Chapter 11 #2
Vision-Sam ran toward the community center, constantly checking over his shoulder. He slipped inside, barricading the door behind him.
Delilah found herself inside without crossing the space between. A makeshift medical center had been established. Mac lay on a cot, bandaged and pale. Others she recognized huddled in corners, the last of Assjacket's conscious citizens.
"I found more suppressants," Vision-Sam announced, distributing bottles. "They slow the progression, but we're running out of options."
"The evacuation team hasn't returned," Mac said weakly. "The barrier extends beyond the county line now."
A commotion outside drew Sam to the window. "They're coming. Everyone take your dose now."
Mayor Grimble shuffled at the front of the approaching horde, his mayoral hat—somehow still intact—bobbing with each jerky step. The hat's tiny flags waved frantically, as if trying to signal for help while its owner moaned tunelessly.
"By municipal decree," the Mayor's hat announced in his voice while the Mayor himself only groaned, "all citizens will shuffle aimlessly and moan at appropriate volumes during designated hours. Violators will be assimilated with extreme prejudice!"
"They're breaking through!" someone screamed.
Sam turned to the survivors. "Go out the back. I'll hold them off."
"No," Delilah whispered, understanding what came next.
She watched, helpless, as Sam fought the horde. He was magnificent, powerful—but there were too many. A purple mist enveloped him as the Mayor's outstretched fingers brushed his arm.
Sam's struggles slowed. His eyes, those intense eyes that had looked at her with such complex emotion, began to cloud over.
Behind the advancing crowd stood the silver-haired witch, smiling coldly.
But behind her—Delilah gasped—stood something worse.
A presence, shifting and indistinct, wearing faces like masks.
It discarded each face when it finished, letting them fall like empty husks.
It reached for another mask, and Delilah recognized the face it selected.
Her own.
"SAM!" she screamed, lurching back to reality so violently she knocked over her reading table.
She found herself on the floor of her shop, Elder Thornberry peering down at her with unexpected clarity in his rheumy eyes.
"When the wolf howls at midnight, the crystal catches moonbeams in unexpected places," he said softly, all his usual rambling replaced with eerie precision.
He reached into his pocket and placed a small crystal wolf figurine in her trembling hand.
"Remember—the Collector needs pairs. You're stronger together than apart. "
Before she could respond, Elder Thornberry walked calmly to the center of her shop and disappeared through the floorboards without disturbing a single board.
* * *
Sam traced his finger along the topographical map of Assjacket, his knuckles still raw from the fight with the witch's shadow creatures.
The cabin smelled of coffee, antiseptic, and the distinct scent of shifters—a woodsy musk that intensified with the three scouts crowded around his handcrafted oak table.
"The ley line convergence points create natural defensive positions," he said, marking red X's at strategic locations. "If the Silver Witch returns with reinforcements—"
"When," Mac corrected, arms crossed over his broad chest. "Not if."
Sam's jaw tightened. "When she returns, we'll have the pack positioned here, here, and here." He stabbed the map with more force than necessary on the final mark.
The youngest scout, Riley, barely twenty with a nervous habit of partially shifting his ears when anxious, glanced between Sam and Mac. "The Council's never authorized a full defensive perimeter before."
"The Council isn't here," Sam growled. "And they didn't see what that witch can do."
The oldest scout, Eleanor Blackpaw, her silver hair pulled into a severe bun, sniffed disapprovingly. "Your injuries have made you reckless, Wolfe. We need more than maps and gut feelings."
The third scout, Darius, massive even by shifter standards, rumbled agreement. "What we need is—"
Thunder cracked, and the cabin door flew open, slamming against the wall. Delilah stood in the doorway, rain plastering her hair to her face, clothes clinging to her shivering form. The crystal wolf figurine clutched in her white-knuckled grip caught the lamplight.
"The witch is working for something worse," she gasped, water pooling beneath her feet. "Something that wears faces like masks."
Sam was across the room before he realized he'd moved, pulling her inside. "What happened?"
"I had a vision." Her eyes were too wide, pupils dilated with residual terror. "Everyone in town—empty. Purple mist. The Mayor's hat was still talking but he was just—just shuffling and moaning."
Riley snickered. "So the Mayor's hat finally took full control? Sounds like an improvement."
"This isn't a joke," Delilah snapped with unexpected ferocity. "You were there too, Riley. You tried to evacuate the children but got caught at the south barricade. Your last conscious act was pushing Matilda Johnson's twins to safety before the mist took you."
Riley's ears fully shifted, pressing flat against his head. "I've never told anyone about my promise to protect the Johnson twins."
"And you, Eleanor," Delilah continued, turning to the older woman. "You barricaded yourself in the library basement with seven children and your husband's ashes. You told them stories to keep them calm until the food ran out."
Eleanor's weathered face drained of color. "My Frederick's urn is hidden behind a false panel in my bedroom wall. No one knows I speak to his ashes every night."
