by Harry Nix
Alex took his hand off the wall and turned to Nia. “Done,” he said.
Nia was already texting.
“Five minutes,” she said.
Alex looked around the kitchen and the small corridor that led to the lounge. His impulse upon having a parent visit was to clean the hell out of everything, but there wasn't much to be done about state of the house itself. Since they'd been there, they'd cleaned as best they could, but the fact was it was quite old and required more patching and money poured into it. Alex hadn’t bought this and the other properties for their quality, but for their isolation. Still, as he looked at a hole in the wall, he wondered if it would have been better to buy a higher-quality house somewhere in the city.
Nia, for her part, went rushing around, straightening up things before grabbing Alex by the hand and dragging him outside. April was nowhere to be seen. She wasn’t in with the mages so Alex assumed she was perhaps in one of the adjoining yards making the grass grow or nature bloom. As he thought of her, Alex realized he hadn't tried drawing on the nature mana again outside of his time with April. Even though it was a significant advancement, there were so many things in his mind that he’d just pushed it aside.
He brought up his spell screen as he waited out front of the property. The nature mana was full to the top but he thought it was worth trying to access it anyway. Down the street was a scraggly tree, barely holding on. Letting out a few breaths, Alex tried to replicate the feeling he’d had of being surrounded by nature, of being aware of every plant. For a moment there was nothing, just the sound of distant cars and the smell of the hot sidewalk with the sun beaming down on it. Then, like a tiny beacon lighting up in his mind, he became aware of the tree. It had been badly planted and wasn’t entirely suited for this climate and so was stressed, not getting enough water, and the sidewalk was too close to it. It had dug down with a large taproot but still was struggling to get enough water. Alex was momentarily distracted from the thought of Julius arriving by the plight of the tree. He was fairly sure trees didn't have feelings but somehow it felt like there was an emotional component to it, as though he was upset now about the struggling tree. Was this how April felt?
Alex took another breath and then gently drew on the nature magic, pulling it through the tree. It was difficult. Only a trickle of it came, a few small green sparks popping out of the air and floating across to Alex.
“Is that you or is April nearby having sexy thoughts?” Nia asked, watching the green sparks wide-eyed.
“It's me. I think I learned how to draw on nature,” Alex said.
“Wait till Juno hears about this. It’s going to be handkerchiefs out of the butt time again,” Nia said. She laughed and so did Alex but then her face went somber. She wiped away a tear and sniffed. Alex wrapped his arm around her, and she put her head on his shoulder, wiping away another tear at the thought of Juno.
“What if they kill her before we find her?” she asked in a small voice.
“They won't. I think they took her so I'd come to find her, and then they’ll try to kill us all,” Alex said. He knew it wasn't a comforting thought that they’d all possibly be murdered, but somehow he just knew that Juno was alive, and if that was true then the next part was almost certainly true. It was a trap, a lure, and Alex was going to step right into it to save his little witch mate.
Soon two cars appeared at the end of the street. After parking, Julius and the other six members of his pack approached the house. Out on the sidewalk, there was no way to draw a line so Alex went to the small patch of dirt beside it and scraped his foot in it, before holding out his hand to pull Julius across it and then the rest of the pack.
Julius was wearing a pair of board shorts and a Hawaiian shirt with pineapples on it. He also had on a pair of sunglasses and a Panama hat. He gave Alex a fierce hug before hugging and kissing his daughter.
“Dad, are you on a beach vacation or something?” Nia teased him, touching his shirt.
“Haven’t you heard? It’s holiday season. We need to fit in with the tourists,” Julius said. The rest of his entourage were dressed similarly to him, although perhaps less garishly. After a few minutes of chitchat, Julius nodded to Alex, grabbed a bag off one of his pack members, and split away from them.
“Need somewhere private to talk,” Julius said. Alex began leading him into the factory to the office before realizing there was only one chair in there now, after the other had been destroyed in a telekinesis accident.
He stopped in the doorway and that's when Julius saw the two mages tied to the metal beam. Even though he was in human form, he let out a growl, then stormed over to them, Alex following behind.
“They’re Ignis,” Alex said.
“I know, I’d recognize those burn marks anywhere,” Julius said, looking at the scarred mage. He squatted down to get a closer look at the two of them, let out another growl, then walked away, heading out the front. Alex hurried to catch up as Julius stopped out on the sidewalk, his hands clenching around the handle of the bag he was carrying.
“I know the feeling,” Alex said.
“I just want to shred the meat from their bones,” Julius said. He seemed to get a hold of himself. “Is there somewhere else we can talk?” he said.
Alex decided on the picturesque garden that April had created. It adjoined a somewhat rundown garage but it had benches in it and some leftover tools as well as chairs to sit on. He led Julius next door, down through the desolate backyard and through the gate where they found April sitting naked, cross-legged, with her eyes closed underneath a tree as though she was meditating. A small haze of green sparks drifted around her head. She opened her eyes as serenely as a Buddha as the two of them walked through the gate.
“Oh, hi, Julius,” April said.
“April,” Julius said, laughing to himself.
