by Harry Nix
Before anything else could happen, Alex grabbed Stephen by the arm and then waved at Juno to bring Harmony, taking them down the back of the factory and into the office where he did his enchanting. He put both of them in there and closed the door, standing outside with Juno as Nia approached, still in hybrid form. She wasn’t flexing her claws anymore but Alex could feel a chill rolling off her, like cold air coming off a glacier.
“Can you get them some food and something to drink, please?” Alex asked Juno. Juno glanced at Nia, and touched her on the arm before she walked off to join April, who was hovering in the distance. Alex saw that Roma had gone too, melting away with the rest of the pack.
“He can’t stay here,” Nia repeated. There was something in her voice, a tone of challenge, and even though she was his mate, Alex found himself shifting to hybrid without intending to. He was suddenly towering over Nia, and behind him in the room, he heard Harmony gasp as she watched him shift through the window.
With his shift to hybrid, the wolf felt closer, as did the dominant alpha. Alex could feel that separation in him again; the human side would have chosen “gently, gently”, trying to soothe the upset girlfriend. The wolf was muttering about being the alpha: his word was final; what he said went. It was as though Alex could hear both sides at once, and he knew that both were true simultaneously. As alpha, his word was law. He did have the final decision… right up until he didn’t, the position being a complicated mix of dominance and ruling by consent. Even Nia had told him long ago that alphas that didn’t listen to their pack might suddenly find themselves abandoned overnight, king over nothing.
Despite the murmuring in his mind to put his foot down, Alex held out his hand to Nia, who looked at it and then finally acquiesced by putting hers in his. She was as stiff as a board, her fury still barely contained, having gone from a fire to a glacial cold.
“I’m sorry your dad’s territory got silvered,” Alex said. It seemed that Nia hadn’t been expecting this, had perhaps been working herself up for an argument, because she frowned and then suddenly started crying. Alex wrapped her in his arms, feeling the connection between them as Nia’s emotions flipped. All the pain was held back by anger, and as soon as Alex had reached out to her, it had shattered like the fragile thing it was. Alex knew better than to speak again and just held his mate, letting her cry, feeling her slowly relax. It wasn’t complete, though. She still was genuinely angry about Xavo. Finally, they pulled apart and Alex wiped away a few of Nia’s tears.
“I’ll come talk to you soon,” Alex said. Nia nodded. Then looked past Alex, and her gaze hardened as she saw Stephen.
“He’s picking up rings in there. You better hope he doesn’t suddenly attack us,” she said in a cold voice. She turned on her heel and walked away just as Juno reappeared, carrying two plates with sandwiches on them and with a bottle of water stuffed under each armpit. Alex took the two bottles of water from under Juno’s arms as she gave him a curious look like what the hell is going on? He opened the door to the office and she set the plates down on the table before Alex followed her out again after telling the teenagers to start eating.
“Why is Nia crying now?” Juno asked. Alex chewed over the answer, but there really wasn’t a good way to phrase it. So he just said it.
“She’s upset because her father’s land got silvered and I never noticed because I’m too busy making plans for what to do next, always skipping forward. We never stopped to talk about what’s happened, how we feel about it. I mean, you were kidnapped, and how many times did we discuss that? I was taken, had to burn off one hand and freeze the other, and then it’s like we just forget about it because so many terrible things happened, one after the other, that it all blurs together,” Alex said. He realized he’d almost started ranting himself.
They had actually found the location where Alex had been taken when he was kidnapped by unknown assailants, but it had been wiped clean with no clue that anything had ever happened there. Even as he thought about it, he realized he had barely talked to Jacob about it… although the young werewolf had been downcast for a time, seeming to blame himself for Alex being taken.
It was really like becoming the CEO of a large corporation with his rapidly growing pack. He was now disconnected and aloof; it was though the individual things that happened to the werewolves in his pack weren’t important, and he was focused on the big picture.
