Chapter 8 Arik
Arik
If the tableau that formed on the gravel drive of the pack house had been the final standoff of an old Western film, then we totally would’ve kicked their asses.
But against Matthew, Ian, and Calder? Even Jared, who wasn’t an alpha and couldn’t shift anymore but made up for it with how he’d grown up play-fighting with Matthew and Ian? Please.
Diaz’s deep bench, two shifter lawyers who smelled like they might be ferrets—and way to lean into the fucking stereotype there—were both standing as far from Calder as possible, seeming to seek protection in Angelo’s tiny shadow.
Clearly they didn’t know what the rest of us did, that Angelo would be more likely to eat them and then go have a cocktail with Ian to wash them down than protect them if things went south.
Jared and Ian had taken up positions at the foot of the porch stairs, left and right.
Calder glanced up at me and Matthew, nodded approval of the way my mate had me close and safe, and put himself a step in front of Jared, doing the same.
Paul, Jennifer, and Matthew’s other councilors fanned out around us as we came out onto the porch and down the steps.
I had to squint against the glare of a high overcast sky.
No snow was falling, but it lay in damp clumps all over the ground. Overall, not an inspiring landscape.
But it made an appropriate setting for our uninspiring visitors.
Roger Diaz sauntered forward flanked by a muscled and flat-eyed track suit clone on one side and his thin, twitchy little shaman on the other.
The shaman’s eyes kept darting back and forth—small wonder he was nervous, if he’d helped Jessica escape and then had the gall to help Diaz find them—and he had a mustache that had to be a crime in multiple jurisdictions.
I didn’t have the best history with other shamans, so I might’ve been biased…
but something about the texture of his magic reaching out to probe mine nauseated me in a way that had nothing to do with my stomach.
Diaz stopped six feet away, close enough that I could smell every molecule of his cheap, cloying cologne. It had an acrid note underlying the sickly sweetness.
An acrid note that had the same skin-crawling, off-putting feeling as the shaman’s magic.
Matthew moved restively at my side. Not much. Subtly. As if something had made him uncomfortable. I looked over at Calder and found him staring, nostrils flared—but not at the shaman. At Ian. I followed his gaze. Ian’s eyes glowed, his hands flexing as if his claws were about to make an appearance.
Of course. Of course these motherfuckers hadn’t shown up to play fair. They might not have intended to deal with us—and that’s when it twigged.
They hadn’t planned to deal with us. But they’d had a plan all along. The shaman had helped Jessica escape. Diaz had come up with his bullshit about her psychotic break. And he’d known she’d run for her family’s ranch.
If he’d showed up in force, intimidating the humans and with his lawyers waving around a bunch of legal threats, he could’ve gotten rid of his inconvenient human wife, taken his werewolf children, and fucked off home looking like the good guy to anyone who didn’t look too closely.
My blood sizzled in my veins, my claws itching at my fingers, and it had absolutely fuck-all to do with the shaman’s magic. Fucking bastards.
And now they’d had to pivot, thinking they could adapt their plan and pull it off with a werewolf pack instead of Jessica’s human family. The lawyers had submitted the complaint in advance. They wouldn’t have done that on the off-chance that we’d spontaneously start trouble.
Because they knew we would. Their new plan had to be using magic to incite us to violence.
When our side started throwing punches and claws to the kidneys in the midst of what they could plausibly claim was a peaceful legal discussion, and Diaz’s pack’s lawyers witnessed it all, not even Angelo’s friendship with Ian would get us out of trouble.
It was too late to pull Matthew aside and explain. Too late to do anything but hope he and the others kept it together long enough for me to counter it. And the shaman’s outreach toward me hadn’t been simple curiosity, but a probe of my defenses. He’d be ready.
I was the best, damn it—I’d eat him for breakfast. But I needed to focus, I needed Matthew to stall them for a few minutes, and reaching that calm center where my magic welled up and waited for my command was incredibly fucking difficult while surrounded by angry alphas. Even my very own angry alphas.
“I’m here for my children and my wife,” Diaz said without preamble.
“If they’re not out here in ten seconds, that’s kidnapping.
We’re obviously not here to start trouble,” he lied, baring his teeth.
