by Kell Amber
Whether he wanted his father to be in his life or not, no one deserved to be trapped in the body of a bone wolf. Lars needed to be freed no matter what the consequences.
The librarian smiled when she saw Quentin, and waved but didn’t speak. Quentin waved back and passed on through. Normally he stopped to visit with the librarian, Lori Watson, but not today. He wasn’t up to small talk.
Fifteen minutes later, Quentin sat with stacks of books piled high around him. After searching through the pile for the history of bone wolves, Quentin hadn’t learned much from the books that he didn’t already know before he started.
Bone wolves were formed by the will and magic of a necromancer using the carcasses of other creatures. They were under the control of their creator until they used up all their magic. No one knew why there were only wolves but no other animals could be created this way.
“But what if you are your own power?” If the bone wolves didn’t need a necromancer to keep them alive, what would be their limit? Who had created the ones who followed Quentin? Was it the fae woman, and what had been her motivation? To punish her husband?
“I need to find out who created them.” Quentin wouldn’t be able to progress in unraveling the spell if he didn’t know its source. He doubted his sweet stepmom would give him any information. If she didn’t know Lars was a bone wolf, she didn’t need that sort of ammunition, and if she had created the wolves, she was unlikely to help him break the curse.
“Hello there, Mr. Heart.”
Quentin looked up to find one of the vampires he’d abandoned in front of his mother’s place. “Parson.” Quentin nodded.
Parson took a seat opposite him. “What are you trying to do?”
“Learn more about the bone wolves and who might have created them. I need to free them.”
“Why? They are valuable protection.”
“They have the souls of people trapped in there. It’s not fair to them.” He didn’t share the identity of the lead wolf. His father probably would not want it spread about that he was a bone wolf now.
“You are a better man than many. Most would keep the advantage.”
Quentin shrugged. “I’m trying to simplify my life.”
Parson grinned, exposing his incisors. “I think my leader wants to take care of all your problems for you. You are giving Master Jakinson fits with your need to do things your way.”
“Yeah, I’m distressingly independent. I appreciate you’re following Jaks’s orders, but I don’t need anyone trailing me around.”
“How about we make a deal?”
“What kind of deal?”
“You let me follow you around, and I’ll tell the master that you only need one of us to watch over you.”
“And if I don’t agree to any of you coming with me?”
“Then there will be half a dozen of us following you all over campus.”
Quentin sighed. “Fine.” One vampire couldn’t be too much trouble, could he?
Parson helped him locate more information on the supposedly mythical beasts.
Parson closed his final book. “I think that’s it. I don’t see anything else.”
Quentin sighed, put his elbows on the table, and pressed his face in his hands. What was he supposed to do now? A soft whimper and a nudge against his leg had him lifting his head. Lars sat beside him. “It’s not becoming of a fae king to whine. I’m doing what I can.”
The bone wolf set his chin on Quentin’s leg.
“So, what’s his relationship to you?”
“He’s my father.”
“Really? You have the blood of a fae king in your veins?” Parson sounded excited.
“Don’t drool,” Quentin said in a dry tone.
“I wouldn’t do that, but I’m beginning to think Master Jakinson is the luckiest vampire on the planet.”
Quentin shook his head. “I’m going to have to try a different approach.”
He reviewed all the people he knew and made a decision. He stood.
“Where are we going now?” Parson didn’t appear concerned that they were going somewhere else, just curious.
“You might want to go home.”
Parson stood. “I thought we had an understanding.”
“I’m going to go visit a necromancer.”
“And?”
“Some people don’t like necromancers.” Vampires in particular often didn’t like them. A powerful necromancer could influence them.
Parson bit his lip as if considering his options. “I’m not excited about seeing one, but I can’t let you go alone. If I did, then I might as well leave the city, because Master Jakinson will gut me.”
“I could call him for you?” Quentin didn’t want Parson to feel forced to do something he didn’t want to do.
