3. Deacon
Chapter three
Deacon
There’s nothing we can do for the driver. Whatever that spell was, it hit him head-on, leaving us the only two living beings on the street.
The only two I can scent , anyway. From the way Vasile’s gaze is tracking the shadows, he can’t see anyone either, and his night vision is far better than mine.
“We need to move,” I say, tugging on his sleeve. He nods, and as I pull him along, he watches the darkness around us. Another spell lights up a wall behind us and I drag him down an alley, round a corner, and out onto another street.
Are we moving closer to Kieran’s flat? We aren’t far away. It won’t be long before Chaya calls, either, though I have no idea how she could help with this.
We duck behind a low wall and Vasile pulls his phone out of his pocket, keeping it low to hide the light as he unlocks it.
“What are you doing?” I hiss. Is the mage nearby? How would I know?
“We need help,” he murmurs, his mouth so close to my ear I can feel the warm puff of his breath. “Let us hope they answer this time.”
He dials and I twist where I’m sitting, glancing over the wall. There’s no one on the street. I could shift, but that would only make things difficult for Vasile, and if I can’t pick up the mage’s scent at all in this form, I don’t know how much more luck I’ll have in the other.
“I thought young people were all on their phones nowadays,” Vasile mutters darkly, and I can’t help the way my mouth twitches. Clearly, Sam or Kieran or whoever Vasile is calling won’t answer.
“Picked a bad evening for it,” I reply. There’s a hint of movement across the road, a twist of shadow, and I duck down as magic rockets through the air, the spell crashing against the wall of the alley we just emerged from.
Vasile hisses through his teeth. A spell bag lands on the floor and some tension leaves my shoulders.
“Come on,” I say and drag him to his feet, pulling him back down the alley again. We’ll be safer if we keep moving.
“I need to—”
“Call,” I say. We run out of the alley, and I turn us left, in the direction of Kieran’s flat. We’re not dealing with a mage of Sam’s calibre, not if they’re using spell bags. It’s still not an ideal situation, for sure, but if we can get to him, then I believe we’ll be safe.
“I can’t—”
“I’ll keep us moving.” I glance back at him, and he nods. “Call.”
We round a corner, keeping low as we hustle down the street. There are plenty of twisting little roads in this part of the city, but without being able to see and sense the mage, they’re as dangerous as they are useful. If they’re waiting down one of them…
“Sam!” Vasile’s exclamation has me letting out a sigh of relief. “We are under attack. A mage. No, I do not believe—”
I tune Vasile out, taking one of those side streets and then securing us in a shadowed corner. He lowers his voice, and I position myself between him and the empty air, watching.
My wolf pushes to the surface. Not a full shift—not even half of one—but enough that I can hear the slightly elevated thump of Vasile’s heart, the rumble of a car I can’t see in the distance. I’ll keep him safe. I have to.
Vasile ends the call and shoves his phone back into his pocket. “They are on their way,” he says. “As long as I have my phone, they can track our location.”
I nod. Should I be embarrassed that we’re being rescued by a bunch of unruly pups? Maybe, but I hardly know any wolves who can deal with magic.
“Should we try to head back to the street?” I ask.
Vasile takes a half step forward, tipping his head to one side. “Yes,” he murmurs. “The closer we can get to them, the better. I would not like them to be caught unawares.”
I doubt they will be. I met a handful of mages before the wars, but Sam ranks up there with the most vicious of them. And that’s just what I saw of him from when Kieran faced off against Hale.
“Right. Let’s go.”
Vasile doesn’t push to get ahead of me as we slip down the narrow street we came down and back out toward the main road. I linger in the shadows, holding my breath.
There’s no sign of the mage. Kieran’s flat is maybe ten minutes away. If luck is on our side…
“Come on,” Vasile says. His voice is barely a whisper, fingers brushing my wrist as he passes. I swallow, hoping the sound somehow covers the stutter of my heart, and follow him.
