Magaestra: Found: An urban fantasy series

by Katherine Kim

  "Well," Faith said softly. "I can already tell you one thing that those books are going to get wrong."

  Aldric's eyes blinked open and it took a moment for him to focus on her. "Oh?"

  She swallowed and nodded. "They're going to try to tell me that vampires are cold." She shook her head slightly and felt his fingers slip against her skin. "Nothing about you is cold at all."

  As if to prove her right, she saw a fire blaze in his eyes for a moment before he blinked it away. He smiled and leaned his forehead against hers and let it rest lightly there for a moment.

  "Faith," his voice whispered over her skin.

  They sat like that for who knew how long, and unlike when she was sobbing on his shoulder, a small part of her hoped this moment would never end.

  Somewhere downstairs a door closed loudly, and Aldric was instantly sitting up, alert and lethal for a second before relaxing again with a shy smile. “Just Marc coming back inside. He went to patrol around the lodge property and check in with the enforcers we have set to watch overnight."

  "Oh, that's good. That actually makes me feel better, a bit," Faith wondered if she sounded as breathy as she felt, so she swallowed "Um, how do you know that, though?"

  "We discussed it before I came upstairs," Aldric answered.

  "No, I mean, who it was that closed the door downstairs."

  "Oh, I can hear him walking through the kitchen, and I know the sound of his walk. We have lived together here for many years." Aldric smiled again and drew her head close again to kiss her forehead. Then he stood and, with that small, shy smile he walked to the door and softly closed it behind him.

  "Well," Faith muttered to herself, brushing her fingers over her forehead where his lips had just been and staring at the back of the door. "Now I won't be able to sleep for a completely different reason."

  12

  Aldric stepped into Marc's office and raised an eyebrow at his friend. "Anything?"

  "Nothing that would upset us, no. Tamika's going to do a few more laps, then sleep with her door open in case," Marc said. "I touched base with the patrols out there, and they haven't seen anything either, though they have scented several strange wolves in the area now as well. And I've fielded a few phone calls about them as well. People are catching their scents in town.“

  "Do we know where they might be located? If they abducted Cristina Latham, then they likely took her back to their local base."

  Marc sighed and shook his head. "Nothing yet, but we're looking. There is a lot of woodland to cover, and the search teams were starting at the Latham's cabin. The trackers are all familiar now with all three Latham ladies' scents, from the bedding in the cabin. They also picked up several vampire scents, but as far as wolves go, they just found traces of the scents you and Tamika caught. They must have gotten into a car since those disappear almost immediately, along with Crissy Latham’s scent. And I am very concerned about the scent of blighthound you picked up on that dead rogue.”

  Aldric nodded. None of this was particularly surprising news, though troubling.

  "I am going to hunt. You used the last of the venison this evening, and it might be best if I stay as healthy as possible. Tomorrow morning I will call my cousin to see if he can find any traces digitally."

  "Not a bad idea," Marc said. He stretched back in his desk chair before reaching out to turn off his screen. "If these guys rented a space somewhere, there's bound to be a record of it."

  Marc stood and walked over to meet Aldric in the doorway. "Be careful on your hunt. We can always use the meat, but with who knows how many rogues in our territory and now this blighthound situation… I would rather go without the venison than go without you."

  Aldric smiled and nodded, and they both left the office. Marc headed to the staircase and Aldric slipped out the kitchen door into the backyard.

  It was a cool night, for being the middle of summer. The stickiness and the heat of the day had settled down to a slight scent of moisture, and the earth and plants around the area were exulting in it. Thin clouds lazily drifted across the half moon, leaving Aldric more than enough light to see by.

  He rolled his shoulders and stretched his neck to the left, then to the right, then took a deep, slow breath in... out. With a glance at the dim bedroom light filtering out through ivory and green curtains, he stepped down off the deck and in a ripple of change, was fully vampire before his foot landed in the grass.

  He passed one of his enforcers, Mia, as he entered the forest and nodded to her. She nodded back and tipped her head slightly in salute. She had recovered from her mad run after the rogues’ car that afternoon, and he was glad to see it.

