Lunar Bound, page 9
part #4 of Sky Brooks World: Ethan Series
At the sight of me, Logan’s heart raced toward excitement. He pushed off from the counter, approached me slowly. I couldn’t tell if he was being cautious or just savoring the moment. As he approached, his breath quickened. His pupils dilated like eclipsed moons. The tattoos on his arms shifted and rolled. So, not the dark elf magic then. Josh eyed the interaction with a silent rebuke for me. I held back an annoyed sigh, refusing to be provoked as I endured Logan’s game until he reached out a tentative hand to touch me, as if he wasn’t sure I was real.
“Step away,” I growled, glaring down his wide-eyed wonder.
Either he missed the warning or found it exciting. His hand continued toward me until I gripped his wrist. Logan blinked at the speed of my movement, but there was no fear there.
“Now.”
He scrutinized my expression like a child appreciating a feisty pet. I held his gaze, unblinking. He didn’t have the common sense to look away. In a were-animal, I’d take that as a challenge. Sky watched our interaction, confused and worried, while Sebastian casually shifted his weight toward Logan, ready to strike.
After a long moment, his smile broadened and he went back to his counter. From there, he studied us once more. His gaze darkened as he took in Sky. Immediately, the glow in her tote bag caught his attention. His head tilted. His weight shifted as if to approach her.
I shook my head once, slowly.
He relented, turning his attention to Josh. Looking my brother up and down, Logan seemed to regard Josh’s magical ability with amused appreciation.
“Let me see what we have here,” Logan said. “The Midwest Alpha, Beta, and their witch.” He frowned at Sky. “And my betrayer.”
She bristled at the accusation. “I didn’t betray you.”
Unmoved, he turned his attention to Sebastian. “To what do I owe this pleasure?”
To the point, he stated, “I need your help.”
Logan snorted. “I am sure Ethan has informed you that I am all out of favors for you. And now that I know your pack can’t be trusted, I choose not to enter into any agreements you will not honor.” His voice deepened as he turned a snide look to Sky. “I definitely do not care to do business with you.”
“We aren’t going to bitch fight about how ‘wronged’ you feel by Skylar’s alleged betrayal,” Sebastian said. “It was a foolish agreement anyway. If you knew her, there isn’t any way you’d have thought for one second she was going to give you a person as a pet, so get over it.”
Logan’s jaw set. The tattoos peeking from beneath his cuff came to life once more, this time moving in a frenetic fashion. Beneath the magic tempest roiling around him, his glamour flickered, revealing flashes of the grotesque creature beneath. “We had an agreement and she reneged.”
His magic began to gather around Sky. I tensed, prepared to charge. He was too close for me to shift, which left me vulnerable to his magic. I’d only have a second or two to get my hands around his neck. I’d have to go for the quick kill.
Logan sensed the threat. Before either of us could react, Sebastian put his anger on display.
“You want to screw Chris,” he snapped, pacing, gesticulating to draw Logan’s full attention, “seduce her like anyone else. Don’t pull us into your sick little perversions. Please don’t think for one moment that I am naïve enough to believe you only wanted her for companionship, you sick bastard. The subject is moot. I am not giving you a fucking person. And I advise you, if you plan to try seducing her, this look—get rid of it. Looking like Ethan is not going to help you get in her bed any faster than the way you probably look without your little glamour.”
“You know what I want.” Logan folded his arms over his chest and threw a pointed glance toward the door. “If you’re not going to give it to me, there doesn’t need to be any further discussion.”
We didn’t budge.
Logan relaxed as an idea occurred to him. He raised a finger, declared, “If not Chris, then Winter.”
Sebastian’s lips spread into a violent sneer. For once, Logan felt fear. His heart betrayed him, though he did his best to look bored as he leaned against the counter, sighed. His power wasn’t limitless, after all. Sebastian noticed, pressed the advantage. His pacing took on a wilder tone, like he might lose control if pushed too far.
