by Anne Malcom
Because he knew, inside of his heart, that whatever it was sought to destroy his mate. And he could not kill it because it lived inside her. So he did not move.
“I swear to every goddess and deity who has gifted me with my power that I will do so,” she vowed, the concreteness of the words settling into the air like some sort of binding contract.
The promise of death hung between them for a moment more. Then he swallowed acid at the thought of leaving her.
“Very well,” he gritted out.
He tasted both victory and disappointment inside of her.
That meant she was not lost forever.
Just for now.
He didn’t hesitate to dart into the ruined bathroom and snatch his sopping clothes. Nor to tear out the window and into the night, running as fast as his legs would take him. He had to, because if he let himself linger, the last thread of control he was clutching would snap, his beast would take over, and she would be lost forever.
He reached the woods outside of the city in record time, changing and sprinting through them to his cabin he’d hidden when he’d bought the land.
Conall was not going to give up on his mate—his witch—merely because she threatened to curse him and blow him off the face of the earth. It would take that very thing to get rid of him.
He merely had to change his strategy. Hadn’t he been his clan’s chief strategizer, a title he’d warmed to better than the one burned into him at birth. Though it had been centuries since he’d led his pack into wars—centuries since he had a pack—such instincts would not go away. And this was a war, with his witch. With whatever power, whatever being lay inside her that was threatening their union.
So he would not force himself into her, not taste her lips, not feel his skin against hers, though the very thought of it pained him.
He would take it upon himself to fight this battle she had been muttering about, the one that had been simmering in the immortal world for decades. It had not troubled him, not even the thought that his pack might perish in it.
But now he was ready to fight in this war, for her. With her. And they’d win it. Then he’d make sure she did not deny him again.
Chapter Four
“Let’s start the killing now that I’m not dead, shall we?” Isla said with a grin, anger cutting through the energy in the clearing.
It was fair to say everyone was pretty ticked off. Isla had been pissed enough to rip Rick’s arm off. Totally called for, in Sophie’s opinion, since he’d tortured her and almost killed her. Granted, he didn’t know she was in the grips of a spell that would make it so she didn’t heal, but still, torture was a dick move.
She just wasn’t that into him. Some men took rejection super badly.
Then again, there was apparently some kingly reason for the torture, but Sophie didn’t buy it. Which was why she had almost stripped him of his mortality—something she didn’t even know she’d been capable of until moments before—and likely destroyed herself by welcoming the power that simmered inside her.
Isla had saved the day by not dying.
Sophie sensed something else against the chill inside her while she was struggling to control her power.
Her wolf.
He was close.
But not close enough for anyone else to notice. Then again, Rick was distracted by his bleeding stump, Thorne was too busy making goo-goo eyes at Isla, Scott was recovering from her almost killing him, and Silver was glaring at her.
Still didn’t accept the friend zone.
Sophie clapped. “Okay, well I’ve just realized I forgot to feed my cat, so I’ve got to go.”
Isla frowned at her. “You don’t have a cat.”
“Well I’ve got to go and buy one, then,” she snapped. “What self-respecting witch doesn’t have a cat?”
“Easy—you,” Isla said, crossing her arms. “You’re not a self-respecting witch.”
The presence moved closer. He’d be within scenting distance soon.
Sophie flipped Isla the bird. “Glad you’re not dead, bloodsucker.” She glared at Rick. “You got off easy. You’d do well to remember that in case you were thinking of fucking with my best friend again,” she promised. “Walk it off, Scotty,” she advised the dazed halfling. She pointedly ignored Silver. She didn’t need that.
“Bye, losers.”
And then she was gone, taking care to saunter for a hot minute, then run once she was out of sight.
The wolf ran with her. She waited for him to advance. To shout about the near-death experience, to fuck her against a tree trunk. Declare her his again.
He did none of these things.
To her utter dismay.
She waited for longer than she cared to admit, but he only remained at a distance, watching.
She bit her lip before she called out to him.
Then she stormed to her car.
The wolf was staying true to her wishes. She needed to stop being such a fucking cliché female and start being the kickass witch she was.
Which meant it was time to fuck some shit up. Destroy the strongest—and evilest—witches known to man and monster.
And forget a particular monster.
Two Days Later
Calling spirits at a time like this was risky, to say the least, but she didn’t have much of a choice, and if it wasn’t a risk, it wasn’t a party.
Plus, she needed a risk. She was bordering on desperate after the events at Thorne’s place, and she’d found out nothing from all of her research.
It would be a good distraction from the fact that she hadn’t seen hide nor hair of the wolf for days, only sensed him on occasion, but she could’ve been imagining that.
Sophie stood in front of the mirror, white candles covering every surface of her second bathroom—the first one was currently out of use on account of a great hulking fucking werewolf smashing a priceless vintage tub, which she still owed him a curse for—signifying the purity of the ritual.