“I presume you guys want some privacy?” April said. She stood up and gathered her clothes which were piled nearby and then walked past the two of them, giving Alex a quick kiss as he went.
“Alex,” she said with a nod as she walked out through the gate, closing it behind her.
“You should see the stuff the forest nymphs get up to. Come across a group of them and it's just nakedness as far as the eye can see,” Julius said.
Not knowing what else to say, Alex focused on that. “Are there forest nymphs in your territory?” he asked.
“Over near the edge of it there are. Let’s just say before I had a pack and a whole bunch of wives, I had quite a good time visiting them,” he said. Alex laughed and then led Julius over to the shed, but with the heat of the midday sun it was baking hot in there so they ended up back on the grass. It a little incongruous to the seriousness of the meeting that Alex was planning. They ended up sitting down on the grass, and Julius wasted no time opening the bag and pulling out some maps which he passed to Alex.
“The first one is the territories, the packs as they stand the best I can tell right now. I've marked on there the packs that had werewolves taken for that blood golem. There’s three within just a few miles of Baxter and if you’re looking for allies, I think they're the ones that will help you,” Julius said.
“We definitely need allies after Ignis attacked and killed ten of us,” Alex said.
Julius winced for a moment, baring his teeth. “What did I tell you about not telling another alpha things? Especially about how many pack members you have,” he said.
He passed the second map to Alex. “Here are locations of attacks from both mages and vampires. The thing I know about them is they’re lazy, which means the more attacks in an area, the more chance there are vampires or mages living nearby. It's hard to find them with the wards, but, you know, wards can break.”
Alex opened the map and saw it was similar to the first one with the territories on it except this one had colored dots and triangles drawn on it. The triangles were vampires and the colored circles were mages, according to the key. The most heavily dotted regions were near Baxter itse
lf. There was another area about ten miles out that was surrounded by dots and triangles.
Alex pointed to it. “Does that mean there's something out there in this region, like a compound?” he said.
“I think there is. We’ve gone looking for it before but can't seem to find it,” Julius said.
After handing over the maps, Julius sat back on the grass and looked at Alex. He could feel the older werewolf studying him. The last time they'd seen each other, Alex had been in a room at the mansion in the territory he had acquired, freezing his ass off, trying to work on enchanting rings. Julius had come in to talk with him and seen all his failed experiments, broken and blackened rings and bits of jewelry. Although it wasn't that long ago, Alex had come a great way and he could now reliably enchant rings, although the number of spells he had to put on them was quite low.
“I think they took your wife to make a trap for you,” Julius said finally.
“That's what I think too. So I took those Ignis mages. Hopefully they'll hand over an address, then I'll go there, and if Juno isn't there, I’ll kill nearly everyone and take more mages and find out another address and keep going. I’ll drown the entire enclave in their own blood until I find her,” Alex said. The anger that usually came up when he thought about them taking Juno seemed strangely absent. There was only that cold chill, the hardness that could not be bargained with. Julius must have sensed it because his face grew serious.
“That's one way of going about it, but I'm not sure you can do it alone. Do you have any plans to make any alliances at all?” he asked.
Alex suddenly understood that Julius and Nia must have been talking, perhaps more than he assumed. That was fine. What girl didn't talk to her father for advice right through her life and, hell, he could use it. If Julius had good ideas, he'd take them.
Alex had chewed over how to make alliances more than once, but he couldn’t see a clear way forward. There was the risk of outright war or that he’d have to kill an alpha and lose the pack anyway.
He glanced down at his rings, and like a bolt of lightning from the sky, it hit him. Trade rings for alliances. After all his couldn't be the only pack out there that was being attacked.
“How many fireball rings do you think a pack would need to agree to help me? Those, shield, and healing rings, that's what I can give them right now,” he said.
Julius looked down at Alex's hands and raised his eyebrows.
“Werewolves don't much like magic. I mean we use it—we get rings, shifter charms, wands occasionally… it could work. How many rings do you have?” he asked.
Alex could almost hear the test in the question. He shook his head. “I have enough,” he said, a slight smile on his face at the gentle challenge from the alpha.
“Good, you’re learning. Yes, that could work. Give me some numbers of what you’re willing to offer, and I can go out beyond the closest packs. I’ve had dealings with almost all of them except the wild and crazy ones. If you give me samples of the rings and promise that you can make enough to fill the promises, I'll go out there and make alliances for you. But if I say I need a hundred shield rings, you need to deliver. My word is my bond,” Julius said.
Alex unscrolled the map of the werewolf territories and packs. There were a lot of werewolf packs out there, but they were fractured and fighting against each other. Some were in open warfare and others barely tolerated packs on their borders.
Julius had tried for years to impose a kind of civilization over the werewolves. Rules of challenge in combat that some of the werewolf packs had accepted and even attempts at modernization such as building structures on their lands so they could keep them against the vampires and mages who often sought to drive them off it. One of the old maps Alex had seen in Julius’s home had shown packs holding enormous amounts of territory that was slowly whittled down over the years until the pack was extinguished. The mages and vampires never stopped, even if it took them decades to get what they wanted.
“I'll count the rings and work out an offer. How soon will you be able to go back out there?” Alex said.
