The Spell (29 page)

Most likely, it was the latter. Cole’s red eyes burned as he again flashed into wolf form, dodged a bolt of power that shot from the warlock’s hand, and rushed toward him, teeth and claws wickedly bared.

Charlie’s demise hung over Danny like physical weights, making it hard to think and act. But she had somehow steeled herself to cast a spell of her own to help Cole when a hand slid over her mouth from behind, silencing her.

Her captor didn’t say a word, but she knew who he was anyway. Jason’s darkness was all around her as he pulled her back from the crowd and toward the tree line. She realized then, in that moment, that he must have been wearing a shield all his life just like she had. Hers was to hide her dormancy. His was to hide his evil.

They made it to the tree line and Jason pulled her through and into the relative quiet on the other side.

“Let her go.”

Danny felt Jason freeze behind her. She could feel every muscle in his body tense, his arms tightening around her where they held her against his chest. But an ominous, promising sound pricked the night. It was the sound of a handgun being cocked.

Jason slowly released Danny, stepping back. Danny turned around. Jason’s green eyes speared the darkness, locking onto Lucas’s tall form. The black leather clad alpha werewolf stood several yards away. His left hand was relaxed at his side, but his right hand held a shining silver automatic with steady, determined calm. It was aimed at Jason’s heart.

“You’re fast, warlock,” Lucas told him. “But I’d be willing to bet my life that a bullet is still faster.”

Jason watched him carefully. “You might be right,” he admitted softly. “But a bullet will only slow me down. I’ll simply transport away, heal, and come for you Caige.”

Lucas’s hard expression didn’t change. He wasn’t fazed. “If these were normal bullets, you probably would,” he said. And then he smiled a wholly nasty smile. “But they’re not.”

What’s going on?
Danny wondered.
What kind of bullets are they?

But Jason’s face had blanched. His expression was just a touch less sure and angry and a lot more frightened than it had been a second ago.

“You forget that I studied your kind for decades,” Lucas said. “I know more about you than I care to.” The sound of a bullet leaving its chamber split the night and Jason’s tall body jerked once beside Danny. She jumped as a second shot was fired.

And Jason Alberich, the warlock who had played alongside her as a child, hit the ground.

Chapter Nineteen:
“The Prestige”

Lucas slowly lowered his weapon. He was a good aim; he’d had years of target practice. He had taken the warlock in the heart with silver bullets and he had no doubts that Jason Alberich was dead.

Danny remained motionless, frozen to the spot. Lucas studied her with a careful eye. She was trembling and might even be going into some kind of shock. He wanted to strip off her clothes and hold her against him beneath the hot spray of a long shower, but at the moment, she was going to have to be the tough little witch he knew she could be. Because Charlie wasn’t dead, not yet, but if Danny didn’t heal her soon, she would be.

“Danny,” he said as he strode across the space between them, jammed his gun in the back waist band of his jeans, and took her face in his hands. “You need to heal your friend.”

“Wh-where is she?” Danny asked, swallowing hard and blinking up at him.

Lucas turned and pointed to a pair of blue jeaned legs sticking out from behind a nearby bush. Danny instantly pulled away from him and raced toward Charlie’s unconscious form.
That’s my girl
, he thought, following on her heels.

Charlie’s skin was so pale it was nearly translucent against the strawberry blonde shock of her silken hair. Blood was just beginning to stop pumping from the open wound in her chest. Lucas could hear her heart beat, but it was so faint, so soft, even his werewolf ears barely picked up the sound. She’d done a number on herself.

She would rather have died than lived with Gabriel Phelan.

“Charlie,” Danny breathed, sobbing softly. The Healer placed her hands over the wound on her friend’s chest and closed her eyes. She spoke her words of magic and her palms began to glow, their light and warmth spreading from beneath her touch. Lucas watched as it infused Charlie’s body, lighting it from within. It had entered her heart and now moved through Charlie’s bloodstream, repairing her from the inside.

In a few seconds, Danny sat back on her heels and removed her hands. Charlie remained still where she lay. She looked like a China doll there in the grass, so terribly pale.

