Chapter EightSalvator
Chapter Eight
Salvator
I owned a number of safe houses all over South America that I had selected over the years for their location or just because they appealed to me when I visited the area. This one was the closest I owned to Cusco. I didn’t believe anyone knew where it was, but that assumption had been incorrect because there was a blocker in my car in case someone had bugged Luna’s bag at the hotel.
I had been on the phone with Jethro when Luna screamed for me. One look at her face and I knew she was viewing a vision. They had saved us from discovery in the past, and just saved our lives today.
Someone had previously known about this property and extrapolated that I would go here. That meant there was a spy in my organisation, and that didn’t sit well with me.
My sensitive ears were still ringing after the blast, but I stopped the car about a mile from the property, and pulled the SIM card from my phone. Luna watched me and reluctantly handed me her phone when I held my hand out. I put them both into a Faraday container I kept in the compartment under the seat.
“Does that mean I’m doubly dead?” Luna asked, her face pale and her eyes wide.
“Looks like we both are until I figure out what the fuck is going on,” I snapped, beyond pissed off that I hadn’t been able to keep her safe for any more than two days in that house.
She wiggled her nose. “It was a little bright in there anyway.” She settled back in the seat. “There was no magic involved, I would have felt it.”
“That doesn’t narrow it down,” I pointed out, slamming my car into first and hitting the accelerator.
“Technically, it does,” Luna replied, fumbling in her bag at her feet until she found her sunglasses. “If it was witches, an explosion of elements would have killed us, and lycans would have surrounded us and ripped our throats out, so that leaves humans and their explosives.”
I eyeballed her while driving. “Lycans can set explosives as well.”
“True, but you prefer to look your prey in the eyes,” she replied. “Lycans also prefer to ensure their enemy is dead.”
She was right on both accounts. “So, what do you suggest?” I asked.
“That someone is using humans to do their dirty work.” She turned her head to stare out the window, a soft sigh sounding. “It’s something I have been aware of for a while. Humans or creatures with some magical trait being used by the stronger supernatural creatures with the promise of turning them or helping them increase their powers.”
“Probably Balor,” I muttered, my knuckles whitening with the grip I had on the steering wheel.
She moved in her seat until she faced me. “Have you seen Balor in recent years? Physically, I mean, not rumours or secondary accounts. Have you actually seen him?”
I cast my mind back to the last time I had seen my old master, but it was around two hundred years ago in Lima. Since then, it had always been one of his generals that acted on his behalf.
“No,” I conceded. “It’s been a long time since anyone has actually seen him. My belief is that he is holed up somewhere, hiding where no one can rip his head off.”
“Hmmm.” Luna pouted slightly and chewed the corner of her mouth. “None of our clairvoyants have spoken of him in forever, and he ceased being in my visions a few hundred years ago.”
“Someone is running his organisation,” I replied, finally thinking the situation through differently. We had spent so long in this war with Balor, I never stopped to think who was in charge. I had assumed it was him.
“It’s just a thought,” Luna said. “I haven’t sensed any priestesses dying in recent years, but then I believed it was because they were in hiding. Now I’m not so sure.”
I watched her out of the corner of my eye. This was the woman I had spent hours watching over when she was in the temple, I had spent every moment we would steal away with her, and in that time I had studied her every reaction. There was something she wasn’t telling me.
“What is it?” I asked. “What are you hiding?”
She returned to looking out the window. “Not hiding,” she replied in a soft voice. “Something that I can’t decipher from my vision.”
I had overheard the mother priestess talking about Luna back when we were all slaves to an empire. She had been a powerful witch with the gift of sight. I couldn’t remember a time when her visions weren’t correct—it was the reason I had acted immediately earlier.
I didn’t push her any further, letting her work through her vision to interpret it in her own time.
“Do you have many dire wolves in your pack?” Luna asked about an hour later.
“We have a few hundred. Dire wolves are rare, the mutation that creates us only showing up occasionally, even in families that carries the gene.” I drummed my fingers on the steering wheel. “Balor is still collecting young dire wolves from packs when they first shift and reveal who they are.”
