Chapter 23
Chapter
Twenty-Three
T he night was dark, the forest quiet as they gathered outside the pack house one hour before midnight. With no moon visible in the sky, the stars shone brighter than usual. The weather had taken a cold turn, and an icy gust blew through the trees, making Kade glad he’d grabbed a jacket.
Next to him, Liam shivered, though he was bundled up in a winter coat. Kade resisted the urge to pull him into his arms and warm him up.
Unease settled over him as he flanked Victor, standing before their assembled pack members. Grant and some of his pack were there too. With the four mages, there were nearly two dozen members in their party.
“After we cross through the wards,” Victor said, “we’ll have maybe an hour before Niall’s pack arrives, but assume it’s less than that. Establish a perimeter around the mages and get into the positions we’ve discussed. Any questions?”
They shook their heads. This was just a reminder; they’d been through it before.
Elijah took over. “The likelihood of the spirit affecting you is extremely high. These things leave trails relative to their size, and this one’s could be covering the entire territory. If so, you’ll feel paranoid from the moment you step across the border. Keep that in mind. Remember that you trust your partner, no matter what the spirit is telling you about them.”
They’d been paired with someone they trusted with their life, in the hopes that it would help to remind them they didn’t need to be suspicious of their partner. But given how strong the spirit was on Niall’s territory, it seemed unlikely that would hold out for long.
“Also,” Elijah continued, “the larger spirits hide smaller ones underneath them, so there may be other spirits affecting you as well, depending on what’s nearby. If you see any, whatever you have to do, don’t let them touch you.”
Kade swore a few members of their pack glanced at him before returning their attention to Elijah.
“When we first cross, we’ll quickly capture any spirits in the area so we don’t have to worry about them as we work, but we need to trap the spirit of paranoia as soon as possible. It could take longer than an hour, and once we start, it’ll increase its effects on us. The last two spirits we fought created golems to attack us. I expect this will do the same. Monitor your thoughts and emotions, and focus on which are yours so you don’t let the spirit overwhelm you.”
Through their bond, Liam’s nerves jittered. This wasn’t something he would ever choose to do. He was more comfortable with his books than this kind of potential physical confrontation. Regardless of how his affinity was traditionally used, Liam would never feel at home in the middle of a fight. But he was trying to project the aura that it was fine, he was fine, no one should worry about him. It made Kade long to pull him close for a different reason—to comfort him as well as warm him, though he doubted Liam would appreciate that.
He was also unsure how comforting he could be. It wasn’t like he could say everything would be alright. This spirit was massive, the pack whose land it was on was hostile, and their alpha was insane from its effects. They had a plan, but how could it hold up when so many variables were at play? They didn’t know how the spirit would affect them or what it would do when they tried to capture it, and they didn’t know how much time they had until Niall’s pack showed up or what they would do when they got there. He couldn’t blame anyone for being nervous about that. Hell, he was nervous, and part of his desire to pull Liam close was simply because the one thing keeping him from freaking out about the size of the spirit, about what that spirit might do to them, was Liam’s scent. He wanted to bury his nose in Liam’s neck and inhale deeply to anchor himself, to use it to keep his lungs working, to keep the bands of panic from squeezing his chest.
The fact that a good chunk of their pack was outside the house on a new moon didn’t help. They were at their weakest that night; it made them vulnerable to attack. His instincts screamed at him to herd everyone inside, tuck them in, and protect them. Considering the tight expression on Victor’s face, he was fighting that same urge.
But they needed to do this. The new moon was the whole point of them doing it tonight, after all.
Grant wasn’t faring any better than Victor. He appeared to be restraining himself from physically hauling his pack to safety. After two weeks of eating and sleeping properly, they looked healthy again, no longer gaunt and seconds from passing out. Grant was the imposing figure Kade had always remembered him being—a solid bulwark in the looming chaos.
They finished their final preparations, and the mages called light into their hands, though each was unique. Liam’s was the familiar fire Kade had grown so used to. Elijah’s was a soft glow, while Aran’s was a bioluminescent green. And when Kade glanced over at Miles, he blinked at the radiant light in his hand, a little ball of sunshine. Between the four of them, it was bright enough that Kade hardly required his enhanced senses to see.
Their group headed out, Victor and Elijah leading the way with Grant behind them. Kade and Liam followed, then Rick carrying the chest they’d made for the spirit. Liam had carefully transferred the sigil for paranoia into it earlier that day, checking it multiple times to ensure he hadn’t messed it up. The rest of the packs trailed after them.
