Текст книги "Bespelled"

Автор книги: Laura Thalassa

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Текущая страница: 12 (всего у книги 27 страниц)

Silence. Absolute fucking silence.

“If your mate really did what you said he did,” a shifter finally asks, “how do we know he didn’t kill those women?”

I squeeze my hands together. “He confessed his innocence to me while under a truth spell of his own.”

More murmuring.

“Why isn’t he here?” a woman calls out. “We should hear this from him as well.”

This evening feels like it’s spun wildly off course. I knew I’d be retelling the events that unfolded with Cara, but I didn’t expect the truth potion or the informal inquisition I’m now getting. And I definitely didn’t expect to get Memnon involved. The thought of him in this room, politely answering questions for the lycans, is laughable. He’d sooner gut them all.

“Even if you wanted him here,” I say, “he answers to no one.”

Vincent gives me an intense look. “No one—except you.”

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CHAPTER 21

I spend another thirty minutes answering more follow-up questions, and my tongue trips over itself as I try to explain various aspects of the same few topics—the night of the spell circle, the witch murders, and Memnon.

Eventually the questions peter out until there are none left. I stare at the room as several long seconds tick by.

Vincent stands. “Thank you for coming here and speaking to us about all this, Selene.” He turns to face his pack. “Now we vote.”

Wait, there’s a vote for this? One I have to sit in on?

I slide a panicked look to Kane, but his eyes are on his alpha.

“A simple majority will determine whether Selene becomes a friend of the pack. By a show of hands, who is in favor of her?”

My heart races as most of the room raises their hands. I exhale.

“And those against?”

Only a few hands rise into the air.

Vincent turns to me. “By the laws of lycans and men, I formally welcome you, Selene Bowers, as a friend of the Marin Pack.”

Howls go up across the space, the sound raising my gooseflesh. Instinct is screaming at me to flee, but my magic comes alive at the noise. It spills out of me, moving about the room and weaving in between shifters.

I meet Kane’s lupine gaze. Though there’s a hard set to his jaw, he smiles at me, then howls along with the rest of them.

Only once the noise dies down do the lycans rise. One by one, they come up and greet me, giving me a hug and rubbing their cheeks against mine. It happens over and over, the entire pack marking me with their scents as they recognize me as their own.

It’s not the weirdest thing I’ve ever experienced, but it’s definitely not your normal fucking Wednesday either.

After the last shifter has embraced and marked me, drinks and food are brought out, and the wolves begin to mingle. Before I can so much as attempt to slip away, I’m whisked into a conversation with an older lycanthrope woman who likes to crochet scarves and doilies, then I’m speaking to a bear of a man with a bushy, strawberry-blond beard and kind eyes who insists that Nero is welcome to hunt on their land.

Then I’m chatting with younger female shifters who are looking at me with round, admiring eyes, and I feel entirely like an imposter.

On and on the conversations go until Kane grabs my free hand and physically hauls me away from his pack mates. He doesn’t release his hold until he’s led me out the rear of the house and onto a secluded back porch.

Night has already fallen out here. Frogs and insects call out from the darkness, and it’s such a shift from the high-energy conversations inside that my body relaxes.

Kane closes the door behind us, and the noise inside quiets to a dull background murmur.

“I thought you might need a break,” he says by way of explanation.

I give a shaky laugh, my breath misting. “I did. Thank you.”

Kane smiles tightly. “I love my pack mates—would give my life for them—but they can be a lot.” He moves over to the pine railing, leaning on it.

For a moment, I stare after him, my breath hitching. I’m unsure where the two of us are at or where the relationship goes from here.

“Relax, Selene,” he says, not bothering to turn around. “I’m not going to bite you. That’s what you’ve been worried about, right?”

Maybe I thanked Kane too soon. This conversation is already harder than any of the ones I had inside.

“Do you love him?” he asks.

Memnon, he means.

I step up to the railing next to him and lean against it. “I did once.”

“Once,” he echoes. His gaze returns to me. “But not anymore.”

I lift a shoulder. “He’s my soul mate—but no, I don’t.” If I did, the binding spell Memnon invoked would break.

