Elaine retched again, this time only bile.
Trembling, she sat down hard, just outside the stall. Floyd brought her a blanket. It was ninety degrees outside in the fading summer, and she couldn’t stop shaking. A strong arm wrapped around her shoulders and it took a while for her to realize that he was rocking back and forth with her.
“Elaine, is there anything I can do?”
“I…who found them?”
“I did. I came in at five to clean the stalls like usual and prep for the massive leather throw out. I called the cops as soon as I saw everything.”
“Did you see the wolf?”
He frowned. “Hell no. I’d be dog food if I had, I’m sure. I thought at first with the damage that it might have been a bear or something, maybe a cougar. It was the response team that decided on wolf. They found paw prints and the tooth marks are pretty distinctive, turns out.”
Frowning, she reached down and touched the wolf’s tooth charm around her throat. It felt heavy. The last thing she wanted to become was a wolf. Never again.
Did Trent kill Rainstone?
It was the only thing that made any sense. She’d been deep asleep after a night of love-making–
No, not that, fucking. Call it what it was.
He could have shifted and killed Rainstone. Did he need her to come with him for extended training? Was he trying to isolate her? Goddess, what? Would he have eliminated her father or Carrie next in order to make it easier to leave with him? Who had she slept with? The man she saw behind Trent’s eyes, the one who adored her? Or was it the ruthless soldier, that lieutenant caught in an eternal war?
She didn’t know and it made her tremble even harder.
“Seriously, I…if there’s anything you need, I’m right here,” Floyd said, stroking back her braids. “I can go get Cynthia. She can…”
“There’s nothing she can do and she’s got to deal with the police. I mean, she just lost May. I need some air,” she replied, stumbling out and back to her car.
There was only one place she wanted to be.
CHAPTER TEN
TRENT WAS DISAPPOINTED at the way he woke up. Instead of a beautiful country girl wrapped up in his arms, with her ass snuggled up against his hard cock, all he saw was an empty expanse of mattress and a note. While he understood that she had other duties that didn’t involve him, it still stung a bit that she hadn’t even shaken him awake to say goodbye. They had more training to do, more forms to acclimate her to, and there was still the need to get her to the coven house in Atlanta. There, a variety of Wiccans could train her in her gifts, help her grow from novice to expert. It was beyond his talents, and, besides, it was expected from the Magus Corps.
Even if he didn’t want to just dump her off there.
He wanted her for himself. He’d spent the early morning caught up in erotic dreams about how much pure ecstasy it would be to initiate her. Frankly, he wanted that connection with her, of soul touching soul, and magics entwining.
The cold bed was a reminder that she might not feel the same.
Besides, he was a warrior. This was about doing the job and getting back in good graces. He was supposed to be taking on Knights. He wasn’t ready to settle down. Not that entering a coven or training was about that. The Wiccans they collected were encouraged to grow in their gifts and join the fights as they could. But joining in that way with Elaine would change who he was and what truly mattered to him. He was still only a first lieutenant and his low rank haunted him. Being captain was something he’d fought towards for a decade. One day he wanted to be treated with the respect of a general or commandant. Someday—maybe hundreds of years from now––he might rise high in the Corps. He’d made one mistake and let a novice slip from a coven, but he could recover.
Elaine, as gorgeous as she was, as much as her wild side called to his own, she couldn’t be worth derailing his already injured career.
Could she?
Confused, he dialed up his contact. He just needed to get clearer perspective from someone with his mind more focused on the mission. General Logan MacCulloch answered on the third ring.
“Have you given Elaine the real facts of the situation yet, Trent?”
Cool, efficient. That was everything Trent wanted himself to be. Somehow he felt he could never make up for the hundreds of years head start that many of the Magus Corps had. He’d always be a kid to them. Still, he needed to answer his superior.
Taking in a deep breath, he steadied himself, tried to focus on what he wanted.
“Yes, Ms. Blackhawk has been updated about her nature, the Magus Corps, and we’ve made natural contact.”
“Have you practiced rituals with her? Addressed the need to get her to safety in Atlanta where a full coven can nurture her?”
“We were working on more spells today. She can only access one form as a shifter and I want her to be able to do more.”
“So she’s a full shifter then?”
“Definitely, and I’ve rarely met a fiercer wolf.”
The general relaxed, and he could almost hear a smile in his superior’s voice.
“You seem far less disappointed in your assignment than you were at first, Trent.”
“I still have to get her to leave her life here for a new city. I don’t think that’ll be easy to arrange. She’s very well-rooted here, sir.”
“Yes, but we need to get her safe before the Knights find her. She’ll understand that Atlanta beats a beheading.”
“She’s finishing graduate school this year.”
“She can take a sabbatical until we have her trained well enough to protect herself. And since when do you care what she wants? I thought you were biding time before you could get back in the front line and back to and I quote here ‘civilization.’”
“Birmingham can be beautiful,” he countered, thinking more of a charming brunette than The Magic City.
“True, but be honest. I’m not talking as your superior. I’m talking as a friend.”