They’d barely been hiking for ten minutes when Elijah’s footsteps faltered. He pulled up short, gasping. Victor spun toward him, his senses on high alert, feeling whatever Elijah was.
“What is it?” Liam’s concern burrowed into Kade.
Aran and Miles walked up from where they’d been farther back in the line.
Elijah turned, his eyes wide. “Someone’s trying to break into the shop. There’s pressure against my wards, an unfamiliar magic working on them.”
Kade’s brow furrowed. That couldn’t be a coincidence. Someone breaking into the magic shop on the new moon, when no one was there and they were about to confront Niall’s pack.
“Do you think they’ll get in?” Liam asked. “Your wards are pretty impenetrable.”
“They aren’t giving yet, but they won’t hold out forever, not if this mage knows what they’re doing.” He paced a few steps, running fingers through his hair. When he came to a stop, Victor’s hand rested on the nape of his neck, attempting to comfort Elijah and ease his distress. “Fuck. I should have reinforced the wards. If I’d used Victor’s energy, I could have made them stronger, and it wouldn’t even be a question.”
“No one expected this, Elijah,” Liam said. “It’s not your fault for not reinforcing them.”
Aran and Miles made noises of agreement.
“Whether or not it’s my fault, it doesn’t change anything. There’s still a mage trying to get into my shop.”
Kade grimaced. He understood that all too well. Not being at fault didn’t prevent the consequences of someone’s actions.
“What do you want to do?” Victor asked.
Elijah winced. “As much as I hate to say this, my shop doesn’t matter. It’s just stuff, and Lady can take care of herself. Capturing the spirit on Niall’s land is more important.”
“Are you sure?”
Elijah nodded.
“If we leave now, we might catch them,” Aran said. “And we have to assume they’re involved in this. It might help us figure out what’s happening.”
“Or we miss them and lose our chance to get Pierce to assist us. If they break into my shop, they break into my shop. Even if they steal everything in there, if we can get this spirit off Niall’s land, that’s what we have to do.” He didn’t look or sound happy about it, but he was right.
“What if we split up?” Miles asked.
Elijah shook his head. “Given the spirit’s size, I don’t think I can do this without all three of you. Not in the time we have.”
“What if we send a few pack members instead?” Kade disliked the idea, but the mages needed to be there, as did Victor, Grant, and himself. Their pack members didn’t.
“No,” Elijah said firmly. “I’m not sending any shifter off to face mages without magical backup. Especially on a new moon.”
Kade exhaled, and Victor did the same.
“There’s no good solution here.” Elijah’s voice was tight. “But we’ve got to do this. So let’s go.”
They continued their hike, pausing just inside Victor’s wards, facing the neutral area between their territories.
It was ten minutes to midnight. Pierce should be there soon.
As they waited, Elijah paced, a furrow between his brows. He was agitated, restless like a wolf shifter on a full moon, unable to stand still.
Liam studied him. “Are you going to be able to concentrate?”
“If I’m doing something, I’ll be okay. Right now, all I can do is sense them battering the wards.” His movements were sharp with his growing frustration.
Time stretched out, each second passing with painful slowness. The forest was silent around them, with the usual nocturnal creatures long since scattered in the presence of the wolf shifters.
The only sounds were the crunch of Elijah’s steps and the wind whistling through the bare branches of the trees. It was frigid with the oncoming winter, making their breath fog, and Liam shivered, his coat not protecting him entirely from the cold. For a second time that night, Kade had to resist warming him with his body.
No one spoke as they stood there, shifting their weight from foot to foot. Elijah’s restlessness was seeping into the packs, fueling their desire to move, to do something. The feeling of being powerless to stop this had Kade’s foot tapping against the ground. His wolf—subdued by the new moon—prowled with discontent.
Kade gazed at Niall’s territory. Nothing looked wrong. It appeared as it always had, no different from their own. But if he got closer, the proof of how misguided that impression was would crawl against his skin, leaving him repulsed by its foulness.
He tilted his head up toward the stars that glittered between the branches, searching for patience and finding he had none.
Pierce had been perpetually early when they were in school, while Kade’s relationship with punctuality had been more casual.
He should have been there.
Kade exchanged a glance with Victor and Grant. They’d interacted with Pierce enough to know he wouldn’t be late under any normal circumstances. There were no good reasons for him not to be there.
Elijah grimaced. “They’re getting through.”
“Do we need to go?” Victor asked.
“At this point, we won’t make it. They’ll get through before we get there. It’ll be too late.” His tone was laced with resignation, and he started his pacing again.
