by WB McKay
"Unless you plan on making a getaway, you shouldn't have to worry," she assured me. "The pack land goes a few miles out, and past that is forest service land. We're safe here."
She patted my shoulder like we were close friends, and took off in a delighted skip down the slope, laughing and hooting. Like her joy set the rest of them in motion, others spilled out of the barn behind me, and before I knew what I was doing, I ran along with them at the back. Everyone stopped midfield, moonlight bathing us on all sides, and shifted as one. Three wolves who'd already shifted in the barn caught up with us then, running circles around the shifting majority, excitedly urging the rest of us to hurry along. The wolves surrounding me acted as if it didn't hurt, as if it was a joy to be a wolf out running that night, and for the first time in my life, I shared that feeling.
We ran until the sun came up. We howled at the moon. We swam in a shallow lake. We chased each other and ourselves. We played until we couldn't play anymore.
When I shifted back in the barn, I expected to feel not like myself. What I felt instead was something I couldn't identify at the time, but would someday come to know as unburdened. It would be a long time before I came to recognize that for the gift it was.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
I woke up refreshed. It took me through breakfast to think of that word—I didn't believe I'd ever used it before, but it fit. It was a new day, and no matter what the pack decided, things were moving forward. I knew what the vampires wanted. The vampires were a link to the blond woman. Whether the pack decided to help or not, I was going to. Tess was in town. One way or another, I would handle this. Perhaps we'll be able to use the glyphs to our advantage, I thought, and a rush of giddy excitement ran through me.
I knew there were heavier issues at play in the situation, but the revelation that was glyphs gave me a thrill I couldn't deny. I decided to stop at the workshop on my way to meet Tess. I'd always promised The Inventor to inform her when I ran into any new or interesting magic, and it would be good to talk to someone else who understood how exciting a development this was. It wasn't every day I uncovered a new vein of magic. Heck, it wasn't every century.
I tossed my purse on the workbench and unlocked the safe first thing. Carrying The Inventor's weapon had proven to be a liability the night before. It was probably best I left it tucked in the safe. I doubted I'd ever feel safe carrying something like that around anyway.
The lab was unrecognizable when The Inventor answered the call. Purple soot covered the room.
"Are things going… well?" I asked.
"Even failure is a success," she reminded me.
"Every failure knocks one more possibility out of the way," I said. "I know. Well, I hope you're being careful."
She laughed at that.
"I called with some exciting news," I said. "What do you know about glyphs?"
"What about glyphs?"
"Did you know that witches can draw lines, flood them with magic, and set them up to do things? I don't know what all they can do at this point, but the witches I met last night used it to set up a trap."
The Inventor pulled off her goggles, leaned over her desk so she was close enough to the camera her face became blurry, and said, "Tell me more."
So I did. "...and the more interesting part of it all is that when I stepped on the activated glyph it wasn't holding me. It locked onto wolf magic. It was holding me within its confines by my own magic."
"Are you sure it was made with witch magic?" she asked.
"Yes."
"I need you to slow down," The Inventor said, and my whole body went stiff. The Inventor never said slow down, she was more of a go faster kind of girl. If I was taking breaths between paragraphs, I was talking too slow for The Inventor's taste. "What's happening on this case you're working?"
"You never ask me about that." We had a rule about it, even. She'd made the rule up.
"You're right, I shouldn't have asked. I'm telling you: inform me of the details of the case you're working now."
"Vampires are killing witches of the coven I'm talking to," I said. "That's the long and the short of it. They set up the glyphs keyed to wolves because they thought it was wolves attacking them. They're working on figuring out how to set up traps for vampires."
The Inventor pulled back from the camera, her face a mask of worry. "You should leave the area immediately."
"Why would I do that?"
"These witches are being killed off one by one. They are working a magic that combines witch and fae properties." She said it like she didn't need to say more, like I should have known what that meant, and the knot in my gut told me I understood exactly. Still, I needed to hear her say it.
"What does that mean?" I asked her.
"The Division of Protection Against Magical Corruption is taking them out of play."
"Are you sure?"
"Ninety-five percent."
"No," I said. "No."
"Yes."
"Shit. Damn. Shit." I paced the workshop until my eyes caught on the safe and steadied. I returned to the camera's view and asked, "They'd kill humans?"
"They would especially kill human witches," she said. "There might be repercussions for taking out fae, so they might hesitate, but most fae agencies consider humans to be inconsequential."
"Can I fight vampires if they're part of the fae government?"
"Why do you want to fight them?" she asked. "They're FAB assassins. You understand that, right? And they're not after you."
"I understand that," I said. "If I fight them, and I win, would the Faerie Affairs Bureau send more?" I wanted her to tell me I only had to handle one group of vampires. I could take out one group of vampires. But I thought I already knew that wasn't the case. If I started this, I'd be starting something.
"The only things I know about their operations are unsubstantiated, but I would think so, yes. Again, I am going to advise you to leave the area as soon as possible."
"That's one option," I agreed.
"This is dangerous," she told me.
