by Leela Ash
“Joshua?” Bo demanded, his voice tight. He saw Derek look up and shoot him a quick, concerned glance and Bo frowned as he realized he was still pissed and some of his anger must have seeped into his tone.
With calm deliberation, Bo wiped his face clean of all expression and faced the man he had come to regard as a father and a mentor.
“You called me, Joshua?” Bo repeated.
Joshua snuck a look at Kelly that was distinctly conspiratorial as he asked, “Where have you been?”
“Out,” came the succinct response.
The pair exchanged another glance and Miles and Bryan visibly tried very hard not to chuckle.
“Rumor has it you’ve been tangling with some female on the streets,” Kelly offered in a laughter-tinged voice.
Bo’s jaw tightened in anger as his legendary temper flared. “Rumor,” he declared in a very dire tone, laden with biting sarcasm, “Must be either very daft or very idle!”
Surprised silence reigned at this deliberate affront to Miles and Roland whom were the apparent source of the tidings.
Then everyone seemed to rush into nervous speech at once in a bid to cover up. Joshua cleared his throat. Kelly loudly inquired if Tom needed to use the potty. Her son gave her an offended look that said he was big enough to use the potty if and when he needed. Jack observed in a loud voice that the windows were open, and Joshua looked cold. Drake accused Luke of cheating and Luke loudly asked if everyone wanted a drink.
Only Derek was mute. He was observing Bo out of hooded, grey eyes that shimmered like pure silver, his lean frame taut with tension.
When everyone subsided into silence, Derek spoke, his voice calm and authoritative, “Bo? Come over here for a minute. Jack and I were just considering the general layout of Weirna and the Coyana Waters nearby. Would you care to guess the exact spot where the witches’ conference is likely to be held?”
Bo threw Joshua a mocking glance, “What? Your old friend Nabradia didn’t send an invite?”
“Cut it out, Bo,” Derek ground out testily.
Bo subsided into silence at once. No one was surprised. Bo always listened to Derek, they all did. He was the leader of the Damaged Pack.
Bo strode over to the table and looked down at the map, considering.
“We need to act fast, Bo,” Luke said. “The strays seem to be turning up everywhere. You gotta get rid of them, Bo.”
“We already figured out that the stray cats and dogs in Weirna have increased because the witches’ conference is coming. Have you found a way to curtail it?” Jack asked, abandoning his game with Drake and coming to stand beside his brothers.
“Not yet,” Bo said. “But I don’t see that that’s much of a problem anyway,” he added. “They’re just strays.”
“Why are you so worried about the strays anyway?” Drake demanded, joining them at the table.
Derek flicked a glance at each face, but he kept quiet.
Bo’s jaw hardened as he read Derek’s mind. “Derek wants us to get rid of the strays because he’s realized they are not faeries on a spy mission as he’d thought at first. He’s realized they’re something far worse.”
Bo looked so serious and cold that Drake, Luke and Jack shared a concerned glance.
“What are they then?” Kelly demanded before any of the men could speak. She had materialized beside them, unnoticed.
Bo threw her a measuring look as though assessing her ability to handle the news. He flicked a glance at Derek silently asking his permission to share the news. “They are Nabradia’s gateway to Alabad.”
The words dropped like a bomb causing instant shocked silence. Even Joshua and his friends fell silent mid-speech and shot startled glances at the Pack.
“Alabad?” Kelly repeated forcing the word past her suddenly clogged throat.
“It’s the place witches go when they die,” Bo explained. “And only the truly wicked witches can return back to earth through its portal. If and when they return, they are evil itself, able to wield enough wickedness to make Nabradia look like a teddy bear.”
It didn’t sound good.
“Its portals haven’t opened for a single witch in over a thousand years,” Drake muttered as though in a daze. “How did we not see this before? The more cats and dogs and witches and shifters assembled in a place, the easier it is to crack the gates of Alabad with dark magic.”
