Wolf Witch (Victoria Brigham Book 1)

by D. N. Hoxa

  The gunshots didn’t stop, but the car eventually did. I’d never been in an accident before, but let me tell you, it was surreal. Like the whole world was hanging from a thread, and all I could do was wait and see if I’d survive.

  I did. Red was fast. Red was good at grabbing me and pulling me out of the car in one piece. I have no idea if he did it through the window, or if he got the door open, but I was sitting on dried grass, and the car was two feet away from me, grey smoke coming from under it. Amara opened the backdoor and slid down to the ground on her stomach. Her forehead was bleeding, but she didn’t look hurt.

  As for Red, he was nowhere to be seen. The three cars who’d been chasing us had stopped, too. They were just shooting at us, and Red’s car was our only protection.

  What the hell are you doing? Do something! my mind shouted at me. I was sitting there, staring like a lunatic, when I could have been helping. It was Haworth’s men. They’d found me again. Maybe Amara’s spells weren’t as strong as she thought. Those people had had my blood, after all. Little could beat a spell done with one’s blood.

  But I hoped her weapons were better. Getting up on all fours, I rushed to her side as she pulled the bag of weapons out of the car. She was breathing heavily, chanting under her breath for a few seconds. I grabbed two guns without knowing if they even had bullets in them, but Amara didn’t stop me.

  “Stay in the car. I’m going to distract them and make them shoot at me so you can shoot at them,” she said.

  “Are you crazy? You’re going to die!”

  “My shield will protect me from their bullets, but with it up I can’t shoot. So I’m going to get close and personal.” She quickly put a handful of small knives in the pockets of her pants, and then grabbed a sword in her hand. “Stay in the back and shoot without stop. When you run out of ammo, grab another one.”

  “Amara, wait!” I called, but it was already too late. She’d stood up and was running toward the fight behind Red’s car.

  Cursing under my breath, I got myself in the backseat, dragging the weapon bag behind me. When I finally saw what was going on through the broken window, I almost passed out. Nine people were fighting Red, who couldn’t stop jumping from one end of the line to the other, but these people didn’t go down as easily as those who’d kidnapped me. They shot at Red, and he shied away from every bullet. Only when I sniffed the air hard did I realize that those bullets were made of silver.

  True to her words, Amara ran straight into the fight with a sword and a dagger in her hands. I stretched my arms over the backseat, the metal of the guns alien against my skin. I had no idea what the hell I was doing, and I’d never been more afraid in my life. The smell of blood, gunpowder and my own fear brought bile up my throat. My eyes closed the first time I pulled the two triggers at once. I wasn’t afraid of hitting Red or Amara. She was protected by her spell, and he wouldn’t be harmed by a normal bullet, but that didn’t mean I didn’t shake from head to toe while I held onto that trigger until there were no more bullets to shoot.

  Breathing heavily, I threw the guns away and grabbed another two. Only one more left after them, but I emptied these in less than ten seconds. Blowing on the beads of sweat slipping down my brows, I focused on what was in front of me again. Only two of Haworth’s men left standing. I didn’t know how to take aim, but I did my best with what I’d seen in the movies. With only one gun in my hand now, I shot six bullets but never managed to catch any of them.

  Red did, though. Not with bullets but with fangs.

  As soon as both the remaining men hit the ground, now lifeless, he turned toward the car. Toward me. The backlights were still turned on so I could see his face perfectly. His eyes were dark, wide, lifeless. His fangs were extended, reaching all the way down to his chin. They were thick and they were bloody, and his cheeks were hollowed. He looked like a skeleton with skin stretched over bone, but nothing more.

  And then he transformed right before my eyes. His took on life, burning green, and his fangs disappeared, leaving no trace behind. The shape of his face changed, becoming what it was before this began. Once again, Red looked man, not beast. Once again, his looks deceived me.

  I dropped the gun and ran out of the car, shaking so badly, I was surprised I managed to run to him and Amara. They were both still standing. Red didn’t have a scratch on him, but his shirt and jacket were torn, and Amara’s forehead was no longer bleeding.

