Authors: Quinn Loftis
If ever Jewel had wanted to seriously injure someone it was in that moment, stripped of her will, unable to help her friends, watching the possibilities of a new future in a new world slip away. She stared up at the sky that t
hey had been unable to see within the cover of the thick, dark trees of the forest and saw that night was coming. Slowly the blue faded to purple and finally to black. There were no stars, only a full moon staring back at her.
This can’t be how it ends,
she thought to herself.
Everything is just beginning, the books I’ve read unfolding before me as people I didn’t think could exist come to life.
She tried to bite back the tears that seeped from her eyes, tried to focus on all the knowledge she had, searching for anything that would help get them out of there. But there was nothing. For all of her supposed gypsy magic, as she lay there waiting for Lorelle and her evil master to do their worst, Jewel realized she was still just a human. Gypsy healer heritage or not, she was no more than a mere mortal.
∞
Kara tried over and over to move something, anything
, on her body but it was useless. She felt like one of those quarters people super glue to sidewalks just to watch others try to pick them up. As though someone had poured super glue onto the surface, pressed her body onto it with firm pressure for twenty minutes and boom, presto, stuck for life. There was no pain, not yet anyway, just the unbelievable force that Lorelle used to hold them in place. She wanted to snort at Lorelle’s use of magic to subdue them. Kara felt like it was cheating and wondered just how well Lorelle would fare in a good old fashioned street fight.
How would the harpy do then,
she thought and inwardly grinned. She’d learned to hold her own in many of the foster homes she’d been in, and it had been quite a while since she had gone hand to hand with anyone. After everything Lorelle had put them through, and was about to put them through, didn’t she have the right to get at least one good fist to the gut or knee to the nose in on the fairy? As she lay looking up at the sky, she realized that it just wasn’t in the cards of this game called life for her to have a happily ever after. She had thought, only days or maybe a little longer ago, that she was headed for college. She had thought that she had an actual future with endless possibilities, or at least a future without Pearl the cat lady treating her like one of her pets. Then Lorelle had happened, fae, gypsies and magic were suddenly no longer just a Disney movie away, they were knocking on her front door. The worst part of it all, is that she didn’t open the door. It had been shoved open by evil. Kara spent her life avoiding evil― evil people, evil places, evil temptations and yet here she lay like a virgin sacrifice in a pagan ritual. As she closed her eyes to block out the bright moon she remembered something Pearl had said in one of her rare coherent moments. It was when Kara had first arrived at Pearl’s house as her foster child. She was fourteen, angry at the world, and desperate for something more. She’d been fighting a lot in school and the second time she was suspended Pearl finally decided to say something.
“
What are you fighting for, Kara?”
She asked her.
“I don’t want to fight, but what else do I do when mean people do mean things to me?”
Pearl walked over to the bed where Kara sat and took her hand. It was rare that Pearl ever touched her so Kara paid attention.
“There are all sorts of evil in this world and there are several ways to deal with them. You are so young and have faced way too much of it and for that I’m sorry. There is a time to fight evil, there is a time to resist evil, but when neither of those things are keeping evil at bay, then there is a time to turn in the opposite direction and run as far and as fast as you can. That is not cowardice; it’s wisdom. You pick your own battles. You know the ones you can defeat and the ones you need to do everything in your power to get away from.”
At the time Kara understood what Pearl had been trying get across. But now, after having been snatched up without any warning or time to run away by an evil that is beyond anything she has ever faced, she wondered where it fit in Pearl’s lesson. How was she to have dealt with an evil she never saw coming, never knew existed
, and had no way to run from?
∞
Heather knew that she should be terrified, and maybe in some unknown place in her mind she was shaking in her boots, but consciously she was holding it together. Maybe it was because she couldn’t see their enemy. Maybe she had some irrational enthusiasm because, though the probable outcome was death, it was the most exciting thing that had happened to her since she was fourteen and Corey Sheffield had led her behind the bushes and kissed her, tongue and all. She figured it was a crap shoot to try and figure it out while in immediate danger. So instead she focused her senses on the things around her. Unfortunately there wasn’t much to go on. There were no usual night sounds, singing crickets, hooting owls, or the scurrying of critters that emerged only when the sun dropped from the sky. It was silent, except for the breathing of Jewel and Kara, which she knew differed from Lorelle’s because theirs was short and rapid. Lorelle breathed as though it was a burden and she could use that time to do something else like kidnap girl scouts or cast evil spells on nice old ladies that would make them crawl across the ceiling like big nasty spiders. She sighed a lot, and huffed irritably, and periodically she even groaned out a long breath. In short, it was annoying as hell. She didn’t smell anything different than the soil she had first caught a whiff of when they arrived, and up to that point the temperature had felt fairly comfortable. On the tail end of that thought the temperature dropped and cold crept up the length of her as though she was being slowly sheathed in ice. She sucked in a quick breath and heard the others do the same. Her chest was beginning to feel compressed with the weight of the invisible tomb, the intensity of the pressure on her whole body felt like it would push her straight through the stone she lay on.
