Deadly Vows

by Arthur, Keri

  “Timing is everything in the survival stakes,” I said. “Though it is a little odd the ghoul attacked so soon after dusk. They tend to wait until deeper darkness has arrived.”

  “We’re talking about a creature that supposedly has no bottom half, so I think odd is a given.” The amusement was clearer in Mac’s tone this time.

  “Where does the scent trail lead?” Aiden asked. “Into the scrub or down into the valley?”

  “Former. I tracked it as far as the boundary but no further.” He shot me another look. “Was the creature simply spooked by the couple’s actions, or does salt really work against something like this?”

  “Salt—pure salt—is a deterrent against most supernatural beings, though it’s better used in a protection circle or as a barrier against entry in doorways and windows.”

  “Huh.” Mac’s gaze switched to Aiden. “Which means it might make sense for us to add a permanent tub of the stuff to our kits, boss.”

  “Ask Maggie to get onto it tomorrow.”

  Other voices were now audible. One was Jaz, another ranger who’d only recently moved into the reservation after marrying into the Marin pack. The other was most likely the woman whose love of ghost-hunting TV shows had probably saved the lives of her partner and her.

  We walked around the rear of the building but didn’t head toward the still-open French doors. Instead, Mac leapt off the veranda and strode across to a stone path that wound its way up through a garden filled with trimmed roses and deciduous trees.

  The rear fence was a weatherworn and hip-height picket; beyond it lay trees and scrub. I drew in a breath and caught a vaguely odorous scent that reminded me of death and decay.

  “I’ll take the lead,” Aiden said. “Mac, rear point. Liz, if anything tweaks your senses, let me know.”

  I nodded and tried to ignore the tension gathering within. The small gate creaked as Aiden opened it, the sharp sound echoing across the stillness of the night. Which, more than anything, pointed to the presence of evil having slipped past here not that long ago. Night creatures were far more sensitive to all things supernatural than most humans; the fact that even the possums weren’t moving about spoke to the foulness of this thing.

  The hill soon steepened dramatically, and my legs began to burn. As my breathing became harsher, Aiden caught my hand and tugged me on. I wasn’t entirely sure it helped, but at least it meant I wasn’t slowing them down too much.

  The tree line thinned out as we neared the top of the ridge, and stars gleamed in skies only partially covered by clouds. Aiden paused, his gaze searching the tree-lined valley below us, while I rested my hands on my knees and sucked in air. Fit I was not, even though I’d recently started intermittent jogging—though not in any way to lose weight, as I was perfectly happy just as I was. Of course, my definition of intermittent differed wildly from Aiden’s, which was why I tended to do it mostly on the days I stayed home. Belle was a far more patient and understanding jogging partner—mainly because she didn’t feel obliged to stay by my side the entire time, which in turn meant I could not only stretch out the running intervals but also shorten the time spent running. Although it had to be said, jogging wasn’t as bad as I’d feared. My muscles certainly recovered faster than I’d ever presumed they would.

  Mac stopped beside Aiden, his hands on his hips and frustration evident. “The trail’s gone cold.”

  “Yes.” Aiden glanced at me. “Are you getting anything on either a psychic or magical level?”

  “Not a glimmer.” I pushed upright and studied the valley below. “I don’t suppose there’s an old graveyard down there somewhere, is there?”

  “No.” He drew in a deep breath and released it slowly. “I guess we’ve no choice—”

  “There is Barnett’s farm,” Mac cut in. “It’s on the far side of this valley, I know, but they do have a family burial plot on their land.”

  I frowned. “I didn’t think it was legal to bury people outside a public cemetery? Or does the rule differ in the reservation?”

  “Only to some extent,” Aiden said. “Every pack has burial grounds within their compounds, but humans still need approval from the appropriate department to bury on private land. Even then, it’s usually only granted if there’re prior burials on the site.”

  “In the Barnetts’ case, there’re five generations buried there,” Mac said. “Is that a big enough graveyard to attract something like this?”

