It was easier to think once she left the country club. Too much had happened tonight, and she wasn’t even thinking about the explosion. They had kissed again. She was lying to her friends and herself. This relationship had stopped being professional months ago.
She wanted him even if she couldn’t even write it in her journal. With the emotional quotient of a sociopath combined with bloodlust from the demon essence that animated their bodies, unsouled vampires still knew right and wrong—they simply didn’t care. He made sure to toe that line around her. If she kept sneaking kisses with him, she’d have to know what he did when she wasn’t around. He’d be honest, if questioned.
She dreaded the answers as much as she wanted to ask.
15
Long past midnight, Red parked at Lili’s Diner.
Unlit strung lights hung in the gravel lot, but the tables were gone, the party packed away. She walked inside, knocking on the door. Only a single light shone from the back office. On the silent drive with Ana from the country club to pick up Stace’s borrowed car from Kristoff’s cottage, she had texted a long update on the tithing to the gang. Only Zach, closing the diner, had replied.
“Hey, where is everyone?” she called out.
Zach strode out of the back room and around the bar. “That’s what I want to know. I haven’t gotten a word since they went into the woods.”
“No one had been at the house. Are they still out?” she asked. Stace had gone with Vic and the wolves to search for another sacrificial victim that might have triggered a wildcat portal to pop out a soucouyant. “You’d think the body would be close by. Could they be far enough to be out of signal range?”
“Maybe. The dimensional energy can mess with technology. I got your text, though. Novak is a tough son of a bitch. He’ll work Gavin over until sunrise. Make sure he tells us what he learns.”
Headlamps flooded the windows.
“It’s the Falcon.” Going into the parking lot, she called out, “We were going to send a search party after our search party.”
The black van stopped in front of the diner. Vic hopped out of the driver’s side. “I still say—”
“And I still think it’s a dangerous idea.” Jackson stomped out of the side door. “You don’t know these hills.”
Lashawn glumly followed behind him. Dried mud splashed his jeans to the waist, and one of his lenses was cracked.
“Enough, guys,” Stace said, exiting the front seat and striding away from the van.
Red touched her arm. “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine, but I need to clear my head. I swear their arguing chased away the demons. I can patrol and search for a body better without them.” She took her keys back from Red, going to her car.
“Stace!” Jackson called.
“Stay here.” Zach jogged after his friend. The two ended up in a huddle by the open driver’s side.
The hunter and the two wolves shifted on their feet, guilty faces turned away.
Red shrugged as if to say ‘look what you’ve done.’ “So, where did you go?”
“Some creepy summer camp after we found jack shit around here.” Vic rested a foot on the van bumper. “Wherever that body is, it hasn’t started to stink enough for a supe to smell it.”
“The riftquake happened near here,” Red said. “If you’d checked your messages, you’d know I got a lead on a suspicious vampire who dropped by the party. Maybe on his way from the body to the country club. He could do illusions, had to be a magic user.”
“Exactly what I thought,” Jackson said. “We need to go back to the summer camp. The place reeked of vampire. One must have been nesting there recently.”
Vic huffed a dry laugh. “All we got out there was Lashawn slipping into a pit with a skeleton. Our victim is fresher than that.”
“That’s where Alaric opened the rift. It’s where he died.” Jackson growled. “Stop acting like you know my town.”
“I’ve passed through a dozen ones like it.” Vic scanned the trees around the diner. “We should be hitting up lairs near where the portal opened. I bet the killer wised up and did the murder inside, lit some scented candles to throw off the hounds.”
His brother frowned, stepping away to watch Stace drive out of the parking lot. He glared at the half-moon in the starry sky.
Jackson raised his voice, jabbing his finger at Vic. “We’re not dogs on your leash.”
“It was a figure of speech!”
Lashawn groaned, rubbing his face., “Can we call it a night on this? We can check out the Ghost Beach tomorrow. It’s the last thing on the list.”
Vic stepped up to the big werewolf. “I’m sick of tiptoeing around your sensitive fuckin—"
Returning to the group, Zach whistled with two fingers in his mouth, the sharp sound piercing through the argument.
