Lunar Bound, page 24
part #4 of Sky Brooks World: Ethan Series
Next to Sky, Sebastian gestured to David. “Is he okay to question?”
I assumed the answer was “no,” given the way his heart lurched at the question.
“I’m fine,” he lied with a surprisingly steady voice.
Fear had a way of sobering a person.
“Can you tell me what happened?”
David swallowed. “I was getting ready for work.” He took a gulp of water and I heard the plop of the glass on the counter. “I heard a light knocking. He looked injured so I opened the door. I was about to call the police when I got a look at his legs, that’s when I called Skylar.”
“Did he say anything?”
“Just partial words, ‘kil'l’... kela’ maybe. I couldn’t make out any of it.”
That got my attention—Josh’s and Winter’s as well.
Sebastian’s voice remained unfazed, revealing nothing as he asked what we were all thinking. “Could it have been Kelly?”
“Maybe.”
“Thank you.”
He returned to the living room with Sky in tow, rifled through the were-animal’s discarded clothes until he found a thin, laminated card. He frowned at it. I rose to look over his shoulder. Winter and Josh had the same idea. It was Kelly’s driver’s license.
Sebastian swore under his breath. “She didn’t leave, she was taken.”
A noise distracted us as the wolf went into convulsions, his claws scraping the wooden floor.
Dr. Baker called out in an urgent, professional voice, “I need help.”
Within seconds the convulsions abruptly ceased and the wolf lay motionless. Dr. Baker checked him and then started CPR. When he glanced at his bag, Winter took over the CPR. He retrieved a medicine bottle and a syringe bag. After drawing a dose, he inserted the needle through the stranger’s chest, directly into the heart, and delivered a shot of adrenaline.
A procedure of last resort to restart the heart.
The wolf remained perfectly still, life draining from his body, until a few seconds later, he was gone. Dr. Baker’s frown deepened like a fresh wound. He ran a hand through his silver hair, then looked up at Sebastian with a sorrowful expression.
“I want to take him back to the retreat to study him.”
Sebastian nodded.
David returned to the living room, aghast at the sight of the dead wolf.
Dr. Baker seemed old, worn out, as he rose to his feet. “Let’s get him out of here.”
I moved to lift the body, but Sebastian intervened. Taking it in his arms, he directed the rest of us to follow him through the garage. The sun had risen, I realized. Most likely, anyone seeing the wolf in Sebastian’s arms would think he was carrying a large dog, but our presence at the house would stand out. There would be questions, followed by rumors.
After carefully placing the wolf in the back of Sebastian’s SUV, I returned with him to the house. David was on the couch, weeping and utterly lost.
Sebastian took Sky aside.
“He won’t say anything,” she promised.
“I know. But I still need to talk to him.”
“About what?”
He stared down at her with narrowed eyes. This wasn’t a time for questions.
Sky read the tension in his shoulders, rushed to explain. “He’s scared and you’re kind of”—her eyes roved over his intimidating frame—“intense, and I think he’s been through enough.”
He considered for a long moment. “Give him my number and have him call me. He needs to call me, Skylar, okay?” Walking out, he added over his shoulder, “I will see you tomorrow at five for training.”
Training?
“P.M., right?” she asked, hopeful.
He laughed.
Josh caught my eye, nodded toward the door. I made sure Sky was okay, then followed him to his Jeep.
“It’s time to try and trace Ethos’s blood,” he said. “I’d hoped to practice a bit first, but there’s too much weird shit going on.”
“You think Ethos is behind the strange were-animal?”
“It’s a safe assumption.”
I considered for a moment, asked, “Makellos?”
I already knew the answer, but wanted Josh’s confirmation. The magic around the wolf hadn’t smelled or felt like Makellos magic. Josh agreed. To be thorough, I decided to give Liam a call. He’d no idea about the strange were-animal, and I believed him.
At his house, the tracking spell failed to reveal anything about Ethos’s whereabouts. He’d used up half of the blood Sky had soaked up from her floor, which gave us one more shot.
