by E. A. Copen
I walked back to where Sal and Ed waited. Sal sat very still, but upright and sure to keep his head above Ed’s. He looked stiff and favored the injured side, but someone who didn’t know him very well wouldn’t have noticed anything was wrong. Sal would keep it that way as long as he could and project the image of power and control over the situation. The look he wore on his wolfish face straddled the line between alert and irritated.
Meanwhile, Ed paced in a wide circle that stretched between where his alpha sat and where Reed had disappeared, his nose to the ground and tail low, but not tucked. When I came close, Ed casually picked up his pace as he circled, making sure that he crossed in front of me before I reached Sal. He stopped an arm’s length away, stretched, yawned, and sat between Sal and me. Protective mode it was, then.
I scratched Ed behind the ears and squatted to get a better look at the burn on his nose. It was red and raw, but healing. There were other patches of singed fur all the way down his back, but he looked unharmed. “Ed, I’m going to need you to shift back if you can. The police want a statement, and it seems you know more about what happened here than the rest of us.”
Ed’s tongue, which had been hanging out, rolled back into his mouth. He pricked his ears, glanced back at Sal, and let out a slight whine.
“Sal is going to heal. He’ll heal better if we can get him out of here and away from all these people where he can focus on that instead of trying to be stoic and badass.” My comment drew a huff from Sal, and the werewolf straightened his back, bristling. I ignored him. “Besides, the two of you are sitting right where the officers need to be to begin their investigation. You’re in the way of progress here, boys.”
At that news, Sal stood. Ed trotted back to stand shoulder to shoulder with him, gently supporting him from the injured side. Sal’s limp was barely noticeable as the two of them walked back toward the line of police cars. Tindall and the officers waiting with him stepped aside to allow the pair to pass. The werewolves didn’t stop walking until they were far removed from the crime scene and safely hidden beside the second ambulance.
I put a reassuring hand on Tindall’s shoulder as I passed, following the wolves. “Leave your men and come help me get this statement, will you?” I didn’t need his help, but I did want a witness. Given my unusual relationship with the werewolf pack and my involvement with the incident, I wanted to head off any potential conflicts of interest before they ever got started.
When we made it to the ambulance, Ed had already begun his change. The soft, pained whines and cracking of bone coming from beside the ambulance gave him away. Sal growled at our approach and Tindall froze, his hand straying toward his gun.
“Easy,” I said and grabbed Tindall’s wrist. “That wasn’t an aggressive growl. Just one to let you know how grumpy and alert he is.”
Tindall relaxed but frowned. “I don’t know how you can tell the difference, Black. I’ve been working with supernaturals for years. To me, a growl is a growl.”
“Comes from spending so much time with them. You pick up a little body language here and there.”
“He’s not going to change back, too?” Tindall cast Sal another wary glance as the werewolf shifted his weight away from the injured side. Either he was in too much pain to continue hiding it, or he didn’t consider Tindall a threat.
“Sal will heal faster this way.” I turned to Sal and tried to ignore the loud, wet ripping sounds of Ed’s change. “Sal, where’s Mia?”
Sal jerked his head to the side. I followed the motion and leaned to get a better look. His truck was parked a short distance away, right next to a motorcycle I recognized. It was Bran’s Harley, and Bran leaned against it with Mia in his arms. When I’d thought of what a mean outlaw biker might look like before I’d met the Tomahawk Kings, Bran was the image I would have called up. Bran was a huge, hairy guy of Japanese and Russian heritage. He had a green Mohawk, wore plenty of studded leather, and never went anywhere unarmed. He was also the most pleasant member of the Kings, despite being their sergeant at arms. As odd as it might have looked to everyone else to see a big katana-carrying biker cuddling a sleeping toddler, to me, it looked natural now.
I gave Bran a wave that he returned and turned my attention to Sal. “Will you let me see?”
Sal huffed as if to say, “It’s not that bad.” Translation? It hurts like hell, but I don’t want to seem like a wimp in front of another man. Typical.
