by Moira Rogers
“Maybe Recco is battling more dissent. Maybe he’s trying to fool us into thinking an attack won’t come so we’ll let down our guard.” Cindy shrugged. “Or maybe he’s just messing with us.”
“Or maybe Sasha and Adam are right, and the vampire’s the one pulling the strings.”
Unthinkable, except that Sasha would know better than anyone. She and Dylan were the only ones who had come close to meeting the vampire, albeit through magic, and the witch seemed certain the vampire was dominant. “I suppose so.”
Keith stabbed his fork into one of the steaks hard enough to show his frustration. “They don’t understand. Dylan doesn’t, either. They don’t understand why it’s wrong.”
“For the new leader in Helena to hand over power to a vampire?” Cindy could barely fathom it herself. “More proof he doesn’t deserve to be anyone’s alpha, if you ask me.”
“Gavin’s been preparing to hand this town to me for forty years, and it still tore him up, even halfway to death’s door. It’s Alan Matthews all over again. It’s crazy, and you can’t plan for crazy.”
The words—and the lack of control they indicated—should have scared her even worse. Instead, a curious peace stole through her. “Yes, you can. You prepare yourself to the best of your ability, but acknowledge that you have to deal with things as they come.”
Keith dumped both steaks onto a nearby plate and dropped the still-sizzling skillet into the sink. “You’re right. I know you’re right. Hell, a few months ago I was telling Gavin the same thing. Now I understand how much harder it is to see when you can feel every single life on your shoulders.”
Cindy abandoned her coffee and pulled two beers from the refrigerator. “I’m intimately acquainted with the feeling.”
“I suppose you would be.” He accepted one of the beers with a smile. “Should we go save your new friend from Abby? She had a lot of questions to ask him.”
Abby was one of the few people who wouldn’t use the opportunity to truly interrogate Adam. “Is she ready for this? To be your mate, an alpha in her own right?”
“In the ways that matter.” Keith drained half of the beer, then closed his eyes. “She doesn’t understand our traditions, our culture. But she understands protecting the people in her care. The rest will come.”
Abby was strong, and Cindy had no doubt that she could handle whatever happened, as long as she had Keith’s help. “What did she want to talk to Adam about?”
“No idea. She wouldn’t say.”
Knowing Abby, she’d wanted an excuse to show Adam that not everyone in Red Rock was bothered by his presence in town—or in Cindy’s life. “You have a sneaky, matchmaking woman, Winston.”
Keith’s smile made him look more like a man in love than a badass warrior. “And I like her just fine that way.”
“As always, your talent for understatement amazes me.”
“Decades of practice, sweetheart.”
“How does Abby deal with you?”
“You really want to know all the details?”
“No, she doesn’t.” Abby stood in the doorway, looking amused. “Are you two done teasing each other? Or were you having a serious conversation?”
“Too many serious conversations.” Cindy grimaced. “I think I’ll stick with teasing.”
Keith drifted across the kitchen, a seemingly absent-minded movement that nonetheless put him within arm’s reach of Abby. He made it look natural—instinctive, even—to toss his arm around her shoulders and drag her tight against his side. “Where’d you dump the vampire?”
Adam was right behind her, and Keith knew it. Cindy pushed back her chair and beckoned. “Want a beer?”
“Sure.” Adam sidestepped the embracing couple and offered Cindy a small, quiet smile. “It’s surreal, isn’t it?”
“Which part? Dinner, or that we might have to cut this scene of domestic bliss short because our watch shift starts in an hour?”
“The latter. If this is what being under siege feels like, I’m glad I was a lumberjack instead of a soldier.”
Keith made a rude noise. “If being under siege was this cushy, I would have stayed a soldier.”
“It’s the waiting.” Cindy remembered it well from her emergency rotations in school. “The waiting is a killer. Too much time to think.”
Adam lifted a hand and touched her cheek. “At least it gives us time to talk.”
They’d done nothing but talk for the last two days, but there was still so much to say. “There is that.”