He ran a hand through his naturally tussled hair. “Sky’s help might make the difference.”
I scowled, but he was right. I was less concerned about the Aufero now that she’d changed it. Having her involved with a spell that involved Ethos was another matter. Looking at the remnant of blood, I knew we had to try.
We returned to Sky’s. Steven was there, checking the doors and windows.
“She went back over,” he said, nodding toward the neighbors’ house.
Seeing her phone on the kitchen counter, I brought it with me to David’s.
He answered the door, which was a good sign. He’d sobered some, but his gaze seemed even more frightened and concerned and…interested, like he wanted to sit us down and ask questions but wasn’t sure if I’d kill him for it.
Trent sat on the couch, a glass of wine in his hand, looking bewildered but excited. Questions were on his lips as well.
I glanced at Sky, wondering what she’d told them.
David stepped aside and we walked in. Once he’d closed the door, he took a seat next to his partner. The two together eyed Josh with keen interest. He answered their attention with a flirtatious smile.
Sky blinked at her phone when I offered it to her. “How did you get my phone?”
Her breath reeked of fermented grapes.
“You left it at your house.”
Her hands went to her hips. “Okay, just for fun, do you want to tell me how you got in my house?”
I watched her temper rise to a quick boil before placing the phone in her hand. “Steven let me in.” Glancing around the room, I noticed several empty wine bottles on the table, accompanied by empty glasses. Grinning at Sky, I leaned in to whisper into her ear, “How many have you had?”
From the couch, David held up a hand, fingers splayed. In case I couldn’t count, he mouthed, “five,” then lifted a bowl-sized goblet. He mouthed, “Of these.”
Sky noticed Josh for the first time. She stepped back from me, suddenly self-conscious. “Why are you here? Is something wrong?”
“I tried to find Ethos using the blood you collected, and I couldn’t.”
David stammered a little as he asked, “Did you find out anything about the man?”
“Dr. Jeremy is still working on it. The man’s blood work is different than ours. He’s definitely not one of ours,” Ethan said.
Sky asked casually, “Is this Liam’s and the elves’ handiwork?”
My attention flicked to her. Had she drunk so much that she’d lost her mind? It was one thing for David and Trent to know that were-animals were real. They didn’t need to know about elves or anything else supernatural. Glancing between her indifference and the neighbors’ unsurprised curiosity, I gathered that she’d done a lot of talking while Josh and I were gone.
That was a mistake. The more they knew, the more dangerous their world became. Sky hadn’t learned that lesson, yet. I wondered just how much she’d told them. Anger rose in me. David and Trent were likable, decent people who gossiped far too much. As far as I knew, they’d never talked about Sky’s wolf. That didn’t give them the right to probe me with questions they’d no business asking.
Putting on a polite smile, I stepped close enough to wrap my hand around her waist. She tried to back away from me once more, but I’d slipped a thumb through a loop in her jeans, using it to hold her close.
I answered David as casually as I could, not wanting to give more animus to the question.
“He says they didn’t have anything to do with it.” I added as a subtle warning, “But we spoke to him on the phone, so I had no way of knowing if he was telling the truth. Everyone has physiological changes when they lie. Most of us can detect them.”
David’s mouth snapped shut, but the sudden racing of his heart told me the message had been received.
“I don’t do it,” Sky lied to comfort them, undermining me in the process. “Not intentionally. Sometimes if it’s really noticeable, I can, but I wouldn’t do that to you all.”
Josh didn’t seem to have a problem with David and Trent’s newfound knowledge. “I didn’t detect their elven magic on the were-animal. There’s something else weird about it and I can’t quite put my finger on it.”
“We should go,” I stated.
Sky considered defiance, decided against it this time. On our way out, Trent rose to his feet, a look of awed excitement on his face.
“Can we see some magic?” he pleaded, his gaze fixed squarely on Josh.
Sky read my reaction. “We really have to go. Maybe another time.”