I came closer and knelt, looking at the cut on his shoulder. Now that I had enough light to see, it looked worse. It wasn’t just a simple slice. The blade must have been hot when it sliced into Sal because the edges of the wound were dark. Black fur surrounded the wound and blood still oozed from the hole. He flinched slightly when I touched it, and I could see the white of bone. “It should have healed more than this,” I said and looked Sal in the eyes. “Silver?”
He snorted and shook his head.
“If not silver, then maybe it was spelled.”
“It smells fae to me.”
I looked beyond Sal at Ed, who lay curled up on the ground with his back to me. Tindall pulled open the ambulance doors, dug around until he found a blanket and handed it to me. I stepped around Sal and placed it on the ground within Ed’s reach. Most werewolves didn’t much care about being naked in front of people, but given the crowd and the news vans that had started pulling in, I figured Ed would want to cover up. He sat up stiffly and grabbed the blanket, pulling it over him without unfolding it.
“Fae?” I tried to call up a mental image of Reed’s sword. The one he had tonight looked just like his normal weapon of choice. Ed had been in that incinerator with me when Reed deflected all that fire, and he’d seen Reed use that sword several other times as well. “Has it always smelled fae to you?”
Ed shook his head, his shaggy brown hair bouncing. “I don’t get to smell his sword that often, to tell the truth. Usually, when that thing comes out, my ass is in the fire already and he’s saving my bacon, not burning it to a crisp.” He rubbed the healing sore on his nose and winced.
I waved a hand over the wound again, this time concentrating on the flow of energy around it. There was magick there, all right, but it felt residual. That meant it was on the blade itself and not on Sal. That was good. With a little healing magick, Sal could pull simple spellwork like that apart. Unfortunately, he couldn’t do much while he was still a wolf, and shifting might make the wound worse.
“Will he heal?” Tindall pointed at Sal.
Ed closed his eyes and leaned against the squad car’s wheel. “You said you had questions.”
“Yeah. What the hell happened, Ed? Why were you even out here?”
“Mara.” Ed’s voice was a strained whisper.
I looked up at the barn fire. Even with all that water pouring down on it, the fire was still raging. It dawned on me why Ed might be out this far, alone, so late at night, without telling anyone where he was going. A terrible, sick, and sinking feeling settled over me. “Oh, my God,” I said, fighting panic in my voice. “Was Mara in there?”
Chapter Three
Ed shifted the blanket across his lap and reached up to scratch his face. He winced when he accidentally rubbed the scab off the end of his nose.
The red and blue emergency lights reflected over the side of his face, betraying healing bruises. “No,” he said at length. “I’m not sure where Mara is right now.”
He chose his words carefully so that it wasn’t a lie. Werewolves and lots of other supernaturals can sense when someone is lying. I’m not one of them, but Ed had grown up in werewolf packs. He knew how to lie without lying.
“Tell us what happened, son,” Tindall said, putting his hands on his hips.
Ed looked at Sal. “Someone should stop the bleeding.” He nodded to his alpha’s wound.
I climbed into the open squad car and rooted around for sterile gauze, antiseptic, and medical tape. While I was looking, the EMT popped around the side of the ambulance that was free of werewol
ves and asked if I needed a hand. I leaned back out the door. “Will you let him help?”
Sal’s answer was a huff and a roll of his eyes as if to say, “I’m a werewolf, not a monster.”
“You should be okay to try to patch him up,” I told the EMT. “But don’t bother with stitches. They’ll tear out when he shifts back. Just get the bleeding to stop.” I hopped back out of the ambulance while the EMT gathered his supplies. “Okay, Ed, tell us what you were doing out here.”
Ed chewed on his lower lip.
I turned my head to Tindall and the EMT. “Give us a minute and some privacy, would you?”
Tindall nodded. Ed scrambled to tuck the blanket around him toga-style. We still weren’t out of Sal’s hearing, but human ears wouldn’t have been able to pick up anything we said. I stepped forward to grab Ed by the arm and lead him off a few paces. Ed jerked his arm away and snarled at me, the unfamiliar sound freezing me in place. Sal, Valentino, and Nina had all growled at me at one time or another, but to have Ed do it felt unnatural.