It was five past midnight, and there was no sign of Pierce.
Victor leveled a look at Kade. “You know him best. Is he coming?”
“He said he’d be here and isn’t the type to make promises he doesn’t intend to keep, but he’s also affected by the spirit, so can we really predict how he’ll act?”
“Could he be working with whoever’s behind this?” Aran asked. “You can’t tell me it’s a coincidence that they did this tonight, when we’re supposed to be meeting him way the fuck out here.”
Kade had no answer for that. He didn’t want to believe Pierce would be involved, but these spirits made people do things they’d never do of their own volition.
“The mages are working with shifters,” Liam pointed out.
“We were the ones to suggest the time and place,” Elijah said. “And his pack is being affected like ours were. I can’t imagine him endangering them for… What? Power?”
Aran shrugged. “Or the spirit is making him do it.”
Kade hoped that wasn’t the case.
“Alright,” Liam said. “We know we’ve got a group of mages and shifters who are probably behind the spirits that have attacked the pack lands. We know spirits are affecting Niall’s pack and that mages are breaking into Elijah’s shop. We don’t know why they’re doing that or how Niall’s pack is connected, though we can speculate. What’s our most pressing issue?”
There was no hesitation in Elijah’s reply. “Saving Niall’s pack. Which means we wait. If Pierce doesn’t let us through the wards, things get even more complicated. I can’t break through those wards without Niall feeling it and getting everybody out here before we’ve captured the spirit. We need to give this as much of a chance as we—” He cut himself off with a sharp inhale. “Fuck. They’re through.” He pressed his lips together, and Victor’s hand settled on his shoulder and squeezed.
“Can you sense anything about them?” Miles asked.
“It’s an unknown mage. If I had to guess, there’s shifter energy involved. Not many mages are capable of getting through my wards on their own.”
Kade didn’t love what that indicated about the strength of the mages they were up against. He took out his phone and checked the screen. Ten past midnight. “Should I contact him?”
“If he set us up, I’m a no on that,” Aran said.
“Maybe there’s another reason he isn’t here,” Miles suggested.
Kade wasn’t sure the other possible reasons were any more reassuring. Niall might have discovered his plan, or the spirit might have made him too paranoid to trust them.
“We have to risk it,” Elijah said.
“Is there something you can send that won’t cause an issue if it’s intercepted by Niall?” Liam asked.
Kade couldn’t think of anything. “If Niall sees it, I doubt what I write will make a difference. But I’ll keep it casual.”
He typed out a quick, “Hey, man, what’s up?” The reception was nonexistent out there; it’d have to wait until they were somewhere with a signal again.
They waited another hour, everyone growing more restless as they did, but Pierce didn’t show up. Then they hiked back home. Elijah strode with determination, on a mission to get to his shop.
When they reached the house, most of the pack members went inside while Kade, Liam, Victor, Elijah, Grant, and the other mages formed a caravan to head into Lost Creek.
Liam was a ball of worry in Kade’s mind as he drove.
“We’ll figure out who did this,” Kade said.
“Of course we will. But that doesn’t mean I’m not going to worry about it.”
Victor, in the lead car, set a pace that got them to town in far less time than usual. As they pulled up to the empty shop, the door stood ajar, its handle wrenched off.
Elijah was out of Victor’s SUV before it had come to a complete stop, and Victor sprinted after him a second later, shouting, “Elijah! Wait!”
He didn’t pay Victor any mind, though he did pause at the threshold and put up a hand, sensing what lay inside.
Kade got out and hurried up the sidewalk with Liam, everyone else following them.
“I don’t feel any magic,” Elijah said. “Except what they used to break the wards. I think it’s safe.”
He ducked inside, and Kade heard a string of curses. Liam dashed after him, Kade on his heels.
The shop was nothing but destruction. Its normal state of semi-organized eclectic clutter had been marred and vandalized. Shelves were tipped over, their contents spilled on the ground. Broken glass and splintered wood littered the floor, forcing them to pick a careful path through the room.
As Elijah made his way to his office, a few lights flickered on—lamps that had previously resided on shelves and tables, now knocked over but working, while others were smashed beyond repair.
Kade breathed in. “It’s the same mages from Grant’s territory. One corrupt, one not.”
“Yes,” Grant agreed. “And at least four shifters. Maybe the same four. They still have that weird, muted scent.”
Once again, Kade was relieved that Victor’s father wasn’t in the group.
Elijah reached the open door of his office and entered the small room. From what little Kade could see, it was a wreck.