Every candle color helped to fuel the magic to which they were connected, operating on a different frequency when lit by a witch. She technically should be surrounded by purple candles right now, if she wanted to follow the rules, which she never did. Purple connoted mystery, the strongest candle associated with astral travel and to connect a witch to unseen realms. Since she was trying to tap into the spiritual realm, it held to reason that purple was her jam.
And it was. She’d loved it because of its connection to mystery, power, and authority. Surrounding her apartment and work space in hues of purple candles helped to strengthen her connection with her physic self—one of the most important things for witches.
But she had gravitated to white this night. She told herself it was because she needed the added protection of its purity since her power was so closely connected to the grave she was looking to use as her physic telephone.
Not because of its connection with the lunar cycle.
With the moon.
Nope.
Her eyes reflected in the mirror swirled with flecks of silver and amber. A human might think it was a trick of the light. But of course, humans were idiots, and on the rare occasion they were paying enough attention to notice the magic that surrounded them, they came up with excuses for it, unable to reconcile the truth in their small brains.
“Terentia,” Sophie called into the mirror, into the world beyond this one.
A candle flickered.
“On the realm of the spirits, I call for our Guardian,” she continued, her voice having a musical quality to it she did not intend, brought upon by the power she was releasing. “I wish to convene on the space between our two worlds. On matters grave in knowledge and spirit. Come to the mirror in which I stand, I implore Terentia, our Guardian grand.”
Sophie screwed up her nose at the unintended rhyme.
So lame.
But it worked. The mirror flickered like quicksilver, the chill of the grave grabbing at her like ice wind. The candles flickered once more,
fighting off the evil spirits latching onto the death in Sophie’s voice, aching to find purchase on her soul.
Her instincts had been right. Had she used purple, the conductor of the connection of realms, such spirits would’ve escaped the mirror and attacked Sophie.
“Child,” the dim figure in the mirror called, coming to stark realness as if it was Sophie’s own reflection.
The face was not beautiful and ethereal to match the voice. No flowing golden hair, radiant skin, majestic gown as many expected when they called on their first spirit.
This was a witch who now belonged to the underworld. Her beauty had been snatched away and given to those living.
Her skin was graying and decayed, peeling from her face, revealing chalky bones underneath. Lank yellow hair hung in clumps around the corpse’s face, insects scuttering through the dirty strands.
She was naked, her skin peeling, rotting, and sagging all over her body, hanging off the bones that held her together.
Most young witches were terrified and traumatized on their first experience calling up one of the ancient witches. Sophie had not been. She wasn’t even surprised. You were Facetiming a dead thing, what did you think you were going to be looking at? Kate Beckinsale?
She also found this ugly depiction of death beautiful in its truth, showing those living what a gift life really was. Death was ugly. More people—more witches—needed to realize this.
“Terentia,” she replied, her voice thick with overarching respect the dead deserved. A lot more respect than the living.
Sophie’s social niceties were more refined with corpses than anything else.
“Why have you called me from my rest?” Terentia asked, her voice gentle.
Spirits were not wrathful either. Well, some of them were. It depended on how they died, for sure, but mostly on what type of people—or immortals—they had been in their time on earth.
Basically, if you were an asshole in life, you’d be an even bigger asshole in death.
Terentia was a sacred Guardian to their kind, giving her life to save an entire coven of Wiccans. Not even real witches—in the magical sense of the word, anyway. They were just humans who tapped into the witch frequency and served with peace and love and all the bullshit Sophie despised.
But Terentia had loved them as servants of The Four, and given all her power to defeat the werewolves who had attacked their peaceful village centuries before.
She was kind of a kickass witch.
And she helped those sisters in need when it was a true and urgent matter. She wouldn’t have appeared in the mirror otherwise.
“I need to know about the Herodias sisters,” Sophie said. “They have escaped their bounds, and their spells have corrupted one who I care for.” Sophie paused. “A sister.” It wasn’t exactly a lie—and you couldn’t lie to a spirit—Isla was a sister to Sophie, the only one she had. Hopefully Terentia would assume this to be a sister witch, because no way in Hekate would she help a vampire.
Even saintly witches weren’t going to help bloodsuckers.
Good thing Sophie wasn’t a saintly witch.
Terentia’s eyes swirled silver at her words, her grotesque face morphing in what Sophie guessed was alarm. It’s not like there was a news channel in the otherworld, though she was surprised this was the first the spirits were hearing about it. Sophie’s coven should’ve convened with them the moment the knowledge came to them.
Fishy.
“They have been freed?”
Sophie nodded. “Two have, from what I can gather. My sister defeated one, and the death spell weaved from Hades himself was her repayment. I need a way to counteract the spell.”
Terentia watched Sophie for a long time. Well, at least it seemed like she was. It was pretty unnerving to have a dead witch zombie with silver eyes watch you through a mirror at first. But now Sophie had done it enough to know the dead witch zombie was combing through millennia of knowledge, both hers and the other witches who had perished in the name of The Four.
Knowledge did not die with the witch, in most cases. You just had to know which corpse to ask.
