Page 22 of The Alpha's Warlock
“If we have two minutes for me to concentrate, I can cover our tracks,” I panted. “Make us hard to find. But the magic won’t last long. It’s really hard for me to cast on more than one person at a time.”
“Do it, I’ll keep watch.”
Ian put himself between me and whatever or whoever might be after us, and I closed my eyes and tried to find my center. I’d been so off-balance lately that I wasn’t even sure if I had one anymore.
But when I looked within, the first thing I saw was the shining cable of the mate bond — and it led straight to the place I thought of as the core of my magic, a tipping point somewhere inside my consciousness where everything sat in perfect stillness. I drew on it, pulled my energy through it, and disrupted the patterns around me and Ian. It was much, much easier to do it when the other person was my mate; it was like we were one unit, as far as my magic was concerned.
The spell spread out around us like ripples in a pond, and I knew that if anyone looked at us, all they’d see would be the boulder. Our footprints would be visible if someone really, really focused, but if they didn’t their eyes would slide right over them.
“Okay,” I said, opening my eyes. “We’re more or less invisible, for now. But we need to get moving. And find out why we’re suddenly wanted men.”
“We need to get back to the territory.” Ian bared his teeth in a feral-looking grin. “Looks like you’re getting that nice long hike after all. Hope my favorite socks that you stole are still comfortable.”
I winced. “Great,” I said. “Just fucking great. Piggy-back ride?”
“Not a chance,” Ian growled, and led the way across the creek.
Chapter 14
On the Run
I wiggled my hips, trying to hoist myself a little higher on Ian’s back. “Sorry, I keep slipping,” I muttered.
“At least you stopped telling me to mush,” Ian shot back.
“Only because I believed you when you said you’d drop me.”
Ian snorted and tightened his grip around my thighs. It had taken all of half an hour of fighting our way through thorny bushes and tall weeds and mud, and more mud, before he’d rolled his eyes, stopped, and leaned over so I could climb on — and another thirty seconds before I pissed him off. But hey, in my defense? I honestly wasn’t trying to be a jackass. I thought maybe what we needed in this situation was a little humor, so sue me.
Note to self: alphas had no sense of humor about dog jokes. To be fair, I probably should have been able to work that one out on my own.
“You still not getting any signal?” he asked.
I pressed the button on the side of Ian’s phone, where I had it awkwardly poised in my left hand. My right arm was wrapped around his chest. The screen lit up, but there weren’t any bars. “Nope.”
“Huh.” He ducked under a branch, but not quite far enough, and it whapped me on the top of my head.
“Hey!”
“Don’t know any sled team commands for ducking under branches, Nate?”
I bit down on my tongue and held the button to restart the phone. Maybe it just needed to refresh its connection, or…something. What I didn’t know about cellular communication could fill a whole phone manual, and probably did, except that I didn’t have one.
Ian’s phone had lost service somewhere between the store and the creek we’d ended up following for a while. Unless he’d suddenly and coincidentally gotten cut off for non-payment of his bill — which, okay, on any other day would be likely enough — someone had cut him off on purpose, either with magic or with more mundane fuckery at the phone company. We couldn’t call Matthew. We couldn’t use GPS, although Ian didn’t seem to need it, luckily. And we couldn’t check the news or social media or anything to see what the fuck was going on, which was a bigger problem. It was kind of amazing how pathetic we were without our technology, even though I had magic and Ianwasmagic. There was probably a Millennial joke in there somewhere, if I’d been feeling ironic enough to make it at my own expense.
We were heading for the Armitage territory, although it was going to take us a while to get there at this rate. And while Ian was determined to get home — some werewolfy instinct telling him to get to his pack at all costs — I wasn’t so sure.
I’d been trying to work through it in my head while I jounced along on Ian’s back. Nearly everyone in the store, with the exception of a couple of kids and a stoner staring red-eyed at a shelf of crispy pig-skin snacks, had seemed to recognize us. And want to get the hell away from us.
Then the cops came, probably called by an employee the minute we walked in. So whatever was up, it wasn’t just a supernatural thing. As far as I knew, neither of us had committed any normal human crimes recently, so — at least one of us was suspected of something we hadn’t done. Something fucking awful, to merit that level of response. And something that made us dangerous to everyone around us, since all the normals had clearly been told to keep their distance. And the supernaturals, too; the gnome had panicked when he saw us. Oh, this wasbad.
So where’d the local authorities, normal and not, gotten that idea? Occam’s razor suggested the Kimballs, or whatever faction of the Kimballs had kidnapped me, but I wasn’t sure what they stood to gain. I could easily turn around and tell the police about the kidnapping, after all. Did they think they could get me out of police custody and into their own, if they used the town’s PD to do the dirty work of catching me in the first place?
And okay, maybe they could, depending on who they had in their pockets, or if they had pack members working for the department. I had no idea, and I was cursing myself now for staying out of local affairs as much as possible after my father died two years before. Then, it had seemed like a logical, self-protective move. I simply couldn’t deal, and I didn’t want to. I’d been basically a prisoner for so long. I wanted to live a quiet life, get laid on the weekends, do some freelance magic Monday through Friday.
Well. That worked out just fucking great. I should’ve moved to Idaho or something. Too late now.
“Hey, Ian?” He huffed at me. “So, I really think heading back to the pack isn’t the best —”