"Says the woman who just laughed when I told her to be careful." I sat down hard in my chair. "My parents were witches."
"I didn't know that."
"You wouldn't. I've never said that out loud before. My parents were witches." I swallowed hard. "When was the Division of Protection Against Magical Corruption formed?"
"Centuries ago," she said slowly. "What are you thinking?"
"My parents were witches," I repeated, seeing the pieces fall together in my head. "They were inventors of a sort. When they were murdered, they were working on easing the pain of werewolf shifts."
The Inventor's eyes went wide. She saw it immediately. "What are you going to do?"
"I'm going to start something," I said. "I'm going to start something, and then, I'm going to finish it."
I SKIPPED THE WITCHES and went straight to the alpha's house. I texted Tess that I didn't know when I'd be making it back her way, but to keep working on the vampire traps. I'd fill her in on the details later. Hopefully by that time I'd look a little less shell shocked. The pack wasn't bothered by such things.
They were singing a much different tune this afternoon.
"The fae government is behind this?" someone asked.
"The faeries sent vampires into our territory?" someone else shouted.
"After what they did?" someone else asked.
"They exposed us to the humans, and then they sent vampires into our territory."
Gretchen did not look warm and welcoming. She looked like a one woman wrecking ball. That would of course be a fatal assumption to make. She had a pack of werewolves at her back.
"Julia," Graham said, "arrange a meeting with the witches as soon as possible."
I tipped my invisible hat. It seemed I, too, had a pack of werewolves behind me.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
It took very little time for the witches and wolves to confirm they were both on the same page. The wolves wanted to kill the t
respassing vampires sent by the unsavory fae government. The witches would also like the vampires hunting them to be dead. From there, they dove straight into making a plan, all practical business between two groups bent on killing each other the day before.
A great number of those famous sayings have been true to my finding, "the enemy of the my enemy is my friend" was no exception.
The plan was offense, and came in two main parts. The second part was the battle. The first part was the protest.
I admit, the idea was strange. There was no getting around that.
The witches of Redding carried their signs proudly into the park.
"Save us from the vampires!" chanted a woman carrying a sign with a picture of Halloween fangs with a large red X crossing them out.
"Witches deserve safety!" shouted another.
The signs weren't the most clever, nor were the chants, but they were strange, and strange grabbed attention. It was already one of the warmer days we'd had that June at eighty-seven degrees, with the sun shining right on us at high noon. It was a fitting time for calling out your enemies, I figured, especially when those enemies were allergic to sunlight. Blood drinkers could go outside for a brief time if they were of the mind to, but they'd have to have a compelling reason for it. Sunlight rapidly depleted their magic. If they'd recently fed well, they might tolerate it well enough, but there wasn't much purpose to sustaining damage like that. Blood drinkers were creatures of the night. Which made it the perfect time for the witches to leave their protected property and set the trap.
"Witches have rights!"
"Clip all fangs!" They clearly hadn't asked my approval before they settled on their protest cries.
For twenty minutes, the only thing the protest attracted was wary stares and chuckles from passersby, but as planned, a news van pulled up. It was one of the stations I'd contacted myself.
Gail stepped forward, ready and waiting to be the face of the coven. As a firefighter—a job I found suspicious for a witch—she said her coworkers were most likely to laugh the whole thing off. She intended to play the thing off as a stunt to amuse people, what with all the uproar about werewolves in the human news recently.
The camera was filming from the moment they stepped out of their van. The witches shouted louder. I stood off to the side, not relishing the idea of being caught on camera, and continued contacting news stations on my phone to make sure the protest was widely covered, impossible to miss if you were a FAB agent responsible for maintaining threats like the possible exposure of vampires to humankind.
"We're not hurting anybody!" Gail told the uncomfortable reporter. "We gather peacefully every Wednesday night in a field across the street from Lonely Mountain Tree Farm. We deserve protection like anyone else!"
To Gail's credit, she didn't laugh once. She'd had a difficult time convincing me she could handle the act when we'd practiced the routine.
The reporter asked a few polite questions about why the vampires were after them and what made the coven sure they were vampires and how long the coven had been meeting in the area.
Once the interview was over and they were packing up, I approached the van with a smile that felt all wrong on my face, but must have been right, because the reporter returned it. "Hey," I said. "Thanks for covering this."
"Thank you for the tip," she said. "We always appreciate our viewers helping us out."
"You're welcome," I said. "Do you know when this will air?"
"It should be on tonight's schedule."
"For the evening news, right?"
"Yes, ma'am."
My smile felt natural to me after that, but it likely wasn't human friendly. The reporter recoiled. I walked away without another word, sure I'd only frighten her more as my smile grew. I'd have paid good money to see the look on the vampire's faces when they caught the evening news. I'd have to settle for the face they made when they fell into the second part of our trap.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The glyph was activated. The witches and Tess were in place. The pack had come to the scene already shifted to help cover their scent. Vampires weren't the most aware bunch, but we didn't want anything to ruin the plan. The pack hid deep in the tall grass, crouched and ready.
