The Vampire's Spell_The Black Wolf

by Lucy Lyons

  “Neither will I,” I confessed, grateful for the dark wolf, who understood our ways and was willing to explain the differences to me. We sped up a little, catching up to Clay and his bodyguard as they started the black SUV parked down by the water. “Do I ask why you’re parked down here?”

  “If it was me, I’d say to avoid a vampire ambush in the parking lot for kicking Josiah’s ass,” said Steven.

  “Which is why no one is asking you, Steve-o,” sighed Clay and I laughed. Apparently, the democracy was real with this pack. Thaddeus would’ve hauled Steven in front of the pack and beaten the hell out of him, if not killed him for insubordination. Then again, I’d never seen anyone even challenge our alpha, so maybe I was wrong.

  The drive out of the city was lovelier than the arrival, with the sun setting out my window as the mountains rose to my right. We drove for the better part of an hour without anyone speaking, the light from Clay’s phone lighting up and going black again as he spoke with the Fae Portia, or whoever. Meanwhile, I glanced at my own, silent phone again, wondering when my brother was going to reply to any of the texts or messages I’d sent him.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Clay put his phone away when the mountains and forest got in the way of a cell signal and I did the same, praying that Porter really was just too busy being a kid with no adult supervision to call, and not in real trouble. It was hard not to let go of some of my worry and pain of the prior days as I opened my window and breathed in the forest. The cedars and ferns smelled different than the trees I knew, and the air was colder and crisper than I was used to, but it was beautiful. The concrete and steel of the city had been taxing, but out here, even sitting in the car was easier.

  I’d wondered how rich this clan was when I saw the humans flocking to the club. I’d assumed the money all went to the vampires. I was wrong. Two long houses sat in a clearing nearly perpendicular to each other. The first was two stories and had carvings all around the windows and the two sets of double doors along the side. The other was single story and looked newer, with more carvings in various stages of completion. Further toward the trees there was a line of small cottages, only big enough for a small living space and maybe a water closet. They were painted like cottages from a book of fairytales, and it should’ve been campy, but ended up being whimsical and cheerful instead.

  There was already a fire in the pit they’d dug near the largest longhouse, and a commercial-sized grill manned by a grey-beard in a floppy hat. I could tell that he was an alpha from the gravel parking area, and between him, Clay, and Clay’s bodyguards, that was more alphas getting along together than I’d ever seen. Thaddeus had let me stay because he’d adopted my brother and I after the accident. Skoll and his gang were all beta’s, strong, but not strong enough to be a threat to the pack or Thad’s leadership.

  “How do you have so many alphas living together?” I finally asked Marcos in a stage whisper as we approached the fire pit. The bearded wolf at the grill heard me and laughed aloud, raising his beer to us.

  “Because we have enough for everyone here in the most beautiful state in the continental U.S., southern boy,” he called out, and several wolves hollered their agreement. Marcos saluted the man and patted the bench next to him by the fire.

  “That’s Bernie. He’s the old alpha of the pack. When Ashlynn came along, he stepped aside so she could lead, and offered to help her, you know, show her the ropes.”

  “Shit, boy, that’s nothing like my pack,” I choked on a swallow of beer and he laughed at me.

  “The story gets even better when a Venatores hunter is poisoned by his own kind and turned into a werewolf and comes out here and steals the alpha’s pack and her heart.”

  I laughed aloud and shook my head. “That’s the stuff of romance movies, if werewolves ever got to star in those instead of just the horror shows.” Someone new passed me a plate entirely covered by a thick steak, and my mouth watered. “Clay wasn’t kidding when he said he had a pack to feed, was he?”

  There were at least twenty wolves in a near even split of males to females. Every age group over eighteen was represented, and just like back home, the young ones gave respect to their elders, giving up seats closest to the fire if needed, and serving the others food. It wasn’t meat from a hunt, but as close to the city as they were and many mouths as they had to feed, I was just as happy to be eating grass-fed beef as I would’ve been to eat fresh catfish and deer.