Derek looked at Kelly, his eyes bleak and hard, “If Nabradia opens Alabad, she will unleash hell on earth and crown herself queen of it all.”
4.
Bo hadn’t been able to stop frowning in the three days since Derek’s announcement. And thanks to that announcement, every time he saw a stray cat or dog, he could literally hear the clock ticking. They were running out of time but the extra pressure on him wasn’t helping any.
He had never liked animals in the first place, maybe because he was a shifter, half-man, half-animal himself. He’d never been able to really relax around animals like most humans automatically did. Call him paranoid, but every time he saw a cat or dog, he couldn’t help wondering if his rivals, the Archstone Tribe, hadn’t discovered some new way to shift into home pets rather than bears or wolves or other shifter forms. It was a trial to have to always be on guard every time a stray cat wandered by.
Now he thought about it, he’d never known any shifter to own pets. Perhaps they all had that same secret phobia on some level?
Derek couldn’t be bothered about Bo’s ambivalence towards animals though. He wanted all the strays out of Weirna —and fast— and as far as he was concerned, Bo was just the man to do it.
Besides, Luke, Drake and Jack were working hard to find the Tiara before Nabradia did and made herself more powerful. She had cast a powerful spell on Joshua which could only be cured by using a rare and mystical flower known as the Elderwood Staff. The Pack had only learned her plans when they had used the Elderwood to cure Joshua and Nabradia had shown up and grabbed it for herself. They had no way of knowing what Tiara exactly she was after, but they did know it was supposed to make her powerful enough to bend every being —whether supernatural or human — to her will.
Derek was almost working himself into the ground figuring out a way to stall or postpone the conference at least until they had the Tiara.
With a sigh, he turned off the road and parked on the shoulder of the highway. Derek did have a point about these strays, he admitted to himself. Between the house and the highway, a less-than-five minutes’ drive, he had counted over thirty strays, which was mind-boggling!
He looked towards the long stretch of forest, he would have to investigate them. These forests marked a boundary of sorts between the Coyana Waters and Weirna. Some of the Salem Witches were clustered in a community just after the Coyana Waters. If they had something to do with the strays, it stood to reason the strays would be in the forest and around Coyana Waters.
The trees were eerily silent as he climbed out of his car and looked around. No one was in sight. He listened with his inner ear to pick up conversations or thoughts that would signal that someone else was near, but there was nothing.
With a low, satisfied growl, he raced into the forest, and as he went, his forearms thickened, fur appeared on his skin, and his legs became shorter and furry. His bear form was complete in seconds.
Free at last, his mind screamed. He threw back his head and howled, the sound an exultation and a worship. Being a shifter bear was the one solid and happy reality in his life. He felt free, unrestricted, unshackled, unbound. In his true form, he always felt like he could take on the entire world and win.
And the best part of being in his animal form was that he didn’t have to talk to anyone— at least not humans anyway.
His powerful legs easily covered the distance as he bounded through the forest. His eyes turned this way and that, his nose sniffing. He couldn’t perceive any cats close by, perhaps they had seen the bear and hidden? He wanted to know where exactly they were coming from into Weirna because
if he could trace it, then maybe he could shut off that entrance.
Bo raced around the forest for what seemed like hours, but he couldn’t find a single stray nor could he find where they were coming from.
He got to the edge of Coyana Waters and raced up to the flowing spring from the waterfall. He bent his head to drink, sighing in relief as he drank deep of the clean flowing water.
A reflection appeared in the water and he froze, recognizing instinctively the long black robes of the Salem witches. He slowly lifted his head, his heartbeat calming when he realized the young woman with fiery, flowing red locks hanging all the way down to the backs of her knees was not Nabradia. She was a very beautiful and very young witch with wide green eyes and naturally red lips pursed in a pretty pout as she stared at him.
Bo waited, watching her.
