Wolf Hunted

by Kris Austen Radcliffe

  “They didn’t tell you.” She did not at all look surprised. “The elves no longer favor sensitives. There were problems before you arrived. That’s what Gerard told me.” She tugged me toward the house. “There are new protocols. No interference at all because of fate or something. Never mind that we are well aware of who among the pack’s families are sensitives and could use a hand so they don’t end up in therapy because they think they’re crazy.”

  Axlam didn’t seem any happier about the secrecy than I was.

  “But she’s Akeyla’s friend. How is that not interfering?”

  Axlam shrugged. “No interference also means allowing spontaneous relationships to develop.” She pointed at the house. “Haven’t you ever wondered why Arne tolerates Jax and Akeyla’s fated mate magic? Even a less powerful elf could a put magical stop to their relationship without so much as breaking a sweat.” She turned back toward the house. “It was spontaneous, thus protected by their no-interference protocols.”

  And here I thought Arne was being a good grandfather. “Should we tell Ed and Isabella?” He’d been about to punch Arne at the Admin Building. “What if—”

  “Uncle Frank!” Akeyla and Sophia—with Jax and Sif in tow—pushed open the gate from the back yard. “We set out water and food for Marcus Aurelius,” Akeyla called.

  Jax looked lost, as if his big moment had been subsumed under Akeyla’s work to make sure my dog had provisions. The poor kid was totally at a loss as to what to do.

  “Grandma showed me how to set a beacon spell. He’ll come home and we can ask him about a kitten.”

  Sophia, standing next to Akeyla, looked over her shoulder and around Sif. “What?” she called, as if someone was standing behind the kids and the gate, out of my and Axlam’s sights.

  Jax looked, too.

  But neither Sif nor Akeyla looked. They had no idea Sophia or Jax were distracted.

  “Jaxson!” Axlam called. “Who’s there?”

  Akeyla took Sophia’s hand. “Grandma says it’s time to—”

  I heard a woman’s voice. Sophia turned to Jaxson. “Listen,” she said, and yanked Akeyla close.

  I saw the person they were talking to. I saw her step in front of the kids just as the wine bottles of my gate lit up one after another as if a firefly pixie had teleported inside of each, one after another.

  Jax’s wolf magic burst out between the girls and the gate. Akeyla raised her arms in the distinctly elven way they do when they are about to cast a spell. And Sophia Martinez, the mundane nine-year-old friend of a little elf and a young alpha werewolf, braced as if she was about to get into a hand-to-hand fight with a monster.

  “Kids!” I bellowed.

  Axlam grabbed my arm. “Frank!”

  The bottles shrieked.

  Ellie and the children vanished.

  Chapter 21

  I spun Axlam to keep my body between her and the magical blast. Heat rolled around me—literal heat—and a crackling reverse electricity that danced as little pixies of static along Bloodyhood and onto the garage.

  The magic turned everything into a negative exposure—the red of my truck turned green and the shadows behind the garage white. Even the static flickered as little black sparks and not the yellow-white of real electricity.

  The heat and the magic were gone before I inhaled again.

  Axlam wheezed and coughed. “Jaxson!” she shrieked. “I saw…” She rubbed her eyes as if confused. “Where is my son?”

  The kids were gone, as was the woman who had to be Ellie Jones. All four had vanished into the thick air and the blizzard’s rising wind.

  Sif doubled over. She retched and leaned against the house.

  The front door slammed against the frame. A wave of brilliant elven power burst into the drive and around the vehicles. “Sif!” Dagrun yelled.

  Sif forced herself away from the wall. “That…” She leaned forward again. “That felt like a reset.”

  Dagrun roared. Whatever pain the blast caused Sif was also clearly affecting Dag, but Dag never showed weakness. Never.

  “I will eviscerate you, St. Martin!” she yelled.

  “He took the kids!” Axlam staggered to her feet.

  “Wait, wait…” I was sure I saw Ellie, but I couldn’t tell them that. Not with the elves this close. Not with Axlam’s wolf magic manifesting.

  “Frank!” Dag shouted. “That burst swept away my protections on the girls!” She pointed at the side of the house. “Mine!”

