Battle of the Hexes

by Lidiya Foxglove

  “So…like…I just…”

  I did not know how to turn into a freaking wolf. Presumably, if it was easy to do, I would have done it already. At some point, when I felt threatened at Merlin College, shouldn’t I have just wolfed out and like, eaten Piers Nicolescu?

  “Charlotte, love, don’t be nervous. You can do this. Just allow yourself permission.”

  I fell to my hands and knees while trying to imagine myself doing the same fluid transformation as Mom had done.

  Nothing.

  “Wolf!” I cried. “Magical wolf! Magical wolf transformation power! Lupus transformicus!”

  “I feel as if you are not taking this seriously.”

  I flopped to the ground. “I am taking it seriously! I just talk a lot when I’m nervous.”

  “Please don’t be nervous…” She sat down next to me and put a paw on my leg. “It’s my fault, isn’t it? I’m sure I make you nervous, just being here, changing everything…”

  A small laugh spurted out of my lips at being regarded by such an earnest wolf. “It’s probably a factor.” I sighed and twisted at the rings on my fingers, particularly the reliquary ring—one bit of magic Harris left in my hands. “I was starting to get pretty good at being a witch. I still had a long way to go, but I was excited about it.”

  “You kept your friend alive,” Mom said. “That’s the best spell anyone can ever manage. And you didn’t have to sell your soul to do it. You should be very, very proud.”

  “You’re also very cool,” I said. “It was just me and Dad, you know, and neither of us were cool.”

  “You and your dad are both very cool!” she said. “Sure, I’ve thought it might be nice to do a few things to your hair. But only if you want to. You’re brave and kind and funny and you have four very sexy young men who are crazy about you. I have always tried very hard to be cool. Glamorous and a little mysterious, and rebellious…and miserable. An ‘artiste’, who doesn’t actually do much of anything. It was that little bit of emptiness inside me where he got in…” She turned back into a woman and immediately crossed her legs, gracefully, even as she put a hand to her stomach.

  “The…demon?”

  She nodded and put her hands on my cheeks. “You remind me much more of your father than myself, and I am glad. You aren’t too wrapped up in your own head.”

  “Well, I’m only one quarter wolf. What if I don’t have it in me?”

  “I believe that you do. Remember how hard it was to do magic at first?”

  I grinned. “I burned Ignatius’ office.”

  “You did? A fast learner, then?”

  “Controlling it was still hard.”

  She was right, though. I remembered that moment when they asked me to light a candle and it sounded insane. I thought the same thing I was thinking now—that surely if I could light candles with my brain, I would have done it already.

  I thought of everything in me that had ever felt more primal than civilized. Smells on the wind. Lust. The itch to go outside for no real reason. The moon, the wind, grass under bare feet…

  I planted my hands in the soft green covering of the forest floor, and I let go of my tethers to my human self.

  Wolf.

  I became a wolf.

  Mom transformed with me now, and she ran ahead of me, luring me forward. I let her teach me the things I should have learned a long time ago, the heritage of my grandfathers who could turn into wolves. Maybe they weren’t too different from Firian’s ancestors, just untamed versions of familiars. I felt wild and free—

  —my feet hit a path and the magic seemed to suck out of me, knocking me back, tumbling me into girl form. I fell flat on my back.

  Mom had taken a slightly different way, but now she turned back as well and helped me up. “Just a little pocket of magic,” she said. “I guess you found the end of it.” She glanced around. “It might be gone for good if we returned here in another year. But it was nice, wasn’t it? I told you you could do it. I can’t wait to tell your grandfathers.”

  “Let me tell them!” I said, and then I laughed. “Sorry. I sound like a little girl.”

  She grabbed me and hugged me tight. “That’s okay,” she said. “Let’s make up for lost time.”

  Chapter Four

  Harris

  What do you know? A few days in some rented cabins with Charlotte’s family, and I already liked them better than my own family.

