Impulse: Southern Arcana, Book 5 (28 page)

Julio jerked his arm away. “What will it do, map the signature from the gun?”

“Mm-hmm.” She dropped a bullet into the bowl, then swirled the blade of the knife in Julio’s blood before dipping it in the herbs. She held the tip over the first candle, filling the room with the pungent scent of scorched blood and burning herbs. By the time she’d burned the herbs off the blade on the fourth candle, the area in between them had begun to glow.

Kristen set the knife aside and picked up the two glasses, holding them a foot above the metal bowl. “You two might want to take a step back. There shouldn’t be a physical explosion, but the power might bitchslap you pretty hard.”

“I’m fine,” Julio growled. “Just—hurry.”

“If you say so…” She closed her eyes with a hum, and light arced between the candles, a silver square of power that spun out like yarn connecting each flame. She peeked at the bowl, adjusted her aim, and dumped the mixed herbs and Julio’s blood on top of the bullet.

Magic cracked through the room as Kristen jerked her hands back. A glowing column formed in the center of the bowl, thrusting skyward like a floodlight before collapsing in on itself. It rushed outward in a perfect circle, slicing through Julio with an uncomfortable jolt. Next to him, Patrick grunted in pain.

Kristen seemed unbothered. She watched, poised on her toes, her hands hovering outside the barrier formed by the candles. A moment later it collapsed, and she snatched up the metal bowl and stirred its contents with her finger as she counted under her breath. When she hit
five
, she removed her blood-covered finger and traced a rune on the back of the iPad. “Tape,” she muttered, dabbing her finger in the bowl again. “Get me the tape from my bag. And the towel.”

As she traced a second rune, Patrick dug through her bag and surfaced with a towel and a roll of clear packing tape. Kristen carefully wiped her finger clean before picking up the tape. “This’ll be good for twenty-four hours, give or take.” She tore a long strip of the tape off and carefully set it over the first of the bloodied runes, smoothing down the edges with a look of fierce concentration. “More take than give, if you stray out of 3G range. There’s a little magic in there that can boost a signal, but if you’re burning through that, it’ll mean less to spare for the spell.”

As she fitted a second piece of tape over the back, she looked up at Julio. “If it comes down to it, pull up the tape and bleed on the thing. There’s power in blood. And yours has a hell of a kick. But until then…” She flipped the device over and activated the screen. A map appeared, zoomed out to show the entire country. A silver dot pulsed in Georgia. “There’s the gun.”

His eyes fixed on that point. It didn’t matter that finding the gun didn’t necessarily mean finding Sera. It was
hope
, a concrete direction in which to travel, and Julio snatched the tablet. “Whatever you want,” he promised hoarsely. “I’m good for the money.”

“For Ben,” she said again, already packing up her supplies. “But if you want to send me a grand to cover the supplies, I won’t spit on you. Patrick knows how to find me. You’ve got more important shit to get done.”

He looked up, met Patrick’s gaze. “This time, it
is
my call to make. I’m going to kill that fucker.”

Chapter Seventeen

She heard his voice in her dreams.

Slow. Familiar. Coaxing and wheedling, whispering for her to open her eyes, whining for her to wake up. Her head throbbed and her body felt bruised from nose to toes, but it was his
voice
that dragged her into consciousness, and the sick dread that came with it.

Paper touched her lips. “Wake up and drink it. You got a little banged up in the crash.”

Josh.

She pressed her lips together as tightly as she could and turned her face, not caring that something wet splashed against her cheek.

He sighed, exasperated and impatient. His fingers curled tight in her hair, and he forcibly pulled her face back to the cup. “Drink.”

It smelled like water. Shuddering, she parted her lips, and she was so parched she let the liquid wash over her tongue and only considered spitting it back at him for a few moments. It might be satisfying, but it wouldn’t be smart.

Right now, she needed to be smart.

“Touching.” Another voice, this one low and irritated. “When you’re finished, can we talk about how you fucked everything up?”

Sera tried to turn her head, but Josh’s grip in her hair hadn’t eased. She only caught a glimpse of the room’s other occupant out of the corner of her eye, but it was enough. He looked like an older, angrier version of Miguel, which meant he had to be Diego Mendoza.

Okay, she had to be
really
smart.

