.
She would live here all the time once she’d banked enough cash to hold her for a decade or more. However, human economics were irritatingly unpredictable. Aside from the constant of greed and corruption, financial magick was a rapidly changing field, and one that took increasing amounts of her time. If the rate of change in society reached the level of chaos her models predicted, she might have to retire here soon, whether she was ready or not. Life among mortals when their civilization went through periods of crisis was something to be avoided at all costs. She’d barely escaped the French Revolution with her head still attached to her shoulders. Not that she expected a return of the guillotine. The mountain men who’d fled the cities and haunted the western slopes could be plenty dangerous in their own way, which was the biggest reason for the installation of protection wards around the cabin.
The current chaos she faced, however, was of her own design. As much as she didn’t want to admit it, Remy had been right. Without her interference, Owen would never have called Gideon Black. He and Tasha McNeil might be cozied up in a were den somewhere right about now, fucking to their heart’s content. And she might have been able to relax enough to find out if she wanted more from Remy Lemarchal.
At least, enough to make it worth the risk.
Behind her, a motor whirred as Tasha buzzed down a car window. “Is it all clear?”
Lilith turned and said, “Yeah, we’re good.”
“Can you come give me a hand? I think Erin’s waking up.”
With a sigh, Lilith padded back to the car and opened the passenger side. Erin Waverly rolled her head to the side, her eyes wandering and almost tracking with her movements. She was too pale and her aura was tinged with a gray color that threaded through the spectrum like ugly wires in a dancer’s tutu. Lilith didn’t like the looks of it. Alcohol was often more destructive than people realized. However, alcohol didn’t do that to auras, that is, one night’s indulgence wouldn’t have that effect.
“How do you feel?” Lilith asked.
Erin grunted.
Tasha exited the car and joined Lilith. Together they scooted Erin out of the Kia and half-carried her across the yard, up the steps and inside the cabin. Tasha tilted her head back to look the loft high above the main floor while eyeing the wooden ladder used to reach the space. “Is that the bedroom?”
Lilith nodded. “Let’s put her on the couch here.”
“Good idea.”
When Erin was situated under a thick quilt, Tasha collapsed in an overstuffed chair by the fireplace and propped her bare feet on the polished stump that served for a coffee table.
Lilith paced, chewing on her lower lip. While they’d hustled Erin inside, the redhead had floated in and out of consciousness, as evidenced by her slurred speech and repeated question, “Whuz goin on?”
Tasha dug into her oversized leather handbag, pulling out a small white plastic bottle with a blue label. “Erin’s head must be killing her. I know mine is.” She rose and headed toward the galley kitchen at the rear of the cabin. “Is the tap water safe to drink?”
Lilith halted her pacing. “Don’t give her anything.”
“Why not?”
She hesitated. How much more high strangeness could Tasha take right now? Not a lot, in Lilith’s opinion. When she’d told Tasha that Erin was likely suffering the effects of alcohol and rich food that had been before she’d gotten a good look at the woman’s aura.
The gray color she’d noticed was bad. It meant Erin had lost some of her life energy, the kind that was difficult-to-impossible to retrieve. But when that happened, there was usually a reason, and the thing sucking life out of the human was glaringly obvious. Any hearthwitch could perform the extraction.
Normally.
Not a lot of normal was in evidence lately.
Proper procedure dictated a witch locate the demon or spectral energy form that had latched onto the human and remove it as fast as possible. The deeper and more widespread the gray shading of the aura, the more vital essence the subject had lost. If it hadn’t gone too far, most people survived the ordeal.
Erin hadn’t reached the point of no return. Yet.
“A little ibuprofen won’t hurt her and might help,” Tasha said.
“Let me look at the bottle.” Lilith took it from Tasha and made a show of studying the contents. Synthetic pharmaceuticals often weakened the life force and so were generally a bad idea when dealing with a soul sucker.
Tasha rested on hand on her hip. “Plain ol’ generic stuff.”
Lilith passed it back to her with a sniff. “Don’t give her any.”
Looking around, Tasha said, “Where’s your medical degree?”
Should she tell her it was from the Sorbonne? Circa 1923?