  Not that I’d ever admit it. Especially to her grandfather Malcolm, who had targeted me for hassling, but I could give back as good as I got. I guess Charlotte had a bit of an irascible British werewolf frontman in her. That explained a lot. Even if Rhys was her blood grandfather, in my mind I could see a bit of all of them in her mom and even in her.

  Will it be like that for us someday?

  It was a lot easier to imagine now that I had an example. If Monty couldn’t have kids anymore, so what? My family would be so upset that I didn’t feel possessive over my own kids, but I’d rather they have Monty or Alec to read them bedtime stories instead of me. I wasn’t good at that sort of thing, but someday I would teach them to cast wards. How to stay away from the council. How to conduct yourself in society. Knowing when to fight and when to back off.

  Defense. Survival. I knew that stuff well, because I’d been training to be on the council someday and put myself in real danger.

  So it was a little ironic and irritating that I had died. Fuck. Now I had to drink this nasty tonic in the morning so I wouldn’t turn into an undead monster. Professor McGuinness told me that like it was no big deal, but it felt like a little bit of a big deal to me.

  Of course, it wasn’t as bad as…

  I was having some insomnia, and I noticed that Montague wasn’t in his bed. Still. At three am. He’d been hunting at night, keeping his feeding to himself. I’m sure he didn’t want to be a hindrance to the family reunion, and remind everyone that he was a vampire, but it also meant he was tired and pale during the day, a little aloof. What was he eating? I didn’t think he could take down a deer without coming home a bloody mess, so more likely it was rabbits.

  I went outside. Firian was asleep on the cabin’s sofa, while Charlotte had a bed in the cabin loft. Her dad didn’t fight the arrangement on vacation, losing out to the laissez-faire attitude of her other relatives. The night air chilled my skin. I cast a searching spell, a faint trail of light whispering off into the trees, and I followed it.

  If you had asked me what my aim was, I probably wouldn’t have given you a straight answer, but of course I knew.

  The night woods were no place for warlocks, even the tamer woods of the Fixed Plane. My feet rustled the brush and snapped twigs even as my eyes adjusted to the faint moonlight, and my other senses tried their best to pick up slack. The winter woods were so quiet that every sound was like an explosion.

  Suddenly I heard a rush of almost silent footfalls moving quickly. Vampires didn’t have super speed like in the movies, but they could still be very fast, and unusually agile.

  The sound made my hair stand on end, because I’d never seen Monty move the way that sound suggested.

  “Monty?” I hissed, hearing the faint rustling in the distance.

  He dropped out of a nearby tree. I had no idea how he had even gotten into the tree so quickly without me seeing him. “Oh, Harris. It’s you. What the hell are you doing out here? I’m kinda busy.”

  “Did you catch anything tonight?”

  “A snack,” he said sarcastically. “This really blows. I found a faun with its mother and that actually looked delicious but it’s like…a baby animal. I can’t fucking kill a baby animal in front of its mother. No wonder the old vampires seem amused by me, but…come on.” At least he still always sounded like Monty. “What are you prowling around out here for?”

  I thrust out my arm. “You need human blood.”

  He looked at me. “We’re going home tomorrow. I have beef blood in the freezer.”

  “Monty, you’re starting to
look dead.”

  “Speak for yourself.” His eyes had moved to my arm. “Why?”

  “We need to have each other’s backs.”

  “Rayner drank your blood already. How was that?”

  “I wasn’t into it,” I said. “If that’s what you were asking.”

  Some books said it was a sexual experience for a vampire to drink your blood, and it hadn’t really been like that, thank heavens. At the time I put up a fierce mental resistance, and it was painful and unpleasant. I would never have lived it down if, in the middle of a humiliating assault upon my person, I had also gotten hard for old male vampires, the natural enemy of the Nicolescu family.

  But I kept thinking about it. That particular pain. The burn of fangs sucking the life out of me. Monty drank Charlotte’s blood after I died, they told me. She had been wearing turtleneck sweaters to cover the Band-Aid on her neck. I kept thinking about that too, in a way that drove me nuts. I guess it stirred something. I wasn’t sure if it was sexual, or more like a drug. Once we all tried a cigarette and we coughed and it didn’t seem worth making ourselves sick over, which seemed a common enough experience, but how did you end up with a second cigarette anyway?

