Page 65 of Feral
Beside him was a small woman with long, silver hair, though she looked young. On the other side of her was an older woman with salt and pepper hair that sat almost straight up like she’d been electrocuted, and had tiny beads strung through it. Honestly, her hair seemed to defy gravity, or like she was trying to be the Halloween stereotype of a witch. She smiled broadly, and one gold tooth glinted in the headlights.
Dominic got out first from the vehicle in front of us, and I slid quietly from our car too. I looked at Cooper. “Stay with the Omegas,” I said softly so they didn’t wake. They were exhausted, and I wanted to just wrap them up in cotton wool to keep them safe and happy forever.
Beckett climbed out from the other side, and we went to stand near Dom. The group looked harmless, but you could never be sure with witches.
Dom didn’t seem to have the same hesitation though, because he ran at Loren, wrapping him up in a hug that would have cracked a lesser man’s spine. “It’s so, so fucking good to see you, brother,” he whispered, slapping his back. Then he pulled back and punched him hard in the gut.
The woman beside Loren gasped, her hands clenching and the feel of magic in the air making my skin tingle. I stepped forward, growling low, and Loren straightened up, wheezing and laughing at the same time.
“I fucking thought you were dead. You sent me back through that fucking portal and I thought you weredead!” Dominic hissed, then hugged him again.
“I’d do it again,” Loren told him, coughing a couple of times.
Dominic shook his head. “I know you would, you self-sacrificing bastard.”
“You can talk,” Loren sniped back. “Dominic, this is Electra. She’s who your Goddess sent me when I was dying. Lucky too, because I was about to be food for the coyotes and the worms.” He indicated the pretty silver-haired witch. Then he pointed to the one with the crazy hair. “And this is the leader of the Moonburst coven, Wilbur.”
“Wilbur? No offense, ma’am, but isn’t that a man’s name?” Dominic said curiously.
Wilbur shrugged. “I had an accident in 1973, and just went with it. Easier to have tits than to summon anAverialatidemon to turn me back—trust me on that. If you want my advice, don’t do magic while you’re downing your weight in shrooms, kids.”
I blinked. Then I blinked again. The woman—I think?—was grinning a little wildly, so maybe those shrooms did a lot more damage than just one spell gone bad.
The silver-haired girl, Electra, rolled her eyes and sighed, while Loren looked like he was having a hard time holding back his laughter. He looked past Dominic at me and Beckett.
“Hey guys, it’s good to see you.” His face fell, all mirth gone. “Sorry it’s not under better circumstances though. Come on, we’ll get you all settled. Courtland gave us a heads up, so we’ve spent most of the day with the coven, cleaning out some of the houses.” He wandered down the steps. “Used to be a big oil refinery out here, but eventually the well dried up and the workers all left. Place is basically a ghost town now. Electra and Wilbur live out here, along with a couple of others in the coven, but all the humans left a decade ago. The places still need some work, but they’re liveable.”
Loren looked over our shoulder, and I could see the lights of the bus in the distance. He fanned his fingers, and a small blue orb that flashed like a sparkler appeared in front of us. “Follow the blue orb and it’ll take you to what it decides is the best house for you. Like the sorting hat in Harry Potter, but with real estate.”
“Okay…” Beckett said incredulously.
Witches. They were so fucking weird. Still, we climbed back in our car and followed the bright blue orb down the street. Luckily, it traveled pretty slowly. It led us past five cross streets to the aptly named Sixth Street, and then to the third driveway down from that. Every other house around us was dark, so I assumed this wasn’t one of the witch-inhabited areas.
The house in front of us was a double-story one, with a wraparound porch and large front windows. A tree with a tire swing stood in the front yard, and it had a large barn shed out the back. It was pretty damn picturesque, even in the darkness.
It wasn’t perfect, of course. Even from here I could see that the porch roof was sagging, and the paint was peeling from the cladding. There was a missing step, and we hadn’t even opened the front door yet.
But it gave me a good feeling, and when Darius woke up, he smiled at the sagging house. That was enough for me.
41
BECKETT
Isat on the second story landing, watching tiny glowing orbs race around the town of Moonburst. They were every color in the rainbow, and they adapted their speed to the people they were assigned to; if you were walking, it would plod along in front of you at a reasonable pace. If you were in a car, it traveled a solid ten miles per hour to get you where you needed to go. It was a pretty awesome piece of magic. My mom had messaged me and said she’d been put in a sweet little row of cabins on Third Street, and I was glad she wasn’t too far away. The orbs really were like the sorting hat.
“It’s pretty magical, isn’t it? But I’ve never seen a place with so few trees,” Kitten said, coming to sit beside me on the deck. It seemed pretty structurally sound when I stepped out here, but Cooper was going to have a good look at it in the morning.
I pulled Kitten onto my lap, and she snuggled against my chest. “We’re in part of the Great Plains. Not many trees out this way. Does it make you unhappy?”
She shook her head. “No. I’ll learn to listen to the plains the same way I listened to the forest.”
I stiffened. “Has anyone heard from Courtland? About what happened to Maxton?”
We’d been watching the news, but as far as the human world was concerned, the only thing up in those mountains was an abandoned logging village. How we’d gotten away with that for so long in the age of satellites was a mystery.
She shook her head. “No, but the orbs moved the De Léon Pack right next door. And the Huxley-Grey Pack the next street over. Guess they wanted to keep all the Omega Packs together.” She shrugged. “Anyway, Darius and Cooper are over there helping settle the children, so maybe they’ll have news when they come back.”
The human news mightn’t mention Maxton by name, but the fire was now big enough to warrant television coverage, and it didn’t look good at all. Half the mountain was on fire.
