Pure Blooded (13 page)

I was too stunned to respond.

Marcy nodded sympathetically. “I know this is crazy, and must be a lot to process, but who do the wolves consider as their creation myth?”

Marcy was right to call it a “myth.” Supernaturals had inhabited the earth long before there had been any written documentation. For a millennium, only oral legends had been handed down
through each Sect, which were highly susceptible to being embellished or exaggerated, as anything is if it’s handed down through that many years of history. Our Pack Bible had many facts, but our creation, the birth of the first wolf, was considered legend—loosely interpreted—but believed nonetheless.

“Our creation myth states that the first human was turned into a werewolf,” I recited from memory, “by an ancient Scottish goddess who’d been rebuffed by him. He’d been a great warrior—the greatest the world had seen—and was cursed to live out a life of immortality without his lover.”

“A Scottish goddess, huh?” Marcy’s voice held some irony. “Voudoun is an ancient magic that has been around for eons. Your goddess creation story could easily be entwined with some myths and legends of the voudoun, which would be how she ended up a loa. Honestly, Celtic and African myths are not such strange bedfellows when you go back millennia.” She shrugged as we began to walk again. “I’m telling you though, that scent is unmistakable. It sent all the hairs on my arms jumping at once.”

“So what you’re saying is, if this
is
Marinette, there’s a chance I might be heading to do battle against my creator?” I was dumbfounded even thinking that something like that could be true.

Marcy tucked an errant curl behind her ear. “I have no idea. I’m just telling you what I learned as a young, impressionable witch. Witches like to hammer scary folklore crap into our brains to prepare us for the unexpected, and this”—she waved her arm around—“is about as unexpected as I’ve ever seen. The goddess of your creation myth
could
be her, but who knows? There’s no way for us to know for sure until we know for sure.”

“Eloquent,” I said wryly. Another scream rent the air and I took off, yelling, “We’re coming, Naomi! Hold on!”

As I raced forward, my mind replayed everything Marcy had just told me. I leapt and bounded over roots and trees, mindless of anything else. My wolf snapped her jaws, urging us on.
We’re close
, I told her.
I can sense it
.

We’d shot ahead of Marcy, but she wasn’t very far behind.

My wolf held her nose in the air. And as we ran, the scent of black pepper and lavender grew stronger.
I think I see something up ahead
, I told my wolf.
There’s a break in the trees
.

I soared through the opening and somersaulted onto an expanse of cracked, dry earth—if you could call it earth. It was more like a bunch of accumulated dust. I was up on the balls of my feet in a low crouch before I came to a full stop. In front of me stood an old, dilapidated wooden shack that looked to have been constructed sometime during Prohibition.

The old building was in bad need of repair. There were boards missing, window glass was gone, the porch was decayed and slanting at an angle, and the entire thing was covered in
hanging fetishes, old animal parts, dried herbs, and other things I couldn’t—and didn’t care to—identify. They hung from every available space on the house, from the dormer all the way up the roofline, and they chimed together eerily in the soft breeze.

The house is empty
, I told my wolf. I didn’t sense any movement. She put her muzzle in the air and scented. Then I heard it.

Chanting.

I spotted a path across the expanse to my right, but before I could take off, Marcy burst out of the trees behind me, panting.

“It’s about time,” I told her.

“Shut it.” She bent over, gasping in a few harried breaths. “Last time I checked, I had no animal in me, but making sure I wasn’t python bait was a big motivator to move quicker than I ever have.”

“Something’s going on over there. I hear chanting.” I gestured to the path across the way and turned to start moving forward when Marcy grabbed my arm once again.

“Hold it, Wonder Wolf,” she ordered as she manhandled me back, tugging at the bag around my waist. “I need you focused. You can’t just barrel in there without protection at the ready. You’re going to need your dark-magic baggies.” She opened the pouch. “We need to throw a wedge into her evil plans, and this is the only way to do it.” She dug her hand in and pulled out two spells. “Perfect.” She set them in my hands, one in each palm. “One stun spell”—she curled my left hand into a fist around it—“and one protection.” She did the same thing with my right. “Once we get in there, I want you to throw these in front of you at the same time and speak both words. I’ll be there to back you up.”

I noted the colors. “Say both words in one breath?” I asked as she made sure the pouch was accessible to my hand.

“Yes.” She set her hands on my shoulders. “And, Jess, it’s not going to be pretty in there. Whatever she’s doing is evil. Don’t let your emotions get in the way. If you have any Achilles’ heel, it’s
that you have too much human empathy, something supes who are born supernatural never have. The prime objective is to kill her and eliminate the evil—even if it’s at a cost.”

