Warlock's Fate: An Andrew Moore Novel 03

by D. R. Rosier

He blinked in astonishment as she walked away, he’d been almost sure she’d say no, or maybe even laugh in his face, but then he jumped up to follow…

  Damon’s first reaction earlier in the day to Andrew’s video message, was to hiss in disgust, and to wish all vampires a fiery and final death. He’d been expecting it of course, Gina had informed him of the possibility, but he hadn’t believed it. He still had trouble believing it, even hours later, as he headed toward an alpha meet. Despite that disbelief, and once his anger had cooled, he’d begun to reconsider. If it was true, they might be able to build the packs back up in relative peace, and even be welcomed into the city again, which hadn’t happened since the late nineteenth century.

  He also took satisfaction in knowing that asshole Arthur was dead. The warlock hadn’t been sure, but he knew better. Vampires didn’t give up their covens, it would have been to the death. He smiled grimly, and wondered if he should send a thank you card to this Annaliese. He chuckled darkly.

  Regardless of his feelings however, as Head Alpha he was just the representation of the joint alphas will, of all the packs. That was how it was meant to be. It wasn’t supposed to be a position of ultimate authority, the last Head Alpha had abused the position. In short, it would take a vote of approval of at least five of the eight alphas to agree to even go to this meeting. There were eight shifter species, and a split vote signified maintaining the status quo.

  That also meant there could be up to three very unhappy alphas about a vampire peace, which will cause untold amounts of trouble. One thing at a time, he counseled himself.

  After that, if they could even agree at this meeting of the races on how to bang out a treaty, another alpha meeting and vote would be required to ratify the treaty before it would take effect. He was still unsure whether he wanted to support it or not, but he would attempt to avoid bias when explaining the stakes. Honestly, they probably should do it, even if building up their numbers for a generation and then killing all the fuckers was far more appealing. In truth, he already knew it wouldn’t be that easy, the vampires got a vote in any battle or conflict, and the old ones were tough bastards.

  Still, there was a lot of bad blood after over a hundred years of skirmishes and war, and even peace would cause problems in the packs for generations to come. But… if they could avoid full scale war, it might be worth it. Maybe.

  He pulled into the dirt parking lot, and jogged into the woods with Daniel, his witness at his side, who’d been quiet and lost in his own thoughts the whole drive. When he arrived at the meadow where they were holding the meeting, it was just him, Daniel, Gina, he thought her witness was named Cindy, and then the wolf alpha, Jeremy along with his witness Kenneth. They still had to wait for the birds, bears, dolphins, sea lions, and sharks.

  Jeremy said, “Tell me we aren’t going to trust this bitch, she’s a vampire.”

  Damon shrugged, “It would be hard, if not impossible, but the mages and warlock will be there as well. I would suggest if we do this we need to work in a betrayal clause. All three remaining take out any aggressor.”

  Gina said, “Maybe, but only for sanctioned attacks. Rogues will be a thing, especially in the beginning. I don’t want some hot-headed shifter dragging me into a war with mages, vampires, and the warlock.”

  Damon nodded, “Well said.”

  Jeremy spat in disgust, and the conversation stopped until the rest of the shifter alphas arrived.

  Damon got started.

  “I don’t know yet if this is a good idea or not, but we should at least take the first step and go and see what I can come up with alongside the mage, warlock, and vampire leaders. Arthur, our most bitter enemy, is dead, and the warlock seems to believe the new vampire is cut from a different cloth. Gina has met her as well, so let’s hear from her, Gina?”

  Gina replied, “Annaliese is very old, she makes Arthur look like a newborn. She also spoke with me in respect and I scented no disgust or distaste from her at all. I didn’t like her at first simply because of what she was, but the more we talked the more I couldn’t hate her either. You all know how controlling vampires can be, well she has this whole philosophy that control is an illusion. I’m… fairly confident if we had a treaty with the vampires she would respect it.”

