Chapter 18 - Drake
Not for the first time, Oz summoned us to a meeting in Elias’s office. If the alpha was annoyed with Oz for doing so, he had long since given up on lecturing Oz for the practice. As a result, a cluster of us were crammed into the office, all looking at Oz as he cradled a pile of papers.
“I’ve been doing some research,” Oz said by way of greeting.
“There’s a shock,” Sam said. “Oz doing research. Who would have thought? The real question is: How much sleep did you get?”
Oz blinked blearily, fighting back a yawn. “I think I got a thirty-minute nap at some point? Maybe twenty?”
Letting out a puff of air, Elias rolled his eyes. “If I thought that strapping you down to a bed to get you to sleep would do anything, I would,” he lectured Oz, who shrugged, indifferent.
“Gripe at me all you want,” he said. “I’m still the one who has all the information.”
“And that is…?”
“Azaret manages to absorb the power from magical areas. He saps the life out of them, causing chaos behind him. His entire thing is that he’s always craving more power. He can’t get enough of it.”
“How does he absorb it?” Elias asked.
“It takes some time,” Oz said. “Like a couple of days. And if he doesn’t drain the magic entirely, then it’s possible to get it restarted. But, considering everything, I think it’s best if we don’t let him get that far.”
“Which means there’s no way he’s going to share with the wraith,” Sam said.
“Looks like it,” Oz said.
“All right,” Elias said, nodding as his fingers drummed on the table, brow creased as he mulled over the new information.
“We know more than we did. The problem is, it’s all a bunch of disconnected pieces that we need to bring together to come up with something cohesive.
Which begs the question, how the hell are we supposed to do that? ”
He raised his eyebrows as his gaze swept across the room, opening up the floor for suggestions.
“We need to figure out a way to turn the two of them against one another,” I said. “If we can get them at one another’s throats, they’ll be distracted, and that will give us enough time to come up with a plan to go after whoever wins.”
“Bets are still open for who’s going to win,” Oz piped up. “My money’s still on the wraith.”
He quieted, biting his lips as Elias shot him a withering glare.
“We can’t just wait, hoping one of them will take out the other for us,” Elias countered. “It’s a nice fantasy, but it’s not feasible, nor is it practical.”
“The good news is that we’re not helpless on either front. We know iron hurts demons. Emma and Rachel can help with the wraith,” Sam said.
“Liv, too,” I muttered, turning the heads of most of the other wolves in the room. Only Elias and Sam didn’t look surprised. Their mates must have told them what was going on.
“Wait.” Oz held up a hand, eyebrows shooting high up his forehead in incredulity. “Are you telling me that Liv’s a witch, too?”
“Looks that way,” I growled.
Oz blinked. I knew my friend well enough to know that he was currently biting back a thousand questions he desperately wanted to ask.
My lip twitched upward despite myself. “I’ll tell you about it later.”
“They can help defend the town against the wraith,” Elias conceded, ignoring Oz’s shocked interjection. “But I’m not risking them to attack him head-on. I’m not putting them in danger.”
Sam snarled his agreement. I gave Elias a short, sharp nod, trying hard to hide my relief that he didn’t plan on putting Liv directly in harm’s way.
It had been one of the things that had kept me up at night ever since she had told me she wanted to train with Rachel and Emma.
Knowing that wouldn’t be an issue, as I had feared, let me breathe easier.
“All right, so we have three witches we can use,” Oz said. “I think that we need to utilize them as much as possible. We’ve got an advantage that would be moronic to squander, you know?”
“I’m guessing you have an idea?” Elias said.
“Considering I’m just finding out about a third witch, not at the moment. Give me a few minutes, and I’ll figure something out.” Oz tapped his foot, staring up at the ceiling as he contemplated, entirely oblivious to the fact that the rest of us were staring at him.
“Maybe they can create something for us?” Oz finally suggested. “Ever since this all started, I’ve been doing some research into witchcraft. There are plenty of examples of witches enchanting objects with magic. Maybe we can get them to do that for us to go up against the wraith.”