“There are other dire wolves being born from different families,” Luna replied, still looking out the window.
“I thought they were unique to our area of the world,” I said, once again realising I didn’t know as much as I thought, my brow furrowing. “How do you know all this?”
“I walked a long way,” she replied cryptically. “A young vampire was being stalked by a hellspawn about fifteen years ago, so I bound her powers. She would only receive her powers again when she found her fated mate. He was a black wolf.”
“A dire,” I confirmed.
“My understanding is that his family births a dire wolf every generation. When I studied the genealogy of other families, it seems about right.”
I hit the brakes of the car and spun to face Luna. “Did you say hellspawn?” I asked, my mind finally catching up with what she said.
“Yes, there have been more frequent breaches in the wards between the Earth realm and Hell. The hellspawn have been sneaking through for decades.” She blinked, peering at me in confusion. “I used to see them in the lava when Misti was angry.”
“What have I been missing all these years?” I demanded. “You seem to have been off into the world to discover all the secrets that it holds.”
Her mouth curved up into a sad smile. “It’s a lonely place when you travel by yourself, maybe that’s why I spend so much time in libraries.”
“This is fucking crazy,” I muttered, starting to drive again.
“Can I suggest we continue on the tour route?” Luna said, chewing the side of her mouth again. “I feel it’s important somehow, although I don’t know why.” She finally met my eyes and my stomach clenched. My memory of her didn’t do her beauty justice.
“I need to change cars and then we’ll make plans.” I had always been suspicious, never fully allowing the rest of my team to see all aspects of my life. I owned a building in the town below Machu Picchu, and kept a Jeep in it for when I wanted to escape into the mountains, and run wild in my wolf form.
My wolf was going crazy in my head, our thoughts blending together in a burning anger. Three times now our mate had been in danger, one of which when she was sleeping in our bed, and I wanted to kill whoever had tried to hurt her. My claws dug into the steering wheel, and I had to try and breathe deeply to calm myself before I ended up shredding it.
Luna rolled the window down and tilted her head forward so that the air rippled through her hair. “There is a distinct smell of this land that always signifies home,” she said. “Nowhere else has this unique aroma.”
“I’ve travelled over the years, but I’m always drawn back here,” I replied, relaxing back into my seat. “In the early years, the journey wasn’t as convenient as it is today.”
Her laugh rolled over my skin in a familiar caress. It still had a faint husky tone that made her sound breathless. “It took weeks to traverse across the sea in a boat, and by the end, the smell was horrendous.”
“Sick and sweat!” I said, remembering the disgusting aroma.
“And shit,” Luna added, laughing again.
It suited her, transforming her face to remove the seriousness that years had placed there, reminding me of the girl who stole my heart all those years ago.
“Ugh! To think you can fly across the world in a day now in a metal bird.” I shook my head. “They would have called it witchcraft and beheaded people back in our day.”
“They beheaded people just for entertainment back in our day,” Luna teased. “Or threw you into a volcano.”
“Good times.” The problem was they were good times because it was simpler times. “Everything was sorted with a good war instead of all these negotiations that people insisted on nowadays. Throwing the asshole into a volcano was so much easier than talking about our feelings.”
“Not for the person in the volcano,” Luna quipped. “I imagine that was rather uncomfortable.”
I gave her the side-eye. “I would prefer that to talking about emotions and fluffy shit like that.”
“Heaven forbid!” She held her hand to her chest and rolled her eyes. “It would burn you alive to talk about your feelings.”
“You have no idea,” I muttered. No one had seen me when I had been told Luna was dead. I disappeared and collapsed, my arms wrapped around the back of my head as my entire world fell apart. I couldn’t speak, walk, or eat for days as I mourned her loss. Behind closed doors I fell apart and slowly put myself back together again. The man I was today was the best I could achieve.
Luna turned on the radio, changing the station until she found something to hum along to, singing the odd words that she knew, getting louder in the chorus. I smiled and shook my head, hardly able to get my head around the normality of what was happening.
“Come on,” Luna said encouraging. “Everyone knows this song.” She turned the radio up as the lyrics filled the car.
“I don’t sing,” I replied, knowing that I had belted this out in the shower more than once.
