War Witch

by Layla Nash

  I spun on my heel to face Moriah the moment he was out of sight. “So, I should go. If—”

  “Not a chance,” Leif said with a laugh, catching my shoulder. He ignored Moriah’s grim look and instead directed me back to the roped-off VIP lounge where empty seats waited.

  Making a break for the exit felt like the best idea I’d had all day, but three of Leif’s lieutenants remained in the bar, eyeing me askance. The Warder flapped his free hand at them and they dispersed through the crowd, and he pulled me to sit on one of the small couches.

  The lead singer, oblivious to the continuing drama, staggered to his feet with the microphone in hand. The drummer flipped his sticks and crashed the cymbals, and the music roared back to life. A heartbeat later, the dance floor erupted and the cheers nearly boosted the room from the rafters. Nothing like a good fight to get the blood pumping.

  But even in the seething chaos in front of the band, a three-foot bubble of space protected Mimi and her friends from the nearest male. I didn’t know if fear of Soren or my blue arm convinced others to stay away from her, but I wouldn’t complain. No one would even bump into her now, for fear of meeting Brandr’s fate.

  Whatever grief I had to put up with would be worth it. Mimi could enjoy her party. It was a good night, all things considered.

  Despite Moriah’s efforts to sit with Leif and me, she took one look at his expression and kept moving to the couch behind us, inclining her head as she retreated. Leif poured drinks from the bottles that remained, handing me one without a word. I drowned my sorrow with gin as I offered a silent toast to the witches who’d been killed. The saints would carry them home, and we would remember them always. My throat burned—from grief or gin, I couldn’t tell.

  Magic burned my fingers as I made myself another drink, almost dropping the bottle of gin. The rumor of my nonaligned status would spread as quickly as my humiliating arrest at the restaurant. Wonderful. No use regretting what couldn’t be undone. I drained the drink. But I could sure as hell give forgetting a try.

  After staring out at the gyrating band as the music reverberated through us, Leif spoke. “Ten minutes after I dropped you off, I stood over the remains of our most powerful witches.”

  I concentrated on my empty glass, counting the ice cubes over and over. Grieving could wait. It had to wait. I couldn’t let it be real yet.

  “I called you,” he said. “Since you knew them. I called you and you didn’t answer. So I went back to your apartment.”

  “About that...”

  “What did I find, Lily?” His voice cut through the pounding drums. “Your front door open, the wards destroyed, blood everywhere. Your belongings burned or in pieces. And your handprint on the wall—in blood—but no trace of you. No hint. Nothing but blood.”

  I hardened my heart. So he’d been worried. Too bad. I was the one who was homeless. “I couldn’t stay there.”

  “I thought they’d killed you too.” Leif remained expressionless, though his eyes flashed gold. “I thought you’d been taken, and if I’d only walked you to your door, you’d be alive.”

  For a moment I thought of all the people who haunted us, who would be alive if we’d done one thing differently. It wasn’t me he regretted not being able to save. I knew that much.

  The room blurred as I tried focusing on Mimi and they switched on red and yellow and blue lights. In the eerie lights, I caught his goons watching me from across the bar, faces hard. No more giggling like Adam at the restaurant. I studied the ice in my glass once more, illuminated by my blue hand. “What did you find at Tracy’s house?”

  “How did you know it was Tracy’s house?”

  Magic flickered as I leveled a blank look at him. The War Witch suffered no fools.

  Half his mouth quirked up in a familiar smile, though there was no humor in it. “You don’t want to know.”

  “She was my friend.”

  “That’s why you don’t want to know.”

  “You wanted to know what happened to Max.”

  He went rigid and the air around us froze. Bringing up his murdered best friend probably wasn’t the best way of deescalating the situation. His goons edged closer and I made a blue fist, keeping a wary eye on them. “So your little buddies don’t think you can take care of yourself, huh? Protecting you from the mean ol’ witch. How sweet.”