“You don’t have to be with an asshole just because your magic is joined,” Kane says.

“I’m not with him,” I remind Kane. “Last night was … just sex.” I try to ignore the fact that it was the most searing, erotic sex I’ve had in this life.

“Just sex,” Kane echoes, his voice bitter. “Tell me, if he hadn’t shown up, would you have spent the night with me? Would you have had just sex with me?”

I open my mouth, but I genuinely have no idea what in the seven hells I’m supposed to say.

“You were worried about me biting you,” he continues. His eyes drop to my neck before returning to mine. “Was that it?”

I remember how it felt kissing him last night. Wrong, wrong, wrong.

“That was partly it,” I say, hoping to avoid discussing all the ways my bond betrays me when I’m with people other than Memnon.

“Would that really have been so bad? Would I have been so bad?”

I frown, flustered by this entire conversation. “Kane, I’m sorry if I unlocked some secret insecurity⁠—”

He laughs hollowly at that. “An insecurity? Selene, I’m all but begging you to actually consider me instead of the menace who thinks you belong to him. This isn’t me being insecure. This is me wanting you and wanting you to want me back the way you did a few weeks ago.”

I want that version of me back too. I stare at the dark sky. “Kane, my life is a mess. I’m a mess. I don’t know what you see in me, but you’ve picked the wrong girl.”

“What I see in you?” Again, he laughs, but this time, the sound has a pained edge to it. “You saved my pack mate—you nearly died doing so. You are hilarious and a fucking good time when you cut loose. You’re honorable, beautiful, and powerful.” His eyes drop to my neck again.

I’m barely breathing. Intuition is telling me to back away from the shifter, but I’m also caught up in his words.

He reaches out and touches the pulse at my throat. “Would it really be so bad?” he says again. His gaze flicks to me, and his wolf is in his eyes. It looks…hungry.

I go still the way I imagine hares do when they face down a predator.

“You’re not serious, are you?” I breathe. I can’t tell, but intuition is still insisting I back away.

“I could claim you. Right here, right now,” he says, his eyes fixed on my throat. “I would make sure it didn’t hurt.”

Holy Goddess.

I force myself to turn more fully to face him, startled at the proposition. I search his features. “You hardly know me.”

He draws his attention up to my eyes. “There is an understanding shifters have with their wolves that mates are a matter of instinct. My wolf likes you—he has since the moment you healed him.”

“I’m already mates with someone else,” I say.

“You are with a monster,” Kane says. “One who was happy enough to destroy your life when it suited him.”

Sort of. I mean, shit pulled an Uno reverse real quick.

“If I claimed you,” he continues, “then I would have an equal right to be your mate.”

I place a hand over the juncture between my neck and shoulder and shake my head. “Kane, I don’t want that.”

His eyes are lupine when he takes a step toward me. There was barely any distance between us before; he’s fully in my space now.

“Are you sure?” he says, his voice unnaturally low. “Imagine what it would be like to be tied to someone who wants you, loves you.”

I do know what that’s like. That’s never been the problem. For all Memnon’s flaws, he’s always loved me.

This is…a lot. And if my life was different—simpler—I might happily bare my neck for Kane and go along with this.

But things aren’t simple.

“I think,” I say, carefully picking my words, “if it’s loyalty your pack holds in high regard, then you’re going to understand that I can’t be with you like that.”

Kane looks like I struck him, and I feel like I’m carving my own heart out with a dull kitchen knife.

“I have a soul mate,” I continue. “One who is legitimately terrible, but he’s…mine.” I laid claim to him in my mind earlier today, but the sentiment rings even truer now that I’ve spoken it out loud. “Long ago, I gave my life for a spell strong enough to be with him again. To be here, in this life, trying to figure it out with him, and I owe it to who I was to⁠—”

I choke, the rest of the words falling away as sharp, burning pain blooms from my side.

“Selene?” Kane says, alarmed.

I grip my ribcage against the sizzling pain, grinding my teeth together to keep from screaming.

“What’s wrong?” the shifter says, reaching for me.

“My side,” I gasp out.

