The Vampire's Spell:

by Lucy Lyons

  “The Fae who were inside of Fairy when the doors were sealed lost their magic slower than those of us trapped on the outside,” Maria explained as we all walked back to the large tent set up for her and now for Onyxis as well. “Those on the outside had to hoard our magic, forcing us to ration ourselves and only use it when absolutely necessary.”

  “That’s why you hid from the rest of us. Not because you were offended by us but because you were afraid that we could do real damage to the Fae without their magic,” Ashlynn offered.

  “Well, yes . . . and no,” Maria sighed. “There are more among the High Fae who are offended by the strength of the kin and their ease in acquiring what is seen to be a Fae birthright than there are those who recognize the value of Fae-kin in keeping the balance of magic strong.

  “Is that what we’re up against here?” Somayo interjected. “Are you here because the murderer is Fae?” My eyes widened, and Ashlynn and I glanced at each other and then at Maria, but she smiled patiently and shook her head.

  “I believe that you and your Venatores have the bulk of the information on the happenings of the rainforest, hunter. I’m here to sort rumor from fact and ensure that the reopening of the doors to Fairy aren’t what caused these deaths. Beyond that, the hunt belongs to the hunters, both human and Fae-kin.”

  “And the vampires?” I added, looking to Onyxis. She pursed her lips and closed her eyes her power brushing across my skin as she reached out with tendrils of her psychic power, like fingers through the growing darkness.

  “I think, perhaps, it would be best if the vampires came, but the shifters stayed at home, Alpha,” she finally decided. “I feel preternatural creatures out there, not likely our killer, but they are killers, and bringing more shifters into their territory would be asking for a war I don’t think we want.”

  I couldn’t ask Caroline to join our hunt, even though I knew that she would come and that she wanted to. Little Rowena was still young enough to need her mother with her every minute of every day. Asking Nick to send some of his soldiers would have to do. Even knowing that Onyxis was right about bringing more shifters, I felt a pang of loss that my own soldiers couldn’t come to us or our wererat friends among Nick’s clan.

  Our friends had been with us through every battle. Now suddenly we found ourselves very much alone in circumstances fraught with peril and we couldn’t call upon them. I pushed away the doubt that began to creep into my thoughts before Ashlynn could sense my uncertainty, but Simi caught my mood without the need for telepathy.

  “We’ll be all right, Clay. You were a great hunter before you grew claws and fangs, and you’ll be a great hunter without claws and fangs. Trust us. We’re a good team, remember?”

  In the dim light from the lantern, I considered each of my companions in turn. We had two ancient beings of immense power, two alpha werewolves, and two of the fiercest warriors I’d ever known leading a team of skilled indigenous hunters into the wild. Never mind that we had no idea what we were up against and our intel consisted of half-baked rumors about a long-dead god. After all, who were we but a band of warriors consisting of fairytale creatures and horror-movie monsters? If anyone could take out a make-believe god, it was us, even without the safety of the clan that had adopted me and made me feel whole again when the humans I trusted had pulled the rug out from under me and toppled my world.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Maria commanded us to sleep within the protection of the camp despite protests from both Somayo and Ashlynn who wanted to go out in the darkness and try to flush out the killer or killers. Simi offered to head back into the nearby village with me in the morning and help translate so I could speak with the men who’d found the bodies while they were out gathering honey and hunting for food.

  Somayo only agreed to stay in camp after Onyxis promised to do some exploring from the air and ensure that no deaths occurred while we were sleeping and unaware. Finally, Ashlynn and I followed Simi to the fire, where we were introduced to men whose names I would never be able to pronounce, much less remember, but I nodded and shook the hands that were held out for me, keenly aware of the undercurrent of fear from the humans who regarded us as not just otherworldly but superior. In the age before the Spanish arrived to conquer and baptize the heathens into the one true gospel of the Catholic Church, we would’ve been among the pantheon of gods that men like these had worshipped.

  The knowledge sat on me like a sack of bricks. I didn’t want people to fear or worship me. My magic wasn’t the magic of the High Fae, needing the fear and adoration of humans to feed their immortality. That was our strength, out here in the wild. The ability to draw on nature herself, to be fed by the wild magic and return it to where it came from stronger than before.

  One of the men approached me as I ate my bread and rice by the fire. In broken English, he asked to sit with us, and Ashlynn moved over so he could sit between us and speak to us both.

  “I know where the Quetzalcoatl fed last,” he confessed in hushed tones, staring into the low, orange flames of the fire. “I found the hunter who had come to our village looking for Di Dis, the ape-men of the tepui,” he muttered, wringing his hands as he spoke.

  “I don’t know the name,” I admitted. “Do you believe in these . . . these ape-men?”

  He shrugged and kept wringing his hands together. “The tepui is the house of the gods. If the ape-men exist, I’ve never seen them. But I have seen strange things. None of them as strange as the man burned in his clothes, the only thing left to identify him being his expensive gold watch.”

  Briefly, I thought about the businessman from the flight. Another man with expensive jewelry and enough power to think he could claim whatever he wanted.

