Shadow's Howl

by Riley Storm

  Liam leaned back in the chair, resting his head on the high back, staring up at the ceiling. He knew that, on a basic level. Plus, he knew something Logan didn’t.

  Jennifer had fought another mage. Without being asked, ordered or expected. She’d made that decision all on her own.

  “I need a drink,” he muttered, getting up from the chair and leaving the office, trying not to let himself get too confused with all the thoughts swirling around in his brain.

  19

  The spell was there. She could feel it.

  All the knowledge for how to cast it was in her mind. The patterns of magic and how she needed to shape them, the thoughts she needed to imbue within the spell as it grew. Jennifer had it all, all she would need to cast it.

  Everything except the will.

  Hesitating, she bit her lip and turned away, putting her back to Liam, so he wouldn’t see the pain on her face. The doubt. The fear. Not fear of him, she was past that, past being afraid of what he might do or think of her. She no longer cared about that.

  No, this terror was something deeper, something born into her, not grown. It was a result of who she was, what she was. Not just a mage, nor a powerful one, that was only a part of it.

  “Jen? Is everything okay?”

  Liam had taken to using the shortened form of her name lately, and as much as she wished to keep things formal between them, to push the fact they had kissed as deep into the past as possible, she hadn’t. It was hard, because she liked the way it tumbled off his lips. It felt natural, and was hard to ignore. So, she’d let him continue to call her Jen, like a guilty pleasure she wouldn’t admit to anyone else.

  “Everything’s fine,” she told him. “Just preparing.”

  Everything was most assuredly not fine. She’d been working for days now to build this spell, to work in all the elements she would need. It was one of two new spells they had come up with that would spearhead their plan of attack. The other one was simpler to cast, though it had a higher raw strength requirement. This one was complicated, with many different elements woven into it.

  “Okay, whenever you’re ready then. Let’s do this. You’ve got this.”

  Which is exactly what I’m afraid of.

  Telling Liam that was out of the question, of course. This was information she wanted nobody to know. It was hers, private, unshareable. After all, how do you tell someone you’re not afraid your spell will work, but you’re terrified of what casting it may cost you?

  I will not be like him. I won’t. I can be better.

  They were the same three short sentences Jennifer had told herself over and over for the better part of a year now, ever since she’d learned of her—of Adrian’s demise, the mage gone rogue, involving himself with the shifter houses in a bad way. Everyone knew that by now, his involvement hadn’t exactly been hidden from the rest of the paranormal world.

  What many didn’t know, was how he’d gotten to that point to begin with. The slow decline of his sanity as he delved ever deeper into magic he shouldn’t have been tinkering with. Spells that were outlawed, for good reason.

  It had twisted him, warped his mind as he drew on deeper, darker energies, becoming obsessed with the never-ending quest for more power. More strength. The scariest part was he’d possessed it. Somehow, she still didn’t know how, was that Adrian had found it.

  Without any guidance she’d seen, he had unlocked the secret of blue magic. Not just how to call upon it, but how to shape it, cast it, bend it to his will. That was no small feat, though it was difficult to convey to a non-magic user just how improbable it was that Adrian would be able to do all that on his own, without destroying himself in the process.

  That was where her fear traced its origins back to, the blue magic he’d found within himself, and unlocked. The same magic that lay in her, deep, dormant, but always at the edges of her awareness, ready to awaken should she desire it.

  And part of her did. The wild, angry part, that wanted to show the Mage Council how wrong they were for what they were doing, the chunk of her soul that wanted revenge on all those who had wronged her in the past, no matter how slight. It would be so easy to give birth to the magic, feed it with her anger, her fear, her guilt. All the negatives.

  But what sort of monster would it create if unleashed?

  Only Adrian knew the answer to that.

  “Are you sure you’re okay?”

  She sniffed, drawing herself up to her full height of five-seven and turned to face Liam. “Yes, I am. Just going over it a few more times in my head. It’s easier to focus when I’m not facing you.”

  “What’s wrong with me?” Liam asked, touching his face.

  Absolutely nothing. You are a specimen of raw sexuality, with a face I wouldn’t mind between my thighs.

  “Oh, lots of things,” she said. “So many things. I just can’t even look at you without losing all hope. It’s bad, Liam, real bad. You should go to a doctor. That can’t be normal.”

  “What can’t be normal?” he asked, obviously prepared for a sarcastic reply.

  “Your face.”

  He rolled his eyes and rolled the fingers of his right hand at her. “Come on, let’s get this over with already, okay? Stop dawdling. You’ve been working hard, really hard. You’re ready to do this.”

  She bit her lip, still unsure.

  “Besides, you get to cast it on me. Shouldn’t that, I don’t know, fill you with joy and enthusiasm?”

  Sometimes, his self-awareness was all too accurate. That was the last straw she needed. Closing her eyes, Jennifer began pulling the elements of the spell together. There was no need for speed, not yet. She had to become confident in her ability to cast it over and over again before she worked to speed up the process. If just one thing went wrong, then it could be Liam’s life on the line.

