by Leia Stone
He grinned, mischief lighting up his honey-colored eyes. “Glad you noticed.” He didn’t bother to cover up any of his, hmm, manly bits for a few minutes. He was all smooth muscles and lean planes, and I was half tempted to pull the truck over to explore them.
“Eyes on the road, love,” he said, pleasure at my reaction evident.
Oh right. The road. I yanked my focus back to the front.
“So,” I started, trying to return my mind to our next move while Brock grabbed his clothes from the seat behind him and started putting them on. “Johnny chose the most powerful witches to join us, so that’s good. At least based on what Gran told me.”
They were going to be about ten or twenty minutes behind us. They were still assembling the crew when we left.
“Tell me about them,” Brock said while zipping up his jeans.
“Well, Johnny knows his stuff, or he wouldn’t be in charge of the Black Clan, but as you see, he’s a prick.”
“That fact didn’t escape me.”
“Auntie Bertie holds her own. She was the head of the clan before Johnny came of age and came into the bulk of his power. I suspect she could probably still give him a run for the position if she were so inclined.”
“And why isn’t she? She seems to have enough grit to take him on.”
I shrugged. “Gran never really told me, but I expect Auntie Bertie just got tired of it. She complains a whole lot, as you saw, but she probably enjoys her semi-retirement. It’s a lot of work to run a clan of witches and warlocks like the Blacks. Not a one of them seems to do anything without griping first.”
“I noticed. Makes me glad the wolves are more easygoing.”
“Totally. I’m grateful for that too. I couldn’t imagine living on the Black land with all of them.” I shivered. “Or raising a baby among them. It will be challenging enough raising a kitsune-witch-werewolf baby without having all of them around, breathing down my neck.”
“I’m glad you told Bertie you wouldn’t bring the baby by,” Brock said.
I glanced at him. “I didn’t figure it’d fly with you, and there’s no way in hell I’ll let our baby be a part of anything they’re up to.”
“Not a chance.”
“Yeah, the Blacks are dangerous. The less we see of them, the better. If Johnny really is dealing in dark magic, then it’s definitely bad.” I tightened my hold on the steering wheel. “The other five witches Johnny said were coming are my cousins. Gran was one of five siblings, and they all had lots of kids. I haven’t seen my cousins for years, but they’ll all be able to do what we need them to. Even when I left Eugene when I was sixteen, they were already powerful. I’m sure they’re more so now that they’ve been training with the clan.”
“Have you gotten word about Willemena yet?” Brock asked.
I shook my head, flicking a quick peek at the dark screen on my phone. “Cass said he’d text as soon as Tianna had news. If Willemena can’t make it, then I’ll have to ask Johnny to bring an extra witch, though I’d rather have Willemena. Gran trusted her, and she’s played straight with us so far.”
Brock nodded, sharp eyes peering out the windshield ahead of us. “Willemena seems to know what she’s doing. I hope she can make it too.”
“Any news from Ray?” I asked. Brock had left his second in charge while he was away with me.
“Not since we first arrived at Cottage Grove. A few of my wolves couldn’t get home in time, but they’re locked in their offices, windows shut, vents blocked, waiting for instruction. We’ve got to get this dealt with soon. If a single one of my wolves gets infected, I don’t know what it would do to the rest of the pack.”
I gasped. “I didn’t think of that. The entire pack is linked!”
“Including you and the baby.”
“Do you think the effects of the fog could travel along the pack link?” Dread weighed heavily in my gut.
“I don’t know, Evie, I really don’t. When something bad happens to any of us, we can all feel it. When Nathan died, it hit every one of the wolves really hard. I think it’s possible that if the fog takes hold of one of us, it could influence the rest of us. I hope it’s not the case, but we’ve never dealt with one of these monsters before.”
I was busy considering how bad this shit show would really go when I noticed something up ahead on the road. I squinted, trying to make it out. “Is that … fog?”
A blackish green-tinged mist rolled across the road. Bile rose up my throat at the sight of it.
