Page 59 of Pack Rage
Chapter 28
Distraction
GRIGOR
Just outside the exit to the lower levels, I smelled the witch’s blood. But she was far away, and I assumed the closer scent was a distraction. I slunk along the tree line to the rise anyway, to see what was there. A large clearing ringed by pines, almost a small valley, took up half of the land inside the fences. A raised lip of grass-covered earth made up the meeting place, with a dirt ring in the center for the fights, or the speeches.
The scent of her blood was all around the area. Old blood that had soaked into the earth, as well as salt, as if the witch had done some spell there, and tried to cleanse it. This was where the Council would meet, but it was already teeming with Enforcers and servants.
The earth was shadowed around that area, but Elina McDonnell was far away, and old spells weren’t my main concern.
She’d been away from the Mansion since the day she’d dropped me in her dungeon. Once I’d regained enough of my strength to seek her, I’d felt her presence moving away from the packlands before stopping to the northwest. I’d thought shemight return, but instead, she’d stayed away, distant enough that perhaps she felt safe. Now, her blood was a pulsing beacon, calling me to her, to kill her.
I almost couldn’t believe that her coven hadn’t taught her how to hide her presence from other magic users. But then, there were so few witches left alive, and most of their knowledge had been lost. The only ones I’d sensed nearby were drained, like Finnick, almost to the point of losing their witchcraft entirely. She clearly assumed I was still bound by silver, helpless.
There was no doubt in my mind where the witch was now. I followed the pulse of her blood, the rank, familiar scent of her. I ran for hours, until I could taste her blood magic as well in the air, fresh traces of it mingled with violent death.
She hadn’t run from the Mansion to hide. She’d gone here to kill, to gather more power, preparing to come back to her home and harm my mate. My brothers. I would not allow it.
My rage gave me speed, and I ran faster, invisible to the humans as I leaped over their roadways and dove back into the shadows of the trees on my way. The witch might have used an automobile to travel to her destination, but I could channel my wolf’s power—and his speed—into my human form, and move just as fast.
I stayed as far from the roads and the stench of exhaust as I could, keeping her scent in my nostrils instead. I ran north and west, crossing roads and streams, seen only by the small creatures of the woods, who sensed my wolf and froze in place as I passed.
Before long, I slowed, within a mile of where my wolf’s nose insisted the witch had stopped. I wasn’t scenting bloodinsidea body, but spilled. There was something flat, almost stale about the odor, though it grew more intense as I approached. Had someone else found her, killed her, before I could?
No, she wasn’t waiting for me, wounded. This was something else, and the witch was somewhere else.
Incensed, I dropped the look-away spell as I stepped out of the cover of the trees. My wolf wanted nothing more than to return to our mate and guard her, take her out of the hands of her enemies. But I had to see what this was, understand what the purpose was.
In the clearing was a dark spell circle, the taint that rose up in the late afternoon almost as visible as the steam drifting from the spell’s focal point. Six dead shifters, rogues from the state of their clothing and starvation, lay in a circle around a flat wooden platter of still-warm blood. There was an empty space around the circle, and a trail in the leaf mulch leading into the nearby forest. The seventh sacrifice, perhaps dragged into the woods after they were killed, or perhaps consumed.
I leaned down to examine the spilled blood. What spell had she done? Something to strengthen her own blood, which was in the platter, or something to bind the other shifters’ blood to her own. Or both.
I covered my nose, offended by the reek of the spell circle and everything around it. The dead shifters carried the familiar stench of feral wolf, and must have been half gone before she’d gotten her claws into them for the spell. There had been at least four dozen other shifters here, though. An army almost, none of them among the dead. I examined the entire scene, noting traces of semen on the ground, before catching a scent I’d come across before.
Ivan, the silver-poisoned, half-mad shifter who’d attacked Flor. My wolf raged that she might still be in danger from that madman. I’d looked for any trace of him, magical or otherwise, before I’d followed Flor away from Canada to make sure she was safe from him. Then I’d tracked Sergeant all the way to Southern.
I’d known I would need to make sure Ivan was dead someday, but now I was cursing myself for letting it go. He was not one of the dead, but he had been here. I turned to face the Eastern packlands, knowing where he had to be headed, and with whom.
A slight tug at my senses from that direction, the connection of my blood to hers, had me cursing again. I could feel her as she moved away, back to the Mansion, and my feet itched to follow her.It would take much of my energy to do so. She had to be in a car, going that fast.
At the other end of our bond, Brand’s wolf lifted his nose. Ah, I’d forgotten to mute those connections. Even though the distance I’d run would soften my emotions somewhat, they would all sense my unease. Gently, I pinched the bonds closed and turned my full attention back to the spell.
Just as I did, a sharp, frigid breeze cleared the air around me, carrying the stench of corruption and death away, and a more potent scent to me, of living blood.It won’t be living for long.I followed the scent into the woods and, a few dozen feet later, the slight wheeze of labored breathing, finding the missing shifter.
Or what was left of him.
This one wasn’t a rogue. I knew him well, though the last time I’d smelled him, I’d been at Southern. He’d spilled his seed on the floorboards of the Pack House, while I hid underneath the bed, keeping Luke alive. If Elina McDonnell had been this one’s lover, and she had left him here, like this, then all the others were in more danger than I’d feared.
She wasn’t an untrained witch. She had to know what she was doing, if she’d known not to go into the battle against Brand and the others without mustering more strength, and an army as well.
She’d known what the cost for a spell that would make her impossible to defeat would be. Which also meant… the salt andblood back at the Eastern Mansion may have been something else. Something far more dangerous than I’d imagined one witch with no coven could create.
Run back,my wolf insisted.Kill him and go. No time.I had a terrible feeling he was right.
I cursed as I approached the dying male. “Torran.”
It was the wretched shifter who had tortured so many of the Southern pack, killing males and brutalizing females. Someone had taken all of his clothing, and most of his skin, and left him a shivering, dying mess on the cold forest floor. I approached with no pity at all, only a small regret that I was not the one who had done this to him, and a pinch of gratitude that his death would fuel my return to Eastern.
