Twenty-Sided Sorceress 3 - Pack of Lies

by Annie Bellett

  A hint of smoke touched my nose as I reached the blade. Smoke and ink. Magic. Enough of a warning that I dropped flat and the first shot missed.

  One of the boulders moved, resolving itself into the assassin as he raised a gun and fired again. He’d made a mistake, coming this close, choosing terrain that wouldn’t burn, choosing a place where I didn’t have to worry about witnesses or collateral damage.

  I lashed out with magic, ripping the gun from his hands. My power raged through me. I was ready for this shit now.

  I sent my magic out in a circle, throwing up a dome of force around us, boxing him in with me. He was faster than I was, in better physical shape. Clearly he knew how to fight. All advantages I didn’t have.

  The assassin tried to back away, drawing two more kunai as he sprang backward and slammed into my magical Thunderdome.

  His breath hissed out through his teeth as he steadied himself, and his face lost its perpetually bland expression.

  “Who are you?” I asked. I tied off the spell, anchoring it to the rocks. It wouldn’t last forever, minutes perhaps, but I couldn’t keep channeling it and shield myself as well. Or go on the attack.

  “Who are you?” he asked back, his beetle-hard eyes narrowing.

  I pushed my magic into a shield just over my skin, much like I had at the Henhouse before trying to attract the attention of men with machine guns. One of his kunai spun toward me and I slapped it out of the air with a glittering, shielded fist.

  “Jade Crow casts harden,” I muttered. “It’s super effective.” I tightened my grip on Samir’s knife and crouched. “Only way to get out of here is to kill me,” I told him. I figured saying “come at me, bro” would have been too much. Adrenaline pumped through my brain, carrying me into a high that fueled my power, made me feel like I could do anything, take on anyone. I felt giddy with magic and bloodlust.

  The assassin came at me, darting in so quickly I barely got my knife up before he was slashing at me with his own blades. I felt every cut and impact on my shields, felt my power being used up, draining, each blow pushing me around, off balance. I tried to slash back, but he was far too quick, my dome giving him just enough room to maneuver on the uneven ground and circle me.

  I threw bolts of force at him, recklessly spending magic. Beyond the slight shimmer of the dome, I saw Alek rush up. Saw him pause, his mouth moving. I couldn’t hear his words.

  Looking at Alek distracted me, and the assassin came at my back, his knife slicing into my leg, cutting through my weakening shield. White-hot pain lanced up my hip. The assassin slapped something to my back and retreated. Reaching back, I snatched the paper and flung it away from myself, dropping low as fire raged around me.

  The air grew thin, breathing more difficult. My shield had cut off everything, apparently. Things to think about and refine later. Smoke filled my nose, made my eyes water. My leg gave out under me and I slashed at the dark shape as the assassin hit me again, this time taking me to the ground. I couldn’t breathe. The fire had eaten all the oxygen.

  He rolled me under him, trapping my legs. I looked up into his face as he sat up and pressed a kunai to my chest. His skin was blotchy, his lips turning blue. He was out of air as well.

  I don’t need to breathe, I told myself. Air is optional. Remember the lessons of the pool. I stopped breathing and focused on the magic inside myself, pouring my power out to encase the assassin in icy cold, envisioning everywhere he touched me as frozen, dead.

  He tried to scream as frost rimed over him, speeding up the blade to his arm, wrapping itself around his throat, locking his limbs. Ice didn’t need air. Ice was good against fire.

  I pulled my arms free and smashed the dome, breaking the circle.

  Air rushed in and I gasped for breath. I put Samir’s knife against the assassin’s throat, exhaustion making my hand shake. He was still frozen, though I felt his skin warming where he knelt on my stomach, his body starting to twitch.

  I jerked the kunai out of his hand, pushing his frozen arm away from my chest, keeping my own knife against the pulse in his neck. The assassin’s eyes watched me, unafraid. He was ready for death.

  I wondered if he was ready for worse than death. I set my hand against his chest, felt the beating of his heart. Samir had sent him to kill me. This man had tried to kill my friends, had hurt people I loved. Plus, he had really pissed me off.

