Page 20 of Battle of Witches
I managed to rein it in when smoke started coming out of Kaine’s nose.
“Relax, Kaine. I can reverse it so you can perp-walk him in as an adult. He had that coming.”
Kaine blew a massive cloud of smoke out of his nose.
“Thanks to Beyla, I knowwaymore about musicals than I ever intended to know in my entire life. I will shift and eat the next person that hums or sings that song. Change him back, someone magically get him some pants, and get cuffs on him.”
“Can I hit him if he tries to fight when Ravyn changes him back?” Loki said, gleefully clapping his hands. “Don’t look so crabby pants. I’m trying to explore mynever been eaten by a dragonkink.”
“Something tells me you’d give me indigestion and constipate me for a week. Find a different dragon to explore that kink with. Now, step back and let my agents take over.”
We all stepped back. I wouldn’t put it past Loki to want to see what it was like to get eaten by a dragon for shits and giggles, but wefinallyhad a win here, and he wasn’t going to do anything to mess that up.
The agents surrounded Valentine, and I reversed my spell. He ended up flat on his ass, naked on the pavement. Before he could even get up to fight, this massive bear shifter jumped on him, wrenched his arms behind his back, and got the power-dampening handcuffs on him.
Now, Kaine told Loki he couldn’t hit Valentine if he struggled, but he was handcuffed and powerless, and Kaine kicked him right in the stomach with his big-ass boots. I don’t think any of us were mad about it except Valentine, who was hunched over and wheezing.
Kaine crouched down and got right in Valentine’s face.
“I have a particular hatred for people who go after kids or teenagers who haven’t been trained to fight back. You went aftermykid this time. A lot of really powerful people here want you dead. Now, I could, technically, turn away for five minutes and let them loose, but I happen to know how things work in prison. It doesn’t matter who is in there for what and which gang they are loyal to. They will all come together to beat your ass every day for going after three kids who couldn’t fight back, and the other wolves aren’t going to have your back. I hope it was worth it, you fuckwit.”
Even outside of jail, someone would have beaten his ass to death. Supernaturals were always fighting for power and asserting dominance. But you did that with people who had been trained to fight back. Everyone knew that if you were under eighteen and had magic, something terrible happened. Killing two untrained eighteen-year-olds and trying to go after a sixteen-year-old with magic was just a recipe for the entire supernatural community turning on you.
And Valentine didn’t look the least bit worried about it. He just smiled at Kaine. We won. We had him, and he was going to jail. Bjorn had much better luck when he was touching someone. We’d get to Asfrid, too.
So, why was Valentine smiling like this was just a temporary inconvenience?
Chapter16
Killian
We really needed to take five minutes for some proper ass shakeage and a celebratory orgy now that we had a fully formed coven. I didn’t even have five minutes to get all the details about the little threesome with Bjorn and Sleipnir. We didn’t really have time for any of that, though.
We were all at the bureau waiting for Valentine to be processed so we could unleash Bjorn on him. If he had anything on him, he would have lost it when he tore through his clothes, shifting. One of the warlocks magically conjured him some sweatpants. However, I still hoped someone searched up his arse anyway for any contraband because he was one of those assholes that thought cocks should go up the arse if he were doing that to women, but a vocal shit for brains that cocks shouldn’t go anywhere near a man’s arse. I’d done that now, and it was pretty fucking fantastic.
“Valentine has a huge ego, but he knows how this world works. Heknowswhat the supernatural community will do to him because of his choice of victims. He can’t exactly run and hide in prison. Yet, hesmiledat Kaine and didn’t look worried at all,” Ravyn said.
That could mean something big, but it could also just be an indication of what a colossal wank stain he was. He had the attention of an utterly perfect witch and didn’t even attempt to keep her. He was clearly a complete and utter fucking idiot. Loki agreed with me.
“I got to observe Valentine in the wild. He’s the kind of idiot male species who thinks he’s the strongest man in the room wherever he goes. He’d repeatedly walk into pubs with stronger men, hit on their women, and get his ass kicked. Valentine would take a few days of drinking healing potions and return until they banned him.
“Think about it. Kaine Dragovich is a badass. The only reason I have no problem poking him is that I’m truly immortal. His fire can’t burn me, and I’m deathly curious about what would happen if he ate me. Valentine went after his adoptedchildand thought nothing bad would happen to him. This rancid butthole probably thinks he can take on the entire prison and become king there.”
That was accurate. How stupid could you be? I had only just come to Ravyn when Kaine caught this serial killer that had been terrorizing Profane all year. He had just gotten his detective shield, and almost no evidence was left behind. Like, literally nothing that would hold up in court.
Kaine used a circumstantial scrap of nothing to track him down and caught him in the act. He saved a woman’s life and was plastered all over the news for months. He got a promotion, but that wasn’t the first time Kaine made the news. He was pretty notorious for catching criminals with little to go on. Of course, none of us knew he had an amazing young hacker named Balthazar in his back pocket, but what the fuck?
Dragons were just as protective of their whelps as they were of their treasure. Beyla might not be his biological child, but I don’t think that mattered to either of them. I knew Loki probably had something planned, but Kaine’s lizard brain had also been plotting. HewantedValentine dead, but he wanted him to suffer first. The men in prison would do that, and his hands would be clean.
Remind me never to piss off Kaine.
“I don’t know,” Ravyn said. “I get that I was probably always more into Valentine’s job than I was him, but I wouldn’t have overlooked toxic-male bullshit like that. He could be a possessive asshole about other men talking to me, but he didn’t act like he owned the place. He certainly didn’t give me any indication he was the type of man that would openly walk straight up to someone’s girlfriend in a bar and seriously think she would leave with him and hewouldn’tget his ass kicked.Iwould have kicked his ass. Every woman I’m friends with would kick his ass before their boyfriends could because that’s just gross.”
I would have bitten him and let him worry about rabies. Familiars didn’t get that, but supernaturals weren’t immune to it if a regular animal bit them. It would have been beautiful to watch him stress about it. He didn’t evenblinkwhen I shat on him because he was too high on whatever nasty potion Asfrid was brewing now that he brought her back from the dead. And I ate Taco Bell for lunch to prepare for it.
He justhadto steal that one bit of pleasure from me. Arsehole.
“He behaved because he had a good thing with you, even if he was too stupid to realizehowgood and not epically fuck it up. He totallydoesbehave like that when he’s out of the country in remote areas because he thinks no one will find out. Valentine rewrites the stories in those books of his like he had women throwing themselves at him, but you’re right, Ravyn. Half the time, the women beat his ass. He thought he could fuck the lesbian out of a she wolf’s girlfriend while we were in Norway, and she threw him through a window. The pub banned him and sent the bill for the window to the dig.”
