The Vampire's Spell: The Hunted (Book 8)

by Lucy Lyons

  I winked at the Night Mother and escaped before I saw their reactions, and Ash, Dirk, Haley, and even Jeremy met me in the corridor.

  “I have no need to listen to the ancient ones tell me why I’m inferior, if you’d like some extra help,” he smiled, and I clapped him on the back.

  “I have a feeling, the more, the better the chances of making it back alive this go ‘round, Jer. If you could maybe find a few intrepid wererats who would like to throw caution to the wind and help us try to save Rachel, we’d appreciate—” A shadow passed across his face, and I closed my mouth without finishing what I was going to say.

  “You have every one of the wererats of Seattle at your side for this fight, Clay. We will bring Rachel home, no matter what’s befallen her at the hands of the monsters who called themselves ‘men of honor,’” he spat. I wanted to ask what had enraged the usually unflappable corporate attorney, but Ashlynn caught my eye and shook her head, almost imperceptibly.

  She is his mate, her voice sounded in my head, and I blanched. Nick may not know, but I remember Caroline said they had to find mates, so the vampires didn’t feed from the humans above.

  Just as I was explaining to Jeremy where he and his rats would find us, Nick joined us in the hallway. He gripped my shoulder hard, and I met his glare with one of my own.

  “You are not lesser to me, Alpha. Neither is my rat king,” he added, meeting Jeremy’s eyes with a nod. “They felt the magic we created together, and they want it, as badly as the Order wants our magic for themselves. Downplay your power as long as you can, for the freedom of your pack if for no other reason.”

  I glanced at the heavy door several feet down the hall and then back at the vampire I’d come to respect for his democratic leadership and loyalty to my best friend.

  “When this is all over, we need to discuss the bond between your clan and our pack,” I said, my nonchalant tone belying the pounding in my chest. “It seems the stronger the enemies that attack us, the more imperative it is that we strengthen our partnership.” Ashlynn bit her lip, but nodded in agreement, and Dirk watched us thoughtfully. I knew he was against serving any creature other than the wolves, but I wasn’t looking for servitude, only the power I needed to keep him and his wife and all my people safe from outside forces.

  I strode down the corridor toward the door and felt the anticipation of battle rising, not just in me but in Ash and Dirk and all my wolves. I gave them an extra push of my power to drive their beasts to the surface. A wind picked up around me, even though we were deep underground, and I heard the voice of the Night Mother behind me whisper, “The wild hunt comes.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  The air swirled around me, and I smelled wet earth, fallen leaves, and the underlying scent of death—the sweet, metallic copper of life blood that sang through my body and awakened the wolf. With horror, I realized I couldn’t control the change and watched as Ashlynn, Dirk and Jeremy shifted into their animal forms around me. Up the passage, I could hear the howls of my wolves as the wild magic touched them and drew out their magic, and without another thought, I raced down to the door, where Dominique and Henny were working furiously to bypass control of the door and open it for us.

  There was a clack and scrabbling of claws on the stone floor, and shifters poured into the corridor behind us, with Haley shrieking her delight. She clapped her hands and ran them over the fur of Jodi, the nearest wolf. He stood as tall as she did, but when she reached up to touch him, he snuffled her neck gently and leaned in so she could scratch behind his ear, like a lapdog. When I caught his eye, he grinned a doggie grin too, his long tongue lolling out to one side as he conned the little Fae into giving him attention.

  Her eyes were completely clear for the first time since I’d met her, not sick or glassed over or shiny with fanatic zeal. She met my gaze and blushed, smiling shyly with her hands still buried deep in Jodi’s shaggy coat. I stepped toward her, and Jodi turned so his body was between us, his lip curled back in a toothy sneer, and I chuffed my laughter at him. The hunt was on us, and we were the hounds of hell waiting to be released and let the wild magic carry us across the land.