Brock clenched his jaw. “Fuck! It sure is. There was no fog on this road when we first drove through. It’s spreading fast.” He clenched his hands into fists and grunted in frustration. “I don’t know how to fight fog! Give me something I can hit or sink my teeth into, not this crap.” He gestured wildly up ahead of us.
Poor Brock. He was used to being in charge and in control. Since I’d arrived in his life, very little had been within his control.
“We’re going to have to drive right through it,” I said while Brock turned off the air conditioning, double-checked that the windows were fully closed, and grabbed two gas masks from the back seat, where we’d stashed them earlier. I’d learned today that Brock owned a dozen gas masks. When I’d asked him why, he’d just said he liked to be prepared for anything. Right then, I was mighty glad he was obsessed with protecting his pack.
While I kept driving, he strapped the mask on me before putting on his own. We had no idea if you had to breath the fog in to be affected or if it could just touch your skin, but this was the only road to the sheriff’s office and we couldn’t wait if it was spreading this fast. Yeah, it was like the apocalypse in Eugene, Oregon, and we didn’t have a second to spare. It was only going to get worse if I didn’t find a way to seal the gate before that siren bitch Calista and her sisters could get back out to create more havoc.
The fog thickened ahead of us until it fully concealed the rest of the road behind it. I was forced to slow down. “Dammit! If we had all ten witches assembled right now, we could take it down.”
Brock’s truck crawled through the haze of blackish-green.
“Did it take over the whole town while we were gone?” Brock asked. Through the mask, he sounded a bit like a sexy Darth Vader, though his question sent ice water through my veins.
“I sincerely fucking hope not.” But as I drove the truck through the fog, with no end in sight, panic started to thump in my chest. “Send Johnny a text to warn the Blacks behind us.”
Brock fiddled with my phone and then set it down, watching the road ahead keenly. He didn’t speak for a moment, and I wondered if he was checking in with his second-in-command via their telepathic pack link.
“Oh no,” he finally said.
“What?” I asked right away, keeping my attention fixed on the road ahead of me. Visibility was limited to like five feet in front of us. It was going to take us forever to get to the sheriff’s office like this, and the Blacks wouldn’t be able to get there any faster, and they were still probably ten minutes behind us even though I’d told Johnny they had to hurry. Though I didn’t think they had gas masks, they were powerful enough to magically protect themselves from the effects of inhaling the fog.
“Ray says the fog has completely overtaken pack land. He’s locked up in our house, so he can’t tell if the fog rolled back in from town to our property, or if more of the fog is seeping out of the gate. Could there be more than one fog demon? Or could one fog demon take over a whole damn town?”
“Dammit, I don’t know! Cass would though.” But I couldn’t exactly call Cass with a gas mask strapped to my face. But if he was close enough...
‘Cass!’ I called out across our link, hoping I was within range. We’d never been able to figure out exactly how far our telepathic capabilities stretched. ‘Can you hear me, Cass?’
‘Barely, but yeah, I can hear you. Shit’s gone to hell faster than we thought. It’s chaos over here.’ His voice was muffled inside my head but it was there.
/> ‘Where’s here?’
‘T and I are holed up in my loft, but we’re going to leave soon to meet you at the sheriff’s. It’s all over the news. People are going nuts out there. It’s really bad.’
‘Yeah, Ray says the fog has completely overtaken pack land, which means Gran’s cabin must be in it too.’ I worried at my lip. Molly was in the cabin with Haru and Reo, and my dad was at Brock’s house. ‘We’re on our way to the sheriff’s. We saw my cousin Johnny, and he’s agreed to send seven witches from the Black clan. Did Tianna get a hold of Willemena?’
‘Yeah, apparently the cranky old witch had a premonition about her being needed. She was already on her way. She’ll meet us at the station in twenty.’
‘That’s good news. We need all the power on our side we can get.’ I sighed in relief. ‘We might be late at this rate, but we’re making our way straight to the station. Meet you there.’
‘You got it, my girl.’
