by Stormie Kent
“I’ll remain here and guard the entrance,” Reynalda said. A shifter volunteered to wait with her.
Several of the mages cast illumination spells. Winrich went through first as he was nearest to the door. They filed down the stairs with the closest person to the door going next. Nic and the shifter soldiers made sure to keep a shifter body between her and everyone else. The stairwell wasn’t long.
The scenery for the tight space included wood steps and dust motes. She wanted to yell for the people in front of her to hurry. The wildness inside her absolutely hated the tight space. Combined with the oily feel of fatal magic she could sense just ahead, Leila’s need for speed rode her all the way down the stairs and directly into a horror pit.
The stairs led into an open room lined with shoulder-high cages. Those cages held beings. The first cage she walked to housed what was clearly a sprite, its tiny body emaciated. In the next cage, sitting propped against the back wall, was a man. She couldn’t tell his species. There was almost no life left in him. She turned in a circle. All the cages were similarly filled with bodies too weak to even acknowledge the presence of the shifters and mages or cry for help.
She started moving, pulling her phone out before she knew what she was doing. She ran to the cage holding the sprite even as she dialed.
She didn’t have time for greetings. When her mother answered, Leila said, “Mother, get healers to the Stevenses’ address. I also need transportation for at least ten patients.”
She hung up without waiting for her mother’s response. Pushing her phone back in her pocket, she reached for the lock on the sprite’s cage. She growled as someone grabbed her.
Nic whispered, “It’s silver. We’re looking for keys right now.”
Nic tried to pull her close, but she shoved him off. The sprite had opened his eyes at Nic’s voice, but it was Leila he looked at.
“We’re going to get you out.” She didn’t know if he heard her; his eyes were glassy and half-lidded.
Who would hurt a sprite? They were gentle creatures who hid in the forest near lakes and minded their own business.
Someone spoke to Nic. “No keys. He must keep them with him.”
Leila heard the sound of Nic’s phone vibrating in his pocket. He took it out and peered at the screen. “Someone just drove onto the estate. The vehicle matches the make and model registered to Stevens.”
Leila stood and headed for the stairs.
Nic grabbed her arm. “What are you doing?”
“I’m going to go get those keys.” Hopefully over Stevens’s dead body.
“All by yourself?” His voice was soft, as if he feared she would break.
“Fine. Then you go get them. I’ll follow.”
Keeping a hand on her arm, he turned to Winrich. “We need to take a stand before he gets inside. He’s sure to have tricks of all kinds built into his little house of horrors.”
“Agreed.”
Nic finally released her as he raced up the stairwell, shifters and mages at his heels. Reynalda fell back as they burst through the opening. Leila tossed her an explanation as she hurried past. “He’s outside.”
Leila raced toward the front door. Newly acquired shifter speed didn’t make up for having shorter legs, and her mate and his soldiers filed out before her. They went down the steps and spread out to wait for Stevens.
She hadn’t been planning to take on Findor Stevens on her own despite what her mate had thought. She wasn’t a fighter, and she had eleven shifters standing between her and one sorcerer. One sorcerer who had been glutting himself on the power of other beings.
“Don’t allow him to leave here.” The coldness in Nic’s voice satisfied something inside her.
“He’s going to be hyped up on stolen magic and whatever forbidden spells he’s performed. Don’t underestimate him. He won’t be easy to capture or kill.” She knew the shifters heard her. Their hearing was superhuman.
Stevens’s black SUV traveled slowly up the drive before stopping behind the line of cars. The door opened, and Stevens stepped from the vehicle. It was times like these when Leila wondered why evil people didn’t look evil. Maybe five-ten, with the build of a fencer, Findor Stevens’s brown eyes, blond hair, and even, pleasant features reminded her of someone playing a movie angel rather than a demon who kidnapped and tortured others.
“Gentlemen.” He glanced around at all the mages and shifters. “And ladies. What may I do for you?”
