by Kelly Meding
Tennyson’s lips parted in the most shocked expression I’d ever seen on the man. “Then the legend of the Ossory wolves is true?”
“Apparently. And now I’m related to it.”
I filled him in on the backstory during the elevator ride to the lobby, all the way up to Jaxon’s wish. Something hit me then, and I pushed the stop button so the car jerked to a halt. “Did you guys know Jaxon was going to use his wish like that? You were right there to snatch me out of the way.”
“He informed me of his intentions, but no one else. He wanted to be certain you were removed from the situation as quickly as possible, so Damian could not exact physical retaliation for his actions.”
I pressed both hands into my eyes, overwhelmed with both gratitude for their teamwork and fury for having plotted this particular switcheroo behind my back.
“He loves you, Shiloh. He sacrificed himself for you, because of that love. The memories you bargained away? They were of the person you loved most in the world, and you lost your memories of him.”
Regret and grief tried to overcome my anger, but I wouldn’t let them. I hadn’t lost Jaxon yet, and now was the time to go get him back. I’d deal with the emotional fallout of this conversation later.
“I appreciate you guys trying to save me.” I dropped my hands, keeping them in tight fists by my side so I didn’t lash out at him. “But don’t fucking lie to me again.”
“My apologies.”
“Good.” I pushed the button to resume our trip. “Let’s go kick my granddad’s mystical ass.”
“With pleasure.” He dropped his cloak to the floor. His eyes flashed crimson, and the tangy odor of vinegar betrayed his own fury at Damian, who had had his fingers in the necromancer’s plot. This was personal for us both.
The elevator doors slid open to a scene of destruction and chaos. The real wall separating the lobby from the receptionist area was smashed in, drywall and broken glass all over. Furniture was broken, and the glass in both the front windows and door were shattered. Half of the exterior wall was blown out, exposing it to the night air. Vampires and werewolves persistently climbed in those holes to launch themselves at Damian, who stood in the center of it all, like a rock star on stage. Except he wasn’t greeting his adoring fans, he was knocking all comers back with blasts of black energy from his hands.
Two wolves came at him from opposite sides. Damian blasted one wolf with that black energy, while simultaneously reaching out and grabbing the second wolf by the throat. The beast was as large as Damian himself, but the warlock held the struggling wolf as it was a small child. The wolf clawed at Damian’s chest with his back feet, shredding the front of his shirt but leaving no actual mark on Damian’s skin.
And then it struggled even more fiercely, trying to get away.
But it had no chance. Damian snapped the wolf’s neck without so much as a blink, and threw its lifeless body at an approaching vampire. The psycho hadn’t even broken a sweat.
Novak knelt in the corner of the room near an overturned chair. He had scorch marks on his clothes and one bloody-looking burn on his neck, and he seemed to be talking into his earbud. I didn’t see Jaxon in the small arena, but over the noise of battle, I could hear his stag’s angry screams.
The black tether between him and Damian pulsed faintly and threaded its way out the hole in the wall. Hopefully, the vampires had corralled Jaxon elsewhere, because I had to focus on my asshole grandfather.
Damian wasn’t looking in our direction, so I pulled my gun and fired every round directly at his back. I didn’t see blood, but the impact knocked him to his knees. Tennyson blurred past me, and he had Damian against the wall, a hand around his throat, Damian’s feet a foot off the floor. Red light blazed in Damian’s face, and Tennyson’s fangs grew longer than I’d ever seen them.
Damian broke Tennyson’s hold and head-butted the vampire. Tennyson barely flinched. Their movements blurred as they fought each other, Damian’s physical speed matching Tennyson’s blow for blow. They blasted through more drywall, knocked another huge chunk out of the exterior wall, and then hit some sort of support beam that made the ceiling crack down the center.
It was the closest I’d ever come to seeing two gods in hand-to-hand combat, and it was breathtaking.
And kind of terrifying.
