Witch Interrupted (19 page)

Until now.

Because he’d kind of blackmailed her.

After sausage biscuits, if he wasn’t too mad, she was going to suggest he blackmail her again—and again and again. That would be a highly intelligent use of their time.

Katie wriggled in her seat, the ache between her thighs a reminder of this very shallow reason to keep her bargain with Marcus. She had her freedom. She could disappear and never see him again. Beyond her conscience, beyond the fact she needed help, as did he, she could confess that she didn’t hate him.

She respected him. She admired his drive. She wanted him in a way that frightened her. It meant she had to confront the part of her that longed to be dominated. She would let him cause her pain, because she trusted him to give her pleasure. She would say yes to anything he desired.

For someone who governed her environment and the people around her in order to stay alive, it was both horrifying and cathartic.

She turned west at a crossroads, hitting a state highway that would take her on a wide circumference around the tattoo parlor. Marcus believed anyone hunting them would assume they’d hightailed it out of the country. It was what she’d have done if given the option—and if her family had been with her.

The sticking point was whether Lars had caught Vern, Dad and Tonya. If he had, could he fathom Katie’s familial attachment—an attachment other keepers didn’t share? Their families had cast them out. Anathema. Unlike other shifters, no keeper would lift a finger to help a relative, least of all Hiram Lars. It was rumored he had numerous children, children
he’d
cast out when they’d emerged normal instead of convex.

Would Lars realize Katie had healed in her years away from the keepers? Would he realize her love would bind her until she could rescue her family?

Her actions in the near future hinged on whether or not they were safe. Katie couldn’t go another day and a half without knowing.

When there was nothing at the Garner post office, she took the direct route to Marcus’s Airstream. It just happened to run by the tattoo parlor.

Katie, unlike Marcus, was willing to risk that Lars wouldn’t have conscripted any wolves who might detect the whisper of juvenile wolf. She’d muddy her physical appearance for keepers or elders who might be present. She’d be fleet, invisible. This used to be her life, and she’d been the best—at this and other things.

She might be able to examine the Dumpster and confirm whether Vern and the others had been forcibly extracted. That would tell her everything she needed to know.

Still anxious, but more settled than she’d been for days, Katie ducked into a fast food restaurant long enough to don a physical disguise before heading to the tattoo shop.

The fact her hands were sweaty on the wheel was only natural.

The car was gone. Katie was gone. Marcus’s patience was gone.

She’d left some shit note about sausage biscuits, a bluff to keep him off her trail. The dried agrimony under his pillow confirmed how she’d slipped out without him waking.

That sneaky witch.

He was done trying to treat Chang Cai as anything close to an equal partner. Not that he thought she was motivated by malevolence—more like foolhardy loyalty. She wasn’t the merciless predator the keepers had described. But she’d agreed to stay with him and lay low.

She’d lied to him yet again.

She’d put a spell on him yet again.

And he was so worried about her, he almost forgot to activate a mask and buckle on his travel pill pack before he shifted into wolf form and headed toward the tattoo parlor at top speed.

After a hard run through mostly rural countryside, Marcus reached the perimeter of the tattoo shop area in approximately fifty minutes. He allowed himself a moment of grim satisfaction at his physical achievement before settling into a discovery pattern.

What were the chances Lars had wolves working for him? Katie thought none, but she’d left the keepers years ago. She hadn’t been there after Lars had taken the helm, hadn’t seen what he was happy to do to wolves.

She wasn’t safe here. Lars could have her already. How could she be so stupid? A lone witch, a nearly drained and defenseless witch, going up against a psychopath like Lars and his minions was insane. Why couldn’t she wait for the rendezvous? Marcus hadn’t told her he didn’t intend for them to go. As far as she’d known, they’d be verifying her family’s status in twenty-four hours.

But as soon as he’d fallen asleep, she’d bolted.

This was the last time he turned his back on her without there being handcuffs involved.

Marcus had flown solo since Elisa had died. Their parents had been in their third pass-through before they’d managed to have him, and both had succumbed not long after to the cancers that plagued witches more frequently than they did humans. When Elisa had contracted cancer as well, he’d been prepared to challenge the Goddess to keep her and her unborn child with him.

He’d failed. Since then, he’d not allowed any relationships to deepen beyond the superficial. At first, he’d had to outwit the keepers, and then he’d had his quest.

Now he had…his quest. And some familiar fears for someone beside himself.

Marcus sorted through animal and human scents in the vicinity of the tattoo parlor. No wolves. No spell components—the best way to detect witches when you didn’t know their DNA. The closer he got, the more troubled he grew. He wasn’t worried about himself—his mask disguised him as a normal dog—but he was worried about Katie. His resource. His test subject.

His lying, cheating, car-jacking, distrustful, sexy, infuriating pain in the ass.

What if he couldn’t find her in time?

