Since I’d been wrapped in the blanket while taking the potion, it had turned invisible too. I threw it off me, since I wouldn’t need it anymore, and got up to look out the window.
I gasped at the scene before me, shock and fear clawing my heart.
Noah was fighting a mountain lion. And judging by how the lion kept lunging and Noah kept dodging, he wasn’t winning.
At least, I assumed that the brown wolf with the white underbelly was Noah. The brown was the same color as his hair. The other wolf—the one I assumed was Sage—was smaller, with black fur. She was holding off three coyotes of her own. The coyotes were smaller than she was, but they were quick and vicious guerrilla warriors as they went in for their attacks.
The other two coyotes were dead, beheaded and splayed out on the ground in puddles of their own blood.
The lion pawed at Noah, but he avoided its sharp claws every time. Noah was agile and fast, but his breaths were deep—labored. I feared he wouldn’t be able to keep this up for much longer. And while shifters could heal, if their brains or hearts got punctured, there was no coming back from that.
He needed Sage’s help. But one of the coyotes Sage was fighting went for her leg, another catching her tail. She snapped her teeth and howled. All the while, Noah was slowly losing speed against the lion’s attacks.
That was it. I couldn’t sit here and watch my friends get slaughtered. I might not have supernatural strength, but with both my appearance and scent hidden, I had the element of surprise on my side. And I intended on using it.
I reached for my boot knife—it was invisible too, since it had been on me when I’d taken the potion. Knife in hand, I crawled across the seat and opened the door that wasn’t in the line of sight of the fight. I hopped out, not closing the door. I couldn’t risk the sound of it slamming shut calling attention to the fact that I was here.
I moved as quickly as possible, avoiding stepping on the patches of brush. The shifters were all involved in their fights, but the tiny bushes being crushed under an invisible foot would be an obvious giveaway of my location. The fact that I was leaving footsteps in the dirt was already risky enough.
I hurried toward where Sage fought the coyotes. She was already mostly healed from the previous attack I’d witnessed. But the same two coyotes circled directly around her with supernatural speed and kept nipping at her legs, faster than she had time to recover. She snapped at their throats, although she missed.
She was losing steam.
The third coyote jogged around them, watching them with intensity. It appeared to be keeping her away from where Noah was fighting the lion.
I sneaked up behind the third coyote, sliding my knife straight through its neck and up into its brain. It gave a small yip and collapsed to the ground.
The coyotes circling Sage turned at the distraction.
She used the moment of advantage to capture one of their necks in her jaw, snap its head clean off, and fling its lifeless body to the ground. The final coyote’s beheaded corpse was seconds behind.
Sage ran straight at me, using her nose to nudge the knife from my hand. It clattered to the ground between us.
How did she know I was standing there?
The coyote’s blood, I realized. The knife was invisible, since I was wearing it when I drank the potion. But the blood coating the knife wasn’t. Sage had pushed it out of my hand because she didn’t want me to give away my location.
I didn’t have time to thank her before she turned to help Noah.
Jaws open, she ran for the lion’s underbelly, catapulting forward and knocking the beast on its side. Blood spurted from its stomach in droves. She must have hit a vein. It took all of my self-control not to jump up and cheer her on.
Noah was on top of the lion in a second, his jaws clamped around its neck. I heard a sickeningly loud crunch as he broke its spine, and the rip of flesh as he tore its head off its body.
The mountain lion was dead.
And from the look Noah was shooting in my general direction—his lips curled back to reveal the lion’s blood still on his teeth—he looked like he wanted to kill me next.
Raven
Noah and Sage shifted back to their human forms. Whatever injuries they’d gotten during the fight had already healed. And their clothes remained on. I supposed shifters were able to shift with their clothes, the same way that everything I was wearing also turned invisible when I’d taken the potion. That was handy, since the other option—them being naked after shifting—would have been pretty awkward.
“Raven.” Noah stepped over the mountain lion’s corpse, his eyes narrowed in my general direction. “What the hell were you thinking?”
“You can see me?” I was so surprised that he knew where I was that I ignored his question.
“I can’t see you,” he said. “Since clearly, you took the liberty of helping yourself to our invisibility potion. But I can smell you.”
“How?” I held up my hand—the one wearing Sage’s ring. “I’m cloaked.”
“The rings that Sage and I have were forged from the same stone and created under the same spell.” He crossed his arms, as if I should understand the implication of what that meant. “They’re linked.”
“Those wearing linked rings will be able to sense each other, even though no one else will be able to sense them,” Sage added. “It’s useful while hunting, since it’s important to be able to sense your partner. So right now, Noah can sense you, and if you were a supernatural, you’d be able to sense him. I can’t sense either of you, since you’re wearing my ring and Noah’s wearing his.”
“Okay,” I said. “Got it.”
“I can’t talk to you like this.” Noah growled, gesturing in my general direction. “Sage, get her an antidote pill from the car.”
“I can get my own antidote pill.” I placed my bloodied knife back inside my boot and marched to the car, not wanting anyone to have to fetch anything for me.
“It’s in the front pocket of the bag!” Sage called out. “The pink ones. They’re chewable.”
