Firestorm

by William Stacey

  No, she mused. We need the supplies and horses inside this church.

  Erin dropped to a knee behind the wall, motioning Angie to drop as well. In the darkness, Erin’s eyes flashed like a wolf's as she nodded at Angie. Erin's job had been to get Angie close enough to the church to use her special magic, her life-sense ability. Now it was up to Angie.

  Angie closed her eyes and sent out her consciousness, probing the area for life forms. In a flash, every living thing within a couple hundred meters flared into existence within her mind’s eye, glowing like candle flames. The smaller life forms, the birds, mice, and vermin, she ignored, instead working her way through the larger creatures, counting only men or horses. Rowan’s estimate had been good. There were eight men inside the church, a section. Most of the men lay prone, sleeping, but two men were upright and moving. One stood in the bell tower, while the other patrolled the interior wall of the church. Two sentries, then. One would have been better, but two was doable.

  She exhaled and opened her eyes, nodding to Erin and holding up eight fingers and then making fists before holding up two more fingers—eight men, two sentries. Erin nodded. They had all the information they needed. A section of men was far more reasonable than they had any right to hope for. Hell, Erin could probably take out both sentries herself right now. That would be stupid, of course, and Rowan would be furious. But she could.

  What would Tec think if Angie and Erin foolishly risked their lives?

  Would Tec even care?

  The strange were-jaguar warrior had been uncharacteristically morose since the death of his master, the dragon Quetzalcoatl, and had barely said a word to anyone in the days since. For reasons she couldn’t understand, she found herself watching him almost constantly in the days since escaping the temple of Zolin. Her thoughts always drifted to him, as if he were a magnet and she iron fillings. It wasn't just that he was good-looking—hell, he was probably the sexiest man she had ever seen—but something else was going on between her and him, something ... screwy. The other night, she had lain on the hard ground, watching his face as he slept, and she had been inexplicably aroused, wanting nothing more than to pull her pants down and jump his bones. No man was that good-looking, not even a were-jaguar with mesmerizing green eyes. Yet even now, her thoughts drifted to him, to his powerful biceps, to his—

  Erin shoved her shoulder again, her eyes slits.

  Angie's face heated beneath her night-vision glasses, and she mouthed the word "sorry." Erin shook her head and led her back down the hill, through the graveyard, and into the sleeping village.

  Rowan and the others waited for them in the mountains to the south of the village. Their party consisted of Rowan and Erin's other two brothers, Casey and Jay, as well as the elven changeling Wyn Renna and Deldin Gar, the only surviving member of the elven Phoenix Guard that had helped raid the temple; Octavia "Tavi" Navarro, a Norteno combat mage, one of the famed Brujas Fantasmas, the Ghost Witches; and Tec, the man who filled Angie with inappropriate thoughts.

  Erin led Angie through the village and then out into the surrounding woods. Erin, in her element, moved quickly and silently, but Angie almost walked into Erin before she realized the other woman had stopped.

  Erin dropped to a knee, pulling Angie down with her. They had come to a small mountain road, little more than a hardened dirt path through the woods that led to the village, but now Angie heard the clopping of horses' hooves and the jingle of harness. Riders were coming, and by the sounds, quite a few. The two women remained in place, hiding behind bushes. A horse nickered, and a moment later, horse and rider came into sight, moving down the path toward the village. More riders followed, a long line of mounted soldiers, all carrying rifles.

  Angie held her breath, and Erin eased her sub-gun into her shoulder, her finger resting on the trigger guard. Angie forced down her anxiety and closed her eyes, casting out her life-sense magic once more. She counted a dozen horses and riders as well as a long line of people walking alongside the horses. Many were children, she recognized with a start. The soldiers were herding prisoners. She opened her eyes and saw the prisoners now, bound neck to neck, including the children. There were thirty of them, mostly women, and at least a third were children, some as young as five or six. What the hell is this?

