Witch Interrupted (36 page)

Claws skittered alongside as several keeper wolves gave chase. Some were mobile. Why hadn’t they defended Lars? If they wanted him dead—why chase her? She could almost feel their hot breath on her heels. Using her ears instead of her eyes, she took aim with her good arm and fired.

A wolf squealed and tumbled paws-over-head. She kept running. Her feet against the concrete shot jolts of pain through her wounded shoulder. She could feel her head swimming and blinked to clear her vision. As soon as another wolf grew close, she shot it too.

Bang. You’re dead.

The rest kept back, leery of her marksmanship. They’d been evolved into wolves by the berserker spell, but they weren’t fools. Their memories drove them now that the initial effect of the spell had passed.

Katie hit the storage area and nearly skidded into a stack of pipes. She caught her balance. Barely. The first spotlight blazed. The wolves wouldn’t have a sight advantage anymore. The door to the lab stood open, its concealing machinery thrust aside. Staggering, she picked up her pace and hoped the wolves wouldn’t notice her weakness. Tiny debris on the floor cut her feet. Two wolves crouched in front of the lab with hackles raised.

She shot one. The other fled. She wouldn’t have stood a chance against born wolves or experienced transformed wolves, but the keepers were unfamiliar with their new bodies, senses and internal changes. Their entire lives had just entered the hell dimension, as far as they were concerned.

Too bad for them. She stumbled over the dead wolf and into the lab.

The place was absolutely tossed. What the hell?

Katie ran to the supply cabinet, which had been vandalized. Why would the keepers waste perfectly good components and lab equipment? Smash the cot to pieces? Shred the books? Blood dribbled down her arm. Her vision began tunneling, and lightheadedness dogged her.

Five more minutes and she’d pass out.

She had to be quicker. Smarter. She flung items every direction, trashing Marcus’s lab the rest of the way. She sniffed here and there, but so many herbs and bases had been spilled, she couldn’t suss out any bay. When she came across their last can of heal-all, she sprayed herself quickly, half-ass, enough to stop the blood loss. Ten more minutes, then. Maybe. Her head felt like an echo chamber. She rotated her shoulder—usable, as long as she favored it.

That handled, she searched frantically on the floor, in piles of rubbish, in boxes, for Marcus’s spells. She finally located the remnants of his defensive cocktail. The greenish-brown mix had been dumped into a deep sink along with various liquids and herbs. If the cocktail was here, some bay capsules…the antidote…might be near.

She pawed through trash until herbs coated her hands and arms, getting in her scrapes, burning her skin. The keepers had been thorough. Everything in the lab was smashed and contaminated.

Dammit, dammit.
A miracle existed, and she couldn’t find it. She’d run out of time.

Despairing, starting to shiver so hard from the cold and gunshot and tension that her fingers wouldn’t work, she fumbled on a pair of coveralls. Marcus’s. She smelled him in the fabric. Tears blocked her windpipe. Like her hands had blocked Lars’s windpipe.

Seven more minutes? Enough to finish that job. She’d go back and kill Lars. She swiveled to leave and her gaze fell on the items she and Marcus had brought to the factory today, including their clothing. The keepers had piled them haphazardly next to the door. Marcus’s kit had been trashed, but his clothing, his pants pocket, where he’d carried a bay capsule since the day he’d met her?

Nothing there. Another fail. Tears trickled down her cheeks, and she remembered. He’d told her he trusted her yesterday. Teased her to check his pants pocket. He’d meant it. No antidote pill. No defense against monkshood. That meant he’d been without one since…

Since the night they’d made love. She’d flung his capsule into the glassware.

Stumbling, running, Katie ran for corner shelf. With a wad of paper to protect her hand, she pawed through shards. Dark green capsule. Dark green capsule.

Goddess, please.

There.

Small and green, sitting innocently inside a half-broken beaker. Shaking, she reached for it, but she was filthy.

She wiped her hands, thrust them into the ever-present rubber gloves and grabbed the bay pill, a smidgen of primed cayenne from the kit, more gloves and the oven cleaner canister. Pocketing everything, she checked the gun clip.

Three bullets. Half a factory to navigate. Unconsciousness loomed despite the heal-all.

No one interrupted her race—really, her stagger—back to Marcus. When she reached him, the only living creatures were her father, hovering over Lars like the spirit of vengeance, and Lars himself. Maybe. Dad hadn’t ripped open his throat, but Lars wasn’t moving.

Except for a few bodies, the keeper wolves had disappeared. She had no idea where or why. As long as they weren’t attacking her, she didn’t care.

Katie knelt beside Marcus and dug into his thick ruff, trying to find a pulse. Nothing. He was dead—again. Was this a record? He’d gotten the tattoo so they could approach the elders and rescue her family. He’d intercepted monkshood to defend her, thinking it would be a bullet. Sometimes wolves could survive bullets.

