Hadley Werewolves, page 15
Stay steady. Stay focused. You got kids to find.
The bleak darkness in the room sucked at her, reminding her that she’d ventured in blind. Her coven had abandoned the compound once the blood demon escaped its prison and young witches got left behind in the madness. Sadly, their mothers were most likely dead. On her way to the auditorium, she’d passed the door that led to the demon’s prison: a jewelry box deep in the coven leader’s basement. The two other trapped demons in the box stirred as she passed. At least she didn’t have to deal with them.
She sighed. What had once been an uneventful week turned deadly when Ophelia, the coven’s leader, answered the demons’ siren call and touched the box. One of those creatures possessed her, and then all fucking hell broke loose. The one safe place for the blood witches in Las Vegas had been snatched away and no one had volunteered to head into the shark’s open mouth but her.
Just the thought of being the underdog brought a sliver of fear up her spine. Not too many elders questioned her when she offered to go in this morning. Especially after what happened to the first search party.
As the youngest witch ever to be given the status as an elder, she didn’t have many to mourn over her if she died. They hated what she was—an outsider from a coven in Europe. An olive-skinned witch with an unwelcome attitude.
An attitude she’d be glad to shove down that blood demon’s fucking throat.
She twisted her torso to glance around the column. Her target was fifteen feet away. Two young witches cowered near the stage. A dark figure perched on the ledge, its legs swaying with a strange twitch.
She tried not to stare, not to think of what happened to people who ventured too close. Before she’d had a chance to recover after the escape, their new leader had formed a search party. The search team had been bold at first, lining up like soon-to-be slaughtered cattle. The foolhardy had died quickly. She’d seen the carnage firsthand and stayed back while the first party didn’t return but for the cowards and the lucky.
The legs stopped. The demon’s attention diverted again. What was it doing? It could’ve killed the young witchlings like the others. Pulling off the limbs like slowly stretching out taffy candy between your teeth. The memories pulled her in every time, and she yanked them away. Now wasn’t the moment to think about her parents or their horrible fate.
“C’mon, witchling,” the shadowed form on the stage said. “Come play with me.”
“I’m no witchling,” Nevena murmured.
Ophelia, the head of the elders at the crow coven, had been possessed by a blood demon. It would never know what the leader once knew, but it listened from its hiding spot and learned what it could of its environment. Everyone mourned Ophelia’s loss. Once the demon took over, her mind was completely lost while her body somehow lived on with its newest occupant. A fate no one wanted to witness.
“You’re too far away for me to greet you properly, Tsvete.” The high-pitched voice didn’t belong to Ophelia anymore. A deadly edge lined the words.
Nevena’s heart jumped into her throat, and her head jerked up.
Why did it call her that name? It knew Bulgarian? She hadn’t heard that word in a long time.
“Won’t you come closer?” the demon hissed. “I’d love to whisper to your blood. To take you in and swallow you whole.” A soft laugh, almost like running water. “Your blood sings to me,” Ophelia’s shattered voice croaked. “It’s weak in spirit, but strong in will.”
Nevena needed a distraction. Might as well let the bitch keep on chatting away while she got to work. She glanced at the stage, quite familiar with the layout. Three ties fastened the hoist on the lower right for the stage curtain. Not a mechanical system but a simple pulley. She visualized her target. Buy some time. Buy some time.
You’re the wind. You can’t be touched, she reminded herself.
She brushed her right hand’s thumb against the tiny blade attached to the leather ring on her left hand’s index finger and drops of blood pooled. The bite of pain from the tip was reassuring. Pain meant she was alive and could bleed for what needed to be done. With her fingertip, she traced a glyph into her palm, on one of the many tattoos inked there. Magic pulsed as she drew over each ridge. The blood witch’s magic came from their blood and the glyphs they drew.
She took a deep breath. Then another. One. Two. Three.
She darted away from the column, going backward instead of forward. Along the way, she pivoted to face the stage. With a strong flick of her wrist, the blood on her fingertip curved in a wide arc and hit the side of the stage. It burst through the thick velvet curtains, and an audible zing went through the air as the ropes broke and curtain fell. The blood demon on the stage twitched its head.
Nevena changed direction, heading back toward the stage. It was now or never. She ran the tiny blade along a familiar cut line across her right forearm. The blood came fast. She traced a new glyph. This one wasn’t inked into her palm, but she had it memorized.
She veered toward the children. One shot, she reminded herself. She ran as fast as her feet could carry her and grabbed the wet back of her arm. Then she raised her hands. The weight of all the chairs in the room tugged at the back of her neck like heavy stones. She breathed shallowly through the tension.
Don’t look at the demon. Don’t look. Don’t look.
Just aim.
If she veered too close, she’d see what was left of Ophelia’s eyes. Only once in her life had she gotten that close before and she didn’t want to do it again unless absolutely necessary. Seeing death up close and personal did something to her insides. To Nevena one thing was certain: Fear made you freeze and make piss poor choices. Flight was the best action. Dead fuckers told no tales.
