Chapter 28 Claws Out
CLAWS OUT
The forest swallowed us the moment we left the van.
Samuel took point, moving between the trees silently, a predator who’d been born to hunt in the dark.
Barney flanked him to the right, the vampire little more than a shadow sliding through the undergrowth.
I followed with Didi and Mrs. Chen on either side of me.
Gavin brought up the rear, a compact fire extinguisher strapped to his back and his tail curled tight against his legs.
Nobody spoke. The only sounds were our footsteps on the leaf litter and the faint rustle of branches overhead.
The ley lines grew stronger with every step.
Back in the van, the convergence had been a low throb in my bones.
Now it was a veritable flow of power. The currents of magic coursing deep under the ground made my nerve endings tingle like I’d stuck my finger in an electric socket.
My wolf’s fur was standing on end, her lips peeled back on a growl that begged to rip free from my throat.
I could feel the ley lines heading toward a point ahead of us. One that pulsed with a sinister energy.
Didi’s breath hitched beside me. The witch’s hands were clenched at her sides, faint sparks of magic dancing across her fingertips. She could feel it too.
“It’s strong,” Mrs. Chen murmured uneasily. The elderly witch had both hands wrapped around a bundle of dried herbs she’d tied with twine. She was crushing them slowly between her fingers, releasing a sharp scent that mixed with the pine and damp earth around us. “Stronger than I expected.”
Samuel glanced back at us. His eyes were a molten gold now, his wolf close to the surface. He held up a hand a moment later. We stopped.
The house had emerged from the gathering gloom through the trees, fifty yards ahead.
Where the warehouse on Porter and Ninth had been ugly and abandoned, this place looked almost respectable.
A two-story colonial built from dark stone, it had a slate roof and shuttered windows.
Ivy crawled up one side in thick, knotted ropes.
A porch wrapped around the front, its boards warped but intact.
Warm light glowed from two ground-floor windows, casting golden rectangles across an overgrown lawn.
If I didn’t know what was happening inside, I might have thought it charming.
But I knew better.
The corruption radiating from the house was like a stench. I could almost taste it in the back of my throat. Oily, cold, and layered over the ancient ley lines like rot on fruit.
The Thornwick property sat like a spider at the center of the web of dark energy. My wolf pressed against my skin, drawn to the almost palpable power of the convergence. She wanted out badly. I barely held her back.
“The barriers start here,” Barney murmured. The vampire had stopped between two ancient oaks. “Three layers. The outermost is a detection ward. If we trip it, she’ll know we’re here before we reach the lawn.”
Didi was already raising her hands, pale blue magic flickering along her fingers. “I can suppress it long enough for us to pass through. But I’ll need to hold it open, which means I can’t do anything else until we’re past.”
“How long?” Samuel asked.
“Thirty seconds. Maybe forty.”
“Do it.”
Didi closed her eyes and focused. The air between the two oaks shimmered faintly, like heat rising from asphalt. I felt the detection ward shiver, its edges fraying under the witch’s magic.
“Go,” Didi whispered through gritted teeth. “Quickly.”
Samuel moved first, slipping between the oaks in a low crouch. Barney followed. I took Mrs. Chen’s elbow and guided her through, the old witch clutching her herb bundle and muttering something under her breath that made my wolf’s ears twitch.
Gavin came last, his nostrils clamped shut with one hand. I could see the effort it was costing him not to sneeze from Mrs. Chen’s herbs. If his nostrils sparked now, we’d lose any element of surprise we had left.
Didi crossed the space and released her hold on the ward, sweat beading her forehead.
The second layer was like walking through warm syrup.
It thickened the air and clung to my skin as Samuel and I pushed past it with brute force, our wolves lending us strength.
The witches used their magic to cross it.
Barney didn’t seem to notice it at all. Gavin’s horns popped out when he went through.
The third barrier was different.
It hit me like a wall of cold water. My wolf snarled in response.
This was magic saturated with the same corrupt signature we’d sensed at the warehouse and outside the Lincoln sisters’ clinic. White luna power surged instinctively in my veins. I felt the barrier recoil from me like it had been burned and hoped the witch who’d put it up didn’t notice.
Didi caught Mrs. Chen’s arm as the elderly witch staggered through.
“That one was real nasty,” Mrs. Chen grunted. “It has vampire blood in it.”
Barney’s jaw tightened.
The house loomed inside the magic perimeter. I could hear muffled voices from within. My wolf stretched her senses.
I picked up four heartbeats that were fast and erratic, the kind of rhythm that came from fear. Melody and the three Ashgrove witches. A layer of corrupt magic overlaid their vitals.
The fifth heartbeat was slower, steady, and utterly controlled.
Samuel silently indicated the east side of the house, where the cellar entrance Barney had identified lay behind a tangle of dead rhododendrons. We began moving again, keeping to the shadows along the tree line.
Two things lit up on my radar when we were thirty yards from the house. A surge in the convergence. And three more very faint heartbeats.
A cry came from the building before I could react. I smelled Melody’s pain.
The front door crashed open. A shape shot out of the doorway.
It streaked across the porch in a blur of dark fur and leapt the railing in a single fluid motion. For a frozen heartbeat, it was silhouetted against the warm light spilling from the hallway.
It was the black cat with the golden eyes.
My wolf surged beneath my skin with a power that made my breath catch, every instinct I possessed locking onto the animal. Muscles thickened. Nails sharpened into claws. My vision snapped into the razor sharp clarity that came when my luna abilities were fully engaged.
The cat hit the lawn and bolted toward the trees, its sleek form moving with a speed no ordinary animal should possess. It was headed toward a gap between the property boundary and the forest.
“That’s her!” Mrs. Chen hissed.
I had already broken into a dead run, Samuel a second behind me.
Barney dashed past us, the vampire accelerating so fast his body blurred.
The cat veered hard to the left, cutting across the lawn at an angle that took it away from where it would have crossed paths with the vampire and toward a stone wall that bordered the eastern boundary.
It was heading for a narrow crack between two moss-covered stones, one barely wide enough for a rat.
Barney adjusted his trajectory. He was quick, supernaturally, terrifyingly so. But the cat had the advantage of size and agility. It wove between the weeds and tall grass with a fluidity that made it hard to track, its golden eyes catching the ambient light.
Samuel and I closed from the other side, our wolves pouring speed into our human forms, our heartbeats in sync. I clenched my teeth.
Between the three of us, we were narrowing the cat’s escape route.
My stomach lurched when the cat suddenly changed direction, her motion defying physics. She raced for a corridor of shadow between two pines.
It would take her into the forest and away from the convergence point. Away from everything we could use against her.
I threw myself sideways with a burst of luna speed.
My fingers raked the air.
My hand closed around the cat’s tail as I landed hard on the grass.
The animal screeched, the sound cutting through the night like nails scraping across chalkboard. It was a woman’s scream compressed into an animal’s throat and it was raw with fury and shock.
The cat whipped around, claws slashing at my flesh as I pushed to my knees. Pain lanced up my wrist when its nails scored deep lines across my skin. I gritted my teeth, held on grimly as it squirmed and tried to escape, and drew on my white wolf power.
It surged through my veins and into my grip.
The effect was immediate and violent.