by WB McKay
One of the vampires made a run for it. I wasn't meant to follow just yet. I needed to watch for all the runners. I'd track them down once the battle was over. The vampire headed in the direction of Nathaniel's Christmas tree farm across the street. It was halfway there when it jerked back as though something had latched around its head. The vampire turned around and returned to the fight, struggling to walk like it was making a trek through knee-deep mud.
The blond woman had one arm pointed at the vampire and the other swirling around again.
Now that I knew what I was seeing, I noticed the jerky movements of many of the vampires. One of them had Rachel latched around its arm, but continued jerkily backing toward the blond woman, ignoring the wolf it wore as a bracelet. It didn't react when its arm snapped, or when she relaunched her attack at its chest.
She was conducting the vampires in a twisted symphony. She controlled them.
And they were losing terribly. There were too many vampires, fighting too many opponents, for one person to steer them all.
One of the vampires—missing both hands and torn a few other places besides—ran directly at her. Her eyes were on the chaos in front of her. It took fangs sinking into her neck for her to notice that it wasn't in the fight anymore.
The offending vampire dropped to the ground and before my very eyes, with no one touching it, the vampire's chest cracked open and its heart flopped out.
I didn't take my eyes off the blond woman after that. Worried as I was about Tess, and Nathaniel, and Rachel, and everyone else, the biggest threat had made itself painfully obvious.
I started toward her without having to think about it. Tracking vampires had fallen off my list of priorities.
Blood flew in front of me, and I looked away from the woman long enough to source it to the vampires around the field. Six of them were still up and fighting, and all of them had blood trickling from their wounds. It arced through the air, converged over the blond woman, and flowed in a steady stream into her waiting mouth.
She wasn't a vampire—the glyph hadn't held her—but the blond woman was a blood drinker of some kind, that much I knew. Everything else? I hoped to find out.
The vampires, though newly weakened by the blood she'd stolen from them, continued the fight.
I followed the blond woman as she fled into the tree farm, determined that whatever else happened, she wasn't going to get away.
THERE WAS NO PREPARING for a giant bat-beast. One moment the woman was running down the row of trees in front of me, the next she was enveloped in a flash of green light, and a bat-beast a foot taller than I was flew over the tops of the trees. Fae, I thought, like that information was helpful at that moment.
I had to do something. The woman who murdered my parents was getting way. I looked around to make sure I was alone and racked my brain for inspiration. I'd always thought hawks were pretty. I pictured their wings in my mind, I pictured them large and sprouting out of my back I poured every ounce of magic I had into the mental image, willing the wings to grow. Bones I wasn't meant to have tore through my back in a violent rearranging of my being. Shifting to a new form was always extra painful. It wasn't something a werewolf was meant to do. It was unnatural. Luckily, witches didn't care about unnatural magic.
My newly sprouting wings tore through my shirt, but I didn't have the time to worry about it.
I pulled The Inventor's weapon from the back of my jeans and I turned the dial. The shift was taking too long. I had to do something to slow her down. All I could do was hope the gun didn't pull so much magic from my body that I couldn't complete the shift. I aimed at the bat-beast and hit her hard in her core with a blast of wind. She jounced wildly through the sky, losing a few feet of height, but pumped her wings harder to make up for it. I shot again and ripped a hole through her left wing.
I crowed with triumph, took aim again, missed, and watched the left wing knit back together, healing before it had the chance to cause the bat-beast real trouble.
She was getting away. It wouldn't be long before The Inventor's weapon wouldn't be able to reach her.
With one last push, I decided my wings—which I could still feel shifting—had to be called done enough, and I took off at a run while I flapped them behind me.
And then I was flying.
I continued shooting the weapon, missing as often as I was hitting her at first, but the wounds slowed her down and as I got closer, my accuracy improved. I flew faster, the bat-beast lost height and speed. I'd have her back on the ground in no time, I was sure of it.
And that's when the she spit blood at me. I could stay silent when my body shifted in slow agony from one shape to another, but I wailed like a banshee when the boiling hot blood sprayed over my side.
I regretted never having the forethought to practice growing wings and flying before. If I had, I might have learned to fly defensively and dodge her spittle in a more elegant manner, but as I paid more attention to it, I found it wasn't that different from leaping out of the way in wolf form. Still, she hit me one or two more times while I struggled to plan my next move.
I resisted my body's instinct to heal. I couldn't handle the use of magic just then if I was going to continue using my weapon. I thumbed the dial over to fire.
It flowed out in weak streams at first. Gritting my teeth, I pulled through my whole body, and gathered enough to send balls of flame straight at the bat-beast's wings. I shot again. And again. The wings lit up until the whole of them were burning. She continued straining to heal, but she couldn't keep up. The bat-beast lost altitude, hit the ground, and shifted back to a human body, the fire gone and even her clothes intact. Her expression wasn't sharp, though. She looked worn down. Burning or not, she was weakened from the fight.