Winrich stepped forward. “Findor Stevens, we have been empowered by the Council to bring you in to face charges not limited to kidnapping, murder, imprisonment, and the use of forbidden magic.”
Stevens’s eyes narrowed for a moment. In the next instant a firebomb exploded to her right, directly in the cluster of witches and wizards standing there. Stevens slid back into his vehicle even as Nic and the pack moved. Almost as one, they shifted to half form. The SUV made a three-point turn with beastly werewolves running around it, attempting to hem it in.
Leila jerked around at the whimper behind her. She moved toward the mages. Many were up and able to walk, if singed. Some were stirring and getting to their feet, while two lay unmoving. It was to those two she went first. Their clothes were still smoking. Burns covered the side of the man’s face, and the woman’s clothes had burned away in large patches around her legs, revealing mangled skin underneath.
Leila checked for pulses and used her magic to search for energy signatures. They were present, if weak. She wasn’t a healer and didn’t know how she was going to help them.
“Leila.”
She looked up at Winrich. His clothes smoked a bit, and he listed to his left, holding his side, but he was standing.
Leila began dragging the witch back toward the porch. “Can you bind Stevens’s power? Are there enough of you left?”
“Yes, but we’re going to need your assistance.”
“Okay, help me here first.” The injured wizard wasn’t dead yet. Being run over by a runaway car would make his nap permanent.
Leila and Winrich moved the wizard. She hoped her mother was sending the cavalry so the injured could receive medical attention.
Winrich made room for a wizard dressed all in blue. “Elam has some healing ability. At least enough to start the healing for these burns.”
She looked up at Winrich. “I don’t know the ritual.”
“Just pick up the chant when you can. Mostly we need the extra witch in the group. It won’t matter much if the shifter kills him. I have to actually have my hands on him, though.”
Leila and the conscious witches and wizards needed to take care of Stevens before he tossed another firebomb and killed someone. She and Winrich walked as close to the melee in the yard as they could get. Leila focused on Stevens and the shifters. They still surrounded him in an attempt to force him to stop his vehicle. Instead, Stevens drove forward, gaining speed as he went, his intent clearly to run over Nic.
“Move!” Leila shouted.
Her damn heart felt as if it shot into her throat. The hit from the car might not kill him, but it would leave him hurt. Badly. They had too many enemies for him to be out of commission. She started toward him, knowing she would never make it in time.
Nic’s legs bunched and strained as he squatted, then leaped into the air exactly when Stevens would have hit him. Nic landed on the hood of the SUV with a resounding crush of metal. Leila froze in place and watched as Nic raised abnormally large and sharp claws and forced them down through the roof of the vehicle. She winced as he did it again and again. Stevens tried to fling him from the roof with sharp turns.
Finally, the sounds of grinding metal filled the air as Nic slowly peeled the roof back like a particularly difficult tuna can lid. A fireball zoomed through the hole in the vehicle, and Nic leaned as far back as he could, continuing to hold on to the jagged rolled-back metal that used to be the vehicle’s roof.
The smell of burning fur singed her nostrils, but Nic didn’t show signs of being hurt.
He reached inside the roof. The SUV swerved, and Nic leaned farther inside until he ended up half lying on the vehicle’s roof as Jake attempted to rip the car door open, hanging on as the SUV continued to careen over pavement and grass.
Leila watched as Nic pulled Stevens through the roof of the vehicle by his arm. Jake, who had been tearing at the now open car door, jumped behind the wheel and slowed the SUV. Stevens twisted in Nic’s grip, resembling a demented rag doll. Nic grabbed him by the other arm and pulled. The sorcerer screamed, his pain and fear forcing the hair on the back of her neck to stand at the same time another part of her nodded in approval while her mate forced the man to suffer. Bones snapped with resounding cracks, and Nic tossed the sorcerer from the roof to the ground before jumping down beside him.
Stevens alternately screamed and moaned as the shifters gathered around him on the ground. Leila ran forward and was grabbed by Nic. His claws snagged her clothes but didn’t break her skin.
“No.”
“I need the key.”