  “Are you okay?” Red asked me, his green eyes scrolling up and down my body, searching for wounds.

  “We have to get out of here,” I said breathlessly.

  “No, we can’t!” said Amara. “We’re on the right track. These people wouldn’t have been here if we weren’t on to something. We’re going to the right place.”

  “We don’t even have a car anymore,” Red said, looking back at his BMW with longing. “Come on.” He put his arm on my shoulder and pulled me to him. “Stick by my side.” I held onto his shirt with no intention of letting go.

  “Come on, guys! We can’t go back now. They’re dead!” Amara shouted as we tried to hurry back to where we came from. There was nothing but trees on both our sides, but a few more feet and we’d reach the nearest village full of houses. We could use them to hide and rest if needed. “They’re dead! They’re not coming back! Just—”

  She was cut off when the sound of something flying cut the air. Red froze by my side and blood exploded in front of him, falling onto the ground. It all happened too fast to make much sense of it. I looked to the side, and I saw Red with an arrowhead coming out of his chest. A silver arrowhead. His fangs extended, his cheeks hollow, he just stood there and looked ahead, seeing nothing. I screamed, going for the arrow, trying to pull it off him, never realizing that Amara was no longer standing. She’d collapsed on the ground not four feet away from us, and now Red fell to his knees, too. My heart almost leaped out of my chest at the thought of him dying that, when I looked up and saw the people coming for me with their guns raised, telling me to step back, I didn’t care. I didn’t care that they’d shoot me and kill me on the spot. All that mattered was that Red and Amara didn’t die. I’d brought them here myself. I couldn’t live with their lives on my conscience.

  But maybe I wouldn’t get to live at all, either. Something cold pierced me right in the stomach, below my ribcage. I looked down to see a syringe, now empty, buried in my body. Sound no longer reached me. My wolf was lost, far away from my thoughts, and the ground grew closer and closer. I tried to look at Red for one last time, but I couldn’t. I’d already lost control of my body.

  Chapter

  The smell was awful. This time, I didn’t have anything on my head. They’d just blindfolded me, but the smell was horrible. Sweet perfume, magic, sweat, blood, rust, old wood—and animal. Wolves. There were wolves in there, and they were the same as the ones who’d killed the three witches at the Palace.

  Even before I’d fully woken up, my heart beat like crazy. Where was I? Where was Red and Amara? I could smell vampires and witches, but there were more than one of each.

  I was caught between moving and standing still to scope out my surroundings. I was sitting on a wooden chair, my hands tied in a thick rope behind my back. They hadn’t bothered with my legs. The room we were in was big. There were windows in there, too. I could smell the glass of the panes and the slightly rotten wood of the frames. Candles were burning there, too, and there were a lot of weapons around me.

  Footsteps interrupted the complete silence. A door opened ahead of me.

  “He’s coming,” a man said. “Get the blindfolds.”

  Chills rushed down the length of me. Another man walked over to me and took off my blindfold, taking a good chunk of my hair in the process, too. I gritted my teeth to keep from cursing and focused on my vision instead.

  The room we were in was decorated in polished wood, oriental rugs, and red velvet armchairs. The candles, about fifty of them, were all over the floor, though there were gas lamps shining ever
y few feet around the walls, bathing the room in light. I couldn’t tell how many windows were behind us, but moonlight shone all the way to the end of the room.

  I was sitting in the middle. To my left was Red, also sitting in a chair. The silver arrow was still in his chest. That’s why he looked in so much pain. Amara was to my right, looking at every face in the room with the hatred of the entire world in her eyes.

  There were fifteen people in there with us. Eleven men and four women. Werewolves, witches, and three vampires, too. Oh, and there were the three wolves. The ones who hadn’t listened to my orders at all.

  Before I could even begin to reach out to my wolf, footsteps echoed from behind the only door we could see right across from us. I held my breath, my body freezing as if it already knew who was going to come through it. But it didn’t. I could have never imagined how the man who walked inside would look.