I landed on top of the monster and slammed my first into her nose. One hand yanked hard on my feathers, the other slammed into my ribcage with vampire strength. My legs locked tight on her sides; I wasn't willing to risk losing my hold on her as I rained fist after fist down on her. Her nose healed crooked; her magic was depleting. Unfortunately, so was mine. Between the magic I used to grow wings and the magic I let The Inventor's weapon pull out of me, I was wary of using magic again and draining myself further when I didn't know how long I'd need to last in the fight.
Inspiration dawned from my own dilemma. The blond fae had vampire strength, had been sucking blood out of vampires through the air. Vampires lived on the magic in their hearts. I put my hand over the fae's chest and strained to filter the magic away like I'd done to the vampire in the woods, cramming the magic out to the edges of her body. There was just… too much. Fear iced through me for the first time. While I could sense that the fae was less powerful than she had been in the beginning, and I could see that in the way she struggled to heal, she still had more magic than I could handle. I tried harder, greatly diminishing the magic in the blood near her heart, but when I didn't notice any change in the speed of her healing wounds, I decided that blood drinker she may be, vampire she was not. Removing the magic from her heart—assuming I could manage it—wasn't going to kill her, only exhaust me further.
I let go and jerked her crooked nose hard to the side, breaking it again.
It was time for a bluff.
I jammed the barrel of the gun hard into the fae's throat. With a gentle pulse of my magic reserves, I flickered flame against her in warning. The fae stopped fighting, and I was careful to contain my surprise. Apparently, she didn't like fire. She also believed I had the goods to fire the thing again, something I wasn't sure I wanted to try..
"I know you can heal," I told her, "but can you heal your head back from a charred stump?"
She slowly raised her open hands above her head and let them rest on the ground. This was my chance. It was happening.
I could have cried from the relief of finally being able to ask, "Why did you kill my parents?"
"I've killed a lot of parents."
"They were here," I reminded her. "It was a little ove
r a hundred years ago. They were helping folks—helping werewolves—and you and a pack came through and killed them. Why?"
"Werewolves?" She laughed. "That wasn't me."
"Don't lie to me. I saw you. The wolves turned me and left. Was that a mistake? Or did you never think I'd catch up with you?"
"It wasn't me." Her expression made no sense. She was calm, maybe a little amused.
"Stop lying."
"I only control vampires. If I could control wolves this night would be going differently right now."
"But I saw you."
"Did you now? Didn't you say you were dying at the time? And your family had just been murdered? But you saw me? Are you sure?"
"Stop that!" Tears blurred my vision. "I saw you! I saw you!"
I heard the gun clink against rocks before I put together that I was on my back. The fae monster was running. NO. The word rang through my ears, so maybe I said it out loud. Magic pulsed in my gut, a burning hot rage as I scrambled for the gun. Hotter than any magic the gun had pulled out of me before, I shot before she could get away.
As things went, it turned out she really couldn't heal a charred head.
I was still standing over the body staring, my wings rustling in the breeze, when Nathaniel said, "Hey."
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
It took me two days to shift the wings away. I'd truly drained the magic from my body in that last blast of the gun. For a minute there, I'd wondered if it would make me mortal. The wings should have been a hint that wasn't possible. Nathaniel had to help me sneak away from the scene.
I'd spent my recovery time hiding from view. If I went home, I was sure the Colton boy would see me. There was no explaining away wings. Worst of all, I'd had to avoid Tess. I'd called her from the parking lot of Lake McCumber a few times. She'd left town after our first phone call, wherein she'd told me that she'd gone to look for me after the fight and seen the body on Nathaniel's tree farm. She hadn't asked for an explanation, she'd waited for me to offer one up. I didn't have a good one.
"Explain to me again where the fire came from," she said when she answered my second call. There was no moving on to any other subject. It was all she wanted to know.
"Why can't you leave it alone?" I finally asked her.
"Because that's not what we do." She sounded appalled. "We tell each other everything."
I didn't know what to say.
"Tell me where the fire came from," she insisted.
We both stayed on the line for five minutes of silence before she said, "Call me if you change your mind," and ended the call.
I had nothing to do after that but sit and wait for my magic to replenish so I could get rid of the wings. When I finally did, I went home, relieved to be able to do something other than sit and stew in my own volatile thoughts.
I went in my back door, propped it open to let the fresh air inside, and walked through the cabin to the front. When the front door closed behind me, the flutter of paper didn't make any sense. Who would leave a note on my front door?
They hadn't bothered with the courtesy of folding the paper in half to keep the angry words private.
I know what you are. You're not wanted here. Leave, before we have to make you.
C. Colton
I eyed the Colton boy's home. Like I needed a signature to know who this was. So word had finally traveled to my neighbor that I was a werewolf. I knew it would happen at some point. I'd told those people at the government office. It shouldn't have ticked me off; I'd been expecting it. This is not a big deal, I told my weary mind, but it felt like one thing too many. I plopped down on my porch, swung my legs beneath me, and watched that big mountain, willing it to give me something. Peace, strength, resolution—I'd take any of those, even in small doses. That didn't happen, of course. I did get a visitor. I was expecting him, too, though I hadn't expected to feel such relief when the front porch creaked beside me.
"I know you want me to say I'm sorry I did it, but I'm not." I didn't know which thing I was talking about—learning witch magic, killing the fae woman—I should have been sorry about a lot of things I wasn't.