  I stayed with Marcos and Steven throughout the supper and enjoyed the laughter and the country music in the background. At least that was familiar, if nothing else was quite like the nature preserve back home.

  The pregnant alpha watched me from across the fire with a concerned look on her face, and I asked Marcos if she had a particular reason not to like me. “She looks like a protective mom on the first date, but there’s no way she’s old enough to be anyone’s mother,” I said as he handed me a bottle of water and a plate of brownies to take from.

  “Goldie was adopted from a bad pack after Clay killed their alpha and we rescued the young ones from the pervs that kept them,” he explained. “She’s probably just worried you’re going to kidnap Goldie and take her again, like she was when she was first changed.”

  Horrified, I gaped at him. “That’s a big leap, from soulmate to sexual deviant, Marcos.” He shrugged again. “We’re a pack of survivors, Orson. That means that every one of us has suffered unspeakable violence against us by shifters. Is the leap really so great when you can remember the day you died?”

  Shame and embarrassment drove me to my feet, and before I realized what I was doing, I was kneeling in front of the she-wolf, my head bowed. “I apologize for not coming to you right away, alpha, I bring greetings from the Rougarou pack in Baton Rouge.”

  I glanced into a scowling face, but her eyes sparkled like emeralds with concealed mirth. “Oh, get up, Orson, she’ll let you keep embarrassing yourself as long as you let her do it.” Clay handed his wife a tall glass that smelled like apple juice and sat next to her. “We don’t do things the old way, and the moment we knew you were here, I made sure Ashlynn knew as well.” He waved me to my feet. “Ashlynn, meet Orson, alpha of the Rougarou pack and adopted son of their king. Also, the soulmate of our very own Goldie.”

  “If she wants you,” Ashlynn countered, and I shook my head. “No, the die is cast, and the bond made. We are soulmates. She still hates me, though, if that makes you feel better.”

  “Yes. Well, no, not really.” The pretty mother-to be shifted in her seat with a sigh and I pushed the section of log behind me closer to her for her feet. “I want Goldie to be happy. But I haven’t spoken with her, and I’ve been told you marked her with a scar and changed her color?”

  “Yeah, uh, no,” I laughed. “I don’t have that power, to change a tiger’s stripes, ya know, Cher.” I paused. “I was thinking about it on the way up here, and I had to wonder, maybe she changed it.” Ashlynn tipped her head to one side and narrowed her eyes at me.

  “Walk with me, wolf, I need to stretch my legs.” I held out my hand and she chuckled and shook her head, standing in a fluid motion despite the mound of pregnant belly that protruded from her lean frame.

  She took my arm and led me away from the fire toward the cottages and pointed out which building they’d put up first, and who had done the work. The entire pack had put up the bones of the first longhouse in a day, and the entire camp had just finally been completed after a year, with space for additional housing as it became necessary.

  “We all just live in town, I can’t imagine us getting along well enough to live together,” I laughed. “We’re all related, at least distantly, and every gathering brings out some family feud or other.”

  “We came together with a common purpose, to protect ourselves from vampires and hunters and humans alike. Piece by piece, we’ve carved out space in that world, but like all Fae, the concrete and steel and technology of the city wears us down. we all come back here because it belongs
to us, and we can be ourselves.”

  “I don’t know that I’ve ever felt like I could just be myself,” I chuckled. “But I’m happy to see that wolves whose shifting is the result of an attack, are in fact the more balanced ones.”

  “And yet, you want to take Goldie away from all this.”

  “I don’t want anything. It isn’t about me, or her, alpha,”

  “Ash,” she corrected me. I nodded and continued.

  “There are times when you have to shift, right? But it’s bad for the babies, so you haven’t, have you?” She shook her head.

  “Our pack witch has given me herbs to stop the change.”

