by Celeste Raye
Then John heard a scream, and even though it was about a mile away, he knew exactly who it was. Not only was Laura back, but she was not alone, and whoever she was with was not happy with something that she did. John knew he had to get to her. If somebody was hurting Laura, he had to stop it. Laura didn't deserve it. He was the one that dragged her into it after all.
John realized the danger around him, and he raced back inside, finding his daughter and placing her in the panic room before he left. Dana didn't want him to go, but John knew that the safest place for her was right there, no matter what he discovered.
It was a hard choice for him to go back and make sure Dana was safe because he knew that Laura wasn’t. It was her that had screamed. Had his helping Dana spelled the end for the woman he had fallen for? John couldn't change what he had done, and he probably wouldn’t anyway. Laura wouldn't want him to, but as he raced towards the danger, he was worried that it would be too late.
He heard another scream and it was Laura again. She sounded like she was in pain, and he wasn't prepared for what he saw in the clearing in the woods.
Laura was in some kind of' bubble of magic that was hovering her several feet over the ground. It was coming from the woman that she had been talking to that one night in the woods. He imagined that it was her sister. Either way, he realized that it was her family that was doing it to her.
John didn't have time to scope out the situation. He was running on pure emotions, and he didn't see the other witches beside him. All he saw was the blast of purple magic coming towards him in a bolt of light. John didn't have to know much about magic to know that he was going to hurt.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Laura heard a commotion behind her and she was relieved and then worried, when she saw that it was John. It looked like he had gotten the warning. That seemed to be about the only good that came out of it.
Caroline tried to shoot him several times, and Laura begged her not to. She didn't want anything to happen to him, no matter what the rest of the family wanted. Her two aunts were with him after her sister Madeline dragged her back to her mother. She tattled on her, telling her that she was going to warn John and Dana. Now that she had warned them, Laura was worried that something was going to happen to John.
Another threat crossed her mind, and she wondered where Dana was. Her eyes searched the woods, hoping that she wouldn't find her peeking out from behind a tree or something. What was going to happen next, Laura did not want Dana to have to witness. There were some things that people just couldn't unsee.
“Stop, Mother! John and his daughter had nothing to do with this. You are just being cruel at this point. You all are. Abusing your magic.”
“I have certainly heard enough from you.”
Madeline threw her out of the magical hold that they had on her, and Laura was gasping for breath. Being suspended like that had felt like it was crushing her whole body slowly. Now she was finally able to take a deep breath that filled her lungs.
When she tried to move towards them, a magic bolt sent her flying away, and she called to John as she was leaving. She was telling him to run. Laura knew what her family was capable of. She should have left in the middle of the night and warned him. But she was afraid of what she would find if she had. Maybe she could have just called. Anything had to be better than this.
Laura heard a scream coming from where she had just been thrown from. It was a very loud sound that sent a shiver through her spine. First, it was one of her aunts that screamed, and then it was her sister. From the way they sounded, Laura was sure that they were hurt, if not worse. There was no more sound for a time, and then she heard another aunt screaming.
When she got to her feet and got to the area she had been thrown from, the first thing that she saw was several bodies. There was blood, and it took a moment for her eyes to adjust to the movement. John was not John. He was in his bear form. He had her mother, and it looked like he was about to kill her when Laura tried to stop him.
“John! Don't do it! That's my mother. I know that she is evil and our family has done horrible things, but she is still my mother.”
It was then that Laura saw her sister on the ground, and she was still breathing. Her focus went to her. Madeline had always been different than the rest of them. She had always hoped that Madeline was more like her. Even though Madeline had just tattled to her mother about her plans to stop all of it, she still couldn't bear to have something happened to her.
“John! Come here and take my sister back to her house. My aunts will be able to help her. The rest of the coven can heal her.”
John had shifted into his human form, and he had Laura’s mother by the neck. It was obvious that he did not want to let her go.
Laura wasn't afraid of him, not in the least bit, and as far as Laura was concerned, he owed her. He had not been truly honest with her and had hurt her. If nothing else, he could help her now. It was his fault, after all.
“You want me to help her?” John was incredulous.
“Yes, I want you to help her. You know where we live, don't you?”
He said that he did and Laura waited for him to change back into his bear form. She climbed on top of his back after she laid her sister over as well. Laura looked back at her mother once; her face was still colored, and she wore a look of rage. Laura knew that she shouldn't leave, but she had no other choice. Caroline was going to have to wait.
Madeline was innocent of all of this. Or at least more innocent than the rest of them. She was guilty more of not being able to stand up to her family. Laura knew from experience that it could be really hard to do.
John took her where she wanted to go, but he didn't get very close. He stopped and let her get her sister off of his back before he turned around.
“Get her into the house to be saved by your family, but then I want you to come back with me. This isn't safe. This isn't you.”