  Jeremy said, “And what of our dead, and the massacre we recently endured? Shall that go unanswered?”

  Carl, the bear alpha said, “The architect of that crime is dead, we all know his coven was nothing but slaves at the end of a very short leash, and we are now offered peace and room to grow. I don’t know what will happen in the future, or how long it will last, but to turn that down when we are still vulnerable would be foolish.”

  Jeremy scoffed, “We have the warlock’s wards to keep us safe.”

  Damon didn’t blame Jeremy all that much, he’d thought of a lot of the same arguments on the way over here.

  “Does anyone want to add anything before we vote. This is just about me going and negotiating, if we vote to go forward, we’ll have a second vote once I’ve distributed the proposed treaty and you’ve all had a chance to review it.”

  There was no response.

  “Very well, all in favor of moving forward to some kind of accommodation with the leeches?”

  He looked around as he raised his arm. He was a bit surprised at the results, every alpha except Jeremy had voted to move forward with the plan…

  Chapter Fourteen

  The next morning Katia stretched behind her desk. She’d just set up a meeting room for Andrew in a hotel near the outskirts of the city. She brought up her e-mail, and sent the information to Annaliese, Samuel, and Damon, after a moment of though she blind copied Gina so she’d know what was going on too. It was all set up for tomorrow night, and she hoped Andrew somehow pulled it off.

  She knew it would be up to all of them of course, but without Andrew putting the idea out there it never would have happened. She knew he put his heart in it, and was proud of her fiancé. He’d just barely gotten all the other races to back off, and now he was determined to help the vampires and shifters find peace too.

  She knew a lot of that had to do with Gina, and keeping their ally safe, but certainly not all of it. She grinned, it had been a nice surprise, to wake up that morning with Gina’s tongue inside her. Almost as good a wakeup call as Andrew’s cock, almost.

  Lilith stuck her head in the door, “Samantha wants us all in the study.”

  She raised an eyebrow in question, and stood up.

  Lilith said, “Her new magic that she’s been working on I think.”

  She shrugged and linked arms with the succubus, she was curious what it might be about, but it wasn’t like she could use magic herself.

  They moved into the study, and then joined Julia on the couch, Andrew and Samantha were sitting on chairs over by the desk. She looked over at their mate, and he shrugged, apparently he had no idea what was going on either.

  Samantha stood and asked her, “How much do you know about spells verses wards?”

  She frowned, “Wards go on buildings, right?”

  Samantha nodded, “Exactly, they can’t be used on people. When a ward is attacked there is… heat bleed off, as well as the fact the ward holds a lot of magic in reserve, which can be catastrophic to a physical body if released all at once, should the ward break or be overloaded.”

  She said, “Right, which is why you use protective spells and offensive spells on people.”

  Samantha replied, “Yes, because the spell is constantly fed magic from the mage or warlock, it doesn’t have a pool it comes from.”

  Samantha paused a second, “Which brings us to what I saw as an issue. Right now, Andrew can hold twenty spells in his partitioned minds, I can hold thirty. Most of his potential is being used right now to hold protective spells over himself, you, and Julia. Really, what he should be doing is holding demons and primed spells in addition to his own protective spells, but obviously in this case you both take precedence over that.”
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br />   She frowned over at him, he just smirked back, she knew she’d never talk him into just protecting himself, so didn’t bother trying.

  Samantha asked, “But what happens when we have three children in the house, then another a year after that, and probably more after that. There’s no way we can protect all of them and you, we’d run out of spell potential.”

  She frowned, and hoped Samantha had a solution, the other part of her mind was shocked, someone might attack her baby? She needed a gun or something, a magic one.

  Samantha held up a gold necklace, and walked across the room and put it around her neck, then she put a second one around Julia’s neck.