  I’m happy for you, Jodi, but you’d best remember not to make her mad. She’s a much better fighter than you are, I thought at him, pleased that one side effect of the magic boost was that I could simply speak to him in words, no matter what form we were in. He didn’t reply, and I was left to wonder if that was my power alone or the magic of the pack as Dominique called my name from close to the strange magically sealed door.

  “Clay, we figured out how to hack the user who created this doorway, but there are too many shields between us and the other side. I don’t know where it leads, and if I get this open, I don’t have enough control to close it. I won’t be able to stop anything from trying to come back through.”

  My head turned back toward the nursery, and Dominique sighed and wove her fingers together then pulled them apart repeatedly. I saw Dominique show her nerves rarely enough that I knew the danger of opening the door was real, and deadly.

  I pushed my way through the wolves to the back of the pack and silently gave half a dozen wolves the task of protecting the vampires, warning them as Dominique had warned me—that once the door was open we didn’t know what would choose to come back through.

  The underground wind that smelled like nighttime and moonlight grew in pitch, ruffling my fur and tossing the witches’ hair about as they started chanting at the glowing runes. I wound my way through the furry bodies, pausing to touch my nose to the shoulder of the rat with the mark of the king, and he followed me to Henny’s side. She smeared some sort of herb paste around the outline of the door, chanting over it as Dominique tried to find the “circuits” of the spell and override them.

  Every second that we waited, the air grew thicker and heavier with the weight of the magic, and my fur stood on end from the power brushing through and over me. None of us could stand still, and wolves started to prance around the tight space until I heard a yip and saw the beginning of a scuffle.

  “Stop,” I heard a human voice command. Ashlynn stood between the wolves and stopped their fighting with a hand on each of their muzzles. They backed away from each other, and she teetered to the wall, where she leaned and stared at the floor. I waited a little longer before going to her, and Ashlynn’s knees buckled under the strain of shifting against the tide of such strong magic. I forced myself to change with her and held her in my arms as the wild magic began to recede from me.

  “You’ve got to change back, Ash. I think it has something to do with the wild magic, and we’re going to be left behind if we don’t change back.

  “I’m sorry. I don’t have your ability to speak to them clearly when they’re in their wolf form. I just wanted them to stop before others joined in and we wasted the magic that we’ve been given.”

  I held her hand and felt the beast inside her, still pacing, rising to the surface to brush against me affectionately. I kissed her lips and pushed my energy into her, forcing the change faster than I ever had before. Faster than the eye could see, Ashlynn was on all fours, covered in cinnamon fur.

  Dominique’s chanting grew, and a puff of stale, damp air blew in as the stone inside the painted runes vanished, leaving an opening tall enough for a man and wide enough for two wolves to walk abreast. On the other side was the tunnels that I’d gone through with Dirk to retrieve our women, but somehow they’d bypassed the narrow tunnels with the low ceilings by creating the door in the stone, a feat that should’ve been impossible.

  I took the lead with Ashlynn and Jeremy directly behind me and my pack following. Silently, on padded feet, I picked my way around puddles of stagnant water that probably became underground streams whenever it rained, which in our city was significant. The wild hunt demanded that we get out of the tunnels and run the open land above ground. Even Jeremy began to make too much noise, distracted by the tug of wild magic on the beasts within us.

  Behind me, s
omeone howled, and it filled the passage and pushed out ahead of us like a trumpet, declaring our arrival. I broke into a run, and the wolf reveled at the ability to stretch our legs and really run, so much so that for a moment I forgot everything but the call of the hunt and I rushed straight into the center of a group of twenty black-robed humans, tossing them around like rag dolls.

  A wind rushed up behind me. Ashlynn bowled me over, growling at me to keep my focus and find Rachel while the other wolves and rats had their fun with the torturers of the Order of Crows. Ashlynn led the way while I covered her rear, sniffing the air and sprinting from one alcove to the next, following the faint smell of Rachel’s perfume, the hint of wintergreen from her breath mints, the lavender from her laundry soap.

