Chapter TwelveSalvator
Chapter Twelve
Salvator
It had taken several days for the magic in the amulet to finally break through whatever the fuck I had been whammied with. For the first time in forever, it felt like the world was back in focus. I hadn’t realised how disconnected I’d felt until I was me again.
We were currently staying in a property I owned close to Lake Titicaca. Legend reported this to be the birthplace of the Incas, and I wasn’t quite old enough to know the answer to that, but they did love high altitude places to build their temples.
There were new phones in storage here which allowed Luna and I to access emails and the internet. She had reached out to her friend Maia who was currently putting together a strategic unit to determine what was happening. Considering that I had been compromised, I didn’t know who to trust in my organisation right now. What troubled me even more was I didn’t know which of my properties had been identified when I had been bewitched.
I remembered Luna when she was a priestess dressed in robes and carrying out duties for the temple. She tended to be shy and quiet around others, but filled with passion and charisma when we were together. The Luna of today gravitated to the kitchen, incorporating magic into every element of her life, including cooking.
I sat in a chair beside the window, watching her discreetly. A spoon stirred a pot all by itself as she chopped vegetables close to the sink. She snapped her fingers and the spoon rose out of the pot and settled on the counter beside the cooker. She moved to the cupboard to collect spices, and the knife continued to chop. Magic was no longer a part of her, but an extension of her that reached out into the everyday world.
“You’re staring,” she accused without turning to look at me.
“I was just wondering if the broom was going to start brushing the floor,” I teased.
She moved so I was in her eyeline and winked. A broom adjacent to the kitchen door began to sweep the floor in time with the knife chopping.
“Show-off,” I grumbled.
“There’s little point in being able to perform magic and then taking the trash out yourself,” she replied.
This was a version of Luna that I never knew existed. A carefree homemaker who sang in the shower and managed to find me every night in her sleep no matter where she started in the bed. I had convinced her to sleep in my bed so that we were together in case we were attacked. She had created witch balls from bits and pieces she had found in nature on our journey. They hung around the outside of my house as a magical security system.
Normally magic felt like sandpaper scratching over my skin, and I tried to avoid direct contact with the witches in our organisation, but Luna’s magic was like a gentle caress that eased my emotions.
“Why did magic irritate me before your amulet?” I asked,
Luna’s eyes widened briefly. “In what way?”
“It felt abrasive,” I replied. “I used to think it was psychological because my wolf missed you. In the end, I avoided situations involved magic or witches.”
She leaned her ass against the counter. “It’s possible that whoever created the enchantment put a safeguard in it for you to avoid those who could detect and remove it.”
I nodded slowly. “That would make sense. Who do you think would have done this?”
Luna wiggled her nose and sucked in a deep breath. “It was a powerful enchantment that has been with you a long time. The person would have to have spent time with you to create it, and then they would have needed to have been close to you to integrate it into your aura.”
That information stunned me since Luna had basically told me it had to be someone reasonably close to me in my organisation.
“I’ve avoided immortals outside the circle of my organisation for centuries,” I said slowly, horror washing over me. “Those are people who are vetted and trusted.”
Luna merely stood and stared at me silently for several moments. “I created a safe haven for witches and other magical creatures that spans the globe. Do you know how many people can get in touch with me directly?” She paused for a moment. “One. Maia is the only one with my personal number. Everyone else goes through email to a secure address or they contact Maia.”
Shit. I thought I was strict on my privacy. “Your life sounds very lonely,” I replied softly.
Her cheeks flushed and she glanced away. “I made a choice that I don’t regret.” She shrugged. “You can’t get hurt when the only person in your life is yourself. I have a pussy cat if it makes you feel any better.” She tried to smile, but it never reached her eyes.
I had no idea what to say to that because it was the most heartbreaking sentiment I had heard, equalling the moment I had to walk away from her and leave her in someone else’s care with all I possessed in the world to pay her fare.