  “Don’t think you can goad me into getting rid of them.” I snorted, about to mock him, but Leif leaned his elbows on his knees, staring into the crowd. “You just brought down four of the top males—including the alpha—of the strongest Old World pack in the Alliance. By yourself.” He raised his glass to toast me. “Which makes you one hell of a threat.”

  There wasn’t anything to say to that. I wondered if he would tell me anything useful about the scene at Tracy’s house, or if I’d have to break into her house in order to learn the truth.

  Leif concentrated on the half-empty bottles as he poured me another drink. “Where did you train?”

  More of his damnable questions, and no easy escape in sight. “My parents taught me. Are you going to tell me what you found at Tracy’s?”

  “No. It’s an active investigation and I can’t share details until we’ve identified and questioned all the suspects.” He leaned back against the couch, half-turned to face me. “You were fully trained before the Breaking?”

  “Yes.” It wasn’t entirely true—I’d been twelve when the Breaking happened, and only halfway trained by my parents. I learned the rest during the war, and made up what I needed to survive. All post-Truce witches trained at regulated academies, the curriculum approved by the Alliance and the humans. They conspired to regulate something that by its very nature was chaotic. My mouth twisted and I reached for the fresh drink. Any witch who couldn’t show a diploma from one of the academies was either a pre-Breaking witch or a rogue. Worse still was that all official instruction in destructive magic ceased with the Truce. An entire generation of witches knew nothing of dark magic and could not begin to understand how to defend against it. A generation of helpless charmers. I gulped the gin.

  Leif’s elbow nudged my side. “What discipline?”

  I laughed. Only wolves asked about disciplines. But it was a mistake. The power of his attention shifted once more, and the primordial human in me wanted to flee. Leif was the Alpha’s second for a reason, and it was not because he let people laugh at him. He held my gaze long enough to remind me he could kill me without consequence, then flicked my glass. “Drink.”

  “You forget I don’t have your tolerance.”

  “I didn’t forget.” His smile turned half-flirtatious, half-predatory. “Like I didn’t forget I asked you a question.”

  “Is Leif asking, or is the Chief Investigator?”

  “Chief Investigator Leif.”

  I cleared my throat, careful not to look at him. They couldn’t smell lies, of course—that was nonsense. But they could hear an elevated heartrate, smell increased sweat, see pupils dilate with stress, interpret all those biological reactions. Deception was a messy business. “I never specialized.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  He shouldn’t have, not with blue running up my arm. Spells and hexes for destruction had always come easiest, even from my earliest memories. There were many reasons I didn’t keep mirrors in my house. “I didn’t specialize.”

  “So what kind of witch are you?” And he already knew the answer.

  War witch hovered on the tip of my tongue. That’s what I was during the war, but during the peace... Maybe he had a point. What kind of witch had I become after the Truce? The kind of witch who abandoned her coven and skulked around in dark alleys at night, maybe.

  Saints be damned. I drained my drink and reached for the gin, missing the bottle on my first grab. Leif sat forward and solicitously refilled my glass, easing closer on the couch as his arm looped over the back, near my shoulders. The gin fell like a rock in my stomach, oozing blessed numbness down my arms and up to my nose unti
l I couldn’t even feel my teeth. Holding the blue death wore at me, draining my energy.

  His words were barely a breath as he repeated the question, a whisper between lovers as he touched my arm and sent shivers all through me until my nerves misfired. He wove a spell as easily as a basher, sent a fog of desire through my brain like a practiced charmer.

  I cleared my throat and fought for sanity. “Just a witch.”

  If I were a better witch, I would have had a defense. Something to fend him off and preserve my dignity. It was a clinical observation as I swayed toward him, leaning into the way he stroked my arm. My skin rippled under his fingers, a small wave along the tide of his touch. I turned toward him until my feet tangled with his. It had been forever since anyone touched me with kindness.

  He leaned closer until his lips brushed my ear. “Just a witch?”

  “Sometimes not even that.”

  He nuzzled behind my ear, inhaling deeply, and his touch stole away all reason and logic. “Such a dangerous witch.”