She poked me in the side. “Everyone sings even when they’re not very good at it.”
“Are you saying I’m a bad singer?” I asked, my eyebrow rising in question.
“Nope, just that you weren’t very good at chanting before someone was tossed into the volcano.”
“Homicidal maniacs tend not to bring the best out in me,” I defended. “I have a delicate constitution.”
“Uh-huh. Of course you do.” She sat back in her seat to watch me. “Do you still prefer to rip heads off or have you changed your modus operandi?”
My lips twitched. “There’s nothing wrong with ripping the heads off your enemy.”
“It is a little bit gory,” Luna commented.
“Only if you’re the one who catches it.” I shrugged. “Some might consider it romantic.”
“Nothing says I love you like a decapitated head.” Luna laughed again and for the first time in what felt like forever, a weight lifted off my chest. Her presence made it easy to breathe again, to have something other than hatred and anger in my life.
I swung my car into the underground car park of a building I owned, having invested in it when the area had been redeveloped a few years ago. It was one of the few benefits of longevity: being able to own property in various places for many years. All I needed was a good immortal lawyer who changed the ownership every sixty years or so.
“This is different.” Luna followed me from the car into the complex.
There were offices and residential units, of which I used a few while the others were rented out. All of this was connected to a different identity I invented about a hundred years ago that no one else knew about except the legal expert I used.
“I find it easier to own different types of property. Most wolves only want homesteads where they have room to shift in privacy. I have a number of properties like that, but I also have functional places like this.” I strode through the apartment until I reached the office at the rear. I had created a second username for myself on our system when we were upgrading it a few years ago and had new wolves joining the organisation. Luna appeared behind me as I logged in, and I noticed how pale she was after all the drama of today.
“Here.” I led her to the sofa I tended to stretch out on while reading reports. “I need to check what is happening after the explosion. You need to rest.” I felt her forehead to check if she was burning up.
“I’m fine.” Luna waved her hand to tell me to stop fussing. “We are an immortal species, which means the average that kills humans just slows us down. It’s why we survived all those boat journeys so long ago.”
She made a damn good point, but it wouldn’t stop me from worrying about her. The average human would have died in that crash with that head injury.
I used my other account, although it wouldn’t give me the level of clearance my original one would. There were reports from the crash, including the dead girl in the mortuary. Tarrack had matched her very well to Luna and had managed to get the body here in record time. There was nothing about the explosion at my home, which was unusual since it was in our area, and all incidents of a possible terrorist attack would be included on our radar.
I signed into the police system, and the explosion was there, allowing me to read updates in real time. That should have been in our system by now, which meant someone had deliberately kept it out. No one knew that was my house except the person who set the charges.
“What did you see in your vision?” I asked, glancing up at Luna.
She was sitting with her head back and her eyes closed. Somewhere deep inside, I knew she was still alive. It was the reason I had never moved on, could never sustain a relationship. No one enflamed me the way she did, and it caused a physical ache in my chest that we had been deliberately separated by someone’s sabotage.
“Hmmm?” She sat up and opened her eyes. There was still a massive lump on the side of her head, and bruising under her eyes, but she had never looked more beautiful because she was alive and with me.
“Your vision,” I repeated. “Did you see anyone in it?”
Her brow furrowed as she concentrated. “Only a shadow, and then it shifted to when I saw the explosion and knew it was imminent.”
I sat back in my chair to watch her. “What did the shadow look like?”
She held her hand out. “Give me your hand and I’ll show you.” I did as she asked, sitting in the chair beside her. “Close your eyes.”
My vision darkened for a moment before everything shifted and I felt nauseous. The sun shone through the trees, creating shadows that stretched across the lawn. My house looked empty, although I knew Luna and I were inside because my car was parked in the driveway. I concentrated on the moving shadow, trying to ascertain who it belonged to. It was nothing more than a blob until it got closer to the house, and then it became a shape. The distinct shape of a wolf. It transformed against the wall, crouching low so they could use their fingers since our claws tended to do more harm than be dextrous.