A cold rage simmered in Elijah as he emerged, an icy, dangerous edge to his voice as he spoke. “I know I chose not to come here. Protecting the pack was more important, but fuck, I’m going to kill whoever did this.”
“I’ll help.” Liam’s tone was dead serious. He crouched, extricating a battered book from the debris and brushing it off.
His eyes took on an orange glow, and the pleasant warmth of his magic pulsed in Kade’s chest as he placed a spell on the book that made its pages ruffle and its cover shimmer. When the light around the book faded, he set it on a toppled shelf and stood, his face grim. “What do you think they wanted?”
“My ledger and inventory list are in the office, but given how ruined everything is in here, if they took something, I’m not certain I’ll be able to tell.”
He glanced around, his gaze landing on the door in the back corner of the shop that led to the stairs. “They definitely went upstairs. I never leave that open. Let’s see how bad it is up there.”
The second-floor workroom itself wasn’t trashed. There wasn’t enough in the room for that. But Kade smelled the shifters and mages, and the two storage room doors were thrown open. Inside, they were as destroyed as the shop had been.
Aran stalked straight into the larger one, stepping over boxes and sorting through the mess. “I bet I know what they took. Why they broke in.”
How could he tell?
“What is it?” Liam asked.
“Those flowers. The crate they were in, it isn’t in here anymore.”
Elijah did a quick check and didn’t find anything either. “Why would they go through all this effort for less than a dozen dried flowers?”
Aran shook his head. “I’ve been trying to determine what it is in the evenings, but every identification spell comes up blank, which means it’s something new. The only thing that had any sort of resonance with it was moonflower. So it’s a moonflower hybrid, but I don’t know what it’s crossed with or what it does. Not yet.”
They exited the storage room, and Elijah headed to the third floor.
“I have another layer of wards on my apartment,” he said over his shoulder. “I didn’t feel them touch those.”
The door was closed and locked, and when they let themselves in, everything was as it should be.
Lady sat on the dining room table, her tail thumping with annoyance, her expression saying, ‘About fucking time you got here.’
Elijah walked over and scratched her behind the ears. “Are you okay?”
Kade didn’t understand why he was worried if she’d been in the apartment. Obviously she was okay. They hadn’t been in here.
Liam must have felt his confusion because he explained it to Kade. “Locked doors don’t stop her if she wants to go somewhere.”
He raised an eyebrow, but Liam shrugged. “We have no clue how she does it.”
Lady flexed her paws, her claws coming out. Each was tipped in red. Kade inhaled, getting the faint scent of blood. He’d never seen a cat look quite so pleased with itself before.
“You are the best cat ever,” Elijah told her, and she gave him a flat, unimpressed glare. “Guys, can you?”
He didn’t say what, leaving Kade even more confused, but the mages knew what to do, leaping into a flurry of activity. Victor and Grant seemed equally unsure.
“I’ll get a map.” Miles ran out the door, his footsteps light as he descended the stairs.
“I’ve got the candles.” Aran grabbed a couple off a small table on the other side of the room.
“Liam?” Elijah asked as he headed out of the apartment.
“On it,” Liam called after him. He cleared everything off the table except the cat, then took the piece of chalk Aran handed him.
As he drew a circle on the tabletop, Aran set two candles on opposite sides of it, and Liam lit them with a snap of his fingers.
A few seconds later, Miles came back with a rumpled map and spread it out over the circle. Then Elijah returned, holding a smooth tiger’s eye stone and a knife.
He placed the stone in front of Lady, then used the dull side of the knife to delicately flake the dried blood off her claws and onto the stone. When he was finished, she jumped to the top of the refrigerator and regarded them haughtily before cleaning herself.
Elijah pricked his finger and added a drop of his own blood to the stone. It mixed with the flakes, then somehow sank into the glossy brown-and-gold surface. He laid the stone on the paper, rested his hands against the table, and closed his eyes.
The scent of magic filled the air as Elijah did something to the stone. It started to wiggle, then circle around and around, but after a moment, Elijah grimaced, removing his hands from the table. The stone stopped.
“Not enough blood?” Liam asked.
“No, they aren’t on the map.”
Kade frowned. That map showed hundreds of miles around Lost Creek. Even if they’d left directly after breaking through the wards, they couldn’t have driven outside its bounds.
“How could they have gotten farther than that?” Victor asked.
“They didn’t,” Elijah said. “The spell isn’t locating them because they aren’t traceable.”
“They’re untraceable? How?” Kade asked.
“There are a couple of possibilities, but most likely they’re behind some kind of ward that protects them from notice.”