  Old Jade Crow might have let him go. Months ago, I might have. He was human. A week ago, I would have merely killed him.

  Today, I flipped the switch inside. No more defensive. No more playing by rules that only got people I loved hurt.

  New rules.

  “I’m sorry,” I said softly. Then I focused my magic into my hand and ripped out the assassin’s heart.

  Power and knowledge surged through me as I swallowed a bite of the assassin’s heart. His name was Haruki and he was forty-one years old. He hadn’t lied about growing up in the Oki Shoto islands. His life flitted through my mind and I pushed it away for later examination.

  I felt Alek pulling Haruki’s body off me and opened my eyes, still vibrating with the new power as it mingled with my own magic, joining. Like dumping a pond into an ocean, the ripples went on for a while before fading away.

  Alek helped me to my feet. I carefully sheathed Samir’s knife and then tossed the remainder of Haruki’s heart onto his body.

  “You are injured,” Alek said.

  I tested my leg. The cut was already closing. “I’ll live,” I said. “Go to the car, I’ll be there in a moment.”

  He studied my face for a breath and then nodded. There was no judgment in his eyes, only concern. I watched him walk away before turning back to Haruki’s body.

  I wiped my bloody mouth on my equally bloody teeshirt, annoyed that the blood tasted almost sweet, almost good to me. Then I crouched and closed Haruki’s clouded eyes. Using his own blood and his own memories, I drew a sigil on his forehead, imbuing it with power.

  “Good bye, Katayama Haruki,” I said softly in Japanese, using his surname first and then his given name. Then I turned and limped to the car as his body ignited behind me, a last wave of inky heat following me. I did not look back.

  Stonebrook Hunting Lodge, the official name of the Den, was about six miles out of town down a partially paved road that wound up a hill through pristine old-growth forest. It was a faux-castle, a hulking stone and wood building with two main wings joined by a three-story-tall great hall and flanked by squat, mostly decorative stone towers. There was only one approach to the Den; a long driveway that climbed the hill and terminated in a circular drive in front of the huge stone steps leading to the giant red doors of the great hall.

  Cars filled the parking lot carved into the hill beside the Den, shining like Skittles in the morning sunlight as Alek and I stopped the Mustang at the bottom of the hill, pulling as far off to the side and into the shadow of the trees as we could.

  “How many alphas are here?” I asked.

  “Counting their seconds?” Alek thought for a moment as we stared up at the big stone building. Only the upper part was visible from where we were. We’d have to go farther up the drive to see the doors. “Two hundred and thirty wolves, I believe.”

  I wondered who the wolves we’d killed at the Henhouse had been, what pack they were with. I hoped it wasn’t Wylde’s pack helping betray everything their former alpha had lived for, had worked to build.

  “I believe your line is ‘time’s up, let’s do this,’” Alek said with a slight smile.

  “We live through this, I’m going to make you watch that YouTube video,” I said, smiling back at him. Nerves fluttered in my belly and then calmed. We would live through this, I promised myself. This was a beginning, this new start between us, and I wasn’t going to give it up so easily this time.

  We climbed out of the car and slipped into the woods, sticking to the trees as far up the hill as we could. The forest thinned and then terminated a couple hundred yards away from the do
ors. From here I could see the wide stone porch. Four figures lay prone in its surface, sunlight glinting on metal in their hands. I squinted. Guns. Big guns. If anyone was dying inside that hall, we were too far away to hear the commotion.

  “Wolves?” I asked Alek.

  He took deep breaths of the air, mouth partially open as though tasting as much as smelling for their scents. He shook his head. “Human. I can’t force them to shift,” he added, clearly following my line of thought.

  “Damn,” I muttered. I reached for my magic. We were a long ways out, but I had to try to reach them. We needed inside that hall. Universe only knew what Eva was doing, what was happening in there. She had hired these men to keep anyone else from coming in. Humans with guns. Another breach of the Council’s rules, I guessed, a shifter dealing with humans, using human muscle. Mercenaries. Fucked-up world.

