I hear metal scrapping behind me and whirl to face what made the sound, while still keeping the unmoving invunche in my sights. A manhole cover in the center of the street slides open, and Jon pops his head out.
“You got it?”
I nod, motioning to the creature. “It seems pretty harmless.”
“You’re forgetting we saw it kill a guy with a pipe earlier tonight.”
“Yeah, but why? Has anyone tried to find out why it’s doing what it’s doing?” Pity and compassion well up inside me. “Is it even aware?”
Jon jumps out of the sewer and returns the manhole cover to its original position. He walks to the creature and squats down near its head.
“Hey, little guy, can you hear me?”
The thing’s eyes open and it launches at him, a knife clutched in its right hand. A guttural grunt erupts from its mouth, but no words. Jon reacts lightning fast, deflecting the knife and breaking the invunche’s arm in one fluid move. With one powerful punch straight to its head, Jon crunches the invunche’s skull with a sickening crack. The creature collapses, blood on its deformed face, but not flowing like a head wound normally would, indicating he’s killed it with one blow.
“Hell,” I mutter, while looking back and forth on the street carefully. “Right here in front of Justin’s house. Really? What if the cops come back out?”
Jon doesn’t hesitate, he scoops up the inert body in one fluid motion, tossing it over his shoulder. “Let’s get moving.” He takes off at a jog, heading back down the alley to an access gate that will get us to Justin’s backyard.
Everything happened so fast, I doubt a full minute has elapsed since the thing started crawling out of the sewer. Jon vaults the fence, hopped up on adrenaline from the brief encounter.
The moment he lowers the body to the ground outside Justin’s backdoor, the creature turns to dust. Both of us stare at the remains in disbelief.
“Did you have any idea that would happen?” Jon asks.
“Not a clue,” I say, running a hand over my head. “This shit is weird.” I step over the dust and knock on the door. “Maybe Justin will know what the hell is going on.”
“Uh-huh, sure. The guy who didn’t know his blood was not up to par for making spells. Yeah, he’ll be a big help. We should go back to Bart. At least he’s lived a long enough life to have a freakin’ clue.”
Justin opens the door, a relieved look on his face. “You’ve got him already? Just like that?”
I motion to the pile of dust. “Not exactly. That’s all that’s left of the little guy.” Justin comes out to investigate the remains and I step through the door into his kitchen, eager to make sure Dria is okay.
She sits at a small table in the corner, looking over the ingredients Justin has assembled. “Little guy? Sounds like you feel sorry for the invunche. What happened?”
Jon answers from behind me before I can. “Nothing to report really. He was hiding down below, came out when I got too close. Rafe stunned him and when I approached it attacked me with a knife. I broke his arm and hit him hard, one punch to the face. It crushed his skull. End of invunche.”
“Not a worthy opponent,” I say, still feeling uncomfortable with killing the deformed creature.
Dria rises and comes to me, placing a small hand on my arm. “It was a ‘he’ at one time?”
I nod. “As far as we could tell.”
“And you’re feeling bad because of its size?”
Justin interrupts us, coming back in and grabbing a garbage bag from under the sink and a large plastic serving spoon from a drawer. He sees us looking at him and pauses before heading back outside. “The remains could be valuable for a spell. No way am I wasting that.”
My stomach turns and Dria sends a soothing wave over me, halting the worst of the nausea. “I found a book with local lore in Justin’s collection,” she says. “You’re correct, that invunche was a little person at one time. They often took humans of smaller stature or pre-teens. Over many years it was deformed by magic and turned into what you saw.
“Its sole purpose was to guard a wizard’s cave and kill whomever came too close. It may not have looked like much, but never underestimate the element of surprise. From what I read, it couldn’t speak, and there was no longer any remains inside of the human it once was. They lived for hundreds of years, often longer than the wizard who created it.”
“Doesn’t make me feel any better for killing him.”