Antsy as hell, Marcus emerged from the neighborhood he and Katie had escaped through yesterday. It was tempting to sprint to the shop, but he made himself check every approach. He behaved as doggishly as possible. While wolves, coven members and humans who spotted him would think nothing, keepers might be suspicious of random dogs poking around their base of action. The wolf sympathizers’ use of animal masks to conceal their clients was known to keepers.

On the road that intersected the street to the tattoo parlor, he plopped down on the shoulder and scratched himself. Then he ducked his head between his legs and pretended to lick his balls, something true shifters rarely did, for obvious reasons.

Instead he checked for spoor on the ground.

Yes. There.

Faint whiffs of spell-grade monkshood, loosestrife and hops combined with guns. Coven witches wouldn’t smell like monkshood. Cops would smell like guns but not herbs. That left keepers.

From his vantage point, the back of the store and Dumpster looked normal. All spoor was from yesterday. Marcus looped around the tattoo parlor and concealed himself behind a clump of bushes. The only vehicles were Katie’s and her father’s. His truck and the Smart car were gone. The front window glass was still busted out. No crime scene tape. No unusual sounds. Not much traffic.

He felt no urge to leave the vicinity, which meant no aversion wards had been set to chase off onlookers. From here, he could identify the herbal components from the berserker bomb on a shattered pneumatic gun. The mixture made his skin twitch with memories. Definitely his work. If Katie hadn’t been with him when Lars had released the spell, he’d have gone as mad as the Birmingham packers. He analyzed the scent and committed it to memory for later study.

After a sneeze that cleared his sinuses, he caught vestiges of humans and wolves. Blood spatter marked the street in several places, but he didn’t smell any fresh blood.

The wind blew gently toward him, and he did smell fresh Katie.

She’d been here. Recently.

The upstairs curtains fluffed in the breeze. Except the breeze was coming from the opposite direction.

She was still here.

Silent and swift, Marcus crossed the road. He slowed as he neared the window to leap gingerly into the building. Broken glass had been swept haphazardly to the side of the room.

The scents of people and wolves thronged in the small space. Many shifters, many components, a few humans, but no pressure in his ears to indicate a spell being cast. Behind the counter, books splayed on the floor, with papers flung everywhere. He had no doubt everyone who’d entered had tossed the place. The keepers in hopes of finding Katie, Vernon or him. The cops, packers or elders in hopes of discovering what had happened.

Was it possible no one had gotten what they’d wanted?

Marcus slipped between the beaded curtains. The second room bore similar evidence of a search. Tattoo ink splashed the walls, and an autoclave lay in pieces on the floor. Other paraphernalia had received similarly rough treatment. The bathroom door canted off its hinges and the door to the upstairs was cracked open.

He rushed up the stairs. In wolf form, he was dark gray, almost black, and rangy. He placed his paws lightly so his claws wouldn’t tic. If Katie spotted him, she’d see a black dog, not a wolf, but he doubted that would fool her for an instant.

Logically he knew if she’d wanted to escape him, she wouldn’t have come here. Escape wasn’t her goal. He entered the apartment and spotted her on the couch. Just sitting there, unmoving. Her spine was curved, her head bowed. She held a leather bag he recognized as Zhang Li’s tattoo kit in her lap.

Relief rushed through him, but it didn’t displace his other emotions. He barked once, sharp and angry. He wasn’t sure if he was pissed as hell at her for leaving or glad to see her alive.

She glanced up, her expression guarded. “Oh, look, a stray dog. Whoever could it be?”

She smelled of resignation and unhappiness. Because he’d recaptured her? Marcus focused his magic inward, shifting into his accustomed body. In under a minute, he stood before her, clothed, armed with supplies and highly annoyed.

Time to let her know in no uncertain terms that she’d regret conning him.

His first words came out rusty and fast—and weren’t what he meant to say. “You could have been killed.”

Even as he said it, the truth rang in his head like a fire alarm. Her safety was his primary concern—not the betrayal, the lies or their bargain. Feeling that way about her, though, wouldn’t advance his cause, so he tamped it down.

She nodded. “I know.”

“What if this is a trap?” He said it because it was logical, but didn’t entirely believe it. In Lars’s world, a keeper wouldn’t risk herself for family. Keepers learned to be comfortable with collateral damage—and saw no need for self-sacrifice.

Katie shrugged. “We’re alive. Hence my belief that this is, shockingly, not a trap.”

She was so certain, so uncaring of her well-being. She hadn’t worn a mask when she’d come here. She had no safeguards at all. Her recklessness was a danger to herself and others. “It was a poor choice to return to the shop.”

Her jaw flexed; her dark eyes turned hard. “Are you not going to ask what I found? I realize you don’t give a shit about my family, but it’s sort of a big deal to me.”

He wouldn’t lose his temper. He’d caught her, and that was that. Marcus’s objectives didn’t involve sacrificing himself for quests that weren’t his own. The fact that this made him more like the keepers than, say, Katie, with her willingness to do anything for her family, was uncomfortable but unavoidable. “Tell me about the others.”