I nodded. Marcy knew me well. If the cost was Naomi’s and Danny’s lives, it was too steep a price to pay, but I wasn’t going to argue with Marcy. I would make the tough decisions as I went. “The only one who is losing her life is the bokor.”

The chanting picked up, coming faster and in more hurried tones. “It sounds like she’s performing some kind of ritual,” Marcy whispered. “That’s probably why the loa didn’t come back. She’s probably inside the bokor. The best way to stop what’s about to happen is to disrupt the ceremony before they get a chance to finish it. Mess it up completely, which I know firsthand you’re good at.”

“Like physically destroy it?”

“Yes, exactly. There should be an altar, and nearby potions or bowls of blood. Destroy anything and everything you can get your sharp claws on.”

“You got it.” I headed down the path, a spell clutched in each hand, Marcy close behind me.

“Oh, and expect there to have been a blood sacrifice, so don’t let it catch you off guard.”

I started to trot. “What kind of blood sacrifice?” I glanced over my shoulder and grimaced.

“My guess would be human.”

I stifled a gag. “Why not a wild boar or chicken?”

“Because death is the best kind of energy for the darkest magic, and the bigger, and more intelligent, the better. Remember, this bokor is a supernatural without conscience. I just told you we don’t have much empathy as an entire race, but most of us do have a conscience. The evil ones don’t. They kill without thought, vying only for power.”

“If she wanted the strongest magic, why wouldn’t she just sacrifice a supe?” My mind instantly shot to Danny. That’s why she let him in! Before Marcy answered, I shouted, “She
would
sacrifice a supe.”

We both ran down the winding path. At the end, we came to a wall of trees and nothing else.

“This can’t be a dead end!” I exclaimed. “I can scent her, and I can hear the chanting.” I placed my hands on the bark nearest me and it hummed with magic.

“This is just a strongly warded illusion,” Marcy said, closing her eyes as she began to murmur. “Push some of some of your magic into that tree and see if you can break the ward while I try a spell.”

I closed my eyes.
We need Selene’s or Eudoxia’s magic for this
, I told my wolf. For the first time, she uncurled the power of five. She grabbed Selene’s red signature and mixed it with Eudoxia’s white. As the magic moved forward, it churned through my body, a ribbon of pink. It was strong.
We toss it at the tree all at once
. “Marcy, get ready,” I said. “I’m going to blast it on three.”

“I was born ready.”

“One, two…
three
!” I forced the magic from my body, shocking the ward at the same time Marcy shouted her incantation.

There was one pulse and all of a sudden it burst open. The impact threw us backward. What stood before us was terrible.

“No,” I breathed.

Naomi was laid out on top of an earthen altar, her body still, covered by a gray blanket that could’ve been white at some point.

“You are too late, lone wolf.” The voice coming out of the bokor’s mouth held an accent, possibly Haitian.

“She’s stalling,” Marcy whispered from right beside me as we both stood and stared. “The ceremony isn’t finished. I can feel the magic vibrating for release. You have to go now.” She elbowed me. “Destroy it before she can say anything else.”

Needing no more prodding, I bounded into the area.

It was a perfect circle, lined with tree trunks carved into gruesome totem poles with expressions of death and destruction detailed onto each tier. Tied to every pole was a rabid wolf, each baring its teeth and snarling. In the trees behind the totem poles, snakes of various sizes slithered here and there between the branches and skated across tops of the structures in eerie silence.

It was a grisly scene.

But the capper to the entire show was the female, who stood tall at the head of the altar. She was thin, her skin a deep milk chocolate, her hair pure white and sheared close to her scalp. She wore a multicolored robe, the sleeves draped to her elbows, her hands raised high in the air. Her nails were long and yellow, curved around her fingertips like claws. And blood dripped from her palms.

As I entered the circle, her head rose slowly to meet my gaze.

Her irises were the color of ice.

The effect was immediate. It was like she could see through me, straight into my soul.

Naomi lay in front of her. The altar was crude, made of mud and twigs, and as I rushed closer, I noticed that under the gray blanket, Naomi was dressed in a simple sheer gown, her hands restrained by thin iron rings.

She didn’t move, which was distressing.

I was going to destroy everything I could find.

“Halt!” This time the voice that came out of the bokor’s mouth was different. It sounded ancient. The loa’s voice was authoritative, the Haitian accent gone. I stopped in my tracks. “You came too late to save this one. The blood that rides within this host has already been consumed.” The bokor grinned, an expression that looked unnatural since the command had been issued from the loa. I noticed now she had a red smear mark on both her cheeks, and as she smiled, her teeth were broken and blackened.

