by Harry Nix
“Alex, let the weredogs go. It’s too many,” she urged. The chill in her hand seemed a distant annoyance to Alex. After all, she was wrong anyway. He was powerful, supreme, he could feel the weredogs below, churning into the main force, killing mages, and as their agony rose, others succumbed to it, although a few began to draw on it. Great and terrible spells erupted. One sliced through his weredogs, killing a hundred in a blink of an eye. It was a vicious cleaving. Alex felt it like a mortal blow, the werewolf blood suddenly struck dead, and for a moment his hold on the tendril wavered, the weredogs losing cohesion before he grasped it again and directed them to attack once more.
It was then that he felt Juno's hands on his body. She practically leaped off the ground to bring her face up to his, wrapping her legs around him. She brought her mouth close to his remaining ear and then bit it, sinking her teeth in. The jolt of cold from it pulled Alex away from his crazed thoughts. He barely managed to hold the weredogs but came back to himself. Juno pulled herself off him, and stepped back down to the rooftop, pools of frost gathering at her feet.
“Just wait a minute. The rest of the pack is almost here and more.” She looked up at the sky, where out of nowhere, dark clouds suddenly appeared, popping into existence on what had been a blisteringly hot day.
“The witches are coming,” Juno said.
She’d barely finished speaking when there were two thuds on the roof as Ruby and Hera landed.
Ruby was dressed much the way she was last time Alex had seen her—combat boots, green camo pants. Her T-shirt this time had an advertisement for a strip club. Juno's mother Hera was all in black, wearing a short skirt and a black T-shirt, her arms laden down with bracelets that buzzed with magical energy. Although she still very much looked like Juno, Alex saw now that she must have had an illusion spell on her the first time they’d met, making her appear far younger. Her eyes were sparkling with mischievous energy.
“Mother, Grandmother, what can we help you with?” Juno said airily as though they were just discussing the weather.
“We have a hundred witches if Alex is willing to make a deal,” Hera said, crossing her arms.
Juno looked at her nails and then buffed them on her shirt.
“What do we need to make a deal for? As you can see, he is now psychically controlling weredogs so those mages will soon be dead and then we’ll get the rest.”
Alex couldn't believe what was happening. Below, the carnage continued, but the mages were winning, slowly executing the weredogs one by one. Juno was ignoring it like it didn’t matter. She looked at him as though reading his mind and then pointed at his missing ear.
“Please heal your ear, dear,” she instructed. Alex cast healing flame and stuck his finger against his leg, the magic jolting up to his head to begin repairing his flesh.
“We just want three favors. Moderate ones for each of us and one large one for the witches,” Ruby said.
“No deal!” Juno declared. “You can have one favor, that’s it.”
“It’s good you escaped, my dear, but did you suffer a head injury? You know the witch coven always gets what it wants,” Hera said.
Juno snorted. “I’ve got something for the witch coven right here,” she said, grabbing at her crotch.
Alex saw Ruby snicker. Hera remained unfazed.
“We have one hundred witches ready to fight. We want our three favors,” she repeated. Juno glanced up at the sky, which was quickly covering over with grey, blocking out the sunlight. Alex couldn't see anyone up there, but he could feel the magic swirling. His mind was on the weredogs. Out of the original sixty, they were down to forty.
“You can have one favor, and you can decide which of you gets it, and then the witches can have one favor,” Juno demanded.
“You know, if you’d been there, you would have been able to make this deal,” Hera said.
“I was kidnapped.”
“Oh, please, you could have got out any time,” Hera said, fluttering her hands in the air.
“Is that true?” Alex asked. They were down to thirty weredogs now. Nia, Matilda and River were holding them back and he could feel the main force of his pack approaching, including reinforcements from the fortress some distance behind them.
Juno turned to him and stomped a foot on the rooftop, which was coated in ice.
“No. Well, maybe. I knew I could push it but the chaos was all over the place. Once I knew you were there I got out.”
