The Vampire's Spell: The Hunted (Book 8)

by Lucy Lyons

  “Oh, no. Well, yes and no,” she replied. “Just know that those so-called High Fae are only there because they received the earth-shattering magic. But what we have, you and I, it’s what keeps the earth from shattering, and that’s just as important.” She patted my elbow. “What the Cetan conjured was the spark of magic from a long-dead Fae that she may or may not have killed eons ago. For now, take your information and use it to find the humans who are trying to steal our magic and in all likelihood our immortality.”

  “But we can’t find them because Fae already set Haley free,” I growled.

  “Oh, I didn’t say that, Alpha. We believe in justice too, you know. She helped humans attack Fae and betrayed a direct order from Master Shedu to protect you and guide you to your mates.” She smiled, and suddenly her face was hard and as alien as her eyes. “You didn’t think the Fae would just let her go after that, did you?”

  Dirk blanched. “We can’t let them kill her, Clay. She’s just a kid.”

  “She was hundreds of years old, Dirk.”

  “Not in her head, she wasn’t,” he replied. “She was like a child, so excited, so happy to be helping. She disobeyed Master Shedu and almost tore your throat out, but she was following someone’s orders. She didn’t have the cunning to act on her own.” Dirk shrugged his shoulders and sighed. “We’ve got to get her back, boss. She might be a victim too.”

  I cursed and glanced at the naiad, who was smiling sweetly at me.

  “They took her down to the wharf. She may be able to drink blood and walk in the daylight, but rumor has it that she’s terrified of water because of the years she spent in a box at the bottom of a river for the crime of existing.”

  My heart fell into the pit that was my stomach, and I hug my head. Dirk was right. We had to at least stop the Fae from driving Haley any crazier than I thought she might be. We were the strongest wolf pack in the country, and we had bond ourselves in a blood oath to protect the innocent and the helpless. I wasn’t sure Haley counted as innocent, but we wouldn’t ever know if we didn’t get her back.

  CHAPTER TEN

  “What do you mean, Fae on the wharf? Do you want us to engage or just check it out?” Colette was clarifying even as she was giving orders to the vampires who were going to take flight as soon as the last light of the sun ducked behind the horizon.

  “Right. Don’t waste too many bodies. It’s past time for us to be rescuing Rae and Ashlynn. We haven’t heard from them or felt their power in hours, and every minute that goes by without sensing them, Dirk loses a little more of his control,” I warned her.

  “What about you?” she asked, and to my credit I took a moment to think about it before answering.

  “I’m OK, but let’s not take too much more time to get our girls back, all right?” I finally replied. I’d gotten used to coordinating complex missions as a hunter for the Venatores lamiae, and I took a moment to silently thank the bastards for all the years they spent training me to compartmentalize and focus on the mission first.

  Dirk and I were standing at the crossroads, literally. If we turned right, we’d end up on the waterfront and could stop Haley’s pseudo-justice. If we turned left, we were only a city block away from Pulse and the teams that were about to go into the deep tunnels to search for our women.

  “What do we do, Dirk?” I asked him, and he glanced toward the water. “She was ready to kill me, and now I’m wondering if Ash would forgive me if we didn’t save her.”

  “That’s because she wouldn’t,” he replied. “Look. You know they’re not dead because that we would’ve felt. That means they’re probably drugged and sleeping.” I nodded and he continued. “We send a team to the water, and we go get our girls. The others don’t ever have to know what Haley did, at least not until after she’s safe.”

  “The Fae are hard to kill,” I sighed.

  “So let’s make the wolves tougher than the Fae,” he growled, and he clenched his fist, pushing raw energy into his hand. When he opened it, his fingers were claws and the back of it was covered in fur. He smoothed his unchanged hand over it, and the fur disappeared, leaving his hand smooth but with inhuman claws. “We make them all Pooka.” He turned his hands over, and in the palm of each was a small circle of light.