“She’s healed,” Danny said, her voice still quavering, “but she’s lost too much blood.” She raised her wrist to her mouth then and Lucas caught his first glimpse ever of his mate’s new, white fangs. They were beautiful. But she was planning to use them to pierce her own wrist and Lucas leapt forward, barely stopping her in time.

“No,” he told her, grasping her wrist and lowering it. “Let me.” He could already sense Danny’s weakness from having cast the transport spell on so many werewolves and having healed Charlie’s mortal wound. She was exhausted. There was no way he was going to allow her to kill herself by sharing her blood as well.

“No,” came a deep voice from behind them both. Lucas spun to see Malcolm Cole standing at the tree line. He was covered in blood, his clothes were torn and scorched, and even as they watched, a gash was healing across his exposed shoulder. But his red gaze was on Charlie. “I’ll do it.”

No man in their right mind would have argued with Cole’s right to give Charlie his blood in that moment. Lucas nodded at his old leader and pulled Danny up and away from Charlie’s body. Cole knelt beside his mate and raised his wrist to his lips. His fangs pierced fast and true, instantly drawing powerful blood from his veins.

“Make sure she swallows,” he said without taking his eyes off of Charlie. Lucas realized he must have been talking to Danny – who could probably manipulate Charlie’s throat with her magic.

Beside him, Danny nodded and moved forward once more. Cole lifted Charlie into his arms and rested her head on his legs. Lucas could see the pain etched into his handsome features. There were unshed tears in his red eyes. He’d been reduced to a monster – and then a crying one.

But he placed his wrist to Charlie’s lips and gently pried her mouth open. The blood pooled in Charlie’s mouth and Danny touched the woman’s neck. Charlie’s throat convulsed.

Lucas heard her heart beat once, harder than before. Another swallow and it beat again. “That’s it, luv,” whispered Malcolm as he bent and placed a gentle kiss to her forehead. Lucas noticed the sweat that beaded on the alpha’s brow, and yet Cole remained steady and still with determination. It had to be hurting him in so many ways to give up what he had left inside of him after the fights he had just been in. For a werewolf, giving blood was an incredibly intense experience. He must have been in his own private hell.

What seemed like an eternity later, Charlie moaned and then coughed, and Cole removed his wrist. Charlie’s blue eyes fluttered open, her heart beating strong once more. But she wasn’t smiling. She didn’t look relieved. She looked terrified.

“Gabriel!” she choked, her eyes wide, her heartbeat now kicking up a few notches. Malcolm held her tightly to him, his fingers brushing the hair from her face. “Shh,” he told her. “He’s not here, luv. He’s dead.”

“No,” she insisted, shaking her head and trying to sit up. “He’s not dead!” Cole wasn’t letting her go anywhere. He held her fast and peered down into her eyes. Lucas heard her heart skip a beat and settle down; Malcolm’s power was rushing over her. She was a dormant again; he had more influence over her now than he had before.

“Yes he is, Charlie,” he told her “He
is
dead. I swear to you, luv.” Charlie swallowed once, and relaxed in his embrace. Cole turned to glance over his shoulder at Lucas.

There were messages in that gaze. They were stark and meaningful.

Lucas turned to Danny and instructed her to stay where she was until he called for her. She may have wanted to argue with him, but she knew he was right. She nodded and Lucas left the second clearing in order to make his way back to the first one.

The snarling and bursts of magic had died down a lot; the men were obviously falling one by one on both sides. Lucas readied himself for what he would find when he entered the field, but the sight that met his eyes stopped him cold nonetheless.

Gabriel Phelan was indeed dead. He lay at the base of the altar where Charlie’s grandfather had attacked him, the crystal he had been wearing around his neck shattered. Lucas knew it had been the Vessel that held his life force. He knew this because he’d spent a very long time learning everything he could about warlocks after the disappearance of his brother.

But that wasn’t what took Lucas’s breath away.

As he stood there, the last of the sounds of struggle passed and half a dozen flashes turned wolves back into men. They were proof that the wolves had won this round, but Lucas paid them no heed. He couldn’t.