  “Was he a white man?” I asked. “An American?” The man nodded.

  “Si, but American. He was Australiano,” the man replied.

  “And he was hunting for ape-men?” I asked again, and the man nodded.

  “They are a myth. They are not real, but children tell the stories to scare each other. But the hunter said he had killed every other kind of predator, even sharks and tigers. He wanted to kill a man, but he couldn’t, so he looked for . . . other things.”

  I shuddered at the thought of men hunting my people simply because we were “other things” and patted him on the shoulder. “I think some kind of ‘other thing’ decided to kill him instead, amigos. But we’ll find it, and somehow we’ll stop it from killing your people.”

  “Oh, it never kills our people,” he said. “Only the white men with loud voices and louder guns. The Di Dis are protecting us now.”

  “Then why help us find it?” asked Ashlynn. “If your people are safe and only intruders are killed, why let us come at all?”

  “Because when a creature grows hungry, it must eat,” he explained. “Who will the Di Dis feed on once the white men are all gone?”

  Ashlynn chuckled and patted the man’s still clenched hands. “Then we’ll find it and convince it to stop, relocate it, or kill it,” she promised him. “But I’d hate to do the last. Especially if the others we talk to have a similar take on the idea that we’re dealing with a protector.”

  I knew why she felt as she did, as a creature who would be hunted herself but spent her days protecting the lives of the innocent from the negative effects of the wild magic that made us what we were. Not all innocents were human, and not all villains were vampires and werewolves.

  I felt a change in the breeze and glanced to see a form briefly outlined by the moon before I dipped down toward the trees again. Onyxis was keeping her end of the bargain and doing the grunt work herself to boot. Ashlynn followed my gaze and pulled out her phone. Maria didn’t have the same abilities as we did, and with Onyxis gone, we could report to Nick exactly what we’d seen and heard. If the Night Mother was interested in the creature, I was forced to entertain the possibility that she wanted its power for herself to add to the mysterious menagerie she was building.

  Dirk and Rae, two of
my best and most loyal soldiers, had gone to her, but they still reported to me what they believed mattered to the pack. The Night Queen trusted no one and kept all her creatures separate from one another. It had taken weeks for Dirk to find his way through the labyrinth of the castle the Night Queen had claimed for herself in the Highlands of Scotland. He’d found no other wolves, but wee folk like brownies kept the castle clean and only came out of hiding when they thought the wolves were asleep for the night. He’d seen wisps lighting the way for her when she walked through her gardens at midnight and had seen a man walking with her, a seal-skin over his shoulder like a selkie.

  As was typical of life with a vampire, what she gave them was half-truths and distractions, and neither Dirk nor I had an inkling of an idea what her end game was or if all her aid had ben sincere or another deflection of her true purpose. Nick was my partner. We led the clan and the pack, and even the rats since Jeremy had gone back to LA to keep order among the rats and vampires there.

  Ashlynn joined me at the edge of the darkness outside the firelight. I could feel the energy from the protective circle tugging at the beast inside me. The wolf ached to run in the jungle and feel the moss and ferns under its feet, listening to the animals of the night fall silent and wary of the new predator. In the distance, I could feel the mountain too, calling to the wild magic in me. Ashlynn held my hand, and I felt the same electricity thrumming through her.

  We were meant to be where we were—not as Fae but as wild magic. The wild hunt wanted to race through the ancient trees and scare up birds in the undergrowth. There was definitely something out there in the darkness, out of range of both my preternaturally enhanced night vision and my minimal psychic ability. I couldn’t touch it, but I felt it graze my senses, just out of reach.

  I turned back to Ashlynn, and she took me to the tent we’d been assigned. Near one of the small fires, I saw Somayo and Simi sitting together, their heads bent toward each other as they planned the hunt, and calculated the additional risk-to-benefit ratio of having not one but two ancient Fae with them on a hunt for what was possibly another Fae. I jerked my head toward them and Ashlynn followed my look back to them.

  “They’re good together, you know?” she half-asked. “Does it bother you at all, seeing them together?” Ashlynn and I had never talked about our past relationships, and her question startled me.

  “I’ve been hoping they’d figure out how good they’d be for a long time, actually. Caroline and I have a bet going. Once he pulls his head out of his ass and realizes Simi feels the same way he does, he’ll do something about it. Then Caroline owes me a hundred bucks, which I will use to take you to dinner,” I grinned at her as she rolled her eyes.

  “You two are terrible.”

  “Yeah, but we love our friends, and we want them to be happy. Like we are and the professor and Henny,” I explained. “I mean, just think of it. If Caroline hadn’t brought me to you, the professor and Henny might never have gotten back together again.”

  “We’d never have come together if you’d tried to take the alpha role after being part of another pack. I would’ve killed you or died trying, no matter what our wolves chose.” I nodded.

  I hated that my people had experimented on me without my permission. They’d torn my life apart the day I’d been turned into a werewolf. But Ashlynn was right about how it had worked out for the best. I wasn’t just another faceless soldier in the Church’s army, struggling just to be recognized for the dangerous work we did, separated from the rest of humanity by the secrecy of what we did.

