Chapter 4
FACING DOWN THE ENEMY
LEVI
“Okay, everyone, listen up,” Van said from in front of the bar at the Willow Lake Pub as soon as I walked through the door.
A few Halloween decorations had already been put up around the pub, but the shiny orange, purple, and black decorations did nothing to lighten the mood. Van was wearing his police uniform, and I felt comforted by the visual reminder that he would do whatever it took to protect us.
My buddy Carter was at his side. The big bear shifter had his arms crossed over his chest as he scowled.
Knowing him as I did, I’d bet he wished he could be anywhere else right now.
As the fire chief, though, I guessed he felt he had a duty to support Van.
He was an authority figure in town like Van, although he wasn’t usually standing in front of everyone while doing it.
Supes filled the room, eager to find out the latest scoop about the hunters.
The place had to be overcapacity, but neither Carter nor Van made a fuss about it.
I knew they wouldn’t. The most reassuring thing for a supe was being around other supes.
After I’d spent the last hour and a half tailing the humans through every street in Willow Lake, I, for one, needed this.
Minotaurs weren’t built for sneaking around. We could find our way out of any maze. We had an uncanny sense of direction and a great memory for landmarks. But stealth? Nope. Not our forte.
Thankfully, Teague had relieved me after the group returned to the motel.
Apparently, Van—or it could have been Gage—had set up a roster to have the group followed.
Yeah, it’d probably been Gage, since his former teammates were covering most of the hours.
Thank Magic for that. As former operatives and investigators for the Supernatural Council, they had more skills and knowledge than the rest of us.
I’d happily let those guys—Teague, Nelson, Adrian, and Isaac—take over completely so I could just hide at the center of my maze until the hunters left again.
I suspected not everyone in town would feel that way.
Some busybodies in town would undoubtedly think they were real life Miss Marples if they’d been tagged in.
It was easy to imagine them with binoculars hanging from their necks, ducking around walls, and giving updates in Pig Latin through a set of toy walkie-talkies.
Hell, considering how up-to-date some of them were on all the goings on in town, they probably did that already.
Yes, Teague would do a good job. Better than me, certainly. The guy was a death mage, who’d worked for the Supernatural Council for years, but he could pass for an average mundane human. He had a ready smile and freckles. Very boy next door. No one would expect him to be deadly.
Really, human nature was rather misguided when they depended so much on appearances to make assessments about someone’s strength or capacity to do harm. Not that I thought Teague would hurt anyone without cause, but if provoked? I wouldn’t want to stand against him.
Van made a commanding presence. Fiery light blazed from his eyes, a sharp contrast to his dark skin.
The fire was a sign of how close to the surface his hellhound was.
It soothed me to see him ready to eliminate any threat we faced.
His voice was calm, and, unlike me, no sweat trickled along his hairline.
Still, I wasn’t alone in my fear. The stench of it saturated the air. Mates held onto one another and families huddled together at the tables. And the few loners, like me, stood in clusters around the room.
Westin, our local merman, was standing close to the door that led to the kitchen, guarding the two kids.
Well, I guess they weren’t really kids, but that was how everyone in town thought of them since we’d found them at the mercy of a rogue wolf pack a few months back.
Brodie and Dakota, the young men in question, were peeking around the door, but didn’t come out.
Daphne Rivers, a protective mama cat shifter and one of the biggest gossips in Willow Lake, was standing amid four of her children: Theo, Eli, Clive, and Warren. Another of hers, Simon, was clinging to his dragon mate at a different table.
Daphne’s eyes kept flashing with the pale green of her cat’s.
She looked seconds away from shifting, just so she could arch her back and hiss if anyone ignored her quest for answers.
Her husband, interestingly, wasn’t present.
He was one of the few supes who wasn’t. Even Old Thom, the antisocial old troll, was here.
But having all these supes in one place was dangerous.
“Van?” I said as I approached the hellhound. “We shouldn’t be together like this, not while the hunters are here. The woman spoke like she knew what magic felt like when a bunch of supes gathered in one place.”
Van frowned and turned to the supes. “You heard him… I want one person from each family to stay, but we need everyone else to clear out.”