  "I am going to hunt. I should return well before dawn."

  Mia whuffed her reply, then turned back to her station, and Aldric walked on.

  It was a good night for his hunt. The forest sang in his ears and the owl he had heard earlier hooted again, somewhere deep in the night. Hunting was a wise choice. He didn't need to feed, strictly speaking. He had emptied a pint of donated blood a few days ago, but with the new threats to his clan's safety he felt the need to be in the best possible condition. If he was to protect Faith and Kaylee, he needed every advantage.

  Also, it would prevent him from doing anything foolish, like standing outside Faith Latham's bedroom door to listen to her breathe like the sort of midnight monster the movies made his kind out to be. Granted, it had been her breathing that had alerted him earlier that she perhaps needed company. He had heard it picking up and start to get irregular in the way that suggested panic or sharp anxiety. Marc had told him about her panic attack earlier in the afternoon.

  So he had run into his room and grabbed the first books from his shelf that he laid his hands on, to hopefully give her something else to focus on. Much, as it turned out, to his eternal embarrassment. He really should find other reading material.

  Aldric stepped silently over a large branch fallen across his path. He was following a game trail that he often used, stepping lightly down the narrow almost-pathway more by habit than by intent. His mind was still half in the room behind him with the green and ivory curtains, sitting beside a brave, strong, beautiful woman who, for some impossible reason felt she could lean on him when she needed someone else to carry her burdens for a moment.

  That she had chosen to lean on him at all made his thoughts race.

  Certainly, he was no innocent. He had ample experience with women. He was, after all, a little over a century old. Still, however, they had been mainly vampires who understood his nature and were not overly afraid of him. Alternately, they were humans who were ignorant entirely of the paranormal world entirely, let alone that they took a vampire to their bed, so they had no reason to be more than usually cautious. They only saw him as perhaps dangerous in the way of soldiers or another sort of trained fighter.

  He had not lied to Faith. She knew full well what he was and had seen him fighting, killing. Most people were not comfortable to have him in their space for overlong, not even many of his own clanmates that looked to him for safety and protection.

  The scent of deer on the faint breeze brought him out of his thoughts and reminded him of his task. He stepped off the trail and followed the scent instead.

  Perhaps Faith and Miss Kaylee would enjoy venison sausages for breakfast, assuming they stayed a few days. He and Marc had gone through a period where they experimented with various recipes, and in the end Marc had preferred the fancy cured meats that took a great deal of time and effort but Aldric had preferred the simple and rustic sausages that could simply be spiced and then rolled into plastic wrap and cut into patties.

  If this deer was large enough, he would make sausages, he decided. And he would make Marc stew meat and ground venison for the freezer. He tracked the deer– three of them, he thought, though he only intended to take one– and turned his plans over in his mind. He hoped that Faith would enjoy the sausages.

  His wandering thoughts were one reason he was not prepar
ed when the strange wolf landed on his back and took him to the ground, raking claws down his flesh and shredding his shirt. He landed with a grunt and rolled, forcing the wolf to jump clear. It darted in again to slash at his exposed stomach, but Aldric caught the wolf by his throat and heaved, flinging the creature away to crash into a tree trunk and slide to the ground.

  Aldric was barely back on his feet when a second wolf came at him from his left. He dodged, then leaped over the third wolf who charged him to spin and keep all three beasts in his view. The one in the middle was dark grey, nearly black, and the other two were a bit lighter.

  All three stood almost half again as large as a natural wolf, a clear indication of their paranormal status, but they were slightly shabby, like they hadn't seen a bath in too many days and had not bothered to groom themselves. Aldric thought they would be considered somewhat greasy and underfed in their human forms. Their eyes were varying degrees of that dull red that told Aldric that they, too, were halfway to feral. Rogues who had gone too long without the influence of an Alpha to ground them.

  They crouched, their ears back and their sharp teeth exposed in snarls. Aldric hissed back, baring his own formidable teeth to their view.

  "You are on Frostwalker Clan land, and I believe you have one of our people. You will return her immediately and leave the area.”