Ed turned on me. His upper lip twitched as if he wanted to curl it back and show his teeth, but he didn’t. “I’m not the same person I was two years ago, Judah. Don’t think you can scare me into telling you anything.”
“That was not my intention, Ed, and you know it. Come on. I thought you knew me better than that.”
He turned away and stared at the burning building in silence.
I sighed and forced my shoulders to relax before I uncrossed my arms. “I know that, if Mara was in trouble, you probably wouldn’t tell Agent Judah Black anything, Ed. I know you’re pissed at me for how the situation was handled at Aisling.”
“You let Mara get tortured. By a vampire. You traded her like currency.”
I winced.
“You killed her parents in front of her,” Ed continued. “I know they were bad people and that they were hurting her, but imagine what that was like for her. You killed her parents and then tried to be her parents. She felt like your prisoner.”
He wasn’t wrong. I hadn’t seen it at the time because I thought I was saving Mara. Instead, I smothered her and pushed her further down a path that took her dark places. She was Ed’s first real love. I had hurt her, and by extension, him.
“I can’t change what happened,” I said. “I would if I could, but I can’t. The past sucks. Mara’s especially. I won’t sit here and fight to justify all the decisions I made, but yeah, some of them were bad. For that, I’m sorry.”
Ed lifted his chin. “Sorry doesn’t take away the scars. Sorry doesn’t take away the night terrors and heartache. It doesn’t fix Mara.”
“No,” I said gently. “It doesn’t.”
The firefighters shouted directions back and forth and the fire blazed, but we stood in strained silence.
“I know you wouldn’t tell Agent Black about Mara, but would you tell a friend who shed blood with you? For you? Someone who just wants to know she’s safe and loved.”
Ed’s throat worked. The wind shifted and blew smoke and ash toward us. I blamed that for the tears Ed wiped away. “I couldn’t stop her in time.”
I raised a hand. “Hold up. Let’s start from the beginning, okay?”
Ed nodded and swallowed. “Mara was never really missing. I’ve known where she was this whole time. Actually, I’ve been helping her stay under the radar.”
He turned to gauge my reaction. I wasn’t surprised to hear that Ed had been helping her, only that she had stayed so close to home and been so successful. The whole county was looking for Mara, and I sent her picture nationwide. I had been outsmarted by two kids who weren’t old enough to drink.
I must not have looked too surprised, either, because Ed lifted his chin and continued, bolder. “We’d been seeing each other weeknights. The place we meet changes, but it’s on a rotating schedule. I knew something was wrong, that something had changed, but she wouldn’t tell me what it was. Over time, she has gotten more distant. I thought she just needed space. Then, last week she…” He choked and put a hand over his mouth. It was several minutes before he could compose himself. “She said we couldn’t see each other anymore.”
“Oh, Ed. Breakups are always tough.” I reached forward to put a reassuring hand on his shoulder, but he jerked away.
“It wasn’t a breakup! I mean, not a normal one. It was that stupid cult, that boy she was hanging out with, Warren Demetrius.”
I held up my hands. “Slow down, Ed. What cult?”
He huffed out a deep breath and tilted his head to the side, thinking hard. “Do you know anything about the Tribulation Adventists?”
I knew enough to be worried the minute he brought them up. The Tribulation Adventist Church was a Christian fundamentalist group, an offshoot of Pentecostals, I think. They sprang up right in the middle of the Revelation and were one of the first groups to openly embrace supernaturals. That might sound good, but I promise you it isn’t. The church was exclusively supernatural and preached a doctrine straight out of the book of Revelations. According to them, we were living in the end times for humanity, soon to be replaced by a chosen, superior race of supernaturals. They weren’t openly anti-normative human, but BSI had kept tabs on when and where the church operated and how as well as they could. When the government flags a fundamentalist religious group for surveillance, nothing good is happening.
“Yeah,” I said. “Sorta. I mean, I only know the basic info BSI sends out in their e-mails. Why?”
