by Lucy Lyons
I felt her pause and in that heavy silence I felt her utter grief and despair. You left us, and he stopped killing humans and started killing wolves. But not just killing, Alpha. Draining them to maintain his strength. I couldn’t stop him, when I tried he took my boy.
So you told him I was a better choice to drain?
He took Grace and her son, and Porter, and I knew I had to bring you home. I’m sorry, Orson. You were always meant to lead, but he hid his sickness for so long, and weakened the pack so much, we couldn’t fight back.
Frustration coursed through me. Release me and let me save my mate and our people. I can kill him, Miriam. No magic can stop me if you just take off these goddamned chains.
I would, but I’m in a bit of a . . .bind, myself, she replied, and sent me an image of her surroundings. She was in the center of the clearing, chained to the stone blocks just as I had been, flanked by Ray and Marcos.
“Shit,” I cursed loudly, and against the wall, Steven stirred. “Steve-o, you have got to wake up. We have to get out of the chains, man.” He groaned as consciousness opened his mind to the searing pain of the silver and I yelled louder to get his attention. “Steven, we need to break the chains. I can’t do it without you, but they’re going to execute Marcos and drain us, c’mon, soldier, get up!”
He lurched to his feet, but was still unresponsive. I felt for his beast and saw the scarlet heat of his animal pacing just under his skin like a shadow. The silver was preventing the change, but it gave me an idea for how to free us. I tried to sense the moon, where she was in her revolution around the earth, and Miriam sent me an image of the sunset over the trees. Our connection seemed to make me stronger, but I knew that meant it was weakening her, and we needed to hurry to save her and the others. All her faith (and magic) was in me, apparently.
I gathered the power I felt flowing up through the bloodstained stone into me, and created a ball of power at my core. It wasn’t enough to let me break the chains as I had done in the clearing, but it was more than enough to combine with Steven’s own power and release his wolf.
I reached out to him with my power like I was reaching with my hands, and gripped the wolf I felt straining against the silver for release. His eyes met mine and realization flooded him a split second before the wolf leaped from his skin and the chains that held him. He roared in pain at the suddenness of the change and the flash of heat from the silver it had caused before they fell away from his new form and spun and attacked the links that held Goldie to the wall.
“Break my chains and get her the hell out of here,” I commanded him. “I’ll get Marcos, I promise.” The wolf stared intently into my eyes, his icy blue ones full of concern, but he didn’t question me. Goldie slumped against the altar and I felt her life throbbing through the stone, the death magic so old and woven into the cave that even without Miriam, the magic carried on.
The chains flashed so bright I jerked my arm to cover them, and it freed from the chains with a pop as the links broke. Goldie gasped below me, and Steven jumped back at the flash and dove for my mate and dragged her back from the melting, hissing chains as Voodoo magic, shifter magic, and the blessings of a thousand righteous sacrifices warred with the black magic that Thaddeus had brought to our people for his own gain.
Steven grabbed me by the upper arm, sinking his teeth in until they met at the bone. I gagged on my scream of pain and clenched my teeth to keep quiet as he yanked me off the altar and onto the floor, where I dry-heaved, smelling the flesh that the silver had torn away from my body burning above me.
“Thank you,” I finally coughed, and shook my head. “Get her out, get help. I’ll pay the price of the vampires for not waiting, just get her safe and them to us, please?” He snuffled at my forehead like he was checking for a fever, but I knew he was smelling for greater injuries. Seeing satisfied that the burns and missing flesh were the worst of it, he stood and let me drape Goldie over his back, wrapping her arms around his neck to help keep her astride him.
I dug for a bit of magic to help her heal, and my wolf answered my call, coming to the surface and pressing against my skin, trying to get closer to her. I pressed my chest against her back and kissed her gently as my beast awoke hers. I felt their energy mingle for a moment. She tightened her grip around her packmate’s neck, and her knees tightened to his sides.
Without another glance, Steven-the-wolf dropped low and slunk toward the front of the cave, and I called the wolf just enough to change my hands into claws. With a deep breath, I roared my challenge to Thaddeus as I raced toward the clearing, and burst out the opening as the last light of day disappeared behind the trees and left the clearing in shadow.
While shifters don’t need much light to see by, easily tracking prey by the light of the moon and stars, the torches that framed in the perimeter of the circle let my still human eyes see Thaddeus and his victims in the center of the circle, as well as the soldiers, some familiar old friends, some still stinking of the wounds that had turned them that hemmed me in and herded me toward the chains at the center.
Goldie and Steven were still hiding just inside the mouth of the cave, so I let the soldiers close in, giving the wolf an opening to free my mate. Thaddeus grinned at me, his face gaunt and ashen from the taint of the dark magic he commanded.
“The coward returns,” he chuckled, and his soldiers laughed cruelly along with him. The pack, though, remained silent, weakened, but not won by the magic he hoarded only for himself.
“Strange words from an alpha who has to suck the magic out of his own people to stay in power.” I paced between the edges of the ring of soldiers, each pass bringing me a little closer to my captive friends. “How does a man who rapes and sacrifices children call himself brave?”