“You know I found the merchant and his people,” I said randomly and then almost bit my tongue off. “I had managed to escape the fighting, and tried to follow you. He said you had waited as long as you could, but his family had been in danger. Then I went to our village, and discovered it had been destroyed by Balor’s loyal guards since priestesses and dire wolves had both been born in it.”
I sat back in my chair and stared out the window, blowing out a breath to try and clear my memories from the past.
“I visited where our village had been as well to try and warn our people of the war. It was as if it had never been there,” Luna said, moving across the kitchen to come to a stop in front of me. “I never discovered what happened to them.”
I shook my head, the ghosts of the past coming back to haunt me. “I wasn’t in his guard long, but some of the older wolves told stories of him targeting villages who had high rates of dire wolf births, others where magical abilities were prevalent. Our village had both.”
“Mother used to say we were magical because we were born on sacred land,” Luna replied. “She said it was somewhere blessed by the great goddess.”
I had believed dire wolves and witches were born through lineages. It had never occurred to me that where someone was conceived or born would play a part in their magical makeup.
“If I was sitting in my office, I would send someone to take a look at the area, but since that isn’t an option, we’ll need to take a look at what is special about that site.” I trailed my fingers through my hair.
I nearly jumped when Luna’s fingers combed my hair to put it back into place. “You’re going to go bald if you don’t stop that,” she admonished. “Maybe I should start brewing you camomile tea instead of coffee.”
I released a low growl at the thought of drinking weed soup.
“It might calm you down,” she continued. “And stop you plotting violence and death.”
I sighed and relaxed since she was still touching me. In her sleep she wrapped herself around me and whispered my name. While conscious, she tended to put distance between us.
“Violence and death will keep us alive,” I replied. “Someone is stalking us, and their preferred end solution is for us to be dead.”
Her fingers traced down the side of my face. “You see danger in the shadows and monsters in the darkness.”
I grabbed her fingers, bringing them to my lips. Her pupils dilated when I kissed them. “There are monsters in the darkness, I’m proof of that, Luna. Those monsters created the shadows and steal souls.”
She shivered at my words but I never once removed my gaze from hers. Now that she had found her way back into my life, I had no intention of losing her, and that included to the boogieman from our past.
“Come on.” I stood up, keeping her hand in mine. “We promised to go on a tour of the lake today.”
It was selfish of me, but when she was sightseeing, Luna stayed close to me and didn’t object to signs of affection.
“Lunch first,” she objected. “I slaved over a hot cooker for you.”
My gaze snapped to the aforementioned cooker, and noticed the vegetables that she had been chopping had found their way into the pot, the spoon stirring it again. That was another difference to the old Luna. She couldn’t cook, while this version created food that left me salivating. My heart wanted to go out for the day, but my stomach was in control right now and he was demanding a huge bowl of whatever that spiced stew was. He might even be tempted into a second portion.
“Fine,” I said with a pout. “Since you enchanted the kitchen utensils into cooking for us, it would be rude to ignore their hard work and devotion to our lunch.”
“Hey!” Luna protested, pushing me playfully, a smile lighting up her face.
We never had this before in our relationship, and it felt so different in a good way, as if there was more to Salvator and Luna than explosive sex and passion in the moonlight. I set the table as she put food on plates, the two of us working comfortably together, moving around each other as if we had lived together for years. A realisation hit me as I poured drinks: this was the first normality I had experienced in forever, a sense of being in a family and relaxed around someone because they made you safe to be yourself.
After lunch, we set out to explore the local area. Any time we were out and about, Luna took the opportunity to collect samples from nature that she used in spells. She had limited materials with her, and this allowed her to replenish her supplies with items from the country where she learned magic. I had gotten used to the scent of herbs and spices being mixed in my home, Luna changing the energy where I lived.
We were about an hour away from the house when I noticed a car in my rearview mirror. I didn’t say anything, but kept an eye on the situation, even changing my route to determine if it was following me.
