by May Dawson
"I was right," I said.
"You weren't wrong," he grumbled. "But you weren't right. Because right wouldn't have been fucking stupid. Putting yourself in danger when you're the one they want most--"
I hadn't even thought through what would happen if the witches had captured me. "Maybe if the coven had me back, they'd leave you all alone."
"No," Arthur growled out. "Swear to God, Piper, I'm going to handcuff you to me."
"I'm not worth it." If there was anything that could stop both my packs from being murdered, all over again, even sacrificing myself, it was worth it. I’d imagined my parents’ death thousands of times: my parents falling to the floor, the breath torn out of their bodies by the witches. They should have just abandoned me.
Arthur grabbed my shoulders, forcing me to look into his face. "Tell me you aren't worth it one more fucking time and see what happens."
High color flooded my cheeks. Arthur threatening me in front of my guys made me feel hot with embarrassment--and hot between the thighs.
"God damn it, you're worth everything to me," he murmured, his gaze steady on mine. "I don't know what I'd do without you."
I caught his wrists with my hands. "I feel that way about every one of you. You can't blame me for going out there when I could help them."
"I think I can," he grumbled. He turned away from me to face Callum.
There were shifters running back and forth frantically, carrying ammo boxes and weapons. They were setting up fortified positions with big guns close to the edge of the sea. Arthur must be planning to blow the witches out of the water before they even reached the shore.
Artur clapped Callum's shoulder in a hasty greeting. "Is she always this much of a pain in the ass?"
"Always," Callum said.
"Medic!" Logan yelled. One of the EMTs ran over, a red bag slung over his shoulder. Logan pointed to Josh and Nick. "Check them out. I don't give a shit whether they tell you they're fine or not."
Josh fell back in the sandy beach without any objection. The medic checked him over, pressing his ribs carefully and asking him questions.
Callum grabbed me in a tight hug, and I clung to him.
"You doing okay, princess?" he asked.
"I'm fine," I promised him. My men and my sister were alive. That was all I needed.
"Tell us what we can do to help," Callum told Arthur urgently.
"I've got two unmanned guns," Arthur said, his gaze encompassing Kai.
"I'll take one," Kai said, already running to a lone gun further down the sandy bank.
"Hold," Arthur called, his voice echoing along the shore.
The cold breeze blew up stiffly, tossing fallen, dried leaves into the air. Then the island seemed to still.
The boats loomed larger and larger as they sailed toward our shores. It seemed impossible to breathe through this terrible anticipation.
The boats turned apart from each other, fanning out. They were trying to cover as much of the shoreline as they possibly could, to spread out further than our defenses could reach.
"Hold," Arthur called again, and somehow everyone stayed still, despite the nerves that must be rising in the pack's throats.
And then, when it seemed like the boats were about to run aground and witches would be able to jump out into the shallow water, Arthur shouted, "Fire!"
The ground itself seemed to tremble under my feet. My ears rang as gunfire reverberated through the air.
"Find your targets and keep firing!" Arthur shouted over the noise. As the guns fired over and over, the air filled with smoke and with the scent of gunpowder. A boat ahead of us exploded.
The first boat reached near the shore, halfway down the gunline. A dozen men spilled out, charging frantically through the waves. They all carried weapons. My eyes caught on one of them as he pulled a pin and hauled back his arm to throw.
"Grenade!" I shouted, but he threw it short of the line, and it exploded, sending up a spray of sand.
The next second, a shot punched through his chest, and he flew backwards, slamming into the water. He didn't break the surface.
There must have been a hundred men in all those boats. “How can they have so many witches?”
“They don’t,” Arthur said, his voice dark. “They must have hired mercenaries. They’ve got an army.”
One mercenary, and then another, fell in the waves. Another reached the shore, only to die then. Two more charged up toward the guns.
"They're practically committing suicide," Arthur muttered.
"They might be compelled," Callum said.
"Do you know any spells to break it?" Arthur demanded. Then, raising his voice, he said, "I need back-up on that machine gun team in the east sector!"
Callum exchanged a meaningful look with Josh. Werewolves had this bizarre fear of magic, and the packs forbade the use of anything but counterspells.
I moved to Callum's side and, taking his hand in mine, tugged him back from the crowd and behind the shelter of a few pines that twisted sideways from the steep incline down toward the water. Josh pushed the medic away and limped up toward us, his arm shielding his ribs.
"I don't have herbs with me," Callum said, his voice low.
Since he had minimal magic available to him as a wolf--or so he had told me before, but I wondered--he always used herbs and fire to enhance spells.
"Let's give it a shot." Josh took my hand in his and squeezed, as he looked down at me and smiled. "Today, I'm a big believer in magic."
"If we break the spell, there will be hell to pay when Arthur and his pack figure out what happened," Callum muttered.
"Maybe Arthur is more open-minded than you expect," I said.
Callum scoffed at that. It reminded me of the way Arthur would have snorted at any suggestion that Callum might surprise him. The two of them were more alike than they realized. I decided to keep that thought to myself for another day.
