CHAPTER 2
It’s one thing to move so fast that you hyperlapse, another thing entirely to slow yourself down. I pumped the brakes the second I was in the alley and out of human sight, but I still slammed into the witch with so much force that we bounced off the brick wall behind her.
She blinked, looking dazed, and before she recovered, I drove my forearm into her throat and held it there. If she couldn’t breathe, she couldn’t cast.
“Fucking hell, are you trying to out us?” Kevin said from behind me.
“Relax, boss, she moved too fast for humans to see,” another voice called.
Thank the Goddess for that.
The witch I held started struggling. I ground my forearm in a little harder. “I wasn’t about to let her get another spell off.”
Kevin stepped into my line of sight and sent me a dark look, his scent prickly. “You better pray you weren’t caught on a camera.” He lifted his phone to his ear and snapped a command out, ordering whoever was on the other end of the line to hack into the street cams and wipe the footage.
The temptation to crush the witch’s windpipe was getting harder to resist. She’d attacked a pregnant woman. What kind of monster did that?
“I need something to gag her with,” I said. I had to get away before my instincts got the better of me and I did something I’d regret.
A tearing sound rent the air. I glanced sideways and saw one of the guards—a large blond man with soulful brown eyes—ripping the T-shirt he’d been wearing in half. Now he stood in a black tank top that put both his muscles and his battle scars on full display.
“Here,” he said, handing me a wad of fabric.
I shook my head. “You do it.”
My phone was on silent, and it was vibrating nonstop in my purse. Judging from the typhoon of emotions surging through the bond, Michael was flipping out, and not being able to reach me was only making it worse. For both of us.
“No, I’ll do it,” Kevin said, stepping forward. He took the ruined shirt from the guard and shoved the gag into the witch’s mouth.
I let him take over and dug my phone from my handbag. Michael’s name flashed across the screen. I glanced up from it toward his sister. She shuffled into the alley, assisted by another guard. Behind them, the fourth one stood sentry on the sidewalk.
Amy wiped the blood from her nose. It looked like it had stopped bleeding, but the coppery tang in the air was too sharp for me to be sure.
I might have been relieved if not for the way she clutched her belly like she was still in pain.
Bracing myself, I dragged in a deep breath that reeked of fear and agony.
The baby’s pulse echoed Amy’s, thready, fast, like it had been hurt, too.
Rage rolled over me, staining the edges of my vision red.
Good thing I’d let go of the witch. If I’d still been holding her when Amy walked into the alley, I don’t know what I would have done.
Was this the kind of thing Michael hinted at when he said the only reason I didn’t hate witches was because I hadn’t been around them enough to know how monstrous they truly were? Well, I did now.
My protective instincts were screaming at me to kill her for hurting Amy and the baby, and a reckless panic drove the urge on that made me distrust myself.
The memory of holding down that vampire while Michael stabbed it still plagued me with nightmares.
I could only imagine how much worse they’d get if I did the killing myself.
I lifted my phone and hit Answer.
“What’s happening?” Michael asked before I could say hello. His tone was cool and cultured, as it always was. No one in hearing distance would ever know that he was anything but.
“A witch just attacked Amy,” I said. “Kevin is with us. Call him or one of the other enforcers. I have to get off the line.”
I hung up on him. A sharp spike of frustration raced over the bond, and I knew he was pissed. I’d deal with it later. Right now, we needed to save his sister.
I pulled up my contact list and dialed Bonnie—the witch I saved a couple of nights ago. Time to call in that favor she owed me.
I hit the speakerphone button on the first ring. Bonnie picked up on the third.
“Layla?”
“One of your witches just cast a spell on Amy Kolbeck that’s hurting both her and her unborn baby.”
Silence echoed over the line.
“Bonnie,” I ground out.
“What does the witch look like?”
“Curly red hair. Freckles. Average height and weight.”
Bonnie let out a heavy exhale.
I forced my fingers to relax around my phone before I broke it. “You told me you’d warn me if the order went from watching me to attacking.”
“The order hasn’t changed,” she said. “The witch you’re holding, does she have some sort of mark on one of her wrists?”
I turned to face Kevin and was shocked to see the change that had come over the woman he held.
She no longer wore the smug smile I’d fist glimpsed.
Nor was she still dazed. Now, her eyes were wide in her face, like a startled deer.
The weird thing was, she wasn’t staring at the wolves around her, but at my phone.
Good.