He wouldn’t take no for an answer, like a kid expecting us to prove all his childhood fantasies were real. I finally gave him a glimpse of the wolf in my eyes. He finally shut up. We were almost out the door when Josh turned back to Trent. Josh couldn’t resist an audience. With a twirl of his fingers, a glass rose from the table. A bottle of wine followed. Following his gestures, the bottle tipped and poured its remaining wine into the glass. As he lowered his hands, bottle and glass slowly settled back onto the table.
Trent and David were agape.
Sky asked on our way to her house, “What do we do now?”
Josh answered, grinning, “You’re going to help me track Ethos.”
She smiled, exhilarated by the idea.
I sniffed the alcohol in her blood. “You’ll need to be sober before we try the magic. Changing will burn some of it.”
I pulled her living room curtains closed and pushed furniture out toward the walls while she changed in and out of her wolf form several times to burn off the alcohol. It was a trick I’d learned in law school.
Josh draped a towel over his shoulder, the one we’d used to soak up Ethos’s blood.
While I leaned against a wall to watch, Josh and Sky faced each other in the middle of the room. He moved closer to her, to an unnecessarily intimate range. If I’d any doubts what he was up to, I lost them in the mischievous smile he gave me. Our silent exchange made Sky uncomfortable as she glanced between the two of us, looking as if she’d rather try the spell alone.
I suppressed a growl. Going too far, Josh.
Getting down to business, Sky raised a shimmering field around them using his magic.
“I hear you’ve mastered using the Aufero,” he said.
“Well, if master means no one died, Maya didn’t take over, and the house was still standing after I used it, then yes, I am the grand master.”
He laughed, pressing closer until their bodies brushed against each other. “Then you’ll take the lead and I’ll help. You have access to dark magic. I think if we are tracking Ethos, you are going to be stronger.”
He explained what she needed to do, giving her confidence and me an irritated gut. Once she was ready, he laid out the bloodstained towel on the floor between them. Next to it, Sky placed the Aufero, then began her invocation. The orb responded, taking on a glow that grew more intense as she progressed. Magic filled the room like a fall breeze. I’d witnessed tracking spells a number of times. How the location manifested depended upon the caster and the target. Josh’s spell normally manifested the location on a 3D map. He was as surprised as I was when blood streamed from the towel to form a series of numbers on the carpet—GPS coordinates. I snatched a shopping list from the fridge. Just below where Sky had written “a butt ton of yogurt,” I copied the coordinates. The numbers faded as I noted the last digit. A small amount of Ethos’s blood remained on the towel.
Sky asked, “How long will it take to get the pack together?”
“We need to scout it first,” I said, “see what we’re facing.”
I tapped the coordinates into my phone, then led Josh and Sky to my AMG.
The drive was quiet as we each prepared for what we would find. With any luck, we’d survey the location and confirm Ethos’s presence without drawing attention. If our luck failed, we’d have a fight on our hands with the most powerful supernatural being I’d ever encountered. Sky appeared confident, but Josh understood the risk. Waves of powerful magic pulsed and swirled in the cab, emanating from him in the backseat. Glancing at him through the rearview mirror, I noticed his eyes were darker than normal—not yet black, but he was preparing his strongest magic. He’d faced defeat at the hands of Ethos before. This time, he’d no intention of being caught unprepared.
As we drove out of the suburbs into increasingly rural land, I began to wonder if the coordinates were correct. Following the GPS led us to a dead end at the edge of a dense, black forest. The location indicator on my phone continued flashing some ways into that darkness, but there was no sign of an access road.
Manipulating my phone, it seemed the entire forest area had disappeared from my map. This wasn’t by chance. Josh and I exchanged anxious glances. I tried driving around looking for an access road into the forest. When that failed, I went back to the dead end.
Sky shook her head. “This can’t be right.”
“Of course it is. You don’t discover this by accident. It’s a perfect place.”
Out of the AMG, we searched the edge of the forest until I found a rough, winding pathway. Following it, the dark woods seemed to engulf us as the trail steadily narrowed. Even the air grew thick as the presence of Ethos’s foul magic became apparent. A faint, familiar scent caught my attention. Pausing to sniff, I recognized the scent as Samuel’s. Worried what that meant, I grew more cautious but continued on. Eventually the path delivered us to a small house camouflaged by a tight canopy of trees and foliage.
