Chapter 26 #2
“Alright then. I’ll hold onto them.” I took a step back to leave and immediately realized I had no idea where the hell I was.
“Before I take you back to your car, I’d like to speak with you for a moment.”
My shoulders slumped. I’d expected this. “My answer is still no.”
Silas’s lips quirked. “You tossing me out on my ass was a strong clue.”
“Yes, well, you deserved it.”
“Perhaps I did.” He shook his head. “While Beckett is what I wish to discuss, the subject matter is different.”
I crossed my arms and stared at him with suspicion. “Alright.”
He turned. “Come. Let’s start walking. We’ll be out of the woods in about twenty minutes. My Second is driving your car back.”
A flash of memory, the frantic bail out of the car and the subsequent run to get to safety. I groaned. “Oh shit. I left my car on the side of the road. How many tickets did I get?”
“None.”
At my look of astonishment, Silas smiled. “A couple of my shifters spotted a frantic dark-haired woman bailing out of her vehicle and hauling ass toward the woods. They thought they should call me.”
“Ah.” My cheeks burned. “I’m sure that was weird enough to get put on your radar.”
Silas grunted in agreement. “The claws and fur and glowing eyes helped influence their decision.”
I winced. “Within ten minutes of someone ripping off that amulet, everything started. I couldn’t make it home.”
“You were safe the moment you stepped into those woods. I went looking for you as soon as they said it was a curly-haired woman.”
Warmth bloomed in my chest. “You could have stopped me from eating Thumper.”
Silas grinned, making my heart skip a beat. Damn. He was fine all mussed up and dirty. “You didn’t eat Bambi, so you gotta take it as a win.”
We walked a little while before Silas shoved his hands in his pockets. “Beckett has been on our radar for a while now. Some of our female shifters have had issues with him, though he’d never gone further than verbally harassing them. He’s never been as enamored with our women as he is with you.”
“Lucky me,” I said dryly.
“I think there’s something in your blood that draws him to you.”
At my sharp look, Silas gave me an apologetic smile. “You are a witch, yes. But you are something else too. Something I can’t put my finger on. Beckett senses it as well, and whatever it is it’s making him nuts.”
“You’re saying my blood draws him like an aphrodisiac?”
“Something like that. I’m not sure if he wants to kill you or make you his mate.” He winced. “Or whatever vampires do. I’m not sure they’re capable of love. Not like we are.”
“He’s attacked me twice now. Neither time felt like he wanted to book a trip to Vegas.”
Silas stopped and held out his hand. “He attacked you again?”
I nodded. “A few days ago.” I held up my arm. “Should have known something was weird when his claw marks healed the same day he gave them to me.”
He held my arm up to the light, stroking a finger down my forearm, his touch a light caress that made my stomach tighten. “No scarring,” he murmured. “How deep did he cut you?”
“Nearly to the bone.”
Silas’s eyes flashed with a silver glow. “I’m sorry, Alex. He needs to be taken out.”
I never felt in danger when I was with Silas, even knowing he might be more of a predator than Alric. “The Prime visited.”
Silas’s attention snapped to me. “When?”
“A few times. I saw him yesterday morning.” He lifted a dark eyebrow, and I waved a hand. “Beckett broke into my house. It’s a whole thing. Regardless, Alric wanted the same thing you did.”
“He knows.”
“About the poisonous blood? Yes. He’s known for months.”
Silas’s brow furrowed. “Poisonous blood?”
I nodded. “Alric said it was a defect. He had to provide blood for Beckett since his turning.”
Silas slowly shook his head. “No, Alex. A few months ago, Beckett was an asshole, but he was completely normal. He doesn’t have poisonous blood.”
The Shifter King rolled his sleeve up to expose his right forearm. His veins were raised and black. I gasped in alarm. That mark. I’d seen it before in my kitchen the first time he’d visited and had forgotten about it.
Silas continued. “Beckett is infected with some kind of virus or spell. I had a run-in with him a few days before you ran into us in the alley. It turned physical and the bastard scratched me.”
I hissed and ran my fingers over his arm. “What is it?”
“No idea, but if it can infect me, I don’t think anyone is safe.” He ran his fingers over the raised veins. “I feel… urges,” he confessed. “I want to scratch and bite and kill.”
Silas swallowed hard and looked at me. “This thing wants to possess. It wants to blaze through me and take.”
Alric had kept his cards close to the vest. “That bastard lied to me.”
Silas nodded. “Looks that way. I bet his people are infected and he’s trying to keep it under wraps.”
“If the vampires feel the same way you do…” My voice trailed off. Vampires already felt those urges when they first woke up. Only time and training helped them squash those particular desires. “He wants to use me to find him. Just like you did.”
Silas’s jaw tightened. “I could have gone about it another way.”
I cracked a laugh. “You think?”
“I am still learning how to interact with other supernaturals. Being King is not all it’s cracked up to be. Everything feels like a minefield, and I have to remember I cannot always demand things and expect to be obeyed.”
I stared at him. “Wow. That’s insanely arrogant. And self-reflective. I’m not sure whether to be impressed or appalled.”
“You can be both,” Silas said with a slight grin.
“Appalled it is.”
Silas kept walking. “I assume you turned the Prime down as well.”
“I did.” Something else was bothering me. “Are any of your other people infected?”
“Just me. None of my shifters know, and I plan to keep it that way. Finding a cure is my top priority.”
I glanced up at him. “How do you propose finding one?”
“I’m ninety percent sure the witches are behind the virus.”
My stomach dropped. “Surely you aren’t serious.”
“I’m dead serious. If I can find the witches responsible, I can force them to cure me.”
My lips thinned. “I don’t think the witches would do such a thing. Why would they risk a war with the shifters and vamps? There’s no way they’d win.”
“You’d be surprised. We are animals at heart and possess little magic, other than the type that ties us together as a Pack.
As King, I possess the most magic, but I cannot summon storms or create potions or do fantastical things like your kind.
My magic provides physical benefits among other things, but they are small powers, designed to keep us close and acting in good faith with each other. ”
“Why do you think the witches are responsible?”
He held up his arm. “There is magic in this virus. I feel it inside me.”
I stopped walking. “Let me see your arm again.”
Silas held out his hand. I pushed up his sleeve again, my fingers sliding over the crisp hair on his arm. The dark veins had crept from the underside of his forearm to the edges of either side. I wasn’t sure what I could do, but I was good at sensing magic.
I wrapped my hands around his arm and closed my eyes.
Standing outside in the fresh air, with a gentle breeze ruffling my hair made it easy to slip into the state between wakefulness and meditation.
My breathing steadied and I tapped that inherent magic always resting inside me.
I don’t know where it came from; Mom said hers didn’t work the same way, but the power was useful, even if it was niche.
I stroked my thumb over the veins in Silas’s arm and concentrated. At first, nothing happened, but I kept searching.
A wave of black oiliness hit me; the magic inside Silas’s veins was dark with corruption. I sucked in a gasp. My elbow burned like fire.
“Alex?” Silas’s voice was warm with concern.
“Shh.”
He fell silent. I kept searching, digging deep for answers, but the darkness kept slipping away, the spell or virus, whatever it was, evading my questing.
I pressed a little more, sensing something familiar, even as I knew I’d never before encountered whatever was living inside the Shifter King’s body.
One thing I knew, though, was Silas was right.
A witch and possibly something else had made this spell.