  I shrugged. “I can’t really say for sure, given I have no real idea what we’re dealing with.”

  “Meaning it is worth checking,” Aiden said. “We’ll head back down and drive over.”

  “Good, because you weren’t ever going to get me to walk over.”

  Aiden chuckled and pressed a hand to my spine, gently ushering me back to the path. Though it was easier going down, it still took nearly half an hour to return to the house.

  Aiden motioned me toward his truck and then walked inside to talk to Jaz. I opened the passenger door but didn’t immediately climb in, instead studying the surrounding night as awareness prickled across my skin. My watcher was once again out there.

  I hesitated, one hand clenched against the need to raise some form of defensive or even tracking spell. If my watcher was Clayton, then nothing I did would matter. If it wasn’t, then he’d most likely be protected against any spell I could raise. Or, at least, any spell that didn’t involve the wild magic.

  That suggests you’re not carrying Ashworth’s diversion charm on you, Belle said, mental tone annoyed.

  No. Totally forgot about it.

  Then I’ll make sure you shove it in your purse when you get home.

  Footsteps approached. I half turned and watched Aiden stride toward me.

  “What’s wrong?” he immediately said.

  “Nothing.” I hesitated. “Can you smell anyone nearby?”

  He raised an eyebrow but flared his nostrils, drawing in a deep breath. After a moment, he shook his head. “No—why?”

  I shrugged. “It’s probably just imagination—”

  “If there’s one thing I’ve learned over these past few months, it’s that when you say it’s probably your imagination, it’s not. So give.”

  I grimaced and climbed into the truck. “I keep getting the feeling that I’m being watched.”

  “Well, if Clayton’s here, that’s not surprising. He’ll be tracking your movements so he’s got a clearer picture of his attack options. Classic hunter action.”

  “Yeah, but Clayton’s no hunter. He generally prefers immediate confrontation over stealth.”

  “Except when it comes to snatching innocence, apparently.” Aiden’s voice was flat and yet hinted at fury. For me. For what had been done to me.

  “And that is what in the end saved me. He didn’t expect resistance.” Didn’t expect Belle to come roaring to the rescue.

  Aiden reached across and gently gripped my thigh. Warmth bled into my skin but failed to ease the inner tremors.

  “There’s a good chance we’ll find him before he decides to do anything,” he said. “Trust that. Trust us.”

  “I do.” I just didn’t trust that Clayton would react in any normal manner.

  Silence fell, and night closed in. After another twenty minutes, Aiden slowed and pulled into a long, tree-lined driveway. Stones crunched under the tires and, up ahead, a house lay wrapped in darkness. As we pulled up, the external lights came on and, seconds later, so did the internal ones.

  “Wait here,” Aiden said, and climbed out.

  He leapt up the steps and strode toward the front door. It opened, revealing a middle-aged man wearing a T-shirt and boxer shorts. Aiden spoke to him for several minutes, then came back. The owner went back inside and the lights went off.

  “He’s not coming with us?” I said.

  “Better if he doesn’t, especially if this thing is there.” Aiden started the truck and followed the drive around to the left. The headlights picked out a track that wound past s
everal old sheds.

  “What excuse did you give him for us needing to see the family cemetery?”

  “I told him we were tracking a burglary suspect, and his current trajectory had him heading this way.” He slowed as a gate loomed. “You want to open that?”

  I did. It was a process we repeated twice before we reached the top of the long hill. In the glow of the headlights, a peppercorn tree stood guard over a metal fence. Beyond it were a number of headstones.

  I climbed out and moved to the front of the truck. The breeze was stronger up here than it had been on the other plateau, no doubt due to the fact that the only tree up here to break its force was the lovely old peppercorn. At least this time the resulting goose bumps were actually due to the chill in the wind, rather than any sense of evil.

  “Anything?” Aiden asked, as he stopped next to me.

