by Bonnie Vanak
Gabriel’s nose wrinkled. “You did a good job. Too good. I almost attacked you, thinking you were the source of the toxic dark that’s poisoning the land. Jake stopped me. And Sienna.”
He glanced at Sienna, and his gaze softened. “Thanks, pixie.”
Jake sighed and removed his ball cap, running a hand over his black hair. “This is turning out to be one screwy day.”
Molly blinked hard. “I know I stink, but I had to do something… what is that?”
They turned in the direction of her pointing finger. Jake’s eyes widened. Red flushed Sienna’s face as the Lupine jogged over to her white lacy bra lying on the ground. He picked it up.
Sienna wished the earth would open up and swallow her.
Returning to them, he handed Gabriel the bra. “Next time you want to prowl around do it with a little more discretion. Unless you’re into cross-dressing, and I don’t think that’s your style.”
Grateful Jake hadn’t given her the garment, she watched Gabriel tuck the bra into the waistband of his jeans. “Thanks man.”
Jake turned his attention to the little red wolf. “Why are you hiding, Molly? Is someone threatening you?”
The young shifter stared at the ground. “It’s Luke, the Lupine my alpha wants me to mate with. He keeps pressuring my folks. But I don’t want to mate with him. I don’t care how much it unites our two packs or increases my alpha’s territory. I won’t be turned into a political pawn.”
Jake sighed. “Running away never solved any problems. In this case, you caused more. We’re on the trail of a nasty dark enchantment and Gabe here almost turned you into wolf sushi because of that stench.”
Molly’s mouth wobbled. “I’m sorry. I didn’t think I’d cause trouble.”
Fishing into his pocket, Jake withdrew a set of keys and handed them to the female. “My cabin’s over by the environmental center. Number sixty-nine. Go there, shower that stench off you and stay there. When we’re finished, I’ll come for you and we’ll go to your parents, have a little chat.”
“They won’t listen to you. You’re a stranger in these parts. They only listen to kin.”
Jake’s jaw tensed. “They’ll listen to me if they ever want to run with the moon in my park again.”
He gave her shoulder a gentle pat. “Go now. I’ll be there soon.”
Giving him a grateful look, she shifted back into a wolf and raced off into the brush.
Jake jingled the keys in his hand. “Guess that shadow I saw the other day was Molly. And the stench. But we should check out the river and make sure. If this toxic dark is in my territory, I need to know. We’ll take the boats, cover the river.”
They started back for the truck. Sienna itched to test out her powers, but didn’t want Gabriel or Jake near if things soared out of control. She would not risk hurting them.
“I’ll meet you at the truck.” Sienna jerked a thumb at the bushes. “I have to…”
At her delicate pause, Gabriel frowned. “I’ll wait for you.”
“Um, not necessary. And I can’t, ah, do what I must do if I know you’re nearby.”
Gods, wasn’t that the truth?
Soon as he left, she cut through an opening in the bushes and stood in a small clearing. No one around. Sienna closed her eyes and summoned her powers, pulling all the dark magick together into a big ball.
She thought of happy thoughts, like watching a sunrise over the Pacific Ocean, and aimed them at the ball of darkness. Then she summoned the magick to her outstretched palms.
Heart racing with anticipation, she opened her eyes. Oh please…
It glowed pure black. No threads of white magick to control it. The dark energy pulsed and grew larger.
Oh gods, it was getting out of control. Panicked, she yanked it back inside her. It slammed into her chest like a white-hot hammer. Biting her lip against a scream, she rode through the pain.
Finally the globe of dark power vanished. Sienna bent over and breathed deeply, her guts feeling like someone ground glass into them.
Tears filled her eyes. She brushed them away with an angry fist. It was pointless.
She could not control the dark magick inside her.
The spring of Danu remained her only option.
Thirty minutes later, Sienna sat with Gabriel in a small skiff powered by a motor while Jake paddled in a yellow kayak. They headed north on the Loxahatchee River, passing by Skins enjoying an outing on the water. Eyes trained on the shoreline and the tangle of red mangroves peppering the shore, she looked for anything unusual. But she smelled nothing and saw nothing odd.