  Beautiful. He was tall, muscled in all the right places, his blue eyes piercing, his smile as bright as the sun. His light hair was combed neatly behind his head and his clothes, a baby blue shirt and navy pants, melted onto his frame. I couldn’t tell his exact age, but he couldn’t be older than thirty. And I couldn’t determine his smell, either. He smelled of magic. Bad magic, but that was it.

  Behind him was a woman, not much older than me, with the same blonde hair and blue eyes, but her face was round and her frame small. She looked as afraid as she looked indifferent when she took the three of us in.

  And then the man spoke.

  “Welcome!” he said, raising his hands to the side. “It’s been a while since I’ve had guests over.” Clapping his hands, he slowly, almost lazily walked to the center of the room, and his eyes focused on me. The gesture took the air right out of my lungs. It was him, I knew it. It was Hector Haworth. “Tell me, is this her?” he asked nobody in particular.

  “Yes, sir,” one of the men to my right said.

  Haworth’s smile grew, and I was tempted to shield my eyes. He came even closer to me and leaned forward just a bit to get a good look at my face. I tried to keep it cool. I tried to hide my fear, but I failed. My body was shaking terribly.

  “She looks…ordinary,” he said in wonder, analyzing every inch of me. His mind was calculating God knows what. Then he straightened again and shrugged. “But the best ones always do.”

  Turning away from me, he began to unbutton the sleeves of his shirt and roll them up to his elbows. I looked at Red, terrified to think about what was going to happen next. He was watching me, too, but he was in so much pain, his whole face had changed. The silver was too much. It had been inside him for God knows how long.

  His pain stirred my wolf. She raised her head, her anger taking over my mind. Red’s pain took away a little of the fear. I tried to tell him with my eyes that it was going to be okay. We were going to find a way out of this because we had to. This couldn’t be the end. We wouldn’t let it be.

  Amara was focused on Haworth completely. The look in her eyes was murderous, and I could see her trying to untie the rope around her wrists. It made me do the same. If I could get my hands free, maybe I could do something. I could get us out of here somehow.

  “All right, wolf. Show me,” Haworth said, his voice making me jump. It was clear, cold, sharp as an ice shard. He stood in the middle of the room with his hands on his hips and watched me. “Come on, don’t be shy. Show me what you are.”

  “No.”

  The word left my lips before I had the chance to stop it. Not that I intended to. He might have made me want to pee my pants, but fear didn’t get a say in what I said. I could pretend to be tough for my own sake.

  “No?” Haworth said, raising his brows as if he were confused.

  “Rot in hell, asshole. I’m not doing shit for you.”

  It was tough talk to hide what went on in my chest. I looked into his eyes, and I knew that my wolf could not under any circumstance come out right now. If she did, that would be it. Just like he’d controlled those wolves standing behind the rest of his people, he’d control her, too, and I couldn’t let that happen. I’d die before I let that happen.

  Haworth laughed. It was a sick sound, and I wanted to shy away from it. Nobody else in the room moved a single muscle. They just watched the show.

  With a hand in his pocket and the other around his chin, Haworth tsked me. “You have no manners, do you? I’m asking you nicely, Victoria Brigham. Shift or I’ll make you, and it will be much more painful that way.”

  If I could flip him off, I would have, but my fingers were too busy trying to get that stupid rope off me, and I was almost there.

  “You don’t want my wolf to come out,” I said. I needed more time to come up with a plan and to free myself, and I could get more time by talking. I hoped. “If she does, you’ll die. She really doesn’t like assholes.”

  “You insult me,” he said, a hand to his heart. “You think you could kill me?”

  I forced a tight smile on my face. “I don’t think. I know.”

  Another one of those laughs. God, he sounded worse than the guys in the bad horror movies I should have never watched. But it was okay. As long as I got him to waste time talking, I’d take it.

  “Laugh all you like. You’re using animals to do your bidding. You’re taking away their freedom. There’s nothing worse than that. Nothing lower,” I said through gritted teeth. The rope was loose enough now that I could move my hands around. It was only a matter of seconds.