  The mounted men were Aztalan soldiers, but the man leading them wore a heavy cavalry saber on his hip. She guessed his sword was hexed, which made him a mage. Only hexed weapons could slip past the magical shields a mage's shade—the supernatural spirit-like entity that shared a mage’s body—created to protect their mage host. Shades helped mages survive the caustic effect of using mana to create magic. In return, the shade kept the mage alive, shielding him or her from just about any threat—other than a hexed blade. If this man was a mage, then he was a Tzitzime blood mage and would be dangerous. He’d know magic spells she didn’t.

  As the prisoners moved past, Angie saw they were Ferals, the savage tribes who were all that was left of those people who couldn't find safety within the protected zones and walled cities after A-Day. Without laws or structure, the Ferals had degenerated into primitive cultures, the ultimate dog-eat-dog society, literally. She had never seen Feral women and children before, only the fighting-age males who attacked the walled farming communities, but now, seeing the misery on their faces, Angie felt pity for them. When one of the children stumbled and fell, the nearest rider beat him with a stick, eliciting howls of pain. Angie held her breath, her body rigid with anger.

  She and Erin couldn’t take on so many foes, not by themselves.

  The long line of prisoners and soldiers moved past on their way to the village and then the church atop the hill. There was no way Rowan would want to attack that church now, not with so many soldiers and a Tzitzime mage. As Erin rose and led Angie away, Angie couldn’t stop thinking about those prisoners. And what the Aztalans—infamous for their bloody sacrifices—were going to do to them.

  There was no way Angie was going to let that happen.

  Chapter 3

  Moss-covered boulders, some as large as wagons, lay strewn about the mountain gully where the others awaited Angie and Erin. As the two women came closer, a dark shape stepped out from behind one of the boulders, surprising Angie.

  "Ha! Got you," said Jayden "Jay" Seagrave, the second youngest of the Seagrave family.

  "Hardly." Erin brushed past him. "I smelled you two hundred yards back. Jesus, Jay, find a stream. You smell worse than Casey."

  Jay was in his late twenties, with long reddish-blond hair. The young man was so good-looking, most of the women in the Home Guard, Angie included, had harbored a crush for him. Jay's left arm, where he had taken a Feral arrow in the shoulder a week earlier, was bound across his chest, but he held a sub-gun by its pistol grip with his good hand. His smile faltered. "Now you're just being mean." He turned to Angie, who still wore her NVGs. "How'd it go, four-eyes?"

  "Good and bad," Angie said with a weary sigh. "Good and bad."

  "More gooder or more badder ... badderer?"

  As she drifted past him, Angie trailed her fingers over his stubbly cheek. Jay needed a shave. After days in the mountains, he had far too much scruff on his face. It made him look all woodsy and rough, but Jay was too sweet for that.

  Even if he was another werewolf.

  Jay sighed. "Badderer, then. Story of our lives."

  The young man left his sentry post to follow the two women. Normally, abandoning a sentry post could get you in a lot of trouble, but Angie had learned that it was almost impossible to sneak up on the Seagraves. With their enhanced senses, they could hear a mouse fart from a hundred feet away ... probably smell it too.

  The rest of the party sat on fallen logs or moss-covered stones around a fire so small it barely counted as such, but that was all Rowan would allow while the Aztalans hunted them. Rowan waved them over. "Take a load off."

  In his late fifties, Rowan was the eldest of the Seagrave family and pack leader, the alpha wolf. He was
n't a particularly large or muscular man, but he was just about the toughest person Angie had ever met. With his graying red hair, thick porn-star mustache, and grizzled features, he exuded the quiet confidence of an elite warrior. Before the Awakening, Rowan had been a Navy SEAL. Three of the Seagrave brothers had been in the U.S. armed forces in one capacity or another and had been stationed together on A-Day in the same unit as Angie’s father: the Electro Magnetic Vulnerability Assessment Facility—now the Home Guard’s Bunker. Only Erin and Jay had been too young to serve and had joined the Home Guard shortly before Angie had graduated from Char’s Fey school of magic in the Fresno Fey Enclave.

  The others made room for Angie, Erin, and Jay around the small fire. Angie sat on a stone, pulled off her NVGs, groaned, and rubbed her sore butt. After all the hiking they had been doing the last few days, every part of her hurt—especially her feet.

