Twenty-Sided Sorceress 3 - Pack of Lies (16 page)

We climbed out of the car and slipped into the woods, sticking to the trees as far up the hill as we could. The forest thinned and then terminated a couple hundred yards away from the doors. From here I could see the wide stone porch. Four figures lay prone in its surface, sunlight glinting on metal in their hands. I squinted. Guns. Big guns. If anyone was dying inside that hall, we were too far away to hear the commotion.

“Wolves?” I asked Alek.

He took deep breaths of the air, mouth partially open as though tasting as much as smelling for their scents. He shook his head. “Human. I can’t force them to shift,” he added, clearly following my line of thought.

“Damn,” I muttered. I reached for my magic. We were a long ways out, but I had to try to reach them. We needed inside that hall. Universe only knew what Eva was doing, what was happening in there. She had hired these men to keep anyone else from coming in. Humans with guns. Another breach of the Council’s rules, I guessed, a shifter dealing with humans, using human muscle. Mercenaries. Fucked-up world.

“Wait,” Alek muttered. His head swiveled and he tasted the air again.

I sensed movement in the trees behind us. Wolves.

But it was a man who emerged from the denser forest and made his way to the stand of fir we lurked within. He was about six feet tall with long, shaggy black hair that had a dramatic shock of white running through it, a thick beard, and skin a shade darker brown than my own. He smiled, his hands spread in a non-threatening gesture. Something about how he moved was almost awkward, as though he had not walked in a long time and was trying to remember how with each step. He wore only a pair of green sweatpants, no shirt or shoes.

“Justice,” he said, his voice rough and gravelly. “I am Aurelio, called Softpaw, alpha of the Bitterroot pack.”

Alek moved so that he was half between Aurelio and I. “That your pack in trees?” he said.

“Yes,” Aurelio answered. “I have come to swear the Peace. My daughter is dead; the Justices have no hold over me any longer.”

Alek and I exchanged a confused look, which Aurelio saw.

“You do not know?” he asked, the determination in his face turning to confusion. “No, I guess it has been many, many years. You are too young. One of your own, a wolf called Evaline, made me leave. My daughter killed a human trapper, and the Justice said the price for her life was for me to fight Ulfr, stop the Peace. I could not fight my friend, but I did not sign. I took my pack and we fled deep into the wilderness. But my daughter is gone. I wish to redeem my cowardice.”

He said the words as though he had been rehearsing them, which I guessed he might have. It had likely been a very long time since he’d spoken with a human throat, since he’d shared words with other people.

“Good,” Alek said simply. “Eva has broken the trust; she is not acting with the will of the Council.”

Aurelio searched Alek’s face and whatever he saw there satisfied him. “My pack is yours, Justice,” he said.

“Don’t suppose you know another way into the Den?” I asked.

He looked past Alek at me and shook his shaggy head. “Your mate is human? She will be in danger here,” he said.

“Woah, I am not his mate,” I said. “Or totally human. Check your nose.”

His nostrils flared and he cocked his head. “No,” he said in his rough voice. “Not human. The blood on you is, but it is not your blood.”

All right. I had literally asked for that. I sighed.

“That still doesn’t get us past men with machine guns.” Turning, I leaned around the tree behind me and peeked at the top of the hill. “They look spaced within five feet of each other to you?”

“Yes, why? Can you make a shield again?” Alek asked.

“Maybe,” I said, though I had something else in mind. I pulled on my magic, ignoring the dance of red spots at the corner of my vision and the sharp pain that did a jig between my eyes. I was tired, but I hadn’t hit my limit. Not yet.

But I was tired of shields. Tired of bullets. There had to be another way. I looked around and fixated on Alek’s shirt. He’d pulled on a white teeshirt from his house trailer and a black sweater over it. The teeshirt showed a little above the collar line of the sweater. I was sure Ezee would have been horrified.

“Give me your undershirt,” I said to Alek, the stupidly crazy idea forming in my head growing more and more real by the second.