  The middle wolf snarled louder and moved to leap again. Aldric could not simply kill the beasts. He needed them alive to tell him where Cristina Latham was being held. And he had no doubt now that she was, indeed, held captive somewhere nearby. Without the easy solution of simply killing his attackers available to him, he was somewhat hampered.

  The wolf leapt, followed closely by his two companions, and Aldric had no more time to spare for thoughts of plans. He had only enough time for response and action. The three attackers may have been ill-kempt, but they were clearly practiced, and slowly drove Aldric back. His arms and legs bled freely, and the gashes on his back ached now where his skin felt slick and wet. There was a new set of claw marks on his side, raking down his ribs and bleeding into the waistband of his jeans.

  "Enough!" he roared.

  Aldric grabbed the next wolf that dodged in to take a swipe at him, and held him by the throat "I really only need one of you wolves alive."

  With barely even a thought he dug his claws into the soft flesh of the wolf's throat. In the distance he heard one of his own enforcers howl an alert, having heard his shout. The two remaining wolves backed up, snarling, spittle dripping from their jaws as they, too, howled in thwarted rage before they turned and ran off into the dark. Aldric considered giving chase, but his injuries told him that would be foolish at best.

  "Damn," Aldric growled under his breath. After a moment he leaned back his head and added his own howl of rage to the night's noise. It was a poor imitation of Mia's information-laden call to arms from a few moments earlier, but he knew it would reassure his clanmates that he was at least well enough to answer, which meant that his opponents were no longer an immediate concern.

  Surprisingly, it was Marc that reached him first, not one of the enforcers.

  "I told Mia and the others to stay near the house. What the hell happened to you?" Marc glanced down at the dead wolf and then back to Aldric, who was shrugging out of the tattered remains of his shirt. "Jesus."

  “Two of them were the wolves I scented at the cabin." Aldric said, swiping at the blood he could reach. “The leader is a fierce opponent, and all three of the here were experienced fighters. The rogues I fought at the cabin were not so seasoned.”

  "Hell," Marc said. He tipped his head back and howled a message, and a moment later Aldric heard an answering call. "The house is clear. Someone will come back here to follow the other two, but right now we're getting you to the house to get cleaned up. How the hell did they get your back? Nobody gets your back."

  "I was distracted," Aldric muttered as he turned. He stepped over a rock and pushed through the brush, heading back to the game trail.

  "I'm sorry, what now?" Marc's voice came to him through the shrubbery behind him.

  His smaller injuries were beginning to itch, indicating that they were beginning to heal. Unfortunately, the larger wounds would take more time. Perhaps a full day, going by the way the felt. Aldric swore again under his breath. He didn’t even get to feed.

  "I was distracted. I was planning what I wished to do with the deer after I fed," he hedged. It wasn't a lie, after all.

  "Holy hell, Aldric," Marc's voice was full of glee. "You were planning on feeding Faith, weren't you? Like, providing for her."

  Aldric ground his teeth together, then just as quickly as his irritation hit, it drained away. Marc was his friend, and had been for too long to be bothered by his needling. Also, too long to lie to him.

  "Yes, I was thinking about making sausages for the Magaestra and her niece,” he said, falling back on formality. He stepped off the narrow trail and onto the wider path back to the lodge. He sent Marc a morose glare, though his friend was grinning like a fool. "I was also considering stew meat for you. Happy?”

  "Happy beyond words, Aldric," Marc chuckled. "I don't think I've ever seen you willing to actively provide for someone outside of the clan. You want to feed her!” Mark as good as giggled, and Aldric grumbled at him

  Marc’s grin faded as they approached the building. “I’m less happy that you got clawed up in the process, and I'm downright furious that some mangy strays were in our woods, trying to take our people. We absolutely will not stand for that."

  The pair stepped up onto the deck and opened the kitchen door, only to be stopped by Faith, standing there wide-eyed and staring at what remained of his shirt and the blood still sluggishly dripping down Aldric's side.

  "I heard the howling and came down to see if something was up. What... Who did this to you?"

  "The rogues that we believe have kidnapped your sister. I killed one, but the other two escaped. I am sorry," Aldric frowned. "I failed to capture one of them to tell us where they are keeping her."

