Witch Interrupted (33 page)

They both knew Lars, albeit from different perspectives. It was questionable whether Lars truly knew them, and he would have no way of guessing what Marcus had been testing. Yet Marcus knew a great deal about Lars’s weapons, seeing as many were based on Marcus’s research.

Did that give them an advantage?

Katie swerved the car from the direct route to the factory, jolting him from his thoughts. He braced himself with a hand against the door. “What are you doing?”

“Just checking.” She peered into the rearview mirror suspiciously. The car that had been closest to them didn’t turn, nor several cars behind it. Finally, one did.

However, it pulled into a driveway. The side street led through several neighborhoods, similarly constructed houses with minimal yard space. People walking dogs along sidewalks. Joggers with reflective shoes. For Sale signs. Katie rerouted to the main road, but her tension didn’t ease.

He knew what she feared, and it wasn’t sex or experiments. Not anymore.

“I’d like to discuss the fact you’re thinking about how to ditch me.”

“I, ah…” She sighed. “I didn’t realize you could read me so easily.”

“I know how I’d feel in your position,” he said. “If I could protect you by deserting you, would I want to do it? Yes.”

“Isn’t it hypocritical of you to expect me to respond differently? If this is because you’re a man and I’m a woman—”

“It’s not,” he assured her. “I want a chance to outsmart Lars. We’ve outsmarted him before. What can we accomplish together if we focus on Lars instead of my experiments?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t have to leave today,” he said. When she sighed again, he knew that was exactly what she’d been planning. “Lars isn’t currently torturing your family. He activated his informant network with a red alert. He invaded Millington. It’s obvious we are his focus, and he’s pulling out all the stops. Finding out Chang Cai was alive may have triggered a—a mental break.”

“He was already fucking nuts. You’re saying he’s crazier now?”

“Unless you believe he’s been attacking covens and packs for years and nobody suspected,” Marcus said. “Open defiance of the covenants correlates to a change in his perspective or goals. It correlates to recklessness. That’s something we can use against him. He’ll be less cautious if he thinks he can catch you.”

“I definitely know how to be bait.”

“That isn’t automatically our plan.” He reached across the seat and cupped her neck. Her hair tickled his hand. “But it’s worth considering. One hint of your presence, and we could lure him anywhere.”

Dammit, they needed the cooperation of the region elders on this. Perhaps they should place the calls before Marcus finalized his tests. What if the elders possessed a failsafe for keepers gone bad?

“Do you have your wolf senses?” she asked. “We could use your nose and eyes when we get to the factory. You know, in case the hint of me has already lured him there.”

“Some.” Right now he couldn’t smell much beyond the yarrow in the heal-all Harry had sprayed all over his tattoos. He leaned closer to Katie and breathed deeper.

There she was. On the edge of the yarrow, her scent. Something harsher too. “Are you carrying monkshood?”

“For you to notice that, you must have access to your wolf. That’s good, right? You’re dual?”

What Katie could do—it was simply part of who she was, part of her magic. He could kill as well. He would kill anyone who threatened her. He’d just use a different tool than magic. “Are they contact capsules or pods?”

“Pods.” She decelerated at a stop sign, turned right and picked up speed on a state highway. This put the sun beside the car instead of behind it, and it no longer blinded Marcus via the mirror.

“Good. That’s safer for you.” She’d been prudent to steal the monkshood. He never should have destroyed her original supply or criticized her for having it. For being what she was. A warrior. A fighter. A protector. “Do you have enough?”

“Enough for what?” she asked, eyebrows arching.

“To defend us. And, should the occasion arise, to kill Lars.” He wanted her to know he was secure about her abilities and was grateful she was convex. He loved her with complete acceptance.

She cast him a questioning glance. “You’re comfortable with this discussion?”

“Spare no detail. It might spark ideas.” To properly evaluate the situation, he needed to tabulate their advantages. Katie’s training and abilities would be needed. He might not believe Vernon had given up the location spell yet, but it would happen. Soon.

So they’d prepare. Now.

If that meant discussing the best way to ambush keepers and commit murder, they’d prepare.

“All right.” She nodded slowly. The car cruised down the empty highway until they neared the factory. His warehouse was one of several buildings in a vacant, half-constructed industrial park, signs of a depressed local economy. His factory was the most dilapidated.

“I can’t kill Lars with monkshood. It’ll refract and go who knows where. Keepers die, of course, in the line of duty. Not usually old age or by one another’s hands…not publicly, anyway. I’ll carry the pistol and a knife, and we should get you a gun.”