The wicked glint in his eyes was a reminder that they had taken a few breaks from talking. “And now that I’ve jinxed it, maybe we should eat.”
“Or maybe—” A distant howl split the night, and Cindy jumped to her feet so quickly she overturned her bottle, spilling beer across the table. “That’s Mac.”
Keith had already started for the door, but he pulled up sharply and pointed at Adam. “You watch her damn back. Cindy forgets everything when people are hurt.”
“We’ll take care of our part, Winston. Go.”
Cindy snatched up the bag she’d brought with her. “You can join the fight, Adam. They need everyone they can get. I’ll call if I need you.”
Abby and Keith’s footsteps sounded loud on the front porch as Adam shook his head. “Keith’s with Abby. Dylan’s with Sasha. I’m with you. Keith’s no fool, Cindy. He understands instinct.”
No point in arguing, even if she wanted to. Cindy hurried out the door as more howls rose in the night. “Sounds like it’s coming from the main road into town.”
Adam paused outside the door to snatch up his weapons, matching hatchets with wickedly keen edges that had been polished until they gleamed. “Not what we’d expected, but it’ll make ’em easier to kill.”
Unless they didn’t fear making a full frontal assault because they vastly outnumbered the Red Rock wolves and knew it, or because they had more fighters slipping quietly through the woods for a flank attack. Cindy drew a deep, sharp breath. “We have to hurry.”
The end of the main street already looked like a battlefield, with wolves fighting on four legs and two, with weapons as well as claws and fists. Guns fired, knives gleamed, jaws snapped—and Cindy almost stumbled under the oppressive weight of sick power that filled the air.
“Something’s wrong,” she whispered, the words eclipsed by shouts and screams.
“The magic.” Adam’s voice sounded strained. His eyes followed the path of one of the wolves, who charged recklessly down the main road toward them, every stride jerky and uneven. Adam’s fingers tightened on his weapons, but he didn’t move. “They’re fighting it.”
“You mean they’re being controlled somehow?”
“I don’t know. It doesn’t…” He bit off a snarl. “We need to find Dylan and Sasha.”
“We need—” Cindy cursed. “Mac. They would have gotten to him first, and I don’t see him.”
The staggering wolf lunged toward Adam, who met the movement with a strong swing and broadsided the werewolf’s head with the side of his hatchet. He went down in a crumpled pile of fur, and Adam shook his head. “It’s wrong. The magic feels wrong, but I don’t know why.”
She gripped her bag so tightly her knuckles ached. “I know. Come on.”
“Stay behind me,” Adam replied shortly, then took off toward the bar. The attacking wolves charged him, but he knocked them back with singular ease, making it clear he was used to using the blades on more than trees.
Two familiar wolves, Julie and Hans, met them in the street, Mac sagging between them. “He fell not far from his post,” Julie said with a grimace. They stumbled under Mac’s weight and lowered him to the ground.
The ashen hue of his skin scared the hell out of Cindy. “Hey, Mac,” she said soothingly. “I was looking for you.”
One arm was a ruined mess, and his abdomen had been torn open. “Found me.”
“Smartass.” There wasn’t much she could do. His healing was sluggish at best, too slow
to outpace injuries this severe. “Julie, Hans, you two go. I’ll stabilize him here, and Adam can help me get him to the bar.”
“Tell my wife—” Mac’s words caught on a cough, deep and racking. “Love her. Kids too.”
Pretty words were a waste of time. “All I need is ten minutes. If you can hold on that long…”
A snarl sounded from their left, followed by a grunt, a pained yelp and a thud as a body hit the dirt. Adam’s shout cut through the air. “Gennaro!”
Mac shuddered and groaned. Cindy looked up from her bag and caught his eyes as she gathered gauze in both hands. “I mean it, Mac. Just a few minutes more. I’ll catch up to this, give you a fighting chance.”
A grunt, which might have been assent. “Stubborn bitch.”
“You don’t know the half of it, sweetie.”
