by Lucy Lyons
Table of Contents
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
The Vampire’s Spell
The Black Wolf
Book 11
Lucy Lyons
© 2017
© Copyright 2017 by Persia Publishing - All rights reserved.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher, addressed “Attention: Permissions Coordinator,” at the address below.
The information herein is offered for entertainment purposes solely, and is universal as so. The presentation of the information is without contract or any type of guarantee assurance.
Table of Contents
CHAPTER ONE 4
CHAPTER TWO 17
CHAPTER THREE 27
CHAPTER FOUR 43
CHAPTER FIVE 54
CHAPTER SIX 68
CHAPTER SEVEN 78
CHAPTER EIGHT 87
CHAPTER NINE 101
CHAPTER TEN 113
CHAPTER ELEVEN 129
CHAPTER TWELVE 138
CHAPTER THIRTEEN 147
CHAPTER THIRTEEN 159
CHAPTER FOURTEEN 171
CHAPTER FIFTEEN 183
CHAPTER SIXTEEN 196
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN 204
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN 216
CHAPTER NINETEEN 225
CHAPTER TWENTY 236
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE 248
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO 260
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE 274
CHAPTER ONE
Sunset gilded the room, painting the walls of my room in gold and pink and orange, but I knew that it was the middle of the night, and I was asleep in a tent in the red desert of Utah. But I let the dream weave itself through my second-story boarding room in the old colonial I rented with my younger brother in the Garden district. Porter wasn’t in my dream, though, and the sunset shouldn’t have been visible from my east-facing window.
In the way of dreams, though, it didn’t bother me to see the play of colors on my wall and mirror. A slender arm appeared slung across my chest, pinning me on my back as I lay in the bed, and when I looked at the woman it was attached to, all I could make out in my dream state was a sea of blood-red hair. True red, I thought to myself—a color that didn’t exist among humans unless their genetics carried something Fae, somewhere along the line.
And even though I’d never met the woman, I knew her eyes would be brown. No, not brown. Gold, almost the color of amber the way it dripped down the bark of a dead pine, mesmerizing and rare. She stirred and sat up, staring at me in shock and horror.
“Who are you?” she gasped, and the spell was broken. I opened my eyes and stared at the moonlit peak in the tent. Those eyes, wide and glittering with anger, tinged with fear at my invasion of her mind stayed with me as I waited for sleep to find me again.
In a way, it was a comfort knowing that out in the world was my soulmate, and that she was such an unparalleled beauty. But the dream hadn’t told me anything about where I could find her. Until she’d realized we were sharing the vision and reacted, I hadn’t been sure of what I was seeing. But just as my father had told me two decades before, when he was alive and still overseeing my transition from awkward preteen to full-fledged predator, I’d finally found my soulmate.
I slipped out of my tent and climbed to the top of the outcropping of rock, as close to the waxing moon as I could get. It wouldn’t be full for a few more days, but there was plenty of light from it and the blanket of stars despite the roaring fire I had going. I knelt at the top of the small hill and threw back my head, howling to the night sky in gratitude and relief. My people had been blessed and cursed when the first wolf killed the first vampire in our bayou back home. The blood lust from the monster had given us the sight, we were told. But it had also made us weak. Without our other half, the female to calm us and keep us sane, the alphas of my pack eventually gave in to the bloodlust and went feral.
My pack had been watching me for almost five years as my skirmishes with my fellow single males had become more frequent and more of those fights started happening outside the arena than in. My father had told me that I’d know if I’d waited too long to find my mate, if I let my strength overpower my control. I’d nearly killed a wolf over the last beer in the cooler one night, another because he got in my face, thinking I was looking at his girlfriend.
Of course, I had been but so was every other male in the bar, wolf or not, which was exactly what she had intended by wearing a dress that covered less than most underwear. But she wasn’t my type and I didn’t appreciate having some beta get in my face because he was the rare wolf who could get drunk and his style of drunk meant being stupid and irrational.
It wasn’t until the day I’d snapped at Porter and almost broken his neck that I’d realized the pack was right. Porter had looked at me with wide eyes and refused to fight back, not that he could’ve from his wheelchair. The kid had missed out on the wolf gene and the car accident that had killed my parents had paralyzed him for life. What almost became a very short life, thanks to my selfish refusal to admit I’d crossed over and needed to be controlled, I’d almost lost the only person left in my life that I cared about.
I howled at the moon again, and coyotes, my little cousins, howled in reply, adding their voices to mine in a chorus that would’ve made other campers stoke their fires and huddle closer to the light, if I hadn’t gone to so much trouble to get away from other people. The desert smelled of dust and scaly creatures and the remnants of heat on the red rock the park was so famous for.
