Page 29 of Coven Relics
“I don’t feel guilty about a damned thing I ever did, but if you break your fucking hip trying to help me, I’ll never get over it. You’ve already been a tremendous help. Ghosts are not my favorite thing, and I didn’t particularly feel like dealing with more than one tonight. I also would have had a big problem bringing my people into those woods. Let us take it from here.”
“Slow down, cowboy,” Minerva said. “You have a dream team put together here, but you still need help since you taught your creations how to hide from gods. You’re pretty much useless until you find him. The Academy of the Profane needs to be made aware that there’s a dangerous criminal lurking in their forest and for fuck’s sake, call Kaine Dragovich. The dragon is a hero who always seems to find his criminal, even when no one else can. I’m not sure if he’ll arrest you or light your ass on fire if you mess this up, but he strikes me as being much more direct than Odin when he’s angry, and something tells me he’s not even remotely afraid of you.”
Oh, I knew damned well Kaine wasn’t afraid of much. Gods and demons, no. Beyla getting hurt was probably the only thing I could think of that scared that dragon. We needed his help and the Academy’s.
“I’ll call Gabriel. He just started teaching,” I said.
“Don’t,” Minerva said. “Let me call the headmaster. Gabriel is still an unknown to them. They probably haven’t even told him the truth about Shrieking Woods. They don’t really tell the professors until they get tenure. If Gabriel bursts in talking like he knows Shrieking Woods isn’t haunted and there’s going to be an attempted murder there, they will want to know how he’s come by that information. It’s too soon for him to be eccentric. If I’m the one that tells the headmaster I have this information from a real seer created by Loki, who I also know, he’s more likely to believe it.”
Minerva Krauss had been handling the prissy-ass supernatural elite formuchlonger than I thought she had. She’d always been my hero because she didn’t come from some famous witching family and neither did Ripley nor I. She worked her ass off, broke every societal rule, and now she could just call the headmaster of the Academy of the Profane with a crazy-ass story about a werewolf, some ghosts, and a seer and just get shit done. She’d apparently done the same in many different witch bodies for a long time. When this was over, she was spilling deets over tea.
“I’m still calling Gabriel. I don’t even trust certain witches with necromancy. Idefinitelydon’t trust Valentine not to make revenants with some untested hybrid spell. My sister has him mostly kidnapped for sex stuff since they got back from Hell, so I haven’t asked him to teach me his revenant killing spell. I didn’t think I needed that skill this soon the last time I was with Gabriel,” I said.
“Maybe they took a break from all the orgies, and he taught Felix and Ripley. We had to carry him out of that shipping container when he killed the revenant Silvaria created. There was just one revenant that time. They are going to spread that knowledge around just in case they get outnumbered. Valentine has two corpses, so we need Gabriel and someone else who knows that spell. We also need people to fight Valentine and carry anyone who used it out of Shrieking Woods.”
“I can carry plenty of people out when I’m shifted, but why don’t they just cancel this orgy? If everyone stays inside, the wolf will have to travel to find his prey. There’s a bigger chance of him getting caught,” Sleipnir said.
Oh, sweet summer child. Bless his big sexy heart. Moon orgiesnevergot canceled. They happened in any weather, no matter what was going on. There could be a raging war going on where both sides hated the shit out of each other, but if something special was going on with the moon, there was a truce long enough for everyone to get their fucking on. Neither shifters nor witches knew what kind of horrific bad luck would happen if you didn’t get carnal under the full moon because no matter what kind of shit was happening in the world, orgies never got canceled.
And I had amassiveamount of questions about the witches back in Sleipnir’s day that he wasn’t a regular at a witch’s moon orgy. I’ll bet he knew how to throw you aroundjust rightduring sex if you asked him to, but he wasn’t one of those men who just presumed women wanted it that way. If he had been invited just once, he would have known these things don’t get canceled.
“Not going to happen,” Killian said. “At most, the headmaster might ask them to move it out of Halliwell Square. The students aren’t really going to listen. Halliwell Square has been a safe space, even before there was a name for that. It’s where the students sit and hang out, practice magic, and yeah, have their moon orgies.”