We walk for a couple of minutes, shoulders hunched, eyes never fixed, and I wonder if we might just make it. I know Kieran’s building is warded. A mage using spell bags certainly shouldn’t be able to get inside. We should—
The air sizzles around me. Vasile spins on his heel, and horror twists his face a second before a spell hits me in the side.
It’s forceful enough to lift me off my feet, sending me crashing onto the pavement. Vasile is beside me in an instant, dragging me up. I groan. Everything hurts. We need to move, but everything hurts.
“Come on. Come on!”
I get my feet under me, and Vasile swears when the mage throws another spell bag in our direction. That one misses, and he drags me forward. By the time we reach the corner, I can move on my own.
We race down that street, into the closest shadows we can find. I lean against a wall, tipping my head back as I pant.
The pain is beginning to ebb. Maybe the spell was just meant to incapacitate us for a moment.
Vasile moves closer. He studies my face, and his hands flex at his sides as though he wants to reach out and touch.
“Are you—”
“I’m fine.” I don’t need him to worry. He shouldn’t have to.
He looks at me as though he doesn’t believe me, and I huff a laugh and smile, surprised when some of the tension leaves his shoulders.
“You are?”
“I swear, I—”
Pain rocks through me and I bend double, digging my fingers into my side. It burns , fire creeping through my veins, and Vasile catches my shoulders when I tip forward, his scent drenched with worry.
“Deacon! Look at me, Deacon.”
I can’t. My eyes are closed, but I’m certain the world is still spinning around me. When my knees buckle, Vasile helps me down to the ground. His touch burns, far too hot, and I know it’s whatever magic is in me, but I hiss through my teeth all the same.
“Sorry,” he murmurs. He looks between me and the end of the street as if somehow now we’ll be able to see the mage who’s been chasing us. “Deacon, it will be okay.”
I curl in on myself when pain wracks me again. I know what this is. The mage must have put wolfsbane in the spell. I’ve experienced it before but never to this degree.
“If they come—” I croak. Vasile flinches like I’m shouting.
“I’m not leaving you,” he says.
I squeeze my eyes shut as my body shakes. Even though I can’t see him, I know his chin will be tilted up, mouth pressed into a firm line.
“Vas—”
“No!”
My front is warm again. Is he leaning closer? Sweat rolls down the side of my face, my spine.
“I won’t. Don’t ask me to.”
He must, though. If I’m to die here, I won’t take him with me.
“They’ll be here soon,” he says.
Who is he reassuring? Me or him?
“We just have to hold out until then.”
I just have to—Everything hurts again. Each breath drags on my lungs, and it’s a moment before I realise I’m breathing too quickly, not really pulling in air at all.
Vasile’s hand lands on the back of my neck and when I flinch, he pulls it back. “Hurts,” I mutter. Can he hear me? His fingertips brush my skin, and this time, there’s heat, but it doesn’t hurt at all.
“Can you look at me?” he asks, worry flooding his voice, his scent. “Deacon, please. Look at me.”
I force my eyes open. The view that greets me is hazy, and Vasile’s eyes are too dark when they meet mine. Fuck. I’m going to die here, aren’t I? After everything…
I thought we’d have more time.
A shout sounds down the street and when Vasile gets to his feet, I reach for him, almost tipping to one side.
“Sam!” he shouts. He’s giving us away. Won’t they…?
Footsteps come closer. Not Sam, but someone I’ve scented before. The female mage. I groan and shut my eyes again. A strange fog is creeping into my brain, and the pain is almost fading away, darkness creeping closer—
“Fuck,” the woman hisses.
Olivia? No. Ophelia.
“They put wolfsbane in this?”
“Is that what it is?” Vasile asks. He’s on one side of me; she’s on the other. Where her hands hover, brushing my shirt aside to view a wound neither Vasile nor I can see, Vasile’s fingers trace down my bicep, his touch dulled by the cotton shielding my skin.
“Yeah, I can—” She swallows audibly.
I try to force my eyes open, but it’s difficult, and I only manage it for a second.
“Yeah. I can fix this.”
A shout, further away. I drift in and out, coming back to myself with a gasp when Vasile’s fingers curl around my arm, holding me where I’m slipping to one side. The burning scent of herbs reaches my nose. I can’t tell what they are right now.
