Oka climbed to his head and went to work on his eyes and the edge of his nose, while I leaned forward, flattening myself against him. I fumbled a bit for my crescent blades.
“Fuck!” I yelled the word as I finally got a blade out and dragged it across the front of his neck in a perfect arc, a nice clean cut that went all the way back to his spine.
Although I guess it wasn’t really all that clean, since blood sprayed everywhere, but we got the job done.
Two wolves were left around the truck. Breathing hard, I stood and took a quick look around. More wolves were closing in from the outskirts of the caravan, and god only knew how many beyond that in the forest waiting.
Oka leaned against my leg, getting my attention. “They sent the new wolves in first, knowing they would die. They’ll hit us with the old-school werewolves next.”
I nodded as my blood chilled. “The ones who’ve been around from before the Rending. Well, shit.” This was going to get fucking ugly.
Come, take my hand. You can end this. No more lives will be lost.
Ah, that was dirty pool. I bit the inside of my cheek to keep from responding. Oka shot me a look. She knew I was fighting my own fight too.
The werewolves were reforming their ranks. Their numbers were shrinking, and the caravan would think they were safe and let down their guard.
Then and only then would the old werewolves take all of us out if I didn’t do something and fast.
Arrows sailed at the wolves mercilessly, but they’d be running low on those by now.
Could I have wiped the wolves out on my own? In the past, I would have said yes, but unless I was truly ready to embrace the dark magic, it wasn’t going to happen.
“Work together,” I shouted at the men still standing in the perimeter ring. “Pick a target. Take them down one by one!”
Slowly arrows started flying toward single wolves on the outskirts. Picking them off one at a time.
“You,” I pointed to the four men who’d climbed out of the pit, “aim for the wolves closest to the truck.” I made my way around behind Sage, who turned and glared at me. I caught a flash of Ass Face as he ran by. “And for the love of the Mother Goddess, try not to hit me, Ron!”
Oka snickered. “Oh, Ass Face, how you lasted this long is beyond me.”
Sage snapped her fingers at me. “You don’t give the orders here.”
“Not the time.” I pointed past her. She whipped around as a wolf leapt onto the bed of the truck. Arrows and spears littered the air, raining down on the beast, clipping Sage here and there, sending her reeling backward as she tried to cover her face.
“Stop hitting me, you fools,” she screeched, making the rain of fire cease, which was of zero help to the kids and the pregnant woman hidden in the cab.
They’d gone silent, which I could only hope meant the one adult in the group had hidden them down low, so they didn’t see the carnage.
“Fuckwit,” I muttered with a shake of my head. The men could’ve saved Sage. But instead, she frightened them into taking aim somewhere else. Now she was all that stood between those kids and that wolf. If you didn’t count me and Oka. But she didn’t know that.
There were five men within earshot, and a wolf closing in fast from the perimeter.
“I’d take that one out if I were you,” I suggested with a tip of my head, before I took off running to the truck.
But my feet slid to a stop when a scream snapped my head around to the left. A scream from a voice I knew better than anyone else in this caravan.
Macey was pinned hard to the ground, barely holding off the jaws of a snapping oversexed black and white wolf with one hand. Her machete was just out of reach of the fingers of her free hand. I hesitated for only a moment. Sage would have to wait and hope her ineptitude kept her alive. Macey needed help, and no one else in this caravan was running to her rescue.
I turned and launched myself at the wolf that bit at Macey’s face. Her face was shiny from the amount of saliva that had splattered over her cheeks and her mouth was pinched shut tightly.
If she survived, there was a chance she’d turn. And the caravan would execute her.
The wolf was like the others, young and stupid. His back end was humping while his front end snapped and snarled.
I wasn’t sure if he was trying to kill her or fuck her. Either way, it was about to end.
“Keep your mouth shut no matter what, Macey!” I said. The wolf’s head swiveled to me, eyes narrowed, and ears pinned to his head.
That distraction was all she needed. She kicked him right smack in the balls. He let out a howl, and his eyes closed with the pain. I took my chance and hit him full force with my shoulder, knocking him off balance, flipping him over onto his side for just a second. Macey and I moved in tandem to either side of the wolf.
Macey reached for her machete, and as I pulled my arm back to slash through the wolf’s lower back with my blades, she pointed at me. “Don’t you dare. That one’s mine.”
Absently, she wiped a bit of blood from her face, smearing it, giving her a feral, wild look that made me think of death masks. Her brown hair was no longer braided neatly and had come loose in several places. The blood highlighted her cheekbones and she grinned with her teeth bared.
A premonition slid over me, almost like I could see her life force. And while it burned brightly in that instant, she was not long for this world.
“Macey, be careful!” I said.
I couldn’t do this again, I couldn’t lose Macey again.
Her tank top was completely askew after having a two-hundred-pound wolf on top of her, fighting for her life. She was a strong girl. I had to be wrong.
She turned the handle of the blade, spinning her weapon as she approached the wolf that groaned and writhed on the ground.
I made a reach for her and she dodged me. I had to pull her back from this or she was going to die. I knew it in my gut.