Probably not.
“She’s your friend,” Lilith said. “It’s up to you, but I wouldn’t.”
Tasha tossed the small container up and down like a small ball a couple of times then sighed and tossed it on the round dining table.
Lilith started toward the ladder to the sleeping loft, congratulating herself. Maybe this new plan of letting idiots make their own choices was a good thing. Who knew? It might even work.
“This is beautiful,” Tasha said.
Lilith looked down from the third rung of the ladder. Tasha held up a large white feather, and the knots in Lilith’s heart began to harden again.
“Do you collect them?”
“No,” Lilith said in a harsh voice. “Put it down.”
Doing so, Tasha frowned. “Are you all right?”
The rune at Lilith’s throat burned again, as it had so many times this night. She’d ignored it, but she couldn’t any longer. The feather must have been here a little under twenty-four hours, and was the second one she’d seen.
Gaebryl’s signal.
One she’d been ignoring to the best of her ability, but if she didn’t respond soon, he’d be pissed.
Like that was any different from his normal temperament.
Like she had time to deal with a primadona seraphim.
Like she had any choice.
She sighed deeply and slid down the ladder, glanced at the old wooden clock on the rough mantle. Nearly 2 AM. If she hurried, she could make it to see Gaebryl and be back before dawn. With any luck, Tasha and Erin would sleep. Tomorrow, there would be time. Tomorrow, they could figure out what to do.
Tasha’s body was stiff and her expression had taken on what Lilith was coming to realize was a very stubborn look. She smiled. Stubborn was good. Tasha would need every bit of stubborn to deal with Gideon and Owen.
“You must be very tired and I haven’t been exactly forthcoming about…a lot of things,” Lilith said.
“Yes, and yes.”
Lilith gestured at the bottle of ibuprofen. “Pharmaceuticals are great in some circumstances, however I have a remedy I think might be better for your friend. Something that’s been in my family a long time.”
“Sounds good,” Tasha said, “as long as it’s safe.”
“It is. Safe. But I need to go collect a few ingredients.”
Tasha glanced toward the door. “You mean outside? In the woods? At this hour?”
“We shouldn’t wait.”
“Okay,” Tasha said doubtfully. She eyed the ladder leading up to the sleeping loft. “Do you mind if I crash up there?”
“Not at all. Get some rest. We’ll talk when I get back.”
“I promise,” Lilith said. “No more secrets.”
“I’m holding you to it.” Tasha turned away and headed for the ladder.
Lilith, left in the great room near the door, circled her sore shoulder, and wished they could all go to sleep and wake to a fresh day.
One where werewolves didn’t track her and strange demons didn’t attack and her life belonged to no one but herself.
It was a nice dream, but she’d learned long ago that dreaming didn’t make it so.
She opened the door and headed back into the dark.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Funny about sleep. When you needed it most was when it said adios and left your brain wide-awake to churn every stupid detail. Like that would help.
Up in the so-called sleeping loft of the cabin, Tasha threw off the quilt and scooted to the edge of the bed, let her legs dangle and rested her face in her palms. She’d washed most of the filth from the night’s barefoot run from her feet, but they still throbbed and felt like she might have suffered a few tiny cuts. Her new black dress was ruined, also.
And her shoe.
The one she’d lost when she’d run from those things. She’d found it on the ground next to Lilith, charred as if it’d been barbecued. She’d asked Lilith about it in the car, but hadn’t gotten a satisfactory answer. In truth, she didn’t care about the shoe, because if it had, in some bizarre way, helped Lilith survive, she was cool with that.
But what the fuck? Who torched a shoe? And how?
Lilith had promised answers when she returned, and Tasha was going to dig them out of her even if she had to tie her down and use sharp objects.
Giving up on rest for the moment, she crossed to the ladder, climbed down to the great room and turned on one of the table lamps.
In another time, she would have loved spending the night in a rustic cabin. Might have admired the red leather sofa and the striped, cotton rug and the lamps that looked like they’d been fashioned by local artisans. But all she could see was Erin’s pale face against the rich leather. She couldn’t shake the feeling that something more serious was wrong than simple overindulgence.