Page 19 of Battle of Witches
And every single boy at that party who was going to play a little loose with the wordnoor a passed-out drunk girl was going to think twice about it.
My work here was done. I had a wolf to catch.
Chapter15
Ravyn
This warehousereeked.It used to process parchment for grimoires until they moved to a better location. It was great for masking your scent from stupid werewolves who had gone to the dark side, but I was going to have to wash my hair twice to get the stink out.
We weren’t alone. Kaine wasn’t fucking around now that Beyla was involved. There were agents everywhere. Kaine saidwecouldn’t kill Valentine, but there was enough wolfsbane here to take out a fully grown wolf. Iwantedto unleash Loki on Valentine, but not until he gave up his new girlfriend. I had feelings about what she did to my familiar, and I intended to get them all over her.
Kaine had broken us all up into teams. I would havethoughthe would have split us up and given us all bureau babysitters, but oh no. Instead, he was going to let us let our misfit freak flag fly all over his bust. Speaking of, Loki appeared with a smirk and a swagger.
“Please tell me you didn’t just ruin that girl’s entire life? She has two years left of high school left, and that’s going to be an eternity if you embarrassed her in front of the cool kids.”
“Who do you think I am, sweetheart?”
“I’m going to ask her later, and if she was embarrassed, you don’t get boobs for two weeks.”
“That’s not fair! Maybe Killian will give me nipples.”
“I’m siding with Ravyn on this one. No nipples if you embarrassed Beyla.”
“If she thinksreallyhard about it, I did her a solid.”
WhateverLoki did at that party, I was getting it straight from Beyla and then deciding on his boob privileges. Bjorn snapped to attention.
“We can talk about access to Ravyn’s magnificent breasts later. I see Rowena and a really fucked up werewolf who thinks he’s being sneaky, but all his wolfy ancestors are screaming in the Aether because a drunken wild pig has more stealth than he does right now.”
Now Ihadto look. Wolves were predators. This should have been instinct.No onehere should have seen him until he was ready to strike. Except there he was trying to hide behind a light post he was entirely too big to hide behind like a cartoon character. So, whatever Loki ended up doing to him probably wasn’t nearly as bad as what Asfrid had already done.
Rowena had her back to him, and even she knew he was there. He made his move, and she whirled around and let out her banshee shriek. The window we were looking out of cracked, and Valentine fell to his knees.
I finally got a better look at him. He looked terrible. Valentine had always been a good-looking man, and he knew it. He used to never let me see him unless he looked immaculate. He looked terrible. Valentine just lookeddirty.In two months, he’d lost weight, and his beard and hair were out of control. He also looked like he hadn’t showered in the two months since I’d last seen him.
Valentine screamed and clapped his hands over his ears. Killian slipped his hand into mine just in case we needed to power share. The other agents started moving closer, but I saw Valentine was getting ready to shift. His gray wolf burst forth straight at Rowena.
I didn’t hesitate. She shrieked again right when I flung a spell at him. One of the wolfbane darts flew over his head as he transformed into a puppy midair and belly flopped on the ground. He let out a disgruntled yelp, then tried to growl at Rowena.
We all spilled out of the warehouse, and everyone had their magic and dart guns waiting. Except they didn’t need to. Valentine was a wolf puppy. He’d be a fat, little baby if he tried to change back. He’d stay that way until the spell wore off, or I decided to be nice and remove it.
I knew several ways of disabling shifters. They started teaching us how to defend ourselves with magic when we were freshmen at the academy. I might not have as many tricks as one of Kaine’s agents, but I had several in my spank bank. Icouldhave just used the range I had power sharing with Killian to knock him out or let that wolfbane dart hit him, but I wanted to embarrass him. Call me petty, but it was what it was.
Everyone ran out to surround puppy Valentine. He tried to shift back and fight, but he just turned into a fat, little infant. When he realized, he tried to roar in anger, but it came out like a baby tantrum. Loki cooed and made kissy noises at him.
“Look at the wee, fat, little baby villain!”
“Who turned my perp into a toddler?” Kaine demanded.
I shrugged innocently.
“You said not to kill him. I made him harmless.”
“Do you know how many levels of fucked I’m going to be by my bosses and the media if I haul a baby into the station in magic-draining handcuffs? They aren’t even going to wait five minutes for me to explain you turned the asshole who robbed to Museum of the Profane, murdered two college students, and raised the leader of the Cult of the Aether Sisters from the dead into a baby.”
Loki had clearly been hanging around Killian and me too long and had been corrupted by our love of musicals. He started twirling his hair and hummingThe Cell Block Tango.Killian started sniggering. Bjorn and Sleipnir had already been initiated into the coven and seen several musicals. So, they knewexactlywhat Loki was humming.
Bless them. They tried, but the longer Kaine gave us dragon stink-eye over baby Valentine while Loki’s humming got louder, the harder it got not to laugh. We finally won something. We got my cheating asshole ex-boyfriend. We fell out laughing. Some of Kaine’s agents hadn’t even had the displeasure of dating the fucker, but they started laughing, too.