  Casey Seagrave, a tall, red-haired, bushy-bearded brute of a man, draped a muscled arm around her shoulder. "Need some help with sore muscles, Angie-baby?" he leered in a suggestive voice. "Full-body erotic massages are my thang."

  She elbowed him in the ribs, and he grunted and removed his arm, but she smiled. Casey was kidding ... well, probably. It was hard to take Casey seriously at the best of times. He was the second oldest and by far the largest of the Seagrave family. A huge man, at well over six feet and hundreds of pounds of muscle, Casey seemed way too big to be an ex-Special Forces helicopter pilot. With his large, oft-broken nose, thick beard, and disheveled red hair, he elicited one of two reactions from people: exhausted eye rolling or underwear-spoiling terror.

  "No," snapped Jay. "Pulling your wang every half hour is your thang."

  Casey snorted. "When you grow some hair on your balls, little brother, you'll learn real men have many talents, including the manly art of self-pleasure." He leered once again at Angie, but she pretended not to notice.

  Jay had plopped next to Tavi, even though there was more space elsewhere. Tavi was young and pretty—okay, beautiful—and in her early twenties, with long brown hair, big, expressive hazel eyes, and a pert nose. Over the last few days, Tavi and Jay had been spending an inordinate amount of time in each other's company, their voices lowered in conversation, and more than once, Angie had watched out of the corner of her eye as Tavi trailed her fingers over Jay's arm or shoulder, a happy laugh on her lips at something he had said.

  Angie should probably have been jealous—God only knew Erin had been pushing Angie and Jay together for weeks now—but, to her considerable surprise, she wasn’t jealous. Like, at all. She liked Jay. She really liked Jay. And a year ago, she would have happily birthed an entire litter of his wolf cubs, but this wasn't last year. Angie had been through the wringer and had become a different person.

  To be fair, Tavi had been through just as much. In the course of a single week, Tavi had lost her mentor, discovered her lover was a Tzitzime spy—who then tried to kill her—and watched helplessly as a pack of monstrous chupacabras ripped him apart. So … yeah. If something good was going on between Tavi and Jay, that was just fine with Angie. She sincerely hoped that when nobody was watching, they were sneaking off to the bushes to screw like bunnies.

  Well … maybe not that. But something sweet. Maybe holding hands.

  Besides, even now, Angie couldn't stop stealing glances at Tec, who was sitting sullenly across from her, staring at the fire. Tec wasn't particularly tall, like Casey, but he was solidly built, with powerful arms and shoulders and a narrow waist. His bronzed features were a blend of Spanish and aboriginal, with a large hawklike nose and striking green eyes. His hair was dark and curly, blacker than hers, and she wondered what it would be like to run her fingers through it and then down his chest and toned stomach to his…

  She gave herself a shake. What the hell is wrong with me?

  The others were a pair of elves—although only one of them looked like an elf. Deldin Gar was a Phoenix Guard warrior, the lone survivor who had accompanied them on the raid to rescue Tec and Wyn Renna. Thin, with an elongated egg-like skull, long pointy ears, and straight black hair, Deldin Gar sat beside Wyn Renna, who, despite looking like a tall blond human woman with pale skin and the sides of her hair shaved, was another elf. Wyn Renna was a changeling and the daughter of the elven queen, Elenaril Cloudborn. Almost two decades ago, the elves had used powerful magic to turn her into a changeling, altering her features to look exactly like those of Constance Morgan, the woman everyone had always thought was the legendary leader of the Brujas Fantasmas. The real Constance Morgan had lived among the elves, taking the name Wyn Renna and serving the queen as the leader of her Phoenix Guard—right up until the moment that evil bitch Rayan Zar Davi had beheaded her atop the Temple of Zolin.

  It really had been a hell of a week.

  "Okay, everyone," Rowan said, getting their attention. He pointed to the ground next to the tiny fire, where he had used small stones and sticks to represent the walls of the church, with a large strip of bark for the church itself. "What are we looking at?"

  "There was a section of infantry, eight men," Angie answered. "And at least twice as many horses."

  "Was?" Tec asked, speaking for the first time in what seemed like days.

