Luna's Sokjan (Book one) (31 page)

If you pump enough silver
into a werewolf it will kill him. Shoot him in the right places,
and you don’t need silver to kill him. The stomach is not one of
those places, luckily for me. The world moved in slow motion as I
fell to the ground. My hands tried to catch the blood that poured
out of the wound in my stomach. I watched as Gabriel snapped
Jerry's neck with a roar of rage and then he was next to me. The
look of anguish on his handsome face broke my heart. I heard
Tiberius calling for help.

“Get the silver out before
the healing spell starts.” I gasped at him curling my bloody hands
into his shirt.

I could already feel the
tattoo starting to move over my skin. If the tattoo healed the
wound, before we got the silver bullet out. We would have to reopen
it, and I definitely didn’t want to do that. Gabriel jerked my
shirt up and stared in horror at the wound and the moving tattoo.
Tiberius loomed over us.

“Damn it, Gabriel we need
to remove the silver before the wound heals over.” His mighty voice
boomed. “I’ll hold her down, and you pull out the
silver.”

He knelt down beside us
and reached for me.

Gabriel jerked me up and
away from him.

“No don’t touch her.” He
growled at Tiberius.

“Gabriel, get the silver
out.” I whispered to him again and touched his face with my bloody
hand. We stared at each other. “Please.”

“Alright, Tiberius, hold
her down.” He gently laid me back down on the ground.

Tiberius held my arms and
used his upper body the pin me down. Gabriel held down the lower
part of my body. He took a deep breath and plunged his hand in the
wound. I screamed in pain and fought against them both trying to
make them stop. Then as suddenly as it had started, it was over.
Gabriel dropped the mangled, bloody silver bullet on the ground
next to us. Pulling off his shirt, he used it as a bandage to stop
the blood flow.

Tiberius moved quickly out
of the way and I lunged at Gabriel. Snapping and clawing at him, as
my pain clouded mind focusing solely on him. He slammed me back to
the ground and focused his energy on me.

“Sleep, Branwen, sleep.”
He whispered just inches from my snapping jaws, and I fell into the
awaiting darkness.

I could hear the voices
all around me. Forcing my eyes to open I could see nothing, but
darkness. The voices made no sense to me as if they spoke a foreign
language. I closed my eyes and called to my power, it wasn’t there.
In a panic, I tried again and still the power didn’t answer the
call. I tried to move, but my limbs wouldn’t obey. I screamed in a
frustrated rage and fought against the darkness that tried to claim
my mind. Enraged at the loss of my power I tried to shift. Pain cut
through me like a knife but the darkness fell away. This time when
I opened my eyes I was in my bedroom at my house, but that couldn’t
be right. Gabriel wouldn’t have brought me here he’d have taken me
to his house where the shielding was stronger and he could protect
me better.

“You will make me stronger
than I ever dreamed.” It was a male voice with a slight southern
accent. I turned my head in the direction of the voice. The speaker
wore a hooded black cloak. So I couldn’t see his face or body, but
I could taste the power coming off of him, and it made me
gag.

“Is that so?” I said and
tried to move again. This time my limbs worked. My rage must have
broken through whatever had been blocking me. I sat up
slowly.

“No don’t get up.” He
ordered me and energy moved towards me. “Your wound is too fresh. I
am glad that your mate killed Jerry and saved me the trouble of
having to do it. The fool knew he wasn’t supposed to hurt
you.”

“Who are you?” I asked and
moved slowly to the edge of the bed.

It made my stomach hurt
and I had to stop to catch my breath.

“I am your master.” He
answered me.

His power flowed all
around me. It was dirty and tasted of death.

I laughed out loud and
hugged my stomach in pain. This could only be a dream, because
nobody in their right mind would say something that stupid to me in
person.

“Shut up bitch! You will
do my bidding.” He snapped at me with words and power.

I smiled at him and
dropped my feet to the floor.

“No! I said don’t get up.
You must be completely healed for me to accomplish my task.” The
savagery in his voice made me stop moving and stared at
him.

“Since the age of two,
according to my mother, I have barely done anything that anyone
told me to do. What the hell makes you think that I will follow
your orders?” I asked him.

“I am your master, and
very soon we will be doing great things together.” He sounded so
sure of himself. I shrugged and started towards him again. “We’ll
have to get rid of your mate though. I don’t see him agreeing to
all the things I want to do to you.”

“I don’t see myself
agreeing to all the things you want to do to me. Let me show you
what you are up against.” I told him. Calling my power to me as I
walked towards him and it finally answered back. “Why did you kill
those girls?”

I was almost to him it
seemed to take forever.

“I've been looking for you
for some time now.” He told me. “It was rumored that the first
female Sōkjan to be born in over two hundred years was a werecat. I
can’t tell you how many female cats I had to go through to find
you. Then only to find out that you weren’t part of any cat clan
and you were mated to an Alpha wolf.” The hooded man said in
disgust and shook his head.

I realized that he
couldn’t feel my power, now wasn’t that interesting.

“Go ahead try me. How many
female cats did you kill?” I said moving a little
closer.

“McKenna it doesn’t
matter. What matters right now is that I have you. Now, I will be
able to complete my task.” He replied as he stood up.

I figured he was closed to
Gabriel’s height, but the cloak hid the rest of his
body.

“It does matter to me. A
lot of innocent people died in my name for your cause. I’m not very
happy about it.” I said to him.

I timed my movements
carefully, and struck quickly. Slamming him in stomach with my
power filled fist. I smiled at his grunt of pain. I would have hit
him again with my other hand, but he was gone before I could
connect the other blow.

“Still think you can make
me yours?” I yelled at the empty space.

