Unleash (Spellhounds Book 1)

by Lauren Harris

  "Stay still!" Strong, spidery hands shoved me to the floor. I looked up, a growl on my lips, and found the Guild Sorcerer over me. He was tall and narrow, worn down to the sinews by magic. Studs pierced his eyebrows and lips and burned bright as constellations with amber power.

  Fingers scrabbled at my shirt, tugging the tank top straps aside. I grabbed his wrist and twisted it.

  "Ow, fuck!" the Sorcerer hissed. "Which one is it, then?"

  Tattoo—he was after my slave tattoo. That was right. With the sweeping anger and fear, I had almost forgotten the plan. I jerked my chin at my right shoulder.

  "It took you guys long enough!" I snapped.

  "Your plans changed, so ours had to change too," he said. "We were expecting a little more-"

  Morgan slammed into the table next to us, buffeted back by another spell. The dead girl slid off the tabletop and dropped beside us in a thick slump of limbs. Her open eyes stared straight at me.

  "...help," the Sorcerer finished.

  Morgan shoved off the table's edge, even as the Sorcerer's fingers found my shoulder. An electric pulse of magic shot into the circular design, and the glyphs lit up like fire. Then the glowing magic wheel lifted from my shoulder, a sparkling twin of the ink still embedded in my skin.

  Gwydian’s power burned violet and angry, arcs of energy branching between mandala and skin. The Sorcerer’s hand shook. Amber power pushed back purple and, one at a time, the enslavement spell’s tethers snapped away.

  I craned my neck to see what was going on. Morgan was on one knee, hunting knife in hand. A second Sorcerer stood with one foot on the stairs, her opposite arm extended, power gleaming and crackling over the handle of a matte black Walther PPK.

  She was just as emaciated and pierced and tatted up as the Sorcerer above me. All the metal on her flashed like LEDs, and the tracing of power in her veins made lightning patterns down her arms as she pushed magic into a shield mandala.

  Morgan lunged, testing the shield with his knife. A clash of light, and he staggered back with a growl of pain, shoulders hunching.

  That was when I heard dad's Baretta fire off a shot. Above me, the Sorcerer ducked. My pulse punched at the inside of my throat. I couldn't see Mom.

  With a grunt of frustration, I grabbed the Sorcerer’s jacket, locked a leg around his hip, and heaved his weight sideways. A holster dug into my thigh as I rolled on top.

  And there was Mom. Her face was blank as she aimed and fired, aimed and fired. The bullets spanged off the Sorcereress's second mandala. Why hadn't she fired?

  In an instant, I saw the answer—Mom and Morgan stood between the Sorcereress and Gwydian, Human barriers to the Guild Enforcers' magic-laced bullets. There was no telling how many bullets it would take to drop Mom and Morgan. She didn't have a clear shot at Gwydian.

  But I did.

  The Sorcerer below me fought for dominance of my slave spell. My spirit felt unstable, whipped around like a flag in rough wind. I ignored it. I reached down and wrestled with the holster at his hip.

  "What the-" he muttered, glancing under his arm at my hand as I freed the gun and twisted it into my grip.

  It settled solid and heavy in my hand. I pulled it between us and dragged back the slide, chambering a bullet with a satisfying metallic ratchet. I wasn't as good a shot with my left hand, but Gwydian was mere yards away. I couldn't miss.

  I lined up my sights and conjured three picture-perfect memories: the dead girl's face; my father's writhing, screaming form; and tears coursing over Mom's livid bruise.

  This would be my last kill, and the only one I would lose zero sleep over.

  My tattoo burned, and the Sorcerer grunted. For an instant, I thought it was the death throes of the enslavement tattoo breaking up under his power. Then my arm grew heavy.

  No.

  My hand lifted, turning that matte black barrel away from Gwydian. I resisted, hand trembling. Adrenaline-spiked blood thudded in my ears and, for a second, the gun pointed at the floor beside the Sorcerer's head. To his credit, those brown eyes didn't shift from my tattoo.

  Pain throbbed in my head, a hot spike of violet. My arm gave out. The mandala-etched barrel shoved cold under my chin. My pulse throbbed against it, hard and desperate, as if it could defy fate. My finger tightened.

  At least it was over.

  A gut-wrenching tug jerked deep in my core. The enslavement spell flared, searing an amber ring into my eyes before going dark. A blown bulb, fading in my brain.

