25. Poe #2
“It’s…fuck, it’s west.” I sensed the general direction of Lycan’s alarm, but because the bond was only one-sided, I couldn’t pinpoint it exactly.
If Ava had been the one taken, I would have been able to track her all the way around the fucking world.
But like this? Incomplete and barely formed?
It would be like trying to find a specific speck of sand in a desert. “Ren?”
She closed her eyes and shook her head. “Northwest. The twin bond is strained, but I can feel him in that direction.”
“Northwest,” Guin said, launching into full planning mode. “What do we know that’s out that way?”
The others talked behind me while I grimaced and tried to get my shit together.
“We’re coming,” I attempted to tell him. “Hang in there. We’re coming.”
I had no idea if it worked. No response came from his side, only the anguish of whatever they were putting him through.
“If Evelyn’s trying to complete whatever Marx started,” Bridge said, “she’d be holed up some place private. Something with ley lines or ancient magic. Something tied to her specifically.”
“The old magic runs deep here,” Serpent said. “That could be a million places.”
“I called Smiler on our way back,” Mick said. “He’ll get a cleanup crew out there. It’ll be a gas main before the evening news.”
“Thanks, Mick,” Orion said.
“Why would she take them?” Ava cut in. “She was after me. She was only supposed to be interested in me.”
“It’s a trap, obviously,” Aquila said. “She’s trying to lure you out, get us on her turf.”
“Mill?” Orion barked.
“Hold, please,” he said, eyes flicking over his laptop screen. “Just tapping into the police security cameras with the bypass Mick gave me, trying to track her.”
“We still don’t know what we’re walking into,” Ren said. “We can’t go in blind.”
“We have the mechanics,” Leander added. “We know what kind of curse Marx was working on Maeve before she killed him. Assuming Evelyn is doing the same thing—”
“That’s a big assumption,” I added, crossing my arms.
“You’ve got a better idea?” Leander asked. “Let’s hear it.”
My wolf bristled at the condescension in his tone.
“If some stupid vampire could steal a shifter’s magic, why haven’t we heard of anything like it before?” I matched his arrogance with my own, perhaps fueled by Lycan’s agony and Ava’s panic. “You think Marx was the first piece of shit in history to have a grudge with a pack of shifters?”
“I didn’t realize you were the pinnacle of knowledge when it came to magic,” Leander growled. “By all means, educate the rest of us.”
I’d just been about to lay into him when Guin interrupted me.
“Marx is dead now, so why does it matter?” she said. “Evelyn’s got no reason—”
“I have a theory,” Bridge said, drawing my attention away from the shithead warrior to the group. “It’s wild…but hear me out.”
“Go on,” Orion said.
“Let’s lay out the facts. Ignore any assumptions.
” She cast a sideways glance at Leander.
“We know the spell specifically targeted the Kennedy bloodline. Marta knows what she heard when she helped you rescue Maeve, and I did my own research. Whatever Marx did to Maeve wasn’t just a suppression curse.
This was meant to fix something that was already there, something that already existed in the Kennedy line.
” Bridge rubbed at her forehead, closing her eyes and shaking her head.
“This is blood magic…old and powerful. Magic like this needs an anchor, something living, something that will hold the magic in place for as long as the anchor survives. That’s the whole appeal.
Put it in something that doesn’t die, and neither does the spell. ”
“Vampires,” I said.
“Vampires,” she agreed. “And once it’s cast, it can’t be destroyed. It has to land somewhere. Otherwise, it will go back to where it came from. Back to the anchor.”
“That’s what Evelyn’s doing, isn’t it?” Maeve asked. “You said she’s trying to fix whatever he fucked up?”
“No, I’m saying the ritual Marx did on you wasn’t the first time he tried it with a Kennedy,” she said.
“He tried the curse before. Maybe a previous ritual got blocked, and he was trying to rectify whatever blowback that caused. Now he’s dead, and Evelyn is picking up the pieces almost like she’s personally invested. Almost like the blowback hit her, too.”
For a moment, no one said anything.
“How did she look when you saw her at the royal reception?” Bridge raised an eyebrow.
“She was using glamor magic,” Ava said.
“But she stank,” I added, “more than usual.”
“And there was something in her eyes,” Ava continued. “A soullessness. An emptiness.”
“If she’s dealing with a blowback from a blood curse, she’d be rotting from the inside out,” Leander explained. “The pain would be unbearable.”
“Marx smelled horrible,” Sol cut in.
“And his blood was black,” Maeve said. “Blacker than I’ve ever seen in a vampire. I was coughing the shit up for days afterward.”
Bridge nodded. “That sounds like a curse gone wrong.”
“So what does she want with me?” Ava asked.
“She’ll need someone from the bloodline to counter it,” Bridge said, “to reverse whatever damage has already been done.”
“Can she do that?” I squeezed my hands into fists, unable to contain my rage. She’d have to kill me to get to my mate.
“Depends on how far she’s willing to go.”
“This is ridiculous,” Guin interjected, rolling her eyes and rubbing a hand over her face. “Why does it matter what spell she’s trying to do? We need to go in there, guns blazing, and burn the place to the ground.”
“Guin’s right,” Ren added. “They’re fucking up our packmates. Rituals, spells—we’re wasting time speculating when we should be planning.”
“We should know what we’re up against,” Bridge argued. “If I say the wrong words or pull on the wrong magic, I could make it worse. Knowing she’s dying means she’ll be distracted and desperate. We can use that.”
“Almost there,” Mill cut in, typing furiously. “Poe, Ren, can you be any more specific? Any other directions?”
I tried to yank on the connection to Lycan, only to have it scald my mental strings. “No. I can’t reach him. He’s in bad shape. We have to hurry.”
“We would have known if there was some kind of curse on our bloodline,” Maeve said. “Surely, Mother would have said something or warned us somehow. Someone would have reached out to tell us.”
“Would they?” Aquila argued. “You didn’t even know you were shifters until you started hanging around with us.”
Dread wormed into my chest, dragging my heart down to my knees, and I realized it was coming from Ava. She froze and opened her mouth, that icy fear bleeding through our connection.
It was the same sense of grief and panic I’d sensed in her dreams, something of her but not belonging to her. It slid into her again, the wheels churning in her mind, something clicking into place, and it devastated her.
“Bridge,” Ava said, clearing her throat. “What do you know about magical dreams?”