“No. I’ll be fine.”
“All right.” Quentin wrapped a hand around Parson’s wrist, then teleported.
They appeared outside of Grevin Harrow’s townhouse. Black paint coated the outside, a spiritual mark to enhance the dark spirits and block out the light. Quentin used his wizard sight to trace the lines of magic.
He took a step toward the house only to be brought up short. “What?”
Parson had hold of his arm. “You can’t go in there!” Parson shouted.
“See, this is why I didn’t want to bring you along. You don’t have an open mind.”
“An open mind? That place practically screams evil and you want me to let you go inside?”
“It’s not evil. It’s just dark magic. Just because he uses the other side of the spectrum doesn’t mean he’s a bad person.” Quentin had heard this argument before and didn’t have time or inclination to go into it again.
“Necromancers aren’t known for being touchy-feely. If I let you in there, Master Jakinson will kill me.”
The four bone wolves appeared in front of Quentin. “I’m not going in there alone.”
“You’re not going in there at all.”
Quentin tilted his head as he examined Parson. “I am. You can come with me or stay here.”
A dark cloud coalesced outside the townhouse. They formed the shape of a caped man. Quentin watched the man pull back his hood, revealing a handsome man with dark hair and red eyes.
“Do you need help, Q?” His friend’s voice rolled through him, warm as a homecoming.
“No, Grevin, I’m fine.” He pinned Parson with a glare. “Aren’t I?”
“No, you are not fine.” Parson moved between Grevin and Quentin.
Peeking around Parson, Quentin saw Grevin tilt his head toward his house. Quentin nodded.
They both vanished and reappeared in Grevin’s house.
“That vampire is going to have a fit.” Grevin laughed.
“Yes. He shouldn’t have thought to stop me. The whole point of coming here was to talk to you, but he became worried when he saw your house.”
Grevin took off his cape and tossed it on a chair. Underneath he wore a concert T-shirt from a human hard-rock band and a pair of strategically torn jeans. “What an idiot. Want a drink?”
“No, I’m good.” As much as Quentin liked the necromancer, he never ingested anything in Grevin’s house because he never knew what might be cross-contaminated with a potion mixture. He didn’t think Grevin would purposely poison him, but the necromancer kept his potions in the kitchen, too close to his food for Quentin’s comfort.
“Have a seat.”
Quentin settled in the leather chair next to Grevin’s. “Thanks for letting me in.”
“No problem. You don’t come by often enough. Us wizards need to stick together even if we are from different specialties. What are you doing these days? Still in school?”
“Yep. I’m going for my PhD.”
“Why?”
Quentin crossed his right ankle across his left knee. “Why what?”
“Why are you still in school? You have enough juice you could be running this city. I don’t understand how you can harness all that power
and not have it go to your head.”
Quentin sighed. “Do we have to have this conversation every time?”
Grevin grinned. “I like this conversation. You have always fascinated me, Q. I see you’ve been claimed.” He pointed at Quentin’s necklace.
Quentin scowled. “Yeah, that wasn’t my idea. Jaks decided I was his. We’re working on finding a balance.”
“Only you would be negotiating with a master vampire, Q. Most people just do what they tell them to.”
“Maybe, but that’s not why I’m here.”
“The bone wolves, right?” Grevin pointed a finger at Quentin. “You have the most interesting companions, but my wards will keep them out.”
“They’re not regular bone wolves. They have souls trapped inside. One of them is my father, and I suspect the rest are his brothers. They’re all fae.”
“Interesting.” Grevin stroked his chin. “That would take very specialized curse magic.”
Now Quentin was getting somewhere. “Do you know anyone who can do that?”
“No.” Grevin stood and headed for a bookshelf. He grabbed a thick volume from the top shelf. “I have heard of this, though.” He flipped the pages until he was about halfway through. “Here it is. I thought I’d seen something.” He turned the book around to show Quentin.