“Why do you even act like you care? I know the truth, John, why you brought me into your home.”
“I know you do, but those crazy witches are trying to kill my whole family and my whole pack, so the last thing I need to do is be caught here. Get your sister in the house and come with me.”
Laura was unsure for a moment, but then she agreed. She knew that she couldn't stick around with her family, not after what went down tonight.
“What about Dana?”
“She is in the panic room watching cartoons at the moment. Dana is safe. I want to get you safe too, and then we will figure out what to do next.”
Laura was unsure about the plan, but there was nothing better that she could think of. The last thing that she wanted to do was leave it all the way it was, but she didn't have a choice.
“Fine, I'll be back in a minute.”
For the first time since Laura had met John, she used her magic in front of him. She had always kept a damper on it, even when she was around her own family, but it was a lot easier to move her sister that way. She put her up into a bubble, just like her mother had done to her and started to move her towards the house. She was almost to the front door when they opened it, and her Aunt Lisa had a shocked look on her face. “What happened?”
It was pretty easy to imagine the answer to that, considering the way her wounds looked. It was obvious that a shifter had gotten hold of her.
“I have to go, Lisa. Take care of her.”
Lisa yelled after her, but she ignored it. Once the rest of them found out what she had done, she wouldn’t be safe. Laura was never going to be able to go back.
She wanted to look back just once, at the house she had known almost all of her life. She hoped that her sister would be okay. Madeline was in bad shape, but if anyone would be able to save her, it was the Baxter family. Before they had gone towards the dark full-stop, everyone from the smaller town would come to them for remedies. They had a spell or a potion for just about anything. Those times were gone, once they locked themselves away, deeper in the woods, but Laura knew tha
t they would still have that knowledge.
When she got back to where she had left John, she was worried that he wouldn’t be there. What if he left her?
“Laura?”
He was ready for her, and she climbed onto his back quickly. Laura worried about finding Caroline out there, so she cloaked them both and held on as he made his way through the woods, back to his home at the edge of the city. It was a ways away, but he moved fast and they were there quickly. Laura noticed that he bypassed the area with her fallen family, and she was thankful for that. Nothing good was going to come from going back there.
They stopped in the woods, and she slid off of him before he turned back into the form she had fallen for.
“Are you okay?”
“Check on Dana. We can talk later.”
Laura was still afraid something had happened to her. Maybe she got scared and tried to find them… A million bad scenarios ran in her head as she was opening the backdoor. She just wanted to see her and know that Dana was okay. Her father was right behind her and put the code in, while Laura waited an eternity for it to open.
Chapter Twenty-Three
The door was taking forever to open, but John was able to breathe again when he saw Dana sitting on the couch, watching TV. It’s exactly what he told Laura that she would be doing, but he hadn’t imagined that he would be right, though John was sure glad that he was.
“Baby, are you okay?”
“Yes, Daddy, I’m fine. What’s going on? You look like you’ve been in a fight.”
He looked down at himself and cursed the appearance that he was showing to his daughter. He hadn’t realized that his clothes were in tatters and there was blood all over him. He wanted to go back a few minutes and clean himself off first, but he had been too rushed to see her. That and Laura probably wouldn’t have let him take the time to do so. She was just as concerned about Dana as he was.
“I have been in a fight, baby girl, but I'm fine. We need to get out of here, though.”
“Are you hurt?”
“No.”
“But you have blood all over you…”
“This isn't my blood, Dana. Now come on, we’ve got to get out of here.”
Dana wanted to know what was going on, but as soon as she saw Laura, all of the questions disappeared. She ran up to Laura and gave her a big hug.
“We didn't know if you were coming back, Laura. I am so glad that you did. I was afraid I would never see you again. You didn’t even say goodbye.”
John could tell that Laura was taking the little girl's words to heart. Laura had a bit of a glistening tear in her eye, and he saw her wipe it away. Dana always had a knack for getting inside a person's heart. It looked like Laura was no different.
Laura pulled away from Dana and gently reminded her that they really did need to go.
“What's going on?”
“Some bad people are after our family, Dana. I don't think they like shifters very well, so we're going to go somewhere we can be safe.”
“We're going to go see Grandpa?”
John had been thinking about what they were going to do as soon as he had started taking out witches in the woods. He had known instantly, that it wasn’t it going to be safe for them to go back. Maybe he did need to go back to his pack. They certainly were going to need help fighting when the witches came.
The only good thing was he would be able to report was the fact that he had taken out a couple of them before they could attack as a full coven. It would weaken their power, but possibly not enough. Witches where some of the strongest creatures that he had ever encountered.
“Maybe we can go see Grandpa? I'm sure that he wouldn't mind a little visit.”