“Are you going to tell me what’s wrong?” Luna asked, moving in her seat to watch me.
I glanced at her briefly. “What makes you think anything’s wrong?” I queried, shooting another look in the rearview mirror.
She sat up straighter and held her hand out to start counting. “One, your body language is tense. Two, you keep looking in the mirror. Three, the spell I put in this car activated about twenty minutes ago to alert me to the fact that someone is following us.” She pointed to a little dancing cat she had put on the front dashboard a few days ago. Instead of moving side to side, it seemed to be rotating in a circular motion.
“You could have told me you had a spell that had activated,” I muttered, giving her the full power of one of my grumpy glares.
“There are spells all around the house and in some of the rooms. I thought you realised the significance of the little cat.” She touched the top of it with her fingertip and it stopped dancing.
“Do you know who is following us?” I queried.
Luna rubbed her hands together and muttered in a language I hadn’t heard for a very long time. It sent shivers rippling down my spine and the vibrations of magic filled the car. A mist formed like a screen on the front dashboard, clearing to reveal the man who had blown up my house and who had been following us a few days ago.
“How the fuck does he keep finding us?” I demanded.
“A powerful witch could create a locator spell by using an item that belongs to you,” Luna replied. “It’s why no one knows where I live, and I travel lightly.”
“I don’t know whether to be terrified or impressed at the level of security in your life,” I admitted.
“A deranged psychopath was hunting my kind to absorb our powers,” Luna said, her voice low. “Mother priestess told me to run and hide, and to trust my instinct. That is what I’ve done to ensure I survived, and Balor never got the chance to access our collective power.”
I felt her sadness through the bond that strengthened between us every day, and I wanted to destroy everything Balor and his organisation stood for. Whatever had happened to me had taken that killer instinct from me, leaving me merely protecting my borders from incursion, but not actively taking the fight to him. Whoever had been responsible for the spell on me had been subtle to ensure no one would see their true ambition—to allow Balor to expand his empire away from my borders.
“I’m going to try and lead him somewhere isolated,” I said, returning my attention to the asshole currently following us.
“Do you think he has alerted anyone else about our location?” Luna asked, her head dipping to study him in her wing mirror.
“If it was me, I would want to make sure I had the correct target before calling in backup. He was at the house alone, and I didn’t detect anyone with him at Machu Picchu.”
She wiggled her nose again, which meant she was thinking the situation through. “I can try to create an illusion for him to follow to allow us to escape.”
“Or you could create an illusion to allow us to get behind him and surprise him,” I countered, the need to end this chase pulsing through me.
Luna chewed the corner of her mouth. “I will kill to defend myself, but I don’t deliberately seek to harm others. It is not the wiccan way.”
“Luna.” I sighed and moved my attention from the road to look at her. “This man tried to blow us up only your vision saved us, he followed us into the mountains, and is now currently behind us in his car. I think we can agree that he intends us harm, and we should at least speak to him to see who he is working for and why they are trying to kill us.”
“Capturing him to ask him questions would be okay,” she replied slowly, nodding her head.
I didn’t reply because the only way this scenario would end involved an immense amount of pain and that asshole dead at the bottom of a slope with a broken neck.
She took out her phone and began to type, probably to get Maia’s help to anchor whatever spell she was about to perform. It was the reason why witches worked in covens—at least one to perform the spell, and another witch to ground it to ensure success. She then proceeded to rummage through her bag until she retrieved a smaller silk bag that contained her magical items.
“I’m going to distort reality, so he believes that we are still travelling down this road, but you can pull over and fall into place behind him,” Luna said, bringing out the wax candle I had seen her use to draw symbols. Anyone else drawing on the interior of one of my cars would have faced the full force of my wrath, but Luna possessed the ability to calm the savage beast inside me.