He pursed his lips but to his credit he pulled off his sweater, then his teeshirt, and handed it over, tugging his sweater back on. I picked up a dry stick from the ground and tied the shirt to it. Pulling my braid over my shoulder, I yanked out the tie and shook my hair down my back. I wanted to look unmistakably female and human before I walked out into the open.

“Wait for my signal,” I said. “I’m going to try to get closer.”

“They are going to shoot you,” Alek said.

“Maybe,” I said. “But those are human men up there. I know a thing or three about men.”

“You are covered in blood.”

I looked down. He had a point, but fuck it. “That might help sell the whole ‘helpless and in need of saving by dicks.’”

“What’s the signal?” Alek asked with a resigned look on his face.

“Them dying or me getting shot. Whichever happens first.” I picked up my makeshift truce flag and grinned. I didn’t give him a chance to respond, stumbling out of the tree line and into the grass, walking straight up the hill toward the men holding machine guns.

Behind me I heard Aurelio mutter something that sounded like “mates.”

The men didn’t shoot. I saw movement among them, and the murmur of voices filtered down to me as I walked, waving my flag.

“Don’t shoot,” I called up to them, pitching my voice higher than it normally was. “I need help!” I fake-stumbled and moved closer, letting my magic fill my veins, readying a spell in my mind. I knew what I wanted to do; it was just a matter of getting close enough, of connecting.

“Lady,” one of the men yelled, sitting partially up. “This is a restricted area. Back down.” He sounded distressed. I didn’t know what Eva’s instructions had been, but shooting unarmed women who looked already hurt and were asking for help clearly hadn’t been covered.

Just a few feet closer. Closer. I labored up the hill, covering another ten feet. Then another. I could make out their eyes through their balaclavas. One of the men on the side dropped low over his gun, sighting down on me. The others still looked confused and unfocused, but I was running out of time.

Forty feet out, I threw the spell. Purple lightning arced from my outstretched hand, zapping into the man who had spoken. It hit him hard and threw him back before spreading between him and his companions, forking out to either side in a spectacular light show. I dropped flat to the hill, wincing as my injured leg twinged, and pressed my face to the still damp grass.

Silence. Then I heard Alek and Aurelio running up the hill behind me. I sat up and looked at the porch.

The mercenaries lay where the lighting had thrown them away from their guns. None of them were moving. I shoved away the pang of guilt about it. Alek was right—it did get easier. It helped, of course, that I was pretty sure they had been about to gun down an unarmed woman. Hard to feel guilty in the face of that little fact.

We climbed the remainder of the hill together.

“What did you do to them?” Aurelio asked me as Alek checked the bodies methodically for signs of life, stripping them of their weapons as he went.

“Chain lightning,” I said. “When you absolutely, positively got to kill every last motherfucker in the room, accept no substitutes.”

“You are very odd,” the Bitterroot alpha said. He turned away from me with a frown and, putting his fingers into his mouth, whistled back at the woods.

“Guess you don’t watch a lot of movies,” I muttered. My badass references were wasted on this guy.

Wolves streamed up the hill behind Aurelio. He met the eyes of a leggy white wolf and nodded as though it were speaking to him.

“These are the only men with guns out here. Everyone else is inside,” he said.

I looked up at the huge doors. “I think I can blast through these,” I said. High on magic, I was pretty sure I could blast through anything at the moment. I was going to pay for this later.

“Or we could go in the side door,” Alek said, pointing to a smaller door set near the corner of the hall, at the edge of the stone porch. “With the key Liam gave me before he died.”

So much for a super-grand, dramatic entrance. Some guys just don’t know how to have fun.

Aurelio agreed that he and his second, the white wolf, would come in with us, but that the rest of his pack would stay outside and guard our flanks. He actually said “guard our flanks.” It was kind of adorable. I wished that Ezee had been here to hear it.

Alek unlocked the door, and we entered the great hall with him leading the way. I readied shields just in case there were more men with guns.