“Well, Mara started hanging out with one of them. A guy named Warren. His dad is the leader of the group here in Concho County. About nine months ago, they purchased a parcel of land not far from here and started to build.” Ed made a sour face. “Then, out of the blue, Mara says she can’t see me anymore. She’s going to be with Warren now in his dad’s little cult. Thing is, I’m not convinced he isn’t manipulating her somehow, maybe with magick.”
That didn’t sound like the Mara I knew. She might have been desperate to find somewhere to belong, but she wasn’t stupid, and she wasn’t mentally weak. If the church tried to pressure her, she’d never cave. She wasn’t the type to do well in a cult. She liked her independence too much. Ed was right. It didn’t seem like something she’d do of her own free will, but I hadn’t seen Mara in almost a year.
“She was hiding out in a women’s shelter,” Ed continued. “Moved around a lot to keep from being noticed. She wasn’t interested in the cult at first, but the more she hung out with Warren, the more she talked about it. I think she might have gotten involved with rem. I know the Tribulation Adventists use it.”
Rem. Holy hell, this was bad news. Rem was the street name for a drug that was a cross between magickal speed, LSD, and heroin. It’s little sister, Pixie, had started showing up on the streets of Eden a few months back and Tindall was having a hell of a time combating it. Made from some plant that had been imported from Faerie, the name of which I couldn’t pronounce, rem had two uses for magickal practitioners. First, it was, well, magickal speed. It would keep you going for crazy amounts of time without sleep or rest. That made it popular with stressed-out teens and college kids. The second use was a massive ability boost. I could spark a tiny flame in between my fingers with a snap. With a hefty dose of rem, I could probably call up fire hot enough to burn bone to ash.
“I tried to check in on her. Then she stopped answering her cell. She didn’t answer her e-mail or text. I spent the last two days trying to get in contact with her before I resorted to…other things.”
“Other things?”
Ed nodded.
When he didn’t elaborate, I pressed, “What kinds of other things?”
“Magick.” He wiggled his fingers in the air, forgetting he was holding up the blanket. As soon as it started to slide, he grabbed for it and tucked it better.
I waited for him to smile, laugh, or otherwise make a gesture that said he was joking. Time stretched on into more uncomfortable silence before he stuck out his hand, palm up. “Give me you
r cell.”
“Why?”
“Do you want to know how I tracked Mara here or not?”
I glanced back at the ambulance. The EMT was wrapping some gauze around Sal, and Tindall was pretending not to be interested in our conversation. “Okay, Ed. You’ve got my attention.”
I tugged my cell phone from my pocket and slapped it into Ed’s hand. He immediately squatted down to draw a circle in the dirt with his finger. A few inches inside the big circle, he drew a smaller one and then started connecting the two with several lines. It only took me a few seconds to recognize the simple circle. It was the one everyone started with.
Circles aren’t inherently magick, not until you add something to make them so. Usually, that’s a drop of blood, spit, or some other bodily fluid, depending on the purpose of the circle. With that and focused will, just about anyone with a hint of magickal talent could perform simple spells inside the circle. Inside a powered circle, energy is amplified, and since the circle acts as a barrier, the energy stays inside, trapped and feeding off whatever’s inside as a fuel source. Fire and water were standard offerings, though you could use almost anything. Whatever you put in that center circle as a fuel source, however, changed the nature of the spell so you had to be careful. Putting anything living inside that center circle to be consumed was not something a person with good intentions would do.
Once he was finished drawing the connecting lines, Ed placed my cell phone in the center circle. He fiddled with a few buttons to find my GPS program and then put it back down. He plucked a few hairs out of his head and tossed them into the inner circle under the cell phone before he closed the circle with a little spit. A small static charge zipped around the outer circle and then funneled to the inner circle. There weren’t any magick words for Ed’s spell, but he did spend a few minutes sitting there with his eyes closed and kneeling at the edge of the circle, long enough that the backlight on my phone turned off. I was just about to interrupt him when the light turned back on and my phone made a sound I’d never heard it make before. The GPS program queued up with a message that said it was searching. The map zoomed in, first on Texas, then Concho County, then on the nearby county road.