Page 38 of The Alpha's Warlock
Fuck my life.
“I’ll stay out of trouble,” I said hoarsely. “Promise.”
Ian’s eyes narrowed in suspicion. “You never give in that easily.”
“Well, first time for everything.” I turned away before he could read my expression, which was probably somewhere between misery and longing. I was like a bad supernatural country song, all wanting to be loved and sad that my werewolf ran away. Or something.
I went and stood right by Dor, where I was going to be staying, apparently, and crossed my arms. That was the end of the conversation, as far as I was concerned.
Ian lingered for a minute, his presence a heavy weight behind me, and then he loped off through the trees, ready to marshal his pack for the fight. He wasn’t happy, I could feel that much through the bond. He wasn’t happy with me, specifically, on top of everything else on his mind. Well, what else was new.
After the wait, and the quiet, it seemed like nothing would ever happen, and I’d started to wonder if the Kimballs had given it all up as a bad job and gone to bed, the way I wished I could. Even the dusty, ripped-up mattress in the shack of solitude had started to sound like the best idea ever.
Then everything happened at once.
A wave of wolves burst out of the trees on the other side of the road, a cacophony of howls echoing as they charged. Flickering shadows ran to meet them: vampires, led by Charlie, a small figure at the front with moonlight glittering from his pale face and his elongated fangs. Howls came from behind us, too, Kimballs and Armitages calling out defiance, followed immediately by screams and yelps and wails as they met.
The forest around me dissolved into chaos, and I spun, desperately trying to get a handle on what the fuck was going on.
“How did they get behind us without triggering any of the spells?” I demanded. “Dor! What the fuck?”
“They have another shaman,” Dor said grimly. “Look!”
I turned, and froze. Coming out of the woods were two figures, one small and slim, with long blond hair trailing in the air around him like it moved in invisible currents. His hands were raised, the tattoos on his arms writhing over his skin like crawling insects.
The other was something out of a fever-dream. He was a werewolf, half-shifted, but…he had to be nine feet tall, his massive tree-trunk arms dangling down far enough that his claws almost brushed the ground. This wasn’t the type of werewolf I was used to; this was more like the monsters crafted out of medieval night terrors, the kind that normal-human movies depicted when they didn’t have the budget for a supernatural consultant. Enormous jaws, set with teeth large enough to enclose my whole head, dripped ropes of slime.
What. The ever-loving. Fuck. “Dor, what is…” I couldn’t even figure out the right question to ask.
“That’s Kimball,” Dor said, his voice tight. I’d never heard him more than casually interested. This was the Dor-version of freaked the fuck out. “That’s —” He dissolved into a string of words in his own ear-twisting language, spat out in a fury. “That’s necromancy, that’s a fuckingabomination. It’s meant to make him invincible, but he won’t come back from that, not as himself.” Dor turned to me, his face set. “Stay here. Do not go more than five feet from the spell circle. You’re hidden here, from the weres, at least.”
That was not so fucking reassuring. Before I could say anything, he was running, flat-out, at a speed no human or werewolf could hope to match, his sword unsheathed and refracting the moonlight in flashes of light in colors I couldn’t name.
He had almost reached Charlie when the monster — Kimball, the abomination — swiped out at the vampire. The blow connected, and Charlie flew through the air in an impossibly high arc. He hit the ground, and he didn’t get up.
Dor let out a sound like a mortar launcher wrapped in a full symphony orchestra, a rising crescendo with too many harmonics for the human ear to process. I fell to my knees, clutching my head and screaming, though I couldn’t hear it, only feel the vibration in my skull.
When I could look up again, Dor and the monster were fighting, Dor’s sword weaving through the air like the shuttle of a loom, the monster dodging and swinging with a speed that should have been impossible for something that size. Blood spattered from both of them, falling like rain.
Some of the Kimball wolves got past the vampires, who were retreating to Charlie’s side, and flung themselves right into the path of Dor’s spells. They flew back, their bodies making horrid popping sounds, like mosquitoes in a bug zapper. It didn’t matter. There were more coming up behind me, and the weres who’d triggered the spells had also caught the shaman’s attention. Even at a distance, I could see his eyes. They glowed with green fire, and his mouth was moving, crafting some kind of magic.
That was not going to end well for me.
It didn’t. He wrapped his hands in the air and threw something, something I could only see with my inner eyes. A ball of darkness, wispy and knotted, that I knew would kill me if it hit. I could feel it searching for me. It felt like…it felt like the curse my father had used on Ian.
I could fight it. I’d done it once before, dammit. I gathered every bit of magic I had, reaching deep down into the place within where it glowed the brightest.
The curse-ball hit, but I was ready. I didn’t try to dodge it; Icaughtit, wrapping it in a blanket of my own magic, smothering it with the strength of my connection to Ian, the mingled alpha power and my own raw energy, far more potent together than they could ever be alone.
It smothered the curse, pressing it into a smaller and smaller lump, and then extinguishing it altogether.
I didn’t even have time for a fist-pump of victory. The shaman shrieked his rage, already readying for another attack.
I hit the ground hard as something huge collided with my back and pinned me to the ground. Turning my head and spitting out pine needles, all I could see were huge claws digging into the ground next to my face. Claws sticking out of a human hand; Ian was only half-shifted.
“Ian, get off me!” I tried to shove up off the ground, but he was immovable. A deep, low growl reverberated through my back. “Ian, that’s Kimball,” I panted. “That thing. It’s fucking Kimball, and I don’t think Dor’s winning.” I didn’t want Ian fighting it. I didn’t want Ian anywherenearit. But that was the threat he could deal with, and the threat he needed to take on.
“I’m not leaving you. I’m not fucking leaving you here —”
