Chapter 6
Augustine tripped on another fucking rock and killed a curse before it escaped his mouth.
He’d been stumbling through the brush, half blind with the darkness closing in.
It was ungodly hot, more fucking hot than it had any right to be in April, and there was no trail.
Just jagged chunks of limestone, thorny bushes, and clumps of trees that looked starved of water.
This place was a barren shithole, and he forced his way through it, not knowing if he was going the right way or if he’d been walking in circles.
He'd heard gunshots fifteen minutes ago. They’d rolled through the hills, a twin burst of sound that came from everywhere, echoing through the scrub, then another pair of shots a few moments later.
He’d tried to aim for the direction he thought the shots had originated.
It took him up another hill, and then, a short time later he heard a howl.
Some deeply buried part of him recognized it wasn’t a coyote.
No, that was something bigger. A threat that resonated through his spine, and he hated the way it made him feel. And then he went toward it.
He ran most days, a standard warm-up before a regimen of weights and sparring. He knew he was in superb shape, and yet this damn hill felt like it would end him.
Diana had shot through it like she had wings. He had expected her to sic the wolves and follow. But he did not expect her to charge up the wooded hillside at the speed of an Olympic sprinter. How the fuck did she do that?
He had been expecting something like this to happen since the moment she jumped from her chair straight onto Sutton’s desk and put a knife to his throat. But he didn’t expect that. She bounded up that fucking hill like she was a metamorphosis Prime, except she did not transform. She just ran.
Nothing in his research said that animal mages gained any kind of enhanced capabilities. Was it just the Harrisons, or was everything he knew about animal mages catastrophically wrong? He needed to solve this damn mystery, the sooner the better.
Augustine pushed his way through the brush, wincing at the thorns catching on his clothes.
A massive tree rose before him, a clump of trunks curving from it like some giant, gnarled version of a monstera plant done in oak.
It jutted from the spine of the hill, ruling over a stretch of clear ground.
He registered a body by its roots and two huge wolves sitting beside it.
They looked at him. He noted the blood staining their mouths.
It should have alarmed him, but there was a bigger threat, and she commanded all of his attention.
She lay sprawled on the curving trunk, twenty-five feet above the ground, a lithe, graceful creature with glowing golden eyes.
Her hair had come loose, and it spilled over her shoulders, framing her face.
She watched him step out from the brush with predatory focus, and when he met her gaze, it sent a shudder through him.
Augustine froze.
She was beautiful and terrifying. More than human.
He’d read myths, part of a well-rounded education, where people ventured into the wilderness and found something there, something so mystical, powerful, and incomprehensible, they made names for it.
Dryads, Huldras, gods. He didn’t know what she was, but she was one of those.
The wolves ignored him and went back to their prey.
He knew he had to say something, do something, but instead he stood, petrified, and stared.
If he moved, he would become prey. His body was certain of it.
His instincts screamed at him, warning that she could leap off that branch and be on him in an instant.
He wouldn’t be able to stop it, and he wasn’t sure he would try.
She stretched, like a great cat, and slipped down the trunk, landing softly on her feet. It was the hottest thing he had ever seen. She walked toward him, and it was liquid sex. He swallowed, aware he’d gone hard.
She stopped three feet from him. He was still afraid to move, not scared for his life but terrified that this would end.
“Adrian Woodward,” she said. Her voice was a low purr.
The words didn’t register. They just bounced off his deluded brain.
“Augustine.”
He liked the way she said his name. He wanted her to say it again. To moan it.
“Augustine! Focus.”
If she touched him, he would haul her up against the tree and fight the wolves if they tried to stop him.
“Prime Montgomery!”
The words finally penetrated the haze in his brain like a cold rush of water. He made his mouth move. “Yes?”
“Adrian Woodward has my cub. He’s going to dissect her tonight. His compound is somewhere in Canyon Lake.”
He pulled his cellphone out, tapped it, and spoke into it on autopilot. “Get me everything on Adrian Woodward.”
He ended the call and stared at her.
“Take your rabbit,” Diana said over her shoulder.