“I killed him, so don’t worry your pretty little head about it.” Jon sounds like he’s taking joy in throwing my words back at me.
Justin returns with the full bag and my stomach lurches. The callousness disturbs me.
“Waste not, want not.” Justin shrugs. “Don’t judge me, dude. It’s hard to be a wizard for hire.”
Jon chuckles. “You mean used to be. With dust for blood, you’re out of business.”
The tall wizard looks at my wife. “Not with her help, I’m not.”
Dria lets go of my hand and returns to the table. “I’m helping with only this spell, Justin. After that, you’re on your own.”
“What about the blood you promised me in payment?”
“And how long will that last you? You have a bigger problem, my boy. One you need to figure out how to handle or your wizarding career is over.”
Justin shrugs, unwilling to admit to the horrible bind he’s in. “Bart uses animal blood. Maybe I can, too.”
Dria motions to the spell components. “Let’s get back to the locator spell and find Rolando. The rest will take care of itself.”
Justin puts the bag of invunche remains in a large bin under his sink and focuses on the task at hand. “It’ll take me an hour to complete all the chants and add all the ingredients again at the appropriate times. Vivian’s blood will act as the catalyst and payment all at once.”
“Okay,” Jon says. “So you don’t need us for the next hour, right?” He looks my way and nods. “We should go after Cat Dude while his scent is still fresh near the Tribunal.”
“Fresh? That’s been hours,” Justin says, at the same time Dria says “Cat Dude?”
“Not for a werewolf—it’s still fresh,” Jon replies, then smiles wickedly at my wife. “Yup, Cat Dude. Aren’t I clever?”
“Uh-huh,” she teases back. “Yeah. Like a brick.”
“I’ll go,” I say. “But I want to be back here when the spell completes. You’ll call me, right?” I ask of Dria.
“You got it, hon. Go, do what you need to do. I’ll keep the wizard safe.”
We leave through the backdoor as the spell incantations begin. I glance at the gray, powdery remains left on the cobblestones and dead grass, a shiver stealing over me. “That’s just wrong. On so many levels.”
“Do you think the same thing will happen when we kill Cat Dude?”
“I have no idea,” I say, striding away from the dreary leavings. “Guess we’ll find out soon enough.”
We drive to the Tribunal, unsure if Jon’s werewolf presence will trip the magical wards or not. Are they even working anymore now that Justin is unable to renew them from the last alert? I have no idea. This magical shit is way over my head.
Jon and I park the car as near to where I can recall we found the body. The second he steps out, he reacts. “Oh man, there’s no doubt that thing is a cat. I can smell it from here.”
“Great. Can you track it, too?”
“No problem.” Jon takes off down the street, the opposite direction Dria and I approached from earlier. “Can you keep up, old man?”
I don’t answer, but follow close behind, unwilling to rise to any taunts while on a job. We lope down side streets and main thoroughfares, surprise growing inside that the hombre gato didn’t kill again when it traveled so far—and that it could get this far undetected. The trail twists and turns, venturing into side yards, parks, and finally into an abandoned building.
Dead dogs litter the alley leading up to a side entrance. Leaving a message to kee
p out even a non-supe can figure out.
“Looks like we’ve found its lair.”
“Let’s do this.”
Jon cracks open the door, listening intently before moving. He pauses to sniff, then his air of expectancy disappears. “There’s nothing inside.”
“Dammit. Are you sure?”
“Positive.”
“You know what that means then, right?”
“That it’s out looking for prey.”
“Yup, that’s what I was thinking, too.”
We travel up and down the alley, then circle the building, looking for an exit trail that might be fresher than the one that led us here. After a few minutes of searching, Jon finds a lead.
“I think it’s heading into the heart of San Telmo. Where the pack resides. I’ve got to let Magdelena know.”
“Can you call her?”
He shakes his head. “Never thought to ask for her cell.”
I let out a deep sigh as I check my watch. “All right, we’ve been out here a while. Let’s hustle back to the car. I’ll drop you off and get back to Dria. I don’t want her to activate the tracking spell without me.”