Not monkshood.

How sensitive would the bay pill be? It was a mixture, which meant it’d be tetchy. If she only had one, she couldn’t afford contaminants.

Katie snapped off the first pair of rubber gloves and donned a fresh one. Careful to hold her hands away from her grubby, bloody body, she dug out the bay capsule. It would be primed, since Marcus had assumed he wouldn’t possess magic when he needed it.

She smashed the pill into his mouth and held his jaws closed. Magic bloomed.

Thirty seconds. Sixty. Her head felt like a balloon, disconnected and floating. Marcus’s chest didn’t rise. His tail didn’t wag. The spell had done something, but it hadn’t reversed the monkshood.

Frantic now, she yanked off a glove, probed his tongue with the herbs on it, and shot power through the components into him. She added all the power in the smidgen of cayenne to boot.

Inelegant, unpracticed, hopefully effective.

The spell responded explosively, sucking at her reserves like a vacuum. Katie coughed and held on to his furry body. Her vision blackened. She let the last of her magic flow into the components and Marcus.

Get up, Marcus.
She ran out of magic and used her alpha on him.
Get up. Get up. Get up.

She fell across him, praying. His fur smelled like him. His body was still warm. She couldn’t see anymore so she closed her eyes.

Get up. You have to get up.

His skin shivered, as if he were shaking off flies. There on the cold factory floor, he shimmered and shook and shifted back into his human body. Her face rested against his smooth chest and his arms encircled her.

“I was dead again, wasn’t I?” he said in a creaky voice.

Katie sighed with relief and passed out.

Katie’s cell phone buzzed, flashing a West Virginia area code. Hoping it was June or Harry with news about Vern, she quickly stripped off a glove and her goggles and answered.

“Katherine,” said a voice she’d come to be all too familiar with—a voice that did not belong to either Travis. “I’m glad I caught you. You’re so rarely home.”

In truth, she was almost always home, working with contractors, fixing the new house to her liking and letting her father in and out the damn door eighteen times a day. She simply didn’t answer Shirl’s calls if she knew they were from Shirl.

“Glad you caught me too,” Katie lied. “How have you been?”

Since the battle a month ago with Hiram Lars, the region elders had been setting the table nonstop, trying to sort order from chaos. While they’d suspected Lars of overreaching for twenty years, they hadn’t been walloped with the proof until now. It would take years to untangle everything Lars had wrought, and his spy network—which had not been approved—had gone to ground.

Thank Goddess the elders had taken Lars into custody, saving Katie from the moral dilemma of a straight-up execution.

“I’m good.” Shirl had been her main contact with the region elders. “I wanted to let you know that we’ve voted to increase the salary and benefits package for the directorship position.”

“How nice for the future director.” Katie eyed her workspace critically, components laid in neat dishes and the Bunsen burner flickering. Two hours left to restock their heal-all stash. Give or take interruptions like phone calls and aggravating wolves. “I’m not changing my mind. It’s not about the money, Shirl. I don’t want that life.”

“It doesn’t have to be like it was before,” Shirl said. “It can be what you and the region elders, working together, feel is best for all shifters. We need someone we can trust to manage the keepers, and we believe that person is you.”

Vern, thirty years ago, had been sent to clean up the council. Unfortunately, he’d underestimated Lars, and the elders’ plan had blown up in their faces. The elders, wary of open warfare, had begun guiding covens to handle more wolf issues themselves to reduce the council’s clout—at the same time Lars had pretended his teams could no longer locate renegade wolves. The overall workload reduction for the keepers had enabled Lars to pursue his purist interests and experiments aggressively. The egregious covenant-breaking he’d committed in pursuit of Katie and Marcus had given the region elders the kick in the ass, and the proof, they needed to lower the boom.

Katie didn’t want the boom lowered on her. The region elders had been at her for the entire month to take over the council.

“If you agree to alter your policy regarding transformed wolves, I may be willing to negotiate.” Her recent experiences, and everything Marcus had discovered, had changed her perspective. Perhaps Tonya—whom Katie missed desperately—had been right all along. She was a sympathizer at heart.

And perhaps she simply wished she could send her father on a very long vacation with anyone who wasn’t her, but she’d agreed to be personally responsible for him if the elders allowed him to remain cognizant now that he was a wolf.

Shirl sighed. “That isn’t possible. We have to consider the good of everyone, not what a few of us might prefer. Dr. Delgado can’t replicate his achievement at this time, and we aren’t in a position to introduce ourselves to the packs. Transformed wolves are a security risk.”

