“Shit, lady, what are you?” The first flicker of fear crossed his face.
“Right now,” Hunter, said, “she’s the only one who can keep you safe.”
“What does it want with us?”
I debated on how much to tell him. “Stay near the fire. Keep the doors locked, windows closed. After tonight, the creature won’t be back. You aren’t his intended target.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I am.”
I closed the door, and Hunter and I crept slowly toward the cornfield.
Chapter 2
Wolves and Dragonspawn
We were at the edge of the cornfield before Hunter spoke softly from beside me.
“You’re going to explain that to me later.”
“Explain what?” Keeping my voice pitched low, I scanned the thick rows of corn for anything dark that moved among the ears. A sign of red glowing eyes, or fur, black like the night. I saw nothing, but magic filled my nose, rotten and close.
“Explain why you didn’t tell me you believe that you’re this thing’s target.”
My shoulders dropped. He was right, I owed him an explanation. Hunter knew I had magic, knew I was a witch, and he knew I hunted evil like my father once did. Evil the Dragonlords were supposed to protect humanity from and didn’t. He knew I’d been hunting a supernatural wolf for years with my father, one that wasn’t a werewolf like him, but that’s where his knowledge ended. He didn’t know I’d always had the feeling the wolf I’d first seen as a child was stalking me, specifically. “See, this is why I never allow myself to get into relationships.”
“Why?”
“Because,” I hissed. “I don’t do explanations.”
“Helena, dear. We are in a relationship.” The emphasis made me smile.
“Are we?”
“Well.”
My father and I never used social media, never left a trail that those who hunted us could use. But I’d done research online often enough that I knew how it worked. I was pretty sure if anyone’s relationship fit the status, ‘It’s complicated,” it would have been Hunter and me. Did I detect disappointment in his voice?
“We’ll need to talk about that too—” he started, but I put up my hand in what, for him, would have been near-darkness. He fell silent, stopping beside me.
Until now, the breeze hadn’t affected the cornstalks, but I heard them rustling to my left. I stilled, finger moving to the trigger mechanism on my crossbow.
I let every sound reach my ears, let everything around me wash over my senses. The fast and steady thump of Hunter’s pulse. The wild, predatory scent of him. The coolness of the air on my hand, the faint buzz of the electricity powering the lights in Weatherby’s house behind us. That rotting meat smell which suddenly grew stronger.
“He’s here.” I pointed toward the rustling that grew closer, the strengthening scent.
“The wolf is here? Now?” Hunter’s heart sounded like a drum in the silence, and I heard him draw his gun.
“Don’t bother with that. It won’t help us.”
“Right.”
We changed course and crept deeper into the field of corn. About twenty feet in, a low, vibrating growl made me turn to my left, crossbow raised. I looked closely, but nothing moved between the stalks.
Ears of corn rustled in front of us, and I aimed the bolt toward the sound. My heart leaped into my throat.
Ten feet in front of us, down a narrow path, a wolf stood, exactly as I’d always seen him every other time. Fur so dark it almost disappeared into the night, seeming to draw in the light around it. Eyes like a demon’s, glowing an evil red.
And as tall as a fucking man.
“Jesus Christ.” Hunter’s voice sounded far away, drowned out by the sound of my heart thumping in my ears.
I was about to fire the bolt straight at the wolf’s head, but I didn’t get the chance.
Hello, Helena. I’ve been waiting for this moment for a long, long time.
My lips parted, but no sound came out, finger frozen on the crossbow’s trigger. The voice filled my head, huge and demonic, with a presence so strong it hammered at my thoughts. I hissed through my teeth and pressed the heel of my hand to my throbbing temple.
“You have to be kidding.” Hunter again. So, he could hear him, too. A comforting thought, somehow.
I shook off the dizziness the wolf’s mind induced and fired the bolt, aiming right between its eyes.
The bolt shot out with a fft and cut through the air. My aim was true; it should have gone right through the wolf’s brain. Instead, the instant before the bolt struck, the wolf’s shape became nothing more than smoke and shadow. The bolt passed through, striking the ground behind where the wolf had been standing, and the smoke and shadows coalesced, returning to form the wolf’s original shape.
