Werewolf Mage 4

by Harry Nix

  “What happened to your alpha?” Alex said.

  “My name is Poppy,” she said. Her name didn't match her fierce spirit. “The dead came and killed most of us, including our alpha—over two hundred gone and we’re all that remain. They silvered our land, killed our children, and we have nowhere else to go.”

  Hearing what had been done to them, Alex saw how it had gone down, the dead stepping out of the forest. Probably drones again. After all, it worked so well with him, why wouldn't Xavo do it again?

  Two hundred dead was an astonishing number. Xavo must have come out in force. Although Alex knew the logistics didn't work at all, he didn't care. He waved the assembled werewolves over to the sidewalk. This area was so rundown it was covered in a thick layer of dirt. Scraping a line in it with his shoe, Alex held out his arm to Poppy.

  “You first. Come with me and we’ll get revenge,” he called out. Poppy put her foot on the line and Alex pulled her over. With each werewolf over the line, Alex could feel his pack growing, like there was some number in his head ticking up.

  Despite the fact they were out in the open, there were no normals around to trigger the Great Barrier. His pack used their healing flame rings to help the injured. Alex drew on nature mana to heal the worst wounds.

  Although it was clear the werewolves had heard that he was a mage, seeing it was something else entirely. A few of them were wide-eyed at the sight of a werewolf casting magic. Alex even removed the rings from his fingers and gave them to Jeremiah to show that it was all him.

  It was just over an hour in the burning hot sun to make their way back to the home, and when they got there, Jeremiah quickly took charge. Splitting the fifty werewolves up into groups of ten, he then assigning them to a werewolf from the original pack to give them water and food and take them to have a shower.

  On the way back, Alex had talked with various werewolves. Most the time it was like when he first met Jacob, and the werewolf was hesitant to speak to the Alpha. Nia had greater success. She charmed the werewolves, pulling out of them information about what had happened and where their territory had been. As soon as they returned, she used their newly bought satellite phone to contact her father and it wasn't long before she called in Alex to speak with him.

  “You want to explain to me how that alliance is holding together?” Julius said without preamble. The line wasn't great. Occasionally there was a strange metallic echo through it, but they could hear each other well enough.

  Alex hesitated. He hadn't told anyone, not even his mates, about that elusive feeling that he had yet to give a name to, or how it had felt to influence the werewolves to back Wind down to keep it all from falling to pieces. He wasn't sure he could tell anyone. After all, what if this was some kind of insidious mind control? How could anyone trust him again if they knew that he could exert a power and make them do what he wanted? He waited too long because Julius cleared his throat and spoke again.

  “I said, can you tell me how the alliance held together? Because I've been trying to do that for decades and even the best of them barely lasted past a battle, the werewolves turning on each other. I want to know how you got Wind to stop being a lunatic,” he repeated.

  “I just talked to them,” Alex lied. He could feel plummeting cold in his stomach. He realized he needed to talk to someone, probably Nia, to judge how she felt about it, but this might have to be a secret that stayed close. He wasn't sure whether Julius believed him or not but the werewolf made some grunt of approval.

  “Nia tells me you've added the refugees from another pack. Fifty or so, that's good. Keep growing, because despite the fact you have that alliance, I think something bad is coming. I've heard whispers of mages massing. There were trucks moving about the place. People gathering supplies, docks being loaded and the like. If I had to guess, you bloodied their nose with that Ignis attack and they’re going to come back to burn down your world,” Julius said.

  “Are they more Ignis mages?”

  “I don't know. It seems likely as that’s who you attacked. I can't say for sure.”

  “Have you been able to make any other alliances?” Alex said.

  “Not yet. I returned home and we were attacked ourselves. It’s not safe for me to go out just yet,” Julius said. Alex went to speak again, but then a strange echo came rumbling down the line. He heard Julius repeating hello a few times and then the line dropped out.