As I made my way to the Range Rover, I realized how strange this situation would look to any passing outsider. Five cars pulled over to the side of the freeway past midnight, their headlights illuminating three people standing amongst the freshly beheaded corpses of coyotes and a mountain lion.
It was a good thing no one was driving this far out in the middle of nowhere at this time of night.
Well, no one except for us. Which, judging how well that had gone, had been a pretty stupid move.
It didn’t take long for me to find the pink pills—they were where Sage had said, in a zip locked baggie in the front. The antidote pills had been something else that Sage had told me about during our long drive. They could counter the effect of most potions, but only when the pill had been created by the same witch who had brewed the potion. In this case, both the pill and potion had been created by Whitney—Amber’s sister who had been murdered by Azazel. The antidote would only work on potions brewed by Whitney.
Since Whitney was dead, we had to be careful with how many of the pills we used. Once they were gone, there would be no way to create an antidote to any of Whitney’s remaining potions.
Given that the invisibility potion would have run out of juice in less than an hour, Noah must have commanded I take the pill because he was pissed.
I popped the pill in my mouth, chewed, and swallowed. It coated my tongue like chalk. I imagined it was doing that to the rest of my body as well.
I held one of my hands up to my face, watching the ghost-like haze become more and more opaque, until I was visible again. The blanket that had turned invisible with me turned visible again as well.
When I stepped back around the car, Noah and Sage were bickering about something. Their conversation ceased when they saw me.
“Good.” Noah nodded in approval and marched toward me, anger swirling in his eyes. “Now I can see your reaction when you tell me what the hell were you th
inking getting by involved back there.”
“I was thinking that you were fighting a mountain lion on your own, Sage was struggling against three coyotes, and that if I didn’t do something to help, those shifters would have come for me next.” I raised my chin, determined to stay strong and show no weakness. “I couldn’t risk that happening.”
“We were handling it,” he said. “You would have been safer if you’d stayed put.”
“Maybe,” I said, since none of us knew what would have happened if I hadn’t stepped in. “But why didn’t you tell me that one of them was a mountain lion shifter? I thought they were all coyotes.”
“It was irrelevant.” Noah’s jaw tightened. “You were safe, and we were beating them. We had it covered.”
“It didn’t look like that from what I saw.”
“You weren’t supposed to see anything!” He motioned toward the Rover—the white car was covered in dust, looking a wreck with its destroyed tires. “You were supposed to stay hidden under that blanket.”
“You told me the fight wouldn’t take long,” I said. “It was taking long. I was worried that something was wrong.”
“Nothing was wrong.” He growled and took another step forward, so there were only inches between us. “But how am I supposed to protect you when you do something stupid like that?” He looked like he wanted to reach for my shoulders and shake some sense into me, but he flexed his fists instead.
Now we both held each other’s gazes. Neither of us said a word, and neither of us backed down. If he was trying to intimidate me, I refused to let him.
“We didn’t know that one of the shifters was a mountain lion,” Sage admitted, her voice barely louder than a whisper.
“What?” I whipped my head to face her—she was looking down at the ground in shame—and then I looked back to Noah. “You said you knew. You lied.”
“I didn’t lie.” He shifted on his feet. “I never said we knew the shifter was a mountain lion. I just said that his being a mountain lion was irrelevant.”
“Same thing,” I muttered.
“No,” he said. “It’s not.”
“Fine.” I looked back and forth between the two of them. “But how did neither of you sense a mountain lion? And how did a mountain lion join up with a pack of coyotes, anyway?” I didn’t know much about wild animals, but those two species didn’t seem like the types to naturally mix. Sort of like dogs and cats… but bigger.
And supernatural.
My life had seriously taken a turn for the insane.
“It was cloaked,” he said, motioning to his ring. “Like we are. We didn’t know until it shifted into its coyote form… and then into a mountain lion.”
“It was mated with a mountain lion,” I realized. “So it could assume both forms.”
“Correct,” he said. “And also correct that mountain lions and coyotes wouldn’t naturally mix. Coyotes—like wolves—are pack animals. Big cats like mountain lions tend to be more solitary.”
“And more lethal.” I eyed up the lion behind us, dread filling my stomach at what might have happened if I hadn’t helped Sage with those coyotes so she could help Noah with the lion.
“It wasn’t too bad.” Noah sounded a bit too modest considering the fight I’d witnessed. “It’s just a good thing it wasn’t a tiger. Then we would have been in some serious trouble.”
“A tiger?” I widened my eyes, catching my jaw before it dropped to the ground. “There are tiger shifters?”
“Oh yeah,” Sage said. “They live in India—in the vampire kingdom of the Haven. They’re the most deadly type of shifter out there. It would take an entire pack of wolves to even have a chance at taking down one tiger. I’ve never seen one, but Noah has.”
“You’ve been to India?” I tilted my head as I looked up at him, surprised.
He raised an eyebrow. “Why does it sound like you find that crazier than the existence of tiger shifters?” he asked.
“I don’t,” I said, although I realized a second later that it wasn’t totally the truth. “I just… well, I guess I just don’t know much about your past, do I?”