“Shit.” The reports I’d tracked on this creature, traced back since the first time I’d seen it when I was a kid, began to make a new kind of sense. Farmers who claimed to have shot it, and it didn’t die; a man who said he’d thought he’d hit it with a car, and yet it had vanished when he went to check on it. Now I knew how it still lived.
“Let’s go.” Hunter pulled me toward the farmhouse. “We can’t kill it. We need to get out of here now.”
Unwilling to give up so easily, I took a bottle of holy water from my utility belt. I tossed it at the wolf like a grenade, making sure the bottle shattered when it struck the wolf’s face.
Again, its form became smoke before the bottle struck, only this time, the smoke vanished. The bottle fell uselessly to the ground, unbroken.
Cornstalks rustled behind us, and we both whirled around. The wolf stood before us. The blood drained from my face. Hunter aimed his gun, but I pushed his hand down.
“There’s two of them?” He glanced around, confused.
“No.” I nodded behind us where there was nothing.
Hunter pushed me behind him. A deep vibration rumbled from his chest, and his body moved into a ready stance. Predatory anger radiated from his mind. I returned to his side and ignored his irritated glare. His confusion over the wolf’s changing locations mirrored what pounded through me. Fuck, now what?
Now you see there is nothing you can do, witch. The wolf’s mind bombarded my thoughts. Tell your werewolf lover to leave now, and I will let him live.
Hatred dripped from his voice and filled my head, as much for Hunter, specifically, as for werewolves in general. Hunter moved toward the wolf, but I pulled him back.
“No. Don’t. He’ll kill you.”
He stepped back to my side. Being half human, and therefore unable to fully shift, there was no way to know if he’d survive a fight with this thing. I had no idea how to kill it, either. “What do you want? Who are you?”
I have many names, but you may call me Rakar. Once, before time was time, I led the armies of The Dark Lord across the Realms, bringing death to all who opposed him.
“The Dark Lord. What do you want with her?” Hunter demanded.
The wolf ignored him.
“Answer him. Why have you been stalking me?”
I answer to no one, least of all this mortal abomination who seeks to take what is mine. The Dark Lord is my only master.
“Wait, what do you mean, what is yours?” I said.
I mean you. You are the woman destined to walk at my side, the woman whose power complements my own. You and I are one, Helena. Mates.
“Hey. Listen, you—” Hunter started in a growl, once more stalking toward Rakar until I pulled him back to me.
“You’re lying,” I gritted out.
Am I?
My head spun. I tried to shake off the dizzying implications, but the wolf’s mental presence seemed to strengthen until it battered my skull. I pressed my hand to my head again.
Do you think I, the messenger of Shandar himself, would have bothered attacking livestock and killing one measly human officer just to get your attention if you weren’t mine?
“It’s not
true.” I could feel Hunter’s surprise, thick with possession beside me.
For years I have waited for the moment to bind you to me. For this.
The wolf’s massive bulk leaped through the air toward me. I shoved Hunter out of the way and heard him hit the ground. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him land, not laid out, but in a crouch, low to the ground. I grabbed a bolt from my quiver and dropped onto my back. The wolf’s massive body pounced, paws striking me in the chest. Knocking the wind out of me and flattening me to the ground.
I stabbed the bolt up into its belly—or I tried. The bolt seemed to go through nothing, meeting no resistance, yet the wolf’s paws pinned me down, heavy, crushing my chest. Then its huge jaws dove for me.
Teeth sank into my left shoulder, piercing flesh until pain blazed. I screamed. Heard Hunter’s angry shout. While the wolf’s teeth were still in my shoulder, hoping its attack meant it couldn’t turn non-corporeal again, I thrust the bolt toward Rakar’s eye.
Rakar’s weight no longer pinned me down, and I blinked up at the star-studded sky. He was gone.
Sitting upright, I glanced around, but didn’t see any sign of him. My shoulder felt like it was on fire, an alarming cold stealing over me, as if I’d been pulled out of a lake of ice.
“Hunter…” My head swam. I swayed, but he was already at my side, cradling me against his chest.