“So glad you could join us
, Volcan.” Lorelle sneered.
Heather guessed
that this must be the puppet master Jewel had been speaking of. When he answered the fae, she realized that Lorelle had been just a drop of lava, but Volcan, he was the whole damn volcano.
“As much as it disgusts me to say
it, you did well Lorelle. They are powerful. With just these three, unable to control the power and therefore unable to protect it, I’m able to draw on it. It has been a long time since I left the walls of that castle.” Volcan’s voice was as cold as the atmosphere he created.
“Kudos to you for rejoining society, does that mean you don’t need to drain the little healers in order to have access to their magic?”
“No.” He snarled. “The power I’m siphoning now is nothing compared to what I will gain with their blood. Why, have you suddenly had a change in of morals? Is your heart bleeding for the prey that you caught?”
“Wow, you really know how to take a question and run with it. I was just thinking of how less messy things would be if I didn’t have to slice them up,” she said, with what sounded like to
Heather like false indignity. “If you’re done with your usual three year old moment, can we please get on with it?”
“Start with little Jewel Stone over there. Their blood has to be fresh, warm and full of life in order for me to absorb the power in it,” Volcan explained as if he was talking about the weather.
Heather squeezed her eyes closed as the fear she thought she didn’t have, reared its ugly head at Jewel’s first scream.
“I’ve seen fights in the club,
drunk fights, gang fights, cop versus gang fights, and I thought I’d seen more blood in my nineteen years than I ever would again. As I stand next to the powerful fae who has tried to prepare us all for the fight that is to come, I know now that it had all been merely a drop in the river of blood that would spill this night.” ~Stella
Sally looked out the window to the field where the wolves and fae were practicing battle tactics. She shivered at the memory of a similar field, filled with similar and in this case some of the same people, practicing in much the same way. Only it had been for a different fight. In that field they had prepared to face a witch of incredible power, and wickedness to match. It was the first time in a very long time that the packs worked together for a common goal, something that was bigger than themselves. It was also the first time the fae had rejoined the wolves in battle since the Werewolf Wars, and that was when the last known healer vanished.
Now, in a time where gypsy healers are being rejoined with the wolves they were intended to care for, on
this
field they prepared to fight evil once again. It is a different battle, on a different battleground, with a different foe, but the outcome must be the same. For the sake of the future of the supernatural world, Lorelle and her master must not be allowed to succeed. The power that a gypsy healer holds is pure, its purpose to serve and to heal. Like many things intended for good, it can be twisted and shaped into something different when in the hands of the wrong person. The longer Sally was a part of that world, the more she understood how the thirst for power distorts the truth, corrupts the virtuous, and destroys anything that would thwart it.
“You ready for this?” Peri’s voice drew Sally’s attention from the window and her thoughts.
She turned to look at the beautiful fae who, when she so chose, could look as harmless as kitten, but lying beneath that façade was a fierce lioness. “Are we ever truly ready?” Sally asked.
“Do we have a choice?” The fae parried.
She thought back over the past year, of all the trials they had faced, all the evil they had destroyed, all the lives they had saved. If not them, then who would have? If Vasile and the wolves hadn’t taken a stand, if Peri and the others on the Fae council hadn’t left the comfort of their safe realm, if the warlock king Cypher hadn’t turned from the dangerous path on which he had started―on and on Sally could list those in the supernatural community who looked at the malevolent forces standing before them and said
if not us, then who
. They didn’t put their hands up, take a step back and say this is not my fight. It may sound like they made a choice, a choice to bow out or join in. But when it comes to those who have refused to let darkness have a foothold they don’t ever consider there being a choice, because every battle is
their
battle.
“If not us, then who?” Sally answered firmly.
Peri’s lips turned up in a knowing smile. “Exactly.”