Wesley Dade’s dire prediction about dominoes and the end of the world echoed in her head as Josh turned to glare at Diego. “I wasn’t going to miss this chance. The bastard’s been on top of her day and night.”

“Which is the point, genius. You take him out, you get her, and we both have what we need. As it stands, I provided you with some powerful,
expensive
magic, and for what? To watch you make kissy faces at a woman who obviously despises you? This isn’t even entertaining.”

Josh’s coyote surged to the surface, its rage a hot wind of power. He released her and rose, placing his body between her and Diego with a twisted sort of protectiveness. “She belongs with me. Your son’s confused her, because he doesn’t know how to take care of her. He doesn’t deserve to touch her.”

Sera’s stomach roiled at the fervent tone of the words. Not the same as the angry man who’d confronted her in New Orleans. The sick pulse of his coyote was proof enough. Whatever grip on sanity Josh had possessed was gone.

Diego snorted. “I don’t give a shit what you and your little princess get up to, but you owe me. You didn’t hold up your end of this deal.”

“Deal’s not done yet.” Josh lowered his voice. “Give me time to talk to her. She’ll come around and then we can take care of the rest.”

Diego snatched a bottle of whiskey up from the table and tossed it into the small kitchen sink with a crash. “Too much of that, not enough thinking. You’re not the only shapeshifter stupid over the girl. Do you think my son’s going to wait for her to turn up? He’s coming after you, idiot.”

Josh stared at the wolf, and for one hysterical moment, Sera wanted to laugh. Josh
was
an idiot. A drunk, stupid fool, and wouldn’t it have been nice if Diego had turned out to be one too? The two of them could have bickered over tactics like a sketch-comedy parody until Julio showed up to kill them both.

What a weak, pathetic hope. Just like a good submissive shifter. Cringe and whimper and wait to be rescued.

Fuck that.

Her body ached, but Josh hadn’t bothered to tie her up. Why would he have? She’d never had the ability to disobey him for long, not once he brought dominant power to bear. She could feel the weight of the enchanted gun holster at her hip, but Diego was staring right at her.

Not the right time. She wet her lips and remembered Josh’s sneering insult from a thousand years ago.
Is that how you deal with life these days? Something bugs you, you throw a goddamn wolf at it?
She had a lot of wolves to throw. None of them would send Josh running, but Diego…

Oh, she could scare him.

“Julio’s not the only one who’s going to come looking for me,” she said, looking straight back into Diego’s dark eyes. “Alec Jacobson’s in town, and he’s been friends with my dad since before I was born. You don’t want to be here when he shows up. And if you paid for magic to fool Anna Lenoir, you
really
don’t want her knocking on the door. She won’t bother to kill you before she starts cutting you into pieces.”

Diego pulled a pack of cigarettes from his pocket, and he barely glanced at her as he lit one. “Muzzle your bitch, Hill. She’s about to start in on the head games.”

Josh had called her a bitch during a hundred arguments, but apparently that privilege was reserved for him alone. A snarl vibrated in his chest as he pulled back his shoulders. “Watch your fucking mouth.”

“No, you watch yours,” Diego growled. “I’m not about to let her flap her lips and throw you off your already pathetic game. So shut her up, or I will.”

Tension filled the room, a challenge issued. Sera held her breath…and almost let it out on a whimper when Josh turned away, submitting to Diego’s dominant power. “Hush, sweetheart,” he whispered to her, leaning down to stroke her cheek. The touch made her skin crawl, but not half so much as the rush of magic that followed. He might have submitted to Diego, but he was still dominant to her.

And her coyote knew it. The animal inside curled in on itself, a defensive gesture that left her feeling small and helpless. The crush of Josh’s aura against hers made it hard to choke out even one word, let alone a whole sentence. “You’re going to let him hurt me?”

“He doesn’t want to hurt you,” Josh soothed, stroking her again. “He didn’t want you having babies with his son, but that’s natural. After I left New Orleans, I knew those wolves had to be twisting you up. They’re not right, not any of them. We stick to our own kind. We belong with our own kind. Diego knows that. I know that. You know it, even if they made you forget. You know how good it can be.”