  “Don’t tempt me like this…,” Monty said, reaching for my arm. He stopped himself and dug his hands in his hair. “It’s too dangerous when we’re alone. So far I’ve always been able to stop, but…” He made a face. “It’s…man, I don’t know if we should go there.”

  “I think we have to go there,” I said. “There are four of us. If you drank our blood in a regular cycle, you would be stronger and not so hungry. We can look up how often it’s recommended to give blood and space it out.”

  “You know this isn’t just a clinical thing,” Monty said. “It’s very…intimate.”

  “Yeah. I know.” I wasn’t sure what else to say. “I want to watch you drink Charlotte’s blood. But she’s not ready yet.”

  “You’re still recovering,” Monty said, but he reached for my arm. “Don’t let me take more than a taste.”

  “Okay.” My heart was beating fast as Monty lifted my wrist to his mouth. He wet his lips. My mind went blank and in the moment, the man I was looking at didn’t seem at all like the friend I had grown up with.

  I wondered if he was thinking the same, because I felt like something inside me had come back different when Charlotte revived me. Everyone in my family had always been defined by the family. I had kissed that goodbye. If I saw them again, I would be regarded as a traitor.

  I didn’t really care.

  “Gentle,” Monty said, as if to himself, and then he sank his teeth into me. His fangs went deep and they weren’t like needles, they were teeth—they left a mark, tearing flesh, but I remembered this pain now and the burn was satisfying. Vampire venom made you want what they offered. My body still struggled, instinct taking over. Hunter and prey. His arm went around me, stronger than I realized he could be, keeping me there. Once my skin was broken, he licked and sucked so not a drop of my blood was wasted.

  I don’t know if there’s such a thing as ancestral memory, but this almost felt familiar to me. Nicolescus have been vampire hunters all their lives, but they have also dabbled in the forbidden fruit, I thought. How could they not? Centuries of men and women, hunting down some of the most charismatic beings in the magical world?

  You only hurt the ones you love.

  When I let Monty drink fully, I could feel my mind letting go of everything that troubled it, succumbing to weakness that would lead to death, but sometimes as I was drifting to sleep at night I would suddenly wake myself violently. I had been trained for this, and now I whipped out my own magic, sparking him with light.

  He staggered back and snatched a handkerchief out of his pocket to wipe his mouth. “Good,” he said. “Good, thanks.”

  He already looked healthier. “You’re welcome.”

  He cast a healing spell on my skin to seal it up, but he still pulled out another handkerchief and tied it around my wrist. I started back for the cabins, a little dizzy.

  “I’ll come with you,” Monty said, offering a hand.

  “I don’t need it, I’m fine.” I stuck my hands in my pockets. “I’ll go alone.”

  “I’m heading back anyway.”

  “You’re going for Charlotte, aren’t you?”

  “It’s the middle of the night.”

  “Yeah, but now you’re turned on. I can smell it.”

  “Fucking vampires,” I muttered, my skin turning hot.

  “I feel the same way,” Monty said. “Let’s wake her up.”

  Chapter Five

  Charlotte

  I knew life was back to normal because Alec wasn’t in my dreams anymore. Instead I was having a dream about Daisy. She was sitting in front of a television like a zombie watching a show called Detroit Pet Psychics. (That wasn’t a real show, was it? It was a testament to the absurdity of modern reality shows that I wasn’t actually sure.)

  “Daisy?” I said in the dream. “Did something happen to Cash?” For some reason I was concerned that her familiar wasn’t around, even though he usually wasn’t, like any normal familiar.

  “Yes,” she said, glazed. “But it’s okay. The TV is my familiar now.”

  “Okay, seriously, where is he?” I asked, looking for a remote. I didn’t see one. I didn’t see any buttons on the TV either. In fact, there wasn’t even a cord. Daisy’s eyes never left the television. “Daisy, you have to stop watching this and do something.”