  I barely had time to register what that meant. Warmth spread in my chest. A plume of turquoise fire filled my mind, ignited my veins like my blood was pure ethanol. I was blind with it.

  Spidery fingers snatched my wrist. The Sorcerer twisted the gun from my grip and fired. The clap rang in my ears, and before I reacted, he spilled me sideways off of him. My elbow hit something soft, slick. The girl's body. I recoiled.

  The Sorcerer fired again. Bright amber and blue flashed through the turquoise in my vision, clashing with the violet of Gwydian's magic.

  I recoiled, willing my eyes to focus, to see anything but light. It was like breaking that enslavement spell had broken something else inside me, something that had been holding back this dense, pulsing flame. I squeezed my eyes shut, forced back the ringing thrum of electricity.

  Focus, eyes. Focus, focus, focus.

  I opened them and met the sight of the polished hardwood floor, an intricate mandala ruined by bloody boot-prints, and splintered fiberglass. Splintered real glass, too, because the whisky decanter and glasses had slid from the bar.

  Gwydian stood against the door to the rear cabin, his grimoire clutched under one arm. A phalanx of mandalas surrounded him, flaming out from the tattoos on his wrists. He was flush with the dead girl's blood. It was enough power to turn me into a monster, or protect himself from a pair of Guild Sorcerers for a long while. But not both.

  Luckily, he had turned me into a different monster long before the threat of this ruined mandala.

  I concentrated on the tattoo on my left shoulder—the one with the trio of Celtic hounds chasing each other around the inner ring. I recalled the sight of the Irish wolfhound lying next to me six years ago, its blood and mine mixing on the mandala beneath us. Its spirit entering me, twining around my bones. Becoming us.

  It was the power Gwydian had given my pack. The power the Sorcerers’ Guild wanted, and which my mother had offered in trade for our freedom. A spell in that book.

  The tattoo on my shoulder flared, not violet, but that searing aquamarine like the water around the Keys. I blinked, thinking for a moment that the vertigo had returned.

  It didn’t matter—I could see, and I didn't have time to think. The middle circle of the tattoo prickled and energy flowed toward the design, draining my chest and my limbs. I waited for the tipping point, my body growing weaker as the tattoo brimmed with power. Then, just when I thought the sound and shake of the fight would fade into oblivion, it happened.

  Magic spilled from the mandala, racing backwards through my veins as it burned through the iron in my blood, searing straight into my heart.

  My face ached. My bones went hot and malleable as forge-glowing iron. I felt the shift and bend of my jaw, the lengthening of my teeth, the shift of organs in their visceral cavities. Hair grew like pins and needles from my skin.

  I willed the change to happen faster. My hearing was getting better, and Mom’s voice still sounded in pained cries.

  She was the most vulnerable person here. I had to protect her.

  My nails hardened and hooked down into claws, and I stopped trembling with change. My body was no longer that of a seventeen-year-old girl, but an Irish Wolfhound of the same mass. As a human, I was just a rougher, taller cut of my mother with Dad’s tawny hair and ski-jump nose, but as a hound I was battle-ready and vicious.

  And prepared to take out Gwydian’s throat.

  I pawed off my jeans and shirt. Then my nails dug into the wood and I lunged from beneath the table. I
tore across the ruined mandala, dodging around the streak of a spell from the Sorcereress still on the stairwell. I followed its glimmering trail, straight for Gwydian.

  My teeth latched onto the edge of his protective shield mandala, which crackled around my teeth like a sparkler. Shapeshifting was a handy skill, but this was the real reason we were so valuable to Gwydian, and so dangerous to the Guild.

  The mandala pulsed, and burst. Violet light sent constellations across my vision, but I still made out Gwydian's silhouette. The muscles in my legs coiled. My lips curled back, exposing teeth that longed for the crunch of something more solid than magic.

  I exploded forward. Gwydian's livid blue eyes flashed, and he swung the book, but I was ready. My jaws closed around salty leather, my weight ripping it from his hands. I knew an instant of triumph before a rough grip caught me by the throat.

  Morgan hurled me backwards. I crashed into the table, releasing the book with a bark of pain. The Guild Enforcer lunged, a shield springing from the tattoo on his hand even as Mom fired. Bullets clinked to the floor in tiny blossoms of metal.