“Marcus is working on it,” Katie said. He’d expended all the energy in his cayenne permabrand during the battle with the keepers. There were no traces left beyond silvery markings on his front and back in a lattice design. When he wasn’t making love to her, he was in his lab testing benign ways to evolve a witch or wolf to dual state. “Don’t rule him out.”

“We haven’t ruled out Dr. Delgado,” Shirl assured her. “He has our support as long as he keeps us apprised and accepts a few commissions and, possibly, interns in the future.”

“He’s still looking over the proposals.” They were stacked somewhere in the office. He’d scheduled time to read them once he completed a side project, which he’d hinted he might resolve tonight. “Anyone who wants to intern with him has to be comfortable with exceptions to the transformed wolf policy. He doesn’t need to deal with prejudices.”

“Of course. Speaking of wolves, how is your father?”

The registered exceptions to the elders’ transformed wolf policy, which had been updated in the latest coven newsletters, were Harry Travis, Marcus Delgado and Zhang Li. Wolves aided by the freedom program weren’t publicly acknowledged, and the sympathizers had gone deeper undercover, deactivating their hotline after the elders had tried to contact them for help with the keepers.

Katie just prayed Tonya and Vern were with the sympathizers instead of dead. Their continued absence was one of her biggest concerns.

Her other concern was her father. She was beginning to think he was never going to regain two-legger form. He’d been a wolf since the incident.

“He’s hairy. Would you like to talk to him? I can put you on speaker phone.”

“I shouldn’t,” Shirl said. “This is a business call.” Katie and Marcus had taken Zhang Li to see Shirl two weeks ago in hopes it would inspire him to shift. While he’d been happy to see his old girlfriend, lounge on her couch and eat her pot roast, he’d stayed four legged.

“Our business is concluded,” Katie said. “I’m not going to rejoin the council.”

“We did vote to establish a reeducation program regarding public opinion of convex witches,” Shirl said encouragingly. “You shouldn’t be segregated from the rest of the coven network, and convex witches shouldn’t be coerced in any way to enlist in the council.”

“It sure feels like you’re coercing me.” Katie heard the
tic-tic
of her father’s claws in the hallway outside her stillroom. He must be done with the movie she’d put on for him.

“Not because you’re convex. Because you’re the right person for the job. We want to work with you.”

“I’m truly not interested,” Katie insisted. “Once you locate Vern and Tonya Applebaum, you can get him to fill the position again.” Her friends had definitely been at the council stronghold when all the shit had gone down. The keepers willing to speak to the council reported seeing them.

“I wish your father would communicate with us about what happened,” Shirl said. “He still won’t use the alphabet rug?”

Katie and Marcus, after Dad had entered his third day with no return to upright position, had purchased a preschool ABC rug so her father could spell words if he wanted.

He didn’t.

“No, he won’t use it. Surely the region elders can find out what happened at the stronghold? You have access to the council’s files and the remaining keepers. Are you not allowed to tell me about any leads on Vern and Tonya or do you not have any?”

“You have pretty high security clearance,” Shirl said. “The files weren’t informative, and none of the keepers know what happened. We finished the interviews last weekend. Lars isn’t giving us any lucid information, but there’s evidence to suggest he repeatedly poppied keepers who weren’t in his elite group. We also know he maintained a wing of the stronghold where only he and his team went—where the experiments took place.”

Both during Katie’s time and after, Lars hadn’t involved the whole council in his purist endeavors. Marcus’s stint there and the experiments had been off the books. The young keepers Lars had employed for his less covenant-friendly goals were nowhere to be found.

“Lars broke covenant and poppied fellow witches for selfish purposes? Color me shocked.”

“There are probably caches of files elsewhere,” Shirl said. “Most keepers only vaguely remember anyone on Lars’s elite team. Since the deceased members died as wolves, no one recognized them. DNA has proven inconclusive. The analysis of that DNA is one of the commissions Dr. Delgado may receive in the future. Do you think he’ll take it?”

Shirl was trying to sucker Katie into more conversation. Not going to happen. The elder would continue to badger her, guilt her, flatter her, bribe her and level with her in hopes something, anything, would change her mind. But Katie wanted to be left alone to tend to her wounds and her two wolves in peace. “I really need to go, Shirl. Got herbs to pick and cayenne to prime.”

“I understand. Give my best to your father.” They exchanged a few actual pleasantries before Katie hung up the phone.

Finally, she could get back to brewing. She wanted to be done when Marcus got back. They hadn’t vocalized many affections or intentions since their near-death experiences had prompted all the confessionals. Marcus wasn’t chatty, and she wasn’t particularly emotive herself.

But they’d certainly restarted their bedroom activities—minus any experimental regimen. Marcus had somehow wound up living with Katie and her father in the new house. She helped whenever he needed a boost from a witch, and hoped the sex and magic weren’t the only reasons he’d stuck with her.