“The one who sent me here,” Trent countered, his tone brusque.
“Yes that, but I’m serious. How do you really feel about her?”
Trent sighed and it took a long time to answer, to articulate all he felt for her.
“I thought this would just be a job to placate the Corps so I could get back to my real job.”
“The Magus Corps is all about bringing more Wiccans safely into our fold. There’s nothing more important.”
“But what if you think you’re falling in love?” Trent asked.
Logan laughed and it exaggerated his brogue when he spoke next.
“I’d be a poor lad to ask about that one, not after falling so hard. All I can say is that sometimes things feel right, and it’s more than about just helping a novice. Sometimes they’re the only person you can imagine spending the rest of your life with.”
“Even if that’s for millennia?”
“No one ordered you to initiate her.”
“I just feel…I’ve never met anyone like her. Just tell me to get back to D.C. as soon as I can. The South is messing with my head.”
Logan chuffed on the other end. “We do need your skill in a fight on the frontline. There are always Knights and their clerics to stop. That’s just the general part of me talking.”
“Then do that.”
“Your friend says that you have to do what matters. The rank and the missions you want will follow.”
“Maybe she doesn’t even feel the same way.”
He laughed again and Trent was beginning to resent the older and wiser routine.
“If she has you this tied up in knots already, then I think it’s serious on her end too. Here’s the order I can give: get her to the coven as fast as you can.”
“But her school, her farm–”
“Keep her alive, lieutenant. Over and out,” Logan replied before clicking off his end of the conversation.
Trent stared for a long time at the phone after that. The advice wasn’
t all that helpful. He had no idea how he would get her to leave everything she’d ever known.
Shaking his head, Trent tossed his phone to his couch.
“What am I going to do?”
He’d been so focused on that question, he only heard Elaine when she opened the front door. She rushed in, slamming the door behind her.
“You’ve got some serious explaining to do!”
He wouldn’t have needed his enhanced senses to know that something horrible had happened. Her jeans and flannel shirt were caked with blood. He went to her but was greeted with her fist thrown at his face. On instinct, he grabbed her wrists and restrained her arms behind her back. She cursed and bucked against him.
“What’s going on?” he asked, looking into her eyes.
She shrieked, the assault on his hearing causing him to recoil. She wrenched free and kicked him in the shin. Her brown eyes brimmed with fury as she faced him.
“You’re a liar!”
“I have no idea what’s going on.” He held up his hands. “You left and I thought we were in a good place.”
“Rainstone is dead.”
Trent gasped. Losing a familiar was like losing a limb. The kind of pain she was in, he could barely imagine.
“I don’t understand. What happened?”
“Like you don’t know,” she said, balling her hands in fists at her sides. “A wolf chewed his throat out. Sound familiar?”
“I was here all night with you.”
“I fell asleep, you could have done anything. I only know you’re the good guy because you say so. My horse is dead and there are no wolves in Tuscaloosa. What am I supposed to think?”
“You’re supposed to be able to trust me,” he said, daring to reach out to her. “Seriously, do you think that I’m capable of that?”
“It was a wolf.”
“Then it wasn’t me. Maybe there’s an escaped zoo animal from Birmingham or the Knights or something else. I’m not kidding. You got into some chickens before but we’re not animals. We have more control. Besides,” he added, voice low. “Killing your familiar is hurting you. I’d rather die than make you suffer. Please, believe that if you don’t believe anything else.”
She hesitated.
“I don’t even know what to think anymore.”
“Do you think I’d ever hurt you after I’ve helped you hone your abilities, after the love we’ve made?”
She looked down at the blood crusted to her shirt and slowly, goddess so slowly, shook her head.
“No, but I don’t know what’s going on anymore and I’m scared.”
“Then let me protect you.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
“I DON’T UNDERSTAND how turning into wolves when the whole town is on high alert is going to help us at all,” she said, frowning at Trent.
They were sitting in the small, patchy backyard of his that bled into the surrounding woods. She was glad that most of it was surrounded by a high fence. Between them was the makings of a small altar: five black candles were set in the shape of a star, a ring of salt and saffron circling it to make a pentacle, much like the silver one on Trent’s band. Maybe she should have noticed it before. Maybe she could have detected Trent’s Wiccan nature earlier and avoided a world of pain and destruction.
“We won’t be turning into wolves.” He set two large, russet, tail feathers in the center of the altar, between the candles. “These are hawk feathers, red-tails to be exact.”
“Okay.”
“Take off your necklace.”
“Why?”
“Because it’ll confuse the magic. You can’t become two animals at once.”
She frowned. “But I become a wolf.”
“I said we could do more as shapeshifting Wiccans. We’re not as consumed by our animals as a true born shifter would be. We’re also not bound to one shape.”
“So I could become a shrimp or an octopus or a mouse?” she asked, feeling her stomach burble at the thought.
He gestured to her necklace and snapped his fingers.
“Off now. Anything that happens when ingredients mix like that would be disastrous.”