If someone as strong and old as Tennyson couldn’t bring Damian down, we were in serious trouble. I longed to join the fight, to get my own vampire blood-fueled punches in, but they were moving too fast.
Finally, Tennyson did something that gave him the slightest advantage. With a devastating punch, he sent Damian headfirst into the exterior brick wall, and then was on him in a blur. He hauled Damian to his feet in the same position they’d started, his fangs nearly as long as my fingers now.
Uh-oh.
When Tennyson fed off the necromancer, he’d briefly obtained the necrotic magic. If he bit Damian—
Damian shouted when Tennyson pierced his jugular, and I used the distraction to race across the lobby to Novak—which I did crazy-fast, thanks to my earlier O-positive energy drink. And Novak noticed. “I ain’t gonna ask,” he said. “You got a plan for defeating this guy?”
“Not really, but Tennyson seems to.”
Damian roared and with an ear-popping drop in air pressure, some force knocked Tennyson across the room. His body shattered the drywall, and he fell to his knees, clothes and long hair covered in dust. Damian advanced two steps before Tennyson threw both hands forward and a blast of gray power smashed into Damian’s chest. It threw Damian right through the last of the standing office drywall, and he crashed into the interior wall just beyond. Tennyson had not only taken power from Damian, he’d physically weakened him, as well.
With my enemy momentarily stunned, I used my newfound speed to bolt across the room to Damian’s side, and I smashed the butt of my gun into his nose with all the power coursing through my veins. Then I cut off his scream by hitting him in the temple hard enough to send him sailing sideways to the floor. Tennyson appeared by my side, and he wrestled Damian until Tennyson had Damian’s hands trapped behind his back—hands that seemed to be the direct source of his energy bolts that had hurt so many.
Forgoing the gun this time, I punched him in the mouth. “You kidnapped my mother.” Another punch. “You blackmailed me and hurt my friends.” Third punch split his bottom lip wide open. “You can rot in hell.”
Damian roared once and head-butted me. I crashed backward into the remnants of the reception desk, shocked by the power of that impact. Granddad packed a punch.
A circle of shifted wolves and vampires had formed, all watching and waiting as the three of us waged a magical battle. I would have loved to see Danu tag in to the fight, but hey, goddesses had their own priorities, and her wolves were free now. Damian was our problem.
He tried to backward head-butt Tennyson, but Tennyson creatively used the momentum of Damian’s action to flip Damian backward in a spectacular move that left Damian facedown on the ground—arms still trapped behind his back—with Tennyson on top of him.
Supernatural wrestling with an audience to boot.
Time to get our opponent into a three-count.
Except Damian started laughing, and with both blood and drywall dust smearing his face, it was pretty freaking creepy.
“I’m sorry, does this tickle?” I asked, then kicked him in the mouth.
“I’m merely amused you think you can win here,” Damian replied. “You’re a foolish child.”
Tennyson growled, and his hands started doing that gray-glow thing again. Damian hissed in pain, and the skin around his wrists where Tennyson held him began to sizzle. “I thank you for the power increase,” Tennyson said. “How long will it take to burn down to the bone?”
“Drinking my blood may be protecting you from my power, vampire, but it won’t last. I’ll make your death last for days for stealing from me.”
“Better men have tried to kill me and failed.”
“How about we end this right now?” I asked as I turned back to the pair of men on the ground. I mimicked using the swords like scissors. “We chop the head off the beast and stop this bullshit.”
“Careful you don’t awaken a hydra, child,” Damian said. “You have no idea what you’re truly up against.”
For a guy about to lose his head, he was being awfully confident. I glanced at Tennyson, whose stony expression only said kill. “I’ll take my chances,” I replied.
I took a step toward Damian, not eager to kill the man because of all the questions I still had, but ready to see his evil plans stopped once and for all. The ground started to vibrate; tiny bits of debris danced atop the linoleum floor. The air went hazy with magical power, making the hair on my arms stand on end. I lunged in the same moment the world exploded in sharp black light. I flew backward into a warm body, and we both sprawled to the ground. My entire body tingled and jerked, as if I’d been hooked into an electrical current.