Getting the shit beat out of her would be less traumatic than this. She twisted away, wiggling back toward the wall. “Then Diego’s lying to you. He didn’t stick with his own kind.”

The wolf leaned against the wall and eyed her. “Didn’t I?”

“Carmen’s in her thirties and Miguel’s barely past twenty. That wasn’t a one-night stand.”

“Humans are more of a blank slate.” One of his eyebrows ticked up in a tiny arch. “If they weren’t, Julio couldn’t have been born a wolf. You certainly couldn’t give birth to one.”

“She’s going to have coyote babies,” Josh growled. “Anything else would be unnatural.”

Great. Let them argue over what grand purpose her womb was supposed to serve. Edging her body toward the wall, she slid her hand up her leg, toward the invisible gun digging into her side.

“No argument from me,” Diego said with a shrug. “None of my business what you do with her.”

Almost. Almost. Her knuckles scraped against the wall as she worked her hand closer to the gun. She’d have to shoot Diego first. Josh scared the shit out of her on a gut-deep level, but Diego was the one who’d snap her neck without a second thought.

Josh pulled her up by the shirt suddenly, slammed her against the wall and knocked the wind out of her, and the years fell away with breathless speed. She was sixteen again, gawkish and wounded, blinded by power of a strong male of her own species. She was twenty, two years married and discovering the dark side of a husband who had hidden it so carefully for so long.

Shame battered her as instinct forced her eyes down. Quiet. Quiet and passive. Don’t move. Don’t make him angry. Don’t
breathe
…

“Shh, it’s okay.” He wrapped an arm around her and froze when his hand bumped into the gun. “What the hell?”

Invisible, not intangible. Magic could force people not to notice the gun, but it couldn’t make it not exist. Panic made her stupid, and she grabbed for the weapon.

Josh snatched it away first, staring at the gun and then her with a look of betrayed disbelief. “Sera?”

Once you call attention to it, the glamour’s broken. So don’t wave it around screaming, “I have a gun.”
That had been the gruff warning from the man who’d attuned the gun to her. Josh would be able to see it now, even if he put it down. So would Diego.

No more secret weapon. “I needed to be able to protect myself.”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake.” Diego took a single step forward and held out his hand. “Give it to me before you let her blow your brains out. You don’t have them to spare.”

Disdain dripped from his voice. The same barely concealed loathing that laced the words of every well-bred wolf who had to deal with her. Josh’s gender didn’t save him. He was a coyote. He was lesser. And he
was
a fool if he’d believed a wolf like Diego would deal fairly with him.

Maybe not entirely a fool. Josh held the gun away from Diego, eyes narrowing. “Back the fuck off, Mendoza.”

“You’re blind. She’ll get you killed if you don’t take care of her first.”

The craziness was back on Josh’s eyes. He swung his arm around and pointed Sera’s gun at Diego’s head. “You try to lay a finger on her, and I’ll take care of you instead.”

Diego groaned and rubbed his eyes. “It serves me right for dealing with inferior fucking—”

Josh squeezed the trigger, and thunder shook the room as the wards on the gun backfired. The concussive force punched into Diego, sending him staggering, and slammed Josh back against the wall. The gun thumped to the carpet, and Sera dove for it.

No one chased her. Whatever spells had been woven around the gun to keep anyone but Julio or her from firing it must have been strong. Sera scrambled through the door and skidded down the hallway, barely seeing the walls on either side of her. She got the fleeting impression of roughly hewn wood, an impression confirmed when she bolted into the front room of a rustic cabin.

The front door was locked, but one jerk of even her limited shapeshifter strength snapped it from the doorframe. She flung the door wide as the first footsteps staggered into the hallway behind her.

Fight or flight. She had a heartbeat to decide, and instinct drove her out the door. The woods surrounded the cabin on three sides, with the fourth side facing a placid little lake. An idyllic location, and a remote one. She could scream herself hoarse without scaring anything more than the wildlife.

Cars or woods. An SUV sat on the gravel drive, but the chances its keys were waiting conveniently in the ignition seemed tiny. Another split-second decision, and she bolted toward the trees. If she had to she could toss the gun and her clothes and shift. Try to lose herself in the woods, or find a place to hide…

The door crashed open, and the wind carried Josh’s scent to her. He was too close. Too close to run, too close to hide.