“What do you say, Alex?” Hera said, her voice low and somewhat seductive. Before he could answer, though, Juno waved a warning finger at him.
“Zip it!” she demanded. She turned back to her mother and grandmother.
“One favor, you choose who gets it, and one for the witches, but we also want a permanent twenty witches stationed at the fortress we took,” Juno said.
“You want a permanent twenty witches stationed amongst werewolves? Are you planning on starting a breeding program?” Hera said archly.
It was then they felt a surge in the magic. Something being done down on the battlefield. Alex got the feeling of more blood that must've been down there, pulling together. It was werewolf and human mixed, forming together, and a moment later he knew what it was: a blood golem. The Corvus mages had created it but they'd already learned. They'd taken the blood from their dead brethren and mixed it with only a small amount of werewolf blood.
“Great, now there’s a blood golem. Can we wrap this up, please?” Juno said. She buffed her nails on her shirt again and examined them as though nothing really important was happening.
“Agreed,” Hera said.
“Agreed,” Alex said. There was a lot of magic going on but he still felt the bond being made. He had his spell screen open. There was a tab marked favors and contracts. He didn't need to turn to it, but he still felt the two favors land. One was moderate and the other large, whatever that meant in reality.
With the deal done, Juno turned back to Alex just as the last of his ear reformed.
“Let's murder them all, my dear. Titus is down there somewhere. Big, bald, covered in scars. Hunt for him,” she said. With that, as though they’d rehearsed it, she, Hera and Ruby ran to the edge of the roof and dived off. It was so fast that Alex was taken aback for a moment, finding himself up there alone.
He was down to only fifteen weredogs now, most of them terribly injured, but with all the death he could feel a new source of power. For a moment he reflected that Ruby was right: the mages were stupid staying locked in their narrow enclaves. A mixture of necromancers and pain mages would be formidable…
Alex drew on the death that was swirling around him and brought up the spell for minor necromancy. Henry had said it was for small animals but Alex felt that he could push it. With a roar, he ran towards the edge of the roof just as a hundred witches appeared out of the sky, as black as crows, dropping down.
Alex cast his spell, feeling it spread out from one dead weredog to the next, their eyes lighting up in green as they returned to existence, pulled by his will.
21
The sensation of controlling the reanimated weredogs was different than pushing on the live ones. They drew on death, and Alex could now feel why they called it reanimation rather than resurrection. There was no spirit. There was no controlling intelligence. There was just the will of the necromancer. Alex managed to pull forty weredogs out of death and sent them charging against the mages. The weredogs were strong already, but the reanimated ones, their eyes glowing green, were stronger still. Alex kept pulling on the death surrounding them, flooding it into the weredogs all the while as he hacked and slashed and cast spells with wild abandon.
The Corvus mages had been dealt a mortal blow, but they still weren’t out. They’d gathered near an old factory and the force that had split off was now rejoining them. They’d learned quickly though; on the edge of his awareness Alex felt the last of their weredogs being executed by the mages so they couldn't be turned against them.
As Alex
dived on a mage and tore his arm off, sending it and his wand spinning across the sidewalk, he could feel his pack finally arrive and dive into the fray. They attacked with teeth and claw, some remembering to use their spells, and Alex couldn't begrudge those that forgot in their wildness. He knew these were not the same mages that attacked their village. That was Ignis, and they'd exacted their bloody revenge upon them, but that meal of violence hadn't been enough to sate him nor his pack. Alex could feel it, surging amongst them. Decades of being suppressed and abused, werewolves being forced off their land and killed.
He tore through more mages, hitting one who had a particularly strong spell ring that took Alex a good few minutes of hacking to wear down before he tore the mage’s head off. His pack had reached him now, and he felt the reinforcements joining, all of the werewolves from the fortress. He could even feel their divisions. It was almost as if they were colored red, blue, and green, separate from each other. He felt that elusive thread somewhere behind him but there was no reason to call on it right now. His pack were fighting, and the witches had brought hell with them. They’d dropped out of the sky, landing amongst the mages, casting deadly magics. He saw one sprinting across the battlefield in a blur, leaving icy footsteps in her wake.
