“I’ll say.” Woods spat on the ground.
“Who would ever have believed that Vampires were innocent?” Shogun dragged his fingers through his hair and began to walk in a circle.
Hunter ran over, grabbed Sir Rodney’s temples, grimacing as his right arm shook from the pain. “We’re healers… by nature,” he said, breathing hard. “I’ll take the pain; he’s stabbing the image into your mind, enraged… but the information is invaluable.”
“Your arm,” Sasha said. “Let me do the extraction.”
Hunter just stared at her but didn’t stop. She nodded and backed off. It was an intimate process; if there were other thoughts, they could complicate matters.
“Just get it outta me bleedin’ head! For the love of all things holy… it was duplicity in its highest form!”
Sir Rodney slumped as two of his best men held him in Hunter’s grasp. After a few moments, Sir Rodney’s body relaxed and Hunter’s eyes rolled into the back of his head. When he came out of the daze, he was snarling and his eyes were pure wolf. He dropped Sir Rodney in the arms of his men, pivoted, and took off into the glen. Shogun and Sasha were right behind him with a retinue of archers swiftly navigating the trees.
Helicopters were not far in the distance. Fire-engine and police sirens were closing in. But Hunter had the trail in his mind. He picked up the scent on the back of his palate; if he could have called his wolf, he would have been four paws on the ground and one with the wind.
When Hunter found him, Kiagehul was barricaded in a mansion that instantly faded to nothing more than a quickly drawn black magick circle. The onslaught of now strong Seelie Fae tracking magick had left his target exposed. Hunter skidded to a stop, and the frightened Unseelie brandished a dark charm and a wand, following Hunter’s every move.
“Stay back, wolf!” Kiagehul shouted, fear stripping his glamour.
“Your head is mine,” Hunter said, taking short lunges to terrorize the evil being that had wreaked so much havoc.
“If you touch me, you will be cursed for a hundred generations!”
“Don’t touch him, Hunter!” Sasha shouted.
But Shogun left her side to begin circling with Hunter.
“MacDougall?” Sir Rodney said, pushing past the wolves. “Me own damned bodyguard-me best man? What is this madness?”
“Kennan Kiagehul MacDougall! Did you even know my Unseelie name, Kiagehul?” the Unseelie shouted, holding his wand out before him. “Disinherited! Abused in your Seelie Court because of who my father was… Never in line for what was rightfully mine-well this time I decided to take it!”
“Treason!” Sir Rodney shouted, his fingertip sparking as he pointed hard at Kiagehul. “You were my most trusted, because of who your mother was to my court!”
“As though my father’s Unseelie line never mattered?” Kiagehul said, his eyes narrowed with hatred. “Had the Fae wars waxed differently, I would have been in line to rule.”
“But they didn’t… and I gave you a high post nonetheless-for your Seelie mother!” Sir Rodney shouted, veins of rage now standing in his neck and at his temples. “You take up your fate and lack of inheritance with your cold hearted queen, not me! She was the one who passed you over because of your father’s ineptitude in battle. I gave you asylum!”
“Dead man walking,” Hunter said, snarling.
“It’s like watching a foxhunt when the quarry is finally at bay, eh Kiagehul, you rat bastard?” an archer shouted from the trees, and then spit out the twig he’d been chewing on. “Only I’d like to see these dogs of war leave nothing of your stinkin’ carcass to bring home.”
“Did your queen know?” Sir Rodney paced along the perimeter of the black magick circle. “Out with it!”
“My queen will benefit greatly from your fall,” Kiagehul sneered.
Woods and Fisher finally caught up to the group, but all the Fae backed up as Kiagehul began to scream.
“Thrash him with the rowan branches to strip him of his power,” Sasha ordered. “Then cross his pentagram with the iron, gentlemen, and make sure you put a piece in his pocket so there’s no chance he’ll get away. This SOB is going to court tonight.”
Bear Shadow stood in the mist beside his pack brother, nerves taut, gaze sweeping. Crow Shadow held the implements to break the curse; his job was to walk point and call the spirits. But something was wrong as he called Hunter’s name. Only strange silence came back… Then he saw it. Hunter’s wolf with red glowing eyes, a demon version of his courageous alpha.
The beast lunged so quickly that he didn’t have time in his human form to evade it. It was not pure mist but was dense, had weight, its jaws savaging his skin, tearing his flesh. Crow leaped in and tried to stab it with an iron stake, but it grabbed his arm between massive jaws, almost snapping bone, but Bear had climbed on the beast’s back to force it to turn its attention away from Crow.
There was no time to see with Silver Hawk’s eyes or listen to Clarissa’s shrieks. Crow Shadow gored the beast as it reared on its hind legs, standing Hunter’s wolf height of seven feet tall. Iron plunged through the beast, exploding it to cinders. Bear Shadow hurled a handful of rowan berries over Crow Shadow’s shoulder, screaming for him to get down as Sasha’s wolf charged out of the nothingness.
But that only burned away her fur, leaving a scorched demon wolf skull with glowing red eyes and a mangled, bloody coat. She stalked both men, circling them and waiting for Silver Hawk to enter as a demonic version of his Silver Shadow self.
“Something’s gone wrong!” Bear Shadow shouted out loud. “They’re not etheric doubles, they’re demons!”
Crow Shadow backed up with him as both warriors took a stand, surrounded.
“Pull them out!” Clarissa shouted, breaking the trance. “Something’s happened, Bradley.”
Doc shook Silver Hawk as he slumped forward on the table. Bradley jumped up from the table with Winters and dashed to the computer.
“The spell’s been changed, reinforced somehow. The one who cast it had to have been tipped off!” Bradley began searching through screens.
“They won’t last that long,” Clarissa shouted. “They’ve got one demon down; call Sasha’s cell! See if you can get through to Hunter to go in there and get his men out!”
Sir Rodney handed Sasha the cell phone as his retinue of soldiers blended into the trees. “It’s for you,” he said, puzzled. He nodded as she accepted the unit and pressed it to her ear.
“What?” Sasha grabbed Hunter’s uninjured arm as the retreat came to a full stop.
“I don’t mean ta rush the lady,” one of the archers said, “but we’ve got to get this bag of rot back to the dungeons and us out of the humans’ way, posthaste… And problem is we need a wolf to carry ’im through the forest, due to his iron-clad condition.”
“Hunter’s men are trapped in the shadow lands,” Sasha said quickly, relating the drastic events. “They’re up against my dark shadow self and Silver Shadow’s evil etheric, as well as Shogun’s, all alone… And who even knows how formidable the others will be?”
“It’ll take me a half hour to forty minutes to go back, assuming I’m not stopped,” Hunter said, beginning to pace.
“They’ll be dead by then,” Kiagehul called out, laughing a hysterical laugh of the criminally insane.
Sasha went to Hunter. “No. You were the first etheric double they put down. You go in there, focus on killing mine, and call me-I will hear you in my soul. Then let me go in there and fight with you to kill the rest. Your arm, baby,” she said, gently touching the edge of the tape. “Trust me to be by your side… Call me in there with you and don’t you dare die on my watch.”
She didn’t care if she’d just made an open declaration, a clear choice with witnesses all around, and didn’t care if Shogun or Sir Rodney was offended. She didn’t want to hurt them, but it was what it was. Something was lifting, breaking up like the congestion of a bad cold… The haze was gone. Hunter stared at her for a moment, his inner vision clear for the first time in days-she could feel it inside her like she knew her name, and that private knowing anchored her.