  I wanted to tell him everything, about the war and Anne Marie and Tracy and Eric. About the dark years. I sighed, leaning closer and resting my palm on his flat stomach, and closed my eyes as I inhaled from his collar and got lost in the scent of him, all male and wild.

  Leif brushed the hair over my shoulder, kissing my temple. His hand settled on my thigh and I melted into his touch, sighing again as he drew me into his lap. I could have stayed there forever, the music fading away until there was only the gin haze and the magic in Leif’s touch, red pack magic swirling with blue witch magic. A contented growl rumbled in his chest, vibrating through me as I clung to him. “What discipline do you practice?”

  My hand slid up the back of his neck and into his short hair, and I hid my face against his neck as I murmured, “Everything.”

  “Everything?”

  Part of me knew it was dangerous. The rest of me didn’t care. If I told him what he wanted to know, he’d hold me, play with my hair, kiss my neck. “Everything,” I told his collar. I took another deep breath, the soft whiskey scent tangling in my thoughts. “White, gray, black. All of it.”

  “Oh, Lily.” He sighed, and real regret colored his voice, slow and slurred with magic and scotch. “Are you the dark witch I’m looking for?”

  The gin gave me enough bravery to say, “I’m the witch you’re looking for, but I’m not a dark witch.”

  “Then why do you know dark magic?”

  “You remember,” I whispered, bracing a hand on his chest as I looked up, needing him to understand. He was the only one who understood. “You remember why. Know thy enemy.”

  His gray eyes turned amber, his lips parted and revealed a wolf’s canines. Saints preserve me. All was lost.

  “I remember,” he said. Leif nuzzled my nose, drifting a ghost of a kiss over my lips as his hand trailed down to the small of my back. “And I know you. You’re a dream I can almost remember. Where have you been, Lilith?”

  The memories rose too close to the surface and I didn’t think—I let the magic take the words it wanted. “In the last year of war, we asked the Warbringer for help and he denied us.”

  “So you walked away.” His hands cradled my face and forced me to look at him. His eyes turned brilliant gold but glazed, an addict deep in the ecstasy of his drug. He remembered everything, more than I wanted. “Lilith, who went to Sanctuary in the seventh year of war and saved us all, walked away.”

  I shivered. He knew too much and assumed the rest. But his touch was gentle and warm, his arms pleasantly firm around me, and if I tilted my head just so, he could...

  I felt his smile against my cheek along with the tickle of his beard, felt the pack magic slide around me like fleece on a freezing morning. I sank down into madness, into the firm brush of his mouth against the corner of mine, and his teeth tested my lip.

  Lost.

  Chapter 24

  The kiss lasted forever and yet not long enough. I thought I heard someone speak behind us, thought maybe there was an effort to change the magic that swirled up around the couch, but it all faded away as Leif’s fingers slid along my jaw.

  My brain shut down completely, the heat from his body as overwhelming as his proximity. He squeezed my shoulder until I relaxed, despite the adrenaline still flooding my veins. I loved him. I’d always loved him, even before I really knew him, and I desperately wanted him to love me. I wanted to draw him close and run my hands through his hair, I wanted to mark him until everyone knew he was mine and I was his.

  “Tell me everything,” he said, and my heart beat faster.

  Tell him everything? Everything about the years when I followed him like a puppy, when he rendered me speechless with just a look, when I would have killed to make him laugh. When I’d been a lost kid, adrift and grieving, and he appeared like a buoy to keep me afloat. I couldn’t explain that, even as the pack magic tried to drag it all out.

  “I don’t remember,” I whispered, closing my eyes as his lips drifted over my forehead. I ached to tell him. He wouldn’t judge me for my crimes. He alone could understand. He’d handed me a medal, eight years ago, for those crimes.

  “Liar.” I felt his smile against my cheek, through the scratch of his beard, and I bit my lip. He smelled like wood smoke and the wild, like full moon nights in old forests. And the husky grumble of his voice, cutting through the strange underwater throb of the music, reminded me of quiet nights by the campfire. Alone. His hand slid down my back to play with the waist of my jeans. “You’ve been avoiding me.”