  “What I did was create a third form of magic, not wards, and not spells, but a bastardized version of both, kind of mashed together. I call it lesser wards. In short, the necklace has all six protective spells on it, as well as a sophisticated magical control ward. That’s it, nothing else, no magical pool of power. How it works, is I created a spell that will connect a mage to it, much like any other ward. Once the mage is connected, the magical control ward provides feedback for the magic it needs to support the six protection spells. If one protection spell is hit, the feedback will just ask the supporting mage for more magic power, and the control ward takes care of routing it to the spell that needs it. No magic pool inherent in the spell, which is what makes it safe.

  “So, long story short, it only takes one spell potential to run six spells. Right now, it would take Andrew holding eighteen spells to fully protect all three of you, if he wears a lesser ward as well, suddenly it only takes holding three spells freeing him up to summon demons and pre-cast spells. It will also make it easy to protect the children as well when they’re out, just one spell each, and I’d be helping with the small burden as well.”

  Samantha smiled, “So… don’t take those necklaces off, ever. Julia, your chain will grow larger when you shift, so it won’t break.”

  Andrew said, “That’s amazing, that will free me up to summon half a dozen demons, and pre-cast half a dozen spells, you’ll teach me the spell?”

  Samantha nodded, “Yes, it actually wasn’t that hard to set up, it’s just that mages don’t really need to protect that many people normally.”

  Something told her, that Samantha was being humble, because whipping up an interface spell and control system to monitor and provide feedback on six spells, not to mention routing magical power to the right place, didn’t sound easy at all. It also sounded way too useful for the no one thought of it or needed it before comment.

  Andrew confirmed her suspicion.

  “Bullshit, you’re brilliant,” he accused with admiration.

  Samantha blushed, and then continued, “I’ll teach you now, then you can let your spells go and connect to the necklaces instead.”

  She looked down at her lesser ward amulet and chain while they did that. It was beautiful, but of course she couldn’t read any of it, it was all Latin and symbols. She’d have to find a way to thank Samantha for this, because just words wouldn’t suffice…

  Annaliese had lifted at least half the compulsions that were placed on the coven as standard laws, maybe more than half. It’d been a busy couple of days, and she’d been running Helen and Jason ragged as well. It made sense to her, the sooner she started training them, the sooner she could be done with the responsibility. Hopefully, she’d be able to talk them around to her philosophy on life as well. She didn’t want to have to do this all over again in a few hundred years.

  She laughed, when she opened the invitation to a peace summit of sorts from Andrew, not quite sure she believed he managed to arrange it. She knew the shifters had plenty of reasons to despise the Seattle coven, new leadership or not, and the mages tended to dislike change.

  Maybe it was the brand new young council that allowed him to pull the second part off.

  “Jason, pass the word, I don’t want any of our people on the north border of the city tomorrow, I’m going to try to make peace with the shifters, and formalize our treaties with the mages and warlock.”

  Jason nodded, “I’ll pass the word, you aren’t going alone are you?”

  She shook her head, “Nope, you and Helen are going, I still need to show you that less is more.”

  Jason sighed, “Yes grams.”

  She snickered, “Anything else going on, or are we caught up?”

  Helen said, “We’ve reviewed everything that was in place, unless you want to add something new to our laws…”

  She shook her head, and then pushed a few stray blonde hairs out of her eyes, “No. Let’s let things settle down first, before we make more changes. You two should enjoy tonight.”

  Jason asked, “Going somewhere?”

  She smirked, “A girl can hope,” she said, and she picked up her cell and called Andrew.

  Andrew answered, “Hello, this is Andrew.”

  “It’s Annaliese.”

  He replied, “I was just thinking about you, what’s up?”

  She smiled at that, she was three thousand years old, and definitely shouldn’t be feeling girly excitement. Yet, she couldn’t get the smile off her face at hearing that. He was handsome, sexy, smart, and she was really looking forward to getting to know if he could be the one, her next mate. She knew at the very least their philosophy on life was similar, and any man that could hold onto five women had to be special. From what she understood, only two of the five didn’t have a choice, and even then, those bound to him certainly didn’t have to be happy and in love with him. It was just the truth, and perverse or not, it made her want him more. He was… desirable on all levels after her investigation and talking with him, she would have to see if that remained true after an intimate date.

