by Harry Nix
Alex couldn’t quite say what came over him, perhaps his two mates whispering in his ears, but he waved to Juno, and when she came closer, he suddenly leaped up, shifting as he did, towering over the little witch.
He flung her onto the bed, where she landed on her back, squealing in shock. He dived on her, the bed creaking under his weight. April and Nia had moved fast, holding one of her wrists each. Juno went to say something but suddenly Alex was above her, his cock lined up with her mouth and he gave her no chance to speak. It wasn’t the most comfortable position, holding himself above her, but when he looked down he could see her hands were held by Nia and April and she had her mouth open, sucking him for all she was worth. He only let it continue for a moment before pulling himself down the bed, leaving Juno gasping, her cheeks two patches of red. The heat from her body was close to searing but Alex was in hybrid form, more able to stand it.
Juno moaned as Alex slipped himself into her and he let out a growl at the temperature. It was like plunging into a volcanic pool, some hot spring that was close to scalding. He went from sliding into her to pounding away in an instant, and soon she was gasping, sometimes screaming, her arms held down still. The wildness that had come during the thrall felt like it was close enough to reach out and grab. It was like sex and fury mixed together as though Juno had done something very wrong and he had to punish her. Because he had already come, Alex kept at it for quite a while, Juno melting beneath him into a boneless puddle. There were bursts of red in the air as she came and then came again when he didn’t stop. Sometimes she gasped no and other times yes, more, and then soon she lost all of her words.
Eventually Alex felt that build up again, the swelling in the base of his spine, the shocks up his legs. The room was growing brighter now, more sparks rising off Juno’s skin as her temperature went up. She screamed and a flow of them burst up from her as Alex came, bringing his head down to nip at her neck, resisting the urge to bite harder.
As the bursts of sparks hit the roof, Juno’s temperature dropped down to normal and her eyes rolled back in her head as she collapsed. Alex slipped out of her and to the side, being careful not to land on April.
There was a twist in the magic then, washing out from Juno like a wave. He didn’t see any spell but knew Juno must have cast something unconsciously. It almost pulled him down into sleep.
Nia and April weren’t so lucky, both of them slipping into sleep beside Juno. Alex lay there for a little while looking at his mates through half-lidded eyes before finally shifting back to human and sitting up on the side of the bed. The chill from Juno’s chaos magic was long gone, pushed away by the heat, but it seemed the air-conditioning had sensed the change in temperature. It kicked on automatically, sending a gust of frigid air across them.
“Well, not everything can be perfect,” Alex murmured, looking up at the air-conditioning vent. Despite the luxury of this hotel room, it had been placed in the wrong spot so it blew directly onto the occupants while they were attempting to sleep.
Alex spotted a glowing panel out in the other room and despite wanting to stay in bed with his three mates, forced himself out there. He fooled around with it for a few minutes until he managed to turn off the vent near the bed while leaving the other ones on, to keep the room reasonably cool.
The further away he was from Juno the weaker the stupefying effect got, and it was now fading rapidly. Alex found himself over by the window, looking out over Baxter, wondering if it had been a spell that Juno had cast or if it was some unconscious thing, a direct expression of power. He looked down at the street below, seeing a few cars moving about, and across at the buildings. Some of the floors were lit up but most were dark. In one he saw a man packing up his suitcase before leaving the office, the window going black.
Although the bed was calling to him like a siren, Alex stood at the window for a few more minutes mulling over the extremes he had experienced recently. Squatting in homes, no air-conditioning, no power, working out of a tiny dusty office, on the run, hunted down, a bounty on his head; and then tonight, delicious food, a puppet show drama, and his mates in this luxury hotel room. Alex wasn’t sure he could make sense of it all or whether he should even try. He guessed it was still a reminder that no matter how bad things got, how chaotic they were, sometimes there was still good food, good champagne, and three amazing mates. Eventually he went back to the bedroom where the three girls were sleeping. Alex pulled the sheet up over them then lay down behind Juno who soon nestled back against him. Just the feel of her body against his was enough almost to awaken the beast again.
After stroking his fingers down her back a few times Alex forced himself to close his eyes and give in to the sleep that had been pursuing him.
6
“So apart from teeth and fangs and some kind of chameleon ability to blend in, is there anything else you know about this so-called monster?” Alex said. He cringed as Boris thumped over a pothole, but Juno, who was driving, didn’t seem to notice.
“One of the witches was stung right before the shutters all came down. She couldn’t use her magic for a couple of hours. So it might have some kind of mana-blocking poison,” Juno said.
“Mana-blocking poison,” Alex said, writing it on the pad before sitting back and sharing a glance with Nia, who was worried but trying not to show it. April was in the front seat, gently clinking as Boris rattled along the bumpy road. She was sorting through various potions that she’d grabbed in their rush this morning. They were about fifty miles outside Baxter, with another hundred or so to go, and Alex could feel the favor to the witches’ coven pressing on him since it had been invoked this morning.