“I’m here.” I tried to get up, but he clutched me close. “No, don’t move.”
He ripped the front of my shirt partway open and pulled it aside. A scowl turned his mouth down. “Fuck me.” I glanced down at the torn flesh, the blood soaking my whole upper sleeve.
His emotions flickered through my thoughts, piercing the haze of agony. They came through faintly, like trying to see through a thick fog. Because I was wounded? This wouldn’t be the first time being wounded affected my magic. His emotions felt like anger, but free-flowing, like it was looking for a target. His confusion flickered, sharp. His breathing bore a faint rumble, an animal’s anger.
“We need to get you some help.” He reached into the inside pocket of his coat for his phone, but I stopped him.
“No. No doctors.”
“What? Helena, you need medical attention—”
“No. They wouldn’t be able to help anyway.”
“Yes, they will,” he growled. “They can stitch you up just fine.”
I shook my head. “Poison. I can feel it. They wouldn’t know what to do.”
Hunter dropped his shoulders and glared at me. Did I sense suspicion?
My father would know what to do. The thought felt empty and hollow. For the first time in years, I felt completely lost without him.
Hunter quickly stripped off his coat. He ripped open his short-sleeved button-down shirt, causing the buttons to fly everywhere. The wifebeater underneath left his bulky muscles bare, chest rippling under the thin fabric.
When he’d taken off his shirt, a thin silvery men’s chain swung free of the wifebeater’s neckline. A small silver ring with blue sapphires embedded around it glinted in the moonlight.
Something pleasant and warm fluttered in my belly, bittersweet. “My ring,” I whispered, reaching up a shaking hand to stroke the silver. “You’re still wearing that thing.”
“Always.” But his voice was oddly rough. He reached back and yanked the wifebeater over his head, then wadded both shirts into a cloth pad, using it to put pressure to the wound. There was enough material to cover the bite marks Rakar had left on the front and back of my shoulder. When he pressed down to staunch the bleeding, I hissed between my teeth.
“Sorry, sweetheart.” Irritation dripped from his tone. “I wish my shifter healing worked on others and not just me.”
He stripped off the narrow belt at his waist and wrapped it awkwardly around my shoulder, then yanked it tight to tie off the wound and slow the bleeding. The pain nearly made me pass out, but I pushed it back. “You all right?”
I nodded dazedly. I hated the helplessness that radiated from his mind, echoing my own. “Helena, what the fuck are you involved in here?”
I tried to think of the best way to explain the whole thing to him, but there was just too much he didn’t know. I decided on the truth.
“I don’t know that much more than you. Until tonight, I didn’t know the wolf’s name, or that it was telepathic.”
“So, you didn’t know he thinks you’re his mate.” Again, his suspicion stabbed at me, nearly as painful as Rakar’s bite.
“No. That’s new.” I shivered at the thought. Certain memories tickled at the edges of my thoughts, things I knew threatening to fall into place, forming a tapestry that gave his words truth, yet I shook the thoughts off. I couldn’t be.
“Well, the fucker’s lying, but why?”
“Hell if I know.”
Okay, the truth was, I had an inkling, but I had to be wrong. If I was right… The implications made my blood run cold.
“Let’s go.” With my wound tied off, I tried to get to my feet. My head swam and sweat slicked my face.
“Stay there,” Hunter snapped. He swung on his coat and picked up my crossbow.
“We must be in a relationship,” I mumbled. “You’re touching the crossbow.”
A hint of a smile touched his mouth. Hunter carefully pulled me up.
“We’d better get back to the Weatherbys,” I said. “I’ll need to arrange to have them moved to a safe location, in case Rakar returns and tries to use them to get to me.”
“How?”
“Chief Lawson has contacts. He can make them disappear.” We started toward the farmhouse. Every move made my head feel like it was going to float away.
“Where are you, witch? I can smell you.”
The low, growling voice, deep and more graveled than Hunter’s had ever been, brought me up short. Fingers of fear crawled up my nape. I froze where I was, clutching Hunter, but he’d already tensed beside me, protectively close.