“I’ve been feeling your problems for days. This empath is done with your shit. None of you saw what it was like when a door opened wide to the Blood Realm and hell came to party. That’s not happening again on my watch. People are dying, and more will follow until we stop it. Right now, you three are our weakest links. I’m settling whatever is going on tonight. I need lavender, dried Miranda root, holy water, and everyone to shut up and get the hell in the diner!”
Red blinked at him, not expecting the monologue from the archer. The group froze, wearing identical looks of surprise.
“Did I stutter? Now!”
“Aye aye, captain,” Vic said, mock saluting.
“I’ll get the herbs from the van,” Red said.
“We’ll need your toolbox, Jackson.” Zach lifted his finger in warning. “Zip it, because I’m saving your relationship with Stace right now. Thank me later. You’re doing the thing you did that one Thanksgiving, and I don’t care if it makes the diner smell like burning hair.”
Red hustled to retrieve the ingredients, losing minutes when she couldn’t find the potable holy water. Zach hadn’t specified, but she’d rather be safe than getting everyone sick with blessed water drawn from a creek. When she finally got back into the diner, they had started without her, emptying the center of the diner by pushing the tables against the booths.
Lashawn at his side, Vic sat cross-legged opposite Jackson, the two staring sullenly at each other over a handled sauce pot ringed with lit candles. A clump of dried vines rested inside. Five mugs, half full of steaming water, were in front of them.
Zach crouched, lighting the last candle. He plucked a hair from his head and dropped it in the pot, motioning for the other men to do the same. Vic was the last holdout, only offering a hair after a silent argument of glares and eye rolling with his brother.
She knelt next to Vic, opposite from the empath, in the circle and placed the baggies and old bottle of holy water on the floor. “What’d I miss?”
“The hunter bitchin’, mostly,” Jackson said from her right.
Zach ignored Vic blowing a raspberry at the werewolf’s comment. “If we’re going to get this bastard, you three gotta work together. Time to see the other side’s point of view. Dump a pinch of lavender in your cups and a few bits of root too, everyone.” He continued as the five traded baggies, preparing their teas, the chopped root seeping quickly to a green. “Just dollop the holy water in like you’d take milk with your coffee. Gulp it, don’t nurse it. I’m putting an empath twist on an old wolf ritual.”
They tossed the herbal remedy back, the Miranda root leaving a spicy aftertaste.
“What are we doing? The tea is going to chill us out, but what kind of herb is in the pot? How does the wolf magic come into it?” Red asked. “We didn’t cover this at the academy.”
“You’ll get it once we start.” Zach held a candle to the vines inside the saucepot. Flames caught on the clump, growing to engulf a corner, singeing the hair. It smelled like a swamp fire. “Think of it as smoke signals with feelings.”
Vic grumbled, “I’m only letting a wolfmage put a spell on me for my brother’s sake. Can I get mo
re explanation than that, dude?”
“Yes. Hold hands and like each other.” Zach clasped Lashawn’s and Jackson’s hands roughly.
The wolfmage and the werewolf hunter stared each other down, neither reaching out a hand first.
Zach rolled his eyes. “I figured, hence the extra cup. Red, join in. We don’t have time for these two to argue about touching.”
She shifted forward to obey, holding Jackson’s hand.
Vic scooched forward, closing the circle by clasping hands with his brother and Red. “This is cozy. Not cringe-worthy at all.”
“The awkwardness hasn’t even begun.” Zach blew on the smoldering pot, releasing thin smoke curls. “Now, the big guy first.”
Sighing, Jackson pursed his lips before lifting his head. He opened his mouth, emitting a low note somewhere between Mongolian folk singing and a wolf cry. The power in the sound made her throat chakra vibrate.
Vic bit his lip, suppressing a laugh. His more sensible brother was freaked. What did he sense from the other shifter?
Red turned on her spirit gaze. A yellow current pulsed from the wolfmage as the note changed, lengthening. His brindled aura stretched over her, surrounding the group. Energy surged from the pot in a plume, dancing like smoke in the air. It thickened to a purple vapor.