  He shook his hands, and they looked normal again, and he motioned toward Pulse. If we were going to do magic, especially big magic, I couldn’t think of anywhere other than the campground that would be better.

  I called Colette back and told her to hold the shape shifters up until we could join them, preferably somewhere we’d all fit together. We jogged that last block as I tried to sense Ashlynn anywhere within the city limits and failed, yet again.

  The club was nearly empty when we walked in, but Tyler, the human bouncer on duty, gave me a nod before he went back to watching the few early customers as they milled around, hunting for prime locations where they would camp all night, hoping to be seen by someone important, wealthy, or beautiful. Soon the club would be packed wall to wall with sweaty, ravenous human bodies all searching for something missing from their lives, fun, romance, excitement, and all of them blissfully unaware of the harsh reality of the battle that would leave the club shorthanded for the night.

  Henny met us at the bottom of the elevator and escorted us to the combat training room where the wolves waited. Static raised the hair on my arms as the emotional energy of the pack converged on me, and I drew as much of their power into me as I could. The energy level dropped in the room little by little until I felt like I could breathe freely and the wolves had calmed down, some of them even managing to sit on the floor as they waited for me to speak.

  I glance at Dirk and Henny in turn, shrugging. I had no idea how to share my energy. I’d acted as a focus for Caroline, so I knew it could be done, but the only power sharing an alpha wolf had to do was pull the beast out from within the human host. Wolves were separate from their magic. I was not. It was what made me different from my pack but also what made me hopeful that I could give them all the same gift I had.

  “OK, we’re going to give you some extra wild magic before you fight the Fae,” Dirk announced, “so get in a circle around us and sit or kneel. We got a little pushback when it was given to us, so don’t try to act tough or you might end up knocked out and useless for the fight.” He glanced at specific younger males as he spoke, and sheepish faces turned to the floor as they shuffled into place.

  “I’ll go get Caroline. She has the most experience with this,” Henny offered, but I caught her by the arm and shook my head.

  “She’s trying to avoid doing magic until they know how the baby will react. I can’t ask her to do that for us right now.”

  “That’s why she doesn’t wait for you to ask,” Caroline scoffed as she strode in the door, Nick following close behind. “I’ve got dampers around the baby, and the vampire watching her is immune to her baby mind games. Whether you want me or not, you got me.”

  “I’m simply curious about the new magic we felt when you came in earlier. I’ll stay out of the way.” He sat on a bench against the wall and folded his arms across his chest, and Henny and Caroline moved Dirk and I until we were close to one edge of the circle, farthest from the door.

  “OK, this will move through you all, so you need to hold hands. If you let go, you will experience some pretty . . . intense pain as the magic tries to find its way to the next body, so sit next to someone you like.” She paused, but no one moved.

  “We’re a pack. We frequently sleep in a naked puppy pile after hunts. No one’s afraid of a little hand holding,” scoffed Goldie. I flashed her a grin and winked.

  “True story,” I quipped when Caroline’s eyes shot to my face, wide with shock. “Sleep, comfort, not sex,” I added, and she looked away, trying to regain herself.

  The wolves held hands, and Dirk and I knelt facing Bernie and Steven. I put my left hand on Bernie’s shoulder and held Dirk’s with my right, and his hand gripped Steven’s shoulder. I felt a ho
t, sharp pain and looked down to see my arm bleeding, cut nearly from wrist to the crook of my elbow, and heard Dirk curse softly as Caroline did the same with him, draining blood into a bowl she’d slid on the floor between us. The blade wasn’t sliver, and the blood flow slowed almost immediately, but I scowled at Caroline all the same.

  “Oh, don’t be a baby. I’ve had to do it to myself more times than I can count, and with silver too.” She cleaned the blade on her black jeans, and I glanced over at the scars on her forearms.

  Henny had poured some of the blood into another small dish and was dipping her thumb into the warm liquid and smearing a small amount on the forehead of each wolf. Caroline took up the first bowl and did the same to myself and Dirk then moved counter clockwise to complete the circle. Usually unflappable, Bernie stared across the circle with wide eyes, sweat beading on his lip.

