Werewolf Mage 4

by Harry Nix

  “It’s not for drugs, it’s for helping us out,” Alex said. They were barely out of the doorway before Emile slammed it shut.

  As soon as they were out of view of the house, Nia grabbed Alex by the arm, excited. “It worked. I mean it worked for like fifteen seconds, but it worked. We just have to figure out how to make it go for longer. Maybe then we can get some of the normals involved to see what’s really going on in the world!” she said.

  “Yeah, you're right,” Alex mumbled. She was beyond excited and he supposed that they had learned a few things but how could he make a ring that would last longer than fifteen seconds? He didn't even understand the mechanism for how it overheated and destroyed itself.

  He supposed there were things like the shifter charms that worked for various lengths of time, charged up with energy from their makers. Would there be any use for a charm that thwarted the Great Barrier? As Alex turned it over in his mind, he realized he might have to go back to see Emile with another code ring. The big question he wanted answered was if Emile wore it, would he suddenly remember that Nia had turned into a werewolf in front of him and Alex had summoned fire? That was an experiment for another day.

  At some point, Nia had walked in front of him deliberately, swaying her hips from side to side. She looked back at him and gave him a wink.

  “Hotness incarnate, that's what he said. The incarnation of hotness, like a goddess, basically,” Nia said, swaying her bubble butt from side to side. Alex was pulled out of his thoughts of spells and experimentation, watching those hips move.

  “Let's not go home just yet. We should go visit that garden April grew,” Alex said.

  “You'll have to catch me first,” Nia said, and suddenly took off running. Alex chased after her. Because they were out on a public street neither could shift to hybrid form, but still the joy of the chase was something the wolf side of him loved. Nia ended up dashing down the side of the abandoned house, out the back and through the gate, Alex barely a step behind her. As soon as they were through, she transformed to hybrid and he followed. He wasn't quite sure what happened but somehow, she turned and stopped while he was running full pelt and managed to judo flip him, so he landed hard on the grass. Then she was on top of him while he was still gasping for air. She slipped him into her and pressed his hands down to the grass, holding him by the wrists.

  “You didn’t see that one coming, did you?” she said, beginning to move up and down. Alex finally got his breath back, feeling for a moment the touch of the wildness that had come during the thrall. He went to move his hand, but Nia just pressed it further down to the grass. She leaned forward and nipped his neck, drawing blood.

  “That's for doing magic experimentation without having half your pack around you wearing healing flame rings,” she said. She had a dangerous glint in her eye and was thrusting herself down upon him even harder now. There was some kind of challenge in her tone and now, in his hybrid form, Alex responded to it.

  “I’m the alpha,” Alex said, and it carried tones of ‘and I’ll do what I want’. Nia growled at him as she began to move faster, squeezing his wrists with her hands. In hybrid form, she was strong, but so was he. She was fast too and for a moment she let go of one of his wrists, then slapped him right across the face before grabbing him again. It wasn’t a light slap either.

  “And I am the alpha's mate,” Nia growled. Although the sensations of Nia on top of him were incredible, Alex very deliberately and slowly lifted his arms up off the grass, Nia straining to hold them down. She let go for a moment, then slapped him again, before scratching her nails on his chest and grabbing hold of his wrists.

  “Just leave them on the grass, please,” she said.

  Alex let go, having proven his strength and that at any moment he could flip her over onto the grass if he wanted. Now that they had established their roles with Nia playing dominant, Alex relaxed into it and soon the red began to pop out of the air, the glints flying towards him. Her growls turned to gasps, and soon she was shaking. Alex came as she collapsed over the top of him, holding on to his fur, and pressing her face against his neck. She suddenly transformed from dominant and angry to needing him, wanting comfort and connection. He wrapped his arms around her and when Nia moved he realized she'd been crying a little. He rolled to the side and laid her on the grass, wrapping his arms around her again, the two of them entwined.

  “You have no idea how much I love you,” Nia whispered.

