The Vampire's Spell_The Black Wolf

by Lucy Lyons

  She gave a startled laugh and cleared her throat. “I guess Clay was serious when he said he hadn’t told you about us.” She motioned for me to walk with her and followed the stream downhill away from the camp. “He thinks we can help you fight the illness from being away from your mate, as we have some experience dealing with insanity.”

  “You disagree?” I asked. She sighed and stopped walking, turning to face me. It hi her expression in the moonlight but showed off all those feathers she was so obviously proud of.

  “I disagree that there is anything to ‘fix,’” she replied. “Just make Goldie go with you. It’s the simplest and most logical solution.”

  I scoffed at the suggestion. “Sure, start a war, be saddled with a powerful mate who just might kill me in my sleep, sounds like a plan.” I sat on a rock and looked out over the trees below us. “I did not expect to hear a woman tell me to force another woman into bondage. What would you do if someone tried that with you?”

  “I got used to it.” She pivoted and strode back the way we’d come with irritation plain in the set of her shoulders even if I couldn’t smell the frustration rising off her body like smoke from a fire

  Well, shit, I thought, and the wolf agreed. Why wouldn’t Clay warn me about that, at least?

  I knew like any alpha, he had his reasons. But since I’d started to pay attention to the increasing aberrations in my own leader’s commands, I’d learned to question blind obedience. Portia stopped just inside the circle of trees and waited for me, watching the wolves as they relaxed around the fire.

  “What, exactly, do you want from all this?” she asked when I reached her.

  I gazed over the clearing at the pack as they sang a drinking song, Clay and Ashlynn watching over them like proud parents. “I wish I could stay, and bring my brother here,” I confessed. “I never feel like he’s safe back home, because of his injury, and the fact that he can’t shift. Makes the pack treat him like he’s less, like he’s just a human.”

  “I know what that’s like,” she said quietly. “Clay and his clan beat the equality drum on a pretty regular basis.”

  “I take it you don’t agree.” I made it a statement, but she nodded in agreement.

  “I’m working on it.” She sighed, a heavy exhalation of longsuffering that reminded me of my mother when I’d gotten into mischief as a child, teasing my elders or tracking dirt into the house.

  “There is one other thing I would ask for if I could,” I added softly as I watched a scarlet ponytail bob through the throng.

  “Your mate?”

  “A few minutes alone with her, to talk to her, would be a good start,” I sighed, brushing nonexistent dirt off my pants.

  She snorted at me again. “Then go get her, Tiger, I guarantee if you wait you will never get another chance. There was a whisper of wind and she was just gone, with less disturbance than my pack made through the trees when we were tracking prey. I caught a glimpse of a large bird in silhouette against the moon and that too, disappeared in the black curtain between the stars.

  Goldie was still near the fire, speaking to and older woman and man and laughing with her whole body at something the man had said. With her head tilted back, hands reaching out to her companions to steady herself as a deep, full throated belly-laugh fell from her lips. God damnit, even her laugh is sexy? I mocked myself as I feigned nonchalance, walking up to them like nothing was wrong.

  She caught my scent before she saw me and all that delicious laughter died on her lips, making my heart sink even further into my belly. The woman she’d been speaking with turned to me with a smile that eased the pain a little, and she clambered over the man to reach me with her arms outspread.

  “Oh, you must be Orson, I’m so happy to meet you,” she gushed as she held me close. She was so subtle with her touch I almost didn’t feel her energy interfering with mine. I fought the urge to pull out of her embrace and let her metaphysically search me. After all, back home with the Vaudun priestess, or mambo, who we went to with magic-related needs would’ve done far more than just touch my magic and keep moving.

  “Did you get a good look at what’s under the hood, ma’am?” I murmured as she pulled away and I felt the instant heat of a blush in her cheeks.

  “Well, young man, I suppose I did. You can’t blame me for being curious, can you? I’m about to deliver my very first royals, after all.”

  I chuckled and shook my head. “Not at all, and I hope your . . .husband?” I asked as I held out my hand to the gentleman who’d been stroking his goatee and watching us with open curiosity and amusement.

  “I’m professor Eldritch and this is my wife, Henrietta. Most people call me ‘the prof.’”

  “And I’m just Henny, Bill only calls me Henrietta when I’ve messed up his garden.”

  They were both humans, but the professor was purely that, and the werewolves were perfectly at ease with shifting and being their canine selves in front of him. I glanced around us and caught a worried look from Goldie.

  “He’s under pack protection because he’s family, you know,” and I tried not to smirk at her for being in my head without noticing.

  “I wasn’t asking, Goldie. It’s none of my business either way. If the professor is here, there’s a good reason, and the way they both made you smile, well it made me feel better, and worse at the same time, but it was good to see, good to hear too.”

  Stop it, Orson, I don’t hate you and you know it, her voice resounded in my head.

  How could I possibly know that if you won’t even speak to me? I’m your mate, god damn it, not your executioner. She cringed at my reply, but neither of the kind couple seemed to notice.

  “It must’ve been difficult for you, coming here without any foreknowledge of who we are or what we’re about,” Henny clucked and patted my arm.