“You suspect she’ll go after Rolando on her own?”
“In a heartbeat. She’s headstrong and always willing to put herself at risk to protect me.”
“At least she’s predictable.”
Within twenty minutes I’ve dropped off Jon at Lupine Luna and made my way back to Justin’s. After he and Magdelena get the hombre gato, we have just one more person to track down: Rolando.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Jon
I linger outside the bar, unsure about entering. Yes, I need to warn her of the possible danger and get going after Cat Dude, but I’m all mixed up with how I feel about this woman. Guilt weighs on me for what I hope to steal from her. Betrayal burns in my gut for what I’m doing to the “us” that is building between Candy and me.
Call her, my conscience whispers in the back of my brain.
Geez, should I? Should I tell Candy what’s going on? How would I react if I was in the same position with something she was doing? I shake my head, indecision plaguing me.
The cell phone in my pocket feels like a leaden brick, mocking me for not manning up and talking to her about what’s going on.
Okay, what’s the worst that could happen? She could hate me for what I plan to do and dump my ass. Yikes. That’s one option—but another could be that she’d understand and accept why I have to do it. There could also be a middle ground, of which I have no idea the results.
Without waiting for my insecurities to talk me out of it, I dig out my phone to call her. I wander a few doors down and sit in a closed store’s doorway, making sure there are no eavesdropping Weres around first. Anxiety coils in my gut, making me hesitate before I press the send button.
After a few rings, she answers the phone in my cabin. “Jon? How’s it going in wintry Argentina?”
“Good.” The automatic response leaps out before I have a chance to realize it’s not accurate. “I mean bad. Damn…” I drop my head, comforted by the sound of her voice. “I mean things have gotten mixed up.”
“Tell me what’s going on.”
I fill her in on everything that’s happened since we got here, unsure if Viv will be pissed I’ve said anything to someone back home or not. Or, more accurately, to someone she doesn’t know exists in my life and is staying in my home. God, this is so messed up. I’m not good at deception. There’s no way I could be a spy.
She listens to all of it and focuses on what I’ve revealed about Magda. “This half-shift trait you mentioned, it sounds fascinating. Would she be willing to teach you?”
“You see, that’s the problem. Rafe thinks she’d never teach me, and Viv is pushing for me to learn it by whatever means necessary.”
“What does that mean? It’s not like you can threaten to kill her to get her to reveal how she does it. Sounds like her secret is powerful enough to kill you on its own.”
“No, not by threat. Viv wants me to…” I trail off, uncomfortable voicing the vampire’s suggestion even though it was why I called.
“Yes?”
“Oh God, this is hard.” I let out a deep sigh. “Vivian wants me to seduce Magda and gain her trust. Get close enough to her to figure out how she’s doing it so I can learn the skill and teach others.”
Candy’s quiet on the other end of the line. Perhaps processing what I’ve said, perhaps debating on hanging up on me, I don’t know. All I know is my heart feels tight—like I could explode any second now.
“Jon,” she says in a soft voice. “Do you remember when, for my safety, I said I hid, disguised as a man in your old pack?”
“Yeah…”
“You also remember I had… relations with a few of the female pack members.”
“Uh, yeah. So?”
“At first, I came onto the women so I’d fit in. It was expected, you know, to bed hop, to look for your potential mate. I knew I preferred men. I used women to keep myself safe—at least that’s what I told myself. But it wasn’t the truth.”
“No?”
“No. I came to like those women, a lot. I liked getting close to them, I liked their warmth and affection, and let’s face it—as a man, I couldn’t ‘fake’ an erection, so I knew the attractions I was feeling at the time, which was mainly a combination of like and lust, were real.
“It was a difficult situation to come to terms with. I was acting in my own best interests, not theirs. I was dishonest when I approached them as a male werewolf, one they thought they might have a potential mate with.