  Had Ellie burst Dag’s spell? But….

  I rubbed my eyes in confusion. If whatever hit had been powerful enough to disrupt Dagrun’s magic, we were in serious trouble.

  A massive, bright sigil formed around Dagrun’s arms and chest. It slid and locked, and a burst of power not all that different from what we just experienced exploded outward from her body.

  I squinted and shielded my eyes. Her magic washed by me without doing harm, and rippled into the trees around the house.

  She roared at the sky again. “No one takes my granddaughter!” she yelled. “We were going to imprison you for the harm you have done our wolves, but now you have touched the royal blood of Alfheim!” she shouted into the trees.

  St. Martin took the kids? Part of me said no. Part of me said that they might well be safer than we were.

  But that made no sense.

  Dagrun’s glamour ruptured. She didn’t drop or release it, as most of the elves do when they step outside of their mundane disguises. Dag’s pretenses literally parted as if her elven self had punched her way through her human chest.

  “Frank.” Axlam’s voice had deepened and her eyes shimmered with her wolf. “I think that wave loosened her control. She’ll hurt you or any mundane within ten miles if she doesn’t calm down.” She stepped in front of me even though she, too, was feeling the effects.

  “Queen Dagrun.” Sif held out her hands. “You need to breathe.”

  Big, fat snowflakes fell onto Dag’s shimmering magic and popped with tiny wet smacks as if each one was a bug landing on a zapper.

  “Dag… Mom….” I extended my hand to my elven mother. “I think that wave hurt you.”

  Her ponytail danced like a cobra behind her head. The jeans and tunic she wore wiggled and transformed into a magical version of her elven armor as if she had called the breastplate and helmet to herself.

  And the Elf Queen of Alfheim morphed into an elemental magic I had rarely seen her show.

  Axlam’s wolf bristled. Sif stepped back as if the other elf terrified her more than the wave we’d just suffered.

  “Where is my granddaughter!” Dag boomed.

  Fully out of her glamour and in her elven armor, she pulsed with power—and manifested her goddess aspect.

  She roared again. “You know not what you have done, St. Martin!”

  Axlam leaned against my truck. “Get your axe, Frank,” she semi-growled.

  Was she turning? But the moon wasn’t out. She was away from the pack. And the elf who was running with her was as crazed as an untamed werewolf scenting blood.

  I darted for the front door. Letting either of them out of my perception probably wasn’t smart, but neither was arguing with an alpha werewolf.

  The door slammed against the wall. I’d left Sal against the wall just inside the door. I swung my hand down—and caught nothing.

  Sophia’s bag was where she’d left it, as was Akeyla’s, but Sal had vanished along with the girls.

  I backed out of the house. “Dagrun, did you move Sal?”

  She howled more like a wolf than an elf.

  I grabbed my coat, pulled out my phone, and dialed Arne. “St. Martin kidnapped the girls,” I said. “Dag’s enraged and Sif’s hurt.” I hung up, though I didn’t know for sure it had been St. Martin, but Dag sure thought so, and I wasn’t going to disagree with an elf.

  Dagrun ran into the trees.

  “We need you here!” I yelled.

  Sif looked between me, Axlam, and the trees. “Stay
here,” she said, and bolted into the trees after her queen.

  “Axlam!” I yelled.

  “Jaxson!” Her howl turned into a full-throated growling yowl.

  If she turned now, out here without her pack or Dagrun, this close to a change pulled out by the Samhain full moon, she’d lose herself to the rage her wolf must be feeling.

  No human half of a werewolf could stand against that. Not even Axlam, Gerard, or Remy. St. Martin had taken Jaxson and Samhain was about to loosen all the separations between humanity and the magical underpinnings of the world.

  The alpha wolf in front of me would kill every single threat, big or small, between her and her cub.

  “Hold on, Axlam. Please.” Axlam was fully capable of ripping off my arm in wolf state. If she lost control, she would be more of a danger to the local mundanes than Dag.

  Her wolf magic vanished into her body. She bent forward. “He will not survive this,” she choked out. “I will feast on hisss… hearrrrrttttt.”