Kane gently pries my hands away and lifts my shirt. The skin beneath is smooth, unblemished. I neither sense nor see any malicious magic, but it hurts like someone has shoved a hot poker into it.

What in the seven hells is going on?

“There’s nothing there,” Kane says.

As he speaks, another wave of pain comes. My back arches, and I fall into the shifter.

“Selene!” Kane wraps his arms around me, a note of panic in his voice. “Tell me what’s wrong.” His voice deepens as his wolf enters it. “Is this a curse?”

Selene! Memnon bellows down our bond. Where are you?

The bond—the bond, of course. The pain isn’t my own; it’s coming from my bond.

Kane’s still talking to me, but I’m no longer listening.

Memnon! I shout. Memnon! What’s happening to him? The pain is unbearable, and I’m only feeling an echo of it.

What’s happening? Memnon demands, echoing my thoughts. Are you all right?

Am I all right? Why would Memnon be asking that if he’s the one hurt?

I suck in a sharp breath when I realize who I’m actually feeling.

“Nero.”

My familiar is being attacked.

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CHAPTER 22

I slip down my connection with my panther and into his mind, right as he’s snarling.

He pounces on someone, the action making his side scream. The metallic tang of blood coats my mouth—his mouth—as he sinks his teeth into their neck, then rips out their throat.

Vaguely, I’m aware that my actual knees have buckled and Kane’s fully holding me up. I’m shocked by the violence, but I did recently give Nero permission to maim and kill anyone who tries to hurt him.

Even as his victim collapses beneath him, others close in. There’s one, two, three, four, five⁠—

A curse strikes my flank, interrupting my count of the assailants, and I yowl at the blistering pain.

I snap back into my own head with a sharp inhale.

No, no, no.

I scramble out of Kane’s arms.

“Selene, what’s going on?”

“My familiar is being attacked.”

In one fluid movement, I hop over the wood railing, my magic seamlessly assisting me, and I dash toward the trees.

“Selene!” Kane calls after me. “Fuck.”

I hear the door to the cabin open behind me and Kane shouting to his pack mates, but it’s all background static as far as I’m concerned. Even the explosive pain that’s spreading across my torso isn’t enough to deter me.

Terror is eclipsing everything but my need to save Nero.

SELENE, WHAT IS WRONG? Memnon’s voice booms across our bond.

Nero, I sob. Supernaturals have cornered Nero, and they’re hurting him.

On the other end of the cord that links me to the sorcerer, I sense him go very quiet and very cold.

Where is he?

The Everwoods.

I’m coming. It’s a vow and a threat.

Even that, however, might not be enough.

By then, it might be too late. I might be too late.

Oh Goddess, oh Goddess.

I flood my connection to Nero with as much power as I possibly can. I don’t know that it will do anything for him like it would for me, but it’s the best solution my panic-laced mind can come up with.

“Find my panther,” I command my magic in Sarmatian.

A ribbon of it snakes out of me, weaving through the trees in the same direction my intuition has already been leading me. I run as fast as my legs can carry me, uncaring about my ragged breathing. Even my power is well-honed for once, fluidly catching me when I trip over a fallen branch and helping me right myself before I hit the earth.

Familiars are tied to their supernatural, the magical bond lengthening and strengthening their lives. But they can be killed. It’s been known to happen.

At that petrifying thought, I force more magic down my bond with Nero and force my legs faster, even as my lungs scream and my body feels like it’s incinerating itself from the inside out.

Far away, a chorus of howls fills up the night air. Unlike earlier, there’s no mistaking these sounds. They’re war cries.

I nearly lose my footing. The lycanthropes are coming to my aid. Despite turning Kane down, he summoned them. I sob a little as I run.

A sharp, slashing pain blooms in my stomach, this one much deeper than the others, and I nearly trip over my own feet at the onslaught of it.

I slip into Nero’s head for a split second, but it’s long enough to realize that he’s been mortally injured.

I choke on a scream.

No.

Before he was Nero, he was Ferox. Same soul, different bodies. When I found him in Rome, I made a vow to cherish and protect the panther for the rest of my life.

I intended to keep that promise. I will keep that promise.

Hold on, Nero, I tell him. I’ll be there soon.