“You don’t.” He lowered his voice, as if warning me not to push the subject any further.
“All right.” I swallowed, suddenly eager to change the subject. “But no matter what you say, I did help you back there. I deserve at least an acknowledgment… or a thank you.”
“You did help,” Sage said. “I would have eventually fought off those coyotes on my own, but in time to help Noah against the mountain lion?” She shrugged and glanced back at the lion, doubt crossing her eyes. “I don’t know.”
I knew then that while my decision had been risky, it had been right. I’d do it all over again in a heartbeat.
“Just don’t pull a stunt like that again,” Noah said. “You got lucky this time, but don’t push that luck. Not if you want to stay alive.”
“Maybe it doesn’t have to be luck.” I straightened my shoulders in challenge. “Maybe you—both of you—could teach me how to fight.”
“I thought you wanted to get to Avalon as quickly as possible?” he asked.
“I do.” Obviously that hadn’t changed, since the sooner I got to Avalon, the sooner I could save my mom.
“Then we don’t have time to teach you how to fight,” he said. “You trust us to keep you safe, and that’s final.”
I opened my mouth to protest, but he held a hand up to stop me.
“Now, which of these trucks should we hijack?” He took a good look at the old, rusted pick-up trucks that had belonged to the coyotes. “Because we sure as hell aren’t making it to New Orleans on four shredded tires.”
Flint
I walked into the back room of the dimly lit bar, my veins thrumming with excitement when I spotted the beautiful blonde at the corner table nursing a drink. I’d felt her presence the moment I’d walked inside the building, but seeing her made my heart race in a way it never had before.
“Mara.” I breathed her name as if it were life itself, joining her at the table.
She stood, wrapping her arms around my neck in a fluid motion as her lips joined mine. She smelled like a warm campfire on a winter night. It was the distinct scent of demon, but one I’d come to love, as I now associated it with her.
“Flint.” She gazed up at me through her seductive red eyes—the eyes that had stolen a piece of my soul.
I recalled the first time I’d seen those eyes, when I’d walked into this bar last week. I’d been repulsed to find a demon frequenting my favorite bar in the city. I’d marched up to her and grabbed her, ready to tell her she wasn’t welcome and to order her to leave.
The moment my hands had wrapped around her wrists, I’d felt an undeniable pull toward her. I’d wanted her. Then, when our lips met for the first time, it was like strings bringing our souls together. I’d felt her, and what I felt wasn’t evil.
It was the soul of a beautiful woman who had finally escaped her desolate home and was ready to make a new home for herself on Earth.
I knew at once that I wanted to help her. Because the connection between us—the way my soul sang for hers—was undeniable.
I’d imprinted on her.
It was unheard of for a shifter to imprint outside of our species, but it had happened. And it had happened both ways. She hadn’t realized what it was at first, since imprinting was an experience unique to shifters, but she’d imprinted on me as well.
I believed it had happened for a reason—so that Mara and I could mate, allowing me to provide safety to my pack in these dark times to come.
“I spoke with Azazel.” She smiled as she sat back down, and I sat with her, anticipating good news. Her hands didn’t let go of mine, and I squeezed them tighter.
I would never let her go.
“And?” I leaned forward, eager for her to continue.
“Once your pack completes the blood binding spell that swears your allegiance to him, he will allow us to mate.”
I drew her toward me, kissing her again. Actions always spoke for me when words failed.
“I take it you’re happy?” she asked once we broke apart, her eyes shining as they gazed up into mine.
“That’s an understatement.” I cupped her delicate features with my hand, thrilled that this beautiful woman would officially be mine. “This is the way everything’s supposed to be.”
“It is,” she agreed. “But Azazel isn’t known for his patience. When will your pack be ready for the ceremony?”
“The moment my sister returns,” I told her.
“And when will that be?”
“Soon,” I promised. “I contacted some allies of mine and offered them a substantial monetary reward if they fetched her as she drove by their territory. They should be bringing her back as we speak.”
“Should?” She raised an eyebrow. “Have you received confirmation from these allies of yours?”
“They’re on it.” I puffed out my chest, annoyed that she doubted me. But of course, one look into her soulful eyes stopped me from being annoyed for long. “According to the tracking device I had installed on her phone, they pulled her over right before I came in here. They’ll bring her back home. Once she’s returned, we’ll commence the ceremony immediately.”
I felt slightly guilty for sending the coyotes after Sage—my headstrong sister hated being told what to do, even by her alpha. She was far more connected to her humanity than I’d ever been. Still, I loved her, and I wouldn’t leave her on her own. This was for her own good.
Because if she knew I was making a deal with the demons, she’d never voluntarily return.
After the blood binding with Azazel, Sage would come to her senses and forgive me for abducting her and ordering my allies to kill Noah and the redheaded human. After all, I couldn’t risk Noah and the human following her. Pack was always first, and they weren’t pack.
My sister would forgive me because the connection with the greater demon would overpower her humanity for good.
It was best this way. The path had been clear from the moment I’d imprinted with Mara.
The Angel Trials (Dark World: The Angel Trials Book 1) Page 15