With Josh shielding him, Callum began to chant softly. His hands stayed at his sides as he twisted his fingers in the air. His eyes drifted shut as he focused, although his breathing came quicker and quicker. His scent--masculine, like pines and fresh-cut grass and woodfire--rose in my nose as if he was sweating with the effort.
"They're afraid," he said softly. “They are compelled. They’d never go to their deaths so helplessly otherwise."
"Are they innocents?" I demanded. I couldn't help but imagine the coven rounding up a group of innocent people to send ashore first as cannon-fodder.
He shook his head. "They're all mercenaries. They signed up—but they didn’t expect it to be like this.”
He fell silent again, straining, and then suddenly gasped, his shoulders tensing. His eyes flew open.
"I think I got the hold to release on a few of them, but still." He gestured at the bloody scene playing out below us. "At this point, there's nothing for them to do but fight."
"Keep trying," I said. "At some point, their free will might come in handy. They might realize what the coven did to them."
"Hopefully, they take it personally." Callum took my other hand.
It warmed my heart the way he looked at me, and how seriously he took my suggestions.
Josh, Callum, and I held hands in a triangle as Callum began to chant again. Suddenly, it felt like there was a chill in the air, raising the hairs on the back of my neck and on my arms.
And then all of a sudden, heat swept through my body until Callum and I were fever-warm. The words he was speaking repeated in my own head.
He was speaking softly in Latin.
I understood his words loud and clear in English.
My eyes fixed on a mercenary who knelt at the edge of one of the boats, firing on the shore.
Suddenly, his thoughts were in my head, frantic and loud.
This isn't like any other job we've had. Fuck this shit. God there's blood in the water. I'm not going out there. No one said this was the plan...
He gripped his rifle in one hand as he leapt into the
water.
I shuddered as I watched him run through the waves. His actions weren't his own, but he couldn't resist completing the mission.
Then suddenly, I felt the witch's hand on his mind release. It was as if the witch couldn't take the pressure we were exerting on their fingers anymore.
He fell to his knees in the waves, shots pinging around him. There was nothing to do but get up and charge forward, trying to make it to some kind of shelter on the beach, so he did. He launched himself up toward the shore.
A round punched through his chest--more than one round—and his body jerked over and over as one of the machine gunners locked in on him as a target. Then the gun swiveled desperately to another target. He was left behind, floating face-down in the waves.
But there were more of them, still coming. One of the machine gun nests fell. Logan ran down to man it, on his own. The mercenaries would try to exploit that gap to open fire down the line and take out all the guns.
There were three more boats nearing shore now. A second wave.
Black fog swirled around the boats. Witches. The witches were coming to finish the battle.
"They're getting so close," Josh muttered. "Like they aren't afraid of the guns."
One of the mercenaries, still struggling through the waves toward shore, screamed. Maybe it was because our minds were so close to theirs, but even through the racket of the rapid gunfire, his voice echoed in my ears.
Another sea monster snatched him in its tentacles. It slammed him against the ocean floor and then raised him up again, its tentacles tightening and breaking his ribs before it threw him away onto the shore like so much human wreckage, bent and broken, bloody mush.
Then the sea monsters began to crawl up onto land.
Chapter 8
The sea monsters killed anyone they could reach, mercenary or shifter, without discrimination. One of them reached one of the machine guns and got the gunners in their tentacles. Desperately, Logan hauled his gun around and fired at it as it came furiously toward him, its tentacles undulating across the ground so fast that my eyes almost couldn't process it moving. My heart froze in my chest as Logan held the trigger down, spraying bullets across the thing, until it fell in a lump in the sand. The monster was enormous: a body the size of a small car, tentacles as long as telephone poles.
There were still more coming up the beach toward us.
"Hold your positions!" Arthur yelled. "We can take those monsters here. If we retreat, we lose our chance."
If those monsters breached the line, a lot more lives would be lost.
Callum's eyes flew open.
I squeezed my hand in his. "We did everything we could."
"I think we succeeded in breaking their spells. It might help." His gaze took in the scene below, as if he was trying to figure out what to do. "Josh, stay with Piper."
"I don't need to be guarded."
Callum grabbed my face in his hands, his gaze affectionate, and pressed a quick kiss to my forehead. "Yes, you do. You're the most important person on this island."
"To the coven."
"Nah. I wasn't talking about the coven." Callum gave me a wink and then turned and ran down toward the line. He grabbed Arthur's arm, whispering urgently into his ear.
One of the monsters seemed to get distracted down in the water. It became intent on ripping apart the boats on its own side--apparently, sea monsters are fickle--but the other monster reached the machine gun line despite taking several bullets punching into its massive body.
God, it was so near Kai. There was just one other gun nest separating the monster from Kai. Kai suddenly broke off his firing on the boats ahead and lifted the machine gun, clenching his jaw with effort, and ran forward to drop alongside the other gunner. Together, the two of them opened fire on the beast.
The monster’s tentacles undulated along the ground, and then whipped toward Kai. Kai’s teeth were gritted, set as if it took everything he had to keep from running, as he kept firing into those tentacles that whipped within feet of him. The tentacles jerked back with the rounds that pierced it, splattering thick black sludge over Kai.