“I know you’re a shifter. It’s no use pretending to be a common animal. Come on, change back now!” she spat. Her voice was shrill and angry, at odds with her pretty mien.
Bo tossed his head like any ordinary bear and returned his mouth to the water.
The witch glared at him as he ignored her. Bo didn’t notice the ray of light that shot from her eyes to the water but when his mouth touched the water, it was scalding hot this time. He yelped and jerked backwards, landing on his back and writhing in pain.
She lifted her hand, an ugly grin spreading across her pretty face as she shouted, “Rekana Musi.”
It felt as though he were parted from his body and floating on thin air. In the twinkle of an eye his bear form had vanished and was replaced by his human form.
“My, my. Aren’t you a fine specimen of a man…” she cooed, crossing towards his prone form. “Fancy hiding all that hard, sinewy muscle under fur.”
Bo was breathing heavily as he stared up at her unable to control his limbs or move a muscle.
The witch walked over until she was standing right above him. She stood astride his still-prone body and crossed her arms over her chest.
“What do you have to say for yourself, Beaufort Kent?” she whispered.
How had she known his name? Bo wondered.
Duh, she’s a witch, his mind reminded him huffily.
He strained to listen to her thoughts, there was a jumble of so many voices screaming inside her mind, he almost went deaf at the cacophony. He turned off his ability at once.
The witch threw back her head and laughed long and hard. “Thought you could get into my mind and listen in, did you?”
Bo looked away. He was used to sifting through people’s thoughts and reading their minds but not to having people sift through his own.
“What’s your name?” he asked.
“Alcacia, handsome,” she purred. With another laugh she dropped to her knees still astride him and then laid down on him full-length.
Bo experimentally tried to lift a hand. He still couldn’t move a muscle.
He looked at her, wondering what she’d done to him.
She shrugged, reading his thoughts again and laughing as she told him, “You’re a Weirna shifter. I can’t hurt you without cause. But I can, at least, keep you in place until I’m done with you.”
He ground his teeth. He was lying flat on his back a few inches from Coyana Waters, out in the open where the Archstone Tribe or Nabradia and her band of rebel witches could have a go at him! This had to stop.
“Get off,” he growled.
“In a minute, handsome,” she purred, undeterred by his anger as she bent forward and melded her lips with his in a drugging, sensuous kiss that made his penis twitch in warning.
5.
When Alcacia lifted her head, her lips were wet from the kiss and her eyes were sleepy. Her breasts were crushed against his chest and her hands were splayed on either side of his head.
Bo regarded her, angry with himself for feeling even a tinge of desire. His lips twisted in anger as he said with biting sarcasm, “Don’t tell me witches these days are so hard up for a man they’ve been reduced to roaming the forests and taking men by force.”
Her cheeks darkened in anger and she glared down at him. At the same time, above her head, he saw a familiar curly head of hair poke through a parting of trees. The body followed the head through the parting and Jeanine stood in the clearing, lifting a hand to shade her eyes against the sun as she stared at the waterfall.
Bo held his sigh, trust Jeanine to have terrible timing. If the witch saw her, there would be nothing to stop her from killing her or hexing her.
He tried again, and to his joy, his hand lifted. He flicked it behind Alcacia in the universal ‘shooing away’ gesture while he used the other hand to hold Alcacia’s head in place, to keep her from turning around and seeing Jeanine. He knew the moment Jeanine noticed them and recognized him. Her eyes frosted over and she started marching towards them. He flicked his hand even more desperately and he saw her slow down, her eyes bouncing from his face to the back of Alcacia’s head.
He could hear her thoughts. She was furious that he was having a tryst with his ‘girlfriend’ in a ‘public park’.
Humans rarely came towards the Coyana Waters and even when they did, they couldn’t see the Salem witches’ dwelling on the other side of the waterfall. They couldn’t see the many shifter dwellings scattered around, including where the Damaged Pack and Weirna shifters lived.
