CHAPTER FIFTEEN || LEE #2
Daniel’s ears went scarlet at that. Hunter scowled after her. I disguised a laugh as a cough into my hand.
After breakfast was finished, Reed stood up. “Since we’re all here, we have a few things to discuss.”
With that, he told the pack what we’d learned about the sympathetic manifestations, adding that they were already mostly faded and that everything would go back to normal.
Visible relief rippled around the room. Oliver let out a breath he’d clearly been holding, some of the tension going out of his shoulders.
Reed added, “The second order of business: Sarah has made a breakthrough on research into our monster problem this morning.” He nodded in her direction. “Will you tell us what you’ve discovered?”
Sarah stood up, smoothing her red hair, even though it was already pulled back into a ponytail—a nervous tic I’d noticed over the years—and cleared her throat. “Um. Yeah. Well, you guys know I’m not a fan of public speaking—”
A few of us chuckled at that.
“—so I’ll keep it short and sweet. We’re facing a monster—or, well, I guess it’s two monsters—called the Mara.
Or the Mare. They’re predatory entities from Slavic folklore.
They mostly feed at night, while the victim is sleeping.
” She paused, visibly collecting herself.
“They’re usually considered to be ghostly creatures that sit on the victim’s chest, causing nightmares and sleep paralysis. ”
“What do they feed on?” Harris asked. Though, I suspected that was more for our benefit than for anything else. He and Reed probably already knew everything Sarah was about to tell us.
“Well, they take life force, mostly,” Sarah replied.
“But amnesia is a common symptom in the lore we have. The texts were unclear as to whether they’re actually feeding on memories or if the memory loss is a byproduct of losing so much vitality.
” She paused. “Robert is probably lucky to be alive, especially if two of them were feeding on him at the same time.”
“Very good,” Reed said, beaming at her. “Thank you, Sarah. Now—”
“Uh, there’s more—” Sarah broke off in mid-sentence and blanched, as if realizing she had just interrupted her alpha.
Though Reed didn’t seem upset. Instead, with raised eyebrows, he said, “Go ahead.”
“Right. Sorry,” Sarah said. “The other thing is that these creatures are drawn to magic. They’ll feed on anyone, but they prefer people with magical ability. Even if it’s latent.”
Reed and Harris exchanged a surprised glance. Apparently, Sarah hadn’t told them that part.
Harris recovered first. “This is important information. Thank you for telling us this, Sarah.” He paused and looked in our direction, his gaze settling on Daniel. “We’ll need to ensure that you’re kept out of harm’s way, of course.”
Daniel blushed deeper, and he seemed about to shrink lower in his chair. Then something changed in his expression, and he looked from Hunter to me, then at Harris.
“No,” he said flatly.
Alarm jolted through me, and when I met Hunter’s gaze, I saw he’d had a similar reaction. What was our mate doing?
Reed frowned at Daniel, confused. “No? You don’t want to be protected?”
“Oh, I totally do,” Daniel said calmly. “But we should be smart about this. If it’s attracted to magic, we ought to use me as bait.”
“Are you out of your mind?” Hunter demanded, shooting our mate an angry glare. “You’re not doing that!”
“Seconded,” I said, frowning at Daniel. “That’s likely to get you hurt. Or worse.”
“I held my own before,” Daniel said stubbornly. “I can do this. I’m the only one who can.”
“You don’t have to martyr yourself to prove you belong here!” Hunter hissed. “If not for you, Lee and I wouldn’t have stood a chance!”
“Exactly my point,” Daniel said. “I don’t want anyone in the pack to get hurt. I can lure the Mara out and fight it.”
“I agree with Hunter and Lee,” Harris said, after exchanging another long glance with Reed, who also visibly didn’t like Daniel’s suggestion. “What you’re suggesting is way too dangerous.”
“It wouldn’t work, anyhow,” Tamrand said, speaking for the first time.
The rest of the pack went silent, all of us staring at the fae in our midst. He looked like any human man—except that his blue eyes were far too vivid—and he seemed generally displeased to be here.
Though, he owed the pack and he knew it.
We’d saved Sally, his only friend, from the Algea at his request.
“What do you mean?” Reed asked, when it became clear that Tamrand wasn’t going to continue.
“Most Otherworldly creatures aren’t that much smarter than most animals,” he explained.
“The Algea is a notable exception. But the Mara is both intelligent and opportunistic. Based on what I’ve been told, these creatures have already seen what the warlock is capable of.
They won’t attack him again. Not unless they were absolutely certain he was vulnerable. They prefer easier prey.”