“Okay,” Sebastian shouted, “let’s get all this out of the way so there isn’t any more of this foolishness. I am not giving you anyone, whether it be Chris or Winter. No one. Period. We can be mutually useful to each other. You seem to be enjoying your new freedom, which is only possible because of us. Do you think curses are just magically removed because you willed it? We did that. Just as easily as we removed it, we can restore it.”
Logan scoffed. “Do you expect me to believe you had anything to do with the curse being removed?”
“We have the Clostra, so yes, we had everything to do with it.”
That put a dent into his smugness. He covered his fear with a show of admiration, but Sebastian had found his weakness. Logan had spent a long time trapped in his home and didn’t want to lose his newfound freedom. “How did you manage that?”
“We have two of them and access to the third if we need it.”
A lie couched in truth. Not quite convinced, Logan’s magic receded. His tattoos stilled. Sebastian responded accordingly, softening his tone and his movements. Logan would investigate our claim, find out we did in fact possess two of the books. That was likely enough. I doubted he’d hunt down Samuel to find out if we really did have an arrangement to share.
Sebastian declared, “I think we can help each other.”
“What do you want?”
“Are you able to find out who created a particular spirit shade?”
“Yes.”
Sebastian nodded. “Good.”
Anticipating a bargain, Logan’s excitement returned. Magic filled the room once more as his tattoos came back to life.
I caught a worried look from Josh.
A Tre’ase was most dangerous when a bargain was being struck.
“And if I can do this for you,” Logan said carefully, “what do I get in return? Do you accept this as an obligation you must fulfill?”
“No,” Sebastian stated. “If you can find it, you will remain as you are, free to roam the city, the world, without restrictions. If you don’t—” He shrugged, an implied threat. A bluff built on the prior lie. He took a seat at the kitchen table, clasped his fingers behind his head, and stretched out his legs in front of him, meeting Logan’s glare with a calm indifference. “So, are we going to do this?”
“Give me a week,” Logan declared flatly. “I am flattered by your confidence in me, but this isn’t something I do often and it requires a few days to prepare.”
“You have three days. I am quite confident you can make it happen in that time frame. I trust that you will not betray us or try to leave without doing this. Am I correct in my assumptions?”
Logan rolled his eyes, admitted, “I enjoy my new life.”
Sebastian grinned.
“Are we done?” the Tre’ase asked.
Taking the opportunity to further annoy Logan, Sebastian made a slow glance about the room as if deciding whether to stay awhile. After a moment, he rose with a bored sigh and walked into the cozy living room. Anger flashed across Logan’s visage. Before he could interfere, I was next to him. He chose to endure the intrusion, smoldering. He’d already given the game away. The woman was here, in the house. Given the Tre’ase’s intentions for Chris, we weren’t going to walk away without investigating.
His body stiffened as Sebastian approached a closed door on the other side of the room.
He pressed his ear to the door, demanded of Logan, “Who’s in here?”
“That isn’t any of your concern.”
“Of course.”
Sebastian opened the door and walked inside.
Logan threw me a hostile glance, but withheld his protest. The Clostra gave us leverage. He stewed at the murmur of conversation drifting from the other room. A female voice, calm. After slight encouragement, Sebastian emerged with an attractive young woman dressed in an oversized shirt. Her gaze was distant, her manner torpid. Was she under the malaise of his spell, or was her dullness her natural affect? He couldn’t bind a human with the servus vinculum spell, but there could be other ways.
At the sight of her, Sky sucked in a sharp breath. Josh’s anger manifested in the magic gathering at his fingertips.
Logan’s scowl deepened. “She’s not here against her will.”
Josh asked the woman, “Do you want to leave?”
She answered with a slow shake of her head. “I want to stay here, with him.” She looked to Logan for confirmation—perhaps permission—but her posture was no more tense than it should be when confronted by a group of scowling strangers. Her heart rate was surprisingly calm. She wasn’t lying, nor was she looking to us to find some hidden plea in her words. She was confident in her desire.