“Hold him,” Ophelia says, and one of Vasile’s arms comes across my chest like an iron bar. His other hand tightens in the back of my shirt as if the fabric will somehow keep me pinned.
She says something else—something I don’t think is in English, though who knows by now—and I feel a sudden pressure. I wince back, prising my eyes open.
I look into Vasile’s face in the second before Ophelia feeds her new spell into my system. It burns , scorching the wolfsbane from my veins, and when I let out a helpless cry, Vasile presses his forehead against my own.
He murmurs something. I don’t know what. I force myself to keep my eyes on his, staring straight ahead until all I can see is the deep, deep blue of them. The path Ophelia’s spell is taking—I can feel it burning the wolfsbane away.
Still, I have no idea how long it lasts. Hours, it feels like, though I’m certain that’s not the case. When it’s done, when all the wolfsbane is gone, every part of me feels battered and bruised. I sink back against the wall, panting, sweat soaking through my shirt.
“It’s gone?” I manage, turning my head to look at Ophelia.
She’s pale, and her eyes are wide when she nods. “Yeah. Sorry, I know—It’s all we have to counter wolfsbane. A couple more minutes and it wouldn’t have worked at all.”
I give her a smile, though I don’t know where I dredge it up from. “You should…” Fuck, it feels like I’ve sprinted for miles. “We have some magic users. Not many. Can you—”
She nods immediately. “Of course.”
Vasile is still holding me, though his grip has loosened, so it’s more of an embrace than him pinning me to the wall. I don’t want to bring attention to it. I don’t want him to let go. He seems to realise, though, and by the time I look at him again, he’s already pulling his arms back.
“You are all right?” he asks. I don’t need to read his expression to tell if he’s worried; I can smell it on him.
He thought I was going to die.
To be fair, so did I.
“Not gonna die today,” I say, and he scowls when I smile. It drops from my face quickly. “Yeah, I—I’m fine.”
“Not fine ,” Ophelia corrects. There’s a warning glint in her eye, and if her skill wasn’t a giveaway, that look shows me why she’s in Sam’s coven. “It’ll be a couple of days before you’re fine .”
I frown, but when I try to sit up, my head spins. A shadow falls over us. Sam. He scowls down at me, but I doubt the expression is due to any ill-will.
“They got away,” he says, voice hard.
Vasile’s growl is quiet enough that I’m not sure the others hear it. “How?”
Sam shrugs. “They were hard to trace, but I’m sure their magic is like Faye’s.”
I look at Vasile, who shakes his head. “Who?”
“The mage I captured before. Look, we should—” Sam looks back down the street. “Can we talk about this somewhere else?”
Where should we go? It’ll take far longer than the forty minutes it took to get here for me to make it all the way back to the pack house. The clan house isn’t really much closer. The bag Chaya gave me, my coat still inside, is long gone, but I shoved my phone into my pocket when I dressed. Now I pull it out, shaking my head at the shattered screen. Chaya is going to be furious when she finds out what happened.
“Your flat is closest,” Vasile says, coming to the same conclusion I have. It’s the safest place for us, but I think we both already knew that.
Sam looks between us, then nods. “Yeah, okay. Can you walk?”
The last question is directed at me, and though my wolf bristles, I do not. Wolfsbane poisoning is dangerous. Ophelia is right. I won’t be fully healed for several days, despite her intervention.
Still, I make it to my feet and take a couple of slow steps. “Yes. I can walk.”
Sam nods again. He knows better—can read pain even where I don’t want it to be read. Is that because of how he was trained, or because of the people he associates with now?
It doesn’t matter.
“Ophelia, take the front,” he says, and she slips in ahead of me. Vasile is only a step behind, and Sam brings up the rear.
I hear Vasile’s soft puff of breath, not really a laugh but something… amused. Fond. There is a similar feeling in my own chest. A mismatched pack they might be, but I think there is not one among the wolves that would have done a better job.
“Let’s get going,” Sam says. “I don’t want that mage thinking they can come back and try again.”