  Because our wolf senses of smell were so keen, we didn’t bother with heavy perfumes. It was one of the things that I’d had to get used to when I started working for the vampires—all the fragrances they used to hide the faint scent of death that was the cost of their powers. It proved to be a boon in separating her from the smells that the humans trailed, however, and that was enough to make the headaches from the barrages to my senses worth it.

  Ashlynn started to turn to the right down another passage when a faint whiff of that lavender came from the left on the wild magic. I barked before I could even formulate a thought to send to my mate, and she instantly spun around and followed me down the path I chose.

  My beast reveled at the harmony of our movements, and I stretched my gait until we were running full out the way the magic wanted us to. At the end of the hall was my target and my prey. I trusted that Ashlynn would make Rachel her priority, but there was another scent in that room with her and I wanted her.

  I’d smelled that brand of Fae before in the dojo, and I knew when I found her scent I needed to make sure she made it back to the Red Dagger alive so she could face a punishment far more painful than I could dish out to her. As I’d hoped, Ashlynn made a beeline for Rachel, snapping through the bands that held her. The real entrapment was in the silver chains that had been laid across her torso, chest, and each of her limbs, pinning her down and deeply scoring her flesh with red, angry burns.

  “Portia,” I managed to growl, and the hooded creature turned to face me.

  “No, not Portia, that half-assed, self-righteous, Fae-justice-warrior-of a-Red-Dagger. I’d kill you for the offense, but I need your wild magic, Alpha, or my sister will never get the justice she so richly deserves.”

  It made my head hurt to realize that Portia was the good sister in her family. The Cetan certainly looked enough like Portia and smelled enough like her to explain my confusion, but the subtle differences were like smelling vinegar under honey. When she pulled off the hood, her feathers shook out with a slithering sound instead of the silken whispers of Portia’s, and her face was just the wrong side of angular to be pretty, hard and angry and so bitter that I could taste it on the back of my tongue.

  I stood on my hind legs and towered over her, shifting enough that I could vocalize with ease. I rolled my shoulders and grinned at her then called out to Rachel over my shoulder.

  “Let Ash carry you, Rachel. You can trust her to get you home safe.” Portia’s sister Cetan slashed out at me, but she lacked the Red Dagger’s finesse and skill honed by thousands of hours of practice. I easily evaded her talons and knocked her to the ground.

  “You bastard mutt,” she hissed, jumping to her feet and backing away from me. “How dare you put your hands on me. I am High Fae, and you are not fit to lick my shoes.”

  “Well, then it’s a good thing I have no intention of doing so, isn’t it, Madame Cetan?” I growled in warning, and she skidded on the wet stone and fell on her ass. The sounds and smells of people hurt, humans dying because they had believed in her came to me, and my growl deepened. She was everything I hated—cruel, selfish, bigoted against the innocent people I had protected all my life. Now we were killing humans for the first time, all because of the power of the Fae. I showed her my teeth and stalked her, not as a wolf but as the hellhound that would punish her for breaking Fae law.

  It wasn’t until I had her throat under my fangs that I realized why the High Fae were so afraid of us coming into our power and why some wanted to stop it. I released her and picked her up by the neck, forcing her to walk ahead of me. If the High Fae wanted wolf executioners, they would just have to keep looking.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  There were no bodies in the main chamber when I dragged the Cetan through it by her campy black robe, and I could hear the wolves howling ahead of me as they guarded Ashlynn and her cargo back to the compound. I fought the urge to add my voice to theirs and let them have their victory run without me. I had my own prize, and as soon as she was delivered to the Night Mother and Master Shedu, we would run through the streets of our city and then we would let the magic loose in the mountains, on our mountain.

  The doorway was smaller when I got to it than it had been on the way through the first time. Stupidly, I dragged the Cetan toward it without binding or gagging her, ignoring her words as curses in a Fae language I didn’t understand.

  It wasn’t until I saw Dominique frantically waving at me to run that I realized I was holding the person who still controlled the runes. I picked up my speed, running with not just the extra speed of the wolf but the lengthened limbs of my nearly seven-foot hybrid wolf-man frame. The hole the witches had managed to make continued to close, and in a last-ditch effort to stop her chanting, I drew back with both arms and tossed her through the remaining space, shifting to full wolf form and jumping through behind her.