My head is too panicked for a fancy spell. All I manage is a simple one⁠—

Make me swift as the wind, I silently command my magic.

I’ve been sprinting, but now my pace picks up, straining my muscles and tendons to the brink of their capacity. I feel the wind at my back and on my face, and it feels as though I could melt into it, as though we are one. I blow past the boundary line marking the shifters’ territory from the witches, following the ribbon of my magic.

I must be getting close.

I peer through Nero’s eyes once more, trying to focus over the debilitating pain and the chill that’s filling my familiar’s body.

There are at least five supernaturals, witches if I had to guess. Two of them look vaguely familiar, but it’s hard to tell. Cat eyes see things differently, and the night cloaks so much. But I sense there are two others who are lying on the ground. The smell of their blood tinges the air.

A couple of the supernaturals are peering beyond Nero, looking for me.

“Any sign of the witch?”

“No, but she’s coming. You can see the line of her magic. She knows her familiar is hurt.”

“Fuck her, I’m hurt.”

As they squabble, I return to my own mind and funnel more power down my bond. They likely hurt my familiar to lure me out.

Wind is whipping through my hair, and tears are slipping out the corners of my eyes, but beneath my grief and fear, violence rises in me, ancient and eager. I can feel the edge of it staining my power as my magic gathers in my palms. Those witches are fucking marked.

Up ahead, the trail of my magic comes to an abrupt end. I can’t see my familiar, but I do notice the witches around him. A couple magical orbs hover in the sky above them, illuminating their forms.

“There she is.”

I don’t know which person announces it, but I’m already dragging my arm back, my power coalescing in my palm.

“Explode,” I command.

And then I throw it.

BOOM!

Magic and fire detonate in the air, blowing back the circle of witches, revealing the slumped shape of my familiar.

The pain that lances through me at the sight of him nearly brings me to my knees.

Make them pay. Memnon’s voice is icy, wrathful.

More magic floods down my arm and into my palm.

“Explode.” I throw it at the witches, uncaring that it might blow limbs apart.

My power detonates just above them, throwing the witches farther from my familiar. Several of them scream, and fire has broken out on one of them. I see the woman frantically try to put it out.

The rage that surges through my blood is otherworldly. There’s a hungry, sinister part of me that needs to end each one of them slowly, but the moment my eyes return to Nero, it dissolves away.

My familiar lies unmoving on the ground. In the darkness, I can just make out the sheen of blood matting his fur.

I can’t breathe over the pain—both physical and emotional—choking the life out of me.

I close the last of the distance between us and fall to Nero’s side, my knees landing in a pool of cooling blood. At first glance, my panther looks dead. He’s too motionless. But when I slip down our bond and into his head, I can feel him still there. That’s the extent of my reassurance, however, because an instant later, I feel the full weight of his pain. It’s more than agony; it’s death throes.

I bite back a sob.

“You’re not dying on me. Vekahi.” Heal. I whisper the Sarmatian word, pressing a hand against his blood-matted fur. My magic soaks into his body, thick like honey.

It’s difficult to sense what it’s repairing, but I think…I think that bad wound, the one that should’ve done him in, is healing. Maybe I’m just being overly hopeful.

I run a hand over his cheek, and he makes a soft, huffing noise.

“It’s okay, big guy,” I reassure him. “I’ve got you. You’re not dying.”

My hand continues down his back, only stopping when my fingers catch on a piece of paper…and a nailhead that pins it to my familiar.

They literally nailed a note into Nero’s skin.

My hands begin to tremble as my power vibrates in me. I’m seeing red—red like blood, red like pain, red like wrath.

Before I can act on it, I hear a whisper. Seconds later, a spell hits my back, searing through the cloth and sizzling my skin. Another curse quickly follows, slicing into my shoulder.

I grunt, slumping forward over Nero, my magic still healing him.

My attacker murmurs again, the incantation too low to hear, and I brace myself, using my body as a shield. The curse grazes the side of my temple. Pain bursts from behind my eyes, and for several seconds, I can see nothing—no red vision, no mutilated familiar, nothing.