  “Wait,” Alek muttered. His head swiveled and he tasted the air again.

  I sensed movement in the trees behind us. Wolves.

  But it was a man who emerged from the denser forest and made his way to the stand of fir we lurked within. He was about six feet tall with long, shaggy black hair that had a dramatic shock of white running through it, a thick beard, and skin a shade darker brown than my own. He smiled, his hands spread in a non-threatening gesture. Something about how he moved was almost awkward, as though he had not walked in a long time and was trying to remember how with each step. He wore only a pair of green sweatpants, no shirt or shoes.

  “Justice,” he said, his voice rough and gravelly. “I am Aurelio, called Softpaw, alpha of the Bitterroot pack.”

  Alek moved so that he was half between Aurelio and I. “That your pack in trees?” he said.

  “Yes,” Aurelio answered. “I have come to swear the Peace. My daughter is dead; the Justices have no hold over me any longer.”

  Alek and I exchanged a confused look, which Aurelio saw.

  “You do not know?” he asked, the determination in his face turning to confusion. “No, I guess it has been many, many years. You are too young. One of your own, a wolf called Evaline, made me leave. My daughter killed a human trapper, and the Justice said the price for her life was for me to fight Ulfr, stop the Peace. I could not fight my friend, but I did not sign. I took my pack and we fled deep into the wilderness. But my daughter is gone. I wish to redeem my cowardice.”

  He said the words as though he had been rehearsing them, which I guessed he might have. It had likely been a very long time since he’d spoken with a human throat, since he’d shared words with other people.

  “Good,” Alek said simply. “Eva has broken the trust; she is not acting with the will of the Council.”

  Aurelio searched Alek’s face and whatever he saw there satisfied him. “My pack is yours, Justice,” he said.

  “Don’t suppose you know another way into the Den?” I asked.

  He looked past Alek at me and shook his shaggy head. “Your mate is human? She will be in danger here,” he said.

  “Woah, I am not his mate,” I said. “Or totally human. Check your nose.”

  His nostrils flared and he cocked his head. “No,” he said in his rough voice. “Not human. The blood on you is, but it is not your blood.”

  All right. I had literally asked for that. I sighed.

  “That still doesn’t get us past men with machine guns.” Turning, I leaned around the tree behind me and peeked at the top of the hill. “They look spaced within five feet of each other to you?”

  “Yes, why? Can you make a shield again?” Alek asked.

  “Maybe,” I said, though I had something else in mind. I pulled on my magic, ignoring the dance of red spots at the corner of my vision and the sharp pain that did a jig between my eyes. I was tired, but I hadn’t hit my limit. Not yet.

  But I was tired of shields. Tired of bullets. There had to be another way. I looked around and fixated on Alek’s shirt. He’d pulled on a white teeshirt from his house trailer and a black sweater over it. The teeshirt showed a little above the collar line of the sweater. I was sure Ezee would have been horrified.

  “Give me your undershirt,” I said to Alek, the stupidly crazy idea forming in my head growing more and more real by the second.

  He pursed his lips but to his credit he pulled off his sweater, then his teeshirt, and handed it over, tugging his sweater back on. I picked up a dry stick from the ground and tied the shirt to it. Pulling my braid over my shoulder, I yanked out the tie and shook my hair down my back. I wanted to look unmistakably female and human before I walked out into the open.

  “Wait for my signal,” I said. “I’m going to try to get closer.”

  “They are going to shoot you,” Alek said.

  “Maybe,” I said. “But those are human men up there. I know a thing or three about men.”

  “You are covered in blood.”

  I looked down. He had a point, but fuck it. “That might help sell the whole ‘helpless and in need of saving by dicks.’”

  “What’s the signal?” Alek asked with a resigned look on his face.

  “Them dying or me getting shot. Whichever happens first.” I picked up my makeshift truce flag and grinned. I didn’t give him a chance to respond, stumbling out of the tree line and into the grass, walking straight up the hill toward the men holding machine guns.

  Behind me I heard Aurelio mutter something that sounded like “mates.”

