Demon Accords 10: Rogues

by John Conroe

  “Got it,” he announced in a breathless rush. He popped it open and sat on the floor, glancing from Stacia to Tami’s face on the screen before looking into his case. “Got the basics: osha, angelica, copal, anise, rosemary, rue, agrimony, blessed salt, sea salt, even iodized salt. Sage too, of course. The kitchen had basil, caraway seeds, clove, coriander, cumin, garlic, and bay leaf. What else?”

  “Anything protective that grows naturally in that region should be particularly effective. Burdock, plantain, blackberry, maybe blueberry too, since Maine is known for them. Also, any marigolds or chrysanthemum flowers grown locally will be helpful. I’m sending you some family recipes for defending and defusing death magic. Share these with the others and I’ll use your bones for a chair,” Tami said, typing into her phone.

  “Right, no sharing. Got it. Thanks, Tami,” Declan said.

  “Don’t thank me, warlock. Repay me,” she said with an emotionless face.

  “Okay. We’ll work that out when I get back,” he said.

  “Good-bye wolf,” Tami said to Stacia.

  “Yeah, nice chatting with you, witch,” Stacia said coolly.

  Declan cut the connection. “You two get along alright when I was outside?”

  “We understand each other a bit better. Now what do we do?” she asked.

  “We start by opening these shotgun shells I borrowed from Shorty. Game loads, but we’ll dump out the shot and refill with a mixture of blessed salt and some of these herbs. I don’t have a lot of the really powerful ones like osha and angelica, so we have to make them count,” he said, settling into work.

  “That we will,” she said, studying him with a slight smile while he worked.

  Chapter 25

  Stacia woke instantly. Just a tiny sound… way downstairs. A split second later, her brain supplied the identity: Shorty, rising and beginning his day.

  She was lying on Declan’s bed, still clothed, but with her leg thrown over his. A blanket from the foot of the bed covered them. She vaguely recalled the two of them lying back on his bed sometime around two a.m., talking about herbs and spirits.

  Declan lay on his side, facing her, sound asleep, hair falling over his right eye. Deep inside, her wolf was quiet and happy. If she were a werecat, her beast would’ve been purring. It was ungodly early, still dark out. Her phone suddenly buzzed with a text. It was Buck Thompson with a simple On our way.

  It was time to get moving, but she hated the idea of moving. The bed was warm and Declan smelled good. It was weird because she could identify tens of thousands of scents from just one sniff, but she couldn’t figure out why he smelled of forest and earth. She could smell his deodorant, his toothpaste, the smell of the chicken salad he must have had for lunch yesterday still redolent in his t-shirt, but for the life of her, she couldn’t figure out why his body—his skin—smelled like the wild places of the world. Why his hair, under the odor of his Dove for Men shampoo, smelled like the air before a summer thunderstorm.

  A car was coming down Shorty’s long driveway. Pickup truck. Older engine, V8.

  Now getting up wasn’t a choice. She gently untangled herself from the male next to her—her male, according to her inner beast, and padded to the bathroom. A shower was pointless, but she washed her face, drained her bladder, and brushed her teeth with Declan’s toothpaste on her finger. When she came out, he was awake and watching for her.

  “Hi,” he said, eyes curious.

  “Someone’s coming. Just pulling into the yard. Also, Buck texted me. They’re on their way. Time to get our act together,” she said.

  “Attack at dawn type of thing?” he asked. She nodded. “I’m glad you fell asleep here last night. I don’t know what today will bring, but I wouldn’t want to face it without you,” he said awkwardly, suddenly a little shy.

  She leaned over him and kissed his cheek. Then, after a pause, she kissed him on the lips. It was a soft, lingering kiss, one that promised more. She pulled back and looked into his bright blue eyes. “I thought I’d find one rogue werewolf up here and instead, I found a whole pack with a deranged alpha and a death witch. I’m not ashamed to say I’ve never been happier to see anyone in my life than when you came through that door yesterday afternoon. By myself, I would have grave concerns. But the two of us together? Forget about it. Of course, at some point, I thought you might level the station and start a war. So you get a couple of points for not obliterating the local law enforcement population.”

  “I was pretty angry when I saw you bound in that chair and heard the asshat Adler talking. Omega was trying to talk me down, telling me your heartbeat was steady and even, that your breathing was normal so you weren’t in pain, but I was still really mad. But I also heard the sheriff and I realized how much you must have impressed him in the short time you’d been here. So I figured maybe smooth and slow was better than shock and awe,” Declan said.

  “Wow, a college guy that actually thinks before he acts… amazing,” she said, giving him one more kiss. “Alright. Let’s get this over with,” she said.

  “You in a hurry or something?” he asked.

  “I can’t continue what I just started until we clear out this pack and that little witch bitch,” she said, her eyes amused and sly.

  His face flooded with sudden understanding and he jackknifed upright. “Right. One pack of killer werewolves toasted and one evil witch roasted, coming right up.”