  There was a bit of worry etched into the corners of his eyes that she’d seen before her eyelids blocked her view of him. His mouth too, her brain said, replaying an image of him, his lips flattening as he stood his ground, ready to be hit with her spell.

  All at once, the magic fizzled out of her. She didn’t want to hurt Liam, she realized, despite the taunting and the teasing. Not that the spell would cause him permanent harm of course, she would never risk casting something like that upon him. But even a spell like this, she was resisting subconsciously because…

  Why? Because why? What was it about Liam that made her not want to hurt him? It certainly wasn’t his abrasive, untrusting personality, or his smugly good looks. What the heck could it be then, she asked herself, going over him from head to toe, trying to figure out what it was, as each well-muscled, perfectly proportioned body part flowed past her mind’s eye, in a long line of—

  Oh, hell—fucking no!

  “Jen?”

  Her eyes flew open. Liam was still standing twenty feet away, but he was looking at her strange now, head tilted to the side.

  “What?” she asked, fighting with herself, trying to deny the answer that had sprung up.

  Not possible.

  “Well your face was all blank, then suddenly it twisted up into something that looked like…frustration? Wanted to make sure everything was okay.”

  Sighing, she nodded at him. “It’s fine. I’m just afraid I’m fall—failing,” she said with a cough. “I’m afraid of failing.”

  If he bought that line…

  Liam smiled and came over to her. “That’s perfectly understandable Jen. And you might fail.”

  She blinked in surprise. “What?”

  “You might fail.”

  “Some pep talk,” she muttered, looking away from his eyes, avoiding that azure stare. Now was not the time to get caught up in him and his looks. Her body and brain were betraying her, she couldn’t trust them around him. Looking into those swirls of ocean blue would be the downfall of her day, that was for sure.

  Liam laughed quietly. “So what if you fail?” he challenged. “That’s not the point right now. The point is,
you’re trying. That you’re working toward this goal, this end goal. The point of today is to make progress in that. If you succeed, wonderful. If you don’t, then we analyze it, and make progress toward it some more again later, or tomorrow. As long as you don’t give up, then it doesn’t matter, because you have everything you need to do this. I know that.”

  She looked even more straight down as her head started to tilt upward of its own accord. “Thank you,” she said softly, meaning it. That was perhaps the nicest thing he’d said to her yet.

  “This is all you,” he continued as if she hadn’t spoken. “You’re the one putting in all the work, all the effort, these past four days. I’ve spent most hours of the day with you, I’ve seen the results of your progress. The strength of your will. It’s incredible.”

  Liam fell silent abruptly, and though she was at first thankful for that, Jen suddenly realized they were in one of those awkward silences. The ones where something else usually happened after. Like a kiss. A slow, burning inferno of a kiss that seared her lips and warmed her entire body from head to toe.

  Like the last time.

  She fought back the bodily reaction at the memory of their first kiss, trying to keep her arousal in check before it betrayed her. Shifters had an incredible sense of smell, she knew that from her lessons. If he was using it, he would smell her arousal, know how badly she wanted to throw herself at him, to feel the press of his body on top of her. Inside her. How she pulsed for his touch, ached for his…

  Enough.

  Shutting down her body was tough, because it wasn’t used to Liam being like this. The show of his personality, the reveal that he was far more observant than she’d ever expected, had caught her off guard. As had his gentle words.

  “Thank you,” she said again, forcing a cough to clear a lump in her throat. “That…that actually means a lot coming from you.”

  “Why?” he teased. “Because I’m usually a dick, and you didn’t think I knew how to be nice?”

  “Something like that,” she said softly, looking away in what felt an awful lot like shame at being called out. “You haven’t been the nicest companion.”

  “I have my reasons,” he said, a tightness returning to his voice.

  Jennifer nodded, finally meeting his gaze, looking him dead on. “I like this side of you better.”

  The words just sort of slipped out. She hadn’t intended to say anything, to tell him a single thing about her thoughts. Yet once more her body was betraying her, saying things she had meant to keep private. Like earlier, when she’d almost said she was falling for him.

  That wasn’t something Liam needed to know! The last thing she needed was the two of them complicating an already complicated coexistence with the fact she had feelings for him. Not like he would believe her if she told him, but still. It was an unnecessary complication.

  “Okay, step back,” she said, tearing her gaze away from his chest and arms, pushing the image of his disgustingly glorious physique out of her mind. Out of sight.

  Liam walked backward until he was once again twenty feet away. He disappeared from her vision as her eyes closed once again. Power swelled up, building and building as she wove the strands of magic together, plucking this and combining it with another from over there. Slowly, the spell took shape, and she breathed power into it, feeling it become a tangible thing.

  This was her favorite part about being a mage. The casting of magic, especially new magic, new spells. The potential to manipulate the power was near infinite, if you had the patience and will, along with the natural strength to do it. Jen had all of those things.

  She tentatively pulled at more power, feeding it into the spell, cautious that she never pulled too much. She wasn’t going to end up like Adrian. She controlled the power; it would never control her. Never.

  Hopefully.

  Once she felt it was strong enough, she opened her eyes, sighted on Liam, and then cast it.