Sasha came running, bounding down an alley with Dylan on all fours at her side. “He knows them. Dylan says—” She clutched her side and panted. “Dylan says these wolves wouldn’t be fighting.”
“He knows them from where?” Adam snapped, tension clear in his voice.
Dylan yipped and butted his head against Sasha’s hip. She closed her eyes, almost as if listening. “The towns Alan took over. The ones he kept around for the money.”
“What the hell did they do? Fill them up with magic and send them out here?”
The witch went pale. “I think that’s exactly what they did.”
Cindy secured the last roll of gauze around Mac. “Help me get him to the bar, and you can talk to Keith. There’s got to be something we can do.”
The bar wasn’t far, but the trip was chaotic. Keith met them halfway, his eyes worried. “One of you better know what the fuck is going on, because none of this makes sense. I swear to God, half of them are trying to run away now, but every time they hit the town limits something turns them back.”
“Magic,” Adam gritted out as an unfamiliar man arrived at his side. Keith gestured and the man eased Mac from Adam’s grip and helped Cindy move him into the bar. “Dylan thinks these wolves are from the towns Alan took over. Cannon fodder.”
Keith looked at the witch. “Do we need to try to restrain them? Other than Mac, most of the damage they’re doing is accidental. As soon as they started meeting resistance, whatever was keeping them focused broke, I guess.”
Sasha looked grave. “I can dispel the magic binding them, but to do that I have to dispel all the magic, even the spell we cast to make Recco and the vampire think the refugees were still here.”
“Adam? Thoughts?”
“They’re full of power,” Adam watched as one of Keith’s men took down a crazy-eyed attacker. “External power. Wild, probably power the vampire harvested from the pack and forced on them. They’ll make Brynn look subdued, and they’ll suffer without an outlet.”
“And they’ll die if they keep fighting us.” Keith didn’t hesitate. “Free them, Sasha. I’ll spread the word to restrain them if possible.”
She hesitated, her gaze flickering to Adam. “What he said about an outlet…”
He knew where she was going and cut her off with a sharp gesture. “We’ll deal with it afterwards. There’s got to be a temporary alpha out there, or a leader. One wolf he’s feeding the power through. We need to find him.”
“And kill him?” It was Keith, quiet and practical.
Adam just wished he had an answer. “If it comes to that.”
Keith nodded and shot off, leaving Adam with Sasha, who stared at him. “Before I separate them, I need to know. Will you help those wolves?”
“Take that magic into myself, you mean?” He tried to fill his words with derision, but underneath some tiny part of him rejoiced. The power was wild, untamed—but he was an expert. A vampire who’d played with blood bonds in a way few could dream of. In the darkest depths of his soul he was hungry for it—hungrier than he’d ever been in his life, and that dark other-self whispered promises of what they could do with that power. Anything.
Sasha spoke. “If you can’t, it might be more merciful to kill them than to break the bonds.”
Adam turned to look down the street again, at the ragged, disjointed fighting. Some of the wolves had already died, and more lay injured or unconscious, disabled by wolves who had instinctively recognized that the fight wasn’t quite right. Keith had already begun to gather up the stragglers, some of whom fought him wildly. Others seemed almost relieved, throwing themselves to the ground at his feet and begging in disjointed words that weren’t audible from so far away, though the tone was clear: relief.
They were innocents, twisted inside and fighting the power the same way Brynn did. For Brynn, the power was always there. These wolves just needed relief once.
With their power, you can keep Cindy safe.
The thought triggered an instinctive reaction, intense and so overwhelming the words escaped from his numb lips without thought. “I’ll do it.”
The witch nodded and sank to her knees. Her hands dug into the earth, almost as if she was trying to root herself in it. She began to murmur, slow words that increased in speed until they became a feverish, rhythmic chant.
Magic snapped through the air, leaving a pulse that rolled out from Sasha in ever-growing waves, something that brushed against magic and swept it away. The night fell still, silent, even the spell-sick wolves who’d attacked them.
Then the first one screamed.
Adam closed his eyes and reached for the energy around them, invoking that ghostly echo so that when he opened them again he could trace the eddies of power.