Adding fuel to the fire his shaman had already started.
“If you do, you’ll be going away for a long time. ”
“Your wife would’ve died without our assistance,” Matthew practically snarled. “And it’s not kidnapping if they’re here voluntarily. You need better lawyers. Better everything.”
Fuck, fuck, fuck. Matthew didn’t react like that.
He kept his head level when any other alpha would be losing it…
when he hadn’t been spelled. There wouldn’t be a few minutes.
The sensation of something crawling on me increased, the other shaman’s magic expanding.
I let mine flow out to meet it, forcing myself not to flinch at the greasy, gritty sensation of my power rubbing up against his.
I went deep, the real world floating away, everything around me turning into a play projected against a screen with tendrils of energy wrapped around it all like the tentacles of a jellyfish.
The shaman’s magic had a pinkish, mottled tinge, like bloody pus.
And it kept shifting, as if it wasn’t there at all.
Like the magic that had been on the car.
All at once, I knew exactly what to do, because I’d studied those spell bags last night with Nate, the two of us dissecting them both literally and figuratively.
I took a glance upward from where I lurked in the magical underpinnings of mundane reality. Matthew had taken a threatening step forward, Ian at his elbow, and Diaz’s mocking grin grew…
It had to be now. My heart raced, and I took a deep breath, holding it, drawing my power into a central vortex like a whirlpool, ready to shoot out as soon as I released my inward pull.
My opponent’s magic had a unique ability to self-camouflage.
The spell bags had demonstrated that. And right now, his projected power flowed like smoke, opaque and tangible one moment and gone the next, reforming somewhere else.
Aiming at it would be useless. That was what he wanted me to do, baiting me into it, offering obvious ways to attack that I knew instinctively would end in an ambush and disaster, or in spending all my strength to no purpose.
If I tried to shield Matthew and the others from the effects of whatever foul potion he’d doused Diaz with, or block his magic from enhancing them, I’d fail.
And if I attacked him directly—and my gods, that was tempting, to strike at him directly, stop his heart or raise the temperature of his brain five degrees and boil it in his skull like a pot roast—then he’d be dead, but I’d also be giving Diaz what he wanted: an excuse.
No, I’d use their own bullshit against them, and put all my faith in the rest of the pack’s abilities to, well, kick their asses.
I gathered all my magic into a tight, concentrated, seething orb, and I could see him watching me, gloating, so sure I was about to throw it at him in a wave of aggression…
and instead, I released it in a shimmering curtain, malleable and reflective.
I sent it out in front of us, sliding between our group and theirs.
The shaman’s spells quivered faintly, reacting to his confusion—and then shuddered with his shock and dismay.
He regathered more quickly than I’d expected, pouring himself into his spells and strengthening them, trying to break through mine.
But too late. My magic slid into place a split second before his own wave of power smashed into them. For a suspended instant, it hovered in the middle of everyone gathered there—and then flipped, rushing back the way it’d come with irresistible force.
I opened my eyes, gasping, my knees gone wobbly with the loss of so much of my magic at once, especially after the way I’d drained my reserves last night, and my vision refocused barely in time for me to watch the shaman’s reflected spell hit Diaz and his men.
They staggered as if they’d been hit by a physical wave, froze—and launched into sudden motion, a whirlwind of claws and fangs and growling, flinging themselves at us like they’d gone feral.
Which they had, of course, as they’d planned for our side to do.
Everyone exploded into action at once. Diaz flung himself at Matthew, six-inch razor-sharp claws aimed for his neck, and my chest clenched, my own claws coming out—but with a shake of his head as if he’d thrown off the last of the other shaman’s magic, Matthew moved to fend him off with dizzying speed, getting him on the ground with a few loud snaps of breaking bone.
Diaz’s closest goon made a run for Ian, and I almost felt sorry for him as Ian, laughing in a way that nearly frightened me, casually sent him flying off his feet and through the air with one swipe of his arm.
The other two, their desire to live overwhelmed by the amplified power of their shaman’s magic turned on them by mine, went for Calder.
Jared didn’t even bother. He simply took a step to the side and watched as Calder bashed their heads together and dropped them like garbage.