“I’m not a great shot.” As a witch, he’d never seen much need for guns. “I could shift to wolf form and attack Lars if the occasion arises. We’d need to deplete his components or magic reserves first, else a standard wolf attack wouldn’t be that effective.”

“I like this conversation. It’s romantic.” Her lips quirked.

It wasn’t. It was honest and open and realistic. He liked it as well, because of what it meant about the two of them. She was willing to plot with him instead of desert him for his own good.

“I’ve never killed anyone,” he said. “Lars didn’t worry about the health of the wolves they captured, but I did. If we’re forced into a fight, how will killing impact me mentally?”

“When you kill, you feel like the worst person on earth. Even when you’re doing it because you have to.”

That was how she’d lived—how she’d been forced by the council and witch culture to live—for thirty years. She’d considered herself the worst person on earth. It was a miracle she’d healed into the woman she was today. The fascinating, beautiful, intelligent, loyal woman he loved.

“I’ll take that into consideration. I’m not conditioned to respond with lethal force, and I don’t want my lack of training to put us in jeopardy. I don’t want to hesitate.”

She scrunched her face as if trying to scoot her glasses up without using her hand. “I have faith you’ll do what’s needed when the time comes.”

As a precaution, Katie traveled around the industrial park’s access road before directing the station wagon to a spot concealed by large, rusted equipment. There appeared to be no other vehicles on the premises. Marcus rolled down the window and sniffed.

Rust, oil, dirt. Puddles dappled the muddy ground after last night’s thunderstorm. The station wagon splashed through a rut. He smelled autumn decay in the foliage, drowned earthworms and concrete.

“Smells normal.” They retrieved their baggage. His muscles and skin complained, but the discomfort was nowhere near as intense as it had been. Perhaps the brand had toughened him—or fried his pain receptors. It was also possible his wolf was erasing some of the pain, but he didn’t want to get his hopes up.

Though he did feel like a wolf. A wolf who’d been pummeled, but a wolf. A wolf with endless witch magic inside him, simmering like a secret.

They conducted a perimeter sweep of the factory, which revealed nothing. Back at the entryway, the aromas of ozone and burned plastic struck the first note of discord. “Something nearby must have been struck by lightning last night.”

If it was the transformer, he hoped the utility crews had repaired the damage. When they unlocked the factory door, the burned plastic smell increased. Marcus’s nose wrinkled. Which hurt, but so did walking.

Katie appeared to be oblivious. She latched the door behind them. “Interior sweep. Check all the exits.”

“Can we visit the laboratory first and check if there’s electricity?”

She pursed her lips and didn’t meet his gaze. It wasn’t because she was being shifty—she was checking everything. Assessing their surroundings. This was Katie on alert.

He didn’t see anything out of place, but her tension increased along with the burned plastic smell.

“That’s a terrible odor. Can you identify the source?”

“No.” When he was a wolf, he relied on his senses, and they were telling him nobody had been here but his group. The scorched plastic could be anything from a lightning-splattered electrical system to a chemical spill.

It invaded his sinuses until he couldn’t rely on his nose. Murky sunlight poured in through the vented windows three stories up in the main room of the factory. The bowels of the factory grew darker and narrower as they wove through assembly areas and the huge storage tanks. Pausing, they unlocked and raised a wide lift gate before entering the first floor storage section.

The
clack-clack
of the rolling gate echoed painfully in his ears. If anyone was here—and he doubted it—they’d know someone had arrived. He always left the gate down and secured, to dissuade vandals. The gate out of the way, Marcus retrieved his flashlight. He hadn’t installed electricity anywhere besides the lab since there was no need. He shone the beam ahead of them into the dark, low-ceilinged room.

Stacked pipes rose on pallets in no particular order, creating corridors. A maze. He’d organized things to his liking when he’d bought the factory and used industrial remnants to both construct and conceal his hideaway.

“Something’s wrong.” Katie had been holding her gun in an easy, practiced grasp. She aimed it down the last corridor between them and the laboratory’s secret door.

He shone the flashlight ahead. It looked normal to him.

“How can you tell?” Marcus couldn’t discern anything beyond that horrible scent. The sharp odor stabbed his sinuses, and from there stabbed his whole head.

She glanced at him as if he was nuts. “The ward’s gone.”

He’d installed permanent boundary markers around his lab that—when he’d been a witch—he could activate with few additional components. Like the aversion spells on Katie’s safe room, they deterred curious visitors. The ward, though they’d set it upon arriving at the factory, didn’t appear to be operational.