  “I have some idea,” Alex whispered.

  “Seeing you come home like that. All that blood… we need you. All of us. Especially Juno if we’re ever to get her back,” Nia said. Alex pulled her against him, and it wasn't long before they both shifted back to human. Despite the shade of the trees, it was still a hot day, and being covered in fur made it worse. They kissed for a while before pulling apart.

  “So, on a scale of one to ten, how much would you say you loved me?” Alex said, teasing.

  Nia rolled her eyes at him. “It’s probably about a six right now, looking at a four if you’re going to be a smartass about it,” she said.

  Alex leaned forward and kissed her by the ear.

  “I love you too, crazy wolf,” he whispered.

  10

  Alex had barely fallen asleep when April gently shook him awake. He went from dazed to sleepy to alert in an instant at the smell of blood. He bolted out of bed and grabbed her by the arms.

  “Why are you bleeding? You okay?” he said.

  “Shh… It's not my blood. Get dressed. I broke them,” she said.

  Alex quickly dressed and followed April out. In the dim light of the corridor he saw she indeed was uninjured. The blood was on the backs of her hands and arms and some of it on her clothes. They went out the front door, past the two guards, then into the factory. Every time Alex went in and out of the place he looked at the shiny spot on the driveway which had, thus far, been the first and only time he'd flung a spell at another mage and interfered with the spell they were casting. He wished he could refine the skill to work out how to use it, but there was no way to put it in practice, not without risking lives. If he flung part of a shield spell at April while she was casting magic at him, who knew what would happen? That only left the heat of battle, and the only other time he'd attempted it, the spell had bounced back on him and he’d inadvertently cast it himself.

  As he went into the factory, Alex heard the two mages muttering. Both of them were standing, roped to the steel pillar, and Alex immediately saw the source of the blood. The scarred one appeared to have clawed his own eye out. There was a gobbet of flesh sitting on the concrete a few feet away from where he’d presumably thrown it. Jacob was there along with Yvonne.

  Alex wasn't quite sure when the teenagers had somehow been introduced into the guard mix. He left that kind of organizational detail to Jeremiah, and although part of him said that they were too young, he supposed he could be wrong. After all, they were almost adults. Jacob looked fine, but not so Yvonne. She looked queasy, very deliberately facing away from the two mages and the flesh on the floor.

  April waved her bloody hand at the mages.

  “I got an address from them. 11 Jameson Street, across the other side of town. They both must've had some kind of training and possibly another spell running on them to prevent them from divulging information about their enclave. They broke about twenty minutes ago, both at the same time, but it did something to their minds. In short, I think they're both insane now, but you still might be able to get something useful out of them. Just be careful if you take the mage cuffs off. An insane mage can still cast spells.”

  Alex approached the two men, trying to remember their names. He’d got so used to thinking of them as the scarred one or the broken nose one that he'd forgotten that they’d told him. He addressed the scarred one who’d clawed his eye out.

  “Can you show me some fire magic?” he asked.

  He didn't even look at Alex, didn't register he was there. He was chewing his lip
and twitching. He suddenly bit down, drawing blood, some of it running down his face. Alex looked at April who just shook her head. He moved to the other one. His nose was still flattened and askew.

  “What's your name?” he asked. The mage looked at him and his eyes went wide.

  “Alex Lowe, Alex Lowe, Alex Lowe,” he yelled.

  “That's me. But what are you called?”

  “Alex Lowe!”

  Alex tried a few more questions, but the mage would only answer the same thing each time.

  “They’re both out of their minds,” Jacob said. He was in human form and only wearing a pair of shorts due to the hot night. Yvonne didn't seem to be interested at the moment, Alex supposed because of what she'd witnessed. Alex led April away so they could talk in private.

  “Is there any chance we can get anything else out of them?” he asked.

  April shook her head again. “Whatever they had running on them has mixed up their brains like they were thrown in a blender. The one saying your name? That’s all he says, and the other one just keeps hurting himself anytime you press him. Even with his hands tied down now, he bites his lip. If we ask him more questions he’s probably going to bite his tongue off, then start with his cheeks. We either kill them or let them go,” she said.