“I know it’s a little crow
ded in here,” Dillon spoke above the chatter of the group gathered in what, at one time, seemed like a large living room. But add eight rather large werewolves and a few fae, two with the egos the size of small continents and a room tends to shrink. “We’re going to have to deal with it for a few minutes because Lucian and I have a plan and it includes all of you, even the new healers, so everyone needs to be in the know.”
From their perch on the stairs,
Stella leaned over closer to Anna but kept her eyes on the room in front of her. She turned her head slightly so that her voice wouldn’t be projected out into the room for the hearing of the werewolves. “Did you know we were going into battle?”
Anna shook her head. “I thought Peri said all we had to do, and I quote, was hold a pretty stone that showed up whenever the hell it felt like it, throw in some chanting, maybe a little sparks, and if things got really bad there might be a virginal sacrifice and voilà, battle done, sister killed, healers saved
…,”
“Get the hot chocolate,” they both finished together as Stella nodded. “So she conveniently forgot to add that we would be joining in the war cry.”
Anna’s lips turned up in a sly smile. “It could be worse,” she whispered.
Stella’s eyes widened. “What’s worse than running into battle with huge freaking werewolves and fae that like sharp pointy things towards a psycho f
ae hell bent on draining gypsy’s of their blood?”
“The werewolves could be on the opposite side of us,” Anna pointed out.
Stella thought about the huge wolf that had started out as a man and decided Anna was right, it would be worse to be running head long into a fight with the wolves on the wrong team.
“Sally,” Lucian’s deep voice rumbled across the room. “You and the healers will be here,” he pointed to a crude layout he had drawn on the wall of the dark forest. “There isn’t
much raised land in the forest—that’s the highest point. Once you have done what Peri has tasked you with, you three will then make your way to the battlefield to gather up the other three healers. Two of them have not been around our species yet and we decided they would be most comfortable and trusting of other humans.”
Sally nodded, “We’re ready.”
“More than likely Lorelle is not expecting us this night,” he continued. “Her confidence in thinking that she has rattled Perizada and that we will need to regroup for a day or so will be her downfall. Because of this, we are going to attempt to sneak into the dark forest. Neither Peri, nor the other fae will be able to use a cloaking spell because it would draw too much power and Lorelle would recognize it. If ever there was a time that you wanted to see how silent your hunt could be, tonight is that time. Once we’ve determined their location, we will spread out,” he waved his hand in an ark over across the drawing, “and move forward as one, low to the ground for the wolves, and utilizing the trees for the fae. There are eight wolves and three fae. The attack formation will be three wolves, then a fae,” Lucian took a pen from his back pocket and made little markers on the wall illustrating his description, “Three wolves, then a fae, two wolves, then a fae.
“Do not break the ranks for any reason until Peri gives the command. Wolves, after your time working with the fae today, you know what they are capable of. This battle is not going to be a fang and claw
clash. This is a battle between, for lack of a better term—sorceresses. They fight with magic. Because of that we will start out in our human forms. As we draw closer to the enemy we will draw attention away from Peri, Elle, and Adam by phasing to our wolf in their line of sight and in different intervals. This should hopefully help us get close enough to get the three healers.”
“Not that I’m questioning you
, Lucian,” Lee, Dillon’s second spoke up. “But how do you know they will at this spot in the forest. Why won’t they be at the castle Peri thinks Lorelle has been hiding out in?”
Lucian looked to his mate and nodded for her to answer.
“That’s a fair question since I haven’t fully explained what I believe my sister is up to,” Peri admitted. “Long story short, gypsy healers have always been coveted by dark magic users because their magic is so powerful. But extracting the magic from the healers is difficult. Gypsy magic comes from the life force of the healers—their very essence. To access that power, the healers have to be drained of all their blood. The one stealing their power has to drink the blood directly from the source while she is still alive.”
“Like a vampire?” Anna asked.
Peri shook her head. “Well, vampires, if such a thing existed, typically only take blood for nourishment, not power. This is different. There has to be intent and dark magic at play when the blood is being taken if the thief wants to steal the power. I don’t even think Lorelle, depraved though she is, would stoop to this level. I think I know who would and I hope I’m wrong. There was once a member of the high fae whose lust for power was stronger than any I’ve ever seen. By delving into dark magic so deeply, he was eventually able to amass enough power to create his own race of evil witches. We thought him killed centuries ago by a combined force of wolves and the fae.”
“How is that possible?” Sally frowned.