  Faith blinked, her face unreadable. Marc stood silently behind Aldric, both of them waiting for her reaction.

  "Son of a bitch," Faith glared at Aldric for a moment before grabbing his wrist and yanking him into the kitchen. Behind him Marc chuckled again and closed the door behind them.

  13

  Faith muttered to herself, cursing like a sailor as she pushed him down to sit on one of the kitchen chairs, sitting sideways so that the wounds on his ribs and back were easily accessible.

  What in the name of all that was holy was he doing out there? He was dripping blood all over the damn kitchen and there was dirt and sticks and leaves all over him, including stuck to and in the bits of him that were bleeding. She stomped over to the cupboard that she remembered him getting the painkillers from earlier that afternoon and slammed it open.

  What sort of mess had he managed to get himself into? What could possibly leave him shirtless and bloody like this? Okay, so she wasn't mad about the shirtless part. Goddamn, but the man was easy to look at! But the bloody part? Un-freaking-acceptable.

  Lord, had it only been that morning that her life was normal? Not even a whole day. She felt like she had lived weeks since she and Crissy and Kaylee decided to make brownies.

  "You have no idea how lucky you are that Kaylee and Jake didn't wake up, all the racket you all were making!" she fumed. Marc and Aldric stayed silent. Just as well, since she was not in the mood for any backtalk.

  She grabbed the handle of the clearly marked first aid kit and jerked it out of the cupboard. Even she wasn't sure what all she was muttering, but it sounded to be heavy on the swearing.

  "I was finally asleep, thank you very much, then all of a sudden it's like a damned wolf choir out there. I suppose it's difficult to carry a cell phone when you're not wearing clothes with pockets, but it was a pain in my ass tonight. What the hell happened? Somebody better start talking, dammit.” She set the kit down on the table bes
ide where she had left Aldric, just stopping herself from slamming it down. She glanced up at him while she popped the thing open to rummage around in it before crouching down at his side to get a better look at the wounds.

  Aldric, and Marc behind him, were both gaping at her, visibly startled.

  "What?" She snatched up some gauze and a bottle of alcohol and started cleaning away the twigs and leaf bits and drying blood off Aldric's skin.

  "Um," Aldric started to say something, then stopped. Then took a breath like he was going to say something new, then stopped.

  "You look like you're making fish faces," Faith grumbled. "Whatever you have to say, spit it out."

  "I think he's in shock," Marc said from over Aldric's shoulder. "I'm pretty sure that the last person to scold him quite like this was his mother. I’ve never seen anything like it, please, continue!”

  Faith glanced up at Marc and realized that a wide grin was spreading over his face. "It's kind of fun to watch. I'm going to start the water boiling. We'll all have some tea and I'll heat up one of the spare blood packs for you, Aldric, since you didn't finish your hunt tonight."

  "Thank you," Aldric finally managed words.

  "So? Are you planning to actually answer my question at some point?" Faith threw the last of the bloody cloths on the table and reached for the bandages.

  "We have scented several wolves in the area, as you are aware. The three wolves that we know were at your cabin today appeared in our woods here, tonight, and attacked me," Aldric said. He was trying to downplay it, she could tell. He wasn't even looking at her again, but at someplace over her shoulder. "I defeated them, but two of them escaped."

  "They were coming for me and Kaylee," she guessed.

  "Well, we're not sure of that," Marc said, grabbing mugs down and opening another cupboard and the freezer. Faith scoffed and he flicked an amused glance at her. "But yes, it's a good assumption."

  "There are now only two wolves to worry about, that we are aware of,“ Aldric finally found his voice. Faith grimaced, but nodded. Killing people– even werewolf people– wasn't on her personal list of things that were okay, generally speaking. With another look at the nasty claw marks marring Aldric's otherwise clear skin, she supposed that killing in self-defense was pretty forgivable, especially in this sort of situation. And it’s not like you haven’t seen him kill before, she reminded herself. She didn't have to like it, not that she would ever say anything out loud. Something must have showed on her face, though.