  The men didn’t shoot. I saw movement among them, and the murmur of voices filtered down to me as I walked, waving my flag.

  “Don’t shoot,” I called up to them, pitching my voice higher than it normally was. “I need help!” I fake-stumbled and moved closer, letting my magic fill my veins, readying a spell in my mind. I knew what I wanted to do; it was just a matter of getting close enough, of connecting.

  “Lady,” one of the men yelled, sitting partially up. “This is a restricted area. Back down.” He sounded distressed. I didn’t know what Eva’s instructions had been, but shooting unarmed women who looked already hurt and were asking for help clearly hadn’t been covered.

  Just a few feet closer. Closer. I labored up the hill, covering another ten feet. Then another. I could make out their eyes through their balaclavas. One of the men on the side dropped low over his gun, sighting down on me. The others still looked confused and unfocused, but I was running out of time.

  Forty feet out, I threw the spell. Purple lightning arced from my outstretched hand, zapping into the man who had spoken. It hit him hard and threw him back before spreading between him and his companions, forking out to either side in a spectacular light show. I dropped flat to the hill, wincing as my injured leg twinged, and pressed my face to the still damp grass.

  Silence. Then I heard Alek and Aurelio running up the hill behind me. I sat up and looked at the porch.

  The mercenaries lay where the lighting had thrown them away from their guns. None of them were moving. I shoved away the pang of guilt about it. Alek was right—it did get easier. It helped, of course, that I was pretty sure they had been about to gun down an unarmed woman. Hard to feel guilty in the face of that little fact.

  We climbed the remainder of the hill together.

  “What did you do to them?” Aurelio asked me as Alek checked the bodies methodically for signs of life, stripping them of their weapons as he went.

  “Chain lightning,” I said. “When you absolutely, positively got to kill every last motherfucker in the room, accept no substitutes.”

  “You are very odd,” the Bitterroot alpha said. He turned away from me with a frown and, putting his fingers into his mouth, whistled back at the woods.

  “Guess you don’t watch a lot of movies,” I muttered. My badass references were wasted on this guy.

  Wolves streamed up the hill behind Aurelio. He met the eyes of a leggy white wolf and nodded as though it were speaking to him.

  “These are the only men with guns out here. Everyone else is inside,” he said.

  I looked up at
the huge doors. “I think I can blast through these,” I said. High on magic, I was pretty sure I could blast through anything at the moment. I was going to pay for this later.

  “Or we could go in the side door,” Alek said, pointing to a smaller door set near the corner of the hall, at the edge of the stone porch. “With the key Liam gave me before he died.”

  So much for a super-grand, dramatic entrance. Some guys just don’t know how to have fun.

  Aurelio agreed that he and his second, the white wolf, would come in with us, but that the rest of his pack would stay outside and guard our flanks. He actually said “guard our flanks.” It was kind of adorable. I wished that Ezee had been here to hear it.

  Alek unlocked the door, and we entered the great hall with him leading the way. I readied shields just in case there were more men with guns.

  The side door led into a small foyer where a second door opened into the great hall proper. That door was also locked, but Alek’s key opened it. The door opened inward and Alek poked his head around before nodding and walking through.

  As soon as we passed through the door, I heard people talking, the sounds of a crowd washing over me like a tangible wave. The air inside was heavy and warm—the ceiling was far above and there was plenty of space even with hundreds of bodies inside, but the hall was still crowded enough to heat the air, to change it. The stone walls shimmered slightly and I recognized the kind of soundproof shielding that Alek sometimes used. Eva’s doing.

  The hallway we’d emerged into opened wide almost immediately to reveal a cavernous room. Benches lined the walls and there was a gallery level above, an iron spiral staircase on my left leading up to it. Men and women covered the benches, many sitting, and some standing above in the gallery. A large stone slab engraved with knotwork sat in the middle of the floor, raised a few inches from the stones around it. Wulf’s final resting place, I guessed. A small group of shifters stood at the head of the slab, Eva among them.

  The crowd’s murmuring conversations turned to exclamations as we entered. Bodies moved aside, eyes questioning, as the four of us walked into the open center of the hall.