by Anne Malcom
Sophie and Conall had driven through the town soaked in misery. Well, Conall drove. Of course, she, a woman, couldn’t possibly drive a car in a foreign land. She’d only rescued him from a cage in the middle of the woods where he’d been tortured and then fucked up three fully turned werewolves.
Honestly.
But she wasn’t in the mood to argue, because she was psyching herself up for the battle with the binding potion in her hand, and memorizing the spell. She had the power to cast it—which usually required an entire coven of witches—thanks in part to Conall.
Whatever it was between them was something more than sex—even Sophie was beginning to admit that. Because every time they were close, every time they were joined, it was a straight shot of pure power. Like she was a succubus. Except he wasn’t drained afterward. If anything, the wolf had more power, more rippling muscles, more of an indestructible aura, the beast in him stronger than ever.
So they’d fucked three times on the jet on the way there—strictly for battle purposes—then twice on the train from Poland.
She was more juiced than a guido in June.
“Don’t you think it’s weird that the vamps have a kitchen when they don’t even need to eat?” Sophie asked conversationally as Conall ripped the throat of a vampire guard who’d rushed them upon entering the vast room.
He’d been snacking on the cook, who scuttled out silently. Humans who didn’t scream at death were troubling, because that meant they’d seen worse things than death.
Join the club.
“Like, I know vampires can eat. Have you seen Isla eat a cheeseburger?” She shook her head. “I swear she does it to taunt me because she can’t put on weight, the bitch.” Worry for her vamp saturated the insult. Isla was currently in the front of the house, facing off with her mother and brothers. Sure, she had Duncan and her possessive slayer with her, who wouldn’t let her die out of sheer force of will and large biceps, but still, dread had set over Sophie the second they’d set foot inside.
She stuck to her nonchalance, trailing her hand over the stainless-steel surface, finding modern amenities in the ancient house strange. “I know they’d likely eat too, but I thought it’d be unicorn hearts, newborn babies, that kind of thing.”
Sophie glanced at Conall, who’d dropped the headless vamp and was inhaling deeply, looking for the scent of an enemy.
His eyes flared in panic and he moved toward her. The vampire had already dropped to the floor without Sophie having to take her eyes off Conall. “Gotta be quicker than that, wolf,” she teased, stepping over the vamp toward where the witch was being held.
She didn’t need a map of Castle Douche-ala to know where she was. No, even with the sheer evil that soaked the walls of the house—that was in the very air she breathed here—there was malice so cold that it worked like a magnet, drawing Sophie in.
The way was relatively unguarded, Conall taking care of the rest because he’d growled at her to “conserve your power” when she’d decapitated the third vamp with a flip of her hands.
Sophie had rolled her eyes, mostly because he was right.
She might’ve had more power flowing through her veins than ever before, but that likely might not be enough. She didn’t trust herself to call on the power inside of her, so much so that she’d done a small binding spell on herself. Silly, on the eve of battle, but even with the spell, something about the dark witch’s call was alluring to that caged part of her. It rattled against her interior walls, not to destroy the ancient witch but join her.
Not good, like at all.
She froze when she found herself standing at the top of a flight of stairs. The damp air was drenched in death, and black magic so wrong that it turned her stomach.
Conall’s heat kissed her back, and he rested his hands lightly on her hips. The small touch soothed Sophie, as much as she hated to admit it.
“La mia luna?” he rasped, voice drenched in worry.
She sucked in a breath. It was tainted with the bitter magic, seeping into Sophie’s lungs painfully. “I’m good,” she said. “Let’s rock out with our magicks out.”
Then she descended.
There was not a single soul, or vampire, guarding the witch. Sophie guessed why. Walking through the dungeons was harder and harder the closer they got. As if the air was getting thicker, turning to cement. The very oxygen surrounding the witch repelled life.
The power inside of Sophie clawed at her painfully, so bad in fact that she had to sink her teeth into the side of her lip in order to stop herself from crying out. She knew if Conall so much as sensed that she was in any kind of pain, he’d throw her over his shoulder and sprint out of the house quicker than she could blink.
He didn’t care about the end of the world that may come as he did so.
He’d said as much on the plane.
“I’m going to be in danger here,” Sophie said throatily, tucked in his arms, naked on the sofa of her private jet. That’s why she didn’t fly commercial—you couldn’t fuck in the middle of the cabin. Well, you could, but people frowned upon it.
“I’ll likely even get hurt,” she continued. Conall’s arms flexed. She rested her elbow on his chest so she could hold her chin in her hand and lock eyes with him. “You’re gonna wanna go all wolfy and protect me and pound on your chest, prove to everyone you can look after your woman.” She gave him a look. “But in there, I’m not going to be your woman. I’m your witch—actually, I’m always your witch—the one who has kickass powers and also a responsibility to take in a power that threatens to burn the world to the ground. You gotta stand aside and let me get a little banged up, for the greater good. I know, it’s totally lame. I’d rather do it for the greater evil, but someone already stole that part.”
Conall stared at her, his eyes warming the chill of what was to come. Then he wrenched her up his body so their foreheads were almost touching. His hands clutched the sides of her neck.