The old wooden chairs floated in the air one second, and in the next, they rained down on the demon. Ophelia’s chin snapped up, and her hand rose as if to protect herself. The chair smashed into the floor with an audible crunch. The children screamed and some backed away.
A few seats bounced back from the demon, careening toward Nevena with a sharp whiz in the air. She dodged one, finally reaching the children. Don’t look. With a gentle shove, she pushed them toward the exit from where she’d come.
“Go, go!”
At first, they didn’t budge, but with a forceful shove from one her spells, they hurtled forward.
Not far from her, one of the chairs finally hit the blood demon square in the face and threw it backward onto the stage. Nevena stopped a moment, while the kids kept running. She jerked to look back. She could finish this tonight.
End it all and put the demon to sleep.
But only those dumb bastards in the movies went to investigate the bad guy when he’d fallen.
Being foolhardy was something she’d given up a long time ago. When she joined the kids at the door, she didn’t look back. She’d face the demon again soon enough when the witches formed a plan to return the demon to the box once and for all.
Las Vegas skyscrapers blossomed into view on the horizon. Officer Drew Crane’s gaze took in everything with a wary eye. He’d volunteered to drive the van when his friend Trenton got too tired. Everyone had been up way too late cleaning up from the aftermath of the second witch attack on the small Arizona town of Hadley. Too many lives had been lost when crazed werewolves had slaughtered the townspeople.
Instead of letting fatigue tug at him, he focused on the road and what needed to be done. Something serious was going down with the witches, and after what happened in Hadley, he didn’t want that trouble coming to his pack.
“I can’t wait to get there, Drew.”
He glanced to the right to look at Ben, one of the two people he never expected to come along. The werewolf had been gloomy the whole time, only once showing his true feelings when he glanced at one of the two women in the backseat. Charly and her mother sat not far from each other. Charly, Trenton’s mate, was a werewolf while the other woman made him shudder. She was a blood witch. The very same person who brought hell and ruin to Hadley again. He practically sensed the hate radiating from Ben every time they stopped for gas. They should’ve left the man behind.
“So why the hell are you letting him come?” Drew had asked Trenton before they’d left town. “He looks like he’s ready to kill her at any minute.”
“He’s got nobody else but his hate,” his commanding officer said with a shrug. “He’s got the firepower we need and won’t let us have it unless he comes along.”
“You’re kidding me, right?”
“Ben’s got his own demons to fight, but he promised me he’d help to avenge his boys. He said he wouldn’t touch her. He gave me his word.”
“What good is the word of a man who lost his sons to the witches?”
“What better man to take than one with combat experience?”
Drew sighed and kept his eyes on the road while he drove. There wasn’t much he could say to Trenton. The man had already made up his mind. Just thinking about how all the attacks in town had been a part of the witches’ plan made him ill. They wanted to gather werewolves to help them keep strange demons at bay. On the one hand, they had a noble cause to protect the world, but he saw their attempts to enslave werewolves as downright unforgivable.
Charly stirred in the backseat and brought him back to the present. “Take the I-210 exit when we reach Lindsey.”
“No problem.”
Charly was a mystery to him. The small blonde woman had come to town not long before the second attack began. At first, everyone had thought she was just a rogue werewolf, but all along she’d been a witch infected with a werewolf’s bite. A witch in wolf’s clothing.
And they’d all fallen for it.
Until they had learned Charly’s mother was the one behind it all. Vanessa had enchanted Orland, the pack’s second-in-command, and soon rabid and infected werewolves overran the town, seeking out townsfolk to either kill or bring under Orland’s control.
Nothing in town was the same anymore, thanks to those two women. He trusted Trenton implicitly, but when it came to the witches, he refused to see them as anything more than manipulators and liars.
“Are you sure you want to do this?” Charly whispered to Trenton.
“Just stop the martyr act. I told you I’m not letting you face the blood demon alone.”
The couple had a long argument on the road. Everyone remained silent. Werewolves’ hearing was too good for that. At times, Drew tried to not recall what she’d described: that they would be facing non-corporeal, evil spirits that were trapped in a magical box. If a weak blood witch got too close, the demons’ call ensnared the witch and the woman would be driven to come closer. Once she drew too close, the witch touched the box and a blood demon possessed them. He shuddered at the thought of such violation and shifted his attention to the city still in the distance.
Their final destination, the suburb of Lindsey, was in view. This early in the morning, he expected to see joggers or a few cars heading to work, but the place was far too quiet. The whole place came off as artificial. Row after row of houses, the majority of them matching in some kind of style or detail, nothing standing out as unique. The desert lawns had ornate features, but the neighborhood screamed suburbia. He preferred small-town living.
He checked the gas gauge. They were getting low. “We need to make a pit stop.”
“Keep going down this street and then take a left,” Charly said. “There’s a gas station near the compound.”
He passed a station, hoping to pull into it, but the lights were off on the filling units. Why did she have to take them so close? Didn’t they want to form a plan before they got all Rambo and busted in there with guns blazing?
They found another gas station and he pulled into the parking lot. He climbed out to fill up the van while everyone else stretched his or her legs.
Charly’s mother didn’t stir from the backseat. She simply looked out the window from the van’s third row. No one had sat next her. No surprise there.