“We thought the dark forest was forever wiped from memory. In our vanity, we didn’t possibly think his power could best our magic. But we underestimated our opponent. I think Volcan’s spirit lived on because of the malevolence that saturated everything in its borders.” Peri took a deep breath and let it out slowly before she continued. “So, if I’m correct then Volcan wants to drain these healers for their powers, but he needs Lorelle’s help because he doesn’t have a physical form, yet. The combined power of the three girls just might be enough to enable him to take back his old form and his old magic.
“
The draining of the blood is a ritual. It will be done outside, in the elements. The girls will most likely be incapacitated in some way by Lorelle’s magic. If I can draw her attention, it will distract her enough that her spell will fail. Then the girls should be able to get free. All of that to say, this location Lucian has picked is a clearing, one of only a few in the dark forest and just happens to be where Volcan was killed. His blood saturated the earth there, which means that since he is still alive, he can use the magic that would have seeped into the soil. Blood magic is powerful; it’s dark, and when it’s the blood of the spell caster it’s even worse.”
“When you asked me to join this little party you said it wasn’t going to be life threatening,” Adam accused, though his lips held a sly smile.
“I lied.”
Adam chuckled. “You can admit that you wanted it to be a surprise for me since you didn’t get me a birthday present this century.”
“Adam?”
“Yes
, Peri.”
“Remind me to get you checked out by a veterinarian when this is done. Your excitement for killing things is beginning to become disturbing, and I worry that I will one day soon find you furry, flea infested, licking your butt
, and enjoying it way too much.”
Then tension in the room dropped considerably as it filled with chuckles and snickers at the bantering. It was what Adam had intended, and was one of the reasons Peri put up with his crap.
“Alright,” Dillon took over again. “The fae will be flashing us to our rendezvous point. Costin will assist Sally, Anna and Stella to their location and then rejoin with the pack. Remember,” he narrowed his eyes at the group, “this is a hunt until it’s not; that means we move as one, in silence until it’s time to engage the enemy. Number one priority is to get the girls out, number two, destroy those dumb enough to take what it ours.” A collective growl of approval rose up from the wolves in the room.
Anna glanced at Stella who was looking back at her with what she was sure was the same expression on her own face. “What the hell have we gotten ourselves into?”
Stella bit her upper lip. “I’m not sure but I keep waiting for them to paint themselves blue and suddenly acquire a Scottish brogue, or for one of the women to yell,
Spartan, come back with your shield, or on it.”
∞
“Just for kicks, how are you going to get their blood into your form so you can use their magic?” Lorelle asked as she held the fae blade over Jewel’s arm.
She felt his presence surround her as he answered. “Through you of course.”
Wonderful
, Lorelle thought to herself as she felt Volcan enter her mind and begin to take over. She wanted to fight him, but she wanted even more to not know what he was about to make her do.
Under his influence
Lorelle picked up the healer’s arm and slit her wrist deep. Blood immediately poured out and, before she could think, Volcan forced her mouth to the wound. She didn’t notice the girl’s scream. Volcan fixated her attention to the task at hand and she could feel his need, his greediness for the red liquid and she was sure that at any moment she was going to vomit, but she didn’t because he wouldn’t let her.
The iron rich taste coated her lips and mouth and Volcan used her voice to croon over his feast. As she felt the flow of blood slowing, she licked the wound clean to see that it was knitting itself back together. Volcan jerked her head up to look at the healer
’s face but only saw fear and pain there. She took the blade again ran it across the same wrist, nothing happened. Her eyes narrowed as she felt Volcan’s rage begin to grow. He made her move the blade up a couple inches on her arm and cut. As with the first wound, blood poured out warm, fresh and smelling rich with power. Once again Lorelle found her mouth pressed to the wound nursing it for all it’s worth. She could feel Volcan’s power getting stronger, could sense him better inside of her as his being seemed to begin to solidify in that realm.
“What is the healer doing!”
He snarled in her mind. She pulled back and saw that the second wound was also knitting itself back together staunching the flow of blood.
Volcan moved
Lorelle’s face over Jewel’s, hovering mere inches away. He narrowed her eyes and drew her lips taunt across her face. As he spoke, the voice that emerged from her throat was not her own, it was his. He was getting stronger very quickly. “You think you can stop me, little healer?” He sneered at her. “You think to keep me from having what I want, what I need, in order to accomplish my goal? I will cut every inch of your young, ripe body if I have to. I will begin severing fingers and drinking the blood from the stumps, and if you’re lucky I will cut your tongue from your mouth and drink from you like a man to his lover. One way or another, Jewel Stone, I will bleed you dry.”