‘And, Cass?’ I said.
‘Yeah?’
‘Be careful.’
I didn’t want to think about anything happening to my demon imp bestie. Life had changed so much over the last several months as to become nearly unrecognizable; Cass was the one constant fixture in my life I could always count on, and I wanted to keep it that way.
‘Don’t worry about me,’ Cass said. ‘My badass T has some kind of spell that keeps the fog from touching us. You watch your back till I’m with you to watch it for you.’
I smiled through our link, wondering if he could feel me, before disconnecting. “Willemena’s coming,” I said aloud to Brock, before finding it too difficult to communicate through the masks. I switched to our pack link. ‘We need to stop this fog demon, stat.’
‘You can say that again.’
We continued to crawl along the road until my right eyelid twitched at the slow pace. I’d agreed to be at the station in an hour; at this rate, if felt like we’d be lucky if we made it before nightfall.
I handed my phone to Brock. ‘Text Molly and Cho and tell them to meet us at the station. Tell Molly to wear the mask you left her, and to make sure to bring her apprentice badge.’
‘What about Haru and Reo?’
I hesitated. In reality, I wanted everyone I cared about to stay safe and put. But that wasn’t an option. Still... ‘I don’t see what they can do to contain the fog. They should go protect my dad, especially since we’ll need Cho for the fog.’
Brock nodded and got to typing, and when we finally pulled up outside the station it seemed as if ten hours had passed, though it’d only been ninety minutes or so.
We were definitely late.
I cut the engine and peered at the barely-visible building. Immersed in the thick, putrid-looking fog, it was like a haunted house, not a police station. It perfectly matched the rest of the scene. The trashcans lining the street were upturned, parking meters were bent and knocked over, and cars had been abandoned with their doors hanging open and engines left running. And that was only as far as I could see in the fog.
‘It looks like the set of a horror flick,’ Brock said.
I nodded sadly. How had things gone so wrong so fast? And how was the responsibility of the entire town squarely on my shoulders? It felt like I was carrying around a refrigerator on my back, and all my body wanted was a nice, long nap … monster free.
I needed to close that fucking gate, like yesterday.
Car alarms blared in the distance, making the uneasy stillness of the town seem all that much more wrong. There wasn’t a person in sight.
‘Is it safe to walk through as long as we’re not breathing it, do you think?’ I asked, wishing—not for the first time—that I’d had the chance to learn more about my witchy powers. If Tianna could make a bubble that kept out the air, I should be able to as well … if I’d learned how.
‘I have no idea…’ Brock trailed off. ‘You’d better double check with Cass.’
But just as I reached out for Cass, a rap on my driver’s side window about gave me a heart attack. I yelped and jumped half a foot off my seat, before seeing that Cass was hovering at my window, flapping his little wings to keep him aloft. The fucker was laughing at me as I attempted to gather the scraps of my dignity.
Tianna loomed behind him, but she wasn’t laughing. The Amazonian fae-witch with the great hair was shooting looks in every direction, her magic crackling between the open palms of her hand. The fog didn’t seem to touch them. They were surrounded in a thin clear bubble of clean air. She spoke to Cass in their transparent bubble, and he relayed to me. ‘My sexy T says she’s going to extend the bubble to surround the cab of the truck until you and Brock are inside. Got it?’
I nodded first at him, then at her behind him. Her magic flared as she pushed the invisible force of her power outward to bolster and expand her clear bubble. The moment she nodded at me again, I popped open the driver’s side door and Brock and I slid next to them, pulling off our gas masks but clutching them in our hands. There was no way I was leaving it behind in the car, not with the way our day had been going.
“Let’s move,” Tianna said in her best military commander impersonation. “Hostiles are everywhere.”
“I don’t see anyone,” I stated while hustling along the sidewalk in front of the station.
“They’re there, trust me.”
As if I’d summoned them, a horde of people began filtering through the fog. On foot, there was no chance of confusing them for usual townies. Their dress was normal enough, but their faces were locked in menacing snarls, their gazes gleaming with a manic possession that didn’t bode well for anyone. A low grumble followed them, like the theme song of hell.