A cooling breeze lifted damp tendrils of hair escaping her ponytail. Her nipples brushed against the cotton shirt. Sienna ran a hand over her mussed ponytail. It came back covered with sand. She glanced at Gabriel, manning the boat motor.
He winked.
Narrowing her eyes, she continued her search of the shoreline.
In a patch of mud where the river had receded, a great blue heron nosed about for food. They ventured further north, passing a metal box. Gabriel explained that it was a water monitoring station to measure the river’s salinity. Turtles sunning themselves on fallen logs saw them approach and splashed into the river. A six-foot alligator, eyes peering above the waterline, studied them with lazy indifference as they passed.
“George’s cousin? Or another relative?” she asked Gabriel.
He shook his head. “George isn’t a river gator. He prefers the swamp. Fewer people to annoy him.”
“He doesn’t like people?”
“Oh, he does. If you put a little hot sauce and salt on the person, then he really likes them. But just as an appetizer.”
Gabriel grinned.
Gradually the landscape changed as the water turned less brackish and fresher. Instead of mangroves, bald cypress and scrub pines lined the shoreline.
They traveled for another three miles and then turned back.
“Whatever was here is gone now,” Jake said, dipping the yellow paddle into the river as he guided the kayak alongside them. He tied the kayak to their boat.
“Or maybe it’s not gone,” Gabriel mused. He cut the motor and let the boat drift. “If this toxic dark is truly an enchantment, it has a life of its own. It’s guided by its maker, who wouldn’t want us to find him. And what does someone who doesn’t want to be found do?”
“Like Molly,” Sienna realized. “He’s hiding from us. He knows we’re here searching and the dark is hiding.”
Jake nodded. “Let’s pull off the river and explore that little creek on foot. There’s a pathway we can use.”
A refreshing breeze cooled the sweat on Sienna’s body as they continued their journey. They entered a narrow creek, following its twists and turns until reaching a small clearing on shore. Brush and trees flanked a pathway, as Jake had indicated. After tying up the boats, they went ashore, following the trail.
The pathway dipped again, leading to the creek. Jake went still, his eyes widening. “It’s here. I sense it. There’s a heaviness in the air. Feel that?”
He waved his hand and she saw a queer rippling in the air, as if he pushed a fist through clear gelatin. Fear clogged her throat. Sienna wondered if the evil inside her could be controlled if she faced another source of dark magick.
Gabriel squeezed her arm. “You’re looking pale, pixie. Maybe you should wait this out. Stay by the boats.”
“Not a good idea. If this is Eleven magick like you said, Gabe, we’ll need her to counteract it.” Jake studied her. “You up to this, Sienna?”
They needed her. The land and the water, if it were fouled with this dreck, needed her. Sienna pulled herself up. “Yes. Lead on.”
The sandy path dipped and twisted, winding down to the creek once more. But as they approached the water, a foulness clogged the air. Sienna’s eyes watered as they stepped onto a sandy shoreline.
Flat and calm, the little creek looked normal further away from where they stood. But right before them was not
hing normal.
Here the water was a sickening shade of gray. The stench made her gag. This wasn’t low tide and the normal scent of decaying material. It was foul, and smelled like fetid death.
Gabriel’s nose wrinkled. “It smells like every bad thing that’s ever polluted the Everglades.”
Unstrapping his backpack, Jake suddenly began coughing. He dumped his pack on the ground, clapped a hand over his mouth and raced away. The sounds of retching followed.
Suddenly Gabriel raced to the bushes, bent over and began vomiting. Sienna’s stomach squeezed in sympathy. With their sensitive olfactory senses, the stench must be gagging the shifters.
Sienna leaned over and held his shaking shoulders, supporting him as he emptied his stomach. She squeezed the hard muscles of Gabriel’s shoulders, wishing her touch could provide comfort.
Jake returned and fished two water bottles from his pack, handing one to Gabriel. He straightened, took the bottle and drank deeply. Gabriel wiped his mouth with the back of one hand.