Not everything was going their way, though. One witch burst into a spray of blood and viscera in the air, splattering down in a gory rain. Another screamed, blood pouring out of her mouth before dropping dead on the sidewalk. The Corvus mages had come well-prepared, and through the deadly magics surging about, there was a smaller group with guns, firing them, wearing down shield spells, and sometimes killing. In the rear of the battlefield beyond the factory, the blood golem came lumbering towards them, attacking the nearest target of opportunity. Werewolves who dived at it sometimes splashed straight through. Sometimes it hardened and grabbed at them, tearing their bodies to pieces.
Alex felt every death of the werewolves like watching a light being snuffed out in his mind and that rage churned in his stomach. He saw ten witches come out of nowhere, simultaneously casting spells at the blood golem. It was too fast for Alex to see what they were doing, but one of its legs solidified, drying out, and then tore off. The golem stumbled and then fell to the ground before shrinking, forming a new leg, and getting to its feet again. It was shorter now, its former leg turning into a congealed lump of blood and slowly oozing to the ground. A spray of bullets went through the witches and they were hit by spells on every side, half of them dropping dead.
Then Alex felt it again.
That great and terrible cleaving that had swept through the weredogs. The magic heaved and then it tore through the battlefield, killing witches, mages and werewolves alike.
Alex turned and saw the mage responsible: big guy, bald head, scars everywhere. Sure, there were a few that matched that description but this had to be him. Titus, head of the Corvus mages.
Alex sent his reanimated weredogs flooding towards him, chewing a bloody path through the mages.
He ran behind them, his shield spell flickering as bullets hit it.
In the rage and chaos, Alex hit something, like a landmine. He found himself flying off his feet, smashing through the wall of an abandoned factory. He got to his feet and cast healing flame, drawing on the death and pain around him, stitching up his wounds, and then jumped back out the hole and joined the battle anew.
Although it seemed they were down to equal numbers now, the pain mages who remained were experts in drawing on the lake of pain Alex could feel sloshing around like warm honey. He felt a spell go streaking across the street towards Nia who stood exposed, and only at the last moment saw a faint shimmer of light appear in front of her as Hera cast a protective spell. Whatever it was rebounded off Hera’s spell at an angle, hitting two witches and a mage. It was as though every cell in their body became disconnected from every other one and there were suddenly animated bags of blood that slipped apart and wet the ground.
What started as a hundred witches was down to maybe fifty now, and they were exacting a cost for every death. The blood golem had been reduced in size but was still killing with wild abandon. Alex tried to reach for it, to feel if he could grasp the small amount of werewolf blood, but it was too dilute.
He cringed as the last of his reanimated weredogs were torn to pieces. He brought the spell up again and cast it about the battlefield, but there were no other weredogs to reanimate, they'd been cut and broken, torn to pieces, and although there were quite a few mages and werewolves available, he knew the spell didn't have the power.
The fighting grew desperate, and Alex struggled to get to Titus. He became vaguely aware of blurred figures moving impossibly fast about the battlefield. The vampires had finally shown themselves.
Alex felt more werewolf deaths from behind him. He felt rather than saw Jacob tearing mages apart, then being flung through the wall of a house, Yvonne following after, a healing flame burning at her fingertip.
Heedless of the mages between him and Titus, and his wounds that were bleeding freely, Alex sprinted for the mage. They were a good three blocks apart. Titus was out at the edge of the outskirts where it turned to countryside and where the houses were truly ruined.
Over the screaming around him, Alex swore he heard Juno yelling no but he couldn't turn to stop. His mates and the pack had to protect each other. Titus was running now, turning tail like a coward, and his inner wolf howled with joy at the idea of pulling him down and tearing him to pieces as he cowered in fear and begged.