Magic buzzed along my skin, like fierce electricity. It smelled primal, but also old. It reeked of something that lived in flames and rode the wind and seemed too big to be contained in a man’s form.
Dragon’s magic.
My teeth clenched. A fucking Dragonlord.
Hunter’s chest muscles tightened under my hand; possession radiated off him, filling his mind. His nostrils flared. He gave a soft snort of disgust at the smell of the Dragonlord.
I quietly pulled him backward off the path and into the rows of corn. Hunter crouched with me, holding me to him as though trying to shield me from harm.
We both knew there was nothing either of us could do if the Dragonlord found us here.
A hundred feet away, footsteps rustled the corn. A twig snapped under the Dragonlord’s boots, like a crack of bone. In front of where we crouched, he turned this way and that, searching. Searching with eyes that probably saw better than mine.
Cold drops of sweat trickled down the back of my neck. More than a head taller than Hunter’s six foot three inches, he might have looked exactly like a man, except that he was too big, his muscles too heavy and too thick, his strength far surpassing any human’s.
My skin crawled, feeling the magic of long extinct dragons pulsing in my head. I sensed two distinct magical fingerprints, yet I only saw one Dragonlord. I glanced around, but didn’t see the other.
“What’s he doing here?” Hunter mouthed the words. A Dragonlord’s hearing was many times better than a human’s.
It had to be Rakar. Dragonlords could sense evil forces like him. Demons, galsiks, anything linked to Shandar. Unwilling to risk speaking, I glanced around for the other Dragonlord until Hunter tapped my shoulder. I cocked my head at him.
“He’s a Dragonwatch Guardsman.” Again, he mouthed.
He was right. Dressed in black leggings and a matching tunic, a silvery breastplate covered the Dragonlord’s broad chest. A long crimson cape draped to his boots. The uniform marked him as a member of the Dragonwatch Guard, their equivalent o
f law enforcement. A red phoenix shone on the breastplate, a ruler’s coat of arms.
“Your magic grows stronger every year,” the Dragonlord said. Red hair the color of blood shone like flames in the faint predawn light. “Come to me, little one. I smell your wound. Let me take care of it for you.”
Yeah, right. Malice and excitement dripped from his voice. His version of help would involve those magical cuffs that hung from his belt, meant to cut off a human from their magic, and a walk to a burning death at the stake. Or worse, my being made into a witch weapon, a slave forced to use my powers to kill at the command of the fucking Dragonwatch.
The Dragonlord halted, sniffing the air. “I smell something else.” His voice deepened, demonic. “Man-dog. So, you consort with werewolves as well. Another nail in your wicked coffin.”
I heard Hunter’s teeth grinding and gripped his jacket sleeve. I’d dealt with weres enough to know some Dragonlords viewed them as evil even while laws kept the Dragonlords from hunting or killing them. I had a feeling this one wouldn’t let the law stop him.
“Surrender now and make it easier on yourself,” the Dragonlord said when I didn’t appear. “No human can escape a Suvia Kyan. Especially not one whose magic is untrained.”
If I remembered right, the name Suvia Kyan, the Dragonlord word for their race, meant Children of the Dragon.
Hunter stared at me, brows climbing with every word the Suvia Kyan said. Yeah, there was a lot he didn’t know, including that the Dragonwatch Guard had been hunting me my whole life. That they’d been after my father and me long before they’d taken him. As a human, my magic was illegal to them, as evil as Shandar himself.
I ignored Hunter’s questioning look.
“A Demon Wolf’s bite is toxic, do you know that?” The Guardsman turned and bent low among the corn, crouching, so that even the way he moved seemed inhuman. A ball of fire glowed in his hand, fire that burned brighter and hotter than normal flames. Dragonfire. The magic filled my mind, ancient, predatory, and deeply unnatural.
He shone the firelight around him, casting a glow on his features. Two red eyes, almost as red as Rakar’s but glowing with a different sort of light, scanned the shadows around him. A red dragon gleamed on the center of his forehead. His dragonsign. It looked like a tattoo, but it glowed with the power of his dragon within, with the use of his fire magic.
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