Boots moved slowly across the blood-drenched earth and Lucas felt Daniel Kane step up beside him. On his other side, Jessie Graves approached. They too were quiet. All eyes were trained on the two men who lay by the altar upon which Charlie had nearly killed herself. One body belonged to the twice dead, once-risen Gabriel Phelan.

The other belonged to Alexander Kavanagh. The Overseer.

*****

They’d all known it was pointless. It had been the destruction of Phelan’s Vessel that killed them both. There were no wounds to heal, there was no life left to save. But Danny had fought several pairs of hands with fierce determination and finally, they’d allowed her to kneel beside the Overseer and press her palms to his chest.

It had been one of the most heart breaking things any of them had ever seen. Danny had no family. She’d been raised by Lalura, an older and wiser witch within their coven. But she’d never had a father. This man came as close as any man had ever come to filling that role. And he was also Charlie’s grandfather.

Now Charlie had no family either. Danny hadn’t wanted her friend to suffer that loneliness, but there was no helping it. Kavanagh had died taking out the man who threatened what he treasured more than anything else in life and in fact life, itself.

When enough time had passed, Danny allowed her hands to drop and stood back up in time to see Charlie coming into the clearing with Cole at her side.

Time slowed down and the world silenced itself. Charlie looked into her friend’s eyes – and then her gaze slid to her grandfather’s prone form.

That had been hours ago.

Now Lucas led Danny from the front steps of the Council headquarters toward the motorcycle that sat waiting at the end of the drive. The sun was just coming up over the tree tops; the tide was slowly ebbing away. The early morning was quiet.

Behind them, in the grand building that housed the most powerful werewolves in the world, Jessie Graves had just been pronounced king. More or less. He’d earned his position as the new Overseer – and no man had ever wanted it less. He had steadfastly refused at first, until the members of the Council were at last able to make him recognize that the Overseer had been training him for just such a position. It was even in Kavanagh’s will.

That was what had cinched it for Graves when nothing else really would. He couldn’t bring himself to dishonor Kavanagh’s memory by refusing something that the former Overseer had plainly wanted in life.

And so it was done and Daniel Kane and his wife had gone home and Malcolm Cole had absconded with his mate to some place private and quiet.

Charlie was a dormant again, but the good news was that along with her made-wolf blood, the gypsy curse she’d born on her arms had also disappeared. She accepted it with ambivalence that weighed more heavily on relief, and not one person she knew would have blamed her. The curse was gone and it was never meant to have been hers in the first place.

Once Charlie had some time to mourn and could put the death of her grandfather behind her, Cole would turn her once more. As far as Lucas was concerned, the green-eyed alpha werewolf was looking forward to it. There was no way to hide that kind of desire.

Lucas approached the bike of black and chrome and righted it, kicking up the stand and gracefully swinging his right leg over to mount it. Danny waited beside the bike, her hands tucked into the pockets of her black zip-up hoodie. She watched him in enigmatic silence for a moment and he wished he could read her mind.

“Because, little witch, you and I have a lot of getting to know one another to do,” he told her. “And I doubt you want me to start doing it right here in front of Council headquarters.”

“I could turn you into a frog,” she teased, her eyes twinkling.

“You could,” he admitted, feeling his own face crack into a grin. “But then you’d be carrying around a frog all day long. You know you would think I was too cute to just leave me sitting here.”

Danny threw back her head and laughed; the sound like magic to Lucas’s ears. Hell, it
was
magic.

“Maybe,” she said through her laughter.

“So why don’t you save yourself the trouble,” he said, “and get on?” He put the key in the ignition and turned it, never taking his eyes off of his mate. The bike roared to life with a twist of his throttle and rumbled beneath him, a steel beast ready to run.

Danny didn’t say anything further. Instead, she gave him a sweet smile of surrender, put her arm around his shoulders, and mounted the bike behind him.

Lucas took a pair of shades from the inner pocket of his jacket and put them on. And then he leaned into the bike, twisted the throttle, and drove them both toward the rising sun.