Samuel’s scent led into the house. We could’ve left, called for the pack. So far, it seemed we’d reached the house without being noticed. Catching Samuel and Ethos by surprise gave us an advantage I couldn’t just throw away.
I caught Josh’s attention, gestured toward the door. When he nodded, I signaled for Sky to hold back. She silently agreed. I quickly stripped off my clothes and changed into my wolf. As I approached the house, I felt a powerful blast of Josh’s magic pass over my shoulder. The door burst into splinters. I raced inside to find Samuel sprawled out face down on the floor, unconscious. Fine white debris littered his back and the nearby floor, courtesy of several Samuel-sized holes in the plaster walls.
Otherwise, the house seemed empty. Ethos was gone, but there’d clearly been a fight. I sniffed blood that stained the floor near Samuel’s body, confirming the blood was his.
Glancing around at the sparse furnishings of the one-room house, it wasn’t hard to tell that Samuel had been living here for some time. We’d found his hiding place. So had Ethos, just as Josh had cast his tracking spell. Most likely, Ethos had come looking for the rest of the Clostra. If he’d found it, we were all at his mercy.
From Josh’s anxious expression, I knew he’d puzzled out the same thing I had.
Sky appeared in the doorway, rushed to Samuel’s side. Kneeling over him, she checked his pulse. I could hear the faint beat as he struggled at the edge of death. While she tried to revive him, I shifted back into my human form and dressed. Josh and I set about searching.
Josh stated the obvious. “The Clostra isn’t here.”
He chewed his nails, contemplating the ramifications. We had to assume Ethos had all three books, but could he read them? As far as we knew, there were only two people who could read the Clostra. Sky was one of them.
“I need your phone,” I informed Josh. Using it, I called Cole, the Alpha of the East Coast Pack. After giving him a quick description of the situation, I asked him to check in on Sky’s cousin, Senna. Finished, I returned the phone to Josh and started toward the door.
“Ethan,” she said from Samuel’s side. “Will you help me with him?”
I scowled. “Help you do what?”
“Get him to the car. He’s just deadweight and you’re stronger than I am.”
“No.” Samuel’s sole purpose in life was to use the Clostra to rid the world of magic, likely killing all were-animals in the process. He was an enemy. The pack was safer with him dead. “We’re leaving him.”
Josh followed me out the door. I knew by the grunts from inside, the sound of heels scraping across hard wood, that she wasn’t giving up. She emerged from the house with him, awkwardly carrying the larger man in her arms. Her lips pursed with the effort. Determination burned in her eyes. If she wanted to carry him, that was on her. Struggling behind us on the path, I listened to her ragged breath, to her grunts as she tried shifting his weight. I expected her to give up at any moment, but that wasn’t who she was. Once Sky had the bit between her teeth, she’d never quit.
A quarter of the way to the car, I’d had enough. Rounding on her, I demanded, “Are you serious with this?”
She glowered. “I’m not leaving him unconscious in the middle of nowhere so he can die.”
My jaw clenched with anger as I strode toward her. “If he had all three books, you know exactly what he would do to us. Or have you forgotten his goals? He doesn’t want magic to exist. He doesn’t want us to exist.”
“Sebastian once choked me,” she countered. “Winter was president, vice president, and co-founder of the ‘let’s kill Sky club,’ and you’ve told me you didn’t like me and have threatened me on multiple occasions. People change, things change. You don’t dislike me now—”
“Don’t be so sure about that part,” I muttered as I lifted Samuel from her and slung him over my shoulder.
Walking behind me, she complained, “You’re jostling him too much. Be care—”
“That’s enough, Skylar.”
I rounded on her, showing my anger. She blinked back in surprise and I continued toward the car. All the way, I could feel her fuming behind me. Once I’d propped him into the backseat of the AMG, I retrieved my phone from the glove box and informed Dr. Baker that we’d meet him at the retreat.
