by D. N. Hoxa
“I’m busy,” I mumbled. “What’s up?”
“I need to see you.” It sounded like he was walking somewhere and he was in a hurry.
“I can’t. I really am busy.” Busy trying to keep Julian alive.
“It’s important,” Bender said. “I need your help.”
That’s when I remembered. “What did the ECU want?” I asked, because why else would Bender ask for my help?
“Let’s talk somewhere face-to-face,” he insisted.
“Bender, I’m not in New York. I’m not going back soon, either. Just tell me what they said.” It was a lie because I was going to go to my office next, but if he knew that, he’d wait for me there—no matter what I said. If he did and saw Julian, I’d be in trouble because in the state Julian was in, he wouldn’t be able to keep up his disguise twenty-four seven. He was still healing.
“What’s gotten into you, Wayne?” It was an accusation.
“Nothing’s gotten into me. Can’t I just be busy?” Why the hell was that so hard for people to believe? I had a life of my own, didn’t I?
Bender sighed loudly. It was easy to see how much he hated this, but in the end, he gave in. “They need something found, a.s.a.p. Whoever finds it will get a reward. A very good reward, one our coven could really use. That’s why we have to find it,” he said in a rush.
“What’s it?”
“A necklace,” Bender said.
I laughed.
“A necklace? Really? They called all the covens for a necklace?”
“Not only the covens. The vampires and the wolf packs are in on it, too.”
The laughter died on my lips. “What?”
“The reward is two million dollars, Wayne. Two. Million.” Bender laughed at himself. “Do you have any idea what the coven could do with that money? All the people we could hire, all the weapons we could buy, not to mention the Bone Academy we want to bring back. We can do all of it with that money. You have to help us.”
“What did they say about the necklace?” I asked halfheartedly. Could it be?
“An enchanted necklace. Very important, blah-blah. They didn’t say much. You know the ECU,” Bender said.
“But they must have told you what it looks like.” How else were people going to look for it?
“Yeah, we saw the picture. What are you getting at?” he asked.
“Describe it to me.” My heart hammered in my chest. Everything around me disappeared, except for Julian, who was barely even breathing while he looked at me speaking to Bender.
“What does it matter?” Bender asked, his voice full of suspicion.
“Just describe it to me, Bender!” I shouted. I didn’t want to but I couldn’t help myself.
“Leather tie. Three steel cylinders welded together.”
Holy spell. Everything came back to me in a rush. I knew exactly which necklace he was talking about. I’d had it in my hands, right before handing it to the ECU.
“What’s going on, Wayne?”
But how could I tell him that? “I’ve got to go.”
“Don’t do this. Please,” he whispered, but I already had.
“I’m sorry.” I hung up the phone and turned to Julian.
“What happened?” he asked with half a voice.
“The dragon blood was stolen from the ECU. They’ve got everyone looking for it, witch, wolf and vampire.”
“Goddamn it!” Julian shouted and hit the dashboard with both his fists. I wanted to drive away from that place already, but my body was too numb. I could barely breathe. A dumbfounded smile stretched my lips.
“This is fucking insane!” Julian continued. “What the hell am I going to do now? Galladar is not going to stop, Winter. He’ll be here before we know it.”
“Julian…” I whispered, but he couldn’t even hear me.
“It’s gone. Gone, just like that. Powell’s dead, the girl is dead, and now someone stole it from the goddamn ECU! I thought you said it couldn’t be done,” he hissed.
“You’re not listening to me, Julian.” Couldn’t he see the smile on my face?
“If we’d figured this out sooner, we could have been the thieves. We could’ve had the blood in our hands. How the hell are we going to do this now?”
“Julian, I know who took it.”
Silence fell in the car. He looked like he wanted to tell me to just cut the bullshit already, but he must have seen something in my face because his mouth opened, but no words came out. My smile stretched wider.
“You know who took it,” Julian repeated.
