Slowly, the blinding white glare of the area surrounding us gave way to the lush green of a healthy, old-growth forest. Pine and spruce curled around me, and a natural flowing spring lined with fragrant flowers trickled in the distance.
Bola continued to gurgle. He grabbed at my hand, the one with talons still embedded in his throat, feeling the dying ebb of his pulsing blood. I batted his weak attempts away with my free hand.
A twig nearby snapped.
Bola stiffened.
I looked over, first taking in the bare feet, then the shapely tanned legs leading to a barely-there leather outfit.
Feradea.
Her mouth twitched. “Well met, daughter-mine. I see you brought me a gift.” I slammed the talons of my free hand into the side of Bola’s neck and sliced, increasing the damage and blood flow. His body jerked and writhed as his Demon nature attempted to heal the damage.
“Quick!” I turned to Feradea. “Help me get him to the Demon Realm.”
Her face scrunched up, and she examined her nails. “You don’t want to go there.”
Bola gurgled and bucked.
“Yes, I do! I want this fucker destroyed. If he dies here, he’ll just pop up again.” My chest constricted. I was so close.
Bola’s blood flow decreased, and Bola’s soulless gaze drew distant.
Feradea’s expression relaxed. “I understand. Fear not, daughter mine. The realm of the divine and demons are essentially the same. His death here is final.”
Tension flowed from my muscles, and a smile spread across my face as the life leeched away from Bola—from the entity who’s face once plagued so many of my nightmares.
Dead.
He was finally dead.
Warmth expanded in my chest as his body sagged against mine. I pushed him off and stood beside Feradea. Unlike a Demon death on Earth, his body didn’t quickly disintegrate.
The Goddess reached down and tore Bola’s head from his body in one swift motion
“Wha—?”
She turned to me, with Bola’s lifeless, decapitated head dripping blood in her hands, and winked. “Your gift to me.”
Chapter Thirty-Five
Friendly reunion
“There is nothing better than a friend, unless it is a friend with chocolate.”
~Linda Grayson
As soon as the mouldy, rodent infested room with slime covered walls fully materialized, I let the stag go. The room still swayed a little, as if I’d taken a few shots too many of cinnamon whiskey on ladies’ night, but as a Carus, I would recover from my fight with Bola sooner than later. After confirming with Feradea for the umpteenth time death in the domain of the divine meant no resurrection in the nether realm, and Bola was truly, forever gone, never to return, never to torment me again, I promised to visit and said my goodbyes. She’d laughed, clearly amused at mortal haste. Bola might be dead, but Wick had howled with rage, the boys hadn’t been found yet, and the Pharaoh was on the run, again. Rat bastard.
The old desk and the lamps providing the dim light solidified and merged into concrete images.
“Where the fuck did you go!” A deep, raw voice growled behind me.
I spun around to face the entrance. The room continued to spin. Weakened, naked, and in my human form, nausea rolled up my throat. I gulped.
Wick stood naked in the center of the room. Werewolf yellow eyes bore into mine with a smoldering heat. The intensity so potent, his Alpha power rolled over me like a wave of lava.
My wolf whined, wanting to go belly-up.
Wick’s body heaved with deep breaths, his skin splattered with dried blood. Grease and more blood streaked his Norse god-like face, slashing across with the severe angle of his brows.
Why was he frowning at me? He looked like he survived a landmine.
I sniffed.
Only a little of the blood was his.
My shoulders dropped, and I let out a long breath.
“You disappeared,” he whispered.
I shook my head. And winced. The room swayed again. I took a step to the side.
Wick hurried forward to reach me. “I came in time to see you disappear with that…that animal. He was on top of you.” Wick shuddered. He knew all about my painful past and the role Bola had in it—the rape and torture. Bola’s death had been too quick.
Strong hands gripped my arms and pulled me in for a hug. He wrapped me into a naked cocoon made of his warmth, his strong arms borderline crushing.
“Are you okay?” he whispered into my ear. His light breath fanned my hair, and tickled my neck.
“Bola’s gone.”