Around me, werewolves whined and vampires hissed, but I couldn’t freaking see anything. Black light might sound like an oxymoron, but we were not in darkness. The absolute blackness of Damian’s power and his soul had filled the room and blinded me to everything else.
A hand closed around my throat, and I’ll be blessed if Damian didn’t lift me right up off the ground. I didn’t have to see him to feel him, his skin sizzling against mine. I couldn’t breathe or get my body to do anything other than dangle there and choke and burn.
“You may have won today, but you will be mine one day, Shiloh,” he said, his words as heavy and horrifying as this constant blackness. “And I always keep my word.”
Through the agony in my throat and the lack of oxygen in my lungs, I still managed to grind out two words. “Fuck. You.”
Tennyson!
I’m sorry I failed you, Shiloh . . .
The pain stopped abruptly as unconsciousness swallowed me up.
I found the pain again the moment I became aware of voices all around me. I was on something moderately soft, thank Iblis, but my throat blazed with heat and my head hurt like a son of a bitch.
“She’s coming to.” Novak? My brain was kind of muzzy, but it sounded like him.
“Wh-op-n?” I’d meant to ask “What happened?” but my tongue wasn’t cooperating.
“Relax, no one is in immediate danger,” Novak said. Yeah, definitely him. “You’ve got a nasty magic burn on your throat that even the vamp’s blood isn’t healing all that fast, and you took a big blow to the head.”
My version of “I did?” didn’t come out well, either, but Novak understood.
“Damian must have thrown you headfirst into the bricks, because that’s where I found you when all the dark went away.”
I finally blinked my eyes open and found myself staring up at a sea of stars. The scene started making more sense. I was outside, on a blanket, with people moving all around me. Novak was sitting beside me and, I suddenly realized, holding one of my hands. He was protective, sure, but he was rarely the one offering comfort.
Oh no. “Who died?” Victory and whole words!
“Two of the werewolves Rosalind brought died of their injuries.”
“Our people?” Tennyson’s grief-stricken apology in my head roared back. “Tennyson?”
“He’s weak, but he’s . . . well, I guess he’s not technically alive anyway, but he’s still undead. Damian used my swords to pin him to the wall through his heart. Shredded it, but the blades weren’t silver, so it didn’t kill him.”
“Thank goodness. Damian got away?”
“Yeah.” Novak’s already grave expression went even darker. “And . . .”
“What?”
“He’s still got Jaxon, Shi. They’re both gone.”
“What!” I tried to sit up, which was an epically bad idea. My entire body ached, but I couldn’t sit on my ass right now. Novak helped me sit up by keeping an arm around my waist. The skin around my neck stung and pulled in weird ways, and I was glad there were no reflective surfaces nearby. If it looked half as awful as it felt . . . ugh.
The new viewpoint also brought the scene into a much sharper clarity. I was on the front lawn of the professional complex, and not only were local and state police present, but so were other people in suits with US Marshals badges around their necks.
Oh great, we’ve been reported.
The vampires who’d helped didn’t seem to be around any longer, and I didn’t see Tennyson, but I trusted Novak that he’d survived the fight. And I shoved back a pang of grief-stricken anger at Damian having gotten away with Jaxon. I hadn’t been strong enough to break that bond before Damian disappeared with my . . . lover wasn’t the right word. Best friend?
Close enough.
I did spot Chandra and Hanson speaking animatedly with three Marshals, and no one looked happy. “What did I miss while I was unconscious?”
“The Pack wolves are all currently en route to their proper home states,” Novak replied, “thanks to those helicopters Kathleen promised us. Haven’t talked to the Dame Alpha of Florida, but Rosalind assured us that Alpha Kennedy is in our debt.”
“That’s nice.” A werewolf Alpha wasn’t a bad ally to have. “Vampires?”
“They’re gone. One of them took Tennyson someplace to heal.”