I held it aloft and stalked toward her. “Your covenmate, Bonnie, owes me one hell of a favor. I saved her life. And now she’s going to tell me how to undo what you just did.
” My words were for both of the witches’ sakes—a threat to the redhead, and a reminder to Bonnie of where she would be without me.
The witch Kevin held tried to yell something through the gag.
Kevin hauled her arms over her head and pinned her hands against the brick wall with one meaty fist. She tried to knee him in the balls, but he smoothly sidestepped the blow and leaned forward, holding her in place with his body while he checked over her wrists.
Sure enough, a lifted scar marred the skin of her left one. It looked like some sort of rune.
“There’s a mark,” I told Bonnie, describing it to her.
Bonnie sighed. “Her name is Carly. She belongs to a more fanatical faction within the coven.”
I glanced at the witch in question, Carly, who was still trying to talk through her gag and kept shaking her head, over and over again, sending her curls flying.
“Why did she attack Amy?” I asked.
“I have no idea, but trust me, I plan to find out,” Bonnie said. “We don’t want a war with the wolves.”
Kevin’s top lip lifted in a snarl. “Of course not. You’re perfectly content to keep using us as a shield against the bloodsuckers.”
“Not the time, Kev,” I said. Then, to Bonnie, “How do we break the spell?”
“I don’t know.”
Kevin let out a low growl. “What do you mean you don’t know?”
“I mean I can’t tell you how to break it without knowing what spell she cast,” Bonnie said.
Kevin pinned me with a look. “No fucking way am I taking the gag out of her mouth.”
I agreed with that. We couldn’t trust that Carly wouldn’t curse us all.
Amy shuffled over to me, breathing hard. Her nose had started bleeding again. “What if I… tell you… how I feel?” she wheezed into the phone.
It was all I could do to remain still beside her. My ears pounded with the sound of my own pulse. I wanted to rip Carly apart, limb by limb, and bathe the alley in her blood.
“That won’t work,” Bonnie said. “Any number of spells could have the same effect.”
“Then what do we do?” I asked, my voice sliding an entire octave lower as the need to shift took hold.
Bonnie hesitated.
The smell of anger, sharp and hot, filled my nose as Amy leaned closer. “If anything happens… to me or the baby… my mother will kill everyone you love… one by one… and save you for last. She’ll drag it out… for years.”
“You wolves are all fucking psycho,” Bonnie said, sounding more tired than angry or afraid.
I nearly snarled. “Said the witch I had to call because one of your friends attacked a pregnant woman.”
A low sound of disgust came over the line. “She isn’t my friend.”
“Then tell me what we need to do. Or I swear to the Goddess, I will help Mary when she comes after you.”
Bonnie was silent for so long that I didn’t think she would answer. When she finally did, her voice was low and filled with the heavy weight of regret. “The only other way to break a witch’s curse is to kill her. The spell will die when she dies.”
The witch in Kevin’s hold tried to jerk free, but he held her easily.
Seeming to realize the futility of fighting him, she turned her gaze to the street beyond the alley as though looking for help.
She tried to scream around the gag, but Kevin was too fast for her, clamping a big hand over her mouth that cut the sound off.
Tears streamed from her eyes. Even though my blood still sang for vengeance, some small part of me pitied her. It was an awful sight.
I looked away, back to my phone. “Will Amy be okay afterward?”
“I don’t know,” Bonnie said. “I can only tell you that she won’t be hurt any more than she already is.”
Kevin glanced at Amy. “We’ll need to get you to a mystic the second we’re out of here.”
Amy nodded.
I hit the Mute button. “What if Bonnie is lying?”
Kevin turned his gaze to me. “She’s not lying. We’ve known about this for years.”
“About a witch’s spells dying when they do?”
“Yes.”
“Then why make me go through all of this with her?” I asked, gesturing with my phone.
“The witches don’t know we know. And there might have been a way to reverse what damage has already been done that we didn’t know about.”
Thanks to my ignorance, I’d called in my favor for no good reason.
But that was nothing compared to the fact that my fellow wolves had allowed me to waste these precious minutes and put both Amy and the baby at risk, all in search of another leg up on the witches.
Michael would hear about this, and if he didn’t do anything about it, I would.
I sent Kevin a dark look. “I’m turning off mute.” I hit the button when no one protested. “Consider your debt paid,” I told Bonnie.
She hung up on me without saying anything else.
Carly started sobbing. Great, wracking shudders shook her shoulders. Tears and snot ran down her face.
Amy shuffled over to her.