  Alex turned around to see Nia had walked away but not as far as he had thought. She’d crossed her arms and was studying Alex. Normally, Alex would have been very happy to see this. She was wearing a tight white T-shirt with cleavage and her arms had forced it up. She’d also braided her hair so it fell down around her neck, curling past her collarbone. She was frowning at him.

  “You don't have to lie to my dad. I know he says that stuff like ‘don't tell another alpha whatever’ but you can tell him the truth,” she said. Alex put the satellite phone down on the desk and walked over to her. She didn’t unfold her arms, even when he touched her.

  “There's a lot going on, but I promise, soon I'll talk to you. I just need to sort some things out first,” he said, hoping it didn't sound as lame as he thought. Nia sniffed, but accepted his excuse, finally unfreezing and giving him a quick kiss.

  “I think we can still have a party, but with fifty new pack members we have about ten minutes’ worth of food left. We need to make a big trip to Roma to offload rings to get some cash.”

  It was close to mid-afternoon by now, and Alex wanted to do anything other than getting in that car and driving around town, but he understood the need for it. He was definitely sure they didn't even have enough food to feed all the werewolves even a single meal and with all their other expenses he knew they were running low.

  “Okay, I'll have a quick shower and go see Roma,” he said.

  Nia arched an eyebrow at him.

  “A quick shower? Getting yourself all prettied up, are you?” she said. She had a chilly look on her face which then quirked into a smile before she poked him in the chest and turned to go.

  Alex followed her out, still not quite sure how it worked exactly with adding another mate when you already had three. It seemed to be some complicated dance of requesting permission and consent, and he wasn't quite sure why these questions were dancing around Roma. He barely knew her, and apart from one wild moment during the thrall approaching when the wolf side of him had decided that Roma was his mate and that Prince the vampire couldn't touch her, he wasn't sure if there was any connection there. Plus, there was the whole thing about her being a Medusa.

  18

  Roma’s shop was a blasted wreck.

  “Well, this isn't the happy reunion I was looking for,” Juno murmured, looking at the broken shop window. As soon as Nia had told Juno and April that they were going to go and see Roma, the two of them immediately volunteered to come along. Jacob had volunteered right away too, and although Jeremiah made a few grumbling noises about wishing they had another car so he could send more of the pack members with Alex, he finally let them go.

  Alex looked at some of the people passing on the street but none of them even glanced at the broken window or the yellow police tape across the doorway saying do not cross. Alex could only wonder who had actually put that up. The normal police or police like Monroe, a fey pretending to be human?

  Pretending that he had every right to go inside, Alex pulled the tape off and pushed the door open, walking inside what was left of Roma’s shop, followed by his mates and Jacob. Although the outside had evidence of burn marks on the door, inside it was as though someone had gone around with a sledgehammer, smashing everything to pieces. There were some marks, black but they weren't soot. April knelt to take a sample.

  “I don't think this was Ignis mages, no fire,” she finally said. Alex took a quick look around. There wasn't any information to be gained in the front room. Although part of the counter was still there, the rest had been smashed. He carefully stepped around it, throug
h the door that led to the corridor in the back room. Once out there, safely away from the view of any passersby, he shifted to hybrid form and felt Nia and Jacob do the same as they followed. The back room was no better than the front. Roma’s bed had been destroyed, along with the kitchen area; the fridge door was half smashed off and there was old food splattered on the ground.

  “Well, that's super creepy,” Nia said, pointing to the middle of the room. Alex recognized the heads of the statues. They were all that remained of them. They appeared to have been snapped off their bodies, which had been crushed into a pile over on one side of the room. Someone had set the heads in a circle.

  In his hybrid form, Alex’s sense of smell was better, and he quickly found his way to some blood that was dark green, a spray of it across some of the surviving cabinets. April came over, pulled another small bottle from her bag, and began scraping some of it off.

  “Is that Roma’s?” Alex asked.