  I halted and faced her. “So you’ll never change again?” I asked and she scoffed. “Exactly. You can put it off but not indefinitely, and you shouldn’t. Goldie and I are bound together. We can walk away from it and be fine . . . for a time, but sooner or later the day’s gonna come when ignoring that magic’s gonna make us sick, then violent, then dead, just like any werewolf if they forced themselves to stay human for too long.”

  She dropped my arm and hugged herself, wrapping her arms around her belly as if she were protecting her babies from my words. “This is what it’s like for every werewolf born to the pack?” I nodded silently and she cursed under her breath. “Thank you for explaining it to me.”

  I leaned against a tree and folded my arms. “Racing across the country following a vision, trusting my wolf to find a woman I’d never met . . . It was the scariest thing I’d ever chosen to do.” I pushed off the tree. “I don’t want to make Goldie miserable, Ash. But I don’t want to die, or hurt someone because I can’t control my power either.” I glanced back toward the fire pit where werewolves laughed and a couple of them had broken out guitars. “Looks like a hippie commune,” I teased, and Ashlynn laughed.

  “Sure does. But were the first sent into battle every time something goes wrong with the world, despite all Clay’s efforts to make the Fae and the vampires see us as a free people.” She turned to me and groaned in frustration. “How bad would it be to send Goldie to live somewhere, where the worst thing she’ll have to deal with, is learning to like gator meat?”

  She made me snort and I covered it with a cough. “Tastes like chicken.”

  “So I’ve heard,” she chuckled. “I wanted to hate you like I hated the alpha who kept Goldie and other teens as pets,” she spat out the word and I understood. Our own legends were full of vampires who had done the same before we eradicated them and gave up more of our humanity to do so.

  “I understand. We were once slaves to creatures we were as powerful as but not as long lived. It gave them an advantage.” She turned me back toward the camp as I continued. “We went to the Vaudun for help and in exchange for half of the soul of every werewolf born to the curse, they gave us additional speed, stronger claws, and the ability to change without the moon.”

  “Abilities we all have today are because of the royals giving up half their soul?”

  I chuckled, “hey maybe it’s just a story to explain why we must be with our soulmate. But we’re stronger together, we need each other, in the end, we can’t live without our other half and if one dies, the shock of the bond breaking usually kills the other.”

  “So Goldie after everything she’s already been through, now Goldie will die if she doesn’t mate with a stranger and belong to him?” I started to argue but she held up a hand and shot me a look that made me shut my mouth with a snap. “I know I’m strong. I also know that to everyone outside our relationship, I belong to Clay. He doesn’t get to think it.”

  “You think Goldie isn’t strong enough to stand up for herself? Because she sent me packing without even giving me a chance, so I’m not worried about her ability to do what she wishes.”

  “Like change her color?”

  “Why not, if we jus' a bit of the fairies, why couldn’t she use glamor to make herself more invisible?”

  Ashlynn gaped at me and huffed. “Shit. I wonder if we all have glamor of some kind.”

  “I dunno. I’m still stuck on trying to believe I’m a fairy,” I scoffed. “But she was in a bad way, and maybe pushed herself to be less . . . precious, to protect herself. You can’t hide from your soulmate, Cher.”

  “I hate you,” Ashlynn muttered.

  “Wait now . . . you what?” I halted in my tracks, glancing around for an ambush.

  She snorted derisively at me and dropped her hands to her sides. “I hate that I can’t hate you. I had every intention of sending you packing, but you’re just so . . .so frustratingly handsome and sweet and wise. I won’t force Goldie to choose you.”

  “Yeah, that seems to be a running theme since I’ve arrived.” I huffed and paced, my hands on my hips so I didn’t end up punching a tree. “I’m not asking anyone to force my soulmate to be with me—the magic is.” I stopped and leaned closer to her. “You think your democracy is the evolution of our species, and maybe you’re right. But back home, the alphas protect their people, they don’t just let them make stupid choices that endanger themselves and everyone, human or wolf, around them.”