Laura didn’t say anything, but she helped get Dana a small bag ready. Ernest already had the car waiting for them, and they remained in the car for a few moments before John came back out. He was rushing, and he knew he had missed things, but none of it mattered at the moment. Everything he was worried about, truly worried about, was in the car waiting for them to go.
Ernest had been caught up to speed on what was going on. There was a lot that was going to have to be discussed, but Ernest knew better than to say anything in front of Dana. While Dana knew that sometimes harm could come to them because of what they were, John still wanted to keep her away from it. She didn't need to know everything.
So instead, they drove in silence for what seemed like forever. John knew that it was quite a long drive, but Dana gave up trying to stay up for it. She was tired from all the excitement and leaned against his shoulder, sleeping. That she was safe was all that mattered.
“Where are we going, John?”
Laura was talking very low, to not wake up Dana.
“We're going to go to my pack. They have to be warned, and they will keep us safe.”
“Do you really think that's a good idea?”
The tone said that Laura was nervous, and he could understand why. Everything bad that was coming down on his pack was because of her family. At the time that he had hired her, he had every intention of using her to secure the pack’s forgiveness from the witches. Now that he had ruined all that, there was just worry about keeping everyone safe. He knew that he was going to have to keep her safe from her own family as well. But maybe he was going to have to keep her safe from his too. They were not going to take too kindly to her, considering who she was.
“It will be fine. There are over two hundred and sixty of us in the pack and I think it would be best if we were all together right now. There is strength in numbers.”
“Yes, but you also make it easier for the witches to kill you. My family is planning to burn you alive with one spell. If you are all gathered together, you're just going to make it easier for them.”
John stopped for a moment and thought about it. He had not thought of it that way before. He had always thought that there was strength with them together, but now he was questioning if he was wrong. He knew that he could trust her, but it didn't mean that anybody else would.
“Do you really think that your family will go through with it?”
“You know the history of my family, don't you? You know what they've done? They have killed a lot of people, and I don't think that they would bat an eye, to kill all of you, as well as the twenty human sacrifices needed to do so. They will stop at nothing until they see you all burn.”
John had been afraid of that, but there was nothing he could do about it. This wasn’t his fight, it was his uncle's fight, but he was going to have to fix it.
He took a deep breath and told Laura that everything was going to be fine, even if he didn’t believe it.
“I think we have very different definitions of that word, John. The sky is falling down around us, and you are just so calm.”
“Everyone that I love is safe, so yes, at the moment, I am very calm. I will be there for my family, but you two are the ones that I am worried about more than the others.”
“Why am I one of those two?”
“You know why.”
“Maybe I want to hear it since I learned that you like to keep things from me.”
“I know that you are mad at me.”
“That would be an understatement.”
“Well, whatever it is, I know that you are mad. I shouldn’t have lied to you, but in my defense, I never thought I would fall for you. How was I supposed to know that it was even possible?”
“Fallen for me?”
“Yes, in every way that I can. You have to know that.”
Laura was quiet for a moment, and then she just smiled. “I think I have fallen for you as well, John. I don’t know how it happened, or why, for that matter, but I know that I can’t think of ever feeling this way with anyone else.”
They kissed softly, and John forgot for a moment where they were. He tried to deepen it, and she pulled back and gave him a look.
“Soon, woman. We will be alone soon, and you won’t have a good reason not to anymore.”
>
Laura agreed, but he could see that he wasn’t the only one that wanted to be alone at the moment. He had to look away from her, knowing that it wasn’t the right time.
The car stopped and pulled his mind to other things. John knew that he was going to have to have a long conversation with his father, but he wanted to get the two girls put up first. They needed a couple of rooms, which there were plenty of. Then he could go down and have the long conversation with Dominic that he didn’t want to have. His father was never one to see reason, but now that it was Dana being affected, he was going to have to.
He found them each a room. Laura stayed behind in the one for Dana and helped her get ready for bed. She had slept a little while in the car, but it was still late, and she needed to get some sleep. More importantly, John had to figure some things out. Then he would have a plan, and then he would be able to take care of it. That’s all he was worried about at the moment.
John went to find Dominic. He had run off to get a drink or something of that nature. He was getting an idea of what the conversation was going to be about. John knew that his father wasn’t one that wanted to face a confrontation. He would happily walk into a fight but talking about it was a whole other ball game.
Chapter Twenty-Four
“Tell me what is going on here, son. I don’t understand.”
John sighed out loud because he’d explained himself several times now. As much as he wanted to believe that this wasn’t going to end badly, he knew that it was impossible for it to end well.
“Like I said, the witches are coming. They hit up my place first, and I had to take three of them out. Maybe two dead and one severely injured. Caroline, one of the stronger ones, got away, but I don’t think it will be long before we see them again. She will want her revenge.”
“Given all the shit that you gave me when you heard about us killing one of them, I wouldn’t have imagined that you would go ahead and do the same thing, three times over.”