Wick growled. “At least you’re not hurt.”
Much. “No. Bola’s gone, gone. As in dead. I killed that motherfucker in the divine realm, and he’s never coming back.”
An image of his black soulless gaze glazing over as the blood, spurting and oozing out of his neck, ran along my arms flashed across my vision. The matching part of my mind, the dark place, dripping with pain, shame, and all the other unsavoury feelings that resurfaced with any thoughts of my time in Dylan’s pack settled. As if instead of waiting like a coiled spring to pounce given any chance or flicker of a memory, Bola’s death squashed the potency of the past. An invisible weight lifted from my shoulders. Free. The fear of Bola returning dissipated. The lurking possibility, gone. I was truly free of him. Forever.
Wick squeezed me and burrowed his face in the crook of my neck. He ran his nose along the soft, vulnerable skin. The not-so-distant memory of his heated kiss tingled on my lips, spreading heat through my body for more.
Musky coconut spiraled out from my skin.
A low rumble from Wick’s chest vibrated against my body. His hands relaxed their grip and slid down my naked back. Now, very aware of our lack of clothing, I yearned for his hands to continue travelling along my skin, for his mouth to take mine as his body claimed me.
Someone cleared their throat.
I jumped back. “Oh god! The boys.”
Wick straightened and chuckled. Instead of speaking, his lips twitched and he stepped to the side.
In dirty rags for clothes, four young male Witches used the enforcers from Wick’s pack for support. Stan and Lucus peered in from outside the door. One of the Witches in the center looked up. Underneath plain blond hair, browner from grime, a soft gaze met mine. I’d know that adorable puppy-face anywhere.
“Ben!” I crashed into my friend and wrapped my arms around him. He hugged me back as my senses took in details. No blood of theirs had been spilled recently, no scent of pain. Just dirt. A lot of dirt, and sweat, and… Like months and months without a shower and proper facilities grime.
I wrenched back, my face twisting. “Ugh, no offense, Ben, but you—”
“We all stink!” Patty exclaimed, seconds before he lunged in from the side and hugged me as well. His greasy black hair slid along the bare skin of my arms.
“Group hug!” Matthew joined in from the other side, his green eyes sparkling underneath a mop of sandy hair.
Over Ben’s shoulder, Stan’s smile broadened. He enjoyed this.
“Yeah.” An unfamiliar voice spoke behind me, deep and rugged, like we met on a hiking path in the middle of nowhere. “I’m good.”
I looked over my shoulder, half expecting to find a man dressed in plaid wielding an axe. Christopher. He always reminded me of a gruff logger. Well, he got his voice back, and it matched his appearance, but there’d been a hefty cost. Bola had used his body to enact horrific deeds, events that put the Witches in this very mess.
“Witch, I goddamn saved your life. You better take a step in, and join, or I’ll finish what I started months ago.” Namely, killing him. I’d been close. Only love for the other Witches had stayed my hand.
Christopher tensed, his gaze searching.
I maintained my death stare.
Christopher shrugged and stepped forward, tentatively wrapping his arms around the whole group. “Thank you,” he whispered into my ear.
It’s a group hug.
It’s over.
I laughed and twisted to meet his wolf yellow stare. It was positively murderous. Burnt cinnamon spiralled off his body, and he clenched his fists.
The Witches followed my gaze. Almost as one, they tensed before breaking away. Patty leaped three feet, sideways, like a deranged leprechaun.
Stan’s gaze twinkled as he handed me his shirt. He still wore a white tank, but it did little to hide his pasty skin and beer belly.
“Thanks.” I gently plucked the shirt from his hands and pulled it on. It smelled of Stan—soap and leather—but the shirt covered my hoohoo, and that’s all that mattered.
Wick continued to growl low, probably not impressed I wrapped myself in another man’s scent.
I rolled my eyes at the vibrating Werewolf Alpha. Relax.
I will not. We have unfinished business, Andy.
That’ll have to wait.
I’m not waiting while you belt out old songs into carrots and beer bottles with four lunatic Witches, Wick growled.