  My paws skidded on the floor, and I slammed into the far wall, head first. I let my body fall to the floor and laid my aching head in my paws. I trusted that someone had taken hold of the bird fairy and waited for the ringing to stop before I shifted back to my human form and accepted the loose shorts that Jeremy handed to me.

  “Nick and the others are waiting with your prisoner in the conference room,” he explained.

  We walked there together as I looked out over my wolves looking for Ash, but I couldn’t find her, so I assumed she’d taken Rachel to the clinic. We settled ourselves in with my seat directly across the Cetan so I could smirk at her as I explained the situation to the other leaders. Maria sat with her usual, neutral face, but Onyxis wore a look of open hatred.

  After all the time I’d spent with Nicholas, I’d learned to expect that the leader of the vampire people would be mysterious, unreadable, and distant. The honesty of the Night Mother’s rage and venom seemed more in line with the animals she surrounded herself with than with the intrigue and facades vampires preferred.

  “Maria, I take it this is not one of your Red Daggers, but you have a High Fae who might be interested in what her sister’s been up to,” I began, but she cut me off.

  “Half-sister, Clay. That is Circe, Portia’s half-sister,” she corrected. “Her mother was High Fae, but her father was a naiad, a vampire-like creature who lives in the branches of trees and drops down on unsuspecting victims.”

  “That’s why she was stealing power,” I mused. “She doesn’t have the power of the High Fae or the standing.”

  “Maybe that’s why Portia’s such a bitch,” muttered a voice behind me, and Dirk joined us. “The wolves are ready to run, Alpha. Leave the Fae to people more disposed to the pain of others, and let’s hunt.”

  “Go with your wolves, Alpha. Tomorrow Circe stands before the Fae council. You will provide testimony,” Maria commanded. “That a Fae would commit such atrocities to her own kind is unconscionable.” I felt Dirk stiffen, and Onyxis cleared her throat.

  “I believe my wolves and vampires feel rather strongly that our kind shouldn’t commit such atrocities to any kind, Master Shedu,” she suggested. “Alpha, I would still like to speak with you, but the magic is so strong I can’t imagine you’d listen to me now anyway.”

  A hand slipped around my arm, and Ashlynn whispered in my ear, “Goldie is with
Rachel, protected from the magic of the hunt by Dominique’s magic, and the magic is pulling at the pack, Clay. We need to go to the mountains. We need to run, and we need you to lead us.”

  The moment I left the room and the collective magic of the other leaders, the air pressure increased around me until my ears felt like they needed to pop. I inhaled deeply and gazed at Ashlynn, who was stripping down in the hallway and shifted, her cinnamon fur brushing against me and raising hair all over my body. I tugged the shorts down over my hips and let them fall to the floor, releasing my beast at the same time. The moment I felt my body reform, I howled for my pack and raced toward the stairs that would take us to the garden.

  A wererat I didn’t know was watching the back entrance, an AR15 slung over his shoulder and a scowl on his face. When he saw the tidal wave of furry bodies hurtling toward him, he let out a cowboy call and threw the door open, releasing us from the tunnels and jumping up on his chair to avoid getting run over by the stampede of wolves. On a whim, I howled again and called the wild hunt, the magic that had been pulsing all around us, begging to be let in. By the time I reached the top of the stairs and made for the back door, there were rats among the wolves and letting out shrill calls of their own. The pack had doubled by the time we reached the locked door, and the vampiress closest to it threw it open with a shriek before we could knock it down with the sheer weight of our numbers.

  The night sky called, and the wind picked up and howled around us, lifting and propelling us onward. I kicked harder, and the ground flew by under me so fast I could’ve been flying past the maples and the weeping willow in the vampire’s garden. The wall came up on us suddenly, and I inhaled and leaped, praying that I cleared the decorative iron spikes along the top of the cobblestones barrier.