I nodded. “I know who took it.” And it was going to be so much easier to steal it from him than the ECU.
Twelve
Xander Ramos was the head of the only pack of packless werewolves in the country. He called himself an Alpha, but he was nothing but a rumor junkie. And a cocaine junkie, too. He held wolves who’d abandoned—or were kicked out of—their packs under supervision, and they reported back to him. They could do whatever the heck they wanted, too, except get themselves in trouble with the ECU and the other actual wolf packs. That’s where Xander drew the line.
He was also the only person in the world I’d told about the dragon blood.
Six months ago, I’d gone to his penthouse to ask him about the attacks on the Green coven. He was the first one to tell me that the werewolves everybody had claimed to have seen were different. He had been right, too. Those “werewolves” had turned out to be Hedge witches using actual wolf skins to disguise themselves.
In return for that little information, I told him that the ECU was in possession of dragon blood. There were whispers among paranormals that Xander was responsible for some of the biggest heists that happened around the country. Nobody ever got caught so there was no proof, but if you asked me, I believed it. And when I’d told him about the dragon blood, I’d even hoped he’d steal it from them, only because I hadn’t wanted the ECU to have something that had belonged to Julian once, even though it had been me who’d given it to them.
Now, by some miracle, it seemed like Xander had really stolen the necklace full of dragon blood powder.
“Are you sure it’s him?” Julian asked when I told him the story.
“It has to be. Nobody else has the resources—or the balls to go after the ECU.” And if I knew Xander Ramos—I knew his type—he’d done this just to mock them. Just to say that he could.
“If this guy was powerful enough to take the blood right under ECU’s nose, that means he’s powerful enough to protect it, too,” Julian said.
I was finally able to drive again, so I couldn’t turn to look at him. “But he’s not the ECU.”
“Which could be a problem. He took the blood from the ECU. Doesn’t that make him better than them?”
I bit my lip until I drew out blood. Shit. He was right. Xander Ramos may be many things, but weak was not one of them.
“Maybe, but it also makes him more accessible. I know where the guy lives. I’ve fought against his wolves before.” And I’d handed them over to the ECU for imprisonment—at the request of Xander, of course. At the time, I had been working for Finn. It was how I met Xander in the first place.
“I don’t think he’d steal something from the ECU and just leave it at home,” Julian said.
I rolled my eyes. “You were more excited about the idea of breaking into one of the most protected buildings in the world!”
“Because I know them. I know how they operate.” It made sense, and I couldn’t blame the guy for being more afraid of the unknown, than the impossible—for us.
“I need to ask you something,” I said with a sigh. I hadn’t thought about what I was going to say properly. Not nearly enough, in fact, but it couldn’t hurt to just say the words, could it?
“Of course,” Julian said.
“The ECU is offering two million dollars for whoever finds the blood first,” I started. The idea had come to me while I was still talking to Bender. I just hoped Julian wouldn’t freak out as mu
ch as I expected him to. “When I was after the Hedge witches, I worked with Lynn’s uncle. Eli Bender. Bone witch, and a powerful one. He’s now in charge of the coven’s internal affairs. He’s also the one who told me about the blood being stolen.” When Julian said nothing for a long second, I continued. “He could help us. If we tell him everything, he could help us get the dragon blood back.”
“In exchange for…?”
“Once we open the portal to get to the fairy realm, we just give the necklace with the blood to him. He takes it back to the ECU, gets the reward, everybody’s happy.” In my mind, the plan was rock solid. This way, everybody would win.
“Do you really think it’s smart to get someone else involved in this?” Julian asked.
To my surprise, he was much calmer and more relaxed now than he had been ever since Bender told me about the stolen blood.
“I trust him.” As I said the words, I realized just how true they were. I really did trust Bender. He knew about my magic, and he never said a word to anyone, not to mention that he’d had my back since day one. “I understand if you don’t want to, but Julian, we’ll need the help. The faster we can get to the Galladar guy, the sooner all of this will be over. We need to be really fast if we don’t want him coming to Earth.”