My hands flew to my hips and I glowered at him. Our…stuff…will have to wait until we kill the Pharaoh.
His mouth formed a perfect O, and he had the decency to look chagrined. He rubbed the stubble on his chin with his fist. We could just let him go.
I shook my head. The motion too quick, my vision swam. I staggered to the side. Wick stepped forward. I waved him off.
His gaze narrowed, and his lips flattened into a grim line.
He’s too powerful, he’ll just rebuild, I said.
The gazes of the others in the room ping ponged between us, probably guessing a silent battle waged, but having no idea of the outcome.
You can’t even stand up straight. Let me take you home. Let me…
I smirked. The heat in Wick’s gaze left little doubt to what he wanted me to let him do. No, Wick. We need to take him down. Now. Besides, someone told me to identify and squash every person involved, or like a disease, they’ll just fester and flare up again, and again.
Who the heck said that?
The Pharaoh.
Wick grunted.
Our spectators snapped their attention to Wick, brows raised.
“What are you two lovebirds fighting about, now?” Allan sauntered into the room, all swagger, no urgency, hands clasped behind his back like he’d taken a leisurely stroll among the peasants on the boardwalk. Clint entered the room after him with a cheese-eating grin, his swords, dripping with blood, grasped loosely at his sides. At least the immortal had avoided dying-not-dying this time.
I turned my death stare to the Vampire. “We need to find the Pharaoh.” And gut him.
“Oh?” Allan said, suspiciously coy. “This Pharaoh?”
With swift Vampire reflexes, he held up a decapitated head from behind his back. The glazed-over almond-shaped gaze met mine.
My jaw dropped.
Chapter Thirty-Six
The master of none
“I’ve had a perfectly wonderful evening, but this wasn’t it.”
~Groucho Marx
The rage circling in my body, calling for the Pharaoh’s death, continued to race around with nowhere else to go. My shoulders slumped. “Are you fucking kidding me?”
I stared at the remains of the most ancient Vampire I’d ever met. Young Vampires disintegrated to ash almost immediately. As an older Vampire, the Pharaoh’s head would take days to deteriorate.
Something pinged in my brain, like an errant thought leading to something important, something missed, but as I groped to grab the dangling thread, it slipped away. Lost.
I mentally shrugged. Who the heck cared? Allan killed the Pharaoh.
How? How was this possible? Allan wasn’t powerful enough to take him out. Right?
“How…How…” I shut my mouth and glowered at the smirking Vampire. The tension tightly coiled in my body bloomed outward and drained through my veins. Gone. I’d been so intent on killing this son-of-a-bitch, and now? Robbed. I felt robbed, and empty, and a little relieved. I would’ve needed a giant horseshoe up my ass to defeat Bola and an ancient Vampire on the same night.
Allan tossed the head at my feet. It bounced off the metal floor with a sickening slick and hollow sound before coming to rest against my bare toes. The flesh cold and sticky.
Ew. I shuffled a half-step back. Sure, I used to deliver death to unsavoury supes, but I never fondled their amputated body parts. I got in and got out without getting dead…or covered with decomposing Vampire slime. Yuck.
“Your face is priceless, Carus.” Allan adjusted his sleeves. “Like a fish sucking air.”
Clint chuckled and muttered something about me and sucking under his breath.
Ew!
Wick growled and stepped forward.
Clint held his hands up in mock surrender. “Oh, come on. I was joking.”
Alan shot Clint a dark look, and the human servant thankfully shut his mouth.
“You’re right, Carus.” Allan turned back to me. “I lack the strength, age, and power to take out the Pharaoh in a one-on-one battle, but I never planned to fight the Pharaoh honourably. I caught your thoughts and from there, I tracked the Pharaoh’s mind. Luck placed me in the right location. As he ran to escape you, he quite literally ran into my blade.”
Huh. Never pegged Allan as a lucky bastard, but geez. “Well, that was…”
“Easy?” Wick finished for me.
I feel like we should have a button to press or something.
Wick caught my thought, and his smile grew.