  His body cut the wind and allowed his warm, musky scent to wash over me. I drew it in, somehow finding both comfort and strength in his closeness. And hoping, with all that I had, that Aiden wouldn’t be amongst those made to pay for my presence here.

  I frowned, wondering if it was a warning of what was to come, or simply fear. I hoped it was the latter. I feared it was the former.

  Especially given my watcher had even followed us up here.

  “Liz?” Aiden prompted gently.

  I swallowed heavily and tried to concentrate on what we were hunting rather than what was hunting me.

  “I’m not immediately sensing anything, but we’ll need to get closer to be sure.”

  We walked on. I silently wove a containment spell around my right hand; the threads gleamed silver and gold in the darkness, the former an indication that despite the fact my inner concealment spell remained active, the wild magic within would not be contained. At least not when it came to creating magic—and that was going to be problematic.

  Although I guess if it came down to a duel of magic between Clayton and me, the appearance of wild magic within mine would be the least of my problems.

  We walked through an open gate into the private cemetery. There were five lines of gravestones, some so old the writing on them had all but been erased by the wind and the weather, and others so new the golden letters gleamed in the pale light of the moon.

  There was nothing to indicate a ghoul or some kind of demon was using these graves as a shelter, and relief stirred, even though its absence here only meant it was free to create havoc elsewhere.

  “Nothing looks disturbed to me,” Aiden said. “And the breeze is free from the foul scent we followed from the cottage.”

  “I’ll still do a full check, just on the off chance it’s somehow concealing itself from me.”

  The result was the same; the ghoul wasn’t here. I released the containment spell and flexed my fingers to ease the remaining tingle.

  “I guess it was always a remote chance,” Aiden said. “Let’s get you home—”

  “Not before I secure the graveyard. It may never come up here, but it’s better to be safe than sorry.”

  I swung the pack from my shoulder and pulled out the bottles of holy water. There wasn’t enough to protect the entire plot, but it was the graves that really mattered. The three I carried should be enough to stop the ghoul or spirit breaking into a coffin to wait out the daylight.

  I uncorked the first of them and began the spell. I walked as I spoke, trickling the holy water on the ground, creating an unseen barrier that would allow humans and animals past but keep the monsters out. It was a basic spell, but sometimes that’s all that was needed. Besides, anything more complicated would have to be boosted to last any length of time, and I really didn’t want to waste that sort of strength right now.

  Once the entire area was covered, I activated the spell and studied it through narrowed eyes. Surprisingly, there were no threads of wild magic visible; maybe it only attached itself to the stronger spells.

  “All set?” Aiden asked.

  I nodded. “The spell will only hold a couple of days at most, but hopefully we’ll have caught the ghoul by then.”

  “Going on past hunts, I wouldn’t be betting on it.” He lightly guided me back to the car, his fingers pressing warmth into my spine despite the layers of clothing.

  “I’ve got to return to the station for an hour or so, but I’ll be back on guard duty later tonight.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “It’s your day off—Jaz and Mac can handle the reports, surely?” I paused. “Or is this more a shower thing? As in, you hate ours.”

  His lips twitched. “That might or might not be a good guess.”

  “It’s not that bad, seriously.”

  “I like a shower big enough to party in.” He glanced at me, his blue eyes gleaming with mischief. “There’s definitely no room in yours to do anything interesting.”

  I tsked. “A werewolf with no imagination is a very sad thing.”

  The gleam became heated. “Imagination is not a problem. I shall prove it to you once the current situation has been dealt with.”

  “I do wonder how, given the already mentioned party dimensions of your showers.”

  “There are small places aplenty in my house. We just haven’t explored them.”

  “Then I look forward to doing so.”

  “Excellent.”

  I smiled and glanced out the window… and caught sight of a figure on the ridge of the hill several paddocks across. My stomach clenched and, for a second, I couldn’t even breathe.