Any hopes he’d had of a peaceful morning, perhaps ordering a ridiculous room service breakfast after feasting on his mates, had been shattered after Juno had woken them in a panic. The witches’ coven had called in their marker, requesting their favor from Alex. He was to go immediately to a secret library about a hundred and fifty miles from Baxter, enter it, and defeat the monster within. Alex had wanted more details, but Juno was in a crazy rush telling him they had to get moving, otherwise Alex’s non-completion of the favor would start to hurt him seriously. She’d rushed them out of the hotel, back home for all of a minute, and then into Boris, which had been parked on the street, although there had been no sign of Ruby or Hera.
Now they were driving at high speed with a hundred miles to go, and Alex was wrestling with not just the witches’ strange request, but more bad news he’d learned this morning.
Just yesterday, twenty-six werewolves in his pack had all lost their jobs. A bunch of them had taken up scaffolding work, helping set it up around buildings under construction, whereas the others had taken minor jobs, including Yvonne, who had started work as a waitress only a few days earlier.
Quite a few of the pack were employed now and bringing in money, which was helping lessen the burden on Alex, but then yesterday, like a blow coming out of nowhere, a whole lot of them had been fired all at once without reason from different jobs.
Alex sat back and looked down at his notepad, which he’d divided into two parts. On one side he’d been writing anything he could get out of Juno, who was at some high level of panic, and on the other, details of actions he thought the vampires were taking against him.
The power was still out, although Jeremiah assured him he was close to bribing an electrician to do some illegal work to hopefully get it reconnected. Werewolves had lost their jobs, and recently in one of the local Baxter newspapers, a politician had started agitating for getting rid of urban blight, something Alex would have ignored if Jeremiah hadn’t brought it to his attention. Urban blight in this case meant all of the abandoned homes, many of which had werewolves squatting in them.
Alex tapped the pen on that side of the pad. They were making zero progress there. They still couldn’t get anyone to reconnect the electricity, their homes are still condemned, and if this was what vampires did, it was supremely effective. He knew it might take
them six months to a year to build enough support for some kind of urban redevelopment program, but that was how they worked. They didn’t care if it took years to achieve their goals—eventually decisions would be made, bulldozers would arrive, their land would likely be compulsorily acquired from them, and although they might be paid back some value, they would still end up homeless.
He went back to the witches’ favor.
“Juno, can you just take me through this one more time?” he said.
Juno was hunched over the wheel so tensely that she looked like she might snap at any moment.
“I told you the details,” Juno said. Although they still had miles to go, she was racing like they were an ambulance on the way to hospital. Alex reached forward and touched April on the shoulder, getting her attention before nodding at Juno. April was worried, too, but understood what he wanted, so she reached over and touched Juno on the arm before a faint chime sounded, and then Juno let out a sigh a moment later. Alex watched her physically relax and unclench, letting her shoulders down, sitting up straighter in her seat before shaking her head as if throwing off the weight of the morning.
“Wow, I really needed that,” she said. Nia reached over from the back seat and squeezed Juno’s shoulders a few times, the little witch sighing before finally rubbing her eyes and glancing back over at Alex.
“Okay, the whole story is this. Witches arrange in covens, and then there is this big coven. It’s the coven made up of covens. In the middle of nowhere, they built a library/armory/treasure house/whatever. Not quite twenty years ago some…monster… appears in the library out of nowhere. Now, this was extremely weird because that place was covered in so many protections. It starts killing witches. A few escaped and then bam, the whole place locks down. The building itself has shutters and iron gates for defense if it’s needed, but something triggers them and then locks over the top of it. Some kind of unbreakable magical lock the various witches have been working on coming up to two decades now. They even used dynamite on it, no effect. Well, very recently it started glowing, changing colors, something happening with it, and then best I can figure it, right about when you ripped the ward apart on Xavo, it told us that it will open for a Werewolf Mage,” Juno said.
“The magic lock itself actually said Werewolf Mage?” Alex said.
Juno shrugged. “I’m only hearing it from Hera, but yeah it clearly indicated it would only unlock for a Werewolf Mage. The way that place works, you can’t take anything in. No rings, no wands, no weapons, just you. Not even a shifter charm,” she said.
“It doesn’t say anything about gulping down a bunch of potions before you go in, though,” April said.
“Nor does it say anything about taking a bunch of unenchanted rings and enchanting them once you’re in there,” Nia said.
“On the first one, yeah, maybe if you drink some potions, you can go on with that. The second one, I don’t know. He might enchant a ring and the security system will step in, and stomp him into the ground,” Juno said.
“What kind of security system?” Alex asked.
“There’s a couple of golems, metal ones, and for some reason they didn’t step in to fight the monster. They’re basically there to stop witches fighting each other inside the library, so their first step is to grab you and just throw you out, but then after that, if you keep doing it, they’ll hurt you. In fact, there’s a few other magical defense systems that should have kicked in, but none of them did, so it’s possible that none of them are working,” Juno finished. Now that they were talking, Juno visibly relaxed further despite what they were discussing being somewhat horrifying.
The monster, which some had described as larger than an elephant, and others as cat-sized, had killed almost every witch in the library at the time, with only those closest to the exits managing to escape before the security system kicked in and locked the place down. Whatever it was, it moved fast, and had overcome quite a lot of powerful witches including stinging one and removing her ability to use magic altogether.