Luna used the window beside her as a canvas for her to draw on, and the hairs on my arm rose as magic manifested inside the car. She chanted lowly, the symbols illuminating one after the other until they glowed on the window.
“You can pull over,” Luna informed me, and I manoeuvred my car to the side of the road, watching as the other vehicle got closer and closer. I fully appreciated and acknowledged the power of magic, but I expected him to park behind me and start a fight.
Instead, he drove past us as if we were invisible.
My gaze met Luna’s for a moment, and I started my car again.
“You can’t just kill him outright,” Luna said, and my lips twitched because it was as if she had looked inside my head.
“We can interrogate him first,” I promised.
“We can question him,” Luna insisted. “And determine if he is a threat or an asset.”
I glanced at her in disbelief. “He tried to kill us, I’m voting for threat.”
Luna pouted for a moment, folding her arms across her ample chest. “People can be bewitched. It does not make them our enemy.”
Her words reverberated through me and I realised I could have been considered a threat because someone had whammied me with a spell. My back molars ground together, and I silently swore an oath to find whoever had been involved and send them to see if there truly was a Heaven and Hell.
“Can you get us closer?” Luna asked. “I think I can affect his engine.”
I didn’t even try to question her because she was showing me that I had misunderstood the scope of magic. The witches in my organisation made potions and created spells for specific reasons. Luna used it as an extension of herself and to manipulate the world around her as naturally as she made a pot of tea.
I accelerated until we were directly behind the car. A few moments later, I noticed smoke radiating from the engine area.
“What are you doing?” I queried.
“The element of fire controls heat, so I can use it to increase the temperature of the car engine until it overheats,” Luna replied. “It makes it looks like an accident and magic isn’t detected.”
“Do you often hide your magic behind a natural phenomenon?” I asked.
Luna shrugged and the car in front of us began to swerve violently, flames emerging from under the bonnet, the car skidding and veering in to the side of the road. “Heart attacks are considered a normal cause of death. It is easy to remove the air from someone’s lungs until nature takes her course.”
My eyebrows flew up at her admission. Some of the witches we dealt with used elaborate ways to track and kill someone, but they had never made it sound as easy as Luna had. It made me wonder what my little mate had learnt over her years of roaming the world alone.
I parked behind the car, watching as one person emerged, shouting and waving his arms.
“He does realise that won’t help, doesn’t he?” Luna asked. “Technically that would fan the flames.”
I shot her an amused look, and slowly exited the car.
The driver of the other vehicle turned to face me, his eyes widening in recognition, his body contorting into an attack pose.
Luna emerged from the other side of our vehicle, static energy radiating from her in intoxicating waves. The wolf took a step toward her and a growl rumbled from my chest.
“Sit!” Luna snapped her fingers and pointed to the ground.
The wolf blinked once, clearly trying to defy her command, but even I could feel her power and it was a heady mix that would make the sober drunk. He slowly fell to his knees.
“Salvator has a few questions for you, and I want you to answer them truthfully,” she continued, moving toward him with her wax pencil in her hand. She drew a symbol on his forehead, and I braced myself for him trying to attack her, but his arms remained at his sides as if he was being restrained.
His eyes were huge and pleading when he moved his attention to me. I swallowed, unsure what to say since I had never witnessed anything like this before.
I propped my ass on the front of my car and watched the wolf, trying to ascertain if I knew him or if our paths had crossed in the past.
“Why are you following us?” I asked, there seemed to be little point in asking if he was involved with blowing up my house considering I had witnessed him there in Luna’s vision.
He pulled his arms, but they wouldn’t budge. I glanced at Luna enquiringly.
She shrugged. “I do not appreciate people hitting, biting, or spitting. It is easier to immobilise them, and much more civilised.”
I had never considered interrogation to be civilised before, but there was a first time for everything.
“I won’t ask again,” I said to the man kneeling on the ground. “It would be best for you to cooperate.”
“Fuck off!” he snapped.