The two wolves ripped a small bloody carcass in half and trotted toward them.
“They were too excited after the hunt,” she told him.
He shook his head, trying to fling away the last vestiges of whatever spell she’d cast on him. “I thought …”
“It’s not good for them to feed on humans. It sets a bad precedent. Follow me. It’s almost dark, and we need to get back to the car.”
He trailed her down the slope, trying desperately to reassert some kind of self-control.
All of his fail-safes, all of the self-imposed conditioning that had carried him through the kind of missions that would have broken him otherwise, she had smashed through all of them.
For a moment, there were no restraints. The failure of his willpower shook him to his core. It was profound.
He had to get a grip. She was a client, this was a case, she was a friend of his House… If he didn’t start thinking with the head that mattered, both of them would be dead, because Adrian Woodward was a Prime.
Woodward.
Unfinished business that came back to haunt him.
The problem with allowing a group of people with unrivaled individual power to police themselves was obvious. Sooner or later, some of them would stop playing by the rules and attempt to consolidate all power into their own hands. The magic elite were no different.
A few years ago, some Houses formed an alliance seeking to upend the social order and usurp the authority of the Texas State Assembly, a body that governed the conduct of magic users in the state.
That alliance became known as the Conspiracy, and its goal had been to restructure the republic into an empire, with a Caesar-like figure at the top and Primes enjoying unlimited privileges.
Rogan, the Baylors, and the Harrisons opposed it, forming their own alliance.
Augustine had been drawn into it. No, he’d thrown himself into it despite valid and logical reservations, because he would not tolerate tyranny.
No matter how lofty the pretend goals or high-sounding the rhetoric, the true face of the Conspiracy was ugly and brutal.
It sought to be a totalitarian regime with Primes at the top, and he fought them with all the savagery he possessed.
He’d been idealistic once, and he thought that part of him had died, until something inside him stood up and refused to be an accessory to the murder of democracy.
Woodward had been a part of the Conspiracy.
The evidence of his involvement was circumstantial but compelling.
Woodward was an animator. He crafted elaborate constructs made of metal, plastic, and wire and infused them with magic, bringing them to life.
Every animator had a signature, and Woodward’s was obvious.
His constructs looked like monstrous animals.
A construct attacked Rogan after he had delivered a vital piece of evidence to the Harris County DA.
It had been guided by a powerful animator who wore a Zeta Sigma Mu ring, exclusive to members of an elite, magic-users-only fraternity.
Woodward ticked all the boxes—he was a Prime animator, he lived in the area, his history had suggested that he wouldn’t hesitate to attack the DA office or another Prime, and he wore the ring.
He had been the Treasurer of the Dartmouth Chapter during his college days.
Augustine had zeroed in on Woodward quickly, but despite MII’s best efforts, he failed to obtain conclusive proof. It ate at him, but at the time he could do nothing about it.
Then, Woodward popped up again, a year later, when Rogan, the Baylors, and the Harrisons united to take down Alexander Sturm, one of the most dangerous members of the Conspiracy, at his fortress-like compound. A compound that had been guarded by constructs.
Augustine hadn’t been there. His role had been different. While they stormed Sturm’s house, he was dismantling Sturm’s allies. But he had watched a recording of that assault.
Augustine’s memory served up the video of a monstrous mechanical horse with crocodile jaws charging at the camera, full speed, like a runaway train lit from within by a magical blue glow.
Its mouth hung open, displaying two-foot-long steel teeth.
A grenade hurtled toward it and exploded against the construct’s chest, ripping a hole in the metal.
Debris went flying. The construct stumbled, and then the jettisoned parts streamed back into it, reforming its body.
Sturm was a weather mage. Augustine had sunk hours and a lot of his resources into trying to tie Woodward to Sturm, and again, he’d failed. He knew Woodward was involved, he felt it with an intuition honed by years of experience. But he couldn't prove it.
Woodward had escaped all consequences of that investigation. He had always been a recluse, but since the Sturm affair, he practically vanished from the public eye. Yet here he was now, attacking the Harrisons.
“Why?” The word came out almost on its own, an extension of his thoughts.