Thadd snarled and took a step forward, almost within reach if I timed a leap just right. Miriam, gagged and chained, struggled weakly, catching my attention. Her eyes glanced to mine and behind me, warning me, and then she looked up and they widened in a silent scream.
I followed her gaze and saw the shadows across the starlit sky, a darkening between the pinpoints of light that made me almost giddy with relief. I snarled at Thaddeus, took a deliberate step toward him, and spun and grasped the chains that bound Ray instead, and jerked them out of the ground as the silver flashed and burned in my hands.
The chain across his back broke free in my grasp and I swung the end around, catching one soldier on the jaw and sending him flying into another. There was no way for us to escape the circle, twelve soldiers at full strength was more than three with injuries could take on. However, I wasn’t going to wait on our night-flying saviors to show up before I started to fight back.
Thad had disappeared, and I was surrounded by his men, while Ray barked and snapped at the soldiers who were trying to get him back to the cave. I shouted at him, commanding him to my side and he followed the order without hesitation. A murmur went up from the pack as they watched, thinking I’d made Ray, or was his alpha. Either way, I saw that Ray understood, and silently, I gave him another directive. He leapt over the soldiers who raced toward him and clawed at the chains that had been draped over Marcos back, while I reached out to the unconscious man with my limited magic, searching for the wolf to force the change on him.
Above me, I felt a breath of wind and the scent of old death assailed my nostrils, and the screams of the first soldiers to be carried off gave me the strength I needed to push past Marcos’s natural defenses and trigger his wolf. I pulled the wolf out of him before he was awake, and he shuddered and stepped out of the manacles that were only closed tight enough for human wrists, not the slender paws of a wolf.
He stared at me in shock then shook himself and scanned the clearing, searching for someone. I smelled urine and turned to see one soldier raise his hands in front of him before Marcos raced past me in a brown blur and tore out the man’s throat. I knew I’d never ask what had transpired between them, but a sick sensation of guilt made bile rise into my throat as I str
uggled with Miriam’s shackles.
She shook her head violently trying to spit out the gag, and I pulled the soggy mess of cloth from her mouth for her. “Go help the others, I can free myself now that I can speak,” she explained.
“Tell me you didn’t start this mess, Miriam,” I growled, and she shook her head.
“It started innocently, I swear. Thaddeus said his mate had tricked him and she wasn’t his soulmate, but then your parents died almost immediately after, and you were too young to take over. I was just trying to keep the pack safe.”
“So you helped with his soul-sickness, and kept his secrets.”
“When you came of age, I tried to stop him, to talk sense into him. But he imprisoned me and turned to dark magic, forced me to . . .” her voice broke and I remembered the visions, her laboring to heal the wounds of Thad’s victims.
“You made the cave fight Thad, and his sickness got worse, instead of better with each sacrifice.”
“I thought the pack would see what he was doing and fight back, but they just let him . . . they let him hurt them.” My words to Goldie came back to me and I repeated them to Miriam.
“A pack is only as strong as its alpha. Ours weakened us. But I’ve returned, strong in magic and with stronger allies.”
“You brought vampires to Baton Rouge, wolf. The pack will never let you lead them now.”
I grinned at her without humor, showing her my teeth. “I think that the pack will do whatever I command them to, witch, because I’m going to save them from you and your insane master.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
The sky was full of the sound of wings as I left Miriam to free herself and started hunting Thaddeus in earnest. Steven had come back to the fight, and I saw flashes of his fur as he tore through the weak, new wolves Thaddeus had made as if they were paper dolls.
I felt Goldie nearby, and sent her a silent command to stay away from the fight, but she sent back only fear and as her heart raced in my head, I felt her running through the trees in the dark, pursued by a larger animal who smelled of black magic and death.
With a curse, I scanned the sky and the circle for Josiah, but the vampires were a blur in the torchlight, moving faster than any wolf I’d ever seen, and the soldiers disappeared in a haze of blood and body parts while the rest of the pack tried to fight off the undead attackers, or ran from the circle to hide in the woods.
None of them had shifted, and the vampires had no way to tell who was a victim, and who was a traitor. I reached out to the wolves, to the earth beneath my knees, to Goldie as she raced through the forest in a golden blur. I sent that power out to the wolves, searching for those I knew and loved, my family and friends, drawing out the wolf in each as I searched for Porter. I prayed that he’d escaped through the underground spring with the others, but his injury had been so severe, and without having changed, I didn’t know if there had been any use in trying to heal him at all.
Are you out there, little brother? I pled silently for an answer, a sense of him, but found nothing. Instead, a howl went up from my packmates as they reveled in finally being wolves again as Nicholas landed directly ahead of me.
“The wolves are loyal, the humans belong to Thad,” I panted, and he nodded. “Goldie’s out there with him. Please don’t kill my pack while I’m gone.” He scoffed and I released my wolf, relief flooding my body as the beast took over and I hurtled into the bushes without a second thought.
Death flew above me, and I knew without looking that it was Josiah that covered my back. I followed the smell of fear and insane hatred to the edge of the alligator territory, where I found Goldie hemmed in by Thaddeus on the forest side, and the gator boys on the other. I cursed myself for trusting Daryl and launched myself at my former alpha, digging my claws into his back before he could turn to face me.
