Page 39 of The Alpha's Warlock
“I can handle the fucking shaman, Ian! Go!”
Part of me wanted him to refuse again, to stay by my side no matter what. That part ached when he leapt off of me and threw himself into the fray.
The bigger part of me, the part that wanted nothing more than his trust, watched him streak away from me and swore to do my bit to make sure we lived through this.
I’d take this fucking shaman down if it was the last thing I ever — bad choice of words. I’d take him down. Fuckingperiod.
The shaman tried to tag Ian with some kind of curse as he ran by, but I tugged on the bond, shoving power through it just in time to act as a shield. Dor had his sword raised, but his left arm hung limp by his side. The monster reared up, roaring — and Ian took a SuperOlympics-worthy flying leap, sinking his claws and fangs into Kimball’s shoulder and neck. They both went down, tumbling and wrestling, howls and shouts echoing. Dor was back in it, hacking at Kimball’s clawed feet.
And then the shaman was coming for me, power gathered around him like an electrical storm.
I couldn’t fight him on his own terms. Not as exhausted as I was, and not with panic singing in my veins. Ian, Ian might be dying — sharp pain coursed through the bond, crippling me for a crucial moment. The shaman let out a ululating chant, his magic pulsing in every syllable, and curses rained down on me. They sizzled as they impacted Dor’s wards, and I swatted away the others, but I fell to the ground, the wind knocked out of me.
My hand landed on Dor’s water bottle, and I gripped it instinctively like I would a weapon.
A weapon. I clutched it tighter, willing the metal of it to respond to me. I’d always done better with objects to focus my magic: salt, and bowls, and mirrors, the tools of my trade that could absorb and concentrate my power, when I didn’t have the focus to craft a spell out of nothingness.
In that frantic moment, the only thing I could think of that would flow well into a metal object was a binding spell, the kind that had been on the cuffs and chains I’d worn earlier that night. I whispered the words and pushed every bit of power I had into it, the rush of it burning through my muscles and nerves and viscera, and as the shaman reached for me, his lips curved into a rictus of a smile, I hauled back and smashed it into his face.
His nose broke with a wet crunch. He screamed — and the water bottle detonated like a grenade, silver tendrils of my spell spilling out over him and wriggling down his neck and arms, burrowing into his skin.
With one more scream, he went down, falling to his side with his mouth open, his eyes glazed and blood pouring out of his nose. I struggled out from under him and staggered to my feet.
I was just in time to see Ian wrap his arms around the monster’s head while Dor stabbed at Kimball’s torso. Ianwrenched, his whole body twisting, and then fell back. Something huge dropped from his grasp.
Kimball’s head, spouting an extraordinary amount of gore. The body toppled to the ground.
“Your master is dead!” Dor shouted, his voice carrying like the ringing of the world’s deepest-toned bell. “Kimball wolves! Your master is dead, your shaman is vanquished. Surrender now, or die.”
He didn’t wait for an answer; he was already on his way to Charlie, who was hidden behind a protective knot of his vampires.
The answer came instantly, anyway. I heard howls from deeper in the woods, behind me, where the Armitage pack was still fighting; the Kimballs’ voices were shrill with anguish and fear. The vampires pushed back their opponents, who broke and ran, more than one falling to Dor’s sword as they tried to escape.
It was over.
I dropped down on my ass in the dirt and put my head in my hands. If one of them tried to kill me on his way out of the Armitage territory, so be it. I was too tired to worry about it.
Did they give merit badges for surviving your first pack war? If so, I thought I’d earned mine.
I was so, so done with decapitation for one day. And I sure as hell wasn’t joining the severed-head clean-up crew. I curled in on myself, laughing hysterically, and waited for the mopping-up to be over.
Chapter 22
Aftermath
“Nate.” Ian’s voice was so scratchy I hardly recognized it, but it was hard to mistake his looming presence. He dropped onto his knees beside me — really dropped, like someone had cut his strings, and then flopped down to sit cross-legged. “Nate, look at me?”
There’d already been people moving around me: some Armitage wolves dragging the shaman away at Dor’s low-voiced direction — hopefully to be bound with some better spells than I’d used on that water bottle. It’d done the job, but it wouldn’t keep him down forever.
I’d heard Ian giving orders, hoarse but calm and commanding, sending a few of his pack to harry the remaining Kimballs out of the territory, telling others where to put the wounded Kimballs left behind, and generally managing everything like a fucking boss.
Who knew he had it in him? Not Matthew, that was for sure. He always treated Ian like an idiot.
And so had I. I buried my face a little deeper in my knees. Yeah, shame was a bitch. Push had so fucking definitely come to shove, and Ian had defended his pack successfully, protected and cared for me, fought my father with everything he had, and literally ripped off a monster-wolf-abomination-thing’s head with his bare fucking hands. And now he was organizing the aftermath as if he’d been doing this every day for years.
Which, actually, he basically had, as Matthew’s second. I wondered how much of Matthew’s attitude to Ian came from not even noticing how much Ian got done when he wasn’t looking.
Then I wondered if I could crawl into a hole and die for a while, maybe taking a little break from that to savor the taste of the foot I’d crammed in my mouth repeatedly over the last few days.