Had the lightning negated his wards? Was that the smell?

Not possible.

Something
was
wrong.

He wiped his face, rubbing his nose and cheeks where the piercing odor hurt the most. “Let’s get out of here. We’ll take a closer look at— ”

The laboratory door opened, and Katie’s father. Zhang Li, stepped through. Behind him was Hiram Lars, holding a gun to the smaller man’s head.

“Look who it is.” Lars’s gloating voice sliced through Katie’s dismay. “My old friend Chang Cai.”

She could react many ways to the current situation, and all of them would accomplish the same thing.

She was dead. Marcus was dead. Zhang Li was dead.

Unless she could neutralize Lars and however many keepers he’d brought with him in the next couple of minutes. She assumed they were surrounded. The plastic scent would have been applied throughout the factory to baffle Marcus’s nose.

Shit.
She’d done that herself on missions…usually
with
herself, though, not chemical spills.

Her chances of saving the day weren’t looking good.

“Lights, please,” Lars said.

A giant spotlight clunked on, flooding the area with enough intensity that Katie squinted. Beside her, Marcus growled. She waited to see if Lars would greet the scientist he’d once held prisoner, but Lars smiled at her, his unnaturally straight teeth gleaming. “Put the gun down or I kill your precious papa before your very eyes.”

She knew he’d do it, so she lowered the pistol to the dirty concrete. Hands out to the side, she rose. “How are you, Ba? They treating you well?”

“What the hell are you still doing in this country?” Zhang Li asked. “Idiot girl.”

She didn’t see bruises on him, and he was wearing different clothes than when she’d last seen him. His hair looked washed, so he’d been allowed to bathe. Did he still have amnesia? He’d called her girl, not Katie. She wished she could hug him. “Love you too.”

“Shove the gun toward me.” Lars tapped his gun against her father’s temple. Dad flinched.

Katie considered whether she could miraculously kick the gun in such a way that it would discharge into Lars’s high forehead. If possible, he looked even sicker than he had last week.

Good.

Sick or no, his brains would look fantastic splattered all over her father and the door behind them. She suspected Dad would agree.

If she hooked the gun just so with her toe and it flew into her hands… Would cinematic shit like that actually work?

“Are you too ill to cast a better mask spell?” she asked Lars instead of kicking the gun.
Drag it out. Find options.
“Unless you enjoy looking like a withered lemon.”

“I’ve no need of such ridiculous ploys anymore. The gun. Now.” Lars cocked his weapon, and Zhang Li closed his eyes.

Katie kicked the pistol toward Lars.

“That’s better,” he said. “The best anyone could expect of a depraved harlot, I suppose. Look at you. Standing there like you have a right to breathe our air after committing bestiality with that…disgusting animal. I suppose you think you’re superior now that you’re a so-called alpha witch.”

Marcus kind of laughed. What was funny about this situation?

“I see you’re still a judgmental prick,” she said to Lars, hoping he’d ease off on Dad.

He did, but only to gesture toward her with his gun. “Take her.”

Shadowy figures moved into the corridor around her and Marcus. Younger, fitter keepers—zero gray hairs or wrinkles—divested her and Marcus of their possessions without touching skin. They were gloved and armed to the teeth. She recognized a few from Alabama and nobody from her time with the council.

None of them would make eye contact with her.

Was her reputation that extreme? Did they think she could inflict magic with her eyeballs? They hadn’t been so leery in Alabama. Lars had probably taken his frustration out on them in the past week.

Marcus was not so silent. “Hello, Yasmine. Bill. Anthony.”

None of the men reacted, but a female keeper with black eyes and hair glanced briefly at him. “Don’t speak to me, mongrel.”

“Now that we have that nasty gun business out of the way,” Lars gloated, “I have some questions about how you averted the wipe twenty years ago.” Despite his physical changes, his voice bore the same patronizing, vaguely European accent, his country of origin lost in his personal history. “I’ll give you a chance to explain yourself before I kill you.”

“You’re so gracious,” Katie said.

“We’ve wiped keepers for centuries, but of course Chang Cai was the special one.” His mouth soured as he said the words. “The unwipeable one. We haven’t been able to replicate what you did. So tell me. Was it intentional? A defensive spell? Or was it an accident?”