Nic shifted back to human form and crouched next to Stevens. He rifled through the sorcerer’s pockets, pausing only once to break the man’s hand when it began to glow red. Stevens’s silent, openmouthed screams were more chilling than if he’d made noise. Visibly frustrated, Nic ripped the man’s shirt, shaking it before tossing it to the side.
She spotted a heavy chain laying flush against Stevens’s throat. “His neck, Nic.”
Her mate pulled the chain from the man’s neck. A heavy key hung from it. She reached for it just as a shout went up from one of the shifters. She looked up.
“It’s my parents!” She yelled the information, hoping the men running toward the approaching caravan of vehicles wouldn’t open the lid of her parent’s car as they’d done the last vehicle they had attacked.
Impatient to return to the basement, she waited for the magical cavalry. They needed healers down there. She tapped her foot until the cars parked and expelled passengers. Her eyes went directly to her mother, who was making her way to Leila. “He needs his power stripped. I need two healers on the porch and several more in the basement of the house. Bring stretchers.”
Her mother’s gaze locked on to her face for a moment. People began to separate from the group, immediately responding to Leila’s directions. “You could have taken my place one day. You have the steel for it.”
It was the nicest thing her mother had ever said to her. Nic moved restlessly at her side, and she patted his thigh. “I don’t want your place. I have my own.”
Taking the key from Nic, she led the waiting healers into the sorcerer’s home.
* * * *
Nic prowled through the sorcerer’s basement. Leila had taken charge of moving the victims, directing his soldiers to carry the gurneys out after the healers triaged each one. His wolf wouldn’t settle and sent him exploring. Jake was on self-imposed bodyguard detail, following Nic wherever he went. Nic knew Jake had instructed the soldiers to never leave Leila alone with the witches and wizards.
The hall of cages opened into a room that smelled strongly of blood. An altar stood against one wall, surrounded by artifacts he would leave to the mages to dispose of. The power seeping from the objects rubbed his fur the wrong way, making him snarl. Yet he couldn’t leave the room. He was missing something.
“Leila!”
A moment passed before she appeared at his side. “You bellowed?”
So sassy. “What do you sense in this room?”
She shivered. “Forbidden magic, screams, and death.”
He nodded. “But under that. My wolf is certain we’re missing something.”
Beautiful brown eyes stared at him with intensity. “Okay.” She closed her eyes.
He felt the brush of her magic against his skin. They stood there for a long time. He let her work, his wolf satisfied his mate would discover what was troubling it.
She opened her eyes. “There is another energy signature here. Another hidden room?”
Damn. “I hesitate to touch anything here, but we can’t just leave someone trapped in the walls.”
“I only sense energy behind this wall.” She pointed to the wall he’d come back to more than once.
Nic, Leila, and Jake stared at it before spreading out to search for the hidden trigger. Carter had described the feel of the stairwell door trigger as a slight depression under the hand. They looked for the same on the wall in front of them. Nic found it exactly in the center. The door slid open, revealing a small, barely lit room. It contained a cot and a bucket in the corner.
And one very battered teenage female wolf shifter.
The adults froze as the girl curled in on herself. Shivering. Hiding. Her hair had been shorn down to the scalp. Her brown skin showed deep purplish bruises along her face, neck, arms, and legs. She wore a dirty sleeveless T-shirt and shorts. He didn’t know her. She wasn’t from the Coldwell Pack.
His wolf pushed to the surface, and so did everything that made him the alpha. Leila gasped, and the teenager cried out.
“I’m sorry, Alpha.” She uncurled from her protective ball, still scared, even as her wolf tried to show him proper respect.
He walked toward her and lowered himself to her level. “You’re safe now.”
She nodded. His wolf told him she didn’t believe him. He could see the strain in her. She was still a pup, and her instinct would be to trust him, try and get close to him so he could pet her. She jerked forward and back, and it broke his heart.
“What’s your name?”
“Tara, Alpha.” She edged tentatively forward as if she couldn’t help herself.
