by Elle Thorne
That smile of hers would be gone soon enough, once he turned her over to the one who hired him. This witch would be taken to the Shifter Council to pay for her crimes.
Hawke had no use for witches. He never had, and never met a witch he liked.
Take that back, he had one use for witches. He glanced at Vengeance on his sleeve, a spider that cast enchanted webs which paralyzed and even poisoned witches. A witch had given him Vengeance in exchange for Hawke letting her live.
As if knowing he was thinking of her, Vengeance stirred, twitching one of her hairy legs, her eyes glancing in his direction. Vengeance was no small spider; she was larger than the palm of his hand. She’d been his friend, his best friend really, since about six months after Hawke left the special forces. He’d re-pledged himself to the task of seeking revenge, and Vengeance had taken to her name as if born to it.
The waiting was the hardest part. Hawke lay in hiding, patiently awaiting the return of the witch he was hunting. He had tracked her for days, learning her patterns, found out when the best time to take her would be and where.
She was a small thing, this witch, as far as height went, probably not even reaching him mid-chest. Though she was curvy, with dark brown hair that had auburn highlights and chocolate brown eyes.
Hawke knew better than to think for a split second that the height of a witch could determine the power within. He had faced a much shorter witch, and had the scars to prove it before he and Vengeance prevailed, banishing the woman to witch heaven.
Permanently.
Doubt there was a witch heaven?
All witches go to hell.
Of that, he felt certain.
Chapter Two
Alannah watched her cousin Fiona and Fiona’s mate Jonah on the balcony of Mikhail and Miriam Romanoff’s home.
They seemed so happy. Was it possible? Alannah had gone to one of the highest witches in a neighboring coven to ask for help for Fiona. She knew how important it was to Fiona that she be able to carry her shifter mate’s baby full term. It was so rare that a witch could get pregnant with a shifter’s baby, and actually carry it to birth.
Fiona had not indicated she was pregnant yet, nor had Jonah mentioned anything with his supersensitive shifter senses picking up the heartbeat of a baby or the scent of her pregnancy. But Alannah was on pins and needles. She felt responsible for their union, even though she wasn’t sure that sense of responsibility wasn’t misplaced. But still, she supported this union wholeheartedly, fear for the wellbeing of a baby aside.
She glanced down at her cell phone again. Seems that was all she was doing lately: waiting for Mireille to contact her.
Alannah’s sister Mireille had gone to Russia to study her witchcraft arts.
You’d think she could find someone locally who would be able to teach her what she needed to know. But no, not Mireille.
Mireille had to learn from the very best. She’d heard through the grapevine there was a witch, a powerful sorceress, just outside Moscow. And just like that, Mireille packed her bags.
Alannah knew she had arrived there safely. She knew she was enjoying her stay there, except for the cold weather. Neither Alannah nor Mireille were wild about snow.
But now, three days had passed.
Actually, three days, four nights. And not a word from Mireille. No call. No text. No email. At first, her phone had rang and rang when Alannah called. Now it simply rolled straight to voicemail as if the battery were dead. Or the phone had been turned off. There was no way Mireille was turning her phone off, of this, Alannah was certain. Her sister would have known the amount of stress this would’ve caused Alannah. She would never have gone without communicating.
“Are you okay?” Miriam Romanoff, matriarch of the Romanoff clan of polar bear shifters, though an Arctic fox shifter herself, wore an expression of concern.
Alannah glanced up from her phone. “I’m fine.” She placed her palm over her phone and slid it into her lap, then rose from her seat. “Excuse me for a minute.”
Alannah headed to her room in the Romanoff home. She was their guest, but it was beginning to look like she was their forever guest. She’d been staying with them since she helped Fiona and Jonah extricate themselves from the brouhaha they’d become emerged in with the Northfork witch coven.
Fiona, Jonah, and the Romanoff clan had emerged victorious, assisted by Alannah’s intervention. But Alannah’s integrity and honor in helping the Romanoff and her cousin Fiona, had put her in a bad place with Ilse, the leader of Northfork. She’d been banished from the coven. Though being away from Ilse was a bonus, Alannah did miss some of her friends at Northfork.