  “I think so. Medusa blood is green,” April said.

  Juno came over to join them, and although the mood was somber, smiled when she saw the blood. “Excellent, we can do a finding spell. Maybe we can locate her,” she said as she touched Alex on the shoulder.

  “Watch and learn,” she said. She reached forward with a nail and scraped up some of the green blood, depositing it into the palm of her hand. Alex saw her spell screen flash up. She was casting a variant of find food.

  He could feel Juno's attention on the blood as the spell locked on to it. A small ball of light appeared in Juno’s hand and throbbed. Even through Juno, Alex felt the pull of it. It was incredibly faint but in a clear direction.

  “Saddle up,” Juno said, walking out to the front room. They followed to the car, which now felt like an oven, even after the short while it had been sitting parked on the side of the road. After winding the windows down and trying to get the air-conditioning going, Alex set off, turning when Juno told him to. Sometimes she reached over and touched his shoulder to share the sensation of the spell with him. As they moved it gave a throb every few seconds that she felt to be from a certain direction.

  It wasn't long before Juno told him to slow down and Alex found himself back in a familiar neighborhood. They were near the Grease Trap. That meant not far from here, Howey and Puzo were working on their post-apocalyptic computer game. Although Alex had been to the Grease Trap plenty of times since his world had been ripped apart, he felt a slight trepidation now, worried that he would run into his friends and he still had no explanation for why he had vanished. For a moment he wished he had some means to pull the Great Barrier aside, just so he could tell the truth. More than just a ring that exploded after a few seconds. There was also a greater worry that if anyone was following him and saw him speaking to Howey or Puzo, that would draw targets on their backs.

  Soon enough Juno waved them to a stop outside the Grease Trap.

  “She’s definitely in there. You go first, we’ll come after to give you time and her space,” Juno said.

  “It’s so hot out here though,” Jacob complained.

  “There's a tree over there. Go sit down under it,” Juno said, pointing out the window.

  “Go, go,” Nia said, waving Alex on. Alex left his three mates and Jacob behind, and walked into Grease Trap, feeling for a moment as though he'd time-traveled. It could have been an ordinary work day and he was picking up a quick lunch.

  He saw Roma, sitting at one of the rear booths, staring into nothing, with a plate of uneaten food in front of her. She’d ordered pancakes with a side of bacon and eggs and a glass of orange juice which was half-drunk, and a black coffee, but she wasn't touching any of it.

  Alex slowly approached, quickly glancing around to see if he could recognize anyone who might be a magic user, perhaps a mage or a vampire who had been tracking her, worried this might be a trap for him. He also didn't want to startle her. Even at the best of times, Roma had wanted to keep a fixed distance between them.

  Alex gave her a wave in her line of sight and eventually she focused back into reality. She gave a slow blink at him and then nodded for him to come over, although she never smiled. Alex slid into the booth across from her, but before he could say anything, one of the waitresses was there handing him a menu.

  “Would you like to hear today's specials?” she said.

  “Pablo's heart attack special and a large orange juice,” Alex said, passing the menu back. The waitress turned on her heels and vanished. Alex returned his attention to Roma who was staring at some point over his left shoulder. Now he was closer to her, he saw her clothes were a little dirty. Her T-shirt definitely had dried blood on it. Thankfully, she was wearing dark clothes, so it wasn't immediately obvious to the eye.

  “We went to your shop. Are you okay?” Alex asked, figuring he might as well start with the worst of it.

  “No, I am very much not okay. How did it look?” Roma said, still looking over Alex's shoulder.

  “Smashed front window. Every bit of furniture demolished like someone went through there with a sledgehammer,” he said.

  “Oh. How about the statues?” she said, finally glancing at him. Her eyes soon tracked back to that invisible point.

  “Haven’t you been back?”

  “Not since the vampires attacked. I stoned three of them in a row, two fully, one only partially, then I escaped. The last thing I heard was them starting to smash things,” Roma said.