  Ashlynn closed the tent behind me and I stripped down, setting my clothes aside and climbing under the top sleeping bag she’d doubled up so we could sleep together. She followed suit and slid into the bedroll next to me, her skin sliding over mine like warm silk as she nestled into the curve of me, her head resting on my arm.

  She pressed harder against me and sighed when I adjusted to accommodate for the way she affected my body, and a growl of warning escaped my lips as my beast rose to the surface, enticed by her.

  “I know we can’t tonight, Clay. But knowing you want me is enough . . . sometimes.”

  I muttered a complaint into her hair, and she giggled softly and wriggled against me again, gasping when I flipped us so she was on her back while I straddled her. Her breathing came in shallow pants, and I pinned her hips down with mine, running my hands up her arms to her wrists and gripping them above her head in one hand while I stroked her face with the fingers of the other.

  “Clay . . .” she gulped as my fingers trailed down her throat and along her collarbone. “I don’t think this is the time or place for . . .” I moved my hand lower and she held her breath, releasing it with a chuckle when I slid the tips of my fingers down the ticklish spot on her side.

  “How about we give Somayo and Simi a little magical encouragement?” I whispered, pushing her knees apart so I rested between her legs, holding her down only at our hips and her wrists still pressed to the ground above her head.

  “They don’t need any help from us to get together, Clay. They’re already halfway there.”

  I nuzzled her neck and moved with her as she wrapped her legs around me, confident that I was breaking her down when she sighed and arched her throat for my teeth to graze.

  “But we could all use a little wild magic, Ash. Who are we to be selfish when we have no idea what we’re up against?”

  “Oh, so this isn’t because you love me. You just want me to be your focus,” she grumbled, but I heard her need for me as loudly in my head as mine for her.

  “You could be my focus without this,” I reminded her. “But with you, this is best. You and I are meant to be entwined, our power, our bodies . . . I have more control over my power when I’m with you. I could never direct my abilities so specifically with any of our sorceresses. They just don’t have that missing piece.”

  I kissed her neck again, feeling her melt under me until I had to let go of her wrists and touch more of her. I lifted us both until I was on my knees and she was sitting on my lap with her legs and arms wrapped around my neck and body, and I pressed my lips to the skin over her heart. Slowly, cautiously, I released my magic until I could see Ashlynn’s wolf in my mind, leaping and prancing around my own.

  He responded to her in kind, and in my mind’s eye I could see the red energy of her wolf and the blue energy of mine blend together until with a whimper she clutched me tighter and the magic dissipated into wisps under my control. The light flowed through the camp, stopping at the protective circle and returning to us as we clung to one another.

  There were exclamations from the men standing guard, who raised their voices first in alarm then in excitement as the wild magic of the mountain and the Washington forest we called home enveloped them and gave them the call of the hunt.

  The exclamations turned to shouts of panic. A magic field far more powerful than my meager psychic feelers stopped me like a wall, and Ashlynn and I came back to ourselves with the abruptness of slamming on the brakes on a freeway with a similar physical result. Ashlynn fell away from me, and I collapsed onto my back, my arms and legs limp, quivering jelly.

  “What the hell was that?” she huffed as she rolled onto her side to face me, sweat beading on her forehead and upper lip, her hair sticking in tendrils to her damp face and chest.

  “That was the door to Fairy being opened again, against Maria’s will.” I struggled to my feet and let my wolf rise to the surface to give me strength. I groaned with the effort as fur rippled down my back and my legs reformed under me, more muscled and oddly shaped for a man but perfect for fighting preternatural creatures who would be at least as strong as I was. Ashlynn gathered her energy for the shift, but I put out a clawed hand to stop her.

  “I can help you,” she argued, and I smiled, my chest tight at the sight of her bravery.

  “No, you get dressed and come out armed with iron or steel. It’s not likely whoever is out there appreciates the Fae-kin. I’d rat
her not remind them that’s what you are. But if it gets bad and I can’t handle it . . .”

  “I’ll come save your weak ass,” she drawled. I growled at her, and she laughed at me, running her hand down my fur and smacking my ass. It made me proud that she found my wolf form as attractive as my human self, and I stretched to my full height, which was several inches taller than my human six-foot-two.

  I waited only long enough to see her tug a T-shirt over her head before lunged through the tent door, and in one leap I cleared the fire and the humans between myself and the carved wooden door. It had already closed behind the Fae who had trespassed on our camp, and under the bright light of the nearly full moon, I found myself face-to-face with the one Fae I least wanted to see.

  CHAPTER SIX

  “Portia. Why am I not surprised you couldn’t show a little courtesy and get permission instead of invading our camp in the middle of the night?” Onyxis said the words I was thinking, and I curled my lip, showing my fangs.

  “Down, doggy,” she hissed, shaking out her feather crown down her back and rolling her shoulders like she did when we sparred back home.

  “Down, both of you,” Maria called out from her tent door. Portia flinched and I smiled, knowing full well that my furry, fanged face was only more intimidating when you could see all my teeth.