  “I didn’t know I was stopping here, I just knew I had to go west,” I admitted. “Then I saw the most beautiful woman I’d ever laid eyes on in real life, and I knew this was where I needed to stop.”

  Goldie cleared her throat and detached my arm from her pack witch. “If he’d said it like that from the start, he might’ve had less trouble,” she joked, pulling me away from the pair. “Don’t let them fool you, Orson. Henny’s already going over potions in her head to help you keep the sickness at bay, and if I know the professor, he’s going to head to his garden any second and start picking herbs for her work.”

  “They don’t seem afraid of me, Goldie, neither did Portia.” I casually dropped the princess’ name in the hope that Goldie would stop seeing me so much as an outsider, but it only made her frown more. “Please just talk to me. I refuse to dig through your thoughts on purpose.” No matter how tempting, I added silently, and my silent heart sparked to life in an instant as the corners of her mouth turned up and she chuckled softly.

  I don’t hate you, you know, she replied, her thoughts trembling along the bond and into my mind. Her tone was chastising, but not unkind, and hope bloomed as she led me toward the main longhouse.

  “Maybe not,” I said aloud, “but you haven’t been predisposed to giving me a chance either.”

  “Well, what do you expect? You dropped into my dream one night and showed up in my city almost the next day. There wasn’t much time to decide what I want to do.” I clenched my fists and released them, taking a deep breath to control my frustration.

  “Whether I live or die is based on your choice, Goldie. Whether you live or die is based on it. This isn’t about your heart, or your independence. This is about survival.”

  “So you say.”

  “Wow.” I stopped in the doorway and folded my arms across my chest. “Are you really such a prize that easily verified information and a magical mark that you can’t rid yourself of could really be seen as my subterfuge to get inside you?” I leaned in and added in a whisper, “because you gave that up without blinking, and it wasn’t your boyfriend’s name in your mind when you did.”

  She drew back to h
it me and I caught her by the wrist and threw her fist away from me. “How dare you,” she hissed, her body trembling.

  “You don’t get to be offended by the truth while you play with our lives, and the lives of who knows how many innocent humans, jus to play hard to get.” I spat the words at her even as my brain screamed at me to stop before it was too late. “You want to play with the undead and risk becoming a mindless murderer? Fine. But you should know, there’s an upside to our pairings that you will never taste with that bloodsucker of yours.”

  “Don’t talk about Joe like that.”

  “Oh, but it’s OK to look down on me? Fuck you, Golden wolf. Just because you’re with one, doesn’t mean they’ll ever see you as their equal. But hey, now I understand why Portia said what she did.”

  She flinched and when I smirked at her, she closed the distance between us and snarled in my face. “What did that stuck up bitch tell you?”

  “She said I needed to just throw you over my shoulder and take you by force. I’m guessing, because you were too stubborn, or too ignorant to care about the consequences of your actions on the rest of the werewolves and the Fae.”

  “I really am beginning to hate you, Cajun.”

  “Well that’s too bad, because despite your selfishness and willingness to ignore your own truth even if it kills people, I really wanted to get to know you better, and find out why we were meant to be.”

  She turned away from me and I squeezed past her shoulder to get back outside. In the clearing the wolves, all of which were gifted with preternatural hearing and had heard every word of our fight, busied themselves with anything that would keep them from making eye contact with me. All except one.

  Ashlynn beckoned me to her side, where she’d been speaking with Henny and the professor. Even though I wanted to tear my clothes off and run back to Baton Rouge in wolf form I clenched my teeth and joined them.

  “Obviously, you two are only making things worse by talking, Orson,” she offered without rancor. I bristled and she held up a hand to stop me from replying. “It’s time for you to hunt with us, Orson. I can’t join you, but take what you can from our magic, and we’ll try to help you.”

  “But?” I asked at the tone of her voice.

  “But I would ask that in return for our help, you give her enough of yourself to buy us time to find a permanent solution, before things get . . . out of hand.”

  “If she murders anyone, I’ll know. I’ll see it as if I were inside her body. Ashlynn, I will come back for the sole purpose of destroying her if she kills an innocent.” Gorge rose in my throat as I spoke, and the she-wolf’s face paled, her eyes glassing over and shining in the moonlight with unshed tears.

  “We will all do what we have to do to preserve the pack,” she assured me. “No matter what it takes.”

  “Even if it takes tearing my throat out, Ash?” Goldie’s voice shook behind me.

  “Whatever it takes, Goldie.” Ashlynn brushed her fingers across her cheeks and sniffed as she walked past me and placed her hand on my shoulder reassuringly as she left us.

  “I’ve been requested to join the hunt tonight, to share as much of my power with you as I can before I leave.” I turned and gazed down into her teary eyes. “I don’t want to die, and I don’t want you to. I’m doing what I have to, to take care of my loved ones. I’m sorry.”

  Before she could question why I was apologizing, I rushed at her, placing my hand on the bite mark over her heart, and called her wolf. She fell away from me, gasping and snarling, but the fur still flowed over her back as her limbs reknit themselves for running on all fours.