“The betrayal of their feelings, their wishes and dreams… it felt awful. But I had to do it to survive. And if I was completely honest with myself, I enjoyed it at the time. I felt something toward the ladies, even if I had dishonorable intentions and was misleading them.”
“You’re right,” I say. “You had no choice at the time. You had to fit in to survive.”
“Did I? Did I really? I could have gone off on my own. I could have pretended to be gay—although, with a few of the homophobic males in the pack, that might have been a dangerous choice.
“The point is, I did it. And I can’t change it now.”
“Why are you telling me all this, Candy? It’s your past. I have no right to judge or get angry over what you did before we met.”
“It may not be the same, but I’ve felt what you’re feeling right now. It’s tearing you up, isn’t it? The desire mixed with the guilt?”
I let my head drift back to the glass door behind me, the cold and isolation mirroring what I’m feeling inside. “Yes. It is.”
“If you can forgive what I did, how can you not forgive yourself what you must do?”
“But we weren’t involved when you deceived them. I’m very much involved with you now. It doesn’t feel right.”
“It’s not about my approval, Jon. Or about right and wrong. It’s about your acceptance of what you need to do.”
I’m quiet for a moment, letting her words sink in.
“I’ve gotten to know you these past few weeks. You’re a man who values integrity—which is a good thing. So let me ask you—are you fighting to seduce this werewolf because Vivian suggested it, or are you afraid of what doing so will mean to your honor?”
Her words twine deep within me, forcing me to see what I didn’t want to admit to. Maybe my issue really is protecting my sense of morals, what I feel is right and wrong. But surviving, as Candy pointed out before, is about doing what must be done, honor be damned.
I clear my throat, the chill from the night stealing my voice. “So after all that, you still think it’s a good idea?”
“To learn a skill that could unite the packs? Yes, without a doubt. To tear yourself up for feelings and emotions building about a woman you must ultimately deceive and leave? No. Let it go.”
Candy goes silent for a moment before speaking again, perhaps sensing I’m still on the fence.
“Let’s look at this from a different angle—you’ve not made her any promises have you?”
“No.”
“She knows your Vivian’s servant, right?”
“Yes, she knew it the night she sent wolves to track me.”
“And wasn’t that to blackmail you so you’d do what she wants?”
“Yeah.”
“This woman isn’t expecting long term with you. She’s looking for a good time. And for you to help clean up her city. Do what you need to do and leave the guilt behind. It’s okay to enjoy it. It’s okay to feel. I know in the end what you’re having to sacrifice to do it, and I’m still here. I’m not going anywhere.”
“Damn, Candy. You’re making this too easy.”
She laughs. “What were you hoping for? Tears and screaming? Damning you to hell for cheating on me, when’ve we’ve made no commitments to each other and have only known each other a month?” I can almost see her shaking her head at me in frustration. “The bigger picture, Jon. Keep focused on the bigger picture. Life is not a game, it truly is about surviving. And what she knows will help you—will help us—to survive.”
“Thanks. I needed that.”
“Good. Now do what you need to and come home to me.”
We end the conversation and I feel lighter. I may not have a lot of experience with relationships, but I made the right choice in calling her. Pushing up from the cold concrete, I stride toward the bar, determined to do what must be done, and leave the guilt behind.
“I didn’t expect to see you back so soon,” Magda purrs from her seat behind the desk. She rises and approaches me, arms extended in greeting.
The alpha wraps her arms around my neck, snugging her soft curves against me, and rubbing me with them in a long, languorous stroke. I’d have to be blind and stupid to not see what she’s offering—a good time with no strings attached.
“Do you want to tell me where you live so I don’t have to keep coming to the bar to find you?”
“I practically live here, so this is the best place to find me six nights out of seven.” She leans in and takes a deep breath of air close to me, her nose brushing the hair near my ear, a sigh of anticipation escaping her.
Blood Legacy: Adult Urban Fantasy (The V V Inn Book 5) Page 16