I narrowed my gaze on Naomi and edged to the side to get a
better look at her. One of her arms had been recently cut and a bone knife covered in blood lay next to her head. Her blood had been contained in a small bowl, made of what looked like ivory, which sat next to the knife.

“I don’t care if you’ve consumed her blood.” I took a bold step forward. There wasn’t much here to destroy except for the altar. “You’re not going to live long enough to do anything with it, so it doesn’t matter.”

The bokor tossed her head back as the loa laughed. The sound was manic.

“You fear me.” Her gaze landed on mine, and her irises were like tides washing over a clear sea. “That makes me satisfied. I have been planning this for longer than humans have inhabited these lands. Look around you.” The bokor’s body awkwardly swept a bony arm outward, her robe riding up to expose no more than a skeleton covered in skin. The loa’s voice sounded hollow in her host’s throat the more she spoke. “This is my world. It’s a place where the Earth collides with the spirit realm at a perfect apex. In the beginning, I filled it with water and beasts to keep the humans out, but they have wound their way back in. So now I must cloak myself within these trees so none discover me. But I have been patient all these years, biding my time, knowing that soon I will be free again. Free to roam the Earth as I did once long ago.”

I pretended to be devastated by the news that she wanted to rise again, which likely had something to do with me. My eyes were downcast as I drew slowly closer to Naomi, the spells still in each of my hands. This loa was clearly out of touch with reality. She must’ve lived in this swamp for hundreds of years, not doing much of anything. In order to keep her thinking I was interested while I figured out how to take apart the altar, I asked, “If you’ve been waiting all these years for me to set you free, you’re going to be sorely disappointed. I’m not here to grant your wish. In fact,
just the opposite.” At the same time, I lobbed the spells down in front of me, shouting the Latin words in unison.

They exploded in a cloud of black and green smoke as I dove for Naomi.

I skidded across the altar, scooping her body along with me as I went. The iron shackles snapped on impact, and they came sailing along with us as I landed on the ground, cradling an unconscious Naomi in my arms.

That’s when I saw him.

I knew it wasn’t Danny, but my heart rose in my throat anyway. The body was prone in the soil in front of the altar, right where the bokor had stood. His hair was the same dark shade as Danny’s and he had a similar build. I knew he was one of my father’s wolves, and when his scent hit me full force I swallowed, biting back my human emotions.

I had to stay focused. There was nothing I could do for him now.

The rabid wolves strained at their leashes, snapping and gnashing their teeth. They must be tethered there because the bokor couldn’t control them when she was ridden. But it was only a guess.

I tucked Naomi against the side of the altar, as far away as I could get from any of the wolves, and stuck my head up. Marcy had cast a spell right after I’d thrown mine. She said we’d get three minutes if we were lucky. I now had a protection spell five feet around me and if both spells had worked, the bokor was stunned. It didn’t bode well that she wasn’t standing where she’d been, but I had to trust she was down for at least a moment. The air was dense with smoke and I had to act now.

Marcy wanted carnage, and I was going to give it to her.

I leapt over the altar in my Lycan form, destroying and upturning everything I could get my hands on. My claws raked away huge hunks of mud and twigs, while my legs exploded the bowl
and sent the knife and anything that touched me sailing. I swiped at candles lining the circle, slicing them in half, destroying more bowls that had been placed on a small table with my fists. As the smoke from the spell began to clear, a laugh swept by my ear.
You think I’m a child who can be felled so easily by a simple spell? Think again
. The loa crashed into my stomach, sending me hurtling backward in the air.

I gasped as I hit the ground. “You were forced out of your host. I take that as a win.” I’d landed within a hairsbreadth of a wolf, and without hesitation I drew my knife and plunged it into its brain.

A scream pierced the air.

My head shot up and I spotted Marcy standing over the bokor on the other side of the circle. I leapt up and ran toward them. “What happened?” I asked. “Why is she down?”

“She’s weak. The loa took all her strength. But she’s trying to access her wolves. She must have connected to one of them right as you killed it.”

I raised my eyebrows. “Then we need to keep our advantage going. Your spells worked like champs. They forced the loa out and weakened the bokor. That’s more than I’d hoped for.” I turned, glancing at the remaining wolves. There were some who were still rabid and uncontrolled, straining their leashes like they were trying to get out of their skin to get to us. But others had calmed and seemed to be assessing me with intent.