  She snapped at me, growling and prancing as she herded me away from her pack, and tried to chase me into the woods. I tugged my borrowed shirt off and undid my belt slowly, refusing to budge for her while her rage grew.

  “Hate me all you want, Goldie, my mate. I will still be yours long after you tire of your rage.” I let my pants drop to the ground and shifted as I leaped into the woods, sparks racing down my spine as the wolf raced to the surface, power building and exploding in the fur that flowed down over my back and legs. I landed on all fours and howled, calling to the natural wolves I’d smelled near the stream and raced onwards, pulling every wolf, natural and preternatural, with me.

  And Goldie came, she couldn’t help it. Her mark pulled her to my side, our wolves a matched pair like in my vision, light and dark dancing together, moving as one as we chased the moonlight through the forest. I knew when the morning came she would hate me again, but I reveled in the freedom of our beasts, no hate, no love, only magic and pure acceptance of the mark that bound us.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  I awoke to an arm flung across my face and slid forward as I clambered to my knees, my brain foggy from sleep and my heart racing at waking among alien trees with soft, warm skin pressed against my back.

  “Shouldn’t I be the one running away scared?” her sleepy voice punctured the clouds in my brain like sunlight and stirred the beast within. I felt it stretch luxuriously and hated it for withholding the memories of the night before.

  “True enough, so why are you still here? You’re obviously more awake than I am.”

  She snorted and rolled over, reaching above her head and arching her back. My body instantly responded and I turned to hide it from her as she stared at me with an expression of contrived boredom.

  “Don’t bother hiding it, I can smell your arousal, same as any Baton Rouge wolf could,” she scoffed. I growled at her, my hackles raising with my wolf’s at her tone. “Oh, don’t be so irritable. You get to wake up slow because you’ve never been in any real danger,” she continued. “You’re lazy, spoiled, and apparently, slow,” she added, sitting up. “We’re miles from where we should’ve taken down that deer. You took way too long to catch me.” My wolf reared up proudly and I knew we’d been in sync enough for the beast to heed my desires even when he took over the hunt.

  I grinned at her and laid back down on the nest of grass and soft young pine boughs we’d made, even though it was much less comfortable in human form than it would’ve been in our half-wolf bodies. My hands under my head, I waited for her to realize I’d taken her as far as I dared in this strange landscape before I’d taken her down.

  “Oh. Oh my God.” She punched me in the ribs and rolled on her side, her breast pressing pleasantly against me. “You dragged me out here to force me to be alone with you all the way back.”

  She hadn’t asked a question, so I didn’t bother to answer. She could read it in my thoughts any time she wanted anyhow. She threw a leg over me and pressed my shoulders down as I stared up at her in shock. “Are you sure you’re safe like that?” I asked, my voice already husky with the need that was pressing into the heat between her legs.

  “You won’t get it unless I want you to,” she reminded me and tortured me more by wriggling her hips. “So tell me what you need to say so badly that you forced a ten-mile hike home on me.”

  “It’s only a few miles, Goldie, now you sound like the lazy one.”

  She dug her fingernails into my skin, elongating just the nails into points without shifting her hands or arms. It was an impressive show of control and I let her know I appreciated it with a low whistle. Her response was to dig her claws in deep enough to make me wince, and release me when I let out a grunt of pain.

  I shifted just my fingers, lengthening my own claws, and pressed them into the soft expanse of her ass, not breaking the skin, but reminding her that she wasn’t the only one with control. I lifted her off me, irritated with myself for not forcing the issue and satisfying my lust instead.

  “Watch yourself, wolf,” she growled softly, her blood-red hair falling in front of her face so that only those golden eyes shone out. How she passed for human in the city I couldn’t have said, she was utterly, completely magical without her glamor. I chuckled, setting her down next to me and staring pointedly at the evidence of my attraction to her.

  “I’d say I’m being
more gentleman than you deserve, Cherie. Best be careful with your teasing, or I’ll make you finish what you start.” My voice was thick with need and she swallowed hard and hugged her knees to her chest. I hid my disappointment by busying myself with cleaning the dried blood and other bodily fluids off me in the nearby water. When we found it, the deer carcass we’d brought down together was too picked clean to carry back to the rest of the pack, so we left it to the natural inhabitants of the forest to finish and both shifted, able to run faster in our half-wolf forms than our human.

  It also prevented her from having to speak to me, which was as much a boon considering her mood as it was another nail in the coffin of our relationship. I’d tried to speak to her mind, but she’d closed herself off so tight I wouldn’t have been able to tell she was alive if I hadn’t heard her footfalls and felt her breath on my shoulder blade as she ran a half pace behind me.

  The forest smelled more familiar to me than when we’d first pulled up in the black SUV. I’d run this way as a wolf, and the scent of the nearby camp, as well as the natural wolves that I sensed pacing us off to my right, brought back a flood of memories of the night before, running with the pack, then leading, as is customary for a visiting alpha, then the pack breaking off and leaving Goldie and I to run alone. Goldie’s bad mood made more sense the more I thought about the implications of her pack leaving her with me, letting her wolf make the choice that her human half wouldn’t.