She obliged and tossed the wolf’s tooth far from everything they’d set up.
“No, seriously,” she said. “Are there limits?”
“Usually the magic works best with large animals, but any animal is potentially possible.”
“But it’s magic.”
“Which has certain rules, but if you have part of the animal you wish to become and tailor a spell for it, you can try. You’re going to concentrate now as we say the ritual and just think of flying.”
“Flying?”
He smiled and took her hand, and a part of her was deeply grateful. She’d accused him of murder but his touch was gentle and warm.
“It’s magic, isn’t it? The instinct of the hawk will be with you the same way that the instinct of the wolf was. I’ve used my wolf form so often it’s always there, but you’ll eventually discover what the perfect spirit animal for you is.”
“So you’re wild no matter what?” she asked.
“Of course! Now, close your eyes and repeat after me as I light the candles. It’s like echo and response.”
She closed her eyes only to find it heightened her other senses. The saffron was pungent and tickled her nose.
“Mother Goddess, mother of Earth and of power,” he started and she echoed as he went. “Mother Goddess, we your children need help to right a wrong. To avenge a familiar from your fold. Give us wings to soar and eyes to see all that’s been hidden.”
She finished her part of the incantation and felt its energy, like a sizzle of electricity pouring from her gut out to her fingers and toes. It flared up hotly, and she doubled over in pain. The crunching of bone came next but, oddly, she was starting to get used to it.
Her arms thinned and hollowed out, her spine shrank and her chest broadened. It expanded so fast that she felt like it would almost explode with the growth. Then her lips changed. They hardened and morphed into the sharp beak of a hawk. Feathers sprung up everywhere, itching like crazy, but she had no fingers with which to scratch. Reaching up toward her shoulders all she found was ineffectual wing tips. The change took place in seconds, and she hopped.
Wrong, trapped.
There was another here, smaller than she, male. But it wasn’t his territory. It wasn’t hers either but she wasn’t sharing with him.
Need out.
She flapped her wings and ascended a few feet to the sky before strange sounds were in her head.
Elaine, keep control. It’s Trent. You have to remember who you are!
The male was up now, flapping toward her, and she was going to bolt, just needed enough height to avoid the fence rails and escape to Mother Sky. Then she caught his eyes, golden and tawny.
Trent? Oh my god I’m flying!
He laughed although it came through only in her head, rich and throaty.
“I told you the hawk could do it. So let’s get to it.”
• • • • •
She was beautiful to watch in any form: an incredibly sensual woman, the fiercest wolf, and now the most graceful raptor in the sky. She dove through the clouds as if she’d been made for that body all her life. Maybe they’d found her true spirit animal. He’d used different bird forms over the years, but he’d never taken to the sky as naturally as she had. She dipped and weaved with expert skill, breathtaking to watch.
As they neared the farm, her question sounded in his mind.
What are we looking for?
He slowed and hovered with her on the thermal from the hot pavement below. Fierce golden eyes appraised him, but behind them his lover’s soul lurked.
Anything suspicious on the farm, starting first with wolf tracks. We have to find where our mystery animal came from.
She nodded, an odd thing to see on a bird, and dove low like a fighter pilot. He followed suit and enjoyed the rush, better than any roller coaster. Hawks had evolv
ed for years to hunt mice in large fields, to see something tiny cowering in high grass. Their vision was impeccable.
It didn’t take long to find the large, distinctive prints of a wolf. Elaine had mentioned the farm had a few Dobermans that lounged around. But when you became a wolf on an almost daily basis, you knew your own paw prints when faced with them. They followed the trail deep into the woods beyond the farthest pasture, and then both of them swooped down for a landing.
Elaine was circling as best she could on her short, stubby legs.
I don’t understand. The trail is just gone!
He hopped and paced a bit beside her on the ground before his eyes caught sight of the tire tracks in the far corner of their clearing.
I understand. See those tire prints? Someone brought our wolf in.
Who?
He gazed at her before starting to shift to human.
The Knights. They know who you are and how to get to you. We have to leave, now.
• • • • •
“I can’t do that,” she replied sitting down in front of him on the forest floor.
It felt odd to be so exposed, so naked. They’d made love before, of course, and he’d seen her bare in several forms. Still, Elaine felt that she couldn’t keep the upper hand in a conversation when she was as naked as the day she’d been born.
“This is my life. Carrie’s here. My dad’s in Moundville. My mom’s in the city. I have a thesis to finish, and the farm is reeling from all of this.”
He shook his head at her. “The farm will only get more attacks like this if you stay.”
“But I have a life. I had a life before magic overran it. Can’t we stay? Isn’t there a coven in Alabama?”
“No,” he replied kneeling down next to her. After the day she’d had, it was easy to relax in his embrace, to feel the heat of his palms flush against her face. “The nearest two are in New Orleans and Atlanta. By staying here, you put everyone you love at risk. Your family, your friends, your co-workers. When you’re trained and can protect yourself, it’ll be different.”
Trent: Her Warlock Protector Book 7 Page 7