“And your pack, your alpha?” He watched her shrink back.
Jake exhaled heavily behind him, knowing as well as he did the response indicated nothing good about her pack.
Leila moved forward. Nic hid a smile as he sensed her wolf grow stronger as she came closer.
Tara’s head jerked up, and she froze. “Alpha.” Her voice held more wonder than fear.
Leila’s hand came to rest on Nic’s shoulder. “We’ve come to take you away from here, Tara. The sorcerer can’t hurt you anymore.”
The child nodded as her eyes darted from Leila to him. He’d tried to tell Leila how rare she was. The true female alpha could secure an alpha male’s rule. Everyone knew she wouldn’t willingly join with a weak or unworthy male. She’d challenge him until one of them died. Or she left. Nic had never actually met an alpha female before Leila. From the look on her face, neither had Tara.
Leila said, “Let the alpha carry you. We’ll have a healer look at your wounds.”
At the word healer, Tara recoiled. “No magic.” Her voice was so small.
“If they try to hurt you, I’ll hurt them worse.” Leila’s claws descended.
This seemed to settle the issue for Tara, and she finally turned to Nic, tentative trust in her eyes. He scooped her up gently. She weighed so little, and Nic struggled with his anger.
He carried her to a healer, snarling at him to be gentle. Leila stood in the child’s line of sight the entire time, carefully watching every move the healer made. By the time the healer was finished, Tara’s tense little body had relaxed into Nic. The healer, however, glanced at Leila warily, and it amused Nic and his wolf. Sometimes nonshifters could tell where the real threat was. Daughter of their Council leaders and mated to the alpha of the wolf pack, she commanded obvious power, and her wolf was still riding her. He personally thought the amber glow of her eyes was sexy.
His soldiers moved around Nic, Leila, and Tara. Leila followed the front guards up the stairs and out of the house.
Nic turned to Jake. “Stevens can’t live now. They need to know that.”
Jake broke away and headed for Winrich. Findor Stevens stood surrounded by mages to one side of the stairs. Tara cried out as she saw him. Leila shifted to half form and stormed down the stairs before he could hand Tara to one of the soldiers.
“Leila!”
She didn’t paus
e, only pushed the mages in front of her out of the way before grabbing Stevens’s head and twisting. The resulting crack was final in the quiet of the yard. She dropped him, turned, and returned to Nic’s side before taking human form again.
She stared deep into Tara’s eyes. “He won’t hurt anyone ever again.”
“Yes, Alpha.”
Tara’s small body shook, but the total devotion in those two words and her gaze told him Tara would trust Nic and his mate to keep her safe. He’d deal with the fallout of his mate killing a man later. She hadn’t always been a wolf. She might not even understand that the mama wolf in her would tolerate no threats to pups she considered under her protection. The wolf didn’t care about silly human conventions and rules.
Head high, his mate looked at him. “I’m sure they have the rest of this under control.”
Shifters snapped into action, opening the back door of the SUV for her when she stood next to it, following her orders about how to lay out a blanket for Tara next to her. The men moved faster than they even would have if Nic had been giving the directions. Jake glanced at him, one eyebrow raised. Nic couldn’t help the grin that spread across his face.
Jake only shook his head. “Well, if the pack keeps growing by leaps and bounds and you become the wolf king of North America, it won’t be a bad thing to have a queen.”
Chapter Eleven
As soon as Nic’s mother saw Tara, she promptly took over her care. He felt selfish for not realizing how much his mom needed someone to care for. He followed Leila into the alpha residence and up the stairs. She headed straight for the bathroom and started the shower. He wondered if killing Stevens was catching up to her.
He watched her strip and step into the tub before slowly taking off his clothes. He climbed in behind her, watching as she quietly soaped her arms.
“Leila, it is okay if you feel sad about killing Stevens.”
She turned to stare at him. For a really long time. “Um, okay, but I don’t feel sad or bad about it. I did the damn world a favor. We need to make sure the Council takes care of Kano and Lewis properly.”