  I looked toward the house. If I got her inside, could I hold her until Arne got here? I didn’t run with the wolves. I had no idea how to help.

  I turned back toward Axlam.

  Between us and well within my reach, Bastien-Laurent St. Martin, that little dung beetle of a humanoid, pointed the end of a large gun’s barrel at my chest. “Quiet, now, Mr. Victorsson,” he said.

  “Where the hell did you come from?” I shouted. Quiet, I would not be.

  He was in full winter gear, complete with boots, gloves, and an expensive trekking jacket complete with Mednidyne logo. His hat, though, said Minne-snow-ta like he’d bought it at a gas station somewhere between Alfheim and the Minneapolis airport.

  Behind him, Axlam, who was still bent over, did not notice that St. Martin had materialized on my driveway. Nor, it seemed, had she heard me yell.

  I couldn’t see the magic he was using to separate us. Not really. Not with the snow and the wind. But something was between us and Axlam. Something that distorted the movements of the falling snowflakes just enough that my senses barely picked it up.

  He’d put up a wall, or a veil, or had expanded his carapace-like shell of magic outward while he pointed a gun at my chest and rubbed at his nose like he’d been snorting his master’s magic.

  And all his erratic behaviors, all his delusions of grandeur, all the snickering and the harassment and the annoyance suddenly made sense. He really was a bug under that carapace, an unsubstantial rich kid with a revenge fantasy that made him the perfect patsy for something much larger than himself.

  “You didn’t think I would attack turned wolves while they ran, did you?” He shook his head as if we were all to be pitied. “Oh, s’il te plait. While they have the entire nest of elves with them?”

  “Set the gun on the ground,” I said. “Now.” He had the upper hand, but I was bigger. Maybe I could intimidate him into cooperation.

  He waved the gun around, but pointed it back at my chest when I took a step forward. “No you do not, jotunn.” He sniffed again. “I want that one at her most savage.” He pointed over his shoulder at Axlam. “How dare you reject my offers! I do not appreciate the disruption of my plans.”

  Axlam leaned against my truck. She’d calmed, and was coming back to herself. “Frank?” she called.

  Did I dare swat away St. Martin’s gun? I didn’t have a good sense of his speed, and getting shot right now would hinder searching for the kids.

  He pinched his lips like a blue-haired DMV matron. “Trying another headlock will get you killed, jotunn.”

  He seemed to be fixated on the jotunn business. “Where are the girls?”

  He twitched as if surprised by my question. “Your Queen and her under-elf? They’re in the trees over there. I tossed out that boom to get them out of the way.” He nodded toward the woods. “That Queen is knocking around like a bull in an otherwise pristine china shop. What is it with elves, anyway? Why the theatrics?” He rubbed his nose. “This is why your pathetic little town needs new management.”

  Axlam groaned. “Frank!” she yelled.

  St. Martin nodded over his shoulder. “I was going to do this slowly. Savor my treats. It is Halloween, isn’t it? Your American spawn dress up and demand tribute, do they not?” He did his little dance again. “But you had to go digging around on my lands.” He waved the gun at my face. “You ruined everything.”

  “You harassed the elves at the park. You harassed me at Raven’s Gaze.” He’d spent the weekend running around town yelling look at me! And he’d come after Axlam this morning.

  He bounced on his heels and rubbed his glove against his cheek.

  “I have ten months’ worth of photos of the Alfheim Pack. Ten. And you think finding that one camera made a difference?” He sidestepped. “I had a plan. A lovely slow boil. I was going to make this little town so afraid. Terrified! What is this horrid wolf magic that’s come to our home!” He air-quoted ‘wolf.’ “Then you’d want my help.” He paced again. “Need me. Pray for me. Oui, oui.”

  Did he even understand his own plan? “You are insane.” Of course he was insane. He was some dark magic’s pawn.

  He cackled out a laugh. “She murdered my father!” he screeched. “Mon papa. He’d always bring me dolls from the countries he saved.” He held the gun as if it were a toy.

  “The elves can help you.” Not that they would. Not after he’d taken the children. But he was insane enough the offer might get him to pause.