As the coyotes raised their voices, I left them to the song and loped back down to the fire. The desert was colder at night than I was used to back in Baton Rouge, and the stars seemed farther away, despite the thousands of feet of elevation I had up here near Bryce Canyon.
I sat at the fire and thought back to the days before that had brought me so far from the lush, green home I’d been forced to leave. The pack alpha, Thad, had found me huddled in the dark corner of the boarding house parlor, Porter leaning against the wall across the room, his wheelchair on its side, just so much twisted metal.
“I promised your parents I’d always take care of you boys,” he’d said softly. I’d seen the grief in his eyes and known that my life was over. We survived because humans didn’t know we existed. If a wolf could let his bloodlust control him, humans were easy pickings, and public murders meant a hunt would quickly lead back to the pack. A wolf gone mad didn’t think about DNA or other evidence that tied him to a murder scene, just how to get the most pain and blood from a victim before their heart stopped and the body was too cold to make him feel anymore.
“I stopped myself, Thaddeus. I don’t have to die.” My words had echoed,
hollow in my head and my empty ribcage. Porter was my baby brother. My only blood, and I’d almost snapped his neck because he’d rolled through the door as the wolf was taking over. He’d also saved my life when he did. If it had been anyone else, I would’ve ripped their throats out before I realized what I was doing. If I’d spilled innocent blood in a feral rage, it would have been an automatic death sentence.
Instead, I’d been chained and taken before the pack at the half moon, the time of judgment. Supposedly when the wolf and the man share our bodies and minds equally and we are at our most just and fair. Shackled in the center of the clearing, the pack surrounding me, I’d thought my life was over. I’d come into my power late, but when I did, I’d come into my own already exhibiting alpha powers. It took every ounce of control to stand still and quiet and not rage against the chains, desperate to prove I deserved another chance at life, even though I knew I could break my bonds and kill half the pack before they’d be able to take me down.
Skoll, the enforcer for the pack and until I’d started to decline, my second in command, approached at Thaddeus’s command. He stood before me with his broadsword, fierce joy in his eyes. Skoll wasn’t feral, he was simply violent by nature. The man and the wolf were perfectly synchronized in his lust for blood and flesh. I’d argued for hours when Thad had put him in my command, and I’d fought to control and aim his violence away from humans for almost a decade before our roles were reversed and his freedom from my control of his appetites was finally within reach.
“Don’t do it, Skoll,” I hissed. “Judgement hasn’t been passed, and I deserve to face my accusers.”
“Judgment was passed over a decade ago, Orson,” he’d chuckled. “You and that gimp brother of yours just didn’t have the decency to die when you were supposed to.” My head snapped up and I met Thaddeus’s eyes and my heart sank. There was no confusion in his eyes, simply irritation that Skoll had spoken out of turn.
Sitting in front of the campfire, my hands curled into fists and I felt the beginnings of my claws bite into my palms as I struggled to control my temper at the memory. But I would never forget the pure rage that swept over me as I struggled against the wolf, praying to Gaia and whatever gods were listening to help me. Because if I was gone, there would be no one to stop them from putting Porter down like an unwanted puppy.
It was my brother that had kept me sane as I’d fought my demons, and my brother than had prevented me from crossing that last line of violence. I could not leave him to the mercy of the pack that were capable of even suggesting they’d killed my parents, even if it was just to torture me.
Before I’d realized what I was doing, the chains had snapped from the rings cemented into the center of the arena. I drew back my arm and flung the right length of iron out and around Skoll’s neck, using the momentum to pull myself up and over him, looping the chain around him again and using him as a meat-shield against the others. We were a peaceful people, and I’d acted so quickly that only Skoll and Thaddeus had started their changes, but neither had the gift of instantly morphing from man to wolf, and I was able to back Skoll nearly all the way to the pack members who lined the circle before Thad had stepped down from the dais, his face elongating into a grey-flecked muzzle.
Skoll thrashed and growled, but his change was even slower, and by the time fur flowed over his back, I had him on his face on the ground, my knee in his back and my muzzle close to his ear.
“This wolf claims that he killed my parents, you all heard him. now he seeks to end our line by killing me when I have spilled no blood” I shouted, carefully forming the words around my canine fangs. Wolf muzzles were not made for human speech, but I needed the pack to know I was still a man and in control of my wolf. “Who will protect my brother from this murderer while he awaits his trial?”