“If you release my family and Marcus, I’ll tell you.” What keepers had been sacrificed for Lars’s experiments—anyone who disagreed with him and his philosophies? That would explain why his current team was composed of young witches. Though keepers were conscripted from all over the world, gathering an entire team in twenty years was a stretch. Convex witches weren’t born every day.

Nor were witches who looked like Lars. Toward the back of the group, Katie spotted several tall men who could have been Frank’s brothers. She noticed Marcus eyeballing them too.

“Why would I release anyone?” Lars said. “I believe I’ll keep you all, and you’ll tell me what I want to know when I start cutting off fingers.”

“Psycho,” Zhang Li muttered. “I’m the only one he’s still got.”

Lars’s calculating gray eyes narrowed and his mouth tightened so much his lips vanished. “Shut up, old man, or I’ll shoot you. You’re of no use to me now that I’ve found her.”

What did Dad mean? Had Lars killed Vern and Tonya?

Katie’s anger, already hot, began to fume. It boiled into her brain, which clicked furiously through scenarios that involved fighting, blood, gore and death.

Unfortunately, logic insisted most of the blood would be hers.

“This discussion is going nowhere. Search them,” Lars directed his team. “Be thorough. She’s treacherous.”

“Whoever hurts her dies,” Marcus informed the room at large. Everyone ignored him. She hoped they continued to do so, because that would give him a chance to come up with…something. Anything. She was drawing a blood-soaked blank. The only thing she could think of was to pretend she’d bounced the poppy intentionally instead of it being the luck of the alpha draw.

The keepers began patting them down. With a vicious grin—the closest he’d come to acknowledging Marcus was more than a statue, Lars added, “Don’t forget her genitals. They’re probably diseased.”

“Oh, good fucking grief.” Katie refused to hide her contempt. Did Lars think she’d quail because he ordered a cavity search? A rape? Torture? She would never break for him. His insults meant nothing. “Ba, don’t watch.”

Her father already had his eyes closed. His posture had deflated, as if he expected to be killed at any moment. He might know something she didn’t, but she refused to speculate.

He wasn’t dead yet. Marcus wasn’t dead yet. She wasn’t dead yet.

When the keepers began stripping her as Lars commanded, she smiled her widest smile. “Do what he says, children. He’s the boss and you’re the peons.”

One or two paused, but not for long. More professionally than she expected, they undressed her and Marcus to their underwear and searched for weapons and spell components. Marcus, needless to say, received a desultory inspection, since wolves couldn’t do magic—but he did receive several shoves and cuffs.

He didn’t fight much. He, like her, seemed poised for a different action. His brands appeared tribal in the harsh spotlight, primitive and striking. No one commented on them, despite it being unusual for a wolf to wear ink.

Marcus could do magic. Katie’s magic had accrued too. How could she get her hands on some herbs? How could she convince Lars she had information he wanted so he’d postpone whatever murderous fantasies he’d concocted?

Her bra and panties provided no warmth in the cold, dank factory. She shivered but didn’t cower as the female keeper called Yasmine inspected her privates.

“She’s clean,” the woman said. Marcus watched them with death in his pale blue eyes.

Pale eyes. He had the wolf in him, rising up, reaching out.

And how much witch did he have?

The keepers sure as hell wouldn’t be expecting that.

“Almost disappointing,” Lars commented. The nature of the witch and wolf relationship meant keepers with brutality on the brain didn’t rape their target wolves for fear they’d transform themselves. Katie—not a wolf—wasn’t sure what to expect. “The great Chang Cai trapped so easily, without so much as a trick up her sleeve. I’d hoped for a better show. I’ll give you one more chance to tell me the truth, Chang Cai. Is there a recipe to prevent wipes?”

“Maybe,” she said. “Vernon Harrower cast it on me. Too bad you killed him or he could have shared it.”

Lars grimaced. “He’s not dead.”

Not dead? Then how was her father the only prisoner Lars had left? “Where is he?”

His grimace deepened. Wherever Vern was, it pissed Lars off. “Do you have the recipe or not?”

She could fake one. They’d test it before killing her. Possibly. She glanced at Marcus, and he shook his head.

He’d taught her about defenses for many spells, including monkshood, magic drain, calming mix and pack bonds, but had admitted there was no defense against a wipe. Did he have a plan—hopefully a better one than hers?

She trusted Marcus.

Taking a deep, shaky breath, Katie said, “No. I don’t have the recipe.”