  The Sorcerer scooped up the book and dashed for the stairs.

  Mom fired off two more. I’d lost count of how many bullets she had, but it wouldn’t be enough. The Sorcerer ducked around his partner’s shield, which spat mom’s shots back into the wood paneling. He sprinted up the stairs, Morgan on his heels.

  I was the only one not being controlled, spelled, or shot at. With the chaos distracting Gwydian, this could be my only chance to kill him. I clambered to all fours and slunk around the table.

  Gwydian heaved a spell at the Sorcereress’s shield. The two forces crackled together, twin circuits of energy battling. They cracked and spiraled out in a pinwheel of lightning. Through the wash of light, the Sorcereress fired her gun. The bullet struck Gwydian's shield and hissed. Molten metal dripped to the floor, smoking.

  I tensed, ready to spring, but Gwydian’s skin lit up with a clutch of tattoos. I scrambled back—in the years I’d been part of magic battles, I’d never seen someone prime so many spells at once.

  He fired them all. Across the planks, the Sorcereress hurled herself to the floor.

  Gwydian’s spells struck in a flurry of light and fire and chaos. Glass shattered, speakers and books toppled from shelves, and chunks of wood and fiberglass flurried in the air.

  The explosion settled. I looked up from my hiding place. Gwydian hunched against the wall, breath heaving. By the stairs, the Sorcereress struggled to remove the magazine from her gun. Shrapnel littered her body and her arm hemorrhaged around a curving fragment of decanter.

  I saw the moment Gwydian noticed her wound. His blue eyes sharpened, and a smile curled onto his handsome face.

  He extended his hand. I lunged.

  My teeth sank into flesh, the taste of blood and linen filled my mouth. The bone cracked in my jaws.

  His scream raked my ears. He staggered but I held on, shoving the full weight of my canine form into him. I pinned him in place and willed the Sorcereress to fire now, while he focused on me. While I had him-

  A gunshot, followed by a thudding impact in my shoulder. I was down before I registered the pain. For a moment, I lay there on my side, staring at the petite, blonde woman with the barrel of her gun still aimed at the place I’d been. Her face was twisted, teeth bared in a grimace.

  I heard her guttural scream through the haze of shock.

  It was just my shoulder. The long bone of my scapula curving over my ribcage, protecting my heart. She could have shot me in the skull. She had probably aimed for it, fought it. Hit lower instead.

  I tried to call out and tell her I was okay. It came out a whine. That's right. Paws, tail, muzzle. I was a dog right now.

  I didn’t think about transforming back, I just did it. Somehow, it was easy. Then I was curled naked at Gwydian’s feet, my shoulder a mess of blood where the bullet had torn through the remaining ink of my enslavement tattoo.

  A second gunshot rang out at the exact moment the TV over Gwydian’s head let out a shower of sparks. The Sorcereress collapsed onto her bleeding elbow, her black gun shaking at the end of her reach.

  I relaxed, knowing the next seconds would bring freedom, at last.

  Small, rugged boots staggered into me. Mom’s legs knocked me aside. I looked up to see Gwydian’s uninjured arm around her neck, holding her in front of him.

  I reached for her, missed. Panic jolted through the haze of shock, and I swung my gaze to the Sorcereress.

  “Wait,” I said, but it was like a nightmare—the words came out mangled and watery. “Wait, wait!”

  The Sorcereress blinked as if batting away my words with her eyelashes. I watched the moment she decided to pull the trigger anyway.

  My whole world balanced on the sharp tip of an instant and then, with a sharp crack, changed forever.

  Chapter Three

  I felt the jerk of Mom’s legs, saw her knees buckle, but she didn’t fall. Then the sound of a second shot. And a third.

  Gwydian cried out, and for the second time that night, the body of a woman dropped next to me, dead eyes staring. Flat green, dead as emerald. And there was a hole the size of a thumbtack underneath her eye. I stared at it, fingers moving without my permission, as if I could brush it away.

  Something grabbed my hair, hauling me up with shocking force and pain. Gwydian’s bloody arm slid trembling around my neck.

  Or it tried to.

  I’m not sure what came over me then—I should have been a rag doll of horror, but I grabbed Gwydian’s arm, heaved my weight forward, and hurled him over my shoulder at the Sorcereress.