“My turn,” Zach said.
Instantly, like turning a faucet, emotions flooded through the connection. Lightheaded, she tried to separate the anxiety, fear, and anger from her own. She couldn’t figure out which one came from whom. How did the empath live like this, pounded by stimuli from all directions?
“You know how this goes, Jackson,” he said. “Get it out. What do you want him to see?”
“Exactly who he killed.” He jutted his chin out, dark eyes boring into Vic. Tightening his grip on her hand, Jackson tossed his head back. His howl sounded impossible coming from human vocal cords. Hate pulsed through the emotional connection, drowning everything out, the empath forcing them to experience what he felt.
As if projected on the purple ether, a thin bucktooth man shadow boxed in a rundown gym. The padded helmet on his head made his skinny body look even scrawnier in a tank top and shorts sagging off his flat backside. He thumped his gloved hands together. “I’m ready, Jackson!”
Red didn’t know how she heard the reedy eager voice, but the words were in her head as if the memory was hers. Zach’s heart chakra flashed green to her third eye, the only warning before the hate for Vic disappeared. Feelings of protectiveness and affection hit her as Jackson recalled his old friend.
“Brady didn’t deserve to be put down.”
“I know I made bad call! All the evidence pointed to a feral wolfmage. He fit the bill. I didn’t know until later he was a patsy set up for my crew to find. Told you, I have a code,” Vic said, sweating as proper grammar failed him. “That ain’t it.”
“You didn’t ask questions, you just shot! He wasn’t what Fowler tried to make us!”
The feeling changed. Guilt scratched at Red like sandpaper.
Zach asked, “What’s this, big guy? What do you think you could have done?”
“I should have made him come with me when I learned the truth about Fowler.” Jackson bowed his head, nose wrinkling as he closed his eyes. He exhaled heavily. “I knew that road would end bad, and I left him behind.”
“You can’t carry Brady’s choices.”
Vic bowed his head. “I’m sorry. I wanted to take it back. I swear I did.”
“Forget this. I don’t need the Dentist’s apology.”
“Stay,” Zach said. “You wanted a do-over on helping a vulnerable wolf like Brady? The universe sent you one.”
The long stalemate between the empath and the wolfmage churned through the group link as spectral fumes weaved around Red. She tried to hold tight to her own reactions, irrational worry spiking that Zach would make her play spin-the-trauma too. There were a few doozies in the chamber if he did.
“Fine. It’s the pup’s turn.” Jackson squeezed her hand. His wild magic, so different from her own, flowed through her like a conduit around the circle. “Why don’t you shift?”
Lashawn’s expression looked stony, but high-pitched anxiety pierced the emotional connection. Sweat on his upper lip reflected the candlelight.
“Don’t fight it,” Zach ordered. “I know you’re thinking of whatever it is.”
The smoke revealed a teenage Vic with a patchy mustache, shown as Lashawn remembered him so many years ago. He sat on a shaded bench outside a dingy highway motel in a faded Megadeath shirt. Pimple-faced, he sulked and tossed rocks at a bush. “I can’t believe Dad left us here to go fight the Whispering Werewolf alone. Yeah, I get why you, but I’m sixteen for God’s sake.”
“Come watch TV,” Lashawn’s youthful unseen voice whined. “You couldn’t kill a wolf anyway.”
“I could! I could kill ’em all, and I will one day.”
“There are good ones, you know. My mom said so.”
“No, there ain’t. And they’d be better off dead if they were.” The young Vic stomped away, out of the smoky vision.
Pushing his broken glasses up, the older Lashawn met the wolfmage’s eyes across the smoke. His cheek twitched. Discomfort and embarrassment slunk through the circle.
“Hey, I’m sorry. I don’t think that about you.” Vic tried to reassure his brother. “I forgot I ever said that. Dad was right to keep us off that hunt with Lopes. I wasn’t ready for it then or—"
“I don’t want to talk about it here,” Lashawn snapped. “I think we’ve seen enough.”