Realizing her homeless and coven-less predicament, the Romanoffs had been kind enough to take her in. Of course, Alannah’s little sister Mireille had been invited, too, but Mireille who had not been living at Northfork, but rather staying an hour away, had passed on the offer.
Now Mireille was…
Alannah pushed that thought away.
Mireille is fine.
She was simply being irresponsible. She was being carefree, fun-loving, Mireille.
No she wasn’t. She wouldn’t do that to me.
Alannah closed the door to her room and pressed on her sister’s photo on the phone screen. She waited for Mireille’s phone to ring.
It didn’t.
Mireille’s cheery voice popped onto the cell phone immediately. “Hi. You’ve reached Mireille. You know what to do.”
Alannah jabbed at the phone with her index finger, breaking the connection.
I know exactly what to do.
Exactly.
Chapter Three
“Why are you keeping me prisoner?” the witch whispered.
Hawke wondered if she realized he could hear her. She was confined, a captive, thanks to Vengeance’s enchanted web weaving.
He heaved an exasperated sigh, not buying her innocent act. “I have a decree from the Shifter Council. You’re standing trial for executing shifters. They’ll send a representative to pick you up and transport you there.”
And it won’t happen soon enough.
Her proclaimed innocence didn’t hold water for Hawke. Neither did the fact that she looked innocent. He knew all about the deceptive ways of witches.
And come to think of it, he’d had enough.
He turned to Vengeance perched on a wooden rail near his recliner. “I’m going to take a breather. Want to go or stay?”
She leapt from her perch, airborne for a brief second, then landed on his shoulder.
He moved toward the web the witch was enclosed in, a cage specially prepared for her by Vengeance and tossed food in. “Don’t try to escape.” He ran his fingers over the mesh of Vengeance’s web. “It’s escape proof.”
She glared hate at him through her liquid brown eyes. He turned from her and pushed the thought that plagued him to the far recesses of his mind.
That witch is about the same age Renee would have been. If she were alive.
Renee. His sister.
Anger burned anew and he slipped upstairs in the dacha he’d bought a few years ago.
He’d been in Russia visiting his great-grandfather, the last relative on his mother’s side still living in the country, when he’d run across the nineteenth century home. A dacha, his great-grandfather had explained, was a summer retreat home for Russians who were mid- to upper-class. He’d been unable to resist the architecture and had bought the abandoned building and several of the lots that surrounded it.
He locked the sturdy wooden door on the brick and wood structure, larger than a cottage, but not quite the size of some dachas that could double as a villa. He glanced back at the home. The basement where the witch was kept had blacked-out windows. It looked secure and wouldn’t rouse suspicion. He’d soundproofed the room as best he could and his property was fairly remote, so he could afford to step away for a spell to visit his aviary.
Hawke, Terrence Hawke, but commonly called Hawke, had a special touc
h with birds. Specifically, he had started as the unofficial go-to guy for peregrine falcons in the area. Then he’d become the expert on birds of prey. There was a reason for that. His mother was a falcon shifter.
A bit ironic, he thought, a falcon shifter mating with a polar bear that bore the last name Hawke. His mother went from being Belinda Vargas to being Belinda Hawke. And she delighted in telling him and Renee the irony of a falcon marrying a Hawke when they were younger. Hawke and Renee lost both parents when they were young, and then Hawke lost Renee.
Life had certainly changed for him.
He glanced at Vengeance perched on his shoulder. At least, he had her.
Pathetic, I know, calling a spider your best friend. A spider that casts enchanted webs. A spider you got from a witch who offered the spider to you so you wouldn’t hurt her.
Shifters shouldn’t get the jump on witches. They have the advantage of distance, if they are spell casters. Yet, I have my ways. Skills I’ve developed over a long time of fostering hate for that specific breed of supernaturals.
Bounties on witches paid well, and hers was a bounty he was more than willing to collect.