  But it wasn’t Clayton. Aside from the fact it wasn’t tall enough to be Clayton, the figure on that hill had flowed from one form to another.

  “Is there any reason for a werewolf to be running around up here?”

  “No, why?”

  “Because I just spotted one on the ridge several paddocks over. He’s now running downhill through the tree line.”

  Aiden leaned forward and then frowned. “How the hell can you see that? I can barely see him, and I’ve wolf eyesight.”

  Once again unease stirred—as did the sudden desire to go talk to Katie. These changes—the sharpening of at least some of my senses—had only started happening since she’d inhabited my body. Maybe she—or even Gabe, whose soul now haunted the wellspring where he’d fused Katie to the wild magic and in the process lost his life—could tell me whether it was a temporary or permanent situation. Although given the time that had passed, it was looking more and more permanent. Which meant the real question was, how far would it go?

  “The rising moon is fairly bright; I caught the glimmer of his coat more than anything.” Which wasn’t a lie, because that’s what I was currently seeing.

  He grunted—a sound that somehow managed to convey disbelief. “My first instinct is to go after the bastard, but the distance between us gives him the advantage.”

  “Against you. Not against magic. Keep driving.” I quickly created a tracking spell and then wound down the window. The night air snapped in, cooling the cabin instantly.

  The moon chose that moment to come fully out from behind the clouds, silvering the coat of the running form.

  Aiden swore. “It’s a goddamn O’Connor.”

  “Probably not from your pack, though.”

  “If he is, there’ll be hell to pay.”

  As the moon’s glow started to fade, I flung the tracking spell out of the window. It flew toward the running wolf, a small, tumbling mass of threads that shimmered in the moonlight. Our target obviously wasn’t wearing much in the way of protection against magic, because the spell hit him dead center and instantly began tugging at my directional instincts.

  “Got him,” I said.

  “Good.”

  He swung the truck off the track and accelerated across the paddock. As the wolf’s speed increased, the spell’s threads spooled out across the night, leaving a faint but shimmering trail for me to follow. I did wonder how in the hell he hoped to escape, given no wolf could outrun a vehicle—not over a long distance, anyway.

  Then
I spotted the truck near an open gateway. “I don’t suppose you’ve spotted that man or the vehicle following us?”

  “No, which means he’s probably placed a tracker on my truck. He would have had plenty of opportunities today.” He glanced at me. “If that is the case, then it’s worth checking your SUV, too.”

  I rubbed my arms, but it did little to chase the chill that gathered once again. Aiden might be talking about physical trackers, but magical ones were easy to do and easy to conceal. Getting me—or Belle—cornered on our own would certainly be something Clayton would prefer. It’s no doubt the reason I’d been drugged on my wedding day—it meant he didn’t have to put in the time and effort required to seduce the unwilling.

  The question that had burned in me since that dark day was whether my parents had been party to that drugging. While I could totally believe my father would have turned a blind eye, I really, really didn’t want to believe my mother would have condoned it. I might have been a great disappointment to her, and she might have been a somewhat distant parent thanks to my lack of magical ability, but she’d never been deliberately cruel or uncaring.

  As the wolf ahead neared his vehicle, he flowed back into human form and jumped into the SUV. I couldn’t see the plate number from this distance, which was annoying because it meant we had no means of finding him if my tracker stopped working for some reason. Seconds later, he was speeding away from us. Aiden followed, gradually gaining ground as his truck bounced unsteadily over the rocky pasture. My grip on the grab handle was so fierce my knuckles glowed.

  The wolf’s SUV smashed through a gate, sending it flying as the truck spun to the right and barreled toward the road.

  “You know,” I said, as we hit another pothole and the truck threatened to topple. “It might be worth letting him think he’s gotten away.”

  Aiden shot me a glance—something I felt rather than saw. “Are you sure the tracker threads won’t snap or something if he gains too much distance?”

  “I can’t give you an ironclad guarantee, of course, but I’m pretty sure it won’t.”