Polite way of saying he was off to find a couple dozen blood donors. I wanted to thank Tennyson for his help, but it would have to wait. Right now, we had to get this current mess sorted. “Where’s my mom?”
“Back at the motel. I called and told her what happened, but made her swear to stay away from the scene until we properly secured it.”
“Thank you.”
“Family helps family, Shiloh.”
The stark emotion in his voice startled me into turning around and really looking at him. The big incubus rarely wore his emotions on his sleeve, or expressed more than anger or boredom. But tonight, instead of a powerful fallen demon, I saw a man who’d survived a battle with his friends, and who had lost one to a powerful warlock. He and Jaxon squabbled like brothers, and that’s because they were. Maybe I couldn’t remember their relationship, but Novak did, and he was hurting too.
I leaned into him in a sideways hug. “We’ll get Jaxon back. That’s a promise.”
“I know.” His arm tightened around my waist briefly. “Didn’t know Jaxon was gonna wish himself into your spot. Jerk.”
“Apparently, he only told Tennyson so he could swoop in and get me out of the way.”
Novak grunted.
“Miss Harrison? Mr. Smith?” The three Marshals Chandra and Hanson had been speaking to approached my blanket, and the shortest of the three had spoken. “US Marshal McGovern.”
Novak helped me stand so I could politely greet the newcomers. Must be from a local office, because I didn’t recognize any of them. Hanson and Chandra stood off to the side. Chandra’s folded arms and undisguised glare did not endear me to these three at all.
“Shiloh Harrison,” I said.
“Novak Smith.” He’d needed a last name for the official paperwork, and creativity wasn’t exactly Novak’s strong suit.
“Miss Goodfellow informed me of your activities of the past few days,” McGovern said with a bit of a sneer I didn’t care for. “You used government resources for an informal investigation, while under temporary suspension from your positions as Para-Marshals. Is this information accurate?”
Well, when you put it like that . . . “That’s correct,” I replied. “The investigation into the missing werewolves was tangentially related to our necromancer case last week. Chandra personally knew one of the missing couples, and she asked us for a personal favor while we were all on paid vacation.”
“Miss Goodfellow said something very similar. And had you gone about your inv
estigation as civilians, without using government-bought weapons and vehicles, this would be a very different conversation.”
I crossed my arms. “I’m sorry, but did anyone tell you what was going on in that clinic? That they were splicing human and werewolf DNA to create hybrid creatures that they then murdered tonight?”
“That clinic is private property, Miss Harrison. The werewolves were there voluntarily.”
Seriously? This guy must be one of the compromised Marshals. Great.
“Then why wasn’t the couple who asked to leave granted that request? Why did the place have all kinds of magical wards and security if they were volunteers?”
McGovern looked at me like I was a special kind of idiot. “All of the volunteers signed paperwork stating they would remain in the clinic for a minimum of eight weeks, and this particular couple had only been there for two.”
“Paperwork no one remembers signing, by the way,” Chandra interjected.
“The documents are legal,” McGovern said. “What you did here, by interfering in a legal clinical trial, is not.”
“Excuse me?” I said. “They were experimenting—”
“You’re not hearing me. You trespassed on private property, and then caused several million dollars of damage to said property that the US Marshals’ Office is liable for.”
Anger blazed through me hot and hard, and I pulled back on the Quarrel I’d already unleashed once tonight, even though I really wouldn’t mind siccing it on these three assholes. “The guy in charge of this place kidnapped my mother and demanded I trade myself for her release! He invited me over, so I didn’t fucking trespass anywhere.”
“Miss Goodfellow reported a similar story, and yet the person in charge of this facility is Dr. Marcus Ferguson, and he’s assured us beyond a shadow of a doubt that he neither kidnapped your mother, nor demanded you come here and interrupt his place of work.”
I looked at Chandra, whose exasperated expression said she’d trying telling them about Damian, and they didn’t believe her. Or they did, but perhaps they’d known about this place the entire time. Kathleen and Damian had both intimated that the government was interested in his work.