“For the record, Halliwell Square and that giant statue of Beatrix Halliwell werenotmy idea when I was setting up these buildings. That happened years after my death in that body. I always meant for that part of the academy to be what it is now, but I could have done without naming it after me and that massive statue.”
“You might fool the mortals in bodies like this, but anyone who knew you when you were in your true form being worshipped like the god you are, know damned well you love any and all effigies made of you,” Loki said.
“Well, if we can’t cancel this orgy, then we need to assemble our warriors and plan for battle,” Sleipnir said.
“When you call Gabriel, get Reyson over here. I really wish we could contact Death. That was a great idea, Killian. Everyone’s creations figured out sex feels excellent and started breeding like bunnies. Death had to makea lotof reapers to keep up with all the people dying off. If he let us borrow a few, we could end this in five minutes.”
“Yeah, but Death is even less predictable and controllable than you are. He’s also hyper protective of his reapers. He’s not going to swoop in and save the day. So, nut up and put that big, beautiful Trickster brain to use,” Minerva said. “Anddo notfuck up the garden in the middle of Shrieking Woods while you’re in there.”
“Everyone make your phone calls. I need to know who and how many I’m dealing with,” Loki said.
We knewwhereValentine was and where he was going to strike. Thorunn might have taught him how to hide from gods, but I didn’t think anyone was safe from Bjorn’s gifts. Thorunn had probably spilled the beans to Valentine that Doctor Key was really Loki and that she could teach him to hide from a god until he accomplished his task.
Thorunn didn’t know Bjorn and Sleipnir were back. She didn’t know Minerva Krauss was really Freya. Valentine couldn’t even get my twin sister’s name right. He probably told Thorunn he could get her a set of Gemini twins, and it didn’t even cross his mind that she was dating a god who went a little psycho when it came to my sister.
Valentine was also the kind of macho asshole that thought it would be super easy to kidnap two women. It wouldn’t have even been a fair fight if they were trained. Ripley and I would have destroyed him if he tried. I also wasn’t discounting any young supernatural woman who just had their magic awakened and was only two weeks into their first semester at the Academy of the Profane at learning to use it.
Valentine had the upper hand so far. No one would have thought to check Shrieking Woods for him because everyone thought it was too haunted to set foot in. But we had him now. And everyone here had a reason to hate him and the ghosts he brought over with him.
Valentine had better pray to his god that Kaine and his people caught him before we did because I’d seen Reyson and Lilith get creative when they needed to kill. There were entire sagas written about Loki and his lizard brain.
Chapter22
Loki
There was a lot I didn’t miss about the old days. I was very much fond of indoor plumbing, being able to walk into any shop and buy men’s beauty products without making them myself, and air conditioning was glorious. However, Ididmiss putting your squad together to go fuck a bitch up when they had it coming without notifying any authorities who just wanted to arrest someone.
Sleipnir and I could easily handle this before the eclipse started. I would honestly love to see that stupid werewolf’s face when I charged up to that cabin on a massive, inky black steed with eight legs and red eyes, and I wasn’t pretending to be a warlock. Thorunn should have known better than to make any promises of protection when I was involved, even if she taught him that potion.
But this wasn’t the glory days of Viking retribution. I generally chose cunning over my fists. You pretty much didn’t want it directed at you when I chose violence. I still didn’t know what I was going to do to Valentine, but it would be graphic. A blood eagle would offend most modern-day folks, and that would seem like a paper cut compared to what I was going to do.
But I’d given my word to several people I cared about. Lies easily slipped off my tongue when it suited me to pretty much anyone, but never to people I cared about, and if I made a promise, Ialwayskept it. I promised Ravyn I wouldhelpher take her revenge, not charge in, and do it for her. I swore to Minerva I’d do this without killing anything in that garden, and if I went charging in with Sleipnir, it would all get trampled.
Even if mine blew up in my face and I lost so much, I’d never take someone’s revenge from them. I knew it was frowned upon now, and you were just supposed to let the police and courts take care of it for you, but that system wasn’t exactly perfect. My pixie friend inspired me to get a law degree. I could fuck up someone’s day legally just as well as illegally. I’d happily make sure whatever revenge they wanted went better than mine if someone asked me.