  If Angie was surprised to hear Tec speak, she was thrilled to see him watching her. Her lips felt too large and numb, and she struggled to answer him. "I ... well ... there was this ... er—"

  "Another patrol arrived," Erin said, staring at Angie. "Just as we were leaving."

  Angie’s face heated with embarrassment.

  "Patrol?" Rowan asked, picking up on the tone in Erin's voice.

  "A dozen more Aztalan soldiers," Erin answered.

  "And fuck our lives," Casey said, yanking on his bushy beard with both hands. "A section? No big deal. An entire platoon? Not so easy."

  "Not just a platoon," Angie said miserably. "They have a Tzitzime mage with them as well."

  Rowan sighed, his expression world-weary. "Well, better to find out now. We'll find another target."

  "Rowan," Erin said in a tight voice, "we can't wait. The full moon is—"

  "I know when the full moon is. We'll just have to move fast."

  Fear shot through Angie, and her gaze swept across the Seagraves. Each one looked miserable. "Wait. You've told me before you lose control when you change to werewolves. Is it safe for us to be around you?"

  "No," Erin said simply. "It isn't. It really isn't. That's why we were hoping to get the horses. That way we could put some distance between us and you before the full moon. We planned on catching up to you … well, after."

  "If we can," Jay said. When Erin glared at him, he met her stare defiantly. "It's the truth, and you know it."

  "Damn, damn, damn," muttered Rowan softly, running his hand back through his hair and massaging his neck.

  "There's more," Angie said.

  "That wasn't enough?" Jay asked.

  "They have prisoners. Women and children."

  From the expressions on their faces, this pleased no one. "Prisoners?" Rowan asked, articulating the word as if it made no sense. "Women and children?"

  "It was creepy," Erin said. "Especially the mage. Really creepy. I know how stupid this sounds, but he smelled … bad."

  "It isn't stupid," Tec said. "The mage you saw was Tzitzime, a blood mage. Their sacrificial magic turns their souls black. You smelled the foulness."

  "What are they going to do to those people?" Angie asked.

  "Do? They're going to kill them, ritually sacrifice them, cut their hearts out, and gain more power."

  Angie's jaw dropped. "What ... what do you mean?"

  Tec's eyes locked on hers. "The dragons, the Twin Deaths—Itzpapalotl and Tezcatlipoca—taught their Tzitzime worshipers sacrificial blood magic. The more people they sacrifice, the more power they gain. This is how Rayan Zar Davi has lived as long as she has."

  To her horror, what he described sounded far too much like what she did as a source mage—absorb the life
force of others and convert it into mana to cast powerful spells. No, that wasn’t entirely true. She wasn’t taking anyone’s life force, the Shade King, the powerful supernatural entity she shared her body with, had taken those lives, not her. Never her. She was merely the conduit for its magic, not faultless certainly, but not responsible either.

  She felt like throwing up but turned to Rowan. "We need to do something."

  "Angie," Rowan said softly, misery in his eyes. "We're in enemy territory. We can't help everyone. There's an entire platoon as well as a blood mage in that church now. It's too much."

  She jumped to her feet, her emotions surging. "You're a family of werewolf super soldiers." They were all staring at her now as if she had lost her shit, but she kept going, couldn't stop now. Her mind kept going back to what Tec had said about the Tzitzime sacrificing those people. "Helping women and children, that should be enough of a reason, but if you need more, think about this: They have everything we need in that church: weapons, supplies, horses. We need to hit them—tonight!"

  "She's right," Erin said, standing in support and staring down Rowan. "We didn't listen to her when the chupacabras went after Tavi. Let's not make that same mistake. I vote yes."

  "This isn't a democracy, sis," Rowan said. "I didn't ask you for your vote. We're just talking right now is all."

  Casey spat, but some of the spittle missed and ran into his thick beard. "Well, more enemy means I get to do more fighting, so there's that."

  "Jesus, people," Rowan said, glaring at Erin and Angie, mostly Erin ... maybe a little bit at Casey. "We're werewolves, but we’re not invulnerable, and even for us, an entire platoon is a lot—and there's that Tzitzime mage."

  "I'll deal with the mage," Angie said defiantly.

  "I'll help," offered Tavi. "Two against one is pretty good odds, even if they know different magic."