"Darius fought longest beside Sam. You held the community center door while twenty-three people escaped through the back. The witch's shadow creatures tore through your left shoulder first."
Darius unconsciously touched his shoulder, his expression grim.
"The seer speaks truth," Eleanor said quietly. "My grandmother had the gift—same look in the eyes after a true vision. The hollow terror that comes from seeing what cannot be unseen."
"But that's not the worst part," Delilah whispered. "Behind the witch was something else. Something wearing faces like masks, discarding each when it was done. And the next face it reached for..." She swallowed hard. "Was mine."
Eleanor's sharp intake of breath cut through the room. "The Collector," she whispered. "My grandmother spoke of such a being. An entity that harvests paired magical energies to sustain itself."
Sam's protective instincts surged. He found himself standing closer to Delilah, his body angled between her and the door.
"The Collector needs pairs," Delilah said, her voice steadying as she met Sam's eyes. "That's what Elder Thornberry told me. We're stronger together than apart."
The room fell silent as the implications settled over them like the storm clouds outside.
* * *
The scouts departed into the stormy night, leaving behind a heavy silence broken only by the crackling fire and rain battering the cabin windows. Sam poured two fingers of whiskey into a glass and handed it to Delilah. Her fingers were still trembling.
"It'll help with the vision aftershocks," he said, keeping his voice level despite the storm of emotions inside him.
Mac lingered by the door, checking his phone with suspicious frequency. "I should coordinate with the other perimeter teams."
Sam caught his friend's too-casual tone. Mac was giving them space, an uncharacteristically subtle move for the shifter king.
Delilah sank into Sam's leather armchair, curling her legs beneath her. The firelight caught the tear tracks on her cheeks, turning them to gold. She stared into the whiskey without drinking it.
"You believe me," she said. Not a question.
Sam lowered himself onto the hearth, wincing as his still-healing injuries protested. "I've seen enough impossible things to know when someone's telling the truth."
The fire popped and hissed, throwing shadows across the cabin walls. Outside, thunder rumbled like a distant warning.
"What Eleanor said about The Collector," Sam continued, "it explains the pattern of thefts. The paired artifacts, the ley line convergences—"
"The paired people," Delilah finished, finally meeting his eyes. "Ivy and Rafe. And now..."
She didn't complete the thought. She didn't need to.
Mac cleared his throat. "I'll just step outside to make those calls." He slipped through the door with remarkable stealth for a man his size.
Sam watched Delilah's hands cradle the whiskey glass, remembering how those same hands had cradled his head after the witch's attack. How they'd trembled then, too.
"There's something I haven't told you," she said, her voice barely audible over the rain. "About my clairvoyance."
Sam waited, recognizing the weight of confession in her tone.
"I can see fragments of everyone's future. Sometimes clear paths, sometimes just... possibilities." She took a shaky breath. "It's why I don't date. Why I keep people at a distance. I accidentally told my high school boyfriend he'd marry someone else on our third date."
Despite the tension, Sam's mouth twitched. "That would kill the mood."
"You have no idea." A ghost of a smile crossed her face before fading. "But with you... since the witch attacked... I see nothing."
The whiskey glass trembled in her grip.
"No future. No possibilities. Just... emptiness." Her voice broke. "I've spent my life seeing paths for everyone else while keeping them at arm's length. But with you...I see nothing. No future. It terrifies me more than any vision I've ever had."
Sam moved without thinking, taking the untouched whiskey and setting it aside. He knelt before her, ignoring the pain shooting through his ribs.
"Maybe it's not emptiness," he said quietly. "Maybe it's just unknown."
"I don't do well with unknown." Her smile was fragile but real. "Control freak, remember?"
"Says the woman whose cat regularly destroys her entire shop."
"Jinxie is the exception that proves the rule."
Sam reached for her hand, his calloused fingers brushing her palm. "What if—"
The fire suddenly roared emerald green, expanding outward in a shower of purple sparks and glittering smoke. Sam instinctively moved to shield Delilah as a figure stepped through the flames, dramatically dusting ash from a neon leopard-print jumpsuit.
"Dark forces circling Assjacket again," Baba Yaga announced, adjusting her enormous hoop earrings. "First the cursed warlock, now you two. Someone's collecting magical pairs. It's not an accident you found each other."
She snapped her fingers, and the dying fire leapt back to full strength. "I have a solution—with minor side effects."
Sam straightened, positioning himself between Delilah and the ancient witch. "How did you get through my wards?"
Baba Yaga rolled her eyes. "Please. Your magical protection is like tissue paper to me. Very nice tissue paper, expensive kind with lotion, but still tissue."
She plopped herself into Sam's reading chair and propped her feet—clad in rhinestone-covered platform sneakers—on his coffee table.
"Now," she said, examining her perfect manicure, "let's talk about your little Collector problem and why magical pairs are suddenly very trendy in the supernatural dating scene. Although why Fabio and I aren't a target is beyond me. We are the epitome of magical pairs. "