  Alex looked back at the two bound mages. They'd been here in the factory for a long time now. They’d seen his pack coming and going, had even seen Julius visit. Alex had walked past every day on his way to the small office to practice his spell writing.

  “There’s no way they know the size of our pack, our location, or anything like that?” he asked.

  “Definitely not. They are not giving any useful information to anyone ever again. Believe me, I tried. I think we should let them go,” she said.

  “What does that do for us?”

  “Dread game,” April said. She had that look in her eye again, and Alex sensed a ripple in the magic around them. It was quite similar to Juno's chaos magic when it went awry and she chilled the environment. Alex could feel the anger radiating off April, covered by her sweet smile.

  “Let's look at the psychological angle of this. They know by now that we took two of their mages. So, let’s return these two, their minds broken, one of them missing an eye. Let them see what happens when they screw with us,” April said.

  Although it was dark, Alex had to admire it a little. After all, this was the enclave that killed ten of his pack, burned their village to the ground, and drove them off their territory. What was it that Henry the necromancer had said? Within the Xavo enclave there was an argument going on in whispers. Applying pressure would cause cracks along the weakened lines. There might be other mages within Ignis who might want to back away from Alex, and sending back some of their own completely insane would give them incentive to do that.

  “Let's do it,” he said.

  “How about now? We’ll try to make it to Jameson. We’ll trigger another ward, I’m sure. When we finally come out of it, we’ll dump them on the street, plus we could mark down the edge of the ward. You just have to promise me you’re not going to cast that spell again,” April said.

  Alex hesitated, not because he didn't want to make the promise, but because he didn't want to make a promise he didn't know he could keep. He knew if he opened his spell screen, it might flick over to the rune spell, and then who knew, he might be compelled to cast it.

  “I can't promise it, but if I don’t open my spell screen it might be okay. Last time we had to sit on the edge of the ward for at least a few minutes before it suddenly went live.”

  They got the mages untied from the beam, a process which even with four of them was a struggle because as soon as the scarred man's hand was free, he started scrabbling at his own face again, trying to hurt himself. The two mages were cuffed together too, and Alex saw evidence that they’d tried to use magic. The scarred man was burned around his wrist and the broken nosed mage’s wrist was discolored. The skin had obviously been frostbitten at some point and now was turning black. Alex was once again reminded that they needed to buy more mage cuffs as he had no idea how long these ones would last. He cast analyze on them, looking at the multitude of spells running, and although a power level came up—45%—he had no idea what that translated to in terms of number of days, or what would happen if the mages tried to cast a spell to overcome it.

  Eventually they had the two mages untied from the pillar and bound again, hand and foot. They put them in the trunk of the car and set off, heading for the other side of town, taking the teenagers with them.

  “Are you okay?” Jacob asked Yvonne in the back seat.

  “It was just so gross. I feel sick,” Yvonne said. In the rearview mirror, Alex saw Jacob shuffle closer to her and hesitantly touch her on the hand. Yvonne then rested her head against Jacob’s shoulder. In the front seat April and Alex exchanged a glance that was loaded with meaning. Not wanting to make the teenagers realize they were being observed, the two of them started chatting as if they were out for a lovely Sunday afternoon drive rather than in the middle of the night to dump two insane mages on the edge of a ward.

  Once they were within a few miles of the address, April got out the map. There were still faint marks on it, leftover stains of Alex's blood that had gotten onto the map and then had been cleansed away by April. Alex started reading off street signs and cross streets as they passed, April marking the map with a cross, indicating that the ward hadn't hit them just yet.

  “Gemina Terrace,” Alex said. Then he started as a car suddenly braked in front of him. He looked around, realizing he was no longer on Gemina Terrace. They were somewhere over in the suburbs.