After draining his bottle, Jake squatted down and studied the creek. “Sienna, there’s an eye dropper in my pack. Can you get it for me? I need to take this back to the lab.”
“I wouldn’t get too close,” Gabriel warned. “This crap is deadly. It’s helped kill several shifters and infected the trees and plants. Let’s get a sample and get the hell out of here.”
Sienna retrieved the eyedropper and handed it to Jake.
As he carefully siphoned a small water sample into the eyedropper, and put it into his empty water bottle, something tickled her stomach. It came from inside, like feathers rubbing against skin. But this sensation wasn’t nice. It felt more like feathers studded with razor blades.
Cramps seized her and she put a hand to her belly. The darkness was reacting to whatever this was.
“Sienna, can you tell what kind of magick did this?” Gabriel asked.
Her eyes watered. Blinking, she studied the oozing foulness polluting the water. She shook her head. “It’s not like anything I’ve ever seen or experienced. But it does have overtones of Fae magick.”
She pointed to a swirl of iridescent colors swirling lazily atop the water, like an oil slick. “See that rainbow? Only Fae can do this. Each time a Fae, be it a sprite, fairy or Elf, weaves a spell, he or she leaves behind their particular signature pattern. Elves have more forest green in theirs. Sprites and Fairies tend toward the reds and blues.”
Gabriel’s face tightened. “This is the same dark enchantment that’s poisoning the ‘Glades. My home. I will find out who did this and eliminate them.”
Absorbed in studying the slick colors, she barely heard the veiled threat in his tone. Sienna glanced up. “This creek is off limits to boaters.”
Jake nodded. “We sectioned it off last week because we’re doing controlled burns and don’t want nosy tourists investigating the smoke. Safety measure.”
“But shifters use this area to hunt?”
The ranger nodded. “We have fox and osprey shifters and Molly’s pack, the Monroes, comes here at least once a month to run with the moon and hunt squirrel and raccoons.”
She suddenly understood the implications. “That’s why this is here. It’s a shifter haven, and this toxic dark is only present around shifters, or Others.”
“Son of a …. ” Gabriel clenched his fists. “It’s following us. It tracks our scents, or other signature patterns, and follows us. Waiting to trap us.”
“And then it moves on.” She pointed to the swirl of colors gliding closer to shore. “It senses you two are here, and now it’s itching to get onshore to claim another victim. Only this is stronger. It’s not infecting the trees. It wants to kill you outright.”
Gabriel’s expression tightened. “If this continues, it will destroy every shifter in eastern Florida. We must find a way to stop it. Why would a Fae want to destroy the environment?”
His gaze looked haunted as turned to her. “Your people are supposed to protect the land, not destroy it.”
“I don’t know.” She hesitated. “But one could have turned fully dark and cast a spell to do this.”
“Why?” he repeated. “For power? To thumb their nose at me, at shifters? And this is the people you wish to return to? A people who would do this to shifters and drive us away from our homes?”
Her gorge rose as Gabriel surveyed the gray muck. This hurt him deeply. For the past 25 years he’d watched Skins encroach on his territory, where once he and his kind ran wild and free, until all that was left was a small area he fought hard to protect against development. And now Fae enchantment threatened what was left of his land.
Gabriel was a sexy bastard who wouldn’t hesitate at anything to get what he desired, but he loved the land and fought fiercely to protect it. Her people were dedicated to the same, but now one had betrayed them.
She had to help stop this. But if she didn’t report back in Cael soon, she’d risk losing everything dear to her. Sienna swallowed hard as she thought of being exiled from all Elven, wandering the land and never having a home.
But she couldn’t leave now, knowing how very bad things were for Gabriel. Yet she felt the darkness tickling her insides, itching to get out and join the evil enchantment that had taken over the water.
Sienna clasped his hand and squeezed tight. “I’m sorry one of my people did this.”
His gaze hardened. “Sienna, go back to the boat. I don’t want you near this waste and risk you getting hurt. Jake and I are scouring the area to see if any shifters have been infected or worse.”