  “You OK, Bern?” I murmured in a low voice, even though the entire circle was made of up preternatural animals with better hearing than natural wolves.

  “I know there’s magic in us, Clay, but I’m an old fart who ain’t never done any magic that didn’t come from the moon. I just don’t need voices in my head that don’t belong to wolves,” he explained, and I nodded.

  “I can’t make you do this, but I wouldn’t send you into this battle without the extra power. The Fae aren’t just long-lived, Bernie. I’ve seen them survive damage even shifting wouldn’t heal.” I thought about Haley, with her insides on the outside, healing in a third of the time a wolf would, without expending any visible magic. “No magic, no fighting, but no shame in it, OK?”

  Bernie’s eyebrows drew down in a heavy scowl, and he curled his lip at me in a wolfish snarl.

  “The day you sit me out of a fight is the day the moon doesn’t rise, son,” he grumbled and gripped my wrist tightly. Caroline was back at my side, and when I peered up at her, she smeared blood on my forehead and grinned down at me.

  “You ready?” she asked and with a last glance at Bernie, I nodded. “Dirk, Clay, focus on your power as a whole. Don’t try to figure out what’s what—just pool it all together the way you do when you’re going to change.” I tried to obey her, afraid of what was going to pour out of us. What if she took too much, and I lost the magic I’d just started to appreciate?

  Caroline took a breath and gipped my neck and chanted. I couldn’t see Henny, but I felt her presence nearby and smelled the sandalwood in her perfume. Hippie perfume, I thought, and Caroline mentally shushed me and reminded me to focus.

  The power in the room grew rapidly until the air tasted like metal and the hair on my neck stood on end. I felt Caroline’s power move through me, and realized Henny was at Dirk’s back, mimicking Caroline’s actions exactly. Energy moved from me into Bernie, and I heard him exhale hard and then breathe in again. His shoulder relaxed under my hand, as did his grip on my wrist.

  As I watched, Bernie and Steve started to glow, like the moon was under their skin, filling them from the inside. I dropped my gaze and realized I was glowing too, and even as cool and clear as the light was, soon it was too bright for me to look, and I was forced to close my eyes and tip my head back toward the ceiling.

  Behind me I heard a low howl, answered by one and then several. I tried to pull away to look at my people, worried that the magic had forced the weaker and younger members of the pack to slip into wolf form, making them unable to roam the city without being seen. Caroline gripped my neck impossibly hard, forcing me to stay still, and the light and energy seemed to devour all the oxygen in the room. I felt pressure on my head, and the need to sleep weighed down on me until I couldn’t hold my body upright.

  I fell to my side, and there was a loud pop as I broke the connection. Light flashed through the room and a blast, just like the one that had thrown Dirk and I on our asses, blew out from our point in the circle to the walls.

  Caroline shook me, and I waved her off before struggling to a seated position and blearily peering around the room at mostly humans and some wolves as well, all wearing stunned expressions as the room fell completely silent.

  “That’s exactly what you looked like, so I’m going go out on a limb and say it worked,” Dirk chuckled, and I laughed with him. I felt exhilarated and energized as I got to my feet, the lethargy and weight gone from me. When I searched myself for the new magic, I couldn’t feel any separation between the Pooka’s magic and the wolf in me, and the beast rubbed against the inside of my skin, happily waiting to be freed.

  “I feel so strong,” Goldie gasped, and I held up a hand.

  “I’m sure you do, but no one under eighteen is fighting tonight. I need you here, safe.” Goldie opened her mouth to argue then shut it with a snap and started toward the door, stepping over wolves who were still basking in the afterglow of our power exchange.

  Henny started pulling people to their feet and reminding them of their assignments, and I held out a hand to Bernie. He took it with a shaky laugh and clambered to his feet then nudged me to turn around.