“Do you want anything to eat from inside, Drew?” Charly asked him.
“No, I’m good.” He finished pumping gas into the van, the need to take a leak tugging at him. Might as well take care of that. He ran inside the station and asked the attendant about where he could use the facilities.
“Our public restrooms are on the side of the building.” The man offered a key attached to a license plate. Not the most inconspicuous way to keep people from stealing it. The license was labeled NOSTEAL. He snorted with amusement.
Drew lugged the keys outside. He took in the desert behind the building. It was a familiar sight, like home in Hadley. He spied a figure sitting at the edge of the parking lot hunched over on the curb.
“Are you all right?” The cop in him made him ask. This wasn’t his jurisdiction, but being kind had no borders.
The woman with black hair swayed a bit and whispered, “I don’t need your help.”
“I can get you some water if you want.”
“I didn’t need anything from you, boy.”
Boy? He chuckled. The young woman looked to be no more than twenty. Barely legal. She was dressed in a pair of black pants with a black shirt. Her hair was glossy with loose waves down her back. The wind played with it, tossing it into the breeze. Her olive-skinned face was unblemished, but her hands weren’t. From this distance, every scar on her hands drew him closer. Long and short cuts overlapped each other. Good God, it was horrific. Even more peculiar, she had a bunch of tattoos on the palm of her hand. She was probably a cutter. He’d met one during his brief training at the police academy while he lived away from Hadley.
He should leave her alone. He was probably pissing her off, and he really didn’t intend to raise her ire. She flopped forward a bit, leaning precariously as if collapsing. He raced across the lot, catching her before she face-planted in the concrete. Her wrist flipped over, revealing a bleeding wound.
“I gotcha.” Her shoulders were firm. She appeared small but muscular.
Up close, he caught a new scent. Under the layers of sweat and clothing, he inhaled something peppermint-like. An intoxicating mint that lined her from head to toe. She wasn’t human. Not even close to it. What the hell was she?
He took off his jacket and pressed the garment against the wound. He glanced around, watching drops of blood seep into the coat and onto his hands. Not a single person in sight. He hoisted her into his arms and carried her toward the van. He’d have to use his cell to call an ambulance to check on her.
Trenton spotted him first and ran over. “What’s going on?”
“She just passed out.” He glanced at the woman in his arms. “We should call an ambulance.”
“Don’t call the cops,” a voice said behind them. “And for all that is holy, please tell me you didn’t touch her blood.” Their heads turned to see Charly standing behind them. “We haven’t even arrived yet, and you werewolves always poke in your noses where they don’t belong.”
The muscles in his arms deadened for a moment.
What the hell did he just do?
Chapter 2
After depositing the unconscious woman in the front seat, Drew spoke with Charly to figure out what was going on.
Ben was, of course, the most helpful with suggestions. “I think we should leave her ass by the side of the road to bleed to death.”
Naturally, his suggestion was ignored.
“Who is she? And what’s wrong with her blood again?” Drew asked. “Does she have hepatitis or something?”
He tried stamping down on the cold tingles of fear pressing against the back of his neck and failed. While werewolves were pretty resistant to human diseases, she wasn’t human, so all bets were off.
“Her name is Nevena. She’s not diseased.” Charly’s face scrunched up. “More like cursed.”
As if that made it better?
“Wait a second. You know her? And what do you mean by cursed?” Now Trenton approached her, too.
“She’s from my coven. My former coven.” Charly closed her eyes. The dread in her features didn’t help. “I don’t know the details, but now you have to stay close by her. Something will happen if you’re far apart.”
“Like what?” Drew asked.
“I dunno. Something not good,” she said. “We need Nevena, anyway. If the compound is under attack, the witches would’ve fled to a safe place outside—”
“They don’t head to the Holiday Inn?” Ben grumbled.
“A dip in the pool sounds refreshing, but no, not really,” Charly snapped. “She should know where they are and how we’ll get a hold of them.”
“Why do we need them?” Ben used his burly body to angle between them. “Why don’t we go in with some guns and blow the blood demon away? Sweet and simple.”
They all glanced at the dark-haired man in annoyance. Ben practically had his finger ready on the trigger. Not far from them Vanessa stared at Nevena with an expression he couldn’t read. Her scent though reflected fear. Why was she afraid of Nevena?
“I suggest we wait for her to wake up and then move from there,” Charly said.
“I’m in no mood to wait for Sleeping Beauty to wake up,” Ben said. “Is there any way for you to make an educated guess on their location?”
“I guess we could try a few places,” Charly said.
After using the restroom and paying for the gas, they returned to the van. Charly directed Drew down a few side streets toward their next destination.
The new quiet in the car bothered him so he spoke up. “Why was she by herself instead of with your coven? Why leave one of their own by the side of road?”
“No surprise there—” Ben tried to add.
“She’s what you’d call a leader of our soldiers, the enforcers. They tend to keep to themselves. Her in particular.” From the backseat, Charly’s sigh reached his ears. “It’s complicated. Most of the other covens don’t want her due to her affliction.”