Alex cast haste upon himself and blurred, leaving the main battlefield and following Titus down a street to a small cluster of houses. Titus was running with a few mages, all terrified, scrambling as they went. They leaped a fence using magic, as agile as any werewolf.
Alex followed, thudding down to a backyard that was slowly being reclaimed by nature. The moment he hit the ground two great spikes of pain pierced his feet and then wrapped themselves around his ankles, creeping upwards. Alex looked down to see that they were two enormous thorns that he had landed on, magically altered, that had thrust themselves out of the earth. The spiked vine that had grown with them had dug itself into his calf muscles and wrapped around his thighs.
Titus was standing near the rear of the ruined house, a spell screen flickering above his head as he directed the growth. The mage was grinning, waving his arms like he was conducting an orchestra. The vines quickly grabbed Alex's body, binding his arms to his sides, and began to suck on his blood.
Alex saw a ripple near Titus and realized he'd been fooled. Titus hadn't been running in fear with a pack of scared mages. He'd been running and casting a spell to make Alex chase him, to get him alone and away from the rest of the pack. Alex brought up his spell screen, but everything was grayed out. The vines had some kind of spell on them that blocked his. His active spell list was full of question marks and wounds, and even as he watched, his mana was draining away with frightening speed.
“My mother was a nymph, my father was a mage, and from her, I got some control of nature. This is the same spell I used on your baby brothers and sisters, piercing them with the thorns, sucking their blood dry,” Titus said.
Alex struggled, but the vines were too strong. They were constricting his breathing now and on his spell screen he could see the list of wounds multiplying. There was a line that said blood loss and the percentage was climbing higher. Alex struggled again and went to roar to attract attention, but a vine snapped around his muzzle, holding his mouth closed.
“You can always rely on a werewolf to be a stupid werewolf, to chase their prey, to be dumb and vicious, and to practically run straight into the knife,” Titus said. He was still casting spells. Alex could see them appearing above his head, only vaguely recognizing a healing spell which Titus used, pressing his hand against his leg and grimacing as it went to work. Titus went to say something more when they both felt it: the stabbing of the Great Barrier.
Beside the house as though he appeared out of nowhere was a li
ttle boy, no more than four or five years old. He was dirty and thin and staring at the two of them. The snap of the Great Barrier forced Alex to transform back to human, and the vines loosened. He tried to dive but it was pointless in this form. He was slow and the vines were thick.
As Alex slowly toppled, the vines tightened their grasp, pulling him upright again. Titus blurred across the yard and stabbed the boy in the stomach. The Great Barrier snapped away as Alex tried to scream, even as the vines surrounded his mouth.
A woman screamed as she came rushing from inside the house. Titus pulled the knife from her son and stabbed her too. She collapsed on the grass, blood jetting out of the wound in her neck.
Titus turned back towards Alex, the knife wet with blood, and Alex saw the intent in his eyes. It seemed he’d wanted to use the spiked thorns to kill Alex, but now had decided there was no more time to wait.
Every spell was still grayed out. Every mana—what was left of them—was inaccessible. Alex cast about, desperately searching for that tendril, until he finally brushed against it. His pack were nearby, plus the reinforcements. He reached for it and caught hold of it with a grip that was harder than iron. He meant to pull, to bring the pack of werewolves to where he was, to tear Titus to pieces, to see if they could save the woman and the boy, but something else happened instead.
Instead of bringing them, he drew energy from them and felt some of the werewolves topple, suddenly weakened, while others howled. Despite the pain they experienced, it was a willing exchange. He was their alpha, they would sacrifice for him. A surge flooded into Alex and he literally heard a chime as a circle appeared in his vision, saying two status points. Alex immediately shoved one to speed and the other one to memory. As before, he felt the space he had for spells expand.
The two status points were confirmed, and Alex felt the change in his body. He was faster now and had more space for spells. With the Great Barrier temporarily gone, and his speed enhanced, Alex lurched, pulling away from the vines, and just for an instant, all the spells came back.