Rage pulsed deep in my stomach as I struggled to suppress the urge to lash out at the creature even though what I was viewing was in the past and I wouldn’t be able to reach him. Over the years, I had tried to control the blood rage which was inherent in all dire wolves. We were stronger and faster than the other wolves, and each wolf tended to possess magical traits, as if there were magic users in our ancestry.
My nose twitched as a familiar scent caught my attention, and I tried to identify it. My claws flexed in and out, and my body froze when I identified the odour. It was a flower that I had only ever found in one location in this region, even if I didn’t know its name.
Peru bordered with the Amazon rainforest, and that luscious landscape was a place that was still packed full of a variety of creatures, both magical and mortal. The flower grew not far inside the forest in the shade on the bark of trees. I had been sent there as a soldier to collect young dire wolves and had stopped to study the tiny yellow flowers. I had noticed that the wolves who derived from that pack tended to exude that scent as if it was in their DNA.
The vision faded as the shadow moved away from my house.
How had I not detected them since my wolf was on high alert since Luna was injured?
“You’re blaming yourself,” Luna said, sitting back in the seat to study me. “We are dealing with an organisation that has lasted a thousand years, and evolved in that time to be devious and manipulative.”
It caused a lump to form in my throat because she had always possessed the ability to read me as if I was an open book. No one else had ever been able to detect any of my moods or intentions. She had been my unclaimed mate, and now it felt like the opportunity had passed for me to make her mine forever.
I stared at the wall and contemplated everything that had happened in the past few days, and none of it made a pleasant scenario. “I’m beginning to think that we’ve only scratched the surface of what is happening.”
“There has been an illusion in place for centuries to allow us to only see what they want us to,” Luna replied, shocking the shit out of me.
I moved my gaze to her. “Then what are we supposed to do? Continue to sit in the dark and believe the shit they’re feeding us?” I demanded, suddenly wary of everything.
Luna sighed and curled her feet under her in a gesture I remembered from her youth. “Honestly? I’ve spent years keeping witches off the radar of the people who seek to control our power. We live in communities cloaked by powerful enchantments so that we can’t be found. When we venture out, we wear amulets to prevent anyone from detecting our magic.” She held her pendant up as she spoke. “We don’t want to fight, merely being allowed to exist in this world.”
“There are witches working with us,” I said. “We try to maintain the balance here.”
“This is only one area,” Luna replied with a tired smile. “It’s a big world.”
I had stayed here because it was my home, and wolves were territorial, which meant we tended not to go far. There had been a war with the vampires for years, but Lycan High Command tended to leave us alone because dire wolves were unpredictable and uncontrollable.
A ping from the computer terminal behind me drew me from my thoughts, and I spent the next hour reading through reports and gathering information. When we left here, I would have no access to our systems since Luna and I were technically dead, and it would take them days to sift through the remains of that house.
Luna slept curled up in a ball on the sofa when I had finished, her hair covering part of her face. A part of me wanted to claim her right now without worrying about the consequences, binding her to me in a way that was unbreakable. Yet, a stronger part of me wanted her to need me the way I did her. I craved to see that raw passion in her eyes, her body surrounding and accepting mine as we gave way to our instincts as we had in nature in what felt like a different life ago.
I lifted her hair over her shoulder to stare down at her beautiful face. Youthful passion was a unique experience because nothing else mattered than your sexual desires. Life hadn’t become complicated, and you didn’t have the weight of responsibility on your shoulders. We tried to sneak away as often as possible just to be together. I had been a moth to her flame, needing to feel her heat even if it burned me.
The cameras around the property showed no movement, and the radio I had tuned into our network was ominously quiet. We could keep moving tonight, but both of us had had a rough few days, and I hadn’t slept as I watched over Luna as she drifted in and out of consciousness.
“Fuck it,” I muttered, carefully lifting her off the sofa to carry her and place her on the bed.
Everyone needed sleep to be able to stay alert and function. No wonder that wolf had gotten so close to us without me realising. I paced through the apartment, setting the alarms and retrieving weapons from the safe behind the bookcase.
Tonight, the devil would have to wait to claim my soul, and death would have to take the night off. We could recommence this dance of survival tomorrow.