A strong, familiar power
licked at me, and I purred in response. Gabriel’s voice filtered
through my confused mind.

“Be calm Branwen.” He
murmured, “We are almost home.”

Cool darkness claimed me
again.

Someone had removed all my
clothes, and cleaned me up. That someone laid half on top of me,
half beside me. Listening, to Gabriel’s heavy breathing I touched
my healing stomach and thanked Luna, Gabriel had been there. Silver
can cause a lot of damage if left on or in the body for too long.
The last time I’d been shot with a silver bullet. It had taken me
two days to find a pack and get the help I needed. I still carried
a small scar across my right leg from that attack.

I stared at the ceiling
and thought about what I had learned about the master. I kept
coming up with more questions than I had answers for.

What was he trying to
find? If he were trying to cross over to another realm, why didn't
just he summon a demon to help him? The most obvious answer was he
wasn’t strong enough. He needed more power to call a demon to drag
his ass across the portal. For whatever reason he’d picked me to be
his duracell battery. Nice.

He couldn’t have picked a
more volatile battery source. I almost felt sorry for the guy,
almost.

How did Daniel fit into
the equation? He sure as hell wasn’t the owner of any of the
different powers I had tasted recently. He could be using this
distraction for his own agenda, but why? What did he have to gain?
Pack leader? That didn’t make any sense he was virtually assured
the position being the alpha’s son.

“My love, if you had
wanted me to wake up. You could have picked a more creative way to
do it.” Gabriel said to me. Turning my head, slightly I gave him a
questioning glance and realized that I had been rubbing his arm.
“What’s on your mind love?”

He rolled over on to his
back and carefully pulled me up against him. Gently he pillowed my
head on his chest. He rested his big hand on my hip as I told him
everything I’d been thinking. When I was finished he lay there in
silence while he thought over what I told him. I touched the scars
on his chest left behind from his own recent brush with
death.

“If they had managed to
kill you, I would have lost my mind.” I told him.

“What would you have
done?” He asked stilling my nervous fingers with his mighty
hand.

“I would have gone home,
regrouped. Then I would have ripped this town apart looking for
your killer.” I said very quietly.

He kissed the top of my
head.

“I will never leave you
again, my love.” He promised me.

We were silent with our
thoughts.

“The master’s power tastes
like death, but he’s not a vampire. Their taste is different. It’s
like he is somehow absorbing the power from the dead girl’s.” I
commented. “I can start scouting out the usual places and see if I
can stir something up tomorrow.”

“What we can stir up.
You’re not going alone.” He corrected me
,
“Sam will be handling all business
for the pack and Jack will be running the security business until
this master is caught.” He told me. Then he tilted my head up to
peer into my face. “I am all yours, little Raven.”

He caught my mouth in a
possessive kiss.

Oh, goody, just what I
always wanted, a thousand year old babysitter.

“When you have had enough
time to heal we’ll go after this ‘master’ together.” He said and
rubbed his thumb over my bottom lip. “Why haven’t your spirits
returned with news yet?”

I took a deep breath
refocusing my thoughts, “I’m not sure, sometimes spirits take a
while. We’ll start with cemeteries and abandoned buildings. He has
to be somewhere nearby. Some place where he can keep an eye on
things.” I said. “Another thing that has bothered me for some time
is that, Daniel didn’t seem to be that surprised to learn that I
was an Sōkjan. He was surprised to learn that we were mates. I
didn’t care about his reaction at the time, but maybe that was our
first clue as to what is going on.”

“Maybe we should have a
talk with Daniel. It does seem that he knows about what is going
on. Tiberius will be a problem though. We’ll have to bring him
solid proof that his son is involved.” Gabriel said.

This was nice talking out
my ideas with him and hearing his thoughts on the situation. I
snuggled closer to him and ran my leg over his.

“We could start searching
now.” I suggested resting my chin on his chest. “I’m feeling
better.”

He ran his thumb over my
lip again and watched me through hooded eyes. I nipped his thumb
with a playful smile. Slowly I slid my hand down his stomach and
felt the hard muscles twitch under my hand.

“I’ll have to take a rain
check on your invitation, until you’re feeling better, little
Raven.” He said and grabbed my hand with his. “Behave, my love. I
don’t want to hurt you.”

I laughed
seductively.

“Are you hungry? I’m
starving. We didn’t eat dinner last night.” I told him.

“Come on let’s see what we
can find.” He said with a chuckle and patted my butt, before we got
up. Slipping into a long blue satin robe, I noticed Gabriel’s side
was bare when he pulled on sweat pants. He didn’t have the
tattoo.

“Where’s your tattoo?” I
asked and offered him my hand.

“I will have to redo the
tattoo on this body. I was thinking I might get you to teach me
your tattoo spell. I like the way it works.” He answered as he took
my hand.

“You want a full body
tattoo that moves?” I asked him.

The idea was highly
amusing to me. We left the bedroom. It was early, and no one else
was awake yet.

“No not a full body tattoo
that moves, but I do like some of the things yours does. How does
the healing work?” He asked.

We had reached the
stairs.

“Like the healing chants.
I just added it to the original spell. Now that I think about it,
maybe that is why the tattoo moves.” I smiled at him. “It took me
weeks to get the spell to do all the things I wanted.”

He laughed, we had reached
the kitchen. I moved to make coffee and Gabriel opened the
refrigerator.

“What do you want for
breakfast?” He asked looking at the contents.

“I don’t care. What did
you have for dinner?” I asked him.

With the coffee brewing, I
went to look with him.

“I don’t remember I was a
little busy last night. I like that color on you. Where did you get
the robe?” He asked me.