There was no accounting for taste, but she’d made up her own mind—at least until she’d seen the real Logan.
Sebastian, Josh, and I exchanged silent agreement.
Sky remained skeptical, waiting for Sebastian to take the woman’s hand and lead her out of the house. When he started for the door, Sky’s confidence collapsed. I nodded toward the door, directed her and Josh to follow Sebastian out. Confused and reluctant, she fell in line behind him, but the hard set of her jaw told me she wasn’t ready to let the situation go. Following her out, I noticed the vein in her neck begin to throb in time with her rapidly increasing heartbeat, as if the threshold we’d crossed had been some kind of moral barrier.
Stepping off the porch, she scowled back at the house, then me. The moment she heard the door click shut behind us she turned back. My hands on her back, I gently steered her toward the path.
“She wants to be there,” I whispered. “You can’t take her, Sky.”
“But—”
“But, nothing. The topic isn’t up for discussion. You can’t make her decisions for her. She wants to be with him. Period.”
“She doesn’t know what he is, and I am sure that if she did, she would want to leave. I just need to talk to her.”
“That is what you want to believe, but it doesn’t mean it is reality. You feed a vampire regularly, something most of us find reprehensible, but it is what you choose to do.”
She reacted, stunned. “Stop doing that!”
My tone deliberately soothing, I asked, “Doing what?”
“Just stop it,” she growled and caught up with Josh a few feet ahead.
The journey through the woods continued in silence. I understood her desire, empathized with it, but it wasn’t our place to stop the woman from making a foolish mistake. Once we reached the cars, Sky followed Josh to his Jeep. I followed, intending to pull her aside and explain why we’d left the girl with Logan when a familiar scent fouled my nostrils. Sebastian and Sky caught the scent just before the jackal emerged from a shroud of foliage a few feet away. Magic swelled around it, racing toward an explosion. I reached for Sky to pull her behind me when the jackal vomited a blast of magic from its maw.
The force of the blast hit like a wave, threatening to topple us. Josh slammed into the door of his Jeep, winced but kept his breath, an incantation on his lips. The rest of us kept our feet, barely. Before the jackal could strike again, Josh raised his hand. A shimmering wave of magic enveloped the jackal, squeezed it. He grimaced with effort as another gesture drew the were-animal toward him.
Unable to break Josh’s spell, the jackal let out an angry howl. Growls and snarls surrounded us as six were-animals emerged from the woods. I recognized the snow leopard, the Beta of the Ares Pack. With him were two wolves, a puma, a coyote, and a lynx. I guessed Anderson was making his move, but where was the rest of his pack? I wondered if he was making a simultaneous move somewhere else, like the retreat. Suicide, but he wasn’t the most strategically sound leader.
The leopard uttered a low, rolling growl at Sebastian as they locked gazes. In two strides, he transformed and crashed into the leopard, driving it back. Its claws flailed against Sebastian’s flanks as he threw the leopard to the ground.
I placed myself in front of Josh and Sky as the rest of the Ares closed in around us. Josh was the most vulnerable, his magic largely useless against were-animals. The Ares were in for a surprise if they underestimated Sky, but she wasn’t experienced in fighting multiple attackers. If the Ares focused on her, she could be overwhelmed. I shifted into my wolf, dug my claws into the ground, growled a final warning. One of the wolves feinted, tried to draw me away. Failing, it turned back. The two wolves attacked simultaneously from either side, but their timing was off. One of them should’ve gone low. Pivoting, I leapt to the right, catching the neck of one of the wolves in my jaw while the other wolf leapt, catching dirt for its trouble. Biting down, I twisted, letting the wolf’s momentum snap its neck for me as it fell.
I dropped the deadweight, turned as the other wolf crashed into me. We rolled, snarling and snapping for each other’s necks until we were back on our feet. From the corner of my eye, I saw the puma had backed Sky and Josh against the Jeep. She shielded herself with the tote bag as the puma reached out to rake her. The canvas ripped open. The glowing orb spilled out. Sky snatched it back before it hit the gravel. Wielding the orb like a rock, she struck the puma’s snout. The were-animal cried out from the blow, stumbled sideways. Sky followed up by driving her boot into the puma’s ribs. Snarling, it raked her across the leg, ripping through her jeans, drawing blood.