Quentin accepted the volume and scanned the section Grevin pointed out. It took him a few minutes to decipher the words in Old English.
“Someone trapped them with a dimension demon.”
“You’ll need to make a pact with another demon to get them back out.”
“But if I remove the souls, where will they go?” Quentin didn’t want to banish his family members’ souls to the in between forever.
“Their bodies might still be trapped in whatever spell was used to steal their souls in the first place. We need to find out who cast the spell in order to save them.”
“We?” Quentin stared at him in surprise.
“Come on, Q. I’m bored. I’ve got three more days until my demon bloodstone is fully cured and my next batch of hellhounds still hasn’t hatched. Let me come play. Besides, I freak the vampires out. Think how much fun it will be.”
Quentin considered the pros and cons of dealing with the necromancer versus the vampires. He grinned fiercely. “Fine, you’re in.”
“Yes!” Grevin jumped up like a little kid, all high hops and enthusiastic arm swings. “Let’s go scare some vamps.”
Quentin tucked the book beneath his arm. “Yeah, this will go over well.”
Grevin slid on a pair of sunglasses before nodding to Quentin.
“We could just walk outside,” Quentin said.
“Naw, then we’d have to reset all my wards. Let’s just teleport back to your vamps before they figure out how to storm the castle.”
Quentin smiled. “Let’s go.”
They teleported in sync, reappearing in front of Parson. Parson was no longer alone.
Oops.
Chapter 7
Jaks crossed his arms and glared. Behind him stood a dozen other vampires. Collectively, they had disapproving looks.
“Hey, Jaks, what are you doing here?”
Grevin’s choked laughter didn’t reassure Quentin he’d pulled off his nonchalant act.
“I had a disturbing phone call from your guard. Apparently, you aren’t being cooperative.” Jaks’s frown didn’t waver beneath the power of Quentin’s grin.
“I just had to stop in to visit a friend.” Quentin waved a hand toward Grevin.
“At your service,” Grevin bowed to Jaks.
“You can go back to your creepy house now. Quentin doesn’t need your help,” Jaks said, waving a hand at the necromancer.
“I still need Grevin. He’s going to look into the bone wolf problem for me. Did you bring my signed form?” Quentin couldn’t put off going on another bounty hunt. He still needed to meet with the hospital administrator.
“No need. I paid your mother’s bill,” Jaks informed him.
Grevin groaned. “Oh, vampire dude, you are completely clueless.”
“Why? He doesn’t need to hunt if he doesn’t have the bills. It makes perfect sense,” Jaks said.
It took Quentin a few minutes to gather his temper and not send a lightning bolt through Jaks. “I appreciate the thought, but it was my responsibility.”
“And you’re mine, so that makes it my issue also. I’d like to go with you to meet your mother. I thought it would be too pushy to introduce myself.”
“Good to know where you draw the line,” Quentin muttered and rubbed his forehead, hoping to stave off an impending headache.
Grevin broke into Quentin’s stare-down with Jaks. “Q-man, let’s get somewhere I can examine the wolves. We’re too exposed here.”
“Okay. We can take this to my mother’s house.”
“No. You can do it in the manor. I’ll feel better if I know where you are and can have people protecting you,” Jaks insisted.
“Protecting Q?” Grevin began to laugh, a loud, boisterous sound Quentin had never heard before.
“It’s not that funny,” Quentin said after there were no signs of Grevin stopping.
“It is.” Grevin wiped his cheeks. “The big bad vampire is trying to save the super-powerful wizard.”
“No matter how powerful, everyone has a weakness. It’s my job to make sure no one exploits Quentin’s.” The tender look Jaks sent Quentin had Quentin melting.
Damn, he kept trying to retain his anger toward the vampire. Holding on to resentment became harder when real affection was involved.
“Okay, we’ll go back to your place.” Quentin could give in on this argument. Besides, the vampires probably had a bigger courtyard. His mother’s place had a small garden, but it wouldn’t give them much space to practice whatever Grevin wanted to try.
