Walter wasn’t an especially powerful alpha, and I wasn’t vain enough to think that they had done this just to see me get torn apart. I was getting the sensation that they had been bound to a common goal for weeks, maybe. Days, at the least.
Disconcerted, I dropped my second sight and stretched where I stood, legs spread wide and bending at the waist to place the flat of my arms against the hard-packed dirt. I had to find a way to break the round or today would be a repeat of Karen without the happy ending.
My butt was in the air, with only my black tights between me and their imaginations, and at a rude laugh, I came up in a slow exhale. I turned to Jenks. They had let him wash the blood off his hair, and his blond mop was in loose ringlets, throwing his green eyes in stark relief. Youthful features pinched, he stood absolutely still for once, and I didn’t think it was because of the armed guard. Actually, I was surprised they had him here, but he was providing a lot of entertainment and was a curiosity in himself. I could understand their confidence. Even if we got away, how could we escape survivalists, street-racer gangs, and Weres with credit cards?
About the only thing going for me was that my rudimentary ley line skills hadn’t made it to Walter’s report. I was a strict earth witch, according to it, and seeing as I hadn’t made a circle or hit the wolves with anything other than an earth charm, they had no idea I could work the lines too. Just as well. They would have put one of those nasty black ratchet-wristbands on me for fear I’d tap a line through my familiar and make them all toads. That I didn’t have a familiar was a mute point. The band would have still made me helpless, robbing me of the energy I had in my chi and spindled in my head. And I wanted to use it.
I looked at my feet and stifled a shiver of nervousness. I’d wanted to turn Jenks his proper size before this got started. Jax waited at the hotel, and as long as it was warm, Jenks could fly back and they could get out of here. This wasn’t a rescue anymore; we were down to salvage.
Excitement rose through the surrounding Weres—sending the feeling of sandpaper over the skin of my aura now that I was aware of it—and I followed everyone’s attention as Pam made her sedate way to us. Her red robe fluttered about her bare feet, and with her hair flowing about her, she looked exotic, walking under the trees as if belonging to the earth. My muscles tensed, and avoiding her eyes, I went to Jenks for a last word.“Stop!” one of his guards barked before I had gone three feet, and I froze, hip cocked.
“Give me a break,” I said loudly, as if I wasn’t shaking inside. “What, by the Turn, do you think I’m going to do?”
Pam’s voice rose high, carrying a derision I wasn’t sure was aimed at me or the guys with guns. “Let her talk to him,” she said. “It may be the last time she has her wits about her.”
That’s nice, I mused, the threat of their doctor with his needles keeping me quiet.
Pam swayed to a halt before two women. They didn’t look enough alike to be friends. The tallest was wearing a well-worn leather halter and classically torn jeans, and the other had on an inappropriate dress suit and heels. Visiting alphas, I guessed.
The four men around Jenks had lowered their weapons a smidge, and I sidled past. I was finding it easier to ignore the barrels pointed at me, though stress had me wound tighter than Ivy’s last blind date. “Jenks,” I said. “I want to turn you small.”
His worry melted into disbelief. “What the hell for?”
I grimaced, wishing the guards weren’t hearing this. “You can fly back to the mainland while it’s warm, get on a bus, go home, and forget I ever asked you to help me with this. I don’t know if I have enough ever-after spindled to invoke both spells, and I can’t let you risk being stuck like this if I—” I grimaced. “—if I get hurt,” I finished. “I don’t think Ceri can reverse the curse herself, so she’d have to twist a new one, and for that she’d need demon blood….” I wanted him to tell me I was being an ass and that he was with me to the end, but I had to offer.
His brow furrowed. “Are you done?” he said softly. I said nothing, and he leaned forward, putting his lips beside my ear. “You’re a dumbass witch,” he whispered, his words soft but intent, and I smiled. “If I could, I’d pix you for a week for even suggesting I up and leave you here. You’re going to unwind that ever-after in your head to Were. Then you’re going to pin that woman. And then we will get the hell off this island with Nick.