Juno touched him on the arm and then stepped forward to give him a hug, wrapping her hands around his body. In hybrid form, he towered over her and she was a diminutive little thing. As she squeezed him, he shifted back to human, shrinking down within her arms, his clothing reappearing as the shifter charm brought them back.
“Probably best to talk to them looking like a human rather than a scary werewolf,” Juno said, and then gave him a kiss. She hadn’t given him any solution, but still, he felt better. Then she left him to it, and Alex stepped into the little office, closing the door behind him.
Stephen had gulped down his sandwich and drunk his entire bottle of water. Harmony was almost the same, finishing the last few bites of her sandwich, drinking the water. They were sitting on two of the dusty old chairs that had been left abandoned in the office. Alex sat on the other side of the desk, suddenly feeling like he had brought them in for a job interview. Where was he meant to start? His gaze went to Harmony’s missing little fingers and he decided not there. If he was going to get angry, he’d rather it be later at the end of the conversation so it wouldn’t color his thinking.
“Those shock shield rings are failing like half the time, right? I can fix that for you,” Stephen said, putting his plate on the desk and picking up one of the shock shield rings that he’d obviously examined. He held out his other hand, and without thinking about it, Alex reached out to touch it so they could share their magic. On the kid’s window was the shock shield spell… Well, about 85% of it. He’d made some minor changes, cutting away some of Alex’s code and adding in new sections.
“I could see there was a box holding the power, but there were these holes in the corners. And as the lightning bolt zapped around, about half the time it would hit the hole, and if it got out, it would break the whole thing,” Stephen explained. Alex quickly went over the code, and although some of it didn’t make sense, he knew instinctively the kid had done what he’d said: this new spell would enchant 100% of the time. Alex wouldn’t have to worry about exploding rings wasting materials and risking injury. And the fact that the kid had done it in just the few minutes he had been waiting in the office told Alex that no matter Nia’s feelings, and those of the rest of the pack, it was possible that Stephen was the most important person that Alex might ever meet.
Unfortunately, thanks to his silver cleanse spell, Alex had no more space left. He never liked the idea of deleting an old spell for a new upgraded one until he could prove it would work, but he had no choice right now. He deleted the original shock shield spell and copied the new one over from Stephen. It even freed up some space… not much, but enough, because the kid had compressed some parts of the spell. As soon as he was done, Alex pulled his hand away, breaking the connection.
“Thanks for that. I’ve got something else I need to show you later, too,” Alex said. Although all he wanted to do was start immediately on spell writing before the kid could disappear or something else happened, he forced himself to resist that urge.
“So tell me why the two of you were out wandering together, apparently looking for me?” Alex said. Stephen and Harmony shared a glance, and then Stephen cleared his throat.
Stephen told his story quickly and calmly. He told Alex he had returned to Xavo and told them that he’d been taken by Alex. He’d handed over all the rings he’d taken, including the code-altering ring. He had been pulled into meeting after meeting, been quizzed by senior mages who were seeking every bit of information about Alex that they could obtain. Stephen had kept it to himself that he had worked on the rings and enchanting with Alex. He told Alex apologetically th
at he’d told them of the various spells he knew Alex could cast, including fireball and the minor necromancy, which had raised quite a stir, with the enclave trying to work out how Alex knew such a spell and where he had obtained it from.
Eventually, the questioning had died down and Stephen had gone back to being simply a member of the enclave… albeit one who had survived an encounter with an apparently murderous werewolf mage. It was then that Stephen had told them of his decision to leave the enclave, which set off another round of questioning, as though by leaving, he was taking vital information about Alex with him.
He’d been held for another few weeks, but eventually let go and, as he described long ago, once he was out of the enclave, it was as though he didn’t exist to them. He had a small amount of money, no job, and no relationships outside the enclave, which meant he had slipped quickly into homelessness.
He had made a little money enchanting rings and selling them one by one at desperately low prices, trying to stay hidden away, so the fact that he was able to enchant rings easily now wouldn’t be discovered. He had been squatting in an abandoned house when he heard someone climbing in the window, which had turned out to be Harmony. And at this point, she told her story.