“We’ll put a pin in your issues then.” Zach conceded with a shrug. “Vic, we haven’t really talked. What’s your deal?”
“My deal is that I apologized to Jackson and need to have a long talk with my little brother. I’ve learned a lesson, I guess, so I’m going to go and pray on it now.” He moved to stand.
Jackson barked. “The circle, Lashawn!”
He obeyed the dominant wolf, retaking his brother’s hand. “I don’t know about this.”
“We need to stop!” Red said. They’d only find terrors in her mentor’s mind.
Jackson reached over and grabbed the hunter by the forearm, jerking him into a sitting position. “Nope. It’s show and tell.”
Vic retorted, low and quick, “You’re going to let go of me. Now.”
She grabbed his hand to help free him. “Leav—”
Zach and Jackson didn’t even give them a count to three.
The fear flattened her like crashing boulders, shoulders sinking under the mental weight. Smoke billowed from vine embers in the pot, flaring up into a tear-drop shape. The candles flickered from the energy surge. She hunched over, drawing her knees up, barely noticing Jackson rejoining hands.
Screams exploded in her ears, an echo of tortured remembrance. Blood filled the image in the smoke—on an old plaid sofa, on cabin walls, on a wooden floor. It dripped from a dead man in hiking gear with a jagged gash where eyes used to be. His face and neck were ruined except for an intact chin that looked like Vic’s. A loud crash made her heart jump even though she knew it was a memory.
Vic squeezed her hand so hard it hurt. Horror tightened his face, neck tendons straining as if his head wanted to turn but his brain couldn’t make the command. This was the cabin where the Parkses had their last family vacation. This was when his childhood and his family died.
Ben Park was the first, but he wasn’t the last.
Rising vapors revealed a child’s arms. It was Vic. Nine years old on the night when his life changed forever. He half carried, half pushed a girl in pigtails who was barely more than four.
“Gracie!” The adult Vic leaned close to the scene, wet eyes glistening in the candlelight.
“Run!” Jieun Park stood by the sofa, sweater torn, axe raised in defense of her family. Bleeding scratches marred her face, forehead to jaw. “Don’t look back!”
Knocking the mother back, the wolf loped for the children like
a grim fairy tale come to life.
Gracie toddled as fast as she could toward the front door of the cabin with a bit of her brother’s stubborn determination in her chubby face.
Small hands in view, Vic pushed his sister ahead. He fell to his knees. The image shifted to the bloody tracks on the floor as if a dropped camera in a recording.
Like dark gray phantom, the wolf jumped over him to land on the girl. A shadow of a striking paw stretched across the floor. The boy looked up, perspective shifting on the smoke to reveal a horror show. He rushed to his little sister only to be clawed and batted back.
His screaming mother picked up the axe and brought it down on the wolf’s back. “Go, Victor!”
Red turned her head, but she couldn’t escape the girl’s shrieks and their sudden end. Tears streamed down her face. She wasn’t the only one. Lashawn wept silently for his brother. The other two men looked shell-shocked at the tortured vision. Raw fear barreled through the circle like a runaway train. Was the empath even still in control?
Vic crushed her hand in his grip, blood-shot eyes bulging, lids wide as if someone stretched them back. Tremors ran down his arms, fingers chilling as his palms sweated. A tight choked sound escaped his throat.
The psychic projection shook as he remembered running out of the cabin into a clearing in the woods. His small legs pumped as fast as they could. He stumbled, looking back.
In the cabin doorway, blood covering her yellow sweater, his mother groped for the threshold to stay upright. Moonlight hit the apples of her high cheeks. Her brown eyes, so like his, sought her child as if she knew it would be her last sight.
A hungry snout clamped on her ankle, dragging her onto the bloody floor and tugging her inside. His mother’s last word trailed off into a scream. “Run!”
Little Vic tried to obey her last wish, crawling through the grass. Shame and fear lashed at him. The grief coursing through the connection felt as fresh as the day he lost her.
Small Town Witch: A New Adult Urban Fantasy (Red Witch Chronicles 5) Page 17