“Good, we’ll take the cars. No more teleporting without protection. I never know where you’re going to pop up.” Jaks wrapped an arm around Quentin’s waist and then pulled him toward the limo.
Quentin almost objected, but he decided to pick his battles with care rather than fight over every little thing. He refused to snuggle against the vampire, though, no matter how much Jaks’s comforting presence called to him.
“Fine, but I still expect you to sign my paper.”
“Why?” Jaks asked with frustration filling his tone. “Why is it so important to you? I don’t think you even enjoy bounty hunting.”
“I haven’t done enough to know whether I like it or not. I had one hunt, and then you took away my choice. Instead of asking me if I wanted to be bonded with a vampire, you put this leash around my neck and declared me yours. You then tried to take away my employment. Well, I won’t be subject to your whim. I’ve worked hard to get where I am, and I won’t have you strip it all away because you like to be the one in charge.” Quentin threw himself into the limo. He slid his palms along the soft leather seats as he fumed.
“You’re such a tactile man,” Jaks remarked as he joined him.
Like a pin popping a balloon, all Quentin’s righteous anger exploded out of his body, leaving him hollow. “If you keep this up, you’ll never find out how tactile,” Quentin teased.
“I don’t want to always be fighting with you, my sweet,” Jaks said. Jaks ignored Grevin and the wolves as they joined them in the large vehicle.
“I don’t want to fight either, but I won’t be a puppet for you to command at will. I need to be my own person.”
Jaks slid his fingers through Quentin’s hair, caressing his scalp in slow, soothing circles. Despite Quentin’s best efforts to keep himself back, he melted into Jaks’s touch.
“I don’t want a puppet,” Jaks said softly. “Do you want to know why I claimed you?”
“Why?” Quentin had been so busy, there hadn’t been much time for soul-searching. Still, he’d wondered what had been the deciding factor.
“Because I looked into your soul and saw a person so vibrant, so thrivi
ng with life that I wanted to absorb some of that. You are willing to risk life and limb to raise money for your mother’s medical care, but you won’t accept a ride with me because it might put you in my debt. I picked you, Quentin Heart, because you have the purest soul I have ever seen, and I will do anything to keep it that way.” Jaks picked up Quentin’s hand and kissed the back of it.
“Oh.” Quentin didn’t have a response to that.
“Real smooth, Q. That’ll keep him hooked.” Grevin snickered.
Quentin kept his gaze on Jaks, basking in the admiration in the vampire’s eyes while replying to Grevin. “Remind me to replace your dead man’s ashes with cigarette ash.”
“Bitch,” Grevin muttered under his breath.
“I heard that,” Quentin said.
A wet wolf nose bumped Quentin’s hand. He broke away from staring at Jaks to look down. It wasn’t Lars but one of the other wolves.
“I haven’t forgotten you. I swear we’ll look for a cure.”
Apparently satisfied with that, the wolf lay down on the limo floor with his siblings.
When they reached the vampire manor, Jaks took Quentin aside. “I have some business to attend to. Don’t spend all night out in the garden playing with the wolves.”
Quentin took a deep breath and then let it out in a huff. “Sign the form.”
“What? I thought we went over that. I’ve paid your debt.”
“As much as I appreciate that”—he really didn’t—“I can’t let you take away my choices. If you sign the form, then I’ll know you aren’t cutting off my independence.”
A low growl rolled up Jaks’s throat. “Why do you have to make me into a controlling monster? I only want you to be safe.”
“It’s not that I’m making you the bad guy. I just refuse to have an obsessive boyfriend. I won’t turn into one of those people who let their significant other take over every aspect of their existence. I’ve worked hard my entire life to be independent and make my mother proud. I’m not going to have her die thinking I’ve fallen into a bad relationship.”
For a moment, Quentin thought Jaks would deny him. Hard resolve flickered in Jaks’s eyes. “This is really important to you, isn’t it?”