6. Enzo
Chapter 6
Enzo
L ow growls ricochet around me. It takes me several seconds to realize it’s my brother making the sounds. He’s on top of the car, and pools of blood spill from his injuries.
I open my mouth to call out his name, but I’ve also shifted into my wolf body in the wake of the trauma, and a howl of pain emanates from my lips when I try to speak.
“Don’t!” a weak voice rasps. “Don’t move. Neither of you.”
Blinking through the haze of agony, I see Violet crawling through the wreckage, attempting to help. I moan again when I see her beautiful face, bloodied and scratched from the accident. I’m overcome with protectiveness.
“Alphas?” the driver yells out for us from somewhere outside the mangled SUV.
My mind whirls. How did he manage to get out?
Between Violet’s battered body and the driver’s voice, I find my motivation to move.
We have to get out of here, Steele. This car could blow at any minute, I speak to my brother through our telepathic connection.
“Alphas!” the driver hollers again. “Are you in there?”
“Help us!” Violet calls back, her words slightly stronger than before. “We’re trapped.”
I push the glass and rebar off me, kicking the mangled door open with my hind legs. Pain shoots up my spine, but I ignore it, feeling the creak with the effort.
Do you hear me, Steele?
I hear you, my brother responds. I’m coming.
Relief overcomes me, and together, we work to escape, my teeth catching on the edge of Violet’s jeans. She yelps at the suddenness of the motion, but she doesn’t fight as I pull her to safety, my second kick creating a space for us to exit the vehicle, my brother on our trail.
We collapse on the desert floor and morph back into our human forms, panting and sweating, blood seeping into the beige sand beneath us.
“Alphas!” The driver rushes toward us. “Thank all the gods!”
“What the hell happened?” I snap, pulling Violet a safe distance from the smoldering car. Breathing heavily, Steele sidles along the other side of Violet, embracing her trembling body.
“I… I don’t know!” the driver cries, wringing his hands as we stare up at him skeptically.
Something about his demeanor sits oddly with me. He’s avoiding eye contact, staring at his hands. On closer inspection, he doesn’t have a scratch on him. He keeps a safe distance, and I smell the deceit all over him.
Suddenly, I’m on my feet, advancing, my teeth baring. “What happened?”
He backs away, his hands held up, and trips over a rock, falling to the ground.
“Something came onto the road,” he yips. “A turtle?—”
“A fucking turtle?” Steele is at my side now, and we surround him. “You almost killed us over a turtle?”
“He’s a warlock,” Violet wheezes from behind us.
My head whips back toward her, my eyes narrowing. “Come again?”
She stands shakily and approaches, her steps uneven.
“He’s a warlock, and I can smell the dark magic on him.” At first, the driver shakes his head in denial, but Violet meets his eyes defiantly. “You are. Don’t lie.”
He immediately loses his facade, sneering at us, but before we can confront him, he laughs maniacally.
“We’ll get you next time, Alphas,” he drawls. “And you…” He wags a finger at Violet. “Shame on you for betraying your own kind.”
In a plume of black smoke, he vanishes, leaving us dumbfounded and speechless for a moment.
“What the hell was that?” Steele rages, glowering at me. “Where did you get that guy?”
“Me?” I snap. “He’s your hire!”
“Not mine!” he denies. “Jax must have brought him on!”
Violet collapses to the ground, and our bickering is put on hold as we rush to her side with concern.
“Hey,” I growl reluctantly. “Are you all right?”
She tries to smile. “I’m okay.”
“We need to get her back to the estate,” I tell Steele, and he nods.
“And we need to do a full inventory of our staff. Immediately.”
Every step is agony, but I don’t let my brother or Violet see how much damage the accident caused me. My real concerns lie with them. If I’m in this much pain, how bad off are they?
Steele calls for Jax to pick us up, and it feels like he takes forever to find us, but when he finally does show up, he has an expression I’ve seen before. It’s the same look he had when I told him our parents died.
“What the hell happened?”
Steele gives him a quick recap. We pile into his crimson sports car, but as we head back to the estate, Violet weakly makes a suggestion that forces him to pull over.
“Maybe the estate isn’t the best place for you right now.”
Jax looks at her in the rearview mirror, and I signal for him to pull over from the passenger side, immediately understanding her concerns.
“She’s right. There could be more spies there. We shouldn’t go back.”
“Dammit, who hired that guy? Why wasn’t a proper background check done on him? What the hell has been happening to us these past few years?”
“No one hired him. He was planted, and no one thought to check,” Steele seethes.
“How? How can anyone get into Dusty Woods uninvited?” I insist. I look at Violet helplessly, and she purses her lips.
“Dark magic works by a unique set of rules. You may have let one of them in by invitation, and they allowed others,” she offers. “I really don’t know how it happened. But it clearly did, and I’d bet there’s more of them. I doubt he’s working alone.”
“Until we can go through every single staff member, Violet is right. We can’t go back there,” I concede, my heart sinking. I can’t believe things have gotten so out of control under our watch, and we’ve allowed it to happen.
Steele eyes Violet, and she looks away, her cheeks flushing as she waits for another reprimand from him. Instead, his words shock everyone. He hangs his head. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have been so hard on you.”
Startled, my chin jerks up. I don’t think I’ve ever heard Steele apologize to anyone for anything in my life.
“It’s okay,” Violet mumbles through a grimace. “I know why you thought it was me. I would have thought it was me, too. The timing… Although they probably planned it that way, too.”
“She needs a doctor,” Jax says urgently. “You all do.”
“No,” Violet breathes. “I just… We need to get somewhere safe, and I need some of my supplies. I can fix us. Let’s just find a safe house.”
Jax glances at me, and I nod.
“Go to the east end pack house,” I tell him. “There should be some supplies there, too. Whatever she doesn’t have, we can get.”
Jax steers the car back onto the road and heads toward the east end Apex pack house, but I’m not sure we’ll be safe there. As much as I don’t want to press Violet for details when she’s injured, I feel like I don’t have much of a choice at this point.
“You said you smelled dark magic on him,” I tell her. “What does that mean?”
Fear floods her eyes, and she starts to shake her head.
Protectively, Steele jumps in. “Do we have to do this now?”
“Yes!” I interject. “We do. Whatever this is, it’s been happening for years. And now they know we’re onto them. So, unfortunately, we have to do this now.”
Violet exhales. “I don’t know what to tell you. He was clearly a warlock. I don’t know him personally, but I could sense the darkness around him.”
“What does that mean?” Jax wants to know. “I thought that was all a myth, the practice of dark magic.”
Violet grimaces again and holds her side, sinking deeper into the seat, her lovely eyes half-closing.
“Stay with us,” Steele murmurs. “Are you all right?”
“I’ll be fine,” she mutters back. “And I don’t know much about the coven of dark witches and warlocks, guys. For the most part, I thought they were a myth, too. But here we are.”
Silence ensues as we finish the drive to the east end pack house, each of us lost in our own thoughts. Who did this is becoming more apparent, but why they did this still doesn’t make sense.
What does this dark coven want with us? And how are we going to get them off our backs?