The scent of fear spiked. People shuffled closer together, as if not wanting to be the one singled out and asked to leave.
A few people scowled at me, so I retreated to the pool table where I usually hung out.
That was my territory in the pub—well, not just mine.
It was Carter’s and Parker’s too, but that was it.
No one else could claim it like us. I grabbed my pool cue, not to use as a weapon, but because holding it was familiar and comforting.
Not a single person left.
Van’s mouth was a tight line as he eyed up the group. I didn’t know what he was going to do, but it was going to be a shit show.
Gage, our local demon guardian, pressed a kiss to his mate Jake’s temple before standing and catching Van’s eye. He cleared his throat. “I can help with disguising the magic for a while.”
Wow. That was possible? I blew out the breath I’d been holding. That’d be good.
Van’s gaze snapped to the demon. “You sure? Because…”
“I’m sure,” Gage said.
Yeah. I didn’t think the man would have spoken if he hadn’t been sure. As the guardian of Willow Lake, he was tasked with protecting both the community and the place.
Van nodded and waved at him to do what he had to. Gage nodded. “Lock the doors for a minute.”
Someone scurried to the large wooden doors leading to the parking lot.
As soon as the lock clicked into place, Gage unleashed his demon form.
His body grew larger, and tar-colored wings protruded from his back.
His dark horns, which were always visible to supes, seemed shinier and more menacing as his skin and eyes turned red.
Long, dark claws formed at the tips of his fingers.
He was terrifying. He wouldn’t harm me, or any other Willow Lake supe.
But try telling that to my nerves. More sweat sprouted up over my skin.
Gage closed his eyes and lifted his hands. Magic whipped through the room like a hurricane, and when it died down, the usual tingling presence of magical energy had disappeared. I gulped.
That was unsettling. Unnatural. I shivered.
I wanted to shift into my minotaur form just to make sure I still could.
“There is no need to worry. This is temporary,” Gage reassured us as he shed his demonic form and returned to his normal human-looking form. “You can unlock the door.”
I wished we could have kept the door locked. I didn’t want the hunters waltzing in here, although I understood why blocking their entrance would be bad. The last thing we wanted was to pique their curiosity.
“Okay. Let’s talk about these humans.” Van nodded, but I could see by the way he tugged at his collar he didn’t like being disconnected from the magic in the community any more than I did. “Now that we know they are here?—”
The pub door was flung open, interrupting him. Hayden, our pack alpha, charged into the room with his mate Ryley on his heels. His eyes flashed as his wolf-side surged forward.
“What the fuck is going on?” Hayden demanded.
Van caught my eye and nodded, encouraging me to speak.
“Uh… some people checked into my motel today,” I mumbled. “They look like hunters.”
Hayden held up his cellphone. “Why the fuck didn’t you let me know, Van? I checked my text messages. My damn text messages!” he shouted. And, yeah, everyone knew our alpha hated texting, or anything else related to technology. “Do you know what I found? Nothing. There was nothing there.”
Every person in the room tilted their heads to the side to expose their necks. No one liked when an alpha was angry .
“You were on a weekend away with your mate,” Van explained. “We didn’t want to disturb you.”
“Yeah, well, fuck that.” Hayden rubbed his chest. “My pack magic has been going wild for hours. I could feel everyone’s damn fear. And what the hell happened to our magic? It’s missing. What did the hunters do?”
“Gage cleared the magical energy from the air for the night so the hunters couldn’t sense it,” Van explained.
“Well, I don’t like it,” Hayden grumbled. “It’s making my skin itch.”
“Deep breath in. Deep breath out. Remember? Like you taught me.” Ryley rubbed Hayden’s back. “You can see they’re all safe. I told you we should have called.”
“How would I have known they were safe over the phone? I needed to see them.” A growl punctuated his words. He tugged his mate into his arms and glared at Van. “Tell me about the fucking hunters.”
“Nothing’s happened. For now, it’s a matter of watching what we do in public while they are here to make sure they don’t see anything they shouldn’t.
” Van swung his gaze away from Hayden to the rest of the people gathered.
“We already do this anyway, so nothing needs to change. We interact with humans every day. We all have human neighbors and friends. There’s no need to worry about these three. Carry on as usual.”