Daniel slumped down in his seat, frowning at the fae. “Oh.”
“How do we kill them?” Hunter asked flatly, looking directly at Sarah.
Sarah hesitated. “That’s where I hit a wall.
The pack records don’t have anything on killing a Mara.
The diary references are vague—they describe the creatures but not how to deal with them.
I couldn’t find a weakness beyond what you already discovered.
” She looked at Daniel. “The light aversion. Any sort of direct light burns them.”
Silence fell. The pack exchanged uneasy glances. None of us liked the idea of having a monster we didn’t know how to kill.
“Tamrand?” Reed prompted. “We invited you here in the hopes that you might be able to shed some light on how we can fight these things.”
The fae nodded. “Iron will kill them. Specifically, blessed iron.”
“Oh,” Sarah said, sounding startled. “Like a wraith?”
Wraiths were a very dangerous and nasty type of ghost. Thankfully, the pack didn’t need to battle ghosts of any sort very often.
That was mostly something human monster hunters concerned themselves with—going town to town and destroying hungry ghosts who were preying on the living.
That and whatever other monsters they encountered along the way.
Tamrand nodded again. “Precisely like a wraith—piercing them through the heart with blessed iron will destroy them completely. They share much in common with certain types of ghosts, except the Mara isn’t bound to any one place.
They travel to their victims. Though, they’ll often avoid most other creatures—even humans—until it is time for them to feed.
” He turned to Sarah and added, “And you were correct, earlier. Robert is very lucky to be alive. The next victim may not be so lucky. When they feed, they become vicious.”
“Have you ever encountered one?” Harris asked, frowning at Tamrand.
“Oh yes,” Tamrand said. “I’ve resided in the Otherworld for most of my life. I’ve encountered many of its native creatures.”
Visible surprise rippled around the room. As far as the pack knew, most of the fae who lived in our world weren’t actually from the Otherworld. Their parents or grandparents were. Or ancestors that went back even further than that.
Something shifted behind Tamrand’s eyes.
A flicker of old pain, maybe, so quickly smoothed away that I might’ve imagined it.
He was quiet for a moment, as if deciding how much to share.
Then he continued with, “Their method of feeding—stripping magic, life force, and memory—is not unknown to those of us who have lived on the other side. Our kind often destroy them on sight. They are predators to us. They are drawn to our magic.”
“So you have a vested interest in making sure these creatures are destroyed,” Reed said meaningfully.
I understood that he was implying that Tamrand wasn’t off the hook for Sally—because this benefited him directly as well.
Tamrand scowled, but nodded. “Yes. I do.”
“Great. How’s our stock of blessed iron?” Reed asked, turning to look at Emma.
“Our armory has plenty,” she said. “Hank kept it stocked and Jeremy maintained it over the years. We’ve got blessed iron in the form of blades, arrowheads, and a few other kinds of handheld weapons.”
From my understanding, genuinely powerful blessed iron was kind of hard to come by.
It didn’t really matter who blessed the iron, technically.
It would work just as well, whether it was done by a Christian priest, a Jewish rabbi, a Buddhist monk, or even a Wiccan high priestess, but the thing that made it rare was the faith of the person doing the blessing.
They had to have a rock-solid belief in the powers they were blessing the iron in the name of, otherwise it wouldn’t work.
“Perfect,” Reed said. “We’ll load up and start hunting the creatures tonight, using the compass Daniel enchanted.”
“Sounds like a plan,” Harris agreed.
“We take them down before they can target anyone else,” Lacey said, giving Reed and Harris a sharp nod. “Sundown tonight.”
Reed nodded back at her. Then he met the gaze of everyone in the pack, one at a time. “Is everyone clear?”
The pack responded with nods and murmurs of assent. Even Tamrand inclined his head.
The meeting broke up. The pack scattered to go about their business.
Tamrand rose to leave, and as he passed me, he paused.
“Protect your warlock,” he said. His blue eyes held mine for a moment. “They can take him quicker than you might imagine.”
* * *
Lacey caught me outside the mess hall.
Hunter and Daniel had gone ahead to the cabin. I’d hung back to help Emma clear the dishes—partly because I was raised with manners, and partly because I could feel Lacey’s gaze on the back of my neck like a laser sight and I knew exactly what was coming. Better she deal with me than with Hunter.
She was leaning against the porch railing, arms crossed, her blond ponytail whipping in the breeze. Her expression was not friendly.
“We need to talk,” she said.
“I had a feeling.”