“You cannot counteract the spell,” Terentia said finally.
Sophie sagged. She had a feeling that was going to be the case.
“To end the spell means to defeat the three dark ones. Not cage, but wipe them from this world and bar them from going to the next. True death is the only thing that can save your sister.” That time the silver eyes were looking at Sophie, right into Sophie. And her skin froze at the look, the grave crawling over her like the insects in Terentia’s hair. “And it is the only thing that will save you,” the mirror witch whispered.
Fuck, she’d also had the feeling that was the case. Sophie had sensed the proximity of her own demise for years now.
“You need the grimoire,” she continued. “You know where to seek it.”
Sophie muttered a curse. Yes, she knew where to seek it, but that didn’t mean she wanted to have to go and seek it herself. “I cannot conjure it?”
Terentia shook her head, a flap of her cheekbone moving in the breeze. “You know you cannot. It must be grasped with hands, not magic.”
Sophie nodded once. “Thank you, Guardian. May your rest be peaceful and eternal.”
It almost looked like the spirit smirked. “I doubt such a thing will be the case.”
And then she was gone, all the candles flickering out and severing the connection with the underworld.
Good thing too. It was becoming too inviting.
She would’ve rather gone to the underworld at that point instead of the place she had to go to retrieve the book.
Her childhood home.
The wolf followed her.
Of course.
That time he showed himself to her.
It infuriated her, his constant presence. It infuriated her more that she felt comfortable, content in it too. That her entire body ached with need from the mere presence of his aura.
She knew his need existed too, because it was painted in every inch of his energy: her, the need for her, his devotion to her.
She had to ignore it. For whatever remaining sanity she had left.
“I thought I said I would end you if you came near me again,” she hissed, slamming the door and shielding her hand from the sun to gaze up at the sprawling villa in front of them.
“You said I would meet Hades should I force myself on you,” the wolf answered, surprising her. She hadn’t expected him to speak, only to lurk. The wolf continued to surprise her. She hated that too. “I am not forcing myself,” his gravelly voice continued. “I shall take you again only when you beg.”
Her lady parts dipped at the pure sex in his tone.
Beg him right now, let him take you on the street.
She wasn’t about to let her vagina talk for her. It had gotten her into enough trouble as it was.
“I’m here to do my duty,” he continued.
She whipped her eyes from the decaying grandeur of her coven’s home to the just plain grandeur of her wolf.
Fuck, you need to stop thinking of him as yours.
In the immortal words of Holly Golightly, people did not belong to people.
In this case, it was werewolves did not belong to witches, but the spirit still held true.
“And your duty is?” she asked with a hand on her hip.
His eyes went to that hand, where it was covering her exposed skin. She had dressed appropriately for her home visit, with a cropped tank that read ‘Muggle in the sheets, witch in the sheets.’
She’d cut the bottom off it and showed half her tattooed midriff, and almost all of her aforementioned wild lady parts in a way low-slung ripped mini that barely covered her ass. She completed her look with thigh-high boots that laced all the way up.
She’d known her fellow estranged witches would hate it.
It seemed her wolf loved it.
Fuck.
“My duty,” he ground out through an iron jaw, “i
s to protect my witch.”
His words had her hackles rising, and she waved her hand to send him flying into the SUV he’d arrived in. He hit the roof with so much force he collapsed into the car, the smash ringing out on the deserted suburban street.
“In case you hadn’t noticed, this witch doesn’t need protecting,” she hissed, turning on her heel. She clicked the locks of her Jeep. “But you might.”
The door opened before she’d even walked up the wooden steps. The witches inside of the house obviously heard the crash and definitely felt the rush of magic that strictly wasn’t meant to be practiced in broad daylight—despite the fact that this whole effing street was spelled to repel mortals.
She hid her flinch as she crossed the magic threshold designed to repel enemies; it smarted a little, as the spell couldn’t decide whether she was friend or foe. She gave a slight magical push to get through it with both happiness and sadness at being recognized as foe.
Yes, they used to be her family. They’d raised her since birth, her parents having either died or abandoned her—there was some argument as to which, but no matter what, they’d left her. And the witches gave her a home, a resentment of authority and a tendency to overreact when people told her what to do. But they still raised her to be the fucked-up immortal she was, hence the sadness. But they were also Grade A bitches who wanted to control Sophie and grind down her spirit. Hence the happy part.
“Hey, I’m the black witch of the family,” Sophie said with a finger wave at the shocked little witch who’d opened the door. “I’ve come for a cup of tea, maybe a scone and to snatch the oldest and most precious book of our kind. That cool?”
The witch was transfixed not by Sophie—which sucked, because Sophie considered herself rather transfixing, even on a bad eyeliner day—but at the wolf, who sounded like he’d extracted himself from the roof of the car and was likely coming toward the house.
Sophie waved in dismissal. “Oh, don’t mind him. He’s obsessed with me.” She shrugged. “What can you do?”