  He pulled over to the side of the road and touched April on the shoulder. She shook her head and then rubbed her eyes a few times as though she was awakening from sleep. In the back seat, Yvonne was actually asleep, resting against Jacob who was sitting there with his eyes half-closed.

  “We must have hit the ward,” Alex said.

  He looked around until he found a cross street and, taking the map from April, marked their location, a full eight miles away from their previous location. Whatever was there had a far more powerful warding spell on it than at the previous location. Alex looked around. It was suburbia where they were, although he saw a cluster of shops down the end of the street. It was just past midnight now and being midweek there was hardly any traffic about.

  “That ward kicked hard,” April murmured. She drank some water then slapped her cheeks, trying to wake yourself up.

  “Shall we just dump them here?” Alex said.

  “That’s the plan. As soon as we get those mage cuffs off, we need to get away from here as fast as possible,” April said. The two of them got out of the car, leaving the teenagers half dozing in the back. After looking around to make sure they weren't being observed, they opened the trunk to find the two mages in there squirming about.

  Alex hauled them out and dumped them a few feet from the car.

  April had thought ahead, bringing a large serrated kitchen knife with them. She counted down from three, and the moment Alex removed the mage cuffs, she cut the ropes from their hands and feet.

  Immediately they bolted back to the car and jumped in. Alex turned the ignition, but the car refused to start, coughing and clunking.

  “No, not now, you piece of junk,” Alex swore.

  “What's happening?” Jacob asked from the back, finally waking up.

  “If the car doesn’t start we just need to run,” April said, looking out the side. The two mages had gotten to their feet. “And now one of them has summoned a fireball,” she said.

  Alex looked over. The scarred one had a fireball the size of an orange in his hand. He was looking at it as though he was mesmerized. Alex saw the other mage was staring at it too. Hopefully, they would stay entranced long enough for the car to start. Alex hit the gas a few more times and tried the engine. It had only just started coughing to life when the fishhooks of the Great Barrier stabbe
d into every muscle and pulled on him. Beside him, April called out in pain and the two teenagers in the back seat went from drowsy to awake at the agony of it.

  Alex felt a sudden urge to rush at the mages, to attack them, to do anything he could to just get them to stop what they were doing. He glared over at them, feeling an anger that some part of his mind knew wasn't his, that was coming from outside rather than in.

  He saw the source of the problem—a carload of teenage girls had slowed, looking at the two mages on the side of the road. There were five girls stuffed into the car and they were all gaping at the mages and their fireball. Alex wasn't quite sure why the Great Barrier wasn’t pushing harder against them. The whole look, look away thing didn't seem to be working very well.

  “We need to run if the car won't start before it gets worse and we have to kill the mages,” April said, gritting her teeth.

  The engine stalled out again. Alex tried it one more time and it started, so before it could die again, he put it in gear and hit the gas. They lurched out of there, tires squealing on the road. For a moment Alex almost heaved on the wheel, feeling an insane desire to run the mages over. The uncontrollable nature of it felt very much like the thrall, like the wild rage that sometimes rose up.

  The further they got from the mages, the weaker the pull of the Great Barrier got, and as soon as they turned a corner, it vanished entirely. The shock of it letting go caused Alex to swerve again before he got control of what he was doing. The four of them were panting and sweating.

  “I wanted to kill those mages,” Yvonne said.

  “Yeah, chop their heads off,” Jacob said.

  “Goddamn Great Barrier,” April said. She must've clenched the blade of the serrated knife at some point because it had blood on it and she had a cut on her hand.

  “April, your hand,” Alex said. She looked down and Alex heard a light chiming as she cast a spell. The wound on her hand healed itself, then she cast cleanse for good measure just in case any droplets of it had landed on the road. Alex and April sat mostly in silence as they drove back, but in the back seat Jacob and Yvonne were talking in whispers, and just as they got back to the house, Yvonne giggled at something Jacob had said. Alex and April shared that look again as they got out the car and said good night to the teenagers who walked together back into the house.