"I know that," Nathaniel said, and smirked at me. A moment of seriousness stole across his face and he threw an arm around my neck, bringing my face in low and close, and he kissed the top of my head. "I know that."
I turned my head so it rested on his chest. Just one more minute of relief, I promised myself.
He smelled like mint and pine.
I pulled away and remembered why I didn't let myself have moments like that. They filled me up, then drained me out, leaving me feeling more empty than I did before.
"How's the pack doing?" I asked.
"About like you'd think they'd be," he said. "Graham's funeral is tomorrow."
I wasn't sure if I was going or not. I wasn't sure about much of anything.
We'd been quiet for a while. Today, and the days prior, he'd had plenty of chances to ask me about the wings. They'd been right in front of him multiple times. I expected at that point it was bound to become another one of those aching, pulsing, unspoken things that lived between us.
"Julia?" His voice was small and wary. "What's wrong? I'd think, after everything, you'd be feelin' happier right about now."
"What?" My head shook with confusion. "Why?"
"Because it's over," he whispered. "It's finally over. She's dead."
"I don't know," I said. "It's not right."
"What's not right?"
"A lot of things," I said. "I still don't know anything about the pack. I've started something with the Division of Protection Against Magical Corruption and I don't even know who they are. And…" I rubbed my forehead. "I told you, she said 'it wasn't me'."
"But you saw her," Nathaniel said. "You recognized her. Don't let what she said take this from you. She was evil. She's a liar."
"But she wasn't though. She was fae, Nathaniel. The fae don't lie."
"We're fae," he said. "There are exceptions. Plus, you know they all get tricky with the word play. They like to mess with your mind."
"She plainly said, 'it wasn't me'. And she said it like it was funny. It was like she knew something I didn't."
"It's finally over, Julia. You got your revenge. Isn't that the most important thing?"
"No, it's not," I insisted. "The important thing is the truth. It's nothing if it's not true."
"Has it ever occurred to you that you just don't want it to be over?"
"Excuse me?"
"This is all you know how to do. You can't let it go. Yes, we have a new problem with that division, but that's a separate issue."
"Unless it isn't," I said.
He sighed heavily. "It's always going to be like this with you, isn't it?"
"Maybe it is," I said. "And it's always going to be like this with you, too."
I sighed and looked out at the mountain. I expected he'd get up and walk away in a minute or two, but he didn't. When I gave in and glanced his way I had to do a double take because he was grinning like he always did.
"Nathaniel Thatcher, what in the world is worth smilin' about right now?"
"You could shoot me again, if it'd help." He bumped my shoulder.
"Maybe next time." Because I was sure there would be a next time.
"I'm lookin' forward to it."
A Note From the Author
Thank you for reading Wolf Magic. We hope you enjoyed Julia's journey. If you love books, one of the best things you can do is leave reviews on Amazon.com.
Watch out for Wolf Marked (Wolves of Faerie, #2) coming soon! If you want to read more adventures in this same world, check out Bound by Faerie, the first novel in the Stolen Magic series. You can read the first chapter by turning the page. Enjoy!
- Faith and Robert (WB McKay)
[email protected]
Bound by Faerie
(Stolen Magic, #1)
WB McKay
Dragons. Of course it would be dragons making me scale a seaside cliff on
my Saturday morning. No farmer's market for me, because dragons. "This is the modern world. You don't need to keep your hoard in a cave."
The wind made the climb unpleasant, but I didn't feel like doing the job naked, so flying up there wasn't an option. It was a real bitch not being able to take my clothes with me when I shifted, but at least the Magical Object Division of the Faerie Affairs Bureau had sprung for an enchantment that allowed me to take my swords, their belts, and their sheaths with me through the shift. It had saved my tail feathers on more than one occasion.
Because I needed to be able to talk, and pecking out eyeballs was not always the appropriate action, I sometimes needed a big hunk of steel to tell people I meant business. Intimidation helped avoid actual violence. That was where Epic came in. He was the large sword strapped to my back. Haiku hung at my hip, ready for the more subtle jobs. In most cases though, I tried not to draw either of them. It wasn't that I abstained from violence or anything. A good fight had its time and place. It was just more fun to find a clever way to steal an item from someone who shouldn't have it.
I took a minute to catch my breath and steady myself before poking my head over the lip of the cave. There wasn't a gigantic dragon ready and waiting to eat me, so maybe I'd gotten lucky and Lou was out hunting for more stuff to add to his already impressive collection of priceless objects. It was always hard to walk away with only the object on my warrant when I visited Lou. Most of his collection would never be classified as dangerous by the MOD. It was just pretty. So much pretty. Today, however, we'd gotten word that Lou was in possession of a heavily enchanted necklace. I hadn't been given any particulars about its power, just a strict warning not to put it on and a description. I'd pushed for more information, but they said it was "need-to-know". Apparently, as the person designated to retrieve said item, I didn't need to know if it could melt my skin off if I looked at it the wrong way. No, that's not a hypothetical. That actually happened once. It wasn't a large chunk of my skin, but still, that shit hurt.