  I stormed off toward the stream I could hear through the woods, not caring if she followed, and not expecting her to. The Rainier pack were not my people, and no one here would care or notice that I was gone, or if I had left for good. Not until it was far too late, and they all had blood on their hands.

  CHAPTER TEN

  I sat next to the stream that poured over the rocks above me in a miniature waterfall, splashing and gurgling over the edge and frothing on the rocks at my feet and considered my options, unsure that I had an option that wouldn’t cause more trouble and heartache. My phone was still dark, with one signal bar flashing depending on where I held the phone up under the growing moonlight

  Porter, I texted yet another plea for him to contact me, I’m in danger here and it might take me longer to get back to you than I’d hoped. Woody is dead, he attacked a wolf locally to get to me and they killed him for it. I don’t know if others will be sent, but you must stay where you’re safe. DO NOT go to the swamp.

  I pressed send and stood on my toes, lifting the phone up like an old antenna until the message indicated it was sent. I kicked loose rocks into the water and scented the air. There were deer nearby, and raccoons just across the stream, and a natural wolfpack somewhere not too far from the camp. I turned to head back to Clay to ask if I could run with his wolves just once before I left, so I could hunt with “real” wolves at least the one time. I made it to the tree line before I jumped back and snarled at the figure I hadn’t noticed in the trees.

  A woman seemed to separate from the shadows and the forest and reform in front of me, her skin glowing in the moonlight, her hair glinting like peacock feathers, pink and purple and blue in a long line over her shoulder. I flinched again when she shook out what I’d assumed was dyed hair and it stood in a crown on her head.

  “Are those . . . feathers?” I asked, manners long gone as my heart pounded.

  “Were you not informed that I would be observing you, wolf?” she replied, her voice dry and mildly irritated.

  “Are you a fairy?” I asked again, standing to my full height for the couple of inches it gave me over her lean, statuesque frame. She glowered at me and grunted in exasperation.

  “I am Portia, Princess of the High Fae Light Court and Queen betrothed to the Sluagh. I am not ‘a fairy’ shifter. Fairies are the lesser folk of human storybooks.” Her voice conveyed so much loathing and distaste that I readied myself for an attack, but she lounged against the tree and stared balefully at me without saying another word.

  “OK,” I hesitated to respond, since Clay hadn’t given me instructions on dealing with his Fae allies. She scoffed and started to turn away and my hackles raised. “But your royal imperiousness, I’m not one of your subjects. I’m not Sluagh or high Fae. I’m also not a member of this pack. I’m a royal, descended from the first werewolves on the American continent, and we don’t take to b
e treated like common dogs.”

  “Gods, did you and Clay learn how to be obnoxious at the same puppy school?” she drawled and stepped out further into the light. “Fine. You heap big alpha, me fairy princess. Better?”

  “I’d prefer I’m Orson, and it’s nice to meet you, Portia, you have an amazing crown and despite being a bitch, meeting you is a really cool moment for me.” To my surprise, she laughed aloud, the movement transforming her pretty pout into a stunning smile, and the glow of her skin brightened. “I’m sorry, this may be too forward, but are you using glamor on me?”

  The smile disappeared in a flash, replaced by a cold, calculating stare. She didn’t answer immediately but took another step toward me. “You can sense glamor?”

  I shook my head and shrugged. “I don’t have any Fae powers, I just knew something wasn’t . . . right. It was more somehow.”

  “That was you sensing glamor. Perhaps that’s why your she-wolf, Goldie, couldn’t keep her dark fur around you, you have the ability to cut through glamor. It’s a valuable gift, and dangerous to the Fae.”

  “Well, that sucks, Cher, because I was real excited to learn more about the Fae and how everybody gets along so well out here.” Again, no answer from her, she just pursed her lips as her eyebrows knitted together. “That was sincere, if you were wondering, although I’m sure you have good reason to keep a half sane wolf out of your sanctuary.”