“That’s not a bad idea, actually,” Elias admitted. “I’ll talk to the girls and see what they can figure out. If you could tell them what books to look at for those spells, I’d appreciate it.”
“I’ll make a list,” Oz promised.
I found myself breathing a little easier. We had plans. That always made things feel more manageable, even with wraiths and demons and all the other things plaguing the town. Knowing we could do something, that we knew what to do, always helped me focus. We were taking strides toward action.
A knock sounded on the door, and the entire room fell silent.
We all looked to the door. There was no reason to expect anything was wrong, but it was as if a cloud had just covered the room, weighing everything down.
I didn’t know how to explain it, only that I had the uncomfortable certainty that something was very wrong, and that whoever was on the other side of the door was about to deliver some very bad news.
Glancing around, taking in Elias’s and Sam’s stricken, uneasy expressions, I had a sneaking suspicion that they had the exact same thoughts.
Lucas was the one who actually opened the door. On the other side stood Theo, one of my patrolmen who was supposed to be circling the town right now. That intuition that something was very, very wrong deepened into cold certainty. Theo’s features were taut, his shoulders tense, his expression grim.
No one said anything as he stepped into the room, all of us watching him intently. Theo licked his lips.
“Sorry for interrupting,” he muttered. He turned to me. “I know I’m supposed to be patrolling, but—”
I waved him off. “I know you well enough to know you wouldn’t be here if it weren’t important. What is it?”
“I was on patrol and was on my way past the oasis when a couple of people stopped me,” he began. “It’s impossible. I don’t know how it could happen. If they hadn’t dragged me over to see it, I probably wouldn’t have believed it myself.”
I held up my hand, and his babbling died away. “What happened exactly, Theo?” I asked.
Theo hesitated, stiffening, then seemed to bite the bullet.
“The waterfall’s stopped.”
Silence. Not even Oz had a pithy remark. Everyone looked at one another, as if trying to assure themselves that they had actually heard Theo correctly. The identical looks of horror, bewilderment, and confusion on everyone’s faces told me that we had all indeed heard him correctly.
“What do you mean, exactly?” Elias demanded, his voice even despite the edge to the words. The intensity of his stare would have made any number of shifters whither and shrink away.
“I mean that one second, the waterfall was going fine. The next, it slowed to a trickle. Then, it stopped altogether,” Theo said.
“But that’s impossible,” Sam said. “There’s no way that the waterfall could just stop like that.”
“Well, impossible or not, it’s happened,” Theo said. “I’ve seen it with my own eyes.”
Elias was already moving toward the door. “Let’s go,” he growled.
***
When we got to the oasis, a huge crowd had formed, surrounding the water as they craned their neck to stare up at the mountain where the water normally descended.
There was not a drop of water to be seen.
The stone where the water trickled down, normally dark and damp from splattered water, was bone-dry, the sun having baked the rock.
The oasis itself was still. The water, which normally rippled and churned slightly from the waterfall, was nothing more than a glassy surface.
The growing crowd murmured their unease, their confused and discordant conversation swelling as more people arrived.
When one person caught sight of Elias and called out his name, the other heads whipped toward us.
A second later, we were surrounded by dozens of concerned pack members, every one of them peppering us with their fears and concerns, the cacophony so loud and chaotic that none of us could parse any one question.
Elias held up his hand, but it still took another long moment before the cluster quieted down enough for him to actually speak.
“Right now, we don’t know what’s going on,” Elias said. “We’re looking into it. I’m going to ask everyone to please remain calm. Once we know more about what’s going on, then we’ll give you an update.”
“Is it the wraith?” a woman asked, clutching her child to her chest.
“We don’t know,” Elias repeated. “We’re going to see what we can find out, okay?”
It took us some time to actually clear the throng. An hour had passed by the time we had blocked off the oasis and were able to examine it properly. We hunted for signs of a blockage upstream, but found nothing. The water had just vanished.