  She went back to her room to dress for combat… and brush her teeth again. When she got back to Declan’s room, she found him in black cargo pants, a long-sleeve black shirt that said DEMIDOVA SECURITY across the shoulders, and black combat boots. He was fastening on a crossdraw holster with a stainless steel revolver at his waist and already had a combat tomahawk in a kydex sheath hanging over his right shoulder. She raised both eyebrows at him as she looked the hardware over.

  “Mack made me the tomahawk and Jetta gave me the Ruger. It was her uncle’s, but it’s a bit too light and too powerful for her to be comfortable with. SP 101 in .357 Magnum. She’s an artist with a 9mm but this… not so much,” he explained as her fingers tugged on the tomahawk’s sheath. Truth be told, she was admiring the way his torso filled out his shirt as much as the gun and hawk. The Arcane training programs were definitely agreeing with his physique. He’d never be bulky, but he was getting much more defined.

  “It only holds five shots, but they’re pretty potent. Right now, it’s loaded with three garlic and rowan rounds and two silver loads,” he said, his heartbeat running faster as her fingers danced lightly over his back.

  “Garlic and rowan? Is that supposed to be for vampires and werewolves?” she asked idly, smiling at what she heard inside his chest.

  “No. It would just piss them off. Garlic oil and slivers of rowan wood are for things like the revenants that attacked our restaurant. Things of spirit. They’re kinda like those salt and herb rounds in your shotgun,” he said with a nod at her slung DP-12.

  “Well, those are a hell of nice gifts,” she commented.

  “I bought them some rifles at the end of the summer. Tanya way overpaid me,” he said.

  “Oh? About the same time you bought me this shotgun?” she asked.

  “Yeah. So?” he asked defensively.

  “Nothing. Just a lot of nice stuff for a college kid to hand out—even one who got paid really well,” she said.

  “All of my needs at Arcane are met by the scholarship that Chris and Tanya gave me. Plus I have the absolute best robo investor in the world managing my money,” he said.

  She froze, thinking what a sentient quantum computer could do to the world’s investment markets. “Is that why my 401k has been doing better than it should have?” she asked.

  Correct, Miss Stacia.

  Declan had the earpiece back in place.

  “We’ll talk about invasion of privacy later, Omega. Right now, you better grab your bag and your balls and let’s get moving,” she said to Declan. It was his turn to frown at her words until she sm
irked and chin pointed at the bed, where his Crafting bag and three new steel and silver balls of doom lay.

  “Oh, right,” he said.

  They found Shorty outside the lodge, talking to a tall man who stood like he was looking across a fence. An invisible fence. Stacia recognized the man immediately. “Maurice Bowwan. He’s a local practitioner,” she said to Declan as they stepped out the door.

  Shorty turned to them when he heard the door open. “I didn’t know how to let him by the magic thingy,” he said. Maurice stood quietly, watching them closely, about ten feet from a line of tall nails that were poked into the hard ground, each about a foot apart.

  “Well, this is your property, Shorty. Those are your nails. So you have the ability to simply invite him across the threshold of the ward. Anyone else would need to pull one of the nails to create an opening and then replace it,” Declan said, his eyes focused on Maurice.

  “Invite him in? Just say come on in?” Shorty questioned.

  “Pretty much. Personally, I would say something like ‘You are welcome to enter my property today or for now.’ That makes it a conditional entry, not a blanket license to enter at free will,” Declan said.

  “Maurice, you’re welcome onto my property any time you want,” Shorty said, then glanced at Declan to see if he understood the importance of his words.

  “Okay, free license then. Maurice, I’m Declan. Shorty must trust you implicitly,” Declan said, holding out his hand.

  Maurice took so long to look at the outstretched hand that Stacia started to get pissed, but Declan stayed cool. But finally, he strode forward, crossing over the ward and, with an odd formality, took Declan’s hand. And held it. “I am Maurice Bowwan, Declan. I am honored to meet you on the lands of my friend John Kane,” he said.

  Declan’s eyebrows twitched upward just a little bit and he smiled slightly as he shook Maurice’s hand. “Thank you,” he said. The grip looked tight, like they were doing that guy thing of testing each other’s grip strength, which Stacia thought was kind of dumb, especially since she could have crushed any of their grips. But somehow, they reached a mutual, if silent, understanding and released hands.

  “You have created a fine protection for my friend John,” Maurice said, curiosity in every line of his body.

  “We were attacked by werewolves last night. Olsen is dead,” Shorty said, nodding at Olsen’s cabin, which stood without a door about forty feet away.

  Maurice’s eyes grew slightly larger as he looked first at the broken cabin doorway and then turned his eyes on the main building with its two boarded-up windows.

  “I was blinded by the ward this young man put in place. But now I see why,” Maurice said. “I am so sorry about young Olsen.”

  “They came at suppertime. We’d all be dead except for Stacia here. Took out two by herself,” Shorty said.

  “How many were there?” Maurice asked after an appraising glance at Stacia.