“Oh. Fuck,” I said, my step faltering.
Immediately, Brock’s hand went to the small of my back, and he hurried me back into motion. We tore up the front steps of the police station and barreled through the double doors. The second we were through them, the officer who’d been stationed as lookout snapped a bar back between the two handles, barring the door shut. With a tight mouth, he peered out the tempered glass panels, watching the street.
Molly materialized from the fog then and sprinted toward the doors, gas mask firmly in place, a shotgun in either hand. She was also encased in a bubble and I guessed it was Cho’s work. Damn I needed to work on my witchy powers!
“Open back up,” I yelled, and the man did as I asked, letting her slip inside before closing it again. I added, “We’re expecting three more parties.”
The police officer looked between me and the fog-demon-possessed people following our trail toward the station. “I don’t think they’re going to be able to make it inside. I can’t let the rest of them all in.”
“We need them to stop this fog, and they’re right behind us. They should be here any minute,” I told the officer, thinking of the Blacks, Willemena, and Cho. “Do what you have to do, but we need them inside, and fast.”
Prematurely balding, the officer scowled like I’d just told him to hop on one leg while doing the impossible, but when Detective Swanson rushed out from the back of the station to greet us, he nodded curtly. “I’ll see what I can do,” the officer on door duty said.
Brock clapped him on the shoulder while Tianna let the bubble protecting us dissolve. “See that you do more than that,” Brock said. “If the people we’re expecting don’t get in, we can’t stop the fog.”
The officer gulped so that his Adam’s apple bobbed, then nodded nervously, his eyes wide and worried as he took in three women who would’ve looked like sweet little old ladies if not for the murderous slant of their features. The women pounded on the tempered glass panels of the front doors, making the officer jump, and the rest of us hurry to the back, following Swanson.
Eugene, Oregon, was like a freaking zombie apocalypse.
7 Too many witches in the kitchen
Luckily, it didn’t take long for our ragtag group to assemble. The Blacks and Willemena had arrived. Detective Swanson gave us the
rundown: Chaos had descended upon Eugene, and it wasn’t going to let up until we did something about it. The cops were at a loss. The human world was completely unprepared to deal with a fog demon.
The detective, who looked like he’d aged a decade since I last saw him, scanned the many supernatural creatures gathered in the conference room around him. Fine wrinkles lined his eyes and crinkled his forehead. “The latest is that one of my officers is holding his family hostage, at gunpoint. He was the first to be hit by the fog, so far as I can tell. By now, the only ones of us on the force who haven’t been hit are inside this station.”
I’d only seen him, the guy manning the door, and a receptionist. Unless they had someone hiding in a back room behind a closed door, that was what the police force of Eugene had been reduced to.
“What’s your officer asking for in exchange for releasing his family?” Willemena asked in a strong voice. Despite the clusterfuck that pressed in on us on all sides, she was radiating a calm I envied. “If he’s holding his family hostage, he must be asking for something.”
“Or maybe not, given that we’re dealing with a fog demon,” Aunt Bertie snapped at Willemena. Since I’d introduced Bertie and Willemena, Bertie had been trying to assert herself as top dog.
Willemena tilted her head to one side, her long silver hair shifting gracefully, while she waited for Detective Swanson to answer. She didn’t even direct a look at Bertie, which only made my great aunt growl softly and shake her tight gray curls.
Detective Swanson appeared lost for a moment, before rubbing his hand across a tired face. “He’s asking for ten buckets of KFC, extra crispy, and biscuits and butter.”
My mouth dropped open for a quick second. I definitely hadn’t been expecting that. “I take it you’re going to give it to him?”
“I don’t see much of a point. Before this, it was three large pepperoni pizzas, with mushrooms and extra cheese. And before that it was lo mein and moo shu pork.”
“What, is the fog giving him the munchies?” That was one of the weirdest things I’d heard lately.