Mrs. Grace Abernathy, the woman we (and most of the single wolves) rented from, stepped forward. “The boarding house is neutral territory. It has always been a place for newcomers and outsiders to make their homes. Parker stays with me, and none who wish him ill may enter without facing my law.” We all knew that even though Sue was middle-aged by human standards, she was a ferocious warrior in her own right. I accepted her offer with a nod and glanced around the circle, waiting for others to agree. Almost the entire pack nodded or raised fists, human or wolf as they started to change, ready to fight me or Skoll, or just separate us.
Only Thad and his mate stood with stony faces, and I knew I couldn’t let them finish their mock trial of me. Skoll spoke the truth in that, at least. Judgment had already been passed on me, long before I knelt chained in the center of our fighting arena. I tightened my hold on the chain around Skoll’s neck and bellowed my rage and betrayal as I clamped down harder, twisting the length of chain around my wrist until I felt Skoll stop struggling for breath and sag beneath me.
I released him and grabbed the chains between my clawed hands, tearing the links apart like paper, and pointed at Thaddeus. “I’ll be back for my brother, and you’d best be prepared when I return, mon ami.”
I felt a rush of wind at my back, ducked out of the way of the claws swinging at my neck, and raced through the cypress trees toward the water, where my skiff was moored. I released it and dove into the water behind it as it sped toward the far shore, hiding in the muck of the shallows until Thad’s guard passed by, chasing the sound of the motor.
Then I’d slunk back to my room, hoping Sue’s refusal to allow pack business on site had prevented anyone from meeting me there. Of course, I’d forgotten that even in a wheelchair, Porter was fast, and smart enough that he’d known exactly where I’d go. I climbed in my window to see him sitting in his chair at the end of the bed, my canvas duffel in his lap.
The firelight warmed the unmanly tears cooling on my face as my gut wrenched at the image of leaving him behind, but I forced myself to face my memories and I continued. Without a word, he’d tossed the bag on the bed and moved out of my way so I could get to the bathroom. When I returned minutes later, returned to my human form and clean enough to travel, he’d held out one gloved hand to me.
“Find her. You know she’s out there, Orson. Find her and come get me. I’ll be fine until then. If you find your mate they can’t do anything to you.”
“I don’t know where to go, Porter,” I had muttered, ashamed and horrified at what my mother would’ve thought to see my little brother taking care of me instead of the reverse.
He sighed and pulled me down by the hand for a hug. “Pick a direction. Let your wolf guide you and you’ll find her. God knows I’ve listened to you having dreams about her long enough.” His dry tone startled a smile to my face. “Now start paying attention to the damn things so they can tell you where to go.”
“For a wolf with no claws, you’re pretty smart about all this wolf stuff,” I’d murmured in his ear, the only thanks I could give him without being reduced to childish tears at leaving my best friend and only family.
“I may not have claws, but I have a bigger brain than you do, big brother. Big enough to know that you’re going to get caught if you don’t get lost, like five minutes ago.” He shoved me back and sniffed. “Get lost, Orson, and don’t come back until you know they can’t hurt you.”
I sniffed the air coming from the open window, hoping that the only wolf I’d smell was me. The night was clear and the moon bright enough that my enhanced human sight would be enough to guide me, and I clambered out the way I’d come in. No point in making trouble for Sue on top of everything else. The iron manacles on my wrists would have to come off, but at the time, I pulled down my sleeves to cover them, grateful for whatever adrenaline or gift of the goddess had made me strong enough to break the chains that had been strung between them.
The night was half over, and I had an entire world to search, looking for a woman I’d never met. Porter was the smarter of us, so in the first wise choice I’d made in an age, I scented the air from the shadows of the peaked boarding house roof, letting my wolf decide which
way to start. The wolf pointed me northwest, and I leaped from the roof to the garden below, and ran.
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CHAPTER TWO
I took out my wallet and counted the cash I had left by the firelight. It wasn’t nearly enough to get me to the coast, but I’d been avoiding using cards or visiting banks since Porter’s last text as I’d passed into Utah from New Mexico by way of Four Corners. I’d hitchhiked into Mesa Verde but caught the scent of wolves and backtracked south, catching a ride with a Christian biker club back north.
It had been exhausting, and all I wanted to do was shape shift and travel in wolf form, but Porter’s texts had become sporadic and the last time we’d talked his voice was strained with worry. I couldn’t afford to spend days traveling the distance that I could do in hours.
When the wolf chose to travel northwest, I thought maybe I’d end up in Montana and I was relieved. I knew a few members of a wolfpack there, and it would be easy to gather some reinforcements for the return trip. Instead, I ended up searching for Seattle terminals on my phone, the airport and the docks. Whatever the next step in my travel to find the mysterious redhead, it looked like I’d be leaving the country to get to her.