Callum stepped forward, raising his hands, and fire flickered against his palms, then died.
He couldn’t do it on his own. I left the ridge—no matter how much these men tried to protect me, we were a team—and ran to his side. I grabbed his other hand in mine, raising my hand toward the monster.
Fire crackled across my palm and then jetted against the monster. I almost gasped at the burning in my palm and the surge of hot power through my body. It was painful and addictively pleasurable at the same time.
At first it seemed like the flames beating against the monster had no impact. Its wet skin wouldn't ignite.
And then suddenly, terrifyingly, there was a flaming monster waving its tentacles wildly through the air, slamming into anything in its way with enough force to throw a man yards away.
But Kai and the other gunner kept resolutely firing as the monster undulated closer and closer. So did Callum and I. None of us moved to retreat even as those flaming tentacles whipped above our heads.
The sea monster fell into the sand.
The third monster barely breached the shore before the combination of machine gun fire and flame set it falling back into the waves.
"That should wash up the shore in the Outer Banks or something and really terrify some tourists," Josh muttered. "These witches seem willing to risk revealing the supernatural."
"I'm told I'm worth it," I muttered dourly.
Josh still held my hand, and he stepped even closer to me, his shoulder pressing against mine comfortingly. "This isn't your fault, Piper."
"I know.” But even if it wasn’t my fault, it was still my problem. Whatever monsters—figurative or literal—others curse us with, we’re the ones responsible for fighting through. It doesn't matter how unfair it was that they gifted us the monsters in the first place.
For some reason, I thought of how annoyed Logan had been that I kept calling the head of the coven my father. James Sullivan was the man who had raised me. Even though he wasn't really my father--he had stolen me from the man who would have loved me, after all--there was a bond between us that could not be denied.
It was a bond that would end with his death or mine.
The Shenandoah pack leader walked down the line toward Arthur. Despite all the chaos unfolding around him, he walked slowly, almost reluctantly. The gun in his hand was held low at his side.
Something felt wrong.
I ran forward, calling out a warning. But the guns were firing and a boat exploded just then, flames streaking up toward the sky. Arthur couldn't hear me. He didn’t turn to see the threat.
The world seemed to turn to slow motion as the man held his hand up, extending the gun toward Arthur.
I slammed into Arthur's back. From the corner of my eye, I saw the gun recoil in the man's hand.
Big as Arthur was, I didn't knock him down, but he jerked forward.
My body was in his place.
Something punched into my chest, something hot.
Logan reached the man a few seconds behind me.
He grabbed the alpha and snapped his neck.
Arthur caught me, his face twisted in anguish.
But even as he lifted me up in his arms, he couldn't stop me from falling.
Chapter 9
Logan
Piper's body sagged in Arthur's arms. Her bright blue eyes met his, still vivid and clear. Her lips parted in surprise.
There was a gaping bloody wound in her chest.
"You're going to be all right," he lied.
My hand still gripped the jaw of the other pack's leader, my arms locking him against my body, but he was dead now, his neck floppy and his eyes unseeing.
I let him fall to the ground, and he dropped away from me like the trash he was.
The battle raged around us as their wolves turned on ours. Around us, our wolves began to transform, as did their
s, rushing into battle with each other. Snarls and yelps filled the air as wolves clashed.
This was a set-up. They had claimed they needed our help, but they were working with the coven.
Black smoke crept across the ground, first as tentative tendrils of fog poking up the shore like fingers and then beginning to rise. It was hard to breathe through the smoke.
"Fall back with her," Arthur barked at me, crossing the brief distance between us.
Our pack needed him. He slid her body against mine, and I gathered her warm, slack weight against my chest. There was blood on her lips now, and she looked shocked, her blond eyebrows arching over her eyes.
"I've got you," I promised her as I turned and ran up toward the house.
When I reached the porch, shouting for a medic, the boats were drifting loose near the shore as the witches trudged through the waves.
Our pack was being massacred. We were outnumbered by the mercs and the Shenandoah pack, who were working in unison now. Arthur was quickly deploying a mix of wolves and men, forcing our pack to organize and fight back no matter how badly things had turned.
"Medic!" I screamed again, searching the shore for him. Then I saw the red bag lying on its side in the sand, and the inert body beside it.
I laid Piper down on the floor on the porch. I had to staunch the bleeding before I could move her anywhere else. When she tried to say something, blood flowed more thickly out of her mouth, and her eyes widened with terror.
"Here." Fiona shoved me aside, dropping one of the medical kits between us. Quick and steady, she was already unzipping the case and pulling out a package of Quick-Clot.
This was the second time I'd tried to save a dead person today. These wounds were grave--a chest wound from a heavy caliber weapon like the .357 the alpha had carried required both good luck and immediate medical care to be survivable--and yet I kept moving. I pressed my fingertips into her throat to find her pulse. Bloody fingerprints marked her fair skin.
The Quick-Clot went in, and she made a desperate sound, her heels jerking across the floor. Quick-Clot burns worse than any wound. But it would keep her from bleeding out.