I wouldn’t be lying if I said the world would be better off without witches.
Hawke pushed the thoughts away. He was going to a place of goodness. His peregrine falcons were waiting for him, all in various stages of rehabilitation, some with the hope to be released, some not.
He had a couple of locals who tended to them in case he was delayed in his efforts to hunt witches.
He pulled his ATV up to the aviary, and no sooner had he stopped, than Vengeance crawled out of the hood on his back. The spider preferred to ride on his back in the confines of the hood.
Probably staying safe from the creatures that would love to swoop down on her.
He was under no illusion that his birds of prey wouldn’t love to make a meal of Vengeance. One almost had, once. Luckily, Vengeance scooted into the hood just as the falcon skimmed the tip of Hawke’s head. Then again, what would have happened to the falcon if Vengeance had spun one of her webs. Those webs were as secure as steel, this Hawke knew for a fact.
Who knew? He hated to see either the falcon or the spider hurt. That happened long ago when Vengeance was still new to him. These days, Vengeance was an old hand at either looking out for the birds or staying out of their sight altogether.
He slipped on his gauntlet and entered the aviary, larger than a football field, and was immediately greeted by Jester, his oldest and most faithful falcon.
Jester’s shadow coursed over the snow-covered ground and at the same time, Hawke felt Vengeance scurry across his shoulder and under the hood on his back, settling in place.
Jester released a greeting, the sound piercing the quiet sanctuary, then he made a power dive toward Hawke drawing up short when Hawke raised an arm. The raptor studied Hawke with an intense dark eye, turning his head this way and that.
“Don’t give me a guilt trip, Jester. I was busy. I know you’ve been well-cared for.”
Jester shook himself as if to argue that point.
“Yeah, yeah, you’re fine.”
No sooner had Hawke finished that discussion, than Erethra flew around him in a tight circle, letting out shrieks to get Jester to give up the spot.
Jester knew better than to piss off Erethra. He spread his wings and made for the skies. Right after the pressure of Jester’s talons released from Hawke’s arm, Erethra took his spot.
“I hope you’re not here to reprimand me, too,” Hawke cautioned her.
She didn’t move. Still as a statue, she studied him.
“Awww. Come on. Not the cold shoulder treatment.”
Chapter Four
Alannah shivered and pulled her jacket around her. This is exactly why I don’t like living in cold areas. She could barely handle New York. She was thinking of moving.
Yeah, but not to this damned forsaken frozen land.
Come on, it’s not that bad, she chastised herself. It really wasn’t. And yet, she felt it was. Yeah. But that was because she couldn’t find Mireille.
She’d flown in. Not exactly accurate. Mikhail Romanoff had arranged for her to fly in on his private plane.
Thank goodness for the Romanoffs, she thought, for what must have been the millionth time.
Mikhail had friends in Moscow who picked her up at the airport and delivered her to Mireille’s apartment. With a whole lot of begging and quite a bit of bribing, Alannah had convinced the building manager to let her into her sister’s apartment. Well, actually she’d also promised to have dinner with the old lecher, but she had no intention of following up on that part of the bargain.
Mireille’s place had been left as if she’d planned to come right back. She’d had meat thawing on the counter, meat that now had maggots in it. Alannah shuddered at the memory of the wriggling white horrid little creatures.
She’d called Miriam as soon as she figured out that whatever had happened to her sister, it wasn’t good.
“Hold on.” Miriam’s voice was muffled then she had handed the phone to Mikhail.
“The driver’s on his way back. I just texted him from my phone. He’ll take you to a wolf shifter that freelances. He’ll track her. Call me when you find her. Don’t put yourself in any dangerous situations. We can have boots on the ground there in no time at all to help you.” He barked his orders, clearly a man accustomed to having his commands obeyed.
“Thank you, Mikhail.”
“There’s something else,” he said.
She didn’t like the tone of this voice.
“The witch’s name you gave me, she’s not in Moscow. Hasn’t been teaching for ages. In fact, she’s gone to the Hermitage.”