  A pale green arc shot out from her fingertips. Elation filled her for an altogether brief moment, before the spell fizzled out and died fewer than ten feet from her.

  “What?” Liam looked around. “What happened? I saw you cast it. Did it work?”

  “No,” she said. “It didn’t. Something went wrong.”

  “I see. Okay. Well, let’s take a bit, analyze what it could have been, and then we can—”

  “No,” she said fiercely, already summoning her magic a second time. “I can do this.”

  “Jen, it’s okay. You don’t have to prove anything to me.”

  “I can do this,” she said fiercely, eyes open this time, watching the magic come to life in her hands. She worked faster this time, with more confidence. The spell had been right. She knew it had been. It felt right. So, it wasn’t the shaping of it that was the problem.

  It was the power. She’d been too afraid, too cautious. This time, she fed more juice into it. The green went from pale, to forest, to jade, to a brilliant emerald color while she watched.

  “Jen?” Liam asked nervously.

  She cast it.

  20

  Emerald magic rushed at him. He had a moment to try and dive for cover, but it didn’t work.

  “Oh shi—”

  There wasn’t even time to complete his sentence. The magic caught him up, snapped his legs closed and pinned his arms to his side, while gluing his mouth shut. A moment later, he blacked out, just as the ground came rushing up at him.

  When he came to, his body was relaxed, and Jennifer was standing over him, looking concerned.

  “Liam?” she yelped as he blinked and began to stir, control returning to his body. “Liam, you’re okay?”

  “I’m fine,” he said, confused. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

  “You were out for ten minutes.”

  His forehead wrinkled as he stared at her. “Seriously? It felt like ten seconds, if that.”

  “That’s cause you were unconscious, dummy,” she said, slapping his arm, trying to conceal a grin.

  “Is that relief I see?” he teased, sitting up. “Relief your bodyguard is okay, maybe?”

  Jen’s lips flapped as she exhaled heavily. “More like relief I don’t need to find a new test dummy.”

  He laughed, getting to his feet, feeling none the worse for wear. “Hell of a spell there. Hell of a spell. Good job!”

  Without thinking, he pulled her into a hug. “I’m proud of you.”

  “Thanks,” she said sheepishly, sounding reluctant to accept the praise.

  But she wasn’t pulling away from the hug.

  “What did you do differently the second time?” he asked, curious to know. There hadn’t been time to talk about it before, she’d just cast it a second time before he could react.

  To his surprise, he felt a slight shiver run through her body as he held her tight to him. It wasn’t from the cold, that much he was confident about. It was summer and she was wearing one of those mage robes that kept her body temperature regulated.

  “I fed it more power,” she said. “I didn’t give it enough the first time.”

  He nodded, his left hand unconsciously rubbing her back up and down without thinking.

  “We should go celebrate,” he said abruptly, changing the topic, sensing she didn’t want him to push much harder.

  “What? Why?”

  “You just created a new spell today. A multi-purpose one with excellent results,” he said. “That’s worth going out and having a drink.”

  Jen shook her head. “I don’t know, Liam. Besides, where would we go out to?”

  She was still leaning against him, her head on his chest. The proximity, the physical touch, it was making it hard for him to keep his composure.

  Reluctantly, he pulled back, letting his fingers drag up her shoulders, trying to hold onto the moment, though he knew he had to let it go, lest he find himself in a tight situation.

  “I didn’t mean go out-out,” he said. “We can’t leave the farm, you know that.”

&nb
sp; Although the loyalists knew where the rebels were based now, meaning the farm was compromised, they no longer had the strength to threaten them either. Not while they were all in such close proximity to one another.

  Liam knew they couldn’t stay for much longer either. Eventually, they would have to strike at the loyalists, before they were able to gather any more strength. The odds were in the favor of the rebels for the first time in the course of the rebellion, and even he knew they needed to strike while the iron was hot, or else they would lose their advantage.

  He just hoped Jennifer would be ready in time.

  “Come on,” he said, snagging her arm, linking it with his. He could handle that much touch without his pants shrinking a size or two. “Let’s go.”

  “Liam.”

  He came to an abrupt halt before taking a single step, because Jennifer wasn’t moving.

  “Okay. No celebration it is,” he said. “Not a problem. You’re the boss right now, since you are the one who did all the work. I just lay there and looked pretty.”

  “You mean snored.”

  “What?”

  “You lay there and snored,” Jennifer told him, nodding her head when his began to shake.

  “I do not snore!” he protested.

  “Rightttttt. Remind me to get the next one on camera then. It wasn’t pretty, mister. Trust me on that.”

  There was a slight pause and reaction from Jennifer at the use of the word trust, as if she expected him to blow up over it, but Liam let it pass. Now wasn’t the time for that. She needed to feel good about herself, to feel positive. He still wasn’t entirely sure he trusted her, but there was something forming between them.

  Respect, maybe? He wasn’t sure.

  “So you want to knock me out again, is that what you’re saying?” he asked, standing a body-width away from her.

  “I need to practice. I need to get faster at casting it,” she said fiercely, her facing lighting up feverishly. “Much faster. It needs to become second nature to me, so I don’t even have to think about it. That requires a lot of practice.”