“Macey!” I snapped her name in the hopes I would yank her out of this madness that had hold of her. Blood lust was a real thing. This was not the first time I’d seen it take over someone. “We don’t have time for this shit. They’re targeting the kids. We need your help.”
“In a minute.” She shrugged me off.
She didn’t understand she was potentially hurting others by following her own whims.
I suddenly had an insight into how my mentor must have felt dealing with me when I blasted off on my own instead of listening to her.
Time seemed to slow. She raised her blade over her head, but the wolf was playing possum. She was close enough to finish him off, but he leapt up, out of her range. His eyes locked on me.
“I’ve heard of you. The girl in the green cloak. Where’s that pussy of yours? I’d eat it.” Then the dirty bastard tried to head butt me. Honest to goddess, he whipped his head around, and tried to get me right in the gut, teeth snapping on the last of his words.
I leapt back on instinct alone, turning it into a backflip, dodging the blow and his teeth, but barely. His attention on me gave Macey the opening she needed. He’d ignored the human to come after me.
He was a fool; she had a mean streak a mile wide and the blood lust drove her hard.
He lunged at me, and I hit him in a sweeping blow with the blade in my right hand that carried all my weight behind it as I stood from my backflip. My curved blade tore through the flesh of his exposed neck as he overshot me. He stumbled a few feet, gagged as he tried to breathe through his sheared neck and flapping muscles before he went to his knees, dying slowly, bleeding out in a puddle that soaked into the ground.
Werewolves might heal fast, but a blow like that was deadly even to the hardiest of supernaturals.
“Hey, he was mine,” Macey said like a bratty little kid. Except she was serious. Genuine hurt and anger flashed in her green eyes as she stormed off.
I suddenly felt bad for the shit I’d put Rylee through. It seemed as though karma was giving me my own dose of bad attitude.
<
br /> Her angst was the least of my worries at the moment.
The snarls of the battle atop the hood of the truck drew my attention from Macey as she ran off to find another wolf to fight.
You can’t save them all. Oka’s thoughts came through loud and clear. A flash of orange showed me she was back under the truck, waiting for her moment.
“Macey is going to die,” I whispered, and a burst of genuine sadness rolled through me. The older wolves were waiting and there would be no stopping them.
I caught a glimmer of movement as they watched from the trees and my blood ran cold.
Fuck shit damn, this was going to get far worse before it got any better.
But I had to try and stem the tide.
“Macey! The truck! Protect the kids!” I called after her, hoping I might channel that rage of hers in a better direction. But she didn’t hear me. She took off toward the outskirts, closer to the older wolves.
She thought she was strong enough to survive this battle.
And I wasn’t sure any of us would if the older wolves took things in hand. I twisted around.
Sage was right where I’d left her: trapped atop the pickup truck, throwing weak spells, pissing off the oversized wolves out for blood. She didn’t carry any traditional weapons, which was a fatal mistake if you asked me.
My mentor had taught me that while magic was a powerful weapon, there were times when magic could use some help getting your ass out of the frying pan and avoiding the fire.
Times like being surrounded by wolves and humans.
My only choice was to get back to the truck, neutralize the threat one wolf at a time, and then make it look like Sage had saved the caravan. At least, that was my plan. And like Rylee, my plans always played out beautifully.
Yeah, not so much.
The wolf currently after Sage was a brilliant white-coated beast with eyes so blue, I could see them even at a distance. And he was big, so large he took up most of the truck bed, which would leave me very little room to move around, or even get a good angle on the beast. My knives were not made for throwing. He leapt from the truck bed to the top of the cab and let out a long howl.
I ran toward them, my thoughts spinning.
For just a moment, the beast’s size made me wonder if this was their Alpha, but I shook that off a second after I thought it. I seriously doubted it with the wolves that waited in the trees. In theory, you take out the Alpha and the pack should scatter. At a minimum they would retreat and regroup, giving us a chance to slip away, cross territories and lose them in the wake of the big trucks.
In this case, I’d settle for taking out the biggest wolf and hope it did the same as killing the Alpha. The other wolves seemed to be waiting on him to make his kill of the witch.
As I got within ten feet of the truck, Sage fell onto the hood flat on her back, her robes flying up over her head as she screeched, which gave the wolf even more dominance over the sanctuary for the kids.
Their screams punctuated each new bang and thud on the metal of the truck.
This was not going well. I grimaced and looked for Oka. She was under the truck still, waiting for her moment.
Her eyes lit up as they met mine and I shook my head. Not yet.
I wasn’t giving up on doing this the old-fashioned way.
The wolves would converge on Oka if she shifted, and I wasn’t willing to trade her life for the humans.
I needed the high ground if this was going to work. I made my way around the front of the truck as the big white beast snapped and growled at Sage. The last thing standing between him and his prize. Or so he thought.
I jumped up onto the hood, and Sage yanked her robes off her face and looked at me with wild eyes. “Help us! I feel the dark magic in you!”
Ah, fucking hell, that was the last thing I needed. “Stay down.” I pushed my way past her as I brandished my blades at the wolf. He growled down at me, undeterred. If anything, he grinned, his tongue lolling to lick his lips.
“What are you going to do, little girl? Fight me with your pig stickers?” He snarled the words, blood flecking the edge of his mouth.