The Hermitage, an isolated abandoned monastery tucked into the Pontic Mountains in Turkey. A place where witches went to disconnect from others, connect with their essential nature. It allowed witches to sharpen their skills.
“I’m going to send one of the boys there to Russia, just to be sure everything goes without any issues.”
“I’m sure that’s not necessary,” Alannah countered.
“Maybe not. But I’ll feel better if either Jonah or Isaac fly on over.”
Alannah knew better than to argue with Mikhail. “Thank you.”
They arrived at the address for the freelance tracker. The driver that Mikhail had arranged for Alannah was a few feet away at the end of the alley. She waited in front of a metal door, on a metal building, in an industrial area in Moscow. The only thought that came to mind was gray. Everything seemed gray, and it wasn’t just because Mireille was missing. It was dreary and dingy.
And it made her feel hopeless about finding her sister. This wasn’t the train of thought she wanted to have. She wanted to find her sister. Should she contact the police? Would they ask questions about why Mireille was here? If she told them she was here to study, would they want to know where? How could she tell her she was here to tutor under a witch?
So, here Alannah stood, looking for the tracker since she had no idea where to find her sister and no one she could turn to without arousing the wrong kind of suspicion.
She rubbed her hands together against the frosty weather and then knocked again.
Odd, how does knocking when your hands are cold hurt more than when they’re not?
The door opened. An unshaven face peered at her from under an unkempt mop of blond hair mixed with steely gray. The eyes narrowed. “Da?”
“You speak English?”
More narrowing. The door closing slightly.
“Please. I need help. Do you speak English?”
“What do you want?”
“I’m looking for Anthony.”
His jaw tightened, bristly hair moving with muscles that clenched and unclenched.
“I’ll pay.” She’d forgotten to use the magic words Mikhail had told her. He’d said nothing would get her as much help as money would.
The door opened a slight bit. “How
much.”
“A thousand dollars. Cash.”
He practically drooled. “For what?”
“I’m looking for my sister. I heard you were a good tracker,” she paused, suspicion at the forefront, “if you’re Anthony.”
“I am.” He shook his head, making his hair fall back, allowing her a better view of a face that was lean and haggard with a hungry expression. “Let me get my coat.”
He closed the door, not inviting her in.
Rude, she thought. But down deep, she was happy about it. Judging from the smells that wafted from the room behind him, she wasn’t sure she wanted to be in that stench.
She walked toward the car that had brought her here. The driver stepped out. All muscles and hardcore expression. “All okay?”
She nodded. “He’s coming.” I hope.
No sooner had she said that than the lean shifter in a denim jacket that had seen better days slammed the door to the warehouse behind him and strolled her way, a Cheshire cat grin barely concealed on his thin lips.
Until he saw the driver. He froze. “Who’s he?”
“He’s the driver.”
“No. He looks like he’s official. I don’t do official.”
The driver’s face grew harder with a scowl. “What’s the problem?” He addressed the question to Alannah, ignoring the wolf shifter.
Alannah shrugged, frustration setting in. This was not going to work. She had a sister to find.
She stormed and stomped her way toward the wolf shifter and grabbed his jacket by the lapels. She held her breath against the smell of it.
How the hell could a tracker—a shifter with supernaturally sensitive smelling abilities—stand that malodorous jacket. Or for that matter, his stinking home.
Still not breathing, she drew her face close to his, nose to nose. “Look. You’re going to help me find my missing sister, and by damn, you’re not going to give me a bunch of shit. Now I’ll pay you—”
She gulped because she’d have to borrow more from Mikhail for this one. He’d already let her borrow some for the trip, but this would take away every penny. She wouldn’t be able to buy a meal. Or anything. “—I’ll pay you fifteen hundred dollars.” She jerked on the jacket. “You got that?” She fought the urge to use magic on him. She knew shifters didn’t usually care for witches, especially the uneducated shifters, and this one, he seemed like he hadn’t made it passed third grade.