The Pharaoh’s death had been too quick after a significant build up. Adrenaline still raced through my body, screaming for a fight where an opponent no longer existed.
“Um, guys?” Steve said. “We should get these Witches home. I don’t think they’ve been dining on five course meals.”
John supported Patty as the Witch sagged against him. The Werewolf’s face scrunched up. “And they really do stink.”
Allan nodded. “Well, Carus, it looks like you achieved your goals. The Pharaoh is dead, and if I’m reading your mind correctly, so is Bola. Well done. There’s nothing left to do here.”
“Except kill Tucker. Loose end and all.”
“Yeah, uh… About that.” Lucus pulled on his shirt collar.
I snapped my attention to him and watched his cheeks flush. “About what?”
“Veronika might be working out some of her, uh, healing process with Tucker.”
“Ew!” Stomach acid rose up my throat. Geez, it’s like they banded together in a private meeting beforehand and thought of ways to trigger my gag reflex.
“No! No.” Lucus waved his hands and shook his head. “Not like that.”
“How exactly?” I narrowed my gaze at the Witch, now sweating profusely.
“She planned to pull Sid over from the other side. They had a deal. I don’t think…I don’t think Tucker will be alive by the time we return.”
I opened my mouth.
“She has just as much right to revenge as you do, you know. It’s not all about Andy McNeilly.” His tone increased an octave. “You don’t know… You don’t know what he put her through.” Lucus’s hands trembled, as if one wrong word or move, and he’d blast me to another realm.
He was right. I didn’t know what ATF did to Veronika. I didn’t need to. Two brain cells could make an accurate conclusion. I stepped forward, ignored his flinch and twitchy hands, and laid a hand on his tense shoulders.
“I can guess. He was a sick fuck.” A greedy, sick fuck with an overinflated ego. Tucker had only been an irritating nuisance to me. He’d been a torturer to Veronika. She deserved this vengeance more than me.
Lucus straightened. His gaze searched mine, and seeing no malice, his shoulders dropped under my hand, and his muscles relaxed. “She promised to make him suffer.”
My lips twisted. “Good.”
Chapter Thirty-Seven
We are one
“Know this: I am addicted to you. I have tasted your mind, and I cannot forget its flavour.”
~Unknown
Werewolves, Witches, and Stan milled around Wick’s large living room, clasping hands, slapping backs, and clinking beer bottles before downing the amber fluid. The Wereleopards, Allan, and Clint had gone home, opting out of the after-party.
The mysterious vial Bola had tossed the Pharaoh in exchange for luring me to him contained KK, or something like it. Maybe a perfected version. Fuck that. We didn’t want to risk it getting into the wrong hands, and without debate, Allan had crushed it on the ferry deck while the rest of us watched. Now, with the majority of our enemies taken care of, everyone wanted to relax and celebrate.
Wick had handed me a shirt and a pair of his sweats without a word as soon as we got back, silently demanding I cloak my body in his scent. Amused glances and knowing smirks from the others darted my way.
Stan had his shirt back and with a beer in his hand, mingled with everyone else as they rejoiced in our victory. Everyone acted like they were completely unaware of the tension building between me and Wick. How could they miss it? The tension tugged at my soul so hard it felt as though it would rip from my chest to plaster itself against Wick’s body.
My falcon popped into my head and shrieked. I winced. She sent images of pecking the party guests and chasing them out the door.
Wick stood in the midst of the celebration, muscles taut, surrounded by an invisible cloud of burnt sugar and cinnamon.
My heart hammered in my chest, knowing full well what drove Wick’s agitation. He’d planned to “finish this” when we got home.
Well, here we were. At his home. And surrounded by meddling Witches, a nosy cop, and Wick’s entire enforcement team from the pack.
My wolf paced, waiting, anticipating.
Cold shivers spread across my pebbled skin. I clutched my beer as if it would calm my nerves. Did I want to back out? Run away?
Wick’s heated gaze met mine across the room, smoldering the airwaves, burning my retinas, claiming my mind before spreading through my body as if he sprawled naked across me instead of standing twelve feet away.
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