  But Haworth was irritated now. He didn’t want to talk to me anymore. He raised one hand toward me, and his lips moved just once. He didn’t chant. He didn’t say the words of a spell like a normal witch would. Just one move of his lips and the pain began in my chest.

  It was worse than the ritual Yumi had put me in. So much worse than any pain I’d ever felt before. I gritted my teeth to keep from screaming because it was so sudden. I held onto the rope tying my wrists together as hard as I could, and I squeezed my eyes closed.

  Air couldn’t get through my throat. My wolf howled in my head, warning me. She was being forced to come out, just like with the ritual, but if she did, we both knew how this was going to end. What was going to happen next? Would Haworth make me kill Red and Amara myself? Would he send me after other people to kill them and take what was theirs, like the other wolves had done?

  Who was going to stop me? How many people were going to die at my hands?

  No. I wouldn’t let that happen. He could have me, but he couldn’t have my wolf.

  Something burned my left butt cheek. For a second, I was confused as hell, but then I remembered. The Reaper String. I’d put it in my back pocket when Amara gave it to me. It was burning, pulsating with magic so raw, I could feel it like a physical thing pressed against my skin. My wolf howled again, her pain doubling mine. The ropes around my wrists disappeared. My jaw opened involuntarily and I screamed. The chair wouldn’t hold me. I fell to the ground on my elbows and knees, keeping my eyes closed so I could focus on my wolf. Focus on keeping her back.

  But he was strong. So strong, he was suffocating me with his power. His magic reached deep inside me, looking for the wolf, and if it found her, there would be no going back. So I tried to push it away with all my will. The more I tried, the more the Reaper String burned me. The more its magic spread all over my skin. It was like a fire, the flames dancing longer, farther up and down the length of me every second. At first, it was irritating. I had enough trying to keep myself from giving up. I didn’t need more pain.

  But then, I realized, the more the Reaper burned me, the easier it got to breathe. The less pain in my chest. The less my wolf howled.

  It was stopping it. That piece of steel was somehow lessening Haworth’s magic on me. Blood dripped down my nose and I think from my ears, too. My bones were breaking and getting back together every second, and even my scream lost all meaning, but it was getting better. The Reaper burned, and its fire purified me. It took Haworth’s nasty touch away.

  And when i
t stopped, it was like the heavens let go of me, and I fell and fell and fell and hit the ground all over again. I couldn’t breathe fast enough, deeply enough to come around, to see what was happening.

  Someone grabbed me by the arms and pulled me up before dumping me again, back on the chair. I blinked and blinked, but the blur didn’t go away for a long while.

  “That was impressive, I won’t lie,” said Haworth. His voice came to me in waves, like he was speaking under water. I barely made sense of his words.

  He’d stopped chanting. I’d done it. I’d stopped my wolf from coming out, even when forced by what had to have been one of the strongest spells in the world. But it was the Reaper String. Its invisible flames helped a great deal, too. Maybe I’d been wrong about that thing. Maybe it would be better if I kept it with me the whole time from now on.

  “How long do you think you’ll last? I can keep this going on all night and day,” Haworth said. He was no longer smiling. He was irritated, pissed off to no end that he’d failed—and in front of his people, no less.

  “And you’ll keep on failing,” I said. There was blood in my mouth, too, so I spit it out in front of his feet. “You’re not going to get away with this, you know. Whatever you’re doing, it’s going to stop.”

  “Oh!” he said, laughing, but this time, it was forced. “You want to stop me, wolf? How neat.” He walked over to me and this time grabbed my chin in his hand. Red growled but Haworth didn’t mind. “You’re going to shift, and I’m going to have your wolf, lowly creature. And when I do, I’ll show you a side of the world you’ve never seen before. Then you’ll know that nobody can ever stop me.”

  He pushed my face away like I disgusted him. My hands were free now, but I was also exhausted. It took me a while to reach for my back pocket. The Reaper was better off in my hands. If he tried to spell me again, I was going to show him how he couldn’t be stopped.