Lars rolled his eyes. “Of course you don’t, because there isn’t one. Now you’re of no use to me either. You, you, you—” he pointed at members of his team, “—throw them in the holding tank and bring me the berserker bomb. I’d like to see her ripped apart by the same animal she’s been consorting with. Right before she dies, we’ll shoot him in the head, so she can enjoy it.”

“No!” When Marcus started struggling, one of the keepers restraining him brandished a spell pod. Black as tar. The only black pods she knew were monkshood.

“Marcus, stop.” He couldn’t fight monkshood.

He growled—but he stopped. The keepers didn’t kill him.

The keepers wrestled her and Marcus through the storage areas. Lars handed her father off and followed them, chuckling to himself.

Like a crazy person.

Time was running out.

The berserker spell, no matter how much Marcus loved her, would take him if cast specifically on him. He would try to slaughter her.

She was pretty much naked and defenseless.

They reached the huge holding tanks, twenty-foot-high metal silos with tall rims. She didn’t have to see the inside to realize there was no way a witch could hop out of one, else Lars wouldn’t be laughing himself sick over the thought of trapping her with a feral. Goddess, to force Marcus to do this to her! He’d never forgive himself.

A ladder had been propped against the first tank. They pushed her toward it. Another spotlight clanked on, throwing the tank into stark relief. Center stage. Two men climbed to the tank’s access hole, waiting for her so she couldn’t hurl herself off the other side and run.

“A little poetic justice, dying at the hands of a monster, considering how I almost killed you the first time.” Lars’s rheumy eyes gleamed with excitement. He clutched a giant wad of herbs in his hands—an unnecessarily large dose of berserker mix considering his target was a single person.

“How you almost killed me the first time?” Lars had always loved the sound of his own voice. Time to rile him up so he’d shout and make mistakes. “Your guy shot me in the arm. Barely. You didn’t even come close to killing me.”

“Not in Alabama, you dumb whore.”

“Do you mean when your son Frank attempted to capture me in Kentucky?” She took a stab in the dark. Perhaps her hunch about Lars’s one-man breeding program was true. “He was simple to outwit. Just like you will be.”

“Frank?” His laughter was phlegmy. Somewhat strained. “He’s not convex. That makes him a failure. I don’t care what happens to failures, as long as they serve me.”

None of the flunkies uttered a word—perhaps they weren’t allowed to speak. She did, however, notice a few glances. Did Lars make them call him Sire too?

“But no, this has nothing to do with Frank. Did you think the wolves you’d been sent to neutralize twenty years ago lusted after you so much they fell into that much of a frenzy? You were arrogant. Convinced all you had to do was flash your cunt and everyone would fall at your feet.”

Ah, Lars was talking about her final assignment for the keepers—the one where she’d nearly died because the ferals she’d been sent after had gone crazy. Crazier. And her team hadn’t arrived as scheduled.

When they’d finally shown up, Katie had been in huge trouble—bruised, naked, defenseless, ferals ripping into each other over who got to fuck her to death and then, apparently, devour her internal organs. She’d remained alive as long as she had by pitting them against one another.

Lars had been with her team. At the time she’d been too intent on survival to notice whether he’d seemed disappointed to find her in one piece. But since then, she’d wondered.

Yasmine, her back to Lars, scowled. She was close to Katie but not one of the keepers gripping her arms. When the man to Katie’s left began to speak, Yasmine gave a tiny, but decisive, headshake.

Had the other keepers not realized Lars had tried to kill Katie—Chang Cai? Or how? Was this about Frank?

It could be anything. They maintained blank expressions, but Katie could read posture. Nuance. The four burly keepers on Marcus were starting to have trouble keeping him in one place. They seemed distracted. And her guards were definitely showing signs of disquiet.

Lars’s team was uncomfortable right now, whether due to Lars’s confessions or his intent to have Marcus butcher her under the influence of berserker herbs.

“What are you saying?” she asked, to make him clarify aloud. “I don’t understand.”

“I set you up, of course. You were supposed to die. The wolves were supposed to take care of you since our incompetent director frowned on culling unworthy keeper whores from the ranks. Spell components are easy to dissolve in alcoholic beverages, and wolves will drink and eat anything. Even humans.”

“Wolves don’t eat people,” Katie said, though the ferals had certainly discussed it. If Lars had given them tainted food…

“That shows how stupid you are,” he declared. “Precious little Chang Cai, groomed to bring the keepers into a new era. A modern era. No one…no one…is a worthier keeper than I am. No one is more devoted. No one is better suited to issue in a golden age for witches, one where the stench of animals no longer taints our bloodlines.”