  “Naw, girl. This is all I need.”

  “Daisy, we have to get to Wyrd!”

  “But I have this TV though.”

  I waved my hand in front of her face but she wouldn’t even look at me. “Daisy…Daisy!”

  I woke up to a few arms around me.

  “She’s having a nightmare,” Montague said.

  “Well, we’ve all been having a few of those,” Harris said.

  I relaxed when I realized I wasn’t alone. Harris and Montague were with me, for reasons I didn’t question, their arms strong and secure around me, their scent comforting and…mm, suggestive. I also smelled iron. No, blood.

  “Why do I get the feeling you aren’t here to comfort me?” I said. “Did something happen?” I awoke more fully. “What just happened? Did you drink Harris’ blood?”

  “Her sense of smell is really getting keen,” Harris said, sounding irritated, but then, when did he not sound irritated?

  “I still have a few special powers,” I said. “Did you let Monty drink your blood? You seem okay,” I whispered. “Ohmigawd, was it hot?”

  They looked at each other.

  “Why do you think we’re here?” Harris demanded, as he ran his hand along the curve of my waist and hip, the only part of me exposed between winter PJs.

  “What time is it?”

  “Late,” Montague said. “Or early. But you’ll sleep really well after this. Just try and have a nightmare now.”

  “Naughty.” I was warming quickly between them, even though Montague was cool to the touch, he was hot to the eyes and I guess that was plenty. Anyway, Harris felt nearly feverish with desire. My eyes searched him, finding the handkerchief tied to his wrist.

  “Did you…offer?” I asked. “Or did Montague…take?”

  “Hush,” Harris said, his fingers quickly working off his buttons. “I don’t want to talk. I just need to fuck.”

  “Your romantic dialogue, on point as usual,” I said.

  His arm wrapped around my shirt, tugging it off, my skin prickling in the cold, while the other hand dove between my legs and fingered me so roughly that he got his wish. I shut up, quivering with pleasure.

  “I wouldn’t take what wasn’t offered,” Montague said. “But he knew I was suffering. I don’t know why he’s incapable of admitting he cares about us, but maybe he’s lucky we all have such a good sense of smell. He can’t hide that.”

  “I don’t really see the need to go on and on about it.” Harris’ thumb
stroked the exact spot that drove me to the verge faster than anywhere else, as he slipped two fingers inside my slickness.

  “You were into it, huh?” I gasped. “The blood thing. Vampires can seduce anybody.”

  “It’s you I want,” he said, taking his hand back. “You.” His eyes were pale but colorless in the dark, the blue washed out by shadow, but his skin was beautiful in the moonlight. I was kind of fascinated by the fact that he had whipped all his own clothes off. He could have just stripped me naked and whipped it out, kept that level of power, but instead he actually let me look at him, including the scars left behind from his death.

  I traced them with my finger, with a certain pride in my work. He could never look at himself in the mirror without being reminded that I had saved his life. He trembled, just slightly, under the light touch of my finger. Then he put his hands on the bed on either side of me, locking eyes, before claiming my mouth with his own.

  He tasted so sweet, I bet his blood was good for Monty too. “I wish I could have watched,” I said.

  “I want to watch him drink yours,” he purred in my ear. “When your body is ready.”

  “It’s ready for something,” I said.

  “Oh, and you’ll get it.” He nipped my ear, running a hand through my hair, tugging it gently, as he pulled off the rest of my clothes and plunged his length into me.

  “I’m pretty tired so you better work for it,” I said.

  “I will.”

  I’d had so many dreams about Alec, I didn’t mind being woken up with something real for once, although if they made a habit of it I’d be a very tired girl. Lately, my dreams had been filled with demons and bad school dreams and disconcerting scenarios, and nothing felt better than just a good, hard sexy interlude. I guess Montague definitely didn’t take too much blood from him, for Harris to have this much energy. I made him work for it, but I still tightened my muscles around him with every thrust. It was amazing how easily we found a rhythm, for two people who couldn’t stop bitching at each other, but I guess that was a rhythm too.