The smell of it drove the other were-animals into a frenzy.
I noticed the lynx closing in on Josh just before the surviving wolf tackled me to the ground. Its jaws snapped at my neck while my claws scraped at its belly. Sensing victory, the wolf ignored its wounds, worked to close its jaws around my throat. I turned, twisted, until I snapped at the wolf’s leg. The wolf yelped. Taking advantage of the distraction, I pushed the wolf off me and scrambled to my feet, toward Josh and Sky.
The wolf barred my way, its snout low to the ground as it bared its teeth and growled. Behind it, the puma lunged at Sky. Using the orb once more, she smashed it into the side of the puma’s head. The puma fell, stunned. Letting out a ferocious roar, Sky leapt onto the were-animal, straddled it. The two struggled as she scrambled for a clear shot at its head. Behind her, Josh desperately threw rocks at the lynx, buying time while the lynx waited for an easy opening.
I fixed my gaze on the wolf between us.
Before I could strike, the air filled with dark magic. The jackal’s high-pitched bark drew the fight from the were-animals. The wolf backed away, as did the lynx. The puma pushed off Sky, leaving her vulnerable to a counterattack, but the puma ignored her. It scrambled to its feet and disappeared into the woods with the other were-animals.
Glancing at Sebastian, I noticed the coyote’s blood-drenched flank before it limped into the woods. He shifted back into his human form, glanced down at the snow leopard’s corpse at his feet.
The jackal was nowhere to be seen, but that wasn’t surprising.
Josh remained alert, magic shimmering around him as he reacted to the dark magic dissipating around us. “What the hell was that?”
My gaze shifted to Sky, to her tattered shirt, the splotched blood on her jeans. A panic rushed over me until I recognized the blood was minimal. Her wounds weren’t serious, but they would need tending.
Sebastian calmly retrieved a pair of pants from the backseat of his car and began to dress, while I retrieved a change of clothes from my Maserati. “The snow leopard was the Beta of the Ares Pack. Anderson will want revenge for me killing his second-in-command.”
He met my gaze. Had Anderson committed his pack to the ambush, he might’ve overwhelmed us. Where was the rest of the Ares Pack? Why had the jackal called the attack off? Now that Sebastian and Josh had experienced the jackal’s magic directly, they understood the anomaly of it.
Sebastian stated, “We need to pay Anderson a visit.”
I placed the keys to my car into Sky’s palm, watched the set of her jaw as she pushed the keys into the pocket of her jeans and started toward Sebastian’s SUV.
“Be careful going home,” I said, barring her way.
She blinked at me for a moment. For once, she didn’t put up a fight. After some residual hesitation, she turned and walked to my car. She glared at me from behind the wheel as she revved the engine. A rush of panic flooded my cheeks. The GranTurismo was an expensive high-performance vehicle, more power than she was used to driving.
I said, my voice deliberately soft, “Drive carefully.”
I winced at the horrendous grinding noise as she put the car into reverse and backed up a few feet before stopping. Still glaring, she grind-shifted her way through the gears looking for first. Once found, the car lurched forward. I stared aghast as she scrapped the rims against the curb on her way out of the cul de sac before finally driving away.
On the drive into the city, I made a few calls to find out if Anderson had made another move against us. He hadn’t. After a few more calls, I informed Sebastian, “Gavin and Tim will meet us there. They’ll bring reinforcements.” After some thought, I added, “Anderson might be behind Kelly’s disappearance.”
Josh was surprised. “We think she’s been kidnapped, now?”
I scowled. “It’s worth considering. He might’ve taken her for intelligence.” Outside of our medical facilities, she didn’t have much more to offer. We’d always been careful to keep her out of the pack’s inner workings, for exactly this reason.