  “I wanted to let you know I’d be there tomorrow night, but what are you doing later tonight?”

  He replied confidently, which made her heart pick up its pace, “Taking you to dinner. Italian good?”

  She said demurely, “That sounds perfect, Serafina’s at seven?”

  He said, “I’ll be there.”

  She hung up, and looked at Helen and Jason who looked at her in shock.

  “What? It’s a date.”

  She realized she was bouncing on the couch a bit, and stopped before she embarrassed herself further…

  Annaliese looked in the mirror, and spun her body back and forth. She was wearing a hot little red dress, sweetheart neckline, strapless, and tight over her breasts, but only showing a tasteful amount of her fair skinned cleavage, and it hugged the valley of her waist snugly, but as it flared back out over her hips, it fell in loose folds down to her lower thighs. The dress was supportive, and her C cups were pert thanks to her vampire existence, and she didn’t like panty lines. She felt a little… naughty, because the dress was all she was wearing.

  Except of course, she also had on a pair of four inch black heels, which gave her a height of five foot five, and made her ass look fantastic. The only other thing she wore were diamond stud earrings, and a ruby and diamond necklace.

  It was too bad this was their first date, she’d have enjoyed him peeling her out of this red dress.

  She smiled, at the look of excitement in her light blue eyes, and her very light and straight golden blonde hair was put up on the sides, but the back of her hair was loose and flowing to the small of her back. She had just a touch of makeup around her eyes, and that’s it. She had a perfect and fair complexion, there was no reason to cover it up. She couldn’t wait for him to see her, and hadn’t felt like this in centuries.

  She’d met her last mate over three hundred years ago, a human, and he didn’t want the turn, but she’d stayed with him and her blood helped extend his life, until he passed away around two centuries ago. It was time to move on, and let that go, her attraction to the warlock made that obvious. She was ready to start a new life, and a new partnership.

  She also knew she needed to be careful, the warlock would live for many centuries, perhaps over a millennium, she had
to be sure of him before making that kind of commitment. She’d never cheated on or lost a mate before to anything but death, and she wouldn’t start now. No matter how flaky or disposable human marriages had become, mating meant something to her. It was sacred, and a bond not meant to be broken by anything but death.

  Still, flirting with and seducing him as she got to know him, would be delicious. It would make the moment when she surrendered herself to him that much sweeter, there was something to be said for patience, and putting off the desires of the flesh. Fortunately, as a vampire it wouldn’t take her years of dating to determine his measure, a few dates would do nicely enough. She was very good at reading people after all, and her nose would help that along.

  Perhaps it was arrogance on her part, but after three thousand years she didn’t think anyone could hide their true selves from her for more than a few hours.

  She saw it was time, grabbed her purse, and thought of the alley near the restaurant. Shadows swirled around her, and she disappeared.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Annaliese smiled as she stepped out of the alley and toward the restaurant. She could feel Julia’s aura, but couldn’t see her. She’d already figured they’d have a shadow tonight. Andrew on the other hand, was waiting by the door in a pair of black slacks, shoes, and a dark blue collared shirt.

  His neck looked delicious, as did the rest of him.

  She smiled widely as he caught her eyes, and then smiled wider as she closed the distance a bit slowly, letting him appreciate the view she’d gone through so much trouble to provide.

  “You look stunning Annaliese. Beautiful.”

  She touched his chest lightly with her fingertips, and stretched up to kiss his cheek.

  Her hand lingered for just a moment, as she said, “Thank you. You clean up well yourself.”

  He held out his arm, and she took it, “I’m glad you recommended this place, I’m actually fairly new to the city.”

  She grinned, “I know.”