He screamed in agony and bowed his back, and I shifted to match his form, half wolf, half man, and threw him to the ground. At my flank, the gators still hissed and advanced, but instead of attacking Goldie, they passed her and went for two more shifters I hadn’t seen on her other side.
God bless Daryl and Poole, I thought, repenting of my brief disloyalty. Thad was up again and we circled one another, claws at the ready. His aura was thick with black magic, the stolen life-forces of humans and wolves alike, but the moon was shining down on me, and a different death magic, older, neutral instead of evil, hovered nearby.
I glanced at the shadow I knew was Josiah and then at Goldie, and the shadow flickered to the side, scooping up my mate and disappearing. The alligators didn’t even notice she’d gone, they were too intent on their own battle to care about us or our war any longer.
Thad feinted to his left and caught me with his heel as he spun out and kicked me. Despite the sickness that was devouring his brain and any conscience he’d had, he was as strong as ever if not stronger, and I flew backward, my ass hitting the ground just before my head and shoulders.
I jumped up and blinked the stars away from my vision, and braced just in time to catch another kick and spin his leg away from me, driving my fist at his muzzle. He dug his claws into my biceps and I felt the dark magic he tried to inject into me. I didn’t know if he wanted to weaken me, or control me, but I leaned in and bit his throat, desperate to make him stop, to force him to let go of me.
Instead, my mouth was filled with his blood and the bad juju, and I was forced to release him, gagging and vomiting up the foul stuff. “Your blood is tainted,” I hissed. “You’re corrupt all the way through.”
“I’m stronger than you will ever be, and I will add you to my power,” he laughed. “You brought vampires into our territory. The pack will never follow you now.”
“No. You did this, when you started making weak wolves and stealing girls from their families to murder,” I countered. “And I will kill you tonight.”
I attacked with claws, teeth, and abandon. My brother was gone, my mate injured and in the arms of her vampire lover. I had nothing left to lose and I made sure he understood it.
“I should’ve killed you when I killed your parents,” he snarled as I forced him back into the trees. It had the desired effect, and my concentration was broken enough for me to step back.
“Why didn’t you?” I whispered it, panting and backing away from him, his blood seeping into the ground as it poured from deep channels I’d torn in his flesh. “Why didn’t you just kill me then, instead of raising me to love you?”
I saw his eyes clear for a moment and he faltered, but the evil that occupied his body recovered and his eyes hardened again. “Because I knew you’d make a great sacrifice, one day. Far better than your brother, although you should know, he held on like a wolf. It was a proud moment to see him survive where other humans died so fast. Too fast really, it was hard to get any enjoyment out of it before they were gone.
His voice was callous, cold and indifferent to the deaths he’d caused, and something inside me snapped. With a roar, I slammed my shoulder into his sternum, doubling him over across my shoulder and pushing him through the tree he’d been leaning against in a rain of splintered wood.
My claws closed into fists as I straddled him and I pounded them into his face, over and over, repeatedly beating on him until his muzzle was soft over shattered bones and his eye socket was crushed in under his eye. He was so still, I thought I’d killed him, but his faint heartbeat limped under my fingertips as I touched his artery, and as I grabbed his ankle and started to drag him, he released a ragged, shuddering breath.
No vampires appeared to help me with my burden, and it took several minutes of dragging him over felled trees, rocks, and uneven ground before I reached the clearing, but my pleasure in the sounds of pain he made every time his head banged on the ground kept me from picking him up.
When I reached the thorny bushes around the camp, they fell away from me and left an opening at my feet at a command from Miriam on the other side. Cautiously I hauled Thaddeus through it and into the circle, where va
mpires, only some of which I recognized, hemmed in the wolves and Thaddeus’s soldiers.
“Where are the sacrifices?” I called out to Miriam. “Where are Thaddeus’s victims?”
She shrugged and stepped forward, carefully avoiding Nicholas and the New Orleans vampires as she approached me. “They’re gone, alpha. They escaped into the spring, but I don’t know if they survived.
“Oh, we survived, witch, no thanks to you,” came a voice from outside the thorns. I motioned to the border with a jerk of my head as I threw down Thaddeus’s leg, and Miriam opened the way for the new arrivals.
A gasp went up from the pack and I turned to face the broken people I’d tried to help before being captured myself, and immediately fell to my knees. At the head of the small pack of wolves, was Porter, not in his wheelchair, but standing tall, walking without assistance.
“Oh my God,” I panted, hot tears blurring my vision as I stared unseeing at my brother, not only alive, but healed of his paralysis.
“God had nothing to do with it, Orson, at least, no God I know.” My blood chilled at the rage in his voice, and I glanced at Nick before standing and kicking our unconscious alpha out of the way as I strode to him.
“Thaddeus didn’t do this for you, Porter, there’s no dark magic in you. That means that it was you in the hallway, with the broken neck, right?”
“Yeah, it was me. And I bet you can imagine my surprise when my big brother, not knowing it was me, healed me, when he never would before?”