  My cheeks caught fire and he chuckled, leaning back to study me with those honey-gold eyes. “And what, dare I ask, are you thinking to make you turn so red?”

  I gurgled something—a furious denial as I envisioned it—and he smiled more. “It can’t be that exciting—we didn’t sleep together. I’d remember that.”

  An undignified squeak was all the response I could manage. Saints preserve me. I was the damn War Witch. I braced my hands on his shoulders, intending to push him away so I could untangle myself, but I should have known better as a connection completed and the floodgates opened. Heat rushed through me in a heady mix of magic and memory, and his pack magic rolled through me in a typhoon. My magic rose to meet it, twining around him as it drew me in and stole what little control I had left.

  I managed to say, “Oh no,” as our eyes locked and everything opened and closed at the same time. His magic tugged and the floodgates to my carefully contained memories cracked. Scenes and people best forgotten rolled out of my head and into his like a bad movie, and too late I tried to turn aside the worst of them before he learned enough to hate me forever.

  Leif’s eyes sparked gold, and his teeth looked too long for a human mouth as he murmured once more, “Tell me everything, witch.”

  I struggled to control the memories, though I couldn’t stop them. They were all bad: standing on battlefields littered with bodies, knowing I’d killed many of them. Watching friends disappear in funeral pyres. Standing over the wounded, desperate to heal them despite my own exhaustion. Panic as a cast failed and left colleagues vulnerable. Guilt over the ones I couldn’t save. Almost getting captured, almost getting raped, almost getting killed.

  His hands gripped my waist as grief kindled in his gaze. Only one memory of him slipped by, after his best friend was tortured and executed. One of his other friends betrayed us all, but Max and his partner, Kate, paid the price. When the humans dropped Max’s body at the gates, Leif went berserk. Not even Soren, with all his pack magic and alpha dominance, could stop Scary Leif in a full rage.

  I’d been a little frightened, but not paralyzed like the other witches, as I stepped in front of him to protect the others. The arrogance of youth protected me: very little frightened me then. I assumed I would die any day and had nothing left to lose.

  Leif’s expression twisted as he watched my memory of everyone viewing Max’s broken body, of Leif mad with grief as Soren restrained him and tried to comfort him as
the first contortions of rage and grief twisted the Warder. Watched as he raged free and the shifters tackled Leif, as he tossed them aside like dirty rags. He inhaled sharply as the memory-Leif launched at me, roaring in a heart-stopping moment as inhuman eyes tracked me and said: prey.

  Even from the safety of eight years later, the memory chilled my blood. Just before his memory-jaws snicked shut on my throat, his hands disappeared from my waist and the connection snapped.

  He blinked, looking dazed. “I attacked you.”

  For once, it wasn’t even a small lie. It was the unvarnished truth. “No. I got in your way.”

  “Soren said I ran someone down. He never said who.”

  “No need for you to know,” I said. I touched his cheek, not liking the way his forehead wrinkled in concern. “There was no debt. You were grieving.”

  “I don’t have the monopoly on pain.” He studied my face, and I felt like he truly saw me again. He knew almost everything. The dark stuff, the painful stuff, when I was at my worst. His lips parted and I thought about kissing him again, just to change the conversation.

  I tried to smile. “You’ve had more than your fair share. Besides, no one expected you to sit under a willow tree writing bad poetry. You grieved your own way.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said. Leif took a deep breath and his arms linked around me, drawing me once more to his chest, and the pack magic swirled up again.

  All might have been lost except for Mimi. She stumbled up and tripped into the couch, knocking Leif’s arms and pack magic aside. Reality snapped back to cold focus as Mimi landed in my lap.

  I blinked as the fog lifted and the music roared back and I really heard what I’d said, what I’d shown him through my memories. What I admitted. I slid off Leif’s lap as my cheeks burned, and Mimi giggled as she waved a perfectly-manicured finger at the Warder. “You’re going to be in trouuuuuuble.”