“I’m your backup,” he said, taking a flushed step backward. “Not a come-easy friend who flies away at the first sign of a problem. You need me, witch. You need me to carry Nick if he’s unconscious, hotwire the jeep to drive back to the beach, and steal a boat if he can’t swim. And Jax is fine,” he added. “He’s a grown pixy and can take care of himself. I made sure before we left that he knew the number to the church and could read Cincinnati off the bus schedule.”
The lines in his face eased, and a crafty glint replaced the hard anger in his eyes. “I don’t need to be small to get out of these cuffs.” He sent one eyebrow up, turning into a scallywag. “Five seconds, easy.”
The wash of relief flowing through me was distressingly short-lived. “But I’m not going to let her pin me,” I said. “I’m going to fight until I can’t anymore. If I die, you’re stuck like this.”
His smile widened. “Aw, you aren’t going to die,” he said mischievously.
“Why? Because you’re with me?”
“Ooooh, she can be taught.” Hiding his hands from the guards, he bent his thumb, moving it in a stomach-turning disjointedness so the cuffs could slide right off. “Now get out there and get a mouthful of bitch ass,” he finished, jiggling his wrists so the metal links fell back in place.
I snorted. “Thanks, Coach,” I said, feeling the first fingers of possibility ease my slight headache, but as I looked over the noisy throng, I grew depressed. I did not want to do this. It was a demon curse, for God’s sake. And the easiest way to get out of this, I thought. Ceri had said the payment wouldn’t be that bad. The smut would be worth escaping being drugged. I’d seen her make the curse. Nothing had died to make it. I was paying the price, not some poor animal or sacrificial person. Was it possible for a curse to be technically black but morally white? Did that make using it right, or was I just a chicken-ass taking the easy way out and rationalizing myself out of a lot of pain?
You can’t do anything if you’re dead, I told myself, deciding to worry about it later.
Nauseated, I looked over the heads of the growing conglomeration of Weres. The energy coming off them seemed to swirl around me like a fog, making my skin tingle. Okay…I was going to be a wolf. I wouldn’t be helpless like before. Pam might not feel any pain, but if I got ahold of her neck, she was going down in a modified sleeper.
A quick glace at Pam, and I shook my hands to loosen them. As challenger, it was my place to assume the field first. Breath held, I took five steps into the clearing. The noise increased, and a swift memory of being a contestant in Cincy’s illegal rat fights flitted through me and was gone. What was it with me and organized beatings, anyway?
Pam turned. Head high, she smiled at the women with her and touched the shoulder of the one with the most polish in parting. Light on her bare feet, she came forward, the crowd’s noise turning softer, more intent. It was easy to see the predator in her despite her diminutive size, and she reminded me of Ivy, though the only similarity was their grace.
“Rache?” Jenks said loudly, the alarm in his voice bringing me around. He pointed with his chin to Walter approaching on the same path his wife had used. There were two men with him: one in a suit, and the youngest in head-to-toe red silk, his walk a jewelry-jangling swagger.
Walter halted at the edge of the circle, and on impulse I opened my second sight. Walter’s aura wasn’t rimmed in that hazy brown sheen—it was permeated with it. The entire three packs had begun to accept his dominance.
I quickly scanned the other two alpha males’ auras. Theirs were clear of Walter’s influence, as were their wives’, but the visiting alphas had to know it was happening. That they were voluntarily letting him do this to their packs scared the crap out of me. Whatever Nick had stolen must be big for them to bind themselves for so long that Walter was starting to claim them all. It went against all Were tradition and instinct. It just wasn’t done.
Walter looked utterly satisfied. He glanced at me, his eyebrows rising as if knowing I could visually see the mental connection he was fixing over another alpha’s pack. Smirking, he looked to Pam and gestured.
Pam reached for the tie to her robe. “Wait!” I called, and a ripple of laugher went through them. They thought I was frightened. “I have a spell to Were with, and I don’t want to get shot using it.”There was a collective hesitation, and most of the conversations were stilled, the street gang muttering the loudest. I shifted from foot to foot, waiting. Pam recovered smoothly, coming to a halt a good ten feet from me. “You can Were?” she said, a mocking smile on her. “Walter, honey, I didn’t think earth witches could do that.”