“So they’re somewhere around here,” Victor said. “But hidden.”
“Exactly.”
“Well, fuck.” Kade didn’t like that at all.
“It’s fine. We have their blood. There’s no time limit on this spell. We can try again. And when they leave whatever protection they’re hiding behind, we’ll locate them.”
“If you leave the map here, Aran and I will try in the evenings,” Miles said.
There was a bright flash through the bond, and Kade glanced at Liam.
“Actually,” Liam said, “hold on. Here. Take the map.”
Elijah picked up the stone and map, and Liam wiped away part of the circle with a towel from the kitchen before writing over it.
“ Oh ,” Elijah said as he watched. “Will that work?”
Liam shrugged. “Only one way to find out.”
“Will what work?” Kade asked, but they weren’t paying any attention to him.
Elijah set the map back down and the stone on top of it. He pressed his hands to the table and the stone began to move, but at a slower pace than before. This was slow, lazy spirals and circles sweeping over the map. When Elijah pulled his hands away, the stone kept moving, slithering along, rasping over the paper.
“Nice.” Elijah was clearly impressed. He then explained what they’d done to the shifters in the room. “He made the spell continuous. Or, well, continuous until it runs out of the magic I fed it, so it should last for a day or so. Basically, it’ll be constantly searching and should eventually lock on to the signature of whoever broke into the shop.”
“We’ll feed it more magic until it does,” Aran said.
“What happens if they leave and then go inside their wards again?” Victor asked.
Liam squinted at the map. “I’m not positive. It might stop over the area they disappeared, waiting for them to leave. In which case, we’ll know where their hideout is.”
Kade pulled out his phone. His message to Pierce had been sent, but remained unread. “If Pierce contacts us in time and we trust him, can we try tomorrow night?”
The four mages exchanged glances.
“It’d be better than waiting another month for the next new moon,” Elijah said. “The bigger issue is whether or not Pierce is compromised, or if Niall suspects he was helping us. But that’s not going to change whether we do it tomorrow or a week from now.”
“If Pierce can’t help us, what do we do?” Victor asked.
“I’ll have to sort out the best method to get through the most clamped-down wards I’ve ever seen around a pack territory, and then we’ll have to do this as fast as we can. It’s not something I’ve looked into, though the ward book does have a few spells that might work. I should also practice how quickly I can do it beforehand. The last thing we want is for it to take me so long that they arrive and are waiting for us.”
Kade hated the idea of delaying longer than they already had—Niall’s pack had been under the influence of the spirit for months—but they couldn’t rush it if they wanted to do it right.
“What would we do about the spirit though?” Liam asked. “If it has hooks in the pack, what good is breaking into their territory if we don’t have someone inside to help us capture it?”
“Either way, we have to try.” Elijah’s expression was grim.
“What do we do until then?” Miles asked.
Elijah sighed. “I don’t like this, but I think we need to keep doing what we’ve been doing. When we get their location, we’ll scout the area and hopefully figure out who we’re up against. But until that happens, let’s finish cleaning up the spirits on Victor’s and Grant’s territory, and I’ll work on plans to get into Niall’s. On the full moon, Miles will reset Grant’s wards as planned.”
Miles’s eyes darted to Grant, then back to Elijah.
“I have two of those white flowers that I’ve been using for testing.” Aran pointed to some of his belongings. “I’ll keep working on it until I find out what the hell they are and what the fuck they can do.”
“I’m still working on destroying the spirits. No luck so far, but we’ll keep experimenting.” Liam’s frustration prickled against Kade’s senses. “And in the meantime, I’ll start cleaning up the shop since there are only so many tests I can do on any given day without depleting myself and Kade.”
“Some of our pack can help get the shop cleaned up,” Victor said. “At the very least, they can sort through the worst of the mess to find what’s salvageable, repair the damaged shelves, and build new ones.”
“My pack can help too,” Grant offered. “They’ll be relieved to have something to do.”
“That would be appreciated,” Elijah said. “I can’t deal with it on top of everything else, but Liam can give you instructions on what to do.”
Liam nodded. “I’ll take care of it.”
With that settled, they headed downstairs and got into their cars. The first hazy tint of dawn stained the horizon.
On the drive home, Liam looked over at Kade. “You don’t think Pierce would set us up?”
“If he was in his right mind, and it was his choice, he would have helped us, absolutely. So either the spirit got to him, or Niall did. Considering Niall’s behavior, I don’t know which is worse.”
“Will he reply?”
Kade had no idea. “We’ll have to wait and find out.”
That was an answer he knew no one would be happy with.