If Alex had a choice in it, he’d want to talk to some of the surviving witches, make a perfect plan, at least give April the time to brew up some more powerful potions, but the witches had invoked their favor, and now Alex was understanding just how deadly and serious such promises were.
He’d made the favor in exchange for the witches supplying a hundred troops to defeat the thousand-strong Corvus pain mages and their weredogs. Alex knew the witches had helped turn the tide of battle, knew that they may have lost if they hadn’t been there, but now as they barreled out into the middle of nowhere, he was regretting the deal he made.
Juno had rushed them home with such speed because the favor had begun to pull on Alex. It was almost like the Great Barrier, the feeling of fishhooks in his muscles. At first, it was weak, only tugging lightly as they went home to get clothes and supplies, but even running into his office to grab a bunch of unenchanted rings had pulled on Alex as he was moving away from where the favor was to take place. Perhaps that explained why Juno was driving like a lunatic, trying to get them to the library as fast as she could.
They talked, gradually exhausting the topic, and then moving on to chew over new matters, like the sudden influx of unemployed werewolves. Alex brought up his spell screen, concentrating on the contracts and favors tab. The one made to the witches’ coven was a major favor and sitting at the top. There were three other favors listed. One was listed to Hera/Ruby, another consequence of getting troops for the battle. It was a moderate favor, which Juno had explained was around the level of the previous one, when Ruby had asked Alex to help her steal gold from the vampire, Prince. The two other favors listed were for Juno and April, both listed as minor, a new designation that had only recently appeared.
Alex looked over them, no longer feeling the tug of annoyance he had when he’d first seen them. Juno had made him trade a favor before he was even aware of what it really was, and he’d felt that April had done the same, but he’d worked at letting it go. They were his mates and wouldn’t pull him into something ridiculously deadly. The witches’ coven, on the other hand, had no such hesitation.
With Boris roaring along, they quickly ate up miles, and a little over an hour later had slowed considerably, the sealed road changing to dirt, Boris thudding along over holes. The road soon petered out entirely, Juno having to get up a burst of speed to go up and over a hill of grass and slippery mud before coming down the other side where a newer road started that led to a small town.
“This place is a ghost town,” Alex commented, looking out the window at the run-down buildings.
“It used to be a thing, back when the witches could get in the library. Obviously, not a bustling metropolis out here, but plenty of witches would come to stay, go in to study, trade favors. Once the library locked down, this place died with it. They went to other libraries in different states,” Juno said.
“How many of these places do the witches have?” Alex asked.
“Enough,” Juno said, dodging the question like a typical witch.
“I think about eight, just in the United States,” April said. “When you work out roughly how many witches there are, size and population centers, places that they could go… I think they’ve dotted them about, and there’d be roughly eight of them.”
“Maybe,” Juno said, and then flinched when Nia pinched her on the back of the neck.
“Ow! What was that for?” she complained.
“For being a typical witch,” Nia said.
They drove down what Alex assumed had previously been a main street. There were disused shops up and down it, and he once again got a glimpse of the entire hidden economy behind the world separated out by the Great Barrier. Before the library had shut down, this town had been alive, full of witches. There’d been a general store, a laundromat, and what appeared to be a few restaurants, including a shop that sold Chinese and had a peeling golden dragon stuck on the front window.
They’d just reached the en
d of the main street, looking at miles of dusty open land, when a cold wave washed over the car as they passed through some kind of barrier. Between one blink and the next, a building the size of a university popped into existence in front of them. It was like a fortress merged with a modern office building. Parts of it looked positively medieval—spiked fences, small slits to fire arrows out of, castle walls. These merged with other sections that were far more modern. Through one window, Alex could see a desk with a chair and a computer sitting on it. He could instantly tell from the appearance of it that it was easily twenty years old.
“They can’t break that window?” Alex said.
“You can try, but I’m not sure we brought enough healing flame rings for what might happen to you,” Juno said. They followed the road, which led to wide front gates that were open, and passed through them.
Inside was like a different world. There were trees spread everywhere over rolling grass, some of which had gone wild, clearly in need of a gardener. They drove to the front of the library where Hera, Ruby, and a group of other witches were waiting.
Alex got out, noting that nearby there were a few very new-looking kit homes that had been constructed near the library, apparently where the few remaining witches who were trying to destroy the magical lock stayed while they were working on it.
Alex looked across the witches. Ruby had combat boots on again and was dressed in black, like she was ready to go rappelling down the building itself and smash in through a window. Hera had gone the other direction, wearing an evening gown. She crossed her arms, and Alex saw small glints of light from the jewels embedded within. The other witches were dressed more conservatively and looked like field researchers, wearing shades of khaki. One of them, an older woman in her fifties, had her hair pulled back so tightly that Alex was almost sure if she sneezed, her face would rip off entirely.
“White Fang, about time,” Ruby called out, jovial. Alex saw the other witch give her a look that felt like it would have killed her had it landed. Stretching from the trip and followed by his mates, Alex came to stand in front of them, feeling the pressure from the favor lessening as he got closer.