Slowly, my sight returns, but there’s little true relief when the hits continue. Most land on my lower back, carving into my skin and scalding my flesh.

Selene! Memnon bellows.

I’m fine.

I fucking hate that word, the sorcerer spits out. Hold fast, fierce queen. I’m nearly there.

Blood is dripping from many, many wounds. For a moment, I don’t know where I am, when I am. This feels like old battles and ruthless enemies.

I draw in an unsteady breath, my hands slipping from Nero, my fingers digging into the blood-soaked soil as the hits continue to rain on me.

Vengeance. The word whispers in my ear—now in English, now in Latin, now in Sarmatian.

There are primordial things deep beneath the ground. Things that hunger for blood and chaos. Things I once made a pact with.

You can have my help again, the deep earth whispers.

This is the part of cursework and blood magic they don’t talk about in the coven—how the darkness sometimes speaks with you if you wake it. If you beckon it.

“Wi’manvus sisapsa bowad bodit, dubtup san est iv'tav’ap,” I say slowly. Devour my spilled blood, feast on my pain. My hands tighten around the wet earth. “Do ligohutnutsa batwad wuvknusava xu onut pesasava va’ukudapsa kav sanvasa.” Tear into these witches, and let them feel my wrath.

Along my skin, I hear the hiss of boiling blood and I smell the acrid, burnt edge of it.

Whoever was listening to my plea, they answered. Power races up from the earth, into my palms. No sooner has it entered my system, however, than it pours back out of me, the cast curse streaming toward my assailants.

My magic strikes them so hard they’re blown back by the force of it. Seconds later, their screams start up, agonized and terrified.

I rise, my body feeling like one open, festering wound. I push the pain away, staring down the witches. One of them is already back on her feet. Another two are rising. The others are still screaming on the ground, curling in on themselves.

I stare at them, this growing, seething anger demanding I stop hearts and snap necks.

“Run!” one of the witches shouts.

Those who can run begin to flee into the forest, but the orbs of light above them now bob along overhead like their own personal spotlights. It makes them easy targets.

One of the remaining women is bleeding. Without thinking, I let my power reach for that blood. I’ve done this so many times in the deep past that it’s second nature. Power roars through my veins. It feels tainted with my own darkness.

Right now, I don’t care.

I don’t speak. I don’t form a spell. I simply drag my fingers through the air, my intention forming itself into my magic. I can see oily black streaks in the pale orange magic as the curses barrel across the forest and strike the fleeing witches. I see each of them go down, their cries echoing in the night air.

There are still two witches lying nearby.

They attacked my familiar. They tried to end his life.

Moving over to the witch nearest me, I place my boot on her neck.

I don’t know whether it’s Memnon’s power or my own, but my hair is rippling as my magic gathers. I can feel old, dark things in the ground, things that reach and claw for the surface.

I lift my chin even as I stare down at the witch, her freckled face illuminated by her blue witch’s orb above us.

I recognize her, I realize with a start. She lives on my floor. I’ve shared meals with her, passed by her in the communal bathrooms. She’s an acquaintance. It makes this situation so much worse.

“The earth hungers for your life,” I say softly, almost in a trance. “Give me one reason why I shouldn’t let it eat you alive.”

As I speak, the soil shifts beneath the witch, as though it’s already eager to get a taste.

The woman lifts her hands, and I can see pale turquoise magic gathering there. All it takes is a little push of my magic, and the ground shifts, dragging the witch’s arms into its dark embrace.

The witch cries out, struggling now against both me and the earth. But her hands are pinned, and the more she struggles, the deeper she sinks into the earth.

I dig my heel into her throat. “Why were you attacking my familiar?”

She chokes out a scream, fighting against me.

“Why?” I press.

When she says nothing again, I funnel my magic into the earth, letting a little more of it swallow her up.

The witch makes a strangled noise before gasping out, “I…can’t…talk about it.”

I frown down at her. Lauren, the instructor, said something similar when Memnon questioned her.

“She wants you,” she adds, which is about the least helpful piece of information she could give me. I already know this—people are leaving me threatening notes and attacking my familiar. What I want to know is⁠—

“Who?”

“Lia,” she finally chokes out.

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