  “At least seven,” Shorty said, turning to Stacia for confirmation.

  “Exactly seven. Three ran away. Three died, and one was captured. That one is in police and federal custody,” Stacia said.

  Maurice opened his mouth to ask a question, but a sharp cry overhead caused them all to look up. A huge set of wings flapped as a monstrous flyer back winged to a landing on the roof rack of Declan’s Land Cruiser. It was as gray as the pre-dawn sky, scaled looking, with massive bat-like wings that stretched from one end of the Cruiser to the other. Two powerful legs with sharp, thick talons clutched the metal rack and shook the vehicle as it settled onto its roost. A long neck and reptilian head with backward-thrusting spikes around its crest completed the perfect image of a miniature dragon.

  “That’s Draco. He’s with me,” Declan said.

  “You bound a being of the Air? You fool!” Maurice said, outraged and maybe scared as well.

  Declan’s expression went blank, but his eyes got hard. Stacia knew that he wore that face when he was frosty with anger.

  “If you have the ability to tell these things, Mr. Bowwan, you will perhaps see that he is not bound in any way. Do you have that level of skill?” Declan asked, voice cold.

  Bowwan, still looking at the dragon, picked up on Declan’s sudden anger. He looked first at the young warlock and then back to the dragon, who was now preening one wing.

  “Oh, I see,” he said, suddenly much subdued. “The elemental isn’t bound. In which case, we need to stay behind this ward.”

  “No Mr. Bowwan, we don’t,” Declan said, crossing the line of nails. Stacia felt something like spider webs being lifted from her skin and knew that Declan had just broken the ward, a fact that wasn’t missed by Bowwan, who sucked a sharp breath.

  Ignoring the others, Declan strode up to his car and the miniature mythical beast that immediately stopped grooming and inspected the young man like an interesting bite to eat. Holding up one hand, Declan waited as the dragon stretched its neck down and rubbed its jaw on him.

  “He is not bound in any way, except perhaps by affection,” Declan said, turning to look back at the others. Draco’s head darted down, but the toothy jaws stayed closed as the beast rubbed its face in the boy’s hair. “And he won’t attack unless he perceives a threat.”

  “You befriended an elemental?” Maurice asked.

  “Actually, I made the shell and he sort of moved into it. A minor miscalculation,” Declan said.

  “What were you going for?” Maurice asked.

  “More of an animated robot,” Declan admitted, turning back to the beast on the truck. He was slightly uncomfortable.

  “You were trying to create a golem?” Maurice asked, incredulous.

  “I didn’t know they were called that. I was just a kid,” Declan said.

  “One with prodigious power and no supervision apparently,” Maurice said.

  Declan snapped around, his cool anger, which had begun to subside, now flaring to hot outrage.

  Uh oh, Stacia thought, stepping forward. Wrong thing to say. “He was supervised by two of the most skilled witches to ever come out of Ireland; witches with more power and knowledge then anyone I’ve ever met or heard of. Exactly who are you and what have you achieved that grants you such vast judgment of people you don’t know a thing about?” Stacia asked, her wolf awake and angry.

  Draco had raised his head from his young creator’s head and was now focused with a sharp predatory gaze on the older man.

  Shorty was frozen, looking like he was torn between backing up his friend and getting the hell away from him.

  “You accidentally called an elemental into being and you think that is adequate supervision?” Maurice said, not backing down although he was beginning to look uncertain.

  “I created Draco to help with a game. My supervisors realized what he was immediately. They monitored the situation closely but saw no reason to dispel him. I’m not sure how much experience you have with elementals, but I sincerely doubt you have a hundredth, no, a thousandth of their Craft,” Declan said.

  “And he’s not even the really scary one,” Stacia said.

  “There’s another one?” Maurice asked in disbelief.

  “Robbie isn’t scary. If anything, he’s much calmer than Draco,” Declan said, frowning at her.

  “Please,” she said. “He’s big as a wall and crushes robots with one hand.”

  “He’s the one that retrieved the crystal in your necklace. Robbie wouldn’t harm you,” Declan said, puzzled and maybe a little hurt.

  “Oh, I didn’t say I was worried about him. It’s other people that lose their shit when he rumbles up out of the ground like an animated boulder,” she said.

  “He’s really very placid. He prefers the quiet of the woods around the restaurant. In fact, I think Draco gets on his nerves a bit,” Declan said, watching her instead of Bowwan.

  “I know. Your aunt explained it and showed me where he likes to sit, like a pile of rocks, on the edge of the property. It’s just he’s pretty intimidating when
he’s angry,” Stacia said.

  “What makes him angry?” Shorty asked.

  Bless you, Stacia thought before answering. “Anyone or anything that threatens the land, Declan’s aunt, or Declan. You may have seen some footage of him on TV, Shorty. There were a number of news clips that caught him this past summer in New York City.”

  “That monster that rose up out of the pavement?” Shorty asked. “The one that beat the insect robots to pieces?”