The battle plan was simple. The witches created one large, circular glyph in the center of the field. As bait, they would be standing in the center of that glyph while they waited for the vampires. Once the vamps were in, the witches would run out. This was the highest risk part of the plan, but the witches had been adamant that it was smart. Tess had insisted on going in with them as she was good in a close range fight and could be mistaken for a witch by the vampires. It was her job to make sure all the witches got out. Once the witches were clear, Graham, who worked in the lumber industry and had committed some crimes he told us not to ask about, would detonate the explosives buried under the glyph and blow the vampires and their magical hearts to tiny bits.
The pack would be there, in wolf form, as backup in case something went wrong.
I would go into the fight in human form. I'd already proven I couldn't fight with the pack. My job was to be available for tracking any vampire that managed to get away and take care of anything else that came up. No one but myself questioned the usefulness of my presence. The rest of them saw my mysterious ability to track vampires as a valuable backup, something that made them feel safer. If they knew about everything else I could do, well, that was a useless train of thought, because they'd have been too horrified to see the practical uses for my skill set.
It's fine, I reminded myself whenever my thoughts spiraled away from me. This wasn't the whole war, this was the opening battle. From there, I would learn more about the division, and I would find the pack of wolves responsible for killing my family and changing me into a werewolf. I would track down the blond woman, assuming she didn't show herself tonight. I was trying not to be hopeful for that, because I wanted it too much, but that was the rub: I wanted it too much not to hope for it. She was who I'd searched for all along, and I knew in my heart that she was the center of it all. Once I got my hands on her, the rest of the puzzle pieces would fall into place. I'd know what to do from there. I had to believe that.
I crouched, alone and ready. We'd been waiting since sunset. We'd considered giving a meetup time to the news reporter, but decided we couldn't trust they'd follow it anyway. We were in it for the long haul, or so we thought.
The wolves had warned that the vampires would appear without warning, ready to fight. The witches had insisted that, as FAB agents, they should at least maintain the illusion of coming to talk first.
It was thirty minutes after the last glimmer of sun had dropped out of sight. The crickets were singing, and then suddenly they weren't.
Ten vampires rushed across the field. Some of the witches backed up a step or two, but no one ran until the first vampire crossed the barrier. I'd worried the flare of witch magic that burned my nostrils would alert some of the vampires in time to stop, but they were too confident and moving too fast.
Gail tripped. I stood up without thinking about it, not even sure what I was going to do, but Tess wrapped an arm around Gail's middle and half dragged her out of the circle, all the while swinging her machete at the air. She was right; the vampires did back away from her.
Tess and Gail were still running when the first vampire hit the barrier.
And that's when I saw her. Blond hair flowed down her back. She wore a different coat—modern, wool with big buttons and a fancy collar—but it was her. She waved her arms at the vampires, yelled something I was too shocked to understand.
At nearly the same moment that Tess and Gail cleared the barrier, the blond woman dragged her feet across the edge of the glyph, destroying the trap.
The vampires ran free. The wolves charged in. Pandemonium broke out.
Our people were everywhere. Using the bomb was out of the question.
We'd talked about the possibility of the glyph breaking. It was wh
y the pack was there in the first place. It had felt like idle conversation at the time. I'd been confident they wouldn't discover a way to break free before the bomb could be detonated. She'd known exactly what to do. And she wasn't a vampire.
Gunfire rang out. The vampires had guns.
The pack ran in front of the witches, using their bodies as shields. Tess dropped her machete and pulled out two guns. She was always ready for anything that came up, and ready to ignore the fact that she was human and should have been hitting the ground with the other humans. Bullets would kill humans. Bullets wouldn't hurt a werewolf unless—
Graham—big, intimidating Graham, beta of the Lassen Pack—took one bullet to the neck and another to the head. Body limp, he fell out of sight. The pack's cries answered what had happened.
Bullets wouldn't hurt a werewolf unless they were silver. One silver bullet, maybe even two, would be painful but survivable if they hit a leg. I didn't think Graham was getting back up again.
Taking out the guns became the priority. I looked on helplessly—wanting to dive into the fight—but stuck with my job of watching for blood drinkers on the run so I knew where to start tracking if any got away. Still, I was distracted by the actions on the field. Witches threw wind at the vampires, blowing guns from their hands or at least knocking them to the side. Gail had warned them all not to use fire; it was as likely to hurt allies as it was to hurt the vampires. Crazed wolves were the masters of chaos. Hands were torn off vampires and flung to the ground without pause. Even vampire superspeed was not fast enough to reload the guns between the attacks of the witches and the fervid violence of the wolves.
Through all of it, I never lost track of the blond woman. She stayed in the center of the deactivated glyph. The vampires fought on all sides of her; she was the center of the storm, and she was not calm. She swooshed her hands around her and yelled commands. A wolf dove her way, getting closer than the rest had, and two vampires jumped in to block its path. It took me a while to understand they were protecting her the way the others had protected the weakened vampire in the alley.