  “The elves can help you,” he mimicked. “The genie said you’d say that!”

  Genie?

  He worked for a dark wolf genie?

  He pointed the gun at me again. “You be quiet, jotunn.” He danced a little to side. “Jotunn. The genie didn’t tell me there was a jotunn in Alfheim.”

  All this was because of a genie? A djinn?

  “You got yourself into something bad here.” I held up my hands and slowly moved toward him.

  “Oh no you do not!” he shrieked.

  I stopped.

  He pointed the gun at Axlam. “I’m saving that murdering bitch for last. I’m going to put her in a cage in the City Administration parking lot. I can make the entire Alfheim Pack rampage that way.” He rubbed at his nose with his gun hand, and thankfully, didn’t point it at my chest again. “No one turns me down.”

  The nose rubbing suggested he was inhaling more than some genie’s magic. The way he bounced on his heels meant he was distracted.

  I snatched his gun wrist, squeezed, and slammed my other palm into his face. The gun, now pointed up, fired. My palm met granite.

  Not granite. His magic shell.

  And Bastien-Laurent St. Martin snickered.

  Chapter 22

  After the episode with my brother and the vampire quagmire that came with him, Arne believed we were about to face what he so wryly called “an escalation.” He hadn’t been specific about who he thought would cause said escalation, or what we were going to do about it. He simply shrugged and said that escalators were pervasive and a natural part of life.

  Escalation was what got Remy and me sent to Las Vegas. Alfheim, with her welcoming enclave and her healthy and wealthy werewolf pack, was on many a magical radar. Alfheim was “modern,” and being modern meant that you got all the perks and pits of the modern world—cellphones, electric cars, Cold War vampires who were really the ultimate Old World villains, and an ever-escalating crew of bastards with also-escalating weapons who thought they could take Alfheim down a peg or two.

  I had one such weapon by the neck and gun wrist. The smug little toad sneered even though I had the upper hand and he was nothing but a tool.

  “Who do you work for?” I demanded. “Axlam!” I bellowed. “Get Dagrun!”

  St. Martin rolled his eyes. “She can’t heeeaaaarrrrr yooooouuuu,” he sing-songed. “You aren’t the brightest of the elves’ pets, are you?”

  She didn’t hear me, not directly—but her magic noticed.

  St. Martin twitched. He trie
d to wiggle to look at Axlam but I held him—not him, but his shell—tightly.

  Her eyes were still golden. She hunched, too. Her wolf wanted out into the physical world. Sending her off to find the elves like this was dangerous—but so was keeping her within St. Martin’s reach.

  “Axlam! Go!” I yelled.

  If she was going to fall to these magicks, she would have already. But she was alpha, and she stood against St. Martin and Samhain’s pushes and pulls on the veils. She’d get Dagrun and return.

  She sniffed the air more like Marcus Aurelius than a person, and let out the closest thing to a wolf howl a human throat could make.

  Then Axlam Geroux ran into the woods along the same path as our Queen.

  “I’m going to pluck out her eyeballs!” St. Martin screeched. He tried to kick me, but I continued to hold him far enough away that he couldn’t do real damage.

  I might not have been able to knock the gun from St. Martin’s hand, but I held his wrist in a way that kept it aimed away from my body. I could not feel his skin, but I did have him by the throat.

  The sniveling toad snickered. “Won’t do her any good to run.”

  “I could snap your neck,” I responded, “and take care of the problem once and for all.”

  He sniffed again. “No, you cannot,” he said. “And even if you could, you wouldn’t. You have standards.”

  He was correct that I wouldn’t kill him. If he died, we might never learn whose magic he wielded, and that would for sure come back to bite Alfheim.

  “Perhaps I should snap your collarbones instead.” I stared down at his puckered face without releasing his neck or his hand. I might not break a bone now, but he needed to understand that I would the moment we moved beyond this impasse.

  “So violent!” He snickered again. “More proof this town needs discipline.”

  Not even the vampires had been this insipid.

  A distant scream of a siren filtered through the trees. Ed was close by.

  I lifted St. Martin off the ground by his neck and spun us around so I could get a better view of any vehicle coming down my driveway.