“There is no need to be rude,” Luna admonished him. “Technically, your behaviour toward us has been ghastly. First you tried to blow us up, then you followed us into the mountains, and now, here you are again joining an outing you weren’t invited to.”
She made it sound as if he had been an inconvenience that needed to be scolded. This was an adult dire wolf with murderous tendencies and a nasty attitude by the way he was staring at us. He blinked once, turning his attention to me as if to seek guidance on how to handle Luna. I had no fucking clue, as I was beginning to see that I had only ever known one aspect of her.
My mate was a complex beast that made my pulse jump with excitement. The more I got to know her, the more I craved her. I didn’t just want to mate with her, I wanted to consume her with an intensity that made every muscle in my body twitch.
I folded my arms across my chest and stared at the wolf, raising one eyebrow because I wasn’t accustomed to having to repeat myself. The seconds ticked by, and all his silence did was increase my temper.
Then Luna did something that shocked me to the core. She crouched in front of the wolf and stared him straight in the eye. The air shimmered around the two of them and I saw a faint glow that extended about a foot around his body. Luna used her right index finger that she tended to wear a ring with a quartz point on to write in his aura. It never occurred to me until this moment that the ring was the equivalent of a crystal wand for Luna to use in spellcasting.
As a wolf, I had always sensed intent and auras around people, but had never seen one before. I watched in fascination as Luna muttered in an ancient language and the facial expressions changed on the man. This was magic as I had never seen this before, a raw power of nature that thrummed at the fingertips of a woman with devastating abilities.
Luna sat back to study the man. He looked confused, blinking and screwing his face up as if trying to bring everything into focus.
“He was spellbound,” Luna said moving to beside me. “Someone is using an ancient magic that was removed from grimoires centuries ago. I’ve seen it in some of the ancient grimoires that I collect for my personal library.”
I sighed, closing my eyes for a moment. “This is a bigger problem than I thought,” I replied. “How the hell do I know who I can trust?”
She shrugged one shoulder. “My suggestion would be to target the people you need the most and remove the spell which binds them under the control of whoever is doing this. Once it is removed, it should be impossible for them to be targeted again.”
“I need Tarrack since he can access every system in our organisation and has back doors into every single programme. Jethro has been with me from as far back as our days serving together in the empire.” I paused for a moment. “Paulo is an excellent tracker, and we’re going to need that going forward.”
Luna nodded slowly. “If we’re going to do this, then we’ll need a base that you have no connection to as I don’t know when you were spellbound and how closely they were watching you during that time.”
I hated feeling this vulnerable when I should be the one in charge of this situation. “I imagine they know about my alternative bank accounts.”
“It’s possible they didn’t want to make what they were doing obvious, and used influence only,” Luna said. “This guy would be considered more under their control. I doubt he’ll remember a lot when he fully comes around from the enchantment, while you still retain your memories.”
“Many of them feel hazy, or as if I was watching it from a distance,” I admitted. “I’ve been trying to work out when this happened, and honestly, I haven’t felt like myself for a very long time.”
“This war changed two hundred years ago and became something more devious and sinister, the deaths of witches becoming targeted as particular bloodlines were selected,” Luna replied. “It almost feels as if another player entered the arena and began to influence those in power.”
“Meaning?” I queried.
“Balor was deliberate,” Luna replied. “He is a soul eater who wanted ultimate power through the consumption of different gifts. Unless he has had a personality change, there is someone else on his side who is more interested in controlling players on their chessboard.”
The wolf in front of me groaned, holding his head in hands. “What the fuck happened? Where the hell am I?” He looked up at us. “Who the fuck are you two?”
My gaze met Luna’s and murderous rage burned deep in my stomach at the thought of a cloaked enemy out there who had been turning the wolves into their own personal puppets. Now that we were once again freeing ourselves from tyranny, those who sought to oppress us would feel the force of our wrath.