She had fled from the Corvus compound where Alex and Juno had massacred everyone, running through the night to a home owned by a Corvus mage. She, too, described questioning… although from the way she spoke, and the tears that occasionally trickled down her nose, it was clear it was nothing like the way Xavo treated their mages. The pain mages were quite brutal, and Harmony’s voice broke as she described being tortured for a short while, her tormentors convinced that she was keeping something back from them. Eventually, they’d stopped, and she had been ignored for a time before she’d awoken one morning being dragged from her bed, was taken to a room, and had her little fingers cut off with a pair of pliers. She had been left without treatment, the pain mages in the room feeding off her agony and, at one point, forcing her to dip her hands into bowls of vinegar and salt.
As she described this, Alex found it hard not to growl, the coiling anger inside of him beginning to shout that they needed to find these pain mages, cut their fingers off, dip them in vinegar… but not stop there, just keep going, finger by finger, toe by toe, castrations and cutting off ears and noses, whittle them down until they were armless and legless torsos with just a head left, and then, at that point, dump them to let them live as a permanent reminder of Alex’s fury.
His dark fantasies played in his mind as Harmony explained that she’d been ignored after that, and that she’d finally fled, disappearing one night and, like Stephen, immediately becoming homeless. Having heard that the werewolf mage lived somewhere in the north of the city, she made her way out there hoping to come across him. She met Stephen by pure chance. The two of them paired up and had spent the last few weeks shifting from house to house, walking streets, getting further out into the industrial district.
Alex took this all in and then sat back, letting out a breath, trying to push some of the anger away with it. He could feel faintly on the edge of his mind that connection to the rest of his pack, and could sense even now that his emotions were trickling out… even though he wasn’t holding the power, he could affect it. He focused on clamping it down, thankful that most of the werewolves had, in fact, gone back to their business, leaving the factory virtually empty. He knew Nia was somewhere inside the house. He could sense her, although at a distance she was like a blurry figure that was part sadness and part cold anger.
“I’m sorry you got tied up. Some enclave, maybe Tradinium, silvered a werewolf territory we were staying at not too long ago. We’ve also lost our territory after Ignis attacked, killing some of my pack… and they even kidnapped Juno,” Alex said, realizing that he couldn’t possibly update Stephen on everything that had happened since he’d seen him last because it had been nonstop.
“I understand. It’s just that I don’t have anywhere else to go. The price I’ve been selling the rings at… I haven’t even been able to get enough money to get a bus ticket. And no matter where I go, if I keep enchanting rings and selling them, eventually Xavo will find out and then they’ll know I lied, and then they’ll come after me,” he said.
Alex turned his gaze to Harmony. “I’m sorry they tortured you. I thought I should have taken you with me to help protect you; I just didn’t know what to do,” he said.
“You couldn’t have known. And besides, you already killed the ones that tortured me in that battle, as well as Titus, who was probably the one that gave the order,” Harmony said. For the first time she smiled, although there was a slight viciousness to it, like Nia when she was angry. So much for finding her torturers and cutting their fingers off and dipping them in vinegar, Alex thought.
“Will Corvus be looking for you? Are you allowed to leave that enclave?” Alex asked.
Harmony shook her head. “After you murdered all those mages, I doubt they care about me at all. You killed so many of them they had to send for a whole bunch of new mages just to fill all the empty spots. It’s almost like a complete change of management of a business, and no one knows where the keys are, or how to operate the bank account, or when the milk gets delivered. That’s how I could leave. I doubt anyone even noticed I’m gone… but eventually they might. If I can get some money, I can get very far away from Baxter, go find another enclave or get a job, maybe? They might just forget about me,” she said.