Jeanine was dressed in a sweatshirt with jean shorts suspended over knee-high boots. Her curly hair curled around her face as usual and her lips were bare.
She looked at him for a moment more, then to his relief, she turned around and disappeared back into the trees.
Bo almost collapsed from sheer relief.
“What?” Alcacia demanded.
“I’m waiting for you to let me up,” he intoned.
“You’re no fun,” Alcacia harrumphed as she levered off him, careful to slide every inch of her body against his as she rose.
Something about seeing Jeanine had doused every trace of desire, tiny though it had been. She had looked at him with anger and disappointment, as though he had let her down. Plus, he had somehow felt as though he had betrayed her.
The thought angered him and he frowned at Alcacia. “What the hell was that?”
“The beginning?” she chanted, with a smile that lightened her features.
Alcacia walked backwards, smiling at him as she lifted a finger and pointed at him. The rest of the trapped sensation faded and he sat up.
“Alcacia—” he began.
But she had disappeared in a puff of wind.
“Sly bitch,” he spat.
Bo jumped to his feet and tracked Jeanine. She had been walking fast but his abilities meant he walked even faster and he caught up to her with ease.
“Hey, wait up,” he called.
She looked over her shoulder and glared, “What for? I didn’t disturb you and your girlfriend, did I? Stay away from me.”
He ran, and grabbed at her arm, “Stop.”
She did, her chest heaving as she glared up at him with stormy rebellious eyes. Bo started to speak, when he noticed with surprise that her eyelashes were wet, as though she had been crying. He blinked.
He’d always thought Jeanine was as tough as nails; the idea of her crying caused everything inside of him to revolt.
“What’s wrong?” he demanded.
She wrenched her arm from his grip, “Don’t you dare touch me until you’ve washed those hands. I don’t know where they’ve been.”
Bo chuckled at that one. But he kept his hands to himself. “Why are you crying?”
“Something got into my eyes and they watered a little, that’s all,” she lied, brimming with defiance.
“What are you doing here?” he asked in a tight voice.
She rolled her eyes, “I didn’t realize I needed permission to visit the waterfall.”
“People hardly come here,” he argued.
“You’re a person and you’re here. What makes you so special?”
“I’m
different —” he began and then realizing what he was saying he cut himself short. “What I mean is I’ve lived in the Angle all my life,” he said careful to use ‘The Angle’ instead of ‘Weirna’ because humans called the town the Angle. Then wanting to rile her, he added with a grin as smug as he could make it, “Plus, I’m a man.”
That did it. Her moodiness vanished and was replaced in an instant by red-hot anger. Her cheeks went bright red, her nostrils flared, and her hands clenched into impotent fists at her sides. She looked like a petulant child as she cried, “You did not just say that, Beaufort.”
“Everyone calls me Bo,” he reminded her.
The look she gave him was one of such withering scorn it was a miracle he wasn’t picking himself off the floor.
“Maybe so, but I think it’s a silly name. Beaufort suits you better.”
He looked away for a minute as though he were thinking then looked back at her, “Jeanine? Why are you here? Seriously?”
“I saw your truck parked over on the shoulder of the road,” she said with a nonchalant shrug. “I wanted to make sure everything was alright.”
He stared at her in silence until she began to shift in discomfort. She had been worried about him, he realized, reading her thoughts with embarrassing ease. He refused to examine why that realization made him feel tender.
“You came here because you were worried about me?” he whispered.
His voice sounded husky even to his ears. He cleared his throat and repeated the question in a gruff tone that sounded more appropriate to his ears.
“Get over yourself. I was worried about the animals,” she scoffed.
Then she turned and tramped forward, leaving him to follow if he chose or remain rooted to the spot with that idiotic, knowing grin on his very annoying face.
Bo chose the former.
“So, your girlfriend is pretty,” Jeanine observed in a suspiciously high voice.
Bo threw her a confused look and then he faced forward as he carefully said, “Alcacia is not my girlfriend.”