  Alex wasn't sure whether he should tell her about the statues, but he figured it couldn’t make it much worse.

  “They cut their heads off, smashed the bodies, then put their heads in a circle in the middle of the room.”

  “Vampires. It's a very traditional calling card and warning. Usually it's the heads of their victims, but I guess there was no one there they could use, so they took the statues, figuring they were alive.”

  “I saw some green blood there. Are you injured? I can help heal you.”

  The waitress reappeared, dropping Pablo's heart attack special in front of him. It was ridiculously giant—eggs and bacon, sausage, chicken-fried steak, biscuits and gravy, mushrooms and more. The smell of it made Alex's stomach rumble again but he wasn't sure whether he should start eating, considering Roma’s state.

  “Please, eat,” she said and went back to staring at nothing.

  “How long ago was it that were you attacked?” Alex asked. He picked up his fork and started eating, hoping the familiar activity would perhaps break Roma out of whatever trance she was in. Sure enough, after a moment she turned her attention back to her food and began slowly picking at it.

  “Three days ago… maybe four. I sort of lost track there. I haven’t been able to go home. I don't know a cleanse spell so every hour or two I move around. I get the feeling they're not chasing me, though. I think them destroying my shop was punishment for selling your rings and helping you,” she said.

  Roma was frowning now at her meal. Alex heard a doorbell jingling behind him, and when he glanced back, he saw it was his mates and Jacob, who went to another booth at the front.

  Alex turned back to Roma, who had seen them come in.

  “Great. The whole pack is here,” she said.

  “I'm sorry they destroyed your shop and hurt you.”

  The words felt hollow in his mouth. After all, Bailey the pawnbroker had been crucified inside his own store, tortured and gutted, and then Alex had just moved on to someone else that he could sell rings to. Now that he thought about it, he knew he hadn't even warned Roma that doing business with him might be dangerous. She seemed to be thinking along the same lines.

  “Oh really? Are you sorry the same way you were sorry about Bailey?” she said.

  Alex stopped eating to take a gulp of his orange juice.

  “Yeah, I am. That’s the problem with these psychotic mages—they don't stop and they’ll hurt anyone. I'm not sure how that's meant to be my fault,” he said with a hint of challenge in his voice.

  “You cost me everything!”
Roma suddenly shouted, banging a hand on the table. Every head in the diner turned in their direction, and Alex suddenly felt he was having a public breakup. There was a shocked silence for a moment before everyone turned away and the sound gradually returned. The waitress came cruising by, giving them both a look, but didn't say anything.

  Alex sat for a moment more, choosing his words carefully.

  “Not too long ago our pack and three others attacked the Ignis mages. They had a fortress. We killed almost three hundred of them and took it for our own. I did that because Ignis had come all the way out to the country to attack my pack. They’d killed ten of us. I still don’t know why they won't leave me alone, but it is clear they’re not going to stop. I see now that I should have told you how dangerous it was, and I’m sorry. I can't fix your shop but you could come with us. Our pack is strong and we have our own properties, and I swear I'll do everything I can to keep you safe,” Alex said.

  Roma looked properly at Alex then, as though seeing him fully for the first time snapped her out of her shock. Then she suddenly put her hands to her head, smoothing down her hair and looking back at her plate.

  “It's okay, it's okay, it's okay,” she said before finally letting out a breath and taking a sip of her coffee.

  “Where is your pack staying?” she asked, still staring at the table.

  “Out in the rundown industrial area. Take whatever expectations you have and then lower them about ten notches. The air-conditioning doesn't work well, and it is very crowded right now, but you'll be surrounded by a hell of a lot of werewolves. I can definitely guarantee you a room of your own,” Alex said.

  For the first time, Roma smiled at the slight joke about the notches.

  For Alex’s part, there was strange feeling inside of him. He wanted to protect Roma although he barely knew her. And then…