Alex wasn’t quite so sure about that, but he kept his thoughts to himself. If he was in the enclave’s position, anyone who’d survived an encounter with the werewolf mage would be questioned endlessly. Hell, he might even send them back out again as spies. That thought rose up and Alex was almost tempted to dismiss it out of hand. Despite the fact that Stephen had silvered his land, he trusted the kid. The way they connected through their magic meant they knew each other on a deeper level, and he hadn’t sensed an ounce of guile in him.
Harmony, he wasn’t so sure about. She appeared broken, small and scared and terrified out of her mind, but if he was going to send a spy to appeal to someone’s better nature, that’s exactly the spy he would send. Harmony might not even realize she was a spy. Perhaps they’d intentionally released her, thinking she would go to Alex at some point and planning to scoop her up again after and let the real torture begin. Alex chewed over his thoughts for a few more moments before finally making a decision.
“Harmony, I’m going to put you in a house nearby with someone called Roma. She’s staying with us, too, after vampires attacked her store and destroyed it. You’ll be safe here and we can talk more about what’s meant to happen next.”
Then he turned to Stephen, “There’s another house a little further away and you’ll be alone there, no werewolves. They live around it, nearby. I’ll introduce you to Jeremiah, who lives over there, and maybe we can get to work enchanting, creating some spells. I’ll keep you safe,” he said.
Both the teenagers nodded before Stephen reached out to pick up a ring off the table, the spell screen above his head flickering as he cast analyze on it. Alex sat back, feeling the faint tendrils of his pack around him. Stephen was an incredible opportunity, so long as he could prevent his pack from murdering him.
Harmony, he wasn’t sure what to do with. Unless she was willing to hand over a list of addresses and names… and she might need to stay with them for a little while to build up trust before she did that.
There was also the other problem of the fact that it had become common knowledge that he and his pack were in the north of the city. Alex had known in the back of his mind that this was happening, especially considering werewolves had come out of the territories to find him, and the Corvus mages had gone to the north of the city, methodically making their way south attempting to find Alex. With so many werewolves coming and going, and only one ward covering a house and half of a factory, it was kind of futile to hide the fact that he was out there.
He either needed to
work out how to build a hell of a lot more wards and install them across his territory, including houses he didn’t own but they were squatting in, or just embrace it, have werewolves openly coming and going, announce it to the mages that the north of the city was his now, his territory. Put out a call for other werewolves to join him and that any mage that wanted to talk, to trade magic, was welcome.
Alex glanced back at the two teenagers, seeing them as problem and opportunity mixed together. Then he let that go, seeing that both of them were just thin kids who looked like they hadn’t had a decent shower in a while.
“Okay, come with me,” he said.
14
Alex came into the main house late at night his head still buzzing with ideas from the afternoon he’d spent working with Stephen. After getting both the teenagers cleaned up he’d done as he said, sending Harmony to Roma’s house, figuring one recovering survivor might be able to help another. He had taken Stephen out to the empty house he’d had in mind. He reiterated to Jeremiah that Stephen was under his protection. Most of these werewolves out in that area were new and, perhaps due to their distance from the core of the pack, hadn’t been overly influenced by Nia’s anger. Alex still told them what Stephen had done, being forced to fly a drone for Xavo, but he explained that the kid was important, they needed him, and Jeremiah had nodded and told him he would take care of it. Then he and Stephen had spent the day working together, making enormous strides for such a short time.
They had gone to work on the shock ball spell, passing it back and forth between each other, cutting and rewriting, and already it was 50% smaller and yet still as potent. It was in this rewriting that Stephen shared with Alex that he had attempted to rewrite and cut other spells he’d come across, even buying a random shield ring, but had learned his ability to modify them was almost nonexistent.
It seemed that Stephen’s particular talent for rewriting, cutting the comic book pages that he saw and making new spells, only worked on spells that Alex had written himself. Alex was a bit disappointed to hear this, hoping that he’d be able to show Stephen the ward spells, figure out some way to shrink them down so Alex could begin casting them or manufacturing wards himself, but still it was only a small disappointment.