Sasha burned the brightest, lit up like a rainbow of magic—life and death, earth and spirit. A shimmering green cord connected her to Dylan, whose subdued aura held sharp, protective edges as he hovered close to his witch. As Adam watched, the bond between them flared and snapped, leaving a mere echo in its place.
Turning gave Adam a clear view down the street. The wolves of Red Rock burned brightly too, but the light around them was eclipsed by the angry power roiling in the invading wolves. Sickly green edged with red and black, the power of the wild that had been twisted with death.
After that, it should have been easy. Every wolf had a thin bond trailing away, magic running inexorably back to its anchor. It had been the same way among his wolves, a secret he’d never told Joan because he delighted in her consternation when he never had any trouble finding her. Every wolf in their pack had been bound to her with chains of magic, visible only to someone who knew how to look.
Adam knew how to look—but as he did, the first bond snapped, succumbing to the lingering power of Sasha’s magic.
With every pulse, more bonds disappeared. Adam set off at a run, following the tug as more and more of the flickering bonds tangled together, all flowing toward the same source.
At the center of the quickly vanishing web he found Abby and a young man who couldn’t have been older than twenty. The werewolf huddled on his hands and knees, bleeding and shaking. “What happened?”
Abby clutched one bruised hand. “I don’t understand. We were fighting, and then he started trying to herd everyone back the way they came.”
So their leader, at least, had been strong enough to fight the madness. “These aren’t Helena wolves. Dylan said they’re from nearby towns that paid tithes.” Adam sank to his knees and laid a soothing hand on the boy’s back. “They’ve got more power shoved in them than Brynn does right now, and it’s making them crazy.”
“Jesus.”
The boy tried to scramble away, but Adam cursed and caught his shoulders, holding him steady. “Son, listen to me. The bonds between you and the other wolves are snapping, and every time one does all that power snaps right back to you. Let me take it, so it won’t hurt anymore.”
“Take.” His terrified voice cracked. “That’s all anyone ever does. Even when they give back, it’s nothing but pain.”
“No more pain,” Adam promised, gentling his voice. “Just one drop of blood, that’s all I need. O
ne drop freely given, and any pain will skip right on past you and come to me.”
He nodded. “I don’t care if you kill me. Just make it stop.”
The pain in those tired, hopeless words shredded Adam’s nerves as he reached for the boy’s wrist. It didn’t take much, a tiny prick of teeth and the first taste of blood, and magic roiled up, hungry and eager.
Forging the connection hurt, but it was a pain Adam could master. He let the connection fall into place and braced himself against the onslaught of power, but even that wasn’t enough. It roared over him, through him, flooded him in life and death and pain and grief and sorrow, so much sorrow he wanted to weep—
It didn’t stop. More bonds broke, still failing under the press of Sasha’s spell, but the bond between him and the boy stayed strong. Adam siphoned off a tiny bit of the power to strengthen it, using it to reinforce the connection until not even Sasha’s magic could break it. With each shattered binding, more power slammed into him, until he was full of it, floating on it.
Madness beckoned, but Adam closed his eyes and forced it away with one thought. One face. One need. “Cindy. I have to get back to Cindy.”
Abby was already kneeling by the boy, who’d gone limp in her arms. Her face was calm, but her eyes saw too much. “She’ll be at the bar. Hurry.”
If the run from the bar had been chaotic, the walk back was eerie. The intruders had dropped where they stood as their bonds failed, and perplexed-looking defenders milled about as Keith organized them to start gathering the fallen.
Inside, Cindy stood by the raised stagelike dais, cleaning up. She grinned as she gathered discarded plastic and paper, along with opened packages of medical paraphernalia and bloodied gauze.
She looked up when he walked in, her smile widening. “Hey, Mac’s going to be—” The words cut off in a harsh intake of breath, and she dropped the half-full trash bag she held. “What’s wrong, Adam?”
Every instinct focused on her, but he was afraid to take another step. “I had to take their power.”