Julian flinched. I might not have been able to properly imagine what this fairy bad guy was really like, but the look on his face was enough to get me scared.
“If you think that’s the right thing to do, then do it,” Julian said.
“I do.” It was the right thing, and the only way to help both Julian and Bender, along with the Bone coven.
“But if he doesn’t know about your magic—”
“He does.”
“I thought you said you were keeping it a secret,” he whispered.
If my ears were still working properly, he sounded a bit disappointed, too. And very judgmental. That pissed me off. He had no right to be disappointed by my choices when he didn’t even know what had happened. When he’d treated me like a stranger ever since he got here.
“He knows.” That was all the explanation I was willing to give.
Then, as if he wanted to piss me off even more, he said: “What’s he to you?”
I laughed dryly. “He’s my friend, Julian.” It’s more than I can say about you.
He said nothing else, and the car filled up with uncomfortable silence in record time. I texted Bender to tell him to meet me at my office and tried to clear my head while I drove. I didn’t succeed. By the time we got back, it felt like there was a hand around my brain and its fingers were squeezing the heck out of it every couple of seconds.
Julian dropped his disguise as soon as we walked in the office, and I locked the door behind me, just in case someone came by.
“You need another healing spell,” I said and nodded at my room. No matter that he was being an asshole ever since he came back, I couldn’t stand to see him so weak. He also needed to rest, but asking him to do that would probably be taking it too far. In his shoes, I wouldn’t want to even hear it.
Without a word, Julian lay down on the couch. I avoided his eyes when I put my hands on his chest and began to chant. My wild magic roared to life as the words of my spell coaxed it forward, towards my palms.
“Give the spell a few minutes to settle,” I said when I was done and made for the door.
“Winter,” he called.
I stopped walking, but I didn’t dare turn to look at him.
“I don’t mean to be like this. I don’t want to anger you. It wasn’t my place to judge and make assumptions like that. I’m sorry.”
“You asked for my help. I’m doing it in the best way I know how.”
“I know,” he whispered. “It looks like I’ve forgotten how to behave around you, too.”
A sad smile touched my lips. “I could say the same thing.” No matter if I wanted to admit it, it was killing me that I couldn’t even look at him anymore.
“I missed you.”
My chest lit up with all kinds of firework. Against my will, my body turned and I met his eyes. Now he was telling me that he missed me? And why the hell did he look like he was in pain?
A thousand words were on the tip of my tongue. I wanted to tell him that I’d missed him, too. That I’d thought about him every single day. That I’d dreamed about him, and that every night before going to sleep, I had wished I’d see him again.
Instead, I just looked at him like I had all the time in the world.
But I didn’t. Before either of us could blink, someone knocked on the door.
***
Bender looked at Julian like he wanted the fairy to be something he was simply imagining. Ever since I let him in, his eyes were on Julian’s face and Bender refused to even move.
“Before you say anything, I need you to sit down and I need you to listen,” I said. At the sound of my voice, Bender jumped and turned to me, as if he was just realizing that I was even there.
Nodding, he wiped his mouth with his hand and dragged his feet to my desk. Julian stood by the door to my room, arms crossed in front of him, a defiant look on his face as he analyzed Bender. The air filled with testosterone and my cheeks flushed. This was going to be even more awkward than I imagined.
“Bender, this is Julian Walker,” I said halfheartedly.
The witch wasn’t all that surprised. “I thought Julian Walker was a Blood witch, whom you killed.” His eyes met Julian’s again.
“Yeah, that was a lie.”
“No, kidding,” Bender mumbled. With his brows narrowed, he shook his head at me as if to ask me what the hell was going on. Taking in a deep breath, I went and sat behind my desk. I was feeling very uncomfortable, but some relief came from the fact that I would at least no longer have to lie to Bender. I was going to tell him the whole truth.