I grinned right back at him. “You know the story of Little Red Riding Hood?” I rolled my shoulders and my cloak swirled out behind me in a lucky gust of wind. “I’m not the little girl, wolf. I’m the fucking hunter.”
He bared his teeth and I crouched, my blade held up on an angle, ready to cut him open.
The wolf had the high ground on the roof of the cab, but maybe I could still get a good hit from where I was. All my blades needed was a soft spot and a split second. I just had to steer clear of those teeth until then.
He lunged and snapped at me as I slashed up at him, not really trying to hit him, just getting a feel for his range of motion. Which, it turned out, wasn’t much. Screeching like a banshee from hell, Oka jumped onto the edge of the truck bed and was under his belly in a flash.
“Dogs drool, cats rule!” she yelled, and slashed one of his legs as she went. He yelped and fell while she slid easily out of harm’s way, down the side of the truck before landing gracefully on all four legs. “And that’s how it’s done, bitch boy.”
Another time I would have laughed at her sass; as it was, I settled for a grin.
He went down hard and slammed the side of his head on the top of the cab. This was my split second. I pushed off and came down on his neck in a one-two combination that left a spray of blood trickling down the windshield. I cringed, wishing I could shield the kids from the gore of the day.
Because although Frost was three, he was still a baby as were the others. Still little enough to be carried on someone’s back, still young enough to not understand how bad this world we lived in was.
Still too small for such horrors as wolf attacks and blood everywhere.
I turned away from the body of the wolf and stared out at the trees. A big wolf with indeterminately colored fur, but with a burning gaze of golden eyes, caught my attention.
You could cage that one with your magic, Pamela. You could make him your pet.
For just a second, I considered it, and took a step toward the tree line before I could stop myself, the darkness in me whispering its seductive call. If I could make them mine, we could protect the caravan better.
The wolf’s eyes widened. He bobbed his head once, lifted his muzzle and let out a long low howl, and then he disappeared.
Had he somehow seen the darkness in me too?
A shiver ran through me. I got the feeling that was exactly what happened. The magic had saved us, but not because I’d used it.
The Alpha wolf had seen the potential and that had been enough to send him running.
Bloody hell, that could not be good.
But for now, they were gone, and that was the best you could do some days.
With one foot, I shoved the wolf off the truck and climbed into the bed, wiping the blood off the back-slider window with the edge of my cloak. “Frost? Kids, you okay?” Oka leapt up beside me and put her paws on the window.
The little tow-headed boy put a hand up, against the glass where Oka’s paw was. Tears swam in his eyes, but his cheeks were dry. He scrunched his hand over the glass as if he could hold Oka’s paw, as he met my eyes with a stiff bottom lip. The pregnant woman who’d been charged with staying with the kids inside the truck held them all close to her, and tears streamed freely down her cheeks.
“I’ve got this. It’ll be okay,” I told her. She nodded to me, but clearly didn’t believe me.
A thump of metal snapped my head up. Sage was back on the hood of the truck literally stomping her feet. Like that was going to help the kids be less afraid. “What right have you to tell her you’ve got this? You barely have a place in our caravan!”
“Sage, this isn’t really the time—”
She cut me off. “You’ll address me as Mistress Sage.” She leaned in close. “The magic in you is a black stain, and you obviously don’t know how to use it, or you would have
. And I will not have an underling like you screw up my place here.” The twist of her mouth was the only warning I had.
She flicked her fingers at me and a sharp, magical slap spun me around, my cheek stinging hot with embarrassment as much as the slap itself.
I went to a knee, mostly to catch my breath and put my blades away before I used them on Sage. A slap to the face was not the worst thing I’d had done to me, and I doubted it would be the last indignity with the way things were going.
Blades put away, I slowly stood and turned to face Sage. “One day you’ll regret that, Sage.” I refused to call her mistress. There wasn’t a single thing she’d be able to teach me even if I still had full control of my elemental magic.
Even if I had embraced the dark magic humming in my veins, whispering to kill her on the spot.
I didn’t lower my eyes but let the darkness swirl upward, so Sage could see it. She sucked in a sharp breath and took a step back. I smiled. “I see you understand.”
“Ladies,” Richard said as he climbed to the top of the truck. He looked at her and then to me, but I dropped my eyes. I didn’t need him to see how ugly I was inside.
Richard took Sage’s hand and raised it into the air as if she were the champion of the day.
What a crock of horseshit. Everyone had pitched in, this was hardly Sage’s handiwork. If anything, she’d put people in danger, not saved them.
Richard held up both hands, silencing the crowd. “This attack is more proof how valuable the children are: they are our future. We must continue east. The Haven, Shamballa, is our only hope of survival. Sage will get us there. She will keep us safe on the journey, just as she has done today.” Richard’s voice was hoarse from the fight, full of exhaustion. And hope, damn it, he still had that in spades.
I lifted both eyebrows at Richard’s praise of Sage.
There were others who had fought, the rest of the caravan had helped too. As if this victory was hers and hers alone.
Ahh, you deserve their love, Pamela. You deserve their gratitude.
Aimless Witch Page 7