  Weaker wolves who had never been able to stave off the change under a full moon were shifting their hands to claws and back again so fast it was almost a blur to try and track them. I glanced down at my own hand and thought claws, or at least made the command, and my hand was shifted, without the pain or the time it usually took.

  “Wild magic, Bernie. That’s what separates the Fae from the halflings, and now we have it.” It bothered me that I hadn’t thought to test it out before, enjoy the gift I’d been given. Then I remembered the reason why, as Ashlynn’s pain hit me like a fist to the gut. I couldn’t hear her thoughts, but I felt the knife that entered her abdomen as keenly as if it had been in my own stomach.

  “Oh, my God, Clay. What was that?” Caroline gasped, and I coughed and tried to speak around the burning pain that was spreading through my gut.

  “Ashlynn. It was Ash. She’s hurt.” I reached out for her, but as soon as she recognized me, she shut me out, and the pain stopped as quickly as it had hit. “They stabbed her with a silver blade, and I felt it,” I said to Bernie as he held me upright. I shook him off and rubbed my stomach. “I felt it like I was the one being stabbed. Is everyone else OK?” Bernie nodded and clapped me on the back.

  “Welcome to the club, son. Whatever else you just did, you’re now bonded to your mate.”

  I groaned aloud and cursed silently to myself. I had to get Ash back before anything else happened to her. Especially if they could incapacitate me by hurting her. I grabbed the holster Caroline held out to me, a custom fit leather over-the-shoulder job left over from my Venatores days, and caught the Glock 9 mm she tossed me, sliding it home and locking it in place.

  “Good thing you’re such a hoarder, Caroline. I never thought I’d be hunting monsters again,” I quipped, and she bit her bottom lip as I felt her dismay at sending us out without her. “Don’t you worry about us. You just make sure Haley stays put and doesn’t hurt anyone. She’s little, but she may be the deadliest creature to grace that prison of yours.” I put my arm around her and gave her a half hug. “I wish we weren’t bringing this to your home, Care, especially with the baby.”

  “We owe you one, or several, Clay. Don’t you worry about us. I’ve got my ace in the hole end route, and nothing or nobody is getting to Ro.” I nodded to the waiting soldiers and we headed for the door as a unit, and I silently prayed that whatever that ace was, she never had cause to need it.

  The moon was rising as we opened the back door out of the sublevel and sent Steven and Jesus with their five-man teams to join the vampires Nick had searching for Haley. I didn’t ask them to report when they acquired their target and just ordered them to send as many as was safe to join us in the deep tunnels after she was secured.

  I hadn’t felt Ashlynn since she shut me out, but the memory of her pain urged me through the underground as fast as I could move without getting hung up on the low ceilings, my six-foot, four-inch frame bent over to avoid braining myself on the pipes that hung from the
concrete above us.

  Bernie and Jodi were with me. Dirk had taken a team and followed Nick’s second, Rachel, and half of her best soldiers down to a forgotten, old underground train project, abandoned for decades by humans and used as a sun-free travel system by the vampires to get anywhere in the city without having to set foot in the sewer system.

  I had Colette with me, the only vampire I trusted with my life. She was bonded to Caroline by their shared trauma and was the most loyal and terrifyingly vicious vampire I’d met who I hadn’t beheaded. I felt her eyes on me as we made our way through the second set of tunnels the vampires had scented humans down, and the space was getting smaller with every foot we traveled deeper.

  “Jodi, hand me your guns and shift, big buddy. You won’t fit much farther, and I can’t afford to leave you behind.” He handed me his AK 47 and a handgun, then Colette accepted his twin silver blades, two sets of handcuffs, and a Beretta, winking as he finally handed her the flak jacket he’d been wearing.

  “Shirt too, big boy,” she reminded him. “That one’s a little expensive to replace.” He took off the woven armor T-shirt, and she slung it over her arm, clucking at his muscular body in approval. “If I was going to like a boy, it could be you,” she purred, and I sighed.