Well...tell him not the whole truth, but most of it.
“Julian is a fairy, one whose magic works here,” I started. “He disguised himself as a Blood witch so he could find a way to get back home to the fairy realm. He did.”
“What are you talking about?” Bender said, a dumbfounded smile on his face.
“He found dragon blood from actual dragons from the fairy realm. He used it to open a portal. I helped him do it. When I got back, I told everyone I’d killed Julian, and to get the ECU off my back, I gave them the dragon blood.”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa, wait a second!” Bender shouted and stood up, his hands on my desk as he looked down at me. Julian stepped forward. I almost rolled my yes. “You got back? Where did you get back from?”
“The fairy realm.” The sooner he heard the whole truth, the sooner I got this conversation over with, and right now, that’s all I wanted.
“You were in the fairy realm,” Bender said, pointing his finger at me, smiling like a lunatic. He obviously didn’t believe me.
“I was. And then I got back. I gave the ECU the dragon blood. That’s why they called you guys in today. Someone stole it from them and they want it back.” I spoke fast, afraid he’d interrupt me, but Bender blinked fast a few times then dropped on the chair again.
“They said it was an enchanted necklace,” he finally whispered.
“Well, they lied.” What did he expect? They were the ECU. They lied like they breathed: effortlessly. “Now, we get to the part where I tell you why I called you here.”
“Why is he here now?” Bender asked instead, pointing at Julian but never taking his eyes from mine.
“Because there’s a mad fairy guy who’s destroying Courts and killing fairies in the fairy realm. He’s come to ask for my help.”
All of this sounded like a fairy tale to Bender. Judging by his face, he didn’t know whether he wanted to laugh or cry.
“You’re kidding,” he finally said, his voice void of emotion.
“Not at all. But to get back to the fairy realm, we need the dragon blood to open the portal again. That’s why I called you here,” I said, so fast that my words
slurred. “If you help us find the dragon blood, we’ll use what we need to open the portal, and you can take the rest back to the ECU and claim the reward.” Easy peasy.
“I don’t think I heard you right. You want to go to the fairy realm to fight a fairy guy who’s destroying courts and killing fairies?” he repeated.
“Bender, please,” I whispered, but it didn’t look like he was going to stop.
“This is bullshit, Wayne. You’re not going anywhere,” he hissed.
“Who are you to say where she goes?”
Julian spoke for the first time. Shivers washed down my back. Mayday, Mayday, my mind was calling.
Bender stood up and turned to the fairy, keeping his chin up. “How can you ask something like this from her? Do you want to get her killed?”
“Winter is much more capable than you apparently think she is,” Julian said, raising a thick brow as if to mock Bender. “And no, I do not want to get her killed. I want her help.”
Bender tightened his fists until his knuckled turned completely white. This did not look good.
“You’re talking about the fairy realm as if it’s the country next door. She’s a witch! If you don’t have the strength to fight off your own kind, who gave you the right to ask someone else to do it?” Bender hissed.
“Guys, stop it,” I said, but neither of them even looked at me.
“Winter is a fairy, too. My realm is her home. If we don’t stop Galladar now, he will come here next. He will destroy Earth the way he’s destroyed our courts. That gives me the right to ask for help.” Julian took a menacing step forward, and Bender didn’t miss a single beat. I jumped to my feet and stepped in front of them.
“What the hell is wrong with you two? We’re all adults here so let’s behave as such.” Once again, my words fell on deaf ears.
“If you worry about your realm so much, why aren’t you there now, fighting?” Bender hissed.
Julian’s eyes spit fire. Alarm bells rang in my head. I put both hands on his chest because I knew I wouldn’t be able to hold him otherwise.
“Julian, please. Can you give me a second?” I whispered, but he wouldn’t even look at me. God, I could practically feel the adrenaline coursing through his veins. His muscles shook under my hands, aching to start fighting already. I couldn’t allow that. What the hell was I thinking, bringing them together like this?