Gabriel watched as she turned to head back to the boat. Then the two males shifted into their animal forms. The big panther and the gray timber wolf stole into the undergrowth and vanished.
She lugged Jake’s backpack to the boat and dumped it inside. Sienna stared at the water, searching a distant memory.
Something about the colors had bothered her. They seemed familiar. The signature pattern wasn’t odd, but significant.
Another look wouldn’t hurt, she reasoned.
When she returned to the creek, the darkness had spread. Thick as an oil slick and as lethal, it coated the water in an oozing mess.
On her haunches, Sienna stared at the murky water, grieving at the newfound threat. Who could be so nasty and infect the lands Others needed for hunting? As an Elf dedicated to protecting the earth, it hurt deeply to know one of her brethren had done this evil.
But she couldn’t risk getting heavily involved. Already she’d risked too much. A blush heated her face as she remembered Gabriel’s hands upon her body, giving her so much pleasure. The Blood Moon festival was soon. By then, she must be gone. She needed to use the spring of Danu and move on.
She picked up a twig and poked at the black water, uneasy at how it began changing colors. The grayness vanished, replaced by charcoal. Sienna threw the twig into the creek and watched the dark swallow it.
No way would she risk getting this toxic substance on her.
The colors surfaced and swirled, rainbow patterns running into each other like a watercolor in the rain. And then it clicked. She had seen this type of magick before.
Cael’s magick. Only the King or someone of his blood could create such magick. She’d heard from Cael when Samantha had dined with them how proud he was of his daughter’s Elven powers. How she’d created a rainbow globe of power just like her father. Samantha had even demonstrated it at the table, the ball bouncing in her palm like a child’s toy. Then Cael had created a similar globe of energy, the colors much more vibrant and glowing.
Like the colors swirling inside the darkness of this toxic dark.
Deeply troubled, she stared at the water. Could this be the Fae King of the Northern Light’s work? Why would a Fae King devoted to protecting the land cast a dark enchantment on Gabriel’s territory, killing shifters and destroying the trees Cael loved?
It made no sense, unless Cael hated Gabriel so much he wanted to take the panther to his knees.
&nb
sp; Gabriel needed to know the enemy he faced. But her loyalty to the king ran deep. She could not tell the panther until she had more evidence this was Cael’s doing.
The darkness inside her burned and cramped. She could feel it tugging at her, urging her on until the water would cover her head. Holding her stomach, wincing at the stabbing pain, she inched away from the creek.
Suddenly a tongue of water lapped at the sandy shore, close to her feet. Alarmed, she inched backward.
But the darkness inside her urged her forward. With all her might, she struggled against the violent urge to greet the toxic dark, let it engulf her.
You will not win, she vowed.
Standing, she started to turn and head for the pathway to wait for Gabriel and Jake.
She heard footsteps behind her, but before she could turn, someone gave her a violent shove. Arms pin-wheeling, Sienna struggled to maintain her balance, frantic to avoid falling into the water.
A hard boot kicked her in the back. With a shriek she fell toward the water, felt the poison reach for her with greedy fingers.
The darkness rose up and covered her.
Chapter 8
Nothing. They found no trace of shifters, not even a paw print. Gabriel nosed near a cabbage palm, his paws digging into the sand as he picked up an odd scent. When he saw the scrap of blue cloth, stamped with Molly’s scent, disappointment shot through him.
Lifting his head, he watched Jake sniff a sabal palm. The wolf growled low in his throat and lifted his leg on the tree, marking his territory. Then Jake loped over to Gabriel and shifted back to human form, clothing himself by magick.
Gabriel did the same, dusting off his hands. “Find anything?”
“Nothing but old deer scat and the stench of Silvern pack. One Lupine in particular. Luke Silvern, the bastard who wants to mate with Molly.” Jake snorted. “He marked several trees, arrogant prick. Just to let me know he was hunting in my turf without permission. He does it because he knows I can’t do anything without calling out a pack war. And as a ranger, I’m not going to fight with him in the open and risk alerting Skins to the fact there’s a wolf pack in the area.”
