Wild Things (Chicagoland Vampires 9)

“Merit.”

I looked over, found Ethan a few feet away. He was dirty and blood smeared, but all limbs were intact. I nearly sagged with relief.

“Tanya and Connor?” he asked, moving quickly nearer and looking me over.

“The woods,” I said. “I got them to the woods, then dealt with her.” I gestured to the harpy, who looked scrawny and pitiful there on the ground, her wings folded in death.

“This is a miserable thing,” he said, no little pity in his voice. “Let’s get back in there.”

We walked back into the clearing as Gabriel finished off a harpy with a vicious bite to the neck, and we ran to his position at the edge of the battle.

Light exploded, and Gabriel burst back into human form, naked as the day he was born. There were a few scratches on his body, a result of the weird magic of shape-shifting. Although changing from human to shifter would heal injuries received as a human, it didn’t work in reverse.

“Everyone is tiring,” Ethan said.

Gabriel nodded. Jeff ran up, hastily clothed, pointing at Catcher and Mallory.

“They think this is a magical attack,” he said, “and they think they know how to finish it with the magic they have left. But it will be big magic.”

Catcher and Mallory knelt together on the ground in the center of the meadow, near the fallen totem. They held their left hands together, palms flat, and their right hands flat against the earth, as if testing it for weakness, or pulling strength from it.

“Mallory won’t do it without your go-ahead.”

Gabriel looked at her for a moment. “Will it hurt the Pack?”

Jeff shook his head. “It will be targeted at the magic itself. It shouldn’t touch anyone else.”

Gabriel wet his lips, nodded. “If they think they can end it, they should. Just tell us what to do.”

“Get down,” he said, then cupped his hands around his mouth. “Go!” he yelled across the clearing.

As Catcher nodded at Mallory, Ethan grabbed my hand and pulled me down into a crouch.

I couldn’t see the magic around Catcher and Mallory, not with my eyes, but I could feel it ramping up, like the supercharged atmosphere before a storm, the air suddenly heavy and smelling of ozone.

A bubble of magic emerged from the earth, quickly encompassing the two of them, growing until it was ten feet tall, and then suddenly exploding, pulsing, like a wave through the sky.

The magic hit the birds like a bomb. They exploded into swirls of acrid black smoke. Like it was a living thing, the smoke rose into a giant, swirling column over the clearing, a cyclone of magic. It screamed with noise—like the squeals of a thousand harpies together—and blew tents and leaves and the rest of the bonfire to the ground in an explosion of noise.

It spun faster and faster, debris winding around and around like a children’s toy, narrowing and rising farther and farther into the sky until, with a final scream of sound that made me clap my hands over my ears, the column broke apart, sending black tentacles of smoke into the sky.

The night went silent, and the smoke began to dissipate, revealing the stars once again.

We all rose again. Gabriel looked at Ethan. “Get back to the house. And Catcher and Mallory, as well.”

“Back to the house?” Ethan asked, his magic and body suddenly tense, making all my spidey senses tingle uncomfortably.

“We were just attacked, and you’re the odd ones out.”

We weren’t shifters, he meant.

We were different.

We were suspects.

Chapter Five

BLOOD WILL TELL

They’d undoubtedly been attacked before. They’d had intra-Pack struggles, and they’d overcome them. But tonight they’d been attacked, without warning, by creatures that weren’t supposed to exist.

This had shocked them. Unfortunately, we were on the wrong side of that shock.

We followed Gabriel silently back to the house, where Finn directed us to the kitchen.

It was large, with white cabinets and sleek black countertops, and a large kitchen island with an expensive stove and several stools for casual meals. The Breckenridges’ kitchen staff, dressed in their formal black-and-white uniforms, watched us from one corner as Mallory, Catcher, Ethan, and I were directed to the center island.

“Sit,” Finn said, then disappeared from the room. The house staff, also shifters, but apparently on duty during the festival, stood together, arms crossed, whispering and regarding us with obvious hostility.

Ethan sat beside me, his hand protectively at my back. Catcher and Mallory took seats across from us, and the strain in her face was clear. They’d interned us in the house while they grieved together, reminding us just how separate our worlds still were.

“What will they do now?” Mallory asked.

“Clean up. Mourn. Heal,” Catcher said, running a hand over his shorn scalp.

Mallory looked worried and guilty, and she nibbled nervously on the edge of her thumb. I could read the fear in her face: She was the witch, the woman who’d used black magic, the one they’d taken in.

She’d come here, and she’d brought death with her.

As if reading my mind, she looked up at me and met my gaze, and the weight of her emotions made my chest clench.

I knew her again. As well as I’d known her before, but now as a sorceress, tested by magic and come through the other side. I might not ever forget the past, what she’d done. I wasn’t a child, or naive. But I could forgive her, and we could move on and try to build something better, something stronger, than what had been before.

But still, no one spoke. I could deal with comfortable silence, but this silence was not comfortable. I broke through it, clearing my throat. Ethan, Mallory, and Catcher frankly looked relieved by the intrusion.

“Harpies don’t exist,” Mallory said. “They aren’t supposed to exist.”

“I’m not certain they do exist,” Ethan said, glancing at Catcher. “I presume from their disappearing act they were magic?”

“A manifestation of some kind,” Catcher agreed. “They weren’t real.”

“They killed,” I said. “They fought and wounded. They were real.”

“They were tangible,” Catcher said. “But they weren’t real. Not real harpies, anyway,” he added at my questioning look. “They were magic—power shaped and molded into something three-dimensional and solid.”

Ethan glanced warily at the kitchen staff, then leaned forward. “That’s how you thought to use magic to destroy them at the end.”