“I’m never going to stand aside,” he growled. “I’ll be at your side, fighting for you when I can, fighting with you when I can’t.” He searched her face. “I’d set fire to the world just to stop you from feeling a cold breeze, so don’t think I’m going to care about someone else burning it down if it means I take you from harm’s way.”
She blinked. Once. Twice. His certainty, his determination, surrounded her. Enchanted her.
The memories of his howl, his sorrow, not yet to come haunted her with a chill that even the burning of the world wouldn’t warm.
So instead of replying, she kissed him. Like she might die that day. Even though she knew she wouldn’t. But she would die soon. And she’d be taking two people to the grave with her.
The memory fueled her. Both of his touch before and of what was going to come of this entire war: her death, his pain. She needed to punish those responsible while she could. Before it was too late.
The witch was standing in the middle of a dim chamber, eyes on Sophie the second she rounded the corner, as if she had been waiting for her. She smiled when their eyes met, showing blackened, decaying teeth. A centipede scuttled from the inside of her mouth, up her cheek and into her hair.
Sophie didn’t blanche, but she felt the wolf behind her stutter in his step. He shouldn’t have even made it that far. The magic in the dungeon should’ve brought him to his knees. There was a spell in play there that allowed only those with magic—dark magic—to enter. Sophie didn’t want to dwell too hard on the reason she got through it, let alone him.
She used their slight distance to throw the two crystals she’d been clutching at the arched entrance to the antechamber, the one she was inside of and he was outside of. They landed at each end, erecting an invisible but impenetrable wall between them. She’d planned on that all along, never intending to put her wolf in the line of fire.
She knew he wouldn’t die that day, but there were a lot of things worse than death. She was already responsible for what befell him in the future; she wouldn’t be letting an
ything happen to him in the present.
The betrayal and rage in his eyes as soon as he realized what she’d done hit her physically. He pounded against the wall, screaming, bellowing, his form changing as he prepared to turn into a wolf in an effort to charge through the magic.
Sophie turned, not revealing an ounce of emotion.
She faced the witch, who hadn’t even glanced at the wolf. Her gaze was toxic, seeming to rot Sophie’s very flesh.
“I have been waiting for you, child.” Her voice was nails on a chalkboard, tearing at Sophie’s ears.
Hot blood trickled down her earlobes. She knew if she let the witch speak for too much longer, there’d be more blood. Her very words were drenched in evil so deep that it tore at Sophie’s insides.
The pain was more intense than she’d expected. Especially with Conall’s frenzied roars at feeling it secondhand, through whatever connection had suddenly grown stronger in proximity to this ancient evil.
“Well, color me flattered. One of the most terrible and, I’ve got to say, unattractive witches in our race has been waiting for little old me.” Sophie clutched the bottle in her hands, though something stopped her from moving, from tossing the potion at the witch.
At first Sophie thought it was the witch, weaving a spell. But no, it was Sophie herself. She didn’t want to cast the spell. She wanted to hear more. To bathe longer in the acid that was the air around the witch.
The sheer power.
“You have power that surpasses everything,” Malena continued, eyes glowing black. “You see a sister in me. You know we will do great things.” Her voice was suddenly music.
Sophie stepped forward. Not to bind her, as had been the plan, but to release her. She needed Sophie’s help. This great and benevolent being needed Sophie to help release her, to make them pay.
“I see what they have done to you,” Malena continued. “They fear your power. So they seek to destroy it. Because they are not like you. You have never had the comfort of a sister because you are too strong for them. And you sought only freedom. They offer you a cage to whither and die in. I offer death too. You know this. Death is your very existence.” Her eyes glowed brighter and darker at the same time with the knowledge of Sophie’s secret.
It was a weight being lifted off her, that someone else knew. That someone else understood what it was to manipulate death, to be borne out of it.
Sophie took another step forward. More blood streamed from her ears, warm on her neck.
“But with this death I offer life. I offer power.”
The invitation was inches away. Sophie needed to take one more step to grasp it. Her skin started to blister at her hands. That didn’t matter.
Worms curled around her feet. Large spiders crawled up her legs.
She was about to take the last step when the entire room vibrated.
“Sophie!” The growl was a bellow louder than the roar of power around them. It was familiar, full of something warm, something that melted the ice surrounding her.
She glanced back, her eyes tearing from the orbs of destruction attached to the witch’s head. Her gaze met gold.
Conall stood stationary against Sophie’s wall of magic. His clothes were ripped, knuckles bloody. “You shall not do this,” he rasped. “Or the world will burn. With me inside it.”
“No!” Malena hissed, sensing the wolf’s pull was stronger than even her own magic.
But it was too late. Sophie had already thrown the potion, watched it smash at Malena’s feet, all the power that had been peeling at Sophie’s soul sucked into the void created by her potion.
She held up a black stone and every part of Malena’s control and black magic tore into it, cracking the bones in Sophie’s hand. Still she held strong, gritting her teeth.
“From the abomination of our gift, let the release of your powers be swift. Let this darkness be home to your power, for you lose it now, in this moment, in this hour,” Sophie chanted, her voice scratching with the pain it took to say the words. The witch had tried to fight against it, tried to yank Sophie’s voice from inside her.