The side door led into a small foyer where a second door opened into the great hall proper. That door was also locked, but Alek’s key opened it. The door opened inward and Alek poked his head around before nodding and walking through.

As soon as we passed through the door, I heard people talking, the sounds of a crowd washing over me like a tangible wave. The air inside was heavy and warm—the ceiling was far above and there was plenty of space even with hundreds of bodies inside, but the hall was still crowded enough to heat the air, to change it. The stone walls shimmered slightly and I recognized the kind of soundproof shielding that Alek sometimes used. Eva’s doing.

The hallway we’d emerged into opened wide almost immediately to reveal a cavernous room. Benches lined the walls and there was a gallery level above, an iron spiral staircase on my left leading up to it. Men and women covered the benches, many sitting, and some standing above in the gallery. A large stone slab engraved with knotwork sat in the middle of the floor, raised a few inches from the stones around it. Wulf’s final resting place, I guessed. A small group of shifters stood at the head of the slab, Eva among them.

The crowd’s murmuring conversations turned to exclamations as we entered. Bodies moved aside, eyes questioning, as the four of us walked into the open center of the hall.

“The hall is sealed,” Eva said, fear and anger clouding her face and making her look meaner and uglier than ever. “This is a place for wolves. You are not welcome here.”

“Am I not?” Aurelio asked before Alek or I could respond. He looked around at the assembled alphas. “I am wolf. I am alpha. This woman once prevented me from pledging to Ulfr’s Peace. I will not be turned away again.” His eyes dropped to the elaborately carved stone. “He was my friend.”

A shorter speech than he’d given Alek and I, but it worked. Murmurs of “Softpaw” and “Bitterroot alpha” rippled around the hall.

“The Peace? It does nothing for us. It has neutered us. We are wolves. We are alphas. Do not be stupid.” Eva strode forward, spitting onto the stone.

Freyda stepped out of the group as well, following Eva, outrage in every line of her body.

“Eva Phillips,” Alek called out before Freyda could speak. He raised a hand, his gesture and words commanding immediate silence. “You are a murderer and a liar. I am here to bring you to justice.”

“Justice? You know nothing of what we were, cat. Once we were feared, respected. The Council gave us real power, ultimate authority. There was a time when they spoke to us directly instead of feeding us vague visions and unhappy dreams. I will be the alpha of alphas and there will be no Peace. Let the Council come and stop me.”

“I am still Justice,” Alek responded, moving forward with the stalking grace of a hunting cat.

Aurelio and I backed off. Freyda looked at Alek and she, too, moved backward, until just the two of them stood on opposite ends of the stone slab.

“So the Council sent you?” Eva mocked.

“No,” Alek said.

From the soft exclamations all around me, I wasn’t the only one surprised by this revelation.

“But,” he continued, pulling his feather talisman out of his sweater and holding it so that the silver caught the dim light filtering in through the upper windows and glinted, “I am still a Justice. The scales will balance.”

Eva’s eyes widened, and she snarled at him, flicking her hand in a “now” gesture.

Movement and a soft cry from the upper gallery dragged my gaze away from Eva. I recognized the two green-eyed brothers from the parking lot by Liam’s body the day before as they stood up in the gallery, machine guns in their hands. Every man and woman near them also pulled out a machine gun.

The hall had just become a barrel, and we were the fish.

Alek roared; the same deep coughing sound as earlier at the Henhouse reverberated throughout the hall. It was an impressive sound coming from a human throat, human lungs. Around me bodies turned from human to wolf, dropping from two legs to four, until I was standing at the edge of a sea of wolves. Beside me a huge black wolf with a wide white streak down his back crouched and growled, golden eyes focused above. Aurelio. I stepped in closer to him and looked up.

In the gallery, the men and women holding machine guns had stayed human as well. I squinted, making out earbuds and the lines of a cords running from their ears. No wonder Eva had gestured to signal them. One of the brothers held a gun that looked more like one of the paintball rifles we used. It made me nervous, though I didn’t know why.