“We can leave tomorrow. I made certain promises to certain pack members about barbecue chicken wings and all-you-can-eat pancakes. I don't fulfill that, I'm a dead werewolf,” he said with a chuckle.
The two of them left the garden and went back to the house where Julius suddenly transformed from powerful alpha werewolf to a kindly grandfather, showering chocolate bars and toys upon the children.
Nia sidled up to Alex and wrapped her arm around him as he watched the children clamoring around Julius.
“Did I do good inviting him here?” she said. He knew that she was gently prodding him, but she'd been right. He had to get out of that mindset of doing everything alone. Even though he hadn't grown up werewolf, it was clear he was starting to adopt the traits of that side of him, and perhaps going too far. After all, humans hadn't come to dominate the surface of the earth and almost every species upon it on their own. They worked together. The pack was always stronger than the individual and logically it meant that packs of packs would be stronger again.
“You did good,” he told his mate and then gave her a kiss.
8
“25 Smith Street. What does it look like?” Alex said.
“Yellow house. Flower boxes. Definitely a hotbed of necromancer activity,” Jacob said, the boredom evident in his voice.
It was the day after Julius's visit, which had been short but sweet. He and his pack had stayed in a hotel in town but then he’d come back in the morning and Alex had handed over almost every fireball, healing flame, and shield ring that he had, keeping a few aside to sell to keep their cash pile growing.
He told Julius he had the capacity to make a lot of rings and rather than giving him a number to use in the deals, he’d asked Julius to just make them and then it would be on Alex to fulfill them. Julius had chewed that over with Alex for a while, eventually coming up with a supply contract agreement that if Julius promised a hundred rings they would come in batches over time.
Once Julius was gone, Alex had taken Jacob out to see if they could pinpoint the location of the ward that they'd stumbled across days ago.
For the last few hours they’d been going house by house, marking it on the map, describing what the house looked like, before driving along one more house, hoping to find the exact point where they lost consciousness of what they were doing.
“Oh, look, 27 Smith Street. This one is a yellow house as well but no flowers. Wow, such variety, this is clearly another necromancer hideout,” Jacob said, scribbling down notes on the pad.
“What? Did you think we’d be fighting mages all day long?” Alex said.
“No. I mean… maybe one or two,” Jacob said.
“Taking on insidious mages means we have to do some boring stuff, sometimes,” Alex said and tapped the gas.
“What the hell?” Jacob said, snapping Alex out of his daze. He immediately hit the brakes. Because it was the daytime, a car pulled up short behind him and immediately honked its horn. Alex waved an apology and pulled off to the side.
“Where are we?” he said.
He finally spotted a sign, and although Jacob was as excited as he was, he was still a sarcastic teenager. “Oh, look at that. Jones Street. We've gone from Smith Street to Jones Street. Like, even the street names are boring around here,” he said.
“Just shut up and find it on the map,” Alex said. Jacob spotted it on the map. They were three miles away from Smith Street.
“That’s it. We've got them,” Alex said.
He drove back toward Smith Street, heading for the houses he knew were outside the ward radius. As he got closer, he pulled up his spell screen and immediately it flipped by itself to the spiky black runes. Alex wasn't quite sure it was because he desired it or whether the spell had a mind of its own. Immediately it throbbed, then a minute or so passed before it throbbed again. Each time made Alex grit his teeth. By the time the car passed 25 Smith Street, his h
ead was aching, and his nose was starting to run.
“Dude, are you okay? Don't hurl in the car,” Jacob said. He’d almost pressed himself up against the door, ready to jump out in case Alex did vomit.
“There's a spell. It's… don’t worry, I’ll tell you later,” Alex said. He grabbed a drink bottle and took a mouthful of water, but it didn't help. The throbbing was hurting, telling him there was something nearby. Alex sat there enduring it, until suddenly the execute button lit up underneath the runes. The pull of it was so strong that Alex actually lifted his hand. It almost felt like it was being controlled by someone else.
“What are you doing? Is this some magic thing?” Jacob asked. The teenager had gone from sarcastic to worried. Alex was still in human form but, with the heat and the throbbing, had grown clammy and obviously looked about as sick as he felt.
“It's okay,” Alex said, but it definitely was not okay. Even turning his attention to Jacob had weakened him enough that he reached forward and tapped nothing in the air, which on his spell screen was the execute button. Normally spells compiled, compressing into a blur of almost a pure mathematical expression, drawing magic before they cast. The runes weren't like that at all. It felt like some kind of giant threshing machine, blades spinning. No surface was safe to touch, and by executing it, Alex had shoved his hands into the blades, into the machinery, and pushed it, setting it off like some kind of dangerous underwater mine that had a will of its own.
“Your hands,” he faintly heard Jacob say, but the young werewolf was at a great distance. Alex could feel a connection to whatever spell he’d let go, his great and terrible machinery. It went racing up the street ahead of them, then suddenly turned, hitting a generic yellow house. This one had flower boxes on the windows too. Alex felt himself in two places at once. There in the seat of the rundown old car, and down the street, part of his mind following along with the spell, incorporated into it.