“It reminds me of the riverbed we found,” I said. “I wonder if that was some sort of trial for whatever happened here.” I turned to Elias. “Any thoughts?”
“I don’t know what’s going on precisely,” Elias muttered, running his fingers through his hair.
“Something happened to the underground spring,” I said. “That’s the only explanation.”
Elias grimaced as he deliberated. “It makes the most sense,” he admitted. “But at the same time, it’s almost impossible. We have guards up there at all times. They would have…”
He trailed off, going pale.
I nodded. The guards at the underground spring should have come to get us the second they realized something was wrong. The fact that they hadn’t could only mean one thing.
“Let’s go,” I said.
Giving Theo and a couple of others orders to stay nearby and keep an eye on the oasis, the rest of us shifted and followed Elias in a race toward the tunnels and the underground spring, already knowing what we would see but praying we were wrong, anyway.
We raced along the side of the mountain, running as fast as our paws could carry us across the desert. It seemed to take an eternity. My heart pounded as my wolf snarled and thrashed in agitation with every extra moment it took.
We saw the two lifeless forms on the ground long before we reached the base of the tunnel.
My nostrils caught the stench of death mixed with blood, all but masking the scents of the two shifters who were supposed to be on guard.
One of the forms was a wolf, and it seemed the other hadn’t had enough time to shift.
Blood stained the ground, dark against the dry, sandy surface.
Dread made my stomach plummet as my wolf raged. Still, I held out the slightest hope that maybe these weren’t the men who were supposed to be protecting the tunnels, even as I could already tell that was a pipe dream. There was no one else they could be.
As we neared the bodies, enough to confirm that they were the two guards on duty, a high-pitched cackling sounded overhead.
I didn’t even get the chance to turn toward the sound before something slammed into my back, right between my shoulder blades.
It forced me to the ground as several sharp needles dug into my flesh.
Not needles—claws. I howled as they buried into me, gripping tight.
More cackling sounded, and within a handful of seconds, the entire area was filled with imps.
They lunged toward us, leaping onto our backs and slamming us to the ground.
I watched as one imp snapped the neck of one of the wolves just before a weight slammed onto my shoulders and forced me down.
I was spared the same fate because Oz barreled into the creature.
I forced myself to my feet, glancing around at the sea of demons.
We had to run. There were too many of them for us to fight.
I hated it. We all did, but it was either run now and come back to fight another day, or stay and die and leave the pack to fend for itself against what was about to come their way.
As much as I despised it, there was nothing else we could do.
Not right now, not without more of a plan.
Just as I thought this, Elias yowled a command, the order to fall back. We turned and ran. The imps chased after us for a long time, following us back to the oasis.
Finally, the remaining imps began to retreat. Some of them continued cackling even as they disappeared. We kept going for another quarter-mile before finally slowing to a stop.
Once we were certain we were safe and the imps weren’t lying in wait, we shifted back to human.
Elias panted, wiping away the blood from the cut on his cheek with the back of his hand, smearing the crimson.
More blood welled in the wound almost immediately.
He stared back the way we had just come, eyes wide as if he couldn’t believe what he had just seen.
“Fuck,” he hissed.
“You know what we’re going to find if we go back,” I said, glancing where we had just run from. “That tunnel is going to be crawling with demons. We’re not going to be able to do anything. Not without a full-scale assault.”
Elias nodded, rage radiating off him as he glowered at the path that led to the spring, the lifeblood of the entire pack. The second we walked in there, we would come across more demons. More than we could handle with just a handful of us.
“I hate that they made us run,” he snarled, the words dripping with rage and venom.
“We had to do it,” I told him. I hated admitting it as much as he did.
Elias scowled, not responding. He didn’t have to. Nothing I said right now would change the reality of the situation or make it any easier to swallow.
The wraith had taken over the underground spring. After months of coveting it, it finally had what it wanted, and it wouldn’t take long until we were all run out of town.