It sure as hell wasn’t her cooking. Though she knew damn well taste buds in wolf form weren’t equivalent to taste buds in human form, even her father didn’t like Katie’s cooking. June’s care packages of baked goods improved the cuisine in the Zhang-Delgado household exponentially.

Katie slid a fresh latex glove on her bare hand, popped goggles over her glasses and returned to the components. It was hard to quit living as if everyone wanted her dead. If she continued to stockpile components, maintain go bags and use June’s expensive wards on her house, that was her business.

If she continued to track down Tonya’s acquaintances with the information she’d scrounged from the tattoo parlor, doing anything she could to find Tonya and Vern, that was her business too.

And it would help everyone, including the region elders, if her father would shift back.

What had happened to him while he’d been with Hiram Lars? Did he still have the amnesia? Did he know what had happened to Tonya and Vern?

And would he ever let her work uninterrupted for more than twenty minutes? If she had to quit what she was doing to open the back door for him one more time today, she was going to—

From the den—the room with the back door—she heard him scratch and bark.

Katie thought about ignoring him, but if she did, he’d come into her stillroom and bite her. Because he was an asshole.

“Old man,” Katie said, stripping off both gloves and her lab coat, “don’t you want to have opposable thumbs again? And shit in toilets and use the TV remote and eat off plates?”

She tossed her gloves into the waste bin and laid her coat across the back of a chair. Growling like a wolf, she stomped down the hall to the den.

Her father, tail wagging, lifted a paw and scratched the painted wooden doorjamb, leaving long claw marks.

“What do you need out for?” Their house was in the country, near Marcus’s lab, but they did have neighbors. And those neighbors had cats and chickens. “If you’d cooperate with the letter rug, we could communicate like people. We need to know what happened while you were with the keepers.”

Zhang Li didn’t want to communicate. But he did want in and out the door. A lot.

As she lectured, he wagged his tail and panted.

Katie stormed to the back door, jerked it open and booted his ass out. “If I hear one more thing from the neighbors about our dog chasing chickens, I’m going to put you in a coop. Don’t think I won’t.”

All she saw was the saucy wag of his tail as he disappeared into the woods behind the house.

She sighed and checked the clock. Marcus would be home soon. Good. He’d said he was close to a breakthrough. Maybe he’d had a miraculous brainstorm for how to motivate Dad to shift. The hell. Back.

Marcus had run some tests on Zhang Li, who was as cooperative as a wolf as he had been as a witch. He couldn’t determine anything magical or physical blocking Zhang Li’s shift. It was possible to prevent a wolf from changing forms with certain spells, but there were no traces of those components on her father.

And who’d have put that spell on him? Not her.

Katie had barely finished her afternoon work when she heard the crunch of Marcus’s truck in the gravel drive. She tossed her last gloves for the day into the trash and brushed off her oversized T-shirt and jeggings. Before she reached the door to greet her scientist, she heard Marcus talking. He fumbled with the door latch as if he only had one free hand.

“I think you’ll like it here.” His deep, calm voice resonated inside her, as always. She loved how he could be so calm and so passionate simultaneously. His control and intensity thrilled her—in and out of the bedroom. “You may not be allowed out for a time, but we can grant you the permission of the yard after your prove yourself.”

Who in the world was he talking to? He rummaged with the many locks on their door. Katie got tired of waiting and opened it for him.

Marcus, poised on the porch with his keys out, had wedged a grocery bag under one arm and carried a large, plastic case in his hand. Closer inspection revealed the case was an animal carrier, the size used for small dogs, rabbits and cats.

Katie squatted in front of the blue plastic case. “You got a cat?”

“I did.” In the grocery bag, he had several cat-care items. “There’s a pan and litter in the truck. Could you fetch them? I need to introduce the animal to her new home, and she’s used to me.”

“Sure.” Marcus had never displayed any interest whatsoever in pets. Witches often kept them, but wolves rarely did—especially not cats. It wasn’t that they disliked cats or cats disliked them, but many wolves seemed to feel cats were the antithesis of wolfhood. Though Marcus wasn’t a born wolf, he didn’t seem the cat type.

But he did surprise her sometimes…like the other night in the shower when he’d joined her for a lengthy cleansing session.

They hadn’t used antibacterial soap, but she’d definitely felt refreshed afterward.

Katie retrieved the desired items and set them up in the washroom. A cat. She’d never had a cat. Pets didn’t lend themselves to a clandestine, drop-everything-and-run lifestyle. But if Marcus wanted a cat, she was agreeable. A pet was a domestic, settled kind of decision. If domestic and settled was how he was starting to feel about her, she’d happily become the crazy cat lady. She didn’t want a drop-everything-and-run lifestyle anymore, and it wasn’t as if he was asking her to brand him with cayenne.