  Magic-use made him light and adrenaline strengthened my throw. He hit the edge of his own mandala and tumbled into the Sorcereress. I dropped to my knees, grabbed mom’s face in my hands. Her skin was still warm. A moan strangled off in my throat—I had seen this happen too much to hold onto hope. I had to move.

  I grabbed dad’s Baretta from her cold fingers and bolted up the stairs.

  Hot salt air struck my face as I shoved through the door onto the deck. An orange moon hung full over the ocean, spilling just enough light to illuminate the two figures hunkered at the bow. One was enormous, long blond ponytail ripped forward by the wind, the other slender and glimmering with the barest hint of amber power.

  I staggered onto the upper deck and let the hatch fall closed behind me, breath sharp in my throat. Part of me wanted to shove something over it or lock it in case Gwydian defeated the Sorcereress and came up after me. But my brain kept stalling out, my gaze flicking from Morgan and the Guild Enforcer, to the piles of rope and sailing paraphernalia scattered on deck, unable to form a plan.

  Morgan hadn't moved. I stepped toward him, and the Sorcerer's gun swung toward me. He scanned my naked body, blinking hard. He'd have seen us transform before, but I didn't fit the scarred ex-mercenary profile. I guess I couldn't blame him. At last, his eyes fixed on the bullet wound leaking blood down my shoulder.

  "Is he dead?" the Sorcerer demanded.

  I shook my head. The Sorcerer cursed. He held a bag in one hand—one of the waterproof bags the gang members used to bring clothes and guns with us when we swam from boat to shore. It bulged, the thick corner of Gwydian's grimoire pressing out against the nylon.

  I stared at the barrel of his gun, remembering when he'd wrestled it from my hand and shot at Gwydian. Dad's Beretta warmed in my hand.

  The other Guild Enforcer shot Mom. Downstairs. She'd shot her.

  Through the dizzy haze, it occurred to me that this shouldn't have happened. The Guild should have helped us go free. We'd known there was risk in trying to kill Gwydian, but we banked on the Sorcerers' help.

  Part of me hadn't trusted the Guild, but I hadn't realized how much I was using cynicism as a mask for hope. Hope that now grew cold in the hold below.

  "You...you shot her," I said. The Sorcerer's pierced brow pinched. "You—I mean, her. Your friend. She shot her—Mom. She shot my Mom.
" The words came out jumbled and disorganized. My vision blurred. I glanced over the starboard gunwale. The Miami skyline made a serrated jag of concrete and neon against the sky.

  A flicker of turquoise brightened my vision, pulsing with my heartbeat. The pain in my shoulder spiked, but my mind cleared.

  Though the Sorcerer still leveled the gun at me, he seemed hesitant to shoot. I stared back and shook my head, mouth parted as if I could express the rising tide of horror. Strands of hair whipped my cheeks.

  "We had an agreement," I whispered, even as dread and certainty hardened in my chest.

  He shifted his grip on the gun. "Your mom was still under his control," he said. "She knew the risk."

  I lifted dad's Beretta. The Enforcer's dark eyes widened, and his gun wavered. If he'd noticed the gun, he hadn't expected me to turn on him.

  "She shot her in the face," I growled. "Twice more in the chest, because Gwydian was using her as a shield. Maybe if she'd actually hit him…." But no. Even that wouldn't have mattered. The Sorcereress had dismissed Mom as a slab of meat barring her from Gwydian. I shook my head again. "You were the good guys. We thought you'd help us. This is what I'd expect from Gwydian."

  Morgan stepped forward. My momentary relief shattered as he approached the Sorcerer, tattoo glowing. Not with Gwydian's violet power, but with the same amber fire I'd felt when the Sorcerer had freed me. I stiffened.

  “Morgan...." But my throat closed on the plea when my cousin stepped between me and the Sorcerer. If he'd put his back to me, it wouldn't have been shocking. He'd be facing off my enemy, protecting me, like he always had. Instead he faced me, grip tight on his hunting knife.

  My throat throbbed. A quick rush of panic and anger flooded into my head, bringing with it a haze of turquoise that haloed everything.

  "Sorry, kid," the Sorcerer said. "None of you were supposed to make it off this ship."

  I swallowed, staring into my cousin's steely eyes as if it were him talking, and not the Sorcerer behind him. Of course they wouldn't let us go. How naïve to think we could trust them.