“He has them, of course,” she said simply. “It’s our fault. We shouldn’t have deserted them.”

“If we’d have stayed, he’d have captured us too. What good would that do?” Marcus considered sitting next to her but remained standing, in a position of authority. She needed to remember he was in charge and his actions had protected her. “How did you find out?”

“I found Ba’s ink kit in the panic room and a coded note from Vern.” She dug in the bag and extended a wad of paper, her movements listless. “I translated it. Read it and weep.”

Apparently she had. Faint tear-trails shone on her cheeks, though her nose and eyelids were barely pink. She relaxed—slumped—on the couch, laid her head against the back and closed her eyes.

Marcus uncrumpled the paper. In bad handwriting was a detailed grocery list. In small, neat handwriting beside it was a translation:
Overheard “the whore” escaped. Rampage. Cops spelled away. They’re checking for safe rooms. Will…

Vernon’s part of the note ended with a jagged scrawl.

“Do you believe they got away?”

She shook her head. “Ba couldn’t have outrun the keepers. He has magic-resistant arthritis.” Heal-all wasn’t a cure-all, especially not for deeper human ailments.

“There are two vehicles missing. They could have driven away.”

“Vern would have left a sign. Finished the note. Lars has them. I’m sure of it.”

“You can’t trade yourself.” He wouldn’t be surprised if Lars had immediately murdered Vernon, considering Lars’s feelings about his predecessor and the ills he’d claimed Vernon had continued to inflict on him. Tonya and Zhang Li, however, he might keep around. “He’ll kill you all.”

“He can try. I think he’d be willing to let them go in order to get his hands on me.”

“There’s nothing you can do to ensure that.”

She didn’t open her eyes, just said in a flat voice, “That remains to be seen.”

“You have to quit working against me, Katie. It’s more important now than ever.” It occurred to him she wasn’t taking his project seriously because she saw no function in it. It provided her no aid, no resolution to her immediate problem. “If we break the barrier between witch and wolf, it will be the answer you need.”

“Sounds self-serving to me.”

He’d explained this to her already. He’d keep trying until she understood. “Think about it. A huge scientific discovery like the ability to recover transformed wolves or a cure for cancer would entrench us in the coven network. Even you, a convex witch. It’s the safest place to be if the keepers want to kill you.”

Right now, Marcus and Katie had no respect, little safety and few advantages. His experiments must succeed for them to be free. Otherwise they’d be trapped in hiding for the rest of their lives.

Though Katie seemed to have accepted that sentence, it had never been Marcus’s plan. He would never quit trying to disable Hiram Lars and the keepers so they couldn’t torture and kill anyone else.

He frowned at the scribbled message, wishing Vernon had shared more details. He could only imagine the chaos as the keepers closed in on Vernon and the two amnesiacs. “The note doesn’t mention whether Lars identified me.”

Katie’s outward appearance was peaceful. She rested her head on the back of the couch, features expressionless. Except for the tear tracks, she could have been meditating. “It’s not always about you. If he did recognize you, Marcus Delgado is just some wolf now. Probably one that whore Chang Cai is fucking.” She raised her head and laughed. “Oh, hell. I guess even psychos like Hiram Lars have to be right sometime.”

It was true Lars didn’t think of wolves as possessing higher intelligence, even transformed ones. Despite the fact IQs of wolves varied as widely as witches or humans, to Lars, many keepers and some subsets of the coven network, wolves were such primitive throwbacks that it invalidated their rights and their—for lack of a better word—humanity.

The threat of a scientist turned wolf, even one who used to work for him, would hardly worry Lars. He’d treat Marcus like any other animal, and his primary goal would be capturing Chang Cai.

He handed Katie the note. “You’re not a whore.”

Finally, she looked at him, bemusement replacing the bleakness in her expression. “That’s your takeaway from all this?”

“Do you want another? You endangered us both, not for the first time. You’re hotheaded, mistrustful and underhanded.” He’d seen it in her chi and her actions.

“You’ve got my number, all right.” She shrugged, her gaze dropping to the paper. “I won’t apologize for leaving. I knew you wouldn’t let me, and I had to know if they were okay. What’s your excuse?”

He’d had to know if
she
was okay. He’d hurled himself into a situation that could have been stupid and dangerous, same as she had. However, he’d had a mask, defensive spells in his pouch and a four-legged disguise.

“I have to protect my interests. We have important work to do.”

She huffed, without much energy. “I’m still here, aren’t I?”

She wouldn’t be if Lars had caught her. Marcus wouldn’t have known whether she’d run off or been taken, and he’d never have recognized Vernon’s grocery list as a code. “Am I supposed to believe you intended to come back to me?”

“Believe whatever you want.” She folded the paper in half as if she couldn’t bear to read the text again. “My family comes first, and you’re not my family.”

For some reason, that made him even angrier. “No shit.”

Her expression changed yet again as she narrowed her eyes. “Considering what you did for your sister—what you’re still doing—one would think you’d be understanding about my detour.”