Though she’d failed. And now Sophie held her darkness in the pulsating stone. It burned her skin and froze it, her broken bones protesting.
It wouldn’t hold forever. Or for very long. But it worked for now.
Sophie released the spell keeping Conall out. He burst into the room with a rush of warmth, of energy.
Sophie sank to her knees, unable to stand with her pain any longer.
Conall’s hands were at her arms in an instant, to yank her back up, to hold her.
“No,” she hissed, her voice so sharp that it paused even her wolf.
She nodded to Malena, who she was keeping frozen with great effort.
Blood ran from her nose.
“Get the witch,” she gritted out.
He paused, and she sensed his pain, his fury at her state. She couldn’t move her gaze from the murderous glare of Malena. “Do it!” she screamed, power vibrating in her voice.
Conall moved, yanking at the witch roughly, snapping her wrist as he did so.
No love lost there.
His gaze was on Sophie, who was still on the ground.
“I will carry you both,” he said, stepping forward and dragging the witch.
“No,” Sophie whispered, pushing her screaming body up with a force that roiled her stomach.
Conall’s eyes flickered from gold to silver as his beast sensed her pain, her danger.
“Let’s go. This place is tired, don’t you think?” she asked lightly.
He growled in response. “Sophie, you cannot walk out of here.”
She spat blood at his feet, turning as she did so. “Oh, I can, and I’ll be doing it with all of my usual swagger. Just you watch.”
And she did.
And it almost killed her.
But it wasn’t her day to die.
So she did it.
Chapter Ten
“I’m sure it doesn’t measure up to a cave, but here’s a little hovel I prepared earlier,” Sophie said with a forced grin, holding her hand out to the cage she’d replaced on the off chance she’d need it to hold any rogue vampire-human hybrids.
Luckily, with some tweaking, it served as a multipurpose prison, suitable to hold a witch who some of the most powerful immortals in the world had to put in a cave on a cliff in Albania thousands of years before.
This was in Sophie’s offices in Brooklyn. Close enough.
The witch snarled, and the stone tucked between Sophie’s breasts on a thick chain throbbed with a force that cracked a rib.
She was starting to feel like Frodo heaving that fucking ring into Mount Doom.
Conall shoved the witch with a brutal force that sent her flying into the metal of the cage, which shocked her on contact. His face curled into a grim sort of satisfaction.
Then he turned to Sophie, body taut and wired, as it had been since they’d left Isla’s home.
They had met up with a bloodied and frantic Thorne cradling a lifeless Isla in his arms. Sophie noted the unnatural angle of her neck and reasoned that she’d had it broken, hence the reason for her being unconscious. A wound like that could take them out of commission for a hot minute, but it was no biggie.
“Ah, looks like you’ve got what we came for,” Duncan boomed, an edge to his forced cheerful voice that turned Sophie’s stomach once more. He craned his head to get a look at the being Conall had been carrying with disgust. “Ah, she’s a looker, isn’t she? The evilest ones always are.” He winked at the witch.
Sophie blinked, her head pounding with the need for unconsciousness as she followed Duncan’s gaze in confusion. Malena’s face was curled in a grimace, her lips black with crusted bits of dead meat from what Sophie assumed was her last meal. Her eyes were black, completely, even without her power inside her. Her hair was matted and rank with insects crawling through it. The dress she wore was so ripped it barely covered her decaying frame, and it had a rancid
stench attached to it.
Sophie had assumed that Conall could see what she saw, hence the reason for his utter abhorrence for touching her.
But no, she must’ve had a strong glamour that only witches could see through.
Her wolf’s disgust was purely from the fact that the witch had almost killed his mate.
Ah, not yet, wolf, she thought. But soon.
She swayed slightly and Conall let out a growl, dropping the witch as if she were nothing but a sack of potatoes so he could steady Sophie.
“How about we don’t drop the all-evil being who we almost paid our lives for retrieving,” Sophie said through gritted teeth.
“Already on it,” Duncan replied with a grin, heaving the witch over his shoulder, smacking at her ass while he did so.
Sophie toyed with the idea of taking the glamour off so he could see the rotting corpse he was fondling, but thought better of it. This was more fun, and she was in dire need of amusement.
“La mia luna,” Conall murmured, his hands biting into her hips.
“I’m good. Don’t you dare try to carry me,” she snapped.
“If you haven’t noticed, Isla is fucking dead right now, and we’re exposed,” Thorne thundered, entering the conversation finally. He glared at her wolf. “Pick her the fuck up, knock her out if you need to, and let’s get out of here so Sophie can fucking heal her,” he growled.
Sophie sensed Conall might challenge Thorne, but the slayer was already jogging down the snowy incline, toward their vehicles, his concern for Isla his only worry.
Well, that sounded familiar.
“Wolf,” she warned. But she was already in his arms.
Fucking alpha males.
They’d rushed to the airport, taken off and flown for an hour without Isla waking up. Even though Sophie was distracted trying to contain the epitome of all evil, battling unconsciousness, she was a smidge worried.